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CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

ix va\

VOL. XXXIII.
APRIL, 1881, TO SEPTEMBER, 1881.

NEW YORK :

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.,
9 Barclay Street.

1881.

THE NATION PRESS, 2? ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

American (An) Catholic Poet. Eugene L.

Didier, 145

Among the Moors, 509

Anglican (The) Church and the Courts of

L aw . Her.ry Bellingham, M.P., . . 6q

Anti-Semitic League, The Prussian.

Thomas Dun Danion, .... 131

A Pilgrimage to the Shrine at Drei Eichen.

Tke Hon. Alice Seymour, . . . 706

Aridge, The Valley of the. AT. P. Thomp-
son, ........ 260

A Song without Words. Sara T. Smith, . 743

A Woman of Culture. John Talbot Smith,

8r, 228, 390, 534, 656, 789

Belgian School Question, Present State of

the, 119

Bishop Seymour's Reason Why. The Rev.

Walter Elliott, 416

Calderon de la Barca. Maurice F. Egan, . 474

Canada (French) and its People.^ . M. Pope, 696

Canon (The) and Inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures, The Catholic Doctrine of.
The Rev. A . F, He-wit, .... 523

Catherine (St.) of Genoa and her Contempora-
ries. Lady Blanche Murphy, . . 488

Catholic (The) Doctrine of the Canon and In-
spiration of the Holy Scriptures. The
Rev. A . F. He-wit, . . . . . .523

Chambers of the Saints. M. P. Thompson, .

641, 752

Christian Jerusalem. The Rev. A. F. Hewit,

452, 684, 767

Christ, The Life of . The Rev. A. F. Heivit,

108, 175, 351

Cicero, Trollope's Life of. T/ie Rev. J. V.

(/'Conor, 200

College at Paris, The Irish. R. F. Farrett, . 404

Dance of Death (The). M. P. Thompson, . 55

Episode (An) of the Battle of Gettysburg, . 449

Ethnologic Studies among the N. A. Indians.

Mary M. Meline, ..... 255

Female Education in Germany, Mediaeval.

Lady Blanche Murphy, .... 377

French Canada and its People. A. M. Pope^ 696

Gettysburg, An Episode of the Battle of, . 449

Greek (.The) Monasteries of Mt. Athos.

Lady Blanche Murphy, .... 163

Hammond (Dr.) on Miracles. The Rev.

George M. Searle, ..... 433

Heathendom and Revelation. The Rev.

Henry A . Brann, D.D., 10

Illinois, Irish Settlements in. William J.

Onahan, 157

II Santo. M. P. Thompson, . . . .298

ladians, Ethnologic Studies among the N. A.

Mary M. Meline, 255

Ireland and the Irish. Tke Rev. J. P. Ryan, 836

Ireland of To-day, "Young Ireland" and

the. John MacCarthy, .... 39

Ireland, The Jacobite and Later Celtic Po-

etry of. Alfred M. Williams, . . 626

Irish (The) College at Paris./?. F. Farrell, 404

Irish Settlements in Illinois. William J.

Onahan, 157

Jacobite (The) and Later Celtic Poetry of Ire-
land. A If red M. Williams, . . .626

Jerusalem, Christian. The Rev. A . F. He-wit,

452, 684, 767

Joseph de Maistre. Hugh P. McElrone, ' . 218

Latin and French Plays at the College of Louis-

\e-GrznA.Lady Blanche Murphy, . 814

Life (The) of Christ. The Rev. A. F. He-wit,

108, 175, 351

Maistre (de), Joseph. Hugh P. McElrone, . 218

Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth, Queen

of England. S. Hubert Burke, . .618

May-Time on the Galtees. Julia M. Crothe, 208

Mediaeval Female Education in Germany.

Lady Blanche Mur/<hy, .... 377

Miracles, Dr. Hammond on. The Rev.

George M. Searle, 433

Mt. Athos, The Greek Monasteries si. Lady

Blanche Murphy, 163

National Unity. Count de Falloux, . . 334

New Version (The) of a Protestant New Tes-
tament. The Right Rev. Thomas A.
Becker, D.D., 558

One Hundred Years Ago. William Len-

neky 736

Opium Habit, The. D. W. Nolan, M.D., . 827

Pius (St.) V 777

Plays (Latin and French) at the College of
Louis-le-Grand. Lady Blanche Mur-
phy, ' . .814

Present (The) State of the Belgian School

Question, 119

Prussian (The) Anti-Semitic League.

'1 ' homas Dun Danion, .... 131

Rachel's Fate. William Seton, . . .314

Reason, The True and the False Friends of.

The Rev.I.T. Hecker, . . 289

Restitution ! If not, why not ? R. F. Far-
rell, 577

Ritualism (Through) to Rome, . . .721

Saints, Chambers of the. M. P. Thompson,

641, 752

Scientific Dogmatism. The Rev. George M.

Searle, 274

Seymour's (Bishop) Reason Why. The Rev.

Walter Elliott, 416

Some Account of the Latin Vulgate. The

Rev. A. F. He-wit^ 59

CONTENTS.

Summer Reading. The Rev. J. V. C? Conor, 503

The Colleen Dhyas. Alfred M. Williams, 464

Thomas Carlyle. The Rev. J. V. O' * Conor, . 18

Through Ritualism to Rome, . . . 721
Tomb of the Conquistador (The). Lady

Blanche Murphy, 24

Trollope's Life of Cicero. The Rev. J. V.

CfConor, 200

True (The) and the False Friends of Reason.

The Rev. I. T. Hccker, . . .289

Tyng's (Dr.) Sermon on u the Mountain-
Movers. 1 ' The Rev. George M. Searle,

Unity, National. Count de Falloux, ,

Valley (The) of the Arie"ge. M. P. Thomp-
son, ........

Vulgate, Some Account of the Latin. The
Rev. A. F.Heivit,

Weetamoo. William Seton, ....

" Young Ireland" and the Ireland of To-day.
John MacCarthy,

5QO
602

An Easter Card. Edith Cook, . . .154

A Northern April's Stratagem. John Acton, g

A Psaim of Life. William Gibson, . 624
Charity Children going to Mass. Thomas

A. Janvier, 313

Dies Irae. A New Translation. Joh n D.

Van Buren, IS

Hadrian's Address to his Soul. J. L. C? Sul-
livan, 487

In a Graveyard. Mary E. Mannix, . . 54

Knut the King. Julia O'Ryan, . . . 5 86

POETRY.

Lepanto. Matthew Daly, . . .810
My Treasures. Thomas L. Kirby, . . 389
Our Rain and Our Lady. John Acton, . 655
Revelations of Divine Love. The Rev. Al-
fred Young, . ... 79, 215, 414

Spring. James Peck, 427

The Children of Lir. Aubrey de Vere, 185, 304
The First Star that Fell. John Acton, . . 162
The Martyr. A. L. H., .... 683

The Minstrel's Curse. Mary E. Mannix, . 520
Upon the Shore. William Livingston, . 448

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A Nameless Nobleman, 719

Annual Report of the Operations of the U. S.

Life-Saving Service, 432

Apostolical Succession, 720

A Question, 720

Ausjiingst verfiossenen Tagen, . . . 575

Carroll O'Donoghue, 720

Christian Schools and Scholars, . . . 856

Christian Truths, 570

Christ in his Church, 569

Der Saphir, ....... 575

Disturbed Ireland, ...... 284

England Within and Without, . . . 717

English History Readers, No. i, . . . 719

Ernestine, 143

Foregleams of the Desired, .... 140
Frederick the Great and the Seven Years'

War I4I

Gleanings from Our Own Fields, . . . 718

Graduale de Tempore t de Sanctis, . . 431

Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, . 570
Institutiones Theologicae ad Usum Semina-

riorum, 428

Instructions for First-Communicants, . . 141

Mario von Martigny, 575

Motherhood, ....... 574

My First Communion, ..... 574

New Views on Ireland,

Nico'.ai Lancicii. S.J., Opusculum spiritale,

Nouvelle-France, Colonie libre de Port-Breton, 142

On the Sunrise Slope, 859

Or. Thinking, ....... 283

Pennsylvania Excursion Routes, . . . 720
Prospectus of the Descriptive and Pictorial At-
las of the Cesnola Collection,
Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle,
Reports of St. Mark's Academy, . . . 576
Sir William Herschel : his Life and Works, . 287

284

430

Select Works of the Ven. F. Nicolas Lanci-

cius, S.J., .......

Seventy- three Catholic Tracts on Various

Subjects, .......

Sketches of the Lives of Dominican Saints,
Synnove Solbakken, . . . . .

The Cat, ........

The Excellences of the Congregation of the

Oratory of St. Philip Neri,
The History of the Crusades, ....
The Irish Land-Laws, .....
The Irish Land Question, ....
The Lands of Holy Scripture, . , .
The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude, .
The Life of Father Gerard, S.J., . . .
The Life of the Venerable Francis Mary Paul

Libermann, ......

The Life's Work in Ireland of a Landlord who

tried to do his Duty, .....

The Longfellow Birthday Book, . . .
The Metaphysics of the School, . . .
The Mission of Woman, .....

The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien,
The Priest of the Eucharist .....

Thesaurus Biblicus, ......

The Servant-Girl Question .....

The Statues in the Block, and other Poems, .
The Story of Ireland, .....

The Story of St. Frideswide, Virgin and Pa-

troness of Oxford, .....
The Theistic Argument, .....
The Trials of the Church, ....

The Twelve Annual Reports of St. Mary's

Industrial School, .....
The Workings of the Divine Will, . . .
Une Anne"e de Meditations, ....
What Might Have Been, . . . .
Words of Comfort to Persecuted Catholics, .

143

140
781
860

288
284
286
142
7i9

2?2

284
141

857
143
138
2 83
286
572

43 T
3^5
281

576
287
428
432
716

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXI11. APRIL, 1881. No. 193.

DR. TYNG'S SERMON ON " THE MOUNTAIN-
MOVERS."

QUITE a sensation has been produced, as our readers probably
know, by a sermon recently preached by the Rev. Stephen H.
Tyng, Jr., f D.D., on the subject of " Modern Miracles." The
principal cause of this sensation was, of course, Dr. Tyng's admis-
sion of the genuineness of many at least of the miracles worked
in modern times in the communion of the Catholic Church, and
notably at the great sanctuary of Lourdes.

This admission was naturally a source of great surprise to
Protestants, who generally reject without the least examination!
all miracles attested by Catholic witnesses. To us, however,,
their rejection of Catholic miracles is no doubt likely to be quite
as surprising as Dr. Tyng's admission of such miracles is to
them ; for it certainly seems passing strange that facts occurring
not in secrecy or in a corner, but in the open light of day, and in
places easily accessible, should be uniformly pooh-poohed or ig-
nored by intelligent and educated people. But when we come to
think we easily see the causes for this line which they take, un-
reasonable as it is. One is that many of them have an idea that
the church is composed of two classes, the deceivers and the de-
ceived ; that the priests, or whoever else may be admitted into the
ring, produce certain effects which the uninitiated regard as mi-
raculous, the ring meanwhile laughing in its sleeve; and that,
moreover, the credulity of those outside the privileged class,
founded in ignorance and developed by these false wonders, goes-

2 DR. TYNG'S SERMON ON [April,

farther than is intended, and sees a miracle even in cases where it
is not expected to see one. So Protestants of this sort no more
think of examining into the miraculous nature of the cures at
Lourdes, for instance, than they would think of examining whether
after all there was not something preternatural in the tricks of
a conjurer or the experiments of a chemist, because a portion of
the audience of either exhibitor believed that his results could
not be attained without the help of the devil.

Thus it is, as we all know, that Protestants think and speak of
the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. They say : " That
is easily explained. The priests have in a bottle some chemical
substance that boils at a very low temperature ; they hold the
bottle in their hands, and of course this substance melts and boils,
and the stupid people think it is a miracle." And they get quite
indignant at the trickery which they think the church resorts to,
and quite contemptuous at the ignorance which they think she
fosters.

But there is another reason why Protestants unhesitatingly
reject Catholic miracles ; and this reason has more to do with
the present case and with their surprise at Dr. Tyng's course.
They say : " The Catholic Church is of course wrong ; it is a cor-
ruption of Christianity, that is certain. So it is quite impossible
that God should work any miracles in her or for her ; if he did
it would be sanctioning error. If Catholic miracles were true
the Catholic Church would have to be true ; as for ourselves, we
know, thank God, that it is not, so of course we know that it
would be only lost time to examine into these pretended wonders ;
we might as well study seriously an alleged proof that two and
two make five."

One of them, for instance, states this as follows in a recent
number of the Guardian : " If our good Brother Tyng were as
logical as he is unquestionably ' sincere and earnest/ he would
find it impossible to stand for a moment on the ground that he
has taken in his sermon, without a full surrender of his reason
and conscience to the authoritative guidance of the Romish
Church ; and it is in no sense a non sequitur when the Times shuts
him up to this ' lame and impotent conclusion.' "

It is, according to him, you see, a " lame and impotent conclu-
sion," an absurdity, in fact, for an intelligent man to be a Catho-
lic. ^ And you see, by the way, the usual nonsense about surren-
dering one's reason and conscience, etc.

But these are, for our present purpose, side issues. The ques-
tion which is uppermost and most important just now, and the

1 88 1.] " THE MOUNTAIN-MOVERS" 3

question which we propose to discuss, is whether the conclusion
drawn by the writer just quoted is substantially correct : whether
Dr. Tyng is really obliged, if he will not recede from the ground
taken in his sermon, to go farther and become a Catholic.

Of course Dr. Tyng himself takes the negative side on this
question. He admits the miracles, but he has his own explana-
tion of them which permits him to remain a Protestant. What is
his explanation ? It is that miraculous answers may at any time
be expected by any Christian whose faith in God and the efficacy
of prayer is strong enough ; that a miracle is the reward of lively
faith in the power and goodness of God and in his promise to
answer prayer ; and that it is quite independent of the particular
doctrines which the person favored with it may hold on other
points, or of the particular church to which he may belong.
Miracles, and many of them, too, have been worked at Lourdes
and elsewhere in the Catholic Church, he says, because Catholics
have strong faith. He claims miracles for Protestants, too ; but
he is quite willing to yield the palm to us, to grant that our
prayers are more frequently answered miraculously, because we
have a stronger and more general faith that they will be. Faith
comes naturally from the Catholic system, according to him ; but
excite it among Protestants to the same extent as it prevails
among us, and miracles will be as common in one church as in
another. So the practical bearing of his sermon is this : it is an
encouragement to Protestants to excite in themselves a faith in
miracles like that of Catholics, in order that they may be equally
favored with them. " How rich," he says, "ye may be if ye will !
Can I not provoke you by this story of blessings to godly jeal-
ousy ? "

It does not plainly appear whether Dr. Tyng means to pro-
mise the same miraculous favors to those who do not in any way
profess or call themselves Christians. He says nothing, so far as
we can see, about the non-Christian world ; and it may be that he
regards the faith that is answered by miracles as one founded in
some way on the promise of our Lord that if we have faith as a
grain of mustard-seed we can move mountains, since he takes this
promise as his text. If so, it could not well be had by one not
adopting the Christian name. Still, he seems to give no special
reason why God might not miraculously favor others, as well as
Christians, who had arrived, though by a different road, at an
equal confidence in divine answers to prayer.

Well, then, why should not Dr. Tyng's Protestant friends ac-
cept his explanation ? For he evidently does not hold that God

4 DR. TYNG'S SERMON ON [April,

favors Catholics as such, but that he would do as much for Pro-
testants, and perhaps even for the heathen, on the same condi-
tions, capable of being realized by all.

Yet many of them do not accept it. In spite of it they per-
sist in regarding a belief, at least, in the miracles of Lourdes as
equivalent to a belief in the doctrines of that church for whose
members these miracles have been worked. And no doubt many
of our own communion will be of the same opinion. Which is
right, Dr. Tyng or his critics? Is his explanation a good and
sufficient one? Or, to put the shoe on the other foot, need we be
shaken in our faith should Protestant miracles be frequently
claimed and well attested ?

The question may be put in a more general form, thus : What
must one who admits the reality of miracles think of them ? Can
he regard them, with Dr. Tyng, as having no bearing on the
doctrinal differences of churches, or must he consider them to be,
as the doctor's opponents maintain, at least in cases like that of
Lourdes, a divine sanction to this or that particular church or
dogma?

To answer this question we had better first understand exact-
ly what we mean by a miracle.

A miracle is simply a physical phenomenon which we are quite
certain is neither the result of any physical laws nor produced by
the action of man or of the brute creation. It is, therefore, evi-
dently due to the interposition of some forces which do not ordi-
narily appear to take part in the course of events. For the for-
ces lodged in nature and belonging to it cannot, we may be quite
sure, depart of themselves from their regular way of working.
They may seem to, it is true ; but such departures are not miracles.
They come under law and will be repeated in similar circum-
stances. A real miracle, then, as we have said, comes from some
power which is not physical or animal ; from the evident and ex-
traordinary interference of some such power, some superhuman
and supernatural power, as we may call it, in the ordinary action
of others. It will be seen that we exclude from the class of mira-
cles those effects which the human spirit may be able to produce
in extraordinary ways ; for these, it is quite possible, may in time
be made matters of science, and become at least quite as compre-
hensible to us as the movements of our own bodies.

Now, to whom is this superhuman and supernatural power to
be ascribed? If it creates or annihilates matter, or if it implants
new forces in nature or suspends its laws, we should be right in
referring it to the Author of nature himself. But it is very hard

1 88 1.] " THE MOUNTAIN-MOVERS:' 5

to be sure in most cases that a miracle has such a character. For
example, suppose that a stone stops in the midst of its fall ; we
should be inclined," no doubt, to say, " Here is a suspension of the
law of gravity." But it is by no means clear that there is any
such suspension. As a man might stop it by catching it in his
hand, so an angel might stop it in spite of the continued action of
the law of gravity. Or if a tumor suddenly disappears, or a
new eye is formed, it is not absolutely clear that matter is annihi-
lated or created. The power of spirit to act on matter, and to put
it into new forms, is all that is needed to account for by far the
greater part of miraculous phenomena.

All, therefore, that a miracle in general shows is the action of
some spiritual power interfering with the purely physical course of
nature in the same way that we ourselves interfere with it. If
such interferences were common they would have the same cha-
racter as now, but we should cease to be surprised at them.
They are the occasional contact of a vast and immensely ener-
getic world with our own ; for those who believe in that world
they are not puzzling, but, when rare, they are of course startling,
if obvious and unmistakable.

A miracle, then, comes from that unseen world, but we are
generally left somewhat in the dark as to the quarter of that
world from which the miraculous, influence proceeds. It may
come from God, either directly or by the ministry of angels and
saints ; or it may come from spirits acting without his command,
acting, as we do, by his permission, but often contrary to his will.
Miracles are, therefore, divided into two principal classes, divine
and diabolical. Of the latter class, for instance, are those pre-
dicted for Antichrist in the Apocalypse. And the genuine
phenomena of the spiritualism, or more properly spiritism, of the
present day are to be referred, no doubt, at least as a rule, to
this class.

Very well, then. In the first place, to determine the signifi-
cance of a miracle we must ascertain to which class it belongs.
We must remember that the occurrence of a preternatural event
does not necessarily imply the suspension of the laws of nature,
or anything else peculiar to Omnipotence ; nor does it even
imply any command or sanction from God, given to his ministers,
the angels and saints. It may be diabolical ; the devil has been
allowed to work his " lying wonders," as St. Paul calls them, in
all ages.

The Jews in the time of our Lord knew this very well, and
the explanation given by some of them to his miracles was a

6 DR. TYNG'S SERMON ON [April,

plausible one. " He casteth out devils," they said, " by Beelze-
bub, the prince of devils." No doubt there was great perversity
and wilful blindness in their holding this view, but the perver-
sity and blindness was not in their believing diabolical miracles
possible, for the diabolical possession, which our Lord himself
recognized, belonged to that class ; no, it was in their refusing to
believe, in face of the evidence, that the power which he had to
cast out devils was not diabolical, but divine.

We need not, then, consider a miracle either as Dr. Tyng con-
siders it, and much less need we consider it as a divine sanction
to any doctrine, till we have shown that it is not the work of
Satan. Now, this is not always an easy matter. Certain general
rules may be given, both concerning the character and tfre result
of the miraculous work, which enable us to trace it to its source ;
but we cannot go into this subject at length. The " discernment
of spirits," as it has been called, is a matter of too great import-
ance and difficulty to be taken up by the way in a magazine ar-
ticle. But we call attention to it to show that there is no imme-
diate cause for alarm to us should miracles even having a doctri-
nal significance, such as those of spiritism, rise up against us ;
they must first be shown to come from God, or to be performed
by his command, or at least the indications must be decidedly
that way. Simon Magus worked miracles ; other false teachers
may do the same. We may, however, reasonably presume that
miracles coming in answer to an earnest and fervent prayer di-
rected to God for a good object are divine. Let us now proceed
to consider what significance we shall attach to miracles of this
kind.

To do so we shall have to consider first what we mean by an
answer to prayer in general. The critic of Dr. Tyng whom we
have already quoted, and whose remarks are on the whole much
to the point, asks parenthetically : " Can there be any answer to
prayer that is not miraculous ?" To this question we must reply
that there can be. Almighty God, in his infinite knowledge, of
course foreknows the entire natural working of the universe ;
and he may, in his creation and arrangement of it at the begin-
ning, have disposed matters so that foreknown events should
follow prayers also foreknown, and thus prior to nature and in-
dependently of it have made the event depend on the prayer.

But still prayer is not a natural power in the universe, like
human labor, for instance; we cannot say that, naturally speaking,
prayer and its answer have the relation of cause and effect to
each other, as labor and its fruit have. A man works, and he gets

1 88 1.] " THE MOUNTAIN-MOVERS:' 7

a harvest which he would not get without working ; and though
both these are foreknown, they really -have a natural connection
with each other. The one follows from the other according to
natural laws and inconsequence of them. But prayer cannot in this
way be answered ; there must be either an accommodation of the
universe beforehand for it, so to speak, or an act of God inter-
mediate between the prayer and its effect, exerting some forces
in the world of matter and human or animal life outside of the
laws of matter or of life.

In this last case the phenomenon is miraculous in its charac-
ter. It would not always be, strictly speaking, a miracle as we
have defined it above ; for it may not be a matter of clear evi-
dence or of subjective certainty to us that there is such an inter-
ference with the course of natural law.

It is more properly and usually called in such cases, where
the action is obscure and hidden, and may be supposed to come
from purely natural causes, " a special providence." To this
class may also be referred the divine action when confined to the
human soul ; for though the miracles of grace are in one way the
greatest, yet they are hidden, at least to the world at large.

Answers to prayer may, then, be divided into three classes :
ordinary or natural, special providences, and miracles ; the latter,
as we said in defining them, coming from the interposition of
some forces which do not ordinarily appear to take part in the
course of events, but which probably do take part in it quite often,
as in the way of special providences from God, or in that of
temptations by evil spirits.

Now, there seems to be no reason, and people generally, we
think, will admit that natural answers to prayer, and even special
providences, are given outside the church ; indeed, we are sure
that grace follows prayer outside the church, though not to the
same extent as within it. Why, then, should not real divine mira-
cles be given outside the church ?

Here again there seems to be no reason to the contrary, ex-
cept what would come from their implying falsehood or giving
what might be called scandal. If miracles, even though not
directly asked as a doctrinal test, should be so frequent or so
placed in connection with some false doctrine as to be necessari-
ly interpreted as a sanction of it, then also we may believe that
God would restrain his mercy, or rather that then it would real-
ly cease to be so, by scandalizing the faithful, by casting doubt
on the church and impeding the way of salvation. But that
there should be, as we may say, sporadic miracles, for the benefit

8 DR. TYNG'S SERMON ON [April,

of pious and faithful souls in invincible ignorance outside the
church, seems possible; for these would not only do no harm, but
might be the means of bringing these souls and others to the
light of faith.

That God should work a miracle when distinctly asked for as
a confirmation of false doctrine, or, as we have said, when it
would necessarily be understood in that sense, is of course out of
the question. If any preternatural phenomenon is claimed to
have occurred in such circumstances, it will undoubtedly be found
to be either a claim without foundation, or, if genuine, to be dia-
bolical, not divine, when examined according to the usual rules, or
at least to give no clear proof of its source.

For other miracles than these Dr. Tyng's explanation is ad-
missible, unless, as we just said, they are too frequently repeated.
For it is equally impossible that even those others which occur
in circumstances which do not make them a doctrinal test should
be as frequent outside the church as in it. The permanent and
regular gift of miracles is one of the promises of our Lord to his
church, and cannot be given outside without obliterating this
mark of his true bride. Hence it is that the Catholic Church has
always abounded with them, as compared with even those claimed
for others. Lourdes, as all Catholics know, is no new phenome-
non ; miraculous shrines and sanctuaries are found in many places
and times. The lives of the saints also are adorned with innu-
merable and well-attested miracles, which only the prejudice of
Protestants prevents them from examining. As the pillar of
cloud and fire went steadily before the Israelites in the desert, so
the evident and supernatural light of God's miraculous provi-
dence has steadily accompanied the church in her journey through
the world, and will continue to do so through all time.

To conclude, then, miracles, individually and simply as such,
have, as Dr. Tyng maintains, no bearing on the doctrinal differ-
ences of churches ; but, as his critics hold, when worked, and es-
pecially if repeated continually as at Lourdes, in connection with
and evident sanction of a dogma of faith, they have. And also,
taken in mass, they furnish, by their very number alone, conclu-
sive evidence of the divine claims of the Catholic Church to
those who will but take the pains to examine history in general
as Dr. Tyng has examined that of Lourdes.

Dr. Tyng, then, to some extent falls under just suspicion to
Protestants, not on account of his present position, but because
he seems to have started on a road which, if it be conscientiously
and rationally followed, will lead .him to see not the mere oc-

i88i.] " THE MOUNTAIN-MOVERS." 9

currence of miracles at Lourdes, but their constant and frequent
repetition in the church of which Lourdes is but a specimen, and
their connection with her doctrines, as notably in the canonization
of saints ; and by these to be led to recognize in her the hand of
that one God whose unchanging truth she continually teaches,
blessing and honoring her, his faithful witness, as no other is
blessed and honored.

We can, of course, wish nothing better for him than this ; and
we think that, whatever his convictions may be, he will follow
them with courage and independence. And if he is the man we
think him, he will in time see things as they are. We should
cease to believe not only in miracles, but in the ordinary opera-
tions of grace, did we not believe that every seeker for truth, such
as he appears to be, will find it in the end.

A NORTHERN APRIL'S STRATAGEM.

YOUNG April, slave to Winter-Naaman,

Spoke to him low : " If healed by Earth's strong streams,
Thy reign of life would last beyond thy dreams
Of life." By faint hope spurred, .the leper ran,
With all his snows, from stream to stream. From van
With gold-hued curve the sun shot withering beams
Upon the seeking chief ; and throbbing gleams
Of wakened grass stole after him, to span
And whip his heart to death. Keen April, slave,
Laughing, sowed whitest seeds of bubbling rain,

That June winds and June dews might roses own
For loveliest toys and nests. And then she gave
A wide search for her master. But in vain :

The streams had drowned him, and Earth's death had
flown.

io HEATHENDOM AND REVELATION. [April,

HEATHENDOM AND REVELATION *

A MOST interesting study is to trace the similarity between
the ancient pagan religions, both' in doctrine and in practice, and
the doctrines and practices of Christianity. Some English Ca-
tholic writers, like Canon Formby, have been recently giving their
attention to this work, but no one has done it so elaborately, so
far as doctrines are concerned, as Dr. Fischer in the volume that
lies before us. Of course it is but natural to suppose that ves-
tiges of primeval revelation would be found in all parts of the
world. After the dispersion of the human race, especially after
the confusion of tongues at Babel, each emigrating family carried
away with it a bit of the original treasure, which, however rusted
and discolored, was never totally lost. Besides this traditional
preservation of portions of revealed truth, commerce with the
Jews or with the Christians diffused it or revived its knowledge,
even where there were no missionaries to propagate it. The
Queen of Sheba must have brought back many lessons of reve-
lation from Solomon to her Eastern home. St. Paul found at
Athens an altar to the unknown God, perhaps erected to the
Logos after whom Plato longed, and whose coming the Cumaean
Sibyl prophesied :

" Cara deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum." t

We find unmistakable evidence of the nitration of Christian
thought and principles into pagan literature after the reign of
Augustus. Even though they were opposed to the doctrines of
Christianity, its ethical spirit influences Tacitus, Juvenal, Persius ;
and notably the Greeks, Lucian and the Stoic philosophers who
lived after Christ. Ovid, Horace, and Catullus, who lived before
Christ, have no morals. The Greek theatre before Christ as
witness the comedies of Aristophanes was simply an infamous
place, while Lucian's dialogues, written about A.D. 150, show a
high-toned morality for a pagan and are clear regarding the im-
mortality of the soul. It is fair to suspect that Persius caught
the spirit of Christian morality which breathes through most of
his satires from some of the Christians who perished in the per-

* Heidenthum und Offenbarung. Von Dr. Engelbert Lorenz Fischer. Mainz, 1878.
t Virgil, Fourth Eclogue, v. 49.

1 88 1.] HEATHENDOM AND REVELATION. IT

secution of Nero. The following line paints the remorse of a
sinner as well as a Christian could do it :

" Vtrtutem videant intabescantque relicta" *

Just as in our days the influence of the Catholic Church is
felt even by her enemies, to a certain extent controls some of
their opinions and influences their morals in spite of themselves,
so in ancient times did God's primeval revelation filter through
the pagan nations, and Dr. Fischer proves it by giving us a sum-
mary of those articles of their religious faith which resemble
Christian dogmas or are identical with them.

He first investigates the Vedas of ancient India, perhaps the
oldest Bible of pagan mythology. It is divided into four volumes,
Rig, Saman, Yq/us,and Atharvan. This Bible teaches the unity of
God, the creator of all things. It teaches also that there is a
Messias or Mediator, called Mitra, sometimes Agni. On him the
epithets of "high-priest," "first prophet," "teacher of the holy
law," " prince of mankind, "and "redeemer of sin " are bestowed.
Kama is the Holy Ghost; Vritra is Satan. There is also men-
tion made of the tree of immortality, the temptation of the first
man, and of the deluge.

The doctrines of the immortality of the soul, of the existence
of heaven and hell, and the hope of the resurrection of clarified
bodies are clearly expressed in the Vedas. It is true that poly-
theistic theories and some other gross errors are intermingled
with these truths ; but the clearness in which the principal Chris-
tian dogmas are stated is sometimes startling. The Vedas teach
that hell is a place of eternal fire and gloom in which the wicked
are eternally punished.

The next in point of antiquity is the Persian mythology con-
tained in the Avesta. This word means " reform " in Sanscrit, so
called because Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, wrote it, and he was
rather the reformer than the founder of the Persian religion.
The belief in one God, triple in personality Ahura Mazda, Mith-
ra, and Sraosha ; in a mediator Mithra ; the hope of a redeemer,
the belief in angels, Satan, the tree of life in a terrestrial paradise,
the serpent, original sin, the deluge and Noe's ark, the advan-
tage of faith and good works, auricular confession, the immortality
of the soul, purgatory, hell, heaven, and the final resurrection of
the dead at the end of the world, is almost identical in expression
with the doctrines of the Christian Bible.

* Persius, Third Satire, v. 38.

12 HEATHENDOM AND REVELATION. [April,

Following the stream of history, Dr. Fischer passes down to
the Babylonians and Assyrians, and, forming his judgment from
the investigations of Botta, Layard, Burnouf, and Rawlinson
among the inscriptions and monuments of these ancient peoples,
he finds many Christian dogmas mingled with the errors of their
religion. Thus a vein of monotheism runs through their poly-
theism. There are vestiges of belief in the Trinity ; in a kingdom
of angels, some of whom revolted and were defeated by Mero-
dach Michael ; in the creation of the world in six days out of a
chaos of water, in Eden, the tree of life, the serpent or dragon,
original sin and its consequent punishment ; the deluge in detail,
the tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues ; the immortality
of the soul, heaven, purgatory, hell, and the hope of a final resur-
rection.

These are some of the doctrines which the descendants of Ja-
pheth, the Hindoos and Persians, and the descendants of Sem,
the Babylonians and Assyrians, preserved amid surrounding
error. Nor is the tradition of truth lacking among the sons of
Cham, as the hieroglyphs and other monuments of the Egyptians
plainly demonstrate. Indeed, the ancient religion of these people
has so many points of resemblance with the teaching of Moses
that many have said that he drew his doctrines from their sacred
writings. The points of identity between the Hebrew and
Egyptian theology would only prove, however, that both were
originally from the same source, the latter adulterated by error,
the former preserved from contamination by the special Provi-
dence which watched over the destinies of the Jewish people.
The belief in immortality, the existence of angels good and bad,
the unity of God, the creation of the world out of nothing, are
clear under all the superstitions of the Egyptians. There are
even vestiges of the doctrine of the Trinity. Jamblichus, the Neo-
platonic philosopher, testifies to this ; and so do certain papyri
preserved both at Turin and Leyden. Some of these doctrines
were not known to the vulgar, but were preserved in the secret
mysteries by the priests. It is well known that the disciplina ar-
cani* of the early Christian Church was the common practice
among the ancient Egyptians, very few being allowed to see be-
yond the veil of their sacred mysteries.

This extraordinary similarity of the doctrines of these ancient
races helps to prove the historical character of our Bible. The
facts produced by Dr. Fischer show the unity of primeval revela-
tion, the unity of the human race, the unity of primeval religion.

* The discipline of the secret.

1 88 1.] HEATHENDOM AND REVELATION. 13

And it is noteworthy that the farther we go up the stream of
time, the purer we find the creed of mankind, and the more strik-
ing appears its identity with Christianity in all the principal
points of faith. Polytheism, pantheism, fetichism, and other cor-
rupt forms of worship are all of a later date than monotheism.
Thus, the worship of animals, which at one time disgraced the
Egyptians, cannot be found in their early records. The mummies
of crocodiles, cats, and snakes are all comparatively recent in Egyp-
tian history ; and Lucian defends the Egyptians from the charge
of such degrading superstition by explaining that these animals
were honored only as symbols of the constellations or signs of
the zodiac. Astronomy was always honored in Egypt Apis
was our Taurus or bull ; the Ram found so frequently in Thebes
was our Aries. According to this theory and it seems probable
from the fact that the Egyptians gave religious honor only to
certain animals we might go farther and explain the vegetable
worship of the same people,* as well as the fetichism of certain
African creeds, by some symbolic meaning attached to the ob-
jects of religious reverence. Dr. Fischer stops, however, at the
dogmas and does not investigate the practices of ancient re-
ligions.

Upon a closer investigation might it not be found that the
charge of gross superstition brought against some of these ancient
peoples, because of religious reverence shown to certain animals
or things the holy bull or holy geese, leeks, charms, and amulets
was not a cultus lati'ice, but merely religious respect because of
some symbolical or historical meaning? Might we not be judg-
ing those people as rashly as Protestants judge Catholics because
of their reverence for holy relics and holy things, beads, scapulars,
and medals ? Certainly all religions have shown more or less
homage to certain animals, and have used peculiar things in reli-
gious worship. Lustral water, incense, bells, vestments, strange
prostrations and genuflections, processions and peculiar ceremo-
nies, are not confined to the Christian Church. The holy lambs
from whose snowy fleeces palliums are made for archbishops in
the Roman Church may have their metaphysical counterpart in
the sacred Apis of the Egyptians. The turtle-doves which Our
Lady offered in the temple in fulfilment of the Jewish law re-
mind us of the custom in pagan Rome of honoring certain birds.
A Christian boy in the British Isles considers it a crime to kill a
robin, because he piously believes that its red breast is inherited

* The well-known line of Juvenal, " O sanctas gentes," etc. "O holy race, whose gods
grow in their gardens " will be remembered.

I4 HEATHENDOM AND REVELATION. [April,

from the robin which was stained by the blood of Christ on Cal-
vary. When Captain Fluellen carries the national leek in his hat
and makes ancient Pistol eat it out of respect to Wales, or when
a patriotic Irishman honors the shamrock on his saint's day, is
there not an echo of these customs coming down to us from the
Egyptian gardens in which the holy leeks grew ?

There is a tendency in human nature to use physical things
as aids to prayer or to religious observances. Call them pray-
ing-machines, or charms, or amulets, as they are when degraded
into superstition ; or call them the Urim and Thummim or phy-
lacteries, as the Hebrews did, the metaphysical reason for their
use is the same. We cannot here undertake to develop that rea-
son. It is sufficient to note the fact and its universality ; and, as
Lamennais has well said, " A universal error is the false echo
of a universal truth," so the universal custom of using physical
objects shows that they may be as efficacious for truth and good
as they have been for error and vice. And hence the Catholic
Church uses them. Our Lord used spittle and clay to give
a blind man sight. The Catholic uses the beads, the best aid
to prayer that was ever invented. Millions of " Pater Nos-
ters " have been wafted up to heaven through it ; and millions of
acts of worship of the Creator have taken place through it which
without it would never have been made. How many good
thoughts does not the scapular inspire : thoughts of the Immacu-
late Virgin of Mount Carmel, better for the mind to indulge in
than in those evoked by the tress of golden hair that dangles in
the locket, or the " little faded flower, but oh ! how fondly dear,"
that lies withered between the pages of the novel, and tells the
tale, perhaps, of faith and virtue withered with it.

The aim of religion is to make men good, true worshippers
of their Creator. If a thread tied to a man's finger will remind
him of some good act that he has promised to do ; or if by carrying
ten jackstones in his pocket, their rattle as he walks reminds him
that he must keep the Ten Commandments why, let him put on
the thread and carry the jackstones. A fortiori, why not sanction
the use of blessed objects that are by themselves reminders of
sweet prayers and sacred practices? Ancient religions attest
their use, as well as the similarity of the higher truths which are
the doctrines of the Catholic Church. She is not, then, an ano-
maly in the history of the race ; she is rather the law of the race
and the law of nature, agreeing with its dogmas and in consonance
with its practices. She is not an island of truth in an ocean of
error, but she is the ocean itself. Error is the island, but an

1 88 1.] DIES IR^E. 15

island indented with bays, interspersed with lakes and flow-
ing rivers, all deriving their water from the ocean.

Well did St. Augustine say, " In vetere novum latet, in novo ve-
tus patet"*

DIES

DAY of wrath ! terrific morning !
Earth in ashes at its dawning !
David, Sibyl, both give warning.

II,

Tremor ev'ry heart is rending
When the Judge is seen descending,
Strict to search our lives' offending.

in.

Driven by the trump resounding
Through the graves, in tones astounding,
Come the dead, the throne surrounding.

IV.

Death in stupor, Nature quaking
When the dead are seen awaking,
Each to summons answer making !

Open lies the Book, containing
Record ample, all arraigning,
Justice, world- wide, ascertaining.

* "The new lies hidden in the old ; the old is made manifest in the new.

1 6 DIES IRJE. [April,

VI.

None to hide his guilt presumeth
When the Judge his seat assumeth
And to vengeance all sin doometh.

VII.

What shall I, then, wretch ! be saying,
Whom, as friend, then seek in praying,
When the just are fear betraying ?

VIII.

Mighty King ! to each offender
Thou salvation free dost tender ;
Source of love ! be my defender.

IX.

Jesus ! while my burdens bearing,

For my safety e'er be caring,

Me from wrath of that day sparing.

Weary steps for me were hasted,
Bitter death in torture tasted ;
Let not pains so great be wasted.

XI.

Vengeance just thy hand dispenses ;
Pardon me for all offences
Ere the day of recompenses.

XII.

Hear my moaning, self-accusing,
Sin and shame my face suffusing ;
Turn not from me, grace refusing.

1 88 1.] DIES IRJE. 17

XIII.

Thou who heard'st the thief, when dying, vv,-*
Mary's tears wert prompt in drying,
Wilt not crush me, hope denying.

XIV.

All my pray'rs are undeserving ;
Yet I trust thy love unswerving,
Me from lasting fires preserving.

xv.

While away the goats commanding,
On thy right hand keep me standing,
Where thy chosen sheep are banding.

XVI.

When the wicked, who have striven
'Gainst thy will, to flames are driven,
Blessed peace to me be given.

xvn.

Lowly, prostrate, humbly praying,
Contrite heart before thee laying,
Care for me when life's decaying.

XVIII.

Day of terror ! sad and tearful !
Day that springs from burning fearful !
Judgment day for dead and living !
Be, O God ! that day forgiving.

VOL. XXXIII. 2

1 8 THOMAS CARLYLE. [April,

THOMAS CARLYLE.

THE most significant sign of the desuetude into which Tho-
mas Carlyle's writings had fallen at the time of his death is
the vague and contradictory criticism which that event has occa-
sioned. The fact is, Carlyle has become only a tradition to this
generation. The attempts which the journals have made to ana-
lyze his philosophy remind one of the conjectures respecting the
hieroglyphics of Egypt, or the guessing of metaphysicians regard-
ing the philosophy of Scotus Erigena or Giordano Bruno. Not
that Carlyle's philosophy was at all difficult of comprehension,
but it has utterly gone out of men's minds and practice. Nor
could all the rhetorical dexterity of Taine attract modern readers
to the contemplation of Carlyleism. Whatever day it had be-
longs to the irreclaimable past.

The initial success of Carlyle was due to his perception of the
literary awakening in Germany at the beginning of the century.
Karl Hillebrand has drawn a picture of the intellectual condition
of Germany in the eighteenth century which, had it been done
by any but a German hand, would arouse a storm of protest.
According to Hillebrand, the darkest age that ever overhung the
human intellect was not so devoid of at least gleams of light as
the eighteenth century in Germany. There was no philosophy,
no art, no religion, no popular education. Any intellectual impe-
tus which the Reformation might be supposed to have given to
Germany had long since ceased. In a word, Germany dates her
civilization from the nineteenth century. Of course Hillebrand,
speaking to Englishmen, refuses to acknowledge that the Refor-
mation, which was the direct cause of the Peasants' War, and
even of the Thirty Years' War, was indeed to blame for bringing
this intellectual, as it had brought moral, death upon a large por-
tion of Germany. The intellectual advance of Europe, as Hallam
reluctantly admits, was checked by the fierce polemics of the Re-
formation ; and if the Renaissance had not continued in Italy and
France, we might have lost through Protestant fury the scholas-
tic literary treasures of the middle ages, as Germany and Eng-
land lost the arts. Germany has had to put aside Protestantism
completely, in order to achieve any intellectual results, and though
one must regret the complete severance of her special culture

1 88 1.] THOMAS CARLYLE. 19

from religion, one cannot forget that Protestantism has no inspi-
ration for poet, artist, or philosopher.

England, aware of the material and intellectual depression of
Germany, could with difficulty believe that a mighty intellectual
revival was possible there. The Hanoverian sovereigns were
utterly indifferent to letters, and, naturally enough, the English
nation judged the German people from their ignorant sovereigns.
To this day the majority of Englishmen make no distinction in
speech or thought between Dutch and German. Theirs was a
genuine surprise when Carlyle revealed to them the presence of
great poets, painstaking historians, and subtle philosophers among
a people comparatively unknown in literature. It may be said of
Carlyle that he was the Columbus of the new literary continent.
He brought out specimens of German prose, translated Wil-
hclm Meister, eulogized Jean Paul Richter, and wrote an admira-
ble life of Schiller. He corresponded with Goethe, then hardly
known outside of Weimar. He gained, what was easily gained in
England at that time, a great reputation as a German scholar.
Now this is a common accomplishment, and German, with Italian
and French, is requisite for an appointment in the British civil
service. Coleridge used to tell a story about his having been
suspected of designs against the British government because he
was once overheard talking of Spinoza's philosophy ; for, as he
pronounced the first syllable spy, he was believed to be in secret
communication with the French radicals. When Sir William
Hamilton wrote his famous Edinburgh Review dissertation on the
Philosophy of the Conditioned, he declared that there were not
over a half-dozen metaphysicians in the British Isles that had
ever heard of Kant. Carlyle popularized Germanism. He open-
ed a new path in literature, and, to say truth, the public were
tired of the flippancy of French atheism (the only French litera-
ture England read) and the portentous " boring " of uncounted
memoirs and anecdotes of Napoleon. Besides, German literature
had ranged itself upon the side of Romanticism long before
Victor Hugo.

As George Eliot, by a mysterious means vulgarly called by
newspaper men "puffing," acquired a vast reputation for erudi-
tion, and had the good sense not to put it to the test, so Carlyle
in his earlier fame was credited with being a profound philoso-
pher after the German idea. With feminine shrewdness George
Eliot gave us glimpses only of the boundless stores of her learn-
ing, and these only in the shape of mottoes to her chapters.
Sydney Smith says of the motto from Publius Syrus, put upon

THOMAS CARLYLE. [April,

the Edinburgh Review, that neither he nor any of the other con-
tributors had read six lines of Publius Syrus, but they "knew
their public." No shrewd sciolist anxious for a reputation for
learning would quote Virgil in preference to Aulus Gellius,
Homer before Moschus, or Shakspere before Gower. When
George Eliot forgot her caution, and began discussing Judaism
in Deronda, and literary criticism in TJicophrastus Suck, her fame
received a blow from which it never recovered.

Carlyle had not the caution of the authoress. From translating
German he passed into writing a FAllemande. This is the pecu-
liar temptation of translators. Certainly Carlyle, with his fervid
temperament, would not long confine himself to a species of
labor akin to lexicography, which poor Dr. Johnson, after Scali-
ger, compared to the labors of the anvil and the mine. Why
cannot I write like Jean Paul Richter ? asked Carlyle.

Now, of all men that ever lived Carlyle was the last that
could write like Richter, for the very simple reason that he could
not feel like Richter, or indeed like any of the greater German
" humanists." There is in the writings of Richter a sweet hu-
manity, a tenderness for all of God's creatures, a profound reve-
rence for Christianity, and an all-embracing sympathy with every
form of mental and bodily distress. Such was Richter's own dis-
position. Carlyle was a bitter, dyspeptic, cynical Scotchman.
He might imitate Richter's quaint phraseology, his bursts of
queer rhetoric, his stops and exclamations, but he never could
reproduce the spirit of the man whom Germany loves to call
der Einzige. We have the form of Richter in Sartor Resartus, but
the spirit is the mockery of Goethe.

Had Carlyle confined himself to translation he would have
enriched English literature with the best products of the German
mind, and indeed of the mind of France, Italy, and Spain ; for he
possessed the gift of language in the highest degree. But he
had not the humility, nor perhaps the patience, for this work, and
he was deceived into a belief in his own powers. One cannot
read a page of his writings without feeling that here was a great
master of human speech. His sentences seem to follow wherever
his pen leads. We cannot conceive of Carlyle as a painstaking
writer in the general sense. We know, even without the infor-
mation of biographers, that long and finished essays were written
by him at one sitting. There is none of Macaulay's pedagogism
in his books, yet we feel that he was a greater master even of
grammar than Macau lay. One need not leave Lindley Murray
to parse any sentence of Macaulay, but the writings of Carlyle

1 88 1 .] TJIOMA s CARL YLE, 2 1

awaken our almost forgotten memories of German syntax, or the
peculiar linguistic grace of the French, or the strange repetition
of pronouns before and after the verb which 'characterizes the
Italian tongue. N

So supreme was this gift of language that it enabled him to
think with the people whom he described ; and this is the secret
of the vividness of his descriptions in Frederic and the French Revo-
lution. Few master a language so completely as to be able to
think in that language. Whatever view we may hold respecting
the relations of speech with thought, there is no question that
our thoughts are profoundly modified by even the modes of ex-
pression in our native language. Written speech may be to a
certain extent formal, but oral language is the spontaneous show-
ing-forth of mind. There is a contradiction in the saying about
speech having been given to us to conceal our thoughts ; for we
cannot conceal the structure of our language, and this powerfully
influences our conceptions and ideas. No one can study Latin
without realizing that they who used it were the masters of the
world. A people will speak their history and their intellect long
before they write them. In proportion as a nation advances its
power of expression improves, and we read the fate of a people
in the decay of its language.

While the majority of scholars content themselves with a
working knowledge of a language, or a few of them, of a critical
turn, push their studies somewhat further, the ends generally at-
tained are only utility, or accomplishment, or aesthetic pleasure.
But given a fierce and fervid imagination like Carlyle's, with a de-
lusion in his philosophical insight, and a knowledge of a language
which puts dictionary-makers in the shade, and we have such
works as the French Revolution and Frederic tJie Great. Carlyle
felt what the language of Revolutionary France was. He heard
the language of the mob at the guillotine. He was versed in the
phrasing of the Moniteur, and knew the slang of every Parisian
quartier. He understood the dialects of Germany, and gauged
the significance of the coarse tongue of the people. The conse-
quence was that his histories are something more than cold
chronicles, although, as we shall see, they are far from being his-
tories in the best sense.

Like most men to whom speech comes easy, he early attached
deep importance to language as a revelation of man. His first
essays Novalis, Diderot, Characteristics, and Burns are remark-
able for the enunciation of this belief in the evidence furnished of
a man by his manner of speech. But when he began the histori-

22 THOMAS CARLYLE. [April,

cal researches for his Frederic he soon changed this belief into its
opposite, and thenceforth, through thirty volumes, preached the
goldenness of silence. He was impressed at first with the ap-
parent wealth of German historical literature, but his heart failed
him when he discovered that its chief characteristic was its bulk.
Fiery and impatient himself, he could not restrain his wrath at
the resolves of German scholars, who think thirty years too short
to devote to the difference between the first and the second aorist
of the Greek verb. The literature about Frederic II. was with-
out limit, and it is saying much for Carlyle that he grappled with
it. But oh ! the weariness of spirit that came over him, and which
appears in the very first chapter. And the genius of the man
who can actually make interesting the petty affairs of the pettiest
court in Europe, before Frederic can interest us himself!

The present historical school which is by far the best, because
it is philosophical, has placed Carlyle's historical writings in the
class of fiction or romance, alongside of Froude and his imitators.
It seems plain enough to us that history should not be wholly oc-
cupied with kings and great personages ; but this theory was un-
known to Carlyle, as it was unknown to the great body of his-
torians before his day. The king and his court were the only
themes worthy of an historian. The people came in only inciden-
tally, either to hurrah the king or to petition him most humbly for
permission to live. Buckle, in his History of Civilization, failed to
make the slightest impression in England, because he ventured to
hint that human affairs, after all, were not wholly dependent upon
the British sovereign. He suggested that there were certain
great laws of natural and political development ; that the people
at least lived and died, that they were not wholly unidead, and
that the court circular could not possibly contain all the news of
a nation. But he was scouted at the time, though some of his
conclusions have since been granted. Now, Carlyle's histories are
only court circulars. All his theories about hero-worship are
vitiated by this toadyish spirit, and of all that he has written only
his few translations from the German, with an essay or two, will
survive.

What does his Frederic tell us of the Germany of that day?
Nothing outside the palace walls. The whole power of his in-
tellect was given to chronicling the sayings and doings of cour-
tiers. Page after page is devoted to the poor French poetry of
Frederic. A book is given to describing his father with his regi-
ment of giants. The episode of Voltaire's friendship fills half a
volume, and is the best portion of the history ; for Carlyle was

1 88 r.] THOMAS CARLYLE. 23

just the man to expose such a sham as Voltaire was, with his
sham "study of the Christian Fathers," his sham humanity, phi-
losophy, poetry, history, and sincerity. The discomfiture which
Voltaire met with at the hands of Frederic, Carlyle enjoys huge-
ly, but he forgets to tell us how ridiculous Voltaire made Fred-
eric over all Europe. The two, it is known, were consummate
scoundrels, and it is some comfort to think that they were the
bitterest enemies of Christianity of their age. The blasphemy,
dcrasez rinfdmc, was the bond of their union. Carlyle fills page
after page with trivial details of obscure German princelings,
court-lackeys, and gossip. Scarcely a word does he bestow up-
on the nation at large. We have no glimpse of the manner of
life, the morality, the aspirations of the people. Indeed, Carlyle
hated and despised the masses of mankind, whom he advised to
herd with their fellow-asses in the fields and seek some instruc-
tion from them. We have no statistics of trade ; little or nothing
about the state of literature, if it existed ; a few sneers at Leibnitz
and Wolff who were by no means "crazy philosophers "and
disdainful reference to the poor Protestant preachers whom Fre-
deric despised. All praise is lavished on the hero, who is lauded
to the skies chiefly because his hatred and detestation of the hu-
man race did not prevent him from kindly keeping men under
the lash of a military despotism, as they ought to be kept.

So, too, all Arabian history is summed up in the career of
Mohammed. Mirabeau is the French Revolution, and Luther is
Protestantism. This species of historical philosophy is in our
day completely exploded, and the wonder is that men ever be-
lieved in the virtual omnipotence of any historical character.
The Germans were the first to disprove it. Yet even now we
hear that Gregory VII. founded the Papacy, and that St. Igna-
tius Loyola revolutionized " modern Catholicism." It is extreme-
ly doubtful whether individual force or intellect deeply modifies
even savages, not to speak of a complex civilization. Luther is
known to have been the victim, not the leader, of Protestantism.
The modern historian, following out the careful study of the peo-
ple and the influences that affect them, soon disposes of the "he-
roes " before whom Carlyle would have us prostrate. One of the
most valuable results of modern historical criticism is the refu-
tation of Strauss' theory that Christianity owes all its success to
the ideal of Christ held up by the cunning apostles. No great
historical movement can be so explained.

But Carlyle continued building statues to his heroes, uncon-
scious of the indifference of the crowd, who now will soon throw

24 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. [April,

them down, if they deem it worth their trouble. Day by day
men are coming- back to the grand old Catholic belief in man,
as a child of God, a responsible agent, having greater interests
than those which a king can manage. The Erastianism or state
religion which Carlyle taught must yield, even if it has to
yield to infidelity. The state is not supreme in religious dic-
tatorship. The better thoughts of Carlyle about man are real-
izable in the Catholic Church, which, by moral teaching and
doctrinal decree, insists upon our freedom of will, our higher
destiny in another life, our natural excellence, of which origi-
nal sin did not deprive us, and our personal and individual value
in the sight of God. Men cannot be dealt with as herds of asses,
as food for powder, or as mere slaves at the car of a hero. The
violence of this Carlylean doctrine did much to render it unpopu-
lar, but the same teaching is found in all philosophies that ig--
nore the noble human ideal held up by the Catholic faith. It is
said that the old Covenanting doctrine about election and the
eternal decrees drove Carlyle from Christianity. But such doc-
trines are alien to the true faith, which fecit utraque unum, up-
holding the dignity and glory of man, whom Carlyle despised as
a sham and a failure, at least in the mass, and revealing God as
Providence, where Carlyle saw only chaos or blind, irresistible
law.

THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR.

THE echo of the first French Revolution was still sounding
in Burgos when a knot of young Spaniards met by stealth to dis-
cuss dangerous political subjects. The police and their less le-
gitimate "special" helpers had their eye on these and many
more youths of the city, and the regulations of the time made
these meetings really hazardous to those who chose the pastime
of revolution. As usual, a large proportion of the " conspira-
tors " were harmless and hare-brained, fond of excitement, tired
of love-making, and boiling over with unused energies ; a very
few had some method and object, fewer still any definite political
principle or conviction.

Sancho Alvarado was one of the former set, and the impover-
ished representative of a family once rich and famous in the city.
Among Cortez' original followers had been a scapegrace ances-
tor of Sancho, a young man not unlike his descendant, who, for

1 88 1.] THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. 25

pure love of fun and mischief, had joined the great Mexican
undertaking- after getting rid of his own small inheritance at
home. For years the "ne'er-do-weel" disappeared and was
supposed to be dead ; but when he was verging towards middle
age he came home with a Mexican wife and chests full of trea-
sure, settled down in Burgos, bought a house, and lived some
years en grand seigneur, leaving large possessions to his brother's
children, and building himself, before his death, a handsome tomb
in the cathedral. This became in after-years one of the cijriosi-
ties of that splendid church, as it was built, chamber-like, ten
feet high and eight square, of great blocks of stone, covered to a
height varying from two to five feet with large slabs of Mexican
sculptures and inscriptions. An iron door of unusual thickness
protected the entrance. On the flat roof of this mausoleum the s
" Conquistador," as he was familiarly called in Burgos, and his
wife were represented, portrait-wise and life-size, lying side by
side with their hands crossed on their breasts ; he in his military
dress, she in court costume, with the addition of a Mexican fea-
ther mantle carefully wrought out in . alabaster, and one or two
folds of it falling over the outer side of the tomb. The coffins, of
stone, were inside the chamber, of which the head of the family
always kept the key. The son of the Conquistador, born in
Spain, returned to his mother's country by his father's desire,
and there joined an elder brother who lived with his Aztec grand-
father. This branch of the Alvarados then once more disap-
peared from their kindred's memory, and the family, though en-
riched by the Conquistador's wealth, squandered it before three
generations had passed. Sancho and an old maiden aunt a phe-
nomenon in Spain, where marriage or the convent are the ordi-
nary social alternatives were now the only direct representatives
of the Conquistador's Spanish kindred, and they lived in a few
huge, artistic, but bare and uncomfortable rooms in the palace
where the soldier of , fortune had held his banquets. The rest of
the house was rented to all kinds of people workmen with home
trades, poor priests unattached to any order or parish, a univer-
sity professor, several poor gentlewomen, and two or three rich
Jews, whom the other occupants shunned visibly, and whose
money (it was more than two-thirds of the rental of the house)
the old lady, Dona Mercedes, never received direct, but required
to be sent to her through an orthodox goldsmith and money-
lender several streets off.

Sancho, according to the proud tradition of his class, had been
brought up to do " nothing," but to do this elegantly and jaun-

26 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. [April,

tily. An old priest, a friend of his father, had given him all the
education he had some Latin and Spanish literature, chess-play-
ing, and natural history ; the latter being the teacher's hobby, his
pupil became unusually well grounded in all that was known of
the science at that time, so much so that his more fashionably ig-
norant friends used to joke him about his uncommon specialty.
As he had no influential relatives or rich connections, there was
no military, court, or official career open to him, and he drifted,
with- many others, into a useless but harmless life until some,
whispers of new political theories began to cross the Pyrenees
and fire the fancy of his idle young associates. Among these,
but not idle, was a young doctor whom Sancho loved and looked
up to ; a man graver than his years, and one of the few who
thought and reasoned before they allowed themselves to feel.
Pedro Dorrez was the orphan nephew of a poor country priest,
who had brought him up and sent him to Salamanca through
much pinching and self-denial ; and both intellectually and pro-
fessionally the young man well repaid the trouble, though his
uncle, satisfied with old ways and conditions, shook his head
sadly over the startling theories that Pedro so calmly broached.
The young doctor had a certain influence over a few men in Bur-
gos, where he had a humble practice among small shop-keepers
and others in very moderate circumstances, and among his friends
none was dearer to him than Sancho, whose boy ishness attracted
him and whose honesty he could trust. The usual items of small
and fruitless agitation a kind of social propaganda which the po-
lice were glad to magnify into a " plot" brought the little con-
clave into trouble with the local authorities. Sancho was enthu-
siastic about the "persecution," and delighted to become a mar-
tyr ; somehow he had managed to concentrate upon himself the
greater part of the suspicions attached to his coterie, and he had
the honor, consequently, of being the chief victim sought. But
as these matters often became affairs of life and death, or at least
of transportation or perpetual imprisonment, Pedro was seriously
alarmed for his friend, and hinted to him pretty plainly that it
was no time for melodramatics, but that he must hide himself ef-
fectually, fora few days at least. Getting out of the city was im-
possible, as the gates were watched on purpose. Pedro was
ready to run any risks, but could not think of a safe place ; could
Sancho ?

" I have it ! " cried the }^outh, his eyes gleaming with fun
which no danger could suppress. " You know the tomb ? No one
will guess I'm there. My aunt has the key ; I can get hold of it

1 88 1.] THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. 27

easily enough. And fancy what a chance for the old gentleman
to prophesy some wonderful fortune for his descendant ! Did I
ever tell you the legend ? "

" No," said Pedro absently. " But you had better think of
business now."

" Oh ! it does not take long to tell. The family tradition goes
that the old sinner comes down off his bed of state one night in
each year, and waits till dawn to communicate some secret to
one of his own kindred ; but hitherto nothing has ever come of it,
though it is said several of our people actually watched through
the night. I know an uncle of mine did, and so did I when I
was fifteen. A man inside the tomb ought to have a still better
chance, and the night will be five nights from now the i$th of
April."

" My dear Sancho, don't fill your mind with childish fancies.
The important thing is, how are you to get there, and how shall
I manage to bring you food ? We have no time to lose. I hope
before five days I shall have smuggled you out of the city."

" We will go to the cathedral this- evening during Vespers ;
there is always more or less of a crowd circulating through the
building, and you know they don't close it till very late. I can
slip into the tomb, and we can take provisions for a day or two.
It is a very easy matter."

" I don't know. I think the police are watching for you at
this moment ; it may not be easy to reach the church."

" We shall have to risk it, at any rate. We need not go till
after supper. I have some good wine in my aunt's store-room ;
let us drink to my safety."

" You deserve to be shot or caught for your foolishness, San-
cho. To think that you should waste all this energy and good-
humor of yours in this do-nothing life ! I wish you were in the
New World."

" Like my ancestor of the tomb? Well, if there was any such
fun going on as there was in his days, I should echo your wish."

" Well, there's better than fun : there's work, and improve-
ment, and, to a certain extent, freedom. But don't let us moral-
ize. I'll come with you to your aunt's, and I'll see that you get a
chance to get the key unperceived. I dare not let her into the
secret, fond as she is of you."

They went down stairs (this talk' had taken place in a little
attic which Sancho had fitted up as a natural-history museum
with such specimens of birds, beasts, and plants as his limited
means would get) and explained to Dona Mercedes that, as they

28 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. [April,

were .going on a little expedition together for a few days, they
had come to bid her good-by, and would be grateful if she
would order a little refreshment for them. Some of Sancho's
wine soon appeared, and an old wrinkled woman-servant, a nurse
formerly of Sancho's mother, brought in bread and fruit on an
ancient and beautiful silver tray. After a little talk, which Pedro
could not but feel was a dangerous delay, he asked the old lady if
another pensioner on her kitchen-scraps would be too much even
for her well-known charity. He knew of a poor woman whose
husband had died a week ago, and she and her two little girls
were dependent upon charity ; the man had been dismissed from
his employment a few weeks before his death, and the help which
his widow would have freely asked from his former master she
dared not ask now.

" He was dismissed for helping his young mistress in -a love-
affair, too, Dona Mercedes," said the artful Pedro, who knew the
old lady's weak points. "But I do not want you to help any
chance, unknown wretch ; I want you to come and see for your-
self, and I promised the poor woman I -would bring a kind lady
to see her to-day before I left. Perhaps I should not have pre-
sumed so much on your kindness, but I hope you will not make
me break my promise. We should have time now while Sancho
puts up a few things for our trip."

Dona Mercedes, who was really kind-hearted, and also liked to
play Lady Bountiful, since it almost deluded her into the fancy
that she was rich, needed no coaxing, and, well wrapped in her
mantilla and a warm, dark shawl besides, she started, basket in
hand, taking with her a bottle of Sancho's wine as his special
contribution. The two were not gone half an hour, though
every minute seemed an eternity to Pedro, who dreaded some-
thing happening in his absence to mar his plan for his friend, and
yet dared not seem in the slightest hurry, or even preoccupied,
while he accompanied the benevolent old lady to a wretched little
out-house a few streets off where the widow and her children
were temporarily living. He was relieved, when they got back,
to see Sancho sitting placidly and idly in the gaunt, marble-floor-
ed room ; the twilight was falling fast, as it does in the south,
and the cathedral bells were ringing. Dona Mercedes asked
where were the mules, or were they going on foot ? Well, they
were to meet the mules at the gates, impatiently said Pedro, who
hated the details of any secret plan, and therefore hurried his
friend off as quickly as possible. They reached the cathedral by
a narrow calle leading to a curious side-door many feet above

1 88 1.] THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. 29

the level of the church-floor. A double staircase of colored mar-
ble, with wrought-iron railings, and numerous statues in niches,
and historical bas-reliefs, wound down into the body of the church
nearly opposite the Conquistador's tomb. Vespers were being
chanted in the Canons' Chapel, a small church in itself, but a
crowd of people in gay costumes, the women chiefly in black,
were crossing from altar to altar; many countrymen who had
come into market that day were staring at the gorgeous or unfa-
miliar surroundings, and there was stir enough to conceal any
special incident. The iron door opened inwards from the outer
side of the tomb that facing the aisle but it was largely conceal-
ed by projecting slabs with sculptures of weird aspect, clumsy
and intricate combinations of hideous human figures with very
beautiful geometrical designs. On the left slab was a dwarf
squatting on a large stone, his hands resting on his stomach.
The antiquaries of the city considered this a very characteristic
curiosity, and one of the canons had written a learned treatise on
this Mexican " idol or devil." Sancho little heeded him as he
passed in, with some slight food wrapped in a colored silk hand-
kerchief, and whispered good-by to his anxious friend.

And so began his uncanny vigil. Time at first seemed very
long to him ; he had brought a taper, such as are in use now in
Spain and Italy a coil of wax of the size of a large ball of thread
or darning-cotton. This he lit until he felt sleepy, and then, eat-
ing a piece of bread, he put it out and went to sleep, stretched
on the floor by the stone coffin of his ancestor. Some supersti-
tion, or perhaps the incline of the coffin itself, made him choose
the floor for a bed, though for a seat he had not scrupled to make
the best of the coffin. He could hear sounds when he woke, and
guessed it was morning, though the tomb was so well built that
not one ray of light came in anywhere. He amused himself by
guessing at what was going on in the cathedral, hour by hour ; he
said his prayers rather more at length than he commonly did
when he had less leisure than now, and he ate a sparing breakfast,
sitting on the edge of the coffin. By and by he heard mid-day
and the Angelus ring from the belfry at least he thought so and,
getting tired of the dark and his own efforts to kill time, lighted
his taper and began closely examining by its tiny light the two
coffins in the centre of the tomb. The names of the occupants
and the dates of their deaths were carved in plain Roman capitals
on the top part of the slightly convex lids. Then he made the
tour of the walls, noting each little roughness of the stone, and
examining any that looked like an intentional ornament or a half-

30 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. [April,

sketched letter. Here and there were some triangular bits, rough-
edged, looking as if they had been split from a larger block as
was quite possible in days when art-preservation was not in fash-
ion and on these were fragments corresponding, at least to the
eye, to some of the foreign carvings outside. But Sancho's in-
terest in these memorials began to fade as he got hungry and
sleepy and lost count of time. He was asleep when the iron
door opened and Pedro, looking worried, came in.

" The police are on my track now," said the latter as soon as
he had roused the prisoner, " and I could only just get this for
you it is hardly enough." And he set down a bottle of wine
and a small loaf of white bread. " I fear I may not be able to
come again till the day after to-morrow, as I dare not show my-
self, even at night. Something may happen even this night.
Try to bear up, Sancho. I could not get another taper : be care-
ful of yours."

" I wish I could sleep all the time ; I never knew how long
time could seem," said the younger man.

" Well, the less you think about it the better. I can't stop
now. Good-by."

Sancho seemed more restless and forlorn than ever when left
alone again, and tried various experiments of monotonous count-
ing to make himself sleepy once more. The tedium was getting
very vexatious for so joyous and social a creature as Sancho was ;
he hated the dark, and heedlessly kept the taper burning. The
same with the food ; for, as he got suddenly hungry, he forgot all
contingencies and ate all he had. After that he lost count of
time still more, and began to pace up and down, straining his
ears to catch any sound from outside. Sometimes he thought it
was the great bell tolling the hours, sometimes the thunderous
organ in the great loft above the chancel, sometimes the murmur
of the crowd passing by the tomb. He dozed now and then, and
kept dreaming confusedly, chiefly about his home and his aunt,
but sometimes of his present abode, which got mixed up, in
his half-consciousness, with the natural-history cabinet. Each
time he woke he drank a sparing draught of wine, remembering
that a man can starve much more comfortably than he can do
without drink. At last his taper burnt to its lowest edge and
went out in a flickering pool of wax on the floor. Now he knew
that there was nothing for it but to wait. Pedro might be kept
away, but surely he would find some one trusty enough to send
in his place. The noises, seemingly from outside, grew louder
and buzzed more in his ears ; he began to fancy people made re-

1 88 1.] THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. 31

marks as they passed the tomb, and he would echo these remarks
aloud to himself. Anything, he thought, to pass time and keep
his brain clear. He tried making plans as to his future, and
thought of what Pedro had said about the New World. If he
only had any influential friends and connections, he thought, with
the instinctive southern reliance on any one rather than one's self ;
but even as it was, if he could scrape a little money together, he
might find a rich wife among the Spanish-Americans. They
thought a good deal of pure " blue blood " from the mother-
country, and his blue blood was about all he had wherewith to
buy fortune. As to politics, he had had enough of them, if this is
what they bring in their train. Martyrdom was very grand in
theory, but not so comfortable in practice. He wondered if the
real martyrs felt as he did, and if the dungeons he had read of
were as unpleasant as this. He went through in memory details
of bodily torture that he had read about with his old tutor, and
dwelt on them, especially hunger and thirst. Suppose Pedro
was prevented from coming or sending, how long would it take
to kill him in this living grave ? Walled up alive that was an-
other ancient torture, and no doubt if he cried or knocked on the
walls no one would hear him ; the blocks of stone were enor-
mously thick. And suppose even some sound could get through,
it would only frighten away any one who heard it, and it would
be said that the Conquistador was uneasy in his grave. And
then, if the legend were true, and his ancestor did move off his
tomb Sancho, brought face to face with the idea, did not
welcome it. Perhaps he had not quite believed in the possibility
before ; at any rate, it was a distant one then, and a romantic no-
tion of watching for the dead man seemed quite a different thing
when spoken of at supper among genial companions and when
viewed on an empty stomach, in the dark, and under other aggra-
vating circumstances. A sort of buzzing in his head warned
Sancho to " pull himself together," if he did not want to lose his
wits. A draught of wine would do him good ; but he had left the
bottle in the farther corner of the tomb, and felt lazy and disin-
clined to grope for it. He thought he could not do better than
let sleep have its way perhaps it was the best thing under the
circumstances ; so he dozed off, but woke again with a start, how
soon he could not tell, but a raging thirst was upon him now,
and he crept on hands and knees in the direction of the wine.
The place seemed lighter than before, and something was surely
sitting there grinning, he thought, and keeping the bottle from
him. It was an indistinct shape, but stunted and squatting on

32 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. '[April,

the stone floor; it flashed upon Sancho that it was the Aztec
dwarf come to life to worry him. He made the sign of the
cross, but the thing did not move or disappear, only grinned
again ; and there the bottle was, near its foot, but out of reach.
He felt as if he, too, were turning to stone, and would be found,
years hence, a statue stretched alongside of the stone coffins, and
learned men would write treatises on his appearance and how he
got there. Time he no longer measured or thought of ; he heard
no more sounds ; his hunger had given way, not to thirst exactly,
but to a blind desire for drink, which increased as the dwarf sat
immovably by the bottle, barring access to it with a misshapen,
dead-white foot. He tried to speak to the horrid thing, said
some prayers with a vague notion of exorcising it, waved his
hands and crossed his forefingers at it, but it seemed proof against
everything. Even its stony grin began to grow vague, and
Sancho thought he felt sleepy again, though he was almost be-
yond conscious feeling by this time. A long interval seemed to
him to have passed before he woke again, and, strangely enough,
though he remembered that he had been shut up in a dark place,
he felt sure now that he was standing outside the iron door, with
a distant lamp flickering, and a sense of miles of -free but dark
space above his head. He was not alone, either, but his com-
panion was neither Pedro nor the Mexican dwarf, but a large
white figure, apparently a man in armor. He looked up, and the
space on the mausoleum was partly empty ; only one figure lay
there. Then, of course, this was the Conquistador. He did not
feel afraid, though he distinctly remembered having expected to
feel so should he see his ancestor. The> figure turned slowly
towards him ; he could see every hair of his head and beard,
every fold of his ruff and lace, every link of his armor, all in white
alabaster; but he knew that the stone man was alive and would
speak to him presently.

" Sancho Alvarado," said the voice, " in the city of Mexico,
in a house by the water, you will find a chest that I left there,
and a parchment that will tell you something you do not know.
In the city of Mexico lies your future fortune. Go and seek it."

Sancho waited to hear more ; but slowly the white figure
seemed to melt into the surrounding darkness, and he felt that,
though he was sure he had not moved a step himself, he was
within the tomb again. He fancied he had had a dream, but
where was the dwarf now ? Perhaps he could reach the wine.
He stretched his hands out, and fell forward ; but the bottle
seemed to move just beyond his reach of its own accord, and he

1 88 1.] THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. 33

was too weak to go any further. Well, he must wait ; he could
get plenty to drink in the city of Mexico, especially as the house
was by the water. Meanwhile, why did not Pedro come ? And
here came another gap in his remembrance.

" Sancho," whispered a voice anxiously and intently, as, six
days after his first entrance into the tomb, his friend came back
with food and cordials as well as medicine ; but the young man
was still unconscious, and perhaps, Pedro for a few moments
feared, dead. But no; at least the doctor felt tolerably sure he
was not dead, and, in a fever of impatience, administered one
remedy after another as quickly as he dared, till Sancho opened
his eyes in feeble consciousness. His first words, however, did
not sound rational. " In the city of Mexico there is water."

" Are you thirsty, Sancho ? " asked his friend. " Drink this,
and then you shall tell me all about it. Do you remember where
you are ? "

It was some little while before the prisoner came perfectly to
himself, and then he was so weak that Pedro hardly hoped to be
able to get him out. His mind occasionally wandered, but, on
the whole, the doctor made him understand that the crisis was
almost as serious now as ever ; that he himself, Pedro, had been
so watched that it had been unsafe for him to come ; and that now,
desperate as the chance might be, there was but one, and that
was to get out of the city. Sancho feebly wondered and ac-
quiesced, and his friend went on to unfold a plan he had thought of
distasteful, certainly, since it involved more lying ; but, as things
stood, what could one do ? Sancho was to be carried out as if
dead (a medical friend had got a certificate of death ready), Pedro,
and another whom he said he could trust, acting as bearers and
servants. As to recognition, he must risk it ; but as he was be-
lieved to have already escaped, and soldiers had been sent on his
supposed track, perhaps there would be a chance of safety for a
day or two. Once out of the gates, robbers and desperadoes
might be supposed to have attacked them, which would account
for their leaving the coffin empty on the road, and they would
make the best of their way to some unfrequented inn. To his
uncle's he dared not go, as the police had all his antecedents by
heart, and were sure to have already vexed the poor old man's
soul by search and questions about the " scapegrace Pedro."
Everything lay in their own skill and presence of mind ; and of
course they would have tc*associate in their plans the trusty com-
rade whom they would need. Sancho, still mistily, assented to
everything. Pedro fed him by small instalments, and hoped to

VOL. XXXIII. 3

34 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. [April,

be able to support him as far as a little back-shed in a courtyard
behind the cathedral, where his friend and the coffin were in
readiness. Sancho began eagerly to detail the things he had
heard and seen, and the doctor listened, half with a professional
interest, half with a natural impatience at the necessary precau-
tions and delay. Sancho at last asked how had Pedro found him,
asleep or what ?

" Stretched face downwards on the floor, with your hand
clasping the bottle, which was one-fourth full," said Pedro, with a
smile.

" I was sure the dwarf was sitting nearly on it," laughed the
other faintly.

With some trouble the invalid was helped out at dusk when
a number of people were about, and the two slipped into a little
lane leading to the meeting-place, a tumble-down shed, part of an
old unused stable, where a third friend met them. He was con-
tentedly sitting on a coffin, at the sight of which Sancho involun-
tarily started.

" Yes," said Pedro, " it is unpleasant, but look upon it as if it
were an escapade and a lady was concerned."

" That reminds me," put in the third, " I thought another pre-
text would be good after we get rid of the coffin, and I brought
away some of my sister-in-law's clothes. She'll think one of her
maids stole them. I shouldn't make a bad senorita, should I ? I
have some of the things on under my cloak, and the petticoats
are wrapped round my waist like, wide sashes. I took pains
enough to fit them in like a puzzle."

" Good ! " said Pedro ; " you can personate an eloping couple,
you two, and I will do the servant."

Sancho was gradually entering into the fun, and crept into
the coffin, which was loosely closed over him ; there were a few
holes bored in the bottom, but it was not pleasant at the best. A
poor-looking black cloth was thrown over the coffin, and as the
procession moved on Pedro spoke to the first boy he met, in the
usual local patois and with the approved ring of a mourner, ask-
ing' him to get a candle in the sacristy of the* cathedral, and, for
the love of God and the honor of a poor gentleman (who was al-
ways good to the poor while he lived), to carry it before his
corpse, that it might not be said he was buried like a dog or a
heretic. The good-natured boy called another of his kind, and
the two soon hurried back from the cathedral with two half-burnt
torches, which they carried in silence before the coffin. No one
noticed the procession, except two young women, who audibly

1 88 1.] THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. 35

wondered why the dead was not uncovered, as was most often the
case, and Pedro answered the indirect remark by a warning to
keep out of the way, as " his excellency had died of a contagious
disease." At the city gate he silently handed the guard the medi-
cal certificate, and stood stock-still while the man fingered over
what he probably could not read ; then, on being told to pass on,
he turned composedly to the boys and said :

" I can't afford to take you any further. Here is something
for your charity, and the torches will fetch you a few coppers."

The small procession went on. The road grew less and less full
as it left the city. After half an hour the bearers turned down a
sandy lane to the right, where they stopped and released the sup-
posed corpse, and slightly damaging the sides of the coffin, as if
a scuffle had taken place, they left it half tilted over. Pedro
breathed more freely as this part of the escape was accomplished ;
as to the next he had less anxiety. The third member of the
party was soon rigged out in woman's clothes and closely veiled
in the customary mantilla. Pedro, after doctoring Sancho again,
started ahead to find horses for the journey. The other two
walked on slowly, and about an hour later met the doctor once
more, mounted and leading a second horse, upon which his com-
panions, in the character of an eloping couple, were to ride to-
gether. They changed horses twice more that night before dar-
ing to stop, and then, shy of staying at an inn, they slept in an
open shed till early dawn, when they started once more, and
finally gave up the horses, paying pretty high for their return.
Now the travellers took up the new character of pilgrims, peas-
ants going to a local shrine of some celebrity ; the woman dis-
appeared and a sturdy boy replaced her. Sancho was getting
stronger, and was able to laugh at his fancies during his hunger-
fever in the tomb, and his appetite was getting into its normal
state. Notwithstanding his common sense, he kept harping, how-
ever, upon " the city of Mexico " and his possible fortune till
Pedro good-naturedly turned his fancy to account by suggesting
that the New World might afford him a good field, quite irre-
spective of improbable parchments and such theatrical " tab-
leaux"

" But," said Sancho, " where is the money to go with, and
such other practical things ? 1 have come away now without
even a shirt to my back."

" I think," said his friend, " I have enough here to set you up
for the present. I had a sum easily accessible at all times, because
I had long foreseen some such hurried emergency as this; and if

36 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. [April,

you don't mind accepting a loan by way of realizing your future
fortune, you are welcome to what I have."

Sancho was silent for a few minutes, then burst into fervent
thanks, and the matter was looked upon as settled, if they could
find a ship ready in a short time, which, to save the reader further
anxiety, it is as well to say they did. Pedro and his companion
then took the road to a small provincial town where the latter
had relatives, and both settled there for a year or so under as-
sumed names. After that the third member got a small local ap-
pointment, in consideration of which he swallowed his political
scruples, took a wife, and settled down into a humdrum citizen,
while Pedro left the country and travelled for some years, com-
ing back to Burgos when tired of finding most of his Utopias hol-
low. Dona Mercedes was still living and vegetating on her
house-rents in the same gaunt, bleak, but artistic old rooms, and
she told him that she occasionally heard from her nephew in
Mexico. He always asked after Pedro in his rare letters, which
came, generally with a present of money, once a year on her feast-
day. He spoke of a villa and large herds of cattle and many
slaves. He had married a year after he went out, and said he was
happy and well off, but he should not send his sons to be reared
in Spain ; he meant them to be Mexicans. Pedro smiled as he
thought how lucky the advice had been which he had given to
his friend. " Then," added the old lady, " he sent word that he
had a sum in a Paris bank set aside for you for a debt he owed
you ; I have the banker's address all safe." Pedro then gave
Dona Mercedes the details of the escape, of which till now she
had been completely ignorant; indeed, for a time she had thought
that the authorities must have imprisoned and made away with
Sancho, and many a Mass had she had said for the repose of his
soul before she got his first letter from Mexico.

Years went by. The Mexican War of Independence took
place, and Alvarado, joining in with his new against his old coun-
try, soon got into a prominent position. One day his troops,
flushed with victory and wine, pursued a Spanish official from
street to street ; he was well known and very unpopular, and
Sancho feared that, if unrestrained, they would certainly kill him.
He was unable to stop the pursuit discipline was almost un-
known and he thought his best chance lay in heading the hunt.
The man took refuge at last in a rambling building stuccoed in
white and pretentiously aping European grandeur. It stood in
the older portion of the city, and had a courtyard and carriage
gateway ; but the place was deserted, the plaster was falling off

i88i.] THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. 37

in large flakes, and the rooms looked vast and ghostly. The
hunted wretch fled up the first stairs, Sancho Alvarado keeping
his men back under pretence of searching every nook on the
ground-floor ; and when they could not be kept back any longer,
he led them up the first flight, shouting with all his might to let
the enemy know his bearings. The second story was Jhe last,
and the rooms were large and bare, very destitute of hiding-pla-
ces. Sancho could not help noticing the decaying furniture left
in many : huge wide bedsteads with tall, thin posts, inlaid tables
spoiled by the damp ; the ceiling in one room was all of stucco laid
in painted scales overlapping each other ; another immense room
was painted pale pink. A stifled cry told him that the hunted
man was not far. This last suite of apartments seemed to have no
back outlet, and, in fact, ended in a smaller chamber overlooking
the lake, but at a dangerous height for a leap. A door in the
wall led into a projecting but enclosed balcony, which was more
like an overhanging closet, and into this Alvarado felt sure the
victim had gone. The door was sculptured in stone, and bore
marks that seemed familiar to him ; it was partly like a Renais-
sance cabinet-door enlarged, but some of the carvings were na-
tive Mexican. It flashed upon him that they were like some on
the tomb in Burgos cathedral, and then lie remembered the
words of his ancestor: "... A chest in a house by the water."

His soldiers were close on his heels ; they came trooping and
clamoring into the room. He felt his honor would be lost if they
touched the unlucky man.

" Now you have gone through the house," he said quickly and
sternly, " and satisfied yourselves. There are outlets enough for
him to have crept through to the roof of adjacent buildings. At
any rate, you have lost time enough time that belongs to your
country, not to hunting for a poor wretch in dread of his life. I
can show you better plunder even than this decayed house.
March back in order, or I shall know how to have you pun-
ished."

They looked sullen but disconcerted ; some were rebellious
and wanted to argue, but the majority shrugged their shoulders
and turned towards the door, falling into ranks. Alvarado
marched them out and banged the door behind him, closely
watching and occasionally threatening his men. He was not
able to go back to see what happened to the Spaniard, and, in-
deed, did not know for several days. By the fourth night a mes-
senger came to him with a bulky packet, which he delivered very
mysteriously, saying nothing as to his employer's name. Sancho,

38 THE TOMB OF THE CONQUISTADOR. [April,

on opening it, found a letter from the man whose life he had
saved :

" I cannot thank you enough : I owe you my life and safety."
This was the substance of the letter. " I leave the country as
soon as I can. I have neither wife nor child, and am counted
rich. Allow me to show my gratitude in the only way left me :
half my possessions are henceforward yours. The accompany-
ing papers will give you the details. Much of my money is in-
vested in Europe, as I foresaw lawless times here. My town and
country houses, if not already destroyed, I should like you to oc-
cupy. But for you I should not be alive. I stayed three hours
in mortal dread in that closet in the cul-de-sac chamber ; what I
suffered no one knows. I wish it were safe for me to thank you
in person."

With much Spanish politeness this summary was elegantly
woven into a long, grave, and formal letter, while the enclosed
business papers, representing a fortune by comparison immense,
made a thick pile. Alvarado took possession of the real estate,
which was not yet much injured his luck never deserted him in
anything, said his half-envious friends and wrote to Pedro,
drudging away at his profession in Burgos :

" You see the Conquistador was right, though it took a long
time to realize his prophecy. The old fellow might have told me
the date, if he had been considerate. I repeat my old wish : why
don't you come and settle here? There is land thirsting to be
used and developed, and meanwhile you might help me to man-
age my new legacies."

" You forget," answered Pedro, " that prophecies should be
literal, and you see the parchment was all nonsense. Your own
brain coined the prophecy, and a queer coincidence if you can
call it such happened as to a few details. About coming over,
you have nearly persuaded me ; you may see me some day.
Things here do not seem likely to improve."

It was afterwards discovered that the old house through
which the Spaniard had been chased had once belonged to the
Mexican Alvarados, who, however, had left the city, impover-
ished, and settled obscurely in a provincial town. Only two or-
phan girls and their two old widowed aunts remained of this
branch, as far as Sancho could make out, whereupon he sought
out the children, betrothed one to his eldest son, and portioned
the other out of the Spaniard's wealth. Pedro, still a bache-
lor, came out in due time, and before long married very hap-
pily.

1 88 1.] " YOUNG IRELAND:' 39

-YOUNG IRELAND" AND THE IRELAND OF TO-
DAY.*

THE party of " Young Ireland " seems as remote from these
days and interests as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines of Dante's
time or " the Beggars " of Alva's. It strikes with a sense of
strangeness to find one of the leaders and chief organizers of that
ardent circle of bright and heroic spirits moving in among us to-
day, weighted with years and with honors, to tell us the story of
the rise of a party that, though it ended in swift and overwhelm-
ing disaster, did much to fill the Irish people with ideas and
with a spirit of independence. It is impossible to read Sir
Charles Gavan Duffy's history of the movement in which he
played so prominent a part, without acknowledging that the
Young Ireland party were striking for right principles in a per-
fectly legitimate and constitutional manner. It would hardly be
tox> much to say that there was no constitution for Ireland in
those days. The English constitution itself has undergone many
and important changes since the period of which the author
writes, and the work of reform still continues.

To readers who have read anything at all of Irish history the
Young Ireland party is an old and familiar subject. Most of the
men who figured as its chieftains found refuge in this country
after their exclusion from their own, and many of them told us
the story in various forms. There seemed nothing new to tell
about it, and men were inclined to shrug their shoulders on
learning that the one man yet to be heard from, the founder of
the Dublin Nation, was coming back from the scene of his labors
and his triumphs to take up a more than twice-told tale.

He has succeeded in making it new. At least it was never
before told so fully and circumstantially. The author held in his
hands many a thread needed to knit the story together and give
the clear connection with other events. He was the centre of
the party, which may be likened to the favorite yet rather ab-
surd device of several European powers : a double-headed eagle,
of which Duffy and Davis formed the two heads. Duffy was to
a great degree the guiding, while Davis may rightly claim to be

* Young Ireland : A Fragment of Irish History. 1840-1850. By Sir Charles Gavan Duffy,
K.C.M.G. London: Cassell, Fetter & Galpin.

40 " YOUNG IRELAND" AND [April,

the inspiring, spirit of a movement that had for its object the in-
dependence of their country and people.

To use this word independence in connection with Ireland
and the Irish people calls up in most persons either a smile of
contempt or a sad shake of the head, as at an heretical or a hope-
less idea. Why should this be ? What is meant by the inde-
pendence of a people ? Put in brief, it means this : the right to
manage their own affairs ; to look after their own moneys, their
own interests and industries, their own educational, religious, and
national development ; to raise their own taxes, elect their own
officials, and frame their own laws. If it be wrong, if it be a
crime, if it be a hopeless dream for the Irish people to aspire to
such measure of self-government, the same must be true of any
other nation or people that ever struck for liberty. Why draw
the line at Ireland ? England was very instrumental recently in
creating new and independent principalities out of the Danubian
provinces that were rotting away under the power of the Turk.
She helped Greece to achieve independence. She aided Portu-
gal. She intrigued and worked to assist in the formation of the
kingdom of Italy. England is plainly and professedly not averse
to the independence and autonomy of homogeneous peoples.
The one exception is Ireland. There she draws the line on the
alleged ground of the disruption of the British Empire. But
Austria, in whose policy, at least as regards foreign affairs, Mr.
Gladstone about a year ago defied the world to lay its finger on
a single spot and say it was sound, has shown how to reconcile
the independence of her subject peoples with steadfast union and
unfaltering loyalty to the empire. Germany shows the same.
This American Republic is a conspicuous example of the union
of independent States under one government. For that matter
England itself is an equally conspicuous example of the happy
results of such an arrangement in the Dominion government and
the Australian colonies, where the people have their own parlia-
ments and complete power to manage their own affairs. That is
independence. It is for that the Irish people are struggling ; and
surely to engage in such a struggle is no crime. Not only is it
not a crime, but, as will be seen, it has become an absolute neces-
sity to a people whose masses, under existing legislation and cir-
cumstances, are constantly threatened with famine and the circle
of their lives bounded by despair.

The history of the Young Ireland party can never be more
than the history of a picturesque episode. It is overshadowed
on the one side by the mighty figure of O'Connell, while on the

1 88 1.] THE IRELAND OF To- DAY. 41

other its own undignified collapse and complete failure to achieve
what it attempted will always cling to the movement and lessen
its character. A revolution that begins mightily only to go out
in a fizzle must bear the penalty of failure.

O'Connell had taught the Irish people to lisp the name of
liberty. He stood up a man among his people and before the
world. That from first almost to the last was his attitude. He
faced the British government, all its armies, navies, power, laws,
policy, wrong, and claimed his place in this world, and in his
own land, as a man. The rights due to man, properly consti-
tuted, well ordered, set by Providence in this world for a term
of being, he insisted upon, and all the rights. The British gov-
ernment stood aghast at his audacity. No heresy ever broached
was so outrageous to human ears as the demand of this Irishman
to enjoy natural rights. He was bold enough for anything
bold enough even to attempt to enter the sacred precincts of the
British Parliament as the representative of an Irish constituency.
The thought was shocking. Why, the man was a Catholic,
and how was a Catholic to be admitted to the British Parlia-
ment the Parliament that pointed with pride to the Great Char-
ter of Langton and the Barons ?

It will be seen how far Englishmen and Irishmen have tra-
velled in the way of parliamentary reform and in recognition of
natural rights since 1829. But there is a long journey, and an
arduous one, before them yet ere the British government
comes to the full recognition of what is due to humanity, espe-
cially under the changing condition of things. It is this fact that
lends its chief value to Duffy's work. It is instructive to trace
up the steps of the struggle of forty years ago, for that was little
more than the beginning of the struggle that is convulsing Ire-
land and England to-day.

The lispings that O'Connell taught the people grew to be
very clear utterances in the generation that grew up around him.
Had there been no O'Connell there would hardly have been a
Young Ireland party. They were really his children, though he
afterwards disowned them, and though they threw off allegiance
to him. With the quarrel that led to the estrangement between
them men nowadays have little concern. They are more con-
cerned with the circumstances that made O'Connell what he was
and led to the formation of a Young Ireland party, and for this
reason : notwithstanding what O'Connell accomplished and what
Young Ireland aimed at accomplishing, many of the conditions of
existence against which both struggled continue even to our own

42 " YOUNG IRELAND" AND [April,

days. It is against these Ireland is struggling now with a tena-
city of purpose and a united organization that it probably never
exhibited or knew before.

Duffy considers that if Englishmen fairly studied the period
embraced in his narrative it would help them to understand a
problem which perplexes them. The problem is this : " Why
Irishmen not deficient in public spirit or probity were eager
to break away from the Union and from all connection with
England?" That problem exists to-day in as vexed a form
as it presented half a century ago. Stated in other words, it is :
What is the cause of the steady discontent of Irishmen with Eng-
lish rule?

And here it is as well to deal with the current and contrary
objections. It is asked : Why is Scotland, why is Wales, why
are the colonies content with English rule ? The answer, to a
mind not blinded by prejudice, suggests itself at once. As for
the colonies, they already enjoy what Ireland is striving after
home-rule, which is only another term for the complete manage-
ment of their own affairs. From this is excepted India ; but India
is not a colony. It is a vast empire of subject and diverse races,
not homogeneous, which it is necessary either to let go alto-
gether or hold fast by military rule. But the English-speaking
colonies, peopled by the blood of Great Britain and Ireland, are
wholly free. England is averse to learning lessons in govern-
ment, but when she must she learns them thoroughly and ap-
plies them.

What England, in its war against the founders of our republic,
fought strenuously to maintain it of its own will granted to other
great and distant colonies. It was a wise act, and its wisdom is
shown in the loyalty and peace of those colonies. They do not
wish to separate from the home government, for the simple rea-
son that they do not feel it a drag on them and a curb in their
mouths. They are content because they are masters over their
local interests and affairs. Australia and Canada are not ruled by
a Parliament sitting in London, which has confessedly more than
it can well manage in the way of looking after its own special in-
terests.

As for Scotland and Wales, apart from the fact that they are
geographically connected with an overwhelming power to which
they have quite succumbed, the conditions of their political and
social existence were made such as finally to win them cheerfully
over to English ascendency. They became one in religion, one
in interest, one in political life. The English law for them be-

1 88 1.] THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 43

came practically and really Welsh or Scotch. They were given
what they wanted, and, having got what they wanted, rested sat-
isfied. Why is it otherwise in Ireland ?

Sir Charles Duffy's book will help to explain why to those
who cannot give a reason for themselves. Catholic Emancipa-
tion was won in 1829 after a struggle that was equivalent to a re-
volution. Previous to that the Catholic people of Ireland had
practically few or no rights that the British government and the
ascendant Protestant class in Ireland were bound or cared to re-
spect. At the most they were such rights as were hardly worth
the having. Is it difficult to understand why, under such circum-
stances, " Irishmen not deficient in public spirit or probity were
eager to break away from the Union and from all connection
with England " ? They would not be worthy of the name of
men did they not desire " the disruption of the empire," as the
phrase goes an empire that held them in bondage and denied
them almost every natural and civil right.

This is not the language of exaggeration or imagination. It
is the hardest fact, and so well known that it is needless to cor-
roborate the statement by any testimony. The English statutes
furnish all the testimony requisite : the English laws against the
Irish Catholics, and not only against the Irish Catholics but
concerning Irish trade and Irish commerce. On this latter
point Mr. Froude is very instructive and within easy reach. No
man has better told the story of the wilful destruction of the
flourishing trade and commerce of Ireland by the English Parlia-
ment in obedience to the demands of English traders and manu-
facturers. It was this destruction of promising and profitable na-
tive industries that drove the great mass of the Irish people to
look to the land for subsistence, subject at the same time to the
harshest laws in behalf of the landlord as against the tenant. If
people can see any special reason why the Irish should feel par-
ticularly loyal and patriotic towards England for graciously con-
ceding to them such a mode of existence, they must think very
meanly of human nature.

The whole story is easily summed up. What concessions
have been made, what improvement has taken place in the condi-
tion of the Irish people from the granting of Catholic Emancipa-
tion down to to-day, a period of half a century ? In half a cen-
tury, which covers the life of two generations, a great deal may
be effected by a great and wise government in the way of amelio-
ration of bad laws or trying conditions of life under which large
sections of its people suffer. Sir Charles Duffy's fourth chapter

44 "YOUNG IRELAND'* AND [April,

is devoted to a very comprehensive " Bird's-eye View of Irish His-
tory " from its earliest stages down to the period which he de-
picts. What was the object of Catholic Emancipation ? What
the Catholics asked, as Duffy says, " was to be admitted to their
just share, or at any rate to some share, of the government of
their native country, from which they had been excluded for
five generations. " Did Catholic Emancipation give them this?
Not at all. " On the passing of the Emancipation Act a single
Catholic was not admitted to any office of authority, great or
small. The door was opened, indeed, but not a soul w T as per.
mitted to pass in." Such is the manner in which English justice
is doled out to Ireland.

Though Catholic Emancipation was won in name, the spirit in
which it was conceded may be judged by the immediate action of
the British government :

"The Catholic Association, which had won the victory, was rewarded
for its public spirit by being dissolved by act of Parliament. Its leader, who
had been elected to the House of Commons, had his election declared void
by a phrase imported into the Emancipation Act for this very purpose*
The forty-shilling free-holders, whose courage and magnanimity had made
the cause irresistible, were immediately deprived of the franchise. By
means of a high qualification and an ingeniously complicated system of
registry, the electors in twelve counties were reduced from upwards of a
hundred thousand to less than ten thousand."

Such was, and to a great extent still is, English statesmanship
with regard to Ireland ; yet well-meaning Englishmen are, and will
long continue to be, astonished that Irishmen of probity and pub-
lic spirit are anxious to break away from England and from all
connection with the Union.

Twelve years later the Dublin Nation was projected. " In the
interval a few Catholics were elected to Parliament, two Catho-
lic lawyers were raised to the bench by the Melbourne govern-
ment, and smaller appointments distributed among a few laymen,
each appointment being followed by a groan from the Tory press,
as if the Emancipation Act were an instrument intended only for
show." We have now reached 1840, and it will be seen what
share the Catholics of Ireland that is to say, the great bulk of
the Irish people had in the control of themselves and their own
affairs. And what were their own affairs? It is necessary to as-
certain, because the conditions of existence are practically the
same in 1881 as they were in 1840, which fact, duly weighed,
throws a strong light on the agitation prevailing in Ireland to-
day, its cause and its justification.

1 88 1.] THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 45

"The whole population were dependent on agriculture. There were
minerals, but none found in what miners call ' paying quantities.' There
was no manufacture except linen and the remnant of a woollen trade,
slowly dying out before the pitiless competition of Yorkshire. What the
island chiefly produced was food, which was exported to richer countries
to enable the cultivator to pay an inordinate rent. Foreign travellers saw
with amazement an island possessing all the natural conditions of a great
commerce as bare of commerce as if it lay in some byway of the world
which enterprise had not reached. . . . There was no foreign trade. . . .
Decay was nearly universal. The provincial towns in general had an un-
prosperous or bankrupt look. There was scarcely a county which could
not show some public work begun before the Union and now a ruin."

That was a spectacle calculated to warm the heart of an Irish-
man in gratitude towards the governing country. Not all were
poor, however. One class at least reaped a rich harvest from the
everlasting and hopeless toil of these serfs for such they were :

" The conditions of the two classes who lived by agriculture furnished a
singular contrast. The great proprietors were two or three hundred the
heirs of the undertakers, for the most part, and absentees ; the mass of the
country was owned by a couple of thousand others, who lived in splendor,
and even profusion : and for these the peasant ploughed, sowed, tended,
and reaped a harvest which he never shared. Rent, in other countries,
means the surplus after the farmer has been liberally paid for his skill and
labor; in Ireland it meant the whole produce of the soil except a potato-
pit. If the farmer strove for more, his master knew how to bring him to
speedy submission. He could carry away his implements of trade by the
law of distress, or rob him of his sole pursuit in life by the law of eviction.
He could, and habitually did, seize the stools and pots in his miserable
cabin, the blanket that sheltered his children, the cow that gave them
nourishment."

This was in 1840. Were the conditions so very different in
1880? There are unprejudiced witnesses in abundance men like
the Rev. George H. Hepvvorth, like Mr. James Redpath, like the
correspondents of American and even English journals to bear
testimony that, for the great mass of tenants in Ireland, life, its
opportunities, chances, hopes, is the same to-day as it was forty
years ago. Time has brought little or no improvement ; and im-
proved legislation is a fiction rather than a fact. But the land-
lords have gone on prospering by the same methods pursued
forty years ago :

" There were just and humane landlords, men who performed the duties
which their position imposed and did not exaggerate its rights ; but they
were a small minority. The mild Berkeley, in his day, spoke of certain
Irish proprietors as ' vultures with iron bowels ' ; and landlords of this type
were still plentiful. There was nowhere in Europe a propertied class who

46 " YOUNG IRELAND" AND [April,

did so little for the people and took so much from them. The productive
power of an estate was often doubled and quadrupled by the industry of
the farmers ; and its rental rose accordingly. In later times rents shot up
with war prices, with protection, with the system of conacre (under which
small patches were let at an exorbitant rate to laborers to grow potatoes),
but when any of these stimulants was withdrawn they did not come down..
Rents impossible to be paid were kept on the books of an estate, and
arrears duly recorded to hold the tenant in perpetual subjection. For, in
addition to his labor, the landlord required his vote and various menial ser-
vices. The Lady Bountiful of the parish for women are more unfeeling
and inconsiderate in their exactions than men often required the children
to be sent to a proselytizing school, on pain of immediate ejectment.
O'Connell frequently demanded how they would like to have it made com-
pulsory on them to send their children to be educated at Maynooth on pain
of forfeiting their estates, but they regarded the absurd comparison with
proper contempt. The food of the peasant was potatoes, with a little milk
or salt ; flesh-meat he rarely tasted, except when he went as a harvest la-
borer to England ' to earn the rent.' The country was famous for the pro-
duction of butter, and the growth of beef and mutton, and especially of
pork; but butter, beef, mutton, or pork was nearly as unknown as an arti-
cle of diet among the peasantry as among the Hindoos. Famines were fre-
quent, and every other year destitution killed a crowd of peasants."

These extracts are taken at length, because in the main they
tell the story of to-day. It is not true of to-day that " some-
times the tortured serfs rose in nocturnal jacquerie against the
system, and then a cry of ' rebellion/ was raised, and England
was assured that these intractable barbarians were again (as the
indictment always charged) * levying war against the King's
majesty.' " How many a man has re-echoed Lord Melbourne's
sentiment concerning one victim of such an agrarian murder !
" If one-half of what is told me of him be true," he wrote he was
then Chief Secretary for Ireland " and it comes from many
different quarters, if he had forty thousand lives there would
have been no wonder if they had all been taken."

As for the proverbial thriftlessness and ignorance of the Irish
peasant, on which so many who have never inquired into the
matter are fond of dilating, where were the enlightenment and
thrift to come in ? A man needs something to make him thrifty ;
he needs to be taught to dispel his ignorance. The grandfather
of the Irish peasant was " a papist who was liable to be trans-
ported if he learned the multiplication-table ; his father was not
permitted to possess landed property, arms, or the franchise ;
and in his own day (1840-50) there were no public schools at
which his religion and his race were not bywords of scorn."

For Protestant children of the middle class in Ireland there

1 88 1.] THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 47

were endowed schools, where they received an education almost
free. There was also the university. For the Catholic children,
save the very few who were in a position to be sent abroad, there
was nothing but enforced ignorance and idleness. " Up to 1832
the children of the industrious classes were taught in hedge-
schools." The peasant, by his tithes, bore the whole burden of
the Established Church. We will be told that the Established
Church has been swept away and is now a matter of ancient his-
tory. When was it swept away? In 1869. With the passing of
Catholic Emancipation came the beginning of the change. The
Irish are a singularly elastic and adaptive people. They are
quick to improve their opportunities. When the Nation news-
paper was founded the spirit of serfdom had been already bro-
ken :

"Among the middle-class Catholics a great change had taken place.
A generation had reached manhood who knew the penal laws only by tra-
dition. Their fathers had grown rich in trade or the professions, had pur-
chased land, and shared the excitement of a great political contest, and the
sons, educated for the most part in English or foreign colleges, or in the
Dublin University, laughed at the pretensions of Protestant ascendency.
This was the class destined to form the bulk of the party afterwards known
as Young Ireland."

Yes, and a party that was not to end with the Young Ire-
land of the author, which is but a wavelet of a mighty stream,
but of the Young Ireland of all future generations. How Eng-
land had provided for the education of the people whom it taxes
with ignorance may be seen from the fact that the penal laws
left nearly four millions of them not knowing how to read or
write, and nearly a million and a half who could read but not
write :

" There was a state church and there were state schools, but in two-
thirds of the parishes there were no congregations, no school-house, and
no service. There were rectors enjoying pleasant incomes, and bishops
making colossal fortunes. By a return laid before Parliament it appeared
that eleven bishops in less than fifty years had contrived to bequeath to
their families an average of a hundred and sixty thousand pounds apiece.
. . . Where diocesan schools existed, the teaching proffered to Catholic
children was strictly Protestant teaching, with the unconcealed purpose of
proselytism."

The condition of such a country, and the habit of mind of such
a people, may be imagined. As the author well says :

" The island to which, in later times, its national parliament had brought
back trade, commerce, and prosperity, was sickening under a burden of
paupers without hope of employment, because trade and commerce had

48 " YOUNG IRELAND" AND [April,

disappeared. Is it surprising that it led many men to the conclusion that
the connection between Ireland and the dominant country must be put on
another footing or must be brought to an end ? On less provocation the
sober colonists of North America broke away from the empire, and the
grave Belgian bourgeoisie broke away from their legislative union. On less
provocation, indeed, the phlegmatic Hollanders opened their dikes and let
in the sea."

Readers who may be in doubt as to the reason for the exist-
ence of the Land League, of which we hear so much in Ireland
just now, will possibly find some of their doubt dispelled by con-
sidering the meaning of the extracts quoted. As already said,
they apply with almost equal force to the present situation in
Ireland, so far as the social condition of the great mass of the
Irish people goes. Some improvements, of course, have taken
place in the interval of forty years. But to what do they
amount? The Irish Church has been disestablished. That is
undoubtedly a great grievance gone. And now what else has
been done ? Education has advanced, it is true, though the Ca-
tholics still wait in vain for the privileges accorded by the gov-
ernment to their Protestant fellow-countrymen. So that in this
important respect they have themselves rather than the govern-
ment to thank for the improvement. The political franchise in
Ireland is not at all on an equal footing with the franchise in
England and Scotland. The unfortunate country has been
scourged by two awful famines : the one of 1846-7, and the other,
which was only a degree less terrible, in 1879-80. But is the
British government answerable for these " visitations of Provi-
dence," as it is the custom mellifluously to call them ?

