Full text of "The Catholic world"

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

. 76W

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE,

VOL. XXXII.
OCTOBER, 1880, TO MARCH, 1881,

NEW YORK :
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.,

9 Barclay Street,

1881.

THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

Alexis dzToc<\uw'\\\e. Wilfrid C.Robinson, 157
American Literature, Transitions of. The

Rev. J. V. (? Conor, ..... 363
A New Book on Freemasonry, . . .610
Asia, The Light of, . . . . . -473
Austro-Hungary, ...... 33

Blunders of Dr. E%ver. The Rev. George M.

Searle, ....... 813

California, The Early Catholic Missions of.-

Charles H Robinson . . . HI

Catalogues of MSS. in the Vatican Library,

The. ll.-TAe Commander J. B. de
.

C a thoirChur C h,Genesis'ofthe.-77,//?^'.

A F.Henit ...... 73,167

Catholic Missions of California, The Early.

Charles H. Robinson, . . . . in
_.,.,., . ,

Cathohcs and Protestants agreeing on the
_ . . ~ . , , r, , ,

SchoolQuestion.-r/^ I ' J '* K * r * 6 "

"I"/

>L ^ f /^i-i_* N j TM-' i- i
Church (The) under Elizabeth. S. Hubert
j

*' ,.' ' u 'T? "i r- '
Commentary (A) upon the Episcopal Conven-

tl0n ' ........ 28Q

Dechamps, The Writings of Cardinal. The

Rev.A.F.Hewit ...... 394

Decline of the Study of Metaphysics .Come-

liusM. O'Leary, M.D., LL.D., . . 145

Diplomacy A Dish <.-?okn MacCartky, . 57

cy,A.-^^ ( :C^^, . 5 7

Ecclesiastical (The) Press in Germany before

the " Keformation." Lady B. Murpliy, 650

Elizabeth, The Church under. 5". Hubert

Burke, ....... 219

English (The) of To-day. John MacCarlhy, 491

Episcopal Convention, A Commentary upon
the 2g

Ewer (Dr.), The Blunders ot. T/ie Rev.
,,.,,

George M. Searle, ..... 813

Frechette, Louis. Maurice F Egan, . . 550
Freemasonry, A New Book on, . . . 610

Genesis (The) of Faith.- The Rev. A. F.

ffewit, ...... 43,, 577

Genesis of the Catholic Church.-^ Rev.

A.F.Hewit, ..... 73,167

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Rev. J. V.

O* Conor, ....... 231

Heraldry, Some Usesof.Hfonsignor Seton,

D D., ........ 5=4

Heraldry, The Religious Aspect of.Mon-

signor Seton, D.D., ..... 757

Ireland, Protestant Proselytism in. Henry

Bellingham, M.P., ..... 621

Irish-American Colonies. The Rev. Stephen

Byrne, O.S.D., ...... 346

^ of Christ ._ r ^ Rev , A , F . Hewit , 842

Decision, K.-The Very Rev. Thomas

* J?*. * .....

Light of Asia, The, ...... 473

auriceF. Egan, 550

f CrC le ***-"' *'
rse ">

Metaphysics, Decline of the Study of. Lornc-

lius M. OLeary. M.D., LL.D., . . 145

Mind, Some Recenf Views upon.-G^f^W

^^^,^^.,i^J ..... 747

Missine (A) Page of Catholic American His-

tory. The Rev. R. L. Burtsell, D.D., . 204

My Raid into Mexico. N.Robinson, 88,238,370

Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Rev. J. V.

O 1 Conor ..... . . 231

New Irish Poet - A - Alfred M. Williams, . 735
New ( The > Rhetoric. The Rev. J. V.

& Cottar, ....... 692

obelisks, and the New York Obelisk.-^,-

raldi Cesnola, ...... 7

One Christmas in Alice Luttrell's Life. Sara

T. Smith, ....... 53 8

Orcades ?The). M. P. Thompson, ... 306

Oxford, The Changes in. Arthur F. Mar-

shall, ........ i

Petrarch Canon at Lombez. M. P. Thomp-

son " ' ' .' .* *, ' ' S02

Protestant Proselytism in Ireland. Henry

'
Bellingham, M.P., ..... 621

Public Education before the " Reformation."

Robert Rea, ..... 262, 354

P ^ < The Rev ' E " B " D >> Tw Le " erS

K-Orby Shipley, A M., ... 404

Reformatio p ublic Education be f ore the.

-R obe rtRea ...... 262,354

Religious (The) Aspect of Heraldry. Mon-

signor Seton, D.D., ..... 757

iii

CONTENTS.

School Question, Catholics and Protestants
agreeing on the. The Rev. I. T. Hecker,

Some Recent Views upon Mind. Cornelius

M. O'Lafiry, M.D., LL.D., . . .747

Some,. Uses; oT ,Heraldry. Monsignor Seton,

524

Sybil Keith's Inheritance. Sara T. Smith, 273

The Placard, 446

Three Catholic Poets. Maurice F. Egan, . 121

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Wilfrid C. Robinson, 157
Transitions of American Literature. The

Rev. J. V. O 1 Conor, 363

699

Two Letters to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D.

Orby Shipley, A.M., . . . .404

Vatican Library, The Catalogues of MSS. in

the. The Commander J. B. de Rossi, , 48

Woman in Ancient Egypt, .... 563

Woman of Culture, h.John Talbot Smith, 14,

187, 319, 504, 673, 771

Wraith (The) of the Achensee. /^. .'Wo, 591,825
Writings (The) of Cardinal Dechamps. The
Rev. A . F. Heivit 394

POETRY.

A Christmas Carol. Edith Cook, . . . 561
A Revision, . . .... .47

Goethe's Dedication to Faust, . . . 186

Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalen. The

Rev. A If red Young, .... 490

Lake George (1880). M. B. Morse, . . 272

Oberon and Titania. Stephen de Vere, . . 70

Placare, Christe, Servulis, .... 345
Purgatorio (Canto XX.) T. W. Parsons,

LL.D., 420

Revelations of Divine Love. The Rev. Al-
fred Young, 768

The Bee at the Altar. Eleanor C. Donnelly, 218
The Fight with the Dragon, . . . .666

The Tintamarre. Julia O 1 'Ryan, . . . 548

The Wife of St. Nicander. Edith Cook, . 302

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A History of the Catholic Church in the Dio-
ceses of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, . 430,

A History of the Devotion to the Blessed Vir-
gin,

Album Benedictinum,

An Authentic History of Ireland and its
People,

An Egyptian Princess,

Anglican Ritualism, .....

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Re-
ligion, .......

Chinese Immigration, .....
Common Sense in the Household, .
Critical Dialogue between Aboo and Caboo on
a New Book, ......

Das Gnadenbild der Mater Ter Adrairabilis, .
De Religione et Ecclesia, ....

English Tyranny and Irish Suffering,
God the Teacher of Mankind,

Introduction to the Study of Sign- Language, .
Irish Distress and its Remedies,
Irish Saints in Great Britain,

430
281

574
575
716

857
429
859
8o

287
715
718

283

Les Socie'te's Secretes et la Socie"te, .

Life of Father Alexis Clerc, S.J., . . . 719

Life's Happiest Day, 143

Literary Studies from the great British Au-
thors, 574

Little Manual of Novices, .... 288
Lives of the Leaders of our Church Uni-
versal, ....... 430

Memoirs of a New York Doll, . ... 860

Moral Discourses, 575

Poems of Many Years and Many Places, . 854

Poems : Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous, . 576
Protestantism and the Bible, . . . .714

Religion and Chemistry, ..... 424
Report of the Commissioner of Education

for the Year 1878, .... - 859

Rose O'Connor,

Sister Dora, ....... 575

Strange Memories, ...... 286

The Adventures of a Donkey, . . . 759

The Age of Unreason, 720

The Church and the Moral World, . . 428

The Endowments of Man, .... 427

The Fifth of November, and other Tales, . 144
The Growing Unbelief of the Educated

Classes, 141

The Hour will Come, ..... 287
The Illustrated Catholic Family Annual for

i8Si, 284

The Iron Gate, and other Poems, . . . 282

The Life of Henri-Marie Boudon, . . . 429

The Life of the Rev. Charles Nerinckx, . . 142

The Life of St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, 575
The Life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of

our Lord Jesus Christ, .... 144
The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the

Rt. Rev. Dr. Doyle, 286

The New Catholic Sunday-school Manual, . 288

The Qur'an, 856

The Stillwater Tragedy. . . . .284

The True Faith of our Forefathers, . . 279

Ultima Thule, . . . . V .285

Wetzer und Welte's Kirchenlexicon, . . 720

Will Roses of Cape Ann, .... 573

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXII. OCTOBER, 1880. No. 187.

THE CHANGES IN OXFORD.

A VISIT of Cardinal Newman to Oxford a few months ago, as
a guest of the Fellows of Trinity, is suggestive of some hope for
the future. It is suggestive also of recollections of the past.
Half a century has gone by since John Henry Newman was elect-
ed a scholar of Trinity, and within that period such mighty
changes have been wrought in the religious and academical life
ot Oxford that a new world of thought and a new compass of
object may be said to have been begotten in the university.
Cardinal Newman's own life has in real sense impersonated much
of the change which has come over the Old World. He com-
bines the past with the present the best of the past with the
best of the present all the earnestness of research and of will
with all the harvest of possession and reward. To his eminence
the recollections of Oxford are always at once sweet and trying.
The very remembrance of difficulties, of struggles, of separations,
has much in it to give pleasure and pain. The acquisition of
what is new, though at the same time it be precious, does not ef-
face the deep loss of early sympathies. No one has written more
tenderly and pathetically on the pain of separation from old
friends, from old scenes, old interests and associations, than the
eminent theologian who has done more to convert Anglicans than
perhaps all other converts put together. It is this naturalness of
sentiment, this kind, simple friendship, which has won the cordial
sympathy of all Englishmen, and caused Protestants, however
wedded to their prejudices, to respect, and even to love, Cardinal
Newman. He has never willingly given offence to an adversary ;

2 THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. [Oct.,

he has never been the aggressor in controversy ; he has only de-
fended any position which was assailed, and this, too, with im-
mense charity and quiet modesty. If every Catholic controver-
sialist had the spirit of Cardinal Newman, his especial gift of
making the best of an adversary's case, more Anglicans would be
drawn to the church by " a soft answer " than are now repelled
from it by egoism or harshness.

At Littlemore, a village near Oxford, " Dr. Newman" estab-
lished a religious community which was kindred, at least in
spirit, to a Catholic monastery. It was in this retreat that Dr.
Newman was led, by divine charity, to embrace the one faith of
the one church. We in these days can hardly measure the ex-
tent of the struggle the tremendous wrench of the man from his
surroundings which was involved in such a novel resolution.
At Oxford, forty years ago, there was no more " movement to-
wards Rome " than there was towards the church of the czar.
When the Oxford movement first began the tendency was so
half-hearted that the " Eastern Church " had more attraction than
the Western. The idea of union, of return to Catholicity, was
but partially apprehended by the " Tractarians." It was rather
formulated in such a phrase as " Cannot the primitive Church of
England be united, by concession on either side, with the Ca-
tholic and Holy Eastern Church ? " than formulated by such a
phrase as " Cannot we submit, heart arid conscience, to the su-
preme authority of the Holy Roman See?" "Romanism," as
it was then called, and as it is still called by the ignorant, was
regarded as slightly inferior to czarodoxy. The notion was that
the Church of England was primitive ; that czarodoxy was only
a few shades less primitive ; but that Romanism was a growth of
a later period, and therefore not quite so catholic as the Eastern
Church. Accordingly we find that Mr. Palmer went to the East
to try to open the way to reconciliation. But, to use a conven-
tional word, he was " snubbed." The Archbishop of (Canterbury
was not recognized. The Church of England was regarded as a
state invention, a state machine, which had never possessed even
a priesthood. The history of that church was well known. It
was no more primitive than was Henry VIII. or Queen Eliza-
beth. It had not one single link with the primitive church. The
Eastern bishops and priests therefore repudiated an alliance with
an institution which was born of illegitimacy. All the woild
knew that Queen Elizabeth's illegitimacy was the real cause of
her repudiating the pope's authority, just as Henry VII I. 's most
disreputable marriages were the real cause of his doing the same

iSSo.] THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. 3

thing. The East would not listen to English flattery. Mr.
Palmer had to abandon his expectation of uniting English heresies
with Eastern schisms.

Yet at Oxford there was an undercurrent of suspicion that the
East, without the West, was imperfect. Besides, the West was so
very much closer than the East, so much more familiar by asso-
ciation, that only the very learned knew anything about the East,
whereas everybody knew something about the West. " Perilous-
ly near to Rome " was a phrase which had a meaning for every
Protestant, man, woman, and child ; but perilously near to St.
Petersburg, to Moscow, or to all the Russias had but a very
vague suggestion of proximity. The real truth came to be known
that the coquetting with the Eastern Church was a veil, an
apology, even a deception ; and that if Catholicity was to be had
there must be union with the Holy See, not with the successors
of Peter the Great.

Dr. Newman was the first to break away from the pleasant
delusion of substituting Eastern dreams for Western truths.
When he became a Catholic every Englishman understood that
Catholicity meant " submission to Rome." And though the
Eastern hallucination continued to spread, and has even now some
respectable votaries, the whole of England is aware that union
with the Eastern Church would only add to the gigantic compass
of schism. Indeed, the few Eastern ecclesiastics who have come
over to England, and who have returned hospitality by soft speak-
ing, have been laughed at as the allies of- the magnates of the
Broad-Church party, but as having nothing at all Catholic about
them. The Ritualists have quite dropped their Sclavonic idols,
quite as much as they have dropped their own communion. The
High-Church party has become "drier" than ever, and knows
nothing of Russian "popes "or Ritualist priests. Indeed, the
High-Church party is now quite pointless, a mere compound of
respectability and moderation. The Low-Church party is much
the same thing with Dissent, and only differs from it in belong-
ing to the state church. The old Tractarian party, of which Dr.
Newman was leader, has utterly faded away and is extinct. The
sole object of that party, the pure, earnest aspiration, was search
after the primitive church. The Ritualists assure us that they have
found it. But what was called " Puseyism " but which was more
accurately " Newmanism " has no votaries, and can have them
no more. Catholicity was justified in Dr. Newman. His bro-
ther writers, his contemporaries, and his followers have lost their
avocation, their raisan d'etre. The search has been completed.,

4 THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. [Oct.,

the object has been found, but irresoluteness keeps " Puseyites "
out of the church.

The Oxford of thirty years ago and the Oxford of to-day dif-
fer in more than one grave particular. Religiously there has
been a considerable going back. Academically there has been a
considerable march forward. Religiously, as has been suggested,
the inquiry after truth has given place to a sort of speculative re-
ligiosity. Even the intellectual activities which worry the Ox-
ford mind are devoid of the old religious earnestness. Such
activities are in the direction of compromise. To suggest how
it may be possible to retain the sentiment of Christianity, with-
out authority, without dogma, without obedience ; to advocate
churchism on the ground of Christian seemliness, or nationalism
on the ground of social unity ; to avoid open schism by paring
down differences, or rank scepticism by praising a few doctrines ;
to keep midway between the fantasies of an Ernest Renan and the
hard lines of sectarian bigotry such are the puzzling problems
which the intellect has to work out, but with which the soul can
have but little to do. There was always a certain section of uni-
versity preachers who used to indulge a vain fondness for specu-
lation ; but in past times there were also many preachers who
were earnest in the search after Catholicity. Even the late Dr.
Wilberforce once said in St. Mary's pulpit : " Would to God we
were one with our true sister, Rome, through whom we derive
our orders, the sacraments, and all that we possess ! " It may be
doubted whether any preacher in these days would like to risk
such an aspiration in the same pulpit. The newest fashion at
Oxford is, as we have said, to cherish evasion and to try to make
unreality look scholarly. The result is a " farrago," as the
Church Review has called it, of contradictory and injurious -specu-
lations. And the fashion set at Oxford is copied throughout
the nation with more or less feebleness or affectation. It is
true that the Oxford religion is assumed to be academical, in the
sense of being a culture of the intellect ; and that " down in the
country " there is less pretence of fine learning, and perhaps more
real earnestness, or at least simplicity. But the " breadth " of the
Oxford religion is the " breadth " of the country religion ; and lati-
tudinarianism abounds everywhere. The new proposal to found
at Oxford " Theological Halls," at which graduates may study
for holy orders, is but one more endeavor to cast dust in the
country's eyes, that it may not realize the stupendous failure of
Anglicanism. It is also a confession that, for the last three hun-
dred years, Anglican clergymen have been half educated. The

i88o.] THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. 5

Archbishop of Canterbury has said that it is " curious " that the
Church of England, since the time of the Reformation, has never
had any special system of clerical culture. It would have been
much more " curious " if it had had any. " A hundred sects bat-
tling within one church," as Lord Macaulay has described the
Establishment, were not likely to agree upon any system of cul-
ture for the candidates for orders for the whole " hundred/' The
hundred sects are still less likely to agree now. Ritualism has
added a stupendous item of "battling" which makes agreement
more improbable than ever. The Archbishop of Canterbury pro-
poses to found the new halls on what he is pleased to call " the
principles of the Reformation." But seeing that those principles
have produced nothing but " battling," and that Ritualism is their
most contemptuous condemnation, while Ritualism itself stands
condemned by the fact that it calls its own church apostate from
the beginning, we cannot see how new halls for the rehabilitat-
ing of the old fallacies can produce any logical Anglicanism.
Unreality cannot be patched up into reality. Oxford cannot re-
beget Christianity. The intellectualism of Oxford is pious
rationalism and nothing more. It is rationalism plus the senti-
ment of Christianity.

Cardinal Newman preached two sermons at Oxford during
his brief stay with the Fellows of Trinity College, not, indeed,
in any university chapel, but in the Catholic church of St.
Aloysius. Very aptly taking the divine mysteries for his first
subject and the Catholic pastorate for his second, he showed that
the Christian intellect has to be obedient, and that to be obedient
it must have an authority to obey. Exquisitely simple yet con-
vincing, the cardinal's style was the exact opposite of the pre-
tentiousness which makes Anglican preachers preach themselves.
If all the dons of the university could have listened to those two
sermons they would have realized the simple truth, of which at
present they seem unconscious, that intellectual humility must
precede knowledge. If God tells us anything about himself, said
his eminence, he must necessarily tell us a mystery ; and if we
are to understand what we are to believe about a mystery we
must have a divine authority to inform us. This was the prac-
tical bearing of the two simple sermons which his eminence
preached when at Oxford. Now, the Oxford "theology," as it is
funnily termed, is grounded on two opposite postulates. The
first is that no mystery need be believed which each Oxonian does
not think he finds in the Bible ; and the second is that when he
thinks he has discovered it he may think about it just what he

6 THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. [Oct.,

will. No beating about the bush can make escape from the
truisms which three centuries of Oxford Anglicanism have ren-
dered patent. The unreality which is talked about the authority
of the early church, of the early councils, of the early patristic
doctors or saints, can make no escape from the truism that every
Oxonian must interpret all such writings for himself. And since
Oxford " theology ' declares of the whole church that it taught
errors for the space of " eight hundred years and more," and that
consequently it must be always liable to go wrong, and indeed is
much more likely to go wrong than to go right, the irresistible
conclusion is that individual Oxonians must share the same pain-
ful religious ignorance. How, then, can any Oxford " select
preacher " get into the pulpit of St. Mary's, and teach the eternal
truth of the eternal mysteries, when he has to begin by assuring
his hearers that they are his teachers, or that, at least, they are
equally competent to teach him ? And this is exactly the same
thing with saying that nobody is competent to teach anybody.
Away go the divine mysteries, with Christian faith in divine
mysteries, at the very appearance of a " select preacher " in the
pulpit. Such a preacher is only selected to preach himself be-
cause he has no authority to preach truth. He may be endowed
with cunning capacity to preach " views," but the next preacher
who comes after him will demolish them. The present writer
has heard a select preacher, in the afternoon, cut up the preacher
of the morning into little bits. And this not on points of mere
opinion, not on open or debatable questions, but on the doctrine
of Christian baptism, on the doctrine of confession, on such an
awful divine mystery as the Real Presence. The afternoon
preacher, no doubt most unintentionally, calls the morning
preacher a heretic or an idiot. Oxford theology is a game at
ninepins. The undergraduates are spectators of the pastime.
And it is in church that such theological diversions are car-
ried on for youthful edification. Coming out of church from
" the university sermon " the undergraduates engage in friend-
ly controversy on the merits of the "select" preaching com-
batants. It is obvious that they have as much authority to
decide on doctrines as their teachers, who simply knock them
to pieces. They may not be so well read in " the Fathers,"
but if they were they would have the same right to inter-
pret them. They may not be so well " up " in the councils,
but if they were they would have the same right to misjudge
them. They may not as yet have put on their white ties, but if
they had they would have only " ordained " their private opinions.

iSSo.] THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. 7

Oxford theology is the science of religious opinion, and Oxford
holy orders are its consecration. Oxford dons are the moral
police force of such opinion, and Oxford select preachers are its
champions. Oxford doctrine is but systematized opinion. Ox-
ford theology is the science of blending opposites. The Oxford
University is designed to instruct young men in the arts of intel-
lectual religiosity.

Cardinal Newman did not return to Oxford too soon, to sug-
gest a wise escape from such dilemmas. The suggestion will
probably not be adopted. The Archbishop of Canterbury's sug-
gestion of " Theological Halls, to be founded on the principles of
the Reformation," will probably be considered less exacting.
Still, we must beg leave to tell his grace that his want of acquain-
tance with Catholic matters is hardly excusable even in a " pri-
mate." He expresses himself as approving Prince Bismarck's en-
forcement that Catholic students, before being ordained, should
go through a course of philosophy. Now, why a Catholic stu-
dent, who, by ecclesiastical rule, cannot be ordained to the Ca-
tholic priesthood without going through a course of philosophy,
should be compelled to subject himself to the rationalist teaching
of German free-thinkers who believe in nothing at all is not ob-
vious that is, religiously to any Christian. If even Oxford
philosophy as the Oxford commissioners have told us leads
almost inevitably to heartless scepticism, what must be the result
of the still more heartless kind of free-thought which Prince Bis-
marck is pleased to consider philosophy ? However, let this
pass. The subject was only worth mentioning as showing what
the " primate " can do for Oxford. The great fact which the
university has now to face is that the hour for decision has fully
come. It is impossible to defer it any longer, if Oxford is to be
saved from blank scepticism. Cardinal Newman may be said to
have marked the period when the choice between extremes must
be made. Oxford Protestant is now completely worn out, and
Oxford sceptical has set in. Oxford Catholic is the only possible
alternative, for even Oxford inquiring is at an end. What Ox-
ford was in the days of William of Wykeham, of Waynflete, of
Sir Thomas Pope, is the only Oxford that can supplant the pre-
sent decadence, if the university is not to become free-thinking.
The spirit of the past still calls out to the present to ask for the
old paths and to be saved. It is the spirit of St. Frideswide
who laid the foundations of the priory where now stands the
noble college of Christ Church which must take the place of the
spirit of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, whose portraits now

8 THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. [Oct.,

adorn the college hall. It is the spirit of the " warden and col-
lege of the souls of all the faithful deceased collegium omnium
animarum fidelium defunctorum de Oxon." which must take the
place of the spirit of Grindall and Parker, who destroyed the
eight altars, tore up the Catholic missals, and defaced copes, albs,
and crosses when Elizabeth was pope of the new Anglicanism.
It is the spirit of the founders of Magdalen College, who ordered
a requiem Mass to be said for the patrons, every day in the year,
in perpetuity, which must take the place of the spirit of those
Protestants who " commuted " the Holy Mass for a few pieces of
modern choral music to be sung, once a year, on the first of May.
It is the spirit of Sir Thomas Pope, who ordered five obits
yearly to be celebrated as festivals of Trinity College ; it is the
spirit of the charter of Corpus Christi College of which the
date was 1516 which recites that " the founder, to the praise of
God Almighty, the most holy body of Christ, and the Blessed
Virgin Mary, as also of the apostles Peter and Paul and Andrew,
and of St. Cuthbert, St. Swithin, and St. Birin, doth found and
appoint this college, always to be called Corpus Christi College " ;
it is the spirit of King Alfred, of Edmund le Riche, of Walter de
Merton, and of a thousand Catholic contributors to the univer-
sity, which must take the place of the spirit of such sacrilegious
Puritans as Cromwell, or Fairfax, or Beacon, whose only idea of
piety was depredation, and whose only charity was to rob the
" holy souls." But can such a spirit be restored to Oxford ?
Can Oxford be once more really Christian ? " Son of man, can
these dry bones live ? " It seems as if modern thought had
so ploughed up Catholic foundations that the divine Architect
would have to lay a new first stone.

Cardinal Newman has set the example of the only possible
" spirit " in which a return to the old paths can be effected. This
spirit is individual submission. It is not by " corporate union "
a fine phrase which shirks private responsibility that conver-
sion to the one truth is to be brought about, but by the indivi-
dual apprehension of the individual duty that is, by individual
submission. It is an easier thing in these days for individuals to
submit than it was five-and-twenty or thirty years ago. Even the
illustrious " Dr. Newman " has told us that he had misgivings as
to what he was about to go to, though he had none as to what he
was going from. Anglicanism was hopeless ; but there might be
many a disappointment in untried spheres of thought, many a sen-
sible loss of accustomed joys. The cardinal has told us since that
there was no disappointment, no loss of any joy that was pos-

i88o.] THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. 9

sessed. And hundreds of other clerical converts have said the
same. We do not see with what excuse any Anglican can plead
ignorance as to what he is going from or going to. And addi-
tional motives are being multiplied for making that great change
on which present and future peace must depend. Take the devel-
opments of the" farce " of Convocation, at which Oxford is at least
fairly represented; take the increasing wrangles of the clergy, of
whom about one-third are Oxford men ; take the growing impo-
tence of the bishops, who have no more power to direct their
clergy than have their butlers, yet who are all of them Oxford
or Cambridge men, all of them typical apostles of modern Angli-
canism that is, ready to make a compromise with every heresy ;
and, finally, take the Archbishop of Canterbury, the "Archbishop
of Heresy," as he has been called, who can only maintain peace
where there is no peace by sacrificing all positive teaching, by
begging his quarrelling clergy not to quarrel, and assuring them
that they have nothing to quarrel about, because credo and nego
are the same thing. Dr. Tait is a typical Oxford man, for he is
scholarly yet charmingly pliable, a professing Christian who is
unfettered by dogma, an English churchman who stretches
" views " like india-rubber, an ecclesiastic who has little faith in
church authority, a head of a church which does not believe in
any head, a supreme authority at whom every curate smiles. In
his person are united the respectability and the suavity which are
so dear to every Englishman's conscience, the gentlemanly bear-
ing which dispenses with severe obedience, and the plastic faith
which greatly prefers private judgment ; the breadth which in-
cludes many an error, and the sectarianism which condemns the
Catholic Church. This prelate is the titular head of Anglican-
ism, the supreme pastor of a flock which has no shepherd for
not one of his sheep or lambs hear his voice. Oxford looks on
" Canterbury " as embodying the essentials of the combination of
Christianity with free-thought. Free-thought is the superior of
Christianity, because Christianity is meted out by free-thought.
Just so much and no more of Christian, doctrinal teaching is per-
mitted by the free-thinking clergy as may coincide with individ-
ual apprehension, without obstructing clerical " advancement in
the church." " If you could know the interior belief of all the
clergy," said a lay Oxonian to the present writer but yesterday,
" you would find it harder to strike a mean in their doctrines
than to strike a mean in the shifting winds of a thunder-storm."

Now, Oxford is in real sense a nursery of Anglican develop-
ments ; not precisely in regard to doctrinal changes for doctrines

THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. [Oct.,

change continuously all over England but in the fostering a spirit
either of earnestness or indifference in regard to Christian unity
or to free-thought. It is indisputable that at the present time the
university of " Dr. Newman " is half rotten with unbelief or
speculation. The two spirits are in reality but one. The spirit
of speculation is the spirit of unbelief, for it has no faith, no love,
no emotion. It is the spirit of free-thought curbed by sentiment.
It is scepticism kept from outrage by traditions. It is intellectu-
alism piously toned by social habits. Christianity it most cer-
tainly is not. Just as attendance at morning chapel is a part of
college discipline, making demand only on the energies of the
early-risers, so swearing to the Thirty-nine Articles is a require-
ment of Oxford membership making demand only on the faculty
of elasticity. It has been graciously conceded that Oxonians who
are not Anglicans need not swear to the Thirty-nine Articles ; but
this was mainly because persons outside Anglicanism are pre-
sumed to have more conscience than those inside. Everybody
laughs at the Thirty-nine Articles a ludicrous compound of asser-
tion and negation but since Anglicanism can only exist by such
a compound all Anglicans accept the Articles as " a necessary
evil." Besides, since at Oxford there is an intelligence of the
history of those Articles, an intelligence of their true character of
compromise which is out of the question for merely half-instruct-
ed Anglicans, it follows that the act of " swearing " is made in
strict harmony with the spirit with which the Articles were drawn
up. That spirit may be called shuffling. It is a compromise be-
tween faith and private judgment. It is the subjection of the su-
pernatural aspiration to the perfectly natural inclination to be a
heretic. Nor can any one blame such a state of mind that is,
for its want of consistency. If at Oxford there is no supernatu-
ral authority, nor even " priestly " restraint, over the lay mind,
save in purely conventional intercourse, the principle of private
judgment is only perfectly carried out in the private interpreta-
tion of all the Articles. Let any one who has been present at the
services in a* college chapel, at the services in St. Mary's on a
Sunday, or even at theological lectures, given either privately or
publicly, cast a stone, if he can, at the inconsistency of undergradu-
ates in swearing to their own private views of anything. An Ox-
ford graduate has thus summarized the religious characteristics of
the Oxford college chapel and college don : " No sacrifice, no Pre-
sence on the altar and the Oxford college chapel was a room.
No priesthood that must not anathematize itself, its own history
for three hundred years and the assumption of function was

iSSo.] THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. n

ludicrous. No sacramental or even personal relations between
the dons and the lay undergraduates and the don was in every
way an anomaly." With such total absence of magisterium in the
teaching of Oxford in any other than an academical sense (we are
speaking of Oxford during the last generation) every man be-
came his own spiritual doctor, his own painfully fallible doctri-
nal pontiff. A regius professor of divinity was only a book-
learned don, who was regarded as a sort of ordained librarian.
" If you think of taking orders," a tutor would say to a young
graduate, " it will be necessary to attend the divinity lectures
which are given by the regius professor." And then,' sitting in
a cold hall, the young graduate would have to listen to a still
colder treatise on certain evidences, to a string of books or of dry
technicalities, " which was about as much like a course of theology
as a puddle is like the full sea." Thus, with no real science of
theology, with no real study of philosophy, with no training of
any sort for clerical duties, the young graduate would be
launched on that supernatural career which consisted chiefly in
getting married and in reading prayers.

One of the oddest things at Oxford that is, to the Catholic
apprehension was the absolute nothingness of its bishop. He
had no more to do with the spiritual governance of the univer-
sity than if he had been lord-mayor of London. We have re-
cently seen that Mr. Mackonochie, of Ritualistic celebrity, has
openly defied his bishop in refusing to be suspended, or even to
change any of his practices, though the bishop actually appointed
another clergyman. At Oxford this principle of no-bishop was
esteemed to be a privilege of the Oxford dons. It was thought
to show the academical supremacy. It was only when a graduate
presented himself for holy orders that the bishop became a living
auxiliary. Oxonianism, like all Anglicanism, knows but little of
bishops, except as the nominees of a prime minister. It knows
equally little of priests. A don is a scholarly layman in a white
tie, who reads prayers, gives Communion once a month, tries to
look a little dignified if young men grow naughty, and perhaps
" gates " them for non-attendance at chapel. It may be replied
that a university is not a nursery for clergymen, but a national
institution for education. Yet, since the universities were the
only clerical nurseries which England ever imagined till a few
years ago, we must cease to wonder that Anglican clergymen,
bishops, priests, and deacons have been simply married gentlemen
with a pious turn. The new institution of theological seminaries
has only developed a more self-willed kind of clergymen, who,

12 'THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. [Oct.,

imagining themselves theologians, fight the bishops and the laity
with their small armory of coached-up Anglican traditions.

What, then, is to be the issue of the latest phase of Oxonian-
ism free-thought allied to active heresy ? Probably the great
mass of the " respectable " English laity will stick to their con-
ventional Christianity a sentimental and sometimes earnest reli-
giousness while the whole of the highly-educated and the whole
of the listless classes will go over to sceptical indifference. This
movement is now largely developed. You hear more free-talk
the result of free-thinking in ordinary English drawing-rooms
and club-rooms than you hear even in volatile Paris, while there
is not that immense class of earnest Catholics in England which
there is in the French capital and provincial towns, who at least
preserve the faith for their descendants. The number of Catho-
lics in England is necessarily but small " necessarily " because of
the national prejudice. And there is a certain barrier between
Catholics and Protestants, not social nor resulting from antago-
nism, but thrown up by the diffidence of both parties to enter
upon religious inter-communication. So that whereas Anglican-
ism goes down and down more feeble, more irresolute, more
shivered Catholicism stands rather as a beacon, which may at
any time be consulted by the earnest. But the earnest are, in
most countries, the few ; and the modern spirit of " modern
thought " is in the opposite direction of earnestness, tending
solely to pride of intellect and to ease. The pretensions of so-
called science and the license of the infidel press are breeding a
generation of indolent sceptics ; so that the church has less to
combat the developments of heresy than a spirit which hates
everything but egoism. Such a spirit is very hard to convert.
It is possible to convert from any sort of intellectual error, but
not from listless free-thought or from pride.

His Eminence Cardinal Newman, in revisiting the university
after more than a quarter of a century of Catholic experience, has
invited, as we have said, the whole of the university to come out
from the chaos of contradictories. He has seemed to say : " I
have long set you the example of true conversion, and I now tell ,
you what my experience has been. If Puseyism has proved a
failure and Ritualism has proved a failure, and rationalism has
been developed out of both failures, to whom shall you turn with
any hope of finding rest, save to the mistress and mother of all
truth ? You have no guide who is capable of teaching you any-
thing which you are not equally capable of teaching him. You
have indeed dons, fellows, and tutors, but you have not one

i88o.] THE CHANGES IN OXFORD. 13

authoritative guide. Return, then, to that religion and to that
authority which, as Huber says, ' made Oxford as early as the end
of the ninth century the seat of the highest intellectual cultivation
then existing.'" But the authoritative guide is just exactly that
one personage for whom the Oxford undergraduate does not
search. He used to search for him in the Tractarian days, but he
has long since ceased to think that he can really find him. At the
recent Oxford commemoration, when the lively undergraduates
made sport of their unpopular dons, they were only "chaffing"
the lay side of their character, knowing perfectly that they had
no real priestly side. That white tie which the Oxford don wears
is but the badge of decorous serenity ; it is no more accepted as
the livery of priesthood than as the uniform of the regiment
of the First Life-Guards. Priesthood at Oxford means reading
prayers, with the unwelcome college duty of giving lectures and
the objectionable prerogative of giving scoldings. The dons do
not associate with the undergraduates, because they would lose
their official dignity if they did so, and because they have no other
kind of dignity save the official. They never perform one single
priestly function, unless it be giving Anglican Holy Communion ;
and that is known to be a feature in decorum which admits of
very various acceptation. The Oxford proctors who sometimes
at commemoration are treated to a rude shower of hisses are
generally clergymen, whose priestly avocation consists in hunting
up naughty students. They, and the four " bull-dogs " who go
about with them lay functionaries of a somewhat plebeian caste
are regarded as mere academical policemen ; and the proctors
are regarded as clerical only because they are college fellows. If
the proctors could be fellows without being clerical, they would,
in all probability, much prefer it. The undergraduates appreciate
the "supernatural " accident which is allied with the holding of a
fellowship. They, too, are quite willing to be ordained, if the
prize of a fellowship makes it desirable. Indeed, they have most,
of them some idea of being ordained, if no lay profession should
seem more promising. Who shall blame them ? If Oxford theo-
logy is but speculation, and the Church of England an elastic
sphere for its exercise, and the Catholic religion the only religion
which is not professed in it, any young man of good morals can
scarcely do better than take orders with a view to getting
married.

14 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER I.

THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.

TOWARDS the close of a certain day in January, some years
removed from the present date of writing, a snow-storm was tak-
ing place in a Canadian city of note and position in its own coun-
try, but little known, save among the mercantile community, in
the United States. The storm was one of the old-fashioned kind,
when the flakes fell softly and thickly, and thought not of stop-
ping for two days at least ; when you could not see to any no-
ticeable distance through the feathery veil, and enjoyed many
surprising encounters in consequence ; when the air rang with
the music of invisible bells and human voices, and when every
pleasure-loving freart was bright with the confidence of a month's
uninterrupted sleighing. Those were the good old times cele-
brated in story and in song. Nature's generosity in the shape of
a snowy, blowy, freezing winter was equalled only by the gene-
rous manner in which the Canadians celebrated its coming. In
that city the winter has become a memory of the past, and so
many changes have occurred in other respects as to make the
period of which we write seem tinged with the romance of a
century's distance. Then the woods ran close to the city limits,
and occasionally, in spite of aldermanic fiats, still held with their
rearguard some of the most popular thoroughfares. Now
the virgin forest has fled northward, and only a rim of vene-
rable trees ornaments the surrounding hills, the memorial of de-
cayed glory, and a reproach to the civilization which banished
so much of beauty.

The forest had been the guardian of the snow and the rain,
and the friend of the rivers. Now the rivers run thin and tremu- ,
lous to the lakes, shrunk into half their earlier size and deprived
of all their loveliness ; and the grandchildren of those who looked
then with sparkling eyes and beating hearts on the piling snow,
or drove day after day in the long winter season through the
drifts to the tintinnabulation of the bells those grandchildren, I
say, now wait hopefully and patiently for a storm which will give
them one hour of pleasant sleighing, and many days of slushy,

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 15

muddy discontent, on the four wheels of a brougham. It was a
city of simple, homely pleasures in the main, and these abounded
to the fullest extent. Nature, like the people, was generous in
her giving. In summer there was rain in abundance and cool,
dry days ; in winter the cold fairly sparkled, and the snow fell as
it is falling this moment when the story begins, in showers that
left marble appearances as common as in the days of the Roman
fame. .

It had been snowing for two days, and already the first indi-
cations of the clearing up of the storm were becoming apparent
in the increasing volume of sleighbell music ; in the rout and
roar of the school-children whom careful mammas had kept with-
in doors for forty-eight terrible hours ; but more than all in the
broad banners of light that waved across the snowfall from the
west, where the sun was struggling, and not vainly, to throw his
strongest winter light on the snow-bound land and the frozen wa-
fers of the lake. Forms were becoming more distinct, sudden
encounters less numerous, and foot-passengers, although they had
severe struggles in the snow-drifts, more venturesome. In those
streets where wealth and respectability dwelt, ladies in furs,
coachmen in liveries, and gentlemen in greatcoats were coming
and going to and from every mansion, so eager were all to greet
one another after a long imprisonment of two days. O the
cheerful, smiling young faces that shone on every side with a
brightness which their hearts had stolen from the returned sun !
And the blessed old faces pressed against the windows to see the
younger ones departing, with the memories of an earlier and a
similar time to lighten up the wrinkles and the fast-dulling eyes -!
What a sight it was even to the indifferent looker-on ! The greet-
ings that were exchanged, loud and ringing as the greetings of
their own sleighbells ! The pretty cries from the young ladies,
and the manly tones of assurance that answered them !

Up and down through the long thoroughfares went the sleighs,
a winter mosaic of colored robes and silvered harness and spark-
ling eyes, crossing and recrossing the same streets, darting into
side avenues and appearing again on the fashionable way, turning
at times countrywards for a spin on the open roadway, and oc-
casionally moving snail-like through a retired quarter, where no-
thing had escaped the mould of shabby gentility save undying
love. But at one of the most favored points an awkward block-
ade occurred. It was a wide avenue leading straight to the lake,
and bordered just now by the skeletons of trees. The stateliest
houses of that time here had their foundations, and the bluest-

1 6 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

blooded of the city here sheltered their stately exclusiveness.
On every gate gleamed a silvered inscription, and at every curb
was a polished and carved footstone for the horsewomen of the
house for riding was an accomplishment of those days, much as
it is now neglected. The blockade was extensive, and began in
front of a building whose roomy grounds and numerous towers
bespoke unusual wealth for the proprietor. Sleighs were con-
stantly arriving to swell the throng already gathered, and, as the
dwelling stood at the intersection of two streets, a goodly and
heterogeneous crowd of vehicles was soon ranged northward and
westward on the avenues.

The occupants stood on tiptoe of expectation. In the coun-
tenances of some not a little alarm was expressed, for a flame had
crept from one of the chimneys of the stately dwelling, and was
pushing its deft fingers along a part of the roof quite free from
snow. The peril was not immediate. Moreover, the servants
had come to the rescue, and a sturdy fellow was crawling on
hands and knees to the spot of danger.

A little relieved from suspense, the silence of the Crowd was
soon changed into a murmur, and shortly the readier and more
forward began to indulge their wit at the expense of their neigh-
bors. Then the laugh followed, hilarity communicated itself with
lightning speed to the whole assemblage, and it became clear
that as the danger to the dwelling diminished the necessity of a
speedy separation became more urgent. Some of the sleighs
began to feel their way through the multitude a proceeding
which gave great offence to the majority, and brought down
showers of sarcasms and biting repartee, not always of the most
refined sort, upon the occupants. Others, not caring to risk re-
ceiving the same attentions, waited in silence and patience for
escape from the situation, but showed plainly enough their dis-
tress and disgust. Prominent among these was' a gentleman in
the rear of the crowd, yet not far enough back to retreat in the
direction whence he came. His turn-out was stylish and rich,
but so subdued in its trappings as to attract more attention and
envy from its extraordinary taste and refinement than from its
richness. He sat quietly smoking a cigar and throwing con-
temptuous glances on those around him. They were as contemp-
tuously received as given. The coarser ones did not hesitate to
utter some sharp criticisms on his appearance, ambiguous enough,
however, to apply to any gentleman in the crowd, and therefore
not to be considered personal by any. Their attentions did not
disturb his serenity or banish his looks of scorn. When at last

iSSo.j A WOMAN OF CULTURE.. 17

they had become bolder, and their wit was edged with a broader
personality, he turned to his companion, who, holding the reins,
had been as silent as himself, and said in a peculiarly cold, insult-
ing tone : " Answer them, Quip," and returned to his cigar and
his contempt.

An expectant rustle among the crowd followed the utterance
of these words, a shifting of seats, a craning of necks, and a
stretching of ears as if the answers which Quip had been com-
manded to make were to be of a crushing and conclusive nature.
The individual thus suddenly lifted into notoriety gazed for a
moment on the enemy, with one eye shut after the fashion of a sage
jackdaw, and then shook himself as though arranging a set of ill-
natured feathers. His appearance was peculiar. The narrowness
of his head and face, the Roman prominence of his nose, the
backward curve of his forehead, and the surprising length of his
neck gave him the air of a wise old bird. His eyes were deep-
set, brilliant, and hard in expression, and his hair, dark and thick,
hung straight as an Indian's over his neck. He had been eyeing
the wits for some time in expressive though constrained silence.
He had not, however, uttered a word, and the permission or com-
mand of the gentleman with whom he sat woke him to no further
demonstration of eagerness than that which I have compared to
an arranging of ill-natured feathers. The enemy seized upon the
gentleman's words as a veritable challenge, and, without waiting
to inspect their antagonist, crossed swords in an instant.

" Come out, Mr. Quip," said a horsey-looking youth in the
distance ; " unfold yourself, my hearty, to the public gaze. Don't
be bashful, Mr. Quip. You'll be handled as gently as a fresh
muffin." " Come out ! " chorussed the jokers of minor degree.
" I'm a-cornin'," the gentleman answered glibly. " I like to be
sure of a welcome, though. I'm poor, and there doesn't seem to
be enough among the whole of you to invest in a square meal.
I'm here," concluded Mr. Quip modestly, with a knowing wink
at an old gentleman who was in convulsions across the way.
" What are you fed on ? " inquired a fast youth in an eye-glass.
" Matches," said Quip ; " and I blaze when rubbed against hard
substances. You needn't be afraid to touch me, Johnny, for
you're too soft to stand on your own legs. You shouldn't be out
without your papa." " A crack in a door wouldn't be harder to
photograph than you, deah Mr. Quip," lisped the other. " In a
small establishment you are just the one to fill up the corners
that nobody uses from being too small to get into." " Perhaps
you'd like to hire me," said Mr. Quip. " No, no ; yet I could

VOL. XXXII. 2

1 8 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

assure you of more food than you get in your present quarters."
" More food to look at, perhaps ; but I can do that every hour in
the windows of butchers and grocers. You judge, Johnny, like a
votary of the superficial world. You may feast on sirloin and
honey, as it .is said by the poet, and yet you can find people to
swear that you are starved. But get a ten-cent dinner at a
Dutch eating-house, borrow or beg a stylish rig which you never
intend to pay for, and you are supposed to live on the fat of the
land." And the gentleman, heaving a profound sigh, next burst
into a series of explosive cachinnations that set all the horses
prancing. "Now take my advice, dear friends," he continued
blandly, as he saw indications of a break in the blockade : " pay
your debts in this world, or the devil will collect them in the
next, and he exacts a hundred per cent. ; don't take it hard that
some men can ride in their own carnages while you must steal
one or walk the world is full of such inequalities of fortune, and
your satisfaction is that an hour must come when all will ride in
the same kind of a coach ; lastly, keep a civil tongue in your
heads on all occasions. Adieu."

The front rank of the blockade had broken as Mr. Quip fin-
ished his moral discourse with a prodigious wink in the direc-
tion of the friendly old gentleman. All the sleighs were in mo-
tion. Down and across two avenues the stream went pouring,
the horses snorting and plunging gladly at their release from un-
willing bondage, and the ladies and gentlemen sparkling and
glowing, as to cheeks and eyes and conversation, with redoubled
fervor. Mr. Quip's enemies endeavored to make reply to his
last onslaught when the movement reached their vicinity ; but
the bird-like fellow had already received his orders from his mas-
ter, and with a bow of scornful politeness towards them, and a
last and powerful wink at the merry old gentleman, had turned
off into the drive of those grounds where stood the mansion so
lately threatened with destruction. Another sleigh had driven
to the door, and as the doctor for of the medical profession Mr.
Quip's master turned out to be alighted and came slowly up the
steps its late occupant disappeared within the house.

Within the lamps had just been lighted, and their soft bril-
liancy fell upon the panelled walls and rich adornments of the
rooms with an effect that took the eye of the physician mightily,
although he had seen it all many times. Everything was in per-
fect taste, and in keeping with the reputed wealth and fine so-
cial position of the man whose good fortune it was to hold the

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 19

highest business reputation in the city. Doctor Killany looked
around him with the air of one accustomed to live and move
among such luxuries, and he seemed more absorbed in the im-
patience of waiting than in actual observation of the costly com-
forts under his eye. Yet at that moment no picture could have
been more distinct in the doctor's mind than that of the miser-
able, dingy bachelor rooms miserable and dingy for his tastes and
ambition, wretched by comparison with all this magnificence
which his income could with difficulty support in their tawdry
grandeur. The doctor was a handsome man, not extraordinarily
good-looking, but with the personal beauty which regular fea-
tures, fine teeth, bright eyes, a good figure, and a polished man-
ner can give to the most ordinary mortals. His complexion was
too uniformly pale -to please, and a certain pinched expression of
some of the features gave a rather sinister touch to his countenance.
The eyes shifted too often from one object to another. The mouth
had about it the faintest suspicion of cruelty, and in his moments
of meditation his brow fell to glowering with the ferocity of a
Catiline. His head was intellectual in shape and size, and rested
proudly on his shoulders, but the jaw was too massive to make
the effect complete, whatever firmness it gave to his expression.
Standing under the glare of the lamps, Doctor Killany appeared
no ordinary personage. No one would forget to take a second
glance at his pale face and elegant form, wondering, perhaps,
that, one so favored by nature should be so little favored by
grace.

The servant came shortly to usher him into the library, where
Mr. McDonell awaited him.

The merchant sat in his easy-chair, near the grate, his face
partly hidden by a newspaper, which he did not lay aside at the
entrance of his visitor. He was an old man, if judged by the
whiteness of his hair and the wrinkles of his face. Care and
weariness were its prevailing expression, and these qualities seem-
ed to deepen and broaden when Doctor Killany had entered, and,
walking to the mantel, stood with one arm upon the marble shelf
in an attitude of superb and yet insufferable familiarity. He was
smiling down upon the white-haired gentleman, who, without re-
moving his eyes from the paper, contrived to say :

"Will you not be seated, doctor? I suppose you are to stay
for dinner."

"Thank you," the doctor answered, "but my stay must t be
rather short. If you could give me your attention for a few mo-
ments I would be deeply grateful."

20 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

The slightest shade of annoyance passed over McDonell's face
as he answered :

" It is not of so much value, sir, that your gratitude should be
at all aroused. Do sit down."

" Thank you again," said the doctor smoothly ; " but please
excuse me. I must feel grateful extremely so. The minutes of
a business man, I have heard, represent so many dollars."

" In business hours, perhaps, but not now, not now," returned
the other, with visibly restrained impatience.

Doctor Killany drummed the mantel with his fingers for a few
moments, and stared at the opposite wall. " You had a narrow
escape a short time ago. I saw it from the street ; the roof was
blazing prettily, and the avenues were blockaded."

" It might have been an awkward thing for us," McDonell
said, " if the engines of the fire department had become neces-
sary."

" So I thought. Miss Nano was in one avenue and I in the
other. Neither was able to approach. Imagine our sensa-
tions."

" They must have been painful," said McDonell, with an
amused smile.

" Indeed, indeed they were ; byt, pardon my abruptness,
I have come to speak of your daughter."

The older gentleman put aside his paper at this, folded his
hands, and looked into the doctor's shifting eyes so long as they
remained fastened on him. It was an attitude of confident de-
fiance.

" I allow you," he said, with a blandness which did not quite
conceal the peremptoriness of his tones, " to associate with Nano,
to dine with her, to ride with her. I trust you have not the
sublime impudence to desire any closer relations."

" To be plain with you, I have cherished such desires," said
the doctor humbly, " but subject both to your permission and to
Miss Nano's in their expression. I am not a susceptible man, but
your daughter's intellect, beauty, and

" Her wealth and position," broke in the other.

" Her wealth and position," continued Killany, undisturbed,
" were a combination of good qualities which neither my
heart "

" Nor your interest."

" Nor my interest, if you will so have it, could easily pass
over ; and being once prisoner so favorably, you may be sure I
am not anxious to escape from my chains."

iSSo.J A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 21

" Not while the chains are golden, I'll be bound," laughed
McDonell. " But you will never have from me "

" I beg of you, sir," interrupted the doctor, with a warning ges-
ture, " for your own sake not to make any declarations which it
may pain you to retract before I leave."

His manner was gentle and smooth as usual, but contained a
threat in its very smoothness.

" Your confidence would be amusing," said McDonell, grow-
ing a shade paler, " if the matter were less serious or our relations
other than they are."

But he did not continue his interrupted speech.

" Precisely," the doctor murmured ; " and it is on the strength
of these relations that I stand before you to-night. As a distant
relative of the rich merchant I might have held a precarious
social position in this city and country ; but as a poor profession-
al I would not have dared to look up to the heiress with the
boldness I at present assume. You see I am frank."

" It is one of your shining qualities," the merchant answered.
" Yet, if you would deign to receive a little advice from me, do
not presume too much on this secret matter. Poverty is a great
misfortune, but not the greatest, and I would suffer it in prefer-
ence to many things. Besides, it has often occurred to me that
restitution might as well be made now to those I have wronged
as when I am on my death-bed. It must be made in any
event."

" Are there any to whom you could make it? " asked the doc-
tor, with careless but cunning indifference.

" That is not to the point," the merchant replied, resting his
head heavily on his hand ; " if they do not live it goes to the
poor."

" Have you thought of your daughter in this ? "

McDonell raised himself haughtily, and threw an angry
glance at the doctor.

" I understand you," he said coldly. " But Nano will not fail
to follow her father into poverty, if it be necessary."

"And so to live after him?" questioned Killany, with the
slightest suspicion of a sneer in his smiling face. " You do not
know your daughter, Mr. McDonell. In spite of her philosophi-
cal pursuits, which she pretends teach her to despise every-
thing ; in spite of the careful education you have given her at
the hands of strangers, Miss Nano has a high appreciation of the
advantages of wealth. She has no religion. In fact, she despises
all religions. A kind of philosophical morality has usurped re-

22 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

ligion's place. I believe that, if it were required, she would, as
Christians say, peril her soul to retain this wealth."

McDonell stood up, his face as white as the marble mantel,
his breath coming in short, quick gasps.

" You lie ! " he whispered, "you lie, you lie, you lie ! "

The doctor smiled at his anger and earnestness. The agony
of the father found no sympathy in his heart. An atheist himself,
he could not see in the principles which it pleased Miss Nano to
profess anything inconsistent with the ordinary standard of vir-
tue. He said nothing in answer to the intensely bitter and in-
sulting words of McDonell, but busied himself with the papers,
while the merchant, bowing his head upon the mantel, endeavored
to recover from' the sudden storm of anguish which had swept
over his soul. During the silence that intervened neither saw
the face which for a moment looked in through 'the partly-open
door, and was reflected darkly mournful on the mirrors oppo-
site. When the gentlemen resumed their conversation it was
gone.

" Tell me why you have come here to-night," said McDonell,
composedly taking his seat. " What more do you ask for? "

" The smallest of favors," said Killany ; " and I have never
been exacting, considering what I know."

" Considering what you know," returned the other sharply,
" it was politic to have asked but little."

" Is it nothing," said the doctor, angered by the old man's
tone out of his own calmness, " to know that the wealthy and
stainless citizen, connected with the best families of the province,
and a rising power in the political world, is, if justice were done,
not much better than a pauper and the basest of criminals? "

" Proof, proof, sir ! " cried the merchant.

" There I am weak," the doctor acknowledged. " I cannot
drag you before the public tribunals, I cannot blast your name
with actual disgrace. But society, the world, is exacting. A
word, and your name is indelibly stained. Before the world's
courts you will stand a criminal, tried and condemned, and, more-
over, there will be no appeal. Do you care to risk that ? "

"For Nano's sake, no," McDonell said ; "and yet, as I have
said of poverty, it is a great misfortune, but there are misfortunes
still greater."

" To return to the object of this interview," said Killany " and,
I pray, leave off your silly innuendoes I want your permission to
woo your daughter honorably. It shall be in her power to reject
me. I do not ask your influence no, not even your neutrality.

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 23

From me she shall never hear of the unfortunate relations that
exist between us, and if you choose to leave her penniless at your
death-hour it shall make no difference for me. Can anything be
fairer? Could you desire more in the wealthiest son-in-law ? "

"Nothing more," McDonell answered carelessly. " I accept
your conditions, and, further, there shall be no interference on my
part. You have told me that I do not know my daughter. In
the respects you have mentioned I do not, and trust that those
hideous deformities of character may be as wanting in her as they
are glaring in you. But this I do know," and a smile of -loving,
fatherly confidence lighted for a moment the gentleman's haggard
face : " she will never marry you. Oh ! you may exercise the in-
genuity and cunning of a devil, but she will never marry you."

" I take all risks," the doctor said gaily. " ' Faint heart never
won fair lady.' Behold me in a twelvemonth your honored son-
in-law."

" I shall bid you good-evening," the merchant said wearily.
" You have obtained your request. I would say, may you regret
the hour when you first asked it, but that I am sure you will."

" Good-evening, sir," the doctor coolly responded. " I would
also say, may you regret the hour in which you first granted it,
but that I am sure you will. Your servant, sir."

And he bowed himself, smiling and triumphant, out of the
room. For some moments Mr. McDonell remained in his droop-
ing posture at the table. Then he rose and surveyed his face at
the glass.

" It must have been truth," he said with a sigh, " or it never
would have struck home so keenly. O my child ! my child !
Through you God will punish me for my desertion of the or-
phans, for my desertion of the faith he gave to me and my
fathers, for my love of power and wealth ; above, all, my child, that
I did not bestow on you, motherless, the care and love that was
your right. I must suffer doubly in your sufferings and my own.
O my God !" and he clasped his hands in convulsive agony and
fell on his face to the floor, "let me bear all! The wronged
shall be righted ; I shall repent through all my remaining years ;
but spare, oh ! spare my child."

A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

CHAPTER II.

WRECKED.

THE darkness of night had come on during the interview be-
tween the doctor and McDonell, and in all the rooms of the man-
sion the lamps had been lighted and the last ray of daylight shut
out by the closing of shutters and curtains. In all the rooms
save one. On the second floor the apartments of the lady of the
house were situated elegant and luxurious chambers, where
wealth and art had joined hands, under one of skilled and tasteful
eye, to make everything beautiful. Here were no lights. The
curtains were still up and the blinds open. Only the cold light
of stars shone through the window, and a soft gloom rested like
a veil on the dimmed outlines of statues and busts and stately
furniture.

On a low ottoman the lady herself was seated. She was
looking up towards the sky with her hands clasped on her knee,
motionless as her own statues, and more beautiful even in that
twilight, which was strong enough to light up the lines of a fair,
classic face and be reflected from large, soul-filled eyes. She had
sat there just as she is sitting now since that moment when her
ears had heard the scornful words of Dr. Killany to her father,
and, looking into the library, she had caught a glimpse of a tab-
leau which for an instant sent a spasm of pain through her form.
She was thinking over the sneering sentences, and trying in a
feeble way to feel angry at the indignant, passionate, agonized
denial her father had made. She was wondering, too, at the atti-
tude of humiliation he seemed to hold towards Killany, whose
manner, though highly respectful and considerate, seemed flip-
pant, and even impudent, in the presence of agony so keen and
distressing. And between the two meditations she was confused,
vexed, and restless.

The principles which Killany had represented her as holding
were those to which she had given utterance many times, and had
spoken of proudly as the true basis of life's enjoyment and useful-
ness, perhaps even its truth. For some reason she was annoyed
then at finding they belonged to her ; whether from the scornful
manner in which Killany had mentioned them, or from a convic-
tion that, when stripped of the glamour of cultured conversation
and stated in plain English, their beauty and solidity were not so
apparent, she could hardly tell. Perhaps it was not so much from

iS8o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 25

either of these causes her annoyance proceeded as from the im-
pression which her father's bitter indignation and grief had made.
In the circle of her friends such declarations as these were
received with applause and admiration, quoted again and again,
and were called the free expressions of a mind liberated from the
slavery of custom and superstition. Yet here was a man, not at
all given to piety, and totally averse in his outward actions to the
superstitions of creeds, who, at mention of the fact that his child
professed such doctrines, or negations of doctrine, must needs act
as if a serpent had risen in his path, and stretch out his hands and
roll his eyes in horror, and insult outrageously the person who
gave the information. And this man was her father. He, who
had never shown to her one-tenth part of a father's care and af-
fection, found all his paternal heart racked and torn as it would
not be if she lay dead in the stately house. She thought of this
confusedly, and was a long time in clearing away the extraordi-
nary mental fog in which it involved her. She went over aloud,
one by one, the assertions of Killany, in order by this means to
discover what in his language could reasonably cause her an-
noyance and her father pain.

" ' She has a high appreciation of the advantages of wealth,' he
asserted. And what is there in the world," she said, with her eyes
still fixed on the patch of sky, " which has a more powerful or
extensive influence ? Virtue is supposed to be the only power
able to cope successfully with it, and yet virtue has a price and
can be bought for gold. They who have it not would give their
honesty to obtain it. They who have it would peril all to retain
it. Love and hatred are its handmaids, and the passions generally
bow before it. To be rich is to be divine, and Croesus was a god.
If there were any meaning in these creeds, if their hereafter were
but a certainty, one could afford to smile at the ups and downs of
fortune. If it is a reproach to appreciate that which is most ap-
preciable, then, Christians, despise your heaven. Wealth and sta-
tion are mine, and why should I love them less ?

" * She has no religion in fact, despises all creeds/ he said.
And is it not true ? And if true, what reproach is it for me ?
The mummeries of Romanists and the quarrellings of Protestants
what have they which can allure any but the most ignorant
minds or the most bewitched ? I have no religion, if to despise
the world's superstitions be that ; but my heart is human, the love
of my race is my religion the religion of humanity, of culture, of
refinement.

" ' I would peril my soul to retain this wealth.' Not so fast.

26 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

There he was wrong. I have no soul in the sense which is theirs
a part of me which is to live in eternity, and as it has lived in
time, so suffer or rejoice when time is ended. That the might-
iest intellects of the world have looked upon as a myth. I peril
nothing, for I have nothing to peril. But oh ! if it were true
beyond dispute that I had an immortal soul, what would I care
for wealth or honors ? Is there a God ? Christians and I say yes.
Are we accountable to that Being for all our actions ? Chris-
tians and I say yes again. -We differ only as to his personality.
Their God is an impossibility, beautiful but intangible and unap-
proachable. Mine is a reality which begins and ends in time
myself. Why should I feel annoyed at hearing truths uttered ?
The doctor knows too much:; and yet not too much, for all
that he said I have many times repeated before my friends.
My father is more childish on these points than could be suppos-
ed in one so indifferent. I have no God, no religion, in the bad
sense which moderns have given these words. I love wealth and
power, and despise and dread poverty and weakness. What if
ever they should claim me, who detest them so much ? "

In the whirl of distressing thought which this idea brought
upon her she allowed her head to sink low on her breast and said
no more. Later the servant entered quietly and lighted the
lamps in the rooms. She rose then and stood before the mirror,
as her father had done a few moments before in the painful soli-
tude of the library. The face and form reflected there, in spite
of the suspicion of care that rested on the brow, were very, very
beautiful, and she smiled her approbation.

" Let them speak of you as they may," she said, with a harsh
laugh, " let them think of you meanly or kindly, you have that
which will subdue the fiercest of them beauty, and birth, and
wealth, and intellect. You may be wicked, an atheist, and un-
principled, but those qualities can gloss over so-called defects.
And yet, poor figure ! you have no stability. You want a soul.
Your beauty will fade and crumble through disgusting rottenness
into dust. There should be an immortal part of you to preserve
that which is so frail yet beautiful. Would that this much of
Christian superstition had some truth ! If I had been educated
differently perhaps

She broke off abruptly, seated herself on the ottoman, and
gave herself once more to thought. Her last words were the
keynote to her meditations. She was reviewing her past life, its
successive steps, and the scenes of her youth and girlhood rose
up before her with the painful distinctness which belongs to sor-

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 27

rowful memories. The twenty-four years of her existence had
nothing in them to interest the general world, but to those who
look upon a human life as infinitely more precious than number-
less worlds the slightest incident in the career of one who pre-
sented so complete a spiritual wreck as Nano McDonell, the
most trifling causes that worked upon the moulding of that
haughty, inconsistent, and brilliant mind, were things of startling
importance and worth.

The grave and often harsh expression that rested habitually
on her face, the melancholy that always lurked in her eyes when
the gayety or excitement of a moment had passed, were indica-
tions of a nature which at some time during its formation had
suffered, perhaps insensibly, yet severely. Her mother had died
in her infancy. To the child it was not a great loss, for the mer-
chant's wife was as shallow a creature as ever breathed, spending
her days in foolish intrigues to prevent her husband from return-
ing to the " superstitions which he had rejected," and to induce
him to attend the High-Church worship. Her ideas of fulfilling
the offices of wife and mother went no farther than the bearing
of children and the hiring of nurses, the mere animal instinct of
caring for the young being absent from her nature, and the
higher notions concerning the -duties of a Christian mother ut-
terly undeveloped. Her daughter would have found in her a
hindrance rather than a guide in her efforts to escape from the
maze into which she had fallen. Miss Nano was therefore ush-
ered into the world under severe conditions. Her father had de-
serted his faith to obtain his present position of wealth and influ-
ence, and though his hair had grown prematurely white through
remorse, yet to retain that position he had not scrupled to use fraud,
and he had resolutely turned his back to the church which his heart
sighed for and his reason acknowledged. He was indifferent to
Nano. Business cares were of more importance to him than the
care of the little child who was to inherit his property. Nurses
and governesses were supplied at proper intervals, and the
boarding-school received her when she had thrown aside her
pinafores and taken to forbidden books and unlimited candy.
She had been a trial to every one with whom she had come in
contact. Her proud, violent, untaught nature burst forth regu-
larly in childish rebellions, too serious in their consequences to
governesses to make these indulgent ladies bring the case before
the proper authority, her father. They coaxed and wheedled
while Miss Nano tyrannized. She had a passion for books, and
read everything, from the histories of Prescott down to the New

28 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

York Ledger, then in its infancy ; refused imperiously to study
the catechism or learn her prayers; laughed scornfully at the
idea of a bad place or a devil ; and went to the fashionable church
under protest and through fear of her father.

He was not distant with her nor unkind. They chatted occa-
sionally at the table. She made him little presents, which found
their way to a waste-basket as regularly as received, but on her
finding some of them in an ash-heap she put an end to these
little tokens of a child's tender love. Sometimes she sat on his
knee or drove out with him in the state carriage ; but his preoc-
cupation on these occasions, and his indifference to what she said
or did, rendered her pleasure insipid, and often turned it into
pain.

It did not require years of such behavior to separate them
and to chill in her heart the lively affection she naturally felt
towards him. But it remained for the boarding-school to put the
finishing touches to the work which ill-training and neglect had
so well begun. The teachers of the institution to which she was
sent were of the transcendental school, were great admirers of
Margaret Fuller and Emerson, and had each a master passion, in
ministering to which they spent the greater part of their lives.
All were disciples of culture, yet professed as much of Christian-
ity as was consistent with their broad principles, and could
satisfy the less visionary parents whose daughters were entrusted
to their charge, and who required some show at least of the pre-
vailing religion in the general make-up of the young' ladies. In
their philosophy Christianity meant culture, or the worship of
the beautiful, the worship of mind as impressed on matter in the
production of graceful statuary, solemn temples, fine paintings,
musical compositions, and startling books. According to their
ideas they retained the cream of Christianity, leaving the skim
milk to the various creeds, and they spoke and wrote of Catholic
doctrines in a peculiar fashion. Beauty was their standard of
right and wrong, of truth and falsehood.

It was Nano's misfortune to fall into the hands of these self-
worshippers. There was no doubt of the plastic material exist-
ing in the half-wild, impulsive, talented creature, and it submitted
to the moulding process with wonderful meekness. For three
years she walked with them through such mazes of absurdity
and learning as it never occurred to the greatest or most erratic
of scholars and philosophers to tread. The poetry and philoso-
phy, the antiquities and religions, of all nations in all times were
the objects of pretty and superficial investigation. The graduates

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 29

could spout more mythology in an ordinary conversation than an
Oxford professor, and all talked learnedly of the Zendavesta, of
Confucius and his maxims, of the Aristotelian theories, of the
Copernican system, and of the philosophy of the eighteenth cen-
tury according to Cousin. The habit of referring all disputed
questions, however profound, to the decision of the cultured
v mind, to be decided not on its merits, which might or might not
be a simple impossibility, but on its congruousness with the
standards set up by transcendentalism, tended to create an ex-
cessive self-love in the pupils. The worship of self quite na-
turally supplanted the worship of the Deity, and a disastrous
moral blindness followed.

Three years in such an atmosphere for a girl of Nano's sort
meant spiritual death. When her education was finished, and she
returned to rule as mistress of her father's house, Nano was fair-
ly enlisted in the ranks of atheism. " Strivings after the unat-
tainable " were become quite as much the strong points in her
character as they were in the characters of those with whom she
had so long associated ; and by degrees her nature underwent
the revolting but expected change which the sentiments she has
just uttered indicate.

After the last-spoken words of the lady she remained for a
long time in the same attitude of dejection and disturbed thought.
The scenes of her life in the past were not pleasant memories.
So deep and absorbing was her meditation that a gentle knock
at the door, though twice repeated, passed unheeded. Even the
opening of the door a moment later, and the entrance of a young,
bright-looking lady in walking costume, were not enough to wake
her from her reveries ; and for a few moments the new-comer
stood under the chandelier directly behind Nano, watching her
bowed form reflected in the mirror. Then she stole forward, put
her arms around Nano's neck and her lips to her cheek in a famil-
iar but respectful way, saying :

" Always solitary, always thinking ! Wrapped up in your
contemplation of Hindoo deities or mythologies, Nano, when you
should be getting into a pleasant excitement over the latest style
of our winter hats."

Nano looked up and caught the gentle hands in her own, all
her moodiness vanishing on the instant.

" Little witch, you are as mysterious in your comings and go-
ings as the Roman "

The witch put one hand quickly over the lady's mouth.

" No, do not mention one of those heathen deities. Have you

3 o A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

not promised me ? And I would as lief be compared to a monkey
as to a heathen goddess."

" I did forget my promise," said Nano, " but for the first and
last time. Yet I was not thinking of the goddesses when you came
in, but of some very practical things which do not often occur to
me, as you will easily believe. I had said aloud, just before you
entered, what a terrible thing would it be to become poor."

" Not so very terrible," said the girl slowly and with such a
serious face that Nano laughed chidingly.

" Let us talk of more cheerful things," she said. " Now that I
am to lose my companion, our parting must be made in a merry
mood. Life has so little of what is actually pleasant in it that it
is not good to borrow trouble. Now tell me of that young pro-
digy, your brother the doctor. Has he opened his office yet, and
have you made all your arrangements ? Oh ! what shall I do
without my companion? Sweet Olivia, where shall I find such
another as you ? "

" You can purchase anything for gold," said Olivia slyly.

" Very true, dear, if the ' anything ' exists, which in this case I
doubt. No other shall supply your place. It would remind me
too much of my loss."

" Loss ! " echoed Olivia. " Say rather gain. The companion
has become a friend."

" True again. But you have not told me of your brother."

" He is quite well, thank you, and already at work. His shin-
gle was hung out yesterday Henry Fullerton, in gilt letters
and the sweetest music I ever heard was the swinging song of
that shingle last night. I would not let Harry tie it down."

" Has he had any professional calls yet ? The music ought to
bring them, if nothing else."

" Yes and no," said Olivia, hesitating and gently blushing. "An
old friend called on him to-day and lunched with us. You must
know him Sir Stanley Dashington, a baronet and quite wealthy."

" I know him, dear," said the lady blandly. " He is very
handsome and very rich and very sensible. He is a Catholic, too,
like yourself, and lives in some delightful place called Ballyna-
bochlish, Ireland. I see he has wounded your heart already, and
I know you have known him a long time. You deserted me ; my
revenge will be to help you to desert your brother also."

" My going will not surprise him," answered the young lady
calmly. " It is to be expected, and I would soon be superfluous
in the Fullerton household. My brother will get married some
day, I suppose."

iSSo.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 31

" And you must set him the example ! Christian modesty, for-
sooth ! "

" Christian modesty, forsooth ! " repeated the young lady.
" What in the world has my getting" married to do with Chris-
tian modesty ? I would give your transcendental doctrines a
shot for that gratuitous attack, but really I have nothing to say.
I have shown up their foolishness and absurdity, and I can't go
any farther. To talk transcendentalism is to talk nonsense. Do
put your theories of the beautiful into some practice. If you
must worship beauty, come out to-morrow and worship the latest
styles. Such colors, such "

" In that way," interrupted Nano, frowning, " you always
treat those things which with me are so serious. Do you sup-
pose that I care for these vanities ? "

" Ah ! Nano," cried the young lady, " if you indulged your
woman's vanity a little more, and your aspirations after the un-
attainable a little less, your, life would not be the blunder it is.
Why, the philanthropists, as they call themselves, ridiculous as
their talk and actions are, do some good in the world, but your
school is the most useless yet discovered."

" School is a hateful name," said Nano. " I am bound by no
such fetters. My principles are truly Catholic. Whatever is
good I love, and I try to assimilate to myself all good. Is there
any nobler work than trying to make one's self better? "

" None, if you proceed in the right way," returned Olivia
with much earnestness. " But to build and destroy at the same
time is not making one's self better. You are doing that. You
have deprived yourself of a soul, and of the eternal home of that
soul. You believe in no God, no heaven, no accountability. You
have gone farther. You have made yourself a god, and set your-
self up in His place who made you and claims your homage. And
while you have been doing all this that kind and talented soul
whose existence you deny has struggled hard to save you from
ruin. Have I not witnessed and calmed its tumult many a time ?
But you looked upon it as only the struggling of your worse na-
ture, and resolutely put it down. Now the evidence of the con-
flict appears in your sadnesses and unrests, in your melancholy
expression and manner. O. Nano, dear Nano ! " and Olivia, ris-
ing from her seat, threw her arms once more around her friend,
" in the last moments of your life that which you have conquered
now will rise up like a giant, speak with tongues of thunder what
you now deny, and render you the unhappiest of women. Take
warning, dear, in time. Your intellect if applied but for a little

32 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Oct.,

to the search for the truth, your great pride if humbled ever so
little before God's goodness and power, would bring you out of
trouble into peace."

" I would smile, child," said Nano, not in the least moved by
her friend's earnestness, " but that you are so serious. Nothing
can ever take from me the convictions that now are mine. There
is no other refuge, and I look for none. Death is the end of all
beautiful, mysterious death."

" Beautiful, mysterious death ! " repeated Olivia. " Beautiful
to him who looks upon it as the entrance to a better life, but terri-
ble to those who see only its flowers and lights and fancied peace ;
mysterious only to the pagan and the atheist. For us One who
went that way and returned has laid bare all its mysteries."

" Mysterious withal," said Nano, closing her eyes as if to call
up some forgotten image. " The sea is a secret thing, and the
frozen North, and the human heart; but none express such
strange mystery as the faces of the dead. Oh ! to see them lying
there in everlasting repose, the seal of an eternal silence upon
their lips, all sense seeming to be turned inward upon themselves,
as if they were listening to and seeing and enjoying such things as
this world never knew, and from which no foolish, worldly plea-
sure can draw them ever again ! Mysterious death ! "

Both were for some moments silent.

" God of mercy," thought Olivia in agony, as she listened to
the words and saw the looks of her friend, "that such a soul
should be lost to thee ! "

Then she said aloud :

" I am growing impatient, Nano, and despondent. I shall talk
with you no more about these things. Your uncertain transcen-
dentalism is too gloomy. It is best to leave you to to "

" Well?" questioned the lady when Olivia stopped.

" Why should I mention One whose existence you deny ? I
was about to say, to God."

" As I should say to myself."

Olivia put her hand to her ears and expressed in her face
terror and disgust.

" Oh ! do not speak so," she gasped ; " I shudder for you, dear,
if God left you to the mercy of such- a divinity. It is one of his
punishments, and the most terrible."

" It is destined to be mine, then," said Nano, with a poor
attempt at gayety. " But there is the bell for tea. Let us go down
together. My father has not yet heard of your new departure."

TO BE CONTINUED.

I 8 80.] A US TRO-HUNCA R V. 3 3

AUSTRO-HUNGARY : ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND

PROSPECTS.*

THE Emperor of Austria is one of the few reigning sovereigns
of Europe against whose life no attempt has hitherto been made.
The secret of this exception may be found in the general faithful-
ness of his subjects to two hereditary traditions to which their
loyalty has never been questioned the Catholic religion and the
imperial family.

In spite of the various nationalities of which it is composed,
and their fierce contests and rivalries amongst themselves,
Austria is one again whenever the danger of separation appears
to threaten on the part of any of the populations whose historical
development has been bound iip with the fortunes of the house
of Hapsburg. Then private quarrels are forgotten, divisions dis-
appear, rank joins to rank, and neither misfortune nor defeat can
lessen the devotion to the empire which exists alike in the Tyrol,
in Bohemia, in Hungary, and in Austria proper. We will briefly
consider the reasons of this union, which are little understood by
the world outside of Austria.

To a people united in ideas and interests a social organization
is necessary in which the weak are not crushed by the strong,
where the good customs and traditions of the nation are uninter-
ruptedly transmitted, where the family is in full possession of the
rights indispensable to its vigor, where all that is venerable is
venerated, and where lawful authority has no need to threaten in
order to make itself respected. Austria does not, certainly, pos-
sess all these conditions, but she possesses the chief among them,
and, excepting the educational laws, which touch the very heart
of the people, the defects of her constitution are external, and im-
pede and inconvenience more than they corrupt. The popula-
tions of Austria are spread over three regions of different aspect.
Hungary has its vast plains ; the villages of the southern pro-
vince rise height above height on the sides of the mountains ; and
the Bohemians dwell in the well-watered valleys of their gently-
undulating hills.

Everywhere, with the exception of Carst, in Istria, the soil is
rich and vegetation abundant. The Austrians have comparatively

* See L'Autriche-Hongrie. Par M. Xavier Roux. Paris : Palme.
VOL. XXXII. 3

34 AUSTRO-HUNGARY : [Oct.,

few great cities, and are for the most part an agricultural people ;
thus their belief, traditions, customs, and costumes have been un-
der the most favorable conditions for hereditary and peaceful
transmission, and we find Austria preserving its individuality of
races, provinces, and localities better than any other country in
Europe. It is still a country distinct from other countries, and
one in which the wretched despotism of fashion has made the
fewest ravages. One happy effect of this originality of local cus-
toms and ideas is that they attach the people more strongly to
their country. The internal disturbances of Austria have passed
in Europe for an imitation or contre-coup of the French Revolution.
This is a mistake. With the exception of a few large towns, the
aim of all the Austrian agitations has been something purely
local, and wholly foreign or contrary to the rage for equalization
in France ; seeking not a republic but the monarchy, and the
triumph of the intelligent classes rather than . the omnipotence
of numbers. When, in 1848, the Magyars fought with superb
bravery under Kossuth for their own freedom, not for the idea of
a universal liberty, the Hungarians would not name a ministry
until the end of the struggle ; and when they had this ministry
the revolted chiefs never thought of declaring for any other rule
than that of the ancient monarchy. Thus, although the local pa-
triotism of the various races appears at times a danger to the
throne as well as to the national prosperity, the bond of belong-
ing to the same great empire is to each of these races a motive of
unhesitating devotion in the case of common peril.

Of the principal races which compose the empire, the Slavo-
nian is the most numerous, amounting to 16,145,000 ; the German
amounts to 9,155,800; the Hungarian to 5,153,000; the Latin,
3,493,000 ; and besides these are to be found representatives of the
Gypsy, Greek, and Armenian races. There are also in Austria
1,600,000 Jews.*

Each of these peoples has its own customs, traditions, and
pride. The Roumanian defies the Magyar and the German dis-
dains the Slav, while each upholds its ancient rights and demands
their restoration with an apparently implacable hostility to the
rest. But these mutual animosities arising from pride of race
are dominated by the greater pride of forming an integral part
of the Apostolic Empire. This fact was curiously manifested in
1849, when, the emperor having refused to the Hungarian depu-

*In 1851 the Jews in Austria numbered only 680,000. Their increase since that time is un-
equalled by that of any other race in any other country. We commend this fact to the con-
sideration of Dr. Colenso, the Protestant bishop of Natal.

i88o.] ITS PRESENT CONDITION- AND PROSPECTS. 35

ties the constitutional form of government, a fierce war broke out
between Austria proper and Hungary. At the same time the
other races considered this a favorable moment for pressing their
own claims for a reconstitution of their ancient rights. The
struggle had two phases. So long as the Hungarians fought for
their liberty the other nationalities joined the insurrection, and
with them threatened the government of Vienna, in order to ob-
tain also what they wanted for themselves. Austria seemed on
fire, and the ancient monarchy on the verge of destruction. A
certain number among the Hungarians, however, pushing their
requirements beyond their original limits, wished to create for
themselves an autonomy in the heart of the monarchy. Upon
this what was not the astonishment of Europe to see all the other
peoples, forgetting their own causes of complaint and desires of
liberty, turn fiercely and with one accord upon the race which
dared to fail in its fidelity to the empire, and Hungary was forced
to yield because a few only of her sons had for an instant spoken
of separating from Austria.

The cultus, if we may so call it, of the imperial family springs
in great part from the remembrance of the great things which
many of the sovereigns have accomplished, and which are the
honor of the monarchy.* A stranger is struck with the universal
affection of the people for their rulers an affection of which he
finds abundant evidence in every part of the realm. He cannot
enter a peasant's cottage or the humblest wayside inn without
seeing on its walls the portraits of one or more of the members,
living or dead, of the house of Hapsburg:

Not many years ago the Emperor Francis Joseph, while hunt-
ing in the neighborhood of Buda, lost his way. Evening came
on, and, with the one officer who accompanied him, he asked hos-
pitality at a cottage in the woods, and sat down, incognito, to sup
with his host, the charcoal-burner.

" Since you are one of the king's hunting party," said the
peasant, " there is one thing I wish very much that you could tell
him."

" And what is that?" asked the emperor.

* For instance, amongst the principal benefits conferred on her people by the Empress Maria
Theresa were the promulgation of a new penal code, the abolition of torture ; the foundation of
the Aulic Council of Commerce, the military schools of Vienna and Neustadt, and an Academy
of Commerce ; special schools for the poor children of noble families ; the Aulic Commission of
Instruction ; the academies of Brussels, Roveredo, Mantua, Presburg, Raab, Agram, and others ;
the colleges of Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Namur, Luxembourg, Ruremonde, Ypres, and Cour-
trai ; the Deaf and Dumb School at Vienna, etc. She made important and beneficial changes
in the army regulations, improved the condition of the soldiers, built barracks and fortresses,
and made improvements in the political, financial, and judicial administration.

36 AUSTRO-HUNGARY : [Oct.,

" It is a matter of importance, and I say it plainly. His ma-
jesty would do well to quit the town of Vienna and corne to live
here in the midst of us. We know how to venerate our king, but
those Viennese rascals have not the same fidelity. You know it
was the Viennese who assassinated the great Emperor Matthias
Corvinus."

Matthias Corvinus lived in the fifteenth century. This simple
and affectionate fidelity exists in all the provinces, and is, next to
religion, the chief strength of the Austrian monarchy.

But it is not only in the glorious past of the imperial house
which has given to the church so long a line of saints, as well as
made itself renowned by noble deeds or knightly courage, and is
respected for the dignity of its domestic life it is also in the noble
examples of the princes of the blood at this present time, that we
see a source of the popular affection and admiration which sur-
round the throne.

One of the principal objects of interest at Vienna is the Indus-
trial Museum. Forming a portion of the same building with the
school, to which capacity and good-will suffice to procure gratui-
tous admission, is a superb edifice provided with everything
which can facilitate the professional culture of the young men,
whether in architecture, sculpture, porcelain, glass, wood-carving,
tapestry, iron-work, or any other form of industrial art. The ad-
mirable arrangements of the building are completed by a well-
selected library containing the latest works on art and manufac-
tures. This noble institution was founded and is kept up by the
Archduke Renier, who is always on the watch to add to its col-
lections, and in every way to promote the thorough preparation
of the students for their respective careers. Again, every visitor
to Pesth will remember the Margarithen Insel, which seems to
have been set in the Danube as a point of view for one of the
loveliest landscapes in God's creation the wondrous isle which,
in the midst of one of the largest rivers of Europe, itself contains
warm springs. It is the generosity of an archduke which has
made the Margarithen Insel the paradise it is ; it is he who built
the vast and splendid baths beneath its groves.

In the furthest parts of the empire are institutions founded
and maintained by members of the royal family, who keep alive
and vigorous the traditional respect by the benefits they person-
ally confer in works of public utility.* The more we learn of the
simple and useful lives of the imperial family, the more we can

* The memory of the frank and noble Maximilian, whom a sad destiny made Emperor of

i88o.] ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS. 37

understand the prestige it continues to enjoy among all the na-
tionalities beneath its rule.

With regard to the authority of the clergy, there is no country
in Europe, with the exception of Ireland, where their authority is
so universally respected as in Austria. Even the revolutionists
are afraid to attack them openly, although there is a portion of
the Viennese press that ignoble portion which thrives on scandal
base enough to endeavor, by the sedulous employment of cal-
umny, to undermine this influence of the priesthood.

But in spite of this their influence is not only very salutary
but very great. It is interesting to see, in a country so jealous of
its liberties, how the people, the bourgeoisie and the nobility, in
every local matter of any importance seek and appreciate the
guidance of their clergy, who, being ardently patriotic, take the
deepest interest in everything connected with the well-being of
their country.

The Austrian clergy are rich, and so employ their riches as to
make them the source of incalculable good. Bishops and simple
parish priests, regulars and secular priests, rival one another in
founding and maintaining useful institutions. In Hungary alone,
where they are richest, they have founded no less than ninety
schools of gratuitous instruction for the middle classes. Through-
out the empire their generosity embraces every degree of educa-
tion ; in the universities and the elementary schools alike the
professors are ecclesiastics, and thus, from the base to the summit
of public instruction, it is, as a rule, the priest who builds the
schools and who teaches in them, unwearied in promoting the dif-
fusion of sound knowledge as a guarantee for preserving the in-
fluence of the church.

Besides the schools, numberless charitable institutions, in aid
of every kind of misfortune, are founded by the clergy. Most of
the cathedral and monastic chapters observe also the ancient cus-
tom of a weekly distribution of food and money to the poor ; and
thus there does not exist, even in the poorest quarters of the

Mexico, still awakens a lively emotion in the hearts of the people he was called to leave. The
following letter written by him to his tutor, Mgr. Mislin, will not be read without interest :

"JERUSALEM, FRANCISCAN CONVENT, July 2, 1855.

"DEAR ABBE: After having, at the Vatican, received Communion from the hands of the
Holy Father (a moment of peace and sweetness I shall never in all my life forget), and having
prayed there for you, my dear abbe, with all my heart, I have now (yesterday) received the
Blessed Eucharist at the Holy Sepulchre, where I again offered my fervent prayers for the
excellent author of The Holy Places a. work which accompanies me throughout my pilgrimage.
Since I have had the happiness of finding myself, in the course of a month, at Rome and Jerusa-
lem, I only know the immense happiness it is to be a Catholic ! May God grant us a happy
meeting! FERDINAND MAXIMILIAN."

3$ AUSTRO-HUNGARY : [Oct.,

Hungarian cities, that squalid and frightful pauperism so com-
mon in modern England and (though to a somewhat less extent)
in France. The Austrian clergy, not being hampered by poverty
and civil restrictions, have free scope for their active beneficence,
and are always on the watch, as it were, for any need, that they
may supply it, and for any form of suffering, that they may
hasten to its relief.*

In Austria the power of the aristocracy is based upon their
beneficence and strengthened by their habit of work. Activity is
there a characteristic of social life in every degree. It is scarcely
possible to meet with a man of high rank who wastes his patri-
mony in idleness and pleasures, or a noble family which does not
by its own endeavors carry out the beneficent traditions of its
ancestry. The French noblesse lost its vigor by residence in the
capital and at court. That of Austria, for the most part, remains
all the year, or nearly so, among the rural populations.

But there are two sorts of aristocracy in the empire, the
Hungarian and the Austrian. In Hungary the nobles are innu-
merable. In every village, every variety of condition, every pro-
fession and trade, even to the function of groom or valet, they
carry their pride and loftiness with them, through prosperity or
poverty alike. Nearly every Magyar declares himself a noble
and affects an air of superiority and disdain towards all the other
races composing the empire, making it a rule to yield to no man
in point of precedence.-)- M. Roux relates the following charac-
teristic incident :

A Magyar judge of Presburg was going down the Danube, when a fel-
low-passenger entered into a conversation with him which lasted some
hours. The judge was charmed by the politeness of his new acquaintance
as well as by his elevation of mind.

" You are a Magyar," said the unknown. " May I ask what function
you fulfil in your part of the country ? "

* The influence of the Austrian clergy has not hitherto been lessened by the "Confessional
Laws" passed, under the pressure exercised by the "progressionists," with intent to weaken it.
The principal prescriptions of these laws are : i, that the nomination of priests to benefices
must be made under control of the civil power ; 2, that every priest in any charge must be also an
Austrian citizen, thus preventing the bishops from obtaining auxiliaries from certain 'neighbor-
ing countries ; 3, that all the revenues of the clergy should be subjected to heavy taxation.

t " The Hungarian nation is as ancient as the country it inhabits. We are, as all know,
the ancient Pannonians, who under Attila and other chiefs accomplished such marvellous con-
quests, without our country having been really subjugated by any of the most famous conquer-
ors who have made war against us. We are the sons of those peoples who have always chosen
their own chiefs, giving them only power to command, but not to punish at their fantasy ; for
our brothers were so free that the only veritable masters they acknowledged were their gods."
Declaration made by the Hungarian nobles after the War of the Discontented, in their Manifesto
to justify the late Rising. (Cassovia, 1707.) Nor are these pretensions in any way diminished
at the present time.

iSSo.] ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS. 39

" I am a judge at Presburg. And you, monsieur? "
" Archduke of Austria. I have the government of Hungary."
" Yours also is a pretty position," answered the judge, no way discon-
certed ; and he continued the conversation.

Proud and arrogant towards an adversary, the Magyar is gen-
tle and benevolent with regard to all who do not question his
rights. With them he takes pleasure in allowing free play to his
great qualities, and thus, as a rule, the Hungarian nobles possess
the devoted loyalty and affection of their tenants and depen-
dants.

The character of the Austrian aristocracy does not share the
domineering spirit of the Hungarian. It is more gentle, just; and
judicious, and also more national and popular. There is, more-
over, nothing imaginary in its title to nobility, which is founded
upon no pretension of race, but relates to the family and the man.
The ancestors whose portraits adorn the castles which rise among
the woods at every turn of the fair valleys of Styria, Carinthia,
and Bohemia have, as warriors, statesmen, or public benefactors,
deserved well of their country, and at some period or other won
the nobility as well as the renown of their name. The lustre of
this name is increased by their descendants, who are the heredi-
tary benefactors of the villages around them. " Often," says M.
Xavier Roux, " in order to satisfy my curiosity, I have questioned
the peasant, the laborer, the man in rags, whose .indigence might
excuse him from knowing or heeding the glories of his country,
but have never met with a mind so ignorant or a heart so envi-
ous as not to know and appreciate the illustrious names of his
province and the most celebrated personages of ,the Austrian
monarchy. The memory confuses dates, but the heart makes no
mistake in its comprehension of facts. From the mountains of the
Tyrol to the plains of Hungary I can testify to the gratitude of
the Austrian people to the heroes of their country."

The Austrian aristocracy is not only active in works of gene-
rosity, it is laborious also. In the Tyrol and the poorer parts of
Styria and Carinthia it is no uncommon thing to see nobles fell-
ing wood in their forests and working in their fields in the midst
of their men. The sons of great but impoverished families often
become farmers, and by so doing lose nothing of the respect and
consideration of their equals in rank. To undertake the cultiva-
tion of land for a richer neighbor surprises no one and lowers no
one, but nobles who take to commerce and manufactures enjoy
somewhat less regard in public opinion than those who become
tillers of the soil a difference doubtless arising from the survi-

4O AUSTRO-HUNGARY : [Oct.,

val of feudal ideas long after the disappearance of the feudal sys-
tem.

Nevertheless, whether in the factory or at the plough, the no-
ble preserves his influence and authority by the fact of his per-
sonal labor, and in his example the people see, as it were, the glo-
rification of their own toil. Thus the beneficence of the rich no-
bility a beneficence in which their wives and daughters take an
active share and the laborious lives of the impoverished alike
maintain the prestige of their ancient names and encourage the
industry and content of those around them.

In Austria it is no unmeaning expression to speak of " the
ruling classes." The people not only accept but seek the direc-
tion of those whom they regard, because of their education, more
enlightened, and because of their means and position more disin-
terested, than themselves. The legal reality of the division of
classes into nobles, bourgeoisie, and people was swept away in the
revolutionary tempest of 1848 ; but although feudality has been
legally banished from the institutions, it still lives, not only, as we
have already said, in the ideas, but also at present in the manners
and customs of the empire.

We say at present, for one of the laws promulgated during that
troubled period is slowly but surely producing a fundamental and,
as will be seen, deeply injurious change in the country ; and this
is the law which deprived the nobles of all the land rented of
them by others, leaving them only so much as they were culti-
vating themselves or having cultivated under their own direc-
tion.

Fifty years ago the class of bourgeoisie scarcely existed in Aus-
tria, except in the large towns. Now, however, the land is large-
ly bought up from the peasants by nouveaux riches from the towns,
and particularly by the Jews, who are disseminating themselves
in all directions. In Hungary especially there are very few vil-
lages the best portions of which are not now their property, and
their action in Austria proper, if less powerful, is none the less
determined and aggressive. Thus the daily-increasing worship
of riches is gradually destroying the influence of disinterested
motives and ideas, and a ne\v class of bourgeoisie is coming into
power, bringing into the social life no other elements than greed
of wealth, love of luxury and pleasure, and revolutionary changes
in institutions and ideas, in place of the useful and healthy influ-
ence of a nobility and bourgeoisie devoted by their family tradi-
tions to the general good. It is with deep sadness that the pa-
triotic Austrian contemplates the alarming increase in his coun-

i88o.] ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS. 41

try of the Jewish race, both in numbers and power, and per-
ceives that in a few years they will to a most serious extent, if
not altogether, have undermined or overpowered all the Chris-
tian ideas and motives of action which as yet constitute the
most solid support of the Austrian Empire. Their chief instru-
ment for evil is the press. At Vienna the " liberal" press, which
is an odious affair of money as well as the sedulous propagator
of impiety and immorality, is entirely in the hands of the Jews,
who by these detestable journals infuse into the minds of the
people a continuous stream of poison and corruption, together
with the revolutionary ideas which have produced in different
parts of Europe anarchy, socialism, and nihilism.

Three safeguards exist as yet against the inroads of the anti-
Christian element namely, the dignity of the upper classes in
their lives, the respect of the people for lawful authority, and,
lastly, their veneration for the traditions of the past and for the
memory of their dead.

Until very recent times the social classes were three in num-
ber ; the nineteenth century added a fourth, that of the mechanics
and working-men a category differing from the people in ideas,
inclinations, and the economic conditions of their life, and in habits
imitating, as far as lies in their power, the luxury of the bourgeoisie.
The members of this category are agitated by a vague ambition
and an eager thirst for pleasure, and convinced that " the prole-
tariat," the " new social layers " that is, themselves and their own
class are formed for " the regeneration of the masses," and that to
them it belongs to take the upper hand in the affairs of nations.
Hence it follows that those cities whose manufactures have in-
volved the greatest agglomeration of workmen are as a rule the
most restless and least happy regions in the world. Austria has
been more fortunate in regard to the agglomerations of her work-
ing classes than either England or France.

Bohemia alone, of all the provinces, can be strictly called an
industrial country. In the others also there are, however, a few
great manufacturing towns. The tranquil lives and moderate
aspirations of the workmen in these centres prove that they have
escaped the chief dangers accompanying large agglomerations,
and that socialism does not exist among them.

This happy exemption is due to the wisdom and foresight of
the heads and directors of the works, and the active interest they
take in the moral and material well-being of their employees, whom
from the outset they have watched over step by step, often even
anticipating their wishes as, for instance, in the establishment of

42 AUSTRO-HUNGARY: [Oct.,

savings-banks and benevolent funds in case of accident or sick-
ness.

And this, as we say, has been done from the outset. At the mo-
ment when manufacturing 1 life was beginning to develop in the
Austrian Empire, and before the cities of Vienna, Pesth, Gratz,
etc., had attracted a crowd of operatives within their walls, a
priest of Mayence came to propose to the Catholics of Austria a
plan which he had already tried with remarkable success namely,
that of uniting the workmen in an association for mutual succor
and prayer.

His words and example speedily bore fruit. In 1852 were
founded in the different parishes of Austria the first Catho-
lic Circles for Working-men. These differ from the "Circles "in
France by being at the same time not only religious associations
but associations for material assistance as well a feature which
has largely contributed to their development and their stability.
Their periodic meetings for religious purposes are accompanied
by a deposit of money in the savings-bank and the mutual-assis-
tance fund, interest being allowed on these deposits. By this and
other means the forethought of the directors gave no time for
discontent to germinate, and when the Austrian workmen read
the violent appeals of their comrades in France and Germany
they merely shake their heads and return to their work.

Besides the urban agglomerations there are others more re-
cently created by the lines of railway, and which, when ill-affect-
ed, are still more dangerous than the former, since their action
extends over the whole country.

The Sudbahn is one of the most important railway companies
of the empire. Its action is felt in all the great centres as well as
in the smaller towns and the large extent of country through
which its lines pass. Under its orders are men of Italian race in
Istria, of Slavonic in Croatia, Magyars in Hungary, and Ger-
mans at every point. Here, as elsewhere, at the outset of the
formation of railways the germs of insubordination and impiety
began to declare themselves ; these, however, as well as jealousies
of race, difficulties of existence, and the various dangers of ag-
glomeration, disappeared before the benefits of a Christian and
judicious administration.

The Sudbahn has established within itself beneficial institu-
tions to meet every reasonable requirement ; amongst others an
Assurance Company, the benefits of which are shared b}^ all its
employees ; a fund upon which its old servants are pensioned off
when disabled by age, infirmity, or accident ; for its active work-

i88o.] /T-5 PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS. 43

men it has the Workmen s Cities at Vienna and Marburg", with
schools for their children, and, for their domestic wants, stores
where they can obtain good provisions at very moderate prices ;
in fact, nothing that affects their well-being is forgotten. These
railway colonies, moreover, offer an encouraging example to
timid directors who fear to lessen their revenue by increased care
of their operatives. That of Marburg, for instance, brings in five
and a half per cent, to the company for the capital spent upon it,
and yet the men have a house and garden for less than four dol-
lars seven florins fifty kreutzers a month ! The married occu-
pant can also in most cases let one of his rooms to an apprentice.

This colony stands on an agreeable plateau along the right
bank of the Drave. Both sides of the long streets present a
wooden railing, hung about with creepers and showing flowers
and foliage above. The buildings, commodious and simple, stand
each in the middle of a large piece of ground. Each building is
divided into four sets of rooms, and each set, independent within,
has its outer door independent also, and opening on to its own
share of garden, which is large enough to furnish the family with
vegetables all the year round. Each set of rooms has its cellar.
The employees are exceedingly attached to their city, and the
keenest regret of a workman who has to leave the company is
caused by the fact that he must at the same time quit so cheerful
and convenient an abode.

The beneficent measures adopted by the Sudbahn have been
more or less imitated by the other railway companies of the em-
pire ; thus the men have no temptation to socialism or to political
or religious contests, knowing that they would only be the losers
by revolt or change.

We have spoken of the loyalty of the people to their sove-
reign, of the rural populations to an active and beneficent aris-
tocracy, and of all classes (as a rule and where not infected by
anti-Christian revolutionists) to the clergy. The root and foun-
dation of this loyalty may be found in the sacredness of the family,
and the dutiful respect for parental authority which is one of the
chief causes of strength in the Austrian Empire.

The traveller in Hungary is struck by the singular arrange-
ment of its villages. The houses, long and low, present an end
only to the street. In this end are two narrow windows. The
door opens into the court or garden which separates one house
from the next. Often the houses are back to back, and the gar-
dens between every two pairs separated by a wall ; thus in many
places the streets seem almost interminable from the long spaces

44 AUSTRO-HUNGARY : [Oct.,

of wall intervening from one house to the next. The gardens are
kept closed to the passer-by.

This arrangement is an exact picture of the independence and
autonomy of each family, which has little in common with its
neighbors, each house being a society complete in itself.

The following custom is mentioned by M. Xavier Roux as in-
dicative of the filial affection and obedience expected by the pa-
rents, and commanded, under severe penalties, by the laws :

"We were present," he says, "at a marriage in the mountains of Hun-
gary. The bride was clothed in sombre garments, and her crown made of
purple or red flowers and dark green leaves. At the moment of leaving the
parental abode she began to weep. In vain her companions endeavored to
console her; she continued to sob the whole of the long distance to the
church and back again. The bridegroom walked at the head of the wed-
ding guests, with his eyes cast down and a woful countenance ; the rest of
the party, men and women alike, conforming the expression of their faces
and demeanor to the same lugubrious air.

" 'This,' I remarked, 'is evidently a compulsory union, which both par-
ties are unwilling to contract ; there is no gladness and there are no white
flowers.'

" ' On the contrary, monsieur,' was the answer, ' this marriage is one
which both parties eagerly desire. Do not be. troubled by these outbursts
of grief: custom requires the betrothed thus to express their regret at
quitting the homes of their youth.' "

The solid organization of the family rests on a double respect
that between husband and wife, and that of children to their pa-
rents. " Our nation," said a noble Austrian, " is not yet enfeebled by
the poison of civil marriage." Religious marriage is not only the
surest safeguard of the mutual attachment of the father and
mother, but also of filial respect. One expression of this respect,
noticeable throughout the empire, is the deep and universal honor
paid to the dead. On entering a church in Austria it is impos-
sible not to remark the large portion of the 'edifice which is given
up to the memory of the departed ; every slab of the pavement is
often a tombstone, every pillar a mortuary monument, and every
chapel a mausoleum. A nation which honors its dead remains
faithful to its ancient traditions. On the other hand, one of the
first acts of the French Revolution was to desecrate the tombs of
Saint-Denis and scatter the remains of the departed kings, as a
prelude to the murder of their descendant.

It remains to say a few words on the parliamentary system as
applied to Austria, and on the character of the revolution in that
country. Modern progressionists are apt to overlook the fact that
different countries often require different forms of government, and

i88o.] ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS. 45

that in nations of great diversity of race, customs, and ideas no
single system can be expected to confer the same benefits or pro-
duce the same results. The parliamentary system, fruitful of good,
though not of unmixed good, in Great Britain, has produced
great evils in Prussia, and is doing the same at this moment in
Belgium ; and while it is in one country helpful to the promulga-
tion of wise and good measures, in another it paralyzes, or goes
far to paralyze, all healthful action. That the same may be said
also of absolute and of republican government we need but, by way
of proof, glance at Russia on the one hand and the South Ame-
rican republics on the other, to say nothing of the arrogant and
aggressive injustice which the present composition of the govern-
ment in France enables it to perpetrate against the majority of
the country as well as against its most sacred rights.

Protected against despotism by its local liberties, Austria did
not desire, nor does it even now understand, the new form of
government imposed upon it by the agitation of a minority. The
populations of the various provinces of the empire cannot take in
the idea of ministerial responsibility, and at the present moment
regarding their monarch, as they regarded him twenty years
ago, as their sole responsible legislator, they are often heard to
exclaim with wonder and regret on the passing of the new laws :
" It is surely- strange that the emperor should have become a revo-
lutionist ! "

There is in the Austrian people no love of parliamentary in-
stitutions, but there is an ardent love of communal and provincial
franchises, and for all which enables them freely to carry out their
ancestral traditions. It was the full restoration of these rights
which they desired in 1848, and which they still desire in 1880.
The representatives of the Tyrol unceasingly repeat that only in
the interest of the public peace do they submit to the laws elabo-
rated by the Parliament at Vienna, but that they do not in any
way soever recognize its power or its right to legislate in the name
of the nationalities composing the Austrian Empire. The revo-
lution, in fact, deceived the people, turning to the profit of this
new regime, which favored the ambition of the few, the aspira-
tions of the provinces for their ancient liberties. The Germans
and Magyars aspired to power, and the revolution served their
purpose. The parliamentary system makes the king a shield for
the revolution. The laws it makes are promulgated by the sov-
ereign, the persecutions it sets on foot are carried on by his
agents, and the oppressive measures planned and imposed by it
against its political adversaries are sanctioned by his power and

46 AUSTRO-HUNGARY. . [Oct.,

enforced by his soldiers. Not one of these perils, not one of
these wrongs, has been spared by the revolutionists against the
dignity of their sovereign ; on the contrary, they have done their
utmost to debase it, and in particular by organizing the most ini-
quitous system for the return of deputies to parliament that has
yet been invented. Into the details of this system we cannot now
enter : we only give the results.

In Austria the Slavs amount to sixteen millions, the Germans
to only half this number, and yet the electoral majority is so con-
trived as to belong inevitably to the Germans over the Slavs.

In Hungary the Magyars are 5,153,000 in number, their com-
mon adversaries (Slavs, 3,000,000; Germans, 1,850,000; Rouma-
nians, 2,400,000) in all eight millions ; and yet the electoral law
makes these latter the minority of the kingdom.* This injustice
is the more revolting from the fact that nearly all the commercial
and industrial enterprise of the realm, whether in art, trade, or
public works, is in the hands of the rejected races. Universal
suffrage, which is the bane of France, would be the saving of
Austria, where, under the new regime, the will of the people is
a mockery, and the power of the sovereign, as a legislator, a lie.

The deputies returned by this iniquitous system lost no time
in showing themselves worthy of ' it. The educational laws were
passed with the avowed purpose of " liberating the, understand-
ing from the yoke of clericalism," besides other measures for
cramping and restraining the action of the church. " The par-
liamentary power as now exercised in the Austrian Empire, with
its trickiness, its false legalities, and a mendacious idea of justice
to which no man would dare to appeal in private affairs, appears
to us the most active and dangerous power which has yet arisen
against the future of the people of Austria ; and this power, more
than any other, makes its detestable influence felt even in the
smallest hamlets in the extremities of the empire. Daily and
hourly it fills the thoughts of the German, in whose hands it is
an arm of oppression, and of the Slav who groans beneath it.
The one strengthens himself in the hope of revolt, the other in
his ideas of despotism ; all loyalty is departing from the political
relations of the two races, and mutual hatred deepening in the
hearts which ought to beat in harmony for the honor of their
country."

And this is what the revolution has done for Austria. That
the evil did not break out sooner was doubtless owing to the
rigorous measures enforced by Prince Metternich against every

* L'Autriche Hongrie^ p. 195.

i88o.] A REVISION. 47

appearance or suspicion of revolutionary propagandism. But if
his severities preserved the heart of the empire from the con-
tamination which had invaded the other states of Europe, his
policy was not strong enough to prevent outside its limits the
plottings of the secret societies against his country.

Nevertheless, in spite of her defeats and revolutions, in spite
off the political charlatans who have tampered with her constitu-
tion, this great empire, full of vitality and vigor, and devoted as
ever to her hereditary rulers, still defies the prophecies of those
politicians who in succession during the past fifty years have
continued to predict her fall ; and not only this, but the conclu-
sion arrived at by those who study her closely from a Christian
point of view is that, with regard to religion and loyalty, Aus-
tria is the least disaffected country in Europe.

A REVISION.

I READ a legend, sweet and quaint,
The other, day, amid the faint
Calm light of early dusk ;
The story, odorous of musk,
Smiled in a dust-bound, silent book
Neglected in a lovers' nook.

Of course you know it : how he strove
To shape the marble like his love
That ancient sculptor ; how his hand,
Guiding the chisel, like a wand,
So perfect made the beauteous whole
Jove breathed in it his lady's soul.

The dainty myth in modern time
Will serve to tell in careless rhyme :
Our sculptor sneers there is no Jove ;
Science has made a myth of love ;
So practical the race has grown,
Tis only Beauty's heart is stone.

48 CA TALOGUES OF MSS. IN- THE VA TICAN LlBRAR Y. [Oct.,

THE CATALOGUES OF THE MANUSCRIPTS IN THE
VATICAN LIBRARY. II.

ii.

WHEN the Papal Curia removed the treasures of the Apostolic
See from Italy into France the archives of records, diplomas,
documents of all kinds, and the codices were transported first to
Assisi and thence to Avignon. In 1327 John XXII. ordered an
inventory to be made of them at Assisi ; in 1336-39, 1367, 1369 au-
thentic catalogues were compiled in Avignon,* the last of which
was published by Muratori.f Renascent learning, however, then
required new collections of books and of emended copies of an-
cient works upon every subject, which were sought after with
assiduous and intelligent sagacity by scholars of that noble age.
All know the favor wherewith the Roman Pontiffs seconded the
renewal of classical studies. In Avignon the popes had their
private library,:]: and furnished it with classical books even, which
were of great service to the learned, especially to Petrarch.
The Antipope Benedict XIII. transferred a great portion of the
pontifical library of Avignon and of the archives to the castle of
Peniscola in Catalonia ; the catalogue of the manuscripts convey-
ed thither in 1408 is preserved in the Latin Codex 5I56A of the
National Library of Paris. At the close of the great schism of
the West a large number of those codices were not brought back
to Rome, but given to the college founded at Toulouse by Car-
dinal Peter de Foix, senior, known as the Fuxiense, and finally lost
and dispersed in the seventeenth century.) The celebrated Am-
brose Traversari, in 1432, speaks of this despoiled library of the
pope, then in Rome, as well furnished with Greek codices, but
almost entirely wanting in rare books, so dear to that sagacious
seeker after lost works.

The damages sustained by the ancient library of the Apostolic
See and by that of Avignon were splendidly repaired by Nicho-
las V., 1447, who instituted for the use of the entire court that'

* See Gaetano Marini, Historical Memoirs of the Archives of the Holv See, cap. 6, 7 (edited
by Mai, together with the history of the Bibl. Ottoboniana by Ruggieri ; and Lacmmer, Monnm.
Vat. hist. eccl. sczc. XVI. illustrantia, append, i.)

fMuratori, Antiquitat., vi. p. 76 et seq.

\ See Delisle, Le Cabinet des MSS. de la bibl. imp., i. p. 486 etseq. Cf. Inv. gen. des MSS.
franc^ais de la bibl. nat., i. p. cv., cvi.

See Petrarchae, De rebus f am., epist. xii. 5 (ed. Fracassetti, ii. p. 182).

| See Delisle, 1. c.

i88o.] CATALOGUES OF MSS, IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY. 49

celebrated library which contemporaries, especially the publisher
Vespasiano Fiorentino, lauded to the skies. John Tortelli com-
piled the catalogue of its contents, which unfortunately is lost,
and styles it omnium qua fuerunt prcestantissimam, since, to provide
it with the lost works of classical and of sacred antiquity, erudite
and experienced men were sent at enormous expense ad diver-
sas extremasque mundi paries* Calixtus III. was accused of dis-
persing the literary treasures collected by his glorious prede-
cessor. The accusation has been recently examined into and
judgment passed upon it with equal learning and impartiality by
Eugene Mtintz, historian of the arts at the court of the popes in
the fifteenth century .f We have here, in Cod. Vat. 3959, the au-
thentic catalogue of the codices of Nicholas V., found in the palace
by his successor, Calixtus III., and preserved by his orders,
which M. Mlintz will probably publish before we do. ^

The great undertaking which redounds to the glory of Nicho-
las V. was brought to completion by Sixtus IV., who gave stable
form to the public Palatine Library distinct from the secret that
is, from the archives and from the private library of the pontiff
in the Vatican Palace. This was classified according to 'Subject-
matter and to authors ; and Demetrius Lucense, under the orders
of Platina, compiled a magnificent catalogue thereof, of which we
have the original and more than one ancient copy. The famous
bibliographer of Jena, John Burcard Struvius, possessed a copy
of this catalogue, from which he published extracts. Other
catalogues were compiled under Innocent VIII. and Leo X. ;
and during the fifteenth and in the early years of the six-
teenth centuries not only was the use of the Vatican codices con-
ceded to frequenters of the library, but the codices were even
lent out to private individuals at their residences. This is proved
by authentic registers and autograph receipts of codices then lent
to students notable documentary evidence of the culture and of
the studiousness of the Roman court in that classic age.

Rome being sacked by the army of the Constable of Bour-
bon in 1527, the Vatican Library had its share of the general

*See Tortelli, Comm. Grammaticce de orthographia, Tarvisii, 1477, in procemio. Cf. Vespa-
siani, Vita di Nicolo V., and Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Nicolai V, in Muratori, Scriptor. rer.
ital., xxv. p. 282, iii. p. ii. p. 926.

tSee Muntz, " L' Heritage de Nicolas V.," in the Gazette ties Beaux Arts, 1877, p. 42361
seq. Cf. Von Reumont in Archivio It., ii. ser. viii. p. 134.

JSee Muntz, 1. c. p. 423, note 2.

See lugler, Bibl. hist. litt. cuius primas lineas duxit, B. G. Struvius,. Jenaa, 1754, p. 284.
In the Dresden Library. Cod. C. 253 (E), a copy thereof is preserved in the handwriting of W.
E. Tenzel, entitled Catalogus bibl. Vat. ante C. C. et amplius annos concinwatus et ex MS.
codice descriptus a i6S6.
VOL. XXXII. 4

50 CA TALOCUES OF MSS. IN THE VA TICAN LlBRAR Y. [Oct.,

damage, and lost the catalogues, which were, however, recover-
ed.* A new catalogue of the manuscripts was com piled Jussu ct
industria Cardinalis S. Crucis that is, of Cervini, afterwards Pope
Marcellus II. ; f it was published in three large volumes under
the pontificates of Paul III. and Julius III. J These volumes
served for the common use of \he public as well as secret libraries
and of the learned throughout the sixteenth and in the beginning
of the seventeenth centuries, until the completion of the first
six volumes of the present great catalogue, whose history is sum-
med up in preceding pages. The compilation of this new inven-
tory had been rendered necessary by the ever-increasing biblio-
graphic wealth of the library. Pius IV. ordered Panvinius to
collect books in every language.! Amongst the new acquisitions
during the latter half of the sixteenth century are the manuscripts
of Colocci, of the Manuzii, of the above-named Panvinius, and
the valuable codices, as well as the impressions with manuscript
marginal notes, bequeathed by will by Fulvius Orsini. Orsini
had himself compiled a catalogue of his beloved treasure, and
it is preserved in the Codex Vat. 7205 ; authors have recently
spoken of its value and called for its publication^ But neither
Orsini nor others then dreamed of publishing similar catalogues.
Nor is mention made of them in books descriptive of the new lo-
cation provided by Sixtus V. for the Apostolic Library, of the
splendid building erected for its reception, of its literary wealth,
and of the measures decreed to ensure its being cared for and in-
creased.

Already prior to Sixtus V., in the brief pontificate of the learn-
ed Marcellus II. (twenty-two days), and then in that of Paul IV.,
his immediate successor, 1555, the celebrated Vatican printing-
press had been annexed to the library. The popes, too, had insti-
tuted the office of proof-readers to ensure the accurate printing of
the ancient sacred texts and of the Fathers.** These proof-readers
watched with special care over the emendation of the manuscript
copies by the Vatican Greek copyists employed morning and

* See B. Gasparoni, Letters and Arts, appendix to t. ii. p. 119 et seq.

t Cod. Vat. 3946, which, through error of modern authors, is cited as containing the catalogue
of the Vatican Library compiled by order of Bessarion, a catalogue which never existed.

% Cod. Vat. 307-69.

See Greith, Spicil. Vat., p. 6.

\ Rinaldi, Ann., a. 1564, 53.

T| Beltrani, in the Archives of the Roman Society of Native History, 1878, p. 186 ; therein the
codex cited is erroneously numbered 7250. I have somewhere read that the Vatican Codex 6477
contains a catalogue by Fulvius Orsini, whilst it is in reality an index of prohibited books.

** Rocca, Bibl. Vat., p. 56 ; Polidori, Vita Marcelli II. , p. 125. Regarding the office of proof-
readers, see Marini, Arcl.iatri,\\. p. 305.

1 880.] CA TALOGUES OF MSS. IN THE V.4 TICAN LlBRAR Y. 5 I

evening in transcribing the ancient texts which were wanting to
the library, or in making new copies of those which were falling
to pieces from age. From the research after, and the special
study of, the Greek codices arose apparently the idea of their di-
vulgation by means of indexes and catalogues. The library of
the Senate of Augsburg, in the sixteenth century, was esteemed
rich in literary treasures, and an outline of a very concise cata-
logue of Greek codices was published anonymously in that city
in 1 575, and generally attributed to the celebrated Jerome Wolf ;*
later it was quadruplicated by David Hoeschel in 1595.1 These
are perhaps the first incunabula the history whereof I am delin-
eating in outline. Manuscript copies of the Vatican Greek cata-
logues were multiplied in the sixteenth century, and were pos-
sessed by the libraries of the Escurial,;); the Royal and the Colber-
tine of Paris, that of the Queen of Sweden,! the Slusiana in
Rome,^f and others. Father Anthony Possevin, in his Apparatus
saccr edition of Cologne (a. 1608) first collected and published a
series of catalogues of Greek codices of the principal libraries, in
truth somewhat imperfect ; still, that of the Vatican Library is
comprised in it, and was later republished by Spitzel.** Not long
after (1636) Kircher published the catalogue of the Coptic codices,
and in the second half of the same century (1675-93) Bartolocci
published that of the Hebrew codices.ff That was but little in
proportion to the enormous manuscript treasures of the Vatican
Library, more than redoubled by the Palatine, Urbino, and Alex-
andrine collections, and to the twenty volumes of catalogues and
of indexes compiled in the seventeenth century, as has been al-
ready narrated. But the times, the drift of study, and the in-
ducements to the entire publication of catalogues of codices of
the larger collections did not seem propitious. Towards the mid-
dle of the last-named century compilations were begun of the
catalogues of the minor libraries, which could more readily be
described in full. In Italy a notable example was given by Toma-
sini in the Bibliotlicca Patavina MSS., and later in the Bibliotheca
Veneta MSS., both published at Udine in 1639 and 1650.

* See Spitzelii, Sacra bibl. arcana retecta, p. i et seq.

t Hoeschelii, Catalogus codd. graec. in bibl. reip. Augusta Vindelicorum, a. 1595.
\ Mader, De bibl., second ed. p. 124.

Cod. Reg. 2812, Colb. Reg. 5135. See Montfaucon, Bibl. bibl., p. 4 et seq. 101 ; Blume,
St. Ital., Hi. p. 103.

1 Cod. Vat. Reg. 562, 1598, 1994.
JU Montfaucon, 1. c. p. 176
** Spitzelii, 1. c. p. 253 et seq.
H See Assemani, Bib!, apost. codd. MSS. catal., t. i. praef. c. i.

52 CATALOGUES OF MSS. IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY. [Oct.,

in.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century the Cesarian Libra-
ry of Vienna was possibly the first amongst the greater libraries to
have its full descriptive catalogue, compiled by Lambecius, who be-
gan to print it in 1665 ; it was continued by Nessel in 1690. In de-
fault of printed catalogues of the several libraries of codices an
attempt was made to provide general collections of compendiums
of the manuscript inventories. The leader of this move in bib-
liography was Sandero, who in 1641 and 1644 published his two
volumes of the Bibliotheca Belgica manuscripta. Bernard arrang-
ed in two large volumes the classic collection, Catologi librorum
MSS..Angli(Z ct Hibernice in unum collecti, Oxonias, 1697. Montfau-
con sought to do far more, and, comprehending in his vast mind
and untiring industry all known libraries, he conceived the plan of
the Bibliotheca bibliotJiccarum manuscripta that is, the compendium
or the excerpta of all the catalogues of codices of all libraries. This
work embraced naturally that of the Vatican Library ; and he was
conceded the free use and examination of all the volumes of cata-
logues compiled in the course of the seventeenth century. Mont-
faucon made copious extracts not only from the seven volumes
already existing of the Latin catalogue properly known as Vati-
canus, but also from the most ancient catalogues and from the
Greek .indexes. He published an old catalogue of the library
of the Queen of Sweden (Alessandrina), and that of the codices
of Petavius, which, from its series of antiquated numbers, impeded
and confused rather than furthered research, and was the cause of
errors. He paid no attention to the Palatine and Urbino collec-
tions.

But the Bibliotheca bibliotJiccarum, when published in the be-
ginning of the seventeenth century, could not suffice for the re-
quirements of the erudite, nor respond to the progress of the
bibliography of manuscripts. Amongst the most cultivated na-
tions preparations were begun to publish the several catalogues
of the best collections of codices of every language. The cata-
logue of the Vatican-Palatine Greek codices, by Sylburg, was
then published in Frankfort, 1702. Rome was not slow to join
in this. Joseph Simon Assemani, in 1719-1728, published the
three volumes of the Bibliotheca oricntalis ClemcntinG-Vaticana,
the result of the notable treasure of codices collected by himself
in the East and secured for the Vatican Library through the pro-
vident munificence of the learned pontiff, Clement XL, who also
presented to the library the Greek codices of the famous

iSSo.] CATALOGUES OF MSS. IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY. 53

Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II. Innocent XIII., successor to
Clement XL, in 1721 began preparations for printing an ample
catalogue of all the codices of every language. The work was
continued in 1736;* from 1756 to 1759, thanks to the encour-
agement of Benedict XIV., were compiled and published the first
three volumes of the Catalogus Bibliotheccz Apostoliccs Vaticance co-
dicum MSS. in trcs paries distributus ; in quarum prima orientalis, at~
tera grcsci, tertia latini, italici aliorumque europ&orum idiomatum co-
dices, ed. Steph. Evodius et Joseph Simon Assemani. This entire
gigantic catalogue was to fill twenty volumes, describing non modo
scriptorum noimna ac singular um voluminum argument a, sed ca quoque
qiuzpr<zc(Ztercs conspicua notatuque digna in codicibus occur runt. \ The
magnificent programme of the Assemani, sanctioned by the sol-
emn approbation of Benedict XIV., published in separate parts and
praised by the learned of every nation, \ was adapted to the taste of
the age and to the designs of contemporary authors of similar
works. But if some were happily enabled to complete the like
interminable catalogues of other notable libraries as, for exam-
ple, was the good fortune of Bandini in Florence yet, viewing the
immense mass of the Vatican codices, the undertaking and the
design of the Assemani were disproportionate to human strength,
nor could the longest life suffice to bring them to completion.
It came to pass, therefore, that the first ten folios of volume iv.
having been consumed in the unexpected fire of 1768, the Asse-
mani lost heart ; and that deplorable misfortune, the great age of
the compilers, the difficulty of finding other scholars who might
worthily succeed them in their task, and, finally, the political
troubles of the close of the last century and of the beginning of
this, interrupted the well-advanced publication of the Vatican
catalogues.

IV.

In the present century Mai, desiring to resume in some mea-
sure the great undertaking of the Assemani, published in the
large volumes of his Scriptorum veterum nova collectio the supple-
ments containing the codices of Oriental tongues. He issued in
a separate volume the catalogue of the Egyptian papyri of the
Vatican Library, Rome, 1825. Recent writers assert that Mai
published in 1833 the first volume of the Greek catalogue pre-
pared by the Assemani. In reality we neither possess the pre-

* See Leipz. gel. Zettung^ a. 1736, p. 401. f Assemani, 1. c. t. J. p. xv.

J See Acta erud. Lat. supplem.,\. viii. p. 2. See Bethmann in Pertz, Archiv., xii. p. 215.

54 CATALOGUES OF MSS. IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY. [Oct.,

paratory studies upon the Greek codices made by the Assemani,
nor did Mai publish any Greek catalogue whatever. The false
report above named proves that he had manifested some such in-
tention ; and in his time the learned Hellenist, Jerome Amati, re-
vised and completed the Greek catalogues and indexes of Leo
Allatius. But the great discoverer of so many inedited works
had not time to devote to the editing of Greek and Latin cata-
logues. He published in Rome, and almost wholly from the Va-
tican codices, his famous collection of ten enormous volumes
Scriptorum vctcrum, as many Classicorum Auctorum, and the like
number of the Spicilcgimn romamtm ; and when his untimely death
ended his active life he had already in press the volumes of the
Vatican Greek Bible and volume viii. of the Nova patrum biblio-
thcca. His papers, which are preserved in the Vatican Library,
contain plans, material, and notes for the completion of the last-
mentioned gigantic collection in some twelve or fourteen vol-
umes. He left entirely to those who were to come after him the
care of compiling and publishing catalogues.

Meanwhile the Vatican catalogues were specially studied by
foreigners, principally by Germans. Frederic Blume, who ex-
plored the libraries of Rome, 1821-22, published long notices of
the Vatican Library and of its catalogues ;* he was followed
by Greith, who pointed out the codices relating to ancient Ger-
man literature.f In 1854 Louis Bethmann examined, page by
page, all the volumes of the Vatican catalogues, and copied thence
the titles of all documents anywise relating to the history of
Germany.;}: D. Bede Dudik did the same with regard to the
history of Bohemia and of Moravia. Similar labors diffused
abroad the renowft of the Vatican catalogues and of their value,
and still further increased the universal desire for the speedy
publication of a complete edition of them.

We have already dwelt at length upon the labor undertaken
and brought to completion in later years to classify and index all
the still uriexamiried codices of the Vatican Library, thereby add-
ing to the ancient catalogues several new volumes of manuscript
inventories. No less care and attention were devoted to the
printed matter, which, by reason of its change ot location to the
Sala Borgia, the purchase of the library of the lamented Car-

* Blume, Her Italiciim, iii. pp. 13-114, iv. pp. 264-283 ; Bibl, librorum AISS. italica, p. 125
et seq.

t Greith, Spicilegium -I'aticanum : Beitrage zur nahern Kenntniss dcr Vatikanischen Bib-

iir dcutsche Poesie dcs Mittelaltcrs, F'rauenfelt, 1838.
\ Bethmann in Pertz, Archiv.^ 1. c. pp. 201-374.
Dudik, Itcr. Rom., Vienna, 1855, pp. 122-294.

I88O.] CA TALOGUES OF MSS. IN THE VA TICAN LlBRAR Y. 55

dinal Mai, and of other collections brought from Germany, re-
quired an almost entirely recompiled catalogue ; twelve volumes
had already been prepared for the press. Likewise the incunabula
of the Vatican Printing-Press and the precious editions of the Aldi
had been accurately catalogued in four large volumes. All was
ready for the resumption of the much-desired general publica-
tion of the Vatican catalogues of manuscripts, from which, as had
already been done for the history of Germany and of Austria, ex-
tracts and fragments were being culled relative to other histories
and subjects.* The wisdom of the present reigning Pontiff, from
the early days of his pontificate, animated the officials of the
Apostolic Library to renewed activity in literary labors. The
eminent librarian of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal Pitra, the
worthy successor of Cardinal Mai and of his glory as a discoverer
of priceless inedited texts, forthwith proposed to Leo XIII. an
undertaking honorable to his pontificate and suitable to the pre-
sent time ; the enterprise was at once decreed, and has been al-
ready inaugurated.

The present system of the most competent and approved
compilers of similar catalogues, as I have already stated, differs
widely from that of their predecessors of the last century, which
has been proved by experience to be interminable. In like man-
ner the commission now appointed to publish the Vatican cata-
logues have determined to abandon the system of the Assemani,
and to adopt the more simple method now become, as it were,
classic in such works and general descriptions of manuscripts.
The accurate catalogues already existing in the Vatican Library
will form the basis of the edition, whence every superfluity will
be retrenched and every want supplied ; all the codices will be
examined one by one, and confronted with the description given
of them by our predecessors. Such is, in substance, the pro-
gramme of the present undertaking, wholly in conformity with
the present state and requirements of bibliographic science rela-
tive to extensive collections of manuscripts.

* Vincent Forcella is now publishing a catalogue of Vatican codices concerning the history
of Rome, the first volume of which has been lately issued by the Brothers Bocca. The French
School of Rome, in its celebrated Bibliotklque, commenced a series of Notices snr dh>ers MSS.
ife la Bibl. Vaticane, two essays whereof have been already published. One is an interest-
ing; article by the learned Elie Berger upon the writings of Richard le Poitevin ; the other the
catalogue of the Greek codices of Pius II., compiled by the illustrious Abbe Duchesne. Of the
latter codices, however, the library possessed from the time of Clement XI. an accurate catalogue,
with alphabetical index, in the volume of that of the Greek codices of the library of the Queen
of Sweden ; Duchesne was in error when stating that no description of the manuscripts of Pius
II. existed in the Vatican Library.

56 A BOOKSELLER 's ADVERTISEMENT. [Oct.,

Besides its books the Vatican Library possesses rich cabinets
and various collections of ancient articles, of the middle ages as
well as specimens of modern art.

The delineation of the history of the Vatican catalogues has
resulted, as it were, in an outline of that of the Vatican Library
itself. But although many have written, still, as the illustrious
Baron von Reumont affirms, it is the general desire to possess a
complete and critical history of the library, enriched with docu-
ments connecting its vicissitudes with the literary annals of the
Eternal City.* The writer has for long years busied himself with
collecting the material for this interesting work, more particular-
ly relating to the first centuries, to the origin and the contents of
the scrinia and of the libraries of the Apostolic See prior to their
deplorable dispersion during the middle ages. The publication
of the Vatican catalogues will furnish an excellent opportunity to
make known the result, be it what it may, of said studies. One
of the grandest and most glorious epochs, in the history of the
Vatican Library will be that of the pontificate of Leo XIII., who,
inheriting the generous and wise love of liberal studies of Nicho-
las V., of Sixtus IV., of Clement XL, and of Benedict XIV., free-
ly opens to all the use of the literary treasures of the Apostolic
See, collected through the munificence of his illustrious predeces-
sors. And if Nicholas V. and Sixtus IV. were the founders of
the public Vatican Library, Leo XIII. will nobly crown their
work with the publication in extenso of its inestimable cata-
logues.

A BOOKSELLER'S ADVERTISEMENT.

THERE is nothing so important to- humanity as to know its desti-
nation.
Pamphlet containing full particulars for sale at Ten Cents.

Schiller.

* Archivio Storico'Italiano^ new series, t. viii. p. 142.

i88o.] A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. 57

A DISH OF DIPLOMACY*

THE relations of the United States with foreign powers are
constantly increasing in intimacy and importance. Indeed, it is
safe to say that there exists no state to-day whose foreign re-
lations are so far-reaching and general. Its only possible rival in
this respect is the great commercial power of Great Britain ; but
Great Britain's interests are largely centred on its own colonies.
The republic of the United States, now a leading power in the
world, has this advantage over all other powers : its foreign rela-
tions are eminently peaceful and progressive. It stands severely
aloof from all their internal complications, and its geographical
position sustains it in this. It is a great, an inexhaustible store-
house for the necessaries of life ; it has in abundance the means
of securing life's luxuries ; its soil is still, to a vast extent, a virgin
field for the exercise and reward of human energy and activity.
It would be impossible to depict in a brief compass the natural
and commercial advantages that this fresh, unexhausted continent
presents to the world over all other living nations. On the other
hand, its political system and form of government are such as to
favor the highest activity and energy of the individual. He is a
free unit in a free state. The demands of the government on his
services are only such as are needed to carry on the necessary
business of government.

This is the new power that is now entering so freely into the
world's life ; and it needs the bare statement only of the facts enume-
rated to show the vast influence it is destined to wield over human
affairs, more especially in their present troubled and complicated
condition. Europe may be said to have spent the present and
the last century in dynastic or international strife, and it is as far
from even the hope of permanent peace as ever. The peoples,
weary of the never-ending struggle, seek issue from their trou-
bles in revolt. Industry droops and commerce dwindles, but
wars and rumors of war and ever-increasing burdens go on ;
while over across the ocean is a great continent inviting them to
its shores, to a peaceful soil and a land literally flowing with mjlk
and honey.

With foreign relations of this kind, ever widening and deepen-

* Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, transmitted to Congress,
with tJie Annual Message of the President, December i, 1879. Washington : Government
Printing-Office. 1879.

58 A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. [Oct.,

ing, it is of vast importance that this nation of forty millions of
people be rightly represented among foreign states. The foreign
service of the United States is not without illustrious names
men who were at once an honor to the country that sent them
abroad and honored for their own worth by the countries to
which they were sent. It is to be hoped that as the republic
advances in wealth, population, and power the race of men fit to
represent it among foreign peoples is not dying out. Judging,
however, by the diplomatic correspondence of several years past,
one must arrive at the conclusion that either the men capable of
fitly representing this great republic and people abroad have
died out, or they are kept in severe obscurity at home. So much
is this the case that the question is frequently mooted in the
public press, and by men competent to judge on the matter : What
is the use of our diplomatic service ? Under present aspects it
seems, on the whole, devised to reward local activity in the po-
litical campaigns at home. The consequence is that a set of men
are sent abroad as foreign ministers with about as clear an idea of
the important duties of their office as they would have in taking
up a class in Sanskrit. Most of them can hardly be dignified
with the poor title of mediocrity. It is one thing to make an ef-
fective stump-speech in one's district, or to be a successful sugar
or leather merchant. It is another thing to take such a man off
his stump, or away from his leather and his sugar, and send him
to London or Berlin, to Paris or Vienna, to protect, among men
trained in diplomacy by severe service and long and close con-
tact with public affairs and public men, the interests of this
country, as well as to derive advantage to it from any opportuni-
ties that may occur or that a statesman can sometimes create.

The truth is, we have no diplomatic service worthy of the
name. Men nowadays are sent abroad pretty much haphazard.
Each in turn is more or less of an experiment. Americans have
not yet quite got over the idea that they are competent to under-
take at the shortest possible notice any position calling forth hu-
man skill, wit, and activity, no matter how incongruous for such
a position a man's antecedents and previous surroundings may*
have been. It is so common here at home for one to have run the
gamut of occupations and attained to eminent success at the end
that we are apt to carry confidence in ourselves too far, and ar-
rive at that pitch of ignorance where a man does not see that he
is out of order and out of place. At all events there can be no
question about the main fact : that if this country is to be repre-
sented at all among foreign peoples and powers, it is not too

i88o.] A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. 59

much to demand that it be represented by gentlemen, if not of
diplomatic training, at least of cultivated intelligence, of some
knowledge of the world and of society, and with very clear ideas
as to their duties and the exact object of their mission. It would
be fitting, also, that they had a fair knowledge of the people and of
the people's language to whom they are sent of their history,
customs, mode of thought and life. This would remove the pos-
sible harshness of first intercourse, prevent the annoying mistakes
that sometimes occur through ignorance or misapprehension, and
open doors that would otherwise remain coldly sealed. But that
is a question, and surely a serious one, for the men in charge of
state affairs to consider. If anything could quicken a Secretary
of State to the necessity of overhauling the foreign office it would
certainly be a perusal of the last published volume of correspon-
dence from our diplomatic agents abroad.

One of our ministers has recently returned from Belgium and
freely unfolded himself to a reporter of the New York Tribune
(July 24). The interview, though brief, is interesting, and charac-
teristic of the style of man too often entrusted with the charge of
important public affairs :

" Colonel William C. Goodloe, of Kentucky, late United States Minister
Resident at Brussels, has returned home in time to take an active part in
the political campaign. He resigned his post in Belgium because he did
not wish to remain longer away from his own country. In conversation
with a Tribuns reporter at the National Republican Committee rooms the
other day he said he thought two years long enough for an American to
spend in Europe, unless he is content to drop out of the current of affairs at
home. Colonel Goodloe found life at Brussels very agreeable, so far as its
social features are concerned. The diplomatic corps is made up of able
men. Belgium is considered by all the European governments as an ex-
cellent point for observing what is going forward in the whole field of di-
plomacy, and they send first-class men to look after their interests there.
Colonel Goodloe speaks in high terms of the intelligence of King Leopold,
his interest in scientific matters and in the welfare of the people. The
government, he says, is as free and liberal as that of England, the ministry
being responsible to the legislative body, and the king being bound by the
constitution to select ministers representing the views of the majority.
The political questions which divide the people chiefly concern the schools,
which one party wishes to separate from the influence of the clergy a mea-
sure strongly resisted by the other. Colonel Goodloe's experience with re-
gard to the expense of living in Europe was the same as that of most of our
diplomatic representatives. He found it necessary to spend about twice
the amount of his salary in order to live in a style befitting his position,
and to keep on a footing of social equality with his colleagues representing
other countries, and to return the hospitalities they extended him."

Thus it will be seen that because this diplomatist " thought

60 A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. [Oct.,

two years long enough for an American to spend in Europe, un-
less he is content to drop out of the current of affairs at home,"
the ministry at Brussels is left vacant until a successor worthy of
stepping into the shoes of Mr. Goodloe can be found. This will
be an extremely difficult task, as it is impossible to measure fully
the importance of Mr. Goodloe's communications to the Secre-
tary of State. What could be more deeply interesting than his
opening letter, elated January 2, 1879?

" The customary New Year's receptions," he informs Secretary Evarts,
" were yesterday in this city almost universally observed, the central point
of interest being, of course, the one held at the palace. The ladies of the
diplomatic corps were received by the queen on the evening of the 3ist.
At noon of the ist the chiefs of missions, with their secretaries and at-
taches, were received by their majesties the king arid queen. Afterwards,
in the order named, were received the senators and representatives, the
judiciary, the officers of the army, the garde-civique, and citizens for whom
permission had been previously obtained.

" All countries having ministers at this court were represented, save that
of England, whose officers remained away on account of the recent death
of the Princess Alice. An order temporarily suspending the court mourn-
ing for this occasion was considered sufficient absolution by the rest of
us."

Now, it is impossible to exaggerate the dignity and worth to
the state of an epistle of this kind, which is destined to go down
in the country's archives from generation unto generation. This
eminent member of " the rest of us " goes on to observe :

" As is their majesties' custom, they talked briefly with each of the
ministers, beginning with that one longest accredited to this court, and
closing with the latest arrival. Fortunately, however, the proper estimate
of a country's worth and greatness depends neither upon the rank nor
length of service of its representative."

After, this keen thrust at " the rest of them " Mr. Goodloe
graciously remembers that there was present a representative of
the United States, and informs Mr. Evarts that " the king to me
was as cordial and gracious in his manner and language as pos-
sible, and it gives me great pleasure to make known to you his
kindly expressions." These he gives and closes his letter.

In the course of his second letter, dated March 10, Mr. Good-
loe throws off a little of his diplomatic reserve and hauteur, and
becomes extremely confidential and proportionately entertaining.

" In the course of a short conversation with the king," writes Mr. Good-
loe, "while in attendance at a ball held at the palace recently, in reply to
an incidental remark of mine that the United States seemed now to be en-
tering upon a more prosperous state than it had enjoyed prior to specie re-

1 8 So.] A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. 61

sumption, his majesty said : ' I am very glad to hear it ; you know well my
feelings towards your country ; I wish it the greatest prosperity and ad-
vancement, and strongly hope that commerce may increase between the
two countries.'

" It is not uncharitable to conclude that while his majesty may not be
adverse to Belgians purchasing goods from the United States, yet his great
desire is that the balance of trade should be in favor of his own country.
As a similar feeling is doubtless likewise entertained by the United States,
it is essential that a healthy impetus should be given to commerce first, and
then the country enjoy the greater benefit that may be the better entitled
to it."

The last sentence is diplomatically obscure in its meaning ;
but doubtless it is intended to mean something. Mr. Goodloe
proceeds to make some observations on the prospects of Ameri-
can trade with Belgium, which are in the main judicious enough,
though given in a free and easy style that is quite exhilarating,
though not exactly after the manner of either Talleyrand or Lord
Chesterfield. " A man entering a store here," he writes, " and of-
fering to sell goods by sample, would be at once pronounced an
escaped lunatic ; but when orders are once given to a manufac-
turer they are continued from year to year and not changed save
for very good cause." He insists that a travelling agent's " know-
ledge of the language should be thorough, so that he may have
his subject always at his tongue's end. But, above all, merchants
should be cautioned against sending a ' smart,' * sharp ' fellow on
their business."

Austro-Hungary being one of the leading European powers,
it is only natural to expect that the republic should be well re-
presented there. Mr. John A. Kasson is the American minister
at the court of Vienna. He is not at all the same kind of man as
Mr. William Cassius Goodloe. Mr. Kasson has a weakness for
skimming the turbid surface of European politics, and giving Mr.
Evarts the benefit of observations that are rarely profound and
not always correct. As a consequence his communications are
marked by voluminous asterisks, significant of great gaps. It is
amusing to note how Mr. Evarts strives to keep Mr. Kasson to
the practical business of the legation, which has little to do with
European politics properly so called, but rather with matters af-
fecting trade and commerce, and the mutual relations of the two
countries in this respect. But Mr. Kasson will not be held, and
flies off into the vague field of speculation at the faintest oppor-
tunity.

By the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin Austria was charged
with the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She marched

62 A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. [Oct.,

her troops into those districts. A party in Hungary was averse
to the expedition and created some difficulty at the outset.

"In Hungary," writes Mr. Kasson (October 27, 1878), "the finance
minister, an able and popular man, refused to undertake the work of pro-
viding for the additional expenses resulting from the occupation of Bosnia,
and resigned."

It is surely scarcely a mark either of ability or patriotism to
thwart one's government at a delicate crisis in affairs, and by way
of preventing its fulfilling a solemn engagement even by force of
arms. Mr. Kasson, if he thought it necessary, might easily have
stated the fact of the resignation without extending his benedic-
tion to the obstructive minister. Committal expressions of this
kind are frequent in his communications. It is a minister's busi-
ness to state facts, not to take sides in matters where his govern-
ment has no immediate concern. Treating of the commercial
relations between Austria and Italy (Relations, p. 41), he writes :

" So sharp was the contest with Italy (toward whom Austria still appears
to retain some feeling of offended superiority)," etc.

What in the world has Mr. Kasson to do with Austria's " of-
fended superiority ?" He confesses to having been caught nap-
ping by the French ambassador, M. Teisserenc de Bort, who
paid him a long visit and pumped Mr. Kasson to his heart's
content respecting the prospects of bringing about a commercial
treaty between the United States and France " by which mutual
special tariff concessions should be secured."

"Supposing at the time," says Mr. Kasson, "that it was a chance topic
of conversation, I spoke fully of what I believed to be the sentiments of
my countrymen, and of my personal opinions on the subject."

He afterwards discovered that the French ambassador's visit
was by no means an idle one, but intended to elicit just the infor-
mation that Mr. Kasson cheerfully volunteered. It is quite possi-
ble that no great harm was done one way or the other. But Mr.
Kasson's tendency is towards gratuitous effusiveness, and occa-
sions might easily arise that would convert this amiable quality
into a serious danger to the interests that Mr. Kasson is sent es-
pecially to guard. He transmits valuable information when he
suppresses himself and his love for advising the home govern-
ment, and consents to sink his views in order to deal with plain
matters of fact.

Of our ministers at London and Paris little is to be said, for
they, fortunately perhaps, afford small opportunity for notice.
The chief event in French politics on which Mr. Noyes was

iSSo.] A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. 63

called to comment was the fall of President MacMahon an event
at the time of international import. Mr. Noyes' communication
on the subject occupies about a little more than a page of the
published correspondence. Mr. Noyes at least does not sin on
the side of superfluousness, as do many of his colleagues. They
sometimes convert very small mole-hills into very large moun-
tains ; Mr. Noyes only sees a mole-hill in a mountain. At the
.same time the facts he does state he states dispassionately. Mr.
Welsh's letters from London are chiefly confined to decisions in
the courts, circular letters, and newspaper extracts. Mr. Welsh
returned home, and Mr. Hoppin took charge of the legation
until the appointment of a minister to fill Mr. Welsh's place. Mr.
Hoppin continued Mr. Welsh's practice of transmitting to Secre-
tary Evarts copious clippings from various English newspapers
on every kind of subject from the question of fisheries to Lord
Beaconsfield's speech at Aylesbury, Lord Derby's and Mr. Cross's
at Southport, and Lord Salisbury's at Manchester in defence of
the Beaconsfield administration.

There are only two letters from Mr. Bayard Taylor, one giv-
ing the law against the Social-Democrats, the other relating to
the German Fisheries Society. Mr. Taylor, who died at his post,
was succeeded by Mr. Andrew D. White, President of Cornell
University. A comment on Mr. White's despatches is reserved
for another portion of this article.

There is one other important mission calling for attention
here, and that is the legation at Brazil, where Mr. Henry Hil-
liard is minister. Mr. Hilliard is, not to put too fine a point on
it, a little gushing, and rather more effusive, with less substance
and point, than Mr. Kasson. Mr. Hilliard seems to labor under
the impression that he was sent abroad not so much to care for
and advance strictly American interests as what are called " Ame-
rican ideas." He would, if he could, convert Brazil to republi-
canism, though it is hard for any sane man to admire the repub-
licanism that exists in the South American states. As a class
these states are very aptly described in Mr. Evarts' words as
" communities where the conspirators of to-day may be the gov-
ernment to-morrow " (Relations, p. 582). But Mr. Hilliard seems
to regard republicanism as the panacea to cure every possible
human evil a pleasing theory, doubtless, but one unfortunately
that history has not thus far sustained.

Charged with this sublime sense of his " mission," of course
Mr. Hilliard regards himself as occupying an infinitely higher
plane than the people and statesmen to whom he is accredited.

64 A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. [Oct.,

He never hesitates and never loses confidence in himself, while
he occasionally condescends to throw in a good word for the
home government. His first letter treats of a convention con-
cluded between the United States and Brazil for " the protection
of trade-marks for articles of American manufacture and com-
merce." " It will ever," he writes encouragingly to Mr. Evarts,
" be a source of great satisfaction to you and to myself to feel
that we have been able to accomplish a convention that must
exert the most beneficent influence upon the manufacturing and
commercial interests of our country." This " most beneficent
influence " still remains to be proved ; the mere settling of a con-
vention does not necessarily establish it. But imagine a minister
writing to the Secretary of State in this style, and the secretary,
with humble sarcasm, allowing it to go into the public records :

" I know how earnestly you desire te conduct the great department
over which you preside so as to promote, in the highest degree, the inte-
rests of our country, and to give to the United States the most commanding
advantages in our foreign relations.

" I shall be at all times ready to co-operate with you in the accomplish-
ment of that object so long as I have the honor to represent our country
at this important post."

What in the name of common sense does Mr. Hilliard imagine
he was sent abroad for but to " co-operate " with the home gov-
ernment ? He adds an amount of gush about the triumph of the
administration abroad and at home which is quite gratuitous on
his part, and for which he was certainly not asked. After this
one is prepared to find Mr. Hilliard committing himself to state-
ments that are likely to be received with painful surprise in
Brazil.

In his second letter he volunteers the declaration that

" The leading statesmen of the Liberal party . . . wish to deliver Bra-
zil from the influence of European ideas. . . . They regard the institu-
tions of the United States as a splendid illustration of the principles of free
government. . . . The wisest men of the Liberal party do not desire at this
time to effect any change in the form of their government, but they do
earnestly desire to free themselves from the dominion of European ideas."

There is much more of this style of writing. Of course, if Mr.
Hilliard was sent to Brazil for the express purpose of indulging
in free speculations on the possible conversion of that empire
into a republic after the model of the United States, all this is
eminently right and proper and cannot fail to be extremely
gratifying to the Emperor of Brazil, who is accepted as a friend
to this country.

iS8o.] A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. 65

" They (the Liberal leaders)," he adds, " favor what I name an American
policy. From the day of my arrival here I have endeavored to stimulate
the sentiment. In my address to the emperor I expressed my sentiments
in strong language, and I have steadily pressed these views upon the public
men of the empire from time to time."

Here follow some eloquent asterisks. But it is fair to submit,
if Mr. Hilliard is permitted to do this in Brazil, openly to ad-
vance views in direct opposition to the institutions of the country
to which he is sent on a friendly mission, why should not our
ministers at the European courts, and with much more osten-
sible reason, follow his example and advise the monarchs and
statesmen of those countries as to the true method of governing
their peoples ? It is easy to imagine what the response would be
from Germany, or England, or Austria, or Russia. But the Em-
peror of Brazil is a good-natured man, who has seen something of
the United States, and perhaps can appreciate the kind of charac-
ter of which Mr. Hilliard is a decidedly pronounced and con-
fident type.

In another letter Mr. Hilliard says (Relations, p. 137):

" There is in the empire a powerful party properly named Liberal. There-
are in its ranks men who decidedly approve a republican form of govern:-
ment." And yet he adds : " The best interests of this vast country are as-
sociated with the reign of the emperor. So long as he lives the empire is
stable. This is a free government, essentially so, with an imperial form*,
but still the emperor might say in a high sense, ' I am the state.' "

It is hard to follow Mr. Hilliard in his self-contradictions. A
Brazilian might accuse him of intriguing against the state;, only
that the intrigue is so flimsy and transparent. Possibly the advice
would be lost on such a man that he is not sent to Brazil to regu-
late the affairs of that empire, or to assist in changing its form of
government, which even he pronounces to be essentially free, but
simply to look after the interests of the United States so far as
Brazil touches them, and to inform this government dispassion-
ately on important matters of fact of general interest. The first
duty of an ambassador is to report accurately to his government ;
a man who is an avowed partisan can never fulfil this duty.

The representatives of this country in England, France, Aus-
tria, Germany, Belgium, and Brazil have now been fairly con-
sidered. The reader is in a position to judge by their own let-
ters of the men sent abroad from the republic. The selection
from the voluminous correspondence is sufficiently varied to
justify a general judgment regarding our diplomatists. The
average is extremely commonplace, though a harsher term might
VOL. xxxii. 5

66 A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. [Oct.,

in some instances be used. It is quite unnecessary to go the
round of the world. Others are even worse than those quoted,
both in the matters touched upon and in the style of their com-
munications. Some of the diplomatic gentlemen seemed to re-
gard it as their chief duty to give minute reports to the govern-
ment of the movements of General and Mrs. Grant. Even Mr.
Lowell, the minister at Madrid, and now the minister at London,
devotes the whole of his first letter to this subject. He is as
careful in his description of General Grant's movements as a
newspaper reporter. The general was, by Mr. Lowell's account,
received with every possible honor and distinction by the king.

" Every possible attention and courtesy," he writes, " were shown to
General Grant during his stay by the Spanish government, and the Minis-
ter for Foreign Affairs took occasion to tell me that these civilities were in-
tended not only to show respect and good will to General Grant, but to the
government and people of the United States." He adds : " General Grant
several times expressed to me very warmly his pleasure and satisfaction at
the manner in which he had been received and treated."

That being so, it is deeply to be regretted that General Grant
did not make a more fitting return for the exceptional courtesy
of the Spanish king and government. On the eve of General
Grant's departure for Portugal an attempt was made on the
young king's life. Congratulations on his happy escape poured
in from every court. This honored American guest departed
without a word or sign, without even the conventional civility
of a formal leave-taking. Mr. Lowell relates the circumstance of
his departure in lines that, meant to be kind, are extremely pain-
ful:

"General Grant left Madrid on Friday, the 25th (October, 1878), at nine
o'clock P.M., for Lisbon, the Portuguese minister here having already tele-
graphed his coming, in order that he should be properly received. In con-
sequence of this latter circumstance it was impossible for him to delay his
departure in order to take formal leave of the king, as he otherwise would
gladly have done. I made the proper explanations and apologies to his
majesty at our reception next day."

Up to nine P.M. makes a fairly long day in which to find time
to say good-by. A telegraphic despatch, under exceptional cir-
cumstances, can surely be countermanded. Mr. Lowell apolo-
gizing for the behavior of General Grant to General Grant's
distinguished and gracious host is not a pleasing picture for an
American to contemplate. It is easy to imagine the cold cour-
tesy with which the Spanish gentleman, who happened to be a
king, received the painful apology. Was it similar conduct that

i88o.] A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. 67

provoked the incident recorded by Mr. Bingham, the United
States Minister to Japan, on General Grant's arrival at Yoko-
hama :

"The English men-of-war in port," writes Mr. Bingham, " made no re-
cognition of the general, owing to the order issued by her Britannic ma-
jesty's Colonial Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, to the effect that her
majesty's war-vessels should not salute General Grant, as he was but a pri-
vate gentleman."

British Colonial Secretaries do not issue orders of that kind
to their navy without special motive and without the consent of
their Cabinet.

There is one matter yet to refer to, and that is the correspon-
dence so far as it trenches on Catholic affairs. This was a constant
and just cause of complaint which has more than once been ad-
vanced in this magazine. These remonstrances seem to have
taken effect, for the present volume is singularly free from the cus-
tomary faults in this direction. Even Mr. Foster, the inveterate
enemy of Catholics in Mexico, has at last been prevailed upon to
restrain his religious bias, not to say bigotry, and attend strictly
to the regular and important business of the legation. Mr. Marsh,
who used to rail at the Pope from Italy, still exists, but the old
fire seems gone. There is a tone here and there of the anti-Ca-
tholic spirit in which he used to glory, but it is half-hearted and
dull. For the rest his despatches are of the average order. Mr.
Goodloe, as might be expected, blunders sadly over the Catholic
question in Belgium and misstates facts with the cheerful igno-
rance for which this representative of the American people has a
special talent. One hardly expected to find a similar bent in Mr.
Andrew D. White, who was summoned from Cornell to take the
place shadowed by the death of Mr. Bayard Taylor. Previous
to his departure for the German mission Mr. White was treated
to any number of dinners in and around New York. All sorts of
pleasant things were predicted of his appointment, and he re-
sponded in kind ; and yet it must be confessed that Mr. White's let-
ters fall under the dead average. Well, where Mr. Lowell fails
it is hardly to be expected that Mr. White would shine. He fol-
lows the London practice of sending voluminous reports of de-
bates in the Reichstag and such like, which might be easily gath-
ered from newspapers, and when he does venture on anything
like an original letter he blunders sadly. He gives an account of
the session of the Reichstag which was closed on July 12 "by a
formal decree of the emperor," as Mr. White announces with un-
necessary care. This long letter is broken up by ominous aster-

68 A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. [Oct.,

isks, which sufficiently gauge the value to the state of Mr. White's
communication. He mistakes the whole drift of events as regards
the resignation of Dr. Falk and the effect of that resignation. Se-
cular journals on this side of the \vater were more alive to the situ-
ation than Mr. White at Berlin. He writes of the report that " the
German government intend to give back to the Roman Catholic
Church what the Kultur-kampf of the last seven years wrested
from it " as being " probably without foundation/' " The German
government," says Mr. White, " can hardly have any real inten-
tion of re-establishing the supremacy of the Roman Church in
matters of education." But the Roman Catholic Church neither
had nor claimed such "supremacy." It simply claimed the free-
dom of teaching that Cornell enjoys in this country, and of which
Cornell's president, instead of being the avowed foe, might have
been expected to be the ardent friend. " Dr. Falk's resignation,"
he says, " has been generally lamented." That was a doubtful as-
sertion, especially in face of the fact stated by Mr. White that his
educational measure of March, 1872, " has been a continual thorn
in the flesh to many Lutherans, to the Evangelicals, and especial-
ly to the Roman Catholics." Dr. Falk's enforced resignation
may have been lamented by men who upheld Dr. Falk's ideas,
but the lament was certainly not general, as Mr. Evarts was
doubtless aware, or has at least become convinced by this time,
as he has of the utter fallacy of Mr. White's unnecessary and un-
wise predictions. It is ill to predict on the wrong side. Dr.
Falk, proceeds Mr. White, with a strange perverseness for mistak-
ing facts, " has initiated into Germany the principle in the relations
between church and state which prevails in the United States."
This statement is altogether wrong. Dr. Falk initiated into Ger-
many, possibly in a more rigorous form, the essentially vicious
principle of the Code Napoleon respecting education, which is no-
thing less than the complete subjection to and absorption of edu-
cation by the state. The president of Cornell is strangely igno-
rant to mistake that for the principle in the relations between
church and state that prevails in this country. In this country
the church is completely free of state control. Under Dr. Falk's
system it was completely subjected to and ground down by the
state ; hence Prince Bismarck himself has been compelled to re-
voke it by reason of its evil working. It is to. be regretted that
our minister, who is undeniably an intelligent and well-meaning
gentleman, having the good of all classes of persons at heart,
should show himself so mistaken regarding important public
questions. The Prussian government, which is certainly not

i88o.] A DISH OF DIPLOMACY. 69

favorable to Catholics, has been compelled, of its own act, to over-
turn the Falk legislation which Mr. White so strenuously de-
fends in contradiction to every sentiment of the American people-
He falls into the too common error that what is ostensibly against
Catholics is in favor of all non-Catholics. He, in common with
thousands of excellent and otherwise intelligent men, loses sight oi
principles in the mist of preconceived prejudice.

There are a few other anti-Catholic communications, notably
some from Mr. Hilliard, that might be touched upon, but they
are so flimsy as not to be worthy of serious consideration. The
main purpose of this article has been to set forth the intellectual
poverty and absolute unfitness to represent this great people of
the men whom the government sends abroad. Their letters, as a
rule, are not nearly so full, so interesting, so well written, or so at-
tentive to questions of large public interests as are many letters
that appear in the daily newspapers. And yet these men are
supposed to have close access to the governments to which they
are sent, to have to a certain extent the ear of the state with
which they are necessarily in constant communication, and to
meet public men at every turn. The fault is plainly not with the
mission but with the men. They are simply incompetent. A
certain official training shows itself at once in the clear, crisp, in-
telligent letters of Mr. Hoffmann at St. Petersburg and Mr. Moran
at Lisbon. These form refreshing oases in the dreary desert of
dull verbiage that fills the volume. American interests advance
of their own virtue, and by reason of increased and easy inter-
communication. The country is worth something to other
countries, therefore it makes its way. The official representa-
tives of the country would seem better calculated to retard than
advance its progress.

70 OBERON AND TITANIA. [Oct.

OBERON AND TITANIA.

A FAIRY TALE FROM SHAKSPERE.

A SUMMER night. The pale moonlight

Sleeps on the throbbing sea ;
The drooping flowers within their bowers

Are sleeping silently.

The birds upon the forest boughs
With folded wings are sleeping,

And the bird of night, with noiseless flight,
In mystic rings is sweeping.

Beneath the leaf, the ivy-leaf,

Crouches the dragon-fly ;
And the beetle bold, in his armor of gold,

Is booming drowsily.

The landrail shy, night's sentinel,

From his sequestered lair
In meadow deep or grassy dell

Sends forth his watchword clear.

The lovesick maiden's closing lid

Enfolds the half-shed tear ;
On faithful breast sinketh to rest

The weary laborer.

" Come hither, hither, my goblin page,"

Says Oberon, fairy king ;
" There's work to be done of frolic and fun

Will make the greenwood ring.

" Away, away, on thy pinions gay,

To the brink of yon dancing rill :
Titania, my queen, is there, I ween,
Asleep in a daffodil.

i88o.] OBERON AND TITANIA. 71

" With magic juice of virtue rare

Her heavy lids bedew,
And let some monster form be there
To meet her waking view.

" Whate'er it be she first shall see

She needs must love and follow
(Beguiled her heart by elfin art)
O'er hill and ferny hollow."

. Now Puck he laughs, that page so sly,

He claps his filmy wings :
" Yes, master, yes " ; then up on high

All radiantly he springs.

Away with goblin glee he hies
Like a fire-fly through the shade,

Till below a rustic he espies
In drunken slumber laid.

Around the clown a fairy mound

With magic art he rears,
And behold the hapless rustic crowned

With an ass's head and ears.

Blfishly laughs the dainty sprite,

The hideous form beholding,
And through the spangled depths of night

Darts off, his burden folding.

He lays him down, that monster clown,

Before the sleeping fairy ;
Her lids, with magic herbs bestrewn,

Then fans with pinions airy.

Now poised aloft, a song he sings,
Which unseen spirits waft her,

Balancing his perfumed wings
With a low, tremulous laughter.

72 OBERON AND TITANIA. [Oct.,

Morning appears ; each flower uprears

Its sleep-o'erladen head,
And opes to heaven an eye all tears

Like liquid opals shed.

The queen beholds with wondering eye

The form before her lying,
And looks again, imploringly,

With low and amorous sighing.

Upon her knees in fond delight

His shaggy lips she kisses,
Anon with tapering fingers white

His long, rough ears caresses.

" Awake, my love," she cries, " awake !

Nor scorn Titania praying ;
Awaken for thy true love's sake."
The monster answers, -braying.

" O gentle music, notes divine ! "

Th' enchanted queen replies ;
" Here, here thy gracious head recline,

Here breathe fresh melodies."

Unearthly voices shout aloud ;

Shrill peals of laughter ring ;
And from a shroud of fleecy cloud

Darts Oberon, fairy king.

He breathes upon her, soft and warm,

Low, fairy music sings,
Then folds her frail and shrinking form

Within his gossamer wings.

Away the mists of error speed ;

She loathes that form abhorred,
And sinks her spell-bewildered head

On the bosom of her lord.

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 73

GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

VII.

THE principal arguments adduced in proof of the theory of a
human origin of the episcopal polity of the Catholic Church are
taken from the indeterminate use of the names of bishop and
presbyter in the writings of the apostles and from the comments
of St. Jerome on this apostolic usage of terms.

In the Epistle to Titus, St. Paul, after reminding him that he
had left him in Crete to complete and carry into effect the neces-
sary dispositions for the more perfect organization of the church in
that island, and particularly that he might appoint and institute
presbyters in the cities where Christian converts existed, proceeds
immediately to describe the qualifications of a bishop. In his
Commentary on this Epistle (at ch. i. v. 5) St. Jerome remarks as
follows :

" Therefore, a presbyter is the same as a bishop is, and before that by the
instigation of the devil emulations in respect to religion arose, and people
began to say : I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, the churches
were governed by the common counsel of the presbyters. But, after that
each one was accustomed to regard those whom he had baptized as his own
disciples and not of Christ, it was decreed in the whole world that one
chosen from the presbyters should be placed over the others, to whom the
whole care of the church should belong, and the seeds of schisms be thus
taken away. Some one may think that this is our opinion, not found in the
Scriptures, that bishop and presbyter are one, one being a designation of
age, the other of office, but let him read over the words of the Apostle ad-
dressing the Philippians, where he says : Paul and Timothy, servants of
Jesus Christ, to all the saints who are at Philippi, with the bishops and
deacons. Philippi is a city of Macedonia, and certainly there could not be
several of those who in common parlance are bishops in one city. But be-
cause, at that time, they were accustomed to call the same persons bishops
whom they also called presbyters, therefore he speaks of bishops without a
distinction, as if he had spoken of presbyters."

After referring to the address of St. Paul to the Ephesian
Presbyters at Miletus, and his admonition to the Hebrews to
obey their prelates, using the plural, St. Jerome proceeds :

" These things are brought forward in order to show that with the an-
cients the same persons were presbyters who were also bishops, but that
gradually in order that the plants of dissension might be uprooted, the
entire administration (sollicitudinem) was transferred to one. Therefore, as
presbyters may know that by the custom of the church they are subject to
the one who has been placed over them ; so also bishops may understand
that they are greater than presbyters more by custom than by the veritable

74 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Oct.,

ordinance of the Lord, and that they ought to rule the church in common
with them, imitating Moses, who, although he had the power to rule the
people of Israel alone, chose seventy in conjunction with whom he judged
the people."

There are a few similar passages in other writings of St.
Jerome, but everything which can be adduced to show that in his
opinion the superiority of bishops over presbyters was not of
divine but human institution, is sufficiently expressed in the quo-
tation we have given. There are also several passages scattered
through his works, in which he speaks of the episcopate and of
the priesthood and ministry in a more general way, not in refer-
ence to the origin and nature of that pre-eminence which belonged
in his time to bishops in the government of their clergy and peo-
ple. These are mostly incidental remarks, obiter dicta, since he
never undertook to explain systematically and fully either the
Catholic doctrine or his own opinions in regard, to the hierarchi-
cal constitution of the church and the nature of its different
orders. All of them, taken together, would not fill more than a
few of our pages. It is well known to scholars, that the style of
the great Doctor is somewhat rough and off-hand, and that all his
expressions cannot be interpreted correctly by applying the rules
of dialectical and exegetical criticism with precision. In the pas-
sage we have quoted and its cognate passages, a precise and ac-
curate explanation of his complete and exact meaning is diffi-
cult, and the most learned commentators upon them, ancient and
modern, are not altogether agreed among themselves. The main
point, however, is to ascertain whether St. Jerome held and pro-
posed the opinion ascribed to him by Calvin, Blondell, and many
other Protestants, that the episcopal polity in the church, and the
distinction of order between bishops and presbyters is totally a
human institution, not at all founded in divine right, but intro-
duced by a purely ecclesiastical law. All Catholic and many
Protestant authors are agreed that this is far from being true.
It can be proved, with a little trouble, by a careful consideration
of what St. Jerome has written, making due allowance for his
peculiarity of style, collating his different statements together,
and giving due weight to extrinsic considerations derived from
the common tradition and doctrine of his time, that this eminent
Doctor held and taught substantially the common and Catholic
doctrine that the hierarchy in the church consisting of Bishops,
Presbyters, and Ministers was established by a divine ordinance.
In respect to the superiority of bishops over presbyters, how
much is de jure divino, and how much de jure ecclesiastico, in St.

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 75

Jerome's opinion, exactly what was the change in the regimen of
the church introduced by the apostles after a certain lapse of
time according to his supposition, it is not so easy to determine
with precision and certainty. Some few things in his statements
are obvious and indisputable. One is, that at first the titles of
bishop and presbyter were often used indiscriminately, and this is
acknowledged by other ancient authors. Another is, that the'
appointment of local bishops with full governing power, in all the
churches everywhere, was decreed by the apostles and by de-
grees universally carried out. Still another, that in some essen-
tial sense, and in virtue of the dignity and power of their common
priesthood, bishops and presbyters are of one order, in which
even the apostles were included.

The most lax interpretation which can plausibly be made
of St. Jerome's language, would represent the superiority of
bishops as consisting not in an intrinsic character, but in an ex-
trinsic and permanent delegation of a higher office with special
honor and power annexed, like the superiority of archbishops
over bishops, and of the Exarchs and Patriarchs over all other
metropolitans. This interpretation, however, is only plausible,
so long as certain isolated statements are considered in a superfi-
cial manner, apart from all others, and from a deeper examina-
tion of the scope and intent of the great Doctor, which was to
exalt the office and dignity of the priesthood in opposition to the
arrogant and despotic spirit of certain bishops, and to the inso-
lence of some of those deacons who were in places of great trust
and authority under the bishops of the great sees, as administra-
tors of their financial and other temporal affairs.

It is not necessary to prove what every scholar must be aware
of, that St. Jerome regarded the presbyterate of the Christian
church as a true and proper priesthood whose essential character
consists chiefly in the power given by ordination of consecrating
and offering the Body and Blood of the Lord. This power over
the real Body of Christ is intrinsically greater than that power
over his Mystical Body, the church, which is conjoined with it ;
and the sacerdotal character is the highest and most perfect in
respect to dignity which can be imparted to men. The Presby-
terate, as a name of age or dignity, denoting seniority, or senato-
rial, patriarchal and venerable precedence and priority among
the faithful of Christ, is the proper, generic name denoting the
condition of all, even Apostles with their Prince and Primate, who
have received a participation from Jesus Christ in his priestly
character. The name of the episcopate, in itself, denotes only

76 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Oct.,

the office of superintending, ruling, teaching, exercising pastoral
sollicitude and authority over the flock of Christ. Therefore, as
all who had received the priestly character were presbyters, so
all who had received any pastoral charge were bishops, in one
common and general sense, according to the most primitive use
of terms, and, in regard to their office of serving and ministering,
were also called Deacons, which appellation is given in the New
Testament both to the apostles and to Christ. Nevertheless,
those who were deacons and nothing more were specifically
called by that name, those who were presbyters and nothing
more were specifically called presbyters, and those who were
raised by a new consecration to a higher grade in the presby-
terate, after they had become permanently constituted chief rulers
and pastors of the churches everywhere were exclusively called
bishops as their specific designation. Before this time, and
while the local clergy were probably for the most part presby-
ters, the associates and coadjutors of the immediate apostles of
Christ, who were missionaries and founders of churches, were
called apostles. After the earliest period had passed away, ec-
clesiastical nomenclature became more distinct and precise, and
the terms Bishop, Presbyter and Deacon were applied in a techni-
cal and exact sense to the three grades in the hierarchy.

The argument of St. Jerome is briefly this. A Presbyter is a
Priest, and so far of similar dignity with a Bishop, therefore a
deacon must honor him as far superior to himself, since he is not
a priest but a minister of the priesthood ; and a bishop ought to
honor his own sacerdotal character in presbyters as well as in
bishops. Moreover, presbyters actually exercised the pastoral
and ruling office in certain churches under the direction of the
apostles, before local bishops were appointed over them with the
sole and exclusive authority of government and administration.
Therefore, they are competent, by their order as constituted by
the divine appointment, to share with bishops in governing the
church, and the ecclesiastical law which has placed such absolute
power in the hands of bishops for the sake of preventing schism
ought to be administered by them in a mild and moderate spirit,
by conceding to their presbyters voluntarily the privilege of con-
sultation and concurrence in the government of their churches.
The Saint makes a kind of appeal from a harsh and despotic use
of episcopal authority to the higher law. " Let the bishops re-
cognize that they are greater than presbyters more by custom,
that is, by ecclesiastical law, than by any right which can be
truly called divine."

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 77

Did St. Jerome think and did he mean to assert or insinuate
that the episcopal polity in the church is not of divine appoint-
ment, but only of human origin, established by the apostles in
their capacity of ordinary legislators and rulers ? Or did he
mean to say, that the superiority of bishops, even if it proceeds
from a decree of the apostles made by divine inspiration, is
nevertheless only a superiority of office and not of intrinsic
character imparted by their episcopal consecration ?

The first opinion destroys itself by the very statement. For,
if the apostles were not jure divine bishops in the strict sense of the
word, what legislative and ruling power could they have which
was ordinary, and not confined within their extraordinary com-
mission as the legates and plenipotentiaries of the Sovereign
Priest and King over the Church, Jesus Christ ? The second
opinion, though not so manifestly false, is not at all probable.

The very words of the holy Doctor in which he seems to di-
minish the rightful pre-eminence of bishops indicate that they
have, by the disposition of the Lord a real superiority over pres-
byters. " Noverint se magis consuetudine, quam dispositionis
Dominicce veritate, presbyteris esse majores." This can fairly be
interpreted to mean that bishops have a certain superiority jure
divino, which was left by the Lord to be more precisely deter-
mined in the matter of jurisdiction by the apostles and their suc-
cessors. The divine right of bishops was certainly maintained
by the other great fathers contemporary with St. Jerome and be-
lieved in as the common doctrine in his time. Aerius, a presby-
ter who was disappointed in his hope of obtaining a bishopric,
disputed this doctrine and maintained the equality of all priests-
This new tenet was at once condemned as heretical, and St. Epi-
phanius describes it as rather a piece of insane folly than an opin-
ion worthy of serious refutation. It is not to be supposed that
St. Jerome, who was never censured for his opinions on the epis-
copate, agreed with this man who became at length an Arian and
is only known to history as an insignificant heretic. No one can
doubt that the great Doctor recognized the utility and necessity
of the episcopal polity as finally established by the apostles.

"The well-being of the church depends on the dignity of the Chief
Priest, and unless a certain power which is unparticipated and high above
men is given to him (exsors* qusedam et ab hominibus eminens potestas)
there will be as many schisms as there are priests in the church." (Adv.
Lucif.)

* Exsors may also be translated " above or beyond the vicissitudes of chance," which is its
primary meaning.

78 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Oct.,

It is to be presumed, in the absence of any evidence to the
contrary, that St. Jerome ascribed the ordination of such a power
in the church to the Lord, and not merely to a human provision.
And this is confirmed by the parallel which he draws between
the Jewish and the Christian hierarchy.

" And that we may know that the Apostolical Traditions were taken
from the Old Testament ; that which Aaron and his sons and the Levites
were in the temple, the same Bishops and Presbyters and Deacons may
claim for themselves in the church." (Ep. ad Evangelum.)

Speaking of the sacrament of confirmation, he says :

" If we inquire why in the church a baptized person does not receive
the Holy Spirit except through the hands of a bishop, learn that this ob-
servance descends from the same authority which teaches that the Holy
Spirit descended upon the apostles." (Adv. Lucif.)

He was not ignorant that by delegation from the supreme au-
thority, Presbyters can be empowered to confirm, arid that they
had frequently in the East received this power. Nevertheless,
he recognizes in bishops an ordinary power received from the
apostles and not common with the extraordinary faculty given to
presbyters of giving confirmation. But when he describes most
precisely and accurately that power in which consists essentially
the specific difference of a bishop from a presbyter, he mentions
only ordination.

" For what does a bishop do, with the exception of ordination, which a
presbyter may not do."

We justly infer that St. Jerome and the whole church re-
garded this power of ordaining bishops and priests, as residing
in the bishop as such by virtue of his episcopal consecration, not
only far excellence like the power of confirming in bishops, and
the power of baptizing in bishops, priests and deacons, but incom-
municably with any inferior grade in the church, just like the
power of consecrating and absolving in a priest. Such a power
could only come from Jesus Christ, the sole institutor of sacra-
ments, the only one who can empower a man to confer in his,
name a portion of his own innate and supreme priesthood. By
the universal belief and practice of the church the right of ordain-
ing priests either of the first or the second order can only be pos-
sessed and exercised by bishops. The power is given to them in
their episcopal consecration which is a distinct and separate rite
from ordination to the priesthood, and transmits from the origi-
nal apostles through an unbroken succession, the apostolic char-

iSSo.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 79

acter. This succession of bishops to the apostles St. Jerome de-
clares in plain and explicit terms.

" With us, bishops hold the place of the apostles." (Ad Marcellam.) " All
are successors of the apostles." (Ad Evang.)

This last passage occurs at the end of a statement similar to
several others of the same purport in the writings of other great
Fathers, that all bishops are equal in regard of their episcopal
character and dignity.

" Wheresoever a bishop may be, whether at Rome or at Eugubium,
whether at Constantinople or at Rhegium, whether at Alexandria or at Tanis,
he is of the same worth and of the same priesthood. The power of riches
and the humility of poverty does not make a bishop higher or lower, but all
are successors of the apostles." (Ad Evang.)

The term " sacerdotium " which expresses the specific ratio of
equality among bishops denotes here the fulness of the gifts
and graces imparted to a bishop in ordination, and not merely the
essential character of priesthood which is the same in bishops and
presbyters. " Sacerdos " was the name given par excellence to
bishops in ancient times, as it still is in the offices of the church,
and u sacerdotium " the name of the episcopal dignity, though not
in an exclusive sense. The most strictly and theologically ac-
curate definition of the priesthood describes it as a bipartite order,
generically one, and specifically divided into two. Those Catho-
lic writers who say that the episcopate and presbyterate are two
orders really mean nothing more than those who say they are but
one order which has two distinct and specifically different grades.
The only dogmatic definitions of the church are those of the Coun-
cil of Trent.

" If any one shall say that there is not in the Catholic Church a hierar-
chy of divine ordination which consists of Bishops, Presbyters, and Minis-
ters ; let him be anathema.

" If any one shall say that Bishops are not superior to presbyters, or
that they have not the power of confirming and ordaining, or that the pow-
er they have is common to them with presbyters, etc., let him, etc." (Can.
de Sacr. Ord. sec. 23, can. vi. vii.)

That there is a visible and external priesthood in the New
Testament, and that Order or sacred ordination is a true and
proper sacrament instituted by Christ, by which the Holy Spirit
is given and a character imprinted, is also a dogma of Catholic
faith.

" Sacerdotum ordo bipartitus est, Episcoporum scilicet, qui sacerdotes

80 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Oct.,

primi appellantur, et Presbyterorum, de quibus Rhabanus (L. i. Inst. Cleric,
cap. 6) ait : secundi vero ordinis virt presbyteri sunt." * (Theol. Wiceburg.)

F. De Augustinis of Woodstock (de Ordine) says the same,
and this is in accordance with the doctrine of St. Thomas.
The priestly character is given by ordination to the pres'by-
terate and is the principal and necessary foundation of the
episcopal character which is the plenitude of priesthood, the
sacerdotal character with an extension and with complemen-
tary grace. Absolutely speaking, the only act which a bishop
is enabled to perform by the sacramental grace of order
which a presbyter cannot be enabled to perform validly, is the
ordination of bishops and priests.f This is what St. Jerome
and St. John Chrysostom distinctly affirm. The bishop possesses
the priesthood in that full and complete manner that he can im-
part it to others. Bishops, as Fathers in the priesthood, and, as
St. Ambrose says, princes over priests, by virtue of their conse-
cration are set apart for the highest office of pastoral care and
rule over clergy and people, and therefore by their order or by
ecclesiastical law, when they receive lawful mission and jurisdic-
tion they can do many things which priests cannot do simply by
the rights imparted to them in ordination or belonging to their
office as presbyters and subordinate pastors under their dioce-
san bishop. Nevertheless, many presbyters, who are abbots, vi-
cars-general, generals of Orders, or promoted to other dignities,
have a most extensive jurisdiction over other priests, a pre-emi-
nence of rank and authority, and when they are invested with the
Cardinal's robe even an extrinsic superiority over ordinary bish-
ops which makes it strictly true that the only visible difference
by which a bishop surpasses such presbyters, is the power of con-
firming and ordaining.

It is true, nevertheless, that in respect to Order any bishop in
partibus is superior to a Cardinal who is not a bishop, and equal
to a Cardinal-Bishop or the Pope. So, any priest in respect to the
order of priesthood strictly so called, is the equal of any bishop,
even the Pope. He can absolve in the sacrament of penance and
he can offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and the Pope as a priest can
do no more. A bishop can consecrate a deacon to the priesthood
and a priest to the episcopate, even though he were the Pope-

* The order of priests is bipartite, consisting, viz., of bishops who are called the chief priests,
and of presbyters of whom Rhabanus says that presbyters are men of the second order.

t We leave out deacons, because although we think it more probable that a priest cannot re-
ceive delegated power to ordain them, some theologians think otherwise. The power of ordain-
ing to the inferior orders has often been delegated to priests, and even now abbots can confer the
minor orders. But these inferior orders are probably of ecclesiastical institution.

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 81

elect. A Pope-elect cannot do this unless he has been already
consecrated to the episcopate. By virtue of his episcopal conse-
cration, he has no higher character and can perform no higher
act than any other bishop. This is the only sense in 'which we
can understand St. Jerome's statement that all bishops are equal
because all are successors of the apostles. It is precisely as
bishops that he predicates of them this sublime and equal charac-
ter, which does not belong to them in common with presbyters.
The superiority of one presbyter over others is only an extrin-
sic and official superiority. The superiority of one bishop over
others is the same. In the time of St. Jerome there were almost
everywhere metropolitans of ecclesiastical provinces. Over these
metropolitans, in many parts of the church there were exarchs
and patriarchs, and the Pope was the Primate of the universal
church. After Rome, the Supreme Apostolic See, Alexandria
had the first place, Antioch the second, and Jerusalem the third.
The First Council of Nice, twenty years before the birth of St.
Jerome recognized and sanctioned the rights of the patriarchal
and other higher metropolitan sees as derived from immemorial
antiquity.* Without doubt, they date from the apostolic age.
It is evident from the Scripture itself that St. Timothy and St.
Titus were archbishops, and this is confirmed by historical testi-
mony, and necessarily inferred from the statement of St. Jerome
that they were commissioned by St. Paul to ordain arid govern
bishops as well as presbyters. Now, the only right of pre-emi-
nence over bishops for which the ordination of God was ever
claimed or recognized is the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome
as the Successor of St. Peter. Even this supremacy, as well as
every inferior jurisdiction of archbishops over bishops delegated
from the supreme power, was never considered as conveyed
through a sacramental consecration or as raising the Pope, the
Patriarchs and the Archbishops to a hierarchical grade above the
Episcopate. On the contrary, bishops were always regarded as
invested with a higher sacerdotal and hierarchical character than
presbyters, imparted to them by episcopal ordination. The doc-
trine of St. Jerome cannot be explained otherwise than in agree-
ment with this idea.

St. Jerome confirms and illustrates his general thesis of the

*It is very probable that the words of the sixth Canon, " this also is the custom with the
Bishop of Rome," really mean to point out the ancient and customary recognition of the patriar-
chal rights by the Bishop of Rome from the time of St. Peter, as the ground of their validity.
See an able essay by the Rev. Dr. McLaughlin on this subject in the Catholic Quarterly Review
for April, 1880.

VOL. XXXII. 6

82 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Oct.,

identity of the sacerdotium in bishops and presbyters, by a refe-
rence to the primitive custom of the Church of Alexandria, and
his remarks, together with the statements of Liberatus, a deacon
of Carthage in the sixth century, and of Eutychius a Patriarch of
Alexandria in the ninth century are combined together to make a
case of actual diversity from the general polity of the church,
extending into the middle of the third century.

St. Jerome was writing a letter to one Evangelus against the
presumption of certain deacons, especially those of Rome. The
Roman deacons, who were the administrators of the temporali-
ties of the Roman Church, held a position of great importance
and authority, they had a very influential share in the election of
the Pope, and in many cases one of their number was the person
elected to fill the Chair of Peter. In short, they were the pre-
cursors of the Cardinal-Deacons of a later period. St. Jerome ac-
cuses them of arrogance towards priests, and sets himself to com-
bat their pretensions by exalting the character of the priesthood
and showing its similarity in essence to the episcopate. After
having made statements respecting the important share which
presbyters had in common with bishops in the government of the
church during the earliest period of the apostolic age, similar to
those we have quoted above from the Commentary on Titus, he
proceeds to say :

" At Alexandria, from Mark the Evangelist, down to the bishops Hera-
clus (who died about 246) and Dionysius (who died 265), the presbyters al-
ways nominated one chosen from among themselves and seated in a more
elevated place, bishop ; as if an army should make a commander ; or dea-
cons choose one among themselves whom they know to be a diligent man
and call him archdeacon."

How much does this prove ? Merely, that at Alexandria
there was a senate or chapter of the chief presbyters, a sort of
college of cardinal-priests, who possessed the exclusive right of
electing the patriarch, and, we may infer, aided him in the govern-
ment of his diocese, as well as of his extensive province, where
his jurisdiction was much greater than in any other patriarchate.
Does it prove that he did not receive consecration from bishops ?
Not at all ; for in this same Epistle St. Jerome says that a bish-
op alone can ordain. Does it prove that there is no more differ-
ence between a bishop and a presbyter than there is between a
deacon and an archdeacon ? By no means ; for it is in this Epis-
tle that the passage occurs, already quoted that represents all
bishops as the successors of the apostles. The change which
is supposed to have taken place in discipline somewhere in the

iSSo.] GEA T ESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 83

third century was from a peculiar mode of election to the com-
mon one, in which the corn-provincial bishops had the chief
part, with the clergy of the diocese as concurrents, and a certain
concurrence also of the laity. Liberatus relates in addition, that
the election having been made with as much promptitude as pos-
sible, the bishop-elect watched by the body of the deceased pa-
triarch until it was laid in the tomb, when placing its hand up-
on his head and taking from it the pallium of St. Mark, he was
immediately proclaimed patriarch and exercised the rights of his
office. Liberatus says nothing of episcopal consecration, and he
had no need to do so, for it was a matter of course. He is par-
ticular in mentioning what were peculiar customs of the Alexan-
drian Church, and passes over in silence what was in accordance
with the universal practice. That the patriarch-elect was induct-
ed into his office and assumed its administration before being con-
secrated proves nothing whatever against the Catholic doctrine.
He could not ordain, indeed, but every other function he could
perform validly and licitly by virtue of his priestly character and
the rights conferred on him by his legitimate election. A priest
is frequently the administrator of a diocese, during a vacancy or
a prolonged absence of the bishop* A priest who is bishop-elect
of a diocese obtains full jurisdiction from the moment the bulls
from Rome are received and promulgated. It is the same with a
priest who has been elected Pope, or even a deacon. If he is a
priest he cannot ordain until he has been consecrated, if he be a
deacon he cannot say Mass, or administer any sacrament, baptism
excepted, until he has been ordained. But he is competent to
exercise complete Papal jurisdiction before receiving the orders
which he lacks. Martin V. who was- a Cardinal-Deacon at the
time of his election assumed his place at once as President of the
Council of Constance and Supreme Ruler of the Catholic Church,
and he was ordained priest and consecrated bishop afterwards.

Eutychius is the witness relied on to fill up all the gaps in the
testimony of St. Jerome and Liberatus and make out a complete
case for a Presbyterian polity at Alexandria. This is what he
says in his Arabic history of the origin of the Alexandrian
Church, translated into Latin by Selden :

"Mark the Evangelist constituted twelve presbyters together with
Ananias, who should remain with the patriarch ; so that when the patri-
archate was vacant, they might elect one of the twelve presbyters, upon
Whose head the other eleven imposed hands, and blessed him and created
him patriarch. . . . Nor did this constitution concerning presbyters, to wit,
that they should create the patriarch from among the twelve presbyters

84 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Oct.,

cease to be observed until the time of the patriarch Alexander, who was
the three hundred and eighteenth of the number. He forbade that hence-
forth presbyters should create the patriarch. And he decreed, that when
the patriarch died bishops should assemble and ordain the new patriarch.
From Ananias, whom the Evangelist Mark constituted patriarch of
Alexandria, down to the time of the patriarch Demetrius there were no
bishops in Egypt ; nor did the patriarchs before him create any bishops.
But he, when he was made patriarch, constituted three bishops. And he
was the first Alexandrian patriarch who made bishops. At the death of
Demetrius Heraclus was put in his place as patriarch of Alexandria who
made twenty bishops."

From all this it is inferred that the patriarch was not only
elected by the presbyteral college of Alexandria but consecrated
by them, and that all the churches in Egypt, Pentapolis and
Lybia were governed by presbyters subject to the patriarch.
Whatever Eutychius may have intended to say or be thought
to have testified respecting the original right of presbyters at
Alexandria to consecrate their patriarch, his testimony ought
not to be cited by a critical scholar. He was an Arabian, igno-
rant of Greek, w r ho was patriarch of Alexandria at the end of the
ninth century; Natalis Alexander long ago destroyed his credit
as a competent historian, and Saumaise, the famous Protestant
controversialist says that he is a man in whom but little faith can
be reposed, a narrator of many fabulous stories. It is hardly
credible, however, that he should have ascribed to the Alexan-
drian presbyters the power of consecrating a bishop, unless he
supposed that at least some of them had received the episcopal
character. Petavius relates that Abraham Echellensis, a Ma-
ronite, a learned Oriental scholar and professor of Syriac and
other Eastern languages at the Royal College of Paris assured
him, that there were three impositions of hands generally ob-
served in the East at the creation of a bishop.* The representa-
tives of the laity laid their hands on the head of the elect, to
signify their acceptance of him as their bishop, the clergy did the
same, and afterwards the bishop consecrated him with two or
more other bishops assisting him. The statement of Eutychius
that there were no diocesan bishops under the patriarch before,
the third century only amounts to this, that all the Alexandrian
patriarchate was one vast diocese, and is moreover incredible in
itself and contrary to historical evidence. One single fact in the
history of St. Athanasius sufficiently proves that the doctrine

* Abraham Echellensis himself published a work against Selden, in which he makes the sair.e
statement.

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CIIUXCH. 85

and practice in Egypt respecting episcopal ordination was
always the same with those which prevailed everywhere else
throughout the world. The Arian Ischyras, who pretended to
be a priest, was condemned as an impostor by a Council held at
Alexandria, because it was proved that he had not been ordain-
ed by any bishop, but by Colluthus a schismatical presbyter.
" Whence is Ischyras a presbyter ? " says Athanasius. " And by
whom ordained ? Was it by Colluthus ? . . . But that Col-
luthus died a presbyter, and that both his hands were without
authority, is known to all and doubted by no one." (Apol. contr.
Arian. n. n.)

A canon of the Synod of Ancyra, the chief city of Galatia,
probably held about A.D. 314, is also cited in proof of the ordain-
ing power of presbyters.

" It is not permitted to chorepiscopi to ordain priests and deacons, also
the same is not permitted to the priests in cities, in another diocese, with-
out a written authority from the respective bishop."

Hefele remarks upon this canon :

" Although the first half of this canon is easily understDod, on the other
hand the second presents a great difficulty ; for it was never competent to
the priests of cities to ordain other priests or deacons, and least of all in
a foreign diocese. Many of the ablest scholars have therefore maintained
that the Greek text of this last half of our canon, as it now stands, is incor-
rect or incomplete. There fails, namely, the phrase noieiv TI, = aliquod
agere, = to fulfil every ecclesiastical function. In support of this amend-
ment, they appeal to several ancient versions, namely that of Isidore :
' Neither is it allowed to the priests of a city, for the future to issue any
order without the bishop's commandment, or without the authority of his
letters to do anything in any diocese.' (Some copies have in another dio-
cese.) The old Roman Codex Canonum has the same, only substituting
promncia iov parockza. The ancient collator of canons Fulgentius Ferran-
dus Deacon of Carthage, translated it in the same manner : ' That Priests
of a city without the bishop's command, may not order anything, or do any-
thing in any diocese.' In the same sense Van Espen interpreted our canon.
On the other hand Routh (Reliq. Sacr. t. iii. p. 432) took another way. He
maintained that there was no word wanting in the text, but that, according
to several codices, we should read in the beginning of the canon jcj/?7rz^oVoz?
in the dative, then below, aXXa /arjv /Li^de, instead of aXXa jur/Se, then
rtpatifivrepovt TtoXecoS (accus.) and at the end exatfrt? for erepa, so that it
must be translated thus : ' It is not permitted to chorepiscopi to ordain
priests and deacons (for the country) but still less may they ordain priests
for the city, in any diocese, without the written authority of the respective
bishop.' In this way the Greek text as conformed to certain, and especially
to Bodleian MSS. gives undoubtedly a good sense, yet a'AAo? jmjy [tyde does
not mean but still less, but but indeed also not; which just here makes
some difference. Besides, there can hardly have occurred the case of cho-

86 GEA'ESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Oct.,

rdpiscopi ordaining priests for the city; and if so, this was already implicitly
forbidden in the first part of the canon." *

These chorepiscopi, i.e. country bishops, were a sort of Rural
Deans, governing country-districts under the bishop of the dio-
cese. Some of them had the episcopal character, either because
those bishops who for any honorable cause were without a see
and had returned to their original bishop's cathedral church were
naturally deputed by him as his auxiliaries, or because they
were specially consecrated for the purpose. They could lawfully
ordain in their own rural deaneries, or in any other place, pro-
vided they were duly commissioned by the bishop of the diocese.
They did, however, often exceed their powers, usurp in their lit-
tle domain the proper powers of diocesan bishops, and perhaps
even venture to go into the episcopal city, or into other dioceses,
and ordain there priests and deacons. They became at length so
generally troublesome and obnoxious to the bishops that the
whole institution of chorepiscopi was universally abolished.
Whichever reading of the canon of Ancyra, enacted in order
to restrain their usurpations, is more probably the correct, origi-
nal reading, it is certain that the unamended text makes non-
sense, and it is condemned by all canonists as not authentic.

There are no other arguments based on what is claimed to be
positive historical evidence, going to show a change in the apos-
tolical constitution of the church during its early period, and to
refute the claim of divine origin for the Catholic episcopate, which
we think it needful to notice. We beg the reader to bear in
mind that we have not undertaken to prove by documentary
evidence the apostolicity of the Catholic Church. This would
require a more extensive and detailed treatment of the sub-
ject, and woul.d be foreign to our purpose. What evidence we
have given is incidental to the answering of objections. Our di-
rect aim in the discussion of the pages immediately preceding is
to show, that there is nothing in these objections to break the
force of the argument from prescription. Our positive argument
begins from the concession of the most learned Protestant and
infidel writers respecting the early existence of unity and catho-
licity in order to show by inference that the church which has
been from time immemorial one and catholic must be apostolic
and holy, and having these four marks must be of divine origin.
The continuity of tradition, the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab
omnibus, the witness of the Catholic Church to herself by the very
fact of her perpetual existence, the proof of her divine origin by

* Concilliengeschichte, t. i. p. 200.

i88o.] THE CLASSICAL STYLE. 87

the principle of the sufficient reason and the efficient cause from
her nature and attributes as an effect, is the line of our argument.
By this argument we wish to prove that a change from the church
of the semi-rationalistic and Neo-Evangelical theory to the church
of the catholic theory could not have taken place in the interval
between the Council of Jerusalem and the Council of Nice, the
middle of the first and the beginning of the fourth century.
Therefore the great, historical Christianity and church of the
later, the mediaeval and the early Ecumenical Councils, the church
of Pius IX., Innocent III., Celestine, Leo, and Sylvester L, bears
witness always and everywhere to her own beginnings and to her
apostolic and divine origin.

In our next, which will probably be our concluding article, it
will be our object to make this our express topic and to bring to a
focus all the arguments by which we have been endeavoring to
show that the lofty and attractive ideal of Catholicism must be
admitted as divine by all those who believe that Jesus Christ, the
Author of Christianity, is truly God.

THE CLASSICAL STYLE.

IT is only the higher form of the imagination, where it is the
faculty that shapes, gives unity of design and balanced gravita-
tion of parts, which can unimpeachably assure to any work the
dignity and permanence of a classic ; for it results in that exqui-
site something called Style, which, like the grace of perfect breed-
ing, everywhere pervasive and nowhere emphatic, makes itself
felt by the skill with which it effaces itself, and masters us at last
with a sense of its indefinable completeness. LOWELL.

THE CHARACTER OF ENGLISH POETRY.

OF the best English poetry it might be said that it is under-
standing aerated by imagination. LOWELL.

88 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

MY RAID INTO MEXICO.

CHAPTER vil. Continued.

AFTER a few prolonged whiffs of his cigarette Mr. O'Shea
resumed : " After being refused by Miss Bolgibbie, and being in-
formed by my aunt that she had altered her will, my heart went
down into me boots. I resolved upon a little rustication, and a
few days afterwards I set out for a walking tour in the beautiful
county of Wicklow. It was a lovely evening in April that I
trudged into the little village of Roundwood, distant from Glen-
dalough about five miles. You remember the lines, Nugent :

" ' By that lake whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbles o'er,
Where the cliff hangs high and steep,
Young St. Kevin stole to sleep.'

" Well, sir, I put up at Murphy's Hotel, and, having ordered
the usual bacon and eggs and a bottle of Double-X, was standing
at the hall-door looking up and down the road, and over the way
at the rival house, just to kill time, when a little fellow as yellow
as a guinea, and with hair and eyes as dark as a blackbird's wing,
came up to where I was, and, lifting his hat, wished me good-
evening in a foreign accent ; but his Saxon was sound enough.
In a few minutes, Nugent, the little fellow and I were as thick as
pickpockets; and when the slipshod girl announced that my
bacon and. eggs were ready I invited the little chap to share
them with me. I've always had a habit of asking people to din-
ner, me boy, and so had me father before me, the Lord be merci-
ful to him ! The little fellow accepted with all the pleasure in
life, and whipped out his card ; and it took me from the hall-
door, up the rickety stairs, and into the dining-room to read his
name. I'll never forget it. Steady, Nugent, me boy, for I'm go-
ing to let it off now."

With a droll twinkle in his eye Mr. O'Shea, after a dramatic
pause, discharged his petronel :

" Here goes. It will stagger ye, anyhow. Seiior Pomposo,
Verdugo, Jose, Ignacio, Najera, Miguel, Ramon, Mata, Salvador,
Corella, Manuel Gutierrez. What do you think of that for a
name ? "

" A howler. Some Spanish grandee, I suppose, on a trip to
the Emera'ld Isle."

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 89

" A Mexican, me boy a Mexican mining engineer, who, hav-
ing heard of the Wicklow gold and copper mines, had resolved
upon inspecting them personally with a view to developing them,
just as if we were heathen savages that knew nothing ! Well,
Nugent, Gutierrez and I ' prospected,' as the Americans say, the
entire county, he paying all the bills for he had plenty of min-
eral in the shape of gold stamped with Queen Victoria's ugly
mug, while every shilling I parted with made me lighter in
pocket but heavier in heart ; but barring a few grains of gold,
which we got after crushing as much rock as would build a sea-
wall from the Pigeon House to the Hill of Howth, we extracted
about five shillings' worth of gold.

" ' We can do better than that in Mexico, anyhow/ says Gu-
tierrez, ' and I'll go back and become a millionaire/

" I parted from him with extreme regret. He wanted me to
go to Mexico with him, but Dublin had its fascinations for me,
the red militia uniforms and the Castle balls being too much for me
altogether ; and I tell you what, Nugent, that that same Viceregal
Court plays the deuce with half the young squireens in the coun-
try. Not to have been there taboos you from what is termed so-
ciety, while to have been there unfits you for your every-day life.
No person in business is qualified to be presented at court, and
'pon me conscience I believe that this is the cause of all the
professions in Ireland being overstocked."

Having lighted a fresh cigarette, Mr. O'Shea resumed :

" I was on the Shaughraun for some months, and was very
much out at elbows, when a friend of mine got me a clerkship in
the Union Bank, then just established. This brought me in thirty
shillings a week, and this, with my seventy pounds a year, kept
me going like a Rathmines omnibus. I was enabled to attend the
levees and drawing-rooms and St. Patrick's Ball. I did the Kings-
town Pier on Sundays in summer, and the Donnybrook Road and
Merrion Square in winter. Four o'clock every day saw me dis-
charged from the financial institution to walk up and down
Grafton Street. I dined usually at Anderson's "

" Now Spadacinni's," I interrupted.

" The same, me boy and spent my evenings, I regret to say it,
at Jude's, where I saw more heads broken by the Trinity College
boys than ever were whacked in at Donnybrook Fair. I was not
much of an accountant, but I was a sort of favorite with the cus-
.tomers at the bank, for I was a good punster, and I kept the
dapper counting-house clerks going in this way, so that my desk
always commanded a crowd. The directors remarked this, and

90 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

after five years I was promoted to one hundred pounds a year, less
income-tax. I then resolved to look out for an heiress, and hav-
ing been invited by Town Councillor O'Mulligan to visit him at
his marine residence on Dalkey Hill, and having ascertained that
he had an only child, a daughter, who was being educated at the
neighboring convent, I accepted the invitation and repaired to
Howth View Lodge. Miss O'Mulligan was a very pretty girl,
and I made love to her, as racing men say, from the start. Her
father seemed nothing loath ; her mother never tired of hearing of
the life at the Viceregal Court, of which I gave her the most vivid
description, calling upon my imagination for my facts, and filling
up by personal reminiscences with yours truly for the centre-
figure ahem ! "

Here Mr. Van Dyck O'Shea took a sip from his liquor glass.

" I made such good running that after half a dozen Sundays
I spoke to the town councillor after dinner.

" ' If ye can get Tilly for to say yes, she's yours, and I'll settle
six thousand on her now, and she'll have all I have when I'm
gone ; but I'm afeard that she's bint on the convent.'

" Alas ! the worthy civic father was but too correct in his sur-
mise, and although I kept going there Sunday after Sunday for
over eighteen months the dinners were solid, I tell you, and al-
ways a couple of bottles of champagne Miss Matilda would
have nothing to say to me, and she's now mother-abbess of a
convent in New Zealand."

" You didn't break your heart, Mr. O'Shea.? "

" Well, my heart wasn't in it, Nugent ; it was my pocket. And
you see it's lucky that I was not crazy about her, for if I had
been the Prince of Wales it would have been all the same. Well,
sir, the town councillor, who was a real good-hearted fellow, never
lost sight of me, and, having been elected chairman of the Lug-
ganure Copper Mining Company, he at once came to me to the
bank and offered me the secretaryship at three hundred a year.
Whew ! didn't I jump at it. Didn't I strut into the bank every
day, and lean over the counter and chaff the poor beggar who
succeeded me! Our mine flourished. We paid a rattling divi-
dend. We dined that is, the directors and secretary at Breslin's
at Bray, and had our special train to the Meeting of the Waters,
close to which the mine was situated. I spent much of my time
during the summer in the neighborhood of the mine, as the trout-
fishing in the little Avonmore River was elegant ; and all went ,
merry as a marriage bell when, at our half-yearly meeting, a
crotchety shareholder hinted that the auditors passed everything

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 91

that was put before them, and that he, for one, while he rejoiced
at the dividend of fifteen per cent., would wish to be publicly in-
formed whether the said dividend was being paid out of capital
or profits. This led to an investigation, which proved the audi-
tors to be dummies, the directors noodles, and the cashier to be
worse. As for the secretary, he really knew nothing of the busi-
ness, as his post was made so easy for hini by the cashier, and'
when the denouement came and the whole thing ' busted ' he was
honorably acquitted, but he was branded as an idiot."

"What became of the O'Mulligan, Mr. O'Shea?"

" Oh ! he was made alderman and J.P. in reward for his mar-
tyrdom, and the directors were all more or less repaid for their
dummydom. It was when I found myself an inspector of public
buildings as we call a man out of employment in Dublin that I
bethought me of Pomposo, Verdugo, Jose, Ignacio, Najera, Mi-
guel, Ramon, Mata, Salvador, Corella, Manuel Gutierrez. I wrote
him a letter, telling him that I would be glad to accept office in
Mexico in any capacity ; that since I had seen him last I had been
a banker, and secretary to one of the most famous mining compa-
nies in Ireland, as indeed it was. In fact, I blew my own trumpet
so loudly that the music charmed Gutierrez, and he at once re-
plied, from a place with an unpronounceable name in the interior
of this country, offering me a share in a mine upon which he was
then engaged in exploiting. I pawned my annuity of seventy
pounds for two hundred and fifty, and came out here, and here I
have remained. Such is the brief outline of the uneventful ca-
reer of yours till death, Van D. O'S."

Mr. O'Shea told this story of his life in a manner impossible
to write. His winks, smirks, raising of eyebrows, drawing back
of his mouth, and general drollery and archness were simply ir-
resistible, and I found myself, whilst listening to him, one vast,
expansive grin.

"I'll take ye out to me mine, Nugent. You'll see the caballero
with the string of names, and I'll tell you what you'll hear, me
boy only think of it ! you'll hear the Irish language spoken in
the heart of a Mexican silver-mine."

" How is that, Mr. O'Shea? " I asked.

" My aunt taught me the real Connaught Irish, and I never
forgot it. When I was learning Spanish from one of the overseers
here, a keen, intelligent Indian, I let him have Irish in exchange,
and he in turn let the miners have it in explication. But here's
the sefiora. It is time for .the drive on the Paseo."

The sunset was absolutely gorgeous as we drove along the

92 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

Paseo de Bucarelli. We were steeped in a sort of yellow haze, a
golden splendor that gradually deepened into purple. High up
against the keen, full blue sky were the snow-capped summits of
Popocatapetl and Iztaccihuatl stained a luminous pink, while on
our right, like a jewel set in the Tyrian-tinted Ajusco Mountains,
stood the castle of Chapultepec, the favorite residence of the ill-
fated Maximilian and Carlotta. This Paseo is the Bois de Bou-
logne, the Rotten- Row, the Phrenix Park of the Mexican dcsocu-
vrtts. It derives its name from Bucarelli, a Spanish viceroy, who
was so deeply loved by the natives that to this time he is spoken
of as " the Indian's friend and protector."

Here every evening at five o'clock all carriage-riding Mexico
turns out, the ladies in full evening dress, their hair minus cover-
ing save the black lace mantilla with the addition of natural
flowers. The young bloods show in full charro and bestriding
priceless mustangs or Arabs. I thought I knew something about
riding. I imagined that I had rather a graceful seat myself ; but
I freely confess that I gazed on these gay caballeros with feelings of
the keenest envy. I never saw a horseman till I visited Mexico.
Of course I consoled myself with the idea that across country
they would be nowhere, but here the sight of man and horse ab-
solutely delighted me.

" You can't do better than that in Royal Meath, Joe," laugh-
ed the senora, who followed my fascinated gaze.

" The riding is superb, senora. Just see how that young fel-
low handles his horse. Isn't it marvellous ! "

" You should see them lassoing a bull, Joe. I shall get Mr.
O'Shea to arrange a * meet ' for you. It requires more dexterity
than taking the brush. Beside it fox-hunting becomes very tame
indeed. That," added the senora, "is the statue of Carlos IV.
You see it is the centre point for four branching avenues. Over
there stands the Tivoli del Eliseo, and behind it is the property
that the martyred Maximilian gave to the traitor Bazaine. It
was confiscated and sold by the so-called government of Juarez.
Over yonder is where the Corrida de Toros, or bull-ring, used to
rear its head. We have no bull-fights in the capital now, Joe, but
.in the provincial cities, especially Puebla, they flourish as they
do in Spain. And now for Chapultepec."

Our road was bordered by eucalyptus-trees, and all beyond
them were fields devoted to the great sword-leaved maguey-plants
from which the native beverage pulque is manufactured. In the
distance, on the left, was the aqueduct of Belem, which conveys
the aqua delgada, or pure water, from the Albatoca, the basin at

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 93

Chapultepec, to the city, its arches clothed in the luminous greens
of ferns and mosses and lichens.

" The last time I entered the^e gates," said the sefiora sadly,
as we spun past some slovenly-looking soldiers engaged in cook-
ing tortillas opposite a red brick guard-house, " it was to urge up-
on his imperial majesty but this will not interest you, Joe. See,
they have torn away the imperial monogram, the M. C., which
used to stand over the gilded gates senseless savages ! "

Chapultepec is situated about three miles from the city, at the
extremity of the fashionable drive known as the Calzada de la
Reforma. High above us, as we wound in and out of the venera-
ble tf//^//z^-shadowed grounds cypresses beneath which the luck-
less Montezuma was wont to muse upon the ultimate fate of his
country while Hernando Cortez and his daring followers were
making merry in his capital clear as if cut en silliouette, rose the
white towers, and galleries, and terraces, and colonnades, and bal-
conies of the palace seated upon its lofty bed of porphyry, tinted
by the setting sun with lines of living fire. Gorgeous flowers
glowed upon all sides on terrace walks, on slopes and buttresses,
on crags and balconies.

In the many-tinted foliage appeared parasites, resembling red
and yellow and purple butterflies, while at the base of the beet-
ling rock upon which the fortress is perched stand the guard of
cypresses beneath the shade of which Montezuma, arrayed in
garments covered with the feathers of birds, would wander for
hours.

The castle is a long and narrow building, spreading along the
summit of the porphyritic rock, and necessarily following in form
the outlines of its foundation. It stands on the exact site of the
Aztec royal palaces. As we ascended the zigzag roadway the
view became every moment more enchanting, while we were
compelled to pause at every turn of the path to linger over the
entrancing panorama that gradually unfolded itself to our gaze.
The city of Mexico, set like a glittering gem in the fertile valley ;
the lakes Tezcoco, Chalco, and Xochimilco stretching away in
filmy blue ; the hill-shrined Guadalupe with its magnificent
church ; the quaint and many-arched aqueducts of Belem ard
San Cosme ; the ruins of Molino del Rey, and towering above all,
in appalling and majestic silence, the snow-peaked Popocatapetl
and Iztaccihuatl. The approach to the terrace of the castle is be-
neath a white marble arch. This was in melancholy disrepair, as
indeed was the castle itself and all its surroundings. Everything
wore a sad, depressed, neglected look. I noticed that the im-

94 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

perial monogram had been removed from the brazen gates, upon
which the traces of gilding still faintly lingered. There were
pedestals and niches without statues, frescoes were obliterated,
and aesthetic tiles were broken, while hideous gaps showed in
the once even and elegantly-laid-down terrace walk.

" I feel like one who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,"

quoted the sefiora as we entered a set of apartments giving upon
the luminous green valley.

" Here is vandalism ! " she cried. " Just look at this cheap paper
covering this exquisitely-painted panel, and what a hideous con-
trast to that gloriously-fretted ceiling ! I must say for the Mexi-
cans that as regards harmonies of color they are as dead as Mon-
tezuma. I suppose this arises from the fact that they are sur-
rounded by so much natural beauty they disregard the artifi-
cial."

The stairways were crazy and broken, the balusters falling to
pieces. We went out on the leads to take one long, last, linger-
ing look at the ever beautiful view, and even as we stood there
the rose-pink on the peaks of the volcanoes flushed rosy red,
then deep claret, and then the crimson became purple.

The garden poor Carlotta's was a mass of tangle and
weeds.

" Ah ! " exclaimed the senora, " let us get to the carriage. I
feel as if this were the tomb of the unhappy man and woman
whom the Fates called to a throne that hurled one into a blood-
stained grave, the other," here she shuddered, " into the living
death of insanity."

But by far the most interesting and beautiful part of Cha-
pultepec is the forest of ahuehuets, or cypresses, by which it is
embowered. These cypresses are mighty trees of extraordinary
age, which can count their years by centuries. The witnesses
of Montezuma's daring and his ancestors' adventures, they were
regarded already by his contemporaries as objects of wonder and
renown, and are at present, perhaps, the most curious memorials
in the world of trees.

The gnarled trunk of the oldest and largest cypress, called
Montezuma's Tree, measures forty-eight feet in circumference
I walked round it and is one hundred and sixty-five feet high.
I never saw anything grander than the twisted stem of this ahue-
huete, with its mystic pavilion of lofty branches, and its garlands
of Spanish moss hanging down in delicate ribbons from every

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 95

twig with the grace of the drooping pennants of the weeping wil-
low. This moss barba Espanol, Spanish beard is one of the
strangest parasites imaginable. It is a tangle of pale green ten-
drils, in thickness like an ordinary string, and while one end is
closely wound round the branch of the tree, the remainder drops
in long, straight festoons. It is called heno, or hay, by the natives,
and at a distance it imparts the idea that a hay-shower has fallen
on the trees, leaving its traces in this singular and remarkable
manner.

" The good citizens of Mexico are fond of picnicking under
these trees," observed the senora, "and at every turn you will
find al-fresco parties."

We did surprise one picturesque party engaged in dancing
the fandango. The snow-white attire of the Indians as they glided
silently through the embowered avenues imparted a ghostly at-
mosphere to the whole scene impossible to describe.

It was past seven o'clock when we returned to the Calle
Marascala, and it was only while I was engaged in my ablutions
preparatory to descending to dinner that I recollected Conchita's
letter.

CHAPTER VIII.

SAN ANGEL.

CONCHITA'S last words, as I hurriedly dressed for dinner, ac-
tually smote me :

" Here is a letter which you will read, but not until you have
reached the city of Mexico. It tells you all. Enclosed is an-
other letter addressed to a certain person, which, if after reading
your own letter you feel inclined to deliver, you will hand in per-
son. If you decide not to deliver it, burn it ! "

I had permitted the busy whirl of sight-seeing to erase all
thoughts of Conchita's mission from my mind, and could scarcely
realize the fact. Obeying her instructions as to the reading of
the letter addressed to myself, I had resolved upon bursting its
seal at the moment I struck the Capital, but what between the
senora, and the padre, and Van Dyck O'Shea both the girl and
the letter had vanished from my mind.

I sought it where it lay in my portmanteau, and was about to
tear it open when the dinner-bell rang. As the senora was punc-
tilious to the last degree with reference to table ceremonials, there

96 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

was nothing for it but to thrust the missive into my pocket and
hurry to the dining-room.

During dinner I was so abstracted that more than once the
hostess asked me if I was ill.

"He is undergoing the purgatory 'of sight-seeing," laughed
Father Gonzalez. " There is nothing so fatiguing. I remember
on my first visit to Rome that I wanted to see everything in the
compass of a single day, and set out in the morning to do the
entire city. I managed to get through a great deal, but ere ' even-
ing's best light ' 1 would not have taken a thousand scudi and
have allowed my eyes to ache on the Coliseum."

" He'll have to do the play to-night," observed O'Shea. " I've
got a box at the Teatro Nacional. He will see Offenbach's last
done into Mexican."

" We must not run our young friend to death," said the
senora.

" Pshaw ! my dear madam, when I was his age I have danced till
six in the morning, gone from the ball-room to the Pigeon House
Wall for a dip in the briny, have breakfasted on a red herring
and a bottle of soda-water, have turned into the bank this was
when I was a clerk in the Union Bank in College Green, Dublin
at half-past eight, and at five P.M. I have turned out of the bank
for two hours up and down Grafton Street, and nine o'clock
found me waltzing again at the rate of fifty spins a minute ; and,
by the bones of Montezuma, I do believe if I was put to it I could
do it at this writing."

" You'd try it, at all events," laughed the senora.

Pleading an excuse, I withdrew after dinner, and, proceeding
to my own room, eagerly tore open Conchita's letter.
1 It ran :

" My brother is an officer in the Mexican army. He commands the
Twenty-fourth regiment of the line. The Oaxaca Regiment it is called. He
is a man of considerable influence, as he has proved himself a very brave
soldier. It was he who led the three sorties from Fort Guadalupe at Puebla
against the French, and was wounded in each sortie. The murder of the Em-
peror Maximilian made him an Imperialist. He considers that his country
has been for ever disgraced by the murder, and so thoroughly imperialistic i's
he that he is now engaged in an intrigue to place a Grand Duke of Austria
on the throne steeped in the martyred Maximilian's blood. I need hardly
say that the discovery of this plot would lead to my brother's being shot
within twenty-four hours. A letter from the exalted personage in question
has been forwarded to me, to be conveyed by safe hand to my brother.
This letter is enclosed in the envelope, addressed Colonel Enrique Mojelos.
I am a Mojelos, though I have adopted the name of my dearest, kindest pro-

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 97

tectress. You now know enough to decide whether you will endeavor to
deliver the letter or burn it. I warned you of danger. You see yourself
face to face with it. Act as you think best, and in whatever way you de-
cide to act remember you have the gratitude of C."

I did not hesitate a second.

"Where is the Oaxaca Regiment quartered now?" I asked
when I rejoined Mr. O'Shea, whom I found over his Chartreuse
and cigarette in the balcony overlooking the patio.

"The Oaxaca? Oh! that's the regiment that Diaz distin-
guished himself with."

" Diaz ! Who's Diaz ? "

" Porfirio Diaz our coming man. By George ! I think his
name ought to be Dyaz, for he's as fond of fighting as a Tippe-
rary man." And Mr. O'Shea gave me a brief account of the record
of the man who has since risen to the presidency of the republic.

" Where is the Oaxaca Regiment ? "

" How the dickens should I know ? But if you're very anxious
about it I can find out in two minutes. There is a barracks, as we
would say in Ireland, right forninst the Alameda, and that's not
ten minutes from where we sit."

" I'd feel awfully obliged if you would."

" Hi, Pedro ! " A servant appeared, to whom he gave some-
orders in Spanish, whereupon the latter vanished, to return almost
ere Mr. O'Shea could indulge in a sip of his favorite post-pran-
dial chasse.

II The Oaxaca Regiment is quartered at a place called San
Angel, Nugent that is, the first battalion," said O'Shea, trans-
lating the servant's parting words.

" Where is San Angel ? "

" It's about fifteen miles from here. It's a swell summer resort
at the foot of the Ajusco Mountains, where the thermometer
keeps well below eighty in the shade. The view from it is lovely,
and, bad luck to the irreligious scoundrels who rule us ! the mag-
nificent old convent is now turned into a barracks."

" How do you strike San Angel?"

" Easy enough by tram-car the entire way. But the senora
is sure to drive you out there some day ; it's on the bill of fare, me
boy. The road," he added, " isn't quite safe from gentlemen of
the Dick Turpin class perfect gentlemen, who, like Claude
Duval, would rob the senora of every real she had about her, to
say nothing of her jewelry and a portion of her garments, and
then compel her to dance a fandango by the roadside."

" Are you serious when you say the road isn't safe ? "

VOL. XXXII. 7.

98 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

" Well, I am. You see since the war if you like to dignify it
by that title several disbanded imperialists have been wandering
about the country living upon faith, what we all subsist upon
chance. They haunt the Ajusco Mountains, where to follow
them would take ten thousand men and then miss them. Some-
times they pounce on a tram-car carrying the money to pay the
factory-hands at Tacubaya or the farm-hands on some large
hacienda. They are usually pretty well posted, and know the car
on which the great cart-wheel dollars you've seen our silver
dollars ; don't they remind you of the great big copper pennies
we used to see in Dublin ? Musha ! but many a wan of them I
paid for a tray or snuffer-dish of Crofton apples at the Metal
Bridge that stands over the Liffey between Carlisle Bridge and
Essex Bridge. Well, sir, the authorities send an armed guard,
consisting of two men, with each tram-car along the line ; but,
baithershin! there's such a thing as firing at the church and
hitting the parish."

" I should like to visit San Angel without bringing any risk
upon the Sefiora San Cosme. I shall visit it alone."

" And so you can, with me. We'll go out there some day next
week and visit the place. It's really well worth seeing."

" Could we not go to-morrow morning ? "

" Not very well, for we've the Picture Gallery, and the Mu-
seum, and the Mineria on the board for you."

" Wouldn't they keep ? "

" So will San Angel."

"You've piqued my curiosity, Mr. O'Shea, and to-morrow I
mean to see San Angel."

The senora made no objection.

" I'll take you in the carriage," she said ; " I owe it to myself
to visit the two dear, good sisters whom our paternal government
have allowed to remain there, provided they dress in secular gar-
ments. They are permitted to keep a wing of the beautiful old
place clean and to teach the village children. The remainder of
.the convent is used by the soldiers."

" Take your revolver with you to-morrow," said Mr. O'Shea
as we were about to part for the night. " I'll bring mine in fact,
I never travel without one. Voila ! " showing me the deadly in-
strument as it peeped out of a back pocket in his trowsers. " We
all carry them in Mexico. It used to be the macheta, or knife, but
no caballero carries a knife now ; it is left to the lower classes, who
use it pretty freely, I can tell you. Par cxcviplc, I visited the
prison here the other day, and found that out of twelve hundred

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 99

male prisoners nine hundred were jugged for using the machcta.
That's a lively percentage."

I should mention that I accompanied Mr. O'Shea to the
theatre the Teatro Nacional. The house is very roomy, but
lighted by oil lamps, which imparted a sepulchral appearance to
the interior. The opera was not one of Offenbach's, but a very
clever bouffe by a Spanish composer. It was entitled " II Barba-
rillo de Lavapiez," and had all the chic of Lecocq, Hervey, or the
maestro already named. Each act was of very long duration, and
upon commenting on this to my guide, philosopher, and friend,
O'Shea, he informed me that the Mexicans pay for one act only,
and at the end of each act they turn out, when, if they like the
performance, they purchase tickets for the second act, and thus
to the end of the piece.

Seated in the pit was a very handsome, distinguished-look-
ing young man, whose startling likeness to Conchita filled me
with considerable interest. His eyes met mine more than once,
and in reply to my scrutinizing gaze he bestowed upon me so
haughty a stare that it almost amounted to a challenge.

After the performance Mr. O'Shea brought me to the Cafe
Concordia the Delrnonico's of Mexico for supper, and AVC had
hardly taken our seats when the caballcro whom 1 had noticed in
the theatre, and who had noticed me, entered, accompanied by a
friend. Seating themselves at a little table near ours, my eye
again encountered his, and, being now close to him, the likeness to
the girl was something so forcible that I resolved upon ascertain-
ing whom he might be.

"Just turn your head, Mr. O'Shea not yet a minute and
take a look at the man with the black pointed moustache sitting at
the table to the right. Not yet a minute, for he has already
queried my stare."

Following my instructions, O'Shea cast a look round the
room, taking in the object of my curiosity in his revolving glance.

" Don't know him."

" Could you find out who he is ? "

" Certainly. Pean ! " And calling a waiter, he directed him
to discover who the gentleman might be without attracting atten-
tion. Ere the son of the napkin returned the personage in ques-
tion arose, and with his friend strode out of the cafe.

" He's a soldier," said O'Shea, to whom the waiter had im-
parted the information. " His name is Mojelos. He's a colonel.
Now for QUT pcscao de lago" helping me to a little fish not unlike
our Dublin Bay flounder. "This is one of our delicacies, me

ioo MY RAID INTO MEXICO, [Oct.,

boy ; it is caught in the lakes that surround us Chalco, Texcoco,
and Xochimilco. Just scarify the little beggar and squeeze a few
drops of lemon-juice into the furrows. Now top-dress with
cayenne pepper. I'll give you a drop of Tequila punch to swim
it in."

The senora, at the eleventh hour, resolved upon visiting San
Angel by tram-car instead of taking her carriage.

" The roads are so execrable," she explained, " that no springs
are worth a peso's purchase ; besides, by standing out with the
driver, Joe, you'll see the country, which is extremely beau-
tiful."

The tram-cars in Mexico are drawn by mules, and two cars start
within a few yards of one another. The first car is second class,
and, being cheaper, is used by the Indians. The second car is
first class, and just the same as the cars I had seen in New
York. The driver is a picturesque fellow in richly-laced som-
brero, and a whip such as Sancho Panza should have basted the
ribs of Dapple with. The very crack of it was like the report of
a pistol. The conductor's chief business is to blow a horn at all
street-crossings. He collects no fares, this operation being con-
ducted by special employees, attired in French uniforms, posted
at certain portions of the road. These financial acrobats leap on
and off the car while the mules are going at full gallop. How it
is done without accident is to me a marvel.

Each car is provided with two of the Guarda Civil, or civil
guard. These men, armed to the teeth, stand, one with the
driver, the other with the conductor. Their uniform is the most
picturesque I have ever seen : gray felt sombrero crusted with
silver, buff-leather jacket, white shirt, blood-red sash, and buff
boots to the hips. They wear great gauntlet-gloves and carry a
carbine.

Availing myself of the senora's permission, I went out on the
front platform of the car and stood behind the driver. How
that man did screech, and yell, and vociferate as he urged his
mules into a gallop ! How he cracked his whip and shook his
entire body over his long-eared team ! What a pace we went at,
never flagging, but keeping up the stride, until we spun into
Tacubaya, the "swell " suburb of the capital.

Here are the country residences of the " best people " in Mex-
ico bankers, merchants, lawyers, et id genus omnc. The houses
are magnificent and the gardens one clot of color all the year
round. I was delighted to be told by O'Shea that the handsom-
est residence of all, a baronial hall, in fact, belonged to an Irish-

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 101

man, a Waterford man Barren, a banker, and one of the most
respected and wealthiest men in the country.

" You will see the place, Joe," said the sefiora through the
window ; " you will be asked to dine there. They are charming
people. I want you to see a genuine Murillo, a Crucifixion, that
Mr. Barren has, and also a quaint old picture representing a city
scene in the time of Cortez."

The scenery after we had quitted Tacubaya became magnifi-
cent. Before me stood the purple Ajusco Mountains towering to
the azure and covered with vegetation to their summits a per-
fect sierra. On the left were Popocatapetl and the " Woman in
White," seemingly touching the sky. Around me were corn-fields
of luminous green, here and there interspersed with tufts of trees
gorgeous in scarlet and yellow blossomings. Ever and anon we
would pass some tiny church, its green-tiled dome flashing in the
sunlight, while shrines and adobe dwellings embowered in per-
fumed foliage dotted every turn of the road at irregular inter-
vals.

In something less than two hours we arrived at our destina-
tion, without let or hindrance, and, ascending a gentle slope, the
wondrous old convent burst upon our view, the high walls of
its enormous garden stretching away till lost in the dip of the
valley.

On a great green before the gateway, soldiers in undress were
engaged in playing games, children in noisily disporting them-
selves, and sheep in browsing on the short, crisp grass.

The rich carving over the oaken portal was rudely effaced, the
sculpture on the stone arch clotted with lumps of mud, while a
statuette of the Mother of God had not escaped the sacrilegious
ands of the soldiery of Lerdo de Tejada.

Our right of entrance was questioned by the sentinel on duty.

" I come to visit the sisters," said Sefiora San Cosme, with
quiet dignity.

" I cannot let you pass till the officer of the guard consents,"
retorted the sentinel.

"Send for the officer of the guard, then," exclaimed the
senora, her nostrils expanding, her eyes flashing.

The officer, after some delay, made his appearance, a greasy,
unhealthy-looking fellow, who kept buckling on his sword as he
crossed a courtyard that once resounded but to the soft footfall
of the pious sisterhood. After scrutinizing us with consider-
able pertinacity this valiant warrior permitted us to pass, detacb-
ing a sergeant to shadow us.

102 My RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

"Ask the sergeant if Colonel Mojelos is here," I urged
O'Shea.

" Yes, he is," was that worthy's reply after he had made the
inquiry.

" I would like to see him." We were passing along a hooded
cloister.

" This is the name of the chap you saw last night at the Cafe
Concordia, and probably the same boyo."

" I wonder if he speaks English? "

" English ! Why, what next ? Why, man alive, the officers of
the Mexican army are the most ignorant, uneducated set of black-
guards of any service in the world."

" I am obliged to differ with you, sir," said a deep, stern voice
directly beside us, and Colonel Mojelos stepped from a door- way
and directly confronted O'Shea.

" My conversation was a private one, sir," said O'Shea
haughtily, " and with it you have nothing whatever to do."

" Your conversation was loud and forced upon me, sir, and
you have made a statement which I characterize as " here his
eyes fell upon Senora San Cosme, who was a little in advance,
and dropping his voice into a whisper, he added : " Your name
and address, sir."

" Faith, I'm proud of both," retorted O'Shea. " My name is
Van Dyck O'Shea, and my present address is the Calle Maras-
cala. And now, as the gentleman in difficulties said to his Sa-
tanic Majesty, who are you ? "

" This is my card." And Mojelos hand him the bit of paste-
board.

" A word with you, colonel, if you please," I said.

Mojelos bowed stiffly.

" If it's going to try and patch up my broken crockery you
are, Joe Nugent, just don't give yerself the least trouble in life.
Van Dyck O'Shea has been nearer the Fifteen Acres in the Phoenix
Park, Dublin, than you know of."

" I don't intend to meddle in the matter at all," I hurriedly
exclaimed. " Please go on with the senora ; make an excuse for
my absence say anything you like."

" Well, I'm first cousin to a leprechaun if "

" Go."

O'Shea saw by my tone that I had some object in view, and
clinging to his theory that I was about to endeavor to throw oil
upon the troubled waters, he exclaimed :

"Joe Nugent, you're a gentleman I say no more; I'm in

iSSo.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 103

your hands." And turning on his heel, he rapidly followed in the
direction taken by Senora San Cosme.

Colonel Mojelos regarded me with an insolent curiosity, twirl-
ing his mustache with one hand, while he played with his sword-
knot with the other.

" Well, sir," he exclaimed, as for a second I speculated as to
the best mode of addressing him, " what do you wish to say to
me? Have you any insult to offer to the officers of the
Mexican army ? "

" None whatever," I replied. " I wish to speak with you
privately, and alone."

"Speak!"

" Not here."

" Follow me, then."

He entered the doorway from which he had so unexpectedly
come upon us, and crossing a large apartment, the walls frescoed
with scenes taken from Holy Writ, ascended a broad oaken
staircase, and, passing down a red-brick-paved cloister, halted at
a low, narrow door, and, slightly bowing, motioned me to pass in.

The room was neat as a new pin. In one corner was a camp
bedstead, in another a tin toilet service. A table covered by a
white cloth beautifully embroidered in color stood in the centre
of the room, on which there was a bouquet of exquisite flowers.
A few oaken chairs, evidently part of the wreckage of the convent,
were scattered about. In a corner lay a military chest. Over
the mantel was a picture of the defence of Puebla, with the words
"Cinco Mayo" written in a bold hand right across it, followed
by a scratchy signature. A writing-table did duty near a low,
deep-embrasured, diamond-paned window, while guns, lances,
and cigar-boxes formed to make up the impedimenta of this sol-
dierly apartment.

" Be seated, sir." And Mojelos, motioning me to a chair,
flung himself upon one exactly opposite to me.

I plunged my hand into my breast-pocket and drew out Con-
chita's letter the letter addressed to myself.

" Do you recognize that hand-writing, colonel ? " I asked.

" One moment." And he sought a pair of pince ncz, which
with considerable deliberation he adjusted to his somewhat aqui-
line nose.

He flushed as, raising his eyes from the superscription on the
envelope, his gaze met mine.

" I do know that writing," he said, and that was all, while he
seemed to read my very soul.

104 MY R A][D INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

" It is, if I am not mistaken, the writing of the Senorita Con-
chita Mojelos."

He nodded two or three impatient nods.

"Your sister?"

" My sister, sir ; and may I ask if you are the Mr. Nugent to
whom it is addressed ? "

" Here is my card, colonel." And I handed him my visiting-
card, which he perused word for word.

" Are you the bearer of a letter of introduction to me, Mr.
Nugent ? " he asked.

" Be good enough to read that letter, sir," I retorted, con-
siderably nettled at his cold, reserved manner, " and you will
see whether a further introduction is necessary or otherwise."

" I shall," glancing at me over the now unfolded epistle. As
he read it the expression on his face altered as if by magic ; he
clutched the paper as though holding on to it for dear life, while
his lips formed the words as he devoured line after line.

" Forgive me ! " he cried, springing to his feet, and embracing
me, after the Mexican fashion, by enfolding me in his arms and
clapping my back several times very rapidly. " My friend, my
sister's friend, the friend of a great cause ! You are good, noble,
generous, brave ! My darling sister would never have trusted
you if you had not been a true man. Mr. Nugent, I am yours,
your friend, your brother, your slave. Do with me as you will.
For God's sake let the impressions of the last five minutes be
erased from your mind for ever ! I shall embrace your friend
when I meet him. All will be joy and brightness. You have a
letter for me from a certain personage is it not so?" Terribly
excited, he made a supreme effort to control himself.

" I have it here, colonel, and while you peruse it I shall, w r ith
your permission, rejoin my friends." The fact being that I did
not care to mix myself up in the secrets contained in the epistle.

" As you will. Permit me to escort you to your friends. Not
a word, please. My first duty is to offer my hand to Mr. O'Shea.
Under any other circumstances I would have endeavored to
have run him through or shot him."

O'Shea's astonishment was considerable as Colonel Mojelos
advanced to him and exclaimed :

" Mr. O'Shea, you may pitch into the entire Mexican army,
for all 1 care, but with me you must be friends. Shake hands."

" What the divvle does this mean ? " asked O'Shea of me
in his richest brogue, while the colonel effusively wrung his right
hand.

i8So.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 105

" It means that Mr. Nugent is my very dear friend."

" Your very dear friend ! "

" Yes, mine."

" Why, he never saw you till last night, and never spoke to
ye till a minnit ago."

" It's all right, Mr. O'Shea. I'll tell you all about it by and
by," I exclaimed with a laugh.

" Faith, I'm fairly bothered between you."

" You'll do me the honor of visiting my quarters after your
visit to the sisters. We'll see how a bottle of Burgundy will go
under the shadow of the Ajusco Mountains." And giving O'Shea's
hand another ring and nodding gaily to me, the colonel quitted us.