Famine, under such circumstances, is no visitation of Provi-
dence. It is directly traceable to the hand of man. It is as
though one held out to a prisoner a certain measure of food, just
sufficient to maintain the miserable life in him. By some acci-
dent the prisoner fails one day to get his portion, and dies of
starvation in consequence. Can such a death be called a visita-
tion of Providence ? This is just the case of the great mass of
the Irish agricultural class. The system under which they hold
their plots of land, under which they give the toil and the sweat
of all their lives, is such as to preclude almost any possibility of
improving their condition ; of saving, of laying up something
that would enable them to face without fear any such visitation
of Providence. At the same time the destruction of their com-
merce and native industries by the English government has of
necessity compelled them to look to the land for a living. It is

1 88 1.] THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 49

said that the land is too poor to yield them a living ; yet some-
how or other it manages to yield a rich revenue to the landlords.
There is certainly money in it. Take the single instance of the
eleven bishops of the Established Church in Ireland. Where
did they procure the handsome average of a hundred and sixty
thousand pounds apiece which, according to the Parliamentary
returns, they were enabled to bequeath to their families within a
period covering less than fifty years ? To accumulate a fortune
of ; 1 60,000 in fifty years would be considered a very fair show-
ing in any business in any land. If the bishops of the Establish-
ment found Ireland so profitable a place to live in, what is to be
said of the great landholders, among one hundred and twenty-one
of whom nearly four million acres, the best soil in the country, is
divided up ? They certainly did not fall behind the bishops.
This money was not rained out of heaven even on the devout
heads of the bishops. It was raked out of the soil by the starv-
ing peasants. Their lives were given to enable the bishops and
the others to leave a handsome competency to their families. It
is not a question of absence of money. It is a question of distri-
bution. The distribution is altogether, or nearly altogether, on
one side. At all events it is so unequal, and made so unequal by
law, as to leave the chances of life to the great mass of those
living on the soil of the scantiest and most uncertain kind. It is
to alter this condition of things that the Land League is now
striving, and it is hard to see how so very natural an effort can
be called revolution and an attempt to disrupt the British Em-
pire. If the British Empire means starvation and a semi-state of
slavery to the Irish, then disruption of the empire would be
about the best possible circumstance that could occur for them.
Let us not be influenced by words, but look in the face facts
that concern the lives and destiny of a people. If the necessary
improvements are to be wrought only by revolution and disrup-
tion, then these are the only remedy. Human lives are of more
account than even the legislative structure of the British Empire
a structure that is by no means perfect, and that is constantly
being tinkered at and adapted to meet new circumstances and re-
quirements. It is for England to say whether it shall be revolu-
tion or reformation.

That the Irish people have some reason for their demands and
some just grounds of complaint is conceded by the highest au-
thority in the British Empire. In the speech from the throne at
the opening of Parliament, January 5, 1881, occurs the following
significant passage regarding Ireland :

VOL. XXXIII. 4

50 " YOUNG IKELAND" AND [April,

" The anticipation with which I last addressed you of a great diminu-
tion of the distress in Ireland, owing to an abundant harvest, was realized ;
but I grieve to state that the social condition of the country has assumed
an alarming character. Agrarian crimes in general have multiplied far be-
yond the experience of recent years. Attempts upon life have not grown
in the same proportion as other offences ; but I must add that efforts have
been made for personal protection, far beyond all former precedent, by the
police, under the direction of the executive. I have to notice other evils yet
more widely spread ; the administration of justice has been frustrated, with
respect to these offences, through the impossibility of procuring evidence,
and an extended system of terror has thus been established in various parts
of the country which has paralyzed almost alike the exercise of private
rights and the performance of civil duties.

" In a state of things new in some important respects, and hence with
little of available guidance from former precedent, I have deemed it right
steadily to put in use the ordinary powers of the law before making
any new demand. But a demonstration of their insufficiency, amply sup-
plied by the present circumstances of the country, leads me now to apprise
you that proposals will be immediately submitted to you for entrusting me
with additional, powers, necessary in my judgment not only for the vindica-
tion of order and public law, but likewise to secure, on behalf of my sub-
jects, protection for life and property, and personal liberty of action.

" Subject to the primary and imperious obligations to which I have just
referred, I continue to desire not less than heretofore to prosecute the re-
moval of grievance and the work of legislative improvement in Ireland as
well as in Great Britain.

"The Irish Land Act of 1870 has been productive of great benefits, and
has much contributed to the security and well-being of the occupiers of
the soil, without diminishing the value or disturbing the foundations of
property. In some respects, however, and more particularly under the
strain of recent and calamitous years, the protection which it supplied has
not been found sufficient, either in Ulster or in the other provinces.

" I recommend you to undertake the further development of its princi-
ples in a manner conformable to the special wants of Ireland, both as re-
gards the relation of landlord and tenant, and with a view to effective
efforts for giving to a larger portion of the people by purchase a permanent
proprietary interest in the soil. This legislation will require the removal,
for the purposes in view, of all obstacles arising out of limitations on the
ownership of property, with a due provision for the security of the interests
involved.

" A measure will be submitted to you for the establishment of county
government in Ireland, founded upon representative principles, and framed
with the double aim of confirming popular control over expenditure, and
of supplying a yet more serious want by extending the formation of habits
of local self-government."

Such a speech was never before delivered from the British
throne with reference to Irish affairs. It is worded with extreme
caution, but its meaning is unmistakably clear. Practically it
concedes all the Irish demands as now advanced by the leaders of

1 88 1.] THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 51

the people. Granting all it says about agrarian crimes and the
necessity of putting a stop to them, in the same breath it gives a
reason and excuse for them. It promises the prosecution of " the
removal of grievance and the work of legislative improvement in
Ireland." What does that say but that there are long-standing
grievances to be removed and legislation to be reformed ? If
there were no grievances, such as the crown here acknowledges
to exist, and nothing to reform, thei^e would probably be no
agitation and no interference on the part of the people with the
administration of what is called justice. The attitude of the Irish
people is surely not against justice, but against the injustice
which the royal speech implicitly acknowledges to exist. The
speech states that " the Irish Land Act of 1870 has been produc-
tive of great benefits " to the Irish people. And what was the
Land Act of 1870? It was the first attempt, or rather the begin-
ning of an attempt, to curb within reasonable and just limits the
arbitrary power of the Irish landlord over his tenants, and to
protect the rights of those tenants against his rapacity. That
was its essence and purpose. The royal speech confesses that it
did not extend far enough in the right direction. " The protec-
tion which it supplied" has nowhere been "found sufficient."
The queen, therefore, recommends " the further development of
its principles in a manner conformable to the special wants of Ire-
land." All the world knows what those special wants are. They
are not wants of to-day or yesterday, but of all time, present, past,
and future, and up to 1870 they were persistently refused recog-
nition by the British government. The act of 1870 is to be de-
veloped so as adequately and justly to regulate " the relation of
landlord and tenant " a confession that that relation is not equita-
ble " and with a view to effective efforts for giving to a larger
portion of the people by purchase a permanent proprietary in-
terest in the soil." What does this mean but a redistribution of
the land, so as to relieve the tenants and help to make them their
own masters, as they are in France and Belgium and in other coun-
tries? The total number of acres in Ireland is 20,322,641. Of
these 3,709,161 acres, comprising the richest portions, are owned
by 121 persons, the majority of whom are habitual absentees, and
simply use the land to enable them to live in luxury abroad.
That is an average of 30,654 acres to each of these persons. The
remaining 16,613,480 acres are divided among 5,411,416 persons,
being an average of three acres per head. There is the Irish
land question in a nutshell.

So much for the land side. With respect to other matters hard-

52 " YOUNG IRELAND" AND [April,

ly, if at all, less important, the speech promises a measure for
"the establishment of county government in Ireland, founded
upon representative principles," etc. Well, that, if it means any-
thing at all, means the concession in large measure to the Irish
people of a control over their own moneys and care for their own
affairs. In other words, it is home-rule, or something more than
the germs of home-rule. And here again the concession is a con-
fession of a long-standing wrong and injustice to the people of
Ireland.

Into the strife of Irish politics now going on at Westminster
it is unnecessary to enter. The task, indeed, would be a hopeless
one to attempt in an article of this kind. All that is needed for
a clear, common-sense view of the main questions in debate, not
of the views of this person or of that, is already, it is hoped, here
given. The queen's speech concedes the justice of the Irish de-
mands and promises immediate reform. All outside of that is
party politics, where mistakes may easily enter on both sides.
Some individuals may demand too much or demand right in a
wrong way. Some may be possessed by the wildest and vaguest
dreams. But what the people want is unmistakably clear. They
want a fair return for the labor of their lives, a fair chance of liv-
ing in reasonable comfort and hope, and of bringing up their fa-
milies with a view to improvement in their position. That they
do not possess and cannot hope for under existing conditions.
These conditions the speech from the throne promises to alter
and adjust with a view to fairness on both sides. Furthermore,
the vice of governing Ireland from Westminster is struck at.
This has been a long curse not only to the Irish people but to
the British government. As soon as Irishmen find themselves
at home in their own land, masters of their own property, con-
trolling their own local affairs, they will have nothing left to
grieve about. Their substance will not be given to the support
of absentee lords. That is independence, and, instead of disrupt-
ing the British Empire, will prove to be its strongest bulwark.

It will be seen that Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's work has been
here used rather to illustrate present events than to enter into
an examination of what is past and gone. The present in Ireland
is too vivid and real to allow one to wander into bypaths even
in such delightful company as that of the author. But when the
calm of good sense and mutual good will and effort shall have
settled down over the stormy scene that is now being enacted
before the eyes of the world and such a calm is destined to come
to a noble and "much-tried " (the expression is a recent one of

1 88 1.] THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 53

Lord Salisbury's) land and people men will go back gratefully
to the author's story of one of the most stirring episodes of Irish
history, told as no man yet of all the gifted band of his compan-
ions has been able to tell it. Then they will come to see and
know more nearly and dearly than they ever knew before the
Nation s staff that moved and thrilled the pulses of that larger
nation of their countrymen, for whom alone they lived and wrote
and were willing, every man of them, to offer up their lives. They
worked, and played, and fought, like the brilliant young enthusi-
asts that they were, for the noblest cause, under heaven, that can
occupy the life of man the liberation of their country and the
freedom of their people. The pens of such men are made of
the same steel as the sword of Scanderbeg or of Washington.
They did not accomplish all they dreamed of accomplishing, and
yet they did much more than they are yet credited with. Differ-
ing with O'Connell in minor matters that we of to-day can look
at calmly and easily understand, they really took up his work
and labored at it with the most ardent devotion and with great
practical if not immediate results. With the glow and ardor of
youth they caught the inspiration of his line free spirit of noble
manhood. His was the mighty voice ; theirs the instrument.
Sir Charles Duffy might not be willing to concede this ; but it
is true nevertheless. They may have added turns and expres-
sions of their own, and they did. They gave a new form to the
mighty outpouring of the soul of the great Irishman, but the
grand old music was under it all the inspired breath of freedom
that this man gave, not to Ireland alone, but to the world. They
sang it in impassioned strains whose echoes penetrated the soul
of a Macaulay, startled the sleeping conscience of British minis-
ters, and fell like dew from heaven on the parched heart of every
famished peasant in their own land. The song went on from
generation to generation until it crystallized into the hard, prac-
tical resistance and heroic attitude of the Irish people that we
see to-day, that calls for words of wise guidance from the Pope
and promise of long-deferred amendment and good cheer from
the head of the British government ; that has at last aroused the
active sympathy of all lands. As said already, if there had been
no O'Connell there would have been no " Young Ireland "; and
if there had been no " Young Ireland " there would hardly have
been an Ireland of to-day ; for, as Sir Charles Duffy truly says,
" To-day is the child and heir of yesterday."

54 IN A GRAVEYARD. [April,

IN A GRAVEYARD.

(FROM THE GERMAN.)

" HERE rests in God." Tis all we read ;

The mould'ring stone reveals no more.
"-In God." Of other words what need?

These span the broad, eternal shore.

O'erladen with its starry blooms,
A jasmine bush conceals the mound,

Neglected in the place of tombs,

With spicy, golden sweetness crowned^

And deep within its leafy breast

Some tuneful bird has sought a home,

The tiny brood within the nest
Fearless and free to go and come.

A holy quietude is here,

Save where the happy birdling's song
Breaks through the stillness, pure and clear,

And echoes the dark firs among.

Sleep on, sleep on, thou pulseless heart,
Where jasmine stars drop golden rain,

From every troubled thought apart,
Forgotten every earthly pain.

Sleep on ; thy long repose is sweet,
Tender and cool the grassy sod.

O traveler ! stay thy hurrying feet ;
Step softly here " he rests in God."

1 88 1.] THE DANCE OF DEATH. 55

THE DANCE OF DEATH.

" Come to the Dance of Death, all ye whose fate

By birth is mortal, be ye great or small ;
And willing come, nor loitering, nor late,

Else force shall bring you struggling to my thrall :
For since yon friar hath uttered loud his call
To penitence and godliness sincere,
He that delays must hope no waiting here ;
For still the cry is, Haste ! and, Haste to all ! "

From the Spanish,

THE Dance of Death, or Dance Macabre, as it is otherwise
called, is a kind of ghostly masquerade often chosen as a subject
for the poetry and dramatic performances of the middle ages, but
more especially represented in sculptures and paintings, for the
most part on the walls of cloisters where the dead were buried,
forming a series of pictures in which Death leads off into one
terrible round people of all ranks and conditions of life. In this
dance figure popes and cardinals, emperors and kings, bishops and
monks, knights, magistrates, and laborers; the old man stiff
with age and the young man in the freshness of his years, stately
matrons and slender maidens, beggars and fools, who, in spite of
their reluctance and horror, are all borne around in one fatal
whirl to the sound, as it were, of strange, unearthly music :

" The grim musician

Leads all men through the mazes of that dance,
To different sounds in different measures moving
Sometimes he plays a lute, sometimes a drum,
To tempt or terrify."

In some of these paintings, however, Death dances alone with
his pale tributary, and between them a terrible dialogue is carried
on, which may be read in their gestures or in quaint rhymes be-
neath.

In many instances these paintings were executed after some
great pestilence, to perpetuate the remembrance of the divine
chastisement and strike a salutary terror in the minds of the peo-
ple, as in the cemetery of the Pardon on the north side of old St.
Paul's, London, where a Dance Macabre was " artificially and
richly painted," after the plague of 1438, at the expense of Jenkin
Carpenter, executor of the will of Whittington, thrice lord mayor
of London. Thirty-three persons of different ranks were here

56 THE DANCE OF DEA TH. [April,

represented, each attended by a phantom, and Death led the long,
sepulchral dance, shaking- the sand impatiently from his hour-glass
with one hand, and uplifting the fatal dart with the other. Be-
neath was a metrical explanation translated from the French by
John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk of Edmundsbury.

There were a great number of these paintings in England,
France, Germany, and other Christian countries, most of which
are now destroyed. In England, for instance, there was one in the
church at Stratford- on- A von, now gone, but which was there in
Shakspere's time, and doubtless suggested several passages in
his plays. And there are the remains of one still on the rood-loft
in the church of Hexham, in which are to be seen a pope, a car-
dinal, and a king. The oldest painting of the kind known was in
the nunnery of Klingenthal, opposite Bale on the Rhine, built in
1274 by Walter von Klingen, a follower of Rodolph of Haps-
burg. This convent was closed in calamitous times and aban-
doned. When taken for a salt-manufactory in 1766 the paintings
were discovered by a baker, who made drawings of them, which
he presented to the library at Bale, where they are still preserv-
ed. One bears the date of 1312. In another are two skeletons
piping before an ossuary on which is a verse in old German :
" God judgeth righteously. Here nobles lie side by side with
peasants. Who now could tell which was master and which ser-
vant? "

It was this lesson of human equality that gave popularity to
the Dance of Death, in which all ranks are confounded from the
king to the beggar. Death is the universal leveller, "beating,"
as Horace says, "with equal foot at poor men's doors and at the
gates of emperors," summoning them forth to the only true re-
public, making no distinction between riches and poverty, wis-
dom and ignorance, success and misfortune. There is an old ini-
tial letter still extant in which Death stands in an open grave,
holding up on his spade two skulls, on one of which is a crown,
and on the other a peasant's cap. On the spade is graven the
word Idem the same to express the equality of the two con-
ditions in the grave.

Kings, however, favored these representations as well as the
people. The celebrated Dance Macabre at Paris was painted by
order of Charles V., though not executed till three years after his
death. Henry VIII. of England had one painted, some say by
Holbein, in the palace of Whitehall, built by Cardinal Wolsey
and destroyed by fire in 1697. And Louis XII. had one frescoed
by the best artists of his day in a gallery of the castle of Blois,

i88i.] THE DANCE OF DEATH. 57

composed of thirty parts, in which representatives of every grade
of society receive from Death the admonition of the church on
Ash Wednesday : Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem re-
verteris. He opens the dance with the pope, citing with cruel
irony the old adage : A tout seigneur tout honneur. He maliciously
begs the advocate to come and plead his own cause before the
great Judge, and see if black will be made white, as he has made
it for his clients. He mocks at the doctor and his drugs, the
lover and his romance, and the knight sheathed in his armor. It
is only a Carthusian monk whom he treats with consideration and
politeness, as if accosting a debtor ready to pay. This Dance is
now gone, but drawings of it were made for Talma, the celebrat-
ed tragedian, on account of the costumes. There is the merchant
with his escarcelle, his robe to the ground ; the bailiff with a yel-
low mantle ; the sergeant with a mace and enormous sabre ; the
peasant with his hoe, etc., all in the dress of the fifteenth century.

The Dance of Death was to be found especially in the con-
vents of the Dominican friars, as at Bale, Berne, Strassburg, etc.
Their order, devoted chiefly to preaching, availed itself of every-
thing that lent weight to their discourses and illustrated their
warnings as to the fragility of human life. In their church at
Strassburg, now so sadly alienated, the series begins with the
great preacher in the pulpit, among his audience a pope with
broidered garments, a cardinal, a young bishop, a nun with folded
hands, some old men asleep, and a young maiden with a serene,
innocent expression and a graceful figure worthy of Raphael.

One of the most celebrated Dances of Death was that in the
cloister of the Dominicans at Bale, painted in commemoration of a
plague, by order of the ecclesiastical council held there between
1431 and 1438, several members of which had fallen victims to its
ravages. It was this council that elected Count Amedee VIII.
of Savoy as pope under the name of Felix V. ; but he resigned his
claims two years after, in order to restore peace to the church,
and retired to the solitude of Ripaille, on the shores of the lake of
Geneva. In this Dance were the genuine portraits of several
who were present at the council. The pope was Felix V. ; the
emperor, Sigismund; and the king, Albert II. There, too, was
./Eneas Sylvius, secretary of the council, afterwards Pope Pius II.
This historical painting is now gone, but engravings of it are
still to be seen full of interest.

The Dance of Death best known to us is that on the covered
bridge of Lucerne, which no American traveller in Switzerland
fails to cross, and it is celebrated by Longfellow in the " Golden

58 THE DANCE OF DEATH. [April,

Legend." This bridge, three hundred and ten feet long, was built
over the Reuss in 1404. It is sometimes called the Todesbrticke,
or the Bridge of Death, from the paintings that adorn it. These
are in the triangles formed by the timbers that support the roof,
and a portion of them necessarily face each end, so whichever
way you cross there is, if you look up, a long series of lugubrious
scenes before you.

"The Dance of Death !
All that go to and fro must look upon it,
Mindful of what they shall be, while beneath,
Among the wooden piles, the turbulent river
Rushes, impetuous as the river of life,
'With dimpling eddies, ever green and bright,
Save where the shadow of this bridge falls on it."

These paintings, thirty-six in number, were executed by Kas-
par Meglinger (1631-1637), and have beneath them stanzas cor-
responding to the subject. Death appears everywhere at the
table, holding a wineglass ; behind a counter, calling on all to buy ;
with a comb in hand to array a lady for a ball ; at the bar as an
advocate an advocate that invariably wins his cause; as the
guide of a monk on his way to administer the sacraments to the
dying. Here

" He has stolen a jester's cap and bells,
And dances with the queen " ;

and further on

" The new-wedded wife,

Coming from the church with her beloved lord,
He startles with the rattle of his drum."

In one angle is a gay party driving in the country. The chil-
dren are laughing and joking. Death, in the garb of a coach-
man, sits on the box, snapping his whip as if in a hurry to arrive.
In another angle he sits on the crupper behind a cavalier who is
flying from the battle-field for fear of being slain. Not far off is

" Death playing on a dulcimer. Behind him
A poor old woman with a rosary
Follows the sound, and seems to wish her feet
Were swifter to o'ertake him. Underneath
The inscription reads : ' Better is Death than Life.'"

The contrast between this long picture-gallery of Death and the
brilliant landscape around it, with its fair lake dimpling and
laughing in the sun, encircled by beautiful mountains, Pilatus
among them with his windy pines,

1 88 1.] THE DANCE OF DEATH. 59

" Shaking his cloudy tresses loose in air,"
is exceedingly striking. You feel the force of Elsie's reflection :

" The grave itself is but a covered bridge
Leading from light to light through a brief darkness."

There is another Dance of Death at Lucerne which, though
more ancient, is seldom visited. It was painted for the cloister
of the Jesuits by Jacob de Wyl, who belonged to an old noble
family of this region. After his death, in 1621, his widow mar-
ried Kaspar Meglinger, a pupil of his, who painted the Dance on
the bridge. Wyl's paintings are still preserved in the town li-
brary. They are in twenty-four groups, beginning with the ex-
pulsion from Paradise, and ending with an ossuary. Death is not
represented as a skeleton, but as a fleshless, cadaverous being
with eyes that burn in their sunken sockets.

In the chapel of the dead in the Augustinian convent at
Vjenna one of the friars, Ulric Mergerle, better known by his
monastic name of Abraham a Sancta Clara (1642-1709), painted a
Dance Macabre in which he variously represents Death as enter-
ing a window by means of a ladder, breaking to pieces the boxes
and gallipots of an apothecary, playing chess with a lord, and as a
hunter who has just brought down a stag. In one place a har-
lequin or jester is making grimaces at Death, which reminds us
of more than one allusion in Shakspere to this attendant at the
royal court of Death :

" Merely thou art Death's fool :
For him thou labor'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still." *

And again, in " Pericles, Prince of Tyre ".:

" Or tie my treasure up in silken bags
To please the fool and death."

The Dance at Vienna was engraved and published at Nurem-
berg in 1710. Abraham a Sancta Clara, the painter, was noted
as a preacher of great originality, and seems, from the sermons
that have come down to us, to have used language as bold and
figures as startling as the illustrations in his Dance Macabre.

The most noted Dance of Death in Germany is that in the
baptismal chapel of St. Mary's church at Lubeck a fearful spec-
tacle indeed for the new-born infant's eyes to open upon. It

* " Measure for Measure," act iii. scene i.

60 THE DANCE OF DEATH. [April,

consists of twenty-four persons of natural size, each one attended
by a skeleton. Death leads the dance, playing on a flute,

"And they cannot choose but follow
Whither he leads."

With the exception of the empress and a young girl, it is ex-
clusively a dance of men. To the merchant that figures in it
Death says : " Remember the bankruptcy Adam once made.
That left thee a debt I call on thee to pay. Pay me now what
thou owest, that I may bear away my dues." The infant alone
takes no part in the dance, but lies in its cradle, with Death close
at hand, saying : " My first utterance was a cry."

The Todtentanz in the churchyard of Neustadt, near Dresden,
is curious because executed in bas-reliefs. These were sculp-
tured by the order of Duke George the Bearded. Having lost his
wife and six children, he fell into a state of deep melancholy, and,
causing these reliefs to be made, he placed them in his own
house, but they were afterwards removed. They are divided
into four series : one is devoted to ecclesiastics, two to laymen of
different ranks, and the fourth to women. The Emperor Charles
V., King Ferdinand I., and Duke George himself with a rosary
in his hand, are represented in the dance, and before them is
Death beating on a drum. But before the long line of church-
men, with the pope at their head, he is playing on a flute. The
costumes in these reliefs are very curious. In the dance of wo-
men is an abbess in her mantle of ceremony, a lady of rank sup-
posed to be Barbara, the wife of Duke George, a peasant with a
burden on her back, etc., all of whom Death is preparing to cut
down with his reaping-hook, reminding one of Longfellow's
lines :

" There is a Reaper whose name is Death,

And with his sickle keen
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between."

There is another sculptured Dance of Death in the cloister at
Rouen, known as the Aitre of St. Maclou, formerly used as a
burial-place, which is about one hundred and fifty feet long and
one hundred wide, and surrounded by an open gallery, covered
and paved, where once stood two altars for the celebration of
Mass for the dead. The centre is now planted with broad-spread-
ing lime-trees, and used as a play-ground for the schools that

1 88 1.] THE DANCE OF DEATH. 6r

open into it, so that, the ancient court of Death is in our day
merry with the voices of children. Of the thirty-nine columns
that once supported the gallery thirty-one remain, on each of
which is carved a representative of some grade of society in the
icy grasp of Death, but now considerably mutilated. The series
begins with the fall of man. Adam and Eve are standing by the
tree of knowledge, around which is twined the serpent, its upper
part like unto the form of a woman, as Raphael has represented
it. The figure of Eve, which is in good preservation, is remark-
able for its grace and beauty of outline.

Adam and Eve, who by their transgression brought Death into
the world and all our woe, rightfully begin the Dance of Death,
and they are seldom omitted. Sometimes the tree of knowledge
is curiously represented as branching out from the extended
arms of Death, whose twisted limbs form the trunk. The ser-
pent winding around his shoulders offers Eve the forbidden
fruit, and Adam is stretching out his hand to show his part in
the sin of disobedience.

The most perfect painting of the Dance Macabre in France is
in the abbatial church of La Chaise Dieu in Auvergne. It is
painted on the exterior wall of the choir, and the long array of
ghastly figures looking down into one of the dampest, gloomiest
of aisles, where stands a row of old stone coffins, seems like an
apparition of spectres. Here are all grades of society, beginning,
as usual, with a pope and an emperor, and they are all remarka-
ble for expression. Death attends each person, and by his grasp
links them all into one long chain. His contortions and mali-
cious glee at the reluctance of his partners in the dance are ludi-
crous but terrible. He throws his head back so far with horrid
laughter, as he clutches a shrinking old woman, that he almost
topples over. He lays his hand on the cardinal's head with
an ironical grin, and gives a joyful leap with one of his long,
skinny legs. He stands behind a monk and seems to be mimick-
ing the holy man's air of resignation. But he veils his face with
a winding-sheet before the saintly nun, and with his hand before
the innocent babe in its cradle.

These paintings of the Dance Macabre were probably a mise
en scene of the popular sermons of the middle ages, in which Death
was often made to address people of every condition. Such dra-
matic discourses were naturally embodied in rhymes and pictures
for the people, and out of them grew dramas and pantomimes
performed in the cloisters and cemeteries, perhaps on All Souls'
eve, representing people of all ranks led off by phantoms, some-

62 THE DANCE OF DEATH. [April,

times two and two, sometimes in a circle, but mysteriously disap-
pearing at last, one by one, into a horrible darkness. Michelet
says these exhibitions were relished exceedingly by the English,
who introduced them into France. An old document at Besan-
gon speaks of a Dance Macabre performed in that town, July 10,
1453, after Mass in the church of St. John the Evangelist, at the
time of the provincial chapter of the Minor Friars. And similar
spectacles took place in the Cemetery of the Innocents at Paris,
which gave rise, perhaps, to the custom of exposing simulacres in
the open air, like the alabaster skeleton of Pilon exhibited in the
eighteenth century. These masquerades originally were by no
means of a frivolous or profane nature, but, like the old mysteries,
were performed in a serious religious spirit, and when they took
place at night by the lurid light of torches, among the very tombs
of the dead, must have been impressive to the last degree. No
doubt in the course of time they were profaned and had to be for-
bidden by the church, like the sacred dances once so common and
some other mediaeval customs of religious import. The Duke of
Bedford, after the victory of Verneuil in 1422, celebrated at Paris
the triumph of the English by one of these spectacles, which
must have seemed cruel to the inhabitants after so many of their
fellow-citizens had fallen victims to the horrible famine. A pro-
cession was formed that passed through the streets with the King
of Terrors at the head, wearing a crown and carrying a sceptre
in his bony hands, and seated on a throne sparkling with gold and
precious stones.

Dandolo relates that amid the splendid festivities celebrated
at Florence in the time of Lorenzo de' Medici, Pietro Cosimo, the
painter, who excelled in the arrangement of all those spectacles
so popular in Italy, secretly prepared a masquerade of Death for
the carnival of 1580, and one night, to the astonishment and terror
of the revellers, a strange procession, lit up by the glare of
torches, appeared in the streets, slowly moving along to the
sound of trumpets giving out a hoarse, lamentable peal. In the
midst was a black car adorned with skulls and cross-bones, drawn
by buffaloes, and surmounted by a gigantic figure of Death with
a huge scythe in his hand, surrounded by coffins, out of which,
every time the procession stopped, issued forth awful spectres
clothed in black, who seated themselves on the edge of their
coffins and sang dirges of appalling solemnity, sometimes appeal-
ing to the religious sentiment of the immense crowd, dwelling on
the nothingness of human life, and calling on them to do penance,
as in the following hymn :

1 88 1.] THE DANCE OF DEATH. 63

" Dolor, pianto, penitenza
Ci tormentan tuttavia ;
Questa morta compagnia
Va gridando Penitenza !

" Pompe, glorie, onori e stati,
Passan tutti e nulla dura,
Ed infinia la sepoltura
Ci fa far la Penitenza ! "

Attendants in black and white robes, wearing masks like death's-
heads, bore funeral torches before and behind this car at just the
distance to give effect to this spectral scene, and behind came a
throng of dark forms, like shades from another world, mounted
on horses of extreme tenuity, each one with four attendants,
shrouded in palls, carrying torches and banners on which, as
well as on the draperies of the horses, were death's-heads and
other funereal emblems. And as they passed along they chanted
in trembling accents the solemn " Miserere." The effect of this
unexpected apparition amid the wild gayeties of the carnival may
be imagined.

Cervantes doubtless had in his mind one of these ghostly mas-
querades when he related how his knight of the rueful counte-
nance, in his quest of adventures, met a huge van on which sat
Death accompanied by an emperor, a knight, and other attend-
ants. It was driven by a frightful demon, who, in reply to his
questions, said : " Senor, we belong to a company of strollers.
This morning, being the octave of Corpus Christi, we performed
a piece in a village the other side of the hill, called the Cortes or
Parliament of Death, and we are going to play it again in yonder
village. That fellow there acts the part of Death ; that other, an
angel ; yon woman, our author's wife, a queen ; the one beyond,
a soldier ; that one, an emperor ; and I, that of a devil, one of the
chief personages in the drama, at your service."

Ainsworth, in his Old St. Paid's, tells how Judith and Chowles
came by night upon a company of skeletons in the subterra-
nean church, some of whom were playing on psalteries, others on
rebecs, others on tambours, every instrument giving out a wild,
unearthly sound. Each skeleton had a mortal at his left hand,
and seen by a blue, glimmering light through the massive pillars,
beneath the dark, ponderous arches, they looked like a congrega-
tion of phantoms ; but on closer examination could be distin-
guished a pope in his tiara and pontifical dress, a monarch with
his sceptre and royal robes, a queen wearing her crown, a bishop

64 THE DANCE OF DEATH. [April,

with his mitre, an abbot with his crosier, a nun in her wimple, a
duke in his robes of state, a grave canon of the church, a knight
in his armor, a judge, an advocate, and a magistrate, all in their
robes ; a mendicant friar, a physician, an astrologer, a miser, a
soldier, a fool, a beggar, a robber, a pedlar, a blind man, and a
gamester, all distinguished by their apparel. After winding off
through the gloomy aisle the tallest of the spectres sprang for-
ward with a wild, demoniacal laugh, enough to chill the very
blood in one's veins, and, beating his drum, the company filed off
two by two to the upper church, where they formed an immense
ring and began a giddy dance. These were the Earl of Rochester
and his associates, who, recklessly turning the most appalling of sub-
jects into a jest at the very time of the plague, were acting out
the old Dance of Death as depicted in the Pardon churchyard of
the north cloister.

The name of one great painter is specially associated with the
Dance of Death that of Holbein, on account of his famous series
of woodcuts depicting scenes of every-day life in which Death
makes his appearance. He had always been familiar with the
Dance in his native town of Bale, and does not depart from tradi-
tional rules as to the representation of Death, but he has so im-
parted to his work the spirit and originality of true genius as to
throw all other designs of the same subject into the shade. They
have, however, been too often described to be dwelt upon here.
Strange that this great painter of Death should have been struck
down by the plague at London, similar to the pestilence which
led to the Dance Macabre at Bale and in so many other places,
and become so confounded with his fellow-mortals in the repub-
lic of the grave that his resting-place is wholly unknown.

Some suppose the old legend ofLes TroisMortset les Trois Vifs
the Three Living and the Three Dead so popular among all Chris-
tian nations in the middle ages, to be the germ of the Dance Ma-
cabre. It is perhaps older, there being three metrical versions of
it in the French of the thirteenth century. This legend is in sub-
stance as follows :

Three young cavaliers, with falcons on their wrists, issued
forth one fine hunting day, and, passing through a cemetery with
all the thoughtlessness of youth, exchanging gay pleasantries as
they went, were stopped by a hermit coming out of his cell, who
pointed with warning gesture to three half-open tombs. The
first one contained the body of a princess borne off in the flower
of her life, Death withering at one stroke the beauty of which she
had been so vain. In the second was that of a king which the

1 88 1.] THE DANCE OF DEATH. 65

worms were ready to devour. And in the third was one in the
last stage of dissolution, horrible to behold. As the young men
gazed with startled aspect at this spectacle the hermit said :

" Vide qvid eris : qvomodo gavdia qvaeris ?
Per nvllam sortem poteris evadere mortem.
Nee modo laeteris qvia forsan eras morieris."

He had scarcely finished before a concert of lamentable voices
issued from the three graves : " Why puffed up with pride, un-
happy men ? " said one of the voices. " Be mindful of what you
are, and remember that what I am you soon will be." And the
other voices added, one after the other : " Every one in his turn.
Death spares no one, rich or poor, and, though we are now what
you will soon become, we once were all that you now are." The
young men were affected by what they saw and heard, but only
one of them was sufficiently impressed to remain and follow the
holy example of the hermit. His companions, drawn on by love
of pleasure, gaily pursued their way, but had not proceeded far
before Death pierced them with his arrows, saying :

So colei c'ocido omne persona
Giovene e vecchie . . . subito

" I am he who slays all men suddenly, the young as well as
old."

This scene is frescoed on the walls of the staircase of the
Benedictines at Subiaco by which the monks slowly and solemn-
ly descend to the cemetery, bearing their dead, some of whom
perhaps look at the shadowy forms as they pass, thinking how
they, too, had been as suddenly arrested in the pride and thought-
lessness of youth to follow a holy career. A similar scene is de-
picted on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, where you see
richly-attired princes and dames, in descending from the moun-
tains with their dogs and falcons, come upon St. Macarius, the
hermit, who, as he turns to the hunters, points to three yawning
graves.

The Due de Berry had the legend of Les Trois Marts et les
Trois Vifs sculptured (1408) on the portal of the Church of the
Innocents at Paris, in which, according to quaint rhymes on the
cornice, he was afterwards buried. We find it also painted on a
panel of the choir at Ennezat, in Auvergne, opposite another on
which a demon is disputing with St. Michael over the body of
Moses. There are likewise the remains of one in the church at
Ditchingham, England, and another was discovered in 1846 on

VOL. XXXIII. 5

66 THE DANCE OF DEATH. [April,

the arch of the chancel of Battle Abbey, near Hastings a painting
probably of the fourteenth century.

There is one at Zalt-Boemel, Holland, which is very curious.
On one side of the church are painted the Three Living sur-
rounded by their dogs and servants. One of them, mounted on a
white horse, has a falcon on his wrist, and a red and yellow tur-
ban on his head. On one side are woods where a stag is to be
seen, and on the other are the walls and towers of Zalt-Boemel, so
intact as to prove the painting to have been executed before the
town was besieged by the Spanish under Admiral de Mendoza in
1599. On the opposite side of the church are the Three Dead
rising from their tombs, partly covered by their winding-sheets,
one holding a spade and the others the stone lids of their coffins.
Above are scrolls with the moral they address the Three Living
across the nave, but partly effaced : " Death has brought us to
this us who once ruled over men, kings as you are, but now the
food of worms. Consider what you are. . . . Therefore has-
ten. . . ."

The same subject is frequently found among the illustrations
in ancient books of office. In all such representations the hermit
is generally St. Macarius of Alexandria, perhaps on account of
the legend that, interrogating a skull one day as to the fate of its
soul, it revealed to him a gradation of sufferings in the other
world in terms that recall the circles of woe in the Inferno of
Dante. This legend is too significant to be omitted :

" One day, as Macarius wandered among those ancient Egyptian tombs
wherein he had made himself a dwelling-place, he found the skull of a
mummy, and, turning it over with his crutch, he inquired to whom it be-
longed ; and it replied, ' To a pagan.' And Macarius, looking into the empty
eyes, said : ' Where, then, is thy soul?' And the head replied: ' In hell.'
Macarius asked : ' How deep ? ' And the head replied : ' The depth is
greater than the distance from earth to heaven.' Then Macarius asked :
' Are there any deeper than thou art ? ' The skull replied : ' Yes, the Jews
are deeper still.' And Macarius asked : ' Are there any deeper than the
Jews ? ' To which the head replied : ' Yes, in sooth ! for the Christians whom
Jesus Christ hath redeemed, and who show in their actions that they de-
spise his doctrine, are deeper still. 1 " *

Some suppose the term " Dance Macabre " to be derived
from St. Macarius, who is so often introduced into these pictures.
Others think it comes from macbourah, the Arabic for cemetery ;
and others again from the name of the artist or poet who first

* Sacred and Legendary Art.

1 88 1.] THE DANCE OF DEATH. 67

made use of this subject. The term " Dance of Death " is
modern.

Scenes analogous to the Dance of Death were formerly graven
on armor, cast on bells, carved on bedsteads, painted in missals
and even on ladies' fans, and sculptured in churches. Cards were
painted for Charles V. of France, some of which are still pre-
served, on which are to be seen the pope in a blue mantle, cardi-
nals in red, a king in royal robes, and Death himself on a pale
horse, with his scythe raised, riding over his victims. The card
with Death on it was the thirteenth, generally considered an
ominous number, and therefore in greater harmony with the
subject.

In the old Dominican convent of San Pietro Martire at Na-
ples, now shamefully converted into a tobacco-manufactory, was
a bas-relief, recently placed in the Museum, representing Death as
a royal hunter with a double crown on his head, and a falcon on
his wrist ready to dart off in pursuit of his prey. Victims of all
ages lie at his feet, and before him is a merchant supplicatirigly
offering him a large sum of money he is pouring out of a sack,
saying :

" Tuto te volio dare
Se mi lasci scampare "

" I will give thee all if thoti wilt suffer me to escape " ; but a
refusal is on the lips of remorseless Death.

An old Psalter in which King Henry VI. of England is de-
picted in his boyhood, with the arms of England and France on his
mantle and a crown on his head, kneeling before the Virgin, with
St. Catherine, whose name he bore, at his side, contains the pic-
ture of five skeletons, wearing tiaras, crowns, and cardinals' hats,
seated in a row above five monks who are chanting in their stalls
with open breviaries before them and five choristers below, while
two monks, prostrate before the altar, are praying with beseeching
gesture.

Holbein furnished designs for arms in the sixteenth century
in which, though the figures are necessarily small, are strikingly
depicted the terror of a king letting his sceptre fall at the ap-
proach of Death, the despair of the queen, the stout resistance of
a woman writhing and disputing with the foe, and the bold defi-
ance of a soldier whose attitude recalls the line in Shakspere : " I
throw my glove to Death himself." In an old German engrav-
ing men and women are issuing from the walls of a city against
Death, who is approaching with his arrows. And elsewhere a

68 THE DANCE OF DEATH. [April,

knight, armed to the teeth, is shown contending with Death, who
carries a buckler and sword, or perhaps an uplifted bone like a
cudgel.

There is, in fact, no end to the variety of forms Death as-
sumes in such representations. A woman looks in a mirror and
sees only a hideous skeleton reflected. Another on a soft couch
is awakened by two phantoms opening the curtain, one of whom
is playing on a viol. A duchess is at her toilette, with Death be-
hind her clasping around her throat a necklace of bones. Some-
times he poses as a bridegroom to youth and beauty, saying, as
in the Spanish Danza de la Muerte :

" Bring to my dance, and bring without delay,
Those damsels twain you see so bright and fair:

They came, t>ut came not in a willing way,
To list my chants of mortal grief and care :
Nor shall the flowers and roses fresh they wear,

Nor rich attire, avail their forms to save.

They strive in vain who strive against the grave.
It may not be : my wedded brides they are."

In other pictures Death slips behind a merchant weighing his
gold, to place a gleaming skull in the balance as a counterpoise to
his ducats. He pours out lavish bumpers for a wine-bibber. He
directs a blind man toward a ditch, taking care to detach his dog.
He makes grimaces behind the back of a king and lays his hand
on the royal crown, or, as Shakspere says, doubtless in allusion to
some such scene:

" Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp."

He carries the train of an emperor. He puts on a cardinal's
hat, and helps enthrone a venerable old man whose head bends
down under the weight of the tiara. He knocks unexpectedly at
the portal of a castle, perhaps addressing its lord in the words of
Manrique :

' Saying, good cavalier, prepare
To leave this world of toil and care

With joyful mien :

Let thy strong heart of steel this day
D ut on its armor for the fray,

The closing scene."

These pictures of Death in so many fgrms, these spectres on

1 88 1.] THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. % 69

pale white horses, these ghastly skeletons with scythe and hour-
glass, these reapers in the service of Death, these Dances in an-
cient cemeteries and gloomy aisles, may not be among the best
models handed down to us from the middle ages, but they are in-
teresting monuments of the past, and valuable as an index to the
mediaeval mind. They have, too, a moral of their own, and are
so interwoven with the literature of the Christian world as to
make the study of them not wholly useless.

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH AND THE COURTS OF

LAW.

THE Protestant Established Church of England is in tribula-
tion. Some of her clergy, after a trial in the courts of law, hav-
ing been condemned for violations of the law, have been arrested
and imprisoned for refusing to obey the mandates of the court.
The contest between Ritualism and the courts of law has of late
become greatly intensified, and is rapidly becoming one between
law and authority on one hand and disobedience on the other.
The indignation of those who sympathize with the High-Church
party is great. The English Church Union, which may be con-
sidered to stand in the same position to the Ritualists as the
Land League in Ireland does to the farmers, is greatly disturbed
at the imprisonment of those whom it designates priests and mar-
tyrs. But no one imagines that those clergymen who have been
committed to prison have been punished for the wearing of a vest-
ment, however illegal and reprehensible such an act might be. It
is well known that the question has passed altogether into a new
stage, and that they were imprisoned for contempt of court, for
refusing to obey the sentence and acknowledge the jurisdiction
of the judge of the ecclesiastical court appointed by Parliament.
Herein lies the difficulty. Dr. Pusey and others have asserted
the contrary, but the general consensus of opinion is against them.
Many even among the ranks of High-Churchmen are beginning
to think that it is not seemly that persons holding official posi-
tions in an established church, and enjoying special benefits
therefrom, should be allowed to defy all authority and inaugu-
rate an ecclesiastical rebellion. With the exception of the leading
Ritualistic papers, no journal in England manifested approval of

70 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH AND [April,

Mr. Dale's conduct or the action of the English Church Union,
which advocated the cause of the "martyrs." The facts of the
case are simple. The Rev. T. P. Dale, a man of uprightness and
piety and a gentleman of education and position, has persisted in
doing certain things declared by the established law to be illegal.
No one seeks to compel him to be where the law can interfere
with his private views, but it has been decided, and we think justly,
that as long as he remains under his contract with the Establish-
ment he is bound to obey its laws. It is quite open to him to se-
cede or to join any of the numerous sects and variations of Pro-
testantism by which he is surrounded, or to make his submission to
the Apostolic See. The choice apparently lies between conscience
and casuistry. He preferred the latter, and was imprisoned, and
we cannot understand how any one can regard him in the light
of a martyr. Some enthusiastic partisans have actually gone so
far as to liken him to Daniel in the lions' den, whilst they com-
pare his diocesan, the Bishop of London, to his persecuting pre-
decessor Bonner in the reign of Queen Mary, and the present
sovereign of England to Diocletian. We quote this to show how
very strongly many persons feel in the matter. Some, in the
fulness of their indignation, have advocated extreme measures,
and are prepared to espouse the cause of the Liberation So-
ciety and seek a solution of the difficulty in disestablishment.
Such enthusiasts receive but slight sympathy in official quar-
ters, for the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Tait), in a reply to
some members of Mr. Dale's congregation, did not hesitate to
affirm that Mr. Dale and his supporters were deserving of no
assistance, for they had defied all authority, whether that of
judge, queen, convocation, or bishop, and he proceeded to point
out that they were even acting contrary to the advice given by
some hundred Anglican, American and colonial, prelates assem-
bled at Lambeth in 1879.

The censures of the bishops are generally treated by Ritual-
ists with derision, unless such censures are directed against their
opponents. It is therefore somewhat difficult, even with the best
wishes in the world, to sympathize with them. They appear to
act on no principle. Whilst professing the most profound respect
for episcopacy, they invariably treat all prelates with disdain
whenever they happen to disagree with them. The Ritualist, in
fact, claims for himself complete infallibility, and Ritualism, if per-
sisted in, must eventually wreck the Anglican communion and re-
duce the theory of private judgment to an absurdity.

The arrest and committal to jail of Mr. Enraght, a clergyman

1 88 1.] THE COURTS OF LAW. 71

from Birmingham, is thus described in one of the numerous Ritu-
alistic journals, and is headed

"THE VICTORIAN PERSECUTION.

"All England has by this time heard of the arrest of the vicar of
Holy Trinity, Birmingham, for ritualistic practices. . . . The suspense of the
parishioners was ended on Saturday last ; very few minutes were allowed
them in which to assemble, but these sufficed to enable them to make a de-
monstration never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The scene
when the vicar stood bareheaded ut the vicarage gate, addressing the silent
and sympathizing crowd, bidding them farewell and blessing them in the
name of his divine Master, was most impressive."

The local papers say it was an extraordinary scene, at once
unseemly and ridiculous, and they are indignant with Mr.
Enraght for his remarks on the bishops. At Mr. Enraght's re-
quest the journey to the jail was made on foot. When near the
prison a brother clergyman thus addressed him : " This is an age
of religious liberty, but can any one imagine we are living in the
reign of Queen Victoria, in the middle of the nineteenth century ?
The bishops are frequently asking why parents do not encour-
age their sons to take holy orders ; now, standing in front of War-
wick jail, we give a ready answer." These observations were
received by the crowd with approval. On arriving at the jail
Dr. Nicholson, rector of a church in Leamington, a gentleman
who distinguished himself by a somewhat long correspondence
some five years ago with Cardinal Manning on the subject of
the Sacred Heart, asked Mr. Enraght's permission to give him
his blessing. Mr. Enraght assented, knelt upon the pavement
in front of the prison gates, whilst Dr. Nicholson offered up a
prayer and pronounced a blessing. Simultaneously with the de-
parture of Mr. Enraght for Warwick a large bill bearing these
words was posted throughout the parish :

"PARISHIONERS OF HOLY TRINITY, BORDESLEY : Your vicar has been
put into Warwick jail. What for? He is imprisoned for conducting ser-
vice as the church orders him. Look at your prayer-books. But thou-
sands of the clergy break the laws of the church in every direction and no
one says anything. Is this fair play ? Mr. Gladstone says the law under
which he is being persecuted is unjust and unconstitutional. He is your
vicar, therefore raise your voice louder than any one else's in crying out
against this shameful business. Stand up for him as you did at the Easter
vestry row."

It is a significant fact that shortly after the imprisonment of
these two clergymen five hundred new members joined the Eng-

72 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH AND [April,

lish Church Union, and that a sum approaching to 1,000 was
collected at once on the appeal of Archdeacon Denison. It is no
less signilicant that in a large number of churches where advanc-
ed ritual had prevailed without vestments or incense these have
been adopted.

What may be the solution it is impossible to say. The real
question which lies at the root of the whole difficulty is the royal
supremacy. As in the days of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, so is
it now, the royal supremacy is attacked. The question at pre-
sent is that of the authority of the courts whence the judgments
proceed, not the judgments themselves. Once granted that
either Lord Penzance or the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council has spiritual authority, resistance to such authority be-
comes a very serious matter. To a Catholic it appears very
simple, for he knows that Anglicanism is simply the creation of
an act of Parliament and has no spiritual authority of any kind,
but the case is one of extreme difficulty to many a sincere and
conscientious High-Churchman. Such an individual is acting on
Catholic principles which are of themselves true and just, but
which can find no home in Protestantism or any church such as
the Anglican Establishment, based on a compromise and the crea-
ture of the state. Those who argue that under existing circum-
stances it is a gain that the judgments hitherto delivered by the
Privy Council have been irregular, say that, had Lord Penzance
allowed the vestments, Anglicans might as a body have sat down
contented under the shadow of an Erastian system ; and that if in
days to come the doctrine of the Incarnation should be condemn-
ed as heretical, no one could then in consistency have refused
obedience. To have obeyed once would have involved a similar
course on every future occasion, and they assert that they never
will submit to the secular jurisdiction thrust upon the church.

Ritualists, therefore, appear to be smarting under a sense of
twofold injustice : (i) the being judged by courts which have
no authority to decide spiritual questions, (2) the false rulings
of those courts; the principal and most tangible grievance being
the former of the two. Mr. Dale and Mr. Enraght suffered im-
prisonment for refusing to recognize Lord Penzance, or, more ac-
curately, the Judicial Committee of which he is the mouthpiece,
independent of the secondary question as to whether the judg-
ments delivered by them were or were not correct. The Bishop
of London, Mr. Dale's diocesan, having been appealed to by some
of the dispersed congregation, wrote a letter in which he ridicul-
ed the idea of martyrdom, though he distinctly expressed his ob-

1 88 1.] THE COURTS OF LAW. 73

jection to imprisonment. The following extracts are worthy of
note :

"I disapprove and greatly deplore the imprisonment of Mr. Dale on
public as well as on personal grounds, for his sake as well as that of the
church. Imprisonment is not a due or becoming penalty to inflict on a
clergyman as the consequence of such an offence as his, and will always
enlist sympathy on the side of one who is believed to err conscientiously,
however erroneous that conscience may be. Imprisonment, indeed, is a
result of proceedings under the Public Worship Act which was probably
not in the minds of any who framed that act, certainly not in the minds of
those who assisted in passing it. It is a penalty which I could not myself
have been a party to imposing, but one of which I have no power of pro-
curing the remission. It must, however, be borne in rnind that if imprison-
ment proves to be a result of proceedings under the Public Worship Re-
gulation Act, it is equally the consequence of wilful disobedience of any
subject to the sentence of any court of justice in the realm."

Not only did the bishop ignore Mr. Dale's aspirations to mar-
tyrdom, but he declined to recognize the parochial character of
the protest sent to him, asserting that the bona fide parishioners
had nothing to do with the protest. " All the congregation,"
says the bishop, " live in other parishes, and have therefore their
own church and their own pastor, which they have deserted."

The difficulty is apparently insurmountable, and yet outsiders
fail to see why, in a communion that is based upon the right of
private judgment, any Anglican should be hindered from choos-
ing the doctrines which must be preached to him every Sunday.
It seems to them, as well as to many Anglicans themselves, that
it is the birthright of every English-born member of the Estab-
lished Church to select what doctrines and what ritual he ap-
proves of, whether they be put before him in the form of bald
Calvinism, sensational Puseyism, or rigid Latitudinarianism.
The only difficulty that presents itself is that if Anglicanism is to
exist as a church or a corporate body, it must necessarily be gov-
erned by set rules administered by certain qualified courts; and
it must be plain to every member of it that if each clergyman is
allowed to make his own conscience the sole arbiter as to what is
or what is not a proper form of service, it would be utterly im.
possible to preserve that uniformity which is considered a cha-
racteristic of Anglicanism. The imprisoned clergy belong to a
communion whose doctrines and ritual are fixed by act of Par-
liament, and when they took upon them the ministry of that
church they pledged themselves to preach certain doctrines and
to observe a certain ritual, neither of which, however, it is neces-
sary to add, are very definite. The Parliament of England not

74 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH AND [April,

only fixed the law of the Anglican Church, but also appointed
tribunals whose decision has gone against them. On the theory
that no man should be allowed to be a judge in his own cause, all
clergymen of the Established Church are bound to accept the
decision of the lawful authorities and to conform to them like the
rest of mankind. When men feel themselves bound by conscience
to act otherwise, the only logical conclusion is to throw up the
contract they had entered into and be independent and unfet-
tered. The natural penalty incurred by every official who re-
fuses, on conscientious grounds or otherwise, to perform the duties
of his post is loss of office. If the law is to be enforced it seems
that the most practical method would be to deprive clergymen
who cannot obey the law of the rights which the law confers on
ministers of the state church. Clergymen who receive sympathy
as prisoners would neither deserve nor receive much sympathy
if placed, as far as the law can do so, in the position of ordinary
English laymen.

Deprivation, and not imprisonment, appears to be the only
real remedy for refusal to obey the law as it at present stands,
and there is no reason why such a course should not be success-
ful. Then if the deprived should invade the church and make a
disturbance he could be dealt with summarily by the criminal
law as the disturber of the congregation, without any interference
on the part of Lord Penzance or the Privy Council. " Imprison-
ment, unless perpetual, is ineffectual ; for the person imprisoned
(as in the case of Mr. Tooth some years ago), as soon as he is let
out, can at once re-enter his church and resume the same course
as before. Something must be done, for it would be simple an-
archy if every man were to do just what he pleased, recognizing
nothing by which to direct his conduct except his own will.

The Catholic theory is no doubt highly distasteful to the
High-Church school, but it nevertheless has to be affirmed, and
affirmed decisively, in controversies like the present. An estab-
lished church in a Protestant country under constitutional gov-
ernment is neither more nor less than an organization for teach-
ing and practising the religion of the majority. Parliament is in
England the expression of the will of the majority, and therefore
Parliament must be supreme. That is the system which has pre-
vailed in England ever since the course of its political history
converted royal supremacy into parliamentary supremacy in all
matters of government, temporal as well as spiritual, and it is
only on condition of the maintenance of this system that the
majority consent to tolerate an Establishment at all.

1 88 1.] THE COURTS OF LAW. 75

The Catholic idea of a church is of course completely differ-
ent, being that of a divinely-instituted, organic body pronouncing
authoritatively and definitely upon religious truth and falsehood.
The Protestant .idea of an Establishment is that of a church ap-
pointed to teach certain doctrines which, inasmuch as they are
the doctrines of a majority of persons exercising their private
judgment, must, by virtue of the first principle of Protestantism,
be assumed to be true.

It is unfortunate for sincere and religious Protestants that the
Parliament which regulates their doctrine and ritual should be
composed of men of every shade of belief and unbelief; but as
long as the Established Church is upheld such a state of things
must exist, and Catholics can only hope that the anomalies daily
becoming more apparent may open the eyes of many Anglicans
to the unreality of Protestantism.

" We must not indulge our imagination," said Cardinal Newman in one
of his early lectures, some thirty years ago, at the London Oratory, "in the
view we take of the national Establishment. If we dress it up in an ideal
form, as if it were something real, with an independent and a continuous
existence and a proper history, as if it were in deed or in name a church,
then indeed we may feel interest in it, and reverence towards it, and affec-
tion for it, as men who have fallen in love with pictures, or knights in
romance, do battle for high dames whom they have never seen. . . . We
see in the English Church, however, no body politic of any kind ; we see
nothing more or less than an Establishment, a department of government, or
a function or operation of the state, without a substance, a mere collection
of officials depending on and living in the supreme civil power. Its unity
and personality are gone, and with them its power of exciting feelings of
any kind. ... It has no traditions ; it cannot be said to think ; it does not
know what it holds and what it does not ; it is not even conscious of its
own existence. It has no love for its members, or what are sometimes
called its children, nor any instinct whatever, unless attachment to its mas-
ter or love of its place may be so called. . . . Bishop is not like bishop
more than king is like king or ministry like ministry; its prayer-book is an
act of Parliament of two centuries ago. ... It is as little bound by what it
said or did formerly as this morning's newspaper by its former numbers, ex-
cept as it is bound by the law, and while it is upheld by the law it will not
be weakened by the subtraction of individuals nor fortified by their continu-
ance. Its life is an act of Parliament. It will not be able to resist the Arian,
Sabellian, or Unitarian heresies now because Bull or Waterland resisted
them a century or two before."

How true and how prophetic ! The Anglican Church is un-
able to recognize a spiritual supremacy anywhere but in the head
of the government. She sees two religions in the world and two
opposing spiritual chiefs, the one national, non-dogmatic, con-

76 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH AND [April,

venient, useful, and her own ; the other what she calls anti-na-
tional, dogmatic, intolerant, unmanageable, and foreign. Each of
these she views as a reality. She upholds the first because she
likes it ; she resists the second because she detests it, and when any
of her clergy or her laity support it, or tend in that direction, she
is offended ; hence the majority of Anglicans, be they lay or cleri-
cal, condemn Ritualism as a religion of shams and imitation, and
approve of punishment, and even imprisonment, for those who ad-
vocate it. A state church is one thing and a free church is an-
other ; but this apparent playing fast and loose with both, claiming
all the dignities of the one and all the independence of the other,
is a thing that no state will ever concede, nor is it one likely to
be tolerated by the English government.

Feeling runs high, and many are of the opinion that no enact-
ment of an ecclesiastical character passed during the last two hun-
dred and thirty years has been more thoroughly revolutionary
in its leading principles than the Public Worship Regulation Act
of 1874, and has in so short a space of time spread far and wide
the seeds of disaffection. Nevertheless, as long as the act re-
mains unrepealed it seems imprudent and unwise to ignore it.
Those who protest against its provisions now, as they did at the
time of its promulgation, can make use of all legitimate and con-
stitutional means to have it removed from the statute-book ; but
the spectacle of gentlemen of position and education openly re-
pudiating and defying the established law of the country is not
calculated to produce a beneficial effect upon the people.

The view regarding these imprisonments taken by the ordi-
nary foreigner is one that is endorsed by most persons who are
not Ritualists. The Journal de Bruxdles, for instance, says :

" Mr. Dale, rector of St. Vedast, contended that the ecclesiastical tri-
bunal that had condemned him had no right to imprison him. Lord Cole-
ridge, Lord Chief-Justice of England, and his two assistant judges gave
lately an elaborate judgment, in which they reject the pretensions of this
pastor, and prove clearly as the day that Lord Penzance had every right to
send him to the damp straw of the felons. It is not necessary to say that
this is a pure metaphor, and that the reverend gentleman occupies a very
comfortable apartment, in which he receives numerous pilgrims attracted
by his martyrdom, and perhaps also by the good glasses of wine he can offer
them. These good Ritualists are indeed astonishing folks, for they say they
belong to the Church of England, and they obstinately give themselves
over to practices which that church condemns; they deny the competence
of lay tribunals to judge clergymen ; and when condemned they make use of
every jurisdiction and every subterfuge of trickery. However, we shall
probably not hear much more talk about Mr. Dale, though we should be

1 88 1.] THE COURTS OF LAW. 77

surprised if we have heard the last of him, and still more surprised to learn
that he had listened to the voice of reason and become a Catholic."

Bishop Thirlwall (the late Bishop of St. Asaph), who was one
of the greatest scholars and theologians in England, expressed
himself fourteen years ago to the effect that no churchman who
did not desire the subversion of the reformed religion and its final
absorption in the Church of Rome could too deeply distrust or
too strenuously oppose the proceedings of the English Church
Union.

The support given by this society to every clergyman that
has been attacked by the courts shows clearly that the bishop
was not far wrong in his estimation of it ; and yet the society is
perpetually increasing in numbers and gaining adherents amongst
men of high position. It already includes several bishops and
dignitaries, although, it is but fair to add, these are for the most
part colonial. Up to the present the bishops of English sees have
not formally recognized it, but there are signs and indications of
a change. The imprisonment of two clergymen, and the threats
of proceeding against many more, have forced the hands of some,
and the conduct of the Low-Church party, as carried out by the
Church Association, has been openly censured.

The Bishop of Ely (Dr. Woodford), a former chaplain of the
late celebrated Dr. Wilberforce, has taken his stand as the cham-
pion of the Ritualists. In reply to an address signed by about
fifty clergymen in his diocese holding important positions, he
used the following remarkable words : " The Church of England
cannot, without violence to her character as a national and histo-
rical church, refuse to find place for that section of her members
which, although embracing many shades of feeling and practice,
is comprehended under the term Ritualists. To crush or to drive
out a body, consisting of both laity and clergy, which has manifest-
ed not only a love of high ceremonial but a fervent zeal for the
spiritual welfare of the people, which has succeeded in awakening
a sense of religion and a love of the ordinances of Christ amongst
classes of the population which the English Church had utterly
failed to reach, would inevitably be followed by a feeling of dis-
couragement issuing in utter spiritual apathy. . . . Ritualism is
a part of a vast religious movement which has made itself felt
through the whole Anglican communion at home and abroad.
During the last forty-five years the Anglican Church, in Eng-
land, America, and the colonies, has been in the varying throes of
that movement. It has quickened the whole life of the church,

78 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. [April,

but in so doing it has probed sharply her doctrines and usages,
her judicial system, and her constitutional relations to the state.
At such an epoch, to confront any strong development of feeling
and action with the rigidity of the law produces in states revo-
lution, in churches schism." There can be no doubt that there is
a great deal of truth in these remarks, especially the concluding
portion of them, and it is more than probable that the action of
the Low-Church party in resorting to force will prove the begin-
ning of the disruption of Anglicanism, and further corroborate
the well-known maxim of the Right Honorable John Bright with
regard to the Irish difficulty, faak force is no remedy. From what-
ever point of view we regard the imprisonment of Ritualistic
clergymen, we can but come to the conclusion that it is the be-
ginning of the end.

HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT.

BEFORE every man lies a path leading to infinity,
But the wisest man travels only a short distance.

- Schiller.

EXPECTATION AND FULFILMENT.

THE youth puts to sea with a thousand-masted fleet,
The old man comes into port on one boat saved from the wreck.

Schiller.

1 88 1.] REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. 79

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

MADE TO A DEVOUT SERVANT OF OUR LORD, CALLED MOTHER

JULIANA,

An ' anchor ete of Norwich, who lived in the days of King Edward III.

THE SECOND CHAPTER.

THIS Revelation did the Lord witsafe * to me,
A simple creature and unlettered as I be,

And yet in deadlie flesh.

In year of Grace the thirteen hundredth seventie third,
Upon the fourteenth daie of Maie, I saw and heard

What did my soule refresh.

Poor creature as I was, three gifts I humbly sought,
Which fro my youth had alway been in thought,

And subject of my praier.

The first wish was to have the Passion brought to mind ;
The second praied I sicknes bodilie to find ;

The third three woimdes to bear.

Me thought my feeling in the Passion was some deale,
But yet, by grace of God, I longed it more to feel,

And see its verie sight.

Me thought I would that time have been with Magdalene,
And other Jesu's lovers present at that scene

Who witnessed his sore plight ;
That with them I might view the Passion bodilie,
And all the dreedful paines he suffered for me,

And with them him bemoan.
For that like them I verie dearlie loved him ;
Though of his cup of woe I could not sip the brim,

Yet wished 'twere all mine own.
None other sight ne shewing did my soule desire ;
For to be saved at last I did in sooth aspire

Because of God's mercie.

I had none other meaning save this one alone
To have more mind of Jesu's Passion, and bemoan

His sufferings for me.

The second to my contrite heart did freelie come
Not seeking it ne fearing it as wearisome

A icknes unto death

* Witsafe vouchsafe.

8o REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. [April,

So travellous and hard that 1 should undertake
All Rites of Holie Church and seem to quite forsake

My hopes of life and breath.

As well might ween myself that I had come to die,
And eke the like appear to others standing by,

And think me at mine end.

For I would have no fleshlie comfort left to me,
Ne earthlie life ne hope, but verie agonie

Almost my soule to rend ;

All paines as great and sore as verie death would bring ;
All bodilie and ghostlie feares my spirit wring,

And nought be spared of dread.

That fiendes might tempt me, and by their foul power alarm
And terrifie me, yet withouten ani'e harm,

And be in all but dead.

And this meant I ; for I would wholly purged be,
To afterward live unto God more worthilie

Because of that disease.

For I had hoped it might have been to my reward
When I should come to die to sooner see my Lord,

If so it should him please.

I did condition make when offering my praier
To see the Passion and the sicknes I would bear,

Therefore said I, in fine :

" Lord ! what I would thou know'st, and if that be thy will ;
But if not, then, good Lord, be pleased, take not it ill,

For all thy will is mine."
This sicknes I did ask for even in my youth
That it might come to me at thirtie years in sooth,

If God would it permit.

The third, by word of Holie Church and grace divine,
Three woundes in life to have my heart did strong incline,

Which three are these, to wit :

The woundes of true contrition and compassion kind,
With wilfull longing unto God with all my mind ;

And as above is writ

The twaine I sought with a condition to confirm :
But this third asked I mightilie withouten anie terme,

Yet readie to submit.

These twaine desires passed from my mind and went awaie,
But that which was the third dwelled continuallie,

Nor did me ever quit.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 81

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER XV.

THE HEIRS ARE DEAD.

KILLANY was not the most ingenious of plotters, nor, con-
sidering the experience which his adventurous life had given
him, the shrewdest and coolest of men. Likes and dislikes were
rapidly formed in his bosom shoals which the true Bohemian
ever avoids and he gave them cunning but ready expression.
Where they interfered with prudence, prudence often got the
worst of it. His natural clear-headedness often yielded to pas-
sion. Even his own interests were occasionally injured by inane
attempts to gratify the desire of revenge. Something of the
honorable dispositions of earlier years still lingered in him. He
had still the instincts of the gentleman, and years of criminal as-
sociations had not wholly destroyed them. He could not pocket
insult or contempt always, although his training and his interest
urgently insisted. It was to his interest that Olivia should not
be made an open enemy. Her influence with Nano was power-
ful and dangerous, yet not impossible to be destroyed. A little
patience, a little scheming, and the thing was done. Better and
closer friends than she and Miss McDonell were parted every
day by easily-manufactured causes. But Olivia's silent and un-
disguised contempt for him stung him into retaliation, and, to add
to the bitterness of his vengeance, there was the newly-risen fear
of a rival in the handsome, virtuous Dr. Fullerton. He scarcely
waited to reckon consequences. He felt assured that the Fuller-
tons would find it difficult to stand against a shower of well-
directed calumnies. Their poverty, their pride, their . c1 ight ac-
quaintance in the city would dishearten them too much that they
should enter on a contest with society, which, having once re-
ceived an idea, never lets go its hold on any consideration. By
one hasty act he arrayed against himself the doctor, Sir Stanley,
and probably Nano ; and should the matter be investigated closely,
and the charge proved false and traced to him, society's doors
would be shut against him. These probabilities, in the heat of
his passion, he looked on with disdain. They were not likely to
happen. His cunning was of too high an order to permit him to
be discovered by means of his own footsteps. The condition of
his affairs by that time would be so materially changed that if he

VOL. XXXIII. 6

82 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

were discovered he could afford to snap his fingers at his ene-
mies. Moreover, he had a strong and well-grounded suspicion
that the Fullertons knew very little of father or mother. They
never spoke of them, never seemed to have relatives or influen-
tial friends, and were reticent on their early life. It was just
possible that in secretly undermining their good name he had
struck upon the secret of their lives, the skeleton of their closet ;
and if his good fortune really so favored him he was well rid of
them for ever. Carrying the war into Africa Dr. Killany called
this movement, but it did not promise to succeed quite as well as
the expedition which gave rise to the saying.

He had skilfully entangled Nano in the meshes of his schemes,
and was drawing her more and more, as the days passed, towards
the evil act of which they were the preparation. Even here he
had not acted with great tact, although his judgment was unques-
tionably good. He was so confident of his thorough understand-
ing of Nano's character that he was often led into blunders in her
regard surprising enough to himself when he examined them
dispassionately afterwards. Her attachment to good an.d hatred
of what was^-adically evil still puzzled him. He thought he knew
the strength of her instincts, but it. had not entered into his mind
that she would be willing to surrender her fortune, or its greater
part, to strangers without a struggle. Her firmness on this
point, however, had necessitated the fiction of the death of the
heirs. She had seized upon this door of escape eagerly. It was
the straw to the drowning man, and, though it lay weakly enough
in her hands, her frenzied fancy magnified it into a certainty of
safety. Much as she distrusted Killany, it never occurred to her
that, interested as he was in the affair, the thing might be a clever
invention. His own conduct was strangely mysterious. The
idea had not come to him as a last resort. It had formed part of
the original plan of action, and had suggested to the scheming
doctor the newer and more practical idea of settling the question
to his own satisfaction, whatever story he determined to offer to
Miss McDonell. The fact of the death of the children was most
important to those who expected to have any share in the Mc-
Donell estate. If they lived it was best to know their where-
abouts, for accidents might make them acquainted with their
rights and set them to making inquiries. If they were dead no
more was to be said about them. It was necessary that the fact
should be known in either case ; yet Killany took no steps in that
direction. Dead, the heirs could do him no harm ; living, the
danger was too remote to cause him fear, or even uneasiness.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 83

The necessity of the hour was uppermost with him, and he
spent his time and his energies in building an elaborate case,
strengthened with innumerable forged documents and backed
by the testimonies of Quip and Juniper. To Mr. Quip he had
entrusted the task of finding so much about the children as would
assist him in making out the required documents ; and the deep
gentleman not only did all that his master commanded, but, going
further out of pure curiosity, developed some startling complica-
tions of the game which Killany was playing. Moreover, their
importance can be suspected when it is known that Mr. Quip
said no more to his master and did no more for him than he had
been hired to do, and that the possession of his newly-discovered
facts left him in a stupid condition for days afterwards.

Killany was not ready with his papers and witnesses on the
day appointed, nor for many days, and Nano was too proud to ask
him the reason, too cautious to show any great interest in the
proceedings. He delayed the examination partly from policy,
partly from . necessity. The work of preparing printed docu-
ments and forged letters, of harmonizing the whole scheme so
thoroughly that she could by no means suspect the trick, and of
coaching the witnesses, was not so easy as he had imagined, and
Mr. Quip, who was general superintendent, fought hard for addi-
tional time in order to perfect his own secret plans, and lied with
a success and pertinacity that actually disarmed his master.
Killany wished also to make Nano more eager and more irrita-
ble. It nettled him to see how well she kept up the role of in-
different observer, and how powerless he was to pull from her
face the mask of icy composure. It was imperative, too, that the
impression of McDonell's madness should seize so well upon the
minds of outsiders as to float back to her by a thousand little
channels. She would then be prepared for the violent measure
of her father's incarceration, and would feel that the act was jus-
tifiable when supported by the suffrages of her friends. He had
been careful to spread, with all the cunning at his command, the
report of McDonell's failing intellect. He had been more suc-
cessful in concealing his own share in the matter than in doing
the same in the later scandal of the Fullertons. Society was sur-
prised one morning to find itself talking quite naturally of the
fact and commenting on the possible consequences. Where it
began was not known and could not be discovered. Like an in-
sidious internal disease it had crept upon them ; the whole system
was attacked, and it became impossible to discover the causes.
Society accepted it unhesitatingly when every one talked of it,

84 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

and came, with the conventional tears, hints, and hidden sarcasms,
to sympathize with the lady who was to suffer. Nano first per-
ceived it, not understanding, on the night of the reception, in the
looks, half-pitying, half-prophetic, cast at her father, in the mys-
teriously-worded assurances of esteem and sympathy from her
friends and acquaintances, more than all in the irascible manner
and eccentric behavior of the merchant himself.

A strange affection for him had sprung up in her heart since
his illness. It was unreasonable, she thought, and it annoyed her
that it came at a time when the old indifference would have been
so acceptable. Every real or fancied slight on him would have only
stirred her pride before as an indirect insult to herself. Now it
pierced her with physical pain and filled her eyes with tears.
He was old and feeble. He needed her, his child, in his weak-
ness. He preferred her before the world and his wealth in the
going down to the tomb. And she was to be harsher to him
than a stranger. Under the appearance of necessity she was to
put him in bonds, for caresses give him blows, and for affection
hatred. She could not have treated her enemy worse. A sea of
bitterness surged over her heart.

" Let them mock at him," she thought remorsefully ; " all they
can do or say will not weigh the weight of a hair against the
mountain of my ingratitude."

With so many influences for good tugging at her will it
might have appeared strange that she trod so resolutely the path
leading down to crime. Her own instincts, her education were
utterly opposed to the course she was pursuing. Her newly-
born love for her father, her affection and admiration for Olivia,
the incipient liking for Dr. Fullerton, the utter detestation of
Killany, were so many chains which bound her to virtue, and
they were hard to be broken. Yet her Mephistopheles was
never absent from her side, and, when her resolutions for good
were about to be taken, put forward in more startling colors the
losses she was certain to sustain, and assured her that her sin
would have no influence on her faithful friends. Downward with
the tide she drifted, and the voice of the tempter would not let
her thoughts rest for a moment on the desolate ocean waiting' to
receive her into its bosom.

A clear sky, with the cloud in it no bigger than a man's hand,
looked down upon the daring sailor in Bohemian seas Killany.
As he planned, so went everything. McDonell was mad, or
nearly so, the world said;- Olivia probably so occupied with her
own troubles as to need all her sympathy for herself ; and Nano

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 85

was at the point of desperation. With an eye to dramatic effect
Killany introduced his witnesses and his forgeries at this junc-
ture. He came in on the afternoon of the day succeeding the
reception, with a bundle in his hand.

" Your patience is to be rewarded to-day," he said, smiling in
his aggravating fashion. " I must thank you for your forbear-
ance. I am ready to prove to you that the children of whom we
have so often spoken are really dead."

" I am interested," she answered briefly, and waited, with her
eyes fixed on his face, until it should be his pleasure to begin.

" As you have been already made acquainted with the leading
facts in the history of these children," said Killany, " I shall deal
only with the circumstance which is of highest and immediate in-
terest to you their death. After it pleased your father to accept
the office of guardian for the children of his friend, and to make
away with the fortune which had been left to them, he put the
little Hamiltons in American and Canadian schools, and left them
there until they had yielded to the adverse destiny which meets
so many neglected orphans. The boy died in his college, the
girl in her convent, within a few weeks of each other's death.
Your father, of course, paid all the expenses of their funeral, but
took good care that neither the children nor their superiors
should ever know the apparent relative or benefactor. Here are
the documents in proof of what I have said."

He opened the bundle of papers which he carried and passed
them over to her one by one. They were a cleverly-connected
series of forgeries, consisting of letters, declarations, and news-
paper notices. The letters and declarations were from the supe-
riors of the college and convent in which the children had re-
sided, from the doctors who attended them in their illness, and
from strangers who had been interested in the orphans. The
notices were slips from the papers of the neighborhood and time,
describing or mentioning the death and funeral. In a court of
law they would not have been worth the value of a pin, but to
the lady for whom they were intended they had the strength and
validity of sworn testimony. She read them in silence carefully,
raising her eyes stealthily at times to note the expression of his
face. She did not dream of deception. She was wondering only
what wages he expected for his work, since he was not a man to
give his services in so important a matter gratuitously. When
she had finished he said :

" I have brought one witness, or rather two, who can throw
more light on the affair a Mr. Juniper, whose mother was ac-

S6 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

quainted with the Hamiltons during their stay in New York,
who remembers to have seen the children, and who attended the
boy's funeral some years afterwards. The other is Mr. Quip,
my assistant. He collected most of the evidence which you now
see before you. Would you wish to see them ? "

" By all means," she answered. " It does not make so great a
difference, perhaps, but I shall not have to accuse myself of negli-
gence in this affair hereafter."

The servant was ordered to conduct Messrs. Quip and Juni-
per from the waiting-room below to the lady's apartment. The
two worthies had been awaiting in much bad humor the invita-
tion to ascend. Juniper was restless and shaky, not concerning
the falsehoods he was to swear to, but the compensation he was
to receive. Mr. -Quip, cool and indifferent as usual, had endeav-
ored to excite Juniper's gratitude to the pitch of presenting him
with ten per cent, of the promised reward. When that gen-
tleman refused to be grateful Mr. Quip declared his intention
of forcing him into the proper state of feeling.

" Ten per cent, is my price," said he decidedly, " and you may
thank your stars that I let you off so easily. If I chose to take
fifty, couldn't I do it? If I chose to take all, couldn't I do it?
Why be so unreasonable as to grumble at a very reasonable pro-
ceeding ? "

And he began to examine the parlor, removing such ornaments
as were not likely to be missed and could be safely stowed in
his vest-pocket, Mr. Juniper grumbling the while, but unobservant
of his comrade's doings. The servant came to summon them to
Nano's presence.

" I'll not go," said Juniper with gloomy determination. " Ten
per cent, is too much. I'll see Killany,"

" Ten per cent.," answered Quip promptly, " is too little. I
take fifteen now, and for every minute you hang back I add five
to my first demand. If it reaches one hundred, Juniper, I'll do
the job myself."

In so far as real emotional insanity was concerned, there was
but a slight difference between the asylum-keeper and his crazy
wards. He glared at the impassive Quip, and was stung to
fiercer anger by his smiling indifference.

" Ten per cent, you can have, money-shaver and poi "

Quip's hand flew to Juniper's mouth in time to break off the
utterance of the odious word, and his fingers tightened on his
throat with deadly vehemence.

" For the last time, Juniper," he hissed. " If you ever utter it

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 87

again I will not hesitate to do for you what I did for that other.
Come, you cowardly dog 1 ! come."

The keeper became silent and lamb-like, and followed him
from the room. The servant had gone on ahead. Nano was
not at all impressed by the personal appearance of the wit-
nesses. Quip's villany and cunning shone in every line of
his countenance and in every motion of his lithe, crooked
body. Juniper's coarseness and' vulgarity spoke quite as dis-
tinctly and obtrusively. It was hard to distinguish whether
greater disgust was aroused by Quip's cool impudence or
Juniper's vile cringing in the presence of Killany and Miss
McDonell.

"You will tell this lady, Mr. Quip," said Killany, "the his-
tory of the investigations which these papers represent." And
he pointed to the documents scattered over the table.

Mr. Quip plunged into explanations with great earnestness,
and told his tale with an elaborate elegance that surprised his
hearers. He was at home in spinning out to a gullible audience
a well-connected, highly-flavored, and important lie. He dwelt
on particulars, and rushed into descriptions of scenery with the
ardor of a novelist. He could not, however, resist his old habit
of poking fun at his hearers ; but as on the present occasion they
never dreamed of so much impudence on his part, he was left*to
enjoy the laugh alone. Mr. Juniper followed, when he had done,
and spoke bashfully but explicitly on what he knew of the chil-
dren. It was even more satisfactory than the testimony of the
documents.

" I was intimate with young Hamilton," he said, in accordance
with Mr. Quip's instructions, " and called on him at the college
quite often. He stayed sometimes at my mother's house for a
few days, and once in a long time his sister, a little baby-girl, very
pretty and loving, was sent down to see him. He was very
much cut up when she died, and, being a delicate lad himself, it
told on him somewhat. He died a month afterwards of fever.
They buried him in the graveyard there, and put a stone over
his grave. You can see it at any time. It is a good many years
since then, but the graveyard is kept in tiptop repair and the
stone is still standing."

" Did you ever see the gentleman," asked Nano, " who pro-
vided for those children ? "

" But once, I think, ma'am, and my recollection on that point
is not very clear. I do not remember his name or his face. My
mother may know that."

88 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

" That will do," said the lady, and the physician motioned
them from the room.

There was silence for a long time. Nano was thinking with
considerable relief of the death of the heirs, and indulging, since
she could safely do so, in a womanly pity for their mournful fate.
She had nothing to say to the doctor. He had done his duty.
He had removed a light obstacle from her path and placed a
heavier himself in the way. She was anxious for him to depart,
wondering as before when he would ask compensation for his
labors, and of what nature would be his demands. Killany, how-
ever, had much to say, and was quite determined to remain until
it was said, if she did not imperatively dismiss him.

" You are satisfied? " he asked.

" Quite satisfied, doctor, and infinitely obliged to you. I may
retain those papers ? "

" By all means. But I would like to know if this examination
has not removed some of your scruples against the measures I
advised some time ago."

" I may say frankly they have not. I scarcely thought of the
question since, save to wonder if what you asserted were really
true."

And there she hesitated, and seemed undecided to speak fur-
thfer, for he was looking at her with sharp eyes, as if waiting to
pick up the first wrongly-chosen word.

" I hoped," she continued, when he did not speak, " and I do
hope still, that when these facts have been presented to my fa-
ther"

" I beg pardon for interrupting you," he said, laying one hand
impressively on her arm, " but that hope is foolish. Your father
has wrestled with the same idea for years, and it has not shown
him a way out of the difficulty nor offered any solution of the
question. The deep-rooted and fiendish superstitions of his creed
have such power over him that nothing you can say will move
him from his determination to give the property to the poor.
The eternal safety of his soul rests on that act, he believes, and he
is too shrewd a business man, and too sincerely frightened by his
present health, to leave to you a few thousand dollars at the cost
of his eternal happiness. If it were to drive you into disgraceful
and absolute poverty, he would do this thing and rejoice that he
had done it. He is becoming more irritable and uncertain. His
business has suffered some not trifling losses by his late blunder-
ing, and men shake their heads and wonder that he is permitted
to go on in this way. Some of his eccentricities you have seen.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 89

with your own eyes. The opportunity of ending the miserable
uncertainty in which you live is now before you. Seize it while
you may, for a reaction may come and what is now a work of
charity may be made a crime."

" I understand," she answered, her coldness increasing in di-
rect opposition to his warmth and earnestness. " But I must
think, and I would prefer to be alone. You shall know my re-
solve shortly."

He rose with polite and deferential haste. Her manner was
unmistakable, and he flattered himself that he knew her moods.

" As you wish, Miss McDonell. You understand the crisis
that has arrived in your affairs, and will decide as you ought, I
feel certain ; only remembering that some despatch is required.
Good-day."

He went away directly, and she fell into one of her day-
dreams over the nearness of the danger and her contemplated
crime. The overwhelming sadness and disgust that follow upon
the fall of the virtuous had lately become her portion. When
alone and undisturbed it gathered around her like a thick, poison-
ous atmosphere. It colored her thoughts, sleeping or waking,
with a bloody hue, and her resistance to it filled her with despair
and overcame her with physical weakness, as in the case of one
who struggles madly with a nothing. Still, her resolution was
not weakened by her distress. Some time this terrible deed must
be done. She was putting it off until the latest moment. She
was resolved to strike the blow, and could not put her hand to
the weapon. Under the pressure of so much doubt and dread
her life was becoming a martyrdom, and her cheeks grew pale
and her eyes heavy, despite the strongest efforts of her indomita-
ble will. Her meditations lasted for hours, and to-night the stars,
her loved stars, were looking in through the familiar window on
her reclining form, and reflecting themselves in her upturned
eyes, before she was aware that night had fallen.

" Madam," a servant said from the door, " your father re-
quests your presence in the library."

CHAPTER XVI.

A THANKLESS CHILD.

HUMILIATIONS were in store for McDonell. The air which
he breathed was charged with the lightnings of God, and every
movement which he made, whether towards good or evil, was to

90 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

draw down on him the divine punishments, chastening if re-
ceived in a penitential spirit, damning if the heart still remained
alienated from justice and truth. In the pride of his slowly re-
turning strength he had rejected the graces placed by God in his
way. Bound hand and foot and tongue in the deadly bands of
paralysis, he had thought that one hour of freedom, one minute
almost, would be lightly purchased with all his wealth. One
g race to speak was all he asked of God, as Dives asked for a
single drop of water to cool his burning throat. Our Dives was
bathed in an ocean, and with renewed force struck the hand that
gave. He was restored, in a measure, to his old position. His
opportunities for repentance were many. They came to his door,
to his table, and thrust themselves upon the privacy of his night-
ly slumbers ; and yet he put them all aside, but not indifferently
or thoughtlessly, as is the fashion of a devil or a fool. They were
with him day and night, waking and sleeping. They seemed to
talk with him, for his diseased fancy gave life and personality to
every harassing thought. "You are old," said one; "take me
and buy your passage to heaven.'* Said another: " Paralysis may
come again. Take me ; I am worth three-fifths of your fortune."
And a third cried : " It is your last chance. Take any one and you
are safe." Poor old idiot! he took none, and was weighted down
with wearisome remorse through the weeks that followed his
strange turning away from God ; fretted and fumed over the evil
he had strength to do in earlier days, and was now too weak to
turn into good ; raged against his daughter that she was not little-
minded and ignorant and ugly, as one whom change of fortune
could not affect from pure inability to understand the change; and
wore himself out in a variety of ways, all more or less dangerous
to his delicate state of health. He scarcely knew the meaning or
the pleasure of a refreshing sleep. Care slept beside him on the
pillow, and, like Richard in his ten-;, he saw in turn the shadowy
forms of those whom he had wronged. A pale-faced man and
woman cried in his dreams for justice to their children. Two
orphans screamed in his ears for the wealth which they had lost.
His daughter, wan and entreating, besought him with tears not
to leave her in poverty. In the background always stood a black-
robed deity in the attitude of a Nemesis, and the sallow face
wore spectacles and looked very much like the persecuting
priest. When he awoke in terror, and found it was but a dis-
agreeable dream, he raged for an hour in the helpless, idiotic
fashion of an old man and an invalid, and dared not go to bed
again.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 91

" Poverty," he would mutter, wiping the cold sweat from his
brow " poverty be hanged ! Wailing and screeching not to be
left poor, when her income will never be lower than twelve thou-
sand a year ! There's an idea of poverty for you ! As if her in
come, like her majesty's, footed up to so many hundreds a day, and
was coming down to as many units ! Eighteen thousand is not a
sum to be dropped to a stranger without blinking, to be sure, but
what is it all compared teaman's peace of mind, his night's sleep,
and and I may as well say it, though I don't want to and the
safety of his soul ? I can't get over the look of the priest, posing
as Nemesis indeed ! What won't a man dream ? And I wouldn't
endure it again for a fortune. Poverty ! Pooh ! Twelve thou-
sand a year poverty ? I'll send for the priest to-morrow and
settle the matter for ever. Let her screech for the money. I'll
not be pestered to death for the sake of paltry dollars."

He would sleep peacefully after this good resolution, but still
did not dare to return to bed. His invalid-chair was comfort-
able enough, however, and saved him a repetition of his ugly
dreams, and the morning looked in on him cheery and determined
as a man could be. But night-thoughts are foolish creatures
when dragged into the light of day. Like the players of the
stage, they are all grace, lightness, beauty under the glare of the
footlights ; the sun has no mercy on them, and shows their hide-
ous paint, and faded velvets, and paste diamonds with shining im-
partiality. Resolutions made in the silence of the night are much
of the same nature as the mists which gather on a river. They
disappear with the sun ; and so it was with McDonell's. The
evaporation was complete. He did not send for the priest nor
inform his daughter, but went about restless, melancholy, and
snappish, biting every one that came in his way, raising many a
laugh at his eccentricities, and playing more and more into his
enemies' hands.

He had forgotten his famous idea of making the boy whom
he had defrauded his secretary and son-in-law. The difficulties
which he should have foreseen at first occurred to him in the
course of time and daunted him. He was fickle and uncertain in
his resolves and plans. He thought of many schemes and re-
jected them as fast as they presented themselves ; but they served
the purpose of diverting his mind from himself until despondency
followed. So slowly was he recovering from his illness, so easily
was he put back a degree on the way to moderate health, so
severe an effect had the slightest depression of spirits on his sys-
tem, that he was at last compelled to think seriously of taking

92 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

Nano into his confidence. Night and sleep were the terrors of
his existence, for the diseased fancy was never idle. His dreams
were become more frightful, his resolutions more numerous, and
the breaking of these a thing of shameful frequency. He saw no
way out of his misery, and one evening, in a fit of despair, com-
manded his daughter's appearance in the library with the inten-
tion of revealing to her the nature of the situation. She came
immediately and found him in a wild condition of feeling, torn by
conflicting emotions, but firmly determined to dare all in this
moment. It shook his resolution somewhat to look upon her
royal beauty and manner, and to think how much of its outward
adornment, how much of its inward vain satisfactions, he was to
take away by a single stroke of his pen ; and then his mind, re-
verting to the income she would possess, always forgetful and
excited now, he blurted out :

" Pish ! Who would call that poverty ? "

She was taking her seat when he uttered these words, and as
a glimpse of their true significance flashed upon her mental sight
a slight pallor overspread her face, her lips trembled, and she put
out her hands in a blind way, as if trying to grasp something.
He saw it and wondered ; but she grew calm immediately, and
spoke so sweetly that he thought no more of it and prepared to
open his disagreeable story. His troubled face, the paper in his
hand, the expression he had just used, forced upon her the belief
that the hour of trial was at last come ; and, half conscious of the
scene about to take place, she prepared herself, with desperate and
pitiful calmness, to act her part to the very letter. Undecided she
might be at other times, but in the presence of the temptation
she was ever on the tempter's side.

" I have a very painful and humiliating confession to make to
you, Nano," he began in his proudest and haughtiest fashion,
" and at the same time I must make you acquainted with a mis-
fortune which will soon be yours and will require all your forti-
tude to meet. Before I begin my sad story let me ask pardon of
you that to the neglect of years I must add a finishing touch in
depriving you of a great part of the only favors which I ever be-
stowed on you I mean your wealth and social standing."

" I beg of you, sir," she said, with a coolness that astonished
but did not reassure him, "to come to the substance at once.
Are we ruined and beggars ? "

" No, not so bad as that," he replied, much relieved ; " but cir-
cumstances have lately occurred which make it necessary that I
should surrender part of my estate in justice to others. It is the

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 93

greater part, Nano, but it will not leave you poor. You will not
be compelled to leave the circle to which you belong, but your
fortune will be diminished by more than one-half."

" I am at a loss to understand, sir, how this can be."

" I have written it here." And he handed her the paper which
he was nervously fingering. " I could not summon resolution to
relate with my own lips the disgrace which I have brought upon
your name. But it was only just that you should know my rea-
sons for acting as I am to act."

She took the paper and read the confession, while he watch-
ed her with eager eyes, dreading, yet submissive to what might fol-
low. She already knew the pitiful story, but she was anxious to
see how far the circumstances agreed with Killany's tale. They
were precisely the same.

" Well ? " said her father when she handed back the paper to
him in silence.

" I cannot yet understand ? " was her quiet reply, and it struck
chilly on his heart, " what possible effect this can have on our for-
tunes, unless the children are alive."

*' You do not understand ? " he gasped in astonishment.
" Nano, you do not understand that we cannot retain what be-
longs to another, and, though we may have used it as our own
for years, we are bound to make restitution."

" Are the heirs alive? " she asked.

" It matters nothing," he answered quickly. " If they are not
alive to receive their own it goes to the poor. I cannot escape
-estitution in that way."

" And you would give the wealth which for twenty years you
lave guarded, increased, and grown gray and paralytic over to
the beggars in the street, or to the priest whose debts demand
ich windfalls ; and you would leave me, your daughter, brought
ip in the splendor which this house displays, with diminished
income, to be laughed at and lorded over by the vulgar rich
ibble of the city. Father, are you dreaming or are you mad ? "

" I wish it were one or the other," he said in a feeble way,
that I might wake to know it was not my daughter who utter,
ed those words. My honesty was brittle enough, God knows,
but it had life. Yours seems dead. And still I forget, poor
girl, that you have been bred a pagan, and what can you know
of honor or justice as the Christian knows it? "

He bowed his head in his hands like one stunned, and Kil-
lany's words, " She would barter her soul to retain this wealth,"
seemed burned into his brain. Her emotion was not less severe,

94 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

but her determination was invincible. She had begun the
hideous drama, and would play it to the end.

" Do not excite yourself, sir," she said, " over a phantasy.
But it is as well for you to know that I will not submit to any
such disposal of your property. It is yours to do with as you
please, but I shall make strong opposition, and, if the world says
rightly, I shall be successful."

He lifted his head, and looked at her with a face more hag-
gard than when he had lain on his sick-bed. His command of
words and his pronunciation were not of the best since his illness,
and in times of excitement these defects became more apparent.
His voice was thick now as he sternly said :

" What do you mean, woman ? Do you dare to threaten your
father?"

" I beg your pardon. I meant no more than I said," she an-
swered as calmly as before.

" Then know," he cried in a passion, bringing one hand down
on the table with a violence that set the papers dancing, " that
every cent of this money shall go to those to whom it belonged.
By the heavens above, girl ! if you are not honest from choice,
you shall be so from necessity. I am master yet."

" I do not dispute it, and let me beg of you to lower your
tones, father. The servants have ears, and, if they allow a little
for your condition, it is possible to say too much."

"For my condition?" he muttered suspiciously. " What is
there in my condition to allow for ? "

She hesitated. Was it necessary to add to his suffering by
informing him of the slanders which circulated concerning him
in the world ? She was very hard with him, and felt as if she
could be harder and more cruel yet. A demon of cruelty had
possession of her.

" The world says of you, sir, that you are mad, or fast becom-
ing so. Business men are afraid to deal with you, since every
act of yours may be called in question hereafter. And this pa-
per " she picked up the confession and laid it on the coals of
the grate " would probably be of as much value in a court as the
ashes into which it has turned. Judge, then, of the manner in
which this story would be received by the world, and, if you are
wise, put it aside for ever."

It was not a pleasant fact even for her to tell or for him to re-
ceive, and the manner of his receiving it was harder yet to bear
unmoved. His face grew stony and whiter, his lips were set, his
eyes glaring, and his whole manner one of concentrated horror.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 95

He held out his hands involuntarily towards her. If the world
treated him harshly she was his only refuge, and she had feared
this appeal.

" Do you believe it ? " he moaned. " O Nano ! do you believe
it?"

" I do not wish to. But after so strange, so improbable a
confession as you have made to-night, and the mad, chimerical
scheme of restitution which you have planned, my faith is con-
siderably shaken. Say it is all a mistake, father " and she put
one hand on his arm, and looked into his face with an expression
so hard to resist " say it is a blunder, a mere freak of your fancy,
and I shall believe without doubting in your sanity."

He looked down coldly but blankly into her face.

" So the devil would look," he muttered, " when tempting me
to sin. I could not do that, Nano ; I could not do what you ask,
for then to myself I would be worse than mad. Ah! " with sud-
den, fierce recollection shaking off her hand, " I have been nurs-
ing a viper all these years, and now it stings me into madness.
It was hard enough to withstand temptation as I did in the last
few weeks, but there was a triumph in resisting until Satan took
your shape, Nano. O God ! it is your turn now."

"You are mad, I believe," she said curtly.

He did not answer, but remained staring silently into the fire.

" Paralysis was nothing to this," he muttered to himself, and
every word pierced her like a knife, " and hell could not be much
worse. These shrunken, .maimed limbs and this thickened
tongue have been made so for her sake, and now "

He turned and faced her without finishing the sentence.
" Listen," he said. " I have been told that you do not believe

God or in the existence of a soul. Had I done my duty

God and you, you would have believed otherwise. As it is,
icar and remember these facts, and profit by the lessons they
mtain.

" I was brought up in the Catholic ' superstition,' and I left it,
lot from conviction, but from the love of wealth, and power, and
ligh standing in the world.

" I had been a good, pure, honest man while I remained true to
ly own principles. I knew and felt and relished the responsibili-
:ies of a husband, a father, and a Christian. But the moment I
deserted those principles and they are embodied in the Catholic
faith I forgot everything but the golden calves which I wor-
shipped.

" I allowed your mother to live a cheerless, unwifely life, to

g6 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

die a peevish, sin-laden, despairing woman, who, not enjoying life,
still had no hope in death.

" I robbed my friend and his helpless children.

" I left my daughter to the care of religious hybrids, who
brought her up according to the maxims of all the blasphemous
fools that ever prosed under the cloak of humanity, wisdom, and
truth.

" Now mark my punishment.

" When I would undo a part of the evil which I had done
the world calls me mad. I wish to return to my church, to pur-
chase my eternal safety with the world's gold and the heart's re-
pentance, and lo ! my daughter turns upon me, and weighs the
eternal happiness of the man who gave her life with the pitiful
opinions of her pet society acquaintances. The education which
I gave to myself I have unwittingly given to her, and the results,
I suppose, will be the same. I have sinned in my love of gold,
and so will you. This is my punishment to be accounted mad.
Will it, tod, be yours ?

" Now, on your principles, Miss McDonell, atheist, free-
thinker, judger of God in his motives and actions, how do you
account for all these chances?"

" On the strength of your madness, sir," she answered, trem-
bling; "for if you were not mad before you are at this mo-
ment."

" Mad yes, for ever mad," he said, putting his hands to his
forehead. " And Killany was right after all. Well, you are a
finely-matched pair. You will put me in the asylum yet."

" I have nothing in common with that man. He is here by
your permission, and not to my pleasure."

" Then let him go, in God's name, and do you follow as speed-
ily as you may."

She rose and walked to the door.

" You will forget this rash idea of restitution, father. You
are rapidly recovering from your illness, and such excitement as
you have endured this evening does you only injury."

" Yes, I was excited," he answered dreamily. " Oh ! I must
have been. Come here, Nano."

He took her hands when she stood by his side, and looked
with an old man's beseeching helplessness into her eyes.

" Does the world really say that I am mad, Nano ? "

" It does," she answered with not hypocritical gentleness, for
her heart was very sore indeed.

" And, Nano, do you think that I am mad ? "

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 97

" I would not hesitate in saying no, father, but for what has
happened to-night. Were you in true and solid earnest ? "

" I should be mad indeed if I said otherwise. But, O my
child ! be kind and straightforward with me as I have not been
with you. If the world turns against me I have but one refuge
on earth. There is another whom I have betrayed and dare not
look up to until I have done right and atoned. Nano, I am dy-
ing. My days are numbered, and will you not help to make my
last hours easy for me ? You will be alone when I am dead.
You have no relatives, and I pray you that as you would wish to
die in the arms of those who love you, so to let me die."

"And so you shall, father," she said, kissing his forehead;
" only forget to-night."

" Ah ! away with you," he almost shrieked, flinging her from
him with a violence that was terrible to see. " You are not my
child, but a foul, unnatural thing, caring more for my gold than
for me ! A thief, if you could and dared ! Out, out ! I say."

She went away calmly enough, though her face was white
from the indignity which he had put upon her, a woman.

McDonell raised his hands to heaven in silent invocation.

" It is done at last, and thank God ! " he said. " I shall send
for the priest to-morrow and make the final arrangements. My
sorrows are ending, but hers are beginning, and Heaven alone
knows where they will end."

The bell rang for dinner, but neither father nor daughter
came to the table. McDonell was busy arranging his papers, and
Nano, worn and disgusted, eaten up by remorse, anguish, and
despair, yet more than ever determined to hold on to the pro-
perty, walked the length of her room in sad meditation, vainly
endeavoring to devise some less violent means than the asylum
for quieting her father.

CHAPTER XVII.

"ON ICE."

KILLANY called the morning after the library-scene, and found
awaiting him a woman of a far different temper than he expected.
He had left her in doubt the preceding evening ; she was all de-
termination to-day, and related what had taken place with a
frankness, a vivacity and earnestness she had not shown him for
an indefinite period. It puzzled him still more, however, in her
regard. He feared that her manner was forced and intended to

VOL. XXXIII. 7

98 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

deceive. He had allowed her a certain time in which to come to
the mark, and she had anticipated him. He was not a man who
liked to change his rules of action for every incidental exception,
no matter how severely they injured the substance of the rule ;
and in this much again he was not a Bohemian. He had tested
by long experience the efficacy, strength, and correctness of his
methods. He had found, too, that if adherence to them in all
cases sometimes brought about losses, departure from them had
in several instances brought him greater losses. He listened to
her tale, and observed her changed manner with considerable of
disquiet and unexpressed suspicion.

" And now," said Nano, in concluding her story, ," the time
has come for action, yet I am at a loss to know what to do. At
any moment he may make over this property to the priest, for he
was so angered by my opposition that he seemed prepared for
any rashness."

" You must put him under guard at once," Killany answered,
proposing the bold scheme more with a view of testing her sin-
cerity than with the expectation of having it accepted. " His let-
ters and messages must be intercepted and visitors excluded.
The time is ripe, for the world, and even his own household, is
persuaded of his insanity."

The faintest pallor came into her lips, and she flushed slight-
ly afterwards ; but, conscious of Killany 's sharp gaze, she became
immediately calm again.

" You mean to have him guarded here?"

" Yes."

" But do not forget that the admission of strangers would
excite his suspicion."

" There is no necessity for strangers. His valet will make an
excellent keeper, for the fellow is frightened enough at the reports
of your father's insanity. He will keep out visitors, and hand
you all letters entrusted to him. I will advise, as his physician,
that your father remain in absolute retirement for a few days. If
he suspects what is occurring, and becomes violent, then more
stringent measures must be taken. A few days' time and one or
two outbursts of rage will be enough to give him the manner of
a madman. The physicians may do the rest."

" You are too bold," she said coldly. " I have not yet con-
sented to these violences."

"Then this first violence is totally unnecessary," he replied
decisively, " if you do not intend to go further. All is over if
you hesitate for a moment. Once he discovers his position, you

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 99

must either release him or put him in perpetual confinement.
Let the first happen and you will never be able to put him in
safety ; for his friends will gather round, and easily destroy, by
determined opposition, the present impression of his madness.
There is no medium, Miss McDonell, and the alternative is the
loss of your property."

She could not but feel the truth of his words, and if she pre-
tended to doubt and consider it was merely to gather strength
and outward composure for the shameful consent she was about
to give this man. Before him she wished never to betray the
faintest emotion. Hitherto she had looked upon him and his
plottings with feigned indifference, and this he had borne with pa-
tiently, hopeful for such a moment of triumph and compensation
as she was now compelled to offer. Henceforth she must appear
in the role of his co-conspirator, and the bitter humiliation of such
an alliance was forcing her proud heart to the dust.

" Do as you wish," she said at last, with affected carelessness,
" and let there be no bungling."

" That I can promise you," he said, lowering his eyes to con-
ceal the wicked, malicious joy that shone there. " I have not yet
made any blunders. You may trust me."

After some further but important conversation he left.

Olivia called in the course of the day with the news of a skat-
ing-carnival to take place the next evening. The little lady was
not as brilliant as usual, and there was a suspicion of heaviness
in the eyes that ever sparkled cheerily. For the first time in her
life a real, blasting sorrow had come upon her, and the young
heart felt the suffering keenly. With the silent, enduring cour-
age of a woman, counselled by Mrs. Strachan, whom Killany had
so unluckily fallen upon as the greatest gossip he knew, sustained
by the fear of consequences to her brother if the story went
abroad, she went on her way as before, carrying a smiling face
and a gay manner to hide her sorrow. If she was sad, however,
Nano made up for it in the forced gayety which she assumed.
Ordinarily cold and reserved, remorse, like the blaze of a polar
sun on the ice-fields, thawed her into unnatural cheerfulness.
Olivia sat puzzled and overwhelmed at this new side to her
friend's character, listening to her rapid and wandering speeches,
and mystified by the slightly-flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
A chill struck upon her heart, for she could not reconcile this
phenomenon with true peace of conscience.

" And there is to be a carnival," said she, " and you are anx-
ious that I should go with your party ? Of course I shall be

loo A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

happy. Sir Stanley is excellent company, and your brother, al-
though perhaps a trifle grave, can talk metaphysics and transcen-
dentalism. I know one thing that will please you: Killany will
not be there. He is pressed with business and cannot come."

" It makes but little difference/' Olivia answered, with a lump
sticking in her throat. " I choke when his name is mentioned or
when in his presence. He cannot do me more harm present than
absent, and I am sure he will do as much as is possible in any
place. And now, leaving all disagreeable subjects aside, what
are you going to wear? Something dreadfully cultured, and un-
intelligible, and pagan, I am sure."

" Diana is to be my rdle : black velvet and gold trimmings ;
moon-and-star crown ; bow and quiver of arrows over my shoul-
der."

" That is better than to appear as an Indian goddess with an
unpronounceable name a veritable what-is-it, comprehensible
only by the elect of culture. I am going as a Swedish girl in a
winter costume. Sir Stanley is anxious to find out what I shall
wear. The foolish fellow would actually array himself in a cor-
responding habit, if he knew."

" Which would be quite proper, and no doubt he will dis-
cover it. It will not make a great difference as to a certain
event."

" I suppose not," Olivia said meditatively, and with another
throat-spasm.

Something in her face recalled to Nano the evening of the re-
ception.

" Ah ! " she suddenly exclaimed, " how could I have forgot-
ten it ? "

" Forgotten what ? "

" The night you went home so distressed from the reception.
Do you remember what you said to me ? I have thought of it
so often since, and it has worried me unaccountably."

" I should not have spoken as I did," Olivia said hastily.
"Something did happen, but I must ask you to wait a little be-
fore I tell you."

" I will wait just five minutes. You have grown thin and pale
in a few days, and have lost some of your old cheerfulness.
Child, I ought to know the cause of this trouble, since it happened
within my walls."

" There is' no present need of your knowing, Nano. I could
not open my lips now even if I wished ; but believe me, you shall
hear all in good time."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 101

Her embarrassment was so great and painful that Nano for-
bore to press her further, and the conversation turned to other
subjects. When leaving, Olivia offered, according to custom,
her hand and cheek to her friend ; but, to her surprise and grief,
Nano managed to reject both in the gentlest and cleverest
manner.

" I have offended her by my reserve/' she thought sadly, as
she went down the stairs ; and being very sick at heart, and
overweighted with the burden of her own sorrow, this new bit-
terness welled up from her heart to her eyes and sent her home
weeping quietly behind her veil. But Nano, with her hands
clasped tightly over her breast, uttered the true reason of this
apparent coldness to her friend. She looked upon herself as a
guilty, sin-stained thing, unworthy to breathe the same air with
so pure a creature as Olivia Fullerton.