" Well, if this doesn't bang Banagher ! " muttered O'Shea.
" Joe Nugent, what does it all mean ? I hope that you kept up
the honor of the old country, anyway ; but to have a man chal-
lenging you wan minnit, and the next asking you to crack a
bottle of Burgundy by the powers, it bothers me."

I was uncertain how to act. Mojelos had evidently avoided
all mention of my acquaintanceship with his sister.

" How did ye put yer comether on him at all, Joe?"

" Well, you see we had some mutual friends in New York ;
that is the reason why 1 wanted to learn all about him last night.
He seems a very nice, gentlemanly fellow."

" He's nice enough now, but, faith, I didn't love him ten
minutes ago. He's as brave as a lion, and has a good fighting
name. They say he has the army in his pocket, he and Diaz. If
he chose to 'pronounce/ as they call it here, to-morrow, he'd
have fifteen, aye, more than fifteen, out of our thirty thousand
troops at his bugle-call. Anyhow, we'll ' pronounce ' on his
urgundy."

We found the senora in a distant cloister, engaged in conver-
tion with a venerable sister, who turned a pair of sweet, pure
eyes upon me as I approached.

Luckily, she spoke in French, and we had a delightful chat.

" The gentleman in command of the soldiers here is a gentle-
man and a devout Catholic," she observed ; " he makes our impri-
sonment as little painful as possible, and is very severe with any
of his men who trespass beyond the Nazarene Cloister garden,
which marks the boundary-line. He sent a corporal to prison for
six months the other day for crossing the garden-wall. The
commander who was here before him was a terrible man. He
allowed his men to go anywhere, and encouraged them to do it.
He entered the church with a cigar in his mouth one Sunday

io6 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

morning. I called his attention to it ; he laughed at me and spit
out on the floor. I plucked the cigarette from his mouth and
would not return it to him. He threatened to imprison me. I
said : ' You may insult me as long and as often as you will, but
you shall never insult my Lord and my God while I can raise my
voice in His cause.' After that the terrible man did not come this
way, but his soldiers did, and they poisoned the air with their
ribald songs and awful blasphemy. They smoked, and sang,
and did what they pleased at all hours of the day and night. I
protested, and was laughed at for my pains. The archbishop, to
whom I wrote, protested ; he was insulted. It would have gone
on, but that the godless commander was sent to Guadalajara to
quell a threatened insurrection. I believe he was killed. Sister
Guadalupe and I prayed for his conversion. Perhaps," she add-
ed with a delightfully naive simplicity, " he was penitent at the
last moment."

Accompanied by the good sister, we visited the church, part of
which was falling into decay, owing to the condition of the roof,
which the government refused to expend a peso upon. The altar
was extremely handsome, and the Virgin in a painting above it
as starry-eyed as the San Sisto Madonna in the Dresden Gallery,
Raphael's masterpiece.

" Now, Sister Monica, we must let our young Irish friend see
that robe that is being worked for the statue of the Virgin by my
protegee."

" It is in the sacristy. She is at work on it now. This way."

"You're going to see one of the prettiest girls I ever laid my
two eyes on, Nugent, me boy," observed O'Shea, who had fallen
back a little with me. " If I was twenty years younger I'd be a
raging lunatic about her. If your heart isn't as tough as stirrup
leather her eyes will burn a pair of holes in it. They're violets,
me boy."

"Is she a nun? "

" Not a bit of it."

" Then I suppose she's on the high-road, like Miss O'Mulligan,"
I laughed.

" I don't think so."

"Who is she?"

" The senora knows. There's some mystery about her.
Hush ! here we are."

We descended three steps and found ourselves in the sacristy,
a poem in the darkest oak, relieved by sacred pictures and
stained glass. The apartment was long and low-ceilinged.

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 107

Around the walls at intervals were oaken chests in carving such
as might have come from the steel of Verbruggen himself, bound
in wondrous brasses ; at one end a row of confessionals, and at
the other an altar occupying the whole width of the sacristy.
The ceiling was adorned with a superb copy of the Assumption.
An oaken table stood in the centre ; beside it two high-backed
chairs upholstered in crimson Utrecht velvet, chairs such as Ysa-
bella " the Catholic " and her right royal consort might at one
time have sat bolt upright upon. The table was covered by a
snow-white cambric cloth ; upon the cloth was a robe of helio-
trope satin.

A girlish form bent over the robe. A daintily-shaped head
was bowed reverentially. The sun shot shafts of gold through
the stained glass ; one of them crowned the girl's head like an
aureole. A pair of small white hands were engaged in sewing
pearls on the heliotrope satin.

" Inez," said the sefiora.

The girl looked up. I saw nothing but a pair of great violet
eyes and the blush of the white rose.

She kissed the sefiora again and again.

" Isn't she a beauty ? " asked O'Shea in a whisper.

" Hush ! " I said, for I wanted to hear her speak.

" Joe, come here," said the sefiora, " till I present you to my
protegee, the Senorita Inez O'Hara."

Inez courtesied deeply.

" May I not claim you as a countrywoman, Miss O'Hara?" I
asked.

" You may and you may not, Joe," laughed the sefiora.
" She was born in Ireland and reared in Ireland, but since I
mean she has been in this country for ten years, and I mean to
make a Mexican of her. Don't I, Amiga de mi corazon ? "

" Si, sefiora I mean yes." And the girl was as red as the
blossom of the flor de pasqua that crimson flower one sees no-
where but in sunny Mexico.

" Do you recollect old Ireland, sefiorita ? " I asked.

" Oh ! yes. I could never forget it. We lived in a great
house with fields, oh ! so green, that sloped down to a river, and
there was a crowery "

" Rookery, dear ! " put in the sefiora.

" Rookery and the rooks made such a terrible noise. And we
had a jaunting-car. And papa went to hunt in a red coat nearly
every day in winter, and we had ever so many beautiful dogs ;
and I remember going up to Dublin in the train, and I recollect

io8 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Oct.,

that poor papa pointed out the old Irish Houses of Parliament to
me in College Green, and the statue of King William. I was
seven years of age then ; I am seventeen now."

There was a delicious freshness about the young girl. Her
manner was naive, graceful, and earnest. Her foreign accent, too,
added piquancy to the general effect, while her voice was de-
lightfully low and musical. Her violet eyes looked fearlessly
into yours, yet with an alluring softness. The, rich red lips
seemed loath to part with the words that came from them ; her
utterance was slow. The sefiora had entered into a discussion in
Spanish with Sister Monica apropos of something I wot not of, in
which O'Shea joined, so I had the senorita all to myself,

" I am sewing pearls on the cloak of our Blessed Lady," she
said. " We are to have a great feast next Monday. The senora is
coming, and I suppose she will fetch you. Are you a Catho-
lic?"

" Thanks be to God, I am ! "

" Oh ! I'm so glad. Poor mamma was a Protestant, and want-
ed to compel me to leave the true faith ; but the grace of the Al-
mighty was with me and I clung to Him. I suppose the senora
has told you all about me? "

" Not one word."

She was silent a moment, her beautiful head bowed, while a
wave of intense, desolating sadness swept over her expressive
face.

" Have you come straight from Ireland, Sefior Nugent? "

" Straight."

" And merely to pay the senora a flying visit? "

" She was my dear mother's school-fellow."

The tears welled up in her eyes. I saw that the word " mo-
ther " touched a chord, so I dashed into a rattling description of
my departure from Dromroe, my stay in London, describing my
sister, my voyage across the Atlantic, the trip to New Orleans,
and finally the sail over the gulf and the railway ricle to the
capital.

" The senora has spoken of you, oh ! ever so often. I know
you quite well. I know your sister, too. Why didn't you bring
her with you ? How I would have loved her ! "

" You can love her by proxy," I laughed.

Inez blushed deeply, and commenced to trifle with a string of
pearls. If she had been less unsophisticated I could have had
some fun with her over my joke ; but it was evident that she won-
dered what I meant, and took what I said in sober seriousness.

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 109

"Do you often come on to visit the Senora SanCosme?"
I asked.

" Every week. I spend four days here learning Latin and
French from Sister Guadalupe, and assisting her in teaching the
children of the village. I am going in to the Calle Marascala so
soon as I shall have finished beading this robe of our Blessed
Lady."

" You prefer being in the city to being out here." I was hor-
ribly commonplace, but what could I talk about ?

" If I could have the senora here always I think I would like
to remain here. It is so tranquil, so absolutely quiet ! "

" Do you ever see the dashing young officers who are quar-
tered in the other wing ? "

The senorita shuddered as she replied, "Never."

Suddenly I recollected the copy of Raphael's Madonna in my
bed-chamber at the Calle Marascala.

" You are an artist, Sefiorita O'Hara," I said.

" Has the senora told you ? " she asked in some confusion.

" She has, and some of your work meets my eyes the very
moment I open them in the morning, and the last thing as I close
them for the night your copy of the Madonna San Sisto."

" Oh ! you are in the Emperor's Room. It was in that room
that the poor martyr sat a whole day during the crisis in the
Cortes. The senora was honored by his confidence. It has been
called the Emperor's Room ever since. I have done an original
head of our Lord," she added. " Would you like to see it ? "

" Immensely."

She stepped over to one of the quaint old bureaus, unlocked a
brass-bound drawer, and produced a picture on canvas, sketched
but unfinished. It was a head of the Divine Master not in
agony, but in beatification. The design was admirable, the exe-
cution wonderful for one so young and so untutored.

" Who taught you to paint, senorita?"

"The good Padre Gonzalez. You should see some of his
sketches ; they are superb, inspired. But he never shows them,
he is so modest, so retiring. I I fear you you will think it
rather bold of me to have shown you this, senor."

"On the contrary, senorita, I feel highly flattered. And
now I want to ask you a question : What are you going to do
with this picture ? "

" Sabe Dios. Send it to the raffle they are getting up for the
benefit of the poor fathers."

"Would you sell it? "

i io OUR EPOCH. [Oct.,

" Who would buy it ? "

" I would."

" Would you really ? " The joy, the rapture in those violet
eyes as, bending forward, the girl gazed at me, awaiting my re-
ply!

" I will give you anything you ask for it, sefiorita."

" And I will take anything you offer."

" Would twenty thirty pounds be too little ? "

" Too little ! Why, five pounds. How many Mexican dollars
go to five pounds, Senor Nugent ? "

" About twenty-five, I think."

" Sixteen twenty-fives make one hundred and fifty. O
sefiora," she cried addressing Madame San Cosme, " Sister
Monica, we shall be able to purchase that white satin robe for the
Virgin after all. Senor Nugent wants to buy this," thrusting
forth the picture, " and has offered me one hundred and fifty dol-
lars for it. Isn't that too much ? May I take it ? "

" For sweet charity's sake," I exclaimed, gently removing the
picture from her hand. " I shall make it a present to a dear old
friend in Ireland for his little chapel, with the condition that "

At this moment a sergeant entered with an urgent message
from the colonel that I should come to him at once.

" Au revoir," said the sefiora. " Do not remain too long,
Joe."

"What about the bottle of Burgundy?" whispered O'Shea.
" Stir him up."

TO BE CONTINUED.

OUR EPOCH.

CERTAINLY our century has brought forth a Great Epoch,
But most of the men who live in it are extremely small.

Schiller.

i88o.] EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. in

THE EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA.

THE church in California has passed through as many phases
within the past hundred years as in other countries it has re-
quired centuries to develop. With the conquest of Mexico by
Cortez the purely military achievements of the Spanish monarch
ended, and a singular but effective combination of military, civil,
and religious administration replaced the army.

In the light of recent modern history, which relates the sub-
jugation of nations and sections through the bloodiest contests,
sending the victims of national greed into the next world un-
shriven, it would be manifestly improper and unjust to urge
against the church the important part her priests took in the
Spanish conquests. No apology now is necessary on behalf of the
church of Christ for perfecting her mission of carrying the " glad
tidings " to the uttermost parts of the earth, and availing herself
of the favorable opportunities afforded by the Spaniards to ac-
complish the purpose she has always been destined to effect
to wit, the conversion of the heathen. Hence, wherever the
Spanish conqueror or adventurer penetrated, there also penetrat-
ed the servant of God.

The dream of the soldier was the acquisition of gold and the
hope of reward or preferment from the king he served ; his mo-
tives were human, transitory, and related to the present only,
while to the priest occurred the promises of Christ the world
was to be redeemed and an earthly kingdom, a church militant,
established ; visions of future glory existed in his mind. With
prophetic instinct, and led by the Spirit of God, he sought, as an
instrument of the divine will, to fulfil the decrees of Heaven by
converting souls to the true faith. The soldier, tired of conquest,
and his greed for gold satisfied at last, rested ; but the priest, im-
pelled by a dominant power, penetrated into unknown regions
and among hostile savages, becoming at once a pioneer explorer
and the harbinger of salvation to those for whom the Saviour had
shed his blood, but who knew it not. And so we find the mem-
bers of the Society of Jesus, as early as the year 1642, civilizing the
Indians in Lower California with success, until the year 1683,
when the Jesuit fathers, under the leadership of Salvatierra
and Eusebius Kino (Kuhn), the latter a learned astronomer from
Ingolstadt, were invested with the ecclesiastical, civil, and mili-
tary administration of the missions, and in a short time brought

ii2 EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. [Oct.,

into the true fold the whole of the peninsula of Lower California.
It was the same Father Kino who, in pursuit of further spiritual
conquests, made his celebrated explorations to the north of the
peninsula and along the Rio Colorado in the years 1701 and 1703,
among other missions establishing that of St. Xavier del Bee in
Arizona, in the Papago Pueblo, nine miles south of Tucson, erecting
so remarkable a church edifice that it stands to-day both a wonder
and a reproach a wonder that the hand of man, in a region desti-
tute of materials, could have possessed the skill to perform so great
and beautiful a work ; and a reproach that the practical civiliza-
tion effected by this learned priest and his co-workers should
have been rewarded with confiscation by the destructive hand
of an abortive republic in the name of " God and liberty." The
walls of St. Xavier del Bee are silent as the graves of those who
worshipped within them, but the day will come when every stone
shall be an accusing witness against the follies perpetrated in the
name of progress.

Later, Fathers Guillen, Ugarte, and Consag made further ex-
plorations of the Colorado of the West, extending the domain of
the missions, and organizing new missions with a view of ren-
dering practicable an overland route from Sonora to California.
Twenty-eight missions in Arizona should testify to the zeal and
energy of these missionaries ; but nothing now remains except a
few ruins and deserted pueblos, and the tradition living only in
the clouded memories of the Poma, Maricopa, Moqui, and Papago
Indians distributed along the Gila River and between Tucson and
the Colorado of the West.

These missions were governed with paternal care and pros-
pered not only spiritually but temporally. The savages were
taught the art of agriculture and such other employments as their
nature permitted them to understand. All was peace and hap-
piness two blessings not permitted long to any one on earth,
much less to the followers of the Society of Jesus. The storm
came and the Jesuit fathers were driven from the scenes of so
much labor. King Philip of Spain, in recognition of their services,
had granted them an annual pension of thirteen thousand dollars ;
but Carlos III., fulfilling, perhaps, the prophecy of St. Ignatius,
expelled them from his dominions on the 25th of June, 1767. The
civil power, presuming, naturally enough, that injustice would be
resisted, placed the execution of the decree of Carlos III. in the
hands of the Catalonian captain of dragoons, Gaspar de Portala,
appointing him at the same time governor of the Peninsula, and
placing under his command fifty well-armed men to expel the

iSSo.] EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. 113

Jesuits from the missions, by force if necessary. Fourteen Fran-
ciscan friars to succeed the Jesuits accompanied Portala. Arriving
at Loreto, the decree was communicated to Father Bonito Du-
crue, the superior of the missions, who, with all the Jesuit fathers,
respectfully submitted to the order and left California on the
3d of February, 1768.

Thus for eighty years these pioneers had converted and
civilized the whole of the peninsula of Lower California and a
large part of Arizona, had give~n to the world a correct geo-
graphical knowledge of a region which mariners from Maldonado
down to Captain Shelvocke sought in vain to gain, and had es-
tablished a new empire for Spain, which to-day, after the lapse
of over one hundred years since the Jesuits were forced to leave
it, is in such a bad and backward condition that it is not worth
annexation to the United States.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768 the labors of the
Franciscan friars began, and the fruits of their missionary work
were as wonderful as those of the Jesuits. Under the leadership
of Friar Junipero Serra, whose name is pronounced with rever-
ence in California, the conversion of Upper, or what is now the
State of, California was effected.

The civilization and development of California was the de-
sired object of the Spanish king, and he was urged to accomplish
his designs, more particularly because the marvellous conditions
of climate and soil of the country were such that its agricultural
resources and productions must be incalculable. It was to be-
come the seat of an immense population and of a highly civilized
and prosperous people ; these would form the nucleus of an em-
pire of great power, which would exercise a controlling influence
over the whole coast bordering upon the Pacific Ocean.

The Franciscans, as the successors of the Jesuits, were en-
trusted with the establishment of a civilization which, when com-
pared with that generally inaugurated by civil or military power,,
was singularly adapted to endure for ages and provide for every
contingency that might arise in human affairs. A long line of
missions gives evidence of a perfect system of homogeneous
pueblos, frequently differing in rank, but always the same in kind
and in organization.

It was under the laws of Spain that for the first time was
built up, codified, and promulgated a complete system of civilized
and Christian law (Las Siete Partidas of Alphonso X., in 1260),
under which municipalities or communes, whether called cities,
villages, or towns, first obtained a representation in the Cortes.
VOL. xxxii. 8

ii4 EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. [Oct.,

But the California communes, pueblos, or missions, although
founded upon the Spanish system, were enfranchised from the
political distinctions of class and the social distinctions of rank,
and exhibited a higher grade of civilization than any cities, vil-
lages, and towns which have replaced them. The missions were
built up from a uniform basis, perfectly resembling each other in
all their features and emancipated from the irregularities and un-
certainties .which deform more modern communes. All this was
the work of the priest, who knew how to mould the temporal
affairs of mankind in perfect shape by the addition of the leaven
of religion. As soon, however, as the civil power assumed con-
trol religion was eliminated and disorder followed.

The first of a long chain of missions in Upper California was
founded by Friar Serra at San Diego, fifteen miles from the
present Mexican boundary-line, on the i6th of July, 1769, and in
fifteen years this holy priest had established in this State five
Spanish and nine Christianized Indian missions, and baptized
5,800 Indians, dying at Monterey on the 28th of July, 1784, at the
age of seventy-one years.

Twenty-one missions in all were founded in California on a line
from San Diego to San Francisco, and down to the year 1823. All
were in the most flourishing and independent condition, while the
whole State shows evidence of the assiduity of the missionaries not
only in providing for their dependants but in increasing the agri-
cultural resources of a prolific soil. It is matter of tradition that
the fathers, in their travels from place to place, carried with them
grain, which they scattered in favorable localities, trusting to
nature to reproduce and fill the land with crops for future gene-
rations ; and it is a fact which can be verified at the present time,
particularly in the southern counties, that hundreds of acres of
oats sprout, mature, and are garnered annually without any cul-
tivation or preparation of the soil. The meadows are clearly
defined and the crops, free from weeds, grow spontaneously.
These " oat-hills," as they are termed, have always been sources
of astonishment, both on account of the wonderful vitality of the
seed and the providence and wisdom of the missionaries, who,
indeed, fulfilled their mission to Christianize, civilize, and develop
the country.

Down to the year 1834 the missions in fact, the whole State-
existed under the religious administration of the Franciscan friars,
and in the latter year were in their most prosperous condition,
morally and financially, as will appear from the following table,
compiled from De Mofras* Calif ornie :

1 880.] EARL Y CA THOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. 1 1 5

TABLE OF THE MISSIONS OF UPPER CALIFORNIA UNDER THE RELIGIOUS
ADMINISTRATIONS IN 1834.'

Names of missions, going north from
the south.

4J-0
&

Distance from
preceding.
Leagues.

Indians.

Horned cattle.

I 1

1, 800

10,000
1,900
20,000
5,000
1,000

1,200
I,2OO
2,OOO
4,OOO
2,500
2,OOO
I,2OO
700
1,200
800
I,2OO
I,1OO
I, 6OO
500
700

wi
i'i

Ij"

June 16, i76g.
June 13, 1798.
Nov. i, 1776.
Sept. 8, 1771.
Sept. 8, 1797.
Mch. 31, 1782.
Dec- 4, 1786.
Sept. 17, 1804.
Dec. 8, 1787.
Sept. i, 1771.
July 25, 1797.
July 14, 1771.
Oct. 9, 1791.
June 3, 1770.
June 24, 1779.
Aug. 28, 1791.
Jan. 18, 1777.
June 18, 1797.
Oct. 9, 1776.
Dec. 18, 1817.
Aug. 25, 1823.

17
14
13

3
18
13
13
it

IS
*4
17
ii

18
8
T 3

262 leag.

2,500
3,500
1,700
2,700
1,500

1,100
I,2QQ
1,300
900
1,250
1,200
1,400
700
500
1,450
600
I, 800
2,300
500
1,250
I,3OO

12,000

80,000
70,000
105,000
14,000
4,000
5,000
14,000
15,000
9,000
4,000
12,000
6,000
3,000
9,000
8,000
13,000
24,000
5,ooo
3,000
8,oco

17,000

100,000

10,000

40,000

7,000
6,000
5,ooo

12,000

14,000
7,000

10,000

14,000
.7,000
7,000
9,000
10,000
15,000
19,000
4,000

4,500

4,000

13,000
I4.OOO
IO,OOO
20,000

8,000
2,500
3.000
3,5
6,000
4,000
2,500
3,000
2,500
1,500
3,5oo
2,500
6,000
10,000
2,500
1,500
3,000

San Luis Rey ....

San Gabriel

N. S. delaSoledad
Mission del Carmelo

Santa Clara .

San Rafael

Twenty-one missions on a line of

30,650

424,000

62,500

321,500

122,500

To the Indians mentioned in the table should be added at least
me-half as many whites.

The reign of the church had brought peace and contentment
iponthe land; the hills teemed with cattle, the soil was cultivated
id its resources developed to a greater extent every year. The
lanagement and discipline were simple and patriarchal, and so
risely conceived that no exceptions or disorders could possibly
mr. The architecture of the missions was of a superior order,
icarly all of the same type, differing only in beauty of design
md extent of decoration. De Mofras thus describes the mission
)f San Luis Rey, in San Diego County :

"The building is a quadrilateral. The church occupies one of its wings ;

le fagade is ornamented with a gallery. The building, raised some feet
ibove the soil, is two stories in height. The interior is formed by a court.

Fpon the gallery which runs around it open the dormitories of the fathers,
of the major-domos,' and of travellers, small work-shops, school-rooms, and
store-rooms. The hospitals are situated in the most quiet parts of the mis-
sion, where the schools also are kept. The young Indian girls dwell in the
halls called el monjero, and they themselves are called ' nuns ' (las monjas).
Placed under the care of Indian matrons, they learn to make cloths of wool,
cotton, and flax, and do not leave the monastery (el monjero) until they are
old enough to be married. The Indian children mingle in the schools with
those of the white colonists. A certain number, chosen among the pupils

ii6 EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. [Oct.,

who display the most intelligence, learn music, chanting, the violin, the
flute, the horn, the violoncello, and other instruments. Those who distin-
guish themselves in the carpenter's shop, at the forge, or in agricultural la-
bors are appointed alcaldes, or chiefs (overseers), and charged with the di-
rection of a squad of workmen."

" The administrative body of each mission consisted of two fathers, of
whom the elder had charge of the interior and of the religious instruction,
and the younger of the agricultural works. The regulations of each mission
were the same. The Indians were divided into squads of laborers. At sun-
rise the bell sounded the Angelus and every one set out for the church.
After Mass they breakfasted, and then went to work. At eleven they dined,
and this period of repose extended to two o'clock, when they returned to
labor until the evening Angelus, one hour before sunset. After prayers
and the rosary the Indians had supper, and then amused themselves with
dancing and other sports. Their diet consisted of fresh beef and mutton,
as much as they chose, wheat and corn cakes, and boiled puddings called
atole and pinole. They also had peas, large or small beans in all an ' al-
mud,' or the twelfth part of a bushel, to each every week. For dress they
wore a linen shirt, pantaloons, and a woollen blanket ; but the overseers and
best workmen had habits of cloth like the Spaniards. The women receiv-
ed every year two chemises, a gown, and a blanket."

Such was the simple and peaceful life at all of the California
missions when in their last year of prosperity, in 1834.

The results of the missionary scheme of Christianization and
civilization in California were so great and so successful that the
exultation of the pious men who arranged it and devoted their
lives to its accomplishment was justifiable. Neither civil nor
military power, neither Protestantism nor modern paganism, can
claim any share in the magnificent work which the religious of
the Catholic Church alone, out of its free and untrammelled ele-
ments, began and completed. The wisdom of civil governments
and statesmen will appear when we come to the secularization of
these missions.

In sixty years of labor the missionaries of California had plant-
ed twenty-one prosperous missions upon a line of seven hundred
miles from San Diego north to the latitude of Sonoma. More
than thirty thousand Indian converts were lodged in the mission
establishments and taught a variety of useful arts, besides re-
ceiving religious instruction. -Their tasks were easy and cheer-
fully performed, and in the glorious climate of California life was
a pleasure. More than four hundred thousand horned cattle pas-
tured on the plains and grazed on the hills, as well as sixty thou-
sand horses and more than three hundred thousand sheep, goats,
and swine. Seventy thousand bushels of wheat were raised an-
nually, and sufficient beans, maize, and other grain to make an an-

i88o.] EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. 117

nual crop of one hundred and twenty thousand bushels. The
missions rivalled each other in the production of wine, brandy,
soap, leather, hides, wool, oil, cotton, hemp, linen, tobacco, salt, and
soda. Of two hundred thousand horned cattle annually slaugh-
tered the missions furnished fully one-half, realizing from the car-
casses, hides, and tallow a net income of one million of dollars from
that source alone. De Mofras says that the income derived from
the cattle and other articles, of which no definite statistics can be
obtained, reached a total production by the missions alone of two
millions of dollars annually.

Gardens, vineyards, and orchards surrounded all the missions,
except the three northernmost, and, according to their latitude,
these missions were ornamented and enriched with plantations of
palm-trees, bananas, oranges, olives, and figs, with orchards of
European fruits, and with vast and fertile vineyards. In addition
to these valuable properties N and the mission buildings the self-
moving or live stock of the missions, valued at their current rates,
amounted to three millions of dollars of the most active capital,
bringing enormous annual returns upon its aggregate amount,
and, owing to the great fertility of animals in California, more
than repairing its annual waste by slaughter. This was the great
religious success of the Catholic missions in California, and this
their material prosperity in the year 1834, even after many depre-
lations had been committed upon them by the first governors of
:he regime of "independence."

" What is remarkable in the establishment of these missions,"
iys De Mofras, is, " they cost the government nothing" When the
dssions of Lower California were first founded the viceroys of
Spain furnished some assistance. Philip V. gave them in the first
rears of his reign an annual pension of thirteen thousand dollars,
mt in the year 1735 the Jesuits added to the capital of their funds
>y the purchase of productive real estate. In 1767 a lady of
Guadalajara, Dona Josefa de Miranda, left by will to the college
of the Society of Jesus of that city a legacy of more than one
hundred thousand dollars, which the Jesuits, however, refused.
This was the beginning of what is known as th'e " Pious Fund "
fondo piadoso}. The property belonging to the " Pious Fund of
California," with its successive additions, comprised landed
estates, including several mines, manufactories, and immense
flocks, with more than five hundred square leagues of land, all
situated in the province of Tamaulipas. In 1827 the government
forcibly seized seventy-eight thousand dollars in specie deposited
at the mint in Mexico, the product of the sale of the Arroyo Zar-

iiS EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. [Oct.,

co, an estate of the society, and the " Pious Fund" was also de-
spoiled of immense tracts of land by the Congress of Jalisco.

Under the Spanish government the revenues from the
" Fund " amounted to about fifty thousand dollars per year, which
paid the salaries of fifteen Dominicans at six hundred dollars each
and forty Franciscans at four hundred dollars each. The balance
was used in the purchase of cloth, implements, tools, church
accessories and ornaments.

From 1811 to 1818, and from 1828 to 1831, the missionaries,
on account of political troubles, ceased to receive their stipends,
and, including the revenues already seized by the Mexican gov-
ernment, a total of more than one million of dollars was appropri-
ated from the revenues of the Pious Fund, leaving, however, the
capital intact.

On May 25, 1832, the Mexican Congress directed the execu-
tive power to rent out for a gross sum for seven years the pro-
perty of the " Pious Fund," and pay the proceeds into the na-
tional treasury. But a second decree of Congress on the ipth of
September, 1836, directed that the " Pious Fund " should be
placed at the disposal of the new bishop of California (Garcia
Diego) and his successors, to the end that these prelates to whom
its administration was thus confided might employ it in the de-
velopment of the missions or in similar enterprises, according to
the wish of its founders.

General Santa Anna, Provisional President, now came upon the
scene, and on February 8, 1842, deprived the bishop of California
of the administration of the " Pious Fund." And ftns pious presi-
dent administered it so successfully that he sold it in a lump to
the house of Barrio and to Rubio Brothers shortly after. The
value of the " Fund " was not less than two millions of dollars,
and the proceeds were incorporated in the national treasury.
This ended the " Pious Fund." Steps were taken some time ago
by the archbishop of San Francisco and others to recover at
least a portion of this property through our own Congress, but
the returns have not yet begun to come in.

The missions themselves had not been interfered with to the
year 1834, at which time, as has been said, they were in their most
prosperous condition. The Mexican government had absorbed
the outside property and floating cash belonging to the missions,
and now proceeded, in the name of "God and liberty," to "ad-
minister" the temporalities of the missions in California.

It was discovered that Spain never intended that the church
should have any property in the missions; that the Spanish

i88o.] EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. 119

government, in engaging the missionaries in this work, intended
solely that they should convert and colonize the Indians, and, hav-
ing accomplished these objects, the system of missions became
spent, and the Indians, being now good, pious, and useful, were
ready to become citizens. Hence the duty of the state was to
come in and relieve the missionaries of their burdens, and the
state accomplished this object in an effectual manner. Besides,
the idea of the regular clergy holding curacies was wrong, the
system of secular curacies being the normal one in the church.
This was the theory of secularization. Another reason urged
and all governments have a number of " reasons " and excuses for
confiscating church property was that the friars, who were
mostly Spaniards, were hostile to the newly-acquired " indepen-
dence " and should be invited to go out of the country, leaving
California fully colonized, with uniform and homogeneous institu-
tions, united, prosperous, and contented.

In 1834, therefore, the decree of secularization was passed,
and, following a forced construction put upon the laws of Spain
providing for the establishment of the missions, it was deter-
mined to convert the religious communities into civil municipali-
ties and place their property in the hands of civil administrators,
appointing secular priests in place of the missionaries of the
regular orders. As a natural consequence private individuals,
taking advantage of the liberal offers of the " God and liberty "
style of government organized in Mexico, began to petition for
grants of grazing-lands which were located upon the well-stocked
>ortions of the religious establishments. These petitions were
readily acceded to by the government, and a systematic course of
)lundering pursued with such success that in 1842, not quite
eight years after the " civil administration " of the missions had
begun, the latter were practically ruined, showing the following
difference as the result of the " progress " of statesmanship :

Religious Civil

administration, administration.
1834. 1842.

Indians 30,000 4,000

Horned cattle 400,000 28,000

Horses and mules 62,000 3,000

Sheep, etc 321,000 31,000

Grain 122,000 7,000

Even the counter-revolutionary governor, Micheltorena, who
ime from Mexico with an army, was dismayed at the ruin, and
in his proclamation of March 29, 1834, recited that

" The pious and charitable institutions of social order for the conversion

120 EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA. [Oct.,

of the savages to Catholicism, and to an agricultural and peaceful life, are
reduced to the gardens and enclosures of the churches and buildings, . . .
that the Indians, who are naturally lazy, now, from additional labor and
scarcity of nourishment, being in a state of nudity, having no fixed employ-
ment or appointed mission, prefer to keep out of the way and die impeni-
tent in desert woods, in order to escape a life of slavery filled with all pri-
vations and destitute of social enjoyment ; . . . that there is no other way
of reanimating the skeleton of a giant like the remains of the ancient
missions except to fall back upon experience, and to fortify it with the ap-
pliances of civil and ecclesiastical power."

This governor makes an attempt to restore the missions, but
the evil has been done, and the skeleton of the giant could not be
reanimated. The immense benefits conferred upon the world by
the civilization of an empire, considered from a purely world-
ly point of view, and independent of the spiritual benefits to
the souls of the people, were utterly disregarded, and the same
insane, unbusiness-like spirit which h'as possessed nations from the
foundation of the world exhibited itself in destroying what had
been intended for the world's benefit, and involving in ruin the
civilization perfected by the church, without which governments
cannot endure.

With the destruction of the missions began the return of the
reign of violence and lawlessness, and the church, as it now exists
in California, is obliged to begin its work anew, as if the history of
the past hundred years had never been. There is no State in the
Union, no country on earth, in which the highest form of civili-
zation attained, by and through the church, and the lowest form,
that without God or morality, appear in such striking contrast
as in California, and nowhere is there less said about it as an
argument to maintain the claims of the church to be the light of
the world and the best promoter of even worldly prosperity.

i88o.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 121

THREE CATHOLIC POETS.

A SKETCH.

" No young man," says our old friend, the estimable Duke of
Omnium, in Anthony Trollope's last novel, " should dare to neg-
lect literature. At some period of his life he will surely need
consolation ; and he may be certain that, should he live to be an
old man, there will be none other, except religion." The Duke of
Omnium, however, is not of our time ; it is not strange that he is
puzzled and bewildered by the breadth of view which permits
agnosticism as a decoration to the real business of life enjoyment
and denies none of the pleasant vices to exalted gentlemen or
none of the picturesque frailties to no less exalted ladies. Were
the worthy duke abreast of the age he would not except religion,
for it has become an axiom with the most exact thinkers that cul-
ture is the highest and best thing in life ; and what is culture,
judged by their standard, but the art of reading in perfection ?
Matthew Arnold comes as near blasphemy as any man can in this
period, in which the saying of smart things about the Creator
has come to be regarded as a mark of much wit, when he places
poetry even above science as the consoler of men.

" Without poetry," he asserts in a preface to Thomas Humphry Ward's
mirable work, The English Poets, which is the text of this article " with-
t poetry our science would appear incomplete ; and most of what now
passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.
Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it. For finely and truly does
Wordsworth call poetry 'the impassioned expression which is in the coun-
tenance of all science ' ; and what is a countenance without its expression ?
Again, Wordsworth finely and truly calls poetry 'the breath and finer
pirit of all knowledge.' Our religion parading evidences such as those on
hich the popular mind relj^s now; our philosophy pluming itself on its
sonings about causation and finite and infinite being what are they but
the shadows and dreams and false shows of knowledge ? The day will come
when we shall wonder at ourselves for having trusted them, for having taken
them seriously ; and the more we perceive their hollowness the more we shall
prize the ' breath and finer spirit of knowledge offered us by poetry.' "

spi

The day has come when men reared among the shams of Pro-
test have turned away from the weak support of an emasculated
religion to seek rest in a philosophy which offers no certitude,
and in a science which is only half understood. They stretch out

122

THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

their hands for bread, and the priests of culture give them a
stone.

Poetry, exalted, God-inspired as it is, interpreter as it is of the
voiceless messages that man and nature hold for each other, fails
when we go to it for that consolation which all men crave some
time or other, and without which the highest attainment is value-
less that consolation which the soul craves, and craves more

strongly, when it has conquered the intellectual world and reach-
ed its ultima thule of culture. At a certain time in his life the
French poet, Maurice de Gu6rin, found what he deemed consola-
tion in resting against the trunk of a lilac in his garden, " le seul
etre au monde centre qui il put appuyer sa chancelante nature,
comme le seul capable de supporter son embrassement," in the
struggle between pantheism and faith that was going on in his
soul. Poetry must fail those who go to it as a last resource, as
the lilac failed De Gu6rin. It is the experience of men in all ages
that hearts only can comfort hearts, that the purest abstractions
are cold and unsatisfactory. Humanity that can console hu-
manity must be itself, yet higher than itself. The church offers,
not poetry, but the Sacred Heart.

Goethe did not find consolation in poetry or the highest
flights of his intellect, and Matthew Arnold, the most polished
and complaisant of the priests of culture, is not, it would seem,
free from that divine despair in which we may imagine Sappho
looking from her rock. Poetry is a seraph on whom the light of
God falls, but poetry is not God. Poetry may bear the soul to
supernal flights, but it cannot give rest, serenity, hope, which
make consolation. It ever asks that " Why ? " to which religion
gives an eternal answer.

The Scriptures contain great poems the greatest poems ; but
he who, reading them, tries to eliminate the Godhead of Christ
loses himself in what Ruskin calls the verde smalto the helpless
green of the Elysian Fields. Homer, cold and joyless, offers no
consolation ; Horace and Theocritus are without joy in their
verde smalto. Roses and wine soon lose their savor and the
cicada is only harsh when the heart is sad. Christianity gave
to poetry all its joyousness, all that sympathy with men and
nature which makes us glad. Poetry no longer echoes the sea-
like moan of restless souls, as in Homer ; it interprets and ele-
vates, as in Dante. It is impossible to divorce Christianity
from the poetry that is nearest to us. Christianity has made
it what it is. It was not till after the Resurrection that the
spring clothed itself in gladness. The rain came and departed,

1 8 So.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 123

and the voice of the turtle was heard in the land ; but the
full glory and gladness of the spring did not make itself known
to the human heart until after the first Easter. Who, going to
Shakspere for consolation, is not referred to Him who is beyond ?
And where is the sublimity of Dante without the Divine Persons
from whom that sublimity radiates ? Such poets as Swinburne
and Gautier cannot escape from the light of the cross. Their
paganism is not the paganism of the Greeks ; they cannot bridge
over the stream that flowed from Calvary. The light deepens
their shadows. Their effects are in chiaro-oscuro y and this has
given them that vogue for which they sacrificed so much.

All poets have longed for clearer, more exact and fervent ex-
pression of their inspiration than any earthly language can give,
and all poets have felt that the highest poetry here falls short of
that sublime poetry which their boldest thoughts only see as
through a glass darkly. No poet seems to have known this
longing and this limitation better than Robert Southwell. To
him poetry brought no consolation, as we may judge from his
poems. To him it brought no false quietism, which both Words-
worth and Cowper seem to take for consolation. He burned
to manifest the divine love that lived within him ; and, in
the usual expression of poetry, he cried out. Southwell was a
priest whom religion forced to be a poet ; it is doubtful whether
either Habington or Southwell would have been poets had they
not been spurred on to ardent expression by the motive which
religion gives to devout souls. This is true, perhaps, in a les-
ser degree of Habington and Crashaw than of Southwell. The
former, however, would have been only dilettanti, had not religion
given them clearness and strength. All three were, as another
writer has expressed it of one of them, not merely poets who hap-
pened to be Catholics, they were poets and Catholics ; and their
religion and inspiration were so near each other that it is diffi-
cult to tell which bade them sing.

No man can read the story of Robert Southwell's life without
a feeling of reverential admiration. His life and his poetry are
alike above our ordinary sympathy, for he was a martyr, and
a poet whose theme was always of sacred things. Martyr and
poet are epithets so grand that when a man deserves them he
becomes superhuman. For this reason the poetry of South-
well will never become popular. His poems had some vogue in
England, not because the public really preferred strength and
real passion to the fashionable word-building and quaint conceits
which passed for poetry, or felt his power as a poet, but because

124 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

the heroism and pathos of his death attracted popular sympathy
to his work. Even his enemies admitted that his death was
worthy of an ancient Roman ; and zeal, inflexible faith, and heroic
endurance were not without honor even in days when the politi-
cians had found it wise to lead the English nation to regard a
Catholic priest as worse than a leper.

Southwell did not think much of poetry as an art ; but this
fault was not uncommon among the Elizabethan poets. His rich-
ness of expression is unbounded, unhusbanded. Nature, as nature,
had no message for him. Nature was God's footstool ; of the
myriad voices, of the myriad phases in earth and heaven, he took
no note for themselves. The rose and the lily were for him in
their best place before the tabernacle, and the breath of the new-
mown fields was less sweet to him than the incense that
wreathed the pillars of a church. Rhythm and rhyme were fet-
ters to his thought rather than helps to it. Verse in his hands
was the nearest earthly approach to that divine expression which
the seraphs have ; it was powerless to hold the fervor of a
heart that burned with desire for union with our Lord. " St.
Peter's Complaint," the most worthy expression of his genius, is
an evidence of this.

Southwell doubtless considered Shakspere's contemporary
poem of " Lucrece " if, indeed, he read it as Ulysses looked upon
the sirens. Professor Hales, who contributes a brief but ap-
preciative notice of Southwell to The English Poets, points out
the striking resemblance, in a literary way, between " St. Peter's
Complaint " and " Lucrece." In each poem there is an over-
powering wealth of imagery, a crowding of illustration, a luxu-
riance of thought, and a minuteness of narration. " St. Peter's
Complaint " is the stronger poem, not only in its motive but in
treatment. " It is undoubtedly," says Prof. Hales, " the work of a
mind of no ordinary copiousness, often embarrassed by its own
richness, and so expending them with a prodigal carelessness."
But it is something more than this. It is the outburst of a heart
burning with divine love and poetic fire ; it is unique in literature.
It is not artistic ; it contains little sweetness, no sympathy with the
humanity of the saint, which a modern poet would have made
the most prominent part of the " Complaint." The silence of a
Stylites only could better express the penitence of such a soul
as Southwell portrays. The poem is long, consisting of one hun-
dred and forty six-line stanzas. These are striking and beauti-
ful :

1 8 80.] THREE CA T HO LIC POE rs. 125

" Like solest swan, that swims in silent deep,
And never sings but obsequies of death,
Sing out thy plaints, and sole in secret weep,

In suing pardon spend thy perjured breath ;
Attire thy soul in sorrow's mourning weed,
And at thine eyes let guilty conscience bleed.

" Still in the 'lembic of thy doleful breast

Those bitter fruits that from thy sins do grow;
For fuel, self-accusing thoughts be best ;

Use fear as fire, the coals let penance blow ;
And seek none other quintessence but tears,
That eyes may shed what entered at thine ears.

" When, traitor to the Son, in Mother's eyes,
I shall present my humble suit for grace,
What blush can paint the shame that shall arise

Or write my inward feelings on my face ?
Might she the sorrow with the sinner see,
Though I'm despised, my grief might pitied be.

" But ah ! how can her ears my speech endure,

Or scent my breath still reeking hellish steam ?

Can Mother like what did the Son abjure,
Or heart deflowered a virgin's love redeem ?

The Mother nothing loves the Son doth loathe ;

Ah ! loathsome wretch, detested of them both.

" Weep balm and myrrh, you sweet Arabian trees,

With purest gems perfume and pearl your rine ;
Shed on your honey-drops, you busy bees,

I, barren plant, must weep unpleasant brine :
Hornets, I hear, salt drops their labor plies,
Sucked out of sin, and shed by showering eyes.

" If love, if loss, if fault, if spotted fame,

If danger, death, if wrath or wreck of weal,

Entitle eyes true heirs to earned blame,
That due remorse in such events conceal :

That want of tears might well enroll my name

As chiefest saint in calendar of shame."

These quotations give only a slight idea of the beauty and
richness of the poem. It is over-wrought, and the constant allit-
eration detracts somewhat from the simplicity of statement which
would otherwise have strengthened many of the lines. One can-
not help speculating upon the heights which Southwell might
have reached in the art of poetry, had he not suffered death at the

126 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

age of thirty-three at the age when he desired most to die, if
God willed it, as bringing him nearer to that sublime Model of
his life whom he loved so well to imitate. It is hardly possible
that he would have written much, even had he lived to remain in
England. The life of a priest in the days of " good Queen Bess "
had little leisure in it for dalliance with a muse that does not love
turmoil. And, moreover, theology is not the most tender nurse
of the poetic art. Theology is apt to restrict its steps and hold
it in leading-strings, that it may not forget men's souls in pluck-
ing flowers for the sake of their perfume. Dante, it is true, was
a theologian, and Milton probably thought that he was one ; but
Southwell was a priest, and the holy office cannot accept a di-
vided heart. It is probable that in " St. Peter's Complaint " he
reached his highest water-mark in poetry. It may have been in
him, as it was in the author of " Lucrece," to write a poem that
would move the hearts of all the ages to come ; but to him, as a
priest and poet, fame was nothing. The soul nearest him was
more important to him than the admiration of centuries. South-
well is one of a very few poets who never felt the touch of
earthly passion- or of that sentiment, half-human, half-divine, that
we call love. Even Crashaw's address to his mythical mistress,
impersonal as it is, expresses a feeling which Southwell never ex-
perienced. He lent no ear to the Circe who transformed so many
of his brother poets into a semblance of bestiality. As a priest,
he felt the sacredness of his place above angels ; and there is
no sign of that conflict between the sensuous and the spiritual
to which poetic temperaments seem especially prone. In this
Southwell offers a striking contrast to a rare and delicate modern
genius, Maurice de Guerin, who, likewise a Catholic and with a
strong instinct towards the entire consecration of himself to God,
shattered himself in a struggle between the sensuousness of nature
and the asceticism which he felt in Christianity. But Southwell
was the highest type of a Catholic. This fact, from the ordinary
literary point of view, doubtless restricted his scope as a poet ;
but from the ordinary literary point of view the manner is above
the thing, the art of Gautier above the fervor of Southwell, and
human love is only, worthy of the poet's song. Southwell is none
the less a poet that he sang to God alone. The texture of his
work is stained in the blood of the Sacred Heart, not iridescent
with the changing hues that arise from corruption. " Love's
Plot," which is not inappropriate here, is full of a characteristic
sententiousness that shows his firm poetical grasp' by never be-
coming prosy or commonplace :

i88o.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 127

" Love mistress is of many minds,

Yet few know whom they serve ;
They reckon least how little love
Their service doth deserve.

" The will she robbeth from the wit,

The sense from reason's lore,
She is delightful in the rind,
Corrupted in the core.

" She shroudeth vice in virtue's veil,

Pretending good in ill ;
She offereth joy, affordeth grief,
A kiss when she doth kill.

"A honey flower reigns from her lips,

Sweet lights shine in her face ;
She hath the b'lush of virgin's mind,
The mind of viper's race.

" She makes thee seek, yet fear to find ;

To find, but not enjoy ;
In many frowns some gliding smiles
She jaelds, to more annoy.

" Like winter rose and summer ice,

Her joys are still untimely ;
Before her hope, behind remorse,
Fair first, in fine unseemly.

" Moods, passions, fancies, jealous fits,

Attend upon her train ;
She yieldeth rest without repose,
A heaven in hellish pain.

" Her house is sloth, her door deceit,

And slippery hopes her stairs ;
Unbashful boldness bids her guests,
And every vice appears.

" Her sleep in sin doth end in wrath,

Remorse rings her awake ;
Death calls her up, shame drives her out,
Despairs her upshot make.

" Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,

Leave off your idle pain ;
Seek other mistress for your minds
Love's service is in vain."

128 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

" Times go by Turns " and " The Burning Babe " are already
too well known to Catholics to need reproduction. It is strange
that his " Child of my Choice " a tender and fervent address to
the Child Jesus has not found its way into our hymn-books.

Southwell was not the only poet who suffered on the scaffold.
The gallant Surrey had preceded him, and in after-years Andr6
Chenier died by the hand of the executioner ; but no poet in
modern times died the glorious death of Southwell. The deaths
of Surrey and Chenier were as mournful sunsets ; his a glorious
sunrise. Like his own "solest swan," his last songs in prison
were sweetest, for he had already pierced, with a martyr's vision,
the splendors of heaven.

From his childhood he was fervently religious. He was the
third son of Richard Southwell, a Catholic gentleman of Norfolk.
Robert was born at his father's seat,. Horsham, St. Faith's, about
the year 1562. There is a tradition to the effect that a gipsy
woman made an attempt to steal him, in the hope of gain ; and
he never ceased, it is said, to show his gratitude to God for
having saved him from a semi-savage and vagrant life. Although
the Southwell family was Catholic, Richard Southwell never
permitted his religion to stand in the way of his preferment ; and
in those days Catholics could obtain worldly advantage only by
the sacrifice of principle. Robert's tendency towards the reli-
gious life was so strong that he was sent to Douay to be edu-
cated for the priesthood, and from there to Paris. This fact
speaks well for his father, who risked much by having him edu-
cated abroad. Robert went from Paris to Rome, where he was
received into the Society of Jesus. Early in the year 1585 he
applied for permission to return to England. The thought of
souls perishing for the sacred nourishment that he could give
them filled him with a solicitude that was agony, and he longed
for the crown of martyrdom. The peril that faced him was not
vague: "Any papist," according to the statute 27 Elizabeth c.
2, " born in the dominions of the crown of England, who should
come over thither from beyond the sea (unless driven by stress
of weather, and tarrying only a reasonable time), or should be in
England three days without conforming and taking the oath,
should be guilty of high treason." Southwell knew that a Jesuit
was doubly obnoxious to the herd of Englishmen who blindly
followed time-serving leaders ; he knew, too, that if discovered
he should be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He did not shrink.
Perhaps he reverently repeated the words of his " Burning
Babe":

i88o.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 129

" Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorn,
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals ;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls ;
For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blooc}."

Southwell's letter to his father which he wrote soon after his
return to England shows that the poet who wrote " St. Peter's
Complaint " might as easily have spoken an apologia before the
despots who in England imitated the persecutions of Diocletian in
the name of " reformation." The letter is full of that earnestness
and faith which were ingrained in this remarkable man :

" Who hath more interest in the grape than he who planted the vine ?
who more right to the crop than he who sowed the corn ? or where can
the child owe so great service as to him to whom he is indebted for his
very life and being ? With young Tobias, I have travelled far, and brought
home a freight of spiritual substance to enrich you, and medicinable re-
ceipts against your ghostly maladies. I have, with Esau, after a long toil
in pursuing a long and painful chase, returned with the full prey you were
wont to love, desiring thereby to insure your blessing. I have, in this
general famine of all true and Christian food, with Joseph, prepared abun-
dance of the bread of angels for the repast of your soul. And now my
desire is that my drugs may cure you, my prey delight you, and my pro-
vision feed you, by whom I have been cured, enlightened, and fed myself ;
that your courtesies may, in part, be countervailed, and my duty, in some
sort, performed. Despise not, good sire, the youth of your son, neither
deem your God measureth his endowments by number of years. Hoary
senses are often couched under youthful locks, and some are riper in the
spring than others in the autumn of their age. God chose not Esau him-
self, nor his eldest son, but young David, to conquer Goliath and to rule his
people ; not the most aged person, but Daniel, the most innocent youth, de-
livered Susannah from the iniquity of the judges. Christ at twelve years
of age was found in the temple, questioning with the greatest doctors. A
true Elias can conceive that a little cloud may cast a large and abundant
shower ; and the Scripture teaches us that God unveileth to little ones that
which he concealeth from the wisest sages. His truth is not abashed by
the minority of the speaker for out of the mouths of infants and sucklings
he can perfect his praises. Timothy was young, and yet a principal pastor;
St. John a youth, and yet an apostle ; yea, the angels, by appearing in
youthful semblance, gave us a proof that man)*- glorious gifts may be
shrouded under tender shapes. All this I say, not to claim any privileges
surmounting the rate of usual abilities, but to avoid all touch of pre-
sumption in advising my elders ; seeing that it hath the warrant of Scrip-
ture, the testimony of example, and sufficient grounds both in grace and
nature.

" If you," says this earnest poet, " if you were stretched on your de-
parting bed, burdened with the heavy load of your former trespasses, and
gored with the sting of a festered conscience ; if you felt the hand of death
grasping your heart-strings, and ready to make the rueful divorce between

VOL. XXXII. 9

130 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

body and soul ; if you lay panting for breath and bathed in a cold and fatal
sweat, wearied with struggling against the pangs of death, oh ! how much
would you give for one hour for repentance, at what rate would you value
one day's contrition ? Worlds would then be worthless in respect of a
little respite ; a short time would seem more precious than the treasures of
empires. Nothing would be so much esteemed as a moment of time, which
is now by months and years so lavishly misspent. Oh ! how deeply would
it wound your heart when, looking back into yourself, you consider many
faults committed and not confessed, many good works omitted or not re-
covered, your service to God promised but never performed. How in-
tolerable will be your case ! Your friends are fled, your servants frightened,
your thoughts amazed, your memory distracted, your whole mind aghast,
and, unable to perform what it would, only your guilty conscience will con-
tinually upbraid you with most bitter accusations. What will be your
thoughts, when, stripped of your mortal body, and turned both out of the
service and house-room of this world, you are forced to enter into uncouth
and strange paths, and with unknown and ugly company to be carried be-
fore a most severe Judge, carrying in your own conscience jour judgment
written, and a perfect register of all your misdeeds ; when you shall see Him
prepared to pass sentence upon you against whom you have transgressed ;
he is to be the umpire whom by so many offences you have made your
enemy ; when not only the devils but even the angels will plead against
you, and yourself, in spite of your will, be your own sharpest impeacher ?
What would you do in these dreadful exigencies, when you saw the ghastly
dungeon and huge gulf of hell breaking out with most fearful flames ; when
you heard the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the rage of these hellish
monsters, the horror of the place, the rigor of the pain, the terror of the
company, and the eternity of the punishment ? Would you then think
them wise that would delay in such weighty matters, and idly play away a
time allotted to prevent such intolerable calamities ? Would you then ac-
count it secure to nurse in your bosom a brood of serpents, or suffer your
soul to entertain so many accusers ? Would not you then think a whole
life too little to do penance for so many iniquities ? Why, then, do you not
at least devote the small remnant and surplus of these your latter days in
seeking to make an atonement with God, and in freeing your conscience
from the corruption that, by your treason and fall, has crept into it ; whose
very eyes that read this discourse, and very understanding that conceiveth
it, shall be cited as certain witnesses of what I describe ? Your soul will
then experience the most terrible fears, if you do not recover yourself into
the fold and family of God's church."

For six years Southwell labored in his native land. Many
Catholic souls, even priests in hiding, were strengthened by his
example and consoled by his fervent piety. His zeal made many
return to the church and saved others from apostasy. Protected
by Lady Arundel, whose confessor he was, he performed his sa-
cred duties and wrote at intervals ; but the crown of martyrdom,
like a pillar of fire, was always before him. It led to the Pro-
mised Land; and he was soon to gain the end for which he

i88o.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 131

worked. The manner of his betrayal and imprisonment is related
graphically by Mr. Turnbull in his biography affixed to Mr. Rus-
sell Smith's edition of the martyr's poems :

" There was resident at Uxendon, near Harrow-on-the-Hill, in Middle-
sex, a Catholic family of the name of Bellamy, whom Southwell was in the
habit of visiting and providing with religious instruction when he exchanged
his ordinary close confinement for a purer atmosphere. One of the daugh-
ters, Ann, had in her early youth exhibited marks of the most vivid, unmis-
takable piety ; but, having been committed to the Gatehouse of Westmin-
ster, her faith gradually departed, and along with it her virtue. For, having
formed an intrigue with the keeper of the prison, she subsequently married
him, and by that step forfeited all claim which she had by law or favor upon
her father. In order, therefore, to obtain some fortune she resolved to
take advantage of the act of 27 Elizabeth, which made the harboring of a
priest a treason, with confiscation of the offender's goods. Accordingly she
sent a messenger to Southwell, urging him to meet, her on a certain day
and hour at her father's house, whither he, either in ignorance of what
had happened or under the impression that she sought his spiritual assist-
ance through motives of penitence, went at the appointed time. In the
meanwhile, having apprised her husband of this, as also of the place of con-
cealment in her father's house and the mode of access, he conveyed the in-
formation to Topcliffe, an implacable persecutor and denouncer of the Ca-
tholics, who, with a band of his satellites, surrounded the premises, broke
open the house, arrested his reverence, and carried him off in open day, ex-
posed to the gaze of the populace. He was taken in the first instance to
Topcliffe's house, where during a few weeks he was put to the torture ten
times, with such dreadful severity that Southwell, complaining of it to his
judges, declared in the name of God that death would have been more pre-
'erable.

'The manner in which he was agonized may be seen in Tanner's So-
cietas Jesu Martyr. But all was to no purpose ; the sufferer maintained
an inflexible silence ; nothing could shake his constancy ; and the tormen-
rs affirmed that he resembled a post rather than a man. He was then
ansferred to the same Gatehouse which was kept by the husband of the
retch who had betrayed him, and, after being confined there for two months,
as removed to the Tower and thrown into a dungeon so filthy and noisome
that, when brought forth at the end of a month to be examined, his clothes
were covered with vermin. Whereupon his father presented a petition to
Elizabeth, humbly entreating that if his son had committed anything for
which by the laws he had deserved it, he might suffer death ; if not, as he
was a gentleman, he hoped her majesty would be pleased to order that he
should be treated as such, and not to be confined in that filthy hole. The
queen, in consequence, ordered that he should be better lodged, and gave
his father permission to supply him with clothing, necessaries, and books ;
of which latter the only ones which he asked for were the Bible and the
works of St. Bernard. During all his protracted confinement, although his
sister Mary, who was married to a gentleman of the name of Bannister, had
occasional access to him, he never discoursed of anything but religion."

132 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

He was kept in prison for three years. At last, upon his own
petition, he was brought to trial. According to Challoner, Cecil's
reply to this petition was " that if he was in so much haste to be
hanged he should quickly have his desire." He was removed
from the Tower to Newgate, and on the 2ist of February, 1595,
he was taken to Westminster and tried. His conduct before the
court was worthy of his life. He was serene, manly, and not pre-
sumptuous. He denied that he was guilty of treason, but con-
fessed that he was a Catholic priest, and that his purpose in Eng-
land was to administer the rites of the church to her faithful
children. He was condemned, and on the morning of the 22d of
February was executed at Tyburn. Through the blundering of
the hangman his agony was prolonged, and he " several times
made the sign of the cross while hanging." He was drawn and
quartered ; but " through the kindness and interference of the
bystanders the martyr w^as allowed to die before the indignities
and mutilations were allowed." And this happened in the reign
of a woman whom historians have named " good," and whom Eng-
lishmen have been taught to reverence as " great" !

William Habington, who was born in 1605, has been strangely
neglected by Catholics and the public in general. The pathos of
Southwell's death did much toward keeping his fame alive ; but
it is difficult to understand why, when Crashaw is remembered,
Habington is almost forgotten. In those wonderful melanges of
literature compounded " for the use of schools and colleges " it is
difficult to find mention of him, and well did he write in " The
Holy Man " :

" Grown older I admired

Our poets as from heaven inspired ;

What obelisks decreed I fit

For Spenser's art and Sydney's wit !

But waxing sober soon I found

Fame but an idle sound."

It is not surprising that we, who have left the name of a real
Catholic poet, George Miles, fade aw r ay, and to whom the Catho-
lic Canadian, Louis Frechette, is only an unknown name, should
not delve into volumes of forgotten law for Habington's poems ;
it is surprising that at this time, when the resurrecting of musty
poets has become a mania, that so little has been done for one
who, if not a born singer, was yet so near the divine voice as to
catch some exquisite echoes. He was pre-eminently the poet of
conjugal love, as Southwell was the poet of the higher love. His
song is always of two pure hearts feeling hope and fear, to whom

iSSo.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 133

the fever of passion is unknown. Habington came of a good Ca-
tholic family, which is a distinction in a country where the good
families had been so willing to barter faith for fortune. The
stanchness of his blood was proved by the way his ancestors
had kept the faith. His uncle, Edward Habington, having been
implicated in Babington's famous conspiracy to rescue the Queen
of Scots, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at St. Giles in the
Fields. As usual, there was a Protestant minister at the scaffold,
who urged him to be of a lively faith. He answered that he be-
lieved steadfastly in the Catholic faith. The minister feared that
he deceived himself, and asked what he meant. " I mean," he
answered, " that faith and religion which is holden in almost all
Christendom, except here in England." After this, much to the
disgust of the reverend gentleman, he would answer no question,
but prayed to himself in Latin. In his dying speech he " cast out
threats and terrors of the blood that was ere long to be shed in
England." The poet's father, Thomas Habington, was also im-
plicated in the same conspiracy. He escaped probably because
the people were becoming tired of the shedding of the blood of
some of the noblest men in England. It was not hard for the
public to sympathize with generous youths who, as if to return
to the days of chivalry, had risked their lives in behalf of a beau-
tiful and unfortunate queen. The people at heart were not entire-
ly devoted to the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and the wily poli-
ticians around her throne knew when it was prudent to stop the
shedding of blood. Hence Thomas Habington escaped the fate
of his brother. He went to prison, however, and when he was re-
leased Mary Stuart had bidden farewell to earth and gone, let us
hope, to a land happier than even " le plaisant pays de France."
He retired to his ancestral manor, Hendlip, where he led a life of
lettered leisure, producing several works of local topography and
a translation of the epistle of Geldus a Britain. He suffered a
second imprisonment for suspected implication in the Gunpowder
Plot. That he sheltered the Jesuits, Father Garnett and Father
Oldcorne, afterwards most unjustly hanged, at Hendlip, was the
only evidence against him. James is said always to have been
partial to the partisans of his mother, and it is possible that
Thomas Habington's connection with the Babington plot may
have worked in favor of his release. His brother-in-law, Lord
Monteagle, interceded in his behalf, and after his escape a second
time he betook himself to the company of his children and books.
Of his son, the poet, little is known, except his love-story. He
was educated at St. Omer and at Paris. Returning to England

!34 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

with the down just sprouting on his lip, he fell in love. The lady
of his thoughts was Lucy Herbert, the daughter of Lord Powis.
Habington was a gentleman of small estate and the bearer of a
name that of late had not been on the winning side. Lord Powis
felt that the niece of Northumberland and the granddaughter of
an earl might look for a more splendid suitor. But Lucy the
incomparable Castara of Habington's poem looked Avith favor on
the poet. The course of true love did not run smooth, but its
variations were rather the ripples of an April shower than the
waves of an autumn storm. Following the fashion, young Hab-
ington wooed his lady-love in verse. It does not take much to
excite turmoil in a poet's soul, and Habington's troubles must
have been mild indeed, since they did not excite anything but the
most proper and gentlemanlike protest :

" Parents' laws must bear no weight

When they happiness prevent,
And our sea is not so strait
But it room has for content."

This is about the most violent sentiment he utters. Lord
Powis belonged to the Catholic branch of the Herberts, and the
stanchness of the Habington faith must have had some effect in
softening his opposition. He was not a very cruel parent, and
the fact that Habington had a small estate neutralized his de-
merit, in a father's eyes, of occasionally dropping into poetry. In
all his raptures of Castara's sighs, glances, eyebrows, and bosom
Habington never loses a certain consciousness of " deportment."
He is never tired of protesting that the bent of his love is honora-
ble and his purpose marriage an iteration that the occasion does
seem to require. But if his verse Avas somewhat mannered and
even the spiritual Southwell did not escape the conceits of his
time his sentiment is always honest, manly, and pure. His
thoughts did not wander from his wife, the wonderful Castara.
Next to religion she was the lodestar of his thoughts. He was
married at the age of twenty-eight, and the years of his life after-
wards kept the peaceful and happy promise of his wedding-day.
His description of Castara is the most exquisite passage in his
greatest poem :

" Like the violet which alone

Prospers in some happy shade,
My Castara lives unknown,
To no looser eye betrayed.

For she's to herself untrue
Who delights i' th' public view.

i88o.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 135

" Such is her beauty, as no arts

Have enricht with borrowed grace;
Her high birth no pride imparts,
For she blushes in her place.

Folly boasts a glorious blood :
She is noblest being good.

"Cautious, she knew never yet

What a wanton courtship meant ;
Nor speaks loud to boast her wit,
In her silence eloquent.

Of her self survey she takes,

But 'tween men no difference makes.

" She obeys with speedy will

Her grave parents' wise commands.
And so innocent that ill

She nor acts nor understands.
Women's feet run still astray,
If once to ill they know the way.

" She sails by that rock, the court,

Where oft honour splits her mast ;
And retiredness thinks the port
Where her fame may anchor cast.
Virtue safely cannot sit,
Where vice is enthroned for wit.

" She holds that day's pleasure best

When sin waits not on delight.
Without mask, or ball, or feast,
Sweetly spends a winter's night.

O'er that darkness, whence is thrust
Prayer and sleep, oft governs lust.

She her throne makes reason climb,

While wild passions captive lie,
And each, each article of time
Her pure thoughts to heaven fly.
All her vows religjoiis be,
And her love she vows to me"

I He was friendly with all the great literary men of the time,
ere is a tradition that he was not absent from those feasts of
son and flows of sack in w r hich Jonson, Massinger, and the
jolly crew of the famous old inns indulged ; with him all things
were enjoyed in moderation. Tranquil, serene, surrounded by
his children and supported by a firm faith, of which " The Holy
Man," the fourth part of " Castara," is an evidence, he ended a
happy and peaceful life in 1654.

He had not been unaccustomed to the pomp of that court in

136 THREE CATHOLIC FOETS. [Oct.,

which Charles I. and Henrietta Maria reigned, in which Waller
sang and Vandyke painted, and in his volume of poems (republish-
ed by Arber in 1870) the most celebrated names of the epoch ap-
pear in dedications. His tragi-comedy of " The Queene of Arra-
gon " was acted in 1640 at Whitehall. The favor of the court did
not disturb him, nor did the Civil War draw him from his seclu-
sion. He was not a man to act except under strong impulse, and
it is probable that neither the Cavaliers nor the Roundheads
wholly had his sympathy.

" Castara " is divided into four parts, " The Mistress," " The
Wife," " The Friend," and " The Holy Man." It speaks well for
the unpoetical constancy of Habington that Castara as the wife is
even more beloved than Castara the mistress. The muse did not
say imperatively to him, as she did to a later and very different
bard,* " Poete, prends ton luth." Indeed, one cannot help suspect-
ing that he often took up his lute because he had nothing else to do.
From lack of perception Habington is often uneven. That per-
fect art that welds all parts into simplicity was unknown to him or
to most of the Elizabethan poets. He startles the reader with viv-
id lines which are like the bright scarlet of the salt-marsh's bushes
among the tawny hues of autumn. He cares little for the tech-
nical part of his art. His sonnet to " Castara in a Trance," al-
though very fine, lacks the dignity of the sonnets of Milton, which
he must have known. To those scornful critics who assert that
the sonnet at its best is only fourteen jingling lines, it will be
an interesting comparison with any one of Dante's or with Words-
worth's " The World is Too Much with Us."

" Forsake me not so soon ; Castara, stay,
And as I break the prison of my clay
I'll fill the canvas with my expiring breath,
And sail with thee o'er the vast main of Death.
Some cherubim thus, as we pass, shall play :
' Go, happy twins of love ! ' The courteous sea
Shall smooth her wrinkled brow ; the winds shall sleep,
Or only whisper music to the deep ;
Every ungentle rock shall melt away,
The sirens sing to please, not to betray;
The indulgent sky shall smile ; each starry choir
Contend which shall afford the brighter fire ;

While Love, the pilot, steers his course so even,
Ne'er to cast anchor till we reach to Heaven."

This is a jingling sonnet ; but it is not the sonnet's highest

* De Mussel, " Nuit de Mai."

i88o.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 137

form. These striking lines, like most striking lines in his poetry,
are too epigrammatic ; nevertheless they are beautiful. He ad-
dressed roses in Castara's bosom :

" Then that which living gave you room

Your glorious sepulchre shall be ;
There wants no marble for a tomb
Whose breast has marble been to me."

In this stanza there is much melody and truth :

" They hear but when the mermaid sings,
And only see the falling star,
Who ever dare
Affirm no woman chaste or fair."

His reverence for the Blessed Virgin, and, after her, for Cas-
tara, made him believe in the virtue of all women. Sensuousness,
which is not lacking in his poems, never degenerated into sen-
suality. The boldest flight of his fancy is stayed by the influence
of religion on a clean heart. He believed that

" Virtuous love is one sweet, endless fire."
To poets who thought otherwise he said :

" You who are earth and cannot rise

Above your sense,

Boasting the envied wealth which lies
Bright in your mistress' lips or eyes,

Betray a pitied eloquence." '
'he exquisite lines,

" When I survey the bright celestial sphere,
So rich with jewels hung that night
Doth like an Ethiop bride appear,"

imind one of Shakspere's

" Her beauty hung upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear."

There is no greater similarity between these passages than
itween Wordsworth's

" Violet by a mossy stone "
id Habington's

" Like a violet which alone
Prospers in some happy shade."

But why blame poets for limning coincidences which nature
lakes? The poet who is truest to nature must often seem to
)lagiarize from those who have been true before him. Habington's
worst faults are those of taste. They go no deeper. " Castara,"

138 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

as a whole, is a noble poem that deserves to live. Probably in
no other poet's works if we except Tennyson has a higher, yet
not superhuman, idea of womanhood been given. The most ex-
ceptional and beautiful characteristic of the three truly Catholic
poets, Southwell, Habington, and Crashaw, is their spotless
purity of word and thought. Faith and purity go hand-in-hand.
If "Castara" were studied in this age it might almost make
chastity fashionable among men. This virtue of Sir Gala-
had was not common in Habington's time, and it has always
required much courage in a man of the world to proclaim
that he possesses a quality which is generally regarded as
the crowning attribute of womanhood. To this poet, who
dared to dedicate, in a licentious age, his work to the woman
who was to him as the church to Christ, we owe honor ; it was
his Catholic faith and practice that made him so noble among
the men of his time. Habington ought to be studied by all
young Catholics. Americans have inherited his poems along
with that language which was forced on the ancestors of some of
us, but which is none the less our own. His faults of technique,
so glaringly apparent in this day of almost perfect technique in
poetry, offer lessons in themselves. No man can read "Castara"
without feeling better and purer ; and of how many poets can
this be said ? Since Pope taught the critics to place execution
above conception Habington has found no place. It remains for
the rising generation of young Catholics who read and think to
give him a niche that will not be unworthy of the poet of that
chaste love which was born from Christianity.

If Richard Crashaw, a poet who, by reason of his entire devo-
tion to his faith and his absolute purity, belongs to this group,
had written nothing except the final of " The Flaming Heart,"
he would deserve more fame than at present distinguishes his
name. " The Flaming Heart," marred as it is by those exaspe-
rating conceits which Crashaw never seemed tired of indulging
in, is full of the intense fervor which the subject " the picture of
the seraphical Saint Teresa, as she is usually expressed with
seraphim beside her " would naturally suggest to a religious and
poetic mind. After what Mr. Simcox very justly calls " an
atrocious and prolonged conceit," * this poem beautifully closes :

" O thou undaunted daughter of desires !
By all thy dower of lights and fires ;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove ;
By all thy lives and deaths of love ;
* The English Poets.

i88o.] THREE CATHOLIC POETS. 139

By thy large draughts of intellectual day,

And by thy thirsts of love more large than they ;

By all thy brim-fill'd bowls of fierce desire,

By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire,

By the full kingdom of that final kiss

That seized thy parting soul and sealed thee His ;

By all the heav'n thou hast in him,

(Fair sister of the seraphim !)

By all of him we have in thee,

Leave nothing of myself in me.

Let me so read thy life that I

Unto all life of mine may die."

The mystical fire which lights this poem is a characteristic of
all Crashaw's religious verses. "Intellectual day" is a favorite
expression of his ; " the brim-fill'd bowls of fierce desire " is one
of those lowering conceits that occur so jarringly in Habington's
poetry and that are intolerably frequent in Crashaw. Born
about 1615, he began to write at a time when a poem lacking in
quaint conceits was scarcely a poem, and his verse, delicate, ten-
der, original, and singularly fluent in diction, lost much strength
from this circumstance and from his habit of diluting a thought
or a line until all its force was lost. No poet since his time has
been given so greatly to dilution and repetition, except Swin-
burne. In the famous " Wishes," written to a mythical mistress,

"Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me,"

plays with one idea, fantastically twisting it and repeating it
itil the reader grows weary.

In 1646, four years before his death, Richard Crashaw pub-
;hed "Steps to the Temple." Reading it, one may well ex-
tim, with Cowley:

" Poet and saint to thee alone are given,
The two most sacred' names in earth and heaven ! "

glows with an impetuous devotion which is like the rush of
fiery chariot. It carries the soul upward, although an occa-
sional earthly conceit clogs its ascending rush. And yet it is
evident that the devotion of the poet was so genuine that he did
not think of his mode of expression. He tore out the words that
came nearest to him, in order to build a visible thought. Pope
did not hesitate to borrow the finest passages in " Eloisa and Abe-

140 THREE CATHOLIC POETS. [Oct.,

lard " from Crashaw, and there are many lines in Crashaw's
poems which unite the perfect finish of Pope to a spontaneity
and poetic warmth which the " great classic " never attained.

Crashaw was born in an " intellectual day " tempered by a
dim religious light. His father, like Habington's, was an author,
a preacher in the Temple Church, London, near which the poet
was born. He took his degree at Cambridge. He entered the
Anglican Church as a minister. But his views were not orthodox ;
he was expelled from his living, and soon after he became a Catho-
lic. From his poems it is plain that Crashaw was always a Ca-
tholic at heart. He entered the church as one who, having lived
in a half-forgotten place in dreams, enters it without surprise.
Crashaw went to court, but gained no preferment. The " not
impossible she " whose courtly opposites suggested the por-
trait never " materialized " herself. He became a priest, and died
in 1650, canon of Loretto an office which he obtained, it is said,
through the influence of the exiled Queen Henrietta Maria.
Crashaw's poems are better known than Habington's, though,
with the exception of " Wishes," which, like Herrick's " To Daf-
fodils," is quoted in almost every reader, and the lovely poem be-
ginning,

" Lo ! here a little volume but large book,
(Fear it not, sweet,
It is no hypocrite,)
Much larger in itself than in its look,"

they are read only in odd lines or striking couplets. Crashaw
had the softened fire of Southwell with the placid sweetness of
Habington. He possessed a wider range than either of them ;
the faot that he was at his best in paraphrases shows that he did
not own the force and power which Habington had in less degree
than Southwell, or that his fluency of diction and copiousness of
imagery easily led him to ornament the work of others rather
than to carve out his own. As he stands, any country even that
which boasts of a Shakspere may be proud to claim him. For
the fame of our three Catholic poets it is unfortunate that they
wrote in the great shade of Shakspere ; but in the presence of
great intellectual giants they are by no means dwarfs. Flawless
as men, unique and genuine as poets, they cannot die as long as
the world honors goodness and that divine spark which men call
poetry. They were Catholic ; true alike to their faith and their
inspiration ; faithful, and, being faithful, pure as poets or men are
seldom pure.

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 141

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE GROWING UNBELIEF OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES. An Investigation.
By the Rev. Henry Formby. London : Burns & Gates. 1880. For
sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.

We take this occasion to correct an error of the press in our Notice of
Mr. Formby's great work on Rome in our August Number. The second
sentence of the second paragraph reads : " He stands on the same ground
with Leo XIII. and many others of the most learned and soundest histori-
cal writers." It ought to read : " he stands on the same ground with Leo,
etc.," referring to the celebrated German historian, Prof. Leo of Halle.
The Universal History of Leo is constructed on the idea that Religion, Reve-
lation, the History of Redemption, the Mission of Christ are the central,
dominating facts and the true scope of all human history. This is the mas-
ter idea in all Mr. Formby's writings. In the present pamphlet he assigns
as a principal cause of the growing unbelief of the educated classes the iso-
lation and separation which has taken place in their minds of all secular
history from the history of the true and revealed religion of God. He takes
occasion to criticise the plan of studies which is traditional in Catholic col-
leges as an imperfect and faulty one which separates classical literature
and ancient history from the religious instruction which is -given, at the
same time censuring the measures of precaution which are taken against
modern infidelity as inclining to confine and repress the powers of the un-
derstanding, and the piety which is cultivated in the young pupils as being
of a capricious and luxurious nature.

We have no doubt whatever, that one of the greatest objections to the
truth of the Catholic Christian religion in the minds of the modern scepti-
cal generation is : that it is not universal enough, that it excludes from the
true church and the way of salvation the majority of mankind in favor of
the minority. It is also plain, that one of the best ways of destroying the
plausibility of this specious and sophistical objection is by presenting a
true philosophy of universal history which sets forth Christ in it, as its
central object, the illuminating Sun of the universe " enlightening every
man who cometh into this world." Probably many who are charged with
the great work of education will agree with Mr. Formby that the Course of
Studies might be improved and made more suitable to the present state of
things by aiming more directly and efficaciously at this presentation. A
bishop from a remote part of the world, who is an Englishman, not a con-
vert, but educated from early youth in Catholic schools and in one of the
ecclesiastical colleges of France, lately expressed to the writer his judg-
ment on the thesis of Mr. Formby's pamphlet, formed in the light of his own
experience and observation. He remembered that the effect which the
classical education he received tended to produce in his own mind would
have been that which Mr. Formby points out and deplores, had it not been
prevented by reading Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History. Yet, he
thought the case stated and defended in the pamphlet to be over-stated,
and too much influence assigned to what is only one of many causes com-
bining to produce the present sceptical tendency in educated men. Pro-

142 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

bably, this opinion will be very generally concurred in by those who are
equally competent to form a judgment.

Mr. Formby's criticism of the methods by which personal piety is culti-
vated in the youth who are brought up in Catholic schools and colleges
seems to us captious and ill-sustained to a very considerable extent. As-
signing the cause of future aberration to a defect of early training may
contain the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. All beginners and imper-
fect Christians need to be led in great measure in the way of sensible devo-
tion, and this is especially true of the young. Besides, there is no method
more solid, more intellectual, more truly spiritual, for grounding sincere
and well-intentioned persons both young and old in faith and virtue, than
the way of Retreats. These retreats are given regularly and systematical-
ly in all colleges, and in the schools for both sexes which are conducted by
ecclesiastics and religious. No doubt, thorough instruction ought to be
given in Christian Doctrine and a really solid religious education. Is it cer-
tain that this is generally neglected ? Perhaps attendance at the examina-
tions of even young girls in the best convent schools would show that it is
not. Very likely, there is room for improvement, as there usually is plenty
of that kind of room everywhere. We hope Mr. Formby's strong admoni-
tions will stimulate the effort after this improvement.

THE LIFE OF REV. CHARLES NERINCKX. With a chapter on the early Ca-
tholic Missions of Kentucky ; copious notes on the progress of Catho-
licity in the United States from 1800-1825; an account of the estab-
lishment of the Society of Jesus in Missouri ; an historical sketch of
the Sisterhood of Loretto in Kentucky, Missouri, and New Mexico, etc.
By Rev. Camillus P. Maes, priest of the -diocese of Detroit. Cincinnati :
Robert Clarke & Co. 1880.

This is a history of the life of one of the earliest missionaries of Catho-
licity in the West. A great deal of attention has been called of late to the
remarkable progress the church has made during the last one hundred
years in the United States. Perhaps the best way of appreciating this pro-
gress, and of realizing the wonderful change that has taken place in eccle-
siastical affairs, is to look at the lives pf the early missionaries. The hard-
ships they underwent and the sufferings they endured seem almost incredi-
ble. St. Paul's description of his own life when commending himself to the
Corinthians, indeed, very aptly applies to theirs. But, like the martyrs of
old, they merited by their self-sacrifice an outpouring of God's grace on the
young American Church which made it prosper and grow, until now the
eyes of the world are on us in astonishment. We certainly owe an enor-
mous debt to the Old World for the many valiant souls it sent out to culti-
vate this portion of the Lord's vineyard. Father Nerinckx was one of the
most prominent of these. " No priest," says Father Maes, " ever came to
the missions of the United States who left an impress so clear and distinct
as Father Nerinckx." He went out to Kentucky, where he exercised
his ministry, when there was but another priest in all that region, and
there he spent the best years of his life. From the first moment of his
arrival till his death his life was an heroic one in the truest sense of the
word. Shortly after his death Bishop Flaget, writing to Bishop England,
says that " his whole life was a continued martyrdom and holocaust."
Bishop Spalding, in his Sketches of Kentucky, says that " in the annals of

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

the missionary life in the West few names are brighter than the Rev. Charles
Nerinckx's." Had Father Nerinckx done nothing else than found the Sis-
terhood of Loretto his name would have been worthy of a place in the
pages of history ; but when we come to consider the supernatural life of
the man it can be truly said that he deserves to be ranked among the first
fathers of the American Church. This book will, then, be read with a
great deal of pleasure not only by that large class of our people who admire
virtue and heroism wherever they see it, but especially by those who
sympathize with the church in her progress in this country.

The volume possesses an additional interest on account of the great
number of historical documents it contains. For this reason it is a valua-
ble book for those who wish to make themselves familiar with the history
of the church in the West.

The publishers deserve a great deal of praise for the good taste they
have displayed in doing their part of the work.

LIFE'S HAPPIEST DAY; or, The Little First-Communicant. By the
author of Golden Sands. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1880.

Any work that treats of the matter of First Communion is worthy of
attention. First Communion is by all acknowledged to be one of the most
important events in life, yet the paucity of proper books of instruction in
English, whether for the use of teachers or children, is deplorable, and
unless the teacher has a special adaptability for this peculiar kind of work,
and devotes a great deal of attention to it, the children must be poorly pre-
pared. Indeed, the proof of this is seen every day by the parish priest and
the missionary.

The present work needs little more to recommend it than to say it is by
the author of Golden Sands. It is not intended to supplant the catechism,
but to supplement it. It is divided into three parts. The first, which is
doctrinal, treats of grace, the sacraments of Penance, Eucharist, and Con-
firmation ; the second contains instructions on the principal virtues ; and
the third inculcates certain pious practices to assist the child during the

e of preparation for First Communion, and also to preserve its effects in
er-life. The first part is really a series of instructions explaining the
.techism, and, we fancy, would be of more use as an aid to the teacher

n as a text-book for the child. It presupposes that the child knows
the catechism ; and we doubt if, after this latter is accomplished thoroughly,
as it should be, there would be time enough left in most schools to have
these explanations learned and written out by the children after the plan
of the author. The idea is a good one, if it could be executed.

We especially commend the interrogative form in which all of Parts i
and 2 are written. Any one who has had experience in instructing
children in catechism must have found that the only way of keeping up
the interest and attention is by frequently introducing the interrogative
form. If the book is intended for children we are sorry to see the transla-
tor has occasionally allowed a word to slip in entirely beyond the capacity
of First-Communion children. Few children of eleven or twelve years can
master " thwarted," " depository," " docile," " infectious," " vivify," " ra-
vages "; and confession is defined an "avowal or acknowledgment." We
do not call attention to this fault as a prominent one in the book ; on the

144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 1880.

contrary, we congratulate the translator on the simplicity of the book gen-
erally. But we speak of it because it is of importance in making books for
children, and something which seems to have been entirely ignored by
most of our catechism-writers. We have many catechisms in English
which are admirable theologically, but are practically useless because the
children for whom they are intended cannot even pronounce many of the
words, to say nothing of understanding them. In Part 3 there is what is
intended as a table for examination of conscience, and it is admirably
adapted to children ; but it is put in the form of a confession, and, we think,
is thus apt to mislead a child.

The book is printed in the same style as Golden Sands, and would make
a very neat present or prize ; but it is a book which will never be read by
children, and for a text-book the price is too high.

THE LIFE, PASSION, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD JESUS
CHRIST. Being an abridged harmony of the four Gospels in the words
of the sacred text. Edited by the Rev. Henry Formby. With an en-
tirely new series of engravings on wood, from designs by C. Clasen, D.
Mosler, and. others. New edition. Narraverunt mihi iniqui fabula-
tiones, sed non ut lex tua (Ps. cxviii.) New York : The Catholic Publi-
cation Society Co. 1880.

We are glad to see a new edition of this excellent little work from the
pen of the learned and industrious Father Formby. It follows as far as
possible the language of the Gospels ; its simple style and very clear ar-
rangement, as well as the creditable illustrations, make it a good book to
put into the hands of young persons.

THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER, AND OTHER TALES. By the author of Marion
Howard, Maggie's Rosary, etc. London : Burns, Gates & Co. 1880.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

On the 5th of November every year the Speaker of the British House
of Commons, attended by other worthy gentlemen, has to go through the
sad farce of looking in the cellar of the House of Parliament for " Popish "
gunpowder. Other than this absurd ceremony, no official recognition is,
we believe, any longer given in England to Guy Fawkes' Day, a day that
even within recent years was a terror to peace-loving Catholics in that
country. " Down with the Pope, and God save the Queen ! " if it is now
shouted through the streets, is a cry that has become distasteful to all
decent Protestants. Nevertheless, long-established customs do not die
easily, and innocent Protestant children, who know nothing of the Holy
Father still find amusement in burning a hideous figure that they have
dressed up to represent either Guy Fawkes himself or " the Pope."

The little story of the above volume is a charming recital of how a
Protestant family was led to the church by the firmness of a Catholic,
neighbor's child in refusing to cry " Down with the Pope ! " even though
the affair was represented to the child as empty and harmless. Three other
pleasant tales follow The Fifth of November. The book will be found en-
tertaining and instructing for children from twelve to fifteen years old.

A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, FROM THE ACCESSION OF OUEEN VIC-
TORIA TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS. By Justin McCarthy. "New York :
D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1880.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXII. NOVEMBER, 1880. No. 188.

DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS.

THOUGH it has been customary ever since the so-called revival
of letters to vilify the philosophy of the schools, to pursue it with
the triple lash of ridicule, sarcasm, and invective, this was done
by writers who at least subscribed to some system of metaphy-
sics. Nowadays, however, it is a sad as it is a significant feature
of scientific treatises to sneer at and belittle all metaphysics and
relegate it to the region of exploded fancies and superstitions.
A writer * in a recent number of a leading periodical, obeying the
instinct of his short-sighted philosophy, has given utterance to
the following conceit :

" Let us observe at the start that metaphysics is but a minor branch of
ilosophy, and one that is daily declining in importance. It is a science of
efinitions without bases. It contains a vast amount of laborious logic
that leaves us no wiser than we were."

If this language is flippant and savors of that superficial dog-
matism which imparts to the page of the essayist the air of
smartness which editors sometimes insist upon because it carries
away the hasty reader, it also reveals a general disposition to
acquiesce in the sentiment it embodies.

The ordinarily successful because popular magazine- writer is
he who seeks to reflect but not to mould the thought of a period,
and we must accordingly regard the above utterance as exhibit-
ing a general disesteem for metaphysical pursuits. But we will

* North American Review, May, 1880. F. H. Underwood, art. " Ralph Waldo Emerson," p. 484.
Copyright : Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1880.

146 DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. [Nov.,

quote language much stronger in its condemnation of this branch
of human knowledge, from a source that claims to be far more
authoritative than the pages of a review. Dr. Henry Maudsley,
in his treatise on the Physiology of the Mind, says :

" Two facts come out very distinctly from a candid observation of the
state of thought at the present day. One of these is the little favor in
which metaphysics is held, and the very general conviction that there is no
profit in it ; the consequence of which firmly-fixed belief is that it is cul-
tivated as a science only by those whose particular business it is to. do so ;
who are engaged, not in action, wherein the true balance of life is main-
tained, but in speculating in professorial chairs or in other positions where
there are little occasion for hard observation and much leisure for intro-
spective contemplation ; or if by any others, by the ambitious youth who
goes through an attack of metaphysics as a child goes through an attack of
measles, getting haply an immunity from a similar affection for the rest of
his life ; or, lastly, by the active and ingenious intellects of those metaphysi-
cal philosophers who, never having been trained in the methods and work
of a scientific study of nature, have not submitted their understanding to
facts, but live in a more or less ideal world of thought."

We have quoted this passage in full, as it both strikingly ex-
presses the objections which are daily urged against the study of
metaphysics and conspicuously abounds in the faults with which
every arraignment of that science may be charged. The quota-
tion proves how noticeable a feature it is of the accusations that
are made against metaphysical studies that their authors invari-
ably fail to explain what is meant by the term. They inveigh
.against " metaphysical psychology " and " metaphysical abstrac-
tions," as though the disparagement implied in the very use
of the term sufficed to fasten the seal of condemnation upon it.
This failure clearly to explain what certain writers so severely
reprehend is all the more amazing when we find them adopt-
ing the principles and applying the conclusions which the science
of metaphysics has established for them, and which they conse-
quently would fain gladly disavow. Indeed, they are driven to
this by the very necessity of the case, for there can be no true
science existing apart from the principles which metaphysics
supplies. It lies at the root of all knowledge, and it alone fur-
nishes to us the means of constructing an intelligible philosophy
of the cosmos.

A reference to the true meaning of the term, a statement of
that which the science of metaphysics embraces in its compass,
a rtsumt of its achievements, will convince the least reflecting
that it is the corner-stone of all the other sciences, that it is in-
deed the wellspring of all systematized knowledge. What now

i88o.J DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. 147

is meant by metaphysics ? A science, the queen of all the sci-
ences that, namely, which treats of things transcending the limits
of the sensible universe, and offers to our contemplation the true
properties of real being. Are there such things? Are there
objects of human cognition other than those which are revealed
to us through the senses? Are there properties of being far
more real than the sensible qualities of matter with which we are
placed in immediate contact? Dr. Maudsley, just quoted, to-
gether with the whole tribe of materialists, reply in the negative,
and call such objects vain conceptions, the brood of a disordered
intellect and product of a heat-oppressed fancy. Let us see if
such is the case. When the most illiterate man mentions the
name of the commonest object he performs an intellectual action
at the bottom of which necessarily lies a notion that transcends
the scope and grasp of the senses. The " tree " or the " field " of
which the laborer speaks represents a general idea from which all
sense-operation is excluded. Both are general terms, and as such
have their origin in the first known individuals of both species.
The knowledge we first obtain of an individual of a class is a
direct universal conception. We know the object, indeed, to-
gether with its individual characters, the latter being revealed to
us by the senses ; but when we name it we abstract from those

haracters and give expression to that pure essence which is
mmon to it with all other objects essentially identical, and we
consequently embody in the concept which the name of the object
ymbolizes nothing whatever of what is contained in the sensible
resentation. The color, weight, shape, and other sensible

ualities pertain to the individual and must be cognized in it ; but
the essence is common to all, and this, once cognized, supplies
us the means of determining a common identity. Should we
w recognize this identity as common to many objects, the

irect universal conception or knowledge of the essence of the
object in conjunction with its individual characters becomes

flex i.e., we now consciously exclude from view the true indi-

idual characters, all operation, namely, of the senses, and by a
new act of the intellect embody in one general conception all the
individual objects of the class so far as they agree in essence.
Thus it is only by the aid of metaphysics that we can rationally
explain the manner in which generalization, that commonest as
well as most important of all mental operations, is performed,
and we must consequently admit the validity of the claim of that
science to deal with supersensible objects, and that these objects
possess a reality the chief reality, indeed, of things very differ-

syn
qua

148 DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. [Nov.,

ent from the fictitious and purely subjective value which the rela-
tivists and agnostics would alone allow to them.

It is very easy to charge against a certain branch of human
knowledge that it does not directly tend to increase the sum total
of scientific discoveries, and to belittle it accordingly ; but when
we reflect that it supplies a rational basis to physical science, and
that it is invoked at every step of a scientific procedure, rash as-
sailants should hesitate before penning words that condemn and
stultify themselves. The advocates of the anti-metaphysical school,
if we may be permitted so to designate it, contend that there can
be no legitimate knowledge but that which comes to us through
the channel of experience and observation, and they infer that the
position they hold both furnishes a key to the solution of the in-
ductive method, excludes & priori conceptions as invalid, and
reduces all mental function to sensation. This assumption that
& priori conceptions are invalid, that they are purely subjective
and arbitrary forms of the mind, representing nothing real in the
objective order, is the strongest argument those can wield who
extol the grandeur of physical investigations and claim the supe-
riority of physical science over metaphysics. We will now see
how far the facts justify this assumption.

Two principles underlie all systems of cosmology and cosmo-
gony, and these are the principles (i) of causation, and (2) the
uniform and invariable constancy of the physical universe. Are
these principles really known to us as the result of experience and
observation, or do we know them a priori i.e., as a necessary con-
sequence of the natural activity of our intellects. We hold that
the latter is the only philosophical view that can be taken of the
question. And, first, as to the principle of causation. The advo-
cates of the former view, consistently with their primum philosophi-
cum* maintain that in the relation of cause to effect nothing else
can be found beyond mere invariability of sequence and antece-
dence, since observation and experience disclose nothing more ;
so that, according to them, the variable and irregular sequence
of phenomena, notably bearing no relation to each other, differs
from the relation of causality only in the one element of invaria-
bility. If this be the case what is to prevent the mind from sub-
stituting invariability for variability in a given instance, where
common sense revolts against the supposition of cause, and thus
logically conceiving the relation of causality ? A flash of light-
ning is not deemed the cause of an ague chill, since the mind can
perceive no relation between the two phenomena ; but the mind
can conceive the invariable succession of one event to the other,

i88o.] DECLINE OF THE STUD-Y OF METAPHYSICS. 149

and thus may, without more ado, according 1 to these philoso-
phers, conceive the one as being the cause of the other. Common
sense refuses to acknowledge the operation of cause in such a
case, and is, by the nature of the mind itself, compelled to invoke
the indispensable element of power in order to constitute the true
relation of causality. The notion of cause is the expression of a
law of the mind ; it is founded in its constitution ; it cannot be
demonstrated ; and a due consideration of the instance just alleged
abundantly proves that reason cries out against a view which
emasculates a necessary and absolute conception. Thus, then,
observation and experience are not the source whence we obtain
our knowledge of the principle of causality on which rests the
general law of physical science, but, in order to impart validity to
this corner-stone of knowledge, a metaphysical principle is necessa-
rily invoked. Following in the wake of the late John Stuart Mill,
the disciples of the new school also refer the principle of the uni-
formity of nature to the same source, and contend that, had not
daily experience from our tenderest years taught us that the
physical universe runs in unalterable grooves, we could attain to
no knowledge of that fact. We grant that experience confirms the
truth of the analytical principle, but we at the same time hold
that we come to a contemplation of the phenomena of the uni-
verse with the necessary and preconceived belief that uniformity
the fixed condition of their occurrence. Were it indeed the
rowth of experience we would witness its gradual development
the minds of the young; we would note its broader and deeper
stablishment concurrent with the enlargement of the experience
r hich had given it birth. Now, so far from this being the case,
nldren, in whom reason is only dawning and whose experience
decidedly limited, are the firmest believers in this principle, and
istinctively apply it at each moment of their lives. Moreover,
fohn Stuart Mill has most unwarily fallen into a vicious circle
striving to uphold the opinion that our belief in the constancy
)f natural phenomena has its sole origin in experience. His rea-
ming is virtually : Our senses attest to us the uniform succes-
sion of the events of the physical universe ; therefore we know
lat such uniformity exists, and in consequence we formulate this
principle : The laws of the universe are constant and invariable.
Were we now to ask why it is that the testimony of our senses
may be trusted implicitly from day to day, we are met with the
reply from the followers of Mr. Mill that, nature being constant
and uniform in her operations, our senses deliver to us a constant
and uniform testimony, and hence cannot deceive us. This prin-

150 DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. [Nov.,

ciple, therefore, as well as that of causality, does not derive its
validity from experience and observation, but, like the latter, is
strictly a priori, analytical, and absolutely certain.

We have been at pains to insist upon the logical necessity of
regarding those pure principles of reason upon which avowedly
all knowledge rests as the legitimate outcome of metaphysical
research, in order that we may the better estimate the spirit and
appreciate the illogical position of those who spurn the peerless
science of metaphysics, who look from the sun to study the pro-
perties of light in the weak reflections of the moon. When an
English statesman, at a public distribution of prizes, does not
hesitate to warn his youthful listeners against the study of

" Metaphysics of any kind whatever ; that it was absolutely a waste of
time far better read a novel of Dickens, because metaphysics began by as-
suming something that was not true, and ended in something that was ab-
solutely absurd,"*

we stand aghast and question our very eyes and ears. Surely
there must be a deep-rooted cause for this widely prevailing aver-
sion to a science which fed the keenest intellects of the past,
which supplied material for thought to the colossal mind of Aris-
totle, whence the subtle Plato drew forth those sublime specula-
tions which continue to thrill every truly noble and lofty human
bosom with grand and rare emotions, which inspired the pen of
St. Augustine, and, above all, constituted the substructure upon
which St. Thomas Aquinas built his magnificent Summa Thcolo-
gica. If the study of metaphysics is justly reprobated, then we
must conclude that the writers mentioned, together with many
others whose names were once household words in the great
seats of learning such as Albertus Magnus, St. Anselm, Suarez,
Bellarmine, Descartes, De Lugo, Leibnitz, Locke, Stewart, Reid,
and Hamilton so far from having augmented the sum total of
human knowledge, helped rather to retard scientific progress by
their speculations and hampered men's minds by their systems of
philosophy. The supposition is not tenable, and in rejecting it
we are compelled to seek in the conditions of the mental activity
of the day the causes which are leading to a decline and threaten
an eventual abandonment of metaphysical research.

Many are justly convinced that chief among these conditions
is the exclusive and consequently too ardent prosecution of physi-
cal science. Far be it from us to lift our voice against the grand

* Father Harper, Metaphysics of the Schools, Introduction, p. n (name of statesman not
given).

i88o.] DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. 151

achievements of modern science, nor would we seek to relax aught
of the vigorous prosecution of those scientific investigations to
which we are constant and delighted witnesses. We desire simply
to point out the peculiar mental bias which a very general and ex-
clusive direction of mental effort has produced. Physical science
deals with the sensible properties of matter, and therefore studies
the individual, while metaphysics, divesting its object in the sensi-
ble order of all material conditions, ignores the individual and ab-
stracts therefrom the essence, to which it bends all its energies and
labor. Herein already we perceive points of a radical dissimilarity
between the two sciences which constantly tend to place them in
antagonism, and do most certainly antagonize the minds devoted
to either one with pernicious exclusiveness. Metaphysics deals
with the abstract, while physical science is concerned with the
concrete ; and though this latter is compelled to employ abstrac-
tion in the formulation of its general laws, it does so unconsciously,
because instinctively ; but when it consciously weighs the abstract
with the concrete, that with which it has no concern against that
which is the supreme aim of its efforts, it naturally exalts the lat-
ter over the former, and assigns to it the first place in the hier-
archy of the sciences.

If we wish to look deeper for the cause of this preference for
mere experience and observation on the part of physicists, we
shall find it in a misconception of the true function of the induc-
tive method arid a wrong estimate of its rdle in the history of phi-
losophy. The inductive method essentially consists in establish-
ing a progressive synthesis of natural phenomena till their num-
ber and unvarying uniformity justify a general statement or law.
The naturalist, no matter in what branch of physical science he
may be engaged, who thus by reason of continued induction has
succeeded in formulating a general conclusion, triumphantly
points to the supreme value of the inductive method as having
helped him to the discovery of an important law in the gov-
ernment of the physical world. Now, we contend that here
e misconceives the true function of the inductive method and
assigns to its operation that which is properly deductive. The
man of science continues to employ the inductive method so long
as he accumulates facts bearing on a general conclusion, but
he can never, while adhering to induction, conclude numerically
more than the ascertained facts warrant. The moment he does
so he necessarily includes in the conclusion more than is con-
tained in the premises, and so violates that rule of the syllogism,
Latins hunc quam prczmissce, etc. And yet he is by no means

152 DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. [Nov.,

compelled to accumulate particulars beyond a certain point ;
indeed, to accumulate all were impossible. How, then, is he
justified in reaching a general conclusion ? As soon as the
particular instances are sufficiently abundant he measures them
by the a priori and analytical principle. Uniformity is the
law of the universe, and he accordingly deduces his general
conclusion. With the last particular instance gleaned induc-
tion ceases, and deduction begins and ends in the general
statement based upon all the particulars that have been ascer-
tained. Moreover, the stickler for the paramount value of the
inductive method, while mistaking its true function, falls into a
habit of mind most fatal to accuracy and precision. As has just
been remarked, no amount of experience and observation can
amass a number of particular instances commensurate with a
general conclusion, so that the mere experimentalist is compelled
to assume the difference between the particulars and the univer-
sal extension of his terms. Were he to admit that his formula is
based on an a priori principle there would be nothing illogical in
his conclusion ; but since he rejects as undemons'trated whatever
experience and observation have failed to establish, his general
statements are necessarily mere assumptions. The habit of mind
thus engendered unfits a man for the study of metaphysics, which
proceeds by the method of strict demonstration and submits
its conclusions to the crucial test of syllogistic reasoning. The
Rev. Thomas Harper, S.J., in his recent able work,* alluding to
this defect in the inductive method, as employed by many of our
scientific men, very pertinently remarks :

" When, therefore, the mind has been long accustomed to those imper-
fect forms of thought, it is liable to become loose in its logic from being
wholly unaccustomed to the use of stricter and perfect forms. Hence arises,
or may arise, a mental slovenliness, if I may so express myself, which is
wont to manifest itself in a neglect of logical order ; in the use of an unde-
fined terminology ; in causeless repetitions ; in careless and imperfect defi-
nitions, when they are given at all ; in the perpetual confusion of legitimate
physical inductions with mere theories, or with deductions which, because
they are deductions, belong to some other science."

That these are riot " wild and whirling words " too many sad
proofs are furnished by contemporary scientific treatises. That
much-used and, we may be permitted to say, that much-abused
term, force, is in evidence to show that modern science is any-
thing but exact in its definitions. The writer has pondered
over ten different definitions of the word, all more obscure

* The Metaphysics of the Schools.

i88o.] DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. 153

than the term itself, and none conveying a definite and sat-
isfactory notion. As for instances of loose reasoning referred
to by Father Harper, they abound in any manual of science
that may be taken up at haphazard. All the attacks that have
been levelled at teleology, or the doctrine of final causes a
doctrine of a purely metaphysical origin are blemished by ex-
treme looseness and inaccuracy. The champions of natural se-
lection tell us that organic development is the result of a pro-
gressive heterogeneity dependent upon blind, necessary law,
and that there is no such thing as intelligent design apparent
in the structure of the universe. Dr. Maudsley holds even that
our conscious purposes are the result of organic changes wrought
in the independent ganglia of the spinal cord, and would have
been as effectually worked out unconsciously. This surely is the
very straining of common sense, and would seem to verify the
saying: " Quos Deus vult perdere, etc." But Dr. Maudsley does
not utterly disdain reasoning in support of his paradox. He
says :

" But an organic action with never so beautifully manifest a design may,
under changed conditions, become as disastrous as it is usually beneficial ;
the peristaltic movements of the intestines, which serve so essential a pur-
pose in the economy, may, and actually do, in the case of some obstruction,
become the cause of intolerable suffering and a painful death. Where, then,
is the design of their disastrous continuance ? "

We submit that this argument scarcely bears the semblance of
iasoning. Who would say that the fly-wheel of an engine was
)t constructed for a purpose because it sometimes bursts and
ds swift destruction all round ? or that a watch was not
lade for the purpose of recording time because its movements
icome sometimes clogged and out of order? Again, he im-
>resses into service as an argument against design an interesting
:periment made by M. Bert. M. Bert cut off the paw of a young
it and grafted it in the flank of another rat ; it took root there

and went through its normal growth, beginning to dwindle after

a time.

" Where," asks our author, " was the design of its going through its
regular development there ? Or what, in the temporary adoption and nu-
trition of this useless member, was the final purpose of the so-called intel-
ligent vital principle of the rat on which the graft was made ? "

This reasoning is vitiated by three salient defects. In the
first place, it assumes that perversion of design is equivalent to
its entire absence ; in the second place, it supposes that there can
be no design where there is no knowledge of it ; and in the third

154 DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. [Nov...

place, it supposes that design must exist, if it exist at all, in the
secondary causes whose natural functions we witness. In regard
to perversion of design being compatible with its prior normal exis-
tence numberless proofs may be given. A locomotive is designed
to run on rails, but, should derailment occur, it will keep right on
for a little distance till the impetus has ceased : case of the graft-
ed rat-paw. The fact that this manner of locomotion did not
enter into the design of the builder of the locomotive is no
argument that he did not intend it to go at all. That ig-
norance of design bespeaks its absence is the 1 height of absurd-
ity. An ignorant navigator whose ship has crashed against
an iceberg curses the circumstance which makes ice an exception
to the law of expansion and contraction, and wishes in his heart
that ice would sink as it forms. He is ignorant of the fact that
all animal life would perish helplessly from the face of the earth
were his most unreasonable wish granted. And yet our modern
materialists blame Christians for admitting the possibility of a de-
sign lurking in certain phenomena of the universe, because their
meaning is hidden from us, because our imperfect minds cannot
unravel their intricacy nor dip down into the vision of their
depths. And so they cry out with Spinoza that to cloak his
ignorance and to deceive his understanding the Christian seeks
shelter in that grand asylum of ignorance the will of God. In
regard to the third supposition implied in the example alleged by
Dr. Maudsley viz., that intelligent design does not exist because
it is not found in the operation of unintelligent secondary causes
the objection is of a piece with his previous reasoning. No one
dreams that the tree has a design in drawing its sap from the
earth, but surely that is no reason why an intelligent Creator did
not fashion it in such sort that it should do so.

It has been our purpose, in bringing forward these views of
contemporary science concerning the doctrine of final causes, to
show the puerility of those who attempt to arraign metaphysics
on special charges, to barely hint at the glaring defects which
maim and mar their reasoning, and to exhibit specimens of that
loose reasoning which has placed the mind of the physicist in an
attitude of conflict with the exacting closeness of reasoning which
the science of metaphysics demands.

When Bacon directed men's minds to the folly of attempting
to investigate the secrets of the physical universe by a synthesis
of its facts, he did not, as many ignorantly suppose, invent the in-
ductive method. He merely insisted upon its greater suitability
for physical exploration. Indeed, it were absurd to suppose that

iSSo.] DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. 155

any philosopher could have invented a method of inquiry (pro-
vided it be a legitimate one) which no man had hither employed.
A legitimate method of inquiry is a natural one, and, being such,
finds its application in the rightful employment of each man's
logical faculty. Our young men, in overestimating Bacon's influ-
ence upon science, have made him the founder of the inductive
method. The writer has heard that statement made this sum-
mer* by a graduate of one of our foremost colleges in his com-
mencement speech. Now, the truth is, Aristotle not only employ-
ed induction in his Natural History, but categorically insists upon
the necessity of its employment in certain cases. And if either
Bacon is entitled to the credit of having revived the inductive
method for a revival, after all, it only was the history of philo-
sophy rightly gives the palm to Roger. This overweening esti-
mate of the inductive method naturally led men to a misuse of it,
and in this misuse we may find the deepest source of the current
hostility to the study of metaphysics. The laboratory is not the
Grove, and, though we all admire those marvels of mechanical
skill which modern ingenuity has wrought, we should not there-
fore disallow to purely speculative thought its influence in con-
tributing to the higher happiness of man, nor subject its conclu-
sions to the imperfect tests of an imperfect method. The induc-
tive method becomes a method of madness when it presumes to
adjudicate upon what immeasurably outlies its scope and groping
reach, and the saddest result of its attempt to do so has been
to make men attach a trifling value to questions that affect their
interests beyond the grave. Hence even if the physicist were
theoretically disposed to allow to metaphysics its proper rank
among the sciences, his long-continued and ardent pursuit of
purely material aims tends to distort his mental vision, and he un-
wittingly tries to bring supersensible objects of cognition down
to the square and compass of his pet methods of procedure. Thus,
then, it is a law of the mind that it must acquire an ineradicable
bias and take on an indelible complexion from the character of
the work in which it is engaged ; " its nature is subdued to what
it works in." The result is a lack of adaptability to other pur-
suits, a certain mental inelasticity which may snap but does not
yield.

Moreover, since the senses and imagination are a constant
misleader even to the student of metaphysics, how much more so
must they prove a stumbling-block to him whose whole life is

* Columbia College, speech on Francis Bacon.

156 DECLINE OF THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICS. [Nov.,

plunged in the ocean of the sensible, and to whom it represents
all that is noblest in life and nature ! A modern physicist of note *
has even gone so far as to proclaim his undying faith in the po-
tency and supremacy of matter and the yet undreamt beauties
and virtues pent up in its bosom. Now, every student of meta-
physics is too well aware that his most annoying enemy in the
contemplation of the properties of real being is the imagination,
which constantly interposes illusory images and distracting sen-
sile representations between the mind 'and its proper object.
Let him attempt to understand the scholastic doctrine of the
multilocation of bodies, and his imagination at once with untiring
activity keeps different objects before his mind's eye, which he,
with mere mechanical rote, keeps on calling one and the same.
Despite his most strenuous efforts, he cannot at first distinguish
multiple occupation of place, which is mere multiple relation,
from the multiplication of the bodj 7 itself, and this because of the
tyranny which the imagination exercises over him. It compels
him to confound extension in ordine ad locum with extension in
ordine ad se, and he cannot discern the pure intellectual truth till
he has purged his mind of the delusive flicker of the imagination.
The senses and imagination are undoubted helps in the lower
orders of inquiry, but once we attempt to outleap their barriers
they stretch octopus-like tentacles round about us and strive to
hold us fast in their meshes. Like the purple mists of the morn-
ing which roll between us and the upper air in bewitching and
fantastic shapes, these weird wantons stand between us and the
eternal hill-tops of truth, and are dispelled only by the continued
radiance of everlasting light. They play admirably the part of
Ariel to Stephano and Trinculo.

Another source of retardation to the progress of metaphysics
is our exceeding jealousy of all encroachments upon the indepen-
dence of thought. Metaphysics, like all sciences, like everything
that has struck its roots deep down into our nature, has necessa-
rily been slow of growth and needs on our part an acknowledg-
ment of what has been accomplished in the past. Now, an exces-
sive regard for independence of thought makes us reluctant to
accredit the past with what has been done, and men love, like
Penelope, to undo to-day the labor of yesterday. Says Father
Harper :

" The man who digs out a way for himself may be very original, but
his originality will probably show itself in missing the right direction. To

*TyndalL

i88o.] ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. 157

follow one's own lights before they can possibly appear is but doubtful
policy ; and such eccentricities will eventually assume the form of errors.
. . . Such a one will be toiling for a foundation for himself while a solid
foundation has already been provided ready for his service. . . . He should
take up the skein of truth from where it has been set free and continue the
work of disentanglement. It surely argues the foolishness of childhood to
unwind the wound silk and to throw it back into a heap of twisted con-
fusion, in order to ensure to one's self the weary task of unravelling it from
the commencement."

Independence of thought is an excellent thing, provided it
knows how to discriminate; provided it can determine upon
what foundations already cast it can build with safety ; provided
it knows how to guard against the mirage and shun the dangers
of the morass. Indeed, well-informed and impartial observers
need be but at little pains to become convinced that the latest
contributions to metaphysical knowledge are but a mere after-
math of truth, that the more glorious harvest has been reaped
by those who went before. Even the advocates of independent
thought have but to open their eyes and study the facts of history
in order to be convinced of this.

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE.

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE intimately allied his name with
America by his great work on democracy, and as an author is
well known in the Old and in the New World. His life as a citi-
zen and as a Christian is, however, less well known than his work
as an author. Nevertheless that life does not lack interest. Born
in 1805, when the First French Empire was still in its glory, he
died when the Second Empire had lost little of its splendor. By
family a Legitimist, he saw unmoved the overthrow of the Bour-
bon dynasty ; unripe as he considered France for a republican
form of government, he saw without surprise, if not without fear,
the downfall of the French monarchy ; nor could the Second Em-
pire, based on universal suffrage, have come upon him unaware.
All these events in the life of the great French nation he regard-
ed as so many steps made along the path to democracy which he
considered all peoples would have to tread. This idea the key-
note of all his writings he has himself clearly set forth in his in-
troduction to his great work.

158 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. [Nov.,

" Everywhere," he says, " we have seen the events of the life of nations
turn to the advancement of democracy ; all men have helped it onward by
their efforts they who designedly assisted its successes and they who
never thought of serving it ; they who have fought for it and they who are
its declared enemies ; all have been carried pell-mell in the same path, and
all have labored together : the one sort in spite of themselves, the others
without knowing it, as blind instruments in the hands of God."

This idea was so strongly impressed on him that, in spite of
family connections and a soul impressionable to all that was great
and good in the old state of French society, he never for a mo-
ment seems to have thought that the pre-revolutionary society
could be restored. Q n his mother's side he was descended from
the celebrated Malesherbes. That renowned man, it will be re-
membered, did much to improve the criminal procedure and
prison discipline of France, and was extremely fond of travelling.
De Tocqueville inherited these tastes of his ancestor. The father
of Alexis was prefect of the department of Seine et Oise, and,
under the Bourbons, was made a peer of France. He trained his
son for the bar. The latter, on finishing his legal studies, was ap-
pointed a magistrate at Versailles, and he held and kept that post
during the revolution of 1830.

One of his colleagues in the magistracy was Gustave de Beau-
mont, with whom he now formed a close friendship. The new
government soon discerned the merits of the two friends, and sent
them on a mission to the United States to report on the peniten-
tial and prison systems of this country. Here the two young men
remained for nearly a year. On their return home they embodied
the results of their investigations in a report which greatly help-
ed to modify the discipline and improve the condition of French
jails. This American expedition had more immediate conse-
quences on the lives of the two friends. They resigned their
posts as magistrates and devoted themselves to lives of study.
Alexis, as the first fruits of his labor, gave in 1835 to the world
the first part of his great work on democracy in America. The
second part appeared five years afterwards. In 1841 Alexis was
elected one of the forty of the French Academy. In thus honor-
ing De Tocqueville the Academy honored itself. Its choices
have not always been so wise, as the recent elections of a Littre
and a Renan have proved. And in the past the Academy has
sinned, although rather by omission than commission. Even
Moliere could not obtain an entry to the Academy on account of
this learned body's too strict adherence to rules. His bust, how-
ever, now stands conspicuously in the hall of the Academy, with

iSSo.] ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. 159

this inscription on it : " Nothing was wanting to his glory he
was wanting to ours."

A little time before his election as an Academician De Tocque-
ville married. About the same time he began his political ca-
reer, and during the ensuing nine years of his life he was a
deputy to the French Chambers and actively shared in the par-
liamentary struggles of those days. In 1849, however, his health
gave way and he was forced to seek repose at Sorrento. His
constant companions there were the younger Ampere and Mr.
Senior. The latter has left on record some interesting details
about his friend and their conversations together. Nothing de-
lighted De Tocqueville more than bright sunshine, bold moun-
tains, and wide expanses of sea. Nature pleased him most when
seen on an extensive scale. The country around Sorrento yielded
him this delight, and, when his health permitted, he enjoyed it
by rambling straight on across the mountains, scrambling up
the steep rocks, and allowing few obstacles to turn him aside.
This mode of taking exercise, while it dismayed his less active
friends, showed them his bold, straightforward character. In all
he did it was his way to go fearlessly forward. As in his walks
nothing could stop him, unless something called on him to do an
act of kindness a bed of wild violets, for instance, whence a few
flowers could be culled for his wife at home so in his life he
never turned aside from his labors, unless to help a friend or to
serve some one in distress. After passing some months at Sor-
rento he returned for a brief space to parliamentary life in Paris.
Soon, however, the halls of the Academy, the brilliant drawing-

ooms of the capital, and the dinner-parties of his political friends
ere no longer enlivened by the pleasant, playful talk, and the

necdotes related without guile, and the sound political views
of Alexis de Tocqueville. Ill-health again forced him away
from the busy world of Paris to the quiet of his country-seat at
Tocqueville, near Cherbourg. There he spent much of his time
in improving his estate, in planting trees in one part, in cutting
them down in another, so as to make the place as pleasant as pos-
sible to the friends he loved to draw around him. Proudly deli-
cate in all his dealings with men, lovingly tender to his family,
truly kind to all, he was a noble and generous master. The
peasantry around Tocqueville still remember with gratitude one
who not merely relieved their wants with his purse, but in per-
son visited and consoled them in their sorrows. While conscien-
tiously discharging the duties of a landlord and acting the part
of a generous host, he continued unceasingly his literary labors,

160 ' ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. [Nov.,

in spite of intense physical sufferings. In 1857, however, he vis-
ited England, where he was warmly welcomed and honored.
The following year his health again failed and spitting of blood
returned. Once more, he had to seek milder climes, this time at
Cannes. The change availed him not, and, seeing his end ap-
proaching, he carefully fulfilled all his religious duties. " Your
father," remarked the latter's confessor to the son, "on the eve
of his death sought consolation from me I found edification in
him." The same words might be applied to the son. Alexis de
Tocqueville through life had always clung to his faith. " Doubt,"
he was wont to say, "-has always seemed to me the most unbear-
able of evils in this world, and I have ever judged it to be worse
than death." He loved to meditate on the great truths of reli-
gion as set forth by Bossuet and by Bourdaloue, esteeming the
latter the greatest of all French spiritual writers. Death at last
freed Alexis de Tocqueville from his earthly sufferings on April
1 6, 1859. Hi funeral at Cannes was a public homage done to
his memory. Lord Brougham was among the mourners. " The
death of M. de Tocqueville," he said, " was a cause of mourning
for England." M. Ampere wrote of him that " he was a man
such as this generation will never produce again." M. Villemain
called him " a martyr to noble studies and noble aspirations."

Although during his political career he did good service to
his country, it is not as a politician that his memory will live.
He was not a great orator. He needed that physical force ne-
cessary to command the attention of large and noisy assemblies
such as the French Chambers too often are. Still, his speeches
were always vigorous and solid, and sometimes even eloquent
and brilliant. His voice was pleasing ; his delicate, well-marked
features, when lit up by the heat of debate, were attractive. In
public as in private life he was ever one of the most exact and
punctual of men. His courage, physical and moral, was unde-
niable. On the coast of Algiers, when shipwreck seemed certain,
he and his brave wife were an example even to the sailors by
their calm presence of mind. When, in the midst of the revolu-
tionary excitement of 1848, the mob of Paris broke into the Cham-
bers, De Tocqueville was unmoved. " I felt," he said, " that they
had no idea of firing." Nor in face of the barricades did he
display less courage. When, during those troublous times, he
became Minister for Foreign Affairs, a friend expressed surprise
that De Tocqueville should accept so difficult a post. " I am not
afraid of responsibility," was the calm reply. His action in the
Roman question showed that his words were no empty boast.

i88o.] ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. 161

It was he who sent M. Corcelles on his mission to Pius IX. at
Gaeta. He wished to see France exercise a legitimate influence
in Italian affairs. He hoped that Pius IX. would continue the
reforms in the temporal government of the Pontifical States which
that pontiff had begun before the revolution drove him into ex-
ile. He was opposed, however, to anything like pressure being
brought to bear upon the Pope to force him to continue such
reforms. He considered that such a policy was an insult to an
independent sovereign and to the head of the Catholic Church.
Accordingly, when Louis Napoleon wrote his absurd letter to
Edgar Ney, De Tocqueville retired from the ministry. That
letter was dictated by the revolution, which dreaded nothing so
much as to see the Pope spontaneously reforming his govern-
ment. After that letter it became impossible for Pius IX. to
continue his work. It is worthy of mention that one of the re-
forms which the Pope contemplated was the introduction into the
Pontifical States of the Code Napoleon. In a despatch written by
M. de Rayneval on July 31, 1849, ne says:

" The Pope said to me : ' I am going to give you some good news. I
wish to do something that will please France. We have been lately work-
ing at a code of laws ; well, yesterday I said that v/e must simply take for
model the best of all codes the Code Napoleon. Some changes would be
necessary ; still, it is always easy to correct the details of great and noble
things.' "

It was not, however, as Foreign Minister that De Tocqueville
did his country most service. It was rather in committees on
such great subjects as the abolition of slavery, and the manage-
ment of the Algerian colonies, and the reform of the prison sys-
tem that his calm, well-trained, judicial mind was most serviceable
to France and to the world. As for his views on passing events,
the general character of them has been mentioned already. As
the republic, he thought France was not ripe for it ; as to the
republicans, it was General Cavaignac who alone inspired him
with respect. " His figure," he said, " is the only noble one
hich has appeared before the colorless background of the
revolution of 1848." The Second Empire filled him with sorrow,
although he did not share the fears of many of his friends.

" I do not think," he wrote to Ampere, " that we shall end as did your
Roman Empire ; . . . there are many points of difference between us, and
this one especially : that whereas we only sleep, your Romans were dead."

The despotic rule of the empire only made him sigh the more
after freedom :

VOL. XXXII. II

1 62 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. [Nov.,

" At any epoch I would, I think, have loved freedom ; nowadays I am
inclined to worship it."

Any bad political news affected him as much as some per-
sonal sorrow, and towards the close of his life it became neces-
sary to conceal from him such news, if it arrived at night, as
after hearing it he would not have slept. Still, his fears for the
future were always of that healthy kind which he has himself
described fears which make men " watch and fight, and not
those which, sluggish and helpless, soften and unnerve' the hearts
of men." His foresight was considerable, and in his work on de-
mocracy in America he clearly foreshadows the struggle that
would take place about the slave question. Nor did he less
clearly discern the great division, now daily growing clearer
everywhere, between Catholics and unbelievers.

"The men of our times," he wrote, "naturally incline to disbelief; still,
when once they possess a religion they find in themselves a hidden instinct
drawing them, in spite of themselves, towards Catholicity. ... I am led to
think that our heirs are more and more inclined to divide into two parties,
one deserting Christianity altogether, the other entering into the bosom of
the Roman Church."

The fame of Alexis de Tocqueville in the future must rest not
on what he did as a politician, but on what his literary labors
produced. The two works by which he will be remembered are
his Democratic en Ame'rique and his Ancien Rdgime et la Revolution.
The latter book was originally sketched as early as 1836 in the
pages of a London review, at the request of De Tocqueville's
friend, John Stuart Mill. The first-named work was, as has been
said, published in two separate parts. Critics differ as to the
merits of the two parts. In our opinion both are of the same
sound workmanship. The interest of the subjects treated grad-
ually increases as the work proceeds, and the whole is connected
together by a logical chain of great strength. His chapters, as a
competent critic remarks, are just what chapters ought to be
little books within a big one. No doubt, to many, the writings
of De Tocqueville are heavy reading, and unless the reader takes
an interest in the matters discussed he will soon, and perhaps
wisely, throw his books aside. De Tocqueville did not write
easily. With much labor he strung his paragraphs together,
completing each carefully before going on to the next. He paid
more attention to what he said than to how he said it. His ideas
are too closely packed together and weary the mind by the very
closeness of their array. The very neatness of each sentence,

i88o.] ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. 163

the absence of all idle epithets, and the formidable way in which
each sentence is blocked out give the reader that sense of weark
ness felt in the midst of a garden wherein the flowers are all in
perfect bloom, wherein no weeds riot and the hedges are all
symmetrically clipped. He has not, it has been remarked, any
of the piquancy of Montesquieu nor any of the bitter raillery of
La Bruyere, who was one of his favorite authors. At times the
ease with which his prose moves equals that of Voltaire, and in
correctness of expression he vies with Pascal, while it is clear
that his models have been the great writers of the seventeenth
century. No man ever was better qualified to write, yet no man
was ever so weighted by his very qualifications, as De Tocqueville.
He had carefully gathered among men and among books matter
for his works. Ideas he had in plenty. His thoughtful, obser-
vant mind supplied them in abundance. Thus his wealth of
matter and thought became his first difficulty. The daintiest
dishes pall the palate of him who feeds day after day on them.
Continual sunshine is more tiresome than continuous changes
of weather. So too much matter, however good, satiates the
reader's appetite, too much wealth of thought fatigues his atten-
tion. This is, so it seems to us, De Tocqueville's weak side as an
author. He is never rhetorical for the sake of pleasing ; he is
never trivial, never commonplace. His style is always lofty ; his
reason never is clouded by passion ; he is always master of his
ideas. He probes every subject to the quick. He sounds every
depth to the bottom. He critically inspects every side of a ques-
tion, while from one demonstrated point he is capable of deduc-
ing a thousand corollaries with all the relentless exactitude of
a mathematician, until, in sheer despair, the reader cries, Hold,
enough !

His great work on democracy in America is divided into two
parts. In the first part he examines the laws, institutions, and cus-
toms of the United States, and analyzes in a masterly manner the
only government that has succeeded in reconciling true liberty
and equality. In the second part of his work he considers the
influence of democratic principles on the intellectual life and ha-
bits of democracies. Professedly treating of democracy in Amer-
ica, the work in reality is an examination of democracy in Europe
as well as in the United States. " It behooves us," somewhere re-
marked Montalembert, " to give to this admirable prophecy its
true title, that of democracy in France and in Europe." Monta-
lembert was right in wishing for the work a better title and in
styling it an admirable prophecy, for a prophecy in truth it is.

164 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. [Nov.,

The meaning of this prophecy De Tocqueville has explained in
one of his letters.

" To those," he writes, "who have imagined an ideal democracy a bril-
liant dream easily to be realized I have sought to show that they have
charged their canvas with deceptive colors ; that the democratic govern-
ment they advocate, if it can give those who live under it some solid advan-
tages, has nevertheless none of that loftiness with which their fancy clothes
it ; and that such a government, moreover, needs for its existence certain
conditions of enlightenment, of personal morality, and of religious belief
which we do not possess and which we must strive to obtain before we can
enjoy the political consequences of them.

" To those to whom the word democracy is a synonym for riot, anarchy,
plunder, murder, I have striven to show that democracy can govern society
while respecting property, recognizing rights, preserving freedom, honoring
religious belief ; that if a democratic government was less favorable to the de-
velopment of certain noble faculties of men's souls than other forms of gov-
ernment, it at least had its beautiful and noble aspects ; and that, perhaps,
after all, it was God's will to spread abroad a portion of happiness among
the greater part of mankind rather than to give to a few a great sum of hap-
piness and to bring a very few nigh to perfection. I tried to show that what-
ever might be their opinions on the subject, the time for choosing was gone ;
that society daily was hastening on, carrying all before it, to a state where
equality would be the normal condition of men ; that now there was noth-
ing left except to choose from among evils that were inevitable ; that the
question was not whether we would have an aristocracy or a democracy,
but whether we would have a democratic society, progressing in an orderly
and modest manner, yet without any poetical grandeur, or a democratic so-
ciety riotous and licentious, the prey to every frenzy or the victim of a yoke
heavier than any borne by man since the fall of the Roman Empire. I
wished to check the ardor of the first, and, without disheartening them, to
show them the right road to take. I wished to lessen the fears of the sec-
ond and to bend their desires to a thing that was inevitable, so that, some
showing less impetuosity and others less doggedness, society might work
out its destiny in a more peaceable way."

De Tocqueville s work on L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution
equals, if it does not surpass, his earlier efforts.

" As to the way affairs were conducted," he says, "during the eighteenth
century, as to the part various institutions played, as to the attitude of dif-
ferent classes of society towards each other, as to the conditions and feel-'
ings of those who as yet could not be seen and heard, even amid the lowest
degrees of opinions and customs, we have only confused and often faulty
ideas "

To throw light on such subjects De Tocqueville published
this work, the result of much long and patient labor. He

i88o.] ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. 165

searched the shelves of obscure provincial libraries ; he ransacked
the archives of towns of which the names are hardly marked on
the map ; he read through the often voluminous correspondence
of land-agents, stewards, tax-collectors, and minor officials ; he
compared the state of things in France with those of England
and Germany, and, to do this the more thoroughly, set himself
to learn German. Of English he was already master. After
such labors he sat down to write his work, of which often a single
page contained the results of a month's researches. He never
was satisfied to take his information at second hand. He loved
to find the fountain-head, and there to form his judgment, un-
biassed by the already-expressed opinions of others. In one of
his letters he describes his method.

" When," he says, " I have to treat a subject, it is, as it were, impossible
for me to read any book that has been written about it ; the contact with
the ideas of others so excites and disturbs me as to make the reading of
such works positively painful. As far as possible I keep from myself the
knowledge of the meanings, the judgments, and the ideas other authors have
derived from the facts I am examining, although I thus expose myself to
the risk of repeating what others have said before me. On the other hand,
I take every care to search out in contemporary documents the facts I am
in want of, often at the cost of great labor finding only what I might easily
have had by other means. My harvest thus laboriously gathered, I then
retire, as it were, into a solitude, and carefully pass in review all the ideas I
have got together for myself, comparing them and arranging them, and
then at last I make it a point to set forth these ideas, wholly my own, with-
out caring for the consequences that this one or that one may derive from
them."

A book written so conscientiously and so laboriously must al-
ways be an authority. To analyze it would be impossible within
the limits of this paper ; a quotation or two must suffice. Of the
French clergy at the epoch of the revolution he speaks in terms
that might have been used by Burke.

" I know not," he says, " if, in spite of the staring vices of some among
its members, the world ever saw a more remarkable, more enlightened,
more patriotic clergy than the Catholic clergy of France when surprised
by the revolution a clergy fuller of public as well as private virtues, and
fuller of faith, as they showed amid persecution. When I began to study
the state of society in the old times I was full of prejudices against it ; I
ended by respect for it."

De Tocqueville did not live to complete his work, which would
not have been merely a study of the ancien regime ; it would have

1 66 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. [Nov.,

been a perfect history of the French Revolution. Of this history
he left the outlines, which only make us regret the more that he
was not spared to complete his labors. Still, to murmur would
be wrong, and our consolation for our loss must be found in
the eloquent words of another noble Frenchman who likewise
left his literary labors incomplete. " We are on earth," wrote
Ozanam, " only to do the will of Providence. That will is ful-
filled day by day, and he who dies leaving his task undone has
wrought as much in the sight of the Supreme Judge as he who has
had time given him to crown his work." Lacordaire, writing to
Ozanam, said: "Let us a crucify ourselves to our pens!" And
the friend answered : " My labors, I feel, are killing me ; but
God's will be done ! " " Both," remarks the biographer of the
great Dominican " both died as became brave knights, their
weapons in their hands, truly crucified to their pens." As valiant
a knight was Alexis de Tocqueville, who too died clutching the
greatest weapon of modern times the pen. " Daily," to quote
Ozanam once more " daily our friends, our brothers, as soldiers
or as missionaries, encounter death on the shores of Africa or be-
fore the palaces of mandarins. Meanwhile what are we doing?
Do you think that God has made it the duty of some to die for the
cause of civilization and of the church, and left to others the task
of living, their hands idle, dozing on a bed of roses ? Workers in
science, Christian men of letters, let us show that we are not
cowardly enough to believe' in a division such as it would be
wrong to charge God with making and a shame for us to accept.
Let us hasten to prove that we, too, have our battle-fields, where-
on, if need be, we know how to die." Alexis de Tocqueville, like
Ozanam, was not among those who dozed. Both were numbered
among those who died laborers to the last.

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 167

GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

VIII.

THE question of the divine origin of the Society which is one
and catholic in its organic constitution, a perfect and unequal
society composed of a hierarchy and people under the regimen
of one Supreme Head, turns, as we have proved, upon the fact of
the apostolical succession in the Catholic episcopate. The note
of apostolicity gives new lustre to the notes of catholicity and
unity, by giving a new and distinct evidence that the efficient
cause of the manifest and actual unity and catholicity of the his-
toric church of Christendom is the institution and perpetual con-
servation of its Founder, Jesus Christ. It gives the same lustre
and evidence to the note of sanctity, by showing that all the
essential causes and means of holiness and salvation in the church
are of divine institution. The note of apostolicity is located in
the episcopal succession from the first apostles, including the
succession of the Primate of bishops to the principality of St.
Peter in the apostolic college. The fact of the external succes-
sion is historically certain, and we have already shown the futility
of the few plausible arguments against its uninterrupted con-
tinuity. With the external fact the intrinsic nature of the suc-
cession is indissolubly bound. It was, namely, a succession in
true and proper priesthood having a transmitted and indelible
character, a succession in the mission and jurisdiction conferred
by Jesus Christ, and in the office of preserving and teaching the
faith and morality of the New Law, with supreme authority, in-
volving a corresponding obligation of subjection and obedience
on the part of the whole world.

All this, and whatever is implied in it or necessary to its com-
pletion can be proved by a continuous tradition, received semper,
ubique et ab omnibus, which is contained in a series of genuine and
authentic documents beginning from the apostles. This argu-
ment from Holy Scripture and Written Tradition is one how-
ever, which demands a considerable degree of learning, leisure
and opportunity for study, and is therefore suitable only for a
minority out of the whole number interested in knowing the
truth of the matter. Yet, there is the tradition itself, as distinct

168 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

from its documents, the living tradition embodied in the church,
made visible and palpable by the very existence and perfect na-
ture of the church, in all times and places where it lives and has
its being. The church itself is its own living, perpetual, omni-
present witness, bearing testimony to itself and to its Founder.
The church of the present age is a witness to the church of the
eleventh century, of the fifth, of the third and of the first. The
sex, the integrity of physical organization, the race-characteristics
of an adult, are evidence of the same attributes in the individual
as a child and as an infant. When you see a white, an Indian or
a negro boy of ten years of age, you know that he was born a
white, Indian or negro infant of the male sex. As, in the present
instance we are supposing all those who read what we write
to have the capacity of knowing with reasonable certainty what
the church was in its early adolescence, we begin our argument
from that period. There is a way of inquiry and argument suited
for the learned, and another suited for the unlearned. But, there
is also a middle way which is suited for those who are somewhat
learned or capable of becoming so, and which may be to a cer-
tain extent suitable though not altogether sufficient even for the
most thorough scholars. And we conceive that, in the present
case, such a way is the method of arguing from the historical
position of the church during the period which elapsed be-
tween the beginning of the second and the beginning of the
fourth centuries, and especially from the last half of this period,
to the constitution and attributes of the apostolic church. The
argument is intended to prove that the theory we have all along
been considering, of a transformation into the Catholic Church
from an apostolic church of a different species is untenable and
false, and that such a transformation was impossible. Wherefore
the church of the Nicene Council, which is identical with the
church of the Tridentine and Vatican Councils, is also identical
with the church of the apostles.

There is no sign or trace during these first three centuries of
any other religion having the slightest claim to be considered
orthodox Christianity, than the Catholic. There are no signs or
traces of a change in the great Christian body, there is no break
in the continuity of tradition. There has been no break since
then in this continuity. The only adequate cause for this perse-
vering unity and catholicity under the form of one organic so-
ciety which can be assigned is its apostolic, that is, divine origin.
The adult, the adolescent and the infant church must be the
same. Growth and accidental changes there may and indeed

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 169

must have been. We have already said that we recognize a prin-
ciple and law of development and true progress in Christianity.
But this is not what is called development by Gibbon, Guizot,
Milman, and other theorists of the same general type. The man
in his adult and infant ages is essentially and specifically the same,
but with accidental distinctions. The infant and adult church is
likewise identical with itself though its ages are mutually
distinguished one from another. The specific difference is con-
genital and original, impressed by the hand of the Creator and
unchangeable. This specific difference of the true, genuine
Christianity and church is precisely Catholicity. It shows itself
clearly and unequivocally at the earliest period which is illu-
mined by abundant historical light, and more obscurely under
the dimmer light which preceded. In a word, so far as we can
know anything of historical Christianity we know it as Catholic
and nothing else. From what we do know, it is certain by a
moral demonstration that it did not change and could not have
changed during the earliest and most obscure period of its ex-
istence.

Mr. Gladstone, one of the most subtle, as he is also one of the
most accomplished in literary culture, of the modern antagonists
of the church, has attempted to prove the contrary. He refers to
the silent, insensible change which corrupted throughout almost
the whole world the primeval religion of mankind, changing the
common, universal Monotheism of the patriarchal ages into the
religions of heathendom. These religions, he says, got, after the
lapse of time, antiquity and continuous tradition in their favor,
and were so far like the Catholic Church. Therefore, notwith-
standing its antiquity and continuous tradition, the Catholic reli-
gion may be a corruption of a primeval Christianity which was
changed into it insensibly without any violent convulsion, any
struggle, any distinct notification in the history of the men, the
instruments, the influences and the events by which the change
was wrought.

This is plausible in its first aspect, but really one of the most
hollow and transparent of sophistical bubbles, which a breath is
sufficient to annihilate. It is just like the parallel which infidels
draw between the progress and extension of Buddhism and Ma-
hometanism and the propagation of Christianity. The possi-
bility of some sort of extensive and long-continued sway of a false
religion is easily enough proved, and no advocate of Christianity
ever thought of questioning it. But the impossibility of such a
conquest as Christianity won ; considering the nature of the reli-

170 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

gion, the instruments and means of its propagation, the time,
place, circumstances of its birth and progress ; without the intrinsic
force of truth, supernatural powers, and the intervention of God ;
remains where it was, in the position of an irrefragable proof of
the divine origin of Christianity. A false religion may come to
have a certain antiquity, a certain continuity of tradition, a cer-
tain sanction of prescription and possession. A true religion may
become changed and corrupted by insensible degrees, and a tract
of time with its products and events may hide from the common
view the anterior time when an apostasy from primeval truth
and pure morality began. But this does not show what the exi-
gencies of the anti-Catholic argument require that it should, viz.,
that such a religion as Christianity, under such circumstances as
really existed, could undergo such a change as is supposed, com-
pletely, insensibly, universally, and in so short a time, and that
the counterfeit could be substituted for the genuine with all the
argument from prescription in its favor.

The patriarchal religion was revealed religion in its inchoate
and most simple and imperfect form. Its existence and preserva-
tion in primitive purity depended on the fidelity with which men
adhered to the oral tradition by which the faith and the moral
law were transmitted from the original ancestors of mankind. It
rested on a general consent, and was embodied in the natural in-
stitutions of the family, society, and the commonwealth ; with
no separate organization of church and priesthood, with few and
simple forms of worship, few and brief written records. Its law
was written in the heart and conscience, its unity and universality
were the result of voluntary agreement in following the footsteps
of the fathers and foregoing generations ; and, therefore, just as
soon as corruption of the heart and conscience became general
the bond was too weak to hold mankind in religious unity, and
the different nations took each its own way downward into mul-
tifarious errors and superstitions. Nevertheless, the pure, patri-
archal religion was preserved in a chosen tribe which became
a nation, and in that nation the revelation of God was augment-
ed, embodied in a strong organic constitution and transformed
into Judaism. The Judaic institution, in its essential and corporate
being, was incorruptible and imperishable, so long as its prescrib-
ed period lasted. Thus, in its lineal and legitimate succession,
the patriarchal, prophetic and sacerdotal order, descending from
the truly primitive and original antiquity, and by an unbroken
continuity of tradition going back to the beginning, transmitted
the revelation of God to the time when the Messiah was born and

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 171

the Catholic Church established. The antiquity and traditional
continuity of the Catholic religion go back to this original epoch
of the new creation and begun restitution of all things, in Jesus
Christ. Their parallel is, therefore, in the pure tradition of the
Old Law, not in the aberrations of heathendom. With these,
the sects and heresies which have fallen off from the Catholic
Church are parallel. All this Mr. Gladstone studiously and
artfully evades, under the pretext of incompetence in polemic
theology, so that he may stick in the mere surface of things and
find scope for his fanciful and superficial analogies.

But this is not a way worthy of a Christian. The Christian
religion is from God, and for all mankind. It has its definite
character and this can be ascertained by reasonable and diligent
inquiry. The church is the last, the most perfect form of reveal-
ed religion ; and therefore in its organization, in its strength, its
durability, its incorruptibility, its power of resistance and aggres-
sion, its adaptation to all races, times and conditions of human life,
it must surpass all the preceding forms. To suppose that its
genuine and pure ideal was universally subverted by a counter-
feit substitute, within two hundred years from the death of the
last and most beloved apostle, is to represent it as inferior to its
precursors, and indeed as a failure.

But we come now to the direct argument from historical facts
positively proving, that by its very nature and its whole environ-
ment, the Christian Church of the first three centuries was an in-
surmountable barrier to every essential alteration and transfor-
mation, and must necessarily have been originally instituted with
the same intrinsic form and external organization which it possess-
ed at the time of the First Council of Nice.

The apostles and their coadjutors preached the gospel and
founded the church over such an extent of territory, in so many
distinct and widely distant parts of the world, among so many
different and separate races of men, that the church became really
catholic in its diffusion during their lifetime. This work was
continued during the second century, and during the third, so
that the way was prepared for the great event of the fourth cen-
tury, the formal recognition of the Christian religion by the two
great divisions of the Roman empire, the Western and the East-
ern.

Jerusalem was the starting-point, and became the patriarchal
centre of the churches of Palestine which were largely composed
of Jewish Christians, until the final destruction of the city. Here,
the mixed multitude of foreign Jews and proselytes was first met

172 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

and evangelized by the apostles. Soon after their first labors in
Jerusalem and Palestine they undertook the conversion of the
Syrians and Chaldasans, who were a mixture of Cushites, Turco-
mans, Aryans and Semites, some cultivated and luxurious, others
living in primitive simplicity of manners. Churches were found-
ed all through these vast and varied regions. At Antioch on the
Orontes the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians ; there
St. Peter fixed for a time his supreme chair, and, when he trans-
ferred it permanently to Rome, left to the bishop of the see a
wide patriarchal jurisdiction with the dignity of precedence among
bishops next after the bishop of Alexandria. St. Mark evan-
gelized Egypt and Lybia, and St. Matthew probably Ethiopia.
Persia and Armenia, the Hellenic peoples, probably even the
Hindoos, the Arabians, the Romans and Italians, the Gauls of
France and the adjacent regions, and the people of Spain, in
short, the inhabitants of the principal portions of the Roman em-
pire, and of many others beyond its limits, in Asia, Europe and
Africa, had the gospel preached to them by the apostles and their
companions or emissaries. They did, really and in person, fulfil
the commandment to evangelize the world. The prophecies of
the Jewish seers and the promises of Christ were fulfilled. In
the second century the church was, and was called by all men,
heretics and pagans as well as true believers, Catholic. Points
were occupied, incipient churches were established, congregations
of converts were gathered, over an immense surface where false
religions with gorgeous rites and temples, powerful priesthoods,
and the immense mass of superstitious and vicious populace, still
to the outward view gave the world a pagan appearance. These
spots were the points from which the active force radiated in all
directions which in a few centuries made the orb of the Roman
world Christian. Gibbon and the whole school of infidel histo-
rians have done all in their power to belittle the wonderful work
begun and carried very far onward by the apostles, and pushed
still further forward by their successors during the first three
centuries. The semi-rationalistic and so-called impartial and cri-
tical Christian school are too much imbued with the same spirit.
The writers of ecclesiastical history among Protestants who take
sounder and more correct views of early Christianity, and even
Catholic authors of books generally read, are by far too superfi-
cial and jejune in their account of its first period.* Nevertheless,
even the minimized presentation of the great leading and gene-

* As a work of very different character, replete with information which is not elsewhere
found, we refer to F. Thebaud's The Church and the Gentile World.

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 173

ral facts suffices for our purpose, and the most elaborate attempts
to explain them in a purely human sense only serve to bring out
more clearly the futility of the effort.

At the close of the great era of persecution, when the succes-
sor of St. Peter came out of the catacombs into the Lateran pal-
ace, and, with the concurrence of the Emperor Constantine, call-
ed together the First GEcumenical Council of Nice, the univer-
sal tradition of the Catholic Church gave utterance to its voice.
Even those who revolted and began a deadly warfare against the
faith defined by the council, by an heretical interpretation of the
ancient creed, concur in their testimony to the apostolic antiquity
of all that part of Christianity we are engaged in especially vindi-
cating from the charge of novelty. There can be no doubt that
the universal church recognized in itself a society constituted in
organic unity under the hierarchical regimen of bishops, succes-
sors to the apostles, with the successor of Peter as their Primate.
There can be no doubt that the religion universally professed was
sacramental and liturgical, that the true and proper Sacrifice, the
true and proper priesthood conferred solely and jure divino by
episcopal ordination, were recognized by all as essential parts of
the New Law of Christ. There can be no doubt that the author-
ity of the church was recognized as the proximate Rule of Faith,
and communion with the one, true and Catholic Church admitted
to be necessary for salvation. The same reasons which prove
that all the bishops and the faithful everywhere ; with the excep-
tion of the few who stood self-condemned by the novelty of their
doctrine and their schism from the great body of Christians ; could
not have erred in the profession of the Apostolic Faith in the Son
of God, prove that they could not have all conspired together in
one common error and departure from Apostolic Order and Doc-
trine by a false interpretation of the article in the Creed " I be-
lieve in the Holy Catholic Church." These reasons are nume-
rous, but they can all be traced to one root, viz., that the apostles,
fully instructed by Jesus Christ and filled with his Holy Spirit,
committed the sacred deposit of his faith and law to so many, so
various, so widely separated and independent channels of trans-
mission, that the failure of secure and pure transmission was a
moral impossibility. Those who were converted by the apostles,
and especially those who were ordained by them as their associ-
ates and successors in the apostolic ministry, were most assured-
ly imbued by the effect of their instruction and example with the
genuine and pure spirit of the Christian religion. It is impossi-
ble to suppose that they could have wished to make an alteration

174 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

in religion. This first generation continued into the second cen-
tury, and from these disciples of the apostles, the Christians of the
second century received that instruction and that impress of ex-
ample which stamped upon them that type of religious character
which every one may recognize without difficulty as specifically
Catholic. The same process went on through the third, and in the
same way that " the boy is father of the man " this early childhood
of Christianity produced the adolescent manhood of the fourth and
fifth centuries. These first three centuries were ages of faith,
of holiness, of heroism and martyrdom. The inner and the
outer fires kept away the moral degeneracy and corruption from
whose fetid cesspool heresy comes forth as an intellectual mala-
ria. Those early Christians were sincere and zealous, and their
religion was their all. One of their most characteristic marks
is their traditional and historical spirit. Their religion was an
inheritance, a legacy of the New Testament of Our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, of which the apostles were the administra-
tors and executors. The first of the great Doctors of the fourth
century jJSt. Athanasius, was thoroughly imbued with this spirit,
although he was of Alexandria, where Christian philosophy first
began to flourish, and he himself was a great reasoner and dog-
matic theologian. In St. Irenaeus the same spirit is not only
dominant but exclusive. St. Ignatius of Antioch, the second suc-
cessor of St. Peter in that see, is completely filled with it. To a
modern Episcopalian or Presbyterian his letters read like the
charges of Bishop Hobart and Bishop Doane, as if he were writ-
ing a "High-Churchman Vindicated" with the express purpose of
exalting the hierarchy. But this is a mistaken view. He was
really anxious to guard and protect the pure faith in Jesus
Christ and his gospel against the assaults and wiles of heretics
who subverted their very foundations. He appeals to tradition,
to antiquity, to the original and genuine teaching of the apostles,
and all his exhortations to .reverence and obedience towards the
bishops and clergy are in view of their divine office as the con-
servators of the deposit of faith and the teachers of sound, apos-
tolic doctrine. The whole power of religion, in those days, was
in the conscience ; and no general conspiracy of conscience to
deceive or to submit to deception is possible, where conscience
has been. so enlightened and thoroughly formed by divine teach-
ing as it was in the beginning of the Christian religion. The ar-
gument of Paley can be applied to this case, proving that the
early Christians could neither have been deceivers or deceived.
That enormous power of original Christianity which was able to

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 175

convert such multitudes of Jews and pagans, to withstand all
the violence of persecution, and to conquer the Roman empire,
was sufficient to conserve itself and resist alteration. Moreover,
there were no means of alteration. Religion was in catechetical
instruction, in the rites and observances of worship, in oral tradi-
tion, in the preaching of the clergy, in the outward, visible or-
ganization of the church. Besides the Holy Scriptures, or por-
tions of the same, there were very few Christian books even for
those who were able to read and to procure books. There was
no opportunity for disseminating new doctrines in this way far
and wide among the clergy and people. There were no general
councils, and local councils dealt only with local affairs. In a
word, all means and instruments of producing universal changes,
and in fact, to a great extent even the means of healthful develop-
ment and progress were wanting. The universal movement in
the church was almost wholly the effect of the original, universal
impulse given by the apostles, and given in common to so many
centres that their harmonious agreement must be referred to their
continuity in the line of direction on which they were started, and
any attempt at universal change would have produced only con-
fusion. The church of Jerusalem, the church of Antioch, the
church of Alexandria, the church of Ephesus, the churches of the
West, could never have been drawn aside from their right course
one by the other. The Church of Rome itself, powerful for con-
servation, and for the correction of local and particular aberra-
tions, was powerless for innovation and alteration. There were
innovators, rebels, schismatics, heretics, schisms and heresies.
But these were local, they were mutually hostile, in open contra-
diction to antiquity, to apostolical tradition, to the common con-
sent of the faithful. They were speedily condemned, and gene-
rally became after a time extinct. All awakened excitement, con-
troversy, active opposition, and have left their traces in history.
Universal change into the same errors, even a universal 'change
of exterior government, from a Presbyterian to an Episcopal
form, from an Episcopal regimen of co-equal, independent bi-
shops to a metropolitan or patriarchal constitution, much more
a change into a Papal government, was wholly impossible. Most
of those whose possession of rights was invaded would have re-
sisted. The result of such an attempt would have been either
failure or the breaking up of the church into separate fragments.
Much less was a change of doctrine, introducing a new system
of sacrificial, sacerdotal and sacramental ideas, a possible thing.
The heretics of the fourth and fifth centuries, the pagans them-

1 76 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

selves, to say nothing of men within the church, learned, fearless,
and zealous for primitive doctrine, such as St. Jerome, would have
found out the deviation and reproached with it all its authors and
abettors. Of all things the most incredible is the hypothesis, that
silently, imperceptibly, universally, without a trace of its history,
without a sign of opposition, without an outcry of warning, a
debased and degenerate catholicity should have entered on the
possession, and securely seated itself in the dominion, of the heri-
tage of truth in Christendom. Supposing, even, that the apostles
had left Christianity in an indeterminate state, to form and shape
itself freely, with the sacred writings interpreted by private judg-
ment as the only rule of faith, it would have been impossible that
the elements should have spontaneously coalesced and crystallized
everywhere throughout the world into one, uniform, harmonious
and common doctrine and order, into the Catholic Church of the
Nicene Council.

The last resort of that kind of Protestantism which wishes to
remain Christian and orthodox without either confessing the
divine origin and authority of the Catholic Church or placing
itself in an attitude of extreme and irreconcilable hostility to
historical Christianity, is not a tenable and defensible position.
There is no hiding-place for this moderate and liberal Protestant
orthodoxy, this Neo-Evangelical and semi-rationalistic kind of
Christianity, in the obscurity of the first three centuries ; no
matter how far back it may creep towards and into the catacombs,
prisons, secret chambers and other recesses where the church lay
hidden during the early part of the second century and the latter
part of the first. The light which the fourth century casts back-
ward is too strong and clear, even that light which the apostolic
writings and the remaining documents of Christian and heathen
literature cast upon these times out of their obscurity, when re-
flected and gathered into a focus by a soundly critical scholar-
ship, illuminates their dark corners too brightly, for any theory
of pseudo-development to conceal its conjectures and sophistries
successfully. The leap into the dark serves only to cut off all
hope of escape, and to confront a hopeless and lost cause with the
truth which it has been evading, after the manner which is natural
to error, by all sorts of turnings and windings. We call this
theory an hypothesis of pseudo-development, and it is so, just like
the similar theory in physics, which pretends to show evolution
of the like from the unlike, without intervention of efficient caus-
ality. Its genuine and contraposed object of imitation, the true
idea which it counterfeits, is the correct theory of development

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 177

by the evolution of the specific nature within itself, by growth,
expansion, assimilation, increase in its own kind and progress on
its own line.

It is important to take at least some notice of the fact that
such a development must have taken place in the Catholic
Church, during its passage through the first three centuries of its
existence, as well as during the millennium which followed the
conversion of Constantine. If any one should suppose that the
claim of the Catholic Church to date from the mission of the
apostles implies an assertion of the instantaneous outbursting
into full bloom of Catholicism as it is now visible, or as it pre-
sented the phenomena of its subsisting being to the world in the
year 325, it would be a great mistake. Such a mistake is danger-
ous, because the supposition is incredible, and impossible without
an astounding miracle such as we know for a fact God did not
work. The church in its infancy must have been in an infantine,
inchoate condition. Its outward appearance, its mode of exist-
ing and acting, a thousand details pertaining to its actual state,
must have been very unlike what they became afterward. The
data are wanting by which we can reproduce before our imagina-
tion an exact picture with perfect and minute delineations, of that
early, apostolic age. The lineaments of the new religion as a
concrete reality only show themselves faintly at first, very gradu-
ally coming out into greater distinctness. It is no more possible
to trace minutely the growth of the great plant from the mustard-
seed and make a record of its successive stages, than.it is to see
the corn-stalk, the apple-tree or the infant growing, or to record
the process by which a language is formed. The divine concep-
tion of the Infant Jesus, his birth and his childhood, were hidden
from the world and the devil. He performed a concealed work,
and his resurrection and ascension were shrouded in a mist of
obscurity, a cloud of mystery, from all but a chosen few. Unless
the Lord had chosen to take the world by storm, to ride into his
kingdom on a chariot of glory environed by an invincible host, it
was necessary that he should begin his work in secret and pre-
pare imperceptibly for his open triumph. The humility, the
poverty, obscurity, ignominy and persecution which enveloped
the beginnings of Christianity were necessary, in order that it
might diffuse secretly its pervasive force and sink deeply, into the
soil of humanity, ready to burst forth in due time with irresistible
and universal power, and by its new growth to supplant and
crowd out the old, decayed vegetation of heathen philosophy and
religion with their corrupted doctrines, superstitious practices

VOL. XXXII. 12

178 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

and vicious customs. It would not have done to announce pub-
licly and blazon forth loudly from the beginning, that the Chris-
tian priesthood was going to overthrow the Jewish and heathen
sacerdotal castes, the Christian temples and altars to take the
place of the splendid shrines of ancient worships, the Vicar of
Christ to dethrone Caesar and occupy his palace, and Christen-
dom to seat its kingdom on the ruins of the. Roman empire. All
this was suspected and feared too soon for the peace of the first
Christians, but found out too late to make their extermination
possible. The contempt, neglect and obscurity in which the
facts, dogmas, aims, organization, and general purport of the
Christian religion were enveloped were its opportunity, and en-
abled it to spread so widely and grow so strong, that it could
endure the fire of persecution, come out of the Red Sea of mar-
tyrdom a vast, unconquerable host, and go forward to possess the
Promised Land. The apostles and their early successors did not
provoke and exasperate the religious, philosophical or political
prejudices and passions of the people and their rulers any more
than was absolutely unavoidable. They made no premature and
defiant proclamations of the divinity of Jesus Christ, of the mys-
teries of the Creed, of the hidden virtues of the sacraments, of
the powers \vhich the Lord had communicated to the priests of
his church. A very great reserve, we know, was maintained in
communicating the deeper and more mysterious doctrines of
Christianity. The discipline of the secret was thrown around
them as a yeil to hide them from the eyes of the profane and the
imperfectly instructed. This veil covered over the sacerdotal
character of the priesthood by concealing the nature of that Eu-
charistic Sacrifice to w r hich the sacrament of order is essentially
related. The names given to the hierarchical orders were such
as to cover with a modest garb the real spiritual power and do-
minion contained in them. Apostle, Bishop, Presbyter, Deacon
were sufficient as designations of certain offices of superiority, but
did not disclose to the Jews that new High-Priests, Priests and
Levites disputed with them the heritage of Moses and Aaron, or
to the Romans that a new Pontifex Maximus was coming to seat
himself in the Lateran palace, while every imperial diocese, ex-
archate, province and city was to receive a spiritual prince and
pontiff whose episcopal mantle would make the Roman purple
and scarlet to fade by contrast with its superior lustre.

The beginnings of the English monarchy were rude and sim-
ple, compared with its subsequent, slowly enhancing grandeur.
Our own early colonial settlements, and even our primitive re-

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 179

public under the constitution of 1788 and the presidency of Wash-
ington, were small and feeble, compared with what the United
States of North America have become during the nineteenth cen-
tury. The England and the United States of to-day were never-
theless in the germs from which they have been developed, and
each nation has grown and flourished according to its own speci-
fic law. These, however, are human commonwealths, subject to
much greater modifications in principles, in dominant ideas, in
polity and laws, in forms and customs, than the. church, which is
a supernatural society, the kingdom of Christ, having a divine
constitution, divine laws, divine institutions, which in their sub-
stance are unchangeable, and having a permanent, supreme au-
thority which regulates all else, not de jure divino and immutably
fixed, with as much uniformity and stability as is necessary for
good order. The analogy is therefore true but not perfect. The
church is sui generis and of a most complex nature. It must be
studied in itself and by the light of its own principles. An accu-
rate distinction between what is essential and what is accidental,
what is de jure divino and what de jure ecclcsiastico, what is abso-
lutely permanent and unchangeable and what is subject to modi-
fication, what is immovable and what is progressive, is difficult ;
and for those who are not guided by the authority of the church
herself the attempt to make it is full of peril and sure to lead
into many errors.

In a general way, we may and we must say that the church as
human society had its origin, growth and development, except
so far as a direct divine intervention was necessary, more huma-
, and under the general laws of Divine Providence, in a mode
alogical to other great human institutions. Its episcopal and
pal polity, its doctrine, laws, liturgy, ceremonial, theology, lite-
ture, action upon states, upon mankind, upon morals and civi-
ation, upon the whole world in moving it towards its final end
and consummation, had to begin from germs and to germinate,
grow gradually, and become disclosed after the lapse of a suffi-
cient time. It is absurd to look for a clear, distinct and explicit
manifestation in the very earliest age of Christianity of all that
which it contained potentially and afterwards reduced to actu-
ality. This is one great stumbling-block in the way of Protes-
tants. They have an imagination of what primitive, apostolical
Christianity was, which it is very difficult to dislodge. They shove
this imagination between their eyes and the historical verity.
They estimate the Catholic Church and religion by certain appa-
rent features which strike their senses and minds, and they are un-

i8o GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

able to find in the New Testament and the earliest Christian re-
cords that obvious, vivid counterpart and similitude, which they
think ought to be perfectly and unmistakably evident, if the church
and religion of the apostles were identical with the modern Ca-
tholic Church and religion. If they would look more closely and
impartially, they would see that they cannot find any counterpart
of their own idea of the Christian religion.

When the apostles and disciples were gathered together in
Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost next following the Ascension,
and for some years after, there was no New Testament, no Missal,
no Breviary, Ritual, or written Code of law and doctrine. They
had no churches, seminaries, fixed and permanent altars, few costly
vessels and vestments, no splendor of religion, no external honor,
not even any recognized civil status or any rights before the law.
There was no Holy See, there was no regular and universal or-
ganization of provinces, dioceses or parishes. No one but a child
or a simpleton could fancy St. Peter with a sparkling tiara', St.
Paul with a purple soutane, cross and ring, church-bells ringing,
organs playing, choirs chanting elaborate music, and High Mass
or Solemn Vespers celebrated in a splendid church crowded with
well-dressed and ill-dressed people. Neither can we fancy neat,
sober people carrying a hymn-book wrapped in a white handker-
chief, or an old lady sitting in her parlor of a Sunday with her
spectacles on, reading her Bible. St. Peter was not called His
Holiness, St. John His Eminence, or St. James the Most Reve-
rend Lord Archbishop of Jerusalem. Our Lord went about and
conversed among men in a very simple and informal way, with-
out any outward show, royal pomp, or ceremonious observance
of the worship due to him. It is not likely that the disciples
knelt down before him, or sang hymns in his praise, or observed
any more forms of outward reverence than he himself had been
accustomed to practise toward St. Joseph and the Blessed Vir-
gin. When St. Peter and the apostles were left by him to take
his place, the same familiar and informal way of conduct must
have continued among the disciples, and only gradually given
way as the simple, loving brotherhood of Christians changed
and expanded into a numerous, widely spread, regularly con-
stituted society. This is all in harmony with God's way of
redeeming and saving mankind, with nature, and the fitness of
things. It is very charming and lovely, when we remember
the great, the mysterious, the divine, which is hidden be-
neath the modest veil. But, forgetting or denying all this, we
have nothing left which is other than commonplace and insignifi-

iSSoj GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 181

cant ; if made much of; incongruous and absurd. Those who set
forth only the human in Jesus Christ take away the whole mean-
ing of his mission. Walking in a coarse tunic and barefooted, he
was none the less Emmanuel, The Son of God in the most per-
fect and glorious human nature. He needed no splendid raiment
or coronal of gems to give him royal dignity. Those who take
from the apostles their sublime and mystic character, and who
make of the Holy Eucharist only a simple meal which the disci-
ples ate together as a way of keeping up their brotherly love,
make of Christianity a weak, inept and pitiful association of well-
meaning people, about equal to a Moral Society or a Sewing-Cir-
cle in a country village, as a means of regenerating the world.
When we really look at that small body of men, women and
children who used to gather together in the Ccenaculum of Jeru-
salem, we find that, although wanting in the learning, the com-
manding genius, the wealth, the political power, the human
prestige, the natural forces of every kind, which could make
any considerable success in their undertaking hopeful, they
possessed by the legacy of their Almighty Lord all the high
and divine gifts which were sufficient for their sublime work.
The priesthood is not in high titles and brocaded vestments,
the sacrifice is not in marble altars and golden chalices, in
solemn chant or splendid ceremonial, the church is not in
magnificent cathedrals and wondrous works of art, the coun-
ts of perfection are not in stately monastic walls, the faith
is not in libraries of learned folios, the essence of catholicity is
lot identical with a world-wide imperial domain embracing patri-
"chates and provinces and dioceses. The glowing language of
the prophets and the exalted diction of the church-offices, when
they speak of the apostles and of the church which they founded,
are in singular contrast with the outward appearance of things
which a haughty Jew or a proud heathen looked upon with aver-
sion and disdain. Yet this language is literally verified in the
highest, that is, in the spiritual sense, in the apostles and the
ipostolic church. " The king's daughter was all glorious with-
The bride of Christ was like " Barfuss " in Auerbach's ex-
[uisite romance, so beautiful and admirable in her poverty, that
the Synagogue with all the costly remnants of ancient queenhood
was like discarded Vashti in the presence of Esther, and the fa-
ded, licentious religions of the world were like Cleopatra beside
Marianne ; in comparison with her chaste, unadorned beauty,
needing no adornment, but worthy of the costliest. Fine rai-
ment is a masterpiece of human skill, the body which it decorates

1 82 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

is the masterpiece of divine workmanship. All which is added to
the substance of the Catholic Church is its clothing and decora-
tion, not the Mystical Body of Christ itself. Even the actual ex-,
tension of its substance by catholicity, the hierarchical organiza-
tion of its diffused episcopate and laity, is not its one, holy, catho-
lic and apostolic essence, just as the size and symmetry of the
members in a noble and fully developed man are not identical
with his human essence. The church was virtually Catholic in
its smallest and most infantine beginning. The power was there
which was afterwards applied through the widest expansion.
The first link of the chain of tradition was immovably fastened
in the rock of the foundation. The source welled up in secrecy
and silence with the perennial supply of pure water which filled
great rivers and multitudinous streams flowing in every direc-
tion.

But it is necessary to come to particulars and speak more de-
finitely.

In the first place, the apostolic church was strictly one society
throughout all the extent which it acquired during the first cen-
tury, and in all its parts.

Second, the apostles were one corporate college possessing su-
preme power, under their prince.

Third, their teaching was the proximate rule of faith and
morals.

Fourth, the dogmas of faith were explicitly taught and be-
lieved in their integrity, as the first principles and fundamental
truths from which all later dogmatic and theological teaching and
science have been expanded.

Fifth, the Holy Eucharist was a sacrifice, daily offered as the
great act of Christian worship. The forms and externals, though
simple, had all the propriety and solemnity befitting such a great
Act, so far as means and circumstances permitted, and were the
original model from which all the liturgies in ancient and univer-
sal use were constructed.

Sixth, the Seven Sacraments were all administered with an
explicit belief in their sanctifying efficacy.

Seventh, the Counsels of Perfection were taught and prac-
tised.

Finally, the entire hierarchical organization was contained in
the apostolate immediately instituted by Jesus Christ, having its
summit in the principality of Peter, and was actually established
by degrees, as soon as the exigencies of good order and stability
required it, and fit subjects were found in sufficient number who

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 183

could be entrusted with the complete, ordinary jurisdiction of
bishops who were to succeed in the place of the apostles.

There is nothing- more clearly and explicitly set forth in the
apostolic writings than this, that the church was constituted as
" One Flock under One Shepherd." This oneness was most visi-
bly manifest when the entire Catholic Church was comprised in
one diocese and one parish at Jerusalem, with St. Peter as Chief
Pastor and all the other apostles as his coadjutors, the whole
multitude of the faithful, a few thousands in all, being gathered to-
gether around them, under their immediate superintendence. It
is this unity of the whole church as one body which is the pri-
mary and fundamental principle of order and organization. The
formation of distinct parts and divisions, from the parish to the
patriarchate, is consequent upon this, subordinate to it. Distinct
local churches under the jurisdiction of particular bishops, are
necessary, because it is impossible that a universal church should
be congregated in one, and be immediately governed by one. It
was necessary that the Bishop of the Catholic Church should
have colleagues, in order that the full episcopal authority should
be applied everywhere and to all. These bishops must be nu-
merous enough to govern every part of the church throughout
the world, and yet, not so numerous that their number, and the
>mallness of the division of the church into local parts would
lake the episcopal body too large for a supreme senate of the
r hole church, and the multitude of distinct parts favor disinte-
gration rather than unity. The wants of the faithful require
lowever a much larger number of priests than could be safely
itrusted with the plenary sacerdotal character of the episcopate,
'hen the faithful are numbered by the hundred million, the
>riesthood must be numbered by the hundred thousand, while
ic bishops cannot suitably be increased to more than a few
lousand, even if all the world should be in the Catholic Church,
"he organic constitution of the church, therefore, provided for
unity by the appointment of one Supreme Head, and for the mul-
tiplication of parts by the institution of the episcopate with the
priesthood of the second order and the inferior order of the dia-
conate associated and subordinated for the fulfilment of the com-
plete work of the sacred ministry. We find the apostles institut-
ing and ordaining first the deacons of the church of Jerusalem,
when the practical need of such an order had become manifest.
From the time of their dispersion from Jerusalem until the end
of the apostolic age, we find by the inspired records and the

1 84 GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. [Nov.,

testimony of ecclesiastical writers, that just as rapidly as cir-
cumstances required and allowed them to do so, they created
and formed an adequately numerous clergy, consisting of dea-
cons, presbyters, and bishops who had either general or local
jurisdiction like that which they themselves exercised. How
many bishops were ordained during the first twenty years and
placed over churches with full and permanent jurisdiction cannot
be ascertained with certainty. It is a . matter of probability and
conjecture only, whether the apostles who evangelized the Orien-
tal countries at first left the nascent churches generally under the
temporary charge of mere presbyters, or whether, as Petavius
and Mamachius suppose, a considerable number of those who are
called by that name received also episcopal consecration. Dur-
ing that earliest period, before St. Jerome asserts that a decree
was made, and by degrees put in execution, that one bishop with
supreme rule should be permanently placed in every city, there
were certainly some besides the thirteen, who had been raised to
the dignity of the apostolate and were called apostles, though not
sharing in that extraordinary and universal commission which
the twelve and St. Paul received from Jesus Christ. St. Jerome
and St. Pacian say this. (S. Hier. in Gal. i. 19, Pac. Ep. i.) Peta-
vius and other learned men think that St. James of Jerusalem was
one of these. St. Mark, St. Barnabas, Silvanus, Epaphroditus,
probably Apollos, Timothy, and Titus were of this number. At
a later period, Evodius and his successor Ignatius of Antioch,
Polycarp of Smyrna, Linus, Cletus and Clement who succeeded
St. Peter in the Roman See, St. Apollinaris of Ravenna, and others
whose names are mentioned in ancient documents, were ordained
by the apostles. A provisional government by presbyters can
have existed, if at all, only during the first thirty years, and in
that part of the church in Asia which was frequently visited by
several of the apostles and their coadjutors. Those who evan-
gelized other parts of the world, in the more distant parts of the
East, and in the West, established the episcopal organization from
the very beginning, as all tradition and history testify. St. Epi-
phanius says :

" It was not possible for the apostles to put all things in order at once.
There was need in the first place of presbyters and deacons, that both to-
gether might administer ecclesiastical affairs. Wherefore, where there was
no one as yet at hand worthy of the episcopate, there was no bishop ap-
pointed for that place. But when necessity demanded, and there was no
lack of men worthy of the episcopate, then bishops were appointed. But

i88o.] GENESIS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 185

when there was no great multitude, there might not be found any who could
be made presbyters ; wherefore these were contented with a bishop only."
(Horn. 75 adv. Ae'rium.)

Whatever way may be taken to explain scant and ambiguous
notices in the Acts and Epistles about this early and incipient
stage of ecclesiastical organization, the irregular and provisional
order of ecclesiastical administration continued only during about
thirty years, and in certain parts of the church. From the be-
ginning, a regular episcopacy was established in the principal
churches. St. James was early appointed the Bishop of Jerusa-
lem with patriarchal jurisdiction over Palestine. St. Peter estab-
lished the See of Antioch and ordained Evodius as his successor.
He sent St. Mark to Egypt to found the Patriarchal See of
Alexandria. St. Peter established the Holy, Apostolic See at
Rome, placing his chair in the palace of the Senator Pudens,
and from that moment the doom of the Cassars and of the Roman
empire was sealed. Episcopal sees were dotted all over the
world which ever after traced their line of bishops back to their
apostolic founder. Timothy was placed at Ephesus, Titus in
Crete, Polycarp in Smyrna. When St. John wrote his Apoca-
lypse, he addressed himself to the bishops of the seven principal
churches of Asia Minor, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira,
Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea, which were all metropolitan
sees. It is a curious fact analogous to the use of the term Ange'l
by St. John to denote a Bishop, that in the new hierarchical con-
stitution of Judaism which had its centre at Tiberias, the chiefs of
the clergy were called Angels. Polycarp was already in Smyrna
and Ignatius in the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch when St. John
was seeing his visions in Patmos. Soon after, the second century
commenced. The church went down into the sea of blood, fol-
lowing St. Peter and St. Paul, St. James, St. Ignatius, St. Apolli-
naris, St. Clement, and the other apostolic leaders on the way .of
martyrdom. It was this line of martyrs and confessors which
handed down the tradition of the apostles to the august assembly
of bishops at Nice. The apostles bequeathed their doctrine and
their authority together with their blood to their successors, who
in turn sealed their credentials and their testimony with their
own blood, dyeing ever more and more deeply in its purple cur-
rent the episcopal robe. For three centuries every heir to the
mitre was an heir 'presumptive to the crown of martyrdom. On
many days in every year the altar and its ministers are vested in
scarlet and crimson in their commemoration and honor. During
all this primitive and heroic age there is no trace to be found in

1 86 GOETHE'S DEDICATION TO FAUST. [Nov.,

the apostolic and catholic church of anything like the so-called
Evangelical Protestantism. The Ideal of that age is the Catholic
Ideal, and just as surely as Christianity is a divine religion, the
Genesis of the Catholic Church has an apostolic and divine
origin.

CONCLUDED.

GOETHE'S DEDICATION TO FAUST.

YE floating forms ! again you're drawing near ;

My troubled gaze beheld you once before.
Shall I now strive to hold you firmly here ?

Yearns my fond heart e'en yet for mystic lore?
Forward ye press ; 'tis well : then rule the hour.

My bosom heaves as touched with youthful feeling,
As, forth from cloud and mist, around ye pour

Enchanted breathings, your advance revealing.

II.

You bring me pictures of a brighter day,

Visions of loveliness that passeth show ;
Like to traditions wrested from decay

Love reappears and friendships fervent glow ;
And pain returns in mournful echoes sighing

Over life's labyrinthine, devious maze,
Naming the good ones who, in joy replying,

Beguiled the blissful hours of bygone days.

in.

Alas ! they will not hear the coming song,

Those cherished souls who heard the first I sang.
Vanished from sight is now the friendly throng,

Silent the echoes that around me rang ;
My voice now vibrates to an unknown crowd,

Whose very praise but swells of grief the tide,
Since they whose cordial greetings made me proud,

If yet they live, are scattered far and wide.

1 8 So.] A Wo AM AN OF CULTURE. 187

IV.

I am oppressed with longings once foregone,

For that weird realm where mystic souls belong ;
It floats above me undefined in tone

Like an ^Eolian harp my lisping song.
A shudder seizes me ; tear follows tear ;

The rigid heart unbends in ecstasy ;
What I possess I see as from afar,

And what is lost becomes reality.

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER III.

AT LIFE'S OUTSET.

LATER that evening Olivia sat alone in the parlor of the little
home which was to own her for its mistress days and months,
perhaps years, to come. The conversation held with Nano
McDonell in the preceding chapter cannot have failed to give a
fair idea of this cheerful lady's disposition. The kind, active
sympathy of her nature, its graceful, womanly vivacity, so tem-
pered by good sense and true modesty as never to exceed due
bounds, were united to intelligence and piety of a high order.
She was educated, too, after the fashion of Charles Reade's ideal
heroines that is, could speak a few languages besides her own,
play the piano correctly and well, sing charmingly, make her own
dresses and bonnets, and cook with shining success. Her culture,
in the transcendental sense, was remarkable only by its absence.
She was the black beast of the cultured circle to which Nano
belonged, and where Nano admitted her in order to startle the
refined body whose intolerance was as conspicuous as their pro-
fessions of liberalism were loud and ridiculous. She knew no
mythology.

Her sunny disposition found proper expression in the sunniest,
purest, shapeliest little figure and countenance. She was not a
handsome woman. She was too little to merit that appellation.
Her light hair and blue eyes, her pretty mouth and fine com-
plexion, her graceful alertness and well-shaped body, were the
qualities which arrested the eye and gave Olivia the reputation

i88 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

of a beauty. Her pure heart shone in her eyes and gave a new
expression to the loveliness which, without it, would be only the
beauty of the flower or the butterfly. When she spoke the
sweetness of her voice, the good sense of what she said, the kind-
ly wit or innocent sarcasm of her words, and the pretty dimples
that ran up and down in playful response to her own emotions
were sure to attract her hearers and win from them admiration
and very often regard. One young gentleman of a pugnacious
disposition and high rank had already laid siege to her heart and
carried the outworks. She was sitting now alone in her parlor,
her sewing in her hands ; but the needle had dropped from her
fingers, and her eyes were gazing dreamily, and with a shade of
sorrow in them, into nothingness. Outside the wind moved the
professional sign enough to bring to her ears a gentle squeak of
the " sweetest music in the world." The fire was flashing and
leaping in the grate, and the clock on the mantel pointed almost
to the hour of nine.

" Poor Nano ! " she said aloud, and the words showed of whom
she was thinking. The sound of her voice roused her from her
meditation, and she resumed her work with a sigh. The thought
of her friend's condition had long been the thorn in her heart of
love and faith, and she longed to see her obtain the security and
peace of truth. The interview of a few hours previous was not
soon to be effaced from her mind. Some of its facts still rankled
severely.

" I wish she had not uttered them," she thought, " or that
I could forget them, or that her ways of thinking were not
so wild. She is growing wicked. How can she help it, having
no one to help her to good and refusing to look for assistance,
when we, with every facility to avoid evil, find the work so hard ? "
Again, after a long interval of thought, she said aloud : " Poor
Nano, poor dear Nano ! "

" Poor Olivia," mimicked a deep voice from the door. She
gave a little scream of surprise, and rushed to throw her arms
around the neck of a stalwart young fellow who was just enter-
ing, to upbraid him for giving her such a fright, and to assist him
in a sisterly way to remove his outer clothing. He sat down in
the easy-chair, when the first flurry was over, laughing. In the
strong light of the hanging lamp the faint resemblance to his
sister was clearly seen, although his muscular development and
rougher complexion took away considerably from the likeness.
And, moreover, his face was grave and serious in its expression,
and had perpetual care marked upon its handsome outlines.

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 189

" Poor Olivia ! " he said again when comfortably seated. " You
have any amount of pity for your neighbors and not a drop for
yourself. Didn't somebody say that charity begins at home ? "

" Yes, dear ; and somebody answered that that was no reason
why it should stay there."

" And I say again that that that is no reason why it should
make an old gossip and gadabout of itself. There is a mean in
everything "

" And especially in men," interrupted she.

" No innuendoes, if you please. There is a mean in everything,
and it should be sought out. Shed some tears for your own
pretty self now and then. Afterwards give away as much sym-
pathy as you wish."

" I hate that self," returned Olivia, half in earnest. " It is a
very demon in the world. I speak from experience."

"That is an unsafe admission, sister, and you are scarcely
twenty summers old."

" But you won't take advantage of these admissions, Harry,"
said she pertly. " You make too many yourself."

" Not so damaging in character, though," he responded.
" But this Miss Nano, whose name is always on your lips, and
whose excellent qualities seem to have bewitched you complete-
ly what is she, a poetess or a philosopher or a blue-stocking ? "

" All three," said Olivia earnestly.

Her brother held up his hands to ward off an imaginary
dragon.

" All three, I repeat," said the little lady with great decision ;
and if you knew her you would not* fail to love and pity her as
I do. She is a genius. She writes the sweetest poetry, equal to
much that I have read in Longfellow, and has all the world's
philosophies and mythologies at her fingers' ends. But her prin-
ciples are of no worth and would not stand a severe shock, and
education has so warped her kindly heart and disposition, and
filled her with so much of cant, that I must call her a blue-stock-
ing. But oh ! Harry, no handsomer she is there alive."

" Beauty is the gilding of the pill," said Harry, making a wry
face ; " and do you expect, innocent, that I shall swallow it un-
resistingly ? "

" What else is there to charm the men more effectually than a
lovely woman? You want to sneer, sceptic ; but look at that and
be silent." And she pressed into his hands a photograph of her
friend.

It was impossible to look on the handsome, haughty, and

igo A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

intellectual face of Nano McDonell without emotion, and the
doctor, hardened as he had been in the severest of schools, and
not inclined to surrender on the instant, felt a momentary thrill
steal through him as his eyes rested on the beautiful countenance.
He remained silent for some time, absorbed in studying the pic-
ture, while Olivia watched him with a keenness that almost bor-
dered on anxiety and argued the presence of the deepest spirit
of intrigue in her innocent breast. He handed the photograph
back with a deep, involuntary sigh, as if awaking from a pleasant
dream. Olivia clapped her hands and laughed in triumph.

" Oh ! " said he, blushing at his inadvertence, " photographs
flatter."

" So they do," assented she, " even in this instance. For Miss
Nano is not always on exhibition, and one may never rouse her
into that attitude and that expression again. But oh ! Harry,"
continued the cunning enthusiast, " if you saw those lovely eyes
with the fire of life in them "

" They express intolerable pride," he interrupted.

" And unutterable tenderness sometimes, and glorious anger,
and withering scorn. But O dear Heaven ! if the soul were but
the shadow of the body in spiritual beauty there would be noth-
ing to grieve for. She is a woman that can be led by love "

" Where is the woman that can't? " said the cynic.

" And if some strong, manly nature, gifted as her own, but
commanding and good, were to make her his wife, ah ! then
what might we not expect ? "

." Speaking from a medical point of view," said the unmoved
Harry, " we might expect "

" You wretch ! " screamed she in his ear, " don't say a word.
You are in love with her already, and I shall bring you to the
next stage jealousy. Dr. Killany is wild about her."

" Indeed ! I never had the honor of a close acquaintance with
the gentleman, but I should say he would make the very worst
of husbands. Do you know, I have been thinking of entering into
partnership with him. He has a splendid practice, and probably
finds courting and practising not agreeable neighbors. He is to
send a messenger to-night to inform me of his decision on the
matter. I thought he had already come."

" There has been no messenger yet. I do not like but likes
have nothing to do with business. Will the arrangement be bet-
ter than independent work ? "

" For a time infinitely better. It is a real stroke of fortune.
Don't you see that for many months I could do no more in my

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 191

present position than pay expenses ? With Killany I shall have a
handsome salary. And, again, I shall become known in the city.
When I do start on my own account I shall have hosts of friends.
Yes, it is a real stroke of fortune."

" I am so glad. After all your hard struggles, Harry, to find
a safe position at last ! "

She took his hands in hers and they looked into each other's
eyes. Her last words and her affectionate action had caused a
burst of feeling that turned their thoughts into a gloomier chan-
nel and shut out for a time the remembrance of those who had
formed the subject of their conversation. They could not speak,
and a delicious silence settled on the room, save for the crackling
of the fire, and the ticking of the clock, and the wind-born music
from the professional sign outside.

They were all in all to each other, these two, although the
first indications of separate interests intervening were beginning
to declare themselves. They had been orphans from childhood.
Their memories of father, and mother, and friends, and home
were too indistinct to give them deeper sorrow than the natural
yearning for these objects could bring. The charity of strangers
had been father and mother to them. Harry had been educated in
American colleges at the expense of a guardian whom he had never
seen. The same was the case with Olivia, but she had spent her life
in the convent of the Ursulines at Quebec, and was as patriotic a
Canadian as ever breathed. They had not been often together in
the twenty years of separation, but they had clung to each other
as lonely, friendless hearts will cling, and absence only strength-
ened the ties of natural affection. A few years back the myste-
rious friend who had supported and protected them through
childhood withdrew his assistance and left them to fight their
own battle with life. Olivia easily found a situation, and in the
course of time became companion to Nano McDonell. Pier
brother began the practice of medicine at Philadelphia. Not
meeting with even hopeful success, he drifted to the remote
towns, and finally settled in the city of Toronto, where our story
finds its scenes and characters. His life had been one of self-
denial and pain. He had no resources save his talent, which
often brought him to starvation's verge ; but his brave heart,
strengthened by the simplest and holiest trust in God, never
wavered. He was anxious to make a home for his sister, that for
a few years at least they might know the pleasures of that com-
panionship so long denied them. All his struggles were nerved
with that ambition which was accomplished in the end. They

192 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

sat in their own home, no longer outcasts. Their roof-tree was
firmly rooted. In its shade they looked back on the past with
mild regret and Christian satisfaction. The mystery connected
with their earliest life sometimes troubled them. Olivia had been
too young to recall any incident of that time. Harry knew, or
thought he knew, but it was much like a dream, that his parents
were of English extraction and had come from Brazil to New
York. Some locks of hair and a few letters still remained to
them as memorials of those dear ones. The secrecy which their
guardian preserved was puzzling. They had never even seen
him. So little promised to be derived from an investigation,
however, that Harry had never resolved upon making an effort
in that direction.

That was their simple story. Harry was a good-looking fel-
low of twenty-eight, with a fine figure, a severe, deep nature, and
a talented mind. The discipline of poverty had left its impress
on his character in the broadest letters. His face, as we have
said, was marked with lines of care and melancholy. Their
causes had long disappeared, but the suffering he had endured
had given him stability and firmness of mind, had opened his
heart to the keenest sympathy for the sufferings of others, and
had taught him above all the necessity of unwavering confidence
in God, its consolation and its reward. His disposition was
noble and generous, yet shrewd, too, and full of caution. He had
made too many painful blunders in his struggle for bread to give
his generosity free rein at every opportunity. An honorable pru-
dence guided even his kindest charities, and impulse was a thing
of the past with him.

" Fairly settled, as you say, Olivia," he said after a long si-
lence. " Yet I have a name to make, though in the meantime
money will be plentiful enough."

" You will not find that so very hard," said she, with loving
confidence. " I am not without some influence. I know many of
the best and highest people here, and first among them is my poor
Nano. Her friendship for me will bring the crowd to you.
Have I been altogether useless ? "

" My guiding star, dear," answered he tenderly, " could hardly
have been that. If you had not been near to cheer and strengthen
me I should have succumbed many a time."

" And now," he added, as if struck with a sudden inspira-
tion, " I seem destined to lose it just as I begin to enjoy its
glory."

She blushed the gentlest of colors.

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 193

" I'm not to blame," said she, " and, as I told Nano, it is to be
expected."

" Nano always ! This woman has bewitched you."

" May I be far distant when she has done, the same* for you !
The men are the silliest of creatures over a woman. I could not
believe it until "

He would not take up her words when she stopped, but smiled
and enjoyed her confusion.

" Until you had experience of it yourself. You haven't found
it unpleasant, since you seem anxious that more of our sex should
grow sillier still."

She looked up innocently, her manner when intending a
crushing reply, but Harry was saved the proposed humiliation
by a diversion in the hall. There arose without the sound of
fierce scuffling, intermingled with curses, blows, and the tramp-
ing of feet, and the next moment a young gentleman threw open
the parlor-door with great violence, dragged in by the collar the
humorous Mr. Quip, struggling, kicking, and reproaching, and
crushed him forcibly into a chair.

" Sir Stanley ! " cried Olivia.

" An eavesdropper, Harry," said the baronet, gasping. " Your
pardon, Miss Fullerton, for this rough intrusion, but I caught
us fellow with his ear to the keyhole."

Mr. Quip looked up sideways mournfully. His hands and
legs were dangling, his clothes crumpled and torn, his whole ap-
pearance very much like that of a captive chicken. The beady
eyes stared bright and inquiring at nothing at all.

" I ask pardon," he said when he had recovered his voice suf-
ficiently to speak, " but I must contradict the gentleman. He is
laboring under a false impression. I dropped a key close to the
door, and was stooping to look for it, when I was set upon and
roughly handled by him. I believe there's law in this country."

" There must be some mistake, Sir Stanley," interposed the
doctor. " Is not this Dr. Killany's messenger ? "

" Your servant, sir," said Mr. Quip appealingly. " I have a
note for you. If you will obtain my release from this semblance
of a gentleman "

The semblance shook Mr. Quip with violence.

" You deserve a kicking as well for your impudence as for
your dishonesty," said he ; " people don't look for keys through
keyholes."

" It might have fallen on the other side," Quip suggested, un-
able to conquer his desire to quiz. " I could give many instances
VOL. xxxn. 13

194 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

of a like nature. My papa poor old man ! he died of a very in-
teresting congestion had in his

Sir Stanley shook him again with increased violence.

" I believe there's law in this country," said Mr. Quip.

" The"n you shall have the benefit of what there is. With
your permission, Miss Fullerton, 1 shall kick the thing out of
doors."

" Which permission you will not get," said she. " Let the
poor fellow go. He has done no harm."

" It might teach him manners and sounder principles of hon-
esty. But as you command " and shaking the bird from his
grasp with disdain, he came over to her side. Mr. Quip gathered
his limbs and his rags together, and made a faint attempt to ar-
range his necktie.

" It's not often I'm so caught," said he in apology, " particu-
larly in the presence of ladies. My confusion is too severe to
permit of my remaining longer, and I beg that you will not insist
upon it. I have only to deliver you this note, sir, and wish you
a good-evening. There is no answer required."

He handed a slip of paper to the doctor, made an elaborate
bow to Olivia, and walked to the door. On the threshold he
stopped and waved his hand loftily towards Sir Stanley.

" We shall meet again," he said, and walked away with the
air of a crushed tragedian. The baronet's laugh rang in his ears
as the door closed.

"Very melodramatic," said Olivia.

" You should have let me kick him."

" And have missed in consequence that tragic departure ?
Why, Sir Stanley, where is your humor?"

And they at once fell a-talking with the honest intention of
finding it out, which gave rise to much whispering and laughing
on the baronet's part, and wonderful blushing on the part of Oli-
via ; and so earnest were they in the search that the doctor, who
was smiling cheerfully over the contents of the note, allowed him-
self to be forgotten, and fell asleep in his chair.

iS8o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER IV.

WEAVING THE WEB.

AN elegant building on a principal street bore on one of its
doors the name and profession of Dr. Killany. The first floor
was devoted to the mysteries of commercial life. The second
contained in its area the private office, consulting-room, and wait-
ing-room of the city's most fashionable physician. Dr. Killany
was a man of refined and luxurious tastes. His offices were fur-
nished in the richest and most tasteful manner, and it was the
daily delight of the doctor's patients to spend some time among
his bric-a-brac collections and enjoy the charms, of his witty,
sparkling, and cultured conversation. Such calls might be sup-
posed to intrude slightly on the professional duties. Perhaps
they did, but they did not diminish the professional income.
Time and personal advantages were not thrown away valueless
on the whims of rich patients, and it was noticed that they who
came oftenest and remained longest paid the heaviest bills.

The library or private office for the most held the doctor's
presence. A bell from the outer rooms summoned him to the

>artment for consultation. Mr. Quip manipulated the bell, and
ry often, as whim or need or occasion suggested, the patients
well. The waiting-room was his domain. A pretty table and

>me shelves in a corner held his papers and books for Mr. Quip

spired to professional honors. He had the slang of the medical
lepartment to the highest perfection ; and it was one point in his

ivor that through a close study of his excellent model, the doc-

>r, he had acquired the professional polish and affectations. He
fond of exercising his newly -acquired powers on every safe

id convenient object. To the uninitiated the ordeal of an inter-
view with Mr. Quip was not the least of the terrors which at-
ided a visit to the reserved and distinguished physician, his

laster.

At the earliest office-hour of the morning after his adventures
with Sir Stanley Dashington and the Fullertons, Mr. Quip was
sitting in deep study of a medical work. On his countenance
were no traces of the indignities there administered by the indig-
nant baronet. A placid look rested there instead, as if he were at
peace with himself and all the world besides, and his thoughts
were dwelling on more important things than the little check he
had received that evening. Perched on the arm of a chair, his

196 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

legs turned and twisted for support about every convenient pro-
jection, his eyes blinking and winking with cat-like regularity, Mr.
Quip read, pondered, and gave an occasional utterance to the pro-
found thoughts that were surging within him. There was no louder
motion on that floor than the winking of his eyes. The soft car-
pets, carefully-hinged doors, and gliding movements of doctor
and servant precluded the necessity of noise. Voices never pene-
trated through the walls. Even the tinkle of the library-bell
which Mr. Quip managed was silvery enough to be unheard by
outside ears.

While the student was reading and pondering there came a
sharp, imperative, and boisterous knock at the door. He was not
so deep in his book as not to hear it, but with a due regard for
the matter before him, and a proper understanding of his posi-
tion as servant to the first physician of the city, he concluded to
let the rabble wait. Therefore he read a few lines more, and was
putting away his book and disengaging his legs from their various
entanglements when the visitor unceremoniously entered and
saved him the trouble of leaving his seat. The new-comer was
an acquaintance, a man about thirty years of age, smart, well
dressed, and familiar. There was a world of anger in his eye as
it rested on Mr. Quip, to whom it was pleasing, on taking note
of the mood of his friend, to get angry too, and to address the
stranger in terms of vigorous reproach.

"Juniper," said he with dignified utterance, "you have been
visiting this institution long enough to know that the strictest
etiquette is observed in the waiting-room even."

" Inside or outside ? " snapped Juniper in tones so loud that
Mr. Quip put his hands to his ears in agony. " Stuff!" continued
the gentleman scornfully. "D'ye think, my hawk, that I'm to
stand on such observances ? No, no ; I leave that to those who
get something in return for the money you squeeze out of 'em, sir."

Mr. Quip took away his hands from his ears and laughed
softly.

" Very good, Juniper ; I shall borrow five dollars from you on
the head of that, or tell it as my own at the club. But I beg of
you to lower your tone in speaking. What my deep regard for
you prevents me from doing Dr. Killany would not hesitate to
do should you disturb him by your unseemly manners."

Juniper thereupon went into convulsions, and roared so loud
that the windows shook.

" Kick me out of doors, I suppose ? I shouldn't like him to
get his claws on me, if they are anything like yours."

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 197

Mr. Quip laughed uneasily and made a note in his diary.

" This won't do, Juniper. You are living too high. Witti-
cisms from men of your kind spring only from good feeding.
Your pulse is going at a fearful rate. You must come down to a
potato-diet, and take fresh air on the street-corners daily about
this hour."

" Not an inch do I budge on any consideration," said Juniper.
" Besides, I have news for you. Having spent my money on the
hungry medical crowd "

',' Thirsty, you mean," Quip interrupted.

" And being obliged to go to work, I have got a position in
the asylum, taking care of madmen, at fifty dollars a month. How
is that for good fortune ? "

" Not bad for you," answered the other, with a critical
glance at the lusty limbs and swelling muscles of his friend.
"You've found your vocation. Mind is not your department,
but matter is. At least you save yourself from digging. And so
our little circle will lose one of its best members, and we shall
never more have the pleasure of feasting at your expense. How
did you turn out so lucky ? "

" Stated my case to an old chap who knew my father years
ago. McDonell, the importer, got me the place."

t" Quite a distinguished patron ! He didn't lend you any
h?"
" No ; perhaps I would not have taken it if he had."
" I wouldn't have tempted you with offers had I been in his
ce. I'm not overflowing with cash, and I was hoping that you
could have favored me in that line."

" You owe me some two hundred dollars now, Quip ; and
I swear I'll have it out of you in hard cash or in broken
bones."

" Don't get excited," said Quip, jumping suddenly to his feet.
" Now, if you want to see some fun, and behold the result of a
speculation in milk and water, step behind that door. There's
a youth just entered the hall below. He is coming up the stairs.
He is here. Go."

Mr. Quip had waked into sudden animation at sight of his
legitimate prey, an innocent rustic who was walking up to
his fate with a courage born of ignorance and desperation. He
was coming to consult the most renowned physician of the city.
Mr. Quip met him at the door and led him in silence to a seat.
" You have come to consult Dr. Killany, I suppose."
" Yes, sir," blushing and frightened.

198 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

" A preliminary examination is necessary before you can be
admitted. Fifty cents fee."

The money was hastily and willingly paid.

" Do not be alarmed at any of my movements. I shall first
ascertain the rate of your pulse."

With great deliberation and impressiveness he attached a wire
to a clock on the mantel and twisted the other end about the
patient's wrist.

" Remain perfectly still. There is no cause for alarm."

His voice was soothing, but his actions belied his words, and
the patient trembled with agony. There was a silence for some
minutes. Mr. Quip was waiting for the hour of ten, when the strik-
ing of the clock would add to the solemnity of his decision. He
kept with thumb and finger a tight hold of the youth's nose, where
he asserted the jugular vein to be, and he counted with profes-
sional emphasis and professional comments its fancied pulsations.
" One two three four, delightful ! Five six seven no,
seven and a half what's this ? Heart action running contrary to
pulse action bad indications ! One two three are you a
light sleeper and eater? I thought as much. One two three
move your arm up and down gently ten times. One two
three if the clock-like machine strikes ten when you are done I
consider you in no danger."

This last movement was scarcely completed when the clock
struck ten. Mr. Quip sat down before his patient with a banter-
ing smile on his hatchet-face.

" A healthier boy than you, sir, it has rarely been my lot to
meet. You have been deluding yourself. The test I have ap-
plied is infallible, but if you wish to be fully satisfied you shall
hear the doctor's own opinion." He pulled the bell-cord and
flung open the folding-doors to the consulting-room. Before
they closed on the youth an effective view of the physician en-
tering from the library beyond was given to those without. It
was threatening and awe-inspiring, and never failed to produce a
deep impression on beholders.

Mr. Juniper came out from his hiding-place with a counte-
nance purpled and eyes tear-wet from restrained laughing.

" What a bit of freshness ! " said he. " I haven't seen the like
since I came from the country first. After all, Quip, you must
net a pretty income from your position here."

" Not a cent," said Quip. " Do you think me dishonest
enough to retain money so obtained ? My position would be
soon lost if I indulged in that work long."

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 199

Mr. Juniper winked at these disinterested words and took his
departure.

"Call up some time and see me," he said in going. " I know
the penitentiary is more in your line, but the asylum doesn't want
interest."

" Not while it is conducted by lunac}^, Juniper, of which you
are the essence. Good-morning."

Shortly after the call-bell rang. Mr. Quip hastily threw open
the folding-doors, and a second impression was witnessed the
distinguished doctor bowing his patient out, the latter the very
personification of hope in his appearance.

As there were then no other patients to be attended to, Dr.
Killany returned to his library and resumed the meditations
which the late episode had interrupted. The room in which he
sat was a model of elegance, richness, and taste. Its colors were
of the soberest hue, and it was furnished with numerous little
curtained alcoves and stained-glass windows. Here stood a
cabinet of bric-a-brac; from out a half-curtained niche peeped
cunningly a marble Cupid ; where a soft twilight hue lingered all
day upon the wall hung a gem in painting. It might have been
a room in an old castle, with its arched oak ceiling, its waxed
floor, its curious shapes of furniture, and its strange design. The
doctor, sitting at his desk in a costume of sober black, the sub-
dued light from the windows falling on his pale, intellectual face,
hiding all its lines of wickedness and intensifying its dark beauty,
looked the very spirit of the place. His head was resting on his
hand, and his brows were knitted in deep thought. Like his ser-
vant, he gave occasional utterance to his impatient and surly
meditations. His interview on the preceding afternoon had been
satisfactory one, but its success had only opened up new
venues and new necessities of intrigue to his scheming brain,
trigue was his element, but he could grow impatient over it,
evertheless. He was a Bohemian, a mere adventurer, needy but
ented, with a constitutional distaste for work and a strong de-
ire of rising to wealth and station at a single bound. He hoped
to do this through Nano McDonell. The first step had been
taken, and he was now considering the difficulties which still
stood in his way.

They were two : the impossibility of winning Nano's love and
the intended restitution which McDonell had spoken of. To
obtain Nano as a wife and retain the dowry intact were the pre-
sent objects of his scheming. He felt that it was impossible to
attach Miss McDonell to him by any ties of affection. With her

200 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

keen perception of character she had read him, in the first days of
their acquaintance, through and through. She would stoop to
unite herself to such a man as he only when her own baseness
might equal his. Interest was the only bond which could unite
them. She loved power and wealth to a morbid extent, and
dreaded obscurity and poverty more than death. To retain so
much good he felt positive that she would not, if cunningly
worked upon, stop at the doing of much evil. The knowledge of
her father's sin and of his present intentions might cause at first
a revulsion of feeling. Her high position, her reputation for vir-
tue, her intellectual pride might urge her at first to reject impera-
tively any idea of holding a property which was not her own.
Such scruples would be got rid of by a vivid picture of con-
sequences; the heirs-at-law would be shown to be dead, which
would send the property into the state coffers ; and the necessity
of secluding her father from the world in order to prevent un-
pleasant family scenes would soon make itself absolute. By de-
grees growing familiar with evil she would not only consent to
his measures, but propose and take measures of her own to pre-
vent the loss of that so dearly loved. In all these doings he would
be the powerful, indispensable adviser, and such a position offer-
ed many opportunities. The idea of holding the position brought
up a train of pleasing images to the doctor's mind. His frowns
vanished and he walked through the room for a few minutes, his
face smiling, in full enjoyment of the anticipations of the future.

The second difficulty was the more easily arranged, since it
depended solely on overcoming the first. One fact was upper-
most in Killany's mind restitution. The glimpse of his chang-
ing dispositions which Mr. McDonell had unwisely afforded him
alarmed him more than can be conceived. It was an unexpected
feature in the game, and rendered the confinement of the silly
old man an imperative necessity. To get rid of him by murder
was a means from which Killany would always shrink. In his
economy it was a mistake, an egregious blunder, and equivalent
to a surrender of the scheme which it was intended to assist. He
could be made idiotic, but to this Nano would never consent,
little as she cared for the parent who had never given her teii
words of fatherly affection in his life. A gentle restraint might
be employed, and lunatic asylums were not yet without abuses.
It would be a severe strain on Miss McDonell's virtue to stoop to
things so eminently at variance with her education. Culture has
no principles to face necessity, however, and he felt no fear but
that with his assistance she would reason wrong right upon the

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 201

present occasion. It was done every day in matters where there
was little at stake, and why not extend the application of the
rule?

The doctor thought and said many other things, in the course
of an hour, more or less connected with this subject. He was a
man of caution, skilled in the weaknesses and strengths of his
own character, and rarely committed a blunder in that respect.
Yet his habit of thinking aloud, although it had never yet led him
into actual danger, was imprudent. It was even dangerous, he
would have said and felt, had he seen the position which for a
long time Mr. Quip occupied at his door. That gentleman never
lost an opportunity of using his ears, which had a great affection
and fitness for keyholes, and during the meditations of his master
every involuntary remark had entered through his greedy auri-
cular organ, causing the strangest imaginable contortions of his
face. However, the remarks were disjointed, being uttered at
long intervals, and Mr. Quip was no wiser in the end.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs drew Mr. Quip from his
pleasant occupation. He hastened into the waiting-room, and
was at the door in time to receive Miss McDonell, who entered
with the air of one not a stranger to the surroundings. Indeed,
she had often been there before, and, as a distant relative of the
physician, was privileged with admission into the sacred precincts
of the library. The theatrical proceedings were omitted in her
case. Mr. Quip, with solemn bows and an official expression, led
her to the door of the penetralia, threw it open with a profound
salaam, and announced Miss McDonell. Killany for a moment
looked anxious and annoyed, but he came forward smilingly to
take her hand and lead her to a seat, expressing his delight at the
honor of her presence, and saying many civil and ordinary things
in a most warm and devoted and extraordinary fashion. She re-
ceived them languidly as a matter of course.

" You are to dine with us to-day," she said. " I hope you
have not forgotten it."

" It would be impossible to forget it, Miss Nano."

"And you can make a professional visit at the same time.
My father complains of indisposition. Though not actually ill,
he looks haggard enough to suit an ill-wisher."

Killany started imperceptibly and looked at her keenly.
Her gaze was turned from him. She was watching the light fall-
ing through the closed windows, and no suspicion of having said
a sharp thing was in her manner.

" A passing fit," said he, with an inward wish that it were

202 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Nov.,

something more. " Professional and business men are subject to
it. In your father's case I have the causes off by heart."

He watched her still to see if she observed a double meaning
in his words, but she only said, " Indeed ! " and was silent.

" Do you know," he continued, " that Parepa-Rosa will be at
the Royal this week ? I thought you would wish to hear her,
and I engaged a box for one evening. May I count on the honor
of your presence ? "

" Oh ! certainly," said she, rousing herself into something like
animation. " How very kind of you ! And Parepa is to be here
with her heavenly voice and her cheery face ! It is so rare for a
good singer to come to Toronto that this will be a memorable
event."

He was about to make some reply when the silver bell at his
hand gave out its warning.

" A patient or a visitor," he said. " Will you excuse me for a
short time?"

" I am going myself." And she accompanied him to the door.
" I wished only to have you call in time to see my father. Let
me thank you again for your kindness in inviting me to the
opera."

" Do not speak of it."

He opened the door at the same moment, when from the wait-
ing-room Mr. Quip ushered in Dr. Fullerton, and the three met
face to face in the centre of the room. The blue eyes of Fuller-
ton looked conscious, Killany was plainly annoyed, but Miss
McDonell was innocence itself with regard to both gentlemen.
She saw a fair-haired, graceful man in the perspective, and, not
having the honor of his acquaintance, ignored him. Killany,
however, understanding her deep affection for Olivia and her
often-expressed desire to know the brother of her friend, felt that
it would not be wise, his own wishes to the contrary, to anger
Nano by allowing to pass this legitimate opportunity of making
them acquainted.

" I may presume enough in the present instance," he said to
Nano in his calm, polished tones, at the same time extending his
hand to Dr. Fullerton, " to introduce to you my new assistant
and the brother of Miss Olivia Miss McDonell, Dr. Fuller-
ton."

The faces of the pair exhibited for a moment the faintest ex-
pressions of surprise. They were of course surprised, Miss Nano
at her own nearsightedness, and Harry at the unexpectedness of
the introduction. They bowed and said a few commonplace

i88o.] A DROP FOR DIVES. 203

things, and then, under guard of Killany, she continued on her
way to the carriage.

When the doctor returned he took his assistant to an apart-
ment opening off the consulting-room in the same manner as his
own, and gave it over to his special use. It was fitted up in good
imitation of the library, being neat and tasteful, but inexpensive
in the decoration and furniture.

" As we have settled upon the main articles of our partner-
ship," said he, " there will be no need to review the thing to-day.
This is your domain. Mr. Quip is at your service in the matter
of messages and the like, excepting outside of office-hours. How
did you take in the appearance of our city belle, Miss McDon-
ell?"

" She is beautiful," said Harry, with feigned indifference, but
his heart was fluttering. " I have seen her before, and have heard
of her often enough. Olivia regards her as divine."

The other laughed and went away with easier feelings.

Harry did not think it necessary to tell him that he dreamed
of her at night and was half disposed to fall seriously in love with
her by day.

TO BE CONTINUED.

A DROP FOR DIVES.

"Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.'*

HARK ! sinful man of earth. Dost thou not hear
Thy brother Dives' cry ? Go, comfort him,
And from thine eyelids' overflowing brim
Drop down one sorrowing penitential tear.
This is the drop he craves to ease his pain ;
Though ever weeping, all his tears are vain.
The true repentant tear, thou know'st full well,
No eye can shed in heaven, nor will in, hell.

204 -4 MISSING PAGE OF [Nov.,

A MISSING PAGE OF CATHOLIC AMERICAN HIS-
TORY. NEW JERSEY COLONIZED BY CATHO-
LICS.

WE are wont to appeal to Maryland as the great witness of
the spirit of tolerance displayed by our Catholic forefathers in
the establishment of colonies in the New World. Many will be
surprised to find a similar appeal made to New Jersey as another
important witness of the genuine spirit of Catholic charity to-
wards erring brethren in the presence of sad unkindness mani-
fested towards them both in the mother-country and in the
colonies. This is the more remarkable as Protestants delight in
casting up to the Catholic Church, as peculiar and essential to
her mode of action, the spirit of persecution, without weighing
the seriousness of the charges which they make. We do not con-
sider ourselves as discoverers of new facts with regard to the
history of New Jersey, but many will be surprised to know that
New Jersey, and Long Island in New York, were colonized by
Catholics, and for the precise purpose of giving Catholics shelter
from Protestant persecution whilst offering to Protestants ample
religious freedom.

The constitution of New Jersey, whilst in 1776 holding forth
as its basis liberty of conscience, retained until 1844 the tell-tale
clause that

" No Protestant inhabitant shall be deprived of his political and civil
rights."

Few are aware that in the first constitution of the colony of New
Jersey, or, as it was known in its first charter, the Province of
New Albion, the Catholic settlers had proclaimed aloud the prin-
ciple of religious toleration as early as the year 1634 in these
words :

" No persecution to any dissenting, and to all, such as the Walloons,
free chapels, and to punish all as seditious and contempt as Bitter rail arid
condemn others of the contrary ; for this argument or persuasion All Re-
ligion Ceremonies or Church Discipline should be acted in mildnesse, love
and charity, and gentle language, not to disturb the peace or quiet of the
Inhabitants."

It is most creditable to Catholics that whilst they were the
constant object of the most cruel system of persecution in the

i88o.] CATHOLIC AMERICAN HISTORY. 205

mother-country, and were tempted, by the hope of worshipping-
God according to their conscience, to abandon their native coun-
try and seek a refuge in the far-away lands depending upon the
British crown, their first thought was to offer equal rights, civil
and religious, to all other Christian bodies that might choose to
dwell upon the lands granted to them.

The Catholic leader of this colony, and the first Englishman
that settled New Jersey, was Sir Edmund Plowden, to whom a
charter was granted by Charles I., in 1634, of the territory now
called New Jersey and Long Island, but designated in the charter
as New Albion and the Isle of Plowden, whilst Sir Edmund
Plowden was designated lord proprietor, earl palatine, gover-
nor and captain-general of the province of New Albion. Edmund
Plowden was a descendant of an old Saxon family of Shrop-
shire, England, that received its name, Plowden (i.e., kill-Dane),
from acts of prowess as early as A.D. 920 against the Danish in-
vaders of England. His ancestor, Roger de Plowden, served in
the Crusades under King Richard Coeur de Lion, and was pre-
sent at the siege of Acre in 1191, and for some distinguished ser-
vice received the augmentation of two fleurs-de-lis to the family
arms. The Plowden family remained firmly attached to the
Catholic faith in the midst of all the changes and dire persecu-
tions of the sixteenth century. The Earl of New Albion's grand-
father was the famous lawyer of Queen Elizabeth's time to whom,
though a Catholic, she had offered the chancellorship, when he
gave the following answer :

" Hold m*e, dread sovereign, excused. Your Majesty well knows I find
reason to swerve from the Catholic faith in which you and I were
rought up. I can never, therefore, countenance the persecution of its
professors. I should not have in charge your Majesty's conscience one
week before I should incur your displeasure, if it be your Majesty's royal
intent to continue the system of persecuting the retainers of the Catholic
h."

The queen, we are told, " admired the firm frankness of her
sergeant, and, in yielding to his remonstrance, deprived herself
and the nation of the service and credit of an able, disinterested,
and upright judge." He was, however, subjected to many an-
noyances because of his refusal to subscribe to the observance of
uniformity of divine service, and for having been present at Mass.
An anecdote illustrative of the times is told * of the Plowden

* Records of English Province S.jf., series x. part ii. p. 542.

206 A MtssrtfG PAGE OF [Nov.,

family concerning a trap that was laid for him, whence his quick
wit saved him :

" He was once informed by evil-intentioned persons that he could hear
Mass at a certain place. He availed himself of the opportunity, though
liable to heavy punishment. He was tried for the offence, but, suspicious
of foul play, he asked the supposed priest if he could swear to being a
priest, who answered in the negative.

" Edmund Plowden replied : ' The case is altered. No priest, no Mass,
no violation of the law.' ' The case is altered, quoth Plowden ' became
afterwards a proverb."

Edmund the Earl of Albion's eldest brother, Thomas, renounc-
ed all his prospects of earthly welfare to become a Jesuit, and in
1623 was on the perilous English mission, when by statute 27
Elizabeth it was death for a priest to be found in England. He
went under the name of Father Salisbury, and was seized by the
pursuivants at Clerkenwell, March 18, 1628. One of his sisters,
Margaret, was a professed nun in the order of English Augus-
tinianesses at Louvain, of which convent she became procuratrix
in 1653. She passed forty years, from 1625, the date of her pro-
fession, to 1665, the date of her death, in earnest devotion to the
exercises of the cloister.

In the chronicles of this convent we find an account of the
persecutions and troubles to which Francis, the Earl of New
Albion's brother, who had succeeded to the Plowden estates, was
subjected :

" When the troubles began in England between the king and his Par-
liament, and Catholics were chiefly plundered, then did this good gentle-
man (Francis) feel his part of the misery, living then at his house named
Shiplake, in Oxfordshire, which was finely seated hard by the river Thames,
whence he might when he pleased go by water into divers shires, as also go
to London ; and then he lived there with divers of his friends with him, so
as they were about sixty in number. And keeping a good house, they would
then sometimes entertain the bargemen that came that way, who gave
them but an ill return for it, giving notice to the Parliament forces and be-
lying Mr. Plowden by saying that he mustered men for the king. A great
company came and set upon the house, shooting at it, so as all lived there
were fain to fly in haste, and they plundered the house and took all away.
After that Mr. Plowden was forced still to fly from one place to an-
other for to keep himself out of their hands. Then he came and lived
awhile at Reading, until that also was besieged and taken by the Par-
liament, yet upon condition that those who would might safely de-
part away. Whereupon Mr. Plcrwden's household, taking their chiefest'
goods and five hundred pounds with them, departed in a coach out of the
town. But when they were come forth the Puritan Earl of Essex said to
his soldiers, ' Come, boys, plunder now,' so they took the coach with all
their goods and money, leaving.them only the clothes on their backs; and

i88o.] CATHOLIC AMERICAN HISTORY. 207

they came then and lived at Oxford until that town was also surrendered.
After that they were fain to retire themselves to their house named Aus-
tum (Aston), and to live very privately, where they were so beloved by their
tenants that they redeemed for them the house and goods which were se-
questered, who repaid them again. They lived but poorly by reason of the
troubles, not daring to have anything but what was merely necessary, being
still in danger of plundering. They were much beloved of their neighbours
by reason that Mr. Plowden, having skill in law, did help them in their
business, and his wife, who was skilled in surgery, did very charitably assist
them in their necessities." *

Their daughter Elizabeth became a nun in the same convent
of Augustinianesses in Lou vain, and died its superior in 1716. It
was this Mr. Plowden's youngest brother, Edmund, to whom
was granted the charter of New Albion. We have dwelt at
length on the history of members of his immediate family to show
how the troubles to which he and they as Catholics were exposed
at this time had much to do in persuading him to take refuge in
some part of the British colonies, where he might be unmolested
in his temporal and spiritual concerns.

All could easily foresee, whatever might be the outcome of the
struggle between the Parliament and the king, that Catholics
would not be spared by either party. For the greatest and most
dreaded reproach that the Parliament could make against the
king was that, because his wife, Queen Henrietta of France, was
a Catholic, he was secretly favoring popery and trying to sub-
vert the Protestant establishment and come to terms with the
pope. To prove that there was no foundation for such a charge
he was constantly renewing edicts for the imprisonment of priests
and for the sequestration of the property of Catholics. In the
year 1628 he carefully excluded all English Catholics from the
queen's chapel at Somerset House ; he offered in successive pro-
clamations a reward of one hundred pounds for the apprehension
of Dr. Smith, the Catholic bishop ; and he repeatedly ordered dur-
ing the year 1629 the magistrates, judges, and bishops to enforce
the penal laws against the priests and ^Jesuits. The law left it to
the king's option to exact from the lay recusants the fine of
twenty pounds per lunar month ; he allowed them as a favor to
compound for a fixed sum to be paid annually into the exche-
quer sometimes one-tenth, sometimes one-third of their yearly
income to gain, not the liberty of serving God according to their
conscience (that was still forbidden under severe penalties), but
the permission to absent themselves from a form of worship
which they disapproved.

* Records, p. 348.

208 A MISSING PAGE OF [Nov.

Edmund himself, to avoid the inconveniences of these frequent
annoyances, had gone to the Continent, where he spent much of
his time in useful travels and in maturing plans which he had con-
ceived for colonizing a tract of land that had once belonged to
the South Virginia Company, but which, by the dissolution of
this company, had reverted to the British crown. Lord Balti-
more had returned from his unsuccessful attempt to establish a
colony within the jurisdiction of Virginia unsuccessful because
the government of the colony refused to allow it unless he sub-
scribed to the oath of allegiance and supremacy purposely framed
to exclude Roman Catholics and had petitioned for and obtained
a charter for the country beyond the Potomac, and to which the.
name of Maryland was^ given in honor of the Catholic queen,
Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. From the Public Record Of-
fice, London, Colonial Papers,* we find that the petition of Ed-
mund Plowden, knight, and others for the territory north of
Maryland quickly followed, asking "for the like title, dignity, and
privileges to Sir Edmund Plowden as was granted to Sir George
Calvert, knight, in Newfoundland." This petition was granted
on July 24, 1632, eighth year of the reign of Charles I.f He
seems to have acted without delay upon the grant made to him,
and we find a charter issued under the great seal of the king on
June 21, 1634, giving the conditions, and describing the country
conveyed to Sir Edmund Plowden. It was designated as New
Albion ; and the charter also indicates the purpose for which it
was sought :

" Whereas our well-beloved and faithful subject, Edmund Plowden.
knight, from a laudable and manifest desire as well of promoting the Chris-
tian religion as the extending of our imperial territories, hath formerly dis-
covered at his own great charges and expenses a certain island and regions
hereinafter described in certain of our lands to the western part of the
globe, commonly called Northern Virginia, inhabited by a barbarous and
wild people not having any notice of the Divine Being, and hath amply
and copiously peopled the same with five hundred of our subjects, being
taken to that colony as companions of the same pious hopes; and the
colony being founded . . . hath humbly supplicated our Royal Highness to
erect all that island and region into a province and county palatinate, . . .
and also praying that we should create and invest the same Edmund Plow- 1
den, knight, and his assigns with the dignities, titles, and privileges of
governors of the provinces : Therefore know ye that we have given, etc., to
Edmund Plowden all that entire island near the continent or terra firma of
North Virginia called the Isle of Plowden, or Long Island, and lying near or
between the 39th and 4oth degree of north latitude, together with part of the
continent or terra firma aforesaid near adjoining, described to begin from the

* New York Historical Collections, 1869. t Strafford Papers, i. p. 72.

iS8o.] CATHOLIC AMERICAN HISTORY. 209

point of an angle of certain promontory called Cape May, and from thence
to the westward for the space of forty leagues, running by the river Dela-
ware and closely following its course by the north latitude unto a certain
rivulet there arising from the spring of the Lord Baltimore's in the lands of
Maryland and the summit aforesaid to the South, where it touches, joins,
and determines, with all its breadth ; from thence takes its course unto a
square leading to the North by a right line for the space of forty leagues to
the river and part of Readier Cod, and descends to a savannah touching
and including the top of Sandhay, where it determines, and from thence to-
wards the South by a square stretching to a savannah which passes by and
washes the shore of the Island of Plowden aforesaid, to the point of promon-
tory of Cape May above mentioned, and terminates where it began."

This description almost corresponds to the territory known to-
day as New Jersey and Long Island.

Beauchamp Plantagenet, of a very distinguished family, is the
first to give an extensive account of what was done by Sir
Edmund Plowden, in a pamphlet by him, published in 1648 in
England. He claimed to be the descendant of Sir Bernard Plan-
tagenet of Chawton, Blendworth, Clanfield, and Catrington, in
Hampshire, which possessions had, however, been lost to the family
in the civil wars in the time of Henry VI. The name also indi-
cates that he was related to the Edward Somerset, alias Planta-
genet, Lord Herbert, Baron Beaufort, etc., to whom, on April I,
1644, Charles I. gave a commission under the seal, appointing him
commander-in-chief of three armies of Englishmen, Irishmen, and
foreigners, authorizing him to deal with the confederate Catho-
lics of Ireland to send an army to help him against the Parlia-
ment. He mentions having visited Barbadoes, St. Christopher's,
Bermudas, New England, Virginia, and Maryland. Campbell, in
his history of Virginia, p. 210, tells us that in course of his ex-
plorations Plantagenet, coming to Virginia, was very hospitably
entertained by Captain Matthews, Mr. Fantleroy, and others, find-
ing free quarters everywhere. As this account of Beauchamp
Plantagenet is very rare, we think it advisable to give copious
extracts, which will be found of very great interest :

scription of the Province of New Albion, and a direction for adventurers
with small stock to get two for one and good land freely, and for gentlemen
and all servants, labourers, and artificers to live plentifully.

"To the Right Hon. and mighty Lord Edmund by divine Providence
Lord Proprietor, Earl Palatine, Governour, and Captain Generall of the
Province of New Albion, and to the Right Hon. the Lord Vicount Monson
of Castlemain, the Lord Sherard Baron of Letrim ; and to all the other the
Vicounts, Barons, Baronets, Knights, Gentlemen, Merchants, Adventurers,
and Planters of the hopefull company of New Albion, in all 44 undertakers
VOL. xxxii. 14

2io A MISSING PAGE OF [Nov.,

and subscribers, bound by indenture to bring and settle 3,000 able trained
men in our said severall plantations in the said Province :

" Beauchamp Plantagenet, of Belvil, in New Albion, Esq., one of the com-
pany, wisheth all health, happinesse, and heavenly blessings. May it please
your good Lordships and fellow-adventurers : Having been blasted with the
whirlwind of this late, unnaturall, and civill English war, seeing the storm
more likely to encrease than to calm, I recollected my former journal. ... I
perused all the books of any English Colonies. ... I conferred with my fel-
low-patients, 7 Knights and gentlemen, my kindred and neighbours. . . .
The storm grew far more tempestuous with thundering and lightning, black
and terrible gusts and spouts that made the rivers and my friends to hide ;
for the roaring of the cannon beat down their wals and houses ; the Musque-
teers, Dragoons, and Pistold Horsemen swept all Ca****[ Catholics] and
their goods afore them ; the Pikemen in their inclosures left them no beds,
pots, or pans ; their silver plate was turned into earthern dishes ; new names
and terms like an unknown language and like to strange tongues, un-
heard of as far as our Antipodes, called Cavalleers, Engagers, Independents,
Roundheads, and Malignants, like the Gothes, Huns, and Vandalls and
Alans that invaded and conquered Italy, Spaine, and France ; and like the
Saxons, Jutes, and Angles that conquered Brittany. These having plun-
dered and put upon us new Laws and Ordinances called Contribution, Ex-
cise, Quartering, and Sequestrations, my friends were now and rightly by
God's Providence made light, and not troubled or incumbered with much
stuffe to travel with, nor farms, tenements, nor copyholds, and for our
sins our pride abated, our hearts humbled. I resolved to be a Newter in
this quarell, not to kill English men and Christians, but with Christ to fly
into Egypt, and, like the Apostle Paul, to fly out of one city into another
and get out of the fire. At last my seven Knights and Gentlemen im-
ployed me, the oldest and boldest traveller, to see all English Plantations
by warrant, to buy land in the healthiest and best for us eight and for a
hundred servants and twenty of our old tenants and families. . . . Thus
instructed I viewed Barbadoes and St. Christopher's, Bermudoes, New Eng-
land, and Virginia and Maryland ; avoiding Virginia and Maryland (which
I found healthier and better than Virginia), for then it was in war both
with the Susquehannocks and all the Eastern Bay Indians, and a Civill
War between some revolters, protestants, assisted by 50 plundered Vir-
ginians, by whom M. Leonard Calvert, Governour under his brother, Lord
Baltamore, was taken prisoner and expelled. . . . They related of the ex-
cellent temper and pure air and fertility of soil, . . . vallies of grapes, rich
mines and millions of elkes, stags, deer, turkeys, fowl, fish, cotten, rare
fruits, timber, and fair plains and clear fields which other plantations want ;
this excelling all others, and finding it lay just midway between Virginia,
too hot, and the cold New England on the other, after one hunting voiage
and * * * 60 miles on one side of Albion and 310 miles on the other side
and Long Isle, finding the countries better and pleasanter than related, I
made my addresses to Lord Governour of Albion.' I resolved to return to
Holland and to transport my friends. . . ."

Of Earl Plowden he says :

" I hope without offence or imputation of flattery to affirm his virtues

1 880.] CA THOLIC AMERICAN HISTOR Y. 211

more than the gems of the Coronet of this Our Earl Palatine doe adorn his
noble part : Since to me conscientia mea mtlle testes I have had the honour
to be admitted as his familiar, have marched, lodged, and cabbined together
among the Indians and in Holland, have seen so many of his Manuscript
Books and most excellent Rules and observations of Law, Justice, Police, I
found his conversation as sweet and winning as grave and sober, adorned
with much learning, enriched with six languages, most grounded and ex-
perienced in formal matters of State policy, government, trade, and sea
voiages, by 4 years travell in Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium, by 5
years living an officer in Ireland, and this last 7 years in America, his stu-
die and suits at home and abroad enabling his impartiall and infallible
judgement of Judicature and certainly his perfect knowledge of his 23 In-
dian Kings. . .

" Your humble servant,

" BEAUCHAMP PLANTAGENET.
" MIDDLEBORO, this 5 of Decem., 1648."

The Earl of Albion appointed his eldest son and heir appa-
rent, Francis Lord Plowden, Baron of Mount Royall, and Gover-
nor, and his son Thomas Lord Plowden, Baron of Roymont,
High Admiral; and his daughters Winefrid, Baroness of Yve-
dale; Barbara, Baroness of Ritchneck; and Katherine, Baron-
ess of Prince . Beauchamp says that " Bracton, the ancientest of
lawyers, averres Earl Palatines have regall power in all things
saving liegance to the king." This new title and peerage were
" by special act of Charles I., as Emperor of England, granted that
both by Tenure and Dependency this Province shall be of the
liegance of Ireland," whence his honors and precedency held
throughout the whole British dominion. Beauchamp Plantage-
net gives an account also of the way of dealing of the govern-
ment of the new colony with religion :

" It is materiall to give a touch of Religion and Government to satisfy
the curious and well-minded adventurer. For Religion it being in England
yet unsettled, severall translations of Bibles, and those expounded to each
man's fancy, breeds new sects, I conceive the Holland way now practised
best to content all parties : first by act of Parliament or Grand Assembly to
settle and establish all the Fundamentals necessary to salvation, as the three
Creeds, the Ten Commandments, Preaching on the Lord's Day and great
days, catechizing in the afternoon, the Sacrament of the Altar and Baptism ;
but no persecution to any dissenting, and to all, such as to the Walloons,
free chapels, and to punish all as seditious and contempt as Bitter rail and
condemn others of the contrary ; for this Argument or persuasion All Reli-
gion Ceremonies or Church Discipline should be acted in mildnesse, love
and charity, and gentle language, not to disturb the peace or quiet of the In-
habitants, but therein to obey the Civill Magistrate. . . . For the Po-
litique and Civill Government and Justice Virginia and New England is
our president [precedent]. First the Lord Head Governour, a Deputy Gov-

212 A MISSING PAGE OF [Nov.,

ernour, Secretary of Estate or Seal Keeper, and twelve of the Councill of
State or Upper House ; and these or five of them is also a Chancery Court.
Next, out of the counties or towns, at a free election or day prefixed, thirty
Burgesses or Commons. Once yearly, the loth of November, these meet
as a Parliament or Grand Assembly, and make laws or repeal, alter, ex-
plain, and set taxes or rates for common defence, and without full consent
of Lord, Upper and Lower House nothing is done."

Evelyn, who is described as having 'been for four years in the
country, enumerates the various tribes of Indians with which he
was acquainted, giving the total as about eight hundred. Planta-
genet adds to his list the names of various other tribes, detailing
with some minuteness their respective numbers, which he figures
at about two thousand in New Jersey, whilst there were four
kings on Long Isle, with about eight hundred bowmen.

We find also that a chivalric order was instituted under the
name of " The Albion Knights, for the conversion of the twenty-
three kings." This band professed to have at heart only a desire
for the conversion of the twenty-three Indian tribes living within
the limits of Sir Edmund's grant. Hence upon the badge of their
order we find their own and Plowden's arms supported by the
right hand of an Indian kneeling, around which are twenty-
two crowned heads, the whole being encircled by the legend :
" Docebo iniquos vias tua^s et impii ad te convertentur " (I shall
teach the wicked thy ways and they will be converted to thee).
The knights' device was a hand holding a crown upon the point
of a dagger above an open Bible, and the palatine's arms, two
" fleurs-de-lis," upon the points of an indented belt with the le-
gend, "Virtus beat suos" (Virtue makes its own happy).

Sir Edmund Plowden visited his territory in person about
1641, and, from collating the various authorities, we gather that
the first colony was established on the Delaware River. Lord
Baltimore in the year 1685, before the Committee of Trade, "gives
their lordships an account that in the year 1642 one Plowden sailed
up Delaware River."* Plantagenet, writing in 1648, says that he
had passed seven years in the colony.

In the Albany Records of 1644 are two documents f showing
that in 1643 Sir Edmund Plowden, knight, bought of Philip
White the half of the bark then owned by Peter Laurents and
Mr. Throckmorton, and which was then freighted on account of
said knight. Winthrop, in his journal, says in 1648 :

" That here [Boston] arrived one Sir Edmund Plowden, who had been in
Virginia about seven years. [The territory comprised in New Albion had

* Votes of Assembly of Pennsylvania, vol. i. p. 17. t Vol. iii. p. 224.

i88o.] CATHOLIC AMERICAN HISTORY. 213

once belonged to the South Virginia Company.] He came first with a pat-
ent of a county palatine for Delaware Bay, but, wanting a pilot for that
place, he went over to Virginia, and there having lost the estate he brought
over, and all his people scattered from him, he returned to England for sup-
ply, intending to return and plant Delaware, if he could get sufficient strength
to dispossess the Swedes." *

In a Dutch work published in 1650 it is said :

" We must now pass to the South River, called by the English Delaware
Bay. We cannot omit to say that there has been here [New Netherlands],
both in the time of Director Kieft and in that of General Stuyvesant, a cer-
tain Englishman who called himself Sir Edward [Edmund] Plowden, with the
title of Earl Palatine of New Albion, who claimed that the land on the west
side of the North River to Virginia was his by gift of King James [Charles]
of England ; but he said he did not wish to have any strife with the Dutch,
though he was very much piqued at the Swedish Governor, John Peintz, at
the South River, on account of some affront given him too long to relate." t

Mulford, in his History of New Jersey, gives as full an account of
the history of New Albion as can be gleaned from the contempo-
rary documents. Earl Edmund Plowden conducted a company
into the province, mentioned by Plantagenet as five hundred, fix-
ing his principal residence at the manor of Watsesset. The
whole extent was divided into several manors, which served to
give titles to each member of the earl palatine's family. A com-
pany from New Haven, consisting, of fifty families, settled on a
small stream called Varcken's Kill, not far from the Delaware,
and swore fealty to him as the Palatine of Albion. This acces-
sion from New Haven gave rise to a descent of the Dutch, by
command of Governor Kieft of New Netherlands, upon this set-
tlement. The Dutch had been particularly incensed at the en-
croachments of the New Haven colony ; and when not only they
approached them from the north, but their activity was displayed
by sending this body of settlers to a part of the country so far
south of New Amsterdam to which the New Haven colony could
have no pretence to lay claim, Kieft's anger knew no bounds, and
he sent a body of men, who took possession of the settlement,
burned the houses, dispersed the colony, holding a number of the
people as prisoners. The Swedes, who had also made settlements
in this part of the country, joined with the Dutch, but were not
content with attacking this colony from New Haven, but seem to
have attacked the other English settlements made by Plowden,
as we may gather from his statement at New Amsterdam that he
was very much piqued with the Swedish governor, John Peintz,

*Winthrop, vol. ii. p. 325.

t Verloogh von N. Nederland. Vol. ii. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Memoirs, p. 324.

214 A MISSING PAGE OF [Nov.,

on account of a serious affront, and from his purpose, expressed at
Boston, of returning to England for supplies to enable him to
dispossess the Swedes.

What number of persons ever resided in New Albion under
the palatine's rule, or what was their condition, is but imperfectly
known. Gordon, quoted in King's discourse before the New
Jersey Historical Society, 1845, says a fort named Erowenec was
erected at the mouth of Pensauckin Creek, on the Jersey shore,
and that there was a considerable settlement at Watcessi, or Oite-
gessing, the present site of Salem. There probably were settled
the fifty families from New Haven. A few traders were scattered
throughout the province ; there were also settlers on the Isle of
Plowden, or Long Island. We find records of the attempts made
by Sir Edmund Plowden, on his return to England in 1648, to
gather new adventurers to people his colony, that had been dis-
persed by the attacks of the Swedes and Dutch. Thus in Public
Record Office, London (Domestic Interregnum), * on Thursday,
March 21, 1649-50, at a meeting of the Privy Council, a motion
was made " that the Petition of the Earle of New Albion relateing
to the plantation there be referred to the consideration of the Com-
mittee of this Councell what they conceive fitt to be done therein."
On Wednesday, April 3, it was reported to the council that the
Earl of Albion had gathered a goodly number of adventurers, and
a motion was made f " that it be referred to the committee for
plantations or any three of them to conferre with the Earl of Al-
bion concerning the giving of good security to this Councell that
the men, armes, and ammunicion which he hath now shipped
in order to his voyage to New Albion shall goe thither and shall
not be employed either there or elsewhere to the disservice of the
publiq." And on Tuesday, June 11, 1650, by the committee it w r as
decided J " that a passe be granted for Mr. Batt and Mr. Danby
themselves and seven score persons, men, women, and children,
to goe to New Albion." This last transaction was evidently the
carrying out of the agreement registered in St. Mary's, Maryland,
along with many other deeds concerning Albion, between Earl
Plowden and Sir Thomas Danby, by which Sir Edmund leases to
Sir Thomas, " who hath undertaken to settle 100 persons," ten
thousand acres, whereof ninety-nine hundred are to be bounded in
a perfect square on a part of .Rickney wold within three miles of
Watsesset, his lordship's plantation, and one hundred acres lying
entire and adjoining to Watsesset town, paying " one silver penny
for ever for every person resident on the premises."

* Entry-book, vol. xcii. p. 108. \ Ibid. p. 159. \Ibid. p. 441.

rei

i88o.] CATHOLIC AMERICAN HISTORY. 215

It was on Sir Edmund's return to England that Beauchamp
Plantagenet published the pamphlet above mentioned, of which
we have given extracts, and which had certainly the effect of form-
ing the order of knights who were proud to boast that one of
their principal objects and hopes in going to this distant land
was the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. Undoubtedly
the new persecutions to which the Catholics were being sub-
jected, during the civil war between Charles I. and the Parlia-
ment, by both parties had a most powerful influence in urging
them to leave their native country. Charles I., in 1646, 1647,
1648, was negotiating alternately with the Scots, the English Par-
liament, the Independents under Cromwell, and the Irish Confede-
rates. In 1649 the king was beheaded. In 1650 the Common-
wealth was in full sway. And in those days in England the first
duty of religion was to put down popery ; scarcely a day occur-
red in which some ordinance was not issued to insult and perse-
cute Catholics. The priests were seized and put to death ; but
it was chiefly the property of the lay Catholics that was sought.
The Parliament pretended that Charles was attempting to restore
popery, notwithstanding his protests and his proclamations
against Catholics. Yet as he was more lenient to them than the
bigoted Presbyterians that controlled the Parliament, they took
refuge in the quarters of the royalists and fought under their
nners; and this again confirmed the prejudice against them
nd exposed them to additional obloquy.

To these civil commotions and disastrous events is to be at-
tributed the inability of Sir Edmund Plowden and his Catholic
associates to carry out their plans for colonizing New Albion as
earnestly as they desired.

Yet we have undoubted proof that the Earl of Albion's sons
clung to the estates given to their father. Two of them most
probably became residents of Maryland, and their descendants
there have always been prominent in its history. They owned a
large tract known as Resurrection Manor, in St. Mary's County ;
and a descendant of these Plowdens, in the beginning of the eigh-
teenth century, by marrying Miss Henrietta Slye, came into pos-
session of Bushwood, where the first Colonial Assembly of Bur-
gesses of Maryland was held, and this historical place was in 1854
in the possession of Edmund J. Plowden, who is described in a
letter of A. R. Sellers, M.C., in that year, as a gentleman of wealth
and high character, and, we may add, a Catholic, showing that the
family has through all the vicissitudes of colonial and revolution-
ary times adhered to the ancient faith of their fathers. Many of

216 A MISSING PAGE OF [Nov.,

the prominent Catholic families of Maryland and Virginia to the
present day are proud to claim descent from the Plowdens that
first settled New Jersey i,

In England the Plowden family continued through all her
troubles faithful to the Catholic Church, and was, as Dr. Oliver
says, " fruitful in religion of both sexes," for it furnished from its
sons no less than nine members to the English Province of Jesuits,
most of them distinguished for their virtue and talents ; whilst
from its daughters eleven entered various orders of nuns ; * and
we find that the Rev. Charles Plowden, S.J., first master of novices
of the re-established society in England in the beginning of the
present century, and second provincial, was a most devoted friend
and counsellor of the first bishop of the United States, the Most
Rev. John Carroll.f There were some paintings at Bushw^ood
which the tradition of the family says were brought there from
some house in England in possession of the Plowden family. And
as late as 1 784 there came to the United States a certain Varlo,
who, in the name of one of the Plowdens of England who claimed
for himself still the title of Earl of New Albion, through the inter-
mediary of the Rev. Robert Molyneux, afterwards president of
Georgetown College, was brought into communication with Ed-
mund J. Plowden of Bushwood, then member of the House of
Delegates for St. Mary's County, Maryland, with regard to their
mutual interests and proprietary rights over New Jersey and
Long Island.

The inhabitants of New Jersey were startled by having their
proprietary rights unexpectedly called into question by Mr. Varlo,
who took up his headquarters in a hostelry in New York, offer-
ing for a proper consideration to heal the defects of and confirm
their titles by the authority of the Earl of New Albion. He
threw this firebrand into the peaceful homes of the Long-Island-
ers, who had not dreamt that any one could lay claim to their
property :

"THE FINEST PART OF AMERICA.

"To be sold or let, from 800 to 1,000 acres in a farm, all that entire estate
called Long Island, in New Albion, lying near New York. Belonging to
the Earl Palatine of Albion, granted to his predecessor, the Earl Palatine
of Albion, by King Charles the ist."

It is not within our scope to discuss this phase of the first

* Records of English Province S,J., series x. part ii. p. 537.

t History of the Catholic Church in the United States, Shea-Courcy, p. 50.

i88o.] CATHOLIC AMERICAN HISTORY. 217

charter of New Albion. Our object has been to call attention to
the fact that New Jersey was first colonized by Catholics, and
that, whilst they sought refuge there from dire persecution from
their countrymen for conscience' sake, they themselves learned
and put into practice the lessons of toleration and mildness in. all
that concerned religion. We may conclude with a passage of
Mulford, in his History of New Jersey, who, with all other, even
Catholic, historians who have written of the subject, does not
seem to have been aware that the first settlers were Catholics :

" In religious matters the most entire freedom was given. Some funda-
mental doctrines, as well as certain forms, were to be settled by acts of Parlia-
ment, yet dissent was not to be punished ; indeed, all railing against any one
on account of religion was deemed an offence. For it was said : ' This argu-
ment or persuasion in religion ceremonies or church discipline should be
acted in mildness, love, charity, and gentle language.' This noble sentiment,
carried out as it was to have been into actual practice, gives one of the
finest as well as earliest examples of religious toleration known to the
world. In regard to this particular full justice has not been done to the
lawgiver of New Albion. Williams and Calvert have been lauded, and justly
lauded, as being the first to remove the shackles of religious intolerance
and give full liberty to the mind of man in the communion it holds with its
great Creator. Williams was doubtless the first to proclaim the principle
' that the civil magistrate has no right to restrain or direct the consciences
of men.' Calvert followed closely in his track. To these men let honor
be given. But they have been represented as standing entirely alone until
the appearance of Penn. This is not just or true. Plowden may not have
advanced to the same point ; he retained the shadow of a state religion ;
but he offered the fullest freedom and the fullest protection to all, and gave
his voice in favor of mildness, charity, and love. Though his designs were
not successful, though the work he projected fell short of completion, yet
he deserves to be ranked with the benefactors of our race, and New Albion
is entitled to a higher place in the history of human progress than is often
allotted to older and greater and more fortunate states." *

* History of New Jersey, p. 73.

218 THE BEE AT THE ALTAR. [Nov.,

THE BEE AT THE ALTAR.

A DUSKY bee, with its gossamer wings

Fluttering soft in the summer air,
Came, through the chapel-window low,
To the shrine, where the priest, in his robes of snow,

Was breathing the Consecration prayer.

Humming its dulcet hymn of praise,
Balancing bright on its gauzy wings,

The bee hung over the altar-stone

Over the miniature marble throne

Which bore the weight of the King of kings.

Close to the sacrificial hand

Of the fair young priest the creature drew,
As though in the Host and the sacred Wine
It scented the sweetness of buds divine,

Heavenly honey, celestial dew !

Then on mine ear a whisper fell,

Breathed by the Spirit : " O sweet, sweet Flower !
Well may the bee fly close to thee,
Lured by the scent of thy purity,

Drawn by thy beauty's wondrous power.

" Flower of flowers ! Thine odors rare
Ravish the soul with a rapture new.

Lo ! ere the lights of the altar wane,
Ere the Host and the Chalice are lifted again,
Draw near, like the bee, O sons of men !
For His Heart and its honey are all for you."

:88o.] THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. 219

THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH *

IN the history of no land is more strikingly illustrated the
plausibility of the saying of the Latin satirist, " Difficile est scri-
bere verum," than in the case of the annals of England, espe-
cially so in treating of the change of religion in the sixteenth cen-
tury. But how much is the difficulty enhanced when we realize
the surroundings of Dr. Lee, the author of the two beautiful
volumes before us ! When Juvenal said it was difficult to write
the truth he meant that it was dangerous, for the profligate pa-
tricians of his time had ready clients to punish those who dis-
pleased them ; but now, though writing the truth of English his-
tory, most particularly on the epoch under notice, the veracious
chronicler has the consciousness of having written truly as his
sole reward. Be his labor ever so onerous, his research ever so
painful and prolonged, he will have but a scanty patronage from
the British public, too long swayed by the so-called histories
of the eighteenth century, and still more set astray by the more
recent falsehoods of Turner and Froude. One of the most favor-
ite lies (the old English monosyllable is the most apt for the utter-
ances of this flagitious misrepresenter of the truth) is that " the
Bible was put into the hands of every artisan, who read it with
avidity at the street-corners and at his fireside," etc. How many
men were able to read at the time ? The price of the first edi-
tion of the Bishops' Bible, with prefaces by Cranmer and Parker,
Lowndes states to have been set down at 60 los. English money
of our day. It was printed by Richard Jugge in 1568, and no
kind of Bible was attainable throughout Elizabeth's long reign
by the wretchedly-paid artisan, who, even if he knew how to read,
would prefer a loaf of bread or a draught of beer to the miserable
hash of barbarous English presented by Tyndale as the " sacred
buke." Another falsehood, not the less so though only implied,
with which Mr. Froude favors us is that to the Reformation we
owe the translation of the Bible. Now, in Italy, Germany, the
Low Countries, in Spain and in France, the Bible was printed in
the vernacular long before Luther had the misfortune to be
born ; and all the original printers, as well as the English Caxton,

* The Church under Elizabeth. An historical sketch. By the Rev. Frederick George Lee,
vicar of All-Saints, Lambeth, author of Historical Sketches of the Reformation^ etc., etc.
London : Allen & Co.

22o THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. [Nov.,

who had his printing-office in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey,
were Catholics, not apostates.

Only a comparative few have what may be called the courage
to take up books like Dr. Lee's and ascertain the truth from his
invincible and undeniable averments. It is superfluous to say that
no portion of English history has been so misrepresented as the
reign of Elizabeth ". that bright Occidental star " of King James'
Bible, but who was really one of the worst women that ever ex-
isted. Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne of England over the
wrecks of a nation trampled to the earth by a mushroom aristo-
cracy, enriched and rampant from the plunder of the church and
the heritage of the poor ; for the old nobility had been all but
annihilated by the Wars of the Roses. Some eighty thousand of
the despoiled and evicted, the hitherto employers and employed,
had been hanged or otherwise " disposed of " for manifesting
their desolation in the reign of her father; and the long and
dreary interval of contending factions in the reign of the wretch-
ed boy-king, and the rule by a profligate and domineering coun-
cil of affairs during the reign, but not the rule, of Mary, must
have made a harassed people experience hope at the accession of
Elizabeth.

Her reign it is the custom even to this day to celebrate as
the most glorious era in the British annals ; but whatever cele-
brity it possessed did it not owe in great measure to the darkness
of the times, the habitual slavery of the people, the sex and un-
doubted ability of the monarch, and the talents of an utterly un-
principled ministry ? Queen Elizabeth has been accredited with
virtues whose sole existence consisted in the assertion of her pre-
judiced eulogists. Her wisdom was not that of truth and right,
but of a cool, penetrating sagacity, prompt, vigilant, and inexorable.
The energy of her resolution and her profound dissimulation ac-
complished what no other attribute of her mind nor her physical
powers would have been able to surmount. By the potent use of
hypocrisy, falsehood, and bribery she managed to keep her neigh-
bors of the Continent in a blaze of war or enveloped in the dark
clouds of mutual distrust, whilst with gold, intrigues, and pro-
mises, through subtle agents, she made an Aceldama of dis-
tracted Ireland and Scotland. At home she was despotic, abroad
she was victorious. By her buccaneer heroes, Drake, Frobisher,
Hawkins, she plundered the subjects of her relative Philip, whose
gigantic remonstrance in the shape of the Armada was consigned
to destruction through the agency of the elements and the superior
skill of her hardy and invincible seamen, mostly pirates as they

i88o.] THE CHURCH UXDER ELIZABETH. 221

were. The people admired her because she was a successful
queen, and she liked her people because they were submissive
slaves. By her acuteness she secured able ministers, who served
her with fidelity because they feared her anger, and they flattered
her vanity because their doing so prolonged her favors. But
they served her at their peril, and she selected and sacrificed
them with equal cunning and indifference, as witness her con-
duct to Walsingham, Davidson, and others. She affected learning
and professed religion the latter of an inexplicable description.
However, in the one she was a pedant without depth, and in the
other a bigot without devotion or even morality. She plundered
her people to be independent of her Parliament, and bullied her
Parliament to be independent of her people. In fine, the exter-
nal glory of England under her administration rose so high in the
obtuse vision of her contemporaries and the concurrent glorifica-
tion of the trembling parasites who prostrated before her that
the stunted intelligence of her day even led good men to believe
that Providence seemed in her case to have condoned every dis-
regard of moral principle and to smile even upon the vices of this
too celebrated female tyrant.

This is the summary of Queen Elizabeth's character which we
venture to make from a close perusal of the work of Dr. Lee.
Upon the inner life of Queen Elizabeth we will not enter. It is
here set down in " words of fire," and we would not transfer to
these pages a scintilla even from the ashes. The woeful straits
to which this self-conscious yet recusant believer in the truth
brought the honest professors of the true religion are set down
in these pages with appalling realism as well as with irrefragable
veracity. Nothing but an overwhelming conviction of the wrong
which has been done to the English-reading race, to the cause of
Christianity even, not to speak of common honor and honesty, by
" those delators of honor and honesty called historians " who
have deified this English monarch, could have impelled this de-
voted Anglican clergyman to write these fearless volumes, which
really constitute, under the circumstances, one of the greatest
literary wonders of our age.

Even to those who know that Queen Mary has been most
cruelly maligned in reference to the Smithfield burnings ; that it
was her council, before whom she was powerless, who were the
acting agents in those scenes ; that Cranmer himself would not
permit the boy Edward to save a young lady victim from Cran-
mer and the stake ; that Cranmer and the bishops burned in
Mary's reign were rebels to Mary and suffered as heretics by her

222 THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. [Nov.,

council, who themselves became Protestants in the next reign
even to those students of history who know all these things Dr.
Lee presents a fresh and appalling catalogue of slaughter against
Elizabeth on the score of religion. Mary's council, over whom
she had no power, burned a few rebel bishops against Mary's
will ; Elizabeth, of her own free will, with the obsequious concur-
rence of a ntinistry, her creatures, did not burn, but hanged, drew,
disembowelled, and quartered, or stifled and racked in her pes-
tilent jails, Heaven knows how many good, harmless, humble
teachers of the faith of her ancestors and of theirs. We have
greatly abridged the details from the appendix to the second vol-
ume ; and yet we fear the length of the list will be regarded as
too extended for our pages. But in some monumental way, as
here, should this fearful array of martyrs, furnished by a noble
witness to the truth, be placed before American readers, Catho-
lics as well as those of all other beliefs.

A LIST OF MARTYRS WHO SUFFERED UNDER QUEEN ELIZA-
BETH.

Cuthbert Maine, priest, born at Yarlston, near Barnstaple, Devonshire.
Student of St. John's College, Oxford, and, after his conversion, of Douay
College. Apprehended at Colveden, near Truro, tried at Launceston, and
condemned for high treason ; hung, drawn, and quartered at Launceston,
November 29, 1577.

John Nelson, priest, son of Sir N. Nelson, Knight, born at Shelton, near
York. Student at Douay. Taken prisoner in London, condemned for
denying the queen's supremacy, and executed in the usual manner as a
traitor at Tyburn, February 3, 1577-8.

Thomas Sherwood, scholar, born in London, educated at Douay. Ap-
prehended, tried, and condemned in London for denying the queen's su-
premacy ; executed at Tyburn, being cut down while yet alive, disem-
bowelled, and quartered, on February 7, 1577-8.

Everard Hause, priest, born in Northamptonshire, educated at Cam-
bridge, and ordained a clergyman of the Church of England. A convert,
studied at Rheims, and ordained a Roman Catholic priest on March 25, 1581.
He was apprehended while visiting prisoners in the Marshalsea Prison, and
cast into Newgate amongst thieves, and loaded with irons. He was con-
demned for high treason, and sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered.
He suffered at Tyburn on July 31, 1581.

Edmund Campion, priest, S.J., born in London, educated first at Christ-
church Hospital ; student of St. John's College, Oxford ; ordained deacon
of the Church of England. A convert, studied at Douay, and admitted into
the Society of Jesus at Rome in 1573. Coming to England in 1580, he
labored in his vocation for thirteen months, and was taken at the house of
Mr. Yates, of Lyford. He was brought to London, and, after being cruelly
racked and tortured, was arraigned and condemned for high treason, but

i88o.] THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. 223

offered life and one hundred pounds a year if he would change his religion.
He suffered in the usual manner, being hung, disembowelled, and quartered
at Tyburn, December i, 1581, aged forty-two.

Ralph Sherwine, priest, born at Nodesley, near Longford, Derbyshire.
Student and fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. A convert in 1575, and
studied at Douay until he was made priest in 1577. Returned to England,
and was soon after taken in London, in November, 1580. After being twice
cruelly racked, and imprisoned for seven months, he was arraigned and con-
demned for high treason. Six months afterwards he was martyred by
being hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, on December i, 1581.

Alexander Brian, priest, S.J., born in Dorsetshire, and studied at Hart
Hall, Oxford. A convert, and afterwards a student of Douay in 1576; re-
turned to England a priest in 1579, and apprehended in London 28th April,
1581. After cruel racking and torturing he was condemned and sentenced
as a traitor to be hung, disembowelled, and quartered, which sentence was
executed upon him at Tyburn, December j, 1581.

John Paine, priest, born in Northamptonshire. Admitted into the Eng-
lish College at Douay in 1575, ordained priest in the following year, and sent
upon the English mission. He was apprehended in 1581, and brought to
the Tower of London, where he was cruelly racked. Tried atChelmsford, in
Essex, and condemned to suffer for high treason in the usual manner, but
offered life if he would go to church. The sentence was carried out on
April 2, 1582.

Thomas Forde, priest, born in Devonshire, graduated at Trinity College,
Oxford; took his M.A. degree in 1567, and admitted fellow of that college
soon afterwards. A convert, and entered the seminary at Douay in 1571 ;
rdained priest in 1573. He returned to England and labored some years
pon the mission, and was taken, together with Father Campion, in the
ouse of Mr. Yates, at Lyford, in Berkshire. Tried and sentenced to death
n London, November 21, 1581 ; executed May 28, 1582.

John Short, priest, born in Cheshire ; educated at Brazenose College,
xford. Coming to England from Rheims, he was arrested on July 14, 1580,
ndemned to die as a traitor, and was executed in the usual barbarous
manner at Tyburn, May 28, 1582.

Robert Johnson, priest, born in Shropshire, educated at Douay, sent on
the English mission ; arrested and sent from some other prison to the Tow-
er in 1580, where he was three times cruelly racked. Sentenced in Novem-
ber, same year, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, he was not executed till
28th May, 1582.

William Filbie, priest, native of Oxford ; arrested at the house of Mr.
Yates with Father Campion and his companions ; committed to the Tower
in July, and sentenced to death on November 20 following. For six
months he remained in prison, cruelly pinioned with heavy iron manacles,
and suffered the usual death of a traitor at Tyburn, 3oth May, 1582, aged
twenty-seven.

Luke Kirby, priest, born at Richmond, Yorkshire ; a Master of Arts. Re-
turned to England after having been some time at the English College at
Rome ; was arrested in 1580 and committed to the Tower, where he suffered
the torture of the " scavenger's daughter." He was sentenced at the same
time as Father Campion, but was not executed till May 28, 1582.

224 THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. [Nov.,

Lawrence Richardson, arrested whilst laboring as a missionary in his
native county of Lancaster. Hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, May
30, 1582.

James Fenn, priest, native of Somerset. Laboring on the mission in his
native county, he was arrested and thrown into Rochester jail. Thence
sent to London, he was thrown into the horrible dungeon of the Marshal-
sea for two years. He was released at Tyburn by being hanged, disembow-
elled, and quartered " in the usual manner," February 12, 1584.

John Munden, or Mundyn, priest, born at Maperton, in Dorset, con-
demned at the same time and. for the same cause as the four preceding, suf-
fered death with "great joy and cheerfulness" at Tyburn, February 12,
1584.

Thomas Emerford, priest, native of Dorset, educated at Oxford, execut-
ed at the same time and in the same manner as the two preceding, at Ty-
burn, February 12, 1584.

John Nutter, priest, born at Burnby, Lancashire ; B.D. Oxford. Return-
ing to the Catholic Church, he went to Rheims, where he was ordained and
sent on the English mission. Apprehended immediately on his landing, he
was thrown into the Marshalsea, whose horrors he suffered for a year.
Condemned for being a Catholic, he and four other priests were executed
at Tyburn, February 12, 1584.

William Carter, printer, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn,
January n, 1584, for printing a treatise on Schism, against Catholics at-
tending the Protestant services.

James Bell, priest, native of Warrington, Lancashire, ordained in the
reign of Queen Mary, conformed to the new religion, but repented and re-
turned. Apprehended for doing so, he was tried at Lancaster with three
others for denying the queen's supremacy, and suffered the usual traitor's
death with " great joy and constancy," being then sixty years old, April
20, 1584.

Thomas Cottam, priest, native of Lancashire ; B.A. of Oxford. Appre-
hended in 1580, imprisoned and tortured, and finally hanged, drawn, and
quartered at Tyburn, 3oth May, 1582.

William Lacy, priest, born at Hanton, Yorkshire, ordained at Rome ; re-
turning to England in 1580, labored in his native Yorkshire ; was apprehend-
ed, thrown into York Castle, and loaded with chains. He was tried at York
" for persuading the queen's subjects " to the Catholic religion, and was
executed in the usual manner, August 22, 1582.

James Thompson, priest, hanged, drawn, and quartered at York, No-
vember 28, 1582. " He received his sentence of death with great joy."

William Hart, priest, native of Wells, Somerset, a distinguished alum-
nus of Lincoln College, Oxford. Arrested for " assisting at Mass," heavily
ironed in York Castle, and hanged, drawn, and quartered there, i$th March,
1583.

Richard Thirkill, priest, native of Durham, executed in the usual man-
ner at York, May 29, 1583.

John Slade, a native of Dorset, schoolmaster, hanged, drawn, and quar-
tered at Winchester, October 30, 1583, "for denying the queen's supremacy
and maintaining the old religion."

John Body, native of Wells, Somerset, apprehended at the same time as

i88o.] THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. 225

the foregoing, suffered the usual "death of a traitor" at Andover, Hamp-
shire, November 2, 1583.

George Haydock, priest, son of Evan William Haydock, Esq., of Cot-
tane Hall, Lancashire. Offered his liberty if he would renounce the Pope.
Refusing, he was sent to the Tower, where for two years he was confined
in irons, deprived of all human comfort and assistance. Finally executed
in the usual manner, February 12, 1584.

John Finch, born at Eccleston, Lancashire, and brought up a Protestant.
Becoming a convert, he assisted the Catholic clergy in every possible way.
He was arrested, thrown into a filthy dungeon, where he was subjected to
fearful cruelties for years. Refusing finally to abandon his religion, he was
executed as a traitor with Mr. Bell, April 20, 1584.

Richard White, native of Montgomery, schoolmaster, arrested for refus-
ing to go to church ; loaded with irons in Ruthin jail ; then taken out,
forcibly carried to church, put in the stocks,, treated with every indignity,
cruelly tortured at Bewdley, and finally condemned for denying the queen's
supremacy. This noble lay martyr suffered on October 17, 1584, at Wrex-
ham, in Denbighshire, where he was suspended for a few minutes, cut
down alive, and then mangled and butchered in the most barbarous man-
ner.

Thomas Aldfield, priest, native of Gloucester, first cruelly tortured for
dispersing, with the help of Webley, a dyer, copies of Cardinal Allen's mod-
est answer to the English persecutors. He and Webley were executed as
traitors at Tyburn, January 5, 1585. Both were offered life if they would re-
nounce the Pope and acknowledge the queen's spiritual supremacy.

Hugh Ta)dor, priest, born at Durham, hanged, drawn, and quartered at
York, November 26, 1585.

Marmaduke Bowes, a married gentleman of Anerane Grange, Cleveland,
was executed with the aforesaid Father Taylor for having harbored him in
his house.

Thomas Crowther, priest, died in the Marshalsea after two years' im-
prisonment.

Edward Poole, priest, sent from Rheims in 1580, cast into prison same
year. Heard of no more.

Lawrence Vaux, canon regular, thrown into the Gate-house prison with
N. Tichborne, Esq., in 1580, died there the same year.

Edward Straneham, whom Stow in his Annals calls Edward Barber,
suffered the death of a traitor at Tyburn, January 21, 1585, "for being a
priest."

Nicholas Woodfen, priest, executed with the preceding for the same
crime " being a priest."

William Thompson, priest, executed on 2oth April, 1585, for " remaining in
England," and Richard Lee, priest, was hanged, drawn, and quartered with
him for the same offence.

Richard Sergeant, priest, and William Thompson, priest, were executed
as traitors at Tyburn simply for being priests and remaining in the king-
dom.

Robert Anderton, priest, born of an honorable family in Lancaster, and
William Marsden, same county, were executed in the Isle of Wight for " be-
ing priests," April 25, 1585.
VOL. xxxii. 15

226 THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. [Nov.,

Francis Ingolby, priest, son of Sir William Ingolby, suffered at York,
June 3, 1586.

John Finglow, priest, was executed for " being a priest," at York, Au-
gust 8, 1586.

John Sandyr, priest, executed at Gloucester, August 11, 1586.

John Lowe, previously a minister of the Established Church, converted,
ordained a priest, and sent on English mission, executed at Tyburn, Oc-
tober 8, 1586.

John Adams, priest, executed at Tyburn, October 8, 1586. Same day
with the two preceding, and on the same charge, Richard Dibdale, native
of Worcester.

Mrs. Margaret Clitheroe, gentlewoman, was pressed to death at York
for harboring and relieving priests, March 26, 1586.

Robert Bickerdike, gentleman, was executed at York for refusing to go
to the Protestant church, July, 1586.

Richard Langley, Esq., executed at York, December i, 1586, for harbor-
ing and assisting priests.

Robert Pilchard, priest, born at Battle, Sussex, executed at Dorchester,
December i, 1586.

Edmund Sykes, priest, banished in 1581, was condemned for returning,
and executed at York, March 23, 1587.

Robert Sutton, priest, native of Burton-on-Trent, executed at Stafford
for being a priest, July 27, 1587.

Stephen Rowsham, priest, executed at Gloucester, July, 1587.

John Hanibley, priest, born at Exeter, put to death at York, September
9, 1587. Offered his life and a good living if he would conform to the new
religion. Same day, and for the same cause, George Douglas, priest, a
Scotchman, suffered.

Alexander Crowe, priest, hanged, drawn, and quartered at York for
priestly character and functions, November 30, 1586.

Nicholas Garlick, priest, native of Glossop, Derbyshire, executed at
Derby, July 24, 1588.

Robert Ludlane, priest, native of Sheffield, tried, condemned, and exe-
cuted at the same time and place as the preceding " for priestly character
and function," July 24, 1588.

Richard Simpson (some time a minister), priest, executed at Derby, July
24, 1588.

William Dean, priest, executed at Mile End, London, August 28, 1588.

William Gunter, priest, executed August 28, 1588.

Robert Morton, priest, executed in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, August 28,
1588.

Thomas Halford, son of a minister, priest, executed at Clerkenwell, Au-
gust 28, 1588.

James Claxton, priest, executed near Hounslow, August 28, 1588.

Robert Leigh, priest, executed at Tyburn with five Catholic laymen and
Mistress Margaret Wood, August 30, 1588.

William Way, a Cornish priest, executed at Kingstown-on-Thames, in
Surrey, October i, 1588.

Robert Wilcox, Edward Campion, and Christopher Burton, priests, were
likewise executed.

i88o.] THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. 227

Robert Widmerpool, of Widmerpool, Nottinghamshire, gentleman, tutor
to the Earl of Northumberland, about the same time.

Ralph Crockett and Edward James, priests, at Chichester, October r,
1588.

John Robinson, priest.

William Hartley, priest, executed October 5, 1588, in his mother's pre-
sence, near Bankside.

John Weldon, priest, executed October 5, 1588.

Richard Williams, priest.

Robert Sutton, schoolmaster, executed at Clerkenwell.

Edward Burden and John Hewitt, priests, executed at York, October 5,
1588.

William Lamplough, layman, suffered at Gloucester in 1588.

Robert Dalby and John Amias, priests, March 16, 1598, suffered at York.

Richard Yaxley of Lincolnshire, and George Nichols of Oxford, priests,
executed at Oxford, July 5, 1589.

Thomas Belson, of Brill, Bucks, gent., executed at Oxford, July 5, 1589.

Humphrey Pritchard, layman, a- servant to Belson, executed at Oxford
on the same day.

William Spencer, priest, executed at York, September 24, 1589.

Robert Hardesty, layman, executed at York, September 24, 1 589.

Christopher Bayles, priest, executed at Fleet Street, London, March 4,
1590.

Nicholas Horner, layman, executed at Smithfield, March 4, 1590.

Alexander Blake, layman, executed at Gray's-Inn-Lane, March 4, 1590.

Miles Gerard and Francis Dickenson, priests, executed at Rochester,
April 30, 1590.

Edward Johnes, priest, executed at Fleet Street, London, May 6, 1590.

Anthony Middleton, priest, executed at Clerkenwell, May 6, 1590.

Edmund Duke, priest, executed at Durham, May 27, 1590.

John Hogg, priest, executed at Durham, May 27, 1 590.

Richard Holliday, priest, executed at Durham, May 27, 1590.

Richard Hill, priest, executed at Durham, May 27, 1590.

Robert Thorp, priest, hung, drawn, and quartered at York, May 31, 1591.

Thomas Watkinson, yeoman, hanged at York, May 31, 1591.

Mountford Scott and George Beesley, priests, executed at Fleet Street,
London.

Robert Dickenson, priest, executed at Winchester, July 7, 1591.

Ralph Milner, layman, of Winchester, executed at Winchester, July 7,
1591.

William Pikes, layman, of Dorchester, suffered there -for denying the
queen's supremacy.

Edmund Jennings, priest, executed at Gray's-Inn-Fields, December 10,
1591.

Swithin Wells, gent., executed at Gray's-Inn-Fields, December 10, 1591.

Eustachius White, priest, executed at Tyburn, December 10, 1591.

Polydore Plasden, priest, executed at Tyburn, December 10, 1591.

Bryan Lacey, layman, executed at Tyburn, December 10, 1591.

John Mason, layman, executed at Tyburn, December 10, 1591.

Sydney Hodgson, layman, executed at Tyburn, December 10, 1591.

228 THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. [Nov.,

William Paterson, priest, executed at Tyburn, January 22, 1592.

Thomas Pormorte, at St. Paul's Churchyard, London, February 8, 1592.

Robert Ashton, gent., at Tyburn, June 23, 1592.

Edward Waterson, priest, at Newcastle, January 7, 1593.

James Bird, gent., at Winchester, Lady Day, 1593.

Anthony Page, priest, hung, drawn, and quartered at York, April 20,

I 593-

Joseph Lampton, priest, at Newcastle, July 27, 1593.

William Davies, priest, at Beaumaris, July 21, 1593.
John Speed, layman, at Durham, February 4, 1594.

William Harington, priest, at Tyburn, February 18, 1594.

John Cornelius, priest, at Dorchester, July 4, 1594.

Thomas Bosgrave, gent., at Dorchester, July 4, 1 594.

Terence Carey, layman, at Dorchester, July 4, 1594.

Patrick Salmon, at Dorchester, July 4, 1594.

John Bost, priest, suffered at Durham, July 19, 1594.

John Ingram, priest, suffered at Newcastle, July 25, 1594.

George Swallowell, some time a minister, executed at Darlington in 1594.

Edward Osbaldeston, priest, executed at York in 1 594.

Robert Southwell, priest, at Tyburn in 1595.

Alexander Rawlins, priest, at York in 1595.

Henry Walpole, priest, at York in 1595.

James Atkinson, layman, in 1595.

William Freeman, priest, at Warwick in 1595.

George Errington, gent., suffered at York in 1596.
. William Knight, yeoman, at York in 1596.

William Gibson, yeoman, at York in 1596.

Henry Abbott, yeoman, at York in 1596.

William Andleby, priest, at York in 1597.

Thomas Warcopp, gent., at York in 1597.

Edward Fullthorpe, gent., at York in 1597.

John Britton, gent., at York in 1598.

Peter Snow, priest, at York in 1598.

Ralph Grimstone, gent., at York in 1598.

John Jones, priest, at St. Thomas' Watering in 1598.

Christopher Robinson, priest, at Carlisle in 1598.

Richard Horner, priest, at York in 1598.

Matthias Harrison, priest, at York in 1599.

John Lyon, yeoman, at Oakham in 1599.

James Dowdall, merchant, at Exeter in 1599.

In the year 1600 the following priests were executed : Christopher
Wharton at York ; Thomas Sprott at Lincoln ; Thomas Hunt at Lincoln ;
Robert Nutter at Lancaster ; Edward Thwing at Lancaster ; Thomas Pa}-
lasor at Durham. And the following laymen : John Rigby at St. Thomas'
Watering; John Norton at Durham; John Talbot at Durham.

In the year 1601 the following priests were executed : John Pybush at
St. Thomas' Watering ; Mark Barkworth at Tyburn ; Roger Filcock at
Tyburn ; Thurston Hunt at Lancaster ; Robert Middleton at Lancaster.
And the following laity : Ann Line, gentlewoman, at Tyburn ; Nicholas
Tichbourne at Tyburn ; Thomas Hackshott at Tyburn.

i88o.J THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH. 229

In 1602 four priests were executed, viz. : Thomas Harrison at York ;
Thomas Tichbourne at Tyburn ; Robert Watkinson at Tyburn ; Francis
Page at Tyburn. And the following laymen: Anthony Batty, gent., at
York ; James Duckett, bookseller, at Tyburn.

In 1603 one priest, William Richards, was drawn, hung, dismembered,
disembowelled, and quartered at Tyburn.

[To this catalogue should be added the fact that hundreds of lay men
and women in the ranks of the gentry were beggared by being compelled
to pay a fine of 20 per lunar month for refusing to go to church, where, in
the main, the so-called clergy were men of the most infamous lives.]

Need it be added that a howl of excited vituperation of these
volumes has affrighted all within the pale of the Established
Church, except Dr. Lee ? If the present writer were at freedom
to speak of this high-souled witness of the truth it would be seen
by the world that no nobler evidence ever bore testimony against
the " felonry of history/' as Macaulay indignantly wrote in re-
ference to the falsehoods of the Reformation pamphleteers used
in the written history provided for the " British public." How
the reverend and irreverend critics have raved in the organs of
the " Establishment " ! In the English Churchman a " reverend "
writer denounces the work of Dr. Lee as a production to be
avoided and abhorred, but carefully abstains from giving reasons
for the abstention and abhorrence. Not a line from the book has
been quoted in this characteristic criticism, simply because, as the
chapmen say in the French markets if remonstrated with by an
expert on the price of their commodities, " Eh, bien, monsieur, la
verit6 ne se vend pas." Truth does not pay in Britain either in
the work of the hand or of the truthful intellect. It has been
asked by the organs of the English " Established " Church : How
dares Dr. Lee, an Anglican cleric, so far consort with papists as
to commune with them even on the common highway of his-
torical truth ? But why, above all, raise the veil and show in
veritable aspect the crimes of the hitherto accepted heroine of
Protestantism? Is not this craving to suppress thq truth a
proof of the identification in the self-conscious yet most reticent
souls of English churchmen of the origin of their religion with
the most odious criminality ? And deny or ignore it as they
may, such identity is a fact as solid as granitic rock. The why
and the wherefore, and the consequences of the perversion of
England, meet one face to face every day in the incongruous and
most heartless medley called "English society."

To sum up : The originators of Protestantism in England
were, firstly, a licentious tyrant subserved by bad or timid Catho-
lic bishops and clerics ; secondly, the quasi rule of a wretched boy-

230 THE CHURCPI UNDER ELIZABETH. [Nov.,

king mastered by the infamous council of Somerset, by Cran-
mer, Paget, Richy, and so forth, all of whom who survived the
axe of mutual hate becoming " anxious Catholics " again in the
brief reign of the much-maligned Mary, with the proviso that
their plunder should remain in possession ; thirdly, Elizabeth,
accepting Protestantism from factious motives, the plunderers
being the richer and thereby the stronger party, aided, coun-
selled, and confirmed by the help and advice of the Cecils, father
and son, Walsingham (whom Elizabeth allowed to rot in his bed
when he was of no further use), and Davidson, whom she per-
juriously sacrificed in sullen obedience to the execrations of
Christendom at her unnatural murder of Mary, Queen of Scots.*
That the Protestantism fashioned into an emasculated observance
by evil-doers, all bad Catholics, imitated paganism in its initiation,
by cruelly persecuting their fellow-mortals is no fault, of course,
of its present marvellously diverse profession ; but that the cul-
tus, whatever it is, had its base cemented with the blood of hun-
dreds of martyrs Dr. Lee too sadly proves. We see every day
glorifications of the Reformation. Reformation from what, and by
whom ? Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and all the Protestant episco-
pal " martyrs " with the exception of Hooper, who was the vic-
tim of the private hate of Paget were all rebels as well as per-
jured and sacrilegious priests, just as, with the exception of re-
bellion, was the first Protestant archbishop, Parker. These were
the men, with the lay plunderers of the poor, who " reformed "
the ancient creed of England. John Knox, too, one of the mur-
derers of Rizzio, was a priest ; and so had been the execrable
Moray, the illegitimate brother and would-be murderer of Mary,
Queen of Scots. Reformation ! A sad mutation from the olden
faith of the great and good, effected by profligate misnamed Ca-
tholics, foisted upon an enslaved and devastated country. Quis po-
terit re for mare ipsos reformatores ? In the impossibility of reform-
ing themselves the evil genius of abandoned Catholics set to
work to deform the pristine belief of a too facile yet down-trod-
den people.

* By the way, let us state that Dr. Lee's volumes contain the letters to Paulet, the jailer of
Mary, and his very shrewd replies respecting Elizabeth's desire "to clear off poor Mary by
poison to avoid further trouble."

;88o.] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 231

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

IN Goethe's masterly criticism of " Hamlet" he interprets that
creation of Shakspere as a man on whom an awful injunction
had been placed, which his habit of morbid speculation and intro-
spection prevented him from obeying. He was commanded to
kill the king, but he had not the thoughtless courage of a bravo.
It is questionable whether a vivid imagination is a bane or a bless-
ing. While Dryden was composing " Alexander's Feast " his whole
frame trembled as though he, too, were listening to old Timo-
theus' choir. It takes no expert in handwriting to tell from the
manuscript that Byron wrote certain portions of " Childe Harold "
under overwhelming emotion. Dickens has left on record that,
after finishing the chapter in Dombey which describes the death of
little Paul, he walked the streets of Paris all night in the deepest
sadness. An Edinburgh printer who worked on Carlyle's manu-
script said that he could make out the historical portions, which
we presume were written in a comparatively tranquil mood, but
" deil tak the mon when he begins to swear." It is said that we
have lost much of Keats' fine imaginings from his positive reluc-
tance to write, and the presence of an amanuensis disconcerted
him. Homer sang, and we all know what Ben Jonson says of
the inexpressible charm of Shakspere's conversation. Macaulay
never read his own history after it was before the world, and
nothing could induce Lever to correct his own proofs. What
struck others as masterpieces of their genius seemed to these
children of imagination only weary, stale, and flat. Virgil, on his
deathbed, ordered the ^Eneid to be burnt. As soon as old Dr.
Johnson got a pension he relinquished his pen w r ith the alacrity
with which Rasselas got out of the Happy Valley, and Thackeray
wrote always under stress. Yet none of these had to keep their
pen in their mouth " waiting for an idea."

One of the most imaginative men in the whole cycle of litera-
ture was our countryman, Nathaniel Hawthorne. His genius is
so marked that one is amazed that it remained so long unknown.
The reason is that he did not want to be known, for he, better
than his sharpest critics, was aware that his fancies could not do
any positive moral good. He wished to be content with his own
dreams, and, like all imaginative minds, he shrank from imparting
them to others. He was pursued by booksellers. His note-books

232 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. [Nov.,

and diaries were scrutinized. His manuscripts were wheedled or
forced from him. He was made a victim of Boswellianism. He
repeatedly sought refuge from the publicity of print, and was
happy as a small official at Salem or our consul at Liverpool.
He disliked Brook Farm, where he hoped to have an opportunity
of communing with himself. He was perfectly willing to milk
the cow, if she would only let him, or to prepare the aesthetic
tea, if he could time the boiling-point. He preferred translating
the rather dull tales of Tieck to composing romances of his own,
their infinite superiors. Such was the exquisite fineness of his
perception that he could discover the most unexpected analogies
in the commonest objects. He wove a romance out of every per-
son he saw, but to whom he did not speak. When Gainsborough
was painting a portrait all that he asked of the sitter was that he
or she should keep the mouth shut ; not for artistic reasons, but
because we are seen at our best when we are quietest. A great
artist works under inspiration, which vanishes if he is interrupted.
To relieve a bosom oppressed with thick-coming fancies Haw-
thorne was wont to jot them down. Men of thought and fancy
frequently do this, perhaps to certify to themselves the impres-
sions they have received ; perhaps, in accordance with the well-
known law of association, to lay up for themselves a treasure of
sweet remembrance in -future years. Hawthorne appears to have
lived in this ideal world, and all his writings bear witness to his
extreme susceptibility to the lightest impression from the outside
world. Unlike Coleridge, whom he most strongly resembles in
mental structure, he was chary of talk. He had the same morbid
speculative turn (which ends in nothing), but he was exceedingly
averse from letting any one know of it. Coleridge had a fanci-
ful notion that he could make Spinoza's pantheism and Chris-
tianity agree, and, indeed, he wrote a pamphlet to prove the ab-
surdity, going so far as to deduce from Euclid a rational argu-
ment for the Trinity. The problem which oppressed Hawthorne
was the problem of evil, and, though he shrank from it, the ghost
" would not down." His mind ran on very gloomy themes, and,
being essentially a thinker, he could not change the deep current
of thoughts that sweep into eternity. Less highly endowed but.
happier men either never feel this oppressive sense of wrong un-
righted, or, if they do, they have a solace in a divine faith which
makes clear to them what was not clear to even St. Augustine
until he received the priceless gift.

The conditions of the early youth of Hawthorne tended to de-
velop the unwholesome activity of his imagination. His father

i88o.] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 233

died of fever at Surinam, on a voyage, and the death so affected
his mother that she lived for thirty years in sorrowful seclusion
from even her own household. Nathaniel was only four years old
when he thus became an orphan for it appears that his sorrowing
mother suffered herself to be so completely prostrated by the
death of her husband that she did not find comfort even in the
presence of her child. Salem, too, must have been a bleak place
in those days (1804-10), and the living sorrow within the house
must have cast its cloud over the sunniest spirit. Hawthorne, in
his story The Scarlet Letter, was to become the most powerful
limner of the gloom of Puritanism, and no doubt his young days
furnished him with many a suggestion of sadness. He never had
any childhood. Pensive and brooding, wandering about the
melancholy town, his boyhood is rather sad to contemplate. His
health at fourteen was so frail that he had to be sent for com-
pany's sake to some relatives in Maine a change hardly for the
better, and certainly not calculated to cheer or enliven him.

He was graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. His only
intimate friend there was Franklin Pierce, to whom he took a
great fancy, possibly for the reason that the two men were dis-
similar. Pierce was one of the jolliest and pleasantest of men,
Hawthorne one of the most melancholy. Pierce in time became
President of the United States, and a most popular one, for he had
qualities that attracted all men to him, He was wont to rally
Hawthorne on his gloomy face, though he was the first to recog-
nize his subtle genius ; for Pierce was a man of fine abilities and
remarkably keen penetration. It seems odd that Longfellow, who
was in the same class as Hawthorne, never discovered his genius
until the recognition was not needed that is, when Hawthorne
had become famous. The case seems similar to that of Ches-
terfield patronizing Dr. Johnson when the Dictionary was on the
verge of publication ; or perhaps Hawthorne could not be
brought to see that Longfellow was the great American poet.
At any rate, it is known that he never admired Longfellow's
poems, and, of course, that neglect is sufficient to stamp him as
utterly tasteless, despite the saying de gustibus, etc.

The spirit of gloom seized him on his return to Salem, and his
morbid imagination found full play in the dreariest of households.
He thought and wrote, though what he wrote he generally burnt.
Years after they found in old crannies and nooks fragments of
exquisitely-written stories that by some chance had escaped the
flames. From the first his English style was as we have it now,
pure, transparent, and expressive of the most delicate shade of

234 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. [Nov.,

his weird thoughts. It was no difficulty for him to put into
writing fancies which would seem to defy utterance. Had he
had any taste for the niceties of metaphysics he might have con-
structed a clearer terminology than that which is now in use.
He was fond of beginning stories, such as Septimius Felton and
the Dolliver Romance, and leaving them unfinished, his own mind
travelling far beyond his rapid pen. And this sense of incom-
pleteness hangs about all his works. Indeed, his fragmentary
Note-Books are the most satisfactory of his performances to a
sympathetic mind, which may follow out, if it can, his train of
thought or fancy hinted at in one or two lines. In a recently-
published Life of Hawthorne, by Henry James, Jr., there are some
sneers at this phase of Hawthorne's mental state, as, indeed, at all
that this truly imaginative man did and wrote ; but then who
is Henry James, Jr. ? Every page of his Anglo-American stories
shows the snob and would-be English toady.

If any proof were needed that genius, of even Hawthorne's
gloomy sort, could get along without the help of the "multitudi-
nous rules of rhetoric and the pedantic drilling of " courses of
reading," his writings would furnish it. He made no particular
mark at college, and there is no evidence of profound learning in
his writings. A scholar, or even a reader of the general run of
books, comes across the source of an idea in a new book, just as a
boy follows the course of a river upon the map. How many a
fame for profound classical learning rests upon the mottoes that
are prefixed to Addison's Spectator or upon Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy ! The charm of Hawthorne to a mind ennuyt of much
learning is that he sets aside all the claptrap of quotation and
gives us the freshness of his mind. This result is due to his wea-
riness of heart after having written a ponderous American Maga-
zine of Useful Knowledge (Boston, 1836). Imagine such a mind
hunting up the best and, of course, in view of the latitude in
which he wrote, the cheapest method of making soap ! It was
worse than poor Goldsmith's compiling laudatory biographies
of the worthies of Great Britain.

He properly left the domain belonging to "useful know-,
ledge " to those enamored of that thrifty mistress, and once more
relapsed into his dreams. How beautifully useless they are may
be seen in the Twice-Told Tales, which officious friends prevailed
upon him to publish in 1837. He had written them anonymously
for magazines long since forgotten, and very probably he himself
had forgotten them. But that unlucky Magazine of Useful Know-
ledge had gotten for him the name of " author," and he was roused

i88o.] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 235

to the painful consciousness of having a reputation to sustain.
His fellow-countrymen insisted upon his collecting his old stories,
which he now heartily wished had been cast into the fire, and
upon his publishing them for the benefit of an admiring posterity.
It is well that he was prevailed upon to publish the Tales, because,
though he knew that they would not succeed as a publication
then, they might in future years, which indeed was to be the case.
Although he was the most distinctively American author of his
day (and, indeed, have we even now one to whom such a title
belongs ?), he was the least known, and, where known, the least
regarded. The Twice-Told Tales on publication proved a com-
plete failure, and the author serenely remarked to his mortified
friends: "I told you so." In 1838 Bancroft, the historian, got
him a situation as weigher and gauger in the Boston Custom-
house, in which humble occupation he was most happy. The
sailors loved him, because he had a natural penchant for the sea.
His grandsires were sailors, and his mind was filled with the im-
memorial traditions of those " who go down to the sea in ships."
His peculiarly tragic imagination, if such an expression is allow-
able, loved to dwell upon the stories of shipwrecked mariners, and
to brood over the secrets buried in the " vast and melancholy
main." Indeed, he was glad his book failed, for now he could
indulge his fancies in a repose undisturbed by publishers. He
felt the necessity of " getting out of himself " in some active occu-
pation, in the full and free converse with rough-handed and hard-
worked men, who would only laugh at his sad thoughts, and who
were amazed at the unaccountable impression their rough story
of shipwreck and death made upon him. He preferred this prac-
tical and strong talk of experience to the etherealization of his
philosophical friends, that laughed at scars, who never felt a
wound.

The gloomy temperament which he had inherited from his
forefathers, who had made themselves conspicuous in putting
down the Salem witchcraft and in punishing Quakers, reasserted
its domination when he found himself again alone in the " Old
Manse " at Concord. He gave himself up to solitude (although
now married) and fed his fine imagination upon the glories of
sylvan scenery. No writer, except the late Father Faber, has
left so perfect descriptions of the changing foliage, of the beauty
of flowers and fruits, and of the aspect of external nature in every
season. Thomson wrote the Seasons while lying in bed, and he
probably never saw a sunrise if he could help ik Hawthorne
noticed the slightest change of tint in a cloud. He watched the

236 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. [Nov.,

varying forms of snow, the sheen of water, and all the other deli-
cate hints of beauty apparent to those that have the artistic eye.
But he cared nothing for botany as a science, and detested a mi-
croscope. He returned from an afternoon walk with a mind
filled with beautiful thoughts, but he never brought home a bou-
quet or preserved a fern-leaf. His mind absorbed the beauty
and the fragrance, and then he would go to his study, and in
writing photograph the scene, his melancholy acting as a camera
obscura for there had to be a background of gloom.

He read very little. He never " crammed " for writing, ex-
cept, of course, when he compiled the Useful Knowledge. He
devoted most of his {noughts to the problem of evil in this world,
its action upon the human heart, its modification of character, its
inevitable exposure through the action of some law which he
vainly tried to explore, and its awful perpetuance in forms of
mental and bodily pain. The shallow talk he heard around him
from Margaret Fuller Ossoli, and from other sages that at pre-
sent grandiloquently call themselves the Concord Academe, only
served to throw him more upon himself. He wrote The Scarlet
Letter as a tentative answer to his inquiring spirit. Can sin go
unpunished ? Why not Confess it, if it be a weight too heavy to
be borne ? He felt instinctively that a confession to God in a
vague, general way, or even in heartrending agony, is not enough ;
for does not the guilty minister of the tale wrestle long in
prayer? Yet publicity is not advisable, for does not the shameful
blazon of the letter upon the adulteress only deepen her grief
without alleviating it ? Is there any torturer more grisly than
the injured husband who holds the poor minister upon a rack
more terrible than any the most fabulous Inquisitor can invent ?
Is it not clear that, in a certain way to us unknown, we inherit the
punishment of the sins of our forefathers ? These are the ques-
tions which this thoughtful and sincere man put into a story
that painfully affects all who cannot see the answer which
such questionings demand". Hawthorne wrought out in his book
the finest natural argument -for sacramental confession that ever
was penned. The Catholic Church alone answers the queries
adequately. So, too, in the House of the Seven Gables he again re-
verts to the subject of sin and its natural horrors. He proves
from the testimony of conscience that there is such a thing as sin.
In the Marble Faun, following out the thought to its most awful
development, he establishes the apparently untenable position
that sin will draw a man up (or is it down ?) from a natural sim-
plicity of character to a point which makes him a demon. Sin is

i88o.] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 237

an educational power. It will sharpen a man's wits. It will
train him into the highest capacity for evil. This is the terrible
moral of the greatest of his tales. Donatello is half-witted, a
satyr, but sin transforms him into a man horrible thought !
We are accustomed to say that sin debases and degrades our
human nature. So it does, in the truest sense and before God.
But may it not be true that the most polished, astute, and natu-
rally lovable persons are the vilest in the sight of Heaven ? His-
tory says as much. Hawthorne pushes the idea into the realm
of the old Salem witchcraft, and he draws a picture of a witches'
sabbat, at which the seemingly most holy and decorous people of
a town assist, and, throwing off their hypocrisy as a garment, re-
veal themselves in all their natural sinfulness and acquired moral
hideousness. The theme is shocking, and the suggested thought,
or rather half-belief, is inexpressibly painful.

While consul at Liverpool he wrote some detached sketches,
which were afterwards collected into a book called Our Old
Home. He never liked England, and his book gave great
offence. He carried his thoughtful and observant spirit into the
lower walks of Liverpool life, and, with his miracle of minuteness,
described the Liverpool purlieus, an English workhouse, and his
visit to the tomb of Shakspere. As we have said, he uncon-
sciously wove a romance around what he saw, but this power
never led him into exaggerating beyond the limit of the possible.
He read histories in men's faces, and, though he avoided confi-
dences, men found in him a strange sympathy which made them
tell him much that they would have concealed even from them-
selves. No man ever visited Stratford-on-Avon with a more
philosophical spirit than he. He hated hero-worship. He wan-
dered around the tombs, saw the town, and inferred the genius
f Shakspere from the wretched limitations of the house in which

lived, wrote, and died. None but a genius could have flooded
with light that dismal abode. He brought away no relics, but he
glanced at some of the names scribbled on the wall, and imagined
what "John Smith and family " felt amid such surroundings.

Had his genius found answer for those questions that besieged
him, and that grew more importunate toward the end, he might
have left us books filled with consolation. As it is, it is pleasant
to read of him that while at Rome he loved to pace the " groin-
ed aisles " of St. Peter's when it was quite empty, however and
to pay frequent visits to the Catacombs, doubtlessly weaving ro-
mances and conjectures about the lives and hopes of the unnum-
bered dead therein at rest.

238 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

MY RAID INTO MEXICO.

CHAPTER IX.

I TAKE A DEEP INTEREST IN INEZ O'HARA.

I FOUND Mojelos in a state of considerable agitation. With-
out asking me to be seated he burst out with

" They are a set of idiots, dolts, madmen ! / cannot act single-
handed. I am willing to give my life, but I want to give it and
get something in return. This is not the hour for pronouncing.
There are too many powerful personages in the capital with
hands raised against the cause. The vultures still batten and fat-
ten on the murdered corpse of imperialism."

He commenced to walk up and down the room, ever and anon
flinging his clenched fists in the air, as if menacing an unseen foe.

I remained perfectly passive. In fact, my thoughts were
working on the double, if I may use the term. I was thinking of
the violet eyes of Inez even while the Mexican sabreur was pranc-
ing about the apartment.

" They urge upon me the necessity for action," he resumed.
" I can reckon on my regiment, and the Oaxaca men will bring
the Chihuahuas, and the Chihuahuas will bring over the Tlanti-
lans. Mr. Nugent," turning to me, " do you know anything of
Austro-Hungarian politics ? "

" Absolutely nothing, colonel."

" Then you may never have even heard of Prince Aachen of
Hapsburg ? "

" Never. v

" He is second cousin to Francis Joseph. A hero, his charge
at Magenta was one of the most brilliant things ever done. He is
but forty-six, a diplomatist, a ripe scholar, and a Hapsburg. He
is our man. I don't mind talking to you, since my sister has taken
you into her confidence."

I bowed.

" He is not unwilling, but with the sad fate of Maximilian be-
fore his eyes he is naturally anxious to see his way a little. The
idiots by whom he is surrounded are fairly befogged. They are
color-blind. At that distance, and with no diplomatic relations
between the countries, it is impossible for them to determine every-
thing. The cause has many friends here, but it has many ene-

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 239

mies. The cause would not be worthy of a name if it hadn't foes.
Those people, a lot of danglers at Schonbrunn, imagine that an
Austrian prince has only to land at Vera Cruz to be welcomed
with open arms. If Prince Aachen were to land to-morrow he'd
be arrested on the Mole and incarcerated in the fortress of Ulloa ;
you have-seen it, right opposite the town. A court-martial would
sit upon him, and the sounds of platoon-firing would affright the
zapilotes within twenty-four hours. He would be shot, Mr. Nu-
gent shot like a dog. And those ignoramuses want to force my
hand, want to send his royal highness here at once, and me to
pronounce, and just want to sink the whole ship. This is the sub-
stance of this precious document which you have so generously
undertaken to hand me."

I could say nothing. The subject was one upon which I was
in total ignorance. My silence in this instance was the gold of
impotence.

" When do you return, Mr. Nugent ? " suddenly demanded
the colonel.

This question came upon me by surprise. Vague ideas of
spending three or four weeks in the country flitted dreamily
through my mind. I did not care to focus them, preferring
rather to drift. Strange to say, the answering thought was Inez.
Yes, Inez O'Hara, the girl whom I had just quitted in the sacristy.
I longed to see more of her, to hear her charming Irish brogue
mingled with the high-bred, polished accent of Spain ; to be
with her, to see her sketch, and paint, and sew ; to listen to her
im \mtpiquante recollections of dear old Ireland. She was com-
ng on a visit to the senora. This thought afforded me a sense of
exquisite pleasure. She would remain. I should see her daily
d all day.

" When do you return?" repeated Colonel Mojelos, for I was

absorbed in my own thoughts that I did not reply.

I believe I started, and I know that the color rushed to my
ce as I replied :

" I do not know."

"Do you intend to make any lengthened stay, Mr. Nugent?"

" Well, you see I have nothing to call me back, at least for
me time, and 1 am so delighted with everything in Mexico that
shall stop as long as I can."

" It -delights me to hear you praise my beloved country,
sefior," cried the colonel in a rapture. " There is not such a
country on the face of God's earth. Poor Mexico!" he added,
" what a struggle thou hast even for existence."

240 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

After a pause he continued :

" I thought perhaps that you might be leaving in a week or
two, in which event I would have troubled you with letters.
Taking letters out of the country is risky, as you will be examin-
ed at Vera Cruz a regular personal examination and all your
papers overhauled. 1 must reply to this missive at once, but
how ? It will be necessary to send a special and trusted messen-
ger."

Had Colonel Mojelos asked me to do this service for him but
one half-hour before, I would have undertaken the mission with-
out a second's deliberation. Now I felt that Mexico- possessed a
charm for me that bade me linger in almost imperative tones.

" Mr. O'Shea spoke of returning with me," I said.

" Mr. O'Shea ? Oh ! that's the gentleman whom I was going
to eat, and who in return was going to eat me ? "

" Yes."

"Is he to be trusted?"

"He is an Irish gentleman, Colonel Mojelos," was my reply.

O'Shea had broached the idea of a visit to Ireland.

" The statutes of limitation are against me, as I was out of the
country," he observed, " and there's a little tailor in Dame Street
that I owe a trifle to, and he'd nose me from Holyhead across the
Channel, bad cess to him ! I don't mind payin' me just debts, Joe,
but a thing so old as that is too hard on a man ; besides, the villain
didn't put silk linings in me black frock they were only some
sort of glazed calico. I know that old O'Brien, that owned Bur-
ton Bindon's oyster-shop, is in Glasnevin, so that debt is paid, and
wan little bill at Morrison's hotel will clear me. Yes, Joe Nugent,
I'm just thinkin' I'd go over and take a look at dear dirty Dublin
with you."

Colonel Mojelos asked me when it was likely that Mr. O'Shea
would be leaving.

" Well, he spoke of coming with me, but I imagine he could
be persuaded to leave at any moment. He wouldn't ask better
fun."

" He should proceed direct to Vienna."

" If you wish it I'll sound him on the subject, colonel."

" I sincerely wish that you would."

" It shall be done."

-When?"

" To-night."

" And I shall hear from you "

" To-morrow."

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 241

" Ten thousand thanks ! You see the exact position of things."
And the colonel, in a rapid and excited manner, went over the
whole question of the failure of imperialism in Mexico.

" I will have no emperor backed up by French bayonets, or by
Austrian, or Russian, or German, or English bayonets either. I
will have an emperor the choice of the people, elected by them,
and protected by them."

After some further observations anent the situation I ventur-
ed to hint that the senora was waiting for me. " The Senora
San Cosme is with you heart and soul, colonel."

" Is she ? Will you present me to her ? "

When we reached the cloister we found O'Shea in an animated
conversation with Inez, while the senora and the good sister were
engaged in catechising a refractory-looking little girl with eyes
as black as sloes.

I duly presented Mojelos, and in a second he was gesticulating
like a madman. The subject of the conversation was evidently
that which lay nearest to his heart, for in his excitement he spoke
so loudly as to cause the senora to place a cautioning ringer to
her lips.

" I am taking Inez with us, Joe," observed the senora, as we
prepared to depart. " She will amuse you better than I can. I
thoroughly believe in the company of the younger the young."

I sat opposite to the senorita on the return to Mexico. The
violet eyes were turned to mine nearly all the way, as she and 1
had the conversation to ourselves, the senora being engaged in
saying her rosary, and O'Shea had mounted on the box beside
te driver.

I could scarcely believe that we had arrived at the Calle
Marascala as the carriage swung beneath the gilded archway,
'hat an elaborate toilet I performed for dinner that day ! I do
ilieve I spoiled six or eight white chokers in order to secure a
>rrect bow.

Inez entered the drawing-room attired in gauzy black, with a

cross suspended from a black velvet ribbon round her neck.
>he wore no other ornament, and a bright, keen-blue, natural
flower was twisted into her sunny hair.

" And so the senora has not told you my history," she said,
as we leaned on the railings of the balcony overlooking ihe patio.

" Not a word, senorita."

" Then let me tell it to you."

" Not if"

I stopped short ; my intention was to have said, " If it pains
VOL. xxxii. 16

242 My RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

you," but I felt the awkwardness of the remark, yet not in good
time.

" I know at least I imagine that I know what you would
say," she continued. " My story is sad enough. My mother was
not only a Protestant, but a rabid one. We lived in the west of
Ireland, and she became what is called a ' souper ' that is, she
went to the cabins of the peasants with money and tracts, and she
paid ever so much money to any poor, miserable person who
would come to Bible-classes and to church. My father was as
stanch a Catholic on his side, and oh ! it was an- awful warfare
that raged between my parents." Here the girl shuddered.
" When poor, dear papa died my mother insisted upon my going
to the Protestant church. I was very young, but even young as I
was I felt, senor, that God would be displeased with me, and I ask-
ed a dear old priest, Father Quinn. Oh ! it is all before me now,"
Inez exclaimed : " the dear old padre and his white-washed house
with yellow thatch. The padre was in great distress. He came to
my mother, but was terribly insulted. He persevered. He com-
manded me in the name of God to remain true to his church. I
did so. I was b'ut it doesn't matter how I was treated at home.
A friend of Father Quinn, a Mrs. De Lacy, offered to take charge
of my education. My mother refused, and it was not until she
married a clergyman attached to the Church Missions Society
that she consented to let me go. Mrs. De Lacy had left Ireland,
but Father Quinn arranged that I should accompany some sisters
who were coming out to Mexico. The senora received the sisters
in this house, and at once took me under her special care. My
mother died, alas ! without having been brought to the true light,
and I am alone in the world. That is my history."

The tears that welled up and stood for a moment in the girl's
eyes now overflowed and rolled down her cheeks, silent streams
of silent sorrow. How I pitied her !

" But I have said enough about myself," said the girl. " Let
us talk about dear old Ireland."

I told her all about my sister Nellie, and Aunt Butler, and Trixy,
and Dromroe. At dinner I came out strong with hunting stories
and anecdotes of Dublin life. I knew I talked well and was a
success. I felt as if champagne was flowing in my veins. All
my discourse was devoted either to the Senora San Cosme or to
O'Shea. Somehow or other I dreaded meeting those violet eyes,
knowing they were fixed upon me, and yet I would have given a
good deal for a look.

"To-morrow," said the senora, "we will take you to the

iSSo.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 243

shrine of our Blessed Lady at Guadalupe. The padre will ac-
company us, and you will see the miraculous picture, Joe, painted
by the hand of the Virgin upon the apron of the poor peasant,
Juan Diego. Amiga mio, will you go with us?" she asked of
O'Shea.

" Thank ye, no, senora ; there's an American, a New-Yorker,
stoppin' at the Iturbide, who arrived last night, whom I want to
put my comether upon. He's here to make millions out of a
mine. He can have the Rivasta, a dead bargain. If he takes mil-
lions out of it he'll become a millionaire, that's all." And here
O'Shea winked at me.

Mindful of my promise to Mojelos, I asked my jovial country-
man to come to my room for his chasse and cigarette. I would
have much preferred to have been alone with the delicious
luxury of certain rose-colored thoughts, but my promise to the
colonel thrust aside everything else.

" You were thinking of returning to Ireland with me, Mr.
O'Shea," I remarked, as we seated ourselves by the open
window.

" I'm thinkin' of nothin' else, bad scran to it ! " was his prompt
reply.

" Would you be ready to start on a short notice ? "

" Let me see. I'd have to frighten Pomposo, Verdugo, Jose,
Ignacio, Najera, Miguel, Ramon, Mata, Salvador, Corella, Man-
uel Gutierrez into fits ; that would take five minutesj and a two
days' journey on mules to get at him. Then I'll have to take a
couple of thousand dollars out of the bank ; that is worse than
taking the back tooth out of an ostrich. Ton my conscience, I
think the bank will break if I remove so much capital at one pull.
I must break it to the dons gently, and remove the coin in instal-
ments. Then "

" I am really in earnest, Mr. O'Shea," I interrupted.

" So am I."

" Would you be ready to start in a week? "

" Ready and willing ; but surely you don't think of leaving so
soon, Joe ? "

"/shall remain for some time."

"Then what the dickens are ye talkin' about? Pm in no
hurry."

" The fact is, Mr. O'Shea, that I have been commissioned by a
friend to ask you to undertake a somewhat delicate mission."

" Whew ! " And he gave a prolonged whistle.

" A friend of mine "

244 MY R AID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

" What is the young lady's name, Joe?" he burst in, with a
sly chuckle.

" There is no lady in the case, I assure you," 1 responded, with
a laugh.

" Well, if there is, it's mighty quick work, my young friend ;
and if there's not you'll find it a pretty tough job to outwit Van
Dyck O'Shea."

" I don't despair of interesting you, Mr. O'Shea. Lend me
your ears for five minutes ; but, firstly, let me give you to under-
stand that this is strictly in confidence and is never to be
divulged."

Having received his word of honor as a gentleman pledging
himself to secrecy, I told him all that had transpired between
Colonel Mojelos and myself.

After a somewhat prolonged silence O'Shea observed :

" I was an imperialist, Joe, and no one did more in the way of
talk to save Maximilian's life than I did. I think that it would
be madness to attempt to establish an empire so soon. We're
like children with a new toy, and we hug our republicanism as a
little girl hugs her doll. Our rulers have lost all sense of religion,
and in my opinion the country, commercially speaking, is goin'
back instead of progressin'. We're like the crab walkin' back-
wards. If it wasn't for a few Germans I'd like to know what
trade or commerce we'd have. We're like people in a besieged
town : we know nothin' of what's goin' on outside dickens a bit.
It's once a fortnight we get any news, and then it's so doctored
that we can't believe it. If we were more liberal and broader, and
more en rapport with the other countries, we'd do pretty well ; but
we're a close borough and as conservative as the old Catholic
county families in Ireland and the We won't trade with the
United States, as we're in mortal dread that if we give the Ameri-
cans what is called a " show " that we will be annexed like
Texas."

" Surely America has enough of territory already ? "

" That's all very fine. She has, and more than enough, but is
it as fat as ours ? Is there gold and but I'm wanderin' away from
the main point. Let us go back to imperialism. I tell you, Joe
Nugent, that the man who comes here to put on an imperial
crown will have no head to wear it after a week. He'll be shot
as sure as my name's O'Shea. We're in the humor of emperor-
shootin', I tell ye. It's big game, and we have bagged a brace of
emperors already Iturbide and Maximilian. Therefore I don't
want to risk my neck in a hopeless, utterly hopeless, cause. Why,

1 8 So.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 245

the very name of Austria is enough to set our fiery orators shriek-
ing" and howling all over the country. I'd rather take my chance
of putting you up, Joe. It's all very fine for Mojelos to talk of
pronouncing. He can pronounce, and his regiment will back him,
but I tell ye, sir, that we've got a little general here, Porfirio Diaz,
who would knock Mojelos and his regiment into smithereens while
ye'd say Jack Robinson. He is a regular soldier, a brave cap-
tain, and is devoted to his country. He has the army with him,
the entire army, with perhaps the exception of this Oaxaca regi-
ment ; though Oaxaca is his birth-place, and I'll lay the odds the
Oaxaca men would follow him in preference to Mojelos any
day."

" Then you won't undertake the mission ?"

" I didn't say that, Joe. A spice of danger only makes the
sauce of life more piquant. If it obliges you I'll "

"Do not think of me in the matter, Mr. O'Shea," I inter-
posed.

" I thought there was a girl in New York that

" Certainly Conchita Mojelos. I met her but once, as you
know."

" Say one and a half times, Joe," laughed O'Shea. " However,
I'll just sleep over it. If it was for you or for the senora I'd
never ask a question, but go out and stir up Pomposo don't be
frightened, I'm not going to let fly the whole name rob the
ink, and be off at a minute's notice. But as neither you nor
dear good friend are much interested, why, it becomes a
>rse of another color."

" I imagine that the senora is interested." And I referred to
ler animated conversation with Mojelos.

" Don't you bother yourself about that ; the senora knows as
r ell as I do that the empire is dead, and that it would be worse
idiocy to attempt to revive it. Why, man alive, we've can-
rassed the question over and over and over again till we're dead
sick of it."

The senora was at the piano when we repaired to the draw-
ing-room ; beside her Inez O'Hara.

" Joe," exclaimed the senora, " I was just going over some of
the pieces I used to play with your dear good mother at Pars-
ley's Academy in Stephen's Green. They have all come back
to me. Here is one, * The Masaniello Quadrilles.' " And with a
delicate yet firm touch she played a selection of airs from Au-
ber's delightful opera.

" Do you play, Miss O'Hara ? " I asked.

246 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

" I do."

" May I not hope to hear you ? "

" If it affords you the slightest pleasure."

She seated herself at the piano and led off with an Habanera.
Then followed numerous fandangos, all performed with a won-
drous skill and finish of execution.

" I know nothing but Spanish and Mexican airs," she cried,
" except long pieces fearfully classical. I will not bore you with
them."

" You can give us that valse of Chopin's, Inez."

" Oh ! yes, I forgot that."

I fear that the chromatic fireworks of Chopin were lost upon
me, for I became absorbed in gazing on the lithe figure swaying
with such inconceivable grace, and on the dainty white hands
that flashed across the keys, and on the paly gold hair which the
wax candles burnished with streaks of yellow white.

I sat out on my balcony that night inhaling the delicious per-
fume of the flowers flowers bathed by a moonlight such as we
wot not of and my thoughts seemed focussed into one :

" If Inez were mistress of Dromroe ? "

CHAPTER X.

A RUDE AWAKENING.

MR. VAN DYCK O'SHEA slept on imperialism, and in the
morning declared against the projected trip in imperialistic in-
terests.

" It's no go, Joe," he exclaimed. " If it was to raise a ruction
in ould Ireland I'd be off like a gun, for there would be lots of
fun ; but in this country they mean business, and I don't want to
join the majority by the help of a Mexican bullet if I can help it.
Why, man, I'd rather be shot down by wan of the Royal Irish
Constabulary ; and I have the choice, Joe."

I took the tram-car for San Angel, bringing the good sisters
two large bouquets which I bought in the Calle San Francisco for
something ridiculously small. The colonel at first seemed rather
gloomy, especially as I told him O'Shea's opinions regarding the
situation.

" How could he tell anything about it," he hotly exclaimed
" a foreigner ? How could he tell the beat of the pulse of the
Mexican nation ? He is not one of us ; he is an outsider. / know
how the Mexican heart beats. I do not say that there is no

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 247

chance of failure ; on the contrary, the chances of success are
against us ; but we will force the running, as you say in English
races. I must go myself, since Sefior O'Shea declines. It is bet-
ter as it is. I shall apply for leave. I shall be refused. shall
forward all my preparations and leave Vera Cruz in disguise.
Could I make up for an Irishman, Mr. Nugent? "
" Not very well, colonel ; you are too dark."
" Ah ! then I must assume some other nationality. Perhaps I
may cross the Rio Grande and touch American soil that way.
In any case, Mr. Nugent, you have my lasting gratitude and
friendship for the noble part you have acted. You are a gentle-
man and a man, and a plucky one. No matter what may happen,
you will think well of Enrique Mojelos, won't you ? Hermano !
brother ! "

His manner made me very sad. He appeared to me to in-
wardly despair of the success of the very movement that out-
wardly he was so sure would succeed. Is it not so with many-f
us ? How often do we not force ourselves, or endeavor to force
ourselves, to think that something we wish for will come out
right ! So it was with this high-spirited Mexican. I knew he
was about to embark in a hopeless cause, but nevertheless would
not admit the fact to himself.

" Your friend is perhaps right," he added, " viewing the situa-
tion in the light of events, /consider that to pronounce just now
rould result in a bloody fiasco. For, by my life psh ! I have
:posed it so often that 1 need not say I carry it in my hand into
my and every enterprise. There are friends very, dear to me
are with me, and who await but the lifting of my finger to
;-o on. It is for these dear fellows that I think, and it maddens
to be urged by a clique in Austria, who know nothing and
mid know nothing of the situation here, to pronounce. Kpronun-
\miento would prove a dead failure. I shall apply for leave to-
ly, and let you know the result of my application. The Sefiora
in Cosme has graciously invited me to visit her. I shall avail
lyself of the privilege accorded me by calling this afternoon
ifore the drive."

When I got back to the Calle Marascala I found the carriage
drawn up in the patio.

" Bedad, Masther Joe, the say-norah was gettin' onaisy in re-
gard to ye. She was afeerd av thim robbers that's on the road
betune this an' where ye wor. Faix, it's little they'd think av
cuttin' yer troath, be all accounts, or av runnin' ye up into the
snow up beyant, on Pop-up-the-kettle, an' keepin' ye there till

248 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

ye'd have for to sell Dromroe for to pay the ransom, the villyans !
Did ye taste the poolkay yet, Masther Joe ? High an' low, rich
an' poor, is all dhrinkin' it. Be the hole in me coat, I'd as lave
swally buttermilk faix, I'd rayther, for it's more wholesomer."

" I rather like \hzpulque, Billy."

" Bedad, thin, sir, yer aisy plazed. I seen how it's med. I
wint out for to ketch a cupple av horses this mornin' to a farm
out beyant och ! I cudn't repayte the name, but it's a rousin' six
miles from here, anyhow, on the road towards Ireland. The plant
that the dhrink comes from is all swoords, and spikes, and pike-
heads, an' a gossoon wud an iron scoop in his hand cuts the heart
out av the plant and lets the juice dhrop into the hole med be the
scoop. Thin, Masther Joe, he laves it for a cupple av days, an'
comes round wud a dunkey and sheep-skin, and he sucks all the
juice that's gathered in the hole up into the sheep-skin, an' runs
the dunkey home wud it, leatherin' him all the way. An' what
do ye think is done thin, sir ? "

" I'm sure I don't know, Billy."

" Begor, the dunkey is dhruv into a soort av barn, an' in the
barn is cow-skin stretched out on frames, the hairy side out, not
like Brian O'Lynn's small-clothes ; an' on the top o' this the gos-
soon lets go the juice in the sheep-skin. Another chap wud a
wand in his hand makes the sign av the Blessed Cross on the
juice wud the wand, an* says a Hail Mary, sir, an' thin the juice
is left for another cupple av days, and carted away to the public-
houses, where it is sowld like porther in wooden noggins."

Billy's description of the manufacture of pulque, the national
beverage, was absolutely accurate, as I subsequently discovered
during a visit to the hacienda of Senor Pancho Buch, at a place
called Tlatplam, about ten miles from the city.

" The leddies is dhressin' for to go out wud ye, Masther Joe.
Faix, but it's yerself that's in clover, an' no mistake. The hoighth
av politeness extended to ye wherever ye go. I'd give me new
brogues this minit that wan av thim impident Beresfords was
here for to see the state you're in, sir ; an' that Captain Mansfield
that bet ye the day the hounds threw aff at Gort-na-drushka
wudn't it take the consait out av him for to see ye thrated like
a prence, no less ! Masther Joe," he added, in a confidential
undertone, " I heerd that the young leddy that's come for to
visit us is Irish."

" Miss O'Hara is a native of Ireland."

" See that, now. Faix, th' ould country is houldin' up well
in this barbarious raygin. There's the say-norah, wan ; Misther

1880.^ MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 249

O'Shea good luck to him for a divartin' gentleman ! that's
two ; you an' me, sir, that's four ; an' the young leddy, five.
That's a quare thing for to find up here. Father Tom won't be-
lieve it whin he hears it. Masther Joe, I hope ye write very
regler, sir, for av ye don't they'll think we're kilt or lost."

The ladies made their appearance upon the balcony,

" Are you ready for the road, Joe ? " asked the seiiora.

" Perfectly, senora."

" Billy, would you like to sit beside the coachman ? We're
going out to the great shrine of Guadalupe," she asked of my
retainer.

"Av I wouldn't be disgracin' th' equepage be raison av me
clothes, yer ladyship say-norah."

" Oh ! you'll do very well, Billy."

" That's me darlint av a leddy," observed Brierly, *as the
seiiora disappeared.

The two ladies were attired in black, both wearing the man-
tilla and vela.

" We will call at the cathedral for the padre," observed the
senora, as she ordered the coachman to the Plaza Mayor.

" Do you know the beautiful history of the miraculous picture
at Guadalupe? " asked Inez.

I replied in the negative.

" Oh ! it is wonderfully beautiful. A poor peasant named
Juan Diego, noted for the purity and piety of his life, was cross-
ing that very hill you see it," pointing energetically to a hill that,
in the exquisitely clear atmosphere, seemed at the city gates. " It
was evening and his day's work was done. Suddenly the dark-
ness of nightfall was illumined with sheen and splendor, with a
glorious light. He looked up, and before him stood Our Blessed
Lady herself. The poor peasant fell on his knees. The Mother
of God bade him go to the bishop and tell him that she wished a
church to be erected on that spot to her honor. Then she- disap-
peared. Juan Diego could not realize that such wondrous honor
hould be paid him, and he considered that that which he had
ust seen was but an effect of his imagination. The very next
vening he was again crossing the hill at the same hour, when
at the same spot the blessed vision again appeared to him. The
Mother of God was displeased with him for not having obeyed
her, and again bade him go to the bishop. Diego, breathless and
trembling, came to the bishop, and emptying some flowers he
had gathered for the altar of the .Virgin from out of his coarse
apron, told the good prelate his wondrous tale. The bishop

250 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

turned his eyes to the peasant's apron, and, starting back, fell up-
on his knees, for there, in order to testify to Juan Diego's truth,
Our Blessed Lady had imprinted her glorious face. You will see
that miraculously-painted apron ; it stands in a golden frame over
the grand altar, for the church was built on the spot where she
had ordered it to be built, and dedicated to Our Lady of Guada-
lupe."

The young girl narrated the history of the miracle with an
animation impossible to describe. She imparted to every word
a sort of luminous power which held me completely fascinated.
Ever and anon she would break into some expression of piety in
Spanish, and she spoke in a sweet, low, awe-hushed tone, as
though she were then and there gazing at the beatific apparition.

We picked up the padre, who was waiting within the chains in
front of the cathedral, and spun past the National Pawn-shop one
of the sights of the capital, and conducted on the same principle
as the Mont de Piete in Paris past the building formerly used as
the Court of the Inquisition, now a medical university, and out to
the open country, the church-crowned hill of Guadalupe in the near
distance. Tram-cars drawn by four mules rattled by us on a hand-
gallop. Hansoms in full charro ambled toward the city. Indians
laden with edibles trotted countrywards. Pulquerias did a roar-
ing business, for your Indian is a thirsty soul and the roads are
exceedingly dusty. Strings of asses, their panniers full of char-
coal, wended slowly to the great centre. Beggars sat by the
wayside and implored alms in guttural prayers. Sounds of the
guitar reached us from walled-in ventas and haciendas, mingled
with the " light laugh of woman."

" You see those pillars," observed the padre, pointing as he
spoke to columns, about twenty feet in height, placed in two
straight lines at distances apart of about one hundred yards.
" That was the former high-road to Guadalupe. Each of those
pillars. was erected in memoriam by some pious Spaniard, and the
entire causeway was thus lined to the very doors of the church.
Now see how the road is occupied."

As he spoke the whistle of a locomotive burst upon our ears
and a train slowly approached the city, its black smoke and the
terrible dust it raised enveloping the pillars, some of which still
displayed busts and statues of the patron saints of the donors.

" What a commentary upon the text," exclaimed the padre.
" That is t\\Qpulqtie train. That train is laden with the poison
which sows such terrible seeds amongst our poorer classes. Two
trains arrive from 'the pulque country daily, the revenue to the

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 251

government on its manufacture being 1 the chief source, after the
spoliation of the churches, of our national exchequer."

There are two churches at Guadalupe, one at the foot of the
hill, the other at its summit. The ascent is exceedingly steep and
marked by pious pilgrims by wayside crosses, mural tablets, and
votive statuettes.

" It is somewhat remarkable," said the padre, " that the infi-
dels and sacrilegious robbers into whose clutches we have fallen
have spared the property of this church. The golden chalices
studded with gems are still here, the silver sconces and lamps, and
the silver chancel-railings. Why they refrain from laying their
impious hands on this fragment of church treasure is a puzzle

" It is the hand of God that prevents them," murmured the
senora, as, gliding into the church, she flung herself at the foot of
a side-altar hung with crutches, bandages, splints, waxen limbs,
medals, and paintings, all in testimony of the miraculous cures
effected by pilgrimages to the church, and implicit faith in the
gracious intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The'padre introduced a clergyman, who took us to the onyx
steps leading up to the picture. We all knelt as the white satin
curtain slowly unrolled itself, revealing the angelic face of the
Virgin Mother, from which bars of gold shot like rays of light.
The color is as fresh and vivid to-day as when the pious peasant
disclosed it to the awe-stricken prelate. The countenance of
Mary is filled with a divine sweetness a sweetness that diffuses
itself like a subtle perfume.

" I prayed to the Holy Mother for your safe return," said
Inez to me when we stood on the terrace overlooking the Valley
of Mexico. My return! Already did she look forward to my
leaving the country of the Montezumas, most probably for ever.
Little did she know the strange heart-throb those few words of
hers caused me. They were earnest words, good words, Catho-
lic words, but behind them lay sad-colored thoughts for me, and
of so ashen a hue that the senora playfully offered me a penny for
my thoughts.

" Are they of Beatrice Butler, Joe? "

I grew red to the roots of my hair. I felt the color mounting
and could trace its upward progress.

" No, indeed, senora," I blurted, as I turned away.

" And do ye tell me, yer riverince, that these railins is rale
solid silver ? " demanded Brierly of the padre.

" I will not say that they are solid, but they are silver, Billy,'*
responded the padre.

252 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

" The same as is in the shillins an* sixpennies at home, sir? "

"Yes, the very same."

" Glory be to God ! May I tell that to Father Tom, sir, boney
fidey, an' no bam ? "

" Certainly."

" That the railins was silver, an' that, blessed hour ! I seen a
pictur painted be the glorious Mother av Heaven. That's what /
call thravellin', an' no mistake ! "

The days that Inez stopped with us passed as if by magic. The
sefiora, in order to let me see the entire city, made it a rule to
hear Mass each morning at a different church, whither we re-
paired on foot. Oh ! those rose-pink mornings shall I ever for-
get them. Waiting for Inez, my heart throbbing madly, assum-
ing a nonchalance I was far from participating when, fresh as the
morning, she appeared on the balcony to cry, " Buenos dias, Sefior
Nugent." Then the chat apropos de rien. Such causer ie is ever
fashioned out of nothing, and yet how much it contains to those
engaged in -it !

'" Dans le bouton de rose il-y-a de quoi ecrire un volume."

The sefiora would appear, grave, earnest, charming, and
decide the church to be visited. I walked between the ladies,
giving my arm to the elder. Then we would stop at some street-
corner, where I would purchase great bouquets of violets to
place on the altar of Our Lady. How sweet it was to hear Inez
giving utterance to her young, fresh thoughts upon such subjects
as came upon the tapis, to listen to her as she explained some
national characteristic, or drew my attention to something of
color in Mexican inner life !

I carried her prayer-book, and because it touched her hand
I revered it. I remember sa}ang to her one morning, as we
wended our way to the church of St. Ferdinand :

" I should like to learn Spanish most awfully, sefiorita."

" Then why don't you try to ? "

" I can read it, owing to the grinding I got in Latin. I think I
shall commence with a prayer-book a book like yours, senorita."

" It would be a very good plan."

" May I have a loan of yours ? "

" Ye yes."

" You hesitate."

" It is because I should like to make a gift of it to you."

I have that book to-day. It is a precious memento of " my
raid into Mexico."

Afternoons we would stroll through a market, or visit that

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 253

wondrous Chalco Canal with its canoes, so closely resembling-
gondolas, laden with fruits and vegetables, and flowers, clots of
color. Then we would return to almuerso, after which came, not
exactly a siesta, but what Americans so aptly term " a lay-off "
a sort of dreamy dolce far niente. Then 'Inez would go to the har-
monium and play a sonata of Beethoven's or a fugue of Sebastian
Bach's. We drove on the Paseo every afternoon ; and the even-
ings ah ! those evenings, when the senora retired to her little
library with the dear old padre to concoct plans for the relief of
the persecuted clergy, and Inez and I were left tte-a-tete. How I
longed for the Louis Quatorze on the blue drawing-room mantel-
piece to strike nine, for then the senora invariably rose, excused
herself, and retired for an hour, sometimes for a longer period.

" I go back to San Angel to-morrow," said the senorita one
evening as we sat on a balcony overlooking the garden.

I started.

" No ! " I cried with considerable vehemence.

She laughed as she uttered the single word, " Si."

" But you will stop here as long as I am here, won't you ? " I
eagerly asked.

She shook her tyead.

" I have the sefiora's command."

" 1 will intercede I mean, wouldn't you prefer to be here in-
stead of being shut up in that gloomy old convent ? "

" I don't know," a sort of pause between the words, the
words dragging their anchors, as it were.

This was a facer. I bore the punishment badly. I absolutely
winced under it. I counted for nothing, then. I was a mere
cipher, an ordinary guest, a bird of passage, of whom she would
say in the after-time : " Mr. Nugent ? Oh ! yes, an agreeable young
man. I remember him. Is he still living in Ireland ? " I reeled
under the shock of her words. They brought me suddenly face to
face with the ghastly fact that I was nothing to her, not even in-
teresting enough to induce her to prolong her stay. " The senora
commands." The senora prized her too dearly to deprive her
of any reasonable pleasure. / was no pleasure to her, and she
wanted to leave.

" Let her go," I fiercely thought. " What is she to you, or
you to her ? Let her go to her convent. It is a rude awakening,
but a necessary one, my boy."

I .resolved to meet her indifference with the same weapon.
" I shall go out, if I can, and say adios on Friday, senorita," I
drawled, pulling at my. moustache.

254 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

" Adios Friday ! " she palpitated.

Was it the flicker of the wax candle, or did she grow red and
white ? It was the candle, of course.

" Yes, Friday.'*

She murmured something-, adding :

" Does the sefiora know of this this sudden departure ? I
I thought you were at least I " and she stopped.

" I do things very suddenly, senorita. I am a very whimsical
sort of fool. A few minutes ago the idea of departure was as far
from my mind as the date of the battle of Pharsalia."

" But what but why go from us, from the sefiora, so soon ?
You have, oh ! so much to see. You have seen literally nothing,"
continued the girl eagerly. " You have to go with Mr. O'Shea
to the mines. You have to ascend Popocatapetl, though it's a
terribly dangerous climb, and if your lungs are not perfect you
must not dare attempt it. You have not been up the Chalco
Canal to Lake Xochomilco. Then there's the extinct volcano
at "

" I may come back in twenty years," I rudely interrupted.
" As Mexico has kept so well, she'll be even more interesting in
the eighteen-nineties."

Miss O'Hara was silent. A strange, nervous, fluttering excite-
ment seemed to take possession of me, a mean, blackguard desire
to torture her yes, to give her pain.

" You see, senorita," I spoke rapidly, " that it wouldn't do for
me to spend too much of my time in a mouldy old town like this ;
why, I'd become blue-moulded myself if I stopped another week.
I am wanted elsewhere. I have a most charming invitation in
New York, the jolliest city in the world, and I promised to be
back ; in fact " oh ! what a puppy I was " I pledged myself to
Conchita Mojelos she is charming, so chic ! to return with all
speed. Then by leaving on Monday " I had already forgotten
the date of my proposed departure " I can strike New York for
a week, and get over to Queenstown, and back to Dromroe for
the hunting. I ought to proceed to Liverpool and up to London.
My sister is on a visit to a Mrs. Bevans and her dearest friend is
one of the richest girls in England." Oh ! coxcomb that I was,
vulgar, miserable cad. " You know, senorita, that hunting to an
Irishman is half his life. If I'm fond of anything it is hunting,
and if I excel in anything it is in the saddle." And I fetched a
cropper at O' Duffy's millstream that a boy of thirteen would
have taken like a bird, and Captain Mansfield left me nowhere.

I rattled on at express-train pace, and I- fear almost as noisily.

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 255

I described hunting, and steeple-chase riding-, the meets of the
Wards, and Royal Meaths, and VVicklow Harriers. I spoke of
the delights of hunt balls, of Timolin and Beatrice Butler, of
Dromroe and its surroundings, of Dublin life, the Castle and its
glitter, of yachting in the bay, of my club and club life, of my
runs up to town, alias London in a word, I made a contempti-
ble ass of myself for nearly an hour, and Miss O'Hara said never
a word.

" I have a headache/' she said, as, slowly rising and curtsying
deeply hitherto she invariably gave me her hand she glided
from the room.

" Aha ! " I chuckled, " I think 1 have shown her that whether
she goes or stays don't weigh very much in the balance with
me."

Ah ! when I went to my room that night my heart ached hor-
ribly, my Dutch courage had vanished, and I realized that life
without Inez O'Hara would be but dead ash.

Inez did not appear next morning. The sefiora and I started
alone to the church of San Francisco. I would not make a single
inquiry about the poor girl, although I was madly hungry for
news of her.

"Inez is not well this morning," observed the sefiora.

"Ah!"

" She was to have returned to San Angel to-day, but if she's
not better of course I'll not let her go."

" Oh ! she'll be all right."

" I never knew her to complain before."

" She spoke of a headache last night."

" She looks dreadfully ill, poor child ! I received quite a shock
when I went into her room just now. She looked like a person
who had been crying all night. I have sent for Dr. Verjuco."

" Have you no English physician in Mexico ? "

" Not one."

When we returned to the Calle Marascala Inez was standing
at the top of the grand staircase.

" I am quite well," she murmured, her voice faltering. " It
was only a bad headache."

I looked up at her. Her face was deadly white, her lips
were white, the heavy lids of her beautiful violet eyes were red
and swollen. Yes, she had had a bad headache.

" I am going into the chapel," she said when the sefiora was
leading her toward the breakfast-room.

" Won't you eat something? Try, mi querida ? "

256 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

" Oh ! I cannot, cannot." And as she hurried away I thought
I heard a sob.

" Inez is not well. I wonder Dr. Verjuco has not arrived," ex-
claimed the senora.

After almuerzo I strolled into the corridor that led from the
principal apartments. Here I suddenly encountered Inez. My
heart seemed to cease beating.

She advanced to where I was standing endeavoring to whiff a
cigarette with a careless swagger.

" Here is the prayer-book," she said,, "and and adios"

Ere I could utter a word she had placed the book in my
hand and had disappeared.

CHAPTER XI.

BILLY BRIERLY MAKES AN ANNOUNCEMENT.

I RESOLVED upon quitting Mexico on the Friday. How the
idea tore at my heart-strings ! Every time it came to me it came
as a sting of pain, ay, absolute pain. Then followed a yearning
to see her, to tell her that she had entered my life, never, oh ! never
to go out of it. The scene of our first meeting was ever before
my eyes : the girlish form bent over the robe, the daintily-
shaped head bowed reverentially ; the sun shooting shafts of gold
and luminous color through the stained glass, the aureole, the
small White hands sewing the seed-pearls on the heliotrope satin ;
then the heavy lids raising themselves to reveal those deep,
earnest, beautiful violet eyes.

Could I tear myself away ? I called upon my self-reverence
and self-control both responded readily enough, but both seem-
ed inclined to leave me in the lurch when I came to consult my
heart. Ah ! what gruesome truths that heart tells us at times.

Miss O'Hara fought hard against her indisposition.

" She fainted this morning. It must have been after she left
you," said the senora, turning to me ; she was speaking of Inez to
the padre. " She is in a high state of fever. Only fancy, she in-
sists upon going to San Angel to-day. I have peremptorily for-
bidden it."

" What does the doctor say ? "

" He says it is nerves something that has excited her nerves
beyond endurance. Nerves ! Why, there never was a girl less
troubled with nerves than Inez ; and as for anything to excite
her, her life is one of pure serenity."

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 257

" It is best that she should return to Sister Monica," observed
Father Gonzalez. " The calm of conventual life will soothe the
child's nerves, if nerves it be."

I could have well, I felt disgusted with the padre for giving
such wise counsel.

" She shall not stir until she is better," said the senora ; and I
could have hugged her for so saying.

" I would like to see the dear child," exclaimed the padre ; " if
she has anything on her mind she will tell me."

" Come and see her, padre."

To feel that she was beneath the same roof was bitter-sweet.
What if it were Dead-Sea fruit ? I would at least enjoy the sight
of her. Like the wretched criminal in the dock, I invariably plead-
ed for " a long day " before the sentence should be carried out. I
could not bear the idea of Inez being at San Angel and I in the
Calle Marascala. I liked to think that she would be with the
Senora San Cosme on the day of my departure. I would like
her to see how gaily I could kiss my hand, and cry Adios and A
mas ver"

There was something strange and restrained in the senora's
manner when we next met. She asked me to sit down, and, fid-
dling with the hem of her pocket-handkerchief, she commenced :

" Joe, what sort of girl is Beatrice Butler ? "

I started involuntarily. The question was so unexpected that
it flung me, as it were, against the wall. Beatrice Butler to come
up in this sudden way !

" How do you mean, senora ? "

k< I mean is she very nice, very fascinating? "

" She is very nice, and I'm sure very fascinating."

" Has she fascinated- -you ? " fixing her eyes on me with a sort
)f riveted gaze.

I answered quite readily :

" Certainly not."

She remained silent, her gaze still fixed upon me as if she
would read my innermost thoughts.

" You referred to her a good deal, Joe," she at length observed.

" I suppose I did, senora."

" Young men of your age do not continually refer to any one
particular girl, unless that girl lies very close to the heart."

" Do you mean am 1 in love with Trixy Butler, senora ?"

" Yes."

" Well, then, I am not. I candidly confess that when I left
home I was a little jealous about her, but that feeling has vanished

VOL. XXXII. 17

258 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

and I could place her little hand in the swaggering dragoon's
I was jealous of a dragoon officer without the slightest suspicion
of a pang."

" Are you sure of this, Joe ? "

" Perfectly." And I laughed.

" That laugh tells me more than all your verbal answers, Joe.
Now for another question : Why has your jealousy died out?"

This was a facer.

" Because well really I don't know." I kicked my feet
about, and wriggled, and felt awfully hot and flurried under the
fixed gaze of my hostess.

Again she was silent.

" May I ask you another question, Joe ? "

" As many as you like, senora ; but this is a hackling," I
laughed.

" Only one, Joe ; and I expect you to reply to it right up from
your heart. Let the words come from your heart to your lips."

I must confess that my heart did beat up in my throat. A
something told me that the senora was going to refer to Miss
O'Hara, and I prepared to steel myself. I cannot tell what whis-
pered this warning, but it came like a flash.

" What do you think of Inez ? "

Ah ! where were the barriers I had so suddenly erected ?
Where was the steel, the adamant ? Was I not prepared for a
question of this sort ? And, now that it came, all my forces were
instantly routed and driven from the field.

I do not know what I did or how I looked, but the senora
slowly rose.

"Do not reply to that question just yet," she said, and she
glided out of the room.

What did all this mean this questioning about Trixy, and
above all the question about Miss O'Hara? Why was the senora
silent? What was I to infer from " Do not reply to that question
just yet " ? What did it mean ? Bah ! it meant nothing. I repair-
ed to my room and prepared to pack my valise. Go on Friday I
would ; nothing would detain me. The City of Mexico sailed on
Saturday evening from Vera Cruz for New Orleans. By leaving
on the nine o'clock train Friday night I would strike Vera Cruz
at two o'clock P.M. Saturday, and go straight on board.

I announced my intention of departing at dinner. I should
mention that the padre and Mr. O'Shea were present.' Miss
O'Hara did not appear.

To my surprise, and, indeed, I may add mortification, the

i88o.] My RAID INTO MEXICO. 259

senora did not seek to press me to remain, nor did the padre or
O'Shea. The announcement did not startle them in the least.
They took it as a matter of course.

" I could have wished you to have remained until the next
steamer, Joe," coolly observed the senora; "but as your mind is
made up I have nothing to say."

"You see, senora," I blundered, "that the hunting, you know,
and the magisterial duties, you know, and all that sort of thing,
to say nothing of the estate, you know, call me away. I shall
never, never forget my visit to Mexico. It shall remain the
brightest, sunniest spot in my memory." I had prepared this
and let it off with a bang.

O'Shea laughed, and the padre glanced at the senora.

Then came a chill, and I never felt more mortified in all my
life. It was unendurable torture.

O'Shea talked of nothing but " love's young dream " after the
senora had retired, giving me several startling examples of the
" fitful fever " that had come within range of his own experience.
He would occasionally wink in a rather mysterious manner,
cough and nod, and otherwise disported himself after so quaint a
fashion as to cause me a vague uneasiness.

" There's nothing like an Irish girl after all, Joe. They're
full of fun and as good as gold. If ever I marry and I'm just
thinkin' that me chances are running as low as the ore in Pompo-
so's mine, for, as poor Mike Brady used to say, ' I'm on the sale
and salla' it's an Irishwoman I'd pick out before all the world.
They're as modest as a May morning, and true to the core. They
have tongues, to be sure, but what would a woman be without a
tongue ? Answer me that, me son. If it's against ye at times, it's
for you ten to wan. They're as witty as they're wise, and, be me
song, their gray eyes are more dilapidating than blues and browns
and blacks rolled into one. Yes, Joe, there's nothing like an Irish
girl, and an Irish girl you must marry. As for "

" I'll never marry, Mr. O'Shea," I stoutly interposed.

Mr. O'Shea's reply was a wink.

" Never ! At least " " Pinafore " had not been composed, so
I added " Not until I am forty."

" Arrah, gelang out o' that with your botherashun," he cried.
" Me opinion is that you'll be married before Lent, Joe, and that's
only three months off.'*

I laughed, asking him if he would like a bet on it.

" I would, then, Joe."

" Will you lay the odds ? "

260 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Nov.,

" I don't know but I will."

" What odds do you lay ? "

" I'll lay three to two in bottles of poteen, Joe."

" Done."

" Book it, me son."

I solemnly booked the bet. What a wild wager ! I thought.

I was seated in my usual place by the open window in my
own room when Billy Brierly entered. It was usual for him to
come for my clothes in order to brush them, and for my boots
that they should be polished. 1 took no notice of his entrance,
but continued my smoke and my meditations.

" Is it thrue what I heerd, Masther Joe? " he asked in a sort
of half-whisper.

" What?"

" That we're goin' for to lave a Frida'."

"Yes."

" B^dad, but that's cruel short notice, Masther Joe.'

I made no reply to this.

" Is it in airnest ye are, sir?"

" Perfectly."

".Anyhow, ye won't go for to thravel on a Frida'," deprecat-

"Why not?"

" Begorra, ye'll be wracked as shure as me name's Billy Brier-
ly. Divil a worse day ye cud set out. It's as unlucky as seein' a
red-haired wumman the first thing in the mornin'. Be sed be me
an' don't stir a Frida'. Faix," he added in an undertone, " it's
here ye ought for to stay for another cupple av weeks, av it was
only for manners' sake."

Billy bustled about the room, evidently expecting that I would
prove more communicative, but I totally ignored him.

" Masther Joe, avic," returning to the charge, " I've been wud
the family, man an' boy, an' I feel like wan of thim ; what hurts a
Nugent hurts me, sir, an' if a Nugent's annoyed it's me that's red-
dy for to let out me heart's blood for the race. Masther Joe, has
anybody been r^thrary wud ye ? "

" Why do you ask me, Billy? "

" Bekase yer as yalla as a duck's feet ; and it's sighin' ye are
instid o' lamn ; an' the moon is good enough company for cats and
banshees, but it's cowld comfort for young blood like yours. If
it's goin' out ye are for to fight a jewel, give thim the pistols, avic ;
don't let no wan persuade ye for to take to the knife ; it's not the
way yer father or gran'father wud be afther givin' satisfaction.

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 261

Av I can give any wan a weltin' ye've only for to tell me, Masther
Joe ; I'm reddy an' willin'."

" Billy, I'm not out of sorts, I'm not goin' to fight a duel, and
there is nobody to welt."

" Then blur an' agers, Masther Joe, why are ye for startin' aff
at wanst like this? We're only sayted, whin it's * off on Frida'.'
Not that I'm frettin' in regard o' goin' home, although I'm in
clover here, Masther Joe, an' so are you, sir. The cook an' me is
very frindly. She's the color av a new half-penny and just as
shiny, but she come into me ways at wanst, an' instid av thim
free-holies banes it's corn-beef and illigant cabbage she gives me,
an', more betoken', sorra a snail I seen sence the first night. Faix,
it's an illigant billet ; now that I've got into the ways av the place,
and can ordher a rasher av belly bacon as if I was a prence.
Shure, av yer home for Pathrick's Day it'll satisfy ye ; an' haven't
we for to halt in New York, mostly moreover in London ? Be-
dad, Masther Joe, av ye let the Bank av England slip betune
yer fingers, yer

The remainder of the sentence was lost. I rather imagine the
words were omadhaum. I bade my retainer retire for the night,
an order which he complied with as reluctantly as a frisky child
the ukase condemning it to bed.

I sat wondering and re-wondering why it was that the an-
nouncement of my intended departure had fallen so flat. Could
there be any special .reason for it ? I puzzled and plodded, and
wearied myself in conjectures, until the only salve I could
apply to my wounded vanity was " custom." It was evidently
the custom of the country to receive such announcements with
all possible sang froid. Why had 1 not thought of that before ?
Every country had its own peculiar conventionalisms. This was
Mexico, and the custom was Mexican.

Having dismissed this unhappy thought, my brain began to
busy itself with Miss O'Hara's illness. I had put on chain-armor
over my heart and was bullet-proof. I could think of her to-
night as a very charming, piquant, beautiful young girl not for
me, though. I might gaze at her, as did the Peri into heaven,
through the bars gaze at her as a delightful picture, a statue !
When ten thousand miles lay between us she would be a most
agreeable souvenir. I would ask the senora for a photograph both
of herself and of her protegee. It would be good fun to show
Trixy, and make her madly jealous, tease her to death. It would

My thoughts were still surging round the image of Inez
when a tap at the door caused me to turn.

262 PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" [Nov.,

In response to my summons the door opened and Billy
Brierly presented himself. He squeezed in as if the door could
not possibly open an inch further than to admit his body. Once
in he closed the portal, and, glancing round the room, advanced
on tiptoe to where I sat in considerable astonishment.

When he came within whispering distance he placed his
finger to his lips, and, glancing round on all sides, breathlessly
exclaimed :

" Masther Joe, I've great news, sir."

"What is it? Speak, and don't stand staring like a fool," I
cried.

" Whisht, sir ! or y e'll be heerd. I only found it out be chance.
I heerd the say-norah sayin' to Misther O'Shea:

" ' Misther O'Shea,' sez she.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE " REFORMA-
TION."

THE character of education in the middle ages was essentially
Christian ; kriowledge was not sought solely as an end, but as a
means for the elevation and purification of the mind and soul ;
for the making of men more humble and charitable, and more
fervent in their love of God. " The highest w r isclom is, not to
study Plato or to disengage the subtleties of Aristotle," says Peter
of Blois, " but to love Christ, to serve Christ, and in this most
grateful and fruitful service willingly, efficaciously, faithfully, and
finally to remain." Eginhard, secretary to Charlemagne, writing
to his son, whom he had sent for education to Raban Maur, at
Fulda, says : " I again exhort you to leave nothing untouched of
the noble science of oratory which you may acquire from the
genius of that great orator ; but, above all, remember to imitate
those good manners in which he excels, for grammar, rhetoric,
and all other studies of liberal arts are vain, and greatly injurious
to the service of God, unless by divine grace they are made sub-
ject to virtue." St. Anselm, in like spirit, writes to his nephew :
" Apply yourself assiduously to grammar, and exercise yourself
more in prose than verse ; but, above all things, guard your
manners and actions before men, and your heart before God."
Such was the spirit of mediaeval education.

1 8 So.] PUBLIC ED UCA TION BEFORE THE ' ' RE FOR MA TION. " 263

The church, through her councils and prelates, has from the
earliest times shown an earnest solicitude for the enlightenment
of the people. L. A. Buckingham * cites the following instances
of councils speaking on this subject, during the ninth century
alone :

" The Council of Orleans, in 800, urged upon the parish priests the duty
of establishing schools in towns and villages, and giving gratuitous instruc-
tion to all children who might be confided to them by their parents ; the
Council of Mayence, in 813, directed the clergy to admonish their parishion-
ers to send their children to the monastic and parochial schools ; the coun-
cils of Aries, of Rheims, of Tours, and of Chalons-sur-Saone, in 813, had for
chief object the encouragement of education, and directed the establish-
ment of schools for the culture of sacred and secular learning ; that of
Rome, in 826, enforced the foundation throughout Christendom of episco-
;eminaries, of parochial schools in towns and villages, and of others
erever opportunity existed ; the fifth Council of Paris, in 829, besought
mis le Debonnaire to establish three great schools in fitting localities,
hat he might thereby secure to the church of God augmentation of glory
id increase of utility, and to himself a rich reward and an undying
lemory'; the Council of. Valence, in 855, urged the multiplication of
schools for the study of divine and human sciences ; the Council of Kiersey-
sur-Oise, in 858, exhorted Charles le Chauve to labor for the encourage-
ment of learning ; the Council of Savonnieres, in 859, invoked the co-opera-
tion of princes and bishops in the foundation of schools for the study of
the Scriptures and the cultivation of the liberal arts ; the Council of
Langres, in 859, impressed in like manner upon temporal and ecclesiastical
rulers the necessity of augmenting the number of schools for the pursuit of
divine and human learning."

The same spirit and sentiments are found in the decrees of
many other councils held during the middle ages. The German
Huber (a Protestant, the father of the author of Janus, and him-
self the author of a history of the English universities) says :

" From the beginning of the eleventh century the papal bulls and briefs
took notice of the most minute details of management, even superintend-
ing the schools, as far as the age permitted." (Die englischen Universi-
taten. Cassel. 1840.)

During the irruption of the barbarians into Europe learning
found refuge in the monasteries, and when, after the Crusades,
came the intellectual revival, schools for the people were estab-
lished in the religious houses. But monastic schools existed long
before this period. According to Mabillon and Baehr, in each of
the monasteries established by St. Pachomius, one of the patri-
archs of monachism, " was a school in which lessons were given

* The Bible in the Middle Ages. With remarks on the Libraries, Schools, etc. By Leices-
ter A. Buckingham. London. 1853.

264 PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" [Nov.,

daily to all who desired to receive them " ; in the eighth century
" two schools were found in every monastery, the one claustral,
in which were pursued the studies of the monks and aspirants for
holy orders, the other public, which was open to all who sought
instruction, this last again being divided into the major and
minor schools, the former of which was designed for the cultiva-
tion of the higher branches of learning, while the latter was de-
voted to the imparting of the rudiments." We read in Spelman's
life of King Alfred that when the Danes had destroyed many re-
ligious houses that monarch hastened to restore them, since " he
found that their overthrow, by depriving the people of the
benefit of the schools which they contained, had caused an im-
mediate decay of learning." The Anglican Bishop Collier admits
that " when the monks were settled in England, in the reign of
Sigbert, they promoted a general improvement, and were very
industrious in restoring learning." Dr. Tanner, Anglican Bishop
of St. Asaph in the reign of George II. and author of the
Notitia Monastica, declares : " The religious houses were schools
of learning and education ; for every convent had one per-
son or more appointed for this purpose, and all the neighbors
that desired it might have their children taught grammar and
church music without any expense to them. In the nunne-
ries, also, young women were taught to work and to read
English, and sometimes Latin also. So that not only the lower
rank of people, who could not pay for their learning, but most of
the noblemen's and gentlemen's daughters were educated in those
places." The same author also says : " In every great abbey
there was a large room called the Scriptorium, where several
writers made it their whole business to transcribe books for the
use of the library. . . . The choicest records and treasures in the
kingdom were preserved in them," so great was the public con-
fidence in the religious houses. Mallet, in his History of the Szviss,
says : " The monks softened by their instructions the ferocious
manners of the people, and opposed their credit to the tyranny
of the nobility, who knew no other occupation than war, and
grievously oppressed their neighbors. On this account the
government of the monks was preferred to theirs. The people
sought them for judges. It was a usual saying that it was better'
to be governed by the bishop's crosier than the monarch's
sceptre." " The monks of Cassino," observes Wharton, as quoted
by Drake in Literary Hours, " were distinguished not only for
their knowledge of sciences, but their attention to polite learning
and an acquaintance with the classics. They composed not only

iSSo.] PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 265

learned treatises on music, logic, astronomy, and the Vitruvian
architecture, but likewise employed a portion of their time in
transcribing Tacitus, etc. This laudable example was, in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, followed with great spirit and
emulation by many English monasteries." Turner, in his His-
tory of England, paradoxically avows : " No tyranny was ever es-
tablished that was more unequivocally the creature of popular
will, nor longer maintained by popular support ; in no one point
did personal interest and public welfare more cordially unite
than in the encouragement of monasteries." The English Quar-
terly Review of December, 1811, says: "The world has never
been so indebted to any other body of men as to the illustrious
order of Benedictine monks. . . . Tinian and Juan Fernandez are
not more beautiful spots on the ocean than Malmesbury, Lindis-
farne, and Jarrow were in the ages of our heptarchy."

It must be borne in mind that these citations are all from Pro-
testant sources, and many more might be added were it necessary.
But the simple fact that a school for the free instruction of the
laity formed part of every monastery is, when we consider the
vast number of these then existing in every part of Christendom,*
sufficient to prove that abundant facilities for the acquisition of
education existed in the middle ages. Not only was instruction
gratuitously bestowed in these schools, but the monks often car-
ried their bounty still further, for the Venerable Bede says of the
Irish abbeys in the seventh century that " all who repaired thith-
er for study received from the religious daily food and the books
of which they stood in need." Nor was this practice confined to
Ireland, but was common elsewhere in wealthy monasteries, as in
the Benedictine abbey at Jumieges, in France. Many of the most
eminent churchmen of mediaeval times were thus maintained and
educated in these monastic schools. We need only refer to Pope
Sylvester II. and Pope Adrian IV. the former of whom was the
son of a peasant of Auvergne, and the latter the son of a menial in
the service of the Abbey of St. Alban's and the Venerable Bede,
who says of himself: "When I was seven years old I was given
to be educated to the most holy Abbot Benedict and then to
Ceolfrid."

The Irish monastic schools became renowned at a very early
period. In the seventh century these schools among the most
famous of which were the "Abbeys of Louth, of St. Ivar in

* Buckingham, on the authority of the Gallia Christiana and Tanner's Notitia Monastica,
declares that in the two countries of England and France 1,313 monasteries were demolished by
war, fire, and heresy, between the eighth and sixteenth centuries.

266 PUBLIC EDUCA TION BEFORE THE "REFORMA TIOJV." [Nov.,

the island of Beg-Eri on the coast of Wexford, of Clonard in East-
meath, of Rathene, of Lismore, of Ross, of St. Finnian, of Bangor,
of St. Mary at Clonfert, of St. Ninnidius on the island of Dam-
Iriis in the Lake of Erne, and of Immay on the coast of Galway "
acquired such eminence that " men flocked thither from Eng-
land in vast multitudes to profit by the advantages of study within
their walls " (Bede, Eccles. Hist.} Cardinal Newman (Historical
Sketches, vol. i.) says :

" The school of Armagh is said at one time to have numbered as many
as seven thousand students, and tradition assigns a university town to the
locality where the Seven Churches still preserve the memory of St. Kevin."

" In the year 536," says Dr. Dollinger (as quoted by Newman), " in the
time of St. Senanus, there arrived at Cork, from the Continent, fifteen
monks, who were led thither by their desire to perfect themselves in the
practices of an ascetic life under Irish directors, and to study the Sacred
Scriptures in the school established near that city." " The foundation of
many of the English sees," says the same author, " is due to Irishmen. The
Northumbrian diocese was for many years governed by them, and the Ab-
bey of Lindisfarne, which was peopled by Irish monks and their Saxon dis-
ciples, spread around it its all-blessing influence. . . . Many Anglo-Saxons
passed over to Ireland, where they received a most hospitable reception in
the monasteries and schools. In crowds ' numerous as bees,' as Aldhelm
writes, the English went to Ireland, or the Irish visited England, where the
Archbishop Theodore was surrounded by Irish scholars. Of the most cele-
brated Anglo-Saxon scholars and saints, many had studied in Ireland ;
among these were St. Egbert, the author of the first Anglo-Saxon mission
to the pagan continent, and the blessed Willebrord, the Apostle of the Fries-
landers. From the same abode of virtue and of learning came forth two
English priests, both named Ewald, who in 690 went as messengers of the
Gospel to the German Saxons, and received from them the crown of martyr-
dom. . . . An Irishman, Mailduf, founded, in the year 670, a school (which
afterwards grew into the famed Abbey of Malmesbury) ; among his scholars
was St. Aldhelm, afterwards abbot of Malmesbury and first bishop of Sher-
burne (or Salisbury), and whom, after two centuries, Alfred pronounced to
be the best of the Anglo-Saxon poets."

" As the Irish missionaries," says Cardinal Newman, " travelled down
through England, France, and Switzerland, to lower Italy, and attempted
Germany at the peril of their lives, founding churches, schools, and monas-
teries as they went along, so, amid the deep pagan woods of Germany and
round about, the English Benedictine plied his axe and drove his plough,
planted his rude dwelling and raised his rustic altar upon the ruins of
idolatry, and then, settling down as a colonist upon the soil, began to sing'
his chants and to copy his old volumes, and thus to lay the slow but sure
foundations of the new civilization. . . . When Charlemagne arose upon
the Continent the special mission of the two islands was at an end ; . . .
yet not till they had formally handed over the tradition of learning to the
schools of France. . . . The Anglo-Saxon Alcuin was the first rector, and
the Irish Clement the second, of the Studium of Paris. In the same age the

i88o.] PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 267

Irish John was sent to found the school of Pavia ; and when the heretical
Claudius of Turin exulted over the ignorance of the devastated churches of
the Continent, and called the synod of bishops who summoned him 'a con-
gregation of asses,' it was none other than the Irish Dungall, a monk of St.
Denis, who met and overthrew the presumptuous railer."

The celebrated monastery and school of St. Gall, in Switzerland,
was among those founded by Irish monks, the saint of that name
known also as the Apostle to the Swiss having founded that
monastery about 585. St. Columban, a native of Leinster, preach-
ed in France, and Montalembert declares he was the one who
gave the greatest impulse to monasticism in the seventh century.
St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, a Benedictine born at Credi-
ton, in Devonshire, founded many schools in Germany. Indeed,
did space permit, we might multiply indefinitely illustrations of
the labors of the monks in the spread of learning and civilization
throughout Europe ; but with the following from the Historical
Sketches of Newman we leave this branch of our subject :

"As the cloister alone gave birth to the revivers of knowledge, so the
cloister alone prepared them for their work. There was nothing selfish in
their aim, nothing cowardly in their mode of operation. It was generosity
which sent them out upon the public stage ; it was ascetic practice which
prepared them for it. Afterwards, indeed, they received the secular re-
wards of their exertions ; but even then the generalcharacter of the intel-
lectual movement remained as before."

In a spirit of large-hearted faith and charity many celebrated
schools were founded without support and without scholars, the
learned doctors of that day hoping to find both scholars and sup-
port ; nor were they disappointed. For instance, according to
Newman :

" Bee, a poor monastery of Normandy, set up in the eleventh century
by an illiterate soldier, who sought the cloister, soon attracted scholars to
its dreary clime from Italy, and transmitted them to England. Lanfranc,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of these, and he found the
simple monks so necessitous that he opened a school of logic to all comers,
in order, says William of Malmesbury, ' that he might support his needy
monastery by the pay of the students.' The same author adds that ' his
reputation went into the most remote parts of the world, and Bee became a
great and famous academy of letters.' William of Jumieges bears witness
that ' clerks, the sons of dukes, the most esteemed masters of the Latin
schools, powerful laymen, high nobles flocked to him.' What words can
more strikingly attest the enthusiastic character of the movement which he
began, than to say that it carried away with it all classes ? "

Seminaries began with that of St. John at the Lateran church,
at Rome, which (founded, it is said, by St. John) remained till the
time of Leo X., when it was removed into the heart of the city.

268 PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" [Nov.,

" This seminary," says Newman, "once called the school of the
Pontifical Palace, has never ceased to exist, and was, at vari-
ous times, the home of St. Eusebius, the Popes St. Gregory II.,
St. Paul I., St. Leo III., St. Paschal, and St. Nicholas I. In the
thirteenth century St. Thomas and Albertus Magnus lectured
there." But until the time of Charlemagne seminaries elsewhere
had a precarious existence or perished altogether. By the Coun-
cil of Trent episcopal seminaries were, restored. Charlemagne,
too, early turned his attention to the establishment of episcopal
seminaries.

" To these," says Newman, " he added grammar and public schools,
as preparatory both to the seminaries and to secular professions. Not
that they were confined to grammar, for they recognized the trivium and
quadrivium ; but grammar, in the sense of literature, seems to have been
the principal subject of their teaching. These schools were established in
connection with the cathedral or the cloister. . . . Charlemagne probably
did not do much more than this. ... It was not in an emperor's power,
though he were Charlemagne, to carry into effect in any case, by the re-
sources peculiar to himself, so great an idea as an university."

Cathedral schools were first established in Spain, in the sixth
century, the Council of Toledo directing that " all children offer-
ed by their parents should dwell under one roof, and be instruct-
ed under the superintendence of the bishop." Later on similar
schools were established in all parts of Europe. The school in
the cathedral of Utrecht had acquired so wide a fame in the
eighth century that " scholars repaired thither from France, Eng-
land, Saxony, Bavaria, and Friesland " ; under Hincmar, and his
successor Foulques, the school of Rheims, in the ninth century,
attained celebrity throughout Europe ; the school of Paderborn,
under Bishop Meinwerc, was renowned in the tenth century ;
that of Lyons, in the eleventh century, was denominated the
" Mother and Nurse of Philosophy " ; that of Tournay, in the
eleventh century, was attended by students from Italy, Saxony,
and other lands ; that of Liege, under Wazo, had achieved a pre-
eminence in the eleventh century which secured for it the title of
the " Fountain of Wisdom." In 1179 the third Council of Lateran
decreed that " since the church of God is bound, as a pious mother, to
provide that every opportunity for learning should be afforded to the
poor, who are without help from patrimonial riches, in every
cathedral there should be a master to teach both clerks and
poor scholars gratis"; and Pope Innocent III. extended this
injunction to other churches, requiring that in each should be
provided the means of gratuitous education. The same Council

i88o.] PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 269

also invested the scholastics of cathedral schools with power to
superintend and license the schoolmasters in their respective dio-
ceses, "a function which," according to an' old chronicler, "they
appear to have discharged even previous to this concession ; for
the Council of Westminster, in 1138, prohibited the scholastics
from accepting payment for the licenses which they granted to
schoolmasters in towns and villages." From this it appears there
were, in addition to those of the monasteries, schools even in the
humbler hamlets, where, indeed, " their foundation had been ur-
gently recommended by the Council of Vaison in 529." In these
schools instruction was given without charge. Pope Alexander
III., says Martene, made this the subject of a letter to the French
bishops, in which he charged them to take special care that the
masters exacted no payment from their pupils, " lest knowledge
should seem to be exposed for sale, which ought to be offered gra-
tuitously to all."

Parochial schools came into existence at an early period. In
the eighth century Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, in a capitulary
addressed to his clergy, says :

" Let all priests open schools in the towns and country places, and if any
among the faithful desire to confide to them their children to be instructed
in learning, let them by no means refuse to receive and educate them, but,
on the contrary, let them teach these little ones with perfect charity. . . .
And for teaching these children they shall seek no payment, and shall re-
ceive nothing but what the parents may offer to them voluntarily and
through affection."

Charlemagne, in a capitulary addressed to priests in 789, re-
quests them to collect and keep under their care not only chil-
dren of servile condition, but also the sons of freemen, and to be
diligent in the establishment of schools. " Mass priests," says an
Anglo-Saxon canon, " shall always have at their houses a school of
learners, and, if any good man trust his little ones to them for
lore, they shall right gladly receive and kindly teach them, nor
shall they for this demand anything of the parents beside that

i which these may give of their own free will." From Wolstan's
life of Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, we learn that " he de-
lighted to teach children and youth, and to encourage them to
diligence and virtue by his pleasant admonitions." St. Dunstan
" manifested himself," says William of Malmesbury, " next to
King Alfred, the greatest promoter of learning that ever appear-
ed in Britain " ; Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, encour-
aged Sigbert, King of East Anglia, in the institution of schools,
and in procuring learned men from France to direct them. Ac-

270 PUBLIC EDUCA TION BEFORE THE "REFORMA now." [Nov.,

cording to Mabillon, Notker, Bishop of Liege in the tenth cen-
tury, " not only superintended the Scriptural studies of clerks,
but also instructed the young laics who had been confided to him
for tuition in the arts appropriate to their several ranks of life."
Reculfus, Bishop of Soissons, urged his clergy to devote special at-
tention to the superintendence of the schools and to making their
pupils not less eminent for the purity of their lives than for their
erudition ; Leidrade, Archbishop of Lyons, occupied himself dil-
igently in the formation and regulation of schools ; Wazo, an-
other Bishop of Liege, not only assumed the guardianship over
schools, but himself taught in them. Much more evidence to
tne same purport might be adduced, but we deem the foregoing
ample to prove that there was " public education " long before
Protestantism was known.

While the priests instructed the children of the commonalty,
the bishops performed the same office for youths of rank or of
great ability. William of Malmesbury says that Wilfrid, Arch-
bishop of York, had sent to him for education the sons of many
great men, whether they were designed for clerical or lay pursuits.
We are told by Alcuin that Egbert, of the same see and a disciple
of the Venerable Bede, " loved to take under his care youths of
good capacity, and, supporting them from his own purse, to guide
them affectionately in the paths of learning." Many other pre-
lates zealously spent themselves in the instruction of youth.

In addition to those heretofore mentioned there existed in the
mediaeval era what were known as " chaptral schools," which seem
to have been generally under a mixed jurisdiction. We quote
the following from Buckingham :

" Occasionally the scholastic was appointed by the bishop, without
reference to the temporal authority, as at Courtrai ; sometimes the superin-
tendence of the schools, claimed as a prerogative by the civil power, was
delegated in perpetuit)^ to the chapter, as at Turnhout ; not unfrequently
the scholastic was nominated by the sovereign, as at Brussels, or by the
feudal lord, as at Narnur, or by the chapter, subject to the approval of
the suzerain, as at Ghent ; at other times the jurisdiction over the schools
was exercised by the chapter conjointly with the municipal authorities, as
at Ypres and at Antwerp. In these schools the instruction was not always
gratuitous ; in some towns this was the case, as at Namur and at Antwerp,,
but in others a charge was made for education, as at Brussels, where there
were, in 1320, eleven such establishments, one superior for each sex, four
primary for girls, and five primary for boys, in which the pupils paid an-
nually twelve sous * [equivalent to about $10 present value], and at Ypres,

* Leber estimates the sou at about 4^. 6f d. in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and
at 3,y. 6%d. at the beginning; of the fourteenth.

1 8 80.] PUBLIC ED UCA TION BEFORE THE ' 'RE FORM A TION. " 271

which possessed, in 1253, three great schools, in which the scholars were
subjected to an annual charge of ten sous [equivalent to about $12], for
which, however, they were to be supplied with parchment."

Still other schools existed, in various parts of Europe, un-
connected with any organization, though generally directed by
monks or clergy. Says Buckingham :

" Such were the schools founded by the Counts of Raperschwil in the
neighborhood of St. Gall, which were protected and encouraged by the
monks ; such were the schools which flourished in some parts of England
in the reign of Henry III., of which Fitz-Stephen makes mention of three
established in London and holding high repute for learning ; such were
probably the eight schools which Lothaire I. founded in 823 in the princi-
pal towns of Italy ; such were the schools for the poor which were fre-
quently created by pious benefactors, as the Ecole des Bons Enfants, which
existed at Rheims from the thirteenth century ; an establishment bearing
the same name at Brussels, which was endowed by Pierre van Huffele,
chaplain of St. Gudule, in 1358, with all his property, .and further enriched
in 1377 by Jean T'Serclaes, Archdeacon of Cambrai, who provided it with
the means necessary for the lodging and nourishment of twelve poor
scholars between the ages of nine and eighteen ; . . . such also were the
schools of the Hieronymites, a pious confraternity bearing some resem-
blance to the Christian Brothers of our days, and instituted by Gerard
Groote in 1396."

We might continue the enumeration of schools existing in the
middle ages for popular education (such as the communal schools
of Holland established in the thirteenth century) but we have
amply proved that the church afforded to the youth of the
mediaeval era abundant opportunities for elementary education.
If, however, learning then blossomed within the secluded walls of
the monasteries, it attained to full fruition in the broad fields of
the mediaeval universities. And these, too, were almost wholly
established and sustained by the church, as we shall show in a
succeeding article.

272 LAKE GEORGE, 1880. [Nov.,

LAKE GEORGE, 1880.

[The Church of the Sacred Heart, Lake George, N. Y., was dedicated on Sunday, August 8,
1880. Built by the Paulist Fathers in their summer leisure as the officiating bishop remarked
it possesses peculiar interest from its situation on a lake discovered by a Jesuit priest, a prisoner
of the Indians, and named by him Le Lac du Saint Sacrement, which name it bore for one hun-
dred and nine years.]

REJOICE, O holy lake ! through all your shores ;

At last your hour has come :
The Blessed Sacrament whose name was yours

Dwells in its happy home !

Blue spread your waters 'neath their Maker's hand,

Doubling the cloudless sky ;
So still the small waves lap along the strand,

They know their God is nigh.

The steadfast pines the summer wind scarce stirs ;

The hushed lake waits to claim,
After the lapse of twice a hundred years,

Its sacramental name.

What lesson from you shall a quick heart take

With feverish haste elate ?
O rocks and rock-like pines ! O mount and lake !

Each voice alike says : " Wait ! "

Two hundred years have passed since here one came

To preach the Christ of God,
Who through all pains of prison, steel, and flame

His Master's footsteps trod.

The Indian torture shook his suffering frame

He praised God as he went ;
Named thee, O purest lake, the purest name,

The holiest Sacrament !

Two centuries stretch, with wrecks of kingdoms strewn,

Between the Jesuit's prayer
And the thanksgiving priestly lips intone

Upon this summer air.

i88o.] SYBIL KEITH'S INHERITANCE. 273

England and France fought bitter battle here,

The home of prayer and peace,
While Indian war-whoops froze the soul with fear.

And what remain of these ?

Their rule has vanished like a shadow cast

Upon a rocky crag,
And where their lions and their lilies passed

Waves a young, star-sown flag !

As thistle-down is blown across the lake

Before the western gust,
The blood-stained children of the wood and brake

Are swept away as dust.

One thing abideth, changeless and secure,

Counting the years as days :
God's truth within God's church, which here once more

Takes up the psalm of praise.

And while the lake lies ever fresh and fair

Beyond the churchyard sod,
From different lips the soul of the same prayer

Goes up to the same God.

SYBIL KEITH'S INHERITANCE.

THE real story of Sybil Keith's life began with the breaking
of her engagement. All that came before the happy childhood,
the care-free girlhood, the sweet, wild dreams of a first love as
intense as it was fruitless had never touched the inner core of
her nature or called forth its strength. To go on doing the
thing that pleases one, and making just effort enough to avoid
what one does not like, is neither development nor discipline, and
Sybil needed a double share of both. There was in her an ele-
ment of indolence, mental and spiritual, which hindered her ad-
vance from her very babyhood. Capable of much, she had ac-
complished nothing for herself or others beyond the pleasant
passing of the days. Her love had come to her one of those days
in the shape of a proud, sad face, and a prouder, sadder soul, tor-
tured, troubled, rendered helpless through circumstances, and
VOL. xxxii. 18

274 SYBIL KEITH'S INHERITANCE. [Nov.,

yet filled with wild longings for an impossible freedom and
power. Some chord within her .struck the answering notes of
pity, fond and pure. There was a brief season of uncertain hap-
piness, a time of suspense, a passionate renewal of delight, and
then the end. A silence as of the grave fell between the two
hearts that had shared the better part of their short lives, and
Sybil found herself facing a blank future that was even shadow-
less. No future pain was left for her. It was the one good she
already saw in the evil that she had measured, at once and for
ever, life's bitterness, but it gave her no hope of future joy. That
outlook was far, far beyond her. She yielded without a struggle,
and drifted away into aimless endurance of physical and mental
pain, too heart-broken to crave sympathy, too far removed in her
sorrow to heed the trifles other women find sore burdens.

This lasted for half the year, and then the time was come for
the angel's touch.

" She must go away," said the watchful love around her.
" She must have complete change of air and scene. Where shall
it be?"

Many things go to the decision of such a question in every
experience. One seldom gets to the very spot of all others one
would choose. The force of circumstances is the name men give
to the gentle leading of the Unseen Love.

Sybil went because it could not be otherwise into a quiet
southern valley where the mountains stand close around a lovely
hollow land. She had never seen the mountains, and when the
faint blue line along the western horizon first showed dark
against the radiant sky she felt a sudden warm, new thrill of life.
When she came out into the evening stillness from the tiny house
at the very foot of the range, a peace and rest she had not known
for many days fell upon her. This centuries-old, majestic beauty
so near at hand was a promise and a proof of strength and stead-
fastness not to be shaken, an awakening to more than the con-
sideration of a passing moment's pain or pleasure. She was glad
she had come. And she had thought it would never again mat-
ter whether she came or went !

She walked away down the path, and turned, at the gate, to
face the mountain. Half way up it something rose white against
the blackness of the pines, and, nearer, a gray and shadowy mass
of buildings overlooked the valley.

" It must be the church and the convent," she said softly, and
then went on thinking of them. " I wonder how it would alter
things to be a Catholic. They have so much thqy must do and

i88o.] SYBIL KEITH* s INHERITANCE. 275

so much they dare not do. I could not bear it ! When every-
thing is so hard already I could never do anything I hated.
Going to church whether one wants to or not, and fasting, and
praying long prayers, and being scolded by a priest who would
not know anything himself of a trouble like mine ! " Then the old
pain smote her sharply and her tears veiled the mountains. For
the first time she had so far forgotten it that it came with the
shock of a new sorrow. Poor little thing ! she had not the
faintest conception of a spiritual life, no idea, born of her life, that
comfort and joy could come of something outside and beyond
that life.

The next day was an early autumn Sunday. Sybil could not
get enough of gazing, and tried the view from all sides of the
house, from every door and window. The family with whom she
had come to stay were Catholics, and she heard much that was
new to her in passing to and fro.

" Why ! " she said to her mother, who was her companion,
" there are ever so many Catholic churches about here, and the
Bullens do not belong to any one in particular. They go just
where they like and when they like. Linda and Frank went up
the mountain before breakfast. That would be very nice to go
to church in the gray dawn, if one liked ! It would seem like be-
ginning the day well in real earnest, would it not ? "

Her mother laughed. " Yes, I think it would be far too much
in earnest for a lazy little thing like you. Did you ever see the
' gray dawn ' in your life ? Now, don't get a fancy for being a
Catholic ! "

" The idea ! " pouted Sybil. But she could not get her
thoughts off them. Their ways seemed part of the mountain life.
Old ways and old thoughts did not belong to this new nature
wooing her and soothing her with such power. She went to the
well-filled bookcase in one of the parlors, and looked over the
books. There were plenty of all sorts, but she chose a St. Vin-
cent's Manual and went out under the trees in a quiet corner.
That night, after they were in bed, she told her mother of the
" queer " things in it, and " wondered " over the Agnus Dei. " I
could never be a Catholic!" she said, turning on her pillow,
when her mother had agreed with her as to the impossibility of
such things being true. There was a strange sense of loss and
desire at her heart as she said it, and had she been better versed
in the curious workings of that most contradictory of all things
human nature she would have known she had tremblingly sought
a different answer from her confidant, that she half-fearfully, half-

276 SYBIL KEITH 's INHERITANCE. [Nov.,

gladly believed already in the helps promised her from those just-
revealed links with Heaven.

There was no doubt about it, the change did her good. She
went off, hand-in-hand with the children, on the mountains, walk-
ing and climbing farther and farther each day in those green, still
woods. The color came to her cheeks, the light to her eyes ; in-
sensibly she was forgetting because she was acquiring. The
strange, new life of home and church she saw on all sides of her
(the community was all Catholic) she found full of charm and
sweetness. There was in her an undeveloped sense of order and
fitness, ready to yield unquestioning obedience to rightful author-
ity, and the spectacle of men and women openly, calmly, ungrudg-
ingly controlled by quiet-voiced leaders, whose words were wis-
dom and whose preachings bore fruits of unselfish practice, had
something in it beautiful and sublime for her. The sorrowful sins
that blotted the sunshine of other neighborhoods she had known
were never rampant here ; the actual exchange of brotherly kind-
ness, preached everywhere, she saw for the first time in actual
existence among these mountain Catholics. When sickness and
death came into rough, comfortless mountain cabins she saw the
gentlest-nurtured ladies go out daily and nightly, one succeeding
another, to nurse and watch as tenderly as in their own homes.
When church services called or religious duties pressed she saw
them taken up with a simple earnestness and obedience that gave
them a new meaning. Now and then she went into the churches,
sat out the solemn Mass and the peaceful Vespers in quiet
thought, and gained a calm of spirit never hers before.

At last the time came when her mother must return home.
Sybil, it was decided, had better stay for the October freshness
of the mountains. In the early red of a crisp, clear morning they
parted at the gate, where the stage waited, and her mother said,
half-wistfully, half-questioningly :

" You will not turn Catholic before you come home ? " She
answered lightly : " Never ! " with as much truthfulness of inten-
tion as ever human lips have uttered.

Ah, but the leading of the Unseen Love ! The end that had
its blessed beginning in her babyhood ! The inheritance, from
the full coffers of earthly tenderness, into which she was destined
to come !

The mellow October weeks waned into November's chill, and
Sybil grew with the hours. There came one night a good priest,
who listened kindly to her girlish chatter, and was only silent
when she made her light protest against pious reading and pious

i88o.] SYBIL KEITH 's INHERITANCE. 277

works because she found them " stupid." But when he said
"good-night" he paused before her.

" I would do much for you, my child," he said. " Will you
do a little thing for me ? Will you say one ' Hail Mary ' each
day? "

Her easy-going nature helped her to its own discomfiture, to
that after-life which was to curb and strengthen and ennoble s
the cost of that ease.

" Oh ! yes, I don't mind; But, all the same, I don't believe in
it, father."

" I will pray that you may," he said solemnly.

From that time an atmosphere of prayer seemed to fold her
in. Nothing was said to her, but she knew the children prayed
for her in the chapel and at the Grotto, watching her with such
earnest, awed eyes as moved her strangely. The people prayed
for her and wished her well. The priests said no word, offered
no advice, but their daily walk was that of men who lived by
prayer. Slowly, slowly, by the links of an imperceptible yet
mighty force, she was drawn nearer to them all. A wonderful
study opened to her the deep and thought-rich doctrines, the
home-reaching meditations, the unfathomable wealth of wisdom
of the church on earth. Intellectually, keen life awoke in her,
and fine, high aspirations stirred her placid, slothfully enduring
soul. And lo ! as she read and listened, perceiving for the first
time the admirable unity of the whole magnificent scheme of the
world's salvation, and its beautiful and perfect application to the
true Catholic life, but one cry arose from her heart's depths:
" Can any one believe otherwise ! " Never once : " Are these
things so?" To be a Catholic became a necessity of her ex-
istence. There was no violent wrench nor heart-sick struggle.
The thing was so real to her she might have been born to it and
known no other state. In the little mountain chapel she received
the seal of adoption, and turned her face steadily towards a new
life, feeling no pang of severance from the old.

She never felt it. In a quiet way that converts seldom know,
the two currents of her divided life ran side by side, neither con-
tending nor mingling. She went back to her home, and, after a
very little while, fell into her own place with no outward sign of
change so great. But the Catholic spirit did its hidden work,
and fought its unseen battles with the foes that threatened sorest
evil. The easy-going nature and the pleasant-choosing will, the
idle waiting for events as they came and the passionate fretting
under disappointment ah ! how they struggled, how slowly they

278 SYBIL KEITH'S INHERITANCE. [Nov.,

yielded, how miserable the future they painted with their failing
powers. How sad the life that came would have been to the
first Sybil Keith ! How unspeakably, awfully sad to the girl
who could never do anything she hated !

But it was not a sad life, on the whole, to the Catholic Sybil.
That did " alter things " greatly. Looking back at the years from
time to time as each dark place was past, she could trace her ad-
vance and rejoice in the discipline. Only one thing she never
understood the reason she had been chosen from so many for
the help and the blessing. A wonderful, merciful tenderness had
been shown her, and she had never deserved it of herself. Her
sense of the justice of God was a sure sign to her of some special
favor won for her. Perhaps the cause lay far back in those
blessed ages when the race of which she came had bowed before
the lighted altars of Catholic Scotland. Perhaps some woman's
gentle deeds of mercy and charity had made supplication for the
women of her line who should follow her. Sybil often thought
of it, and wandered over it in her still questioning mind, and
let it go from time to time, to be answered when all doubts and
questionings shall be made plain.

One day she found a letter of her dead father a sailor-cap-
tain long ago in the Mexican War, a wonderful, sweet memory
in the hearts whose throbs he had counted with the beating of
his own. ' It was a pleasant glimpse of his rich young life, eager,
and brave, and fond, with the world before him and his one
sorrow the separation from his wife and babies. At its close was
this:

"The day I left Vera Cruz I fell in with a vile wretch of an American
who had beea robbing churches and committing every other sort of depre-
dation on the Mexicans. Among other things he had a church crucifix,
the figure about two feet high, and the countenance the most beautiful I
ever saw, it was so sweet and mild. I grieved to see it in the hands of such
a sacrilegious scoundrel, and, out of respect for the faith of our Catholic
friends, I bought it and brought it away with me, intending to present it to
some Catholic church near home. But when I reached this port I felt as
though it were improper to keep it longer on board, and at the solicitation
of the commanding officer, who is a very religious man, and, I think, a
Catholic, I let him have it for a Southern church. It was such an interest-
ing object to look upon that no one familiar with the subject could behold
it without feeling. For my part, I felt a reverence for it I could not ac-
count for.

" Kiss the babies for me. God grant that I may be successful in my
voyage, for their sake ! My one desire is to make them happy, and leave to
them" a comfortable inheritance. I am, dear wife, all I say and all you wish
me to be, your own FRANK."

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 279

Sybil sat with the worn and faded sheet open before her a
long while. When she laid away the relics and closed the desk
she went over to her crucifix and looked up at it reverently
through her tears. The image of that other Figure, that Face
most beautiful " so sweet and mild " which had moved the
brave and tender soul to pity, and to a reverence it could not
understand, was vividly present to her. Where was it now?
Did it, indeed, look down from the altar of some Southern
church ? Oh, to behold it even once !

" For it is my inheritance, papa," she whispered brokenly.
" Your good deed has brought its reward. The Lord you shel-
tered has made up to me, beyond all price, the wealth you craved
for me. That voyage was crowned with blessing for the baby
who needed help the most."

And from that time Sybil's questionings were set at rest for
her. The faith she had so readily accepted, because she had
been prepared for it in ways she knew not, became to her not
only hers through choice, but hers through her dead father's
gift. Verily, the bread men cast upon the waters, after many
days is returned to them the Bread of Life.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE TRUE FAITH OF OUR FOREFATHERS. By A Professor of Theology
in Woodstock College, S.J., Maryland. N. Y. : The American News Co.

The professor of theology is evidently The Rev. F. De Augustinis, au-
thor of the Treatise De Re Sacramentarid in the Woodstock Course of Theo-
logy. What he has undertaken in the present volume is, as stated in the
full title-page on the cover, a refutation of Dr. Stearns' Faith of our Fore-
fathers, and a vindication of Archbishop Gibbons' Faith of Our Fathers.
In his last paragraph, F. De Augustinis says :" In fine, we rather thank
Dr. Stearns for the opportunity he has given us of presenting the doctrine
of the church to our separated brethren, and of calling their attention to
the excellent book which the Archbishop of Baltimore has written for
them." We join in the sentiment of thankfulness that F. De Augus-
tinis has found and embraced an opportunity for writing this excellent
book, although we can only commiserate Dr. Stearns in his misfortune in
having fallen from his place as an examining chaplain into. that of a chap-
lain under examination. We do not owe him any thanks for having, con-
trary to his intention, made such an exposure of the weakness of his cause
as indirectly to serve the cause of truth. Neither have his fellow-Episco-
palians any reason to thank him for his attempt to defend their cause, un-

280 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

less they indirectly receive the same benefit from his indiscretions which
the cause of truth itself has received, through the light which F. De
Augustinis has cast, in refuting him, upon the true doctrine and religion of
the Ancient Church. Episcopalians are a very respectable body, and in
many things much more like Catholics and much nearer to Catholics in
doctrines and practices than are other Protestants. We should much pre-
fer to discuss the points of difference between us with men of genuine
learning, candor and good breeding, and we are sure that the best part of
the Episcopalian clergy and laity, in particular the high-toned members of
that communion in Maryland, approve and prefer that mode of controversy.
There have been great men and fine writers among the ecclesiastics of
the Church of England, and some very respectable imitators of these cele-
brated authors in our own country. So long as they have employed their
talents and learning in the exposition and defence of Catholic truth, they
have been able to emulate the best ancient and modern writers of the Ca-
tholic Church.

But when it is question of opposing Catholic doctrines and defending
those which are contrary to them, the exigencies of controversy must com-
pel them to arrive at last at the alternative of either embracing all Catholic
truth or becoming its most violent and obstinate enemies. The middle
ground is not tenable for a long time. The notion that the Protestant
Episcopal Church is like the church of the earlier ages can only subsist, so
long as those earlier ages are seen in a very obscure light, through a very
misty atmosphere. Isaac Taylor, who was a man of remarkable gifts and cul-
tivation, who had become a member of the Church of England from choice
although bred a dissenter, more than forty years ago exposed the great mis-
take of the Oxford school in identifying Anglicanism with Ancient Chris-
tianity. Episcopalians have no forefathers more ancient than the founders
of their sect, Henry VIII., Cranmer and their associates. Those among
them who are not content to be confounded with the common mass of Pro-
testants, but wish to be considered as distinctively churchmen, only adhere
to their particular sect because they mistake it for a genuine, legitimate
continuation of the original Catholic Church in England, and of the aposto-
lic church. This pretence has been exploded, and as a last resort, those
who are the most fully acquainted with the real facts of history only hang
on to their separate, isolated position, by persuading themselves that they
are not wholly cut off from communion with the great Catholic body, and
will some day obtain a formal recognition which will enable them to be-
come reconciled and admitted to full outward communion. This is a resort,
however, too contrary to common sense, for the majority of sincere and in-
telligent Episcopalians to accept with any kind of contentment. Just as
soon as they discover that the schism of Henry VIII. was a great error and
a great crime, and that the Catholic Church of the present is really one
with the ancient and apostolic church, instead of being a corruption of it,
they draw the right conclusion, that one must be a Catholic pure and sim-
ple, or else give up all church-principles and relapse into extreme Protes-
tantism. Hence it follows, that those who are obstinately bent on defend-
ing the high-church claims, the apostolic succession, etc., for their own
highly respectable but altogether human society, have to take up an atti-
tude of very pronounced and violent hostility against the Catholic Church.

1 8 8o.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 2 8 1

They have no other means of waging this warfare except throwing dust
into the eyes of their hearers and readers. They must resort to personal
recrimination and calumny, to charges of dishonesty, to misrepresentation,
to perversion of history, to misquotation and garbling of texts, and to
similar tricks of sophistry and bad rhetoric. F. De Augustinis proves
abundantly that Dr. Stearns has done this in his attack on the Archbishop
of Baltimore. But he has done more and better work than this. He has
furnished an array of positive evidence drawn from the rich stores of his
learning in support of the archbishop's plain, calm and convincing exposi-
tion of the faith of our fathers, which is abundant and conclusive. By
reading these two books, The Faith of our Fathers, and The True Faith of
our Forefathers, Episcopalians, and indeed all Protestants may see for them-
selves on which side is the truth, and also, the Christian charity which is so
closely allied to truth.

ALBUM BENEDICTINUM, nomina exhibens monachorum, qui de nigro colore
appellantur, locorumque omnium, quotquot innotuerunt, hac aetate flo-
rentium, O. SS. P. N. Benedicti, quod ad annum a nativitate ejusdem SS.
Patris MCCCC. Jussu reverendissimi domini D. Bonifacii Wimmer, Ab-
batis, collegit sacerdos Abbatiae S. Vincentii, A.D. 1880. Prodiit e
typographaeo S. Vincentii in Pennsylvania. 1880.

This grand almanac or catalogue of the Benedictine Order as existing at
the present time was compiled by a father of St. Vincent's Abbey, at La-
trobe, Pennsylvania, under the direction of the Right Rev. Abbot Wimmer,
and printed at the press of the monastery. It contains a few very interest-
ing drawings of some of the principal abbeys throughout the world. It is
brought out in a splendid typographical style, with great completeness of
detail, making a somewhat bulky volume of 550 pages. The Benedictine
Order has subsisted during 14 centuries, and now, in its old age, though
much diminished in its magnitude and power, is of very respectable dimen-
sions. It is divided into 10 distinct congregations including 81 monasteries.
There are 26 other abbeys which are independent, 240 smaller houses, and
780 parochial churches either administered by the monks or under their
patronage, having a total population of about 760,000. They have 12 ec-
clesiastical and 44 secular colleges, containing 6,000 pupils.

The order counts among its members i cardinal, 5 archbishops, 18 bish-
ops and i abbot who is also a prefect apostolic. There are 8 abbots nullius
dioceseos, having quasi-episcopal jurisdiction of a district, and 60 other gov-
erning abbots, besides 19 who are merely titular, and 9 independent priors.
Of the professed monks, there are 1,846 who are priests, 210 clerics, and the
number of lay brothers is 570, of novices 115. The American Cassinensian
Congregation of which Abbot Wimmer is President has 4 monasteries, 197
clerical and 171 lay monks, and there are two or three other monasteries in
the United States under a separate jurisdiction.

An appendix to the Album gives some information regarding the Bene-
dictine communities of women. From this we learn that no part of the
continent of America but the United States has Benedictine nuns. The first
of these communities which was composed then of but three persons came
from a convent at Eichstadt, in Bavaria, in 1852, and established St. Mary's,
Elk Co., Pa., in the diocese of Erie. The Benedictine nuns in this country
now number about 500, having 15 convents, each governed by a prioress, and

282 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

33 lesser establishments depending on these convents. They teach 15 select
schools or academies and 48 parish schools. In addition, there is in Mis-
souri a convent of Benedictine tertiary sisters, who take annual vows.
These last are a recent colony from Switzerland.

The Album is a very curious and interesting document not only for the
Catholic clergy, but for all scholars of an antiquarian and historical turn of
mind.

THE IRON GATE, AND OTHER POEMS. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Bos-
ton : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1880.

Oliver Wendell Holmes has been for more than forty years a favorite of
the Bostonians and New-Englanders, and in general of the American pub-
lic. He has won this favor by genuine literary worth, and therefore as he
has grown older this favor has not decayed but rather increased. Mr.
Holmes is a true poet, and one of our best prose writers. The most marked
characteristic of his writings is humor blended with pathos. As a humorist,
we rank him as one of the trio which holds the first place in modern Eng-
lish literature. Hood, Jerrold and Holmes, in our opinion, are the three
genuine humorists of the first class, who have made their humorous writ-
ings truly artistic and classic. To their honor be it said, they have all made
their wit subservient to moral purity. One thing we have always especially
liked in Mr. Holmes' writings, viz., that he never surfeits his readers with
too much humor, but generally sprinkles it, as an Attic salt, upon his more
solid viands. The pathetic and serious element predominates in all his
compositions, except a few short pieces of pure and unmixed fun. This
last volume is an instance in point, and exemplifies what has just been said.
Indeed, its prevailing tone is a sadness which breathes of the spirit of
Cicero de Senectute, and yet retains the juvenile playfulness of the poet's
earlier productions, like one of our Northern October landscapes. v The
chief poems of the volume are Academic, and among these we note espe-
cially two, Vestigia Quinque Retrorsum, and The School-Boy. The latter
poem has, perhaps, a special interest for the writer of this notice, because
of early reminiscences of the same school where the scene of the poem is
laid and where the poet was once a school-boy. The same poem furnishes
an occasion for the one grievous censure which we have to pass upon Mr.
Holmes' writings. Their religion and morality are purely natural, and not
only so, they are pervaded by a tone of ridicule which is more effective be-
cause it is almost always so light and good-humored, in respect to all that
belongs to supernatural faith and is received through the Christian tradi-
tion purely on the authority of divine revelation. The old Theology of
Andover assuredly made a large demand on credulity in assuming to be
identical with the revealed doctrine of Christ. Yet, it seems to us that it
was hardly the place and the occasion for indulging in banter concerning
the doctrines which Andover was expressly founded to maintain, when Dr.
Holmes was reciting a poem at the Andover Centennial. Moreover, the
shaft of ridicule was shot not only against the peculiar opinions of Andover
but against the Nicene Creed which is the Symbol of Faith of universal
Christendom. The passage we refer to is apropos of Dr. Murdock's dis-
missal from his professorship on the charge of heresy.

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 283

" He broached his own opinion, which is not
Lightly to be forgiven or forgot ;
Some riddle's point, I scarce remember now,
Homo/, perhaps, where they said hom<? ou.
(If the unlettered greatly wish to know
Where lies the difference betwixt oi and o,
Those of the curious who have time may search
Among the stale conundrums of their church.)"

There may be wit in this, but there is no philosophy. It makes some
difference in arithmetic whether you write 10 or oi. There is also some
little distinction of meaning between genius and genus. In the Creed, the
iota entirely changes the meaning of the word which defines the nature of
Christ as the Son of God. The word with the iota expresses only that he
is godlike, without it, that he is God. Can. a Unitarian any more than a
Catholic consider this a trivial matter which it is fitting to sneer at as a
stale conundrum ?

There is more show of reason in what follows :

" Why should we look one common faith to find,
Where one in every score is color-blind ?
If here on earth they know not red from green,
Will they see better into things unseen ? "

If it is a question of imposing private opinions as dogmas and attempt-
ing to produce unity in faith by confessions made by merely human au-
thority, there is sound logic under the cover of this ingenious simile.
But, since it is necessary that we should see into things unseen and discern
truth from error in religious doctrines, the right conclusion of the logic is,
that we need a divine and infallible authority to teach us which are the true
doctrines of the faith which God has revealed. The very natural reaction
)f the mind from the Puritan theology which suppresses reason has cast
imbridge upon the shoals of rationalism. It is to be hoped that some day
will swing off and regain the open sea of Catholic truth. The great
lount of what is true and sound and pure in the writings of many of the
Cambridge school, among whom Dr. Holmes holds such a deservedly high
>lace, is one encouragement to hrpe for this result.

s SOCIETES SECRETES ET LA SOCIETE, ou PHILOSOPHIE DE L'HISTOIRE
CONTEMPORAINE. Par N. Deschamps. Deuxieme edition, entierement
refondue et continuee jusqu'aux evenements actuels. Avec une intro-
duction sur 1'action des societes secretes au XlXe. siecle, par M. Claudio
Jannet. Avignon: Seguin freres ; Paris: Oudin freres. 1880.

In these two volumes, which Father Deschamps had prepared before his
death, a great many facts bearing on the social and political upheavals
of Europe during the last hundred years or more are brought together.
Father Deschamps puts upon the secret societies the responsibility for
nearly all the political ills of Europe to-day. He deserves credit for his
great industry. No Catholic, at least, can help recognizing the evil that
lies at the very base of the secret societies, and the bad results that
flow and that have always flowed from them ; nevertheless a calm perusal
of the industrious Jesuit's own presentation of the facts must convince the
reader that the secret societies are here an effect, not a cause ; that thy are

284 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

merely one of the many evil results of the rottenness of certain portions of
European society and of the gradual giving way of governments that had
disowned the principles to which they owed their original stability. M.
Jannet, who has recast the work since the author's death and has added
much new material to it, contributes also an interesting introduction. The
book merits a careful review, which we shall try to give soon.

THE STILLWATER TRAGEDY. By T. B. Aldrich, author of Marjorte Daw,
The Queen of Sheba, Flower and Thorn, etc. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. 1880.

Mr. Aldrich's romances are not very thrilling, nor do they show any
inclination on the author's part to analyze human character. They are
rather mere sketches, but sketches that if taken up and filled in by some
laborious writer of the so-called philosophical school would achieve imme-
diate success. Mr. Aldrich is interesting none the less whenever he takes
the trouble to be so. But he is evidently too indolent to develop the ideas
that he plants here and there. He lingers occasionally, it is true, to point
out in a few words some trait of character or some pleasant scene, but
then he canters impatiently away, leaving his readers to find out things for
themselves whenever their curiosity has been aroused or their interest
stimulated.

These qualities are manifest in his latest story. The very opening para-
graph, describing the dawn of day in the New England village of Still-
water, is wonderfully true to nature, as far as it goes. Yet it is only like an
artist's memorandum, and must be filled out altogether by the reader's im-
agination. We do not mean to say that we admire " word-painting," but
Mr. Aldrich, with his clear perception, correct taste, and real love of nature,
could be depended on for a finished, complete picture if only he would.
The mystery surrounding the murder of a rich man of the village forms the
principal motive of the story, while the great strike of the workingmen in
1877, which is described as having reached to the mills and workshops of
Stillwater, affords the author an opportunity to present some sound views
on the question of trades-unions and on kindred topics. " Bread or Blood"
was displayed on the banners of the strikers in Stillwater, which recalls
the device actually carried through the streets of St. Louis at that time by
striking shoeblacks : " We don't want bread ; we must have sponge-cake or
blood ! " There is a healthy piece of love-making between the hero and
heroine Richard and Margaret, who, we are happy to say, are called by
their right name, and not " Dickie " and " Maggie " and the end of this
love-making, in spite of apparent and sufficiently perplexing obstacles, is
fortunate.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ANNUAL FOR 1881. With calendars
calculated for different parallels of latitude, and adapted for use through-
out the United States. New York : The Catholic Publication Society
Co.

This is the thirteenth year of what is not merely an almanac with cal-
endars, the gospels and epistles for red-letter days, etc., but a most inter-
esting and valuable year-book of Catholic information. A specialty of this
publication has always been its biographical notices of distinguished Ca-
tholics of the day, and the discussion of matters connected with the history

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 285

and growth of the Catholic Church in the United States ; so that a file of
the Annuals will in time be of considerable service for reference. This
year's number has well-written articles on Cardinal Manning, the late emi-
nent scholars, Dr. Pabisch of Mt. St. Mary's Seminary, Cincinnati, and Dr.
Russell, of Maynooth College, Ireland; also a notice of that well-known and
highly-esteemed Catholic publisher, the late Mr. John Murphy, of Balti-
more. To each of these biographical articles there is an excellent portrait.
The many illustrations in the Annual this year are, in fact, particularly good.
Among other articles, each with a portrait, are sketches of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Mother Mary Aikenhead, Dr. Cummings, Mother Theodore, and
Sister St. Francis, the last two of whom were pioneers of Catholic educa-
tion in Indiana. All sorts of odds and ends of curious lore are sandwiched
between carefully-written original articles on matters of actual interest. It
is the best number of the Annual that has yet appeared. It contains some-
thing for everybody, and a copy of it ought to be found in every Catholic
family.

ULTIMA THULE. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston : Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.

Mr. Longfellow is our own poet, and as such has well earned our love
and praise. We say this as Americans. We could say more. He is one of
the world's poets, and his name is deservedly linked with others whose
fame is world-wide. As Catholics we are unwillingly obliged to take some
exceptions to the rulings of his Muse, especially when she seeks to express
the ideal of Catholic truth.

He fails to see that the outward expressions of Christianity are symbolic
of a divine interior life. A sufficient evidence of this is to be found in the
first sonnet of the present collection, entitled

"MY CATHEDRAL.

' ' Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones ;
The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
Not art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines ;
No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones,
No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter ! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
Gives back a softened echo to thy tread !
Listen ! the choir is singing ; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
Are singing ! Listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship without words. "

Here the poet not only fails to realize the idea and purpose of a Chris-
tian cathedral, but also wanders out of the domain of poesy into that of
the theologian. His ideal cathedral is based upon no reality, but upon an
abstract Quaker doctrine. If Mr. Longfellow would embrace in his theo-
logy the worshipper in the Cologne cathedral no less than the hermit in
his solitude, his Christianity would be improved and he would approach
in his poetical genius nearer to the Catholic standard of a perfect poet.

286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

THE LIFE, TIMES, AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE RIGHT REV. DR. DOYLE,
BISHOP OF KILDARE AND LEIGHLIN. By W. J. Fitz-Patrick, LL.D.,
M.R.I.A., Professor of History to the Royal Hibernian Academy, etc.
New edition, greatly enlarged and revised. Two volumes. Dublin :
James Duffy & Sons, M. H. Gill & Son. 1880. (New York : For sale by
the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

One of the most prominent figures in the agitation that led to the Ca-
tholic Emancipation Act of 1829 in the United Kingdom was that of the
zealous, learned, and patriotic bishop whose life Mr. Fitz-Patrick first pub-
lished about twenty years ago and now again presents with many additions.
These two volumes fairly teem with facts bearing upon the various social,
political, and ecclesiastical questions that have been discussed in Ireland
during the last three-quarters of a century. Dr. Doyle's famous letters also,
graceful, vigorous, and always to the point, are here. Whether the reader
does or does not go along with the bishop in his views on all subjects, no
one desiring to be familiar with modern Irish history can afford to leave this
Life unread.

STRANGE MEMORIES. By Rev. A. J. O'Reilly, D.D. New York : D. & J.
Sadlier & Co. 1880.

The learned author of the Martyrs of the Coliseum, Victims of the Ma-
mertine, etc., has committed to writing in the present volume some memo-
ries of the past which are not too strange to be true. He was induced to
"cast them on paper" by the persuasive entreaties of the children in the
Convent of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, who were the first to dis-
cern their excellence and worth. The children in convent schools, to whom
the book is dedicated, have reason, therefore, to thank the little literary
critics who urged the author to publish without delay these interesting
memories and anecdotes of missionary life.

Although the book is submitted to the indulgent criticism of the young
folks for whom it has been specially prepared, yet it will be read with plea-
sure by those who are no longer in their teens, provided they are able to
appreciate the sublime lessons of virtue which are so brilliantly reflected
through the "moral crystals " that adorn its pages. In connection with
one of his remarkable narratives Dr. O'Reilly makes the following re-
marks, which will meet with the approval of every priest :

" Let those hard-worked priests who, in the large cities, sit for long hours in the confes-
sional, tell of the wearisome work which zeal and love for the salvation of souls carry them
through ; the sameness of the tale of weakness constantly poured into their ears ; the ignorance
of many who mean well, but try patience. Every phase of human weakness or sanctity is re-
presented in an evening's sitting. A saint, requiring direction in the higher vocation of special
and heavenly virtue, where mortifications and penances have to be checked, will give place to
some monster of intemperance or impurity, relapsing, unconverted, and hardened, where all the
eloquence and fervor of the priest is spent in vain to bring a blush or a tremble before the tribu-
nal of an outraged God."

ROSE O'CONNOR : A Story of the Day. By Toler King. Chicago : Printed
by the Chicago Legal News Company. 1880.

Love, the famine, and landlord oppression are the foundation upon which
the author has built this tale of Irish life to-day. It is too evidently a po-
litical tract to find much success among story-readers in this country. The

iSSo.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287

greatest infamy of modern times is the rule of the British in Ireland, but
story-telling will do nothing palpable towards liberation. The Irish do not
need the sympathy of the world that they have had enough of ; what they
do need is the respect of the nations. This is now worth striving for.

THE HOUR WILL COME : A Tale of an Alpine Cloister. By Wilhelmine von
Hillern. From the German by Clara Bell. New York : William S.
Gottsberger. 1880.

There are certain novel-writers, principally of the so-called analytical
school, to whom, in their eagerness for fresh subjects, nothing is sacred.
To these writers the ascetic virtues are simply incomprehensible, so that
their imaginative descriptions of the inner life of religious communities are
not only frequently irreverent, but nearly always full of absurd blunders.
Although having considerable literary merit, the above book, in spite of its
occasional parade of familiarity with medieval life, is decidedly false in its
tone and misleading throughout.

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SIGN-LANGUAGE AMONG 'THE NORTH
AMERICAN INDIANS, AS ILLUSTRATING THE GESTURE-SPEECH OF MAN-
KIND, By Garrick Mallery, Brevet Lieut.-Col. U. S. Army. Washing-
ton : Government Printing-Office. 1880.

This pamphlet has been issued under the direction of the Bureau of
Ethnography of the Smithsonian Institute. It is merely the sketch of a
more extensive work now in preparation, and is designed to stimulate in-
vestigation in the subject it treats.

The Indians, it is well known, are very skilful in the language of gesture,
and can carry on a conversation with one another with almost the same
ease as well-trained deaf-mutes. An instance is given at page 48, where a
Pah-Ute chief recites his adventures altogether in dumb show. This facility
of gesture has been frequently attributed to the poverty of the Indian lan-
guages, which makes supplementary gestures necessary to explain the
speaker's thoughts. Col. Mallery, on the other hand, attributes it to the
great number of dialects in use, which makes it impossible for the Indians
to communicate with any but near neighbors, except by signs. Col. Mal-
lery also seems to accept, at least in some degree, the theory that sign-
language among the Indians may be a " survival " of the mode of conversa-
tion used by primitive man before the development of spoken discourse.
But this appears far-fetched. The very diversity of dialects which he has
already assigned as a cause will, we think, amply suffice without any
recourse to evolutionary theories. His remarks on the result of this diver-
sity of dialects are worthy of attention. He says :

"... Where people speaking precisely the same dialect are not nume-
rous, and are thrown into constant contact, on equal terms, with others of
differing dialects and languages, gesture is necessarily resorted to for con-
verse with the latter, and remains as a habit or accomplishment among
themselves ; while large bodies enjoying common speech, and either isolated
from foreigners, or, when in contact with them, so dominant as to compel
the learning and adoption of their own tongue, become passive in its deliv-
ery. The undemonstrative English, long insular, and now rulers when spread
over continents may be compared with the profusely gesticulating Ita-
lians, dwelling in a maze of dialects, and subject for centuries either to
foreign rule or to the influx of strangers on whom they depended."

This partly upsets the old notion that the profuseness of gesture among

288 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [No v. , 1 8 80.

the Italians and other southern peoples is owing to certain innate qualities
of the warm-blooded races.

LITTLE MANUAL OF NOVICES. By the Author of Golden Sands. New
York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1880.

A neat, pretty little book, quite appropriate for a neat young novice
who has just received the. habit. It is warmly approved and recommended
by His Eminence the Cardinal of New-York, and Cardinal Donnet has called
it a " wonderful compendium." It is only necessary for us to give notice to
masters and mistresses of novices that such a book is published by proper
authority. To say more would be superfluous.

THE NEW CATHOLIC SUNDAY-SCHOOL MANUAL. New York : D. & J. Sad-
lier & Co. 1880.

This little book is a reprint of the Boston Catechism, to which are added
the usual morning and night prayers printed in most catechisms, the pray-
ers at Mass, and devotions for confession. At the end of the book is a col-
lection of about one hundred and fifty hymns, and some of them are very
pretty.

WE have received from the author, the Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S.J. but
too late for notice this month advance sheets of a new work entitled The
Church and the Moral World : Considerations on the Holiness of the Church.

IN correction of a notice that lately appeared in these pages of a Life of
Christ and of His Blessed Mother, Benziger Bros., the publishers of the work,
write us that the cost of the Life is, in numbers, $9 50, and not $16 as the
notice had given it, while the binding is from $3 to $8 extra.

THE SKIN IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. (American Health Primers.) By L. Duncan Bulkley,
M.D. Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston. 1880.

THE SERAPHIC CORD OF ST. FRANCIS. By Monseigneur de Segur. Translated from the fif-
teenth (French) edition. St. Louis, Mo. : P. Fox, 14 South Fifth Street. 1880.

LAUDIS CORONA : the new Sunday-school hymn-book, containing a collection of Catholic hymns,
arranged for the principal seasons and festivals of the year. New York : D. & J. Sadlier &
Co. 1880.

LECTURE BY THE RIGHT REV. R. GILMOUR, D.D., BISHOP OF CLEVELAND: "The Debt
America owes to Catholicity." Delivered at Case Hall, Cleveland, on Sunday evening,
April 4, 1880. Cleveland, O.: Mount & Carroll. 1880.

NOTES TAKEN FROM A LECTURE BY DR. MANUEL DAGNINO, at the Medical University of Cara-
cas, Venezuela, on the Treatment of Yellow Fever. Translated into English by Dr. An-
tonio de Tejada, of New York. New York : Office of Las Novedades. 1880.

PEARLS FROM THE CASKET OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. A collection of letters, maxims,
and practices of the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, Religious of the Order of the Visita-
tion. Edited by Eleanor C. Donnelly. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis : Benziger
Brothers, 18^0.

MEMOIR OF GABRIEL BERANGER, AND HIS LABORS IN THE CAUSE OF IRISH ART AND ANTIQUI-
TIES, FROM 1760 TO 1780. By Sir William Wilde, M.D., author of Beauties of the Boyne
and Blackwater, Catalogue of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, etc. With seventeen
illustrations. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1880. (New York : For sale by the Catholic
Publication Society Co.)

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXII. DECEMBER, 1880. No. 189.

A COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CON-
VENTION.

THE Protestant Episcopal Church would occupy a more envi-
able position if its pretensions were not so great. We are accus-
tomed to conventions of all kinds wherein there is much speak-
ing with little point, wherein many things are proposed and little
accomplished. We are used to Protestant synods and pan^
councils of different sects where the only thing demonstrated is
the impossibility of unity. Happy families agree to live together
in peace by waiving decisions in regard to doctrine and allowing
full latitude of opinion.

But the Episcopal Church will not identify itself with the
Protestant sects. Possessing all their liberty, and to the highest
degree their want of unity in faith, it still makes great ecclesias-
tical pretensions. Its gathering of ministers and laymen js not a
convention in the ordinary sense of the word, but a council of 'a
branch of the Catholic Church. It has bishops, priests, and dea-
cons, and the robes of priestly authority, and looks with proud
contempt upon the unauthorized churches which, without episco-
pal ordination, venture to extend to the Protestant world the
right hand of fellowship. On the opening day of the convention
there was quite a procession of bishops in full canonicals, robed
in the .white and black vestments of their order. There was also
Bishop Cotterill, of Edinburgh, and Bishop Herzog, of the Old
Catholic Church of Switzerland. They passed up the aisle of St.
George's Church and united in the Communion service of their

290 COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Dec.,

denomination. How all this array of prelates strikes the eye of
Catholics may well be imagined. To us the less pretentious con-
duct of Methodist bishops, who have a consecration equally good,
seems much more impressive and real. The two foreign prelates
were a conspicuous feature in this display. One wore, accord-
ing to the Sun, " the red cap and hood of his Oxford dignity."
The other was probably dressed in a gold cope such as he usually
wears in Switzerland. In undress the daily journals describe the
one as " a man of noble presence and ecclesiastical whiskers, hav-
ing a dignified bearing in the short clothes which distinguish
the bishops of the English Church." The other " is a dark-haired
and dark-eyed German with the air of firm resolution." We
presume the Episcopal Church intends to recognize the Old
Catholic Church and the orders of its bishops, which will, no
doubt, be a satisfaction to them. This would be the natural re-
turn for a similar favor extended to the whole Parker line at the
convention held at Bonn in 1874. There a resolution was passed
recognizing the orders of the English Church and its American
daughter. The resolution was not accepted by the Greek and
Russian delegates present, who expressed their doubts as to the
validity of those orders. The object of this action was to gratify
the English clergymen present, and to put them on an equal
standing with the other members of the synod. We do not know
that this act of the Old Catholic synod accomplished much for
the Episcopalians. The appearance, however, of this foreigner in
a cope was no doubt a feeling sign of unity. With this gratifica-
tion of the Ritualistic brethren the Low-Churchmen appeared to
be satisfied, inasmuch as to things more important they have their
own way with the convention. In fact, it would seem that the
High-Churchmen are very quiescent, and that the old feucl is
temporarily healed. Churchmen who differ as widely as the
most extreme Protestants are become a harmonious band of
brothers. St. George's Church, the very seat of low Protestant
doctrine, is the place of meeting, and the officiating clergy are
nearly all of the low type of theology. The following remarks of
the Rev. Dr. Sullivan are explanatory of this seeming harmony :

" Some years ago, as you are aware, a very dangerous disease broke out
in the church. It was a disease that sorely puzzled the best and wisest of '
our ecclesiastical doctors. It was an epidemic and an epicleric as well. It
assumed two different forms, strangely enough, in opposite directions. It
sometimes took the form of a very high fever, and sometimes the form of a
very low fever. It is scarcely necessary for me to say in this presence that
1 myself had a very severe attack of the latter form of the disease in fact,

i88o.] COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 291

I was supposed by some to be almost in extremis. Some of my friends were
afraid that I would not recover, and I think others were afraid that I
would. Happily for myself, I did survive. For the present I wish to say
that one attack has been quite enough for me, and if any one here, or any-
where else, wishes to know the symptoms of the disease, and by what grad-
ual stages it develops in the system, I know all about it. Speaking serious-
ly, however, I am glad to say, not for myself only, but for the whole Cana-
dian Church, and I am warranted in saying, that this disease is rapidly be-
coming a thing altogether of the past, and that, judging by present indica-
tions, the time is not far distant when men, when they look for it, will find
it, but they will find only its cold remains labelled and laid away in our
cabinet of ecclesiastical antiquities, side by side with the bones of the mega-
therium, and the ichthyosaurus, and other equally hideous monsters of
the antediluvian era; and all this has come to pass simply because men are
coming to understand, under the teaching of that divine Spirit who inhabits
the church as the mystical body of Christ, that among all divinely-ordained
laws there is none more sacred than the law of individuality, and that, while
on all matters that are de fide truth is first, and then charity, yet in that
vast field of thought which embraces matters of mere opinion, truth, di-
vinely-revealed truth, has itself proclaimed the supremacy of another law
by apostolic lips namely, the law, ' Let every man be fully persuaded in his
own mind.' "

According to this lucid statement, which received the applause
of the convention, there are no more differences of consequence
among- Episcopalians. They are healed by letting every man
think and act as he pleases, and thus conflict is impossible. Why
is it that such unity in diversity was not accomplished before?
Yet the High-Churchmen would yield all their peculiarities, if
they could once obtain the real acknowledgment of their orders
from any trustworthy source. They have tried the Greek schis-
matics and the heretics of the East in vain. The Greek Church
has denied the validity of their orders in terms as clear as those
of the Catholic Church. t Now there is a new branch of the
church. There used to be only three, but since the Vatican
Council there are four. This increase of the brandies of the church
seems to be a great point with them ; but we think that, from
their own stand-point, their arithmetic is at fault. There are
many validly-ordained heretics in the East whom they have not
counted. Of course heresy is a small matter, if only the apostoli-
cal succession be preserved. As to the recognition of the whole
Parker line by the Old Catholics, it seems to be complete. Dr.
Reinkens holds out his hand from across the Atlantic to the
American branch. The Right Rev. Dr. Herzog, on the second
day, was formally introduced to the House of Bishops, and thus
addressed them :

2Q2 COMMENTAR Y UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Dec.,

" Right reverend fathers and brethren in Christ : Receive my sincere
thanks for the most kind welcome you have given me. I know that the
honor you do rrie refers chiefly to me as representing the Christian Catho-
lic Church and the Old Catholic movement. I thank you, then, not only
personally, but also in the name of my church and in the name of Bishop
Reinkens, who has especially charged me to express to you his respects
and best wishes for the prosperity of your church and for cordial relations
between your church and ours. Brothers, you granted me yesterday a
place among you at the Lord's table, and to-day you accord me a place in
your venerable assemblage. You have by these acts in a certain sense an-
nulled the excommunication hurled against us by the Pope because we re-
jected the errors and abuses which you never acknowledged. We, on our
part, have long since acknowledged you as a branch of the Catholic Church,
and since my sojourn in your great country and your flourishing church I
have proof enough that the Conference of Bonn acted wisely in solemnly
recognizing the catholicity of your episcopate, your doctrine, and your lit-
urgy."

To the same purport were his words to the House of clerical
and lay Deputies. As far as Dr. Reinkens and his brethren can
do so, they declare the American Episcopal bishops to be true
successors of the apostles. This interchange of good feeling, like
every other gushing sentiment, brings peace to wounded hearts.
" In a certain sense it annuls the excommunication of the Pope."
When was it ever heard that the communion of a sect never for
one moment recognized by any apostolical church could annul
the sentence of the chief, bishop of the world ? It must be a very
peculiar gratification, on the principle that " misery loves compa-
ny " and exile is rendered sweet by the number of the exiled. As
to the orders of Dr. Herzog himself the Catholic Church has
never made any investigation. They could not be recognized as
valid by us without such investigation, and, as great changes are
proposed in liturgy, the probabilities are against them. The suc-
cession of the Old Catholics will without doubt become ere long
as uncertain as those of the Reformed Episcopalians. No sect,
however heretical or schismatical, which retained the correct idea
of matter and form in the sacrament of orders, could without any
examination accept the ministry of the English Church. We are
of the opinion that this " fourth branch " \vill not prove a great
success or be a lasting comfort to the Ritualists. The last con-
gress at Baden did not develop much strength, and was chiefly
spent in the discussion of a prayer-book and the adoption of a
liturgy in the German tongue. The Churchman says :

" The proceedings of the Baden congress were of the usual character:
first, a ' conversazione,' otherwise beer and complimentary talk ; and,
lastly, a public dinner : the whole concluded with an excursion into the

i8So] COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION, -293

country, with meanwhile, for two days, deliberations in private of the dele-
gates and two large public meetings."

Bishop Reinkens reports that the progress of his church is not
large, that the number of Old Catholics is " still a little under the
fifty thousand returned some few years ago." Yet the Church-
man hopes it will do great things in the future, and that the dis-
semination of charity will " dissolve the Papacy and suffer it to
be no longer an obstacle to the benign victories of the Gospel."
Probably Bishop Herzog has come here to refresh himself a little,
and then go home and " do great things " towards the dissolution
of the Papacy.

The proceedings of the convention since the opening day have
not presented many points of general interest. The sermon by
Bishop Kip was an earnest one, and strongly urged mortification
and self-denial upon his communion. This exhortation seems to
us very appropriate, as the Episcopalians need, according to the
Churchman, to appear more devoted to the people, and not to be
so much " the church of the select and wealthy." The only fault
to be -found with the sermon of Bishop Kip was its generality, and
that he did not tell his reverend brethren how they were to mortify
themselves, whether by fasting, prayer, or voluntary austerities.
We agree with the distinguished prelate that exterior mortifica-
tion would be very advantageous to the Episcopal clergy. It
would make them more real and less worldly ; and worldliness is
an evil which we all have to fear.

The report of the Board of Managers of the Domestic and
Foreign Missionary Society was read to the convention on the
third day. The receipts have been over a million of dollars
during the last three years, but the expenses have exceeded that
sum. The Domestic Society has employed two hundred and sev-
enty-four missionaries among white people, forty-six among the
colored people, and forty-nine among the Indians. There is also
one Chinese missionary. The Foreign Society has stations in
Greece, Africa, China, Japan, Hayti, and Mexico, and employs for-
ty-eight ministers and one hundred and thirty unordained workers.
There are forty-seven candidates for orders and forty-five hundred
and fifty-nine communicants. To us this seems a small return for
the money expended ; but it must be remembered that the expen-
ses of married missionaries are naturally much greater than those
of single men. The number of communicants is also small, and
would seem discouraging if we did not know that the large ma-
jority of Episcopalians are not communicants. There are doubt-

294 COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Dec.,

less many heathen Episcopalians who do not commune. Bishop
Morris, of Oregon, complained of lack of help, and at this moment
needs sixty-five thousand dollars. He says : " We are giving over
this land (Oregon), with all its promise and all its glorious future,
to the powers of Rome and infidelity." He adds :

" Let me tell you that in my jurisdiction, or what is substantially equal
to it, the Roman Catholics have four bishops an archbishop and three
bishops. The Church of England has just sent out two additional bishops
to British Columbia, north of me. I have told you that we have one little
modest hospital in Portland. The Roman Catholics have got five in my
jurisdiction. I want two women. They have got from one hundred to one
hundred and fifty engaged in their work. They have got fifteen schools
where we have three ; and they are taking the land, unless the church
comes up to a realization of her duty and a determination to carry it for-
ward."

All the missionary bishops need money and men and " minis-
tering women or deaconesses." Bishop Garrett, of Texas, com-
plains rather bitterly of his wants, and in his speech asked a very
appropriate question :

" The grand question, I take it, which we have to ask ourselves a ques-
tion which it would be well for us to answer is this : Are we, a Protes-
tant sect in the great continent of America, striving to gather some few
fragments of the broken loaf of a dismembered Christendom, or are we the
lawful, the rightful, the legitimate representatives of the Catholic Church
of Christ, having mission and jurisdiction in this great country of the
United States ? That is the question."

It is the question ; and the successors of the apostles have al-
ways gone like their models, following the precept of their Lord :
" Take nothing for the way, but a staff only : no scrip, no bread,
no money in your purse ; but be shod with sandals, and do not
even put on two coats" (St. Mark vi. 8, 9).

They have come to the conviction of the great use of pious
women in missionary work, and so they have an imitation of Ca-
tholic nuns or sisters. They, for some unintelligible reason, love
to call them deaconesses. Nearly all the missionary bishops need
deaconesses. This word is an apparent link which binds the pre-
sent to the apostolical age. St. Paul is presumed to refer to the
deaconess where he gives advice to St. Timothy : " Let a widow
be chosen of no less than threescore years, who hath been the
wife of one husband, having testimony for her good works, if she,
have brought up children, if she have washed the saints' feet, if
she have diligently followed every good work " (i St. Tim. v. 9,

i88o.] COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 295

10). The following report was made by the Rev. Dr. Dix on Oc-
tober 1 8 :

" The committee to which this subject was referred deemed it inexpe-
dient to attempt any specific legislation on the subject of sisterhoods, and
therefore confined itself to the preparation of a canon ' of deaconesses,'
the passage of which it recommends. It is as follows :

" SECTION i. Women of devout character and approved fitness may be
set apart by any bishops of this church for the work of a deaconess, ac-
cording to such form as shall be authorized by the House of Bishops, or, in
default thereof, by such form as may be set forth by the bishop of the dio-
cese.

" SEC. 2. The duties of a deaconess are declared to be the care of our
Lord's poor and sick, the education of the young, the religious instruction
of the neglected, the reclaiming of the fallen, and other works of Christian
charity.

" SEC. 3. No woman shall be set apart for the work of a deaconess un-
til she be twenty-five years of age, unless the bishop, for special reasons,
shall determine otherwise, but in no case shall the age be less than twenty-
one years. The bishop shall also satisfy himself that the applicant has had
an adequate preparation for her work, both technical and religious, which
preparation shall have covered the period of at least one year.

" SEC. 6. If a deaconess should at any time resign her office she shall
not be restored thereto unless, in the judgment of the bishop, such resigna-
tion was for weighty cause ; and no deaconess shall be removed from office
by the bishop except with the consent of two-thirds of the standing com-
mittee of the diocese duly convened.

" SEC. 7. The constitution and rules for government of any institution
for the training of any deaconesses, or of any community in which such
deaconesses are associated, shall have the sanction in writing of the bishop
of the diocese in which such institution or community exists, and all for-
mularies of common worship used in such institution or community shall
have the like sanction, and shall be in harmony with the usages of this
church and the principles of the Book of Common Prayer."

We have given this report, at the cost of some space, because
it is interesting in many ways. If adopted by the convention
there will be some new apostolical things to be remembered.
The Protestant nuns will be no more called sisters but deaconesses.
It will not be Sister Mary or Sister Frances, but Deaconess Mary
and Deaconess Frances. This would be the case at least on more
solemn occasions, though the title might be shortened in common
use. They must be twenty-five years old (not sixty), unless the
bishop dispense them, but even he cannot take them until they
are twenty-one. They are to be " set apart " by a form provided
by the House of Bishops, or, in the case of this house not acting,
by the bishop of the diocese. What this " setting apart " means
we do not fully know. Nothing is said of vows, and it is to be

296 COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Dec.,

presumed that there are no vows, because it is the privilege of
these deaconesses to resign when they deem proper. They form
a voluntary association according to good will, and when they
are "set apart" they are not permanently fixed. What the
bishop does to them when he thus receives them does not ap-
pear. Probably he gives them the habit, the cross and beads, and
prays for their perseverance, telling them that they are not like
other women, but in a certain sense consecrated to God. We have
watched this formation of Protestant convents with some solici-
tude. Some of the sisters have made, on their resignation, good
wives, and others have become Catholics. It is a step in. the
right direction, and, considering that these well-meaning women
have neither sacraments nor direction, they certainly have done
very well. Deaconess will be an awkward name, but, after all,
what is in a name ? They can bear this burden in order to seem
more apostolic.

The convention also has discussed the subject of duty to the
Indians, and a joint committee was appointed ".to observe what
action is taken by government for extending to the Indians legal
protection for their civil rights." We earnestly hope that this
resolution will result in some action which may help the poor
Indians towards freedom of conscience and give missionaries
more liberty in their work of evangelization. The Catholic
Church has tried to do its part, and we trust the Episcopalians
will now give us at least their moral assistance.

On the great subject of education we are glad to see the con-
vention put itself on record as follows :

" Resolved, That it be strongly recommended to all churchmen to use
their means and energies in founding and maintaining parochial schools
and other church institutions of various grades commensurate with the de-
mands of the age and the needs of our people in science, literature, and art."

Something of this kind was resolved at a former session and has
not produced much effect. We hope now that Episcopalians
will follow the advice of their prelates and favor practically
"denominational schools." This is the only way to preserve any
semblance of religious education and to prevent their children
from becoming infidels. The argument is very simple, but facts
are the most complete demonstration of this truth.

A member of the House of Deputies tried to pass a resolution
warmly commending " the clergy who during the yellow-fever
epidemic of 1878 and 1879 stood bravely at their posts, minister-
ing to the plague-stricken people of God." But, probably for
fear of any invidious remarks, or censure of those who ran away,

i88o.] COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 297

the resolution was negatived. The question of the new revision
of the Bible was also discussed, but, so far as we can learn, no de-
finite action was taken. One reverend doctor, the prominent speak-
er, stated that the Episcopal Church had never really authorized
any version of the Scriptures, and, in his opinion, never would do
so. A committee may, however, be appointed to look into the
matter and afterwards report.

The foreign missions of the Episcopal Church have excited much
enthusiasm and taken up much of the time of the delegates, One
thing strikes us very forcibly in reading the reports : the results
are very small in comparison with the money and effort expend-
ed. To us it would be positively discouraging. For example,
the Greek mission has Miss Marion Muir as chief of staff, with
eight assistant teachers and 700 pupils. It does not appear who
the general is, nor if there be any minister there.

Japan has 5 presbyters, 2 deacons, i physician, and 14 teach-
ers. There are 63 native communicants and 40 baptisms.

Cape Palmas has I bishop, 10 presbyters, 6 deacons, I physi-
cian, and 14 teachers. They had only 38 confirmations and 26
baptisms, making not quite a baptism to a teacher or minister.
We do not know if the children of the missionaries are counted
in this estimate.

China has i bishop, 8 presbyters, 3 deacons, 14 lay readers, 3
postulants, 2 physicians, 8 female missionaries, 2 medical students,
and 31 teachers and Bible-readers. Here is a community suffi-
ciently large to prevent homesickness or lonesomeness. With
this staff of 70 workers there were 1 1 1 native baptisms and 59
confirmations.

In Hayti there are i bishop, 10 clergymen, and 2 candidates.
There were 59 baptisms and 10 confirmations, and there are 290
commXmicants. Bishop Holly says very properly that this " is
only the seed-time of his church."

The Mexican- mission has i bishop, 2 bishops-elect, 2 minis-
ters, 26 theological students, 17 lay readers, and 24 teachers of
various kinds. The baptisms during the year were 19. There
seems to be some difficulty in the management of this Mexican
'church, and there is not perfect satisfaction on all sides. The
Methodists block the way a little, but it is proposed to make se-
rious inroads upon the Catholic Church with this new branch.
Unless more be accomplished than during the year past we have
no serious grounds of fear. Nineteen baptisms would hardly
make Christians of the children of the ministers and their assist-
ants.

298 COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Dec.,

The canon on divorce came up for consideration, and one
delegate desired to amend the canon in accordance with the Levi-
tical law. How he mixed up the Old and New Testament we
do not know ; but probably, in spite of his surroundings, he ima-
gined that he was living under a Jewish economy. The Church-
man says :

" Proposed legislation on divorce has been rejected, partly, we suppose,
because there is a growing conviction that the church is to meet and over-
come sin in other ways than by legislation, and partly, too, because it is
felt to be unwise to legislate against special sins. It is the duty of all bap-
tized persons, clergy and laity, ' manfully to fight against sin, the world,
and the devil/ and this is to be done individually."

The Episcopal Church has legislated unfortunately in favor of
divorce, and still allows divorced people to be married when
adultery is the cause of the separation and one party is innocent.
Thus with them marriage is not a bond which binds unto death,
and " those whom God has joined together " can be sundered by
the crime of one party.

As an outside matter, generally approved by the convention,
we are very sorry to see that the Episcopalians have taken up
M. Loyson. Grace Church was filled one night to hear the
speech of Bishop Cotterill. It is said that poor M. Loyson (he
does not like to be called Hyacinthe) in his distress appealed to
the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the amiable prelate re-
ferred him to the Bishop of Edinburgh. He would not fraternize
with the Old Catholics, because they were too Protestant for him,
and so he goes to the older Catholics of England. They can take
him, though he still professes nearly all the articles of Catholic
faith. At this meeting in Grace Church Bishop Williams, of
Connecticut, presided and

" introduced Bishop Cotterill, who spoke first of the different movements
in Europe and Mexico against the Roman Catholic Church. He then gave
a short history of the movement in Paris, at the head of which is M.
Loyson.

" M. Loyson's church in Paris, he said, has now been open some eighteen
months. At present the society has no suitable building to worship in. It
has filed several applications for the use of one of the churches in Paris,
but as it does not come under any of the three recognized religions it can
receive no aid from the state. The congregation will be obliged to give up
its present temporary quarters in January, and will be obliged to build a
church. A suitable site has been obtained at a rental of $2,000 a year, and
it will erect an iron church on this at a probable cost of $9,200. Besides
this the congregation wishes to hire assistants for M. Loyson to help him
in his parochial work, so that he can devote himself to his preaching. The
English and American churchmen must help this movement. The expenses

i88o.] COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 299

of the congregation for the ensuing year, including the cost of 'the new
church, is estimated at $17,600, of which the congregation is expected to
contribute $2,600. The English and American churches must assist in order
to give permanence to the movement in France."

There is no reason whatever why the Episcopal Church
should take up M. Loyson. He does not believe as they do, and
the only point of sympathy is that he, an apostate and married
monk, is willing to preach against the Pope and the Catholic
Church. He needs, no doubt, bread for himself and family, but
the respectable Episcopalians will drag their skirts in the mud by
taking hold of him. He will never become a true Protestant nor
be able to found a fifth branch of the church. An article in the
New York Times takes precisely our view of the subject. It
places the truth in plain colors, and is worthy of commendation
to our Episcopalian brethren :

" The Protestant party in the Anglican Church must be well aware that
M. Loyson professes to believe all the doctrines put forth by the Council
of Trent the celibacy of the clergy being a matter not of doctrine but of
discipline. He rejects the decree of papal infallibility proclaimed by the
Vatican Council, but with that exception he is, in point of doctrine, as good
a Roman Catholic as Pope Leo himself. Why should Protestants give this
man $18,000 in order that he may continue to celebrate the Mass and to ad-
vocate, by example and precept, those doctrines which Protestants believe
to be false, blasphemous, and demoralizing ?

" As has been said, M. Loyson has, under the laws of the French Repub-
lic, a clear right to establish a church on a strictly marital foundation, but
he has no right to ask either Protestants or Catholics to give him money to
preach sermons in support of his right to marry. Such, in point of fact, is
understood to be the substance of the gospel which he preaches, and some
years ago a leading American Presbyterian minister, who was unwarily led
into M. Loyson's church, heard him preach a sermon on the physiological
aspects of marriage which the minister afterward characterized as disgust-
ing. To take money from American churchmen to support this French
comedian would be a miserable waste of charity, and it is a pity to find so
excellent a man as the Bishop of Edinburgh engaged in so mistaken a
business."

We believe that nearly all the new churches founded by apos-
tate priests and monks rest upon a marital foundation ; but why,
for the sake of striking the Catholic Church a blow she never
feels, should a respectable society risk its own reputation ?

The House of Bishops sent on October 22 the following mes-
sage to the Deputies :

"The House of Bishops informs the House of Deputies that it has
adopted the following preamble and resolution :

30o COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Dec.,

" Whereas, The Lambeth Conference of 1878 set forth the following de-
claration, to wit :

' We gladly welcome every effort for reform upon the model of the
primitive church. We do not demand a rigid uniformity, we deprecate
needless divisions, but to those who are drawn to us in the endeavor to free
themselves from the yoke of error and superstition we are ready to offer all
help and such privileges as may be acceptable to them and are consistent
with the maintenance of our own principles as enunciated in our formula-
ries, which declaration rests upon two indisputable historical facts : first,
that the body calling itself the Holy Roman Church has, by the decrees
of the Council of Trent in 1565, and by the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception in 1854, and by the decree of the infallibility of the pope
in 1870, imposed upon the consciences of all the members of the national
churches under its sway, as that faith, to be held as if implicitly necessary
to salvation, dogmas having no warrant in Holy Scripture or the ancient
creeds, which dogmas are so radically false as to corrupt and defile the
faith ; and, second, that the assumption of a universal episcopate by the bish-
op of Rome, making operative the definition of papal infallibility, has de-
prived of its original independence the episcopal order in the Latin churches,
and substituted for it a papal vicariate for the superintendence of dioceses,
while the virtual change of the divine constitution of the churches, as found-
ed in the episcopate and the other orders, into a Tridentine consolidation,
has destroyed the autonomy, if not the corporate existence, of national
churches.

" Now, therefore, the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the
United States of America, assembled in council as bishops in the church of
God, asserting the principles declared in the Lambeth Conference, and in
order to the maintaining of a true unity, which must be a unity in the truth,
do hereby affirm that the great primitive rule of the Catholic Church,
' Episcopatus unus cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur,' imposes upon the
episcopates of all national churches holding the primitive faith and order,
and upon the several bishops of the same, not the right only but the duty
also of protecting in the holding of that faith and recovering of that order
those who by the methods before described have been deprived of both.

"And, further, the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the
United States of America, assembled in council, not meaning to dispute the
validity of consecrations by a single consecrator, put on record their con-
viction that in the reorganization of Reformed churches with which we may
hope to have communion they should follow the teachings of the canons
of Nicaea, and that, where consecration cannot be had by three bishops of
the province, episcopal orders should at all events be conferred by three
bishops of national character."

This is literally a fearful thing for Catholics, who will no
doubt tremble when they see it. Yet we think it will produce
no more ^impression upon the Papacy than the many threats of
Luther, who predicted the end of Antichrist in his own time. A
body with bishops whose orders are rejected not only by the Ca-
tholic Church, but also by every heretical communion which has

i88o.] COMMENTARY UPON THE EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 301

an unquestioned succession, thus loudly talks of its ecclesiastical
authority, and prates of the Council of Nicsea and the rules
which govern the validity of consecration. Surely the arro-
gance of the decree exceeds its violation of the law of Catholic
unity. That respectable men with wives and children, and even
grandchildren, should so stultify themselves before the world is
incomprehensible. And its only consolation is to gather to itself
the shreds of schism and to encourage every revolter from the
Catholic Church, whatever be his faith or practice.

Sundry changes are proposed in the Prayer-Book which are
of little consequence to the world, but may prove convenient for
Episcopalians.

The report on " the state of the church " is, as usual, self-lauda-
tory, and endeavors to place the progress of the past three years
in a pleasant light. To us the growth seems very small, and the
outlay of money very great in proportion. We have no time
to examine here the items, but quote the language of Bishop
Robertson, of St. Louis, who seems to think there has been a loss
in church growth during the last few years :

" The dominating cause of the marked reduction in our rate of growth
during the last few years is the agitation which has been going on among
us in the matter of ritual. We are not as one before the world ; our Gene-
ral Council has its sessions absorbed with this belittling matter; activities
are wasted on party strifes, and in differences of bishops with presbyters
and rectors with parishes."

This convention, however, waived the whole matter as plea-
santly as possible, except that the bishops in their charge fail not
to strike a hard blow at the Ritualists. These are the words of
the prelates :

"A church reformed and purified in the fires of martyrdom, that shall
be ashamed of her own title, within whose walls shall be introduced, by
little and little, practices and rites once discarded, and which if they teach
anything teach errors once repudiated, that casts longing eyes back upon
the land of former bondage, can take no surer way to forfeit irretrievably
the confidence and respect of the American people."

These thrilling words, with all their feeling reference to "the
fires of martyrdom," will, we venture to say, produce no effect.
The Ritualists will go on as before with their practices, their imi-
tation of the Mass, their mediaeval vestments, and their confes-
sionals. In the Episcopal Church every man is his own pope.

The convention closed on the 2/th- of October with a charge
from the united episcopacy nearly as feeble as the presiding
bishop himself. There is the special laudation of this " great and

302 THE WIFE OF ST. NICANDER TO HER HUSBAND. [Dec.,

growing country " and the expression of charity to all. There is
no assertion of doctrine. The prelates who before denied bap-
tismal regeneration and the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist
are silent on all matters of faith. They, however, have the pre-
sumption to speak of their unity of belief, when it is well known
that their Articles contradict the offices of the Prayer-Book, and
that there is not the semblance of agreement among their minis-
ters or people. Probably there is no sect where there are so
many admitted contradictions in faith, where the same doctrine
in all points is proclaimed from no two pulpits of the commu-
nion. Still all must be covered over by the mantle of love,
though there is no living man, however acute his logic, who can
tell precisely what the Protestant Episcopal Church believes.

To our minds this convention has demonstrated the decadence of
the sect, for a living church is always sensitive as to differences in
faith. Among the children of heresy and schism agitation as to
creed is the sign of life, and harmony is the chill of death.

THE WIFE OF ST. NICANDER, MARTYR, TO HER

HUSBAND.

" And they, lifting up their eyes, saw no one, but only Jesus." MATT. xvii. 8.

BID thee renounce our God ! Who counsels so ?
I, that have held thine honor as my own,
Bid thee the crown of martyrdom lay down ?

The highest gift Rome's Caesar can bestow !

The mother of the sons of Zebedee

High place in heaven for her sons besought,

Blind to the thorns whereof such crowns are wrought

My love, as blind, had begged as much for thee.

To-day, Nicander, is Christ's chalice thine !
Shall my hand push it from thy lips aside,
My love be cause that unto thee denied

This draught of love immortal and divine?

Shall my fond arms, unkind, drag thee to earth ?

O Love ! without God's love, what were ours worth ?

i88o.] THE WIFE OF ST. NICANDER TO HER HUSBAND. 303

ii.

My soldier ! when, in those long-, haggard years,
The emperor thou serv'dst in foreign land
Faithful to Caesar through our Lord's command

Lo ! yearning for thee ever through my tears,

Each hour I prayed to see thy face again.
Perchance, a soldier's wife, I thought of fame
Crowning, with well-won grace, my husband's name

While knew his soul no battle passion's stain.

To-day I see thy face, O Love, how fair !

Not when mine eyes first looked on thee to love
Seem'dst thou so strong and true all men above

As now, too strong thine honor to forswear.

Bright had I held the glory of war's strife :

With Heaven's thou crownest me a martyr's wife !

in.

I have no fear that love shall make thee weak.
Not, faltering so, thou lovest me and thine

This little one, in whom thine eyes seek mine,
Whose ruddy lips for Jesus' sake would speak
Did any thought of yielding seize thy soul.

Ah ! Love, forgive ; not even would I in thought

Wrong the rich love wherewith thy heart is fraught :
Thou wilt not give Him part who gives the whole.
My woman's heart, to-day, is brave for thee,

And proud and fond to know thou canst not fail.

'Tis light from thy saint's-halo makes so pale
My cheek that else might blush thy shame to see
Lost unto God for all eternity
For one brief, bitter hour of earth with me !

IV.

Nor wilt thou doubt me that mine eyes are dry.

'Tis thy soul's fire, kindled the Cross beside,

That hath my tears, that might betray thee, dried.
Thou knowest, Love, that I for thee would die
Not less than thou for God to whom is owed

The very life we can lay down for him.

O happy chalice ! bubbling to the brim,
Christ's touch makes sweet the bitter-seeming flood.
O thorn-wreathed cup that I may drink with thee,

304 THE WIFE OF ST. NICANDER TO HER HUSBAND. [Dec.,

Pledging anew the promise of love's faith
That shall not fail when earth's life perisheth,
But still unbroken be eternally
Thou wilt not lose it, standing by God's throne ;
I still shall keep it, left on earth alone.

Alone '. Not so : his arms our little one
Still clasps about my neck, his face shall be
The earthly shrine wherein I still find thee,

His heart the sky where shineth still my sun,

While, far beyond the sun, the earthly shrine,
I shall look up to thee, my martyred love,
So longing, till Christ calleth me above

To gaze with thee upon his Face divine.

And this our little one shall learn to know
What heritage is his a martyr's blood,
Eternal life, the saints' beatitude.

Will he too prove a martyr, tutored so?

And I, like mother of the Machabees,

Be yet ennobled through my miseries.

Dreaming, I shall stretch out my hands to thee,
And waking, with Christ's loving mercy plead
Ever more near my feet to him, to thee, to lead.

Ah ! long the years that win my crown for me.

Nicander, Love, ah ! beg of our dear God
To leave near thee a little place in heaven
Where, all my poor self dead, my sins forgiven,

I reap with thee the glory he hath so\ved,

I praise with thee the sinless Lamb who died
That man might live. O faithful one, look up,
Thine angel nears thee with the bitter cup,

While unto thee sweet calls the Crucified.

For thee Mt. Thabor's bright felicity,

For me the shadow of Christ's Calvary.

VII.

Again forgive ; idle my wild words seem,
Belying the true service of my heart.
Unbid, my woman's sorrow still will start

To dim the glory of thine hour supreme.

i88o.] THE WIFE OF ST. NICANDER TO HER HUSBAND. 305

God might have chosen me to die, not thee
Better my anguish and my proud content
Than that fierce grief that would thy soul have rent
Witness of scorn and thy wife's agony.
Meetest for thee the glory of this day,
The royal grace of holy martyrdom
Whose light, through all the lingering years to come,
Will guide my feet along their lonely way,
While heaven's angels, knowing our true life,
Will pray God's pity for his martyr's wife.

VIII.

A little while, dear Love, and all is o'er,
Offered to God thy fullest sacrifice,
Opened thine earth-closed eyes in Paradise,

A sword-stroke, and God thine for evermore.

Not Cassar's triumph, filling pagan Rome

With roll of chariots, conquering eagles' gleam,
Knoweth least pulsing of the joy supreme

Awaiting thy brave soul in its far home.

Ah ! sweet is it, hath patriot soldier said,
For one's own land to die. Ah ! if so sweet
To perish for the soil beneath our feet,

What joy to die for heaven's pure sky o'erhead !

My soldier, 'neath Rome's eagles dost thou die

True patriot of thy native land on high.

IX.

My saint, even now my dim eyes see unfold

The clouds that lie 'twixt heaven's light and thee,

'Twixt sorrow's hour and joy's infinity :
Behind the shadow gleam the gates of gold
Whence angels, swift descending, cleave with sword,

For thy strong soul, a pathway unto God.

O Love, my life! Along the heavenly road
He comes to greet thee Christ ! our Blessed Lord !.
So hath he looked when on his breast divine

The loved disciple lay his trusting head,

So upon Stephen was his glory shed.
O God ! that I dare call thy martyr mine !
To thee I render him thou gavest me :
Thy love is even from eternity.

VOL. XXXII. 20

306 THE ORCADES. [Dec.,

THE ORCADES.

"I love all waste

And solitary places ; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless as we wish our souls to be :
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows."

SHELLEY.

AMONG the places over which Scott has cast the glamour of his
genius are the Orkney and Shetland islands, which, though they
lie in the cold northern seas, under a pale leaden sky, and are poor,
barren, and melancholy, are nevertheless interesting on account of
their ancient traditions of jarls and sea-kings, and the legends of
mediaeval saints not yet forgotten in the places where they labor-
ed and prayed. There are a good many old Pictish towers on
the coasts, some monuments of Druidical or Scandinavian rites,
two or three historic castles in ruins, and, what is of more interest
to the Catholic heart, at least one imposing church built over
the tombs of the saints, besides other traces of the ancient faith.
These islands, too, strike the eye with the unique character of
their bare, treeless landscapes, their broad wastes and moorlands,
and the steep cliffs and bold headlands against which the seas
have dashed and roared in vain for thousands of years.

The Orkneys are now very easily reached by way of Thurso,
the terminus of the railway to the northernmost coast of Scotland.
This town stands on the bay of Thurso and is the chief place in
Caithness. The country around, once clothed with forests, is
now bare and desolate, but it has a certain grandeur of aspect.
There are no trees but the elder, poplar, birch., and hazel, and
these by no means abound. Vast moors and sheep -pastures are
to be seen in every direction. The fields are enclosed by stone
walls, for hedges cannot be induced to grow. This is the land
of gray mists and low-trailing clouds, of driving winds and beat-
ing storms such as Dante describes:

" Eterna, maladetta, fredda e grave."

You find yourself at once in Norseland, as it were. Thurso is
so called from Thor, the old Scandinavian divinity and there are,
endless creeks, and bays, and inlets called by Norwegian names.
The names of the domains generally end m ster, the Scandinavian
word for farm, as Thrumster, Stemster, Scrabster, etc. Holborn
Head, at one extremity of Thurso Bay, derives its name from
Holla, the goddess of hell, as if to express the terrors of the

i8So.] THE ORCADES. 307

abyss beneath, where many a bark has gone down for ever. And
there are many prehistoric castles on the tall cliffs, now mostly
in ruins, that were undoubtedly the strongholds of old vikings
who once ruled these northern seas. All along the coast
these bold- cliffs rise straight up from the sea, forming a bulwark
against the mighty current of Pentland Frith, between the main-
land and the Orkneys, dangerous to the shipping even in calm
weather. These cliffs are of old red sandstone, and are often
worn into fantastic shapes by the incessant dashing of the strong
waves. Enormous hollows are also made in the sides, leaving
the slate cropping out. These hollows, called goes or gyoes, are
sometimes a mile or two in depth, though generally much less.
The sea pours into them with awful violence in stormy weather,
sending up through the crevices and vents great jets of foam
and spray. In some of the mysterious caverns thus formed the
old spaewives sang the wild songs which Gray so happily caught
the spirit of in his " Fatal Sisters."

Thurso in Catholic times was an episcopal see, and there are
the remains of its old church of St. Peter to testify its devotion
to the apostolic chair. The bishop's castle, built with an eye to
the beautiful, is admirably situated west of the town, with a fine
view in the rear over the heathery hills of Forss, which gradually
rise up from a basin, and still finer seaward with the Orkneys in
full sight beyond the stormy frith, the Man of Hoy standing out
at the west like a sentinel watching over land and sea.

There is a regular steamboat from Thurso to the Orkneys,
and a sail thither is delightful in pleasant weather, but those who
wish to explore them must then take a private boat, that they
may wander along the coasts at will. There are a great number
of these islands, but only fifteen of any size, and these are mostly
covered with peat-bogs and marshes. The few trees and shrubs
are regarded by the people as of immense importance. In for-
mer times they boasted of a rowan, one of those mysterious trees
once considered a protection against evil influences, and they be-
lieved the fate of the islands so bound up in its preservation that
if one leaf were carried away they would pass into foreign hands.
Along the shores are numerous inlets and coves around which
the inhabitants chiefly live. Hoy is the most picturesque oi\
these islands on account of its tripartite mountain a mountain
that rises directly up from the sea and divides into three parts,
besides being otherwise rent and riven into strange, curious
shapes. Some of these tall cliffs are like turrets and spires, and
they are often black with the sea-birds that build their nests in
the inaccessible crevices. Sometimes they are clothed with thick

308 THE ORCADES. [Dec.,

mists, and the ravines that separate them are full of gloom and
mystery. The mountain- sides are furrowed with deep seams, on
the edges of which grow a few low bushes, and the bare summits
are the haunt of the eagle, the osprey, and other birds of prey.
The highest peak is called Ward Hill, a name commonly^ given
in these isles to the heights that seem to keep watch and ward
over the whole region. On the northern slope, among barrows
and cairns, is the famous Dwarfie Stone, an immense fragment of
rock swept down from the mountain by the elements. This
stone is regarded with awe by the common people on account of
a small chamber or two evidently hollowed out by tools, but for-
merly believed to have been the work of a trolld, or drow, or
daemon. You enter by a low passage and find yourself in a little
room lighted by an aperture at the top. Here are two stone
couches, hewn out, according to the old belief, by no human hand,
for the dwarf and his wife who once lived here. Beyond is a
smaller room. Some suppose these to be the cells of ancient
Christian anchorites, but there is no religious symbol whatever.
It is certain, nevertheless, that the Orkneys and Shetlands were
visited at a very early period by monks and hermits who, pleased
with the wild solitude and the boundless sea around them
" image," as Mme. de Stael says, " of that infinitude which is con-
stantly attracting the soul and in which it is constantly losing
itself " established hermitages and oratories in all these isles of
the northern seas, as many old inscriptions and documents testify.
When the Northmen began to infest these coasts the hermits, and
even the people, were driven out or slain. It was then the
trollds and dwarfs were believed to have taken up their abode in
these caves, for they loved places polluted by blood and crying
sins. They are said to have wrought curiously in the precious
metals a variety of articles that brought good luck to the wearer.

" I trow 'twas a goodly sight to see

The dwarfs with their aprons on,
A-hammering and smelting so busily
Pure gold from the rough brown stone."

Norna of the Fitful Head, in Scott's Pirate, hung a chain of
gold around Mordaunt's neck wrought by the drows in the
secret recesses of their caverns. And Loke, in the Danish bal-
lad, goes to the sea-worn caves of the dwarfs, " his kinsmen
small," saying :

" And thence for Sif new tresses I'll bring

Of gold, ere the daylight's gone,
So that she shall liken a field in spring,
With its yellow-flowered garment on." '

i88o.] THE ORCADES. 309

Many of these old superstitions still cling to the people in the
most remote of the islands. Some of them are embodied in the
ancient songs and incantations of the Norns the weird women
who spent their lives

" Weaving many a soldier's doom,
Orkney's woe and Randver's bane."

The people have also many tales of witches and goblins which
are associated with the lonely moors, the gray, solitary stones
that used to witness unhallowed rites, the mist-covered cliffs and
headlands with their ruined towers of the old Berserkers, and
the inaccessible caves into which man never ventured, but where
the sea boldly rushes with a roar too awful not to excite a super-
stitious fear.

On Ward Hill it is said an enchanted carbuncle used to be
seen afar off burning with a strange light, but disappeared when
people ascended in search of it. Norna of the Fitful Head tells
how she sat by the Dvvarfie Stone with her eyes fixed on this
gleaming jewel. It was, in fact, among the wild mountains of
Hoy her father took her in her girlhood to separate her from
Basil Vaughan.

Pomona is the largest of the Orkneys, a name hardly war-
ranted by the aspect of the island, which is covered for the most
part with heaths and brown, treeless marshes, with here and there
a lakelet or loch. Everything is desolate and melancholy. The
very tints of the landscape are gray and sombre, and the rude
stone houses that dot the country are anything but cheerful and
attractive. You must love storms and tempests, and the mys-
terious voices of the loud winds, and the mists varying in hue
with every light, and the broad waste of waters, to feel the at-
traction of this cheerless region. The shores are more inte-
resting with their strange cliffs and the secluded bays and inlets
that indent them. At the head of one of these bays stands Kirk-
wall, the chief town in the islands. It goes wandering up the
hill in the rear, as if to overlook the harbor. Coming in from the
sea it strikes the eye very pleasantly, with its venerable cathedral
looming up in the midst. The latter is seen afar off, and the
solemn peal of the bells is heard across the bay from

"The wide-watered shore
Swinging slow with sullen roar."

Kirkwall is an ancient town with one long, narrow street and
numerous diverging lanes. The houses are of stone, with steep
roofs, and there are two or three ruined palaces or castles, an

310 THE ORCADES. [Dec.,

ancient gateway or two, and a few fountains. The church is a
massive, imposing edifice surrounded by a graveyard. Here we
felt on no debatable ground, but on a part of our spiritual birth-
right, consecrated with Catholic rites, bell, book, and candle, and
long hallowed by the tombs of the saints. This cathedral is dedi-
cated to St. Magnus, and is the only one north of the Tweed,
except that of St. Mungo at Glasgow, which escaped destruc-
tion at the hands of the " Reformers." We were surprised to
find so grand a church in this remote island. It is, as Andrew
Fairservice said of St. Mungo's, " a brave kirk nane o' yere
whigmaleeries and open-steek hems about it a' solid, weel-jointed
mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep hand and
gunpowther aff it." It is of the heavy Norman style, cruciform
in shape, two hundred and sixty feet long, with some good tra-
cery in the windows, especially at the east. You enter by a
deep-sunk archway, the ribs and mouldings of which are some-
what hacked and scarred as if it had been found hard to spare it.
No saints have been left to guard the portal. The eastern that
is, the most sacred portion has been railed off for the Protestant
service, and here some deal pews have been set up among the
ancient carved wood-work. Among them is the old pew of Sir
Patrick Stewart, Earl of the Orkneys, with his cipher and coat-
of-arms. The remainder of the church, is of no use now, and the
desolate aspect of the lofty nave that used to witness the magnifi-
cent rites of the church, and the gloom of the aisles with their
long rows of columns, is indescribable. A few old tombstones
still remain, but the shrines of the saints have been swept away.
It was in one of these dusky aisles the high-minded Minna Troil
met the pirate Cleveland.

St. Magnus was the great-grandson of Earl Sigurd, for whom
the gray-women of Caithness " wove the web and wove the
warp " of destiny. He did more than any one else to establish
Christianity in these northern isles ; that is, after their occupation
by the barbarous Norwegians, for St. Palladius had planted the
faith here long before and left St. Sylvester as the chief pastor.
St. Kentigern also sent missionaries here in the sixth century,
and St. Conran was bishop of Kirkwall in the seventh a man of
austere life and great zeal. There were several monasteries on
the islands in his day, the largest of which was at Kirkwall.

The earldom of Orkney was established by Harald Harfagri,
King of Norway, in 872, and given to Jarl Rognvald, who made it
over to his brother Sigurd, a convert to Christianity. The latter
was succeeded by Thorfinn, his son. Thorfinn had two sons,

i88o.] THE OKCADES. 311

Paul and Erland. Erland was the father of Magnus, the great
saint of the Orkneys, whereas Paul's son Hakon leaned to the
old heathenish beliefs and consulted spaewives as to his fortunes.
St. Magnus was a man of noble presence, and he had a lofty
nature. He was rnild and gentle in private life, but brave and
fearless in battle, for he belonged to a race that called dying in
one's bed "a cow's death " a fate dreaded above all by the old
vikings. St. Magnus, however, would not fight unless in a good
cause. It is related that, going with the king of Norway to the
west on one of his piratical expeditions, he was in a battle off
Anglesea, but sat still on deck without arms. The king demanded
an explanation. Magnus replied that he had nothing against
any one on the other side, and therefore would not fight. The
king tauntingly said if he did not dare fight he would do better
to get out of the way. Magnus paid no heed to the taunt, and
instead of seeking a shelter he took a Psalter, and, remaining in
the same exposed place, sang psalms all the time of the battle.
The king being incensed, St. Magnus took refuge in Scotland till
after his death, when he returned to the Orkneys, which were now
divided between him and his cousin Hakon. Those of the in-
habitants who clung to heathenism upheld the interests of Earl
Hakon, but the Christians naturally rallied around St. Magnus.
This led to a feud. A meeting being appointed between the two
earls to adjust their rights, Hakon treacherously came with more
vessels and men than had been agreed upon. Defence was use-
less, and Magnus, unwilling to expose the lives of his followers,
allowed himself to be taken, and was slain kneeling in prayer for
his murderers. The spot where he fell became covered with the
brightest greensward something marvellous in the Orkneys, and
naturally considered emblematic of the freshness and verdure
that entered into their idea of the Paradise whither his soul had
fled. Bright lights and sweet odors were perceived around his
grave, and people went there to be healed. The spot where he
was slain is still pointed out on Mayar Island. His share of the
Orkneys was claimed by his nephew Kali, who made a vow to
build a church in honor of St. Magnus should he succeed in es-
tablishing his rights. He ultimately became sole ruler of the
islands under the name of Rognvald, and was the most prosperous
of the earls. Faithful to his vow, he began the cathedral of
Kirkwall* in 1137, and, when it was completed, had the remains
of St. Magnus brought here and enshrined with great solemnity.
He afterwards made a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem, and

* The name of Kirkwall is derived from kirkin-vagr the creek of the kirk.

3i2 THE ORCADES. [Dec.,

was absent three years. It is related that he and his followers
bathed in the sacred Jordan, and tied knots in the bushes on the
banks after the Norse fashion. He was greatly beloved in the
Orkneys and styled "the holy earl," and, being slain in Caithness
in 1158, was, at the wish of the people, canonized by Pope Celes-
tin III. in 1192. His grandson, Harald Ungi, who died Earl of
Orkney in 1198, was also regarded as a saint, and miracles took
place at his tomb in the cathedral of St. Magnus, where was also
the shrine of St. Rognvald.

The Orkney and Shetland islands belonged to Norway till
1468, when James III. of Scotland married Margaret the Fair,
who received these islands as her dowry, from which time they
were united to the Scottish crown.

The remains of the first bishop of Kirkwall were found in a
stone coffin in 1848 with an inscription to identify them ; but in
1856, when the cathedral was undergoing some repairs, all the
bones of the early bishops were carted off as rubbish, and the
relics of the sainted earls seem to have shared the same fate, then
or at some other time.

The so-called bicker of St. Magnus, a tankard of enormous
size long preserved at Kirkwall, was, according to Scott we
know not on what authority presented to each new bishop of the
Orkneys with the expectation he should empty it at a draught as
a certain means of ensuring a crop of unusual fertility a feat, we
should think, worthy of Tonneau Mirabeau. " By the bicker of
St. Magnus," exclaimed Claude Halcro, using his favorite asseve-
ration as he addressed the hospitable Magnus Troil, " I believe
that ere a friend wanted you could, like old Luggie the warlock,
fish up boiled and roasted out of the pool of Kibster." Hospital-
ity, in fact, was carried to a great length in these islands. It
was infamous for a man of substance to have his door shut, lest,
as it was said, the stranger should come and behold his contract-
ed soul. Bolts and bars used to be unknown in the Orkneys and
Shetlands, " thanks to St. Ronald." There was only one lock, on
the old castle of Scalloway, which every one went to see out of
curiosity. " The blessing of God and St. Ronald on the open
door," cried Norna of the Fitful Head at the entrance of Harfra,
" and their broad malison and mine upon close-handed churls ! "
St. Ronald is no other than St. Rognvald, " the holy earl,"
whose memory is preserved in the islands by the common names
of Ronald, Ronaldson, Ronaldshaw, etc. Scott relates that the
Shetland fishermen in stormy weather would still vow an or emus
to St. Ronald and acquit themselves of the obligation by throw-
ing a piece of money into the window of the saint's chapel. " Ye

i88o.] THE ORCADES. 313

had much better say an oraaraus to St. Ronald and fling- a sax-
pence over your left shouther, master," said Tronda. He also
describes the ruined chapel of St. Ringan, prohibited by the " re-
formed " clergy on account of the people's obstinate attachment
to it. It stood, half filled up with sand, on the shore of one of
those secluded bays in the Shetlands, and the boatmen, before set-
ting off on a cruise, used to go and vow an aymous or alms to St.
Ringan, putting off their shoes at the entrance of the churchyard
and walking thrice around the ruins, taking care to follow the
course of the sun, and then dropping their coin through the mul-
lions of the lanceolated window. Here Norna was found by the
elder Mertoun stripping a piece of lead from the coffin of an old
warrior for one of her charms. Other saints have their names
perpetuated in these isles. There are Daminsey, or St. Adam-
nan's isle ; Rinansey, or St. Ninian's isle, and several bays with
like venerated names.

Near the cathedral are the ruins of the old episcopal residence
built by Bishop Reid in the time of James V. on the site of a more
ancient edifice where Earl Haco died. Close by are the remains
of the earl's palace built by Patrick Stewart, now desolate like
the walls of Balclutha, where the coarse grass grows and the moss
whistles to the wind. They are the haunt of innumerable sea-
birds. The thick walls are now crumbling away, but enough re-
mains to show the fine proportions of the building, as well as
other marks of the ancient grandeur of the earls of Orkney. The
great banqueting-hall is still to be seen, though roofless, and the
tracery of the fine Gothic windows that lighted it, as well as the
immense fii eplace and carved mantel supported by pillars. Winding
stairs lead to the turrets, and beneath the edifice are damp, gloomy
vaults perhaps once used as a prison. Earl Patrick was an arrogant
man and chose for his device the presumptuous words, Sic fuit,
est, et erit, but he was finally tried and executed at Edinburgh for
the arbitrary exercise of his power in the Orkneys and for de-
fending the castle of Kirkwall against the troops of James VI.

North of Kirkwall is Whitford Hill, where Cleveland and his
facetious friend, Jack Bunce, went to avoid the crowd at the fair
of St. Olla. From this hill there is a fine view of all the Ork-
neys, which look like mere patches floating in the sea. The sea
itself is dotted with white-bosomed sails, and in the distance you
see the dark-brown hills of Caithness, among them the tall peak
of rocky Morven, the home of wandering blasts.

The fair of St. Olla is still kept up, and is the great event of
the year. It derives its name from St. Olaf, the Norwegian king
who did so much to promote Christianity in his realm. It begins

THE ORCADES. [Dec.,

on his feast-day, August 3, and continues nearly through the
month. It is a time of general festivity, and people gather from
all the islands around, including the Shetland's. Bark after bark
comes laden with the fishermen and their wives. You are con-
stantly expecting to see Magnus Troil and his fair daughters
land amid the excited throng. All kinds of northern games take
place, and the scene is very animated, especially when the men
get somewhat " fou taegither," as they are apt to do. It is the
best opportunity of studying the manners of the people.

Stromness is another town on Pomona Island, but it is a place
of little interest, chiefly inhabited by fishermen. The men are ab-
sent part of the year, which gives the women leisure to gossip in
the market-place, where it is amusing to see them, in their home-
spun dresses, wooden shoes, and deep-bordered caps, gathered
about the public fountain. One crooked street paved with flag-
stones goes meandering along the shore, from which mere alleys
straggle up the hill, none of which are wide enough for a cart.
The houses are somewhat quaint, with their thick stone walls to
resist the northern blasts, and steep roofs to shed the frequent
rains. North of Stromness, near a tongue of land extending into
the water, almost meeting another tongue, is one of the sacred
circles of old Norse rites, called the Standing Stones of Stennis,
composed of great shafts of gray stone from twelve to eighteen
feet high, looking weird and pale through the mists, like the
ghosts of departed superstitions. They stand in a semicircle,
with a flat sacrificial stone in the centre, and near it is an upright
shaft with a hole in the top, where betrothals and other solemn
covenants used to be made by joining hands through the aper-
ture. This was called giving " the promise of Odin," and was
the most sacred of northern rites that had come down from an-
cient times. Whoever violated such a solemn contract was re-
garded as infamous. Minna Troil offered to bind herself to
Cleveland by the promise of Odin.

The poems of Ossian * frequently allude to the circle of Loda
or Odin and the mossy stone of power. When Grurnal was
overpowered by Craca he was placed in the horrid circle of
Brumo, where the ghosts of the dead were said to howl around
the stone of their fear. And Fingal had recourse to the gray-
haired Snivan that often sang round the circle of Loda, when the
stone of power heard his voice and battle turned in the field of
the valiant.

The stone of betrothal was sometimes called a Traunstein,
from traun, signifying betrothed. Miigge, in his romance of Af-

* MacPherson's Ossian. ED. C. W.

i88o.] THE ORCADES. 315

raja, speaks of a sacred circle of stones in Lapland, called a Saita,
into which the bride was led by her father and there solemnly de-
livered to her husband. And Marstrand is represented as sleep-
ing within one of these magic circles, the hewn stones of which,
marked with curious lines and furrows, had been set up by Jubi-
nal himself Jubinal, whose eyes see into the hearts of all who
call on him, and who suffers neither falsehood nor deceit within
the limits consecrated to his service.

Children used to be passed through the perforated stones of
these circles to ensure them against the palsy. In England and
Scotland great virtue was, in fact, attributed to any stones with
a natural hole in them. Small ones, called " holy stones," were
hung around the necks of cattle as a charm. There was a holed
stone in Cornwall celebrated for the cure of diseases.

The circle of Stennis is surrounded by barrows. There are,
in fact, a great number of mounds in the Orkneys. The largest,
which is thirty feet high and ninety in diameter, has been opened
and a chamber found, walled and paved with slabs covered with
Runic characters. It is probably the tomb of some old vi-
king.

Half-way between the Orkney and Shetland islands is Fair
Isle, a solitary islet about three miles long, with tall, weather-
beaten cliffs that rise dark and ominous from the sea, torn to their
bases by tempests. Mordaunt promised Minna Troil some fea-
thers if an eagle could be found on Fair Isle or Foulah, and these
cliffs are still a favorite shelter for the bird of Jove. The people
are hardy arid of aquatic habits. They live mostly by fishing,
and their boats are sharp-pointed to enable them to shoot safely
between the lofty cliffs ; but there is a little pasture-land to the
east where a few sheep are raised, and even some barley grown.
The Duke of Medina-Sidonia, commander of the Invincible Ar-
mada, was wrecked in these perilous seas and obliged to winter
on this desolate isle a contrast indeed to sunny Spain. The
frugal islanders long retained a bitter recollection of his appro-
priating their winter stores. The Udaller of Burgh Westra
says : " I hate all Spaniards since they came here and reft the
Fair Isle men of all their vivers in 1558."

Between Fair Isle and Mainland is the Roost, a swift, danger-
ous current greatly dreaded by sailors. The first glimpse of the
latter is, of course, Sumburgh Head, where the pirate Cleveland
was wrecked. It is an immense mass of old red sandstone that
rises almost perpendicularly up from the water seven hundred
feet, and the sea in a storm pours furiously through the Roost with
a roar like thunder, dashing against the rock with terrible force

316 THE ORCADES. [Dec.,

and rising to a tremendous height, beaten into clouds of snow-
white foam. It is a spectacle awful in its wild rage, and, once
seen, can never be forgotten. One would not like to be wrecked
on this coast, especially if there be a remnant of the old supersti-
tion that ill-luck comes from a person saved from drowning.

The Shetlands are even more desolate than the Orkneys, be-
ing entirely treeless and almost devoid of shrubs and 'grass.
They are, however, far more grand. The shores are bordered
with immense cliffs, rent and torn into every imaginable shape,
some like tall pinnacles, others rounded and massive like stern
donjon keeps, and in the sides are awful caverns into which man
never ventured fit abode of the old Norse daemons.

" Rocks on rocks in mist and storm arrayed
Stretch far to sea their giant colonnade,
With many a cavern seamed, the dreary haunt
Of the dun seal and swarthy cormorant.
Wild round their rifted brows with frequent cry,
As of lament, the gulls and gannets fly,
And from their sable base with sullen sound,
In sheets of whitening foam, the waves rebound."

Among these cliffs are many narrow passages through which
it looks venturesome for boats to pass, and at night, when they
have lanterns on their prows, you can see them darting into the
black, cavern-like abysses as if to certain destruction, the songs of
the boatmen echoing among the rocks with a prolonged, melan-
choly wail. In midsummer, however, the nights are never dark.
The protracted twilight meets the early dawn in " some wee
short hour ayont the twal," and the tender, subdued light that
everywhere reigns gives a wonderful beauty to sea and cliff, and
even to the dark brown moors. The shores are always grand with
their stupendous cliffs, but the interior of the islands is frightful-
ly desolate by daylight. The marshy wastes rustle with the dry,
coarse grass, and the rocky heaths are covered with ragged furze
and parched fern, dismal indeed to the eye. Here roam troops
of shaggy ponies like those that bore Barbara Yellowley and her
brother to the festival of St. John at Burgh Westra.

Lerwick is the chief place on Mainland. It is a mere fishing
town on Bressay Sound, which is usually alive with boats. The
houses are low, with small windows and pointed gables. Those
with most pretension to elegance have a little walled garden,
where a few plants are sheltered and sometimes coaxed into
blossom. The men are all fowlers, sheep-raisers, peat-cutters, or
fishermen. You see women carrying peat into town in great
sacks, between which they sit on their frowzy ponies. They are

i88o.] THE ORCADES. '317

oftener seen, however, knitting all kinds of woollen articles, es-
pecially the delicate shawls so well known in the market. In
Scott's day the Shetland wool and knitting were in as much
repute as in ours. He thus writes the Duke of Buccleugh from
these islands :

" Had your order related to night-caps and hose,
Or mittens of worsted, there's plenty of those."

Scalloway is a mere collection of rude houses hardly worthy
of being called a town. It is situated, however, on a beautiful
bay, of which you have a fine view from the ruins of the old
castle of Patrick Stewart which stands on the hill above, roofless,
crumbling, and given up to sea-birds. The iron ring is still in
the walls from which the inexorable earl used to hang offenders.

Noss Island, opposite Lerwick, is rough, barren, and dreary,
like the rest, with only one family on it. For weeks at a time it
cannot be reached, the current around is so strong. Here is a
tumulus, or mound, with an interior chamber like that in the
Orkneys, but now walled up. On the shore is a tremendous cliff
seven hundred feet high, and severed from it is an immense frag-
ment of the same height, called the Holm of Noss, that seems to
defy the power of the German Ocean for ever beating against it.
Between is a dark, narrow passage about one hundred feet wide,
through which the sea rushes with a fury absolutely appalling.
These two cliffs are the resort of eider-ducks and other sea-birds,
and the fowlers who go in search of eggs and feathers cross this
awful abyss in a basket drawn across from cliff to cliff by means
of ropes a feat that requires great boldness and dexterity.