" Never again until I have atoned," she said, staring hard at
the pallid woman reflected in the glass " never, never again to
clasp that innocent hand or touch those pure lips with mine!
What a terrible fate have I chosen for myself! Yet who will
know, and when I am dead what will it matter ? For there is but
rottenness after death, and saint and sinner are served alike in
the grave. If it were true but no, there is no God, no God, no
God ! "

The last words were more a question than an assertion. The
divine truth was struggling fiercely for a footing in her soul.
She wrung her hands and looked at them as Lady Macbeth look-
ed at hers, stained with dream-blood, and with her she almost
screamed :

" All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."

Then her mood changed. She grew angry at her own weak-
ness, and tried to force upon herself the mask of indifference ;
tried to reason her meditated sin into an act of justice and even
pity ; tried to laugh at the whole affair as a very ordinary pro-
ceeding over which she was making herself ridiculous.

" Poor little hand ! You have sinned no more than to raise
yourself against one who in his craziness would rob your mistress ;
who gave her life, and riches, and honor, only to sink her into a
deeper abyss of death, and poverty, and shame ; who taught her to
love with her whole heart this which he would now deprive her of
for the sake of a superstition. The world will say you have done
well, and there is no other to judge or know. For there is no "

Her head fell on her breast, and the tears of vexation fell
from her eyes. She did not utter her blasphemy a second time,

102 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

and she could not ; for on the pages of her heart was written in
fadeless characters the truth she would fain have denied.

" Am I deserting my belief?" she muttered. " Am I yielding
to this superstition ? Oh ! this Olivia and her brother are my bad
angels. If I did not know them what would I care for this plot-
ting of Killany's or its result ! I will forget them. They shall
not be my Mentors. But oh ! to forget my own heart. To put
away all that is really good and lovable about me can I do that
and live ? " In her anguish she sat, as she had often done before,
for hours in meditation.

The next evening, when she was dressing for the carnival,
Killany came in hurriedly and sent up an urgent message. She
came down to the hall in her brilliant costume, and electrified
him.

" Ah " and the tone of his voice was not of the sweetest
" you are going to the carnival? I must put off my business
until to-morrow."

" If you would be so kind. I expect my party every moment."

" Mrs. Strachan, I suppose."

" She will be there, of course," was her direct evasion, " in
some hideous dress military it ought to be, or male attire of
some kind. The general is, you know, a good skater and a good
gossip. She is kind-hearted, too."

" Extremely so. I may say good-evening."

" But you have not noticed my dress."

And she stood away from him, and let him see it in various
lights and positions.

" It is very brilliant," he said, pleased at her graceful fami-
liarity. " Not so complete as it might be, perhaps. There is
one ornament lacking : a gold- haired Apollo, or, if it suits you,
another Orion."

" I shall meet many of them, no doubt. What a pity you are
not coming ! "

" 1 regret that business is pressing. Permit me. Good-
evening."

He bowed himself out, chagrined at he knew not what, and
raging with very well-defined jealousy.

A little later came the maskers of the carnival : Sir Stanley
in his Swedish peasant habit, Olivia as she had described herself,
and the grave doctor in the charming holiday dress of a twelfth-
century gallant. They drove off, laughing very heartily at the
grotesque combination of costumes, and were soon in the midst
of the weirdest throng that ever the frozen bosom of the bay had

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 103

borne. It was a clear moonlight night, without wind or heavy
frost, and not too cold to permit of a long, quiet talk after the
limbs had been loosened and wearied with skating. This was the
first note which Sir Stanley took of the scene. A circle of ropes
and guards shut off the maskers from the broad expanse of the
bay, and over this spot fell the glare of a thousand torchlights
and colored lanterns. The assembly was already large too large
for a quiet talk, Sir Stanley observed and ridiculous as such
assemblies usually are. The anachronisms in the costumes and
their grotesque contrasts kept the ladies in subdued but con-
tinued laughter.

" There is our devil," said Olivia to her companion, as the
character glided by with the proverbial tail over his arm ; " what
a labor you would have exorcising him ! "

" If it were to be done according to ritual, yes," said the
baronet boastfully ; " but otherwise, why, no. Give me } r our hand
and let us proceed with the abandon suited to our character. I
am going to startle you when we reach the retired corners."

" I don't wish to be startled," said Olivia decidedly, but with
a beating heart, " and therefore I shall not go into the retired
corners. It doesn't become even a peasant-girl to be wandering
in dark places."

" As you please. I can and will startle you here just as well,
only it occurred to me that for your own sake you would prefer
to be unobserved."

Olivia knew not what to do or say in her distress. It was
very clear that Sir Stanley was going to propose, and, although a
few days earlier she would have hailed the event with simple
and single-hearted joy, it was now become a most painful pro-
ceeding. Diana and her cavalier flew past in as high spirits as
two eminently grave persons could be, and she made a vain effort
to draw them to her side. The devil, with horns and tail pro-
minent in the moonlight, was slipping over the ice ahead, and it
rashly occurred to her to engage him in conversation. But as
there might spring up an occasion of exorcising for Sir Stanley,
she wisely restrained herself and submitted to fate.

" Would you not please wait," she said humbly, " until later
in the evening ? I did not expect very much pleasure from the
carnival, but you will destroy it all if you speak as you intend."

" Your words are anything but encouraging," said he, start-
ing; " and since you seem to understand so well what I am going
to say in the dark corners, come, sister, and hear it at once."

There was nothing but to obey, for Sir Stanley's voice was

104 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [April,

rather imperative in sound. They left the charmed circle of the
maskers and glided away into the blue, silvered twilight beyond.
The moonlight fell in a shower on the ice. In the distance
twinkled the lights of the island, behind them gleamed the city's
fiery eyes, and from an illuminated spot came the sounds of
music and happy voices, and the flash and glitter of gaily-attired
forms, misty and pleasant as a dream. Around them was a desert
scattered with parties of two as far as possible from one another,
and moving with spirit-like ease and gracefulness.

" Olivia," began the baronet, when they had gone a convenient
distance, " I believe you have understood, at least within the last
few weeks, the attentions I have been paying you. You have no
doubt heard the opinions of other people on the matter, and, as
you did not discourage me, I have hoped that my suit was not
disagreeable. I ask you now to be my wife."

" I do not know what to answer," said she, with a sudden
burst of weeping. " I cannot tell, Sir Stanley, whether I shall or
not."

This answer was a poser for the baronet, although he had an
idea that it was not precisely unfavorable. He was silent for
some time, not a little disturbed in his efforts to think the matter
into shape with the lady sobbing at his side.

" Yes or no," he argued, " is the usual answer. This must be
a mean of some kind. Perhaps it signifies * I want to, but I can-
not ; circumstances will .not permit.' And what could be the mat-
ter with the pretty thing ? Egad ! I am off my balance mentally
as well as sentimentally, and if I am not set right again I should
like to select a convenient air-hole and end the programme with
an attempted but unsuccessful suicide."

" Your answer, Olivia," said he aloud, " is rather ambiguous.
I love you, dear, and I thought you might have loved me a
little."

" So I do very much," murmured she, with a blush that
would have entranced him had it been daylight. The baronet
was intoxicated at this confession, and very naturally trembled.

" You frighten me, Olivia. If you love me and I thank you
a thousand times for that sweet saying why can you not tell if
you will marry me? It is mysterious and dreadful."

" I know it, Sir Stanley, But I must ask you to wait for just
the shortest time, and be patient until I can discover something I
wish to know."

" Something you wish to know ? " repeated the astonished gen-
tleman.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 105

" Is that so very wonderful?" she replied, with a touch of the
old sauciness.

" Oh ! no, Olivia, not at all. But I trust it is nothing of course
it isn't."

" Concerning you, Sir Stanley ? I never doubted your good-
ness, and kindness, and honesty. It is about myself, and you will
have to wait so short a time until I am able to say yes or no."

She choked again at the thought of uttering the sad negative,
which circumstances might make a necessity. The baronet, quite
overcome, wished to appeal to the stars or to do some other fool-
ish thing in testimony of his inability to survive an adverse
answer. However, a sensible silence intervened. They skated
slowly round in a limited circle, until Olivia expressed her wish
to return.

" At least I shall always know that you loved me," he said as
they glided away ; for he had been thinking of the mournful
possibility of a parting, simply to enjoy in fancy the luxury which
he imagined would never be afforded him. Very hopefully they
returned to the revellers. They passed an absent-minded pair
taking the direction of the open bay.

" By the gleam of gold and the rustling of silk," said Sir Stan-
ley, " I would take the gentleman for Harry."

" And I know," said Olivia, with scarcely a joy-tone in her
words, " that the lady is Nano. Do you not see her quiver and
bow ? "

" What a learned conversation they must be having ! She will
quote Voltaire, Emerson, Goethe, and Taine. He will bury her
under St. Augustine and Brownson. We can even hear what
they are saying."

They stopped to listen. The doctor's deep and penetrating
tones were easily heard at a long distance, and Nano's sweet treble
floated to their ears as gently as the flight of a bird, but the
words were not distinguishable. They went on out of sight, and
the peasants joined the revellers once more. The number had in-
creased, and the new figures were rather startling. A thin, frisky
figure in a bird-suit hopped and chirped comically throughout
the circle, and annoyed Olivia extremely by his attentions, until
the baronet, observing, threatened to pitch him into his proper
sphere. A tall form with flowing white hair and beard, clothed
in furs and glittering with icicles of glass and steel, seemed also
inclined to pester her with attentions, but took warning by the
threat against the man-bird, and, after gazing about earnestly for
some moments, went off lakewards.

io6 A WOMAN OF CULTUXE. [April,

Nano and the doctor were conversing, with dangerous seri-
ousness and much sentiment, on various subjects when the fur-
clad representative of the frozen north flew by on wind- wings and
glanced at them sharply as he passed. Presently the man-bird
came skating in the same direction, and, being less careful than
the other, approached near enough to have the doctor's fingers
suddenly and firmly pressed about his throat.

" You are too bold, Quip," he said mildly, and Quip's eyes
were starting from his head. " Go back."

Without a word, and with his feathers considerably rumpled,
the fowl stole away, followed shortly by the Frozen North, who,
as he flew by again, laughed to himself quietly and favored them
with another stare.

" An underbred fellow," said the doctor.

" I shivered when he passed," said Nano. " Let us go back,
Dr. Fullerton, for we shall not find our friends here."

" I fear that we have not made much of an effort to find them,"
he laughed. " They are probably returned by this, and we may
expect some raillery from them on our moonlight search."

They met with Sir Stanley and Olivia standing on the outside
circle and quietly watching the scene before them. There was
so little animation in their manner and countenances that the doc-
tor and his partner felt uneasy. They had suspected the baro-
net's intention of tempting his fate to-night, and if he had done
so it was clear that he met only with disaster.

"Well, Diana," cried Olivia, with forced gayety, "your hunt
was a long one. What game did you succeed in bringing
down ? "

" Only a heart," answered the doctor in her stead, " and with-
out using an arrow. The moonlight, the silence, and some other
circumstances made it an easy victim."

" You act up to your costume, Harry," returned the baronet.

"Which is more, I'll engage," returned the doctor, "than you
can say for yourself."

" True," said Sir Stanley, with a vexed look ; " no peasant could
be as solemn as I at this moment."

" And none," repeated Nano, " could be more solemn than our
Olivia here."

Olivia had suddenly withdrawn her attention from their rail-
lery. The tone of a voice on the ice without the circle had
reached her ears, and she was listening, as she listened on the
night of the reception, to the bitter words the voice framed and
uttered.

1 88 i.J A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 107

" Here ? Of course. No society is safe from them. If their
antecedents were as correct and stainless as the queen's own
they could not have greater assurance. You did not hear of it?
I am surprised. I thought it was known everywhere. The bar
sinister is on their escutcheon. ^ I cut them long ago, so far as pro-
fessional etiquette would permit, and I wonder how they have
stood so long."

" That is plain," another answered. " When a woman of fash-
ion and a man of title combine to favor a thing it is sure of suc-
cess. They are out of my books, however, though they were
smiled on by her majesty herself."

" The woman of fashion and the man of title will leave quickly
enough when it reaches their ears. It takes the power of a king
to make such rubbish popular."

The voice stopped there, and she heard no more. The others
were too busily engaged with themselves to pay attention to the
loud speaker, but Nano caught his last words.

" Killany here ! " she exclaimed. " I was sure I heard his
voice near."

" Hardly possible," said the doctor. " He assured me he was
not going."

" Why are you so silent, Olivia ? " said the baronet.

" I am cold "- - she was actually shivering with anguish and
terror " and do you not think we had better return? We have
been here a good two hours, and the crowd is getting thinner
now."

" Two hours ? " said Nano. " That is not probable."

" But it is a fact," Olivia replied, showing her watch. "And
your indifference to time shows how thoroughly you enjoyed it."

They left the ice immediately, and in ascending to the wharf
were passed by an acquaintance, who saluted.

"Good-evening, Miss McDonell. Good-evening, Sir Stan-
ley."

" Good-evening, Mr. Hughes," said the doctor, as the gentle-
man did not seem to recognize him or Olivia. " Are you forget-
ting your other friends ? "

"Ah! to be sure yes good-evening," said Hughes rather
confusedly, and not waiting to make apologies or explanations.
Harry could not understand why a warm spot glowed on his
cheek at this strange manner of address, but Olivia could very
easily account for the deadly chill which set her shivering again
and made her clasp the baronet's arm fiercely.

"You are slipping," said he.

io8 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [April,

" A little," she answered faintly, and was silent.

" Rather a cool way of taking the blunder," the doctor re-
marked to Nano. " At least he might have explained."

She said nothing in reply, but wondered, and Sir Stanley was
too busy with his partner to pay rnuch attention to these trifles.
They reached the carriage and were driven home in apparently
good spirits. But Olivia was reserved and sad.

" I wonder what Hughes meant by it? " were the last words
of the doctor to his sister that night.

"He is very well bred," she answered carelessly, "but he is
often enough in his cups. He did not seem to be displeased or
angry, only confused."

The answer did not satisfy the doctor, and he bade her good-
night with a clouded face.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST.
II.

IN a former article reviewing M. Fouard's Life of Christ we
promised a synopsis of the work. In making this synopsis we
shall almost entirely confine ourselves to a statement of the au-
thor's views, without criticism or discussion. On several im-
portant points there is a difference of opinion among sound and
orthodox scholars. M. Fouard's particular opinions on these
points are in all cases probable and supported by good arguments
and authorities. Being satisfied of this, we are content to make
an exposition of the principal parts of the history of our Lord as
presented by him, with very slight additions or comments.

The chronological order of the principal events in the history
is one of the first points to claim attention. St. Luke furnishes a
point of departure for the arrangement of this order, by giving
the fifteenth year of Tiberius as the date of the beginning of the
public ministry of John the Baptist, and recording the fact that
Jesus was soon after baptized by him, being at that time about
thirty years old. Augustus having died in August of A.U.C.
767, the fifteenth year of the reign of his successor Tiberius, dat-
ing from that event, begins with August 781 and ends August

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 109

782. The computation of Dionysius the Little based on this
supposition is the one which regulated the common use of Chris-
tendom. It has been long known, however, to be incorrect. It
is a fact, settled by the authority of Josephus, that Herod died in
April 750. But if Jesus completed his thirtieth year in the year
781, or in 782, he must have been born after Herod's death, which
contradicts the history of the gospel. He was born at least sev-
eral months before Herod's death, and therefore not later than
the close of the year 749. The year of our Lord I begins with
January 753 according to the common reckoning, which is based
on the supposition that Christ was born in December 752. This
cannot be the correct date, and it is therefore necessary to com-
pute the fifteenth year of Tiberius, not from the death of Augus-
tus, but from the time when Augustus made him his colleague in
the empire, viz., from the year 765.

M. Fouard assigns the year 780 as the beginning of the public
ministry of our Lord, including in it four Passovers, the first one
in the April after he had completed his thirtieth year, a second at
which he was present in Jerusalem, a third from which he ab-
sented himself on account of the plots against his life, and the
fourth, with which the time of his death coincided. The differ-
ence of opinion which exists respecting the date of our Saviour's
birth, assigned by some to the year 747 and by others to 749,
exists also in respect to the year of his death, and there are other
difficulties relating to the chronology of the events of the Holy
Week. One principal difference of opinion is on the question
whether our Lord was crucified on the very day of the Passover
or on the preceding day. M. Fouard decides for the day before
the Passover. The entire chronology of the life of Christ, as he
arranges it, is exhibited in the following table.

749 of Rome :

5 B.C.

25 Dec. The Nativity.

779

26 A.D.

Sept. Ministry of John.

780

27 "

Jan. Baptism of Jesus.

780

27 "

April, ist Passover.

781

April. 2d Passover.

782

29 "

April. 3d Passover.

783 "

30 "

April 7th. 4th Passovers

When Christ appeared in Judea, a century and a half had
elapsed since Judas Machabasus began his glorious reign as high-
priest and ruler. Sixty-six years before the Christian era, two
descendants of the illustrious Machabaean family, Hyrcanus and
-Aristobulus, who had engaged in war with each other for the

i io THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [April,

crown, made Pompey the arbiter of their quarrel. As the result
of this appeal, Hyrcanus was made ruler of Judea with the title
of ethnarch, but subject to the Roman governor of Syria, and Jeru-
salem was abased by the entrance of the Roman eagles within her
walls, and of Pompey himself into the sacred enclosure of the
Holy of Holies. After his victory over Pompey, Julius Cassar
united Palestine to Idumea under the government of the Idu-
mean Antipater, under whom his son Phasael administered the
affairs of Idumea, and another son, Herod, those of Judea. In
the year 37 B.C. Herod was made king of Judea by the Roman
Senate, and forcibly installed by the Roman army. This cruel
and bloodthirsty but able monarch, while he exterminated the no-
blest and best of the Jews, and destroyed their national life by a
heathenish policy, covered the country w r ith superb monuments,
one of which was the new temple at Jerusalem. The principal
institution which remained under his reign and survived it,
though with diminished dignity and power, was the Sanhedrim.
This was a council of seventy-one members composed of the
actual and the deposed chief-priests, Scribes of learning and dis-
tinction who were Doctors of the Law, and heads of tribes and
families. It was a parliament, a supreme court of justice, and a
high Academy, at one and the same time, and had really acquired
predominance over the priesthood, many of whose highest pre-
rogatives it had, by general consent, assumed. Two great parties
disputed with each other for the pre-eminence, the Pharisees who
were zealots for the Law and the Traditions of its Interpreters,
and the Sadducees who were gross rationalists and almost total
unbelievers, though, strange as the anomaly may seem, the ma-
jority of the priests of superior rank belonged to their party.
The nation was in decadence and near its ruin. Piety and moral-
ity were at a low ebb. Sacred learning was trivial, religious zeal
was a degenerate and repulsive devotion to minute outward ob-
servances, associated with an intolerant pride and too often with
hypocrisy. Patriotism had become fierce and fanatical. The
great national idea and hope of the coming and kingdom of the
Messiah had become perverted and degraded into an ambitious,
visionary and wholly worldly expectation of a temporal and
earthly monarchy seated in Jerusalem, extending its sway over the
world, and accompanied by splendor, luxury, abundance and en-
joyment of all kinds of natural and sensible goods, and bringing
to the leaders of the Jewish people that power and pre-eminence,
the possession of which they so much envied the Roman rulers.
The degenerating process went on rapidly during Herod's long

5 8 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. in

;ign, and the thirty-three years which elapsed between the birth
id the death of Christ. The change for the worse which was
iking place during this last period is noticeable in reading the
simple text of the gospel narrative, and becomes much more evi-
dent when other sources of information are examined.

The religious and moral degeneracy of the ruling class and
the common people of Judea was not, however, universal, and
did not become desperate, until after their obstinate rejection of
the true Messiah had consummated their iniquity. The priest
Zacharias, Simeon, who is thought with some reason to have
been the son of the celebrated Hillel and president of the Sanhe-
drim, Nicodemus, a Doctor of the Law, Joseph of Arimathea, a
member of the Sanhedrim, Lazarus of Bethany, Nathanael, Gama-
liel the son of Simeon and Paul's master, who probably became a
Christian towards the close of his life, and many others especially
among the common people, were a different and much better sort
of Israelites. A still larger number were in that floating, unde-
cided condition in which they were susceptible of being led and
persuaded either to good or evil by the example and authority of
those who for the time had most influence over them, and by the
general current of opinion and sentiment.

Not only those Jews who still retained their belief in the pro-
phecies, but the people of the more remote East, also, were in an
attitude of expectation awaiting the coming of the great King of
the Jews. The rumor of this had reached the ears of the Ro-
mans. Suetonius says that " an ancient and common opinion
had pervaded the whole East, that it was decreed by fate that
at that time men of Jewish origin would obtain supremacy." *
Tacitus alludes to the same belief and other similar testimonies to
this common rumor are found in classical literature.

The political condition of Palestine underwent great changes
after the death of Herod. This prince left his dominions by tes-
tament to two of his surviving sons, Archelaiis and Herod Anti-
pas. Augustus did not, however, respect these dispositions.
Judea, Samaria, and Idumea were given to Archelaiis, who as-
sumed indeed the title of king but was obliged to lay it aside for
the more modest appellation of ethnarch, with a promise of eleva-
tion to the royal dignity after he had given proof of his worthi-
ness. The emperor distrusted from the beginning his weak and
violent character, and after a trial of ten years, during which his
tyranny provoked frequent insurrections, he was deposed and

*Suet., Vesp., 4; Tacit., Hist., 1. v. c. 13.

ii2 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [April,

banished to Gaul. Judea was then at first annexed to the pro-
vince of Syria, at that time governed by Publius Sulpicius Quiri-
nius. Not long after it received a separate Procurator. During
the ten remaining years of Augustus, it had three governors in
succession, Coponius, Marcus Ambivius and Annius Rufus, all of
whom found great difficulty in maintaining their authority and
collecting taxes in face of general turbulence and continual sedi-
tions, which were only put down by military force and with
much bloodshed. Under Tiberius the country was more tran-
quil, and during the twenty-three years of his reign received but
two procurators, Valerius Gratus appointed A.D. 16, and Pontius
Pilatus, appointed A.D. 26. Annas was High Priest when Gratus
assumed the government. The latter deposed him and appoint-
ed successively Ismael, Eleazar, Simeon, and Joseph Caiphas. It
seems, however, that although an outward submission was given
to this exercise of usurped authority, Annas was always recog-
nized as the legitimate High Priest and continued to govern in
reality through his substitutes, one of whom, Eleazar, was his
son, and another, Caiphas, his son-in-law. Pilate's character was a
mixture of just dispositions, ambition and cowardice, and his ad-
ministration vacillated between a daring and a timid policy, but
was always irresolute. At length, he retired to Csesarea, coming
to Jerusalem only at the time of the Passover, when he inhabited
the fortress Antonia with a detachment of soldiers. During the
rest of the year, Jerusalem was left to the government of the San-
hedrim, only the greater causes being reserved to his tribunal,
which accounts for the power and opportunity of persecuting
Jesus during his public ministry which the Chief Priests, Scribes,
and Pharisees enjoyed.

Galilee and Perea were given to Herod Antipas with the title
of tetrarch. He was an indolent and debauched prince, who
paid little attention to the acts of the ministry of Jesus within
his dominions, finding nothing in his preaching at which he could
take umbrage.

To the north of this province, the country of Bashan, Tra-
chonitis and Iturea constituted the domain of Philip, a son of
Herod, who was a just and humane prince and a lover of the fine
arts. Jesus found several times a safe and quiet retreat within
his dominions.

Abilene, a region lying at the foot of the Anti-Libanus, ex-
tending from Hermon to the Libanus, formerly a small kingdom,
was at present a tetrarchy governed by Lysanias, who, from the
fact of his bearing the name of the last king whom Antony had

88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 113

dethroned and put to death, is conjectured to have sprung from
his family.

It was near the end of the reign of Herod, that the events
immediately preceding the birth of the Messiah related by the
evangelists, who received them from the mouth of the Blessed
Virgin herself and from other immediate witnesses, took place.
These were so arranged by divine providence as to furnish most
certain and indubitable proof of the divine origin and mission of
Jesus, to prepare the way for his appearing in due time with the
signs and marks of his character as the Messiah upon him, and to
remain for ever through the testimony of history a principal part
of the evidence for the credibility of Christianity. This evidence
was first of all to be given to the Jews, and it came through the
legitimate channel of the priesthood, of the doctors of the law, of
the most hallowed institutions of their religion and their nation-
ality, through a manifest and striking conformity of facts with
. the predictions of the prophets, and finally, through a series of
miracles culminating in the resurrection, wrought by the Mes-
siah, in his own name, in the name of the Father, and of the Holy
Spirit, which were the attestation of God to the truth of the word
spoken by the Son of Man.

The most important of the preparatory events which ushered
the coming of the Messiah was the mission of John the Baptist, a
priest of the pure Levitical descent, allied by blood also to the
house of David as a near relative of Jesus, a prephet and the in-
spired precursor of Christ. His father Zacharias was a priest of
venerable age and sanctity, his mother, equally distinguished 'for
piety, was a cousin of Mary. They lived at Youttah a city of the
Levitical tribe, not far from Hebron in the midst of the mountains
of Judea. An angel announced to Zacharias the birth and office
of his son, while he was offering incense in the Holy Place of the
temple, the most honorable of all the sacerdotal functions, which
was performed with the greatest solemnity twice every day.
The long tarrying of the priest in the sanctuary, contrary to the
invariable custom of the service which required but a few minutes,
the loss of speech which he incurred, and his sudden recovery on
the occasion of the circumcision of his son, his prophetic psalm at
the naming of the infant, the early signs of extraordinary sanctity
manifested by John followed by his ascetic life and completed by
his remarkable though short career as a preacher which was
closed by martyrdom, all gave to the testimony of Zacharias re-
specting the divine revelation he had received, and to the witness,
of John respecting the Messiah, a certainty and publicity, amply

VOL. xxxin. 8

ii4 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [April,

sufficient to convince both the rulers and the common people of
the Jews, if they had been upright and piously disposed.

The authority of Zacharias was sufficient to designate Mary
as the mother of the Redeemer of Israel. It was, moreover, a
notorious and undoubted fact, apart from the testimony of either
Zacharias or John, that Joseph and Mary were of the royal
family, so that their son was qualified in this respect, as a son of
David, to inherit his throne. Public records and genealogies,
which received the authentication of the officers of the Roman
Empire at the time of the enrolment of Augustus, gave the high-
est documentary sanction to this well-known fact. The genea-
logy of Joseph, the reputed and legal father of Jesus, is the one
recorded in the gospels. Before the law, Jesus was the heir of
Joseph, but besides this, the descent of Mary from David, and the
rights of blood which she transmitted to her Son are established
by the genealogy of Joseph, who was her near relative, probably
the brother of her father Joachim.

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was another note of the
Messiah which belonged to him. The visit of the Persian Magi,
the alarm of Herod, the answer of the Doctors of the Law to his
inquiries, and the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, all concurred
to the notoriety and publicity of the fact of the Nativity and
were added to the other certain indications of the time and the
person foretold in the Messianic predictions. The witness of
Simeon, who wa probably the president of the Sanhedrim, and
that of the aged and saintly prophetess Anna, are two more testi-
monies of a similar kind. ' Jesus added another, for the benefit of
the priests and scribes, when he manifested his wisdom by his
exposition of the prophets and the law at the time of his visit to
the temple in his thirteenth year, and John the Baptist finished
the preparatory announcement by pointing out Jesus as the Mes-
siah on the occasion of his baptism in the River Jordan.

The narrative of the Gospel, after recounting the events of
the first forty days of the Life of Jesus, is almost entirely silent
concerning the thirty years which elapsed between his birth and
his baptism. Immediately after the presentation of the child in
the temple and the departure of the Magi, Joseph was obliged to
take Mary and her infant son by a hasty flight into Egypt, to es-
cape the jealous fury of Herod. Three days' journey from the
mountains of Judea sufficed to reach the valley of Rhinocolura,
now called Wady-el-Arish, on the borders of the Egyptian terri-
tory, which was the extreme limit of Herod's dominion. There
is no necessity for supposing that the sojourn of the Holy Family

r 88 1 ] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 115

in Egypt lasted longer than three months. If the flight took
place in February of the year of Rome 750, Joseph may have re-
turned to Palestine in the following May, and must have done so
within a few months from the date of Herod's death which oc-
curred in April, because at the time of his return Archelaiis was
still in possession of the royal title.

One other episode in the history of the early life of Jesus is
narrated, his visit to the temple and discourse with the Doctors
of the Law, in his thirteenth year. Archelaiis had been dispos-
sessed two years before, and the Roman officials were administer-
ing the government, so that the journey to Jerusalem was at-
tended with no danger. The Jewish doctors were accustomed to
hold services, on the Sabbath Days, in one of the halls of the tem-
ple, for the purpose of resolving difficult questions concerning
the law which might be proposed to them. During the Paschal
time, great crowds gathered around their seats, curious to hear
the lessons of the most celebrated teachers in Israel. Without,
the knowledge of his parents, Jesus remained in Jerusalem after
they had joined the caravan with which they intended to travel
homewards, and for several days in succession resorted to this
public school of the Rabbis, where he took occasion by certain
pertinent questions to attract their special attention to himself
and thus to obtain the opportunity of giving them in a manner
comporting with the modesty which suited his age, some whole-
some instruction in the deeper and more spiritual meaning of the
Scriptures. M. Fouard refers in a note to Dr. Sepp's Leben Jesu
for a fuller account than his own of the persons and surroundings
of this interesting episode, derived from sources foreign to the
sacred history and throwing an extraneous light upon it. It is
so curious and interesting that we will quote it at length, trans-
lating from the French version of M. Sainte-Foi.*

" THE SAGES OF ISRAEL.

"Among those who sat at this period in the seat of Moses was Hillel,
who had been the Father of the Sanhedrim, that is the president of this
senate of the Jews, for thirty-seven years. Before his return from Baby-
lon, he had done for his own people what Dionysius the Little afterwards
did for Christians, i.e., made a correction of the Paschal canon, and laid
down the rules to be followed in fixing the day of the Passover. As a re-
ward for this work, he obtained the supreme chair instead of the two sons
of Bethira, to whom it belonged of right after the death of Schemaia and

* La Vie de N. S. Jesus-Christ. Par le Docteur Sepp. Traduite de 1'Allemand par M.
Charles Sainte-Foi. Paris : Poussielgue-Rusand. 1854. Tom. i. ch. 17, 18.

n6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [April,

Abtalion. If the rabbins are correct in saying that he was forty years old
when he returned from Babylon and that he occupied the chair of Israel
forty years, he was about seventy-seven (seventy-nine according to Fouard)
years of age at this time, and died three years (or one year) after the visit
of Jesus to the temple. He laid the foundation of the Masora ; * and he
gained so high a reputation by this work among the Jews, that they com-
pare him to Moses. Some of them ascribe to him a life of one hundred and
twenty years' duration.

"After him came Schammai, an illustrious disciple and an adversary of
Hillel in the school. After Menahem, who was the father of that disciple
of Jesus who bore the same name, had quitted the Sanhedrim and passed
over to Herod's party, Schammai took his place beside Hillel as vice-presi-
dent of the Sanhedrim, and drew to himself a greater number of disciples
than the latter. Faithful to the maxims of his masters Schemaia and Je-
huda ben Bethira, who had been the disciples of Joshua ben Perachia, he
was extremely rigorous in doctrine, and often pushed to the last degree of
severity the received traditions and opinions. Hillel, on the contrary, who
followed the doctrines of his own teacher Abtalion who had himself been a
disciple of Simeon ben Shetah, was more mild and lenient. He allowed
divorce for any cause, whereas Schammai permitted it, only in the case
authorized by the text of the law, for the cause of adultery. This explains
the saying often met with in the Talmud, ' Hillel looses what Schammai
binds.' The Lord often came into conflict with both these schools, but
most frequently with that of Schammai. The two schools agreed in their
opposition to the Herodians, and in their hatred of the Sadducees who re-
jected all traditions, but at bottom they hated each other so cordially that
the disciples of Schammai openly formed a conspiracy against Hillel in the
temple, provoked his partisans by every sort of insult, and assassinated
them in their houses, for they were the most numerous and powerful party.
Nevertheless, the two sects were mutually allied by inter-marriages. Com-
ing as he did into the midst of this division of the people, of its warring
sects and hostile schools of doctrine ; without giving his sanction to any
party among them, the divine Messiah chose for his mission that epoch
which was the most difficult but also the most decisive.

" Besides these two great masters, there was another distinguished
teacher, much their junior in years, Jonathan ben Uzziel, who was the
most remarkable among the eighty disciples of Hillel. The Talmud re-
counts of him, that while he was studying the Law, birds used to singe their
feathers against the wings of the angels who gathered around him to lis-
ten to his words. Jonathan translated into the vulgar Chaldee the histo-
rical and prophetical books of the Old Testament. Onkelos, also a con-
temporary of Christ, at a later period paraphrased the Pentateuch ; and
Gamaliel, who lived at the same time (St. Paul's master), prepared the
Targum (paraphrase) of Job. It is possible, however, that the Targum of
Jonathan was not finished until after the death of our Saviour. In fact
the authors of the Gemara t avow that he did not translate Daniel because
the death of the Messiah and the epoch of his coming as foretold by the

* A system of vowel-points, accents, and critical annotations on the original text of the
books of the Jewish canon.

t A Jewish commentary on the Scriptures.

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHXIST. 117

prophet corresponded too evidently with the facts in the life of Jesus Christ.
This translation of the law and the other sacred books was considered by
some rabbins of that time as a crime equal to that which those Jews com-
mitted who made the golden calf ; because they regarded it as a profana-
tion of sacred things to make them accessible to the common people. In
reality it was most suitable to the epoch of the Messiah that the Scrip-
tures should be translated into the vernacular languages. The divine re-
velation was destined to a universal diffusion beyond the limits of Judaism
among all nations through Jesus Christ, wherefore, the translation of the
Bible was a most fitting means of preparing both Jews and Gentiles for
the reception of the doctrine of redemption. As this service had been al-
ready rendered to the Gentiles by the Greek version of the Septuagint, the
same was performed in favor of the Jews by the translation into the Chal-
daic language which had superseded the Hebrew.

"Another member of the council was Bava ben Buta, a great favorite
with Herod, who spared his life when he made a general slaughter of the
members of the Sanhedrim. The Jews report that he was the person who
presented to the king the plan of a reconstruction of the temple, which had
become dilapidated through age, and was the director of the work of re-
building the edifice ; he established also afterwards a market for the sale of
animals which should serve as victims for the sacrifices, as we shall see later
on. We may mention also Simeon, the son of Hillel and his successor in
the Sanhedrim, the first of the presidents of the grand council who assumed
the title of rabbin or rabbi. This title of honor was adopted after Hillel
and Schammai had made a collection of the traditions, and our divine
Saviour was one of the first who bore it.

" These were the principal Jewish doctors who sat in the seat of Moses
when Jesus at the age of twelve years made his first appearance in the
temple. The seat of Aaron was occupied by the High-Priest Joshua. Next
to him come Boe'thi, the father of one of Herod's wives, Joazar and Elea-
zar sons of Simeon, who succeeded each other in the pontificate and were
successively deposed, and Joseph Ellemi, called also Ananus or Annas, the
son of Seth, who became subsequently High-Priest and in that capacity sat
in judgment upon our divine Saviour.

THE MEETING IN THE TEMPLE.

"We have mentioned in the foregoing chapter the most remarkable
among the chief priests of this epoch. They held their sessions in that
part of the temple which faced eastward, beneath the gate of Nicanor, at
the entrance of the court of the Jews. On the same side of the mountain
upon which the temple stood, but at an outer gate which opened into the
court of the Gentiles, and in another hall, the doctors of the law and judges
of Israel held their assemblies. The eastern gate and hall were called by
the name of Susan from the pagan city of Susa which was represented in
bas-relief on the neighboring wall in commemoration of the captivity.

" In the interior of the temple, near the court of the women, was held
the great school of the synagogue, where the members of the Sanhedrim
gave their lessons, particularly on Sabbath and festival days, in the pre-
sence of a great multitude of hearers, and gave instruction to the people.
From the time of Gamaliel there were three hundred seats arranged for the

iiS THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [April,

disciples of the sages and the crowd of auditors remained standing in the
space behind these seats. Before the time of Christ only the fathers or
teachers could be seated, and the disciples stood around or sat on the ground
at the feet of the doctors, as St. Paul relates had been his own custom. Nev-
ertheless Jesus having shown himself to be superior to the doctors and the
Pharisees in the knowledge of the Law, they gave him a seat among them-
selves as a mark of honor, that he might, like one of their number, resolve
the questions proposed to him and propose to them others in his turn.
' They found him sitting in the midst of the doctors.' It was customary to
concede the privilege of sitting in the seats reserved to the doctors, for spe-
cial reasons, and on certain occasions, to others who were not decorated
with this title, women alone being absolutely excepted. ' And behold ! all
who saw him were astonished, and those who heard him wondered at his
understanding and answers.' For his countenance was lighted up by the
radiance of his divinity, and from his adorable mouth poured forth a stream
of words full of wisdom. Such was the effect which the Incarnate Word
produced at the age of twelve years, when he made his first public appear-
ance before men.

" If it is allowable to compare a mere man with the one who was God,,
we may find an analogous instance of precocious intelligence in the histo-
rian Josephus. He relates, in his account of his own life, that when he was
scarcely fourteen years of age, he received a visit from the chief priests and
civil dignitaries of the city, who came to propose to him some questions on
the mysteries and the true sense of the Law. The same thing happened to
R. Eliezer ben Azaria, who was a descendant in the tenth generation from
Ezra, and who at the age of sixteen was led out of the crowd of auditors
and placed by acclamation in the highest seat of the doctors. Two centu-
ries later R. Aschil, the first compiler of the Talmud of Babylon, attained to
the same honor in his fourteenth year."

To the names mentioned by Sepp, M. Fouard justly adds those
of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

The motive which induced Jesus to perform this extraordi-
nary action, so singular, and without any parallel during the long
period of his hidden life, was sufficiently disclosed by himself in
the words which he spoke to Joseph and Mary : " I must be
about my Father's business." It is easy to deduce from them the
conclusion that an important service was to be rendered to a
number of the most distinguished persons in the nation who
would no longer be living when the time arrived for beginning his
public ministry. It was fitting that they should be taught and
enlightened by the Messiah before they left this world. Some of
them were worthy and prepared to receive this favor and the
grace which accompanied the instruction they received, and those
who did not profit by it had the opportunity of doing so offered
to them.

TO BE CONTINUED.

1 88 1.] THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. 119

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE "BELGIAN SCHOOL

QUESTION.

IT may not be without some use or interest to examine, in
their general features, the working and effects of the oppressive
educational law in Belgium and its recent developments, and
also more especially the manner in which its action has in a great
measure been paralyzed, as to its anticipated results, by the en-
ergy and determination of the Catholic people.

When the struggle began the respective forces were utterly
unequal in a material point of view. All the pecuniary advan-
tages afforded by the budget of the state, the funds of the com-
munes (compulsorily applied), the power of confiscation of school
buildings and appropriation of endowments, were (as they have
continued to be) in the hands of the anti-Christian ministry; while
the Catholics had nothing beyond their private resources, already
heavily taxed to support the administration of the Loi de Malheur,
as this law has been called by the Catholics of Belgium. And it
was under these circumstances that the latter found themselves
obliged to build, furnish, and provide for hundreds of schools, to
pay a numerous personnel, and to admit poor children without
payment, while, in order to meet these various charges, they had
nothing to trust to but public charity. They did not despair,
however, out resolutely set themselves to collect supplies.

One of the regulations established by the clergy and school
committees as essential in the collection ancj employment of the
funds, which has proved a very important one, is the almost abso-
lute localization of the collections, and also of the expenditure. Each
locality has had to depend, in the first place, upon itself, and, with
scarcely any external aid, to meet the cost of its own Catholic
schools. Thus, while each school committee took means to pro-
vide funds from the voluntary offerings of the inhabitants, it at
the same time regulated the expenditure according to the needs
and wishes of the parish, and according to the amount supplied.

Experience has shown this method to be the best of all, and,
in fact, the only one by which large or numerous donations can
be secured, as well as their economical administration. No other
plan could so effectually bring into play the emulation of the re-
spective localities and the responsibility of each parish priest.
It is probably owing in great measure to the unanimity with

120 THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. [April,

which this judicious arrangement has been carried out by the
organizers of Catholic education in Belgium that their remark-
able and wide-spread success may be attributed.

At the same time, although each parish was required to orga-
nize its own schools, other expenses of general utility had to be
met by means of contributions levied from a wider compass and
placed in the hands of the bishops, of provincial committees, or
of certain associations formed for the propagation of the work
such, for instance, as the societies of St. Francis of Sales and
St. Charles Borromeo. Some parishes, known to be extremely
poor, have, on the recommendation of inspectors or decanal com-
mittees, received assistance from this reserve fund towards the
establishment of their schools.

In order to raise these contributions the most varied means
were employed. The rich were solicited for donations of every
description, whether sums of money, costs of building and appro-
priation, or salaries of teachers. In many instances the members
of the Belgian aristocracy, large landed proprietors, families be-
longing to the upper middle class, and wealthy merchants and
manufacturers undertook to build, maintain, and endow one or
more schools. The D'Aremberg family alone built more than
a hundred. The names of Robiano, De Merode, and Caraman-
Chimay also occupy foremost places in this golden book of chari-
ty. The sums so generously offered were, in some cases, em-
ployed directly by the donors themselves ; in others they were
placed in the hands of the school committees, which then became
their legal proprietors. This latter practice took the place, in a
certain measure, of the Faculty of Foundations, which, in Bel-
gium, is subordinated to state authorization and control, and
consequently useless to the Catholic schools.

Persons of moderate fortunes were usually asked for immedi-
ate contributions, and for annual subscriptions for a specified
term of years. The first duty of the members of the parochial
committee was to go the round of their fellow-townsmen, in
order to collect the offerings of each family, and remove any ob-
jections or misapprehensions which might exist with regard to
the work ; the results obtained by these domiciliary visits being
completed by frequent collections made in the church.

The clergy of all ranks set the example of self-denying genero-
sity, and were the first to pay in purse and person. Their pecu-
niary sacrifices were everywhere very considerable. A large
number of priests spent the greater portion of their patrimony in
building their parish school ; others turned everything they pos-

i88i.] THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. 121

sessed into money, selling their furniture (often at a great loss)
and a much harder loss to a priest even their books. At Es-
tinnes-du-Mont the cure, a man of extensive erudition, sold his
valuable coins for the benefit of the school fund. In every way
the Belgian clergy have shown an energetic self-devotion in the
work which so greatly concerns the salvation of souls and the reli-
gious future of their country. This conduct naturally gave great
weight to their solicitations for the concurrence of the faithful,
and, accordingly, they were listened to by all classes. The peo-
ple, alike in the towns or the country, outdid the noblesse and
bourgeoisie in the self-denial which accompanied their generosity.
Working-men, peasants, women, no matter how poor, made a point
of deducting from their wages, and sometimes even from their
bread, a certain portion for the school which would keep their
children Christians. Many, not content with giving, undertook
to collect from others, and joined in numbers the great associa-
tions founded side by side with the school committees in aid of
" free " as opposed to " neutral " education.

These societies are many and varied ; but those which have
played the most important part, whether by the indefatigable ac-
tivity of the promoters or the large amount of their receipts, are
the sections of the Catholic School-Penny the Denier des Ecoles
Catholiques. Already established in the chief centres in Belgium
before 1879, tnev rapidly multiplied during the agitation imme-
diately preceding the passing of the Lot de Malheur, and no
sooner was this law passed than their number immensely in-
creased.

These sections, according to Belgian custom, are linked to-
gether in confederation. Their first General Assembly, held at
Termonde last September (1880), numbered ten thousand mem-
bers, representing nearly three hundred associations or sections.
Organized, like the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, by
tens and hundreds, the " Associates " of the School- Penny give
to their respective chiefs or treasurers a sou or two sous per
week, and the amount thus raised is added to the local school
fund. Besides this, alms-boxes, to receive the offerings of persons
not belonging to the association, are placed in the cafis, hotels,
shops, and wherever the proprietors are willing to receive them ;
they occupy the place of honor in many private houses, where
they profit by the contributions of visitors or the winnings at a
game of cards. Again, there are (or were until prohibited) the
collections made in places of public resort, at village fetes, in the
streets, and at the church-doors. These collections form one of

122 THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. [April,

the chief duties of the members or sactitaires, one of which they
acquit themselves with remarkable address and ability.

All this is not calculated to please the " Liberals," and accord-
ingly the School-Penny holds a distinguished place among their
special antipathies. They have made various attempts to hinder
external action in its favor by procuring the interference of the
police, and on several occasions the societaires have been under
the necessity of applying to the courts, in order to obtain justice
against over-zealous "neutral" (?) burgomasters or commissaires.
The well-known affair at Ghent is a case in point.

In this important city, the metropolis of the textile manufac-
tures of Belgium, inhabited by a large industrial population, the
central committee of the Kattolickc-Schoolpenning organized a gen-
eral collection in all the quartiers for the festival of the Assump-
tion, and announced it in handbills and the daily papers. Upon
this the Liberals took offence. De Kerchove, the burgomaster,
ordered the organizers of the manifestation to abandon their pro-
ject, which he stigmatized as " illegal and contrary to public
order." His injunction was disregarded, and on the day pre-
viously fixed for the collection each member started on his ap-
pointed circuit.

The money collected by each was, however, seized by the com-
munal police, and the persons who had collected it were sum-
moned before the courts. Four days afterwards the following
proclamation, in Flemish, appeared on the walls in all parts of the
town :

"SCHOOL-PENNY OF THE CATHOLICS OF GHENT.

" FELLOW-CITIZENS : On Friday last several of our collection-boxes
were confiscated by the police. Yesterday, in consequence of a letter ad-
dressed by the central committee to the Procureur du Rot, these boxes have
been restored to us. The confiscation having been public, it is just that the
act of reparation should be the same. We avail ourselves of this opportu-
nity to thank the Catholic population of Ghent for the many and generous
marks of sympathy it has on this occasion given to free, national, and Ca-
tholic education."

(The signatures follow.)

On the same day the members of the School-Penny in triumphal
procession, headed by their banner and a band of music, escorted
to the headquarters of the committee the alms-boxes given up
by the communal administration. These, borne upon a kind of
dais, covered with drapery and wreathed with flowers and ver-
dure, occupied the place of honor in the middle of the procession.

j 88 1.] THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION". ' 123

The crowd applauded as it passed along ; bouquets, presented
from time to time, served further to adorn the boxes of the
School-Penny ; the working population accompanied the proces-
sion in crowds, and sang in chorus the " Lion of Flanders" and
the song which has for three years rung throughout Belgium

"Zie zullen haar niet hebben,
De schoone ziel van't kind ! " *

In order to complete and at the same time vary their methods
of collecting, the School-Penny Associations, assisted by other
Catholic societies, occasionally give concerts,///^, lectures, and
conversaziones. In a single week the committees organized at
Brussels, for the " free " schools of the city and suburbs, a fete
for ainc in the large halls of the Cercle Catholique ; and at Malines
a musical festival for the normal schools of the diocese, as well as
concerts and dramatic representations elsewhere. All the means
that ingenious, energetic, and intelligent charity can devise are
pressed into the service of Christian education, and the collectors
of supplies are not more unwearied in asking than they and their
fellow-Catholics are in giving.

And the results are worthy of the effort. It is difficult to ar-
rive at even an approximate idea of the sums received and em-
ployed by the school committees of parishes and provinces; but,
as far as can be ascertained from certain data, it is probably near
the truth to say that, for the whole of Belgium, they amounted
before the close of 1879 to twenty million francs, while gifts in
kind, land, buildings, materials and furniture, carriage and labor,
represented another ten millions. And thus about thirty mil-
lions of francs, or six francs per head for the population, had, at
the end of November, 1879, been absorbed by the first expenses
of establishing the Catholic schools. With regard to the annual
sum requisite for meeting the ordinary expenses, it is estimated
at nine or ten millions, but of this a considerable portion is al-
ready subscribed.

Having given this gejieral view of the situation, we will en-
ter briefly into some of its details. It will suffice, as a sample of
what is being done all over Belgium, to take only the diocese of
Ghent, basing our statistics on the report of the Diocesan Com-
mittee of January 17, 1881, drawn up immediately after the re-
turn of the fourteen decanal inspectors, under Canon de Vos,
from their respective circuits.

* " They shall not have it,

The fair soul of the child ! "

124 THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. [April,

It is the duty of these inspectors to give their attention, in the
first place, to the material conditions of the schools their lo-
cality, sanitary arrangements, and general suitability for the num-
ber of inmates ; and, secondly, to examine their moral and scien-
tific organization their order and discipline, the efficiency of the
masters, the manner in which instruction is given, the character
of the religious training, and the arrangement of hours.

Canon de Vos himself visited a large number of schools, and
presided over numerous conferences of the teachers. These con-
ferences take place three times a year in each deanery, and turn
chiefly upon practical questions. The children attending the
school at which the conference is held receive lessons, in pres-
ence of the meeting, from one of the schoolmasters present. The
subject of these lessons is given out at the previous meeting, but
the persons who are to give them are designated only at the
opening of the conference itself. Thus all the masters are obliged
to be prepared to give this lesson, and are therefore the better
able to profit by the observations they may hear made upon it.
For when it is ended and the children dismissed comments are
made and opinions expressed with regard to the instruction just
given, and, in order further to stimulate the masters, their names,
and the observations elicited by their method, are consigned to
the inspector's report.

An important step towards increasing the efficiency of the
Catholic primary education has been taken in the repudiation of
the programme imposed on the public schools by the govern-
ment, and which, by the unanimous consent of the diocesan in-
spectors throughout the country, is greatly simplified and re-
duced to subjects that are indispensable. This simplification will
go far to secure the pre-eminence of the Catholic schools, as it
allows the teachers to devote their time and attention to essen-
tials, and enables the pupils to make more evident as well as
more satisfactory progress. The government programme on
the other hand, gives so large a preponderance to the various
branches of natural science that essential matters are left in the
background.* Thus, while in the official schools the children's
time is chiefly occupied in acquiring a smattering of botany,
zoology, chemistry, and physics, those in the Catholic schools are
well grounded in arithmetic, and taught to read and write cor-

* At the meeting, on the isth November, of the communal (Liberal) Council of Ghent, the
programme elaborated by Van Humbeeck for the official schools was declared to be "simply
absurd," and the Echevin of Public Instruction was recommended to " see that it was adopted
as little as possible."

1 88 1.] THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. 125

rectly in Flemish and French, and when this foundation is laid
due attention is given also to history, geography, and natural
science.

In the numerous communes where the official schools are al-
most empty the inspectors, in their report, give the list of chil-
dren attending them, mentioning their ages and the occupations
of their parents, together with the number of teachers paid by
government to take charge of these nearly empty schools. It
has been found the more necessary to do this as, on comparing
the official reports of the government schools with. the actual
numbers attending them, these reports are proved to be largely
false. In many communes all the children of an age to attend,
belonging to indigent families, are put down in the list of " neu-
trals "; and although numbers of these children go to the Catho-
lic schools, they are, in spite of the protests of the parents and
the complaints of the communal administration, inscribed in the
official list which is to determine the emolument of the govern-
ment teachers. For instance, a list of six hundred and eight chil-
dren was presented to the communal council of Pamel as attend-
ing the official school, and on inquiry it was ascertained that the
real number did not amount to twenty.*

The 76 primary schools of the arrondissement of Alost have
22,295 children ; the official, 3,336. Among the latter, 26 schools
have less than 10 children in each, while 21 others have less
than 25.

In the arrondissement of Audenarde are 13,692 Catholic pupils

2,312 "neutrals"; at Cruyshautem there are, Catholic 938,
neutral 42 ; and the proportion is about the same in many other
important communes.

At St. Laurent (also in this arrondissement) the fine school-
building formerly erected by Mile. Antoinette van Damme, hav-
ing been confiscated for the benefit of the " neutrals," is deserted
by all but 21 children (whose teachers cost the commune annu-
ally 6,133 francs), f while the number attending the new schools
erected by two other members of the same family is 636.

The Pays de Waes (" Waste Land "), reclaimed, by dint of in-
credible pains and patience, from the sea, and so highly culti- ,
vated as to have become the wonder of Europe for its unequalled
fertility, is, for reasons of a different order, also deserving of es-

* See Bulletin des Ecoles Catholiques for July 29, 1880.

t In regard to payment, it must be borne in mind that education in Belgium, as a rttle, costs
about a quarter of what it does in England, and probably one-fifth as much as in the United
States ; and salaries which to us would appear little more than sufficient, supposing they corre-
sponded to the actual amount cfzuork, would to Belgians seem almost exorbitant.

126 THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. [April,

pecial mention. Waesland, justly regarded as the heart of Ca-
tholic Flanders, is designated by the Liberals as " the stronghold
of clericalism." This tract of country, so remarkable both for its
agricultural and its industrial produce, is a source of special af-
fliction and irritation to " neutral " minds, being a visible and pal-
pable proof that fidelity to the Catholic Church in no way hin-
ders a healthy progress and prosperity in the material order.
The statistics of one of the arrondissements of Waesland will suffice
to give a correct appreciation of all the rest. We take that of St.
Nicolas, in which the population of the Catholic schools is 22,-
558 children, while that of the official schools is 2,405. At Bel-
cele there are 660 children in the Catholic school, not one at the
official, but a budget, nevertheless, of 5,971 francs.

At Beveren, 1,342 Catholics, 9 official.

At Cruysbeke, 567 Catholics, 8 official.

At Haesdonck, 558 Catholics, 3 official (all sons of the schoolmaster).

At Linay, 857 Catholics, 18 official.

At Vracene, 526 Catholics, 5 official.

These five official pupils at Vracene have as yet but one mas-
ter, and cost the commune 5,398 francs; the intention, however, is
announced, on the part of the state, to nominate an under-mas-
ter to share the educational burden, or at any rate to increase
the tax upon the commune. The remaining arrondissements all
tell, more or less, the same story ; we therefore proceed at once
to that portion of the diocesan report which relates to the city of
Ghent a city more extensively contaminated by anti-Christian
liberalism than perhaps any other in Belgium. Nevertheless,
thanks to the devotedness of the clergy, both secular and regular,
and to the unwearied generosity of the faithful, the Christian
schools of Ghent bravely carry on the struggle.

The official primary education figures in the budget of the
city for 1880 at 1,265,000 francs, besides other sums, under the
head of "general expenses," connected with the same object ; and
in spite of the penury of the communal finances, there are ever-re-
curring projects for more neutral schools to be built. In fact, so
long as and wherever there is a Catholic school the teaching state
considers it a part of its mission to neutralize its influence, if pos-
sible, as it cannot succeed in crushing it altogether; and the more
resolutely Catholics suffice for their own educational needs, inde-
pendently of state assistance and in spite of state oppression, so
much the more does the state make a point of multiplying its
empty school and unoccupied teachers, in order to punish with

[88 1.] THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. 127

iditional taxation for their support those who put faith in
irticle 17 of the constitution. Under such circumstances as

icse Canon de Vos might well, at the diocesan meeting on the
of last December, point with thankful pride to the seventy

Catholic primary schools* of Ghent, with their 10,878 children
;ued from neutrality as interpreted by anti-Christian Free-

lasons.
With regard to the official schools, it is impossible to state

nth certainty the actual number of children who attend them.
The lists published by the Hotel de Ville are not to be relied
upon, when published at all for since their inaccuracy was proved
and publicly stated none have appeared. Altogether the number
of children in the Catholic primary schools of the whole province
amounted in December to 122,331, or - of the scholar population.
Nor must it be said that it is pressure exercised by the clergy
which thus fills the Catholic schools. This is not the case. The
Flemish people, in spite of all the attempts made to undermine
their belief, are still essentially Catholic, and they are, moreover,
possessed of strong common sense. It is enough for them to
know that what is called " neutral " teaching is forbidden by the
church ; but it is more than enough for them to see wJiat are the
men who patronize the official school, in order to decide them as
to their choice. Besides this, it is only too evident in which camp
pressure is used, and of what nature and extent, when we -find in
numberless little communes that the only " official " scholars are
the children of the schoolmaster or of his relatives, and of work-
men employed on the government railway or some other service
in the hands of the state. Thus, on the one hand, for the Catho-
lic school there is the moral influence of the priest addressed to
the conscience of the parents, and, on the other, for the official
there are the material persecutions of the state, which throws out
of employment the men who refuse to send their children to the
" neutral " schools.

* The Catholic adult schools and numerous Sunday-schools of the diocese are not included
here or elsewhere. All the statistics given relate to the primary schools, properly so called,
alone.

t The following is a sample of the kind of letters not unfrequently received by the Catholic
schoolmasters :

" IXELLES, June 22, 1880.

"To MONSIEUR LE DIRECTEUR DE L'ECOLE CATHOLIQUE DU BAS IXELLES : The under-
signed, Widow Altemberg, begs to thank you for your kindness in receiving her children into
your school. I now find myself forced to remove them to the communal school ; for being in
unfortunate circumstances, and occupying a house belonging to the commune, I'have just received
an order to quit it in fifteen days. In this alternative I am obliged to yield or find myself
homeless. Receive, monsieur, my very sincere thanks. WIDOW ALTEMBERG."

128 THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. [April,

The commune of Meulebeke offers a remarkable instance of the
despotism of the Liberal government, and it is only one out of
numberless examples differing only in degree.

With respect to this commune the Patrie lately published the
following particulars. The number and quality of the children
attending the official schools stand thus :

" Two children of the police agent.
"Three children of the two gamekeepers.
" One child of the schoolmaster.
" Two children of the schoolmaster's brother.

" Two children of the widow of a ' neutral ' teacher, and to whom gov-
ernment allows a pension.

" One child of the schoolmaster's chorewoman.

" Three children of employees on the state railway.

" Eleven children of families dependent on a linen company in Ghent."

25 children in all out of a commune of 9,000 inhabitants ; while
there are 1,200 children in the Catholic schools. For the instruc-
tion of the 25 " officials " there are four male and three female
teachers, so that each has an average of three children and a
fraction to " neutralize." For the salaries alone of these seven
teachers the annual sum of 10,500 francs is exacted from the
commune, being a tax of seven francs per head for each of the
1,400 rate-payers of the place. This, however, not being enough
to satisfy Messrs. Van Humbeeck and Frere-Orban, Meulebeke
lately received a ministerial decree enunciating the following in-
junctions :

" i. To build and organize two mixed schools at the small hamlets of
Panders and het-Veld.

"2. To enlarge the (empty) school at Marialoop by adding a wing for
girls.

l< 3. To establish an infant school in the centre of the village.

"4. To organize a school in the 'foundation Vermeulen,' in the centre
of the commune.

" The indignation at Meulebeke," adds the Patrie, " at the imposition of
these utterly useless and ruinous charges is indescribable, and the inhabi-
tants and municipality, declaring them to be as illegal as they are despo-
tic and arbitrary, refuse to submit to them."

One of the most vexatious and harassing forms of oppressive
interference which has yet been invented against the Catholic
schools is the wandering organization called the Enquete Scolaire,
whose business it is to visit, examine, and report on these schools,
and everything relating to them, in a manner congenial to the in-
tentions of the senders. This machinery, set on foot by the Free-

1 88 1.] THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. 129

mason ministry as " a work destined to restore civil peace and
amity," has for one of its chief originators a M. Neujean. This
gentleman, when recently addressing some fellow-Liberals at
Liege on the subject, was good enough to explain what this peace
and amity meant, and to expatiate upon the amiable object of its
bearlike embrace.

" Ce parti ! " he exclaimed, " le parti clerical ! jurons-lui haine, mais une
haine ardente, une haine tenace, une haine de tous les jours, de tous les
instants, et jurons de ne deposer les armes que lorsque nous 1'aurons com-
pletement terrasse ! " *

Can it be matter of surprise if Catholics object to smoke this red-
hot pipe of peace?

The working of the " Scholar Inquest " is well described in
a pamphlet by M. Delmer, called Five Days at Virton. M.
Delmer took the trouble to accompany the "inquirers" in their
peregrinations during that space of time, and stenographed every
word of their examinations as it was spoken. His account, which
has all the impress of truth and nature (for instance, in the an-
swers of peasant witnesses, amongst others), is singularly at vari-
ance with the varnished periods of the official report, which, by
its suppression of truth and additions to it, lacks all the condi-
tions of authenticity. And this is not all. In some cases the an-
swers are literally dictated to the witnesses, while the questions,
as a rule, are so framed as to imply command or expectation of
assent. For instance :

" Has not the cure been guilty of exercising undue pressure on the
poor? You have doubtless remarked in his sermons attacks upon the
education law ? No doubt the ill-feeling, hatred, and divisions in the vil-
lage are caused by the clergy ? " etc.

The rustic did not always understand the subtleties of the inter-
rogatory, and would answer simple nonsense or not answer at
all, thus giving rise to the most ludicrous disputes.

" Have you not been revolted, . indignant, monsieur ? " asked a M.
Bouvier of a peasant he was catechising.

" Yau " (rustic d for ya yes*).

" And justly so, monsieur ! And what more ? The cure has changed
the hour of catechism so as to interfere with the official instruction ? "

"Yau yau" (hesitatingly).

" Well, then, monsieur, you are of course indignant, revolted ?"

*" Let us swear hatred against the clerical party an ardent hatred, an unyielding hatred, a
hatred for every day and for every moment and let us swear not to lay down our arms until we
shall have completely overthrown it."
VOL. XXXIII. 9

130 THE BELGIAN SCHOOL QUESTION. [April,

(Slowly) " Yau, mijnheer? "

" Say so, then ! Express your sentiments ! Speak ! "

And this little specimen of the style of these pseudo-examinations,
taken at random from M. Delmer's book, is by no means one of
the worst examples. Witnesses who can be coaxed into abuse of
the clergy are invariably praised, flattered, and instigated to ca-
lumniate them, while those who venture a word in their favor are
as systematically ridiculed, insulted, and set aside. What can be
said of the honesty of the method or the men ? To publish an
accurate report would be to publish their own shameless want of
principle ; the report is mutilated, accordingly, and it is on these
contemptible documents that the discussions in the Chamber of
Representatives are based !

The carrying out of this " work of vengeance " (as it was
openly avowed to be by one of its promoters, M. Devigne) costs
the country nearly half a million of francs per annum. We shall
briefly summarize some of the approved methods of Liberal pres-
sure not yet touched upon, but which also are additional evi-
dence that the Catholics of Belgium have to struggle on against
all influences in power, and all organizations under the control of
the state. The bureaux de bienfaisance, or relieving offices, are
officially leagued against the poor and needy, who, if Catholics or
sending their children to the Catholic schools, are refused all relief ;
functionaries who venture to use their rights as free citizens are
dismissed ; royal commissioners are set over the administration
of Catholic communes, and Catholic municipalities deprived of
their regular subsidies, even in times of special distress for in-
stance, during an epidemic, inundations, or any other general
misfortune and this, too, while they are taxed by exorbitant im-
posts for the support of anti-Christian or empty schools. Deci-
sions of parochial and communal councils are annulled, permis-
sion to have " tombolas," or lotteries, in aid of Catholic schools is
as invariably refused as it is invariably granted to the queux for
theirs ; the same unequal measure being dealt in respect to public
collections made for the respective objects. Medical commis-
sioners are empowered to violate domicile and take preventive
measures, on the most frivolous pretexts, against Catholic teach-
ing. Spies and reporters are employed in all directions, in the
churches and amongst the poor, and a law is proposed for the
suspension of inviolability of domicile not only for the Catholic
schools and teachers, but for all persons denounced by the com-
mittees of the official schools.

[88 1.] THE PRUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC LEAGUE. 131

THE PRUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC LEAGUE.

IT seems only yesterday that we were reading- discourses on
the victory of " the thinking bayonet " in the hands of the Ger-
man soldier. The overthrow of the French armies, we were as-
sured, was not so much the result of strategy and of numbers as
the triumph of superior culture and education. The Zeit-Geist, our
progressive philosophers delighted to tell us, was now at last
soaring over the new German nation, and we were about to have
offered to our admiring gaze all those beautiful things which the
devotees of the religion of Humanity and Culture had been dream-
ing of for a very long while. It is true that three years had not
passed before learned, pious, and charitable men and women
Germans of the Germans were driven out exiles from their
German fatherland. But to calm the amazement of the rest of the
world at this it was explained that the teaching and practice of
priests and nuns were not in conformity with the " Liberal "
order of things that was henceforth to reign. Unless priests and
nuns were cheated of their rights and property, and unless Catho-
lic flocks were deprived of their pastors and Catholic colleges and

132 THE PRUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC LEAGUE. [April,

schools were closed or given over to Liberal instruction, Liberal-
ism could not be at peace. For it is well to note that Liberalism
means uniformity. The law of May, 1873, which sent bishops,
priests, and religious to live on the charity of the outside barbarian,
non-German world, and which substituted the opinions of what was
called the State for conscience, was at last to put an end to the
individuality so hateful to progressists, and leave Germany tho-
roughly united, thinking and acting as one man, and that man the
beautiful incarnation of all the fine ideas of the school of culture ;
that man the Junker Bismarck !

To-day Germany that is to say, Prussia, the Germany of the
Culturkampf and of progress is hunting the Jews. Four hun-
dred years ago Spain was doing the same. But the persecutions
to which the Jews were subjected during the middle ages were
not because of but rather in spite of Christianity. The baptism of
the barbarian peoples who were to develop into Christian Europe
was merely the beginning of the work of Christianization, which
was not fairly to be completed until after the lapse of centuries
a work that received a severe check from the revolt of the
sixteenth century, with all its resulting war and turmoil. For
though Christianity itself is divine, the subjects it had to civilize
and cultivate were only human, or something less than human.
The church itself enjoyed little peace during those middle ages,
so that a peculiar people, who were everywhere strangers among
strangers, and whose circumstances kept them aloof from most
of the risks and sacrifices which the turbulent character of the
times forced upon the rest, could hardly expect to escape al-
together unscathed. And in Spain the Jews were looked upon
with constant distrust, for, as a rule, they were friendly to the
Mohammedan Moors, from whose dominion Spain was making
heroic, but for a long time futile, efforts to free herself. With
Spain, then, the persecution of the Jews was held rightly or
wrongly to be in the interest of nationality and independence ;
the motive was patriotic. With Prussia, Liberal and Progressive
Prussia, it is asserted to be a question of marks and groschen.
It is difficult to see progress in this.

An Anti-Semitic League was formed less than three years ago
with the avowed object of breaking down the influence of the Jews
in society, literature, and politics, and of putting obstacles in the
way of any further progress of the Jewish race in Germany. This
League exists principally at those points which originally were the
strongholds of Protestantism, and which in modern times are the
centres of infidelity. It drew up a petition embodying the fol-

i88i.] THE PRUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC LEAGUE. 133

lowing points, and last November presented it to the Reich-
stag:

" i. The discouragement, by some restrictions, of Jewish immigration into
Germany.

" 2. The exclusion of the Jews from the highest offices, and the limita-
tion in certain cases of the power of such Jews as hold the office of judge
in the upper courts.

" 3. The discouragement of the Judaizingof schools frequented by Chris-
tians, Jewish teachers to be employed only where the subject to be taught
might render it desirable.

" 4. A census of the Jews in Prussia."

The petition was rejected by the Reichstag, but it is now circulat-
ing more actively than before. The League is said to number
more than one hundred thousand members, none but men of
twenty-four years of age and upwards being eligible as members.
The universities are particularly active, the petition having been
signed by fourteen hundred of the four thousand students at the
University of Berlin, by more than one thousand at the Univer-
sity of Leipzig, and by a like proportion at the other northern
universities.

The movement labored under great difficulties at the start, for
almost the entire Liberal press of Germany is in the hands of the
Jews,* and these papers naturally left nothing unsaid that could
bring failure on the Anti-Semites. They- were held up to ridi-
cule as bigoted Protestants, more superstitious even than the Ca-
tholics and not so consistent. The fact that certain old-fashioned
Protestants like Pastor Stocker have been zealous in promoting
the agitation might have lent some color to this onslaught of the
press, but it was soon evident that the impulsive and loquacious
Protestant clergymen were giving vent to a sentiment that pre-
vails as well among the greater part of the non-Jewish Liberals.

Yet the Liberals owe much of their success to Jewish support.
To most of the Jews Christianity is hateful. The orthodox Jew
who still holds to a belief in revelation- and to the rabbinical
traditions regards Christianity as a false religion ; the sceptical
and literary Jew ridicules it as a superstition. The Jewish Lib-
erals,, therefore, mercilessly pushed the enforcement of the May
Laws, which placed the nearly nine millions of Prussian Catholics
under a sort of ban ; for they readily understood that if Catholi-
city were stamped out in Germany it would be all over with

* Reuter's news agency also, which supplies the American press with its European cable
news, is controlled by Jews.

134 THE PRUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC LEAGUE. [April,

Christianity in that country. And, by the way, even so lately
as last January, when Herr Windthorst's resolution in the
Prussian Reichstag, declaring the celebration of Mass and
the administration of the sacraments exempt from penalty,
was rejected at its second reading by a vote of two hundred and
fifty-four to one hundred and fifteen, only two Jews out of
the whole number of Jews in the Reichstag voted with Wind-
thorst in favor of this modicum of religious liberty for Catho-
lics. As soon as Catholicity in Germany was supposed to have
been mortally wounded in the Culturkampf the immense in-
fluence which the Jews possessed as scientists, university profes-
sors, journalists, painters, musicians, theatrical managers, actors,
caricaturists, book-publishers, school-teachers, magistrates, law-
makers, and bankers, besides the thousands of ways in which a
large business patronage might be made to count, was employed
to render Christianity odious. For in these several avocations
the Jews of Prussia are conspicuous both by numbers and by
great ability. There are said to be more Jews in Berlin alone
than in all France.* As the Jews did not agitate professedly as
Jews, the real motives of the anti-Christian aggressions was not
always suspected.

Therefore when we find the Liberals active in the Anti-Semitic
League, we can rightly conclude that religion has little to do with
this new persecution of the Jews. A Protestant writer in an
English periodical-)- says the same :

"Of Protestantism it is vain to talk. Pericles and Alcibiades were not
more completely and frankly pagan, or less trammelled by prejudice, than
the Prussian statesman and warrior of to-day. There are believing Chris-
tians in Germany, but who holds them to be of any account ? The Protes-
tant ' Church ' is a dismal spectacle of dwindling indifferentism ; the Catho-
lic Church has fallen a prey to the Protestant Inquisition of Falk renown ;
and religionists of all denominations are treated by ' the general ' either as
hypocrites and time-servers or as illiterate imbeciles whose ' vain bab-
blings ' are of no account. It is not the religion of the Jews that ' stinks '

* According to statistics given by Dr. Richard Andree in his Allgemeine Handatlas (Leipzig,
1880), and quoted in an article, entitled " La Question des Juifs en Allemagne," in the Revue
Catholique for February, 1881, the following is a correct estimate of the Jewish populations of
the several countries here named :

Total
Jews. population.

Russiaand Finland 2,612,179 74,500,000

Austna-Hungary 1,375X68 ss,<;oo,coo

Germany 512, IS3 42,750,000

Turkey. (58,98?)? 5.7V>,ooo

Rumania

400,0-0 5,500,000

France. 49.439 37< c o,ooo

England 46,000 34,500,000

Total

Jews, population.

Holland and Luxembourg 68,526 4,000,000

Italy 35iQOO 28,000,000

Belgium 3,000 s, 500,000

Spain 5,000 16,500,000

Scandinavian States 4)315 6,500,000

Denmark 4,290 2,000,000

{The author of German Home Life, in an article entitled " The Jews in Germany," pub-
lished in the Contemporary Review for January, 1881.

i88i.] THE PRUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC LEAGUE. 135

in German ' nostrils.' No ' cultured ' German cares what the particular
'doxy ' of his neighbor is. His fear and hatred of the Jew grows out of rr,
terial grounds, and is a life-question of far more vital importance to him
than the relative value of the Testament or the Talmud."

But a Jewish Liberal very singularly, if the Jewish question
were not under discussion does not speak flatteringly of the
period during which Liberalism has had full sway in Germany.
He says :

" Germany has, during the last ten years, fallen from the position of one
of the richest and happiest to one of the poorest and most disturbed of
states. Bowed down beneath the intolerable burden of an immense stand-
ing army, and distracted by failing trade and intense political conflict, the
country has presented a melancholy appearance, and consequently the
Jews have become the scapegoats of all the popular discontent." *

Still, the really wonderful material development of Prussia that
followed the Franco-Prussian war drew to the chief cities a
great influx of Jews. With their keen intellects and inherited
business faculties they soon seized upon many of the main ave-
nues of wealth. From having been a race of small traders and
brokers whom the German Junkers were accustomed to hold in
derision, the Jews were before long able to put the newly-estab-
lished empire under tribute. Complaint is, in fact, beginning to
be made that Prussia is in danger of being Judaized.

the
tin
po
the
*u.

" Wherever they [the Anti-Semites] look," says the Jewish writer in
the Nineteenth Century referred to above, " they complain that they see
their country weighted with Jewish influence. Their universities are deeply
inged with Jewish teachings, their foremost philosophers and their most
pular journalists are Jews. German aspirations and opinions are thus,
they say, asphyxiated by a predominance which cannot be acceptable to
the nation because it is Jewish."

A few quotations from the Contemporary Review f will picture
the situation as it appears to the Anti-Semites :

"... A cry comes from the conquering country that all has been in
vain in vain the sacrifice of German blood and gold ; vain the endur-
ance and the loss ; vain the glory and the fame. Germany belongs not to
herself ; she belongs to an alien race a race with which her children claim
no affinity and own no sympathy ; Germany, we are told, belongs to the
Jews.

" Startling as the assertion may seem, an examination of the facts rather
tends to prove than to disprove it. ... Wheresoever the Semitic race had

*" A Jewish View of the anti-Jewish Agitation," in the Nineteenth Century for February,
1881.

t January, 1881, the article " The Jews in Germany."

136 THE PRUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC LEAGUE. [April,

established itself in Germany it had, even under adverse conditions, pros-
pered. In Berlin the A B C of commerce (in its larger sense) had yet to be
learned. Prussia, singularly deficient in seaports, and Berlin, far removed
from the seaboard, with little to export and with few facilities of transport,
had hitherto enjoyed little more than a local prosperity. Ground had been
reclaimed and colonies planted in former swamps and bogs by Frederick
the Great ; but a ' good year ' meant still (to Prussia) a year of good har-
vests and good husbandry, not of enlarged commercial relations, improved
manufactures, and augmented exports.

" One man's loss is another man's opportunity. Where the German
failed the Jew succeeded. By a series of manoeuvres, too long and too va-
ried (even if it were possible) to enumerate, bankrupt builders, insolvent mer-
chants, tottering speculations, ruined 'companies,' fell into Hebrew hands,
and the experts knew so well how to manipulate matters that what was the
Gentile's ruin proved the Jew's fortune. By degrees it became obvious
that into every walk of life the Hebrew was determined to penetrate, and,
having penetrated, to predominate. ' Society ' had hitherto ignored or at
most tolerated him with uneasy, ill-disguised antipathy. Now it should be
made to feel the Israelite's power and to acknowledge his claims.

" A Jewish banker, who chose Passion-week for the annual epoch of
his hospitalities, smiled to see his drawing-rooms crowded with so-called
Christians, and forthwith the Jewish press made merry over the flimsy fic-
tion of a faith which succumbed so easily to social considerations. Nor was
it long before the same organs held up the whole Protestant community to
general ridicule. The so-called united ' church,' its synods and its con-
gresses, its societies and its charities, its prejudices and its weaknesses, were
scourged with a pitiless scorn and ridicule that would have met with gene-
ral reprehension if they had emanated from Gentile sources with reference
to cognate Jewish subjects. They who had been, as it were, fellow-citizens
on sufferance arose and smote the smiters."

Pastor Stocker, who has so far been one of the loudest talkers
in the movement, is a chaplain of the imperial court a fact of no
small significance. He has also organized a society of work-
ing-men, in order to combat the efforts of the infidel socialists.
Professor Von Treitschke is an extreme Liberal, an eminent
writer, and a close friend of Bismarck, and he is one of the most
ardent workers and talkers in the Anti-Semitic League. He
is professor of history at the University of Berlin. In a pam-
phlet he lately published (Em Wort iiber unser Judenthum, Berlin,
1880) he declares that the Jews are the misfortune of Germany
(" die Jliden sind unser Ungliick "). Bismarck himself is known
to favor the League, and this may explain the sudden kindness
of the Crown Prince towards the Jews, for heirs-apparent at all
times have usually found it convenient to be in the opposition.
Still, the Crown Prince may be sincere in his defence of the
Jews, for he was also understood to be opposed to the May

1 8 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 137

,aws. At all events, a study of the matter from original Ger-
man sources leaves no doubt that all classes of Protestants and
Liberals are now engaged in the work of " Boycotting " the
Jews.

What the issue will be it is hard to say. When the Jews
joined with the Liberals to rob Catholics of their religious rights,
they must have forgotten that the principles of the May Laws
being taught might within a short time return to plague the in-
ventors and the abettors. Perhaps when even-handed justice shall
have set before their own lips the poisoned chalice which they
were not afraid to commend to unoffending Catholics, they will
profit by the experience. One thing must be remembered : the
Jews have not apostatized from the faith. Their fault is that
they have stubbornly refused to recognize the great Catholic tree
that, with divine nourishment, has grown up from the same seed
which they have carefully preserved.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HE LIFE OF THE VENERABLE FRANCIS MARY PAUL LIBERMANN, Founder
of the Congregation of the Holy Heart of Mary, and first Superior-
General of the Society of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Heart of Mary.
By the Rev. Prosper Goepfert, priest of the same society. With a pre-
face by the Most Rev. Dr. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly.
Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

The illustrious Archbishop of Cashel declares in the preface that he
read this volume in manuscript with great pleasure and sustained interest,
and he ventures to predict that no one having a relish for books of this
kind can read ten consecutive pages without being tempted to read it
through. The author has undoubtedly done his work well. By patient
labor and diligent research he has accumulated the facts and the data neces-
sary to make his book entirely trustworthy. The narrative is very graphic,
and gives evidence of considerable ability in the art of writing. He has
drawn a word-portrait of the Venerable Father Libermann which is doubt-
less true to life and is not magnified beyond proper proportion. In his
zeal to prove Father Libermann's claim to sanctity he has not forgotten to

138 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April,

relate the history of his early trials, his constant efforts to become wise and
good, and his difficulties in the practice of virtue. It is evident from reason
that every saint, by the very fact of being a descendant from Adam and
Eve, must necessarily have a great deal in common with other human be-
ings. In writing their biographies, therefore, it is not sufficient as some
writers seem to think to depict only the marvellous and supernatural
aspect of their character, but it is also necessary to describe their natural
traits and to show what they had to do in order to attain sanctity. Some
of the saints have had great natural gifts, as well as extraordinary super-
natural endowments. The progress towards perfection of the individual
soul, like the advancement or civilization of the human race, is governed
by fixed laws. It is not more difficult to become a saint in the nineteenth
than it was in the first century. God adjusts his graces in such a way as to
enable every one to do what is commanded and to avoid what is prohibited
by the divine law. In every age the holy Church elevates prominently
some of her children who have practised in a heroic degree the virtues,
both natural and supernatural, that adorn human nature, and are therefore
to be considered as models worthy of our imitation.

The life of Father Libermann began within the limits of the present
century. He was born in 1804, and received a thoroughly Jewish educa-
tion under the constant supervision of his father, who was the rabbi of
Saverne, in the province of Alsace. At the age of twenty-two he became a
Catholic, and shortly after determined to b.ecome a priest. On account
of nervous debility, however, his ordination was postponed many years.
While waiting and hoping that God would give him strength to follow out
his desire of embracing the sacerdotal state, he employed his time assidu-
ously in study and the performance of good works. When finally admitted
to the priesthood he devised a plan to evangelize the negroes, and, with the
active co-operation of several of his companions, he founded the Missionary
Society of the Holy Heart of Mary. Before his project had been approved
at Rome he had to endure much unreasonable opposition and to bear pa-
tiently with the injurious criticism of those who, for the most part, were
incompetent to pass judgment on the scheme he proposed. At length,
however, those who were appointed to examine the matter at Rome decided
in his favor, and at the time of his death, in 1852^ large number of devoted
missionaries recognized him as their chief and master.

The author has made numerous judicious quotations from the writings
of Father Libermann, who, like St. Francis of Sales, seems to have had a
great facility for letter-writing, and in his confidential written communica-
tions to his friends to have freely expressed his fears, his joys, his sorrows
and consolations. Fortunately for Father Goepfert, these letters were care-
fully preserved, together with many spiritual conferences and instructions
addressed to his disciples, in which he exhorted them to follow the Christian
standard of conduct and to strive after sacerdotal perfection,

THE POEMS AND STORIES OF FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN. Collected and edited,
with a sketch of the author, by William Winter. Boston : James R. Os-
good & Co. 1881.

Twenty-five years ago one of the best known of New York contribu-

8 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 139

tors to periodical literature was Fitz-James O'Brien. He belonged to a cir-
cle of Bohemians who flourished here before the development of journal-
ism replaced the romance of a literary life by a certainty as to the ways and
means of getting a dinner and a lodging. His stories and poems his sto-
ries especially were well received at the time, and Mr. Winter is entitled
to thanks for having collected the best of them in this volume. On reading
the stories Poe's clever essays in the same line are at once brought to the
mind. Not that there is a lack of originality in O'Brien's matter or man-
ner, but because the two men, alike in other respects than their story-tell-
ing powers, often relied on the pseudo-science of their day to give an air of
plausibility to their weird and singular narratives. But O'Brien's stories,
short as they are, lack the finish that Poe put to everything he wrote, and
one cannot help thinking that, whether it was his own fault or not, he was
capable of doing a great deal more and a great deal better than he did do.
The poems, though not of so much merit as the stories, are yet full of the
possibilities that seemed to hang about their author. At all events the vol-
ume which Mr. Winter has given to the public will have the effect of keep-
ing O'Brien's literary reputation from rusting. The stories we particularly
commend to our readers, remarking by the way, however, that O'Brien was
not a Catholic, and that in one or two instances he has unintentionally, no
doubt, used expressions that are offensive to Catholic ears.

At the outbreak of the civil war O'Brien, who, though an Irishman by
birth or perhaps because he was an Irishman was a true American at
heart, went into the army, and while serving on the staff of General Lander
was mortally wounded in an engagement at Bloomery Gap, February 26,
1862. And thereon hangs something curious. During the last few weeks
notices of the book have appeared in the literary corners of the leading jour-
nals, and they have in the main been favorable. Yet two facts are proved
by most of these notices viz., first, how very vague the recollection of the
details of the civil war has already become ; and, second, how far and fast
an historical error will travel before any attempt is made to intercept it.
he error occurs in a reminiscence of O'Brien written by the late Mr. Frank
ood, which Mr. Winter includes with some other introductory matter of
the volume. In describing the way in which O'Brien received his death-
wound Wood says: " His [O'Brien's] encounter with the rebel colonel, Ash-
ley, was a regular duel. They were about twenty paces asunder, and
fired, with great deliberation, three shots; O'Brien was hit by the second
shot, and his men aver that he killed Ashley with his last, as that officer
fell when he fired." Now, the Confederate officer referred to was the fa-
mous Colonel, afterwards General, Ashby not Ashley who was present at
Bloomery Gap, but did excellent service for some time afterward for Stone-
wall Jackson, and in fact, by his reckless exposure of himself, furnished the
men of Shields' division with fine target practice, until he was killed at
Cross Keys in June, 1862. Ashby was one of the boldest cavalrymen and
most skilful partisan leaders in the Confederate service, yet our great
dailies, which have dilettante devotion for all the petty details of modern
European history, misspell his name, and with the utmost gravity repeat an
error which in the first place was excusable enough for the want of better
information, but which ought now to make a schoolboy blush.

140 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April,

SEVENTY-THREE CATHOLIC TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. New York :
The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1881.

A combination of the entertaining and the instructive is more often
talked of than seen, it is sad to have to confess, yet it is doubtful if any-
where else in so small a book one could find so much of these two things
as in the above collection of Catholic tracts. These tracts originally began
to be issued in 1866, and as they were distributed by colporteurs at various
points of the greatest traffic in New York City, their appearance created
something of a sensation.

More than four millions of these tracts, the preface of this collected
edition informs us, have been sold and circulated ; and certainly, when one
glances over the seventy-three titles, this great success is easily accounted
for. Moreover, as the same preface adds, although the authors' names
have never been published, " eminent prelates and learned theologians
men who have a world-wide reputation have written many of these
tracts."

There are few popular religious errors that are not touched upon in
some or other of the tracts, and in nearly every case with a thorough un-
derstanding of how these errors exercise a control over the minds of men
who are not Catholics only because they do not know the church, only
because they misapprehend the church and its teachings. Yet, though
mainly intended for the correction of the errors so prevalent among even
the best educated of Protestants concerning Catholic doctrines, they make
very useful reading for Catholics as well. They are full of learning, but the
learning is presented in so very bright and vivacious a manner that often
one, while reading along with an amused smile on his face, suddenly be-
comes aware that he has gotten a new hold of a familiar truth. None of
the tracts is exhaustive, but every one is suggestive. A more useful auxiliary
for the controversy into which almost any intelligent American Catholic is
in daily likelihood of being thrown it would be difficult to name.

FOREGLEAMS OF THE DESIRED. Sacred Verses, Hymns, and Translations.
By H. A. Rawes, M.A., D.D., Oblate of St. Charles. Third Edition.
London : Burns & Gates. 1881.

The design of this little book, as set forth in its preface, is altogether
devotional. For those souls who, in the midst of sorrow or trial, find it a
help to read or repeat simple hymns these verses are written. A consid-
erable portion of the book is devoted to an account of the Archconfrater-
nity of the Holy Ghost, and the devotion to the Holy Ghost finds expres- -
sion in several hymns. This worship of the Holy Ghost, the author of our
sanctification, as a special devotion, should be earnestly recommended to
the faithful. Already this confraternity exists in the diocese of Phila-
delphia. Let us hope that it may spread throughout our land, bringing
forth the fruits of the Spirit. Were the objects of this association fully ap-
preciated by pastors and people, were all Christians to stir up within their
souls a greater love for this Divine Spirit, who is our guide, consoler,
helper, and sanctifier, we might indeed expect that renewal of the face of
the earth for which the church bids us pray.

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 1 4 1

INSTRUCTIONS FOR FIRST-COMMUNICANTS. Translated from the German
of the Rev. Dr. J. Schmitt, of Freiburg-in-Breisgau, Germany. New
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1881.

This little work is not, as might perhaps be supposed from its title, in-
tended for the use of children and others preparing for first communion;
it is rather a series of instructions which will be useful to priests, or to
others who may share with the clergy the work of preparing children for
it. They are principally based on the questions of Deharbe's Full Cate-
chism, and can well be used in connection with that valuable work. Be-
sides the great amount of matter of immediate utility which they contain,
they are suggestive of much more, and will no doubt be found of great
service in this way, as well as more directly to those who have charge of
first-communion classes, however great their knowledge or experience
may be.

The appendix, consisting of sermons and plans of sermons for the day
of first communion, will also be found very useful for those who may wish
to preach on that day. They would also be available for the preparatory
retreat, and on all occasions when a discourse on the Holy Eucharist is to
be given.

THE LONGFELLOW BIRTHDAY BCOK. Arranged by Charlotte Fiske Bates.
Boston: Houghton, MifHin & Co. 1881.

This is a pretty little quarto volume of three hundred and ninety-eight
pages, containing extracts from Longfellow arranged for every day in the
year, with a blank space reserved for each day in which to set down addi-
tional thoughts. The selection is made with good taste and judgment, and
it will be found that a new light is often thrown on the meaning of the
verses when they are read under the different months, as here arranged,
nder every day or nearly everyday are given the names of eminent
men who were born on that day. It will be seen from some of the names
that the compiler is extremely eclectic. For instance, we find M. Hopkins,
G. Adolphus (this is perhaps the Swedish champion of Protestantism), Santa
Teresa, J. P. Smith, Peter the Great, E. Burke, John Henry Newman, Spitta
(Spitta, Spitta who was Spitta ? Spitta ? Why, he was a German writer
of devotional poetry in the early part of the century. Ah ! yes), F. W. Fa-
ber, Garibaldi, M. F. Tupper, and J. Fell.

FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. By F. W. Long-
man, Balliol College, Oxford, author of a Pocket Dictionary of the
German and English Languages. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.

CThis is the thirteenth volume of the series of little compendiums issued
nder the name of " Epochs of Modern History." The present volume
takes up the career of Frederick the Great, and aims to make that career
more intelligible by brief glances from time to time at such political com-
binations in other countries as had any important bearing on Prussia or
Prussian affairs.

But there are some curious omissions. For instance, in the account of

142 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April,

Braddock's defeat near Fort Duquesne (page 68) nothing is said about the
part taken by Washington ! Four of the most conspicuous of Frederick's
military antagonists were General George Browne and his nephew, General
Ulysses Maximilian Browne ; General the Count Peter de Lacy and his son,
Count Joseph Maurice. Of the two Brownes the first was an Irishman of
the family of the Earls of Kenmare, who, being forced by the anti-Catholic
penal laws to leave Ireland, entered the Russian service and rose to the
rank of a field-marshal. His nephew was born at Basel and became a field-
marshal in the Austrian service, and was mortally wounded at the battle
of Prague. The elder of the De Lacys also abandoned Ireland on account
of persecution, and in course of time attained to the chief command of the
Russian army, while the younger De Lacy won a similar rank in the ser-
vice of Austria. These four men figure constantly in the pages of the vol-
ume under consideration, yet nowhere is there the least hint of their Irish
origin or of the religious persecution that made them exiles from their
country. Had they been Huguenots, victims of the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, would not that fact have been kept before the reader's mind ?

This series is of course English, and is originally intended for the in-
struction of loyal British youth. And that is precisely where the mischief
comes in in reprinting, without careful revision, for American use publica-
tions that deal with politics or history and that have been written for for-
eigners and for the prejudices of foreigners.

NOUVELLE-FRANCE, COLONIE LIBRE DE PORT-BRETON (Oceanic). CEuvre
de colonisation agricole chretienne et libre de Monsieur Charles du
Breil, Marquis de Rays. Par P. de Groote, Consul-General de la Nou-
velle-France. Paris : Societe Generate de Librairie Catholique (V.
Palme, Directeur-General). 1880.

M. de Groote gives a very interesting description of the resources and
capabilities of Port Breton, in Oceanica, in which an attempt is being made
to settle a Catholic French colony. It is an era of colonization, and the
people of France, who have hitherto generally been well contented to stay
at home, appear to be again desirous to establish themselves at points cal-
culated to extend the commerce and increase the influence of their great
country.

THE LANDS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. A geographical and historical Atlas of
the Bible, intended to serve as an aid to the better understanding of the
Sacred Text and of Biblical history. Consisting of seven maps arranged
according to the latest and most reliable authorities. By Dr. Richard
Riess. Freiburg-in-Baden (and St. Louis, Mo.) : B. Herder.

A most useful atlas for the student of sacred history. The maps are
beautifully done, the topography being clearly indicated and in great detail.
As the work was done in Germany, the orthography of the Arabic names
is naturally given according to the German system e.g., el Dschabie for el
Jabie, etc. This, however, will be no great inconvenience to scholars.

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

SELECT WORKS OF THE VENERABLE FATHER NICOLAS LANCICIUS, S.J.
Translated from the Latin. Vol. II. I. On Rash Judgments. II. On
Aridity. With a Preface by Father Gallwey, SJ. London : Burns &
Oates. 1 88 1.

This is a second volume of the works of a Jesuit father who lived in
the sixteenth century, and in giving it and similar works to the modern
English public the English Jesuits are doing a good work. The present
volume embraces two treatises, one on rash judgments and the other on
aridity or dryness and distraction in prayer. Father Lancicius is a mas-
ter in the spiritual life, and anything from his pen can be commended sim-
ply on the strength of his name. His treatise on rash judgments is minute
and practical, and will serve greatly to form a correct conscience with re-
gard to this most neglected and at the same time most easily overlooked
point of Christian morals.

In the treatise on aridity in prayer one has the consolation of knowing
that he is following a guide who has met with and overcome the difficulties
he treats of, and is therefore to be followed with confidence knowing well
that he who has been to a place and is thoroughly acquainted with the
ground can guide with greater precision than one who has his knowledge
from mere hearsay.

THE MISSION OF WOMAN. The substance of a discourse by Monseign-
eur Mermillod, Bishop of Hebron, addressed to the Children of Mary
in the convent chapel of the Sacred Heart, Brussels. Translated from
the French by M. A. Macdaniel. London : Burns & Oates. 1881.

There is something about the French language that makes it particu-
larly well adapted for conveying religious instruction to women. Religion
and its duties are never more attractive to the gentler sex than when pre-
sented in the polite and elegant language of France. This is evidenced by
the fact that ladies of other nationalities who are familiar with the French
generally like to use it in religious exercises in preference to their mother-
tongue.

This address of Monseigneur Mermillod is conceived in the best style
of the French conference, and even in the translation retains much of its
native grace. We feel assured that the devout " Children of Mary " in this
country will read the distinguished prelate's discourse with pleasure and
profit.

The address is printed on fine tinted paper and is neatly bound.

ERNESTINE : A novel. By Wilhelmine von Hillern, author of The Hour
Will Come. From the German by S. Baring-Gould. Two volumes.
New York : Wm. S. Gottsberger. 1881.

This novel is certainly above the common. It is elevated in tone,
highly moral, and cleverly written. The plot is not very deep, but runs on
quite naturally. The heroine's character is of a somewhat exaggerated
type, but is well sustained. Though touching here and there on very deep
topics, yet it is highly interesting. It is an excellent book to place in the

144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 1881.

hands of those who are mere worshippers of "culture" or extravagant
seekers after so-called " woman's rights."
The translation is well rendered.

THE PAROCHIAL HYMN-BOOK. New and Revised Edition. London : Burns & Dates. 1881.
LAUDIS CORONA. The new Sunday-school Hymn-Book. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
WETZER AND WELTE'S KIRCHENLEXICON. Zweite Auflage. St. Louis, Mo. : B. Herder. 1880.

THE LIVES OF THE GREAT SAINTS. By John O'Kane Murray, B.S., M.D. New York : P.
J. Kenedy. 1880.

THE GIRL'S SPIRITUAL CALENDAR. Translated from the French of the author of Golden
Grains. By Josephine M. Black. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

CONSIDERATIONS UPON CHRISTIAN TRUTHS AND CHRISTIAN DUTIES, DIGESTED INTO MEDI-
TATIONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR. By the Right Rev. Dr. Challoner. A new and
revised edition by the Very Rev. Monsignor Virtue. London : Burns & Gates. 1880.

ELEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NEW YORK CATHOLIC PROTECTORY. Westchester, New
York : Printed at the New York Catholic Protectory. 1881.

MEMORIAL HISTORY AND TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ST. MARY'S INDUSTRIAL
SCHOOL. Second Annual Report of St. James' Home for Boys. Press of St. Mary's Indus-
trial School, Carroll P.O., Baltimore Co., Md. 1881.

COLLECTIONS OF THE OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. No. 2. Papers read before the
Society April 7, 1879, anc * January 12, 1880. Taunton, Mass. : Published by the Society.

PROCES-VERBAL DE L'ASSEMBLEE GENERALS DE L'UNION APOSTOLIQUE DES PRETRES SECU-
LIERS sous les auspices du sacre cceur de Jesus, tenue a Clamart les 20, 21, 22, 23, et 24 Sep-
tembre, 1880. Paris : Imprimerie de Saint Paul, Saussens et Cie. 1880.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. XXXIII. MAY, 1881. No. 194.

AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET.

THERE are few spots in this country around which cluster
more sacred memories and sweeter Catholic associations than the
immediate neighborhood of Emmittsburg, Maryland, the seat of
Mount St. Mary's College and the first home of the Sisters of
Charity in the United States. The name of Mount St. Mary's
calls up many interesting recollections. Founded by Dubois, the
first Bishop of New York, and continued by Brut6, the first Bi-
shop of Vincennes, it has sent forth, in three-quarters of a cen-
tury, one cardinal, four archbishops, twenty bishops, and more
han two hundred priests whose good works have not been em-
blazoned on the scroll of earthly fame, but recorded for ever by
the angels in heaven. It has sent forth during the same time
more than three thousand youths to occupy the various walks
of life, some of whom have worn the judicial ermine ; others
have fought and died for their country ; the eloquent voices of
others have been heard in legislative halls or in crowded forums,
while others have added a grace and dignity to trade, and some
have won honor in the calm pursuit of literature.

Of the many youths who have passed through the classic
halls of Mount St. Mary's few have been so variously gifted as
the subject of this sketch. George H. Miles was born in Balti-
more on the 3ist of July, 1824. In his twelfth year he entered
Mount St. Mary's College, where he remained six years, during
which time he acquired that love of literature which became a

146 AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET. [May,

passion with him in after-life, and learnt to love the old Moun-
tain with an affection which increased with his years, and made
him exclaim, in the language of Goldsmith in the Traveller :

" Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee.'

It was his love of study and affection for his beloved Alma
Mater that induced him, in the prime of manhood, to abandon a
professional career in Baltimore and to establish himself perma-
nently in the vicinity of Emmittsburg.

Young Miles' college career was extremely brilliant and pro-
mising, and he was one of the rare exceptions, for he kept the
promise of his youth. He was graduated on the 28th of June,
1843, before he had completed his nineteenth year, and he selected
" Civilization " for his thesis. He was also chosen to deliver the
valedictory, which was replete with pathos, eloquence, and classic
grace. A few months after leaving college he commenced the
study of the law in the office of Mr. John H. B. Latrobe, who
is still in active practice at the Baltimore bar, although nearly
fourscore years old. After finishing his professional studies
Mr. Miles formed a law-partnership with Mr. Edwin H. Web-
ster, who has since represented Maryland in the House of Rep-
resentatives. Mr. Miles found the practice of the law extremely
irksome it was very much like the feeling of Master Slender
and Mistress Anne Page : " There was no great love between
them at the beginning, and it pleased Heaven to decrease it on
further acquaintance." In fact, Miles was as much out of place
at the bar as Poe was at West Point or Charles Lamb at the
India House.

If there was ever a born litterateur, that man was George H.
Miles. His taste was pure, exquisite, and refined, his imagination
was rich, vivid, and almost oriental in its warmth. He naturally
took up the pen as Raphael took up the brush, Canova the chisel,
and Alexander the sword. We all know that the time of young
lawyers is not entirely engrossed by their practice. Mr. Miles
was no exception to this rule, but he did not fritter away the
precious hours of youth in heartless dissipation or "shapeless
idleness "; he employed himself in literary composition. His
first work was The Truce of God, a story founded on the edict
published by the church in the eleventh century prohibiting
private warfare, or duelling, from the sunset of Thursday till
sunrise on Monday, under pain of excommunication. This was
done in honor of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our

5 8 1.] AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET. 147

>rd. The story was published as a serial in the United States
Catholic Magazine, which was established in Baltimore by the late
[ohn Murphy, and which acquired a national reputation under
;he editorship of Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Spalding and
:he Rev. Charles I. White, D.D. Like all of Mr. Miles' literary
rork, The Truce of God was written in a pleasing and grace-
Li style.

"The author," says a critic, "has united the poet and philosopher with
the historian, teaching the Catholic student by example that trials and
sufferings are the heritage of God's church, as faith and sacrifice are the

lark of God's children. We can scarcely estimate the value of this work,
lot for its historical merits only, its noble and elevated sentiments, but for

ic deep and important lessons it teaches to all, but especially to the
roung."

In 1849 ne was a successful competitor for a $50 prize offered
by the Catholic Mirror for the best story. The prize was not very
inspiring, but Loretto ; or, The Choice, the story which gained it, at-
tracted great attention as it appeared week after week, and it
has become a standard Catholic American tale, having gone
through repeated editions and proved a small gold-mine to its
publishers.

In 1850 Edwin Forrest offered $1,000 for the best American
drama. Mr. Miles sent in his play of " Mohammed," which bore
off the prize against one hundred competitors. It is a beautiful
composition, but was never acted, Forrest not deeming it adapted
to the stage. Mr. Miles was accustomed to say that his imagina-
tion was nourished by the perusal of the Arabian Nights. " Mo-
hammed" displays the result of this study in its brilliant ima-
gery, its gorgeous language, and its scenes of Oriental beauty
and magnificence. Every page glows with the warm sunlight
of an Eastern landscape.

At that time there was only a small field for Catholic litera-
ture in the United States, and Mr. Miles had to sell his next story,
The Governess, to the Catholic Mirror for a trifling sum. This
story has never acquired the popularity of Loretto, and, al-
though it does not possess the same peculiar charm, it deserves
a permanent place in our Catholic literature on account of the
lesson it teaches of duty being above all earthly considerations.

In 1851 Mr. Miles was sent by President Fillmore bearer of
despatches to Madrid. In 1864 he again visited Europe, but this
time he went on private business. Shortly after his return from
this second visit he wrote a series of sketches, " Glimpses of

148 AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET. [May,

Tuscany," which were published in THE CATHOLIC WORLD in
1867-8.

Mr. Miles' longest poem, Christine : a Troubadour's Song, also
made its first appearance in this magazine. A contemporary,
in noticing this poem, said that " in Mr. Miles America has
found her Catholic poet. His versification is sweet and flowing,
the images warm and bright, the sentiments pure and ennobling."
Subsequently " Christine " was published in book-form, together
with all his poems which Mr. Miles deemed worthy of preserva-
tion. Among these was the spirited lyric, " Inkerman," which
was originally published in Brownsons Review in October, 1856.
This poem possesses a dash, a fire, and a beauty which makes it
worthy of a place by the famous " Charge of the Light Brigade."
As " Tnkerman " is not so well known as it should be, we quote
the stirring lines which tell how the battle, after being lost by the
English, was won by the French. Overwhelmed by superior
numbers, the English army was about to give way when the
sound of approaching men is heard in the rear.

" Heard ye not that tramp behind us ?

If a foeman come that way
We may make one charge to venge us,

And then look our last of day.
As the tiger from the jungle,

On the bounding column comes ;
We can hear their footfall ringing

To the stern roll of their drums ;
We can hear their billowy surging

As up the hill they pant
O God ! how sweetly sounded

The well-known ' En avant ! '
With their golden eagles soaring,

Bloodless lips and falcon glance,
Radiant with the light of battle,

Came the chivalry of France.
Ah ! full well, full well we knew them,

Our bearded, bold allies ;
All Austerlitz seemed shining

Its sunlight from their eyes.
Round their bright array dividing,

We gave them passage large,
For we knew no line then living

Could withstand their fiery charge.
One breathing space they halted

One volley rent the sky
Then theflas de charge thrills heavenward,

" Vive 1'Empereur ! " they cry.

; i .] AN A ME RICA N CA THOLIC POE r. 1 49

Right for the heart of Russia

Cleave the swart Gallic braves,
The panthers of the Alma,

The leopard-limbed Zouaves.
The cheer of rescued Briton

One moment thundered forth ;
The next we trample with them

The pale hordes of the North.

The Muscovite is flying,
Lost Inkerman is won !"

In the spring of 1857 " De Soto," Mr. Miles' five-act, blank-
verse tragedy, was played at the Broadway Theatre, New York.
A contemporary critic said : " We cannot do justice to the literary
beauties of this play after once seeing it on the stage ; but it con-
tains many passages which struck upon our ear with a genuine
poetic ring that made us think of the old dramatists, and wonder
if they ever got off anything that would far surpass it." The
same season Mr. Miles' comedy called " Mary's Birthday " was
played in New York for the first time, and a writer in the Courier
and Enquirer of May I, 1857, said: " Mr. Miles may be congratu-
lated on being the author of the two best pieces that have been
produced in New York this season ' Mary's Birthday ' and
* De Soto.' Baltimore has certainty given us the only young
American dramatist who is deserving of the name." Other fa-
vorable notices appeared in the New York Times, Herald, Tribune,
Evening Mirror, and Express. On the 6th of October, 1858, the
semi-centennial celebration of Mount St. Mary's College took
place, and Mr. Miles, being one of the most distinguished of the
alumni of the college, was invited to deliver a poem on the occa-
sion. After an address by Mr. James McSherry, Mr. Miles read
his satirical poem, " Aladdin's Palace," which has been pronounc-
ed one of the best things of the kind in American literature. The
opening lines are particularly fine, and, as they afford an excellent
idea of the general scope of the poem, we have reproduced them
here:

" Aladdin's palace, in a single night,
From base to summit rose ere morning light,
A pillar'd mass of porphyry and gold,
Gem sown on gem, and silk o'er silk unrolled :
So from the dust our young Republic springs
Before the dazzled eyes of Eastern kings.
Not, like old Rome, slow waxing into state
The century that freed beholds us great,

150 AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET. [May,

Sees our broad empire belt the Western world,
From main to main our starry flag unfurled ;
Sees in each port where Albion's sea-kings trail
Their purple plumes, Columbia's snowy sail.
Three deep the loaded decks our long wharves line,
Three deep on buoyant hoops fast flounces shine,
While thrice three-story brown stone proudly tells .
The tale of Mammon's modern miracles,
Marking full fifty places in a square
Where the born beggar dies the millionaire."

The poet goes on to show that Aladdin's palace, glorious as it
was, had one unfinished window ; so America wanted one thing
to make it complete, and that thing was the want, of respect for
authority. A lively picture is drawn of the pater-familias :

" Proud of his bondage, tickled with his chains,
Humbly cringing while the stripling reigns."

The ignorant admiration for art is then cleverly hit off, and also
the sensational literature of the day :

" Alas ! the river where the millions drink
Flows from a Helicon of tainted ink ;
Lower and lower the darkening stream descends,
Till, lost in filth, the sacred fountain ends.
Who reads Andrea f Here's a penny tale
That melts the milkmaid o'er her foaming pail.
Who weeps with Luria that can weekly sob
With all the victims of Sylvanus Cobb ? "

The satirist next takes up the subject of general education in
this country, and exclaims :

" O land of lads, and liberty, and dollars !
O nation first in schools and last in scholars !
Where few are ignorant, yet none excel,
Where peasants read and statesmen scarcely spell."

The poem concludes with a fine apostrophe to the angel guar-
dian of the Mount Brut6 :

" My friends, Aladdin's palace needs such men ;
The saint at work, 'tis finished not till then."

On the 22d of February, 1859, George H. Miles was married
to Adeline, daughter of Edward W. Tiers, of New York. About
the same time he was appointed professor of English literature in
Mount St. Mary's College, and removed from Baltimore to Thorn-

1 88 1.] AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET. 151

brook, a beautiful cottage near Emmittsburg, where he resided
during the rest of his life. Here he formed a home after his own
poetical taste, embellished by books, pictures, and flowers.

In April of this year his elegant comedy, " Senor Valiente,"
was brought out in New York, Boston, and Baltimore on the
same night. It was a decided success. The public welcomed
" Senor Valiente " as a genuine American play, which presented
a picture of the life and character of New York society at the
time it was written. Some of the incidents are romantic, others
mysterious, and all interesting. The plot is skilfully conceived
and successfully worked out. It is marred, however, by a palpa-
ble plagiarism of the celebrated picture scene in " A Winter's
Tale " in the last act. We are astonished that so true a literary
artist as Mr. Miles should condescend to borrow even from Shak-
spere. The dialogue of the play is bright, witty, and natural, and
the hits at the follies of the times are exceedingly clever.

During the next few years Mr. Miles wrote several devo-
tional poems, one of which, " The Sleep of Mary," was a prize
poem for the Ave Maria ; others, " All Souls' Day," were pub-
lished in THE CATHOLIC WORLD in 1866 and 1867. These last
had special reference to the Mountain churchyard. One of these
dirges was " In Memoriam " of the venerable Dr. Shorb, for many
years the beloved friend and physician of all the Mountain neigh-
borhood. He labored in his profession to the very last :

" Twas one step from the stirrup to the grave ! "

Towards the close of his life Mr. Miles projected a series of
critiques upon the tragedies of Shakspere, but he only lived to
complete one of these A Review of Hamlet. This essay ap-
peared originally in the Southern Review, and was afterwards
published in pamphlet form, in the hope of extending the circula-
tion of a work which promised to inaugurate a revolution in the
literature of " Hamlet." Unfortunately, this hope was not realized.
The pamphlet was issued from a provincial press and failed to

ire a wide circulation or a general literary recognition. The
essay deserved a better fate, for it possesses much Shaksperian
scholarship, and the author has avoided the controversies on
mere words which make the works of most Shaksperian com-
mentators such tiresome reading.

We have seen Hamlet represented by the greatest of living
actors, every point and beauty brought out with wonderful effect,
but we confess that until we read Mr. Miles Review of Hamlet we
did not understand this most exquisite creation of Shakespere's

152 AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET. [May,

genius. All the mystery involved in the complex character of
the young Prince of Denmark is satisfactorily explained away in
this critique. The popular feeling concerning Hamlet is that he
was weak, " infirm of purpose," and almost cowardly. Mr. Miles
shows that

" Hamlet was strong, not weak ; that the basis of his character is
strength, illimitable strength. There is not an act or utterance of his,
from first to last, which is not a manifestation of power. Slow, cautious,
capricious he may sometimes be, or seem to be, but always strong, always
large-souled, always resistless. . . . And as for cowardice from such cowards
defend us Heaven ! Once roused, he never sets his life at a pin's fee ; the
' something dangerous ' becomes something terrible. There is not a hero in
Shakspere Macbeth with harness on his back, Lear with his good, biting
falchion, Othello with his lithe arm uplifted, ay, even Richard when a
thousand hearts are great within his bosom who would not quail before
the Berserker wrath of this viking's son ; while in the blaze of his dazzling
irony Falstaff himself would shrivel up into Slender ! . . . There is a spirit-
ual necessity for retarded instead of precipitate action. It would be a mis-
take to slay the royal murderer out of hand ; the joy of one sharp second is
nothing to the delight of watching him, day by day, unconsciously moving
nearer to his doom. Had the king a thousand lives, to take them one by
one were less enjoyment than the revelry of deepening hatred, the luxury
of listening to the far music of the forging bolt. The crimes of this scep-
tred fratricide are stale ; the murdered man is dust ; there is no fresh, living
horror to clamor for instant retribution. . . . Hamlet is represented not
only as a prince and a man, but as a Christian ; and as a Christian he may
be pardoned, even at this day, for being partially influenced by his faith.
The manifest Christian duty under the circumstance was forgiveness;
there is no such word as revenge in the lexicon of Calvary."

Mr. Miles was engaged upon a critique of " Macbeth " at the
time of his death, which, fragmentary as it is, is complete so far
as it goes. He intended to write essays on at least two other
tragedies, possibly " Othello " and " Lear." He characterizes
Macbeth as possessing intellect, individual force, energy, and
courage, enlisted in the service of guilt. He describes him as
bold, dauntless, dangerous, with a mind of vast, undisciplined
power. Instead of the academic gentleness of Hamlet we are
presented with the matured manhood of a veteran soldier ; instead
of ellipses, complexity, and oblique suggestiveness, all is plain
and direct ; we cannot misconceive the purport and direction of
the plot : the difficulty is in keeping up with the gigantic stride
of the action. Mr. Miles says :

" Lady Macbeth's estimate of her husband's character is just such an
analysis of the human heart as a fiend might make from some lonely pinna-
cle of hell. She has abandoned herself, body and soul, to his ambition ; her

1 88 1.] AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC POET. 153

will and courage so perfect, her demoniac logic so consistent, that his recoil
from murder strikes her as coward benevolence, his scruples as piety mis-
placed. His ambition is as criminal as human ambition can be ; her com-
plaint proceeds from a full diabolical possession. His character brightens
when laid side by side with hers, as a villain might look a little whiter arm-
in-arm with a fiend. She is more irrevocably bound to the service of the
arch-fiend than any bond of blood and parchment could have bound her.
Hers is the most deliberate self-damnation ever perpetrated a positive
wooing of eternal perdition, a deadly appeal flashed into the very heart of
hell. . . .

"The ruling grace of manhood is power, of womanhood submission ; a
woman may yield to the fascination of superior strength or subtlety, in
slavish obedience to a mysterious instinct, without being radically influ-
enced either by the vices or virtues of her idol. But a cruel man, so tho-
roughly bad-hearted as to ignore all the redeeming influences of existence
by loving a woman crueller than himself, may be said to excel her in guilt
by the enormity of loving her. At bottom Macbeth was worse than his
wife ; with half her undaunted metal he wo'uld have ventured on twice her
crimes. The stalwart regicide quailing before the painted devil of his im-
agination is in every way more despicable than the lost woman invoking
the fiend she serves to avert the truer remorse by which she perishes."

In referring to Duncan's visit Mr. Miles uses this strong lan-
guage : " She springs to meet her coming lord [Macbeth] with the
exultant bound of a tigress to her mate when the scent of blood
is in the night wind." The scene in which Lady Macbeth speaks
of the king's departure is thus described :

" How her soul hisses out in those few words, l And when goes hence?'
Yet how colloquially Ristori glided over it, E quando et parte f with just
little force and significance as though she were putting the question to
a hackman on the Lung Arno. Ah ! could we have only heard Rachel give
the equivalent of that terrible question, we might dispense with the tradi-
tions of Mrs. Siddons."

The contrast between the compassing of Duncan's death and
Hamlet's morbid dwelling on the riddance of the king is drawn
in the following words :

" Hamlet is deterred by the dread of something after death ; Macbeth
rould relinquish all hope of heaven, were temporal success the sure conse-
mence of assassination. He dreads the prospect of the life to come ; the
rhole point of Macbeth's lament is not that the eternal jewel of his soul is
riven to the common enemy of man, but that rancors will poison the
chalice of his peace. His recoil is but a cowardly, selfish calculation of the
chances against him. . . . The dialogue between wife and man is an exhi-
bition of human ferocity and exultant animal power. The damnable con-
sistency of her guilt lends an intellectual majesty to her most horrible ut-
terances. The unconquerable archangel of Paradise Lost is dwarfed side by
side with this rapt high-priestess of murder."

154 AN EASTER CARD. [May,

We have been permitted to make these extracts from this un-
finished critique, and we do so with a feeling of regret that the
elegant piece of composition must for ever remain a fragment.

After Mr. Miles took up his permanent residence at the
Mountain his time was almost exclusively consecrated to literary
work. He was fond of out-door exercise, which he blended with
a love for landscape-gardening and the pleasures of the chase.
As a rule he worked chiefly at night. When engaged upon im-
portant compositions he made long rambles about the mountains
during the day, and in the evening committed to paper the result
of his morning meditation. He had few intimate friends, but the
chosen few who were admitted to his friendship loved him for
the generous warmth of his heart and admired him for his rich
and elegant gifts of mind.

George H. Miles died at.Thornbrook on the 23d of July, 1870,
one week before he had completed his forty-seventh year. His
grave is in the beautiful Mountain churchyard, which has been
a pilgrim's shrine to so many visitors from far and near.

AN EASTER CARD.

ON willow-bough, along whose ruddy stem

The silver catkins shine,
Sits perched a blue-bird heaven on his wing

Pouring his song divine.

Behind him lie the cloudy skies of spring
Gray shadows flecked with blue,

Snow-freighted edges of the windy drift,
Bright sunshine falling through.

Against the far horizon dimly gleam
Low mountains still snow-clad,

While the near meadows, lying low and wide,
Fresh verdure maketh glad.

i88i.] AN EASTER CARD. 155

A soft, warm shadow resteth in the woods,

Where with the distance blue
Mingles the rich, red glow of budding boughs

Their prison breaking through.

We know amid those shadows, dim and far,

A subtle scent doth rise
Where hardy blossoms sow the ground with stars,

Or open sweet blue eyes.

We hear the merry voice of deepened stream,

Its shallows singing o'er,
Winding o'er sunken rock and cool green cress,

Ice-fettered now no more.

Hark ! to the hylas, where broad ferns lie curled,

Uplifting song of cheer :
Back on their hinges Winter's gates are flung,

Unprisoned Spring is here !

Our later Orpheus, bird of azure wing,

With song the world sets free,
From realm of shadow bringing back to light

Our lost Eurydice,

While " Alleluia ! " chants the sun-blessed earth,

Singing the song of heaven
Unto the singer who earth's soul sets free

The crown of love be given.

And " Alleluia ! " sing all hearts to-day,

Gray Lenten skies are riven,
And through the broken drift shines blue and clear

The sunny Easter heaven.

Listening the song of God's undying love,

The chant of Calvary,
Falling from lips of Singer most Divine,

Men's captive souls grow free.

156 4 N EASTER CARD. [May,

Sin-fett'ere ; dr lies the grieving earth no more ,

Our Orpheus Divine
From realm of shadow leadeth where the light

Of God's great love doth shine.

Back from the gates of Hell he brings

His lost Eurydice
The desolated earth for whom his love

Is from eternity.

So, sweet-voiced blue-bird, sing, and wake the earth ;

Bud, willow, into gold ;
Sing, loosened stream, and, happy hylas, bid

The loitering ferns unfold.

Sing, joyful souls, from weary bonds set free,
Bid penance burst in bloom,

While pure ascends from holy, hidden hearts
Prayer's tenderest perfume.

Chant " Alleluia ! " all ye works of God, to-day ;

Earth, lift the song of Heaven
Unto the singer who the soul sets free

Heart's crown of love be given.

1 88 1.] IRISH SETTLEMENTN^IS. 157

IRISH SETTLEMENTS EN ILLINOIS.

THE line of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, extending from
Chicago to La Salle a distance of one hundred miles is marked
by farms and settlements which show the most unmistakable
signs of thrift and prosperity.

The land is in a high state of cultivation ; the abundance and
variety of the stock in sight, the ample barns and bursting corn-
cribs, and conspicuously the comfortable and often elegant farm-
houses within the range of country bordering this once important
internal channel, serve to show that the farmers through this re-
gion are in the enjoyment of a notable measure of plenty, pros-
perity, and comfort. Two railroads, the Chicago, Rock Island,
and Pacific, and the Chicago, Alton, and St. Louis, run parallel
with the canal, the former the entire length, the latter only part
of the distance.

The predominance of the Irish element in the populations
of the towns and settlements along the line of these railways,
and in the farming communities in the near vicinity of the canal,
cannot escape notice even by the passing traveller. A casual in-
quiry will bring out the curious fact that this part of the State
was largely settled by the Irish laborers and contractors who
in the early days had found employment on the works of the Illi-
lois and Michigan Canal, in the period from 1830 to 1850.

The circumstances which led to the transformation of the
canal laborer into the pioneer farmer will form an instructive
chapter in the history of Irish colonization in the West. The
change came from the necessities of the situation, and was largely
involuntary, as will appear in the course of this sketch. A refer-
ence to the history of the construction of the Illinois Canal is in-
lispensable in order to make clear the causes which led to this
example of Irish colonization in Illinois.

Early in the present century the attention of the national gov-
ernment and the efforts of the territorfal, and later of the State,
tuthorities of Illinois were directed to the importance of opening
inal communication between Lake Michigan and the Illinois
River. It was regarded as indispensable " for both military and
commercial purposes." In 1822 Congress authorized the State of
Illinois to construct the canal through the public lands in that
State, granting for the purpose a strip of land ninety feet in width

158 IRISH SETTLEMENTS IN ILLINOIS. [May,

on both sides of it, and reserving the lands through which it
might pass from sale until further direction.

The canal was to be commenced within three, and completed
within twelve, years. The initiatory steps were taken by the
State, the route surveyed, and estimates of cost made ; but when
all these necessary preliminaries had been gone through obsta-
cles and difficulties of a financial and political nature supervened,
so that scarcely any progress was in fact made ; nor was the con-
struction of the canal actually begun till the year 1836.

In the meantime Congress had passed various supplementary
acts relating to the construction of the canal, by which the State
of Illinois acquired the public lan.ds contiguous to the proposed
line, including the greater part of the present site of Chicago, as
a resource to ensure the completion of the important work in
question.

The first ground was broken for the canal at Chicago, July 4,
1836, and it is an interesting reminiscence to recall that, at the
public celebration which marked the event, Dr. William B. Egan,
a young Irishman who had already achieved a leading position in
Illinois, was the orator of the occasion.

Dr. Egan became during the next decade one of the celebrities
of Chicago, and was famous alike for his eloquence and fund of
wit. He had been one of the pioneers of the Lake City, and pos-
sessed that variety and versatility of parts which often character-
izes those of his race who adventure into a new country. He
was physician, lawyer, real-estate operator, and politician. He
was the life and light of a convivial party and the crowning glory
of a " public " dinner. Dr. Egan was often declared to have been
" born to preside at a banquet." He had a mania for real-estate
operations. No Chicago enthusiast could compare with him in
the buoyant estimate he held and constantly put forth respecting
the future greatness and grandeur of the embryonic city ; none
could picture in more glowing colors the wonderful destiny in
store for it. The proverbs and stories of Dr. Egan would fur-
nish matter for an entertaining volume ; but his predictions as
to the ultimate growth of Chicago, though ridiculed at the time,
are an evidence of the penetration and keen sagacity of the
man.

As illustrative of his twin devotion to ^Esculapius and corner-
lots, it is told of the doctor that once, when asked by a lady pa-
tient for whom he had just prescribed a potion : " How shall I
take this, doctor? " he absently replied : " Take a quarter down,
the balance canal time, one, two, and three years ! " this being

1 88 1.] IRISH SETTLEMENTS IN ILLINOIS. 159

the popular term and parlance for payments on Chicago lots at
the period.

The work on the canal, once commenced, invited large bodies
of laborers, and naturally Irishmen in considerable numbers made
their way from the seaboard and from the Eastern cities and
States, allured by the prospect of good wages and steady employ-
ment. Far the greater number came directly from Ireland.

The work on the canal, however, made slow progress, but con-
tinued, with various fluctuations, for a period of twelve years.
The route lay' for the most part through marshy ground, while
still another part of the line involved heavy and costly rock-cut-
ting and excavations. Labor was high ; board and provisions
were higher. The work was frequently suspended for the want
of funds to pay the contractors, and all sorts of financial expe-
dients were resorted to by the authorities of the State and the
trustees of the canal to enable them to prosecute the undertaking.
As a matter of course the contractors suffered, and the laborers
were frequently not paid. " Canal scrip " was the principal, and
often the only available, currency in this part of the State ; but in
time, in consequence of the growing financial embarrassments of
the State, and the difficulties encountered especially in the nego-
tiation of the canal bonds, the scrip steadily sank in value, and at
times was scarcely convertible at all.

Considerable quantities of the canal scrip had been paid to the
contractors and laborers for the work on the canal, and when, in
1841-2, the State failed to pay the interest on its bonds and to
meet the obligations incurred for account of the canal, added to
the universal failure of the State banks the same years, it can read-
ily be imagined that prospects in Illinois were gloomy in the ex-
-eme, and in Chicago there was a general panic and stagnation.

Contractors and laborers clamored for money in exchange for
:heir scrip, but no money was to be had. The scrip, it is true,
ras available in payment for public land ; and to this circum-
stance, in a great measure, was due the selection and purchases
lade by a considerable number of the Irishmen employed on the
inal, who " took up " sections and parts of sections of land along
the line and within the range of country tributary to it. Many
>f them employed it for the same purpose in more distant parts
)f the State, and for lots and tracts in the city of Chicago wher-
iver it was found available. Hence Irish settlements were
formed along the canal from Chicago to La Salle, even as far
down as Peoria ; and thus the canal laborer exchanged his spade
and pick for the plough and harrow, with a result which fur-

160 IRISH SETTLEMENTS IN ILLINOIS. [May,

nishes the best practical illustration and vindication of Irish
colonization in the West.

Many, it is well known, accepted the alternative with reluc-
tance. With a perversity that is unaccountable, others freely
squandered and flung away their scrip, to the neglect of the
opportunity thus presented to become farmers. Were it not
vouched for by persons who were themselves eye-witnesses of
the folly, it would scarcely be credible that these men could have
been so blind to their own present and future interests. Even
those who " took up " farms did so, as we are told, with great dis-
content, and in most cases because they had no other alternative.

But so it came that the nucleus was laid for Irish colonies
and settlements in Illinois, which attracted other accretions from
abroad ; and thus the unwilling Irish colonists of 1835 to 1850 and
their descendants are now among the most prosperous farmers in
the State !

The proof is visible in the rich farms and the thriving towns
and settlements owned, or largely populated, by Irishmen and the
sons of Irishmen. The farming population and neighboring set-
tlements of Joliet, Seneca, Ottawa, La Salle, and across to Kane
and McHenry counties, and down along the Illinois River to
Peoria, are largely Irish. Names might be given and copious
facts narrated to show how these Irish farmers prospered. Not
a few have accumulated considerable wealth, and many of the
most important merchants and traders in the towns and district
referred to and in the city of Chicago are the sons of these Irish
farmers.

We are informed that along the line of the New York canals
a like result followed ; that there, too, considerable numbers of the
Irishmen employed on the canal and the public works of the State
bought or pre-empted land in the early days, and subsequently
became prosperous and even wealthy farmers. Similarly the
building and extension of the Western railroads have given the
same opportunity to the men employed in the work ; but how few
comparatively of the Irishmen thus engaged have had the wisdom
and " push " to get on the land !

The purpose of this sketch is to point out the curious and
interesting fact which gave rise to the Irish farming settlements
in the State of Illinois. But one or two other incidental facts
and illustrations bearing on the subject may be brought for-
ward.

Irishmen dug the canal ; they did more : they furnished much
of the engineering talent required to survey it and to carry on the

1 88 1.] IRISH SETTLEMENTS IN ILLINOIS. 161

work. They were prominent and powerful in the Legislature of
the State, aiding the project by their influence and advocating it
by their eloquence. At a critical juncture in the finances of the
State, during the progress of the undertaking, an Illinois Irish-
man was commissioned by the governor of the State Governor
Ford to proceed to London to negotiate the loan of $1,600,000
by which the completion of the canal was made possible, and
he succeeded ; or rather, as the result of his representations and
the ability displayed in the negotiations with the English capi-
talists, Baring Bros., he laid the foundations for the successful
completion of the loan.

Senator Michael Ryan, a canal engineer and State senator,
had a foremost part in the engineering work of the canal. He
subsequently became one of the leading senators in the Illinois
Legislature, and he there exercised a commanding influence by his
ability and high character. When it was finally determined to
appoint commissioners to negotiate the necessary loan, Senator
Ryan was selected as one of the two to undertake the delicate
and important trust ; and he was the recognized head and brains
of the commission. The estimation in which he was held in Illi-
nois may be judged by the universal regrets that were expressed
at his death in 1845.

Another notable Irishman figured prominently in the public
affairs of Illinois about the same period Dr. Richard Murphy.
Dr. Murphy served three successive terms in the Legislature,
representing Chicago and that district. He was a man of marked
ability and power, and he early won a leading position in the
State.

More prominent than either, and more widely known in later
times, naturally occurs the name of General James Shields, who
first rose to eminence in Illinois. But the story of his public life
in posts and stations of the highest trust in State and nation ; the
distinctions he achieved in campaigns abroad and at home ; the
unequalled honors conferred on him by three States ; the testimo-
nies which came to him from a grateful people, who honored hint
for his bravery and loved him for his honesty all this memo-
rable record may not fitly be told here.

With one other name honorable in Irish-American history
this sketch will be brought to a close.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, whose labors to promote Irish colo-
nization in the West can never be too gratefully remembered,
was a frequent visitor to Chicago and Illinois, and it was in tri-
bute to scenes with which he was familiar, and to emphasize his

VOL. XXXIII. II

1 62 IRISH SETTLEMENTS IN ILLINOIS, [May,

teaching on the subject of colonization, that he wrote the spirited
ballad which appears in the printed edition of his poems " The
Irish Homes of Illinois." The colonization movement which he
initiated resulted in the convention called to meet in Buffalo in
1856, and several representative Irishmen from Chicago and the
State attended and took a leading part in its deliberations.

It is now plainly lamentable that the plans and suggestions
then presented and advocated by Mr. McGee were not more
generally heeded, and that the people of Irish race in America
were not moved to carry them into effect. Mr. McGee was not
free from faults in his public course, but, to his honor be it said,
he labored loyally and faithfully to elevate his countrymen in the
United States, and he pointed out to them with sagacity the
means which would improve their condition and assure them and
their descendants a certain and commanding future.

Many years before he had placed on record in The Irish
Settlers in America the prophecy, referring to his favorite topic
of Irish colonization :

" Whatever we can do for ourselves, as a people, in North America,
must be done before the close of this century, or the epitaph of our race
will be written in the West with the single sentence, ' Too late' "

THE FIRST STAR THAT FELL.

A YOUNG star wished itself a bird :

" Doves are men's ' sweet birds,' and Love's own ;
To be a young dove I am stirred ;

And yet 'tis sky-bread for earth-stone ! "

Each star must be swift page to Night :
This dreaming star-dove spared not she ;

It met no doves to praise its flight,
But fell into the doveless sea.

1 88 1.] THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. 163

THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS.*

THE " Holy Mountain," Aghios Oros, is second only to Jeru-
salem in the estimation of all pilgrims of the Greek faith. Rus-
sians, Servians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, etc., have foundations
among the monasteries, and contribute in many ways to support
their national communities. The monastic republic, protected
and respected by the Ottoman government in consideration of a
heavy yearly tribute, is a unique survival of mediaeval conditions ;
the Byzantine school of painting has its headquarters there, and
continues its old traditions with hardly a ray of Western influence
to modify its spirit. Little known and rather inaccessible, Mt.
Athos yet affords not only archaeological interest, but a combina-
tion of natural beauties rare in the East : scenery and vegetation
of unusual variety, and, except for the steepness of its slopes, ex-
cellent facilities for cultivation. The mountain figured in ancient
Greek history, chiefly as connected with Xerxes, who began a
canal through the isthmus, of which explorers have found authen-
tic traces, but its monastic history is obscure until the ninth cen-
tury of our era. Not that the monks have no legends anterior to
this ; they assert that they were an independent and flourishing
community soon after Constantine transferred the seat of empire
Constantinople, and the monastery of Batopedi has a legend
ferring its foundation to Arcadius, who was shipwrecked there
in his childhood, and was found under a giant raspberry-bush by
some monks already established in the peninsula. It is a pity
that, with so much leisure and such rich material as the monks
have, so little historical research should come of it ; they are care-
less and unprogressive ; the libraries, with some exceptions, are
neglected ; the vague legends which no one cares to investigate,
and which are repeated to strangers with a kind of blind confi-
dence in the belief of the latter, stand in the stead of accredited
facts. The origin of the relics and treasures is equally unsatisfac-
tory ; even the pictures have no history, and the monasteries ap-
pear to have no chronicles or archives. Some of them have lately
been discovered to possess charters and title-deeds, grants made by
Byzantine emperors, with the ancient golden seals still attached

* I J Athos : Notes <fune Excursion a lapresgrfile et & la montagne des moines. Par l'Abt>6
Alexandra Stanislas Neyrat. Paris and Lyons : Plon & Co. 1880.

164 THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. [May,

to them ; but the genuineness of some of these is questionable,
according to the last critical authority who has examined them.
Professor Spiridon Lampros spent several months on Mt. Athos
in 1880, cataloguing and putting in order the various libraries,
many of which were in a pitiable state, the manuscripts spoiling
through damp, rats, etc. Three young students of Athens Uni-
versity went with him as subordinates, and a Swiss artist whose
province it was to note, copy, or report upon the pictures and an-
tiquities. Twice before an archaeological commission visited the
Holy Mountain : first some Russian savants, who collected casts
and copies of the artistic curiosities to the number of several
thousands, ahd left behind them evidences of Western tastes in
the shape of chairs and tables, and even beds, very acceptable to
the visitors from whose account this article is taken ; and, secondly,
in 1862 Messrs. Langlois and Miller, two Frenchmen, to whom
most of the order now found in the best-kept libraries is due.

The government of the monastic republic consists of an assem-
bly of twenty-one delegates, one from each of the large monas-
teries, chosen yearly by their communities, and of a council of five,
Epistasis, chosen by the assembly from among their own number,
who manage all external and common business, while the local
affairs of each monastery are managed by its own superior or
superiors. The council choose, likewise yearly, one of them-
selves zsprotos, or president, the "first man " or supreme ruler of
the monastic peninsula, subject only, and that almost nominally,
to the patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Greek Church.
Each monastery pays a small yearly tribute towards the expenses
of the council, which resides at Karyae, the small capital, a village
inhabited by monks, who support themselves chiefly by the sale
of objects of art and devotion wood and shell carving, crosses
and pictures, Greek rosaries of four parts, each divided into fif-
teen beads, etc. One Turkish commissioner or tribute-receiver
represents the Porte, and lives in enforced loneliness in the mo-
nastic capital. The tribute is equivalent to something short of
four thousand dollars ; but, small as it seems to us, it presses hea-
vily on the monks, whose foreign resources have failed much of
late, and who are now more dependent on their own crops and
exports. There is no public treasury, each monastery, with its
own dependencies, farms, hermitages, and skitos, or smaller sub-
ordinate convents, forming a self-governing whole. The hermi-
tages are mostly rented to the individuals inhabiting them,
whether solitaries or communities of two or three (chilios], who
pay their rent in kind, either by cultivating the ground, giving

1 88 1.] THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. 165

tithes, or selling their mats or other small hand-manufactured ar-
ticles. The treasurer of each monastery visits them periodically
to collect these perquisites. The hermits have a special rule, are
bound to flee from the sight of any human being, each Other not
excepted, save in cases of necessity ; they live in huts and caves,
mostly on the more barren part of the mountain towards the sum-
mit, and sometimes have to use ladders and ropes to reach their
abodes. On certain feast-days they are allowed to attend the
ceremonies at the churches, but have to wear a veil falling low
over their forehead and eyes. Like the rest of the monks, they
wear their hair long and have full beards, but they are invariably
dirtier and more ragged, less careful of their exterior and less
pleasant neighbors. In some of the parts adjacent to their dens
the traveller or pilgrim finds iron boxes fixed to poles or trees,
or hiding-places made in hollow trunks, where it is customary to
leave scraps of food for the use of the hermits. The style of life
in the monasteries is very different, where, besides the monks,
there are servants and workmen of all sorts, mostly wearing the
Albanian costume a shirt and kilt of white cloth (seldom white
long) closely plaited, with a vest of dark cloth all over gold braid,
gilt-buttoned gaiters, and a profusion of small weapons stuck in a
gay-colored sash. On the land end of the peninsula a few Chris-
tian soldiers are established as a guard against incursions. The
monks of various monasteries, though all following, in the main,
the rule of St. Basil, introduced by Athanasius of Mt. Athos, the
reformer of the tenth century, have various customs, some being
bound to perpetual abstinence, others not ; some being ruled by
one elected archimandrite or hegumenos, some by two, equally
elected by the community, others again by a council of four or
five ; some eating at a common table, and others, whom the French
author calls idiorrhytmoi, eating alone, each in his own cell, and
etching his allotted portion himself from the kitchen. All, how-
ever, are bound, besides vigils, Ember days, and special or local
tsts, to keep four " Lents," comprising Lent proper, Advent,
id two periods, one, variable according to other feasts, preceding
>t. Peter and Paul ; and the other, of a fortnight, preceding the
Assumption. Several specified days are fasts in the absolute
mse of the word, though the feebler members are by custom al-
lowed the use of a little bread and water, which is placed ready
on the refectory table. The monks' time, notwithstanding the
ceaseless chanted offices, attendance at which is not compulsory,
is entirely their own, but they are not allowed to go from one
monastery to another without leave. The offices sometimes oc-

1 66 THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. [May,

cupy sixteen or seventeen hours, and quite eight or ten on com-
mon days ; while in the mortuary chapels prayers never cease,
the monks relieving- each other every two hours. The music in
the Russian monasteries is admirable, all in four parts except the
recitatives of the celebrant, and modelled partly on the school of
Palestrina, partly on older traditions. The basses are individually
the most perfectly trained voices, and their strength and steadi-
ness are extraordinary. One of the modulations frequently heard
in the church chant at Russico, the most important Russian
foundation on the peninsula, is as follows :

CHOIR.
CELEBRANT.

The Greek music, on the contrary, is devoid of beauty, nasal,
sharp, and either acutely disagreeable or monotonous and char-
acterless. Only a few monks bear the real burden of the chant ;
the rest are often seen wandering about the church or asleep in
their stalls, or they attend for a time and then leave, and perhaps
return again, much as I can remember the laity "dropping in"
at the figured Vespers, lasting four or five hours, sung on great
days in the Roman churches. Even Sunday Mass in the Greek
Church is not obligatory, as it is with us ; hence this apparent
carelessness. The time thus left on the monks' hands is often
well employed, but less devoted to intellectual pursuits than
could be wished ; the majority work out of doors, and roll up
their long hair under a conical black cap, while their black robes,
too ample for comfort, are girded up or folded round, the cos-
tume being not quite uniform, but generally consisting of a coat-
like garment, black or very dark, of heavy cloth, and with wide
sleeves, and, on holidays, of an additional mantle of like propor-
tions. The hospital, the pharmacy, the kitchen and storehouses
occupy many of the monks, the libraries a few more, the sacristy
and treasury some, while a few are scholars or artists, and even
try to keep up a communication with other scholars, Greek or
Western. Several are good photographers and some are engrav-
ers, but the latter follow native traditions and methods, using tin
cylinders instead of flat plates, and designing after the old By-
zantine fashion. The French travellers found one ivory-carver
whose work was much above the average a miniature sculptor

1 88 1.] THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. 167

whose power of expression in a small space was marvellous.
Much of his work had been sent to various international exhibi-
tions, and in this fact, as in the presence of a print of Trochu and
Gambetta in the reception-room at Batopedi, and of cigarettes
in another monastery, are found the rare instances of intercourse
with the West or appreciation of anything outside the Holy
Mountain. The mass of monks, however, are contentedly unpro-
gressive. The priests among them are few, and are never or-
dained till the age of thirty. Novices go through a kind of ap-
prenticeship of three years, during which they wait upon the pro-
fessed members ; they are not allowed to make definitive vows
till the age of five-and-twenty, nor to become subdeacons before
that time. As to their money, some convents leave the monk the
use or disposition of his fortune in consideration of a fixed sum,
payable at once, which covers his future expenses for board and
fuel for life ; others require the abandonment to the community
of all he possesses. In each case the community becomes re-
sponsible for him in sickness and in health, and buries him, which
is done in a peculiar fashion, the body being buried in a shallow
grave, in its monastic habit, for as long a time only as the flesh
takes to disappear from the skeleton, when the bones are taken
up, dismembered, and placed according to their kind on the
heaps of similar bones preserved in the church vaults. One uni-
versal rule applying to the peninsula is the exclusion, not only
of women, but, as far as is possible, of every female animal, so
that neither milk, butter, nor eggs can be had (the latter, seldom
fresh, are sometimes imported), and the commissariat is even more
restricted than is common in other parts of the East. Oil is the
universal kitchen condiment; dried meats and vegetables, salt
fish, pickled olives, and black bread are staples. The drink is
more varied, for, besides the excellent water of the many moun-
tain springs, there is wine, and two sorts of liqueurs, one called
raki, or aniseed brandy, the other mastic, or raki with an infusion
of a vegetable gum called mastic. This forms one of the conven-
tional signs of greeting and hospitality, as on every occasion of a
visit the glyko is presented to the stranger. A young monk
"good old man " is the generic name for such as are not priests
brings in on a salver a vase full of sweet preserve or dried fruits,
and several large glasses of water and a corresponding number
of small ones of raki. Spoons in a saucer are also provided, and
each one takes a small spoonful of preserve and a sip of wa-
ter first, finishing by another of raki, and invariably, before he.
drinks, saluting the company and wishing them good health..

i68 THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. [May,

The refectory customs that is, for the reception of distin-
guished strangers are equally ceremonious. One of the older
monks is " hospitaller," and a special room is devoted to hospi-
tality, while pilgrims of lower order are equally well and abun-
dantly entertained. Some convents have outer porches, where a
monk watches all night to receive travellers after the gates are
shut, and to give them and their beasts food without delay. The
refectories form a peculiar and prominent feature of the monas-
teries; their walls are frescoed with New Testament subjects re-
ferring to the use of food, and with figures of patron saints; the
white marble tables, scooped into long semicircles, accommodate
from eight to twelve persons, and are ranged along the walls in
front of carved wood or marble stalls, while above, on a higher
level and crosswise, stands the table of the superior and his
guests, in front of his canopied and ornamented stall. A low
pulpit on one side serves for the reader, who reads some book of
devotion during the meal. When guests are entertained a young
monk says a preliminary prayer ; the superior then blesses the ta-
ble and says several collects, ending by the Greek sign of the
cross, which is made from right to left. Before the soup is
served another glass of raki is offered to each ; but after the meal
has begun etiquette forbids any one to raise his glass of wine to
his lips before the superior does so, when one of the monks re-
cites a prayer for the superior's health and well-being. After the
meal, and in the reception-room, a glass of white w T ine is again
served to each, and then black coffee.

The reception-rooms themselves are a characteristic feature
of the Mt. Athos monasteries. They vary in details and rich-
ness, according to the means of the community, but are built on a
generally uniform plan, and serve also as the guests' bed-chamber.
A sort of anteroom is divided off by an open screen or arcade
(the columns in one were of black wood, relieved with red lines),
and beyond, one step higher, is the divan, a wide platform with
low couches of hard wood all round. A carpet, a cushion, and a
heavy coverlet transform the couches into beds, but there is no
pretence at any other furniture ; and though the water-pitcher in
the corridor is of classical shape, there are no appliances for
washing short of a monk offering to pour water over the guest's
hands. The reception-rooms are always on the topmost story,
and have windows on -three sides, outer galleries surrounding
them and being supported on projecting beams or buttresses of
wood. These balconies are usually painted red and black, or
dark brown, while the body of the building is yellow or white,

j 88 1.] THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. 169

stucco over brick, and sometimes undressed stone. Some of the
houses are of flat, wide flags, some of alternate rows of stone and
brick, the latter being as often yellow as red. The architecture,
on the whole, is picturesque, chiefly from its irregularity, the
number of small cupolas, painted or gilt (one church is covered
with metal plates painted green), and the massing together of the
buildings. Each monastery forms a sort of walled village. The
older ones are like feudal castles and fortresses : a dead level of
light-colored wall, often resting on an open arcade below, reaches
twenty or twenty-five feet up, meeting superposed balconies and
bay-windows ; sometimes rooms are crowded on to a rock, with
different levels ; here a wall whence, as at St. Paul's, a chain and
pulley reach far into a grove where a spring is, as, on a smaller
scale, is done in the courtyards of Roman houses, where a bucket
is continually travelling from the well below to the rooms of the
attic occupiers above; there tiers of steep terraces, cultivated
as a kitchen garden ; on the shore boats and boat-houses, where
a horn is blown to call the muleteers and their animals to take
guests up the rocky stairs that go by the name of roads. The
courtyard of the monastery is paved and irregularly surrounded
by buildings: the catholicon, as the principal church is called,
usually stands in the centre, with numerous cupolas, and almost
always a wide vestibule in front, after the style of St. Mark's,
Venice ; on one side the phiala, or baptistery, a wide stone or
marble basin beneath a painted roof supported on columns an an-
cient Greek monument now unused, but still indispensable in the
disposition of church buildings, and which the poorer monaste-
ries replace by a simple marble basin and in some prominent
place the trapeza, or refectory, always surmounted by a round or
octagonal tower, formerly used as watch-tower and dungeon
when pirates or fanatic Saracens were common on these coasts.
The tower now is occasionally a belfry, sometimes a library.
Though bells are known and much used, the ancient wooden
imandra still supplements them a heavy piece of wood hung
;lose to the wall and beaten with an iron hammer ; the sound is
rery resonant and deep. Curved pieces of iron, called aghioside-
, or the holy iron, are also used in the same way. Besides the
catholicon there are numerous other chapels, within and without
the walls, usually corresponding to the complement of priests
attached to the monastery, partly because the Greek rite consid-
ers it wrong to have more than one Mass offered daily on the same
altar, or more than one altar erected in one church, and partly
because no one church could contain the large number of monks

1 70 THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. [May,

and dependents in the monastery. The skitos, eleven in number,
and the smaller farmhouses are served by the priests of the larger
houses. Groves of orange, myrtle, olive, chestnut, and live-oak,
with bushes and vines, diversify the neighborhood and often the
inner circumference of a monastery, while the giant cypresses are
everywhere, adding much, by the contrast of their dark, straight
masses, to the beauty of the spreading, light-colored buildings.
It is hard to believe that the rule excluding women has "never,"
as the author says that the monks boast, been broken ; but public
infractions are naturally remembered with such detail that it is
credible that the rule has not been ostensibly broken for centu-
ries. The monks call themselves " an everlasting nation in which
no man is ever born " ; and so far did they once carry their preju-
dice that they refused to admit " smooth-faces," and established
convents outside the sacred limits for boys and youths committed
to their care, who were admitted by and by when their beards
had grown. Within the memory of some of the older men the
ubiquitous English " lord " once attempted to land on the moun-
tain with his wife, but the " public consternation " and the marked
absence of greeting soon made him aware of his mistake. The
case of a shipwrecked woman being thrown on the coast is even
foreseen and provided for: the oldest monk in the community
would take charge of her for the shortest possible time consistent
with humanity ; she would be housed apart from any other habi-
tation in a lonely part of the mountain, and at the earliest possi-
ble moment taken by boat to the nearest port. With all this
exaggerated misogyny, it is curious to note, as several travellers
have remarked, that the mountain is dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin, and that the cultus which surrounds the image of the
Panag/iia, or All-Holy, as she is familiarly called, is a very promi-
nent thing in the popular Greek faith. One of the monasteries is
also under the patronage of another woman, St. Anne, and some
of the most precious relics are said to have been brought to the
Holy Mountain by an unknown woman whom tradition calls " the
beautiful Mary." The Byzantine empresses also enriched various
of the monasteries. The French priests, Neyrat and Chifflet, of
the diocese of Lyons, and members of the French Alpine Club,
were certainly hardy travellers and not difficult to please, but the
Oriental substitute for a saddle was a discomfort even to them,
and the picturesque saddle-cloth of Turkey carpet did not go far
to reconcile them to the equipment of their mules. Added to
this, they had neither bridles nor stirrups, and only occasionally
a sort of rude cross-pommel to hold on by when even the natives

1 88 1.] THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. 171

considered any special road a little too rough for unhelped de-
scent. Once, at Batopedi, they rejoiced in real European sad-
dles an extraordinary proof of the wealth and progressive spirit
of that monastery. Windmills are looked upon as novelties on
the Holy Mountain, and the one at the skitos of Elias is promi-
nently brought into the picture of that cypress garden, situated
between a rocky cliff and a ravine.

As ever)* where in the East, the coloring, indescribable in words,
is one of the foremost beauties of the scenery of Mt. Athos, and
nowhere more so than in the panorama, extending far into the
Jigean, seen from the summit of the mountain. The ascent is not
very arduous for practised climbers, but the heat is generally
rather overpowering, in spite of an early start from St. Paul's,
the large monastery nearest the peak. A curious barren, rocky
tract, named Kapsa Kalivi, has to be crossed, and there, though
you never see them, you know that most of the cells of the her-
mits are hidden. At the top is a chapel dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin, where, on account of the weather and the difficulty of
access, an exceptional permission has been given for carved
images, almost statues, or at least very salient reliefs. The figure
of Our Lady is among those thus executed. Otherwise it has
been a rule in the Greek Church for many centuries to allow
only paintings of religious subjects, though metal in almost flat
surfaces is not forbidden. The Russian church-screens, or iconos-
tases, are almost entirely of metal-work, gilt, chiselled, or jewelled,
and treated with great delicacy of detail, while the hands and
feet of the figures are the only portions really painted. Beautiful
metal-work is an old tradition of the Greek Church, and the
crosses, censers, lamps, chalices, etc., of the mountain monasteries,
not to speak of their chased and jewelled reliquaries, are a trea-
sure in themselves. The older vestments, too, are heavily em-
broidered with gold and seed-pearls, and with needle-pictures of
great skill. The shrines in the churches there is only one altar
are often furnished with reading-desks of precious woods inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, and the canopied stalls of the superiors are
sometimes of a kind of wood mosaic. Some large doors at Iviron
(the " Iberian " monastery, so-called after its supposed founder in
the tenth century, a Spaniard by birth) are of inlaid woods, light
and dark, another of wood with mother-of-pearl arabesques. A
triple porch gives scope for unusual richness and variety in the
frescoes, but these are unluckily modern, while some of the mar-
ble-work is old, and the columns have a remarkable frieze. Here
also is an exceptional mosaic, at the cross-end of one of the porti-

172 THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. [May>

coes, made entirely of sea-pebbles. A distinctive feature of the
Mt. Athos churches is the chores, or corona, hung in the middle of
the nave an immense metal crown of ten sides, each nearly two
yards long. Some are all of silver, some of commoner metal thick-
ly gilt; the double-headed eagle is the emblem used at each
corner, with a lamp hung by chains beneath, and little pictures
and ex-votos are crowded into the surrounding space, while with-
in this structure, and hung separately, is a chandelier of gilt cop-
per, with lamps and candles of perfumed wax. In some churches
that of Karyae is the completest instance other smaller chan-
deliers surround this corona. There used to be some such thing,
of smaller dimensions, hung in the nave of St. Mark's, Venice,
and lighted up on Easter eve only. Karyse's oldest church has
another special feature a heavy, romanesque steeple or spire, an
exception in this land of cupolas. The frescoes are among the
oldest on the mountain, and therefore the most precious, except
perhaps some of those at Laura, the " Holy Hermitage," which
disputes the palm with Batopedi as the wealthiest monastery.
There are a few there said to be anterior to Pauselinos, the
Giotto of Byzantine art, who lived in the eleventh century, and
to whom are referred any of the pictures on the mountain that
seem tolerably old. A pair of splendid copper gates in repousst
work mark the centre of the painted and gilt screen. Besides
their artistic value a good many of the pictures have a legendary
interest ; one Virgin and Child having, it is said, restored his hand
to St. John of Damascus, whom the Iconoclasts had maimed, for
which reason a third hand was added to the picture. A picture
of St. Nicholas at Stavronikita was cut in two by pirates and
thrown into the sea, when a " mother-of-pearl shell " immediately
rose to serve both as boat and cover, and floated back the picture
uninjured, save for the mark of the sword-cut, " which is shown
to this day " along with the identical shell. This kind of legend
is perpetually repeated, as is natural in a country so often and so
long threatened and plundered by infidel pirates.

Space is wanting to speak in detail, as they should be spoken
of, of the Byzantine pictures, of various dates, which to the learned
form one of the chief attractions of this unique community ; but
the libraries being as yet unexplored, and the full results of Pro-
fessor Lam pros' researches not having yet been published, a few
words on them will not take much room. At Russico, although
the books are kept in a rather damp and low place, they are well
cared for, catalogued and properly classed, clean and in good
order, and occupy a separate little building in the courtyard not

1 88 1.] THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT A Titos. 173

far from the principal church. There are Greek and Bulgarian
manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a fine Gos-
pel of the eleventh, and a remarkable volume of St. Gregory the
Theologian, rich with illuminations. Here, where everything is
comparatively modern, the buildings renovated, and the spirit of
Western Europe has slightly penetrated, such new books as
French originals of Bossuet, Fenelon, and a few more, and some
Italian books, not to mention Russian, are proudly shown ; but it
is needless to say that in most collections on the Holy Mountain
the latest books to be found are often of the sixteenth and seven,
teenth centuries. The great library of Batopedi, which, according
to Lampros, is the most complete and best kept of all, is richer than
Russico's, and occupies three floors of a large tower. The manu-
scripts of the ninth and tenth centuries are all in large, square let-
ters ; there are at least fifty Gospels of all dates, a very old copy of
Flavius Josephus, and the famous codex of Ptolemy's geography,
the oldest known, dating from the thirteenth century. At Russico
is one of the photographic fac-similes made twenty years ago by
Langlois of this precious manuscript. The Greek Fathers and
church historians are largely represented in this library. All the
libraries complain of the wanton destruction by the Turks in 1820,
when they overran the peninsula and destroyed untold treasures,
besides massacring the monks, who had roused their anger by too
openly sympathizing with the Greek revolution. From eight to
ten thousand manuscripts still exist, which it is probable now will
henceforth not only be well preserved, but will shortly be described
to the world and perhaps copied for the use of the learned and
of European libraries. Stavronikita is one of the neglected libra-
ries, or was when the Abbe Neyrat visited it, the books lying in
heaps on the floor, a prey to dust and rats. Xeropotamo has
among its tolerably well-kept books several psalters with old
Greek musical notation, and also an unusual quantity of French
and Italian modern books, the lighter authors predominating
Voltaire's tragedies, Florian's fables, Chateaubriand's novels, etc.
Laura has an important library, well kept, and several psalters
with the pneumatic signs which answered to our musical notes,
with an admirable prefatory treatise on the manner of interpret-
ing these signs. A musical author would find a new field of
study among these MSS., as well as among those of many Ita-
lian, especially southern Italian, convents. Even the late confis-
cations have left many books still accessible, and I have thought
more than once that a gap in the history of church music could
be filled by diligent study among the scattered monastic libra-

174 THE GREEK MONASTERIES OF MOUNT ATHOS. [May,

ries and those, better preserved, of existing cathedral choirs.
Laura has a very remarkable and rare manuscript and illus-
trated copy of Dioscorides' Botanica which no one but M. de
Nolhac has hitherto mentioned ; and the complete Apologues of
the Greek fable-writer Babrias, a work of which only fragments
were known to exist until, in 1841, a Greek savant, Minoid Mynas,
unearthed this copy. Origen's Philosophumena, or refutation of
heresies, also came to light here, and was edited as such by Mil-
ler in 1850, though some scholars disputed its authorship, attri-
buting it to St. Hippolytus.

One of the psalters bears certain figures in three lines which
are supposed to determine, when rightly interpreted, the date of
its writing. The numbers are thus arranged :

7.296
6492

.804

the first signifying the number of years from the creation of the
world to the date of the manuscript ; the second to be subtracted
from the first, leaving 804 as the date of the beginning of the vol-
ume. Notwithstanding this ingenious puzzle, the Abbe Neyrat
fixes the real date, by comparing contemporary works, at 984 ;
but such traditions cling verbally to the cicerone, of whatever
class or nation he may be, long after scholars have exploded the
old fancy. One of the last reminiscences of the two French tra-
vellers on their return to Russico was the request of Bishop Nilos,
of Pentapolis, the former Roumanian metropolitan, that they
would practically interest themselves in securing a publisher for
a very old and valuable manuscript, a commentary on Sophocles'
tragedies, recently discovered and annotated by a monk, a friend
of his own, who was anxious to find European encouragement
in his researches. Bishop Nilos himself was a cosmopolitan,
retired on the Holy Mountain after his unsuccessful mission
to the courts of Paris, London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg to
induce these courts to demand the restitution of Athonite pro-
perty confiscated en masse by Prince Couza, of Moldo-Walla-
chia, in 1862. It was popularly said that the monks owned one-
fifth of the principality ; certainly the sudden loss, without in-
demnity, of their Danubian property made a great difference
in their resources, even with their other foreign possessions un-
touched, their few islands in the ^Egean, and their exports to Con-
stantinople of wine, dried fruits, nuts, and timber-trees. Beg-
ging-tours in the countries of Greek faith, especially Russia, also

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 175

swell their treasury at present. Their hospitality, however, is as
wide as it was in their most prosperous days ; they resist the
most pressing and ingenious remuneration for their kindness, and
themselves load the traveller with presents, only allowing him to
pay the servants and muleteers. As priests of the Latin Church,
the two French abb6s received a specially warm and courteous
welcome, and in his account of the tour the Abbe Neyrat has
returned the compliment, by avoiding any animadversions upon
the unhappy differences, so slight in form yet so stubborn in
spirit, that divide us from our Greek brethren.

[NOTE. Since the above article was put in type the news has been re-
ceived of the authoress' death March 22 at North Conway, N. H., her
residence for some years past. The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will
miss the bright style, the patient research, and the versatile learning which
Lady Blanche Murphy has displayed in her numerous contributions to its
pages. ED. C. W.]

THE LIFE OF CHRIST,
in.

NAZARETH was the dwelling-place of Joseph and Mary before
the birth of Jesus. They remained at Bethlehem after this event,
apparently with the intention of making it their permanent resi-
dence, yet, through dread of Archelaiis, they returned, after their
temporary retreat into Egypt, once more to Nazareth, which was
the abode of Jesus from that time until the beginning of his public
life. We will quote at length M. Fouard's description of the
village and its site :

" Judea is little else than a series of hills running north and south at a
moderate distance from the Mediterranean. Westward, they descend to-
ward the coast ; toward the east they sink abruptly at the bed of the Jor-
dan, which takes its course between them and the mountains of Hauran.
The entire country of Palestine is formed by four parallel bands ; the plains
on the sea-side, the hilly region of Judea, the bed of the Jordan, and the
mountains of Perea on the other side of the river. The valley of Esdraelon,
extending from the sea to the river, cuts the first-mentioned chain of hills
into two divisions, one extending northward to Libanus, which constitutes
the region of Galilee ; the other, which is the land of Judea, stretching
southward and terminating at the desert.

" Nazareth belongs to Galilee and is nestled in the mountains, being
separated from the plain of Esdraelon by side hills which are crossed by a
winding road. On the borders of the village the heights withdraw from each
other so as to enclose a delightfully verdant basin. Some scientists regard

176 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [May,

this amphitheatre as the crater of an extinct volcano, and the fertility of the
soil lends plausibility to their conjecture. There is no spot in all Palestine,
generally an arid and desolate country, which surpasses the valley of Naza-
reth in abundance and freshness of vegetation. The martyr Antoninus in
his Itinerarium compares it to the garden of Eden. 'The women,' he says,
' of Nazareth are adorned with an incomparable grace, surpassing all the
daughters of Judea in their beauty which is a gift of Mary. In its wines,
its honey, its oil and its fruits, it is not inferior even to the fertile land of
Egypt.' At the present time, the picture has lost something of its ancient
charm, yet even now, Nazareth retains its meadows, its shades watered by
living springs, and its gardens enclosed by nopals, where the fig, the olive,
the orange and the pomegranate mingle their flowers and fruits. On the
southwestern side the village stretches up the inclined plane of the moun-
tain, and the bell-tower of the Latin convent marks the site of the habita-
tion of Jesus.

"The horizon of Nazareth is bounded by the rounded summits which
enclose it on all sides, but from the highest point of the mountain on which
the village is built, Jesus could look out on a prospect embracing in one
view the regions which he was one day to make the scene of his triumphs.
On the north lay Libanus and Hermon covered with perpetual snows ;
eastward, Thabor with its dome of verdure was visible, and beyond, the
deep bed of Jordan succeeded by the lofty highlands of Galaad ; on the
south he saw the plain of Esdraelon stretching away at his feet as far as
the mountains of Manasseh ; while, towards the setting sun he beheld the
sea, and Carmel hallowed by the memory of the prophet Elijah."

It is a curious fact, that during Napoleon's invasion of Syria
from Egypt Junot, and afterwards Kleber, had their headquar-
ters at Nazareth, and that a great battle was fought on Mt. Tha-
bor. The great object which Bonaparte aimed at in this Syrian
campaign was the restoration of the Greek Empire with its an-
cient capital Constantinople, under his own dominion. Perhaps
some may conjecture that this unsuccessful attempt foreshadows
a coming restoration of Christian domination in the East.

The life of Jesus from his thirteenth to his thirty-first year
was passed in quiet obscurity at Nazareth. Every trace of the
existence of Zacharias, Elizabeth, Joseph and Cleophas has al-
ready disappeared when the Lord reached the epoch at which his
public ministry began. So long as Joseph lived, he supported
the humble household over which he presided by his labor, as-
sisted by the Son of his virgin spouse in his work-shop, while
Mary performed the work suitable and necessary for the mother
in a poor family. After his death, Jesus must have taken his
place and continued his occupation as a carpenter. The nephews
and nieces of Joseph and Mary with their mother, if they did not
make a part of the family, must nevertheless have lived in such a
close intimacy, that they were like brothers and sisters to their

;

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 177

wonderful and much loved kinsman, as he grew in age and stat-
ure, in favor with God and man, and at length, having arrived
at the maturity of manhood still continued to live among his rela-
tives and fellow-townsmen, showing forth in a common and every-
day life, without any manifestation of his divine attributes, all the
perfect virtues and amiable traits of his holy humanity. Two of
his cousins, James the Less and Jude or Thaddeus, as their names
are best known to us, who were properly called in Hebrew Jacob
and Judah, became his apostles, and another, Simeon, who was at
least their half-brother, was the successor of James in the bishopric
of Jerusalem where he suffered martyrdom by crucifixion in the
one hundred and twentieth year of his age. Mary of Cleophas
their mother was one of the most devoted disciples of Jesus.
Either some of these members of the family of Cleophas did not
at first understand and believe in his divine mission, or there
were other relatives of the family residing in that part of Galilee,
for we are told at a considerably later period that his brethren
did not believe on him, and on one occasion, they even endea-
vored to constrain him to leave his ministry and return to his
family. Whatever the actual method and time of the enlighten-
ment of those among them who are known to have been his dis-
ciples may have been, we cannot doubt that the early example
and influence of Jesus were most efficacious in sanctifying all
of those who were in his intimate society during his youth, who
afterwards proved their good dispositions by such great fidelity.
Particularly, must we believe this of St. James, whose extraor-
dinary sanctity was so much reverenced by Jews as well as by the
disciples of Christ, after the death of the Master had devolved
upon him the dignity of head in the house of David, and spiritual
prince in the assembly of the true Israel in Jerusalem.

The public ministry of the Messiah was inaugurated by John
he Baptist, who came out of the desert and preached penance to
the Jewish people, baptizing them in the Jordan as a sign of
purification. September of the year of Rome 779, A.D. 26, fell
within one of the sabbatical years of the Jews. During this
period, the fields were left uncultivated, their spontaneous fruits
were left to be gathered by the poor and a general remission was
made of all debts. It was a most appropriate time for the mission
of John which probably commenced just at this epoch, several
weeks or months before the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.
As the Jordan flows generally in a very deep bed between banks
which are not habitable, John must have held his stations at
some of the fords of the river. The valley of Jericho is the spot
marked by tradition as the principal scene of his preaching and

VOL. XXXIII. 12

178 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [May,

baptism. In former times, marble platforms covered the banks
of the river at this place, and the vicinity was full of churches
and monasteries whose ruins alone are still remaining. A cross
was erected at a certain point in the river where it was supposed
the baptism of Jesus had taken place, priests accompanied the
pilgrims who went in to perform their ablutions, blessed the
water with prayers and cast into it balm and flowers. The pil-
grims bathed in a robe especially prepared for the purpose, which
they preserved with religious care as their garment of burial.
At the present time there is an annual procession always com-
posed of several thousand persons, travelling in a caravan escort-
ed by a Turkish guard under the pasha of Jerusalem, which
leaves the Holy City during the Easter season, and encamps at
Gilgal. Two hours before dawn of the morning after their ar-
rival, the pilgrims, having been awakened by the sound of musical
instruments, proceed by torchlight to the ford of the river be-
fore Jericho, and at sunrise they perform their ablutions in the
water which was hallowed by the presence and baptism of our
divine Saviour.

This baptism of Jesus probably took place at some time be-
tween October 779 and January of the year 780 or A.D. 27, and is
celebrated together with the visit of the Magi and the miracle of
Cana by the church on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany.
John received the miraculous tokens which authorized him, as
the last of the prophets of the Old Law and the precursor and
herald of the Messiah, to point out Jesus to the people as their
expected Redeemer. Having lived in the solitude of the desert
from his childhood, he may not* have had personal acquaintance
with his divine kinsman before his appearance among the crowd
of penitents to demand baptism. He recognized him, neverthe-
less, if not hitherto personally acquainted with him, by some evi-
dent marks of his extraordinary character discernible to the intui-
tions of his own heavenly spirit, or by a secret inspiration ; and
when he had in obedience to his command immersed him in the
stream of the Jordan as a solemn rite of inauguration into his
office, he saw a visible sign of the mission of the Holy Ghost in
the form of a dove hovering over his head, and heard a celestial
voice proclaiming in the name of the Father that he was his well-
beloved Son, who was now in his humanity solemnly acknow-
ledged and consecrated as the Messiah both of the Jews and the
Gentiles. The fact that no special attention of the multitude to
Jesus was awakened on this occasion, and that he passed un-
noticed among them afterwards, proves that the miraculous signs
were given to Jesus and John alone, and were perceived by no

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 179

others. It was by John's testimony, given to the people in gene-
ral terms, and to the most worthy in a more particular manner,
that the mission of Jesus was authenticated. This is not the
place for developing the argumentative value of this testimony
as one of the motives of credibility by which the divine legation
of Jesus is demonstrated. This has already been indicated suffi-
ciently for our present purpose, and for assisting devout believers
in the Gospel narrative to understand it better. We must hasten
on, and pass by those subsequent incidents narrated by the evan-
gelists and familiar to all readers of the New Testament, which
belong to the beginning of the history of the public ministry of
Christ. We can attempt nothing more than a synopsis of the
general plan of action which our Lord followed in accomplishing
his own personal work as the founder of his new kingdom, ac-
cording to the exposition of our author, with a few additional
sketches of accessory scenes and persons taken from the abun-
dant materials which his work furnishes. As many of the events
of our Lord's ministry are closely connected with the Lake of
Gennesareth, we will first quote the author's description of it and
its environs.

" It is one day's journey from Nazareth to Capharnaiim which, as St.
John's expression indicates, is a continual descent across the hills of Zabu-
lon. At the end of this journey, the traveller, issuing from the Valley of
Doves (Wady-el-Hamam), perceives at his feet the Sea of Galilee. The ob-
long shape and murmuring sound of this body of water suggested the name
of Chinnereth, i.e., Harp, which was given to it by the Hebrews. In the
days of Jesus it was oftener called, Sea of Tiberias, Sea of Galilee, or Lake
of Gennesareth. This last name is variously explained as an altered form
of Chinnereth, as a compound of Gai and Netser, valley of flowers, from the
brilliant tapestry of its banks, and as a compound of Gai and Sar, valley of
princes.* These poetical names show how much the Jews admired this
beautiful lake. In one of their books (Misdrasch Fillim), the Lord is made
to say : ' I have created seven seas, but I have reserved only one for my-
self, the Sea of Gennesareth.'

" The lake is much more renowned, however, from its associations with
Jesus than for its beauty. Everything about it reminds us of the Master :
the waves ploughed by his bark, the shores upon which he walked, the sur-
rounding plains, the beach where he often sat by himself or amidst a
crowd, the lonely mountains in the distance where he retired to pray. No
region witnessed more of his miracles or heard for a longer time his divine
word ; it is all too dear to the Christian heart to allow us to omit an effort
to paint the scene.

"The Lake of Gennesareth is one of the three basins which the Jordan
fills in its course toward the south. Larger than Lake Houleh, it has lesser
dimensions than the bituminous sea in which the waters of the Jordan lose

* The second of these derivations seems more probable than the others.

i8o THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [May,

themselves. In the time of Christ, it formed a singular contrast with the
Dead Sea. It was a scene of life, with its fresh waters filled with fish, its
environs adorned by flowers and fruits ; whereas the other scene had the
gloom of death, no fish being able to live in its bitter, asphaltic waters, a
curse of desolation resting on its shores. And yet, in more ancient times
these two basins had rivalled each other in fertility. When, from the
heights of Bet'hel, Lot beheld the Lake of Sodom and the valley of Sittim,
he saw them as fresh and smiling as the gardens of the Lord and the bor-
ders of the Nile.

"The same causes produced an equal fecundity in both places ; for both
lakes are craters of extinct volcanoes, so deeply sunk beneath the burning
soil, that the Jordan, on entering the Lake of Gennesafeth, is five hundred
feet below the level of the Mediterranean, while the depression of the Dead
Sea is seven hundred and ninety-two feet lower. The earth at this great
depth below the common level, being at once exposed to the heat of a burn-
ing sky, and moistened by an abundance of watery exhalations, is covered by
a most variegated vegetation. In the words of Josephus : ' The walnut, a
tree of cold climates, grows here to a majestic height, and the palm bears
as abundantly as in the torrid zones ; while in their neighborhood flourish
the products of temperate regions, the vine, the fig and the olive. It seems
as if nature had reversed all her laws to combine in these places all her
best and most diverse productions. The different seasons dispute with
each other for the mastery and exercise their influences together ; figs and
grapes ripen uninterruptedly during ten months of the year, and the other
fruits during its entire circle.' This picture betrays the hand of a Galilean
who was proud of his own country and its beautiful lake. Nevertheless it
is not exaggerated ; for at this day, the tourist finds, as soon as the Bed-
ouins cease their ravages, palm-trees overshadowing Tiberias, the indigo,
lotus and sugar-cane growing in the fields of Magdala, and the lake sur-
rounded by a girdle of rose-laurels.

" Josephus boasts with equal complacency of the fecundity of its waters.
The fish were so abundant that fishermen were to be counted by hundreds
along the shores, and there were two villages which bore the name of Beth-
saida, or House of Fishery. On this account, at the time of the partition
of Judea between the children of Israel, Moses reserved to every indivi-
dual among them the right to cast his net into the lake. At the time when
it was frequented by Jesus, thousands of sails gave animation to the scene :
Roman galleys, vessels belonging to Herod, barks of fishermen ; but at the
present time there are only three boats to be found on the lake, and even
these are seldom used by the indolent fishermen of Tiberias and Mejdel.

" The cities of the lake which were formerly populous are now in ruins.
They were all crowded together on the western shore, for on the eastern
side the precipitous wall of rock afforded no access except certain gorges
through which the torrents of the wintry season rushed down into the lake.
Tiberias was the most illustrious of these cities. It had been lately built
by Herod Antipas in honor of his protector Tiberius, with that magnifi-
cence for which he had acquired a taste during his residence at Rome.
Nevertheless, with a total heedlessness of Jewish customs, he erected this
city as the capital of his dominions on the site of an ancient cemetery, and
by so doing excluded from its gates all Jews, since they could not enter

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 181

them without contracting ceremonial defilement. His efforts to attract
them thither by entreaties, favors and privileges were lavished upon them
in vain. It was impossible to overcome their scrupulous regard for their
own laws, and, consequently, Tiberias ^remained always a city of foreign in-
habitants, peopled by Greeks and Romans who were charmed with a resi-
dence more pagan than Jewish, having among its attractions the superb
palace of Antipas, an amphitheatre, and the hot baths of the ancient Am-
maiis, which was probably the Emath mentioned in the nineteenth chap-
ter of the Book of Joshua. It is not likely that Jesus ever entered its walls,
or beheld, except at a distance, its lofty ramparts and marble palaces.

" To the north of Tiberias the hills approach the shore, and the road
ascending the acclivity follows it for the distance of an hour's journey, un-
til you arrive at the plain of Gennesareth. At this spot the heights by
withdrawing anew from each other form an amphitheatre around a level
region which the Talmud calls the terrestrial paradise. Gennesareth is no
longer the delicious garden which Jesus traversed, yet even in its present
neglected condition it shows signs of fertility. In the spring it is covered
with flowers ; bosquets of rose-laurels overshadow its streams, and thistles
form such a thick-set underwood that the traveller finds much difficulty in
forcing a passage through it.

" Gennesareth owes its fertility to an abundant natural supply of water.
On the south is the Round Fountain (Am Medaouarah), on the north the
Fountain of the Fig-Tree (Ain et-Tin), in the centre a copious stream which
falls from the mill of Schouche and through a multitude of canals waters
the fields down to the edge of the lake. It seems that even this profusion
was not found sufficient for watering Gennesareth ; for across the rock
which bounds the plain on the north an aqueduct has been dug out so
as to bring the waters of Ain Tabigah from the neighboring shore.

" Further on, the aspect of the water-side changes ; the hills gently de-
scend to the lake and the waves wash against dense masses of caper-trees,
tamarisks and laurels. On the top and along the sides of these mountains
there is but a meagre vegetation scattered over the sombre surface of a
rocky basalt formation.

" Such is the general landscape on the western side of the lake. From
Tiberias to the embouchure of the Jordan its border line is a curve of about
twelve miles in length, upon which were situated those famous cities of the
Gospel, Magdala, Capharnaiim, Bethsaida and Chorozam.

" Here, then, in Gennesareth, Capharnaiim, Bethsaida, Chorozam, along
three or four leagues of the western lake-shore, was the theatre of the
ministry of Jesus. It was the most suitable one which could be found for
his purpose ; for this region was the most populous one of all Palestine, and
nowhere else could the Saviour have found such a mixture of races, man-
ners, religions, sects, justifying the appellation of Galilee of the Gentiles.
Officers of Herod, Greeks of the Decapolis, peasants, Galilean fishermen,
courtesans corrupted by the contact of pagan cities, Syrians, Phoenicians,
Orientals whose caravans followed the ' route of the sea,' soldiers, Roman
centurions watching over this tumultuous country, publicans gathering
their taxes in settles by the wayside, such was the multitude through which
Jesus passed and which he soon attracted to follow after his footsteps.

" This spot was not only a centre from which his renown would spread

1 82 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [May,

with the greatest rapidity through all Syria, it no less afforded him access to
the most secure retreats from fatiguing labors or menacing perils. A bark
could convey him in a few hours to the mountains of Gaulanitis, where he
consecrated his days and nights to prayer. At a distance of only three
hours' journey northward from the lake, began the domain of the tetrarch
Philip, a just and mild prince. Jesus had only to cross his border" to be
safe from the persecution of Herod, and more than once he was obliged to
use this precaution, for this nonchalant prince had intervals of bloodthirsty
wakefulness. We find that on these occasions Jesus hid himself from the
pursuit of the tyrant by seeking a refuge near Bethsaida of the North where
Philip had fixed his residence. But these absences were short, and as soon
as Herod relapsed into his ordinary indolence Jesus returned to his favorite
land of Gennesareth.

" We have endeavored by the help of the testimonies of the past to
bring back into life this country as it was when Jesus saw and loved it. At
the present day, a pilgrim who descends to the shores of the sea of Tiberias
filled with these remembrances finds himself strangely disappointed. The
green pasture grounds, the vineyards and the vine-dressers have vanished ;
not even the ruins of the once flourishing cities remain ; the jackal
crouches in the synagogue of Tell Houm where Jesus taught ; the thorny
thickets do not suffice to temper the glowing atmosphere of this basin the
heat of which is like that of a furnace. Nevertheless, the lake sparkles in
the midst of the hills as pure and calm as ever, reflecting the same horizon
and the same sky, as of old. What this scene has lost in grace and beauty
it has gained in savage majesty, and above all in mute but impressive elo-
quence. For, this lake which was once so full of life and is now the haunt
of loneliness and death reminds all those who tread its banks how terrible
it is to reject the word of God and to incur his malediction. Woe to thee,
Chorozain ! Woe to thee, Bethsaida ! ' '

Having placed the principal scene of the public ministry of
our Lord before our eyes, the next thing to be done is to dis-
cover the plan of action which he followed, in order to under-
stand the sequence of the historical narrative and the relation of
all the parts to each other and to the whole. An exposition of
the complete idea of the Messiah and his divine mission belongs
to a higher department. We take for granted all the truths con-
tained in Catholic theology, and consider only the exterior order
of facts and events in the history of the divine Redeemer during
one part of the mission which he personally fulfilled, viz., while
he was preaching the Gospel to the Israelites, his own peculiar
people. In accomplishing this work, Jesus Christ acted with
human wisdom and prudence, employing all the means which
were naturally suitable for attaining the object he had in view,
according to a fixed plan, regulated according to the actual cir-
cumstances which surrounded hini and the characters of the per-
sons with whom he dealt. His divine wisdom directed but did

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 183

not supersede his human operation. His divine power was not
exerted to produce in a supernatural and miraculous manner the
effects for which his human faculties and the employment of other
secondary causes and agencies sufficed. Even those highest at-
tributes of his humanity which elevated him as man above the
common level of the prophets and ministers of God were not
brought into continual and conspicuous exercise, but by pre-
ference, and as a rule, he acted as one would have.done who was
wholly inferior to himself, as, for instance, his apostles did, when
he had delegated to them the office of preaching the gospel to
the Jews and Gentiles.

The immediate purpose of our Lord's public ministry was un-
doubtedly to manifest himself to his own people as their promised
Messiah, that they might believe in him and submit themselves
to his teaching and authority. The existing state of things and
the prevailing dispositions of the Jewish people, especially of the
ruling class among them, presented the most grave and apparent-
ly insurmountable obstacles to this undertaking. The members
of the existing royal family, that of Herod, together with all
their partisans and supporters, were the natural enemies of one,
who by proclaiming himself the Messiah necessarily laid claim to
the title of King of the Jews. The representatives of imperial
Rome, backed by all the power of the empire, were much more
formidable opponents and enemies, against whom, in a human
sense, and by natural means, it would be obviously hopeless to
contend. As for the common multitude of the Jews, it would
seem that their enthusiastic and general recognition of Jesus as
their Messiah, so much dreaded at one time by their rulers,
would have increased the danger from the side of the Romans to
a most alarming magnitude. On the other hand, their aversion,
or even indifference, would deprive Jesus of his only human pro-
tection against the malice of his powerful enemies among the
ewish rulers. These rulers themselves were rendered his im-
lacable enemies, whether they were Pharisees or Sadducees, by
eir private interests, their sectarian zeal, and their narrow, ex-
lusive, worldly-minded nationalism.

What the intention and purpose of our divine Lord actually
was at the beginning of his ministry is known to us from the
event and result as recorded in the inspired history. In the first
place, he devoted himself to undergo persecution and death as
the King of all martyrs for truth and righteousness, by the very
fact of undertaking the mission which he had received from the
Father. For this doom was a consequence morally necessary

1 84 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [May,

and unavoidable, unless prevented by the exercise of miraculous
power. It had been decreed in the eternal counsels of God, that
this martyrdom should not be prevented, but that by this very
means the Messiah should become a victim and sacrifice of ex-
piation for the sins of the world, and by his sufferings and death
redeem mankind. Jesus accepted this doom by a voluntary and
free act of his human will. With a distinct foreknowledge and
resolution that his ministry should terminate on the cross, he
had, nevertheless, so to order his teaching and his miracles, that
full time and opportunity would be secured without 'interfering
with the ordinary course of human events, for completing his
public ministry. He had, in the first place, to select and train
his apostles and disciples, who were destined to become, under
him, the founders and propagators of Christianity. Then, he
had to preach his kingdom, to proclaim his gospel, to make mani-
fest his character, his virtues, his doctrine, his law, his grace and
his power, before his own people, and before the whole world
for all coming time. Until this work had been fulfilled, it was
necessary that he should protect his own life and liberty, avoid-
ing by a wise management the dangers which surrounded him,
baffling with superior skill and prudence the machinations of his
enemies, and even preventing any popular movement in his favor
from bringing on a premature crisis in his career. During a pe-
riod of about three years and a half, he kept his enemies at bay,
in this manner ; avoided bringing upon himself the active hostility
of the Romans and Herod, and went about freely with his disci-
ples in all Palestine, preaching and working miracles. This per-
sonal freedom was secured only by a constant movement from
place to place, frequent retreats from one part of the country
which became dangerous to another which was safer, continual
vigilance against the snares and stratagems of the Jewish rulers,
and an occasional employment of supernatural power. It was
hindered and restricted more and more, as time went on and the
plots of the Chief Priests and Sanhedrites enclosed Jesus in a con-
stantly narrowing circle, until at last he became their captive
and victim, and the divine tragedy was ended. The whole pub-
lic career of the Messiah is a circuitous movement from the Jor-
dan to Mount Calvary, in the course of which he traverses Judea,
Samaria, Galilee, Perea, Phoenicia and Syria, frequently passing
and repassing on the same lines. Such incidents and discourses
as have been preserved in the sacred history are strung upon this
line of movement in regular sequence of ideas according to the
particular plan and scope of each separate evangelist. The chro-

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 185

nological sequence can be discovered with probability by a care-
ful comparison of the gospels, and the application of critical judg-
ment. Thus, an outline is obtained of the systematic plan which
our Lord followed out in the education of the apostles and other
disciples who were to become the ministers of his word, in the
evangelizing of the people of Israel, in the manifestation of his own
person, character and attributes, in the unfolding and teaching
of his doctrine, and the construction of the whole moral foun-
dation of the Catholic Church. We have only time and space
for a synopsis of the exterior events and incidents according to
their chronological order, which we will give in our next num-
ber.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE CHILDREN OF LIR.

AN IRISH LEGEND.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

The " Children of Lir," one of the most ancient of Ireland's Heroic Legends, and one of her
" Three Sorrows of Song," has been introduced to many readers by the prose versions of Gerald
Griffin, of Professor O'Curry, and of Dr. Joyce, in whose charming work, Old Celtic Romances,
it has a place, as well as by Moore's well-known song. It has a depth of significance which
suggests the thought that in it the Irish bards found traces of what they often celebrated as a
primary Spiritual Election belonging to the ' ' Isle of Fate " one worked out during centuries of
suffering. The present is, so far as I know, the first poetic rendering of a tale the beauty of
which deserves, and, I trust, will create many poetic versions of it in future times. The best of
the Irish Legends admit of being rendered, as those of Greece were, in different manners and
on different principles.

FIRST PART.

ERE yet great Miledh's sons to Erin came,
Lords of the Gael, Milesian styled more late,

An earlier tribe Tuatha they were named,
Likewise Dedannan ruled the Isle of Fate,

A tribe that knew nor clan, nor priest, nor bard,

Wild as the waves, and as the sea-cliffs hard.

Some say that race, of old from Greece exiled,
Long time had sojourned in the frozen north

Roaming Norwegian wood and Danish wild :
To Erin thence more late they issued forth,

And thither brought two gifts both loved and feared

The " Lia Fail," and Oghaim lore revered.

1 86 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [May,

Fiercer they were, not manlier, than the Gael,

Large-handed, swift of foot, dark-haired, dark-eyed,

With sudden gleams athwart their faces pale,
Transits of fancies quick, or angry pride :

Strange lore they boasted, imped by insight keen ;

As oft obscured by gusts of causeless spleen.

These, when the white fleet of the Gael drew nigh
Green Erin's shore, their heritage decreed,

O'er-meshed, through rites unholy, earth and sky
With sudden gloom. The invaders took no heed,

But ran their barques through darkness on the strand ;

Then clapped their hands, and laughing leaped to land.

Around them flocked Tuatha's race in guile,

Unarmed, with mocking voice and furtive mien,

And scoffed : " Not thus your Fathers fought erewhile !
Say, call ye warriors knaves that creep unseen,

While true men sleep, up inlet dim, and fiord,

Filching the land they proved not with their sword ? "

Then to the Gael their bard, Amergin, spake :
" Sail forth, my sons, nine waves across the deep,

And when this island-race are armed, come back,
And take their realm by force ; and, taking, keep ! "

The Gael sailed forth, nine waves ; then turned, and gazed

Black tempest wrapt the isle, by magic raised !

Round Erin's shores like leaves their ships were blown :
Strewn on her reefs lay bard and warrior drowned :

Not less the Gael upreared ere long that throne

Two thousand years through all the West renowned.

O'er Tailten's field God held the scales of Fate :

That last dread battle closed the dire debate.

There fell those three Tuatha Queens that gave

The land their names they fell by death discrowned : *

There many a Gaelic chieftain found his grave :
Thenceforth the races twain adjusted bound

And right, at times by league, at times by war ;

Nor any reigned as yet from shore to shore.

* Bamba, Fodhla, and Eire.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 187

Still here and there Tuatha princes ruled

Now in green vale, and now on pale blue coast,

A warrior one, and one in magic schooled ;
The graver made Druidic lore their boast,

And knew the secret might of star and leaf :

Gray-haired King Bove stood up of these the chief.

Southward by broad Lough Derg his palace stood :
Northward, beside Emania's lonely mere,

In Finnaha, embowered 'mid lawn and wood,
King Lir abode, a warrior, not a seer ;

Well loved was he, plain man with great, true heart,

Who loathed, despite his race, the sorcerer's art.

Five centuries lived he ere that better light
Shone forth o'er earth from Bethlehem : ne'ertheless

He judged his land with justice and with might,
Tempering the same at times with gentleness ;

And gave the poor their due ; and made proclaim,

" Let no man smite the old ; the virgin shame."

His prime was spent in wars : in middle life
He bade a youthful prinpess share his throne :

Nor e'er had monarch yet a truer wife

With tenderer palm or voice of sweeter tone :

The one sole lady in that land was she

Sun-haired, with large eyes azure as the sea.

She moved amid the crafty as a child ;

Amid the lawless, chaste as unsunned maid ;
Amid the unsparing, as a turtle mild ;

Wondering at wrong ; too gentle to upbraid :
Yet many a fell resolve, as she rode by,
Died at its birth the ill-thinker knew not why !

Before her, sadness fled : in years long past
As on a cliff the warriors sang their songs,

A harper maid, with eyes that stared aghast,
Had sung, " Not long to us this isle belongs !

The Fates reserve it for a race more true,

Ye children of Dedannan's stock, than you ! "

1 88 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [May,

And since she scorned her music to abate,

Nor ceased to freeze their triumph with her dirge,

The princes and the people rose in hate,

And hurled her harp and her into the surge :

Yet still, men said, 'twixt midnight and the morn,

That dirge swelled up, by tempest onward borne.

Remembering oft this spectre of his youth
King Lir would sit, a frown upon His brow :

Then came the Queen with words of peace and truth
" Mourn they that sinned ! A child that hour wert thou

Thou rul'st this land to-day : in years to be

Who best deserves shall wield her sovereignty."

Then would the monarch doff his sullen mood
With kingly joy, and, bright as May-day's morn,

Ride forth amid his hounds through wild and wood,
Thrilling far glens with echoes of his horn ;

Or meet the land's invaders face to face

Well pleased, and homeward hew them with disgrace.

Thus happy lived the pair, and happier far

Since four fair children graced the royal house,

Fairer than flowers, more bright than moon or star
Shining through vista long of forest boughs.

Finola was the eldest six years old :

The yearling, Conn, best loved of all that fold.

These beauteous creatures with their mother shared
Alike her blissful nature and sweet looks,

Like her benign, like her blue-eyed, bright-haired,
With voices musical as birds or brooks :

Beings they seemed reserved for some great fate,

Mysterious, high, elect, and separate.

At times they gambolled in the sunny sheen ;

At times, Fiacre and Aodh at her side,
Finola paced the high-arched alleys green,

At once their youthful playmate and their guide
A mother-hearted child she walked, and pressed
That infant, daily heavier, to her breast.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 189

Great power of Love that, wide as heaven, dost brood
O'er all the earth, and doest all things well !

Light of the wise, and gladdener of the good !
Nowhere, methinks, thou better lov'st to dwell

Than in the hearts of innocents that still,

Thy name as yet not knowing, work thy will !

Thou shalt be with them when the sleet- wind blows
Not less than in the violet-braided bower :

Through thee the desert sands shall bud the rose,
The wild wave anthems sing ! In grief's worst hour

A seed of thine shall germinate that Faith

Amaranth of life, and asphodel of death.

Ah lot of man ! Ah world whose life is change !

Ah sheer descent from topmost height of good
To deepest gulf of anguish sudden and strange !

A nation round their monarch's gateway stood :
All day there stood they, whispering in great dread :
The Herald came at last " The Queen is dead ! "

In silence still they stood an hour and more,

Till through the West had sunk the great red sun,

And from the castle wall and turrets hoar
The latest crimson utterly had gone :

Then the sad truth had reached them ; then on high

An orphaned People hurled its funeral cry.

They hurled it forth again and yet again,
The dreadful wont of that barbaric time ;

Cry after cry that reached the far off main,

And, echoing, seemed from cloud to cloud to climb ;

Then lifted hands like creatures broken-hearted,

Or sentenced men ; and homeward, mute, departed.

Fast-speeding Time, albeit the wounded wing
He may not bind, brings us at least the crutch ;

Winter was over, and the on-flying Spring

Grazed the sad monarch's brow with heavenly touch,

And raised the head, now whitening, from the ground,

And stanched not healed the heart's eternal wound.

190 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [May,

King Bove, chief sovereign of the dark-haired race,
Sent to him saying, " Quit thee like a man !

The Gaels, our scourge, and Erin's sore disgrace,
Advance, each day, their armies, clan on clan ;

Against them march thy host with mine, and take

To wife my daughter, for thy children's sake."

Sadly he mused : but answered : " Let it be ! "

And drave with fifty chariots in array
To where the land's chief river like a sea

(There named Lough Derg) swells out in gulf and bay :
And many a woody mountain sees its face
Imaged in that clear flood with softened grace.

There with King Bove the widowed man abode
Two days amid great feastings. On the third

The King led forth his daughter (o'er her glowed
A dim veil jewel-tissued) with this word :

"Behold thy wife! The world proclaims her fair:

I know her strong to love, and strong to dare."

And Lir made answer : " Fair she is as when
A mist-veiled yew, red-berried, stands in state :

Can love, you say : love she my babes ! and then
With her my love shall bide ; if not my hate ! "

And she, a crimson on her dusky brow

Replied, " If so it be, then be it so ! "

King Lir, a fortnight more in revels spent,

Made journey to his castle in the North
With her, his youthful consort, well content.

Arrived, in rapture of their loving mirth
Forth rushed into his arms his children four
Bright as those wavelets on their blue lake's shore ;

On whom the new Queen cast a glance oblique

One moment's space ; then, flinging wide her arms,

With instinct changed, and impulse lightning-like,
Clasped them in turn, and wondered at their charms,

And cried, " If e'er a stepmother could love,

I of that tribe renowned will tenderest prove."

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 191

And so by her great loving of these four

Still from her husband won she praises sweet

And plaudits from his people more and more ;
Her own she called them : nor was this deceit :

She loved them with a fitful love a will

To make them or to mar, for good or ill.

She wooed them still with shows, with flowers, with fruit ;

Daily for them new sports she sought and found :
Yet, if their Father praised them, she was mute,

And, when he placed them on his knee, she frowned,
Murmuring, " How blue their eyes ! their cheek how pale !
Their voices too are voices of the Gael ! "

Meantime, as month by month in grace they grew,
Their Father loved them better than before ;

And so, one eve, their slender cots he drew
Each from its place remote, and lightly bore,

And laid them ranged before his royal bed ;

And o'er the four a veil gold-woven spread

Their Mother's bridal-veil : and still as dawn
Was in its glittering tissue caged and caught

He left his couch, and, that light veil withdrawn,
Before his children stood in silent thought ;

And, if they slept, he kissed them in their sleep,

Then watched them with clasped hands in musings deep.

And, if they slept not, from their balmy nest
With under-sliding arms he raised them high,

And clasped them "each, successive, to his breast,
Or on them flashed the first light from the sky :

Then laid him by his mute, sleep-feigning bride,

And slept once more : and oft in sleep he sighed.

Which things abhorring, she her face averse

Turned all day steadfast from the astonished throng :

Lastly, as one that broods upon a curse,

She sat in her sick-chamber three weeks long,

And never raised her eyes, nor made complaint,

Dark as a fiend and silent as a saint.

192 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [May,

At last the woman spake : " Daily I sink

Downward to death. I wither in my prime :

Home to my Father I would speed, and drink
Once more the breezes of my native clime.

Last night in sleep along Lough Derg I strayed,

And wings of strength about my shoulders played.

" Those four thy children with me I will take
To please my Father's eye ; he loves them well :

And thou, whene'er thy leisure serves, shalt make
Thither thy journey." All the powers of Hell

Thrilled at that speech in penal vaults below :

But Lir, no fraud suspecting, answered, " Go ! "

Therefore next morn when earliest sunrise smote
Green mead and pasture near the full-fed stream,

They caught four steeds that grazed thereby remote,
And yoked abreast beside the chariot beam ;

And when the sun was sinking toward the West

By Darvra's lake drew rein, and made their rest.

Then the bad Queen, descending, round her cast

A baleful look of mingled hate and woe,
And with those babes into a thicket passed,

And drew a dagger from her breast ; and lo !
She struck them not, but only wailed and wailed
So strongly in her, womanhood prevailed.

Sudden she changed. She smiled that smile which none
How wise soe'er, beholding, could resist,

And drew those children to her, one by one ;
Then wailed once more, and last their foreheads kissed,

And cried with finger pointing to the lake,

" Hence ! and in that clear bath your pastime take ! "

She spake, and from their silken garb forth-sliding,
Ere long those babes were sporting in the bay :

And, as it chanced, the eddy past them gliding

Wafted a swan's plume : 'twas less white than they :

Frowning, the Queen beheld them, and on high

Waved thrice her Druid wand athwart the sk^.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 193

Then, standing on the marge with eye -balls wide,
As near they drew, awe-struck and wondering,

Therewith she smote their golden heads, and cried,
" Fly hence, ye pale-faced children of the King !

Cleave the blue mere, or on through ether sail ;

No more his loved ones, but a dolorous tale ! "

Straightway to snow-white swans those children turned :
And, backward as they swerved, the creatures four

Fixed on her looks with human grief that yearned,
And slowly drifted backward from the shore :

And then, with voice unchanged, Finola cried,

" Bad deed is thine, false Queen and bitter bride !

" Bad deed afflicting babes that harmed thee not;

Bad deed, and to thyself an evil dower :
Worse, worse than ours ere long shall be thy lot !

Thou too shalt feel the weight of Druid power:
From age to age thy penance ne'er shall cease :
Our doom, though long it lasts, shall end in peace."

Then rang a wild shriek from that dreadful shape :
" Long, long, aye long shall last those years of woe !

Here on this lake from misty cape to cape
Three centuries ye shall wander to and fro ;

Three centuries more shall stem with heavier toil

Far Alba's waves, the black sea-strait * of Moyle.

" Lastly three centuries where the Eagle-Crest f
O'er-looks the western deep, and Inisglaire,

Upon the mountain waves that know not rest
Shall be your rolling palace, foul or fair,

Till comes the Tailkenn,^: sent to sound the kneli

Of darkness, and ye hear his Christian bell."

Lo, as a band of lilies, white and tall

Beneath a breeze of morning bend their head

High held in virgin state majestical,

So meekly cowered those swans in holy dread

Hearing that promised Tailkenn's blissful name :

For they long since had heard in dream the same.

* The current running between the maet, or headland, of Cantire, in Scotland, and the north-
ern coast of Ireland.

t Achill Island on the coast of Connaught. JThe " Tonsured One," i.e. St Patrick.

VOL. XXXIII. 13

194 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [May,

Then fell a dew of meekness on the proud

Noting their humbleness ; and drooped her front ;

And sorrow closed around her like a cloud ;
And thus with other voice than was her wont

To those soft victims of her wrath she cried :

" Woe, woe ! Yet Fate must rule, whate'er betide !

" The deed is done ; yet thus much I concede :

In you the human heart shall never fail,
Changed though ye be, and masked in feathery weed :

Your voice shall sweet remain as voice of Gael ;
And all who hear your songs shall sink in trance
And, sleeping, dream some great deliverance."

She spake, and smote her hands, and at her word
Once more the royal servants caught the steeds

Grazing in peace beside the horned herd

Amid the meadow flowers, and yellow weeds;

And fiercely through the night the Queen on drave

And reached Lough Derg what time above its wave

The sun was rising ; and at set of sun
Entered once more her Father's palace gate :

Then, seated there, his nobles,' every one,
Arose and welcomed her with loving state :

She answered naught, but sternly past them strode

And found her girlhood's bower, and there abode.

But when of Lir the old King made demand,

She answered thus : " Enough ! My Lord is naught !

Nor will he trust his children to thy hand,
Lest thou should'st slay them." Long in silent thought

The old man stood, then murmured in low tone,

" I loved those children better than mine own! "

That night in dream King Lir had anguish sore,
And southward, ere the dawn, rode far away

With many a chief to see his babes once more
Beside Lough Derg ; and lo, at close of day

Nighing to Darvra's lake, the westering sun

In splendor on the advancing horsemen shone.

;i.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. ' 195

Instant from that broad water's central stream
Was heard a clang of pinions and swift feet

Unchanged at heart those babes had caught that gleam ;
Instant from far had rushed, their sire to greet,

Spangling the flood with silver spray ; and ere

The King had reached the margin they were there.

Then, each and all, clamorous they made lament
Recounting all their wrong, and all the woe ;

And Lir, their tale complete, his raiment rent,
Till then transfixed like marble shape ; and lo !

Three times the royal concourse raised their cry

Piercing the centre of that low-hung sky.

And Lir knelt down upon the shining sand,

And cried, " Though great the might of Druid charms,

Return and feel once more your native land,

And find once more and fill your father's arms ! "

And they made answer : " Till the Tailkenn come

We tread not land ! The waters are our home."

But when Finola saw her father's grief
She added thus : " Albeit our days are sad,

The twilight brings our pain in part relief:

And songs are ours by night that make us glad :

Yea, each that hears our music, though he grieve,

Rejoices more. Abide, for it is eve."

So Lir, and his, were couched on that green sod
All night ; and ever as those songs up swelled

A mist of sleep upon them fell from God,

And healing Spirits converse with them held.

And Lir was glad all night : but with the morn

Anguish returned ; and thus he cried, forlorn :

" Farewell ! The morn is come ; and I depart :
Farewell ! Not wholly evil are things ill !

Farewell, Finola ! Yea, but in my heart

With thee I bide : there liv'st thou changeless still.

O Aodh ! O Fiacre ! the night is gone :

Farewell to both ! Farewell my little Conn!"

196 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [May,

Southward the childless father rode once more,

And saw at last beyond the forests tall
The great lake and the palace on its shore ;

And, entering, onward passed from hall to hall
To where King Bove enthroned sat and crowned,
High on a terrace, with his magnates round ;

A stately terrace clustered round with towers,

And jubilant with music's merry din,
Beaten by resonant waves, and bright with flowers.

There but apart she stood that wrought the sin,
Like one that broods on one dark thought alone
Seen o'er a world of happy hopes o'erthrown.

On through the press of men the childless strode
To Bove, sole-throned, and lifting in his hand

For royal sceptre that Druidic rod

Which gave him o'er the Spirit-world command ;

Then, pointing to that traitress, false as fair,

At last he spake : " There stands the murderess ! there ! "

Straight on the King Druidic insight fell ;

And, mirrored in his mind as cloud in lake,
His daughter's crime, distinct and visible,

Before him stood. He turned to her and spake :
" Thou hear'st the charge: how makest thou reply?'
And she : " The deed is mine ! I wrought it ! I ! "

Then spake the King with countenance like night :
" Of all dread shapes that traverse earth or sea,

Or delve the soil, or urge through heaven their flight,
Say, which abhorrest thou most? " And answered she :

" The shape of Spirits Accursed that ride the storm : "

And he : " Be thine henceforth that Demon Form ! "

He spake, and lifted high his Druid Wand :

T'ward him perforce she drew : she bowed her head :

Down on that head he dropp'd it; and beyond
The glooming lake, with bat-like wings outspread,

O'er earth's black verge the shrieking Fury passed

Thenceforth to circle earth while earth shall last.

THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 197

As when, on autumn eve from hill or cape
That slants into gray wastes of western sea,

(The sun long set) some shepherd stares agape
At cloud that seems through endless space to flee

On raven pinions down the moaning wind,

Thus on that Fury stared they, well-nigh blind.

Then spake the King with hoary head that shook,
" I loved thy babes : now therefore let us go

Northward, and on their blameless beauty look,

Though changed, and hear their songs: for this I know

By Druid art, they sing the whole night long,

And heaven and earth are solaced by their song."

So forth ere dawn they rode with a great host ;

And loosed their steeds by Darvra's mirror clear
What time purpureal Evening, like a ghost,

Stepped from the blue glen on the glimmering mere :
And camped where stood 'mid weeds the ruddy herds
Far-gazing on those human- hearted birds.

And, evermore, from far those swans would come
To hear man's voice, and tell their tale to each,

Swift as the wind, and whiter than the foam ;
Yet never mounted they the bowery beach,

And still swerved backward from the beckoning hand,

Revering thus their stepmother's command.

And ever, when the sacred night descended,
While with those ripples on the sandy bars

The sighing woods and winds low murmurs blended,
Their music fell upon them from the stars,

And they gave utterance to that gift divine

In fairy song or anthem crystalline.

Who heard that strain no more his woes lamented:
The exiled chief forgat his place of pride :

The prince ill-crowned his ruthless deed repented :
The childless mother and the widowed bride

Amid their locks tear- wet and loosely straying

Felt once again remembered touches playing.

198 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [May,

The words of that high music no man knew ;

Yet all men felt there lived a meaning there
Immortal, marvellous, searching, strengthening, true,

The pledge of some great future, strange and fair,
When crime shall lose her might, and cleansing woe
Shall on the Just some starry crown bestow.

Lulled by that strain the prophet King let drop
In death his Druid-Staff by Darvra's side ;

And there, in later years, with happy hope

King Lir, his children's anthems listening, died :

And there those blissful sufferers bore their wrong

All day in weeping, and all night in song.

Not once 'tis whispered in that ancient story

They raised their voice God's justice to arraign :

All patient penance is expiatory :

Their doom was linked with hope of Erin's gain ;

And, like the Holy Elders famed of old,

Those babes on that high promise kept their hold.

And they saw great towers built, and saw them fall ;

And saw the little seedling tempest-sown ;
And generations under plume and pall

Borne forth to narrow graves ere long grass-grown ;
And all these things to them were as a dream,
Or shade that sleeps on some unresting stream.

More numerous daily flocked to that still shore
Peace-loving spirits : yea, the Gaelic clans

And tribes Dedannan, foemen now no more,

From the same fountains brimmed their flowing cans,

And washed their kirtles in the same pure rills,

And brought their corn-stacks to the self-same mills.

Thus, though elsewhere the sons of Erin strove,
From Aileach's coast, and Uladh's marble cliffs,

To where by banks of Lee, and Beara's cove,

The fishers spread their nets and launched their skiffs.

Round Darvra's shores remained inviolate peace ;

There too the flocks and fields had boon increase.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 199

In that long strife the Gael the victory won :

Tuatha's race, Dedannan, disappeared ;
Yet still the conqueror whispered, sire to son,

" Their progeny survives, half scorned, half feared,
The Fairy Host ; and mansions bright they hold
On moonlight hills, and under waters cold.

" To snare the Gael, perpetual spells they weave :
O'er the wet waste they bid the meteor glide :

They raise illusive cliffs at morn and eve

On wintry coasts : the sea- washed rock they hide :

And shipwrecked sailors eye them o'er the waves,

Dark shapes and pigmy, couchant in sea-caves.

" Some say that, 'mid the mountains' sunless walls,
They throng beneath their stony firmament,

An iron-handed race. At intervals

Through chasm stream-cloven, and through rocky rent,

The shepherd hears their multitudinous hum,

As of far hosts approaching, swift yet dumb.

" In those dread vaults, Magian and Alchemist,
Supreme in every craft of brain and hand,

The mountains' mineral veins they beat and twist,
And on red anvils forge them spear and brand

For some predestined battle. Yea, men say

The island shall be theirs that last great day ! "

END OF PART THE FIRST.

200 TROLLOPS' s LIFE OF CICERO. [May,

TROLLOPE'S LIFE OF CICERO.*

ST. AUGUSTINE, it is said, expressed three earthly wishes to
have beheld our Lord in the flesh,, heard St. Paul preach, and
seen ancient Rome in its glory Christum in came, Paulum in ore,
Romam in flore. Opinions differ as to the period in which the
Eternal City was in her greatest magnificence. If we look only
for earthly splendor, the reign of Vespasian, when the city was
thirteen miles in circuit and contained a population of 2,000,000,
seems the culmination of grandeur. The pearl and gold which
the conquered East was compelled to shower upon her gave to
the Rome of the later empire a barbaric glitter which was not
the least of the attractions that drew the savage Northern tribes
from their mountain fastnesses. Augustus boasted that he had
found Rome of brick and left it of marble ; and the city that rose
from the ashes of the Neronian conflagration eclipsed the glory
of the Rome of the first and the second Cassar. For the Chris-
tian Rome will always remain as the centre of his religion, a city
which, in a noble panegyric of St. John Chrysostom, will be dis-
tinguished above every other, even on the last day, as yielding
from its bosom the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul, who thence
will rise to meet the Judge of mankind. For the statesman, the
historian, and the scholar the Rome of Cicero's day, the century
immediately preceding the advent of Christ, has always had a
profound interest, and hardly a year passes without a contribu-
tion to the study of its characteristics.

This century presents every problem of statesmanship which
modern' civilization has had to face. First came the agrarian
agitation under the Gracchi, the defeat of the people, and the
triumph of the aristocracy under Sulla. Then followed the dic-
tatorship of Marius, which restored the middle classes to power.
Civil war ensued, which resulted in the dictatorship of Sulla.
The servile war, under Spartacus, threatened the government
with extinction and prepared the way for the empire. The con-
spiracy of Catiline was an ineffectual attempt to establish an aris-
tocracy, and Crassus and Lucullus labored to build up a plu-
tocracy. Into these varying conditions Marcus Tullius Cicero
was born (B.C. 104).

* The Life of Cicero. By A. Trollope. London. 1881.

i88i.] TROLLOPE'S LIFE OF CICERO. 201

One would naturally think that at this late day historians and
biographers would see the comparatively slight influence which
a single individual has ever had upon any age or condition of so-
ciety. It is easy to understand the limitations of the early histo-
rians, who invariably ascribe to one man the entire direction of
events. But so much has been effected in the department of his-
torical criticism by modern German and French scholars that
there is only one explanation for the petty historical views of
Froude and Trollope. We may smile at Plutarch's superstitious
observance of auguries and at Suetonius' grave chronicles of the
oracles of Delphi. But they are not a whit more unreasonable
than Froude's estimate of the political sagacity of Julius Caesar,
or Trollope's ascription of a genius for government to Cicero.
As neither of the English writers dreams for a moment that God
had anything to do with the fortunes of the Roman people, this
exaggeration of the abilities of one man is less philosophical than
the treatment of the pagan historians, who at least believed that
the immortal gods were interested in the affairs of men.

Without at all committing ourselves to the materialistic evo-
lutionism of such extremists as Draper, we can easily see that the
accumulation of vast wealth, conjoined with corrupt practices in
the administration of government, will awaken dreams of power
among a patrician order. As Beaconsfield in his latest novel urges,
the only path of distinction open to a wealthy man, particularly
an hereditary noble, is the path to political power. People born
in the purple care little for their money as a distinction ; the
pursuit of wealth engages the attention of those not born to it ;
and fame is only another name for power. It is also well known
that at the close of the Roman republic the ancient religion of
Rome had well-nigh disappeared from the higher ranks of so-
ciety. We may imagine how slight was the influence of Stoi-
cism, which was congenial to the genuine Roman nature, from
the circumstance that Cato bore the name as a distinctive appella-
on. The ancient religion of Rome was both purer and sterner

n that of Greece. Its supreme lesson was patriotism. When
,he religion began to wane its practical dictates of course ceased

have much weight. The city was gradually turned into a
ntheon, and the degradation of the national religion was con-
ummated when divine honors were decreed to the emperor, and
later, as in the case of Caligula, to his horse. Cicero in many of
his orations spoke of bribery and corruption as almost insepara-
ble from every office of government. The case of Verres was
only one of hundreds. He jested with the tribunes and consuls

tioi
the

202 TROLLOP s LIFE OF CICERO. [May,

in open forum regarding the amount of the bribes which they
received. Lentulus, when charged in the senate with wholesale
corruption, broke into a scornful laugh, and regretted that he
had bought two judges when only one was necessary for a ma-
jority. The sale of the purple in the later empire had been
made possible long before. The Praetorian Guard dates from the
civil war of Sulla and Marius. The frightful persecution of the
Christians, humanly speaking, resulted from the terror of free
speech and action, which the first triumvirate made it a principle
to suppress. The people were cajoled with shows ; but it is im-
possible to rule a nation with boH-mots, as the Napoleons found to
their cost. The "great men" that appeared were in reality only
chips upon the tide; but a false historical method, with its "he-
roes and hero-worship," has blurred for us the great outlines.
Expende Hannibalem.

If we except the purely oratorical triumphs of Cicero, he
wielded very little political influence in any part of his career,
although after the suppression of the Catilinian conspiracy he
was hailed pater patricz. The fact is that Catiline's conspiracy
could not have succeeded. It represented the worst elements in
society, and it would have been suppressed if Cicero had never
opened his lips. He only gave fervid expression to the feelings
of the people. The conspiracy was virtually crushed before the
first Catilinian oration was spoken. Cicero was triumphant only
on the sufferance of the patricians, who were secretly in favor of
Catiline, but who abandoned him when they discovered that he
was a fool and a bravo. He made the preposterous blunder of
attempting to conciliate some of the common people, a pro-
cedure which in a city half of whose population were slaves was
suicidal. We can imagine the feeling of the Romans towards
their slaves from the fact that if a master died at home under
suspicious circumstances every one of his slaves suffered death.
The Catilinian conspiracy has been unduly exaggerated, chiefly
through the vanity of Cicero, who, as Plutarch says, continually
harped upon this string. The greatest conspiracy against the
liberties of the Roman people was that of Sulla, which was the in-
ception of the empire. The far-sighted Marius, watching the man-
ners and conversation of the young Caesar, said, according to
Suetonius : " In that lad I see many Sullas."

When the military power which gave Rome to Cassar began
to overshadow the world, Cicero, the "profound statesman "who,
according to Trollope, is the archetype of Mr. Gladstone, could
not see what was plain to the roughest soldier in the camp. He

1 88 1.] TROLLOP E J S LIFE OF CICERO. 203

followed Pompey, a man of a mean and cowardly disposition, who
had deserted him in the Clodian troubles. He doubted long
whether he should join Caesar or cling to Pompey, until the
practical Julius, who very well knew that Cicero's influence was
worth a little flattery, quickly gained him over. The shrewd
Octavius, who outwitted Antony and Cleopatra, outwitted poor
Cicero also and sacrificed him without a sigh. If Mr. Gladstone
is a living fulfilment of ideal Ciceronian statesmanship, all we
say is, absit omen.

But while the career of Cicero as a statesman is of little prac-
tical instruction and, indeed, none but an historian woefully be-
hind the age of historical criticism could write such a biography
as Trollope's Cicero the orator, the philosopher, the scholar, the
man whose supreme passion was for intellectual eminence, has
always been cherished by the fine spirits of the world. Indeed,
a fair acquaintance with the works of Tully would convince any
thoughtful mind of his unfitness for the turbid politics of Rome
in his day. He was destined for the highest and noblest of strict-
ly human professions that of law in an age when the proverb,
Cedant arma togce, had become the expression of a permanent con-
dition. He would have found his place under the law-loving
Numa Pompilius or in the earlier days of the republic, to which
he looked back so fondly as to a return of the golden age. In
the exercise of the legal profession he is without a stain ; in this
regard far outshining Demosthenes, who was convicted of the
hameless acceptance of bribes. If he lacked physical courage
ue doubtless to his extremely nervous temperament he pos-
ssed moral courage in a high degree. His arraignments of
erres and Catiline display consummate intrepidity. His Philip-
ics against Marc Antony cost him his life. He undertook the
ost hopeless cases, and frequently braved the fury of the forum,
e administered his various offices with an integrity worthy of
e author of the De Officiis. In an exceedingly corrupt state of
ciety he was distinguished for his natural morality, his gen-
osity, and his many urbane qualities, and Augustus gave him
e praise most desired by the ancient Roman : " He was a man
f great eloquence and a sincere lover of his country."