On many of the headlands and points of vantage in these isl-
ands are ruined burghs or towers of ancient Pictish or Scandina-
vian times, now only inhabited by the osprey and other birds.
One of these is on Fitful Head, a cliff that looks off on the stormy
northern sea with a daring aspect. Those who like to sit aloof
from their fellow-men, spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity, could
have no better place to contemplate the stars and study the ele-
ments and all the kindred branches of the occult sciences. Here
lived Norna, exercising strange power over the very elements.
Her prototype, however, belonged in Stromness, where she gained
her living by selling favorable winds to sailors after the fashion of
many a Lapland witch. All the weird-women of the north, indeed,
pretended to sway the winds and waves by the virtue of some
supernatural power. Norna, with her charm of lead, promised
that the wildest winds of heaven should subside as they approach-
ed the warrior's tomb from which it had been torn :

318 THE ORCADES. [Dec.,

" For this the sea

Shall smooth its ruffled crest for thee,
And while afar its billows foam,
Subside to peace near Ribolt's tomb.

" For this the might
Of wild winds raging at their height,
When to thy place of slumber nigh
Shall soften to a lullaby."

The ghosts of deceased warriors, in fact, were supposed in
Fingal's time to rule the storms. "O'moon!" said Cuthullin,
" light his white sails on the wave, and if any strong spirit of hea-
ven sits on that low-hung cloud, turn his dark ships from the
rock, thou rider of the storm ! "

Eric of the Windy Hair, King of Sweden, celebrated through-
out the north for his knowledge of the hidden arts, made daemons
his familiars and caused the wind to change in whatever direc-
tion he turned his hair, whence his name of Ventosus Pileus.
And the sorceress King Olaf had put to death when the cup of
her iniquity was full made a profession of dispensing storm or
sunshine at her mere pleasure.

The most curious tower in the Shetlands, however, is on an
island in a loch near Lerwick. It is shaped like a mortar or dice-
box, with no windows in the outer wall. The stones that com-
pose the wall are merely laid on one another without any cement,
and the rooms only open on an interior court. Here Erland, an
ancient sea-rover, took shelter with a Norwegian princess he had
borne off from her native land. Her son, Harald the Fair, pur-
sued them and besieged this tower, but at length had to compro-
mise by allowing the princess to marry her captor.

All these legends and traditions invest the Orkneys and Shet-
lands with a poetic atmosphere, somewhat vague and misty like
the gauzy veil around their shores, but they have in themselves,
in spite of their desolate aspect, an indescribable fascination. The
broacl, solemn wastes, the bird-haunted cliffs, the mighty current
of waters over which the old sea-kings of the north rode triumph-
ant, and where the proud Spaniard was wrecked ; the mysterious
caverns where lived strange dwarfs, sorcerers, and dasmons, now
hoarsely echoing the roar of the waves ; the impenetrable mists
that so often shroud land and sea, all appeal to the imagination
with great power, and one takes leave of them with regret. The
very absence of the trees gives a peculiar attraction to the land-
scape, and one is sometimes tempted to say with Jeannie Deans -
" I like as weel to look at the craigs of Arthur's Seat, and the sea
coming in ayont them, as at a* thae muckle trees."

iSSo.J A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 3 J 9

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER V.

AT THE OPERA.

DR. KILLANY had chosen the evening of Parepa-Rosa's appear-
ance in which to acquaint Nano with the danger to which she
was hourly exposed. Amid the enchantments of a brilliant as-
semblage and sweet music, at a time when her heart would be
most powerfully affected by the glamour of wealth and power, in
the silence and retirement of the box, he would make known to
her the exact position of her father and of herself towards society.
He would paint with the hand of an artist the frailty of the hold
which she had on riches and station, her nearness to poverty and
disgrace, and in the alarm and excitement of the moment he
would thrust his advice and assistance upon her, and make her,
willing or unwilling, as circumstances might direct, his accom-
plice or tool in the wickedness he meditated. The difficulties
with which he had to contend had all been studied. Noble
naturally noble was Nano's character. The bare idea of rob-
bing the orphan of his right would have made her shudder;
and with a strong sense of honor, based rather on transcendental
sentiment than on any fixed principles, she would have faced the
direst sufferings in preference to enjoying wealth that was not
her own. Her love for her father was of custom, not filial. He
had never done anything to cherish the natural affection which
once glowed in her breast. He was hard and stern till years of
remorse began to weaken him, and the full knowledge of his
criminal neglect with its mournful consequences came, a Banquo
at the feast, to fill his soul with horror and alarm. She did not
disguise from him her indifference, nor from the world ; but, with
a keen appreciation of what nature, culture, and society demand-
ed, sbe would never, unless secretly, and pressed, too, by hard ne-
cessity, permit herself to be led into doing him positive injury.

For these difficulties Killany had prepared his antidotes, as he
was pleased to call them. For he looked upon these ideas and
prejudices as poisons which had stolen into her nature, or which,
already there, education had failed to remove. He was to per-
form that office. Like him, she was henceforth to be an adven-

320 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

turess, and have done alike with prejudices and principles. He
would prove to her, truly if possible, falsely if necessary, that the
heirs of the misappropriated fortune were dead. One grand diffi-
culty was then removed. It was but common sense that in prefer-
ence to the state she should retain the wealth which her father had
struggled for twenty years to preserve and increase. If he per-
sisted in his intention of bestowing an equivalent sum upon the
poor, as he would be bound to do according to Catholic teaching,
then the argument of poverty and disgrace was only necessary to
win her into gentle violence towards him. It was true, he would
leave her a sum sufficient to maintain her present rank, but with
diminished splendor. To a woman of her broad, grasping ambi-
tion this was not enough. She would have all or nothing. Kil-
lany, therefore, trusted to this ambition, when properly roused, to
do his devil's work. This medical Mephistopheles would wake it
in her breast by showing to her the heights which she might have
reached, and comparing them with the abysses of contempt into
which she had fallen. Total obscurity would be more endurable
than the scorn of her own. He intended to threaten her, if neces-
sary, although he knew full well that with her it was a dangerous
experiment. All these things, however, were to be dealt with in
turn. To-night he was to inform her of her father's sin and to fill
her mind with dread misgivings, leaving time to develop his
deeper and dark intriguings.

It annoyed him that Nano had an angel whose influence for
good was dangerously powerful. Olivia, in her two short years
of hired companionship, had wound herself around her mistress'
heart. The grandeur and complexity of Nano's nature forced
her to admire the simplicity and sweetness of this modest girl,
whose virtues, although she had but the shadow of her talent, far
outshone anything which it had ever been Nano's fortune to meet.
Acquainted in a trifling way with the philosophies of every school
save that which taught the truth, ready with objections to every
form of religion, but especially to the Catholic, and even sneering-
ly indifferent to the existence of God, both Nano and Killany were
astonished, bewildered, and charmed to find that this young lady, by
a simple question naturally put and not profoundly logical, qould
overturn many high-spun arguments, and by a simpler demon-
stration give them a theological nut which no transcendental
sophistry could crack. Alas ! the devil of culture made void their
efforts to discover the rule upon which Olivia seemed to base all
her philosophy. They were delighted with the discovery of beau-
ties of which they had never dreamed, and made use of them to

1 8 So.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 321

ornament their discourses and startle their clique with their
Seneca-like originality. Killany now looked upon Olivia as his
enemy, as before he had looked upon her with dislike. Hating her
very heartily, and being a very unscrupulous man, there were not
wanting to him either desires or opportunities to do her harm ;
and his intrigues in that respect, his mean, unmanly stabbing in
the dark, worked Olivia much harm in after-days. Slander is a
two-edged weapon, however, and not rarely wounds him who
gives the blow as severely as him to whom it is given.

The scene in the theatre on the opening night of the series
of operas was brilliant and animated. The gaudy theatre, about
whose very appearance there is something mysteriously attrac-
tive ; the glare of the many lamps, which flung their radiance on
the hundreds of forms below, reflecting infinite glitterings from
the bright eyes and the jewelled throats, and arms, and fingers of
the ladies ; the sheen of rich costumes on every side ; the murmur
of many voices tremulous with emotions of joy, or curiosity, or
mirth ; the comings and goings of youth, and wealth, and beauty;
and over. all the music of the orchestra filling in the gaps and
pauses of conversation, and falling, a shower of sweet sounds, on
the audience, are circumstances which, when combined, render the
whole a memorable and a pleasurable thing. The mimic world-
shut off from view by the drop-curtain is an inexhaustible subject
of conversation. The personality of the actors, the characters of
the play, the sympathy to be excited, the indignation at wrong-
doing, the elation at merited and unexpected success, keep young
hearts, and old ones too, not seldom in pleasant and exhilarating
tension. And often the comedies and tragedies off the stage are
of a more interesting though more complicated character than the
mimic play.

The curtain was rising for the first &ct when Killany and^
Nano entered the theatre. The attention of the audience being
directed to the stage, they escaped all but the usual quantum of
staring from the habitue's at the door, and were fairly seated in;
full view at the balustrade before society became aware of the
presence of two of its brightest luminaries. Then there were
many little bows of courtesy from every side, which the elegant
physician acknowledged so gently and gracefully that none might
be aware of the condescension save the happy recipients. Nano
was in full dress and exceptionally brilliant. Her costume and
diamonds were dazzling, and with the quiet, of her manner, and
her evident beauty, formed a verging.-point for those engines of
polite because tolerated rudeness, opera-glasses. Transcendental-
VOL. xxxii. 21

322 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

ism enjoyed a triumph whenever she appeared. " A woman of
culture " was a phrase which the higher grade of society had by
heart. In itself the phrase had no meaning for most people, but
when pointed with direct allusion to a beauty, a genius, and an
heiress, it embraced all that was desirable in the universe. Nano
knew the impression which she created, and gloried in it gloried
in the beauty whose Giver she denied, in the genius whose inspi-
ration was to her a superstition, in the wealth and rank which her
father had sinned to provide. This vanity was a weakness -she
could not but feel, but a weakness only in its expression, her phi-
losophy or absurdity said. She was a fair mistress of her counte-
nance and manner. Generally they expressed only what she will-
ed, and a cold, indifferent exterior hid the flames that society
thought quite extinguished. Not entirely were they concealed
from the keen eyes of Killany. His medical education and train-
ing enabled him to detect changes of color or manner unperceiv-
ed by shrewd ordinary observers, and he had already caught the
clew to points in her disposition which she considered wholly se-
cret.

He was watching her now, as they sat together, with restless,
dissatisfied eyes that turned often and uneasily to one particular
place in the assembly. She had but glanced around on entering,
and had then given her attention to the music and the play. Un-
til the curtain fell on the first act she spoke not a word nor took
her eyes from the stage. Killany did not venture to disturb her.
Instead he seemed rather anxious that her attention should re-
main fixed on any spot save on that which so often took his own
eyes. The moment she turned away when the curtain fell, and,
with a sigh of pleasurable relief, began to devote some attention
to the audience, he hastened to engage her in conversation.

" Charming Parepa ! " he said, " a jewel of song ! The sunniest
nightingale that ever sang a note ! Ah ! you have recognized
,some one."

" My little Olivia," said Nano softly and with kindling eyes.
Her first look had fallen on Dr. Fullerton, Olivia, and Sir Stanley
Dashington not far distant from the box, and she bowed and
smiled in the most familiar way that her studied coldness would
permit. Killany was decidedly angry. He had feared this
trifling incident, and dreaded the effect the good angel might
have on Nano's feelings. For Olivia was smiling in a most
lovable fashion, and making encouraging and affectionate nods
and grimaces towards her friend ; and the mere fact of her pre-
sence, the sight of the sweet, pure face, was as hateful to Killany

1 8 So.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 323

as the face of an angel is to a fiend. Sir Stanley was watching
her movements so fondly as utterly to ignore the box after his
first bow. Dr. Fullerton had smiled his recognition, and, as if
struck by a sudden recollection, Nano had cast down her eyes in-
voluntarily and turned to the stage again.

Dr. Killany gnashed his teeth politely.

" Very interesting fellow, the Irish baronet," he said in smooth
tones. " Seems determined to have a Canadian wife, by all ap-
pearances. Quite a match for Miss Olivia."

" Perhaps," answered Nano. " The obligation, however, will
be all on his side."

" Allow me to differ with you," he said quickly. " Is wealth
or station to be counted as nothing in the scale with loveliness of
form or character ? "

" Assuredly yes. Have you not instances enough in real life
to the contrary ? Beauty is nobility and wealth. Having that,
you need care for nothing else in all the world besides."

" That is a pretty sentiment, but most unpractical. I know
that the world worships beauty, but I know it worships gold too,
and goes oftener mad over the one than over the other. See our
smiling friends all around us. Could we not point out a round
dozen who have sold themselves for gold, some doing it with
beauty and worth attracting the other way ? Your own Miss
Olivia, for example

" Has a baronet at her feet," she interrupted, smiling.

" And society as well," he added, " because of the baronet and,
I may say it, because of yourself. She was obscure enough be-
fore, with all her vaunted beauty and goodness."

" Not vaunted goodness," said Nano in a tone of icy and cut-
ting reproof.

" I beg your pardon. I was getting warm, and the expression
was not intended. But in reason, my dear Miss Nano, what
comparison can there be between the comfort and dignity of
wealth with rank, and the possession of mere beauty, whether of
character or form ? "

" You will force me to discuss' the question," she said, still
smiling, " when I wish to listen to the music and look at my
friends below. In reason, my dear doctor, what is the use of go-
ing to the opera, if you do not go to enjoy it ? I am tired of these
endless discourses which it pleases the blue-stockings and culture-
dried fossils of our circle to indulge in. I must find relief from
them here, at least."

She smiled at Olivia, who was making a sly pantomime expres-

324 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

sion of pretty distaste of the attentions of Sir Stanley. Dr. Kil-
lany was baffled but not subdued. He had been leading her
diplomatically up to the matter of his intrigue, but on the very
threshold she had turned and fled. It was vexatious, and he
smiled. Shortly after the curtain went up and there was nothing
more to be said until the end of the second act.

The music of the opera was thrilling and melancholy. Nano
listened with moistened eyes and throbbing heart. A fierce long-
ing seized upon her to pierce the very depths of the weird, mys-
terious strains, and find whence they drew their life and essence.
An agonized desire to be filled with more of life and beauty than
she had ever enjoyed racked her heart and brain, and she lay
back trembling, and would have wept and sobbed out her anguish
had she been alone. The feeling was not unknown to her. She
had experienced it often enough to suffer it with patience and to
control it within the bounds of moderation. But it puzzled her
much, and left her a prey to a severe depression of mind for days
afterwards. The doctor never removed his eyes from her face,
though he appeared to be as deeply engaged as she in listening to
scenes and harmonies. With calm persistence he returned to his
point when the curtain went down the second time.

He remained cunningly silent until Nano addressed him.
" You seem to be in deep thought," she said. " Comparing
beauty and riches still ? "

" Pardon me, but I could not help it. The subject is interest-
ing. Its only solution, I think, is always to let beauty and wealth
go together."

" That would be unfair, doctor. I speak for an equal division."

" Were it given you to choose," he said abruptly, " would you
give up your face, or keep it and go down to poverty ? "

" Poverty ! What a distressing word ! " And she shivered a
little, but did not answer.

" You are evading the question, Miss McDonell."

" Well, then, I shall not desert my standard. I would choose
poverty."

" And suppose that the alternatives were poverty or loss of
your good name ? I anticipate your answer."

" I shall not make any, sir. The question is not to be put.at
all."

" Good, very good," he said, with a sinister, familiar smile,
forgetting in his eagerness the customary etiquette ; " such a
disposition is invaluable to any one ; to you above all others in-
valuable at this particular time."

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 325

She looked up in cool amazement at these pointed but incom-
prehensible words.

" You speak riddles, doctor."

" They are easily solved, Miss Nano," said he, still smiling,
still forgetful of the insolence of his manner. " You will soon
have the chance of testing the practical working of your senti-
ment. Beauty is nobility and wealth, since you stand yourself
very close to poverty and actual disgrace."

To the fact that his words were flippantly and coarsely uttered
she paid more attention than to their meaning.

" You are hard to be understood yet," she said, with her large
eyes looking straight into his ; " but there is no mistaking the
impertinence of your manner."

In an instant he was all penitence and humility, and was in-
wardly cursing himself for his foolish oversight.

" You have mistaken bitterness of feeling for that of which I
could never be deliberately guilty. I beg a thousand pardons
for my inadvertence. Yet listen further to what I say, since I
must speak in plainer terms. You stand as close to poverty, and
perhaps shame, as could be desired. The wealth which your
father enjoys is not all his own, and, being at heart and by birth
a Catholic, he is dreaming of restoring to those whom he has
wronged. Do you comprehend now, Miss McDonell? "

" Perfectly," she answered, and her doubt and suspicion of
him sounded loudly in the word. "If it be true I begin to com-
prehend much more that was hitherto a mystery to me. Candid-
ly, I believe that you are deceived or insane."

" Neither," he replied vehemently. " I have known it for
some years, and the fact has not been least profitable to me. It
urchased me your father's favor, which otherwise I never could
ave obtained. Having that, I had everything this city could
afford., We are related by blood, of course, but these are ties
which never disturbed the narrow current of his generosity. If
ou do not believe me you may ask him. By so doing you will
hasten an evil which it is yet in your power to avert. He hesi-
tates in his plans because of you. Once break the ice, once give
him your encouragement, and you will be left by a stroke of the
pen in comparative need."

" * Get thee behind me, Satan,' " she said, laughing. It was a
harsh laugh and spoke of anything save mirth. The story
seemed too incredible, and yet his earnestness made her shiver as
if with cold. Killany had cunningly magnified the circumstances,
in order to impress her more powerfully.

326 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

" I cannot understand why you should invent such a tale,
doctor ; and as you are not insane I shall believe that you have
been deceived in some manner. Or is it a development of your
cynical and ungallant theories against the power of worth and
beauty? Or are you cruelly trying me? You cannot change
my opinions ; and as to my feelings, they are not in the least dis-
turbed. My hands are not cold, nor my pulse slow, nor my face
pale, when according to the approved fashion, I should be in an
interesting and exciting swoon."

" This is trifling," said Killany gravely. " I cannot treat you
as a child who will not believe in the approach of a misfortune
which she cannot understand. Your eyes will be opened only
too suddenly when the evil has fallen upon you. Your father's
late illness was the first shock of a convulsion which may yet, and
very soon, destroy him. In his sickness you will discover the
truth of my information, but it will then be too late. He will
have given his property to strangers or to the poor, and you will
be a pauper."

This was stating the case in rather strong terms, but the
curtain was rising and the doctor was growing desperate. She
at last felt conviction stealing upon her, and a hand of ice seemed
to close round her heart and to smother its beatings. Poverty
at last ! Outwardly she remained calm. It had come so slowly
and so gradually as not to surprise her, and her command of her-
self was admirable.

" I believe you," she said suddenly. " And I wish to go
home."

He would have persuaded her to remain until the end of the
performance, but she was determined. He rose and entered the
box to turn on the gas. A page was just opening the door.

" Servant, sir," the boy said, bowing, " but I was to inform
the lady that her father had been taken dangerously ill, and the
carriage is waiting outside."

One eloquent look was exchanged between Nano and the doc-
tor. Coming so soon after their conversation this intelligence
had a fearful significance. They left the theatre hastily and in
silence.

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 327

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRST FALL.

THE most fortunate of plotters seemed Dr. Killany. The
lingering, scornful doubts which Nano had entertained as to the
truth of his information were put to flight by the accidental ill-
ness of her father. There was no time to debate on his motives
or his veracity. If what he had told her were true, then she was
standing face to face with death, poverty, and disgrace, since it
was to be supposed that now, if ever, her father would desire to
make that restitution of which the doctor had spoken. Killany's
heart was bounding, and the sky of his prospects seemed rosy in
the prospect of a golden dawning.

He handed Nano to the carriage in silence. Her manner had
grown strangely cold and distant. In the light that flashed for
an instant from the carriage-lamp on her face he saw that it was
very white, troubled, and despairing in its expression, and he
knew that the inward agony must be very severe which could
force her to such a display of feeling. Nano was indeed suffering
a torture of mind such as she had never before known, so keen
and terrible that all desire of self-control had fled, and all care of
personal appearance with it. Misfortune had never yet laid his
mailed hand upon her, and that he should appear now in so dead-
ly a garb was doubly mournful. She was like one moving in a
dream, uncertain of all the phantasies around her, not knowing
but that if she touched any they would vanish on the instant.
The lights of the theatre danced before her in the oddest shapes,
and the murmur of the voices around, the low strains of the
music, were loud as the shrieks of demons in her ears. She would
have raised her eyes to dispel the illusion by the sight of the
smiling faces turned towards her, some in friendly recognition ;
but tears of anguish were dangerously near falling, and she re-
frained. To be seen weeping by Killany was at that moment and
on that occasion an unbearable humiliation. Others might put a
favorable construction on such evidence of grief, but to him, who
knew the chilliness of her relations with her father, it was a con-
fession of weakness on her part, and on his a triumph.

Therefore she remained silent with eyes cast down as they
rode homeward through the streets. He was silent, too, de-
termined not to forget himself so outrageously as he had done
once before that evening. He wisely left her to her own

328 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

thoughts, which were then in the fiercest confusion, confident
that he had planted in her mind the seeds of many a weary hour
of meditation and mental suffering. A strange terror had taken
hold of her. It shrouded her senses like a mist, leaving liberty
of motion and thought only to render the pain and mystery of
her situation the more terrible. In vain she tried to free herself
and to reason calmly. It was still a mist, impalpable and uncon-
querable, and clung round her and shut out the avenues of help
or escape, alas ! too effectually. Her father had stolen from others,
and was now, at the risk of poverty to himself and his daughter,
to restore his ill-gotten goods. This was the substance of the
danger. An aggravating circumstance was his sudden illness.
It brought her into the presence of her destiny with bewildered
1 faculties. She was helpless from surprise and grief, and desired
only a little time to escape from the mist which blinded and suf-
focated her. After all, what was there in the doctor's informa-
tion to unnerve her so completely ? There was a possibility of
its untruth. Accept it as a fact, and what train of consequences
would follow ? Her father had wronged some one, and that some
one must be righted. He had sinned, and he must suffer for his sin,
even if she, his innocent daughter, must suffer with him. That
was all. All? Ah! no. A sudden pang shot through her head
and bosom, and left her quivering in physical agony. It was not
all. Poverty was staring at her again, wan and hollow-eyed, un-
kempt, uncultured, transcendentalism's devil, leering, threaten-
ing, humbling ; and beside him stood Disgrace, hiding his dishon-
ored head, cringing even to poverty for concealment and protec-
tion. These, perhaps, were to be her companions in the future.
And there was no escape. The tempter stood beside her with
his suggestions, and took a breathing personality in the form of
the silent doctor. She shook him off with increasing fear and
agony, and leaned out of the carriage to catch a breath of the air
of heaven, all tremulous with the sheen of the stars.

She was so harassed by conflicting emotions that the view
of the great profound in its unfathomable repose smote upon
her brain with something of mortal suffering. The great city
had settled down into the quiet of midnight, and the crushing of
the runners upon the frozen snow, and the stamp of the horses,-
and the music of the bells struck the air sharply, and seemed to
leave behind them a track of sound, as a ship, in cleaving the
ocean, leaves in her wake a pathway of whirlpools and foam.
Why should all things be so calm and she so tossed and mad-
dened ? Did the stranger who, in passing, looked carelessly at

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 329

the flying equipage think for an instant of the destinies it was
whirling out of his sight and his recollection ? Did the echo of
her going strike upon the sleep-closed ears of those who went to
rest that night unburdened with care, and give a sadder hue to
their dreams in tender pity for the sorrows of which they had no
exact knowledge ? She fastened her eyes upon the sky. The
" starred map " had always been for her a source of wonderful
interest. She knew the constellations and their mythological
history, and could weep melancholy tears over the misfortunes of
the filthy heroes and heroines who now trod the sky with a purity,
a brilliancy, and a regularity their lives had never known. But
in such knowledge there was no comfort. The Christian looks
upward in his agony, and the meekest star that shines upon him
is as the eye of a merciful God looking down upon his suffer-
ings, encouraging and consoling with its mild beam. This was a
part of her mythology. It was a glorious dream to picture a
Being of infinite majesty, intelligence, and power standing on the
mountains of eternity and flinging those gigantic worlds into
space with the ease of an Atlas or a Hercules. Even in this
there was still no ease for suffering. She never thought of look-
ing there or anywhere outside of herself for such a thing. Self
was all, and oh ! how wretched, how circumscribed, how belit-
tling that all. A kennel was a palace to it for dimension and
worth. And still she looked at the heaven. There was so much
of confusion below that she found relief in looking at its calm,
holy, beautiful fixedness.

Her thoughts came to an end when the carriage drove up the
avenue to her home. Lights were gleaming in all the rooms, and
figures were moving past the windows in a way that argued no
small confusion within. An hour at least had elapsed since Mc-
Donell had first been taken ill, and yet excitement and fear still ?
Her heart was beating rapidly as she gave her hand to Killany
and entered the hall. A group of servants with frightened faces
were standing at the foot of the stairs. All fell back as she ap-
proached.

"Where is my father?" she said gently.

"In his own room, ma'am," one answered, "and the doctors
are with him."

They went to the library. Two medical gentlemen stood at
the table discussing. A third was just entering from the bed-
room beyond. All came forward at sight of the young mistress
so pale and so composed, and tendered her a dozen of assur-
ances non-committal, of course as to her father's condition.

330 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

Doctor Killany put them aside coolly and led her to the cham-
ber.

" Is he conscious ?" he asked at the threshold.

" Quite, but unable to speak or move. Paralysis ; not a severe
stroke."

She went in, and Killany closed the door on them. The valet
was standing at his master's bedside, solemn and awe-stricken.
A lamp burned behind a screen dimly, and in its feeble light the
form stretched motionless on the bed showed ghastly still and
helpless. She sank on her knees, overpowered with emotion, be-
dewed one senseless hand with her tears, and laid it cold and
clammy against her colder cheeks.

"O my father!" she sobbed. Nature was stronger than ha-
bit, and her indifference melted at sight of his helplessness.

He opened his eyes and looked on her with evident surprise.
Then the anguished heart, so mournfully imprisoned by the
stricken members, told its agony in a low, wild moan of fearful
intensity of feeling, and his eyes dilated with unnatural force, ap-
pealing, alas ! how vainly, to the love and help of those around
him. All the soul's expression and pain were thrown into his
eyes. They wanted to speak, to impress upon his attendants his
need, and they could not. He tried to form the words with his
lips, and neither muscles nor voice would obey him.

" Father," she said gently, " you want something. Oh ! can
you not tell me ? I will get you anything, father anything."

He could hear and understand. He struggled a very little,
less than the infant born, and looked wildly around. No help for
him. She smoothed his brow, and kissed him and fondled him.
He could make no answering sign. His eyes alone expressed his
suffering and his need, but no one could interpret those glances.

Doctor Killany looked in after a little. He had heard her
sobs and the loving tones of her voice with some anxiety, for
such affection Avas unexpected and might be troublesome. Her
position angered him, kneeling with her arms around her father's
neck and her cheek to his, and he ground out a curse or a blas-
phemy through his teeth. He came forward and touched her
gently.

" You are exposing him to greater danger," he said, " by your,
presence. He will recover, the physicians tell me, as the attack
is not so severe as might have been. But he must be kept free
from excitement."

She unwound her arms and stood up, but his moans brought
her to her knees again.

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 331

" I shall remain here," she said ; and he saw that her deter-
mination was not to be moved.

"When he sleeps," whispered Killany, "come into the library.
There is something you should know."

She made no response, and he left the chamber. The head
resting- in her arms moved uneasily. As she stood up at Kii-
lany's suggestion the paralytic's eyes had caught the glimmer
and shape of a diamond cross on her breast, and he was now en-
deavoring to push his face close to the jewel with an eagerness
all unseen and misunderstood. She changed his position and her
own. He moaned and still made futile efforts to approach his
lips to the saving sign. He looked up to her eyes and down to
the cross mournfully, and at last she comprehended. Taking it
off her own neck, she put it on his, and never spoke eyes so elo-
quently their gratitude and joy. From that moment he rested
peacefully, and in a short time slept.

Killany was awaiting her patiently in the library. His face
had grown as anxious as her own. Her appearance, so woe-be-
gone, so still, so determined, did not reassure him, and he* feared
that he had not rightly estimated this woman. She came over to
the mantel where he was standing, a curious expression in her
eyes. Scarcely a week past he had stood in the same position in
that room, and delivered his opinion on her character to the man
who lay almost dying a few steps away.

" Well ? " she said, when he made no offer to speak.

" Well ? " he answered, raising his eyes languidly. " He
sleeps? "

" You wished to tell me something of importance to your-
self, I suspect. Say it quickly, for I am going to my own room."

" Your father has suffered less from paralysis," said he, as in-
differently as she had spoken, "than from some want which he
could not express in words a fortunate fact for you. / know
what he wanted."

" And allowed him to suffer as he did ! You call that my
good-fortune, sir? "

Her eyes were full of anger, and hot words trembled on her
lips.

" It is not too late;" said Killany quietly. " A priest, a Ro-
man Catholic priest, can be had at any moment, and that was all
he required."

" Then a priest he shall have," said she. " Thomas, here ! "

Killany put one hand impressively on her arm.

" Until he can speak a priest would be useless and add only to

332 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

his agony. Moreover, he is not in deadly necessity, and, his brain
being slightly affected, he might not thank you for gratifying its
crazy whims. Besides, think of the restitution, of the succeeding
poverty, of the certain shame."

" Restitution ! " she gasped. " Oh ! I had forgotten that."

" It will be well for you to keep it constantly before your
mind. You do your father no injustice in keeping the priest
from him now. When he has recovered he will thank you for
the discretion with which you acted. Do not, I pray you, let any
sudden attack of filial affection interfere with your father's in-
terests or your own."

" Or with yours," she said, furious at this gratuitous insult.
" What have I done that such a thing as you " she stopped her-
self there and grew immediately calm. " I am forgetting my-
self," she said, with a sigh and a weary smile. " When one is
tired and excited, trifles " and she looked at him from head to
foot peculiarly " are more apt to affect the nerves. Good-night."

" Good-night," he responded. " I shall remain here, and call
you if anything unusual occurs."

It was one o'clock. The bells were ringing the hour as she
entered her apartments, where everything lay in stillness, the
statuary visible in its outlines, the mirrors reflecting her white
face and gleaming jewels so weirdly that the room seemed full of
whispering spectres. She drew the curtains across the windows,
for the calm sky with its twinkling lights was mocking the tu-
mult that raged in her bosom. She lit the gas-jets in parlor and
bed-room, as if to drive away haunting images from her mind, and
then sat down, not to rest, but to mutter over and over three words
that had burned themselves into her brain and forced themselves
from her lips Restitution ! Poverty ! Shame ! and to feel a stab
in her heart at every repetition. She had not yet begun to think
clearly. Terror still tyrannized over her senses. The victim
under the fascinating gaze of a serpent was not more helpless
than she under the great and enervating dread of becoming poor.
How could she, who had queened it so long over the multitude,
endure to put aside her greatness and become even meaner than
those she had ruled and scorned ? Was not any fate preferable
to one so humiliating? The abyss towards which she was hur-,
rying herself by her morbid fear of suffering and her dangerous
indulgence of this fear was not yet perceived. She only felt that
a great blackness had fallen upon her, and that death seemed its
speediest and surest relief. From one despair to another only
could she go from life with its humiliations to the grave with its

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 333

repulsive, horrible nothingness and oblivion. Death was a dread ;
a greater dread met her to live. And so she thought on until
from pure exhaustion she could think no more. Ideas became
entangled, and sleep closed her tired eyes where she lay.

It was four in the morning when from her troubled but re-
freshing slumber she woke once more to consciousness of life and
its misery. The lights were burning still in her rooms. The
house had settled once more into the silence of the night. She
slipped down to the library, where Killany slept, and passed to
the room beyond. He, too, was awake, and the speaking eyes
sought hers gratefully, and the low moan welcomed her coming.
She knelt down as she had done before and took him in her arms,
spoke to him with loving tenderness, and gave him hope of
speedy and certain recovery. Once it rose to her lips to tell him
that she knew his only want, and that it would soon be sup-
plied. But there was the tempter again to whisper of what she
so much dreaded. Killany's words had more deeply impressed
her than she had thought possible. She was afraid to run even
the slight risk of a priest's presence. Cowardice had seized sud-
denly on her bold, fearless nature, and in the very height of her
affection for her sick father she was led into the first wilful, un-
filial act of her life. It was a cruel and a useless one, she knew.
Yet the dread of ensuing and unforeseen evils to her held her
back. Over his head she whispered, " I dare not."

The night wore away quickly. Killany, coming into the cham-
ber at the first dawning, was not surprised to find her in the old
position. He suggested once again the propriety of retiring to
her own room. The regards of father and daughter were not the
most pleasant that could be fixed even on a Bohemian. Nano
paid no further attention to him, and the patient made manifest
his disapproval of such officiousness by an emphatic utterance of
the only sound he could just then command. The doctor retired
meekly and vented his rage on the other side of the door.

Miss McDonell was not at home to visitors during that week,
and did not once stir abroad. Many friends called, and among
them was Olivia, full of eager desire to comfort her suffering
friend. Doctor Killany, who had coolly established himself as a
member of the family, received them with much empressement,
and sent them away again with the assurance that Mr. McDon-
ell was expected to recover, regretting that his fair relative, the
hostess, was not prepared to give or receive calls during the ill-
ness of her father. Olivia was puzzled and grieved that no ex-
ception had been made in her favor. Had another than Killany

334 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

attempted to prevent her entrance she would have promptly and
directly appealed to Nano herself ; but the doctor was her aver-
sion, and she went away quickly, glad to rid herself of his smil-
ing, baleful presence.

The truth was that Nano did not care to meet with Olivia
during those days of trial. Her dalliance with temptation had
rendered even the image of the high-principled and pure-minded
girl a kind of reproach. She had so sincere an admiration for her
virtues that much of her own manner was modelled on Olivia's
tastes or predilections, and to have done anything which could
merit her reproaches made Nano hateful to herself. How could
she now endure her presence when her soul was black with the
sin of a child's ingratitude ? Sharper than a serpent's tooth would
it have been to her father to have suspected her guiltiness. He
had gone on during those long, sorrowful days making feeble
attempts to reach the comprehension of those around him, raising
his hands aimlessly and moving his . lips horribly for muscular
power was slowly returning to form one little word of six let-
ters, which comprised all that he asked of the world, and for
which he was ready to give all his wealth in return. She could
look at him, knowing his want, and, trembling, agonized, con- 1
science-stricken, could pretend to efforts at understanding him
efforts that ended in apparent disappointment. She could look
into the eyes so full of dumb agony and earnest pleading, and in
her own express anxiety and wondering innocence as to his need.
She despised herself, almost cursed herself, for this weakness, and
the more because Killany was fully aware of the struggle she was
undergoing. Yet fear and doubt held her back. She did not yet
know the circumstances of her father's sin. She was not quite
sure of its truth, perhaps, though if anything could make it cer-
tain it was Killany 's assurance. Her resolutions were weaker
than mist. When she came face to face with issues her strength
departed.

In a little more than a week after his first attack McDonell
achieved the triumph of writing a legible scrawl on a piece of paper,
and his lips framed with difficulty the \vord priest. There was
nothing to do but accept the crisis. The certainty of having made
himself understood at last threw a new expression into his eyes an
expression of infinite relief, as if a great load had been lifted from his
body. He was back from the tomb into the presence of men once
more. Nano read the scrawl, heard the word smilingly, and, with
a little tightening of the throat, comprehended the results. But she
nodded her head confidently and went away. Here began the real

1 8 So.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 335

struggle. To deny him the priest would open his eyes to her
real feelings, and she could not endure to show to him the hypo-
crisy of her affection. It was, perhaps, fortunate that Killany
came to assist her in deciding for the good or the evil. His fear
of a false move on her part overpowered his prudence. If she
would not herself resolve, he would frame the resolution. She
received his advances coldly.

" Will you send for the priest ? " he asked.

" Why not ? " she answered.

" Do you not yet believe me, Nano ? You are thoughtlessly
cutting your own throat."

" And my father's ? " she said, consenting to argue the point.

" And your father's. Nor will he thank you for it after-
wards."

She was coquetting with temptation, and he saw it rejoicing.
A few minutes of conversation and she would be won at least to
delay, but at that moment footsteps came up the avenue. One
glance out the window decided her.

" I shall take the risk," she said with' quiet determination, yet
inwardly uncomfortable from her own hypocrisy. " The priest
shall come, happen what may, and I shall depend on myself to
meet resulting difficulties."

He would have reasoned and pleaded, but a servant entered
and announced :

" Father Leonard."

CHAPTER VII.

VISITORS.

BOTH Nano and Killany arose at this announcement, the one
with a surprised and fretful countenance, the other smiling and
apparently indifferent.

" For Heaven's sake put him off!" whispered the doctor hur-
riedly, as the priest's step was heard approaching in the hall.

" Too late, even if I desired to do so," she answered in the same
tone, and the next moment was bowing to a stout, medium-sized
gentleman, who took both her hands in his with affectionate
anxiety, and said, gasping for breath the while :

" Bless you, my child ! "

Doctor Killany bowed distantly.

" I heard your father was ill only to-day," continued the priest,

336 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

" and I assure you I was deeply hurt that you had not informed
me on the instant. But I can understand. You look pale and
worn, and did not think, in the alarm at so untoward an event, to
do everything. And how is he, Miss Nano?"

" Improving rapidly, father," replied Nano, successfully coun-
terfeiting cheerfulness. " Indeed, he can write a little and say
a few words. In a few days he will be able to speak distinct-
ly, the doctors tell me. I must ask pardon for my negligence in
not sending you word of his illness. As you have so kindly un-
derstood, I was too confused with grief to think of anything, and
left all to our friend Dr. Killany."

"And I," said the ready doctor, quietly accepting the respon-
sibility which with some maliciousness she placed upon him " I,
acting upon medical advice, announced to no one his illness, and
bravely turned away all who came to see Mr. McDonell. I am
glad that your reverence was not subjected to the same treat-
ment."

" Indeed !" said the priest, smiling grimly at this frankness.
The priest was not the handsomest man in the world nor the
most distinguished-looking, important as was the part which he
played in the history of the church in Canada. His face indicat-
ed the possession of good administrative and diplomatic talent.
The forehead was broad though not high, the eyes of a deep,
piercing gray and hidden by the non-committal spectacles, the
mouth gentle and sweet in its expression, and the chin as deter-
mined and set in its outline as decision of character seems to
require. His nose, however, was short and stubby, and his
complexion sallow. A few locks of dark hair were thinly scatter-
ed over his head. The bald spot was covered by a skull-cap,
which had such a habit of disarranging itself and the neighbor-
ing locks at every move that much of the priest's time was spent
in rearrangement. His manner was naturally graceful, digni-
fied, and courtly, but rheumatism had taken from these qualities
considerably, and in kneeling or sitting he found the greatest dif-
ficulty in the world. He was a shrewd business man, hard and
exacting when necessary, and blessed with a good knowledge
of mankind, and of political mankind in particular, with whom his
dealings were of the most pugnacious nature. As administrative
head of a body whose growing political importance was a thing to
be considered in the arrangements of party men, he was a power
in the state ; and the ambiguous smile that had become a charac-
teristic of his face, and which was now beaming on Killany, was
a trick he had learned in his intercourse with slippery politicians.

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 337

" If it is not asking too much," he said, rousing himself from a
little reverie into which he had fallen while looking at the doc-
tor, " I would like to see your father."

" There is nothing to hinder," replied Nano, conscious that
Killany was appealing to her with all his eyes. " Do you wish
to see him alone, or shall I remain with you ?"

The occasion seemed so urgent that Killany could not resist
the temptation, when the priest for a moment dropped his eyes,
to make an impassioned gesture of entreaty and warning. His
reverence saw it quite as easily as if he were looking at the
gentleman, and comprehended it too, as, with an innocent air, he
said :

" Be it as you please, Miss Nano. What I have to say to my
old friend need not be hidden from his daughter, unless it be your
own desire or his."

" Then let us go down. I shall leave you alone together. He
can talk very little, and I am sure would prefer to have no one
present."

They left her rooms for the library. Killany, seeing that he
prevailed nothing over Nano's resolution, had silently departed,
and speeded his way to the sick man's room, where he dismissed
the valet, informed McDonell of the priest's coming, and appa-
rently departed by the door. However, when Nano and the
priest entered he was concealed behind a screen at the further
end of the apartment, ready for developments.

" Father," she said, stooping to kiss his cheek, " Father Leon-
ard is here to see you."

" Glad !" muttered the invalid in a thick, almost inaudible voice,
extending both his shrivelled hands. He repeated the word sev-
eral times, with such a kindling of the eyes and such a depth of
feeling that Nano, who had looked upon his agony so coldly,
was torn with sudden anguish and wept silently. He held the
priest's hands tightly, like a man who grasped his only support
on a perilous ocean, and he would not let them go. Then Nano,
half-frightened at her own boldness, yet conscious of having done
something which gave a momentary ease to her aching heart, left
them.

In her room she found Olivia, who at sight of her opened the
treasure-house of her imagination and eloquence, and made a
grand display of both, to her own satisfaction. Her appearance
was very welcome in spite of the irritation of the priest's pre-
sence in the house, and her indignation at the wrongs she had
suffered, her astonishment at Nano's changed manner and face,

VOL. XXXII. 22

338 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

and her fresh, hearty sympathy for her friend were entertaining
and very acceptable to the lady who had been leaning entirely on
self in those troublous days, and had found the support so vile, so
fickle, so comfortless.

" Killany met me so smilingly, you know," she explained to
Nano, " that I was sure he was going to ask some silly favor of me
with his usual display of fine words, fine smiles, and overwhelming
politeness. But the idea of being told to go out as I came in
never entered my head any more than it entered yours."

Nano winced at this home-thrust, and laughed to hide her
confusion.

" Why have you such an aversion for the doctor," she said,
"and he the admired of women ? "

" Ask your own heart," replied Olivia. " You admire him as
much as I do, but you have the faculty of concealing your likes
and dislikes better. I rejoice in them too much to hide them
more than Christian charity requires, though I fear I do stretch
the precept a little now and then. I can't resist a trifle of back-
biting sometimes, especially concerning Killany s."

" That is wicked," said Nano ; " and I, though a pagan, can
reprobate such a practice heartily."

"But on what principles? Don't attempt to answer, for I
intend to do it myself. You reprobate it because it is not in
harmony with the feeling of self-respect which you, as a cultured
woman, are supposed to have ; because you degrade self by tak-
ing an unfair advantage of an adversary ; and because you would
be guilty of a want of pride. Now, Christians act on the principle
that to injure another's good name is the same thing with stealing
so many dollars from him, and they are conscience-stricken and
enjoy no peace of mind until they have restored what they have
stolen. There's law and logic, my love, and it seems not to agree
with you."

" You can be tiresome when you choose, Olivia. Have I not
read all that a dozen times in some works of the musty fathers?
What an amount of rubbish they did manage to collect in their
time! "

" Do you know Orestes Brownson, Nano ? " cried Olivia in a
very shrill voice and with an impressive frown.

" The pervert ? Yes. But pray don't deafen me outright."

" He has given transcendentalism some of the sweetest knocks
in the world. Did you ever read what he wrote of those old
fathers whom all our learned ladies smile down upon so serenely
from the heights of their own intolerable ignorance ? He said "

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 339

Nano put her hand over Olivia's mouth.

" I don't want to know what he said. The idea of such a
butterfly as you reading- Brownson ! "

" He said that they"

Up went the hand again.

" Olivia, be so kind as to leave it unsaid. It will haunt me for
a week to come."

" He said that they were the authors of all that was solid in
modern thought."

Nano's hands were clasped over her own ears.

"Now I've said it," continued Olivia; "and you may listen
again. You spoke of those old geniuses slightingly, and I have
defended them. It was Harry told me that. He reads all about
these things. And, by the way, when are you coming to see my
new home ? "

" How often have I planned to go," Nano answered, " and
how many untoward circumstances have occurred to hinder me ! "

" Killany's been there, and his comical servant or student
Quip, and and several others. It's the prettiest place in the
world."

" No doubt. What special attractions have you there ? "

" My brother, for one," cried Olivia with sisterly enthusiasm.
" The best fellow in the world, and as handsome as an angel.
You should see him."

" I have, Olivia."

" Oh ! indeed. And when and where?"

" At Dr. Killany's office. He's the doctor's partner, I believe."

" At Dr. Killany's office ! " repeated she in amazement. " And
he never said a word about it. O these men ! "

Nano was fearing that she would soon be treading on delicate
ground, and therefore she attempted a diversion.

" I haven't heard of Sir Stanley in some days," said she, look-
ing out of the window ; " what has become of him ? "

" He talks of returning to Ireland," answered Olivia promptly,
blushing an ingenuous red ; " but I think he will wait until the
summer."

" You know he will, Miss Artful, and much longer, if you
insist upon it. You may laugh, and protest, and blush as much
as you please, but when the summer comes Sir Stanley will be
here, and he will be here in the fall and through the next winter.
It will end, as all these things end, in a wedding. I congratulate
you."

There was a very harsh chord in Nano's voice as she uttered

340 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

the last words. The little picture of happiness which she had
begun to paint in jest, contrasting so painfully with her present
feelings, smote her with bitterness when it was finished. To
know that she was so very far from Olivia's standard of virtue
made her envious. The flood of misery which had rushed
around her, leaving untouched those cheerful souls that belonged
to her life, filled her heart with rage that she, who had known so
little of true happiness, should still be called on to endure while
they went on carelessly, untroubled, and fortunate always. Olivia
looked at her in surprise, and then laughed dubiously.

" Was it the croak of a raven I heard," she said, " or did your
feelings overpower you, Nano ? Anyway, your congratulations
are premature. I never expressed a particular regard for "

" Sir Stanley Dashington ! " bawled a servant at that moment
from the door, and immediately afterwards this gentleman, enter-
ed the room. The Irish baronet was a fair representative of the
modern gentleman of rank, and appeared to be thirty years of
age. His personal appearance was more distinguished than
handsome ; but being the possessor of brilliant eyes, a taking
smile, an insinuating address, a noble disposition, a name, and a
fortune, he was, on the strength of these qualities, the reigning
lion of Canadian society.

" I am surprised," said he after the first greetings were over,
" to find you here, Miss Fullerton. I thought your mornings
were entirely devoted to domestic matters. It is just as well,
perhaps, for you can do me the honor of accepting my cutter in
going home."

" How very convenient ! " murmured Nano.

" Thank you very much," said Olivia shortly, " but I cannot
permit any temptation to draw me from the useful duty of a con-
stitutional. As to my home affairs, you should know that their
rules have a hundred exceptions in Nano's favor and not one in
any other's."

Sir Stanley coughed and Nano laughed, for both were aware
that she was alluding to the baronet's frequent invasion of rules
and exceptions.

" What a model of regularity ! " said Nano. " What a stickler
for discipline ! It will be her punishment in the future to get a
husband either more regular than herself or too irregular to
understand her discipline. I hardly know which to pray for,
both are so much to my mind."

" The latter, by all means," the baronet answered. " She
must live not only to condemn, like a good politician, her pre-

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 341

sent convictions, but actually to love, honor, and obey their
opposites."

" That could never happen," said Olivia in turn. " I would do
many things before I would suffer in that way. And have I not
a new door of escape ? That fussy old member for Blackwood,
who had to pay some hundreds of dollars for a divorce last year,
has introduced a bill to facilitate such matters. Couldn't I,
wouldn't I take advantage of it ? "

" That would be disreputable," the baronet remarked.

" And utterly contrary to her own principles," Nano put in.
" How often has she held forth to me on the wickedness of
divorce ! "

" Does it make it any the less wicked because I employ it
in a single instance ? But of course, being Catholics, we could
not marry again. Very likely the first experiment would be
enough."

She looked saucily at Sir Stanley, who was bold to say :

" Well, do not pierce me with your eyes, Miss Fullerton, or I
shall be tempted to offer myself as the other party to that con-
templated divorce. Let us pray to-night for the success of the
member for Blackwood. He is a charitable fellow. Having
been nipped pretty badly himself, he is anxious to save others
from the same misfortune a charity, take notice, that prevails
among statesmen."

" His bill will be of some benefit," Nano said, with serious
voice and manner. " I would not object to a little more freedom
in this particular, though I do not fancy the ease with which our
neighbors do these things."

Sir Stanley glanced at Olivia, as much as to say that they, being
Catholics, must unite to crush this loose-principled lady ; but she
would not respond to the invitation.

" There is no need to discuss a bill which will never pass,"
she said. " My opinions on divorce in general, and American di-
vorce in particular, are very well known to my friends. The
Yankees are fast falling into the license of paganism."

" You are stirring the coals of a hot discussion," cried Nano
in tones of warning. " You know that Sir Stanley and I are Ame-
rican sympathizers "

" Pardon me for interrupting," said Olivia ; " but why should
these people be called Americans any more than we, or the Mexi-
cans, or any other nation on this continent ? Did you ever see
them yet that they were not intruding on common or foreign
property ? "

342 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

" Now, now, now," Sir Stanley interposed, " our little Cana-
dian is becoming rampant. Please be calm, Miss Fullerton. We
can regret the existence of the facts you mention, but since they
are well-established, and you must accept them, willing or un-
willing, do so gracefully."

" Must is not the word," said she, becoming suddenly con-
scious, by a glance at a mirror, that her cheeks were glowing and
her eyes sparkling in a manner very dangerous to Sir Stanley's self-
control and peace of mind. " But there ! I detest those Yan-
kees no, not detest, but I wish they were some other na-
tion Greeks or Turks. One might then call them all sorts of
names without hurting other people's feelings."

"You are in a blaze, Olivia," said Miss McDonell lazily.
" Talk of a cool subject until you are restored. Are you going
to Mrs. Strachan's toboggan-party?"

" Certainly. I couldn't miss it. We are to walk to Staring
Hollow and back again on snow-shoes."

" Better yet," said the baronet, " Mrs. Strachan has put me
down as your first assistant."

" Oh ! " pouted Olivia, " what a woman for managing ! "

But she did not say whether the arrangement was good or bad
in her estimation, and Sir Stanley, taking the former for granted,
was made supremely happy. The recollection of the toboggan-
party was a slight damper on Nano's hitherto even cheerfulness
of manner. She had for a time forgotten her troubles in the
presence of her light-hearted friends, and had laughed, as men
and women can laugh with the iron deep in their souls. The
mention of pleasures in which she had always taken part remind-
ed her more forcibly of her present distaste and its causes, and
deep and settled sadness took again possession of her heart. She
was glad when an excuse arose for dismissing the baronet and
Olivia. The servant announced the presence of

" Sir John McDonough."

" The attorney-general," said Olivia, rising ; "then I must go.
I shall have a look at the dear ugly old fellow first. He is my
model of a Canadian gentleman."

" You will meet him on your way down," Nano said. " He
would feel flattered at your estimation of him."

The baronet and she went out together, and saw standing in
the hall below a tall, slim, tastefully-dressed, middle-aged gentle-
man, with the air and bearing of a youth of twenty-five. His
hair was long and hung in dark and well-oiled curls about his
ears. His face, which could not have been much homelier, was

i88o.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 343

fleshless, knotty, and hard, its prominent features being a wide,
smiling, sarcastic, good-humored mouth and a nose of the most
fearless and talented dimensions. The wrinkles were numerous,
the eyes large but dull in expression, and the complexion as
muddy as the waters of a river on a rainy day. This was the at-
torney-general of the first of the Canadian provinces, afterwards,
with varying fortune, the premier of the Dominion, and Olivia's
model of a patriotic Canadian gentleman. He was said in later
years to bear a strong resemblance to Disraeli when age, wick-
edness, and the cares of state had dimmed the personal beauty of
that political comet, and the premier's admirers were fond of ex-
tending the resemblance of feature to the manners and deeds of
their hero.

Olivia stared very hard at him in passing, as she had a clear
right to do, being a woman and already acquainted with him ;
and Sir John, though he could not recall the pretty face that
looked at him so slily, yet so confidently and admiringly, bowed
most courteously, as a statesman should who knows his business.
The priest came out of the library as Olivia was being handed
into the sleigh by Sir Stanley, and she caught a momentary
glimpse of the meeting diplomats, each evidently being afraid to
offer his hand first, lest a wrong construction might be put upon
the act by either.

" Your reverence," said Sir John, with a slight expansion of
the unfading smile, " is not more daunted by weather and rheu-
matism then younger men."

" A sick person is to an ecclesiastic," answered the priest,
" what a wavering vote is to a minister, something to be rescued
at all hazards."

" How is our friend McDonell? "

" Improving, but still in danger. I would advise you not to
visit him. His mind has just been pretty well detached from
earthly things. A fall from heaven to earth would be danger-
ous."

" Thank you, father," said the minister meekly. " I was not
aware that my presence usually had such an effect."

" Could it have any other, Sir John ? "

They were ascending the stairs by this time towards Nano's
apartments, preceded by a servant. Sir John was supporting the
priest, who found the work of ascent very trying to his damaged
legs. Nano was awaiting them on the landing.

" Church and state," said she, "never moved more harmoni^
ously through a difficulty."

344 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Dec.,

" It's not the first assistance we have offered," Sir John said,
with a significance understood only by the ecclesiastic.

" The only one with so innocent a motive," answered the
priest, smiling over his spectacles. " I'll warrant that I pay
with usury even for this favor. Look, Sir John, at this young
beauty, our hostess, and feel remorse, if you can, at the insult you
and your government have lately offered her."

" Insult! " echoed the pair in astonishment.

" Insult," repeated the priest emphatically, " in permitting a
member of your party to introduce a bill for the obtaining of di-
vorces more easily than at present."

" Oh ! " said Nano, and Sir John remained silent.

" It will not pass, I know," the priest continued, " but it is
the entering wedge of a more pressing agitation, the first lesson in
a crime with which for the better growth of our people they
should remain unacquainted. Your party deserves, and will get,
I trust, just punishment for its carelessness and weakness."

" Consider, father, consider the circumstances," said Sir John
earnestly. " A powerful but foolish member rides this hobby.
Practically it will never amount to anything, and to oppose him
at a time when the situation is extremely delicate would do us
serious injury."

" I must put an end to this discussion at once/' interposed
Nano, " by giving a casting-vote in favor of Sir John. You, fa-
ther, I shall ask to be satisfied with an offering of cake and wine.
Come to the luncheon-room, both of you."

The old gentlemen sat down to discuss in peace the merits of
the situation with the pale, fair lady so sadly racked with pain
under her smiling exterior.

TO BE CONTINUED.

i88o.] PLACARE, CHRISTE, SERVULIS. 345

ANOTHER TRANSLATION OF THE HYMN PLA-
CARE, CHRISTE, SERVULIS.

To thy poor servants reconciled
Show mercy, Christ, for whom the mild
And Virgin Patroness this grace
Implores before thy Father's face.

Ye glorious hosts, whose circles nine
Before God's throne refulgent shine,
Shield us with your celestial arms
From present, past, and future harms.

Ye purpled martyrs, you, now dressed
In white because your lives confessed
Your Lord on earth, us exiles call
Unto the fatherland of all.

O choir of virgins, stainless band !
And ye for whom the desert-land
Made sure the way to heavenly rest,
Prepare us mansions with the blest.

The race perfidious expel
From regions where the faithful dwell ;
Let one sole shepherd be our guide,
All Christians in one fold abide.

Glory, O Father ! to thy name ;
Eternal Son, to thine the same ;
To Holy Paraclete be praise
Throughout the everlasting days.

346 IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES. [Dec.,

IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES.

WHEN there is question of a moral revolution affecting large
numbers of human beings, their present condition and future des-
tiny, mathematical calculations are, to a great extent, out of
place. Hence when it is said that " millions" of Irish people
may be moved from the great cities and manufacturing centres of
the United States, from the famine-stricken districts of Ireland,
from England and Scotland, to the splendid, half-vacant lands of
the United States, the idea is not that it will or can be done all at
once or even in five years' time. It is readily conceded, by all
men who have a mind to think or a heart to feel for the fate and
fortunes of that singularly situated and gifted people, that if two
millions of them were moved even to one section of the Unit-
ed States that, namely, lying west of the Mississippi River it
would be a blessing to them and an immense benefit to that fa-
vored region. The hand that writes this has blessed the grave of
many a poor laborer along the Southern railroads, and that grave
is long since forgotten ; has anointed hundreds in the public
hospitals who had fallen in the great battle of American labor,
sometimes called progress ; these eyes have seen too much
squalor, misery, uncertainty in the means of living, among Irish
people in large cities, to doubt for a moment that the majority of
that race in America are in the wrong place, or that the land of
the West is indeed their land of promise. No sane man who re-
fleets on the subject can doubt it ; no honest man will deny it.
But how can two millions, or even one million, be thus moved
and thus benefited ? Principally, as I conceive it, in the five fol-
lowing ways :

First, by speech, public and private, the natural and most po-
tent medium by which, in the providence of God, man is moved
by his fellow-man. It is needless to go far in search of illustra-
tions of this great truth. We find them abundantly in the lives
of all who have brought about great revolutions in the history of
the world. We need only call to mind the men who founded our
own republic, and in Ireland fix our minds upon Grattan, O'Con-
nell, Father Mathew. We may be allowed to cite an illustra-
tion still nearer to our subject. In the autumn of 1879 two
bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States,* deeply in-
terested in this great subject, and boldly setting at defiance the

* Bishops Spalding and Ireland.

i88o.] IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES. 347

danger and annoyance of harsh and ignorant criticism, made a
tour of several cities of the Eastern seaboard, generally occupy-
ing the same pulpit or platform, and addressing on the same even-
ing the crowds attracted by their name and their cause. The
awakening brought about by their efforts in the cause of Catho-
lic colonization exceeded the expectations of all. It is to be
measured not merely by the numbers actually induced to seek
homes on the land, but far more so by the vast numbers who, not
being prepared yet to move, have since that time given serious
and practical reflection to the subject. It is absolutely safe to
say that if these two bishops could possibly devote four or five
years to the accomplishment of so great a work, instead of three
months, the millions alluded to as moved to farms of their
own would in that time become a glorious fact. Therefore the
speech of earnest, practical, devoted men is the most potent en-
gine in carrying out this great work. The merit and success of
the labors of the two bishops were greatly enhanced by the fact
that one of them came from a Western State (Illinois) in which
cheap lands for poor settlers were years ago a thing of the past.
It is beyond question that he could have no interest in the mat-
ter, excepting purely and simply that of benefiting his co-religion-
ists. The other bishop has, with immense labor and often thank-
less, anxious toil, succeeded in settling upon the cheap and fer-
tile lands of Minnesota about three thousand families probably
fifteen thousand persons in the last four years. Very few of
these people could now be induced to return to the drudgery and
uncertainty of city life on any account. This of itself is a pledge
of the success attainable in the 'project of Catholic colonization.
Hence the two bishops commanded a hearing wherever they
appeared ; and the good effects of their honest labors will reach
far into the coming century. Indeed, it is to be hoped that
they will both live to see these effects in their fullest mea-
sure. Now, the question arises : Can this intellectual and moral
crusade be kept up for a few years ? If these good bishops are
prevented by the care of their respective flocks from continuing
their grand work, can devoted, honest, intelligent priests and lay-
men, deeply interested in the cause, not be found to take their
places? Suppose, for a moment, that twelve of these in the
United States, and the same number in the British Islands, were
to take the stand on this subject and earnestly and intelligently
urge it for a few years, speaking upon it wherever it would be
feasible or convenient, thus imparting the most valuable instruc-
tion to the classes most in need of it, and at the cheapest rate,

348 IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES. [Dec.,

what a vast amount of good would be effected ! What a power-
ful- lever it would be in the elevation and saving of as brave, as
generous, as long-suffering a people as ever yet appeared on the
face of the earth ! Supposing, further, that these twenty-four per-
sons were supplied with several thousand carefully-written pam-
phlets, papers, andtnaps having reference to their subject ; we can
easily see in the near future one of the grandest and most bene-
ficent revolutions that have happened in modern times. Those of
us who have witnessed the want of system, of forecast, of know-
ledge connected with the moving of six millions of people during
the last sixty years from Ireland to America, and have viewed
with horror and heartbreaking sorrow the mistakes that have
been made, would rejoice that our generation was not likely to
pass away before an effectual and far-reaching remedy had been
applied to so great an evil. What is to prevent the Irish Catho-
lic Colonization Association of the United States from putting at
least six of these orators in the field ? If it is want of means the
question is easily settled : a free collection received from the au-
diences addressed and from well-disposed and well-to-do indivi-
duals would doubtless supply the want. It would not be unrea-
sonable to expect the great railroad corporations of the West and
the governments of the States immediately interested to lend a
helping hand. It would certainly do no harm to put it fairly
before them.

Secondly, the next great medium through which this mighty
revolution may be effected is the press. Some of our Catholic
papers, notably the Catholic Review and the Boston Pilot in the
United States, and the Liverpool Catholic Times and Dublin Free-
mans Journal in the old countries, have taken it up with most
commendable zeal. Their efforts have already imperceptibly,
and perhaps without the knowledge of their editors, pro-
duced much good. If they had the twenty-four orators just
mentioned, or even a much smaller number, to support their ef-
forts, it is manifest that their united force would work wonders
in this holy cause. The spoken word is most effective for the
time being is the most potent and necessary agent in all moral
revolutions ; but the written word lasts longer and is more ex-
tensively diffused. The adage, Littera scripta manet, will ever be
true. The best men of our own race and of all others, in their
efforts to benefit their people, have had constant recourse to both
the spoken and written word. Witness O' Council, Father Ma-
thew, Bishop England, Cardinal Wiseman, Lacordaire, and many
others less gifted but not less sincere. The preparation of cheap

i88o.] IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES. 349

pamphlets, written from a disinterested and intelligent standpoint,
and, as far as possible, by reliable persons actually residing in
those parts of the country whither emigration is directed, comes
immediately within the scope of these observations. A weekly,
or at least a monthly, paper exclusively devoted to the interests
of Catholic colonization would probably be the most potent ele-
ment in the influence of the press.

The third great influence in the matter of Catholic coloniza-
tion has its life and being in the Catholics of the West. Their
power cannot be over-estimated in this connection. They have
taken the step that others are advised to take ; they have led the
way in which we talk of millions that are to follow. For or
against the movement their honest, faithful decision, calmly and
charitably given, is worthy of deepest respect. Now, it happens
that the writer of this has been very much thrown amongst Ca-
tholic farmers of the West for nearly thirty years, and he claims
to be a disinterested witness of their condition and sentiments.
Without hesitation, without the least fear of contradiction, he is
prepared to prove to the world that, as a rule, they are among
the most happy, contented, independent, intellectual, and moral
people in the land. The movement started about twenty-seven
years ago by that gifted and unfortunate son of Erin, that truly
great man who was so badly abused and so little understood,
Thomas D'Arcy McGee, has been a complete success wherever
it was heartily entered into. He was seconded in his efforts by
some of the best bishops and priests of his time ; and neither he
nor they need be afraid of what posterity will say. Ninety-
nine out of every hundred of those who took their advice and
procured land in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota are inde-
pendent to-day ; their children, in most cases, are faithful, indus-
trious, and obedient, and almost always more deeply imbued with
a reasonable and respectful love of the old land than the children
of the same class of parents in cities. Can these Catholic farmers
of the West help those of their faith and race who, without guide
or compass, are apparently condemned to struggle hard amid the
waves of poverty and precarious employment in cities ? Can
they guide some at least into the secure haven of agricultural
life ? They can do so effectually. They can do it by writing to
their friends, describing simply and briefly the condition and ad-
vantages of the localities in which they live ; also by writing oc-
casionally to the newspapers to the same effect. They can do
it more effectually still in another way. A number of Catholic
farmers living in the same neighborhood in any of the new States
may easily secure a certain amount of land which they cannot

3 $o IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES. [Dec.,

work themselves, but which they can dispose of on fair terms and
on long time to intending colonists. Take, for instance, the great
State of Iowa. It is safe to say that within its borders there are
at least one hundred settlements, great and small, of Catholic
farmers. Is it not within the range of probability that each of
these settlements could, on an average, add to their number five
or ten families every year ? They may easily do it in the manner
just mentioned. This would be adding five hundred to one thou-
sand families every year to those already in that State. The
same may be done in Minnesota, Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, etc.
The writer is acquainted with a Catholic gentleman, an old settler,
in southwestern Minnesota, in an excellent wheat and corn coun-
try intersected by two railroads, who is able and most willing to
procure one hundred farms for as many families of moderate
means in his vicinity. When " moderate means " is spoken of
five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars may be understood, and
farms generally of one hundred and sixty acres each. It is plain
from this fact that the same may be done, in a greater or less de-
gree, in many other places. This very year Bishop Ireland, of
Minnesota, with Father Nugent, of Liverpool, has been instru-
mental in transferring from one of the poorest districts of Ire-
land to the fertile lands of that splendid State over three hundred
persons in one party, all in good health. It appears that the most
efficient aid given to him was by settlers of only two years' stand-
ing in Big Stone County,, Minnesota. Here is a thorough illustra-
tion of what Western Catholics may do in this cause. Above
all, their friendly counsel and wise directions to new-comers are of
inestimable value. The recital of their own trials and hardships
and their triumphant perseverance is not without its good results.
Fourthly, what can be done by Catholics of the Eastern States
and of the older States generally ? Very much in every way.
In their church societies and other organizations they can agi-
tate the question rationally and practically. They can, through
their secretaries, procure the most reliable information from any
part of the West or South on this great subject. Supplied with
such knowledge, even although they may have no mind to move
upon land themselves, they can help young people of their ac-
quaintance and recent immigrants to form correct ideas of the
most suitable localities for Catholic settlers in other States.
Where there is a large and well-established congregation it would
not be difficult to form from its members a society having coloni-
zation for its special object ; and this could hardly fail of success.
At least one church * in the city of New York became patron and

* That of the Dominican Fathers.

i88o.] IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES. 351

sponsor for a society of this kind with very favorable results.
But the moral strength of the union and interest existing between
Catholics of all sections of the country in promoting this work
would be of incalculable service.

Fifthly, what can be done by capitalists ? The answer is
easy and incontrovertible. They can greatly increase their pro-
perty without any risk. They can render the most important
services to poor people at the same time. This can be accom-
plished in two ways : first, they can buy large tracts and culti-
vate them, thereby giving employment to great numbers and
giving them an agricultural education at the same time ; and,
again, they can buy large tracts and divide them into moderately-
sized farms, disposing of them on good terms, with the land itself
for security. Hundreds of Catholics in the United States and in
the British Islands are well able to purchase ten thousand acres
of Western land at from one to five dollars an acre. In the pur-
chase of such an amount of land on a cash basis the very best
terms are secured by the judicious purchaser. He can immedi-
ately divide his land into farms of one hundred and sixty acres
each, and begin to dispose of them with an advance on his own
terms, on the consideration of deferred payments, if required. A
practical, sensible man will break a part of each one hundred
and sixty acres and put a house upon it as a sure inducement to
settlers. The cost of breaking and building will be added to the
price of the land, and all should be covered by a mortgage or
other security to be paid in a term of years, or in cash with the
usual reduction. This plan is the one adopted by the Catholic
Colonization Association, and with what results may be learned
from the masterly report of Mr. Onahan, of Chicago, on last 5th
of May. Only in January last the association secured lands in
Greeley County, Nebraska, and in Noble County, Minnesota,
putting up houses at from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
dollars each, and sometimes breaking a part of the land. Before
the first of May that is, inside of four months the land was
nearly all bought by actual or intending settlers, and ample se-
curity furnished to all subscribers in the stock of the association
that profitable dividends would be given in a short time. The
great lever of success in this particular movement is the fact that
a church was built in each colony and a priest placed there to
direct and encourage the settlers by his experience and advice.
But what has been done by this association may be done by in-
dividuals. The idea is admirably brought out in the Catholic Re-
view of July 25 in the following style :

352 IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIES. [Dec.,

" A gentleman of Ireland, having visited Minnesota and being pleased
with the country, buys this summer (1880) ten thousand acres of land just
beyond the Avoca Catholic colony in Murray County. Here he intends to
locate a number of deserving Irish families ; houses will at once be built
for them, and a sufficient amount of money will be advanced to them to
make a start. They will be allowed a liberal period in which to clear off
this advance and the price of their holdings." Upon this fact the editor
comments as follows: "We do not know who this gentleman is, but it is
impossible that, if he carries out the good work he proposes, he will fail to
make a very large return on his investment. It would be most deplorable
if he should attempt to pauperize an honest race by giving them every-
thing. If he helps them to make contracts similar to those which already
have the sanction of the public morals of the West and of the world, he
will do for them more than they ever dreamt it was possible for man to do,
and he will, at the same time, make such profits as very few capitalists in
Ireland and England can conceive. It is pure childishness, in such a case
as this, to prefer philanthropy to business. A union of both is better;
but had we a choice between dealing in such a case, all other things being
equal, with a mere philanthropist who was willing to risk or lose his money
and an honest man of business who would see that his enterprise was cared
for, we would have no difficulty in making a selection. While we hope and
pray that no one will ever attempt to withdraw from Ireland any family
that can exist there, we do hope that honest business men will invest their
wasting capital in finding on our Western prairies homes and lands and
liberty for their distressed countrymen. They will achieve fortunes for
themselves, and fortune also, and things greater than fortune, for their
Irish countrymen."

The idea was fully and completely developed in a work pub-
lished by the Catholic Publication Society Co., in 1873, entitled
Irish Emigration to the United States, as may be seen on page 56.
Above all other considerations we must reflect upon the moral
effect of wealthy men becoming colonists on their less opulent
neighbors. A man worth fifty thousand dollars, for instance, can
safely invest ten thousand in Western land in any of the forms
mentioned. If he should fail, even partially, he is not yet entirely
ruined. If, however, a mechanic or farmer possessing in money
or real estate only from one to five thousand dollars makes a
false step in this matter, he is ruined. True, a false step can
hardly be made by any one of ordinary prudence ; yet a palpable
and actual taking up of the cause by men who have been success-
ful in other enterprises will give the assurance of success to
others. Again, it is plain that the subject should be entered into
by Western capitalists rather than by those of the East, for the
reason that the former are generally more accustomed to the
ways of agricultural life, and consequently better acquainted with
all the avenues of success in that career.

i88o.] IRISH- AMERICAN COLONIES. 353

Finally, it is of the highest importance that colonization be
carried on by parties of fifty or one hundred families or indivi-
duals rather than by the same persons singly and separately. All
who have had the least experience in the matter will readily
admit the truth of this assertion. Railroad men, old settlers,
travellers through the West, will at once understand it. In fact/
it is founded upon common sense. Not merely in the continued
association with persons of the same neighborhood, and generally
of the same habits of thought, lies the advantage, although this is
very great ; but a number of persons can always command bet-
ter terms in the purchase of their land and all things necessary
for farming than isolated families or individuals. We may, for
instance, suppose fifty persons in one of the Eastern States form-
ing a party for the purpose of settling together in the West,
They will appoint one or two of the party to select a location,
after having thoroughly considered the respective advantages
and drawbacks of different places. There is no trouble in forming
a sufficiently accurate idea on the subject before any risk is run.
Fifty farms of one hundred and sixty acres each is equal to eight
thousand acres in all ; and when the government officials or the
land commissioners of railroad companies find that actual settle-
ment to that extent is about to be made on their vacant lands, ex-
cellent terms are a necessary result. When we consider for a
moment the condition of laborers and mechanics in the cities of
the United States, and more especially of England, the conclusion
is that a greater emigration than ever yet was dreamt of is neces-
sary. Can the British Islands, with a population of over thirty
millions, avoid a revolution during the next twenty-five years?
Men like Gladstone, with his consideration for the poor, with his
correct views as to the responsibility of a government to all its
subjects, might be able to avoid it. But his counsels will proba-
bly die with him. External wars can scarcely be evaded; the
pent-up wrath of an injured, insulted, and deeply-wronged people
may find an opportunity for vengeance even before the end of
the nineteenth century. In that case we may live to see emigra-
tion to our free and favored country at the rate of a million a
year, and our population doubled by the year 1900.

The ideas here set down are given for what they are worth.
It is not probable, or even possible, that successful colonization
will be accomplished, except to a very limited extent, without the
simultaneous operation of all the agencies above referred to. If
some one can show a better plan the writer of these lines will be
the first to accept it.
VOL. xxxii. 23

354 PUBLIC EDUCA TION BEFORE THE "REFORMA TION" [Dec.,

PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMA-
TION."

IN a preceding- article we proved that there was "popular"
education before the " Reformation " in the monastic and other
schools, and we quoted the testimony of Protestants as to the
work of the church in the establishment of these minor institu-
tions of learning. We now cite similar testimony to show that
the church was equally active in laying the foundations of the
higher institutions of learning. The Protestant Huber, in his
history of the English universities, declares that they were " a
bequest from Catholic to Protestant England." " Most of the
continental universities," the same author also observes, " ori-
ginated in entire dependence on the church." Referring to the
remarkable intellectual movement which began about the
year 1200, Huber frankly admits that "the new intellectual
impulse sprang up, not only on the domain and under the guid-
ance of the church, but out of ecclesiastical schools." Guizot
makes the same admission ; even Hallam and Von Ranke acknow-
ledge the labors of the church in promoting learning, and Lecky
speaks of her " vast services to mankind."

"I know," says an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Maitland, "that
the monks were the most learned men, and that it pleased God to make
monastic institutions the means of preserving and disseminating learning
in the world." *

According to Chambers Encyclopedia (ed. 1878, art. "University"):
"The university is usually considered to have originated in the twelfth or
thirteenth century, and to have grown out of the schools which, prior to
that period, were attached to most of the cathedrals and monasteries, pro-
viding the means of education both to churchmen and laymen. . . . The
crowds drawn from every country of Europe to Paris, Bologna, and other
educational resorts had local immunities bestowed on them for the encour-
agement of learning, and to prevent them from removing elsewhere ; and
the academical societies thus formed were by papal bulls and royal charters
constituted an integral part of the church and state."

Such testimony as the foregoing from Protestant sources

* The Dark Ages : A series of essays intended to illustrate the state of religion and literature
in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. By the Rev. S. R. Maitland, F.R.S.,
Librarian to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, and keeper of the MSS. at Lambeth.
London. 1844.

1 880.] PUBLIC ED UCA TION BEFORE THE u REFORM A TION" 355

might be largely added to did our limits permit, but we now
turn to Catholic authorities.

" From Rome as from a centre," says Cardinal Newman, " went forth the
missionaries of knowledge, passing- to and fro over Europe. As metropoli-
tan sees were the record of the presence of the apostles, so did Paris, Pavia,
Bologna, Padua and Ferrara, Pisa and Naples, Vienna, Louvain and Oxford,
rise into universities at the voice of the theologian or the philosopher."

" It is observable how Rome after all strikes the keynote," elsewhere ob-
serves the same author. " Charlemagne betook himself to the two islands
of the North for a tradition. Alcuin, an Englishman, was at the head of his
educational establishments ; . . . . but whence was it that Alcuin in turn
got the tradition which he brought ? His history takes us back to that
earlier age when Theodore of Tarsus, Primate of England, brought with him
from Rome the classics, and made Greek and Latin as familiar to the
Anglo-Saxons as their native tongue. Alcuin w"as the scholar of Bede and
Egbert ; Egbert was educated in the York school of Theodore, and Bede in
that of Benedict Biscop, and of John, precentor of the Vatican Basilica.
Here was the germ of the new civilization of Europe, which was to join to-
gether what man had divided, to adjust the claims of reason and of revela-
tion, and to fit men for this world*vhile it trained them for another."

How numerous universities became in the latter part of the
mediaeval era may be learned from the following list, the dates of
which are mostly those given by the learned Bulasus :

Bologna,

(433) *iii9l Toulouse,

1229

Orleans,

1303

Cambridge,
Cracow,

(630) 915
(700) 1364

Salamanca,
Sorbonne,

1239
1253

Pisa
Perpignan

1345
1349

Paris,

(792) 1200

Montpellier,

1289

Geneva,

1368

Oxford,

(802) 1248

Perugia,

1307

Anjou, .

(i34

Lyons, .

830

Dublin, .

1311

Cologne (refo

unde

d),

1385

Cordova,

968

Prague,

1348

Erfurt, .

I3QO

Naples, .

1224

Pavia (renova

ted),

1360

Palermo,

1304

Drogheda,

1224

Angers, .

T364

Leipzig,

1409

Padua, .

1228

Vienna,

1365

St. Andrew's,

J43

Salerno,

1233

Sienna,

1380

Tubingen,

1477

Rome, .

1235

Heidelberg,

1386

Alcala, .

J 499

Coimbra,

1279

Lisbon,

(1290) 1391

This list is by no means complete; Buckingham says that

" not less than fifty-six were founded in Europe before the

:lose of the fifteenth century." f We have space only to remark

>n a few of these, dwelling chiefly on the English universities.

lologna, celebrated for the study of jurisprudence, numbered in

* Where two dates are given the second is that of the refoundation, or most modern re-
ral

t It may not be amiss to here call attention to the fact that Catholics were also the first to
establish a college in North America. Mr. Wm. J. Onahan, in an address at the laying of the
corner-stone of Marquette College, at Milwaukee, in August last, said : "The order [Jesuits]
founded the first college in North America. As early as 1626 steps had been taken and provi-
sion made to establish a college at that frontier post [Quebec], and in 1633 the foundation of the
future Laval College was laid with such circumstances of pomp and religious ceremony as be-
came the condition and affairs of the struggling and sorely-harassed community." Harvard, the
oldest college in the United States, was established in 1638.

356 PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" [Dec.,

the middle of the thirteenth century ten thousand students,
which, according to Muratori, increased in the next century to
thirteen thousand ; Padua is said at one time to have counted
eighteen thousand students (this was the alma mater of Tasso,
Dante, and Columbus) ; in the twelfth century the University of
Paris, as we learn from Villaret, was so thronged that its stu-
dents constituted half the population of the city, and in 1453
were twenty-five thousand in number; that of Prague (founded
by the Emperor Charles IV., and the first university established
in Germany) contained, at the commencement of the fifteenth
century, forty thousand students ; Salerno and Montpellier had fa-
mous medical schools, that of the latter being founded, it is said,
by Arab physicians who had been driven out of Spain ; the Uni-
versity of Naples (" founded by Ferdinand II. for the propaga-
tion of infidel ideas, it produced St. Thomas, champion of the
faith ") attracted students from every part of Europe ; Sala-
manca (called the " Oxford of Spain ") had as many as twelve
thousand students in the middle of the fifteenth century ; Alcala,
the last of the great mediaeval universities, was founded by Car-
dinal Ximenes, and here was printed the celebrated polyglot
Bible, 1514-21.

While, as we have said, the church took a leading part in the
establishment of nearly all the mediaeval universities, her influence
was specially felt in those great intellectual centres Oxford,
Cambridge, and Paris. Of the origin of Oxford Newman writes :

" In a convent near Naples dwelt Adrian, an African ; at Rome there
was a monk named Theodore, from Tarsus in Cilicia ; both of them were
distinguished for their classical as well as their ecclesiastical attainments ;
- and while Theodore had been educated in Greek usages, Adrian represent-
ed the more congenial and suitable traditions of the West. Of these two
Theodore, at the age of sixty-six, was made primate of England, while
Adrian was placed at the head of the monastery of Canterbury. Passing
through France, ... at length they made their appearance in England
with a collection of books, Greek classics and Gregorian chants, and what-
ever other subjects of study may be considered to fill up the interval be-
tween those two. They then proceeded to found schools of secular as well
as of sacred learning throughout the south of the island. One of these
schools in Wiltshire, as the legend goes, was, on that account, called
' Greeklade,' since corrupted into Cricklade, and, migrating afterwards to
Oxford, was one of the first elements of its university."

An academy is described as existing at Oxford, by Pope Mar-
tin II., in a deed dated in 802. Henry III. granted a charter and
privileges to the university in 1248. University College is said

i88o.] PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 357

to have been founded by King Alfred in 872. Again we quote
from Newman :

" St. Frideswide's Priory, founded about 727 ; St. George's church,
founded by Robert d'Oiley for secular canons of the order of St. Augustine
ten years after the Conquest ; the Abbey of Oseney, founded in the begin-
ning of the twelfth century ; the great Benedictine college founded by John
Giffard, Baron of Brimesfield, in 1283, for novices of the Benedictine abbey
at Gloucester ; Durham College, the seminary of the Benedictine priory at
Durham, founded about 1286, under a grant of land made 'to God, and to
Our Lady, and to St. Cuthbert, and to the priory and convent of Durham,'
and whose site was about that of the present Trinity College these, the
beginnings of Oxford University, have passed away " ; but " Christ Church
is a magnificent monument to the memory of the abbots and canons regu-
lar whom it has succeeded ; Trinity College occupies the place of Durham,
and Worcester the buildings of Gloucester ; St. John's is a revival of a Cis-
tercian establishment founded on its site in the fifteenth century, and
Wadham has risen amid the ruins of a foundation of Augustines in the
thirteenth."

Cambridge University is said to have been begun by Sigbert,
King of East Anglia, about A.D. 630 ; destroyed by Danes ; restor-
ed by Edward the Elder in 915 ; was granted many privileges by
Henry I. about mo; was granted a charter by Henry III. about
1230; St. Peter's College (or Peterhouse) was founded in 1257 by
Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. "Taking the account of Peter
of Blois, Newman draws this picture of the foundation of Cam-
bridge :

" Jeoffred, or Goisfred, had studied at Orleans ; thence he came (in the
twelfth century) to Lincolnshire, and became abbot of Croyland ; whence
he sent to his manor of Cotenham, near Cambridge, four of his French fel-
low-students and monks, one of them to be professor of sacred learning, the
rest teachers in philosophy, in which they were excellently versed. At
Cambridge they hired a common barn, and opened it as a school of the
high sciences. They taught daily. By the second year the number of
hearers was so great, from town and country, ' that not the biggest house
and barn that was,' says Wood, ' nor any church whatsoever, sufficed to
hold them.' They accordingly divided off into several schools, and began
an arrangement of classes, some of which are enumerated. ' Betimes in the
morning Brother Odo, a very good grammarian and satirical poet, read
grammar to the boys, and those of the younger sort, according to the doc-
trine of Priscian ' ; at one o'clock ' a most acute and subtle sophist taught
the elder sort of young men Aristotle's Logic ' ; at three o'clock ' Brother
William read a lecture on Tully's Rhetoric and Quintilian's Flores ' ; such
was the beginning of the University of Cambridge."

It is thus evident that the English universities owe their rise
to Catholic churchmen. In the establishment of universities
Catholic charity, too, kept in view the wants of the poor; and

358 PUBLIC EDUCA TION BEFORE THE "REFORM A TION" [Dec.,

everywhere we find instances of colleges being founded for their
benefit.

" In the University of Paris," says Buckingham, " there existed the Col-
lege of Navarre, founded by Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philip le Bel, in
1304, for seventy students, twenty in grammar, each of whom received week-
ly four sous, about ly. ^d. ; thirty in logic and philosophy, who had each
six sous, about 19^. lod. ; and twenty in theology, who were allowed each
eight sous, about i 6s. 6d. ; the College of Thirty-three, established for
thirty-three students in theology, whose number was fixed to correspond
with the years of the life of Christ ; the College of Montaign [Montague ?],
founded in 1314 for eighty-four poor scholars, in commemoration of the
twelve apostles and the seventy-two disciples of our Lord ; the College of
Harcour, endowed in 1280 for poor Norman students ; the College of Boissi,
whose founder, Etienne Vide, declared that he designed it ' for those who
are not nobly born, but sprung from the ranks of the common people, and
poor, as we are and as our forefathers were ' ; the College of Cornouaille,
founded in 1317 for indigent scholars from that diocese ; the College of
Boncourt, established in 1357 for poor students ; and the Scotch and Italian
Colleges, founded respectively in 1323 and 1333 for poor scholars of those
nations."

Newman also mentions one founded by Robert Capet, as early
as 1050, for one hundred poor clerks ; also St. Catherine's in the
Valley, founded by St. Louis, and the Collegium Bonorum Puer-
orum, founded about 1245 ; at Bologna, among others, there ex-
isted the College of St. Clement, for the Spaniards, and the Col-
lege of Bayeux, for scholars of the dioceses of Mons and Angers.
And such foundations were common all over Europe. Says Bu-
laeus : " We find that all the ancient colleges were established for
the education of poor scholars, but in the fifteenth century other
ranks were gradually introduced."

The effect of the "Reformation" upon the literary monu-
ments of the middle ages and upon the English universities
was equally disastrous. Phillips, in his Life of Cardinal Pole,
says : " Each of the greater monasteries had a peculiar resi-
dence in the universities ; and whereas there were, in those
times, nearly three hundred halls and private schools at Ox-
ford, besides the colleges, there were not above eight re-
maining towards the middle of the seventeenth century."
Says Huber : " Up to the time of Mary the Reformation had
brought on the universities only injury, outward and inward.
There are a thousand results of this great revolution which we
must needs deplore and disown." In the time of Edward VI.
" the universities were made essentially Protestant," and " every
academician whose conscience forbade him to take the oath of
supremacy and to renounce Catholicism was rejected." Anthony

1 8 80.] PUBLIC ED UCA TION BEFORE THE ' 'REFORM A TIQN. " 359

a Wood says : " In Oxford fourteen heads of colleges and nearly
ninety fellows were expelled, and among these were some of the
most learned men."

To an extremely interesting branch of our subject mediaeval
teachers and teaching we are unable. to give much space, our
chief purpose being to show that there were a host of instru-
mentalities for " popular " education before Protestantism came
into existence, and that these were mainly provided by the church.
The Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Cistercians, Augus-
tinians, and Carmelites appear to have been the chief teaching
orders of the mediasval era. Bulaeus, in his work on the Univer-
sity of Paris, says:

" The Benedictines, from the very beginning of their institution, had
applied themselves to 'the profession of literature, and it had been their
purpose to have in their houses two kinds of schools, a greater or a less,
according to the size of the house ; and the greater they wished to throw
open to all students, at a time when there were few laymen at all who could
teach, so that externs, seculars, laymen, as well as clerics, might be free to
attend them. . . . Boys who were there from childhood, entrusted to the
monks, bound themselves by no vow, but could leave when they pleased,
marry, go to court, or enter the army."

The Benedictines and Dominicans also appear as teachers in
the early history of the universities of Paris, Cambridge, Oxford,
Bologna, Padua, Pavia, and elsewhere. Speaking of the Domini-
can friars at Oxford, lecturing upon theology, Anthony a Wood
says :

" They had such a succinct and delightful method, in the whole course
of their discipline, quite in a manner different from the sophistical way of
the academicians, that thereby they did not only draw to them the Bene-
dictines and Carthusians, to be sometimes their constant auditors, but also
the friars of St. Augustine."

Huber tells us that " as early as the ninth century Oxford was
the seat of a school of the highest intellectual cultivation then
existing." " In 1056 Ingulf, who died abbot of Croyland, was
studying Aristotle at Oxford, and using his knowledge of logic
to defend the faith which Oxford now denies." From Huber
we gather further these admissions :

" There is no question that during the middle ages the English univer-
sities were distinguished far more than ever afterwards by energy and va-
riety of intellect." After enumerating such men as Grosseteste, Bacon,
Middleton, Hales, Bradwardine, Duns Scotus, and Occam, he observes :
"Later times cannot produce a concentration of men eminent in all the
learning and science of their age such as Oxford and Cambridge then pour-
ed forth, mightily influencing the intellectual development of all Western

360 PUBLIC EDUCA TION BEFORE THE "REFORM A TION" [Dec.,

Christendom. Their names, indeed, may warn us against an indiscriminate
disparagement of monasteries, as ' hotbeds of ignorance and stupidity,'
when so many of these worthies were monks of the Benedictine, Francis-
can, Dominican, Carmelite, or reformed Augustinian order." " In conse-
quence of this surpassing celebrity Oxford became the focus of a prodigious
congregation of students, to* which nothing afterwards bore comparison."
"These vast numbers eminently testify intellectual activity in the nation
and times, especially since the university was as yet very poor and had no
outward attractions to offer."

Rich " fellowships " and comfortable " livings " were not the
baits which then attracted hosts of students to Oxford number-
ing, it is said, as many as thirty thousand in 1231 and fifteen thou-
sand in 1263 but rational piety and an insatiable desire for learn-
ing, both of which were inspired by the church. St. Edmund
Rich, one of the most eminent of the mediaeval teachers, and
Archbishop of Canterbury, is thus sketched by his contemporary,
Bertrand of Pontigny, and the portrait would serve for those
of many others :

" The copious grace of devotion poured out upon his hearers showed
how great was the piety and efficacy of his lectures. For often illustrious
men, who had come from afar to hear him, closed their books while he
spoke, being unable to refrain from tears. He had honey and milk on his
tongue, and therewith did he instil great sweetness into the minds of his
scholars. Hence from his school went forth many learned doctors, who, as
far as they were able, followed in his footsteps."

Buckingham devotes several pages of one of his learned
essays to the studies pursued in the mediaeval schools, and also
gives an extended list of the books used, but our space permits
only the following brief extract :

" In the chaptral and parochial schools, and the minor schools of the
monasteries, the instruction given appears to have comprehended the
articles of Christian faith, morals, grammar, music, and arithmetic ; beyond
these limits it is not probable that it often extended ; but in the major
schools of the monasteries, as well as in the cathedral schools, the studies
pursued embraced a far wider range ; in these were cultivated the divine
sciences and the liberal arts, the former comprehending the study of Scrip-
tures and dogmatic and moral theology, the latter being subdivided into
the trivium, including grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the guadrivtum,
comprising mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy."

One of the most accomplished writers in the Revue des Deux
Mondes, M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, in an essay on French litera-
ture in the middle ages, points out the love of minute detail to be
seen in it, and says that " we can reconstruct out of the songs and
fabliaux the every-day life of the twelfth or thirteenth century as
completely as our grandchildren can put together the details of

i88o.] PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 361

the life of our time from the descriptions of Balzac or Zola."
Speaking of the curriculum of the schools of the middle ages,
Cardinal Newman says :

" The primitive schools lectured from Scripture, with the comments of
the fathers ; but the mediaeval schools created the science of theology.
The primitive schools collected and transmitted the canonical rules and
traditions of the church ; the mediaeval schools taught the science of canon
law. And so as regards secular studies : the primitive schools professed
the three sciences of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, which make up the
trivium, and the four branches of the mathematics, arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and music, which make up the quadrivium. On the other hand
the mediaeval schools recognized philosophy as a science of sciences, which
included, located, connected, and used all kinds and modes of knowledge ;
they enlarged the sphere and application of logic ; and they added civil law,
natural history, and medicine to the curriculum. It followed, moreover,
from this, that while, on the one hand, they were led to divide their work
among a number of professors, they opened their doors, on the other, to
laity as well as clergy, and to foreigners as well as natives."

Of the teaching at Oxford the same author writes :

" In the twelfth century from the monastery of Bee came forth the
celebrated Vacarius. . . . From the proximity of his birthplace to Bologna,
Vacarius probably there gained that devotion to the study of law which he
kindled in Oxford. . . . As Englishmen at that time sought Italy, so in
turn, I say, did Vacarius, a native of Italy, seek England . . . and Oxford,
and there he effected a revolution in the studies of the place, and that on
the special ground of the definite drift and direct usefulness of the science
in which he was a proficient. As in the case of Lanfranc, not one class of
persons, but 'rich and poor,' says Wood, 'gathered around him.' . . . About
the same time that Vacarius came to Oxford, Robert Pullus, or Pulleyne,
came thither too from Exeter, just about the time of St. Anselm, and gave
the same sort of impulse to Biblical learning which Vacarius gave to law.
' From his teaching,' says the Osney Chronicle, 'the church both in England
and in France gained great profit.' Leland says that he lectured daily,
' and left no stone unturned to make the British youth flourish in the
sacred tongues."

In those ages scholars were true cosmopolites. Wherever
learning centred there they gathered, and, come whence they
might, were ever welcomed. As the mediaeval knight went forth
in search of adventure, so the knights-errant of learning wander-
ed everywhere over Europe, seeking rivals or instructors in
knowledge. But the quest was a peaceful one ; and the challenge
was, not "Whence come ye?" but "What know ye?" Again
we quote the eloquent language of Newman :

" St. Aidan and the Irish monks went up to Lindisfarne and Melrose and
taught the Saxon youth, and a St. Cuthbert and St. Eata repaid their chari-
table toil. . . . The Celtic Mailduf 'penetrated to Malmesbury in the south,

362 PUBLIC EDUCATION BEFORE THE "REFORMATION." [Dec.,

and founded there the famous school which gave birth to the great St.
Aldhelm, . . . who in turn tells us the English went to Ireland ' numerous
as bees.' . . . The Saxon St. Egbert and St. Willibrord, preachers to the
heathen Prisons, made the voyage to Ireland to prepare themselves for
their work ; and from Ireland went forth to Germany the two noble Ewalds,
Saxons also, to earn the crown of martyrdom. O precious seal and testi-
mony of Gospel unity ! "

" Very intimate relations were maintained between the schools of Paris
and Oxford till the time of Edward III. In that happy age religion and
learning formed a bond of union, till war and the rivalry of race dissolved
it. Wood gives a list of thirty-two Oxford professors who went to teach in
Paris, among whom were Alexander Hales and the admirable St. Edmund.
An author quoted in Bulaeus speaks of ' the whole of Ireland, with its family
of philosophers, despising the dangers of the sea ' and migrating to the
south. On the other hand, Bulaeus recites the names of men even greater,
viewed as a body, who went from Oxford to Paris, not to teach, but to be
taught such as St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Richard, St. Gilbert of
Sempringham, Giraldus Cambrensis, Gilbert the Universal, Haimo, Richard
of Bury, Nicholas Breakspere (afterwards Pope Adrian IV.), Nekam, Mor-
ley, and Galfredus de Velsalfe. Indeed, these universities were cosmopoli-
tan in character, for we find among the teachers at Paris at various periods
Peter of Pisa, Alberic of Rheims, St. Thomas of Naples, Peter Lombard of
Novarra, Theodore and Benedict of Rome, Alcuin and Pullus of England,
and John of Melrose and Claudius Clemens of Ireland ; and at Oxford we
read of Scotch, Irish, Welsh, French, Spanish, German, Bohemian, Hunga-
rian, and Polish students."

Our subject is very far from exhausted, but we have shown,
we believe, that the church, so far from being- opposed to edu-
cation, almost alone, during more than eight centuries, kept alive
religion and learning ; that she instituted the principles, meth-
ods, and instrumentalities for a system of popular education long-
before Protestantism was thought of; and that she was emi-
nently successful in the administration of those principles and
methods. It may be objected that the principles and methods
of the middle ages are unsuited to the age we live in. The
methods, it is true, would need modification, but the principles,
being founded upon eternal verities, are adapted to any God-fear-
ing age, and they produced such monarchs as Alfred, Louis IX.,
and Sixtus V., such statesmen as Sir Thomas More (whom even
Burnet pronounces " one of the glories of his nation for probity
and learning " ), such philosophers as St. Thomas Aquinas, such
knightly heroes as Bayard, such navigators as Columbus, such
artists as Michelangelo and Raphael, such writers as Dante, Chau-
cer, and Thomas a Kempis ; better than all, such saints and apos-
tles as Sts. Benedict, Dominic, and Francis of Assisi. Is a wholly
irreligious common-school system likely to do as much ?

i88o.] TRANSITIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 363

TRANSITIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

PROFESSOR OWEN was able to draw a full-length picture of an
extinct monster from an examination of orie of its bones. The
literary paleontologist, reviewing our American colonial litera-
ture, comes to the conclusion that all the writers of that period
were wrangling parsons. A theology which has long since gone
out of fashion forms the bulk of the American library down to
the war of the Revolution, which introduced new topics of dis-
cussion. It is not true that American colonial literature is only a
faint echo of English thought. As ancient Britain was cut off
from the Roman civilization, so colonial America was separated
from Europe intellectually as completely as she was geographi-
cally. The literary movements of the age of Addison, Pope, and
Johnson, and the results of the age of Louis Quatorze, were
unknown and unappreciated in . New England. The Puritans
brought to the country a hearty hatred of merely secular learn-
ing. Art, poetry, and the drama were classed among the vanities
of the world and the inventions of the evil one. In his recent
History of American Literature Prof. M. C. Tytler excuses the
pitiable literary productions of the colonists on the ground that
they were too busy cultivating the soil to give much attention to
the cultivation of letters. But how explain the vast bulk of the
theological literature? Everybody seems to have found time to
write a treatise on election or foreknowledge. Religious contro-
versies raged. The parsons vied with one another in preaching
and printing the longest sermons. The Puritans had no pastoral
theology. It is all disputative. In vain do we look for plain
directions in the conduct of the Christian life. There is not even
a good ecclesiastical history. No words can give an idea of the
dryness and dreariness of this theology. It is the quintessence
of dust. Admiration for the hard-headed and patient Pilgrim
Fathers is increased tenfold by the knowledge that they not only
listened to these tedious discourses, but actually read them. An
Indian war, one would think, would have been an agreeable
divertissement. Rather than read through Cotton Mather's Mag-
nalia Christi Americana we should feel inclined to imitate the ex-
ample of the Italian felon who, having the choice of reading
Guicciardini's History or of suffering death, faintly called for the
headsman in the middle of the third chapter.

364 TRANSITIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [Dec.,

It may be very commendable for the descendants of the Pil-
grims to treasure these literary remains, but common humanity
should move them to warn those readers who have not the good
luck to be descendants. Prof. Tytler, being a native of Connec-
ticut, is determined that his State shall not have produced the
Pleiades in vain. The Pleiades were a galaxy of seven Connecti-
cut poets, several of them epic poets at that, who shed their
sweet influence upon colonial New England. These poets be-
long to that fantastic school of rhymers of which Quarles is the
head. They hunt a figure to death. They torture the most
prosaic idea into the ghastliest poetical shapes. They follow the
" ferocious tyger " through jungles of rhetoric, and chase the
" busy bee " until one wishes that it had stung them. Although
face to face with the virgin loveliness of the New World, they
refer to the scenery with indifference or contempt. The New
World is associated with the ideas of exile, hardship, savages, and
other unromantic surroundings. There is no Camoens here.
The voyage of the Mayflower lacked the divine poet. Mrs. Brad-
street, who was called the " Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in
America," wrote verses which might have been penned in the
dullest English village. Indeed, if we had not the charming
letters and diaries of the Jesuit missionaries we should not have
a glimpse of the " forest primeval," or a sympathetic thrill or
unison with the feelings evoked by the stupendous discovery of
the Genoese.

The early poetry of a nation is frequently very attractive.
There may be charming rustic quaintness or primitive vigor of
speech. Ennius is delightful ; so is Casdmon ; so are the Trou-
badours. Had the colonial American bards been satisfied with
tuning a rustic pipe we might have a collection of good
eclogues. Here was an entirely new field. The very aspects
of nature were different. A race of men roamed the forest who
offered countless studies to the true poet. It is a shame that the
only literature of early America worth reading should belong to
France and to Spain. The Pilgrims are disillusioned for us.
Their literature, such as it is, sings the praises of the land from
whose bitter persecution they had fled, and whose subsequent
tyranny their children fiercely resisted. Barlow and Wiggles-
w6rth croak plaintive odes in tender regret of Albion.

Benjamin Franklin was the first American writer to break
the spell of English tradition. Prior to him American readers
waited for their literary pabulum to be brought from England.
The sagacity of Poor Richard perceived that America would soon

i88o.] TRANSITIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 365

have to do her own thinking. He discarded the old pedantry and
wrote a style which Defoe might have envied. Practical talent,
thrift, independence were his themes. He chafed under the nar-
row-minded rule of the Puritan clergy. "The haughtiest prelate
of Rome " never carried rule with so high a hand as the village
preacher. The civil magistracy were only the " nursing-fathers "
of the state. The axiom that good comes out of evil is illustrated
in the influence exerted by such men as Franklin and Jefferson,
who were free-thinkers of the poor Voltairean school. They dis-
liked " Romanism," but they could not decently oppose it. Be-
sides, who could dream in those days that the Catholics in a cen-
tury would form one-seventh of the population ?

The Revolution deepened and broadened the current of Amer-
ican life. Our literature may be sparse and jejune enough, but
it would have been on a par with that of Canada and Australia if
we had continued dependencies of Great Britain. We should be
only a nation of pedlars, for England would have owned all the
shops. The Revolution gave to American literature a new inspi-
ration and life. It called forth oratory of a high and original or-
der. The prosy and selfish maxims of niggardly thrift were sup-
planted by a generosity of thought and deed. The aspiration to
liberty developed the noblest faculties of mind and imparted dig-
nity and courage to the national character. Dogmatism and the
odium theologicum had to disappear. The literature of America
down to 1830 was largely oratorical even in form. The "read-
ers " of the village school contained some glorious burst of Patrick
Henry or the Declaration of Independence, the noblest philippic
since Demosthenes.

The Revolutionary spirit characterizes our literature down to
Washington Irving, who began the return to English models.
No doubt there was too much " spread-eagleism " in our books,
but it certainly admitted of some excuse. We are at present in-
clined to belittle the Revolution, but it was a tremendous reality
to the fathers. The ghouls of history have been at work, of
course, and we have been warned to be suspicious of much of the
patriotism. There were more Arnolds than one. The republic
is only an experiment, etc. But these reflections did not occur to
the young nation rejoicing in her freedom. We notice a truer
tone in the poetry, a bracing freedom in the prose, of the quarter-
century after the Revolution. The old books of travel are de-
lightfully provincial. We judge every country by our own.
Fenimore Cooper pouted because he had to give the pas to an
English duke. French Republicanism is nothing like ours.

366 TRANSITIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [Dec.,

Poor slaves and tools of despots make up that wretched portion
of the human race over which the starry flag does not stream.

The founders of two distinct schools of American literature
were Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper. They represent
two developments of literature analogous to those of which
Thackeray and Dickens were the English leaders. Irving was
the literary artist, carefully modelling his style upon that of Ad-
dison and Goldsmith, and floating upon it his light thought
through the English-speaking world. He brought about that
Anglomania which has since infected American letters. His
mind was strongly attracted to the graceful literature of Queen
Anne's day, and he was as thoroughly imbued with its spirit as
Thackeray himself. He would have been at home with such
men as Horace Walpole and George Selwyn. He treated Ame-
rica much as Beau Brummel would have patronized an Indian
chief. Not that Irving was a snob, as most of his imitators have
been ; but his sense of form and his artistic theories were jarred
by the contemplation of American life. He had not the genuine
artistic fervor of Cooper. It is only conventionality that associ-
ates Irving with the glories of the Hudson. He did an injury to
that majesty by his comic History of New York. It was almost
like poking fun at St. Peter's. Irving's dilettanteism needed the
comfort and elegance of English mansions, and he is more at
home in the Alhambra than with Columbus on his ocean-tossed
deck.

Fenimore Cooper, on the other hand, was an American of
Americans. He first revealed to his countrymen the incommu-
nicable splendor of our scenery, the inspiration of the land it-
self, the boundlessness of our vision. Old stories and picture-
books of Europe were cast aside. He drew the man that links
savagery with civilization. He showed the resources of fiction
and poetry in the character and history of the red man, and,
though his art is not high, it is genuine. Before him America
was felt to be prosaic. He achieved the result which colonizers
most desire. He interested comparative exiles in their abode,
and his imagination fired the fancy of Europe. As Byron is
more read on the Continent than Shakspere, so Cooper's stories
are more widely diffused than the works of Irving. He is the
literary parent of Joaquin Miller, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte,
and that class of writers who long to idealize America and who
hope to shape a characteristic literature ; while Irving is the
founder of the school which includes N. P. Willis, Russell Low-
ell, Bayard Taylor, and W. D. Howells. The distinctively Ame-

i88o.] TRANSITIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 367

rican school has much to learn and many difficulties to overcome.
It is forced to work in the commonplace or else in the sensa-
tional. But it is better to strike out some new lines of American
thought than pass a lifetime speculating over the spelling of
Chaucer or trying to understand the meaning of every Italian
gesture.

The promise of American literature given by Irving and
Cooper was destined to be blighted by certain American pub-
lishers. As the language was the same as England's and there
was no international copyright, it was cheaper and easier to re-
print English books than to encourage American native talent.
The consequence is that America is stocked with English books.
The order of gens de lettres is unknown in this country. The
number of American men and women that depend directly upon
their pen for support is very small, for a very obvious reason.
Those books that do sell here must have received a slight puff
from John Bull or no bookseller will touch them. Longfellow*
Holmes, Hawthorne, and Lowell had to get their literary diploma
from England or America would not read them. Irving himself
had to secure an English publisher. There is a firm in New
York who have drunk, their wine out of authors' skulls, if ever a
firm did. They now can afford to be virtuous. It is a notorious
fact in literary history that, not content with pirating an author, this
firm did not shrink from suppressing his name, changing titles, and
inserting sentiments and opinions which the author would have
repudiated with indignation. It is bad enough to steal a man's
book, but far worse to steal his reputation or lower his literary
standing. Dickens used to foam at hearing these things. There
is some poetical justice in the circumstance that a publisher of
very little standing has " cut into " this firm's monopoly of novels
and sells two-dollar books for ten cents. Instead of being the
patron of literature, publishing houses which thrive by pirating
are its worst enemy. They are independent of the author and
can afford to laugh at his wrath. Publishers of this description
deserve the thanks of the newspaper press, for they have driven
to it writers who, in Europe, would have produced books of
sterling and permanent value instead of the fugitive essay or the
.ephemeral editorial.

We are so formed by English habitudes of thought and speech
that our literature is now only an echo. Tennyson and Dickens
are imitated ad nauseam. Romancers with no sense of humor
construct a story on the plan of Dickens, and they imagine they
have equalled their master if they produce a few monstrosities.

368 TRANSITIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [Dec.,

Now, Dickens' humor is unquestionable, and it is the only ele-
ment that will keep his books fresh. But mediocre humorists,
like middling poets, are intolerable. The funny man is more un-
bearable in a story than upon the stage. It is strange that no
critic has thought it worth while to point out the Tennysonian.
ism of Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia. Alas ! we are in that hope-
less state when we can no longer discern an imitation.

It is noteworthy that some of the best specimens of sustained
prose in American letters are furnished by the great lawyers and
physicians. The style of Kent, of Story, Taney, and Sharswood is
a model of precision and elegance. The careful wording exacted
by the law, at times even to tautology, serves to give us that
greatest rhetorical blessing, perfect clearness. The same care in
description accounts for the excellence of much of our medical lite-
rature. Scientific men as a class have a calm, dispassionate way
of stating a case. This is a charm absent from poor poetry and
romance. We think that the lawyers and the doctors have sus-
tained our literary reputation better than the professional litttra-
teurs. The legal style is a tradition in the schools, dating from
mediaeval times ; and it is noticeable in the writings of Catholic
theologians how the grave syllogistic forms are dimly perceived,
even under the most graceful rhetoric. No weight of flowers or
allurement of fancy is permitted to supply the place of the inex-
orable middle term.

The editors keep us at home. So strong is the current to
Europe among literary minds that we have Longfellow translat-
ing Dante, and Bryant Homer, although both translations are
dead failures. Is there no inspiration in America? Cannot we
interest our people in their own institutions, their own training ?
The editors say yes, and point to the periodical. It is even so.
The last transition of American literature is into the journal and
the magazine. Our people do not find in books much to interest
them. They are tired of this continual appeal to English stan-
dards. We forget that the people of the United States have no
practical system of education. The public schools are what all
sensible men have described them to be for a generation. The
blindest are now beginning to see. To teach a child only how to
read or to write is to furnish him with instruments for good or eviL
It is the old warning about the tree of knowledge. At the very
best our contemporary literature resembles that of England dur-
ing the reign of Charles II. We have got rid of Puritanism,
but is Church-of-Englandism any better? Fifty years ago men
took an interest in philosophical and theological subjects. Now

i88o.] MAGDALEN FINDING JESUS IN THE GARDEN. 369

they scorn the very idea of metaphysics.* A theatrical mana-
ger must be on the lookout for new dramas which would make
Boccaccio blush. Flashy art must desert the mountain for the
seraglio, and poetry must be " intense." We have here the vul-
garity and poor literary work of the Restoration period, and we
wonder why Cardinal Newman is unappreciated and scholasti-
cism ridiculed. We forget that the people have not reached
even the first stage of an education which makes such apprecia-
tion possible.

We still hope that time will develop our literature. A cen-
tury is but a brief period in a nation's life. We cannot escape
the malign influence of bad English literature, and we may
possess the beneficence of the good. Our great writers are yet
to come. It is disheartening to confess that we have failed in the
field which is, or should be, supremely our own. An American
should, of all men, be best qualified to write history. We can
but specify the stupid bigotry of Prescott and the venom of
Motley to arouse us from what should not be a dream. We
must inaugurate the heroic system of education. We must
train our future scholars as a religious order does its novices.
Perish a dozen 'ologies, if the scholar but master one science !
The public schools and average colleges of America have failed
to give us Admirable Crichtons, and we have ceased to look for
them. But cannot we have a bit of description without a wood-
cut, or a few books and essays that will keep our attention for a
little while fixed on this side of the Atlantic ?

MAGDALEN FINDING JESUS IN THE GARDEN.

" She, thinking it was the gardener." ST. JOHN xx. 15.

As if she were in search of fruit !
But faith hath sense than reason more acute,
And thus her thought of error justifies.
Her contrite eyes,
Now skilled to weep,
Behold indeed the Fruit of virgin womb ;

And risen from a virgin tomb
The first full-ripened Fruits of them that sleep.

*THE CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1880, " The Decline of the Study of Metaphysics.'
VOL. XXXII. 24

370 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

MY RAID INTO MEXICO.

CHAPTER xi. Continued.

BILLY BRIERLY paused and drew a long breath ere he per-
mitted himself to speak.

" It bangs Banagher, an* shure we all know what Banagher
bangs, Masther Joe ; the ignorantest av us knows that"

" What are you driving at ? "

"What am I dhrivin' at, sir? Troth, thin, I'll tell ye, Masther
Joe, but it's a saycret. I'd be kilt av it was let out be me that I
heerd it."

" What did you hear, Billy ? " my curiosity aroused in spite of
myself.

" I heerd this, Masther Joe : I was colloguerin' a bit wud the
cook. She's for all the world like the widda av. poor James De-
laney below av Clash, may the Lord be good to him this night,
amin ! She's a rale daycent craythur, an' for a copper-colored
fay male her manners is shupayrior."

" Never mind the cook, Billy. What is it you have to tell
me?" I burst in.

" Shure, Masther Joe, I'm comin' to it hard an' fast. I was, as
I was sayin', colloguerin' a bit wud Filler ; divil such a name I
ever heerd, but shure she's called in regard av a great saint that
lived here in the time of Julius Caysor an' "

"Just come to the point, will you ! " I sternly interposed.

" Wisha, Masther Joe, but yer always for goin' at a gallop, an'
no mistake. I'm thravellin' as hard as I can, an' I'm cotch up
every minit. Howsomedever, as I was sayin', sir, I was colloguerin'
a bit wud Filler, thryin' for to make her undherstand the Irish
for bacon, an' cabbage, and pig's cheek, an' crubeens, for she never
knows whin it may be useful to her for to be able for to talk to
Christians in regard "

" That's enough, Billy ; you may retire." My patience was
completely exhausted.

" Och ! very well, Masther Joe," exclaimed my follower in a
huffed and mortified tone. " Very well, sir. Av coorse I'll do
yer biddin'. I'll go to Botany Bay av ye tell me, but I thought
ye'd like for to know what I heerd promiscous, an' "

" I don't want to hear anything that you overheard. Good-
night, Billy."

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 371

" See that, now," he muttered as he retreated towards the door.
" Always conthrairy ; divil a lie in it."

He had reached the door, the handle of which was still in his
hand, when he paused, seemed to consider a moment, and then, as
if determined that I should listen to him, he came quite close.

" Masther Joe, the say-norah is goin' for to lave Mexico."

" Not likely."

" She is, I tell ye, sir. It's gospel what I'm sayin'."

" Going to leave Mexico ? Impossible !"

" It's thrue as if Father Tom McManus sed it from the althar.
There now ! " with great emphasis on the last two words.

" What nonsense is this you are talking, Billy?."

" I'm tellin' ye, sir, what I know. She an' the young wan is
goin' for to lave."

"Oh! MissO'Hara?"

" Yis, sir."

" There's nothing very extraordinary in this."

" Isn't there, bedad ?"

" They go to San Angel. The senora goes on retreat."

" Faix, it's a rethrait shure enough, an' a long wan."

All this fuss and mystery, then, referred to the proposed visit
of my hostess to the picturesque old convent, whither it was her
custom to repair five or six times a year.

" The next time you insist upon wasting my time by telling
me the tittle-tattle of the servants'" hall "

" Hould on, Masther Joe," Brierly burst in. " Yer over the
wrong fince, sir. It wasn't the sarvints I heerd spakin' ; it was
Misther O'Shea an' the father. It's not to the convent that the
say-norah and the young leddy is goin', divil resave the bet, but
to ould Ireland an' "

" What ! " I leaped to my feet.

" To ould Ireland, glory be to God, an' no less ! "

" To Ireland ! Are you drunk ? "

" Faix, I got no provocation, Masther Joe."

" Speak ! "

My heart almost stopped beating. What did this mean ?

" It's thrue what I'm tellin' ye. An' if ye'd only listen to a
poor boy ye'd have had the hard word a half an hour ago ; but
ye won't listen to raison, Masther Joe, nor yer father afore ye, may
the heavens be his bed this blessed an' holy night, amin ! " And
Billy retreated in the direction of the door.

" Stop, Billy ! Tell me all about this. What does it mean ?
What did Mr. O'Shea say ? What did the padre say ? It's some

372 My RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

mistake. You are mistaken. You've taken up the whole -thing
wrong. It's one of your blunders."

I spoke rapidly, the thoughts tumbling over each other in my
mind. Inez going to Ireland ! Oh ! there was too much joy, too
much ecstasy in the idea.

" Oh ! very good, Masther Joe. Ye can ax Misther O'Shea or
the father, yerself. There'll be no blundher in that, anyhow."

It took some persuasion to conciliate Billy Brierly, to thaw
his mortification.

" Well, Masther Joe, av ye'll let me tell ye what I heerd me
own way, I'll go bail I'll give ye satisfaction."

With a groan I consented.

" Well, Masther Joe, I was colloguerin' a bit wud Filler in
regard to the Frinch for crubeen, whin who shud come into the
yard the Patty-O, as they call it but the father and Misther
O'Shea. They were talkin' that loud that ye'd hear them from
the steps at Dromroe down at Murty Boylan's shebeen ; an'
shure, Master Joe, I wudn't demayn the family be listenin', bar-
rin' I cudn't help it. The father ups and sez :

" ' It's a quare turn she's taken,' sez he.

" * Begorra, that's thrue for ye,' sez Misther O'Shea.

" ' She never tould me till yestherda,' sez the father.

" ' Nor me till this mornin',' sez Misther O'Shea.

" ' Sense ever Nugent cum here,' sez the father, maynin* you,
Masther Joe, ' she's thinkin' av nothin' outside av her prayers but
Ireland,' sez he. ' An' now,' sez he, ' she's off wud him on Frida.'

" ' Av that murdherin' ould mine beyant at ' I forget the name,
Masther Joe ' had only given us goold instead av rocks as hard
as ' faix, he said ' blazes,' Master Joe ' I'd as lieve go as not,
father,' sez Misther O'Shea ; ' for,' sez he, ' the leddies will want
a whillabullero ' "

" Caballero"

II That's the word, Master Joe caballero. ' It's a long jour-
ney,' sez Misther O'Shea, ' an' the ixpinse wud brake me like
Boyles Bank ; but av I had the manes, father, I'd be off wud a
hop, skip, an' a jump. ! suppose,' sez he, 'ye haven't any coin,
father ? ' sex he.

" * Sorra a wan,' sez the poor father sorrowful enough.

" *Tm thinkin' as much,' sez Misther O'Shea. Thin, Masther
Joe, they kep walkin' up an' down, Misther O'Shea smokin',
an' I cud only ketch a word here and there."

" Are you certain that Miss O'Hara accompanies the se-
nora ? " I asked.

1880.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 373

" In coorse I am, sir."

" What reason have you for thinking so ? "

" Shure I heerd the father tellin' Misther O'Shea."

" What did he say ? "

" Well, I didn't pay much attention to what he sed in regard
to her."

" Pshaw ! " And I turned almost angrily away.

" Isn't it a cruel quare thing that the say-nora wud go for to
keep her comin' wud us a saycret, Masther Joe."

" It is strange."

" As I sed afore, sir, it bangs Banagher."

CHAPTER XII.

I LEAVE MEXICO.

I DID not sleep one wink, and the rose-pink light of the early
Mexican morning found me as wide awake as when I lay down
on the previous night.

The news which Brierly had imparted to me was so startling,
so sfrange, so unreal, so improbable that I kept cudgelling my
reasoning power all night into rejecting the story as a "wild ima-
gining." But a few days previously and the senorahad spoken of
Ireland as a place only to be affectionately remembered, a place
so far off that to visit it would involve the preparation of a life-
time. She had dwelt upon her love for Mexico, the land of her
adoption ; for the people, the customs, her surroundings. Now,
if what Billy Brierly had informed me were true, by a sudden ca-
price or notion the worthy lady had altered the entire plan of her
existence, and, without a note of warning, was prepared to tear up
her daily life by the roots.

Then, was it possible that Inez was to accompany her ? She
would need female companionship, and what could be more
natural for her than to take \\er protegee, especially a girl so naive,
so charming, and withal so delightfully Irish ? Was it not ex-
actly in keeping with the character of the sefiora, her permitting
this young girl to take a peep at the land she loved so well and
in which her childhood had been passed ?

I sprang out of bed and dressed in quick haste, resolved upon
testing the accuracy of Billy's statement at the earliest possible
moment.

374 M Y RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

" Is it true? " I cried, bidding the senora good-morning, after
hearing Mass in our own little chapel.

" Is what true, Joe?"

" The good, the wonderful news ! "

" What good and wonderful news ? "

" That you are coming back with me to Ireland."

She hesitated for a second.

" What could have put such an idea into your head, Joe ? "

Billy Brierly had blundered ! I feared as much. What a bitter
pang of keenest disappointment I felt, the wash of an ocean wave !

" It was that blundering fellow of mine."

" Billy ? "

" Yes. He must have dreamt it."

" I dare say he would like to see me at Dromroe, Joe, and that
the wish was father to the thought. What did he tell you ? "

" Well, the fact is, he said he overheard a conversation be-
tween Father Gonzalez and O'Shea to the effect that you and
Miss O'Hara intended leaving with me on Friday morning en
route to Ireland."

The senora laughed.

" What a character Brierly is, Joe ! Apropos de Brierly, my
cook has completely lost her heart to him. She has made me
her confidante, poor thing ! She is a most excellent creature, and
has, I am told,' actually endeavored to win Mr. Brierly 's affections
through the medium of Irish dishes. Do you perceive any
special and delectable aroma, Joe? Come, then; lean over the
balcony. Now ! "

There was no mistaking it. It came to me like a voice from
Dromroe.

" It's Irish stew, or, as we call it at home, Beggarman's dish,"
I exclaimed.

" You are right, Joe. This is the result of the charms of Mr.
William Brierly. Do you know he came to me last night and
begged of me to tell him the Spanish for Irish stew. I had al-
ready instructed him in potatoes, cabbage, bacon, and ay de mi,
pig's face or cheek."

It was with no good feeling of satisfaction that I received my
retainer when he came to my room after breakfast.

" You blundering omadhaun ! " I growled. " Never let me
hear you repeat a conversation again, no matter what the subject.
You go and blunder into a statement that led me to place myself
in the false position of asking the senora just now about her in-
tended departure."

i88oj MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 375

" Well, Masther Joe ?"

" She laughed at me."

" Did she say she wasn't comin' wud us, Masther Joe ? "

" Why, such a notion never entered her head."

" Did she say so, Masther Joe ? " persisted Billy.

" Of course she did."

" Then, bedad, she's goin' for to make Miss Nelly a present av
all her clothes, for there's three thrunks, as big as the side av a
house, packed up to the troath already, an' there's more gettin'
reddy. If the say-norah sez she's not goin', she's not, Masther
Joe ; but she's makin' a liar av Misther O'Shea. And I can tell
ye more, sir: I heerd the father axin' Misther O'Shea not tin
minits ago av he was able to rise the money for to thravel on."

" This is too absurd."

" Is it, thin ? We'll see who's right, Masther Joe. A gintle-
man can't hear anything be raison av his bein' always in the par-
lor ; but the likes o' me, that's always in the kitchen an', be the
mortial, Filler gev me a stew this mornin', sir, that reminded me
av Biddy Moriarty's own hand. Sorra a lie in it. Th' onions
kem up smilin' betune th' illigant lumps av mate, an' every pitatey
was as fresh an' as full av divarshin as if it was in ould Ireland
it was, instead av bein' up here at the back o' God's speed."

Somehow or other Billy's tenacity somewhat influenced me,
although against the promptings of my better judgment. The
sefiora had not said that she was not going to Ireland, but this
hunting of words into corners and demanding literal expressions of
thought was nothing short of an outrageous begging the question.
My retainer had confused Ireland with San Angel, and the pack-
ing-up was but an ordinary household preparation. And so the
brightness faded out, leaving me but the cold, yea, the bitter,
reality. I .was bound to go, and twenty-four hours from that
moment would see me quitting the terminus at Buena Vista, and
leaving my heart, my every thought, my every hope, further and
further behind me as the grim and unsentimental locomotive tore
onwards towards the Dantesque horrors of the Cumbres of the
Boca del Monte.

I spent my last day in the capital in the pawn-shops ; not that
I required any monetary assistance from " my uncle," but it is in
the empenos where the knowing ones pick up those " unconsidered
trifles " which form such charming souvenirs of the country of
the Montezumas. I invested in two full suits of charro, from
sombrero to the murderous spurs one for myself, the other for
Major Butler, with a view to a long-talked-of fancy ball.

376 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

For Nelly, Aunt Butler, Mrs. Bevan, and Mrs. Flink I
bought a number of gloriously-tinted rebosos silk scarfs all aglow
with yellows and reds only to be seen in Mexico or Spain. I al-
so dealt largely in Aztec ornaments, both of gold and of silver, and
I bought a couple of richly-mounted saddles and some Spanish
swords of the time of Cortez. I sought everywhere for those large
Spanish fans which are at once the pride and the pleasure of the
senoras and senoritas of sunny Spain, but, to my astonishment
and chagrin, not a single fan was to be had save those imported
direct from Paris and of the most Frenchy and common design.

In return for the little prayer-book given me by Inez, and
which lay in the breast-pocket of my coat right over my heart, I
purchased for her a ring a plain gold ring set with a single
ruby, which, love-sick beggar that I was, I likened to a drop of
my heart's blood. The word " Mizpah " was graven upon it, and
the meaning of that word became a veritable prayer for me.

I spent the entire day straying through the city, longing to
get back to the Calle Marascala, yet foolishly striding further
and further from it. What a boy I was, to be sure !

I paid a last visit to the grand old cathedral. The sunlight
was streaming in through the stained-glass windows in bars of
purple and blue and gold, causing the shadows to deepen in the
side-chapels and in remote corners where the confessionals stood
surrounded by kneeling and reverential devotees. As I passed
one of these I beheld a form which my heart told me was that of
Inez O'Hara. She was awaiting her turn and kneeling on the
marble floor. Her beautiful eyes were lifted to a rude image of
Our Blessed Lady, her hands were clasped, her rosary entwined
in her waxen- white fingers. Oh ! it was an exquisite picture,
a subject worthy of one of those great masters whose works come
to us like beautiful prayers. I stepped behind a pillar and
gazed at her. It was no harm ; after to-day I would only see her
in my dreams. I watched her rise and kneel and take her place
in the confessional the confessionals are all open in Mexico saw
her bow her beautiful head as the grave old padre bestowed his
blessing upon her, and then I turned away.

I resolved to wait for her in the enclosed space in front of the
church. I waited. I paced up and down, down and up. I bought
a lot of red-clay earthenware, all in miniature, representing
household utensils, some of them very quaint and Oriental-looking.
I priced toys, and singing-birds, and parrots, my eye ever on the
great green curtain hanging in the central entrance. The band
took up its station in the music-stand on the Zocola. Copper-col-

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 377

ored boys bawled out the contents of the evening paper. Pordi-
osos, or beggars, solicited me for alms. Lottery-ticket sellers pes-
tered me to take my chance for twenty thousand pesos. But Inez ,
came not.

Would I seek her in the cathedral ? I advanced to the perfect
old portal, crossed its threshold, and was about to thrust aside the
curtain when I stopped, and, turning on my heel, made straight
across the Plaza towards the market.

To go over all this possesses a certain melancholy fascination
for me. Psychological analysis is not my forte, but there are oc-
casions in life when we are compelled to lay bare our wound and
cauterize it without flinching.

As I crossed opposite the Palacio Nacional the archbishop
passed on foot, and it was to me a glorious sight to behold the
men and women dropping on their knees to receive the good
man's blessing. I remained uncovered till he disappeared, and a
very little would have brought me into fisticuffs with a well-
dressed rowdy, who pushed his high silk hat more fiercely on his
head as a sort of challenge to the earnest Catholics by whom he
was surrounded. My knuckles itched for a rap at him.

I strolled into the patio of the palace, and there encountered a
Mexican gentleman whom I had met at Senora'San Cosme's. He
very courteously took me in tow, and, being in office he was Min-
istro de Fomento, or Minister of Public Works was a privileged
person. I was taken into the grand reception-room, the walls of
which were covered with crimson watered silk with the imperial
cipher in splendid relief. A full-length portrait of the Emperor
Iturbide adorned one of the walls. The luckless potentate was
attired in a gorgeous uniform, his breast encrusted with orders.
The apartment, which is elegantly proportioned, was furnished in
execrable taste, the carpets and upholstery and hangings all of
different colors, and all so much ajar as to set one's teeth on
edge.

From this apartment I was conducted to the Hall of the Ambas-
sadors, a magnificent salon, very long, and seemingly narrow by rea-
son of its great length. The walls were hung with portraits of
about forty presidents, amongst whom I perceived no less a per-
sonage than George Washington. The room in which the mem-
bers of the cabinet met had once been the boudoir of the Em-
press Carlotta. I felt glad when I passed into the sanctum of the
president, an apartment where the miserable man hatched those
infidel schemes which have proved so pernicious to the well-being
of the country.

378 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

It was late when I returned to the Calle Marascala, for I drop-
ped into the Fonda del Gillow to say adios to Padre Gillow, one
pi the most influential men in Mexico, a good priest, and an hon-
est and fearless patriot. I also stopped at the Iturbide to leave
two or three P.P.C. cards.

I dressed very hurriedly for dinner, and was, as the Yankees
say, "just on time " as the last bell rang.

Miss O'Hara was in the drawing-room, attired in violet the
exact shade of her beautiful eyes.

" Take Inez in to dinner, Joe. I go to-day with the padre '," said
the senora.

The girl's hand trembled as she laid it ever so lightly on my
arm. If I had been placed in possession of Mr. O'Shea's mine I
couldn't have uttered a word.

" As this is your last day at least for some time in Mexico,
Joe, we will drink Bon voyage in champagne."

" You must let me write to you, senora," I urged, after the, to
me, melancholy formula had been gone through of wishing me a
safe and speedy journey, "and I'll send you the Freeman s Journal
and a lot of Irish papers. And I'll send you all our photographs
Nelly's, and Aunt Butler's, and Trixy's and a photo of Dromroe
and of my horses, and you shall have a bunch of shamrocks for
Patrick's Day every Patrick's Day. And you must let me send
you, for Mr. O'Shea's especial use, some real old Irish whiskey
John Jameson's ten-year-old and you'd like some Limerick lace,
wouldn't you ? "

" You'd better send us the whole island at once, Joe. Could
you not manage that ? "

" I'll try," I laughed, although really I think I could have
blubbered at the moment.

" Is there anything I could send you,. Miss O'Hara? " I asked,
addressing Inez for the first time.

" N-nothing. Absolutely nothing. I live in the hope of see-
ing Ireland some

" Hope tells many a flattering tale, Inez," interrupted the se-
fiora with a merry laugh.

Why laugh, crushing the glimmer of the girl's hope? It
was bad form, and grated upon me.

Everybody was gay, animated, and the time seemed to pass
like a flash. O'Shea looked in after dinner, and he, too, was more
full of fun than usual. It was evident to me that the senora
wished to make my last evening in Mexico a particularly bright
and happy one. She had invited a number of people to a recep-

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 379

tion, and tlfey commenced to pour in about nine o'clock. I was
kept bowing and hand-shaking for a " long hour by Shrewsbury
clock," and although I was madly desirous of being by the side of
Inez, and horribly jealous of every gentleman who spoke to her,
I was detained on duty.

Sefior Pancho Buch, who was educated at Downside College,
in England, and who spoke the most perfect English, somewhat
puzzled me by an expression he used :

" We shall miss you and the sefiora very much."

"The senora?"

" Oh ! yes. She so seldom leaves even the capital. Why, she's
a perfect institution with us. Her place cannot, I say cannot, be
filled. How long do you think she will remain away ? "

At this moment I was called upon to take the Senora Rjiva
Palaccio in to supper, and as that worthy and handsome lady did
not speak one word of any language but Spanish, I was compell-
ed to fall back upon my own thoughts, while she played havoc
with the good things so plentifully set before the assembled com-
pany.

A member of Cortes, Sefior Saturnino Ayon, suddenly jumped
upon a chair, and, calling upon us to fill our glasses, proposed the
health of the Senora San Cosme, adding a -good deal to the
toast which I could not understand. Whatever he said set a
great number of the ladies weeping, and after the bumpers were
disposed of the senora made quite a little speech, in which, as
she spoke slowly and distinctly, and as the silence was almost
oppressive, I could distinguish the word " Irlanda " several times
repeated. Then everybody came round her, the ladies to kiss
both her cheeks, as is the custom, and the gentlemen to kiss her
hands.

" One would think," I exclaimed to Inez, " that the senora was
going to leave Mexico for ever. How warm-hearted these Mexi-
cans are ! "

"They are very impulsive, Mr. Nugent."

" So are the Irish."

"Oh! yes."

" Would you act on impulse, Miss O'Hara ? "

" I I think so. Wouldn't you ? "

How little she knew what impulse nearly compelled me to
ty then and there ! I do not know what held the words that
leaped from my heart to my lips.

" Shall I see you in the morning? " I asked of her as we were
>out to part for the night.

380 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

"Oh! dear, yes."

" Then I am not to say adios now."

" Not now."

"My train goes at 11.30, so I shall have I mean that is,
good-night."

I did not sleep very much, as I lay thinking over all the good
things I might have said to Inez on that last night. Her manner
towards me was timid, yet there was none of that strange cold-
ness which had characterized it during the last few days. What
should I say to her in good-by ? Merely carry on the senseless
buffoonery of pretending not to care about parting from her ; say,
"Aurevoir" and express a conventional hope in conventional Ian-
guage to see her one day in Ireland. Why should I not return to
Mexico ? It was no question of distance in the nineteenth century ;
it was a mere question of time and money. I possessed plenty of the
former, and as much as I needed of the latter. Already, as I lay
tossing and turning on the luxurious bed, was I speculating upon
my return to the country of the Montezumas.

Why leave Mexico at all ? I was in nowise pressed^ The
hunting would continue in old Ireland when I would be gathered
to my ancestors. I could hunt every season, but I could not visit
Mexico every season. " Why not remain and woo Inez ? Win
her ! It was not too late. Make a confidante of the senora.
Would it not be the honest, manly, straightforward course to
adopt ? My leaving now was but a fit of pique, a schoolboy's
whim nothing more or less. How could I expect to win every
girl, much less a girl like this, by a nod of my head ? Miss
O'Hara was not one to be lightly won, but, once won, what a
treasure ! Why not go straight to the senora in the morning,
and say, " Senora, I "

This sort of thing lasted until near dawn, and I was dreaming
that my good hostess had just listened to my confession when the
voice of Billy Brierly aroused me.

" It's half a past six, Masther Joe, and Mass is for to be sed
at sevin ; thin we get brequest, an' thin we're off, glory be to
God, an' may the Lord sind us safe home ! Bedad, Master Joe, it's
yerself that's got fat on the vittles here. The cooking is shupay-
rior. Filler is the divil intirely on thim dishes that the quollity.
likes. Do you know what I was thinkin', Masther Joe ? " ap-
proaching the bed and speaking in a very confidential way. " I*
was just thinkin', sir, that ye'll be given hapes o' dinner-parties an'
all soarts av divarshins when ye get back to Dromroe God
bless every brick and sod av it this day, amin ! an' ye'll be afther

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 381

havin' for to keep up wud Sir Robert, and Lord Thrindleton, an*
the Marquis o' Headford. An' why wudn't ye ? Isn't a Nugent
av Dromroe higher, an' grander, an' shupayriorer nor the whole
av thim put together ? "

" What's all this about, Billy? "

" Well, thin, I'll tell ye, Masther Joe. Ye'll be wantin' for to
take the consait out av Sir Robert anyhow wud his Frinch cook,
an' if I was you, Masther Joe, I'll go bail but I'd level him wud
a Mexican wan."

I burst out laughing.

" That's always the way wud ye an' yer father afore ye,
Masther Joe," cried Billy in a mortified tone. " It's always jokin'
me ye do be whin I do be advisin' ye for yer binefit. There's
Filler the divil resave a finer cook betune this and Headfort this
minit ; an' ye'd get her chape, dog-chape, Masther Joe. She's civil
an' obligin', an' has manners that wud win the birds aff the threes.
Sorra a lie I'm tellin' ye. Ye can spake Frinch to her yerself, sir."

" Do you want to marry Pillar, Billy ? "

My retainer first stood upon one foot, then upon the other,
and, looking as sheepish as a school-boy detected in squeezing the
matron's hand, exclaimed :

" I 1 wudn't mind it, Masther Joe, if she was thrained."

" Trained to what ? "

" Natural ways, sir. Thrained for to give up snails an' frogs,
an' for to spake Irish."

" I'm afraid, Billy, that you have spoken too late. We two men
could not take Miss Pillar along with us, and you have not time
to make her Mrs. Brierly."

" Faix, there's time enough for the matther o' that, sir. Father
Gonzalez is convaynient an' is a most iligant man, long life to
him ! But cudn't the say-norah take her wud us?"

" What nonsense ! I tell you that the senora is going to San
Angel and "

" Why, Masther Joe avic, it's coddin' ye th' are. It's truth
I'm tellin'. May I never see Glory but it is. Herself and the
young wan is goin' to give ye a surprise, no less. Shure the
father knows it, and Misther O'Shea knows it an' is comin' wud
us all the way to Ireland."

I do not know how I managed to dress, but I got through the
performance somehow or other. Billy's pertinacity, coupled with
the words spoken by Mr. Pancho Buch and the yes, the kissing
and good-bying of last night, set me almost crazy with delighted
hope.

382 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

The senora was passing to the chapel. I intercepted her.

" O senora ! is this true ? "

" It is, Joe," she said. " We go with you."

When one is awfully happy one desires to extend happiness to
everybody and everything. This, I know, was my state of feeling
as the ladies prepared to start, and the idea of bringing home Billy
Brierly married to a "forriner " tickled me so much that I resolv-
ed upon consulting the senora about it. I should mention that
the idea of visiting Ireland had been in the mind of the Senora
San Cosme for many a long day, but she feared to let it blossom.

" All the stories you told us, Joe, all the associations you recall-
ed, all the buried and treasured memories came trooping to me
and petitioning me to return home, at least for a little while. I
fought against the idea, but it became fixed, and then I consulted
the dear Padre Gonzalez, who said, * Go.' I resolved upon keeping
it a secret just to give you a pleasant surprise ; and when I deter-
mined upon taking Inez I put double locks upon the secrecy, so
as to double the surprise. I felt assured that our coming would
in nowise interfere with your plans, so I made my preparations
silently, swiftly. I long to see dear Nelly. I long to see Drom-j
roe. I long to see dear, dirty old Dublin, and St. Stephen's
Green, and the house I was at school in. O Joe ! the yearning
became more intense every day, so that I could not bear the idea
of your going back to Ireland to think of it, Ireland, and I to re-
main up here ! The moment I said yes to myself, that moment I
began to feel like a school-girl as the holidays approach."

" Are you going to take a maid with you, senora ? " I asked
after she had had a good cry.

" No. Do you think I shall need one ? " ,

I told her about Billy Brierly's sneaking admiration for her
cook.

" I tell you what I'll do," she laughed : " I'll give Pillar the
chance. She's young enough, and not by any means unpre-
sentable-looking. You shall judge for yourself."

She sounded a gong, and to the servant who responded to
the summons she desired that Pillar might be sent to her.

Pillar entered. She was fat and merry-eyed, and showed a
row of teeth that would have reflected credit upon Doherty, the
great dentist of Dublin.

I could detect the red blood leaping into her face beneath her
copper-colored skin as the senora put some questions to her in a
very rapid, decisive way. The girl I suppose I must call her
so ; she was about two or three and thirty opened her great,

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 383

bright black eyes in joyful wonder, then sprang forward and
kissed the senora's hand, and, turning a look of profound grati-
tude upon me, disappeared like a flash from the apartment.

" She's coming, Joe. Won't it be fun to watch them billing
and cooing ? "

When my retainer was informed of the fact of Pillar's being
permitted to accompany us he hung down his head in so comical a
manner as to cause me to roar with laughter.

" Bedad, it's the boys that will call me all soarts av names,
Masther Joe, an' I'm a little afeerd of Father Tom ; but shure yer
honor will colloger him, an', faix, I dar the boys for to go too far
wud their jokin'. They can say nothin' agin her but that she's
a forriner; an' for the love av heaven, Masther Joe, never let out
that she aits snails, or the whole barony '11 be up ! "

A large party of friends were down at the station at Buena
Vista to see us off some with fruit, some with flowers, some
with dulces, some with books. What clappings on the back and
huggings I received from the Mexican gentlemen ! What kissings
and gushings and weepings were bestowed upon my fair friends !
And as the train slowly emerged from the station a wild huzza,
led by Sefior Ay on, greeted our ears.

How beautiful Inez looked in her hodden-gray travelling-
dress, and her felt hat with its blue feather that swept down her
shoulder !

I shall not attempt to describe the journey to Vera Cruz.
Little did I imagine when I ascended the Cumbres of the Boca del
Monte that I was toiling upwards to meet Inez O'Hara! Little
did I imagine, when my heart was torn with a whirlwind of con-
flicting emotions at the thought of leaving Mexico, that I should
now pass through the Infernillo in a very ecstasy of happiness !
Such is life. The great veil ever hangs before us, and it is the
unexpected that always happens.

We struck Vera Cruz just in time to go straight on board the
same old tub that brought me from New Orleans, the City of
Mexico.

" Be the mortial, Masther Joe, av we're sick this time it'll be
cruel hard on the both av us ; an' my stomick is terrible onaisy,"
grinned Billy Brierly, whose attentions to the Senorita Pillar were
of the most clumsy and overwhelming character, while his en-
deavor to make himself understood by yelling into her ear was a
source of unceasing mirth to the ladies and myself.

The sun was setting in liquid amber as the good ship steamed
on her course across the Gulf.

384 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

" Adios r murmured Inez. " Who can tell whether I shall ever
see you again, Orizaba?"

The giant, snow-capped mountain towered to the sky in a
majestic and awful stillness, and long after the beautiful land of
Mexico had disappeared the eye of the Warder was still upon us.

I grieve to say that I was miserably seasick. I grieve to say that
I was compelled to keep my berth, and that, despite every effort
on my part, the terrible monster held me as in a vise. Neither of
the ladies were ill, and this made matters all the more mortifying
for me. The senora would come to the door of my state-room
and inquire how I felt. I could only groan and make a dismal
effort at a joke. No words can tell the anguish I felt when she
would say : "Oh ! get up, Joe. Make an effort. It is delightful
here on deck. Inez is walking up and down all alone."

Ill tell what did make me get up, and what completely and
effectually banished sea-sickness. It was the third day out, and
the senora as usual was urging upon me to make an effort.

" Get up, Joe. Why, everybody is up and about. Even an
old lady of over eighty was at breakfast this morning. Inez is
making all sorts of inquiries about you. By the way, there's a
Cuban on board who is immensely taken with her, and is most
polite and attentive."

I don't think I heard any more. I did get up. I did go on
deck, and, mirabile dictu, the sea-sickness left me. Didn't I shove
that Cuban aside ? Didn't I walk with Inez, talk with her, read
to her? Wasn't the passage a delirious dream ? Wasn't the food
ambrosia, the drink nectar ? Wasn't a life on the ocean wave a
positive glory ? Who wanted to see land ? Not I. I didn't care
if we never saw the shore.

It was delightful to watch the naive wonder and astonishment
that Inez betrayed as we journeyed across the great continent.
We stopped one day at New Orleans and one day at Chicago.
My great desire was to push on to New York, for any city of
America outside the Empire City doesn't count. We put up
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and as the " Shaughraun " was still
running at Wallack's I took them to witness the perform-
ance.

The ladies spent the entire evening between laughing and,
crying, while the terror and anguish of Inez lest Con should have
been killed was the highest compliment that could have been
paid to that able though very stagey Irishman, Mr. Boucicault.
I piloted my fair friends to St. Stephen's Church for an early
Mass, and, after a turn up Fifth Avenue to let them see the walls

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 385

of the cathedral, returned to dejeuner a la fourchette at the Bruns-
wick.

I paid a visit to the Flinks, and found Mrs. Flink fresh and
blooming as a moss-rose.

" O my ! " she said, " what on earth brings you back so soon?
I thought you would have remained in Mexico for at least two
6r three months. Was there a revolution while you were there ?
Why, of course there was two or three, I guess. Conchita.has
gone to New Orleans to meet her brother. She left on Thursday.
I sent her in charge of a dear old friend of Mr. Flink, who will
look after her until her brother arrives. He is an Imperialist I
mean Conchita's brother and is in hot water. He was to have
come by the City 0/ something."

"Mexico? "

" Yes."

" That is the boat I travelled by, and he was not on board."

"Then he must have been shot," exclaimed the little lady,
clasping her fat little hands and gazing up at the ceiling. " What
will become of Conchita ? O my ! she'll do something desperate.
Don't tell me she won't," thrusting an imaginary form from her.
"/ say she will. She'll go to Mexico and, and shoot the presi-
dent. I'll telegraph to her to come back at once. O my ! this
is a terrible state of affairs."

Mrs. Flink proposed to call upon the senora at once, and, ring-
ing the bell, ordered the carriage.

" I won't stop to make a swell toilette," she cried. " An In-
dian shawl covereth a multitude of rags, and I must say that
my new hat from Worth's direct yes, direct, Mr. Nugent.
Mr. Flink had to pay twenty-seven dollars duty on it only think
of it, and he a friend of the collector of customs ! It's mon-
strous ! "

In a very few moments she reappeared arrayed in a cashmere
that would bring tears of envy to the eyes of a Begum.

" Who's the young lady, Mr. Nugent ? Mexican ? Ah ! you
are getting the color of a ripe tomato. O my ! an't love's young
dream quite too 'delightful for anything. O my ! it's a pity it
don't last."

The senora was perfectly delighted with Mrs. Flink, and ac-
cepted her invitation to dinner for the following day con amore.

" An't you pretty as a picture ! " she cried, addressing Inez and
chucking up that young lady's chin. " Why, your eyes are real
violet, child. Ah ! Mr. Nugent," wagging her dimpled forefinger
at me, " I'm sorry it's not one of our Murray Hill swells who"

VOL. XXXII. 25

386 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

then perceiving Inez grow deadly pale, she lightly added :
" Who knows hut: on her return my nephew may have a chance?
He must try; anyhow, or I'll disinherit him cut him off with an
angry, a very angry, dollar."

Mrs. Flink placed her carriage at our disposal, and we had a
most delightful drive out almost to Yonkers. Some golden leaves
still clung fondly to the trees, and the voluptuous haze of Indiart
Summer bathed everything in a soft mist. The noble Hudson
was glassy as though it were midsummer.

" Oh ! we'll catch it for this," exclaimed Mrs. Flink. " We'll
be blowing our fingers and burning our toes at the heaters.
This weather is a shocking delusion. When the Indian Summer
comes to us as late as this it means mischief, for right after it
ugh ! travels what meteorologists call a polar wave, and then we
get frozen aye, the very marrow in our bones. Oh ! you don't
know anything about that in Mexico. / can tell you a lot about
the capital, for Conchita, a lovely Mexican girl whom I have
adopted on account of her mother, who was well, it's a pitiful
story, and a very old one : a bold, bad man, a marriage with un-
dying love on one side and horrible indifference on the other.
People shouldn't marry foreigners."

" I wish Billy Brierly could hear you," laughed the senora,
who thereupon gave a very droll description of my follower's
wooing.

I shall not dwell upon our four days in New York, although
they were rendered absolutely delightful by the hospitable Flinks,
who, in common with all Americans whom I have met, seemed to
do their uttermost to make their magnificent country " a blithe
and blissful spot " to us who were fortunate enough to visit it.
The Flinks came to the dock to see us off, and their floral offer-
ings would put Covent Garden and the Marche aux Fleurs to ten
thousand blushes.

The Germanic steamed slowly down the river and through
the beautiful bays. We soon passed the Narrows, and, leaving
the Hook on our right, the noble land, the home of the brave
and the free, faded from our vision ; but never, oh ! never, I trust,
shall it fade from our hearts.

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. . ihn 387

CHAPTER XIII.

IRELAND.

" AND is that Ireland ? " asked Inez, as, in the mist of the early
morning, she stood by my side leaning over the bulwarks and gaz-
ing at a long, low-lying gray streak toward which the good ship
Germanic was approaching at fifteen knots.

" Yes," I replied.

" Thanks be to God I see it again ! " fervently exclaimed the
seaora, her eyes filling with tears.

" I wish, ma'am, ye'd be so good as for to say a word to
Filler," exclaimed Billy Brierly, edging alongside the sefiora.
He dropped her Mexican title from the moment we left Vera
Cruz.

" What's the matter, Billy ? "

" She's roarin' murdher about somethin', ma'am, an' only I
know she wudn't go for to do the likes I'd take me davy it's
cursin' she wor."

" Tell her to come here."

" Shure I can't, ma'am, barrin' I dhrag her to ye."

The sefiora soon discovered the cause of her ex-cook's excite-
ment. It would appear that her admirer had been endeavoring
to explain by pantomime the near approach of land and the pro-
cess of going ashore. The young lady read his gestures as con-
veying that she was to be thrown overboard, or something equiva-
lent to it, hence her natural terror and dismay. She had never
beheld the ocean till she saw it at Vera Cruz, when the com-
paratively short passage reassured her ; but ten days and ten
nights proved too much for her, and her nervous condition was
something deplorable.

"Will she be always goin' on that a way, ma'am?" ruefully
demanded Billy of the sefiora.

" Oh ! dear, no. It will pass. She's frightened at sea, that's
all."

" Bedad," he muttered, " av she doesn't mind her hand it's
back to the haythin she may go for me. Sorra a haporth o' good
in a bawlin' woman, even though she does cook mait aiquil to
Morrisin's Hotel."

My heart leaped as Queenstown hove in sight, and the Irish
faces in a fishing-boat that bobbed up and down near the fort
were more to me than the ideals of manly beauty by any master

388 MY RAID INTO MEXICO', [Dec.,

that ever took brush in hand. How deliriously green every-
thing appeared, how fresh, how welcomeful ! The brogue of
those who came over in the tender delighted me.

" I feel, Joe," observed the senora, " as if I would like to kiss
everybody on that boat."

" So do I," added Inez, with a joyous laugh.

I had despatched a cablegram to my sister Nelly, merely ask-
ing her to be at Dromroe to receive some American friends who
were returning with me, telling her the boat 1 intended leav-
ing by.

What was my astonishment, my delight, to realize in the per-
son of a little lady who kept frantically waving a white handker-
chief from the tug my darling sister ! Yes, there she was in a
sealskin coat and sealskin hat, and rosy and pretty, and oh ! so
enchanted to see me.

I caught the senora frantically by the arm and pushed her al-
most over the side of the ship.

"Look," I cried, "there's Nelly! Miss O'Hara, there is my
sister, the little red-faced girl' in sealskin waving the handker-
chief." Beside Nelly stood Major Butler, and at the other side
Trixv.

" There's Trixy," I shouted, " in the deep blue braided jacket,
and the black hat ; and Uncle Butler. God bless them ! How
true they are ! "

I leaped to the gangway to receive Nelly and kiss her as if I
was never to kiss her again. Then came Trixy.

" For once," I said as I kissed her too. " Nelly, who do you
think is with me ? Here she is, the senora, our dear mother's
.bridesmaid."

In a second Nelly was hugging the senora, and the senora
was laughing and crying over Nelly.

" How splendid you look, Joe ! " exclaimed Trixy. " So sun-
burnt ! Have you forgiven me ? "

" Oh ! I was a jackass, Trixy. Here, I want you to be awful-
ly good friends with Miss O'Hara. She's with us ; she's coming
to Dromroe." I suppose I made a mess of it, for Patricia cast a
quick, searching glance at Inez, then at me. Then she became
very pale.

" I feel sea-sick," she murmured. " Let me go ashore as soon
as possible."

" I'll get you some champagne, Trixy," I cried.

" Thanks, no, Mr. Nugent," she coldly replied, turning away
from me.

i88o.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 389

Nelly stared very hard at Inez ere she approached her, then
she took her in her arms, and kissed her, and began to cry. It
was strange, all this, but I was so engaged in wringing the
major's hand and asking after everything at home that I hadn't
time to notice much.

" Musha, Major, but it's the cockles o' me heart that's leppin'
this minit. Miss Nelly, but it's yerself that's lukkin' rosy an'
illigant. An' how's Tarn o' Shanther, major ? Is he cured av the
spavinyit? Is the pigs nearly reddy for Bally glass Fair, Miss
Nelly ? How is his riverince, the Lord be good to him ? Shure
it's himself that'll be plazed whin he hears what good Catholics
the haythins is proud an' plazed, an' so wud the Pope av Room.
Is Biddy Moriarty as crukked as ever, Miss Nelly ? I mane in
regard totimper; she'd vex the calendhar, she wud, she's that
conthairy. Faix, major, we seen a power, an' here we are back
agin, wud whole bones in our skins, praises be to the saints,
amin ! An' how's the misthress, sir ? Och, major, but it's yerself
that wud shake a loose leg av ye got up in thim forrin parts."

Poor Patricia was too ill to join us, so she sat down on a
trunk on the deck and gazed out to sea, her chin on hef hands,
her elbows on her knees.

" Let her alone, Joe," cried Nellie imperiously, as I was offer-
ing her all sorts of remedies. " For God's sake let her alone. You
don't know what you are doing. You don't indeed."

" Why"

" Not a word. Who is this Miss O'Hara, Joe, and and when
are you to be married to her ? "

All ashore ! " cried the officer, and amid a scene of hand-
^raspings and earnestly-expressed hopes of meeting again on the
irt of our fellow-passengers, we went on board the tug.

Nellie's question startled me. How had she perceived that I
r as in love with Inez? The perception seemed to lead her
further ; it indicated that Miss O'Hara pshaw ! I had now been
month in the closest intimacy with the girl, and no, I could

nothing, and I feared to test the hazard of the die.

We caught the express-train, and were duly decanted at Dun-
shaughlin, where Aunt Butler and all my tenants awaited our arri-
val. Poor Trixy wasn't herself at all. She sat in a corner of the
carriage, her elbow on the window-pane, her gaze outwards, and
she scarcely ever turned to us for the six hours. She was deadly
pale, too, but looked handsomer than ever.

"Joe," said my sister when we got together in the railway
carriage, " when did this all happen? "

390 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

" When did what all happen ? "

"Your engagement with this girl."

" I'm not engaged to Miss O'Hara, Nelly."

" Don't dare to deceive me ! " cried the little lady, flashing
angrily.

I told her all our meeting, Inez's history, and the dearest
hopes of my heart.

" Are you sure you love her really love her, Joe ? "

I suppose I was very emphatic in my assertion.
" I I thought I was sure you loved somebody else," said my
sister in tearful tones.

" Whom do you mean, Nelly Miss Wriothesly ? "

Nelly said nothing, but nodded in the direction of the window.

"Trixy?"

" Yes."

" Never, Nelly. I own that when I left I was a little jealous
of her that is, of that captain of dragoons ; but I didn't know my
own heart then. I know it now."

" Heigh-ho ! " said Nelly. " This is a shocking bad business."

It was my turn to be angry now, and I fiercely asked her what
she had to say against Miss O'Hara.

"Miss O'Hara? Pshaw! I wasn't thinking of her." Then
my sister added : " She's very beautiful, Joe."

Great was the rejoicing on my return. The whole road to
Dromroe was marked by bonfires, and over the entrance was a
triumphal arch, with the grand old words, " Cead Mille Failthe," in
colored lamps. Beneath the arch, the light shining on his dear
old bald head, stood Father Tom Mooney, in his hand a roll of
paper. This was an address written in Latin and English an
address of " Welcome Home." Good God, how those two words
sounded ! What delicious music !

As I handed the sefiora out of the carriage I felt a pull at my
sleeve, and, turning round, saw that it was Billy Brierly.

" Masther Joe, av ye hope to see glory, keep Mary Lannigan's
tongue aff a me. She's here, sir ; come over from Timolin for to
see me, sir. I'm afeered she'll claw Filler, divvle a doubt av it.
Wanst she's riz, she'd face Hecthor, bad cess to her ! "

Patricia insisted upon going home, although beds had been
prepared at Dromroe, and Aunt Butler went with her. I urged
her to stop.

" It's awfully hard, Trixy. I thought you'd be glad to see me
and "

" Oh ! don't," she cried, and ran out into the darkness.

iSSo.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 391

" What is the matter with Trixy, aunt? " I asked.

Mrs. Butler stared at me.

" Nothing, Joe, only a bad attack of nerves. She'll be all right
in a few days. I'll take her up to Dublin, perhaps, to-morrow for
a change."

Wasn't I proud and happy to have the senora on my right
hand, Inez on my left, and at my own mahogany !

" I have often wildly dreamt of this," I said, " but now that it
has come to pass I can hardly realize it." Or could I.

Father Tom sat beside the senora, and, as they talked nothing
but Mexico, I had a chance of drawing out Inez, to whom my
sister and Major Butler devoted themselves in common with my-
self. At first she was very timid and shy, and blushed confus-
edly, and kept glancing at the seflora ; but after a little she be-
came more at home and conversed with delightful naiv6te and
freedom.

" Well, what do you think of her? " I asked of my sister when
we gentlemen later on joined the ladies.

" She's very charming indeed," said Nelly.

" Is she not a very lovable girl, Nelly ? "

" I suppose so."

"Isn't it delightful to have the senora with us?"

" Oh ! yes, I like to have her."

My sister, usually inclined to gushing, was horribly cold on
the subject of Inez. It was quite evident to me that she disliked
the idea of my liking anybody. It was very difficult to deal with
some people. Here was a very beautiful young girl about her
own age, an orphan, the protegee of the friend of our dear mo-
ther ; and yet, why I could not tell, Nelly didn't seem to like
her. It mortified me terribly. Inez must see it when /saw it so
plainly.

The next day I was for going over to Timolin to inquire for
Trixy, but Nelly wouldn't let me.

" Trixy must be left alone," she said. " I'll take your rebosos
over to her myself."

Almost as we were speaking Patricia entered the room, great
dark circles round her eyes, her cheeks considerably flushed.

" I've come to say by-by, boy and girl," she cried.

" Why, what's up, Trixy ? " I asked.

" Papa has at last consented to take me for a trip on the Con-
tinent. We'll do Paris first, then on to Naples, and get back to
Rome for the Carnival, Won't that be awfully jolly?" She
spoke rapidly, and her mirth seemed to me to be rather forced.

392 MY RAID INTO MEXICO. [Dec.,

" Awfully jolly, Trixy," I said. " When does the governor
think of starting ? "

" To-night."

" To-night ? " I exclaimed.

" Yes. So I rode over to say by-by. Come up to your room,
Nell ; I've got something to say to you. Au revoir, Joe."

Why did she stop in the doorway, look at me in a strange,
wistful way, rush back, take my head in her two gloved hands,
pull it down to her, and kiss my forehead ? She was always a
queer sort of girl.

Pillar caused an immense commotion in the servants' hall,
where she was regarded as a greater curiosity than a stuffed
wolf. The inhabitants of the surrounding country for miles came
to take a look at her, some of them pinching her in order to as-
certain if she was alive. Billy Brierly's sneaking kindness for
her soon manifested itself, and he became the target for the
united wit of the townlands of Drungoff, Cabintaly, and Drom-
roe.

" Faix, it's ye cudn't go much furder or fare worse," said one.

" Its nothin' short av naygur wud do him."

" He bought her for a cupple av shillin' ; thim things is chape
out beyant in Asia."

" Begorra, he might have brought home somethin' daycint
whin he wint about it."

" They say she's a prencess."

" He caught her runnin' wild in the woods an' naked as a
biled egg."

" But it's yerself that has dhroll notions, Billy ; a white faymale
wasn't good enough for ye."

Billy bore the chaffing good-humoredly enough, and retaliat-
ed upon his persecutors by teaching Pillar several denunciatory
words in the Irish language, which tended to raise her consider-
ably in the estimation of those at whom they were ever and anon
laughingly hurled. Of course Nelly and I took the senora and
Inez up to Dublin, where we spent one week in doing the lions.
The first visit our elder guest made was to Clarendon Street
Chapel, and from there she crossed out into Grafton Street and
up to Stephen's Green, on the south side of which stood and still
stands the house in which once flourished the famous school of
Mrs. Parsley.

It was about a month after we arrived in Ireland that the se-
nora asked me to give her a few minutes' tete-b-t$te in my snuggery,
as she wished to consult me about a matter of some importance.

iSSo.] MY RAID INTO MEXICO. 393

" Joe," she said after she was seated, " I want to make a
clean breast of it, for your sake, for my own sake, and for the
sake of another. I perceived while you were in Mexico that
my darling Inez well, no, I cannot commence that way ; I saw,
Joe, that you had fallen in love with Inez "

I started.

" Yes, my dear, dear boy, I saw it, and at first I resolved
upon sending the dear girl back to San Angel. Then, Joe I am
going to be very imprudent now I saw that the affections of
Inez were were engaged beyond recall that she loved you."

The room seemed to whirl round as the senora proceeded.

" Then I said to myself, If this is to be, why not let it be ?
Why not give it every encouragement in your power? This is
why I resolved upon coming to Ireland, for I love that child as
my daughter. I love you, Joe, as a son. Is it to be ? "

I need not detail my reply. I need not put my raptures upon
.paper.

Inez is chatelaine of Dromroe to-day, and her oldest son is
able to sit a Shetland pony like a man.

The senora is at present in Mexico, but she returns next
April to remain with us for good and all. Patricia Butler is mar-
ried to the very dragoon I found her playing billiards with. He
is a very good sort of fellow, and I see a good deal of him dur-
'ing the hunting season, as he contrives to tune in his leave when
the scent lies deep. My sister Nelly is engaged to be married to
Sir Patrick O'Gorman, our popular Home-Rule member, and I
am delighted at the choice she has made. Mr. Van Dyck O'Shea,
having disposed of his interest in the mine and of his partner
with the impossible name, resides in Dublin. He is to be seen
sunning himself in the windows of the Stephen's Green Club at
all reasonable hours. He comes to us for the partridge, and
again at Christmas, when he meets the Bevans.

Billy Brierly was married to Pillar, and a capital wife she
makes him.

" Faix, Masther Joe, but it's a quare thing for to think av," he
often says to me " masther and man for to be matched in that
out-av-the-way place. Well, sir, av it wasn't for bakin an' cab-
bage I'd be a single boy this day ; but the way she done the cab-
bage done it."

Yes, I obtained a wife by My Raid Into Mexico.

THE END.

394 THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. [Dec.,

THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS.*

A REVIEW.

CARDINAL DECHAMPS began his ecclesiastical career as a Re-
demptorist. He was a professor of theology and an author dur-
ing this first period of his life, but most widely known and dis-
tinguished as an orator, the most famous among the successors of
the celebrated F. Bernard as a missionary preacher, and at the
same time a compeer of Lacordaire by his public conferences.
He was first appointed to the see of Namur, and translated from
that see to the primatial church of Malines after the death of
Cardinal Sterckx, shortly before the Council of the Vatican,
which he attended in his capacity as Primate of Belgium. After
the close of the council he was raised by Pius IX. to the cardinal-
ate, and continues, we believe, at the advanced age of 76 to fulfil
all his episcopal duties with undiminished vigor, aided by a co-
adjutor.

The works of a period of active industry as a writer covering
the space of 37 years, which we have now before us in a complete
and elegant edition of 16 volumes, were published in their pre-
sent form in 1874, under the eye of their author. The greater
part of them have long ago been translated into the principal
languages of Europe, have excited great attention and often lively
controversy and have been extensively circulated. Their principal
scope has been to place in a clear light the harmony of reason
and faith, and they have received, especially in view of this
character, the highest eulogium from the late Sovereign Pontiff
Pius IX. Moreover, as is testified by the late Cardinal Pie,
Bishop of Poitiers, the first Doctrinal Constitution of the Council
of the Vatican was derived in great part from one of the works
of Cardinal Dechamps, published before he w r as elevated to the
episcopal dignity.

The first volume of the complete works contains Conversa-
tions on the Catholic Demonstration of the Christian Religion.
Another is entitled The Christ and the Antichrists in the Scrip-
tures, History, and Consciousness, and is the antithesis of Re-

* CEuvres Completes de S. E. Le Cardinal Dechamps de La Cong, du T. S. RSdempteur,
Archeveque de Malines, Primat de Belgique. Malines : H. Dessain.

i88o.] THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. 395

nan's idea, though it preceded the first of this writer's publica-
tions. Another work on Certitude in Religion fills two volumes,
Infallibility and the General Council is the topic of another, The
New Eve is a Treatise on the devotion to Mary, and besides these
larger connected works, there are several volumes of oratorical dis-
courses, pastoral and official documents, minor treatises, miscella-
neous writings and letters. All have an important bearing on the
ecclesiastical history and the principal controversies of the last
fifty years. The most original, the most salient, the most effec-
tive and enduring part of the collective array of intellectual
weapons to be found in the cardinal's extensive arsenal of argu-
ment and eloquence, consists in the exposition of the way of
proving the truth of Christianity by a Catholic argument which
is equally adapted to the wise and simple and equally cogent for
all minds. We confine ourselves, therefore, principally, to a re-
view of that portion of the eminent author's works in which this
argument is made the direct and specific object of exposition.

Pius IX. praises the works of the cardinal because they
" manifest clearly that right reason gives such a testimony to the
Catholic faith, that not only believers, but even rationalists them-
selves are compelled to confess the absurdity of the opinions
which are contrary to it." Cardinal Pie in a letter to the distin-
guished Belgian philosopher Dr. Van Weddingen, expresses
himself in reference to the same as follows : ' " I have particularly
appreciated what you have so well said of the popular proof of
the true religious doctrine. This point had been already treated
in a new and striking manner by your eminent metropolitan,
while he was still F. Dechamps, and the first doctrinal constitu-
tion of the Council of the Vatican has rendered him the well-
merited honor of reproducing the substance and almost the pre-
cise form of his argument."

The entire scope and substance of the cardinal's works directly
treating of this argument is summarized and sanctioned as the
rule of Catholic teaching in these words of the Vatican Council :

" The church by herself, namely by her admirable propaga-
tion, eminent sanctity and inexhaustible fecundity in all good
things, together with her catholic unity and immovable stability,
is a grand and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefragable
testimony of her own divine legation."

This is the old argument of St. Augustine which he frequently
repeats and upon which he dilates.

" It is the very name of Catholic which holds me in the bosom
of the church." " I would not believe the Gospel unless the au-

396 THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. [Dec.,

thority of the Catholic Church moved me thereto." (Con. Ep.
Fund. c. 5.)

In another place, he most explicitly argues that as the disci-
ples who had Jesus himself before their eyes believed directly
upon his own oral testimony confirmed by miracles, and among
other things believed in the future catholicity of the church
which was not yet visible, so the successors of the disciples to
whom the church is visible by her visible notes, but Jesus him-
self invisible, believe in the Lord and in his word by means of the
testimony of the church.

" This the disciples did not yet see, the church spread through
all nations beginning from Jerusalem. They saw the head, and
they believed the head concerning the body. By that which they
saw, they believed what they did not see. We also are similar to
them : we see something which they saw not ; and there is some-
thing which we see not but which they saw. What do we see
which they did not? The church spread through all nations.
What do we not see which they saw ? Christ existing in his
bodily presence. As they saw him and believed in his body (the
church) : so we see his body and ought to believe in the head*
Our respective visible objects are fitted to give us mutual aid.
The visible Christ aided them to believe in the future church :
let the visible church aid us to believe in the resurrection of
Christ. Their faith wa's full, let ours be the same ; their faith
was full, derived from the head, let ours be full derived from the
body. The whole Christ was known to them, and is known to
us : but the whole was not visible to them, and the whole is not
visible to us. The head was seen by them, the body believed :
by us, the body is seen, the head believed." (Serrri. 116, Ed. Ben.)

Again : " The Church is diffused throughout the whole globe
of the earth : all nations have the church. Let no one deceive
you : she is true, she is catholic. We do not see Christ : we see
her, let us believe in Christ." (Serm. 238.) " We have our re-
spective turns, we have the grace of our dispensation : the times
are distributed to us in one faith, with the most certain evidences
for enabling us to believe. They saw the head and believed con-
cerning the body ; we see the body, let us believe concerning the
head." (Serm. 242.)

Bossuet proclaims the fact of catholicity to be a perpetually
subsisting miracle which confirms the truth of all the other mira-
cles, Pascal declares that the present state of the true religion
of itself suffices to prove its truth, Moehler that it is to the di-
vine work of catholic unity our Lord himself appeals as the perma-

na
he

1880.] THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. 397

nent proof of his mission. The same is laid down with accurate
theological precision by the most approved authors of classical
text-books, such as Liebermann, who says that " the church, by
her notes, is a motive of credibility sufficient for the simple and
necessary for the wise " ; and Dens, who says that u she is by the
splendor of her notes the first of the motives of credibility, proves
revelation independently of the Scriptures, and alone makes the
divine origin of the Christian revelation apparent in all its evi-
dence to those who have not received an immediate revelation
out of the ordinary course."

What is meant, then, by ascribing to the mode adopted by
Cardinal Dechamps in Christian Apologetics a certain novelty and
originality ? It is merely this : that in modern Treatises on The
True Religion and The Christian Demonstration, the argument
from the very existence and manifest notes of the Catholic Church
has not been sufficiently insisted on and made prominent, and that
in reasoning from the stability and universality of Christianity
abstraction from the church has been made, the demonstration of
the church being subsequently and separately developed. The
special characteristic, therefore, of the cardinal's works on this
subject is : that, to use his own explanation of his intention, he
has aimed to impress on the attention of the defenders of the
faith " that if there are several good methods of the demonstra-
tion of the faith, if there is a Christian demonstration and a Ca-
tholic demonstration, each one of which is conclusive, although
presented successively, there is also a Catholic demonstration of
the Christian revelation which Providence makes at one stroke
and continues before the eyes of the world by the permanent

ork of Catholicity ; a grand fact which is not only strictly
spealdng a motive of credibility, but is for us the principal one,
distinguished above all others by its being present, public, and no-
'orious, and by being living, speaking, self -manifesting and self-ex-
plaining." (Tom. xv. p. 340.)

No one who believes that Christianity is a divine and revealed

ligion, and that faith is necessary for the temporal and eter-
nal salvation of individuals and the human race can fail to see
how important, how necessary it is to find the best and quickest
and most generally suitable way of confirming all believers against
involuntary or voluntary doubts, and of convincing those who are
in unbelief, in ignorance or in doubt, so that they may clearly un-
derstand that they are rationally bound to believe. St. Thomas
says that no one can rationally believe unless he first sees that he
ought to believe, that what is proposed to him as an object of

398 THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. [Dec.,

faith is credible. In respect to those who have leisure and learn-
ing, there is no great difficulty in the way of their proceeding by
philosophy, history, the examination of documents, to acquire a
competent and extensive knowledge of the whole moral demon-
stration of the divine origin of Christianity, of the fact and the
contents of revelation, of the Catholic Church and her principles,
doctrines and laws, taken singly and collectively. This is a legi-
timate way in which faith may seek for science, when one already
has faith. In the same way, one who has not faith or does not
possess the Catholic rule and criterion of faith, may, by spending
some considerable time in dilligent inquiry and study, arrive at
the certainty which is the preamble of full and complete Catholic
faith. The greater number, however, of those who are believers
are impeded from obtaining any great measure of this kind of
science, and the same is true of the greater number of those who
are seeking or who ought to be seeking for faith itself. More-
over, those who have faith without science must have a reason-
able motive for their faith, even though they can never attain to
science. Those who can attain to science by means of study can-
not lawfully and safely hold their faith in suspense while they
are acquiring science. Those who are seeking for faith, if they
are capable of science, are yet in a very insecure and disadvan-
tageous position if they are obliged to wait for years while they
are acquiring it. Much more pitiable is the condition of those
who are incapable of science, if they must remain in doubt or
ignorance, because there is no short and easy way by which they
can come to see rationally and certainly that they ought to believe,
and what they ought to believe, in order to be in a secure way of
attaining interior peace, the grace of God and the future salvation
of their souls. Two things, obviously, must be true and .verifi-
able in respect to a revealed religion which is proposed to all
men as the only way of salvation and is adapted to the actual state
and condition of mankind in general. Proceeding from God who
is the author of the natural order and whose providence is uni-
versal, who is also the source and measure of all truth whatso-
ever, it must be in perfect agreement with all the real, all the
known and all the knowable, and thus capable of the most com-
plete scientific and historical demonstration to the utmost ex-
tent of the human capacity. But, being provided, for all men,
and necessary for all, it cannot, viewing the actual condition of
mankind, have need of any such demonstration, in order to be
known with certainty as a true revelation and to be certainly
and sufficiently understood by all. A religion which presup-

i88o.] THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. 399

poses any great degree of intelligence, of study and of know-
ledge as the necessary preamble and disposition for certainly
knowing its divine origin and believing with a reasonable and
certain faith what it proposes, cannot be the universal religion
which God has provided and adapted for the salvation of all man-
kind. Therefore, any form of professedly Christian doctrine
which presupposes a personal and adequate examination of its
own documentary evidence as a condition requisite to a reason-
able assent to its truth, stands self-condemned. Moreover, any
form of demonstration however complete and conclusive of the
verity and the genuine nature of the Christian Revelation, of its
authentic documents and doctrines, of the rule and contents of its
faith and law, which can be known and understood only by the
few who surpass the many in mental capacity and knowledge,
cannot be the primary, necessary and universal means of obtain-
ing a certain knowledge that the Christian Religion is from God,
and a certain knowledge of what it really teaches and commands.
It is of the utmost consequence, therefore, that those who un-
dertake to teach the faithful generally how it is that their faith is
not only an act of supernatural virtue proceeding from a gift of
God inherent in their regenerate nature, but also an act which
accords with the essential principles and acts of their rational na-
ture itself, should find out what is the palmary and summary
motive of credibility which really exists in their minds and makes
their assent reasonable. Otherwise, they will present to them
evidences and arguments which are only intelligible and useful to
the smaller number, and will pass over the heads of the multi-
tude. It is of equal importance that those who seek to convince
the multitude of the truth of Christianity, or, specifically, of the
identity of Christianity with Catholicity, should find out this
first, most universal, and most easily intelligible motive of credi-
bility for the claim of Jesus Christ as the Saviour and of the
church as the Teacher of all mankind.

Cardinal Dechamps, in fulfilling his life-long mission as a

:hampion of the faith against every kind of modern incredulity,

ms set forth the church herself, resplendent with her four notes

)f unity, sanctity, catholicity and apostolicity, as that subsisting

ind perpetual motive of credibility which the Providence of God

tas furnished and which is both sufficient for the simple and

lecessary for the wise. Going backward from the foundation of

:he Apostolic Church to the creation of man, he shows how the

society established by God in the primordial human family and

perpetuated through the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations

4OO THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. [Dec.,

was generically one and the same with the Christian Catholic
Church, and endowed with attributes and powers sufficient for ful-
filling the same purpose relatively to the initial and progressive
conditions of redeemed humanity. It might naturally be sup-
posed that one whose dominant idea was the one we have de-
scribed would have devoted himself principally to the instruc-
tion of the people. The young F. Dechamps, as a Redemptorist
missionary, did consecrate himself to this work at the beginning
of his priestly life, and labor in it' with apostolic zeal during
many years. Nevertheless, his high and varied gifts fitted him
to become the teacher of the learned and cultivated, a teacher
and ruler of the clergy, and a primate among bishops, as well as
a popular preacher. His dominant idea was one which did ndt
need to be exchanged for another, when he turned from teaching
the multitude to teach their teachers, to instruct the most cul-
tured minds among the faithful, and to confront the most able
and subtle sophists. To quote his own words : " That which con-
stitutes the proper character of the method which we have pre-
ferred, without disowning the legitimate quality of other me-
thods, is that it follows the ordinary way incontestably traced
by Providence in order to lead men to the faith, and in which
one sees clearly that which is a point of the utmost importance,
viz., that the reasoned-out faith of the learned reposes absolutely
upon the same foundations with the reasonable faith of the simple,
as we have already remarked in the second chapter of this
work, where we show how in this way of Providence, the rights
of reason and the rights of faith are always harmonized." (Tom.
vii. p. 404.) The cardinal's writings are not popular tracts for
the uneducated multitude but mostly learned and polished works
for the educated laity, useful also for the clergy, relating to the
foi raisonne'e, and often discussing the highest matters of philoso-
phy and theology. Yet they all proceed from the principle
before laid down, and are the development and illustration of
the one dominant idea. Those who have to prepare conferences
and discourses or to write essays on the topics of faith, no mat-
ter whether the level of intelligence and knowledge in their
hearers or readers be lower or higher, will find in the cardinal's
writings a great quantity of most excellent material, and also fine-
models of style for compositions which are intended for the more
cultivated class.

The comments and expositions which a prelate of the high
rank, the great learning, and relations of intimate confidence to-
ward the Holy See belonging to the Cardinal Primate of Bel-

i88o.] THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. 401

gium has given upon the doctrinal decisions of Pius IX. and the
Council of the Vatican must carry with them a great authority.
A great deal of light is thrown upon several interesting modern
controversies by the information and the explanations furnished
in his writings. We wish to call attention particularly to the
cardinal's explanation of the import of the condemnations pro-
nounced upon modern rationalism, specifically that reason can
attain to a science of all dogmas, even those which are the most
recondite mysteries of the faith, which is founded on demonstra-
tion by the natural power of the intellect, from natural princi-
ples. It is well known to all who are familiar with theological
speculation that some Catholic writers have endeavored to prove
by purely rational arguments, not merely in a negative but even
in a positive manner, the reasonableness of the dogma of the
Trinity. Notably, among ourselves, Dr. Brownson and F. De
Concilio have distinguished themselves by the remarkably able
and subtle manner in which they have argued that the concept
of the three hypostases is necessary to a clear and distinct con-
ception of the unity of essence in the divine nature. We observe
that an eminent Protestant writer, Principal Caird of Glasgow
University, has recently affirmed that the Trinity is a necessary
doctrine of Natural Theology. There has been some misgiving
awakened in respect to arguments of this kind, lest they might
imply an assertion of a possibility of discerning the intrinsic
reasons of truths which are beyond the capacity and scope of the
human intellect in its present state and can only be known and
believed as the extrinsic authority of revelation. Some of our
classical authors in theology are very shy of arguments of this
kind, and not only exclude them from their treatises but even
take pains to show that they are inconclusive and to deprecate
the effort to reason at all upon this line as fruitless if not rash and
censurable. Cardinal Dechamps does not concur with those
who adhere to this kind of theological positivism.

He does not confine himself to the demonstration of the verity
of revelation, but he goes further by arguing that the revealed
verities are in themselves both negatively and positively reason-
able, showing their intrinsic reasons by which they are made in-
telligible to the intellect in its intellectual and rational light, and
thus adding another motive of credibility to the external motive
of faith which is the veracity of God who reveals them. He
takes his departure from the declarations made by the Sovereign
Pontiff and the Vatican Council. Pius IX. in his Brief of Decem-
ber n, 1862, defines that the scope of reason and philosophy ex-

VOL. xxxii. 26

402 THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. [Dec.,

tend even "ad ilia etiam reconditiora dogmata, quas sola fide per-
cipi primum possunt, ut ilia aliquo modo a ratione intelligantur ":
" to those more secret dogmas which can be first perceived by
faith alone,- so that they may be in some way understood by
reason." The cardinal translates : " aim que ceux-ci soient en
quelque maniere aussi compris ou saisis par la raison." The Con-
stitution Dei Filius also declares that " ratio quidem, fide illus-
trata, cum sedulo, pie et sobrie quserit, aliquam, Deo dante, mys-
teriorum intelligentiam eamque fructuosissimam assequitur, turn
ex earum, quae naturaliter cognoscit, analogia, turn e mysterio-
rum ipsorum nexu inter se et cum fine hominis ultimo." " Reason,
indeed, illuminated by faith, when it searches carefully, piously
and prudently, obtains, by the gift of God, some understanding,
and that most fruitful, of the mysteries, both by analogy derived
from the things which it naturally knows, and also by the con-
nection existing between the mysteries mutually, and between
themselves and the final end of man."

The cardinal refers also to the doctrinal authority of the
greatest theologians as well as to the judicial authority of the
church herself, and especially to St. Thomas, St. Bonaventura
and Bossuet. Specifically in respect to the mystery of the Tri-
nity, following the reasoning of these two last-mentioned doctors,
he designates the line dividing what reason may attempt to de-
monstrate, and may be considered as demonstrable and actually
demonstrated, from that which is intrinsically inevident and un-
demonstrable. The demonstrable part viz. is that for which
analogies in created things furnish concepts and data by means of
which we can understand the uncreated and infinite nature of
God. By means of these analogies St. Bonaventura and Bossuet
have argued from a threefold modal distinction in the rational na-
ture of man, that if this nature were infinite the modal distinctions
would necessarily be real terms of the essence, constituting three
hypostases. Consequently, the divine nature, being intellectual
and infinite must subsist in three distinct hypostases. In what
sense, then, does the cardinal understand those definitions of the
church which proclaim the mystery of the Trinity a revealed
truth above reason, essentially inevident and undemonstrable ?
In this sense, that the entire and complete dogma revealed by
God and proposed to faith by the Catholic Church is not com-
prised in the proposition that there are three hypostases in the
divine unity, but includes more. Analogies fail at a certain point
which is the term of human intelligence, and must fail at some
point which terminates the line of vision for every created intel-

i88o.] THE WRITINGS OF CARDINAL DECHAMPS. 403

ligence. That which cannot be seen except by the intuition of
the divine essence remains in the dark obscurity of mystery.
Therefore, it is only a certain something of supernatural verities
which can be seen, and in their totality as the adequate objects
of divine faith, they are mysteries. Yet, in part, and aliquo modo
they are intelligible, and those who have attained to the intelli-
gence of this part or side of a revealed truth can demonstrate it
to others.

" This is what St. Bonaventure explains, when he says at one and
the same time that human reason cannot pretend to comprehend the
incomprehensible Trinity, but yet that it can see and therefore cause
others to see, that is prove that this incomprehensible Trinity is
necessary in the unity of the divine nature, by showing that the
sovereign goodness or the sovereign good cannot be conceived
without it, quin cogitetur trinum et unum" (Tom. vii., Pie IX, et
Les Erreurs de son Temps, p. 95.)

The cardinal presents in like manner, the Incarnation, the
Holy Eucharist, and other dogmas of faith under their rational
aspect, and we are pleased to see that he favors the view which
among others, one of our own writers, F. De Concilio, has pre-
sented with so much clearness of reasoning, that the Incarnation
was not decreed solely in view of the redemption of fallen man, but
as an original and necessary part of the whole supernatural or-
der.

It is interesting to know what are the prognostications of the
future issue of the great combat between the Catholic Church and
her enemies made by the veteran champion and leader, who at
the close of his long career has collected the works of his whole
ife as so many trophies, the armor, weapons and banners of a
glorious warfare, and which may yet be used again by other sol-
diers of the cross in new campaigns. We conclude therefore
with a passage in which the cardinal expresses his highest hopes
of an approaching victory of the Faith in so beautiful a manner
that we regret to impair its form by a translation :

" It is sure that the splendor of the conquests of the truth
never has been and never will be unaccompanied by some sha-
dow. These victories can never absolutely finish the warfare
between truth and error, for the church must remain militant
even to the last day ; yet notwithstanding this necessity for the
perpetual continuance of the struggle, everything warrants our.
expectation that an epoch is drawing near which has no parallel
in the history of Christianity. On the one. hand, God is diffusing
through the world the spirit of grace and supplication, more

404 Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. [Dec.,

abundantly than in any foregoing times ; and on the other hand,
as if they felt themselves in danger of a great defeat, all the anti-
christian forces are joined in battle-array against the Lord and
against his Christ. They are frightened, then, and what is it they
are afraid of? Of a disarmed power, of the word of an aged man,
which nevertheless cannot be imprisoned with him. It is in this
way that they confess by their actions what they will not acknow-
ledge to themselves, that this word is more than human, and that
in the end God will bring them into subjection to its power."
(Tom. x. CEuv. Orat. p. 132.)

TWO LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.,

CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. BY ORBY SHIPLEY, M.A.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The two following letters have been addressed to Dr. Pusey.

The first letter was privately printed ; and when it had been forwarded to the venerable
doctor it was widely circulated to public men in the Establishment, to private friends, to a por-
tion of the press, and to some Catholics. Neither of the letters, after a period of four months,
has been honored by any reply.

With the first printed letter to Dr. Pusey was sent a formal manuscript letter of presentation.
In acknowledging its receipt Dr. Pusey pleads that he is overworked in trying to finish an answer
to a late book on Universalism, and excuses himself from other controversy. As a rejoinder
to this brief note Dr. Pusey is respectfully asked if these few words may be taken as his answer
to the letter, and if he will sanction their publication; To this second manuscript note Dr. Pusey
in substance answers that he has not read the printed letter ; and that, as it is proposed to publish
the correspondence, he declines to answer it: The second printed letter was then posted to Dr.
Pusey ; and to this no word has been returned.

Whilst awaiting any response which Dr. Pusey might be pleased to give to the letters in
question, a courteous invitation from the editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, to furnish an epitome
of the rejoinder to Dr. Littledale's tract, Why Ritualists do not become Roman CatJiolics, entitled
"Truthfulness and Ritualism," was received by the author. As the privately-printed letter to
Dr. Pusey already contained a summary of the pamphlet, and as the work on which Dr. Pusey
had been engaged was published and hence since one of his reasons for maintaining silence
had lapsed without any answer having been made by Dr. Pusey, the opportunity of obtaining
an extended publicity in the church in America for both the letters following was thankfully se-
cured.

The letters may now speak for themselves.

OCTOBER i, 1880.

LETTER I.

MY DEAR DR. PUSEY :

I am reluctantly compelled to appeal to your individual judg-
ment, and to the attention which your respected name can alone

ap
to

i88o.] Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 405

secure for my appeal, in regard to some recent corporate action
of former fellow-laborers and old friends of my own.

After consideration I have decided to address myself to you,
in your official relations, not only because for many years past I
have looked up to you with deference as an authority in matters
of dispute within the Anglican communion, but also because
you are, and have long been, the one and only person whose
word spoken, or written, or even conveyed by telegraph I
have myself known to become law to those against whose course
of action I venture to appeal. And I so address myself in the as-
surance that, from your high religious character and from your
keen sense of right, I shall be certain to secure justice.

I make this appeal with reference to a gross, unprovoked, and
widely-circulated attack on the moral character of converts to
the Catholic Church a body of men of whom I daily more and
more thankfully know myself to be one to the reckless and un-
scrupulous imputations of bad motives, which are beyond man's
power of perception ; and to many positively false charges and
inaccurate statements which are devoid of any semblance of
proof.

This attack and these accusations, moral and literary, have
been published under the special patronage of a great religious
society, consisting exclusively of " communicants," viz., the Eng-
lish Church Union, of which you are the vice-president. They
originated from the pen of its chief, if not of its only prominent,
and certainly of its most frequent, spokesman, who is also one of
its accredited and honored office-bearers Dr. Littledale. And I
appeal to you in person, and through you, in the first, instance,

public opinion within the society, for these reasons : First, be-
cause I have failed to obtain from the president, and council any
acknowledgment whatever of the grievous wrong that has been
one. Next, because I have been equally unsuccessful in obtain-
ing privately, from several representative members of the Union,
both lay and clerical, any hope or any hint of contemplated re-
paration. Thirdly, because in no other equally effective way can
I expose the shameless accusations and mendacious statements
which, to an extent unconsciously, perhaps, the president and
council have been led to circulate broadcast. And, lastly, be-
cause I am determined to expose Dr. Littledale's assertions, by
simply repeating them categorically, by annotating them in a
few words, and by challenging the society who has adopted
them to establish their veracity.

I take this course, you will be pleased to observe, not in rela-

406 Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. [Dec.,-

tion to myself, but on a twofold ground. In the first place, I
write on behalf of gentlemen who need no defence at my hands,
but whom the society, through Dr. Littledale, has maligned.
And then I plead on behalf of high-toned, honest, and courteous
theological controversy with the Catholic Church, which the so-
ciety, through Dr. Littledale, has degraded. I appeal, therefore,
in the interests of truthfulness in the abstract, which cannot really
be advanced by vulgar personalities, by vague and defamatory
religious gossip, by bold and rash assertions unsupported by evi-
dence, and by definite charges that are demonstrably false. I ap-
peal, also, in defence of upright and earnest men, whose chief, if
not whose only, crime against their persistent and bitter calumni-
ators is this : that they honestly abandoned, and often at a great
personal sacrifice, what they at length, as all others from the first,
have perceived to be an untenable and precarious position in the
Established Religion.

To this position the extremest Ritualist section of the High-
Church party who, however wrongly, venture to claim your
countenance, if not your example still think fit to adhere. Nor,
on the present occasion, do I question the liberty of their choice.
I only question the means which they allow themselves to take,
through the instrumentality of another, to defend and support
such liberty. Neither do I now question their acceptance of a
false principle on the strength of which men, otherwise consistent,
adopt nearly all Catholic doctrine, practise many Catholic usages,
and follow much Catholic example, as members of a Protestant
communion, whilst at the same time they incontinently abuse for
no other word expresses their attitude towards the church, to
which they are yet ceaselessly attracted and which they even slav-
ishly imitate.

But I do earnestly and indignantly denounce as morally
wicked the action of a religious society which, with no obvious
restraint, employs the powers of one of its members in vilifying
the character, in distorting the actions, and in misquoting the
words of those who, at the least, are in religion more consistent
than themselves, though they be hated converts to the Holy Ro-
man Church. I do protest against the conduct of the Union as
unworthy which condescends to utilize such a writer and such a
mode of attack, but will neither frankly apologize for the indig-
nity if it were unwittingly offered, nor will publicly repudiate the
offender when his statements have been publicly proved to be false.

Such conduct I feel sure that you will agree with me in con-
demning as at once immoral, unmanly, and ungenerous.

,i88o.] Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 407

I ask, then, for your help, as that of one whose influence with
all who are implicated in this unhappy and gratuitous defama-
tion of converts is all-powerful. I ask for the exercise of your
influence with the president and council of the English Church
Union. I ask you to obtain, not from the writer for from the
outset I have declined to appeal to Dr. Littledale but from a
company of gentlemen and clergymen who support and encour-
age, or at the least fail to disclaim or repudiate, his wanton assault,
such reparation as they alone, and now, can make. I ask you to
obtain for a candid admission of error in judgment (which is
avowedly excusable under misapprehension) and of consequent
wrong-doing (which is morally inexcusable in persistency) the
like publicity that they spontaneously and even ostentatiously
afforded to Dr. Littledale's indefensible and undefended accusa-
tions. And I ask this after having publicly proved, and not be-
fore I have proved, my case from matters of fact that are beyond
cavil ; from trustworthy witnesses whose testimony cannot be
gainsaid; from documentary evidence which 'the Union has at-
tempted to answer, no, not in one single point.

My case, stated shortly, is as follows :

Dr. Littledale has lately published in the Contemporary Re-
view a reply to an essay of the Rev. Abbe Martin's, entitled What
hinders Ritualists from becoming Catholics ? This reply was official-
ly brought before the notice of the president and council of your
society. It was examined by them. They requested the author
to revise his work. His consent to its republication was secured.
The Union reprinted it in a pamphlet form and at their own expense.
They issued it under their special recommendation ; advertised it
in their literary organ ; sold it to their own members at reduced
terms. In a word, they did what they have before done, I be-
lieve, for none other, whether pamphleteer or pamphlet they
adopted the author's tract and made it their own. Their efforts
for its circulation were not in vain. The Reply met with a cer-
tain amount of success.

The evidence for this definite statement is taken from the
society's official paper. In spite of it, and in opposition to it, the
Hon. Charles L. Wood has been content to deny in general
terms, in the Tablet newspaper, the responsibility of the Union
for all the separate utterances, in this or that publication, which
may happen to appear under its auspices !

The article in the Contemporary Review was written previously
to my submission to the Catholic Church. Hence it affects me
personally, whether directly or indirectly, not at all. Upon its

408 Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. [Dec.,.

reissue, under the patronage of the Union, in a pamphlet form
and under the title of Why Ritualists do not become Roman Catholics,
I was led, without a presentiment of the revelation which awaited
me, to examine with scrupulous care Dr. Littledale's charges
against converts and his attack upon the church. Some results
of my criticism I submitted, first at large and then in detail, to
the consideration of the society and for public inquiry, in two
series of letters, which have been lately completed in the Tablet
newspaper, and are now published by Messrs. Burns & Gates.
They are entitled Truthfulness and Ritualism.

In my letters to the Tablet I dealt with some of the accusa-
tions, made by Dr. Littledale and accepted by the Union, against
Anglicans in general who had joined the Church of Rome, and
against certain distinguished men amongst them. These pas-
sages I compared, where comparison were possible, with authori-
ties at first hand and with official and printed documents. With-
out exhausting either topic, I selected twelve definite charges
and a like number of statements, and I more or. less thoroughly
examined each one of them. With your permission I will sum-
marize some of the results at which I arrived.

The charges brought by the English Church Union against
converts, through the instrumentality of Dr. Littledale, vary from
a comparatively harmless assertion of opinion to the most shame-
ful accusations of untruthfulness and immorality. Two features
are apparent in most of them. They abound in the imputation
of bad motives ; and, also, they are made either independently of
any proof at all, or dependent on proofs which will bear no test
of verification. For instance, to pass upwards from pure matters
of opinion or sentiment to positive detraction and false-witness :

i. Tractarians, Dr. Littledale affirms, left the Church of Eng-
land because they despaired of reform. 2. Convert-Ritualists, he
says, are cowards. 3. Waverers towards Rome, he declares, know
next to nothing of their old religion and absolutely nothing of
their new faith. 4. Seceders to Rome are insignificant in num-
ber, and individually are unregretted. 5. Converts have no in-
tellectual power, and exercise no personal influence. 6. They
accept the Catholic system eagerly, because they like it just as
they might like oysters and pastry. 7. They give up the sin of
thinking, from motives of mere mental laziness and sloth. 8. Not
one convert clergyman was ever converted by the study of theo-
logy and history. And, 9, while most lay converts sink into reli-
gious indifference, not a few fall into downright scepticism.

Dr. Littledale's nine charges, which are made apart from any

i88o.] Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 409

semblance of evidence, more or less closely or individually affect
converts who bear these amongst many other honored names. I
confine myself to the repetition of a few names from a galaxy of
intellect and a crowd of lofty moral characters to which even the
paper which claims to be the organ of the Ritualists is compelled
to bear witness. But I shall mention many of whom you person-
ally will be able to judge whether or not they deserve Dr. Little-
dale's systematic ridicule or his ridiculous disparagement. They
are these, and their names are heard in every position of life :
Allies, Badeley, Barff, Bellasis, Bowyer, Coleridge, Digby, Faber,
Fortescue, Harper, Herbert, Lindsay, De Lisle, Lucas, Manning,
Maskell, Mivart, Morris, Newman, Northcote, Oakeley, Paley,
Palmer, Pollen, Pugin, Ripon, Spenser, Ward, Wilberforce.

Such are the men typical of a class at whom the above
libels are levelled. Nor do these exhaust the minor and vaguer
charges, sanctioned by the Union, which are brought by Dr.
Littledale against converts. Indeed, an impartial person, from a
perusal of the Reply to Abbe Martin, would be naturally led to
conceive the Anglican convert to Rome as one who, beyond the
above- named characteristics, lived the life of a fast layman, being
indifferent to his religion, loafing about billiard-rooms, not pay-
ing his butcher's and baker's bills, and even getting drunk and
being locked up for assaulting the police and that, observe, for
the first time in his life on the evening of his conversion, and by
way of inaugurating his admission into the Catholic Church ! I
pause to ask, not if you recognize the portrait of a convert to the
church of your earlier life, from the ranks of the gentlemanlike,
cultivated, pious, and scholarly Oxford Tractarians ; but if you
can accept such a wicked caricature, even after Tractarianism has
been for years vulgarized and degraded by so-called Ritualist
writers ?

But, in any case, here is an instance of the Ritual method of
controversy with Rome. These calumnies appear amongst the
reasons offered to the world why Ritualists do not become
Catholics. On such moral ' garbage is the modern Ritualist in-
tellectually fed by his accredited leaders and acknowledged
spokesmen. For such shameful statements are individual mem-
bers of the English Church Union responsible responsible by
reason of the action of their president and council yourself and
the Hon. Charles L. Wood, Canon Liddon and the Rev. T. T.
Carter, Archdeacon Denison and the Rev. Dr. West, Lord Lim-
erick and the Rev. F. H. Murray, the Rev. C. F. Lowder and
Dr. Phillimore, the Hon. and Rev. R. Liddell, Mr. J. D. Cham-

410 Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. [Dec.,

bers, Mr. Shaw Stewart, the Rev. G. Body and Canon King,
and others, members of the council and of the society.

These nine charges, however if, indeed, any one outside the
Union can believe them to be true are light in comparison with
those remaining charges which affect the moral character of con-
verts to the church. The latter are threefold :

10. The old, old story of constantly recurring bad faith in con-
verts a charge which receives a curious counter-illustration in
the course of the controversy. In the solitary instance supplied
by Dr. Littledale of convert-falsity I have shown from printed
evidence that the inculpated assertion is literally exact.

11. The fact that conversion to Rome involves, according to
tke English Church Union, in a large majority of cases sudden,
serious, and permanent moral deterioration, especially as to the
quality of truthfulness. The specific charge viz., of convert-in-
veracity is devoid of any evidence whatever. The generic
charge we shall come to presently.

12. The even worse slander which is attached by the Union
and its licensed agent of detraction to married clerical converts
viz., that the motive of secession, in not a few instances, has been
the wish to be permanently free from the moral and religious
checks of the clerical profession, and to be at liberty to adopt un-
censured the habits of fast laymen. This most grave charge
against convert clergymen only assumes its real and almost fiend-
ish aspect when the following is added. The above words form
an integral portion of the author's argument, in which he, under
the guise of a friend, deliberately accuses English Catholic clergy,
by scores and hundreds, who have formed no hallowed domestic
ties, with that type of immorality which is sometimes asserted
of the priesthood by ultra-Protestant controversialists. More-
over, as we shall see, Dr. Littledale has lately reiterated, with
studied emphasis, the more offensive portion of this charge.

These accusations I have repeated in the writer's own words,
as revised by himself and as adopted by the Union. The intrin-
sic amount of probability which belongs to them in the absence
of all evidence in their favor may perhaps be incidentally esti-
mated. I now propose to draw your attention to certain other
statements, with a like general malign purport, gathered from
the pamphlet which has secured the special and even exceptional
imprimatur of your society. These statements occur in some of
the author's assertions which I have carefully annotated in the
Tablet newspaper. They are collected from a cloud of similar
propositions similar, i.e., in their utter untrustworthiness, in

i88o.] Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 411

their inexactitude, in their pretentiousness, in their mistakes and
blunders, in their positive and irreconcilably false quotations.
They form " fair average examples " of the quality of Dr. Little-
dale's accusations, though they afford but a few instances of
their variety. I shall esteem it a favor if you will bear with me
whilst I recapitulate from the Tablet the following reckless and
unproven propositions, not one of which the Union has ventured
to support by evidence, not one of which the Union has had the
candor or the courage to withdraw. For example :

1. Dr. Littledale has charged Cardinal Newman with describ-
ing as like a bad dream certain devotions thrust by authority on
English Catholics. Cardinal Newman has said nothing of the
sort, but has affirmed almost the exact contradictory.

2. Dr. Littledale has accused Cardinal Manning of denouncing
an appeal to the church herself, and to church history, as treason
and heresy. Cardinal Manning has affirmed precisely the oppo-
site.

3. Dr. Littledale has imputed to a statement by Cardinal Man-
ning viz., that " Janus " first formally announced a certain silly
fable about papal infallibility deliberate bad faith. The cardi-
nal's assertion is literally true.

4. Dr. Littledale has committed himself and the Union to this
assertion : that Cardinal Newman has acknowledged the English
Church to be the great breakwater against infidelity in this coun-
try. His eminence has not only not acknowledged this, but he
has said much, and has said often, that which is totally inconsistent
with such an opinion. *

5. Dr. Littledale, fourteen years after making the same charge
and reading the same denial, has again declared that a certain
papal rescript on the reunion of Christendom (whereby hangs a
tale) was promulgated at the instance of a leading convert. The
venerable Bishop Ullathorne, upon personal knowledge and from
official documents combined, contradicted the assertion then, and
repeats the contradiction now.

6. We have seen the lack of evidence which illustrates Dr.
Littledale's exceptional attack upon the untruthfulness of con-
verts. His collective charge, however, of moral deterioration is
supported by a disgraceful personal attack upon some Catholic
nuns, defenceless ladies devoted to God and works of charity,
whom Dr. Littledale, anonymously though plainly, accuses and
falsely accuses of vulgar and petty dishonesty.

7. Apropos of his detraction of the late Father Faber, Dr. Lit-

* See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1866, p. 49.

412 Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. [Dec.,

tledale has charged that divine with false doctrine, on the
strength of his own misquotation from Faber's Hymns. In a
revised edition of his Plain Reasons for not joining the Church of
Rome Dr. Littledale has corrected the quotation to which I drew
public attention, but he has allowed the false charge to remain.

8. In relation to the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence
Dr. Littledale has quoted, between inverted commas, a theologi-
cal term and a sentence, in order to prove a contradiction in
teaching between the Council of Trent and Father Gallwey, S.J.
These quotations are found in the utterances of neither.

9. Dr. Littledale has quoted, and has incorrectly quoted, an
expression of opinion by Bishop Maret on a hypothetic result of
the Vatican Council. He has done so without informing his
readers that the bishop retracted his opinion years ago, and, at a
great pecuniary loss, suppressed the work which contained it.

10. Dr. Littledale has asserted that Count de Montalembert
called the devotions of the church by ths term " idolatry." I
take the liberty to inquire, not of Dr. Littledale, but of yourself,
or of any member of the tract committee who sanctioned the
libel : Where has Montalembert thus spoken?

n. Dr. Littledale has accused St. Alphonsus of an immoral
decision in a case of conscience. I have shown that, in the case
misquoted, Dr. Littledale has actually mistaken a limitation or ex-
ception for a final decision, and has thus misrepresented the saint's
real judgment. I have reason to think that Dr. Littledale has
here permitted himself to quote controversy at second hand.

12. Dr. Littledale has parodied a theological proposition of
Perrone's on the doctrine of intention. Will it be credited, I
have asked the reader, that Dr. Littledale has ignorantly quoted
(and the Church Union, apparently without inquiry, has sanctioned
the quotation), as Perrone's actual teaching, the supposed objection
of an opponent ?

These misrepresentations, inaccuracies, and false charges I
have in this place referred to only, without adding verbal marks
of quotation and without quoting any authorities. But I have
patiently exhibited them in detail and with exactitude, in regard
to each selected assertion of Dr. Littledale's, in the series of let-
ters referred to above. These letters contain at length the proofs
of all that I have here advanced in brief. And to them I beg
leave to refer both yourself and any other who may be sufficient-
ly interested in the topic, or compromised by the action of your
society, further to pursue the inquiry.

The inexactitudes which I have thus exhibited at length and

i88o.] Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 413

estimated at their proper value form but a fractional part of the
inaccuracies to which, in an evil moment, the Church Union gave
its unconditional and plenary imprimatur, and from which, after
some months of interval, the society silently but firmly declines
to withdraw its sanction. For within the short range of sixty-
four pages Dr. Littledale has succeeded in collecting an unpre-
cedentedly large number of serious errors, one-half of which, if
substantiated, would destroy the reputation of any living author
not, by profession, a controversialist. These errors occur in
nearly every conceivable division of his subject, and on nearly
every single page of his pamphlet. For instance and I confine
myself, you will observe, to Dr. Littledale's reasons " why Ri-
tualists do not become Catholics " :

His facts (not less than his fictions) are wrong ; his figures and
his dates are wrong ; and his deductions from both are, conse-
quently, wrong. His theology is bad ; he exposes his ignorance
of the controversial method of theologians, his want of familiarity
with Catholic dogma, his incapacity in dealing with the decisions
of Christian morality. His ecclesiastical history and biography,
and (oddly enough) even his liturgical knowledge, whether they
be English or Roman, are more than questionable. His quota-
tions are often transparently and superficially inaccurate ; nay, in
some given particular they are far more frequently erroneous
than correct. His statistics, as evidence of divine truth, may be
proved to bear a double significancy where he allows of but one.
He retails scandalous religious and social gossip on his own sole
responsibility which independent inquiry shows to be either un-
proven or false. And, on these and other points, he pretends to
an acquaintance with men, facts, and things which circumstantial
evidence, often most unexpectedly, thoroughly disproves. In-
deed, he sometimes displays his own simulation of knowledge
which he does not really possess, and that with nawett. For ex-
mple, in a certain argument " 'gainst Rome " he pompously re-

rs to a long list of authors, presumably consulted at the least by
himself, as Anglican theologians. Two of these, in truth, are Ca-
tholics aye, and distinguished Catholics. (See Reply, p. 48.)

or is this all. Certain statements in different parts of his pam-
phlet are obviously inharmonious. Many of his accusations, in
themselves improbable, are incapable of proof. Some of his re-
ferences cannot be verified. Some of his translations are gram-
matically and critically inexact. And many, perhaps the larger
portion, of his conclusions are unwarranted from his premises.*

* For many other and very serious misstatements by Dr. Littledale the reader may be re-

414 Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. [Dec.,

In short, and apart from moral delinquencies, Dr. Littledale,
in a work which has been decorated by the Union and has been
pronounced " unanswerable," has blundered. It may be from
nationality. It may be from the misfortune of an inexact mind,
an undisciplined temperament, or wide and superficial reading
counteracted by a treacherous memory or the vice of hasty
generalization. It may be from more serious faults which, even
in the palliation of critical error, I will not permit myself to
name as the motive of Dr. Littledale's apparent determination at
all hazards and at any cost to vilify converts to the church. It
may be, once more, from sheer recklessness, inseparable from the
immunity secured by controversial writing which is anony-
mous, and intensified by habitual indulgence. But, whatever
may be the probable cause, the result is beyond a question.
Wheresoever Dr. Littledale can stumble he falls. He falls
heavily and prostrate. He falls so helplessly and so often that
he makes no effort for the recovery of his character as a contro-
versial writer, and even appears to, be unconscious of the moral
disgrace which follow^ the conviction of uttering, with whatever
intention, false statements the result of which for I ignore the
motive is calumny.

If you or any other should consider these general assertions
to be exaggerated as I allow that in former days, before I had
weighed the author's work, I should have considered them to be
I must beg leave to refer you or him to my letters, Truthful-
ness and Ritualism. In this place I have merely summarized,
from the proofs therein printed at large, some few of Dr. Little-
dale's inaccuracies, as a specimen of recent Anglican controversy
with Rome which has obtained the approval of the representa-
tive High-Church society. If you or any other should consider
these criticisms too severe as I admit that, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, I should consider them to be I must refer you or
him, in a critical spirit, to the pamphlet itself by Dr. Littledale.
If you or any other should demand why I have presumed to
defend those who have been wantonly assailed, I would make
the preliminary inquiry : Why should they have been maligned
whom it is an honor for any one to be allowed to defend ? It is
at least as excusable for me to exhibit some results of their de*-
traction as for Dr. Littledale to denounce and for the English
Church Union to applaud. Indeed, had not a society of gentle-

f erred to the new work by Abbe Martin, entitled Anglican Ritualism ( Burns & Gates), which
contains a reprint of all the abbe's articles upon the present controversy, together with some
valuable additions.

i88o.] Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 415

men voluntarily taken the responsibility of the pamphlet, I had
certainly not thought it worth while to expose its contents. But
of the writer's endless inaccuracies, and against his gratuitous and
wicked attack on converts to the church, I have written in the de-
fensive only. And if even thus I shall have seemed, to any one
standing outside the controversy, to overpass the bounds of
charity when inflicting castigation, this fact will, I hope, be taken
into account, viz., that I only combat his calumnies upon the
moral character of others, and only disprove his inveracities on
their words and actions.

At the same time I will not disguise the fact that the absence
of all charity, or even courtesy, in the conduct of controversy,
for a long series of years past, by Dr. Littledale and his organ of
opinion, with those who conscientiously abandoned the Estab-
lished religion for the Catholic Church, consciously stimulated
my efforts and strengthened my powers. For myself, and as an
Anglican, I thank God that I never joined in and always strove
to moderate this popular but futile device with Ritualists to stem
the constant flow of secession by depreciating the character and
belittling the gifts of those who left the Church of England. I
always considered such detraction mean and unworthy in itself,
impolitic and unwise controversially, and as ungenerous as it was
untrue.

But when the present deliberate, minute, and far-extended
calumny was accepted as deserving of honor by the society which
claims yourself and many others who command respect ; when I
had satisfied myself of the real value of this worthless and preten-
tious Ritualistic manifesto, then I determined, please God, faith-
fully to exhibit in his true light the man who thus maligns his
former friends and the divine and world-wide system which he,
up to a point of his own choosing, servilely imitates. I was de-
termined, at any risk, to expose the man who is guilty of all that
I have proved, and all that 1 can still prove, from his own words
of his false-witness, of his false quotations, of his singular mis-
statements, of his unaccountable mistakes ; the whole of which, it
may be noted, are made to support the author's reasons, which
the society has adopted, " why Ritualists do not become Catho-
lics." I was determined, at whatever cost of time and labor to
myself, to expose the man who, himself guilty of such literary
immorality for I judge him no further ; I avoid all imputation
of motive has yet the hardihood to suggest a counter-inquiry
into his own manner of controversy by thus aspersing the fair
fame of others. For the author of the Reply to the Abbe 1 Martin
is the man who professes his own experience of the constantly

416 Two LETTERS TO THE RE v. E. B. FUSE y, D.D. [Dec.,

recurring proof of bad faith in Roman controversy to be large.
He dares to say apart from all evidence that he is continually
met by unquestionably misleading statements, garbled quotations,
incorrect renderings, unverifiable references, and the like. And
Dr. Littledale has secured for this rash statement the moral sup-
port of yourself and of the president and council of the English
Church Union !

It may be asked by others, if not by yourself : Has the Eng-
lish Church Union done nothing in consequence of this exposure
of its accepted, honored, and trusted controversialist? I reply :
The society has done nothing.

It is true that when I had, in general terms, stated my case,
in a preliminary correspondence in the Tablet, against Dr. Little-
dale ; and before I had publicly examined a single charge brought
by him against Catholic converts ; and when the president be-
lieved (as I also did at that time) that Dr. Littledale's tract was
out of print, then the president wrote to the Tablet to say that,
in its unaltered state and with regard to certain indefinite points,
the Reply would not be reprinted. And on learning that the
residue of an edition was still on sale, Mr. Wood repeated the
substance of his promise that the tract, as it then stood, should
be suppressed. Mr. Wood's engagement, you will observe, ap-
peared in the pages of a Roman Catholic newspaper only, which,
of course, is not read by a tithe of the Ritual party. It was not
published in the organs of Ritualism, nor in any Anglican paper ;
nor in the official gazette of the Union. This is all the action
which your society has taken in this miserable matter.

Two further points have to be repeated, in order to allow you
and others to learn the whole truth and to master the moral as-
pect of this case of detraction by a religious society.

In the first place, the Union has already circulated, with a
special imprimatur, between two and three thousand copies of
these false statements. No public effort has yet been taken (so
far as I can learn) to counteract these falsehoods. They have not
been retracted by the author, nor has the pamphlet which con-
tains them been repudiated by the society which is responsible
for them. The president's promise of merely suspending the
sale in the future is no present reparation, is no apology for the.
past. Hence whatever responsibility once adhered to the publi-
cation of these inaccuracies still remains. It has not been re-
moved from yourself and others.

But the next point is even more serious, and demands from
every honorable man in the Union a clear explanation. The ac-
credited exponent of the Ritualists the Church Times has lately

i88o.] Two LETTERS TO THE REV. E. B. PUESY, D.D. 417

made an editorial pronouncement on one of the questions at issue.
It has declared, " after inquiry " into the author's charge of im-
morality against convert clergymen, that Dr. Littledale himself
maintains " the strict accuracy of his statements." This delibe-
rate repetition of a base calumny was made public, I beg you and
others to observe, after the pamphlet had been suppressed by the
Union on this very ground, and after the Hon. Charles L. Wood
had affirmed, on Dr. Littledale's own authority, that "certain
imputations of motives," in the event of republication, should be
withdrawn. Nearly four months have now elapsed, and Dr. Lit-
tledale has not denied the accuracy of this editorial statement in
the Church Times. Such conduct, I feel sure, can claim no sym-
pathy from yourself. To speak plainly, it is trifling with the
president's assurance. It still further compromises the society.
It is one more insult to Dr. Littledale's victims. It is one more
outrage upon truth.

In the meanwhile, although no disproof of any one statement
which I have made has been attempted, the English Church
Union remains inactive and silent. It tacitly declines publicly to
disconnect itself from a grave ethical responsibility which it vol-
untarily assumed. It has not publicly repudiated the author by
whom it has been deceived, and who has made the society a ve-
hicle for wrong-doing. It will offer no reparation to vindicate
its own veracity, nor any retractation, nor any apology to the
maligned character of others. Two courses only can be consist-
ently taken by a body of English gentlemen in this unhappy
moral and literary complication. The Union must either prove
that, in any particulars important enough to convict me of con-
scious and wilful inveracity, I have misstated my case, or it
must withdraw the false charges deliberately made by Dr. Little-
dale and incautiously accepted (probably without due inquiry)
by the president and council.

The Union has elected to take neither course. It has been
induced to adopt an unworthy compromise, as above mentioned,
by merely suppressing an unsold remnant of the tract, whilst fail-
ing to notify the suppression to those who are chiefly if not only
concerned viz., its own members. This, like all compromises,
has failed. It has failed to satisfy high-minded and honest men
within its own ranks. It fails to satisfy those who stand without.
Hence, as I have said at the beginning of this letter, I appeal to
you, who I believe to have been kept in ignorance of the purport
and details of this matter, and who I feel confident will imperi-
ously require that all which justice, honor, and Christian courtesy

VOL. xxxii. 27

4i 8 Two LETTERS OF THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. [Dec.,

demand shall be done. I appeal to you as one who, to a large
extent, stands outside and above the miserable littleness of Ritu-
alistic cavils on the one hand and Ritualistic mimicry on the
other. I appeal to you as one whom I know, as I know myself,
to be incapable of writing with the pen of another what he would
fear to write with his own. I appeal to you as one who, I am
convinced, will in no wise countenance a lie (much less a collec-
tion of falsehoods) even when levelled at Rome, nor will condone
a calumny (still less a catalogue of detraction) even though it
strike at a convert to the church. I appeal to you to exercise
your well-known and, if you are pleased to exert it, your un-
bounded influence with the majority of members in the English
Church Union. Of your own inmost opinion on this gratuitous
attack on conscientious and upright men, who have sacrificed
much when from being friends they became your opponents, I
allow myself to entertain no shadow of doubt. My only doubt
consists in this : that even your weighty influence may not be
still powerful enough to cause the society, under, the lash of hos-
tile criticism and with no legitimate defence, to remember its
duty, to act with charity and truth independently of all respect
of persons, and to free itself from the burden of self-assumed re-
sponsibility.

I appeal to you, lastly, as the vice-president of the English
Church Union, to take action in this painful and humiliating case.
In what direction you may consider it becoming for the society
to move I shall not presume to dictate. If the efforts you may
make shall be happily crowned with success, there will be no
necessity for me publicly to connect your honored name with the
wretched scandal exposed in the present letter, although I shall
be thankful for permission to allow your name to remain upon
its pages. But if, unhappily, you^hall fail in your efforts to ob-
tain a public repudiation of the false charges and statements
above indicated, I shall feel constrained to proceed further.
Under that contingency I shall ask leave to consider any reply
with which you may favor me as in no sense of a private nature ;
and I shall appeal from your decision to public opinion, to judge
between the society and those converts to the Catholic Church
whom it will then have encouraged Dr. Littledale to defame by
deliberately declining to repudiate his wanton and unscrupulous
attack. With much respect, I remain,

My dear Dr. Pusey,

Yours very faithfully,

ORBY SHIPLEY.

i88o.] Two LETTERS OF THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 419

LETTER II.

MY DEAR DR. PUSEY :

I was prepared to learn that you declined to answer my let-
ter, but I did not expect to hear that you had not read it. Af-
ter our relations in past years there was, I think, nothing unseem-
ly in my addressing you.

You say that you have " not read the printed letter, not guess-
ing what (you) could have to do with it."

It was natural that you could not guess what my letter con-
tained ; and the fault, perhaps, was mine. The title, no doubt,
misled you, and I failed to indicate in manuscript the pur-
port of my writing.

I regret the error, and now repair it. But I beg you to be-
lieve (what you appear to doubt) that I had no wish to draw you
into controversy. My letter was intended to produce a practi-
cal result only.

I wrote to you, the most influential member of the English
Church Union and its clerical vice-president, as being, together
with the society, morally responsible for the adoption, reissue,
and circulation of Dr. Littledale's Reply to Abbe" Martin. And
the object of my letter was to draw your attention to the un-
scrupulous and unproven attack upon personal character and
motive which that Reply contains.

In the course of my letter I briefly indicated the position
which you and the Union have taken towards the pamphlet, and
pointecf out certain results for which the Union and yourself are,
as a fact, accountable.

I repeated some of the shameful calumnies of which Dr.
Littledale, under your joint auspices, has been guilty against
converts to the church. He accuses them, either individually or
as a body, of intellectual and moral deterioration, of dishonesty,
drunkenness, and scepticism, of living fast lives, of untruthfulness,
and of gross immorality.

I repeated also, in outline, as specimens of many more inaccu-
racies, twelve serious cases (all of which were supported by print-
ed evidence) of Dr. Littledale's inexactitude, misrepresentation,
false quotation, and false witness, to which the Union has rashly
given its imprimatur.

Further, I wrote to say that these inveracities, personal or con-
troversial, have been publicly exposed by myself, and that not
one of the strictures which I have made has been answered ; and
I brought to your notice the grave responsibility you have incur-

420 PURGA TORIO. [Dec.,

red as the clerical vice-president of the society which has pub-
lished these untruths.

Moreover, I entreated you to use your great influence with the
Union to make them publicly repudiate this untrustworthy and
defamatory pamphlet.

Such was the purport of my letter ; and now that you are con-
scious of its object, I feel sure that you will no longer refuse to
read it.

I ask leave to make public your two former notes, together
with any reply to this letter with which you may favor me.
1 remain,

My dear Dr. Pusey,

Yours very faithfully,

ORBY SHIPLEY.

PURGATORIO.

CANTO TWENTIETH.

A WEAK will yields, by better over-willed ;
Whence, to please him, my pleasure I postponed

And from the water drew the sponge unfilled.
My guide and I, among the spirits that moaned,

(Where space was found) shouldering the rocky steep,
Crept as one walking on a city wall

Hugs close the battlement. The souls that weep
From worn eyes, drop by drop, the sin that all

The whole world occupies, too closely crowd
Upon that other side whence one might fall.

Accursed be thou ! wolf of ancient brood
That hast more prey than any beast beside !
Having a greed so infinite for food.

heaven ! in whose bright circlings men confide
To change the state of things down here below

When will He come who shall drive her to Hell ?

Onward we move with footsteps few and slow
While those poor shadows by their moans compel

Me still to list their weeping and their woe.
By chance before me one cried in such strain

Of agony, ' Sweet Mary ! ' that methought

1 heard some woman in her time of pain.

1 88O.] PURGA TORIO. 42 1

Then followed thus : ' How lowly was thy lot !
As by that humble hostelry is plain

Where with thy holy burden thou wast brought.'
Following I heard : ' O good Fabricius ! thou

Wouldst rather have thy virtue and be poor
Than vice with riches ! ' These words pleased me now

And I drew further forward to make sure
What spirit he was ; for still he spake in praise

Of that dower Nicholas for the damsels made
To lead their youth in honor's holy ways.

' O soul so nobly speaking there,' I said ;
' Tell me who wast thou ? and I fain would learn

Why thou alone dost these just lauds renew :
Thy words shall be well paid if I return

To round the brief road left me to pursue
Of mortal being hastening to its bourne.'

He answered : * I will tell, not hoping aught
Of comfort there from any mortal breath,

But for the miracle of grace thus wrought
In thy strange visit here before thy death.

Of that pernicious tree I was the root
Whose deadly shade so blights each Christian land

That seldom aught is cropped save evil fruit.
But might Douay, Ghent, Lille or Bruges make stand,

Swift vengeance would ensue. Soon may it be !
All-judging One ! I ask it at thy hand.

Hugh Capet I was called on earth : from me
Each Louis, and those Philips, every one,

Whom France is ruled by, in this later day,
Had birth ! and I, a Paris butcher's son.

The ancient race of kings had passed away

(All but a nameless one in grey attire)
When in my gripe I felt the reins of sway

For that old kingdom, and did soon acquire
Such strength thereby, such plenitude of friends

That to the crown without a lord my son's
Head was promoted ; and from him descends

This present line of consecrated bones.
Ere the great dower of Provence banished shame

Out of our blood, if weak, our sins were few.
Thenceforth with fraud and many a falsehood came

Our course of rapine ; then we seized Ponthieu,

422 PURGATORIO. [Dec.,

Normandy, Gascony, to make amends :

Charles came in Italy and there he slew
His victim Conradin, to make amends :

Then sent home Thomas on his heavenward way,
Him of Aquinum, all to make amends.

A time I see, not far off from to-day,
That brings another Charles from that same France,

The better to make known himself and friends.
Unarmed he sallies forth, except the lance

That Judas jousted with, and that he sends
Home through the bowels of Florence till she burst.

* Lack land he may, but shall not lack disgrace,
Nor crime, for which he shaW be more accursed

The less he counts .his damning ravage base.
I see, just sailed, made prisoner on the waves,

That other Charles his daughter trade for gold !
Even as the Corsairs do with other slaves.

What worse in store oh avarice canst thou hold
For us, that hast my blood perverted so

It recks not of its own flesh, bought and sold ?
That less may seem all past all future woe,

Entering Anagni's gates the flower-de-luce
My vision shows ! and Christ himself brought low

By his own Vicar's capture and abuse.
I see Christ mocked again ! yea, my soul grieves

To see renewed the vinegar and gall
And himself slain between two living thieves.

I see that pitiless man whom now I call
The modern Pilate, for all this but leaves

His lust unsated and his power prevails
Against the temple, no decretal gives

Charter the pirate goes with greedy sails.
Oh when shall I be gladdened, my Lord God !

To see the vengeance that awhile doth hide,
In secret calm, that stays thine anger's rod ?

About the holy Spirit's only bride
That which I said, and all that made thee draw

Towards me for comment which I spake beside,
Even such response, by daylight, is the law

That rules our prayers ; but soon as night comes on
Our counter-burden in its turn begins.

* Charles of Valois, nicknamed san s-terre.

I88O.] PURGATORIO. 423

We tell the tale then of Pygmalion ;
His avarice, that brought on so many sins,

Miser, thief, traitor, parricide, in one.
The misery of that miser Midas then

Following his gluttonous desire of gold
That made him evermore the jest of men !

Of Acham next the fond record is told
Who stole the spoils and Joshua's wrath did rouse

That still we seem his vengeance to behold.
Then we condemn Sapphira with her spouse

And laud the hoof-prints Heliodorus felt ;
Now the whole mountain round resounds once more

The shame of Polymnestor, he who spilt
For greed of gold the blood of Polydore.

Lastly our song is Crassiis and his guilt
" Tell, thou who know'st ! what sapor has that ore?"

Just as our passion prompts us is our tone,
Now slow, now rapid ; sometimes with much force,

Then low we speak ; our penance thus is shown.
But at those lauds which formed our day's discourse,

Though none spake near me, I was not alone.'

We had from him departed now, and strained

Hard to o'ercome our difficult road as well
As was permitted to what strength remained ;

When suddenly, as 'twere some great thing fell !
I felt the mountain tremble such cold chained

My limbs as taketh one going forth to die.
Sure Delos was not with such violence riven,

Before Latona found, wherein to lie,
A nest for nursing those twin eyes of heaven.

Then upon every side was raised a cry
So loud that close to me the Master came

And said : ' While I am guiding do not fear.'
1 Gloria in excelsis Deo ! ' this acclaim

The whole were shouting, as from those most near
1 judged the chorus of the rest the same.

Like those old shepherds who first heard that lay
We stood immovable and in suspense

Till the cry ceased, the trembling died away,
Then did our holy journey recommence,

424 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

Viewing the shades to their accustomed wail
Turning and grovelling in their penitence.

Never did ignorance my. mind assail
With such a battle of desire to learn

(Unless herein my recollection fail)
As seemed to make the soul within me yearn :

I dared not slack our speed by asking aught,
Nor of myself the cause could I discern :

So timidly I went and full of thought.

END OF CANTO.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

RELIGION AND CHEMISTRY : a Restatement of an old Argument. By Josiah
Parsons Cooke, Erving Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Har-
vard University. A newly revised edition. New York : Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. 1880.

This book was first published nearly twenty years ago, and has not
been very much changed either in matter or form in this new edition. The
progress of science has of course been taken advantage of by the distin-
guished author for further proofs and illustrations of his point, which is to
show the evidences of intellect and design which we find in the arrange-
ment of the universe, particularly in the distribution and properties of the
principal chemical elements and their compounds.

Coming as it does from one who holds one of the foremost places in the
chemical science of the present day, it is of great value as a bulwark against
materialism, pantheism, and atheism, not only from its intrinsic ability, but
also from the position of its author in the scientific world. It is of itself a
great argument for religion in the minds of those who, like so many men of
this age, have given it little attention, to know or to hear that Prof. Cooke
has ranged himself on its side, even though they should not read a word of
his book. But they are very likely to read it from cover to cover if it falls
into their hands. For it is written in a popular style, as is natural from the
fact that it was originally prepared to be delivered in a series of lectures.
They were first given in Brooklyn in the early months of 1861, and after-
ward repeated elsewhere.

We are, then, very glad to see it republished, and believe that it cannot
fail to do good to the cause of religion, and also to that of true science. We
are, however, sorry to see that the author's information on religious matters
bears apparently no proportion to his great scientific acquirements. In-
deed, it could not well be expected that it would, both from the fact that
men of science in general really have hardly time for profound study of
other subjects, and also because he in particular is disposed to regard reli-
gion, as it would seem, more from an emotional than from a historical or

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 425

strictly theological point of view. He shows, of course, no sign of having
studied Catholic doctrine, and has probably taken not only Protestant theo-
logy but Protestant history as his basis. On this ground he may be ex-
cused for such passages as that at the very outset, where he says that " the
whole hierarchy of Rome united to condemn its results " (those of physical
science) " and to resist its progress." He has, we may presume, no suspi-
cion of error in this and similar statements ; we may believe him to be in-
vincibly ignorant; and they will do probably little harm to the many who
have, like himself, been accustomed from childhood to take these things as a
matter of course. It is nevertheless a great pity that a more thorough
scientific ability and knowledge in these matters could not have been
joined to the very high acquirements which make this work so interesting,
instructive, and valuable.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. By John Caird,
D.D., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, and
one of Her Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. New York : Macmillan
& Co. 1880.

Dr. Caird fs a writer of distinction and a foremost champion of Religion
against modern infidelity in Great Britain. His Croall Lecture for 1878-79,
now published under the title given above, betokens an intellect of a very
high order with a special aptitude for metaphysical reasoning. He has a
perfect style and diction, and has given ample proof by an actually suc-
cessful effort, that the English language can be made an adequate instru-
ment for expressing philosophical conceptions and conveying metaphysi-
cal arguments, without impairing its idiomatic purity. His chief aim in the
present volume is to show the competency of reason in matters pertaining
to metaphysics and theology, and the rational necessity of recognizing the
existence of mind as purely spiritual being, of absolute truth and of the In-
finite Mind, which is Truth and Intelligence in its essence. That part of his
work with which we are most pleased, is a refutation of Hamilton's theory of
the Relativity of Knowledge and of Spencer's doctrine of The Unknowable.
It is masterly in respect to argument, and a fine specimen of philosophical
writing. The refutation of materialism is equally good. In what follows,
we seem to see the working of a noble and religious mind striving after an
adequate philosophy of religion, endeavoring, with only partial success, to
make a synthesis of principles derived from reason and revelation, from
which a rational Christian theology can be deduced, wherein faith and sci-
ence will be harmonized. In some respects, Dr. Caird reminds us of the
late Dr. Brownson, particularly in his way of constructing the argument
for the existence of God and the necessity of religion. The Ontological
Argument is developed with remarkable ability, and we find everywhere
germs of ideas, imperfectly apprehended truths of a Platonic type, adum-
brations of the philosophy of St. Thomas, presenting in a confused and in-
choate state the elements of a better system than the old Scotch metaphy-
. sics or the old Presbyterian theology. Dr. Caird is only one of a number
of Scottish Presbyterian divines and professors, men of superior talents
and learning, whose intellectual movement at the present time is important
and interesting, in view both of its philosophical and its theological ten-
dencies and aspects. They are under the action of two forces, one the con-

426 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

servative, holding them back in Presbyterian orthodoxy, the other an im-
pulsive force pushing them toward rationalism. Thus far, it seems that
these two forces result in a movement toward a theology which is more Ca-
tholic and more rational than Calvinism, and is connected with a better phi-
losophy than any which has been in vogue since Cartesianism and Kantism
came in like a flood. Atheism, Deism, Unitarianism, Transcendentalism,
Materialism, are played out. The wretched Agnosticism which has tried to
steal the robe of science is only a bare-boned, grinning skeleton, which
none but the despairing can worship. It is necessary to be a Christian in
order to be rational, and it is necessary to worship Christ as the True God
and receive by faith all his revealed truths in order to be a Christian. It is
impossible for God who is Truth and the Sovereign Reason to reveal any-
thing unreasonable. Therefore if we can only ascertain what are the cer-
tain dictates of revelation and what are those of reason, they will assuredly
not conflict with one another. Genuine Christian orthodoxy, genuine ra-
tional metaphysics and genuine natural science must agree with each other ;
it is only spurious pretenders which fight with each other and with the
genuine. Certitude is surely attainable in respect to all these three kinds
of knowledge so far as that is necessary for the great ends of life. The fact
that the intelligent and studious youth of this age are so generally unset-
tied in respect to truth, shows that there is some great disturbing cause
somewhere. We have the testimony of one entitled to great consideration,
President McCosh, that they are only unsettled, and wish to become settled
in their convictions and belief. There is reason to hope, therefore, that the
strenuous efforts which so many are making to present Christianity, philo-
sophy, history, physics and all other objects of thought and knowledge in
their reality and harmony will end in a triumph of faith, not at the expense
of reason or science, but through their voluntary alliance and co-operation.
Dr. Caird is one of the most extreme rationalists to be found among the
leaders of the New School of Presbyterians. We have already expressed
our opinion that he is only partially successful in his effort to. elaborate a
philosophy of religion in harmony with those revealed truths which lie at
the foundation of the Westminster Confession. At about the middle of the
book he loses himself in a Hegelian mist which reminds us of a passage in
Ecclesiasticus : sicut nebula text omnem terram. Such a clear intellect as his
cannot, we should hope, become permanently lost in Hegelianism. The
advice which a nephew and pupil of Hegel told the writer of these lines he
received at the close of his studies from Feuerbach is pertinent : " Go back
to common sense." Scotch common sense will, we trust, prevent the Hege-
lian logic from dissolving and causing to evaporate the truths of metaphy-
sics and divine revelation which lie at the basis of sound religious philoso-
phy arid are still held in the school to which Dr. Caird belongs. At the
end of the volume, the learned Principal emerges from the cloud, and gives
some very clearly-reasoned views upon Philosophy and History, in many
respects very similar to those of Mr. Formby, which we think are both cor-
rect and very important. We quote the concluding sentence : " Thus,
whatever elements of truth, whatever broken and scattered rays of light
the old religions contained, Christianity takes up into itself, explaining all,
harmonizing all, by a divine alchemy transmuting all, yet immeasurably
transcending all 'gathering together in one all things in heaven and

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 427

earth ' in its ' revelation of the mystery hid from ages,' the revelation of
One who is at one and the same time Father, Son and Spirit; above all,
through all, and in all."