The influence which the writings of Cicero exercised upon
hristian scholarship during the middle ages, in the department
f law and philosophy, was paralleled only by the sway of Virgil
ver mediaeval Latin poetry. The orator and the poet were the
favorite pagan authors of the ages of faith. The reason upon the
surface, of course, is that Tully and Virgil are nobly chaste. They,

204 TROLLOP E'S LIFE OF CICERO. [May,

moreover, are the greatest and most eloquent expositors of that
peculiarly majestic type of Roman character whose broad im-
press rests upon the ancient civilization and is perceptible even
in its ruin. The intrinsic majesty, power, and harmony of the
Latin language receive their grandest utterance in the periods of
Cicero and the verse of Virgil. Like their own city, the lan-
guage of the Romans possesses an immortality not only through
its adoption by the church, but through the languages of Spain
and Italy, and, at least etymologically, of France. The writings
of the ancient Fathers of the church abound in quotations from
Cicero. The Greek language, although always studied, is not,
and never has been, the medium of learned communication, and it
was to Cicero that the middle ages chiefly referred for knowledge
of the schools of the ancient Greek philosophy. Besides, many
Greek authors were not known to Western Europe earlier than
the seventh or the eighth century. Hallam, whose Literature has
become antiquated, is very desirous of minimizing the Latin and
the Greek knowledge of the middle ages ; but every day turns
out fresh evidence of the vast intellectual activity of times which
nave been falsely stigmatized as Dark, with a particularly large
capital D. When Prescott was gathering materials for his Con-
quest of Mexico he was informed by Irving that he could get all
he wanted in the Spanish monasteries. " And, indeed," added
the genial Irving, " I don't know what treasures of learning on
every subject you cant find in the monasteries." The monks
appear to have known everything and to have written about
everything. Yet Spain, we all know from the veracious and
learned Peter Parley, groaned in the very Darkest gloom of the
Dark ages. The middle ages were made fully acquainted with
the speculations of Plato by the writings of Cicero. Indeed, the
great merit of Cicero, with what we might be inclined to think
his oratorical diffuseness, is his extremely lucid exposition of the
philosophy of the Porch and the Academe. The reader of his
De Natura Deorum will find a very accurate resume of the great
schools of Grecian philosophy, and the fuller study of the Hel-
lenic philosophical writings will only awaken admiration for the
powers of condensation and method which the Roman orator
possessed. The charm which Tully had for the Fathers of the
church was the evidence of a soul "naturally Christian." Cicero
clearly rejects the absurdities of mythology (De Divinatione]
while holding firmly to the belief in one supreme God. He re-
futes the Epicurean theory (which is Tyndall's and Spencer's
modern agnosticism), that the Deity is not concerned about our

1 88 1.] TROLLOP E'S LIFE OF CICERO. 205

doings, and that our knowledge of him is only vague conjecture.
He dwells upon the moral argument for the being of God drawn
from the universal consensus of the human family ; and the ethics
of the De Officiis are cited by Grotius and other intuitive moral-
ists as a striking evidence of the existence of a natural law written
on the human heart, in the sense of St. Paul.

If it were worth while to reply to a weather-beaten objection,
that the Latinity of the middle ages is a horrible jargon known
as monkish Latin, we might quote the testimony of a dozen
scholars like Bouterwek; but we are instructed by the joke of
Artemus Ward, who escaped a bore by pleading ignorance of
every famous name, until his exasperated interrogator at length
asked him if he had ever heard of Adam. " Adam ? " pondered
the immortal showman " Adam ? What was his other name ? "
There is not a single generation since Cicero that has not pro-
duced fine Latin writers, and the scholastic philosophers and
theologians were quite as competent to compose a Latin oration
after the Ciceronian model as they were to frame the short,
technical syllogism. It would be curious to learn, from those
who object with such assthetical agony to the " jargon of scho-
lasticism," wherein this mode of speech differs so widely from the
Latin of Cicero. They would be very much surprised to learn
that a comparison between a philosophical dialogue of Tully and
a chapter from the Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas would not re-
veal antipodal differences. The fact is that this criticism of
scholastic Latinity generally proceeds from those who find great
difficulty in construing the sentences in an elementary grammar.
No great Latin scholar, no matter what his philosophical or
theological convictions may be, ridicules the Latinity of the scho-
lastics. He recognizes it as peculiarly adapted to the expres-
sion of the doctrinal and philosophical thought of the Catholic
Church. But it is a waste of powder to quote Poggio and Eras-
mus, the latter of whom waged war against the excessive classi-
cism or Ciceronianism of his age. This complaint about the
scholastic Latinity is of a piece with the objection to the use of a
dead language in the service of the church. The Latin tongue
at this day is more widely known throughout Christendom than
any living tongue. Not only does it penetrate all modern civil-
ized speech, but it is the language of the learned professions,
whilst it forms the basis and essential structure of the vernacular
tongues of the Catholic nations of Southern Europe. Dead lan-
guage, forsooth !

To Cicero we may say that we owe the form of the oration.

206 TROLLOPE'S LIFE OF CICERO. [May,

His great fame as a public speaker contributed to fix attention
upon his orations, and they were for ages the models of sacred
and forensic discourse. Although the simplicity of the Gospel is
aimed at in the homilies of the Christian Fathers, we must remem-
ber that many of them were trained in the schools of ancient
rhetoric. Even in their short sermons we quickly discern the
skeleton of the old oration the exordium, paries, and feroratio.
Most of the sacred oratory of the ancient church was extempora-
neous, and what modern editors class as homilies were frequently
only notes containing texts of Scripture with a suggestive line.
The austere simplicity of the ancient church was somewhat
averse from oratorical displays, though we find numerous speci-
mens of sacred oratory adorned with all the flowers of rhetoric
and constructed on the rigid principles of Quintilian. One thing
is certain : the Christian Fathers carried out Cicero's injunction
(De Oratore] that an orator should be versed in universal know-
ledge. The wealth of illustration in patristic homiletics is saved
from pedantry by the genuine and simple unction which charac-
terizes them. No doubt the changed conditions of modern life
make the old formal oration seem out of place, but its total des-
uetude should be regretted, especially when we remember how
perfect a medium it was of the highest oratory in the hands
of (Bossuet and Bourdaloue. The modern pulpit eloquence of
France was somewhat modified by the example of Lacordaire,
who followed the literary tendency of his day in the direction of
Romanticism. Still, we think that the sacred orator need have
no fear of following the severest classical form in his sermons,
even to the statement of the division of the points of his dis-
course. Cicero has some very admirable remarks on the absolute
necessity of the repetition of important statements in a discourse
to be delivered before the people, who, he shreAvdly remarks,
must not be credited with much knowledge or with ready per-
ceptions. It is characteristic of severe classicism in oratory that
it quickly becomes extremely acceptable to audiences that, one
would suppose, could be held only by a vulgar sensationalism.
It is noticed that Protestants grow tired of a style of discourse
which belongs properly to the stage. The classic speaker may
rest assured that he will create the taste by which his oratory is
enjoyed.

As we have intimated, Mr. Trollope's Cicero is of little use to
the scholar, and of no value whatever as a contribution to his-
torical knowledge. Tully's place in statesmanship has been un-
settled by Mommsen, but his place in the temple of learning is

1 88 1.] TROLLOP s LIFE OF CICERO. 207

secure. His wit, scholarship, eloquence, and natural piety are
elements that are but little modified by the judgments of modern
publicists. Even his vanity is but a form of that love of glory
pronounced by Milton " the last infirmity of noble minds," and
the copious vocabulary of his language possessed no word for the
Christian idea of humility. Friendship will always return to the
De Amicitia, and old age finds perennial comfort in the De Senec-
tute. So long as mankind will cherish and reverence learning de-
voted to its only true end (the defence of the dignity of virtue
and the overthrow of vice) and for its secondary purpose (the de-
light of lonely hours and a resource from the tedium and disap-
pointments of life), the volumes of Cicero will endure. His im-
mortality has received its surest pledge from the use of his na-
tive tongue by a religion which the ancient Christians, in the
testimony of Justin Martyr, believed that he would have been
among the first of the Romans to embrace ; and though he lived
too long before the coming of Christ to share with Virgil the
legendary history which links the Mantuan bard with the cradle
of the Messias, he divides with Seneca the admiration of ancient
Christendom. One of the popes is said to have cherished so high
an admiration for the humanity and natural nobility of the Em-
peror Trajan that he often prayed for the repose of his soul, and
it was revealed to him that the emperor was saved. Dante re-
cords a tradition of the middle ages in placing Cicero in the
luminoso castello di color che sanno :

" E vidi '1 buono accoglitor del quale,
Dioscoride dico, e vidi Orfeo,
Tullio, e Livio, e Seneca morale." *

*//:, iv.

208 MAY-TIME ON THE G ALTERS. [May,

MAY-TIME ON THE GALTEES.

THE May weather was as tender and sweet as May weather
could be in the green heart of Munster. No rough blast, no
stealthy bite of frost, no weariful rain came to chill and sadden
the pleasant country ; it was all soft warmth and rosy peace.
Down in the valley of the Suir, rich with blossoming orchards
and growing grain, the people ate their mean fare of stirabout
unmurmuringly, for, said they remembering all the while that
they should taste neither wheat nor fruit, nor any of the abun-
dance which their toil and sweat were raising up around them
" If the world frowns on us the sun shines on us." And right
royally did the dear old sun keep on with his comforting. He
penetrated through the house-leek and moss of the straw-thatch-
ed cottages, and warmed even the bones of the bed-ridden old
folks, fighting with such noble will against their deadly aches
and pains, that the poor old relieved things were able to crawl
out to the front doors, and, sitting there, look up smiling and say :
" Wisha, may God be praised for the sun ! "

In the wayside schools, where the small stores of fuel were
long since exhausted, and where, no matter how pinched and blue
the faces and hands and little bare feet of the children were, no
rotting branch from the woods around might be brought, the
radiant light poured in, warming the damp atmosphere, and dry-
ing the moist clay floor, and bringing such a summery feeling
that in the drowsy noon-hour the little ones fancied they could
almost hear the bees among the yellow clover and smell the
June furze. It was such a happiness to be among " the green
things growing " when school was over, to play where lilac, and
hawthorn, and laurel shed their fragrant rain upon the pleasant
pathways, that they forget their hunger, and the old craving for
the dinner and supper of stirabout or turnips and salt let go its
gripe. Sometimes a homesick Irish exile here will say : " Ah ! I
could live on the air in Ireland."

You would say, then, it was a kind sun ; and so, indeed, it was
to the valley people. But up on the hills it was different. Up
where the precipitous rocks make desolate landmarks along the
base of the Galtees, where the peat-moss and heather struggled
only too successfully against the desperate efforts of the " moun-
tainy " men to wring a life-keeping return from the unfriendly

1 88 1.] MAY-TIME ON THE GAL TEES. 209

moors, where snipe and plover were the only living things that
prospered, the sun brought woe and desolation. The rotten,
shed-like cabins of the mountain people and their surroundings
reeked under the hot rays, sickening first the starving children,
and then laying their elders low. There is no fever more dire
than that caused by hunger and foul air; and when cold and
damp have been previously at work on the victims Death reaps a
rare harvest. It was the only harvest reaped on the mountain
that year, and the crops were garnered in Glenfarna churchyard
in the midst of wailings and agony that some can never forget.
The Suir, that waters truly a land " flowing with milk and honey,"
crooned peacefully under the churchyard trees through all the
poor human anguish it heard ; to many of the mourners, seeing
and hearing it dimly through a wild aching of heart and brain,
it seemed the very voice of remorseless Death.

The afflicted people lived originally on the lower slopes in the
midst of their thriving farms. It was a fruitful place, and the
old landlord was so remarkably easy to them that they had actu-
ally enough to eat of potatoes and milk when all his claims were
paid ! That was noble abundance for them, but it was too good
to last. When the young owner " came of age " he had an idea
that a " deer forest " would be an aristocratic addition to his de-
mesne. It would remind visitors, you know, in some measure of
what they had read of feudal surroundings, and, besides, afford
them a means of noble sport in time. So the " human weeds "
were torn ruthlessly from their fertile fields, and the poor old
homes demolished by the crowbar brigade. Belts of oak, and fir,
and beech grew there instead of oats, and wheat, and flax ; and
foreign deer took the place of the agonized people, and these,
while the trees grew and flourished, gave their unremitting sweat
and toil to making the bogs and marshes higher up capable of
producing lingering starvation for themselves and fat luxury
for the landlord. When oats of a salable quality were produced
there, and potatoes that were not too black and watery to be
used for food by the pigs (they were never too unwholesome to
be good enough for the people, remark) ; and when the poor crea-
tures were growing, with the fatal facility with which the Irish
heart clings to what the associations of years are around, to love
their little homes, they were again notified that a removal to the
higher " raes " or emigration were the only alternatives their
owner would allow them. They still speak in the county of the
heart-breaking scenes that followed this notice. Some poor,
vague hope that he would relent kept them from at once obey-

VOL. xxxin 14

2io MAY-TIME ON THE GALTEES. [May,

ing their all-powerful tyrant. But while the men of the crowbar
and pickaxe were still ready to do his inhuman will they ought
to have known that there was to be no mercy for them in the
cold heart of this transplanted Englishman. In a wild November
storm, when the grim mountains looked their cruellest, they were
again driven forth with their few miserable belongings, and their
only shelter demolished, in the midst of gibes and jeers, before
their eyes. Travellers by the mail-car on the road below, hear-
ing through the hoarse noise of mountain torrent and wind the
wild crying, and guessing its cause, felt the desolation of the
evening enter into their hearts, and they remembered it long.

So the forest grew yet larger, and choice spots of the re-
claimed land, that the hunted tenants had given their very life-
blood to, were rented to imported Scotch and Yorkshire men.
Sheilings formed of fragments of primeval rock and stunted
heather rose in the rocky wilderness above a wilderness untrod-
den until then, except by the hardy Knock goats and an occa-
sional tourist seeking in the inhospitable mountain loneliness a
relief from the crowding life and abundance of the city.

When some years had passed, and by the indomitable indus-
try of the people even this place of immemorial sterility and for-
lornness had its savageness subdued ; when they thought (being
charged with a rental that barely left a margin for the buying of
the meal for their stirabout) that they might let their hearts rest
at last, there came another token, and it was only by these to-
kens and the dread rent-notices that they knew of the continued
existence of the owner. It was again his wish that they should
shift higher up, and there was some plain speaking as to what
those rebelliously inclined might expect. But the goaded
wretches, maddened by this unceasing persecution, met the men
who came to enforce the order with such determined and de-
structive opposition that the latter were obliged to take flight,
only, however, to return reinforced by bodies of police and sol-
diery from the lowlands. The carnage that resulted will leave a
stain- on that county for ever, because of the helplessness and
blind agony on one side and the hireling, pitiless brutality on the
other.

And it was on these highest heights, in the regions of mist,
and damp, and hunger, and barrenness, that the unwonted sun
shone. Among those who struggled longest against the fell dis-
ease were the Corbetts, of Peak-na-greina, a mountain-holding
high up near the eagles and the clouds. To us children, tired of
the lush bloom of the valley, it used to be a dear delight to go

1 88 1.] MAY-TIME ON THE GALTEES. 211

for a bracing, breezy day to the Peak and receive a warm Cead-
mille-failthe from the house-mother. I see it now with an aching
heart, for I am far away and the Corbetts are dead and gone, like
my youth and the magic summers the hospitable sheiling, heather-
roofed and snug, with its plot of green and its bed of mignonette
in front, and its cabbage-garden at the side ; the wind-twisted thorn-
tree at the stile near the gate, and the sheer background of black
mountain. The mignonette, and cabbage, and clover were nour-
ished from soil brought up by the boys from the glens beneath ;
the marish on which they lived, struggling as it ever was to get
back to its original wildness, would feed nothing so civilized.
The cabin was a miracle of spaciousness to the neighbors, it hav-
ing three rooms, all as neat, too, as the house-mother's hands
and they were strong and tireless could make them. I re-
member now the pleasant feeling, when a storm had detained
us for a night there, of waking in the early morning and listening
to the cheerful bustle in the kitchen outside, and lying lazily
watching from the bed, comfortable as it was w r ith all " the relics
of ould daicency " possessed by the house-mother, the purple
shadows up the Knock. A run out to the stream and a hearty
splashing in the peaty flood, followed by a vigorous scrubbing
with the great twilled towels, gave us a wonderful appetite, and
no breakfasts have since tasted like the mountain potatoes and
salt that were set before us on those old mornings.

Well, one day at noon John, the eldest, came in from the
" rae " looking very yellow and sick and complaining of a burn-
ing headache. It was at once clear that he had taken the disease,
and, while the mother's heart quaked within her, she applied
such remedies as were used until the arrival of the doctor, for
whom she had despatched Maurice, the second boy. It was
midnight when the messenger and physician made their appear-
ance, and when the latter had done everything in his power for
the patient and returned home, Maurice lay down on the settle-
bed in the kitchen. When the mother went to rouse him he
was delirious. The poor fellow had walked and run close on
twoscore miles, following up the hard-worked doctor, in his
anxiety to get him to his brother's bedside, and now the exhaus-
tion following the fatigue and excitement had brought on the
sickness. Before eleven on the following night the whole fa-
mily, with the exception of Tommy, the younger, a boy of five
years old, and the mother, were in the fever.

Down in the town we had spent a gloomy day. The dead-
bell had never ceased its tolling, and funeral processions were

212 MAY-TIME ON THE GALTEES. [May,

continually moving through the main street even up to the un-
usual hour of seven o'clock. Old Lynn Kearney, the sexton, had
then come down from the belfry and drawn and locked the clang-
ing churchyard gates, and with sighs of relief we noted that the
bell was silent. But it was^a strange silence ; it choked and op-
pressed us in the lurid evening as if we were the dead people
and felt the clay of our gloomy bed pressing on us. We knew
nothing of the Corbetts' trouble, or my mother would have faced
a thousand deaths to go to the aid of our Peggy. She sat up
rather late that evening, hemming sheets and pillow-covers for
the people on the Knock, the while some broth for the convales-
cents' sustenance was cooking. We heard her light foot on the
stairs about midnight, and when she had come in and kissed us r
and talked with us a little, she left behind a more wholesome
state of feeling. I was dozing off into sleep when a sound like
sobbing, seemingly from the sidewalk below, thoroughly awakened
me. Instantly I thought of banshees mourning for the dying, and,
with my heart in my mouth, listened breathlessly till the sound
was repeated. It was unmistakably the crying of a human child,
and when the bell was feebly pulled I knew it was some one in
distress. " O mother ! " I cried, rushing into her room, " some-
body is crying at the door down-stairs. May be it's some one
else that's dying on the Knock." The darling mother ! I see no
one like her now, so strong and tender of heart, so wholesome
and sweet of body, so utterly and altogether noble and motherly.
Throwing a shawl over her night-gown, she hurried down the
stairs and unlocked the street-door. A little heap was lying
there, which when she gently lifted it up, " O Polly ! Polly !" she
called to me standing at the stair-head, " bring me a glass of
water. Here is little Tom Corbett fainted. I'm afraid they're
sick at the Peak." The water revived him, and when he realized
where he was he broke out of my mother's arms, and, pulling her
by the shawl, moaned : " Maurice is sick, and mammy and all ; an'
me mammy won't talk ; an' she's sick, an' she's so sick ! O me
mammy, me mammy ! " He pushed the food I brought away
from him, and would not be comforted. " Tommy," said my mo-
ther, " I'll go to Peak-na-greina, and do you stay here like a good
boy until somebody comes to town in the morning that can give
you a lift home." But the child would not listen to this ; he
would go home, and cried so frantically that my mother had not
the heart to leave him when she came down dressed for her jour-
ney. At that hour of the night there was no getting a convey-
ance without a delay that might lose vital time ; so, taking a

1 88 1.] MAY-TIME ON THE GALTEES. 213

basket of needful things and her rosary-beads, she started out on
her wild walk.

It was a long time after for the events that followed were too
painful to have the time willingly recalled and dwelt on that she
described her toilsome journey for us. Before they had quite
left the town my mother took the grieving child on her disen-
gaged arm, and when, with his head buried on her warm shoulder,
his sobs gradually ceased and he slept, she said she felt as if she
could face a desert in addition to the eight rocky miles before
her so comforting was the consciousness to her of giving com-
fort. Where the rocks commenced, above the first glen, the sound
of an approaching vehicle dispelled for the time the lonesome
fears and forebodings that the hour, and place, and circumstances
were awaking even in her strong heart. A break in the trees and
a flood of light from the cleared moon, when the car drew near,
showed her it was the carrier's wagon on its return journey to
the town. " Wisha, Mrs. Marnane, ma'am, good-morning," called
out the blithe voice of the driver, ceasing his whistling of the
" Banks of Banna." " An' if 1 may make so bould, who's in throuble
this morning?" " I'm afraid they're sick at the Peak, Garret,"
said my mother. " This is little Tom Corbett ; and although he
hasn't been able to tell me clearly what is wrong at home, I'm
afraid some of them are down with the fever. He must have
run the whole distance to the town to-night, and fright and fa-
tigue have almost killed him." " Wisha ma greeneen-laurtf ! the
avigoshoreen o' the world ! But sure you can't carry him all the
ways, Mrs. Marnane achorra, an' that big basket too ! Let me
turn back an' give ye a lift as far as the Peak." It was a tempta-
tion, but mother, remembering how much the carrier's packages
would be needed at an early hour (for it was he brought the

igs, and fresh meat, and necessaries for the sick), would not ac-
cept his kindly offer. "No, Garret," she said, "it is not so far
now, and I am not at all tired." It was hard to convince the car-
ier, but at length he saw that any further insistance would only
grieve and delay my mother, so he drove unwillingly away.
" Well, may the Lord give you a soft rest in heaven, Mrs. Mar-
nane, for you won't take it in this world," he said. " You're
the di'mond of a woman, an' that's what you are ! "

At the solitary police barrack, whitewashed and prim, with
its slope of cabbage and potato ground, and trim hedge of hardy
privet in front, a warm glow of firelight came through the open
door as the watchful sergeant came out and down the path to
find what prowler (it was in Fenian times) had set the barrack

MAY-TIME ON THE GALTEES. [May,

dogs barking. " Well, Mrs. Marnane," said he, his apprehensions
at once changing into cordiality, " isn't it early you're out ! Is
there some other family taken bad ? " My mother told him
about little Tom and her fears for the Corbetts. " Sure, you can
leave him here, ma'am, till daybreak, an' then some of us will take
him home," he said ; " he's too heavy for you to be bringing him
any further. You're tired to death's door from him an' that
basket." But the boy was awake now, and held on so wildly to
her and cried so pitifully that leaving him behind was out of the
question ; and so, thanking the honest policeman, mother pro-
ceeded on her way.

An early milkwoman whom they met coming out of her cabin
about a mile below the Peak told her that at least four of the Cor-
betts were " down," and she insisted on leaving her pail in the
house and relieving my mother of her burdens for the remaining
distance. " I daarn't go beyant the stile, Mrs. Marnane dear,"
she said, when they had come to the twisted thorn ; " you know,
ma'am, I have a family o' my own, an' I have to bring milk to
the townspeople, an' 'twould be sinful for me if I'd go anear the
faver, although God he knows how willing I'd be. Good-morn-
ing to you, you darling woman, an' may the Lord love an' pros-
per you for ever ! "

The sight that greeted my mother's eyes when she opened the
Corbetts' door was one that brought the first gray hairs to her
head, that was soon white enough. Three of the boys lay dead,,
with all the marks of utter exhaustion the fierce fever was apt to
leave, and two were lying convulsed in the last agonies. At the
fireless hearth the mother sat with her hands to her face, and
Tommy, rushing up to her, fondled her and tried to get into her
lap, but met with no response. " O Peggy ! " my mother said,
her heart bleeding, and scalding tears, that seemed to come from
her very brain, blinding her, " my poor, poor Peggy ! " She
threw her arms around the bereaved one's neck, but a chill struck
her as she did so. The deathly cold cheek and motionless form
terrified her, and, taking the cold hands from the face they cover-
ed, she saw that the poor house-mother had no further need of
earthly sympathy.

It was one of the things that used to keep us awake nights
long after, one of the things that threw the weight of old age on
our mother the thought of the five dead boys and their mother
lying side by side, and the crying child that could not be com-
forted or taken away from them. Among the mournful scenes
of that most melancholy time the funeral with the six coffins was

1 88 1.] REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. 215

the most heart-breaking, and the pain of it all was renewed when,
a week later, a smaller coffin was laid upon the mother's in the
churchyard.

And yet they tell the people of a country where such scenes
have occurred and are yearly repeated ; where sorrow and death
are for ever reaping monstrous harvests ; where existence, to the
majority, is a lingering starvation, and suffering only bearable be-
cause of the buoyant nature of the victims ; where the life or
death of a population can hang on the mere whim of a brute in
human shape they tell these people to \>s patient !

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

MADE TO A DEVOUT SERVANT OF OUR LORD, CALLED MOTHER

JULIANA,

An anchorete of Norwich, who lived in the days of King Edward III.

THE THIRD CHAPTER.

AND when I thirtie yeares and halfe was old
A grievous sicknes did my bodie hold,

Which God sent in my waie,
In which I laie for three long daies and nights,
And on the fourth night took the Holie Rites,

Nor thought to live till daie.
Then, after two more daies and nights the same,
Until the darkness of the third night came

I laie in agonie,

And weened ofttimes to have passed awaie
And died outright, as weened also they

Who waited near to me.
Though nothing was that liked me to live,
Ne longing aught that this poor world could give,

Yet loathed I much to die.
In mercie of my God I placed my trust,
Ne feared anie paines that might me thrust,

And sore my patience try.
Yet would have lived a longer time to love
And serve God better, and in living prove

216 REVELATION'S OF DIVINE LOVE. [May,

More worthie of his grace :
That, knowing more and loving more in life,
Be fitter made, when freed from deadlie strife,

To stand before his face.
So litle seemed my life, so poor a sort,
And when compared with endles blisse so short,

I thought with sore amaze :
" Good Lord ! and maie I not some longer live,
And by my living to thy worshippe give

More worthie love and praise ? "
Unto my reason then it did appear,
And by the paines I felt, that death was near ;

To which with all myne heart
1 fullie did assent. With all my will
The will of God alone I would fulfill,

Nor e'er from that depart.
Till daie I thus endured ; and by that hour
My bodie lost all feeling and all power

Down from the midst to feet.
Then was I holpen to be sett upright,
That whilst my life should last I could unite,

With freedome more complete,
My will to God's own will, and think on him ;
And, as my sight of earth was growing dim,

Look toward the heavenlie goal.
My ending drawing nigh, my Curate came
To comfort me in Holie Church's name,

And blesse my passing soule.
He sett the Crosse before my face, and said :
" Look thereupon, and be thou comforted ;

Our Saviour's image 'tis."
Me thought I was full well ; my eien * raised
To Heaven, whereunto I upright gazed

Ne would the look dismiss.
Yet, if I might, I did assent to fix
My eien straight before the Crucifix

When lo ! forthwith my sight
Began to faint and faile, and in the room
It waxed as dark and dim and full of gloom

As if it had been night,
Save in the image of the Crosse alone,
Wherein a common light most sweetlie shone,

* Eien eyes.

1 8 8 1 .] RE VELA TIONS OF Dl VINE LOVE. 2 1 /

But how I could not tell ;

The Crosse alone was clear, and pure and bright,
All else was uglie and of fearefull sight

As filled with fiendes from hell.
Then did my bodie in its over-parte
Begin to die, and slower beat my heart

As soon 'twould beat its last.
Unnethes * had I anie feeling more :
My breath grew short, and life seemed almost o'er ;

Then went f I to have passed
When soudeinlie all paines did quick depart,
Whiles all my bodie in its over-parte

Made whole I weened to find.
I marvailed greatlie at this soudaine change,
And I bethought it was a working strange

Of God, and not of kind.J
Yet to have lived I trusted never more,
And did the feeling of this ease deplore,

Ne was it ease to me.

Me thought if God had given me the choice
To have been freed of life I would rejoice

And verie thankfull be.

Then soudeinlie came to my mind the thought
That I should ask the seconde wounde I sought

Of our Lord's gift and grace-
That in my bodie I might feel the pain
Of Jesu's Passion, and in sight again

His bitter sufferings trace.
For this, as I had praied, was in my mind,
That for his paines I might compassion find,

And likewise feel them too ;
Yet no sight bodilie I did desire,
Ne shewing of no manner did require,

But sweet compassion true
Such as might have a kind and loving soule,
With our Lord Jesu, and with him condole,

All to his death embrace,
To suffer living in my deadlie flesh,
The which my longing spirit would refresh

As God would give me grace

* Unnethes scarcely. t Went thought. % Kind nature, humanity.

2i8 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. [May,

JOSEPH DE MAISTRE.

THE writings of Count Joseph de Maistre, except in France,
have never wielded much direct authority over the general pub-
lic, but through the medium of Catholic writers who study them
they have been made partly familiar. Many of Maistre's politi-
cal paradoxes continue still to be devoutly repeated by admirers,
who do so, perhaps, without that careful examination of the body
from which they are taken so necessary to discern their force.

Born at Chambery in 1754, of a noble family originally French,
but settled in Savoy for a hundred years and the eldest of ten
children, Maistre seemed destined to pass his life in the calm,
patrician ease of Italian society, and to inherit the dignified offices
of his father. He was strictly educated at the University of
Turin, and at home was surrounded by a pious family. Thirty
peaceful years passed on, until in 1792 the French Revolution
broke into Savoy and found him a senator, a married man, and
the father of two children. Savoy being turned into a R6pub-
lique des Allobroges, and the property of the flying nobility con-
fiscated, Maistre found himself deprived of resources, an exile,
without a sovereign, and his family scattered from his hearth.
He first took refuge at Lausanne, where his first important work,
Considerations sur la France, appeared (1796), and, after various
difficulties and after holding several offices, he was finally (1800)
nominated envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to
the court of St. Petersburg. This high-sounding title covered an
office of small pay and less credit, on account of the embarrass-
ments of his Sardinian majesty. Here, separated from his family,
almost in poverty, without society congenial to his tastes, Maistre
spent fourteen years of his life pleading the rights of a despoiled
sovereign. During this period most of his works were written,
a few being but finished when he left Russia. Of these it will be
necessary to make only occasional mention in order to define and
illustrate, and here we need but to analyze the Considerations sur
la France, which contained the germs of the political system
alterwards developed more elaborately.

The style of Maistre was terse and vigorous. His books are
full of startling denunciations and dogmatical assertions. Aside
from the theories he expounded, it is difficult to prevent one's self
from becoming either his friend or his opponent. When some

1 88 1.] JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 219

friend would advise him to moderate a particularly bitter expres-
sion or savage word, he was accustomed to reply : " Non, non,
laissons leur cet os a ronger" * Plenty of " bones to pick " could be
gathered from his volumes, and his enemies have been as busy
in this way as his friends in repeating their pet sayings.

The system unfolded in the Considerations is indicated by the
very first sentence : " Nous sommes tons attaches au trone de V Eire
Supreme par une chaine souple qui nous retient sans nous asservir" f
Within the limits of this supple chain, freely enslaved (librement
esclave\ man works out voluntarily but necessarily the decrees
of a supreme Will. During a revolution the chain is shortened
abruptly (se raccourcit brusquemenf], and consequently the action
of man is so abridged that the destined revolution can neither be
prevented nor successfully opposed. Such almost in his own
words was the theory laid down by him before he proceeded to
consider the causes, effects, and prospective results of the French
Revolution. It is curious to note the fact here that a number of
historians have been accused of the same fatalism especially his-
torians of revolutionary periods. Thiers, for instance the oppo-
site of Maistre in every respect is considered by many to have
held the same theory of events. A strong and picturesque his-
torian, rapidly narrating the events of so chaotic a period as
that written of by Thiers, will naturally produce this result ;
though not intending it, one event will seem to grow out of
another without an exercise of the will on the part of the actors
in them. But this is obviously a very different thing from stat-
ing the theory in precise words, as Maistre did. That men's bad
:ions produce certain disastrous consequences is a position which
is never been questioned ; but to represent these bad actions as
>rought about by foregone events suits the latitude of Mecca
ither than that of Rome. All the catastrophes, all the crimes of
listory, according to him, are inevitable ; " there have been nations
lat have been literally condemned to death." The Terrorists of
'ranee were mere tools in the hands of an avenging God ; and
r hen they ceased to work out the general plan, and were no lon-
ger mechanical instruments of the grand expiation, they were
)ken and replaced. Every step of the Revolution was thus a
>art of the divine plan, against which the efforts of the royalists
r ere vain. The revolutionary leaders suffered no check in their
:hemes, Bonaparte encountered no obstacle to his throne, and

* No, no ; let us leave them that bone to pick.

t We are all attached to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which holds us

lout enslaving us.

220 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. [May,

the armies of both met no defeat, "for the same reason that Vau-
cansoris mechanical flute-player made no false notes." *

This theory is conjured up to explain the phenomenon of the
French Revolution from Maistre's standpoint. The French na-
tion he conceived to consist only of the king and the aristocracy,
who had, previous to their suppression, invited the fate that
overtook them by allowing the spread of pernicious philosophi-
cal doctrines. This, in his eyes, formed their chiefest crime.
For the expiation of this offence the whole nation, guilty and in-
nocent alike though he thinks the innocent were much less in
number than usually supposed suffered, the blood of the inno-
cent atoning thus for the guilty. The principle of his theory
was that members of the same order were bound together by a
mutual and joint responsibility, the sins of the guilty being visit-
ed upon the innocent, and the blood of the innocent atoning for
the sins of the guilty. This idea is more fully exposed in a fol-
lowing work, and so horribly and minutely that the heart reels
under the infliction. He exclaims in one place : " The blood of
Lucretia overthrew Tarquin, the blood of Virginia expelled the
Decemviri. When two parties come into collision during a revo-
lution, we may safely predict that the side on which the most
precious victims fall will ultimately triumph, however contrary
appearances may be." f After the assassination of the Duke de
Berry, in 1820, he writes to M. de Bonald: " We have seen the
end of the expiation ; even the regent and Louis XV. have paid
their debt, and the house of Bourbon has received absolution." J

The conclusion he would have us reach on this subject in par-
ticular, and in analogous cases in general, is that after the expia-
tion is effected the old order of things will be restored. The
extreme partisan of extreme absolutism, holding all written char-
ters in abhorrence, Maistre looked forward to an end exactly like
the beginning. Therefore, in his eyes, the French Revolution was
merely a bloody interlude of chastisement, after which the old
monarch and the old aristocracy would come back. King and
aristocracy having received their rights and sanction from God
himself, any other form of government was unnatural, was only
an aberration from nature that helped to a more wholesome
restoration. He reached this conclusion by overlooking the
primal points in the case. Of course the French Revolution can-

* Considerations sur la France,
t Eclaircissement sur les Sacrifices, chap. iii.

\ Lett res et Opuscules inidits du Comte Joseph de Maistre, prtcides tfune notice biogra-
phiquepar sonfils le Comte Rodolphe de Maistre. Paris. 1851.

1 88 1.] Jo SEP PI DE MAISTRE. 221

not be justified in its excesses, but no man can be blind to the
fact that these were not entirely owing to pernicious philosophi-
cal doctrines ; for such doctrines would never have taken hold
of the people had not very real misery driven them into the arms
of revolution. The France of 1789 was the curious product of
seven hundred years. Her social and political system was a
modification of feudalism ; that modification had been going on
during the period mentioned gradually but surely; Europe
France might be substituted here in the eleventh century pre-
sents the spectacle of the domination of a few families, who di-
vided the land and ruled the inhabitants. The instrument of
government was force ; the source of power was landed pro-
perty. The modifying influences, so ably summed up by Toc-
queville, may be condensed into these : the church, the law, wars
which ruin kings and decimate the nobility, commerce, the in-
vention of printing and diffusion of knowledge, the extension of
the aristocracy by the kings, the invention of fire-arms, the dis-
covery of America.

" From the time that the labors of the mind became the source of
strength and wealth every scientific development, every new branch of
knowledge, every original idea became a germ of power accessible to the
people. Poetry, eloquence, memory, the graces of the mind, the fires of
the imagination, depth of thought, all the gifts which Heaven scatters at a
venture, profited the democracy ; and even when those gifts were found in
the possession of their adversaries they still promoted the democratic in-
terest by bringing out in bold relief the natural greatness of man. Its
conquests accordingly extended with those of civilization, and knowledge
and literature became an arsenal, common to all, where the weak and the
poor daily resorted for arms. ... If, starting from the eleventh century,
you scrutinize what takes place in France from half-century to half-cen-
tury, you will not fail to perceive, at the end of each period, that a double
revolution has taken place in the social condition. The noble will have
sunk in the social scale, the commoner will have risen."*

:
I

his is not only a cheerful prospect, but in the main a true one.

he idea of Tocqueville was to show that in Europe there was
and is a steady advance towards democracy. However, a
heavy discount should be made on these views, especially in

ranee from 1614 to 1789. Excellent as was the old constitution
the score of representation, it lacked the one vital principle

the Etats gtnfraux could not force the king to summon them.
From 1614 to 1789 they did not meet; the kings, unchecked by
any other power, proceeded into vast wars which impoverished

* De la Democratic en Amlrique. Paris, 1835, pp. 4-8.

222 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. [May,

the nation and saddled it with a vast debt. That very increase of
the nobility from the commons which Tocqueville mentions as a
cheering fact had also another aspect. The numbers in 1789 were
excessive, being one in two hundred and fifty of the population.
When we remember that this nobility owned a large part of the
land of France, and that they were exempt, even to the lowest,
from the ordinary land-tax or faille, from the charge of maintain-
ing the public roads (corvee), from military conscription, from
receiving billets of soldiers, etc., and that the clergy, with the
same privileges, possessed landed property, according to Neck-
er, which stood in relation to that of all other proprietors as one
to five and three-quarters, we may form some conception of the
burdens resting upon the people. In addition to this the vast
revenues wrung from the laborers were squandered on the court,
on the armies, and on the nobles, not on permanent improvements.
The rotten fabric had begun to shake even as far back as the time
of Louis XIV. The illusive glitter of that reign was like the
hectic blush on the cheek of the consumptive all was fair with-
out, but the decay had begun within. An erratic system of
finance urged on the evils of a social state that could not stand
great pressure. At length, in 1789, the Etats gMraux met, the
nobles clamoring for an increase of revenue, the commons deter-
mined to effect a systematic course of reform and retrenchment.
The administration wavered between the contestants ; a decisive
collision took place. Meanwhile, as the outcome of these one
hundred and seventy-five years of misrule, came famine. The
revolt began ; hungry, and wild, and resistless, the millions rose
in unreasoning wrath and hurled the whole fabric into chaos.*

An ardent Catholic and a member of a patrician caste rapidly
being extinguished, Maistre identified the church with the mon-
archy. Then, too, the striking features of the French Revolu-
tion, the staring facts that looked men in the eyes while they
had no time to examine into hidden motive powers, were no
doubt misleading. The higher dignitaries of the church at that
time were identified with the nobles as members of the land-hold-
ing class ; and it is an instructive fact that the movement was not
at first directed against religion, but was confined to the nobles
and the land-holding clergy. That keen-sighted traveller, Arthur
Young, while he recorded the starvation and misery of the peo-

* The authority for the political part of the above sketch is Archibald Alison's History of
Europe. Alison took a very conservative view. Thatfamme was the direct cause of the French
Revolution is proved by Arthur Young. See his Travels in France. Carlyle also takes this
view.

1 88 1.] JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 223

pie, noted this so amply that there is no room tor doubt. But,
as in all troubled times in France, the mob of the great cities,
and the demagogues who led them, soon attained to power,
and, desiring license, not liberty and security, turned against re-
ligion. The hardy peasantry of France the real millions of the
nation while they had heartily joined in the movement before,
now rebelled, but were crushed in detail for want of organiza-
tion. Then began the Reign of Terror, the scenes of which are
too sickening to recall, but whose victims Maistre regarded as so
many precious hostages given for the ultimate victory of absolu-
tism.* Also, it is a fact that the Reign of Terror was ended, the
mob of Paris crushed, and a milder republic f inaugurated before
Napoleon, by treachery and force, established his military des-
potism. Maistre, while hating Napoleon, held that this was a
"fortunate event," because it paved the way to the restoration of
the Bourbon.^;

It is evident throughout that Maistre did not consider the
people. He held to the old principle of feudal times, good, no
doubt, in a turbulent period of individuality, that people were
created for government. But when great nations began to be
firmly knit together the evil of this idea was constantly illus-
trated. Very real misery led to the outburst of the French Re-
volution. The people, on account of the various reasons assigned
by Tocqueville, had begun to think about political matters and
to contemplate the working of government. The channels of
democracy, dammed up in France, rose into a deluge. Since
then, and after once feeling the power of ruling, the French peo-
ple have gone through a succession of revolutions, backward and
forward, the main body of the people, sincerely loyal to the Ca-
tholic Church but wishing a representative government, alter-

*" When a philosopher makes up his mind to great calamities in consideration of the results;
when he says in his heart, ' If a hundred thousand murders be necessary, let them take place, pro-
vided we are free '; if Providence replies, ' I accept thine approbation, but thou shalt help to make
up the number,' what can be more just ?" (Considerations sur la France, chap, ii.) These are
the shocking- utterances Maistre is betrayed into by arguing that the excesses of the French Revo-
lution were better than a milder course, because they killed its vital principle and hastened the
restoration of monarchy.

t The government of the Directoire.

\ Lettres, etc., quoted before. This letter was written in 1802. It is a masterpiece of logic,
and its prophecies were completely justified. Maistre thoroughly understood Napoleonism in all
its aspects.

The gentle Fenelon's book, Ttltmaque, was regarded as dangerous at court because it
taught that governments were made for the good of the people ! Saint-Simon, who was a ra-
dical for those days, tells about the Duke of Burgundy repeating this, and how unpopular it
made him at court ; nay, Saint-Simon himself evidently thought it a little vulgar at least ! The
commonplace of to-day was an heroic sentiment in the mouth of the brave and good Fenelon.

224 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. [May,

nately dominated by the radical and the reaction parties on
both extremes.

At the head of the reactionists, and as their chief exponent in
expression, Maistre must be ranked. That voice, though hushed
for sixty years, is still all-powerful in the camp of absolutism.
He is quoted on all occasions by Legitimists, and it is held to be
almost heresy, in certain French circles, to doubt his wisdom.
The spirit of that school is probably expressed in a single sen-
tence by him :

" Against our legitimate sovereign, were he a Nero, we have no other right
than to allow our heads to be cut off while respectfully asserting the truth." *

When he will not allow a system of representation, or a written
charter of any kind, to protect the people against the encroach-
ments of tyranny, to be aught but an evil, he would thus, at one
stroke, take from them the last remedy of an oppressed people.

The hostile attitude of the present French Republic to the
Catholic Church, while altogether unpardonable, has been, it is
likely, aggravated by the loud and active section who follow
Maistre's teachings. If they had not prevented a large body of
Catholic moderates sincerely joining the republican party, the
triumph of the radical faction might perhaps never have taken
place. A queer position is this for the followers of Maistre to
occupy to be the indirect allies of Gambetta ! How much bet-
ter would it not have been if, instead of holding to obsolete is-
sues and dreaming of a return of Utopian aristocracy, those who
ought to be the real leaders of the French people had thrown
their talents and energy into the moderate government of Mac-
Mahon, honestly ! Instead of which there was on their part, as
soon as they thought the coast clear, an effort to place over the
French people again a line of kings they abhorred. At all events
the suspicion of such a purpose wrecked MacMahon's administra-
tion, the body of the people standing uncertain and irresolute, the
only option seeming to be between religion and monarchy on one
hand or irreligion and republicanism on the other ; and in this in-
terval came the victory of the radicals. It is not unreasonable,
perhaps, to assert that the only way for France out of this dilemma
is to shake off the influence of Maistre and his school. True chil-
dren of the church may be true republicans. There is nothing in
the Catholic Church to teach men otherwise. The advocate of an
absolute legitimate monarchy may be a Catholic, it is true ; but, on

* Considerations sur la France.

1 88 1.] JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 225

the other hand, the spirit of the church, if ever invoked in poli-
tics, has always been on the side of humanity. All through the
middle ages, before the people were strong enough to protect
themselves, the power of the church was exerted to shield them,
when suffering from the tyranny of kings. Now, when the peo-
ple have grown strong enough to protect themselves in states
where king and nobles still linger, and have taken the govern-
ment entirely into their hands in others, it is as monstrous as it
is untrue to represent the Catholic Church as inimical to popular
freedom and as an advocate of the restoration of feudal methods.
A truer conception of the matter would be that, as the church
directly withdraws from politics, she only influences politics in-
directly by seeking to instil moral aims in the individual.

As for Maistre's religious sentiments, though they cannot
here be fully discussed, they may be tested, especially as to his
ideas of the relations between church and state. In the passage-
here cited he lays bare his notions concisely, and brings together,,
as it were, the teachings of his whole life. This passage occurs,
in a letter to Count Jean Potocki, who held, it appears, some
chronological opinions at variance with the Mosaic record :

"... And upon this subject I must tell you a great truth : irreligion is
blackguard (Ttrrdligion est canaille). Therefore, setting aside all researches
on its truth or falsehood, a well-bred man takes care not only never to*
make an tclat, but even not to write or speak a single word which attacks
the national dogmas directly or indirectly.

" In every country there are a certain number of conservative families
which support the state; they form what is called the aristocracy or the
nobility. So long as these remain pure and imbued with the national
spirit the state remains unshaken, whatever may be the vices of the sove-
reign ; but when these become corrupt, especially in respect of religjon, the
state must crumble, though it were governed by a succession of Charle-
lagnes. The patrician is a lay priest ; the national religion is his first and
lost sacred possession, since it protects his privilege, and the fall of the
ic entails the loss of the other. There can be no greater crime in a noble-
lan than to attack the national dogmas." *

'hen follows a passage of curious argument which it is not
;cessary to quote, compared to which, it seems, one is justified
declaring the chronological doubts of Count Potocki to have
ien rather harmless. As it is, the letter is sufficiently strange..
The truth or falsehood of religion is a matter of no account. It
may be pagan, Catholic, Greek, or Protestant it makes no differ-
ence ; so it be national, the nobleman must cherish it because it

* Lettres, etc., quoted before. Paris. 1851. Letter to Count Jean Potocki.
VOL. XXXIIL 15

226 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. [May,

protects his privilege ! If Count Joseph Marie de Maistre had
lived under Tiberius Cassar, would he have followed the Son of
the carpenter, the associate of fishermen, the friend of the poor,
the humble, and the publican ? But this test is too severe. Half
of superfinical Christendom would have been no better than
Maistre. We will look at him in another light. Following
Plato, he was fond of defining the Beautiful as that which pleases
an honest patrician. Maistre's works and opinions, judged by
this standard, may be beautiful and pleasing to a man who is a
patrician and who is also honest ; but to men who are not patri-
cians, but are equally honest, they must be detestable and ugly.

What seems to be the chief and fundamental error which led
to all Maistre's other aberrations lay in this : he did not, or he
would not, recognize the distinction between our methods of re-
ceiving the truths of revealed religion and the theories of poli-
tics. Religion is not a matter of opinion. It is the infallible
revelation of God preserved and taught to us by an unerring

^church, and its object is to bring us into beatific union with

'God. Politics is matter of opinion ; there is no final court of
appeal in it; the only thing men can do is to experiment, learn,

.and progress in its methods. No instance of perfection in gov-
ernment, in any state or in any time, can be alleged ; and the only
thing we can hope to attain is the selection of the best. That
extraordinary letter of Maistre reveals a theory very different
from this ; stripped of the wealth of illustration and eloquence of

diction with which it is clothed in his elaborate works, it stands in
bare simplicity and put in the fewest words: king and nobles

;must possess unlimited power over the nation that is the first

, article of his creed ; then they must have some religion, no mat-
ter what so it be national, nor whether they believe it or not,
because it is a cheap system of police for the kingdom. Com-

; ment is unnecessary.

It is instructive to notice the last days of Maistre, in order to
see to what consequences of disappointment the great " Prophet
of the Past " * brought himself. Perhaps he doubted his political
creed at times. It is in justice to his memory to quote here from
a letter written to Baron de Vignet :

" You say that nations will require ' strong governments,' whereupon I
must inquire what you mean by that. If monarchy seems to you to be
strong in proportion as it is absolute, the governments of Naples, Madrid,
and Lisbon must, in your eyes, appear very vigorous. Yet you know, and

* First applied to Maistre by Ballanche. This clever French and very descriptive expression
has been extended to-a Whole group of men who follow him.

1 88 1.] JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 227

everybody knows, that those monsters of weakness only exist thanks to
their equilibrium. Rest assured that to strengthen monarchy you must
base it on the laws, and that all that is arbitrary military tribunals, con-
tinual change of office, and ministerial jobs and messes must be avoided.
Consider, I pray, what we had come to, and how your plans were rejected,
moderate as they were, and though in no way infringing on the royal pre-
rogative."

Bonaparte had fallen, the house of Capet was restored, the
last spanks of revolution seemed trampled out by kaiser and
king ; but still the unlimited monarchy of the eighteenth century
came not back. Perhaps he felt in his heart that the spirit against
which he had struggled was invincible. Perhaps, too, he may
have been shaken in his opinion of it more than once as he
expressed it to a friend in private : " Like Diomed before Troy, I
have perhaps wounded a divinity while pursuing my enemies."
But outwardly there was no faltering, no retraction. He con-
tinued to the last the bitter enemy to all restrictions on kingly
prerogative, to all charters, or constitutions that are written, to
protect the people, and sternly refused to sanction governments
which allowed the people any voice in them. He viewed the
rapidly advancing waves of democracy with rage and mortifica-
tion, though in comparative silence. Personal, success, which he
reaped to the full on his return to Italy, could not console him.
Just after the applause which greeted the publication of his later
works, and while honors were being showered upon him, he
writes to M. de Marcellus : " D'autres 6pines s'enfoncent dans
mon cceur ; mon esprit s'en ressent ; de petit il est devenu nul :
hie jacet ; mais je meurs avec 1'Europe ; je suis en bonne com-
pagnie ! " * The enemy he had wrestled with for life was tri-
umphant. Prostrated for a moment, it rose again stronger than
before, its foes now its friends, and charters and constitutions
flew broadcast over Europe. At this dread vision of victorious
democracy Maistre could only stare in silence; but it weighed
upon his heart like a rock. Family sorrows were added to his
load, slow paralysis sapped his once vigorous constitution, and
the poor, old, broken-hearted man lay down and died at Turin on
the 26th of February, 1821.

* " Other thorns have buried themselves in my heart ; my mind feels them : hie jacet ; but I
die with Europe ; I am in good company I " Lettres^ etc., quoted before. Paris. 1851.

228 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

A CLOSE watch had been set upon McDonell from the evening
on which he had declared his intention of sending for Father
Leonard and making over a certain amount of property to him
for the benefit of the orphans he had wronged, or, in consequence
of their non-appearance, for the benefit of the poor. He had
given to his valet the next morning a note for his reverence,
which, being safely placed in Nano's hands, found its way speedily
into the fire. He had been advised by Killany to remain within
doors for a few days. The excitement of his last interview with
Nano had injured him. Continual brooding since was wasting
him slowly. He felt the necessity of quiet for a time, and obey-
ed the physician's instructions so honestly that he did not dis-
cover at once the position in which his daughter had placed him.
He wondered and fretted at the priest's apparent delay, and
sent other notes urgently demanding his presence. They elicit-
ed a message to the effect that his reverence was not in the city.
This did not satisfy him ; and, the suspicion that his daughter
might be intercepting his letters occurring to him at the same
time, his life was rendered still more unhappy and miserable.
He had dwelt on the last scene with his daughter more with the
petulance of an old man than with the quiet, dignified grief of a
wronged and disappointed father. He raged and wept by turns.
He accused himself, and justly, for the sad deformity of character
which she displayed. He spent the hours in self-reproach, or in
prayer, or in wandering aimlessly through the rooms of his own
suite ; sometimes vowing vengeance against any who would dare
to oppose him, and again crying weakly for humility and pa-
tience in his sufferings. The world without was so beautiful, the
sky so clear, the sun so bright, everything that breathed or grew
so full of life's cheery activity and fascinating movement, that,
pressing his face against the window his old, withered, pallid
face against the cold pane, he laughed from the bitterness of his
heart. It was horrible that the contrast between his loved world

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 229

and himself should be so much in his disfavor ; that in his heart
and home misery, sin, and disease should reign so triumphantly,
while the inanimate world and the vulgar rabble rejoiced. If his
daughter had remained faithful the day would not have lost its
brightness for him. His last hold on the beauty and satisfaction
of life went with her affection. Riches had brought him nothing
but curses, as ill-gotten riches must always bring, and he had
neither health, nor spirit, nor mind to enjoy the power and station
which he had won. It threw him into a dumb, enervating rage
to suspect Nano of holding him a prisoner. He remarked that
he had received no visitors within two days, that none had so
much as sent in their cards. Yet this might be attributed to the
prevailing belief of his madness. That thought was overwhelm-
ing. It pressed him to the ground as if a heavy burden had been
placed upon his shoulders, and left him helpless to think or move.
Mad ! They might as well have said buried. He was like a man
attending his own funeral certain of his existence and his own
identity, yet ousted from his rightful place by the dead thing
called by his name, pressed down under the force of a prevailing
opinion, and conscious only of his utter helplessness.

He determined to watch his servants and at every opportu-
nity test their fidelity. They were acting in the interest of his
enemies, and had already deserted the waning sovereign to trans-
fer their allegiance to his fortunate successor. It was bitter but
natural, and he did not complain of it. It added to his sufferings
that these troubles were not purely domestic. The world had
his insanity on its tongue-tip, and poked among the ashes through
its representative, Killany. His hand was everywhere, planning
and executing, prompting and encouraging. It was not to his
daughter but to this villain that he was giving the victory. It
was not his daughter who would possess the spoils, but the ad-
venturer. The honest and the dishonest wealth would go alike
to fatten his pocket, and those whom he had robbed and she for
whom he had sinned would be left in equal destitution. What-
ever was to be done to defeat the schemers must be done quickly ;
and without any fixed plan of action, dazed by the evils which
surrounded him, he began by watching his servant. Late on
that evening which had taken Nano to the carnival he gave to
his valet a note for the priest. He followed the man with noise-
less steps to the hall, and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing
him read it and then fling it contemptuously into the stove with
a laugh and a joke for one lean little figure which sat comfortably
near to the fire.

230 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

" Old man still hangs to the one idea," said Mr. Quip, who
had been placed in his present position as Dr. Killany's repre-
sentative.

" Yes ; he is bound to see the priest, and waits with fine pa-
tience his return home. Wouldn't have done it, though, but for
Killany, who told him that it would be dangerous to stir abroad
in his present state of health and irritation. The old man is that
careful of himself, you know, that he'll do any foolish thing to
keep from getting ill again. Thank Heaven if they can but get
him into the asylum ! "

" That's a spot where dull care will never visit him," said
Quip meditatively. " Between the choruses of his neighbors and
the strait-waistcoats and shower-baths of the institution he will
not have much leisure for thought. He will be violent, and will
get his share of all these punishments. He is nervous, and they
will affect him more than others. I would not be afraid to bet
that he is dead within six months. The grave is a smoother and
softer bed. It is circumscribed, but you have the satisfaction of
knowing that by your own desire you were put there, and, being
dead, that it was the very best place for you."

And both laughed at this sally.

McDonell's desire to rush out upon them and strangle them
in their scornful mood was so strong that he shrank away in
terror from himself. Was he really mad or going mad, as these
men said and people imagined ?

" It would not be hard to make me so," he thought, with a
shiver of uncontrollable fear ; " and that, perhaps, is the game. If
they knew how little it would avail they would not be so cruel.
But there are other means to bend the stubborn, and they who
do not stop at this will stop at nothing. O God ! this is now
thy time of vengeance."

He stole away to think over this new evidence of his danger
and his daughter's perfidy, and stole back again, overpowered
with peevish rage, when the door-bell rang. He was not himself,
and it would have been better to have remained secluded for a
time instead of irritating his mind still more by every fresh proof
of his sad misfortunes. He could not, however, control himself
so much. From his position he saw that a gentleman, a friend,
had entered and presented his card to the servant with the re-
quest that he might see Mr. McDonell immediately. The ser-
vant sighed and shook his head mournfully.

" Very sorry, sir, but he be that bad as how the doctors say
no one can go near him."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 231

" Ah ! is it true what I have heard, that he is becoming more
confirmed in his weakness of mind ? "

" I fear me, sir, too true. It is not known as yet, not even to
Miss McDonell, how very bad he is."

" Liar ! villain ! " cried the unwise and enraged McDonell,
rushing upon the man from his place of concealment with flaming
eyes and a face distorted with the passion he could not control.
" You dare to repeat to my friends those calumnies ! I will choke
you till the eyes start from your lying head. Run, you villain,
run ! "

And the servant did run, with howls of terror so genuine that
the whole kitchen, headed by the valet and Quip, came tumbling
into the hall. The visitor, with a very pale, embarrassed coun-
tenance, was backing dignifiedly to the door. This movement
brought the madman to his senses partially.

"Sir," he said, controlling his voice with a great and visible
effort, " pardon me for this unseemly behavior ; but these villains,
as you see, would make me mad in spite of myself. There is no
need, I hope, to tell you it is a calumny."

" Not at all," said the gentleman soothingly. " I regret hav-
ing disturbed you exceedingly, and I "

"Ah! you believe as the rest," cried the merchant, half in
scorn and half in agony. " Then do not go until you have con-
vinced yourself of my sanity. I am not mad."

" We all knows that, sir," said the valet behind him. " Not
mad, sir, but only irritated, sir, and forgetting that the doc-
tor wished you to keep your room and not excite yourself,

" Away, wretch ! " roared McDonell, bursting again into a
white rage at sight of his jailer. " Though you are the tool of
reater villains, you have betrayed me."

The man retired precipitately before the anger of his master,
nd was received into the bosom of the crowd with a chorus of
reams and expressions of sympathy. The merchant was about
o make a second appeal to his visitor, who was now at the door,
when Quip touched his arm.

" You would make these men believe you sane," he said, fix-
g his beady eyes on the restless ones of the invalid, and holding
em to his own, " and yet you are taking the surest means to
convince them of your insanity. This is not the time nor the
place to proclaim it. You look like a madman now. Retire to
your room, sir, and be careful to act, not as an ordinary man
would act under the circumstances, but with the devil's own

232 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

cunning. You will need it to get people out of the notions they
have concerning you."

" Who you are I know not," said McDonell, impressed by
Quip's words, " but you speak wisely. I shall follow your ad-
vice. And my visitor is gone ; that shows me how I have
blundered, for he will surely think I am mad."

The servants stood at a distance, whispering and wondering,
their fears quite overcome by their curiosity. Mr. Quip winked
at them and smiled, and they answered with a nodding of heads
and a noiseless clapping of hands to indicate their approbation of
his coolness and dexterity.

" Go to your places," said the merchant, waving his hand to-
wards them ; and he would have said more, but that they vanish-
ed pell-mell into the kitchen regions, and made that part of the
house echo for some moments afterwards with the screaming of
the more sensitive females and the rattling of tins and dishes.
Fearful that he would assail them there and then, the more cool-
headed ones barricaded the door. In the hall were left only the
valet and Mr. Quip, to the former of whom the master gave his
particular attention.

" You may consider yourself discharged," he said, " and
without a character. You are my servant no longer. Having
betrayed me, it is not safe to give you the opportunity of betray-
ing other unfortunates."

He was going to his room when Nano entered from the carni-
val in her dress of the celestial huntress, gay with the glitter of
silk and gold, and even light-hearted. The shrinking attitude of
the valet, the important airs of Mr. Quip, and the wild glances
and appearance and manner of her father gave her immediate
insight into the scenes which lately had taken place. The kitchen
echoes had not yet subsided. She paled slightly, and was going
on to her own apartments when her father stopped her.

" Come with me," he said imperiously. She followed him
into the library with a sinking heart, but with resolute and
unmoved exterior, and for a few moments they stood quietly
facing each other, his hands nervously twitching together, his
eyes reading her face as if to find there some hope of which he
had not yet dreamed.

"Are you my daughter?" he asked sneeringly when his
scrutiny was finished.

" You have better grounds to call me that, sir, than I to call
you father. Why do you ask ? "

" Father, father ! " he repeated, with a broader sneer. " That

i88i.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 233

comes trippingly from your tongue, does it not ? And yet you
have lost all right to that honored title. You have made me a
madman me, your father, who schemed and sinned to make you
what you are, who in his misery and repentance made you his
first thought, who shaped every action in your regard, preferring
to desert his God and his salvation, almost, for your sake. You
have repaid me for my old indifference. You have made me a
madman. I am, if you can make good this vile calumny, as good
as dead and buried. And yet, before God, my sin is not so great
as yours. I gave you part of a father's love and care, and you
have never looked with love on me. You now add crime to in-
difference. Tell me, is it your intention to put me in an asy-
lum ? "

She did not answer, for she could not.

" Tell me, tell me," he repeated fiercely, bringing his wild eyes
close to her face and seizing her violently by the arms, " do
you meditate that sin ? ''

" Am I safe," she answered boldly, " with one who, sane or
not, chooses to act the madman ? Am I to be blamed for con-
fining one who treats his own not even as the dogs of the street
would treat them ? "

" I am always forgetting," he said mournfully, releasing his
hold ; " and there is the apology of my enemies."

He stood for a moment with his hands clasped to his forehead,
the picture of woe and helplessness ; then he went over to the
mantel and took down a crucifix that hung there veiled. Press-
ing it to his bosom, he said : " I submit, and I acknowledge the
istice of my punishment. I submit, I submit. Only remember,
God, that I am deserted by the one whom I most loved. You
lad mother and friend in your affliction. I have no one. Be my
support, and be merciful to my pitiless persecutors.

4< You, unfortunate woman, since you are determined to goon
in your sinful path, bear in mind one thing : your sin will recoil
>n you, as mine has recoiled on me. Perhaps you are already
idged and condemned. See what my punishment is. You have
idded to my pride and my injustice the ingratitude of hell, and
r our punishment will be in proportion. Go now and think upon
words." He turned from her and continued to walk the
ingth of the room with the crucifix in his hands, entirely ob-
livious of her presence. She bore herself with wonderful self-
command. During his denunciation she stood calm as a marble
statue, with her eyes fixed on him, and seemed to derive comfort
and strength from the looking. She was moved and frightened

234 ^ WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

by his appeal. She thought he was becoming what she had
desired him to be a madman. His whole appearance, lean,
shrivelled, pallid, his hair dishevelled and his eyes burning, was
that of one insane ; and insane he was, poor old man ! with grief
and disappointment.

She left him presently and sent for Quip.

" Go to the office in the morning, and inform Dr. Killany of
what you have seen and heard to-night. He will know what to
do afterwards."

" Your servant, ma'am," replied the gentleman, and, agreeably
to instructions received from Killany, went immediately upon his
errand.

Dr. Fullerton found him in quiet raptures the next morning in
the outer office. He was perched, as usual, on the arm of his
chair, deeply engaged in reading up a most profound work on
insanity. With every new discovery he slapped his leg, or, clos-
ing the book, cried of the author :

" What a genius ! One would think he had this particular
case in his eye when he wrote this work."

" You seem interested, Quip," said the doctor. " What's the
object?"

" Lunacy," answered Mr. Quip, with a knowing wink. " It
was delirium tremens before, spontaneous combustion next, and
now it is lunacy, which throws every other in the shade. I never
paid much attention to it up to this, but our respected superior
has a case on hand which has given me a grand insight into the
business. Some rich old nabob on Wilton Avenue, with an only
daughter, has sent his brains to parts unknown. What's left of
him is not even animal."

" I was not aware of that. Who is the gentleman ? "

" He whom they call McDonell. He had paralysis some time
ago, and it touched his brain."

The doctor rose in astonishment, and the whispered words
Killany on that day when he had ridden with him from M<
Donell's to the office came back to his memory. He had hean
rumors, but nothing so decided as Quip's information.

" Are you sure of the man, Quip quite sure ? "

" Morally certain, sir. Wasn't I there last night at the prel
tiest row that ever took place outside of an asylum ? They have
had the old gentleman under guard for some days. Only yester-
day he began to suspect that all wasn't well with him in the u]
per regions, and he gets suspicious of every one in an instant.
The doctors had forbidden visitors. One came just after I got

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 235

back from the carnival, and was inquiring of the servant all about
it, when out bounced the old chap like a fury, choked the ser-
vant, kicked the visitor because he was slow in admitting his
sanity, and was rushing at his valet when I tapped his arm,
caught him as he turned, and laid him on his back. Then I sat
on him.

" ' You're not mad/ says I.

" ' I know it, villain ! ' says he.

" But you're acting mad,' says I again, ' and that is just as
foolish. Now, if you will go to your room sensible, and even gay,
I will let you up.'

" ' You're right/ says he. I'll do it/

" And so he did quite reasonably. It was a sight to see the
servants, who had been looking on, skurry through the door when
he shook his finger at them, and the valet's knees tremble when
he looked at him. His daughter came in then, and he called her
into the library. She was rigged out oh ! but I remember you
were her escort and don't stand in need of a description. At
any rate she didn't look so sweet coming out as when she went
in, and the upshot of it is that there is to be an examination to-
day by the doctors, and you are one of the gang. Then, I sup-
pose, comes a writ de lunatico, and our old gentleman is whipped
off to the asylum. Fine thing, this insanity."

Mr. Quip returned to his book and the doctor withdrew to
the inner office, unaccountably troubled and disturbed. He had
no idea of the extremity to which Nano's father had been re-
duced, and it smote on him awkwardly that she should have ac-
companied them to the carnival while he was in such a sad con-
dition at home. He had not known from Olivia the exact rela-
tions which these two held to each other, or he might not have
allowed the fact to make such an impression on him ; but having
some rigid notions on the Fourth Commandment, even the admi-
ration he felt for her could not lessen the imprudence of her con-
duct in his eyes. A note came from Killany after office-hours,
equesting him to come to McDonell House without delay. It
as noon, and he hastened away directly. He knew that the ex-
mination was to take place, and he felt some anxiety and con-
siderable curiosity as to the result. In the drawing-room of Mc-
Donell House he met two medical gentlemen, experts in detecting
the presence of insanity, and of some fame in their own districts.
Killany was in the upper rooms with Nano, and Olivia too, for he
heard her voice on the stairs. Presently Killany entered, bland,
smooth, and dignified as usual.

236 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

" A rather sad case, gentlemen," he said in tones of studied
professional grief ; " violent at times even to his daughter, but
for the most part melancholy."

The experts looked at each other significantly.

" He could not be in a worse condition," said Doctor B.

" Melancholy madness is the rock of our profession," echoed
Doctor C.

" We have thought it best," continued Killany, as if in expla-
nation to Fullerton, " that but one of us should visit him at a
time. We can compare notes afterwards. Will you be so kind,
Doctor B., as to take precedence? "

" If you wish it," replied the doctor, and under the guidance
of a servant he proceeded to the library.

McDonell showed no surprise, or interest, or alarm at the ap-
pearance of the visitor. He was not aware of the object of the
visit, and was not prepared to give the matter the attention it
deserved. It so happened that the moment chosen for the ex-
amination was most fortunate for Killany and most disastrous
to McDonell. A combination of circumstances had arisen to aid
the devil in the crime to be committed that day. The appear-
ance of the invalid, worn and exhausted as he had been by dis-
ease, was not favorable. His thin, pallid face and trembling,
unsettled manner, his frequent sighs and moody expression, his
inattention and discourtesy, his rapid, shifting, sidelong glances,
his neglected toilet, were circumstances not calculated to remove
preconceived notions of insanity. The sorrows and dangers
pressing around him, surging at his feet like the waves of an
angry ocean, had driven him into a state of mind for the time
akin to madness. He was cunning enough to have defeated the
malice of his enemies in this examination, had he suspected its
ultimate object. He paid no attention to his visitor, and to his
cautious questions gave gruff, incoherent, and inapposite answers,
staring at him sometimes insolently, burying himself in the pa-
pers for a moment, wringing his hands convulsively as if in strong
mental agony, and altogether behaving as much like a madman
as a sane man could. Doctor B. left him with a decided convic-
tion of his insanity, but he classed it as a mild though obstinate
species. The second expert returned with a similar opinion, as
he met with a similar reception.

Since Dr. Fullerton's opinion went for little or nothing against
the testimony already given by the experts, Killany cared not
what he thought or said ; but for the sake of appearances he fol-
lowed the example of the others and proceeded to interview the

i88t.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 237

patient. It was a surprise to him that he had been appointed an
examiner, and he felt that it was less out of good-will to himself
than to give an air of strict legality and impartiality to all the
proceedings. However, he determined to do in all honesty and
earnestness his share of the work. McDonell paid no attention
to him until it occurred to his sensitive but dazed mind that the
number of his medical visitors was strangely increasing, when he
said, without looking up :

" Are there any more of you ?"

" I am the last," answered the doctor in tones of the gravest,
most respectful pity. " I hope you do not consider my pres-
ence an intrusion."

The merchant did not at once reply. A spasm of pain 'for an
instant contracted his face and a shiver crept through his half-
dead limbs. He turned his head toward the doctor with a dilat-
ing horror in his eyes. A glance at his examiner did not seem to
reassure him. He put out his hands feebly, as if to wave him
from his sight.

" Away, away ! " he said hoarsely. " It is enough to disturb
my sleeping hours with your dread presence ; do not make the
day hideous. I will do justice to your children, if they live.
Have I not been trying hard hard hard ? But the devil, who
sends you to torment me, is plotting against me. Why do you
come too? There are many who will make me mad without
your assistance. Away, away ! "

And he groaned and pushed his hands against the empty air,
as if thrusting from him a heavy body.

" You mistake," said the doctor gently, " if you think there is
ere another besides myself."

" Do I not know your voice ? How often have you stood
beside my bed when I was weak and helpless, and mocked me !
Go ! in Heaven's name, go ! Do I not suffer enough with my
daughter and the devil leagued against me ? Away ! "

He had worked himself into a frightful state of feeling. His
eyes were starting, his face was flushed and swollen. The doctor
rose hastily and left the room.

t" Well ?" said Killany, when he entered the parlor.
" Mad," said Fullerton briefly " violently mad."
" Ah ! " And Killany smiled in an ambiguous manner, and
rned to the other physicians : " Let us compare notes, gentle-
men, and then settle on our report."

It was very neatly and even facetiously done over a decanter
f Burgundy. The four medical gentlemen gave it as their

C4.O

238 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

opinion that McDonell was hopelessly insane, and recommended
immediate consignment to an asylum.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE LAST INTERVIEW.

KILLANY came up-stairs, after the consultation was over, to
announce the result to Nano. As she was quite prepared for it,
there was no display of emotion. Her face was pale enough to
suit the r61e of grief-stricken daughter, and its helpless, blind de-
spair was gracefully interpreted by Olivia from her Christian
standpoint. It would be a thankless task to follow the drift of
Nano's thoughts for the last few weeks. They had been like
rudderless vessels on a stormy sea and she the watcher on the
shore, seeing them vacantly wander one by one into the harbor
or founder in mid-ocean, and keeping no account. She tried
hard to be gay, to act as if the most ordinary events were happen-
ing, and she one on whom sorrow, having lightly touched, passed
by and left behind no traces. In vain, all in vain. At no time or
place could she have been or felt more desolate. A great gulf
the gulf of crime, which no repentance could ever close and make
as if it had not been lay between her and Olivia and Olivia's
brother ; between her and the society she worshipped ; between
her and everything that was good and beautiful on earth. If
there were devils she had kinship with them. She had taken her
place with Killany, and in that rested her condemnation. The
high-born lady had stopped to the -worthless adventurer. Yet
she had done no legal sin. Her father had been pronounced mad
and sent into retirement by responsible physicians. The law
could not reach her, but conscience could and did. It tore at
her heart like a vulture, and the agony threw a mist over what-
ever her eyes fell upon. Her books and her philosophies seemed
tit only for the fire. They had not helped her one iota in her
fight with temptation. Her theories had lost their foundation
pride in her own virtue. The virtue being fled, pride and its
superstructure of deceit and rambling, cultured falsities tumbled
to the ground. Human beings, even jail-birds, had got into an
extraordinary perspective, and towered down from an unusual
moral height upon her littleness.

Olivia, her brother, and her lover seemed high as the heavens
compared to her. Killany alone preserved his proper dimen-

;><

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 239

sions, and she had reached his level. There was more meaning
and more humiliation almost in that simple, disgusting fact than
in her sin.

" In a few days/' Killany said, "the legal formalities will be
ended."

" It is all in your hands," she replied shortly, and with so
evident a desire to be rid of him that he took his leave forth-
with.

" I cannot resist," she said afterwards to Olivia, " the temp-
tation to show likes and dislikes after your blunt fashion. I am
utterly unstrung, and have not the patience to do these things
with society tact and discretion. Perhaps I am more sincere."

" I am afraid not," said Olivia. " It is so much to your taste
and so much a part of your nature to do things after a society
model that any new departure savors of hypocrisy. I give you
credit for sincerity in this case. But, O Nano ! is not this a ter-
rible misfortune which has befallen you ? "

" Terrible is not the word," answered the lady, clasping her
hands with convulsive strength. " It is crushing. It has lain on
me as a mountain would ever since the awful possibility first
appeared, and, though I have tried to shake it off, it still clings
to me with fatal stubbornness. I doubt if I ever recover from
it."

They were speaking, and Nano alone knew it, of very differ-
ent things. Olivia alluded to McDonell's insanity, the lady to
her own crime.

" There is nothing in it so bitter," Olivia hastily replied,
ruck by the expression of her friend's countenance, " that you
eed mourn for ever. It is very painful, and you don't know how
sorry I am for your trouble."

" It is not so much a trouble as it is a stain on our name. You
now what absurd prejudices the world has on this point. In a
measure they are behind the savages, our cultured citizens. If
they can say, ' Her father is in an asylum, crazy as a loon,' they are
satisfied. I do not give a snap of my finger for their criticisms
or cynicism. They will always be civil enough to me personally,
but it takes considerably from one's standing. It was only since
his sickness that I began to have a real affection for my father,
and I could now wish that it had remained as it had been. I
would not endure such suffering as I endure at this moment."

Again she spoke with a meaning hidden to Olivia.

" Sentiments of this kind," said the fearless girl, " sound very
meanly in my ears, Nano "

240 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

" What sentiments do not when uttered by one of our
school ? "

" It is your misfortune, and quite often your fault, that you
choose for admiration some of the very worst kind. It is a
fatality among you. But I didn't come here to scold, only to
cry with you."

" I have no tears," said she, with a chilly smile. " I cannot
weep, unless it be for myself. Often the bars of an asylum hold
more satisfaction, and peace, and goodness than the plate-glass
of a mansion like this. I wonder would my father change places
with me? "

" With you, Nano ! " cried her friend, quite shocked.

" Ah ! I was rambling, was I not ? Yet, crazy and all as he

" No, not crazy," said a cold, quiet, hard voice from the door,
" but wronged, cruelly, deeply wronged, and by his own child."

McDonell was standing there with his fiery eyes glaring upon
them, but his face was calm in expression, his manner was no lon-
ger nervous and hurried, and altogether he looked more like the
cool-headed business man of old than he had done since his ill-
ness. Nano's presence of mind did not forsake her at this un-
toward incident. She retained her seat, determined to face the
present danger with all her nerve and impudence. But Olivia,
startled beyond measure by his appearance and his words, grew
pale and flushed by turns, and stood looking helplessly from one
to the other.

" If you wish to speak to me, father," said Nano gently, " pray
return to your own room, and I will follow at once. For the pre-
sent respect our guest, Miss Fullerton, so much as to leave in-
stantly."

" I do respect her so much," he answered calmly, " that I shall
not go till I have made known to her what a wretched thing it
is she loves and regards in you. I beg of you to be calm, Miss
Fullerton, and to fear nothing from me. A commission of some
kind is about to make me out crazy, I believe, and in a few days I
shall be consigned to an asylum, there to end a very miserable
life. It is her doing," and he pointed his outstretched arm at the
defiant and indifferent woman. " She, my child, my daughter, to
retain this ill-gotten wealth of mine, has put me in such a position
that no word or writing of mine can have the least value before
the law. Oh ! beware of her, young lady. Never did serpent
wear a smoother guise than this. Never did a sepulchre look
more beautiful. Beware of her ! "

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 241

" You are not yourself, father," said the lady, still calm and
unmoved. " You have told my friends this same story many
times in a few days, and it has but injured yourself. You wish
to appear reasonable, and your mad words carry only a surer
conviction of your insanity to those who know you. Pray retire
to your room."

He would have spoken had not his attendants suddenly en-
tered and forced him out of his daughter's presence. True to a
certain line of conduct which he seemed to have adopted, the old
gentleman did not attempt to resist this violence, but went away
with the attendants quietly, leaving two frightened women be-
hind him.

"You see, Olivia," said Nano, with a dejected air, "what I
am called on to endure daily. Regularly I have had those re-
proaches flung at me. He has gone over the same catalogue of
my offences it is very long when given in full sometimes in his
own room or mine, and often before witnesses. I have concealed
it as much as possible from the outside world. I did wish very-
much to conceal it from you."

" I will forget," said Olivia quickly. " But that he should 4 ,
turn on you of all others ! "

" It is the worst feature of his madness, and through all his:
sickness I was his most devoted and tireless attendant. He;
would have none other. But let us dismiss so sad a subject."

" And myseli at the same time," said Olivia, rising to go.
" Good-by, dear, and God give you strength to bear this suffer-
ing ! Ah ! Nano, if you knew him as you should, this hour would
not seem so dark. The sympathy which men cannot give, which;
would reach into the depths of your soul as rain into the earth,
would be yours. You seem to go further from him every day.

od-by."

As before, Nano managed to avoid kiss and hand-clasp from,
her friend. Smiling, she said :

" If it would please you I could almost believe in your beau-
ful superstitions. But I know that you want conviction of their
truth as well as of their beauty, which in ail honesty I cannot
give."

Olivia went away sadly troubled about many ill-defined
things. The scene with McDonell left a dark impression on her
mind and gave rise to an unconscious suspicion against her friend.

" His own daughter ! " she thought. " Oh ! if my father were
alive" and a sudden pang shot through her heart at the recollec-
tion of Killany's slanders " and he should fall into the same state,,

VOL. XXXIII 16

242 'A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

I think that, no matter how fierce he might be towards others,
with me he would be always gentle. And yet I have heard that
the insane do the most shocking things even to those whom they
have best loved."

Three days later the arrangements, legal and otherwise, for
McDonell's removal to the asylum were completed, and Nano
and Killany were appointed administrators and guardians of the
estate. Killany himself, in his graceful and delicate fashion, had
informed McDonell of the decision of the law and of the hour of
his departure, and the unfortunate man had asked mildly to see
his daughter once again before he set out for his new home. He
made no outcry, uttered no reproaches. His resignation was
complete. He had thought deeply since the first intimation of
his enemies' designs. They had the start in the race. He knew
that no violence of his could now undo their work, no court
would make him sane again under the damning evidence of the
last few weeks. Therefore the wisest and best plan of action was
to proceed with extraordinary patience and caution; as he had
been accustomed to do in the height of his business fame, to per-
form every act with almost superhuman carefulness and preci-
sion, and thus force upon observers the truth of his sanity. At
first he could not think with equanimity of accepting his dreadful
fate and the degradation of being housed with madmen. When
that feeling had worn away a hope sprang up in his heart that
his daughter might yet be merciful, and, pitying his age and his
many infirmities, refuse at the last to send him to the prison of
despair. It was rather chimerical, and so he understood it. He
forced himself to accept his coming imprisonment as an accom-
plished fact, and formed in detail the scheme by which he was to
liberate himself from the toils. It was the bite of the serpent to
him that he had rejected the great opportunity of confessing to
the priest during his illness. He felt that his present suffering
was the first and perhaps final instalment of the vengeance of
God for that insult, and he prepared to receive it with resigna-
tion, filled with a sense of its justice and necessity. The calmness
of that day was his first step towards liberty. He felt hope's
sweet assurance in his breast. If he could but maintain that
demeanor through every trial, carrying it to the extraordinary
degree which his position demanded, he might. reasonably expect
to be restored to freedom in a very short time. The thought of
the intervening days of horror would have been too much for
him had he allowed his mind to dwell on them, but he resolutely
, turned away when they presented themselves.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 243

As he had requested, Nano came to the library a few moments
before his departure. Her great self-command was never more
severely tried than on this day. Her face still wore its old
pallor, but her eyes and features were expressive of no emotion,
and she took a seat before him as if the circumstances were the
most ordinary of her life. This would have angered him had he
been open to passion. Since passion was forcibly dead in him,
he passed it over in silence.

" I know scarcely why I have called you," he said, with an
ease of manner and expression that staggered her, " and hardly
know what I am to say to you, except it be to say farewell. I
can imagine that you have thought long and carefully on the
deed which is to be consummated to-day. One does not deliber-
ately settle down to the commission of a desperate act without
long consideration of the difficulties which may surround it. I
did not when I stole from two little orphans the thousands which
you steal again at this later date. Among my many apprehen-
sions was not that of imprisonment in a lunatic asylum. You
have done well. You are as successful as I was, and you may be
as unsuccessful as I am. In me see the end of all iniquity. You
triumph for to-day, and to-morrow your hour will come. But
you have thought of these things, no doubt, and I but waste
breath in pointing out to you the future consequences of your
crime. I wish to tell you from my very heart I forgive you for
all you have done. I was wicked, and God has chosen to punish
me in a most terribly just way through you. I submit to his
will. You and I will never meet again. The grave is my next
resting-place. I wish to assure you of one thing, and to warn
you against another. I shall never raise my hand against you
nor speak one word that could result in harm to you. The
secret of our sins and misfortunes shall never have mouth with
me, except in so far as it is necessary to right the wronged.' Be-
ware of Killany. He has lured you into a great snare, and, al-
though I have confidence in your ability to match him, I tremble
knowing to what lengths he can dare to go. Guard your good
name and your fortune securely from him. Prepare yourself
also for suffering. You have only staved off, after my foolish
manner, the evil day. May you never know a jot of the suffering
I have known ! "

He did not say farewell, nor look at her, nor motion her to
go. It required a strong effort to keep his emotions in check,
and he did not dare to note the effect of his words. She was
amazed at his language, and a very tempest of feeling seemed
threatening to overpower her resolution.

244 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

" You need not go," said she in a low voice. " It is in your
power to remain. Say that this idea of restitution was only a
fancy, consent to such conditions as I may impose, and you have
freedom, and home, and daughter left to you still."

" That cannot be," he answered grimly. "I go to the asy-
lum."

" It is a terrible place," she continued, hopefully attempting to
work on his fears " a place of hideous sights and sounds, where
the old and enfeebled, and often the strong, though never so
sane, are sure to lose their wits in time. Its mournful silences,
broken only by yells, and howls, and wailings, its hopelessness
for he who enters there leaves hope behind are appalling. Can
you think of enduring all this when one word might save you ? "

" You make a good tempter," he said, with a smiling, side-
long, cynical glance at her. " Respect yourself and } : our pride,
which I once thought strong enough to support the devil. In
the silence of that place I shall have sweeter peace than you in
the midst of a ball-room rout. I shall take hope with me, for it
never deserts the Christian. And I can think of enduring it all
even with the knowledge of what would save me. It is you who
condemn me to all this misery."

" Rather it is yourself. The law has been my champion
against your madness."

" Do you think that will save you from remorse ? Not if every
judge and physician in the land ratified your conduct."

" You do not wish, then, to save yourself ? "

" Not wish ! If it must be at the cost of a soul, no. It is hor-
rible to think of the life I shall lead there I, a poor old man,
weighed down with age and disease but it is not the greatest
of misfortunes. I had no pity on others, nor did I spare them.
Why, then, should I be pitied or spared ?"

" There is pity for you, father," she said in tones so sweet, and
tremulous, and loving that he turned towards her quickly. " You
are pitiless with yourself."

She seemed stirred, and there was a nameless something in
her glance that inspired him with a mad hope.

" I can never say what you want said," he half whispered.
" You know my beliefs. But, O Nano ! do not be so cruel ;
you "

The encouraging light fled from her eyes, and she walked to
the door. A fearful struggle was going on in his breast. His
last sole hope was leaving him. His pallor grew deeper and his
breath came in gasps. At that moment the jingle of sleigh-bells
was heard on the avenue. The carriage was driving up to the

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 245

oor, the carriage in which he was to be taken to prison, and with
hat fatal sound all his resolutions fled. Down on his knees he
ell, the father before his child, his face streaming with tears,
is hands clasped towards her, his old face agonized beyond
e power of words to tell.

" Nano, my child, I cannot say that word, but oh ! have mercy
n your father."

The words went out to the walls. She had rushed from his
presence like one demented, passing blindly the doctors and asy-
lum officers in the hall, flinging aside the outstretched arms of
Olivia waiting with pitiful face and eager heart to address and
comfort her, and burying herself in the refuge of her own room.
She took her station at the window, and watched with wild eyes
the emaciated man who stood for a moment on the step awaiting
with quiet dignity the disposition of the officers who had him in
charge. Curious eyes were upon him, and he was not disturbed.
There was no trace of the late trying emotion in his countenance.
He stepped into the carriage with scarcely a glance around him,
and so was led away to his dreadful prison, while she, with mad
tossings and ravings, flung herself on the floor, crying :
" What have I done ? what have I done ? "
She lay there moaning as strong natures moan when once
they have hopelessly burst their bounds, leaving a grief-stricken
girl to stand amazed at the open door, then to close it with a
pale countenance, and to go away abhorring that house on which
seemed to have fallen the curse of God.

CHAPTER XX.

THE LULL AFTER THE STORM.

IT was near the end of the month of February, and the winter
began to show signs of breaking up its encampment in Canada.
The Canadian world bore the event with composure. They
were skilled in the peculiarities of their blustering friend, and
ew that he would not, like the Arabs, fold his tents in the night

nd silently steal away. He gave long, comfortable warnings. If
a sleighing-party was projected in early March it might be pro-
ceeded with as leisurely as in the depths of the season. There
was no need of making all arrangements and completing them

ithin two days. If the snow was scarce in the city the country
could still afford enough for a cutter, and not infrequently, after a
seemingly pronounced departure, the frosty old joker returned

246 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

suddenly for a positively last appearance, and played the mischief
with Canadian tempers and Canadian spring costumes. The
whirl and rush of pleasure still went on.. The snow lay thick and
the days were clear and sunshiny ; parties and balls were as nu-
merous as in the early season, and were quite as vigorously at-
tended ; the theatres were in full blast ; the Saturday promenades
distinguished by the usual number of well-dressed people, male
arid female simpletons being plentifully sprinkled about ; and al-
together the sea of fashionable society was tossing and raging
with old-time audacity, bearing on its bosom the gayest of travel-
lers, whose voices could be heard from ten o'clock of this morn-
ing until three o'clock of the next, and sometimes longer, if the
champagne chanced to be plentiful.

The noise only of the tumult, the last ridge of the breakers,
reached the highland of desolation and portentous quiet where
the houses of the Fullertons and the McDonells stood. Sorrow
and crime had drawn a cordon around those fated dwellings, be-
yond which the votaries of pleasure were not to go. Deeply
they regretted it, so far as McDonell House was concerned ; but
the little dwelling which had been Olivia's pride was passed by
with a supercilious stare or never approached at all. The tran-
scendentalists were down in the mouth again. Destiny was at
work to keep the goddess shut up in her shrine for that winter,
and, having a high respect for the modern Fate, they bore the
privation without a murmur. Nano was not at home for days
after her father's departure for the asylum. How she spent the
hours in the loneliness of the great house, unvisited even by Kil-
lany, God only knows. What sorrowful images must have sur-
rounded her bedside in the darkness of night ! What gloomy
spectres and harsh meditations must have thrust themselves upon
her by day ! What bitter, hopeless regret for the past must have
been hers ; what hopelessness for the future, with the recollection
of what she was, with the memory of what she had done, weigh-
ing upon her ! The disgust which the sensitive soul suffers after
a humiliating fall her soul enjoyed to its full measure, and the
mournful consciousness that her crime could never be undone was
the spectre which pointed and sneered at her from every side.
Like Lady Macbeth, she washed her hands with dreadful persist-
ency, rubbing, and moaning as she rubbed, dreading and knowing
that they never would be clean ; and, like the same strong-minded
lady, she had unsexed herself and been filled from crown to toe
with direst cruelty.

The last picture of an old man kneeling with streaming eyes,

b
b

;

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 247

onized face, outstretched hands, and pleading voice would never
effaced from her brain. She saw it everywhere. In her sleep
he sad cry, " Have mercy, my child, have mercy ! " rang- in her
rs, and woke her to shiver and tremble and cower for the rest
the night. So the days passed by, full of untold misery and
elf-abasement.

When nature was exhausted with its own battlings she got re-
ief. A dull indifference or stupor wrapped up thought and sen-
sibility. Her frightful dreams departed ; she began her old trick
of sleeping like a child through the whole night ; her appetite
improved, and as a consequence her color came back and the old
sweet gravity of her manner, which had been driven off for a time
by the feverish gayety of despair. She put away her skeleton.
It was obtrusive yet, but was growing stale from custom. A
crime cannot haunt the criminal always. Physical weakness or
repetition may bring it to the doors again ; but bur}' the chances
of ill-health and relapse into sin, and the blunted nature, like any
deformed thing, will soon find relief. Perpetual dread, or fear, or
sorrow is as impossible to man's animal nature as continual joy.
Nano had found the relief of pure exhaustion, which would in
time become perhaps more natural, and, mistaking it for the real
article, congratulated herself on thus suddenly overcoming con-
science, and began her preparations for enjoying to the utmost
that wealth which she had so deeply sinned to save to herself.
Her thoughts naturally turned to Olivia at the outset her ideal
of the beautiful and true in woman, and now become almost di-
vine to her humiliated mind. Her friend had not called since
ell, she could not remember the exact date, but it did not mat-
r. Not matter ? Stop ! Was not Olivia in the hall that day
hen she came rushing like a madwoman from her father's pre-
nce ? And Olivia, she recollected, had held out her arms, her
retty face all cast down with a friend's sorrow, and she had paid
o attention to the offered sympathy. Was there any connection
between that scene and Olivia's prolonged absence ? Could she
have any suspicion as to the true state of affairs with regard to
cDonell ? Her heart stood still. The only creature in the
orld that loved her to know of her guiltiness ! Oh ! it could not
be; and her breath came in gasps, and she found herself suddenly
brought back again to a consciousness of crime and of life in its
resent altered circumstances.

" If she knows," was her murmured comment on this painful
uspicion, " then all is over between us. I can lay that dream of
love, and friendship, and sisterhood aside for ever."

248 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

Then she tried to persuade herself that, with her wealth and
power and personal qualities, she did not stand in need of the
friendship of the Fullertons, that she was not dependent on any
human creature for comfort or happiness ; and she despised her-
self for the pangs which troubled her at the mere thought of los-
ing Olivia. Pride was the lady's stumbling-block to faith and
salvation. She felt but would not know the emptiness of her own
utterances, and spoke them aloud, and tried to feel -as if the great
master of transcendentalism had himself spoken them.

That day, the sixth from her father's departure, Sir Stanley
Dashington sent up his card. " Urgent " was marked on it, and
she went down to the drawing-room at once to meet him, arrayed
in a half-mourning costume, her lips and cheeks faintly touched
with rouge to hide the evidences of long suffering.

" I am delighted to see you, Sir Stanley," said she, with
assumed lightness of tone and manner. " Do you know, you ai
the first of my friends to call on me since my late misfortune."

" I am glad to have the honor," replied the baronet, " and
assure you I was sorry to hear of that calamity to which you n
fer. It is a pleasure to see that you bear it with proper resign;
tion. Will you pardon me if I say that I have another burden t<
lay upon your shoulders, and if I ask you to use your womanb
instinct and influence in a case interesting to yourself, and to m<
doubly interesting? "

"Olivia?" said the lady, with quick comprehension and a
change of color as rapid and marked as rouge would permit.

" Olivia," the baronet answered, " whose mysterious behavior
during the past week has thrown her brother and me into con-
sternation. What do you think of a naturally lively young lady,
given to pleasure, to visiting, shopping, and gossiping, who re-
tires suddenly from the world, receives no visits and makes none,
remains obstinately enclosed within four walls, loses her appetite
and probably her sleep, grows in consequence pale, nervous, and
hysterical, yet pretends all the time that there is nothing wrong,
and won't submit to cross-examination from brother or friend ? "

The symptoms were so much her own that, struck with the
similarity, Nano remained silent long enough to collect her wits
together and make a suitable reply.

" We must get at the causes, of course," she said at last.
There must be reasons for so startling a change in the young
lady. Perhaps, Sir Stanley, a good part of the remedy is in your
hands."

The baronet shook his head mournfully.

[88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 249

"Do you think, if it were, I would not have discovered it
fore now and have used it to advantage ? I offered her all I
had myself and would you credit the result, Miss McDonell? "

" That she refused ? no."

" Oh ! she did not refuse. I would have been in heaven now,
if she had, or in Ireland. Nor did she consent. There were con-
ditions, she said, and I must wait until circumstances in a certain
case had decided one way or another. According to their going,
so was mine to be. And the worst of it is, if I knew the circum-
stances I might give them the favorable turn ; but I don't."

Again Nano was silent and disturbed. Could Olivia's distress
be in any way connected with late events in her own household ?
It was difficult to see where any connection could exist, yet her
. mind, awaked to suspicion, was running after phantoms and hin-
dered in its action by straws. She had forgotten the incident of
the reception.

" I can suggest nothing, except that I go to her myself, and
try to draw her from her seclusion and get her to confess the
reason of this masquerading. In her case I can call it by no
other name."

" Your plan is excellent, and the very one we wished to pro-
pose," said Sir Stanley. " In the doing of it I beg of you not to
forget me."

"You have deserved too well of me to be forgotten."

" Accept my thanks ; and when may we look for you ? We are
anxious that an end be put to this matter speedily."

" Ah ! do not look upon my success as certain. I may fail
more ignominiously than you. I shall go within two days."

" How can we ever thank you enough ! Let me beg pardon
for intruding upon you at such a time."

t" You have done me a favor rather. I shall expect to see you
on again. Good-morning."
They parted with very different sentiments regarding the
ntle girl whose condition occasioned them so much alarm.
From the night of the carnival Olivia had not ventured to
walk abroad. The doctor's poison had already worked through
the circles of the city, and as a consequence callers dropped off
one by one, invitations dwindled down to nothing, and bows
were so cool and cuts direct so numerous that she gave up her
walks altogether in fear of meeting any of her acquaintances.
Her brother was so wrapped up in his profession as rarely to en-
ter society, and she thanked Heaven for that, he was so quick to
discover any change in the countenance of Dame Society. It was

250 A WOMAN OF CULTURE, [May,

natural that the strain on her feelings should in a short time have
an effect on her outward appearance. When she grew pale and
heavy-eyed her brother wondered, commanded, scolded. When
he saw her appetite failing, and discovered that she walked of
nights or sat up in her room till the morning hours, he was posi-
tively furious ; but neither affection nor authority could move
this obstinate maid, and she continued her downward and dissi-
pating courses. He tried strategy, and failed. He suggested re-
moval to a fairer climate, and she refused to budge. In his de-
spair, after consulting with the distracted Sir Stanley, he left the
matter in the hands of Nano McDonell.

Olivia suffered still more under this well-meant persecution.
Her object was to discover of herself, as Mrs. Strachan had di-
rected, what papers or proofs her brother had of their legitimacy.
If they were satisfactory the affair might be put in Harry's
hands to be managed as he pleased, or Killany might be forced,
through fear of an exposure, to retract his infamous slanders. If
they were not, and none better could be obtained, Mrs. Strachan
had no further advice to give. Her reticence was more sugges-
tive than words. It meant social oblivion and disgrace for the
Fullertons. The intentional slight which had been put upon
Harry the night of the carnival, and which he, poor fellow ! then
misunderstood and afterwards forgot, delayed for a time her in-
vestigations. She was fearful of arousing his suspicions. He
had suffered so much in his life that now, when Fortune seemed
to smile on him, she dreaded anything occurring which might
bring the care-worn lines into his handsome face again.

If it \vere possible she was determined to right the affair her-
self ; but until matters had assumed a more tranquil appearance
she did not venture to approach him on so delicate a subject.
Continual anxiety, in the meantime, had brought about the change
in her appearance. The doubt, and dread, and suspense of her
position were harder to bear than actual disgrace, and she could
not control her feelings or conceal them so thoroughly as Nano
McDonell. And this elegant lady was another source of sorrow
and anxiety for her tried heart. She did not exactty know what
she feared. She was not sure of anything, and she hardly dared
whisper to herself the awful suspicion which Nano's wild words
and actions on a certain sad day had raised in her mind. A com-
mission, of which her brother had been a member, had declared
the merchant insane. She had not spoken to Harry about it,
He seemed to take the affair as an ordinarily sorrowful event,
and never alluded to it in a particular fashion. Yet the strange

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 251

words of Mr. McDonell on that morning when in her presence he
had accused his daughter of being his enemy ; the authoritative
airs of Killany, and Nano's remark that the man was distasteful
but useful ; and, lastly, Nano's demeanor and mysterious agony
and self-accusation on the day of her father's departure for the
asylum, were links in a chain of premises whose conclusion forced
itself upon her irresistibly, horror-stricken as she was at the
thought of such unfaithfulness to her friend. That Nano, proud,
beautiful Nano, could be guilty of so heinous a crime was almost
impossible ! And yet and yet ! The racking doubts never left
her day or night, and an overpowering disgust for the friend
who had loved and cherished her for many years began to steal
into her heart. The dream of a union between her and Harry,
formerly so pleasant and frequently indulged in, inspired her
with the same feelings of revulsion. She wept over her un-
reasoning haste in thus condemning her friend unheard.

The opportunity of speaking to Harry on the all-important
topic came at last on the evening of that day on which Sir Stan-
ley had called upon Nano. Harry and she were sitting in the
drawing-room, the doctor reading in high good-humor some
magazine sketches, and she engaged with her sewing. Her
thoughts were not on the reading, however, but on the conversa-
tion she was about to begin ; and her heart beat almost to suffo-
cation as the fated moment drew near. When the doctor had
finished his article, and was commenting on it, she said in her
quietest and most ordinary tone of voice :

" You never told me about that commission, Harry, of which
you were a member a week ago, in the case of Mr. McDonell."

" What was there to tell ? " said Harry, in bantering mood.
" You know the result. He went off to the asylum a few days
later, and it was the safest place for him, 1 should judge."

" I know. But you never told me of your own interview
with him, and how he acted, and all those little particulars."

" You are after the gossip, I see. Well, I was greeted by the
gentleman precisely as you would like to greet Killany. He
never looked at me. When I began to speak a change came over
his face. He seemed like one struck with mortal fear, accused
me of haunting him at night and of being in league with his
daughter, and cried, ' Go, go ! ' until I was forced to leave from a
fear that he would injure himself by his excitement. Nothing
was plainer than his madness, although he went off to his prison
with much dignity. His attacks may be only periodic. There
is hope for him in that case."

252 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

" Poor Nano ! " sighed Olivia, much relieved, yet with doubt
still tugging at her heart-strings. " To be so utterly alone 1 "

" I know others that were left most utterly alone," said the
doctor, with a shadow on his face, " and there wasn't so much as
a drop of sympathy ever given them. You never knew father, or
mother, or fortune, child."

" Ah ! but that fact makes my sorrow more easily borne," said
this sweet diplomat, as if falling into a reverie. " How much I
would give, though, to have a miniature of them, or a bit of writ-
ing, or some other memento ! "

" Our good, mysterious guardian," answered the doctor sav-
agely, " took care to remove all evidences of who and what we
were, and several other things of equal value, if my child's
memory serves me rightly."

" Do you remember them, Harry, and the guardian ? " she
asked with cunning indifference.

u Pretty well," he said musingly. " And we resemble our
father mostly, for our mother was a dark-haired, sweet-eyed
woman, very gentle, and loving, and commanding. She died very
soon after our arrival in New York. I have a dim, confused re-
collection of the street we lived on, and of one shady spot in par-
ticular where I took you every day and cried quietly over our
dead mother and dying father. It amused you, a two-year-old,
so much that you forgot your own sorrows and vigorous yell-
ing, and put up your pretty baby-hands to catch the tears and
smooth and pet my wrinkled countenance. Boy-like, I laughed a
minute later. Then a friend or relative came along, whom my
father was very glad to see. He arranged matters, took all the
papers and valuables, placed us a few hundred miles apart, and
made himself invisible and unapproachable till this day. I would
like to meet him."

" Do you think he took anything of value, Harry ? Do you
think there was anything of value to take ? "

" I feel quite certain of it, and our guardian's manner since is
conclusive. Why was he afraid to come forward as an honest
man and claim his friend's children, whom he had voluntarily
taken it upon himself to support and educate? He has hidden
like a thief. He gave us a good education out of funds that were
not his own, I'll be bound, since it is unfair to suspect him of so
much generosity. Then he sent us adrift. He concealed his
name and residence, and was careful to keep all avenues to dis-
covery closed. We are not of noble birth, nor the victims of a
romantic episode, nor likely to trouble him for what was not

iS8

i.] A WOMAN- OF CULTURE. 253

owing to us from justice. Why, then, did he remain unknown,
except through fear that we might make it hot for him hereafter?
He took away all hopes of proving our own position to the
world as the children of a Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton, who came
from a southern country where they had been married, and died
in New York. Olivia, we are not even sure of our names."

The color was not deep in her cheek at any time during these
past few days, but it fled altogether at this crushing announce-
ment. In vain she bent lower over her work to conceal the tell-
tale expression of utter despair, and the pain that looked from her
eyes. The doctor saw it, and, though excited in his grave way,
mistook the cause of her emotion.

" There, I have frightened you," he said, with a sigh of relief,
" and worked myself up to enthusiasm. But the consequences of
our guardian's doings are not serious, and never will be. We
shall get along quite as well, perhaps, as if burdened by exhaustive
particulars with regard to our family. Perhaps our name was
Sykes, or Wiggins, or Trigginbotham, or some other hideous
combination of Anglo-Saxon roots, and our relatives might have
been the veriest rascals that ever trod the earth. There is conso-
lation to be derived from so frightful a negation as having no
family."

She could not laugh at his absurd remarks. They had too
much sorrowful meaning for her, lightly as they were uttered ;
but having recovered somewhat of her color and confidence/ she

:ed :

" But if our good name were ever called in question, Harry ?
Suppose an instance in which we would be required to prove our
legitimacy, and our relationship to those we call father and
mother? If we were unable to do so would not the conse-
quences then be frightful ? "

" That is a different matter, and I have occasionally thought
it as a possibility. I h#ve thought, too, of searching up the re-
cords, but want of time and want of money are great obstacles,
nd the search might 'prove fruitless. There was a neighbor in
ew York who attended on our father and mother in their last
oments, and might know many useful things. But is she alive
or dead? Proving our right to the name we carry would be a
difficult but not impossible matter. I even doubt if we could do
it at all, unless under very favorable circumstances."

This was the judge's sentence. She said nothing, and an icy
feeling seemed crowding around her heart as if to shut off from
it all warmth and joy for ever. There was, then, no answer for
Killany's slanders, and before long Harry would learn the full

254 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [May,

force of the calamity that had befallen them. The love which
she had cherished in her bosom for the bright, bold Irish baronet
had become a thorn to rankle there ; and as for her brother, he
need never turn his thoughts again to the woman who had won
his heart. The doctor was musing and did not observe her si-
lence or expression. Her pallor was deepening with every mo-
ment. Only the glow of the firelight and the shadow in which
she partly sat availed to hide her mortal agony from his eyes.

" Ah ! but these troubles," he said at last, " are only visionary.
They are nothing compared to those which have passed or to
those which are, and we can lay them aside until they present
themselves. Olivia, I want your advice. IVty greatest trouble at
present is that I am hopelessly in love."

" Have I not known that since the night on \vhich I discovered
the photograph you carried next your heart? If she knew that ! "

" If she did," sighed he, " and appreciated it rightly, what a
happy man this city would hold ! I have hope."

" Of course. What lover has not, even where the differences
are more telling? Income of the lover, two thousand ; income of
the lady, thirty thousand a year. According to reason, what are
his chances?"

" Two out of thirty," he answered, " and that is very good."

" I have not compared your qualities with hers yet. Put
them side by side, and what are your chances then ? "

" Zero/' he said humbly. " How you do pour on the cold
water, Olivia ! "

" It is best for you to know the worst before you fee"! it. I
would not discourage you in your efforts, but do not be hasty.
And now, if you will excuse, I will retire to bed. The clock is
striking ten."

She had risen with averted face, put away her work, and tot-
tfered as far as the door, in hopes to escape without being ob-
served.

" What a hurry you are in, when you know I wish to talk of
the lady of my heart ! Are you afraid that I shall make odious
comparisons? What are you more than I that a baronet should
stoop to honor you with a title and a rent-roll ? Why could not
Miss McDonell stoop to the poor physician as well ? "

" The comparison does not exist," said she, opening the door.
" 1 shall never marry Sir Stanley Dashington."

The door closed, and he heard her steps die away on the stairs
and in the upper hall ; and if ever a man was thunderstruck and
completely overwhelmed it was Doctor Henry Fullerton.

TO BE CONTINUED.

1 88 1.] ETHNOLOGIC STUDIES. 255

ETHNOLOGIC STUDIES AMONG THE NORTH
AMERICAN INDIANS.

" The proper study of mankind is man."

THE Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institute has
been for the last decade doing good work in ferreting out, and
reducing to a form in which the subject can be properly studied,
the habits and customs of the aboriginal inhabitants of our broad
continent. Three modest volumes have been issued lately, styled
by their authors Introduction to the Study of I, The Languages
of the Indians, by Major J. W. Powell ; 2, The Sign-Languages
of the Indians, by Col. Garrick Mallery, U.S.A. ; and 3, The
Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians, by Dr. H.
C. Yarrow, U.S.A.

In his preface to one of the volumes Major Powell, who is the
chief of the Bureau, tells us that

" Eleven years ago only, ethnological researches among the North Ame-
rican Indians were commenced by myself and my assistants while mak-
ing explorations on the Colorado River and its tributaries. From that time
ie present such investigations have been in progress." Besides his own
labors, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institute has placed in the major's
hands much material, collected by the collaborators of the Institute, relat-
ing to Indian languages and customs, to be used with his own researches in
a series of publications. " The work," he says, " begun incidentally to a
geographical and geological survey, has grown to such proportions that a
large number of assistants are engaged. More than five hundred languages,
belonging to seventy distinct stocks or families, are spoken by these In-
dians, and a like variety of subject-matter exists in other branches of ethnic
research."