Extend this so as to embrace all science and history, and we have a com-
prehensive statement of the great thesis which it is the special task of
Christian philosophers in our age to defend and prove.

THE ENDOWMENTS OF MAN CONSIDERED IN THEIR RELATIONS WITH His
FINAL END. A course of Lectures by Bishop Ullathorne. London :
Burns & Gates. 1880.

The venerable Bishop of Birmingham treats of a most important series
of topics in these Lectures. They are all connected with the fundamental
idea of the absolutely supernatural character of the destiny of man and the
way of its attainment. The great merit and value of the doctrinal and
philosophical exposition of man's endowments in trie order of grace consist
chiefly in the clearness and distinctness with which the idea of the super-
natural is set forth and explained. The learned prelate has given in his
Lectures, first to his ecclesiastical pupils, and afterwards to all intelligent
and educated Catholics, a sublime doctrine and philosophy, free from
technical phraseology and the formalities of the scholastic method, with
that diffuseness of reasoning and eloquence of language which are so neces-
sary to make these intelligible and pleasing to the great majority of readers.
Such great and difficult matters as the Fall and Restoration of Man, the
Origin and Nature of Evil, the Reason for not making Man Perfect at the
outset, and for placing him in a State of Probation, the Reason of the In-
carnation, etc., are copiously and lucidly treated in these Lectures.

The great truths of Revelation and Christian Theology in respect to all
these topics have been so perverted and obscured by Protestantism, so vio-
lently combated by Rationalism, so weakly or absurdly handled by the
superficial English philosophy, so rarely or imperfectly set forth in the Eng-
lish language by competent and orthodox writers, and they are at present
an object of such extreme and yet perplexed curiosity to a multitude of
minds seeking for light on the problem of human life, that a thoroughly
rational and intelligible exposition of the sound Catholic doctrine is a God-
send for which we have cause to be thankful. The manner in which
Bishop Ullathorne treats the question of the Nature and Origin of Evil is
especially worthy of admiration. It is St. Augustine's profound philoso-
>hy reproduced. Equally admirable is the exposition of the reasons for the
>resent imperfect state of man arid the moral risks which attend upon it,
the miseries which are its consequence, and the difficulties which obstruct
the way to perfect happiness. The reasons for rejecting the accepted
scholastic definition of man as "a rational animal " and substituting for it,
that of "an intelligence served by organs," we do not find so satisfactory,
and we might be obliged to express dissent from some other opinions and
irguments on particular points, if we were attempting a thorough review,
treatise on the subjects discussed in this volume which should be alto-
ither perfect and in every point conclusive would place its author at once
on the level of St. Thomas, as the Master of all theologians and philoso-
phers for all coming time. Human science and wisdom have not thus far

428 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Dec.,

attained to this degree of perfection, and perhaps never will, since it may be
unattainable. The substance of that which they have attained in the per-
sons of the greatest and wisest teachers of sound doctrine is contained in
these Lectures. The age and position of their author add weight and
sanction to their doctrinal teaching, especially for all those who are obliged
to trust to his authority for its conformity to Catholic orthodoxy. In fine,
we know of no book in English on the same topics of equal value for the
enlightenment and instruction of an intelligent Catholic laity.

THE CHURCH AND THE MORAL WORLD. By the Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud,
S.J. New York : Benziger Brothers.

We have often had occasion to speak of the works of F. Thebaud,
which are not only considerable in size and number, but real mines of eru-
dition and thought. In fact, his knowledge of antiquity, of history in its
various branches, and of the philosophy of history is vast as well as minute
and accurate. Having already set forth in the earliest history of the
church its instantaneous spread through the whole Roman Empire and
beyond as a proof of its divine origin, he now takes up that note of sanctity
which is joined to universality, apostolicity and unity as a divine mark
which the Author of the Catholic Church has stamped upon his own work,
to make it known as the effect of his causative, almighty power. We have
seen only the advanced sheets of the First Part of F. Thebaud's new work.
This treats of the causes and principles of sanctity in the church. It is not,
however, a treatise according to the ordinary, theological method. It is
rational and philosophical, and while it accords perfectly with theology it
is new and original, profound and striking.

In the Second Part, the author takes up the historical evidence of the
actual moral effects of the church in all ages and all parts of the world, as
the results and experimental proofs of the principles of sanctity existing in
the church. We await with interest the fulfilment of one portion of the
promise made in the Preface, in the exhibition of the sanctity of the church
during the tenth century and the rest of that age immediately preceding
and following which is commonly called the Iron Age. This is of more
special importance than other parts of the subject, because there has been
so much omission, perversion and invention indulged in, not only by in-
fidel and other anti-Catholic writers in regard to this period, but also by
Catholic writers, whose prejudices and erratic opinions have beclouded their
historical perspective, or who have -been with the best and most loyal in-
tentions misled by partial and unfair accounts which have become a kind
of staple of literary commerce. There are grave faults of this sort in the
posthumous volumes of Montalembert's Monks of the West, which require
correction. We cannot say too much in recommending all F. Thebaud's
learned and most valuable works to the perusal of the studious. Most of
them are above the average mark of the reading community, considering
their general unwillingness to apply themselves to serious and long-con-
tinued mental labor. They contain, however, treasures of facts and ideas,
which writers of smaller and more popular books can draw upon and thus
bring into more general circulation.

i88o.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 429

DAS GNADENBILD DER MATER TER ADMIRABILIS VON INGOLSTADT IN BAY-
ERN. Geschichtlicher Bericht und Gebete von Franz Hattler, Priester
der Gesellschaft Jesu. Mit einer Abbildung. Freiburg in Breisgau
(and St. Louis, Mo.) : Herder'sche Verlagshandlung. 1880.

In the church of St. Mary Major at Rome is a picture of the Blessed
Virgin and Child which popular tradition has long attributed to St. Luke.
The undoubted history of this picture goes, at all events, back to the sixth
century, when Pope Gregory the Great had it carried in procession through
the streets of the city during a pestilence then raging. In the sixteenth
century a copy of this picture was carefully and skilfully made and present-
ed to the Jesuit college of Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, where it has ever since re-
mained. Messrs. Herder, the Catholic publishers of Freiburg, have had a
xylographic print in colors executed after the original picture at Rome, and
one of these prints is now before us. It is about twenty-one inches high
and fifteen wide. The background of the picture is in dead-gold in the By-
zantine style. Mary is represented holding the Child in her left arm, her
right hand resting on her left. The faces of Mother and Child are different
from anything we are accustomed to see in pictures of this sort. These
faces are decidedly Oriental ; the Mother's, which is the more remarkable of
the two, has rather an Egyptian cast. Her features are strikingly beautiful,
yet their wonderful repose is something superhuman, reminding one of the
Greek conception of Pallas Athene. The Child holds in his left hand a
book, while with his right, the third and fourth fingers of which are bent
down, he is giving a blessing. The expression of the Child's iace suggests
that of Raphael's cherubs in the Madonna del Sisto. We must congratu-
late Messrs. Herder on their success in this copy of the ancient and vene-
rable picture.

Father Hattler in the book above tells us something about the history
of the Ingolstadt copy, and of a special devotion to the most admirable
Mother which had its rise among the fathers and students of the college of
Ingolstadt, in the seventeenth century, under the rectorship of Father
Jacob Rem.

THE LIFE OF HENRI-MARIE BOUDON, ARCHDEACON OF EVREUX. Dieu
seul. London : Burns & Gates ; Dublin : M, H. Gill & Son. 1880.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

This life is another volume from the pen of Edward Healy Thompson,
who has done so much and so well in furnishing English-speaking Catho-
lics with the lives of the saints and spiritual works. Boudon was a man of
God, richly endowed with spiritual gifts, and his pen was fruitful in treatises
on Christian perfection. This life is not a translation but original, evident-
ly written with great care, and is full of interest. No one who has a taste
for spiritual things can read it without benefit, and those who aim at per-
fection cannot fail to be both enlightened and strengthened by its perusal.
Reading of this kind contributes greatly towards freeing the soul from
worldliness and purifying it of self-love, while tending to lead it to the
meditation of celestial things and the consolations of divine love. Mr.
Thompson has our sincere thanks for supplying this newspaper and novel-
reading age with a most salutary antidote ; one which we would recommend
every Catholic to supply himself with and take often.

430 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Dec.,

Among the works which Mr. Thompson has translated and published,
from M. Boudon, are :

(1) The Hidden Life of Jesits, a lesson and model to Christians.

(2) Devotion to the Nine Choirs of Holy Angels, and especially to the Angel
Guardian.

(3) The Holy Ways of the Cross ; or, a Short Treatise on the various
trials and afflictions, interior and exterior, to which spiritual life is subject,
and the means of making good use thereof.

A HISTORY OF THE DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN THE FIRST TEN
CENTURIES. By Cardinal Hergenroether. Translated from the German
with an Introduction by the Rev. D. S. Phelan. St. Louis : P. Fox.
1880.

We do not know where we could lay our hand upon a volume which
contains so satisfactory an exposition and defence of the devotion of Catho-
lics to the Blessed Virgin, in so short a compass, as in this little book. Its
perusal, while stimulating Catholic devotion, is well calculated to dispel the
prejudices of Protestants. The translation reads as if the original had been
written in English.

A HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE DIOCESE OF PITTSBURGH
AND ALLEGHENY FROM ITS ESTABLISHMENT TO THE PRESENT TIME.
By the Rev. A. A. Lambing. New York : Benziger Brothers. 1880.

Pittsburgh and that part of Pennsylvania which is adjacent to it have a
character which is sui generis, and their own peculiar features of picturesque
interest. The same is true of the Catholic Church in that region. The
History contained in Father Lambing's stout volume has been carefully and
accurately compiled, and must therefore be reckoned among the most valu-
able and authentic historical documents pertaining to the ecclesiastical
annals of our country.

LIVES OF THE LEADERS OF OUR CHURCH UNIVERSAL, from the days of
the successors of the apostles to the present time. The lives by Euro-
pean writers from the German, as edited by Dr. Ferdinand Piper, Pro-
fessor of Theology in the University of Berlin. Now translated into
English, and edited with added lives by American writers. By Henry
Mitchell Maccracken, D.D. New York : Phillips & Hunt. 1880.

The note of unity is certainly a mark of the true church, and we have
looked with wonder on those who believe that the endless discussion and
subdivision into which Protestantism has divided the religious world is a
cheering sign of life and a benefit to humanity. In our times men have
seen the foolishness of such a pretension, and a movement has been set on
foot to effect a union between the sects. The work before us is the out-
come of this movement. It is a series of life stories so written by various
clergymen as to make " our Holy Church Universal " embrace within its
expansive folds men whose lives were the realization of the most contra-
dictory principles. This is not unity, but a syncretism. While deploring
the fallacy of the present theory, we hail the attempt as one calculated to
awaken in the breasts of many that dormant aspiration which can alone be
satisfied in the unity of the Holy Catholic Church.

1 880.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 43 1

COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD : A manual of practical housewifery.
By Marion Harland. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1881.

While the literature of cookery, qud literature, may not be worthy a
conspicuous place in the library of the scholar, yet, for physiological and
economical reasons, a good cook-book deserves a place of honor among the
treasures of the thrifty housewife.

From the earliest times cookery has engaged the attention of many
minds and pens in all civilized nations. Among the ancient Persians the
common people partook of simple but wholesome dishes, eating more sweet
food than meat, but the banquets of the rich were very elaborate. Herodo-
tus tells us that "the Greeks who invited Xerxes to supper all came to the
extremity of ruin, and that wherever he took two meals, dining as well as
supping, that city was utterly ruined." The ancient Egyptians are not, ac-
cording to modern notions, to be reckoned as epicures. " Fish they salted
and dried in the sun ; quails, ducks, and smaller birds they salted and ate
raw." And yet they are hardly to be pronounced barbarians, for they made
good bread and cake, and must have had a penchant for eggs, as they in-
vented a plan for artificial hatching. The meals of the primitive Greeks
are ridiculed by the comic poets, but after the Homeric age an advance
was made in the diversity and preparation of food, until in time the Greeks
became noted epicures. Fish, flesh, and fowl were served in many tooth-
some forms at the tables of the well-to-do, and the bread made at Athens
was celebrated for its fine quality. The women generally looked after the
requirements of the table, but cooks stood in the market at Athens ready to
be hired on special occasions. Athenaeus, in his work entitled Banquet of
the Learned, has recorded the names of the authors of many cook-books
(that of Archestratus, the guide of Epicurus in his pleasures, being the
most famous), and the same author quotes the following lines from Diony-
sius, a comic poet :

" To roast some beef, to carve a joint with neatness,

To boil up sauces, and to blow the fire,

Is anybody's task ; he who does this

Is but a seasoner and brothmaker ;

A cook is quite another thing. His mind

Must comprehend all facts and circumstances."

In the early days of Rome barley gruel and vegetables formed the prin-
cipal diet of the lower classes, but little meat being eaten. The conquerors
of Asia, however, imported luxurious habits of eating on their return to
Rome, which in time culminated in the extravagances of Apicius, who won
for himself a certain sort of immortality by absurdly committing suicide
because, of a large fortune, he had unsquandered only a half million of dol-
lars to feed himself withal. Oysters and fish were highly prized by the
Romans (a mullet of six pounds is said to have sold for 8,000 sesterces
about $350), and we read of such dainties on the tables of the rich as pastry
and fruit, ring-doves and field-fares, hares, capons, ducks, peacocks, phea-
sants, the livers of geese, and " a huge boar, surrounded with sucking-
pigs made in sweet paste, which were distributed among the guests." The
ancient Danes and Germans gave more attention to the preparation of their
drinks than of eatables. Among the Normans the kitchen was held in
much higher estimation. The French began to mend their manners in the
art of cookery after the Medicis came among them, and have undoubtedly
attained the highest rank as cooks in our day. The early Britons, it is to

432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec., 1880.

be feared, were rather inferior, not to say crude, in gastronomic matters,
but their descendants have made encouraging progress, till they may, per-
haps, rank next after the French.

If we may accept the testimony of foreign critics, American cookery is
far below the French, or even English, standard. Indeed, the French cook
is a true artist as well as a domestic economist. The Americans are proba-
bly the most wasteful people in the world. Nor does the mischief end
here : with markets abounding with prime meats, fish and game, with a vast
variety of delicious and succulent fruits and vegetables, we are neverthe-
less an ill-fed and dyspeptic people. And these evils are due to our almost
wilful ignorance of the art of cookery. Now, while it may not be literally
true that " God sends meat and the devil sends cooks," it is to be feared
that too many American housewives look upon time spent in preparing
food as wasted, and that many an unhappy dyspeptic in vain pleads, in the
language of Holy Writ, " Feed me with food convenient for me." But there
is reason to believe that a better state of things is approaching, and that in
the near future American housewives, regarding not alone the pockets,
but the health, of their " bread-winners," will be as famed for their culi-
nary skill as for their other accomplishments. Among the best signs of
this are the establishment of cooking-schools and the eagerness with which
good cook-books are sought.

Since Mr. Pegge published The Forme of Cury (cookery) in 1390 in-
numerable cook-books have appeared, but that the demand for such litera-
ture is still unsatisfied is evidenced by the fact that the publishers of
Marion Harland's Common Sense in the Household, in announcing the appear-
ance of a new and revised edition, say that over one hundred thousand
copies have been sold since its first appearance. This of itself seems suffi-
cient praise, but we have the authority of some lady friends for pronouncing
it an excellent and useful volume. We may add that besides a multitude of
valuable recipes -it contains much good advice to those concerned. The
chapter on " Servants " is humorous as well as sensible.

FATHER GLEESON, of East Oakland, Cal., has in press a work on the
persecutions suffered by the Church.

THE CATHOLIC'S POCKET MANUAL. Baltimore : John B. Piet. 1880.
A QUARTER OF AN HOUR'S SOLITUDE. From the French of Canon Layet. Baltimore : John B.

Piet. 1880.
THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL : ITS ORIGIN, HISTORY, CIRCULATION, RESULTS. By M. Aladel,

C.M. Translated from the French by P. S. Illustrated. Baltimore : John B. Piet. 1880.
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM J. ONAHAN, ESQ., at the laying of the corner-stone of Marquette College,

Milwaukee, Wis., August 15, 1880.

THE following (which should be the third) stanza of the hymn Placare,
Christe, Servulis, on page 345 of the present number, was omitted through
an inadvertence of the translator :

Apostles joined with Prophets hoar,

Do you the Judge severe implore

To grant indulgence when sincere

And sorrow-stricken souls draw near.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXII. JANUARY, 1881. No. 190.

THE GENESIS OF FAITH.

RELATION BETWEEN THE PREAMBLE OF FAITH AND FAITH, AND
BETWEEN FAITH AND REASON ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDI-
NARY MEANS OF ATTAINING TO FAITH.

FAITH, according to the Catholic doctrine, whether consid-
ered as an intellectual habit or as an act of assent to revealed
truths, is quite distinct from and superior to rational assent to
metaphysical truths. It is, moreover, distinct from the rational
assent of the mind to the truth of the revelation which God has
made, on account of the motives of credibility, and from assent
to the logical conclusion that all which is revealed by God must
be true, and ought to be believed. It is a divine gift. The habit
of faith is an infused habit of grace, altogether supernatural, im-
parted by the Holy Spirit. This habit is the principle from
which all acts of faith proceed, as reason is the principle of acts
of rational assent. No man can make an act of faith before he
has received this supernatural endowment, except by an actual
aid of divine grace enabling him to make such an act as a pre-
paration for receiving the infused and permanent habit. The mo-
tive of the assent of faith is not the credibility or evidence of the
revelation, but the veracity of God immediately apprehended.
The firmness and certitude of the assent is above all natural cer-
titude, whether physical, moral or metaphysical. This divine
faith is the root and first principle of all the intellectual and moral

434 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Jan.,

virtues and acts which constitute that righteousness by which a
man is rendered just before God, holy, capable of receiving and
worthy to receive the divine friendship and everlasting life. The
whole process, therefore, by which the mind, exercising its natu-
ral powers in the most perfect manner, acquiring the most per-
fect possible rational knowledge and conviction of natural theo-
logy, of the evidence and credibility of revelation, of the author-
ity of the Catholic Church as the proximate rule of faith, and of
the truths actually contained in the revelation itself, furnishes
only what is called the preamble of faith. Faith itself cannot be
acquired by this process. The knowledge and rational convic-
tion which can be gained by historical and philosophical investi-
gation, even when the mind and will both act with rectitude, are
neither identical with faith or capable of generating it. Faith is
supernatural in its essence. It must be given by God, and both
the mind and the will, even supposing the one to be free from
error and the other from actual sin, must be raised up to a plane
and endowed with a virtue, which are above their nature, before
the act of faith can be elicited. It is very important, as any one
may easily see, when we undertake to show that the Catholic
Faith is rationally credible, and that a firm assent to it is an act
not only in accordance with rational principles but even requir-
ed by them, that an explanation should be given of the genesis
and nature of faith, as supernatural and divine. Ideology is a
difficult part of metaphysics, and that part of theology which
treats of faith is even more difficult. The difficulties which are
in the way of acquiring a perfect speculative science of the ori-
gin of knowledge and of the origin of faith may be passed
over and left to the discussion of the authors of profound works.
But, as there are difficulties in respect to rational certitude
which occur to ordinary minds and need to be settled for their
benefit, so the case is similar in respect to faith. We can easily
suppose that any one who has thought and read with some atten-
tion about the matter of religion might ask these questions, among
others. Why is not reason sufficient for attaining by its natural
light all necessary knowledge in respect to doctrine and morals?
If, nevertheless, it is certain and morally demonstrable that God
has chosen to furnish to man an additional aid by revelation, why
cannot reason suffice to accept and interpret the same ? If super-
natural illumination and inspiration are necessary in order to re-
ceive the truths of revelation with faith in a salutary manner,
how is a previous exercise of the reason necessary or useful ? If
man cannot make the first act of faith by any natural power of

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 435

mind and will, how can it be a rational or an obligatory act at
all ? The religious world is full of confusion and disagreement in
respect to all these questions, and the minds of sincere inquirers
who have not received sound Catholic instruction are generally
and unavoidably puzzled and perplexed in respect to the relations
between reason and faith. These perplexities are not merely
theoretical, they are practical, and they disturb the consciences
and .hearts of many, as well as baffle their intelligence.

The necessity of revelation arises from the supernatural end
and destiny of man, which have been elsewhere explained. The
supernatural order with the mysteries pertaining to it, the Trinity,
the Incarnation, superhuman Union with God, the Beatific Vi-
sion, and similar objects of faith, are above the scope of the natu-
ral understanding, and can only be disclosed by revelation.

The natural intellect does not suffice for an adequate appre-
hension and belief of these truths, for the same reason that the
rational nature of man in its natural essence does not suffice to
make him a fit subject for the supernatural order without regen-
eration and sanctifying grace. There must be a due proportion
between the subject and the object. The human intellect, being
disproportioned to the divine essence as an object of intuition,
must be supernaturally elevated into due proportion. The light
of glory gives this proportion in a perfect manner, and the light
of faith is the aurora of the light of glory. Moreover the inspi-
ration of the Holy Spirit is necessary to give the act of the will
which commands the intellect to give the required assent, a super-
natural firmness. The revealed truths presented by the Catholic
Church to the mind do not of themselves determine and compel
its assent. The assent is voluntary and free. That it may be
firm beyond all natural assent, capable of resisting and overcom-
ing all doubts, holding fast amid all torments and adversities, en-
during through life and in the hour of death, a principle of
superhuman virtue and sanctity, a bond of union with God, a be-
ginning of eternal life, the grace of God is necessary.

The previous exercise of reason is necessary because grace
supposes nature and perfects its operation. There must be a
rational nature existing in order that the grace of regeneration
may have a subject. Natural acts cannot be elevated to a higher
order unless they exist. A man must know that God exists, he
must perceive that veracity is a part of his nature, he must see
that he has revealed certain truths, in order that he may be capa-
ble of receiving the illumination of the Spirit and the inspirations
of his grace, by which he elicits an act of divine faith. The bap.

436 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Jan.,

tized infant has the regenerate nature with its infused habits of
faith, hope and love, but he cannot act from these principles, any
more than he can make any perfect acts of rational thought and
volition, before he attains the use of reason. His first act of faith
must be intelligent. He elicits it voluntarily. That this volition
may be rational he must have in his mind a sufficient reason.
Otherwise he believes blindly and irrationally. An educated
adult who has before his mind the Catholic Faith, proposed to
him by the church as the object of an assent which he has never
hitherto given, must have a reasonable motive for the judgment
that the Faith can and ought to be believed, before he can pru-
dently or rationally determine himself to give this assent.

The assent of faith is rational, because it is in agreement with
reason, although it transcends the ability of pure, unaided reason.
Reason can perceive that God is Truth by his essence ; that he is
the author and sovereign of rational nature ; that his testimony is
absolutely the best and most perfect conceivable evidence of any-
thing whatever which he may reveal ; and that he has undoubt-
edly proposed the Catholic Faith through the medium of the
Catholic Church to the credence of all men. It is therefore both
reasonable and obligatory, according to the natural rule of reason
and conscience, to assent to the truth of his testimony. The
assent which transcends the power of rational nature ; proceed-
ing from a principle in the nature which has been elevated above
itself, which is also actually illuminated and inspired by a divine
grace; is required by reason and conscience, because the aid of
the Holy Spirit is offered to make it possible. A man is not
commanded to elicit an act above nature by an unaided natural
power, but to consent to and concur with the action of God upon
his mind and will, and thus elicit a supernatural act by super-
natural grace. One who has been baptized possesses already the
habit of faith, if he has not destroyed it by any contrary act.
One who does not yet possess the habit of faith, if he has, by the
aid of that grace which is given to all who try to do what they
can, disposed his mind and will to receive baptism, may rely on
the Holy Spirit to give him the actual grace by which he can
make the acts of faith, hope, and contrition which are necessary
in order to receive regenerating grace in the Sacrament. If one
has lost the habit of faith formerly received through the Sacra-
ment, he can rely on the Holy Spirit to restore it to him if he
makes a sincere effort to regain it.

It is plain, therefore, that the Catholic doctrine respecting the
nature, the necessity, and the obligation of divine faith is reason-

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 437

able. It represents God as requiring of men only that which the
natural rule of reason and conscience requires. He demands of
them at any one time only those dispositions and acts which are
possible; those which both reason and conscience acting with
rectitude dictate to them, as due to their own natural integrity
and highest welfare. God follows the rule laid down by St. Am-
brose as a universal law of justice. " Solenne est ut qui fidem
exigit fidem astruat." " Whoever exacts faith should show a
reason for it." The sufficient reason for believing underlies the
whole foundation and structure of faith. The reason for believ-
ing God is given in the intellectual light which manifests his es-
sential truth in being, knowing and signifying. The reason for be-
lieving that he is the author of the Christian revelation is given in
the motives of credibility. The unerring criterion and proximate
rule of faith is given in the authority of the church. When the
revealed truths are proposed with evidence of certainty as ob-
jects of faith, the motive of faith is the known veracity of God.
The cognition which the intellect attains in this way surpasses in
sublimity and certitude all other knowledge whatever. The
truths proposed are of a more sublime order, they are proposed
more immediately by God himself, they are apprehended in a
more pure and divine light by a higher principle and faculty in
the mind, they are the vital force of a more exalted life and more
splendid virtues, they are the aurora of the coming sunrise of eter-
nal day. By faith the mind is illuminated and the will inspired by
the Spirit of truth and grace, so that they as it were think and will
in God, with divine thoughts and divine volitions. Even those
which are purely human, which belong to philosophy and the
practical art of rational operations, are rendered more perfect in
their own kind by the illustration of faith and the hallowing in-
fluence of grace. There is a perfect harmony between the super-
natural and the natural, between revelation and philosophy, be-
tween reason and faith, between the ideal of natural virtue and
that of supernatural sanctity. The most perfect Christian is the
most perfect kind of rational man.

The way is now open to explain why and how we go to work
to demonstrate Christianity and the church by historical, logical
and ethical argumentation.

First, in respect to'those who do not yet know or are not con-
vinced of the truth, or of some part of it. Faith, as St. Paul
says, is the argument of things which do not appear. But it is
only the argument or medium of apprehending truth for those
who have it and are capable of bringing it into exer~ ; se in a ra-

438 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Jan.,

tional manner. One who does not know God clearly must have
this knowledge imparted to him, in a sufficient manner to serve
as a basis for the evidence of the truth of his divine, Christian
religion. One who does not know the Christian religion must be
made to know it in its evidence and in its nature. One who
knows it in a confused and imperfect manner must have a more
clear and adequate knowledge of its nature communicated to his
mind. We do not simply assert the truth and expect God to
give a miraculous illumination to the minds of those who hear.
We might as well leave the whole work to miraculous inter-
vention and abstain from preaching, as to preach without giv-
ing any reason for believing the truth whidh we proclaim. The
scope and end of all demonstration of the truths of natural theo-
logy, of the evidences of revelation and of the divine authority of
the Catholic Church, from its simplest and most popular to its
most elaborate and erudite form, is the following : to furnish
motives for a reasonable and prudent judgment that the one most
perfect and sovereign God exists, that he is our creator and ru-
ler ; that he has made a revelation which subsists in the Christian
religion ; that the Catholic Church is the infallible teacher of
this divine religion, and that, therefore, what the church teaches
ought to be received with a firm assent and voluntarily, on the
veracity of God.

A baptized infant needs to be instructed from the first begin-
ning of his intelligent life, in order that he may be able to elicit a
perfect act of faith in a rational manner when he comes to the age
of reason. Reason and faith are brought into active exercise to-
gether in the soul of a child who is educated in a Christian man-
ner. Reason has, however, the priority, and the child must have
the certainty which is relative to his capacity of thought and
knowledge, that God is, and reveals the truth proposed to him
by his parents and teachers, before he can believe this truth with
a firm and supernatural assent on the veracity of God. It is the
same with all other simple and comparatively ignorant persons.

In respect to those who already have faith in active exercise,
instruction and argument concerning the rational evidence of the
revealed truths have a different use. In the first case, it is in-
telligence which seeks faith, in the second, faith seeks intelli-
gence, according to St. Anselm's well-known formula of Catholic
science: Fides quczrens intellectum. Faith already has its suffi-
cient rational basis, and possesses its sufficient motive for believ-
ing firmly all that God has revealed, viz., the known veracity of
God, veracitas Dei ut cognita. It is, therefore, neither reasonable

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 439

nor lawful to suspend the assent of faith, or to inquire with a
dubitative investigation into the grounds and evidences of the
doctrines of Catholic Faith. But it is reasonable, lawful, praise-
worthy, and often even obligatory, to inquire into the rational
evidence of religion, as far as the mental capacity and opportu-
nities of the individual allow, in order to gain more perfect
knowledge, to find an answer to difficulties, to remove unreason-
able and involuntary doubts, to confirm and fortify faith, to per-
fect the intellect, and to acquire the means of instructing others
or refuting and resisting cavillers and disputers against the truth.
Revelation contains a great amount of truth which is in itself know-
able without revelation, but which is made known with greater
clearness, perfection and certainty, and made more easily accessible
to the majority of minds by means of revelation. All except the
first elements of this extensive natural theology is learned and be-
lieved at first by the way of faith, and by the larger number
is never known in any other way. Yet it can be known after a
scientific and philosophical manner, together with the harmonies
which subsist between this order of knowledge and every other, the
physical sciences included. Even the mysteries have an intelligible
side when they have been once disclosed by revelation and received
by faith, and they can be partially and imperfectly proved. That
is, their mutual harmony can be shown, one mystery can be de-
duced from another by reasoning, their relation to the final end
of the universe can be shown, and by analogical arguments they
can be proved not only to involve no contradiction to reason but
to show a positive conformity to its deepest and highest princi-
ples. Thus, an intrinsic as well as extrinsic credibility of the
supernatural dogmas can be discovered and manifested, which
gives great delight to the pious mind and perfects it in the most
ublime kind of knowledge.

We have seen that before God exacts from the mind an ab-
solute assent, never to be retracted, to the truth of a revelation
nd to the truths revealed, he gives it a reasonable evidence of
e fact of revelation. Whatever may be the way in which the
t of revelation and the real purport of the thing signified by it
e actually made known, the obligation of assent is imperative,
he motives of credibility which attest the truth of the Chris-
tian revelation are exceedingly various and numerous, so much
so, that it is difficult for any one mind to grasp them all. Pro-
bably, this argument of moral demonstration has never been and
never can be exhausted, or set forth in one complete view in such
a way as to present clearly everything which can be discovered

440 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Jan.,

and expressed in language. It is not necessary to know all the
motives which are actually presented in learned treatises on the
Evidences, or even a great number of them. It suffices to have
a few, or even one, if what is known gives a certitude of credibi-
lity.

There is no particular mode of bringing the evidence of credi-
bility into contact with the mind which is absolutely necessary
and is so connected with the revealed truths that divine faith is
impossible without it. It is only necessary to see that God has
made a revelation in order that one should be bound to receive it,
and to believe every truth contained in it, when it is certainly
known to be so, whatever may be the way by which this object
of divine faith is proposed and made intelligible.

Yet there must be, and there actually is an ordinary and com-
mon argument and motive of credibility for a revelation which
is public and common, and which God has given to mankind as
the means of instructing all men generally in natural and super-
natural religion. There must be an ordinary way by which men
are instructed in the knowledge of the truths contained in the
revelation, and of the moral precepts which it enjoins as the con-
ditions of salvation. In point of fact the Catholic Church is both
the one and the other. Its existence, with the four great notes
which mark it, is a present, intelligible and splendid motive of
credibility. It is the one providential motive and evidence, suf-
ficient for the simple and necessary to complete knowledge for
all, which God has given to the world. And it is through this
motive that all the others receive their unity and perfection as
one grand and conclusive demonstration of Christianity. The
church is also the ordinary means of instruction in the verity of
revelation, and in the true, genuine sense and meaning of the doc-
trines and precepts contained in its documents.

The condition of man as he actually exists in his present state
is such, that he spontaneously demands a teaching from God to
enlighten, direct and console him. He feels his own insuffi-
ciency, the insufficiency of the manifestation of God in his visible
works, and the insufficiency of any philosophy drawn out of the
natural resources of the human reason. God provides for him
the teaching which he needs in such a way that when he comes
face to face with it he easily recognizes its divine character. He
does this by giving him a visible Teacher whose divine authority
is easily recognizable simply by being seen and heard. This
Teacher meets him at the beginning of his rational life, and thus
supersedes all need of anxious searching, prevents all reason for

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 441

doubting, and furnishes him with all that sufficient and easy in-
struction which his nature spontaneously demands. The Catho-
lic Church is the continuation under a more perfect form of an
institution which has existed since the creation of man, for receiv-
ing, attesting, preserving and imparting the revelation which
God has given immediately to patriarchs, prophets and apostles.
Before Moses, the continuity and antiquity of the tradition
handed down in that society of men which adhered to the primi-
tive revelation, was the great motive of credibility ; and the in-
struction given by parents and elders to the young and to de-
pendants in the religion of their fathers, was the medium and
proximate rule of faith. Under the Mosaic Law, the national
church of the chosen people with its doctrinal authority was
the great witness to its own divine institution and the living
teacher of the entire ancient and sacred tradition of truth.

The condition of those who have been in former times, or are
now, separated from that society which possesses the pure and
entire tradition of divine truth, differs greatly from that of the
members of this society. Nevertheless, the primitive tradition,
even the augmented revelation possessed by the chosen people in
the post-Mosaic period, did more or less furnish the ancient
heathen nations with the necessary means of saving faith, which
their descendants in modern heathendom have not lost. The
testimony and instruction of the Catholic Church reaches in a
partial and imperfect manner all those who have any knowledge
of Christianity, even though they are separated from the com-
munion of the church. Divine Providence has extraordinary
ways of presenting that truth which makes the substance of reve-
lation as an object of rational knowledge and divine faith to those
who are deprived of the appointed and ordinary means. In so
far as special, individual illumination is necessary to supply the
defect of a sufficient rational knowledge of ^ie motives of credi-
bility, and of the divine truth which must be believed as the
indispensably necessary condition of salvation, God can, and
doubtless does give, in an immediate and supernatural manner,
this special and gracious light. But, apart from such private
revelations or extraordinary inward inspirations and aids of grace,
there have never been wanting in any age or region of the world,
for those who have acquired the full use of reason, more general
and common means of knowing the true God and the natural law,
and of obtaining grace by fidelity to the dictates of reason and
conscience. This general and common medium of religious in-
struction has never been a merely rational philosophy, deduced

442 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Jan.,

by reasoning from the first principles of rational nature and the
data of experience. All men have believed in a revelation, true
or false, and as a fact, the existence of something purporting to be
a revelation is as universal as the existence of reason and of
knowledge derived by the use of the rational faculties. The uni-
versality of the fact establishes the universality of the law as a
law of the divine providence over men. There is also a univer-
sal fact of human consciousness corresponding to this law. Men
have desired to know the Power above the world, to hear from
him, to propitiate him, to know their own nature and reason of
being, to know their future destiny, and to obtain a perfect and
endless felicity. They have always looked, not to philosophy,
but to some tradition of a divine revelation for the satisfaction of
this desire. Philosophers have never been the teachers of the
multitude, and their metaphysical systems have never furnished
the people with their code of belief and morals. More than this,
the greatest sages and philosophers have recognized their in-
ability to meet the demands of human consciousness by the sole
resources of logic and metaphysics, without tradition and divine
revelation. " Do you wish to discover the truth with certitude,"
says Aristotle (Met. lib. xi. c. 8), "separate with care that
which is first and hold to it ; this is indeed that paternal doctrine
which only comes with certainty from the word of God." *
Cicero represents and sums up all the ancient philosophy known
to him when he declares that " antiquity being nearer the divine .
origins and productions of things knew best the truth." (Tuscul.

i. 12.)

Zoroaster, the greatest of the heathen sages, in that part of
the Avesta called the Patets, prescribes the following confession
of faith : " I am wholly without doubt in the existence of the
good Mazdayagnian faith, in the coming of the resurrection and
the later body, in -tta stepping over the bridge Chinvat, in an in-
variable recompense of good deeds and their reward, and of bad
deeds and their punishment, as well as in the continuance of Para-
dise, in the annihilation of Hell, and Ahriman and the Dasvas ;
that the god Ormuzd will at last be victorious, and Ahriman will
perish together with the Daevas and the offshoots of darkness."
(Bleek's Transl. of the Avesta.)

Confucius says : " Of what use are your efforts to weave a new'
tissue by yourself ? As for me, in order that I may not fall into

* This is a free periphrasis of Aristotle's text by Cardinal Dechamps which correctly ex-
presses the sense of this and other passages in his writings. There are several similar passages
in Plato.

1 88 ij THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 443

error I will meditate on the manners and the doctrine of our an-
cestors, of antiquity ! I study it always. My mind clings to the
mind of the ancients. Grand, brilliant and beautiful is the doc-
trine which the sages have transmitted to us." (Chow-King, c. xi.
n. 4.)

The providential method by which men have always been in-
structed in religion corresponds to that law of nature by which
children are dependent on their parents and give them spontane-
ously an unbounded and unquestioning credence and trust. As
they grow up and become active members of a larger family, the
doctrine and law of the society in which they live and the au-
thority of its elders, supersede the private authority of their
parents. The paternal doctrine, the religion of their fathers, be-
comes wider than the particular family circle, and is assumed to
have been given to the founders of the larger human family by
a superhuman power.

The difficulty in the case consists in the intermingling of false
revelations, of impostures, of things absurd and immoral, with
the remnants of the primitive revelation, in the religions of an-
cient and modern heathendom. The question necessarily arises,
and demands an answer : how can that be a providential method
of proposing and making credible the divine truth, which im-
poses also on the same motive of credibility what deserves rather
to be called diabolical falsehood than divine truth, and is morally
degrading rather than salutary ?

It is impossible that the Holy Spirit should ever concur with
the erroneous operations of the human mind by elevating assent
to falsehood to an act of divine faith. It is impossible that God
should lead a rational creature into error and sin by sanctioning
an authority which teaches falsehood and commands immoral
acts.

The answer to this is : that those who are not within that so-
ciety, that original and universal church, in which the pure tra-
dition of the divine faith and law is preserved, are not under the
perfect and complete operation of the providential method of in-
struction. The divine institution for instruction in the truth and
direction in morals has been perverted, and the authority which
it exercises in this perverted and corrupted form is a human
usurpation. The lack of the ordinary means for knowing easily
and certainly what God- has revealed makes it necessary, that
God should provide for the salvation of those who are brought
up in a society which has a perverted doctrine and law, by ex-
traordinary means. The use which divine providence makes of

THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Jan.,

the false religion or sect is an overruling of its usurped author-
ity, by which it is compelled to teach and transmit truth involved
in its errors, to bear a reluctant witness against itself, and to fur-
nish a criterion by which its subjects can discern the genuine,
divine authority, when they are brought face to face with its evi-
dence. Over and above this transmission of truth in the midst of
and in spite of the errors which surround it, there is the extraor-
dinary grace of illumination and inspiration given to those who
seek truth and righteousness with an upright heart, following
and obeying the light which they have as they best can. There
is also in all men who have the full use of reason, a natural light
and a natural law of conscience, by which they are advertised of
the reasonableness and obligation of refusing assent to manifest
absurdities and obedience to laws or customs manifestly degrad-
ing and immoral. Men who act with rectitude of reason and will
do not assent to anything proposed as divine and revealed truth,
except with the tacit understanding that it is one, catholic, holy,
and apostolic, that is, handed down from the original apostles of
God to the human race who were commissioned under the Old
Law, or the apostles of Christ under the New. There is also the
tacit understanding that this professed revelation is either posi-
tively or negatively in harmony with the truth and law which
God has imparted to the natural reason and conscience, viz., that
it is positively proved to be true and credible by reason, or, at
least is not in evident contradiction to truths and facts which are
known to be certain and cannot be reasonably doubted.

In this manner there is a way open to see how those who are
brought up in a false religion or in some imperfect and erroneous
form of the true religion, can free themselves from whatever is
absolutely incompatible with a belief in the truth and a practice
of the righteousness which are absolutely necessary to a state of
grace and salvation. We can see, moreover, how they can, if
they are sufficiently instructed, reasonably and justly question
and reject all usurped authority over their mind and conscience,
and abjure all the errors of their traditional teaching. Those
who hold the substantial truth of divine revelation are virtually
catholic. Whatever is uncatholic falls away of itself when the
proper tests are applied. It is only catholic authority which re-
mains perfectly consistent with itself, with the first principles of
reason and conscience, and with all truth, when it presents the
full justification of its claims and the complete exposition of the
motives of credibility. The facts of human consciousness prove
that a revelation made known with rational certitude as credible,

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 445

and made known with equal certitude as to its genuine significa-
tion, is precisely adapted to the necessities and desires of the soul
of man. The facts of history prove that men have always looked
to a religion professedly divine for guidance. The Catholic
Church, by its four evident marks of unity, sanctity, catholicity
and apostolicity, at once proves the truth of the Christian Reve-
lation and its own supreme, unerring authority as a rule and cri-
terion of faith ; and thus it brings the mind directly in contact
with the veracity of God, the motive of its most firm and super-
natural assent to the truths which God has revealed.

The celebrated French historian Augustin Thierry ex-
pressed to F. Gratry, a little before the death of the former,
in terse and concise form, what is the dictate of sound and en-
lightened reason, when it judges calmly and impartially.

" I know by history the manifest necessity of a divine and
visible authority for the development of the life of the human
race. But all which is outside of Christianity is of no account.
Moreover, all that is outside of the Catholic Church is of no au-
thority. The Catholic Church is, then, the authority which I
seek." *

HE TRUE TENDENCY OF PHYSICAL-SCIENCE RE-
LIGIONS.

So far is it from being true-that the explication of phenomena
from physical causes leads away from God and providence, that
rather those philosophers who have employed themselves in these
investigations have been able to find no way of getting to the
end of anything except by a final recourse to God and provi-
dence.

It is most certain and proved by experience that slight
draughts of philosophy may by chance give an impulse toward
atheism, but that deeper drinking of the same brings the mind
back to religion. LORD BACON.

* Works of Card. Dechamps. Vol. vii. p. 228.

446 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

THE PLACARD.

A CHRISTMAS STORY.

A LONDON Christmas has none of the traditional picturesque-
ness of that old home festival with which we associate good
cheer and happy gatherings ; even Dickens could not make it
attractive, though he makes it pathetic. This was what Dr.
Walsh, a young Irishman just getting into fair practice in a dull
part of London, thought somewhat ruefully as he trudged home
on Christmas Eve, through the black slush which did duty for snow,
past the brightly-lighted shops, and the array of fat beef, wreathed
in holly and box and decorated with gay-colored ribbons, hang-
ing in whole carcases in the butchers' stores. Tanks of mince-
meat, with lace-like patterns spread over them in the shape of
pastry and candy, filled the grocers' windows ; snow-white cakes,
gaudily decorated with international flags and gilt gimcracks of
all sorts, were heaped in confectioners' stores ; the toy-shops blazed
with a lot of waxen pink and white beauty and its accompaniment
of floss-silk hair and blue eyes, besides the more sensible attrac-
tions of toy houses, toy carts, toy ships and railroad-cars, and
what was spent on illumination alone must have reduced the
profits of even good Christmas sales. The streets were filled
with hurrying people, chiefly men laden with baskets and parcels,
and a few children, the eldest of families, come out to share the
responsibility of choosing Christmas boxes for the little ones ; and
had it not been for the black mud underfoot and the black sky
overhead, the scene would have been tolerably cheerful. But
Dr. Walsh could not quite reconcile himself to it, except as a
pis-aller, remembering as he did the roystering times he had had
only five years ago at his old home in Ireland, where Christmas
was kept up in ancient style, and where, mortgages notwithstand-
ing, every one for miles around found himself better off for the
Christmas largess or hospitality of the Walshes. Nevertheless
hard necessity had driven him to take his chances in London,
where he and his sister were trying to earn money to redeem
the tumble-down homestead and get rid of hungry creditors.
She was teaching in a private school, and he had a tolera-
ble practice and a treasure of a housekeeper in his young wife,
who devoted herself entirely to saving and managing the income

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 447

so as to accumulate ready money for the end they all had in
view. What she fed the family on, and what she clothed the
three baby girls with, was a mystery, for the latter always looked
clean and tidy, and the food was always appetizing ; yet the little
fund steadily increased. She had even hinted that there would
be a Christmas tree this year, with the orthodox accompaniments,
as little Clara was four years old and really could not be de-
frauded of the fun all children ought to have at this season. The
doctor was thinking of this tree, for which some of his small bun-
dles were destined, when he turned off into a side street rather
ill lighted and running for a good distance along the dead brick
wall of a large factory building, just the place for advertisements,
though not for an advantageous display of them. However,
there they were, a good many staring, incongruous slips of flimsy
paper, overlapping each other, many torn and illegible, others
fresh from the press, a theatrical flourish grimly jostling a chemi-
cal one, and the figure illustrating " Laughing-Gas " stuck side-
ways across the bottom of the advertisement of a new Egyptian
clown at Astley's. The doctor had a national sense of humor,
and took in the suggested fun of these motley bills as he passed
quickly by, though he had no time to spare to look at them in
detail; but at the further corner of the wall, where a rickety
boarding joined the next house, he noticed a man, too thinly
dressed for the season of the year, standing vacantly before a new
yellow placard. He could just see the color of the poster and a
singular figure upon it like a blurred attempt at an eruption, with
letters a foot long below, by the light of a lamp whose frame
seemed to let in a great deal of wind, for the flame flickered badly.
The man looked commonplace enough, with a round face and
reddish hair and beard, and the doctor slightly wondered at his
immovableness ; for even at a distance he could see that the figure
was not looking closely at the placard or trying to spell out its
meaning. It was only a few seconds before he reached the same
spot, and a glance told him the advertisement was one of a sensa-
tional religious import, relating to the " Second Advent," such as
is no longer uncommon in London streets ; but he had not time to
think of it before the man spoke in a muffled tone, evidently beg-
ging for a copper. Dr. Walsh turned towards the flaring lamp
and felt in his pocket, but while looking at the little silver coin
before he handed it to his companion he felt himself seized from
behind, evidently with a murderous intention. He turned and
grappled with the man, and being a fine, athletic fellow and not
unused to the science of self-defence, he was able to defend him-

448 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

self effectually. He became the more anxious to do his best as
he felt the nature of the grip the strange man had upon him a
grip out of proportion with his natural strength as gauged by his
appearance. The doctor had also clearly seen a knife in his hand,
and hastened to trip up his antagonist, whom he got down on his
back just in time. Neither he nor the man had yet said one word
nor made an attempt to cry out, and the doctor knelt on his chest
and got the knife away, throwing it over the factory wall. Then
the man, still struggling to rise, said in an odd, hoarse, muffled
tone, not fiercely, but with a queer, blood-curdling tone of en-
treaty :

" Oh ! do let me kill you, do let me kill you."

The doctor was sure now of what he had already suspected,
and answered, humoring the lunatic :

" Well, so I will by and by, if you will tell me just why you
want to kill me."

" I can't help it," said the man ; " I want to kill some one.
Two women passed down the street ten minutes before you, but
they did not suit me. I took a fancy to kill you when I saw you
coming towards me. Why don't you let me ? "

" Couldn't you put it off a little ? Did you know my face ? "

" No, but I wanted to kill some one, and when you came down
the street I knew at once it was you, and only you, whom I
wanted. What have you done with my knife?"

" Put it away in a safe place. Suppose you come with me
and tell me why you wanted to kill me."

" I don't want to leave that placard."

Dr. Walsh glanced at the yellow poster.

" Well, shall we go and hear the sermon it advertises ? "

" What sermon ? " said the madman vacantly. He had risen,
and was standing by the doctor, who held his arm with a grip
not easy to get away from.

" Or perhaps you don't care for that. Come with me and tell
me where you belong to."

He was wondering what he could do with the man. The
police-station did not always occur to his mind as the fit recepta-
cle for every kind of vagrant, for he had a professional as well
as a natural feeling of discrimination, and was never in the selfish
hurry to get rid of disagreeable people which characterizes most
of the prosperous inhabitants of London. The man did not an-
swer him, and as the doctor watched him in silence he noticed
changes in his face, and also differences from the common run of
street types familiar to men in town. The lunatic's mind was

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 449

evidently clearing ; a lucid interval was quickly coming on, and
the doctor was anxious to remove him from the scene of the late
struggle before the recollection of it could become painful or
shameful to him. He drew him gently away, and there was no
resistance on the part of his now silent companion ; the doctor,
still undecided as to where he should take him, walked in the di-
rection of his own home. It was the lunatic who broke the si-
lence, saying in an evidently sane tone, and with a gentle and
courteous intonation revealing his natural good-breeding :

" I hope you will accept my earnest apologies for what I now
recollect has just passed. You may have guessed who and what
I am."

" My dear fellow," frankly said the doctor, standing still and
holding out his hand, " you could not have come across a better
man to experiment upon, seeing that I am a doctor and can readily
appreciate your trouble. And now can I be of any use to you ? "

The other was silent, still holding Dr. Walsh's hand in his,
but presently, recollecting himself, said in a hesitating voice :

" I have a little money in my pockets. Could you recom-
mend me a decent hotel not too far from here? I am very
tired."

" I think," said the doctor with a sort of plunge, " I had rather
beg you to accept my poor hospitality ; you would be more com-
fortable."

The man looked up slowly with evident surprise.

" Are you in earnest ? " he said.

" Why, of course," said Walsh cheerily. " My wife will make
you welcome that is, unless you were on your way to friends to
spend Christmas ? "

" No," said the man wearily, and, after a pause, he added : " I
don't believe there is another man in London would ask a stran-
ger an escaped lunatic to his house like that. God bless
you ! "

" Oh ! 'nonsense," said Walsh. " Do you suppose there is no
good-fellowship left in this big town ? Here is my card ; and now
come along or you will catch cold."

The other read the name and immediately said :

" My name is John Llewellyn, and I used to be a briefless bar-
rister, though my real business was literature, and it was to an
unlucky venture in the latter that I owed my first fit of insanity."

" Well," said the doctor, as he found his companion stopped,
" I am glad we have met, for I have no doubt your trouble can
I be cured, and we can talk over matters at our leisure at home
VOL. xxxii. 29

450 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

after the children's Christmas tree. I suppose you are a bache-
lor?"

" Yes," said Llewellyn, " though I am nearly thirty-seven.
But then I fear this is an hereditary trouble ; my uncle killed him-
self in a fit of this sort, though it was drink that brought on his."

" We are not far from home," answered Walsh cheerfully ;
" and I own I shall be glad to see the fire."

His home consisted only of the lower part of a dingy London
house, than which a drearier abode can scarcely be imagined ; but
" where there's a will there's a way," and the Walshes had clear-
ly gone to work with a will. The usual dismal room on the
ground-floor denominated a dining-room, with its inevitable black
horse-hair furniture, had become the family sitting-room, though
a tall screen cut off one corner and formed an impromptu bed-
room for the doctor's sister. The black furniture was covered
with cheap chintz, miraculously kept clean, with frills always ac-
curately fluted, and dark, cheap stuff curtains, fit to stand London
" blacks " without exposing them, draped the tall windows.
Some of the chairs were evidently tied back to back beneath
their covering of chintz, so as to form a sort of tete-a-tete, and
there were sundry couches and tables evidently home-made,
while one side of the room was filled with plain shelves, or rather
piled-up book-boxes used shelf-wise for a large collection of
books, miscellaneous as well as professional. Diagonally to the
books, and back to back with a "cottage" or upright piano (a
wedding present), stood the doctor's writing-table, a common but
unusually thick board standing on two rough trestles stained dark
red. This table was covered with a black silk Norwich shawl
with a deep gold-colored border of intricate pattern, also a wed-
ding present, as were most of the other pretty things in the room.
A Sutherland table with deep leaves stood by the wall, and, when
spread out, made an ample dinner-table for four ; otherwise it
held a bronze lamp and a marble group, and looked like a narrow
shelf along the wall. Centre-table there was none, but- a square,
low, substantial one stood by the sofa, which was placed obliquely
before the fire-place. There was a passage-door leading out from
the bedroom end of this parlor, which was handy for the women
to escape by when patients came at unseasonable hours ; but dur-
ing regular " office-hours " this room served the doctor as his
study and office, the one on the other side of the hall being divid-
ed into a nursery and the doctor's own bedroom. Here the fur-
niture was very simple, and the hangings merely gray lining
trimmed with bands of colored stuff, yet there was nothing of the

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 451

homeless look of a lodging-house anywhere: the kitchen, as is
usual in most London houses, was below the street level, and
there were two pantries and a sort of recess between them, which
also formed part of the apartment. I was going to forget the
most characteristic thing in the sitting-room, which was also re-
peated in the bedroom and nursery : the windows were pasted
over, half-way up, with Japanese pictures, and strips of black
paper between each, as a sort of frame or border, so that no
outlook into the dirty, dreary street could be had, and a border
of Japanese design also ran along the upper sash, leaving only a
broad strip of glass uncovered, but in no way interfering with
the ventilation.

When the doctor reached home his eldest little girl was hold-
ing the door ajar and peeping out, watching for him ; the sit-
ting-room door was open, and showed a glimpse of the fire and
an unusual illumination within. Walsh pushed his companion
into the room and bade him sit down and warm himself at once.
He dreaded the effect upon him of a single minute's hesitation in
the reception, or rather the impression of a reception, given him
by his wife ; so as he forced his companion into a chair he glanced
quickly at his wife and drew back into the hall, where she fol-
lowed him and learnt in a few minutes all there was to know.
She took in the situation at once, though she had a momentary
misgiving as to her husband's safety in the future. Of this, how-
ever, she gave him no hint, and, going back into the sitting-room,
found the younger babies established on the stranger's knee.

" Mr. Llewellyn," she said, " the best welcome has been given
you already the little ones have forestalled me, I see ; but
wouldn't you like to step into my husband's room a minute while
I give the tree its last finish ? " And she took up the bundles the
doctor had laid on the sofa, while he appeared at the door and
led the guest across to his room. While the men were away
Mrs. Walsh explained matters to her sister-in-law in a whisper,
and the two women ventured on a natural confidence as to the
fears which they tried to hide but could not help feeling. Mur-
derous assaults impress a woman more than a man, and even a
doctor's wife is not hardened to professional views of all things,
insanity included ; but our friends were sensible women, and, as
far as possible, locked up their fears in their own inner conscious-
ness. When Walsh and Llewellyn came back there was nothing
to do but push the screen into a different position from its com-
mon one, and reveal the Christmas tree, ready lighted and load-
ed. It stood where Miss Walsh's bed-room was supposed to be ;

452 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

but the screen hid the huddled-up bed and other piled encum-
brances, and there was room enough to go round the tree cut-
ting off presents. Clara insisted t on the stranger having his gift
too, and chose it for him herself a small gilt box with a miniature
compass, originally meant by Miss Walsh for Clara herself, who
had an uncommon fondness for scientific instruments. After the
little hubbub consequent on Christmas distributions, no matter
how small or intimate the circle may be, Mrs. Walsh sat down to
the piano and made the children join in a few Christmas carols
and hymns, an English translation of Adeste Fideles being the
closing one ; for of course the Walshes had not forgotten the old
customs of Christmas at their little church on the mountain-side,
two miles from home, where they used to go for Midnight Mass,
and where they remembered many lovely Christmas nights with
a full moon, or with other beauties which the cold never seemed
to mar. Midnight Mass in London did not seem the same,
though the doctor penitently reproached himself every year for
the thought, supplementing the reproach with a wish his practice
were good enough to allow him a holiday.

After the hymns the children were sent off to bed, and Miss
Walsh disappeared with them for half an hour. The guest was
very silent and apparently sad, though the doctor chattered his
best, offered him a pipe, a long German one, which, though he
declined it, seemed to fascinate him, for he kept fingering it gently
and turning it round and round. Mrs. Walsh now and then
glanced nervously at her husband; their guest's moodiness
alarmed her.

Presently the doctor started a new subject : " I dare say you
have travelled a good deal, Mr. Llewellyn? "

"Yes," said his guest, "though mostly in very hackneyed
places. Even Cracow is on the list of tourist hotels, and that is
the most out-of-the-way place I ever went to."

" How did Poland strike you ? "

" Well, I saw really so little that was characteristic that I dare
not give any judgment about the country. I was an idler then,
and went to see some friends who had a large property and lived
in plenty, though, politically speaking, they considered themselves
shamefully persecuted."

" I fancied the Austrian Poles were pretty contented."

" Yes ; but my friends, though in Austrian Poland, so identified
themselves with their people as a whole that Russian affairs en-
grossed them most, and they lost sight of their individual good-
luck as Austrian subjects."

Ull

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 453

After another pause Walsh said to his wife :

" Mary, I dare say it will amuse Mr. Llewellyn to see some-
thing of Irish catering for Christmas ; let us open the hamper
now, though it looks rather a greedy proceeding. Just call
Clara ; she must have finished playing nursery-maid."

Miss Walsh was called accordingly, and a pretty scene fol-
lowed, though some might call it prosaic, seeing that it was con-
nected with eatables of various sorts. Hampers are a great in-
stitution across the ocean ; they form a large part of the freight-
age material on the railroads from September to March, and es-
pecially at Christmas, and experienced senders have devised cer-
tain sealed knots by which to ascertain whether any hungry por-
ter or brakeman has tampered with the contents. Game is thus
sent from the Highlands of Scotland to Cornwall, fish from the
west of Ireland to the coast of Norfolk, farm produce and home-
made bread, etc., everything that hungry country-folk shut up in
cities can long for, or epicures prize because it is unattainable at
a common shop. This particular hamper was a home gift from
Walsh's father and some younger brothers and sisters still living
in the dilapidated family home which he and Clara were working
so hard to free from creditors.

A lot of sweet-smelling hay was packed at the top, under
which, wrapped in moss, were some late violets with a faint scent,
and a few chrysanthemums. The substantiate were not far to
seek : two home-cured hams of last year and a side of bacon ; two
large turkeys and two couples of chickens, all ready for cooking ;
a small round of salt beef not the scraggy thing which boarding-
house reminiscences have made too familiar and most hateful to
most of us, but salt beef such as is thought a luxury by well-to-do
lovers of good cheer, the traditional squires of romance ; some
jars of pickles and catsups, of jellies and jams, all home-made ;
eight or ten pounds of new butter, some of it in tiny pats with a
rabbit stamped on them ; a jar of cream and a larger one of
milk ; a small cheese and a smaller cream-cheese ; a hare, two rab-
bits, half a dozen partridges, and some sea-fish in a separate parcel
belled with the name of Walsh's favorite fisher-boy, Michael
anlon ; some brown wheat bread and two loaves of white
read, a rich plum-cake, two large covered mince-pies and a
dozen small open ones, with two bottles of old port and one of
the traditional whiskey that never paid duty, and a big plum-pud-
ding ready mixed in a stout bag, besides a lot of dried fruit, and
four lemons and three oranges, the latter being " rich and rare "
in the home of the Walshes, though common enough on London

454 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

street- stalls. There were also a few fire-crackers for the chil-
dren. Llewellyn evidently took great delight in this domestic
event, and the little excitement consequent on opening the ham-
per did much to remove the stiffness of the conversation. A
little supper was laid on the table by a neat maid who appeared
now for the first time, as Miss Walsh took a good deal of the nur-
sery work, and Mrs. Walsh did everything but the rough house-
work and the waiting. The supper was chiefly cold, except for
an excellent oyster-stew and some unrivalled black coffee, and the
strange guest became more at home as the meal went on. After
supper the ladies disappeared for half an hour, and Walsh in-
dulged his guest with a glass of wine and one of his hidden store
of cigars not, however, an extravagant purchase of his own, but a
present from an admiring patient in the tobacco trade. The doc-
tor, though apparently careless and jovial, watched the stranger
closely, and was becoming more and more satisfied that his fit
was over for the present and that his case was curable in the end,
when Llewellyn said :

" I think I owe you an explanation fuller than that which you
may have gathered from my chance allusion to my adventures."

" I am quite ready," said the doctor cheerfully " that is, if it
is not disagreeable to you. I am quite satisfied to take you on
trust."

" You have been much too generous," said the other, " for me
to leave you in the dark. You may say what you like, but not
one man in a thousand would have done what you have."

" Well," said Walsh deprecatingly, " let us get to work."

" I told you I had travelled on the Continent," began Llewellyn.
" It was in Germany that is, in Prussian Silesia that my trouble
first showed itself. My name will tell you that I am a Welshman,
and my father was a small squire, who, having got into debt, was
in a great hurry to sell his estate, which afterwards turned out to
be full of iron, but not till he had parted with it for a very small
sum to a retired manufacturer. He and my brother and I came
up to London. My brother was ten years older than myself, and
was of age when the property was sold. He and my father had
the same tastes, and did not husband very carefully the ready
money they had in hand after clearing their debts ; so I was sent
to a second-rate private school, and should have missed college
altogether if the man who bought our place had not been honest
enough to press upon us an additional sum after the discovery of
the mine was made. He also suggested that my brother should
marry his daughter, as he could give his own sons money enough

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 455

in other forms, and would settle the Welsh property on his only
girl. After some hesitation my brother accepted this proposal,
and engaged himself to Miss Charlton, who was only sixteen at
the time. Her father good-naturedly took an interest in me, and
induced my father to use part of the new sum of purchase money
to set me up in a profession. I went to Cambridge, and subse-
quently to Gray's Inn. Meanwhile my father died and my bro-
ther married. As my inclinations were different from his, my
thrifty mother's characteristics having revived in -me, I was
rather cut off from the family and shifted for myself. I saw that
the bar was not my vocation and set about trying to earn money
my own way. You know how that generally ends in a trial of
literature, and I gravitated helplessly towards publishing and
newspaper offices. By and by I found my level and got a con-
nection with the theatres, writing plays, adapting scenes, etc. a
dramatic author on a small scale, and content to be a well-paid
hack ail my life when all of a sudden a little farce I wrote be-
came the rage, and the merest accident threw me headlong into
a sea of sensational popularity. No one was more surprised than
myself. At first I was a little ashamed as well, for I knew what
trash my things were, seriously and artistically speaking. But an
author's vanity is insidious ; I gave in, wrote more such stuff,
and made money fast. That was eight years ago. This lasted
about two years, and my head was fairly turned, when, as sudden-
ly as the first success, came the first failure. I had made sure of
the favor of the public, but it deserted me as unreasonably as it
had sought me out, and a pet performance of my comic muse fell
flat.

" The sudden revulsion was a great blow to me. I got away
from the theatre before the play was over, and took an aimless
walk through the streets, having forgotten to put on my over-
coat. I wandered about, feeling cold and dizzy, and instinctively
trying to get out of the way of the crowd. Everywhere posters,
placards, and ' sandwich-men ' met me, and some of the adver-
tisements were of my own unlucky piece, then being ' damned '
at the theatre I had left. For days before the piece had been an-
nounced and cried in the streets, and I had been proud of seeing
fearful caricatures of myself connected with the advertisements ;
now a frenzy seized me and I longed to smash every board I saw
placarded, and kill every perambulating human poster I came
across. Presently I saw one of these men I could not see what
he carried on his horrid wooden shield turn down a by-street
leading to the Thames. Beyond the Embankment you know

456 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

there are still many queer nooks ; I followed mechanically, or
rather with a muffled aim which I only dimly understood. The
chill night air was doing its work on my unnaturally-excited brain,
and I was beginning to be unlike myself. I followed the njan,
trying to decipher the advertisement on his back-board, and per-
suading myself it was mine, when presently he turned, and, with
an uneasy look, said something, it seemed to me tauntingly. I
shouted some threat in reply. My recollection of the .scene is
vivid in some respects, but in others quite the contrary ; I only
know that I flew at him, and he ran from me further down the
street till he turned and came out on an unfrequented corner
skirting the river, with a high blank wall on the right covered
with torn and fluttering advertisements. I pursued him blindly,
still trying to decipher his hideous placard, till I saw him dart
through, as I then thought, a hole in the wall ; and when I looked
around I saw two more men bearing placards behind me, and a
third turning the corner. I was faintly conscious that I was
feverish and that my proper place was bed, and yet I was im-
pelled to go on and try the same hole, wondering what the other
men would do, and if they were real men or only phantoms of
my brain. I heard footsteps and voices behind me ; then what
seemed like a whispered consultation, then coarse jests and ques-
tions, as the men made up their minds I was drunk and not
worth troubling about. They passed me, and by this time I felt
stupid and unable to move ; but I saw them disappear one by one
where the first had disappeared, though I could see nothing but
a wall of torn paper before me. When I was alone again I felt
bewildered and, I believe, frightened ; confused notions of murder
haunted me, and I could hear the swash of the tide lazily slapping
the wooden piles of those grisly piers that some people think so
picturesque in Dore's illustrations. Presently the wind got up,
and I suppose the sudden increase of cold suggested dimly the
instinct of getting home to shelter ; but just as I turned round a
large sheet of crimson paper fluttered out from the wall and
struck me in the face. There was a fitful, rainy-looking moon,
and as it came from behind a cloud it threw light enough on the
stained and torn paper to let me see a supposed likeness of myself
grinning at me ; I knew then that it was a poster about my un-
lucky piece. I tore it down, and felt impelled to tear down as
much more loose paper as I could get hold of ; but I had not done
much before a policeman came up I scarcely knew him for one,
however and, with a few words which I did not understand,
took a strong hold of me. I know I struggled, and I remember

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 457

distinctly believing that the man I struggled with was myself,
who had stepped down from the paper wall on purpose to throt-
tle me for my silly failure at the theatre. I learnt afterwards
that this place by the river was a large placard manufactory and
employed many of the ' sandwich-men.' Before I was got as
far as the police-station, where the man naturally meant to take
me, I fell down senseless, and the policeman searched my pockets
for signs of my identity. What he found decided him to take me
to my lodgings instead of the station, and there I woke next
morning with the impression that I had had a hideous dream. I
was as weak as a cat, and still feverish, but I escaped brain-fever
that time. Besides my professional connections I had very few
friends, and I felt so sore and ashamed that I refused to see any
one, and left word two days after that I had gone abroad. I left
no address and started by the Ostend boat. I was not fit for the
journey, and caught a fresh cold on board. I neglected this so
stupidly that when I reached Cologne I had to send for the Eng-
lish doctor and make up my mind to a serious illness. This hap-
pened late in July, and it was the middle of September before
I was myself again ; my brain was seriously affected, and I was
recommended to travel quietly and avoid any exciting corre-
spondence, so I told the Cologne postmaster not to forward my
letters, should any come, and I set out on horseback for a friend's
house in Silesia.

" I had a very pleasant journey, and spent a few weeks at my
friend's ; he was married to a Frenchwoman, a pretty, dark-eyed
girl, a great-niece of Talleyrand. The country was pretty,
though flat, and I was told the cold in winter was intense ; indeed,
I judged so from a picture I saw in the house which represented
plains and valleys of snow and looked like a Siberian landscape ;
it was Oppersdorff in February. The house was comfortable and
commonplace, not very old, and the furniture was mostly French;
my friend was an improver of land, and spent most of his energies
on his English garden and farm. There were drainage works
going on, for the land was low and the climate not always
healthy ; in fact, I caught my second fever there. I thought I
should shake off this touch of sickness by a change and a long ride,
and I started for Breslau with some nice letters of introduction
from my hosts. I went to the theatre the first night of my arri-
val, and the associations of the stage certainly did me no good.
I had noticed myself how odd and irritable I had grown ; more
than once I saw the surprise of my Silesian friends peeping
through their good-breeding ; and now in the city I felt an uncom-

458 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

fortable suspicion that I could not trust myself-, and yet I was un-
willing to tell even a doctor of my new notion. I left three of
my letters with my card on people of note in Breslau, and mean-
while went about seeing sights, and still trying to shake off my
uneasiness about myself. This lasted a week and 1 had not bro-
ken down yet. I began to hope I was all right, but my new ac-
quaintances all appeared to notice something odd and strange
about me, the women especially. There was no English doctor
here, and I determined to take the advice of the first German one
I came apross. I went to his office and had a long talk. I told
him the truth, that I feared I was going mad, and he advised
quiet, and promised to look after me, which he did more like a
brother than a professional man, making himself my companion
and so on ; but from one freak to another my trouble increased
and declared itself. He admitted at last that I had better leave
the hotel, and hinted delicately that I should get better care in a
regular asylum. I still had my lucid moments, and I agreed to do
as he directed. I gave him my bankers' address in London, with
strict orders not to allow the bankers to give any one at home
my address, as I was still in hopes of getting well at Breslau, and
did not wish my circle in London to gossip over what had hap-
pened to me abroad. I knew the asylum by sight ; indeed, it
was almost one of the curiosities of the town, the building having
formerly been a Canonesses' House, and the architecture was lovely.
The place was partly cared for by Sisters of Charity, partly by
lay hired nurses, men and women, and partly by such of the can-
onesses as volunteered for the work. One part of the building
was still appropriated to them, and the rent which the town
paid for the use of the rest went to eke out the income of the la-
dies. I suppose you have heard of these lay communities, if I may
call them so? " ,.

" Yes," said the doctor, " though I have no very clear notions
about them."

" Oh ! they serve the purpose of giving a young girl of good
birth but no means a home and an independence which would
be impossible otherwise, and yet leave her the loophole of mar-
riage, since no vows bind her. There is a kind of superioress,
but no real monastic obedience, and the ladies live apart, visit in
the town, have their own servants, and are bound by no rules but
that of wearing a certain dress within the walls, being home by
dusk, and attending Mass and Vespers on certain days, and spe-
cial services on three or four festivals. They are only obliged to
reside in the chapter-house for six months of the year ; the rest,

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 459

if they like, they may spend visiting 1 . But it is a dull life, and
few women care to forego their slender chances in society before
they are thirty ; it is uncommon to find very young girls among
the canonesses, and then, too, the number is limited by the strin-
gency of the rule as to noble descent. Birth alone is not enough ;
and an illegitimate ancestor generations back incapacitates a can-
didate, or a lack of the right number of legitimate ancestors, or a
mesalliance. Otherwise the old maids with this dignified name
of canoness would swarm through the land. Some * chapters '
are not quite so hard to please, but as all give a ' dowry/ or at
least a wedding present, to one of their number who marries, and
provide part of her income while she remains a member, they
are entitled to be ' difficile' Well, the institution at Breslau had
dwindled from its high estate and found it to its advantage to
rent part of its immense premises to the municipality, and so it
came to pass that the Canonesses' House became my home for a
while. I remember it as well as if it was yesterday that I had
first entered it ; my friend the doctor drove me there in one of my
sane and pleasant moments in fact, I thought then that my at-
tack would prove a passing trouble. We went just after a late
breakfast, and what with the doctor's kindness and the aspect, so
homelike and so artistic, of the building itself, I scarcely felt the
unpleasantness of the circumstances. The house stood in a large
platz where weekly fairs were held ; a high, double set of steps
wound in a half-circle and joined in a wide stone platform in
front of the door, which was massive and elaborately carved.

" From the hall we went into a large, high saloon floored with
polished oak, the carved ceiling supported by a few slender stone
pillars ; and this place, which somehow impressed me with the
same sense of vague distance and hushed dignity of the Sala Regia
in the Vatican on festival days, was filled with small dining-tables
exquisitely clean but very simply served. At a few of these sat
some of the nurses, just finishing their mid-day meal, some Sisters
of Charity in their lovely gray dress, and some of the younger
canonesses in very antique, stiff-looking costumes of black stuff
with a wide white linen collar of peculiar shape, and some odd silver
trinkets down the front of the dress. In addition to this most of
them wore a large rosary at their girdle, and one or two wore
close caps. The doctor and I passed through this hall and on to
the staircase beyond which was a marvel of intricate carving
but did not go up-stairs, as he said his friend, one of the under-
masters of the place, lived in the L wing, mostly occupied by
female patients, and he wished us to pay him a visit together

460 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

before I went to my apartments, as he called them. This wing
consisted of an immensely wide passage, wider than a common
room, with tapestry hangings on one side, and occasional windows
into a large courtyard, and a series of rooms, generally uncon-
nected with each other, each opening into the corridor, while
their other sides looked into a garden. The arrangement was so
peculiar that I was delighted with it ; the doctor explained that
this corridor served as a kind of cloister, and had once been open
to the courtyard, but the weather proved too severe to allow of
regular exercise being taken in the cloister at all times, so the
open side had been walled up and a few of the arches turned
into large windows. A few doors were open, and we met two
ladies walking up and down at the nearer end of the passage.
My friend told me that one was an American whose relations
had brought her there from Vienna, where she became insane
through a sudden loss of her fortune, and they had now paid
regularly for her for nine years, preferring this exceptional asy-
lum to anything in their own country. She was a silent person,
he said, but would refer, as often as she opened her lips, to ' my
aunt Miss Tilden,' and she spoke no French or German.
Through the door of her room I could see the ingenious straw-
panelling, if I may call it so, at which she busied herself ; the
walls, as high as a woman could reach, were covered with min-
ute colored split straws, a sort of Japanese-looking pattern, and
across the room, so that one could not help seeing it, hung a
common clothes-line, with small square tiles hung to it by wires
isolated tiles, each costly and beautiful, but incongruous. Most
of these were presents ; she had a passion for them, and her friends
indulged the whim. It reminded me of a certain sane woman's
passion for cream- pitchers, of which she had in a carved book-
case about thirty of various materials, sizes, and ages in an old
Welsh house of my acquaintance.

" We visited the assistant doctor, to whom my friend wished to
recommend me particularly, and found him very cheerful, very
German, very beery, and very enlightened. His room was
modern and smelt of happy-go-lucky bachelorhood ; it opened
on to a little garden of its own, and was sunny and jolly, though
disorderly. He accompanied us back to the main part of the
building, introduced me to the head doctor, and installed me in
my apartment, a large room with an alcove for the bed, on the
first floor overlooking the courtyard. I scarcely know how long
I stayed there before doing anything palpably queer and insane.
I remember sometimes dining alone, sometimes in a long room

1 88 1.] THE PLACARD. 461

with many others ; then we had billiards and chess and other games
in a large room with an immense white china stove, like a press,
running up to the ceiling, with an ornamented cornice at the top.
I was tacitly required to go to Mass, though not a Catholic my-
self, and I remember vaguely several festival days. It was not
till long after that I examined the chapel. Male nurses attended
the male patients, except those sick of other diseases than mad-
ness. We never saw the women socially ; there was no attempt
at aping a home, but once or twice a year the patients whom it
was safe to leave to themselves dined in company, somewhat
solemnly, in the Elizabeth Hall, the room I had first seen. (A
local princess of that name had been the foundress of this quasi-
order of religious women.) I had no adventure, no love-affair,
no romantic friendship ; my gloomy fantastic fits were more and
more frequent, and I lost count of much time. I was told I had
been unconscious though docile enough for two years, when one
day my friend called early in the morning and proposed to take
me out ; he thought I was much better, and he was anxious to
try the experiment. First we stopped in the chapel to hear Mass.
It was a holiday, the patron saint of the institution ; the sanctuary
was brilliant, but the old altar very plain ; the stalls were arrang-
ed lengthwise down the two sides of the chapel, and when they
were not sufficient plain benches supplemented them ; the men
sat on one side, the women on the other, and the canonesses had
a tribune with a magnificent carved balcony looking into the
sanctuary. Formerly, of course, they occupied the stalls. After
service we went into the market-place, then to the public gar-
dens, then to a restaurant, then took a long drive into the
country. I enjoyed it all, and was quite rational and cool, when
on coming back a placard met my eye. I had seen others before
that same day, but the effect of this was instantaneous and unac-
countable : I grew violent, insisted on tearing it down, and be-
haved altogether like the unlucky lunatic I was. My friend was
sadly grieved. I heard after that I had attempted to kill
him with my fists. I had a few weeks of a very bad time, and
then grew suddenly better as the weather grew cooler. The
doctor sounded me as to the advisability of my going home. I
was reluctant, as I knew no one who could be of use to me in the
dreary places known as asylums in England ; but I began to fear
being a burden on my friend in Breslau, and after a stay of nearly
four years I yielded, and, as my sane intervals were pretty sure to
last at least a month, I allowed arrangements to be made for my
removal. One of my bankers' clerks came to accompany me,

462 THE PLACARD. [Jan.,

but I felt as if I was leaving home when I left my Breslau friends.
It is no use spinning out the sad tale. I came home and at once
entered an English private asylum, where I am bound to say I
was well and even affectionately treated ; but I grew worse since
the day I crossed the Channel, and when my fits came on I was
almost always murderous, which, before my attack the day of the
fair, used not to be the case. Lately, however, the intervals have
been longer and the fits, even if violent, shorter ; but oh ! the dreary
feeling of homelessness. My brother and sister-in-law had to
know of my condition, and they and their children often came to
see me, but I never felt as I did in Breslau that is, until to-night,
when my physician-friend seemed miraculously revived in you,
his brother in the profession. Well, that is my story so far as I
have any story, but I wonder how it will end."

" In your cure I feel confident," said Walsh. " We will con-
trive a bed for you you must be tired and if you will let me do
as I like with you for a little while I have no doubt we shall get
to the bottom of the trouble. Smoke another cigar while my
wife and sister go to church ; I shall stay away this Christmas
night and keep you company."

So John Llewellyn became a guest of the young doctor, and
Miss Walsh removed her belongings pro tern, into the nursery.
By degrees the lunatic recovered, and the doctor was very proud
of his cure, of which the details would be out of place here. It is
years ago since this happened, but the Christmas at Ballywalsh
(the old house was successfully redeemed and the family set on
its legs again) was never kept without Llewellyn as a special and
central attraction. Miss Walsh married in due time, arid a young-
er generation swarmed round the old building. One year the
Walshes took a holiday in the autumn and with Llewellyn visited
Breslau, the Elizabeth Hall, and the doctor, who had now succeed-
ed the head man at the asylum, and was delighted to see his old
patient safe and sound, proof against placards or anything else.
Walsh's practice is large and prosperous, and he has a boy
going to school whom he intends to bring up as a farmer at the
old home. Llewellyn, too, is his country neighbor, as he bought a
cottage near Ballywalsh for the summer, though he has resumed
literature in London as a profession for six months in the year.

j 88 1.] THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. 463

THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS *

WHEN we think of or name a dead or distant nation there
comes before our mental view the picture chiefly of its principal
city, and of that city some salient portion or building a temple, a
palace, perhaps a prison. One says Greece, and we see in the
city of the violet crown the Acropolis bright against the blue
Athenian sky, and the Agora where Alcibiades walked with doves
in his breast ; Rome, and behold in the Eternal City the awful
circle of the Coliseum, the flower of pagan strength and persecu-
tion, and St. Peter's, the flower of Catholic faith and prayer one
for the killing of the body, the other for the saving of the soul.
To most of us, above all to " home-keeping folk," England means
grim and vast London, with the Abbey and the Tower to stand
for church and state ; and France shows us a vision of bright
Paris with Notre Dame and the Louvre. So, in our own country,
at the mention of Louisiana the stranger who has visited or the
native who has left it remembers the long reaches of cane and
cotton, the matted swamps and sluggish bayous, or the freer
stretches of open prairie only as the fringed mantle of the city
that " sits by the sea " where the wide Mississippi broadens to the
Gulf. And of that city one picture will rise most frequently before
him. Once more he stands in the Place d' Armes of the Creoles,
where in old days there lingered a faint flavor of formal French
gardens in the .prim flower-beds and precise clipped hedges, but
which the rampant and too well known charger of American
sculpture links to its Northern brotherhood under the name of
Jackson Square. To right and left from street to street stretch the
uniform dark-red fronts of the Pontalba Buildings, from which
for so many years went good American rentes to Paris to the old
French countess whose title they bear. Facing the square, and
beyond it, is the Spanish-built cathedral of St. Louis, which has
seen more changes of dynasty than any other building in America
north of the Rio Grande. There in turn knelt the Spanish com-
andante and the French gouverneur ; there Jarkson and the Ken-
tuckians heard the Mass of Thanksgiving for the deliverance of
the city ; there, after the cannon in Jackson Square had saluted
the ordinance of secession, a new banner was brought to the altar

* Old Creole Days. By George W. Cable. New York : Charles Scribner's-Sons. The Gran-
dissimes. By George W. Cable. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.

464 THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. [Jan.,

to be blessed, and the dark old church was bright with the scar-
let and gold, and blue and grey of the Gardes d' Orleans, and the
Piques-d'abord, and the Chasseurs-a-pied, and in place of the sol-
emn, breathless stillness at the Elevation the stone floor rang and
re-echoed with the rattle of rifles as the soldiers presented arms.
And one rainy April morning no news came from the forts of the
bombardment begun on Good Friday, and while men wondered
and conjectured the great church-bells rang the danger-signal,
and passing Chalmette, where the English had been stayed, the
Federal men-of-war steamed into view and dropped anchor.

On either side of the cathedral, across wide-flagged courts, are
the old court buildings, the forgotten bas-reliefs crumbling away
from their stucco facades crumbling, as is the memory of the days
when they were built, and the men who made them, from the
minds of their busy American successors. Soon a new court-
house will be built further up-town, after a brand-new design from
the architect's office in Washington, well equipped with elevators,
and hot and cold water, and a Mansard roof, and inside shutters,
as appropriate to Maine or to Michigan as to Texas or Oregon.

Will any one regret to lose the subtle flavor of association, of
history and romance, that hangs around the shabby old two-sto-
ried buildings with their cool corridors under Moorish arches,
where the beggars and cripples used to sit patiently all day
long, and the fat marchandes, with their heads adorned with
bright tignons, offered you calas touts chauds or crme a la glace,
according to the season ? Will any one miss the silent lesson
and reminder of justice and mercy preached by the cathedral
standing between the civil and criminal courts, as in France for-
merly, in every court where sentence of death could be pro-
nounced, there hung the thorn-crowned image of the just Judge,
himself unjustly condemned the merciful Saviour suffering the
penalty of sin ?

Not far from the cathedral might be seen one of the objects of
the city's pride, the date-palm, solitary as the phcenix, whose ex-
quisitely graceful stem and dome of leaves rose high above the
one-storied, tiled buildings around, and whose story has been pret-
tily imagined or told by Mr. Aldrich. It was old when the writer
of this article saw it last, and when it dies New Orleans will lose
that link with the tropics and the desert as she is fast losing the
traces of Spanish and French rule. A year or two ago it seemed
that the memory of those days would disappear utterly from the
minds of men, but before the fading frescoes have lost all their
grace of outline and beauty and sweetness of color they have

1 88 1.] THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. 465

been seen by intensely sympathetic eyes, and a great artist has
given them to the world in the brightness of their departed
youth. More than this, the wiser vision of a later generation has
seen clearly every blot and shadow on the picture, and while in
Old Creole Days, and The Grandissimes Mr. Cable draws a picture
of life in Louisiana which is both charming and true, he has also,
by virtue of the absolute truth of his art, shown slavery and its
sins in so electric a light that even a beggared slaveholder should
rejoice that at the price of poverty and humiliation, even of
war and death, that curse is for ever lifted from his land. The
whole story of The Grandissimes, but above all the chapters
relating to Bras-Coupe" and the murder of Clemence, seems,
in its studied nakedness and freedom from exaggeration, the
most terrible picture which fiction has presented of slavery.
These are the fair, square, sledge-hammer blows of a strong
man, compared with which Uncle Toms Cabin, for instance,
appears hysterical, and sensational, and untrue. The two chap-
ters which give the history of Bras-Coupe are written with the
power of Victor Hugo, and with a touch of his tenderness in the
devotion of that splendid savage to his " bailie Palmyre, so piti
zozo" his adoration of and obedience to his beautiful and gentle
white mistress, and his relenting at the close of his own agony.
i

" The lady came, her infant boy in her arms, knelt down beside the bed
of sweet grass, and set the child within the hollow of the African's arm.
Bras-Coupe turned his gaze upon it ; it smiled, its mother's smile, and put
its hand upon the runaway's face, and the first tears of Bras-Coupe's life,
the dying testimony of his humanity, gushed from his eyes and rolled down
his cheek upon the infant's hand. He laid his own tenderly upon the babe's
forehead, then, removing it, waved it abroad, inaudibly moved his lips,
dropped his arm, and closed his eyes. The curse was lifted.

" ' Le pauv dgiab ! ' said the overseer, wiping his eyes and looking field-
ward. ' Palmyre, you must get the priest.'

"At length : ' Do you know where you are going? ' asked the holy man.

" ' Yes,' answered his eyes, brightening.

" ' Where ? '

" He did not reply ; he was lost in contemplation, and seemed looking far
away. So the question was repeated :

" ' Do you know where you are going ? '

" And again the answer of the eyes. He knew.

" ' Where ? '

" The overseer at the edge of the porch, the widow with her babe, and
Palmyre and the priest bending over the dying bed, turned an eager ear to
atch the answer.

" ' To ' the voice failed a moment ; the departing hero essayed agaim ;
VOL. xxxn. 30

466 THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. [Jan.,

again it failed ; he tried once more, lifted his hand, and with an ecstatic,
upward smile whispered : ' To Africa ' and was gone."

The capture and murder of Clemence show as keen an insight
into the workings of dull, ignorant minds as Hardy displays in
the dense and distorted stupidity of his clowns. It is the story
of generations of slavery and cowardice, flattery and fawning,
and ignorance which keeps on lying even after it is discovered,
told "without an adjective " or one superfluous word.

" ' Oh ! fo' de love o' God, Micht Jean-Baptiste, don' open dat-ah box !
Y'en a reindu tout la-dans, Miche Jean-Baptiste ; du tout, du tout ! Miche,
on'y p's teck dis-yeh t'ing off'n my laig, ef yo' please, Miche. Mo' parole
d'honneur le plus sacre". I'll kiss de cross ! Oh ! sweet Miche Jean, laisse
mot aller ! Nutt'n but some dutty close la-dans' She repeated this again
and again, even after Capitaine Jean-Baptiste had disengaged a small black
coffin from the old dress in which it was wrapped. ' Rein du tout, Miche 1 ;
nutt'n' but some wash'n' fo' one o' de boys."

" He removed the lid and saw within . . . the image in myrtle wax ... of
a negro's bloody arm cut off near the shoulder a bras-coupdwith a dirk
grasped in its hand."

" At the base of this tree sat Clemence, motionless and silent, a wan,
sickly color in her face, and that vacant look in her large, white-balled,
brown-veined eyes with which hope-forsaken cowardice waits for death."

The picture of her murder ranks, for force and vividness, with
the best or worst in modern fiction Nancy killed by Bill Sykes ;
that treacherous shot when Andre* Desilles, stretching his arms
out like a great white cross, fell dead before the men he tried to
save, in front of the cannon at Nanci ; the " murder grim and
great " that avenged beautiful Hypatia while it borrows from the
position of the actors as masters and slave a shame and a ghastli-
ness all its own.

In exquisite and refreshing contrast with these strong and
sombre chapters are those in which the lightly yet firmly drawn
women of the story appear, bringing vividly before us their
potent but almost impalpable Creole charm.

It is not beauty, though they are beautiful as the truth of Mr.
Cable's art demands ; nor intellect, for their quick, bright, hum-
ming-bird minds have nothing in common with our idea of an intel-
lectual woman ; nor goodness, though they are sweet, and loving,
and unselfish, and brave ; but a subtle attraction as indescribable
and as unmistakable as the perfume of a flower. To what a sweet
sisterhood he has introduced us in his two books ! 'Tite Poulette
waiting behind the latticed window over the archway of the old
Spanish Barracks, whence you could almost see " Count O'Reilly's
artillery come bumping and trundling out, and dash into the

1 88 1.] THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. 467

ancient Plaza to bang away at King St. Charles' birthday " ;
the seven fair sisters of the Belles Demoiselles Mansion, " with
its broad veranda and red-painted cypress roof peering over the
embankment, where, at high water on windy nights, every minute
the river threw a white arm over the levee's top, as though it
would vault over " ; Mme. Delicieuse, in her balcony, spinning
her innocent little webs to bring together the estranged father
and son ; the stately, virginal Clotilde, brave, high-minded, a little
feared by her mother ; and, most carefully drawn of all, Aurore
herself, less perfect than her daughter, but how bewitching and
delightful, how exactly calculated to win a man as thoroughly
unlike her as her noble and stately lover ! We seem to see not
only these prominent characters but many of those whose names
are not even given the cloud of girlish cousins walking arm-in-
arm down the broad galleries, or whose white dresses glimmer
through the shrubberies in the soft scented twilight at the Fete
de Grandpere. This is one of the prettiest and truest scenes in
the book, doing justice to some of the most attractive character-
istics of the Creoles their profound reverence for and obedience
to their elders ; their exquisite amiability and politeness, making it
possible for half a dozen families to live in harmony and happi-
ness beneath one roof ; their clannishness, only equalled by the
Scotch Highlanders' " shoulder to shoulder." And how much of
the picturesque but little known history of the State it brings be-
fore us in the picture of the grandptre himself " the oldest liv-
ing Grandissime, Alcibiade, a shaken but unfallen monument of
early colonial days, a browned and corrugated souvenir of De
Vaudreuil's pomps, of O'Reilly's iron rule, of Galvez* brilliant
wars" (who ever thinks how Galveston got its name?), "a man
who had seen Bienville and Zephyr Grandissime."

We shall have to go to the English masters of fiction to find
a group of such well-drawn, widely differing types as the men
in The Grandissimes. Facile princeps is Honore wise, far-seeing,
chivalrous, high-minded, a splendid figure standing boldly out
against the confused background of Louisiana society of 1806.
He is thQfinefleur of a race which showed many shining exam-
ples of heroism and endurance in the late war, as many a Creole
woman since has matched the brave, light-hearted struggle with
poverty of Clotilde and Aurore. Mr. Ruskin would approve of
his attitude in regard to a love which his exaggerated sense of
honor fancies hopeless. " It has not killed me. And . . . while
I keep in mind the numbe'less other sorrows of life, the burhials
of wives and sons and daughtehs, the agonies and desolations, I

468 THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DA vs. [Jan.,

shall nevvah die of love, my-de'-seh, fo' verhy shame's sake." In
politics he is the c^lm thinker, wise enough to see that the old
order must yield, giving place to new, and strong enough to keep
his footing in the turning tide. He is well contrasted with a
bigoted and intense reactionary, the ruffled old eagle Agricole
Fusilier, whose passionate loyalty to a lost and hopeless cause
may well be drawn from life, and with his wise, languid half-
brother, whose education and wealth only make him understand
more clearly the futility of a struggle. Midway between the
courage of the gentleman who can face reproach and anger and
the falling-off of friends, and the unreckoning, animal bravery of
the African prince, stands the weak, pathetic figure of the man of
mixed blood, failing in everything except his revenge.

Among the minor characters the most carefully and charm-
ingly drawn is Raoul Innerarity ; gay, honest, sweet-tempered,
intensely proud of being "cousin to de distingwish Honore
Grandissime," and speaking a language which would have glad-
dened the ears of him who wrote the English of Florae and of
Captain Costigan. One must go to Louisiana to do justice to the
accuracy with which the two dialects are rendered the " Con-
go "-French and the Creole-English. Every harsh and hissing
letter is softened and thickened, almost every final letter drop-
ped, until that softly-breathed language seems to symbolize at
once the sweetness and the indolence of the Creoles ; and of this
the conversations of Raoul and Aurore are the most finished
specimens. Raoul is consistently charming in every situation.
As an artist he introduces us to his chef-d'oeuvre "Louisiana
rif-usin' to hanter de h'Union ! Gran' subjec' ! " and tells us, " If
you insist to know who make dat pigshoe, de hartis' stan' bif-ore
you ! " He shows us his liberality when he asks Frowenfeld,
" You t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe of a
niggah ? " And on being told that it would not, exclaims, " Ah !
my soul ! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupe ! " As a
politician he quiets all discussion with a short formula : " Mi-
frien', you haven't got doze inside nooz : Louisiana is goin' to
state w'at she want." It is generally easy to understand the
Creole-English, though we were puzzled at first to know what was
the peculiar merit of that candidate for the position of drug-clerk
whom his friend described as " so grezful ligue a peajohn " ; but
many a French scholar would find it hard to translate some of
the Congo songs, which are not without a beauty and simplicity
of their own.

i88ij THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. 469

So gies ye te plis noir passe la nouitte,
So de la lev' plis doux passe la quitte !
Tout mo' la vie, zamein mo oir
Ein n'amourese zoli comme ga !

Mo' blie manze, mo' blie boir,

Mo' blie tout dipi g-temps-la,

Mo' blie parle, mo' blie dormi,

Quand mo pense apres zami ! " *

We roust leave to a more accomplished linguist the transla-
tion of the boat-song,

" De zabs, de zabs, de counon ouaie ouaie,"

The " coming man," the judicious, honorable German-Ameri-
can, Frowenfeld, is possessed of every virtue and the one unpar-
donable vice (in a novel) : he is not interesting. At the outset he
is very promising, and the story of his family is as touching as it
is unfortunately too true the stout-hearted, hopeful emigrants
waiting to see the hills on which New Orleans is built, bearing
patiently the infinitely-multiplied torment of the mosquitoes be-
cause they have been told they purify the air ; the disappointed
arrival ; and in a few days every member but himself a victim to
the yellow fever, and he nursed back to a lonely life by strangers.
But our interest fades with his convalescence, and we are apt to
skip his earnest harangues and perfectly correct arguments, or to
read them for the sake of the interruptions. We are rather
bored while he preaches abolition and the dignity of labor to the
pretty little Creoles miles over their heads' and only wake up
when wise Aurore attempts to be philosophical herself.

" ' Doze Creole is lezzy,' said Aurore.

"'That is a hard word to apply to those who do not consciously deserve
it, 1 said Frowenfeld, ' but if they could only wake up to the fact find it out
themselves '

" ' Ceddenly,' said Clotilde.

" Sieur Frowenfel'/ said Aurore, leaning her head on one side,
' some pipple thing it is doze climade ; 'ow you lag doze climade ? "

'"I do not suppose,' replied the visitor, ' there is a more delightful cli-
mate in the world.'

* Her eyes were blacker than night,
Her two lips sweeter than quitte.

(I guess this to be cuite, the boiled cane-juice before it candies a great delicacy of the
"rolling-season.")

In all my life never did I see

A sweetheart beautiful as she.

I have forgotten to eat, I have forgotten to drink,

I have forgotten all things since that time.

I have forgotten to speak, I have forgotten to sleep,

Since I am thinking of my love.

470 THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DA vs. [Jan.,

*" Ah-h-h ! ' both ladies at once in a low, gracious tone of acknowledg-
ment.

" ' I thing Louisiana is a paradize me ! ' said Aurore. ' Were you goin'
fin' sudge a h'air ? ' She respired a sample of it. ' Were you goin' fin'
sudge a so ridge groun' ? De weed in my bag yard is twenny-five feet
'igh!'

"'Ah ! maman.'

" 'Twenny-six ! ' said Aurore, correcting herself. ' Were you fin' sudge
a reever lag dad Mississippi ? '

" And finally, at the end of a long oration on the slavery of caste, an
armed and indolent aristocracy, Aurore gets back comfortably to her bear-
ings. ' Of coze,' said Aurore, with a pensive respiration, ' I thing id is
doze climade ' ; and the apothecary stopped as a man should who finds him-
self unloading large philosophy in a little parlor."

But we must resist the temptation to continue our quotations,
and be content to call attention to the delightful final chapter of
The Grandissimes, a welcome and happy relief after the horror of
the two preceding ones. To those who like to be led by a master's
hand to a little-known city and a forgotten time we commend this
remarkable book. They will find people as real as the creations of
Scott and Thackeray, in scenes as vivid and striking as those of
Dickens and Victor Hugo, nor will there be wanting the close ob-
servation, the caustic sentences which are revelations of George
Eliot and the philosophical novelists. They may tire of the long,
confused family story of Fusiliers and De Grapions and Grandis-
simes. They may think the voudou practices of Mme. Han-
canon a blemish to nature and to art. Although belonging to a
family that has lived in Louisiana for four generations, we confess
that we know and have heard very little of the dark powers of
whom Mr. Cable speaks so familiarly Papa Lebat, Monsieur
Assonquer, Monsieur Danny, and the rest. While we are willing
to admit that in the first decade of the century, and much later,
women may have been foolish enough to believe in the voudou
charms and rites, we do not think that a devout little Catholic
going to early Mass and frequent confession would have had re-
course to them. Mr. Cable forgets how free from the taint of the
witchcraft madness and persecution is the history of all the Ca-
tholic colonies. It was in Protestant New England that that
faithless and cruel frenzy raged like a fire, not in Catholic St.
Augustine or Maryland. In our own time it is in intellectual
Boston that the papers are filled with the advertisements of
clairvoyants and mind-readers sixty, we are told, in the Boston, to
ten in the New York, papers and the vagaries of Home and Katy
King, and materialized spirits and turning tables, have risen to the

1 88 1.] THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. 471

dignity of a Northern " institution." All of which seems to show
that an enlightened faith is a stronger foe to superstition than an
ever-so-much enlightened and advanced reason.

We cannot help regretting that in writing of a Catholic coun-
try and time Mr. Cable's quick sympathies have not been awak-
ened as were those of another non-Catholic author. No one can
read Mr. Parkman's Jesuits in North America without kindling at
the fiery enthusiasm of those early missions. The story of the
priests and nuns in Canada, the heroism of Brebceuf and Mar-
quette and the martyr-pioneers of faith and humanity, have been
told by a Protestant in language that makes one proud of being
a Catholic. While there are not the same splendid examples of
Catholic adventure in Louisiana, there is much that is picturesque
and peculiar which would have added truth "and beauty to his
book. He might have told the outside world something of the
careful, conscientious, religious training of the slaves : the shiny
little black babies brought up to the " great house " to be bap-
tized on the occasion of the priest's visit, and the young couples
coming up to be married the wedding-feast spread on long tables
under magnificent moss-hung oaks and the mistress or her
daughters reading the prayers for the dying at the bedside of
some faithful and devoted old slave. Mr. Cable could have
brought vividly before us a sunset scene of long ago when all the
hands came trooping up with baskets on their heads, filled with
white cotton-bolls, and knelt while the stately mistress, the daughter
of a French and daughter-in-law of a Spanish commandant, prayed
aloud for the safe return from the Senate of le bon maitre, and for
the blessing of the Heavenly Master on the fidUes esclaves and the
abundant harvest. He could have shown in a hundred subtle
touches the humanity and kindness of the relation between mas-
ter and slave.

Well do we remember when our good Irish nurse would
take us to the cabin of some old mammy whose work was all
done, and whose leisure afternoon of life had come, whose patch-
work quilt was more beautiful and interesting in our eyes than
the Bayeux tapestry of Matilda of Flanders, for there was a story
to tell of each patch. Then it was that we were taught to knit, be-
ginning with goose-quills and garters, but aspiring to needles
and socks. Then, too, we thought the candied watermelon rind
which mammy gave us much more delicious than the myrtle-
oranges of our mother's tea-table. Then we were taught the
highest of reverences of youth to age, and of a superior to the
inferior, because of the helplessness of his position. We meet with

472 THE LOUISIANA OF CREOLE DAYS. [Jan.,

few examples of either kind now,- but the last was known in the
days of King Arthur, if we may believe the Laureate :

" For in those days

No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in scorn ;
But, if a man were halt or hunch'd, in him,
By those whom God had made full-limb'd and tall,
Scorn was allow'd as part of his defect,
And he was answered softly by the King
And all his Table."

It was with horror and bated breath that Mrs. was men-
tioned as a lady who would strike a servant. For the other side
of the picture, the affection and devotion of the slave, one need
only remember many a lonely plantation during the long four
years' war, with every white man fighting in the field and the
women and children safe in their trust and confidence in their
own slaves.

But we are wandering far from the times and the Louisiana
of Mr. Cable, and once more we turn to the Place d'Armes to
gaze on the goodly multitude whom he pictures to us. There
are Casa Calvo de la Puerta y O'Farril, Marquis of Casa Calvo ;
and the French prefect Laussat; and Daniel Clark, too well known
as the father of Mrs. Gaines ; and Wilkinson, the friend of Burr ;
and Livingston, who wrote the Code ; and the Lafitte brothers, and
many a familiar Creole name of to-day. Not Creole but Frangais
de la France is Marigny de Mandeville, whom he calls the Mar-
quis Member of Congress, whose name is glorious to all the read-
ers of the Memoirs of Mme. de la Rochejaquelein as one of the
chiefs and heroes of the heroic war in La Vendee. We are loath
to say farewell to them, and we thank Mr. Cable for bringing
them before us again. We think that his last book gives him
rank among the very foremost of American writers.

GOD leads every soul by a separate path, and you will scarcely
meet with one spirit which agrees with another in one-half of the
way which it advances. ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS.

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 473

THE LIGHT OF ASIA*

IF we greet Mr. Arnold's poem with less favor than has so
generally been extended to him it is because we do not approve
the school to which he belongs. According to the rules of that
school he has done his task well. But, while we say this, we
cannot refrain from protesting against the artificiality of modern
verse. Shelley's defects were illumined by genius, but his imita-
tors seem to fall into them without receiving any of his gifts.
Swinburne's meaningless twaddle is escaped by Mr. Arnold ; nor
shall we charge him with the apparent carelessness of his work,
fdr a journalist on the Telegraph must lead a busy life of it. Still,
there is no excuse for the sensational striving, the mawkish sen-
sibility and jarring rhythm of his verse. In a word, Mr. Arnold
is laboring under the nineteenth-century disease book-making.

But, narrowed perforce to the limits of this age, and in com-
parison with modern poets, we must give Mr. Arnold a high
place as a writer for to-day, and not for posterity. He has por-
trayed in striking colors colors that descend too often to be sen-
sational the history of a great religious revolution, and the aspect
of the country and the manners of the people of a most interest-
ing portion of the earth. In the great mass of this work we find
some really noble lines, marred, however, by the defects pointed
out ; and we shall present some extracts from the Light of Asia
which contain a promise of better things that may, alas ! after
all never be fulfilled. But before we go to the poem a slight
reference to Indian religion anterior to the time of Siddartha
will be necessary.

The Vedic system, while teeming with a vast deal of absurdi-
ties and full of subtle Eastern theosophy, recognized behind its
caste lines and special gods a great God above all. This was
Brahme at first Brahme the Thought, then Brahma the Thinker.
Above Sabaism, above Agni, Indra, and Surya, the Aryans dimly
conceived a Soul and a Light, of which these were but the mani-
festations. While they and all else were destined to die, he re-
mained omniscient, omnipotent, eternal. This was most likely
some far-off echo of the doctrine of that remarkable people who,
dwelling between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean, clung so

* The Light of Asia. By Edwin Arnold, C.S. L.

474 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

tenaciously to a belief in one God.* The belief, in the then
state of the Aryan mind, could scarcely have failed to take the
shape of pantheism ; and accordingly their creed took that form,
with all the significations of the word, but around which clung a
grotesque mass of fantastic creations peculiarly characteristic.

Our object is to show the story of Siddartha, as set forth by Mr.
Arnold : how, wearied of a world of misery, and finding no conso-
lation in the shadowy teachings of pantheism, he set his face in
the wrong direction and went into a blank atheism. Like many
a blind sciolist of our own days, when a specious theory takes pos-
session of an over-sensitive and not well-balanced mind, instead of
seeking for a stronger faith he rebelled, and resolutely faced a
future without hope, except the hope of death. This shall be the
measure of our record, this shall be the moral of our story :
Civilization, without God, is a failure.

The poem is supposed to be written by a devotee of Bud-
dhism, and is therefore full of ejaculations which must not be
placed to Mr. Arnold's account; though Mr. Arnold seems to
have fallen enthusiastically into Buddhistic notions, so that a
strange identification between a rishi of the East and the scholarly
poet runs through our mind while reading.

Placed on the confines of Oude and Nepaul was the kingdom
of Kapilavastu, over which reigned Suddhodana and his queen,
Maya, who were of the great solar division of the race. Of these
was Prince Siddartha born the queen, according to tradition, hav-
ing been warned in a dream of the great honor in store for her.
Siddartha, while on earth, was sometimes called Sakya from his
family or tribe name, and sometimes Gautama from the solar sec-
tion of the Aryans. Born in a miraculous manner, the boy grew
a sensitive, delicate child, full of awe at and pity for the suffering
he was permitted to see. This period of his life is more fully
treated than any other part in the poem, and gives the poet op-
portunities for bringing out all the shades of his character. We
warn the reader, though, that this is to a large extent an ideal
picture, and in some particulars inartistically overdrawn. In our
opinion the best parts of the poem are those describing in a
vivid, nervous style Indian life and scenery.

When he became of the right age an instructor was set over
him ; but he soon convinced his teacher in a respectful way, how-
ever that he knew more of the sciences than the learned scholar
had ever dreamed of knowing. So high himself, yet ever does
he thus appear " gentle but wise," looking down on his fellow-

* See Lord Arundel's learned work on this subject.

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 475

mortals with deep pity and reverence. Nothing that could suffer
pain was beneath his notice. One day a noble swan is shot flying
over the garden, and Siddartha runs to it, lifts it up, bathes and
puts balm on the wounded wing, and refuses to give it to the
shooter, alleging that he who saves is more a master of life than
he who destroys.

So all through youth we see him, tortured occasionally by
thoughts of the suffering in the world. In vain are all the de-
lights and all the ease of his lofty station ; in vain

" Among the palms
The tinkle of the rippling water rang,
And where it ran the glad earth broidered it
With balsam and the spears of lemon-grass.
Elsewhere were sowers who went forth to sow ;
And all the jungle laughed with nesting songs,
And all the thickets rustled with small life
Of lizard, bee, beetle, and creeping things,
Pleased at the spring-time."

He saw the thorns under the rose ; how

"... the fair show

Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy
Of mutual murder, from the worm to man,
Who himself kills his fellow ; seeing which
The hungry ploughman and his laboring kine,
Their dewlaps blistered with the bitter yoke,
The rage to live which makes all living strife
The Prince Siddartha sighed."

He is already beginning to discover that prinjal truth of Bud-
dhism, that existence is sorrow. Then if life has no joy, but
only pain, in all its aspects joys being pains in fantastic cos-
tumes what a mockery the whole thing is, what a puzzle to the
brain of Siddartha !

When he was eighteen his father, the king, built a magnificent
palace for him, filled with all beautiful objects, every delight de-
sired by the mind of man, but ingress and egress sternly guarded.
Warning dreams had come to the king wherein his son was pre-
dicted as destined to conquer the world ; and from the tenor of
those dreams the old man feared that the means of this would be
some wild, erratic errand of mercy. Cursing the gods for this
part of their design, but accepting the end, he determined that
the prophecy should be fulfilled as a king should conquer, with
troops and instruments of war. So he built this palace to im-

476 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

mure his son in, away from all sight of misery which would
tempt him apparently to leave his throne.

The marriage of Siddartha, and the manner of his choice, is
told in such very fine lines that we are almost tempted to quote
them ; at least we cannot refrain from copying a few lines which
illustrate one of those strange theories, evolved by the Eastern
mind, so utterly opposed to all our feelings, knowledge, and rea-
son that we can scarce comprehend how it arose. We mean the
transmigration of souls a doctrine not specially identified with
Buddhism, but merely incorporated by it from the old Hindoo-
ism from which it sprang :

" Long after, when enlightenment had come,
They prayed Lord Buddha touching all, and why
She wore this black and gold, and stepped so proud ;
And the world-honored answered, ' Unto me
This was unknown, albeit it seemed half known ;
For while the wheel of birth and death turns round,
Past things anjd thoughts, and buried lives, come back :
I now remember, myriad rains ago,
What time I roamed Himala's hanging woods,
A tiger, with my striped and hungry kind ;
I, who am Buddh, couched in the kusa-grass,
Gazing with green blinked eyes upon the herds
Which pastured near and nearer to their death
Round my day-lair ; or underneath the stars
I roamed for prey, savage, insatiable,
SnhT-ng the path for track of man and deer :
Amid the beasts that were my fellows then,
Met in deep jungle or by reedy jheel,
A tigress, comeliest of the forest, set
The males at war ; her hide was lit with gold,
Black^broidered like the veil Yas&dhara
Wove for me ; hot the strife waxed in that wood
With tooth and claw, while underneath a neem
The fair beast watched us bleed, thus fiercely wooed.
And I remember at the end she came
Snarling past this and that torn forest-lord
Which I had conquered, and with fawning jaws
Licked my quick-heaving flank, and with me went
Into the wild with proud steps, amorously.
The wheel of birth and death turns low and high.' "

We pass over Siddartha's early life, wkich dozed away in
dreamy love and soft luxury, away from the great, bustling, glar-
ing miserable world, in the cool quiet of gorgeous palaces and
sensual existence characteristic of Eastern magnificence. But the
prince cloys on all this bliss ; his mind becomes unsettled ; invisible

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT 'OF ASIA. 477

spirits of the wind whisper to him of the suffering so carefully
hidden from his eyes. He must go forth and see if people are
happy or not. Everything was prepared so that the world
would present itself to him in its gala-dress ; but a pathetic in-
cident reveals to him that man is the heir of sickness, age, and
death.

" Then spake the prince :
' Turn back, and drive me to my house again.
I have seen that I did not think to see.' "

The sadness of Siddartha is reported to the king, and fearful
visions disturb his slumbers during the following night. His
dream was interpreted to him as a forewarning that Siddartha
would conquer the world by the preaching of the word. The
king was greatly troubled, and ordered new delights and double
guards for his son's palace. Then comes a request from the
prince that he might be allowed to go forth and see the world as
it is ; and the king, saying, " Belike this second flight may mend
the first," consents. And here we shall quote the closing lines of
the third book, with three aims : they show the turning-point of
Siddartha's life, they contain an exquisite picture of Indian life,
and will serve as an illustration of the excellences and defects of
Mr. Arnold's style :

" Thus on the morrow, when the noon was come,
The-prince and Channa passed beyond the gates,
Which opened to the signet of the king ;
Yet knew not they who rolled the great doors back
It was the king's son in that merchant's robe,
And in the clerkly dress his charioteer.
Forth fared they by the common way afoot,
Mingling with all the Sakya citizens,
Seeing the glad and sad things of the town :
The painted streets alive with hum of noon,
The traders cross-legged 'mid their spice and grain,
The buyers with their money in the cloth,
The war of words to cheapen this or that,
The shout to clear the road, the huge stone wheels,
The strong, slow oxen and their rustling loads,
The singing bearers with the palanquins,
The broad-necked hamals sweating in the sun,
The housewives bearing water from the well,
With balanced chatties, and athwart their hips
The black-eyed babes ; the fly-swarmed sweetmeat-shops,
The weaver at his loom, the cotton-bow
Twanging, the millstones grinding meal, the dogs
Prowling for orts, the skilful armorer

478 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

With tong and hammer linking shirts of mail,
The blacksmith with a mattock and a spear
Reddening together in his coals, the school
Where round their Guru, in a grave half-moon,
The Sakya children sang the mantras through,
And learned the greater and the lesser gods ;
The dyers stretching waistcloths in the sun
Wet from the vats orange, and rose, and green ;
The soldiers clanking past with swords and shields,
The camel-drivers rocking on the humps,
The Brahman proud, the martial Kshatriya,
The humble toiling Sudra ; here a throng
Gathered to watch some chattering snake-tamer
Wind round his wrist the living jewelry
Of asp and nag, or charm the hooded death
To angry dance with drone of beaded gourd ;
There a long line of drums and horns, which went,
With steeds gay painted and silk canopies,
To bring the young bride home ; and here a wife
Stealing with cakes and garlands to the god
To pray her husband's safe return from trade,
Or beg a boy next birth ; hard by the booths
Where the swart potters beat the noisy brass
For lamps and lotas ; thence, by temple walls
And gateways, to the river and the bridge
Under the city walls.

" These had they passed

When from the roadside moaned a mournful voice,
' Help, masters ! lift me to my feet ; oh ! help,
Or I shall die before I reach my house ! '
A stricken wretch it was, whose quivering frame,
Caught by some deadly plague, lay in the dubt
Writhing, with fiery purple blotches specked ;
The chill sweat beaded on his brow, his mouth
Was dragged awry with twitchings of sore pain,
The wild eyes swam with inward agony.
Gasping, he clutched the grass to rise, and rose
Half way, then sank, with quaking, feeble limbs
And scream of terror, crying, " Ah, the pain !
Good people, help ! ' whereon Siddartha ran,
Lifted the woful man with tender hands,
With sweet looks laid the sick head on his knee,
And while his soft touch comforted the wretch,
Asked, ' Brother, what is ill with thee ? what harm
Hath fallen ? wherefore canst thou not arise ?
Why is it, Channa, that he pants and moans,
And gasps to speak and sighs so pitiful ? '
Then spake the charioteer : ' Great prince ! this man
Is smitten with some pest ; his elements

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 479

Are all confounded ; in his veins the blood,

Which ran a wholesome river, leaps and boils

A fiery flood ; his heart, which kept good time,

Beats like an ill-played drum-skin, quick and slow ;

His sinews slacken like a bow-string slipped ;

The strength is gone from ham, and loin, and neck,

And all the grace and joy of manhood fled :

This is a sick man with the fit upon him.

See how he plucks and plucks to seize his grief,

And rolls his bloodshot orbs, and grinds his teeth,

And draws his breath as if 'twere choking smoke.

Lo ! now he would be dead, but shall not die

Until the plague hath had its work in him,

Killing the nerves which die before the life ;

Then, when his strings have cracked with agony

And all his bones are empty of the sense

To ache, the plague will quit and light elsewhere.

Oh ! sir, it is not good to hold him so !

The harm may pass, and strike thee, even thee.'

But spake the prince, still comforting the man,

' And are there others, are there many thus ?

Or might it be to me as now with him ? '

' Great Lord ! ' answered the charioteer, 'this comes

In many forms to all men ; griefs and wounds,

Sickness and tetters, palsies, leprosies,

Hot fevers, watery wastings, issues, blains,

Befall all flesh and enter everywhere.'

' Come such ills unobserved ? ' the prince inquired.

And Channa said, " Like the sly snake they come

That stings unseen ; like the striped murderer,

Who waits to spring from the Karunda-bush,

Hiding beside the jungle path ; or like

The lightning, striking these and sparing those,

As chance may send.' ' Then all men live in fear ? '

' So live they, prince ! ' ' And none can say, " I sleep

Happy and whole to-night, and so shall wake " ' ?

' None say it.' ' And the end of many aches,

Which come unseen, and will come when they come,

Is this, a broken body and sad mind,

And so old age ? ' ' Yea, if men last as long.'

' But if they cannot bear their agonies,

Or if they will not bear, and seek a term ;

Or if they bear, and be, as this man is.

Too weak except for groans, and so still live,

And, growing old, grow older, then what end ? '

* They die, prince.' ' Die ? ' ' Yea, at the last comes death,

In whatsoever way, whatever hour.

Some few grow old, most suffer and fall sick,

But all must die behold, where comes the dead ! '

480 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

"Then did Siddartha raise his eyes, and see

Fast pacing toward the river-brink a band

Of wailing people, foremost one who swung

An earthen bowl with lighted coals ; behind

The kinsmen shorn, with mourning marks, ungirt,

Crying aloud, ' O Rama, Rama, hear !

Call upon Rama, brothers '; next the bier,

Knit of four poles with bamboos interlaced,

Whereon lay, stark and stiff, feet foremost, lean,

Chapfallen, sightless, hollow-flanked, a-grin,

Sprinkled with red and yellow dust, the dead,

Whom at the four-went ways they turned head first,

And crying ' Rama, Rama ! ' carried on

To where a pile was reared beside the stream ;

Thereon they laid him, building fuel up

Good sleep hath one that slumbers on that bed !

He shall not wake for cold, albeit he lies

Naked to all the airs ; for soon they set

The red flame to the corners four, which crept,

And licked, and flickered, finding out his flesh

And feeding on it with swift, hissing tongues,

And crackle of parched skin, and snap of joint ;

Till the fat smoke thinned and the ashes sank

Scarlet and gray, with here and there a bone

White 'midst the gray the total of the man.

"Then spake the prince : ' Is this the end which comes
To all who live ? '

" ' This is the end that comes
' To all,' quoth Channa ; ' he upon the pyre
Whose remnants are so petty that the crows
Caw hungrily, then quit the fruitless feast
Ate, drank, laughed, loved, and lived, and liked life well.
Then came who knows ? some gust of jungle-wind,
A stumble on the path, a taint in the tank,
A snake's nip, half a span of angry steel,
A chill, a fishbone, or a falling tile,
And life was over and the man is dead :
No appetites, no pleasures, and no pains
Hath such ; the kiss upon his lips is naught, .
The fire-scorch naught ; he smelleth not his flesh
A-roast, nor yet the sandal and the spice
They burn ; the taste is emptied from his mouth,
The hearing of his ears is clogged, the sight
Is blinded in his eyes ; those whom he loved
Wail desolate, for even that must go, .
The body, which was lamp unto the life,
Or worms will have a horrid feast of it.
Here is the common destiny of flesh :
The high and low, the good and bad, must die,

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 481

And then, 'tis taught, begin anew and live
Somewhere, somehow who knows ? and so again
The pangs, the parting, and the lighted pile :
Such is man's round.'

" But lo ! Siddartha turned
Eyes gleaming with divine tears to the sky,
Eyes lit with heavenly pity to the earth ;
From sky to earth he looked, from earth to sky,
As if his spirit sought in lonely flight
Some far-off vision, linking this and that,
Lost, past, but searchable, but seen, but known.
Then cried he, while his lifted countenance
Glowed with the burning passion of a love
Unspeakable, the ardor of a hope
Boundless, insatiate : ' O suffering world,
O known and unknown of my common flesh,
Caught in this common net of death and woe,
And life which binds to both ! I see, I feel
The vastness of the agony of earth,
The vainness of its joys, the mockery
Of all its best, the anguish of its worst ;
Since pleasures end in pain, and youth in age,
And love in loss, and life in hateful death,
And death in unknown lives, which will but yoke
Men to their wheel again to whirl the round
Of false delights and woes that are not false.
Me too this lure hath cheated, so it seemed
Lovely to live, and life a sunlit stream
For ever flowing in a changeless peace ;
Whereas the foolish ripple of the flood
Dances so lightly down by bloom and lawn
Only to pour its crystal quicklier
Into the foul, salt sea. The veil is rent
Which blinded me ! I am as all these men '
Who cry upon their gods and are not heard
Or are not heeded yet there must be aid !
For them and me and all there must be help !
Perchance the gods have need of help themselves,
Being so feeble that when sad lips cry
They cannot save ! I would not let one cry
Whom I could save ! How can it be that Brahm
Would make a world and keep it miserable,
Since, if all-powerful, he leaves it so,
He is not good, and if not powerful,
He is not God ? Channa ! lead home again !
It is enough ! mine eyes have seen enough ! '

" Which when the king heard, at the gates he set
A triple guard, and bade no man should pass
VOL. XXXII. 31

482 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

By day or night, issuing or entering in,

Until the days were numbered of that dream."

The fourth book describes his parting from his wife, his
palace, and his station, that he might preach his new doctrines
clothed in humble robes. In the yellow robe of the rishi he goes
about, exciting the awe and homage of the simple folk. He falls
into a dispute with his brother hermits touching the advantage
of applying torture to their bodies, and departs from them.
Meeting a herd of sheep and goats, he exhibits again the infinite
tenderness of his heart. Seeing a limping lamb straggling be-
hind despite its mother's cries and anxiety, he takes it upon his
neck and follows the herd. He questions the herdsman, and the
latter tells him they are taking five-score sheep and five-score
goats, by the king's order, to sacrifice to the gods. Drawing
near to the river-side, he meets a woman kneeling at his feet
with clasped hands. She reminds him that it was she whom he
had told to get a tola, or black mustard-seed, from some neigh-
bor's house, to bring to life her babe, which had been poisoned
by the bite of a snake, only warning her not to take a seed from
any house where death had been. Of course she found no house
without a visit from the grim ender of this mortal state ; with
her cold infant clasped to her breast, she had gone from house to
house, and each one offered the seed gladly, but each had lost
some member of the household :

' ' O sister ! what is this you ask ? The dead
Are very many, and the living few.' "

So she comes back to ask him to direct her to such a house.

" ' My sister ! thou hast found/ the Master said,
' Searching for what none finds that bitter balm
I had to give thee. He thou lovedst slept
Dead on thy bosom yesterday ; to-day
Thou know'st the whole wide world weeps with thy woe :
The grief which all hearts share grows less for one.
Lo ! I would pour my blood, if it could stay
Thy tears and win the secret of that curse
Which makes sweet love our anguish, and which drives
O'er flowers and pastures to the sacrifice
As these dumb beasts are driven men their lords.
I seek that secret : bury thou thy child ! "

They then proceed to the temple, where Siddartha persuades
them to forego the sacrifice, his gentle heart bleeding at the

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 483

thought of putting to death any animal, no matter how mean
and low.

" For aye so piteous was the Master's heart
To all that breathe this breath of fleeting life,
Yoked in one fellowship of joys and pains,
That it is written in the holy books
How, in an ancient -age when Buddha wore
A Brahman's form, dwelling upon the rock
Named Munda, by the village of Dalidd
Drought withered all the land ; the young rice died
Ere it could hide a quail ; in forest glades
A fierce sun sucked the pools ; grasses and herbs
Sickened, and all the woodland creatures fled
Scattering for sustenance. At such a time,
Between the hot walls of a nullah, stretched
On naked stones, our Lord spied, as he passed,
A starving tigress. Hunger in her orbs
Glared with green flame ; her dry tongue lolled a span
Beyond the gasping jaws and shrivelled jowl ;
Her painted hide hung wrinkled on her ribs,
As when between the rafters sinks a thatch
Rotten with rains ; and at the poor lean dugs
Two cubs, whining with famine, tugged and sucked,
Mumbling those milkless teats which rendered naught,
While she, their gaunt dam, licked full motherly
The clamorous twins, yielding her flank to them
With moaning throat, and love stronger than want,
Softening the first of that wild cry wherewith
She laid her famished muzzle to the sand
And roared a savage thunder-peal of woe.
Seeing which bitter strait, and heeding naught
Save the immense compassion of a Buddh,
Our Lord bethought, ' There is no other way
To help this murderess of the woods but one.
By sunset these will die, having no meat ;
There is no living heart will pity her,
Bloody with ravin, lean for lack of blood.
Lo ! if I feed her, who shall lose but I,
And how can love lose doing of its kind
Even to the uttermost ? ' So saying, Buddh
Silently laid aside sandals and staff,
His sacred thread, turban, and cloth, and came
Forth from behind the milk-bush on the sand,
Saying, ' Ho ! mother, here is meat for thee ! '
Whereat the perishing beast yelped hoarse and shrill,
Sprang from her cubs, and, hurling to the earth
That willing victim, had her feast of him
With all the crooked daggers of her claws
Rending his flesh, and all her yellow fangs

484 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

Bathed in his blood : the great cat's burning breath
Mixed with the last sigh of such fearless love."

Having brought king and priests over to his views, he departs
from Rajagriha, seeking the wood of Gaya, wherein the truth, he
thinks, is to be found.

He spends some time in the forest, musing on the life of man,
almost lost in a long thought broken only by one external inci-
dent. At length his feet approached the fateful Bodhi tree,
under whose leafy foliage full enlightenment is to come. The
voices of inanimate nature hail him as he takes his station in the
coming-on of night. And what a fearful night it was ! The
prince of darkness, Mara, sends forth all his fiercest and most
powerful fiends to shake the mind of the Buddh and to subdue
his resolution. Mr. Arnold puts forth much graphic power to
illustrate this scene. The sin of self, " wan doubt," superstition,
Kama, king of passions, with his troup of false appearances, each
passes before the Buddh's eyes, but do not move his soul.

" Next under darkening skies
And noise of rising storm came fiercer sins,
The rearmost of the ten : Patigha hate
With serpents coiled about her waist, which suck
Poisonous milk from both her hanging dugs,
And with her curses mix their angry hiss.
Little wrought she upon that holy one
Who with his calm eyes dumbed her bitter lips
And made her black snakes writhe to hide their fangs.
Then followed Ruparaga lust of days
That sensual sin which out of greed for life
Forgets to live ; and next him lust of fame,
Nobler Aruparaga, she whose spell
Beguiles the wise, mother of daring deeds,
Battles, and toils. And haughty Mano came,
The fiend of pride ; and smooth self-righteousness,
Uddhachcha ; and with many a hideous band
Of vile and formless things, which crept and flapped
Toad-like and bat-like ignorance, the dam
Of fear and wrong, Avidya, hideous hag,
Whose footsteps left the midnight darker, while
The rooted mountains shook, the wild winds howled,
The broken clouds shed from their caverns streams
Of levin-lighted rain ; stars shot from heaven,
The solid earth shuddered as if one laid
Flame to her gaping wounds ; the torn black air
Was full of whistling wings, of screams and yells,
Of evil faces peering, of vast fronts
Terrible and majestic, lords of hell

THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 485

Who from a thousand limbos led their troops
To tempt the Master.

" But Buddh heeded not,
Sitting serene, with perfect virtue walled
As is a stronghold by its gates and ramps ;
Also the sacred tree the Bodhi-tree
Amid that tumult stirred not, but each leaf
Glistened as still as when on moonlit eves
No zephyr spills the glittering gems of dew;
For all this clamor raged outside the shade
Spread by those cloistered stems."

Failing, the hellish legions fled, and in the third watch of the
night Buddh attains Summa-Sumbuddh, or a knowledge of
transmigration of souls. In the middle watch he reaches Abhid-
juna, which is the knowledge of Brahme's days and nights, or, to
speak more correctly (for Buddhists believe in no god), of blind
Fate's.

' But when the fourth watch came the secret came
Of sorrow, which with evil mars the law,
As damp and dross hold back the goldsmith's fire.
Then was the Dukha-satya opened him
First of the ' noble truths '; how sorrow is
Shadow to life, moving where life doth move ;
Not to be laid aside until one lays
Living aside, with all its changing states,
Birth, growth, decay, love, hatred, pleasure, pain,
Being and doing. How that none strips off
These sad delights and pleasant griefs who lacks
Knowledge to know them snares ; but he who knows
Avidya delusion sets those snares,
Loves life no longer but ensues escape.
The eyes of such a one are wide, he sees
Delusion breeds Sankhara, tendency
Perverse : Tendency energy Vidnnan
Whereby comes Namarupa, local form
And name and 'bodiment, bringing the man
With senses naked to the sensible,
A helpless mirror of all shows which pass
Across his heart : and so Vedana grows
' Sense-life ' false in its gladness, fell in sadness,
But sad or glad, the mother of desire,
Trishna, that thirst which makes the living drink
Deeper and deeper of the false salt waves
Whereon they float, pleasures, ambitions, wealth,
Praise, fame, or domination, conquest, love ;
Rich meats and robes, and fair abodes, and pride
Of ancient lines, and lust of days, and strife

486 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

To live, and sins that flow from strife, some sweet,

Some bitter. Thus life's thirst quenches itself

With draughts which double thirst, but who is wise

Tears from his soul this Trishna, feeds his sense

No longer on false shows, files his firm mind

To seek not, strive not, wrong not ; bearing meek

All ills which flow from foregone wrongfulness,

And so constraining passions that they die

Famished ; till all the sum of ended life

The Karma all that total of a soul

Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,

The ' self ' it wove with woof of viewless time,

Crossed on the warp invisible of acts

The outcome of him on the universe,

Grows pure and sinless ; either never more

Needing to find a body and a place,

Or so informing what fresh frame it takes

In new existence that the new toils prove

Lighter and lighter not to be at all,

Thus ' finishing the path ' ; free from earth's cheats ;

Released from all the skandhas of the flesh ;

Broken from ties from Upadanas saved

From whirling on the wheel ; aroused and sane

As is a man wakened from hateful dreams.

Until greater than kings, than gods more glad !

The aching craze to live ends, and life glides

Lifeless to nameless quiet, nameless joy,

Blessed NIRVANA sinless, stirless rest

That change which never changes ! "

The sun rises on Siddartha's triumph Siddartha no longer,
but the Buddh of all the world.*

A holy peace and joy fall on all ; kings at war declare peace ;
the murderer buries his knife ; the thief gives back his plunder ;
hardest hearts and coldest heads grow gentle and kind on this
supreme day.

" So glad the world was though it wist not why
That over desolate wastes went swopning songs
Of mirth, the voice of bodiless prets and bhuts
Foreseeing Buddh ; and Devas in the air
Cried, ' It is finished, finished ! ' and the priests
Stood with the wondering people in the streets

* There is a confusing variety in the modes in which this name is spelled by European
writers. S. Hardy, in his Manual of Buddhism, gives more than fifty forms that have come
under his notice. , Some of the more common are : Bud, Bod, Buth, Budh, Boodh, Bhood,
Budo, Buddow, Boutta, Poota, Poth, Pot. The Chinese, owing to the meagreness of their ar-
ticulations, seem to have been unable to come nearer to the real sound than Fo, Foe, or Fohi ;
from the same cause they convert Brahma into Fan. Chambers' Encyclopedia.

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 487

Watching those golden splendors flood the sky,
And saying, ' There hath happed some mighty thing."
Also in ran and jungle grew that day
Friendship among the creatures ; spotted deer
Browsed fearless where the tigress fed her cubs,
And cheetahs lapped the pool beside the bucks ;
Under the eagle's rock the brown hares scoured
While his fierce beak but preened an idle wing ;
The snake sunned all his jewels in the beam
With deadly fangs in sheath ; the shrike let pass
The nestling finch ; the emerald halcyons
Sate dreaming while the fishes play beneath,
Nor hawked the merops, though the butterflies
Crimson and blue and amber flitted thick
Around his perch ; the spirit of our Lord
Lay potent upon man and bird and beast,
Even while he mused under that B6dhi-tree,
Glorified with the conquest gained for all
And lightened by a light greater than day's."*

So, fully enlightened, the Buddh goes forth to preach.

The other two books of Mr. Arnold's poem, with a slight ex-
ception, are taken up with the teaching of Buddha. The sermon,
which occupies the entire eighth book almost, is diffuse and weak
compared with the terse original. We shall diverge from our
previous course to give the literal translation of it :

" There are two extremes," said the Buddha, " which the man who has
devoted himself to the higher life ought not to follow the habitual prac-
tice, on the one hand, of those things whose attraction depends upon the
passions, and especially of sensuality (a low and pagan way of seeking
gratification, unworthy, unprofitable, and fit only for the worldly-minded) ;
and the habitual practice, on the other hand, of asceticism (or self-mortifi-
cation), which is not only painful, but as unworthy and unprofitable as the
other.

" But the Tathagata " that is, the Buddh " has discovered a Middle
Path, which avoids these two extremities, a path which opens the eyes and
bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom,
to full enlightenment in a word, to Nirvana. And this path is the Noble
Eightfold Path of " Right views, A harmless livelihood, High aims, Perse-
verance in well-doing, Kindly speech, Intellectual activity, Upright con-
duct, Earnest thought."

And the four Noble Truths follow :

" Birth," said the teacher, " is attended with pain ; and so are decay and
disease and death. Union with the unpleasant is painful, and separation

* This sounds strangely like a reminiscence of Shelley, although of course without much of
his fire and genius.

488 THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

from the pleasant ; and any craving that is unsatisfied is a condition of sor-
row. This is the First Truth, the truth about sorrow.

" The cause of sorrow is the thirst or craving which causes the renewal
of individual existence, is accompanied by evil, and is ever seeking satis-
faction now here, now there that is to say, the craving either for sensual
gratifications, or for continued existence, or for the cessation of existence.
This is the Noble Truth concerning the origin of sorrow.

" Deliverance from sorrow is the complete destruction, the laying aside,
the getting rid of, the being free from, the harboring no longer of, this pas-
sionate craving. This is the Noble Truth concerning the destruction of
sorrow.

" The Path which leads to the destruction of sorrow is this Noble Eight-
fold Path alone that is to say, right views, high aims, kindly speech, up-
right conduct, a harmless livelihood, perseverance in well-doing, intellec-
tual activity, and earnest thought. This is the Noble Truth of the Path that
leads to the destruction of sorrow."

There are ten difficulties to be overcome, called the Ten Fet-
ters or Hindrances viz., delusion of self, doubt, dependence on
the efficacy of rites and ceremonies, bodily passions, ill-will, de-
sire for a future life in a material body and then in an immate-
rial, pride, self-righteousness, and ignorance. After all these diffi-
culties are overcome, and the Eightfold Path traversed, the indi-
vidual reaches Nirvana, self is destroyed, and manifestation of life
in one form sinks back to the great whole.

The reader will perceive that so far there is not a great change
from Brahmanism. Buddh denied the multitude of gods before
prevalent, but this was not much, as they were held to be mani-
festations of a great central Being from whom all emanated ; he
also did away with caste, which after all was only a custom of
society attached to religion as a rite ; yet the moral system, as we
see, was the same. Where, then, was the difference ? It lay at
the very root of all religion. The God of the Hindoos was in-
deed but a shadowy being in their pantheistic creed ; but Bud-
dhism not only denied God, but utterly ignored the possibility of
his existence. They were thus, and are to this day, not merely
renegades from theism, but atheists in the true sense of the word.

In addition to this, and as a natural corollary of it, the Bud-
dhists denied the existence of that part of us which we know by
the name of soul. It is true they held to the belief that there
was something within us which did not die when the body went
to dust, but, according to the deeds done in the body, was trans-
ferred to another sphere of life, from that of a low animal up to
that of a perfect, holy man ; and having reached this stage, the I
sinks into Nirvana. Here comes the distinction between the Vedic

1 88 1.] THE LIGHT OF ASIA. 489

creed and Buddhism, for up to this point they concur identically
in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls ; but in the nature
of individuality, the Buddhists, not believing in the Brahme into
which the soul was absorbed, held that it sank to nothing, being
diffused, as it were, throughout all existence, in the same manner
as we follow them to a certain extent when we say a good man's
deeds live after him ; so easy is it to slip from pantheism into
atheism. Buddha, from the circumstance of his image being in
their temples, is declared by some to be their god. They honor
him, or even worship, if you will have it so we are no sticklers
for mere words but only as the highest and best of men ; a
state his most degraded follower can reach through the medium
of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Here are the closing lines of Mr. Arnold's poem :

" Here endeth what I wrote,
Who love the Master for his love of us.
A little knowing, little have I told
Touching the Teacher and the ways of peace.
Forty-five rains thereafter showed he those
In many lands and many tongues, and gave
Our Asia light, that still is beautiful,
Conquering the world with spirit of strong grace :

All which is written in the holy books,

And where he passed, and what proud emperors

Carved his sweet words upon the rocks and caves ;

And how, in fulness of the times, it fell

The Buddha died, the great Tathagato,

Even as a man 'mong men, fulfilling all ;

And how a thousand thousand crores since then

Have trod the path which leads whither he went

Unto Nirvdna, where the silence lives.

" Ah / Blessed Lord! O high deliverer !
Forgive this feeble script, which doth thee wrong,
Measuring with little wit thy lofty love.
Ah ! lover ! brother ! guide ! lamp of the law !
I take my refuge in thy name and thee I
I take my refitge in thy law of good!
I take my refuge in thy order /"

The queer Oriental scenes of life, the strange creeds, the hair-
splitting theosophy fade away as in a dream, and we wake, glad
to find ourselves free from its nightmare, in the broad, strong,
hearty stream of Western thought.

Dwarf the picture as to time and numbers, and you will see
a startling resemblance between India twenty-four hundred

4QO THE LIGHT OF ASIA. [Jan.,

years ago and Europe to-day or we should say a certain sec-
tion of the highest classes of Europe. Precisely the same order
of thought has followed. Pantheism rampant eighty years ago,
and fallen to atheism now ! It would not be so dangerous if
confined to the few who now profess positivism ; but that few are
gifted, stirring, talented writers and propagators, who are grad-
ually taking possession of the book and periodical literature of the
day, and tinging the whole flow of modern thought. Rational-
ism does not go as far as positivism, it is true, for the latter is, as
its name indicates, a positive creed that utterly ignores God or a
soul, and proceeds on that shadowy basis to erect a religion and
a moral system ; while the former is divided into an infinite num-
ber of schools. Still rationalism may lead the believer into
atheism. And it is under this specious garb that atheism works
first undermining, and then assaulting.

We do not know but that the atheist rather admires the dead
body of the Chinese Empire, whose strength and heart of pro-
gress has been sucked from it by the vampire of atheism. But
there the decomposing corpse lies with a civilization, once pol-
ished and bustling, now rotten and stagnant ; and we are sure no
reasonable man, aside from the question of faith, would join hands
in a movement to bring this about. The present apostles of
atheism, from George Eliot to Frederick Harrison, may be as
lofty in intellect, pure in morals, and gentle in heart as Siddartha
was himself ; but underneath the glitter of their brilliant theories
the poison which is, sooner or later, the death of men and nations
lies.

JESUS APPEARING TO MARY MAGDALEN AS A

GARDENER.

METHINKS that He, whose tender care
Thee, sin-crushed flower of fragrance rare,
Transplanted from the venal mart
To deck the Garden of His Heart,
Should have appeared in other guise
To hide from Love's discerning eyes.

1 88 1.] THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. 491

THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY.*

MR. JUSTIN MCCARTHY is a daring man, as all discoverers
need to be. He has made the very remarkable discovery that
the history of our own days is of sufficient interest and import-
ance to call for the attention of earnest and intelligent men. The
reign of Victoria is to him as important as the reign of Charle-
magne, or Czesar, or Alexander the Great. He approaches a par-
liamentary blue-book of yesterday with as keen and eager a spirit
of investigation as leads Dr. Schliemann to the ruins of Troy or
De Rossi to the ashes of Pompeii or the labyrinth of the Cata-
combs. He is audacious enough to find Lord Palmerston or
Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, Louis Napoleon, or President
Lincoln any one, in fact, of the men who make modern history
as worthy studies as Ajax or Achilles, Widow Dido or Pius
^Eneas. London, New York, Paris are actually as great cities
to him as was ever Troy or Athens. It may be irreverent
and unpoetic to let the dead past bury a good deal of its dead.
Mr. McCarthy's raid into the present is very successful neverthe-
less, and the result eminently practical and useful.

The title of the work is to a certain extent misleading. It is
not so much a history of our own times, which would embrace a
very wide range of subject, as a history of the English people in
our own times ; and as such it will be considered in this article.
The author's " times " are those of Queen Victoria, his subject
the British Empire, and nothing foreign is allowed to enter in
save as it trenches upon British history. The first two volumes
began with the accession of Queen Victoria, and ended with the
temporary settlement of the Eastern question after the close of
the Russian war. The two volumes just published bring the his-
tory down to our own doors, to the elections of 1880 that re-
turned Mr. Gladstone to power. The new volumes cover events
of deeper import and more startling surprise than the old. The
world has moved with giant strides, and history has been made
and unmade with bewildering rapidity, since the congress sat at
Paris in 1857 to settle the question of the East. So rapid, indeed,
have been the changes and so troubled the current of public

* A History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the Berlin Congress.
By Justin McCarthy. Vols. iii. and iv.

492 THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. [Jan.,

events that it required no small amount of skill merely to collate
and group those events together, let alone to construct them into
a pleasing narrative and pass fair judgment upon them.

In his closing chapter, which is devoted to the English litera-
ture of the day, Mr. McCarthy says of Charles Reade, the novel-
ist, that " he can make a blue-book live and yet be a blue-book
still." What Mr. Reade has done for fiction Mr. McCarthy has
done for fact. The author has the experienced journalist's eye
for the really important events and personages of the time,
though, as is perhaps natural in one who writes of events in
which he moved and of persons whom he knew, he at times at-
taches undue weight to minor personages and matters. He has
a happy manner of seizing on the heart of a question and strongly
setting it forth in a few clear, bold touches. He groups matters
with effective skill and links them naturally into the chain of pro-
gress and the march of events. With so clever and fascinating a
writer one cannot help feeling regret that he restricted himself to
what, wide though it may be, is still to the outer world a neces-
sarily narrow field. Had he substituted Europe for England, and
the strong and stirring arena of European politics for the British
House of Parliament, his work would have had much higher
value and deeper interest for all readers, even for Englishmen
themselves. But Mr. McCarthy stays sturdily at home. Every-
thing he touches, even on foreign questions of international im-
port, takes on a local color, a cool English gray, so to speak.
The result is occasionally a little dull and tedious. Matters that
may be of profound interest to Englishmen, or may have been at
the time of their occurrence, are not necessarily so to other peo-
ple. One wearies here and there of the minutiae of English poli-
tics into which the author is driven to enter. For instance, the
world to-day cares very little about the Lorcha " Arrow " affair, to
a minute elucidation of which Mr. McCarthy devotes his opening
chapter, and even nine out of ten of his English readers will have
to consult their encyclopaedias to find out what the Lorcha " Ar-
row " means. So, too, with the " Ionian Islands," the " French
Treaty and Paper Duties," and other matters of quite minor gene-
ral importance, but which Mr. McCarthy dwells on with as
much force and care as he expends on such questions as reform
in parliamentary representation, education, or the struggle be-
tween labor and capital matters of universal interest. The same
conscientious spirit leads him to dwell at unnecessary length on
the personal character and characteristics of secondary personages,
who are forgotten save by those who were associated with them

1 88 1.] THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. 493

at the time Sir George C. Lewis, for instance. Mr. McCarthy
is writing for a new generation, and a new generation sweeps
carelessly by persons who might have been great, but were not.
The fact is, a considerable portion of the work reads as though it
were written from the Reporters' Gallery or the lobby of the
House of Commons. The atmosphere is too confined. One
longs to get out and breathe the fresh air of the broad world.
Men do not like to be shut up in a theatre beyond two or three
hours, though the very best actors are on the stage.

With matters of this kind American readers have no special
concern. Indeed, what will here be especially dwelt upon is
the English people, as it shows itself at home and abroad,
whose life to those who look for it and know something of it
is revealed with peculiar vividness and fidelity in Mr. Mc-
Carthy's lucid pages. He seems especially fitted for this task.
His position and profession brought him for many years into
intimate acquaintance with the leaders of the time in England.
He has seen very much, perhaps most, of what he records with
his own eyes. He has lived among the English people, and
acquired the English habit of thought and expression, yet has
kept the keen eyes of an outer observer that no mere English
prejudice could blur. He is thoroughly at home among the
people whom he depicts. It is plain that he is an honest ad-
mirer of them and a loyal subject of the British crown. Yet few
men have sp well caught as he the capacity of the average Eng-
lishman, from peer to peasant, for blundering into the wrong
side of a great question. At the same time he is fully alive to
the higher and deeper qualities of a nation that has done, and is
yet destined to do, much in the world. This peculiar English
habit he shows up incidentally with admirable effect. For in-
stance, the commercial treaty with France in 1860 seems to have
been unquestionably beneficial to both countries. It was in the
interest, too, of free trade, of which England was the great cham-
pion. It introduced light French wines at a cheap rate into Eng-
land, with a very general beneficial result in the way of tempe-
rance. It was negotiated by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Gladstone,
Lord Palmerston being at the head of the government. And
how was this excellent measure first received?

" Many prophetic voices," says Mr. McCarthy. " declared in the House
of Commons that with the greater use of French wines would come the
rapid adoption of what were called French morals; that the maids and
matrons of England would be led by the treaty to the drinking of claret, and
from the drinking of claret to the ways of the French novelist's odious

494 THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY, [Jan.,

heroine, Mme. Bovary. Appalling pictures were drawn of the orgies to go
on in the shops of confectioners and pastry-cooks who had a license to sell
the light wines. The virtue of Englishwomen, it was insisted, would never
be able to stand this new and terrible mechanism of destruction. She who
was far above the temptations of the public-house would be drawn easily
into the more genteel allurements of the wine-selling confectioner's shop ;
and in every such shop would be the depraved conventional foreigner, the
wretch with a moustache and without morals, lying in wait to accomplish
at last his long-boasted conquest of the blonde misses of England."

For a great conquering nation like England the people have
always shown themselves strangely ignorant of the ways and
feelings of others. It was this contemptuous faculty of disregard
that brought about the Sepoy revolt in India. It was this that
caused the disagreement between England and the United States
a disagreement that more than once trembled on the verge of
war. It is to a great extent at the bottom of England's everlast-
ing Irish difficulty. It is at the bottom of all her troubles with
foreign peoples ; and Mr. McCarthy does England a service by
giving prominence in his volumes to this marked and unfortunate
characteristic of the British race. That his honesty has done him
no harm is shown by the cordial welcome extended to his work
by the English press. This generous appreciation has acted fa-
vorably on the author ; for, with the exceptions mentioned, his new
volumes are broader in sweep and firmer in outline, while they
have all the old charm of style, fairness of dealing with men
about whom public opinion differs as much as about the origin of
species or the path to heaven, and sound judgment on questions
of public moment. His treatment of the Indian struggle is admi-
rable both in matter and form ; and while he labors hard, and not
without a measure of success, to make a reasonable show for Eng-
land's attitude towards this country during the civil war, his con-
clusions are just and sound. Here again the perversity of the
whole thing was the English tendency to follow a hue and cry.
Of course there was much more than a mere hue and cry in the
favor extended by England to the South. There was, or was
thought to be, money in it, and money is apt to color even British
enthusiasm. Mr. McCarthy is anxious to prove that there was
really no opposition to the North in England at all, or at least
next to none. He may be right, but the facts look rather ill for
the theory. He devotes a distinct and very interesting chapter
to the civil war in America, and another to the cruise of the Ala-
bama. He maintains that Lord John Russell's rather hasty pro-
clamation of neutrality "was made with no unfriendly motive.
It was made at the instance of some of the most faithful friends

1 88 1.] THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. 495

the Northern cause had on this side of the Atlantic, conspicuous
among whom in recommending it was Mr. W. E. Forster."

" International law on the subject," he says, " is quite clear that is to
say, it was clearly on the side of the action of the British government, on
the broad ground that ' a state cannot blockade its own ports. It can only
blockade the ports of an enemy.' . . . Therefore, whether the recognition
of the Southern Confederates as belligerents was wise or unwise, timely or
premature, it was not done in any spirit of unfriendliness to the North, or
at the spiriting of any Southern partisans."

Indeed, Secretary Seward had already in a despatch described
the " revolution " as " civil war," and it is hard not to accept Mr.
McCarthy's reasoning on the subject.

He is not so successful, however, in explaining away the later
attitude of the British government and of a very large portion
of the English people. He says, and doubtless with truth, that
it was no feeling of sympathy with slavery that influenced
"so many Englishmen in their support of the South." What
was it then ? It looks remarkably like an English rush of blind
partisanship to which England is sometimes given, as it at first
supported Prince Bismarck's onslaught on the Catholic Church,
which its public voice in the press now as universally condemns.
Mr. McCarthy insists that " the dis4ike of many Englishmen
to the slave system converted them first into opponents of the
North, and next into partisans of the South. An impression
got abroad that the Northern statesmen were not sincere in their
reprobation of slavery, and that they only used the arguments and
feeling against it as a means of endeavoring to crush the South."
" Not a few Englishmen condemned, wholly and out of hand, the
whole principle of coercion in political affairs. They declared
that the North had no right to put down secession ; that the
South had a right to secede." He is simply giving the state of
public opinion at the time, and the kind of arguments that convinc-
ed Englishmen ; and here follows one of his keen thrusts by way of
comment : " Yet the same men had upheld the heaven-appointed
right of England to put down the rebellion in India, and would
have drenched, if need were, Ireland in blood rather than allow
her to withdraw from a partnership into which, after all, unlike
the Southern States, she had never voluntarily entered."

Mr. McCarthy touches the heart of the matter, perhaps, when
he describes how, as affairs progressed and the war was actually
afoot, " there was a kind of impatient feeling" in England, "as
if we and the world in general had no right to be troubled

496 THE ENGLISH OF TO-DA Y. [Jan.,

with these American quarrels, as if it was unfair to us that our
cotton trade should be interrupted and we ourselves put to incon-
venience for a dispute about secession." This fully developed
the growth of English feeling against the North a feeling that
greeted the news of the first Southern victory " with exultation.'*
At once it was concluded that there was an end of the Republic
of the United States. The " Yankees " were derided as cowards
and mere tradesmen by the " nation of shop-keepers." " It had
been well settled," says Mr. McCarthy, " that the Yankees were
hypocrites and low fellows before ; but now it came out that they
were mere runaways and cowards"; and again comes one of the
author's customary thrusts that the English would do well to take
to heart :

" The English people, for a brave nation, are surprisingly given to accus-
ing their neighbors of cowardice. They have a perfect mania for discovering
cowardice all over the world. Napoleon was a coward to a past genera-
tion ; the French were for a longtime cowards ; the Italians were cowards ;
at the time of the Schleswig-Holstein war the Germans were cowards ; the
Russians still are cowards. In 1861 the Yankees were the typical cowards of
the earth."

It is all very odd but not uninstructive to look at now, now
that the struggle has gone into history and a nobler and friend-
lier feeling, a better mutual understanding, have sprung up be-
tween the two peoples and displaced the old bitterness. Still,
there was the fact that " the Southern scheme found support only
in England and France " in France owing to the direct interposi-
tion of Louis Napoleon. " In all other European countries the
sympathy of people and government alike went with the North.
The Russian emperor and Count Cavour favored the North in
a marked and emphatic manner. Mr. Disraeli did the same, as
did the other leaders of the Tory party. " The Pope, Pius IX.,
and Cardinal Antonelli repeatedly expressed their hopes for the
success of the Northern cause," says Mr. McCarthy. " In France
the French people in general were on the side of the North."
But the emperor had his airy schemes about regenerating the
Latin race on the soil of the New World. The result was the
tremendous Mexican failure and blunder ; and the sequel to that
was Sedan.

It is unnecessary to go any farther into the question, interest-
ing though it must be to American readers. The author pur-
sues it honestly, and exposes with unsparing hand the utter
fatuity and blindness of the Liberal statesmen of England and of

1 88 1.] THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. 497

the majority of Englishmen in this matter. To the last they
would not accept the thought of Southern defeat. The truth is,
they knew neither the North nor the South, and were not at pains
to inform themselves. But what is to be expected of a nation
that, as a nation, knows next to nothing even of its own affairs out-
side the kingdom of Great Britain ? Had English statesmen only
half attended to their business there would have been no revolt
in India. But even to-day, with their bitter experience, what
does the nation that rules and governs India know of one of the
greatest and richest of its possessions ? What do ninety-nine of
a hundred Englishmen know of the vast Indian Empire, the peo-
ples that compose it, the questions that trouble them, the divi-
sions among them, the difficulties that beset them ? To the
average Englishman India is a country that produces diamonds,
that is an outlet for a certain amount of British trade, an exercise-
ground for British armies, and an excellent place for younger
sons of noble families and aspiring youngsters who wish to make
their mark and ruin their livers. Not more than one in every
hundred Englishmen, if so large a percentage, could, if asked,
give an idea of the area of India, of its chief rivers, natural fea-
tures, cities, productions, far less of the various principalities and
governments that compose it, not to mention the habits, customs,
and religious -belief of the peoples of India. The first chapter
that Mr. McCarthy devotes to India opens with the statement
that "on the 23d of June, 1857, the hundredth anniversary of the
battle of Plassey was celebrated in London." How many even of
Mr. McCarthy's readers to-day could at the first blush tell him
who fought at the battle of Plassey, where it was fought, what it
was fought for, and what it decided? And yet 1857 is not so
very far removed from 1880. At least it is fair to ask how many
could have answered these questions in .1857. It is doubtful
whether one-half of the British Parliament could. " Yet," as he
says, " at the hour when the Plassey celebration was going on the
great Indian mutiny was already six weeks old, had already as-
sumed full and distinctive proportions, was already known in
India to be a convulsion destined to shake to its foundations the
whole fabric of British rule in Hindostan. ... A few evenings
after the celebration there was some cursory and casual discus-
sion in Parliament about the doubtful news that had begun to ar-
rive from India, but as yet no Englishman at home took serious
thought of the matter." The English were in India ; that was
enough.

Mr. McCarthy's account of this terrible struggle is a contri-

VOL. XXXII. 32

498 THE ENGLISH OF To- DAY. [Jan.,

bution to English literature and English public thought. It is
beautifully told, and eminently calm and lucid. The story of the
Indian revolt is too well known to call for special mention here.
One or two points are brought out with marked emphasis. One
is the wretched manner in which the country was governed pre-
vious to the revolt. It always takes something terrible to shake
Englishmen into the consciousness that there is something wrong
going on somewhere, and that the wrong is either their doing or
of their provoking. Another point is concerning the massacres
by the natives, such as that at Cawnpore, which in Mr. McCar-
thy's narrative rivals Macaulay's account of the sufferings of the
prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta. It curdles the blood
and chills the heart, and it is hardly to be wondered at that in
avenging such crimes civilized men forgot their civilization. Yet
the story of the awful outrages on women which were told at
the time and are still current in the English mind, at least in the
manner in which they are generally accepted, were not true.

" During the Indian mutiny the blood of innocent women and children
was cruelly and lavishly spilled, on one memorable occasion (Cawnpore)
with a bloodthirstiness that might have belonged to the most savage times
of mediaeval warfare. But there were no outrages, in the common accepta-
tion, upon women. No Englishwomen were stripped, or dishonored, or
purposely mutilated. As to this fact all historians of the mutiny are
agreed."

On the other hand, the revenge taken was most bloody and
barbarous so much so that Mr. Disraeli lifted up his voice in
protest against making Nana Sahib the model for the conduct of
a British officer, and declared that " if such a temper were en-
couraged we (the English people) ought to take down from our
altars the images of Christ and raise the statue of Moloch there."
And Mr. McCarthy adds :

"One cannot read the history of this Indian mutiny without coming to
the conclusion that in the minds of many Englishmen a temporary pros-
tration of the moral sense took place, under the influence of which they
came to regard the measure of the enemy's guilt as the standard for their
right of retaliation, and to hold that if he had no conscience they were
thereby released from the necessity of having any."

It would be a matter of interest and importance for a states-
man like Mr. Gladstone or Lord Beaconsfield to state explicitly
what he considers ought to be the conduct of a great power,
claiming to be civilized and Christian, towards millions of subject
people alien to it in race, religion, customs, habits of mind in a
word, alien in everything that separates men. They need not

1 88 1.] THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. 499

travel to India for an experiment. They have a case on trial at
their doors. There is Ireland, a subject country for seven centu-
ries ; and here are the present leaders of the Irish people in the
British Parliament about to be arraigned. And this is the result
of seven centuries of English rule in an island not " of three days'
journey," nor of three hours. Does the same vice, the same
ignorance and contempt for the Irish people and their ways and
wants, prevail in the English mind as prevailed in India ? Is it
this that renders what is really a loyal, a religious, and naturally
conservative people eternally restive and hostile to the English
government? If the Irish people were happy and contented they
would surely not waver for ever on the verge of rebellion ; they
would at least not be natural foes of England. There is no force
more conservative than the sense of having something to lose.
There is no force more destructive of law and order than a hope-
less outlook in life, and a feeling that the world is not worth liv-
ing in ; that power is all on one side, accompanied by neither jus-
tice nor mercy. It is this that drives honest men into revolt.

Mr. McCarthy takes up the Irish question, as he takes up all
questions, boldly. He is an Irish member, recognized as among
the Irish " moderates " of the British Parliament. He is a man
experienced in public life and affairs, and his calmly-expressed
opinions have all the weight that superior intelligence, exceptional
good sense, and downright earnestness can give them. His account
of " The Fenian Movement," the " Irish Church," and his chapter
on " Irish Ideas " are excellent in tone and pregnant with sugges-
tive matter. It is doubtful whether Irish difficulties were ever
before discussed before an English audience in a manner so
cogent, succinct, and so dispassionately. In his cool hands the
Fenian movement assumes a new and more heroic aspect than
it generally presents, and which justifies the high importance
that Mr. Gladstone avowedly attached to it. There was some-
thing real, something very deep and profound at the bottom of it.
There was great wrong and great provocation ; and not all the
men engaged in the wild enterprise were ignoble or false. Bad
and mercenary men it had, especially among those who figured
as its chiefs; but the rank and file were true and self-sacrificing
to all the lengths that self-sacrifice can go. The movement
proved a fiasco ; the honest men suffered, the dishonest escaped,
as they always do.

"There was, however, much feeling," says Mr. McCarthy, "in England
as well as in Ireland for some of the Fenian leaders who now began to be
put upon their trials. They bore themselves with manliness and dignity ;

500 THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. [Jan.,

some of them had been brave soldiers in the American civil war and were
entitled to wear honorable marks of distinction. Many had given up a suc-
cessful career or a prosperous calling in the United States to take part in
what they were led to believe would be the great national uprising of the
Irish people. They spoke up with courage in the dock, and declared their
perfect readiness to die for what they held to be a sacred cause. They in-
dulged in no bravado and uttered no word of repining. All manhood
should have deserted the English heart if the English people did not ac-
knowledge some admiration for such men. Many did acknowledge such
admiration freely and generously. The newspaper in London which most
of all addresses itself to the gratification of the popular passion of the hour
frankly declared that the Fenian leaders were entitled to the respect of
Englishmen, because they had given such earnest of their sincerity and
such proof that they knew how to die."

John Stuart Mill was one of these Englishmen ; John Bright
was another ; Swinburne, the poet, was a third. Mr. McCarthy
enumerates a few of the illustrious men, not Irishmen, who
have been bold enough to find fault with English government of
Ireland. Lord Chesterfield was one of them. Fox was in favor
of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas. Byron was an
enthusiast in the cause of Ireland. Sydney Smith said of the
Irish Church establishment : " There is no abuse like it in all
Europe, in all Asia, in all the discovered parts of Africa, and in
all we have heard of Timbuctoo." Cavour wrote that the same
church " remains to the Catholics a representative of the cause of
their miseries, a sign of defeat and oppression. It exasperates
their sufferings and makes their humiliation more keenly felt."

Mr. Gladstone felt that the hour had come. He rose up to
destroy this monstrous abuse of centuries. Those who remem-
ber the fierce debates of that stormy time in English politics will
call to mind the stubborn tenacity with which so large a portion
of the English people and so many leaders of English thought
clung to a rooted wrong as though it were a precious heirloom
in the preservation of which the honor of England lay. Spolia-
tion, confiscation, revolution, sacrilege, were the cries that beat
the air. Nevertheless the men who cried the loudest and used
the biggest words kept a keen eye to the main chance. When
at last they realized that a church which had never had much
Christian vitality, but offered excellent pickings for professional
parsons and bishops, was to be levelled to the dust, there was a
most unchristianlike hurrying and skurrying to and fro to sweep
in whatever of material worth could be saved from the remains.
It was the Irish Church all over. Mr. McCarthy gives an amus-
ing account of the sudden zeal that rose up in the church to mul-

1 88 1.] THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. 501

tiply curates where there were no curacies, and to increase sala-
ries with liberal hand, before the lease of life had quite run out,
so as to get a grab at the disendowment fund.

And so the evil life of the Irish Church went out ; the loud
cries and lamentations were soon silent ; and nothing more was
or is ever likely to be heard of it. But this was nothing. Great
wrong as it was, a badge of servitude to the people of Ireland, it
was a light burden compared to the pressing weight that crushed
the people down. There remained the everlasting struggle for
the soil, that even at present writing sets Ireland aflame and is a
cause of grave anxiety to England.

Mr. Gladstone had boldly attacked the church, and it fell.
He now proceeded to lay his hand on something far more sacred
in English eyes : the land. Ireland had been waiting through
centuries for an English statesman to come forward and say that
there was really something wrong in the relations between land-
lord and tenant, and that the wrong ought to be righted. " Ire-
land is essentially an agricultural country," says Mr. McCarthy.
Not at all ; it has been made so, and no man better than Mr.
Froude has shown by what wicked legislation on the part of
the English government and what cruel selfishness on the part
of English manufacturers and traders. However, there it stands
to-day, crippled of the industries and manufactures it ought to
possess, an agricultural tract, with the great mass of the people
looking to the soil for support. " The majority of the Irish popu-
lation," says Mr. McCarthy, " live on the land and by the land.
The condition of the Irish peasantry may be painted effectively
in a single touch when it is said that they were tenants-at-will.
That fact would of itself be almost enough to account for the
poverty and misery of the agricultural classes in Ireland." The
other conditions tending to the same end are known : the land-
lords are comparatively few ; many of them are habitual absen-
tees " who would as soon have thought of living in Ashantee as
in Munster or Connaught." The people had to rent the land,
for it was their only source of livelihood. They were absolutely
at the mercy of the landlords. " The demand for land was so
great, the need of land was so vital, that men would offer any
price for it." Yet "if they improved the patch of soil they
worked on their rent was almost certain to be raised, or they
were turned out of the land without receiving a farthing of com-
pensation for their improvements." What hope was there for
men living, or rather dying, from hand to mouth in this way ?
What spur to improvement or industry ? All the tenant's im-

502 THE ENGLISH OF TO-DAY. [Jan.,

provements would go to the benefit of the landlord or the new-
comer who bid over his head, " He was, therefore, content to
scratch the soil without really cultivating it." Such was the sum
of seven centuries of English rule in Ireland. Is it not natural,
under such conditions, that the Irish landlord, as this calm writer
puts it, " began to be looked upon at last as the tenant's natural
enemy " ?

To the average English mind it was equivalent to a crime for
legislation to dare step in between the sacred rights of the land-
lord and the wrongs of the tenant. What is land, after all, but a
form of property ? " Yet English statesmen for generations com-
placently asserted the impossibility of any legislative interference
with the right of the landlord, as if legislation had not again and
again interfered with the right of the factory-owner, the owner of
mines, the possessor of railway shares, the shop-keeper." What
dogma lays it down that legislation must cease at the land ? Mr.
Gladstone's land bill of 1870 was rather theoretically than practi-
cally effective. In reality it was little more than the thin end of
the wedge destined to rive asunder the whole land system of Ire-
land. It struck at the vicious principle, leaving natural develop-
ments to follow. " What it did was to recognize the fact that the
whole system of land tenure in Ireland, so far as it was the crea-
ture of law, was based upon a wrong principle. Mr. Gladstone's
measure overthrew once for all the doctrine of the landlord's ab-
solute and unlimited right."

From what has been said the reader may gain some idea of
what the Irish peasantry groaned under, and what, to a great
extent, they groan under still. The conditions of life to them are
not fair and adequate, and are rendered so by the system under
which they live. The Irish land struggle is one of universal in-
terest, and it can only eventually end in one way : not in the
spoliation of the landlord, but in securing to the people who
live on and by the soil all the opportunities that it fairly
affords of yielding a livelihood in return for their toil.

A few salient points of the history have here been taken up as
illustrative of the English people of to-day, of the mistakes and
shortcomings that accompany their great force of character and
undeniable power in a manner that too often vitiates that power
and turns what ought to prove a blessing into a curse. And so
it must continue to be until Englishmen recognize the fact that
not all the world can or will be ruled according to English ideas.
Certainly the England of to-day is broader and more liberal in
spirit than the England of twenty years back. But it has still

1 88 1.] THE ENGLISH OF ^TO-DAY. 503

much to learn in the art of governing, and it is always too ready
to fall back into the old ruts. Mr. McCarthy is excellent in his
dealing with the popular movements of England. His vivid
sketches of the leaders of political life and thought are very de-
lightful. But best of all is he in bringing out into strong relief
the English people, with all their faults, and follies, and virtues,
painted as Cromwell wished to be painted, without loss of a pim-
ple or softening of a rugged line. Probably no man has done
this so thoroughly. Perhaps Mr. McCarthy did it unconsciously ;
but he has certainly caught the face and the character of the
genus Englishman. If the English people have only the grace to
recognize their portrait the author may congratulate himself on
having achieved what in itself is no mean success. One of the
best aids to make a man do right is to see himself as others see
him.

'HE MODERN MATERIALIST MOVEMENT IN GER-
MANY.

IT is nourished by hypotheses of dilettanti, which an unlearned
id credulous public believes, as a little while before it believed
in moving, writing and talking tables and a special power resid-
ing in decayed wood. J. VON LIEBIG.

504 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN EAVESDROPPER.

THE sixth day of his illness was sinking into a soft-colored
twilight when John McDonell could be said to have recovered
in some degree the use of his limbs, though not of his tongue, to
have been roused from the deadly nightmare which had so long
held him fast, and to have come forth almost a second Lazarus
from his living tomb. The danger was past ; he was to live, and
the unutterable sweetness of life, the delicious content and secu-
rity of that state so often misunderstood, so wofully loved or
hated, so miserably treated by its possessors, filled him with a
vague thankfulness to somebody or something for he scarcely
dared think of God that the boon was still his and that he had
delayed for a little the day of reckoning.

On that memorable evening when, sitting in the library, the
hand of God had stricken him, and he lay stunned, dazed, help-
less, ignorant of what had befallen him ; when from the hurrying
steps, the frightened faces, and smothered expressions of alarm
and grief from those around him he learned that he was become
mortally ill, that his life hung in the balance, an agony had over-
shadowed him as terrible as the peace and security of the pres-
ent moment were grateful. To die so helplessly and miserably,
without a single movement of limb or feature, without a voice
to call for assistance and sympathy, more than a child, less than a
brute, his dying pain expressionless, his despair unconsoled, was
a fate whose justice he acknowledged, but whose fearful intensity
of suffering could even now set him to trembling with apprehen-
sion, and was to bring the glistening drops to his brow lor many
a day to come. To die with his manifold sins unconfessed, to go
down to the grave laden with the possessions of others, to appear
before God as a traitor who had denied him and sold him like
Judas for gold, as a bad father responsible for the soul of his
daughter, as a bad husband who might have rescued his wife
from error, yet allowed her to go blindly to death, were cir^
cumstances that took a breathing personality for him, and stood
leering and mocking, demon-formed, threatening their separate
vengeances, around his bed. He would have cried out the name

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 505

of God to banish them, but there was no voice to come at his bid-
ding. He would have hurled at them the sign of the cross, but
his hands mocked his will and lay motionless. Bound and gag-
ged with invisible cords, ready, like the guest who had not on his
wedding-garment, to be thrown into the outer darkness, he saw
opening for him that hell which in the mad, careless, secure
past had seemed an impossible thing, a weak superstition, the
barbarous invention of priests. He had laughed at it with
the world ; now it yawned laughing for him. Its reality was
piercing his soul with anticipated agonies, and his excited brain
pictured it in the very room, a part of the very bed, where he
lay. He saw its flames stealing insidiously through the floor,
along the walls, by the curtains, along the coverlet, hanging over
him, dancing round his helpless hands that could feel no pain, the
smoke stifling him, the cries of unnumbered lost ringing in his
ears. He could not fly nor call for help. One word he strove
to scream out to his valet a word which the man never heard but
with abhorrence, and which had a cursed meaning in all but
Catholic ears. With fatal prudence he had kept Catholic ser-
vants far from him, that he might never be reminded of what
he had been once and should be still. His servants could not
understand the great want which his eyes expressed, and which
to the Catholic would have been his most intelligible sign. The
devil had been at great pains to make these last moments as
hideous almost as those which were to follow in the invisible
world. If he could but pray ! To whom ? To the God against
whom every action of his life had been directed in enmity ? To
the man whom he had rejected and betrayed for gain ? To the
mother whom he had insulted by his passive neglect and secret
ridicule ? To their friends, whose holiness had been his scorn and
by- word ? He would rather blaspheme, and he did in his mad-
ness.

The physicians came, handled him, discussed him, shook their
heads doubtingly, nodded encouragingly when they thought he
was looking, and said not a word in answer to his appealing eyes.
They forced stimulants down his throat, and performed many
medical incantations over him ; yet the one assurance that would
have benefited him more than all this they withheld. " Shall I
get well? " his eyes said as plainly as eyes could speak, and they
were politely ignorant of ocular language. " Shall I recover my
speech ? " he groaned, and they retired to the outer room to dis-
cuss the groan, probably. It was at this moment that Killany and
his daughter returned from the opera. To have Nano's hands

506 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

clasped around his neck, and to hear the sweet filial and agonized
words from her lips, was an unusual sensation for him, and at an-
other time be would have wondered and put her away with smil-
ing reproof. He did not now think of this, hoping only that her
affection would discover his greatest need. Alas ! even she, un-
knowing, could not interpret his anguish. His child was his
own reflex, who might have been his good angel at this hour had
he but felt long ago the importance of a father's position, the lit-
tleness of the power and wealth he had sinned and struggled to
win, the truth and force and majesty of the religion he had de-
serted. She knew more of the Zendavesta, of the Norse sagas,
of the moral follies, madnesses, and idiosyncrasies of philoso-
phers, than of the Christian faith and its necessities. He had
lived a pagan, she would help him to die one. Every acces-
sory of death only added to his despair. It would have been
a relief to toss himself about and scream his blasphemies in
the ears of horrified listeners. Yet even this was denied him.
Cold, dead, ready for the tomb and yet alive, every inward sense
sharpened by peril to ten times its ordinary acuteness, down to
the grave and into the terrible beyond he was destined to go.

Killany's assurance to Nano that his illness was not absolutely
dangerous relieved him of many of his apprehensions. The fear
that had weighed him down as in a nightmare departed, and he
slept from exhaustion. His sleeping thoughts were scarcely less
fearful than his waking ones. The deadly burden of his helpless
limbs intruded itself everywhere. He walked in lands blessed
with eternal summer, but cursed with the presence of venomous
reptiles. They filled every place with their loathsomeness, and
the more beautiful the spot the more terribly was it infested. If
the appearance of fruit tempted him, and he approached to pluck
it, a snake darted from a concealment, and he could not fly with
his dead limbs. When thirst brought him to a spring a coiled
serpent lay beside it, forbidding all approach, or his helplessness
was too great to bear him to the wished-for spot. Hungering
and thirsting w r ith water and food within easy reach, Tantalus-like
he moved through the weary night, waking at times in deadly
fear, and always unable to express it in more than a smothered
groan.

The days wearing on brought him but little rest or satisfac-
tion. The sun, that came through the window and lay in a golden
heap on the floor for some hours each day, was his only com-
panion. It was dumb like him, but it came from heaven, and, as
he had learned to pray, he sent childishly enough his prayers to

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 507

God with the fair messenger, begging that it, at least, would un-
derstand him and bring back a speedy and favorable answer.
Each morning his eyes waited for the first ray that illumined the
glass, watching until a thousand of them were flooding the room
with light ; and then he asked in his mind what news, and pre-
tended to feel comfort at the answer that was never made. His
limbs were not the only parts which disease had affected.

Nano's devotion and filial tenderness were surprising but very
acceptable. He wondered that he had not claimed so much that
was sweet from her before, and remembered with shame how he
had always rejected her childish advances. His neglect had now
recoiled on himself. She, whose loving eyes should have been
first to interpret his suffering, was last to understand. And, alas !
the tempter had won her into direct disobedience when the
knowledge had reached her through others. The very embraces
which she showered upon him were prompted as much by re-
morse as by affection. She was wronging him in his helplessness,
playing the hypocrite instead of the true daughter, because of
that same love of wealth and station which had been his charac-
teristic and was the cause of his present despair and suffering.
Killany's presence he could not endure. It was like the sight of
a devil, and yet he dared not show his disgust and hatred. He
would be out of his power soon when the great restitution would
be made. Nothing could delay that now, he thought. He was
an old man, broken down by disease, and his old haunts would
know him no more. He must prepare for death, and his first
work would be to cleanse from his soul those stains whose
existence there had made the past week so terrible. He did not
think of consequences but in the vaguest way. He was only
anxious that a priest should come to take his confession and direct
him in the thorny paths which he and his daughter might have to
tread. In Nano he had still great faith, and was angry with
himself when Killany's assertions as to her utter want of the reli-
gious principle found a lodging-place in his disturbed mind. She
would not retain the wealth of another at any cost. Her pride,
at least, would push her down to comparative poverty in prefer-
ence to maintaining their present state at the expense of others.

It was a moment of supreme satisfaction to him when, after
eight days of enforced silence, he was able to articulate a little,
and could move his hands sufficiently to write his name feebly on
a bit of paper. He thanked the sun that morning with glad
tears that at last he had been heard, and very gratefully, very
humbly and penitently, received the priest and his admonitions.

508 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

He was ready, anxious, and willing to do all that was required of
him ; but being unable to speak connectedly or continuously, or
even to write a long sentence, the priest contented himself with
putting him in the proper dispositions for the confession to be
made three days later. McDonell determined to spend those
days in planning his method of restitution.

Here the work of the evil one began. Confession is a humili-
ating and irksome thing even to the humblest of souls, and the
devil, whose personality nowadays culture has banished from the
circle of the truthful or possible, finds in it the occasion of his
greatest triumphs as well as of his sorest defeats. The greater
the sin and the more hidden, the greater the difficulty of confess-
ing. McDonell was about to strike, as he thought, a death-blow
in the mind of one man at his own commercial integrity and
purity of character, which was highly estimated in the world.
This was no temptation to him, who had so severely suffered from
remorse. Health and confidence were slowly returning. The
misery of the past few days was becoming no more than a dream,
and its sting was already half lost. The price which confession
would cost him was tremendous full restitution of his ill-gotten
goods. The question rose vague and shadowy, yet importunate
and daring : Why go to confession now ? why make restitution at
all until the moment of death, as he had at first intended ? He put
the thought away with a shudder, recalling the flames that leaped
about his bed on that dreadful night of his early sickness. Still
the idea thrust itself forward. His mind was pitiably weak. He
yielded to every influence brought to bear upon him, and magni-
fied terrors or securities to an extraordinary degree. This act of
justice which he was about to perform haunted him day and
night. It looked at him from every object about which his dis-
ordered fancy could throw the attributes of life. The portraits
on the wall, the marble figures on the mantel, the dragon-heads
about the grate seemed to leer at him and say, " If you do this we
are yours no more." Nano's pale face and troubled eyes disturbed
him. She would be the chief sufferer. Wealth was not what it
had been to him, but to her, so beautiful, so talented, so deeply
in love with it, there was nothing he could offer to compensate
for its loss. She would not be poor, but her present condition of
life would be reduced to more than one-half of its magnificence.

The struggle in his breast between good and evil went on
with varying fortune until that day which the priest had ap-
pointed to make his second visit. It was the turning-point of his
career, and it found him undecided. Under such circumstances

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 509

he who hesitates is lost. He could not resolve upon a final effort,
could not determine to thrust aside the devil and do right at once
and with honest courage. It was evening, and he sat in his in-
valid-chair near the window through which the messenger sun
had shone so cheerily during his illness. It migfyt have reproach-
ed him now for his weakness, as before it had comforted him ; but
it was already below the horizon, and the reddening clouds were
the only indications of its presence. He could feel that he was
losing his feeble hold on heaven, and knew in a confused way
that the blame must rest with himself. He would not pray. He
feared almost that his petition for help might be granted, and the
resolution be taken which would so cripple his daughter's fortune
while he yet lived. The fading sun seemed to be receding less
than he from heaven. Its rosy pathway downward seemed to be
his own over which he was hastening back to earth again when
he had been almost at the gates. The twilight slowly darkened.
He heard the ringing of bells and the tramping of horses' feet on
the avenue, and listened trembling to hear the sound of the
priest's voice in the hall. He was mistaken. The priest had
not yet come. There was a few minutes' respite for the unfortu-
nate. He lay back in his chair relieved, and, with the weariness
of a child, fell asleep in the midst of his harassing thought.

It was an evening of anxiety to more than him in the cold,
lonely, sin-stricken dwelling. Nano had listened with not less
dread for the priest's coming. She no longer doubted the story
of her father's sin, so many had been the confirming circumstances
in his late behavior, but for pride's sake she continued to look
coldly upon Killany, his pressing advices, and his eager offers for
assistance. To-night the dreaded confession was to be made, and
it was to be presumed that restitution would follow. She had
learned that the absolute poverty which at first she had appre-
hended was not to reach her, but the loss of three-fifths of their
present income was as keenly felt as if they were to lose all.
The power which she loved to wield must necessarily go with
the money. Where had been a constellation in society's heaven
would now be a star of an ordinary grade, and even its moderate
brilliancy might be clouded by disgrace if the story of her father's
crime went forth. Poverty was nothing to such shame. Yet out
of her misfortunes there seemed no avenue of successful and
honorable escape, and she grieved and fretted, as the hours of
grace went by, in hopeless misery. When Killany arrived with the
intention of persuading her to adopt his methods of deliverance
from the danger, he found her in one of her strangest moods.

510 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

" I need not mention to you," he said, " the crisis that is to be
developed this night. You have thought of it often enough.
The last time that the priest was with your father it was agreed
that he should make confession at this time, which means simply
that he will throw away his property and yours on the poor, or
rather on such money-begging adventurers as the priest."

" You were listening," said Nano, with scornful composure,
" to that last interview ? You could not respect the privacy of
my father's room ? "

" I understood your necessity better than yourself," he an-
swered in apology. " I did not wish that you should be taken by
surprise, and I concealed myself in the room. Nothing was said
that I did not expect to be said. The danger is knocking at your
doors."

" Let it knock," she returned haughtily. " I do not fear it.
Do you imagine that I would retain one penny of a property
which is another's ? Whatever my father does in the matter, if it
be within the bounds of reason, shall have my full approval and
support."

" I applaud your resolution," he said cunningly ; " but the
property belongs to no one, and your father, with his already
weakened mind, will not act within the bounds of reason. The
heirs of the property are dead. To no one can restitution be pro-
perly made. But the Romish Church requires that it be made
to the poor, to some good work a very fortunate arrangement
for his reverence, who will now be enabled to pay off the debts
on the asylums and other institutions of his diocese."

Nano was startled at this piece of intelligence, but she was
careful to allow no tell-tale expressions to appear on her coun-
tenance.

" It is not our property, nevertheless," she said. " I leave all
to the wisdom of my father and the priest."

" The mind of your father," answered Killany, with a calm-
ness he did not feel, " is partially shattered, and the wisdom of his
reverence is of a kind that will certainly appreciate the position
in which you have placed yourselves. Once his grasping fingers
close upon this wealth you will have to cut them off to shake his
hold. One would fancy, Nano, that your mind was as much af-
fected as your father's."

" I am not often prejudiced in favor of good," said she, with
exasperating indifference, " and this is a fair opportunity to dis-
tinguish myself in the cause of virtue."

" Since you are to scatter your goods among the poor, then, I

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 511

pray you, end the comedy by taking the veil or retiring- into the
wilderness. But there is the bell, and I surmise that the priest
has arrived. I shall not remain to see this game of foot-ball with
your fortune. Commend me to his reverence as a good kicker,
for he will safely toe it into his strong-box. Take my advice and
hear what passes between "

" Sir ! "

" I beg your pardon. Where great interests are at stake one
should not be too nice in taking risks. 1 wish you, cousin, a
merry evening."

He went away chagrined but hopeful, half-conscious of the
dismay he left behind. Nano was now face to face with her des-
tiny, as the " cultured " love to say of those delicate situations
where nature and the devil on one side struggle fiercely with
the soul and grace on the other. It was easy and sublime, while
the danger was remote and looked like the cloud no bigger than
a man's hand, to roll out platitudes of transcendental virtue,
heroism, and self-denial, and to be politely scornful towards the
practical but foul-smelling suggestions of Killany. Yet here was
the hour of her trial. The feeble step of an old man on the
stairs without was sounding a war-cry in her soul. Alas ! instead
of meeting the enemy with calm, unshaken demeanor, according
to the best and most approved and most inspiring rules of the
school, and as she had so lately met Killany's dark suggestions,
she was meditating a parley and a disgraceful surrender. The
maxims of Confucius and Seneca were making a helter-skelter re-
treat over the moral battle-plain, being very much more orna-
ments of peace than sinews of war. " No heirs," Killany had
said. " The poor will have all." Why not she rather than the
poor she whose father had garnered, preserved, and increased
the wealth which its original owners were not living to claim ?

The priest's step was at the head of the stairs. If she decides
at all it must be done quickly. One minute of time is given her,
for his reverence stops to rest after his ascent, and then comes
slowly to the door on his bad legs. One minute, and the battle is
fought and lost lost, but not for Satan. Honor and self, mere ma-
terial things, have been vanquished by the powers of darkness.
Transcendentalism, to no one's surprise, has scored another de-
feat.

The priest has entered and is shaking hands in his paternal
way with a pale, composed woman whose whole demeanor is one
of studied cordiality and self-possession. He is led down to the
sick-room, where McDonell still sleeps with his face upturned to

512 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

the evening sky. " Father," she says, touching his arm gently.
The slightest touch awakes him.

" The priest has come," he cries, with a start, and his voice is
joyless and dead.

" His reverence has been so kind," Nano says. " I shall leave
you to talk with him."

Lights were brought in by the servant, and she goes out with
him. The priest is looking towards his penitent with anxious
eyes ; he hears the door close, and he turns to see that the room is
entirely free before the solemn conference begins. She has slip-
ped noiselessly behind the screen, has passed to the bed and
around it, and is standing deep in the shadow near another door
whence flight is easy, yet close enough to hear every word that
is to be uttered. It does not matter that her heart is beating to
suffocation under the humiliation which she has put upon her-
self. She has done a mean, unwomanly thing, and feels that she
is capable of descending to lower deeps of degradation. Her
face is burning there in the darkness with shame. She thinks of
Olivia, and the thought almost turns her from her purpose. But
no ; interest, passion is stronger in her soul, and she remains un-
til the end.

Father Leonard was too experienced a man not to per-
ceive that in the disposition of his penitent some serious and un-
favorable change had occurred, and, determining to take the devil
by surprise and by the horns as well, he opened up briskly, taking
it for granted that McDonell was quite ready to do all that his
religion required. But the unfortunate man stopped him ere he
had well begun. Remorse and terror had decided him for the
right ; interest, when both were departed, decided as imperatively
for the wrong. When he looked up, in waking, into Nano's face
he fancied that in her eyes there was an expression of pain and
appeal, as if she knew of the misfortune about to happen her and
were mutely entreating him to spare her this blow. His heart
shut out the grace proffered with a suddenness and decision that
were appalling.

" I have concluded," he said coldly, when the priest began to
speak, " to put off this matter of confession until a more conve-
nient time. Your reverence will excuse me if I decline at present
to discuss my reasons."

" I cannot excuse you," answered the priest mildly. " You,
are not aware of the risk you are running in acting thus. Where
is your good sense and your gratitude ? He who rescued you
from death, and gave you time to save your soul, expects at least

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 513

ordinary thankfulness. You are showing extraordinary ingrati-
tude. If you maintain this resolution you will have every rea-
son to expect that when death stands at your door again God
will be less merciful. It is the commonest justice."

" I have thought of all these things," he answered, unmoved,
" and am not the less determined. Pray excuse me if I insist on
your withdrawal. I am weak, and you are taking an unfair ad-
vantage."

" Not more unfair than that which you have taken of yourself.
The devil thinks little of such a proceeding, and we, his enemies,
still less."

McDonell reached for a hand-bell and rang it imperiously.

" I am quite settled in my resolution," said he, smiling, " and if
you will talk it must be before others."

" As you will," answered the priest in deep accents of pity.
" I have not been wanting in my duty, as you in yours. My
prayer is that the divine vengeance may be averted from your
soul and find its satisfaction only in physical suffering. But your
sin is great, McDonell, and must find a bitter atonement."

The paralytic did not answer. His immovable lower limbs,
iis palsied tongue and hands, his shattered body should have spo-
:en to him more loudly than any of the priest's arguments ; but
:hey did not. He was possessed of the devil, it would seem, for a
larsh spirit reigned in the bosom so lately full of the benign grace
>f repentance. He could almost laugh at the priest's forebod-
igs. His reverence rose to take his leave at once, and in so do-
ig saw the vanishing form of Nano in the gloom beyond. The
tars had betrayed her presence.

" Some spirit of evil," thought he, "is working in this house.
The wise have lost their wisdom, and the honorable their
honor."

CHAPTER IX.

A PLEASURE-PARTY.

A PLAIN, old-fashioned, solid brick building on the northern
outskirts of the city was the residence of Mrs. Strachan, a lady
whose name has recently been mentioned in connection with a to-
boggan-party. She was a Scotch lady of good family, a brisk,
angular, but matronly woman, with the practical good sense and
shrewdness of her race developed to a high degree, possessing
the rarest spirit of fun, and being an ardent promoter of every
VOL. xxxii. 33

514 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

species of innocent, vigorous, loud recreation. Hence her snow-
shoe expedition to a distant hollow where the lovers of toboggan-
ning might find, amid remote and picturesque scenery, a hill suffi-
ciently steep and long 1 to ensure a thorough enjoyment of their
favorite sport.

A party of ladies and gentlemen, all in the first, or at least the
second, flush of youth, was assembled on the snow-covered lawn
of Mrs. Strachan's residence at an early hour on Thursday morn-
ing, and among them, conspicuous by the bloom of her cheeks,
and the shimmer of her hair, and the quiet abandon of her man-
ner, was our pretty Olivia, the impulsive bit of sweetness which
had drawn the greatest catch of the season, the Irish baronet, from
the gilded and artificial toys hanging round within easy reach of
his hand. She was full of life and vivacity this morning. Her
eyes were sparkling, and her lips were saucily curved into a
real Cupid's bow, as she ordered or commanded or scolded her
meek baronet, to the envy of the other damsels, or browbeat
the meeker youth whom she had honored with the position of as-
sistant. The ladies were having their ungainly shoes put on, and
the length of time which the gentlemen were allowing themselves
for the operation had driven Mrs. Strachan, a most punctual and
exacting woman, into a state of high indignation.

" Ten o'clock," she shouted from the veranda, "and not ready
yet, gentlemen ! Sir Stanley, you have a most obstinate buckle
there, and I command you to pass it over to Mr. Crawford and
lose no time in putting on your own. Miss Fullerton, how can
you tolerate such awkwardness? "

" It is very cold," said Olivia, with a side-glance at the lady.
" They can't work very well with cold fingers."

" But they couldn't go more slowly if they had no fingers and
were working in silk," answered Mrs. Strachan.

" It is silk," said the baronet, very red in the face with much
stooping.

" Or illusion," put in Mr. Crawford, sighing, driven secretly
by his own despair to make a pun which nobody understood.

" The cold has no effect on your flattery, gentlemen," said
Mrs. Strachan. " I give you every one just five minutes to get
to the front gate. The toboggans have gone ahead by wagon
an hour ago."

The lady's fiat was respected, and with a great deal of laugh-
ing, and running hither and thither, and entanglement of straps
and dresses, the whole party, thirty in number, assembled at the
front gate. Mrs. Strachan was there in a short dress and snow-

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 515

shoes. Though forty or over, she was not the slowest of foot nor
the least skilled in a walk of this kind, and the four miles to be
travelled within the next two hours, up hill and down dale, had
no more terrors for her than for the youngest of her friends.
They started at once, after the hostess had constituted herself
general of the expedition, had given out the information that
there was to be a moon that night, that they were to start for
home at seven o'clock, and that the first gentleman who allowed
his lady to fall a most ignominious event or fell himself the
very height of disgrace would be subjected to a heavy fine.

The day was a delightful one, there being no wind, any
amount of sun and blue heaven, and crusted snow which lay so
deep that only the fences were in sight along the road. The
road itself would have been lost but for the track which the
advance-sleigh had made, and they could follow the trail as it
wound down the valley and entered the woods on the hill be-
yond. Walking on snow-shoes is not the most graceful move-
ment in the world, although skilled and practised walkers go
through the performance with an enviable ease and repose of
manner. The legs are spread out and the toes turned in, and the
forward movement is an insinuating, gliding process after the
fashion of skating, but without a particle of its poetry. Mrs.
Strachan's party were perfectly at home on the shoes. The
members were thinking more of one another than of the special
unloveliness of their manner of walking. The jest and laugh
passed through the merry crowd, and an occasional chorus from
the gentlemen gave food for amusement and criticism to the
idies. The country along their line of march was thinly inhab-
ited. A log-hut in a clearing, out of sight but for the smoke curl-
ing from the chimney, an occasional chopper with his axe swung
over his shoulder, or the first traveller moving cityward labori-
ously through the great drifts, were the only living objects that
crossed their path. They were under no restraint, and felt all
the better for it. They laughed to the full extent of their lungs,
singly, doubly, and in chorus. They talked very loud and all
together, and the general, a very model of etiquette at home, was
foremost in discarding rules here.

Olivia walked with a cavalier on each side to guard against
accidents Sir Stanley autocratical and indifferent in his bearing,
and Mr. Crawford meeker than the proverbial lamb. As a mat-
ter of course she petted the latter as he grew meeker, and snub-
bed on every occasion the proud baronet, who never would un-
derstand the drift of such performances from one whom he loved.

516 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

" There's something hurting my foot," said she when the first
half-mile had been passed. " It is the very shoe which you put
on, Sir Stanley."

" Then we must stop and arrange it," said he in a matter-of-
fact way, and not with the air of one who had committed an un-
pardonable blunder. " Here is a suitable spot."

An old tree, with a gnarled and obstinate root thrust upward,
lay in their path. She sat down in a pet, and called Mr. Craw-
ford to make the required changes.

" You did the other one so well, Mr. Crawford. I couldn't
trust it to Sir Stanley, for I would be sure to sit down at the end
of the next mile."

The baronet was in no way disturbed, and presently the gen-
eral's commanding eye had caught sight of them, and her com-
manding voice was heard from a distance expressing loud dis-
gust at their sluggishness.

" Gentlemen," said she, " you seem two too many for that
young lady. I shall condemn her to a post beside myself if you
break ranks again."

" Not I," Sir Stanley shouted back gravely. " Crawford it
was that did the mischief "; and " Crawford did it!" screamed
the crowd, until the meek youth was overwhelmed with shame.
Olivia did not know with whom to be angry most.

" The old ogre ! " whispered she to her cavaliers ; " she seems
determined to have this journey without incident. Mr. Craw-
ford, but that I do not wish to expose you to a fine, I would fall
at the first opportunity."

" I am extremely grateful," murmured Mr. Crawford.

" Mrs. Strachan is not to blame," said the baronet. " She
does not wish to have her rules upset to suit the whims of every
one. What a pretty sight is that old farm-house half-buried in
the snow near the woods ! "

No one responded.

" I feel humbled," Olivia thought, " at this calm fashion of
walking over me. Doesn't he know that he shall be punished for
every one of his idle words ? "

He might have known, but it was quite evident he didn't care.
They walked on in silence until an accident took place and the
party was brought to a stand-still. A lady in the front rank had
stumbled and fallen, and three or four gentlemen were establish-
ing the unfortunate on her feet, her cavalier guilty and shame-
faced the while.

" It's the general herself," cried enthusiastic Crawford. " She'l)

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 517

not have a word for the rest of the day, if most * of us do not suf-
fer the same accident."

Olivia looked up at the baronet.

" You might begin, Sir Stanley," she said.

" If I were sure," answered he, pulling his moustache with
calm indifference, " that the ladies would take upon themselves
the task of placing me upright again, I would tumble over a pre-
cipice. Otherwise, it would be too absurd. Perhaps Crawford
would be more obliging."

" Would you, sir?" she asked.

" I wonder that you ask," replied the gentleman reproachfully.

" I wonder, too," said Olivia. " You are both very tiresome.
How far is it to the hollow yet ? "

" Two miles more."

There was another long silence, until a second commotion in
the laughing crowd ahead brought the whole party to a halt. A
gentleman had lost his footing and gone headlong into a drift.
His ornamented feet were sticking in the air, and every one was
laughing, even the indignant general, who had not yet recovered
from the chagrin of her own unexpected and ludicrous fall.

"Four accidents in two and a half miles," said Crawford.
" At that rate there is a fair chance of an upset for every one
between this and our return."

" But we are going to have a moon," said Olivia.

" That will add to the number of catastrophes," said the bar-
onet. " By the light of the moon is the most forgetful, if the
most entrancing, time for the average young man. He never
looks for obstructions then."

" I shall dismiss you both if that is the case," Olivia replied.
" I wish to be taken care of. Pardon me, Mr. Crawford, for hav-
ing to turn you away. Perhaps you are an exception to the
average young man."

" I am afraid not, Miss Fullerton. The moon does affect me,
even in daylight occasionally."

" What a pity ! But here are the woods."

The party had left the road, and, striding fairy-like over
buried fences and hollows filled with snow, was entering the win-
ter silence of a forest. Olivia did wish to grow sentimental over
the loveliness of the scene. The branches above their heads
bent low under the weight of the snow-mantle, upon which the
sun at times dropped a ray of his brilliancy. The old trunks,
straight as savages are wont to be, rose from a wondrously
smooth but hollowed floor, and, like pillars, seemed to support the

518 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

interlaced roof above. There was no apparent outlet, and they
seemed to follow no regular path, the party winding in and out
through the tree-labyrinth, with laughter and song, under the
guidance of the general.

" It wouldn't be much of a surprise to meet an old Druid wan-
dering here some day," said Crawford, venturing, after much re-
flection, upon a remark which he had heard made under similar
circumstances.

"With long, white hair," said Olivia, brightening, "and the
most secret and terrible eyes."

" There's a more practical and useful inhabitant," said the
baronet, flinging a pine cone at a squirrel and hitting Mrs.
Strachan instead. Olivia laughed at the general's surprise when
the missile lighted on her hood.

" You were more prosaic than you intended, Sir Stanley,'*
said she. " Now be good enough to say something poetical and
appropriate. Aren't you really touched by all this winter loveli-
ness?"

" Of course," cried the bold nobleman, with a direct and un-
mistakable glance into his lady's eyes. " It is a temple with
something of the heretical about it, for the worshippers take
things comfortably and there is neither altar nor priest. If there
were we might do rash things, I fear." " If she will be so kindly
foolish," he thought, " to ask what may be the rash things."

But she was too wary, and, although her upward look was
very innocent and engaging, she could not resist making some
fun out of his words.

" There isn't an organ, and the choir is poor."
, "The real choir have gone south for sake of their voices.
But haven't we the musical silence. And sufficient . wind will
make an organ of the trees."

" Ah ! that will do," said she. " There's something too realis-
tic in your poetry ; so stick to plain prose."

They would have gone on wordless for the rest of the journey
had not the fifth accident of the morning occurred. Crawford,
finding himself at a loss to take part in the conversation, and per-
ceiving its drift in despair, had wandered aside to enjoy his own
gloomy thoughts alone. A hidden twig caused him to turn a
somersault in the air, and he disappeared in a drift so deep that
he went out of sight altogether. The evident astonishment and.
nervousness of the gentlemen at this mishap filled the ladies with
alarm. Some lost their footing in consequence of the excite-
ment. Demoralization seized upon the party, and for a few

TV J

tT
St

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 519

minutes the general's powers and the general's temper were
severely tried. Olivia sat on a convenient stump and laughed in
her sleeve. The appearance of the inverted ones was too comical
for the gravest to resist laughing, and in spite of young Craw-
ford's danger and the general's severe countenance, and the tears
of some of the more impressionable ladies, Miss Olivia laughed
quietly. Mr. Crawford was more unfortunate beneath the snow
than he had been above it, for his shoes had slipped under a pile
of brushwood and would not release themselves until a bitter
jack-knife battle had been begun and ended, while the gentlemen
tugged at his body. The good-humor of the party received from
this event too violent a shock to permit of chaffing the unfortu-
nate Crawford. Each endeavored to calm his own disturbed
soul, and to check the rising anger against the author of so many
misfortunes. Olivia would have not been daunted if she could
have restrained her desire to laugh, but she dared not open her
mouth.

When they left the woods Staring Hollow was before them.
A stout log-house with three apartments had been hired for their
accommodation at the foot of the long hill, and its puffing chim-
ney in the vale below carried the gayest and cheeriest of messages
to the tired and disgusted snow-shoers. There was a general
rush for the toboggans. The ladies whipped off their own shoes
with great agility, and were ready and eager to take their places
without assistance. The gentlemen fought hilariously at the
agon, and the general, half angry, yet compelled to laugh at
e boyishness of old boys, shouted and ordered in vain. Sir
Stanley was wicked enough to seize upon a toboggan of the lar-
gest size, and to fill it, too, with a mixed crowd, much to Olivia's
disgust. Yet he was careful not to bite his own head off in teas-
ing Olivia. He sat in the rear, and she sat in front of him, and
Crawford in front of her ; and, unheard of this meek cavalier, the
baronet whispered various pleasant things over her shoulder.
The rush down the hill was brief but full of intensest pleasure.
There is little time given even on the longest hill to analyze the
sensations of a toboggan-ride. A feeling of airiness comes over
you ; you seem for an instant to be disembodied ; an exquisitely,
painfully sweet dizziness forces you to close your eyes momen-
tarily, and then all is over. You are at the foot of the hill. Hav-
ing come down, it becomes necessary to walk up again, which is
not the most prosaic part of the sport, if you have been properly
favored in your partners.

The general with two of her lieutenants led the way, followed

520 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

by six others, two abreast. There was a cheer from the gentle-
men, and a gasp from the ladies, whose fascinating tongues
found the occasion too much for them. At the foot of the hill
there was an upset and a few collisions which amounted only to a
laugh, and all withdrew to the secluded retirement of the cabin.
A lunch of the hottest kind was spread in the main apartment.
The general in her short dress did the honors, and was livelier,
though more ironical, than a girl of sixteen. She had not quite
recovered from her mortification at her fall in the snow ; it was
still a sore point, and she collected her fines from the cavaliers
with a great display of acrimony. Sir Stanley sat beside her, with
Olivia opposite on her left hand ; " for next to the baronet," Mrs.
Strachan observed to a lady who usually occupied the post of
honor, " the baronet's future wife is our most distinguished
guest."

" People have a rather conclusive and annoying way of settling
these things beforehand," thought Olivia, as she marked her
position and the glances telegraphed around the table. " It
would be serving them right to disappoint them."

But the prospect of such a disappointment, it must be con-
fessed, made her heart beat faster. Sir Stanley was looking any-
where save in her direction, but he was saying in secret :

" She must understand this move of the general's, at all
events. There is a moon to-night, and by the light of the
moon "

He went off into a reverie of so moonshiny a character as to
pass the salt to the general for sweetening her coffee. Mr. Craw-
ford was lost to sight at the remotest corner of the room. He
was in disgrace with Mrs. Strachan since his unlucky disappear-
ance in the snow ; but this did not grieve him one-half so much as
the unconcealed merriment in Oli . ia's face when she looked at
him and thought of his vanishing heels. There was an unusual
amount of appetite among the party, and no attempt to conceal
or stint it. In a short time the table was cheerfully bare, and the
gentlemen, rising, left the ladies in the main room, while they re-
tired to smoke and chat unrestrainedly in the apartment set aside
for them.

"We had better stuff the crevices," says the general, with her
Scotch nose in the air, when they were gone, " or the odious
smoke will stifle us right away."

" Dear Mrs. Strachan, don't," says a pretty but elderly young
thing. " I do so love the smell of tobacco ! "

" You'll recover from that attack of mannishness, Miss But-

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 521

tonhole, when you have arrived at the years and dignity of a ma-
tron."

" The foolish old thing ! " thought Olivia ; " she smiles as if
Mrs. Strachan were complimenting her."

This was the strain of the ladies' conversation, and, trivial as
it was, they managed to sustain it for an hour with a success that
would be marvellous to any but ladies with a great amount of
time on their hands. Not one succeeded in escaping a thrust, or
failed to give one ; and hence, when the gentlemen appeared to
claim their partners, all were in high good-humor. Mr. Craw-
ford lingered mournfully in the distance, and would not have ap-
proached Olivia had she not nodded encouragingly to his inquir-
ing glances ; and as the matter stood Mrs. Strachan could not
forbear from some scathing remarks on his ability to take care of
a lady when he could so poorly manage himself. It was now
two o'clock in the afternoon. The day had preserved its early
beauty unimpaired, and the sun ran downward through a steely-
blue sky, its rays turning Staring Hollow into a fairy dell for
brightness and enchanting colors.

" It pleases me," said Olivia to her attendants, as they were
walking up the hill with the others, " that we have no literary peo-
ple in our vicinity. You would hear so much of the chiaro-os-
curo cant on these sun-glories in the valley, and the mythologies
of Persia would be ransacked for picturesque adjectives."

" Perhaps it would be as well, Miss Fullerton," answered the
baronet, " to hear that sort of talk rather than to hear nothing at
11."

" Well, give me time and a chance to breathe," said she, stop-
ping, " and I shall get enthusiastic after a sensible fashion. But
you, Sir Stanley, take the sentiment out of one by your astonish-
ing love for the practical."

" Then I won't say another word."

" I think," said she, looking back, and conscious that the baro-
net and Mr. Crawford were looking at her with interest " I
think that the Hollow looks much like a lake just now, a fairy one,
I mean, where the trees and houses and people are under the
water, and the water itself is sun-liquid."

" And we are the mermaids and mermen," Mr. Crawford ven-
tured to remark. " The general now would take the superstition
out of a sailor on that point. Fancy her with golden hair and a
comb and"

" Don't be personal," Olivia went on. " See how the sun lies
against the snow on the opposite hill. Doesn't it look like water

522 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Jan.,

up as far as where the shadow breaks the line of light, just as the
bank of a river breaks the line of water? "

" That is chiaro-oscuro," said Sir Stanley.

" You are ungenerous, you are envious, Sir Stanley, and I
shall not say another word. Hurry up the hill."

At the summit a surprise awaited them. Dr. Fullerton was
just assisting Nano out of his cutter. Olivia gave a few gasps of
astonishment, and then rushed to greet her friend, who was icier
this afternoon than the air itself, and received her embraces chilily.

" The doctors insisted that I should ride out," she explained,
" and your brother was kind enough to offer me his cutter and
his company."

"And you found both just splendid, dear, I know you did.
Isn't he a young a young Centaur ? There, don't laugh at my
similes. I wanted you to fill up the remark, and you wouldn't,
so that I had to say something."

But Nano was reserved in the presence of a mixed company,
and talked very little. They did not remain a long time. An
hour's sport with the toboggans, a short chat in the cabin with
the general and those of the company there assembled, and they
were ready to return to the city.

" A very handsome pair," said the general to the ladies. " I
wouldn't be surprised if '

" But he's only a doctor, and is not very distinguished," cried
the elderly young thing in alarm. ** And he has no money and
no connections."

" She has enough for both," replied the general ; " and the
brother-in-law of a baronet will never want for patronage."

" That isn't settled yet, you dear matchmaking Mrs. Stra-
chan ! "

" A foregone conclusion. I prophesied it from the first, and
if it doesn't come to pass put me down a false prophet."

Outside Olivia was gushing over her brother, and, as he did
not seem to take it as well as he ought, she drew him aside and
lectured him secretly.

" You are too indifferent, Harry," she was saying. " Why,
she is beautiful, rich, and you are an icicle."

" So is she, Olivia."

" And is it going to improve matters by freezing as hard as
she ? Become a sun, and melt her into dripping, overflowing
love. Ha ! what is this? A photograph ? "

Her hand had for an instant rested on a hard, square substance
over his heart.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 523

" There," said he, breaking away hastily, " Miss McDonell is
looking towards me impatiently. I'll explain to-morrow. You
have enough to do to manage your baronet without scheming to
marry me to that "

He was off without finishing the word, and the sleigh was
soon ringing its musical way to the city.

" Supper immediately ; music and conversation till half-past
six; then preparations for return, which takes place at eight
o'clock," were the orders which the general trumpeted from the
cabin-door. The sun was just gone down behind the hills, and
the fading glow in the west warned of the rapid approach of
darkness. The moon had already made her appearance, swinging
round and high in the ethereal sea.

" By the light of the moon," sang the baronet, emerging from
the kitchen dining-room with a skillet in his hand, " we are go-
ing home."

" I would that it were by daylight," said she, " for I am so
tired that all poetry has been knocked out of me. I am more
tired when I think of a four-mile walk."

" Say the word," cried the baronet, with an eager flourish of
his skillet, as if he were about to fling it into space " say the
word, and my sleigh shall be here at your service. 5 '

" You are dangerously kind. But I have a reputation as a
snow-shoer, and I must sustain it. Thank you."

" As you please." And he sought once more the regions of the
kitchen to assist in preparing supper.

Enthusiasm was not yet wanting in the party, even after the
laborious amusements of the day. Cold punch and hot punch
were the mainspring of the gentlemen's good spirits towards the
close of the evening, and the ladies found all their excitement in
looking at the gentlemen. The meal was slightly convivial, and
the songs sung afterwards were weighed down with vociferous
choruses. But the preparations for departure in the icy air neu-
tralized the effects of the punch, and it was the most reserved of
parties that started homeward by the light of the moon. The
same order was preserved in the line of march, and Olivia found
herself in the rear with her usual attendants. Mr. Crawford, who
had confessed to the softening influence of the moon on his dis-
position, seemed to find an opposing force in the baronet, and re-
mained as hard and unimpressionable as a rock. Sir Stanley,
after having made several attempts to shake him off, settled down
into a ponderous gloom and resisted all the seductions of conver-
sation.

524 SOME USES OF HERALD AY. [Jan.,

The prosaic snow of the day had been converted into silver
dust. Their feet threw showers of shining metal into the air,
which itself seemed like a blue garment shot with silver thread.
The forest-line stood up from the earth, grim and pugnacious,
cherishing the shadow, but bathed unresisting in the glow and
carrying the stars on its head. From the hills the lights of the
distant city were seen, and a broad strip of brightness, measured
and denned along the horizon, indicated the presence of the lake.
Olivia went over these beauties one by one. She dilated on
them and said the most provoking things about them, yet neither
gentleman could or would respond beyond what good breeding
required. " By the light of the moon " turned out a farce, and
when they had reached the city, and were waiting for their re-
spective carriages, Olivia's good-night to her cavaliers was :

" Gentlemen, never walk on moonlight nights. So much soft-
headedness I never dreamed that the innocent moon could trans-
mit to man."

SOME USES OF HERALDRY.

VOLUMES have been written on the origin and meaning of
heraldry, the most ridiculous theories being often explained with
equal absurdity, which has brought discredit on a subject inte-
resting both from an antiquarian and an artistic point of view.
Not everything, however, in the literature of heraldry is beneath
our notice, and the increasing regard for heraldic matters may be
fairly inferred from the large number of able treatises which
have lately appeared. A science which has engaged the atten-
tion of such really learned men in former times as Camden, Dug-
dale, Ashmole, and Selden in England, and Nisbet and Mackenzie
in Scotland, and the writers on which have in all ages and in every
country been drawn largely from the ranks of the clergy, cannot
be one utterly devoid of interest or instruction.

Heraldry was a study which of old engaged the attention of all
who were gentle-born, and it is worthy in these days even to be
looked upon with respect ; and in consequence of its singular util-
ity and comprehensive place in painting, sculpture, engraving,
architecture, biography, and history, during several centuries at
least, some knowledge of it ought to be included as a necessary

1 88 1.] SOME USES OF HERALDRY. 525

element of a liberal education, for it was one of the most influen-
tial means, after commerce and religion, of forming European so-
ciety. It is called a thing of the irrevocable past ; but, even so,
that past is so intimately bound up with all that still interests us in
mediaeval history, poetry, and romance that its study is not use-
less, even though it be of little practical importance. Its resur-
rection followed closely upon the revival of the taste for mediae-
val institutions, in which Muratori in Italy, Scott in Great Bri-
tain, Guizot in France, and Hurter in Germany nobly led the
way, and which now forms one of the happiest characteristics of
our age, which needs some conservative weight to counterbal-
mce the irreverent and iconoclastic spirit of the times :

" Make tombs inscriptionless raze each high name " ;
>ut fortunately, on the other hand :

" Multa renascentur quae jam cecidere,"

as Horace said.

Many of the terms of heraldry have become* " familiar in our
mouths as household words," and many of the best English au-
lors use expressions which are intelligible only to those who are
acquainted with at least the rudiments of the science, which can
easily be acquired by giving to it no more than what Dr. Johnson
ills " those interstitial vacancies " that may intervene even in the
lost crowded variety of diversion or employment. The works
>f Chaucer, Shakspere, Spenser, Drayton, and other of our earlier
)oets abound with allusions to the " noble science," indicative on
their part of a thorough familiarity with the subject; and" the
very name of the inn or hostelry immortalized in the prologue to
ic Canterbury Tales has an heraldic odor hanging about it

" In Southwark at The Tabard as I lay."

Shakspere's insult in the " Merry Wives " to the arms of Sir Thomas
Lucy of Charlcote (whose family still flourishes in Warwickshire),
personified by Justice Shallow, is well known as more witty than
delicate ; but, while venting his malice against the knight, he was
no despiser of heraldry, for we find him complacently using the
arms of which a grant was made to his father, John Shakspere, by
the Heralds' College in 1596, and which was prompted by his
own ambition to found a family in which he was closely imi-
tated by the "Wizard of the North," who was prouder to be
called Scott of Abbotsford than known as the author of Waver-
ley. We must not judge these men too harshly for displaying
such a weakness, because it is so natural to wish to transmit a

526 SOME USES OF HERALDRY. [Jan.,

name, and blood, and honors to one's own descendants that it
seems almost like that aspiration after immortality against which
Saturn vainly rages :

" For I am well-nigh crazed and wild to hear
How boastful fathers taunt me with their breed,
Saying, ' We shall not die nor disappear,
But in these other selves ourselves succeed,
Even as ripe flowers pass into their seed,
Only to be renewed from prime to prime.' "

HOOD, Plea of the Midsummer Fairies.

Dante constantly describes persons by their armorial bear-
ings in his Divine Comedy, which contains so much of this and of
family history that it is a sort of Italian Peerage of the middle
ages ; while the sweeter Tasso frequently emblazons for us the
shields of the Christian knights in Jerusalem Delivered ; and, com-
ing to the two greatest poets of our own day and language, the
laureates of England and America, we find them well acquainted
with the resources and charm of heraldry. Tennyson even exer-
cises his imagination in producing an original achievement :

"And Merlin lock'd his hand in hers and said:
' I once was looking for a magic weed,
And found a fair young squire who sat alone,
Had carved himself a knightly shield of wood,
And then was painting on it fancied arms,
Azure, an eagle rising or, the sun
In dexter chief ; the scroll ' I follow fame.' "

Nearer home our own Longfellow, with no republican scruples,
gives us a delightful bit of New England heraldry in his Tales of

a Wayside Inn :

" A justice of the peace was he,
Known in all Sudbury as ' The Squire/
Proud was he of his name and race,
Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh,
And in the parlor, full in view,
His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed,
Upon the walls in colors blazed ;
He beareth gules upon his shield,
A chevron argent in the field,
With three wolfs' heads, and for the crest
A wyvern part-per-pale addressed
Upon a helmet barred ; below
The scroll reads, ' By the name of Howe.' "

Every traveller in Europe will find his local knowledge and
pleasure increased by some acquaintance with those symbols and

1 88 1.] SOME USES OF HERALDRY. 527

strange devices which mark the gates and walls of famous cities,
the feudal towers and historical castles, the ruined abbeys and
celebrated cathedrals that he may visit ; nor shall he feel his pa-
triotism or his manhood less at sight of the embroidered banners
of the Garter knights at Windsor or of the splendid blazonry in
the Salle des Croisades at Versailles. How picturesque, too, should
he visit Spain, will he find those little old towns of the Biscayan
provinces whose dilapidated houses are adorned with imposing
armorial bearings last remnant of the aristocratic vanity of the
hidalgos or how sad, in his rambles among the nooks and cor-
ners of Old England, to come upon a decayed house of stone,
with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated
shield of arms over the portal in token of antique gentility ! Ar-
morial ensigns handed down from generation to generation are
heirlooms of which the descendants of the first possessors may
feel justly proud, and to whom not unfrequently the ancestral
shield and surname alone remain long after the ancient homestead
has fallen to decay and many a broad acre become the inheri-
tance of strangers, sole reminders to poor gentry

" Of famous men, now utterly unknown,
Yet whose heroic deeds were, in their day,
The theme of loud acclaim."

Perhaps no stronger example could be adduced of the tenacity
of association of ideas than the continued use of armorial ensigns,
lotwithstanding that, as Burke has testified, the days of chivalry
ive departed. There is a pride that " apes humility " ; and
loubtless a certain section of the public believes, or pretends to
;lieve, with more " cant " than candor, that everything in the
shape of rank or distinction is both obsolete and worthless, for-
getting that

" Order and Degrees
Jar not with Liberty, but well consist."

By them heraldry has been stigmatized as the " science of fools
with long memories " ; but we suspect that it is a case of what
Gibbon says of beauty, " which is seldom despised, except by
those to whom it has been refused." Even in republican Ame-
ica, where our people have no crests except those of rude toil, or
ideavor, more or less successful, to rise above their original con-
dition, there is such an increasing demand for armorial bearings
that we are tempted to believe with the Duke of Somerset, who
has recently given the public his impressions of our country, that
we are an aristocratic people living under democratic institutions,

528 SOME USES OF HERALDRY. [Jan.,

and wonder at the Quixotic idea which has possessed some of our
patriots to band together and solemnly repudiate the use of fac-
titious personal distinctions and anti-democratic fashions, and
do their utmost to crush our incipient aristocracy, whether of
wealth or station, which delights in such designations as Excel-
lency, Honorable, and Esquire, and rejoices when it can marry its
daughters to titled foreigners. But so long as our people con-
tinues to assimilate to English tone of thought and habits it will
be impossible, even by legislative enactments, to bring the upper
classes to that happy frame of mind of Sydney Smith, who said,
when somebody asked him for his arms : " The Smiths never had
any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their
thumbs." The use of armorial bearings is too harmless to excite
the fears of any one that it is fraught with danger to society or to
the government, and the only notice the state might take of it
would be, as was once proposed in Congress, to put a tax upon it.
Many instances could be adduced of distinguished men, remark-
able for the simplicity of their character and an entire exemption
from vain ostentation, who have manifested considerable interest
in heraldic and genealogical investigations. Such, among our
own countrymen, were Franklin, Irving, Webster, and Prescott,
by all of whom a reverence for ancestry was felt and acknow-
ledged ; while a greater than these, George Washington, in 1791
very courteously wrote to Sir Isaac Heard, in England, telling
him what he knew of his progenitors in America, and that the
family in Virginia had always used a coat-of-arms.

In all ages men have made use of figures of living animals, of
trees, flowers, and inanimate objects, as symbolical signs to dis-
tinguish themselves in war or denote some particular quality of
their own persons or of their chiefs or their nation. It is clear
from Numbers ii. 2 that the Israelites had distinctive ensigns and
standards, while the dove of the Assyrians, the eagle of the
Romans, and the allegorical emblems depicted on the shields of
the Greeks and Etruscans may all be termed heraldic devices;
and in this heraldry of antiquity even the quality of hereditary
transmission seems, in some cases, to be established. Thus, Virgil
(/Eneid, viii. 657) assigns to Aventinus an insigne paternum upon
his shield ; and a remarkable passage of Suetonius proves the ex-
istence of hereditary family badges with the Romans, for among
the indignities practised by the Emperor Caligula it is related
that he abolished the ancient insignia of some of the noblest fami-
lies (Calig. 35). All visitors to the Vatican and other museums of
Italy will remember the beautiful painted vases which constantly

1 88 1.] SOME USES OF HERALDRY. 529

represent the shields of ancient warriors, displaying such devices
upon them as lions, horses, dogs, wild boars, votive tripods, dol-
phins, serpents, tortoises, and sometimes parts of the human
figure. The resemblance between the use of armorial bearings as
hereditary marks of honor and the Jus Imagmum of the Romans
has been repeatedly noticed. Hence, also, that eminent judge
and jurist, Sir Edward Coke, decides that those are noble who
can produce the family arms of their ancestors : Nobiles sunt qui
arma gentilicia antecessorum suorum prof err e possunt.

Among the savages of North America each tribe or nation
was subdivided into several clans, which had every one its distinc-
tive name, as the Buffalo, the Fox, the Hawk ; and this figure,
called the Totem, was often tattooed on the Indian's body or rude-
ly painted over the entrance of his lodge :

"And they painted on the grave-posts
On the graves, yet unforgotten,
Each his own ancestral Totem,
Each the symbol of his household :
Figures of the bear and reindeer,
Of the turtle, crane, and beaver
Each inverted as a token
That the owner was departed,
That the chief who bore the symbol
Lay beneath in dust and ashes."

Hiawatha, xiv.

Of these symbols of our native tribes, called Totemism, an

erican antiquary, R. C. Taylor, says : " This is Indian heraldry,
as useful, as commemorative, as inspiriting to the red warrior and
his race as that when, in the days of the Crusades, the banner and
the pennon, the device and the motto, the crest and the war-cry
exercised their potent influence on European chivalry." The last
lines from Longfellow will remind the traveller who may have
seen the hatchments hung in front of houses in London, and the
family arms surmounted by a death's head and cross-bones on
bills stuck over the side-walls of churches in Rome, that there
are heraldic indications telling as clearly as in words the sex,
rank, and condition of the deceased.

Heraldry has been styled the " shorthand of history " ; it is
the pictorial chronicle of days gone by, the evidence of gentle
blood, the record of family alliances, the title to hereditary rights.
Its utility to the historian and the architect has been repeatedly
acknowledged, and the use of arms is closely connected with the
tracing of pedigrees, which, to judge by the increasing number

VOL. xxxii. 34

530 SOME USES OF HERALDRY. [Jan.,

of genealogical societies and of annual publications on such mat-
ters in the United States, is almost as minute as if our ancestors
had all been in the Conqueror's train. Human nature is every-
where the same, and in America no less than in Europe a man loves
to know, or to believe, that he is " come of an old family," as the
saying is ; and, indeed, a good lineage is not to be despised. But it
must be confessed that few Americans know anything about their
remote progenitors. A recent American writer insists even that
a grandfather is no longer a social institution ; but a far more dis-
tinguished one has declared his opinion that a nation is nothing
without families by which, of course, he never meant an aristo-
cracy of mere birth, the fact of being, as Lord Chancellor Thur-
low said, " the accident of an accident." He is truly noble

" Who lives to build, not boast, a gen'rous race,
No tenth transmitter of a foolish face ";

for good birth and " the boast of heraldry," unaccompanied by
patriotic services, by cultivation of the mind, by refinement, taste,
and manners, shall save no man from dishonor and contempt :

" The noble blood of Gothic name,
Heroes emblazoned high to fame,

In long array ;

How, in the onward course of time,
The landmarks of that race sublime

Were swept away !
Some, the degraded slaves of lust,
Prostrate and trampled in the dust,

Shall rise no more ;
Others, by guilt and crime, maintain
The scutcheon that, without a stain,

Their fathers bore."

LONGFELLOW, Coplas de Manrique.

In Gothic architecture heraldry is always a beautiful acces-
sory ; and from its earliest existence as an art it is found to be as-
sociated with those imperishable structures which Faith produced
in the middle ages. Gothic monuments, and their more classical
but less vigorous successors of the period of the Renaissance,
abound in every variety of armorial ensigns. St. Peter's at
Rome, Westminster Abbey in London, the cathedrals of Rouen
and of Seville, teem with heraldic ornaments ; and the roof, the
columns, the stained-glass windows, the choir-seats, altars, tombs,
and even the sepulchral slabs in the pavement, have each their
crest, device, or shield of arms. Nor was such a species of orna-
mentation confined to religious architecture. It formed the ex-

;

1 88 1.] SOME USES OF HERALDRY. 531

ternal decoration and interior embellishment of the merchant
palaces of Italy and the baronial castles beyond the Alps. The
canopies of state, the domestic furniture, the gold and silver plate,
were all distinguished by the arms of their noble owners in

" The gorgeous halls, which were on every side
With rich array and costly arras dight."

Evidence of a taste for heraldry meets the traveller in Italy at
every step, and Rome and Florence particularly are crowded
with specimens of the art in every stage of its development.

"Respect for birth," says Hallam, "was hardly ever higher in Europe
than in the fifteenth century, when heraldry, the language that speaks to
the eye of pride and the science of those who despised every other, was cul-
tivated with all its ingenious pedantry, and every improvement in useful
art, every creation in inventive architecture, was made subservient to the
grandeur of an elevated class in society. The burghers in those parts of
Europe which had become rich by commerce emulated in their public dis-
tinctions, as they did ultimately in their private families, the ensigns of pa-
trician nobility."

This passage gives a just idea of the importance attached at
that time to heraldry, in central and northern Italy more than
elsewhere, which, by reason of the extension of trade, were then
placed at the head of civilization and culture in Europe, to which
elevation heraldry contributed its part by tending to soften and
polish the social intercourse of the governing classes, among
whom the exhibition of shields of arms with their numerous
uarterings and differences proofs of matrimonial alliances, of in-
eritance, of patronage, of office, or of succession were as useful
as the tessera consanguinitatis and hospitalitatis had been among
the ancient Latins. The encouragement given to the manufac-
ture of silken housings, embroidered purple and fine linen, rich
tapestry and carpeting inwoven with armorial designs, also in-
creased the comforts and elegance of life, and obliged those who
were anxious to possess insignia of gentility to seek the distinc-
tion that wealth affords by other means than violence and rapine,
while in Germany, France, and England, where tournaments were
most in vogue, the attainment of heraldic honors became a source
of emulation and high-minded endeavor. These honors could be
lost by misconduct. Arms were forfeited or disgraced by false-
hood, killing a prisoner who had called for quarter, oppression of
the poor, treason, disloyalty, and unknightly conduct of whatever
kind ; and in an iron age when prowess in battle was considered
the highest accomplishment, and the right of bearing arms the

532 SOME USES OF HERALDRY. [Jan.,

proudest distinction, the dread of a blot on the escutcheon, or a
reversal of the shield, restrained many a man in his tyrannical
proceedings and curbed in some degree the insolence of power.
Gilbert White, in his Natural History of Selborne, recommends
the study of heraldry to his brother, who proposed writing a
county history, adding that until lately he was not aware how
important that study is to an antiquarian ; and a more recent au-
thor, Professor Innes, in his learned work on Scotland in the
middle ages, after suggesting the great importance of some know-
ledge of heraldry to the student of historical antiquities, observes
that

" For the purposes of family history of topographical and territorial
learning of ecclesiology, of architecture, it is altogether indispensable. . . .
Heraldic emblazonment is mixed up with almost all the fine arts of the
middle ages. In architecture it soon took a prominent place among what
may be called surface ornament not affecting the shape and form, the type
and style of building, but furnishing in infinite variety subjects of embel-
lishment mixed with much of personal interest. If the shield of rich
blazoning, or the cognizance of some old name, covered with dust and dirt,
still creates an interest on the wall of a ruined church or as part of the
tracery of a monumental slab, we may imagine what effect was produced by
the brilliant colors of the old heralds' ' tinctures ' adorning not only the
walls, but repeated in the tiles of pavement and glowing in the gorgeous
coloring of the windows ; when each bearing and difference the square
banner of the knight and the squire's pennon told a universally-under-
stood history of the founders and benefactors of the church, and perhaps
called up some memory of battle or siege, and of honor won in the field or
tourney-yard."

After reading this we are very much surprised to hear the
venerable gentleman who presides over the destinies of art in
Great Britain tell us seriously that we must condemn all heral-
dic decoration, so far as beauty is concerned ; although he admits
of insculpted or painted arms that, for motives of family pride or
local significance, they may be introduced in prominent parts of
a building. When lecturing us on common sense and courtesy
(Seven Lamps of A rchitecture] he must have been thinking of the
vain Earl of Bute who had even the leaden water-pipes of his
castle ornamented each with eight large coronets, or of the gouty
old peer in " Mariage a la Mode " who put a coronet on his
crutch /

In the illuminations of the middle ages heraldry has a place
of honor, and in the present revival of that early art it ought to
occupy a position of corresponding prominence. Heraldry was
also highly esteemed in those times as a becoming decoration for

1 88 1.] SOME USES OF HERALDRY. 533

personal costume. Knights in war wore their arms emblazoned
on the surcoat or outer garment thrown over the armor (to pre-
serve it from rust and soiling) whence arose the term coat-of-arms
or embroidered on their mantles when they assembled for the
pageantries of peace ; and ladies also are frequently represented
in stained-glass windows, monumental brasses, and illuminated
genealogies, bearing heraldic devices on their apparel and kirtles.
While the adoption of such devices was originally left to indi-
vidual choice, as heraldry began, between the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries, to be reduced to a science more attention was
paid to the propriety of the armorial ensigns borne and to what
manner of persons bore them. Soon it was forbidden to assume
arms at one's own pleasure ; they must have been received from
the sovereign, or conferred by military commanders for signal
acts of valor, or given by over-lords to those who held estates
under them. Heralds' Colleges, with their stringent rules and
minute attention to the least details of the art, were established
during the fifteenth century all over Europe. Before that ordi-
nances bearing on the matter were issued from time to time by
the court to regulate disputes between rival claimants and re-
press abuses. King Henry V., in the year 1417, put forth a pro-
clamation to deter any one from using arms not derived from
their ancestors or from a lawful grant ; an exception, however,
was made by the gallant prince in favor of those who had fought
with him at Agincourt, as he promised in his speech before the
battle :

" We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition."

Henry V., act. iv. sc. iii.

The Heralds of England, who before had been attached to the
household of the sovereign or of some other exalted personage,
were incorporated as a fraternity in the year 1483 by King Rich-
ard III. They now occupy a fine establishment in London, which
is the recognized headquarters of English heraldry, and are pre-
sided over by the Earl Marshal, whose office is hereditary in the
great Catholic family of the Howards of Norfolk. It has been said
that the fees derived from America constitute one of the most
important sources of the revenue of that aristocratic institution.
The oldest document in the archives of the college is a roll of
arms of about A.D. 1250. These rolls of arms are long, narrow
strips of parchment, on which were written lists of the names and

534 SOME USES OF HERALDRY. [Jan.,

titles of certain noblemen, with full description of their armorial
insignia.

Much of the learning of ecclesiastics in the- middle ages of
those particularly whose " studie was but litle on the Bible " was
devoted to the production of elaborate genealogies for the found-
ers or benefactors of religious houses. A knowledge of heraldry
enabled the clerk to illumine the pedigree of his lord, and the
chaplain to direct the fresco-painter employed by some mighty
baron,

" In whose capacious hall,
Hung with a hundred shields, the family-tree
Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate king."

An Italian Jesuit, Silvestro Pietra Santa, who flourished in the
first half of the seventeenth century, is gratefully remembered by
all heralds for his ingenious method, since universally adopted, of
representing the different colors of blazonry by lines and dots ac-
cording to a few easy rules. The importance of such a simple
discovery to the lapidary, the sculptor, and the engraver, who
could thus show with extreme accuracy, and in a language which
was the same in all countries, what were the particular tinctures
of a coat-of-arms a matter of ten of importance to the genealogist
and of interest to the antiquarian can hardly be overestimated.
It is a melancholy circumstance that the first instance known of
the use of this invention in England was on the engraving of the
death-warrant of King Charles I., to which the seals of the regi-
cides are represented attached.

The national heraldic corporation of Scotland is called the
Lyon Office. Its chief is called Lord Lyon, King of Arms. Four
Lyons have belonged to the celebrated family of the Lindsays of
the Mount, whose representative, by a singular freak of fortune
or wwfortune for the estate of the Mount became decayed and
alienated from its ancient owners is now settled in republican
America.

Towards the middle of the fifteenth century the use of coat-
armor was to a great extent relinquished by the Italian leaders
and condottieri, perhaps because they so often were mere soldiers of
fortune with no family arms. Instead of these they caused cer-
tain emblems to be painted on their shields and illustrated by
short classical quotations, and are alluded to by Milton, " not
sedulous "

" To describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds ;

1 88 1.] SOME USES OF HERALDRY. 535

Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament."

Paradise Lost, b. ix.

Tournaments were combats of honor in which persons of
noble birth engaged to gain reputation for strength and courage.
This species of dangerous amusement began in Germany, and
was one of the means of introducing and popularizing heraldry.
Several days before the lists were opened the shields of the
knights, with their helmets, wreaths, crests, and war-cries painted
thereon, were hung upon the barriers surrounding the field of
action, and guarded on either side by real wild beasts securely
chained, or by savage-looking men-at-arms drawn from the re-
motest estates of the contestants. In course of time inoffensive
pages and retainers were dressed to represent wild-men, sirens,
beautiful women, angels even, or clothed in skin, or scales, or
feathers to look like lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, hounds, dol-
phins, eagles, owls, and other flesh, fish, or fowl. These heraldic
conceits seem to have introduced the later custom of represent-
ing the arms of noblemen with such " supporters " on either side
of the escutcheon. When the candidates for the honors of the
tournament approached the lists a trumpet was sounded or a
horn blown to announce their arrival to the heralds, who then
came forward to receive their names and rank and examine their
armorial bearings. From this circumstance so many German
families use horns for additional crests about their helmets over
their arms, to show that some ancestor had been admitted to take
part in a tournament, which is looked upon as a proof of old no-
bility. As early as the tenth century the penalty visited upon a
pretender to nobility, or upon a knight whose arms had been dis-
graced, yet who presumed to offer himself at the lists, was to set
him astraddle of the barrier or fence surrounding the field, whence
arose the vulgar punishment of riding a fellow on a rail.

While the vast majority of coats-of-arms used by persons even
with the clearest right to them are of no earthly interest outside
of their own family circle, it must be acknowledged that there
are some so closely connected with the annals of an entire people
that they compose a class apart an historic heraldry. Who, for
instance, sees the achievement of the Duke of Norfolk without
riveting his gaze on the " Bleeding Lion of Surrey " which figures
therein as an honorable augmentation? the royal shield of
Scotland, having a demi-lion only, which is pierced through the
mouth with an arrow charged upon the silver bend of the earlier
arms through a grant to Thomas Howard and his descendants

536 SOME USES OF HERALDRY. [Jan.,

to commemorate the decisive victory won by him on Septem-
ber 9, 1513, when King James IV. was slain on

" Flodden's fatal field,
When shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear,
And broken was her shield."

Or who can look upon the Douglas arms in the quarterings of
the Duke of Hamilton, and not be forcibly reminded by the
" Bloody Heart " of the devotion of the " Good Sir James," who,
while on his way to the Holy Land to deposit the heart of King
Robert Bruce at the sepulchre of our Lord in Jerusalem, accord-
ing to the dying monarch's request, diverged into Spain to help
King Alphonso against the infidels? Knowing the origin of
such figures in the arms of these great historical families, we
insist that the shields of a Howard or a Douglas should fire the
imagination of every man who still retains some reverence for
the past, and is conscious of heroic thoughts and a sense of solemn
sacrifice.

It was allowed by the laws of heraldry to assume without
further license the arms of an enemy slain or captured in battle ;
but the custom never found much favor in England, although
there are some curious instances of it. Thus, in 1628, at the first
reduction of Canada, Sir David Kirke having taken prisoner the
French admiral, De la Roche, ever after used his arms along with
his own paternal coat. Our British ancestors brought with them
to America the tastes and distinctions of their time and country.
In all the colonies we find evidences of social rank and of the
use of armorial ensigns. A certain number of the first settlers
undoubtedly brought with them their seals of arms which were in
common use by them.

It is one of the curiosities of heraldry relating to America
that Greenland is the only country that gives arms of dominion
to any European monarch ; and we notice as a shocking anomaly
that Sir John Hawkins, who was the first Englishman to engage
in the slave-trade (1562), received Queen Elizabeth's approval of
that odious traffic in the permission to use as his crest " a demy-
moor in his proper color, bound with a cord." How noble beside
such a debasing blazon does appear the escutcheon granted by
a Catholic sovereign, Charles V., to Sebastian del Cano, who
brought back to Spain the shattered remains of the first expedi-
tion around the world : argent, a terrestrial globe azure , with the
motto : Primus circumdedisti me !

There is no authoritative heraldry in America, because there

sis

1 88 1.] SOME USES OF HERALDRY. 5357

is no legalized family rank. Yet there is no objection to a gen-
tleman's use of heraldic symbols, if he can be satisfied that he is
entitled to them by descent from an ancestor who inherited the
same from another generation. As a rule, people are too easily
satisfied, and we agree with Davis, in his Day-Star of Ameri-
can Freedom, where he writes of the early settlers of Maryland :
" Most of the persons whose arrival is sketched in this appendix
held the right, I presume, to a coat-of-arms. But not knowing
the fact, I have said nothing, well assured how many spurious
escutcheons are now used in this country, and fully aware of the
danger of running into very gross mistakes." It is a piece of im-
pertinence for any one to use as family arms what the seal-en-
graver or coach-painter may attribute to him on mere similarity
of name ; for " Not every Stewart," says an old Scotch proverb,
"is cousin to the king." The application is obvious. Let those
who have newly risen to wealth and social position, no matter
what their name, be content with a monogram.

Nevertheless, there is and must be in this country, which in-
herits the associations of the Old World, such a thing as official
heraldry, of which a proof are the arms of the United States
over our consulates and legations abroad, and the arms of the
several States of the Union, so gaudily emblazoned in the latest
edition of Webster's Unabridged ! The devices on the shoulder-
straps of army and navy officers the most singular of which is
the recently authorized " black velvet with a silver shepherd's
crook " ! for chaplains, which would be described as sable, a pas-
toral staff in fesse argent partake of the nature of heraldry. If a
ing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well ; but the speci-
ens that we see of American heraldry too often betray the de-
signer's ignorance of the symbolism of the art, and even of its
technical elements. A reference to the coats-of-arms of all the
States, of which a superb collection was made in 1876 by the
chief of the historical department of the Centennial, showed that no
State insignia had then been fixed by statute, and that the designs
used have depended very much on the fancy of individual dabblers
in heraldry. With one or two exceptions they are mere daubs
coarse sign-pictures inferior as works of the imagination, and
not superior in point of execution to the paintings of the ancient
Mexicans. Leaving out Maryland, whose arms are those of
Lord Baltimore, the first Proprietor, the only arms of apparently
original composition which manifest some congruity of thought
and accuracy of design are those of Connecticut argent, three
grape-vines vert two and one, and for motto, Qui transtulit susti.

538 ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL! s LIFE. [Jan.,

net. Here we have " allusive association," which is the very soul
of heraldry, Connecticut having originally formed part it is
supposed of the \inland discovered by the Northmen in the
tenth century, and " reference " to the settlements of the (later)
colony by immigrants transplanted, so to say, from their native
soil, but trusting in Divine Providence to support them and ren-
der them fruitful as the vine. The arms of Massachusetts, too,
are passable ; the crest and motto having been assumed in com-
pliment to Algernon Sydney, who was a powerful protector in
England of the early colony, a personal friend of many of the
first settlers, and in harmony with their political principles. The
motto is part of some lines written by him, with no little audacity,
in the album of the University of Copenhagen in 1659 :

"... Manus haec inimica tyrannis
Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem"

The red man, in the same arms, slowly retreating before the
advance of civilization, and the hint at Bishop Berkeley's famous
line,

" Westward the star of empire takes its way,"

are also very good.

ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL'S LIFE.

EVERY one knows the " governess line " of story-telling.
There is, first, the death of the heroine's father (usually sudden,
sometimes tragical) ; secondly, the discovery that not only has he
taken nothing with him, but that he has left nothing behind him ;
thirdly, the immediate disappearance from the scene of every
decent Christian except one (generally the family physician);
fourthly, the installation of the heroine, through his influence, as
governess in some distant and hitherto unheard-of family ; fifthly
and lastly, the slow or swift but sure subjugation to her charms of
the Great Mogul of the story, and the orthodox conclusion a
happy and prosperous marriage. Such is the outline, varied occa-
sionally in minor points, and filled in, according to the color of the
heroine's hair and the number of her inches, in the stately, kit-
tenish, pathetic, severely simple, or passionate and overwhelming
style. We who read novels and I fear our name is legion

1 88 1.] ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL 's LIFE. 539

are too, too familiar with each and all of them. Charlotte Bronte
might possibly have lacked the courage to finish her portraits had
she foreseen the caricatures, silhouettes, chromos, and "cheap
and nasty " wood -cuts to which they led. The idea was original,
and at the same time easy to grasp to the sorrow of the reading
public.

Nevertheless, there are governesses and governesses. Alice
Luttrell was one of another sort than the stereotyped. She was
young and pretty and light-hearted. She had a father, and a
mother, and a home, brothers and sisters, hosts of relatives, and,
fortunately, but one of them ever nee*ded a physician. She had
not, however, in these hard times, quite as much money as would
have made her perfectly comfortable, mentally as well as physi-
cally. She had not enough to do at home to keep her out of
mischief, and lacked the means to pay for lessons, or purchase
wools, or bestow in charity. There were children younger than
herself, and an invalid brother many years older. The idea came
to her one day that it might be as well for her to work in the hey-
day of life as to play ; and quite charmed with the thought, she
held it up before her parents and her little world in her own
bright, winsome, persuasive manner, until every one agreed with
her and every one helped it on notably the Lawrence-Lees,
whose eldest daughter had been her " intimate " at school. They
wrote eloquent letters to the county full of Lees, Lawrences,
Lawrence-Lees, and Lee-Lawrences whom they had left, with re-
ret, to plunge into the busier and more moneyed life of a great
ity, and these letters led up to the result upon which Alice had
t her heart namely, a situation. In the pleasant warmth and
ightness of an October day she bravely set forth upon her
ch for fortune, a little tearful, a very little fearful, but hope-
ul, resolute, and, for a girl of twenty, philosophical. If things
were pleasant she would be glad ; if they were unpleasant she
would bear it as long as she could, and then there was home
and nothing worse than she had known, at least.

But " things " were pleasant, very pleasant indeed. Mr. and
Mrs. Courtney, of The Woods, were kindly, pleasant, gentle peo-
ple, who had lost the daughter upon whom the hopes of their
old age were set, and between whom and the two younger chil-
dren there seemed, without her, a wide stretch of bare, dull life
they shrank from travelling again. Miss Luttrell filled the gap
and made a sunny ray of light, through whose medium they
viewed the motes and fluttering, treasured worthlessness of the
little lives so far behind them. She taught and worked, and rode

540 ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL'S LIFE. [Jan.,

and drove, was petted and scolded mildly, treated with defer-
ence and real kindness, and proved herself worth more than she
had really hoped. It was a never-ending lesson, if an uncon-
scious one. There were many young people in the neighbor-
hood, with whom she mingled on the best of terms, and whom she
studied more carefully and understood the better from the very
fact of their newness and local peculiarities. The being thrown
on her own resources, too, was good for her, and in all respects
she had known her own needs best and gained from following
her own inspirations.

In all respects save one.' There was no Catholic church with-
in ten miles of The Woods, and the whole country-side were Pro-
testants. How did it happen that a Catholic girl, of Catholic
family, had placed herself in such a position ? Truth to tell, they
had given the matter but little thought. Accustomed all their
lives to the convenience of a city home, living that strangely fa-
miliar yet wonderfully-removed life of so many upper-class Ca-
tholics with their Protestant friends and relatives, it had seemed
quite in the order of things that she should take just the situa-
tion which offered, without a question as to relative faiths. They
had, indeed, asked if there was a church and a priest, and been
answered : " Oh ! yes, not far off " ten miles counting as mere
nothing to the ready horsemen of that section. But ten miles,
practically, to a strange young girl in a strange household proved
equivalent to ten times ten in the regular discharge of her duty.
Six weeks had slipped rapidly away, Christmas was near at hand,
and the time had never come when it suited for Miss Luttrell to
go over to St. Michael's. The habit of talking of it, of planning
it, had been formed at once, but Alice was certainly a careless
little thing, and laid a wonderful mosaic floor of good intentions,
which had a downward slope, at least. It was only carelessness
born of youth and inexperience, however, not deliberate and
hardened. One morning she rose from her prayers with a sud-
denly strengthened determination.

" O Mr. Courtney ! " she exclaimed, meeting him in the hall
and speaking with the true Virginian inflection she had caught,
" do you know, I have been an awfully wicked girl. I really must
go over to church. When will it suit, please ? "

The old gentleman looked down at her with a quizzical smile
beneath which she blushed. Some instinct told her a truth be-
yond dispute. Protestants can understand but one thing less than
the fact that a reasonable being is a Catholic at all, and that is the
fact that he or she is a bad Catholic.

i88i.] ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL' s LIFE. 541

" Whenever you like, Miss Alice," he said placidly, and
paused.

" Well oh ! I don't know when they have the church open.
Mrs. Courtney says she thinks it is not every day, nor even every
Sunday. And it is too far to ride on a chance before breakfast."

" Before breakfast ! " exclaimed Mrs. Courtney, who had joined
them. Then Alice .had to explain and lay bare certain holy
things to eyes which mocked politely. She grew hot and uncom-
fortable.

" I tell you what ! " exclaimed the old gentleman suddenly,
" you had better write a note to Dr. Lingard. He lives on The
Mount, and knows ail about it. He and his family are the best
part of the church, in fact a splendid man, too, and a lovely
family. You know best what you wish to learn, my dear Miss
Alice; so just write it, and I will send it over."

And out of the few lines Alice wrote in her prettiest style
grew the best reading Time gave of her life.

There came, in a day or two, a note from Mrs. Lingard a
Virginia note of cordial and yet stately hospitality. Christmas
was near at hand, with its attendant holy festivities. Dr. Lingard
begged that Miss Luttrell would make her home with them for
a few days at least, when they would be most happy to explain
to her the simple workings of a country-church life not, alas !
blessed with the advantages of that to which she was accustomed.
The Courtneys, who seemed quite relieved at the prospect of
tting through the mysterious rites so easily, were equally ac-
stomed to the free-handed invitation. So Alice accepted it
with thanks for Christmas Eve, the following Saturday.

It proved to be a soft, gray day, snow lying everywhere in
wet and heavy masses, the jagged, black rocks breaking up from
it on the steep mountain-sides of the narrow valley, and the swift,
black river rushing over its shallow slopes far below the train on
which she was speeding towards the little town of Sharon Junc-
tion. Mr. Courtney had placed her in old Colonel Brittan's
charge for the short ride, and she enjoyed it intensely. The
colonel was full of old-time compliments and quaint courtesies
that in him had a grace and beauty of their own, spite of his
well-worn coat and world-worn old face. When they reached the
x Junction Alice looked along the bare, rough platform with some
slight tremor at the thought of her utter strangeness, but there
was no one there to meet her. The colonel instantly surmised
the cause Dr. Lingard's detention at the bedside of a patient
and offered her his arm to conduct her to the house.

542 ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL' s LIFE. [Jan.,

" This way, Miss Luttrell, if you please. It is much the short-
est walk, though a little steep. You have not trodden such pave-
ments often, I am sure."

Indeed she had not. An abrupt turn from the platform, and
a hundred yards of rough stone path, brought them to a flight of
steep stone steps between the mountain-side and the town houses
of the first street. Alice climbed them in fear and trembling, so
slimy, pasty, and treacherous was the snow upon them, but they
led her safely to the second terrace.

The whole town seemed to cling to the face of the mountain
in some mysterious manner. Houses six and seven stories high
on one street faced the next above it with a three-story front of
much superior aspect ; and to call on the people who lived just
under one's daily tread a walk of some half a mile in two or three
directions would be necessary. The street they had come out
upon led between a high, smooth, rocky precipice, on which stood
the church, and a row of plain but neat and substantial old stone
houses.

" This is Dr. Lingard's house," said the colonel, turning in at
an open door on a level with the street, and treading the polished
oak floor with such a ringing step that Alice paused embarrassed.
" Come in, come in, Miss Luttrell. Have you not had time to
learn our fashion of ever-open doors and free entrance for our
friends ? Ah ! madam, your most obedient. Allow me to pre-
sent myself in the capacity of guide to Hebe in the person of
Miss Luttrell. Miss Merrihew, Mrs. Lingard's sister."

The lady he addressed and introduced came out of a distant
door and hurried to them, with an outstretched hand and a wel-
coming smile that was like a benediction. Alice thought her, on
the spot, the most angelic-looking creature she had ever seen,
and few people realized that Elizabeth Merrihew was not beauti-
ful. The expression of her lovely because so loving eyes, the
purity of her sweet, sad mouth, the soft shadow of her plainly-
knotted auburn hair belonged more to a picture or a poem than
to a middle-aged, unmarried woman in a mountain town of bust-
ling America in the nineteenth century. Her very dress, beauti-
ful in its adaptation to herself, was of another age and place. It
was of a rich, deep purple in color, soft and heavy in material,
perfectly plain and simple in make, a rolling collar and cuffs of
black velvet alone ornamenting it. There was not even the tra-
ditional " narrow band of snowy linen " or "soft fall of priceless
lace." Her slender throat and wrists were delicate enough to
stand the trying test of the black, from which they were not

1 88 1.] ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL! s LIFE. 543

separated by any softening material. And yet one felt instinc-
tively she dressed as it happened, and gave no precious time or
heaven-due thought to herself.

" Miss Luttrell, I am truly glad to see you. My brother
charged me to excuse him to you with my first breath, for he
deeply regretted the necessity which called him away this after-
noon. I must add his thanks to Colonel Brittan for taking his
place, also." She turned as she spoke, still holding the girl's
small band, towards the colonel, who stood before her, hat in
hand and reverence in his attitude. Alice saw and felt that his
manner was different and more real than she had ever seen it ;
saw and felt, with a young girl's impressible fancy, that this
woman was not quite as other women in the eyes of those who
knew her. She watched her closely and with growing interest
while he " made his compliments," as the old servants expressed
it, and took his leave. She was glad to follow her quietly to the
upper drawing-room, and have her all to herself for a few min-
utes. What was there in her that so charmed ? Who was she ?
What had she done or suffered ? There was a mark upon her
every one must see, but who could read?

" My sister is in her room to-day with an attack of headache ;
not very serious, but we begged her to keep quiet in anticipation
of to-morrow. The girls are at the church finishing the few at-
tempts at Christmas adornings we have in our power. I waited,
thinking you might wish to go over at once. You have been
away from church so long, poor child ! "

There was not a shadow of reproach in her tone, but a world
of tender sympathy. One might speak to a child long parted
from its mother, or a bride separated from her bridegroom, in
just such sweet, mournful notes if any voice but hers could
compass them. Alice felt her face blush and her heart shrink
with a sudden shame at her own want of the sense of longing
for the beloved Presence they expressed. Saints had known it ;
but surely if this sweet, every-day woman had it too, she was
very wicked to be without it. She rose without a word, and
went out at the side of her new conscience. Elizabeth was si-
lent, too, but it was a happy quietness that had as many voices as
speech. They climbed another set of steep stone steps, and went
in, through a tiny arched porch, to the small white, intensely quiet
church. There were unfinished wreaths about the windows and
pillars, laurel crosses over the Stations on the walls, and some
light, graceful bunches in the various turns of the gallery. A
few young people were swiftly and silently busy here and there

544 ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL' s LIFE. [Jan.,

about the altars, and an occasional soft sound of voices came
through the open door of the sacristy. The star-like gleam of
the altar-lamp seemed to leap higher as Alice glanced towards it,
and the whole Catholic instinct of her nature (thank God, no na-
ture lacks it utterly !) rose at its bidding. She followed Elizabeth
to the railing under it, and knelt down with a fuller heart than
she had ever known before. Privileges too lightly esteemed
grew suddenly most valuable to her, and even in that first half-
hour she wondered how she could have parted with them so
easily. Presently she slipped away into a quiet corner, and sat
down with her rosary and her prayer-book, penitent but hopeful,
and resolute of amendment. God had been very good to Alice
Luttrell when he endowed her with that bright, straightforward
nature which only needed to see in order to do.

She spent a long, blessed time there. It was so good to be
" at home " once more, to see the altar and the simple, pure-look-
ing ornaments and types on all sides of her. Everything seemed
so holy and the girls were so reverent. Miss Merrihew came at
last to dress the altar herself, moving to and fro about it with a
step and manner hushed and timid with awe, yet loving and
eager. The others had finished, and were kneeling near the con-
fessional. Alice went slowly out to join them, and a fair-haired
girl drew her gently into the place beside her. Then all was
still, and the shadows deepened and deepened around them for a
long hour.

It was Belle Lingard who had welcomed Alice to the sacra-
ments. When they went out into the star-lit night she introduc-
ed herself with a gentle cordiality which at once removed all re-
straint. Another little creature joined them in the darkness, her
sister Bess, and they stood quietly aside while the others went
away with softly-spoken good-nights.

" We are waiting for Aunt Elizabeth," she said in explana-
tion. " We must go home by the hill-path. The steps are too
slippery on such a night."

And when Miss Merrihew came they all went silently down
the winding path, which seemed very long to Alice, and quietly
opened the hall-door as though the hushed reverence of the
church followed them even there. Dr. and Mrs. Lingard came
into the hall together to welcome their guest, but they, too, were
like those who wait some solemnly happy hour. Alice had never
known anything like it. The true Christmas spirit seemed to
enfold the house with a tranquil blessing that was peace indeed.

And so it was throughout the night and day so inexpressibly

1 88 1.] ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL 's LIFE. 545

dear to so many hearts. Elizabeth's gentle greeting woke Alice
in the early, early morning to join them at the first Mass, and the
little church was filled, although many of the worshippers had
crossed the mountains and forded the rivers. It was wonderfully
beautiful and solemn before the altar the more that Alice never
lost the sense of the wide, dark, starred night without above the
hills where shepherds waited even then. When they came out
the sun was just rising far up the eastern valley, a rosy, spark-
ling, glinting channel towards it, upon whose level floor the river
made a shining path. Westward the mountains stretched into
the blue, clear shadows of the lingering night, and to the right
the narrower valley of the Sharon lay cool, and white, and still as
the abode of death. Alice laid a detaining hand on Elizabeth's
arm without a word, and Elizabeth, understanding, folded it in
hers.

" It never seemed so lovely to me before," said the young
girl presently. " The world He loved ! It looks like it, doesn't
it? Oh! every Christmas is a happy day, but this is such a real
Christmas everywhere."

" Even the pines and the laurel grow visibly to adorn," said
Elizabeth. " Yes, every Christmas is a happy day indeed."

" Yet I have heard quite good people speak of it with sadness,
and say everything was so changed to them through sorrow
and care they dreaded its coming. I cannot understand that. I
think Christmas will always be the same to me always ! Unless
I grow very wicked, that is ; and I do hope I will not ! "

She said the last sentence so earnestly, yet so timidly, that
Elizabeth looked at her with a tenderness born of understanding.

"Dear child, I hope not!" she said fervently. ''And yet
we must never forget how easily some do fall away. It needs
the life of the sanctuary for most of us a home at the very altar-
steps.'

" Like yours," said Alice.

" Yes, like mine. I have been assigned to the happiest lot I
ever imagined. Duty and necessity both agree with my desires.
My health and my purse both forbid another home than this be-
neath the eyes of the church."

It was almost literally so. For onlythe narrow street lay be-
tween the windows of her " upper chamber " and the gable wall on
the brow of the rock. Late that night, after a busy, quiet, happy
day, Alice sat with her over her fire, pouring out her full young
heart into the mild, searching light of those pure eyes. The fire
burned low, and across the way, through parted curtain and

VOL. xxxii. 35

546 ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL' s LIFE. [Jan.,,

Gothic arch, the lamp before the Blessed Sacrament glowed like
a jewel from those mystical foundations or those matchless por-
tals of the Heavenly City. Elizabeth's heart was kindled with
the deathless flame it typified. She lived for the glory of God.
She had given herself to him utterly, and had won the blessing of
perfect peace. Upon every life that touched hers she left the
impress of her intense devotion, her single-minded, Christ-centred
intention. The household yielded and went with her uncon-
sciously ; those who scoffed at religion believed in hers ; those
who neglected it felt for themselves, when in her presence, the
same yearning pity she would have felt had she known their inner
life ; those who were comfortably puffed up with a consciousness
of progress in holy things grew thankfully humble in view of her
unobtrusive, unconscious earnestness. For it was unconscious.
God had given her " perfect peace," and that comes alone from
entire forgetfulness of self in him. Alice Luttrell, brought, as
God willed, to her feet in a decisive moment of life, moved her to
loving eagerness, and Inspired Wisdom used the lips upon which
his seal was laid for words that burned his meaning into the
girlish heart. It was not much she said, but the way she said it !
She spoke not of things we " ought " to believe and love, not of
a life we " ought " to live, not of an experience saints have had
and we are willing they should have it instead of us but of a real,
living, every-day union and consecration, of a "fellowship with
Christ" in a sense Alice longed to know. Blessed Elizabeth
Merrihew ! How many, many times she woke that tender thrill
in others which is a divine envy ! How wonderful the unwritten
record, upon the yielding hearts she won, of her reality !

Alice went to sleep in her little " stranger's room " with a
glow and warmth of feeling all about her that made her faith a
new thing. She woke with the sense of " something good " to
come, and a strong determination to hold to her new lesson.
She went home to The Woods that morning, and took up her
duties with an elevated standard by which to judge of their ful-
filment. She must be real and true, she told herself. No more
little shams of hard work to earn a lazy hour of self-indulgence.
No more half-done tasks, with a comfortable consciousness that
" nowadays " people did not expect as much of one as they used
in the time of the saints. The time of the saints ! How far off it
used to seem ! An indefinite " dark age," very uncomfortable and
impossible for her ? Ah ! no. It was not removed from her by
one day ; it was beating out the moments with the pulsing of a
heart she had felt against her own ; it was wearing, drop by drop,

1 88 1.] ONE CHRISTMAS IN ALICE LUTTRELL'S LIFE. 547

a record upon the face of eternity's vast triumphal arch with the
blood that reddened the cheeks her own reverent lips had pressed.
How could she hold back now ? An earnest nature lay beneath
the careless expression of herself she had as yet known for her
best, and Alice Luttrell grew rapidly toward the light.

She went once and again to St. Michael's on The Mount, and
then she was called home to her mother's death-bed. Afterwards
she felt her place was at home. The wants she had labored to
supply were dead within her, and from their graves a blessed
troop of spirits rose, bearing her with them. The Courtneys
missed her greatly and kept up a loving intercourse with her
that proved her worth. Two years later she went down to them
on a visit, and as she mounted the stone steps of St. Michael's
with eager pleasure on her first Sunday the bell struck the first
deep knell of a departed soul. The curtains of those upper win-
dows were closely drawn ; Elizabeth's place at the altar-steps was
empty. Startled, and yet chiding her trembling fear, Alice bent
her thoughts upon the duty of the moment, and heard Mass with
tender thankfulness upon the spot where it was first revealed to
her in all its wondrous power and sweetness, so far as human be-
ing may grasp it. When it was over she learned her loss. Eliza-
beth Merrihew had died the death of His beloved.

" But for that blessed Christmas visit I would have missed
her out of my life," thought Alice, kneeling by her silent, beauti-
ful form. " But I could not ! God meant it always that we
should meet, and she should teach me such wonderful things.
Oh ! what a thought. If only in the future some one is coming to-
wards me I am to mean as much for as she did for me ! To
glorify God every day and all day, to show it in one's face, to tell
it in one's tones ! she did this. One could never think of such a
life as anything but beautiful, and wonderful, and grand. Dear
Elizabeth ! the saints welcome you."

Yes, she was right ! To live such a life, to be a living flame
amid the dust and ashes of to-day, how beautiful, how wonder-
ful, how grand indeed ! Thanks be to God ! there are others
than Elizabeth Merrihew upon the circling hills, in the busy val-
leys, beside the rushing streams, and even in our bustling marts,
for whom Christ is a living presence, and Christmas an ever-
new festival of the birth of deathless love.

54* THE TINTAMARRE. [Jan.,

THE TINTAMARRE *

"Not* Maitre,\ this is the Tintamarre

Of the village of Cormeray."
So spoke a sunburnt campagnard

By the Beauron's winding way.
From hand to hand, from voice to voice,

Five hundred years, men say,
It has summoned the weary to rejoice
At the death of the worker's day :
Ha ro o !
Gilles, Jacquot.

Dieu pardoint au bon, Comte Thibaut !
Ha ro o !
Marthe, Margot.

Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut,
Au tout bon Comte de Blois !

At the first sweet sound of the Vesper bell

The harvester drops the hay ;
And leaving the last tree where it fell,

The wood-cutter turns away.
Then he thinks how his fathers' fathers toiled

From dawn to dusk of day ;
And he crosses his tools in the Tintamarre,
And he bares his brow to pray :
Ha ro o !
Marc, Michau.

Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut !
Ha ro o !
Jean, Jeannot.

Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut,
Au tout bon Comte de Blois !

* According to a tradition Count Thibaut (of Blois) , taking pity on the lot of those who
toiled in the fields, fixed the hours for beginning and ending the day's work. Every evening
when the bell of the town had rung one could hear the workmen nearest to the town wSrning
their fellow-toilers either by shouts or by the sound of their picks and spades, which they struck
against one another. This was the Tintamarre, and during the confused hum could be heard
the grateful shouts : " God pardon the good Count of Blois ! " A. A. MONTEIL.

t Before the Revolution " Not' Maitre " was the title given by the French peasant to his
superior.

1 88 i.J THE TINTAMARRE. 549

The hurrying ploughman stops half-way

In the furrow turned for grain ;
Alone, he doubles the roundelay,

And with whetstone strikes his wain. *
The ditcher, clearing his dusty throat,

Sends on the same refrain,
Till the wand'ring goatherd, note for note,
Gives the Haro back again :
Ha ro o !
Luc, Arnaud.

Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut !
Ha ro o !
Jules, Guillot.

Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut,
Au tout bon Comte de Blois !

Still the miller reckons his empty sacks

As he stays in the mill alone ;
Still the miserly farmers bend their backs,

For the harvest is all their own.
And ha! ha! ha! " It would grieve a Turk,"

The wiseacres sighing say,

" That the precious daylight God gave for work
Men and women should dance away."
Ha ro o !
Jacques, Renaud.

Dieu pardoint an bon Comte Thibaut !
Ha ro o !
Jeanne, Babeau.

Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut,
Au tout bon Comte de Blois !

Now the fiddler's time of toil begins,

Yet he too gives thanks to Heaven ;
For, old and blind, he hardly wins

The scanty bread of seven.
And clattering after his dancing feet

Come the village children all,
As they mimic the sounds of the Tintamarre

And echo the elders' call :

* In old illuminated manuscripts may be seen peasants painted with a whetstone attached to
their girdle.

550 Louis FRECHETTE. [Jan.,

Ha ro o !

Gilles, Jacquot.
Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut !

Ha ro o !

Marthe, Margot.

Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut,
Au tout bon Comte de Blois !

L'ENVOI.

Still, the grandsires say, does the good Comte's soul

Haunt forest and champ and clos,
Still he claims his lordship on every bole,
And from every furrow thus takes his toll :

" Dieu pardoint au bon Comte Thibaut !
Dieu pardoint au Comte de Blois ! "

LOUIS FRECHETTE.

THERE exists in the United States a general opinion that what
is known as American literature consists solely of books in the
English language; in fact, we are somewhat narrow and, to
borrow a Cockney term, provincial in our complacent conviction
that the United States contain the American people, and that all
human beings on this continent who do not participate in the
blessings secured for us by the Declaration of Independence are
outside, if not barbarous. They are to be pitied, without doubt ;
but why should we add to the pangs that they must feel, but will
not acknowledge, by depriving them of their birthright ? The
Yankee, the Hoosier, and even the members of that decaying
race, the Cracker, would stand amazed at the insolence of any
Mexican that described himself as an American ; and it is hard
for us to understand that Montreal and Quebec are really Ameri-
can cities as regards locale. 'As to the Canadian himself the
Canadian who prides himself on his nationality he is regarded
in the North as almost as good as the average white citizen who
celebrates the Fourth of July ; yet further down there is an un-
warrantable prejudice against the " Kanuck," and until he gives
hostages to society he is regarded with an air of patronage which
must be very galling to a man stiffened by that consciousness of

1 88 1.] Louis FRECHETTE. 551

superiority which close contact with the lordly Britisher always
gives.

In truth, the Princess Louise and Lord Lome although they
may not have been officially informed of the fact lost caste in
truly American eyes by condescending to come to Canada, and it
is suspected that even the prestige of royalty itself has suffered.
The French-Canadians are unaccountably looked on as an inferior
race. It is impossible to say why ; a most diligent search for the
root of this prejudice has brought to light a hypothesis that the
minds of our young republicans were poisoned by the picture
labelled " habitants " in Mitchell's Geography, which, with the
delectable Rollo books, gave lasting impressions to the genera-
tion that " rose " after the fifties. The presumption of Puritanism,
which always assumed that the country was English and Protes-
tant because the Mayflower touched an infinitesimal corner of it,
may have something to do with our firm belief that the only
American is the Anglo-American rejoicing under the folds of
the star-spangled banner, and that there is no American literature
other than that in the English tongue. There is not much, com-
paratively speaking ; but there is enough to claim our attention
and consideration. The Mexican Prieto is not a Longfellow ;
the Canadian Cremazie is not a Boker ; but if Prieto and Crema-
zie wrote in English, and had been discovered in London, we
should have adopted them long ago and laid the deserved number
of bay-leaves at their feet, as we always do when the signal is made
from over the sea. There are greater poets than Prieto in South
America, and greater poets than Cr6mazie in Canada, and of
these is Frechette, though Lenoir, Le May, and Fiset are not
without great merit.

The French-Canadians are by no means the rude and ignorant
race which they have been represented to be. They are, as a
class, more polished, more patriotic and cultured, than their
English-speaking compatriots. Their political representatives
and literary men have not been equalled in number and talent by
those born on the soil of English speech. Canadian patriotism
and literature have been blighted by the colossal shadow of the
mother-country, but the French people in Canada often forced
to assume on their own soil the position of aliens have preserved
that individuality and esprit de corps which make minorities great
and brilliant. They lose something in the quality of their charac-
ter by fixing their eyes too steadily on Paris, and by magnifying
local elections into battles of giants and political squabbles into
world-shaking shocks ; but, on the whole, they are admirable and

552 Louis FRECHETTE. [Jan.,

worthy of respect. They have produced greater men than their
English-speaking brethren, who seem to prefer everything ready-
made from England, and who will, it is hoped, develop more
backbone after they enter the Union. The names of Aubin,
Painchaud, Cauchon, Garneau, Fabre, L'Abbe Casgrain, and
others, which any student of Canadian literature will recall, de-
serve good places in the chapters that the future historian may
devote to American literature.

The English-speaking world has lately come to know more
about Louis Frechette than it ever knew before, although he is
by no means a Marsyas, young and inexperienced, in the art of
poetry. The Forty Immortals who dwell in Paris, and who oc-
casionally permit a gleam from Olympus to fall on some favored
man of the French nation, have cast their eyes towards New
France and have made a new departure. They have set the seal
of their approbation on the work of a foreigner, and, in spite of
M. Camille Doucet's apology to the effect that Canada had been
French and was still French at heart, the fact is undeniable that
the Academy has crowned the work of an American who is a
British subject ; the Academy, which, in spite of the inroads of
the Romantic school into its severe and chaste halls, seldom
crowns anything that is not what Louis Veuillot calls in derision
" ciseleV' Frechette's lyrics and short poems are " cisele* " after
the best French models. If anything he is too dainty in his treat-
ment of themes. In his workmanship he is more like Cellini than
Michael Angelo, though he has been compared to Hugo, more
probably because it is the regular thing to do than because there
is any resemblance. In his Ode to the Mississippi and " La Voix
d'un Exile" he shows evidences of strength and power which de-
note that there is a firm and virile grasp at the handle of the
delicate tool with which he does his carving. There is a pathetic
sadness and tenderness about these verses in " La Voix " which
are more natural to him than the indignant and angry strophes
which ring out in other parts of it :

"Adieu, vallons ombreux, mes campagnes fleuries,
Mes montagnes d'azur et mes blondes prairies,
Mon fleuve harmonieux, mon beau ciel embaume,
Dans les grandes cites, dans les bois, sur les greves,
Ton image toujours flottera dans mes reves,

O mon Canada bien aime.

" Je n'ecouterai plus, dans nos forets profondes,
Dans nos pres verdoyants et sur nos grandes ondes,
Toutes ces voix sans nom qut font battre le cosur ;

1 88 1.] Louis FRECHETTE. 553

Mais je n'entendrai pas non plus, dans ma retraite,
Les accents avines de la troupe en goguette

Qui se marchande notre honneur.

" Et quand je dormirai sur la terre etrangere,
Jamais, je le sens bien, jamais une ombre chere,
Ne viendra, vers le soir, frier sur man tombeau,
Mais je n'aurai pas vu, pour combler la mesure,
Du dernier de nos droits, cette race parjure,

S'arracher le dernier lambeau ! "

It is difficult for us to understand or sympathize with the fiery
bitterness with which the French-Canadians throw themselves
into political quarrels and hold up offences of politicians, which
with us would be only semi-humorous peccadilloes, to be pelted
with a volume of epithets. For instance, it strikes us as singular
to hear an enthusiastic Canadian making a hero of Frechette be-
cause he was defeated in a contest for the seat of L6vis " the
Brooklyn of Quebec." The struggles of a giant which he sus-
tained against his adversary, the deputy Blanchet, " showed that he
was as great an orator as he was a skilful diplomatist, fecund wri-
ter, and brilliant poet "; and with Cremazie who, like Frechette,
dabbled in politics, but was at length compelled, through rather a
hazy piece of trickery in which promissory notes and the bribery
of voters figured, to flee from Canada he is saluted as a perse-
cuted martyr. His misfortune is laid at the door of his enemies,
and the vengeance of the gods called down on everybody but
him, as if he had been a Greek sage ostracized instead of a politi-
cian fleeing from his creditors. " Yes, if walls could speak, how
the pretended great statesmen who since the departure of the un-
happy poet shamelessly walk the pavements of the capital of our
province, their looks proud and haughty, casting defiance, sar-
casm, insult, and even calumny at those who differ from them in
politics, would lower their heads and hide, if the touching drama
we have alluded to could be told without injuring the interests
or disturbing the peace of certain families ! But patience ; history
will speak in its grand and terrible voice, and posterity will be
convinced that those more guilty than Cremazie ought to take
his place, in order, on the sorrowful way of exile which he has
trodden, to save certain persons who deserved much more than he
incarceration or exile ! " The solid assurance which the French-
Canadians evidently possess that history and posterity have a
microscopical knowledge of their affairs is not only consoling,
but it gives them a charming freedom of invective against their
political opponents. Our patriots might imitate it, were they

554 Louis FRECHETTE. [Jan.,

not held back by the fear of making themselves ridiculous, which,
however, is not characteristic of the Franco-Canadian. He is re-
freshingly in earnest in fact, so much in earnest that it some-
times redeems the triviality of his claims and gives a dignity to
the difference between " tweedledum and tweedledee." Neither
Cr6mazie nor Frechette was successful in politics ; and no poet
has been from Dante downwards, notwithstanding M. Darveau's *
grandiloquent effort to prove that poets are the right men to
manipulate those wires which are called, in the language of the
campaign revivalist, " the destinies of the nation.'* Frechette, how-
ever, carries poetry into politics with much effect from a dramatic
point of view, though it can hardly be thought that these elo-
quent stanzas had much effect in the Canadian symposia that
answer to our " primaries."

" Mandat, serment, devoir, honneur, vertu civique,
Rien n'est sacre pour eux ; dans leur rage cynique,
Us baillonnent la loi pour mieux la violer
Puis, a table, viveurs ! Ici, truffe et champagne !
Grisez-vous bien, 6 vous que le boulet du bagne
Devrait faire seul chanceler !

" Ne laissez pas monter le rouge a votre joue :
La pudeur ne vaut rien ; dans la fange et la boue,
Risquez-vous hardiment, fronts hauts, sans sourciller
Accouplez-vous bien vite aux hontes de la rue
Allons ! depuis quand done cette clique repue
A-t-elle peur de se souiller?

" Les traitres ! s'ils gardaient pour eux seuls leurs souillures !
Mais ils ont soufflete nos gloires les plus pures ;
Us ont eclabousse tous nos fronts immortels ;
Aux croyances du peuple ils ont tendu des pieges,
Et dresse leurs treteaux, histrions sacrileges,
Jusque a 1'ombre des autels."

The author of "LaVoix d'un Exile" is a poet not without
honor in his own country, as the reception he met recently after
his return from Paris, where he went to receive the approval of
the Academy, proved. Mes Loisirs, the first notable collection
of poems published by a French-Canadian, appeared in 1865. It
was received with an enthusiasm that proved that French-Cana-
dians are honest in their praise of their poet. It is a charming
volume, full of freshness and marks of talent, and more than de-
serving of the praise which our amiable old poet, Longfellow,

* Nos Gens de Lettre.

1 88 1.] Louis FRECHETTE. 555

gave in acknowledging that he had read it. Later came another
collection, better than the first, more mature, freer from crudi-
ties and marks of inexperience. Pele-Mele contains lyrics that
will never die lovely bits of verse, often too exquisite in their
polish ; cameos set carefully in frames of the most skilful and
delicate work. Sometimes one wishes that his treatment were
less " dainty," but he has the great advantage of a reticence
which shows reserved force ; and though the influence of Hugo
and Lamartine is evident, it does not weaken a muse which, singing
in measured strains, does not forget the mighty roar of its natal St.
Lawrence. Occasionally there is a note that reminds the reader
of De Musset at his best, but there is always a freedom and fresh-
ness about his verse that prevent him from reflecting the worst
of De Musset or the school which had somewhat affected Cre-
mazie, and which Baudelaire founded.

" He is," wrote an enthusiastic Canadian in 1873, "one of our men of
the future. One of our youngest, and at the same time one of the most
versatile, brilliant, and, above all, the best of our poets, Frechette is 10 Vic-
tor Hugo what Turquety is to Lamartine ; and assuredly he has flown high
since he made his first stroke of wing. There is no doubt that he will at-
tain by new efforts the flight of his master. The poetry of Frechette is of
marble and gold, and the muse of the poet must make herculean efforts,
which, however, are not apparent, so great is her grace, in working this im-
mobile surface. His imagination is a chisel that attacks the soulless block,
and with it he easily forms a column or a flower."

In " Alleluia," dedicated to the Abbe Caron, these magnificent
lines occur, full of that sudden force for which dramatic seems too
reak a term, and of the truest religious feeling :

" Chantez, etres criees, sur vos lyres sublimes !
Car le jour du Seigneur est enfin arrive :
Le monde a consomme" le plus grand de ses crimes,
Et le monde est sauvd ! "

I" La Derniere Iroquoise" is a poem of sustained power, and in
aces it recalls the " Centaur " of Maurice de Guerin. " La
uit " and " Le Matin " are two exquisite companion-pieces,
lightly-cut cameos. Some lines in " Sursum Corda," dedicated to
his wife, will give one of those deft and loving touches which are
due less to his art than to his talent, which delights in spontane-
ous and delicate turns and allusions :

" Le soleil etait chaud, la brise caressante,
De feuilles et de fleurs les rameaux etaient lourds
La linotte chantait sa trille eblouissante
Pres du berceau de mousse ou dormaient ses amours."

556 Louis FRECHETTE. [Jan.,

The closing lines express the cheerful philosophy which often
appears in Frechette's poems :

" Au decouragement ouvrons jamais nos portes :
Apres les jours de froid viennent les jours de mai,
Et c'est souvent avec ses illusions mortes
Que le cceur se refait un nid plus parfume."

Fr6chette's poetic talent is undeniable ; but his columns are
rarer than his flowers, which are carved of Canadian snow rather
than marble, and tinged with the light of the aurora-borealis,
ruddy -arid.- bright. Frechette has never found it necessary to as-
sume a^pagan attitude towards religion. He is, judging from his
poems, a-Catholic who is not ashamed of his religion. It is hard-
ly possible, however, that this poet, bred in any of the admirable
colleges of the country, of which Sainte-Anne and Nicolet are ex-
amples, could ever divorce himself from the influence of that
church which fosters alike patriotism and poetry. As a spe-
cimen of Fr6chette's manner and treatment the following lines
are interesting, and full of the combined sweetness, pathos, and
delicate art which give him a charming individuality :

FLEURS FANES.

" Hflas I que j'en aivu mourir de jeunes ftlles."

VICTOR HUGO.
" Dans sa premiere larme elle noya son cceur,"

LAMARTINE.

" Je passais dans les charmilles,

L'ceil au guet,
Un duo de jeunes filles
Gazouillait.

" Blonde et reveuse etait 1'une,

Je crus voir

De 1'autre la tresse brune
Et 1'oeil noir,

" Deux anges, quelle voix douce

Us avaient !

Les pervenches, dans la mousse
En revaient.

" On causait bals et toilettes,

Et trouble,

S'ouvrait 1'oeil des violettes
Dans le ble.

Louis FRECHETTE. 557

" On jasait, c'etait merveille ;

Et je vis

Les oiseaux preter 1'oreille
Tout ravis.

" Moi, cache sous le feuillage,

Dans le thym,
J'ecoutais leur babillage
Argentin.

" Et du vent 1'aile mutine '\\tbO **

Souffle pur t , ^ f . ^

Egrenait leur voix lutine /, .jjjj w
Dans 1'azur.

" J'y revins c'etait 1'automne ;

Dans 1'air froid,
Vibrait le son monotone
Du beffroi.

" Des nuages aux flancs sombres

Et marbres

Refletaient leurs grises ombres
Sur les pres.

" Des sanglots montaient des vagues,

Et parfois,

Se m^laient aux plaintes vagues
Des grands bois.

" Plus de fleurs, plus de charmilles,

Verts reseaux ;
Plus de fraiches jeunes filles,
Plus d'oiseaux.

" La grille etait entr'ouverte

Du jardin

L'avenue etait deserte
Plus d'Eden,

" Ou done etaient les deux anges

Dont la voix

Ici charmait les mfesanges
Autrefois ?

" Helas ! sur ces freles roses,

Tout glace,

Le vent des douleurs moroses
A passe.

" Telle on voit la fleur fauchee

Se fletrir,

L'une, un matin, s'est penchee
Pour mourir.

558 Louis FRECHETTE. [Jan.,

" L'autre a, sous la froide etreinte

Du malheur,
Perdu 1'illusion sainte
De son coeur.

" L'une dort au cimetiere
Pour toujours,
L'autre a mis dans la priere
Ses amours."

One would have preferred that the brown-haired maiden
should have devoted her heart to God, not after it had lost its
illusions, but in its freshness and freedom from loss. In his
later poems there are some things more beautiful than this ; but
in many of them, as in his much-admired " Pens6es d'Hiver," the
thought is commonplace and diluted, though the treatment is al-
ways artistic. " Fleurs fanees " is by no means the best poem he
has written, but it is in his best manner, and it is a fair specimen
of the lighter and more lyrical moods of his genius. But though
Mes Loisirs is rare, Pele-Mele and Les Fleurs boreales can easily
be obtained ; after all, a poet's voice has an inflection that each
human heart echoes, and each man had best find it for himself.

This poet, who was baptized Louis-Honor6, was born at Levis.
His father was a contractor, with plenty of push and enterprise,
but with no poetry in his soul, or, if he had any, he did not let it
interfere with business. Achille, the second son, began life as a
poet, but finally settled into the lumber business in Nebraska.
The third Frechette studied medicine. Mr. Darveau, in a sketch
of Frechette, gives an enthusiastic description of the spot where
Frechette was born. Levis took its name from the man who
gained the last victory for the French in Canada ; history and na-
ture united to mould the young poet's mind. The majestic St.
Lawrence and the traditions of the past were always before him ;
every day he lived in a poem which the inarticulate murmurs of
the river and the whisper of the elms breathed to him. He could
hear them speak ; but he could only partially give to the world
" Toutes ses voix sans nom qui font battre le coeur."

At eight years of age he began to write verse, and for a time
he wavered between war and poetry ; but finally, at a period
when most boys are thinking of adopting piracy as a healthy and
lucrative profession, he determined to be a great poet. Fre*-
chette pere objected to this, and tolcl him that poets never be-
came rich. Frechette fils wondered why men should want to be
rich, if they could always hear the elms and dream of Bayard
and Duguesclin ; so he went on making his childish rhymes. His

1 88 1.] Louis FRECHETTE. 559

father sent him to the Seminary of Quebec, but he still made
verses. Some of these verses were bad, but he did not know
that, for poets of tender years are quite as ignorant on that point
as poets of larger growth ; and it is an ignorance against which
time often works in vain.

The teachers at the seminary found some of the boy's verses
to have great merit. Poets are so rare that even when one is
caught young his captors doubt his species. These teachers
doubted little Frechette. To try him they bade him transport
himself in spirit to the Council of Clermont and be a troubadour ;
and the boy of twelve obeyed. His poem surprised them, but
they doubted yet. Believing that Pegasus may be made to trot
in any time, they locked him in a room and commanded him to
compose in an hour a poem on the arrival of Mgr. de Laval in
Canada. The hour passed ; the poor child bit his pen and pushed
his fingers through his hair until it stood erect like quills upon
the fretful porcupine. Another half-hour was granted him. At
the end of that time he appeared with the poem ; Pegasus could
trot, after all.

In his childhood and youth Frechette gave promise of being
both a dreamer and a man of action. He would awaken from a
reverie over the gold of the sunset to play a trick on anybody.
As a young poet he was admired, as a boy he was detested by
the quiet and orderly persons who fell in his way. He wanted
to be free from the restraints of school-life, and at fifteen a
onging for adventure seized him. Casting off the scholarly blue
loak, then, he one day left the seminary and started for Ogdens-
urg, with the intention of piercing the future by means of tele-
aphy. But the telegraph office was not congenial. Life was
brief and the art of telegraphing too long. He resigned, and
ok to the breaking of stones for a living. Soon after this expe-
ience we find him back at the seminary contributing some of
'es Loisirs to the college paper. Frechette went from the Semi-
ary of Quebec to the College of Sainte-Anne, and from thence
Nicolet. He was almost cosmopolitan in his education. At
t he reached the Laval University, still singing, and probably
picking up such crumbs of instruction as suited his taste. By
1858 his poems were maturer and stronger. Tales are still
hispered of the pranks of the law-students in Quebec, and often
Frechette's name is mentioned as mixed up in some practical
joke of unusual proportions. The Bohemian life of these young
Canadians might have given a motive to a Canadian Murger,
but it was less artificial and unhealthy than that of their brethren

560 Louis FRECHETTE. [Jan.,

of the Latin Quarter. It was buoyant, and free, and reckless, but
there was no wormwood in it; it was less like absinthe than
sparkling cider. Frechette often entertained a jolly crew in his
garret, and, with Adolphe Lusignan, afterwards known as the
editor of the Tribune and Pays, made the lives of the political can-
didates who were too conservative for them a burden at election
times.

In 1864 Frechette was admitted to practise law in Quebec;
divided as he was, among politics, poetry, and journalism, law
received little of his attention. He founded Le Journal de Ltvis.
But whether he was in advance of his time in political matters or
not, he filled no " long-felt want," and the paper expired after
lingering several months. Disgusted with a country which was
so retrograde, he exiled himself. He started in Chicago L'Obser-
vateur. It came out one morning, and then mysteriously disap-
peared. On an alien soil the poet poured forth his " Voix d'un
Exil6." " Never," cries M. Darveau, " did Juvenal scar the faces
of the corrupt Romans as did Frechette lash the shoulders of our
wretched politicians." He made a poem full of strong passages,
but it is not on record that any of the corrupt politicians blushed.
Another journal of his, LAmtrique, started in Chicago, had some
success. With that placid confidence so becoming to a poet, he
left the paper in charge of a Swiss for a time. This was during
the Franco-Prussian war. When he returned he found that he
had a paper but very few subscribers, the treacherous Swiss
having altered the policy of L'Amtfrique, during his absence, in
favor of Germany. Fr6chette was ruined. Being a poet, he re-
flected that he had light, space, and liberty ; so, taking his stick
in hand, he started for New Orleans. It was at this time that he
sang a chant to the Mississippi the brother of his beloved St.
Lawrence. It is not certain that he tramped at all on this jour-
ney, for, as he was correspondent of two journals, he had free
passes ; but his admirers prefer to believe the more picturesque
story.

The prose writings of Frechette are numerous. They have
been compared to the letters of Junius and to the writings of Louis
Veuillot. They are generally fiery arraignments of somebody
that differs from him in politics, and some of his letters are vigor-
ous in style, but utterly without interest to the reader who does
not care to follow the intricacies, past, present, and future, of
Canadian politics. Louis Fr6chette is still a man of the future.
He has spent much time in writing dramas and letters which have
doubtless had their use. The world at large has reason to be most

1 88 1.] A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 561

interested in his poetry. His last poems place him higher on
Parnassus by many steps than he stood when Pele-Mele appear-
ed ; and the French Academy has earned the gratitude of all
lovers of poetry by bringing to light a poet who deserved recog-
nition from that catholic family long ago.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

" A little child shall lead them."

WHAT go ye out, O Christian men !

This early morn to see ?
Dark is the sky, and chill the snow

Lieth on bush and tree.

" We seek a little royal Child

Born unto us to-day,
Who, from his mother's lap, o'er realms

Uncounted holdeth sway ;
We go to. bear him worthy gifts,

As men have done of old
True worship's lamb of sacrifice,

True service' faithful gold."

How shall ye find this new-born King ?

In heaven no star doth shine :
Without such sign how shall ye know

Where rests this Child Divine ?

" Though shines no star this winter morn,

Though far his Father's home,
We shall not fear through dark and chili

Unto our King to come.
Cold is the earth that harbors Him,

The roof that shelters low,
Upon the empty hearth drifts down

The softly-falling snow."

VOL. XXXII.

562 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. [Jan.,

But fear ye not, O Christian men !

To give your gifts amiss ?
In raiment soft are princes clothed,

Their state not such as this.

" In heaven our King wears royal robes

Resplendent as the sun,
But here we know him in the garb

Of earth's most abject one.
Where little hands are stretched to plead

For bread, and life, and love,
We see the star prophetic shine

The childish face above.
' What do ye to the least of mine

Ye do it unto me ' ;
The Christ-Child lives for us to-day

In homes of poverty.
So, as we light on snow-strewn hearth

The Yule-log's cheerful blaze,
We hear amid the singing flames

The Christmas angels' praise.
' Glory to God on high,' they sing ;

' On earth be blessing still,
And peace to gentle souls that seek

God's pleasure to fulfil.' "

O Christian men ! wait but a space,

Till I my offering bring
To place within the pleading hands

Of Christ, our new-born King.
My heart's true worship lift ye up

To our Emmanuel ;
Take ye my poor hands' scanty gold

That, in love's crucible,
Its yellow glitter may win heat

To warm the barren hearth
Where Jesus, in his little ones,

Is born to-day on earth.

1 88 1.] WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 563

WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT *

IN the preface to his Chrestomathie dtmotique Revillout speaks
in a very lofty tone of the increased knowledge of the private
and business affairs of the Egyptians obtained by his study of
the documents written in the popular f handwriting. Whoever
is familiar with these results, the apparently insignificant bargains,
contracts, etc., from which they were gleaned, and the way the
clue was found and seized, will not deny that these scientific ac-
quisitions are extremely important. Here we can only give the
outlines of the most important results, which supplement what
was formerly made known by the Egyptian-Greek papyri, whose
contents we were taught to utilize by Adolf Schmidt's model
work.

Most demotic documents contain bargains, contracts, records,
and similar matters, thus enriching our knowledge of the domes-
tic and legal condition of affairs during the last centuries before
the birth of Christ. They show us in what manner indebtedness
of every kind was regulated, and that not only pecuniary claims
but liens upon real estate, grain, and other portable property
were secured by legal documents. The law protected property,
and nothing passed from one person's possession to that of an-
other without the co-operation of the public magistrates and the
written record of the agreement. We see transfers of property
made under anything but simple conditions, and perceive that
even complicated cases were managed according to fixed princi-
ples of law. A father or mother divides his or her whole fortune,
or only the real estate, among the children during his or her
lifetime, and yet retains up to death entire right of possession.
Colchytes make over to each other, and arrange among them-
selves by contract, the privilege of interring the dead in certain
quarters of Thebes. Contracts of sale and lease, referring to
fields, vineyards, and fallow land, are drawn up with caution and
with prolix exactness. The form of those prepared at Thebes is
different from those written at Memphis, and in later times
doubtless under the influence of the Greeks, who were better
skilled in matters of business the style was simpler. Under the
Persians and the first Ptolemies it was necessary that sixteen

* Translated from an article by Prof. Georg Ebers in the Deutsche Rundschau for May,
1880.

t The demotic.

564 WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. [Jan.,

witnesses should be present at the conclusion of every contract,
each one of whom was required to produce and sign a copy of
the document relating to it ; afterwards a magistrate, appointed
for this purpose, wrote the deed, and the witnesses merely add-
ed their names on the back of the instrument. A mortgage law
regulated everything relating to such securities, but there were
frequent law-suits, and the manuscripts affording us an insight
into the laws, judicial forms, and legal processes of those times
possess special interest.

Many of these legal matters have already been made known by
the Greek papyri, and are rendered easily accessible by Lumbroso
in his prize-work, Sur V Economic politique des Lagides. But the
demotic manuscripts prove even more clearly than the Greek
ones that in the days of the Ptolemies the ancient Egyptian laws
were in force, as well as the Macedonian. Sentence could be
pronounced according to either law, in accordance with the na-
tionality of the parties to the suit or of the criminal, but a royal
command could alter not only the verdict of the Greek or Egyp-
tian judge, but even the laws themselves. It is interesting to
notice how, in controversies on legal points, the laws are applied.
For instance, any one was permitted, by force of law, to obtain
damages from the person who sold him property belonging to
other people, yet the purchaser of such property could not, un-
der any circumstances, be compelled to restore it to the former
owner. This the soldier Hermias learned to his sorrow. He
belonged to a family that for generations had been in the military
service. One of its members, being once stationed at Thebes,
purchased a house there. In consequence of a great insurrection,
during which little Pharaohs were put in the place of Ptolemy
Epiphanes, Hermias' ancestor was forced to fly from Thebes to
southern Egypt. The house for many years remained unoccu-
pied, until at last a man belonging to the class of colchytes, who
consecrated the bodies of the dead, and in whose district the
building was, bought it according to all the forms of law. When
the soldier Hermias returned to Thebes and wished to take pos-
session of his ancestor's home he found it occupied by strangers,
who, tapping their bill of sale, locked the door upon him and sent
him to the judge. They had obtained the house in proper form
and contested the soldier's title to it. The advocate Dinon repre-
sented the colchyte in the suit, and proved that, as Hermias,'
family had given up their residence in Thebes many years before,
Hermias himself could no longer make any claim to the building
purchased according to due legal forms.

na
hr

1 88 1.] WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 565

After the great insurrections and their final suppression by
Ptolemy X., Soter II., surnamed Lathyrus (86 B.C.), Thebes
could not regain her former prosperity. Her ancient grandeur,
magnificence, and wealth were utterly crushed, extinguished, and
ruined. Even the temples, behind whose walls the rebels had
entrenched themselves, were not spared by the victors ; but
their vast strength and size mocked the fury of the destroyers,
for their total overthrow would have been a gigantic work. The
power and resources of Lathyrus were so little fitted to cope
with such enterprises that in modern times the most superb of
all the ruined temples of antiquity are found beneath the remains
of the city of Ammon. Far worse than the temples and the
" eternal dwellings " of the gods fared the houses of the citizens,
built of perishable materials. They must have been levelled to
the ground in masses ; for Homer's Thebes of the hundred
gates, " the Egyptian city whose houses were rich in trea-
sures," seemed to the Greeks of a later day merely "speckled"
with habitations. The families whose occupation consisted in the
interment of the dead appear to have been treated with compara-
tive indulgence during the repeated plundering of Thebes by the
mercenary troops of the later Ptolemies. Even in still later
times many possessed considerable wealth, and a large portion of
the demotic contracts preserved relate to them and the legal
settlement of their property and real estate.

Those most frequently mentioned are the colchytes, who be-
nged to the priestly order of the Pastophori, and were entrusted
ith the consecration of corpses, etc., the recitations, songs, liba-
ions, and sacrifices never lacking at the burial of a well-to-do
;gyptian. In earlier times there were, in addition to these, as
arate classes, the real embalmers (tarischeutes) and the open-
ers of bodies, or paraschistes, who, after having done their duty,
re said to have been driven away by the relatives of the body
ey had wounded, and seem to have been objects of universal
contempt.

In later times the persons called in the Greek papyri para-
histes are distinguished by the same demotic word as those
amed in Hellenic manuscripts tarischeutes, so that the duties of
both classes had undoubtedly come to be performed by the same
persons. At Memphis, whose prosperity and splendor survived
that of Thebes, those who buried the dead did not open the bod-
ies, even in still more modern days. This defiling act they left to
people of inferior rank, and they were able to pay them, for the
contracts they made show that they possessed great wealth. Be-

566 WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. [Jan.,

sides the duties of the colchytes, the rich men who took charge
of the funeral rites attended only to embalming the bodies ; but
this business was by no means done with the hands only : the ritu-
als of embalming prove that during the process many charms
and formulas for protection against evil spirits were recited.
Any one who knows what magnificent ornaments and costly
amulets were placed upon the mummies of aristocratic Egyp-
tians will not doubt the vast sums which, according to Greek
accounts, were paid those who practised the two most expen-
sive methods of embalming, nor be surprised if enormous amounts
of money are mentioned in the contracts written in the demotic
language, made between colchytes.

To Revillout is due the credit for having fixed the value of
the various modes of payment, so frequently occurring in the
contracts. The Hebrew shekel corresponded with the Greek
silver drachm ; the Greeks and Egyptians used it in the same
way. A piece of money simply called " the silver " was worth
five shekels or drachms, and had no equivalent in the Greek
coins. It seems to have originated in very ancient times, and
Revillout appropriately translates its name "argenteus." The
talent contained three hundred silver pieces (argenteus), or
fifteen hundred shekels or drachms ; and this circumstance is
worthy of special note, because it confirms and explains in a
perfectly satisfactory manner the statement made in the times
of the Lagides, and hitherto thought erroneous or incorrectly
interpreted that the Attic talent of six thousand drachms
was four times as large as the Alexandrian. The value of the
demotic manuscripts is considerably increased by the know-
ledge of this valuation of coins, for it gives us the possibility
of estimating the worth of money and land in the days of the
Lagides, and forming an idea of the amount of the sums
paid on different occasions as fines or damages. In many bar-
gains the contracting parties bind themselves, in case of the vio-
lation of certain conditions whose fulfilment they have under-
taken, to pay fixed sums to the person injured. Other fines fell
to the crown, or, according to the demotic official language, were
" to pay for the sacrifices of the king and queen."

The account of the position occupied by woman in Egypt, as
given in the demotic manuscripts, is of far more general interest
than what has already been related. The manuscripts prove that
most of the reports of Herodotus and Diodorus concerning these
matters rest on solid foundations. How often these strange as-
sertions have been doubted ! It is certainly hard to believe that

1 88 1.] WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 567

in a nation of antiquity which during the time of its prosperity
distinguished itself by military achievements, and even compelled
the great countries of western Asia to pay it tribute ; in a king-
dom guided by an energetic priesthood that advanced all branches
of art and science by arduous labor, and ruled by a sovereign
revered as the earthly embodiment of the highest divinity, men
should in many points have subordinated themselves to women.
Herodotus, who, like all Greeks, was accustomed to see the men
go to market while the women remained at home, must have no-
ticed with surprise that in Egypt women made the purchases
while their husbands were at home engaged in weaving ; Diodo-
rus heard that in Egypt it was the duty of the daughters, not the
sons, to support their aged parents ; and bo^h shrugged their
shoulders at the dwellers on the Nile, who were said to consider
it a duty to obey their wives, and at any rate, in both domes-
tic and public life, allowed the weaker sex rights and privileges
which to a Greek must have seemed unprecedented.

If it is true that a nation's civilization may be estimated by the
more or less lofty position it accords its women, the Egyptians
far surpassed all other ancient peoples. For years not only the
classic writings, but the pictures and inscriptions on a thousand
monuments, as well as the contents of several hieroglyphic and
hieratic texts written on papyrus, have removed the slightest
doubt relative to the lofty position to which women were admit-
ted in the empire of the Pharaohs. Even in the tombs belonging
;o the relatives and highest officers of the ancient kings who built
e Pyramids for sepulchres the wife is called " mistress of the
ouse," and children are named not only for the father but the
other, so that every N boasts of being the son of an X and a
. In many cases N even contents himself with the record of
is mother's name and leaves his father's unmentioned. Statues
f the dead were placed in the tombs of aristocratic Egyptians,
cause certain ceremonies were addressed to them, and by their
means the Ka (the image, the individual peculiarities, the 'person)
of the departed was retained the form that distinguished them
m other human beings while they lived, the same Ka in which
e justified soul clothed itself when it desired to return to earth
its former shape. Such statues were erected to women as well
men ; their bodies were embalmed with as much care as those
of their husbands ; nay, many female mummies are much more
richly adorned than masculine ones of the same epoch. The hus-
band and wife were brought to account for their deeds on earth
before the judges of the nether world ; funeral papyri were writ-

568 WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. [Jan.,

ten for women ; and there are few rituals of the dead which do
not show the mistress of the house sitting or standing beside her
husband. Even in the time of the Pyramid-builders, princesses
were allowed to reign, and, after ascending the throne, enjoyed
the same divine honors the Pharaohs claimed for themselves.
Some had services instituted which long survived them, and
under the Pharaohs, as the edict of Canopus proves, young prin-
cesses were deified.

The Egyptians' rigid insistance upon the legitimate birth of
their kings has been pointed out. Descendants of the sun-god
Ra, and they alone, were permitted to rule Egypt ; but the race
of the god could be perpetuated through women as well as men,
and therefore usurpers of plebeian blood sought at any cost to
marry a daughter of their predecessor's family. In such cases
they themselves represented power, their wives the acknowledged
right ; and both (power and right) being united in their sons, the
priests again recognized a true Pharaoh.

At entertainments and solemn ceremonies the queen appeared
in public with her husband, and the example set by the court was
followed by private citizens, who naturally gave up domestic cares
to the " mistresses of their houses," and not only yielded to them
the duties and joys of educating the children, but also admitted
them to a share in nearly all the social enjoyments open to them-
selves. The colored pictures on the walls of several tombs re-
presenting festive entertainments, at which men and women
mingled as freely as among ourselves, are now unfamiliar to few
persons of education. On the other hand, the knowledge has
scarcely penetrated beyond the narrow circle of Egyptological
scholars that long before the "imprisoned ones " or " recluses "
of the Serapis, whom Greek papyri mention, there were virgins
in Egypt, who also entered the cloister, in the service of Ammon.
As a superior (ur-t) of these girls is named, whole sisterhoods *
must probably have existed, and Revillout rightly supposes that
in pagan Egypt nuns existed before monks. He and Weingarten
have proved that monastic life first took root in Egypt only
took root, for the living purpose underlying its foundation, even
among the Buddhists and other religious communities, first
widened and deepened in the sphere of the Christian faith. But
the demotic papyri make very scanty allusions to these matters.

We shall return to our account of the position of woman in
ancient Egypt, and, by the aid of the demotic papyri, shall be
able to strengthen and enrich with important details what has

* These women were allowed to many.

1 88 1.] WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 569

already been ascertained about this subject through the hiero-
glyphic and hieratic texts.

As would naturally occur in manuscripts written in the popu-
lar language, which dealt principally with the affairs of private
citizens, their families, property, and claims, we shall first be in-
structed concerning the legal position of woman towards her
husband, her family, and the public magistrates. This position
was so very favorable indeed, in many cases so unjustly favorable
as far as the husband was concerned that, if stated by Greek or
Roman historians, we should be compelled to deem everything
related in the following lines untrue or exaggerated; but the
matter admits of no doubt, for the sources of our information are
legal documents, and everything conceded to women in them was
binding upon those who, in the presence of witnesses, had de-
clared in writing their readiness to grant these favors: We also
learn from other papyri that the weaker sex by no means shrank
from defending its rights, and, being man's equal before the law,
might confidently lay its cause before the judge.

The marriage contracts that have been preserved show that
in Egyptian society, which from the earliest ages was strictly
monogamian, great caution was observed on both sides in con-
cluding a marriage ; nay, this was carried so far that in many
cases trial alliances were formed. The bride and bridegroom
were wedded, but not at first for a legal marriage. The man re-
tained the right to dissolve the bond, but, before taking his wife
home, pledged himself by a legal written contract to pay a larger
or smaller compensation in case of repudiation, and, if she should
ar him a son, make the latter his heir. If his consort met his
pectations the husband raised her to the rank of his lawful wife,
d, when this had been done, was obliged to remain united to her
until death. Such "trial marriages" undoubtedly occurred in
the majority of cases in order to secure children, who were al-
ways far more highly valued among Eastern than Western na-
tions. They jealously guarded the right of separation from a
childless wife to put in her place another from whom the hus-
band might cherish new hopes of obtaining an heir. In modern
Egypt also the wife has a certain dowry settled upon her be-
fore marriage by her bridegroom, which, if the husband repudi-
ates her, remains her property ; but every marriage, even one
strengthened by years of wedded life, is sundered as soon as the
husband chooses to thrice repeat the words : " You are repudiat-
ed ! " An inviolable marriage bond, such as. existed among the
ancient Egyptians, is not known to Mahometans, and nothing

570 WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. [Jan.,

on the Nile has undergone so thorough a transformation through
the faith of Islam as the position of woman. Most of the demotic
marriage contracts we possess come from Thebes, where the
Egyptian character was far less influenced by Greek customs
than in Lower Egypt. Here the wife received before marriage a
dowry from the husband, and a certain yearly allowance was se-
cured to her. To ensure conjugal peace the husband was obliged
to pledge himself to bring no woman into his house except his
bride, and to pay a large sum of money if, notwithstanding this
agreement, he should do so.

The title to the possession of any property his father might
bequeath was assigned before the marriage to the expected first-
born son, while the wife's dowry was secured to her. By this
management it often happened that the wife inherited her hus-
band's whole fortune as her sole property, for the wife had the
free disposal of all land, goods, or money that came to her by
gifts or legal transfers. She could assert her right to any por-
tion of her property against her own husband, as well as against
any other person. She made loans to her husband, often on such
hard terms that he was at last forced to give up to her his entire
fortune. She was permitted to control the latter without any re-
striction, like anything else that had legally come into her pos-
session. She could in this case buy or sell land and houses with-
out asking her husband's permission, or even against his will.
Nay, the power of the wife and mother extended so far that if
there were sons, and the husband was diminishing the family pro-
perty, the wife was permitted to enter a protest in her children's
favor. As soon as the wife had given him male heirs the father
was only looked upon as the steward and representative of the
latter's property, and if he wanted to sell his house could only do
so in the name of his sons. Even daughters were permitted to
enter a protest, and actually did so, if the father allowed himself
to be induced to alienate the family property for instance, in
favor of a second wife.

What has already been said is enough to prove that the
Greeks were justified in wondering at the favored position of
Egyptian women. Through Christianity, and especially through
the honor paid to the Virgin Mary, the dignity of womanhood has
received a recognition unknown to most of the nations of pagan
antiquity ; but even among ourselves, who make women our equals
in most respects and pay them the voluntary tribute of reverence,
they are legally less favorably situated than their long-deceased
sisters on the Nile.

i88i.] WOMAN IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 571

Our knowledge of the beautiful literature of Egypt has also
been increased by the demotic papyri. A remarkable story, half-
way between a legend and a romance, has already been made ac-
cessible to a large circle of readers by Brugsch-Bey and Revil-
lout, and the fable of the lion and the mouse, discovered by
Lauth, written in the popular idiom on a Leyden papyrus, and
freshly translated by Brugsch,* causes much food for thought
regarding the original home of the fables about animals. We are
permitted to give our readers the fable of the lion and the mouse
in its Egyptian form : f

" It happened that the lion found himself in a (cave ?) and wanted to
sleep. A little mouse drew near. She had a tiny body as small as an egg.
He woke and seized her. The mouse said to him : ' O thou, who art su-
perior to me, my master, O thou lion, if thou dost devour me thou wilt
not be satisfied by me, and if thou dost let me go thou wilt feel no hunger
for me. If thou wilt now set me at liberty I will one day release thee from
that which is in store for thee. If thou wilt let me go it will be thy salva-
tion, for I will deliver thee from thy distressful situation.' The lion
laughed at the mouse, saying : ' What is it thou wilt do for me ? Is there
any one on earth who can destroy my body? ' (But) she took an oath be-
fore his face, saying : ' I will deliver thee from thy distressful situation in
the evil days that will come ! ' Then the lion pondered over what the
mouse had said. He weighed the matter in his mind, and said : ' If I eat her
I shall verily not be satisfied.' He let her go.

" Soon after it happened that a hunter snared the lion in a spot under a
palm-tree, where he had dug a hole before the lion. He fell in and was
caught, the lion in the hole. He was subjected by force to the hand of man,
brought to the palm-tree, bound (to it) with dry leather thongs, fettered with
straps of new leather/and so there he stood in the presence of the moun-
tains. Then he was sad. As night closed in the mighty beast wished that
the words about the assertion of strength which he, the lion, had uttered
might prove true. Then stood the little mouse before the lion and said to
him : ' Dost thou know me ? I am the little mouse whom thou didst once set
at liberty. I will reward thee for it to-day by this means : that I will release
thee from thy distressful situation in consequence of the violence thou
didst do thyself. He does a good deed who rewards.' The mouse put her
mouth to the lion's bonds. She gnawed the dry leather thongs, she bit
the fresh leather straps that bound him. The lion came forth from his
bonds. The mouse hid herself in his mane, and he went to the mountains
'ith her."

Brugsch is perfectly right when, directing attention to the
similar purport of the Greek and Egyptian fable, he says that the
^Esopian seems like an extract from the Egyptian one, and finally

* In Zeitschrift fiir dgyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1878, p. 47.
t The English version is literally translated from Brugsch-Bey's, which Herr Ebers says he
compared with the original, and could suggest no change in the wording, especially at the time
the present article was written, when the Leyden papyrus was not accessible.

572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan,,

asserts that the Egyptian is the original text. In fact, the latter
is full of details which animate the narrative and are utterly lack-
ing in Jisop's version. We remember the lion who wanted to go
to sleep ; the mouse as small as an egg ; the lion's boastfulness ; the
mouse's vow ; the lion's reflection that she would not be a satisfy-
ing morsel ; the description of the capture of the lion by one of
the pit-traps still used in modern times, especially in Algeria, to
catch beasts of prey ; and, finally, the pretty conclusion of the fable,
according to which the mouse slips into the lion's mane and is
carried by her rescued friend into the mountains. These are
trifling but characteristic touches which the Greek narrative,
striving for the utmost possible brevity, might easily omit, but
which are so organically interwoven in the Egyptian recital that
no unprejudiced person will believe them to be adornments of the
brief ^Esopian text. The supposition that both fables originated
independently of each other seems impossible. Several details
common to both point to the contrary opinion for instance, the
lion's laugh, the latter's capture at or under (enl] a tree, and the
last words of the mouse ; so the Greek ought probably to be re-
garded as a skilfully and boldly condensed repetition of the
Egyptian fable.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

GOD THE TEACHER OF MANKIND. A plain and comprehensive explanation
of Christian Doctrine, the Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and Pen-
ance. By Michael Miiller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and St.
Louis : Benziger Bros. 1880.

This vo.ume is another of the series of instructive books that Father
Miiller has given to the public under the title of " God the Teacher of Man-
kind," and it is as good as the former, and in some respects even superior to
it. It treats of more practical points of Christian doctrine, and in just as
popular a way. It is designed as a plain and comprehensive explanation of
the catechism ; so he gives the question of the catechism in large type and
answers it, and then gives the explanation. The book, on this account, is
very well adapted for any one who has to do with the instruction of others
in the faith. Father Miiller's explanations are clear and intelligent, and,
what is more, put in such a way that it is really a pleasure to read them.
They are adapted to the simple as well as the learned. They are plain with-
out being childish, and comprehensive without being abstruse.

1 88 1 .] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 573

Nor is Father Miiller's book adapted simply for those persons whose
duty is to instruct. It is so intelligently written that it can of itself supply
their place. It is a book that ought to be in every Catholic family.

The volume is divided into two parts. The first part treats of the Holy
Eucharist, the second of the Sacrament of Penance. Father Miiller, under-
each of these heads, has taken up all the different interesting and practical
questions, so that on the points treated he has given a manual of popular
theology.

WILD ROSES OF CAPE ANN, AND OTHER POEMS. By Lucy Larcom. Bos-
ton : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1880.

Lucy Larcom has, with gentle confidence, dedicated this book to her
public " not critics, but friends." She does not trust in vain, for even the
most youthful critic would scarcely have the heart to clip one of these Cape
Ann wild roses with his eager sword ; they are symbols of a muse that
breathes their faint and spicy odor and wears their faint flush. Lucy Lar-
com's poems are full of religious feeling and a love of nature which take a
form somewhat resembling that quietism which we find in Cowper and in
so many of the minor poets. They are free from that sham sentiment and
morbid yearning which characterizes most of the feminine poets of the New
England school. This poet lives, breathes, and has her being in New Eng-
land ; she evidently loves every stick and stone, every nuance of nature's vary-
ing moods at Cape Ann ; she has the regulation cult of Emerson, Whittier,
and Holmes, but she has little self-consciousness and no affectations.
Some of her most simple and earnest poems are the outcome of love and
admiration for her friends. Her favorite theme seems to be that which she
treated so successfully in " Hannah Binding Shoes " a poem which be-
longs to the class of Hood's " Song of the Shirt," and which is almost as
well known. In " Old Madeline " we have an echo of " Hannah ":

" ' I could not bear another lover's kiss,

Because I feel

That somewhere, from the heights of heavenly bliss,
His spirit hither yearns, as mine to his,

For ever leal.'

" Thus to her silent heart alone she said,

Hushing its moan,

That yet into her merriest singing strayed ;
While all declared, ' A cheerfuler old maid

Was never known.' "

" Mistress Hale of Beverly " is a strong, clear ballad of witchcraft days,
11 of tenderness and pathos ; it tells how the spell of the demoniacal ac-
cusers who had so long worked on the dark and miasmatic minds of the
.Puritans was broken by the purity and tried goodness of Mistress Hale.
" Sylvia " is another pathetic and tender poem, which carries a lesson with
it to fathers and husbands. Sylvia is a farmer's wife, loving and sensitive.
The honeymoon had passed, and the farmer, deep in his every-day cares,
had no time for loving words or acts. He called her " Wife " instead of the
sweet old name, Sylvia, of their courtship. She worked industriously, and

574 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

she was proud of the praise she earned ; at last the busy feet and hands
were stilled, and he who had forgotten that she had a heart knew what she
had been to him.

" He sought the sea-washed woods, where tall

Black pines at noon made night ;
The flowers stood still in lovely light ;
He seemed to hear his dead bride call
From every blossom white.

" The warm- breathed, fresh magnolia-bloom

In hands that never stirred
He laid with one beseeching word
' Sylvia ! ' that pierced death's gathering gloom.
Her soul smiled back : she heard ! "

Less morbid than Christina Rossetti, more spiritual than Nora Perry,
without the affectations of Jean Ingelow, she needs only the touch of that
Faith which she seems earnestly to pray for to deserve a place near Ade-
laide Procter.

LITERARY STUDIES FROM THE GREAT BRITISH AUTHORS. H. H. Morgan.
8vo, pp. 440. St. Louis : G. I. Jones & Co. 1880.

Mr. Morgan, the accomplished editor of The Western magazine, has here
formed a compendium of English verse and prose from Chaucer to Tennyson,
omitting American writers. The selection seems to have been judiciously
made, though we could easily suggest two or three among later writers that
are not here and might properly claim a place. Besides the glossary there is
an index to the authors from whom the selections have been taken, with re-
ferences fora more extensive reading. In the glossary, by the way, there is
a singular error (p. 430) where, referring to Scott's poem on the massacre of
the monks of Bangor, that famous abbey is confounded with the still more
famous abbey of the same name in Ireland.

AN AUTHENTIC HISTORY OF IRELAND AND ITS PEOPLE. By M. McAlister,
of Columbus, Ohio. 8vo, pp. 361. Columbus : Columbus Printing Co.
1880.

This book is a condensed chronicle of the Irish resistance to English
aggression since the days of Henry VIII. rather than a history of the Irish
people. The author, however, is honest in his purpose. He describes him-
self as " a descendant in the ninth generation of Ranald Oge McAlister,
who was born by the river Nith, between Dumfries and Sarquar, in Scotland,
and, being a favorite at the court of James, received a patent for several
thousand acres in the County Antrim, between the towns of Carrickfergus
and Larne." Sir Walter Scott did a great deal towards fixing a vicious or-
thography of Gaelic epithets and proper names, but this fault ought to be
avoided by writers of Irish history or romance, though we notice that Mr.
McAlister too repeatedly falls into it. The book will be useful for readers
whose time and opportunities are limited.

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 575

SISTER DORA : A Biography. By Margaret Lonsdale. From the sixth
English edition. Boston : Roberts Brothers. 1880.

The natural side is conspicuous all through this life, and the attractions
which it possesses we cheerfully acknowledge. At the same time its ex-
cesses and defects cannot be concealed. One misses the air which height-
ens and perfects the natural and gives a grandeur and dignity which spring
from a close and familiar life with God alone. We read such a life with sin-
gular interest for two reasons : first, it shows how far a gifted nature helps
one towards goodness and right doing ; second, it shows how much can be
done with the partial graces which they have who are deprived of all but
one sacrament and the many aids and helps of the church.

If a flower displays so much beauty and fragrance in a poor soil, what
would not be its splendor and aroma were it transplanted into a rich one ?
We are not disposed to diminish or deny what is real ; on the contrary, we
accept gladly and approve whatever we find that is true, good, and beauti-
ful. What good stuff was here to make not only a heroine, but what is
much more sublime, a Christian heroine ! And the only reason why this
higher perfection was not obtained was the absence of those means of
grace which would lead to that end.

MORAL DISCOURSES. By the Rev. Patrick O'Keefe, C.C. Moyne, Arch-
diocese of Cashel. Second edition. Dublin : M. A. Gill & Son. 1880.
For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.

These sermons, written in a strong, forcible style, embrace the ordinary
Christian duties. The number of people in our large cities who seldom
hear a sermon is very large. To this class Father O'Keefe's moral dis-
courses, read in the brief moments of leisure, are of priceless worth. The
work has justly merited the high testimonials bestowed on it by the
bishops of England and Ireland.

rac

E LIFE CF ST. ALPHONSUS MARIA DE LIGUORI, founder of the Congre-
gation of the Most Holy Redeemer, Bishop and Doctor of the Church.
Dublin : M. A. Gill & Son. 1880. For sale by the Catholic Publication
Society Co.

The value of this brief life of a doctor of the church consists in its accu-
racy, and those who wish to read only a sketch will find it interesting.

EGYPTIAN PRINCESS. By Georg Ebers. From the German by Elea-
nor Grove. Authorized Edition. Revised, corrected, and enlarged from
the latest German Edition. New York : W. S. Gottsberger. 1880.

We welcome this old friend in a new and becoming dress. The edition
now given to the public by Mr. Gottsberger is the first perfect edition of
the first and perhaps the best of Dr. Ebers' Egyptian Romances which has
appeared in this country. It has all the author's valuable notes con-
veniently placed at the foot of the pages. It has also the prefaces of the
several editions following the first, with the author's latest corrections. It

576 NEW PUBLICATIONS, [Jan., 1881,

is sixteen years since the first edition was published in Germany, and eight
others have been issued since that time, five of them within the last three
years, an evidence that this charming and most instructive historical
romance is increasing in popularity as time goes on. We take for granted
that our readers know all about it, already, and that many of them have
read it. We recommend this new edition to all who have read the former
imperfect one, especially on account of the historical and explanatory notes,
and advise all those who have not read it, if they ever indulge in any light
reading, to do so speedily. Those who wish to make a Christmas present
to a friend who can appreciate good literature, if they select these pretty
volumes will be sure to receive cordial thanks from that friend.

POEMS : PATRIOTIC, RELIGIOUS, MISCELLANEOUS. By Abram J. Ryan
(Father Ryan). Baltimore : John B. Piet. 1880.

The admirers of Father Ryan's poetry, which, as the publisher says in
his preface, " is especially dear to the people of the South," will be glad to
see this handsome red-line edition of the author of " The Conquered Ban-
ner," well suited for a Christmas present. Mr. Piet deserves credit for the
style in which he has gotten out this book.

THE ADVENTURES OF A DONKEY. From the French of Mme. la Comtesse
de Segur. By P. S., a Graduate of St. Joseph's, Emmittsburg, Md. Illus-
trated. Baltimore : John B. Piet. 1880.

The Comtesse de Segur's stories for children have always been great
favorites with the little people. The adventures of Cadichon, the wise
donkey, are full of innocent and amusing frolics, and here and there con-
tain the merest suggestion of a moral, enough to do good, yet not enough
to frighten the young reader away by an unnecessary seriousness or sever-
ity. The book is full of healthy fun, and will charm even gray-headed
children who may chance to open it. The translation is well done, and the
quality of the illustrations is fair.

THE AGES TO COME ; OR, THE FUTURE STATES. By E. Adkins, D.D. New
York : The Author's Publishing Company. 1880.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXII. FEBRUARY, 1881. No. 191.

THE GENESIS OF FAITH.
II.

THE SUBSTANCE, AUGMENTATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE
FAITH ARTICLES AND DOGMAS OF FAITH CATHOLIC DOC-
TRINE CATHOLIC SCIENCE THE TYPE OF CHRISTIAN SO-
CIETY IN THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM.

WHAT faith is has been already explained, and the method by
which the intellect is prepared to give the supernatural assent of
faith to the truth revealed and also made to know what that truth
is which has been revealed.

There are certain other things needing explanation concern-
ing this very truth which has been revealed, as to what its sub-
stance is, whether it was all revealed at once or only by parts in
a successive manner, whether in any way and by what way it is
capable of continual development, and how far knowledge and
belief of this truth is in itself necessary to salvation or made ob-
ligatory by a divine precept given to all men or to some men
only.

It is evident that every thing which God reveals in any way
claims the perfect and undoubting assent of every man as soon as
he knows certainly what that is which God has revealed. All
private revelations and all those which may have failed of cer-
tain and authentic transmission to the present time may be passed
over, and only the common, universal and public revelation actual-
ly existing in some certain depository and authentic medium, be

578 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Feb.,

made the topic of consideration. The Christian Revelation is for
us a mediate revelation. It comes to us by a tradition from those
who received it immediately from God, as something handed
down from our fathers and preserved by the care and custody of
successive generations. It is contained in the written and un-
written memorials and testimonies of the word of God left to the
church by the apostles, which include all the documents of reve-
lation from Adam to Christ contained in the Old Testament, all
the canonical books of the New Testament, and all else which has
been handed down by oral tradition as divine doctrine or law from
the mouth of Jesus Christ or the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

The written word co'ntained in the Bible embraces an immense
amount of instruction concerning doctrines and truths which are
within the scope of human knowledge and are matter of rational
science, as well as concerning historical events. It is also full of
prophetic descriptions of future events many of which are yet to
be fulfilled. All these are in a more or less close and direct con-
nection with the proper subject-matter of the divine revelation,
viz. the mysteries of faith, the truths which are disclosed in view
of the supernatural destination and end of man. It is our duty
to believe that all which the authors of these divine books have
written under the impulse and direction of inspiration is true,
according to the intention of the Holy Spirit. As soon as one
knows with certainty what the Holy Spirit intended to convey
to man through the medium of the inspired word, he is bound to
assent to its truth on the veracity of God. Yet, it is manifestly
impossible to know with certainty what this absolute sense of the
whole Bible and every part of it really is, and only a small num-
ber of men have been or ever will be capable of reading under-
standingly more than a small portion of its contents. It cannot
be, therefore, that the whole amount of that which is in itself re-
vealed truth should be of faith in respect to all men, and neces-
sary as a means indispensable to salvation. What is necessary to
be explicitly believed, and what men are bound to know and be-
lieve explicitly by a just precept, must be proposed in such a way
as to give in an easy and obvious manner certitude of faith.

The essential substance of th'e faith must have been revealed
from the first and remain the same to the very last. It is equally
necessary to all men from the beginning to the end of the world,
and that which is alone necessary must be in itself sufficient in
its own nature, for what suffices for one man must in and of itself
suffice for all as the indispensable means of salvation. The pri-
mary and ultimate object of faith is God, for the purpose of revc-

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 579

lation is to make God known. In the supernatural order, faith is
the medium by which God is known as the sovereign good which
can be possessed and enjoyed by man in the beatific vision. The
substance of the revelation made by God to men consists there-
fore in this, that God as the sovereign good exists, and that he
has provided a way for men to attain to thje possession of this
sovereign good. These two general articles of faith include im-
plicitly or virtually the entire revelation with all -its successive
augmentations from Adam to Christ, and its subsequent explica-
tions in the Catholic Church. They were made known from the
beginning to the human race universally and have always been
believed by all men who have had divine faith. In these two
general articles are included two particular articles, the Trinity
of Persons in the one divine essence and the Incarnation of the
Second Person, the Son or Word, for the salvation of men.
These, also, were obscurely revealed from the beginning in such
a way as to be more or less explicitly believed by the more en-
lightened, and implicitly by the common multitude of true be-
lievers. The substance of the faith is one and unalterable, all be-
lievers have been Christians from the beginning of the world,
and the true church, or the collection of true believers, is the
same society in all the phases of its existence, not generically
changed but perfected in the specific constitution of the Chris-
tian Church.

The augmentation of the revelation from Adam to Christ con-
sisted, in respect to the primary and substantial articles of faith,
new and successive manifestations of the mysteries and truths
ntained in these four articles, clearer disclosures of the divine
erfections and of the attributes and work of the Messias, the
Redeemer of mankind. Nothing has been or can be added to this
substance of the faith. The additional revelations given through
Moses and the prophets, Christ and the apostles, have for their
object secondary and accidental articles and dogmas of faith, par-
ticular facts connected with the history of the providential way
of salvation, and precepts of the divine law prescribing the means
and ways by which men are to attain true Christian righteous-
ness and salvation. The entire sum of the revelations given from
the beginning, closing with the completed teaching of the apos-
tles, preserved in the church, and proposed by her authority, is in
itself the credible object of faith and presents its credentials by
which it exacts undoubting credence in so far as it is made known
in its true sense and significance with certainty. In this aspect,
revealed truth is, like science, boundless and inexhaustible. The

580 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Feb.,

Bible, like the visible universe, is a treasure-house of wealth from
which all generations until the end of the world can draw pure
gold and gems of theology. That Unwritten Word, the Gospel
and Epistle written by the Holy Ghost in the mind and heart of
the apostles and transmitted by a living tradition which is per-
petually and unerringly expressed in the universal teaching of
the church and the universal belief of the faithful, is a perennial
source of unfathomable depth which fills all the reservoirs of ra-
tional and spiritual knowledge but is not adequately measured by
any number of intellectual conceptions or dogmatic formulas.
Divine faith, in a general sense, embraces all this in the act of
firm and undoubting assent to all that God has revealed, because
he is the Eternal Truth and can never be deceived himself or de-
ceive his rational creatures. In a particular sense, the act of faith
explicitly assents to so much of this truth as is explicitly and cer-
tainly known to be the truth which God has intended to manifest
by his revelation. All this part of the whole which is of faith in
itself, is of faith in respect to us. The ordinary way by which this
explicit and certain knowledge is imparted is the authority of the
Catholic Church. Whatever the church proposes to all the faithful
as certainly revealed is of Catholic faith. All which she requires
the faithful to know and to believe explicitly, is of universal obli-
gation and necessary to be believed, either by reason of its in-
trinsic necessity as the indispensable condition of salvation, or by
an extrinsic, moral necessity which is the reason and motive of
the precept. All that which the church proposes as of faith be-
sides the primary articles which all the faithful are bound to
know and believe explicitly, they must believe implicitly, if they
do not know what they are. That is, they must believe that
whatever the church teaches as a dogma of faith is really a re-
vealed truth, and be ready to assent to it, as soon as it is proposed
to them. Those who are bound to acquire a greater knowledge
of the faith than is required of all the faithful have a special obli-
gation of inquiring into the Catholic doctrine ; in certain cases,
e.g. when they are priests or teachers, of knowing all that the
church has defined, and when they have learned what the Catho-
lic dogmas are, they are bound to an explicit belief of each and
every one of them.

The articles of faith, in the strict sense of the word, are those
dogmas which are principal, primarily pertaining to the faith,
more necessary to be known, and having a special difficulty of
belief. They are summed up in the Creeds, and, according to an
approved and generally received division, are twelve in number,

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 581

Six of these pertain to the Godhead, and they are : I. The Unity
of the Godhead ; 2. The Trinity of Persons in the Godhead ; 3.
The work of God in the creation ; 4. The work of God in the
church for the sanctification of men ; 5. The work of God in the
resurrection ; 6. The consummation of the works of God in the
everlasting life of the blessed in heaven. Six others pertain to
the humanity of Christ. These are : I. The divine conception and
birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary ; 2. His passion, death and
burial; 3. His descent to the infernal region or hell; 4. His re-
surrection; 5. His ascension ; 6. His second coming to judgment.
Some theologians enumerate fourteen articles, dividing the dogma
of the Trinity into three, each one of which respects one of the
Persons, and combining the resurrection of the body and ever-
lasting life into one. By these articles, all the principal parts of
the faith are connected and compose a complete organic body of
doctrine, as the members of the animal body are joined together
and fitted into each other by the joints, and hence comes the
term article, from the word which signifies joint in Greek and
Latin.

The Creed, comprising these principal dogmas of faith, is a
symbol expressing in a few brief comprehensive formulas the sum
of doctrine which was taught to catechumens before they were
baptized. This instruction necessarily included much more, both
as an elucidation of the articles of the Creed, and also as an ex-
planation of the moral and religious rule of conduct prescribed

the faithful, and of the sacraments which they were preparing

receive. The dogma of the Real Presence, although a dis-
nct mystery, known solely by divine revelation, one of those

ths which are the most necessary to be known and believed,
d having a special difficulty, was not placed among the articles
of the baptismal creed because it was only disclosed to the bap-
tized when they were prepared for their first communion. This
dogma and all other dogmas of Catholic faith not expressly con-
tained in the twelve articles of faith, are nevertheless contained in
some one or more of these, implicitly or virtually, or at least are
connected with them by a close relation. The entire doctrine
which is of faith respecting the seven sacraments, for instance, is
only an expansion and completion of the fourth article, "The
Holy, Catholic Church." The dogmas of Catholic faith are all
those truths which are revealed by God and as such proposed by
the church as objects of faith to the illuminated intellect of all the
faithful universally, and which every one of these is bound to
believe as a revealed truth on the veracity of God, as soon as he

582 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Feb.,

knows that the church teaches it by her divine authority, al-
though all are not bound to know explicitly all these dogmas.

It is now easy to understand in what sense the objective faith
of the church universal existing in its generic character from the
beginning, and in its specific character of Catholic and Apostolic
Unity from the time of Christ, has been or is capable of augmen-
tation.

The four articles of faith which compose its substance have
not been and cannot be added to, by a revelation of' new truth
similar to themselves. The two particular articles included in
these four were more distinctly revealed, at intervals, between
the time of the primitive revelation made to Adam and the final
revelation made through Jesus Christ. They were also by him
through the apostles promulgated to all mankind and made ob-
jects of universal obligatory belief. Besides these fundamental
and primary truths, a number of secondary and accidental truths
were revealed for the first time and added to the deposit of faith.
The entire text of the Bible may be compared to the tissue which
supports the network of blood-vessels in the body, or to the tex-
ture on which figures are embroidered. It is all inspired. God
is its principal author, and it is all an object of faith. Apostolic
Tradition is its complement and authentic commentary. Having
been completed when the last of the Apostles, finished giving his
testimony, the only way in which the objective faith is capable of
increase from that time until the end of the world is an increase
of the actual illumination proceeding from it upon the minds of
those whom it enlightens, giving them a clearer and more exten-
sive knowledge of the contents of the revelation confided in its
perfect and finished state to the Catholic Church, for custody, in-
terpretation and promulgation.

The Council of Trent has explicitly declared what the office
of the church is in defining and decreeing dogmatically what
are doctrines of faith to be received and believed by all as a con-
dition of Catholic communion. It is namely : " To make an ex-
position to all the faithful of Christ of the true and sound doc-
trine . . . which the Sun of Righteousness, Christ Jesus, the
author and finisher of our faith, taught, the Apostles have deliv-
ered, and the Catholic Church, prompted by the Holy Spirit, has
perpetually retained " (sess. 6 et 13).

The church does not receive through Popes or Councils, or
admit and promulgate as received through private persons, any
new public revelations which are added to the tradition of re-
vealed truth handed down from the apostles, and to be believed

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 583

with divine faith. The church, therefore, does not frame any
new articles of faith or new dogmas, since her gift of infallibility
is not a gift of inspiration, and her divine authority as a teacher
does not enable her to propose any new doctrine as a revealed
truth, which was not before in itself revealed and pertaining to
the objective faith. Every new definition or declaration which
she makes by which some proposition which was not before of
Catholic faith is decreed and promulgated as pertaining to the
faith, is only a juridical and infallible declaration that something
is a revealed truth which was not beforehand certainly known by
all to be contained in Scripture or Tradition. The subject-matter
of all decrees in which dogmas of faith are formulated is that
truth which has been formally revealed by God, and in its own
proper concept is in itself, and immediately the object of the
divine testimony, contained in the divine word. It is explicitly
contained in the divine word, if it is clearly and distinctly ex-
pressed in its own proper terms. It is implicitly contained in it,
if it is involved and implied in the explicit terms of the revelation
and needs some declaratory proposition by which it is explicated
and made apparent. In this manner, all propositions synonymous
with those which are explicitly revealed are revealed implicitly.
So, also, are all correlatives ; e.g. in the proposition that Jesus is
the Son of God, it is revealed that God is the Father of Jesus ;
and in this, that God is the creator of all things, that all things
are creatures of God. Again, in the explicit revelation of any
>roposition, the falsity of the contradictory proposition is im-
)licitly revealed. Further, in the revelation of a whole the im-
)licit revelation of its essential parts is contained ; e.g. that
/hrist had a human will endowed with freedom is contained in
revealed truth of his perfect manhood. Finally, in the reve-
ition of a universal proposition the particular and singular pro-
>sitions which are contained in it by a rigorous logical necessity
are implicitly revealed. Thus, the truth that God has created all
ibstances formally and necessarily implies that he has created
11 genera, species and individuals contained in this supreme
genus of substance. In the truth that God has made the human
soul immortal is contained the truth of the immortality of each
individual person of the human race, taken singly.

The Catholic Church, in the exercise of her prerogative
of infallibly defining dogmas of faith explains some which she has
explicitly taught from the beginning in more clear and precise
terms, generally in order to shut out heresies and errors which
have arisen ; she pronounces some things to be certainly revealed

584 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Feb.,

which were not previously known with certainty to all instruct-
ed Catholics in their distinct and precise notion and might there-
fore be a matter of controversy ; and applies universal dogmas to
the particulars implicitly contained in them, thus making what
was an object of universal implicit faith the object of explicit be-
lief to all the faithful.

The Catholic Faith includes all and only that sum of doctrines
which the church distinctly proposes to all the faithful, by her
ordinary and solemn teaching, declarations and definitions, to be
believed as formally and immediately revealed by God. She
holds the subjects of her jurisdiction answerable before her exter-
nal tribunal in respect to heresy, only in so far as they dispute or
deny some part of this dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Faith.
But, in conscience, and before God, every one is bound to believe,
by divine faith, whatever he certainly knows to be revealed in
Scripture or Tradition, and to believe in general that all which is
contained in these sources of divine truth, in its real and genuine
sense, is the authentic testimony of God. Moreover, every one
who applies himself to the study of theology is bound by the na-
tural law, to use diligence, prudence and honesty in forming his
opinions in respect to all that part of revelation which is more or
less obscure. It is one part of this prudence to pay a due defer-
ence to the judgment of the wisest, most learned and most holy
teachers and interpreters of the Holy Scriptures and Catholic
doctrine, especially where there is a general consent and agree-
ment among them.

Besides the actual contents of the divine revelation, there is
virtually contained in it an indefinite number of conclusions and
inferences which can be deduced from the premisses which it
affords, by the aid of other premisses furnished by natural reason.
These conclusions make up a great part of theological and moral
science and spiritual doctrine. The truth which is attained by
this process is not formally and immediately revealed truth, but
is truth which becomes known by the application of the princi-
ples of revealed truth to matters of human and rational cognition.
This order of ideas is connected more or less closely with the
proper domain of faith and is subordinated to it in so far as it is
related either to dogma or to morals. By reason of this subordi-
nation, the divine authority of the church is competent to define
infallibly the truth of conclusions and inferences from dogmas
of faith which are not in themselves pertaining to the faith,
and to condemn infallibly errors which are not directly and
formally heretical. And beyond this infallible authority there

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 585

is a legitimate disciplinary authority of directing and con-
trolling the teaching of Catholic schools and authors, to which
obedience is due, and which can be securely followed although it
does not give absolute and final certitude.

It is evident from what has been said that what may be called
in a comprehensive sense Catholic science is of vast extent and
continually enlarging its boundaries. There is first the positive
Catholic doctrine embracing all that teaching of the church to
which the faithful are bound to give the firm assent of their
minds, and which in respect to whatever is proposed as divinely
revealed is the assent of divine faith. Then there is the entire
divine tradition in its sources, especially in the Holy Scriptures,
presenting an inexhaustible field for study. Besides the dogma-
tic and moral doctrine which is the primary scope and object of
revelation, there is a vast amount of history, prophecy, imagina-
tive representation of sacred and heavenly things, where the
humble and pious mind is left to a great extent free to prosecute
its search for the true, the good and the beautiful, disclosed and
set forth by the Divine Word himself with the greatest abundance
through the medium of inspired men whose personal intelligence
and knowledge were in no wise suppressed but rather enhanced
under the influence of the Divine Spirit. All which is thus re-
ceived by way of instruction and on the divine authority of the
teacher can be made, in so far as the faculty of reason is compe-
tent to understand it, matter of rational apprehension and of cer-
tain or probable conviction upon its evidence or its analogy and
correspondence with natural knowledge. Outside of this proper
sphere of scientific theology, the human mind illuminated by
faith can prosecute the study of philosophy and of every branch
of knowledge with much greater advantage than it could, were it
deprived of the light of divine revelation. And by a co-ordina-
tion of all the parts of universal knowledge, it can rise to a sub-
lime, universal, synthetical science embracing all the intelligible,
and combining the multiform harmonies of the universe into an
ideal unity.

In calling this universal science Catholic, we use this term only
in a wide sense. It is not meant that all science depends on reve-
lation or on definitions of the church. This is only true of Theo-
logy, properly so called. All that is knowable or provable from
natural principles of cognition comes under the head of purely
natural and rational knowledge and opinion. This kind of science
is free in its own sphere, governed by its own laws and possessed
of its own rights. It is only bound to abstain from contradicting

586 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Feb.,

revelation and the legitimate deductions from revealed truths
and facts. That is, its professors are so bound, for science itself
cannot contradict the word of its own Author. All that part of
science which respects the highest and most universal truths and
considers all things in their deepest causes belongs to philosophy.
Even those truths which are also contained in revelation, in so
far as they are within the sphere and scope of natural reason are
objects of philosophy. Theology, itself, in so far as it demands
assent to its doctrines by reason of their evidence or of the proofs
of discursive reasoning, is a kind of human science. Strictly
speaking, Catholic science embraces only the sum of truths
taught with authority by the Catholic Church. We speak of
Catholic science in a more comprehensive sense, as including all
those universal truths which are in harmony with Catholic faith
and doctrine, which receive from the light of revelation their
ultimate perfection and certainty, and by virtue of which all parts
and details of knowledge are reduced to unity and co-ordinated
in one synthetic whole.

Excellent and valuable as this knowledge is, it is not identical
with Faith, it is far inferior to Faith, and its chief utility consists
in the service which it is capable of rendering to Faith. It is
Faith made perfect by Love which is the true life of the soul, the
light and the life of the world, the aurora of the eternal light.
All the science and literature of the world, sacred and profane, is
as nothing compared with the Four Gospels of the four simple-
hearted evangelists. The Eternal Wisdom did not leave mankind
to the cold moonlight, the faint starlight of natural reason, philo-
sophical speculation, weary, difficult research into the secrets of
his created works. He came in person to illuminate the world.
Clothed with human form, the Eternal Wisdom did not teach
men by philosophy. He presented himself, and his truth as an
object of faith, of hope and of love to the pure in heart and the
penitent, to the unlettered and the poor. He drew the minda
and hearts of his disciples to the contemplation and love of his
Godhead, by the beauty of holiness, the charm of a love without
example, in his manhood. All the power of Christianity by which
it conquered the world came from the faith and love which Jesus
Christ awoke by his personal presence, the manifestation in visi-
ble form of God, the supreme object of the intellect, the sovereign
good of the will. Thjs living image of the wisdom and good-
ness of God captivated the minds and hearts of those who were
worthy to behold it. They were carried out of themselves and
transformed by this living faith, and it was this which made them

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 587

heroes and martyrs, apostles and confessors, endowed with a su-
perhuman, divine might which overcame the world and regene-
rated the human race. This is the minute but pungent mustard-
seed, full of fructifying power, which grew into the great tree of
Christianity. The source of all the life-giving power of Christian-
ity in all the ages which have passed, still remaining without any
waste of energy in the present, and destined to bring the redeem-
ing work of Christ to its perfect fulfilment in the future, is to be
found in that small society of believers who were gathered to-
gether in Jerusalem after the ascension of the Lord. There is to
be seen the original, genuine, charming Ideal of Christianity and
Christianized human society, with all its lineaments of fascinating
beauty, perfect in the infantine face and form of the Catholic
Church in its cradle. It is the beautiful white Dove of pale-gold
plumage and silver wings, in its nest.

The group of disciples who had seen the Lord upon the cross,
who had conversed with him after the resurrection, who had wit-
nessed his ascension, who had received the gifts of his Holy
Spirit ; haunting the footsteps of the Master in and around Jerusa-
lem, walking in Gethsemani and on the Mount of Olives, visiting
the courts of the Temple, assembling in the Ccenaculum where
he had instituted the Holy Eucharist ; were the nucleus of
a new creation, the germ of a new kingdom, the founders of a
new Jerusalem, a city of righteousness and peace ; the progeni-
tors of a new race of men, the society of the children of faith.
One of that living group was the Virgin Mary, the living fulfil-
ment of the prophecies, the impersonated Creed, the witness of
the mysteries of Faith, the last glory of the old and the first
of the new Jerusalem. There were Peter and James and John,
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, the centurion who was
converted at the cross, Lazarus and Mary Magdalen. Hundreds
at first, and after a short time some thousands, were joined with
these in the communion of the Apostolic Church. All these had
the Old and the New Testaments embodied and present before
their eyes. Their bishop was a descendant of David, James the
Less the cousin of Our Lord, in whom was partially fulfilled the
promise to King David chiefly fulfilled in his greater Son, and
who ruled as a spiritual prince that first church of Jerusalem, the
beginning of the spiritual kingdom promised to David's royal
line.

The entire theology and philosophy of Revelation and Faith
is set before our eyes in a concrete and visible form in the history
of this first ten years of the Christian religion. The rational and

588 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Feb.,

historical credibility of the Faith, in what a book of Evidences
was it not set forth before the eyes of all who could read it ! If
ever there were reasonable men in the world, who believed and
acted in perfect accordance with the dictates of reason, they were
those who believed in the Lord whom they had seen risen from
the dead and ascending into heaven, and who sacrificed every-
thing to bear witness to the facts and truths which God made
man had manifested before their eyes. The necessity of upright
hearts and of the light and grace of the Holy Spirit in order that
the evidence which Christ gave of his divine mission might take
an efficacious hold of the mind, and the will be moved to embrace
the truth with a living, loving faith, is manifest in the unbelief
and hatred of the Jewish rulers. They had the evidence before
their eyes, they could not maintain a plausible argument against
it. For a considerable time, they were forced to leave the disci-
pies of Christ in liberty and they were in favor with the common
people. Nevertheless, the Jewish people and their rulers, as a
body, rejected Christ obstinately, and were as a consequence cast
off. This signal example proves that God does not force his
truth and grace upon the unwilling, and that men are free to re-
ject them if they choose to do so, to blind their minds to evidence,
and to shut their hearts against grace.

The distinction between revealed truth and purely rational
science, between faith and natural knowledge, and the wholly su-
pernatural character of the Christian Religion and Christian vir-
tue, are shown in the method which Jesus Christ adopted for the
preservation and propagation of the kingdom which he founded.
Humble, simple and unlettered persons were selected as his in-
struments. The Gospel was not preached after the manner of a
philosophy, the church was not founded in worldly power and
splendor. Not that the Lord rejected those men and those things
which are in a human sense great, admirable and powerful, from
all share in the construction and propagation of his earthly king-
dom. But, since he came to make a new and perfect revelation
of supernatural truth, to found anew a supernatural order, to re-
novate the world in a divine manner, he chose to put aside for a
time those temporal things which could only serve their secon-
dary purpose and be made subservient to a higher power, after
he had first established the foundation of his kingdom in a super-
natural manner.

The fact that teaching by the way of revelation and faith is
the only method which meets the necessities of men in their ac-
tual condition, and the superior excellence and efficiency of this

1 88 1.] THE GENESIS OF FAITH. 589

method, are shown in the prototypal and ideal form in which
Christianity began its existence in the church of Jerusalem.
Those simple-minded, simple-hearted disciples of Jesus possessed
the wisdom after which sages had aspired and toiled, which pro-
phets had possessed only in part. They had a wisdom far sur-
passing the philosophy of Plato. They lived in a community far
exceeding his Ideal Republic. In the apostolic church still in the
minute proportions of infancy, existed the type and the germ of
that renovated humanity, which needed only full and universal
development to transform the human race and realize in all men
that possession of the supreme good which philosophers had re-
garded as the highest attainment of the tlite of men. They were
a brotherhood in faith and love, sharing alike, without regard to
rank or nationality, or any other difference, in all spiritual and
temporal goods. This idyllic period was short, but it has left an
ineffaceable reminiscence of itself which can never lose its charm,
preserved in the brief, graphic memorial of that Evangelist St.
Luke who, according to the early traditions, was a painter, and
who has certainly in his words, painted the most fascinating of
pictures, the portrait of Ideal Christianity from life.

The Blessed Virgin was translated, James and Stephen were
martyred, Peter and the great convert Paul, the apostles and
evangelists and ' principal disciples, were scattered like burning
coals from that first furnace where the fire of faith and love was
kindled and gathered its intense heat; to inflame hearts else-
where, to kindle all over that flame which was destined to em-
brace the world and baptize it " in the Holy Ghost and in fire."
All that Christianity has accomplished is the result of that faith
and love which bound those first disciples together in one bro-
therhood. All that it will yet accomplish must come from the
same source. Their testimony has been perpetuated by the Ca-
tholic Church which began with this believing, loving brother-
hood, and through this testimony the true Ideal of all divine and
human perfection in wisdom, holiness, goodness and beauty im-
personated in Jesus Christ has been kept before the eyes of men,
to call forth the same faith and the same love which entranced
and transformed the first " eye-witnesses and ministers of the
Word of Life."

The genuine ideal type of the church is always to be realized,
developed, renewed, by reverting to this first, original manifesta-
tion of apostolic Christianity. Every age needs to be baptized in
the divine flame of faith and love which was symbolized by the
tongues of fire that sat on the heads of the disciples on the first

ting Chr\
are invitedA

590 THE GENESIS OF FAITH. [Feb.,

Day of Pentecost. It is this faith inspirited and inflamed by love
which gives power to the testimony of the truth of Christianity.
There are evidences, arguments, motives of credibility in abund-
ance, a mountain of books written to prove, defend, explain the
Christian Religion. Nothing can be said against them, but they
do not suffice to convince those who have lost faith and hope, to
convert an unbelieving generation, to renovate minds and hearts
which have become dark and cold. It is the living witness of
faith and love, the unanimous voice of many tongues of fire utter-
ing the same truth in words accompanied by deeds, which gives
penetrating, vivid, convincing power to the reasons and motives
for believing. The truth to which testimony is given is that
God loves not the elect alone or the tflite, but all men ; that Christ
died for all, that saving truth and grace are proposed to all
without difference or exception, in such a way as to be adapted
to men of every sort or condition, age or country, to the common
multitude, to the lowest classes, to the simple and unlearned,
even to the sinful and degraded. By the very terms of such^a
Gospel it can only be reduced to practice by constituting
tian society as a loving brotherhood into which all are
like that primitive church of the first ten years of Christianity at
Jerusalem. The perfect community of all temporal as well as
spiritual goods which existed there is a sort of ideal image in
which the genius of Christianity was embodied. It represented
unity in love produced by unity in faith, in a form of simple,
wholly unworldly, purely religious life in community. This
form could not, from the nature of the case, become the perma-
nent, universal form of Christian society. But it represents what
Christian society ought to be in its spirit and principles, under
all forms however different from itself and from each other in
their variable accidents. That is, a society united in faith and
love, in which the temporal is subordinated to the eternal, and all
necessary spiritual and temporal goods are brought within the
reach of all classes of men without exception. When we reflect
that a thousand million of human beings who are not yet en-
lightened by Christian faith, and a great multitude of those who
are nominally reckoned as Christians are calling on Christianity
to do its appointed work of redeeming them from intellectual,
moral and physical miseries of the most appalling magnitude, it
becomes a matter of serious inquiry for all who profess to be
really Christians, how can a renovation of Christian society in
the unity of faith and love be accomplished, and the limits of the
brotherhood in faith and love which Christ established be extended

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 591

so as to embrace all mankind. This is a topic which would re-
quire a volume, and we have already arrived at the end of what
we intended to say.

THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE.

A TALE OF OLD MUNICH, IN TWO CHAPTERS.

(Founded on fact.)
CHAPTER I.

IN a small, cheerless apartment on the topmost floor of a
house in Fingergasse the narrowest street in Munich there
lived forty years ago two poor art students. Their names were
Carl Schelling and Heinrich Bach. Ay, they were very poor,
not far removed indeed from beggary, for between them they
actually possessed only one suit of clothes. This may seem too
strange to be believed ; yet whoever has mingled much with
German students, and seen the hardships which they cheerfully
endure in order to acquire knowledge, will not deem it so very
improbable. Nor did their one threadbare suit cause any of their
comrades to look down upon them : Carl and Heinrich were wel-
come to every " kneipe," and what grieved the two friends most
was that at these jovial reunions they could never be together.
One must needs remain at home, high up under the peaked roof,
amid the rooks and swallows of dingy Fingergasse.

The master under whom they were studying was the cele-
brated sculptor Schwanthaler ; and let us here observe that of
all his many pupils he considered Heinrich and Carl the most
gifted. Indeed, so highly did Schwanthaler appreciate their ta-
lents that he had hired for each of them a studio in the great
gloomy building next to St. Michael's Church, which is now used
partly as a museum, partly as an academy of art, and which in
days gone by had bee'n a Benedictine cloister. Here they might
labor at whatever tasks he set them, undisturbed by the presence
of other students ; and when Schwanthaler had first shown them
this mark of his favor the young men were able to come every
day to their work, and delighted him by the rapid progress they
made. Now, however, at the time our story opens, the pittance
which they had been wont to receive from their parents was
no longer forthcoming the old folks were dead and ere long

592 THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. [Feb.,

Schwanthaler noticed that whenever one came to his studio the
other was absent from his ; and this surprised him a good deal.
Still, he did not ask any questions, for Schwanthaler knew how
morbidly sensitive Carl and Heinrich were. The two friends
were about of an age three-and-twenty and their cheeks were
marked by the same number of scars. For, as we have said,
poverty did not keep them aloof from their fellow-students, and
German students are prone to fight duels. But in temperament
Carl and Heinrich differed not a little ; and perhaps it is why they
got along so well together. Heinrich was calm, pensive, and full
of dry humor. He was likewise gifted with an exquisite sense of
beauty so much so that whenever he met a beautiful maiden her
face would haunt him all the rest of the day. But then he sel-
dom prayed or went to church unless drawn thither by one
of the gentler sex and he used laughingly to assert that Carl
prayed enough for both. This was hardly an exaggeration.
Carl was extremely devout, heard Mass every second morning,
and was troubled not a little by scruples. Never did he go to his
studio without first entering a church, where he spent a few
minutes in prayer. For his was a chaste soul ; he knew the
temptations to which an artist is exposed, and he never permitted
himself to touch even the tip of a model's finger. Yet full as
much as Heinrich did Carl admire beauty ; he had even been
known to stand a whole hour before Raphael's picture of St.
Cecilia, which hangs in the old Pinakothek, and some students
had sneeringly said he was in love with the beautiful saint. Carl
was, moreover, very hot-tempered, yet equally ready to forgive
as to cross swords ; and Heinrich, who knew him better than any-
body else in Munich, declared that Carl had a heart as big as him-
self.

" Did the professor visit your studio to-day ? " inquired Carl
one April evening, and setting aside, as he spoke, the ideal bust of
a girl just ripening into womanhood which he had been working
at since morning all alone in his dreary bed-chamber.

"Yes," answered Heinrich. "And Schwanthaler was in an
uncommonly genial mood. He heaped praises on my Ariadne
and rapped twice at the door of your studio, then shrugged his
shoulders and smiled as he turned away." " Humph ! I wonder
what he thinks of you and me? " continued Carl. " For the past
month he has never found us both at work oh the same day."

" Well, whatever Schwanthaler may think, he does not com-
plain," answered Heinrich. " Nay, he said this afternoon that we
merited his warmest thanks for the help we have given him in

i.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 593

finishing his ' Battle of Arminius,' which, by the way, in less than
three weeks is to be placed in the Walhalla."

" Well, I wonder what Schwanthaler means to do next ? " said
Carl. " Ha! now we are coming to something interesting," re-
plied Heinrich. " Well, you must know that our master has just
been commissioned by the king to execute a colossal statue of
Bavaria : it is to be ninety or a hundred feet high. But at the
same time the Grand Duke of Nassau is anxious to have him re-
store and embellish without delay the ancient castle of Rafenstein,
which his highness has lately purchased, and which, as you know,
stands on the mountain-side overhanging the Achensee."

" The most enchanting spot in the wide world," exclaimed
Carl, watching, as he spoke, a wreath of smoke circling upward
from his old clay pipe. " Ay, no lake and I have wandered over
all the Tyrol ever inspired me with such thoughts as the Achen-
see," pursued Heinrich. " One might almost fancy that a piece
of heaven's bluest sky had fallen down and got wedged in among
the mountains." " Ha! then you have only seen the Achensee in
fine weather," said Carl. " True," answered Heinrich. " Well,
go there when the wind is howling," said Carl, who, besides being
devout, was also very superstitious. " Go there when the rain
and hail are pouring down and the thunder is roaring. Look at
the Achensee then. Oh ! you will behold a very different sight.
The water is black as ink, and God ! what unearthly sounds I did
hear. The wails and shrieks rang in my ears and chased me like
voices of fiends till I got back to Munich."

" Where you drowned them all in a schoppen of beer at
the ' White Lamb.' Ha ! ha ! ha! " laughed Heinrich. " But now
come, Carl, to business. As I have remarked, Schwanthaler
has been commissioned to adorn the grounds about Rafenstein
with nymphs and fauns. But he says he cannot do this and
the statue of Bavaria at the same time. So what think you ?
He wants you and me to undertake the work at Rafenstein.
* There is a big black rock,' he said, ' immediately opposite the
castle and about a hundred yards from the shore, which is sup-
posed to be haunted ' "

" Yes, yes, I remember the peasants said it was," interrupted
Carl. " The ghost of a poor girl, who was murdered and whose
body was tossed into the lake, appears on that rock ever and
anon."

" ' Well, on that rock,' said Schwanthaler to me, ' I would like
to see placed a figure representing a water-wraith. This will be
an excellent subject for the exercise of your imagination. But

VOL. xxxii. 38

594 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Feb.,

let each of you treat it in his own way and finish his own statue.
Then when they are both completed I shall select the one which
pleases me most.' '

" Good ! good ! " ejaculated Carl. " It is a weird, ghostly
subject, and I can throw my whole soul into it." " We shall be
friendly rivals, but terribly earnest ones," answered Heinrich.
" Here, old fellow, give me your hand." And with this he and
Carl clasped hands. " And long after we are sleeping in God's-
acre," continued Carl, " either your water-wraith or mine will
be standing on that rock, and the Grand Duke's descendants will
point to it and say: ' Behold the work of a genius!' 1 Here
Heinrich laughed, then walked towards the door. " Ay, to-
night is your night to drink beer at the * White Lamb,' " said Carl.
" And now you are off. Well, drink a schoppen for me, and don't
get into another duel until that last slash on your cheek is
healed." Heinrich nodded, then quitted the room, leaving his
friend gazing on the bust at which he had been toiling all day,
and wishing that he had money enough to light up the dusky
chamber with a hundred tapers, in order that he might continue
on with his labor until midnight ; for it was a lovely head and
Carl was in love with his own creation. " But, alas ! " he sighed,
" darkness is coming on apace, the last swallow is twittering by
the window, and soon I must go to bed and try to sleep." For
what else could the poor fellow do ? " But never mind," mur-
mured Carl presently ; " never mind. To-morrow it will be my
turn to wear the clothes. Oh ! how I wish it were to-morrow."

" I wonder whom I can get to sit as a model for my water-
wraith ? " thought Heinrich, as he wended his way towards the
Isar-Thor the ancient entrance into Munich from across the
Isar, and hard by which stood the well-known tavern christened
" The White Lamb." Heinrich knew a score of girls who sat as
models, but they were all models by profession.

" I want somebody who will be my water-wraith for pure love
of the thing," he said to himself "somebody who will inspire
me. I wonder where I can find such a girl ? "

In about a quarter of an hour Heinrich found himself in the
spacious beer-hall, where every second evening he came to chat
and make merry. But this evening a " kneipe " was being given
by the Teutonia Corps, of which he was a member, and the place
was more thronged than usual. Indeed, it was difficult to distin-
guish those who were seated at the far end of the hall, for every
student had a pipe, and every pipe was sending forth an unend-
ing stream of smoke, which, winding and twining about other

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 595

little smoke-clouds, formed a mistlike barrier which the eye
could scarcely penetrate. " Welcome, Heinrich ! " exclaimed half
a dozen voices, as Heinrich squeezed himself into a seat at the
long table, then glanced right and left to see how far off the big
beer-bowl was. " Patience ! it is coming ; it will reach us by
and by," observed the friend on his left, who was likewise very
thirsty, and who, besides being uncommonly fond of beer, was a
pretty good Sanskrit scholar. In a little while the old bowl it
was a century old at least, and out of it Dollinger, Liebig,
Schwanthaler, Agassiz, and Kaulbach had oftentimes drunk in
their youth arrived at Heinrich's parched lips. After quaffing
a good, deep draught of the delicious beverage he passed it to
the Sanskrit scholar. And so on and on the venerable bowl went,
round and round and round the noisy table, to the music of two
hundred and hfty jovial voices.

"Well, I declare! who is this?" exclaimed Heinrich pre-
sently, opening his eyes ever so wide. " I never saw this young
woman before ; and she has a peasant dress on. When did
she arrive?" But his words were drowned in the din of the
" kneipe," and the waiter-girl who had so suddenly attracted
Heinrich's attention went by with nimble step, placed on the
table a platter of sausages and sauerkraut, then as rapidly with-
drew to fetch something else. As she passed along the line of
students a score of hands were stretched forth to catch her hand.
But she managed to elude them all with an arch smile and a
sparkle of her eye which drove several of the students especially
the Sanskrit scholar almost wild. " By St. Ulrich ! that is a
girl in ten thousand," exclaimed Heinrich, as he watched the
door through which she had disappeared.

In a few minutes the girl came back, whereupon our friend
immediately raised his arm and made a sign to catch her glance.
She saw the sign and presently was at his elbow. And now silly
Heinrich, like the other students, made an attempt to steal her
hand her small, sunburnt hand. But the girl drew it quickly
out of reach, then, bending down till her cheek was tantalizingly
close to his, said : " I did not hear your order, lieber Herr. Is it
sausages or schweinfleisch ? " " Well, the uproar here this even-
ing is perfectly deafening, my pretty one, and I am not surpris-
ed that you did not hear me," answered Heinrich. " But this is
a grand * kneipe,' you know, and * kneipes ' are always uproari-
ous.' ' He was about to go on and say something else, some-
thing rather sentimental, when a hungry voice shouted , " More
sausages! more sausages ! " which caused the girl to say to Hein-

596 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Feb.,

rich : " Dear sir, I must be off. What is it you wish ? Sausages,
too ? " " Yes, yes, sausages, sauerkraut, schweinfleisch, anything
you like, only come back soon. I want to " But she did not
wait to hear the rest of Heinrich's sentence ; she was half way to
the kitchen when it was spoken.

At this moment the beer-bowl, after having once more made
the circuit of the table, found itself at Heinrich's place again, and
he took another drink ; but this time it was only a sip.

" I have been drinking your health, my pretty one," he said
when the girl brought him his sausages. " Indeed ! Well, I re-
joice to hear it," she replied, " for another student has just been
muttering a curse on me."

" Who is he ? Where does he sit ? By St. Ulrich ! " exclaimed
Heinrich, rising to his feet. "Hush, hush!" said the girl. "I
beg you be calm ; do not pick a quarrel over a poor thing like
me." " Well, who is he that cursed you? Point him out," con-
tinued Heinrich. " The unmanly dog who could hurt the feel-
ings of the prettiest girl in Munich ought to be made to rue the
day." " Oh ! pray, sir, do not speak so loud," said the young
woman in an imploring tone. Then when she had persuaded
Heinrich to resume his seat, " Look," she added; "yonder he
sits, leering at me, three from the head of the table." Heinrich
looked and beheld, sure enough, a student, whom he did not
recollect to have ever seen before, watching the girl with a vil-
lanous expression. " Ever since I arrived in town yesterday
morning," she continued, " he has been following me. I do not
know what I possess which attracts his attention so much. He
has also whispered things in my ear which prove that he is not a
good man. But I have given him proper answers, and I defy
him ! '\ Here the girl's eyes flashed, and she looked boldly at the
bad student. " Well, now it is my turn to urge you to remain
calm," said Heinrich. " But let me assure you that, although you
are only a poor menial, I will protect you." At this moment
another voice shouting, " Beer ! beer ! " called the young woman
away. And this time she hastened to a gigantic beer-barrel
standing outside the hall, where she filled a pitcher brimful of
foaming beer; then rushed back into the room, barely in time to
prevent the big wooden bowl from being drained of its last drop
a thing which was never allowed to happen at a " kneipe," and
which would have caused the utmost consternation.

During the next half-hour Heinrich scarcely took his eyes off
the beautiful stranger. The girl was dressed in the picturesque
costume of the Zillerthal maidens, which set off to perfection

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. 597

her tall, graceful figure. A fastidious critic might perhaps have
said that her cheek-bones were a little too prominent and that her
skin was slightly bronzed by the sun. But then what eyes she
had ! so large and black and lustrous : like two precious stones
they seemed. And what a luxuriance of raven hair ! pinned to-
gether by a silver arrow, as if Cupid had shot at her without
wounding, and left his missile entangled amid her tresses. Ob-
serve, too, the deep dimple in her chin ; look at her ruby lips,
which, whenever they parted in a smile, set her whole countenance
aglow with sweet emotion. Surely we cannot wonder that she
caused every student's heart to flutter, and that Heinrich mur-
mured to himself : " No girls in the world so bewitching as the
Tyrolese. And, by St. Ulrich ! this one shall be the model for
my water- wraith." Nor did Heinrich doubt for a moment that
she would consent to be his model. His only fear was lest his
good friend Carl, who could hardly fail to be attracted by her
beauty too, might choose her for the same purpose. Presently,
moved by an irresistible impulse, Heinrich rose from his seat and
followed the young woman into a semi-darkened closet where the
bread was kept ever so many huge rye loaves, and each loaf
several feet long ; then, just as she was taking one off the shelf,
he pressed his lips to her cheek. It was a deftly stolen kiss ; but
quick as lightning came the punishment for the theft. And such
a stinging slap on his face did Heinrich receive that he winced with
pain ; for her hand had struck full on the last sword-cut, which
was not yet three days old. While he was groaning, and without
so much as glancing round to see whom she had boxed, the girl
went back among the hilarious beer-drinkers, distributing right
and left thick chunks of bread, and deafened by countless voices
screaming to her: " Come here ! come here ! " for they all wanted
to be helped at once.

But of a sudden the din came to an end ; there was a moment
of perfect silence ; after which, rising to their feet, the enthusias-
tic revellers began to sing the newly-composed ode of the great,
popular poet Arndt, " Was ist das Deutschen Vaterland? "

The girl, who had never heard this thrilling ode before, felt
her heart beat quicker as she listened to it. Then presently,
turning to where Heinrich had been seated, she said to herself :
" He must be singing too, and how his eyes must be flashing ! "
But to her surprise her champion was not in his place. Where
had the gallant fellow gone ?

" O my ! is it possible? " murmured Moida. " Is it possible ?
Can it have been he that I slapped ? " Then away she flew to

598 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Feb.,

the dusky bread-room. But no, Heinrich was not there. Then
she hastened into the court-yard. And lo ! by the light of the
moon the full moon there she discovered the youth laving his
cheek at the fountain.

" You naughty boy ! " she said as she drew near him. " Was
it you who kissed me a few minutes ago ? " Then in a more ten-
der voice : " But did I hurt you ? Is that blood I see on your
handkerchief ? Tell me, is it blood ? "

" It was a welcome slap," answered Heinrich, again venturing
to press his lips to her cheek her now burning cheek. Then
folding his arms and looking boldly at her, " Now strike me
again, if you wish," he said. But the girl, who perceived that
her cruel hand had opened his wound and caused the blood to
flow afresh, merely answered in low, faltering accents : " I am
truly sorry that I hurt you. I hope you will forgive me."

" Have no doubt about it," continued Heinrich, smiling. " But
now pray do not leave me so soon. Tarry a little and tell me
something about yourself ; for although I have never met you be-
fore this evening, I feel a great interest in you."

" O mein lieber Herr ! they are calling me," said the girl
"Hark! don't you hear them ? I must be off." "Well, I will
wait here until you find a spare moment to return and answer me
a few questions," said Heinrich. " So now, my pretty one, go ;
but come back soon."

" How this cut does bleed ! " he murmured as soon as her
back was turned, and again dabbing his moist handkerchief to the
wound. "It was a stinging blow she gave me. Still, I'm not
sorry, for I do believe it has opened the way to her heart."

Heinrich remained at the fountain a good quarter of an hour
ere the girl reappeared. Then she came, waving a clean hand-
kerchief and saying : " Take this, sir, and let me have your hand-
kerchief. I will wash it and have it ready for you the next time
you come." " Many thanks," returned Heinrich. " But now, mein
lieber Herr," she added, and wetting a corner of her apron at the
fountain, " now let me wash my own face ; for when you made so
bold as to kiss me a second time you left a red spot on my cheek
a little, wee spot of blood about the size of a rosebud. And
when the bad student at the head of the table' perceived it it
seemed to enrage him, and as I passed by he said : ' I saw what
took place out by the fountain ; I saw it all, my pretty deceiver.
Now I know you do let people take liberties with you/ O sir !
he is terribly jealous ; he frightens me."

" Well, he shall never harm a hair of your head," answered

!8i.] THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. 599

leinrich, " so do not fear him." Then taking the girl's hand in
ds, " But now please go on," he said, " and tell me something
>f your history. Where do you hail from ? What is your name ?"
My name is Moida Hofer," replied the girl, " and my home
in the Zillerthal, Tyrol. Both my parents, as well as my bro-
iers and sisters, died of small-pox during the past winter, so that
am left quite alone in the world. I am very poor. The only
thing I possess which is of any value is this silver arrow in my
lair. But poor as I am, I would not sell it, for it belonged to my
lear mother. Everybody in my native village shook their heads
r hen I spoke of coming here to earn a livelihood. ' Munich is a
>ig, wicked city,' they all said, ' and you will be surrounded by
r ice and temptation. If you go there you may be lost. Stay
dth us ; we will make a home for you.' But, alas ! I wanted to
the great world which lay beyond the mountains, and so I
tine here. I am still, as you perceive, in my peasant dress, and
uly I walk in the midst of temptations. But this morning I
rent to Mass, and every evening I say my Rosary, just as I did
it home ; and I mean to be what my dear father and mother
uld wish me to be if they were living an honest, virtuous
l."

"Yes, yes. Be good, always good," answered Heinrich. "I
not myself as good as I ought to be ; I seldom pray or go to
[ass. But perhaps some Sunday morning you will take me with
to church." At this Moida smiled, then said: "Hark! they
:e calling me. Oh ! how much these students do eat and drink,
must be off."

" Well, only half a minute more," said Heinrich, holding her
ick by the wrist. " And now, to be brief, let me inform you
I am a sculptor and that I am seeking for a model one dif-
^rent from any of the models whom I am' accustomed to have in
ly studio. None of these inspire me. But I feel that the mar-
)le which I might turn you into would be like a thing of life.
r ill you, therefore, come and sit as a model ? "

Moida looked surprised at this question. " Oh ! I am afraid
that I cannot," she answered, after hesitating a moment. " I
lever did such a thing in my life." Then, after another brief
>ause, during which the calls for sausages and sauerkraut grew
terribly louder, " But, lieber Herr," she added, "what must I do
in your studio ? Perhaps I do not understand."

At this moment the moon came out from behind a cloud and
flooded with its silver light the stone figure of a nymph, in
whose hand was a pitcher from which flowed an endless stream

6oo THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. [Feb.,

of water. This was the celebrated fountain of the " White
Lamb." It was considered very ancient. It had stood here in the
days when Louis the Bavarian was Emperor of Germany, in 1314,
and from this fountain came the only water in Munich that was
fit to drink.

" Well, I merely wish to chisel you in spotless marble," an-
swered Heinrich. " I am ambitious to create something more
beautiful than this " here he pointed to the much-admired
statue beside them, all draped in moonbeams.

Then, as Moida made no response, and taking alarm at her
silence, he added : " But I only crave leave to copy your lovely
head : nothing more. But your lovely head I must have in order
to inspire me."

This, however, was far from being the truth : Heinrich did
not mean to be satisfied with Moida's head. It might do for the
present ; but he hoped that when she knew him better she
would consent to put on a certain costume which Schwanthaler
would lend him, and w r hich, without in the least offending against
modesty, would be perfectly seemly for a water-wraith. " And
then," he said to himself, " what a beautiful statue I will make !"

" Oh ! yes, yes, you may do whatever you please with my poor
head," answered Moida. " But you must promise to tell nobody.
For several other artists have begged me to sit as a model, and I
have said no to them all." Heinrich gladly made Moida this
promise. " And on your part," he said, " I hope you will con-
tinue to say no to every painter and sculptor who asks you to be
a model. For I want you all to myself." " You may rest as-
sured," said Moida, " that I shall be your model, and yours alone.
But now I must leave you I must hurry off, or my master will
scold." And with this she left Heinrich alone by the old foun-
tain, thinking about her ; and, to tell the truth, Moida was a trifle
absent-minded all the rest of the evening for thinking of him.
Heinrich was so different from the other students ; he spoke so
kindly to her ; he had even offered to be her champion. " And
yet I am only a poor peasant girl. Who else would be so chival-
rous?" she said to herself. Then Moida thought of his thread-
bare jacket, with a patch on each elbow, and she determined some
day to make it look a little better. " At least I can put new bind-
ing to it," she said inwardly. Moida's absent-mindedness did not
escape the sharp eye of the bad student, whose jealousy was now
thoroughly aroused, and he muttered to himself : " The hypocrite
has given her heart to Heinrich Bach. But he shall not long
enjoy his conquest."

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 601

In the meanwhile Heinrich, having roused himself from his
reverie, bent his steps homeward ; and when he reached his
little garret-room in Fingergasse he found Carl seated by the
open window, gazing on the maiden's bust, which he had well-
nigh finished, and which looked strangely beautiful in the moon-
light. " I have been admiring this lovely head," said Carl, "ever
since you went away. I once fancied that it moved. How the
moon does excite my imagination ! " Then turning to Heinrich,
who stood in the moonbeams, " But, bless me ! old fellow," he
added, " what is the matter? Your cheek looks very red. Has
the last wound got bleeding afresh ? or have you been fighting
another duel?" "Oh! it's nothing," answered Heinrich, waving
his hand; "only an accident. I struck my face against some-
thing."

" Well, while I put a strip of plaster on the cut," pursued
Carl in a sympathizing tone, " tell me if you saw anything new
this evening in the shape of beauty I mean any young woman
who might serve as a model for our water-wraith. If you did,
perhaps you would be willing to pull straws to see which of us
should have her eh ? " "A model worthy of such a subject is
not to be found in one evening," replied Heinrich. " But now,
Carl, I must go to bed ; and 1 do wish I could sleep till day after
to-morrow." "Ha! ha! because to-morrow it will be my turn
to wear the clothes," said Carl, laughing. " O Heinrich ! when
shall we be rich enough to have a suit of clothes apiece, and be
able to go every day to our studios? "

" Poverty is a hateful thing," growled Heinrich.

" Ay, hateful," said Carl. " Nevertheless, poor as you and I
re, we manage to keep tolerably jolly eh ? " " How I wish it
rere day after to-morrow ! " sighed Heinrich, flinging himself on

couch.

" Well, I never knew you to be so impatient before," said
irl. " You will not even let me attend to your wound. What
the matter? "

" Good-night," answered Heinrich. " Good-night." And
r ithout another word his eyes closed and he slipped off into a
pleasant dream about a pretty lass from the Zillerthal ; and in
the dream he heard Schwanthaler saying : " Heinrich, Heinrich,
thou hast triumphed ! The statue which thou hast made is a
work of high genius."

The following day poor Heinrich was obliged to remain im-
mured in his sky-parlor, patiently toiling at the model of a lady's
hand the delicate, slender hand of a young baroness who had

602 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Feb.,

died during her honeymoon. But he did not labor with his
wonted zeal : his thoughts were constantly flying off to the
White Lamb."

When evening came round it was his friend Carl's turn to
enjoy himself there among his comrades; and no sooner did
Moida perceive Carl entering the beer-hall than she said to her-
self : " What a handsome fellow that is ! But poor, too, like the
kind youth whose acquaintance I made yesterday." Then Moida
added, as Carl drew nearer : " And I declare ! his jacket is patch-
ed on both elbows, and the green binding is partly torn off, just as
on my friend's jacket."

We need not say that Carl was immediately struck by Moida's
face and figure ; and when presently she approached and asked
him what he wanted, Carl's heart fluttered and he looked at her
a moment without answering. " I will take a schoppen of beer
and some bread and cheese," he replied. Then as Moida tripped
off Carl noticed a vicious-looking student leave his seat and follow
after her.

" That fellow, whoever he is, has not a good face," murmured
Carl. " I hope the poor girl will beware of him." In a few min-
utes Moida brought him what he had ordered, and as she set the
beer on the table Carl observed that she looked pale and flurried.
" Why, what ails you ? " he said, little doubting but that the
roue whose name was Otto von Kessler had been saying some-
thing coarse to her.

" A poor drudge like me must get used to having low, im-
proper things whispered in her ear," answered Moida. " But if
ever I get back to the dear spot where these flowers grew "-
here she placed her finger on a bunch of edelweiss fastened to her
waist " I vow never to leave it again."

. " Well, by St. Ulrich ! " exclaimed Carl, with flaming eyes,
" if you have been insulted, go fetch me yonder swords hanging
on the wall." " For heaven's sake, sir," said Moida, " do not en-
gage in a duel on my account ; for if you do I shall lose my
situation here before I have earned half enough to carry me back
to my native valley." " So you come from the Tyrol, the dear
land of edelweiss and virtuous maidens ? " pursued Carl, with
difficulty smothering the rage he felt against Otto von Kessler.
"Yes, and my home is in the Zillerthal," answered Moida.
" Have you ever been there ? " " Indeed I have. Why, I may
almost say that I have visited every nook and corner of the
Tyrol." " Then you have probably been to my dear home," con-
tinued Moida. " How I wish that I had never left it ! " " Well,

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. 603

thus far no evil has befallen you," said Carl, " and, by heaven ! no
evil shall." Then making her a sign to come closer, and drop-
ping his voice, "Tell me," he addtd, "did you ever sit as a
model?" Before the girl could reply somebody called out,
" Beer ! " and off she went to the upper end of the hall, where a
couple of students were knocking their empty glasses on the
table. " Humph," murmured Carl, as he watched her, " my
good friend Heinrich has a true eye for beauty ; yet how came
he to miss this fresh young mountain daisy ? Of all the lasses in
Munich not one would make such a fine model for his water-
wraith. What a magnificent figure she has ! She stands as
straight as an arrow and her step is as nimble as a chamois."
Presently Carl's eyes and they were deep-set, fiery eyes, as un-
like as possible to the blue, pensive eyes of Heinrich flashed, and
he sprang up from his seat ; for Otto von Kessler had risen from
his and was following Moida out of the room. " By St. Ulrich ! "
exclaimed Carl inwardly, " I'll take her part, no matter how low
her station may be." " Begone ! " cried Moida, just as Carl over-
took Von Kessler, who had insolently placed his hand on her
shoulder. " I will not go to your studio ; I will have nothing to
do with you. Begone ! " " This young woman is under my pro-
tection, so take this for your pains," said Carl, tapping the rou6's
cheek with two fingers of his right hand. This gentle blow
caused Von Kessler's face to flash crimson, and for a moment he
could not speak. Presently, after drawing a deep breath, " Ho !
ho ! " he exclaimed, " here is Don Quixote come to life." " Oh !
you may sneer, you may call me Don Quixote," said Carl, " but
unless you apologize to this young woman " Von Kessler did
lot wait for Carl to finish his sentence. Back he rushed into the
beer-hall, where he took down the two swords which were
hanging very near the door ; and so quickly did he do it, and
so full of smoke was the room, that nobody observed his move-
Lents.

It did not take them long to reach a good spot for the duel ;
and poor Moida, who utterly forgot her duties to the beer-drink-
ers, kept pulling Carl by the sleeve, vainly imploring him not to
fight, and she was almost ready to sink to the earth when Carl
and Von Kessler crossed swords. The fighting-ground was
within a few feet of the cold, swift-flowing Isar. Down through
the branches of a willow-tree the moonbeams shimmered, the
city was half a mile away ; it was just the place for a deadly fray,
and just the hour too. " Stand back ! " shouted Carl to Moida.
" Stand back or you will get hurt." Nor did he speak a moment

604 THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. [Feb.,

too soon ; the blade of his weapon flew within half an inch of her
uplifted arm, then down it came upon Von Kessler's forehead,
which instantly became dye'd with blood. The wound, however,
was not a serious one. Nevertheless the red stream trickled into
Von Kessler's eyes and so blinded him that he was unable to con-
tinue the combat ; whereupon he groaned not so much with pain
as with rage, and Moida's name was coupled with Carl's in the
direful oath of revenge which Von Kessler swore. But the girl
did not hear it, for she had sunk in a swoon at the foot of the
willow. " Here, take my hand and I will assist you to get
home," said the ever-generous Carl. " No ! I ask no help. 1
will find my way home alone," answered the other savagely,
and pressing his handkerchief to his brow. And so saying, Von
Kessler tottered away.

" Which one is wounded ? Who are you ? Oh ! tell me, who
are you ? " murmured Moida, presently opening her eyes and not
relishing the icy water which was being sprinkled over her face.
" I am your friend, and I have not received even a scratch," said
Carl, who was kneeling by her side. " Oh ! God be thanked.
But the other one the bad student is he killed ? " continued
Moida in a stronger voice. " Killed ? No, indeed. Still, I have
chastised him pretty well for having affronted you.' 5 " O
brave, noble youth ! " pursued the girl in accents of deep emo-
tion. " The world will laugh at you for taking my part, but the
good God will reward you." Then, as Carl assisted her to rise,
" And I will tell every maiden in the Zillerthal about my cham-
pion," she added, affectionately bringing Carl's hand to her lips.
" Well, I beg you, do not leave Munich immediately," said Carl,
who in all his life before had never experienced such a thrill of
delight as he felt at this moment. " Remain here a few weeks,
and grant me one boon a boon which may be the means of win-
ning me fame and fortune." " Oh ! trust me, kind sir, to do any-
thing in the world to' serve you," answered Moida. " Do give
me a chance to prove rny gratitude."

" Well, come, then, to my studio in the big building next to
St. Michael's Church, day after to-morrow, and let me make an
image of your lovely self in pure white marble." " Yes, yes,
indeed I will I " But here Moida abruptly checked her
tongue ; then bowing her head, " No, no. Impossible ! Impos-
sible ! " she murmured. " But you first said yes, and now I
will hold you to your word," continued Carl. " Why, what is
there to fear? I am a sculptor. No harm will come to you
from being my model ; and, believe me, the statue which I shall

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 605

make will be as chaste as it will be beautiful." Then, after a
pause, he added : " But if I do not have you I must get some-
body else. But no, no. Either yourself or nobody shall be
the model for my water- wraith."

Still Moida shook her head and begged him to release her
from her rash, half-uttered promise. " I really cannot. Any-
thing but that anything but that," she said. " Well, well," went
on Carl, shrugging his shoulders, " I am not able to force you to
sit as a model, nor would I if I could. But at least you might
visit my studio. Come day after to-morrow and have a chat with
me there."

To this Moida consented. Then together they walked back
to the town, Carl hoping that when the girl became better ac-
quainted with him she would consent to be the original of the
weird and beautiful statue which already, in his mind's eye, he
saw standing on the rock in the Achensee.

Of course not a word concerning Moida did Carl breathe to
Heinrich when he got home. Nor did Hemrich breathe a word
to him about the girl. Each friend thought to himself : " I have
found a perfect gem of a model ; one, too, who is as .virtuous as
she is beautiful."

On the morrow, at the appointed hour, Moida bent her steps
to the venerable building where Heinrich's studio was. And as
she drew near to it her heart beat quicker. " For who knows,"
she murmured, " who knows but I may meet my other friend, the
valiant Carl, and he may ask me whither I am going."

Presently, turning aside from the busy street, Moida entered
t. Michael's Church, where, kneeling before the high altar, she
ffered thanks to God for having sent her in her utter loneliness
wo such protectors as Heinrich and Carl.

The girl's prayer was short but fervent. Then, as she with-
rew from the sacred edifice, she said to herself : " I will not let
y soul be troubled any more by vague alarms. The Holy
irgin will intercede in my behalf. Nay, has she not done so
already? It is, doubtless, thanks to her intercession that Heinrich
and Carl have been sent to guard me against the evil-minded
tudent."

A few minutes later Moida found herself within the walls of
the Art Academy, and she began to ascend the dark, winding
stone staircase, so often trodden in days of yore by prayerful
monks. But she had not climbed half-way to the second landing-
place when she heard footsteps behind her.

"Mem Gott ! It may be Carl," exclaimed Moida inwardly.

606 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Feb.,

" What shall I say if he asks me what I am doing here ? " But
no, it was not Carl Schelling who was so rapidly overtaking her.
It was somebody with his head wrapped in a blood-stained ban-
dage, and face as white as the face of a ghost. Moida, of course,
expected that Otto von Kessler would address her for it was
he. But not a syllable did he utter ; only a malignant gleam shot
out of his eyes, and the terrified girl would much rather have had
him speak than stare at her in this singular manner. And as
Von Kessler stared Moida wished with all her heart that Carl
might appear, or Heinrich ; there was still a long distance to
mount up to the fifth story she had to go. How much higher
would this awe-inspiring being dog her steps ? Presently, by a
strong effort of will, Moida averted her eyes from Von Kessler's,
then continued her way ; up, up she went. One, two, three,
almost four stories she mounted, the other always close behind ;
when of a sudden, just at a shadowy spot where there was no
window near, the footsteps ceased. Timidly she glanced over
her shoulder. Von Kessler was not to be seen. " How strangely
he vanished ! " thought Moida, wiping the cold drops from her
brow. " Every time I meet him he fills me more and more with
alarm." Then, as she was wondering what had become of him,
she heard footsteps again ; they seemed to be going up and down
and all around her. But she could distinguish nobody, nor did
anybody touch her.

" Why, dear girl, are you ill this morning ? " said Heinrich,
when presently Moida arrived at his studio. " How cold your
hand is ! It is like ice." "No, sir, I am not ill. Already I feel
quite myself again," replied the girl, as a stream of sunshine fell
upon her.

" But if this is a very cheerful, sunny room," she added, be-
coming suddenly grave again, " the long, long stairs reaching up
to it are most unpleasant. They are so ghostly." " Well, they
are said to be haunted," replied Heinrich. " But I don't believe
in ghosts. Do you?"

" Haunted ! " exclaimed Moida, opening wide her big black
eyes. Then turning to the door, which she had left ajar, she
hurriedly closed it ; and even after the latch had fallen she press-
ed hard against the door to make sure that it was well shut.
" Yes, some people say they are haunted," went on Heinrich,
" and I have an intimate friend who believes it is true. This is
the only point whereon he and I differ. But we are not all born
alike, and my friend is by nature very superstitious ; so much so
that above the door of his studio for he is an artist like myself

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. 607

hangs a big wooden crucifix to keep evil spirits aloof." " I
wonder who your intimate friend may be?" thought Moida,
carefully running her eye over Heinrich's well-worn suit, which
looked so very like the shabby suit worn by the gallant Carl.
Then, seizing a moment when Heinrich's face was averted, she
drew out a pair of scissors and deftly clipped off a tiny bit of the
green binding of his jacket.

" Now, dear girl," said Heinrich presently, " if you will sit
down on yonder chair I shall begin my work." " I am ready,"
answered Moida. " My head is at your service. But before you
plunge your fingers into your lump of clay let me restore to
you your handkerchief. You remember that I promised to wash
it nice and clean." "And you have done so. A thousand
thanks !" said Heinrich. " I was half afraid you had forgotten it."

"Well, I hope your poor face does not pain you to-day?"
continued Moida. " Does it ? Will the wound soon be healed ?"

" It will it will," replied Heinrich. " The little slap you
gave me has made.it heal all the quicker." Moida smiled, then
sat down in the chair.

It was a pleasant hour she and Heinrich spent together a
very pleasant hour. The girl had never been in a studio before,
and the young sculptor answered good-naturedly the many ques-
tions she put to him. Only once did he hint that he might make
better progress if she were to be more still and talked less.
But more than once Heinrich sighed and wished that she had
not restricted him to simply making a model of her head. " But
patience," he said inwardly ; " patience ! I have her all to myself.
She is to be nobody else's model. By and by she may be per-
suaded to wear the chaste drapery which Schwanthaler will lend
me. The most scrupulous maiden could not object to it ; and
then what a peerless statue I shall make of her ! "

When the girl had been with him a little over an hour Hein-
rich washed the clay off his hands and said : " Moida, I have
made a good beginning, and I thank you ever so much. Are
you tired ? " " Not in the least," answered Moida. Then as she
stood with her hand on the latch, about to depart, Heinrich
asked if she would meet him at four o'clock for a stroll in the
English Garden the name of the beautiful park in Munich. To
this Moida said yes. Then she added : " But now may I ask you
to be kind enough to escort me down as far as the first landing-
place?" "Right willingly," said Heinrich, smiling. "Perhaps
you fear to meet an apparition. Really, you and my intimate
friend are quite alike in this respect."

608 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Feb.,

" Well, I do not think it was a ghost I saw. And yet and
yet " Here Moida hesitated. Whereupon Heinrich exclaimed :
" Pray tell me about it. What did you see ? I knew you were
frightened when you first entered my studio." " Otto von Kess-
ler followed me up several flights," replied Moida " followed
me until I came to a spot where there was very little light.
There he vanished. Yet I could hear footsteps passing and re-
passing me ; nor was it so dark but that I should have seen him.
Was it not exceedingly strange ? "

"Humph! " ejaculated Heinrich. "Well, if that fellow plays
another practical joke on you I'll put an end to his joking. By
St. Ulrich ! I will."

On their way down to the street they did not see or hear any-
body, and in a few minutes they parted company, Heinrich say-
ing : " Do not forget four o'clock."

Punctual almost to a minute Moida and Heinrich met at the
trysting-place in the park. It was the spot where Dollinger's
Walk begins. For here it was that this world-renowned church
historian often came to enjoy an afternoon stroll ; and to this
day this shady, retired pathway keeps the name of Dollinger's
Walk.

A short distance to the left ran a little stream, murmuring on
its way to the Isar, while on either side stood large trees, whose
branches, meeting overhead, formed a leafy arch well-nigh im-
penetrable to the sunshine. Nowhere else in this lovely plea-
sure-ground were the thrushes and goldfinches so fond of build-
ing their nests, and even at high noon you might hear a nightin-
gale warbling here.

But although Moida set out in excellent spirits for with such
a gay companion as Heinrich how could she help but be gay
too? nevertheless ere long a great shadow fell upon her.

" Why, liebes Kind, we must go further than this ; we must
not stop here," spoke the sculptor, seeing Moida come to an ab-
rupt pause just where the thick hazel-bushes almost met in front
of them. " Did you not see him ?" said Moida in low, tremu-
lous accents. " Did you not see him ? Wherever I go he haunts
my footsteps."

"See whom? Do you mean Otto von Kessler?" inquired
Heinrich, contracting his brow. "Yes. He glided swiftly across
the path a moment ago, and disappeared yonder where that lily
is." " Indeed! Well, I was looking up at a squirrel; 'tis how I
did not see him. But what if he is hovering about us? What
harm can he do you ? Why, it is childish to tremble so."

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 609

" Well, yes, I am a coward in some things," answered Moida ;
" and Otto von Kessler has succeeded in making me afraid of him.
I must again have recourse to prayer." " You pray a good deal,
I fancy," said Heinrich. " Well, you can pray and I can fight.
Ay, I will teach Von Kessler a needful lesson see if I don't."

" O Heinrich ! I beseech you do not engage in a duel," ex-
claimed Moida. " It is a sin to fight a duel. But now let us
retrace our steps. I feel that I could not enjoy our walk any fur-
ther." " Are you in earnest ? " said Heinrich, looking at her
with surprise. " You will not trust to my protection ? Well,
well, then we shall go back."

And so saying, they returned to the entrance of the park. But
ere they separated Moida made Heinrich solemnly promise that
he would not challenge Von Kessler. Then as soon as she found
herself alone she bent her steps to St. Peter's Church.

The student who had inspired Moida with so much dread
did not show himself at the " White Lamb " this evening, at
which she greatly rejoiced, and with all her heart wished that he
might never come again. But Heinrich was in his accustomed
place, making merry with his friends, all of whom admired Moida
ever so much, albeit they thought she was a trifle too shy. " She
smiles on us," spoke one, " but she never goes any further."
" She has driven Otto von Kessler well-nigh mad," spoke another
student, " for she is the only girl of her class who has stood
proof against his honeyed words and his gold ; for Von Kessler is
rich as well as a count."

" Well, Moida comes from the Tyrol," put in Heinrich, " and
her soul is as white as the edelweiss which blooms on her native
hills."

At this remark a faint smile played on the lips of Heinrich's
comrades, but they did not say anything.

VOL. xxxn. 39

TO BE CONTINUED.

6io A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. [Feb.,

A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY*

A FEW weeks ago citizens of New York saw a secret society,
decked in its regalia and carrying its emblems, take possession
of Central Park while it performed its pseudo-religious rites.
High above the ceremony waved the red banner, the Masonic
ensign, and which for all the continent of Europe is the signal
of revolution and of war against Christianity. The excuse
offered for this violation of one of the rules of the park was
that the Freemasons were laying the corner-stone of the obe-
lisk, which it was alleged was in some way of Masonic origin.
The absurdity, however, of this claim was exposed by the grand
master himself, who, in the discourse which he pronounced on this
occasion, declared that there was nothing to indicate the Masonic
origin that had been asserted by the more ardent of the " illu-
minated." The real motive of the performance, then, it may be
fair to assume, was to make a display of Masonic strength. It
was, after all, only one of many instances where Freemasonry at
this sort of ceremony is brought to the public notice without any
good reason whatever.

True, in the United States and in other English-speaking coun-
tries Freemasonry has so far been free from some of the mis-
chievous influences that dominate the institution in most of the
continental countries of Europe.

" In those countries " [the United States and Great Britain], says Fa-
ther Deschamps, the author of Les Societes Secretes et la Society " thanks
to the superior social condition and to the force of political tradition, Ma-
sonry has undergone a sort of transformation. It has been fused with the
Protestant sects, and has even given a great deal of space in its ritual to the
Bible. If religion has not been the gainer by this, the lodges have at least,
in this way, lost a great deal of the character which they originally had.
But the English and American lodges are different from all others." t

Perhaps the fact that the Illuminism which took such a hold
of the German and French lodges in the last century met little
welcome from the less imaginative English may have had some-
thing to do with this. That the English-speaking Freemasons

* Les Soctitds Secretes et la Societl, ou philosophic de 1'histoire contemporaine. Par N. Des-
champs. Deuxieme edition. Avec une introduction sur 1'action des societes secretes au XIXe
siecle, par M. Claudio Jannet. Avignon : Seguin freres. 1880.

t Les Socittts Secrltes et la.JSociete', tome i. p. 120.

1 8 8 1 .] A NE w BOOK ON FREEMA SONR F. 6 1 1

differ-very greatly from all others is, however, beyond dispute.
And this ought at once to warn American Catholics that the anti-
Masonic literature of Europe can be applicable here only with
considerable modifications. The American lodges, it is well
known, number among their members many Protestant ministers,
chiefly Methodists and Episcopalians.* How long this differ-
ence between the American and European institutions will remain
it is, of course, hard to say. But it is very important to bear in
mind that the constant addition to the American lodges of emi-
grant Freemasons from Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy
is perhaps calculated to inoculate American Masonry with a great
deal of the poison of the European order. The influence of tlie
Hebrews is also to be taken into account. The Hebrews are a
talented race, and many of them who are rationalists have secured
a firm foothold in the European press and have effected a great
deal against Christian institutions by their zealous advocacy of
the so-called liberal movement. The Hebrews are very numer-
ous in the American lodges.

While Freemasonry in this country is not a political party, it
is nevertheless a power of some consequence among politicians.
It is the common belief that a Freemason is no sooner nominated
to an office than his connection with the order is made known to
the brethren for their guidance in voting, not officially, perhaps,
but yet by means that are just as effectual.*)"

A notable fact in the politics of what are known as the Catho-
lic countries of Europe and South America is the hostility shown
to the religious orders. The Jesuits, it is true, come in for the
largest share of the odium, but none of the orders entirely escape
it. Now, though the religious orders are not the church, nor, in
the strict sense of the word, essential to the church, they ha*ve
been recognized by the church as eminently useful. They repre-
sent so much of its active and exterior and so much of its spiritual
and interior life that an attack on them is practically an attack on
the church itself. It may be said, perhaps, that the Catholicity of

* To show how Protestant ministers, and well-meaning Protestant laymen also, may in time
deceived Father Deschamps quotes the founder of Illuminism, who writes : "You could not
imagine what admiration my degree of Priest excites among our people, and, what is most sin-
gular, some great Protestant and Reformed theologians who are members of our Illuminism real-
ly believe that the part of the discourse relative to religion contains the true spirit, the real mean-
ing of Christianity. O men ! what could I not make you believe " (Ecrits originaux, II. Lettre
18 de Weishaupt a Zwach).

t During the recent canvass the formal announcement of the nomination of one of the candi-
dates for the vice-presidency of the United States was couched in language that plainly indicated
to the craft that he was a Freemason. The phraseology employed may have been chosen without
regard to this, but if so the coincidence was at least curious.

612 A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. [Feb.,

these countries is to a degree nominal only ; that in France, for ex-
ample, great numbers of those who are called Catholics and have
been baptized, and have received their first communion and been
confirmed, appear to be satisfied that they have done all which,
from a religious point of view, it is necessary to do until they feel
the approach of death, when they again have recourse to the
church. Of course it is easy enough to understand that a people
who have largely become indifferent to religion can offer it but
slight support, if any, against its declared opponents. A learned
English priest, whose pen has for many years been familiar and
welcome to Catholic readers, lately wrote of the

" portentous facility with which what under the circumstances must be con-
sidered a very alarming proportion of the students of the Catholic schools
and colleges, in all the various countries where European civilization has
been extended, are seen to pass out of the Christian order of ideas which
they are supposed to have imbibed from going through their respective
curricula of higher class studies, into the order of ideas proper to the
numerous votaries of what is called 'free-thought.' "*

Indifferentism in religion this writer believes to be greatly ow-
ing to a wrong system pursued in teaching the classics. In this
he follows much the same line of argument made famous some
years ago by the Abb6 Gaume. But it is not the educated only
in those Catholic countries who are tainted with infidelity. The
artisan class, the working people, who have never read Horace or
JEschylus, and who have for a great many years been much
given to thinking out things for themselves, have to a frightful
extent ceased to know God, except, perhaps, as a vague being with
whom they have little or nothing to do.

The secularization of education is now an important and de-
moralizing factor in European politics, but that of itself will not
explain the indifferentism or infidelity under discussion ; for this
idea of separating religion and science in the schools is new-
fangled, while infidelity has been rotting Europe for three cen-
turies.

Father Deschamps finds the cause in Freemasonry and the
secret societies affiliated with Freemasonry or modelled on it.
His method of establishing this consists in an attempt to trace
the French Revolution to Freemasonry, and then from the Revo-
lution deducing nearly all the political, social, and moral ills of
the day.

What is striking in Father Deschamps' argument for the

* The Growing Unbelief of the Educated Classes . An investigation by the Rev. Henry Form-
by. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1880.

1 88 1.] A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. 613

Masonic origin of the French Revolution is that he largely relies
on what he calls the confessions of Freemasons, but which he
might just as validly have called their boasts. " M. Louis Blanc,"
he tells us, " will show us the rdle played by Freemasonry in the
movement of 1789."* " The movement of 1789," let it be re-
membered, is an elastic phrase, and its employment here might
be taken as a condemnation of much that an American would be
loath to condemn. In the mouth of a Legitimist the phrase might
have a very wide meaning.! M. Blanc, being a Freemason and
also an admirer of the Revolution, naturally seeks to arrogate to
his own sect and its influences whatever to him may seem good
or admirable. There is no doubt that the Masonic lodges arid
other secret organizations played a prominent part in the Revo-
lution, and it is equally true they had been active for some time
before while the whole French people were in a ferment. It is
in times of disorder or of great political excitement that this sort
of agencies are the busiest.

But if Freemasonry and " philosophy " both issued from Eng-
land,^: how happened it that the effect of these two things was so
much more dire in France than in England ? All the more is
this inquiry pertinent because Father Deschamps speaks of the
social condition of France not many years before the Revolution,
even " after half a century of the impious propaganda, after Vol-
taire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau," as being so firm that it could
still defy the secret societies. But one is still more tempted to
make the inquiry on reading that during this time

he Christian education created by the church reached into all classes
society, even to the most out-of-the-way parts," and that " from the six-
teenth century the Jesuits had occupied the first rank in Christian educa-
tion as well by the singular aptitude of their methods to the needs of new
times as by the manner in which they inspired their pupils of the different
provinces with an enlightened patriotism. The France of Henry IV. had
established them, despite the jealousy of their rivals and the opposition of
e enemies of orthodoxy, and their numerous houses of education were so
ny seminaries of faithfulness to the church and to the monarchy." ||

et this monarchy it was that organized the Bourbon League,
one of whose aims was the suppression of the Society of Jesus ;

Ei it was this France, thus well provided with Christian teach-
Les SocieUs Secrltes, tome ii. p. 87.
\ M. Jannet, who has revised and rearranged Les Societes Secretes since Father Deschamps'
nt death, and has written an introduction to it, is the editor of L? Union newspaper of Paris,
a principal organ of the party which aims at restoring the Bourbons, in the person of the Count
of Chambord, to the French throne.

I Les Soc. Sec., t. ii. p. 3. Ibid., t. ii. p. 43. U Ibid.

614 A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. [Feb.,

ers and pervaded throughout by a Christian spirit, which, within
a few years, in the time of the generation that had been so well
schooled, wiped out the monarchy and all its adjuncts in blood,
and cruelly and blasphemously turned upon religion and its min-
isters.

Father Deschamps thinks that " Freemasonry alone can ex-
plain " the suppression of the Jesuits. But when he tells us that
Voltaire, and Rousseau, and D'Alembert, and Pombal, and Choi-
seul, and all the rest, even to Pompadour (!), were affiliated to
Freemasonry, and therefore Freemasonry must be held charge-
able with the origin of the war against the Jesuits, we cannot but
ask, What about Calvin, and Fra Paolo, the author of the Monita
Secreta, and the whole brood of Jansenism ? Surely these, which
were very potent factors in this war, had little to do with Free-
masonry. And if all the persons whom Father Deschamps names
even Pompadour were Freemasons, so too, and that not figu-
ratively either, was Frederick the Great, the intimate friend and
correspondent of Voltaire. Yet Frederick, the idol of the philo-
sophers, Carlyle's hero, was also a Freemason and the reorgan-
izer of Freemasonry, and he it was that offered the Jesuits an
asylum which they accepted ; he treated them with great respect
and recommended them in the most flattering terms to other
sovereigns as excellent teachers. But Father Deschamps speaks
of the parliaments of France which had ceased to exist some
years before the Revolution as Freemasons in a body.

" As for the parliaments, their certificate of philosophico-masonic affilia-
tion is found in the correspondence of Voltaire and of D'Alembert, in the
pilgrimages to Ferney made by the councillors and referendaries, and in the
numerous letters to the principal members, we might have added, were it
necessary."*

This charge against what, with all their faults, were respectable
and learned assemblies, containing many worthy Christians, is
rendered somewhat vague, it must be admitted, by the " philoso-
phico " prefixed to the word masonic.

It is well to remark that the many years' close attention which
Father Deschamps gave to the subject of Freemasonry, while un-
doubtedly fitting him to pronounce an opinion, also tended, in the
natural order of things, to magnify in his eyes the operations of
the craft he had been so long studying. He sees Freemasonry ii>
everything that is anti-Catholic. A similar phenomenon is ob-
servable among non-Catholics, for many of whom the illustrious

* LesSoc. Sec. , t. ii. p. 58,

1 88 1.] A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. 615

Society of Jesus is a constant bugbear and the source of unnum-
bered woes. We have all to guard against cant, if we would deal
seriously with serious questions. It is impossible to insist too
forcibly on the danger to religion and society that Freema-
sonry offers, but the right way to avert the danger is to look
at it as it is, not to dress it up in so fantastic a guise that Free-
masons themselves will be unable to recognize it. Of course
politicians of all parties, unscrupulous as the class have always
been, eager to further their own or their party's ends, would en-
roll themselves among the Freemasons, who were a numerous and
influential association, yet it would not follow that all the vaga-
ries, schemes, or theories of these politicians are to be laid at
the door of Freemasonry. In fact many, very many of those who
suffered during the Revolution, very many of the emigrt nobles,
were Freemasons.

The truth is that France, for some years previous to 1789, had
no longer any legislative assembly. There was nothing that
could be called an organized and disciplined political party. The
art of government had nearly passed out of the knowledge of all
but the intendants and their assistants in the administration. Most
of the power had fallen into the hands of a bureaucracy ; the king,
the higher clergy, and the nobles lived on the people, but no lon-
ger governed them. The new power had succeeded in centraliz-
ing at Paris nearly all the functions of the government, even to
the most petty details of village economy. The parish priest's
house or the parish church could not be repaired, rain would
come in upon the people at Mass, roads or bridges could not be
constructed or mended, until after an exchange of formalities be-
tween the province and Paris which might, and often did, delay
action for a year or more. An immense proportion of the land
was nominally church estate and therefore exempt from taxation ;
but the revenues of much of this estate, instead of being devoted
to religious purposes, were controlled by the younger sons of the
bility, who had taken orders because they had no other means
support or because they were supposed to be good for nothing
else. They resembled the simoniac clergy of the Anglican estab-
lishment, and their often frivolous way of living helped to bring
the name of abbt into disrepute. Most of the nobles had lost
all public spirit, for they had no longer anything to do with the
government of their serfs or tenants, or with the administration
of their province, and they gathered at Paris to squander the
earnings of the peasantry, whose hard toil barely sufficed to pay
the rent. The nobles, like the clergy, were exempt from the

616 A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. [Feb.,

great burden of taxation, which fell upon the bourgeoisie and the
peasantry. During the last hundred years of the old monarchy
class distinctions had become more and more marked. Clergy,
nobility, and bourgeoisie contended each for its privileges. In
the meantime a great debt had accumulated and the taxes were
increased accordingly. Many of the bourgeoisie, by taking office
in the administration, had put themselves on a footing with the
clergy and nobility to the extent of securing an exemption from
the payment of taxes. The poor alone had no exemptions, no
privileges, and bore all the burdens of the state. The artisan
class in the cities were subjected to the bondage of the guilds,
while upon the peasantry, the poorest of all, fell the weight of
the taxes. Their only champions, the parish priests, were nearly
as poor and oppressed as themselves.

The classes which by their intelligence and social influence
might have done much towards practically and peacefully re-
modelling the institutions of their country, so as to meet the
changed times, were each taken up with its own interests. But
if there were no political parties, political writers were plentiful
enough. The literary spirit, too, was everywhere. France,
though perhaps the worst governed, was certainly the most in-
tellectual, nation in the world. Nobles, priests, roturiers, and
grandes dames, even the poor forgotten peasants themselves,
were all left free to discuss a liberty they were not permitted to
enjoy. There was scarcely a political theory that has since
come to be called by certain writers revolutionary that was not
brought forward or put into practice by the king or his minis-
ters. One of these theories viz., that landed estate is absolutely
the property of the state, and is held by the possessors under a
limited right only, merely as a trust for the benefit of the state,
and therefore liable, whenever the purpose of the trust is no long-
er fulfilled, to be taken from the possessor and given to another
was enunciated in the early part of his reign by the best of the
Bourbon kings, Louis XVI. himself. This theory of land tenure
was of course the very basis of feudal landed rights. It seems
to be deemed revolutionary or socialistic only when an endeavor
is made to apply it for the benefit of the many and not of the few.

It is true, the higher clergy spoke out at times. Tocqueville,
whose analysis of the old regime was thorough and perfectly im-
partial, says of the clergy at this period :

" The clergy are at times intolerant and occasionally stubbornly attached
to several of their ancient privileges ; but they are also the enemies of des-
potism, and are as favorable to civil liberty and as desirous of political

i88i.] A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. 617

liberty as the bourgeoisie or the nobility. They declare that individual
liberty ought to be guaranteed, not by promises, but by a procedure similar
to that of habeas corpus. They ask for the destruction of the state-prisons ;
the abolition of the exceptional courts and of evocations,* the publication
of the proceedings of the courts, the permanency of the judges ; the opening
of public employments to all citizens found worthy of them ; a system of
recruiting for the army less offensive and less humiliating for the people,
and that should be without exemptions ; the liquidation of the seignorial
privileges, which had gone beyond the feudal system and were become con-
trary to liberty ; the complete liberty of labor [then dominated by the guilds
and other monopolies] ; the increase of primary schools, of which there
should be one in each parish free to all, lay benevolent establishments in
the rural parts, such as boards of charity, work-houses for the indigent, and
all sorts of encouragement for agriculture." t

So that, from the mild language of the clergy, it is evident that
very sweeping reforms were needed. But no reforms came un-
til that movement of 1789 which Father Deschamps would have
us believe was of Masonic origin. To quote Tocqueville again :

" I read the memorandums drawn up by the three several orders before
assembling in 1789. I mean the nobility and the clergy as well as the
Third Estate. Here I see a law demanded, there a custom, and I make a
note of it. Thus I keep on to the end of this immense labor, and when I
have brought together all these different demands I perceive with a sort
of terror that what is asked is a simultaneous and systematic abolition of
every law and every custom prevailing in the nation." \

The fact that the political doctrines of the Revolution began
to find favor throughout Europe almost instantaneously is to
Father Deschamps certain proof that they were the outcome of a
conspiracy. But is this a correct deduction ? If the Revolution
was the work of a conspiracy, it was perhaps the only great
general popular commotion that ever had such an origin. But,
after all, the suddenness of the Revolution was only apparent.
Its doctrines had been in the air, as it were, for a long while.
The happy result of our own resistance to British misrule was
the realization of theories that had before seemed almost Utopian.
Every soldier who returned to France with Lafayette became a
missionary of revolution.

Yet no one who reads the writings of that time, even those
which Father Deschamps deems incendiary, can believe that the
crimes that accompanied the Revolution were either foreseen or
desired by those who began the movement, no matter what

* A procedure by which matters belonging to the ordinary courts were moved to special
tribunals devoted to the interests of the king.

\ L? Ancien Regime et la Revolution, livre ii. chap. n.
1. iii. c. i.

618 A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. [Feb.,

might have been the ribald language of D'Alembert, Holbach, or
others of that set. Nevertheless there was much to betoken
a storm which all who were not dancing or piping in the king's
house might dread, if they did but use their eyes and ears. The
Revolution came and everything appeared doomed to destruc-
tion. It is curious to remark that those provinces where the
nobility and the higher clergy still dwelt with their people, al-
though they were amongst the poorest and worst governed pro-
vinces of France, resisted the march of the Revolution with a
heroism that has had few parallels in history. This very fact
serves to show how difficult it is to explain the Revolution by
any one theory. But what had become of the bourgeoisie, that
rich and powerful middle class which usually hates disorder?
They were indifferent to the fate of a government and a society
which had mocked at them and their rights, and which had been
generally and systematically ruinous to their interests.

" The contrast," says Tocqueville, " between the benignity of
the theories and the violence of the acts, which was one of the
characteristics of the French Revolution, need surprise no one
who remarks that this Revolution was prepared by the most civil-
ized classes of the nation and was carried out by the most uncul-
tivated and the rudest." * The idea that a complete equality of
condition in society should prevail, which the secret cabals,
Masonic and other, were busily disseminating, served to create
a ferocious discontent among the ignorant multitude suddenly
released from all control. The sans-culottes struck down without
mercy everybody and everything that was above them in wealth,
station, or privileges.

Tocqueville's. explanation of the hatred to religion that was so
marked during the fury of the Revolution is to the point:

" It is easy to be convinced to-day that the war against religion was an
incident only of the great Revolution, a salient yet fugitive feature of its
physiognomy, a passing product of ideas, passions, of pecular facts which
had preceded and prepared the Revolution but did not belong to its
real genius. ... It was not because the clergy sought to regulate the
things of the other world, but because they were proprietors, feudal lords
taking tithes, administering the goods of this world ; not because the
church could not take its place in the new order of society which was to be
formed, but because the church occupied the strongest and most privileged place
in that order of society which it [the Revolution] was destined to reduce to
powder" j-

Freemasonry, then, in the politico-atheistical form which it has

*DAncien Regime, 1. iii. C. 8, f Ibid., 1. i. c. 2.

1 88 i.J A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. 619

taken on the continent of Europe, was not, it may safely be said,
the cause, primarily or secondarily, of the Revolution or the revo-
lutionary spirit. It is rather merely one of the manifestations of
a craving for some sort of religion and for some code of morality
which still exists even among those who have fallen away from
the church of God.

In France Freemasonry had received the official recognition
of the government of Napoleon III., but "advanced" Freema-
sons chafed under the restraints which this recognition imposed
upon the order. The Masonic Congress held at Metz in 1869 de-
manded that the fundamental article of Freemasonry in France,
which affirmed the basis of the order to be the belief in the exist-
ence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the love of humanity
should be replaced by the declaration that Masonry has for its
only principle the unity of mankind. The promoter of this move-
ment was M. Mace, of the University. M. Mace" and his friends
were at last entirely successful, for the general assembly of French
Masons held at Paris a few years later,* by a great majority and
after taking the sense of all the lodges subject to the Grand Ori-
ent or central authority of France, abolished the fundamental ar-
ticle in question, substituting it by the declaration that " Freema-
sonry has for its foundation absolute liberty of conscience and the
unity of mankind. It excludes no one for his belief." It is wor-
thy of note that M. Mace, who contributed so much to this open
triumph of atheism in French Freemasonry, was also the founder
of the Ligue de V Enseignement , a confederation of those who are in
favor of the secularization of education. M. Mace, it may be re-
marked -by the way, is the author of one or two books for chil-
dren published by the Harpers, of New York.

Having thus indicated some difficulties that are suggested by
Father Deschamps' line of argument, it is right to point to an
example of some of his strange propositions. The axiom accept-
ed among all constitutional lawyers of the United States, that
when the legislative and the executive powers are united in the
same person or in the, same assembly there is danger to liberty, is
a dictum of Montesquieu. Unless Father Deschamps was merely
juggling with words, this is referred to as a Masonic doctrine.f
Catholic Irishmen, too, will naturally feel somewhat cautious in
the use of a book which speaks of Disraeli as " the minister to
whom the England of our day owes her recovery of the good
fortune that had been compromised by men of the secret socie-
ties, such as Palmerston and Gladstone." J It is true, Disraeli too

* September 14, 1877. t Les Soc. Sec., t. i. p. 231. t Ibid., t. i. p. 36.

62O A NEW BOOK ON FREEMASONRY. [Feb.,

sees the secret societies in every uneasy movement of the ha-
rassed people of Europe. Nor will the impressionable Celts feel
any delight in reading that Ireland is dominated by Freemason-
ry ! * Nothing could be more absurd.

The essay on the Knights Templars is particularly interesting.
Father Deschamps thinks the knights guilty of the crimes and
irregularities charged to them, and he traces, with a few breaks,
however, in the evidence, a connection between the suppressed
order of the Temple and modern Freemasonry. Freemasonry it-
self he traces also to Gnosticism, Manicheism, and the Albigen-
ses, but he finds the real corporate existence of the institute to
have first appeared in a charter drawn up at a reunion held at
Cologne in 1535-f Among the signatures to this charter, whose
genuineness is acknowledged by respectable authorities, and
which Father Deschamps gives in full, are those of several of the
leaders of the so-called Reformation, including Melanchthon and
Coligny.

Father Deschamps' book is a monument of industry, and
it will be indispensable for all who desire to study the working
of the secret societies in Europe. The annals of Freemasonry,
of the Illuminati, of the Carbonari have been searched, the writ-
ings and speeches of many of those leaders of free thought who
can in any way be identified with the secret societies have been
had recourse to, and the result is a condensed encyclopaedia of
the subject. But it is a work which practically can have but lit-
tle application to the question of Freemasonry in this country.

Freemasonry, as a secret society, is dangerous to our free in-
stitutions ; as a craft it is obnoxious to the true spirit of human-
ity. It is degrading to a man's dignity to submit himself to a
secret, irresponsible, human authority. No one can sincerely
question that the Catholic Church, in prohibiting her children
from becoming members of such secret organizations, has de-
served well of the country, and in this one respect particularly
has done much for the preservation of our political institutions.

* Les Soc. Sec., t. i. p. 173. t Ibid., t. i. p. 318.

1 88 1.] PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. 621

PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND.

THE enemies of Ireland have always distinguished themselves
in times of national distress by an endeavor to win by bribery
and treachery those whom they are unable to reach under other
circumstances. The winter of 1879-80 proved no exception to
this rule. Scarcely had the public begun to realize the possibi-
lity of famine when the proselytizing agents throughout Great
Britain entered upon their new campaign. It may not be amiss,
when treating of this question, to make some reference to the years
1846 and 1847, when famine and pestilence desolated the entire
country. During that period a number of persons, who imagined
that all the misfortunes of Ireland were attributable to her reli-
gion, conceived the idea of a society which should combine the
advantages of temporal and spiritual relief, and thus win the pea-
santry from the faith of their forefathers. A crusade was for this
purpose preached in England, and, under the belief that a new
Reformation might be effected, immense numbers of persons sub-
scribed to the Society for Irish Church Missions.

A Protestant writer, after much circumlocution, admits that it
was only so long as the Mission agents dwelt upon the broad out-
lines of the Christian faith and hope, the love of God, the sin-
fulness of man, the happiness of heaven, and the terrors of. future
punishment that their hearers went with them ; but that as soon
as the agents went a step further and attacked what they called
the pet superstitions and customs which had been handed down
from generation to generation, then, to parody the words of Burke,
"a thousand shillelahs were ready to fly from the hands of these
rough defenders of the faith of their fathers." The people bit-
terly resented the attacks made upon the priests, the doctrine of
purgatory, intercession of the saints, devotion to Our Lady, etc.
Nothing can be more touching than the tie which binds them
to their priesthood, and they could not abide to hear them abused.

The future priest is frequently one of themselves, the son, per-
haps, of a superior farmer, who is sent to Maynooth for his edu-
cation, and always remains an object of reverence and devotion.
During those sad years of famine and peril these priests shrank
from the performance of no duty and no risk of infection, even
when fever followed famine with equal step and the cabins of the
poor were hotbeds of pestilence. Their religion and the religion of

622 PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. [Feb.,

the people of Connemara, though denounced by the proselytizing
agents as superstitious nonsense, enabled them to perform feats of
heroic valor, and not a man stepped out of the ranks to which he
belonged, but all struggled on till they fell as they stood. Disease
in its most loathsome form visited the west. In one little town
which had for long been exempt a traveller walked slowly
through its principal streets, tottering from fatigue and illness.
He entered a lodging-house and asked for food and shelter. Both
were given freely, but he did not improve. In a few hours the
dreaded eruption appeared, and it soon became evident the poor
man was rapidly sinking. Then arose the cry, " Send for the
priest to anoint him." The fatal message was sent to the house
where two priests dwelt together. One was an old man who for
many years had acted as pastor to the parish ; the other was
young, robust, and strong, full of life and health, " the only son of
his mother, and she a widow." The message came to these two
men, requiring one of them to attend and touch a man dy-
ing of the most infectious of diseases. " Let me go," said the
old priest, stretching out his hand kindly to the young man.
" Let me go, and spare your young life." " No," answered the
hero, springing up ; " it shall never be said that I shirked a duty
to avoid a danger." And he went to his Christ-like mission,
caught the disease, and died died as many a man might wish to
die, having finished the work which was given to him to do.
Painful days were those, the account of which even now makes
the flesh creep and the blood curdle. Too much praise cannot
be given to those who labored so indefatigably amongst their
death-stricken people.

At such a time as this, when despair was written on the fea-
tures of old and young and the destroying angel strode through
the land, the Society for Irish Church Missions began its career.
Many of the founders were doubtless persons of piety as far as
their lights went, and in their blindness imagined they were doing
the Lord's work ; but the system made use of was thoroughly bad.
Under the specious plea of feeding the hungry and clothing the
naked, precepts and practices were inculcated on the recipients
at variance with the teaching of their religion, and people who
fell under their influence were gradually led to assume the garb
of hypocrites and liars. Large sums of money were collected in
England, and such extravagant statements were made regarding
the whole movement, which was called " a second Reformation,"
that the society soon found itself with an annual income of up-
wards of 20,000.

1 88 1.] PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. 623

The early part of the year 1879 was signalized by some dis-
turbances, when a portion of the inhabitants, fairly goaded to mad-
ness by the persistent and unscrupulous attacks of their oppo-
nents, rose and committed acts of violence. ' But, speaking in a
general way, the poor people have borne with wonderful patience
the presence of unscrupulous proselytizers amongst them. The
annual report of the society for 1878 states that the condition
of the funds has begun to cause all friends of missionary work
great anxiety, and that a special appeal is deemed necessary. It
declares that, in spite of the reduction of the officers' salaries and
the dismissal of some of the agents, unless more money can be
obtained some important posts will have to be abandoned, and
that, as it is, the existing work is cramped and fettered. Then
comes what must be considered the most important statement in
the whole report namely :

" If greater and more earnestly self-denying efforts are not made, if new
friends are not attracted, this mission will gradually sink and die for want of
funds."

The society has apparently reached a critical period of its ex-
istence, and the possibility of a collapse of the whole scheme is
here foreshadowed. It is important to bear this in mind, for if
such an event should take place it would prove to demonstration
that the vast majority of the Protestant public disapproved of its
proceedings and were of opinion that large sums of money were
being annually spent without result. During the year 1878 in
the whole of Ireland which is divided into eighteen missions, of
which Connemara includes six separate districts we find that six-
teen persons, and one family the number of which is not specified,
are brought forward in the annual report of the society as " con-
verts." When we bear in mind that the income for that year
was somewhat over 20,000 we must come to the conclusion that
the results can scarcely be deemed satisfactory. The expenses
connected with the administration of the society are enormous.
1,000 are spent on printing, 12,000 on the salaries of the
missionaries and agents, exclusive of travelling expenses. The
association secretaries and those in London receive 1,675, and
the amount for small items is considerable. Dr. Maziere Brady,
now a Catholic, but formerly a Protestant rector in the county of
Meath and chaplain to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, wrote
some years ago a series of letters in which he exposed the fallacy
of the working of the society and proved that a large body of

624 PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. [Feb.,

men made their living by it. The Rev. Dr. Littledale, a Protes-
tant minister of ritualistic notoriety, the author of Plain Reasons
for not becoming a Roman Catholic, has written of it in terms
of great contempt, and his testimony, as that of an adversary,
is valuable. But no one could desire a more telling exposure
than that contained in a clever pamphlet published by Messrs.
Hodges & Smith, of Dublin, in 1864, in the form of a correspon-
dence between the Rev. George Webster, Chancellor of Cork,
as prosecuting counsel, and Messrs. Dallas and Bade, officers of
the society, as defending pleaders. There appears to be no doubt
that the breaking up of the society and the closing of the mis-
sions would reduce the incomes of a large number of persons,
whilst it would entirely annihilate those of others. It is there-
fore natural that all who partake of its loaves and fishes should
find the strongest argument for its necessity and urge the impor-
tance of its work.

When challenged by its adversaries to produce its converts it
declines on the ground that they would be subject to persecu-
tion an answer which serves both as a cloak for the large stream
of converts the society is anxious to claim, and also as a stimulus
to the British public to induce them to continue to support a
body of men who are in daily fear of their lives.

One of the most unfortunate circumstances connected with
the whole question is the line taken by those in high quarters who,
in their zeal for the spread of Protestantism, are probably un-
aware of the means employed by the society to further it. In-
stead of boldly going throughout the country to rich and poor
alike, and preaching the gospel with apostolic zeal, its agents have
selected the poorest and most destitute portions of the poorest
province of Ireland for their undertaking. Lord Cairns, then
Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, said at a public meeting that
he regarded these missions not only as a valuable assistance to
the work of the church in Ireland, but a valuable assistance to
the state in the management of the government of Ireland. His
name appears as vice-president of the society, and on more than
one occasion he has taken the chair at its annual meetings. But
the invariable opinion of all intelligent persons, whether Protes-
tants or Catholics, who are not connected with the undertaking, is
that almost all, if not every one, of the so-called converts have
gone over when they were in great need of food and clothing, and
that on their death-bed they send for the priest to reconcile them
to the church. In connection with the riots at Connemara in
the spring of 1879 some interesting depositions were taken down

i88i.] PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. 625

by the senior curate of Clifden which proved indisputably that
bribery had been largely made use of by the agents of the Mis-
sions. The depositions were published by a local paper entitled
the Galway Vindicator, and form an interesting episode. One of the
witnesses says that he was employed to scatter tracts along the
roads and in the cottages which abused the Blessed Virgin and
declared that all Catholics would go to hell, and another that he
was promised ten shillings a month if he would go to the Pro-
testant church. One and all testified to the existence of bribery
and to the underhand dealings of the society's agents.

But, quite independently of this, the mere fact of many of the
agents being English, and the whole concern being more or less an
English undertaking, makes them objects of suspicion to the Irish,
so that their pretension to teach is resented by the susceptible
and warm-hearted Celt as an insult to his nationality as well as
to his faith. The Rev. A. C. Dallas, the founder, or one of the
principal founders, of the society, was an Englishman by birth, and
had had no personal acquaintance whatever with Ireland until
his mission commenced.

The action of the proselytizing clergy in connection with the
distress that was so severe in Ireland for some months was ex-
actly what was anticipated. Though unable to enlist the sym-
pathy of the public as in 1847, they made many attempts to obtain
a share of the large funds established for general relief, and seized
the opportunity of a national calamity to sow division and strife.
When first the scheme of relief was undertaken on the vast scale
that afterwards proved so necessary, the two committees pre-
sided over by the Duchess of Marlborough and the Lord Mayor
of Dublin decided that the clergy of all denominations should be
requested to serve on the local committees, and that they should
be entrusted with a share of money proportionate to the wants of
their respective flocks. It was deemed prudent to make such an
arrangement, not because the Protestants were sufficiently nu-
merous to warrant it, but to prevent any suspicion in the minds
of English Protestant subscribers that public money was admin-
istered exclusively by Catholics.

Ireland being a purely Catholic country, it was but natural to
expect that Catholics would be the principal recipients, more espe-
cially as they represent the poorer classes of the people ; but Pro-
testants, when in want, would undoubtedly have also received their
share. Relief was intended for those who needed it, quite irrespec-
tively of creed or politics. The Duchess of Marlborough nomi-
nated Catholics and Protestants in as far as possible equal propor-

VOL. XXXII. 40

626 PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. [Feb.,

tions on her general committee, whilst her executive committee
was composed half of one and half of the other. The Lord Mayor
of Dublin, equally desirous of conducting matters in a way that
could not be criticised, selected the leading citizens of Dublin,
both Catholic and Protestant, in equal proportions to act with
him on the Mansion-House Committee. The greatest care had, in
fact, been manifested by all parties to act with fairness and im-
partiality, and all would have gone well but for the intrigues and
objections raised by the clerical agents of the proselytizing so-
cieties. Their first endeavor was to place themselves on the
same footing as the ordinary Protestant ministers throughout the
country, and thus assert their right to sit on the local committees.
This having been frustrated by the refusal of the priests to act
with them, they raised the cry of intolerance and wrote to the
papers complaining that the Protestants were neglected and that
money contributed by Protestants was being squandered by the
priests.

A long correspondence ensued, the Rev. Mr. Cory, of Clifden,
and the Rev. Mr. Fleming, of Ballinakill, both of the Missions So-
ciety, making themselves very conspicuous by the letters they
wrote respectively to the secretaries of the Duchess of Marlbo-
rough's and the Mansion-House fund. In the controversy the
main fact at issue was forgotten that the objection raised against
the proselytizing clergy of the Missions Society was not directed
against them because they were Protestant clergymen, but be-
cause they were salaried officials of a society whose avowed aim
was proselytism, and who were banded together for that special
purpose in a part of Ireland where no indigenous Protestants
existed. The priests had no intention of ignoring Protestants, for
Presbyterian as well as Wesleyan ministers and laymen uncon-
nected with the Missions had been nominated on the district com-
mittees. The difficulty, however, was found so great that the
Duchess of Marlborough finally decided on sending no relief, as
heretofore, to Connemara through the ordinary channels, but re-
mitted sums, proportionate to their respective flocks, to the Arch-
bishop of Tuam and the Protestant bishop.

The action of the proselytizers may be gathered from the
programme sent forth from the offices of the society in Lon-
don. It is headed " Distress in Ireland," and is as follows :

" The distress in Ireland is twofold, temporal and spiritual. Large sums
are being collected by various agencies for the distribution of food, cloth-
ing, seed, etc., among the suffering poor. Amongst others ' the Conne-
mara distress fund' of the Irish Church Missions is being generously sup-

1 88 1.] PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. 627

ported. But the committee would fail in their duty if they did not at pre-
sent direct special attention to the great openings for mission work through-
out Ireland. A movement has begun among the Roman Catholic priests,
some of whom are now searching after truth. Never were there greater
opportunities for open mission work among all classes. But the means
necessary for taking advantage of these are wanting. The income of the
society has decreased to two thousand during the past year, and unless
special and permanent aid is now forthcoming the operations of the so-
ciety must be materially diminished, or part of their Reserve fund stock sold
out to meet present liabilities. Hence the committee earnestly appeal to
all who value Scriptural truth to come forward at the present emergency
with large contributions, and thus enable the society not only to carry on
its operations undiminished, but, if possible, to take advantage of the un-
paralleled opportunities for mission work in Ireland that now present them-
selves. Contributions will be thankfully received."

We are sure that no one can read the above without a feeling
of disgust at the canting style of the document, and without a
feeling of indignation at the attempt to make capital out of a na-
tional calamity. In this proclamation there is no hesitation about
issuing an appeal ostensibly for distress, but in reality for pur-
poses of proselytism. The old arguments made use of at evan-
gelical meetings to extract money from the credulous are here
brought prominently forward, but the most objectionable sen-
tence is the concluding passage, which invites the public to
take advantage of the opportunity to make a raid on the faith
of the people.

Lord Randolph Churchill, M.P. for Woodstock, in a letter to
a friend which was published in the daily papers, asserted his
nviction that the object of the society was to pervert the Ca-
holic peasants by bribery, and, in his capacity as secretary to the
uchess of Marlborough's fund, he declared that Connemara had
been so long disturbed by proselytizing agents of the Society for
Church Missions that any effectual relief of distress in that dis-
trict was rendered very difficult.

The whole question of proselytism deserves a close and
searching investigation, and public opinion ought to be brought
:o bear on those who encourage and support it. The honest, and
even the fanatical, love of truth which seeks to impose its own
convictions upon others by fair conflict of reason and authority
is in many cases worthy of respect ; but no one can feel anything
but scorn and loathing for the trade of those who, either for the
purpose of earning a well-buttered crust or of damaging a world-
wide religion, choose God's poorest creatures, at their sorest hour
of need, to make them outwardly conform to doctrines which

628 PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. [Feb.,

they detest, by means of temptations which they can only with
difficulty resist, and to exhibit as the workings of the intellect
what are in reality the pangs of hunger.

There is undoubtedly a ludicrous as well as a painful side of
the matter. There are handsome school-houses without scholars,
and Scripture-readers who dare not read above their breath, and
teachers of Irish-Gaelic who teach their own children fautedemieux,
and Gaelic Protestant Bibles plentifully bestowed in cabins where
not a soul can read and write. Then with discreet management
a few Protestant coast-guards in a district can be made to go a
long way. Four of them in one station may form two separate
congregations in churches far apart, and when two of them send
their children to one mission-school, and the other two send theirs
to another (as actually happens at Belleek), the edifying result
of keeping a house for two separate schools may be seen, which,
but for the providential offspring of the coast-guards, must have
played to empty benches until another famine brought the treach-
erous little Romanists trooping back, eager and hungry for the
truths of the Gospel interspersed with Indian meal. The iatel-
lectual training of the young under the hands of the proselytizers
is peculiar but ingenious. Every day that a child puts in an ap-
pearance at school it receives, when lessons are over, half a pint of
Indian meal tied up in a neat little bag. Any day that the atten-
dance ceases, so do the supplies. Expectation is thus left plea-
santly on tip-toe from day to day, and no single dole is sufficiently
splendid to enable the little traitor to make off with his winnings.
A certain moderate number of attendances at church entitle
adults to pecuniary reward at Christmas, whilst such humble of-
ferings as a cast coat or a handful of seed potatoes can be had on
very moderate terms. The "converts" or "jumpers," accord-
ing to the local vernacular one and all look mean. The Conne-
mara mountaineer who eats the bread of a "jumper" is not to be
envied. The following is a specimen of the class. A fine-look-
ing girl, a member of the only family in a village near Clifden
who had apostatized, thus addressed herself to some visitors :

" I am a Catholic. I say a Hail Mary every night to preserve me from dy-
ing in sin. My life is a burden ; nobody but the Scripture-reader will speak
to me, and my father would destroy me if I murmured, for our having joined
the Missions is the only thing that keeps us from the poor-house. Come
what may, however, I intend, as soon as I can make out the price of a ticket ,
to America, to go away entirely and ask God's pardon."

The father of this poor girl was a ruined man until the Scrip-
ture-reader came to lodge with him upon handsome terms, but

1 88 1.] PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. 629

was then in receipt of pay ; her sister was in receipt of i a month
as a teacher of the Irish language whenever the materials for a
class should turn up, and the clothes which she and her mother
wore were an essential portion of their new faith. Another spe-
cimen is that of a man on Turbot Island who described himself
as a bog-ranger at i a year, but who was in receipt of 1 a
month as an Irish teacher, though there was no one on the island
for him to teach.

It may be said that people in this condition have one class of
sentiments for Catholics and another for the proselytizers, and it
is quite possible that such is the case ; and this is precisely the great
evil of the system, that it turns a man of simple, earnest piety into
a hypocrite, a liar, and a wavering, double-dealing renegade with
one eye on this life and the other on the grave. In any Catholic
community of average comfort and intelligence such a society
would be laughed out of the field, as its agents have been laughed
out of every other corner in the island. But among a people so
helpless, so racked with privations, so poor and so weighed down
by degrading misery as those of Connemara the constant pre-
sence of temptation in its grossest form is a cruel addition to
their trials ; and if there is anything more intolerable in the pre-
sent outlook of the Connemara poor, it is the knowledge that
when he is the least able to make resistance, when the cold of
winter has frozen his blood, and when the sheriff has perhaps lev-
elled his "cabin," and when half-naked and shivering children
are clinging to his knee whining for food, some shabby emissary
of the " Missions " will be at his side to dangle before his hollow
eyes his canting distortion of Christianity and his irresistible bag

Indian meal.

The same system of bribery and corruption is practised by
the same school of Protestants in France, Italy, and Spain, and
with the same success. Since the Italian occupation of the Eter-
nal City Evangelical churches and schools have multiplied to such
an enormous extent that a free-thinking paper published in Italy,
with no sympathy for the " clericals," has declared that there are
sufficient Protestant ministers to convert double the population,
and more buildings than there are people to fill them. It is es-
pecially in times of national difficulty or distress that Protestants
of this class exercise the greatest vigilance. A revolution or a
famine they consider as a special dispensation of Providence to
enable them to carry out their projects and labors in a way wor-
thy of a better cause.

A somewhat lengthened correspondence recently took place

630 PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. [Feb.,

in the columns of a Belfast newspaper between the Rev. Canon
Cory, of these Missions, and the Rev. Canon Macllwaine, D.D., of
Belfast, portions of which we give, as they corroborate all that
we have said on the subject. Canon Macllwaine who, it may be
as well to state, is a clergyman of repute and high standing in the
Protestant Episcopal Church was formerly an agent and official
of the Society for Irish Church Missions, and is therefore well
acquainted with its proceedings. His arguments must, in any
case, be regarded as trustworthy, and will probably prove the
most damaging that have ever been advanced against the prose-
lytizers. The correspondence arose by a proposition, made by a
third party, that a special testimonial fund should be got up for
Canon Cory, upon which Dr. Macllwaine wrote a letter giving
his reasons for disapproval and declaring that he considered any
such course injudicious and unsuitable. He proceeds :

" Having had intimate knowledge of that society [the Irish Church Mis-
sions Society] from its very start too intimate, indeed, for my own peace of
mind I am prepared to say, and, if challenged to do so, to give my reasons,
that it had been far better for the interests of true religion in this land and
for the spread of the reformed faith amongst us if Canon Cory had re-
mained in England, the land of his nativity, and that the Society for Irish
Church Missions had never been formed. ... I plead guilty to having
changed more than one of my early opinions, none of these more strong-
ly than that regarding ' Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics.' . . .
I can state that what has come under my own observation, as well as what
I have learned from the experience of others, has fully satisfied my mind as
to the propriety, indeed, the necessity, of my withdrawal from all connec-
tion with the society in question. That society is in the thirtieth year of
its existence. Amongst the earliest places of its operations was Belfast,
where a branch was formed with the usual apparatus of controversial
classes, sermons, lectures, agents, schools and school-teachers, etc. I took
an active part in these operations, which after some time three or four
years, as my memory serves came to a sudden termination, the issue of the
whole being disgraceful and disastrous in the highest degree. Canon Cory-
then the Rev. C. H. Eade was conversant with all these proceedings, and is
competent either to refute or confirm the statements now made by me.
The agents employed were, with but two exceptions, of the most unsatisfac-
tory description. One, a schoolmaster and reader, was in the hands of the
police on more than one occasion for appearing drunk in the streets and
consigning the Roman Pontiff to a region not to be repeated. Another
contracted debts after such a manner that he was obliged to take French
leave of the town. Another, a chief in the controversial department, and
highly gifted, in his own estimation, as an orator, became while still in the
pay of the society a popular lecturer, having the walls of certain localities
the most unsuitable placarded with such subjects as the Battle of the
Boyne, etc. He was transferred, at my instance, to another field of labor.
The principal school was closed under these circumstances. On a certain

188 1.] PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. 631

day I visited it and found the teacher above referred to succeeded by an-
other of a very different stamp, who submitted to my recommendation to
teach the children other subjects than the errors of popery, which had pre-
viously been the staple of their instruction. After a few of my visits he
drew my attention to the registry of his pupils, and informed me of a dis-
covery which he had made by his visits among their parents after an ex-
amination of the children themselves. And his discovery came to this :
that of the entire number of the children on the roll, some two hundred, all,
with perhaps a dozen exceptions, registered as Roman Catholics, proved to
be the children of Protestant parents, with some ten or twelve, or even
fewer, Catholics exactly the reverse of the statement on the registry pub-
lished as correct by the society. . . . Similar accounts might be given of
other spheres of the society's operations in other parts of the diocese.
Some may still recollect these operations in the Glens of Antrim, the only
results of which were discomfiture and disgrace. Most unsuitable mission-
aries were sent thither one, now deceased, who had to leave after having
kindled a bitter strife among the Protestant inhabitants and the Roman
Catholics. I visited the locality years afterwards and found nothing left of
the ' mission ' save ridicule at the recollection of its doings. ... As to the
present state of the mission in Dublin, I know but little except what is
given in the report of the society all couleur de rose"

Speaking of the Rev. A. C. Dallas, the founder of the Irish
Church Missions Society, Dr. Macllwaine says :

"An Englishman by birth; having had no personal acquaintance what-
ever with Ireland until his mission commenced ; ordained late in life after a
semi-military career as an officer in the commissariat service, and, by his
own often-repeated statement, wholly unpossessed of vital religion until a
short period before entering the ministry; utterly ignorant of the Roman.
Catholic controversy at that time, and but little versed in it practically
until the commencement of his Irish mission, it may well be asked of him,.
Was he the man to whom the lead in such a work as the conversion of the
Roman Catholics in Ireland should have been committed?"

Dr. Macllwaine continues :

" The society is, in fact, nothing else than a lay organization employing
and paying liberally clerical as well as lay agents, scarcely one of its re-
sponsible officers and committee having any direct connection with or
practical knowledge of Ireland. ... It is true of societies as of individuals,
' by their fruits ye shall know them.' Canon Cory enumerates those points
glowing terms, such as 'rebuilt churches, institutions and orphanages
cted, and a fine body of converts, young and old.' Judging from my
rsonal experience in Belfast and Dublin, and relying on the testimony of
her witnesses as to other localities where this society was formerly at
work Cork, for instance I miss this fine body of converts ; and as to
orphanages and Birds'-Nests, perhaps the less said the better."

But could any man of common sense or moderate experience
for a moment imagine that the brands of religious strife flung into
the midst of an excitable Celtic people, the teachers being of the

oth

632 PROTESTANT PROSELYTISM IN IRELAND. [Feb.,

same race and closely allied in blood and disposition, in times of
distress such as Ireland has just been passing through, could pos-
sibly be attended by any other result? It is worthy of note that
the name of Canon Cory did not appear in any of the accounts of
the disturbances in Connemara or in any of the magisterial pro-
ceedings, though he is undoubtedly a moving spirit in the Society
for Irish Church Missions. His name figures in the annual re-
port of the society as " missionary secretary," and he therefore
must be regarded as one of the leading men in connection with
the society, and in a great measure responsible for the late dis-
turbances in the west of Ireland. But though his name did not
occur in any of the accounts of these disturbances, it was frequent-
ly to be seen in the accounts of the transactions of the Duchess
of Marlborough's relief committee, when he made a number of
unsuccessful applications to be placed on the same footing as the
priest of his parish.

The society, which had begun its career with the avowed pur-
pose of converting the Catholic population of Ireland, had before
very long succeeded in producing discord and strife not only be-
tween Catholics and Protestants, but between Protestants them-
selves.

It may be said to have managed to preserve the latent animos-
ity of the Celt to the Saxon, even if it has made but few converts ;
and it may certainly boast of having largely contributed to keep
up the violence of party spirit throughout the country, while it
has destroyed in the English who support it the sense of justice.
Anarchy, dissension, and confusion are the results of its progress,
and large numbers of Protestants in Ireland and England believe
that it is doing more harm than good, whilst the whole body of
Catholics in England, Ireland, and Scotland repudiate it with dis-
gust. But it is more worthy of censure on account of its action
during last winter, when distress was so widely prevalent, than by
reason of any of its numerous shortcomings, and the public may
rest perfectly assured that if it has found itself unable to enlist
fresh sympathy for its undertaking, it is from no want of apathy
on the part of its officials, but rather from a growing conviction
that its proceedings are not satisfactory. We note with pleasure
that by the annual report of 1878 it appears to be in a state of
decadence, that its funds are failing, and that it is, we may ven-
ture to hope, dying a natural death. The last report gives the
sum total of its income ^22,546 145. od. This was formerly al-
most double. In the year 1855 it was upwards of ^"37,000, and in
former years perhaps more. Its friends and admirers are now

1 88 1.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 633.

(though still many) comparatively few. None of the Protestant
bishops in Ireland, except the Bishop of Tuam, is amongst its
leading officials, and there are few Irish noblemen.

It is eminently satisfactory to be able to make these statements,
for the real interests of religion would if the society were pros-
perous be deeply affected. If the officials of the society were, for
instance, successful and the tenets of Catholicity shaken, infidelity
instead of Protestantism would probably arise out of its ruins.
The action of the Irish Church Missions is likely in any case to be
injurious to the cause of genuine religion, for it makes the most
sacred mysteries the subject of flippant criticism. Its officials
might with propriety consider whether there are not abuses
amongst themselves and in the bosom of Protestantism which
would afford scope for their zeal before they set themselves up as
teachers against popery. Let them leave the people of Ireland
and their religion, and, in place of wandering through the wilds
of Connaught for the diffusion of acrimony and the dissemination
of discord, endeavor to instruct their own flocks in the principles
of morality and common sense ; let them enforce the practical in-
junctions of religion rather than wrangle about its mysterious
tenets ; and let them inculcate amongst their own people habits of
industry, sobriety, and subordination, rather than be the emissaries
of disorder and hatred.

A LIFE'S DECISION.*

IN an autobiography bearing this title Mr. Allies has given
us a history of the struggles of his own mind in passing from the
obscurities of Anglicanism to the light of Catholic truth. Through
similar trials many hearts have passed during the last fifty years ;
and the outside world has little idea of the nature of this serious
conflict. God's grace is ever moving, and, though often resisted,
is sometimes triumphant. The life of every man is the history of
that grace in its operations upon the individual conscience. Mr.
Allies has done well to put upon record an experience which, in
its various phases, has so many lessons for us all. It is to be
hoped that his example may be the means of leading to the true
faith some who, having all the graces he had, are in imminent dan-
ger of losing their souls. Distinguished among the English con-

* A Life's Decision. By T. W. Allies, M.A. London. 1880.

634 A LIFE'S DECISION: [Feb.,

verts of our day for natural gifts, culture, and above all rectitude
of mind, he has well earned the love and gratitude of all Catho-
lics. If we except the illustrious names of Cardinals Manning
and Newman, beyond expression dear to every zealous heart,
perhaps there is no one who has accomplished more for religion,
or who has more powerfully addressed the needs of the Anglican
controversy. We owe him much for the many and profound
works which he has given to the church, and even more for the
long example of an humble life of obedience. He has had his
share of the cross, but the shadows of Calvary were far sweeter
to him than the glaring light of a world that crucified his Master.
He preferred the truth to anything the earth could offer him,
and " chose to be an abject in the house of his God rather than
to dwell in the tents of sinners." With so many others who have
thus renounced worldly prospects for Christ, he has had his re-
ward in the joys of an all-satisfying faith ; and he will find one
day much more than his heart could ask, when the lips of his
Lord shall say to him, " Well done, good and faithful servant."

There is much to be said of this autobiography. It will well
repay the reader for the time given to its perusal. If it only teach
him that truth is to be sought with all diligence and embraced with
every sacrifice, he will have learned the most important lesson of
life. In fact, without this lesson our probation is wasted and
eternity lost. Since the unhappy divisions which followed the*
Protestant Reformation God has been calling all souls back to the
church wherein he abides. There is not a grace which does not
lead directly to the church, since the Incarnate Lord " is the Sa-
viour of his body." * If men would be faithful to the inspira-
tions of the Holy Spirit, and follow them to their blessed end,
strife and schism would cease and there would indeed be on earth
" one body and one Spirit ; one Lord, one faith, and one bap-
tism, "f The journal of Mr. Allies is conclusive as to the merits
of the Anglican claims, and also furnishes many unanswerable ar-
guments in favor of the Catholic faith to readers of every class.
We shall endeavor to present a synopsis of his reasoning, in the
hope that we may contribute to the usefulness of his work and
the bright lessons of his example.

The members of the English and Episcopalian churches are
singularly without excuse if they refuse to accept the Catholic
Church. The argument a priori is above any reply. Either
there is no church or there is only one. The only end of a
church is to teach and save mankind ; and therefore Almighty

* Eph. v. 23. t Ibid. iv. 4, 5.

1 88 1.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 635

God could found but one, and can never sanction but one.
Moreover, if, as a matter of fact, he did found a church, he is
bound in consistency to preserve it in its integrity to the end.
The words of the Son of God, " Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it," are only the fulfilment of what reason de-
mands, on the supposition that the divine hand were to form
and establish a church as the organ of his power. The majo-
rity of Protestants reject the idea of a church altogether ; but
the Anglicans make pretensions which are not only illogical but
impossible. With a thorough knowledge of all the inconsistencies
and absurdities of their system, Mr. Allies brings forth evidence
sufficient to satisfy any honest mind, while with the stern lan-
guage of facts he dissipates all their ecclesiastical claims. In the
first place, he demonstrates that the Church of England has not
one characteristic of a true church ; that she teaches nothing
positive, while she negatively attacks with bitterness the Catholic
faith and practice. Secondly, he shows clearly that those who
make claims for their spiritual mother which she disallows, are
the most disobedient of her children, really obeying nothing but
their own self-will. In making a church to suit themselves, they
really unchurch themselves and are the most inconsistent of all
religionists.

i. In the whole history of the late movement towards the
revival of Catholic doctrine there does not appear in the Eng-
lish Church one mark of the authority which belongs to the
true body of Christ. Nothing appears but the instinctive ha-
tred which Protestantism naturally feels towards any approach
to the teachings of the Apostolic See. There is a pretence of a
hierarchy, whose orders have been considered invalid by every
communion having the apostolic succession. There are offices
in the Prayer-Book which in some degree teach the truth ; but
they are a hollow exterior without any soul or meaning. The
bishops have no authority to declare doctrine, except to deny one
by one the articles of the Christian faith. This they have done
in the reassertion of the Thirty-nine Articles, and in the denial of
baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence in the Holy Eucha-
rist. If ever on earth there were the mockery of ecclesiasticism
and the pretence of a church, they are to be seen in the Angli-
can communion.

"The great cause of irritation in this business," says our author, "was
the extreme unfairness of the course pursued towards one section of the
communion compared with that pursued towards the other. Every possi-

636 A LIFE'S DECISION. [Feb.,

ble liberty as to denying of the sacraments and the sacramental system,
as to putting forth their own purely Protestant notions, as to scurrilous
abuse and misrepresentation of Rome, was borne patiently, if not encour-
aged by the episcopal bench ; while the first attempt to state the case fairly,
to remove prejudice, and to bring into light instances of charity in the Ro-
man Church, was viewed as a mortal offence." " The one moral drawn from
these facts was that there was only one heresy known and recognized in
the Anglican Church namely, praise of the Church of Rome ; and that, pro-
vided a man adhered cordially to the royal supremacy in matters ecclesias-
tical, and denounced the Pope as the Man of Sin, he might disbelieve of
doctrines whatsoever he pleased."

There is not a single bishop among them not infected with
this heresy or who has any idea of the dignity or duty of the
episcopacy. The Bishop of Brechin writes : " I declare I dislike
to communicate anywhere, except where I know I am safe from
having my devotion destroyed and my peace of mind disturbed
for the day by the gross carelessness of the celebrant, added to
the friability of the species in our use. Can you tell me what is
the best short treatise on bishops', priests', and deacons' duties ? I
wish we had something of the kind. I suppose Fleury is as good
as any." Bishop Wilberforce was probably a model of an An-
glican prelate, and he figures bravely in Mr. Allies' journal :

" At one time he is soft, sleek and silky ; at another prompt and brist-
ling as a guardsman eager to cut down a rebel who is running a muck."
" A bishop by mere court favor, denying the Real Presence and assuming'
the tone of an apostle, I was wont to call him Vigilantius after a heretic of
the fourth century who attacked the honor of Our Blessed Lady and fell
under the lash of St. Jerome." " The tone he assumed with me was the
more intolerable because I felt that my hold on doctrine was stronger than
his. I had the whole ancient church behind me ; he had Cranmer and
Elizabeth Boleyn." " In my affair with him Dr. Pusey appeared to me
squeezable to anything in order to prevent matters being brought to an
issue. His conduct much lessened my opinion of him. I was not quite
satisfied with any of my defenders, but in the bishop I could recognize
neither the judicial mind nor the fatherly spirit. I believe it consummated
my contempt for the Anglican episcopate." " He was a man of two weights
and measures, and in his conduct to me I never could find any solid core of
truth. "

The ministers are like the bishops, and have no real concep-
tion of the office of the priesthood. They are not consecrated to
stand between God and man and offer sacrifice for the living
and the dead.

" In Protestant countries the pastoral office is a nonentity ; the shep-
herd of his flock is virtually a preacher of sermons. He knows the plague
is ravaging them, but they will not bear the touch of his hand. He must

i88i.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 637

see them perish, one by one, but they will not let him help them. When
death has begun, then he is called in to witness a hopeless dissolution, or
to speak peace where there is no peace."

Mr. Allies also presents in a concise form the grounds of dis-
satisfaction with the Anglican claims. The article of the Creed,
" The Holy Catholic Church," is reduced to a nullity. The
Greek, the Roman, and the Anglican branches are the one church,
and these branches are in direct opposition to each other, con-
demning each other and not holding the same body of truth.
This is not only a plain farce, but a logical contradiction. Either
one of these so-called branches is the church or there is no church
at all. But the Anglican branch does not claim to be the Catho-
lic Church, while she condemns and disowns the other two
branches. Her condemnation is not infallible, any more than any
other of her utterances, and so she asserts nothing that any man
may believe by a divine faith, since she never professes tb speak
in the name of God.

" She has no authority for anything she teaches, save her private judg-
ment of Scripture, which is taken without any authentication as to its
canonicity or inspiration. On her own showing the private judgment of a
branch of the church is of no more weight than the opinion of an in-
dividual. To all Anglicans the Catholic Church is a past historical thing,
and not a living power ; and what that historical church held is a matter
for a man's private judgment, which the longest life and the greatest abili-
ties will hardly enable him to solve."

There is no conception of any responsibility as to the faith in
the authorities of the English communion. The bishops never
for one moment think themselves competent to dogmatize, unless
to attack the Catholic faith in the spirit of Protestantism which
possesses them. Truth is subjective and individual, and there is
not the slightest pretence of unity. In England the church is an
appendage of the crown, where the royal authority or the voice
of Parliament regulates spiritual powers and attempts to confer
spiritual jurisdiction. In the United States there is no royal
supremacy, but the lack of it is the cause of more apparent dis-
cord and wider divergences of doctrine. A democratic conven-
tion composed of laymen is perhaps worse than a privy council.
" The Prayer-Book contradicts the Articles of religion, and there is
an intestine strife between Puritans and High- Churchmen, Cal-
vinists and Armenians, Latitudinarians and Non-Jurors, Evan-
gelicals and Orthodox." There is not one writer to be found
who has a complete scheme of doctrine, and the variations of

638 A LIFE'S DECISION. [Feb.,

teaching concern the most essential verities, such as baptism,
orders, the Holy Eucharist, or even the church itself.

Mr. Allies also shows how the whole Anglican communion
has committed itself to heresy not only in tolerating it in the in-
dividual, but also in giving to it the very highest sanction. Thus
the Articles directly deny the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist,
and call the sacrifice of the Mass " a blasphemous fable and a dan-
gerous deceit." Those who reject the Articles, which they have
subscribed or promised to follow, pretend to give some explana-
tion suited to their private opinions, and profess a belief not sanc-
tioned by their church. Yet even they, with all their attempts at
imitation of the Catholic service, must confess that the idea of the
Eucharistic sacrifice and the adorable presence of Christ upon
the altar is entirely foreign to their communion. From this utter
denial, and even ignorance, of the true doctrine of the Eucharist
flow the practical rejection and disuse of the priesthood. No
one ever looks upon an Episcopalian minister as a priest. The
minister who would assume such powers simply makes himself
ridiculous. He may get together a few followers and display
his priestly robes before them ; but, beyond a very small circle,
sensible people laugh at him, or think him destitute of good sense.
" If he wants to be a priest," they say, " why does he not go where
there are priests in truth, who are not simply playing a part ?
Some of these advanced churchmen hear confessions, but peni-
tents are few and the world looks upon them as foolish devotees.
They have no sanction from their bishops, and have as little
knowledge of the duty of a confessor as of the dialect of the
Chinese. Not only is no Anglican minister taught how to re-
ceive confessions, but if he venture to do so, he must do it private-
ly and on his own authority. No jurisdiction comes to him from
his bishop or from any other source, and his church practically
denies the power of the keys. With whatever piety and sincerity
there may be in individuals, there is no knowledge of the inte-
rior life and no system of guidance. There is no theology by
which to measure virtue or vice, or distinguish one sin from an-
other. The presuming clergy who undertake to hear confessions
are obliged to take the guidance of Catholic writers or fall into
the most grievous errors even in the simplest matters. " There
is no moral theology whatever, nor any direction for the govern-
ment and discipline of the inward man. There is a total absence
of corrective discipline over the flock, and religious offices are
prostituted to those who are in avowed antagonism to their
church." The Communion is given to all who desire it, no

1 88 1.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 639

matter whether they believe in the Christian Creed, the Trinity,,
or the Incarnation of the Son of God. Marriage is permitted to
the unbaptized, to those who profess no faith at all or deny in
open terms all the Episcopalians profess to hold sacred. And
the most public sinner, even if he be unbaptized, is buried with
the one rite, in hope of a glorious resurrection. If such be a
church, then we may well say it is of no use to mankind. It.
serves a purpose of exterior worship, but it miserably deceives
the soul and makes light of the Gospel of Christ, which is one
and unalterable. It actually represents to men that there is no
faith which is essential to salvation. Judging the Anglican com-
munion by the law of the ancient church, it has not one mark of
the true body of Christ. It has neither unity nor catholicity.
Its members have not the semblance of agreement in faith, and its
doctrines are really the denial of the unity and infallibility of
God's church. Upon this denial it subsists, and without it has no
reason of being; since if there be a divine organization upon
earth, it cannot be the sect which asserts its own fallibility
and refuses to affirm any creed. In every characteristic which
distinguishes the English Church we behold the transgres-
sion of the essential law of catholicity. With the ancient and
primitive faith it has no bond of union. It has rejected five
of the seven sacraments, and has denied the sacramental charac-
ter of the remaining two. Baptism is only a ceremony, and the
Holy Eucharist an empty rite. What would St. Augustine or
St. Chrysostom have said to such a church ? The Donatists, with
all their presumption, had many more marks of a church. As the
author forcibly says :

" The living Church of England is a system of complete personal inde-
pendence as to faith and practice. One may believe anything except the
doctrines of the Catholic Church. And what is most striking is the
character of sham which seems to belong to the whole system, as claiming,
in the letter of its documents, powers which it does not exercise and will
not warrant individual members in claiming or exercising, though they are
most necessary to the maintenance of every-day spiritual life."

The branch theory is rather one put forward by her zealous
ms than one advanced by the English Church. In the early
days Rome was Antichrist, and consequently no part of Christ's
kingdom. And this is the only consistent position. It kills the
church altogether, but it justifies Henry VIII. and Cranmer.
The Protestant bodies of the Continent were far more real, and
their descendants are far more logical. As for branches of one
vine which are cut off from each other, and therefore from the

640 A LIFE' s DECISION. [Feb.,

central trunk, the very notion is a contradiction in terms. It is
strange that any rational mind fails to see that if Christ's church
has come to this, it has come to nothing-. In one of the letters
quoted by Mr. Allies it is stated that " our Lord has annexed the
gift of infallibility to a general council by his promise, ' Behold,
I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.' "
And then it is asserted that there never was but one such council
namely, the one recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. " I pre-
sume the Church of England doubts, as I do, whether it be clearly
made out that any council, save that presided over by St. James,
ever was really a general council of the whole church, so as to be
infallible." The writer of this lucid statement of infallibility did
not remember that his church had declared that " general coun-
cils have erred and may err in things pertaining to God," so that
it was a poor waste of time to talk about them in any way. The
truth is that among Protestants the church is nothing more than
the individual. It has no life, no power to impress its character
upon any one. The individual members may have some charac-
ter ; the church has none. So we behold everywhere how sin-
cere men rise above the system on which they are placed, and
often show the signs of supernatural power which in no way
belongs to the organization to which they are attached. And
there is such an unreality in the whole atmosphere which sur-
rounds them, that there is no firm grasp of doctrine, no divine
faith in the highest sense of the term. Ritualists, for example,
fancy that they believe some articles of the Creed, but they hardly
understand their meaning. They cannot begin to conceive the
nature of " one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church." No one
can do so who is beyond the pale of that church. They speak of
a belief in the adorable presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but
with all their words, they know not what they say. They do
not mean to deceive certainly all of them do not but the power
of faith is not in their possession. As the author testifies :

"There is something in heresy peculiarly blinding and confusing. It
seems to paralyze the power of apprehending principles, of discussing the
relation, coherence, and interdependence of doctrines. After ten years of
painful struggle I had not apprehended the doctrine of the Blessed Eucha-
rist, on which from the very beginning I had had the deepest and most
solemn feelings."

This has been the experience of every convert. Once in the
communion of the church, he has seen the scales fall from his
eyes and has realized how vain were his professions of doctrines
which he had not the power to grasp. " No sooner had I crossed

1 88 1.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 641

the border," says Mr. Allies, "no sooner planted my foot on St.
Peter's rock, than I felt myself lifted from shifting sands, on
which there was no footing, to an impregnable fortress, around
which the conflicts of human opinion rage in vain."

Besides the impotency of the Protestant mind to apprehend
the articles of faith, there is also a defect in the reasoning powers.
It is not an uncommon occurrence to find a man professing to
hold all Catholic truth, even the supremacy of St. Peter, and still
hesitating to act. Every day we find men holding doctrines
whose logical consequence is the submission to the Catholic
Church ; and still they live and die out of her communion. No
man can consistently believe one of the great verities of faith
without looking obediently to " the pillar and ground of the truth "
upon which it rests. Eminent doctors have denied the truth of
the Thirty -nine Articles of the English Church, and in the same
breath have defended them. No one has dealt much with Pro-
testants approaching the church without being struck with this
painful defect. Sometimes the world and the flesh keep them
back, and they are not ready for the sacrifice. But often they
seem unable to reason at all. With the major and minor premise,
they fail to draw the conclusion, and are like those of whom our
Lord speaks, " who having eyes see not, and having ears hear
not." We desire to make all due allowances for trials that are
severe, and certainly would not judge harshly any one, But,
with all the professions of a creed, it is hard for a Protestant to
comprehend that he must believe the revelation of Christ, what-
ever it is, or be damned. He cannot bring himself to the convic-
n that his soul is in danger.

Since the movement in the Anglican Church which has

ught so many illustrious minds into the peace of the Catholic
faith, there has been a display of inconsistency unparalleled in
history ; for the earlier heretics did not deny so completely the
authority of the church. Not only has the grace of God moved
them in an unwonted manner, but their own church to which
they clung has done all in its power to shake them off. They
would not be shaken off, neither by threats, nor by the denial of
their cherished tenets, npr by the rigors of prosecution at courts
of law. The more the church denied the essential doctrines of
their belief, the more they seemed to cling to her. They actual-
ly threw her words back in her mouth, and assured the world
that she taught their views of truth. With great pretended reve-
rence for their bishops, they have refused to obey their com-
mands and have spoken of them in the most insignificant terms.

VOL. xxxii. 41

642 A LIFE'S DECISION: [Feb.,

Successors of the apostles fare very badly at the hands of their
most obsequious children. When the Gorham judgment was
pronounced all the High-Churchmen were in a serious excitement.
The church was committing itself to heresy and going to pieces.
Something was necessary to permit any one with Catholic views
to remain in good faith within her communion.

" There was a talk of a new court of appeal, which some bishops were
disposed to beg of the state. It all fell through. In fact, the whole result
of the opposition made by the great party who saw their belief in the An-
glican Church's orthodoxy utterly wrecked, and their supposition that she
had any authority still more utterly destroyed by the issue of a personal
judgment upon doctrine by the queen, was the issue of the following pro-
positions : i. 'To admit the lawfulness of holding an exposition of an
article of the Creed contradictory of the essential meaning of that article
is in truth to abandon that article.' 2. ' Inasmuch as the faith is one and
rests upon one principle of authority, the conscious, deliberate, and wilful
abandonment of the essential meaning of an article of the Creed destroys
the divine foundation upon which alone the entire faith is propounded by
the church.' 3. ' Any portion of the church which does so abandon the es-
sential meaning of an article of the Creed forfeits not only the Catholic
doctrine in that article, but also the office and authority to teach as a mem-
ber of the universal church.' "

These propositions were signed as a protest by thirteen persons,
some of whom have still remained in the English communion,
and some have died without embracing the faith.

"Thirty years have now passed, and the Church of England has most
obediently submitted both to the Gorham decision and to the right of the
queen to be supreme judge in matters of Christian doctrine. The An-
glican Convocation has met yearly, but has never ventured to dispute
either the decision or the right of the civil power to issue it. Moreover, of
the thirteen who signed the protest only six attested their sincerity by
submitting to the Catholic Church."

It would appear that no possible action on the part of the bishops
or authorities could convince some minds. Even if heresy of
the most flagrant nature were propounded, the answer would be
ready that, after all, it did not commit those who were unwilling
to embrace it. Every act or decision of the ecclesiastical au-
thorities has been condemnatory of the- faith, and suicidal to the
claims of the English High-Churchmen. The Ritualists have been
condemned and prosecuted ; and instead of seeing that they are
disposed of by the only authority which they admit, they love to
be called martyrs. If this be martyrdom, it is a new thing for a
man to be martyred by his own church for professing doctrines
which she condemns. In England the bishops, with rare excep-

1 88 1.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 643

tions, have been the strongest enemies of the Anglo-Catholics, but,
with singular inconsistency, they transfer the blame from these
successors of the apostles to the temporal power. In the Unit-
ed States there is no such scapegoat, and the Protestant pre-
lates have given our ritualistic friends their full share of sorrow.
They have omitted the Athanasian Creed. They have reaf-
firmed the Articles with all their obnoxious Calvinistic and
Lutheran opinions. They have rejected the only form of absolu-
tion which could be valid in the mouth of a priest having jurisdic-
tion. They have denied any real presence of our Lord in the
Holy Eucharist. This was emphatically done in the General
Convention of 1868, where the bishops condemn "any doctrine
which implies that after consecration the proper nature of bread
and wine does not remain, or which localizes in them the bodily
presence of our Lord." They have, by special decree, denied the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration, declaring October 11, 1871,
" that the word regenerate in the baptismal office does not signify
any moral change wrought in the sacrament." At the same con-
vention they assert that " private confession has been an engine
of oppression and a source of corruption." Very little more re-
mains for the bishops to do, unless they proceed to attack the doc-
trine of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of God the Son.
Still, the eyes of the blind are not opened. The ritualistic de-
votees will have their own way without regard to the successors
of the apostles. We might easily go further, and state the sad
fact, that the denial of the priesthood and the Eucharistic sacri-
fice leads to the actual disbelief of the mystery of the Incarnation.
In the Episcopal Church, while in terms the great verity is con-
fessed, it is not realized and can in nowise be compared to the
living and vitalizing faith of the Catholic. There are many also
who have the most erroneous views in regard to the two natures
in Christ, confessing a kind of Nestorianism, if even they are so
accurate as was that heresy. How could it be otherwise when
they have no proper reverence for the Mother of God, whom
they sometimes treat with little respect ? The solemn rejection
of the Athanasian Creed is no small matter for the faith and life
of a communion.

2. Mr. Allies also puts in plain light the singular fact, so often
shown, that the Anglo-Catholics make claims for their spiritual
mother which she not only does not make for herself, but which
she disallows. In this respect they are not only the most disre-
spectful and disobedient of her children, but they are the most
thorough disciples of private judgment. Other Protestants in-

644 A LIFE' s DECISION. [Feb.,

terpret Scripture to please themselves. They not only so inter-
pret Scripture and the Christian Fathers, but also the religious
Articles of their own church. The language of his Eminence
Cardinal Newman in a letter to Mr. Allies, September 6, 1848,
well expresses this truth :

"You have, excuse me, no pretence to say you follow the Church of
England. Do you follow her living authorities, or her Reformers, or Laud
or her liturgy, or her Articles ? I cannot understand a man like you going
by private judgment, though I can understand his thinking he goes by au-
thority when he does not. I can understand a man identifying Laud with
the Church of England, or Cranmer with the Church of England ; but it
amazes me to find him interpreting her by himself, and making himself the
prophet and doctor of his church. This, I suppose, is what you and a few
others are now doing ; calling that the Church of England which never was
before so called since that church was. I cannot make out how you can
be said to go by authority ; and if not, are not you, and all who do like you,
only taking up a form of liberalism ? It puzzles me that people will not
call things by their right names. Why not boldly discard what is no longer
practically professed? Say that the* Catholic Church is not, that it has
broken up this I understand. I do not understand saying that there is a
church, and one church, and yet acting as if there were none or many."

These words of the eminent writer express clearly the absurd
and contradictory position of all who would ascribe any catholi-
city to the English Church. That church is not allowed to speak
for herself ; and when she speaks her words are either ignored or
misinterpreted. She has never made any pretensions to catholi-
city, and the whole Anglican theory is baseless and an after-
thought of her too zealous children. Yet the obstinacy with
which they adhere to their own opinions, and refuse to be guided
by their ecclesiastical authorities, can hardly be explained on any
rational theory. There is not one distinctive doctrine of the
Ritualists which has not been condemned by the church they
profess to obey. On whose authority, then, do they hold their
doctrines, such as baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence in
the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance, or the Sacrifice of the
Mass ? Surely not on the authority of the English Church, which
in the plainest language has rejected them. Surely not on the
authority of the Catholic Church or of the Eastern schismatical
communions. Then on no authority whatever but that of their
own private judgment. They go to antiquity and find the Chris-
tian Fathers teaching all these doctrines. This does not help them,
since it only proves that primitive Christianity condemns their
own church. And, besides, these Fathers teach also the unity of
the church as a fundamental doctrine, and the supremacy of the

1 88 i.J A LIFE'S DECISION. 645

See of Peter. If antiquity is to be followed in one thing, it is to
be followed in all things. The synopsis of their reasoning is this:
The Anglican Church is a branch of the universal church by
reason of the succession of bishops ; but a branch of the church
teaches all Catholic truth ; therefore the ancient faith is taught by
the Church of England. We might better turn the syllogism
and reason thus : The true church teaches the true and catholic
faith ; the English Church does not teach this truth by her Arti-
cles and doctrinal decisions ; therefore she is not the true church.
But let us look a moment at the first argument on which all the
Anglo-Catholics rest, and examine its fallacies. The major pre-
mise is an unwarrantable assumption. It assumes first that which
has to be proved. The Anglican Church is not a branch of the
true church unless it is in full communion with the whole church.
And, according to common sense, if it be the true church, then
the Roman communion built on the See of Peter is not the
church, but the fold of Antichrist. We see no middle term.
Branches which anathematize each other cannot both be the
church. But the assumption rests upon two false assertions,
one of which is contradicted by all Christian antiquity, and the
other is denied by every voice having the right to speak, and by
the fundamental Catholic law. The first is that the church exists
where a valid succession of bishops can be found ; and the second
is that the orders of the English ministry are valid. If the first
were true, then the unity of the church would be an impossibi-
lity, since every validly-ordained bishop carries the church with
him into heresy and schism of all kinds, and every heretical sect
of the earlier days, when the sacrament of order was universally
accepted, becomes the true church. Not only is this an infrac-
tion of the essential law of the body of Christ, but it is a mani-
fest absurdity. The first need of the church, as of every other
rganization, is a certain provision for its unity.