The brochure of Major Powell, the first of the series, is, he tells
us, an enlarged edition of what was issued in 1877. It is not, he
says, a philosophic treatment of the subject of language, nor is it
a comparative grammar of Indian tongues ; it is simply a series of
explanations of certain characteristics almost universal in Indian
languages.

The difficulty attending the study of an unwritten language is
very great, inasmuch as the sounds must first be mastered and
then committed to writing, and the simplest elements into which
the sounds of a savage or barbaric language can be resolved are

256 ETHNOLOGIC STUDIES AMONG THE [May,

often more complex than the elementary sounds of the English.
Therefore in writing out an Indian tongue the Roman alphabet
must be used without additions, each s.ound must have a letter of
its own, and each character must be used to represent but one
sound. Another requirement in this study is patience, as it is
difficult to hold the attention of an Indian for any length of time,
and, again, all has to be verified most carefully, lest some grim
jesting of these sons of the forest pass undetected.

It has been the habit to decry the Indian languages as want-
ing in value as instruments for the expression of thought ; but the
student is soon surprised by the discovery that many of the
characteristics of the classic languages which have been to a
greater or lesser extent lost in the modern tongues have been
preserved, and not only preserved but more highly developed
than in the originals in the Indian. Major Powell sets forth the
value of the Indian languages by comparing them with the Eng-
lish. In the former the nouns are connotive i.e., the name does
something more than simply indicate the object to which it be-
longs : it also assigns it some quality or characteristic. As, for in-
stance, the Ute name for bear is " he seizes " or " the hugger." In
Seneca the north is " the sun never goes there." In the Pavant lan-
guage a school-house is called P6-kunt-in-in-yi-kan. The first part
of the word, po-kunt, signifies " sorcery is practised," and is the
name given by the Indians to any writing, because they first sup-
posed it a method of practising sorcery ; in-in-yi is the verb sig-
nifying " to count," and the meaning of the word has been ex-
tended so as to signify " to read " ; " kan " signifies wigwam, and
is derived from the word " kan," " to stay." Thus the literal
meaning of the word is " a staying place where sorcery is
counted."

Indian tongues are highly synthetic, for we find adverbs in-
corporated with verbs, and prepositions also so used. The voice,
mood, and tense of verbs are expressed by the use of inflections or
agglutinated particles. Pronouns also are incorporated in verbs.
A Ponca Indian, remarking that " a man killed, a rabbit," would
be forced to utter the following rigmarole : The man, he, one,
animate, standing (in the nominative case), purposely killed, by
shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, the one, animate, sitting (in the
objective case). For the form of a verb " to kill " would have to
be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection and in-
corporated particles to denote person, number, and gender as ani-
mate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or lying, and
case ; and the form of the verb w r ould also express whether the

1 88 1,] NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 257

killing was done accidentally or purposely, and whether it was
by shooting- or by some other process, and, if by shooting,
whether by bow and arrow or with a gun ; and the form of the
verb would in like manner have to express all of these things re-
lating to the object that is, the person, number, gender, and case
of the object ; and from the multiplicity of paradigmatic forms of
the verb " to kill " this particular one would have to be selected.
When we consider the expenditure of breath and time it requires
to make a simple remark like the above we cease to wonder at
the taciturnity of the red man : on the contrary, we would be
surprised that he could find listeners with sufficient leisure to
keep up an ordinary conversation.

The second of the series of brochures is, Col. Mallery tells
us, intended to indicate the scope of a future publication upon
the same subject now in course of preparation by the Bureau^
presumably under his direction. These few pages will give a
glimpse of what is to come, and are an indication or suggestion,
of material and modus operandi to those to whom he looks for
subject-matter. In glancing over them a vista of great interest
in itself and relatively, as it brings before us other points to^
which the minds of most of us would never otherwise have turn-
ed, is opened. As Hamlet tersely puts it (slightly altered)^
" There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed:
of in our philosophy " ; and having made that discovery, we should
be unwilling to rest there, but at once set about mastering a field
research so near home before turning to others.

After a few pages serving as V envoi, from which we shall epi-
>mize, and which is such charming reading that we are tempted
to resolve ourselves into Olivers and cry for " more ! " Col. Mal-
lery sinks himself in the editor of the vocabulary. He thinks, in.
opposition to an opinion generally claimed, " that the Indian*
sign-language is not a mere semaphoric repetition of traditional'
signals, whether or not purely arbitrary in their origin, but is a
cultivated art founded upon principles which can be readily
applied by travellers and officials so as to give them much inde-
pendence of professional interpreters." Therefore an adept in<
this art should be able to make himself comprehended, without
understanding a word of their language, by several different wild
tribes of the plains, as did a professor in a deaf-mute college.
And, of course, this advantage would extend to the savages of
Africa and Asia.

Sign-language is the mother-language of Nature. Some of the
enthusiasts in this study hold that it is superior to spoken lan-

VOL. xxxiii. 17

258 ETHNOLOGIC STUDIES AMONG THE P y lay,

guage in reality, and only seemingly inferior because it has not
been brought to its final perfection. It certainly must be ad-
mitted that the elements of the sign-language are truly natural
and universal; it also is self-interpreting, and in this power has
an advantage over the spoken language, inasmuch as the latter
requires "it to assist in its interpretation to a great extent. Al-
though it cannot be available without light, it is useful without
sound ; thus the one inconvenience is outbalanced by the advan-
tage. Rapid as thought itself, when used by a proficient it is
marvellous to witness the readiness with which it can be under-
stood.

Picture-writing is another form of sign-language, and the only
form in which the aborigines kept their records.

Of the grammar of signs Col. Mallery says :

" While the gesture-utterance presents no other part of grammar to the
philologist besides syntax, or the grouping and sequence of its ideographic
pictures, the arrangement of signs, when in connected succession, affords an
interesting comparison with the early syntax of vocal language, and the
analysis of their original conceptions, studied together with the holophras-
tic roots in the speech of the gestures, may aid to ascertain some relation
between concrete ideas and words. Meaning does not adhere to the pho-
netic presentation of thought, while it does to signs. The latter are doubt-
less more flexible and, in that sense, more mutable than words, but the
ideas attached to them are persistent, and, therefore, there is not much
greater metamorphosis in the signs than in the cognitions. The further a
language has been developed from its primordial roots, which have been
twisted into forms no longer suggesting any reason for their original selec-
tion, and the more primitive significance of its words has disappeared, the
fewer points of contact can it retain with signs. The higher languages are
more precise because the consciousness of the derivation of most of their
words is lost, so that they have become counters, good for any sense agreed
upon ; but in our native dialects, which have not advanced in that direction
to the degree exhibited by those of civilized man, the connection between
the idea and the word is only less obvious than that still unbroken between
the idea and the sign, and they remain strongly affected by the concepts of
outline, form, place, position, and feature on which gesture is founded, while
they are similar in their fertile combination of radicals. For these reasons
the forms of sign-language adopted by our Indians will be of special value
to the student of American linguistics."

Col. Mailery contradicts the generally received idea that all
the tribes of North America have had and still use a common and
identical sign-language, of ancient origin, in which they can com-
municate freely without oral assistance. He continues :

"The fact that this statement is at variance with some of the principles
and use of signs set forth by Dr. Tylor, whose chapters on gesture-speech

1 88 1.] NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 259

in his Researches into the Early History of Mankind have in a great degree
prompted the present inquiries, does not appear to have attracted the at-
tention of that eminent authority. He receives the report without ques-
tion, and formulates it, that ' the same signs serve as a medium of converse
from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.' Its truth can only be estab-
lished by careful comparison of lists or vocabularies of signs taken under
test conditions at widely different times and places."

The result of his (Col. Mallery's) inquiries proves that the
idea of one universal and absolute sign-language is, in its general
assertion, one of many popular errors regarding the aborigines.

The writer closes with a long list of signs showing how many
different ones indicate the same object, and giving the names of
the tribes which use them. He also gives an anecdote which
very amusingly illustrates the readiness with which some natures
are willing to draw conclusions flattering to their self-love, or, as
they believe, proving the truth of their own pet theories.

James I. of England, desiring to play a trick upon the Spanish
ambassador, who was daft on the subject of sign-language, told
him that there was a distinguished professor of that science in the
university at Aberdeen. The ambassador set but at once for the
place, but the king had sent instructions before. A butcher, one
Gendy, in the town was blind of one eye; he was, however,
a fellow of much wit. Him they dressed in wig and gown, and
told that he must not open his lips; they placed him upon the
professor's chair, and then introduced the ambassador, leaving
them alone together. Presently the latter came out much
pleased, claiming that his theory was demonstrated. " When I
entered the room," said he, " I raised one finger to signify there
is but one God. He replied by raising two fingers to signify
that this Being rules over two worlds, the material and spirit-
ual. Then I raised three fingers to say there are three persons
in the Godhead. He then closed his fingers, evidently to say
these three are one." The professors then sent for the butcher,
who appeared very angry, and when questioned said : " When
the crazy man entered the room he raised one finger, as much
as to say I had but one eye ; and I raised two fingers to signify
that I could see out of my one eye as well as he could out
of both of his. When he raised three fingers, as much as to
say there were but three eyes between us, I doubled my fist,
and, if he had not gone out of that room in a hurry I'd have
knocked him down ! "

In conclusion Col. Mallery says :

" In no other part of the thoroughly explored world has there been

260 THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. [May,

spread over so vast a space so small a number of individuals divided by so
many linguistic and dialectic boundaries as in North America. Many
wholly distinct tongues have for a long, indefinite time been confined to a
few scores of speeches verbally incomprehensible to all others on the face
of the earth, who did not, from some rarely operating motive, laboriously
acquire their language."

This multiplicity of tongues rendered a sign-language an ab-
solute necessity something which presented ideas in a tangible
shape ; and that this sign-language was copious and satisfactory
Col. Mallery has shown in a most interesting manner. His
larger work is to be looked for with much interest by those who
have had the pleasure of glancing over this introductory, while
the labor involved in its production can be approximately esti-
mated.

THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE.

MANY delightful excursions can be made from the Baths of
Ussat, a small watering-place in the Pyrenees, on the Ariege.
The beauty of the fresh valleys secluded among the mountains,
the pastoral character of the inhabitants and the poetic simplicity
of their manners, the legendary chapels that consecrate so many
picturesque spots and the unusual number of ruined castles on
the mountain-spurs are constantly tempting you to explore in
every direction. The castle of Lordat, for instance, so long the
bulwark of this frontier, is not far off. It stands on the very top
of a lofty, isolated peak, seemingly inaccessible, overlooking a
wild gorge in whose gloomy depths rushes a fierce mountain tor-
rent. Nothing could be more romantic than these majestic ruins,
which bespeak the wealth and power of the ancient barons. The
crumbling towers are often wrapped in clouds, and from their
perilous height you look down through the rifts of the fleecy
veil into delicious glens and valleys, now peaceful as the calm
pastoral life of the inhabitants, but which resounded more or
less with the din of arms for a thousand years. The valley of
the Ariege, in fact, from its source at the foot of Pic Lanoux, on
the confines of Andorre, to its junction with the Garonne not far
from Toulouse, was the theatre of bloody wars not only in the

[88 1.] THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. 261

ime of the Huguenots and the Albigenses, but as far back as the
e of Charlemagne and the Moors, Not a walled town in all
his region that has not undergone a siege ; not a defile that
as not witnessed a hand-to-hand fight for its possession. The
loughman, as he turns up the soil, still finds fragments of old
mor once worn by Christian knights, and of weapons that, from
eir shape, were evidently fashioned by the Saracens. Every-
ing speaks of past warfare. There are the remains of over a
undred castles that once defended these valleys, dismantled in
the time of Richelieu. The very churches used to be fortified,
and the cloisters rang not only with holy psalmody, but with the
blast of trumpets and clang of arms. Many of the caverns still
to be seen in the mountain-sides were also fortified, such as the
Spoulgas * of Arnoulac.

The upper part of the Ariege is full of wild beauty, shut in as
it is by the everlasting mountains. Ussat itself is walled in by
precipitous cliffs of limestone, whose bare sides contrast admira-
bly with the green valley kept fresh by the swift-running stream.
In them are numerous caves, some with beautiful stalactites, oth-
ers containing human remains- and the bones of wild animals.
Many of them were once occupied as a place of refuge from the
enemy, and some are still inhabited, as may be seen from the
windows here and there cut through the rock, and the smoke
issuing from the crevices.

Below Ussat the river winds around the base of the lofty
Mount St. Bartholomew, beyond which is Tarascon-sur-Ariege
in a basin formed by the union of several valleys. This has been
considered an important post ever since the Roman conquest,
because it commands three roads to Spain by the ports of Siguer,
uzat, and Merens, as well as the control of the iron-mines up
the Vicdessos, which have been worked ever since the time of
the Phoenicians. Here the Romans established a colony and set
up defences on the heights, showing themselves by no means in-
different to the temperature and beauty of the places they se-
lected. The basin itself is lovely, being watered by four moun-
in streams that go wandering off 'mid clumps of alders, willows,
nd poplars. Through the very town flows the gave of Vicdes-
sos, spanned by a bridge with three bold arches. At the north
is a mountain sheltering it from pernicious winds. The moun-
tains at the south are now bare of all vegetation, but were once
covered by the oak, holly, and box. One gray detached peak of
limestone rises near the town, on which are the remains of the

* A name derived from spelunca, signifying a cave.

icu
taii
am

262 THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. [May,

massive Celtiberian castle of Quie, a gloomy hold bespeaking the
primitive rudeness of the old mountaineers. In the distance you
can see the ruins of the castles of Calames and Miramont, two
ancient sentinels of the mountain-passes. Calames is on the cone-
like mountain of Rabat, the top of which is shaped like the an-
cient calamus, or pipe, whence the name. This castle is said to
have been founded by the Romans, and has played an important
rdle in the history of the country, especially during the Carlo-
vingian period. All the castles of this region are on precipitous
heights admirably situated for hurling down showers of stones
on the enemy a favorite mode of defence in former times.

The valley of the Vicdessos is also most interesting to ex-
plore. It is hedged in by bare, calcareous cliffs, with feudal tow-
ers here and there on the summits, such as the castle of Miglos,
whose frowning walls hang over a deep ravine very striking to
the imagination. Everywhere are forges and iron-works, giving
a peculiar physiognomy to the landscape, as well as life and ac-
tivity, greatly increased by the advent of railways. At the junc-
tion of the Vicdessos and Ariege, just south of Tarascon, where
you enter the gorges of Ax and Niaux, the mountains gradually
descend, and at the foot, where the rivers unite, the Romans are
said to have erected an altar or temple, and beyond is the grotto
of Sabar, one of those caves sacred to the Iberians, who counted
among their divinities the peyros rousados, or cliffs hollowed out
by the action of water. The ancient inhabitants of the Pyre-
nees, in fact, not only honored the great features of nature, such
as mountains, torrents, and lakes, but the action of water on the
rocks and the winds in the forest, which impressed their imagi-
nation and filled them with awe. They paid homage to all that
was threatening and imposing in this sublime region, and, with
the instinct of self-preservation, sought to propitiate the myste-
rious power of the elements. Many of their religious rites were
performed in the mountain-caves, like that of Lombribo near
the Pass of Sabar a name that recalls the worship of Ilhumber,
associated with mystery and horror on account of the human re-
mains found in the cavern, though they might have been those
of refugees from the Moors.

Several old legendary writers, and Silius Italicus after them,
have related how Hercules, crossing the mountains on his way
to Spain to vanquish Geryon and bear off his cattle, arrived at
the court of Bebryx, king of these valleys, who received him
with great honor in the cave of Tarascon that is, in the grotto
of Lombribo. Hercules became enamored of Pyrene, the king's

1 88 1.] THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. 263

fair daughter, and won her affections, but soon abandoned her
to continue his journey with as much obduracy as if frightful
Caucasus had brought him forth amid its hard rocks, and Hyr-
canian tigers had given him suck. Infelix Dido ! The forsaken
princess hid herself from the anger of her father among the
gloomy forests, which she made resound with her woes. She
called upon the trees beneath which she had wandered with her
perfidious lover, the caves that bore testimony to his secret
vows, and the sun that witnessed her wrongs. The raging
winds bore her cries across the mountains over which he had
gone. The remembrance of the abandoned princess haunted the
guilty soul of Hercules, and at his return he was desirous of re-
pairing her wrongs. But it was too late. She had fallen a prey
to the wild beasts. In his rage he uprooted the very forest,
slew the ferocious animals, and disembowelled the mountains, fill-
ing them with his cries of despair and making them resound
with the name of his lost Pyrene a name succeeding ages have
taken up, giving it to the entire range. This is, of course, a
lingering tradition of ancient Phoenician enterprise in this re-
gion.

A great number of places in the valley of the Ariege per-
petuate the remembrance of its occupation by the Moors, such as
the tower of Maoii Negre on a height near Tarascon, and the
Moorish hold of Roquemaure, called Roco Mario by the people,
now in ruins, on the top of the bare peak of Genat up the Vic-
dessos, lost, as it were, in the clouds. The Moors held posses-
ion of this region about seventy years, and not only swept away
e villages, churches, and convents of the despised Christians,
ut nearly every vestige of the temples, villas, and monuments
left by the Romans. The people took refuge in the caves and
tnesses of the mountains. No wonder that Charlemagne, who
elivered them from the Saracens and restored them to their
valleys, should be regarded as the type of civilization and pro-
gress, as Hercules was long before him. From the abbey of La
Grasse to the pass of Roncesvaux the name of this great deliv-
erer is still repeated the hero of a thousand legends. Every-
where is found the name of Carol, as the Tour de Carol among
the mountains; Carolcast, where he had an encampment, near
Celles ; and the cone-like Roc de Carol beside the meadow of
Amplaing, where stands a votive church to celebrate his victory.
On the right shore of the Ariege, opposite Sabar, is a meadow
called the Prat, or Pre, Lombard, where, according to tradition,
the Lombards in the service of Charlemagne encamped. Here is.

letl

del

val

264 THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE.- [May,

a spring that issues from a rock beneath the chapel- of St. Pierre,
where pilgrims come to make ablutions as salutary to the body, if
not to the soul.

The night after Charlemagne's great victory over the Moors
in the plain of Tarascon, unable to sleep, he went forth, in spite of
the storm and pitch-darkness, armed and mounted on his steed,
to visit the outposts. A faithful squire accompanied him. All at
once his horse refused to move in spite of rein and spur, and,
looking up, the mighty conqueror beheld Our Lady, luminous and
radiant with beauty. But the vision was only vouchsafed for a
moment. The next morning a statue of brass was found buried
on the spot, which they set up on a stone inscribed by some
mysterious hand with the name of Our Lady of Victory. The
king carried it to Foix, but it returned to the lonely place where
it was first discovered, and here a church was built and an annual
rejoicing appointed on the 8th of September to commemorate
the great victory of Tarascon. Such is the legend of the noted
church of Sabar, which is reckoned among the historic monu-
ments of France. Three other churches were founded by Charle-
magne in this region to perpetuate the memory of his victory
over the Moors at Amplaing, Celles, and Foix, where likewise
a yearly festival was appointed in thanksgiving on the 8th of
September. In the middle ages a victory was generally com-
memorated, not by some monument to human glory, but by a
church or monastery wherein He to whom belongeth victory
might be continually praised. So it was with any deliverance.
Here at Tarascon, for instance, was built the chapel of St. Roch,
once only fifteen feet square, but now a spacious edifice, out of
gratitude for the cessation of a pestilence called the Maichant mal.
The church of Notre Dame de Sabar was so popular from its
foundation in the eighth century that it became the centre or
capital of the surrounding valleys, which soon acquired the name
of Pagus Sabartensis. A military post was established at Sabar
to watch over the passes to Spain. Some say Charlemagne con-
fided these defiles to the guardianship of a kind of military monks,
who exerted a civilizing influence over the people. From them
the Templars were afterwards modelled. Excavations around the
church of Sabar have brought to light such a number of old stone
sarcophagi as to make some suppose it once a populous town ;
but it was, in fact, the favorite burial-place of the whole country
around. A large basilica in the Roman style was built here in
the eleventh century, and acquired such pre-eminence that several
popes conferred on it special privileges, and the incumbent was

88 1.] THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. 265

styled arch-priest. Pope Honorius III. made it a place of refuge
and exemption during the religious wars, even should the coun-
try be laid under an interdict. This was done by a bull to Robert
of Foix in 1224:

" Should the country be smitten with a general interdict, the church
and village of Sabar, with their dependencies, shall be exempt. The divine
offices may be celebrated in the church after excluding the excommuni-
cated and those under the interdict, "but in a low tone, with closed doors,
and without ringing the bells. . . . We also decree that any one, according
to his wish or devotion, may receive funeral honors unhindered in this
church, provided that while living he was not under interdict or excom-
munication, and reserving the rights of the church to which the body of
the defunct belongs."

Everything contributed to make the church of Sabar popular
and attractive : its origin, its legend, the splendor of the majestic
edifice, the imposing ceremonies, the papal privileges, and the
miraculous Madonna. It was surrounded by wild cliffs, and the
ceaseless roar of the torrent of Vicdessos, which almost encircled
it, could be heard in the church. There were picturesque pro-
cessions from the mountains on certain festivals, as at the Annun-
ciation. On Christmas eve the shepherds used to come to offer
the firstlings of their flocks. The pious peasants of the valleys of
Vicdessos, Ax, and Massat came in throngs to pray the Bonne
Dame de Sabar. They used to ascend the rampe of the church
on their knees. Throughout the country the people only swore
y Nostro Dameto de Sabar.

This venerable church was pillaged by the Albigenses in the
irteenth century, and again by the Huguenots in the sixteenth,
he latter not only stripped it of all its valuable ornaments and
tistic riches, but sapped the walls and profaned the tombs, and
r a long time the ruins were a refuge for banditti, who made it
place of terror. The Huguenots had previously got possession
of the castle of Tarascon by treacherous means, and before the
Catholics could arm themselves they were overpowered and
aughtered. This was September 27, 1568. The streets were
aped with dead bodies weltering in their blood. A holy priest
from Ornolac, celebrated as a preacher, was at prayer in the
church of Notre Dame de la Daurade. His friends warned him
his danger, but he wished to celebrate Mass in order to gain
strength for whatever might befall him. He completed the Holy
Sacrifice, and, still clothed in his alb, was making his thanksgiv-
ing on the steps of the altar when he was seized by the collar,
dragged into the street, and thrown into prison, where he was

266 THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. [May,

tightly bound with cords, beaten, sentenced to death, and finally
carried to the top of the frightful peak on which stands the
ancient castle of Tarascon overlooking the Ariege. Here they
tied up the skirt of his alb, filled it with stones, and precipitated
him with a kick into the gulf of Las Madres. Three days after
his body reappeared on the surface of the water, bloody and life-
less, and was secretly borne away by some pious Catholics at the
risk of their lives, and buried in the church of Sabar. We are
sorry to say that when the royalists regained the castle they
slaughtered the Huguenots and cast a large number into the
gulf to avenge the death of the holy priest of Ornolac.

The people wept over the ruins of the church of Sabar, and,
as soon as it was restored, flocked as of old to the venerated sanc-
tuary to feast, as it were, the Virgin so long exiled. The ancient
customs revived, and the reputation of the church as a place of
peculiar sanctity spread far and near. Pere Amillat, a regular
canon of St. Augustine in the seventeenth century, composed a
graceful, naive ballad in the idiom of the people which embodies
the legend and history of the church. It begins thus :

" Bel noum que rejouis
Tout aqueste pays,
Damo de la bictorio,
S' aben pax et santat,
A Diou ne sio la glorio
Et a bostro bountat ! "

The church of Notre Dame de Sabar was never more popular
than in these days. There is a wild, picturesque beauty about the
spot, and the rural processions issuing from the fresh, shadowy
valleys in the early mornings of spring-time, with their gay ban-
ners and touching canticles, are extremely poetic. But the
great festival of the year is on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin,
which generation after generation have come here to celebrate,
with a few sad intervals, in commemoration of the victory of
Charlemagne over a thousand years ago.

M. Garrigou, the learned historian of the Pays de Foix, shows
a striking similarity between the early history of this region and
that of the adjacent country of Andorre, and the identity of their
political traditions. The Pagus Sabartensis was also a kind of
republic with its own laws and customs. Charlemagne respected
the rights of both these provinces, and guaranteed their inde-
pendence as a reward for their supplies in his war with the
Moors. Louis le Debonnaire confirmed his decrees. For sev-

1 88 1.] THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. 267

eral centuries the country of the Sabartes, sheltered by the moun-
tains and almost impenetrable forests, enjoyed their liberties, but
was finally absorbed into the Comte of Foix.

The counts of Foix, so celebrated for their chivalric deeds, de-
scended from the old kings of France, to an offshoot of whom
Charlemagne confided the Marches of Gascony. This was Arta-
galard, a direct descendant of Clotaire II., from whose son Wan-
drille sprang, in a direct line, Arnaud of Comminges, lord of the
castle of Foix in the twelfth century. He married Arsinda, heir-
ess of Carcassonne. It was their grandson who swept away the
independence of this region and made it a part of the new Comt6
of Foix.

The valley of the Ariege between Tarascon and the town of
Foix loses somewhat of its wild, Alpine character. The roads are
excellent and dazzling white from the limestone rocks that mac-
adamize them. The slopes of the hills are covered with grain.
The vines are trained over great heaps of boulders with a pole
set up in the centre, producing the effect of so many leafy bow-
ers, charming to the eye. On the way you should turn aside to
pay homage to Our Lady in the votive chapel in the meadow of
Amplaing where Charlemagne set up an encampment. Not far
off^on a lofty peak, stands Castelpennent, noted in the history of
the country. About six miles from Foix, a little to the right, is
the antique chapel of Notre Dame de Celles on the declivity of a
mountain that shuts in the charming valley of St. Paul de Jarrat
at the southeast, overlooked by the ruined towers of Carolcast
and St. Paul. Pilgrims used to ascend the flinty path on their
knees, stopping to pray at the fourteen oratories on the way.
Now there is a good road, and people walk up at their ease ; but
it is still considered a place unusually favored by God, and there
is a crowd here every morning from St. Ann's day till the first of
November, sometimes amounting to twenty thousand people in a
season. There is also a sacred fountain.

The town of Foix itself is not remarkable, but a feudal, pic-
turesque aspect is given it by the old castle which towers above
on an enormous cliff, inaccessible on every side except by a wind-
ing path hewn along the edge of the rock. It has three towers.
The most ancient ones, at the north, are said by some to owe their
foundation to the Phoceans, and by others to Fuxee, the daugh-
ter of the unfortunate Pyrene. Less pretentious writers go no
further back than the reign of Dagobert. The great round tower,
a veritable donjon, was built in the fourteenth century by the
chivalric Gaston Phoebus, famous for his interminable wars with

268 THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. [May,

the Count of Armagnac. It is of whitish limestone, preserved
from all stain by the dryness of the atmosphere, and one hundred
and thirty-six feet high. From the top there is a superb view.
The cliff stands at the junction of the Larget and Ariege, and at
the base three valleys open among the hills, one in the direction
of Toulouse, another along the Ari6ge towards Tarascon, and
the third to the southwest, where the valley of Barguilliere opens
to give passage to the Larget, an impetuous stream that comes
down from the mountains, bringing freshness and verdure in its
course. Directly beneath the castle is the town with its half-de-
cayed ramparts, its rock-built houses of antique aspect, and streets
so narrow that a horseman could easily strike either wall with
his spurs. i

As we do not wish to impose on the reader our profound con-
viction that Foix owes its name to its foundress, Fuxee, we gene-
rously acknowledge it is commonly supposed to be derived ffiom
Fouich, the ancient capital of the Sotiates, mentioned by Caesar,
whose downfall under the assaults of Crassus excited a cry of de-
spair among the inhabitants that has descended from age to age,
and is now embodied in the common expression, Es a fomc/iall
is lost the last sigh of the race that fought in defence of the
mountain-passes, still echoed after two thousand years.

St. Nazaire, held in such veneration at Beziers and Carcas-
sonne, was the first apostle of Foix, and gave his name to a church
known to have been here in the year 498. The abbey of St. Vo-
lusien, which superseded the house of military monks established
here by Charlemagne, owes its name to a martyr in the time of
the Arians. An old manuscript of 1458 says St. Volusien, or St.
Boulzia, as the peasants call him, was of Roman origin, the son
of a senator of the Orsini race, who came to Gaul to preach the
Gospel and was martyred by the Visigoths- between Fredelas
and Varilhes. The lances wherewith he was pierced were chang-
ed into ash-trees, which became objects of veneration, and when
cut down always sprang up again, and were still flourishing at
the time the chronicle was written. A contest having arisen be-
tween the people of Fredelas and Varilhes as to the possession
of the martyr's body, it was agreed to place it on a car drawn by
two young bullocks and leave it to their instinct. They set off
towards Foix ; and as the way was rough and dangerous along
the shore of the Ari6ge, the rocks softened and the waters of the
river dried up, that the holy remains might pass along its bed.
The marks of the bullocks' feet on the rocks were still to be seen
in 1720, especially at the Pas de Lous Latras beyond the Larget.

tSSi.J THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE^ ' 269

St. Volusien's body was deposited in the church of St. Nazaire
at Foix.

The abbey of St. Volusien was founded by Roger, the second
Count of Foix, in fulfilment of a vow if brought safely back from
Palestine, where the first count had died. It was he who, when the
remains of St. Antoine were removed at Le"zat, bore them him-
self in his mantle at the head of the procession. He made a great
rejoicing, too, on the 4th of January, mi, when the body of St.
Volusien was transferred to the fiew abbatial church in presence
of an immense crowd in which were many bishops, lords, and
knights. His wife, the Countess Arsinda, gave St. Volusien the
town of Ganac and certain lands at Amplaing. Count Roger
entered Jerusalem Delivered with Godfrey and Tancred. Other
counts of Foix were likewise devout after the old knightly fash-
ion. One of them had such devotion to St. Nicholas that on his
festival he used to " departe all afote from his castell and go with
the clergy in processyon to the churche, where they sang a psalm
of the Psalter : Benedictus Dominus Deus meus qui docet manus
meas ad praslium, et digitos meos ad bellum." Gaston Phoebus,
who figures so brilliantly in the pages of Froissart, used to recite
every day the office of Our Lady, and he solemnly began his trea-
tise on hunting "in the name and honor of God, the Creator and
Lord of all things, and of his blessed Son Jesus Christ, and the
Holy Spirit, one holy Trinity, and of the Virgin Mary, and all
the saints in the grace of God."

Two of the counts of Foix, however, were drawn to the side
the Albigenses, partly because they were allies of the Count of
oulouse, and partly owing to their wives. It was especially by
oman woman ever eager for forbidden fruit that heresy got
foothold at Foix. Countess Philippa, wife of Raymond Roger,
k a fancy to the new doctrines, and her son, Roger Bernard,
as weakly fluctuating. When a conference was held at Pa-
iers in 1208 between the Cistercians andj:he Waldensian preach-
ers, Esclamonde, sister of the Count of Foix, finding the Cister-
cians victorious after six days' debate, took the chair and mas-
tered the assembly in spite of the papal legate, who bade her be-
take herself to her spindle and distaff. Count Roger Bernard,
however, confessed his error and received solemn absolution at
St. Jean de Verges in presence of the legate, the archbishop of
Narbonne, the bishops of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Couserans,
and six abbots, as well as the civil deputies and most of the no-
bility of the province.

The castle of Foix is now used as a prison, and the abbey of

270 THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. [May,

St. Volusien as a prefecture. The little town beneath the over-
hanging 1 cliff is no longer alive with the prancing of war-steeds,
the din of arms, and the songs of gay knights, but is the most
quiet of provincial towns. We like, however, these old places
that have nothing to hope for in the future, but, like some of us,
sit looking with melancholy eyes into the past. Perhaps the
prettiest feature of the town is the promenade of Villote on a
high terrace overlooking the Ariege. There are seats beneath
the trees, where you can sit and'irihale the fresh mountain air and
enjoy the delightful view of the valley through which the river
goes winding its noisy way. It was on this esplanade the fa-
mous Frere Illyricus, in May, 1520, preached for the last time at
Foix to a crowd too great to find room in the nave of the abbatial
church. He was called in France the sainct homme, and was
greatly beloved by Pope Clement VII. He preached boldly
against the vices of the clergy, and predicted the heresy of Luther
many years before it broke out. He is described as a man of ex-
tensive knowledge and holy life, who practised all kinds of austeri-
ties and made goodness attractive. He spent his life going to
and fro in the world as moved by the Spirit of God, endeavoring
to convert sinners. It was with these ominous words he took
leave of Foix :

" Land of Foix, land of Foix ! which turnest a deaf ear to my admoni-
tions, fresh rivers of tears will surely flow from thy eyes ; thou wilt see my
predictions accomplished, and the fires flickering among thy rich moun-
tains and in thy populous valleys. These beautiful sacred edifices, marks
of the piety and devotion of thy ancestors, will be given as prey to the
enemies of the church of God, and to the heresies that will be received and
fostered in thy bosom. Thou wilt behold the executioners of divine Justice
driving out, one after another, the traffickers in the temple. Wolves will
enter into the fold to devour sheep and shepherd alike, as much on account
of the lukewarmness of the clergy as want of devotion among the people,
the greater part of whom only attend Mass out of habit or human respect.
Farewell, land of Foix. T*his is my last visit. I now leave you, unable to
continue on account of the numberless sobs and groans that oppress my
heart at beholding so many offences against God, the horror of which
makes me depart with regret at effecting so little for the salvation of souls.
Farewell. Be converted speedily, in order to avert thy misfortunes."

The prophetic eye of the holy friar only saw too clearly the
evils at hand. Not many years after the Huguenots swept over
the land, destroying everything sacred. The abbey of St. Volusien
was seized, the canons were put to flight, and the holy relics car-
ried off together with the chalices, crosses, censers, chandeliers,

;

lai

8 1.] THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. 271

mps, and curious wrought iron-work. The church was then
abandoned to the rabble usually in the train of such reformers,
who overthrew the altars, made desolate the sanctuary, and
silenced the bells, which they broke in pieces. The building was
then ready to be used as a conventicle. Among the other
churches they likewise pillaged was Notre Dame de Montgauzy,
close to the town, a fine Gothic church, noted for its Madonna,
which still bears marks of their violence.

Beyond Foix, on the right bank of the Ariege, is St. Jean de
Verges, now only a hamlet, but connected with some of the chief
events of this region. The Romans had a military post here,
with a tower on the calcareous Pech of Opio, whence they could
overlook the plain and keep an eye on the defile that leads to the
Pyrenees. There are a great many places among the mountains
bearing the name of St. John, most of which are along the bor-
der, commanding the passes to Spain, like St. Jean de Luz, St.
Jean Pied de Port, etc. M. Garrigou supposes them originally
dedicated to Janus, who presided over gates and thoroughfares,
and changed, by an easy transition, to the name of St. John when
the country was Christianized. On the right bank of the Ariege
are five places bearing the name of this saint : St. Jean d'Aigues-
vives, St. Jean de Verges, St. Jean de Falga, St. Jean de Pamiers,
and St. Jean du Crieux.

Beyond St. Jean de Verges the hills open and you come to
a broad, semicircular basin where the Romans built the Villa
Petrosa, now Varilhes. It was in this vicinity St. Volusien was
martyred. You next come to Pamiers, an episcopal see. It is in
a quiet green valley sheltered by mountains, but for a long time
was the theatre of political and religious contests. Its early

tory is identified with that of the abbey of St. Antonin, of
which it was once a mere seigneurie. St. Antonin, one of the
most popular saints in this region, was an ancient martyr to the
faith, whose body was thrown into a bark and set afloat on the
Ariege. An angel descended from heaven to take the helm and
conducted the boat to a more peaceful shore. The bark of St.
Antonin figures on the old consular seal of Pamiers and that of
the cathedral chapter.

Further on is the pretty village of Bonnac, that belonged at
one time to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem.
A Seigneur de Bonnac played quite an important role in the last
century. He accompanied Charles XII. through Poland, was
with Stanislaus at the battle of Poltava, received the collar of St.
Andrew from the czar and the mantle of honor from the sultan.

272 THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. [May,

While at Constantinople he induced the latter to consent to the
reparation of the Holy Sepulchre and to send the first Ottoman
embassy to France. He was in correspondence, too, with all the
literary people of his day. His son afterwards employed La
Fontaine's grandson as his secretary, and while here the latter
thus wrote a friend : " Who would have thought of my com-
ing across a pile of my grandfather's letters at the foot of the
Pyrenees ? I have some on my table now, part in verse, and part
in prose. There are also about two hundred from Racine, forty
from Madame de la Sabliere, and, indeed, letters from all the il-
lustrious people of the reign of Louis XIV. from 1676 to 1716."

Lower down the river is the village of Labatut, near which,
on a hill covered with oaks, was born Jacques Fournier, after-
wards Pope Benedict XII., who was the son of a miller in the ad-
joining town of Saverdun. It is said he learned to read in his
boyhood by spelling out the Psalms in a book of Hours while
watching his flock. The monks of the neighboring abbey of
Boulbonne, meeting him often in their rounds, were struck by
his intelligence and encouraged him in his efforts to learn. They
afterwards received him in their convent, and, after he became a
professed monk, sent him to Paris to complete his studies. Some
years later he was appointed bishop of his native province, and
was finally raised to the Papacy. He was over seven years in
the chair of St. Peter, and showed himself a wise pontiff, rigid to
himself, zealous in reforming abuses, and never seeking to enrich
his relatives. His family is still represented at Saverdun, where
there is a small country-house on one of the hills bearing the
name of Fournier.

The Ariege is joined a little further on by the Lers, a stream
that comes down from the pine forest of Belesta. In the angle
between them is Tramesaygues (from intra ambas aquas), a small
village approached by roads bordered with oaks, elms, and haw-
thorn hedges. Fish are abundant in the Lers, and taken by means
of a fork called fouchino, a kind of trident similar to the ancient
fuscina to be seen among the frescoes at Pompeii. This way of
fishing, if not so animated and exciting as the spearing of the fish
in the Sol way by the laird of Redgauntlet and his band, is not
without its picturesque features, as it is done by torchlight in the
early autumn nights. The fishermen always go three together.
The one in the middle carries t\\G fouchino, another has a great
bundle of straw which the third twists into torches and holds
lighted over the water. The blaze attracts the fish in great num-
bers, which are rapidly speared and thrust into an open sack.

!88i.] THE VALLEY OF THE ARIEGE. 273

Complete silence is observed. These torches, seen through the
dark, overhanging trees at different intervals along the winding
river, are not without a striking effect.

The fine abbey of Boulbonne is not far off, and is well worthy
of a visit on account of the spacious cloister and vaulted refec-
tory. The original building, which stood at some distance, was
founded in the twelfth century by the counts of Foix, who en-
riched it and made it their burial-place. Two kings received
hospitality here in one day James of Aragon and Philippe le
Hardi of France, with a great number of prelates and barons in
their suite. Simon de Montfort offered his sword in the abbey
church before the battle of Muret.

At Cintegabelle, lower down the valley, you are struck by an
isolated peak with a path winding up among gloomy cypresses
to a Calvary on the top, where stands a huge cross like a sign in
the heavens. From it is a lovely view of great extent. The old
town at the foot with its tall, octagon church-tower, the ruined
fortress on the cliff, the rapid Ari6ge with its bridge of six arches,
the forests of oak at the south, with Mount St. Bartholomew in
full sight, the Pic du Midi at the right, and the bald head of Mt.
Canigou at the left, make up a striking landscape.

Some attribute the name of Cintegabelle to its exemption from
the odious gabelle, or tax on salt, being on the confines of the
Pays de Foix ; but old cartularies mention it expressly as Sancta
Gabella, after a saint of this name, whose remains are known to
have been here as far back as the year 960.

The Arie'ge is soon joined by the Hize, and at the confluence
is Venerque on a height overlooking their windings. There is
an interesting little church here of the Romanesque style a
remnant of the old Carlovingian abbey of St. Pierre, which a car-
tulary of Louis le D6bonnaire, dated July, 817, speaks of as bound
to contribute neither soldiers nor money to the government, but
to aid it solely by prayers for the royal family and the needs of
the realm. In this church are the remains of St. Phe'bade, Bishop
of Agen, in a fine chdsse of bronze. He was noted in his day as
a defender of the faith against Arianism. His relics were proba-
bly transported here for safety in some of the wars, but popular
tradition says they were stolen in the night from the cathedral of
Agen by brigands, who, on their way to Spain, encamped on a
lonely hill near Venerque. The next morning, when they re-
sumed their march, the relics could not be moved, and they had
to content themselves with the silver vessels and other booty
they had accumulated. The people carried the relics to the

VOL. XXXIII. 18

274 SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM. [May,

church of Venerque, where they are still carefully preserved,
though the authorities at Agen have repeatedly demanded their
restoration. In the annual procession of St. Phebade four fusi-
liers, arms in hand, used to march beside the chdsse to prevent
its being seized and carried off a custom continued almost to
our own day.

On the other side of the Ari6ge is Vernet, associated with the
legend of St. Luperce, whose statue is to be seen at the church
door, clad as a Roman soldier. Near by is a fountain trickling
from a mossy bed where Lupertius, after fighting bravely for the
faith, went to bathe his wounds. This was in the third century,
but the waters have never lost the virtue imparted thereby. The
peasantry still come here for relief, particularly in fevers, saying
five Paters and five Aves, but otherwise observing profound si-
lence.

We have by this time come to a lowland region with a broad-
er horizon, a more luxuriant vegetation, and a different race from
the home-abiding mountaineers, and with a different idiom. Here
at Pinsaguel the Arie*ge empties into the Garonne.

SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM.*

IN a well-known passage, St. Paul warns St. Timothy against
the " oppositions of knowledge falsely so called." The word
which we translate " knowledge " is in the Vulgate " scientia," and
is rendered in the Protestant version by the corresponding Eng-
lish term " science." One would think, on reading this warning
of the apostle, especially in King James' Bible, that the times in
which it was given were, like our own, full of great discoveries in
what are now called scientific matters, and that St. Paul's object
was to put his disciple on his guard against apparent contradic-
tions between this physical science and revelation ; to prevent his
being led away, as so many are now led away, from the faith by
a too ready acceptance of such conclusions of this physical science
as might seem irreconcilable with it.

But, in point of fact, the apostolic age, though certainly one of
a high mental cultivation in many ways, was not what we should
now call a specially scientific one. The study of nature was not

* The Past in the Present. What is Civilization? By Arthur Mitchell, M.D., LL.D.
1881.

1 88 1 .] SCIENTIFIC DOGMA TISM. 275

widely or in general very intelligently pursued ; there was not
then the accumulation of facts, and of theories built with at least
apparent solidity on facts, which has now risen to such an exten-
sive and, on the whole, harmonious structure as to seem in many
minds to be the sum total of all knowledge possible to man.

It could not, then, well have been science of this kind that St.
Paul had in his mind or considered as in any way dangerous.
Moreover, there is another reason why we are sure that it was
not ; and that reason is a very good one : it is because we know
that it was something else. It was not real science, such as much
of that now so called is ; no, it was that arrogant and pretended
knowledge which had taken for itself the Greek name " gnosis,"
which St. Paul himself gives to it in the original, and of which
the Latin " scientia " is a translation. There can hardly be a
doubt that the apostle was speaking of the false, self-asserted
" gnosis " or " knowledge " of the Gnostics, who were perhaps
the most formidable of all the opponents with which early Chris-
tianity had to contend.

This " gnosis " was a theory ; in that respect it was like our
modern scientific theories. It was well enough put together, it
had a system constructed with some considerable ability, and it
professed to account for and to include all facts, both of the
natural and supernatural order ; and here also it was like what
our modern scientific theories are, or at least are promised to be
by those who most strongly advocate them. But, viewed in the
light of the present day, it certainly would not be considered to
bear much resemblance to what this age, with equal but on the
whole more reasonable assurance, calls by the same name. Most
people would now regard it as a mere freak of the imagination,
and would even, though not accepting the Gospel, wonder at the
impudence of those who attempted to substitute such a tissue of
absurdities for it. The resemblance between this ancient science
and our modern one would not seem to go very far.

And indeed it really does not go far. The science, or
" gnosis," of the present day rests for the most part on the solid
foundation of observed facts and logical reasoning ; and this is
just where it principally differs from that former one. It is gen-
erally real, not false ; and if it were, as a mass, in opposition to
Christianity, it would be a far more formidable opponent than
Gnosticism was even in its own time. But it is not in such op-
position ; and of the genuine and solidly-founded part of it the
Christian Church has no jealousy and no fear. On the other
hand, it welcomes it for its own sake and also as a most valuable

276 SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM.

auxiliary. For its own sake, for we really believe ; we accept the
faith because we regard it as the truth, and because we love it as
such. We therefore must love the truth, under whatever form it
appears and to whatever matters it relates. And also we wel-
come modern science as a most valuable auxiliary, for we know
that truth not only is not inconsistent with itself, but that any
one part of it will be quite likely to positively confirm and sup-
port every other. We are glad to find it, as a lawyer who is
sure of the justice of his case is glad to find any new and trust-
worthy witness, however remotely his testimony may seem to be
connected with its most important points.

The Catholic Church is not, then, opposed to science, as some
of its opponents pretend. The pretence is simply an insult to it
and to its members ; for if we were opposed in general to the
science of the present day, so much of which is true, it could only
be because we believed either it or our own teaching to be false ;
but the first belief would prove us to be fools, the second would
make us knaves. We are, however, accustomed to these whole-
sale slanders, and are willing to admit that those who join in them
often do not see the full force of their words.

The Catholic Church is not opposed, on the whole, to modern
science, for the simple reason that, as we have said, this science
is not on the whole falsely so called, like that of which St. Paul
spoke, which was a mere product of the imagination of those who
maintained it or of those who had gone before them. But it is
opposed to certain parts of it and to certain tendencies in it, for
very similar reasons to those which influenced the apostle in his
day.

Which are those parts and those tendencies ? We shall see
by considering in what way true natural science is formed, and in
what spirit its formation is conducted.

The basis of natural science, simply as such, is the collection
of observed facts. These facts are examined for the indications
of law which they may contain ; these indications point out the
direction in which experiments or observations should be made,
so far as is possible ; and these judiciously-made experiments or
observations confirm, refute, or modify the theory by the guid-
ance of which they have been made. Observed facts, or laws pre-
viously securely deduced from them, are throughout the crite-
rion of truth ; nothing else is appealed to as a test, except the ab-
solute certainties of mathematical reasoning, which comes more
fully into play as the science advances toward perfection ; and
nothing else is used as a foundation, except some simple philo-

1 88 1.] SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM. 277

sophical principles which are admitted, at least practically, by all
sane men. Without such principles we could not believe in the
existence of nature, or trust the evidence of our senses in experi-
ments or observation's on it.

This, then, is the way in which true natural science is formed.
And the spirit in which it is formed is that of perfect sincerity,
and readiness to submit to the verdict of observation or experi-
ment. As soon as a determination is formed to vindicate some
preconceived opinion, to force the facts to fit in with it, that
moment the man adopting such a course ceases to be truly a
scientific man ; he ceases to be an investigator and becomes an
advocate. The conclusions of one who manifests such a spirit
lose the dignity and weight of a genuine scientific result ; they
may, indeed, be true, but our estimate of them must depend very
much on our belief or disbelief in the theory to which they are
due.

Let us not be misunderstood. We are far from holding what
would be an obvious absurdity, that convictions or opinions, even
though coming from sources outside of the domain of natural
science, must be entirely put aside when one enters the obser-
vatory or the laboratory ; on the contrary, such convictions or
opinions may help and guide the scientific investigator very ma-
terially. When they come from outside of the scientific field
they are not necessary to him and do not enter into the regular
course of proceeding above described, though they have their
use in that case as well as when they have been formed on his
own basis. But a fatal mistake is made when a system is con-
structed on the ground of such convictions or opinions, from
whatever source derived, and claimed as being the result of ob-
servation before it has been thoroughly and sincerely submitted
to the test of observed facts.

The true scientist, though holding, whether on extraneous
grounds or otherwise, the firmest beliefs on the subjects with
which he is concerned, is not precipitate ; he trusts Nature, and
does not fear to interrogate her thoroughly, feeling confident that
her final answer will be in accord not only with her previous
ones, but also with truth elsewhere obtained. The false scientist,
on the other hand, is determined that she shall speak at once in
his favor, and forces himself, and others as far as possible, to be-
lieve that she has thus spoken.

This premature formation and announcement of what may be
called scientific creeds is what may rightly be termed " science
falsely so called." Even if for other reasons they should be

278 SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM. [May,

known by all to be true, they cannot be called scientific conclu-
sions until unquestionable results of observation and experiment
come to their support. Still less has any one a right to palm
anything off under the name of certain science while as yet not
conclusively proved by observation, when the grounds on which
it rests are such as are not universally accepted ; to say, " This is
science," when in point of fact it is his own religious or irreligious
creed, or part o'f some system of philosophy which he confidently
holds. Such a course is not only unwise, it is unfair ; it is a de-
ception, a false invoking of an authority which will be respected,
to prove what only rests on one not so generally received. Such
assertions are not only unscientific (of course here, as elsewhere,,
we speak only of science in the physical sense) ; they are morally
wrong.

It is quite common at the present day to accuse our ancestors
of forming a false science in this way on merely philosophical or
religious grounds. The accusation, on the principles just laid
down, is a reasonable one, though as actually made it is not al-
ways reasonable or true ; for they did not generally use or pre-
tend to use our modern method of scientific investigation. But
it might apply to them, or to us who believe with them. It
would not do for us, even on our theological basis that all man-
kind are descended from one pair, to take a hasty survey of the
field and claim that ethnology proves this conclusively. We
have no doubt that ethnology, if it ever reaches a sufficient de-
velopment, will prove it; but we cannot say that it has as yet
placed it beyond question. Still less would it do for us to take
philosophical principles which are not certain, or points of doc-
trine which are controverted by theologians, and claim any phy-
sical results from them as conclusions of science, especially if we
had to work a good deal in the dark, and with much liability to
error, in the application of these principles or opinions.

Of course if the premises, of whatever kind they ma}^ be, are
such as we are bound to accept, and the reasoning from them
conclusive, we have a right to hold, and to insist on others who
agree with us in the premises also holding, the conclusion ; but
not as a matter of science that is the point when in reality it is
not.

This, however, is just the mistake, the unfairness, the decep-
tion, with which we have a right to some extent to charge the
scientific world of the present day. That world is, as we all
know, largely imbued with infidel opinions. It has, in a great
measure, abandoned religion ; it has also largely adopted a false

58 1.] SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM. 279

philosophy, or at least rejected that which is true. Many of its
members have specially a prejudice in favor of such scientific
views as are in opposition to revelation ; they wish to demolish
Christianity, and hope to find in science arguments against it.
Consequently they make of hypotheses established systems ; of
scientific possibilities certain facts. They boldly announce that
science has proved that man has descended in very remote anti-
quity from an ape, or perhaps even from a clam ; they assert that,
such as he is, he has been on the earth for a hundred thousand
years or more ; anything will do, as long as it is, or even seems,
contrary to the Mosaic record. They exultingly state that there
can be no doubt that the various forms of life on the earth re-
quired incalculable ages for their evolution, and ask, " How about
your six days now ? " If they find we are not much alarmed on
one point they try another.

Now, the fact is that none of these points are really scienti-
fically proved. They have not, like the Newtonian theory of
gravitation, stood the careful tests of observations made impar-
tially and with a simple desire to find the truth and to improve
or modify the theory, if need there should be. Their proofs do
not contrast favorably with the careful determinations of atomic
weights by chemists, with a perfect readiness to accept the re-
sult of the balance, no matter if not in accordance with present
chemical theories. Their confident advocates would do well to
consider, if not to imitate, the humility and simplicity of Newton,
who dropped his whole theory for a long time on account of an
apparent fault in it coming from an erroneous measurement of
the earth's dimensions ; for they have already had some settings-
.back like his. Their sciences are as yet in an inchoate state ;
they are constantly changed and modified ; much time has to
elapse, much more work to be done, before they will approach
completion. When they do, we have no fear of the result.

A good instance of the haste with which confident conclusions
are often reached is that of the division of man's history into the
stone, bronze, and iron ages. This division has certainly many
arguments in its favor ; it is quite likely that it has existed, at
least in some parts of the world. There is nothing in it, when it
is not pushed too far, against the faith of Christians ; but it is
adopted with eagerness in some quarters as a general result of
science, for the reason that it fits in well with the theory of man's
evolution from a lower form of being. The man who uses only
stone implements is welcomed, because his immediate ancestor
may be supposed to be a baboon. The more the theory of the

280 SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM. [May,

various ages is established, the more, as it is thought, will the
Christian doctrine of man's original creation in integrity be un-
dermined ; and for this reason there is a tendency to set down
these ages as forming a certain and universal part of the history
of the world.

We have no objection to the stone man ; we open our doors
to him gladly, so far as he is shown to exist. There is nothing
contrary to Christianity in any real facts about him, as is quite
evident. But we want all the real facts, and a genuine science
formed on them, not a hypothesis assuming that name.

A book bearing on this subject, called The Past in the Present,
has lately been written by Dr. Arthur Mitchell, who is professor
of ancient history to the Royal Scottish Academy and secretary
of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and therefore quite well
qualified to speak on matters in which antiquity is concerned.
He shows that the stone age may be found even now in Scotland
and the adjacent islands ; that stone implements are made and
used by persons who have access to civilization and employ its
products, and who are themselves intelligent and fairly educated ;
that cave-life even now exists ; and brings out many other facts
little known, but having a decided bearing on the general theory
of progress and evolution. His own view is that an art, as it dies
out, deteriorates, and that greater perfection is no conclusive ar-
gument for more recent age ; and this view is not only a com-
mon-sense one in itself, it is supported by facts. He shows by
sound arguments that the use of stone, bronze, or iron has no
necessary connection with man's culture or development, and that
the division of antiquities into the classes corresponding to these
materials has, to use his own words, " no absolute chronological
signification."

The book is a very interesting one and well repays reading.
We have not space to give an adequate idea of it. We only re-
fer to it and recommend it as a partial exposure of the premature
and ill-grounded conclusions into which the falsely so-called sci-
ence indulged in by modern infidels is apt to run. It reminds
one of Edie Ochiltree, in Scott's A ntiquary, bursting the "Agri-
cola Dicavit Libens Lubens " bubble with his authentic interpre-
tation, " Aiken Drum's Lang Ladle." The antiquary had a pre-
conceived theory ; facts had to fit it, and would have fitted it had
not Edie come on the scene.

The more real science we have the better, whether about evo-
lution, the stone age, or anything else. But let us have as little
as possible of this crude scientific dogmatism which has lately

1 88 1 .J NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 2 8 1

been so common. And let us be on our guard against it. St.
Paul's warning was never more in place than now. Let us be-
ware of oppositions, not of real science these we do not fear
but of science falsely so called, of atheistic prejudice and hatred
concealing itself under that venerable name.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE TRIALS OF THE CHURCH ; or, The Persecutions of Religion. By the
Rev. W. Gleeson, Rector of St. Anthony's Church, California; author
of The History of the Catholic Church in California. Two vols. N. Y. :
Catholic Protectory, Westchester. 1880.

The scope of Father Gleeson's history of persecutions is one quite univer-
sal, embracing the whole period of Christianity down to our own times, and
including persecutions by pagans, heretics, and false Catholics against the
church. It has been compiled with great industry and care, and presents
an immense array of facts and testimonies drawn from the documents of all
ages and countries. The most extraordinary fact in all history is the pro-
pagation and final victory of Christianity in the Roman Empire in face of
the persecutions of the first three centuries. We have been particularly in-
terested in Father Gleeson's argument against the view of Gibbon and some
other writers respecting the number of the martyrs in these early ages.
The inquiry into the rate of increase and numerical extent of Christianity
in different epochs from the beginning of the apostolic age is a very curious
one. Father Gleeson appears to us very reasonable and moderate in his esti-
mates. He considers the lowest estimate which can be made with proba-
bility of the population of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the
fourth century to give the number 120,000,000. He estimates the number
of Christians at one-fourth of the whole population, or at least 30,000,000.
The number massacred during the persecution of Diocletian is estimated
at 10,000,000.

The careful reader of these volumes will be convinced that the spirit of
persecution with which heretics and false Catholics have been animated
since the era of the definitive triumph of the cross through Constantine,
has been identical with that of the original persecutors of Christ in Judea,
and of his disciples in the heathen empire of Rome. The same atrocities
have been repeated in all ages, even in our own, and Father Gleeson might
have added to his list out of the record of modern Mahometan outrages
many sad and tragical narratives equalling the most bloody pages of an-
cient history.

The history of the persecutions of the Catholic Church in all ages
proves most conclusively that these trials have really been the most salu-
tary and efficient means of the preservation, improvement, and intensifica-
tion of genuine Christianity in the world in fact, morally necessary to the

282 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May,

triumphs it has achieved. There is nothing more evident than the danger
of degeneracy and corruption which attends on worldly success and pros-
perity in respect to individuals and great corporate societies of men/
but especially the church. A certain measure of this prosperity is neces-
sary, and in itself it is good, but it is liable to abuse. The real, intrinsic
element of destruction working in the Christian body is that which is cre-
ated by degenerate and bad Christians, whether belonging to the laity or
the priesthood. External enemies and trials rather serve as a wholesome
medicine and stimulant to counteract inward diseases and increase all the
vital forces of the Catholic Church. Up to the present time conflict with
evil has been one of the conditions of the actual realization of all the good
which we can find in the history of mankind. While the necessity for this
state of warfare lasts, we may reconcile ourselves to its continuance and
take courage by considering the victory which good has always been gain-
ing in the times which are past, and the sovereign rule of Divine Provi-
dence which regulates and controls all the evil which is permitted for the
sake of the greatest good in the end.

THE LIFE OF FATHER JOHN GERARD, SJ. By John Morris, of the same
Society. Third edition, rewritten and enlarged. London : Burns &
Gates. 1881.

The history of the Catholic Church in England during the period be-
tween the schism of Henry VIII. and the accession of James II. is full of
records of the most heroic persons and the most heroic acts of virtue. It
is much to be desired that it should be written in a complete and adequate
manner. Meanwhile, several contributions to this history appear from time
to time which have great value and interest, among which are to be reckon-
ed those of Father Morris, S.J. One of his former volumes, entitled The
Condition of Catholics under James /., contains a biography of Father Gerard
in connection with the history of the criminal, and happily unsuccessful,
attempt of a few Catholic gentlemen known as the Gunpowder Plot. In
the present work we have a more complete Life, published in a very neat
and attractive form, with several curious and well-executed illustrations.

The narrative has, in common with all the Catholic histories of that
time, all the elements of romantic interest belonging to an age of persecu-
tion : the celebration of Mass in private chapels at the risk of life, hiding in
concealed chambers, hair-breadth escapes, captures, imprisonments, tor-
tures, perpetual conflicts of wit and stratagem between the persecutors and
the persecuted, an undying struggle of faith, valor, and endurance against
power and malice. It has its peculiar interest from the marked individu-
ality of character in the subject of the memoir. Father Gerard was a gen-
tleman of rank and of uncommonly prepossessing character and manners,
entirely devoted and single-minded in his religious and apostolical zeal,
and at the same time of most remarkable skill, address, and adroitness in
carrying out his difficult and dangerous mission. He was not as thorough-
ly educated and learned a man as were most of the principal men of the
Society. He had, however, remarkable zeal, tact, and success in making
converts among persons of the higher class, and in encouraging and lead-
ing on to perfection the persecuted remnant of Catholics to whom he min-
istered. Many of these were among the best and noblest Christian men

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 283

and women who have ever lived. It is most interesting to see what beau-
tiful and costly vestments and sacred vessels they provided, how their
private chapels were so devoutly cared for, and the offices of the church so
sedulously performed and frequented, and all the virtues of the old ages
of martyrdom renewed. There were, nevertheless, some weak and un-
worthy, base and false brethren among them, priests as well as laymen,
who joined in the false witness, treachery, and cruelty of the heretical per-
secutors against the faithful confessors and martyrs of the faith.

Father Gerard is chiefly known by his history of the Gunpowder Plot.
This is one of many famous instances of the criminal and disastrous conse-
quences of false zeal in private persons who undertake the remedy of evils
under which they are suffering in an unlawful way and in disregard or
disobedience to lawful authority. The persons engaged in this plot w.ere
gentlemen of good character, some of them remarkable for their piety and
virtue for example, Mr. Catesby and Sir Everard Digby. The condition of
Catholics was one which seemed to them unbearable and to justify the
most extreme measures for retaliation and deliverance. Their mad scheme
was happily frustrated. Its sole effect was to bring those engaged in it to
a death without honor or utility, to aggravate the evils it was intended to
remedy, to entail obloquy on the Catholic religion, and to involve several
innocent persons with the guilty ones in the punishment of torture and
death. Father Gerard was one of those who were sought for under the
false pretence of implication in this plot, but he escaped from England in
the suite of the Spanish ambassador. He had already been once appre-
hended, subjected to torture, and imprisoned in the Tower, from which he
escaped in a remarkable way. After six or seven years spent in England
as a missionary in his youth, he lived to a good old age on the Continent,
chiefly employed in training up young missionaries and martyrs for Eng-
land, and died happily after a long and holy life.

ON THINKING. An Address delivered to the Senior Class of Rock Hill
College. By Brother Azarias, of the Brothers of the Christian Schools,
President of Rock Hill College. New York : E. Steiger & Co. 1881.

" I would have you all learn how to think. If you leave college know-
ing this, and this alone, your time will have been well spent." These are
words of truth and reason upon which the whole address of Brother Aza-
rias is a comment. The obligation and importance of a due cultivation and
right use of reason for an educated man, in respect to all the affairs of life,
and especially those whose nature is the highest, together with some direc-
tions about the way to cultivate and use reason in the best manner, are dis-
coursed of with that sound good sense, moral and religious elevation of
sentiment, purity and elegance of diction, which characterize all the writ-
ings of the distinguished author of the address. Most readers will find, we
think, the two most interesting passages in the two episodes on the charac-
teristics of Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Henry Newman as thinkers. We
recommend the perusal of this excellent address in a special manner to all
young students. They will find it to their great advantage not merely to
read it over once, but to keep it and make it their rule and guide in their
studies and reading.

284 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May,

THE LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND OF A LANDLORD WHO TRIED TO DO HIS
DUTY. By W. Bence Jones, of Lisselan. London : Macmillan & Co.
1880.

NEW VIEWS ON IRELAND ; or, Irish Land : Grievances ; Remedies. By
Charles Russell, Q.C., M.P. Second edition. London : Macmillan &
Co. ; Dublin : Gill & Son. 1880.

DISTURBED IRELAND : being the Letters written during the winter of
1 880-81 by Bernard H. Becker, Special Commissioner of the Daily
News. With route maps. London: Macmillan & Co. 1881.

THE IRISH LAND-LAWS. By Alexander G. Richey, Q.C., LL.D., Deputy
Regius Professor of Feudal and English Law in the University of Dub-
lin. Second edition. London : Macmillan & Co. 1881.

, Mr. Bence Jones is the English landlord who was last year " Boycotted"
out of the County Cork because he had made himself obnoxious to the
Land League. Upon finding himself safe back in England he gave to the
English public this curious history of his experiences as an "improving"
landlord. Some of the chapters of the volume had already appeared as arti-
cles in Macmillan 's Magazine. Though Mr. Bence Jones is evidently devoid
of humor, his jeremiad is nevertheless amusing from the wholesale way in
which he attempts to belittle the Irish character. The Irish Celt he puts
down as a being of remarkable perception and of clearness of understand-
ing, but completely dishonest. This dishonesty he very impartially charges
upon Catholics and Protestants alike, and he instances the fact that the
Protestant clergy at the time of the Disestablishment in 1870 by a spe-
cies of jobbing increased their personal incomes at the expense of their
somewhat impoverished church. Still, he is "thankful to add " that there
have been " a few cases of clergymen who refused to take a shilling of such
gains. . . . All honor to them!" He thinks the Irish "are not an in-
dustrious people. They will work hard by fits and starts, but the steady
backbone is not there." He believes that government interference in be-
half of the tenants is nonsensical and injurious, conveniently forgetting, as
do most of his class, that it was government interference which by fraud
and violence reduced almost the entire people to the condition of tenants-
at-will of foreign, and for a great part absentee, landlords. According to
him, the landlords of Ireland, especially those of them who are Englishmen,
are a public-spirited, long-suffering class, who are terribly imposed upon by
the keen-witted Celtic rabble who are their tenants. He cannot under-
stand why the Irish dislike to leave their own homes for the profitable ex-
periments of " improving " English landlords. " Is it realized," he asks,
" what a patch of bog and rock in Connaught really is, to which such pa-
triotic attachment is supposed, and which, therefore, will be clung to in
preference to the magnificent land of Manitoba and Northwest America,
where splendid crops of corn grow in succession without manure ? " His
book is, in truth, the narrative, and an interesting and instructive one,
of an observing, well-meaning, but thoroughly narrow-minded man, who
would perhaps have made an excellent gentleman farmer in his own coun-
try, but was altogether unadapted for life among a race so different from
his own as the Irish.

A very good antidote to Mr. Bence Jones is Mr. Russell, the substance
of whose volume appeared last year in the shape of letters from the disaf-

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 285

fected regions of Ireland to the London Daily Telegraph and the Dublin
Freeman s Journal. Mr. Russell says of the land troubles : " Variations of
opinion as to the remedy undoubtedly exist; but when you find the Orange
meetings in Ulster called to denounce the agitation of Mr. Parnell not less
strong in their condemnation of the existing land-law, nor less emphatic as
to the necessity of thorough remedial legislation, it is plain enough that
Ulsterman and Munsterman, Catholic and Protestant, alike recognize the
necessity for prompt legislation on the subject." Mr. Russell's investiga-
tions into the iniquities perpetrated under the present landlord system were
mainly confined to the county of Kerry, and they again brought to light
the shocking condition of affairs on the estates of Lord Ventry, the Mar-
quis of Lansdowne, and on those belonging to the corporation of Trinity
College, Dublin. The Lansdowne estates have long been a scandal to
civilization, and though their owner has always derived from them a large
yearly rental, they have at every season of distress launched crowds of emi-
grants for the United States who mostly arrive here complete paupers.
The able agent or steward of the estate is the gentleman who favored the
public a few years ago with a book called The Realities of Irish Life, a dia-
tribe against the people whose sufferings his class have helped to aggravate.

Disturbed Ireland first appeared as letters to the London Daily News.
Mr. Becker, on Irish affairs at least, is a real Jingo. But he evidently has
a keen pair of eyes, and where he describes what he has himself seen his
honesty and good sense get the better of the prejudices he imbibed from
the landlord partisans in whose company confessedly most of his time was
spent during his tour as a special correspondent. He has the sense of hu-
mor and apparently much good nature, and he is thus able to espouse very
warmly the side of those in whose company he happens to be.

Dr. Richey's little manual of the Irish land-laws will be an aid to all
who seriously desire to understand the Irish difficulty. Whether his re-
flections be in all cases accepted or not, his clear statement of the legal as-
pects of Irish land-tenure is timely and useful.

REMINISCENCES BY THOMAS CARLYLE. Edited by James Anthony Froude.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1881.

This is a book which no admirer of Carlyle or of his school should fail
to read. Mr. Froude's editing has apparently been confined to giving to
the public Carlyle's reminiscences in their integrity as they came into his
hands, for which all who are acquainted with Mr. Froude's usual methods
will feel grateful. The volume consists of Carlyle's recollections of his own
father, James Carlyle, a stone-mason of Ecclefechan (Eccles or Eglais Fechan
i.e., St. Fechan's church or shrine), in Annandale ; of Edward Irving, the
eccentric founder of the Irvingites ; of Lord Jeffrey ; and of his wife, Jane
Welsh Carlyle, besides an appendix in which Southey and Wordsworth are
handled in characteristic fashion.

No one ever suspected Carlyle of gayety, yet few, it is to be supposed,
would be prepared for the revelation of these Reminiscences. During most
of his life he was eighty-five when he died Carlyle was the victim of
disease. As far back as 1818, he says, he had begun the " long curriculum
of dyspepsia." In hopes of relief he once consulted a physician, but con-

286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. . [May,

eluded, after an interview, that he might as well have recounted his " sorrows
into the long, hairy ear of the first jackass " he met ! But his indescribably
sad narrative is the tale of the unending and unsatisfactory conflict be-
tween a brave, resolute, but ill-directed will and the religious dyspepsia
that was the result of the sour Calvinism prevailing in Carlyle's Lowland
Scotch home. A more despairing confession of misanthropy than the
pages of these Reminiscences contain it would be difficult to find.

THESAURUS BIBLICUS; or, Hand-Book of Scripture Reference. Com-
piled from the Latin of Philip Paul Merz. By the Rev. L. A. Lambert.
Waterloo, N. Y. : Observer Book Publication Co. 1880.

The original work of Father Merz was published in 1731. It is an in-
teresting, though by no means a solitary, fact that its author was converted
to the Catholic Church by the study of the Scriptures. He was a Lutheran
minister, and was ordained to the priesthood in the Catholic Church after
his conversion. Father Lambert, the editor of the American edition in an
English version, has amended and improved the original in his translation.
The plan of the work is alphabetical. For example, under the letter A a
number of words are selected, such as Abstinence, Adultery, Alms, Angel,
Apostle, etc., and the principal texts relating to each of these headings are
quoted in full. The headings are also frequently subdivided. One who
desires to find texts relating to any particular topic, by referring to the in-
dex will find the page in the book where these texts are quoted, without
difficulty. The convenience and utility of such a collection are obvious,
and we have no doubt that the great service Father Lambert has rendered
to the clergy will be fully appreciated.

THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. What it involves, and how alone it can be
settled. An appeal to the Land Leagues. By Henry George, author of
Progress and Poverty. Newark, N. J. : J. J. O'Connor & Co. 1881.

The title of Mr. George's interesting pamphlet is misleading. The
Irish question is merely a hook on which the writer hangs a programme of
land reform which he thinks should be applied in this country. Some
of Mr. George's first principles are sound enough, and he might have found
in St. Thomas full warrant for his axiom that there is properly no absolute
proprietorship of land distinct from that possessed by the commonwealth.
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." Man made the town
(that is, the houses), but God made the country (that is, the land), is an old
adage that can be read in another sense than the ordinary one : that rural
life is better than city life. What man made man may own and dispose of ;
but the land, which man did not make, man can only consider himself a
tenant of. The land belongs, under God, to the whole human race, and
every individual is entitled to his share, and only his share, of it. This
theory is, in fact, the principal source of love for one's fatherland. To as-
sert that a limited number of persons be the number never so large can
have a right to an absolute possession of the soil is to divide the inhabi-
tants of a nation into two classes, the populus and the plebs. But the dif-
ficulty lies in the practical limitation of landed rights. Mr. George would
make the state practically as well as theoretically the only landlord, dis-
possessing all individual landlords, destroying all vested rights in land, and

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287

compelling all who occupy the land, whether in town or country, to pay
rent for it to the state. This rent would also supply the place of all taxes.
Of course this is philosophical communism, and there is little danger of any
serious attempt being made to put it into practice in this country.

Like other schemes of communism, it is an indication of a reaction from
the ill-founded theories that, uncfer the name of political economy, have re-
duced selfishness to a system. The real political economy is to be found
only in the equity that comes from a strict adherence to the teachings of
Christianity. In the Christian republic there is a love of God and of man
which will effect much more to secure the greatest amount of happiness
for the greatest number than the political-economist's so-called laws of sup-
ply and demand.

So far as Mr. George's pamphlet has any bearing at all on the Irish
question it is mischievous, for in the furtherance of his theories he ignores
some great facts and exaggerates others.

SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL : HIS LIFE AND WORKS. By Edward S. Holden,
United States Naval Observatory. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. 1881.

The life of a specialist in science is little else than a record ol his works.
The truths which he demonstrates are physical facts, the order of their oc-
currence, and those relations of proximate causes and effects which are
called laws of nature. They are of great moment to the development of his
special science, and sometimes, incidentally, to the discussion of questions
of higher philosophy. But the scientist is not a philosopher; and to paint
him as such is to assert the identity instead of the harmony of physical
and moral truths. The author has wisely confined his labors to a brief
memoir of Sir William Herschel and an historical record of his successive
contributions to astronomical science.

The work before us is not a biography, but a memorial of the great as-
tronomer and an interesting contribution to the history of astronomical
discoveries. The sketch of the life of Herschel, tracing the earlier steps of
his career from the humbler labors of the musician, untrained in physical
:ience, to the high eminence of a Royal Astronomer, is briefly though clear-
ly drawn, and the enumeration of his great discoveries, following the his-
tory of difficulties overcome by great genius and untiring industry, seems

say, Si monumentum quart's, respice. The book is one of that small class
mtitled to success, because well conceived and well executed in the inte-
rest of its subject rather than that of its author.

tE WORKINGS OF THE DIVINE WILL. Gleanings from Pere Caussade,
SJ. From the French. Revised by a Father of the Society of Jesus.
Second edition. London : Burns & Oates. 1881.

These gleanings from Pere Caussade are placed under several heads,
and read as though they had been written consecutively. Who is there
that will not be benefited by a better knowledge of " the workings of the
Divine Will " ? But souls somewhat advanced in the ways of spiritual life
will be helped not a little by the directions and counsels of Pere Caussade.

The size of the volume is convenient. It will go easily into one's vest-
pocket. We are pleased to see that this is a second edition, and would be
more pleased with an entire translation of the original in the same style.

288 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [May, 1 88 1 .

These gleanings may prepare the way for the publication of the complete
translation of the volume as edited by Pere Ramiere.

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 & Gates. 1881.

This is an interesting sketch by Lady Herbert of the edifying life of Fa-
ther Eymard, whose devotion sprang from a fresh, lively, and enlightened
faith in the Blessed Sacrament. The Catholic reader will find in its atten-
tive perusal much that will stimulate anew his love towards our Lord in
this great mystery of his divine love.

THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. By Joseph Frangois Michaud. Trans-
lated by W. Robson. A new edition, with preface and supplementary
chapter by Hamilton W. Mabie. In three volumes. New York : A. C.
Armstrong & Son, 714 Broadway. 1881.

We shall give an extended notice of this work soon.

WE are glad to see the first number (March, 1881) of the Catholic Literary
Circular, a monthly guide for Catholic readers. It is published by Messrs.
Burns & Gates, London, and is a monthly glance at recent Catholic publi-
cations, giving a good idea of what is going on in the Catholic literary
world. As the introductory article in this number says : " It is of great, of
singular importance to the literature of a small and struggling body like
that of the English-speaking Catholics that they should know what their
brethren are striving to do, and should be encouraged to help them."

A MANUAL OF SCRIPTURE HISTORY : being an Analysis of the Historical Books of the Old Testa-
ment. By the Rev. W. J. B. Richards, D.D., Oblate of St. Charles. Part I. From the
creation to the giving of the law. London : Burns & Gates. 1880.

THE COMPANY OF THE HOLY WOMEN COMPANIONS t)F JESUS. A drama, with chorus and
music. (A short Easter mystery-play.) By the Rev. H. Formby. New York : The Ca-
tholic Publication Society Co. 1881.

FREVILLE CHASE. By E, H. Dering, author of SJierborne ; or, The House at the Four Ways^
Memoirs of Georgiana Lady Chatterton, etc., etc. In two volumes. London : Burns &
Gates. 1880.

NINTH ANNUAL REPORT of the Le Couteulx St. Mary's Institution for the Instruction of Deaf
M utes, to the Legislature of the State of New York. From September 30, 1879, to Sep-
tember 30, 1880. Buffalo: Catholic Publication Company.

CONTEMPLATIONS AND MEDITATIONS ON THE PASSION AND DEATH, AND ON THE GLORIOUS
LIFE of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the Method of St. Ignatius. Translated from
the French by a Sister of Mercy. Revised by a priest S. J. Third edition. London :
Burns & Gates. 1881.

MEMOIRS OF PRINCE METTERNICH. 1815-1829. Edited by Prince Richard Metternich. Vols.
iii., iv. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1881.

FAMILIAR INSTRUCTIONS AND EVENING LECTURES ON ALL THE TRUTHS OF RELIGION. By
Monseigneur de Segur. Translated from the French. Vol. ii. London : Burns & Gates.
1881.

THE MYSTIC KEY TO IRELAND'S HISTORY. A lecture delivered on St. Patrick's Day, 1881, by
the Rev. James J. Moriarty, A.M., Pastor of Chatham, N. Y., and author of Stumbling-
Blocks made Stepping-Stones, Wayside Pencillings, etc. Chatham, N. Y. : The Courier
Printing-house.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD,

VOL. XXXIII. JUNE, 1881. No. 195.

THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON.

ONE can scarcely take up a volume on any branch of know-
ledge, or read an article in a quarterly review, or a monthly
magazine, or a weekly religious or a daily secular newspaper,
which touches on the question of the value of human reason, if
written by a non-Catholic it matters not whether he be a Calvin-
ist, Unitarian, or infidel in which it is not unblushingly asserted,
or assumed as an axiom, that the Catholic Church always has
been and is opposed to human reason, repudiates its authority,
and above all discourages its exercise and application to reli-
gion. However these writers may differ on other topics, on
this one they all agree: Reason and the Catholic Church are
irreconcilable.

Whence has sprung this egregious error ? Why is it repeat-
ed so often in every variety of form and expression, and by many
who would wish to be esteemed as just and unprejudiced ?

How does it happen that persons who are learned and distin-
guished for their accuracy in other respects betray such gross
ignorance in this branch of knowledge ? What does it mean that
a calumny of so serious a nature for this charge against the Ca-
tholic Church is nothing else can be uttered and reuttered,
printed and reprinted, in a community which claims to be en-
lightened, and against so false and flagrant an accusation not a
single voice be heard?

Is it because those who make this grave charge presume on

290 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON. [June,

the ignorance of the public and fear no exposure ? Or is there
no intellectual or moral conscience in the community to which
one can make an appeal with a reasonable hope for justice ?
Time and its events alone can tell, and to them we leave the
answer.

Whatever that may be, it is not for us to keep silence under
so heavy a load of infamy. Our sense of loyalty to truth and the
obligation which we owe to the sacred Spouse of Christ compel
us to raise our voice to the utmost of our strength and to the
extent of our ability against her false accusers. Perchance in
showing their groundlessness some may be led to stop their rail-
ing accusations, and the eyes of others may be opened to see the
truth and acknowledge and embrace it.

Whence, then, has arisen this widespread and monstrous
error? Did the Catholic Church fail to disavow and condemn
the fundamental tenet of the religious movement set on foot
by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Henry VIII., and others, and
which tenet one and all of the evangelical sects hold and main-
tain namely, the entire corruption and total depravity of hu-
man nature ?

Do Protestants need to be informed that this doctrine of the
total depravity of human nature in consequence of Adam's fall is
embodied in all their creeds, and is the premise from which all
and each of the distinctive doctrines of their religion logically
depend ? that the only real difference between Presbyterianism
and Lutheranism and Episcopalianism is not in fundamentals^
but in this : John Calvin made a logical system of Protestant doc-
trines from the common premise of total depravity, which they
had either not the intelligence or courage to accomplish ? No
well-informed theologian in our day will dispute that Calvinism
is the complete scientific statement of Protestantism as a dis-
tinct religion. And who is so ignorant as not to know that if
ks essential dogma were carried out to its logical consequences,
the basis of all religion, morals, human society both social and
political, would be sapped and destroyed ?

For this dogma of total depravity necessarily denies to man
liis God-like reason and the noble faculty of his free-will, and
hence leaves no ground upon which religion, morals, law, or hu-
man society can stand. Of all errors since the birth of the Chris-
tian era none has been so fertile in producing dishonorable ideas
-of God and of human nature as this leading dogma of Protestant-
ism, and its influence over men's minds has made, and will con-
tinue .to make where it prevails, more inveterate infidels and bit-

1 88 1 .] THE TR UE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF RE A SON. 291

terer enemies of the Christian religion than all other heresies
combined.

Were those Protestant ministers who seem to be and probably
are disturbed about the decline of faith in Christianity among
their followers, and their neglect of attendance on public worship,
to inquire fearlessly into the causes of this falling away, they
might find one of the principal reasons to be the conviction, which
is gaining ground among the more intelligent and younger mem-
bers of their congregations, that the exposition of Christianity
by Protestantism contradicts the plain dictates of reason, shocks
the clear convictions of conscience, and is subversive of all ideas
of human dignity. Hence Protestantism, as a system of religion,
is rapidly losing its hold upon the conviction of intellectual
minds, and no longer commands their reverence or even retains
their respect. Under the erroneous impression that what is so
repugnant to reason in Protestantism is taught by the Catholic
Church also, this class of persons cease any longer to look for
that reasonable satisfaction which their religious nature craves
in Christianity, and either endeavor to make a sort of religion
of their own or give the subject up altogether.

How false this impression is may be seen in the fact that th.e
Catholic Church did not fail, by the decrees of the Council of
Trent, to condemn Calvinism when it first arose, with all its pro-
geny of errors ; and subsequently, when it was introduced into
her own communion in a modified form, under the cloak of Jan-
senius, who pretended to find his doctrines in the writings of St.
Augustine, the church pronounced this semi-Calvinism hereti-
cal and false. It is a matter of course that orthodox Protestants
should take the part of the originators of Calvinistic Jansenism,
since birds of a feather flock together ; but that Unitarians should
volunteer as their eulogists, this is a surprise. What strange
misery is it that constrains Evangelicals and Unitarians to sink
their antagonism, and that transforms these deadly foes into con-
genial bed-fellows ?

If any one need more evidence to convince him of the abhor-
rence of the Catholic Church for all that smacks even of Calvin-
ism and its doctrines, he will find it in her condemnation of a
certain class of publicists and philosophers called traditionalists.
Among these were some of her most zealous defenders ; but their
defence consisted in depreciating the natural powers of human
reason in favor of, as they erroneously supposed, the interests of
faith. The Catholic Church, ever jealous and vigilant over the
rights of reason, could not allow this disparagement, even though

292 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON. [June,

employed, not, after the example of the so-called Reformers, in op-
position, but in her support. These otherwise able and highly
distinguished men and excellent Catholics were called to ac-
count for their errors, and were required, if they would teach as
the representatives of her doctrine, to assent to the following pro-
positions : " The use of reason precedes faith, and by the aid of
revelation and grace leads man to faith. Reason can demon-
strate with certitude the existence of God, the spirituality of the
soul, and the liberty of man." What better test can one demand
of the doctrines of the Catholic Church touching the value and
powers of human reason than this? Reason and the Catholic
faith are inseparably united, and the Catholic Church appeals
with entire trust and unswerving steadfastness to the decisions of
reason for her support and defence, and it would be on her part
suicidal to accept the services of those who undervalue its dig-
nity and powers.

Still, in spite of these notorious facts of ecclesiastical history,
the public is informed by infidels, positivists, agnostics, et hoc
omne genus men who relegate God to the region of the unknow-
able, if they do not deny outright his existence ; men who reject
the vSpirituality of the soul, and teach that thought is the result of
the molecular action of the nerve-tissues of the brain, especially
its gray cortex, and the liberty of the will a fiction of dreamers,
since man, like all things else, is governed by the fixed laws of na-
ture the public is informed with effrontery by men of this stamp
that the issue is, " Rome or Reason " ! And the Unitarians,
and the Transcendentalists, and the free-religionists join with
these deniers of the loftiest aspirations and deepest convictions of
reason, these subverters of all human dignity, in accusing the
Catholic Church of discouraging the exercise of reason and re-
pudiating its authority ! At the end of this procession of sophists
comes a mob of railers, followers of a leader who in contempt
called human reason "a jackass," "a strumpet," " a blind, silly
fool," and made this one of his grievous charges against the
church : that she cultivated philosophy, founded universities and
schools for learning, stimulated the progress of sciences, and fos-
tered the fine arts ; and this motley crowd unites, with its jargon
voice, with the atheists and Unitarians in accusing Catholics with
opposition to reason, to education, and enlightenment! What
honest man can listen to these false accusations and not burn
with indignation? In olden times the heathen charged the
Christians with their own crimes of idolatry and superstition ;
and her modern foes reproach her with their own errors, against

1 88 1.] THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON. 293

which, under every disguise, she has resolutely pronounced her
condemnation. If these hypocritical accusers of the Catholic
Church in our day had not forgotten how to blush, their guilt
should cause to mantle to their cheeks a dye of crimson shame.

It is a great mistake to suppose that they have a shadow of
ground for their imputations against the church either in the deci-
sions of her councils from the first, that of Jerusalem, to the one
recently held in the Vatican or in any consensus of the Fathers,
or in her doctors or approved theologians. They can find no-
thing in any one or all of these, or in the decrees of her pontiffs,
to countenance their censures, would they only take the trouble
to learn their sense or cease to garble them or pervert their
meaning. The church courts honest inquiry and fair play, and it
is high time that her calumniators were publicly rebuked. For
Catholics to rest quietly under false imputations like these is to
encourage them and participate in the guilt of their fabricators.

For those who do not know it already it is well for them to
know it now, once for all and explicitly, that the Catholic
Church proceeds on the principle, in addressing those who are not
yet convinced of the truth of Christianity, that the exercise of rea-
son goes before faith ; that this exercise consists in the knowledge
with certitude of certain fundamental truths, and that without
this knowledge no science, as well as no faith, is possible for
genuine science and genuine faith, though diverse in their proce-
dure, spring from the same divine source and are based on the
primary truths of reason : hence they aid and confirm each other
mutually ; that man is in possession of all the powers of his
reason, without exception ; that the effect of Adam's sin did not
rob any of his posterity of their natural capacities, powers, or
rights, or essentially corrupt or deprave their nature : hence
man is born now essentially good, and sin is no part of his na-
ture; sin is contrary to nature; that the natural light of human
reason is the light of God shining into the soul. And it is in
this light the acquisition of these certain fundamental truths is
acquired, and in this knowledge reason cannot be deceived, nor
in its immediate deductions from these first truths.

Thus the value of human reason is absolute, and its know-
ledge of first principles, and the truths which flow immediately
from them, is accompanied with unerring certitude. Hence, in
accordance with the teachings of sound Catholic philosophy and
faith, it is the prerogative and province of reason to establish
religion, morals, science, and social and political society upon a
real, true, and eternal basis. These doctrines impart to a Catho-

294 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON. [June,

lie perfectly honorable ideas of God, the most worthy concep-
tions of the dignity of man, and give an immovable firmness to
his religious convictions.

In the above statement we have given the doctrines of St.
Thomas in a free but at the same time a correct version, and he
does not hesitate to place that important branch of the science
of theology to which these truths properly belong under the
head of philosophy.

Moreover, let no one make the great mistake of supposing
that these are only the private opinions of the Angelic Doctor.
St. Thomas was a diligent student of philosophy, and familiar
with the great masters of that science, pagan and Christian, for
whom he had a profound respect. The philosophical doctrines
of St. Thomas embodied the discoveries of the noblest intellects
of the human race for at least twenty centuries, with the addition
of the fruits of his own pre-eminent gifts in that line. Moreover,
St. Thomas was a diligent and profound student of the Holy
Scriptures, as well as of the decrees of the councils and the writ-
ings of the pontiffs, doctors, and approved theologians of the
chu/fch. He was a man gifted with the greatest powers of intel-
:lct, crowned with the highest sanctity, and among all her distin-
guished theologians and saints St. Thomas was incomparably the
most perfect exponent of the doctrines and spirit of the holy
church. He who would deny this would display in his denial
less learning than presumption. Luther did not go as far out of
the way as usual when he said: "Take away Thomas and I will
destroy the church." No Catholic need fear going astray in fol-
lowing St. Thomas, and a non-Catholic who would doubt the
orthodoxy of his doctrine would entertain a groundless suspicion.
So much we have felt called upon to say in the way of explana-
tion of our statement.

Nor is it out of place, but pertinent to our subject, to inquire
what was the aim of -St. Thomas and the schoolmen. This in-
quiry will show the inconsistency of Protestantism in a new
aspect. Every one acquainted with its history knows that Luther
.and his associates were bitterly opposed to the schoolmen. This,
at least, was consistent with their denial to man, in consequence of
original sin, of both reason and free-will ; while, on the other hand,
the schoolmen maintained and defended the continuance of these
divine gifts to man as he is now born, and as necessary to the
knowledge and practice of religion. What was more, the school-
men aimed at producing by the full play of the light of natural
reason, with the aid of philosophy, a complete and a strictly logi-

1 88 1.] THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON. 295

cal exposition and defence of the divinely-revealed truths of
Christianity. Was not such an intellectual effort worthy of all
praise ? For man's nature is essentially intellectual, and his spirit
cannot rest until he has acquired to the utmost extent of his
abilities an intelligent grasp of the truths which religion pro-
poses to his belief as necessary to reach the great end of his
being. It is the obligation of religion to demonstrate to reason,
by irrefragable testimony, that these truths are revealed by God,
who cannot deceive or be deceived, before she has the right to
claim from man his assent ; " for the assent of faith is not by any
means," as the Vatican Council teaches, " a blind movement of
the mind." But this reasonable assent to divinely-revealed truths
is by no means all ; it is only the first but all-important step.
These truths, in addition, must come in immediate contact with
man's intelligence, heart, and will, in order to be assimilated and
influence his conduct and life aright. Hence they are suscepti-
ble of discernment and penetration by the human intelligence, and
above all when it is elevated, and illuminated, and strengthened
by divine grace. They are also capable of admitting proofs drawn
from the relation of one revealed truth with another,
monstration by analogous truths found everywhere :

" Whate'er we hear or see, whate'er doth lie
Round us in nature all that the structure of
Science, or of art, hath found or wrought."

What .nobler intellectual effort can the mind of man conceive
than to seek, and strive to find, the synthesis between natural
and revealed truth, between science and faith? This was the
work to which the Christian schoolmen lent themselves, and the
baptized genius of the Angel of the Schools, St. Thomas, with all
the light and knowledge of his age, wonderfully accomplished
this great task ! Let Protestants who would be considered sin-
cere and consistent go back on their records and reverse the
wrong judgments passed by their leaders on the schoolmen ; then
they will deserve some credit for their present professions in
favor of reason and a reasonable Christianity then, but not till
then.

Is not this very enterprise, which the schoolmen fearlessly
undertook and fairly succeeded in, what the serious and intelli-
gent minds of our day are looking for, and, in earnest tones which
betray their interior struggles, are publicly entreating for?
What else is it that Mr. Tyndall calls for in his Bristol address
when he says : " The problem of problems of tkis hour is, how to

296 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON. [June,

yield the religious sentiment reasonable satisfaction " ? The poet
reveals the dark regions into which he has been betrayed by a
false creed, and gives utterance to the wail of kindred souls, when
he asks :

" But what am I ?

An infant in the night :

An infant crying for the light,

And with no language but a cry."

Is it a matter for surprise that men who would be Christians,
but consistently with reason, driven to despair of finding a rea-
sonable satisfaction for their needs in a religion that starts with
the doctrine of total depravity and like tenets, should reject all
revelation and become rationalists, or sceptics, or agnostics ? Is
it a matter to wonder at that men of highly-gifted intellects, who
labor under the false impression that the Catholic Church holds
what was so offensive to their reason and conscience in Protes-
tantism, should sink all the finer feelings of the soul into the in-
vestigation of the structure of fishes, the study of the habits of
insects, or into searches after the chemical constituents of matter?
O Protestantism ! this is thy dismal and soul-destroying work ;
and the writer of these pages knows it full well and from bitter
experience. Would to heaven he had the ability to induce these
sincere men to abandon the ways which an unsound philosophy
and a false version of Christianity has forced them, so to speak, to
enter, and which can never give them the satisfaction their souls
crave ! When will they escape from that thraldom* imposed
upon their minds by a perverse and bigoted education, and have
the intellectual independence and fairness to examine the just
claims which the Catholic Church makes on their intelligence
and conscience ? How long will they deprive their striving souls
of that blissful vision in which the truths of Christianity are seen
placed in evident relations with reason and the whole universe ?

But who can conceive the foolhardiness of those who join in
with the repudiators of reason, or the deniers of its power to
rise above the senses, in imputing to the Catholic Church the
errors of Protestantism errors which she could not endure, as
we have seen, even in their most attenuated forms ! Here is a
specimen of the language of this class of persons, as published in
a recent weekly religious newspaper : *

" There are," he says, " only two things in the future, in my opinion a fair
reason in religion on the one side, and what you might call the papal dog-

* The Christian Union, April 6.

iSSi.J THE TRUE AND THE FALSE FRIENDS OF REASON. 297

ma on the other ; men will go to these two extremes. Dr. Hodge said years
ago it would come, to that. But, as men are thinking for themselves and
education is spreading, I do not think the Church of Rome is going to grow
any stronger, but always weaker, and that those who stand by reason in re-
ligion and insist on a reasonable faith are going to be in the enormous ma-
jority."

How coolly he takes it for granted that his readers will ac-
cept as true his misrepresentation of the Catholic religion ! " A
fair reason" on the one side and "the papal dogma" on the
other I The Rev. Robert Collyer, the author of this language,
has the reputation of being able to make a respectable horse-
shoe, and we do not doubt it. His mechanical skill, however,
nowise lowers him in our estimation, for we remember that St.
Paul not to go higher, for his example is more than sufficient
was a tent-maker, and no doubt a skilful one, and while working
at tent-making was the great apostle of Christ. What Catholics
desiderate is not that the Rev. Robert Collyer should know less
about making horseshoes, but that he should know more about
the science of philosophy and theology, and possess a little better
acquaintance with their true history. Surely this is not too much
to expect from one occupying the position of the minister of the
Unitarian congregation of the " Church of the .Messiah," which
is supposed to be composed of men and women of more than com-
mon intellectual culture. But he backs up his erroneous opinion
with the authority of Dr. Hodge. Who is this Dr. Hodge? Is
he the late Presbyterian professor of Princeton ? It may be, but we
have our doubts about it. It is more likely Dr. Hedge, a Unita-
rian and a professor of Harvard. It sounds very much like his
rhetoric. There lies before us on our table a volume of Dr.
Hedge's entitled Reason and Religion, in which there is no, little
display of like sophistry on the same subject. " Rome or Reason,"
he says; "there is no middle ground." But whether it be Dr.
Hodge or Dr. Hedge, it is a matter of little consequence, for Mr.
Collyer might quote easily scores upon scores of Protestant, Uni-
tarian, and other doctors in favor of his unfounded opinion. But
what help would he gain other than what the blind lend to the
blind? It would only serve to lead him further into the ditch of
error. The proper answer to the Rev. Robert Collyer's decla-
mation is the one Dr. Crosby gave in reply to the same ques-
tion when he said : " A good deal of modern thought is a mod-
ern humbug," and " a great deal said about this nineteenth cen-
tury is bosh."

Be this as it may, it is high time that the public should know

298 IL SANTO. [June,

that the issue is not, as these traducers of the Catholic Church
disingenuously put it, " Rome or Reason," but Rome and Rea-
son against Unreason and Protestantism. Let them cease to de-
ceive themselves ; in spite of their efforts, this issue is approaching
nearer and nearer to all intelligent minds of our times, and the
day is not far distant when the only choice left will be between,
on the one hand, entrance into the fold of the Catholic Church,
which knows how to reconcile reason with Christianity, and, on
the other, being swept off into the dark abyss of atheism.

IL SANTO.

" Great desire I had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts."

SHAKSPERE.

HALF an hour by railway from Venice brought me to Padua,
one of the oldest towns in northern Italy, triangular in shape,
with seven gates in its walls, standing in the midst of a broad
plain covered with gardens and vineyards, with the lovely Eu-
ganean hills in the background, rising like purple isles out of a
waving ocean of verdure. On alighting from the train amid the
usual hubbub of a railway station I was startled at finding my-
self instantly surrounded by a crowd, apparently in a great state
of excitement, who, with extreme vehemence of gesture, proceed-
ed to cry in the sonorous Italian tongue : " // Santo / II Santo ! "
The saint ! the saint ! I was extremely puzzled at this unanimous
exclamation from those who had never seen me before. I had
but recently arrived in Italy, and was by no means used to the
language, but there was no mistaking the words, echoed in every
note of the gamut. Whatever might be my personal merit, my
looks did not, 1 felt sure, bespeak any unusual commercing with
the skies. I had read of saints of the olden time, luminous and
resplendent with sanctity ; but looking down at my travelling
garb, I saw it was as sable and rayless as that usually ascribed to
the very incarnation of evil. I thought of Sir John Falstaff, who
wished he knew where a commodity of good names could be
bought. Had some happy gale only blown him to Padua, where
they seemed thrust upon one unsought and without price!
Every eye was fastened on me. The cry went on with increased

1 88 1.] IL SANTO. 299

vehemence : " // Santo ! II Santo ! " They were certainly address-
ing me. They seemed to put me on a level with the sainted
dead me who still lived in the flesh. I felt canonized, as it
were, by the popular voice. It was like being unexpectedly
placed among the stars in Ariadne's crown, for instance, or
among the signs of the zodiac. I felt somewhat like Sancho
Panza when he arrived at the island of Barataria, and the bells
were rung, and the people cried out with joy, and the magistrates
came out to meet him, and he was saluted by the honorable title
of Senor Don.

"Take notice, brethren," said honest Sancho, " Don doesn't belong to
me, nor ever did to any of my family. I am called plain Sancho Panza.
My father was a Sancho. My grandfather, a Sancho. And they were all
Panzas without the addition of Don or Donna."

While thus standing, doubtless with an inane look of per-
plexity on my face, and on the point of disclaiming, like honest
Sancho, the premature honor conferred on me, I was suddenly
roused to a true sense of the case by some avvocato del diavolo, who
made me at last comprehend that these frantic men, besieging
me with their cries, were merely hackmen and valets-de-place
proposing to take me to the church of San Antonio, popularly
known at Padua as il Santo, as if there- were but one saint in the
world. How quickly my star, for a moment so bright, paled and
fell from the heavens ! I was like Queen Christina, who, when
she arrived at Rome and saw the fountains sending forth their
sparkling waters on every square, thought they were set playing
solely in her honor, whereas they flow without ever ceasing, as
the glory of St. Anthony never wanes at Padua.

Padua, in fact, is a city pervaded by one great memory, like
Assisi, Avila, and so many other places in the Catholic world.
Here St. Anthony is " the saint " par excellence. It is at once evi-
dent he is the glory of the place. He stands with his lily at the
corners of the streets. His image is to be sold in all the shops.
The street of San Antonio leads to the magnificent church where
he is enshrined, and from which he looks benignly down on the
city he loved and that has so honored his memory. Going an-
other way, you see at a corner, pointing in the same direction,
the simple words il Santo, at first so inexplicable to the stranger.
The square around the church is called the Piazza del Santo.
The church itself is the Chiesa del Santo, or simply il Santo.
And there is the Scuola del Santo, filled with gems of art by Ti-
tian and other great painters. The saint's tomb has rendered

300 IL SANTO. [June,

the place for ever glorious, and though it has many other great
memories, his fame rises above them all. Although born in an-
other land, and but for a short time a resident here, he is only
known in the c'hurch universal as St. Anthony of Padua.

Padua strikes you very pleasantly, especially if you approach
it, as I did, on a beautiful morning in spring, walking through the
avenue of plane-trees that leads into the city. The numerous
domes and towers that inspired Shelley's epithet of " many-dom-
ed Padua " give it an oriental aspect, and they rise with fine ef-
fect from the tender green verdure into a sky as radiant as the
golden Eastern air. The city is full of interest and novelty. It
is pleasant to walk around the ramparts to take in its aspect and
look down into the now cultivated moat and over the wide plain
husbanded with care; pleasant, too, to wander through the ar-
cades that overshadow the streets, affording a grateful refuge
from the glowing sun and giving a sense of seclusion not out
of place at a seat of learning. Just after entering the town you
see a statue of Petrarch, who spent part of his youth here, a pro-
tegt of the Carrara family. In the baptistery, in a fresco of the
year 1378, he is represented kneeling before the Madonna with
several members of that family. His bust is in the cathedral, of
which he was a prebendary. And if you ascend the observatory
you can see the many-folded hills, covered with orchards and
vineyards, amid which Arqua is embosomed, where the poet died.
Among the numerous things of interest are the extensive library,
to which Petrarch contributed ; the immense Palazzo della Ra-
gione, resting on arcades, designed by an Augustinian friar ; the
clock of 1344, celebrated as the first striking clock, which gave
its name to the inventor's family ; the botanical garden, the old-
est in Europe, with its fourteen thousand pfants, and fragrant
with countless roses and geraniums ; the broad squares where
tournaments used to be held, but now lonely and deserted ; and
the stately old palaces with armorial bearings over the wide
portals, and courts adorned with statues and fountains gushing
and sparkling among flowers as luxuriant and deep-hued as Dr.
Rappaccini's fatal blossoms. Every one, of course, visits the
famous university, which has existed over six hundred years,
where Albertus Magnus, Petrarch, Tasso, Cardinal Pole, Co-
lumbus himself, studied, and where Galileo taught. Here, too,
lived and taught the great Pietro d'Abano, famed in the thir-
teenth century as a magician and astrologer for this was the
fountain-head of the occult sciences. And in its halls we cannot
forget the wondrous Michael Scott, who

1 88 1.] IL SANTO. 301

" Learned the art that none may name
In Padua far beyond the sea."

The university is no longer thronged as in the days when it had
eighteen thousand students from all parts of the world, but it is
still prosperous.

The convents with their paintings, and the cloisters with their
rich marble tombs, are worthy of study, but, above all, the
churches, which are of the greatest value in the history of art,
filled as they are with sculptures by such artists as Donatello
and Sansovino, and paintings by Giotto, Titian, and Mantegna.
Among these is the world-renowned chapel of the Arena, found-
ed in 1 303 by Enrico Scrovegno, whose father is consigned to hell
by Dante for his avarice. Its walls are covered with marvellous
paintings by Giotto, which are, as Ruskin says, " a continuous
meditation on the mystery of the Incarnation, the acts of the Re-
demption, the vices and virtues of . mankind as proceeding from
their scorn or acceptance of that Redemption, and the final judg-
ment." The latter is said to have been painted from the inspira-
tion of the artist's friend, Dante.

Going along the Via San Francesco, you see at one corner
the ancient tomb of Antenor, the founder of Padua, set up on
pillars. He was, it will be remembered, a Trojan prince, related
to Priam, who kept up a traitorous correspondence with the
Greeks and encouraged the introduction of the wooden horse,
which one would think he brought with him to Padua from the
huge model of Gattamelata's steed to be seen in the Palazzo della
Ragione. The inscription on the tomb contains a profound
lesson :

" Id quod es ante fui ; quid sim post funera queris ?
Quod sum, quidquid est, tu quoque lector eris " ;

What thou art I was before death. Dost thou seek to know what I
have become in the grave ? What I am, be sure, reader, thou wilt one day
also be.

Turning down by Antenor's tomb, you come to the Prato del-
la Valle, in the centre of which is an island laid out as a garden
or a garden converted into an island by surrounding it with a
canal which is bordered with statues of illustrious Paduans and
members of the university, and encircled by a course where used
to take place the races, and which is still a popular drive. Close
at hand is the Moorish-looking church of Santa Giustina, with its
domes and minaret-like towers standing out against the clear blue
sky. It is an immense church of the sixteenth century, on the

302 IL SANTO. [June,

site of one erected in 453 where St. Justina was martyred. The
unfinished facade stamps it as one of those " broken promises of
God " not uncommon in Italy, to be reckoned among the conse-
quences of the " Reformation," which must be a great comfort
to Protestant travellers. It is spacious, lofty,, and flooded with
light. The proportions are grand and the arches remarkably
bold, and there are many solemn chapels where it is good to
weep and pray and smite the breast. In one of them is the dead
Christ surrounded by the Maries and the loved apostle John him
who fathomed most deeply the mysteries of the Sacred Heart.
In another is a miraculous Madonna brought from the East, one
of those imposing, large-eyed Virgins before which one bends in-
stinctively in reverence. In the richly-carved choir stands the
tomb of St. Justina, on which are sculptured the principal scenes
in her short life. In one compartment she and her father, King
Vitalicino, are baptized by St. Prosdocimo, a disciple of St.
Peter and the first bishop of Padua. In another you see her
torn from* her chariot, and further on she is put to death with the
sword at the tender age of sixteen. The bishop, aided by his
clergy, bears her body to the grave. Over the high altar is a
painting of her martyrdom by Paul Veronese. She was a fa-
vorite subject in the Venetian school of art, for Venice, as well as
Padua, regards her as a patroness. The latter, graved on its
money in former times : Mcmor ero tui, Justina virgo. She is gen-
erally represented with the emblematic unicorn beside her, as
may be seen in Moretto's celebrated painting at Vienna with the
Duke of Ferrara at her feet. Beneath the church you are shown
the ancient prison in which she was immured and martyred a
place that speaks more loudly to the heart than the sumptuous
edifice above. In one of the transepts is a mortuary chest or
shrine containing a portion of St. Luke's remains. It is of ser-
pentine marble inlaid with oriental alabaster and ornamented
with heads of the symbolic ox.

This church belonged to the Benedictines, whose large con-
vent adjoining is now used as a barrack. Helena Cornaro Pis-
copia had such a veneration for the lives and learned pursuits of
the monks that she requested to be buried here among them.
The cloister, once adorned with beautiful frescoes of the life of
St. Benedict, has been sadly defaced by the soldiers a desecra-
tion very painful to witness, but which we found only too com-
mon before completing the tour of " United Italy."