As to the second assumption, there is nothing plainer than the
nullity of the English orders, from the fact that the Catholic
Church has from the beginning rejected them, and that there is
not one heretical sect having unquestioned orders which acknow-
ledges them. There is no other tribunal to decide this point,
and it is therefore decided against the Anglicans. If the ecclesi-
astical bodies having unquestioned orders are not the tribunal of
appeal, then there is no arbiter in the question. If their decision
be not taken, whose shall be taken ? The matter of English
orders has been many times examined, and it has been conclu-
sively proved that there is no evidence that the consecrator in

646 A LIFE'S DECISION; [Feb.,

Parker's ordination was a bishop ; and if he were, the form used
at that ceremony was insufficient and renders the whole transac-
tion null. But it is also certain that, while the church founded by
Elizabeth Boleyn has denied the sacrament of orders, it had
no intention of calling in question the validity of the ministry of
the Reformed Protestant churches or asserting the divine right
of episcopacy. Thus Cranmer, the great father of the Anglican
communion, held that princes could make priests as well as
bishops, by election, and that no consecration was needed for
such as were appointed by the king or the people. The judicious
Hooker teaches that "there may be sometimes ordination without
a bishop." " Blessed be God," says Bishop Hall, " there is no
difference in any essential matter between the Church of England
and her sisters of the Reformation." " I should be unwilling to
affirm," says Archbishop Wake, " that where the ministry is not
episcopal there is no true church." In no place has the Church
of England asserted that the episcopacy is essential to a church
or that she herself possessed Catholic orders. The Articles do
not declare any such doctrine, and what they do express is even
contrary to any such declaration. Article X., on the church,
gives a definition which makes no reference whatever to the
apostolical succession or ministry ; and Article XX II I., on the min-
istry, simply says that " we ought to judge those to be lawful
ministers who' are chosen and called to this work by men who
have public authority given unto them in the congregation to
call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard." Surely here
are no expressions of belief in episcopacy, and the language used
suits the most free of the Congregational churches as well as
the English communion. Had the bishops who framed these
Articles believed in the apostolical succession, or that it was essen-
tial to a church, there is little doubt that they would have ex-
pressed themselves in plain terms. The short preface to the
ordinal is a brief but very imperfect expression of the divine insti-
tution of the episcopacy, and does not decide the question of
the validity of non-episcopal orders. It has been clearly shown
in this journal that the strongest doctrine held by the High-
Churchmen amounts to little more than this : " Episcopacy is a
divine institution and necessary where it can be had ; where it
cannot be had presbyters may validly ordain." ' The doctrine
of the Anglo-Catholics is one which they, in the spirit of private
liberty, have stolen ; it is not taught by their own church. It
will be something new to find even one Protestant bishop who

* See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, vol. iii. pp. 721-730.

1 88 1.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 647

has the Catholic idea of the episcopal office. The ordinal does
not express it, any more than it contains the true notion of the
priesthood which our imitating- friends assume.

We do not imagine, however, that we shall convince all or
many of our High-Church friends. If one should rise from the
dead, perhaps they will not believe. Their plan is to assert
without any proof, with every possible conclusion against them,
the validity of their orders, and then to go on and believe what-
ever they think suitable, and to put it forth as the creed of their
church. There is no one whom they will obey ; but they present
the spectacle of a very singular kind of church. A Ritualist min-
ister in a recent discourse attacks everybody within reach, calls
the bishops " fathers in law, and not fathers in God," says that
" the defence of the church has fallen upon priests and laymen,"
and admits that " a man could remain a priest of the Church of
England even if he did not believe such fundamental doctrines as
the Incarnation and the Resurrection." " The Church of Eng-
land," says he, " was in a, comatose state ; the Houses of Convocation
were practically nil 1 ' (they are surely nil now), "and nobody cared
anything about doctrine." What does such language prove to
men of sound mind ? We can comprehend the position of Pro-
testants who deny the institution of a church and its sphere in
the salvation of men. But the condition of those who loudly pro-
fess faith in a divine church, and then believe neither the doctrine
of their own church nor the creed of any other, who are at war
with every living communion and only hold to an imaginary
church existing a thousand years ago, is one incomprehensible to
any sane intellect.

Thus by the terms of their own reasoning these Anglo-Catho-
lics unchurch themselves. A man is not a member of a church
whose doctrine he rejects, since obedience to doctrinal decisions
is the first condition of membership. They obey no church and
loudly condemn the English communion, therefore are they mani-
festly unchurched. The fact of their lay- baptism being proba-
bly valid only renders them more inexcusable, as those who have
failed to correspond with a grace which would have led them to
the one fold of the Good Shepherd. If now they will pertina-
ciously call themselves Catholics, and take pains to speak of us as
Romanists, thus professing that they are the only Catholics in the
world, they will^only add to the absurdity of their position and
render themselves more ridiculous before the world.

We have thus drawn out the conclusions of Mr. Allies' auto-
biography in the brief statement of a few points which are very

648 A LIFE'S DECISION. [Feb.,

decisive to those who know anything of the Anglican claims. If
any were to accuse him or us of any want of charity towards
those in error, and especially those whom by God's grace we left
behind us many years ago, it would be an injustice. We do not
profess to judge individuals, though we are bound to see and
make known the inconsistency of their position. Truth is dearer
than all human ties, and is to be followed and defended at every
sacrifice. There are times when to neglect plain-speaking is to
conspire to the ruin of souls. That submission to the one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic church which we believed necessary
for our own salvation we also believe necessary for the salva-
tion of all. It is not a matter of mere argument ; it is, one of
life or death. If, after a long and somewhat varied experi-
ence, we were to state the reason why so many remain in
heresy or schism, and embrace not the faith of Christ, we should
be obliged to confess the sad knowledge we have obtained of the
weakness and wilfulness of the human heart. Surely it is not
that the truth fails to attract or that its grounds are not conclu-
sive. It is simply that the world, or self in its various manifesta-
tions of pride, or the devil with his insidious arts, is to the weak
human will stronger than God. Sometimes grace is plainly felt
and openly confessed. Often the argument for the church is ad-
mitted to be unanswerable. But there are sacrifices to be made
and heavy crosses to be taken up ; position is to be renounced
and ties of a whole life to be broken. Heroic virtue is required
and the grace from on high is ready ; but the flesh is weak. First
they pause, then they begin to question, then to put off the hour
of obedience, until little by little the precious grace goes and
leaves them desolate. Then they are sad, then indifferent, and
often end in being bitter antagonists of Catholic truth, which the
great mercy of God taught them once to love. We fear for
them that " the harvest is passed, the summer ended," and that
their souls will not be saved. How can they expect the Holy
Spirit always to strive with them, or, once grievously resisted, to
come back with his former patience? We have known many who
have come to the very portals of the city of God, and have turned
back to be the outspoken enemies of the Catholic Church. They
have kept their position, have even advanced to higher dignities,
and their worldly ties are all unbroken. But have they gained
anything when they have lost peace of mind, the sight of a cer-
tain faith, and the intimate knowledge of their Redeemer ? They
are angry now if one speak of the church which in their best mo-
ments so strongly attracted them. They flash into bitter sallies

1 88 1.] A LIFE'S DECISION. 649

of temper when, one by one, the true in heart follow conscience
and seek the firm reckon which the great Pastor built his church.
They are ingenious in devising excuses or in using arguments
which are really unsatisfactory to their reason. They labor in
vain. No one will ever give them the peace and joy they once
knew when from afar the true light shone upon them. Little by
little all of their religion goes. The striving after union with
God, the life of self-abnegation, the counsels of perfection, all pass
away as the remembrances of a dream which once made them
happy.

May God have mercy upon them in his infinite love ! Oh ! that
they might know the beauty, the power, and the fulness of the
Catholic faith. Here is everything the heart could desire or
the intellect could seek. Here is the dear and overwhelming
manifestation of our crucified and glorified Lord.

" O Church of the living God, pillar and ground of the truth,
fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army in battle
array ! O mother of saints and doctors, martyrs and virgins !
clothe thyself in the robe and aspect, as thou hast the strength, of
Him whose body thou art, the Love for our sake incarnate ; shine
forth upon thy lost children, and draw them to the double foun-
tain of thy bosom, the well-spring of truth and grace."

Who but God can know or worthily prize the gift of faith ?
It is the eye which beholds the world of realities, which sees the
uncreated light of the heavenly King.

" O faith, thou workest miracles

Upon the hearts of men,
Choosing thy home in those same hearts

We know not how nor when.
There was a place, there was a time.

Whether by night or day,
The Spirit came and left that gift,

And went upon his way.
The crowd of cares, the weightiest cross,

Seem trifles less than light,

Earth looks so little and so low,

When faith shines full and bright."

650 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY BE-
FORE THE "REFORMATION."*

THE art of printing in its early days was largely in the hands
of the clergy, and for the first half-century of its existence in
Germany was chiefly used for religious purposes. The publi-
cation before 1520 of books of devotion and of parts of Scrip-
ture is a branch of bibliography which has been less noticed
than the post-" Reformation" work of printing, when the art had
made important progress and had come into more general use.
Italy was ahead of Germany in the number of presses which she
possessed in the earlier stages of printing, and imported prin-
ters as well as presses from Germany. Rome had forty-one
presses in operation up to the year 1500, Bologna forty-three,
Milan sixty, Parma thirty-four, Florence thirty-seven, while
Venice had a hundred and ninety-nine. The higher clergy were
generally the patrons of printers, and furnished the capital and
the superintendence needed, while numbers of the lower clergy
were themselves proof-readers, printers, or publishers. Proof-
reading in those days amounted to editing, and, both for the sake
of orthodoxy and of learning, priests and others in holy orders
were chiefly chosen for this post. In Germany and the Low
Countries the Brothers of the Common Life were so identified
with printing that they were called Brothers of the Quill,
and carried a quill as a badge on their caps. They had long
been prominent as the schoolmasters of the poorer classes,
and the eager disciples of any new system that promised a
quicker diffusion of knowledge among the people. The learned
orders of monks and friars were not distanced by the brothers in
Germany, and, indeed, the presses managed by communities which
served as publishing companies were numerous. Montenegro
itself possessed one at Cettinje, where Brother Makarios printed
the Scriptures, Commentaries, the early Fathers, etc. ; and Italy,
Switzerland, Holland, France, and Germany had a large percent-
age of such establishments. Monasteries sometimes supplied the
locale for secular printers to work in, which is thought to have been
the case with one of the Venetian female communities set down aS
printing-places. The collection of printed books began almost

* Die Druckkunst im Dienste der Kirche, zundchst in Deutschland, bis zum Jahre 1520.
Dr. Franz Falk. Koln. 1879.

1 88 1.] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 651

simultaneously with the art of printing, St. Michael's at Bamberg
possessing a catalogue, dated 1481, of several valuable early pub-
lications, including illustrations and series of woodcuts with
short explanatory text. One such copy, from the blocks used at
St. Clara's at Sb'flingen, representing scenes in the life of our
Lord and of some saints, is preserved in the museum at Nurem-
berg. Cardinal Turrecremata caused one of the earliest illus-
trated books, printed out of Germany and the Low Countries, to
be published in Rome in 1467 by one of the original Mayence
printers, Ulrich Hahn. The wood-cuts illustrated a series of
meditations by the cardinal. Among the devotional manuals
published before 1500 it is interesting to notice one treating of
the Immaculate Conception ; this was printed at Magdeburg,
1489, by Brandis, of Leipzig, whose press the archbishop of Mag-
deburg had just transferred to his own city. The spirit of the
times suggested to the clergy the device of encouraging the buy-
ing and using of books by the distribution of indulgences, and we
find the familiar formula set forth in the preface of some early
specimens, granting so many years' remission to those who
should buy a copy, or read the Ordinary of the Mass devoutly
from it, or in any other way help on the work of printing and
distributing copies. Connected with this was the custom, which
speedily followed the invention of printing, of bequeathing parch-
ment and other materials for book-making, as other gifts were be-
queathed, for the good of the soul of the giver, and sometimes on
condition of the recipient procuring Masses and prayers for his
soul. The custom of lending books of devotion to responsible
persons was also in vogue, as we learn from the bequest of a
Psalter to a convent in Liibeck in 1484, which forbids the lending
of it to the neighboring citizens. Other bequests provided for
the periodical public reading of the works bequeathed, either in
church to the people or in the refectory to the community. For
a long time it was usual for the ecclesiastical decorators and illu-
minators to lend their services to the perfecting of printed books,
going over the capitals and headings with red lines, illustrating the
text with hand arabesques and miniatures, and binding the books.
These rubricatorcs and ligatores are often mentioned in the title-
pages of the early copies of printed books.

Besides the greater work of printing Bibles and Psalters, mis-
sals and antiphonals, the early press of Germany was busy with
popular books of devotion deserving of more minute notice than
they have yet received. There were several classes of these
books : those fantastically named Postillen (which Dr. Franz Falk

652 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

believes to be a corruption of the initial words " post ilia verba ")
or Plenarien, consisting of the Gospels and Epistles for the Sun-
days of the year, with brief commentaries which remind one of
the formal homilies in early Anglican prayer-books; the Lives of
the Saints, the Confession manuals, and the Pilgrimage books.

A postille published at Magdeburg in 1484, in Low German,
begins by an introduction inviting those who do not understand
Latin to follow the Ordinary of the Mass in the following transla-
tion, and to gather from it useful and holy knowledge. The
Gospels and Epistles are accompanied by short glosses or expla-
nations, similar to those which in some countries form the usual
ground-work of the Sunday sermon, and some devotions for Mass
are added, while many of these books gave the literal translation
of the whole service, and consequently bore the name of Plenarien.
A Protestant bibliographer, Gotze, in his history of the press of
Magdeburg, speaks thus of these popular manuals : " When one
reflects that a Latin missal was in use even in the smallest
churches, while these gospel-books could only be used by the
laity for private devotions, the number of the latter strikes one as
something remarkable, and attests the eagerness of the German
people to have the Holy Scriptures brought home to them in
their mother-tongue. They were not content merely to assist
bodily at divine worship, but they longed for the spiritual food
of the word of God. For these books, which from their large
size could not have been cheap, were undoubtedly purchased
only by those who seriously wished to study and understand the
Scriptures. That such a wish was rife in Low Germany is evinc-
ed by the number of editions of such books in Magdeburg, Lii-
beck, and Brunswick until 1509."

The second class of manuals consisted of legends and lives
of the saints, Passionals or martyrologies, lives of the hermits of
the Thebaid and of local patron saints. The grotesque fancies
of the middle ages appear sometimes in these legends, in which
fact and fiction are oddly blended, their literary merit lying
chiefly in the measure or test which they supply of the state of the
European mind at the transition period included in the sixteenth
century. The German appetite for legends was always great,
and a distinct feature of the national character ; Fouque and Uh-
land, besides many others, have utilized it poetically, outside the
bounds of religious legend, but it was chiefly in the lives of
saints that it found a vent during the middle ages.

The martyrs' histories and legends bore the name of Pas-
sionals. Many of these and lives of saints of later date were illus-

l88l.] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 653

trated by famous artists, Diirer, Schauffelein, Wohlgemuth, and
others, and the earlier editions of these printed books exhibit
woodcuts from movable blocks used before the invention of print-
ing- proper, some dating from 1440-50, as in the collection of
the Strasburg legends. As popular as the Passionals were the
equally marvellous lives of the Fathers of the Desert. Mrs. Jame-
son has made us familiar with the mediaeval notions of hermit life
and temptations in Egypt ; fancy and perspective are equally
curious in their details and proportions. The single legends of
favorite saints form a large part of this class of books, the choice
of favorites betokening certain facts historically worth noting.
St. Barbara, St. Catherine, St. Ursula, and St. Margaret, as mar-
tyrs, were among the most popular saints ; the second of these
was the patroness of students in general, and her elaborate legend
was connected with devotion to the Holy Land, where pilgrims
and crusaders never failed to visit her supposed tomb on the
mountain which mediaeval tradition identified with the Biblical
Sinai. The charm of the legend of St. Brandan, the Irish sailor-
monk, is attested by the number of editions (twelve) through
which it passed within fifty years, and points both to the thirst
for sea discovery and adventure which culminated in the voyages
of the discoverers of various nationalities about the sixteenth cen-
tury, and to the poetic halo which hung around Irish saints, so
many of them apostles of Christianity to Germany. One of the
most elaborate titles of the legend runs thus : " St. Brandan's
book and life, what marvels he experienced at sea during nine
whole years, how often he came into dire troubles and necessities,
which it is very entertaining to read."

But the most interesting and hitherto least studied class of
mediaeval devotional manuals were the Confession and Pilgri-
mage books, some of the latter of which have a geographical
value beyond their religious one. Modern Catholicity has not
been inventive or original in its titles, for we find before 1500
printed prayer-books called The Way of Heaven, The Light of the
Soul, The Mirror for Sinners, The Consolation of the Soul, some of
them adaptations and translations from Latin books of private de-
votion in use among the clergy and the educated laity. Quaint
and direct verses head an edition of a tract on the Acknowledg-
ment of Sin, published at Ingoldstadt, somewhat to this effect :
" Wilt thou glance at thy life's sum, be thou young or be thou
old, read this little book with care, and find in it virtue's worth,
and the weight of sin also, with which thy soul is bent. Of this
sin speedily be free, if thou wouldst with. God e'er be."' The

654 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

Augsburg Mirror for Sinners boasts that it is not put together
out of " our own head and brain," but is compiled from authen-
tic ecclesiastical authors who have written on the Sacrament of
Penance for instance, St. Thomas, Gerson, and Antoninus of
Florence. A woodcut at the beginning represents a confessional
with a priest and penitent in the ordinary attitudes, while other
books of the kind sometimes added angels watching over or devils
tempting the kneeling penitent. A " fair and fruitful confession "
was the title of some of these tracts, and everything, from the
form of accusation, " I accuse myself to God with respect to my
five senses as follows," to the table of sins according to the Ten
Commandments, or the five senses, or the seven deadly sins, is
minutely detailed for the instruction of the penitent. An exam-
ple is given of a mild form of sin. " First of all, I accuse myself
to God with respect to my eyes : when I saw that any one
honored me, I rejoiced in my heart, and did not give honor to
God ; and this happened three, four, or five times." A very sensi-
ble remark comes in at the end of the exhortation to read and use
the book : " If thou wouldst have further instruction, hearken dili-
gently to the sermon, for if this little book were longer it would
be less read." A Latin Penitentiary for the use of the clergy and
the learned, published without date or printer's name, began with
an elaborate versified exhortation, of which the following transla-
tion gives an idea: " Whoso cannot reach a priest, let him to his
neighbor go, if he would from sin have rest, as if his body spotted
were. Hast thou no priest near, let thy comrade thy sins hear;
as the sick man without leech will let a neighbor his wounds
reach."

Rhymed versions of prayers and advice served to refresh the
people's memory, and allegories were employed to encourage fre-
quent confession. The gist of one of the latter was the choice of
six physicians, three for the body a good cook, a good host, and
a good barber (the latter to bathe the body, to tickle the veins,
to shear the head and stroke the limbs) and three for the soul :
that is, first, the preacher in the pulpit, who spreads before us the
holy Christian rule of life, and with his tongue enforces Chris-
tian duties ; then the " other soul-leech is the confessor, who the
weight of sin can solve, and take away the anxious dread, sore
guests for the soul. The third soul- leech is Jesus Christ, the Son
of the Most High, together with the Holy Ghost. Man, be glad
so much to know ; three costly gifts make one fine metal, so be-
lieve ye Christians all." Besides the books there was also a very
popular confession map or table, printed on one side of the paper.

1 88 1.] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION." 655

and intended to hang on the wall or door like the Zurich Cate-
chism table. It was printed in 1481, with a large woodcut re-
presenting the customary priest and penitent, with our Lord
accompanied by St. Paul, St. Matthew, St. Mary Magdalen,
Zacheus, the good thief, and other typical sinners. Beneath these
was an exhortation " not to be ashamed to confess thy sin many
sins are forgiven thee because thou hast loved much." An illus-
trated enumeration of sins is also added. The map was a circle
twenty-nine centimetres broad and seven millimetres high, with
a circumference of forty centimetres, the metre being a little over
a yard measure. Long before these mechanical devices manu-
script descriptions of confession-formulas occur, and allusions to
these formulas are found in the oldest manuals extant of mediae-
val literature in Germany, regular confession-books being men-
tioned in monastic library catalogues as far back as the ninth cen-
tury.

The most popular pilgrimage book in Germany was Breiden-
bach's account of his travels in the Holy Land. This expedition
of several of the Mayence Cathedral clergy gives a very interest-
ing insight into the common life of the late fifteenth century.
The dean, Bernard of Breidenbach, was accompanied by a well-
known artist, Reuwich, whose illustrations adorn the book, and
by Count John of Solms. They started on the 2$th of April,
1483, and went in fifteen days to Venice, where they were joined
by five other devout pilgrims of various ranks and nationalities.
The painstaking dean gives a history of Palestine from Abraham
to the coming of our Lord, in a long preface to the work ; but
what is more characteristic is the copy of the contract made by
the company with the master of the galley which they chartered
at Venice. Joppa was the port of their destination. The ship-
owner, Augustin, bound himself, in consideration of a round sum
of money paid in two lump sums, to engage a sufficient crew and
escort ; to provide weapons for eighty men to protect the pil-
grims from pirates at sea and Saracens on land ; to give two full
eals a day with plenty of fresh meat, vegetables, eggs, etc. , and
wine, especially Malmsey ; to take his passengers safely in-
Joppa harbor, and, further, accompany them to the Holy Pla-
, protecting them from heathen molestation and not hurrying
em as to time; and to bring them safely back to Venice, provid-
ing the same quality of food on the return voyage. The harbors
where they were to touch on their way were agreed upon before-
hand, and also the time they were to spend in the Holy Land.
One-half of the money, three hundred and twenty new-coined

656 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

ducats (forty to each of the eight passengers) was to be paid in
advance at Venice, and the rest at Joppa. At Venice the author
gives an account of the relics preserved at St. Mark's and of the
cathedral treasury. A plan of the city is likewise attached, and
a dissertation follows on the political and commercial status of
Venice, with some legendary additions concerning the origin of
the republic. After a stay of twenty-five days in Venice the
party sailed on the first of June, 1483, and touched at Parenzo, an
Istrian port, on the third day out ; heavy seas and a stormy pas-
sage delayed their arrival at Corfu till the I2th, and at Rhodes
the 1 8th, of June. Rhodes occupies a chapter of the chronicle,
and its relics the greater part of the chapter. The pilgrims
stayed on the Knights' island for four days, and reached Cyprus
the 27th. When they first sighted the shores of the Holy Land
they sang the " Te Deum " and " Salve Regina " in chorus. The
captain took all necessary measures to procure passes from the Sa-
racen rulers, and escorted his passengers with an armed retinue
through Rama to Jerusalem, which they reached the nth of July.
They entered the Holy City on foot at six o'clock in the evening,
and visited Mount Sion and its monastery the next day. In the
evening they went, with a special permit, to the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, where their number was counted by the Saracen
authorities, their toll five ducats each collected, and the doors
closed upon them for the night. They spent their time in com-
mon prayer, proceeding regularly from station to station which
tradition pointed out as connected with the road to Calvary, the
rock cavern of the Sepulchre itself being their last placq of prayer
until dawn. The author then goes on to describe other holy
places with much Biblical and historical acumen, and Dr. Falk
says : " As he had, in all neighborhoods and cities which he passed
on his way, stopped to comment on their military or commercial
importance, on their relative distances from one another and
from Venice, on the size and number of the Greek islands, so he
also portrays with minute topographical knowledge and histori-
cal discretion the places of Palestine as they were in classical
times and as they appeared to his eyes." The party visited all
the more remarkable points of and around Jerusalem the Valley
of Josaphat, the Mount of Olives, the site of the Temple, the
brook Cedron and proceeded to Bethlehem on the I4th of July,
after which they spent another night in prayer at the Holy Se-
pulchre. On the 1 6th they rode out to Bethany, and on the i8th
to the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Hereupon follows one of the
most valuable chapters of the book, on the ancient and mediaeval

1 88 1.] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION." 657

geography of Palestine and Syria. Sinai (that is, the mountain
which at that time was thought to answer to the Biblical descrip-
tion of the Mount of the Law), which was further distinguished
as the burial-place of St. Catherine, and which sheltered at its
foot the convent of Greek monks whence came the famous Codex
Sinaiticus, has a chapter to itself in this most interesting of old
pilgrimage books. Breidenbach's travels were published simul-
taneously in Latin and German two years after the author's re-
turn, and came out in many editions during the half-century that
preceded Luther's movement. Eight translations into French,
Italian, Spanish, and Dutch appeared between 1488 and 1522,
while the Italian translation was republished no less than twenty-
three times up to 1675.

Two other remarkable books on the Holy Land are mentioned
by Dr. Falk : the chronicle of Hans Tucher, Petty Councillor of
Nuremberg, who journeyed to Palestine with Otto Spiegel and
the Knight Sebald in 1479, sailing from Venice; and the pilgrim-
age of Ludolf, parish priest of Sudheim, near Lichtenau, in the
diocese of Paderborn, who lived in the East for five years, from
1336 to 1341. The former was published without woodcuts (those
of Reuwich had considerably increased the worth and interest of
Breidenbach's book) and bore the following initial announce-
ment : " On Thursday, the sixth day of May, 1479, I Hans Tucher,
citizen, and for the time being member of the petty council, of
the city of Nuremberg, aged fifty-one years and five weeks, set
out in the name of Almighty God, to his honor and my soul's
salvation, and in nowise moved by desire for fame, or emula-
tion, or any other frivolous motive, to visit the Holy Places."
The second book, earlier by more than a century, was published
in manuscript simultaneously in Latin and German, and printed
among the earliest specimens of the newly-discovered art ; it was
dedicated by the author to his bishop, Baldwin of Steinfurt, Bi-
shop of Paderborn. Ludolf acknowledges that he owes some
of his information to others and has not witnessed all he avers.
He speaks of the two routes to Palestine, one by sea, either on
large ships direct or in small galleys coastwise, and one by land
through Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thrace to Constantinople, from
which port he advises travellers and pilgrims to take ship for
Cyprus and thence to Alexandria, coasting up the shores of the
Holy Land to Joppa, and thus visiting nearly all the cities and
spots dear to the Christian heart and famous in Hebrew and
Christian history. He was an observant man and did not fail to
be struck by details. The flight of birds and their habitats occu-
VOL. xxxii. 2

658 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

pied him on board ship ; the single stork which he saw made him
curious about the winter quarters of the familiar bird about which
so much poetic domestic tradition had gathered in Germany.
Scientific questions about the nature and causes of the Dead Sea
perplexed him, and the sources of the Nile were as much in his
mind as the visible river. In a little island of the ^Egean Sea he
met with hot springs, and near Cairo he visited with great interest
the ovens for artificial chicken-hatching. He reports legends as
simply as facts, but that does not detract from the worth of his
book, as the stories illustrate the mental state of most pilgrims of
that day, and also add to our store of beautiful popular poetry ;
for instance, the tale of the thirty pieces of silver which Abraham
brought from his first home, and which are supposed to have
passed from him to some Ishmaelite merchants, to the brethren
of Joseph, to the Queen of Sheba, to the Three Wise Men, and
lastly to the Temple treasury, whence they were paid to Judas,
and later to the owner of the potter's field. The geographer, Karl
Ritte'r, considers this book deserving of the close study of geo-
graphers as a remarkable source of information concerning me-
diaeval geography. Almost all the known editions are printed
without names, dates, or accurate numbering of pages ; the Augs-
burg one of 1477 is the only exception.

Brother Nicholas Wanckel, an Observantine (Franciscan) friar,
made the pilgrimage in 1517. Only one edition of the work has
been discovered, "Job Gutknecht, printer, in the imperial city of
Nuremberg." The author spent six years. in the Floly Land, and
adds to his description a rule of the " Order of Knights who visit
the Holy Sepulchre." On the back of the title-page is an elaborate
illustration, a large rosary encircling a crucifix surrounded by a
choir of saints, while the souls in purgatory are depicted beneath.
An indulgence of seven years is attached to the use and reading
of this pious book. Sebastian Brand, the satirist, and author of
the famous allegory, " The Ship of Fools," also published his
travels in Palestine, dedicated to his brother, the parish priest of
Lenzburg, near Schaffhausen. He describes the ancient and mod-
ern history of Jerusalem, tells what he saw, dwells on infidel tyr-
anny, and ends his book by imploring Christians to renew the
crusades and wrest the Holy Places from the power of the Turk.
The German version of his book was printed by Kaspar Frey, of
Baden. Another division of pilgrimage books is that containing
descriptions of Rome, the Tomb of the Apostles, and the Great
Relics of the Passion. Jubilee years stimulated the production
of such books as well as they increased the number of pilgrims.

1 88 1.] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION." 659

Heathen Rome was not forgotten, and marvellous mythical tales
of her origin were mixed with later miracles. One of these books,
called The Wonders of the City of Rome, was printed in 1491 in
Nuremberg, and adorned with five woodcuts in the style of the
school of that city. Nine years later came the jubilee of 1500,
and a tract was printed detailing Roman history and the sum of
indulgences to be gained by visiting the seven great churches
and attending the exposition of the Passion relics, while a very
realistic woodcut set forth the exposition by a priest in a high
gallery of the reputed image of our Lord's face on the veil of St.
Veronica, with a crowd of kneeling pilgrims below. It was al-
ready the custom for each country to maintain churches and free
asylums for its own pilgrims ; the large German establishment of
St. Maria de Anima housed each German pilgrim of either sex
for three nights, and provided special' services and ^German ser-
mons for its guests. The book goes on to enumerate the Lenten
Stations, beginning at St. John Lateran, which gives occasion for
a catalogue of relics, indulgences, and church treasures, and here
and there are scattered ten woodcuts. Loretto also was a favo-
rite shrine, one of the best known throughout the world. An
undated quarto tract sets forth how " this house was the one in
which the Holy Virgin was born and brought up by her mother,
St. Anne, and in it also appeared to her the Archangel Gabriel."

But Germany itself possessed numberless shrines, and some
in the south claimed equality with Rome in the great number
id miraculous nature of their Passion relics. It does not seem
lat any one country in the middle ages proper was better pro-
led than another with pilgrimage places ; the belief that led to
icir multiplication was about equal, and pre-eminence was only
accidental circumstance later on, when the " Reformation " had
>lit Europe into two sections. We hear less of English and Irish
irines than of foreign ones, but before the " Reformation " " holy
)laces " abounded as much as they do at present in Italy or Bel-
gium, and customs quite as romantic obtained at them as those
r hich one sees and marvels at now in Southern Europe. South-
Germany even now possesses an amazing number of minor
shrines, each a venerated centre in its own neighborhood. Relics
were brought from Italy and England by the first apostles of
Germany, and subsequently the remains of these apostles them-
selves became objects of veneration.

Miraculous images were multiplied, whether crucifixes or
statues and pictures of the Blessed Virgin, some on panel, some
on glass (such as the very rude one of our Lady's head on a pane

66o THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

of bottle-glass at Absain in the Tyrol, said to have been painted
by angels one night) ; holy wells distinguished some places ; others
claimed authentic possession of miraculous Hosts and particles of
the blood of the Saviour, the hair of his Mother, the veil she
wore, filings of the nails used at the crucifixion, limbs of St. John
the Baptist, etc., etc., each of which was enshrined in a church
full of treasures and votive offerings. The oldest books on re-
cord concerning these German shrines relate to the pilgrimage
church of Altotting, in Bavaria, and Andechs, the " holy moun-
tain " of Upper Bavaria ; about nine editions came out between
1470 and 1505, Nuremberg and Augsburg being the places where
most of them were printed. The latter city itself had one of the
wealthiest shrines in Germany. The riches of Augsburg were as
famous as those of Venice and Bruges, its magnificence was not-
ed, its commerce immense, and its ecclesiastical importance was
great in proportion to its wealth. St. Ulrich, one of its bishops,
and a noted warrior in the anti-Turkish wars in Hungary,
founded the cathedral, and the remains of St. Afra, a female peni-
tent of high position who was martyred by the Huns, formed
the first nucleus of the great treasury which accumulated in
Augsburg, and was depicted in a large woodcut in two pieces, or
more properly a map. The monstrances, tabernacles, reliquaries,
busts of precious metals, cups, tablets, church plate, missals,
crosses, and caskets, etc., are represented in three superposed
rows, sixty separate pieces, chiefly jewelled articles of gold and
silver, of late Gothic workmanship. Six narrow columns of text
explain and describe the items on the picture, which dates from
1480, and was no doubt printed at the well-known monastery
press connected with the cathedral. Solomon of Constance
printed his commentaries there in 1472, a stately book adorned
with hand illustrations. A descriptive pilgrimage book was
printed in 1483 with woodcuts, and as late as 1630 another large
book was made, with a catalogue consisting of fifty-nine copper-
plate engravings, representing the contents of the treasury.
Bamberg of whom its citizens said, " Were Nuremberg mine, I
would add it to Bamberg " published a similar book catalogue in
1493 (two editions the same year), with one hundred and seven-
teen woodcuts, and another in 1509, with twenty-four quarto
pages of text and one hundred and thirty woodcuts, representing
the treasures, among which were some relics undoubtedly apo-
cryphal, yet firmly believed in by the loyal citizens, such as the
" banner of St. George, which came direct from heaven." Pales-
tine always contributes the most prized relics, and here tradition

1 88 1,] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION." 66l

avers that " a piece of the stone from which Christ ascended to
heaven " and " a morsel of rock of the Holy Sepulchre " were
kept at Bamberg. Manifold indulgences were attached to the
visit of pilgrims to the cathedral and their contributions to its
embellishment. The well-known Swiss shrine and image of our
Lady at Einsiedeln, St. Meinrad's home, were commemorated by
a chronicle printed in Ulm in 1494. Einsiedeln is one of the very
few places where ecclesiastical printing is still continued, and a
regular trade is done there in connection with devotional pic-
tures, books, images, etc. Halle and Mayence owed a shrine and
its attendant treasury to the generosity of a collateral ancestor of
the Emperor of Germany, a bishop of the House of Hohenzollern-
Brandenburg, who founded an institution on a large scale in
Halle in 1513, but soon transferred it to his own archiepiscopal
city of Mayence. Not only was the transfer made on paper,
but the actual buildings church, convent, chapels and treasures
were carried away ten years after their first erection and set up
again in Mayence, while the gate through which the relics were
carried in was walled up, as a token that the precious burden
should never again leave the city. The feast of the relics, or an-
niversary of this translation, is still yearly kept on the last Sun-
day in August, when the relics are exposed. They were reckon-
ed among the costliest in Germany, and necessitated a large
amount of plate and books, which are all detailed in a parchment
manuscript with three hundred and forty-four hand illustrations,
itself a treasure of considerable worth. This was copied in ex-
cellent chromo-lithographs in 1848. For popular use, however, a
printed book appeared in Halle in 1520, with a portrait of Car-
dinal-Archbishop Albert, the founder, engraved by Albert Diirer,
and accompanied by an explanatory introduction in Latin. The
frontispiece on the second page represents the dedication of the
church by the Archbishops Albert and Ernest (a predecessor who
collected the first relics and plate), the two figures in pontificals,
each holding up a model of the church to its patrons, St. Mau-
rice and St. Mary Magdalen, depicted above. Two hundred and
thirty-one remarkably good woodcuts illustrate the hundred and
twenty small quarto pages of text. At the end is a page both
sides of which are entirely covered with the arms of the two
founders. The following directions close the book : " At the ex-

I ^osition of the relics stand still and do not crowd each other, and
lould any alarm occur, or cry of fire which God in his mercy
)rbid ! you are not to turn or move until you have leave to do so,
)r our good lord the archbishop, his honorable councillors, and

662 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

others in office have ordered everything here with careful and
necessary forethought. But if any one be found making a noise
or unseemly commotion, and disregarding this warning, it is seri-
ously commanded that he be heavily punished without chance
of reprieve." St. George's at Viecht, in the Tyrol, near Inns-
bruck, had its pilgrimage book printed at Augsburg in 1480. Its
church and convent dated from the tenth century, and were rich
in wood-carving, manuscripts, and wall-paintings.

Cologne, of which an ancient saying tells us that " he who
has not seen Cologne has not seen Germany," printed its first
pilgrimage book in 1492, as a guide to the numerous churches of
the " holy city," " the German Rome," and the indulgences at-
tached to visiting them. The first part of the book divides the
church year into sixty-nine days, six in each month or there-
abouts, in the way of a calendar, denoting which churches to visit
on those days and what devotions to perform before given shrines,
besides the almsgiving, and abstinence, and sacramental condi-
tions necessary for gaining the indulgences. This calendar is
distributed in very practical and business-like, not to say mecha-
nical, fashion, and is a fair example of the mediaeval craze for mys-
ticism in numbers, arbitrary divisions of time, and allegorical ob-
servances. Among the relics in the cathedral we come upon
" St. Peter's staff." Besides the special descriptions of the
shrines of the Three Wise Men or " kings," as mediaeval tradition
called them and of other saints in the cathedral, five editions at
least of the legend of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins
were printed in the first decade of the sixteenth century, all
of them by Cologne presses. The neighboring famous church
of Aix-la-Chapelle could, not have been without similar books,
though Dr. Falk points to the curious fact that none have been
discovered as yet ; but Nuremberg also possessed some relics of
Charlemagne, the Prankish Arthur, and we can guess, from the
catalogues sedulously reprinted in the artistic city, what the
pretensions of Aix-la-Chapelle must have been. The national,
half-Christianized myths which gather round these two figures,
Arthur and Charlemagne, the typical heroes of two races, are
very similar. Nuremberg boasted the possession of " the sword
which an angel brought the emperor, that he might fight with
divine strength, and conquer in battle to the comfort and defence
of Christendom,"* besides other imperial regalia of less problema-

* Trithemius, in the chronicle of Hirschau (1360), says that at Ingelheim Charlemagne
received a sword from an angel, and with the same fought his way through Spain and protected
or cleared the road to St. James of Compostella for Christian pilgrims.

1 88 1.] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION." 663

tical origin. Some of the crown jewels were entrusted to the
care of this city, and were kept at the Hospital Church of the
Holy Ghost, while what were called the " Imperial Relics " were
kept in a silver-plated shrine enclosed in a carved wood chest,
which hung by a chain from the vaulted ceiling of the choir in
the same church. They consisted, according to tradition, of a
piece of the manger of Bethlehem, an arm of St. Anne, mother of
the Blessed Virgin, a tooth of St. John the Baptist, a piece of the
robe of St. John the Evangelist, and fragments of three chains
respectively ascribed to the apostles St. Peter, St. Paul, and St.
John. The pilgrimage book of 1493 describes the yearly exposi-
tion of the relics from a decorated balcony within the church.
Five bishops in full pontificals, each attended by several council-
lors bearing lighted torches, were to stand with the relics raised
in their hands, while at their left a " vocalissimus " (a priest or
clerk with a musical and resounding voice) was to point to each
with a staff, and in a loud voice to read distinctly a description of
the relic out of a book. Beneath them stood a guard of armed
men, and beyond those the faithful. After these were exhibited
the regalia and imperial garments ascribed to Charlemagne and
used at each imperial coronation, also a holy sword purporting
to be that of St. Maurice, a doughty foe of the Saracens ; but the
most solemn exposition was that of the third collection, the
" Great Relics " i.e., a piece of the cloth of the Last Supper, and
one of the towel with which our Lord girt himself to wash his
disciples' feet ; five thorns from the Crown of Thorns ; a large
piece of the True Cross, enclosed in a. great cross that held also
the bulls, briefs, and papal authentications of these treasures;
and the head of the spear with which the Saviour's side was
pierced (this was said to have- been occasionally used by the
* early emperors as a sceptre on the day of their coronation), with
one of the nails used at the crucifixion. As each relic was dis-
played the crier described it and added an exhortation suitable
to the events with which it was associated. Up to the Reforma-
tion the day of the exposition of the relics was used as a legal
and popular date in Nuremberg and its neighborhood ; the last
time that the ceremony was performed was at Easter, 1524, a
hundred years after the institution of this local festival. The
first book, or rather the remains of an illustrated manuscript map,
descriptive of the relics, dates from 1424, while two books, six-
paged quartos, with woodcuts printed by two separate publishers
in the city, bear date 1487 and 1493.

Such expositions of relics were not uncommon. Magdeburg

664 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PRESS IN GERMANY [Feb.,

instituted a similar festival (the book fails to give printer's name
or date) in honor of St. Maurice, whose banner it claimed to pos-
sess, together with nine shrines containing notable relics of our
Lord, his Mother, and his apostles. These were shown, with the
same ceremonies as before mentioned, on the day of St. Maurice,
the 22d of September, and the Sunday within the octave of
Corpus Christi, the great bells of all the churches ringing and a
special sermon explanatory of the relics being preached.

The column-image of the Virgin in the church of Regens-
burg is connected with one of the anti-Jewish local crusades
which repeat themselves in the history of the middle ages. It
was called " the beautiful Mary," and was celebrated for the
cures wrought in its presence. The church was full of votive
offerings of divers values, and besides the five pilgrimage books
describing the cures and the large folio-map printed in 1519 and
1520, there appeared three hymns, in honor of the anti-Jewish raid,
which expelled the merchants of the city, of the erection of the
church, and of the wonders therein witnessed. As late as 1610
a large woodcut with explanatory text appeared, extolling the
fame of the image and its miracles, though the pilgrimage had
ceased in 1544, when the statue was removed and Lutheran ser-
vice held in the church.

Treves vied with Cologne and Nuremberg in the number and
solemnity of its holy treasures. In 1512 the relic of the Holy
Tunic, or the seamless robe of our Lord, was rediscovered after
the supposed interval of twelve centuries since the days of the
Empress Helena. The concourse of kings and sovereigns was
immense. All the German presses hastened to print histories and
illustrations of the relic. Strassburg published three in two years,
one of them a poetical version ; Rostock published an illustrated
map in 1512; and in 15 14 a more detailed account appeared in
Metz, by the preacher of the Treves cathedral, minutely dwell-
ing on the color, texture, and shape of the " Holy Coat." Metz
also published another edition the same year by the same author.
The Byzantine church of St. Mergen claimed to possess the robe
of the Blessed Virgin (though as late as the first French Revolu-
tion a cathedral church in France claimed the same distinction),
and three pilgrimage books were printed the same year, 1512,
describing it. A modern book on it appeared in 1752. The
church and its altars were remarkable instances of Greek archi-
tecture, and bore inscriptions in Greek and archaic sculptures
well worth study. The history of the holy robe varied a little in
the different hand-books, though two of them agreed in assigning

88 1.] BEFORE THE "REFORMATION" 66$

the honor of having brought it to Treves to a hero or knight
named Arundel, while one of them spoke of its Doming from
" Pilate and Herod " as a gift to " an ancient Jew."

The yearly exposition of relics at St. Stephen's, Vienna, Aus-
tria, was only discontinued in 1700; two pilgrimage books de-
scribing the relics appeared in 1502 and 1514. Wittenberg fur-
nishes one such book in 1 509, with a hundred and nineteen wood-
cuts, illustrating the plate and relics of the church which Duke
Rudolph of Saxony built in 1353, in honor of a thorn from the
Crown of Thorns, presented to him by Philip, King of France.
There were over five thousand articles of value in the treasury of
the church, catalogued (and some collected) by Duke Frederick of
Saxony. Wiirzburg had for its patron St. Kilian, an Irish apos-
tle and martyr, who was murdered by early Frankish barbarians
in a horse-stall, which the devotion of later ages transformed into
a church. His relics and other things belonging to this founda-
tion were detailed and described in a little book dated Nurem-
berg, 1483, of which a second edition appeared from the same
press two years later. Among the hundred and twenty-eight
histories of saints which Dr. Falk's pamphlet mentions, those of
the Blessed Virgin are omitted, as they form, from their number,
a class as large again, and many books of devotion are also pur-
posely left out, as he has confined himself to the enumeration of a
certain definite class of publications. The saints of the Old Tes-
tament are not strongly represented, though histories of Job,
Joseph and his Brethren, "Daniel, Esther, Judith, and the Macha-
bees occur occasionally. St. Thomas's evangelization of India
occupies one book that is, his " noteworthy miracle of adminis-
tering the Holy Sacrament to his converts every year" (whether
during his life or after his death is not mentioned). A new light
is thrown on the traditional life of St. Anne by the following
title of a life published in 1519 at Cologne: "The history of the
holy matron, St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary ; how she
was born of her holy parents, Stolanus and Emerentia ; also of
her holy life and bitter penance, with many fair examples and
miracles." Some of the lives are called hymns, and were no
doubt rhymed versions. St. Catherine, the patroness of students,
is nearly as popular a subject of legend as St. Brandan, and no
life omits the story, which Ary Scheffer has so well translated
into painting, of her entombment by angels on Mount Sinai,
One of these books gives the travels of the Wise Men from the
East " to Constantinople, and thence to Milan, from where they
journeyed to the holy city of Cologne," Of the confession

666 THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON. [Feb.,

books, four were in Latin and German, and thirty-nine in German
only. Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Strassburg are mentioned most
often as publishing books of devotion, which were at first the
staple of printers. A few classics, school-books, grammars, and,
more rarely yet, musical and mathematical treatises issued from
the busy presses of Germany and the Low Countries, but books
for religious purposes, whether public or private, were the stand-
by of the printing brotherhood for at least a century. After the
" Reformation " religious controversy made the press a useful wea-
pon, while in countries but slightly agitated by the new movement
the clergy retained their almost monopoly of printing for a much
longer time, and were able to devote themselves to the calm
study of the ancients, and the prosecution of such scientific re-
searches as did not run too glaringly counter to received axioms
of theology. The part that the learned among the clergy in
Italy have taken in obscure branches of knowledge, and the good
service which their patient archaeological instinct has done through
the local press of their country, are scarcely yet appreciated by
the more daring thinkers of Teutonic lands.

THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.

TRANSLATION FROM SCHILLER.*

WHY run the people in a crowd,

What mean these shouts ascending loud,

Is Rhodes to fiery flames a prey

That streams of men block every way ?

A horseman on a charger strong

I see above the pressing throng,

And men are following behind

Dragging a beast of monstrous kind,

A dragon of enormous size,

Like to a crocodile's his maw ;

Upon the knight all fix their eyes,

Then gaze upon the beast with awe.

* In the young knight's narrative of his adventures, a number of lines have been omitted and
others condensed.

THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON. 667

They shouted with a thousand cries
Come see the monster where he lies ;
This hero's hand hath slain the beast
On sheep and shepherd wont to feast.
Of all who dared the worm attack
No living man came ever back.
Give glory to the youth so brave
Who dared the danger us to save !
And now to St. John's Cloister all
Escort the victor in procession,
Where summoned by a hasty call
The Knights Hospitallers hold a session.

Before the noble Master came
The youth with air of modest shame,
And up the stairway pressed the crowd
In eager throng and shouting loud.
Then spake the youth : I have fulfilled
My knightly duty, I have killed
The dragon fierce with my own hand
Whose ravages laid waste the land.
Free to the traveller lies the way,
The meadow to the shepherd swain ;
Up to the shrine, without dismay
The pilgrim climbs the steep again.

The Chief looked sternly on the youth,
And said : brave deed is thine in truth.
That which gives honor to a knight,
High valor, thou hast proved aright ;
Yet say ! what duty hath first claim
On knight who fights in Jesu's Name
His breast the cross's sign adorning ?
And all turned pale to hear the warning.
The youth with mien composed replies,
His head inclined and cheeks all red,
Obedience, first of duties, ties
The cross's soldier to his Head.

This principle, my son, replies
The Master, thine own act denies ;
The combat by our law forbidden
Was boldly waged by thee, unbidden.

668 THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON. [Feb.,

My Lord ! first hear, then judge, replies
The youth in calm and earnest wise.
The precept's real sense and scope
Truly I have observed, I hope ;
It was not with a thoughtless heart
That I went forth on this adventure,
With cunning and with prudent art
I thought the combat I might venture.

Five of our noblest brothers fell

As victims of this beast of hell ;

To keep fresh victims from his maw

The combat was forbid by law ;

Yet for this battle hot desire

Was burning in me like a fire,

And in the dreams of every night

I struggled in the dreadful fight,

And when each dawning morning came

With new reports of ravage done,

These fed within my heart the flame,

Till I resolved the risk to run.

And then within myself I thought:
Diversity of times is naught
In high and honorable things
Which every ancient poet sings.
Men cast in an heroic mould
Gods were esteemed in times of old.
Pagans of valor proved and tried
The world from monsters purified,
With lions feared not to engage
And Minotaurs, half-men half-cattle ;
To save the people from their rage,
Shedding their blood in many a battle.

Are Saracens the only horde
Worthy to feel a Christian's sword ?
Should he alone with heathendom
Contend, or to the rescue come
Of all the world, from every harm,
To free mankind with stalwart arm ?
Yet cunning should his valor lead,
Prudence direct each daring deed.

1 88 1.] THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGOM. 669

Often alone I slily stole
About the monster's lair to hover ;
At last a plan within my soul
To conquer him I did discover.

I came to you and asked for leave,

Which I did easily receive,

To visit my own native land ;

And when I landed on its strand

I caused a dragon to be made

With the most cunning workmen's aid,

Like to the living beast in size,

In every loathsome, horrid feature,

In scaly hide and blazing eyes,

A perfect image of the creature.

A pair of most fierce dogs I chose,

Accustomed with the bear to close,

Enormous in their height and length,

Of rapid course and massive strength,

And trained them skilfully and well

To combat with the dragon fell.

Mounted upon my blooded steed

I spurred him on though scared and trembling

And thus rehearsed the daring deed

In play, the real fight resembling.

Three months I passed, with care preparing
My horse and dogs the fight for sharing ;
And then I shipped for Rhodes in haste,
Only to hear new tales of waste
And slaughter by the dragon wrought
On shepherds by his cunning caught.
Without delay I made me ready
To enter on the great contention ;
Engaged some soldiers brave and steady,
And then began the Rock's ascension.

Thou knowest well the rocky height
Whence all the island lies in sight,
Where stands the chapel, genius bold
Of our Grand Master built of old.

670 THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.

Within the shrine the Blessed Mother
Holds on her arm our Infant Brother
Jesus the Lord, the gifts receiving
Of Eastern kings ; a stairway steep
The pilgrim climbs with heart believing
Who in the shrine will station keep.

In darksome cave beneath the stair
The hellish monster had his lair ;
Out on the people he would spring
Who came that way a pilgriming.
Contrite I prayed before the Lord,
Donned armor bright and girt my sword,
My men with orders stationed round
Ready to second my intention ;
Then on my courser fleet I bound
And seek the foe for fierce contention.

To God I recommend my soul,
Then ride toward the monster's hole.
I grasp and wave my mighty spear,
Excite my dogs, who without fear
Rush on to scan the open plain.
Soon of the dragon sight they gain
Sunning himself 'on the warm grass,
Curled up into a hideous ball.
My horse rears up and will not pass,
The monster whines like the jackall,
And with his noisome, venomed breath
Taints the foul air with scent of death.
The dogs turn tail with speed of lightning,
But on my steed the curb-rein tightening
I spur him forward, and the rage
Of my brave dogs rouse up to wage
The combat fierce ; I throw my spear,
In vain it on his armor rattles,
My horse bounds backward in his fear,
And this had been my last of battles,
Had I not sudden from him sprung.
With mighty force my sword I swung,
Yet vain each blow and vain each thrust,
To cleave or pierce the scaly crust.

THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.

The dragon swung his tail around

And flung me panting on the ground ;

I felt the poison of his breath

And saw the fiery tongue extending

Between the teeth which threatened death,

Its slimy curve around me bending.

Just as his teeth my limbs would crush,

My faithful allies made a rush ;

The dogs upon his belly pounce,

Their biting makes him backward bounce,

Up to the hilt my sword I thrust

In the soft parts below his crust,

Forth pours in streams his life-blood black,

The monster falls with great commotion ;

I fall beneath him on my back

And lie bereft of sense and motion.

Soon as my senses are unbound,
I see my soldiers standing round ;
The hideous monster is no more,
But welters in a pool of gore.
This is the way, my honored chief,
In which the dragon came to grief.

Then burst the feelings long repressed

Within each hearer's heaving breast,

As the young victor ceased from speaking,

Forth into cheers and shouts, which breaking

Against the vaulted roof resound

With mingled, multifarious sound.

And loud, all other voices drowning,

His brother knights demand his crowning.

The grateful crowd with answering shout,

Entreat from the great Chief concession

Of leave to bear the hero out

In triumph with a grand procession.

Compelling silence by command,
The stern Grand Master said : your hand
This people from the dragon freed,
Yet by the self-same valiant deed

THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON. [Feb.,

Brought to the Order evil worse
Than that fell worm, rebellion's curse.
This is the offspring of a mind
Regardless of the law of order,
Breaking all holy rules that bind,
Cause in the world of all disorder.

Even the Mameluke danger scorns ;
Obedience Christian knight adorns,
For in that land where God the Son
In servant's form salvation won,
Our fathers this great Order founded,
And all its laws are wholly grounded
On duty hardest to fulfil,
Perfect oblation of self-will.
Thee has vain-glory led astray,
Wherefore go from before my face ;
Him who has cast Christ's yoke away
The Cross of Knighthood must not grace.

Great was the anger of the crowd,
The house was filled with tumult loud,
The brothers all for grace implore.
The youth looked silent at the floor,
Loosened his knightly mantle's band,
Kissed humbly the stern Master's hand,
Then turned to go ; but as he went
The Master's gaze on him was bent ;
Return, he says, with loving tone,
True son of mine, to my embrace ;
The hardest victory now is won, 4

This Cross once more thy breast shall grace.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BELIEVING AND AN UN-
BELIEVING NATION.

I PREFER a thousand times a believing to an unbelieving nation.
A believing nation has more enthusiasm for intellectual efforts
and more heroism in defending its own greatness.

THIERS.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 673

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER X.

BY LITTLE AND LITTLE.

No more honorable heart than Nano McDonell's beat in a
woman's breast Her whole education had been formed on what
were called the principles of honor. She had been taught to de-
test a lie, and, without distinction of charity, a liar ; to dread so
low a vice as stealing ; to use on all occasions, no matter how
provoked, the mildest and most cultured language ; and to do a
great many other things quite within the power of natural virtue.
In the transcendental revelation attacks from without upon
natural goodness, as well as strength from without to resist these
attacks, were, by consequence of atheism, wholly denied. No at-
tention was paid to them, and when temptation and sin came
from these outside sources the members of the school were never
in a condition to defend themselves. Nano McDonell had be-
come guilty of ingratitude to her father, of tacit injustice to
others, of eavesdropping, and of associating and actually con-
spiring with a man whom recent events had shown to be an
adventurer and a villain. In the great fear of losing half her
wealth and station she had been guilty of these crimes against
culture, and felt herself hopelessly stained and irretrievably lost.
Her doctrines were of the cast-iron mould which do not admit
the possibility of a redemption. Once fallen, fallen for ever. She
could not, moreover, rid herself of the impression that she was
quite willing to go further, if necessary. Her morale was severely
shaken. And oh ! how utterly she despised herself for this in-
vincible weakness.

It was the morning after Mrs. Strachan's fete, and she was sit-
ting alone in her own apartment, thinking and sorrowing, as was her
custom at this distressing time. Her face was thinner and paler,
her eyes sunken a little and more than ever mournful in expression,
and her whole manner one of hopeless and bitter disgust. Her
hands could only pluck nervously at her dress or play with her
trinkets. Reading, writing, work, and study she had long aban-
doned. The momentary vexations by which she was surrounded
from the sickness of her father ; the voluntarily-endured persecu-

VOL. XXXII. 43

674 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

tions of Killany, which she had not the resolution to put an end
to ; and the glitter of that mental Damocles' sword over her head,
had so unstrung her as to leave her indifferent and listless to all
but one harassing thought, the threatened loss of her property.

Her father had on one unfortunate evening failed like her-
self in his honest and just resolves, and for a time the danger
was set aside. For a time only, she felt certain. McDonell
had lost his health for ever, and his business intellect was gone.
He was intent merely on getting well enough to move around
through the world once more as one of its breathing, living menu
bers, and to delay for a few years the dreadful day of reckon,
ing. At any moment death might seize on him again. That
moment would be the knell of her grandeur and present state,
unless she provided against it. He knew that death's next com-
ing would be sudden, perhaps, and he was sure to have fore-
seen emergencies long beforehand. She was to be comparatively
poor. Like a discrowned queen she was to come down from her
throne, and to have the world point at her and say : This was
once our mistress, who is now a nobody. She was wealthy long
ago, whose estates are now so sadly diminished. Then she was
proud enough who is more than humble now. There was her
stumbling-block pride! Since her babyhood that had been
nourished with as much care as if it had been a virtue. It was
become a deadly parasite, twisted round her soul in horrible
folds, sucking her moral life away.

How was she to battle with the danger that menaced her?
Killany had said that the heirs were not living ; that the only ones
who could claim the property were dead. If he could prove that
might she not prevail on her father to make no expost of his old
crime, and no restitution ? Alas ! he was a Catholic. The smoth-
ered faith was stronger than ever. As a Catholic he would make
restitution. The heirs by blood might be dead, and yet there
remained heirs still. There was no escape, unless and she put
up her hands to her forehead with a moan of dreadful anguish.

" Oh ! that I should even dream of that," she whispered with
pallid lips. " Whither am I drifting ? What crimes will yet
stain my soul ? Unhappy me ! Wretched woman, that meditates
lifting her hand against her father ! O God, thy bitterest curse
is not too bitter for that sin !" " God !" she repeated, with a scorn-
ful smile. " There is no God. The cant thoughts and phrases of
these people have poisoned me a little. There is no God. But
oh ! if there is a ruler of this universe, as some have dreamed, why
should I have so much suffering, so much temptation to do evil

1UI

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 675.

and so little strength to resist it ? I would not ask to be exempt
from pain, only to have such strength as would enable me to
throw off this incubus of sin, shame, and temptation that is weigh-
ing me down, down, down to to nothingness."

She cast herself face downward on the sofa in an agony, and
her hair, loosening, fell Magdalen-like over her shoulders. Very
much a penitent she looked, lying there in the twilight of an
afternoon, so sorrow-stricken and full of pain, so wretched in
heart and body. But pleasanter thoughts intruded themselves
afterwards. A smiling, manly face rose often before her vision,
and its brightness lit up for a moment the sombre clouds that
seemed always to hover about her. She was not ashamed to
acknowledge to her heart that in the frank blue eyes and no-
ble disposition of Olivia's brother there was a something which
roused in her a feeling which she had never before known, so
sweet, so mysterious were its throbbings. She knew all his good
qualities. Olivia had gone over them with as much precision
and regularity as she used in saying her beads. He seemed so
straightforward and manlike, so much the embodiment of
knightly courage and worth and purity, that she could not but
wish to see him try for the hand and fortune of one whom the
finical and worn-out bachelors of a more distinguished society
had found it so hard to overcome. So thinking and dreaming,
she slept.

An hour later Olivia, astonished, dismayed, and sympathetic,
found her there in that attitude of dejection and sorrow. With
quick perception of circumstances the little lady left the room
ain, and, hastening to the parlor, found there Nano's maid, whom
she sent to prepare her mistress for receiving a visitor. In the
eantime she sat wondering over the late phenomenon. Nano
as ordinarily so stern with herself as never to permit such dis-
plays of emotion at any time. Feminine curiosity was roused to
discover the cause of the present display ; and as now Miss Olivia
looked at things through one prism, she was prepared to conjec-
ture and infer the wildest possibilities. Nano was awake and
composed once more when Olivia presented herself. The young
lady put her hands affectionately on Miss McDonell's cheeks, and,
ing up the pale face, kissed her \\jps with much earnestness.

" You need consoling," she said, with restrained gayety. " I

sure 'you miss me every day and every hour ; for it was I
ly that knew how to assist you in a mood."

" Was I ever guilty of such a thing as a mood ? " said Nano

roachfully.

676 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

" You would be less or more than human if you hadn't," re-
turned Olivia. " A mood is one of the accidents of a person, and
you must own to some kind of a one at every instant of your life.
Some are more intense than others, and those intenser ones I call
moods by excellence. You have been in one for a week and
over, my love, and you have not recovered from it yet."

" True indeed." And she sighed and looked pensively at the
opposite mirror, which reflected a very melancholy person.

" But now that your father is recovering," continued Olivia,
"there is no reason for moping, unless "

" Well, why do you hesitate? "

" I take liberties sometimes," said the little lady archly, " and
I was about to take one just then. I won't go on without a spe-
cial command."

"I command," said Nano ; "and, moreover, I give you full
permission to take all the liberties that offer themselves."

" I was going to remark, unless you are in love."

" Oh." And the slightest tinge of red appeared on her snowy
throat. She wished to cast down her eyes, but looked at the
wall instead.

" You have suffered from the disease so recently," said she to
Olivia, " that you must be well acquainted with the symptoms.
I shall have to beware of you with your newly-acquired skill.
But even your eye cannot detect anything wrong with my heart
to-day."

Olivia was blushing in turn quite prettily, but unshamed like
a child.

" You have a habit of throwing Sir Stanley at me," said she
naively, " when close pressed yourself. That's a symptom, and
the disease, though just showing itself, will be confirmed in a few
days. I fancy that you will run to a doctor at the first."

Nano said " Oh ! " again, and a cloud overspread her face for
a moment. They were looking into each other's eyes, Olivia
sunny, mischievous, and smiling, Nano sad, frowning almost, and
preoccupied. The pretty young thing with a heart bright, beau-
tiful, and pure as the morning was her friend her friend, whose
soul was like a rising cloud, black with possibilities, ready to dis-
charge fatal lightnings. It "was a sacrilege for her to touch the
girl's hand. Would Olivia, she wondered, if exposed to her
temptations, withstand them better?

" Why have you never spoken to me of your religion, Olivia ?"
she said, so suddenly and abruptly as to throw mountains of cold
water upon Olivia's cheerful humor.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 677

" Your question is my answer," said Olivia promptly and
earnestly. " I preferred to let you see the workings of our reli-
gion in my own fickle character, and have you begin the discus-
sion yourself. But this isn't what we were talking about."

"You were cunning," said Nano harshly, and paying no at-
tention to the last remark. " You were cunning, Olivia, like all
your class. And so you were laying a trap for me? "

Olivia made no answer, but across her sensitive face went the
hot blood of indignation and her lips quivered with pain. Nano
was not looking at her, but presently she said :

" Why do you not answer? "

Olivia still said nothing, and Nano, turning, discovered the
emotion which her unkind remarks had stirred in the girl's heart.

"Calm yourself," she said, "and pardon me. I forgot myself
then as I never did before. I have been very wretched this long
time, and I was envious of the good spirits that in every fortune
have sustained you. When you came to me, dear, as you remem-
ber, you had been a governess in many trying situations, and had
before that left a quiet convent-home. You had suffered much,
yet, orphaned, poor, friendless, your character escaped the stamp
of melancholy. One would think you were the heiress, and not
I. Under what lucky star were you born ? Where do you find
all this wonderful elasticity of mind ? "

" Not in myself, Nano," answered she pointedly. " I was
born under the star of Christ, the star which first shone on the
deserts of Arabia, over the stable at Bethlehem, and has lighted
up the world these long centuries. When Christians are in trou-
ble they bear it patiently for the sake of Him who sent it, and be-
cause they are more like him the more they are oppressed with
misery. What you have seen in me, Nano, is only the shadow of
that which is in the lives of our saints, our priests and monks
and nuns. I could give you hundreds of instances where weak
women bore every suffering that man and life seemed able to
give, yet remained trustful and cheerful to the end ; of women
who were rich, titled, and beautiful, and who lost riches, titles,
and beauty at one stroke ; of mothers and queens whose enemies
deprived them of children and thrones with the same blow, and
sent them into exile afterwards. Yet they were patient and lived
many years of happiness. You know them yourself, for it is part
of culture to be acquainted with such things. The source of their
elasticity of mind was outside of themselves. They believed in
God and his justice, in Christ and his mercy, in heaven and its
reward. Man could do nothing to deprive them of heaven and

678 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

God. There was their strength, Nano. They lost all to gain all.
I am their feeblest representative. The byways and alleys of the
city will show you shining examples every day."

" Of women who have lost their wealth," repeated Nano
dreamily, as if trying to realize the same misfortune for herself.
" I have often thought, if that misfortune came to me, what I
should do. I would be tempted to do almost anything rather
than become poor."

" Who would not ? But it is one thing to be tempted and
another to sin. When the decision of a case is left to self you
will find it a most partial judge. There is a code among the
cultured, I suppose ; but it is nobody's business how it is kept
except one's own."

" And, Olivia, if you were rich, but discovered that your
riches were another's and not yours, would you not be tempted
to retain them at any cost ? "

" I am certain of it," answered she, with such emphasis that
Nano laughed ; " but, by the strength of God, I would let the
riches go, and carry at least peace of conscience into poverty."

" It is well to talk when you have never been tried."

" Ah ! you are sighing as if the same misfortune were about"
to happen to yourself."

Nano laughed again a musical, mirthful laugh, and looked
frankly into her friend's face ; but she was secretly alarmed at
the guesswork of Olivia. However, her acting was enough to
allay any untoward suspicion.

" Nano, remember my old warning," continued Olivia. " You
will never know real peace of heart, real happiness, until you have
come to the truth. It breaks my heart to think how widely we
are separated on earth, and how much more \videly we may be
separated outside of it."

" We will lie side by side, Olivia, until our bodies are dust,
and when it has mingled we shall be close enough."

" For us there is a day of resurrection," said Olivia solemnly,
"and then comes the real separation."

" An impossible doctrine, but very beautiful."

" Ah ! me, beautiful," sighed Olivia. " Everything is beautiful,
or sublime, or nonsensical with the cultured atheist. You are
like people in perpetual, immovable spectacles of green glass.
All things are of the same hue, and the earth has about as
much real beauty for you as for a cow, who measures her hap-
piness by the color of the grass."

" That is sarcasm ; and since you have opened fire, you may

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 679

as well depart at once. I hear Dr. Killany's voice in the hall.
He is come to see my father, and I know you detest him."

Olivia rose hurriedly, saying :

" I fear him more. He has an evil eye for me always. I can-
not help thinking he would do me harm, if it were possible."

" He would not dare so much," said Nano, with a dangerous
light in her eyes.

" Never mind. I fear he is your bad angel, Nano, and that he
rages because of the influence I have with you."

The elegant lady could not repress a slight shiver.

" Perhaps. But I have measured him," she answered.

" Then I feel reassured. He loves you, Nano, or your wealth.
You have understood that, too."

" Oh ! a long time, my pet. I see that you are angling for
something stronger from me than I have yet said. Well, know,
then, that I detest him as much as you do perhaps a few de-
grees more but I find him useful, and shall employ him for some
time to come. But as for marrying him bah ! "

"Thank Heaven!" cried Olivia, with sincerity so deep and
evident that Nano laughed as she kissed her good-by.

The good fairy went away, carrying with her all that was
good in the McDonell household, all the sunshine and honesty
it could ever know. She met Killany on the stairs. He ex-
changed with her a few words of civility, then went on to the
rooms above.

The greetings between him and Nano were of the briefest and

t formal nature. He was still as polished, urbane, and perfect
attire and expression as on the evening of our first acquaint-
ce with him. The anxieties of the last few days, when a for-
ne seemed trembling in the balance, had left no such traces as
ose which unfortunate Nano displayed, and there had sprung
up in his mind a happy conviction that the haughty lady was
becoming more favorable to projects in which her interests were
so deeply concerned.

" Your father is much improved, Miss McDonell," he said.
" He will be able to appear in the world within a few weeks."

" I am very glad, of course," she answered, with as much of the
old indifference as she could assume.

" But you must know," he continued, " that he will never
again be the man he was before this illness."

" It is not to be expected," she replied. " I am grateful that
his life has been spared even on those terms."

" Hum ! so I supposed," he said, looking at her from under

680 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

his eyebrows with peculiar meaning. " And yet another thing,
my dear Nano, which will be a trifle harder for so kind a daugh-
ter as you to bear, though it may turn out convenient : your fa-
ther's mind is seriously impaired. Paralysis is not always con-
fined to the muscles/'

" Very true," she answered coldly ; but he could not see fro
the position she maintained that her throat was contracting wi
sobs and her teeth were clenched in anger or pain.

" Weak-minded men," he went on slyly, " often do strange,
absurd, and unheard-of things. Their fancies are wild. I would
not be surprised nor would you, much as you love your fa-
ther if he should do what so many have done under the same
circumstances. If, for instance, he should take it into his head
that a certain amount of his property belonged to others, and
should find certain schemers willing to believe in and humor his
fancies by pretending to make restitution to the owners, when in
fact their own pockets received all, it might be necessary '

" Stop ! "

She had turned on him suddenly, and stretched out her arm
with a gesture of abhorrence and command. . Her face was' pal-
lid to the last degree, her eyes flashing, her lips quivering with
pain.

" Do not dare to say more. I am wicked and foolish, but I
am not mad, Killany, unless it be in listening to so foul a devil as
you."

" O Nano ! Nano ! " he said meekly and reproachfully, " your
language is violent. I meant nothing. I stated only a disagree-
able fact, which has taken place and will continue to develop it-
self without your intervention at all. The law cannot allow luna-
tics to have their own sweet will in so important a matter as the
disposing of property."

" My father is not mad," she answered sullenly.

" Quite true ; but he is likely to become so, and it will then be
necessary to confine him. If he should persist in believing it was
justice to give away three-fifths of his fortune to -a scheming
priest, I would get out a commission of lunacy. If it were to
go to the original and lawful heirs, well and good. One might
not object ; but the heirs are dead."

There was silence for a few minutes.

" Can you prove that ? " she asked.

" Unquestionably," he replied. " I took the trouble to prove
it long ago, anticipating this moment, and I have documents and
witnesses ready for your inspection."

58 1.] A WOMAN^OF CULTURE. 68 1

IV
Lying was an art with the polished doctor, and he possessed
e requisite conscience and skill to make the lie good with the
1 of as many others as were necessary.
" Come with them on Monday. Now go, if you please."

The abrupt dismissal was not displeasing to Killany. He had
gained his point with a weak yet obstinate woman, and he asked
no more. Time was required to prepare his minor but impor-
tant intrigues. He went away smiling blandly to himself, and
stroking the back of his own gloved hand in self-approba-
tion.

The abased woman he left behind threw herself on the floor
in the same attitude in which she had once been found that after-
noon. With her hair dishevelled and her hands clasped tightly
above her head, proud, humbled, impenitent, Nano McDonell
grovelled, and moaned, and sobbed like one bereft of reason.
She made scarcely a sound that would reach through the walls of
her own apartments, but the storm of grief and passion was none
the less fierce from being narrowed in its limits. Alas ! her suffer-
ing was not so much because of her sin as because of her pride.
She, 'who had been looked up to almost as a saint of the new dis-
pensation, had become guilty of that which even the brutes from
instinct avoided. She had humbled herself to consort and plot
with such a man as Killany against her father, and she railed,
not at her sin, but at her own weakness and her wretched des-
tiny. She was humbled, but neither penitent nor resolved to do
right. She dared make no resolutions, not even that most natural
one, that, come what would, she would never be guilty of the sin
of a child's ingratitude. When her grief had spent itself she sat
down to think calmly on one shameful question : If her father
persisted in his intention of restoring his ill-gotten property and
be it remembered that, although he had delayed the time, he had
not dismissed the obligation would she take advantage of the
slight enfeebling of his mind to hinder so undesirable an event ?

" A month ago," she thought, " I would have struck down
him who ventured to suggest such a crime to me yes, struck
him down with these weak hands, or raised them against myself,
rather than permit that I should so stain my honored name.
And now I propose it to myself, and think on the chances of suc-
cess without anger or shame. I can look quietly at myself and
not tear away the beauty of that wretched, deceitful, ungrateful
face, or crush out the light from those wicked eyes. O my God !
if you exist, as many of the wise and good of this world have
said, why do you leave me in ignorance and helplessness ? Why

682 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

do you send me such trials, who know not how to bear them or
to ask for strength against them ? "

And for hours she sat there raving thus, swayed by every new
impulse, yet always approaching the fatal abyss, retreating in
terror or remorse, returning in fear or shamed determination,
until at last, when the dinner-bell rang, and she was summoned to
appear before her father in his room, starting up hastily like one
called to a death-scene or a scaffold, she cried wildly : " It must
be done ! it shall be done ! " and rushed from the apartment.

The dalliance with temptation had reached its natural result.
By little and little the strands of the rope were formed and the
links of the chain forged together. Now, neither rope nor chain
can be broken by human hands.

CHAPTER XT.

TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR.'

IT was the hour for late breakfast in the Fullerton household,
and Olivia, fresh and sweet as a morning-glory, stood looking
into her jewel of a dining-room with a very mixed expression of
countenance. The coffee was smoking on the tray, the biscuits
were getting cold, the steak was rapidly sinking into a flabby
and juiceless thing, and all because an obstinate gentleman in a
distant room would not answer the bell until he finished a certain
chemical process which he had been studying since daylight.
Olivia grew vexed at the delay and the mischief it was occasion-
ing her breakfast. Yet she could not resist a smile of pleasure
when her eyes rested on the pretty array of table-ware, all her
own. She talked, too, with great volubility, addressing the knob
of the folding-door, and shaking her cap at it in so coquettish a
way that the same action done at any susceptible young gentle-
man would have fatally injured his peace of mind. Talking aloud
was a necessity with Olivia as a sprightly member of a class
famed for its sustained and electrifying elocutionary powers.
Being, however, a prudent little woman, this was never carried
to excess and never led hef into blunders.

" Punctuality," said she, moralizing and any one would have
stood as mildly and willingly as the knob to have the pleasure pf
hearing so sweet a voice and of looking into eyes so bright
" punctuality is a virtue supposed to belong to men altogether,"
said she ; " and since women allow to them a good share of this

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 683

quality, I must yield to the doctrine of universal consent. But
the particular exceptions to this rule are too numerous and too
irritating to satisfy a reasonable person. I can't make my brother
punctual. How, then, manage a husband ? Here is a work of art
falling into ruin for the sake of one man. And I can have no
revenge ? Let me see. None. I might break somebody's heart,
but that would be too close to breaking my own ; and I can't be
sullen with Harry, no matter how hard I try. I can tease him,
though, if I have a good subject."

The good subject was a long time forthcoming. She racked
her brain for a very choice circumstance which should be her in-
strument in flaying her brother. In vain her meditation.

" One would think he was an angel for perfection, and I the op-
posite, so many are the scorchings I get, so few are his, for short-
comings. Every sentence, pointed with my name, becomes im-
mediately an epigram ; and these epigrams, being the cross-fire of
a baronet and physician, sting like needles. Oh ! but don't I send
arrows, rankling arrows, back, hundreds of them, like flakes in a
snow-storm ; and oh ! by the way, it's snowing now, and the ice
will not be worth much at the carnival. And the coffee, my
precious liquid, steaming yet, but half dead from disappointment.
So am I. Can I eat at all with half the charm of my breakfast
taken away? "

" Half its vice too," said Harry from the door. " You should
never eat anything viciously hot, and those biscuits are ruinous
the digestion."

" You dear fellow, I would have some faith in those doctrines
you practised them yourself. But to hear a physician of your
inding crying for hot coffee, hot biscuits, and hot steak "
" For somebody else," he said, stooping to kiss her.
" But eating all yourself, with disregard of your own theories,"
answered, catching him by his nose and turning his head
ray. " When one hears and sees such things faith is lost. I
iven't any, and I shall eat as I please until I die."

" Then the ' die ' will not be postponed on account of wea-
icr, Olivia. But I fancy Sir Stanley will have a word to say
these matters. Has he yet come to the point ? "
Olivia gave a triumphant scream. Her hand for the second
time had struck the hard pasteboard substance over his heart.

" I had forgotten it," cried she, clapping her hands in delight.
But I forget it no longer. Whose photograph have you there,
love-lorn doctor, right up against the hottest part of your ana-
tomy ? "

684 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

The gentleman threw out a card carelessly, then took his seat
at the table and made a politely vigorous attack on the steak and
its accessories. Olivia looked disappointed on catching sight of
her own image on the face of the card. She looked at the back.
" ' Notman and Fraser,' " she read meditatively. " Harry, I never
had any photographs taken there/'

" You have a short memory, miss. I was with you myself."

" That is even more improbable. There is some mystery con-
nected with this card."

It was examined very carefully by the young lady. She
passed her finger across the face ; the thin paper was slightly
wrinkled by the motion. With a flash of intelligence lighting up
her face she seized a knife and quickly nipped off the deceitful
covering. The grave, sweet, high-bred face of Nano McDonell
looked out from the frame. Such a succession of chirruping
screams as leaped from her throat !

Harry, grave old Harry, worn out with years of labor, sad
with old suffering, dignified by adversity, blushed the rosiest red
that ever tinted the complexion of a girl. And the tormentor,
delighted and astonished, laughed in the most shockingly rude
way laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks, ran round the
room twittering, and screaming, and behaving altogether most
absurdly. When she had done, " Thief ! " cried she, laughing
still at every other word, "this is my photograph, which you
never gave me back since the night you first saw it. And you
carried it over your heart, fond, foolish old simpleton ! But
isn't it interesting? a case of love at first sight."

" It takes a woman to jump to conclusions," said Harry. " I
admired her beautiful face and dreamed of it "

"Oh, to be sure and dreamed of it."

" But knowing nothing of her character except some disagree-
able points you mentioned, I have been very careful not to yield
to the tender passion."

" Oh ! certainly ; and,-like a hypocrite, you covered up her face,
her grand, soul-lighted face, with my little foolish, countenance,
and was going to make a display of brotherly affection, if I hadn't
discovered the ruse. Oh ! no, you are not in love, Harry."

" Besides, she is so taken up with Killany "

" You were watching her, then ? "

" Pray don't interrupt. It is probably a settled case between
them."

" But it isn't. She hates him."

" That would not be the first instance of a union in which

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 685

affections were as contrary as black and white. She is a strong-
minded woman, and wouldn't stop at that if it suited her inte-
rests."

Olivia took another Jit of laughing then, which annoyed the
hungry cynic considerably.

" Can't you let me eat my breakfast in peace? "

"Harry," answered she, with a serious face, " I'm glad of
it."

"Glad of what?"

" That you are in love with my Nano. You are the "

" Oh ! is that nine o'clock striking ? I must be at the office in
a few minutes."

But she seized him by the collar, and hung on viciously.

" Not till I have spoken all will you go, Harry."

" Then out with it briefly."

" You are the only man who can save her, my brother. You,
a Catholic and a hero for goodness and virtue, with your honest
love and your big, big will, can save that dear lady from the ship-
wreck which awaits her in the future. O Harry ! think what a
woman she is one out of a world of women, talented, handsome,
wealthy, great of heart, and wicked, as she cannot help being.
Now make yourself knight-errant and rescue her from the giants
that threaten her with destruction. Don't let your pride nor your
poverty interfere. Attack boldly. She cannot help loving you
who can, I should like to know, you precious bit of vigorous,
pious, loving masculinity ? O my ! "

And, quite exhausted, this affectionate sister and earnest
friend hid % the last exclamation under her brother's coat, where
she had thrust her golden head to hide some tears and a rebel-
lious, not-to-be-stifled, merciful sob.

" Well, well, well," said the physician, laughing, yet deeply
moved, " we shall think of it, and no doubt the answer will be to
the wishes of this kind little heart. But let me give a bit of ad-
vice to you, my sister ; only I can't get up so much instantaneous
emotion as you for these occasions. Don't be too hard on Sir
Stanley."

" I'm not too hard," said she, growing warlike.

" What would you call it, then ? No answer. Well, let it
pass. But he does look wretched enough sometimes, in spite of
his commanding, indifferent ways."

" The clever deceiver ! " she thought. " I did punish him, then.
Poor fellow ! I'm very cruel sometimes."

Aloud she said : " It's after nine, Harry."

686 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

" So it is, and the patients will be waiting. Good-by."

She stood in the parlor for some minutes after he had left,
with a happy smile parting her lips, and thinking : " Could there
be a happier morning to any one in the wide world, I would like
to know ? What I have prayed for a dozen times each day and
night in the past year, and thought to be as far from being
granted as ever, is sprung upon me with an appalling sudden-
ness, and so ridiculously. And I could not see that all this time
that is, in the last two or three weeks he was suffering the sweet
pangs. Well, well, my breakfast is cold, but my imagination out-
reaches thermometers, and I'll fancy myself at the torrid zone or
the equator that's a slight reminiscence of geography," said she
to the knob ; " but don't accuse me of ignorance. I know that
one is in the other, but for spite I won't say which."

There was not a dish on the table that did not receive an
apostrophe of some kind during the meal, and the disappearing
food was complimented kindly on its escape from staleness and
the street. The morning passed away in the round of a house-
keeper's duties, and at one o'clock she was ready for visitors or
calls. Her circle was quite as large as a lady without a dowry
or a name could desire ; nor was it entirely owing to the atten-
tions of Sir Stanley, since it had been acquired through Nano
McDonell long before his coming. Yet his name had great in-
fluence in retaining and widening its members, and in keeping all
in respectful homage at the feet of the coming Lady Dashington.
Many a card was therefore left at the modest residence, and
many a stately carriage stopped for a few minutes at the door.
Among them was the turn-out of Mrs. Strachan. f he general
looked decidedly military in a fur cap and cloak of the latest
style, and was for having Olivia as a companion in her after-
noon's drive. But she was obliged to decline all such invitations,
and, like her visitors, they were multitudinous. At the fag-end of
the afternoon, when the stream of callers was certain to be pretty
well thinned, came the inevitable Sir Stanley.

" And it's ho for a jaunt ! " cried he from the street, gaily dof-
fing his hat to her at the window. But she shook her head so
decidedly that he came in to try persuasion.

" It's no use, Sir Stanley, and I do beg of you not to tempt me.
I have refused so many invitations this afternoon that it is very
cruel to continue the persecution longer. I am expecting Nano.
If she comes in state we shall ride out together ; if she comes
afoot, why then '

" Then you can both come out with me," said Sir Stanley,

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 687

" and I shall be the envied of men on King Street. I shall wait
for Miss McDonell."

Olivia was thoughtful. This arrangement was not displeas-
ing, and it struck her that it might be made useful in her little
matchmaking intrigue.

" It is half-past three," she said, after a long silence. " Harry
will be free at four, and it would not be out of place to have him
join us, particularly if Nano is here."

" A very fair idea, Miss Olivia, and I am highly honored in
this commission of playing the chief assistant of a matchmaker.
I'll go straight to the office and force him out. Before he is
aware he will be trapped."

" How very useful you can make yourself at times ! There is
much of your mother in you, Sir Stanley. You show so much
interest for this game."

" But more of my father," answered he slyly ; " and he was re-
markable for his devotion to one woman."

" I can believe that. But are you forgetting your commis-
sion ? "

" I am gone," he said, departing on the instant.

At the door he met Nano.

" I have not made a mistake, then," said she, with a smile of
relief ; " this is Olivia's, and the mistress is at home. I have
walked through a maze of streets in my efforts to find the place,
and was afraid that I would be compelled to return as I came.
She is quite out of the world, Sir Stanley."

" The world has extended its limits, Miss McDonell. Since
icr majesty ran away from society, society runs after her majes-
Mrs. Strachan has been here, and you and I meet on the
ireshold. Is there' any thing more to be desired? "

" Nothing, I suppose. Good-day, Sir Stanley."

" Good-day, Miss McDonell."

And they went their different ways.

Olivia received her friend with a display of matronly dignity
lat was overpowering, as Nano told her.

" But I am mistress here, Nano, and if I did not show in my
>erson all the responsibility and honor the office contains I would
be unworthy the position. You, with your army of servants, find
no difficulty in standing, the mildest of figure-heads, over your
father's establishment. But when the butcher is to be bullied, and
the baker frightened, and the grocer cut down in his charges ;
when you are in constant terror as to the result of a roast or a
pudding, or a whole meal perhaps, then you feel the dignity of

688 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

housekeeping, and you can no more help showing the feeling
than you can resist the temptation of tossing your head when
your hat has a taking feather."

" Oh ! I understand. But did I come here to be lectured
to be entertained ? "

" For both. In the wide world this is the only place whei
you will hear no flattery."

" Who begins to flatter himself is sure to end by flattering
others." -

" Epigrams are out of place in this atmosphere," said Olivia.
" We are absolutely without culture, and, if we don't wish to keep
out its representatives, be sure we do keep out it. Now come
and see every part of this airy, fairy house of mine."

They traversed the house from garret to cellar, and the re-
sulting conversation was full of exclamation-points and cynicisms.
Nano turned up her nose at the cellar vegetables.

" I have never been in so odorous a neighborhood."

" Didn't I tell you there would be no flattery here ? The cab-
bages, poor stupids, have blunt sincerity at least, and won't hold
in their perfumes even for Miss McDonell."

Miss McDonell laughed a short, dry laugh, full of ill-nature
and no mirth.

" 1 heartily wish," said she, "all sincerity in a cellar, if it must
be as obtrusive as cabbages."

" As far as you are concerned it is at the bottom of the sea,
Nano. Your gold is a deep sea for honest craft. Come, there
is a delightful room overlooking the back yard that I wish you to
see. Harry uses it as a laboratory and study, and it is a most in-
teresting place."

" Full of scientific horrors and anomalies, twisted glasses that
make you ache looking at their constraint, and medical volumes
that he never looks at."

" Come and see," was all Olivia answered.

They entered an apartment on the second floor which was
quite a curiosity for arrangement and ornamentation, and resem-
bled in some respects the private room of Killany at the office.
A book lay open on a reading-stand, its left-hand page covered
with pencil-marks.

" Latin," said Nano, " and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas."

" Precisely. Here is a very modern young gentleman who
takes delight in the old Fathers you laugh at."

"And knows nothing, I'll warrant, of Mill, or Rossetti, or Em-
erson."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE, 689

" Nothing good, perhaps. He has broken lances with some of
them in the literary lists, and you can fancy who took second
place in the combat."

" It does not require a great stretch of the imagination, if you
were judge."

" Your irony is out of place, dear. How many of the tran-
scendental balloons have I not punctured with a little pin in my
time, according to your own admission ! "

" You made more noise in the doing than they in the burst-
ing-"

" Which was natural, being a woman, and having to deal with
the weakest of nineteenth-century air-follies."

They returned to the parlor and sat down for a chat. Nano
was not in the kindliest of moods. Her manner was chilly and
hard, and impressed Olivia disagreeably. The young lady mut-
tered secret anathemas on Killany, to whose influence she attribut-
ed much of the irregularity of her friend's disposition. He kept
alive the pantheistic spirit which Olivia had long endeavored to
crush. She had only weakened it, and he was engendering a
more fatal form of scepticism in its stead. She rightly felt, and
could not give her reasons for the feeling, that Nano's manner
was the outcome of despair. The causes and their recency she
did not even suspect. It might not have surprised her much,
though it would have severely shocked her, to become aware of
all the wickedness that was planning.

They had not been long in the parlor, and Nano was begin-
ning to soften into the old cheerful manner, when the jingle of
sleigh-bells was heard at the door, and presently Sir Stanley en-
tered with a bow and a few gracious words.

" I did not think to find you here still, Miss McDonell ; but
since I am to take off the mistress of the establishment, I shall
plead to carry away the guest also. My sleigh is at the door."

" Of course you will come," said Olivia, " if it were only to
be driven home. And I see that you have Harry with you, Sir
Stanley. How pleasant !"

Nano looked startled at this, and was doubtful and inwardly
troubled. However, she accepted willingly enough, and rose as
readily as though undisturbed by any secret feeling. It was
ridiculous to show any emotion over so ordinary and trifling an
event. Yet she felt it would be better to be anywhere else in
the world, better and safer for him and her and Olivia, than sitting
with Harry Fullerton. They made a most attractive party. The
fair-haired brother and sister formed a good contrast with their

VOL. XXXII. 44

690 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Feb.,

darker companions. But mufflers are not adapted to the display
of beauty, and they drove along without attracting further atten-
tion than was desirable. They ran across the general at one
point, and she favored them with a nod of vigorous meaning.

" How fortunate that we were not near enough to hear her
speak !" said Olivia. " We should have the crowd staring at us
otherwise. She can say disagreeable things in a very loud voice."

" You must have been offending her lately," Harry remarked.
" I do not know as the rest of us have anything to fear from the
lady."

" Not I, for one," assented Sir Stanley.

" Not I, for another," said Nano.

" Hypocrites !" said Olivia shortly, nodding to some one in the
street.

" Who was the favored one?" asked Sir Stanley.

" That charming Doctor Killany. He smiles like an angel,
and doffs his hat to us ladies with a grace that is inimitable."

Nano smiled, and muttered " Hypocrite !" just loud enough to
reach Olivia's attentive ears. But Sir Stanley for a moment
looked disconcerted until warned by a glance from Harry.

"You are all quite stupid," said Olivia, after an awkward
pause. " I have no intention of straining my neck every half-
minute to talk to you. I shall devote myself to Sir Stanley."

The baronet was driving, and Olivia sat beside him on the
front seat.

" I am pleased at your devotion," said he.

" I haven't shown it yet, sir. Now I shall criticise the extra-
ordinary people that we meet, and you may criticise my criti-
cisms. Here comes a very poor imitation of an English swell,
newly got up, and trembling with apprehension lest the newsboys
may notice his eyeglass and want of impudence."

" The whole street," said Sir Stanley mischievously, " is but a
poor imitation of English swelldom and snobbishness. One
would think that no other nationality inhabited this country.
English customs prevail everywhere ; and as the genius of the
people is so different, the mixture is funny. I like to see a Scotch
cap over a Tartan plaid, the kilt and trews, or to hear the ridi-
culous accent of the aristocracy from one that has been brought
up to it. But look at this honest, big-headed, Scotch-looking
gentleman on the corner. His suit is stylish and belongs to the
London world. His hat or cap, or what-not, is a parody on the
head-covering of a Highlander, and leaves his head as bare as a
pole. I will wager he has put on a thick layer of affectation over

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 691

his Scotch brogue, and says on occasions, ' Be Jove, but the
chawming creachaw has fashed me wi' a vengeance.' "

" I cannot forget that you are Irish," answered Olivia care-
lessly, " and an American sympathizer. That is enough. It is
my answer, too."

" A pretty conclusive one, I admit, in this country. But I am
not arguing on political grounds, but on those of good taste. I
am told the Scotch have the ascendency here. I see many ex-
amples of it. The Irish are not a cipher, though, as usual, their
careless generosity has made them the football of more astute
and less scrupulous brethren. The English portion of the com-
munity is not large, but everything is done under the aegis of
England, and wears an English hue. English names to every-
thing, English fashions, English forms of speech, English sym-
pathies, as might be expected all English. You envy your neigh-
bors across the way. Their characteristics are more distinct and
more their own."

" I grant that most cheerfully," said Olivia, growing hot and
enthusiastic on the instant. " Heaven forbid that we should be
distinguished as they are in that respect ! Give us the good old
qualities of the English land, the sturdiness, the slowness, the de-
termination, the sterling honesty of our forefathers, and you may
have all such marketable commodities as Yankee shrewdness and
cleverness and dishonesty."

" Olivia, Olivia, you are forgetting yourself."

Nano's voice came from behind in low and gentle reproof.

" I am defending my country against the basest insinuations ;
and if the world hears me, so much the better."

" I made no insinuations," said the baronet. "The question
was one of mere taste. You are Canadians by birth, cosmopoli-
tan in descent, and English in everything else. Now laugh with
me at this ridiculous mixture of nationalities."

" Don't answer the gentleman," said Nano. " You poor stu-
pid, can't you see that he is quizzing you under your very eyes ?
I wish to go home, Sir Stanley."

They were on the avenue then, and in a few minutes were at
the lady's door. Harry assisted her to alight. All were ex-
changing adieux when Killany came out on the veranda.

" He might as well take up his residence here at once," whis-
pered Olivia to the baronet. " See how he looks at me. Oh ! yes,
I am the mischief-maker, and deserve all your hatred, doctor."

Killany was smiling upon them and staring stonily at Olivia.

"I shall make bold," he said, "to ride with you a part of

692 THE NEW RHETORIC. [Feb.,

my way, at least. I am very tired, and forgot to order my cut-
ter."

" By all means. Jump in," answered Sir Stanley.

The doctors sat together on the rear seat and talked profes-
sionally as they rode along.

" And, by the way," said Killany, " I have a bit of news for
you. Old McDonell is becoming idiotic or insane. Keep it a se-
cret until the case develops itself."

Harry had not time to reply, for they were then at the office,
but the information so distressed him that he was silent until the
drive was ended.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE NEW RHETORIC.

WHEN Addison was a secretary of state he was so fastidious
in the diction of his reports as frequently to delay public business.
He polished the sentences of a business communication with the
care which he bestowed upon a Spectator. The Duke of Marl-
borough would gain two or three new victories while the precise
secretary was composing the draft of a state paper announcing
one. This old-fashioned rhetoric has long since departed, at least
from public documents, which are little read outside the govern-
ment printing-office. Still, some of Addison's rhetorical scrupu-
lousness would be prized by our judges when they attempt to
decide the exact meaning of legislative enactments that seem put
together by schoolboys in the first grammar form. There is not
the slightest difficulty of driving a coach and four through most
acts of assembly. Wearisome and pedantic as the old rhetoric
appears to us, familiar with the brilliant and epigrammatic turn
of the new style, it nevertheless contains elements of clearness
and energy which merit careful examination. Young writers are
apt to limit excellence to their own immediate day. So impera-
tive is the modern demand for hard facts and practical science
that we are becoming careless of that beauty of rhetorical form
which was once recognized as the supreme grace of writing. An
essay, in Addison's day, was the subject of study and criticism,
and divided the talk of the town with a new picture or a new

1 88 1.] THE NEW RHETORIC. 693

opera. The Institutes of Quintilian were more widely known
than the law of the correlation of forces, and the literary master-
pieces of antiquity had not yielded the throne of taste to the dry
generalizations of science. A " piece," be it poem or essay, was
studied like a painting. Critics examined the felicitous meta-
phor, the rounded period, and the apposite motto with as keen a
zest as we do the experiments in the electric light and the appli-
cation of the pneumatic tube. Society, in Swift's time, was con-
vulsed about the relative merits of ancient and modern writers,
and the man who wrote a good book could command almost any
position in the state, while in society he was a veritable autocrat.
Fair ladies learned a pretty poem by heart. Now, if we go into
any raptures over an exquisitely-worded poem or piece of writing
we hear the croak of Mr. Herbert Spencer and the sociologists
warning us against the literary, national, or theological " bias "
and the deadly errors that are ambushed in metaphors and ex-
clamation-points.

The new rhetoric disdains the name art as savoring of de-
ceptiveness-, and it may be defined as a method of stating facts,
in writing, as briefly and plainly as possible. It discards orna-
ment, banishes epithets, and counsels the severest form. It has
no tolerance for those parts of speech known as interjections, and
it views all figures and tropes with disdain. Unhappily, so large
a portion of our speech is figurative that it cannot at once give
the coup de grace to all metaphorical language. People have been
trained so long in the viciousness of the old rhetorical methods
that they cannot be brought at once to see the beauty of purely
scientific formulae. The new rhetoric has driven out the dear
old balanced sentence, in which rhetoric in times past could say
so little with such resounding effect. It will not permit the poet
to invoke the Muses, and it has made Olympus rather ridiculous
by showing that Jove did not know the geographical site of that
immortal mount. It wants you to say your say with shocking
directness, just as you would in a telegram for which you had to
pay roundly. Indeed, the new rhetorical harmony is more re-
miniscent of the click of the telegraph-office than of the melody
of the vale of Tempe. This scientific youngster is bullying the
old rhetoric out of its strongholds. Mythology scarce dares
show its head. A poet is nowadays actually ashamed to make
much ado about Cupid's dart, which once he felt no hesitation in
sending twanging in every direction. Sentence of condemnation
has been passed upon the great majority of the two hundred
and fifty figures of speech concerning which the old rhetori-

694 THE NEW RHETORIC. [Feb.,

cians so eloquently descant ; and it is with difficulty that we can
save synecdoche, which is represented as the most dangerous
of the lot. " Gray hairs " can no longer stand for " old man."
Precision is the chief and sole merit of writing. Away with the
trumpery of "figures"! It is scarcely less tolerable to science
than the trumpery of the stage, which she has long since aban-
doned with contemptuous malison.

The new rhetoric stands at the author's elbow and makes
very irritating suggestions. It says : " Can't you put that idea
shorter ? What is the use of that adjective ? It adds nothing to
the force of your language. Why are you so punctilious about
euphony ? People want facts. Drop that musty old classic
quotation ; it's not true, anyhow. Don't write a history like Pod-
ger's, who begins .with a quotation from Ovid, as if to prove to
the world that he is an ass. I hope you have more sense than
Jones, who expects people to get interested in the politics of
Geneva under Calvin, and opens with that old claptrap falsely
ascribed to Galileo, E pur simuove. You know nothing about the
middle ages, and can't tell an indulgence from a syllabus. Be
warned by Smithers' fate, and leave ' Romanism ' alone. Cut
out all figures of speech, and omit that comparison between Leo
X. and Leo XIII. after the manner of Plutarch. Ten to one
there's no resemblance, in spite of your balanced sentences."
This exasperating criticism of the new rhetoric generally makes
the author drop his pen and rush for revenge to an essayist of
the eighteenth century, who writes unpunctuated sentences a
yard long, filled with sesquipedalian words, peppered with
Greek and Latin, and replete with mythology and curious state-
ments in natural history which modern science has exploded.

The style to be coveted and practised is that of calm, tem-
perate, logical science. This, it is contended, has a beauty which
eclipses all the ornaments of poetry and oratory. It is true that
the face of this Minerva is rather forbidding at first glance, and
the ingenuous youth who makes the choice of Athene must give
up all poetic dreams and disdain the childish graces of the rhe-
torician. Truth, pure and simple, to be expressed in the most
unaffected language, is to be the power that will make his writ-
ings read. Calm logic, dissecting the meaning of words, must
be his guide. The slightest glow of enthusiasm in writing should
be a warning for him to lay down his pen, just as the fizz of the
safety-valve warns the engineer. The attitude of his mind should
be judicial. The first and last lesson of this rhetoric is to state
opinions with great diffidence, and to pronounce the last word of

1 88 1.] THE NEW RHETORIC. 695

science on religion as the unknowable. So much space is taken
up in letters with vague dissertations about God and heaven, so
much frantic rhetoric is found in sermons and prayer-books, so
much mischief has been done by the misuse of theological words
and terms, that the new rhetoric will benefit mankind more by
its reserved and reticent attitude than by imitating the Babel
around it. Its mission at present is to warn young writers
against those errors which a false and emotional rhetoric has
communicated to almost all kinds of writing not purely mathe-
matical.

So we see that the new rhetoric is decidedly priggish. The
noblest specimen of this scientific style is to be found in the Sum-
ma of St. Thomas. If there ever was a diction completely and
absolutely judicial, it is the diction of the Summa. Not a super-
fluous word, not a suffusion of fancy to pervert judgment, not an
extraneous or inapposite illustration can be found in that won-
derful book. Its very conciseness is the crowning wonder. Its
metaphors seem to be the very dry light of the intellect. It
weighs words and phrases with a precision that has fixed their
meaning for ever. The new rhetoric need not despair of a model,
if it were possible for all of us to write like St. Thomas. As it is,
it is absurd to suppose that the severe rhetorical form which fits
easily and beautifully to the syllogism in the hands of the Angelic
Doctor could be applied to the thousand-and-one subjects of
literature. And even if it could be letters would fail of their end
>r, while men love an argument, they tire of its treatment in the
jvere and exacting methods of scholasticism. Most men cannot
follow a distinction without dragging the whole thesis along with
them at every step in an argument. Until we all are trained logi-
cians we shall need those patient writers who present us the old
syllogism in a dozen different and clearer lights.

The best lesson of the new rhetoric is that which insists upon
duly weighing words. It cannot be denied that the older rhetori-
cians, bent upon making orators, did not attach much importance
to what they no doubt deemed a very trifling study. Yet the
world appears to be ruled by words more than by ideas. To
take one example, the Catholic Church. The words most fre-
quently upon her lips, as Mass, the Immaculate Conception, grace,
indulgence, and a score of others, really convey a false idea to the
minds of most Protestants. Off they go at a tangent as soon as
they hear them. Writers have made big books and preachers
delivered eloquent sermons about a wholly imaginary " Roman "
doctrine. The world may not be benefited by the exact inter-

696 THE NEW RHETORIC. [Feb.,

pretation of the Rosetta stone or the inscriptions upon an obe-
lisk, but the idea is good to determine the exact weight of each
word before using it, especially if it is connected with any im-
portant religious or civil matter. If the youth who are training
in the new rhetoric will be taught to analyze such propositions
as "The Pope is infallible," we can readily forgive their ignorance
of the laws of metaphor. What the Catholic Church has been
clamoring for, amid the dust and noise of much controversy, is an
understanding of the terms of her doctrines. The study of terms
should be made in rhetoric, which runs a chance of study, and not
be left to logic, which is unfortunately found tedious by many
who do not realize its great importance in even the slightest
scheme of education.

The reason why the old forms of rhetoric are now held in dis-
respect is because the rhetorical raison d'etre was to make pupils
orators. Oratory was the end and aim of rhetoric, and, as the
apparatus of the orator is very large and complex, there resulted
a multiplicity of rules and a wider range of study than that
deemed necessary for the writer. The ancients set very little
store by the mere author. The speaker was the man. All gov-
ernment was largely oral in administration. There were few
books, and learning lived rather on the tongues of men than in
their written words. The eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and
twelfth centuries produced giants of learning in the schools, but
how faint their traces now are ! There were a score of famous
doctors. Where is the Doctor Subtilis, the Doctor Resolutissimus,
and others who worthily bore a striking agnomen ? These men
were trained rhetoricians after the old model that is, their object
being to teach and persuade orally, they studied many uses of
language which have no place in writing. The dry thesis as we
have it is like the few notes of an eloquent preacher. Rhetoric
was deemed wholly subsidiary to oratory. Cicero, to go further
back, prized his actual oratorical effort more highly than the
oration itself or than his written dissertations. The law was ad-
ministered with little regard to the technical study of prece-
dents, and the advocate depended upon the immediate effect of
his oration upon the judge. At present it would be madness for
a lawyer to trust to the inspiration of the moment before a jury,
who, in important cases, have the printed evidence of witnesses
and the written charge of the court submitted to their leisurely
scrutiny. The great productions of antiquity and of mediaeval
times are eloquent and ornate with the eloquence of the rostrum.
The historians abound in impassioned speeches. The philoso-

i88ij THE NEW RHETORIC. 69;

phers, not excepting Aristotle, indulge in high flights of fancy.
St. Augustine's treatises are mainly in the form of a series of ora-
tions employing every device of the public speaker ; and Bos-
suet's Variations is the funeral oration of Protestantism.

These models of composition remained until the advent of
printing and, above all, of periodical literature necessitated a
change. It took men a long time to discover that the style
which would carry away an audience would seem turgid, and
even foolish, in the quiet of a library. Protestants, for example,
are heartily ashamed of the works of Martin Luther, who was a
fierce demagogue and had just the coarse, vituperative style for
a rough audience. But his diatribes, as printed, fill one with dis-
gust. Charles James Fox, the brilliant Parliamentary leader,
wrote a history of England which is nothing but a collection of
speeches. Milton's prose works are all pitched in a violent, de-
clamatory key, this being, as we have said, the result of the rheto-
rical training of his day. The new rhetoric sharply differentiates
the two spheres of public speaking and private writing, and it
emphasizes the object of the latter as being simply instruction,
not persuasion, which is the aim of oratory. At the same time
it has carried into the pulpit and the rostrum a deadening influ-
ence which threatens to extinguish oratory, at least in its more
vehement and emotional expression.

The study of the ancient languages must no longer be pur-
sued in an aesthetic way, or for any literary pleasure they may
but for purposes of critical exactness in the use of our own

mgue. Language is recognized as the most perplexing, and at
the same time the richest, source of our culture, and whatever
tends to elucidate it throws light upon human life and history.

'he making of Greek and Latin verses is discouraged, except as
mental discipline, and stress is laid upon the study of roots.
No one should use tropes and similes unless with a precise under-
mding of their meaning. Mere beauty of language is to be
dewed with suspicion, as presumably only a vain jingle to tickle
the ears. The only beauty of language is that which aptly ex-
presses a truth or clearly states a fact. The general rules for the
construction of sentences must be revised. It is better to write
mly simple sentences than to co-ordinate a number of complex
propositions, in which error may easily lurk. As all error results
from obscurity either of expression or of knowledge, the primum
rhetoricum is, clearness even at the risk of repetition or apparent
puerility.

All this, it will be perceived, is really nothing new, but its in-

698 THE NEW RHETORIC. [Feb.,

sistance as the cardinal law of rhetoric is significant of the condi-
tion of contemporary letters. The English magazines, while they
contain much clear writing, are open to the discussion of certain
questions which are not plainly understood by the people. There
is a jargon about culture which the Englishman in vain endea-
vors to comprehend. There is an aestheticism which is denomi-
nated " intense," and which arbitrarily reverses most of the canons
of taste that the world has agreed in accepting. The dilettante
class in England form a little clique, with a strange vocabulary
in which the word intense is the chief, and they appear to set the
law in what is called society. British art and poetry may be
wofully lacking in many respects, but it is only conceited igno-
rance or malice that would speak of English literature, as a whole,
as the work of barbarians. There is, in fact, no nobler literature,
considering the language itself, the peculiar genius of the people,
or the lack of incentives and examples of excellence, which Eng-
land has always been obtuse in perceiving. There is, no doubt, an
unconscionable amount of Puritan theology in the literature, but
we would rather have this than the lampoons of Voltaire with
which French modern letters are replete. If England gives too
deep a hearing to the critics of the new rhetorical school she
will degenerate into a mere imitator of other nations. The Eng-
lish " religion " may be ungraceful and unlovely, but religion,
least of all the Catholic religion, as it is falsely supposed, does not
consist in the most perfect adaptation of external worship to the
beautiful ideal. There is much more in the Catholic faith than
can be seen through the veil of roseate incense or in the languor
of a pietb. The church detests this identification of her worship
with mere art, and few dilettanti go further in their examination
of her spirit. Still, if the new rhetoric, with its affinities in the
new art criticism and culture, will teach its advocates to prove all
things and hold fast that which is good, the church is likely to be
a gainer in the fairer treatment of literature.

1 88 1.] THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 699

CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING ON
THE SCHOOL QUESTION.

UNDER the heading of " Topics of the Time " in the last Janu-
ary number of Scribners Monthly there is inserted a short article
with the title " The Mayoralty and the Common Schools," con-
taining a bitter attack with a political tirade against Catholics.
Assaults of this kind are frequent in the so-called Protestant re-
ligious press, in the weekly and monthly publications of the Har-
pers, and in the New York Herald ; but Catholics have become
used to this abuse, and have learned to take it from whence it
came and pass it by in silence. When they take up, however,
Scribners Monthly, which has deservedly enjoyed a large share of
their patronage on account of both its literary and artistic merits,
they look for other things, and least expect to meet in its pages
with insults to their religion. That Catholics should feel all the
more keenly a hostile spirit coming from this quarter is not a
matter for surprise, since it is out of keeping with the literary
character and no less in discord with the tone of genuine liberal-
ity generally .displayed in this popular magazine.

As THE CATHOLIC WORLD is not a political journal, or one
pretending to be independent only to be the more partisan, we
leave aside all that is of this character, and confine ourselves to
what does concern us, and concern us deeply, and which the
author of the article under consideration has made the pretext
for his attack, and that is the question of " the common schools."

Our refutation will be limited to one of its points, and that is
the misrepresentation of the position of Catholics towards our
common schools. This is a fundamental issue, one upon which
the writer in Scribner founds all his attacks, and if what he says
on this point is shown to be incorrect all his accusations and in-
sinuations against Catholics fall to the ground. His premise is
contained in the opening of his article in these words :

" It is very well understood," he says, "that the Catholic priesthood and
all the leading influences of the Catholic Church are unfriendly to the
public schools. It is also understood," he continues, "that they would
gladly do away with them altogether."

In reply we declare peremptorily that what this writer asserts is
" understood," " very well understood," is not understood at all
by intelligent men in this community. We shall not content our-

CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING [Feb.,

selves, as he does, by a mere assertion, but before we close we will
prove the truth of what we say.

Query: What purpose can the writer in Scribner have to
create an issue where none exists ? Nobody has laid hands on
the public schools; why, then, this uncalled-for clamor about
them ? No one has even so much as threatened to touch them ;
why, then, this sensitiveness and over-zeal concerning our com-
mon schools ? What motive can this writer have in his effort to
place Catholics in a false position before the public ? Is it in
order to avail himself of an existing prejudice and strike peace-
able citizens a foul blow ? We hope not ; but it looks like it. Be
this as it may, one thing is beyond controversy, and that is, there
is no class of citizens more willing than Catholics, whether priests
or laymen, that those who think the education received in the
public schools contributes to the happiness of their children and
the welfare of society should be freely let to follow out their
convictions. No Catholic would put a stone, no, not even a peb-
ble, in the way to hinder others from doing as they deem best in
the fulfilment of their parental responsibilities. This is what is
understood, and very well understood, concerning Catholics by
those who are conversant on this subject, and so understood be-
cause it is the truth ; and the reasons for this position we shall
now give.

The reasons why are briefly these : Catholics hold, and firmly
hold, that the knowledge of Christian truth and the practice of
the divine precepts of Christianity are essential to man's true
happiness, both here and hereafter, and no less essential to the
welfare of society and the good of the state. Religious instruc-
tion, and religious instruction in the school, is, in the eyes of Ca-
tholics, of paramount importance, and they hold that this reli-
gious knowledge cannot be imparted too early in life or last too
long this side of the grave. These are the sincere convictions
of Catholics, which they do not hesitate to avow, and avow open-
ly, on all proper occasions. But having no wish to force or im-
pose their convictions upon others, they can say in perfect
honesty and frankness to those who differ with them on this
point : Send, if you choose, your children to the public schools ;
let them grow up, if you prefer it, under the instructions and in-
fluences there received ; and may they grow up to be a credit to
you and an honor to the land which gave them birth ! Catho-
lics know how to respect the parental rights of others, and insist
that their own are worthy of equal respect.

So sacred do they hold parental rights that, in order to secure

1 88 1.] ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 701

these, they found schools at their own expense for the proper
education of their children, while they pay their share of a gen-
eral tax for the support of schools where others can educate their
children without scruples. It is true that this double cost for
education bears hard upon Catholics, and they feel the imposi-
tion. It must also be acknowledged that this tax is un-Ameri-
can and disgraceful. But Catholics believe that when its injus-
tice is once understood fair-minded Americans will see it in the
light they do, and feel about it as they do. Catholics choose
to suffer patiently this wrong rather than be robbed of their pa-
rental rights over the proper education of their children. It is a
question how that spirit should be denominated which we blush
to say pervades our country, forcing the voices of Catholics
alone to be raised in favor of religious liberty, and applauding
persecutors and spoliators everywhere, provided only the victims
be Catholics. Is it bigotry ? Is it fanaticism ? Or is it Protes-
tantism ? In most cases it is, we fear, all these three combined
together. But it may as well be understood by all classes of
American citizens that, whatever may be their estimate of paren-
tal rights and their duties towards their children, Catholics will
pay any price for their Christian faith, and are determined to
transmit it to their children unimpaired, even at the cost of laying
down their lives. So much is certain.

The present free schools, we must suppose, do not offend Pro-
testants ; whereas Catholics put in a plea of conscience against
a purely secular education for their children, or a false or muti-
lated religious one such as they impart ; and this plea of conscience
ought to win sympathy, find approval, and gain the support of
ail Protestants or infidels who are honest and sincere in their
profession of liberty of conscience. Catholics urge this plea of
conscience from the depths of their souls and in uttermost sin-
cerity ; and if evidence is asked to confirm their sincerity, they
call to witness the sacrifices they have made and are now making,
while struggling with poverty, to found schools where their chil-
dren can obtain secular knowledge united with a good religious
education.

If the present organization of free schools meet the wishes of
Protestants, Catholics are content. Let the free schools stand as
they are for their benefit, and flourish ! Protestants have the
same rights in this land of freedom as Catholics. When will it
be clearly understood that Catholics are honestly in favor of
schools not only for a class but for all the children of the land?
But in order to render our public-school system universal in its

7O2 CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING [Feb.,

application it must be so amended as to respect the rightful free-
dom of conscience of all.

But is this practicable ? To ask whether a system of public
schools in accordance with the idea of liberty of conscience is
practicable should make an American blush and hang his head in
shame ! Practicable ? when it is well known that it has long
obtained the sanction of all the great nations of Europe ! A dis-
tinguished man Lord Brougham, if our memory is not at fault
said: " The schoolmaster is abroad." True enough; but this
question inclines us to think when he said this he could not have
had the United States in his thoughts. Prussia, until the recent
persecuting Falk laws came into existence, had enjoyed for gene-
rations such an impartial system. France, until a short time ago
when the French Radicals got the upper hand into whose heads
an idea of true liberty cannot be made to enter unless by a sur-
gical operation, if then treated all schools with even-handed jus-
tice, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Hebrew. And what is to
the point and unanswerable is the actual example of both Austria
and England, where no one ever heard a Protestant complain in
the former, or a Catholic in the latter, that perfect justice and
complete freedom of conscience were not allowed to the fullest
extent in the education of their children. Catholic Austria and
Protestant England would both feel disgraced if they did not
understand better what are the rights of parents, how to respect
the freedom of conscience in religious matters, and what is due
to their loyal subjects, than to impose upon them a general tax
for the support of public schools to which a considerable portion
of their people could not send their children without a violation
of their conscientious religious convictions.

What Catholic Americans hold is simply this : that all wisdom
was not embodied or did not die out with the framers of our pre-
sent system of public schools, and that to shape them in accord-
ance with the ideas of impartial justice and religious liberty is to
harmonize them with our free institutions ; and this is what we
would designate their improvement. This is what Catholics
maintain, and maintain as eminently practicable. When will the
clouds which obscure the minds of our fellow-countrymen be dis-
pelled, and they, seeing the truth, bend to reason, justice, and lib-
erty ?

Here, then, is the true position of Catholics towards our
public schools, and these are some of the reasons why they up-
hold it as the true standpoint, both as Catholics and as Ameri-
cans, whatever politicians may say to the contrary in the heat of

1 88 1.] ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION: 703

a political strife on the eve of an election, or scribblers may write
in Scribncrs Monthly, notwithstanding.

Dismissing for once and all this false accuser of Catholics in
Scribner we take the occasion to say further that the fact is be-
coming day by day plainer that the state in providing our com-
mon schools, with the expectation of inducing Catholics to send
their children to them as now organized and conducted, was led
into the commission of a great mistake. For there is one fact
which our fellow-citizens of every religious persuasion may rest
surely upon, and that is, until the problem of framing our free
schools in consonance with the American idea of religious liberty
is solved, to indulge the hope that they will be acceptable to Ca-
tholics is knowingly to entertain a gross delusion a delusion
which those who have not already abandoned it may as well
dismiss at once from their minds. Catholics, under no pretext
whatever, will submit to be robbed of their parental rights. This
may be a bitter pill to swallow, but there is no use of making
wry faces. The pill is of their own concoction, and the fanatics
who have misled the state are bound to take it. For Catholics
in this land of freedom, be it known, if it be not yet known to
everybody, have the same rights as Protestants. If the free
schools have failed in this particular, who is to blame ? Catho-
lics, forsooth ? Certainly not ! There is not force enough be-
tween heaven and earth, or beneath the earth, to compel Catho-
lic parents to send their children to schools against their convic-
tions of conscience. Though the invitation to attend them was
made with most benevolent smiles, the cautious fly had no temp-
tation to be inveigled into the parlor and enjoy the t$te-&-tte
prepared for it by the subtle spider.

The American people have no reason to apprehend the fail-
ure of the true American idea of common schools. What the
American people have reason to fear and to dread is that the
bigotry which has succeeded in laying its iron grasp on the man-
agement of the free schools, with the intent of turning them into
proselyting engines, will, sooner than lose its hold, stir up a reli-
gious strife in a peaceable community and see the costly edifice
of our public common-school education sink into utter wreck and
ruin.

In the meantime the discovery is gradually being made that
what had been prepared by designing men to decatholicize the
children of Catholics has loosened the hold of the Protestant re-
ligion upon the minds of a large class in the community, espe-
cially the youth, and is actually peopling the country with a gene-
ration of doubters, sceptics, and infidels, if not atheists. It is

704 CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING [Feb.,

not strange, therefore, that the cry is heard almost everywhere
of " the downward trend " of religion, and " the decrease of fruit-
fulness " of this or that religious sect. Nor is it a matter for
wonder that the question is already mooted in certain consulta-
tions : " How can ministers arouse the churches ? '' And the un-
pleasant confession is publicly made that " the very best and
most anxious and devoted efforts often seem to fail upon the peo-
ple." The same fruits have been produced by a purely secular
education in Holland and elsewhere, and had these folk dili-
gently read their Bibles, and sincerely believed what they read,
this punishment would not have overtaken them, for Holy
Writ warns us : " He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it."

Catholics have long foreseen these deplorable effects of the
secular education of our public schools as now conducted, and
have, to the fullest extent of their means and the best of their
ability, provided against them. Wherever it is possible they have
established parochial schools for their children ; and where not,
means are taken to guard their faith with jealous care until a
parochial school can be built and supported. Catholics are edu-
cating, in schools erected and maintained exclusively at their own
expense, upward of half a million of their offspring, and they
are fixedly determined not to cease in their efforts until every
Catholic child in the land shall have the inestimable privilege of
obtaining along with secular knowledge a positive Christian edu-
cation. Moreover, they cannot easily be made to believe that
any considerable portion of their Protestant fellow-countrymen
would knowingly consent to their own children being poisoned
with infidelity or irreligion in order to rob the hearts of Catholic
children of the consolations of their Christian faith.

But the facts are too plain for denial that our common schools
have played into the hands of the infidels, free-religionists, and
agnostics. You will find no more enthusiastic admirers and de-
fenders of our existing common schools than the press of these
very men. They know the fruits of these schools, and laugh in
their sleeves ; and well they may. But are Protestant parents
ignorant of their responsibilities ? Do they know that Christian
parents are bound to bring up their children in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord ? that to neglect this obligation, or wil-
fully to expose to danger the faith or morals of their children,
is to fail in an essential duty, and that he who fails in this, in the
words of the apostle, " hath denied the faith, and is worse than an
infidel "?* Or are they only gulled ? And is it out of place to

* i Timothy v. 8.

;i.] ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 705

ask here, How long will Protestantism hold its own when its chil-
dren are under a system of education which strikes at the very
foundations of Christianity, at morals, at the family, and at the
state ?

We make note of the fact that there is a growing feeling
among a large number of them that a more religious education is
absolutely needed ; and the feeling is finding its expression in the
conventions and public organs of the Episcopalians, Presbyte-
rians, Methodists, and other Protestant denominations. Indeed,
it is high time they took alarm, if they would save from entire
destruction the fragments of Christian truth which they have
until recently managed to retain in some sort.

In the Protestant Episcopal General Convention recently held
in this city the following resolution was agreed to :

"Resolved, That the bishops and clergy be most earnestly requested to
bring this subject to the attention of the members of this church, that they
remind the people of their duty to support and build up our own schools
and colleges, and to make education under the auspices of the Protestant
Episcopal Church superior in all respects to that which is afforded in other
institutions."

A resolution in substance the same as the above was passed
by the Presbyterians in their General Assembly, " cordially re-
commending their congregations to establish primary and other
schools, on the plan of teaching the truths and duties of our holy
religion in connection with the usual branches of secular learn-

A remarkable article appeared a short time ago in the columns
of the Advance, a Congregational newspaper published in Chi-
cago. It fully sustains the views and the line of conduct of
Catholics in regard to the question of education, and with such
ability and fairness that we give the communication, by Dr. Ly-
man, entire :

" PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS. By Henry M. Lyman, M.D. Passing one day
through a squalid quarter of the city, my attention was attracted by the
rising walls of a lofty building which overlooked everything in the neigh-
borhood. In size and form it seemed designed for some industrial pur-
pose ; but certain churchly emblems on its front indicated other reasons
for its existence. I soon discovered a worthy Irishman, who, in reply to
my question, informed me that this was the new building for the parochial
school connected with St. So-and-So's church, and that, when completed,
it would accommodate fifteen hundred scholars.

" Here, said I to myself, is another example of that almost superhuman
wisdom which guides the operations of the Roman Catholic Church.
Everywhere, even among the poorest inhabitants of our great cities, these
VOL. xxxii. 45

706 CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING [Feb.,

people are paying their taxes for the support of public schools, and are pay-
ing without a word of complaint. In addition to this heavy tribute, they
are also quietly rinding the money for the erection not only of splendid
churches, but also of costly school-houses. This quiet season of prepara-
tion, however, will not always last. The time is not far distant when a
large proportion, if not the majority, of Roman Catholic children will be
furnished with the means of education in their parochial schools. Then
will arise a demand either for emancipation from the requirement of taxa-
tion for the support of public schools, or for a division and allotment of
their share of the fund thus produced.

" The result of such a demand is easy to foresee. It will be successful in
spite of opposition, for it will be founded on the eternal principles of jus-
tice. To compel a man who is spending his money for the education of his
children in the manner which he believes to be for their highest good to
compel such a man to submit to burdensome taxation for the maintenance
of a system of education which he believes to be erroneous and dangerous
is the height of injustice. The first dawning perception of this truth is
evident in the recent elimination of the Bible from the public schools.
This is an attempt to secure justice by removing one cause of complaint
against the public-school system. But while it removes one objection it
creates another which is far more serious. The complete secularization of
the education thus provided deprives it of the greater portion of its value.
It is useless to assert that intellectual training will make men more moral,
or that- it will add to the security of the state. History teaches the con-
trary. The secular education imparted at our public schools produces men
and women fitted only for those forms of worldly activity which require
little or no moral discernment. The ambitious, unscrupulous adventurer is
the legitimate product of such an education ; and of such characters the
world has never known a dearth. The great want of the age is moral train-
ing; but that can never be obtained at a purely secular school. For this
reason the Roman Catholic Church is right in its theory of churchly edu-
cation for the young. If the clergy are to influence the community other-
wise than by their lives and their official ministrations, if they are to retain
their hold upon the masses, they must fashion the minds of the rising
generation. Children who are trained to go to church, to respect the rites
and the ministers of religion, to believe in a future state and in the exist-
ence of a God who rules the universe, can never wholly escape from the
influence of such ideas. But the children of irreligious families and they
form the majority who attend a school that has been deprived of all reli-
gious color and of nearly all moral flavor, receive no such impression ; and
they naturally grow up indifferent to everything but the pleasures and the
profits of this world. It need excite no surprise that paganism so greatly
abounds, when we are doing our very best to create pagans even out of the
children of the church.

" Our public-school system is a splendid monument of self-sacrifice and
of zeal for the improvement of mankind, and it should never be wholly
abandoned. But it has far outgrown its legitimate sphere, and by misappro-
priating certain of the most important functions of the church it has well-
nigh paralyzed the influence of the church in certain directions, The time
has come when our Protestant churches must resume the responsibilities

1 88 i.J ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION, 707

which they have resigned, unless they are willing to remain passive specta-
tors of the prosperous growth of indifferentism and scientific infidelity. By
the side of every church should stand the parochial school-house. Then
the unjust system of school taxation which now disgraces our civilization
would soon become a thing of the past. The morals of the pulpit would
then find their way through the school-room into the community, instead
of being, as now, forbidden to emerge among Jews and Gentiles beyond the
door of the church. Instead of the uniform drill which now compels all
children everywhere to walk in the same ill-chosen rut, we should have in
different localities different methods of instruction, with a corresponding
richness of variety in the result. Instead of having the education of our
children placed under the supervision of an irresponsible power emanating
from the dregs of the populace, we should feel in our churches a revival of
interest in the subject of education which would enlist the attention of the
best men and women in the community. We should have better school-
houses, for the taste and skill and wealth of our people would then have an
opportunity for modifying the architecture of school-buildings. By limit-
ing the demand for public schools, and by diminishing the money raised by
taxation for their support, the temptations to official corruption would be
proportionately diminished. The centres of population in our cities would
tend to assume greater stability, for the church and the school-house to-
gether, surrounded by stately trees and well-kept grounds, would form a cen-
tre of gravitation far more permanent than anything that Protestant Chris-
tianity has yet produced. The Roman Catholic priest has always succeed-
ed in securing ample room and permanent accommodations for his church
and his school and his convent in every one of our cities, while his wealth-
ier Protestant brother is content with the space between two curbstones,
at some narrow street-corner, from which the first wave of advancing com-
merce too often washes him into obscurity. It is high time to ask which of
these twain is the wiser."

A clergyman of the same denomination sustains in the Ad-
vance Dr. Ly man's thesis as follows :

" PUBLIC SCHOOLS OR PAROCHIAL ? By Rev. A. S. Kedzie This is a
coming question, the discussion of which was well begun by Dr. Lyman in
a recent Advance, and continued by Pres. Pickard a revolutionary ques-
tion, withal, and one that must be taken in hand by the best thinkers of our
times. It is plain to what answer the Roman Catholics are coming. When
years hence they are found educating their children in their parochial
schools, at their own cost, and an immense cost, demand will be made for
a division of the school fund, or at least an exemption of the Roman Catho-
lics from the school-tax. And such exemption will come, even if by as slow
a process and as hard a fight as did Catholic emancipation in Great Britain
over fifty years ago. Fair-minded and even-handed justice will prevail in
the long run.

" Will Protestants demand parochial schools ? Dr. Lyman says, Yes.
So do I : unless the radical defect in our public schools is remedied. What
is that defect ? Not that most of our public school-buildings, in their loca-
tion or construction, threaten with disease the coming generations of wo-
men though that be a lamentable fact ; not that the public schools fail to

708 CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING [Feb.,

teach religion a teaching which in this age of the world's history belongs
to the family and the church, the Roman Catholics to the contrary notwith-
standing;* but the defect is an extreme secularization of studies so ex-
treme that children are put to no study of the essential moralities of life, in
man's relation to his fellow.

" Our public schools cost a very large part of the taxes paid. What do
they promise in return ? To train boys and girls into the men and women
the state and society need. But many of those thus trained come to fail-
ure not failure in business, but a failure in themselves as men and women.
In such case wherein comes the failure ? Not in their ignorance of arith-
metic or of ordinary studies pursued in the schools. But failure comes be-
cause, in the formation of their characters and in the growth of their
minds, there has not, by study, been ingrained into their minds and cha-
racters the essential principles of morality not as a part of religion
(though finding their highest sanction in religion), but as being not less
essential to the business of life than is a knowledge of the multiplication-
table and of applied arithmetic.

" Sent out from the public school into the active duties of life, ignorant
of the application of the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth com-
mandments of the Decalogue to the duties of life not as a part of religion,
but as essential laws of conduct in intercourse with their fellows they will
be as likely to come to failure as men and women as they would to make a
failure in business if they were sent out unskilled by any study of arith-
metic, and ignorant of its application in the transactions of business. Daily
there is written down a long list of men and women who have made them-
selves failures. In such case the failure comes because the principles enun-
ciated in the last six commandments of the Decalogue were not applied to
the conduct of life. Failure in this life can be conceived as coming in no
other way.

" Here a peril is found standing across the path of every man's and wo-
man's success. It is not the exclusive duty of the public schools to arm
men and women for meeting this peril ; but if in this our schools do not
help, they confess their radical defect.

" Nearly every morality of the Decalogue comes into play in the inter-
course of children under twelve years of age, and especially when at school.
It is a grievous wrong to have them ignorant of the help which an intimate
knowledge of these principles would afford. When and how to resist the
tyranny of an ugly boy or the influence of a corrupt girl should not be
left to the uninstructed and unaided impulse of the occasion. Oral instruc-
tion by an incompetent or even competent teacher, and the influence of the
teacher's example, good as these may be, will not meet the case. There
should be a text-book for boys and girls under twelve years of age, in which,
illustrated by stories and brought out by questions, the principles in-
volved in the daily intercourse of their lives are set down for study and reci-
tation. And these are the essential principles of all conduct between men.
In the family as well as in the school would such a book be of use.

* NOTE. Either the Advance has made a misprint or our Congregational clergyman is rather
mixed up, or has made a slip of his pen ; for if parents would do their duty properly, neither the
church nor the state need trouble themselves about schools for the education of children. This
is the Catholic idea of parental rights and obligations.

ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION.

Fresh light on this subject appears to have broken suddenly
upon the minds of some of the Methodist brethren. The Metho-
dist, a popular organ of this denomination, published in this city,
says, in an editorial under the title " Concerning Denominational
Schools " :

" Our object in this article is to say squarely that, in our judgment, the
denominational schools of the land, as compared with the purely secular or
state schools, are, on moral grounds, incomparably the safest. If only in-
tellectual culture were to be considered in connection with the education of
our youth, then our state or secular institutions would doubtless answer a
sufficiently good purpose. Such, however, it needs hardly be said, is not
the case. Trained character, not less than trained intellects, is needed on
their part. Not more important is it that our youth should be educated to
habits of accurate and vigorous thought than that they become established
in habits of virtue rooted and grounded in the knowledge and love of
truth. Now, we hold that the superiority of denominational over secular
schools is especially seen in this, that their influence on character, as a rule,
is immeasurably the most salutary.

"Again, a firm and genial Christian tone pervading a school, by warming
the heart, stimulating conscience, and strengthening and bracing up all
the better elements of one's nature, is eminently calculated to predispose
the pupil to faith as well as to virtue. Our state institutions, as a general
thing, are hotbeds of infidelity not less than of vice. That unbelief should
be fostered and fermented therein is not unnatural. The restraints of reli-
gion are removed. The pride of intellect is stimulated. Science, falsely so
called, usurps the place of the Bible. Doubt is engendered, and finally un-
belief, full-blown, with all its arid negations, comes to be the fixed and set-
tled habit of the soul."

710 CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING [Feb.,

It appears that a friendly critic took the editor to task for his
former article, and here is his reply :

" A valued friend writes, in criticism of some recent remarks of ours :
' Shall we withdraw all support from state institutions of learning and
hand them over to infidelity ? ' This is a different question from the one
we have discussed ; and we believe a sufficient reply is that there is no dan-
ger of such withdrawal, and yet very little hope that individual Christian
men can permanently secure a Christian character to state institutions.
Our point is very different. We have said, and thoroughly believe, that
our church should invest ten millions at least in the next ten years in de-
nominational schools. Why ? Because we believe that this system is the
American one and the only safe one. If the men who must give this
money, if it is given, are told that the denominational system is a tem-
porary one, for the present safety of our church, we do not believe that they
will give it. If we were to advocate, as we have been earnestly urged to do,
an increase of national support to higher education, we should feel that we
were cutting the throats of our colleges by frightening benefactors away
from them. We put the denominational system on the highest ground, be-
cause we believe it to be the true ground ; and we believe that our church
must speak decisively, in this sense, before our colleges are helped to the
means of a vigorous life."

In a subsequent number, in answering another critic on the
question of " Higher Education," the editor makes some very
wholesome remarks which it would be well for our statesmen at
Washington to reflect seriously upon in these times. He says :

"An important principle in the case is that it has an unwholesome ef-
fect on a man to give him a liberal education for nothing. He ought to
pay something as a safeguard to his manhood. This is one reason why
education by the state ought to stop when it has met the common and uni-
versal demand. There may be an argument for educating the few at the
expense of the many ; but it is certainly inexpedient to do so in a country
where private beneficence has founded denominational and other schools in
the expectation that education would remain ' free ' for everybody to en-
gage in. There is a real moral objection to higher education by the state-
religion and morals would suffer if the national treasury were drawn upon
to compete the denominational school out of existence. But it will be said
that no such monopoly is intended. Of course not ; but when once a faucet
draws a stream from the sub-treasury, the music of the golden stream en-
tices other men to insert other faucets. There are precedents enough al-
ready for the thing we deprecate in the interest of morals and religion."

If we abstain from bringing forward more proof on this point,
and from other sources, it is lest we should weary our readers ;
but sufficient evidence, we think, has been produced to show that
the true position of Catholics towards our public schools is now,
by an intelligent and influential class of Christians of all denomi-
nations, rightly understood, publicly acknowledged, and perfectly

1 88 1.] ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 711

justified. It is evident, also, that Christian parents, Protestant as
well as Catholic, are not and cannot be content to send their chil-
dren to schools, unless they are directly religious and positively
Christian. It is our matured opinion that the American people
throughout the length and breadth of this land, if left to them-
selves, would prefer almost unanimously religious schools for
their children, provided that these could be made to meet all the
just demands of the state, and satisfy at the same time the consci-
entious convictions of parents. It is becoming daily more and
more evident that a purely secular education will never take root
in a country whose people are like Americans, who, while hold-
ing divergent beliefs, yet are sincerely attached to Christianity.
Is it, therefore, premature to say that, after much dispute and long
discussions, there is in the main an agreement between Catholics
and Protestants on the Public School Question ?

We are inclined to think not, and this is no small gain ; but
more is required. The question of the hour is : Shall we con-
tinue to allow our public schools to follow their disastrous course,
which tends to undermine the Christian faith of the children who
frequent them, and is biassed in favor of irreligion? Or shall
common sense and fair play reign, improving our school system
by making it what it professes to be, truly " public," honestly
" free," and perfectly " common " ? The answer to this question
is not so difficult with fair-minded men.

Let all schools, whether secular or denominational, stand, as
they should do in this free country, equally before the state. Let
the state pay with even-handed justice for that instruction to
children, and that only, which will make them itself being the
idge intelligent voters and good citizens. Surely it is no busi-
ness of the state how or by whom this instruction be given, so
that it be well done and thoroughly to its satisfaction. A plan of
lucation of this character would be truly free, deservedly pop-
ilar with all classes of citizens of our republic, and strictly in
larmony with the democratic principles of our free institutions.

If these principles of equal rights and fair play, on which our
republic is founded, were applied to public education, education
would not be crippled and confined as it is under the existing one-
sided system. Every school would receive, whether Christian,
Jew, or Gentile, that quota from the state, and no more, which
would be both legitimate and just under our form of political
government. This would be satisfactory to every reasonable de-
mand. No American ought to wish for more ; and the American
state cannot grant more without going beyond its proper sphere.

;i2 CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS AGREEING [Feb.,

The public schools under such a plan would continue to exist for
those who prefer them, and receive their fair share of payment
from the state. Denominational schools would be founded by
those who prefer them, and receive also their quota from the state.
Must we repeat, usque ad nauseam, that this payment of the state
to denominational schools would not be in any sense for their re-
ligious instructions ? for with this the state, constituted as ours,
has no concern. The state would pay solely and exclusively for
that instruction which it rightly requires, and for nothing else, and
according to results. The cry of union of church and state, or the
state supporting religion or sectarianism, against such a plan, is
hypocritical or infidel. Such charges could be made with justice
and truth against the present public-school system. It is well
understood by every sensible American that, in a community
made up of different religious beliefs, all religious instruction
must be left for its support upon the voluntary principle. Sure-
ly a religion which is not self-supporting cannot be worth having.
What honest man would wish to proselyte or pervert the minds
of his neighbor's children under the cloak of common schools ?

A plan of this kind for schools works well elsewhere and in
communities like our own, composed of a variety of religious de-
nominations, and to the perfect satisfaction of all, whether Catho-
lic, Protestant, Jew, or Nothingarian. Why would it not work
well here ? We affirm that it would, because it would fully satisfy
the consciences of parents of every form of religious belief, and
at the same time it is in perfect accordance with the spirit of in-
dividual liberty which is characteristic of American civilization.
Shall parents under the monarchical governments of Europe be in
entire liberty to send their children to schools in accordance with
their religious convictions, and in the United States, the freest po-
litical government under heaven, be subject to an oppressive tax
if they would exercise this freedom ? Our system of public
schools, as now organized, is an anomaly to all the principles
upon which the whole framework of our political fabric depends.

It is sometimes said that our common schools tend to the
" unification " of the divergent elements of our people. This is
a mistake, because, as these are now organized, they create dis-
sensions and do not content the whole people. " Unification "
what's that? That word sounds strange to American ears ! Does
it signify a species of dead-level communism ? How often must it
be repeated that the genius of our republic favors the cultivation
of individual greatness, and not the creation of a powerful nation
at the expense of the manhood of its citizens? Let, then, the

1 88 1.] ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 713

great principles of American liberty enter into our common-
school system unhindered. These would extend its organization
so as to include the thousands upon thousands of children running
at large in our great cities, and spread its fair and impartial wings
over all the children of our great republic. American principles
would lift education out of the arena of politics, lessen its ex-
pense, and render it, like the common air we breathe, free to all.

Protestants have been taught by a perhaps irreparable loss
the necessity of a positive Christian education a lesson which
they might have learned without any danger, for it is contained
in their version of the Bible in the following text : " Train up a
child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not de-
part from it." Catholics have been saved this loss, but by sacri-
fices that it would be difficult fully to estimate. The only gainer
in this conflict has been the common enemy.

We put the serious question directly to the conscience of
every earnest Christian, it matters not what may be his peculiar
creed : Shall not the increasing tide which is flooding our coun-
try with irreligion and immorality be stopped ? The time is at
hand for all sincere Protestants to awake from their sleep, if they
would have their children retain a positive belief in Christianity.
Many are aroused and have spoken, and spoken publicly and
to the point. Some of these we have quoted. But more than
words are called for at such a crisis. Actions speak louder than
words, and speedy action, and action with vigor, is now called
for. For things nowadays go at a galloping gait. And can any
intelligent Christian harbor any longer the slightest doubt that
the battle-field between Christianity and infidelity lies mainly in
the answer to the public-school question ?

Catholics and Protestants both agree that, in view of their pa-
rental responsibilities, they cannot send their children to other
than positive Christian schools. But it is admitted by all that a
state such as ours cannot teach or pay for teaching religion.
Therefore the defects of our public-school organization must be
remedied by amending it according to parental rights and con-
sistently with American ideas of religious liberty. This is the
issue. Will Protestants join in this issue against the common

lemy of Christianity, save the Christian faith of their children,

id secure the future of our Republic ?

714 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb.,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

PROTESTANTISM AND THE BIBLE. Lectures delivered in St. Ann's Church
on the Sunday evenings in Advent, 1880, by the Rev. Thomas S. Pres-
ton, V.G., LL.D. New York : Robert Coddington. 1880.

The list of Father Preston's published works, devotional and contro-
versial, show him to be an indefatigable worker, and he has now given us
another controversial work of no less value than its predecessors These
lectures are a sequel to his former discourses upon the nature and results
of the Protestant Reformation. The author considers and disposes of the
Protestant fables that the Scriptures were unknown to the Catholic people
until the time of Luther's famous discovery of the Bible, and that the church
had purposely suppressed the Scriptures and prevented their use, in order
the more effectually to introduce the papal system. He shows the ab-
surdity of this popular belief of Protestants by bringing forward the fact
that after the invention of printing the Bible was published, with the sanc-
tion of the church, not only in Latin but in the vernacular and that Catho-
lic versions into the principal tongues of Europe were in vogue long before
the time of Luther. The next step is to show that while Protestants base
their whole system upon the Bible, they cannot prove the Bible itself.
Rejecting the authority of the church, they can prove neither the in-
spiration nor the canonicity of Holy Scripture. But even if they could,
their way of salvation by the Bible alone is an absurdity, because it
makes the knowledge of the truth dependent upon the invention of print-
ing, thus leaving out in the cold all those who lived in the fourteen cen-
turies preceding that invention. We cannot suppose that God would have
proposed a plan of salvation thus unavailable to a large portion of the hu-
man race. Private interpretation, moreover, leads to endless contradictions,
and thus defeats the very end of Scripture. The history of the Bible among
Protestants shows nothing but differences differences as to the canon of
Scripture, differences as to correct translation, differences as to the mean-
ing of the sacred text. Besides, Protestants have never been and can never
be agreed as to what inspiration really is. Thus they are sure of nothing,
and the logical result is rationalism and infidelity.

The failure of the Protestant system of propagandism by means of
Bible distribution is shown from the testimony of their own agents, and
this is perhaps the most interesting and valuable part of these lectures.
The case is strongly put, and the conclusion is unavoidable.

In contrast to all this is the position of the Bible in the Catholic Church.
From the infallible authority of the Church only we know that the Scriptures
are inspired, and we are instructed what books we are to receive as canonical.
The Catholic, therefore, comes to the study of the Bible with a certainty
that it is the word of God, not believing that here is the only fount of di-
vine truth, nor that the Scriptures contain all the revelation of God, but
relying upon the judgment of the church, " the pillar and ground of truth,"
to teach him what he is to accept as divinely revealed.

1 88 1 .] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 7 1 5

This is but an imperfect abstract of the argument of these lectures.
Their form is popular, their style clear and forcible, and they are well
adapted to awaken to a sense of their real position those who still cling to
that phantom which they call " Bible Christianity."

IRISH DISTRESS AND ITS REMEDIES. The Land Question. A Visit to
Donegal and Connaught in the Spring of 1880. By James H. Tuke,
author of A Visit to Connaught in the Autumn of 1847. London : W.
Ridgway ; Dublin : Hodges, Figgis & Co. 1880.

The agitation in Ireland during the last twelvemonth has at last at-
tracted English attention, and as a consequence many of those members of
" the aristocracy " and " the gentry " who have a literary turn, and many of
the Bohemians of the English press, are coming forward with remedies.
But besides these interested or ignorant writers we find occasionally an Eng-
lishman who understands the condition of affairs in Ireland and is willing
to speak at least a part of the truth. Mr. Tuke is an Englishman and be-
longs to the Society of Friends, a denomination which has shown a great
deal of kindly feeling towards Ireland. He was one of a committee ap-
pointed in 1847 to distribute help in behalf of the Friends among the starv-
ing in Ireland, and he made a similar tour during the distress last year.
His pamphlet, while containing little that can be new to those familiar with
Ireland, is no doubt something of a revelation to his countrymen. He de-
sires, he says, " to bring to bear on the subject the knowledge gained in his
earlier or later visits to Ireland, combined with the familiarity with ques-
tions affecting the land which a long residence in an agricultural county
and his experience as a country banker may have given him."

" It is in South Mayo," says Mr. Tuke, " that the great seat of disturb-
ance exists, and where, as I have noticed, the largest body of police is quar-
tered, and where there are many men who dare not stir out of their houses
without an escort." Speaking in general of what the English call the
" agrarian outrages," he says that " not more than one in five of the offend-
ers are discovered or punished. This applies solely to offences connected with
the land; for as regards other crimes, they are less frequent than in England,
and as readily punished." Mr. Tuke, indeed, thinks it hard for his country-
men to realize the true state of affairs. "Take Norfolk, for instance," he
say, " which has nearly the same area as Mayo ; ... let us imagine that in
every small town or village of that agricultural county companies of armed
men were stationed in barracks, varying in number from five to fifty, whose
duty it was, by day and by night, on foot and on horseback, to patrol the
country ; eight hundred to one thousand men are thus employed in Mayo,
while two hundred and thirty-six rural police constables suffice for nearly
double the population in Norfolk." A remarkable contrast, truly, between
flourishing Norfolk and poor Mayo. But Mr. Tuke informs us that in this
very South Mayo "the chief landlords are nearly all non-residents five or
more whose total rental, taken out of the country, cannot be less than
eighty thousand a year." That is to say, a tax of four hundred thousand
dollars a year is levied on these struggling farmers and fishermen to in-
crease the revenues of foreigners. No wonder South Mayo is a "great seat
of disturbance."

Mr. Tuke, like a great many others, speaks of the poorer farmers of

716 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb.,

Ireland as " peasants." But there is really no such thing in that country as
a peasantry in the true meaning of that term, even though O'Connell, with
his wonted gush and for a purpose, may have declared that Ireland had
"the finest peasantry in the world." There are true peasants in Germany,
in France, in Russia, but they are the descendants of serfs, and they could
by tradition lay claim to no right in the soil except what their lords might
choose or be forced to give them. Previous to the French Revolution, and
to the later emancipations in Germany arid Russia, they were regarded as mere
appurtenances of the estate. The so-called peasants of Ireland are for the
most part the descendants of free clansmen who never owned a lord,
whose chiefs were supposed to be of their kin, and who had a communal
right in the territory of the clan a right which, in spite of foreign legisla-
tion, these ' peasants " still more or less boldly assert and endeavor to
maintain. It is true Mr. Tuke partly expresses this :

" The Irish peasant believes that he possesses an inalienable right to the soil ; that the land-
lord is not the sole owner, but that he has with the landlord a joint ownership, a ' joint pro-
prietorship,' not simply in the little plot of land on which he has built his hut, but justly also,
with other tenants, communal rights of stray, or grazing, over the mountain or bogland of the
townland. I am here speaking of those who may be regarded as the old and natural tenants of
the soil, who have lived there for generations, and by whose industry whatever there is of culti-
vation in the land, whatever there is of building on the estate, has been effected. We have no
analogous condition of the land in England."

The greatest poverty is that which prevails along the western coast
counties from Donegal to Kerry, where the population, according to Mr.
Tuke, is too much crowded to flourish even if tenant proprietorship were
established. But here Mr. Tuke seems to overlook the fact that many of
these poor people so wretchedly huddled together have within forty years
been evicted from the rich, arable lands where there is room and to spare,
and that these lands, which of right belonged to those evicted tenants, have
been turned into " demesne lands " for English gentlemen or into grazing
farms, of which both the stock and the profit go to England or Scotland.
There can be no sort of excuse, then, for a government emigration scheme,
though Mr. Tuke is inclined to favor such a measure under qualifications.
In all justice English legislation must provide for the pauperism which
English legislation has created. During 1847-48 the Marquis of Lans-
downe, an English nobleman, one of the largest landowners of Kerry, sent
shiploads of his famishing tenants to this country, and they were landed in
this city without a penny to 'their name. Our government has a right to
keep a strict watch on this emigration scheme.

Mr. Tuke's pamphlet is valuable more for the accuracy with which it
describes some of the crying ills of the west of Ireland than for the reme-
dies which it proposes. No settlement of the Irish land question can be
satisfactory or permanent which does not recognize that the land of Ire-
land belongs to the Irish people. As England by fraud vested the title to
a large part of the land in foreign rent-gatherers, England must rectify the
injustice she has done and in some way reinstate the tillers of the soil, who
are its rightful owners.

ANGLICAN RITUALISM. Abbe Martin. London : Burns & Gates. 1881.

Ritualism is an extraordinary phenomenon which ordinary people wheth-
er Catholics or Protestants cannot account for. It is really no more unac-

1 88 J .] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 7 1 7

countable than any other aberration of the human mind. Human nature
is liable to erratic movements, and the mere fact of possessing more or less
of revealed truth does not remove this tendency. The only perfect safe-
guard even for those who are convinced that all which Jesus Christ has
revealed is the absolute truth is an unerring external rule and criterion, an
infallible teaching authority to which an unreserved obedience is freely
given. This which is true in respect to faith is also true in respect to
morals. The revealed law does not suffice, without an authority to inter-
pret and apply the law. Obedience to the one rightful teaching and ruling
authority which represents Jesus Christ the Sovereign Lord is the differen-
tia which distinguishes a Catholic from every other species of professing
Christians. No matter how many truths taught by the church a man may
hold for some other reason than the teaching of the church, no matter how
many things commanded by the church a man may do for some other
reason than the commandment of the church, he is not formally and ex-
plicitly a Catholic on account of this belief and practice. He may not
actually err in belief or conduct apart from this one error of not recogniz-
ing the rightful authority of the church, yet he is destitute of a perfect
safeguard against error and is liable to error. In the last analysis, his own
individual reason and conscience are his rule, and both of these are fallible.
The individual reason acting on the Christian revelation can construct for
itself an indefinite number of systems of doctrine and religious practice, ap-
proaching to or receding from, by indefinite degrees, the genuine and perfect
objective truth. Those who reject the unerring criterion and rule of au-
thority are logically all rationalists. From the Greek schismatic to the
Unitarian, all are alike, and all tend towards some form of rationalism. In
fact Schelling is one of the principal authors of that Neo-Catholicism which
calls itself " Old," having transformed his former Transcendental Pantheism
into this shape, and it was through him that the faith of Dollinger was first
corrupted. Gioberti was another of the same sort. From the days .of the
apostles to the present moment, these counterfeit presentments of the
genuine Ideal of Christianity have been incessantly manufactured by the
minds and imaginations of men who were not directed by the infallible
Catholic rule of faith. All are on an equal footing in respect to the Catho-
lic Church so far as total separation from her indivisible unity is concerned.
The collection of men who adhere to the communion of the schismatical
bishops of the East, the collection of men calling themselves Anglican
Catholics, are no more a part of the visible body of the church than Pres-
byterians or Unitarians. Those of them who have divine faith, sanctifying
grace and inward union with the soul of the church have them by an ex-
traordinary way, as a Unitarian, a Jew, or a Pagan may have them, and are
inculpable for their error only when they have the excuse of invincible
ignorance and good faith.

It is singular to find a Frenchman so familiar as the Abbe Martin shows
himself to be with all the ins and outs and curious turnings and windings
of English Ritualism. He is remarkably quiet and courteous in his manner
of dealing with Anglicans of all sorts, especially the Ritualists, and ex-
tremely complimentary to the English people except in regard to one point,
viz., their logic. Indeed, he seems rather to go to an extreme in the credit
which he gives to the Ritualistic party in the Church of England. It is

7 1 8 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Feb. ,

well, of course, to abstain from expressing any harsh judgment of indivi-
dual persons, but on the other hand it becomes us to be cautious about
assuming that almost everybody is in good faith and free from the guilt of
schism, heresy, or at least culpable negligence and indifference in seeking
for the truth and corresponding to grace. There are so many grievous sins
committed by Catholics through wilful violations of the law of the church,
and even sometimes open rebellion against the authority of their bishops
and pastors, notwithstanding their faith and the abundant means of grace
which they possess, that we can hardly assume universal innocence among
those who are in the unfortunate position of sheep wandering at large
without a fold or a shepherd.

IRISH SAINTS IN GREAT BRITAIN. By the Right Rev. Patrick F.
Moran, D.D., Bishop of Ossory. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

No other writer of the day has, to our thinking, written so intelligently
on Irish ecclesiastical subjects as Dr. Patrick Francis Moran, the present
Bishop of Ossory. His knowledge of the early Christian history of Ireland
is most extensive, his judgment is calm, and his presentation of facts is
easy and graceful. His volume of Essays on the Early Irish Church and his
History of the Archbishops of Dublin are two of the best works that have
yet appeared in illustration of Irish ecclesiastical history. And now he has
given us a volume on the Irish Saints in Great Britain which will add
not a little to his reputation.

Fault is sometimes found with a certain class of Irish writers who treat
of the golden age of their country's history, in that they claim too much
for the land of their affection ; they are accused of laying hands on the
saints and scholars of other nationalities and claiming them as their own.
They take for granted, it is said, that for three or four centuries all Chris-
tendom revolved around Ireland as the common centre of sanctity and
learning, and wherever a great saint or scholar appears during that epoch
he must of necessity, they think, be associated with their country. There
can be no doubt, certainly, that Erin absorbed a very large proportion
of the sanctity and learning of the Christian world during the sixth, seventh,
and eighth centuries, but there were very many holy and learned men
in all these centuries who were not Irishmen, and it would be very unjust
and absurd for the Irish to claim the glory of them. Dr. Moran is
far too jealous of the dignity of his cause to put forth any groundless
claims, and whenever he includes a name in the lists of the Irish saints
that is also to be found on the calendar of another nationality, he is careful
to give his reasons for it, and they are generally sufficient. Thus, St. Cuth-
bert, the patron of Durham, has been regarded as one of the most dis-
tinctively English saints on the calendar, and when we found Dr. Moran
claiming him for one of his " Irish saints in Great Britain " we confess we
felt some little alarm for his lordship's historical accuracy ; but after we had
read the evidence in the case all alarm, and even all doubt, were removed.
There is another very common historical misconception which Dr. Moran
takes occasion to correct in this work. St. Columba is very generally ac_
cused of being, at least in his earlier years, a man of a rather vindictive
disposition ; he is said to have provoked a civil war to revenge an injury

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 719

done him. And it was to make atonement for all this that he became an
exile from his loved " Erin, where the songs of the birds are so sweet."
Even Montalembert, who was full of enthusiasm for the grand old saint of
lona, did not attempt to acquit him of any of these charges ; and no small
share of the admiration which his countrymen still bestow upon him is at-
tracted by his supposed warlike character. But alas ! for the venerable
legends of the past. It now turns out that St. Columba was no warrior at
all, that he was gentle, peaceful, and forgiving from the beginning, and that
a single drop of blood was never shed in his quarrel in fact, that he had no
quarrel at all. It was the love of souls that made him an exile from that
land whither his " gray eye ever turned in yearning."

We trust this new volume of Dr. Moran's will receive the attention it so
well deserves. It is full of information on a most interesting subject, and it
should be very generally read in Catholic circles.

LIFE OF FATHER ALEXIS CLERC, S.J., SAILOR AND MARTYR. By Rev.
Father Charles Daniel, S.J. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1880.

We have read through this life of Father Clerc and have found it most
interesting and edifying. It depicts the career of a man of our own day who
had to contend with the most adverse influences, but who, being faithful to
the inspirations of divine grace, overcame them all and obtained at last the
martyr's crown.

Father Clerc reached the age of thirteen under the influence of a de-
voted and pious mother, but the religious impressions derived from her
were soon smothered by the infidelity and hatred of religion prevailing in
the state schools, to which he was sent by his father. After graduating at
the Polytechnic he chose a career in the navy. For a little while he led a
rather reckless life, like the rest of the midshipmen with whom he was
thrown, but the sight of the heroism and self-sacrificing life of some French
missionaries to the Gambier Islands in the South Seas aroused him to more
noble thoughts, and then, after a long and difficult struggle of some years
between these and the evil influence of former habits and irreligious com-
panions, he finally emancipated himself from the slavery of vice and de-
voted himself henceforth to the service of God with his whole heart. He
found his happiness in the exact performance of his duty as an officer, in
studying the works of St. Thomas, and in the exercise of much prayer and
communion with God. His piety was not sour or morose ; on the contrary,
he appears to have been uniformly cheerful, and with a playful, innocent
humor which made him a universal favorite with his associates in the
navy. In this way he was the means of many conversions, and several of
his companions, like himself, renounced their worldly prospects to devote
themselves to a religious life.

The grace of God kept leading Father Clerc higher and higher, until,
after ripe and mature deliberation, he came to the irrevocable determination
to quit the navy and join the Society of Jesus. Then he practised for some
years the virtues of humility and obedience in a way to edify all his com-
panions, though hidden from the eyes of the world. God, as a reward for
his faithfulness, selected him for martyrdom. He was shot, in company
with the Archbishop of Paris and other eminent ecclesiastics, by the Com-

720 NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [Feb. , 1 88 1 .

munists in their rage when the city of Paris was taken from them. One
cannot peruse this life without being strongly moved to follow Father
Clerc's example. Father Daniel has faithfully collected the incidents of
his life, many of his letters and the testimonies of the friends who knew
and loved him, and has thus given us a most interesting biography which
will well repay any one who will read it.

WETZER UND WELTE'S KIRCHENLEXICON. First number of a new and
improved edition. St. Louis, Mo. : B. Herder. 1880.

The first edition of this Encyclopaedia of Catholic Theology and its affi-
liated branches of sacred science was published between the years 1847 and
1856. The supervision of the publication of this second edition was en-
trusted to Dr. Hergenroether and the work begun by him. His elevation
to the dignity of cardinal having brought with it the obligation of under-
taking new duties, the care of editing this great work was devolved upon
Dr. Franz Kaulen, assisted by two hundred and fifty-three contributors,
among whom are to be found such distinguished authors as Gams, Hein-
rich, Hettinger, Hurter, Janssen,*Jungmann, Moufang, Rohling, Scheeben,
Stockl, etc. The entire work will be issued in ten volumes, each contain-
ing frarn ten to twelve numbers of one hundred and ninety pages each,
royal octavo, the subscription price being thirty-five cents a number. A
continuous and rapid issue of the numbers of the new edition is promised
by the publishers. The reputation of the work is established, and the in-
creased value which the new edition will receive from the vast amount of
learned labor expended on it is self-evident.

THE AGE OF UNREASON. Being a reply to Thomas Paine, Robert Inger-
soll, Felix Adler, Rev. O. B. Frolhingham, and other American Rational-
ists. By Rev. Henry A. Brann, D.D. New York : Martin B. Brown.
1881. Price twenty-five cents. (For sale by the Catholic Publication
Society Co.)

This is not a book but a brochure of about one hundred duodecimo
pages. Its smallness is a merit, for it was intended to be not a heavy gun
but a pocket revolver, to be used in a " battle with small arms." It is a
very clever and lively pamphlet, terse and well reasoned, written in a style
of good English, plain, pointed, pungent, sprinkled with allusions to the
author's extensive reading in literature, with some hard and telling sarcastic
hits on his opponents, and occasional passages of true beauty and elo-
quence. This brochure is one which we should be glad to see reach a circu-
lation of one hundred thousand copies. A great number of similar tracts
would be useful. More ambitious works reach but a small class of readers.
We want a popular religious literature for the million. Poison for the soul
done up in large and small packages circulates everywhere. The antidote
should be distributed after the same fashion, in equal quantities, and with
equal zeal.

THE CHURCH AND THE MORAL WORLD. By the Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S.J. Library Edi-
tion. New York : Benziger Bros. 1880.
This is a library edition of the work noticed in the December CATHOLIC WORLD.

A PEARL IN DARK WATERS. A Tale of the Times of Blessed Margaret Mary. By the author
of Tyborne, Dame Dolores, etc. Baltimore : John B. Piet. 1880.

THE STONELEIGHS OF STONELEIGH. By the author of Tyborne, Dame Dolores, etc. Balti-
more : John B. Piet. 1880.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXII. MARCH, 1881. No. 192.

OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK.

THE word obelisk is borrowed from the Greek, in which it
means a roasting-spit, and these Egyptian spires were so called
because they looked like spikes. Its Egyptian name was tekhen,
a word of as yet unknown meaning.

Obelisks, Professor Donaldson, the London architect, points
out, were not used singly, in wide, open spaces, but were station-
ed two by two in front of the mighty portals of the temple-
palaces, on each side of the entrance, like heralds to proclaim the
glory of the king. For their purpose was, as Birch has remarked,
that of the triumphal column of the Romans. The pair of obe-
lisks, however, was different from the triumphal column in not
commemorating any one exploit of the sovereign, but his name
with his many resplendent titles "the Sun, the Child of the
Sun, the Lord of Diadems, etc., etc." In these inscriptions the
king always shows 'himself on the most glorious side of his
royal nature as the very child of the Sun-God of Ra at He-
liopolis, of Amen-Ra at Thebes. Thus the pair of obelisks was a
pair of heralds proclaiming to all who entered the temple-palace,,
long before they passed within the gate, the twin glories of the
intimately united pair, the great Sun-God and his great son the
Pharaoh. And the monumental inscriptions proclaimed nothing
more than the great names of father and child on the two spires
rising toward the sun.

Probably no kings have held so lofty a position of glory and'
worship as the Pharaohs. When Egypt passed under the influence

722 OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. [Mar.,

of the Christian Church, the deeply religious and devout spirit
which was a national characteristic continued under the new forms
of Christianity, and the suggestion has been offered that \hepylon
of the Egyptian temple, flanked by its two lofty and pointed obe-
lisks, passed with Christianity gradually into the double-spired
doorway of the Christian church. This would be no unworthy
origin of the church-spire. The Catholic Church has ever been
known for the motherly tenderness with which she has taken poor
human nature to her heart. And though the Egyptians gave to
their gods the forms of birds and beasts, let us not deny them a
religious nature. They believed in one Almighty Being supreme
in the universe, and nameless, and there were no images of the
Almighty Father. This idea of God was as pure as that to
which the spires of our churches point through the silent sky.

Sublimity, vastness, majesty were the nature of Egyptian art,
and the obelisks, too, had to be made on the same scale of gran-
deur. They reached their great height in a single block of stone ;
and the Egyptians were not content to bring long distances, and
at the cost of vast labor to hoist into a vertical position, these
great blocks of stone seventy and one hundred feet long, but
they pushed their manufacture to the extreme of difficulty by
choosing a very hard stone. Most obelisks are of granite from
the quarries of Syene, which contain the warm reddish-colored
stone familiar to travellers in Egypt. While the larger part of
the masonry is constructed, as Donaldson remarks, from the
sandstones and limestones of the neighborhood, the more impor-
tant portions of architecture and the statues are reserved for the
superior reddish granite of Syene, at the southern end of Egypt.

Obelisks were placed on a substructure, for which that of the
New York obelisk, as laid bare of the soil that gathered round it
on the shore of Alexandria, will be taken as an example. There
was an underground foundation of three courses of masonry with
sloping sides, but in general approaching a cube. On this founda-
tion were three steps ; on the uppermost step the pedestal ; on
the pedestal the obelisk. The pedestal in general approaches the
shape of a cube very little wider than the shaft ; thus in the New
York obelisk it projects beyond each face of the shaft only about
six inches. The shape of the obelisk is a square shaft capped by
a pyramid commonly called by the diminutive pyramidion. The
shaft tapers, sloping on each side, as is often the case with up-
right surfaces in Egyptian architecture. The slenderness of the
shaft that is, the relation between width and height follows no
fixed ratio, but as a rule the height is about nine or ten times the

:88i.] OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. 723

iameter at the base. In quarrying these enormous stones the
Egyptian engineer could only hope to aim at certain forms with-
>ut quite reaching them. Thus, the obelisks of a pair are not
[uite alike in their dimensions, nor is the cross-section of a shaft
perfect square ; and so throughout the various parts of the sub-
tructure. Sometimes the inequalities become striking. Thus,
accident seems to have happened in the quarry to that one of
famous pair of Luxor (Thebes) which is now at Paris, for
it is noticeably shorter than its fellow by about six feet. This
tequality has been corrected in a curious way : partly by
tightening the pedestal, partly by advancing it before the taller
ift a correction which holds good only for the spectator at
>me distance.

The sides of the shaft are not always plane, but slightly con-
rex, which is the case with the pair of Luxor and with the obelisk
of St. John Lateran in Rome. The slight convexity is regular,
so that the conclusion forces itself upon us that this convexity
was intended. Probably its object was to correct an appearance
of concavity and make the sides appear plane, inasmuch as the
deeper shadow at the angle next to the lighted side would make a
plane face seem slightly concave.

The inscriptions on some obelisks, and accounts of older travel-
lers, show that the shaft was frequently capped with metal. Cop-
per has been found, and inscriptions speak also of gold and iron.
[n one case, at least (the pair erected at Karnak [Thebes] by Queen
tatasu), the inscription says that the shaft was encased in cop-
r. The object, besides that of ornamentation, may have been,
Donaldson has suggested, to correct inequalities caused by the
larrying. Thus an unluckily-blunted pyramidion could be
ought to its rightful height. As the same architect remarks,
admirable polish of the surfaces of the cavities of the deeply -
it inscriptions contrasts strangely with the roughened faces of
shaft and pyramidion. The copper casing made an excellent
jcoration, at any rate, and brilliant indeed must have been Queen
[atasu's lofty shafts, clad in copper and capped with gold, rising
the blazing sun and clear air of Egypt to the glory of the Sun-
God, and Pharaoh his child.

.The inscriptions usually covered all four sides, giving the
name and titles of the king who offered and the god to whom the
obelisk was offered. Sometimes a later king had his name added
to the obelisk in a new inscription, which is the case with the
New York obelisk. This occurs, it is believed, when the first
king was not able to complete the edifice during his lifetime, but

OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. [Mar.,

had to leave this to his successor. The faces of the pyramidion
capping the shaft were carved with scenes of worship, the king
offering wine and milk to the sun. But little is known of the
mechanical processes of quarrying, transporting, and erecting
these huge monoliths ; the designs on Egyptian monuments are
silent on this point. Much ingenuity was shown in splitting the
block from the mass of living rock. A line of holes was drilled,
and instead of inserting metal wedges the engineer drove in
plugs of dry wood, which, on being wetted, swelled with great
uniformity, and safely split the rock along the desired straight
line. The mode of transportation receives some light from Pliny.
The Nile's convenient waterway was, as we should expect, turned
to use. Not only so, but by a canal dug for that purpose it was
brought to the quarry, to the very spot where the huge block
lay. Two flat-bottomed boats, lashed abreast and loaded with
ballast to the weight of the obelisk, were towed beneath the
stone, which had probably been lowered, it should seem from
Pliny's account, nearly to the level it was to assume on the boats.
As the ballast was emptied they rose to the obelisk. Touching
the erection of the monolith on its site, Chabas, from a study of
the inscriptions, says that one edge of the base was first placed
on the pedestal, and the shaft revolved on this edge as a fulcrum
vertically into an upright position. What machinery was used
in thus hoisting it is unknown. To lift so great a weight out of
its narrow bed in the quarry, to lower it into the, boat, to hoist it
on the shore, to transport and set it up on its site all this gains
pur admiration for the Egyptian engineer, which is greatly
quickened when we learn from an inscription that the loftiest
obelisk in Egypt, over one hundred feet high that of Queen Ha-
tasu at Thebes took the extremely short space of seven months
in the making, from the first blow in the quarry to its erection at
the pylon of the palace. That, Lieutenant-Commander Gor-
ringe declares, is more than any engineer living could do.
But in those days human toil and life were cheap.

Only one large obelisk is known earlier than the New Em-
pire, * that at Heliopolis, erected by King Usertesen I., of the
twelfth dynasty. In the New Empire the pride of victory and
strength gained in the successful struggle with the Asiatic inva-
ders called Hyksos, or shepherds, made the kings soldiers and
conquerors ; and as splendid monuments spring up in a military
nation at the return of victorious kings, so in the eighteenth,

'* The New Empire began with the eighteenth dynasty, somewhere about 1600 B.C.

1 88 1.] OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. 725

ineteenth, and twentieth dynasties Thebes and other parts of

gypt were made stately with great palaces and temples, while
obelisks of the warm-colored granite of Syene, with polished sides
covered with inscriptions, became the indispensable pair of heralds
at the pylons of new palace-temples, proclaiming the glorious

ames of the child of the sun. When Egypt began to decline
from her position as the great power in the East, the obelisks
also declined in height, but continued as monuments for bearing
the royal names almost to the latest days of national life. The
youngest obelisk known is the Barberini, on Monte Pincio at
Rome, set. up by Hadrian (first half of second century A.D.), and
bearing his name and the names of his empress, Sabina, and his
beloved Antinous.

In this enumeration the small obelisks are disregarded. There
are now five large obelisks standing in Egypt. Beginning with
Thebes, at Upper Egypt, there are three, one left from each of
three pairs. At the village of Luxor are the ruins of a vast tem-
ple-palace, at the entrance of which stood a pair of obelisks reared
by the great Rameses II., of the nineteenth dynasty (about 1350
B.C.) One was taken to Paris in 1833 by the engineer Le Bas,
having been presented to the French government in 1831 by Me-
hemet Ali. The remaining one is eighty-two feet high. About
mile to the north of this temple-palace was a still vaster collec-

ion of buildings, joined with the other by a long avenue of
hinxes. Two pylons of the many quadrangles are still de-
corated by a pair of obelisks. In each pair one remains ; the
other lies fallen and broken on the ground, and the peasants have

urned to account these broken bones of the giant herald by
manufacturing millstones out of them. The pair before the outer

ylon is the smaller, and was erected by Thothmes I., of the

ighteenth dynasty. The standing obelisk is about ninety-two
feet high. The pair that did duty before the inner pylon was
erected by Hatasu, the daughter of Thothmes I. The shaft that
remains standing disputes with the obelisk of St. John Lateran
in Rome the honor of being the highest in the world. According
to Mariette, its height is one hundred and eight feet ten inches.
These are the great obelisks of Upper Egypt. Sailing down the
Nile, we find one at Crocodilopolis, in Lower Egypt, forty-three
feet high, of uncertain date. We then come to Heliopolis, with
its famous obelisk standing alone and bereft of its fellow. It is
about sixty-seven feet in height and was erected by Usertesen I.,
of the twelfth dynasty (about 2500 B.C.) When Lepsius visited it
in 1843 a flourishing garden of flowers blossomed about its base,

726 OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. [Mar.,

and bees, drawn by the flowers, had taken up their abode in the
deeply-cut inscriptions of all four sides. It reminds us of Sam-
son's riddle. As that of Hatasu at Thebes is the highest, so that
of Usertesen I. at Heliopolis is the oldest, obelisk we know of.
About a thousand years later a pair .of obelisks was reared by
Thothmes III. at Heliopolis in the sixteenth century B.C.
millennium and a half later, about the time of Christ, they wei
removed to Alexandria on the sea-shore ; and about nineteen cen-
turies after that the pair was parted, one to London, the other t<
New York, the two capitals of the English-speaking world.

In modern times the three great obelisks taken to Paris, Lon-
don, and New York in this century have made their journeys froi
Egypt such costly undertakings that we can appreciate the power
if not enterprise of Roman emperors in bringing to Rome and
other parts of Italy about fifty, many of them of great size.
There are now sixteen in Italy, all transported from Egypt in
the days of the ancient Roman Empire, twelve of which are in
Rome. The four outside of Rome are very small.

The twelve obelisks now in Rome were erected between Au-
gustus and Constantine. The cutting, and transportation, and
erection of such huge monoliths had always been regarded by
Egyptians and foreigners as triumphs of engineering science, so
that the Roman emperors were glad to show that they were
masters of the world by forcing from Egypt these cherished
monuments of former greatness. It was a fine notion of the Ro-
man emperors to place them on lofty foundations and make them
serve as the turning-posts in the Circus Maximus and other rac-
ing-grounds of Rome. If they were to be taken out of their own
country it was no unworthy site for them to tower above, nor
scene to overshadow, the rush of the chariots and the passionate
host that filled the benches. Of the twelve obelisks now to be
seen in Rome eight are of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twen-
tieth dynasties (before and after 1500 B.C.), two of the twenty -sixth
dynasty (about 600 B.C.), and two were cut in Egypt and inscrib-
ed with Egyptian characters at the command of the Roman em-
perors Domitian and Hadrian. Both, especially Hadrian, were
greatly interested by the religion of Egypt. In the decline of
civilization that entered with the advent of northern barbarians
the obelisks of Rome were thrown down. Some were broken,
others are probably still buried, and only one remained standing
from antiquity into modern times the obelisk now in front of St.
Peter's. The Egyptian obelisks at Rome shared in the regenera-
tion of art that began four hundred years ago in Italy ; the popes

1 88 1.] OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. 727

unearthed them, mended their broken shafts, reared them anew,
and moved them to the squares of the new Rome. Prominent in
this work were Sixtus V., Innocent X., Alexander VII., Clement
XL, and Pius VI., especially Pope Sixtus V., by whom four,
among them the two highest in Rome, were set up in their pre-
sent position. Of the twelve Roman obelisks four are higher
than sixty feet, four are between forty and fifty feet, two are
between twenty and thirty feet in height. The highest is that
in front of the church of St. John Lateran, and is the second
highest known, surpassed only by that of Queen Hatasu at Kar-
nak (Thebes). Measurements, however, differ, and the Roman
monolith is often called the highest. It was erected in Thebes
by Thothmes III., of the eighteenth dynasty (about 1600 B.C.)
Constantine, in removing it to Constantinople, left it at Alexan-
dria, whence his son Constantius took it to Rome and set it up in
the Circus Maximus. Here it was, after many centuries, found by
Pope Sixtus V. prostrate, buried fifteen feet underground, and
broken in three pieces. He caused the architect Fontana in 1588
to rear it on its present site. It is about one hundred and six
feet high. The same architect erected for the same pope the
next highest obelisk in Rome, that in front of St. Peter's. This
was taken by Caligula from Heliopolis, but, as it bears no inscrip-
tion, its age is unknown. It was originally set up in the Vatican
Circus, and, as already said, it still stood upright when Sixtus V.
had it moved.

The popes have been often sneered at for placing their arms,
cross, and other emblems on the apex of the obelisks, when they
deserve only praise for an enterprise and generosity which New-
Yorkers can measure, who have seen the vast labor and expense of
transporting and erecting an obelisk move slowly on before their
eyes from July to January, from Staten Island through West Nine-
ty-sixth Street to Eighty-second Street and Fifth Avenue in the
Park. Certainly a pope would in this century leave the apex in its
Egyptian condition, but that is because our age has added the
spirit of historical exactness to the artistic spirit. The same spirit
of historical truth should lead us to sympathize with other ages
as well as with obelisks.

Constantinople possesses two large obelisks, one over fifty, the
other more than seventy, feet high, both brought there in anti-
quity. In France there is one, that in Paris on the Place de la
Concorde, about seventy-six feet high. It was given to the
French king in 1831 by Mehemet Ali. He had offered the pair
at Alexandria, in 1821, to England and France. An officer sent

728 OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. [Mar.,

out by the English government had reported that the expense
would be too great, owing to the shallowness of the harbor.
The younger Champollion, when travelling in Egypt, made up his
mind that the pair at Luxor (Thebes) were the best for France
to have, and it was owing to him that the French government
asked Mehemet Ali for them. They were given, but only one
was taken, the smaller of the two. The engineer was Le Bas.
The obelisk at Aries, though dating from antiquity, is not Egyptian.

In England, besides four small obelisks, there is the large one
on the Thames Embankment in London, presented by the ex-
Khedive Ismail Pasha in 1877. The gift was an old one, for, as
already said, it had been made in 1821. At intervals three unsuc-
cessful attempts were made to raise the money in England to
defray the expense of its costly passage. Finally, in 1876, SirJ.
E. Alexander made an appeal. It was answered, not by Parlia-
ment, nor by peer, nor by capitalist, but by a surgeon, Professor
Erasmus Wilson, with 10,000, for which sum the transportation
was undertaken by Mr. John Dixon, a civil engineer. The obe-
lisk, the fellow of our New York monolith, had long lain prostrate
on the shore across a small ravine, where it was used as a bridge
by man and beast. Mr. Dixon encased it, as it lay on the sand,
in the vessel in which it was to sail by surrounding it with iron
plates. The cylinder thus formed was by various additions
turned into a ship and taken in tow in the latter part of 1877 by
a steamer. In the Bay of Biscay the two parted company in a
storm, and this delay and a lawsuit for salvage cost Mr. Dixon
5,000 more than the 10,000 for which he had bargained. It
arrived in London, 1878, January 21, and was set up on the
Thames Embankment September 13, 1878. Its height is about
sixty-eight feet. The cross-section is not quite square nor the
tapering uniform. Like its fellow in " New York, the sea-air of
Alexandria had injured some of its sides and inscriptions. The
weight is nearly two hundred tons.

The experience of the London obelisk with its weatherproof
glaze will be interesting to us who now possess an obelisk of our
own. According to the Scientific American, June 21, 1879, tne be-
lisk, already much weatherworn in Egypt, had suffered on its pas-
sage to London still further damage to its surface, and future in-
jury was expected from the sulphurous acid poured into the air
by the sea-coal fires. After cleansing, all the faces were coated
with a silicious wash ; and now the warm hue shines out, the
.quartz and feldspar glitter, and the deep-cut hieroglyphs have
returned to their ancient sharpness.

1 88 1.] OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. 729

These measurements, except that of the New York obelisk, are
taken from J. H. Parker's The Twelve Egyptian Obelisks in Rome,
Oxford and London, 1879, P* 4 O:

Luxor, ....
Karnak (Thothmes I.), .
Karnak (Hatasu), .
Crocodilopolis,
Heliopolis,

Ft. In. Ft. In.
82
93 6 or 90 6
108 10

43
68 2 or 65 6

St. John Lateran, '
St. Peter's,
Porta del Popolo,
Monte Citorio, >
Paris, .
London,
New York, .

Four .
highest,
in
Rome

Ft. In. Ft. In.
107 or 105 6
82 9
78 6

7 I 5

76 4

6* 5%
68 ii

Our New York obelisk, as already stated, was one of a pair with
the London obelisk, and was erected at Heliopolis (which is not far
below the apex of the Delta), before the temple of Turn, the Sun,
by Thothmes III. (eighteenth dynasty, about 1600 or 1500 B.C.)
The pair was removed to Alexandria in the reign of Augustus, 22
B.C. From the time they became known to European travellers of
modern times one had remained standing on the beach of Alex-
andria, the other was fallen, and they were known by the tradi-
tional name of " Cleopatra's Needles." An inscription, however,
discovered in 1877, shows that they were erected in Alexandria
eight years after the death of that Egyptian siren. Their Alex-
andrian engineer had supported the rounded corners of our obe-
lisk on metal rods, which for ornament's sake were made to
pass through the bodies of bronze crabs sixteen inches long,
twelve wide, eight thick. The two remaining crabs were dis-
covered, on excavating the base of the obelisk, by Mr. Dixon, the
engineer of the London obelisk, in 1877. The two crabs had one
claw left between them, and on the inner and outer sides of this
claw were Latin and Greek inscriptions, which fixed the date
of their erection at Alexandria and the name of the engineer.
What a pity that we have not the name of the first and Egyptian
engineer to write it in a line with the Roman and the American,
with Pontius and Gorringe !

The shaft of our obelisk bears two inscriptions, one by Thoth-
mes III., the other by Rameses II., of the nineteenth dynasty. Per-
haps Thothmes left the building in front of which the obelisks
stood unfinished, and Rameses may have completed his work.
The central line of each face belongs to Thothmes, the two
lateral lines to Rameses. The following translation was made
by Dr. S. Birch, of the British Museum, in 1880 :

Central line (Thothmes). " The Horus, the powerful bull,
crowned in Western Thebes, the lord of diadems, whose king-
dom is as extensive as the Sun's in heaven. Turn, the lord of
Heliopolis, the son of his race, he has caused him to be born Tahu-

730 OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. [Mar.,

times [Thothmes III.] They [the gods] made him a great abode
in their own beauty, knowing what should be, that he should
make his dominion extend as the Sun for ages, the king of Upper
and Lower Egypt, Men-kheper-ra [Thothmes III.], beloved of Turn,
the great god, and his circle of the gods, giver of all life, stability,
and power like the Sun for ever.''

Right line (Rameses). " The Horus, the powerful bull, beloved
of Ra, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Usermara, approved of
the Sun, the Sun produced by the gods, holding the two countries,
son of the Sun, Ramessu [II.], beloved of Amen, the beautiful
youth much beloved, like the disk of the Sun gleaming from the
horizon, lord of the two countries Usermara, approved of the Sun,
Ramessu [II.] beloved of Amen, glory of Turn, giver of life."

Left line (Rameses). " The Horus, the powerful bull, son of
Kheper [a form of Ra], the king of Upper and Lower Egypt,
Usermara, approved of the Sun, the golden hawk, rich in years,
greatest of the powerful, son of the Sun, Ramessu [II.], beloved
of Amen, he has proceeded from the body [of the Sun] to take
the diadems, to be the sole lord, the lord of the two countries,
Usermara, approved of the Sun, glory of Turn like the Sun."

In this inscription, as in the others, the last words of each line
read, " Giver of eternal life like the Sun." There are two hori-
zontal lines at the base, titles of Rameses II. This side has, in
smaller characters, " King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Kherp-
kheper-ra, approved of the Sun, son of the Sun, Uasarkan [I.]/'
or else of Seti II. At least so I restore it.

Central line (Thothmes)." The Horus, rejoicing in the crown of
Upper and Lower Egypt, Men-kheper-ra the golden hawk, delight-
ing in power, striker of the rulers of foreign lands, taking them, as
his father Ra [the Sun] has ordered him power over all lands, his
scimitar victorious by the power of his hands, enlarging the fron-
tiers of Egypt, son of the Sun, Thothmes [III.], giver of life, like
the Sun, lord immortal."

Left line (Rameses). " The Horus, the mighty bull, beloved of
Truth, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, lord of festivals of
thirty years, like his father Ptah Tatanen, son of the Sun, Ra-
messu [II.], beloved of Amen, the Sun produced him to make
festivals in Annu [the Heliopolis], to supply the temples, he pro-
duced him lord of the two countries Usermara, son of the Sun,
Ramessu [II.], beloved of Amen, all health and life, like the Sun.''

Right line (Rameses). " The mighty bull, son of Tatanen, the
king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Usermara, approved of the Sun,
the lord of diadems, ruler of Egypt, chastiser of foreign lands,

1 88 1.] OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. 731

son of the Sun, Ramessu [II.], beloved of Amen, the monarch
victorious by his hands in every land, taking the whole of every
land, the lord of two countries, the son of the Son, Ramessu [II.],
beloved of Amen, life, health, and strength like the Sun."

There is on this side : " Kherp-kheper-ra, approved of the Sun,
son of the Sun, Uasarkan [I.]"

Central line (Thothmes). " The Horus, the mighty bull,
crowned in the Thebaid, has adorned the house of the Sun [Ra],
embellishing with the beauties of the disk of the Sun Heliopolis,
done for the first time in . . ."

Left line (Rameses). " The Horus, the mighty bull, beloved of
Ra, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Usermara, approved of the
Sun, Sun-produced by the gods holding the world, Ramessu [II.],
beloved of Amen, beloved . . . never was done the like . . .
Heliopolis, he has set up his memorial before Atum, lord of two
countries, Usermara, approved of the Sun, son [of the Sun, Ra-
messu II., beloved of Amen], giver of life."

Right line (Rameses). " The Horus, the mighty bull, son of
Ra [the Sun], king of Upper and Lower Egypt, the golden hawk
rich in years, greatest of the powerful, son of the Sun, Ramessu
[II.], beloved of Amen . . . lord of the two countries, User-
mara, son of the Sun, Ramessu [II.], beloved of Amen, like the
Sun."

At the base two lines as before. There is the same prenomen
of Uasarkan I. at the base here. The fourth side is also much
mutilated.

Central line (Thothmes). " The Horus, the mighty bull, be-
loved of the Sun, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Men-kheper-

Right line (Rameses). " The Horus, the mighty bull, beloved
of Truth, Usermara, lord of festivals of thirty years, like his fa-
ther Ptah, lord of Truth [or Tatanen], son of the Sun, Ramessu
[II.], beloved of Amen, god of gods, star of the two worlds at ...
Sun . . . house ... in what is done lord of the two worlds,
Usermara, approved of the Sun, son of the Sun, Ramessu [II.],
beloved of Amen."

Left line (Rameses). Almost wholly illegible. " [. . . User-
ma]ra approved of the Sun, ... all ... son of the Sun, Ra-
messu . . . beloved of Amen, . . . lord of the two countries
[Usermara approved of the Sun, son of the Sun, Ramessu II.,
beloved of Amen], like the Sun."

Round the base two lines with titles of Rameses II., as before.

So far Dr. Birch. The Pharaoh was the son of Ra the

732 OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. [Mar.,

Sun, and of the gods Amen and Ptah, other manifestations of the
Sun-God. He calls himself, therefore, Horus, who was God the
Son, in one of the Egyptian trinities.

When Lieutenant-Commander Gorringe laid bare the founda-
tion of the obelisk he found that the pedestal stood on a substruc-
ture of three low, square stages making three steps. These steps
rose from a tessellated marble pavement of white and blue tiles.
Underneath the steps was an underground foundation of rough,
irregular stones not laid in mortar, in shape a cubical block with
a side of about sixteen feet. The structure above ground was
about eighty feet high. The heights of its members, roughly
given, are : obelisk sixty-nine feet, pedestal seven feet, each of the
steps one and one-half feet. The pedestal projected beyond the
base of the obelisk about half a foot, and each step was about one
and one-half feet wide. The lower step was about eighteen feet
square. The exact dimensions of the shaft, converted into feet by
Dr. Weisse from the metres of Zola,* are: height, sixty-eight
feet eleven inches. One pair of opposite faces is eight feet three
inches at bottom, five feet three inches and five feet four inches
at top ; the other pair is seven feet eight inches at bottom, five
feet, and four feet ten inches at top. The pedestal was strangely
irregular ; only one face was rectangular, and no two faces were
equal ; it was six feet ten inches high, and the horizontal edges
varied from eight feet seven inches to nine feet two inches.
While the shaft and pedestal were of Syene granite, the three
steps were a limestone, hard and whitish yellow. The lower step
was a square layer of eighteen stones. The two upper steps
were not two separate layers like the lower, but formed a single
two-stepped layer composed of six blocks surrounding a square
space in the middle, which space, extending through the two
upper steps, was plugged by three stones. Thus the two steps
were a single layer of nine stones. One of the three blocks in
the middle square compartment was not limestone but Syene
granite, and it filled the east angle of the compartment (the
angles of the obelisk and its foundations faced the four winds).
In the lower step two of the eighteen stones were Syene granite
and a third was an unusually white limestone. One granite
block had hewn out on its upper face a mason's (or carpenter's)
square. The granite block in the compartment of the two upper
steps, and the two in the lower step, with the white stone, are con-
sidered by Lieutenant-Commander Gorringe to be Masonic em-
blems, as also certain stones with curious markings in the under-

* Weisse, The Obelisk and Freemasonry.

i.] OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. 733

ground foundation. On a stone near the mason's square in the
lower step was an iron trowel imbedded in cement. The trowel,
the square, and certain mathematical figures on stones in the
underground foundation were evidently deposited as the marks
of the builder's calling. Whether Freemasonry of the present
day descends in a direct line from antiquity, and whether the
builders of the obelisk's foundation were members of the sup-
posed brotherhood, is another question.

In 1877 Mr. W. H. Hurlbert, the editor of the New York
World, who had made the acquaintance of the Khedive of Egypt,
was informed that Ismail Pasha would be glad to give to the
city of New York the fellow of the London obelisk. It was
through the eloquence of Mr. Hurlbert that a generous and high-
minded New-Yorker, who withholds his name, gave 15,000, the
sum named as adequate by Mr. Dixon, who was then engaged as
the contracting engineer. Meanwhile the Secretary of State, Mr.
Evarts, had been petitioned to convey to the Khedive a request for
the gift of Cleopatra's Needle. The request was negotiated by the
American consul-general, Mr. Farman. Political troubles in Egypt
and other causes delayed the ratification, but finally, in May, 1879,
the original offer was converted into a gift by the new Khedive,
Mohammed Tewfik. Mr. Dixon now declined to take the risk
for 15,000, for the accident in the Bay of Biscay had cost him
dear. Here the man of the occasion presented himself. Mr. H.
H. Gorringe, an American citizen and naval officer of West In-
dian birth, returned from a cruise in the Mediterranean, where
he had studied the question and made up his mind as to the
methods of removal. The result was that Mr. Evarts informed
Mr. Hurlbert that Lieutenant-Commander Gorringe was the

n for the work.

The obelisk was first encased in oak planking to protect the
surface. The process of laying it on the ground consisted of two
parts first to revolve it vertically on its centre of gravity into a
horizontal position, then to lower it, always maintaining the hori-
zontal position. To revolve the mighty shaft two huge trun-
nions were clamped on two sides at the centre of gravity, and
the trunnions supported on two great iron scaffolds. Finally
the shaft was guyed at top from four points to keep it steady
throughout the operation. Before beginning the revolution the
obelisk was slightly raised vertically to enable its base to clear
the pedestal, and this was done by " right and left thread turn-
buckles " connected with rods inserted into the bottom of the
trunnions. This machinery was made in New Jersey after Lieu-

734 OBELISKS, AND THE NEW YORK OBELISK. [Mar.,

tenant- Commander Gorringe's own designs, and was landed at
Alexandria about November I, 1879. On December 6 the obe-
lisk was raised so as to clear the pedestal ; then, pedestal and steps
removed, it was revolved on its trunnions till it hung horizon-
tally high in air. In order to lower it to the ground a pile of
beams laid crosswise was built up under each end as the new
machinery to take the place of that which had done the revolving.
The obelisk was slowly lowered by taking from the top of each
pile in turn. The next step was to roll it on to the pontoon
which was to take it to the steamer, and then into the steamer's
hold. Resting in a cradle, it was rolled over cannon-balls in the
grooves of a track. The track was laid down for sixty feet in
front of the obelisk. The motion was effected by an engine wind-
ing a rope round a drum, the engine attached to the front of the
cradle, and thus pulling itself and its burden up to a point at
which the other end of the rope was fastened. The obelisk was
rolled from the pontoon through a hole in the side of the steamer,
made by detaching some of its iron plates. This steamer, the
Dessoug, was bought expressly to take the obelisk across the At-
lantic. The obelisk set out from its native shores on June 12,
1880, and arrived in New York on July 20. The Dessoug was
put into dry-dock on Staten Island, at Clifton, and on September
6 the obelisk was rolled out exactly as it had been rolled in.
After much waiting for good tides the pontoon, on September 16,
was towed to Ninety-sixth Street and North River, New York.
Its route to its resting-place in Central Park was through Ninety-
sixth Street, down the Boulevard, through Eighty-sixth Street
and its transverse road across the Park, down Fifth Avenue, then,
turning west at Eighty-second Street, to the site on a knoll near
the southeast corner of the lower reservoir, near the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. After leaving the shore at Ninety-sixth Street
the cannon-balls were replaced by frames containing rollers.
From the gate at Eighty-second Street and Fifth Avenue a
huge bridge of trestlework was built across the hillocks and hol-
lows of the Park to bring the obelisk by a uniform grade to the
level its centre of gravity was to occupy in revolving back upon
its pedestal. For this the same machinery used in Alexandria to
revolve it off of its pedestal had been shipped back to New York.
On October 9, 1880, while the obelisk was still near the Hudson
River, on Ninety-sixth Street, the corner-stone of the foundation
was laid, amid imposing ceremonies, by the Grand Master of
Masons in the State of New York. Each department of the fede-
ral government contributed to the documents and other me-

i88i.] A NEW IRISH POET. 735

mentoes deposited in the stone; thus, the Navy Department
sent medals commemorating 1 victories of the American navy,
the State Department a set of colonial charters and federal and
State constitutions. On January 22, 1881, " Cleopatra's Needle,"
some centuries older than Moses and the Hebrew nation, the
herald of the glories of Thothmes, the lord of diadems, the son of
the Sun, whose power reached from the rivers of India to the
isles of Greece, from the Caucasus to the equator in Africa this
mighty monolith was replaced on its ancient pedestal on the
Greywacke knoll in the Central Park of New York.

A NEW IRISH POET.

IT may be considered a self-evident paradox, in view of the
special reputation of Thomas Moore as the Irish bard, his skill in
the construction of smooth and intricate verse, and the absolute
possession which many of his songs have taken of Irish airs, so
that their original names are quite lost and they are only known
by the titles of the verse, that Irish music is not adequately inter-
preted in the Irish Melodies, not merely in sentiment but in rhythm
and sound. Yet those who are acquainted with ancient Irish mu-
ic in its original form, and not as trimmed and emasculated
for the drawing-room taste of the time by Sir John Stevenson,
r ho arranged the airs for Moore's songs, recognize that there is
a wildness and a depth of pathos all the more effective for its
irregularity, like the artless incongruities of early ballad poetry,
which is not interpreted in the set phrases and recurrent rhythms
of even the most successful and closely adapted of Moore's songs.
In this no reference is made to the lack of local color, native sen-
timent, and dialect, which is so conspicuous in the songs of Burns,
lor any attempt to deny to Moore the just praise for his art of
versification or the felicity with which he interpreted the senti-
icnts he felt. As the poet of the drawing-room he has had no
iperior, although the atmosphere and taste of that drawing-room
have changed since his time, so that both his wit and his pathos
have now something of the air of rococo. Neither is it any at-
tempt to disparage the reality of his feeling of nationality, the
patriotic spirit and manliness of tone in reference to the pro-
scribed patriots of his time, or the sincerity of his defence of the

736 A NEW IRISH POET. [Mar.,

ancient glories of Ireland and his vindication of her misfortunes.
That he went no farther than he did in reproducing the spirit of the
native poetry of Ireland in form and color, as Burns had done for
that of Scotland, was partly the fault of the literary taste of the
time, which was yet far from perceiving the value of absolute real-
ism ; partly that of his station, which, although he was a Catholic
in religion and a patriot in sentiment, was still more of the Eng-
lish colony than of the native race ; and partly also because there
was a prejudice against Irishism which did not exist against
Scotticism, in spite of the success of Miss Edgeworth's genre pic-
tures. Political and race animosity had not subsided sufficiently
to allow the Doric of Ireland to become attractive, like that of
Scotland, and the atmosphere of brogue and blunder associated
with the English caricature of Irish literature had its effect in
forcing a loftier and less natural treatment. But the literary as-
pect of Moore's songs is not the one to which we refer in their re-
lation to Irish music. Their artificial finish in versification, the
regularity and confinement of movement in mere rhythm, do not
fully interpret the wildness, the evanescent spirit, and the weird
pathos of some of the finest and most characteristic Irish airs. In
the fairy music the fairies have become the coryphees of the bal-
let, the banshees' wail has lost half its piercing wildness, and the
intoxicating rhapsody of mirth is subdued to refined and slightly
artificial merriment.

The failure of Samuel Lover is much more marked. He was
avowedly a follower of Moore, with less genius and skill. In his
serious songs he imitated the far-fetched fancies and epigramma-
tic sentiment of Moore with less felicity and a more obvious arti-
ficiality. His sentiment was that of the shabby-genteel rather
than the aristocratic drawing-room, and as that of Moore de-
scended to Thomas Haynes Bayly. The only style in which he
showed any originality, and which entitles him to be considered
at all as an Irish songster and interpreter of Irish music, is in his
attempts to reproduce the dialect and native humor of the peas-
antry in comic songs. They once were in great vogue because
there were no better, and it is to be said in favor of Lover that
he was almost the first to really give something like the peasant
poetry of Ireland in its humorous form, and that his songs drove
out the silly, witless, and coarse verses of English pot-house poets
like George Colman the younger, palmed off as representatives
of native Irish humor. But in spite of their greater approach to
naturalness, their taking melody, and their occasional touches of
genuine humor, " Rory O'More " and " The Low-backed Car " are

i88i.] A NEW IRISH POET. 737

but in degree better than " The Sprig of Shillelah " and " Looney
M'Twollir," which they succeeded. As a writer in the North
British Review observes, " Mr. Lover's songs are only imitation
emeralds cut in green glass."

Moore and Lover are the most conspicuous Irish song-writers
and interpreters of Irish music in English verse, but there are
others who in single instances have shown a rarer skill, or at
least a more genuine native spirit. Charles Wolfe, who is only
known as the author of " The Burial of Sir John Moore," but
who wrote several other lyrics, was the composer of a song to
that most beautiful and pathetic air of " Gramachree," " If I
had thought Thou couldst have died," which breathes the very
spirit of the music and, as the anecdote related of its composition
would evince, the genuineness of its inspiration. He was croon-
ing the air to himself until he was moved to tears, and composed
the song in the stress of imaginative pathos. Richard Milliken,
in the " Groves of Blarney," first touched the key of the grotesque
in Irish humor, and, not less in the happy extravagance of the
words than in the absolute felicity of the rhythm, created a song
immortal in its perfection of truthfulness and in its hold on the
world's ear. Perhaps a word should be said for the more artificial
and less easy " Bells of Shandon," by Francis Mahony " Father
Prout " which has taken a permanent place among Irish lyrics ;
but it is not essentially Irish, except in locality, and in particular
is not the interpretation of any Irish air. Before Lover the bril-
liant and erratic Dr. William Maginn, the original of Captain
Shandon in Pendcnnis, had written a series of Irish melodies in
burlesque of those of Moore, one or two of which represented the
convivial side of Irish humor with a great deal of spirit ; but in
his songs, as in the songs scattered through Charles Lever's ear-
lier novels, there is a lack of finish and an air of haste and impro-
visation which mar their effect. Mention should be made of the
famous " Bumpers, Squire Jones," by Arthur Dawson, Baron of
the Exchequer, which is a very felicitous interpretation of the
melody of a capricious Irish planxty ; and " Molly Astore," by
the Right Hon. George Ogle, which, in spite of its old-fashioned
and conventional sentiment, has a lyric swing that gives it the
true singing quality. Gerald Griffin made several attempts at
the interpretation of Irish airs in words, notably in the yet unac-
complished feat of setting the very difficult and very tempting
" Eileen Aroon," known in the Scotch version as " Robin Adair ";,
but in spite of the elaboration there is but one that can be consid-
ered a success in ease and naturalness the little lyric entitled

VOL. xxxii. 47

738 A NEW IRISH POET. [Mar.,

" Gilla Machree." It is impossible to pass over the very vivid and
powerful " Soggarth Aroon," the poor peasant's address to his
priest, by John Banim, which was one of the first, as the strongest,
interpretations of the native sentiment of the people in their own
dialect. But it was not specially the interpretation of any Irish air,
and therefore a little out of the present line of consideration.
And the same may be said of the very beautiful, melodious, and
touching love-song, " Ailleen." The success of these pieces leaves
a great regret that Banim did not devote himself more to lyric
verse, and indicates that he might have been one of the most pow-
erful and indigenous of Irish poets.

The efflorescence of poetry that accompanied the outburst of
national sentiment in the body of enthusiastic and talented young
men known as the Young Ireland party, and which included such
genuine poets as Thomas Davis, James Clarence Mangan, Denis
Florence McCarthy, and others, was very remarkable. It filled the
Nation newspaper with a great quantity of fervid and impassioned
verse devoted to the past glories of Ireland and to aspirations for
its future, in which, in spite of a great deal of extravagant rhetoric
and youthful crudeness, there was a genuine fire and inspiration,
and which was marked by, among others, such stirring ballads as
" The Sack of Baltimore " and " Fontenoy," by Davis ; such a
noble ode as " Soul and Country," by Mangan ; and such an im-
passioned lyric as " Who fears to speak of Ninety- Eight ? " by
the present Professor John P. Ingram. The poetry of this period
was intensely national in one sense, and went very much farther
than that of Moore in its interpretation of Celtic and national
feeling ; but, in spite of the frequent use of phrases and epithets
from the Irish language, it was not, in dialect or expression, the
voice of the native Irish people. It was the interpretation of the
highly-wrought visions of the young men, of what they imagined
Ireland had been and should be, and, although so national in
spirit, was in form adapted for the criterion of English criticism.
Many of the lyrics were adapted to Irish airs, but there were
few which owed their inspiration to them or adequately inter-
preted their spirit. The melody of Mangan's verse when it was
finished, and not, as too often the case, distressingly rude and
forced, was of remarkable quality, but it was essentially rhetori-
cal rather than musical, and artificial in its accomplishment of
difficult feats of rhythm after the fashion of Poe. Davis was
rather a ballad-writer than a lyric poet, and his measures were
more successful in that form, although exception might be made
in favor of the charming songs, " Mauri Bhan Astore " and " The

1 88 1.] A NEW IRISH POET. 739

Lost Path." The melody of McCarthy, although often successful
in dealing- with leonine and assonant metres, as particularly in
that exquisite lyric, " Waiting for the May," was also essentially
rhetorical rather than musical in the technical sense. There is
but one lyric of this school which is thoroughly an interpreta-
tion of an Irish air, and breathes the spirit, as it represents the
form, of its musical inspiration. It is entitled " Kate of Araglen,"
and was adapted to the beautiful, sweet, and eminently character-
istic Irish air of " An Cailin Rhue " the red-haired girl. Its au-
thor was Denny Lane, a native of Cork, who, I believe, is now
living.

One of the most genuine of Irish poets is William Allingham ;
and although not politically national in his spirit, after the fashion
of the Young Ireland poets, he is more thoroughly an interpreter
of national and peasant sentiment. He was the first to utilize the
germs of poetry in the peasant ballads, which, although greatly
inferior to the aboriginal Celtic poetry, from the fact that the
English language does not fully adapt itself to the genius of ex-
pression in the Irish peasant, in its themes and phraseology has a
natural pathos and humor and a turn of expression that reveal
the poetic gift of the Irish people. These Mr. Allingham has
studied, not to reproduce in archaic imitation or to embroider a
foreign stuff with native ornament by patching peasant phrases
on conventional language, but to recreate in form and spirit with
the power and pathos of original inspiration from themes of
peasant life. Two of Mr. Allingham's lyrics, " The Irish Girl's
Lamentation " and " Lovely Mary Donnelly," are among the
most perfect of the interpretations of peasant life in the whole
range of Irish poetry, and the latter is as spiritedly melodious as
it is natural and vivid.

That Sir Samuel Ferguson is a lyric poet of remarkable and
original power was made manifest by " The Forging of the An-
chor," whose happy boldness of epithet and felicity of measure
have given it possession of the world's ear. His other poems are
much less known than they deserve to be, for they display the
same original vigor of epithet and measure and the same native
glow of spirit. The greater part of his work has been devoted
not so much to the translation as the reproduction in spirit and
form of the ancient Irish poetry, epic and lyric, freed from the
redundancies and Oriental extravagance which sometimes make
its turn of thought almost as foreign as the language. In this he
has displayed a skill and versatility in measure, grave or gay,
admirably appropriate to his themes, and some of his reproduo

740 A NEW IRISH POET. [Mar.,

tions of Irish lyrics are remarkably felicitous simply as specimens
of melody. But his studies have been more in the ancient than
in the modern national life of Ireland, and, although thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of ancient Irish music, he has not set him-
self to interpret it as a song-writer in the technical sense.

It would be impossible to omit in a review of Irish song-writ-
ing the single charming poem of Lady Dufferin, " The Irish Emi-
grant," which is genuine, sweet, and touching, in spite of the
rather dangerous universality of its popularity and adoption by
drawing-room sentiment. But in this case the popular taste was
sound, and the sentiment is as genuine as it is simple. Its melody
is equally taking, although not essentially Irish in its characteris-
tic features. Other poems might, perhaps, be mentioned as suc-
cessfully representing phases of Irish sentiment and as adapted to
Irish music, but I believe that I have indicated the more salient
and characteristic features of Irish lyric poetry in relation to
Irish music.

For a few years past there have been appearing in the pages
of English periodicals, chiefly the Spectator, short lyric poems
on Irish subjects, which have attracted attention not only for
the felicity and novelty of their rhythmical measures, but for
their sweetness and grace of sentiment. Those familiar with Irish
music also at once recognized the source of their inspiration,
and how thoroughly, in many instances, they represented not
only the form and measure but the spirit and meaning of the airs.
It was as if the ancient Irish airs had once more received an arti-
culate speech in the English language to take the place of that
which we imagine they must have had when they interpreted
the feelings of their Celtic composers, who were almost invariably
poets as well as musicians. These songs have been collected in
two volumes and published as The Songs of Killarney and
Irish Songs and Ballads, by Alfred Perceval Graves. In the
preface to the latter volume Mr. Graves announces that the
songs derived their prime impulse and complete character from
the music of old Irish airs, and in their representations of native
sentiment from affectionate study of Irish peasant life in the
mountains of Kerry. In both respects they are admirable. The
soul of the airs is in the songs and the tender affection, fervid
gayety, and simple pathos of Irish peasant character in its most
engaging form, in a perfection that is not an imitative study of
dialect so much as an assimilation of thought and speech to the
actual feeling and expression of the people. There are degrees
of success to Mr. Graves' interpretation of Irish airs, or rather, it

1 88 1.] A NEW IRISH POET. 741

may be, to the strength and inspiration of the airs themselves,
some of them being slight and the difficulty of the lyric measure
almost incompatible with vigor of expression. But even in such
instances, when the fetters of rhythm would seem entirely too
cramping for free movement, he has often succeeded in giving
strength with melody and an apparent freedom of flow, as if it
was spontaneous instead of the exercise of difficult art. The
words appear to obey the inspiration of the music rather than to
have been cut and trimmed to its measure, and in meaning they
are the reproduction of the inspiration and spirit of the air, in no
instance with a change in the character or the interpolation of
foreign sentiment, as was so frequently made by Moore. Mr.
Graves' songs are as thoroughly Irish as those of Burns are
Scotch.

One of the most original and at the same time characteristic
Irish airs is " The Foggy Dew," which in its title is emblematic
of the characteristics of Irish scenery and of the inspiration of na-
ture in giving color to national genius. It is neither sad nor gay,
but the indefinable blending of the two, so common in Irish music,
in which, however, it may be said that the undercurrent is melan-
choly and the final impression that of softened pathos. It is like
an Irish landscape, softly green and "lit with a mellow light, but
bathed in a faint mist and dark in its shadows, with the impress
of melancholy even in its softly radiant glow. In " The Foggy
Dew " the alternations in feeling, without change in measure, are
like those from the chasing shadow and sunlight from the chang-
ing sky over the green fields. How faithfully this is interpreted
in Mr. Graves' verse can hardly be fully appreciated without a
knowledge of the music, but the air can almost be reproduced
from the words :

THE FOGGY DEW.

Oh ! a wan cloud was drawn

O'er the dim, weeping dawn
As to Shannon's side I returned at last ;

And the heart in my breast

For the girl I loved best
Was beating ah ! beating how loud and fast ;

While the doubts and the fears

Of the long, waiting years
Seemed mingling their voices with the moaning flood,

Till full in my path,

Like a wild water-wraith,
My true love's shadow lamenting stood.

742 A NEW IRISH POET. [Mar.,

But the sudden sun kissed

The cold, cruel mist
Into dancing showers of diamond dew ;

The dark, flowing stream

Laughed back to his beam,
And the lark soared singing aloft in the dew ;

While no phantom of night

But a form of delight
Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy,

And the girl I love best

On my wild, throbbing breast
Hid her thousand treasures with a cry of joy.

If there is something of an air of unreality to this, and the
limitations of its confinement to the music are perceptible, its
grace and skill are equally so ; and while its interpretation of the
air is perfect, it has the true lyric " cry." Almost equally perfect
in melody and love-sweetness is

WHEN I ROSE IN THE MORNING.

When I rose in the morning,

My heart full of woe,
I implored all the song-birds

Why their mates on the bough
To their pleading gave heeding

While Kate still said " No."
But they made no kind answer

To a heart full of woe.

Till the woodquest at noon

From the forest below,
He taught me his secret,

So tender and low,
Of stealing fond feeling

With sweet notes of woe,
Coo-cooing so soft

Through the green, leafy row.

The long shadows fell,

And the sun he sank low,
And again I was pleading

In the mild evening glow :
" Ah ! Kitty, have pity."

Then how could she say " No "?
So for ever I'm free

From a heart full of woe.

Among the poems devoted to the interpretation of music is
the " Song of the Ghost/' to a very weird and touching air that

1 88 1.] A NEW IRISH POET> 743

has a breath of the supernatural as though of the banshees' wail.
In the notes it is said to be founded upon a Celtic fragment in
which the maiden promises a golden comb to her cock if he will
not crow to summon away the ghost of her lover. It bears close
resemblance to a similar expression in one of Allan Cunningham's
poems, which he doubtless borrowed from the native original :

" I'll make ye a kame o' the beaten gold,"

although in the Scotch song the visitor was of earthly mould ; and
perhaps the greater refinement of Irish native poetry cannot be
better illustrated than by the difference. There is a temptation
to give " Tis Pretty to be in Ballinderry " and " The Blue, Blue
Smoke," a very beautiful and picturesque as well as tender and
affectionate lyric ; but " Kitty Bhan," or " Fair Kate," must con-
clude the specimens specially interpretative of music :

KITTY BHAN.

Before the first ray of blushing day

Who should come by but Kitty bhan,
With her cheeks like the rose on a bed of snows

And her bosom beneath like the sailing swan.

I looked and looked till my heart was gone.

With the foot of a fawn she crossed the lawn,

Half confiding and half in fear ;
And her eyes of blue they thrilled me through

One blessed minute, then like the deer ^

Away she darted and left me here.

Oh ! sure you are late at your golden gate,
For you've nothing to show beneath the sky

To compare to this lass, who crossed the grass
Of the shamrock field e'er the dew was dry,
And the glance that she gave me as she went by.

In the imagery of this as in other poems Mr. Graves uses the
)hrases of compliment in early Irish poetry, as universally ap-
plied as some of the epithets and comparisons in Scotch and Eng-
lish ballad poetry, and which had their origin in the distinctive
features of Irish beauty or natural objects : the breast of the swan,
the step of the fawn, the cheek like the hawthorn-berry in the
snow, the shape like the branch of bloom the bough of apple-
blossoms and otners, which show how vivid and imperishable
are the images of beauty founded on truth to immediate nature.

744 A NEW IRISH POET. [Mar.,

Mr. Graves' dialect poems include a wide range of themes,
from the songs of rustic gallantry to the darker episodes of pea-
sant life, the chants of craft and labor, and incidents of life in the
field and on the bay. Their realism is perfect not only in dialect
but in turn of thought, which is as eminently original in the Irish
peasant as his language. " Father O'Flynn " represents the affec-
tionate regard for the parish priest in his lighter aspects, when
he is the light as well as the honor of the humble festival or wed-
ding, and his jocosities have a double effulgence from the delight
at his condescension and familiarity. It is the counterpart to
Banim's " Soggarth Aroon," which is the deeper tribute to the
priest as the minister in suffering and the consoler of wretched-
ness. The measure has the very lilt of affectionate joyousness :

" Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety
Far renowned for learnin' and piety ;
Still I'd advance ye without impropriety

Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.

Chorus Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
Slainte and slainte and slainte agin ;
Powerful lest preacher, and
Tenderest teacher, and
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal."

" Fan Fitzgerl " has the genuine touch of lightness and ab-
surdity of compliment, mingled with the allusions to the heathen
gods and goddesses which are so common in Irish peasant po-
etry from the traditional learning of the hedge-schoolmaster,
while they are brought in without the self-consciousness and la-
bored accuracy of allusion in Lover's attempts in the same line,
which showed that he himself shared the pedantry he was ridi-
culing. No one who is familiar with Irish peasant poetry can
fail to recognize the felicity of " Fan Fitzgerl ":

" Wirra, wirra ! ologone !

Can't ye lave a lad alone
Till he's proved there's no tradition left of any other girl

Not even Trojan Helen,

In beauty all excellin'
Who's been up to half the divlement of Fan Fitzgerl ?

" I might inform ye further

Of her bosom's snowy murther,
And an ankle ambuscadin' through her gown's delightful whirl ;

But what need when all the village *

Have forsook its peaceful tillage,
And flown to war and pillage, all for Fan Fitzgerl ? "

8 1.] A NEW IRISH POET. 745

" Bat of the Bridge " is the story, told with graphic natural-
ness, of the fine " able " man who was knocked on the head in a
scrimmage at the bridge, and has ever after haunted it as an idiot
with his stick, so that none of the opposing faction dare to cross
it. There is a song of the turf-cutters, the herring-fishers, the
smith's hammermen, the recurrent colloquy of maidens about
the qualities of their lovers, a very powerful picture of the rustic
witch, and other reproductions of peasant life. " The Wreck of
the Aideen " is the pathetic lamentation and farewell of the dying
fisherman to his boat ; but perhaps " The Black '46," a reminis-
cence of the famine year, will best indicate the strength as well
as the naturalness of Mr. Graves' pictures. It is the counterpart,
in rustic expression, to Aubrey de Vere's noble and mystical odes
on the Year of Famine :

THE BLACK '46.

Out away across the river

Where the purple mountains meet,
There's as green a wood as ever

Fenced you in from flamin' heat ;
And opposite, up the mountain,

Seven ancient cells you'll see,
And, below, a holy fountain

Sheltered by a sacred tree ;
While between, across the tillage,

The boreens, full up wid broom,
Draw ye down into a village

All in ruin on the coom ;
For the most heart-breakin' story

Of the fearful famine year
On the silent wreck before ye

You may read charactered clear.
You are young, too young, for ever

To rec'llect the bitter blight,
How it crep' across the river

Unbeknownst beneath the night,
Till we woke up in the mornin'

And beheld our country's curse
Wave abroad its heavy warnin'

Like the white plumes of a hearse.

To our gardens heavy-hearted,

In that dreadful summer dawn,
Young and ould, away we started

Wid the basket and the slan.
But the heart within the bosom

Gave one leap of awful dread

746 A NEW IRISH POET. [Mar.,

At each darlin' pratie-blossom,

White and purple, lyin' dead.
Down we dug, but only scattered

Poisoned spuds along the slope,
Though each ridge in vain it flattered

Our poor hearts' revivin' hope.
But the desperate toil we'd double

On into the evenin' shades,
Till the earth, to share our trouble,

Shook beneath our groanin' spades ;
Till a mist across the meadows

From the graveyard rose and spread,
And 'twas rumored ghostly shadows,

Phantoms of our fathers dead,
Moved among us, wildly sharin'

In the women's sobs and sighs
And our stony, still despairin',

Till night covered up the skies.
Then we knew for bitter certain

That the vinom-breathin' cloud,
Closing still its cruel curtain,

Surely yet would be our shroud.
And the fearful sights did folly,

Och ! no voice could rightly tell
But that constant melancholy,

Murmur of the passin' bell,
Till to toll it none among us

Strong enough at last was found,
And a silence overhung us

Awfuller nor any sound.

Mr. Graves has sought to revivify the peasant poetry of Ire-
land, as Burns did that of Scotland, by taking the current songs
and fragments, and removing their defects and extravagances,
while preserving their beauties of expression and finishing their
themes where they were imperfect. But in quantity and quality
the Anglo-Irish poetry is much inferior to the Anglo-Scotch.
At the period most prolific in Scotch song the Jacobite the
spirit of the Irish nation was almost entirely crushed, and there
was not the real sympathy with the Jacobite cause to create any
such outburst of passionate loyalty. Again, at this period the
language of the peasantry was still the ancient Irish, and the re-
mains of native poetry are to be found in the scattered fragments
of Celtic verse. The street ballads and peasant poetry of a later
day, although here and there they have a flower of expression amid
the uncouthness of the diction, are mainly the product of the pro-
fessional singers, who are merely chroniclers in stereotyped verse

1 88 1.] SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. 747

as destitute of poetry as their cracked voices are of melody. Mr.
Graves has, however, found a few worthy of polish and finish,
among them " Shule Aroon " and " The Bonny Cuckoo," and, if
he continues his studies in this direction, he will find others
worthy of rescue from the broadsheet such, for instance, as
" The Brown Morn " and " The Colleen Bawn of Limerick."

As a whole, Mr. Graves' contribution to Irish poetry has been
the worthiest, as most indigenous, for many years, and we trust
will not only be welcomed in itself, but have the effect to call at-
tention to a neglected province of English literature which has
both an original flavor and a representative quality of great in-
terest.

SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND.*

IT is impossible to overestimate the influence which recent
scientific research has brought to bear upon philosophical
opinions, and the consequent changes these latter have under-
gone and are still undergoing. Positive science has overstepped
its limits in order to usurp the* place of authoritative teaching,
and none but Catholics now respect views which are not in com-
pete harmony with mere scientific speculations. Protestantism
is now, above all other times, reaping the harvest whose seed it
sowed when it set authority at defiance ; for the latest phase of in-
lividualism, in the shape of scientific materialism, the necessary
outcome of individual reason as applied to modern physiology,
has done away with the raison d'etre not only of Protestantism
mt of all religion. Why, indeed, need men wrangle any longer
>ver grace and sacraments and prayer, the chief instruments of
salvation, when men no longer believe they have souls to be
saved ? And that this disbelief is far more prevalent than dron-
ing preachers are prone to admit may be gathered from the num-
ber of volumes lately written by eminent men of science in which
it is openly professed and maintained. A Catholic cannot ac-
cept those conclusions, no matter how plausible the arguments by
which they are fortified, no matter how insidiously they may

* The Brain as an Organ of Mind. By H. Charlton Bastian, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., Professor
of Pathological Anatomy, etc., in University College, London. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
1880.

748 SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. [Mar.,

strive to creep in upon him under the insinuating garb of science.
Catholics, therefore, can alone consistently challenge these erro-
neous speculations and strive to winnow what may be called the
chaff of mere scientific opinion from the golden wheat of scienti-
fic truth.

The latest contribution to physiological materialism is from
the pen of Professor Bastian, of London, one of the most accom-
plished physiologists of the day. His book is replete with in-
struction, and he submits to his readers the most recent facts of
neurological science which intelligent and industrious researches
in Germany, France, and England have brought to light. With
these, however, we have no concern just now, but will consider
his attempt to modify the hitherto current views of the mind in
order to bring mind and recent neurological discoveries into
harmonious relation. This modification he undertakes to bring
about in the chapter entitled the " Scope of Mind," and he begins
by assuming the incorrectness of the view which holds to mind as
an entity distinct from the nervous structure. That this is a mere
assumption his own words will prove. He says at the very
opening of the chapter : " It is customary to speak of the ' mind '
as though it were a something having an actual independent ex-
istence an entity, that is, of spiritual or uncorporeal existence.
Consequently we find spread abroad in all directions definitions of
mind which, to say the least, carry with them implications of a
decidedly misleading character." This is all he says in refuta-
tion of what he calls a misleading conception of mind, and he pro-
ceeds at once to offer a substitute which will be more in har-
mony, he says, with the data of physiology. Now, it would seem
that when a scientific man rejects a wide-spread and cherished
belief he ought at least to consider a few of the arguments upon
which that belief rests arguments that date back to the remotest-
antiquity, and which were deemed of no small consequence by
every philosophical writer from Thales of Miletus down to the
compiler of the latest handbook on mental philosophy.

Dr. Bastian, together with all his ilk, evidently deems it a
work of supererogation to attempt the refutation of views which
are not in consonance with his own. The class of physiologists
who undertake the task of building up a new science of mind are
men who unfortunately have devoted their lives with untiring
zeal and ardor to the consideration of only one side of the ques-
tion, and that the narrowest. One would take it for granted that
the first step requisite in a logical endeavor to substitute a new
theory for an older one would be to point out the insufficiency

1 88 1.] SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. 749

of the latter, to prove that what Aristotle wrote concerning- the
faculties of the soul, what Plato wrote, and all that brilliant line
of thinkers running through mediasval times down to the seven-
teenth century, either was erroneous or is insufficient to meet the
demands which newly-discovered facts are making. Not so,
however; they brush the past aside with a contemptuous wave,
and give forth speculations which, as we hope to prove, cannot
stand the test of a logical scrutiny. The old-fashioned psycholo-
gist, for instance, desirous of knowing how modern materialism is
disposed to treat the arguments by which he was accustomed to
establish the incorporeal character of the mind, will look in vain
for an attempted refutation. He might say : " After all it is true
that, if consciousness is in the least trustworthy, it teaches us that
an idea is simple and indivisible, and can never, consequently,
be made commensurate with a millionth part of a nerve-cell. I
wonder what Dr. Bastian and Dr. Maudsley will say to this."
But his inquiry is bootless, for those free lances in mental science
deliver their blows only where they list, and not where their
force might be most keenly felt.

Dr. Bastian wishes to enlarge the meaning of the term mind
by including among mental phenomena those nerve-changes
which we know to accompany them, and he thus adroitly makes
mind a mere function of nerve-action. For if we must include
nerve-change among the phenomena of mind, we must make it
also cause thereof, since in that case it becomes the mental pre-
cursor of mental action. He is, therefore, a materialist of the
most pronounced sort, but he is loyally such and does not hesi-
tate to eliminate spirit as an impossible factor in his theory of
mind. He divides our sources of mental knowledge into subjec-
tive psychology, or consciousness supplemented by what we are
able to infer from the words or actions of our fellow-men and
lower animals (objective psychology), and what we are able to
learn as to the dependence of these subjective states on certain
bodily conditions of man and other animals. These being our
sources of psychical knowledge, according to Dr. Bastian, we
must, in estimating the data of consciousness, not view them
only in the light in which consciousness exhibits them, but also as
modified in their origin and character by previous nervous con-
ditions. If we were to lean implicitly and exclusively, he says,
upon the direct revelations of consciousness, we would inevitably
commit ourselves to a system of universal scepticism, needing, as
Hume proclaimed, a rejection of all grounds of certainty for our
belief in an external world, in body, and indeed in mind as

750 SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. [Mar.,

an entity leaving to each one of us a mere fleeting series of
conscious states as representatives of the totality of existence.
Hereby Dr. Bastian paves the way to his favorite opinion, that a
knowledge of nerve-change is essential to a knowledge of each
and every mental act, since the latter is the natural product of
the former. It is strange that the fallacy of this statement es-
caped so acute a mind. If consciousness be the product of nerve
operation, do we not depend upon consciousness for our know-
ledge of that same, and is not consciousness, therefore, in the last
analysis, the witness, not to the act, but to the character of the
nerve-operation? Every nerve-change is thus viewed by con-
sciousness as the parent of itself and the only witness to the
fact. But how can consciousness recognize the filial character
of its relation to nerve-change, since it is the only informant
upon whom we may call for testimony as to the truth of such al-
leged fact ? and surely the product cannot be witness to the char-
acter of production, for the character is inseparable from the act.
Dr. Bastian admits that the only available knowledge we possess
is identifiable with consciousness and cannot exist apart from it ;
and this admission fully justifies the strictures just made upon the
notion of nerve-change being cause of the consciousness, whilst
it is itself subsequently supposed to inform us of such causal rela-
tion. He says that all knowledge is but the expression and sum-
mation of our own conscious states ; and in saying this he di-
rectly belies the assertion that consciousness is but a tithe of
mental life. No matter how fragmentary consciousness may be,
how little connected with primary and secondary automatic ac-
tions, the fact remains incontestable that it accompanies our
knowledge of every fact, that it is the light in which we view
truths, and that consequently it lies back of every truth, and that,
as regards it, every demonstration of truth is a posteriori.

It is likely Dr. Bastian, apart from his educational bias as an
experimental physiologist, was led to take this view of the very
partial function of consciousness in the enactment of mental pro-
cesses by the teachings of John Stuart Mill. Mr. Mill says that
what consciousness reveals, together with what can be legitimate-
ly inferred from its revelations, compose by universal admission
all that we know of the mind, or, indeed, of any other thing. Mr,
Mill never clearly explained what he understood by the legiti-
mate inferences of consciousness, and certainly it would be diffi-
cult to divine what legitimate inferences we could reach inde-
pendently of consciousness ; they should be inferences of which
we were not conscious i.e., of which we possessed no knowledge

1 88 1.] SOME RECEN?^ VIEWS UPON MIND. 751

that we know of. Yet Dr. Bastian imagines he has found a philo-
sophical clue in Mill's " legitimate inferences of consciousness "
by virtue of which he finds it possible to ascribe a mental char-
acter to nerve-change as well as to consciousness.

Not only does Dr. Bastian thus arbitrarily extend the term
mind to occurrences with which the speech of men has hitherto
failed to connect it, but he leaves us completely in the shade as to
where he would draw the line between " mental phenomena"
and those events of animal life with which confessedly the mind
has nothing to do. The expression " nerve-action " is very elas-
tic and applies to every function of life, for no vital action is per-
formed without it ; and though digestion, for instance, may give
tone and color to mental action, while it undoubtedly implies ex-
penditure of nervous force, no one is inclined to number diges-
tion among the events of mental life. The complexity and varie-
ty of mental phenomena, together with their close dependence on
purely bodily conditions, render the task of drawing the line be-
tween physiological and psychological processes extremely diffi-
cult, and those who have been accustomed to note the interven-
tion of nerve-activity in physiological processes only are apt to
affirm a like relation of nervous power to purely mental acts.
We freely admit a closer relation between mental acts and ma-
terial changes in nerve-structure than between the same and
changes in the other tissues of the body, but we will not agree
that such closeness of relation is equivalent to the relation of
cause and effect. Dr. Bastian places the phenomena of magnet-
ism on the same plane as those of mind, but the very obvious
difference between the two sets of phenomena impels us to set
them down to very different agencies. And that very difference,
to some extent acknowledged by Dr. Bastian himself, inhibits the
notion that there can be anything causally in common between
the two. This reference is here consistently introduced for the
reason that Dr. Bastian deduces the similar character of magnet-
ism, heat, and motion, with mental exhibitions, from the assumed
premise that there is nothing more in the very highest reach of
mind than there is in the phenomena mentioned. We will there-
fore examine to what extent consciousness, which, according to
Dr. Bastian, characterizes at least one set of mental phenomena,
necessarily separates such phenomena from those of heat, motion,
or magnetism, and also, consequently, from all mere changes that
take place in nervous tissue.

Consciousness takes cognizance of what passes in the mind,
and both constitute what is called conscious thought. Conscious-

752 SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. [Mar.,

ness of thought is therefore distinct from thought, but only logi-
cally, for there can be no real distinction where one term of the
relation cannot exist without the other. Now, there can be no
thought without consciousness ; for we cannot see without light,
and the eyes, surely, are not that light, much less so are the ob-
jects seen.

But if we admit with Dr. Bastian that thought may exist apart
from consciousness, is it not evident that such thought must be
something very different from the thought of which we are con-
scious, since it is essential to this latter that we be conscious of
it ? It matters little whether we call certain conditions of which
we are not conscious thought; so long as the thought of which we
are conscious differs essentially from those conditions they may
both be as unlike to each other as any two things under the sun.
Dr. Bastian has fallen into the error of supposing that when he
bestowed the same term on two sets of phenomena, because of a
certain closeness of relationship between them, he thereby suc-
ceeded in identifying them. He has found that certain in-going
currents of nerve-force disturb the equilibrium of certain cerebral
nerve-cells, and that, consequent upon this disturbance, mental
activity is enkindled which ultimately finds its manifestation in
consciousness. This, indeed, may be true, it is a plausible hy-
pothesis, but it is as unphilosophical as it is illogical to refer
such mental activity, thus manifested, to the changes that take
place in the nerve-tissue in the same manner as we refer func-
tion to an organic cause. So long as it is possible to find an-
other explanation of this sequence of events the mere assertion
that thought represents the functional activity of nerve-cells, be-
cause it accompanies certain changes in these latter, is entirely de-
void of weight. Now, such an explanation is always at hand, and
even rendered plausible by the very admissions and discoveries
of physiology itself. Dr. Bastian contends that the conversion of
distinctly volitional actions into secondary automatic ones is the
result of registered impressions in the nerve-cells, by virtue of
which they become trained to guide and regulate those actions,
and gradually acquire a certain organized experience in directing
the muscles over which they preside to the performance of their
proper functions with ease, dexterity, and independently of atten-
tion. Dr. Bastian herein may be right, and there is nothing in
the doctrine that conflicts with the orthodox view of mind. But
when he insists that the emancipation of volitional acts from the
domain of the will, and their conversion into purely automatic
ones, is the result of those trained nerve-cells taking upon them-

1 88 1.] SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. 753

selves the complete and exclusive control of them, then he goes
a step farther than the facts in the premises warrant. The mind
in this case may be likened to one who turns a key in a rusty
lock : the first attempts are painful and laborious, but as the key
becomes better adjusted to its new function, as the rust of the
lock becomes worn away, the person who locks and unlocks finds
less and less difficulty in doing so, till at last, especially if the
lock has been oiled, the task becomes so easy that he does it with-
out thinking of what he is about. Now, should some ingenious
inquirer, to whom the person turning the key is an unknown fac-
tor, address himself to the task of discovering why it is that with
increased repetition of trial the process of locking has become
easier, he will find that a better adjustment between lock and key
has taken place, that the lock has acquired new and permanent
relations towards the key, and that there exists a purposive adap-
tation of all the parts, by virtue of w r hich the process of opening
and locking has become easier. Should now the conclusion be
jumped at that the lock and key have, in consequence of this new
adjustment and permanently changed conditions, taken upon
themselves complete control of the door in respect to opening
and closing, would it not be rash and premature? The real
source of action, the person who turns the key has been over-
looked, because he does not reveal himself to the senses. In like
manner the physiologist who finds that nerve-cells, answering to
certain currents of nerve-force, acquire a facility in determining
muscular action, concludes too hastily when he says that such
acquired facility devolves' the whole action on the nerves. In
this way may be accounted for the painfully conscious character
of unaccustomed actions. The mind, in determining through the
will certain muscular actions of an unusual sort, depends for
the purpose on nerve-centres whose fitness it has not hitherto
tested ; it labors hard to secure the proper adjustment and co-
operation of co-ordinate nerve-centres, till, in consequence of such
efforts, those undergo certain organic changes which fit them
more and more for their function, and at last the mind has little
or no effort to make in calling them into action. Because, as Pro-
fessor Bain says, " Of mind we have no direct experience, and ab-
solutely no knowledge," it by no means follows that mind may
not exist apart from body, any more than the person who opens-
and locks a door may not exist apart from such relation, because
he has never been seen. Dr. Bastian finds himself as little
in position to account for the manner in which consciousness
arises from cell-action as the psychologist to determine in what

VOL. XXXII. 48

754 SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. [Mar.,

manner spirit acts upon matter. The latter admits the mysteri-
ous and incomprehensible character of the nexus which unites
substances that have so little in common between them, but he is
no more in the dark than the physiologist when he finds himself
confronted by the problem of tracing out the relationship be-
tween changes in nerve-tissue and consequent consciousness. He
says that the objection advanced against grouping conscious and
unconscious conditions under one head " is based upon our igno-
rance as to the exact genetic relation existing between subjective
states and the bodily conditions (or nervous actions) on which they
seem to depend." So long as the physiologist cannot bridge this
mysterious chasm he has no right to classify conscious and uncon-
scious phenomena together. The attempt to do so is an assump-
tion of their radical identity an assumption that is entirely in-
compatible with the admission that we have no knowledge of
the exact genetic relation between subjective states and the
bodily conditions on which they seem to depend. In view of
such professed ignorance it is strange that Dr. Bastian should
not hesitate to write as follows :

" It is, indeed, certain that multitudes of nerve-actions having no sub-
jective side (i.e., which are unaccompanied by phases of consciousness)
form links or integral parts of our momentarily occurring mental states,
and that such mere objective phenomena powerfully assist in determining
our so-called mental states. Nay, more, it seems almost certain that the
greater part of our intellectual action proper (i.e., cognition and thought as
opposed to sensation) consists of mere nerve-actions with which no conscious
states are associated."