Not far from Santa Giustina is the clean, sunny Piazza del
Santo, large enough, indeed, for a tournament. At the first glance

1 88 1.] IL SANTO. 303

you imagine one of the victorious knights is still surveying the
field of his triumph, but it is only Donatello's life-like eques-
trian statue of Gattamelata, the Venetian general. On one side of
this square is the church of San Antonio, with its six domes and
as many tall pinnacles and spires, on the highest of which is
poised a golden angel with a trumpet in his hands, seemingly
just descended from the soft blue heavens to summon all the
world to the tomb of the sainted Anthony. This church is his
mausoleum, and it is one of the most splendid in Italy, enriched
by one generation after another, anxious, as it were, to pay
tribute to so great a saint. It was begun in 1259 by Nicolo
Pisano, the greatest architect of the time, and includes part of
a more ancient church in which was incorporated a portion of
an old temple of Juno. In 1307 the University of Padua con-
tributed four thousand livres towards its adornment. In 1424
the grand dome was built by the voluntary offerings of the peo-
ple. The facade is by no means remarkable, but on entering the
church you are at once struck by the numerous tombs, paintings,
bronzes, and sculptures. One great dome after another swells up
over the nave, supported by enormous pilasters that have tombs
on every side, some high up with knights lying on them, others
with clerkly figures holding a written scroll. There are holy
images, too, that touch the devout heart. One near the. entrance
is the Madonna dei Ciecchi, a painting of the fourteenth century
in a framework of silver, with gentle, almond-shaped eyes and a
sweet face against which the Child presses his, so like unto it.
Two lamps burn before it.

Against the third pillar at the left is a monument to the cele-
brated Cardinal Bembo, the confidential friend of Pope Leo X.,
near whom he is buried in the church of the Minerva at Rome.
It is a marble pediment supported by Corinthian colonnettes,
with his bust in a niche. Cardinal Bernbo was illustrious by
birth, but still more so for his genius and elegant tastes, and he
devoted the greater part of his life to literary pursuits. After
the death of Leo X. he retired to Padua, where he drew around
him the most eminent men of learning. In the sixty-ninth year
of his age Pope Paul III. conferred on him the cardinal's hat,
and he removed to Rome, where he laid aside the classical
studies for which he has been so often reproached, and de-
voted himself henceforth to pursuits strictly befitting his sacred
office. His beautiful poem, " Turning to God," expresses his
sentiments at this crowning period of his life. It has been hap-
>ily translated as follows :

304 IL SANTO. [June,

" If, gracious God, in life's green, ardent year,
A thousand times thy patient love I tried,
With reckless heart, with conscience hard and sere
Thy gifts perverted and thy power defied,
Oh ! grant me, now that wintry snows appear
Around my brow, and youth's bright promise hide
Grant me with reverential awe to hear
Thy holy voice and in thy word confide !
Blot from my book of life its early stains !
Since days misspent will never more return,
My future path do thou in mercy trace ;
So cause my soul with pious zeal to burn
That all the trust which in thy name I place,
Frail as I am, may not prove wholly vain."

The chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, which it seems natural
to visit first, has beautiful gates of bronze. On one is represent-
ed the Samaritan woman at the well, with a statue of Faith
above ; on the other the devout centurion surmounted by Hope
figures of deep significance to the soul approaching the sacred
tabernacle. On the sides of the chapel Donatello has sculptured
some of the miracles of St. Anthony, such as the mule adoring
the Holy Eucharist when his more stubborn master refused to
bend the knee.

Beneath the Cappella del Crocefisso is buried an offshoot of
the White Rose of York, the favorite of two queens of England,
and yet a captive the greater part of his life. This was Edward
Courtenay, a grandson of the Princess Catharine, daughter of
Edward IV. The Courtenays were a chivalric race and count-
ed many Crusaders and paladins in their long line. They descend-
ed from the old kings of France, and had intermarried with the
Capets and Plantagenets. A daughter of this house married a
son of Louis le Gros, and a son married Yolande of Constantino-
ple. In England they held the earldom of Devon, and some of
them were kings of Jerusalem. It was William Courtenay, the
eighteenth Earl of Devon, who married the Princess Catharine.
All these alliances with royalty seemed to be fatal to the race,
especially the last. When the White Rose of York, crushed on
the field of Bosworth, began to revive once more, it found a sup-
port in Henry Courtenay, son of William and the Princess Cath-
arine. He was a friend of Cardinal Pole and a Catholic. Henry
VIII. suspected him of aiming at the crown of England, as he
stood near in the order of succession and was regarded as a lead-
er by the adherents of the ancient church by no means a small
party, numbering as it did most of the great barons and the greater

1 88 1.] IL SANTO. 305

part of the common people, for it was the ever-turbulent middle
class that espoused the cause of the self-styled Reformers. Two
leaders like Courtenay and Pole might have proved formidable,
and on the eve of a general rising in the west Courtenay and his
son Edward, a boy of twelve, were thrown into the Tower, and
the former was beheaded. The boy, as it were forgotten, remain-
ed a captive in the Tower fifteen years, and ran about the garden
and the house of the lieutenant. When he grew older he was con-
fined in the belfry, where his chief amusement was to watch the
vessels going up and down the Thames. After Queen Mary came
to the throne she visited the Tower with a train of prelates and
nobles, and when she saw the young Lord Courtenay kneeling
among others at the postern she alighted from her palfrey,
and embraced and kissed him. The aged Duke of Norfolk and
other loyal captives were with him. She called them " her pris-
oners " and took them away with her. Young Courtenay was
pale from long imprisonment, and had a pensive style of beauty
that was pleasing. Many were desirous he should marry the
queen, and he evidently stood high in her favor. The York
party called him the True White Rose. After Mary was affianc-
ed to the King of Spain those opposed to that measure wished
Courtenay to marry Elizabeth. The queen's suspicions were ex-
cited against him. She hesitated to crush the youth she had re-
garded with favor, but his enemies prevailed and he was again
sent to the Tower. Wyatt, however, denied that Courtenay was
privy to his conspiracy, and after Philip and Mary were married
he was sent abroad into what is called an honorable exile. Eliza-
beth is said to have regarded him with favor, but he died suddenly
two years after, before she had the power to give any proofs of it.
Beneath the grand dome of the church is the high altar with
its colonnettes of marble, erected in 1482, and ornamented with
bas-reliefs and statues of bronze by Donatello, the celebrated
Florentine artist. The tabernacle, of precious stones, is adorned
with figures of bronze, the work of Girolamo Campagna of Ve-
rona, and Cesare Franco of Padua. The altar and tabernacle
cost ten thousand crowns in gold. Near by stands a superb
bronze candlestick eleven feet high, adorned with one hundred
and four figures wrought with wondrous art by Andrea Riccio.
The bronze screen has twelve bas-reliefs of scenes from the Old
Testament, executed chiefly by Tiziano Bellano, of Padua, in 1488.
There are eighty stalls in the choir, that were beautifully carved
in 1468 by Canozio da Lendinara, an artist of exquisite taste, and
there are four organs in the church in highly decorated lofts.

VOL. XXXIII. 20

306 IL SANTO. [June,

The chapel in which St. Anthony is enshrined was built by the
republic of Padua between 1310 and 1350, but the final decora-
tions that render it one of the most magnificent sanctuaries of
Italy were not completed till the sixteenth century. It occupies
the north transept, and opens into the church by five great arch-
ways supporting an entablature of sculptured marble of dazzling
whiteness, with cornices and frieze beautifully wrought, and me-
dallions of the four Evangelists in the spandrels. Along the top
are five saints dear to Padua, among them St. Prosdocimo and
St. Justina. Over the central arch of this beautiful fagade is
graven: " Divo Antonio Confessori Sacrum, RP. PA. PO.," ren-
dered thus : The Republic of Padua to St. Anthony, Confessor.

You ascend by two steps into this sanctuary as into a holier
place. It is touching to see how the pavement has been worn in
deep indentures by the feet of the faithful. In the very centre of
the chapel is the shrine of St. Anthony, of verde antico with gilt
mouldings, surrounded by lamps and tapers perpetually burning.
Four angels with lilies in their hands hold branched candlesticks,
and around hang twenty-four silver and golden lamps of elegant
form and workmanship, given by princes and nobles. On the
top is a bronze statue of St. Anthony with golden lilies in his
hand, between St. Bonaventure and St. Louis of Toulouse, both
of the order of St. Francis. In front is an altar to which you as-
cend by seven steps, protected by two gates of bronze, executed
by Aspetti in 1 590. The back of the shrine is unprotected, and
we found a good many people kneeling devoutly around, soldiers
among them, who, as they entered and left, passed their hands
caressingly over the shrine, touched it with their rosaries, and
leaned their faces against it with a confiding, loving expression,
as if whispering their secret joy or anguish. Votive offerings
hung around, sketches in oil and water-colors, not of any value
as works of art, but affecting from their stories of human woe
and divine succor. Each one was inscribed P. G. R.~ -per grazia
ricevuta, for grace received. The ceiling was panelled and richly
gilded in 1859, at tne cost f fi ye hundred Napoleons in gold,,
through the pious liberality of the Empress Marianna, wife of
Ferdinand of Austria. A dome rises above the shrine, and around
it may be read in great letters : Gaude, felix Padua, qua thesaurum
possedes Rejoice, O happy Padua! thou that possessest so rich a
treasure !

Around the walls of this holy sanctuary are great arches, or
sunken panels of white marble, with alti-rilievi of scenes from the
life and legends of St. Anthony, executed by Sansovino, Tullio

1 88 1.] IL SANTO. % 307

Lombardo, Minello of Padua, and other celebrated sculptors.
These reliefs are of great beauty and value as works of art, but
to comprehend" them one must know something of the life of An-
thony, who is not only one of the most popular saints in the
church, but a favorite subject among artists. St. Anthony of
Padua sprang from the heroic race of Godfrey of Bouillon, the
immortal hero of the Crusades. His grandfather, Vincent de
Bouillon, went to Portugal to fight against the Moors under Af-
fonso I., and greatly contributed to the victory of Castro Verde,
so famous in the annals of the Portuguese nation. Anthony's
father was Martin de Bouillon, a distinguished officer in the Por-
tuguese army, and his mother was Teresa de Tavera, descended
from the old kings of the Asturias. The greatest scion of this
illustrious race was our saint, Fernandez de Bouillon, who was
born at Lisbon on Assumption day, 1195, in a palace close to the
cathedral. From his very childhood he was vowed to God and
holy celibacy. He was appointed to a canonicate at Coimbra in
early life, but when the remains of the five Franciscan proto-
martyrs were brought from Morocco to Lisbon he was so affected
by the account of their sufferings and heroic endurance that he
entered the order of St. Francis, hoping likewise to obtain the
crown of martyrdom. It was on this occasion he took the name
of Anthony. He actually went to Morocco to win the coveted
palm, but a severe illness obliged him to return, and, being dri-
ven by adverse winds to the coast of Italy, he attended a chapter
of the order at Assisi, where his eminent qualities were at once
perceived by St. Francis, who commissioned him to teach theo-
logy in these words :

" Brother Anthony, I desire you to give lectures on theology to our
brethren, on condition that you neither extinguish the spirit of devotion in
yourself nor in others."

Sent to France, he taught successively at Montpellier, Tou-
louse, and Limoges. It was at Limoges occurred the vision of
the infant Jesus which Murillo and other artists have rendered
so famous. He had accepted the hospitality of a wealthy man
whose house was quiet and favored his union with God. The
owner, perceiving a brilliant light in the middle of the night,
approached the saint's chamber and saw him contemplating
with ecstatic devotion the glory of the divine Child descending
from the heavens.

At Toulouse took place the incident, depicted more than once
in this church, of the mule adoring the Host which St. Anthony

308 IL SANTO. [June,

was carrying in procession, though the owner tried to entice it
away by a measure of oats. This led to the man's conversion,
and his descendants erected a chapel on which they placed an
inscription to perpetuate the memory of the event.

It was at Montpellier St. Anthony silenced by a word the
frogs in a neighboring lake, now called Lac St. Antoine, because
they disturbed the studies and meditations of the brethren by
their continual croaking. He is said to have bowed his head
in the cathedral pulpit one day and sung to himself the Alleluia,
which was distinctly heard in the choir of the Franciscans at
some distance, and this before the invention of the telephone.
But the saints often seemed to anticipate the sciences.

It was at Rimini he went down and preached to the fish of the
sea when sinners refused to listen to him. The sermon he deliv*-
ered is sold at Padua and is well worth reading. Addison gives
the following translation :

" Do you think that, without a mystery, the first present that God
Almighty made to man was of you, O ye fishes ? Do you think that, with-
out a mystery, among all creatures and animals which were appointed for
sacrifices, you only were excepted, O ye fishes? Do you think there was
nothing meant by our Saviour, Christ, that next to the paschal lamb he
took so much pleasure in the food of you, O ye fishes ? Do you think it
was by mere chance that when the Redeemer of the world was to pay a
tribute to Caesar he thought fit to find it in the mouth of a fish ? These
are all of them so many mysteries and sacraments that oblige you in a
more particular manner to the praises of your Creator.

" In what dreadful majesty, in what wonderful power, did God Almighty
distinguish you among all the species of creatures that perished in the unN
versal deluge ! You only were insensible of the mischief that laid waste
the whole world.

"All this, as I have already told you, ought to inspire you with gratitude
and praise towards the divine Majesty that has done so great things for
you, granted you such particular graces and privileges, and heaped upon
you so many distinguished favors. And since for all this you cannot em-
ploy your tongues in the praises of your Benefactor, and are not provided
with words to express your gratitude, make at least some sign of reve-
rence ; bow yourself at his name ; give some sign of gratitude according to
the best of your capacities ; express your thanks in the most becoming
manner you are able, and be not unmindful of all the benefits he has be-
stowed on you."

And when St. Anthony saw the fish open their mouths and
bow their heads to show forth their reverence to the Creator, he
rejoiced greatly and cried with a loud voice :

" Blessed be the Eternal God, for the fish of the sea honor him more

1 86 1.] IL SANTO. 309

than men without faith, and animals without reason listen to his word with
greater attention than sinful heretics."

He used to call the fish his brethren, after the manner of
St. Francis. He was, in fact, a great lover and observer of na-
ture, and in his sermons drew many of his most effective images
from the natural world around the birds of the air, insects, the
flowers of the field with their beauty and odor, the sun in the
heavens, etc.

" It is well to resemble the lily on the running waters," said he in one
of his sermons. " The lily is the pure soul ; the passing water is worldly
prosperity."

Tullio Lombardo has sculptured one scene on the walls of St.
Anthony's Chapel that took place at Florence when the saint
went there to preach during the Lent of 1228. Requested to de-
liver a eulogy over the remains of a wealthy man noted for his
avarice, with his usual fearlessness he chose for his text : " Where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also." There is an an-
cient predella at the Belle Arti at Florence, representing St.
Anthony in the pulpit, with one hand pointing to the miser,
who lies on his bier surrounded by his relatives. A surgeon, as
if to test the preacher's words, is examining the body and finds
the heart is gone, and through the open door you see a man in a
green dress and blue cap open a chest full of money, and there
among his bags of gold is the heart of the miser, as St. An-
thony had said.

Antonio de Escobar says St. Anthony is specially invoked to
recover things lost because he entered the order of St. Francis
under the name of Anthony instead of Fernandez, in order to con-
ceal himself from his friends. Therefore he who wished not to be
found for the glory of God received the gift that by his interces-
sion lost objects should be recovered. A French author says the
custom arose from an incident that occurred while St. Anthony
was guardian of the Franciscan convent at Montpellier. It hap-
pened that a novice, tired of his vocation, made his escape from
the convent, taking with him the New Testament in which St.
Anthony had written some notes for his sermons. Afflicted at
the conduct of the novice and the loss of his Testament, the
saint had recourse to prayer. The fugitive novice, in crossing a
bridge, saw at the other end an apparition similar to that which
beset Luther while translating the Bible at the Wartburg, and he
was so terrified at the aspect of the demon that he fled back to
the convent, carrying the Testament with him.

3io IL SANTO. [June,

" I heartily approve that recourse should be had to this saint when
one has suffered loss or affliction," says St. Francis of Sales. " God has
shown that such is his pleasure by hundreds of miracles wrought at the in-
tercession of the saint." And to a person who had criticised the practice he
said : " Let us unite in a vow to this saint to recover what we have both
lost you, Christian simplicity; and I, humility."

St. Anthony had a pleasing exterior and polished, easy man-
ners. His attitudes and gestures were full of grace, and yet so
grave that his very deportment in the street was in itself a ser-
mon. His voice was clear and harmonious, and he modulated it
at his pleasure. He was so eloquent in the pulpit that when
he was to preach all labor was suspended and the very shops
closed. When he delivered the Lenten sermons of 1231 at
Padua no church was large enough to contain the audi-
ence, and he had to preach in the open air without the city
walls, where more than thirty thousand people assembled to
hear him. The roads in every direction were filled with men,
women, and children. Lords and ladies, knights and peasants,
flocked to hear him. The wealthy took off their rich gar-
ments and went in simple attire. At night they went by the
light of torches. The bishop himself attended. Utter silence
prevailed. Every eye was fastened on St. Anthon}^ and when
he descended from the pulpit the people rushed to kiss his hands
and feet and tear off fragments of his garments. On more than
one occasion he would have been crushed to death had he not
been stoutly protected. The Duke of Padua was converted by
one of these sermons near Campo San Pietro, and the family be-
came so attached to the place as to make it their favorite resi-
dence and assume the name, since corrupted into Campisampe-
rio. Tiso the Great, a member of this family, delivered his coun-
try from the tyranny of Eccelino.

But to return to the church of San Antonio. Opposite the
chapel of il Santo is that of San Felice in the south transept. It
is similarly constructed, with five archways resting on columns
of yellow marble, and rich with paintings, marbles, and tombs.
This chapel was built in 1376, in honor of St. James the Great, by
Bonifazio dei Lupi, Marquis of Soragna, who had an heredi-
tary devotion to the great protector of Spain, as he claimed de-
scent from Queen Lupa, who reigned over Galicia when the body
of St. James arrived from Palestine on that idolatrous shore.
This chapel was afterwards consecrated to St. Felix when the
remains of this pope were enshrined here in 1504. The walls are
admirably frescoed by Jacopo Avanzi, a painter of such tender

1 88 1.] IL SANTO. 311

devotion that he long shrank from depicting the Crucifixion. In
the lunettes of the arches he recounts the poetic legend of St.
Jago. Here may be seen his holy remains in a marble boat, with
an angel at the helm, just arrived at Iria Flavia in Galicia. The
disciples deposit the body on a great rock near the shore, which
yields like wax to its pressure and closes around it. Lupa with
her handmaidens is looking over a balustrade, refusing the re-
quest of St. James' disciples to have his body buried. She orders
two wild bulls to be attached to the rock on which it lies, hoping
they will dash it into the water ; but the fierce animals, in-
stantly tamed by the sign of the cross, carry it into her own
palace. The queen with all her household embraces Christian-
ity and consecrates her palace to the service of God.

There is an immense painting of the Crucifixion on the wall
beneath, with a throng of soldiers and spectators that renders the
.scene exceedingly dramatic, if one may use the expression. On
one side, let into the wall, is the tomb of Queen Lupa's descen-
dant, buried here in 1380, with the risen Christ above him holding
the banner of the resurrection, as if to express his hope of a bet-
ter life. Behind the altar is the tomb of Bartolommea Scroveg-
no, sister of the founder of the Arena chapel, who was poisoned
soon after her marriage by her husband, one of the Carraras.

The chapel of San Antonio opens into the picturesque chapel
of the Madonna Mora, one of those black Virgins Giotto loved to
pay his devotions to. It is under a Gothic canopy and belonged
to the church of Santa Maria Nuova that formerly stood here.
St. Anthony himself often prayed before it, and in this chapel he
was first buried. The walls are covered with frescoes, and there
are some old tombs, among them one of Raphael Fulgoso, a cele-
brated advocate, sent to the Council of Constance by the repub-
lic of Venice a tomb of the fourteenth century resting on lions.
This was the mortuary chapel of the Obizzo family, and here
was buried Lucretia Orologio, the famous victim of conjugal
fidelity celebrated in song, and story, and romance.

Beyond is the chapel of the Beato Luca Belludi. He was a
obleman of Padua, who received the religious habit from St.
rancis himself. He attached himselt to St. Anthony, and ac-
mpanied him in his apostolic rounds. On him the mantle of
he saint seemed to fall, and after the death of St. Anthony he ac-
uired so great a reputation for sanctity that he was revered al-
ost as much, and in 1382 the people erected this sumptuous
hapel to his memory near the tomb of his friend and fellow-la-
orer. The walls are frescoed with scenes from the life of the
eato Luca and the history of St. Philip, in whose Crucifixion por-

312 IL SANTO. [June,

traits of the Conti family, benefactors to the chapel, are intro-
duced.

An aisle leads around the choir, and in the chapel at the apsis
we found a bier with tall candles burning around it, and one soli-
tary woman praying and weeping beside it. In the treasury
a beautiful monstrance given to the church by Victor Emanu<
in 1866. Here is kept the reliquary containing the tongue of Si
Anthony, found entire thirty years after his death. St. Bom
venture, who opened the tomb, took it in his hands, kissed it
with veneration, and exclaimed : " O blessed tongue ! that always
praised God and caused him to be praised by others, how pre-
cious art thou before him." And he placed it in a case of gold.
It is now in a beautiful reliquary of the fifteenth century like a
domed chape^ with open arches guarded by angels, set up on a
tall pedestal artistically wrought.

Great Dalmatian dogs used to guard the church and shrine of
St. Anthony, as of old dogs guarded the tomb of St. Thomas a
Becket. It is related that a servant on one occasion, having fall-
en asleep, was shut up in the church all night. The dogs sta-
tioned themselves' at his side and did not suffer him to move
till morning. They did not, however, prevent the spoliation of
the gold and gems belonging to the church in 1797.

The adjoining convent has been taken possession of by the
government, which is trying to convert it into a museum. It has
three quiet cloisters, with tombs, Madonnas, and Christs in the
arcades, and grassy courts adorned with shrubs.

Every pilgrim should visit the little convent of the Arcella,
built in the time of St. Francis. It is half a mile from Padua, and
has a cell which five saints have sanctified, with Supplex ingredere
over the door. Here Christ appeared to the dying Anthony, and
on the walls is depicted the scene of his death and the trans-
portation of his remains to Padua in a car drawn by oxen. It is
enclosed as a holy sanctuary within the present church. St.
Anthony died a little before sunset, June 13, 1231, singing his
favorite hymn, " O gloriosa Domina," composed by St. Ambrose,
or, as some will have it, by Venantius Fortunatus.

In one of his sermons, delivered on the banks of a great river
of northern Italy frequented by white swans, St. Anthony said:
" O my brethren ! let us be like the swan. By its whiteness it is
the image of the converted sinner, who has become whiter than
snow. And when the hour of death arrives the only sound that
escapes from its breast is the harmonious accent of its suffering
joy. O my brethren ! let us imitate the swan, that dies a-sing-
ing."

1 88 1.] CHARITY CHILDREN GOING TO MASS. 313

CHARITY CHILDREN GOING TO MASS.

LITTLE children, sinless yet,

Knowing naught of wrong or shame,

Safe from worldly care and fret,
Loving still the Master's name.

Little children, sinless yet.

Leading these, the Sisters go,

Convoying their tiny fleet,
All demure and saintly slow,

Through the busy city street.
Leading these, the Sisters go.

Thus the galleons sailed from Spain
Through the waste ways of the sea,

With the war-ships in their train
Pirates skulking down the lee !

Thus the galleons sailed from Spain.

Guarded by the caravels,

Safe they crossed the trackless sea

Braved the surges and the swells
Scorned the pirates down the lee !

Guarded by the caravels.

Gentle caravels are these,

These the Sisters, sweet and grave ;
Great the dangers of the seas

Over which they sail to save.
Gentle caravels are these.

Yet their faith has made them strong,
And the fleet of fair white souls

Naught need fear of hurt or wrong
Evil rocks or hidden shoals,

For their faith has made them strong.

Under shelter of God's grace
Safe they'll harbor make at last

In the saintly dwelling-place,
Doubts and fear for ever past !

Under shelter of God's grace.

314 RACHEL'S FATE. [June,

RACHEL'S FATE.

A TALE OF CAPE ANN.

ONCE upon a time there lived on Cape Ann, in the old col-
ony of Massachusetts, a widow named Phebe Scudder. Her
husband, a bold fisherman, had been lost at sea, leaving her, be-
sides a small farm of forty acres, three little children to care
for.

The house in which the widow dwelt had been built from the
timbers of a wreck, and a snug, substantial abode it was. In
front of the door in summer-time bloomed a wilderness of holly-
hocks and sunflowers, encircled by a gravelly path bordered
with shells of various colors ; morning-glories clambered all
about the quaint, diamond-shaped windows ; while inside the
dwelling was a huge fireplace, broad enough for a bench on
either side of the backlog, where one might sit and spin yarns
and gaze up at the stars.

In this chimney one winter evening in the year 1749 were
ensconced two boys and three girls listening to a story which
one of their number was telling. The speaker was a sunburnt
urchin of twelve years of age, whose real name nobody knew ;
for he had been the only being saved from the ill-fated ship
whose timbers, as we have said, had gone to make this humble
home, and at the time of his rescue he was merely an infant.
But his playfellows had christened him Dick, and so the rest of
the world called him Dick, too. By his side sat Rachel, the pret-
tiest of Mrs. Scudder 's daughters, while on the opposite bench
were her sisters, Grace and Phebe, squeezing between them an-
other boy named Sam Bowline.

It must have been an interesting tale that Dick was telling,
for the widow ever and anon would stop her spinning-wheel to
listen ; and when by and by he came to the end she shook her
head and exclaimed : " Dick ! Dick ! you are incorrigible always
talking about distant lands and undiscovered islands, horrid mon-
sters of the deep and wicked pirates. Why can't you keep your
fancy on dry land on some pretty farm where the corn grows
and the birds sing? "

" Oh ! but, mother, it was so interesting," cried the three lit-
tle girls at one breath. " And I shall dream about your story

i88i.] RACHEL" s FATE. 315

all night long," added Rachel, a blue-eyed, gentle creature,
Dick's very contrast in everything ; perhaps for this very reason
she was his favorite.

" And the bark was never heard of again never heard of
again," put in Sam Bowline, in a musing tone, like one who
thinks aloud.

" And what a big serpent was chasing the bark ! " spoke
Phebe, with a shudder. Here they were interrupted by an odd,
croaking voice which proceeded from a dark corner of the room,
while at the same moment a broad flame leaped up from beneath
the backlog, revealing the figure of a raven perched on top of a
clock. " Old Harry is right," said Mrs. Scudder " ' no place like
home.' And if your dear father, girls, had not loved the stormy
sea so much, if he had remained ashore and cultivated his farm,
I might not have been a widow to-day." Presently the clock
struck nine, and with the exclamation, " Bless me ! how late it
is," the good woman hurried her daughters to bed, and Dick
likewise ; for the boy had been adopted by her, and she treated
him as one of her own children. " And if you wish, Sam Bow-
line," she said, " you may have a bed here to-night, for it is snow-
ing and blowing great guns."

" Oh ! I can find my way home in spite of the storm," replied
Sam, a good-natured lad with red hair and a freckled face. So
saying, he quitted his comfortable nook in the chimney-corner
and moved towards the door. But before he got to it the raven
flew down from its perch and overtook him. Then, while Sam
stooped to scratch the bird's head, it again croaked, " No place
like home, no place like home." " Old Harry likes you," said
Mrs. Scudder, as she opened the door for Sam to pass out.
41 Many and many an hour did I spend teaching him to articu-
late these words, in the hope that they might influence my dear
husband to stay at home. O Sam ! I hope you will be wise : stay
on your father's farm ; do not go to sea no place like home."

Sam grinned, but made no response. Then, pulling his cap
far over his ears and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets,
" Good night, dame," he said. And off he went.

The story which Dick had related this evening was only one
of many stories wherewith he entertained his young friends
during the winter ; and by the time spring came round, and the
sunflowers and morning-glories began to bud, Mrs. Scudder had
pretty well made up her mind that nothing she might say or
Old Harry might croak would keep this restless mortal from go-
ing to sea.

316 RACHEL! s FATE. [June,

Dreary as the widow's homestead might appear in the winter-
time, it was not wanting in loveliness when the meadow behind
the house became green and the air was full of the sweet warb-
ling of bobolinks. Thither from a row of old-fashioned straw
hives flew the busy bees, and in this meadow Sam Bowline and
the girls loved to chase the butterflies. But sometimes the bees
chased them, for Dick now and then threw stones at the hives.
And whenever Sam, or Phebe, or Grace got stung he would
laugh and clap his hands ; it was only when they hurt blue-eyed
Rachel that he felt sorry for his mischief.

One May morning, while the sisters were waiting for their
playfellow Sam to arrive it was a Saturday, and he always
came of a Saturday Phebe said : " I wonder where Dick is?"
Scarcely had she spoken when her mother's voice was heard cry-
ing out : " Dick ! Dick ! don't destroy the fish-hawk's nest. Let it
be, let it be, you naughty boy !" But it was too late. At the
risk of his neck Dick had climbed to the top of the dead pine-tree
which stood on a sandy knoll between the house and the ocean,
and, after stealing the eggs, had wantonly pulled the nest apart
just for the fun of seeing it tumble to the ground.

" Alas ! that may bring ill-luck," sighed Mrs. Scudder, as she
went back to her churn. " I almost wish Dick were gone from,
here."

" These eggs are for you, Rachel," said Dick, when presently
the three girls arrived at the tree.

" But mother will scold you for destroying the nest," answer-
ed Rachel. " It was ever so old, and every year the birds came
back to it every year."

"I've heard pop say that it brought bad luck to destroy a
fish-hawk's nest," spoke a voice behind them, and, turning, they
saw Sam Bowline approaching.

"Bad luck? bad luck? Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Dick, who
seemed to care little what was said to him.

The five playmates now bent their steps towards the beach ;
they advanced hand-in-hand, kicking up the sand with their bare
feet and laughing merrily at a couple of snipe which they drove
before them, and which Dick declared he liked ten times better
than the bobolinks. " For snipe," he said, " are fond of wading
in the water, just as I am."

But Sam and the girls were as fond of this sport as he. was ;
and this morning, as soon as they reached the strand, into the
surf they dashed after venturesome Dick, who always led the way.
Backwards and forwards they skipped and played for about a

RA CHEL'S FA TE. 317

quarter of an hour, chased by the breakers, which sometimes
nearly overtook them.

At length came a wave higher than any of the others. " Be
quick ! be quick ! Don't let it catch you," shouted Rachel to
Grace. But Grace was the youngest the weakest ; she was too
slow ; in another moment the breaker curled over her and knock-
ed her off her feet. Then when the seething waters receded they
drew the child with them. She called for help ; Phebe and Ra-
chel shrieked, while Sam and Dick hastened to the rescue. But
before they could reach poor Grace another huge billow had
completed the work of the first and carried her still further
away. Indeed, the brave boys were well-nigh drowned them-
selves in trying to save her.

It was a mournful procession which in a little while wended
its way to the widow's home ; and as Dick passed beneath the
dead pine-tree the fish-hawk was screaming wildly for her rav-
ished nest. But he was too exhausted even to fling a stone at
the angry bird.

Poor Mrs. Scudder ! At first she could scarcely believe her
senses when she counted only four children returning. Where
was the fifth ? Where was her darling Grace ? How suddenly
this new woe had come upon her !

" I hate the ocean ! " she moaned. " I hate it, I hate it ! It
robbed me of my husband ; now it has taken away my Grace."
Dick tried to utter something in defence of the sea, but he could
not. He dropped on the floor, and so did Sam ; while Old Har-
ry hopped between them, croaking, " No place like home no
place like home."

" How time does fly ! " spoke Phebe to Sam Bowline, as they
were seated one morning side by side on a fallen tree the same
old pine which Dick had once climbed to plunder and destroy the
fish-hawk's nest.

" Yes, it is now almost nine years since Grace was drowned,"
answered Sam, "yet it seems only yesterday." "What happy
days those were before dear Grace left us ! " pursued Phebe.

" Very. But these days are happier still," said her compan-
ion, turning his freckled face towards her and striving to catch
her glance. But Phebe's dark eye had fallen on a wild cran-
berry vine at her feet, and you might have thought that she had
not heard his words, except for a crimson spot which suddenly
glowed on her cheek.

"What a sunburnt hand you have!" continued Sam, now

318 RACHEL'S FATE. [June,

taking one of her hands in his and holding it up as if to ex-
amine it. .

" It is not so pretty as the soft, white hands of the girls you
meet in Marblehead," said Phebe.

" Not so pretty ! " exclaimed Sam indignantly. " Why, it is
worth them all put together. This hand can pull an oar, haul in
a bluefish, and has helped me take in a reef when a squall was
coming up." Then, after a pause during which Phebe's heart
beat very fast, " Phebe," he said, " I met a namesake of yours in
Marblehead last week."

" Indeed ! " said Phebe, lifting her eyebrows but not her
eyes. " Well, pray what sort of a girl is she ? " " She is deaf,
dumb, and blind," replied Sam, trying his best not to laugh.

" Poor creature ! And how old is she ? Has she a happy
home ? " " She is very young and has no home, unless it be the
ocean."

" Oh ! you are quizzing me. What do you mean ? " said Phebe
impatiently. " No, I am not quizzing. And, what is more, I
kissed her just because she bore your name."

" Naughty boy ! " exclaimed Phebe, bending to pluck a leaf
off the vine. " And when I kissed her I could not see her blush
for the paint that was on her cheek," said Sam. At this Phebe
laughed.

" But now, to stop joking," he added, " the Phebe Scudder that
I kissed is a schooner which I have built and called after the girl I
love best in the world." Here Sam placed his other hand upon
Phebe's hand, which he tremblingly clasped. Then, as she remain-
ed silent and with eyes still cast down, " You used to make fun of
my red hair and big freckles," he continued, " and once you call-
ed me ugly. But, believe me, there is not a man in the whole
colony of Massachusetts who would do as much for you as Sam
Bowline would. And now, before I put to sea, I want to know if
you will be my wife ? "

" I don't mind your red hair and freckles any more," answer-
ed Phebe in tremulous accents.

" Does this mean that you are willing to sail with me along
life's sea ? " continued Sam, waxing poetic in his rapture. " Yes,"
replied Phebe, now lifting her eyes and gazing frankly at him.
Then, while Sam pressed his lips to her glowing cheek, " Why,
I declare! " she added, " here is Old Harry." And almost before
the words were out of her mouth the raven somewhat grayer
than when we first saw him on top of the clock hopped upon
Sam's shoulder.

1 88 1.] RACHEL'S FATE. 319

" What a pet you are ! " said Sam, scratching the bird's head.
" He likes you and dislikes Dick," went on Phebe. " And I must
confess I do not like Dick either." " Why not, my love?" in-
quired Sam. " Because because I know Dick has persuaded
you not to be a farmer." Here the young woman paused a mo-
ment, while her bosom heaved. " O Sam, Sam ! " she continued,
" why won't you stay ashore and raise corn and pumpkins ? Why
must you sail off to distant lands perhaps never come back ? "

"Never come back! Oh! have no fear of that," said Sam.
" The Phebe Scudder is a stanch craft, well built and wholesome,
exactly like her namesake ; and I am sure she will be lucky, too.
Why, who knows, I may discover a new island like the one Dick
told us about in one of his stories, where the pebbles on the
beach were all gold." " Might not your father's farm be a better
gold-mine?" inquired Phebe. "And then I could help you work
it, and we should see each other every hour of the day."

" Dear Phebe," answered Sam, kissing away a tear, " let us
not make this happy hour unhappy by talking about my depar-
ture. Of one thing be assured : I will make short cruises ; I will
try to visit you every six months ; and you must let me take Old
Harry with me for the words which your mother has taught
him to pronounce will keep reminding me of home."

" Yes, you may take Old Harry," said Phebe. " But now let
us move away from this spot. We have been sitting too long on
this fatal, lightning-blasted pine-tree where Dick once brought
bad luck upon us. I am superstitious. Let us go ! " So saying,
they rose and proceeded towards Phebe's home.

During this interesting interview between Sam Bowline and
Phebe another couple might have been observed conversing to-
gether about a quarter of a mile away. These two were Dick
and Rachel. But first let us tell how they had met this morning.
Rachel, we know, had been Dick's favorite as a child. But now,
when she was just budding into womanhood, her beauty sur-
passed even his most extravagant dreams. She was not bronzed
by the sun like Phebe her cheek resembled a peach ; her eyes v
were blue as the summer sky, and her golden hair was like the
hair of the mermaids whom Dick used to tell of in his romantic
tales. But Rachel had never appeared so bewitching to Dick as
she did to-day, when he arrived from Marblehead after an ab-
sence of several months and discovered her swimming just with-
in the outer breaker. Carried away by admiration, he waded in
the water up to his waist. But he could not reach her, while
Rachel shook the spray off her tresses and laughed merrily at

320 RACHEL! s FATE. [June,

him. " Come ashore ! come ashore ! " cried the enchanted youth.
Whereupon Rachel, taking pity on him, and looking never so
graceful in her chaste, home-made bathing-robe, went ashore,
and together they walked in the direction of a clump of cedars.

" I am glad to see you back," spoke Rachel. " And I am
overjoyed to seejj/0&," answered Dick, feasting his strange eyes
upon her ; they seemed to have grown wilder and more piercing
during his absence.

" Did Sam Bowline come with you ? " inquired Rachel. " Yes ;
look at him yonder, sauntering towards the house hand-iii-hand
with Phebe." " Hand-in-hand, sure enough," murmured Rachel,
with a faint smile. Then, after watching them a moment, " Well,
what have you both been doing in Marblehead ? " " Building
two of the prettiest schooners that ever sailed," answered Dick.
" And mine is called the Shark."

11 What a name ! " exclaimed Rachel.

" Does it frighten you ? " said Dick, with an almost savage
grin. " Well, you might have called it the the "

" The Bobolink, I suppose," interrupted Dick. " No, indeed,
no land name for my schooner." Presently he halted and stared
at Rachel with an expression which puzzled her ; his lips were
firmly compressed ; he seemed wrought upon by some violent
emotion. And when, to her astonishment, he seized her by both
wrists, although his grasp was powerful, she felt him trembling.
" O Dick ! what is the matter ? " said Rachel. " Would you like
to become a queen?" he answered "a queen with obedient
subjects under you and plenty of gold and diamonds ? "

" Heavens ! Dick, what do you mean ? " "I mean that I can
make you a queen, if you will," pursued Dick, still holding fast to
her wrists. " And I shall be a king."

"Dick, Dick, are you sober? Are you mad?" exclaimed
Rachel, who was tempted to scream for help Sam and Phebe
were still within hearing. " Mad ? Not in the least. But you
must know that I have met lately many rovers of the sea ; and I
have heard them say that far off in the Pacific Ocean are many
beautiful islands, where the sky is ever blue and where the in-
habitants are a simple, innocent race, living on cocoanuts and
bread-fruit. Now, suppose I sailed with a bold and jovial crew
to one of those islands and proclaimed myself monarch, would
you accompany me and be my queen? "

" What a strange idea ! " ejaculated Rachel. " But it is just
what I might have expected. You were always fond of telling
us impossible stories."

1 88 1.] RACHEL'S FATE. 321

" But it need not be impossible," went on Dick. " I vow to
do my part. I will conquer one of those islands. But you must
sail with me to my dominion and be my queen."

" What ! Leave dear mother, who is growing old and infirm ?
Go and dwell on the other side of the globe ? "

" My love, my burning love, would make up for all your loss,"
said Dick in passionate accents. " Oh ! I cannot leave my mo-
ther," said Rachel ; " and, Dick, if you truly love me, I beg you
to free my wrists, let me go home." " Well, then, go ! " cried
Dick, flinging her away. " Go ! But I I will make you my
queen whether you will or no."

" Why, my daughter, you look pale. What ails you ? " said
the widow when a few minutes later Rachel made her appear-
ance. " You were so long absent that I began to fear something
had happened. I wish you would not go a-swimming all by
yourself."

For once in her life Rachel refused to tell her mother what
troubled her. Nor would she tell Phebe, who presently drew
near, with Sam Bowline's arm twined around her waist, and look-
ing as radiant as the June sky.

" You must not be downcast to-day," spoke Phebe ; " for a
little while, ago I promised this dear fellow to be his wife, and I

want you to rejoice with us." " You have done wisely," an-
swered Rachel. " Here, Sam, let me shake your hand."
After this kindly greeting Sam asked where Dick was : " He
and I journeyed together from Marblehead. I told him this
morning that I was going to propose to Phebe. He wished me
luck, then disappeared. Where can he be ? " " Have you seen
him, Rachel ? " inquired Mrs. Scudder.

" 1 have just left Dick by the clump of cedars between the
beach and the fallen pine-tree," replied Rachel. " But now let

Cie go to my room ; I must dress." With this Rachel withdrew.
Jut when she had made her toilet, instead of rejoining the
thers, she knelt by her bedside and prayed for Dick Dick,
whose pet she had always been Dick, who had been her child-
lover. Now here he was a full-grown man, much handsomer
n Sam Bowline, with an eye whose passion pierced her
rough. But, alas ! he seemed bent on a hare brained scheme,
ow would it end ? What might be Dick's fate ? " May the
gracious Lord protect him ! " said Rachel. " He asks me to sail
with him thousands of miles away to leave Cape Ann, and
other, and Phebe. Q Dick ! I love you, I love you, but I can-
ot grant you this boon. No, no, I cannot."

VOL. XXXIII. 21

322 RACHEL'S FATE. [June,

In the meanwhile Sam Bowline had gone in quest of his
friend. But no voice had answered to his repeated calls, and he
returned in half an hour without having found him.

" Something has surely happened between my sister and
Dick," spoke Phebe in an undertone to her betrothed. " Rachel
will not quit her room. And did you notice how flurried she
looked when she came back from her bath ? "

" Well, Dick intends to put to sea in a few days," answered
Sam. " I guess he came here purposely to ask Rachel to marry
him before he sailed, for I know he adores her. Now, if she has
refused him he has doubtless returned to Marblehead and may
weigh anchor before to-morrow."

"Will his cruises be short, like yours?" said Phebe.

" I think not. He speaks of sailing round the world."

"Well, you were always a better fellow than Dick," pursued
Phebe, smiling fondly on her lover ; " and now I I detest him,
for I am sure it is he who persuaded you to follow the sea."

"Be not too severe on Dick," said Sam. "With all his odd
notions, his roving temperament, his love of adventure, he has a
golden heart."

Phebe shook her head, then made Sam promise that he would
bring Old Harry home once or twice a year. " I will keep my
promise," said Sam ; " and before many years I will give up the
sea and settle down on a farm."

" Yes, yes, on this dear old farm where I was born,"" said
Phebe ; then presently, with swelling bosom, she added : " O
Sam, Sam ! how impatiently I shall watch from the highest sand-
knoll for the first glimpse of the Phebe Scudder on the horizon."
" And I shall never open my chart without turning my eyes on
Cape Ann," answered Sam. Here there was a pause. Phebe,
albeit this was the day of her betrothal, already keenly felt the
approaching separation. Sam might tarry a few golden weeks
with her ; but these weeks would pass like one day ; and then

" Well, Sam," spoke Phebe, after brushing away a tear, " I
want you to make me another promise a solemn promise."
"What is it?" said Sam.

"Whenever night comes on take in sail," said Phebe. "I
have heard that my dear father always carried too much canvas
at night. It probably cost him his life. So take in sail at
night."

Within a week the young couple were married. Then, when
the brief honeymoon was ended, Sam gave Phebe a long, silent,
lingering embrace and went away. To judge by the tears that

1 88 1.] RACHEL" s FATE. 323

were shed on this occasion, Rachel and Mrs. Scudder felt the
parting even more than Phebe. The latter did not weep nor
utter a word. Only her pale visage and the way she fell back
against the wall told of her poignant grief.

Nor did Sam breathe a syllable either. But when he was out
of sight he pressed Old Harry again and again to his lips. The
raven did not seem surprised ; it made no attempt to escape.
Old Harry and Sam had always been good friends. Now that
both were bidding adieu to Cape Ann, which was never again
to be their home, they appeared to like each other more than
ever.

One moonlight night, not long after Sam Bowline had sailed,
a large, rakish schooner might have been observed lying-to about
half a mile from the beach, directly opposite the Widow Scud-
der's abode.

For once in his life the captain of this craft felt nervous, as,
accompanied by five other men, he rowed towards a narrow cove
that was sheltered from the breakers by a rocky islet.

" How will she take it ? Will she faint ? Will she heap
maledictions upon me? Will she die of fright in my arms?"
were questions which bold, reckless Dick asked himself a score
of times as his skiff drew near to the shore.

In a little while he came to Rachel's home, and, peeping
through the west window, which was partly open, he beheld the
object of his affections seated between her parent and Phebe.
The old lady had been reading the Bible, but at this moment
she was listening to something that Rachel was saying.

" Well, I own that Dick was always a hard boy to manage
disobedient and ever so saucy," observed the latter ; " but for all
that he was not really bad. As far back as I can remember he
was kind to me ; his hand was ever ready to lift me on the pil-
lion ; he brought me the earliest wild flowers ; and once, when I
was lost among the sand-hills, he stayed out a whole night till he
found me. O Phebe ! say what you may against Dick, I will
take his part." " Humph ! I know that he thinks more of you
than of any other girl on the Cape," answered Phebe, "and
what puzzles me is that you did not accept him when he pro-
posed ; for I am pretty sure that he did propose."

" I refused his offer because I love mother more than I love
him," replied Rachel. " He wished me to go far, far, far from
mother to where I might never see her again." At this mo-
ment the door opened, and lo ! the very one of whom they were
speaking stood before them. He was armed with a cutlass and

324 RACHEL' s FATE. [June,

a pair of pistols, and never had Dick looked so like a dare-devil
as now except for his eyes, which, strange to relate, were mois-
tened with tears.

The widow and her daughters quickly rose to their feet.
" Dick, Dick, what has happened ? What brings you here at this
hour?" cried Rachel, who recalled with throbbing heart his last,
ominous words " I will make you my queen whether you will
or no." She had often thought of these words since he uttered
them. Had he come now to carry out his threat ? " And who
is that man I see gliding behind you? " she continued. "Who
is he ? Speak ! "

" And there is a face gazing in at the window," said Phebe,
trembling. " You surely would not steal my child from me ? "
exclaimed the widow, boldly stepping between Rachel and the
intruder. " Calm yourself, dame. There is nothing to fear.
The wicked spirit has left me," answered Dick "it has left me,
thank the Lord, and not for all the world would I rob you of
dear Rachel. Moreover, for her sake I here solemnly vow never
to shed a drop of human blood ; and in the end I will make her
the richest woman in the colony." At these words, to their sur-
prise, Dick fell on his knees and kissed Rachel's feet. Then, ris-
ing up, " Blessed angel ! " he continued, " if any being could have
persuaded me to live ashore that being would have been your-
self. But an impulse which I cannot resist drives me from Cape
Ann. Farewell ! farewell ! " Here he turned and rushed out of
the house.

" I verily believe that Dick is possessed by Satan. The Lord
be praised, he is gone ! " said Phebe. " Alas ! alas ! " ejaculated
Mrs. Scudder, shaking her head, "his pistols and cutlass are
things of evil omen. I hope my fears may not come true." Pre-
sently, without speaking a word, Rachel went to the door and
listened. All was still save the roar of the ocean. " He is gone
gone. Shall I ever see him again ? " she murmured. Then,
before her mother could prevent her, she hastened out into the
night and sped with winged feet towards the beach.

" Is that you, my beloved ? " exclaimed Dick, turning round
when he heard her footsteps.

Rachel made no response, but paused and bowed her head ;
for there were strange men present. Dick bade his companions
continue their way to the boat. Then, taking Rachel by the
wrists, as he had done once before but now it was a gentle, lov-
ing grasp "Dear girl," he said, "you are my good angel. If
you would only come with me my whole life might be changed.

i88i.] RACHEL'S FATE. 325

I shall be on the wide sea like a lost bark without you." " Oh !
I cannot leave my mother," answered Rachel. " But for
mother I might go with you." " True, true," said Dick ; " and
she has been like a mother to me. It was an evil spirit which
prompted me to take you from her. But not all the train-bands
in the colony could make you safer than you are here at this
moment here with Dick, who loves you with his whole heart
and soul, who would die for you."

" I know you would not harm me," said Rachel, looking con-
fidingly at him; while the moon, which peeped from behind a
cloud, revealed plainly enough what her fond heart was whis-
pering. "And, Dick, I could not bear to think that I might
never see you again. It is why I have followed you." " Well,
if some day I returned with plenty of gold some day, perhaps
years hence would you then sail away to my dominion and be
my queen? " inquired Dick earnestly.

" I would marry you if you came back penniless," answered
Rachel. " But we must live here, on dear Cape Ann."

" Impossible ! " murmured Dick in a voice too low to be
heard.

He now gazed on her a moment in silence. It was a solemn
moment ; then, flinging his arms about her neck, he gave Ra-
chel one passionate embrace and disappeared.

A few minutes later his skiff was gliding swiftly towards the
schooner.

The young woman lingered where she stood, listening to the
sound of the oars ; nor was it until Phebe had called her a dozen
times that she answered.

" May the Lord bring him back to me ! " sobbed Rachel, as
she bowed her head on her sister's shoulder; and Phebe in-
wardly repeated the words for she was thinking of Sam Bow-
line " May the Lord bring him back to me ! "

" Goodness gracious ! How it did blow last night ! " said
Mrs. Scudder one October morning the first October after
Dick and Sam's departure.

" I did not sleep very soundly," answered Phebe. " Nor I,"
said Rachel.

" I had a dream," went on Phebe, " in which I saw Sam's
schooner off Cape Hatteras. She was scudding under bare poles,
and would you believe it ? in spite of the hurricane, Old Harry
was perched on top of the mainmast."

" Well, I saw the Shark with her jib and mainsail blown to

326 RACHEL'S FATE. [June,

ribbons," said Rachel. "Dick was lashed to the wheel. The
big waves were sweeping the deck. He called to me, and just
then I awoke."

" I remember the time when I had exactly such dreams," ob-
served the widow. " They used to come during the equinoctial
storm. And one night in a vision I saw your dear father's
schooner foundering. Sure enough, he never came home ; and I
solemnly believe that the Almighty, in his goodness, did vouch-
safe to his poor wife one last glimpse of him before the ocean
swallowed him up."

" I pray the Lord that that horrid pirate whom we heard
about last week may not catch my Sam ! " said Phebe.

"They say the pirate's vessel can outsail anything that floats,"
remarked Mrs. Scudder. " Well, he'll not capture the Shark"
said Rachel.

"The Shark! Ugh! don't breathe that name," said Phebe.
" It is just the name one might expect Dick to give his schoon-
er."

" You are always picking at poor Dick. Pray be more chari-
table," said Rachel, a little nettled.

" Well, the last time Dick was here he certainly looked like a
desperado, and I am very glad that you did not marry him," con-
tinued Phebe.

" Hush ! hush ! Do not wax hot over Dick," interposed the
widow. Rachel made no reply to her sister's speech. She
merely bowed her head on the table, and if a tear fell to the
floor it fell unseen.

But if this night had been tempestuous the day which fol-
lowed was calm and beautiful. And the day was made more
beautiful still by the return of Sam Bowline, who entered with-
out rapping on the door. ,

" I was expecting you ere lpng, t but hardly so soon as this ;
you are truer than your word," cried the joyous Phebe, as he
clasped her to his heart. " Alas !,,! c^n fee with you, my darling
wife, only a few days," answe,rQV3am.. i ;";For you must know
that a terrible buccaneer has suddenly appeared on the Spanish
main. The villain is creating great havoc among the shipping,
and I have been commissioned by some merchants of Boston
who know how nimble my schooner is to go in pursuit of him.
They have armed me with four twelve-pounders ; and should I
get within range of the pirate, let him beware! "

" Quite a compliment to the good qualities of my namesake,"
said Phebe, smiling.

;

1 88 1.] RACHEL'S FATE. 327

" Well, I can barely outsail Kidd on a wind. Going free, I
think he may have the smarter craft," continued Sam.

" You have seen him, then ? " said Rachel. " Yes, once when
I was steering 1 for Charleston with a cargo of pineapples ; and if
a fog had not hidden me from view Sam Bowline might not have
been here to-day."

" What dreadful creatures pirates are ! " exclaimed Phebe.
Then, dropping her voice to a whisper and glancing at Rachel,
she added : " May it be possible that this new sea-robber is is
Dick?"

" Oh ! I understand you need not whisper. You will say any-
thing against Dick. But I love him ! " broke out Rachel. With
this the latter withdrew to her chamber to mourn unseen; for
down deep in her heart Rachel had some misgiving about her
lover. " And yet," she murmured, "Dick solemnly promised
never to stain his hands with blood. No, no, this Kidd cannot
be my Dick."

" Phebe, you should not hurt poor Rachel's feelings as you
do," spoke Mrs. Scudder. " Although she is your sister, she
may get to hate you ; and then think of me living with two
daughters who are enemies ! "

" Well, mother, I cannot help disliking Dick," answered
Phebe ; ".and I wish that I could set Rachel against him, for Dick
is a bad egg. Hard as you begged him to live ashore and mind
the farm, he ungratefully refused ; and, what is more, but for him
my dear Sam would have remained on his father's farm, and my
heart would not have been torn with anxiety every time the wind
howls and the sea rises." " Well, dear Phebe," interposed Sam
Bowline, patting her gently on the cheek, " your mother is
right : let us not accuse Dick without better proof. The pirate's
vessel is indeed very like the Shark ; but for all that it may not
be the Shark."

As Sam had said, he was able to tarry only a brief space with
is young spouse ; in less than a week he was again bounding
over the billows, steering south in quest of the much-dreaded
Kidd.

Long and lonesome was the winter which followed, and it
as made all the more lonesome by the coldness which sprang
p between Rachel and Phebe. They were still fond of sitting
in the big chimney as when they were children ; but now they
sat apart instead of side by side. They seldom exchanged a
word, and heavy grew their mother's heart at this estrangement
between them.

328 RACHEL" s FATE. [June,

Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of this
dreary winter. Towards the middle of February Mrs. Scudder
and her daughters went to a corn-husking. They were gone
several days, and on their return home imagine their surprise to
find a bagful of Spanish doubloons concealed under Rachel's bed.
How did it get there ?

During the same month the merchants of Boston were great-
ly alarmed by the appearance of Kidd off the coast of Massachu-
setts.

When the long-wished-for spring arrived Phebe confidently
expected another visit from her husband. But, alas ! spring and
summer passed away, likewise another autumn and another win-
ter, and still Sam Bowline returned not. But now and again
came news from Marblehead, telling how the Phebe Scudder was
ever in close pursuit of the buccaneer ; and this cheered Phebe's
heart a little, for it proved that ' Sam was alive and doing his
duty.

" Why does he not come, not for my sake only, but for the
sake of his baby boy? " sighed the pining Phebe when a whole
eighteen months had elapsed without her laying eyes on Sam
Bowline.

Quite as often, too, but in a low tone to herself, Rachel would
mourn for her absent lover. " I cannot believe that Dick is the
pirate whom every skipper is cursing," she would say inwardly ;
and whenever Rachel heard a word breathed against him she
boldly took his part. But this cost Rachel the good-will of more
than one gossipy dame ; for the story of the bag of gold had got
abroad, and there was a skipper's wife who openly asserted that
Rachel knew more about Kidd than she cared to reveal.

" Well, depend on it, Phebe, Sam will come home when least
expected, perhaps in the middle of the night," spoke Mrs. Scud-
der as she was trimming her lamp one evening. Hardly were
the words uttered when in he strode at least so Phebe fondly
hoped and believed ; for, as once before, the door swung swiftly
open without any warning tap. Yes, in came a man ; but, alas !
it was not Sam Bowline.

" My Dick ! my Dick ! " cried Rachel, flying to meet the ap-
parition.

" You know me, then? I am not so changed ? " answered the
pirate, taking Rachel's cheeks between his palms and giving her
lips a vigorous kiss.

" Oh ! how I have waited and prayed for you," continued
Rachel as he fondled her ; " and now at last here you are. But

1 88 1.] RACHEL'S FATE. 329

I see blood on your brow, dear boy. What has happened ? "
" Nothing, nothing-; only a scratch," replied Dick. Then, while
Rachel turned pale, " You must know," he added, " that I am
hotly pursued ; but I could not resist coming to see you even
at the risk of my head."

" Well, dear Dick, let me lave the blood off your forehead and
put a bandage on the wound," said Rachel tenderly ; " for I see
that it is something more than a scratch."

In this good work Phebe assisted her ; for Phebe's heart melt-
ed at the sight of her old-time playmate in this woful condi-
tion. While the young women and their mother were thus oc-
cupied Dick gave them a hurried account of how he had been
wounded in a fray with the officers of the law. " It was only an
hour ago," he said ; " and they are now on my track. But I
could not resist stopping here I really could not." " Dear boy ! "
answered Rachel in faltering accents, " great as my joy is, per-
haps it had been wiser if you had not paused in your flight."

" Oh ! they'll never get me in their clutches," continued- Dick;
" for you must know that I am Kidd the pirate, and Kidd is not
afraid of five to one. Why, look, I carry four pistols in my belt,
and a dirk and a cutlass."

"Mercy on me! Dick, Dick, what have you come to?"
ejaculated Mrs. Scudder, clasping her hands. Dick grinned, then
went on : " Many a sack of silver and gold have I buried in the
sand along the coast, and one bag I hid under your bed, dear
Rachel. Did you find it?" " To be sure I did," answered
Rachel. " But, my beloved, how came you by all this money ?
By plundering honest, peaceful merchantmen ? O Dick, for
shame ! for shame ! "

" Well, not one drop of blood have I shed not one drop,"
continued Dick, who felt keenly Rachel's words. " Thank God
for saying that ! " pursued the latter. " At least you are not a
murderer. But, I repeat, for shame ! for shame ! Oh ! I implore
you to abandon your wicked life. Do ! do ! Come and dwell
again on dear old Cape Ann."

" Too late," spoke Dick. " A high price has been set on my
head and But hark ! Here they are. Well, I'll die, but they
shall never take me prisoner."

" Who are here ? What mean you ? The officers ? " cried
Rachel excitedly.

While she was trembling the door turned on its hinges, and
lo ! Sam Bowline entered. What a meeting ! How strange !
how touching ! Here beneath the very roof where they had so

330 RACHEL* s FATE. [June,

often played in childhood .' " Oh ! this is terrible," exclaimed
Sam, while his wife rushed into his arms. " Phebe ! Phebe !
do not hold me ; I must do my duty. Surrender, surrender,
Dick." So saying, he drew a pistol. Dick drew one also and
levelled it. For a moment the young men stood eyeing each
other.

" I hear footsteps outside. They are surrounding the house.
Flee, Dick, flee ! " cried Rachel. " Don't fire, don't fire ! " pleaded
Mrs. Scudder. Both Dick and Sam were loath to pull the trig-
ger. Suddenly, while they were hesitating what to do, Rachel
stretched out her arms, and before they could prevent her she
had snatched away their pistols.

" Quick ! out of the window like a bird," she said to Dick
in a hurried whisper ; and almost at the same instant she dis-
charged both weapons in the air. Then, while the room was
black with smoke, and her mother and sister were screaming,
Rachel grasped Sam Bowline tightly round the neck, and,
making believe that she mistook him for Dick, she hugged the
poor fellow so hard that he was well-nigh choked.

In the meanwhile three or four armed men ran into the
house. But Kidd had been too nimble for them. Out through
the west window he had leaped, shivering the glass into a thou-
sand pieces ; and when presently the smoke cleared away they
discovered poor Phebe lying in a swoon at Sam's feet, who, with
his neck squeezed as in a vise, could do nothing but gasp for
breath.

It is needless to say that this discovery of Kidd under the
widow's roof was soon noised about and afforded the choicest
bit of gossip that the township had ever known. Mrs. Scud-
der's best friends now shook their heads, and even Solomon
Barebones, the ruling elder, looked askance at poor Rachel.
Had Sam Bowline been ashore he would certainly have de-
fended the widow, and Rachel would not have had so many
taunts flung at her. But the Phebe Scudder had once more sailed
in pursuit of the Shark, and Sam was far, far away.

One evening, a twelvemonth after the pirate's narrow escape,
Phebe and Rachel were watching a little boy toddling across the
floor. " If his father were only here to see him ! " sighed Phebe.
" Well, it is hard to be a sailor's wife," said Rachel. " When the
birds leave us' in the autumn we know that they will return in
spring-time ; but when a sailor will come home from sea only
the Almighty can tell." " Alas ! too true," murmured Phebe, a
tear rolling down her cheek. " Will my Sam ever come home

1 88 1.] RACHEL'S FATE. 331

again?" Nor was Rachel's heart less anxious than her sister's,
and more than once the horrible fear came over her that Dick
and Sam might have met in mid-ocean and fought and gone to
the bottom together.

The sisters were now without a mother ; the good Mrs.
Scudder was dead, and a common grief had brought Rachel and
Phebe's hearts together anew. Indeed, to judge by the kisses
which they were showering on little Sam this evening, it was
difficult to say who loved him the more, his mother or his aunt.

" Come in," spoke Phebe, when presently she heard the door
shake. " Did anybody knock ? I guess it was only the wind,"
said Rachel.

" Oh ! if it were my husband," thought Phebe. While her
heart was fluttering, in somebody came and into somebody's
embrace her sister flew. "Dick! Dick! Dick!" was all that
Rachel could utter ; and for more than a minute Dick could only
murmur, " Rachel ! Rachel ! "

" O strange, vagabond being that you are ! tell me, have you
come back to stay ? " said Rachel as soon as her emotion had
subsided a little. " Have you come to live contentedly on Cape
Ann, or are you still a hateful pirate ? Are the officers of the law
still on your track ? "

" Well, my love," answered Dick, " I dare not tarry long
ashore. But now listen, for I have something wonderful to
relate, and something which will greatly interest Phebe." " In-
deed ! " ejaculated the latter, drawing nearer and placing her
hand on his shoulder. " Is it about my Sam ? Oh ! pray go on
speak ! "

" You must know," continued Dick, " that after I had given
my pursuers the slip here a year ago I steered for the Indian
Ocean. The Phebe Scudder kept ever in my wake. But, although
I had resolved to be no longer a buccaneer, I durst not surren-
der. Well, on and on I sailed, with Sam almost within gunshot.
If my guns had been heavier I should have stopped to fight ; but
I had only nine-pounders and was short of powder.

"At length a violent tempest arose and the Shark came very
near foundering ; indeed, she would have gone to the bottom,
only that she was built in Marblehead.

" Well, a couple of months after this hurricane I spied a wreck
in the distance. I made for it, and, lo ! found that it was the
Phebe Scudder. Both masts were gone, the rudder too ; the
waves were washing over her deck, and not a soul was on board,
except Old Harry, the raven, who sat on the stump of the main-

332 RACHEL' s FATE. [June,

mast. He was exceedingly thin and so exhausted that I had to
force food down his throat."

Here Dick was interrupted a moment by a loud wail from
Phebe.

" Well, the sight of Old Harry touched my heart ; it brought
so vividly before me this hallowed spot that I made up my mind
to return and take my chances of the gibbet. Ay, return I
would, in order to give my Rachel one more kiss, even if it cost
my life. Accordingly, I altered my course and steered for the
North Atlantic, the raven in the meanwhile never uttering a
croak.

" But one day, after I had crossed the equator, he startled me
by saying thrice, ' Latitude 1 1 south, longitude 100 west.' Ay,
thrice he pronounced these words ; but I was so taken aback
that perhaps my ears deceived me. I listened attentively, in
hopes that he might speak again ; but since then he has kept per-
fectly mute."

" What can Old Harry have meant ? " said Rachel. " Well,
I will tell you what I think has happened," continued Dick.
" Sam Bowline, finding his vessel dismantled by the hurricane,
has taken to his small boat and sought refuge on some island in
the Pacific Ocean. There he has repeated to Old Harry over
and over again the latitude and longitude of the island, until by
and by the bird has been able to pronounce the words. Then
away Old Harry has flown to bring the message to Cape Ann.
There was little likelihood of his reaching here ; but it was
Sam's only chance of a rescue. But the raven's wings must
have given out, for he is a pretty old bird, and, finding himself
hovering nigh the abandoned Phebe Scudder, he alighted on the
mainmast stump, and would soon have died there had I not dis-
covered him."

" Can this be possible ? What a singular providence ! " ex-
claimed Phebe, a gleam of joy lighting up her countenance.

" Well, I have given you my notion of what has occurred,"
went on Dick, " and I would wager a hundred to one that I am
correct." " Then, I beseech you, make haste and bring relief to
my dear Sam," said Phebe.

" Precisely what I mean to do," answered Dick. " And I will
go with you," added Phebe.

" Just what I was about to propose," said Dick. " You shall
not leave me behind," spoke Rachel.

"Good! good !" exclaimed Dick. "And as I dare not live
again in this part of the globe, let us all make a new home in

1 88 1.] RACHEL'S FATE. 333

a far-off island, in a lovely land where there is everlasting sun-
shine, where you, Phebe, will find your lost husband, and
where I shall find my queen." Here Dick glanced at Rachel,
who smiled and said, " Amen."

Late as the hour was, the young women began forthwith to
prepare for their departure. Before midnight they had filled
Dick's skiff with many articles which would prove useful during
the voyage ; and then Dick rowed them to his schooner, which
lay half a mile outside the breakers. Down in the cabin they
found Old Harry, now quite gra^, and who seemed to recognize
them ; for he lifted his drooping head and hopped toward Phebe.

"Latitude 11 south, longitude 100 west," he spoke while she
was bending over him. But he spoke only once, and there was
something weird in his tone. Phebe fancied that she heard what
Old Harry had uttered repeated by a voice in the air, and she
glanced at Rachel, whose countenance likewise wore an expres-
sion of awe. Then, turning her eyes again on the raven, she dis-
covered that he was dead.

Happily for the success of Dick's enterprise, a heavy fog en-
veloped the Cape for the space of three days, so that nobody per-
ceived the Shark at anchor. By the end of this time the sisters
were quite ready to depart. Ay, Rachel had even contrived to
get wedded to Dick, thanks to a disguise which he assumed.

Nevertheless, the ruling elder, who performed the ceremony,
had a faint suspicion that all was not right ; and in less than an
hour after the Shark had spread her sails to the'breeze, the aban-
doned home was visited by a curious throng, who shook their
heads and wondered very much what had become of Phebe and
Rachel.

The long voyage to the Pacific was safely accomplished ; and,
just as Dick had surmised, Sam Bowline was found dwelling on
an enchanting isle, where the balmy air, the birds, and the flowers
might have made a scene from the Garden of Eden.

Sam never returned to his native land, nor did Phebe, Dick,
>r Rachel. But a generation later, when the American war of
idependence broke out, Commodore Paul Jones had no braver
lieutenants under him than two young men who called themselves
Linericans, but who hailed from the far South Sea. One of these
ras the son of Phebe, the other of Rachel.

What became of Kidd the pirate did always remain a mystery.
It was said by some that he died on the gibbet. He vanished, at
all events, as suddenly as he had appeared.

334 NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

NATIONAL UNITY *

You are attacking the national unity ! This is one of the re-
proaches most frequently addressed to the Catholics, and, to my
mind, the one that wounds the deepest. I wish to examine here
the soundness of this accusatiofc. I wish, without personalities,
without bitterness, to inquire how our unity was founded, de-
veloped, and, after traversing inevitable periods of crisis, perpet-
uated. History has been called the wise counsellor of princes ;
she must become also the wise counsellor of nations, and we may
invoke her to-day to shed her light on this grave subject.

"We are born," says Bossuet, "all of us, with a power-
ful inclination to do that which is pleasing to us." He might
have added : To do what pleases ourselves is not enough to con-
tent us ; we want also to impose our pleasure on our neighbor,
and when we are the stronger we like to subject even the very
thought of the weaker to our own. Most nations include con-
querors and conquered, and unity is then formed by the encroach-
ments of the conqueror. The conquered disappears, or at least is
effaced, before the conqueror, and that continues so long as lasts
the empire of force ; but often that which had been bent to the
earth rises again, what was deemed dead revives, and the history
of the world records as many reprisals as defeats. Not to over-
strain victory is the best way of using it, and the surest guaran-
tee of its duration. In the long run nations have understood, and
statesmen, worthy of the name, have endeavored to impress upon
power, the wisdom of reserve and moderation. When they have
succeeded in this they have been crowned with the respect of
posterity ; and it is one of the characteristics of our civilization
that we have from period to period better and better understood,
better and better practised, the conditions of modern unity by
advancing, stage by stage, from national unity by constraint to
national unity in liberty.

France has been, in this as in so much else, a great initiator.
The Very Christian kingdom founded by a conversion, enlight-
ened by apostles, governed and made illustrious by bishops,

* This article is a translation by Mrs. J. L. O'Sullivan of a recent pamphlet by the Count de
Falloux, of the French Academy, De V Unitt Nationale.

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 335

found in Christianity at the outset the inspiration of her pro-
gress. Charlemagne and St. Louis were her legislators and her
heroes. Down to the sixteenth century the national unity was
one with the Catholic unity.

[M. de Falloux then devotes the rest of this first section, which we
shall here summarize, to a rapid review of the course of French history
from the point of view of his work. That unity, at once national and
Catholic, strove to defend itself against the Huguenots that is to say, as
an unity of coercion the consequences of which long devastated France
by civil war, in which both parties invoked the aid of foreign nations : the
Huguenots that of England and Germany, the League that of Spain and
Italy. The unquestionable rightful heir to the throne had to fight and
negotiate his way to it for five years, during which the unity of the nation
was seriously imperilled and France threatened with dismemberment.
Henry IV., the hero-statesman, saved the country through the unity of
peace and of liberty guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes, which even the
great statesman-priest Richelieu had the wisdom to maintain. It was not
till the sun of Louis XIV. approached its setting that he was persuaded to
revert to the false policy of unity in coercion, and for a hundred years
France suffered from the depletion of her population, industry, and skill
through the effects of the revocation of that great edict of pacification.
Louis XVI. took the first steps in the direction of the restoration of liberty
to the Protestants ; but first the mistakes of the Constituante in its deal-
ings with the clergy, and then the mad fury of the Convention, which
swung round to the opposite extreme of force against liberty, again put in
peril the national unity by arousing the insurrection of La Vendee. As
two hundred years before blood had freely flowed for religion, in '93 it
flowed for the overthrow of all religion, and the horrors of the Terror
threw into the shade those of the sixteenth century. The parts were re-
versed ; but the character of tyranny is not changed by a change of its
flag. A great statesman as well as soldier then came on the scene, and by
the Concordat and the Civil Code the First Consul drew order out of the
revolutionary chaos, and reconstituted the unity and the moral life of
France on the granite foundation of liberty of religion. Napoleon perish-
ed, self-destroyed by his own infidelity to his own earlier wisdom ; but the
work has survived the architect. After the Empire the Restoration and
Louis Philippe inaugurated political liberty, and developed after having
compromised it ; but the sentiment of unity by liberty has remained,
strengthened by the very trials it has passed through. No more inequality
of rights, no more subordination of all to some, and the national unity is
now more secure beyond attack than ever before.

M. de Falloux also illustrates his argument by the case of England, who
found herself morally compelled, after three centuries of religious tyranny
on her part and of martyrdom on the part of Ireland, to establish a real
national unity in liberty by conceding Catholic Emancipation to O'Connell,
"the tribune who became the liberator because he embodied in himself all
the moderation with all the energy of the Christian."

In France the question of public education did not come to the front at
the epochs of the Restoration and of 1830. The state monopoly under the

336 NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

regime of the University subsisted. Freedom of instruction had been in-
serted in the charter of 1830 without much attention to it ; but the claims
of the fathers of families began to be put forward and to seriously occupy
the public mind. After the republican revolution of 1848 M. Thiers reached
the highest point of his career of statesmanship in the law of liberty of
1850, in regard to which M. de Falloux concludes his first section as fol-
lows :]

It has worked for twenty-nine years ; what complaint has it
aroused among competent judges ? What conflict has arisen be-
tween the University and the clergy, whether in Paris or in the
provinces, whether in the Superior Council of Public Instruction
or in the Departmental Councils ? All the reverse : the bonds of
reciprocal esteem and confidence have drawn together closer from
day to day, and the two rivals have never rendered each other
better justice than when they have come to a closer view of each
other engaged in a common work. And it is this which, in the
midst of an entire peace of minds and consciences, you come
to attack abruptly, violently, insultingly ! What ! The national
unity has for three centuries become consolidated through
liberty ; it has had but its momentary disturbances through des-
potism ; and you you, the republic of tranquillization and hope
in the future you repudiate the traditions of liberty to recom-
mence the ill-starred work of despotism ! What ! The sixteenth
century could allow Sully and the Pere Cotton to live together
in good harmony, and the nineteenth cannot endure side by side,
under the same sky, rationalism and faith ! Malesherbes was
ahead of his time, and you would bid ours to retrograde ! The
First Consul signed the treaty of peace of the French Republic
with Pius VII., and you cannot get along with Leo XIII. ! The
Duke of Wellington clasped hands with O'Connell, and you can-
not leave yours in that of M. Thiers ! M. Guizot felt honored in
receiving the Pere Lacordaire into the Academy, and you, at
two steps from La Roquette and Arcueil you can persecute to
extremity ail that bears a religious name or habit !

II.

So be it, say our most moderate adversaries. From the
schoolmaster point of view the laws of 1850 and of 1875 give
no cause for recrimination we are forced to confess it ; but Ca-
tholics are wanting both in patriotism and liberalism ; we cannot,
therefore, tolerate their intrusion into education.

Catholics wanting in patriotism ! This accusation is surely
not a serious one, and, if necessary, even you yourselves would

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 337

repel it. Our old France, the eldest daughter of the church, has
from age to age been aggrandized or defended by the blood and
the sword of the most fervent Christians. The marshals of the
empire did not find the conscripts of the Vendee inferior to their
other recruits. In our late disasters who surpassed the Pontifical
Zouaves' Charette, Bouille, Cazenove, and their friends? Who
has not admired the sexagenarian devotion of the Marquis of
Coriolis and the Marquis of Coislin? And Lamoriciere! if
God had spared him to us, who does not see him, with the roar
of a lion, bounding to the frontier, at all risks, at any price, to re-
join his old companions-in-arms ? And the Sisters of Charity in
the ambulances ! And the heroic litter-bearers of Brother Phi-
lippe ! * You have seen all that ; you have been eloquently re-
minded of it. It is useless to repeat it. No, that is not your
difficulty.

Your dread is lest political education should be given by
others than yourselves ; your fear is not that a brave and charita-
ble generation should be brought up before your eyes that is not
your anxiety ; but you fear a generation hesitating or hostile to
that bundle of ideas which you wrongfully call the conquests of
the Revolution ; a generation which caresses another ideal than
the Convention, and does not, like yourselves, worship exclusively
all that, whether true or false, good or bad, bears the revolution-
ary stamp.

Yes, differences of opinion exist among the French people ;
grave problems are proposed. But do not deceive yourselves ;
this matter concerns men, and not children. Whether in lay or
priestly hands, schools cannot affect it. You believe that in tak-
ing possession of childhood you obtain possession of the nation.f
This is a capital error. The generation brought up under the
educational monopoly is it, then, of one mind ? Does M. Taine
understand the Revolution as M. Mignet does? Do M. Henri
Martin and Michelet paint it in the same colors that M. Lauren-
tie or M. Poujoulat do ? There would be but one means of satis-
fying you : to suppress not .the schools but history and the his-
torians. Is this your desire ? Can you stifle this incessant tra-
vail, this perpetual parturition of the human mind, this inexhaus-
tible activity of the tribune, of literature, of the bar, of the press
that terrible whirling machinery which seizes us all, whatever we
may be or whatever was our origin ?

* See the speeches made at the private meetings in Paris by Messrs. De Mun, Chesnelong,
Depeyre, and Baragnon.

tSee M. Jules Favre's article in the Republique Frang aise of October 14, 1879.
VOL. XXXIII. 22

338 NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

Yes, that is the nightmare of all absolute rulers ; yes, there is
the danger ; but there is also the merit and the honor of all liber-
ties. Pupils of the normal school, pupils of Catholic universities,,
make up your minds all alike to deal with it as it is. For a long
time to come, Christians and free-thinkers, you will encounter
each other in a confused m$tie. Under penalty of being the
renegades of your time, enter into the combat resolutely, some
with confidence in liberty, others with confidence in truth.

Have I any idea of denying or depreciating the fundamental
interest of all society, education ? God forbid !

The education of youth is a moral interest of the highest
order, but it is in no sense a political arena or a means of domina-
tion.

This thesis is not a temporary expedient to escape a difficul-
ty ; I have no intention of lowering the importance of my cause
to make it excite less umbrage. What I now venture to affirm
I have steadily affirmed from the beginning. I have sustained it
against my friends themselves.

It is no secret that twenty-five years ago public dissensions
arose, not in the midst of the episcopate, who in large majority
remained outside of these sad disputes, but in the Catholic press.
This is no moment to revive these recollections. They have an
unfortunate side ; they might, perhaps, have a useful one ; in any
case it is my desire to avoid them now. I shall, therefore, recall
one page of 1856 only to attach to my opinion its anterior date,
and consequently its character of sincerity. To those Catholics
who wished, contrary to the advice of Bossuet, " not to lead men
to good, but to drag them to it," and who seemed to believe with
the Rtfpublique Frangaise that to obtain possession of education was
to obtain possession of the nation, I dared to say :

" No, we cannot checkmate society by the school, the man by the child,,
and it would be useless to place them face to face in a sort of permanent duel.
Though by dint of care and sacrifice some thousands of chosen youths were
sheltered from the pervading corruption of the age, they could not, with-
out a miracle, accomplish the reform of their country. And could we even
be sure of these reformers themselves ? When these young recluses, so
laboriously preserved in their youth, should attain the age and liberty of
manhood, how would they preserve themselves if all they meet in life
should combine to cast discredit on the principles of their education ?
Will they not be affected by the fear of seeing themselves shut out from the
public service, from promotion, and from cordial relations of comradeship?
Will the parents themselves be more exempt from this weakness than the
children ? It is, therefore, not enough for the safety of a nation that the
education of its better families should be irreproachable from the religious

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 339

point of view, but in all that is lawful education should be in harmony with
the social position that awaits the youth when he passes into manhood.
Let him never have to blush for his teachers, or to attribute to them his
inferiority in the magistracy, the army, or any other career. To bring up
young men in the nineteenth century as if they were to step from the
threshold of their school into the society of Gregory VII. or St. Louis
would be as childish as if the young officers of Saint-Cyr were exercised in
the management of the battering-ram and catapult, while the use of gun-
powder was concealed from them." *

I therefore appeal boldly to the experience of all. Education
is the great, the indispensable initiation to moral life, but it leaves
untouched the final preference and choice of political opinions.
Charles de Montalembert, Henri Lacordaire, Augustin Cochin,
were pupils of the University ; many republicans now conspi-
cuous have been educated by the Jesuits. M. de Morny and I
followed the course of the same lycte in Paris, and I did not per-
ceive on the 2d of December that we had embraced the same
party. Republicans and royalists begin to quarrel even at
school, and young Cavaignac rose from the bench of an imperial
lyce'e to refuse a prize tainted with Bonapartism.

Political opinions are drawn from two springs : first of all, in
the family ; would you, then, suppress family life ? In the spec-
tacle which society presents us on our entry into life can you
suppress the young man's first impressions and the conclusions
he draws from them ? Montesquieu, \ who cared but little for the
effect of religious education on the soul, went still further and
said : " Nowadays we receive three different or opposite educa-
tions : that of our parents, that of our tutors, that of the world.
What we are told in the last overthrows all the ideas of the two
former."

If all life were regulated by the school how could we explain
the striking contrast existing between two centuries in which
education belonged exclusively to the religious corporations?
In the seventeenth century everything is firmly Christian ; in
the eighteenth all becomes impious, and yet it is the Oratorians
and the Jesuits who successively educate the generation of the
great reign and the generation of the Encyclopaedia with Vol-
taire at its head. The two phenomena are explained in the same
manner : by the different aspect, the different morality of the two
societies. At the dawn of the seventeenth century St. Francis
de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul frequented the court with Car-
dinal de B6rulle and M. Olier. Shortly afterwards, under Louis

* Le Parti Catholique : Ce qtfil a ///, ce qu'il est devenu, p. 92.
t Esprit des Lois, 1. iv. chap. iv.

34Q NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

XIV., a young man coming from college saw greatness every-
where ; he looked from Bossuet to Fenelon, from Pascal to
Malebranche, from Conde to Catinat ; he heard the fine remark
of the Duke of Burgundy repeated by Saint-Simon : " Kings are
made for the nations, and not the nations for kings." This was
the time when Vauban, claiming justice from Louvois, held this
proud language to him: "Examine boldly and severely; away
with all tenderness ! for I dare to assure you, on the strength of
a very exact probity and a sincere fidelity, that I fear neither the
king, nor you, nor the whole human race together ! " *

The stage itself the stage of " Polyeucte " and " Saint-Genest,"
of the" Misanthrope " and " Athalie " was a great school. All
was not irreproachable at this period far from it ; but at least
when youth had had its irregularities an austere old age and ad-
mirable death raised expiation to a height corresponding with the
sca'ndal.

What a contrast in the eighteenth century ! Instruction is
still in the same hands, but, except instruction, everything is about
to change.

The Abbe* Dubois occupies the chair of Fenelon ; luxury in
velvet and impiety under the straight collar display themselves
on every side ; too often military reverses proclaim the inca-
pacity of those in command, and the groans of public misery
accuse the faults of the government. The theatre, in unison,
accelerates the social decay. Amid the applause of the pit Vol-
taire gives to Jocaste this transparent allusion :

" Our priests are not what a vain people believe them " ; f
and, anticipating the Revolution, he exclaims :

" I am the son of Brutus, and my heart
Bears liberty engraven with the hate of kings." \

Aristocracy was not more spared than royalty : it was the eve
of the " Mariage de Figaro."

One grand voice, however, still echoed in the pulpit where
Massillon was saying to a nine-year-old king :

" Sire, you whom the hand of God, protecting this kingdom, has with-
drawn from the ruins and wreck of the royal house to place you over our
heads ; you whom he has kindled as a -precious spark in the very midst of
the gloomy darkness of. death in which he had just extinguished all your

* History of Louvois. By M. Camille Rousset, of the French Academy.
t " OEdipe," act iv. scene i.
J " Brutus," act ii. scene ii.

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 341

august race, and in which you were on the point of being yourself extin-
guished you are, you and your great men, established for the destruction
as well as for the salvation of many. Never forget those last moments
when your august great-grandfather, holding you in his arms, bathing you
with his fatherly tears, joyfully yielded up his life because his eyes beheld
the miraculous child whom God still reserved to be the saving of the
nation and the glory of Israel ! "

To this royal child the orator courageously presented the pic-
ture he had under his eyes : high places occupied by corrupt
men ; authority, established to maintain the order and purity of
law, justified in its severity by the excesses which violated them ;
the stars which should guide us in the right path changed into
ignes fatui which lead us astray ; licentiousness set free even from
the constraint of the preservation of appearances ; moderation in
vice become almost 'as ridiculous as virtue.* Alas ! it was Louis
XV. whom Massillon thus addressed; the picture he drew was
that of France during sixty years a great warning for those
who desire to mingle superstition with fidelity, to those who
think they can emancipate themselves from human wisdom and
leave all to Providence. Louis XVI. was born and reigned too
late. Who would sustain nowadays that any school instruction,
however irreproachable it might have been, would have been able
to roll back the torrent and hold indignation in check ?

We must repeat it, then, the education of the child will ever
remain the first interest and the most imperious duty of the
family ; but for that to prepare or to oppose the republic, to pre-
pare or to oppose the monarchy, is not the question. The lan-
guage of Cicero and that of Demosthenes, Greek history and
Roman, rhetoric and philosophy, this classical programme the
same as that of Rollin, the religious corporations, the University
all this is designed to form just, enlightened, and, if possible, ele-
vated minds. The aim of education is to form with care an up-
rightness and purity of heart not less necessary to the republic
than to the monarchy ; instruction and education have one sole and
identical mission : to neutralize the bad leaven which is every-
where fermenting, to conquer the enemy which is born and
grows with each one of us original sin. Even when government
puts forth all its strength to combat it, it is not always sure of
victory ; but if government puts itself in union with original sin
and becomes its accomplice, then all equilibrium between good
and evil is broken, the very germ of virtue is crushed, and social
dissolution is imminent. Ah ! have but one fear in the matter of

* Petit CarSme of Massillon : Sermon sur les Exemples des Grands.

342 NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

religious education that, however solid, however deep this edu-
cation may be made, it may be found powerless against the seduc-
tion, the ambition, and the pride of life. You consider the Jesuits
not liberal enough. That may be so. Well, lead them back
more gently to liberalism, and do not take pleasure in justifying
their complaints or their mistrust. You fear that Catholics do
not love the republic enough ? Force them to admire it ! Re-
new the seventeenth century in your own style, offer noble ex-
amples and fine models to the generations who are about to pass
from the school-room into the world, and you will not lack adhe-
sions from all quarters. Few persons will refuse to render to
the republic * .that which is the republic's when the republic
shall be willing to render to God that which is God's. If, on the
contrary, you persist in a different path, if you exact submission
without gaining conviction, and impose esteem without deserving
it, you have gone astray, and those who wish the most harm to
the republic will never do it so much injury as the exclusive re-
publicans in striving to show that the republic can and will live
by the help of persecution only.

Persecution ! Do not count upon it, answer those who
deavor to moderate the movement. We have not lost our
memory, and we will not do you this service : we will not perse-
cute.

Yes, you will persecute. Those who wish for it will carry
the day over those who do not wish for it. That is as sure as
fate.

You will persecute because you are impelled by passion ; and
passion has its logic as well as reason has ; sometimes even more
of it. You will persecute because that is written in your own
history, because it is the inevitable destiny of party men, who
when risen to power still continue party men. M. de Serre,
minister of the Restoration, said in the tribune of the Palais-Bour-
.bon :

" The triumph of a party fatal to the country would not be long before
it proved equally so to the party itself. We are all Frenchmen. There is,
there can be, no exclusion, no disinheritance for any one. You begin by
exclusion ; you end by banishment." t

* See the speech of the Duke of Fitz James to an -agricultural committee, Gazette de France,
September 28, 1879. f

f Le Comte de Serre, by M. Charles de Lacombe, Correspondent of September 10, 1879.

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 343

Why should you not persecute? Only consider your own
past. The Jesuits were banished from France, and even from the
greater part of Europe ; papal assent was given to their leaving,
and the Revolution began before a church free from all ultramon-
tane alloy. Did that disarm your fathers ? Not the least in the
world. In 1790 they dreamed of the civil constitution of the
clergy; in 1793 they dreamed no longer they had reached a Su-
preme Being and the guillotine. In 1828 they obtained from King
Charles X. what they had obtained sixty years before from Cle-
ment XIV. None the less did the revolution of 1830 break out
two years later, and every effort of popular hate, every calumny,
every caricature was directed against the clergy. The churches
of St. Germain 1'Auxerrois and Notre Dame de Paris were plun-
dered, and M. de Quelen, notoriously Gallican, as were nearly all
the clergy of the Restoration, died in a cell which for ten years
had served him as an episcopal palace.

Thus, putting aside the threats and sinister confessions with
which so many newspapers are filled, we may boldly predict that
you will not long stop short at clericalism or ultramontanism.
These are convenient words which may mean whatever may
be required, and every Catholic, when it suits you, will be justly
convicted of being either clerical or ultramontane. Men of intel-
ligence and knowledge, as are so many of you, are not ignorant
of that ; they know perfectly what they want, what they aim at,
and the immolation of a few poor monks or nuns will not console
them for finding themselves to-morrow, even as yesterday, ever
in presence of the church in her unity, her hierarchy, her disci-
pline, her teaching, and her works.

What you are beginning to-day is a war without quarter ; a
war which has already lasted eighteen hundred years ; an old at-
tempt, ever sterile even when it triumphs, but ever renewed even
when it fails, which we must neither dread nor despise over-
much, but to which in any case we must give its true name.
Either you will pause while there is yet time or you will make
your prefects play again the part of the younger Pliny, who tor-
tured two women in order to discover the alleged superstitions of
the Christians and denounce them to Trajan. Do not exclaim
against this approximation ; it is but too well justified by the dis-
tance so rapidly travelled since the opening of the campaign.

As for your terror of ultramontanism, is it really sincere?
You know perfectly well that ultramontanism does not date from
yesterday, and that Pius IX. did not invent it. You know per-
fectly well that the religious orders are an integral part of the

344 ' NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

church, and that we cannot logically admit one arid repulse
others. Do you make Protestantism submit to a similar dissec-
tion ? Do you strike the Lutherans for the advantage of the Cal-
vinists ? Do you favor the pietists at the expense of the Quakers?
Every founder of a religious order has professed the love of Jesus
Christ and submission to his vicar, inseparably ; St. Benedict,
St. Bruno, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, on this point had
no other doctrine than St. Ignatius Loyola or St. Alphonsus
Liguori. Ultramontanism is only a phantom ; it is so confessed
among yourselves in moments of justice or forgetfulness. Be-
sides, are you, then, more Gallican than ultramontane ? Which of
you, affecting the most profound respect for the Gallican Church,
would adopt its Credo and recite its Confiteor? Listen to this
extract from Bossuet one among a thousand similar : " God has
placed a work in the midst of us which, having no other origin
nor support than himself, fills all times and all places, and bears
over the whole earth the character of his authority with the im-
pression of his hand it is Jesus Christ and his church. He has
placed in this church the only authority capable of humbling
pride and exalting simplicity, and which, equally adapted to the
learned and the ignorant, impresses each with the same respect ; it
is against this authority that libertines revolt with an air of con-
tempt."* Will you sign this page? You willingly borrow from
the Jansenists their accusations against the Jesuits, but which of
you would kneel at the feet of M. Singlier or M. de Saint-Cyran,
who would shut himself up at Port Royal des Champs with the
great Arnaud, or translate the Fathers of the Desert with M.
d' Andilly ? You like to boast of some of the severities of the old
parliaments, but you would espouse neither their royalism, their
jurisprudence, nor their penalties. All these appeals to the
past are but stratagems of war, and not professions of faith. One
is induced, therefore, to remind you of the advice of a man of
genius, who was also supremely a man of good sense :

"Quand sur une personne on pretend se regler,
C'est par les beaux cotes qu'il lui faut ressembler,
Et ce n'est pas du tout la prendre pour modele,
Ma sceur, que de tousser ou de cracher comme elle." t

Will you listen to Moliere ? No. We borrow from the old

* Funeral oration of Anne of Gonzaga.

t When for our model we another take,
His nobler aspects we our own should make ;
"Tis not enough, when from him we would shine,
To copy him in taking snuff or wine.

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 34$

regimes their iniquities, their violences, their weaknesses, their
faults, and their mistakes, without troubling ourselves with the
principles, the virtues, or the repentances of those we bring on
the scene. We choose what is of use to us ; we cast away what
condemns us ; we build up a false statement out of true particu-
lars ; we bring forward the great periods and their famous names
to transform them into false witnesses ; we enlist them, in their
own despite, in a work which would have horrified them could
they have foreseen it. And what does all this miserable work '
hide ? There must surely be a design corresponding to the dis-
turbance thrown into all hearts and consciences. It is not con-
ceivable that all this clamor was raised, all these arbitrary acts
done, simply in consequence of the trifling grounds of complaint
so lately brought to the tribune. What! has Christianity tri-
umphed over the pagan world and planted the cross on the tomb
of the Caesars ; has it destroyed the old bondage and endowed
the new world with chastity and charity ; has it from the extreme
East to the uttermost West introduced civilization, converted
and instructed barbarians, built schools and universities side by
side with monasteries; has it drawn out of them the men of
learning, the statesmen, and the saints who have ennobled the
modern world ; has it been the first to profess and ta practise
equality in seating humble priests on the steps of all the thrones,
and placing the triple crown on the heads of shepherds and
beggars ; has it created the great monarchies and the great
republics of the middle ages, recovered and saved the trea-
sures of antique poetry and philosophy ; has it carried letters
and art to their most sublime expression, given in its councils
the model of the highest .and broadest deliberations ; in a word,
has it founded or regenerated everything about us for the last
eighteen centuries for it to be treated as though it had not
been ? Is all this to be put in check, and even in peril, because a
casuist too fascinated with his art gave himself up to childish
subtleties ? Are all these grandeurs, all these benefits to be de-
nied, rejected, and despised, that an unknown theologian may be
scourged,* that the cow or the goat of an imaginary shepherd
may be avenged ? No, no ; you would not wish to be taken at
your own word ; you would not wish to be believed so mean
in your ingratitude ! No, you lay claim to more honor and
greater baseness. Neither the sacrifice of the casuists nor
the sacrifice of the Jesuits will satisfy you ; it is the old war
against Christ which is recommencing. No doubt some of you

* Chamber of Deputies, sessions of July 5 and 7, 1879.

346 NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

would like to begin this war by a surprise ; but your army is too
numerous not to be seen from afar, and too noisy not to be heard
on the march. It is not ultramontanism alone that you attack,
it is not even Catholicism alone ; what you would destroy is all
Christianity itself.

Do not cry out against this. Rather accept frankly the part
you seek to play, together with German free-thinkers and athe-
ists of every land, in the great campaign which is opening against
the church.

An observer* of rare insight said to us : " I cannot forget a con-
fession wrung from one of the most powerful intelligences I have
ever met from a man who, born a Protestant, had become a pan-
theist, and dried up in the service of this system all the treasures
of a rich and fruitful imagination. This man, as so often hap-
pens, rejected or distorted everything in the Christian system,
but he hated only Catholicity, one of whose glories is ever to
receive the homage of hatred when that of love is wanting. In
the midst of a long discussion, in which all the prejudices of his
former error had reappeared under the later layer of pantheism,
I stopped him to ask him if he seriously admitted, supposing
the Catholic form had not existed in the world, that, after
eighteen hundred years of struggle, anything of Christianity
would have remained beyond a system of morality, like the Porch
or Stoicism. After some moments of silence, which gave to the
face of my interlocutor an expression I can still see, he replied :
' No, Christianity would not have survived as a religion ; it would
only have held its place as a system of moral philosophy.'"

To destroy Catholicity and reduce Christianity to a state of
purely speculative theory that is the bottom of their thought;
this thought is the only one that can explain all we see.

But let them reflect well upon it! Some demolitions that ap-
pear seductive at a distance involve more ruin than we had at
first imagined. Sometimes we are glad that we have caused more
fright than harm ; stop there, then. We often may escape a great
conflagration in extinguishing a household fire. Believe others
beside myself ; despise not this precaution.

The powerful are ever prone to shake off all yokes, and espe-
cially the yoke of God; many have undertaken it, but not -one
has obtained full content Philippe le Bel not more than Frede-
rick Barbarossa, the Hussites not more than the Albigenses.
And that does not result from what you willingly call the bar-
barism of the middle ages, for our modern times do not bear a

* Professor Raupach.

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 347

different testimony. You certainly will scarcely claim to be
stronger than your predecessors of the Convention, nor abler
than Napoleon I.; you will not have more contempt of others
than those great despisers of law, nor more confidence in your-
selves than this grand favorite of fortune. Manuel, Attorney-
General of the Commune of Paris, proposed to write on the front
of the Church of the Carmelites, after the massacre of the priests :
41 HERE LIE THE LATE CLERGY OF FRANCE "; and the inscription
was not yet engraven on the marble before the Terrorists were
already cutting each other's throats.

On the i6th of June, i8ii,|he emperor used the following lan-
guage to the Corps Legislatif :

" The peace concluded with the empire of Austria has since
been cemented by the happy alliance I have contracted ; the
birth of the king of Rome has crowned all my wishes and secured
the future of my people.

" The affairs of religion have been too often mingled with, and
sacrificed to, the interests of a third-class state. If half of Europe
has separated itself from the Church of Rome we may attribute
it especially to the contradiction which has never ceased to exist
between the truths and principles of religion which are for the
whole universe, and those claims and interests which concern only
a very small corner of Italy. / have put an end to these scandals
for ever ; I have reunited Rome to the empire; I have granted
palaces to the popes in Paris and Rome. If they have the in-
terests of religion at heart they will desire often to reside at the
centre of the affairs of Christendom,

" It was thus that St. Peter preferred Rome even to a resi-
dence in the Holy Land.

" Holland has been reunited to the empire, of which she is but
an offshoot. Without her the empire would be incomplete."

Is it possible to carry further the blind and proud arrogance
of presumption, the ignorance of all things human and divine ?
Scarcely had four years elapsed when Pius VII. was restored to
Rome by entire Europe, while Napoleon was slowly dying in
St. Helena under the charge of a jailer.

This is a formidable subject of meditation ; here is another,
less grand and imposing, but even for that very reason more ap-
plicable to each one of us.

In an article on the memoirs of feienne Delecluse, editor of
the Debats* M. Sainte-Beuve introduces us into the atelier of
David at the time of the Directory ; it was the reign of full moral

* Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis^ vol. iii. pp. 95, 96.

348 NATIONAL UNITY. [June,

anarchy, when they were in open insurrection against God. " A
student introduced the name of Jesus Christ into a grotesque
story ; one of his comrades, Maurice, head of the sect of the Pen-
seurs, imperiously ordered him to be silent.

" ' Fine invention, truly,' said he, going on in the meantime with
his painting, ' to take Jesus Christ as the subject for jesting.
Have none of all of you, then, ever read the Gospel ? The Gospel
is finer than Homer or than Ossian ! Jesus Christ in the midst
of a cornfield against a background of blue sky ; Jesus Christ
saying, Let little children come unto me can you find grander,
more sublime subjects for a picture ^than those ? Fool ! ' added he
in a tone of friendly superiority, ' buy the Gospel, and read it
before you talk about Jesus Christ/

" When Maurice ceased speaking there was rather a long in-
terval of silence, in which each one looked at the other to see how
the thing was to be taken. Good Morier, an elder student, who
had been a soldier, settled the difficulty. ' That wa,s well said,
Maurice,' said he in a firm voice, and scarcely had he uttered the
words when all the students shouted repeatedly : ' Vive Mau-
rice!' '"

M. Sainte-Beuve continues in his own name : " Here was a re-
flection in epitome of the moral crisis through which society was
struggling : Parmy's Guerre des Dieux, which triumphs in the
beginning, is repulsed and beats a retreat ; the Gtnie du Chris-
tianisme draws near, it is in the air ! "

You will see all this when you least expect it. You may ban-
ish Christianity from its temples and from our codes, but when it
is in the air how can you reach it ? Beware ! Deliberately to
wound and irritate the most deeply-rooted and independent sen-
timent of the human heart is to take a very serious matter upon
yourselves. Let us put aside for a moment all appeal to Provi-
dence and divine promises, and only take up the question from a
political point of view. For a large number of serious and de-
cided republicans the republic is, as it were, in the process of
acclimatization ; for a large number of resigned conservatives the
republic reigns in France, as the sultan does in Constantinople,
from the impossibility of agreeing on a substitute. This is,
then, the time for prudence, not for great adventures. Can you
wrest from a people its religion without stirring it down to its
very deepest depths ? Believe it not ! Do not flatter yourselves
that you can. It would be to misunderstand not France alone ; it
would be to misunderstand the human heart in its most universal
instinct. Despair and joy, discouragement and hope, all bring

1 88 1.] NATIONAL UNITY. 349

back man to God, and against man you can never bar that road.
When you shall have closed the asylums of consolation shall you
have dried the source of tears ? Sooner or later, cruel and blind
that you are, you will rally against you the innumerable multi-
tude of those who suffer through their lives and those who love
after death. And if Christianity did not come back through the
saddest trials of humanity it would be brought back by poetry
and the arts. The thirst for the infinite, the homesick longing
for a better world, which consume the heart of man will never be
appeased, nor even cheated, by materialism, and the scene of
David's atelier will perpetually be reproduced.

These monks and nuns, these, children of the cloister, who are
at the same time children of the people, will always find popu-
larity returning to them, sometimes by one sympathy, sometimes
by another. The manliest and healthiest part of the French
people will never long abandon those benefactors whom the poor
and the sick do not call in vain, My brother ! my sister !

The war against the gods only triumphs for an hour ; the reign
of God always returns.

And even if we must foresee your transient success (alas ! we
are not forbidden to fear it, since Fenelon warns us that the gift
of faith may be transferred from one country to another by mys-
terious decrees), then we should again see those deplorable times
which wrung from St. Jerome that despairing cry : " The world
is crumbling, and we know not how to bow our heads."

To what good purpose, moreover, are so many of these ruins ?
For the protection of the republic ? But who endangers it, if
not yourselves ? General Cavaignac said to you thirty years ago,
and it is not less true at this moment : " If the republic were to
perish, remember well that we should lay it at the door of your
exaggeration and your violence."

Is not the disorder of parties complete enough ? Do you not
behold the most conspicuous, the most eminent of your adver-
saries conspiring for the republic infinitely better than you serve
it yourselves? Could any government that bears in itself initia-
tive and real progress desire an accession with less opposition
or more widely scattered adversaries ? If your hand is full of
benefits why do you not open it? Surely the final word of
French society is not yet spoken ; the final word of a Christian
society is never spoken. We are ready to second you ; we only
ask something beyond plans which have ten times proved abor-
tive, hollow, empty declamations, a philosophy without works be-
cause it is without devotion, without abnegation, without sacri-

3 go NATIONAL UNITY. [June,.

fice. If you do not find enough of the Gospel in our laws and
manners introduce more of it, but do not begin by suppressing
the Gospel. Innovate, improve, seriously, really, without mu-
tilating . anything, without garroting anybody. If we have
timid minds among us who would retard progress, stimulate us
by emulation ; if we have prejudices, make us blush for them ; if
we have points of injustice, turn them into ingratitudes ; but no
proscription, no calumny, no insults. " Baptize the wild hero-
ine," as Father Ventura suggested to you in the full basilica of
Rome when speaking of modern democracy. Take this word
for your programme, and you will not lack auxiliaries. National
unity can be reconstituted as solid and as indissoluble as ever.
We may repeat the ancient saying, Justitia et pax osculates sunt-
Justice and peace have kissed each other. Justice brings bacl
peace ; peace is the reward of justice. But if you remain deaf to
the authoritative voice of some of your friends, if you remain blind
to the evidence, if you continue incessantly, perseveringly to
make the civilized world the target for your attacks, then happy
the eyes that close and the hearts that cease to beat ! It is diffi-
cult for the mind to imagine what name will be appropriate for
this future society. Christian preachers, orators, writers, savants,
you who have believed, you who have taught, you who have cele-
brated the eternal truths, you who have ardently sought for the
natural alliance between religion and liberty Chateaubriand and
Lacordaire, Montalembert and Ravignan, Ozanam and Tocque-
ville, Biot and Cauchy, be covered with shame ! You will have
been (it is daily repeated to you) the corrupters of the nine-
teenth century. And you, systematic Utopians, who would leave
human nature out of the account; fomenters of atheism, nour-
ished with idle dreams and hates ; emancipators of woman, de-
stroyers of the family, genealogists of the simian race, you whose
very name was formerly an insult, be satisfied! You will have
been the prophets, and your disciples will be the high- priests, of
an abominable future.

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 351

THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

IV.
THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF JESUS.

FIRST YEAR.

THE whole time of the public ministry of Our Blessed Lord
extended from the midwinter of the year of Rome 779-80, A.D.
26-27, according to M. Fouard's reckoning, to the April of 783,
A.D. 30, embracing a period of three years and about three months,
in which were included four Jewish Passovers. It is naturally
divided into three parts ; the first of one year and three months,
from the baptism of Jesus to the second Passover, the second and
third of one year each.

The baptism of Jesus is supposed to have taken place in Janu-
ary.* It was followed by a retreat and fast of forty days on a
neighboring mountain, ending with the Temptation, which we
must pass over without comment from want of space. From the
latter part of the autumn or winter until the following spring, i.e. 9
until the first Passover, Jesus was employed in selecting and pri-
vately instructing several of his first disciples, and in making a
journey to the upper part of Galilee and then back to Jerusalem.
The one great event of this epoch was the miracle at Cana. By
looking at a map of Palestine, one will see that Jericho, where
John was baptizing, is very near Jerusalem, while Capharnaiim,
Cana and Nazareth are at a very considerable distance north-
wards. Jesus did not at once commence his public preaching, and,
as he must have had some particular motive for taking so long a
journey away from Jerusalem just at the time when his imme-
diate object was to keep the Feast of the Passover in the Holy
City and then properly begin the fulfilment of his office, we natu-
rally look for something in the narrative to explain what this mo-
tive was. It appears to have been one which was private and per-
sonal, belonging to the duty which our Lord owed to his blessed
Mother and to his family. In fact, not long after we find that Jesus

* Unless the climate of Palestine has very much changed, it seems difficult to suppose that
John could have continued to baptize in the Jordan during the winter season. Dr. Sepp, there-
fore, assigns October as the time of Christ's baptism.

352 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [June,

had removed his own home and the residence of Mary and her
near relatives to Capharnaum. Jesus wrought some other mira-
cles at this latter city after the miracle of Cana, and his fame be-
gan to pervade Galilee, yet his stay was short, and as the cara-
vans for the feast soon began to form, he undoubtedly accom-
panied one of them to Jerusalem, going by the route through
Perea on the eastern side of the Jordan, and not by the nearest
road through Samaria, on account of the hostility of the Sama-
ritans.

Only two remarkable incidents of the first Passover are re-
corded. The first is the expulsion of the men who sold victims
for the sacrifices and of the money-changers, from the courts of
the temple. This first act of authority occasioned the first move-
ments of suspicion and hostility on the part of the Jewish rulers.
The general sentiment of the people, however, at this time, the
effect of the teaching and miracles of Jesus, was favorable to him.
The people believed on him in a certain way, as a prophet and a
man of wonderful sanctity, yet not so as to merit his confidence
in the depth and stability of their convictions.

The second incident is the interview with Nicodemus which
laid the foundation of his conversion.