The former sentence, taken by itself, might be admitted as
true ; but, judged in the light of the concluding words of the
second sentence, it is false and misleading. It may be true, in-
deed, and we avow the facts point to such truth, that mental
states (of course we mean conscious ones) are influenced by pre-
vious nervous conditions ; but how illogical it is to infer with Dr.
Bastian that therefore " cognition and thought consists of mere
nerve-action with which no conscious states are associated " !
What sort of knowledge can that be of which we are not con-
scious ? Do not the terms unconscious cognition imply a contra-
diction ? Much has been said by scientific writers of the unrea-
sonableness of those who differ with them in their views, but for
such unreasonableness on their part out of their own mouths let
them be judged. Surely the world by which we mean the
average man and woman in it would stand aghast if told it actu-
ally knows more than it knows it does. We do not speak of for-

58 1.] SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. 755

tten knowledge, neither does Dr. Bastian, but of actual know-
ledge now possessed ; and we have no hesitation in saying that it
is supremely absurd to say that we are actually knowing and not
knowing that we know. All that Dr. Bastian has any warrant
in the facts for stating is that certain previous nervous conditions
may determine subsequent conscious states, and that a very close
relationship exists between the two; but his extreme desire to
identify them has led him to strain the truth and reason beyond
the premises.

The following sentence will furnish a specimen of such rea-
soning, while it will at the same time serve as an introduction to
the consideration of so-called unconscious cerebration, on which
materialistic physiologists mainly rely for their conclusions :
"We are frequently conscious," writes Dr. Bastian, "of the
first term of some process of thought, and we become aware of
the last, whilst those which intervene, numerous though they may be,
do not in the least reveal themselves in consciousness'' Now, those
words which we have italicized are an open begging of the ques-
tion. How do we know that processes of thought intervene,
especially since they do not reveal themselves in consciousness ?
And if, as is evidently meant by Dr. Bastian, nerve-changes do
occur between the first and last term of some process of thought,
on what grounds can these be called processes of thought ? The
facts of unconscious cerebration, to which Dr. Bastian appeals in
support of his view, certainly show that some nerve-changes do

tervene between processes of thought, but that is all they do

ow. We endeavor to recall a name or word, but to no pur-
; memory will not respond to the efforts of the will, and the
attempt is abandoned, when suddenly, and without any effort, the

ord presents itself to the mind. " Now, it is difficult," says Dr.

arpenter, " if not impossible, to account for this fact upon any
other supposition than that a certain train of action has been set
going in the cerebrum by the voluntary exertion which we at
first made ; and that this train continues in movement after our
attention has been fixed upon some other object of thought, so
that it goes on to the evolution of its result, not only without
any continued exertion on our part, but also without our con-
sciousness of any continued activity." Impressed by this and
similar facts pointing to the close dependence of mental processes
upon nerve-function, Mr. Mill says : " If we admit (what physi-
ology is rendering more and more probable) that our mental
feelings as well as our sensations have for their physical ante-
cedents particular states of nerves, it may well be believed that

rjr

inter
shov
pose

756 SOME RECENT VIEWS UPON MIND. [Mar.,

the apparently suppressed links in a chain of association, those
which Sir William Hamilton considers as latent, are really so,
that they are not even momentarily felt ; the chain of causation
being continued only physically by one organic state of the
nerves succeeding another so rapidly that the state of mental con-
sciousness appropriate to each is not produced." In both these
extracts we have the facts of " unconscious cerebration " pithily
presented, and we accordingly have exhibited to us the grounds
upon which Dr. Bastian works for an identification of conscious
mental states with changes taking place in the nervous tissues.
The question pertinently arises, Are the facts of his unconscious
cerebration susceptible of a different explanation and one that is
in accord with the spiritual view of mind-function ? We hold that
they are ; and not only that, but that Dr. Bastian and his followers
run ahead of the facts in attempting to make conscious action the
sole and simple outcome of unconscious nerve-change. When
the mind endeavors to recall a forgotten name and fails to do so,
it finds itself out of sympathy with the nerve-cells concerned in
that special act of memory, and strives to establish a proper ad-
justment between itself and them. An agitation of the nerves
connected with the memorative process follows, and when the
mind ceases to advert to the matter a spontaneous adjustment
takes place in consequence of this continued agitation, and ere
the mind can fairly return to the search it stumbles over the re-
stored adjustment. Why not this explanation, one entirely har-
monizing with the facts of physiology and the admission of a sub-
stantive soul, as that other one, which can be admitted only by
supposing that coincidence of events is equivalent to similarity
of function ? Every fact of recent physiological discoveries may
be made to consist with the old psychological doctrine of a spi-
ritual agent united to the body and yet substantially distinct from
it, and modern science does itself an injustice when it attempts to
wrench the beautiful facts which it brings to light away from the
groove of their real significance, and make them subserve the ig-
noble purpose of reducing man to the level of the brute and rob-
bing him of that hope which alone makes life worth living, that
there is in him a divine spark in the light of which he reads those
words, Non omnis moriar.

i88i.] THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. 757

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY.

THE Crusades deserve particular attention for their influence
GUI the civilization of Europe. One of the consequences of these
religious wars was the introduction of heraldry, at least as an art,
which tournaments and the many knightly ceremonies of a feudal
age soon raised into a science. It was necessary to distinguish
by some outward sign the principal leaders of the expeditions to
the Holy Land, and their vassals also, consisting of troops from
twenty different nations, who could never otherwise have been
marshalled under the proper banners. The regulation of the
symbols whereby the sovereigns and lords of Europe should be
individually distinguished was a matter of great nicety, and was
properly entrusted to officers called heralds, who invented signs
of honor which could not be construed into offence, and made
general regulations for their display on the banners and shields
of the chiefs and their knights and followers. As most of the
learning of the age was confined to ecclesiastics, it is easily un-
derstood how the fanciful, mystical, and often legendary charac-
ter of these early examples of heraldry was always made by the
heralds to bear some religious sense or meaning. Indeed, herald-
ry was at first so intimately connected with morality and reli-
gion that to profess the true faith and be of legitimate birth were
essential conditions of being allowed to bear arms. These were
originally not refused by the heralds to any thus qualified who
were able to maintain a horse with furniture for the service of the
sovereign. These ornaments and regulations were, then, the
origin of the present system of heraldry, which, with trifling
variations due to the rise of families to estates and titles, not for
deeds of arms, but for wisdom in council, superior learning, or
successful trade, prevails throughout the whole of Europe.

Some of the most common charges still borne by ancient families
in their arms such as escalop-shells, bezants, martlets, stars, cres-
cents, alerions, water-bougets, Saracens' heads, palmers' staves, and
an almost infinite variety of crosses were assumed during the
Crusades by the knights themselves, or after their return, and were
transmitted in their families as memorials of the holy wars, attest-
ing the devotion of some ancestor to the Christian faith and ani-
mating his descendants to emulate his spirit. At least one-half of

758 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. [Mar.,

the charges of heraldry between -the twelfth and the fourteenth
century had a religious origin. Even the colors used had a deep
symbolical meaning ; thus, vert (green) was the color of hope ; azure
(blue) typified the sky, and hence the joys of heaven ; gules (red)
stood for the blood which the Christian warrior had shed for a
good cause ; argent (silver) represented the color of the placid sea
or the plains of Palestine and Egypt. Or (gold) was the color of
triumph and reward, while sable (black) symbolized mourning
and sorrow ; so that while the former color predominates in old
arms assumed about the time of the capture of famous cities and
the defeat of infidel armies, the latter is most frequent when an
expedition was unsuccessful or the Christian host had sustained
disaster. In course of time other derivative qualities were as-
cribed to the different colors. Thus, the renowned banner of the
Knights Templars, called by them Beauseant, was sable and argent,
or black above and white below, to denote that, while fierce to
their foes, they were gracious to their friends. Gule is a color
seldom found upon the arms of religious orders and ecclesiasti-
cal houses, because it is suggestive of war and bloodshed :

" Upon his surcoat valiant Neville bore
A silver saltire upon martial red."

DRAYTON'S Barons War, i. 22.

The virtues of Christian knights were symbolized also by certain
birds, beasts, and fishes, and by imaginary animals whose qualities
they sought to imitate. Hence Lord Lindsay (Sketches of Christian
Art, ii. 49), in noticing the emblematical character of certain mon-
sters as they appear in the porches of ancient churches and abbeys
and on the roofs and gargoyles of old cathedrals, alludes to their
ultimate adoption by the Italian states as crests, and also to their
retention to the present day, as the supporters of royal and noble
escutcheons, all over Europe. "Heraldry," he continues, "is, in
fact, the last remnant of ancient symbolism and a legitimate
branch of Christian art ; the griffins and unicorns, fesses and
chevrons, the very tinctures or colors, are all symbolical each
has its mystic meaning, singly and in combination ; and thus
every genuine old coat-of-arms preaches a lesson of chivalric
honor and Christian principle to those that inherit it truths little
suspected nowadays in our heralds' offices." The cross, as the
most sacred of the figures of heraldry, appears under many varie-
ties and modifications of form, some of them of great beauty. As
a charge it used to be commoner in coats-of-arms than any other
figure. Berry, in his comprehensive work on heraldry, gives

1AJ.V

i88i.] THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. 759

nearly two hundred examples, without giving all that might be
found, of the various kinds of crosses that appear in coats-of-arms.
During the wars for the recovery of the Holy Land the troops
of the different nations that joined in those expeditions displayed
crosses embroidered on their banners and painted on their shields,
while upon the military coat or mantle was sewed a cross com-
posed of two pieces of list or ribbon, either of cloth or silk, of
equal length originally red for all, but afterwards of other colors
also. From this circumstance these soldiers were called Crusaders.
Those of France attached their national emblem the fleur-de-lys
to the extremities of the cross ; hence was formed the cross flory.
Those from the Papal States placed transverse pieces on each
member of the cross, and thus formed it into four small crosses
springing from a common centre ; this was the cross-crosslet.
Some varieties of the heraldic cross are evidently derived from
very early originals in which the sacred symbol was more or less
skilfully disguised ; such is the tau cross (so called from the
Greek letter which composes it), made of an upright shaft and
two horizontal limbs only ; the cross potent rebated, which is no
other than the " crux gammata," formed by combining together
four capital Greek gammas. This mystical arrangement was
anciently called gammadion, and in Old English fylfot or fytfot.
Occasionally the small gamma was employed, which gave to
heraldry the popular cross moline, or anchor cross. A small cross,
sharp pointed at the foot, is the cross fitche'e^ and is a touching
memorial of the Crusaders and pilgrims, who used the point to fix
e cross in the ground, or into any convenient place, in order to
rform their devotions before it. It was thus a sort of mission-
ary's cross, and we find it used in their arms by the Scotch family
of McDonald (and its Irish branch, the McDonnells, Earls of An-
trim) to preserve the tradition that one of their ancestors, a great
Lord of the Isles, had conveyed St. Patrick over to Ireland when
he went there to convert the natives. The cross figures, under
one form or another, in the arms of some of the oldest and noblest
families in Europe, which are found in almost every case to have
been engaged in the Holy Wars. Such are the Howards in
England, the Bruces of Scotland, and the De Burghs, or Burkes,
in Ireland and elsewhere. In the olden times, when every person
of prominence bore heraldic arms, it was imagined that suitable
armorial devices should be assigned to men of mark in earlier
ages. Thus the arms of Edward the Confessor, which were long
regarded in England with peculiar reverence, although found
sculptured as early as the thirteenth century in Westminster

760 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. [Mar.,

Abbey, were devised long after his death. The shield is blue,
and the cross, surrounded by five little birds, is gold. When the
limbs of the cross are unequal in length, the lower one, or shaft,
being longer than the others, it is called a Latin cross. If placed
on steps it is called a cross of Calvary. These steps are called
"degrees,'* and are always three in number to represent the Theo-
logical Virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Such a cross figures
in the arms of the Emperor of Austria whose style is imperial
and apostolic majesty and was granted by Pope Sylvester II. to
his ancestor, St. Stephen, King of Hungary. When the Crusaders
had captured Jerusalem, and Godfrey de Bouillon been elected
king, special arms were granted to the new kingdom by Pope
Paschal II. : a silver shield charged with five golden crosses. As
it was already then an established rule of heraldry that metal
must not be placed on metal, nor color upon color, an exception,
which was very rare, was called " arms of inquiry," as there was
always some significant reason for a departure from the known
rules of the art. In this case it is commonly supposed that the
pope intended to give arms which should be unlike those of any
other potentate ; but mystical writers assert that the crosses were
meant to symbolize the five wounds of our Lord, and that the
peculiarity of the blazon bears allusion to Psalm Ixvii. 14, in
which the singers contemplate the return of a victorious army
and their peaceful enjoyment of their possessions : " When ye
sleep in the midst of your borders, ye shall be as a dove, whose
wings are covered with silver, and her pinions with flaming gold."

The peculiar character and object of the Crusades led to the
formation of those two celebrated military and religious orders
called Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, or Hospitalers (but after-
wards and now Knights of Malta), instituted about A.D. 1092, and
the Knights Templars, who were incorporated a few years later.
The arms of the former were a silver cross of eight points charged
upon a black shield. The points symbolize the Beatitudes. The
present Lord Torpichen perpetuates in his arms the heraldic
sacrilege of his ancestor, Sir James Sandilands, grand-prior of
the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem within Scotland, who, turn-
ing Protestant at the Reformation, got a peerage and the vast
possessions of his " preceptory," with the privilege of quartering
a crown and thistle the armorial insignia of this branch of the
order.

The pile, a figure resembling a long, thin wedge, which is
borne sometimes single, but oftener in a group of three conjoined
in point, and of the color red, is an heraldic memorial of the

1 88 1.] THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. 761

Passion, being originally intended to represent the sacred nails.
The escalop^ or escalop-shell, was a beautiful and favorite charge in
heraldry, being associated with the safe return of Crusaders and
pilgrims, who picked it up on the shore of Palestine. It was
held in such esteem that towards the middle of the thirteenth
century Pope Alexander IV. prohibited all but pilgrims who
were truly noble from assuming such shells as armorial ensigns.
The bouget, or water-0agfcf, is an ancient charge introduced into
heraldry during the holy wars. It represents the vessels, of skin
or of leathern bags one of which was swung at each end of a bar
which a man carried across his shoulder used by the Crusaders
for conveying water over the hot plains of the East, where wells
and reservoirs, besides being scarce, were often poisoned or filled
up by the enemy to retard the advance of the Christians, as Tasso
has described in the Gerusalemme Liber ata (cant. xiii. st. 58). Ale'-
rions, or eagles represented without either legs or beaks, were
carried by returning Crusaders as marks of wounds received in
battle ; while the martlet, which was always represented at rest,
with its wings closed arid without feet, was an emblem of the
Crusader or pilgrim safely returned from the Holy Land, which
he had reached by sea, as it were like a bird confined in a cage
and using neither its feet nor wings to voyage. The bezant, or
golden roundel, in old arms, representing the Byzantine coin or
money of Constantinople, brought back with them from the East
by the Crusaders (two or three, perhaps, being kept as souvenirs
out of the sum required for their ransom), although comparative-
ly rare in English and Scottish heraldry, is quite common in Italy,
as might be expected from the more commercial spirit of the
Venetian and Genoese nobles, who took so great a part in all the
Crusades. The star, which is generally called a mullet in herald-
ry, was a favorite figure in the arms of the Crusaders. When
several stars are introduced in an ancient shield the idea sug-
gested was that of divine guidance to Crusaders and pilgrims,
" which carried them over through a great water . . . and con-
ducted them in a wonderful way . . . and was to them for the
light of stars by night " (Wisdom x.) The pelican was always a
charge of sacred significance, and figures as a crest or in the
shield itself of many noble families. She was represented in two
different ways. One was alone and wounding herself in the breast
with her beak, when she was blazoned " vulning," and was an
emblem of Christ the Redeemer, who died that we might live.
The other manner of representing her was in a nest and feeding
her young with her blood, which dropped out of the wound made

762 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. [Mar.,

by her own beak in her breast. She is then blazoned "In her
piety," and is a special emblem of the Real Presence of our Lord
in the Blessed Eucharist.

Human figures winged, and vested in dalmatics, and designed
to represent angels, are occasionally introduced into heraldry,
their office being to act as supporters to armorial shields. " The
introduction of angelic figures," says Boutell, "which might
have the appearance of acting as ' guardian angels ' in their care
of shields of arms, was in accordance with the feeling of the early
days of English heraldry" (p. 247)."*

Keys are rare in the arms of old families, and generally sym-
bolize either the capture of some Moorish or Saracenic castle
or some close connection with the Holy See. Instances of the
former reason are comparatively common in Spanish heraldry, as
might be expected, since the existence of Spain for eight hundred
years had been one long crusade ; and a glorious example of the
latter and rarer use of keys is found in the arms of the still
flourishing house of Clermont-Tonnerre in France, one of whose
ancestors, for having driven out of Rome an anti-pope and re-es-
tablished the authority of Calixtus II., A.D. 1119, received from
the pontiff the privilege of substituting for his paternal coat St.
Peter's keys argent on a field gules, with the loyal motto, Si
omnes, ego non, from Matt. xxvi. 33.

The sword appears earlier as a spiritual emblem in heraldry
than in its military capacity, and is then always suggestive of St.
Paul the apostle, as in the arms of the city of London, of which
he was the special patron. The see of Chichester has for arms a
venerable man seated on an altar, his head surrounded by a nim-
bus, an open book in his hand (" the Word of God"), and a
sword in his mouth ; and it is a remarkable instance of bigotry
that Protestant heralds blazon these arms a Prester-John sitting on
a tombstone, thus putting an imaginary prince out of the depths of
Asia in the place of our Blessed Lord as described in the Apoca-
lypse, i. 1 6 : " And out of his mouth a sharp two-edged sword
came."

We may here observe that most nations are distinguished by
certain heraldic peculiarities, and a country's history, in all its
vicissitudes of war and peace, and, alas ! even of religious change,
is symbolized in the armorial bearings of the nobility and gentry,

*On a seal of Robert II. (1386) the arms of Scotland are supported from behind by a human
skeleton " the paths of glory lead but to the grave" ; which reminds us of St. Philip Neri, who,
after being offered many eminent ecclesiastical dignities, used to keep " the inevitable hour "
before his eyes by having two cardinals' coats-of-arms hung up in his cell, with a death's head
painted in the centre of each.

1 88 1.] THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. 763

if studied in a chronological order. Certain figures, for instance,
have entirely disappeared and others have changed their meaning
since the Crusades, and much more since the Reformation.

Knowing how inseparably the Catholic faith is bound up
with the institutions, the independence, and the glory of Spain,
we are not surprised that religious symbols and devices abound
in Spanish heraldry, and that even those which per se are of a san-
guinary character are often intimately connected with some cham-
pionship of the faith. Take, for instance, that singular figure
called gyron, in which the shield is divided into several, generally
six or eight, triangular pieces, their points uniting in the centre.
It is so rare in Scotland that only one distinguished family bears
it viz., the Campbells ; but in Spain it is of frequent occurrence,
and always in the arms of families whose distinction arose from
the Moorish wars, when it was customary for the bodyguard, or
closest companions, of the Christian leader to tear up and divide
among themselves, in the fierce joy of victory, his surcoat or
mantle, some parts of which would be stained with his blood
and others retain its original color, which explains why the gy-
rony is always of two different and alternate tinctures. The
term itself signifies in Spanish a gusset or piece of cloth, and the
first instance of its heraldic appropriation occurs in the house of
Giron (from whom the present Dukes of Ossuna are descended),
which got both name and arms from such a circumstance under
King Sanchez I. of Navarre.

It must be said that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
*ies a great deal was done to bring heraldry into contempt, as
r hen arms were gravely ascribed to the patriarchal and ante-
liluvian worthies ; when Joseph's " coat of divers colors " was
tiled a true coat-of-arms, and armorial ensigns were given to
rideon, David, and Judas Machabeus, and when a lawyer of some
linence, Mr. Dobbs, could maintain that the harps borne by the
igels in the Apocalypse alluded to the national arms of Ireland.
r e make an exception, however, for the emblems of the Passion
arranged as armorial bearings, in the spirit of that hymn,

Vextlla Regis prodeunt
Fulget cruets mysterium,

in which Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth century seemed to
anticipate the chivalrous ardor of the middle ages. Such so-
called " Arms of our Saviour " are found carved in Elgin Cathe-
dral, Scotland, in Kilcolgan Castle, Ireland, and in other edifices,
generally of a religious character.

764 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. [Mar.,

What may be called ecclesiastical heraldry, or the blazon of
churchmen, differs in some particulars from that of laymen. To
begin with the field, or blank space on which the figures are
drawn : while for laymen this is always in the form of a shield,
of which there are several varieties, for the popes and for eccle-
siastics, particularly in Italy, it is generally a rounded oval with
convex surface, and is not called a shield but a cartouche, as more
peaceful-looking. Women, with the exception of sovereigns, al-
ways bear their arms in a lozenge, a beautiful substitute for the
heraldic shield, which was introduced early in the fourteenth
century from Flanders, where spinning was the principal occu-
pation of females, and seems to have been suggested by the dis-
taff, which it somewhat resembles in form.

The distinctive heraldic attributes of the Holy See are a cross-
keys and tiara. The popes after their election continue to use
their family arms, with the triple crown over the cartouche and
the keys saltire-wise behind it. This would not be the place to
enter into a disquisition on the origin and earliest form of the
tiara. It was first used by the popes as a distinctive form of
crown, symbolizing their temporal sovereignty, as the mitre did
their spiritual authority. The keys were naturally suggested by
the promise made to St. Peter. One of the ke} 7 s was in early
pontifical heraldry blazoned or and the other argent. The sym-
bolism of these different colors is that the golden key loosens and
the silver one binds. However, for a long time the keys have
both been blazoned or.

Ecclesiastics, no matter what their rank or title " in the world,"
should not use any form of coronet over their arms, although an
exception is sometimes made in favor of those of royal blood or
who hold benefices to which temporal fiefs were formerly an-
nexed. If crests and helmets are too knightly to appear over the
arms of clergymen, supporters which had their origin in those
clamorous and often mortal encounters called tournaments are
still more incongruous. The motto, also, or war-cry, has no place
in a clergyman's armorial ensigns. Just as the coronets of the
nobility have distinctive marks of gradations of rank, the hats of
prelates differ in color and number of tassels, so that, where the
blazoning is correct, the rank of an ecclesiastic can be as surely
determined as that of a peer. A cardinal's hat is red and has fif-
teen tassels on either side, which are also red. There is a conven-
tional form for this, and for all prelatic hats wide, with low crown
and broad, stiff brim very different from the sombrero-like hat,
turned up at sides, which is sometimes seen over episcopal arms in

[88 1.] THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. 765

e United States. At first only cardinals used a hat over their
rms, but before long inferior members of the hierarchy began to
encroach upon this privilege, particularly after dissensions in the
Sacred College had lowered the cardinalate in public estima-
tion. This was the case first in Spain, and the earliest known ex-
ample is that over the arms of Don Roderico Fernandez, Bishop of
Jaen, A.D. 1400. In a history of the Council of Constance, print-
ed at Augsburg in 1483, the arms of the patriarchs of Antioch,
Constantinople, Venice, and Jerusalem are surmounted by green
hats. The custom spread over Europe only gradually, and was
introduced into France, says Menestrier, from Spain by Tristan de
Salarzes, Archbishop of Sens, about 1520. From France Nisbet
says that it passed into Scotland, whose higher clergy were mostly
educated in that kingdom. In England, also, the hat is very sel-
dom seen over a bishop's arms before the beginning of the six-
teenth century. Apostolic prothonotaries began to use the hat
before the middle of the sixteenth century, as appears from the
heraldic treatise of Charles de Grassaria, published in the year
1545. Since then abbots, domestic prelates, and what are called
cathedral or prebendal dignitaries are allowed by custom to put
a hat over their arms. The form of the hat itself is the same for
all degrees of the hierarchy, but differs in size, number of tassels
and frets, and in color, according to the wearer's rank in the church.
The hat of patriarchs and archbishops is green, with ten tassels
n either side, which are green intermixed with gold. Bishops
ve six tassels on either side of the hat, which with the tassels
ould all be colored green. Prothonotaries have the hat black,
with green on the under part of the brim, and six tassels on either
side of a pink or light-red hue. Domestic prelates have the hat

rck, and six tassels on either side of a purple color. Deans,
ions, and vicars-general have the hat, and three tassels on
either side, all black. One tassel of the color of the pendants

Cfays issues from the crown of the hat, on either side, just where
;onnects with the brim.
Cardinals, patriarchs, and archbishops place a cross with double
nsverse, called in heraldry a " patriarchal cross," behind their
shield of arms in pale i.e., erect, exactly in the middle, the up-
per part occupying the space between the top of the shield and
the hat, and the foot or point protruding a little below the base.
Bishops use a simple cross in the same manner. The cross, being
one of the distinctive insignia of episcopal rank, should never be
used by inferior prelates. It is always blazoned argent. The mitre
and crosier (or pastoral staff) are two other ornaments of the epis-

vvil
sid,
bla<
can

766 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. [Mar.,

copal arms, although sometimes carried by inferior and merely
titular prelates (apostolic prothonotaries for instance) entitled to
the use of pontificals, but with this difference : that over episcopal
arms the mitre is represented affrontfa z>., so placed as to show the
full face, with its two vittce, or those bands or pieces which hang
down from the under portion, slightly raised and displayed and
that the pastoral staff is always represented with the curve turned
outwards in sign of external jurisdiction. Abbots have the mitre
turned in profile---z>., sideways and the pastoral staff is represent-
ed with its crook turned inwards to indicate a confined and limited
jurisdiction. In all cases in which mitre and crosier are placed
over the arms the former must occupy the dexter and the latter
the sinister side.* Abbesses carry their arms in a lozenge, of
course, and in some instances with a crosier in pale behind it (in-
volute inwards) passed through a coronet. Menestrier, a pious
Jesuit, and author of a classical work on heraldry (Nouvelle M/-
thode raisonne'e du blason}, published at a period when abbesses in
France were always great ladies and sometimes princesses of the
blood, gently reproves their use of a coronet as a thing of world-
ly vanity, and suggests a crown of thorns in its stead. Their
shield should be surrounded by a chaplet or garland of flowers,
or two palm-branches tied together at the stems and curving up
on either side. In old heraldry a love-knot, or Lacs d 'Amour,
encircled the arms of unmarried ladies, who should not use sup-
porters or crests, or any other parts of an escutcheon directly
suggestive of strife. Instead of the love-knot, widows, and occa-
sionally married women, use a knotted cord around their arms,
which is called by the French a cordeliere, and was introduced in-
to heraldry in veneration of St. Francis of Assisi by Ann of Brit-
tany, widow of King Charles VIII., who bestowed a girdle bless-
ed by the Franciscan friars (called Cordeliers in France) on all the
ladies of her court, exhorting them to wear it and live chastely and
devoutly. Priors, provosts, and precentors place a bourdon, or
staff a straight baton of office slightly ornamented at the top in
pale behind their arms, the foot coming a little below the base of
the shield. The palm-branches are always omitted when a hat and
tassels, no matter how few in number, are used. Marshalling'^ the
disposition of more than one distinct coat-of-arms upon a shield, so
forming a single composition. When the shield is divided into
two equal parts by a perpendicular line, the portion on the right is

* The dexter, or right, of a shield is the left, and the sinister, or left, is the right, of the person
looking at it. The terms have reference to the shield as originally worn suspended from the
neck and over the breast of a knight.

i88r.] THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HERALDRY. 767

the dexter side, and that on the left the sinister side ; when divided
horizontally, that portion above the line is called the chief, and
that below it the base. Relatively the dexter side and the chief
are nobler than the sinister side and the base ; consequently when
the official arms of a see, an abbey, a priory, a religious order, or
whatever other institution having the right to arms of com-
munity are carried on the same shield with one's family arms,
they must always be given the more honorable location. Official
arms are not hereditary although, as we have seen in the case of
the Lords Torpichen, they may become so by abuse except in
the families of those Roman princes'who have given a pope to
the church, in which case they carry as a perpetual augmenta-
tion the cross-keys surmounted by a pavilion " paly " gules and
or, the colors of the Holy See.

A bishop, then, impales his family arms with the official arms
of his see, which ought not to vary. They are often the family
arms of the first bishop, or of the founder or patron (in its tem-
poralities) of the see. Otherwise they should be chosen with
care and. reference to any peculiar circumstance connected with
the see, religious house, or other pious foundation, good examples
of which are the arms of the See of Mayence in Germany, of the
Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland, of the University of the Sor-
bonne in France, of the College of the Propaganda in Italy, also
of the older religious orders in the church. With regard to the
nited States, whenever an episcopal see has the same, or nearly
e same, title as that of some city or bishopric in Europe, its
arms, we think, ought to be those of the. original bishopric or
;own, with some special difference. This might be carried in a
ton, which is a small, rectangular division of the shield, gene-
ally in the upper right-hand corner. Examples of such sees are
New York, New Orleans, Boston, Rochester, etc. What this
difference " should be would depend on the ingenuity and taste
the amateur herald and his acquaintance with local history,
should not be a matter of arbitrary selection. For instance, the
arms of the archbishopric of New Orleans might be those of the
old see of Orleans in France, with for difference in a canton azure
a fleur-de-lys or, recalling the Bourbon king who gave his name to
Louisiana. Those of the bishopric of Rochester might be the
arms of the famous old see of that name in England, with for dif-
ference in a canton argent a shamrock vert the badge of Ireland
to signify that Catholicity was built up in the new see by the
faith and generosity of the Irish. The/#//, a vestment peculiar to
archbishops, is borne as an heraldic figure in the arms of several

768 REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. [Mar.,

sees. However, since it is an ensign of authority which must be
petitioned for in each individual case, not belonging of right to
the primatial or archiepiscopal office, it is against the principles
of correct heraldry that it should ever become part of the per-
manent arms of a see. In fact, the keys and pall began to appear
in the arms of the greater sees at a period not much anterior to
the Reformation, when the pride and power of churchmen were
at their'highest, and the Holy See did not always receive that
reverence which is its due.

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

MADE TO A DEVOUT SERVANT OF OUR LORD, CALLED MOTHER

JULIANA,

An anchorete of Norwich, ivho lived in the days of King Edward III*

HERE BEGINNETH THE FIRST CHAPTER.

OF Love a ghostlie Revelation this,
That Jesu Christ, our never-ending bliss,
In sixteen shewings made to me.
And First : I saw the cruel crown of thorn
Which men did put upon his head in scorn

To make him suffer rufullie.
God's Trinitie and'Jesu's birth were shewed,
How God with human soules doth make abode

In closest union for his love ;

With manie shewings faire which wisdom taught,
With heavenly rewth, and gracious pitie fraught,

When Mercie sweet with Justice strove.
And Second : Lo ! behold his sad, faire Face
Discolouring with his agony apace

As he did hang upon the Roode.

* In THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April, 1880, was given a chapter of this remarkable spirit-
ual treatise as versified by one of our contributors. We purpose giving; other portions of the
work which have been treated in a similar manner. ED. C. W.

1 88 1.] REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. 769

And Thirdlie : that Almightie God, the Lord,
Who verelie made all things by his word,

Right so whate'er he doth is good.
The Fourth betokened scourging of his Flesh,
When shedding plenteous blood all hott and fresh

He, fainting, sank beneath the blows.
The Fifth doth shew how Christ's deare Passion charms
The wiles of Satan, and his power disarms,

And his designs towards us o'erthrows.
The Sixth revealed Heaven unto me
With all the happie, holie saints that be

In mirthfull crowd about God's throne :
How he rewards his faithfull servants deare
Who served and who dearlie loved Him here

Now joyned above to him in one.
The Seventh is mysterie of weale and woe
By which the soule is tossed to and fro :

Ofttimes by gracious touches blest :
Anon 'neath sore temptation heavie lies,
And, wearie of this fleshlie living, sighs

To pass awa.y and be at rest.
The Eighth did mirror Jesu at the last,
In cruel dying, when his soule out-passed

With grievous paines that none may tell.
The Ninth did shew the Blessed Trinitie,
Well liking of Christ's Passion on the Tree,

In which he wills we joye as well.
The Tenth assureth us the Blessed Heart
Of our Lord Jesu Christ did break apart

Full cloven by his love in twain,
That sinners might be shewn he loved them true,
And nought was left undone that he could do

To win them back to him again. '
Th' Eleventh is an high and ghostlie sight
Of -her who now with glory is bedight,

Whom called he " worthie Mother deare."
The Twelfth that our Lord God is all in all ;
Who doth all creatures into being call

And solace them with loving chere.
The Thirteenth is, that God will have us shun
To wit the secret deedes which he hath done

Of which it longeth us to dreed ;

VOL, XXXII. AQ

770 REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. [Mar.,

And paie high rev'rence that he made us best,
And placed us masters over all the rest

The which doth shew his love indeed
The full amends he maketh for our sin
Should all our thanks and endles worship win,

For that our blaim is changed to praise.
Thus meaneth he. " Behold, for by my might,
Pure love and wisdom all is made aright,

Though wrongfull seem to human waies.
Keep thou the faith and truth of Holie Church,
Nor seek my hidden privities to search,

Lest thou oppressed by glorie be.
Be sure I shall make well what is not well,
And when it liketh me their cause to tell

More speedfull shall it be to thee."
The Fourteenth sheweth that our gracious Lord
Is ground of our beseekinge through his word.

Which two faire properties doth shew ;
The which are verie trust and rightfull praier,
And if the both be one like large in share

His goodness will our praier bestow*
The Fifteenth is, we soudenlie will rise
Free from all paine and woe up to the skies,

Which fro his goodness doth proceed,
With heavenlie bliss and joye we filled shall be
Far more than tongue may tell or eye can see,

With our Lord Jesu to our meed.
The Sixteenth saith, the Blessed Trinitie
Within our soules abideth endleslie

In sweet and worshipfull accord ;
Us mightilie befriending for his love,
And doth the wicked enemy reprove

Through Jesu Saviour Christ our Lord.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 771

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER XII.

MR. QUIP FINDS HIS SPHERE.

To be settled definitively in a certain condition of life is a
consolation afforded only to a fortunate minority. The changes
incident to Canadian society, situated as it is on the borders of
civilization, are capricious, and he who but yesterday found in
himself the dispositions, tastes, and tendencies for one settled
pursuit is to-day, by a turn of the proverbial wheel, a prey to
doubt and indecision as to his fitness for anything. Social ship-
wrecks are not uncommon in a sea where vessels are left sudden-
ly without helm or compass. Morning suns turn into clouds of
portentous meaning, and

" So I might go on," observed Mr. Quip placidly to the pa-
tient who was awaiting either the arrival or convenience of Doc-
tor Killany " so I might go on heaping up hyperboles, oxy-
morons, and similar illustrations, all tending to one fact, shedding
light on the same dark subject, that I am out of my sphere, pin-
ing in an uncongenial atmosphere, and, figuratively speaking, dead-
broke."

There was a pause, and the patient looked up admiringly.
He was one of the simple kind, who look upon everything pro-
fessional as something divine ; one of the kind upon whom Mr.
Quip's most outrageous pranks were played, and before whom he
delighted to display his extraordinary and humorous erudition.
" I repeat," Mr. Quip went on, " that I might continue this strain
of eloquence. I might build up mountains of rhetoric, valleys of
thought, canals of flowing speech silvered over with the rays of
reason, and do many other impossible and absurd things worthy
of a Demosthenes or a Cicero, and they would not move you one-
half so powerfully as the simple fact which I have stated, and
which all these figures could but feebly illustrate, that I am pin-
ing out of my sphere and dead-broke. The worst of it is, I know
my sphere and can't get into it. But yesterday I was a man of
consequence. To-day I am an exile and an orphan, wifeless,
childless, moneyless, and heartless too, I believe, for such a suc-
cession of griefs must wear away that sensitive organ. I never
experience any feeling here," said Mr. Quip, laying his hand 011

772 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

his throat, " and that is the region where* my heart always was
before I came here ; for causes of this phenomenon see an ac-
count of escaped criminals in the Michigan prison records."

The patient expressed great sympathy, and offered the con-
soling remark that he seemed to bear these misfortunes quite
well so far as outward appearance was concerned. " Oh ! I am
used to it," said Mr. Quip, with an affectation of stoical indiffer-
ence. " I have endured it for years. I have known nothing but
disappointment since my birth. Even at the first moment of my
entrance into this homogeneous world I suffered the greatest
disappointment that could happen to any one save a woman."

" Oh ! indeed. Might I ask"

" I was just going to tell you. The shock was severe, and I
never have recovered from it, and never will. The effects of it
will go down to the grave with me. I am a physical wreck, as
you may see. Briefly, it was my pet wish and great idea to be a
female ; but fate, a cruel fate, an untoward destiny, interfered, and
I was born a man."

The mere mention of this calamity brought the tears to Mr.
Quip's eyes, and he turned away to conceal his emotion ; but the
patient, astonished and pitiful, observed him secretly to wipe away
a tear. Mr. Quip's face was wonderfully grave after the telling
of his first great disappointment.

" You can scarcely understand," he continued, " sympathetic
as you are, the pain I felt at this circumstance. Time has shown
me that there are greater sorrows in the world, and I have
learned to bear mine with resignation. The birth of a son had a
bad effect on my father. He died shortly after, anathematizing
his luck, and declaring it was better to go then of his own free
will into a better world than be hustled into it in his old age by
a devil of a son. * Give me a girl/ the old man said, ' and you
may take every mother's son in the world in exchange.' You
see my desire of being a female was hereditary. I displayed a
great aptitude for music at an early age. It was said of me by a
great wizard of that day that my deftness in handling notes and
scaling would give me one day a high place in the world. This
enigmatical language contains two musical terms. Why, when
five years old I could play the hand-organ."

The patient was almost dumb with admiration.

" At five years, old ? " echoed he.

" At five years old," repeated Mr. Quip ; and he looked the
very impersonation of modest, unassuming, but injured and
crushed genius.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 773

" Wonderful ! " said the patient.

" Incomprehensible ! " murmured the other, with deeper emo-
tion than before. " And yet see what I am ! See how genius
can be blighted and sat upon ! To-day I cannot sing a note or
play on so much as a jew's-harp. But why speak of the disap-
pointments of my life ? They are numerous enough and thrill-
ing enough to be put in print, if you obtained the right kind of
a man to compose the book one of those fellows that would
throw in plenty of moonlight, a little philosophy to make the
thing sublime, a sunset or two, and a character showing the
same amount of respectful sympathy, risible attention, and pon-
derous capacity for the swallowable as yourself."

" I am honored," the patient gasped.

" I know you are. I am, to'o. I never met any one half so
agreeable. Look at my present situation. The most blinded
could see my unfitness for it. It is low and disheartening, parti-
cularly so for a man who has once stood high in his profession.
I am an M.D. I took out my degree years ago, but the envy and
jealousy of my brother physicians have forced me to hide my head
in this obscure position, sir and I would not say this to a third
individual in the world save yourself. These physicians here,
Killany and Fullerton, are talented men ; but if all their know-
ledge and experience were heaped together they would fit in the
cavity over my eye, and would add but a trifle to the vast and
ever-extending ocean of my knowledge. These men are good, I
assure you. Trust yourself confidently in their hands. But, sir,
they make mistakes. I never make mistakes, and I often rectify
theirs ; nor do I charge one-half so much. Father Leonard was
here lately to consult Killany. We had a chat. I pointed out to
him on the instant his complaint, and he handed me a dollar.
' Your penetration is astonishing,' said he, as he handed out the
bill. Magnificent, wasn't it? His reverence has an income of ten
thousand a year. You, sir, are afflicted with liver complication
and inborn softness of the brain. I tell you this out of pure
friendship. You are so agreeable a fellow that I could charge
you nothing. Pray don't put your hand in your pocket. The
motion is offensive to me, badly as 1 need money. A dollar?
My dear sir, you are robbing yourself. You have not, like the
priest, ten thousand a year. Well, since you insist, I shall accept
it gratefully. Thank you. There is the bell. It is your turn.
Good-day."

The effective tableau of the folding- doors was repeated and
the gulled one disappeared within, leaving Mr. Quip in ecstasies.

774 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

Fortune did not always so smile upon him. His attempts of this
kind as often brought him defeat as success, but his boldness and
impudence smoothed the after-difficulties and enabled him to
escape detection and its consequent punishment. Much of the
information so humorously showered on the individual who had
just disappeared within the consulting-room was plain fact. Mr.
Quip was an M.D., as far as diplomas could make him one, and
had practised to some extent in Canada, his native country, and
in the West. An unlucky and criminal blunder in the latter
place had banished him finally to Canada, where bad habits and
bad companionship had so reduced him from his former glory
that he was quite willing to serve as a medical servant to Killany.
The position was too good for him. His level was in the gutter,
which he was solicitous to avoid by taking the very means surest
to lead him there.

He was discontented with his position. The height of his
ambition was to make unlimited money with the least possible
trouble. It had been his ambition from childhood, but the oppor-
tunities had not yet been offered him. However, they were ap-
proaching. Killany was desirous of preparing the necessary evi-
dence of the death of the wronged heirs for. Nano, and he had
chosen Mr. Quip for his instrument. After office-hours of that
day on which Nano had come to .a momentous decision the doc-
tor called Mr. Quip into his sanctum. He had never conferred
such an honor on the gentleman before, and he was interested
to observe the effect it would produce on the volatile genius.
Mr. Quip would suffer no mental disturbance at even a greater
event. The throne-room at St. James and the presence of the
court of her majesty would not have daunted him. But, with
the shrewdness of his kind, he suspected the nature of the doc-
tor's intentions, and knew that some emotion was expected from
him. He entered, therefore, and sat down with the solemnity of
an owl, his great eyes fixed immovably on the doctor, his mouth
in fish-like repose, his manner a mixture of timidity, smothered
wonder, and alarm. The chair he had chosen for his seat af-
forded him no comfort, as he was posted directly on its edge.
He seemed as if momentarily expecting an order to depart. It
was a mistake to have invited him into the cathedral color and
silence and dignity of a famous room. Killany was satisfied.
Mr. Quip was awed.

" Make yourself at home, Quip," he said graciously, after a
silent survey of his assistant. " We may have a long conversa-
tion, and I would like to see you at your ease."

i88i.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 775

" Wonderfully considerate," thought Quip ; but he said no-
thing, and moved backwards an inch or so in response to the in-
vitation to sit at his ease.

u I have a little piece of work to be done, Quip," said the doc-
tor, clasping his slender hands over his knee and looking with
all his eyes into Mr. Quip's unwinking orbs " a delicate piece of
work, requiring a man of some ingenuity, easily tickled at the
sight of gold, unmindful of risk, and in the slightest degree un-
scrupulous."

" I'm not the man," promptly answered Mr. Quip, " if you
mean me. I confess to the ingenuity but not to the unscrupu-
lousness. Though given to taking risks, I am not the fellow to
be trapped by gold."

" Lofty sentiments ! " said the doctor, unmoved by the brevity
of his speech or his expressions of sterling honesty. " How would
you express what I wanted to say ? "

" I wouldn't express it at all, sir. Bargains of this kind are
essentially dangerous to the parties concerned, more especially if
it ever comes before a jury and you get into the hands of the
lawyers. I am in your employ. You want something done by a
nice, steady, respectable young man who wouldn't turn from the
right path for worlds. I am the man, and I do it. Because of
the length and importance of my services my wages are raised to
a good sum, and the whole affair goes off according to the strict-
est principles of honesty, which is all in the terms nowadays, not
in the deeds."

" I wasn't aware of it," said Killany ; " but the logic is conve-
lient. I want a man who has a firm, honest belief in the death
)f two children, a boy and a girl, orphans, the boy older than the
'irl by some years. Any two children will do, and the witness
iced know no more about them than that they died. But he
lust have a real belief, and must be ready honestly to swear to
icir death. Honestly, remember. Bought and studied evidence
too common and too treacherous. If you can find any one
imong your acquaintances possessing such knowledge and it is
[uite probable you can bring him to me ; impress him with the
;lief that he is concerned in a most important case, where truth
and fidelity to facts are so essential as to bring some severe pun-
ishment if not adhered to. The more respectable the witness the
better."

" I understand, sir," said Mr. Quip, rising, with the same
solemn expression of countenance, as if to depart.

" Oh ! sit down, sir, sit down," cried Killany. " I have not

776 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

finished yet. There are many minor particulars to be attended
to. I rely very much on you, and let it be understood that the
whole business remains a secret. Not a whisper must reach
others of this affair. You may use a sufficient sum of money to
pay the witness for his trouble, but not to induce him to tell the
truth. Clean and legal the business must be from beginning to
end."

" I understand," said Quip for the second time. His owlish
eyes and manner had a depth of meaning in them that would
have disturbed Killany had he been other than a desperate man
himself, ready for all fortunes, and not to be frightened by such
men as Quip. " You need not fear my discretion in the slightest.
It is always to be trusted. The job is not difficult, nor are the
consequences dangerous to me, since I know nothing of the cir-
cumstances."

" I will make them dangerous to you," muttered the doctor,
showing his teeth evillj. Quip took the expression for a smile.
" You n\ay go now, Mr. Quip. When may I. expect to hear
from you ? "

" Not soon, sir," answered he, edging softly to the door ;
"yet I won't be dilatory. In the meantime I was thinking of
speaking to you on the matter of my salary. I have worked
well for you in the past two years, attended to minor cases,
groomed your horses, and amused you in the interval. Now, if
I might ask a few favors on the strength of this faithful dis-
charge of duty."

" You may, Mr. Quip, and I shall be happy to grant them. I
never had a better servant, and your reward shall be in keeping
with that declaration."

" Then, sir," said Quip, with his eyes cast down in affected
humility, but really to hide their mirth and hatred, " I wish that
your horses be groomed by those who have been brought up to
the trade, and that my salary be raised a little. As for the amus-
ing, I am always ready to use my humble powers for your bene-
fit and pleasure."

Killany was outwardly calmer than an iceberg, and fiercer
than a devil at this insolence inwardly. Without paying atten-
tion to any other than the request for an increase of salary, he
said:

" What have been your wages, Quip ? "

" Twenty dollars a month and board, sir."

" It shall be fifty hereafter. You may go."

" But the grooming "

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 777

" Forty dollars, Mr. Quip, shall be your salary. I can get
others to do the grooming."

"But, doctor"

" Every minute you remain is five dollars off your new salary.
Good-morning."

Mr. Quip slipped through the door like a vanishing sunbeam,
and carried his smiling face to the outer office. The rebuff his
insolence had met with affected him as water does a fish. It
was his natural element. He never thought of it, but was taken
up with some brimstone reflections on his loss of ten dollars a
month for the sake of snubbing his employer. For some time he
stood at the window drawing figures on the misty glass and
smiling inanely into the street. He was realizing his good for-
tune, slowly waking up to the fact that his salary had been
doubled, and tracing in the dim future the outlines of the new
pleasures which the additional resources were to bring him. He
did not speculate on Killany's motives. He knew that they were
bad, and that money was at the bottom of them, and he strongly
suspected the parties concerned. He felt certain that all these
secrets would come in due time to his knowledge. .

" I shall become indispensable to the doctor," he thought,
" and in that way get first at the mysteries and then at the gold.
This is the first upward mount of my fallen fortunes, and the first
rung of the ladder is of gold, gold. Oh ! the heavenly metal that
surely is coined from the stars. A whole mine of it is open be-
fore me. I have found my long-sought- for sphere, and I com-
)lain no more against destiny. Nothing to do but the most fas-
cinating kind of brain-work, nothing to avoid but the police and
Killany's poisons, and in return I get unlimited treasure. What
glorious future is before me ! "

Mr. Quip in his exultation performed a hideous dance through

room, noiseless and wild, with savage gestures and grimaces,
>oking the while like a vulture, as hungry and fierce, and infi-
litely more demoniac in expression. When he had grown calm
he sat down in a brown study for some minutes. Killany passed
out during his meditation, and favored him with a cold, forbid-
ding smile ; but Quip did not see him, and went on with his think-
ing, of which the apparent result was a note directed to Mr. W.
Juniper, Insane Asylum, City, and written as follows :

'' To-morrow night the circle meets at the old rooms. Cash is plentiful,
and a general attendance expected. Don't miss the fun, my Juniper, as
you love and regard Quip.

" P. S. The change in your circumstances, from the dissecting-room to

778 A WOMAN OF CULTUKE. [Mar.,

the asylum, from stupidity to insanity, has made no change in my affec-
tions. Q."

This epistle being written and despatched, Mr. Quip, perched
on his study-chair, seized a medical book in his claws, eyed the
letters for a few minutes gravely, and finally fell asleep in a most
studious attitude.

CHAPTER XIII.

A BAND OF. REVELLERS.

THE evening mentioned in the note sent by Mr. Quip to his
familiar, Juniper, was ushered in gusty and wild. The day had
been one of severe cold and high winds, and the night threatened
to be even more tempestuous and disagreeable. The snow lay
deep in the streets., and the wind caught it up in powdery masses,
and flung it against the buildings and in the faces of those who
had ventured to brave the fury of the storm. It was piled high
on the roadways, and left the unfrequented lanes open to the
travellers that never thought of passing through. The plate-
glass windows of the rich gleamed cheery defiance at the storm,
which fretted its snowy pinions against them. The rags and
paper of the poor offered only the show of resistance to the
enemy. Where it was not wanted it came with a rush and a
roar, as if sure of a welcome, creeping through chinks and crevices
with noiseless feet, staring in its ghostly silence at the misery
which alone perforce would greet it. The wealthy looked at its
deadly beautiful face from the protection of a luxurious fireside.
The pauper shook it with a dreary smile from his pillow and his
coverlet, and laughed to see how boldly it lay in the cold fingers
which should have melted its treacherous life away. Around the
lamps at the corners the flakes sported like white-winged beetles,
and the light falling on the crystals seemed to create for itself a
new medium and shone with weird splendor. Where the great
buildings formed a barrier against the wind, and with their lights
opened a pathway through the darkness, it was pleasant enough
to walk and to watch the hurrying and listen to the voices of the
tempest ; but in the more retired streets it was severe labor to
make headway against the drifts, the wind, and the blinding snow.
The blackness was Egyptian, and the eyes were of little service.

Mr. Quip and Mr. Juniper, who had responded promptly to
his friend's invitation, were breasting the wind and the night in

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 779

one of the streets of the West End. It was close on eleven
o'clock. The violence of the storm did not seem to abate with
the advancing hours, and forward movement was such desperate
work that neither gentleman was in the humor for talking.
Mr. Juniper was, moreover, in a mood. He was displeased with
the situation, with his companion for bringing him into it, with
the wretched inclinations which were strong enough to force him
from warmth and comfort and safety into the misery and actual
danger of the night. He was very superstitious and imaginative,
and every moan of the tempest struck a new terror into his
heart. Every unaccountable noise startled him. He was glad
to walk with his eyes shut and his hand on Quip's arm, and he
grumbled for mere sake of the companionship which Quip, stalk-
ing along gravely and silently as a crane, seemed disinclined to
show.

" And only for what's coming," said he, stopping with his
back to the wind, that he might breathe easily for a few minutes
before starting out again, " only that I want to see how the men
who helped to spend my money can spend their own, I wouldn't
think twice about getting back to the asylum."

" Your taste for whiskey has more to do with your coming
than anything else," observed Quip sneeringly.

" I learned that from you," retorted the other. " But as yet I
haven't the nose for smelling it out which you have, nor your
impudence for drinking it at the expense of my neighbor. Hold
on ! Don't start yet. Let us rest alongside this railing, for I
can't stand this wind-choking any longer."

" Don't forget the antidotes, Billy. Cheer up, my lad, and
forward. There is but one block more."

" Hold on, I say ! I'm going to rest if I were at the very door,"
yelled Juniper sullenly. " You can face the wind, for you're not
even breathing hard."

" There's a reason for it, Juniper, as there is, I suppose, for the
existence of a great many things in this world. I haven't said
one word to your twenty in the last hour."

Juniper did not at once reply. They had braced themselves
against the railing, and, freed from the persecution of the wind,
could talk more freely and hear more distinctly. A dull roar
from the lower end of the street had struck upon Juniper's ear.
It was a solemn, steady sound, sometimes lower, sometimes higher
than the crash of the storm, and it impressed him unpleasantly.
He was silent from awe.

" What noise is that ? " he asked after a pause.

780 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

" The devil of the storm shouting his orders, I suppose," Quip
answered in a tone purposely serious and broken. " If he is any-
where in the city, he is in this street now. It is a terrible place,
Billy."

" In what way, Jack?"

His voice was become tremulous. The mysterious sounds of
the night, the darkness, the neighborhood, which Mr. Quip's sol-
emn manner and words had suddenly invested with a painful in-
terest, had set him shivering. Before replying Mr. Quip looked
impressively up and down the street; Very little of its real char-
acter was visible, but what could be seen was most ill-favored.
The houses were for the most part low rookeries inclined at every
possible angle, and threatening the lives of the dwellers and pass-
ers-by. Shutters, when they hung anywhere, were never closed,
but rattled and screaked and banged incessantly. So little of
glass was left in the windows, and so many opaque substances
had supplied its place, that lights could be seen only at long in-
tervals, the feeble glimmer of a poor fire or poorer candle indi-
cating the poverty of those within.

" In the wickedest way, Billy," said Mr. Quip, after a pause
sufficiently long to allow of his former remark making a due im-
pression on Juniper's heated imagination. " If a mark were put
upon every house in this street where a murder had been done,
not one would escape save this we are standing by. Crime lurks
everywhere. That house opposite is a shelter for every criminal
in the city while the officers are after him. Look at that fellow
stealing out now. Night, and such a night as this, is the only
time he would dare to venture forth. Perhaps he is stained with
blood or with a lesser crime. The lake is below us, and an old
wharf lies there. It has not been used for years except by the
unfortunate who looks for rest in the waters under it. Some-
times a girl is found floating there with her hair twisted around
the rotten beams ; sometimes a poor fellow with his head bat-
tered in. I was there myself one morning after a meeting. It
was four o'clock, and there was a heavy fog out. I saw the har-
bor police busy about something, and I went down to look on.
They were dragging out a poor devil, stiff and water-soaked. I
can see him yet with his fingers clutching at nothing and his
eyes full of the slime of the lake. It beat the dissecting-room, I
tell you. There ! do you hear that yell? It was a woman, and
one that won't be alive to-morrow, I'll warrant. Ah ! look, there
she comes."

As he yet spoke a door not far distant opened. A woman

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 781

came flying out on the pavement as though hurled there by an
iron hand within. A few muttered curses were heard as the door
closed. Then there was a painful silence, the woman remaining
where she had fallen. Juniper would have gone forward to as-
sist the unfortunate to rise, but his cooler companion held him
back.

" She is not the kind," he whispered, " to understand or ap-
preciate gallantry or pity. Lie close and watch her. I could
wager any money on her next move."

The woman at last rose slowly and with evident pain. She
did not see the two men almost at her side, and they in turn
made no effort to attract her attention. Supporting herself on
the same railing against which they leaned, she looked silently for
a long time at the house from which -she had been so summarily
ejected.

" At last," they heard her say, and her voice, broken and harsh
though it was, spoke eloquently of her wretchedness and misery
" at last my time has come. It was not so very long in arriving,
and now it is here. No to-morrow no to-morrow for me ! O
God ! what an ending. Oh ! "

" There was a sigh," whispered Quip, touched with a little
pity, " that broke her heart."

Juniper was in agony. He was young, and still blessed with
a sensitive, kindly heart, and it required a vigorous pinching
from his friend to restrain him from rushing at once to her aid.

" It will take all the poetry out of the thing, if you do," argued
Quip. " She doesn't want to be interfered with, and you'll get a
smart bit of a very smart tongue for your trouble. Cry, if you
feel inclined, but be practical and stop where you are."

The woman remained but a short time in her present position,
oaning in a piteous way, she staggered down the street, and in
the light of a lamp at the corner they saw her stand for a mo-
ment, throw her arms in anguish towards the sky, and with a
mad laugh of despair run off towards the lake.

They resumed their way in silence, and arrived before a build-
ing which by daylight must have presented a more respectable
though not less neglected appearance than any on this famous
street. It stood far back from the road, had a high, dilapidated
fence running close to the sidewalk, and presented the general
appearance of an old, decayed family mansion. The gate was
cunningly fixed in the high fence and opened outward. Mr.
Quip opened it, and they entered at once upon a snow-hidden
pathway, thickly covered over with trees and vines, which led up

782 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

to a side entrance. Another key admitted them into the lower
halls, where a few lamps burned with light sufficient to enable
them to find their way in safety. A new stairway to the upper
story had replaced the old, and they mounted quickly, passing
along the hall until they reached a door at the extreme end.
From the moment of their entrance the sound of voices, mingled
with uproarious bursts of laughter, singing, and the clinking of
glasses, had reached their ears. From the room before which
they now stood these noises came. They had an animating effect
on Mr. Juniper. His cheeks glowed, his breath labored as if he
were still buffeting the wind. As with every forward step the
uproar became more distinct and more musical, his excitement
became more uncontrollable, and at last he burst into the room
with a shout that silenced the revel in an instant.

Before it could be resumed a voice cried out :

" The symposiarch."

And the assembly, numbering twenty young men of various
ages, rose respectfully, and, with a clinking of glasses and a rat-
tling of bottles, cried out :

" The symposiarch.'*

Mr. Quip moved majestically to a seat at the head of the table
around which the company was gathered.

" I am late this evening, gentlemen," he said. " It is not my
intention to make any excuses, but our friend Juniper became so
conscience-stricken on the way by a few startling incidents that I
was compelled to halt for a time and dose him with moral phil-
osophy. It belongs to you to finish what I began. Continue
the revels."

The symposiarch, waving his hand authoritatively, sat down,
and on the strength of his permission the Babel commenced with
renewed vigor. Mr. Juniper, who was admitted into the assem-
bly because of his former standing as a medical student for such
each gentleman professed himself to be was surrounded at once
by a fun-loving crowd, and severely cross-examined as to his
scruples of conscience and his life at the asylum.

The room was filled with smoke, and the outlines of objects
could be seen but dimly. The apartment was large, and in its
glory might have had about it considerable magnificence. The
walls were panelled, and carved with great taste and skill. The
ceiling, darkened by time, neglect, and ill-usage, was of valuable
wood, and the floor and old-fashioned furniture seemed to be of
similar material. The students, who had rented the place as a
society-room for the carrying-on of their orgies undisturbed by

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 783

the police or by exacting boarding-house mistresses, had disturb-
ed nothing that 'was fit for use; and when the air was clear and
the sun let shine through the windows a suspicion of old-time
refinement, and grace, and mystery hung about its faded walls.

Mr. Quip enjoyed a distinction among the company that was
quite enviable. He owed it to his unsurpassed impudence and
his interested but apparently open-hearted generosity. For Mr.
Quip spent money with the freedom of a millionaire, and never
dreamed of a return. We have seen how he recompensed him-
self in a few instances. His real character was unknown to the
individuals over whom he presided. It might not have mattered
much if they had known. Many of them could not lay claim to
better deeds or dispositions, and were secretly indebted to the
symposiarch for advice, useful sympathy, and trifling money loans.
Mr. Quip might be trusted to make good use of the influence
which he had thus obtained. He was politic but not backward
in using it. Relentless as a money-lender, pitiless as a tiger, he
yet understood the peculiarities of his own position sufficiently
never to attempt the high hand with his victims. He was always
the friend, the consoler, the injured party a new-world Peck-
sniff in all the outlines of that famous but overdrawn character.
Juniper was perhaps the only individual besides Dr. Killany who
had a clear insight into the man's character. But Juniper was
looked upon as a fool, and the book was never closed for him.
He had not sense enough, in Quip's sarcastic opinion, to make
anything out of the printed page. If he had, thought the sympo-
siarch, sipping his punch lazily, he would not be here to-night ;
or, being here, he would drink less whiskey and keep himself ready
for danger.

"Roseleigh," he said suddenly to a pleasant young fellow
who sat beside him, " come to the other side of the room. I
want to talk with you."

" You must keep an eye on Juniper," he said when they were
it of hearing of the others, " and not let him drink too much,
that he drinks enough to loosen his tongue, for I must get
>me information out of him, which is my reason for bringing
im here to-night. He's so close a fool that if he suspects what
am after, drunk or not, he won't open his lips to-night. You
iderstand?"

" Perfectly," replied the genial Roseleigh, whose readiness to
obey the chief arose from the fact of his slight indebtedness to
Quip. " Trust me to manage him."

A whisper in Mr. Juniper's ear brought the gentleman, after

784 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

a short struggle with the tipsy students, to the symposiarch's
side.

" You are drinking too much," said Roseleigh. " The boys are
filling you purposely, and wish to lay you out along with them-
selves. I heard them plotting the thing."

" They are a little too late," laughed Jumper, with his eyes
fixed rather curiously on Quip. " You saved me in the nick of
time, for I would have gone on until the jug had been finished."

Mr. Quip paid no attention to his friend. He resumed the
conversation which seemed to have been interrupted by Juniper's
appearance. He was giving a detailed account of his adventures
in other climes than Canada, with a view to excite in Mr. Juni-
per's breast a desire to excel them by the relation of his own. It
was a bait that took easily. The symposiarch's deeds of old were
brilliant in themselves and excellent in the telling, but they were
of a kind which might happen to any Bohemian. There was no
mystery about them, nothing of the indefinable charm which
leaves the listener so many questions to be asked with no possi-
bility of a satisfactory answer. In this respect Mr. Juniper had
the advantage. He was reputed a fine story-teller, and never lost
an occasion of adding to his laurels. His faculties were now
misty with unlimited punch, and he was nettled at a certain air
of conceit which the volatile Mr. Quip purposely displayed.

" I know a tale worth twenty such as you have been telling,"
he said after Quip had finished.

The bird-like eyes snapped with delight.

" The old thing you always drag out on big occasions," said
he contemptuously. " It's like fire-crackers on the queen's birth-
day, and as old as Roseleigh's hat. Couldn't you vary it, Juni-
per, in some unexpected way ? Bring the children to life ; have
them discover the man that cheated them ; let the girl fall in love
with him, marry him, and so keep the fortune in the family and
one man out of jail couldn't you do that, Juniper?"

" Yes, I could and shall, if I choose," answered the other
sulkily.

" Then I command you to begin," said Quip, with the air of
one who expected to laugh heartily for the next ten minutes.
Juniper was more nettled than ever.

" Let the boys gather round," he said ; but Quip objected :

" I had no such audience, and they are too tipsy to listen."

The story, therefore, went on without the boys. Roseleigh
and one or two more sober fellows formed the group of listeners,
and displayed an attention as flattering to Mr. Juniper's vain soul

[88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 785

as the asstimed indifference of Quip was galling. By degrees,
however, the symposiarch's manner awakened into interest. His
eyes began to glisten. He moved himself into an easier posi-
tion and nearer Juniper, the better to hear every word. Not a
movement was lost on Juniper. He drank in slowly the triumph
that seemed so insensibly offered him, and exerted himself to
throw all the charm of a stirring romance about the adventures
of two children who had fallen with their fortune into the hands
of a faithless guardian. When the narrator arrived at the point
where he usually described the death of the wronged orphans,
Quip cried out with a snarl of triumph :

"And the children died."

" No, they didn't," answered the victorious Juniper, with an
expression of countenance quite indescribable. " They lived, they
grew up to be man and woman, and they will yet meet with the
man who injured them and give him his deserts."

" Not dead ! " growled the symposiarch profanely. " The
devil !"

"You hold the chief place in this Inferno," replied Juniper.
"Answer your own invocation."

Mr. Quip remembered himself immediately and became
silent. But later, when the whole party had turned their atten-
tion to the jug, he drew Juniper aside.

" Were you in earnest," he asked, " when you said that those
children were living ? "

" What does it matter to you, Quip, you infernal schemer ?
Have you another plot hatching to poison some innocent ? "

" Take care, my boy," cried the symposiarch, with a fierce in-
tensity of tone that made the other tremble. " I wouldn't think
twice of spilling you over the old wharf to-night on our way
home. You know too many secrets for your own good."

" I beg your pardon," meekly replied the offender. "It was
lintentional."

" I can understand that it was," sneered Quip. " But it may
>t always be so harmless. Were you in earnest, I say, when
m asserted those children to be living ? "

" I was, and be hanged to you ! You get no more information
out of me."

" It isn't wanted. I only wished to inform you that by this
new ending to an old story you have lost a cool hundred dollars
or more."

Mr. Juniper stared.

VOL. xxxii. 50

;86 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

" The explanation is," continued Quip, " that not long ago I
was commissioned to find a man who could swear to the death
of any two children, provided that they were a boy and a girl,
orphans, whose parentage could not be easily traced, and were of
such an age as to have been twenty-nine and twenty-two respec-
tively had they lived to this day. It was to be a perfectly fair and
honest transaction. No perjury, everything legal. There was
nothing to be done but declare before a lady, or perhaps before a
court, the death of these two children, and for so simple a ser-
vice you would have received any sum from one to ten hundred
dollars. I had heard this story of yours before, and thought
to benefit you and save myself trouble by giving you the
chance. I suspected that you lied in your former version. I
brought you here to muddle your head and nettle you into telling
the truth. You have done so. You have lost a great opportunity
and I have earned additional labor. So much for not sticking to
a good solid lie when once you got hold of it."

There was too much sincerity in the symposiarch's manner
for Juniper to doubt the truth of his words, and the resulting
grief at his ill-fortune found comical expression in the gentle-
man's face.

"One to ten hundred," he muttered. " We can always make
asses of ourselves."

" You are a shining illustration of your own remark," snapped
Quip, who was really annoyed.

"Suppose," ventured Juniper, after a long and thoughtful
silence, " I should be willing to swear to the death of these two
children, no matter what the facts might be ? "

" Simply impossible," answered Quip, with a grim smile. " It
is probable that if the case came before a court which does not
now seem likely the career of those children would be traced up
to the last degree of certainty. Jail for very respectable people
would result. No, no. We want facts ; and as you haven't got
them, the opportunity is for ever lost to you."

Mr. Juniper's avarice once excited, he was not to be put off by
decision of manner or emphatic language. He began, therefore, a
maudlin assault on Mr. Quip's heart, with a view to weakening
his resolution. The symposiarch remained inexorable, and at last
pretended to dismiss the matter altogether.

" I am sorry to see you so cut up over it," he said, " and I
won't object to doing you this much of a favor: If I fail to find
any one who has the requisite knowledge of facts, and if we must
come down to perjury, I shall call upon you. I know I am run-

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 787

ning a risk, but I have run risks before. It will be worth more
than your life to you to dream of ever going back on me."

Juniper's protestations of undying secrecy and rock-like faith-
fulness fell unheeded on Quip's ears.

" I never thought your foolish soul could be bought so cheap-
ly," was his inward and sneering comment as he walked to his
seat at the table.

The hilarity of the early part of the evening had yielded to a
more than Dutch gravity among the students who sat round the
council-table. A few had surrendered themselves to the demon of
sleep, and were musically engaged under the table. The others,
staring with watery and uncertain eyes through the smoky at-
mosphere, babbled and laughed to their companions, and sang
snatches of drinking-songs with funereal solemnity. It was near
four o'clock, and Quip made preparations for immediate depar-
ture. Some prescribed ceremonies were gone through with.
Roseleigh, standing up, murmured thickly :

" The symposiarch."

And all the gentlemen, following suit with some difficulty,
clinked their glasses and responded :

" The symposiarch."

The effort of assuming a standing position was more success-
ful for many than the attempt to sit in the same seats again, and
as the symposiarch and his henchman left the room most of the
convives found their way to the chorus under the table.

The night had grown calmer. The winds were silent, and a
ragged rent in the clouds had given liberty to a few stars to
twinkle coldly in the frosty air. Juniper shivered when the un-
ceasing roar of the lake reached his ears. It would have a dis-
agreeable association for him in the future. He could not help
thinking of a white face and clinging hair down among the rotten
beams of the old wharf.

CHAPTER XIV.

AN EVENING RECEFFION.

DURING the month of February McDonell's convalescence was
slow but assured. The muscles of the arms and legs gradually
resumed their old tension, and he could drag himself about feebly
and make a pretence of attending again to his business, going at
long intervals to the office, consulting with partners, business men,
and customers, directing a little, resting much, and persuading

788 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

himself that by degrees he would become able to resume all the
old duties, with the provision that younger and healthier men be
permitted to do the greater part of the labor attached to them.
It was necessary that he should employ a secretary, a confiden-
tial clerk. Wisdom and prudence counselled that he should select
from the many deserving men in his employ. Some had already
been recommended for the position by influential friends, and he
had promised to consider the application. He never intended to
keep the promise, for his mind was already made up on the mat-
ter. A new idea, born of his earlier crime and his recent illness,
had seized upon him. The ideas that visited him during and
since his illness were of a stubborn, crotchety, and often foolish
nature. They might be reasonable or unreasonable, practical or
poetical, distasteful to those interested or hurtful to himself, and
he would still persist in retaining, fostering, and developing them.
As Killany said, paralysis had not affected his muscles alone. He
had become feeble-minded. Fretfulness and peevishness were
now his distinguishing qualities, though, with the memory of
what he had once been still strong in his recollection, he strove
bitterly and eagerly to maintain the dignity and calmness of his
perfect physical health. The business blunders which he had
already begun to make were of higher significance to the outer
world and to his associates than he dreamed, and aspiring clerks
smiled knowingly, and experienced partners and friends shook
their heads gravely and doubtingly, when the leader's latest mis-
haps were mentioned. The new idea was as fanciful as could be
imagined. He determined to hunt up the heirs whom he had de-
frauded, make the young man his secretary, and prepare him
gradually for the sudden descent of gfood fortune. It was pro-
bable that he was good-looking and intelligent, if he at all resem-
bled his parents ; and it was possible, too, that a marriage between
him and Nano might take place. The minor obstacles in the
way of his design never intruded themselves on his meditations.
The young man might be in the other world, or engaged in a
profession which he was decidedly unwilling to leave, or a not
very good character, or already married. Mr. McDonell never
gave these difficulties the slightest thought, but proceeded
straight to the accomplishment of his end. The result was too
glorious, too rosy with the promise of settling all his present
troubles to permit him for one moment to descend into the re-
gions of plain, prosaic fact.

Nano, in the meantime, had passed through every stage of
mental agony that a woman so gifted, unfortunate, and exquisitely

8 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 789

sensitive could suffer. A kind of repose the repose of exhaus-
tion had been given to her from the fatal day on which her
resolution to hold the property at almost any cost had been
taken. Her conscience seemed at rest, but it was only the torpor
of an opiate. Under it lay hidden the pain of the dumb beast, so
bitter from its want of expression a deadly ache that never ceas-
ed day or night, in pleasure or pain. The sight of Olivia, the
sound of her voice, the glance of her eye, the touch of her hand
avoided when possible the mere remembrance of the fairy inno-
cent, tore her heart with anguish. That she should be so pure in
her poverty, and herself so vile in her wealth ! The appearance
of her father, his mournful helplessness and senility, his need of
the gentle and unceasing care of a daughter, smote her with grief.
Every hour she compared her own actions and dispositions with
those which Olivia would surely have displayed in the same cir-
cumstances, and every hour derived fresh humiliation from the
comparison. Yet her resolution was never recalled. She went
on in quiet and unexpressed misery, wondering if still greater
agony were in store for her. Her fair outside told nothing of
the inner pain. Her pallor was greater, but was attributed to
the close confinement of the sick-room, and the deeper melan-
choly and strange hardness prevailing in the expression of her
eyes added too much to the beauty of her face to be commented
upon unfavorably.

Her father having recovered sufficiently to render the sick-
room superfluous, her thoughts turned once more to that soci-
ety which she so scorned for its shallowness, so loved and re-
spected for the honor and deference it paid her, and from whose
pleasures she had been separated for more than a month. The
McDonell mansion was the centre of the winter in-door festivities,
and was besides the Mecca of the Canadian transcendentalists,
whither they turned their faces weekly to worship at the shrine,
to pour out libations of tea or Burgundy, to read and comment
on the Koran, the Novum Organum, or the Bible, and to ex-
change the latest sweets discovered in the literary bouquets of
the high-priest, Emerson. Miss McDonell was the priestess.
Her beauty and her wealth were the chief text upon which the
cultured disciples descanted. Their cry was, " Great is the re-
ligion of humanity, and Miss McDonell is its Canadian prophet,"
and they went on their knees to the prophet, offered their incense,
drank her tea and her Burgundy, and went away only to have
the pleasure of coming again to sacrifice. The sudden illness of
the master of the house put an end to festivity. Transcendental-

790 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

ism languished while the shrine remained closed. Society's
stream found a temporary channel, and flowed on less smoothly,
perhaps, but none the less surely and indifferently. Culture,
however, stood at the gates disconsolate. It writhed a little at
sight of a priest entering where it was forbidden to go, and
raged when that familiarity which was denied to it was offered
freely to the upholders of the oldest superstition of modern
times. Its principles forced it to be silent.

There was a general waking of all parties when the cards for
the first reception at McDonell House began to circulate in their
plain, sober envelopes among the privileged of the city. Mrs.
Strachan, happening to call on Olivia the morning after the invi-
tations had been issued, gave expression to the public sentiment
in her vigorous style.

"Are you going, Miss Olivia?" said she.

" Of course," the sprightly young lady answered. " How
could I stay away ? Her receptions are so delightful ! "

" It takes but a short time to find that out," said the general.
" I have attended receptions and receptions, and have been jam-
med, crushed, heated, flattered, and slandered to my heart's con-
tent ; but the model for such an entertainment is at Miss Mc-
Donell's. It is like a poem, the harmony and smoothness of
everything. After all, I believe very much in culture, so far as it
does not conflict with settled doctrines."

" And I believe in it so far as it does not conflict with com-
mon sense, which it offends against quite as often as against reli-
gion. But do you know, Mrs. Strachan, I am in a nervous state
over my dress, and I want you to look at it. I submitted it to
Harry"

" And to Sir Stanley," interrupted the general slyly.

" Certainly," said Miss Fullerton with serene confidence.
" But these awkward men never know the nice points of a cos-
tume. If you ask them to look at your train, and tell how it
hangs, they will look at your eyes and answer, ' Like stars, to be
sure.' "

" They couldn't say much else," said the general good-humor-
edly ; " and you will admit that the gentlemen have great taste
in those matters."

" But not always correct, Mrs. Strachan."

" So says Mr. Strachan when he comments on his taste in
marrying me. But come, you are going to show me the dress/'

They went off to the wardrobe.

The evening of the reception found Olivia paying her re-

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 791

spects to Nano in a costume as faultless in taste as the most cul-
tured could desire so faultless, indeed, that in spite of the un-
pretending material and the counter-attraction of the pretty face
above, female eyes grew envious or admiring as they took in
every detail of the dress. The company assembled was large
and distinguished, as all Miss McDonell's gatherings were, but
the house was roomy and the usual crowding was avoided.

" Bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men."

English faces predominated, and English uniforms for it was in
the time of the military occupation gave a tone and a brilliancy
to the affair which the same gatherings do not now enjoy. Mu-
sic and singing floated from one room, the clinking of glasses
from another, the shrill but subdued tones of warm, polite argu-
ment from a third. In the drawing-room, where Nano held state,
transcendentalism reigned supreme. Its disciples were a fine-
looking body, but it was easy to see from their manner towards
the mistress whence their inspiration was derived. In the al-
coves and curtained windows love made itself known by its soft
laughter and whisperings. These points of vantage Cupid and
his modern other self, Flirtation, had seized upon early in the
evening, and, with considerate delicacy, no one ventured to in-
trude.

" You will come back ,to me, dear," said Nano, after Olivia
and she had exchanged the customary greetings. " There will
be some conversation on your favorite topics. I am not in the
humor for conversation this evening, and you may take my place.
Besides, my little firebrand, it will be to the advantage of every

Ke to hear your vigorous attacks on culture."
" I do not like it," answered the firebrand promptly. "There
no interest for me in listening to the sometimes blasphemous
ititudes which your true pantheist can roll off by the yard. I
am wearied ridiculing and laughing at them. I am sick, too, with
seeing what fools people can make of themselves when they have
put down God and put themselves up in his place little calves of
clay, not having even the merit of being gold."

" Now you may go," said Nano severely, yet detaining her
with her hand. " You are more than ill-humored, and it would
not do to have you heard by my friends. Calves of clay ! To
think we should receive such a title ! "

" If I am going, do let me go," said Olivia, " and pray that I
may not return. Should that happen I shall throw into your camp

792 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

bombshells aimed, not at your doctrines, but at yourselves. I
shall strike at your conceit, the Achilles' heel of your moral na-
ture, and the elect will fall by tens," she added, looking around
in rapid calculation ; " for I see that you must have here over
twenty of the school. I did not suppose one city could muster
so many."

" Indeed ! We are increasing every day."

" I can believe it among the rich ! You need receptions,
and bric-a-brac collections, and expensive editions of Carlyle,
Kant, and all the other apostles of every shade of pantheism to
keep your poor souls together. If it were to tramp to Mass of
mornings at six o'clock, and confess your numerous peccadilloes
three times a year ah ! but I must preserve the discussion for
your friends. I see that Sir Stanley is making desperate efforts
to reach me, so that I must fly."

She fluttered away by an opposite door. Nano followed her
with her eyes, sighing. Had she but a heart like that, so content,
so cheerful, so loving, so pure ! She pressed back her vain re-
grets and turned to the company, next to herself the idol which
she most honored and worshipped. For their good opinion, their
esteem and adulation, she had sacrificed her soul, and she would
exact her price to the last farthing.

Meanwhile Olivia, having fled to avoid Sir Stanley, found him
waiting for her at the door of the music-room, and walked straight
into his arms. He tried to inveigle her into an alcove.

" No, sir," was the decisive reply. " I am a rover to-night, a
freebooter, bound to go where I list, and I shall be tied to no
one. Nano was refused a similar favor, and are you bold enough
to imagine that I will give to you what I refused to her?"

" I am bold enough to think I can persuade you to it," he said,
with one of his dangerous glances, " if you will but give me time.
I am a diplomatist, you know, having served three months on an
embassy ; and if I never exercised my powers much, still I re-
member how to make the disagreeable agreeable, and to put you
under the impression that you were mistaken before."

" You are too confident, Sir Stanley, and too conceited, as
most of our young men are, and I shall do a praiseworthy thing
in snubbing your conceit."

Then the baronet, forgetting his assumption of indifference, be-
came serious and angry.

" I am going to lose my temper," he said, " if you are to put
me off in this way, Olivia. You know "

" Sir Stanley, good-night. You are forgetting yourself. This

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 793

is a public hall just now, and really the music is charming. Ex-
cuse me."

She slipped through the door, leaving the baronet mortified
and enraged at his own stupidity.

" Your diplomacy was nearly overdoing the thing that time,"
said Dr. Fullerton's voice in his ear. He was laughing. " The
general and I were behind the curtains yonder and heard every
word. ' Coquettish,' said I. ' Stupid,' said she ; and you may
infer to whom these words were applied. However, since she
is determined you shall win, she has gone off to capture Olivia
and use her influence in your behalf."

" She is kind," said the baronet briefly and mournfully.

" I fancy," the doctor remarked consolingly, " that there was
no necessity for that move. Olivia will return of herself."

" Thank you for your encouraging words. But I am doomed
to play disconsolate for the rest of the evening."

Olivia in the interval, with a distinct sense of injury rankling
in her breast and almost betraying itself in her lips and eyes, fled
through the music-room without giving any thought to the
players and vocalists, and endeavored to take refuge in a room
beyond. She rushed tumultuously into the midst of a party of
gentlemen so deeply engaged in a political discussion that her
intrusion was unnoticed. Killany sat near the window, talking in
his slow, dulcet tones, and around were McDonell, pale and peev-
ish, the priest with his humble self-assurance, Sir John with his
perennial smile and Disraelian nose, and two other gentlemen of
no appearance whatever. Sir John, who was evidently awaiting a
chance to withdraw from the circle or to change the conversation,
was the first to catch sight of the young lady, and he rose gal-
lantly and somewhat eagerly to bring her forward. This won
for her the attention of the company.

" I beg you pardon, gentlemen," she said with a blush and a
smile, and the pretty boldness of a privileged miss. " I thought
the room was vacant."

" And so it shall be for you, Miss Walsingham "

" Fullerton, Sir John."

" Ah ! to be sure my poor memory, you understand so it
shall be for you, Miss Fullerton, if you desire it. Your rever-
ence, permit me "

" We are already acquainted," said the priest, smiling.

" Dr. Killany"

" I have the same honor," curtly observed the doctor, bowing.

" Mr. McDonell"

794 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

" No need of introductions at all, Sir John," cried the peevish
invalid. " Miss Fullerton is better known than yourself, and,
what is more, can give a straightforward opinion on this question
of Canadian policy with regard to the United States."

" Um ! " said Sir John aloud. It was non-committal. His
thoughts, translated into speech, were :

" The devil himself seems at work to force an admission of
some kind from me to-night."

"We were just discussing," the priest courteously explained
to the new disputant, " the advantages and disadvantages of an-
nexation to the United States."

" And its probability," put in McDonell.

" And its political significance," said Sir John beamingly.
He had to say something, for Olivia was looking at him inquiring-
ly, and he brought out in consequence the most sounding and
senseless remark he could manufacture.

"And all having given their opinions on these points," said
the priest

(" Sir John coming out strong on the political significance,"
muttered McDonell scornfully.)

" will it be asking too much of you, Miss Fullerton, that you
give an opinion also ? These gentlemen will receive it with the
veneration of the knights of old, and defend it as the truth against
the world."

" O gentlemen," answered the maiden, still blushing, " you
do me too great an honor. I own that I am interested in these
questions, and that I think a little and read a little about them.
But it does not become me to put upon you such an obligation
as you propose, or even to speak where those who have made a
study of these things have spoken."

" Modestly and truthfully said," observed Sir John with some
enthusiasm.

" But if you will receive my proposition, I appoint Sir John,
our representative Canadian, to speak my sentiments, and 1
shall adhere to the doctrines he utters."

" There's the difficulty," broke in McDonell abruptly. " You
will have nothing to adhere to. For since we began let me be
hanged if our representative Canadian has given one tangible
opinion on the question. Speak for yourself, young lady ; there
will be at least sincerity in what you say."

Olivia looked in surprise at her appointed champion. The
priest was smiling, and Killany had retired to cough at the far
end of the room. The other gentlemen, with the exception of

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 795

McDonell, seemed to be suffering from some concealed emotion.
Sir John alone was serene as a summer sky, although a comical
glint in his eyes as he looked at the priest argued the existence
of a predicament.

" Miss Fullerton," said he persuasively, " please do not re-
gard the utterances of the gentleman, or attach to them the im-
portance they would have if our friend were in perfect health.
In appointing me as your spokesman you honor me, and I am
grateful. But I must ask you first to speak, and then you shall
have a representative opinion from me one, too, that gallantry,
and patriotism, and sincerity shall be patrons of, I can assure
you."

This was evidently fair and emphatic. So unequivocal a de-
claration from the attorney-general seemed to create consider-
able interest among the gentlemen, and they closed around in va-
rious attitudes of respectful and deep attention.

" Yet before I venture to be so bold," said Olivia, " I should
like to hear what has been said by each of the disputants on the
subject."

The priest was about to take upon himself the reply when
McDonell sharply interrupted :

" To do that would take some hours, Miss Fullerton, for all of
them, with the exception of Killany, perhaps, were as verbose as
you could desire. Sir John managed to say nothing in a great
many words. His opinion amounts to this : if the weathercock
people swing one way, so will he ; if they swing another, so will
he."

" Mr. McDonell ! " said the knight reproachfully.

" His reverence," continued the invalid, " who has spent most
of his life in the United States, and was born in Ireland, at-
tempted, with the genius of a cosmopolitan, to take the question
from an Irish, an American, a Canadian, and a papal point of
view ; but they all so flatly contradicted one another that he
ended by leaving the solution to the future. A pretty hole to
crawl out of, upon my word !

" Killany, in spite of his English birth, being an out-and-out
American sympathizer, said that the attention of Americans
had not yet been directed to the annexation of Canada in the
face of '76 and 1812 he said that, Miss Fullerton and he added
that thinkers like himself were decidedly averse to it. It would
be to the advantage of neither country: not to the United States,
which would become altogether too unwieldy for management ;
and not to Canada, which would suffer in losing her nationality.

796 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

" I said annex, looking at it from a commercial point of view,
and these gentlemen agreed with me. There's a synopsis of an
hour's conversation, and you can see just how much sincerity
there must have been in what we said. Now, my dear, give us a
plain, square, patriotic, sensible opinion, and, as his reverence has
remarked, we will hold to it, for to-night at least, through thick
and thin."

" I always feel too deeply on Canadian subjects," said Olivia,
11 to give what you hard, money-getting men of the world would
call a sensible opinion. I love Canada, and I hate her enemies.
For that reason alone I am opposed to annexation."

" And you consider, Miss Fullerton, that the United States is
a menace to your country ? " said Killany.

" Certainly. And not only to us but to the other countries
of the continent. Her citizens seem to aim at nothing less than
the dominion of the New World. She considers it an honor to
the state which she forces into her abominable Union."

" Abominable," muttered McDonell. " Twaddle ! "

" Abominable !" cried Sir John. "Miss Fullerton S " And
it was hard to say whether he meant his words to be of encour-
agement or reproof.

" It is not often," said Killany, for once in a virtuous mood,
" that we hear that word applied to a political system which is
the admiration of the world."

" Well, gentlemen," laughed Olivia, with a sweetness and in-
difference that astonished herself, so fierce was she -apt to become
in argument, " you have asked for my opinion, and you have
it. Make the most of it. And now shall we hear from you, Sir
John?"

" By all means," cried several together.

" You are very, very warm and somew r hat poetical," said the
politician, with a most flattering smile beaming from his counte-
nance. " But you are not far from the truth in many things, and
your clever foresight does you great credit. So few of our young
ladies think nowadays. But in questions of this nature, Miss
Fullerton, the element of patriotism, while holding a deservedly
high place, must suffer itself to be guided by prudence and by
sound policy, and must often submit to force of circumstances.
Our Canada is a growing country, but as yet disunited, young,
and weak. Our neighbor is powerful, wealthy, united. It would
be mere foolishness to irritate her by empty display. But in the
future what may not happen? All that your ardent young
mind has conjured up in its dreams may be more than realized.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN- OF CULTURE. 797

I congratulate you on your knowledge of Canada's needs, and I
thank you for the honor you have done me."

" There," said McDonell, with a triumphant snarl, "how do
you like that as a specimen of sincerity, gallantry, and patriot-
ism ? It is of the purest political quality, warranted to stand the
wear and tear of a campaign, and to hold its color in spite of the
washing it may receive at the hands of opponents. It is of the
color which washing least affects white. If we were annexed to-
morrow you couldn't twist one of those sentences into hostility
against the American government. If we were to leap at a bound
into greatness Sir John would be the observed of observers, as
the man whose rhetorical and far-reaching mind foresaw and fore-
told it one evening at a reception."

" You are severe to-night, Mr. McDonell," said the priest in
mild reproof. " I consider that Sir John has been very ex-
plicit "

" From what point of view, your reverence ? " growled Dio-
genes. " From the papal, American, etc. ? "

" Let us say from all. He has subscribed to the doctrine put
forth by Miss Fullerton, and is become an opponent of annexa-
tion, and by consequence a believer in our future independence."

" Will you say amen to that, Sir John ? "

Olivia had been disappointed at the knight's reply. She felt
that it was not open or candid ; that he had said nothing about
annexation ; and that what he had said was not in accordance
with her high conception of Sir John's character. She hoped he
would accept this opportunity of retrieving himself. Her know-
ledge of the ways of statesmanship was primitive, and she knew
nothing of the little filthinesses in which constitutional and popu-
lar rulers almost unavoidably indulge.

" These gentlemen are becoming facetious," was all the attor-
ney-general could be brought to say. " Let us leave them, Miss
Fullerton. I hear music in a distant room. I am fond of it.
Will you guide me to the temple of the Muse?"

There was nothing left but to retire. They went away amid
the smiles of the company, and Olivia knew that they were
laughing at her simplicity. McDonell laughed in his hard, peev-
ish, snarling fashion.

" Father Leonard," said he, " you can yet learn a thing or
two from Sir John. It is a neat trick to be able to hold some
twenty or thirty different opinions on the same subject and pre-
sent a new one to every comer. But it is risky. Give me the
man who can talk eternally and yet express no views at all. An

798 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

ass does it naturally,' I know. In a man like Sir John it is the
perfection of art."

Olivia made it her duty to slip away from the knight at 'the
earliest opportunity. Having met with the general, who had
been looking for her a long time with the intention of bringing
her to a sense of her obligations to Sir Stanley, she foisted the
politician adroitly upon her, and so unintentionally checkmated
the good lady. Then she went looking for a quiet spot wherein
to rest for a few minutes. She was feverish, disappointed, and
aching with regrets only half understood. The late conversation
had disgusted her a little, and she wondered if the patriotism her
mind had conceived as belonging to the true lover of his country
was anything more than a creature of her own imagination. Evi-
dently it was not compatible with the idiosyncrasies of an attor-
ney-general.

In her search for a retired nook it was her fortune to run un-
observed on Sir Stanley. He, too, had sought a retirement in
which to hide his disappointment, and disconsolate as any love-
lorn youth looked the handsome baronet when he thought no
eye was upon him. Her heart relented.

" I was too hard," she said, " and it was but natural for him."

Then she threw a book on the floor, and came rapidly into
the apartment to find Sir Stanley gone. It was disappointing
to her good intentions, and she got out of humor at once, but
made the most of circumstances by falling asleep on an inviting
lounge. The sound of voices in the next room awoke her a few
minutes afterward. Two persons seemed to be the talkers, and
she speedily recognized the tones of Mrs. Strachan and Killany.

" Impossible ! " the general was saying in astonished accents.

" Mere fact," Killany answered. " It is known to very few
besides myself. Father and mother they never had lawfully.
They have hidden their base birth under the title of orphans, and
so sought the favor and pity of the world. It is a base imposi-
tion on society."

" It must be seen to," said the general slowly, and Olivia
knew by the tone of her voice that she was still doubtful as to the
truth of what she had heard, yet did not wish directly to ques-
tion Killany's veracity.

" He is a slanderer, too," thought Olivia, rising to return to
the company. " When will the true character of this man be
known ? What poor unfortunate has fallen under his displeasure'
now? Yet Nano tolerates him because he is useful. In what
way ? Can it be in anything good, I wonder? "

1 88 1.] / A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 799

She rejected this last thought with indignation, and chided
herself severely for thinking even inadvertently so poorly of her
friend. When she reached the parlors once more the general
seized upon her and carried her off to the music-room.

" For you have left that sweet voice of yours shamefully
alone," said the general, "and have not made a single effort to
amuse any one this evening."

But before they arrived at the music-room Sir Stanley, who
must have been lurking somewhere in the vicinity, was taken
under the general's protection. Olivia was anxious to atone for
her previous hard-heartedness, and smiled and spoke so kindly
that, indifferent as he pretended to be, his heart was beating, and
he secretly blessed Mrs. Strachan, to whose good services he at-
tributed this favorable change in the mood of his lady-love.
There were few persons in the room when they entered, and the
piano was silent. Dr. Fullerton sat alone at a table looking over
some engravings. His face was grave as usual, but sadder, and
his attention seemed anywhere save on the pictures.

" Look at him," whispered Olivia to the baronet when the
general went off to hunt up some music. " He is in love, Sir
Stanley, and believes it to be hopeless. He has moped like that
the whole evening, stealing into the presence of his charmer,
and stealing out again, guiltily ; afraid to go, and dreading to
stay in her presence. And he wears her photograph next his
heart."

" And who is the favored one, Olivia ? " asked the baronet
with real interest.

" Who but the divinest of her sex, the glorious Nano ? "

" Not quite the divinest," said the amorous baronet, with an-
other of his effective and meaning looks. " But I am very glad
to hear it. They are made for each other, and he will be her sal-

Etion."
" My very thought," said Olivia rapturously.
" ' Two souls with but a single ' "
" Sir Stanley, you may turn the music," interrupted the gene-
l. " Your musical talent has been developed enough for that
ice, I trust."

" My cool-headedness you mean," returned the baronet.
" Or cold-heartedness," said the general. " I will engage that
you are not often disturbed b}~ the sound of a voice or the gla-
mour of blue eyes."

" Only in one particular instance, Mrs. Strachan. Come, Oli-
via."

8oo A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Mar.,

When she had finished her song Dr. Fullerton came over to
the piano with gentle reproach in his looks.

" Where have you kept yourself during the greater part of the
evening, Olivia ? " he asked. " We looked for you everywhere
in vain."

" Not everywhere nor vainly," answered she. " I must have
been somewhere, and I have rewarded your search with a very
fine song. Sir John played the gallant for me a few minutes,
and I do believe I fell asleep afterwards in a little room at the
other end of the hall. The sound of Mrs. Strachan's voice woke
me, or 1 would have slept until the evening was over."

Before any remarks could be made the general, with a smiling
face, drew the young lady away from the gentlemen altogether,
and went with her to another part of the room.

" Did you hear any of the conversation that passed between
Killany and me, Olivia?" she asked, with a searching glance into
the girl's face.

" A few words," replied Olivia, with a scornful curl of her
lips. " Enough only to confirm the opinion I always had of Kil-
lany. He was slandering, then, in his mean, dark way, some in-
nocent people."

Mrs. Strachan seemed disconcerted and troubled for a mo-
ment, and she kept her eyes fixed peculiarly on Olivia's face.

" He was speaking of you and of your brother," said she
calmly.

A deadly paleness overspread Olivia's countenance. She had
to struggle with herself severely before daring to speak.

" Of me and of my brother he dared to say that ? " she gasp-
ed, and her blue eyes looked up with the fear of a startled bird
in their depths. " Oh ! can hatred of the innocent go so far? "

A silence of some minutes intervened. The general was re-
garding her compassionately, and sternly too, the very imperso-
nation of society.

<4 You are waiting for an answer of some kind," said Olivia at
last, " but I am not the one to give it to you. I never knew my
father and my mother, but my brother did, and he can refute the
calumny, no doubt, and punish the calumniator. How Killany,
whom we never knew until we met him in Toronto, should pre-
sume to know so much of our affairs is strange. He hates me,
and would injure me if he could. But he has gone too far for
once. This will cost him more that he dreams of."

Her significant glance at the doctor gave the general infinite
satisfaction. Mrs. Strachan had no faith in Killany, and was

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 80 1

consequently disinclined to believe him in any respect. Yet un-
less he was a low villain of the elegant cut-throat type, he would
scarcely venture on so daring an attempt to injure the fair fame
of the Fullertons. It behooved her to move cautiously in the
matter, and not commit herself precisely to either side. Her
sympathy was with Olivia.

" I understand you, my dear," said the lady, " and I think I
understand Killany. I advise you to say nothing to your brother
of this just now, as it might lead to bloodshed. Young men are
hot, and such a report as this is sure to kill one party or the other.
Look quietly for proof sufficient to put the lie on this upstart,
and then, having the lash in one hand and the knowledge of his
guilt in the other, you will not spare him, nor will I, you may feel
certain. Now let us return to the gentlemen."

" Thank you ever so much," said the grateful, distressed girl.
" Your confidence is consoling, and I shall work harder to satisfy
you than to satisfy the world."

" Very proper," murmured the acute old lady, whose present
sympathy, like Sir John's opinion on annexation, was very doubt-
fully expressed and meant absolutely nothing.

" I wish to go home," was Olivia's first remark to her brother.
" I am tired and ill."

" Brief and commanding," said he good-humoredly. " Let us
go, then, to make our farewells to Miss McDonell."

" So soon ? " observed that lady reproachfully. " Why, Dr.
Fullerton, I have not had the pleasure of exchanging words with
you this evening. I was in hopes that my friends would have
, the honor of hearing you demolish some of their pretty theories.
Olivia tells me you are a great reader and admirer of the
fathers."

" So I happen to be/' the gentleman gravely answered. " I

Kret that Olivia's indisposition makes it necessary for us to go."
" Are you really ill ? " Nano said, " or is it only an affection of
heart ? " she added in a whisper.
" Sick unto death," answered Olivia, with a smothered sob.
have been stabbed to-night, and in a mortal part, by one who
is called a gentleman. You shall hear all by and by. Good-
night, Nano. Oh ! good-night."

And the brother and sister went away smiling. The hostess
smiled, too, as pleasantly as they, while all three held the most
.aching hearts that ever beat in human breasts.

TO BE CONTINUED.
VOL. XXXII. 51

8o2 PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. [Mar.,

PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ.

THE first ecclesiastical benefice Petrarch received was confer-
red on him by Pope Benedict XII., who appointed him to a can-
onicate at Lombez, a small town in southwestern France entire-
ly out of the beat of the tourist. It stands on the right bank of
the Save, one of the tributaries to the Garonne, in a fertile re-
gion that formed part of Queen Eleanora's dowry when she mar-
ried Henry II. of England. The country around has no strik-
ing features to give it any claims to the picturesque, but there
is a calm, pastoral beauty about the valley enclosed among gen-
tle hills through which winds the crystal Save. The hillsides
are covered with vines, the fields abound in the choicest wheat,
the orchards are filled with the plum, the fig, and the almond
tree, and the pastures are well stocked with fat kine of a soft,
creamy hue peculiar to this country. The beneficent heavens
above are pure, radiant, and tempered by cool mountain winds.
Chains of low hills run from north to south, from which you
have a fine view of the Pyrenees on the one hand, and on the
other of a beautiful undulating region extending to the valley of
the Garonne. In every direction are rural villages and pretty cha-
teaux. East of the town is the wide plain where encamped the
army of Louis XIV., under Vendome, on its way to Spain. Not far
off is the chateau where lived the poet Salluste du Bartas, ambas-
sador of Henry IV. to the courts of England and Scotland, whose
poems Milton loved to read in his boyhood and whose " Week
of the Creation " was translated into English by Mrs. Brad street,
wife of one of the early governors of Massachusetts. The ruin-
ed towers of Coucilles and Mauvezin in another direction show
traces of fierce warfare. A little to the north of Lombez is Sa-
matan, the ancient stronghold of the lords of Comminges, which
prides itself on being the first to check the Huguenot Montgom-
ery when devastating the country with torch and sword. Further
off is lie Jourdain, the ancient Castrum Ictium, in a beautiful, fer-
tile plain on the borders of the old forest of Bouconne, where St.
Bertrand, the great thaumaturgus of the Pyrenees, was born, and
where, in the church of St. Martin, may be seen the shrine of St.
Odo, the second abbot of Cluny. Not far from Lombez, at the
west, is Simorre, with its ruined Benedictine abbey founded by
Clovis, the first Christian king of France, whose abbots gave laws

1 88 1 .] PE TRARCH CA NON AT L OMBEZ. 803

and administered justice to the people, and where Montesquieu
spent part of his youth under the tutelage of a relative who was
one of the monks.

This part of Aquitaine was once a Roman province called
Novempopulania, because inhabited by nine different peoples.
Past Lombez runs the old Roman road that went from Climber-
ris (Auch) to Tolosa. Ancient remains have been found on a hill
overlooking the town where a villa or encampment once stood
fragments of marble columns and ancient pottery, a bronze
Mercury, some antique lamps, and a great number of Roman
medals and coins. But there seems to have been no town here
before the sixth century. Lombez, in fact, is one of those places,
so numerous in Europe, that have grown up around the tomb
of a saint. Its foundation is due to St. Majan, or Mayan, the
great apostle of this valley. Ancient traditions say that St.
Majan was a bishop of Antioch in the sixth century, who, after
a pilgrimage to Rome and St. James of Compostella, came into
Aquitaine by way of Bayonne, and, arriving at the valley of the
Save, was so filled with compassion at the barbarism of the peo-
ple that he built an oratory to the holy Mother of God, with a
small cell adjoining in which he established himself and spent the
remainder of his life in laboring for their conversion. He also
encouraged them in clearing and cultivating the land, and intro-
duced new fruit-trees, among others a kind of plum known here
as the peregrine, one of which became famous at Villemagne for
springing up and bearing fruit as often as it was cut down. Fie
is also said to have extirpated the wild beasts and venomous rep-
tiles, and delivered the country from an enormous dragon that
infected the neighborhood with its poisonous breath and devour-
ed every one who fell in its way, by casting his episcopal ring in-
to its yawning mouth, at which the earth opened and swallowed
the monster up for ever. A fountain sprang up on the spot that
has always been considered miraculous. Whether this legend is
to be regarded as literally true or merely symbolic every one
must determine for himself. St. Majan at his death was buried

P'ris oratory, which stood on a height overlooking the present
rn, and his tomb was held in such veneration that a village was
n formed around it.
In the year 810 Count Raymond of Toulouse gave Lombez
and the surrounding territory to the Order of St. Benedict. The
monks did not delay taking possession of their new domains, and
when they saw the fertility of the valley they decided to build a
convent at Lombez, which took the name of Notre Dame de la

804 PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. [Mar.,

Save. The mild rule of the gentle-mannered monks drew around
them new settlers, which increased the size of the village. For
three centuries they and their vassals labored in cultivating the
lands now covered with harvests, and in planting vineyards which
are still the pride of the valley. As long as their labors were un-
productive they lived in peace ; but as soon as the valley was
covered with orchards and rich wheat-fields, and the hills of
Savez were draped with luxuriant vines, the neighboring lords,
as was not uncommon, stretched forth their hands to reap what
they had not sown and gather what they had not planted. It
was a virtue in the thrifty monks to bring wild lands under cul-
tivation, but culpable avarice to cling to the fruit of their labors.
Accordingly, Bernard, Count of Comminges, laid claim to the ab-
bey lands, and the monks, without means of defence, appealed to
the noble house of regular canons at Toulouse, who agreed to
aid them on condition of becoming the suzerains of the ab-
bey. The concession was made and the lands were vigorously
defended, but the contest lasted one hundred and fifty-nine years
before the counts of Comminges renounced their claims. Notre
Dame de la Save became the fief of the canons of Toulouse, who
finally superseded the Benedictines. From this time monastic
life flowed uneventfully along on the banks of the Save till John
XXII. ascended the pontifical throne. He was a native of Ca-
hors, and, desirous of increasing the splendor and influence of the
Gallican Church, he created twelve new sees in France in the year
1317, among which was that of Lombez. The first bishop was
the son of Count Bernard VII. of Comminges, Arnaud Roger,
who had renounced his rights to the succession at the age of
twenty to become a regular canon at Notre Dame de la Save.
After Lombez became an episcopal see the population naturally
increased, and many people took refuge here when the. Black
Prince invaded the country in 1335, pillaging and laying waste as
he went. But it was never a place of much importance. Before
the Revolution there were twenty-five hundred inhabitants. Now
there are only about fifteen hundred. One great disaster it never
recovered from the loss of St. Majan's hallowed remains, which
took place a few centuries after his death. The account of this
robbery is very curious, but not without a parallel in the middle
ages. Just before, the body of St. Mark had been seized and car-
ried off from Alexandria to Venice an act many looked upon in
those days as only a pious larceny. And a little after, that of the
great St. Nicholas at Myra was borne off in a similar manner to
Bari, where it is still honored. In this instance two monks of

i88i.] PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. 805

Cognas, in Narbonnese Gaul, Sylvius and Centulle by name, de-
sirous of enriching their convent with the possession of St. Ma-
jan's remains, then famous for miracles, came secretly to Lombez
for the purpose of carrying- them away. Finding it would be
difficult to execute their design on account of the constant crowd
of pilgrims, they established themselves in a hermitage on St.
Majan's hill, and were finally entrusted with the keys of the
chapel and the guardianship of the tomb. In this way they were
enabled to get possession of the saint's relics in the night-time.
They put them in two baskets and set off in haste for Cognas.
The robbery was discovered in the morning, and the infuriated
people went in pursuit of the monks, who only escaped by taking
refuge in the dense forest of Bouconne, where they had marvel-
lous proofs of the saint's power. They succeeded at last in get-
ting safely back to Cognas. Their brethren came out with great
pomp to meet them, and bore the relics into their chapel with
triumphant music, They afterwards built a church in honor, of
the saint, the belfry of which still remains to attest its magnifi-
cence, and the name of the town itself was changed to Ville-Ma-
jane, since corrupted into Villemagne, by which it is known to
this day.

The chapel of St. Majan, with its empty tomb, continued to be
held in great honor at Lombez. It stood on a hill just north of
the town, with two or three small vineyards around it given by
the canons of Notre Dame de la Save for its maintenance, and on the
eve of the saint's festival the clergy, followed by the people, used
to ascend the hill in solemn procession. Vespers were sung in
the chapel, with a commemoration of St. Prim and St. Clair, two
of St. Majan's fellow-laborers martyred for the faith. On St.
Majan's day (June i) a great crowd assembled in the chapel, es-
pecially those who had any affection of the eyes. The Gospel of
the day was read over them, and they bathed their faces in the
fountain. In time a portion of St. Majan's relics was obtained
and placed in the cathedral. His venerated chapel disappeared
at the Revolution, but a cross marks the place where it stood, and
a procession is still made thither every year on the first of June
to sing an antiphon in honor of the great apostle of the valley.
The abbey of Notre Dame de la Save is also gone. The princi-
pal feature of the town now is the cathedral, with its tall, octagon
tower of five stories, crowned by a gallery and lighted by lanceo-
lated windows separated by slender colonnettes. The arches of
the nave have the arms of the early bishops on the keystones.
The Gothic windows are beautiful in design and brilliant of color,

806 PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. [Mar.,

but were injured a good deal at the Revolution. In their solemn
light you go from chapel to chapel, despoiled of their former
riches, but still containing many tombs of the bishops with their
Latin epitaphs, some with recumbent effigies on them. There is
the chapel of the Agony, and another of St. Majan. That of
Our Lady has a good deal of old boiserie from the ancient church
of the Capuchins. The chapel of St. Sepulcre once had its group
of Holy Women with their vases of perfumes, and Nicodemus
and St. Joseph of Arimathea wrapping up the body of the Lord
in spices. They are now gone, and in their place stands a bap-
tismal font of lead a curious work of the twelfth century on it
symbolic figures of hunters slaying wild beasts with their arrows.
The stalls of the choir have the apostles carved on the panels,
and misericordes and partitions decorated with quaint animals of
impossible anatomy.

The see of Lombez was suppressed in 1801, and it now forms
part of the archdiocese. of Auch. Of its line of thirty bishops,
some of whom wore the Roman purple, the following may be
mentioned as noteworthy :

Arnaud I. (1379), a Benedictine monk, regarded as the author
of the twelve treatises De Operibus Christicardinalibus, sometimes
wrongly attributed to St. Cyprian ; Gerard de Charno, who in a
great famine went out in search of the needy and brought them
into his own palace, where he lived among them as a father, serv-
ing them with his own hands ; Pierre de Foix, son of one of the
old Captals de Buch and of Isabella, countess of Foix, whose
bust is to be seen in the capitol at Toulouse among the illustrious
men of the province, he having founded the college of Foix in
that city, and endowed it with twenty-five boiirses for poor
scholars ; Cardinal Jean Grolaye de Villieres, one of the greatest
bishops of France a member of the royal council and sent on a
diplomatic mission to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, an in-
fluential member of the Council of Trent, and a benefactor to the
hospital at Lombez, to which he bequeathed ten thousand livres ;
Charles de Maupeou, of a noble family in Normandy, who, true
to his name of pontiff, built the fine bridge over the Save, with
his arms on the principal arch, where once stood an oratory to
invite the passer-by to pause and say a prayer ; Ferdinand de
Lamothe-Fenelon, nephew of the illustrious archbishop of Cam-
brai, a man of apostolic zeal and piety, who, after spending four-
teen years at court as the king's almoner, was made bishop of
Lombez and now lies buried before the high altar of the cathe-
dral ; and C6me Roger, of the order of Feuillants, a noted

1 88 1.] PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. 807

preacher, to whom Louis XIV. always listened with fresh plea-
sure. He left part of his property to the poor of his diocese, and
was buried at the foot of the episcopal throne with the simple
epitaph : " Of your charity pray God for the soul of Come
Roger, once bishop of Lombez." It was in his time lived Pere
Ambroise, a Capuchin friar, styled "of Lombez," who sprang
from the ancient family of Lapeyrie, in this region, and was the
author of several remarkable works on the spiritual life among
others the well-known Paix Interieure. The last bistrop of Lom-
bez died in exile at London in 1805.

But the most distinguished man, perhaps, who ever occupied
the see of Lombez was Giacomo di Colonna, the second bishop,
who belonged to the princely family of the Colonnas at Rome,
but was born in exile in consequence of his father's taking the
lead in the political faction against Pope Benedict VIII. This
was Stefano Colonna, who was reconciled to the church under
Clement V. and took up his residence at Avignon, where he be-
came the patron of Petrarch, who called him "a phoenix risen
from the ashes of the old Romans." It was he who, when his
fortress of Praeneste was demolished, being asked where now
was his stronghold, grandly replied, " Here," as he laid his hand
on his heart. His son Giacomo was quite young when appointed
bishop of Lombez, but he had won the affection of Pope John
XXII. by a service that endangered his life. The pope had
drawn up a bull of excommunication against Louis of Bavaria
for seizing the patrimony of the church, and young Colonna, who
possessed great boldness and courage, undertook to proclaim it
at Rome, then occupied by the emperor. He entered Rome by
the Porta del Popolo, accompanied by three masked cavaliers,
and rode the whole length of the Corso till he came to the Piazza
di San Marcello. Here he proclaimed the emperor a felon under
the ban of the church, and, after the old knightly fashion, offered
to maintain and prove it with his sword against all persons whom-
soever. He then fastened the papal bull to the walls of the
church of San Marcello, and, springing on his horse, made his es-
cape to Palestrina in spite of the emperor's endeavors to capture
him. His nomination to the see of Lombez soon followed. The
pope granted him a dispensation on account of his youth and al-
>wed him a year to prepare for holy orders. The young bishop
took a serious view of his obligations, and, as soon as he was con-
secrated, hastened to visit his see, taking with him a brilliant cor-
t6ge of young Italians, among whom was Petrarch, who had been
his fellow-student at Bologna. The latter says : " Colonna, who

8o8 PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. [Mar.,

took pleasure in my poems in the vulgar tongue, into which I
threw all the fire of my youth, forgot the claims he had on me,
and, instead of commanding, only entreated me earnestly to ac-
company him." They left Avignon the latter part of March,
1330, and passed through Montpellier, where Petrarch had pre-
viously studied and had first read the old romance of Pierre de
Provence et la belle Maguelone, which he is said to have retouched.
Thence they proceeded to Toulouse. The Jeux Floraux had
only been established six years. The Abbe de Sade thinks Pe-
trarch was present at the distribution of prizes that year, and
says his intercourse with the poets of this region helped forVn
his taste and influence his style. He found Lombez less
attractive. The town was small and poorly built, and the
people were rustic in their manners. Lamartine says : " Co-
lonna took Petrarch to an obscure and illiterate place at the
foot of the Pyrenees among the sources of the Garonne." The
country, however, at their arrival was in all the freshness and
beauty of spring, and the bishop acknowledged the skies rivalled
those of Italy. As for congenial society, the bishop was distin-
guished for his elevation of mind, the refinement of his manners,
and his love of literature. He was a lover of .poetry especially,
and wrote an occasional sonnet, and therefore sympathized in the
pursuits of the poet. And there were two persons in his house-
hold who became Petrarch's dearest and most confidential friends.
One was Lello Stefani, the Laslius of his letters, and the other
Luigi de Campinia, who was so remarkable for depth of mind
that Petrarch always called him " Socrates." A great number of
his letters in after-years were addressed to these two friends, and
the entire collection of his Letter e delle Cose Familiar i is dedicated
ad Socratem suum..

Some details of social life at the Eveche -of Lombez have been
preserved. Among other things it is related that Colonna and
Petrarch in their leisure often discussed the ancient authors, es-
pecially the Fathers of the church. The former preferred St.
Jerome, but the tender, poetic nature of Petrarch made him give
the preference to St. Augustine. " There are," says he, " a multi-
tude of stars in the firmament of the church, all luminous, but of
various degrees of glory. One is Jupiter, another Hesperus : St.
Augustine is the sun of the church." The sensibility and fervor
of St. Augustine's character, the struggles between his passions
and his piety, and his unflinching dissection of his own nature
made Petrarch regard him as a kindred spirit and seek to enter
into intimate communion with him. He wrote dialogues with

Uli

88 1.] PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. 809

St. Augustine on the contempt of the world, in which he enters
into an analysis of his own soul, laying bare his weaknesses and
fathoming their origin. He always carried about with him in
after-life a copy of St. Augustine's Confessions, given him by
Cardinal de Cabassole, one of his most intimate friends. He
tells about taking it out one day on the top of Mt. Ventoux and
accidentally opening at the passage : " Men go far to examine
the summits of mountains, the waters of the sea, the beginning
and course of rivers, and the immensity of the ocean, but they
neglect to examine themselves."

In their hours of familiar intercourse the bishop used to rally
Petrarch about his gray hair and his passion for Laura. Petrarch
was then only twenty-six years of age, but was already some-
what gray, perhaps to his mortification ; for he had a weakness as
to his personal appearance, and acknowledged in after-years he
was pleased when thought younger than he really was a kind
of infirmity he justified by the example of Csesar and Virgil,
after the taste of his time for Latin erudition. As for his attach-
ment to Laura, whom he first met only three years before, we
have no intention of entering upon its history. However ele-
vated in sentiment, however Platonic, however mystic the veil he
throws over his passion, exalting it into a kind of religion, it has
no attraction in our eyes. It was a universal custom, it is true,
among the troubadours and poets of the middle ages to choose,
like the knights, some dame de ses pensdes at whose feet they could
lay their choicest garlands of poesy ; but Petrarch was identified
with the clerical order by receiving the tonsure and binding him-
self to a life of celibacy, though he was never raised to the priest-
hood, and was, to all intents and purposes, a layman. The prefer-
ments he received were only honorary, and he never accepted
any office that involved the direction of others. He says himself :
" I never would, and never shall, accept any bishopric, or any
cure of souls, however richly endowed. I have enough to do in
king care of my own soul, if, indeed, by God's grace, I suffice
or that." Although Petrarch in his sonnets pretends this senti-
ment of love for Laura directed him toward the supreme good,
we know it was not potent enough to secure him from yielding
to other influences and showing infirmities that reduce his con-
stancy, as Gustave Planche says, to very human proportions, and
excite great doubts as to its purifying effects and its value as the
directing influence of his life. In an imaginary dialogue with St.
Augustine he acknowledges this by the words he puts in the
mouth of the saint : " You say you owe to Laura what you are,

8 io PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. [Mar.,

that she has led you to quit the world and elevated you to the
contemplation of celestial things. ... It is true she has drawn
you out of some vices, but she has also prevented the growth of
many virtues. In tears and complaints you have spent the time
which should have been devoted to God. The best effect of this
attachment, perhaps, is its having made you eager for glory. . . .
As to everything else, I venture to declare that she has been your
destruction by nourishing a passion she ought to have suppress-
ed. She has filled you with a love of the creature rather than of
the Creator, and this is the death of the soul."

With the leisure for literary pursuits, the society of such
friends as Colonna and the members of his little court, a climate
of happy temperature, and a country of varied beauty, though
somewhat wild, perhaps, at that time compared with Italy, Pe-
trarch could not have been unhappy at Lombez. His restless
nature, however, prevented him from taking root here, though
he professed to regret only his own country :

" Non e questo '1 mio nido
Ove nudrito fui si dolcemente :
Non e questa la patria"

This is not the nest in which I 'was softly nurtured ; this is not
my native land. What he really sought was the peace he found
at the end of his days when the storms of his soul had died away.
It was then he recalled with pleasure the life he led at Lombez.
" It was a delightful period," he says in his Epistle to Posterity,
" I might almost say heavenly. I cannot recall without regret a
summer spent so agreeably. Those were the pleasantest days of
my life."

After spending the summer and part of the autumn at Lom-
bez, Colonna went to Avignon to see his aged father. Petrarch
accompanied him and took up his residence in the house, of Car-
dinal Giovanni Colonna (the bishop's brother), which was the re-
sort of all the cultivated men at the papal court. The bishop of
Lombez had barely time to embrace his father before he was
obliged to set out for Italy, where he had first occasion to display
the bold intrepidity of which he had given such brilliant proofs
before his elevation to the episcopate. He met Petrarch some
time after, while a guest of Orso de Anguillara, who afterwards
crowned the poet at the Roman Capitol. Anguillara's wife was
Agnes Colonna, one of those noble women, says Petrarch, who
can only be duly praised by silent admiration. They lived in the
castle of Capranica, a stronghold among the mountains of

1 88 1 .] PE TRARCH CA NOW AT L OMBEZ. 8 1 1

Etruria, governing their vassals with gentle, patriarchal rule, and
gathering around them men of talent and learning. ' The whole
country around was then ravaged by war, but the bold bishop of
Lombez found his way through the enemy, attended only by one
hundred men. With such companionship Petrarch acknowledges
he scarcely sighed even for Rome, which some think he symbo-
lizes under the name of Laura, so great was his love for the Eter-
nal City.

At the accession of Pope Benedict XII. Petrarch addressed
him a Latin sonnet imploring him to restore the seat of the
Papacy to Rome. The pope, though by no means inclined to
follow his advice, was so far from taking offence that, at the re-
quest of Cardinal Colonna, he appointed Petrarch canon of the
cathedral at Lombez. This was in January, 1335. The pope
himself was born on the banks of another branch of the Garonne,
and was doubtless familiar with the valley of the Save. Petrarch
was not disposed to take possession of his benefice during the
bishop's absence, and when the latter, after declining the patri-
archate of Aquileia, was at liberty to return to his see, the poet
had taken up his residence at Parma. He was, however, about
to visit Lombez when he heard of the bishop's death. This was
in 1341. How much he deplored such a loss is proved by his
coupling the bishop's name with that of Laura in one line :

" Rotta e 1'aita Colonna e '1 verde Laura "
My Column's fallen, my green Laurel dead.

He likewise apostrophizes the bishop in one of the most touch-
ing of his sonnets :

" O aspettata in ciel."

Petrarch relates a curious incident connected with the bishop's
death in a letter to Joannes Andreas, professor of canon law at
Bologna, under whom they had both studied : " I saw him in a
dream in the night. No one was with him. Fie was crossing
the little stream that bounds my garden. Filled with astonish-
ment, I went to meet him. I asked him a thousand questions :
where he came from ; where he was going ; why he was in such
haste ; and why he travelled alone. With the smile and pleasant
voice I was so familiar with he said : ' Do you remember the sum-
mer you spent with me beyond the Garonne, and how insup-
portable you found the thunderstorms of the Pyrenees? I, too,
am weary of them, and am going to Rome never to return.' By
this time he had reached the end of my grounds. I begged him

8i2 PETRARCH CANON AT LOMBEZ. [Mar.,

to take me with him. He gently repulsed me twice with his
hand, and then with altered tone and look replied : ' No, this time
I do not wish you to accompany me.' 1 looked at him attentive-
ly and saw death in his pallid, colorless face. Filled with terror
and grief, I cried out, and as I awoke I heard the sound of my
voice dying away. . . . Twenty- five days after I received the
news of his death, and, comparing the dates, found he appeared to
me the very day he left this world for the enjoyment of a better,
as I hope and believe."

" With what pleasure," wrote he to his friend Lello, " I
looked forward to the day I thought near when I should, as he
had affectionately urged me to do, go from the Apennines to the
Pyrenees to present him with two humble but sincere proofs of
my veneration, the new cantos of my Africa and the Roman
laurel with which I had been unworthily crowned, as to which he
had congratulated me, testifying his joy in a poem of extreme
elegance. But God has frustrated my plan. I did not merit so
happy a clay."

And he thus wrote Cardinal Colonna : " As a bishop your
brother showed the most scrupulous exactitude. ... I recall
with pleasure his meekness in spite of his exalted rank, his mod-
esty with such gifts of nature, his natural dignity and youthful
grace, his pious observance of the sacred rites, and a gravity old
men might have envied so young a bishop, without the hope of
acquiring it. ... Two places that have nothing else in common
divide what remains here below of the departed. Rome pre-
serves the high and imperishable renown of its citizen ; Lombez
the venerable remains of its bishop, and never, if I am not mis-
taken, will Providence grant that church a more glorious honor
if you consent to leave them there for ever." But three years
after Bishop Colonna's death his remains were transported to
Rome. Petrarch then resigned his canonicate at Lombez. The
last tie that bound him to the place was severed. Some say he
revisited southwestern France later in life, when time had mod-
erated his feelings and his chief inspiration was the thought of
death, which then seemed the refrain of all his sonnets, as in the
following : " Virgin, Star of our stormy sea, behold the sudden
blast that has overtaken me rudderless. I feel already the chill
of death, but in thee my soul puts its confidence. It is stained
with sin, I deny it not, but, O Virgin ! I implore thee, let not the
enemy overwhelm me in the storm. Hasten, for my days are fly-
ing swift as an arrow. Death awaits me. Commend me, then, to
thy Son, that he may with thee receive my last sigh."

1 88 1.] BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. 813

BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER.

ONE is often surprised, in reading or hearing the numerous
attacks made by Protestants against Catholic faith or practice, at
the immense depth of the ignorance of some of these assailants
who have the best means of informing themselves, and who are
considered by their brethren as learned men, on points which lie at
the very basis of our simplest theological education. It is plain
that even- our little catechisms are a department of literature far
beyond their ken ; and yet, strange to say, they sit calmly in
judgment on matters which it would seem they must know they
have never studied, and make mistakes which would be tho-
roughly amusing if they were not often deplorable in their effects
on those who look to these men as guides.

One is surprised, we say ; really at a loss to account for this
strange phenomenon. Men do not usually blunder in this way in
the other affairs of life, unless, indeed, we except those who try to
show that the circle can be exactly squared or that the earth is
flat. Invincible ignorance, of course, suggests itself to the chari-
tably disposed as an explanation of the course of these critics of
ours ; it seems that they can have no idea how absurd they are
making themselves. But we are inclined to think that in many
cases they have a pretty strong suspicion of it, but that they do
not care much about it, and this for a very simple reason : that is,
that all those with whom they associate are as ignorant as them-
selves and will not detect their mistakes, and that they care little
for derision which does not reach their ears.

These general remarks are suggested by an article recently
brought to our notice, on " The Roman Doctrine of Intention,"
which appeared in the last number of a magazine called the
Church Eclectic. Its author, Dr. F. C. Ewer, who is tolerably well
known in a limited circle as the head of a somewhat ritualistic
congregation in this city, takes up a subject which is an eminently
practical one one on which he must know that all the Catholic
clergy act on precise and well-understood rules. He must fur-
thermore know that these rules are not handed down by word of
mouth in secrecy, but contained in common manuals which are
frequently in the hands and before the eyes of every priest and
every theological student. He must also be well aware that these

8 14 BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. [Mar.,

books are not printed for private distribution, but are to be
found in every bookstore containing works of an ecclesiastical
character. He may, it is true, have some alarming though ill-
founded idea that they would not be sold to him if he were
known not to be a priest ; but if he really fears a mortification of
this kind, he certainly might muster up courage to ask some
" Roman " cleric, at least by an anonymous letter, if these works
could not be procured in any way. But no ; he prefers to hazard
a guess as to their contents, knowing that if he betrays his igno-
rance his friends will never hear of it.

Yes, Dr. Ewer remains in ignorance because he does not
care for information. And in this he resembles many others who
attack the church. This is generally the true explanation of their
conduct. Occasionally, no doubt, they make charges which they
know to be false. Dr. Ewer, for example, in this very article,
does not hesitate to tell his readers that the church says : " Don't
think ; simply swallow. I'll do the thinking for you." Some
Protestants, of course, believe this ; Dr. Ewer, however, is not of
their number. He knows a little too much for that. But when
it comes to the main matter of his article he is off soundings ; he
knows that he is ignorant, and he knows little more. So he sets
out to sea, knowing that he is at sea, but not caring whether he
is or not.

It is for the most part a needless labor to answer attacks made
by such men. We know that they will not listen to us, for the
same reason" that they will not read Catholic theological works.
And their particular coteries will, as a rule, follow. their example;
generally, however, in better faith than their leaders. Among
them, however, and in the Protestant world at large which de-
pends less on guides, there are men and women who are really
seeking their way to the truth, who would like information, but
do not know how to get it in both which respects they differ
from Dr. Ewer. To them, then, it may be worth while to say a
few words exposing his absurd errors as to Catholic doctrine ;
but to him, or to men like him, we have nothing to say. His
statements and his arguments, if such they may be called, we may
notice ; himself we shall not address. Let this be distinctly un-
derstood.

So much premised, let us proceed to the point. What is this
"doctrine of intention " which Dr. Ewer is talking about? It is
the teaching of the church as to the intention in the mind of him
or her who administers a sacrament which is required to ensure
its validity ; and the conclusion he tries to draw is that this doc-

1 88 1.] BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. 815

trine, if true, would expose the validity of the sacraments to
great and continual danger.

To discuss this matter, to explain the " Roman" doctrine, Dr.
Ewer takes one canon of the Council of Trent, which we gladly
quote : " If any one shall say that in ministers, whilst they effect
and confer the sacraments, there is not required the intention at
least of doing what the church does, let him be anathema."

Yes, this is Roman doctrine, assented to, understood, and
acted on by every priest in the Catholic Church. But Dr. Ewer
shows no sign of having any idea as to what it really means.
In the first place, he entirely confuses the distinction, well known
to every student who has made a short course in moral theo-
logy, and obvious, indeed, to common sense, between " intention "
and "attention." He innocently remarks: "A priest's mind
may wander indeed, it may be a perfect blank at the critical
moment" (let us not laugh, my friends : yes, the critical moment)
" of effecting and conferring a sacrament, while at the same time
he is very far from having within him a spirit of ribaldry. Can
Rome mean that such an internal attitude of the priest would be
sufficient to invalidate a rite?" Can Rome mean? Why does
not the man study up and find out what Rome means ? If we do
not understand what any one means, and really want to know, we
go to him, if he can be easily found, and ask him. We do not
know Dr. Ewer's precise residence, but Rome is undoubtedly
within a few blocks of him. Any priest knows perfectly well
that distractions, causing a most lamentable want of attention to
what he is about, do not invalidate his sacramental acts. We are
ot angels, but men, and Rome knows that perfectly well ; we
metimes are, though of course we ought not to be, inattentive
ven in the most solemn acts of our ministry ; but however a
riest wearied by hours of work in the confessional, and hardly
.ble to keep his eyes open, may accuse himself of distractions, no
scruple enters his mind on this head. as to the validity of his abso-
utions, as far at least as his own part was concerned, if he has a
asonable certainty that he actually pronounced the words of
e sacramental form.

But we need not ask why Dr. Ewer does not study up. We
ve already given the reason.

He goes on to say : " But surely the decree calls for some-
thing in advance of such a negative blank in a serious mind." Of
course it does, or in any kind of a mind. What it requires is
"intention," not " attention." And what is " intention " ?

This, of course, Dr. Ewer might easily find out. For the bene-

816 BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. [Mar.,

fit of those, however, who could not so easily ascertain, we will
make a brief explanation.

Intention is, in the common language of theologians, which
Dr. Ewer will not take the pains to learn, " the act of the will
tending to some end ; or the act of the will by which any one in-
tends to do or omit something." We quote from Gury, who
merely repeats the common meaning of the term, just as some
scientific man would give the technical definition of force or of
energy. When talking on professional subjects we must be pro-
fessional ; and a scientist would rightly complain of, or more pro-
bably ignore, one who ignored the distinction between force and
energy ; though the mistake would be more excusable than that
of this dabbler in theology, since the term " intention " is, after
all, used by us in its common English sense, well brought out and
clearly stated in the definition.

Very well, then. Intention is, of course, of two plainly sepa-
rate kinds. I may intend to do something to-morrow or an hour
hence, or I may intend to do it now. It is probable that if I
make the intention some considerable time beforehand I shall re-
new it at some subsequent time nearer to the performance of the
act; so that the act will proceed from the later intention rather
then the earlier. But the last intention made may easily be sepa-
rated quite a while from the act. In this case the act is said to
be performed by a virtual intention ; if the intention, on the other
hand, immediately precedes the act, as is generally the case, it is
called an actual one.

Now, according to the universal teaching of theologians, per-
fectly understood and sanctioned by the church, this virtual in-
tention is amply sufficient for the validity of the sacraments.
You cannot expect the church, in its canons and decrees, to give
a course of theology for the benefit of the unprofessional. You
cannot expect her to explain this distinction which I have just
laid down. She says : " Intention is required "; everybody under-
stands that virtual intention is not shut out by this statement.

We will give an instance of this virtual intention, to bring out
more clearly its meaning and application. Suppose that a priest
is called to the church to baptize a child. He goes to the sac-
risty, gets his surplice and stole, and of course with the inten-
tion of performing the baptism desired. Afterwards he proceeds
with the various ceremonies prescribed by the ritual, and finally
comes to the baptism itself. Now, it is hardly possible that he
should be much distracted in the actual administration of this
sacrament; experience, we think, shows that it is not likely. He

1 88 1.] BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. 817

will have actual attention, but it is probable that he will not stop,
before pouring the water, to make an actual intention even to do
what the church does. He would hardly be counselled to do so ;
such a course would be apt to develop unreasonable scruples.
He simply goes on- carefully to apply the water with the proper
form of words, but does not renew his intention any more than
he renewed his intention to speak to God at the beginning of
each one of the preceding prayers. The whole act, including the
prayers, the ceremonies, and the administration of the sacrament
itself, is probably done in virtue of one intention, made at the
time he left his room.

Dr. Ewer's " critical moment " is an entire delusion, an ab-
surd blunder. The church requires for the administration of the
sacraments only that amount of intention which is required for
the performance of every human act. The only real question
about the Tridentine canon is what is meant precisely by the in-
tention to do what the church does.

Here again Dr. Ewer blunders, unless, indeed, he does some-
thing which is really worse that is, unless he purposely steers
clear of what he may happen to know is the common teaching on
this point. He makes various wild guesses or theories which
would entitle him to some credit for ingenuity, had he not pro-
bably borrowed them from somebody else.

For the information of those whom the doctor endeavors to
deceive and confuse, we will state in the first place, what is well
known to all theologians, that this canon was directed against
the errors of Luther, who claimed that the external performance
of the sacramental act was all that was required. This opin-
ion of Luther is contained in the twelfth of his propositions con-
demned by Leo X. : " If any one (per impossibile] having con-
fessed should not be contrite, or if the priest should absolve not
seriously but jocosely, nevertheless if he believes himself ab-
solved, most truly he is so." This error was a piece of Luther's
doctrine of justification by faith alone. " Luther," says St. Al-
phonsus Liguori, " said that a jocose action was sufficient, because
it sufficed to excite faith."

So far, then, as the immediate occasion of this Tridentine ca-
non (and of another, sess. xiv. can. 9, which the learned doctor

course fails to notice) would indicate, we might suppose that

only object was to exclude jocose administration of the sacra-
ments, or to declare that what Dr. Ewer calls " ribaldry " invali-
dates them. But in discussing the meaning of the definitions of
the church we should act very superficially if we should take, as

VOL. xxxii. 52

8i8 BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. [Mar.,

he does, merely the particular definition by itself and proceed to
speculate on it.

This phrase, " doing what the church does," was not excogi-
tated, as this eminent theologian innocently imagines, by the
Council of Trent. It was but using well-known terms, used long
before its time by the councils of Florence and Constance. " All
the sacraments," says Eugenius IV. in the first of these, "are ac-
complished by three things namely, things as the matter, words
as the form, and the person of the minister conferring them, with
the intention of doing what the church does." And the Council
of Constance prescribed that one suspected of heresy should be
asked " whether he believes that a bad priest, with the proper
matter and form, and with the intention of doing what the church
does, truly makes and confers the sacraments." This was di-
rected on account of the errors of Wickliffe and Huss, who taught
that the power not only of jurisdiction but even of order ceased
if the minister was in the state of sin ; as, for instance, in one of
the propositions of Wickliffe condemned in this council, " If a
bishop or priest is in mortal sin, he does not ordain, consecrate,
or baptize."

The church in these councils, then, of Florence, Constance,
and Trent, was simply laying down its unchanging doctrine, op-
posed by different errors : one making the sacraments open to
constant suspicion of invalidity on account of the unknown moral
state of the minister, and practically annihilating them ; the other
making them a mere external machinery, always working as far
as the mere action of the minister was concerned, not, however,
really conferring grace, but being only an occasion which might
be the means of the recipient's making a salutary act of
faith.

The church, however, never maintained, in condemning Lu-
ther, that the sacraments, when applied to the soul, justified or
sanctified it independently of its internal conditions ; nor did she
teach against Wickliffe, on the other hand, that the minister was
a mere machine to pronounce words and apply matter ; no, she
taught that though his moral state did not necessarily affect the
validity of the sacraments, yet he must act as a reasonable agent
to whose lot it has fallen to perform a Christian rite or ceremony
either one which any person might perform validly, as in the case
of baptism, or one for which he had received special powers not
accorded to others, as in that of the consecration of the Host.

This is the sense in which the general consent of Catholic
theologians has interpreted the words which give occasion to Dr.

BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER.

819

Ewer's blunders ; and it is the true sense, as can easily be seen
)y a little consideration.

For it is quite plain that the church does not require any
faith in the efficacy, or even in the supernatural character, of
:he sacraments on the part of those who administer them. Dr.
Ewer's idea that one must, according to the Council of Trent,
" have the general intention to effect by the sacraments what
the Catholic Church claims for them," is simply absurd. To say
lothing of the decisions of Rome in early days on the validity of
leretical baptism (which Dr. Ewer, with singular bad faith, omits
to notice, as they must be well known even to him), repeated at

Vent, canon 4, de Baptismo, Pope Nicholas I., when consulted by
the Bulgarians on the validity of baptism given by pagans or
[ews, answered that it was valid if given with the proper matter

id form ; assuming, of course, that they intended to do what was

>ked of them by or for the subjects offered for their ministra-
:ion that is, that they intended to perform a Christian rite or

jremony, though they might not only not believe in its efficacy,
mt not even understand what efficacy or grace Christians at-

iched to it, which was, of course, probable then, as it would be at
Lhe present day.

It is evident, then, that the church does not require faith in

the ministers of her sacraments as a condition of their validity.

>till less does she require probity, as we have said, and is con-

irmed by Trent, canon 12, immediately following the one quoted

>y our learned friend. There is, then, nothing in the mind of the

;hurch or its teaching to justify the scare which he attempts to get

ip about his secretly Jewish clergy in Spain and Portugal, or his

jesters about the ordinances of the church in the Roman court.

So far from there being a " serious possibility, if not, indeed, a

>robability, were the doctrine of intention true, that Holy Orders

lave failed in all these countries," there is no possibility at all on

;he ground which he states ; for no Catholic theologian would

Iream of requiring even consecrations to the episcopate to be

" honestly and seriously intended by them " (those conferring

lem) " to be supernatural in their effects." Such blundering as
this is simply inexcusable and, we might say, almost unpardon-
ible.

Such, then, as we have said, and no more, is the " Roman "
intention. It may indeed be absent ; the minister may never, as
it were, have realized the situation. It may also possibly fail in
mother way. There is no doubt that if one conferring a sacra-

lent absolutely withholds the required intention, the sacrament

820 BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. [Mar.,

will be nullified. This is evident from a proposition condemned
by Alexander VIII., which runs as follows : " Baptism is valid con-
ferred by a minister who observes every external rite and form of
baptizing, but inwardly resolves in his own heart: I do not intend
to do what the church does." This serious intention to defeat
the object of the sacrament is as fatal to it as a mere jocose ad-
ministration of it would be. In fact, in the jocose administra-
tion this negative intention is implicitly involved.

But these possibilities are evidently unavoidable, unless we re-
duce the minister of a sacrament to a mere machine for pronounc-
ing words and going through certain forms. Something like this,
a sort of modification of Luther's doctrine, seems to be Dr. Ewer's
view of his position and office. He says : " Catholicity teaches,
in opposition to Rome, that so long as the man is publicly recog-
nized by the church as her priestly agent, so long the people can
depend upon it that the sacraments he formally administers are
sacraments of God and valid." We may remark, in the first
place, that this statement, as it stands, leads to the following re-
markable conclusion : that if even an unbaptized man should
succeed in passing himself off on the church (whatever the doc-
tor may mean by the church, of course, is doubtful) as a priest, he
could validly absolve and consecrate, though he had never gone
through anything pretending to be a form of ordination. It is a
good specimen of the loose style of writing and thinking com-
mon to men of his class ; but we will credit him with meaning by
a man being publicly recognized by the church, that he should
have gone through some such form according to her ritual. We
must, then, making this allowance, understand him to say that if
such a man, even in his sleep, or in any other way unintentional
in a technical sense, should pronounce the words of a sacramental
form, the sacrament would be effected. If, for instance, a priest
lately ordained were studying the form of absolution in order to
commit it to memory, a sinner could take advantage of his repe-
tition of the words to obtain absolution for himself, For no in-
tention whatever, no direction of the form to any particular per-
son, is necessary, according to Dr. Ewer's statement. We really
do not know whether our learned friend will accept this conclu-
sion or not ; but though his words have, as is evident, no precise
meaning in themselves, they seem to amount just to this : that if
the matter of a sacrament is present, and the person (if a person
is required) to whom it should be applied, the sacrament will be
effected (and administered to the person, if person there be) by
the mere pronunciation of the sacramental form by a duly quali-

i.] BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. 821

fied minister. Or, as we have said, the minister of the sacrament
is reduced to a mere machine ; no consciousness on his part is re-
quired of the presence of the matter or of the person ; all that is
required to assure the validity of the sacrament in the minds
of those concerned is evidence that the machine has done its ex-
ternal work correctly.

Now, Dr. Ewer is welcome to hold this view if he pleases. If
it seems to him or to any one else more worthy of God that his
minister should act as a machine rather than in a human and ra-
tional way, really intending (virtually, at least, that is) to do what
is expected of him (which is the Roman doctrine, as has been
shown), we have nothing to say. It is simply absurd, however, to
try to make out, as he does, that his sect, which he calls " Catho-
licity," alone teaches that Almighty God is the real agent in the
sacraments, and that this peculiar theory is necessary to make
him so ; for that he is so is the most commonplace doctrine, obvious-
ly true and perfectly familiar to " Roman " ears. It may be found,
for instance, in the homily on the Gospel, in the Breviary, for the
Octave of the Epiphany, which we read, of course, a little while
ago. Everybody, then, knows this. But that it is in the power of
the human minister nevertheless to prevent God's sacramental
work necessarily comes from the very idea of a sacrament, which
Dr. Ewer really seems (though we could hardly have believed it)
not to grasp. His mechanical or automatic priest will not help
him out of the difficulty. For though wound up by Dr. Ewer,
and warranted always to go off on proper occasion like an
alarm-clock, he is a man after all ; and the doctor cannot prevent
him from using some other inodorous fluid instead of water in
baptism, or saying some other words instead of the right ones.
Uneducated people would never know the difference, and in some
cases no one could know it. Yes, it is evidently possible that
the minister in this and in the other sacraments should deceive
the people purposely or accidentally, and thus, as we have said,
prevent God's sacramental work as well as by want of intention.
Mind, we say his sacramental work. The Almighty can, no doubt,
effect the desired result extra-sacramentally ; but the very idea of
a sacrament is his binding himself by a promise to accomplish a
certain work on definite conditions ; and if those conditions are
not verified, of course the promise does not hold, and we cannot
be sure, but only piously hope, that the work is accomplished.
Dr. Ewer must agree to this, unless he wishes to reduce the sacra-
ments to mere answers to prayer ; that is to say, to teach that
when the faithful think that they are entitled to expect the grace

822 BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. [Mar.,

attached to them, they will have them because their petitions are
good and presented in a spirit of faith.

This attempt to ensure the sacramental graces by impugning
the common-sense doctrine of intention is a very short-sighted
and superficial one. It is plain that, by the very nature of the sa-
craments, we never can have absolute or mathematical certainty
of their validity. We should need analytical chemists to exam-
ine their matter, and phonographs to record the pronunciation
of the form. Slips undoubtedly do occur, probably a hundred
times by defects in matter or form for one frustration by volun-
tary withholding of intention or by want of intention that is, by
the minister never having realized the situation or merely pro-
nouncing the words accidentally. For the rectification of these,
after using all possible care to avoid them, we trust to the provi-
dence and mercy of God, but not to any absolute promise on his
part, unless where they would endanger the perpetuity of his
church, which is hardly a conceivable case.

In conclusion,. we will briefly notice a few other blunders of
this learned doctor, which do not bear so directly on the main
issue.

The first is his saying that " no Roman layman anywhere in
the world can make an act of faith that he was ever baptized, etc."
As we have just shown, there is no way of being absolutely cer-
tain, even on Dr. Ewer's theory, that one has been baptized that
is, of having the testimony of the senses to that effect unless one
is baptized at adult age, and is an analytical chemist in order to
be sure with regard to the matter (which must be tested to as-
certain its real nature), and, moreover, insists on the words being
pronounced in a language familiar to himself and in a distinctly
audible tone. So that no non- Roman layman practically has any
more certainty than a Roman one. His best chance would be if
he were a Baptist ; then, indeed, he might be quite sure about
the water, and also (if his head were not under at the " critical
moment ") about the words. Similar remarks might be made
about the other sacraments which he mentions. But this is not
precisely the point we wish to notice. It is our friend's talking
about making " an act of faith " in such matters as these. Has he
any clear idea what is meant by faith ? Faith in general is belief
in something on the word of another ; in this sense, according to
him, a " Roman " would have more room for its exercise than a
Ritualist of Dr. Ewer's particular shade, though both, as we have
shown, would have plenty. But in the theological sense, in which
he must be supposed to use it, it is belief in something revealed

1 88 1.] BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. 823

>y Almighty God ; and the idea of the particular fact of the bap-
:ism of this or that person being revealed by him is sufficiently
jreposterous to need no further confluent. Nor can he escape
>y saying that, according to his theory, the validity of the sacra-
Lents is assured, where they seem to be valid to the recipient, by
the promises of God. For unless, as we have said, the sacramen-
il graces are mere answers to prayer, their validity depends on
facts with regard to matter and form which usually cannot be cer-
tainly known.

The second blunder is the extraordinary guess which, in his
ignorance of common theological terms, he makes about the use
>f the plural in the words " ministers whilst they effect and con-
fer the sacraments." As we have seen, the singular number is
ised by the councils of Florence and Constance. Rome does de-
mand a specific and individual intention of the kind we have men-
tioned, and runs on no ''shipwrecking rock," or rock of any kind,
doing so.

The third blunder, a most extraordinary and almost incredible
me, is his supposing that the Catholic and common-sense doc-
trine of intention could have any, effect in preventing sacrilegious
msecrations of the Eucharist, or was devised for that end.
'hough there is, indeed, grave doubt whether one species alone
>uld be validly consecrated with the intention of not consecrat-
ig the other, as in the dinner-table example which he gives, yet
has never been defined that it could not, and the more common
>pinion is that it could ; and, at any rate, there is no more doubt
mt a priest could validly consecrate on improper occasions than
iat he could treat the Eucharist improperly and sacrilegiously
fter it had been consecrated. The intention of doing what the
;hurch does will no more save him from effecting the sacraments
inworthily and sacrilegiously than from administering them or
general treating them so.

The fourth blunder is perhaps the most remarkable of all.
>ur learned doctor here actually misunderstands the sense of one
)f the Articles of his own church. This Article the twenty-sixth
simply Catholic doctrine as opposed to the errors of Wickliffe,
hich the worthy imitators of that pestilent heretic in the six-
teenth century did not happen to fancy. But our doctor blun-
ders, as usual, and imagines that wickedness means " bad personal
intention," as he calls it ; whereas every theologian knows that
this Article refers to the fatal dogma maintained by the patriarch
of English Reformers, that a bishop or priest lost all his power by
falling into mortal sin.

824 BLUNDERS OF DR. EWER. [Mar.,

A good example of Dr. Ewer's ignorance of theology is also
found in his fumbling round after a sort of intention which he
fancies will fit the plural form in the single canon of Trent, which
he goes at as if it were an inscription in some unknown tongue.
He comes to the conclusion that all which Rome really requires
is " a general intention in the life, character, and mental disposi-
tion of each priest." This seems to mean- what is known as an
" habitual intention " ; if he knew anything about Catholic doc-
trine he would know that such an intention is not sufficient. But
he is an average Protestant, and of course, as he says, " the ave-
rage Protestant" is in "ignorance as to what Rome is driving
at in her statements of doctrine generally." He is like a cobbler
reading a treatise on astronomy.

Here we will take leave of this ecclesiastical dilettante for the
present. There may be other absurdities in his article which we
have not fully realized or brought to the surface. But these will
suffice. " Ne sutor ultra crepidam " should be his motto for some
time to come. He is, strictly speaking, a layman, and these
matters do not fall in his province ; though if he really wants to
study theology, there can be no objection. But let him study
before writing again, unless he likes to make a show of his igno-
rance. We shall be happy to furnish him with any assistance he
may require, and would suggest to all interested in his welfare to
kindly do the same.

TWO SAINTS.

ST. HILARION once went to the island of Cyprus, whose pri-
mate was St. Epiphanius, his countryman, and formerly his dis-
ciple. At his table a fowl was set before him. Hilarion declined
to partake of it, because, since he had borne the habit of an an-
chorite, he had never tasted anything that had had life. " And
I," answered Epiphanius, "since I have worn this habit, have
never suffered any one to retire to rest with anything against me
in his heart, and I myself have never laid me down to sleep in
discord with any one ! " " Forgive me, my father," replied Hila-
rion meekly ; " thou hast followed a better rule of life than I."

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. 825

THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE.

A TALE OF OLD MUNICH, IN TWO CHAPTERS.
(Founded on fact.)
CHAPTER II.

THE following morning Moida, mindful of a certain promise
she had made, betook herself to Carl's studio. But on her way
thither she stopped at St. Michael's Church to say a prayer. For
Heinrich was right she prayed a good deal ; yet, in sooth, not
more, nay, not so much as Carl. And as Moida approached the
altar dedicated to St. Joseph, the patron of purity, whom should
she discover kneeling there, rapt in deep devotion, but the very
sculptor whose studio she was about to visit.

Softly she knelt down behind Carl, and, despite herself, she
could not help looking at him. And while Moida watched him
fervently praying his eyes fixed upon the image of the saint
she said to herself : " How unlike he is to Heinrich ! Not once
has he ventured on the least familiarity. How all the angels
must love him ! " But presently Moida remembered the cruel
slap she had given poor Heinrich, and she inwardly added :
" Well, well, he deserved some return for that cuff, and I hardly
think it was a sin for me to let him steal a second kiss. But I
wonder what Father Paul will say the next time I go to confes-
sion? Will he give me a very long penance? I really meant
lothing wrong. And Heinrich is such a good fellow so good,

warm-hearted ! "

Moida now clasped her hands and breathed a short prayer,
after which she noiselessly rose from her knees and withdrew on
tiptoe, pausing a moment at the holy-water font. Her fingers
had already dipped into the blessed water, and she was about to
make the sign of the cross, when suddenly another hand appeared
close in front of her, and the sunlight which streamed down
through the stained window overhead fell full upon this hand,
and the gleaming dagger which it clutched caused Moida to start
back and utter a cry.

" Why, dear Moida, what is the matter ? " exclaimed Carl,
hastening to her side. " Your shriek startled me. What -is the
matter?" But the girl made no response ; she continued blankly

826 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

staring at one of the side doors of the church, through which a
muffled figure had swiftly glided out. " Speak ! Tell me what
is the matter. I see that you are trembling," pursued Carl.

" By and by some other time I may tell you all about it,"
Moida answered. " But now let us go to your studio. You re-
member " Yes, yes, I remember you promised to come there
this forenoon," said Carl. " But before we go you might tell
me what has frightened you." And as Carl spoke he wondered
whether Otto von Kessler had aught to do with her agitation.
For by this time he knew how jealous and revengeful Von Kess-
ler was, and he had discovered, too, that this student had been
forced to flee from a university in Hungary on account of some
dark suspicion connected with his name.

" My studio is pretty high up five flights. But you are
strong and will not mind climbing so high," said Carl, when in a
few minutes they entered the Art-building. " It is a hateful stair-
way," answered Moida ; " but you are with me, and I shall not
mind how high I have to climb." Yet while Moida had no dread
at this moment of Otto von Kessler, she could not but think how
very awkward it would be if she met Heinrich, who would surely
suspect that she was going to sit as a model to Carl. " You still
look quite pale," said the latter, when in a little while they
reached his studio. " I do think you might tell me what alarmed
you awhile ago in church. Did that miserable Otto von Kess-
ler insult you by any vile speech ? O the base wretch ! "
" Some other time, some other time I'll speak about it ; not now,"
answered Moida. " At present let me distract my thoughts by
examining these many interesting heads and figures which I see
scattered around me." Then, after a pause, she added: " Did
you make them all yourself? " " Yes, all myself," replied Carl
" all with the exception of this." Here he pointed to a Venus de'
Medici. And now, to Moida's surprise her unutterable surprise
Carl fell on his knees before her. " Dear girl," he went on, " I
beg you do not be offended if 1 renew the appeal which I made
evening before last. You remember under the willow-tree by
the Isar I begged you to let me carve a chaste image of yourself
in spotless marble. And, believe me, not the faintest blush would
mantle your cheek if you saw my statue completed. You said
no. But now now " "O Carl!" interrupted Moida, " I be-
lieve what you say ; but I really cannot grant your request."
Yet even as she spoke she was tempted to laugh at poor, excited
Carl kneeling at her feet. " Oh ! but, dear Moida," pursued the
youth, " I am sure it would not be a sin. My master, Schwan-

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 827

thaler, has ordered me to make a statue representing a water-
wraith. It is to be placed on a rock in the Achensee, where
thousands of eyes will see it and admire it. And, Moida, I am
very ambitious^ I am determined that my work shall be a mas-
terpiece. But to succeed I need a model as fair and pure as
yourself. No, no ! it would not be a sin to let me transform
you into marble. However, if you think it would, go ask your
father confessor. I have already asked mine. He is Father Paul,
a most holy monk. He has even blessed beforehand this work
of my chisel. And, Moida, all I ask of you is to assume a garb
more beseeming a water-wraith than the peasant dress you are
now wearing; and in yonder little room, concealed by that cur-
tain, you will find a fantastic habit, spangled with water-lilies,
which I know you will not object to."

" Well, well, then I yield," said Moida. " You may have me
for your model, all except my head ; that you cannot have."

"Oh! a thousand thanks," cried Carl, springing to his .feet.
" But pray, dear girl, why not your head?" " The reason why
is a secret," answered Moida, who felt sure that Heinrich, if he
chanced to see Carl's statue, would not know whom it repre-
sented if there were no head upon it.

" But now, Carl," she went on, " I wish you to make me a
solemn promise namely, never to tell a living soul that I am
your model." " You may rest assured nobody shall ever know
it. I vow to keep it a profound secret," answered Carl, who al-
ready felt certain that Schwanthaler would award him the prize
of victory ; for he did not doubt that ere he got through with his
work Moida would consent to let him put the crowning touch to
it by modelling her classic head.

And now, while the girl buried her face in her hands and
ighed : " Is it possible ? Is it possible ? I have broken my word
to Heinrich. Alas ! what am I coming to ? " Carl burst into a
laugh and said : " You are indeed very different from any other
young woman that I have ever met in Munich. Yes, you are a

Ear, darling puzzle. But now let us waste no more time. I am
xious to begin my work. Make haste, make haste ! "
During the hour which Moida passed in the studio Carl en-
rtained her with a number of anecdotes of student life. He
Id what wild fellows many of the youths were. He spoke of
their duels and love-affairs. He told, too, of the poverty in
which some of them lived. " Why, you will scarcely believe me,
Moida," he said, " but I know two students who possess only
one suit of clothes between them ; upon my honor this is a fact."

828 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

" Indeed ! " exclaimed Moida, feigning astonishment ; yet in-
wardly she murmured : " And I know who those two poor fellows
are." For she saw that Carl's jacket had lost some of its binding,
just in the very place where her scissors had clipped off a bit of
binding from Heinrich's jacket ; while Carl, who perceived a
smile playing on her lips, added : " I see you do not believe me.
Yet I swear it is true ! "

When the hour was ended Moida felt somewhat fatigued, for
she had been kneeling on one knee most of the time, and she was
very glad indeed to rise to her feet again.

But ere she withdrew from the studio she followed Carl's ex-
ample and passed several minutes with him praying before the
small shrine of St. Joseph praying the saint to ask God for the
grace to remain pure and chaste in thought, word, and deed.

We need not say that Carl escorted Moida down the stairway
the detestable stairway. She did not dare go without him.
Nor. was he at all unwilling to accompany her.

" Perhaps you have heard a horrible story about these stairs ? "
said Carl, as he walked beside her ; " and that is why you asked
me to come with you."

" Yes, I have heard that they are haunted," replied Moida.
" But do you believe it? "

" I do," said Carl solemnly. ' And we are just coming to the
spot where many years ago a poor girl a model, I think was
murdered by a wicked student who was jealous of her love for
another." At these words Moida grasped Carl by the sleeve and
looked nervously over her shoulder.

Carl now proceeded to relate a fearful tale a tale which had
made the hair of even common-sense Heinrich well-nigh stand on
end : how one moonlight night, as he was descending from his
studio, holding his rosary in his hand and praying, there sudden-
ly appeared But when he came to speak of the unearthly
sight which greeted his eyes Moida cried : " Hush ! hush ! Don't
tell me another word." And for a moment Carl was afraid that
she would fall into hysterics. Of course his ghost-story went no
farther, nor did he open his lips again until they reached the big
door which led out into the street. " Before we separate," said
Carl, " I wish to ask if you will take a stroll with me this after-
noon in the English Garden say at four o'clock ? "

" Oh ! anywhere but in the park," answered Moida. " I have
a horror of it, there are so many shadowy nooks there." " Why,
I declare, you are as superstitious as I am," said Carl, smiling.
" Well, well, then let us walk through the broad, sunny meadows

i.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 829

west of the town, and I will show you the spot where my master
intends to erect his colossal statue of Bavaria."

" Agreed," said Moida. And with this she hastened away,
thinking to herself how odd it was that she should have discov-
ered the two students who wore the same clothes. " And they
are both so good to me ! " she said. " But for them I would leave
Munich at once. I should not dare to stay another day."

At the appointed hour Carl and Moida set out on their walk.
And again the girl observed how different he was from Heinrich ;
for Carl did not ask to hold her hand, whereas Heinrich had in-
sisted on walking with her Munich fashion hand-in-hand. But
it would be a mistake to suppose that Moida, innocent and pure
as she was, liked Carl any the better for this. She had a great
deal of human nature in her. " And dear St. Joseph would hard-
ly think it a sin," she murmured to herself, u if Carl took my
hand." But Carl thought otherwise ; at least he did not wish
to lead himself into temptation.

But despite his asceticism he was a cheerful fellow, imitating
in this many an old monk. And in him was exemplified what St.
Thomas a Kempis says : " True quietness of heart is gotten by
resisting our passions, not by obeying them."

And so this afternoon Carl was disposed, a usual, to laugh and
chat. But not so his fair companion ; and when presently he
looked at Moida and perceived a shadow on her countenance he
exclaimed : " Why, dear girl, what troubles you ? "

But Moida did not answer. She was afraid to tell him that
had caught a glimpse of Otto von Kessler, who had ground
is teeth and clenched his fists.

And well it was that Carl did not see him, nor hear what he
muttered, as he peeped at them from around a corner.

" Well, I promise you, kind friend," spoke Moida after a brief
silence, " I promise you that, in case of urgent need, I will come
to you lor help. Do not ask me to explain what I mean. Enough
to know that I look on you as my protector." " Your words are
lear enough to my mind," returned Carl. " I cannot again fight
duel with Von Kessler Father Paul has forbidden me but
I can horsewhip him. I can " " O Carl, dear Carl ! do not
strike him. Shun him ; he is a serpent, a wild beast. Otto von
Kessler is capable of murdering you," interrupted Moida, her
eyes filling with tears. " I am not afraid of him," answered Carl.
But although this was true, still Carl, during the remainder of the
walk, was not in such blithe spirits as before Moida told him that
she had seen Otto von Kessler.

830 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

A week now passed away, and a fortnight, and a month, while
Moida by turns was Heinrich's model and then Carl's. The girl
had no longer even the shadow of a doubt that her two friends
were very, very poor, and she deeply regretted that she was not
able to lay by enough out of her starveling wages to buy them
each some new clothes.

Moida's conscience, in the meantime, was ill at ease. She had
deceived both Carl and Heinrich. " Each one believes that I am
his own model and nobody else's," she would often murmur to
herself. " Oh ! what will Father Paul say the next time I go to
confession ? " Nor did it add' to her inward repose to hear Carl
praise her piety and devotion, and Heinrich call her an angel ;
for Moida knew that good girls and angels would not deceive
and tell lies. It was during this month that she became conscious
of a feeling within her which was not like any other feeling she
had ever experienced before. It caused her heart to flutter in the
daytime. And more than once, in the still hours of night, Moida
had a dream wherein she saw her two kind friends. But never
in any of these sweet visions did Carl touch even the tip of her
little finger. Then, when she opened her eyes, she would ask her-
self : " Is it a sin to love to dream about them ? I cannot help
dreaming." And, with just a tiny scruple on the subject, Moida
would hie to church to pray to dear St. Joseph. Of course every
second evening, as usual, either Heinrich or Carl repaired to the
" White Lamb," where, half-concealed in a cloud of tobacco-
smoke, they enjoyed a pleasant hour or two with genial comrades.
And Carl, Heinrich, and Moida greatly rejoiced when they were
informed that the hated Otto von Kessler had left the city and
returned to his home in Hungary.

" May he never come back ! " said Moida. " But if he ever
does, good-by ! good-by ! " " Why, what do you mean ? " said
Heinrich one evening as she stood beside him, holding a glass of
beer to her lips it was Heinrich's glass, who always insisted on
her taking the first sip. " Do you mean to say you would fly off
to the Zillerthal before my work is completed? Would you
leave me only your head to remember you by ? " Then lowering
his voice, " Dear Moida," he added, " I will never be satisfied
with only your head." Whereupon she gave him an arch look
and answered : " Nothing more, nothing more." But scarcely
had Moida uttered these words when the rosy hue of her cheek
changed to a deathly white. *' Why, Moida, you were smiling 'a
moment ago ; now you are trembling. Speak ! " exclaimed Hein-
rich. " Do you see the villain we were just talking about? Has

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. 831

he come back?" "Yes, Otto von Kessler is here again," re-
plied Moida, setting down the beer-glass, for she could not taste
a drop.

" Well, by St. Ulrich, I'll fight him, and to the death ! " said
Heinrich in a voice so loud that many of the students stopped
smoking and stared at him. " O Heinrich ! I implore you do
not challenge him. He might kill you," continued Moida in a
semi-whisper, and at the same time grasping Heinrich by the arm.
" Besides," she added, " Von Kessler is already gone. He only
peeped in for a second." " Well, I have not yet spilt any blood
for you," went on Heinrich, " but now I am going to do it."
" No, no, not this evening. Wait until to-morrow," said Moida,
who was determined to prevent a duel ; yet in her heart she
could not help feeling proud of Heinrich, who was evidently as
full of pluck as Carl.

Presently, after she had persuaded him to resume his seat,
" Heinrich," she continued, " I never doubted your courage
never. But let me tell you and I am in downright earnest if
you persist in sending Von Kessler a challenge I will immedi-
ately leave Munich." Here Moida lifted her finger and shook it
at him. " What a dear tyrant you are ! " said Heinrich ; and
with this he began sipping his beer. But during the rest of the
evening he spoke very little, and his silence troubled Moida.
" Alas ! " she sighed, " it is time, it is time. I must tear my-
self away. Something dreadful will surely happen if I stay in
Munich." And this night Moida had a ghastly dream.

" I declare, I have a good mind to tell Carl all I know about
this interesting creature," thought Heinrich when he went home.
" Two heads are better than one, and I should not wonder if Carl
advised me to speak to the chief of police about Otto von Kess-
ler." It would have been well if he had done this, for Carl had a
wise head. But Heinrich was very sleepy, and put off speaking
of Moida and the bad student until some other occasion ; and so
Carl was left in the firm belief that Von Kessler was far away in
Hungary.

The following day, at the usual hour, Moida was toiling up
the weary staircase which led to Carl's studio. But she did not
come this time to sit as his model, but to bid the young sculptor
adieu. Moida intended, likewise, to confess that she had broken
her word to him when she promised to be nobody's model save
his own, and to beg Carl's forgiveness. At the same time she
dreaded to make this confession ; for Carl had a fierce eye.
"And I will ask him, too," murmured Moida, " to carry my adieu

832 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

to dear Heinrich. Him also I have deceived." Presently her
eyes moistened, and she wondered if she would ever meet these
two kind friends again, " But, alas ! alas ! " she sighed, " I am
not worthy of being remembered by them. They will only
think of me in scorn." And so slowly and sadly the poor girl
mounted the stairs, with only one bright thought to gladden her
heavy heart. She knew that she would soon be out of reach of
Otto von Kessler. " Yes," she said to herself, " before the sun
goes down I shall be a good many miles from Munich."

But, Moida, the sun is not yet below the horizon ; you are still
in imminent peril. And now look ! What object is that crouch-
ing yonder scarcely six steps from you ? Do you not see it ?
Yes, the trembling girl saw the jealous, cruel student ; but she
did not distinguish what was in his hand, for there was no sun-
shine to make his dagger glisten. Moida's head grew dizzy ; we
shudder to tell what might have happened if at this critical mo-
ment, when Von Kessler was about to spring upon her, the foot-
steps of two persons had not been heard rapidly approaching,
one ascending, the other descending the stairs. The latter was
Schwanthaler.

But without waiting to recognize the professor Moida turned
and made for the bottom of the stairway with all the speed she
could ; but on reaching the main door of the building she paus-
ed, looked round, then, uttering a great sigh of relief, dropped on
her knees.

" Ha ! This is Carl Schilling's pious model, and who is
somewhat eccentric, too," exclaimed Schwanthaler, smiling, and
resting his hand on Moida's head as she was about finishing her
prayer. Then, when she had risen to her feet, " But this is a
chilly spot for your devotions," he added. " Why do you not go
into St. Michael's Church it is close by or else up to Carl's
studio, where there is a pretty shrine and where it is nice and
warm ? "

" O sir ! if you knew if you knew what I have just escaped,
you would not laugh at me for offering up thanks to God in this
public place," answered Moida, drawing her sleeve across her
eyes. " For those stairs, you know, are haunted : a poor model
was once murdered there, and you might have found me mur-
dered, too."

" What do you mean ? " said Schwanthaler, who perceived
that she was exceedingly pale and was weeping ; yet as he had
always considered Moida half-witted since Carl had revealed to
him that she would only allow her body to be modelled, not her

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 833

head, he was now inclined to think that the unfortunate girl was
simply a little madder than usual. " Never mind what I mean,"
replied Moida, who longed to be out of this horrid building and
on the way to her native mountains. Then, touching Sch wan-
thaler's hand with her forefinger, " But now, before I pass into
the street," she said, " listen to me a moment ; for I have a secret,
a weighty secret, to tell you." " Indeed ! Well, I like secrets
and mysteries. Go on. What is it ? " said the professor, smiling
inwardly ; and he could not help thinking what a pity it was that
so beautiful a model should be half-witted. " Well, you must
know," said Moida in a low voice, " that your pupils, Carl Schel-
ling and Heinrich Bach, are extremely poor. They have only
one suit of clothes between them. That is why they never come
to their studios on the same day. For God's sake help them ! "

This was all Moida spoke ; then off she flew with winged feet
towards the Isar-Thor.

" Is it possible? Can it be true?" murmured Schwanthaler,
as he watched the girl hurrying away. " Moida is very eccen-
tric, yet what she has just told me may be true." Then shaking
his head, "Ay," he added, " the mystery is solved. Now I know
why Carl and Heinrich are never at work on the same day.
Poor, poor fellows ! "

But other eyes besides the great sculptor's were following
Moida as she sped down the street. From one of the upper win-
dows of the building which she had just quitted Otto von Kess-
ler spied her.

Let us now return to Heinrich and Carl. On the morrow
morning imagine their surprise when they discovered a big
bag lying outside their bed-room door, and in the bag two
suits of brand-new clothes. " Oh ! what good angel has done
this?" exclaimed Carl, making the sign of the cross with one
hand, while he held up the elegant coat and pants with the other.
" Well, by St. Ulrich, I'll say my prayers this morning," answer-
ed Heinrich, who could not contain his delight. " Ay, the sight
of these fine clothes makes me pious." And now, for the first
time in many months, Heinrich did say a prayer. We need not
add that Carl joined him. Then, when they had risen from their
knees, the happy fellows lost not a moment in donning their new
garments, after which they set out for the " White Lamb," deter-
mined to enjoy an extra glass of beer. " And a dish of sauerkraut
and cheese, too," said Heinrich, " for this extraordinary piece of
good luck makes me hungry as well as prayerful."

But they had not proceeded far when Heinrich's countenance

VOL. xxxii. 53

834 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

fell. He had begun to think of Moida ; and now he determined
to tell his friend all that he knew about her, and ask his advice in
regard to the hated Otto von Kessler, Avho had so unexpectedly
reappeared when he and Moida hoped that he would never come
back from Hungary. Accordingly, as they walked along Heinrich
frankly told Carl how he had made the girl's acquaintance at the
" White Lamb." " And really," he said, "she is a most bewitch-
ing girl. I have often wondered that you did not speak about
her. And she is the model whom I have chosen for my water-
wraith. But, Carl, she will only allow me to copy her head ; and
every time 1 see her I tell her that I cannot complete my statue
with only her head. But she is very stubborn. However, I do
not give up hope. Some day I may conquer her scruples, and
then, oh ! then, Carl, what a peerless model I shall have." While
Heinrich was speaking Carl had stopped short ; and now he was
staring at his friend with a dazed look, which puzzled Heinrich
and made him say : " Carl, Carl, what is the matter ? " " Noth-
ing, nothing," answered Carl, letting his eyes fall to the ground
and shaking his head. " Go on. Have you anything more to tell
about this young woman ? " " Well, yes, I have," said Heinrich.
And now the latter went on to speak about Otto von Kessler.
" What ! is he back ? Is he persecuting poor Moida again ? " ex-
claimed Carl. "Why, then you know something about the vil-
lain ? " said Heinrich. " Oh ! yes, Heinrich, I do. I know as much
as yourself perhaps even more. Poor, dear Moida! we must
save her from him ; for I believe he is capable of doing almost any-
thing. Ay, jealousy has well-nigh made Von Kessler a madman."

And now Carl was as frank with Heinrich as Heinrich had
been with him ; and he told how Moida had allowed him to
model her graceful figure, but not her head. Whereupon Hein-
rich exclaimed : " Carl ! Carl ! who would have believed it ? The
dear girl has managed to throw dust in your eyes as well as
mine. I thought that I had her all to myself; you thought you
had her all to yourself. Oh ! who would have imagined that she
was such a coquette ? "

" Well, I forgive her," said Carl. " So do I," said Heinrich ;
" and after we have drunk our beer we can have a brief talk
with her, and then go tell all we know to the chief of police, who
will take Moida under his protection." Carl and Heinrich were
not long in reaching the " White Lamb " ; and when they entered
the beer-hall and cast their eyes around for Moida, then perceiv-
ed a strange girl waiting on the guests, they immediately began
to fear that something had happened. " Moida went away yes-

i'88i.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 835

terday about noontime," said the host in answer to their ques-
tion ; " and I much regret her loss, for she was an excellent ser-
vant, even if she was a little prudish and shy in her ways."
" Well, come, let us lose not a moment in seeking for her," said
Carl. " Yes, yes, we must make haste," returned Heinrich.
Whereupon off they went, determined to get track of the miss-
ing girl ; and woe to Von Kessler had he crossed their path in
their present mood !

In less than twenty minutes they discovered that Moida had
been seen crossing the Isar-Thor bridge on the afternoon of the
previous day. "She appeared flurried and nervous," said the
old woman who gave them this information, " and she asked me
which was the shortest route to the mountains. She said she
wanted to go to Eben, a village just beyond the Achensee, where
one of her aunts, it seems, is wedded to a miller. So I bade her
cross this bridge, and then keep straight along the highway for
seventy-five or eighty miles." " Well, not a quarter of an hour
after that girl whom you are speaking of passed over the bridge,"
put in an old man who was listening, " a student, whom I have
often seen at the * White Lamb,' asked me whether I had seen
her going in this direction, and I answered yes. For I know
Moida well ; she has handed me many a schoppen of beer.
And now, young gentlemen, it seems that you also are anxious to
find her. Why, how many lovers she has! Ha! ha! ha! "

We need not describe Carl and Heinrich's pursuit of Moida.
They contrived, poor as they were, to hire a couple of nags for
in their trousers' pockets the good angel had dropped a few
florins and, thus pretty well mounted, they took the road leading

/the Achensee, asking at every quarter of a mile whether Moida
d been seen. And Moida had been seen, now trudging afoot,
w riding in a peasant's cart. But when they had gone three-
quarters of the distance, and spent one night on the road, all
traces of the girl disappeared. Carl now proposed that they
should journey on to the ancient castle of Rafenstein, which
stood, as we know, hard by the Achensee lake.

" It is not far off," said Carl. " One of the roads to Eben runs

(>se by it, and there we may perhaps get tidings of Moida."
To this Heinrich agreed. And so to the half-ruined castle
sy went, urging along their jaded horses ; for black, angry
)uds were beginning to darken the sky, and thunder-peals were
ard.
The fugitive girl likewise heard the thunder approaching.
3ut never mind the storm," murmured Moida. " I am now

noj

836 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

close to my dear mountains, and I may consider myself out of
danger."

But if Moid a rejoiced to think that she had successfully eluded
Otto von Kessler, a feeling of sadness blended with her joy.
" For who knows/' she sighed, " whether I may ever meet Carl
and Heinrich again ? "

But of the two Moida felt that she regretted Heinrich more
than Carl, for he was more full of human nature, more like to
herself; and now the very thought of him brought tears to her
eyes.

The big rain-drops were falling not many rods behind her
when Moida got to the border of the Achensee. She might have
continued along the* highroad, which skirted the south end of the
lake ; but a peasant, in whose hut she had passed the night, had
informed her that by taking a boat she might considerably
shorten the distance to Eben.

As good luck would have it, a skiff lay partly drawn up on the
beach, while the ferryman stood leaning on his oar beside it, as if
he were waiting for a passenger.

" Well, well, I'll venture it," thought Moida. " He has stout
arms ; the storm-wind is in our favor, and he will soon row me
across to the other shore."

The boatman needed only a wave of her hand to shove his
boat into the water. " And he is well clad," said Moida inward-
ly, " for such rough work as this. The huge cowl which covers
his head and conceals everything except his eyes will shelter
him from every drop of rain."

Moida was right. The fellow was admirably protected against
rain, and hail, and sleet ; nothing could be seen of his features
save two glittering eyes. In less than a minute the boat was
darting forward amid the waves ; and one billow, higher than
any of the others, at once rose up behind and kept close, very
close to the stern where Moida sat, as though it was striving to
overtake her and swallow her up. But the wind, which was now
howling like ten thousand demons, kept the bounding skiff ever a
few feet in front of this hungry, chasing billow. Already the
Rabenspitz and other high mountains encircling the lake were
becoming veiled by murky clouds which, as they rolled swiftly
along one after the other, took all manner of fantastic shapes ;
and presently naught was left for the eye to rest upon save the
tiny bark, the raging waters, and the boatman, who was plying
his oars with all his might and main. Of a sudden, while Moida
was vainly endeavoring to get a glimpse of the farther shore, an

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. 837

immense fiery serpent darted zigzag athwart the sky, followed in
an instant by a tremendous peal of thunder.

The girl, who had seen many a vivid flash of lightning, but
never before such a flash as this, now began to tremble, and said
to herself : " Oh ! why was I so impatient ? Why did I not wait
until the tempest was over?" And while she was trembling
down poured a torrent of gigantic hailstones ; and poor Moida
bowed her head and groaned and prayed aloud as they fell upon
her. " Boatman, boatman ! " she cried, " why did you let me
venture forth on the lake in such a furious storm ? Rash man !
did you not know what was coming ? " "I knew what was com-
ing," answered a voice which Moida had heard before ; and she
felt a cold stream through her veins and scarcely dared to lift her
eyes as she heard this voice. " Merciful God ! Holy Virgin ! "
cried Moida, appalled by the sight of Otto von Kessler, who
had flung back his cowl and was now staring at her with a piti-
less look. "Merciful God! Holy Virgin!" again she cried;
and this time her wail was answered by a fiendish laugh. " You
are not in St. Michael's Church now, you are not on the stairway
of the old Academy," spoke Otto von Kessler. " Nobody will
interrupt me here. And if Carl Schelling and Heinrich Bach
wish to find their ' Liebe,' they must seek for her among the fishes
of the Achensee." So saying, Von Kessler grasped Moida by
the shoulders in vain she struggled, in vain ; her imploring
words fell on ears of stone then into the foaming lake he tossed
her. Having done the deed, the murderer stood a moment bal-
ancing himself in the rocking boat, straining his wild eyes to see
whether the body would rise to the surface. While he stood
thus looking, and clutching in his right hand a big stone which he
meant to fling at his victim if she reappeared, another fiery ser-
pent darted across the heavens. Then, without a cry, without a
>an, down fell Von Kessler, struck dead by a thunderbolt.

" I have never seen the Achensee agitated by such a tempest
as this," spoke Carl to Heinrich, as they stood by one of the
tower windows of Rafenstein Castle, watching the angry waves
breaking on the beach. What added to the wildness of the scene
was the hour : the shadows of nightfall were beginning to steal
into the chamber, and gave to an ancient suit of armor hanging
against the wall a weird, ghostly appearance.

" And you know they say that the black rock in the lake,
which is now hidden by the scud, is haunted," pursued Carl.
" It is said that piercing cries are occasionally heard coming from

838 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

it." " Ha ! one might think you believed that silly story," re-
plied Heinrich. " Well, laugh at me, if you will," went on Carl.
" I do firmly believe in ghosts and spirits : I am not a material-
ist." " Nor I," returned Heinrich ; " and yet I have no faith in
ghosts, hobgoblins, water-wraiths, or spirits of any kind making
themselves seen or heard by mortal eyes and ears."

He had scarcely uttered these words when an old woman,
who, along with her husband, had her home in the half-ruined
castle, climbed, with all the speed she was capable of, up the
tower steps, exclaiming, " Do you hear it ? Do you hear it ? Lis-
ten ! listen ! "

" What mean you ? " inquired Heinrich, smiling at the granny
as she crossed herself and murmured, " Holy Virgin ! pray for
me." " She means the water-wraith ; and I hear it, too," said
Carl, who likewise made the sign of the cross, and speaking in a
tone full of awe. Sure enough, at this moment a shriek was dis-
tinctly heard, wafted from the lake, and it was presently followed
by another and another ; and the shrieks seemed to come from the
very rock where the water-wraith was sometimes said to make
her appearance.

" I must hasten down to the chapel," said the old woman an
ancient chapel was attached to the castle, where Mass was oc-
casionally offered up. " Holy Virgin ! pray for me." Nor did
Carl lose a moment in following the frightened, credulous crone,
while Heinrich trod close on Carl's heels ; down the stairway
they went at a breakneck pace one false step and they would
have broken their necks and as they descended Carl murmured
a couple of Ave Marias. Then into the chapel both he and the
old woman ran. But not so Heinrich, who parted from them at
the threshold, then straightway turned his steps in the direction
of the lake. " Good ! good ! Here is a boat," he exclaimed as
soon as he reached the water's edge. Saying which, into the
boat he sprang, and never were oars plied more vigorously than
these oars. Yet, strong as Heinrich was, he could barely make
headway in the teeth of the angry wind. Little by little, how-
ever, guided by the loud cries, he drew near to the haunted rock.
Only for these cries he might not have reached it, for all around
him was naught save pelting hailstones and darkness. At length,
when the shrill voice warned him that he was very near the rock,
Heinrich lay on his oars and listened. And while he was listen-
ing there came a huge wave which dashed his little craft violent-
ly against a sharp, projecting ledge, and only that it was very
stoutly built it would have been shivered in pieces. As it was, a

1 88 1.] THE WRAITPI OF THE A CHEN SEE. 839

big hole was stove in the bottom of the boat, through which the
hissing water rushed.

" Quick ! Make haste, whoever you are ! Jump in ! " cried
Heinrich, who saw that there was not a moment to lose.

" Gracious Gocl ! I am saved. Blessed Virgin, your prayers
have been heard ! " answered Moida, as she fell into Heinrich 's
arms. But this was not a time for sentimental talk, for explana-
tions ever so brief. Nimbly the oars were plied again. But
while the brave rower pulled with his whole might, in through
the ugly gap at his feet the water kept pouring.

But the Blessed Virgin's and St. Joseph's prayers had indeed
been heard in Moida's behalf ; and just as the boat was about
to sink into the lake the welcome shore was reached.

" Dear, gallant, noble Heinrich ! " were all the words Moida
could utter as the young man pressed her to his heart. Then,
as she burst into glad tears, " Darling girl ! " answered Hein-
rich. " Never again shall we be parted never again. I love
you too much."

" Holy Virgin ! Dear St. Joseph ! Do I deserve such bliss as
this ? " murmured Moida. Then presently she added : " Where
is Carl? What has become of Carl?" " In church, praying,"
replied Heinrich.

"Well, it is just like him," went on Moida; "yes, just like
him. What a good, pious fellow Carl is ! "

Let us now be brief with our story. Instead of conducting
Moida to Rafenstein, where the old woman would have given
icr a snug night's lodging, Heinrich led her to a peasant's house
a neighboring hamlet. And here towards midnight he left
[oida clad in dry garments and too excited to sleep ; for she had
>lighted Heinrich her troth. Nor was her lover able to obtain
ly sounder rest than herself: when chanticleer crowed the next
>rning his eyes were still wide open. But now to come back
Carl. "What strange adventure have you had?" exclaimed
le prayerful youth, when, after anxiously waiting hour after
>ur for his friend to return, he saw Heinrich enter the tower
recisely as the clock struck twelve. " Oh ! you can't think how
have worried about you," continued Carl. " The tales the crone
)ld me about goblins and demons agitated me ever so much. I
to fear I might never see you again." At these words Hein-
rich smiled ; then, after Carl had embraced him, " Well, you see,
dear friend," he said, " that no devil has caught me. Here I am
safe and sound, and before another sun is many hours high I will
prove to you that I need not envy the happiest man in Bavaria."

840 THE WRAITH OF THE ACHENSEE. [Mar.,

" Upon my word, the dear fellow talks very wildly," thought Carl,
who had never before seen Heinrich's eyes so bright nor his cheeks
with such a brilliant glow in them. " I pray God he is not be-
witched." And when, a few minutes later, the clouds passed away
and the moonbeams shot in through the iron-barred window over-
head, Carl turned towards the couch where Heinrich had flung
himself, and said : " Dear friend, what has happened ? Are you
ill ? Why do you keep muttering to yourself and looking up at
the moon? "

" The sun will soon be up ! The sun will soon be up ! God
bless the sun ! I wish it were already shining," was the only re-
sponse Heinrich gave to Carl's anxious question. The latter, de-
spite the concern which he felt for his friend, in a little while
closed his eyes for he was very tired and after a few hours of
fitful slumber he was awakened by Heinrich exclaiming : " Rise,
clear Carl, rise ! The cock is crowing ! Rise and come with me
to the village church, for to-day is to be my wedding-day, and
you must act as my groomsman."

" Your wedding-day ! Going to be married ! " said the be-
wildered Carl, rubbing his eyes. " Pray, to whom ? " " To a
water- wraith," answered Heinrich, bursting into a laugh. Where-
upon Carl fetched a deep groan, for now he could no longer
doubt that his best, his truest friend had lost his wits.

Then, as soon as they were dressed and had gone down-stairs,
Carl made haste to call a couple of peasants who were on their
way to the fields, and whispered to them : " I beseech you, help
me to keep a vigilant eye on this unfortunate gentleman. Not
a worthier being treads the earth when he is in his senses. But
now, alas ! he has gone mad."

And so, watched by half a dozen eyes, the merry, laughing
Heinrich walked, or rather danced, his way to the church, whose
bell was already ringing a joyous peal.

What Carl uttered, what Carl felt, what Carl did, when a few
minutes later he found himself in Moida's presence, who told him
of her perilous adventure on the lake how Otto von Kessler had
tried to drown her, how she had swum to the haunted rock, how
Heinrich had rescued her, and, finally, how she had promised to
be Heinrich's bride we leave to the imagination of the reader.
But this much let us say : the poor fellow could hardly believe
what his eyes saw, what his ears heard ; and as Carl gazed on the
radiant maiden's face the vision of a thousand might-have-beens
passed before him, while from his lips escaped a sigh. But pre-
sently he mastered his feelings ; then, placing himself between

1 88 1.] THE WRAITH OF THE A CHEN SEE. 841

Moida and Heinrich, and taking- each of them by the hand,
" Come into the church," he said, " and offer thanks to God for
this happy day. You, dear girl, have been saved from a watery
grave ; while you, Heinrich, need not envy the happiest man in
Bavaria."

They were still on their knees praying when the minister of
God made his appearance. Then the candles were lit, a couple
of rings glittered on a plate close by, and Heinrich thought, and
so did Moida, that the Sacrament of Matrimony was the dearest
and sweetest of all the seven sacraments.

During the Mass which followed the marriage ceremony a
boat half full of water drifted ashore ; it struck the beach oppo-
site Rafenstein Castle, and in it was a dead body. Stamped upon
the forehead of the corpse was a small black mark, and its gar-
ments were singed and rent by the avenging fire of Heaven.
But this ghastly object was all that marred the beauty of the
landscape. Calm was the lake as a mirror ; not a cloud floated
in the azure sky ; and the simple country folk who greeted
' Moida when she came out of church declared that this glorious
day was made expressly for her.

When Heinrich and his bride returned to Munich the first
thing he did was to throw open his studio and reveal to Carl
Moida's lovely head ; after which Carl showed his friend the
headless figure which he had modelled. Whereupon Schwantha-
ler who of course was present exclaimed : " Quick, Heinrich,
go fetch your bewitching head and place it upon this faultless
body. It is all that is needed to make the statue perfection."

And the great master was right. When head and body were
joined together he could scarcely speak for very surprise and de-
light. But what enchanted him most about the statue was its
fanciful drapery, which revealed with so much truth, yet at the
same time so very chastely, that which we may call the fairest
work of God.

Then, embracing his two favorite pupils, Schwanthaler pro-
mised them all the assistance in his power. Art, he said, was not
a lucrative profession. But they would succeed, ay, surely they
r ould ; for whatever the world might think of his own genius,
his mantle had already fallen upon Carl and Heinrich.

The young sculptors had indeed produced a masterpiece,
and ere long it was set on the rock in the lake, where the gleam-
ing marble does really appear like a thing of life. Just out of
the blue water the wraith has risen. She is kneeling on one
knee. One hand is twined in the mazy ringlets of her hair, while

842 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [Mar.,

the other she holds up to her ear, as if she were listening" intently
to some far-off sound perhaps the song of a shepherd, perhaps
the faint thunder from a cloud still hidden behind the moun-
tain.

And on this rock the water-wraith will no doubt be kneeling
for many a generation to come ; and if there were nothing else
worth seeing in the beautiful Tyrol, it alone would well repay a
visit to the Achensee.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST*

THERE are several different classes of works having for their
object the life and works of Our Blessed Lord. One class com-
prises the Harmonies, in which the simple narrative of the Four
Evangelists is merely arranged in an order of .regular sequence.
Then there are the Histories which are in the form of a peri-
phrasis of the sacred text. Thirdly, there are those which aim at
a construction of a history based on the gospels, but composed
in the language of the author himself and enlarged by the intro-
duction of historical and descriptive accounts of persons, places,
and events briefly mentioned or alluded to by the sacred writers,
or connected with the subject-matter of their narrative. There is
a fourth class composed of commentaries more or less extensive
and minute on the text of the gospels. Meditations and contem-
plations on the various events, acts and doctrines comprised in the
life and work of Christ make a fifth class. Finally, there are
those works of imagination whose authors draw upon their own
faculty of invention in the way of romance or theory. These
different kinds of writing may be more or less mixed up with
each other in the same book, and in whatever way the life of
Christ is taken as a theme, it is one which is inexhaustible and
capable of being treated with a variety of method proportionate
to its many-sided aspects, and to the diverse conceptions whether
true or false which the mind of man is capable of forming from
the contemplation of the Ideal which is presented in the gospels. ,

* La Vie de N. S. Jesus-Christ, Par 1'Abbe C.' Fouard, Professeur a la Faculta de Theolo-
gie de Rouen. V. Lecoffre, Paris et Lyon. 1880.

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 843

When this theme is treated by an author who writes for the
purpose of giving*instruction and edification to the great body of
the people, according to the truth of the Cathglic Faith, his ob-
ject must be to aid them in some way better to understand and
profit by that which is recorded in the inspired pages of the gos-
pels. The most immediate and highest spiritual good is to be
derived from meditation on the more hidden and interior myste-
ries and truths involved in the life of Christ, from his conception
to his ascension. The sacred literature of the Catholic Church is
abundantly rich in works of this contemplative kind. We take
this occasion to mention one in particular among modern collec-
tions of Meditations on the Life of Christ adapted for retreats
and other exercises of private devotion, viz., that which is con-
tained in F. Ciccolini's Book of Spiritual Exercises according to
the method of St. Ignatius. We have never met with anything
equal to these meditations for fulness of spiritual instruction and
exquisite beauty of form, and we know of several most compe-
tent judges who concur in this opinion. They were written in
Italian, and we believe, have been translated into Latin and
French. We are speaking particularly of the Meditations which
are expressly on the Life of Christ, a part of the complete collec-
tion of exercises for a retreat of thirty days, containing fifty exer-
cises which are quite sufficient by themselves to make a small
volume. A translation into English and publication of these
Meditations separately from the entire book, if the work were
done as perfectly as the excellence of the original demands,
would be, in our opinion, of very great utility and add to our list
of good spiritual books another of a kind which is thus far not to
be found in so excellent a form.

The presentation of the exterior part of the life of Christ, the
consecutive narration of events, the depicting of the historical
scenes and actions according to their outward and sensible aspect,
is the object of a second method of instruction in aid of the study
of the gospels. This is the scope of the work of M. 1'Abbe
Fouard, and, as he explains his own intention, it is to prepare and
aid the devout adorers of Jesus Christ to seek in the gospels
:hemselves their more hidden treasures by meditation. We ex-
press, at the outset, our judgment that the learned professor has
succeeded admirably and much better than any of his predeces-
sors in fulfilling this task. The translation of his work into Eng-
lish is, therefore, much to be desired. It must be done, however,
by a perfectly competent person, who is not only a master of the
French and English languages, but acquainted also with sacred

844 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [Mar.,

science. For, although the text of the work does not require
scholarship in order to be understood, and is suitable reading for
any ordinarily educated person, the notes and apparatus are more
learned and critical, and the Abbe Fouard's Life of Christ, as a
whole, is a book for scholars as well as for ordinary readers.
With this book as a guide to the study of the gospel narrative,
and F. Ciccolini as a guide to meditation on its deeper mean-
ing, one would not need any other books, although this is not to
say that one might not derive great profit from several other
most excellent works, as for instance those of F. Coleridge,
whose exposition is so minute and exhaustive. 'Indeed, those
who have taste, leisure and opportunity for study, when once
they have begun to look into this most attractive subject can
never satisfy their desire of exploring more and more into all its
recesses, and are allured by what they discover to continue their
search, like the monk in the legend who followed a beautiful and
melodious bird from tree to tree and meadow to meadow for a
hundred years, which seemed to him to be only one afternoon.

It is plain at a first glance, that one who studies the life of
Christ in the spirit of faith and piety does not want to be amused
by myths, legends, romantic inventions or imaginary theories.
We want to know the real facts and the truth about the Lord
and Saviour of men. The gospels contain the only authentic
history of his life. How then can any other Life be written and
what is the use of attempting such a task ?

The Abbe Fouard explains clearly what his own conception is
of the proper nature of such a Life and in what manner he has
undertaken to give it shape and body in his work. The history
itself must be in its essence a harmonized narrative following and
explaining by the aid of critical science the records of the evan-
gelists. These records give the facts in a brief, simple and art-
less fashion, and they furnish the means of discovering with more
or less probability the sequence of these facts in the order of
time, where this is not obvious on the surface. The interpreta-
tion of the doctrine taught by Our Lord is furnished by Catholic
Tradition. What additional and illustrative information is there,
which can be derived from extraneous sources, to cast light on
the inspired records and to bring out in clearer relief the reasons,
motives and plan of action and teaching, implicitly contained in
the apparently disconnected series of events and discourses re-
lated in the concise memoirs of the four evangelists? It is evi-
dent that these memoirs written by the disciples of Jesus, were
to themselves and their fellow-disciples of the earliest period of

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 845

Christianity, very different from what they are to us. They re-
presented and preserved an adequate picture of the Christ in his
person, words and works, of his actual environment, of all the
scenes of his earthly life, because the background, the whole
canvas, the entire complement of these brief records, existed dis-
tinctly in their knowledge, their memory and their imagination.
It is this which we are obliged to restore and make our own. It
is necessary to paint the picture of the places where Our Saviour
lived, to learn from contemporary traditions what thoughts and
sentiments occupied the minds of the people of that time and
those countries, to inquire from history respecting the men
whose figures appear in the narrative of the gospels. A whole
vanished world must be reanimated, with its customs and man-
ners, its arts and geography, its polity and religion, its person-
ages and events, its chronology and its languages, so that we can
in imagination place ourselves in the position of those who wrote
and who heard or read the accounts preserved to us in the gos-
pels, in the beginning of our Christian era. This is rendered pos-
sible by the perfection which the sciences of archaeology, of an-
cient languages, of chronology, of historical criticism and other
cognate matters have attained. It is aided, also, by the tho-
rough and intelligent explorations of travellers among the places
and the remaining memorials or vestiges of these past scenes and
events in the drama of humanity. The present time affords,
therefore, greater facilities for the task of historical reproduction
and the arrangement of known facts of past times in due histo-
rical perspective, than any previous age has done since these
epochs of antiquity vanished from actual existence. Other rea-
sons conspire also to make the fulfilment of this task useful and
opportune.

After the apocryphal gospels and the reveries of extravagant
heretics had disfigured the true idea of Christ, the simple presen-
tation of the harmonized narrative of the gospels by such writers
as Tatian in the second century, Ammonius in the third and Eu-
sebius in the fourth, sufficed to dissipate this thin and bodiless
mist of absurdity. The fathers who followed generally applied
themselves to doctrinal and moral expositions of the teachings of
the Lord and his apostles. During the mediaeval period the
great writers, such as St. Thomas, St. Buenaventura and Ludolph
the Carthusian, who made expositions of the history of Our
Lord, indulged chiefly in the contemplative attraction which they
felt so strongly, and rather chanted the praises than investigated
the human traits and actions of Christ. Their successors em-

846 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [Mar.,

ployed themselves chiefly in the theology of the Incarnation and
were solicitous to consider and develop the divinity of the Son
of God more than to study into his human manifestation as the
Son of Man. After the reformation had entered into its second
and rationalistic phase, the sacred books of the Bible became the
object of a long and obstinate attack until at length Strauss and
others denied that the history of Jesus was anything more than a
pure myth, or a mythical transformation of facts which had no
supernatural character. The latest outcome of neology and ra-
tionalism has taken the shape of ingenious and arbitrary hypothe-
ses based on the theory that the gospels were compilations made
from the recitals and traditions current among the Christians of the
first century, which have been enlarged by subsequent additions ;
so that all certitude is taken from the history of the life and acts
of Christ and the apostles, leaving a so-called criticism free to
create a conjectural history of the author and the beginnings of
Christianity.

These multiform attacks on the very foundations of the Chris-
tian religion have called forth on the part not alone of Catholics,
but of the sounder Protestants also, a defence of vast erudition
and masterly ability. It has proved victorious, and the result of
such searching investigations and acute reasonings concerning
the whole matter of the documentary evidences of the facts, doc-
trines* and organization upon which the structure of Catholic
Christianity is founded, has been to give increased solidity and ac-
curacy to that part of theology which treats de Religione et Ecclesid.

The most popular of all the books which have emanated from
the modern school of infidelity have been those of Renan. He
has had the art to throw the charm of sentimental romance
around his flimsy productions. The glare which they have emit-
ted has been transient. The German rationalists have contemp-
tuously condemned the Vie de Jesus as a nullity in the view of
science, a superficial and eminently Parisian production, and it
has long since lost whatever credit it enjoyed for a moment in
France. Its popularity was due rather to the charm and interest
of the subject and to a certain seductive and imaginative style
possessed by the author, than to anything specious or plausible
in his ideas. The popular fancy was caught by the brilliancy
and the skilful adjustment of the drapery, without perceiving
that the real historical figures and events had been transformed
into ludicrous travesties. The illusion has disappeared, and yet
something may be learned from it, namely, the advantage of dra-
pery, provided the figures themselves are unaltered. The popu-

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 847

larity of Renan's sentimental romance, the interest with which
the hypotheses of more learned theorists have been received, are
an evidence that the transcendent beauty of the Ideal which the
evangelists have sketched in its grand lineaments has lost none
of its attractive charm for the intellect, the imagination and the
heart of mankind. The Abbe Fouard has therefore judged cor-
rectly that the time is propitious for an attempt to draw from
the evangelists, as historians whose authority is beyond question,
a true delineation of the character, life, teaching and work of
Jesus Christ, with the restored landscape and perspective of the
age and country in which he appeared, as its environment.
Others had already undertaken this task. The most elaborate
and remarkable effort of this kind is Dr. Sepp's Leben Jesu, a work
which has been translated into French and thus been made ac-
cessible to a much more numerous class of readers than it could
be in its original language, and one which is well worth reading.
Full of learning, and in many respects valuable in its matter as
well as attractive in its style as this work is, it lacks a certain
quality of common sense and an art of historical narrative which
are especially requisite in a book of this kind. The author has
indulged too much in fanciful speculations which are more poetic
than probable, and even in the march of sober narrative and ex-
position he is too inclined to loiter and stray among pleasant by-
paths. Farrar's and Geikie's Lives of Christ the present writer
has not yet read. Veuillot's Life disappointed the expectations we
had formed of it. The others in common circulation do not come
up to the mark which the Abbe Fouard has set up so clearly and
with so much precision, and which we have endeavored in our
preceding remarks to describe. Our present author has spared
no pains in preparing himself to attain it. He has studied and
read most carefully and extensively. In his long list of authors
whose works he has consulted, we find not only the principal Ca-
tholic writers of standard books both ancient and modern, and
the eminent modern scholars of the European continent, but
many English and American authors, such as Coleridge, David-
son, Ellicott, Farrar, Geikie, Milman, Robinson, Stanley and
Thomson. Moreover, he has carefully explored in person the
entire Holy Land, from Dan to Beersheba, from Gaza to Tyre
and the Libanus, " following the Master step by step, on the hills
which were the witnesses of his birth, in the land of death where
he was tempted, on the banks of the lake which he loved."

In respect to the chronological order of the narrative, M. Fou-
ard follows St. Luke and St. Mark in general, and St. John for

848 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [Mar.,

the earliest period of the Lord's public ministry, filling in the e-
tails from each one of the evangelists who recounts something
not found in the others. His translations from the sacred text
are made critically from the original with a free use of the best
various readings and versions and accompanied by numerous
critical annotations at the bottom of the pages. Several short
critical dissertations are appended to each of the two volumes,
together with a General Index and a tabular Concordance of the
Four Gospels in parallel columns, at the end of the second vol-
ume. The entire work contains above one thousand octavo
pages in large, clear type, nearly one-half of this space being oc-
cupied by the notes and other appendices to the text. The text
itself, as we have already said, is free from the encumbrance of an
erudition which is above the capacity of general readers. The
narrative runs on smoothly and consecutively, in a clear and rea-
sonably concise manner, and the style has the grave and austere
beauty which becomes the subject and yet gives enough of poetic
coloring to the recital and exposition of the history and teaching
of the Saviour to satisfy the imagination and give play to pious
emotions.

There are two qualities of a more elevated character which
we have found in this Life and which are the principal motive
for the preference we give it above all others with which we are
acquainted. The first is the exposition of the reason and the con-
nection of the movements and acts which are recorded by the
evangelists in their narration of the series of journeys which our
Saviour made and of the works he performed in the fulfilment of
his public ministry. The second is the elucidation of the dis-
courses and parables of Our Lord, showing the particular point
which each one has, its appositeness to occasions and persons,
the motive for selecting certain topics, and the immediate circum-
stances which suggested the illustrations of doctrine drawn from
sensible objects and incidents of common life. The only way by
which our readers can be enabled to understand and appreciate
the manner in which the Abbe Fouard has accomplished this
most serious and difficult part of his undertaking is to give a
synopsis of his work. We may endeavor to furnish those who
will not, at least for some time to come, have the opportunity of
perusing the work itself, with a synopsis of this kind in some fu-
ture articles. Meanwhile, we offer one or two specimens trans-
lated from the author's text which may give some partial idea of
the character and quality of the work as a whole, omitting, how-
ever, all the annotations.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 849

THE ANNUNCIATION. ,

" Six months after Elizabeth had conceived, Gabriel received from God
another mission, one not to be fulfilled like the former one by descending
into the temple or even into the holy city, but by visiting Nazareth, an ob-
scure village of Galilee. His message was to a young relative of Elizabeth
whose name was Mary, betrothed to a descendant of David whose name
was Joseph. She was likewise a descendant of the great king, the daugh-
ter, as tradition testifies, of Joachim and Anna, and had one sister, who was
also called Mary. The parents of these two sisters, having no male offspring,
had been obliged to secure the legal transmission of their property in their
own family, by affiancing their daughters to two young men who were
their near relatives by blood.

" We do not know what circumstances had caused the removal of these
descendants of the King of Israel from Bethlehem which was the cradle of
their race ; but we cannot doubt that in common with the other members
of the royal family they had sunk down into a poor and obscure condition,
since neither their birth nor the prophecies which promised the throne to
a son of David had caused the shadow of Herod's suspicions to fall upon
them. Since the time of their betrothal, Joseph and Mary had been living
separate from each other at Nazareth in a humble condition bordering on
extreme poverty. Joseph was a carpenter, and Mary was also dependent
on her own labor for her livelihood.

" It was into the lowly dwelling of Joachim and Anna that the messen-
ger of God came down. There, according to the custom observed by the
daughters of Israel, Mary had remained in strict seclusion from the time
when she had been promised in marriage. It was not, however, the vir-
ginity of a few days only that Mary guarded in this retreat; for a light, not
given to other maidens destined to become mothers in Israel, had revealed
to her the merit of perpetual continence, and she had resolved to preserve
her own virginity for ever inviolate. How could this purpose inspired by
heaven be reconciled with her engagement to Joseph ? This had been a
sore and perplexing trial to Mary ever since she had been affianced, and
the trouble in her heart was deepened in that hour when she received the
angelic message.

" On the eastern side of Nazareth a fountain flows which is named the
Fountain of the Virgin. In its vicinity the Greeks have built their Church
of the Annunciation, believing that on this spot the angel saluted the Vir-
gin, who had come thither at even-tide from the village for the purpose of
drawing water. This is a mere legend taken from the apocryphal proto-
gospel of St. James, and has no probable foundation whatever. There is
much more verisimilitude in the idea which Christian art has embodied by
representing the apparition of the angel as taking place in a secret apart-
ment of the house, where the Blessed Virgin was kneeling in the attitude
of prayer.

" Doubtless she was invoking in pious aspirations the speedy coming of
the Messiah when the messenger of heaven stood before her eyes and ex-
claimed : ' Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among
women ! ' While she listened to these words her heart became troubled,
and she reflected upon the meaning of this salutation with anxiety. But the
VOL. xxxii. 54

850 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [Mar.,

angel continued : ' Fear not, Mary ; thou hast found grace before God. Be-
hold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son, to whom
thou shalt give the name of Jesus. He shall be great, and he shall be
called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give him the
throne of his father David : he shall reign for ever in the house of Jacob,
and his kingdom shall never have an end.'

" Mary had meditated upon the prophecies and therefore could not fail to
understand what the angel announced to her. This child, the Son of the
Most High, an everlasting King and the Saviour of men, was the Messiah, and
to her belonged the honor of giving him birth. But the daughter of David
had determined to remain a virgin, and, despite the promise of becoming
the mother of a divine son, she continued firm in her resolution. Neither
the assurance that the message came from God, nor the sight of the angel
caused her to waver. During an instant, the most solemn among all that
have been or ever shall be, the salvation of the world remained suspended,
and at the mercy of Mary. Being mistress over her own will, the Virgin
had regard only to her own purity. " How shall that be, she answered,
since 1 know not man ? " but nevertheless, being equally submissive to the
will of God as she was solicitous to preserve her virginity, she desired to
obey the orders of heaven. The angel enlightened her at once. " The
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, he said, and the power of the Most High
shall overshadow thee : therefore the holy thing which shall be born of
thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth has
herself conceived a son in her old age ; and this is the sixth month with
her who was called barren : for with God nothing is impossible." This was
to demand of Mary a perfect abandonment to almighty power ; she bowed
her head, exclaiming : " Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto
me according to thy word." And immediately the angel departed from her."

This may suffice as a specimen of the Abbe Fouard's historical
and narrative style, although it is not one of those passages in which
occasion is furnished for much more than a paraphrase of the sa-
cred text itself. We will now offer a translation of one of F. Cic-
colini's Meditations, as an illustration of the contemplative manner
of treating the subjects furnished by the gospels, and a specimen
of the particular manner of the distinguished Jesuit whose book
we have so highly commended.

CONTEMPLATION ON THE VISIT OF THE SHEPHERDS.

FIRST POINT.

"The greatest of all mysteries had now been accomplished in the dark-
ness and silence of the night of the Nativity. The divine Persons and all
the angelic hosts contemplated from the heights of heaven the infant of ce-
lestial origin in whose minute form this mystery was embodied, with a de-
light ineffable and unceasing. And meanwhile the greater number of men
buried in gross indulgences, given up to gluttony, dissipation and all kinds
of foolish pursuits, complete the work of their own perversion by an utter
indifference and contempt for that in which heaven and earth have been so

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 851

deeply interested for more than forty centuries. All kinds of men in gene-
ral were involved in this corruption ; but those classes of society which are
the least depraved and led astray by the fascinations of pleasure, by pride
and by the abundance of earthly goods, were still capable of not resisting
a heavenly illumination. And lo ! not far from Bethlehem, some poor and
simple shepherds were keeping guard over their flocks. These are the ones
chosen to receive knowledge of the great mystery hidden from ages and
generations. A spirit of the most exalted rank darts suddenly from the
throne of God, vested in the most dazzling light of glory, his countenance
radiant with joy, and announces to the shepherds that the time of lamenta-
tion is over, that expectation has reached its end, that finished is the sigh-
ing for the happy birth of the desired of all nations, the King of kings, the
Saviour of Israel. I announce to yoii good tidings of great joy, for to-day a
Saviour has been born to you in the city of David. But what are the signs by
which they can recognize the new-born Saviour? They are no other than
these : You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes and lying in a
manger. Be persuaded, then, that the signs by which to recognize Jesus,
and the means for finding him are only humility poverty and mortifica-
tion. Reflect also on the simplicity of heart with which the shepherds be-
lieved in the words of the angel, on the new joy which sprang up in their
bosoms because they were not agitated by tumultuous passions, on the
conversation which they held with one another, on their speedy prepara-
tions for starting on their road, and applying all this to yourself, reproach
and blame your want of eagerness and zeal in searching for Jesus, and
your small degree of earnestness in his service.

SECOND POINT.

" They went with haste, and fotind Mary and Joseph, ana the Infant lying
in the manger. See how the shepherds call their companions from the
neighboring hills, divide into groups, gather together some small gifts,
hurry one another, and full of desire and beside themselves with excite-
ment hasten over the road, that they may verify with the sight of their
own eyes the glad tidings from heaven. Already the ones who have out-
stripped the rest have set foot within the grotto, and have beheld ly-
ing upon the coarse straw that divine babe whom the angel had an-
nounced, and wholly transported with joy they are impatient of the de-
lay of their comrades to whom they make eager and jubilant signals
from the cave's entrance, that they should hasten to share in the won-
derful spectacle. O dear Jesus ! Thou wouldst have gladly seen all men
worshipping at thy feet in that hour, but thou didst receive only these
few rude men, who had nevertheless preserved some lineaments of the
beautiful image of God impressed on their souls by thyself in their crea-
tion ! And oh ! how affecting this spectacle ! Those simple hearts seeing
the little babe all radiant with light, beholding the young virgin-mother
and her holy and venerable protector prostrate before him, hearing the an-
gelic hymns whose melody resounded in the air, all fell simultaneously up-
on their faces on the ground, and offered up to him their poor little pres-
ents. And when they saw now Mary and then Joseph imprinting affection-
ate kisses upon him, they asked permission from both the one and the other

852 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [Mar.,

to imitate their example. Then each one questioned Joseph or Mary about
the way of their coming into that place, and where they were from, and
about every circumstance of the birth of the desired Saviour ; and were
never satisfied with asking information of the most precise and minute par-
ticulars. Consider how they keep their eyes intently fixed upon the infant
Jesus, and how their bosoms are inflamed with holy love at the view of a
God who has so belittled himself for the sake of men. But the sighs, the
tears and the shiverings of the little infant soon interrupt this blessed ec-
stasy, and being seized with a lively compassion they quickly set to work
to collect boughs and interlace them so as to repair the doorway and the
apertures of the cavern and partially shelter from the cold wind the child
who by right should have been born in David's palace. And what, now,
are you doing? Why do you not also prostrate yourself with the shep-
herds before that manger, to adore a God hidden and annihilated for your
sake ? Why do you not ask permission from Mary to touch that bed of
straw and to kiss those sacred feet? If the thought of the sins you have
committed restrains you from so much familiarity, remember that Christ
Jesus came into this world to save sinners. Draw near, then, and join your-
self to this group, to gaze upon, to bless, to praise Jesus, and to offer him
some gift that will please him. Such a gift can only be your own heart.
But it is thine, O happy mother! to present my poor heart to Jesus; ask
him to accept it and to dispose of it as he pleases, for I give it to him irre-
vocably, with all its powers, all its movements, with all its life, for time and
for eternity.

THIRD POINT.

" These good people would have wished to remain always in that happy
grotto, which was for them like the very source of light, like a furnace of
love, a treasury of infinite blessings, a paradise of delights. But they had
to go away. Already the song of birds and the bleating of lambs announced
the approach of dawn. They therefore took their departure and all were
in haste to carry the news of the wonders they had seen. Still there are a
few of them who do not seem able to make up their minds to quit this
blessed spot. O how painful it is to part from Jesus ! O might we ever re-
main here with him ! These lingerers renew their kisses and their adora-
tions, and promise to return soon again with new gifts. Finally, all have
left. Go with them as they walk along the road and listen to their talk as
they call to mind the stories they have heard from their progenitors, the
genealogy of the royal family, all the prophetic signs and predictions, and
whatever they have learned from the readings and sermons of the syna-
gogue ; all of which concur to confirm what they have heard from the
angel and witnessed in the sacred grotto regarding the birth of the Saviour.
Besides the joy, the exultation, the consolation which these things awaken
in their hearts, they feel hope and confidence that great things are coming,
they are filled with sentiments of praise and thanksgiving to the Most
High, and they have a holy pride in the honor conferred on themselves, to
be the first called to the knowledge of the Nativity of the Messiah. Some
talk about the infant, others of his mother, one speaks of their poverty, an-
other of their beauty, this one tries to whistle or sing some bars of the

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 853

angelic music, the other repeats over the words spoken by the angel. And
you yourself? Of what do you love to speak ? What is the nature of your
conversations ? Are they not generally idle and worldly ? Are you not
one of those foolish persons, who are wholly of the world and therefore speak
according to the maxims of the world? "

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE DIOCESES OF PITTSBURGH
AND ALLEGHENY, FROM ITS, ESTABLISHMENT TO THE PRESENT TIME.
By the Rev. A. A. Lambing, author of The Orphan s Friend, Mixed Mar-
riages, The Sunday-School Teacher's Manual, etc. New York, Cincinnati,
and St. Louis: Benziger Brothers. 1880.

Excepting Maryland, no one of the Atlantic States shows so early a
trace of Catholic movement and enterprise as Pennsylvania. Though
Father Lambing's work professedly deals with the Catholic history of the
western dioceses, it throws light on much of the history of the eastern dio-
ceses as well.

In 1755 Catholics mostly Germans were so numerous in Berks
County that five justices of the peace, in a great state of alarm, notified the
governor of the danger to be looked for in these papists, who, they declar-
ed, were " bound by their principles to be the worst of neighbors." The
poor justices were of opinion that they and their fellow-Protestants were
" subject to a massacre whenever the papists [are] would be ready," but
with heartless indifference the Provincial Council endorsed their communi-
cation with the remark, " We apprehend there is very little foundation for
that representation." Thirty years before (in 1725) nearly six thousand
Irish had landed in Philadelphia, and Father Lambing thinks that some of
these were Catholics. Possibly ; but that was the epoch of the large emi-
gration of Irish Presbyterians, who were forced to leave their country
through the tyrannical English' legislation they had themselves so much
contributed to strengthen. In the absence of evidence to the fact it would
scarcely be safe to assume that there was a large Catholic element among
the Irish immigrants to Pennsylvania then.

In a supplementary chapter Father Lambing examines what he deems
to be errors as to the early history of the church in Pennsylvania. These
are regarding "the old priest" mentioned by W T illiam Penn in 1686; the
first priest to say Mass in Philadelphia; the first church in Philadelphia;
and Miss Elizabeth McGawley's chapel near Nicetown. The " old priest "
he concludes to have been no priest at all, but a Swedish Lutheran minis-
ter. With regard to the second of these errors, he quotes from Westcott's
History of Philadelphia some results of investigations which Father Pam-
filo da Magliano a few years ago provincial of the Franciscans in this
State had made in the archives of his order in England. These results,
which Mr. John Gilmary Shea had communicated to Westcott, seem to es-
tablish that the first Mass was said in Philadelphia by a Franciscan friar
before 1720, either by Father Polycarp Wicksted or Father James Haddock,

854 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

both of whom were Englishmen. In discussing the first church or chapel
Father Lambing cites the well-known letter which Penn, then in England,
wrote in 1708 to Logan : " Here is a complaint against your government,
that you suffer publick Mass in a scandalous manner. Pray send the matter
of fact, for ill use is made of it against us here." There was little peace for
the poor Catholics in those times ! But this " publick Mass " must have
been in a private house, and was probably celebrated by one of the friars
mentioned above, as, according to Father Lambing's own showing, St.
Joseph's Jesuit Church was the first, and that was opened by Father
Greaton, who came from Maryland in 1730 or 1732. Complaint was made
against it by some zealous bigots to the Provincial Council, but the church
was not molested. May not an explanation of this indulgence be that the
lieutenant-governor then was Patrick Gordon, from the name evidently a
Highlander, and therefore, if a Protestant at all, less imbued with Puritan
animosity against the Catholics than most of the Protestants of that
period ?

A fact pertinent to the educational question of to-day is the attitude of
Catholics of German origin with regard to the schools. Father Lambing
says (p. 154) : " If there be one trait more conspicuous than another in the
character of our German co-religionists, it is their ardent devotion to the
cause of religious education. With them it is second in importance only to
the profession of their faith itself; and the German congregation must' be
very small and poor, as we shall have ample evidence in these pages, that
will not be found able and willing to support a parochial school." This, it
is true, may be explained partly by the Germans having been accustomed in
their nfctive country to an excellent system of denominational schools, and
partly by their desire of bringing up their children in a knowledge of the
German language. But, whatever the reason for their superior steadfast-
ness to a religious education, it is a fact that throughout the country the
public schools have, in proportion, fewer children of German Catholic
parents than of any others. Yet the Germans are not the only ones who
cling to their native language. At the Church of Our Lady of Consola-
tion in Pittsburgh, dedicated in 1868, sermons, says Father Lambing, have
been preached in Irish oftener than in English, and, indeed, many members
of the congregation can speak no language but Irish, while many of the
children belonging to this congregation, though born in Pittsburgh, are as
fluent in Irish as are their parents a fact which no doubt is cheering to
the friends of " the Gaelic revival."

Father Lambing's book will be very interesting to Pennsylvania
Catholics on account of the great fund of local reminiscence it contains ;
but what will give its greatest practical value to the general Catholic
reader is the wholesome hints to be had from the detailed history of the
various parishes and missions, which is frankly and fully told, whether nar-
rating success or failure.

POEMS OF MANY YEARS AND MANY PLACES. By William Gibson, Com-
modore United States Navy, author of A Vision of Fairyland, and
other Poems. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1881.

These poems are as varied in merit as they are in subject' and style of
versification. There are passages in many of them that men much better

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 855

known to fame as poets than the author might be proud to claim lines of
deep meaning, of haunting melody, and a happiness of poetic expression that
can only come from true inspiration. On the other hand, not a few of the
poems are ordinary enough, both in thought and construction ; not that
any of them are badly done, but of a kind that many might execute without
claiming or being entitled to the name of poet. Commodore Gibson claims
no such title for himself. He modestly sends out his modest volume with-
out a word of preface. As a rule people do not look for poets, any more
than for philosophers or theologians, among sailors. To come across one,
a man of fine culture, warm imagination, and rare delicacy of expres-
sion, is all the more delightful for its rarity. Commodore Gibson is certain-
ly all this. He has evidently moved about the world armed with the alert
strength of a man whose life is passed in battling with the elements, yet
softened and chastened by the tender fancy of a girl whose young eyes and
warm heart are open to every changing beauty in the inexhaustible face of
nature. Here is how he sings of nature in the opening poem, " Perse-
phone " :

" Lean low, and list :

A murmurous motion in the growing grain,
An audible flow in the ascending sap
That thrills the tender shoot as with delight ;
The beating of minutest arteries
In time and tune with the great sun and moon ;
Yea, at all points of all this visible frame
Put thou a finger on my pulse. I live !
For I am Nature. And my child is Beauty,
The thing divinest in divinity,
Save Love and Love is but the holiest Beauty."

"The Doves of Saint Mark " is a very pretty poem. There is a doubt-
ful attempt at glorification of Victor Emmanuel in it that jars on. the ear,
and one or two passages of a similar tendency occur in other places. The
union of Italy was desired by no man more earnestly than by Pius IX.
The union that he desired and that all honest men desire remains yet to be
accomplished in Italy. It was certainly not accomplished by Victor Emman-
uel. " Holy Week in Rome " reads like a beautiful prayer of a humbled
heart. Here is a verse from " The Bells of Florence," that, if we mistake
not, appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, as some of the best of the collec-
tion did originally :

" O bells ! O bells ! th.e worlds are buoyed,

Like beacon-bells, on waves profound,
In all no silence as no void

The very flowers are cups of sound.
We dream and, dreaming, we rejoice

That we, when great Death draws us nigh,
Hearing, may understand the Voice

Which rocks a bluebell or the sky,
And, with new senses finely strung

In grander Eden's blossoming,
May see a golden planet swung,

Yet hear the silver lilies ring ! "

856 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [M ar . ,

The volume throughout, though consisting of a collection of fugitive
pieces, will be found of exceptional excellence and well worthy of careful
perusal.

THE OUR'AN. Translated by E. H. Palmer. Oxford: at the Clarendon
Press. 1880.

New translations of the " Sacred Books of the East " are now being
issued under the editorship of F. Max Miiller, and this translation of
the Koran of Mohammed is Mr. Palmer's contribution to the series. In
the introduction Mr. Palmer gives us his views of the great Arabian
prophet, and although these views are not new, they are yet a little singu-
lar.

He is of opinion that Mohammed was perfectly sincere in the beginning
of his prophetic career, and was the honest victim of hallucinations that
were but the natural outcome of his own nervous disorders. This may be
a scientific way of explaining the peculiar mental characteristics of the
pseudo-prophet, but we doubt if it be altogether satisfactory. It certainly is
not easy to conceive of a shrewd, practical Arabian trader in the fortieth
year of his age becoming the unconscious victim of his own absurd con--
ceits. It is much more probable, we think, and his subsequent conduct is
a sufficient proof of it, .that Mohammed was a designing, ambitious man, who
dealt in duplicity from the very beginning.

It may indeed be true that he was sincere in his desire to elevate the
religious ideas of his Compatriots, but it is manifest that he sought his own
elevation too, and practised on the religious feelings of the people as the
most certain means to obtain power and authority. How could he have
sincerely believed in the divine character of his revelations when he was
so ready on occasion to compromise the one fundamental doctrine of his
faith? Policy, expediency, were his guides throughout, not his supposed
revelations. If Mohammed were sincere, then we have no hesitation in ad-
mitting the sincerity of the modern prophet of the religion of lust and
licentiousness. For Joseph Smith and Mohammed have employed the
same means to secure the same ends. Distance and great success have
thrown a glamour of greatness around the character of the founder of
Islam which separates him, in our minds, from the vulgar, commonplace
character of the Mormon prophet ; and this is about the difference between
the impostor of Mecca and the low vagabond who so closely imitated him
in our own time and country.

Mr. Palmer is of opinion, moreover, that Mohammed could neither read
nor write, and consequently could not have studied the Bible. If this be so,
then he must have lived in daily intercourse with those who were familiar
with both the Old and New Testaments, and he must have had a prodigious
memory besides, for the imitation is such as to warrant Lacordaire's speak-
ing of the Koran as " that plagiarism on the Bible by a student of rhetoric
at Mecca." It is, of course, well known that there were communities of
both Jews and Christians in and around Mecca towards the latter half of
the sixth century, and Mohammed must have gathered from them his not
inconsiderable knowledge of Scripture and tradition. This, together with
his Oriental imagination and the poetic language and exaggerated meta-

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 857

phor of Arabia, gave him all the materials he needed to work up his book of
pseudo-revelations. This, too, is Mr. Palmer's summing up on the Koran.
" Regarding it," he says, " from a perfectly impartial and unbiassed stand-
point, we find that it expresses the thoughts and ideas of a Bedawi Arab
in Bedawi language and metaphor."

The Koran has always been considered the most perfect piece of com-
position in the Arabic language ; but we fail to discover its great literary
excellence in its English dress, and few persons, we think, will have the pa-
tience to wade through its one hundred and fourteen chapters of discon-
nected rhapsody.

The translation now before us is no doubt a faithful one and the best
that has yet appeared. We are rather surprised, however, to find such an
accomplished writer as Mr. Palmer make use of slang phrases, and it will be
difficult for him to justify the example of this kind that we meet with on
page 5, chap. 'ii. vol. i. He has, moreover, materially altered the spelling
of proper names and places, and he persists in writing the word Koran it-
self Qur'an ; this may be the result of more accurate scholarship, but it is
very confusing. Sale and other translators had agreed on a uniform sys-
tem of orthography for these Arabic names, and it would have been just as
well, we think, to retain the form already established. The day will yet
come, we trust, when the book and the religion of Mohammed will be noth-
ing more than a literary curiosity in the world. Moslemism is now divided
into seventy-two sects, and there are signs of disintegration on every side.

CRITICAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN ABOO AND CABOO ON A NEW BOOK ; or, A
Grandissime Ascension. Edited by E. Junius. Mingo City : Great Pub-
lishing House of Sam Slick Allspice, 12 Veracity Street. 1880.

This little squib from New Orleans is a Creole's protest against Old
Creole Days and The Grandissimes, in which Mr. Cable sought to portray
under certain aspects the Creoles and the Creole manners and customs of
Louisiana in the early part of the century. But the author of Aboo and
Caboo charges that Mr. Cable has " written for the prejudiced and inimical
North, against the olden customs, habits, manners, and idiosyncrasies of the
Southern Creole population," and in the supposed dialogue between the re-
suscitated spirits of two old Creoles he indignantly lashes with ridicule what
he deems to be the malicious misrepresentations contained in Mr. Cable's
books.

We confess, however, this indignation and this ridicule seem to us un-
deserved. We fail to perceive in Mr. Cable's portraits any appearance of
ill-nature or of a desire to do injustice. That there was something pictur-
esque about the remnants of the early Spanish and French settlements of
the lower Mississippi was long known, but Mr. Cable has been the first
in English, at least to give them a careful study. That he has been artis-
tically successful is, we think, generally acknowledged. But Mr. Cable,
though, as we believe, a native of Louisiana, is not a Creole, and he appar-
ently wrote from the point of view of one who believes the English-Ameri-
can or, to use a cant phrase, the Anglo-Saxon element to be the normal
American element. Hence, in spite of what looks like a real sympathy
with the scenes and characters he describes, he has been unable to avoid a

858 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

somewhat patronizing and superior air, which is undoubtedly Anglo-Sax-
on, and which seems to have given offence where, as is likely, no offence
was intended.

After the dialogue are a " chorus of frogs " and a " solo by a Zombi
frog." This last, in " Zombi," " Gumbo," or Louisiana negro-French, satir-
izes Mr. Cable's supposed method of studying the Voudou superstition.
We give the first stanza as a specimen :

Savan Missie Kabri,

Ki konin tou gri-gri,

Prosh kote For-Pagnol,

Li te kouri lekol

Avek vie kokodri,

Ki te in Gran Zombi ;

Kan soleil te koushe,

Dan ti kouin biyin kashe,

Li te sorti bayou

Pour apprande li Voudou.

CHINESE IMMIGRATION, IN ITS SOCIAL AND ECONOMICAL ASPECTS. By
George F. Seward, late United States Minister to China. 8vo, pp. xv.-
420. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1881.

Mr. Seward's aim in this work is to counteract the anti-Chinese move-
ment in California and the neighboring States. His earlier chapters are
largely made up of extracts from the testimony taken before the Congres-
sional committee on Chinese immigration. With a few unimportant excep-
tions, however, the testimony has been quoted of contractors only, or oth-
ers whose main concern it is to obtain labor at the very lowest possible
rates. Yet from this testimony it fairly does appear that Chinese labor has
at times been all that some Californians could procure at any terms. As one
example of a great many given. The manufacture of jute grain-bags was
begun a few years ago in San Francisco. Previous to that time these bags
had to be imported from Scotland. The proprietor of the factory testifies :
" When we ordered the machinery we ordered a whole cargo of white peo-
ple to come with it from Scotland ; but they left us," because " when we
engaged them they thought they had a good thing, and when they arrived
it seemed they could do better." As no others could then be got, Chinese
had to be employed. But, according to the testimony cited by Mr. Seward,
the Scotch are not the only people who are less reliable than the Chinese.
American citizens generally, native-born and naturalized, "Anglo-Saxons,"
Irish, Germans, Swedes, and French, seem to have a horror of work as soon
as they come under the seductive influence of "the glorious climate of Cali-
fornia." A " Rev. Mr. Brier" was asked if he had ever seen a native-born
American maid-of-all-work. He answered : " I never knew but one in Cali-
fornia," and " she was rather living there as a home, but received wages."

Mr. Seward does not like the discrimination that is made against the
Chinese. He inquires : " Do we ask the clod-hopper from Ireland, the
operator from England, the peasant from France, or Italy, or Germany, into
our drawing-rooms, and invite them to marry our daughters? . . . Do we
treat the Chinamen in such manner ? " But then these " clod-hoppers,"
whether from Connaught or Kent, or any other part of old Christendom,

1 88 1 .] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 859

will marry somebody's daughters, and will be the fathers of native-born
Americans, some of whom will have "drawing-rooms," and many of whom
will have " daughters," as well as sons who will be true, muscular Chris-
tians. How about the Chinese ?

According to the weight of the evidence as cited by Mr. Seward, there is
not a good foundation for the general belief that the Chinese immigrants
are imported as Coolies by the Six Companies. Mr. Seward remarks that

" the Chinese who have already reached our shores have come because of a demand excep-
tional in its nature, and which is passing away, and their labor is not of a kind which will en-*
able them, speaking generally, to compete permanently in the labor market of the country."

He does not believe in any very great increase in the Chinese immigration,
and he points to the fact that the three hundred millions who constitute the
Chinese Empire have made no really aggressive movement against any of
their Asiatic neighbors. He says :

" .nail ages dominating races have used inferior races to advance their purposes* But the
spontaneous outward movement of a less vigorous people for the purpose of winning bread in
lands not only controlled but occupied by a more vigorous race has not been witnessed in any
quarter of the globe where political and industrial conditions have been normal."

From the appendix we learn that, according to the census of 1880, the
total number of Chinese in the United States is 105,448, California having
75,025, and the city of San Francisco alone 21,745.

REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION FOR THE YEAR 1878. Wash-
ington : Government Printing-Office. 1880.

This report, which might be made very useful and instructive, is never-
theless thoroughly unsatisfactory from its lack of order in the arrangement
and clearness in the division of matter. A great many pages, too, are given
to obituary articles of private persons, presumably friends of the commis-
sioner or friends of the commissioner's friends. The pretext for introducing
these articles is that the persons they refer to had been " friends of educa-
tion." Who is not a friend of education ? What would be said if the Sec-
retary of the Treasury of the United States should devote a great deal of
the space in his yearly reports to laudatory notices of men who had died
during the year previous, and had been known as " friends of commerce "?

DE RELIGIONE ET ECCLESIA. Prselectiones Scholastico-Dogmatica; quas
habebat Camillus Mazzella, S.J., in Gregoriana Universitate, etc. Edi-
tio Altera. Romas: Ex Typ. S. C. de Prop. Fid. 1880. (For sale in
New York by Benziger.)

This is called the Second Edition of Father Mazzella's new work, now
published, so far as we know, for the first time. We suppose from this,
that the First Edition was printed at Woodstock as a part of the Course of
Theology of that college, for the use of the scholastics but not published.
It is a large royal octavo volume of nine hundred pages, and of course far
more thorough and complete than the treatises contained in ordinary clas-
sical text-books. The same skill in stating questions and making the ar-
rangement of the parts of general theses, the same logical accuracy of ar-

860 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar., 1881.

gument, and the same profound erudition, together with an uncommonly
clear and precise diction which have characterized the learned professor's
former works and given him so great a celebrity as a theologian, are found
in this Treatise on a most important subject. It suffices merely to announce
its publication to secure for it the attention and circulation it deserves
among the clergy.

MEMOIRS OF A NEW YORK DOLL. Written by herself. New York : The
Catholic Publication Society Co. 1880.

The very little folks will here find the sayings, doings, thoughts, and
observations of an upper-class doll who was bought in the first place for
"twelve dollars," and then saw the very pleasantest side of life, surrounded
by all sorts of comforts, and luxuries even, and by people who were mostly
very rich and very good a combination very gratifying to find.

ENGLISH TYRANNY AND IRISH SUFFERING. Dedicated to the Irish Land
League of Memphis. By Avery Meriwether. Memphis, Tenn.: R. M.
Mansford, publisher, 298'Main Street. 1881.

This pamphlet is a cool-headed American's concise statement of the
Irish situation, and within its few pages contains all the facts necessary to
enable one to form an honest judgment.

THE SCHOLASTIC ANNUAL FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1881. By J. A.
Lyons, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana.

This is the sixth year of the Scholastic Annual, and it is very creditable
to Professor Lyons, whose taste and discrimination are apparent in the well-
arranged and selected contents.

ST. MARY MAGDALEN. By the R. Pere H. D. Lacordaire, of the Order of St. Dominic, and
Member of the French Academy. London : Burns & Gates. 1880.

SADLIERS' CATHOLIC DIRECTORY, ALMANAC, AND ORDO for 1881. With a full report of the va-
rious Dioceses in the United States, British America, England, Ireland, and Scotland. New
York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1881.

MEMOIR OF GABRIEL BERANGER and his Labors in the cause of Irish Art and Antiquities, from
1760 to 1780. By Sir William Wilde, M.D., author of Bemities of the Boyne and Black-
water, Longh Coorib, its Shores and Island, Catalogue of the Museum of the Royal Irish
Academy, etc. With seventeen illustrations. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

THE DOMINICAN HYMN-BOOK. With Vespers and Compline. London : Burns & Oates. 1881.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

THE PAROCHIAL HYMN-BOOK. New and revised edition, containing prayers and devotions for
all the faithful ; including Vespers, Compline, and all the liturgical Hymns for the year, both
in Latin and English. London : Burns & Oates. 1881. (For sale by the Catholic Publi-
cation Society Co.)

THE PRIEST OF THE EUCHARIST ; or, A Sketch of the Life of the Very Rev. Peter J. Eymard,
founder of the Society of the Most Holy Sacrament. London : Burns & Oates. 1881.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

AP The Catholic world

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