The ensuing eight months were spent in preaching through
Judea, in that part which lies south of Jerusalem, and in the
upper part of Idumea. At this time Jesus began to baptize, or-
dinarily, if not always, deputing this office to his principal dis-
ciples. It is not absolutely certain and indisputable that the sac-
rament of baptism was thus early instituted and administered.
It is nevertheless very probable, and it seems reasonable to sup-
pose that Jesus himself did with his own hands baptize his own
blessed Mother and those who were to become his apostles, and
through the ministry of these latter all such proselytes as were
found worthy of the sacrament of regeneration. Hebrew,
Mamre, Youttah and Kerioth, the village from which Judas
came who was thence called Iscariot, all lie in the line of the
route which Our Lord would naturally follow in this journey
through Judea. John, who was still preaching and baptizing,
gave at this time a new testimony to Jesus before his own disci-
ples, whose jealousy for their own master had been awakened.
He had left Jericho and gone further up the Jordan into the ter-
ritory of Herod Antipas. It was probably near the beginning of
December of this year that he was arrested by Herod's order and
imprisoned, it is supposed, in the fortress of Machaeris, until the
time when he was put to death, one year from the next ensuing

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 353

Passover. The arrest of the great Precursor of Jesus appears to
have threatened some impending danger to himself ; for he im-
mediately set out for Galilee through the country of the Sama-
ritans. At this time, when there were no crowds of persons go-
ing to Jerusalem for a feast, and when Jesus and his disciples
were travelling in a contrary direction, there was no great diffi-
culty to be apprehended in travelling through Samaria, whereas
a real danger beset the way through Perea. During this jour-
ney occurred the interview with the Samaritan woman and the
stay of two days at Schechem where the people gave to Jesus a
hospitable reception and listened with readiness to his preaching.
After leaving Samaria, Our Lord went on toward Nazareth,
preaching in the synagogues of the villages which lay on his
way. On his arrival at Nazareth, he preached in their synagogue
on the Sabbath, where he encountered the first act of open vio-
lence and the first attempt upon his life, on the part of his own
townsmen. Escaping in a miraculous manner from the enraged
crowd who sought to throw him down from a precipitous emi-
nence in the neighborhood of the village, he went to Cana, where
he cured the son of a royal officer who was probably attached
to Herod's court, and .soon after to Capharnaiim which became,
from this time, the centre of his missionary work in Galilee.

Simon, Andrew, James and John, the four fishermen of Beth-
saida who had become disciples of Jesus immediately after the
Temptation, having gone home after the return to Galilee, Jesus
went immediately to seek them and call them to a final abandon-
ment of their secular calling that they might henceforth devote
themselves exclusively to his service. Returning in their com-
pany to Capharnaiim, he began the mission in Galilee on the next
Sabbath in the principal synagogue. This Sabbath is one of spe-
cial interest and importance from the fact that it affords us the
solitary instance of a day in the public ministry of Our Lord which
is minutely described in all its incidents from morning until night
and even to the dawn of the next morning. It was crowded with
remarkable incidents, and may be taken as a sample of the la-
borious days of Our Lord's active life. At the morning service
Jesus preached to a great crowd of attentive and well-disposed
hearers. The sermon was interrupted by the cries of a demoniac
whom Jesus delivered and healed. After leaving the synagogue he
went to the house of the mother-in-law of Simon Peter and cured
her of a violent fever. He remained to dine in the same house
with his disciples, and at sunset the people of the city, who were
much excited by the two great miracles of that day, surrounded

VOL. XXXIII. 23

354 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [June,

the house in crowds, bringing all the sick persons of their re-
spective families to be healed. The whole night was spent in the
ministry of mercy, and it was towards morning when the last
group had departed. Jesus then left the city and went to some
lonely place i'n the neighborhood for solitude and prayer, where
he was found early in the day by the disciples and a crowd of
other persons who had gone in search of him.

From this time until the ensuing Passover Jesus was constantly
employed in preaching and working miracles throughout the nume-
rous cities, villages and small hamlets of Galilee. His fame had
rapidly spread through all Palestine and Syria. There was yet no
organized opposition or persecution to impede his mission. He
was recognized as a teacher and admitted with honor and respect
into the synagogues. The popular sentiment was in his favor, and
he had some supporters and even genuine disciples among persons
of a higher class. Very few particular events of this period are
recorded in the sacred narrative. One of these few is the miracu-
lous draught of fishes in Lake Gennesareth. Another is the heal-
ing of the leper. A third event of more importance occurred af-
ter the return of Our Lord to Capharnaiim. Every reader of the
gospels must have noticed how frequently and strictly he charged
the demons whom he cast out and the subjects of his most extra-
ordinary miracles not to proclaim his name and power among the
people. There was a good reason for this, viz., because an excite-
ment of the people which should lead them to make demonstra-
tions offensive to the local princes or to the members of the San-
hedrim would be sure to bring on a persecution of Jesus and his
disciples. In point of fact, when the Lord returned to Caphar-
naiim he found the city awaiting his arrival with the greatest emo-
tion, and emissaries from Jerusalem already concerting with the
Scribes and Pharisees of Galilee measures of opposition. Since the
cure of the leper, he had avoided all publicity, kept away from the
.crowd and from villages, and gone back to Capharnaiim by unfre-
quented roads. It is probable that he never entered Tiberias, the
capital of Herod ; he was in all ways most careful not to awaken
his jealousy, and he both used himself and enjoined on his disci-
ples the utmost prudence in checking or evading the first move-
ments.of popular excitement in his own favor. He would leave his
enemies without excuse or pretext for their plots against him.
Nevertheless, they made the mere fact of his teaching and work-
ing miracles without any direct sanction from the Sanhedrim, and
his steadfast disregard of the unwarranted additions which they
'had made .to the Law, a pretext for disputing and denying his di-

1 88 1 ] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 355

vine mission, and he was obliged to face them openly, and main-
tain his authority against their declared hostility.

The miracle of the cure of the paralytic, accompanied by the sol-
emn declaration of the power of the Son of Man to forgive sins,
was the event to which we have referred above, which was at
once a decisive moral triumph of Jesus over the Scribes and Phari-
sees who were present as spies and hostile observers, and also an
occasion for a more virulent and declared enmity on their part lor
the future.

The calling of Matthew the publican is the last recorded inci-
dent of this first year, and soon after Jesus went up to Jerusalem
for the Feast of the Passover,

SECOND YEAR.

This second Passover was the last which Jesus was able to
spend in Jerusalem without exposing himself to certain death.
It marks, therefore, a crisis and a change in his position toward
the Jewish rulers. His own opposition to Pharisaism was more
declared and positive, their hostility more malicious and deadly
from this epoch. The first striking incident of this Passover re-
corded is the healing of a paralytic on the Sabbath at the pool of
Bethesda, who was commanded also to carry his bed away im-
mediately to his own house, in open despite of the Pharisaical in-
terpretation of the law of the Sabbath. This was followed by a
distinct assertion which Jesus made, in face of those who accused
him of violating the law, of his own divine character and power
as the lawgiver and the interpreter of his own law. From this
moment the rulers determined to compass his death, although
they postponed taking any immediate measures of violence
through fear of the people. Resolved to act with cunning and
to devise means of alienating the people from him, they from
this time forth surrounded him continually with spies and watch-
ed for a chance of misrepresenting his words and actions, so as to
make him appear to be a violator of the law and a blasphemer
against the doctrines of the Mosaic religion. On the next Sab-
bath after the Feast they surprised his disciples plucking some ears
of wheat while passing through a field and made this the subject
of a second accusation of violating the law of the Sabbath, when
Jesus condemned and refuted their narrow and pitiable rigorism,
and laid down the true doctrine concerning the object and true
spirit of this law. Jesus had already begun his journey back to
Galilee when this incident occurred, and in a synagogue of one

356 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [June,

of the towns on the road, he again wrought a miracle on the
Sabbath, healing by a word, without any external act or move-
ment which could be considered as a work done in violation of
the Pharisaical prescriptions, a man who had a withered hand ;
thus baffling, though by no means subduing the malice of his
enemies, who immediately consulted together " what they should
do to Jesus."

The Galileans were far less imbued with Pharisaical supersti-
tion than the Jews of Jerusalem and Judea, and they were as yet
completely under the influence of the charm of the teaching of
Jesus and the reverence and gratitude awakened by his number-
less and beneficent miracles. Besides, the Sanhedrim had but
little power in Herod's dominions and could effect nothing with-
out his permission and sanction. It was necessary, therefore,
that they should lay aside their habitual contempt for the Hero-
dians and enter into an alliance with them in the hope of arous-
ing the suspicion and hostility of Herod against Jesus. Their
plots were so menacing that the Lord withdrew out of their
reach to that part of the lake shore which was close by the do-
main of Philip. There he received, instructed and healed those
who came to him, until, the storm having blown over for a time,
he was able to reappear publicly and continue his mission with
freedom. He was now followed by greater crowds from all Pal-
estine than ever before. This was the period when he preached
his wonderful Sermon on the Mount, probably on Kourn Hattin
between Tiberias and Capharnaiim. On the morning of that day,
after a whole night spent in prayer, he appointed his Twelve
Apostles. Returning immediately after to Capharnaiim, he heal-
ed the servant of the Roman centurion commanding there, and
made his first pagan converts of this officer and his household.
The next day he raised to life the son of the widow of Nairn, and
in the evening was the guest of a Pharisee named Simon, where
occurred the well-known incident of the conversion of St. Mary
Magdalene, an event which stirred up afresh the hostility of the
Pharisees. Continuing the mission of the preceding year he
went again through the towns and villages of Galilee, accompa-
nied by a numerous group of disciples and everywhere followed
by crowds. A change is, however, manifest from this time in the
disposition of the people, effected by the continual efforts of the
emissaries of the Sanhedrim and their new Galilean allies. Their
plots begin to surround his ministry with impediments, and their
ambuscades gradually close in around him during the rest of this
year and the whole of the next, until their fell purpose is at

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 357

last consummated. Many grievous insults which he received,
the frequent vindications of himself which he addresses to the
multitude, and the alarm of his relatives in which even his blessed
Mother seems to have shared, show that even in Capharnaiim, a
change of sentiment had begun and made considerable progress.
The malice of the enemies of Christ had become at this time more
envenomed and obstinate, so that they began openly to ascribe
the miracles which they could not deny, and particularly the
authority which Jesus exercised over the demons, to a secret
compact with Satan, and accused him of having " an impure
spirit." This blasphemy brought upon them the denunciation
of an irremissible sin against the Holy Spirit and of eternal
death.

It seems to have been partly on account of this change for
the worse not only in the enemies of Christ but also in the people
at large, that he now began to* veil his doctrine under the form
of parables. Another reason was that he now began to teach
those things which related to the constitution of the church,
which there was a special need of setting forth obscurely in figu-
rative language, as .being specially obnoxious. This new mode
of teaching by parables, which is one extremely agreeable to the
Oriental mind, had the effect of increasing the curiosity of the
multitude to hear him, and they beset his steps in throngs wher-
ever he went. On one of these evenings he crossed the lake to
escape the crowd for a time in the solitudes of Perea, and it was
on this occasion that the incident occurred of the sudden storm
when he was asleep in the stern of the boat and was awakened
by his terror-stricken disciples. At Gergesa on the opposite
shore occurred the incident of the healing of the demoniac and
the drowning of the herd of swine. Hindered from 'finding any
solitude or repose in Perea by the excitement caused by this
event, the Lord returned on the same day to Capharnaiim where
the crowd again awaited him. The feast of Matthew where
Jesus ate with publicans and sinners to the great scandal of the
Pharisees, the healing of the woman having an issue of blood,
and the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus the ruler of the
chief synagogue of Capharnaiim, are all regarded by the author
as having taken place at this time and in immediate connection
with each other. The remainder of this year until the Passover
was taken up by the third and last mission of Jesus in Galilee,
and by the mission of the twelve apostles who were sent out two
by two to preach in the towns and villages. In his instruction
before their setting out, Jesus foretold the sufferings and persecu-

358 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [June,

tions which awaited them in their apostolate, and obscurely hinted
at his own approaching passion and death.

The murder of John the Baptist after a year's imprisonment
made it necessary for Jesus to withdraw with his disciples from
Herod's territory. Haunted by remorse and the perpetual
image of the murdered prophet, the tyrant conceived the suspi-
cion that Jesus was John risen from the dead, and was seized
with a morbid curiosity and jealousy respecting him which por-
tended an interference with his liberty. The apostles having re-
turned at the close of their mission, the Lord went with them
to Bethsa'ida-Julias, in the domain of Philip at the northeastern
corner of Lake Gennesareth, and withdrew into the desert in the
vicinity of that city. He was followed by a great crowd of
people who came around the head of the lake by land and arrived
before the vessel in which he crossed the water. They were
joined by a great number of the" inhabitants of neighboring vil-
lages and of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. It was now the
time when caravans were going to the Holy City to keep the
Passover. This was the time and place of the feeding of five
thousand men with a proportionate number of women and
children with the five loaves and two fishes. The effect of this
miracle on the people was such, that the symptoms of a sudden
movement to proclaim Jesus as their expected king showed
themselves in a marked manner. Probably the disciples were
carried away by this excitement and disposed to put themselves
at the head of the movement. Therefore, Jesus gave them a
peremptory order, which they obeyed with reluctance, to embark
at once and return to the opposite side of the lake. He was
obliged to silence their objections by his authority, and when
they had obeyed his command he withdrew unperceived into the
recesses of a neighboring mountain, alone. It was night. A
tempest broke upon the lake, and after three o'clock in the morn-
ing the disciples were still in the middle of the sea, in great
danger, and vainly striving to row towards Capharnalim. It
seems probable that Jesus had sent them alone into this danger
in order to punish their want of prompt obedience, and to give
them a new lesson of his own divine power and their own de-
pendence. He came to them walking on the water, stilled the
tempest and brought them subdued and awed in mind to Ca-
pharnaiim, which he re-entered, surrounded by a great multitude
and welcomed by the last applauses which he was to receive
from that fickle and faithless people.

The next Sabbath was chosen by Our Lord for a crucial test

i88i.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 359

of the faith of the multitude who had been thus far listening with
admiration to his preaching and witnessing with wonder and
pleasure his miracles, and of the faith of his disciples as well.
In a discourse preached in the chief synagogue of Capharnaum
he set forth first the mystery of the Incarnation and then the
mystery of the Holy Eucharist, in such a way as to manifest the
spiritual and heavenly nature of his kingdom in contrast with
the carnal and earthly notions prevalent among the Jews re-
specting the character and office of the Messiah. The effect was
a general alienation of their hearts from him, and even of a con-
siderable number of his disciples. This was so marked and ob-
vious that Jesus solemnly demanded of the twelve whether they
also would abandon him. They all at least tacitly concurred in
the asseveration of fidelity which Simon Peter made in their
name. Yet, it is evident that one of their number, Judas, had
lost all faith in Christ, probably through the revulsion of a heart
strongly attached to the goods of this life from the elevated and
spiritual ideas which were now so clearly and distinctly set be-
fore his mind. For, it was on this occasion that Jesus said : " Be-
hold I have chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil."

THIRD YEAR.

During this third Paschal season of our Lord's public life he
remained at Capharnaum. He could not go up to the Feast or
preach in Judea on account of the determination which the Jew-
ish rulers had taken to put him to death. The Galileans, though
not hostile, had become alienated, and there was no longer a field
open to his ministry among them. The return of the caravans
from Jerusalem brought down emissaries from the Sanhedrim,
the Pharisees of Galilee and the Herodians were in league with
them, and an active opposition to Jesus and his teaching recom-
menced with increased malice. Retreating before this storm, he
withdrew into the pagan or half-pagan region on the eastern
side of the Jordan and on the coast of the Mediterranean, where
he remained from April until September, passing from city to
city and desert to desert, the little company of wanderers no
doubt gaining their scanty subsistence by the product of their
fishing, and finding a lodging where they could. The gospels
furnish very few details of this period. From Galilee, Jesus
went first to Tyre and Sidon, then going inland from the Medi-
terranean coast he passed down through Decapolis to the shore
of Lake Gennesareth, then up the valley .of the J ordan northward

360 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [June,

from the lake, returning to Capharnaiim at the end of September.
He did not preach or show himself in public, seeking rather to
remain unknown and in solitude, chiefly occupied with the in-
struction and preparation of the apostles for the great work
which was to devolve upon them after the next Passover. Still,
his fame spread abroad through those regions, numbers of the
people sought him out, and he did not refuse to give them in-
struction and to work miracles for their solace, as the occasion
offered. To this period belong the healing of the Canaanitish
woman's daughter, of the deaf-and-dumb man, the second multi-
plication of the loaves and fishes, the healing of a blind man near
Bethsaida-Julias, and the confession of Peter followed by the
promise of the primacy, which took place at Caesarea Philippi.
After this promise, Jesus made the first clear announcement of
his approaching passion and death, which he had before foretold
obscurely. During the week following this prediction the Mas-
ter descended the valley of the Jordan, crossed in secret the
hills which lie to the west of Lake Gennesareth, and on the
eighth day ascended a mountain believed to be Mt. Thabor,
where occurred the Transfiguration in the presence of three of
the apostles. This was intended as a solemn testimony from
Moses and Elijah that the law and the prophets were fulfilled in
Jesus, and as an encouragement of the three chief leaders among
the apostles, who were soon to be exposed to such severe trials of
their constancy. After this he returned to Capharnaiim where
he was received with cold . indifference, the twbute-money ex-
acted from him and paid with the coin which Peter found in the
mouth of a fish. Some of his near relatives, even, accosted him
with murmurs and reproaches manifesting plainly that they did
not believe in him. The feast of Tabernacles was at hand, but
he could not go up to it in their company with the usual caravan,
or in public, and he went to Jerusalem with the apostles, later
and in secret, through Samaria where he received fresh insults.

A few days after the beginning of the feast Jesus appeared
quietly and unexpectedly in the temple and resumed his teaching.
During this stay in Jerusalem there was much division of senti-
ment concerning him among the people and there were signs of a
popular reaction in his favor, which only alarmed the rulers more
and increased their desire to arrest and put him to death. Once
there was a sudden and riotous movement made to stone him to
death, and several times attempts were made for his arrest by of-
ficers of the law. These efforts were all baffled, and Jesus con-
tinued for several days preaching and working miracles. The

1 83 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 361

principal incidents recorded are the case of the woman taken in
adultery and the healing of the man born blind who was excom-
municated from the synagogue.

The feast being over, Jesus returned to Galilee* and sent
from there seventy-two of his most trusted disciples into that part
of the territory of Herod Antipas which was situated on the east-
ern side of the Jordan. He himself soon after bade farewell to
ungrateful Galilee, leaving behind him that sad prediction of woe
which was so terribly executed thirty years later by the Roman
armies. Going back into Judea he came unexpectedly to the
house of Lazarus at Bethany, where Martha cumbered herself
with much serving and Mary chose the best part of sitting at the
feet of Jesus to hear his heavenly doctrine. The seventy-two whom
Jesus had sent to prepare the way for him in Perea had already
returned after a short and successful mission, and thither Jesus
now went in person to evangelize that portion of the people, who
received him well and were at this time, and afterwards under the
apostles, converted to the faith of Christ in great numbers. The
synagogues were still open to him in Perea and he enjoyed full
liberty in his ministry, though the Pharisees continued to embar-
rass him and carry out their system of espionage and artifice with
a view of finally drawing him within the meshes of their plot for
his destruction. They were obliged, for. the present, to mask their
designs, and we even find that Jesus was invited to a banquet in
the house of a Pharisee, where he took occasion to denounce the
hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees in strong language. Dur-
ing this time, Jesus is recorded to have cured two blind men, cast
out a dumb demon, and healed the woman afflicted with a chronic
curvature. While Jesus was evangelizing Perea news arrived of
a sedition of Galileans at Jerusalem which Pilate had suppressed by
massacring all the insurgents during the time of a sacrifice which
they offered. The Pharisees also endeavored to alarm Jesus with
a report that Herod was seeking his life, that they might persuade
him to leave that region. " Go, tell that fox," was his reply, " that
I will cast out demons and heal the sick to-day and to-morrow,
and that on the third day I shall be consummated." Nothing could
hinder him from completing the three years and a half of his min-
istry, and when the time came he would voluntarily deliver him-
self up to death. Choosing his own time, the Lord quitted Her-
od's dominions and went leisurely toward Jerusalem, where he kept
the Feast of the Dedication. Approaching the city he foretold
its ruin ; the attempt was again made during his short sojourn
there to stone him and to apprehend him, but in vain. Withdraw-

362 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [June,

ing again into Perea he went as far as Jericho preaching among
a people who seem to have remained faithful to him to the end.
Another banquet was offered to him on a Sabbath day by a Phari-
see, when he healed a dropsical man, confuting at the same time
the rigorous sabbatical doctrine of the Pharisees.

From Perea the Lord was recalled to Bethany by the illness
and death of Lazarus, and wrought his wonderful miracle of the
resurrection of his friend in presence of a great number of the
higher class of Jews as well as of the people from Jerusalem and
its vicinity. Such was the notoriety and influence of this miracle
that the chief priests and members of the council held a special
consultation in which they adopted anew the determination to put
Jesus to death, and resolved to do so as soon as possible. He
withdrew into a more distant part of Judea, to a village called
Ephraim, supposed by Robinson to be the modern village of Et-
Tayibeh on the borders of Samaria, where he remained for a few
weeks in retirement, devoting himself to the instruction of his
apostles. Then, leaving Ephraim, he returned through Samaria
into Galilee and on the frontier performed one of his last miracles,
the healing of the ten lepers, and without remaining long in
Galilee passed the Jordan again into Perea.

During this journey occurred the incident of the rich young
man whom Jesus invited to follow him but who went away sor-
rowful. When, descending the eastern bank of the Jordan, he
had arrived at the place where the road turns toward Jerusalem
and crosses the river, his disciples saw with terror that he took
that route, and although the twelve resolved to follow him it was
with fear and trembling, and at a distance. Here, for the third
time (the second was after the Transfiguration), Jesus foretold
distinctly his passion and death, and his ensuing resurrection.
Notwithstanding their first reluctance to encounter the dangers
of the Passover at Jerusalem, and this prediction of the Master,
they seem to have concluded among themselves that the tri-
umphant inauguration of a temporal Messianic kingdom was now
at hand. For it was just now that Jarnes and John through their
mother Salome preferred their ambitious request to be made the
first in this kingdom. Passing on toward Jericho, Jesus healed
the blind man Bartimeus, and as he was entering the new city of
Archelalis, distant a half hour's journey from the old city, he saw
Zacchaeus in the sycamore-tree and called him down to become
his host for the night.

On the Friday evening before the Passover week Jesus ar-
rived in Bethany. On the evening of the next day, the last Sab-

1 88 1.] THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 363

bath before the Passion, occurred the incidents of the banquet in
Simon's house, the anointing by Mary Magdalene and the mur-
muring of Judas, who was about to consummate his faithlessness
by the betrayal of his Master. The day following was Palm Sun-
day, the first day of the Holy Week.

Here we must bring to a close this synopsis, which we have
been obliged to make a very hasty one, in order to confine our-
selves to reasonable limits. For the same reason we must omit
a synopsis of the exposition of the Parables. We have en-
deavored to give to readers of the Gospels a thread which may
guide them to a consecutive arrangement of the order of events
in the public life of our Lord. Taking the Gospel of St. Luke as
an Itinerary with a map of Palestine, and referring to St. Mat-
thew and St. John for the parts which St. Luke has not re-
corded, with the help of this thread which we have put into
their hands, we think they will find that they will gain a much
more distinct conception of the history of Christ than they have
before possessed.

We conclude with repeating our desire and hope that M.
1'Abbe Fouard's Life of Christ may be speedily and adequately
translated and published in the English language.

SERAPION THE ANCHORITE AND THE HOLY
SCRIPTURES.

SERAPION, who had given his cloak and his coat to two beg-
gars whom he found nearly frozen with cold, met in the evening
some compassionate people, who gave him shelter ; and when
they asked him who could have so robbed him, Serapion pointed
to the book of the Gospels and said : " It was this book that did
it." But even that book did not long remain in his possession.
In the neighboring town he sold it for the benefit of a family who
had fallen into great distress. It was bought by an ecclesiastic,
who gently rebuked Serapion for parting with such a treasure.
He answered humbly : " You will hardly believe it, my father,
but it seemed to me as if the Gospel was constantly crying out to
me, ' Go sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor.' Now,
this very book was all that I had, and therefore I sold it."

364 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [June,

THE CHILDREN OF LIR.

PART THE SECOND.

WHAT time, forth sliding from the Eternal Gates,
The centuries three on earth had lived and died,

Thus spake Finola to her snowy mates,
" No more in this soft haven may we bide :

The second Woe succeeds that heavier toil

On Alba's waves, the black sea-strait of Moyle."

Then wept to her in turn the younger three ;

" Alas the sharp rocks and the salt sea-foam !
Thou therefore make the lay, ere yet we flee

From this our exile's cradle, sweet as home ! "
And thus Finola sang, while, far and near,
The men of Erin wept that strain to hear :

*' Farewell, Lough Darvra, with thine isles of bloom !

Farewell, familiar tribes that grace her shore !
The penance deepens on us, and the doom :

Farewell ! The voice of man we hear no more
Till he, the Tailkenn, comes to sound the knell
Of darkness, and we hear his Christian bell.'*

Thus singing, 'mid their dirge the sentenced soared

Heaven-high ; then hanging mute on plumes outspread,

With downcast eye long time that lake explored ;
And lastly with a great cry northward sped :

Then was it Erin's sons, listening that cry,

Decreed : tl the man who slays a swan shall die."

Three days against'the northern blast on-flying

To fate obedient and the Will Divine,
They reached, what time the crimson eve was lying

On Alba's isles, and ocean's utmost line,
That huge sea-strait whose racing eddies boil
'Twixt Erin and the cloud-girt headland Moyle.*

* " The term Mael, Mull (or Moyle, as Moore calls it), does not properly apply to the current
itself, but to the Mael, or bald headland by which it runs." Professor Eugene O' 'Curry.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 365

There anguish fell on them : they heard the booming
Of league-long breakers white, and gazed on waves

Wreck-strewn, themselves entombed, and all-entombing,
On-rolled to labyrinths dim of red-roofed caves ;

And streaming waters broad, as with one will

In cataracts from gray shelves descending still.

There, day by day, the sun more early set ;

And through the hollows of the high-ridged sea
Which foamed around their rocky cabinet

The whirlwinds beat them more remorselessly :
And winter followed soon : and ofttimes storms
Shrouded for weeks the mountains' frowning forms.

In time all ocean omens they had learned ;

And once, as o'er the darkening deep they roved,
Finola, who the advancing scourge discerned,

Addressed them : " Little brothers, well beloved,
Though many a storm hath tried us, yet the worst
Comes up this night against us : ere it burst

" Devise we swiftly if, through God's high Will,
Billow or blast divides us, each from each,

Some refuge-house wherein, when winds are still,
To meet once more low rock or sandy beach ":

And answer thus they made : " One spot alone

This night can yield us refuge Carickrone."

They spake, and sudden thunder shook the world,
And blackness wrapped the seas, and lightnings rent ;

And each from each abroad those swans were hurled
By drifting water-scud. Outworn and spent,

At last, that direful tempest over-blown,

Finola scaled their trysting-rock alone.

But when she found no gentle brother near,
And heard the great storm roaring far away,

Anguish of anguish pierced her heart, and fear,
And thus she made her moan and sang her lay :

" Death-cold they drift along the far sea-tide :

Would that as cold I drifted at their side ! "

366 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [June,

Thus as she sang, behold, the sun uprose,
And smote a swan that on a wave's smooth crest

Exhausted lay, like one by pitiless foes
Trampled, and looking but to death for rest :

He also clomb that rock, though weak and worn,

With bleeding feet, and pinions tempest-torn.

Aodh was he ! He placed him by her side ;

Above him straight her wing Finola spread :
Ere long beneath the rock Fiacre she spied ;

Wounded yet more was he ; yet laid his head
'Neath her left wing, her nestling's wonted place,
And slept content in that beloved embrace.

But still Finola mused with many a tear,

" Alas for us, of little Conn bereft ! "
Then Conn came floating by, full blithe of cheer,

For he, secure within a craggy cleft,
Had slept all night ; and now once more his nest
He found beneath his snowy sister's breast

And as they slept she sang : " Among the flowers
Of old we played where princes quaffed their wine ;

But now for flowery fields sea-floods are ours ;
And now our wine-cup is the bitter brine :

Yet, brothers, fear no ill ; for God will send

At last his Tailkenn, and our woes find end."

And God, Who of least things has tenderest thought,
Looked down on them benignly from on high,

And bade that bitter brine to enter not

Their scars, unhealed as yet, lest they should die ;

And nearer sent their choicest food full oft,

And clothed their wings anew with plumage soft.

And ever as the spring advanced, the sea
Put on a kindlier aspect. Cliffs deep-scarred

To milder airs gave welcome festively

Upon their iron breasts and foreheads hard,

And, while about their feet the ripples played,

Cast o'er the glaring deep a welcomer shade.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 367

And when at last the full midsummer panted
Upon the austere main, and high-peaked isles,

And hills that, like some elfin land enchanted,

Now charmed, now mocked the eye with phantom smiles,

More far round Alba's shores the swans made way

To Islay's beach, and thence to Colonsay.

The growths beside their native lake oft noted
In that sublimer clime no more they missed ;

Jewels, not flowers, they found where'er they floated,
Emerald and sapphire, opal, amethyst,

Far-kenned through watery depths or magic air,

Or trails of broken rainbows, here and there.

Likewise round Erin's coasts they drifted on
From Rathlin isle to Fanad's beetling crest,

And where, in frowning sunset steeped, forth shone
The " Bloody Foreland," gazing t'ward the west ;

Yet still with duteous hearts to Moyle returned

To love their place of penance they had learned.

Yet once it chanced that, onward as they drifted,
Where Banna's current joins that northern sea,

A princely company with banners lifted

Rode past on snow-white steeds and sang for glee :

Instant they knew those horsemen, form and face,

Their native stock the famed Tuatha race !

T'ward them they sped: their sorrows they recounted
The warriors could not aid them, and rode by :

Then higher than of old their anguish mounted ;

And farther rang through heaven their piteous cry ;

And when it ceased, this lay Finola sang,

While all the echoing rocks and caverns rang :

" Whilome in purple clad we sat elate :

The warriors watched us at their nut-brown mead :
But now we roam the waters desolate,

And like some dead maid's funeral-plumes our weed.
Our food was then fine bread ; our drink was wine :
This day on sea-plants sour we peak and pine.

368 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [June,

" Whilome our four small cots of pearl and gold
Were ranged at foot of Lir's high-curtained bed,

And silken bed-clothes kept us from the cold :
But now on restless waves our couch is spread ;

And now our bed-clothes are the white sea-foam

And now by night the sea-rock is our home."

Not less from them such sorrows swiftly passed
Since evermore one thought their bosoms filled

Their father's home. In memory's mirror glassed
That haunt its quiet o'er their lives distilled :

And, coast what shore they might, green vale and plain

Bred whiter flocks, men said more golden grain.

The years ran on : the centuries three went by :
Finola sang : " The second Woe is ended ! "

Obedient then once more they soared on high ;
Next morn on Erin's western coast descended,

While sunrise flashed from misty isles far seen,

Now gold, now flecked with streaks of gem-like green.

And there for many a winter they abode,
Harboring in precincts of the setting sun ;

And mourned by day, yet sang at night their ode
As though in praise of some great victory won ;

Some conqueror more than man ; some heavenly crown

Slowly o'er all creation settling down.

There once what time a great sun in decline
Had changed to gold the green back of a wave

That showered a pasture fair with diamond brine,
Then sank, anon uprising from its grave,

Went shouldering onward, higher and more high,

And hid far lands, and half eclipsed the sky

There once a shepherd, Aibhric, high of race,
Marked them far off, and marking them so loved

That to the ocean's marge he rushed apace

With hands outspread. Shoreward the creatures moved ;

And when he heard them speak with human tongue

That love he felt grew tenderer and more strong.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 369

Day after day they told that youth their tale :
Wide-eyed he stood, and inly drank their words ;

And later, harping still in wood and vale,
He fitted oft their sorrow to his chords ;

And thus to him in part we owe the lore *

Of all those patient sufferers bare of yore.

For bard he was ; and still the bard-like nature
Hath reverence, as for virtue, so for woe,

And ever finds in trials of the creature
The great Creator's purpose here below

To lift by lowering, and through anguish strange

To fit for thrones exempt from chance or change.

There first the four had met that sympathy

Yearned for so long : and yet, that treasure found,

So much the more ere long calamity

Tasked them, thus strengthened ; tasked and closed them
round,

And higher far fierce winds and watery shocks

Dashed them thenceforth upon the pitiless rocks.

At last from heaven's dark vault a night there fell

The worst they yet had known. The high-heaped seas,

Vanquished by frost, beneath her iron spell

Abased their haughty crests by slow degrees :

The swans were frozen upon that ice-plain frore ;

Yet still Finola sang, as oft before,

" Beneath my right wing, Aodh, make thy rest !

Beneath my left, Fiacre ! My little Conn,
Find thou a warmer shelter 'neath my breast,

As thou art wont : thou art my little son !
Thou God that all things madest, and lovest all,
Subdue things great ! Protect the weak, the small ! "

But evermore the younger three made moan ;

And still their moans more loud and louder grew ;
And still Finola o'er that sea of stone

For their sake fragments of wild wailings threw ;

* " They met a young man of good family whose name was Aibhric, and his attention was
often attracted to the birds, and their singing was sweet to him, so that he came to love them
greatly, and that they loved him ; and it was this young man that afterwards arranged in order
and narrated all their adventures." The Fate of the Children ofLir, prose version by Professor
O'Curry.

VOL. XXXIII. 24

370 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [June,

Full often as she sang, the on-driving snow
Choked the sweet strain ; yet still she warbled low.

Then louder when she heard those others grieve,
And found that song might now no more avail,

She said : " Believe, O brothers young, believe
In that great God whose help can never fail !

Have faith in God, since God can ne'er deceive."

And lo, those weepers answered : " We believe ! "

So thus those babes, in God's predestined hour,
Through help of Him, the Lord of Life and Death,

Inly fulfilled with light and prophet power,
Believed in God, and made their Act of Faith,

And thenceforth all things, both in shade and shine,

To them came softly and with touch benign.

First, from the southern stars there came a breeze

On- wafting happy mist of moonlit rain ;
And when the sun ascended o'er the seas

The ice was vanquished ; and the watery plain
And every cloud with rapture thrilled and stirred :
And lo, at noon the cuckoo's voice was heard !

And since with that rough ice their feet were sore,
God for their sake a breeze from Eden sent

That gently raised them from the ocean's floor
And in its bosom, as an ambient tent,

Held them suspense : and with a dew of balm

God, while they slept, made air and ocean calm.

Likewise a beam auroral forth he sped

That flushed that tent aerial like a rose
Each morn, and roseate odors o'er it shed

The long day through. And still, at evening's close,
They dreamed of those rich bowers and alleys green
Wherein with Lir their childish sports had been.

And thrice they dreamed that in the morning gray
They gathered there red roses drenched with dew :

But lo ! a serpent 'neath the roses lay :

Then came the Tailkenn, and that serpent slew ;

And round the Tailkenn's tonsured head was light

That made that morning more than noonday bright.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 371

Thus rapt, thus kindled, in sublimer mood

Heaven-high they soared, and flung abroad their strain,

O'er-sailing huge Croagh- Patrick swathed in wood,
Or Aichnil, warder of the western main,

Or Arran Isle, even then heroic haunt,

Since Enda's day Religion's holier vaunt.

And many a time they floated farther south

Where milder airs embalm each headland bleak,

To that dim Head far seen o'er Shenan's mouth,
Or Smerwick's ill-famed cliff and winding creek,

Or where on Brandon sleeps Milesius' son

With all his shipwrecked warriors round him Donn.

The centuries passed : her loud, exultant lay
Finola sang, their time of penance done,

And ended : " Lo, to us it seems a day ;

Not less the dread nine hundred years are gone :

Now, brothers, homeward be our flight ! " And they

Chanted triumphant : " Home, to Finnaha! "

Up from the sea they rose in widening gyre,
And hung suspended 'mid the ethereal blue,

And saw, far-flashing in the sunset's fire,

A wood-girt lake whose splendor well they knew ;

And flew all night ; and reached at dawn its shore

Ah, then rang out that wail ne'er heard before !

There where the towers of Lir of old had stood
Lay now the stony heap and rain- washed rath ;

And through the ruin-mantling alder-wood
The forest beast had stamped in mire his path ;

And wasted were their mother's happy bowers,

So fair of old with fountains and with flowers !

More closely drew the orphans, each to each :
'Twas then Finola raised her dirge on high,

As nearer yet they drifted to the beach
In hope one fragment of past days to spy

" Upon our father's house hath fallen a change ;

And as a dead man's face this place is strange !

372 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [June,

" No more the hound and horse ; no more the horn !

No more the warriors winding down the glen !
Behold, the place of pleasaunce is forlorn,

And emptied of fair women and brave men ;
The wine-cup is run dry ; the music fled :
Now know we that our father, Lir, is dead ! "

She sang, and ceased, though long the feathered throat
Panted with passion of the unuttered song :

At last she spake with voice that seemed remote,
Like echoed voice of one the tombs among :

" Depart we hence ! Better the exile's pain ! "

And they : " Return we to rough waves again ! "

Yet still along that silver mere they ling-ered
Oaring their weeping way by lawn and cape,

Till evening, purple-stoled and dewy-fingered,

'Twixt heaven and earth had woven its veil of crape ;

And tenderer came from darkening wood and wild

The voice far off of woman or of child.

And when, far travelling through the fields of ether,
The stars successive filled their thrones of light,

Still to that heaven the glimmering lake beneath her
Gave meet response, with music answering light ;

For still, wherever sailed the mystic four,

With elfin minstrelsy that lake ran o'er.

But when the rising sun made visible

The night-mist hovering long o'er banks of reed,
They cast their broad wings on a gathering swell

Of wind that, late from eastern sea-caves freed,
Waved all the Island's oakwoods t'ward the west ;
And seaward swooped at eve, and there found rest.

And since they knew their penance now was over.

Penance that tasks true hearts to purify,
Happier were they than e'er was mortal lover,

Happy as Spirits cleansed that, near the sky,
Feel, 'mid that shadowy realm expiatory,
Warm on their lids the unseen yet nearing glory.

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 373

Thenceforth they roamed no more, at Inisglaire
Their change awaiting. In its blissful prime

That island was, men say, as Eden fair,

The swan-soft nursling of a changeful clime,

With amaranth-lighted glades, and tremulous sheen

Of trees full-flowered on earth no longer seen.

Not then the waves with that soft isle contended ;

On its warm sandhills pansies always bloomed ;
And ever with the inspiring sea-wind blended

The breath of gardens violet-perfumed;
And daisies whitened lawn and dell, and spread
At sunset o'er green hills their under red ;

Faint as that blush which lights some matron's cheek
Tenderly pleased by gentle praise deserved

That island's curving coast from creek to creek

Like lines of shells with dream-like beauty swerved :

And midmost spread a lake ; from mortal eyes

Vanished this day, like man's lost paradise.

Around that lake with oldest oakwoods shaded
Were all things that to eye are witching most,

Green slopes, dew-drenched, and gray rocks ivy-braided ;
Yet speechless was the region as a ghost :

No whisper shook those woods ; no tendril stirred ;

Nor e'er beside the cave was ripple heard.

A home for Spirits, not home for man, it seemed ;

Some Limbo meet for body-waiting Souls
(Of such in Pagan times the poets dreamed) :

That stillness which invests the unmoving poles
Above it brooded. In its circuit wide
A second Darvra lived but glorified.

Upon that scene perpetual light there lay,

Undazzling beam, and uncreated light ;
For lake and wood the sunshine drank all day,

And breathed it forth once more to cheer the night,
A silver twilight, clear from cloud or taint,
Like aureole round the forehead of a saint.

374 THE CHILDREN OF LIR. [June,

There dwelt those Swans ; their music there they chanted
Then first they sang by day rapt song and hymn,

Till all those birds the western isles that haunted
Came flying far o'er ocean's purple rim,

Scorning thenceforth wild cliff and beds of foam ;

And made then first that sacred site their home.

So passed three years. When dawned the third May morn
The four, while slowly rose the kindling mist,

Showing the first white on the earliest thorn,
Heard music o'er the waters. List, O list !

'Twas sweet as theirs more sweet yet terrible

At first ; and sudden trembling on them fell.

A second time it sounded. Terror died,

And rapture came instead, and mystic mirth,

They knew not whence : and thus Finola cried :
" Brothers ! the Tailkenn treads our Erin's earth ! "

And as the lifted mist gave view more large

They saw a blue bay with a fair green marge.

On that green marge there rose an altar-stone ;

And by it, robed in white, with tonsured head,
Stood up the kingly Tailkenn all alone :

Not far behind, in reverence not in dread,
With low bent brows a princely senate knelt,
Girding that altar as with golden belt.

Marvelling, the on-sailing four that ritual saw :
But, when a third time pealed St. Patrick's bell,

They too their halleluias, though with awe,

Blended with his. The 111 Spirits heard their knell,

And shrieking fled to penal dungeons drear ;

And straight, since now those blissful birds drew near,

The Tailkenn stretched above the wave his hand

And thus he spake and wind and wave were stilled-

" Children of Lir, re-tread your native land,
For now your long sea-penance is fulfilled ! '

Then lo ! Finola raised the funeral cry :

" We tread our native land that we may die ! "

1 88 1.] THE CHILDREN OF LIR. 375

And thus she made the lay, and thus she sang :
" Baptize us, priest, while living yet we be ! "

And louder soon her dirge-like anthem rang :
" Lo, thus our rites of burial I decree :

Make fair our grave where Land and Ocean meet ;

And t'ward thy holy altar place our feet.

" Upon my left, Fiacre ; upon my right

Let Aodh sleep ; for such their place of rest,

The couch of each by usage and by right :
And lay my little Conn upon my breast :

Then on a low sand pillow raise my head,

That I may see his face though I be dead."

She spake ; and on the sands they stept the four
Then lo, from heaven there came a miracle :

Soon as those swans had stood on Erin's shore
The weight of bygone centuries on them fell :

To human forms they changed, yet human none ;

Dread, shapeless weights of wrinkles and of bone.

A moment on their faces prone they lay ;

Then slowly up that breadth of tawny sand,
Like wounded beast that can but crawl, made way

With knee convulsed, and closed and clutching hand,
Nine-centuried forms, still breathing mortal breath,
Though shrouded in the searments pale of death.

On them that concourse, gazed with many a tear;

Yet no man uttered speech or motion made,
Till now the four had reached that altar-bier,

Their ghastly pilgrimage's goal, and laid
Before its base their bodies, one by one,
And faces glistening in the rising sun.

There lying, loud they raised the self-same cry,
As Patrick o'er them signed the conquering sign,

" Baptize us, holy Tailkenn, for we die ! "

The saint baptized them in the Name Divine,

And, swift as thought, their happy spirits at last

To God's high feast and singing angels passed.

376 THE CHILDREN OF LIE. [June >

Now hear the latest wonder. While, low-bowed,
That concourse gazed upon the reverend dead,

Behold, like changeful shapes in evening cloud,
Vanished those time-worn bodies ; and, instead,

Inwoven lay four children, white and young,

With silver-lidded eyes and lashes long.

Finola lay, once more a six years' child :
Upon her right hand Aodh took his rest,

Upon her left Fiacre, and sleeping smiled :
Her little Conn was cradled on her breast :

And all their saintly raiment shone as bright

As sea-foam sparkling on a moonlit night ;

Or as their snowy night-clothes shone of old

When now the night was past, and Lir, their sire,

Upraised them from the warm cot's silken fold,
And bade them watch the sun's ascending fire,

And watched himself its beam, now here, now there,

Flashed from white foot, blue eyes, or golden hair.

The men who saw that deathbed did not weep,
But gazed till sunset upon each fair face ;

And then with funeral psalm, and anthems deep,
Interred them at that sacred altar's base,

And graved their names in Oghaim characters

On one white tomb ; and, close beside it, Lir's.

Those Babes were Erin's Holy Innocents,

And first-fruits of the land to Christ their Lord,

Though born within the unbelievers' tents :
Figured in them the Gael his God adored,

That later-coming, holier Gael, who won

Through Faith the birthright, though the younger son.

1 88 1.] MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. 377

MEDIAEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY.

WHILE education among men during the middle ages was
chiefly confined to ecclesiastics of various grades, it was more
evenly distributed among women. The nuns had more leisure
for study, and the needs of an abbey or smaller monastery, the
obligation of singing the office and reading the Scriptures, and
the territorial cares that devolved on monastic property-owners
or trustees were so many incentives to knowledge among a large
number of religious women ; but a good many women in the
world were both educated, as far as the standards of the time
allowed, and patrons of education among their sex. Half of
them were brought up in monasteries, whether as day-scholars
(a practice that was altered in the eleventh century, as tending to
disturb the quiet and relax the rule of the teaching nuns) or as per-
manent boarders, under the name of ablates i.e., offered which
character was at first merely nominal, but early became nearly
synonymous with actual entrance into the order. There were
diversities of opinion and of custom, however, and the rule of St.
Basil, followed by many convents, discountenanced this prema-
ture destination of children to a life which they had not chosen,
while that of St. Benedict largely accepted the principle of this
vicarious offering by parents. The " age of reason " was in some
convents considered the time of choice, in others the specified
age of twelve the canonical marriageable age -was the one ap-
pointed for a final decision ; but it is needless to point out that
the tendency of the middle ages in all matters of " choice" as to
a woman's destiny made these technical safeguards practically
nugatory. Broadly speaking, girls neither chose marriage nor
the convent, as also they had little choice, in our sense of the
word, either of the person they married or of the order or con-
vent they entered. To the accident of infant betrothal some girls
would owe their proficiency in an uncommon language or other
branch of knowledge ; their destiny would be changed several
times during their childhood as family or national circumstances
changed, and the original career they were to have followed was
often entirely reversed when they at last reached an actually
marriageable age. Education was the one serious interest on
whose permanence they could count ; it afforded them comfort
and pleasure, and the only individual life to which they had

378 MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. [June,

access ; it was useful to them as mothers, mistresses of large
households, and nurses ; it kept many from frivolous temptations
during the long absences at war of husbands and sons ; it en-
abled them to appreciate learning for its own sake and to pro-
mote its diffusion. The mistress read to her maids almost as
regularly as the abbess and others read to their communities.
Although Italy was for many centuries after the tenth the most
educated and civilized country of Europe, still Germany and
Great Britain had a fair share of female education, lay as well as
monastic ; and the Netherlands were particularly noted for their
middle-class schools, and the level to which burghers' and mer-
chants' wives and daughters had risen in the intellectual scale.
The south of France was, until the thirteenth century, a peculiar-
ly well-educated region, chiefly as regards literature ; the nuns
under the famous Helo'ise studied Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew.
Almost all the medical, and especially the surgical, knowledge of
the times was as much diffused among women as among profes-
sional " leeches." The prominence of Scripture as a subject of
study had the happy effect of bringing before the mind of a stu-
dent many things which, by or for themselves, would have beei
otherwise left out of the scheme of education ; so that Biblic;
knowledge, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century at least
implied some notion of ancient history and geography, of th(
manners of peoples more remote than the Greeks and Romans
of maritime discovery, of elementary astronomy, and of the pr<
gress of various domestic and higher arts. Every book
scarcer than the Bible, so that people gathered most of their
knowledge and all their material for speculation from its asser-
tions or its hints. The constant transcribing of parts of tlte
Scripture, which was a recognized profession no less among nuns
than among monks, steeped the minds of a large part of th<
population in a poetical mould. In Germany this, mingled with
the influence of the ritual of the church, gave the tone to much
of the early national poetry. A good deal of the imagery com-
mon to the Minnesingers and Meistersingers can be traced to Bil
lical influence, while the monastic writers exhibit the same ten-
dency in a stronger degree. There went on, ever since the dawn
of a new German revival under Charlemagne to the days of the
Renaissance, a controversy as to the use of classic learning, its
influence, its intrinsic worth, and its fitness for Christian schools.
In Italy national predilections gave it a larger place than in Ger-
many ; it was not so tabooed by even rigid moralists as it was in
the north. Mythology of the bright southern kind was repug-

1 88 1.] MEDIAEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. 379

nant to the national even more than to the religious spirit in
Germany ; the Teutonic ideal of woman was antagonistic to the
part played by the female sex in Greek myths.

The piety of Prankish, Saxon, and northern Celtic women
was essentially self-respecting. There was less social indulgence
to foibles and less light-hearted inattention to the spirit of the
Commandments where the forms of religion were tolerably fol-
lowed than was common in the south, and this reacted on the
estimate of classic literature. German scholars, however, were
not wanting who read and admired Cicero, Horace, and Seneca,
and among these were a few women. The mode of teaching
girls of good birth was early changed from the convent-school,
whence the " oblates " were bound to enter the order, to a sort
of annexed school taught by a few sisters with special permission
to mix more with the world. Again, some of the yet surviving
German institutes of Canonesses date from the days when such
communities of noble ladies, belonging to the " third order " of
some popular monastic rule, undertook the education of girls of
their own class. The Canonesses had various rules : some were
almost nuns, though the vows were not perpetual ; others were
nearly as free as the laity, retaining each her own fortune and
disposing of it independently. Many of them were free to
marry when they pleased, but received meanwhile from their
dress and their vows a social protection which at that time was
a valuable equivalent. The Netherlands, which were the chief
field for the educational labors of the " Brethren of the Common
Life " men whose first aim was to evangelize and educate the
lower classes developed also a kindred community of teaching
sisters named Beguines ; village schools were fitfully held either
by the lady of the manor, by some widow resembling the "dame"
of English country life, or by itinerant school-mistresses who
carried about regular advertisements and licenses from priests
and magistrates. There was, of course, no permanence, no orga-
nization, and no great depth in such educational methods ; the
higher classes were tolerably taught the exceptions taught them-
selves by individual effort and intercourse with foreign scholars ;
the burgher girls of good position imitated closely the life and
customs of the nobility, and were generally quite as well taught,
while between the educational status of the peasantry then and
now there was less disparity than between that of the classes
above and the corresponding ranks at present. The reason of
this lay chiefly in the after-life of peasant-girls, and somewhat in
the different tests which gauged education before and after the

380 MEDIAEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. [June,

diffusion ol printed books. Reading and writing (after a fashion)
are our common tests now ; learning by heart was the corre-
sponding test in older times. What an utterly untaught girl did
not know in the fourteenth century is balanced by what a rough-
ly-taught girl at present forgets three years after she has left
school.* The spelling and writing of all below the commercial
classes is lamentable ; the reading of people (proudly called " scho-
lards " in England) of village education means a painful, slow,
laborious, and unconsecutive enunciation of word after word out
of a book or paper. They are not at home with their knowledge ;
it is unfamiliar and foreign, an external possession of which they
are proud, but which stiffly resists every-day use. The after-
life of the lower classes in Germany and elsewhere is hard and
prosaic, above all it is busy ; and no pursuit can become natural
unless it is habitual. The small stock of knowledge brought from
school and the highest even, among people of leisure, is nothing
but a foundation soon disappears under the wearing burden of
daily cares, which increase as life goes on ; so that one fails to see
how the school-taught peasantry of to-day is more favorably situ-
ated, intellectually speaking, than the mass of their untaught an-
cestors four and six hundred years ago. Oral teaching of vari-
ous kinds was commoner then than now ; parents taught their
children more directly than at present, when they fancy that edu-
cation is the business of the professional teacher ; preaching was
more popular than now, more picturesque and less confined to
theological subjects. Even the marvellous tales of pilgrims and
crusaders were channels of instruction, and Bible plays and
shows, however arbitrary in detail and costume, taught the peo-
ple a great deal. Such things constantly recurred in the life of
even remote country populations, and the impressions thus often
revived were probably more lasting than those which a child of
our day is supposed to receive, once for all, during three or four
years' schooling.

A few details as to educated German women of the middle
ages will serve to illustrate the general state of female advance
in those times. A recent pamphlet, or rather sketch, of some of
these furnishes examples, taken, it is true, from the lives of pro-
minent and exceptional women ; but allusions occur, in the works
to which the author refers, to the ordinary amount of education
which it was taken for granted existed among the average of the

* The comparison is confined to European peasant-schooling, although we have more rural
ignorance even in this country than we like to admit.

i88i.] MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. 381

well-to-do classes. This sketch is due to the researches of a ru-
ral parish priest in the diocese of Mayence.*

The convents naturally present themselves first to the mind,
as their history is easiest of access. A few instances of apprecia-
tion of learning go pretty far back into the "dark ages." The
Christianity of much of northern Germany was due to British
(including Irish) apostles, and the rules of British synods were
applied by and by to the new schools of Germany. The public
and private reading of the Scriptures was enjoined by the synod
of Cloveshove (747), in Yorkshire, on female communities, who
were directed to see to it that the majority of their members
should be fair scholars. Earlier than that by nearly a century a
Flemish convent under the guidance of Gertrude of Nivelles im-
ported its teachers from Britain ; and in 806, about the date of
Charlemagne's revival, rules in the diocese of Metz were given to
convents concerning the diligent use of the Bible, the learning
by heart of the Psalms, Proverbs, the Book of Job, the four Gos-
pels, and the Acts of the Apostles. In order that due attention
should be paid to the reading in common in convents (as distinct
from the services in church), it was enacted in 1190, in the Ger-
man house of Lower Priim, that the sisters should lift their veils,
that the one in authority might see that they were not asleep or
inattentive. In the Chronicles of the Benedictine Order in Ger-
many it is incidentally mentioned that the nuns of St. Peter's
at Metz studied under a learned priest the Old and New Testa-
ments, the calendar with its modes and reasons of computation,
the homilies of the Church Fathers, canon law, and the local
municipal statutes. The usual mediaeval curriculum, called the/rz-
vium and quadrivium, though not universally followed by reli-
gious women, was nevertheless the aim of a good many students
among them. St. Lioba, the friend and companion of St. Boniface
in his Christianizing mission to Germany, and the correspondent
of various learned people in England, was well grounded in all
the "arts " which at that time represented the sum of knowledge,
whether in philosophy, literature, or natural science, and in her
German foundations made these the final aim of the higher edu-
cation which she encouraged.

In the middle of the tenth century Hroswitha of Ganders-
heim wrote a series of plays in the style of Terence, in Latin, on
religious and moral subjects, chiefly the lives of martyrs of the
early church. In her preface she alludes to the demoralizing ten-

* Frauenbildung im Mittelalter. Friedrich Kosterus. Leo Woerl & Co.,Wurzburg und
Vienna. 1877.

382 MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. [June,

dency of the ancient classic plays, which, for the sake of their
style, some Christian scholars still studied, and to the difference
of opinion which existed among ecclesiastics as to the permissi-
bility of such reading. With many apologies, in the elegant
style of the literati of the time, for her " poor unwisdom " and
her " humble patchwork of a few threads and rags from the man-
tle of philosophy," she puts forth her Comedies as a corrective
or substitute to dangerous and alluring ancient plays. They are
six in number, short and spirited, in long rhymed verses (the
metre is not mentioned by Kosterus), and the fifth especially dis-
plays her acquaintance with classic models and the forms of cor-
rectly-developed plays. These pieces have been translated, and
were published in Paris by Charles Magnin in 1845 as a note-
worthy contribution to early dramatic literature.

A more remarkable and ambitious work was the " Garden of
Delights " (Hortus Deliciarmri) of Herrad von Landsperg, the ab-
bess of the Alsatian monastery of Hohenburg, or St. Ottilia, on
the Rhine. This is of the nature of an encyclopaedia, put together,
as the author says, " by a bee from many flowers of spiritual
and philosophical writings, under the guidance of God and in
honor of Christ our Lord, to encourage her sisters in the pursuit
of a honey-distilling learning." This was written in the middle
of the twelfth century, in flowing Latin prose, and contained
three hundred and forty-two pages, illustrated by miniatures from
the hand of artists among the author's community. A synopsis
of Bible history was given, and a description or prophecy, on Bi-
ble lines, of the end of the world and the last judgment. The in-
terpretation of many details of prophecy was a favorite study at
the time, and is faithfully reflected here ; the opinions of mysti-
cal writers are quoted ; the patristic literature is largely drawn
from, and moral precepts from contemporary authors are given.
One of the illustrations is very curious. Philosophy, as a wo-
man, sits enthroned in the middle of a perfect circle, Ethics, Logic,
and Metaphysics forming a threefold crown on her head ; on the
volume in her hand is written the text, " All wisdom is of God."
From her breast proceed the seven sources or fountains repre-
senting the " liberal arts," which are allegorically personified in a
larger circle outside : Grammar with a book and a rod, Rhetoric
with writing-tablets and style, Dialectics with an open-mouthed
dog's head, Music with an organ, a lyre, and a guitar, Arithmetic
with a reckoning-line, Geometry with a circle and a rule, As-
tronomy with stars and a telescope. Socrates and Plato sit at
the feet of Philosophy, but " Poets and Magicians " are portrayed

1 88 1.] MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY, 383

outside the circle, with unclean spirits in the shape of ravens
whispering into their ears. The usual theological and philoso-
phical authorities are quoted throughout this comprehensive
work, while on chronological, cosmological, geographical, astro-
nomical, and even a few agricultural subjects quotations are
made from the " Golden Casket " (Aurea Gemma). The pictures
contain hints of domestic life very valuable in themselves. For-
tunately, a correct folio reprint with twelve copperplate engrav-
ings was published by Engelhardt, of Stuttgart and Tubingen, in
1818 ; the original was destroyed by fire during the siege of
Strassburg in 1870. Herrad's work, like many others, was fur-
nished with an interlinear glossary, almost a translation into the
vulgar tongue, where the greater part of the sentences are
turned into German. The psalm and hymn books in use in
some monasteries were written in Latin and German in separate
columns or pages, and a few books of devotion had the transla-
tion of every unfamiliar word appended. German prayer-books,
portions of Scripture, and devotional poetry abounded among all
those who could read at all, and the poetry of the Minnesingers,
half of which was on religious subjects, was well known in the
convents. Women themselves tried their hand at poetry as well
as other styles of composition ; and while ladies in the world
naturally chose love-themes, or, like the poetess known as the
" Lady of Winsbecke " (though as to her actual existence there
is much doubt), domestic lessons and moral axioms addressed to
young maidens, the nuns chose religious subjects. In the begin-
ning of the twelfth century Ava, an Austrian nun, wrote a me-
trical life of the Saviour, ending with the last day of the world,
which Kurz, in a history of early German literature, notices and
criticises. Other literary nuns were Elizabeth of Schonau, in the
diocese of Treves, in 1165 ; Hildegarde of Rupertsberg, at the
convent of Bingen on the Rhine, in 1179; and Gertrude of Ro-
dalsdorf in 1292. Those who did not become authors were com-
monly transcribers and copyists, and each monastery, in its own
neighborhood, served the purpose of a publishing-house and
book-store, besides that of a library of reference. It was the rule
in most convents for the inmates to learn regularly, as people
in the world learnt their trades, some useful occupation, which
henceforth became, as it were, their profession. The Statutes of
Lower Priim, for instance, enjoined this on the nuns of that house,
and enumerated the best occupations to spin, to sew, to weave,
to embroider, to paint, and to copy out books, the latter being,
as they say, the best, because it comes nearest to the occupations

384 MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION- IN GERMANY. [June,

of the clergy. In many convents teaching was in itself a busi-
ness. Of course the romances of chivalry also spread to the fe-
male communities, and many ecclesiastical and monastic laws
were passed from time to time against the reading of them by
nuns.

The Minnesingers' poetry was almost entirely based on sub-
jects connected with women, and through them with nature, birds,
summer, flowers, bees, etc. A branch of German poetry pre-
ceding that of the Minnesingers was represented by Ottfried of
Weissenburg's harmony of the Gospels, and the Legends of Saints,
by Hermann of Fritzlar. The cultus of the Blessed Virgin gave
occasion to some of the German poets to put forth their greatest
powers. Among all the productions of the Minnesingers few
match the Great Hymn, attributed to Gottfried of Strassburg, a
burgher poet, on the Blessed Virgin. It is sometimes called the
" Divine Minnesong." Conrad of Wurzburg wrote another mar-
vellous poem.

The extravagances, not only of fancy but of deed, that passed
for common homage to the chosen " lady-love" of a minstrel are
such as to make even Quixote seem tame. In all good faith did
these wandering poets, often younger sons of poor knights who
had no portion to give them, choose a " damede sespenstes" and cele-
brate her it was etiquette never to write or pronounce her name
by songs and challenges ; and more often than not the fair one
was a married woman, as the minstrel himself was generally a
good husband and father. The challenges were purely gratui-
tous part of the business, as it were ; they usually took place at
tournaments, and if any disputes arose these were settled by regu-
lar " Courts of Love," presided over by noble ladies. Decla-
rations of poetical love were made in public by these singers,
who often spent in further picturesque homage to their " ladies "
what little money they gained by their songs. Ulrich of Lich-
tenstein was the most grotesque of these hyperbolic lovers, and is
famous for the " Progress of Venus " from Venice to Vienna, he
himself personating Venus according to every mediaeval concep-
tion of the goddess, for he rode a white horse and was dressed all
in white, with twelve servants in white on white saddles and
white horses and bearing white lances. He was veiled, and spent
his time kissing the women on his line of march and challenging
each knight whose castle he passed, all the while proclaiming that
his lady-love was the most peerless under heaven. He subsequent-
ly quarrelled with her because she would not believe that he had
had his finger cut off in her service, and he chose another queen

1 88 1.] MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY, 385

of his heart, equally unreal as far as actual relations with her were
concerned.

The attendants as distinguished from servants of ladies of
high position were in some sort the pupils of their patrons. The
wives of reigning princes and great feudal lords, and, in a lesser
degree, most German women of the nobility, had young girls of
good birth in their train, as well as pages, to whom a kind of
literary and domestic education was given. Boys of noble birth
were sometimes educated in convent-schools. In Quedlinburg,
in Saxony, the historian Thietmar von Merseburg was thus
brought up. The education was various from sewing and the
Psalter up to Latin plays and music. Sometimes convents bar-
gained to provide other necessaries besides learning, as when
Ulrich von Dahlsberg gave a monastery in Unterstorff eight yoke
of arable land (as much as eight yoke of oxen could plough in one
day) on condition of furnishing bread to his wife's household
during his long absences on distant pilgrimages, and of board-
ing his daughter Ottilia until she had learned the Psalter by
heart. Charlemagne's well-known palace school was for girls as
well as youths, and Alcuin dedicated to one of his female pupils
his commentary on St. John's Gospel, and to another his work
on the nature of the soul. A daughter of Desiderius, an early
Lombard king, wrote a Roman history and dedicated it to her
teacher, Paul Warnefried ; the daughter of William the Conqueror
kept up a literary correspondence in Latin with several bishops
and abbots of Germany and France ; a Greek princess married to
the Emperor Otto II. had her son educated by Gerbert, who
was known as the most learned man of his time; the wife of
Henry the Lion introduced the Chanson de Roland into Germany.
The ten last chapters of Vincent of Beauvais' Manual of In-
struction, written in the thirteenth century, treat of the education
of women, and refer a good deal to the domestic lessons of the
Old Testament and to the maxims of St. Jerome addressed to
his learned and cultivated female friends and disciples. With
the rise of commercial free cities or towns, where the burghers
were practically masters, came an improvement in girls' schools
for the richer middle classes. The merchants of the Hanse-
atic towns sent their daughters to convents ; Liibeck in particu-
lar patronized two Mecklenburg monasteries, Rene and Zeren-
thin, until 1502, when the burghers contributed to the founda-
tion of a teaching order in their own town. In Brussels, before
its chief prosperity, there was a school for girls, where the ver-
nacular and religious teaching, a smattering of geography and

VOL. XXXIII. 25

386 MEDIEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. [June,

history, etc., were imparted ; regular burgher schools existed
in Gravezande, Leyden, Rotterdam, Schiedam, Delft, Haarlem,
Oudenarde, and Alkmaar at various dates from 1322 to 1390.
Some of the earliest Dutch miniatures and panel-pictures repre-
sent, incidentally, little girls being taught to read, and the por-
traits of mothers were sometimes taken in this attitude. Even
lay schools existed in a few of the larger towns of Germany
and the Netherlands. Two spinsters, the daughters of John of
Geisenheim, kept one in the Grafenstrasse, in Mayence, in. 1290,
and the register of the purchase of the house for this purpose
may be found in the town archives. In Spires in 1368 the Ab-
bey of Schonau leased a house belonging to it in the Jakobsgasse
to a teaching- woman, name not given, for her lifetime, for the sum
of seventeen pieces of gold currency, for the purpose of a girls'
school.

That private schools existed here and there, and women
taught boys as well as girls, is to be inferred from the complaints
made by town-appointed masters against these inroads on their
income ; the Reformers sometimes found much fault with the
women whose schools were too conservative to welcome the
"new preaching," and in Uberlingen, where boys were sent to
the girls' school, the master appointed by the magistracy to the
Latin Grammar-School claimed compensation from the mistress
for each male scholar whom she admitted. The Beguines a so-
ciety of women not unlike Canonesses in the Netherlands taught
not only burgher girls but those of the artisan class. There
were also in most cities public writers, female as well as male,
who either taught writing or wrote letters for the unlearned.
The itinerant teachers of elementary knowledge have been already
alluded to. Even small places, like St. Goar on the Rhine, had a
girls' school. It is surprising to meet with an advocate of com*
pulsory education in the sixteenth century, but no less a person
than Luther recommended it. Nuremberg and such German
centres, however, can scarcely be supposed to have needed it
when one reads of four thousand children being entertained, on a
visit of the Emperor Frederick III. to the former city, at a gigan-
tic school feast, with games, gold coins being distributed to
them at the end of the festivities.

Charitas Pirkheimer, the German counterpart of Margaret
Roper, the sister of Willibald Pirkheimer, scholar and collector,
the friend of Erasmus and Albert Diirer, represents the highest
degree of mediaeval cultivation. She translated parts of Plu-
tarch into Latin and commented on ancient philosophers. As

;88i.] MEDIAEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. 387

abbess of St. Clara in Nuremberg at the time of the Reforma-
tion she sustained a public disputation on theology with Me-
lanchthon, and her personal influence saved her convent from
secularization for many years after her native city had accepted
Lutheran doctrines. The girls of the town were not seldom
taught in her convent, and altogether the Nuremberg standard of
education was high enough to warrant the scholar Celtes in say-
ing that " the women (of that town) understand arithmetic, writ-
ing, music, and Latin; they are gay, gentle, affable, and well-
bred." Christopher Scheurl dedicated his translation of Cicero's
Republic to her, calling her the equal of the daughters of Laelius
and of the mother of the Gracchi. About the same date the two
Welser sisters, Veronica, a nun in Augsburg, and Margaret, the
wife of Conrad Peutinger, a classical scholar, distinguished them-
selves as learned women, and the latter's daughter, Juliana, began
her career of learning at the age of four, when she was chosen to
welcome the Emperor Sigismund in Latin verses on his entrance
into Augsburg. In 1501 the island convent of Rolandswerth, on
the Rhine, possessed two clever women, one an elegant Latin
scholar, Aleydis Raiskop, and the other a miniature-painter, Ger-
trude of Biichel, to whom respectively John Butzbach, of Laa-
chen, dedicated his works on Learned Women and Renowned
Painters. Christina von der Leyen, an Augustinian nun at
Marienthal, and Barbara von Dalberg, a Benedictine of Marien-
berg at Boppard, also contributed to the reputation of the Rhine
neighborhood for solid education. At Spires the well-known
Abbot Trithemius, of Sponheim, had a Latin correspondent in the
person of Richmondis von der Horst, who also wrote short inde-
pendent treatises ; and Butzbach mentions another nun, Ursula
Cantor, who, he says, had not her equal in the sixteenth century
for theological and classical knowledge. Two universities, Frei-
burg and Tubingen, directly owed their foundation to Mathilda,
the daughter of Louis VII., Count of Pfalz, through her influence
over their founders, the son of her first marriage and her second
husband, while she also collected ninety-four pieces of vernacular
court-poetry, and encouraged the composition of new Volkslieder
(people's songs) on the old models, as well as the translations
from Latin sources by the Chancellor of Wiirtemberg, Nicholas
von Wyle. A Rhenish lady, Margaret of Staffel, after a course
of Latin literature under her domestic chaplain, composed short
Latin poems and German songs, besides historical sketches in
prose. In 1472 the brothers Albert and Louis von Eyb, the
latter a poet, the former an historian, celebrated their mother,

388 MEDIAEVAL FEMALE EDUCATION IN GERMANY. [June,

Margaret of Wolmershausen, as a most learned woman and their
best teacher. In 1508 a female historian and chronicler appears
in the person of Catherine of Ostheim, married to a citizen ol
Limburg ; the Frankfort town library possesses her manuscript
annotations and collations on some parts of the Limburg town
archives. Still more curious specimens of female education, be-
cause presumably denoting an average level of cultivation, are a
petition by a female prisoner of the fourteenth century to the
Frankfort magistracy, and several ledgers or accounts of small
tradespeople and artisans, kept by women. After printing was
invented the thirst for books was increased ; but even before the
first years of the sixteenth century it was a matter of complaint
and reproach by some that the people, " the senseless old gossips,
the pert sophists, any one and every one claims to read and to
write, yea, and will not have it that any one but themselves un-
derstand the sense of this or appreciate the beauty of that."
In the province of Utrecht John Busch notices the German
books daily read, both in public and in private, in more than a
hundred convents and Be"guines' houses, while common people
and women are mentioned along with scholars and men as pos-
sessing many German books, and this in a Flemish province.
The complaints of the clergy as to the prevalence of romances,
folk-lore, and worldly poems, displacing the reading of books
of instruction and devotion, are an index to the taste of the
time and the widespread custom of reading among the masses ;
but what is still more conclusive evidence is the description of
an itinerant bookseller, Diepold Lauber, of Hagenau, who, like all
of his trade in the early sixteenth century, set up bookstalls at
all the various fairs and markets held within a large neighbor-
hood. He says that " not only was there a sale for Latin prayer-
books and famous editions of the Bible in German, but also a
great demand for High-German poetry, the greater epics (pro-
bably the Nibelungen, which were popular from very early
times), popular tales, fables, travels, medical books and others
treating of physical phenomena, natural history, etc."

At the same time a man might be a poet and yet unable to
read and write, as was the case with one of the Minnesingers, Wol-
fram von Eschenbach, who pleaded that he was always too busy
fighting to have time to learn these arts. He dictated his poems
to his squire or any young disciple who attached himself to him
for a time a common custom among the chivalrous poets. He
had a thorough control of all the forms of versification, and was
as skilful in construction as he was rich in fancy ; and as it was

1 88 1.] MY TREASURES. 389

with him, so too with many a man and woman of lesser gifts, but
still educated and appreciative, and not uncommon types of the
culture of the middle ages in Germany.

Two or three years ago the diary and correspondence of a
German burgher woman was published in an English magazine
and reprinted in LittelVs Living Age. It dated from the four-
teenth century, and described wholly the daily life of that time ;
domestic details filled the letters, and two romances, that of a first
and a second marriage, were contained in them. Except the di-
rectness of style which characterizes all private writing up to
the seventeenth century, there was little difference between those
letters and any German home-correspondence of to-day. The
writer mentions, however, that in all the towns where she lived
she was the only woman who could write. Her letters were ad-
dressed week by week to a friend of her own age and sex, a mar-
ried woman. They are certainly, on account of their date, the
most interesting productions in connection with female life in
Germany that have been printed for a long time.

MY tREASURES.

No rubies that burn in kingly crest,
No pearls that nestle on queenly breast
Or sleep in the Eastern sea,
Can buy my treasures from me.

In many a fold

Of snowy silk they lie,
Safe hidden from the vulgar eye

A cross of gold,

Loosed from the grasp of the dead ;
A rosary whose grains in vain
Cold, nerveless fingers strove to press ;
And, dearest of all, a silken tress
Shorn from a bonny head
Mine eyes will ne'er behold again.

390 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [June,

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER XXI.

"WHEN THIEVES FALL OUT."

THAT the clouds are always heaviest before their breaking is
one way of expressing a very trite consolation on occasions of-
fered to the afflicted, but which has probably never been known
to perform its office for any single individual. For just how
heavy and black the moral clouds which hover around life's hori-
zon can become is a matter of speculation even to those who
have tasted life's sorrows to the utmost. We know that when a
man is called on to endure for years a certain amount of suffer-
ing, when the agony has been piled on day after day and nature
seems at its las.t gasp, at the right moment comes a break of some
kind. The water, having risen to the brim of the vessel, flows
over. The clouds, having heaped themselves on one another,
break of their own weight. The break is very often a doubtful
benefit. You find yourself looking for the silver lining of the
cloud, or the proverbial turn in the lane, or the dawn which it is
popularly supposed the deeper darkness foretold, and you are
mightily disappointed. As a rule it rains for two or three days
when the storm has been long fomenting, and he who is burden-
ed with pain finds that it continues an interminable time after the
summit of endurance has apparently been reached. Death often
enough steps in to crown the edifice, and leaves worldly mankind
wondering at the present application of the proverbs. He must
be a wretched one indeed who, having endured years of earthly
misery, has not found therein the material for his future blessed-
ness, has not seen with his dying eyes, peeping through the
gloom of the world's night, the encouraging rays of another and
endless morning.

Aside from all reflections on the probable turning-point of
misery stands the plain fact of Olivia's distress and sorrow. It
had seized hold of her with the violent suddenness of a tornado,
and was ploughing through her nature after the same fashion,
scattering ruin and devastation far and wide, and bringing dread
fear into the three hearts that loved .her most. But its very vio-
lence had doomed it to a short existence. To lose lover, friend,

88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 391

and good name within a few days is not often the lot of a young
lady, although there are likely instances on record. So severe a
succession of misfortunes is unnatural. Even at this moment
Providence was interfering in her behalf, and its agent was the
volatile, the unconquerable, the ubiquitous and omniscient Quip,
sometime physician of doctor-making Michigan, and present
confidant and clerk of Doctor Killany. Providence is not partial
in its employment of means and knows no distinction of persons.
A civil war and a petty conflagration may serve equally well its
purposes. Mr. Darwin, anxious as he is to make his remote an-
cestors baboons, would receive no less attention than the aristo-
crat who labors through his misty pedigree, sometimes vainly, in
the hope of finding a man at the root, and who is indignant at the
suggestion of his being highly undeveloped in intellect and too
much so in his backbone. Mr. Quip was no better than his
neighbors ; in truth, it must be said he was considerably worse ;
but his wickedness did not stand in the way of his appointment
to the office of liberating Olivia from her many woes. Mr. Quip
had no suspicion that any other than himself was connected with
the matter. He would scorn the idea that he was but the agent
of another. He had thought his plan out by himself in the lone-
liness of the night or in the mid-day silence of the office. Unless
his eyes could reveal his thoughts he was certain that he had not
revealed them to any one, even by an inadvertent soliloquy, and
he was not given to walking or talking in his sleep. What he
knew but one other man living knew. Killany's knowledge was
mostly pretence. McDonell alone held the secret. Killany had
sold his knowledge to the latter, and the merchant was beyond
buying and selling for ever.

" It was fortunate he escaped with his life/' soliloquized Mr.
Quip, half-conscious that if he had stood in Killany's shoes he
would have used surer means of quieting the old gentleman than
a lunatic asylum.

Mr. Quip was a Bohemian, like his master, but of a purer and
more highly developed type. He stopped at nothing which the
occasion or his own necessity demanded. His plans were bolder,
his views more daring, penetrative, and far-reaching, his means
more unscrupulous. He was not a success since he had chosen
to go beyond the bounds of respectability. In many things, how-
ever, and in one particular thing, he was more than a match for
Killany. He had .overreached him in the Juniper affair, and had
plunged more deeply into the secrets of the McDonell household.
The extent of Mr. Quip's knowledge in this regard would have

392 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [June,,

been alarming to some of our characters. He had used the spar-
ing confidence which his master had placed in him to get posses-
sion of a groundwork of facts, inferences, and surmises, working
upon which he had obtained the secret of McDonell's life and
had followed it out to its uttermost ramifications. He had an
eye on Juniper as the son of that woman who knew the Fuller-
tons while they were in New York. He had interviewed the
same lady. He had full knowledge of the parentage of the Ful-
lertons and of their claims on the estate of McDonell, and he fol-
lowed to the minutest particular the deep-laid plans of Killany.
How he learned it all is at present unimportant. Dr. Killany 's
cabinets were not a mystery to Mr. Quip, and he had the powers
of a sleuth-hound in smelling out and pursuing a scent that pro-
mised heavy game. On that evening which witnessed the shat-
tering of Olivia's last hope Mr. Quip was perched on the arm of
his chair, debating the question to which of the rival parties
would he be the most useful and costly. Olivia's fate hung for
a time in the balance.

" On the principle," said Mr. Quip, " that rats desert a sink-
ing ship I shall steer clear of our friends Killany and McDonelL
The truth must come out sooner or later, and I am impelled to-
assist in bringing it out sooner through a regard for my personal
safety. I have a presentiment that Killany would not hesitate to-
poison me or have me flung from the long dock, if he knew what
I know about his doings. It is not often I do tell the truth, it
must be confessed, and on moral grounds I don't receive much
credit for telling it now. Still, there is no denying of the fact
that I might conceal it if I wished, and get paid as well. But I
i might not be so safe in the long run. Yes, I shall sell my ser-
vices and my knowledge to the Fullertons."

A knock at the office-door cut short his soliloquy. Whether
the sound was familiar and he knew the person without, or from
some other inscrutable cause, Mr. Quip, instead of rushing to the
door, calmly opened his book and paid no further attention to
external incidents. Presently Mr. Juniper made his appearance
with a white face and an ominous frown. He stood at the door,
and, making an opera-glass of his hands, surveyed his friend from
top to toe in contemptuous silence, turning his head on one side
and clucking like a hen in spiteful allusion to Mr. Quip's sobri-
quet of the " Hawk." This had no effect on the interested stu-
dent, and Mr. Juniper, who evidently came with an object, was
compelled to open the conversation. Flinging a missile which
knocked the book from Quip's hands, he sat down.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 393

" Well ? " said Quip coolly, without glancing at him.

" Well," mimicked Juniper as well as his growling voice
would permit, " my wealthy friend, you are becoming more stu-
dious the more gold you have flung into your pockets."

" I am become a man of leisure," returned Mr. Quip, with an
owlish, upward turn of his eyes, " and men of leisure with any
pretensions to taste are devoted to books and to the fine arts."

" They've got an acquisition in you," growled Juniper, " these
men of leisure. I'd like to know what fine arts you pay attention
to outside of lying and cheating."

" There is music, for one. I am studying the guitar," con- .
tinued Mr. Quip, giving a pantomime of having the instrument in
his hands, and at the same time studiously avoiding his friend's
wicked glances, " and I expect to make a hit at the next sympo-
sium. I always had a great taste for music. I began at three
years old by tearing up my mamma's music. At four I had dis-
sected several mouth-organs, and there is a tradition that at five
I played the hand-organ. That is doubtful, however. Genius
may go far, but never so far as that, Juniper."

" None of your chaff," said Juniper. " You know what I
came here for, and you may as well pony up straight. Are them
dollars that I spoke of forthcoming?"

Mr. Quip put his hands to his ears in horror.

" You are not only slangy, Juniper, but you are ungram-
matical. This is abominable, more especially for you, who live
among kings and queens, and retired greatness generally, at the
asylum."

The disgusted listener stood up defiantly, with his hands in
his pockets, while Quip was speaking. When the " Hawk " had
finished there was such an ominous quiet about him that Quip's
unwilling, beady, treacherous eyes were forced to turn them-
selves upon him.

" Have you done ? " said he.

" Hardly, Juniper. Wouldn't you like to hear me play on the
guitar ? Wouldn't you wish for just five minutes to have your
senses borne on a gushing stream of music into an elysium of
sensual delights? You don't get such chances at the asylum.
There is little music there, and it is all staccato and not distin-
guished for its melody."

" Have you done? " said again the immovable youth, without
a sign of relenting.

" Well, I must say that I have almost. It is very discourag-
ing that I can find no way of rendering your call pleasant. But

394 ^ WOMAN OF CULTURE. [June,

when you must talk at a man, and can elicit nothing in return, I
would rather sit by the sea on the long wharf "

" Don't mention that, for God's sake ! " cried Juniper, putting
his trembling hands before his eyes. " I have dreamed of it often
enough since to make my hair white."

" How did you come to be gifted with so much imagination,
Juniper ? It is a superfluity, a danger, to a man so fond of gold
and whiskey as you."

" Give me my money," cried Juniper angrily " give me my
money and let me go, so that I may never see your face again."

" Will you be rid ever of seeing it ? " said Quip, with a sneer-
ing laugh. " When you part from me it will haunt you forever."

He shook his bony finger, and wagged his elfish, head, and
rolled his cruel eyes at Juniper in a way that made the supersti-
tious man tremble at the knees and turn all the colors of th<
rainbow. Juniper began to swear frightfully, and heaped the
oaths on Quip's head until the latter sprang up, caught him by
the throat, and thrust him into a chair.

" Sit there, fool," he said, " and hear what I say to you on this
matter for the last time. How much money did you get from
me for your lying testimony ? "

" Seventy-five dollars," said Juniper submissively.

" How much were you at first promised ? "

" One hundred and fifty."

" Fifty per cent, gone from the original sum," laughed the dar-
ing Quip " ten per cent, for my services, five per cent, for youi
first insolences, and the remaining thirty-five for your snivelling
threats of exposure. You paltry idiot ! you received one hundred
per cent, more than you deserved for your services. I coul<
have hired less troublesome and more useful men at five dollars
head, but that I wished, forsooth, to befriend you. How much
more do you expect to get, you grasping miser ? Seventy-five
dollars, you say. What modesty ! What disinterestedness ! I
shall give you one cent. There it is, and go."

He flung the coin at him with superb scorn, adding : " And
look that it does not poison you."

Juniper had always a superstitious fear of his elfish friend,
and his present manner and words did not tend to diminish the
feeling. He humbly picked up the cent, much to Quip's surprise,
and began to retire. At the door he stopped and looked back.
Quip was laughing as the charlatan laughs over the credulity 01
his victims, with his hands to his sides and his face purpled in the
effort to restrain his mirth. This gratuitous scorn broke the

88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 395

spell and roused all the courage that was left in Jumper's breast.
With another series of oaths he flung back the coin at the giver
and declared his immediate intention of revealing all that he
knew of the late conspiracy to Miss McDonell. Then he de-
parted.

" Which makes it all the more necessary," soliloquized Mr.
Quip, referring to Juniper's proposed treason, " that I at once
proceed to the right party. Events are thickening. The air is
full of portents and omens. If I don't coin some of them into
gold, then farewell to all my greatness. I have not got into my
proper sphere to make myself as great an ass as I did in others."

When Dr. Fullerton was returning home the next day after
office hours, Quip accosted him mysteriously in the hall.

" Will you be at home to-night," he asked, "and prepared to
receive visitors ? "

" Why, yes, I suppose so," said the puzzled doctor. " Why
do you ask ? "

" I am going to call," Quip replied, " and I want to have a
little conversation with you on family matters. There is some
money in it, and I am anxious to get a share."

" You speak in enigmas, Quip."

" I'll speak literally to-night. You will understand that I
come to talk of family matters and gold, and you will be at
home."

He slipped away into the waiting-room, leaving a mystified
gentleman on the stairs. The doctor did not think it necessary
to speak to Olivia about their visitor until he had arrived and
was seated owlishly in the drawing-room. Mr. Quip was more
bird-like than ever in his motions, and set Olivia laughing at his
queer fashion of sitting on the edge of his chair and twisting his
whole head around to look at an object. But Mr. Quip's first
deliberate and chosen words, after he had been introduced by the
doctor, rudely drove all merriment out of doors.

Said he : "I come to sell to you for a fair price, a clear know-
ledge of your antecedents, the means of getting again the pro-
perty which a slippery guardian stole frdm you, and of establish-
ing you in your proper position before the world."

Olivia trembled, and the doctor, less susceptible, only smiled.
The magnitude of Mr. Quip's design was equalled only by the
assurance with which he declared his ability to execute it, and,
though surprise was uppermost, incredulity and distrust were the
ruling feelings in the doctor's mind.

" You are going to attempt a great deal, Mr. Quip," he said

396 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [June,

quietly, yet anxious to tell the man he was mad and to drive him
from the room.

" I have had remarkable opportunities," returned the gentle-
man modestly, "and I have used them. I know," he continued,
" that you are surprised and not inclined to believe in extraor-
dinary good fortune. But what I propose is simply this : I
have the certificate of marriage of your father and mother. I
can point out to you the man who took your father's money.
I can prove that your father had this money and that your guar-
dian stole it. I have my witnesses and documents, and they are
so strong that no court can break them down. You are worth
some three hundred thousand dollars, and for putting you in pos-
session of it I ask the sum of five thousand dollars, not to be paid
until you have come into possession of your own."

This was open and decided, and the doctor found it impossi-
ble to maintain his scepticism and his composure. Olivia was
pale and quite frightened at the prospect of becoming an heir-
ess.

" I know," continued Mr. Quip, " that my proposal is some-
what astonishing and my demand perhaps a trifle large "

" No, oh ! no," cried impulsive Olivia, and the doctor said
gravely :

" If you can do all you say it is little enough for the service.
Before we accept your offer we must consult with friends ; before
we can even consent to examine your statements we must take
means to secure ourselves from imposition."

" Here is a pledge of my faith and earnestness," said Quip,
placing a paper on the table. " It is the marriage certificate. I
give it to you as an earnest of what is to come."

The orphans read it with varying emotions. To Olivia it was
the blessed shore after long tossings on the stormy ocean, and her
heart was filled with a noble gratitude to Him who had brought
her safely out of the tempest.

" The name on this certificate is Hamilton," said the doctor
suspiciously.

" It is a part of my work to prove you both Hamiltons," Mr.
Quip said, rising to go. " I must bid you good-evening and
leave you to meditate on my proposals. I may expect an an-
swer "

"In two or three days," said Harry. And Mr. Quip de-
parted.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 397

CHAPTER XXII.

THE FIRST FRUITS.

THE social atmosphere after the consummation of the long-
planned scheme of McDonell's incarceration possessed for Dr.
Killany a clearness and brightness that for many a day it had not
known. He was no longer in the maze of a conspiracy, meditat-
ing, struggling, hoping, fearing, filled with chagrin one moment,
too lifted with hope the next ; and although there was yet much
to do and more to be troubled about, still the great obstacle was
removed ; he could breathe, and wait with comparative indiffer-
ence for whatever fate was destined to follow. He was manager
of Nano's estate in conjunction with two nonentities. That posi-
tion his intriguing had assured him. It was imperative that one
who had made himself so important and necessary a factor in
late events should have an immediate reward, which would not
bear the outward character of a price and yet be quite as sub-
stantial. He held his office by virtue of his conventional relation-
ship, the world said. Nano knew as well as he that it was the sop
to Cerberus, the opiate to still dangerous importunings and out-
breaks, and both appreciated it accordingly. It occurred to her
often, and not vaguely, but impertinently clear, that he was look-
ing for higher emoluments her hand in marriage, perhaps. She
had never taken pains to let him understand the hopelessness of
his expectations. If he wanted money a fair fifty thousand was
at his disposal when she came into the property. Considering
what he knew and what he was able and unable to do, this was
heavy compensation ; but she did not intend to offer it at any
time. He might ask for it himself. She knew that to one of his
disposition this was but a drop in the bucket. That, however,
was not her affair. He might choose to be troublesome. She
was prepared for that emergency likewise, and was ready to dis-
miss at the first sign of insubordination. It never caused her a
moment of pain or alarm. She could do many brave, danger-
ously brave things, and one of them was to resist, and even at-
tack, so deadly, so ravenous, so disgusting an animal as this
scheming doctor.

The doctor himself spent many quiet hours communing on
this very subject. It was now the nearest to his heart. He had
time and was lavish of it, and he thought with leisurely care and
diligence on his next move. He had, no doubt, passed the most

398 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [June,

dangerous period of his scheme ; he was now to pass the most
delicate. If boldness and skill were needed in the first instance,
unequalled diplomacy and gentle cunning were now the requisite
qualities. He had to admit to himself and with himself he was
the most candid, least flattering man in existence that the out-
look was not cheering. She had not the slightest affection for
him. Her manner very frequently savored of dislike and dis-
gust, and she was always distant, cold, haughty, repelling.
These feelings had deepened since the crime of her life had been
consummated. It was natural that the one person who knew of
her sin should be looked at with eyes of distrust when previous
love was not in the question. He had it in his power to show to
blind admirers the crack in the perfect vase, the flaw in the long-
prized diamond, the rottenness of the sepulchre which was with-
out a miracle of art and nature. He rejoiced in it that it gave
him control over her, so haughty and daring in her fall ; and it
pained him, too, that she should know and feel her bondage, as it
lessened the chances of affection towards himself. He loved her,
indeed, as much as he ever could love at all. His heart and his
interests were inseparable. Where both went together his pas-
sion was honorable and strong. What hopes did he cherish of
ever attaining to the perpetual control of the noble estate which
lay temporarily in his hands ? He could hardly tell. The possi-
bility of failure so confused the clear-headed Bohemian that for
some days he dared not discuss the question. Its imperativeness
he never forgot, and he came down to it before very long and
reasoned about it in this wise :

She was proud, intensely and morbidly proud, and, like a cer-
tain well-known lady, proud of many things that would not have
borne dissection. She was proud of her position in the world, of
her natural and acquired perfections, and principally of her posi-
tion as leader of the cultured disciples of transcendentalism. It
was in his power to dash her at a single blow frdm the height of
these honors into an abyss of misery and shame whose only re-
deeming point would be its oblivion. Oblivion she dreaded with
the insane, shrinking fear of those who know no God, no belief,
no life to come, and who take refuge from this fear in that falsest
of refuges, their human pride. A whisper, cunning and sweet as
Satan's in the ear of Eve, and it would be known that she had
imprisoned her father ; another, and the disgraceful reasons would
spread abroad like a blaze in the thicket of a summer forest.
Supposing that proofs were asked, there arose the necessity of
liberating McDonell, of wringing or coaxing from him the con-

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 399

fession of his early crime, of finding the children whom he had
| wronged, and of showing the truth of all the outlying circum-
" stances. However, he did not need proofs. He was sure it
would never come to that. She would surrender, under fear of
such results, unconditionally. A woman who did not scruple to
wrong her own father so fearfully for the sake of wealth and
position would not find it hard to wed an accomplished gentle-
man for the same reason, when by the act she would put away
all danger for ever. What if her heart belonged to another?
There could be no serious obstacle in such an event, since interest,
according to Killany's philosophy, was infallibly stronger than
love. If from pure malice, dislike, or pettishness the lady still
refused to look to her own welfare rejected him, in fact it was
not to be supposed that he would bring his own name into in-
famy for the sake of revenge. But he had for the last desperate
condition a remedy which, if decidedly hurtful to the other party,
would be of the highest benefit to himself.

In his calm, professional way the doctor brushed aside the cob-
webs of obstruction to his pretty scheme, and set about devising
j the means which, like a well-made avenue, would lead up natural-
ly, easily, gradually to the culmination of his grand design. He
, had already decided that the event must come off at an early
date. Delays are proverbially dangerous. He was ready then
to lay the question before Nano, but he was not so sure as to the
time most acceptable to her. He set himself to work, therefore,
to prepare her for its reception. In his career he had often
played in the r61e of the serpent and the bird. The snares and
tricks to lure the innocent practised among vulgar Bohemians
were not unknown to him. The nature of the bird to be trapped
in this case forbade the employment of ordinary methods. He
became, under cover of his position as manager of the estate, her
most devoted cavalier, and endeavored so to arrange his comings
and goings that the world would put upon them its most fa-
vorable construction. He whispered in the ears of his friends
the most mysterious hints of coming good fortune, smiled am-
biguously, and shrugged his shoulders meaningly when bantered
on the subject of his growing attachment. He gossiped with the
gossips to an extent that set these estimable persons at loggerheads
with one another as to the truth of the varying tales they told
about the matter. On the whole, he managed to impress society
with the belief that his marriage with Nano was but a matter of
time and expediency. Nano, being a haughty individual who
brooked no meddling in her affairs, was never troubled with wit-

4oo A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [June,

ticisms or innuendoes on the subject. Dr. Killany felt and saw
that he was getting on famously. Nano suffered his extraordi-
nary attentions with wonderful meekness. In the rebound which
her spirits had taken she was become sprightly, cheerful, and ap-
proachable to an extreme degree. Even Killany came in for a
share of this generosity of feeling. By degrees he won her from
her usual reserve with him. The freedom of old friends seemed
to prevail between them, and his confidence and his smiles grew
broader day by day.

His scheming was as patent to Nano as if he had traced it on
paper for her amusement. Like the garrison of a beleaguered
city, she watched with interest the gradual advances of the
enemy ; the contracting of the lines ; the building of forts and
batteries ; read hopefulness, nay, certainty, of success in the be-
sieger's eyes ; felt the anticipation of triumph in his cautious
and seductive manner. She actually led him on to his doom. In
the first days of her trial she had foreseen that herself might be
the subject of Killany 's demands. His manner during these two
weeks which succeeded a never-to-be-forgotten morning had con-
firmed her suspicions and made conjecture fact. She yielded to
the stream, was gracious and kind always, and waited indifferently
for the hour when, with a relentless and determined hand, she
would demolish the fabric of his dreams as completely as he
thought of destroying hers if she refused to listen to his solicita-
tions. She was fully conscious of the power which he held, but
was also sure that it was not absolute and that enough remained
to her to limit it within proper grounds. She was resolute that
she would not be the slave of her crime, a modern lamp which, at
the rubbing of the medical Aladdin, would bring her humbly to
his knees.

Two weeks of patient working and waiting the doctor gave
himself. Then he judged the proper moment to have come, and
on one evening, at the hour which in good society is supposed
to be given only to familiar friends, he set out for McDonell
House with the intention of offering himself to the mistress as a
husband of a superfine quality. It was an unparticular evening,
distinguished by its wintry bleakness and loneliness. A lover
would have noted, perhaps, every feature of the time in which he
was to stake his present happiness on the yes or no of a woman,
that in after-years no incident of the night or day might be omit-
ted in the picture of brightness or misery. Killany was not actu-
ally so nervous as to the result. It was purely a gaming trans-
action, and any turn of the die was to be met with philosophy

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 401

cal composure. Disappointment was not going to break his
heart. Failure was with him only a possibility. He had made
provision, however, for the possibility, and he had in any event a
safe retreat. In one quarter of the city through which he passed,
famous for its dirty children and brutish men, there seemed to
exist some great but subdued excitement. Knots of idlers on the
corners, stalwart and mannish women in the doorways, discussed
in low, earnest tones on some topic, and so interested were they
that Killany's dainty, perfumed passing earned neither a look nor
a comment from them.

" A fight, is it? " he said to a heavy-browed, brutish boy.

" A fight it be, perhaps," answered the surly lad, " but it an't
begun yet as I knows of."

The doctor proceeded leisurely on his way and was soon at
McDonell House.

The conversation promised to be interesting and as artificial
as the chatting of two diplomats intent on gaining admissions
from each other and not 'quite sure of opposing methods. It
was a game of skill in which neither party was to be ultimately
beaten. Nano knew from Killany's manner that the important
hour had arrived, and rejoiced exceedingly. The doctor saw and
understood her feelings partly, knew that he no longer had a se-
cret, and was anxious to plunge into his business without delay.
The usual fencing took place, however, and the regular skirmish-
ings which always precede a great battle. He touched upon the
main point when he said :

" I never call lately without a matter of business which requires
your attention. I have one for you to-night. You will learn to
shudder at my footstep or at the sound of my voice, either is so
apt to suggest disagreeable ideas."

" Business," said she in return, " has rather an interest for me,
and, provided you do not come too often or give me too difficult
problems to solve, I shall not learn to dread footstep or voice any
more than I dread them at this moment. And I dread them
now not at all," she added, because he looked at her as if there
were a double meaning in her words.

" Well, you are very kind, Nano, and I promise you that in
this affair I shall never trouble you again, unless at your own
wish. The fact is, I wish to make you my wife. I offer you my-
self and my estate. The full value of both you understand, and
I do not think it necessary to expatiate on my devotion. Time
will show that very plainly."

The murder was out, and she had remained as indifferent as if

VOL. xxxin. 26

4O2 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [June,

he had proposed a sleigh-ride, looking straight into his face, while
he spoke, with her frank, sweet eyes.

" You are calm, very calm, doctor, over this matter. I had
heard it was the custom but everything one hears is not true."

" I might remark, too," said Killany, with inward uneasiness,
" that you are as calm as myself. I love you, but I have no wish
to gush over what should be a plain matter of business. That I
have loved you for years is clear to you, but, being poor, I did not
presume to show it. Still, if you require assurances "

" Oh ! none ; I require none. They would not sway me one
way or another. My mind has been made up on this matter since
I first discovered your intention of letting your heart run away
with your head. I did not think you could be guilty of such a
thing."

" Indeed ! " he said, not quite sure if she was laughing at him.

" I am glad that we can have an understanding at this early
date," she went on glibly. " It will make our business relations
more settled and less constrained in 'the future. I do not like
to live with a cloud over my head ready to burst upon me, yet
never bursting."

" Ah ! you are going to refuse me," he murmured, with a
quiver of pain in his voice quite touching from its very unexpect-
edness.

" You might have expected it. Yes, I refuse. Gratitude is
not love, you know ; and grateful enough as I am to you for your
services, I cannot make your reward as substantial and sweeping
as you would wish."

" You believe, then, in that folly love. And have you con-
sidered alas ! I know that you have. And yet am I not a dan-
gerous person to be permitted to stray from your side? "

" Dangerous ?" she answered smilingly. " I cannot think so.
I would as soon accuse you of a desire to bite yourself as to bite
me."

" Some animals do both when hard-pressed, Nano."

" That sounds like a threat, doctor, of which I know yo,u
would never be guilty. As you said yourself, this is a pure mat-
ter of business given to me to settle. I have settled it, and you
may accept your fate kindly or not. We shall continue to be
very good friends, and shall take up and lay aside other busi-
nesses as gracefully. If it is any consolation to you to know
that I refuse you from inclination, and not from affection for any
other, take it. It is not much, but it will save you from jealousy
until the force of this disappointment wears off."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 403

He was silent for some minutes. He could not decide upon
what course to adopt in this unexpected turn of affairs. She was
not defying him, he thought, and yet her cool, friendly manner
might hide the cunningest dissimulation. She was a puzzle to
him still, and it vexed him to think how completely he was baf-
fled. This was not the conversation he had planned, nor had his
and this a shadow of resemblance. A bitterness rushed over him
like the surge of an ocean that she should act as if dealing with a
very ordinary event, and not as if her very existence was con-
cerned.

" I' am averse to creating a scene "

" Why should you think of that? " she said sharply.

" But, to tell the truth, I expected something different, not
on the strength of my services but of my knowledge. There
is no money could pay me for that, and I hoped it was understood
that my services were given only in the hope of receiving your-
self some day as a reward. I am tempted not to let you go.
Do I not know enough to make it necessary for you to marry
me? "

" No," she answered boldly. " There is no man on earth could
force me to that. The alternatives might be disgrace and ruin, as
they are not in this instance, but I could endure both,"

" As they are not in this instance? " he repeated significantly,
as if communing with himself. She laid one delicate hand im-
pressively on his arm.

" Let us understand one another, doctor, at once and for ever.
I will never marry you. Bury your dangerous knowledge in that
fact. It is more to your interest to accept our present relations
than to attempt anything like an exposure of our recent doings.
We shall not discuss what it is in your power or mine to do, but
let it be conceded that just now we are evenly matched, and that
only very favorable circumstances may make us open enemies in
the future. Make out when you please the amount to which your
services are entitled, and it shall be paid. Then we cry, Quits.
What do you say ? Remember, I shall never marry you, what-
ever be the alternative. Be guided accordingly."

He listened with increasing despair, wonder, and admiration.
She was a little more earnest than at the beginning of the con-
versation, but still business-like and indifferent. There was de-
termination in her looks, in her tones, and a world of it in her
words, and he was forced unwillingly to believe that she spoke as
she felt. It was all over with his planning and scheming on that
line of action. He had hoped to fall into the possession of a

404 THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. [June,

beautiful wife and a fine fortune, and to take his stand for ever on
a solid and assured basis of respectability and wealth. The game
was against him. He yielded, as the gambler yields, with philo-
sophic heroism, and took up again the old and never-to-be-shaken-
off Bohemian life.

" Let it be as you say," he said quietly, and, after refusing an
invitation to dinner, toojc his leave. Out in the streets, in that
same quarter which had shown a trifling disturbance an hour be-
fore, unwonted excitement reigned. Workmen home from the
day's labors now formed the corner throngs, and the talk was
louder and quite violent.

" In a few days, lads," he heard one say boastingly, " and if
one dares to show his head we'll split it though an army tried
to save him."

He paid little attention to their language, so deeply was he
thinking of his own misery.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS.

THREE hundred and three years ago there arrived in the city
of Paris an Irish priest, the Rev. John Lee, with a band of stu-
dents, exiles from their native land for the faith of their fathers.
They were poor and shabbily dressed. They landed on the
northwest coast in a fishing-boat known as a hooker, a species of
craft well known from Arklow banks to the Claddagh quay,
Galway. They had been more than a week at sea. It was a
perilous voyage, because it was necessary to keep out of the
track of the English cruisers. They did not think of presenting
themselves as pensioners to any of the great colleges ; there was
one of unpretending appearance, built upon charitable founda-
tions, to which they applied for admission. They were received
kindly in the name of charity. It was the College of Mon-
taigu, the first that offered an asylum to the Irish priest and his
beloved levites. This took place in the autumn of 1578; Eliza-
beth was on the throne of England, Henry III. was King of
France, and Gregory XIII. was Pope.

There is no chapter in the ecclesiastical annals of Ireland or
France more interesting than the story of the impecunious priest

1 88 1.] THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. , 405

and the poor students who left the former, and the history of the
Irish colleges founded in the latter : at Douai by the Rev. Chris-
topher Cusack, a priest from the County Meath, who assisted
also in the founding of similar houses at Lille, Antwerp, Tournai,
and at St. Omer, where Daniel O'Connell was educated.

What is known to-day as the College des Irlandais is only one
hundred and eleven years old. It was built by the then prefect
of studies, the Rev. Lawrence Kelly, in the Rue de Cheval Vert,
now Rue des Irlandais, or Irish Street, in 1770. The College
de Montaigu was founded in 1314. In 1485 it was placed under
the direction of the celebrated Jean Standone, regent of the fac-
ulty of theology of Paris. He founded a community of ecclesi-
astics distinct from the college, who were chosen from amongst
the poor, the conditions for admission being poverty and good
ability. He drew up a rule so strict as to rival in many respects
the most austere Orders. Their diet was poor. Meat and wine
seem to have been unknown amongst them, but beans, or haricots,
and herrings were the principal food. The rule was, half a her-
ring to the younger boys, a whole one to the more advanced
students, for dinner. In point of sleep there was as little indul-
gence as at table. The community was divided into four parts,
and each part took its turn to rise at midnight for a week to
recite Matins ; the others, who were not on duty, rose always at
three o'clock to recite the Office of the Blessed Virgin and other
prayers.

"They thank'd their Maker for a pittance sent.
Supped on a turnip, slept upon content."

The meagre fare and austere life did not interfere with their pro-
ficiency in studies ; on the contrary, the students of Montaigu
were distinguished above all other scholars in Paris for their pro-
found learning and brilliant theses. It is recorded, among other
literary achievements, that in the year 1619 they had three de-
bates in philosophy, in which the arguments were maintained
in the Greek language. No other college then could have at-
tempted such an exhibition.

The next abode of the Irish colony was the aristocratic Col-
lege of Navarre. When or why they quitted Montaigu College
we cannot tell. But its benefactors, all French, required that
the students should be taken from Auvergne, France. It was
always in straitened circumstances, and its pecuniary difficulties
perhaps obliged the students from Ireland to seek other quar-
ters. One can well imagine what a change it must have been for

4o6 THE IRISH COLLEGE A T PARIS. [June,

the Irish to be suddenly transplanted from the dilapidated build-
ings of old Montaigu, with its herrings and haricots, to the
finest and best-appointed college in Paris, and to exchange their
old friends the charity students of Auvergne for the nobility of
France and the princes of the house of Bourbon. This college
was founded in 1304. It was the favorite school of the French
nobility and was particularly honored by the kings of France.
It was called L'ecole de la noblesse Frangaise, Fhonneur de tuniver-
site the school of the French nobility and the honor of the
university.

About the year 1605 Baron de Lescalopier, president of the
Parliament of Paris, rented a house for the Irish students in the
St. Germain quarter. To this establishment were transferred all
those who had received the order of priesthood and those ad-
vanced in their studies. The younger students remained in the
College of Navarre.

Permission had been obtained from the Holy Father to ordain
young men of exemplary lives who had attained the canonical
age, although they had not completed their studies, on condition
that they should go abroad to finish them. By their studies was
meant philosophy and theology. Their classics were learned at
any place in Ireland the Catholic schoolmaster dared show his
face. Many of Ireland's noblest priests and bishops were so edu-
cated.

Let us visit one of the small seaports from Wexford to Done-
gal. From there was the safest route to France. The young men
arrived by twos in the vicinity of the designated seaport. They
repaired to the priest of the parish at a convenient time, who bil-
leted them on some of the neighbors, by whom they were joyfully
received. A fishing-smack, or hooker, was procured ; provisions
were secretly put on board. Before setting out they were united
not far from the sea in the barn of some trusty friend, in front
of a temporary altar, at the foot of which they received from
the hands of the priest the Blessed Sacrament. The boat was
moored a short distance from the land. It had been thoroughly
overhauled and made clean as was possible to make craft of the
kind. It appeared in its holiday attire, as it were, and as it swung
with the tide at its flowing and ebbing one would think that the
little vessel was aware of the important journey it was about to
begin. The punt carried two or three persons at a time from
the shore to the hooker. This operation continued perhaps
for two or three days. All are on board and wait anxiously for
a fair wind. A signal from the vessel to the watcher on shore an-

1 88 1.] THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. 407

nounces that the crew are preparing to go to sea ; the latter has-
ten to apprise the friends of those on board. The friends come
to the water's edge, the red-brown jib flaps in the fresh breeze,
the anchor is up, the little craft moves seaward, the patched
main-sail is hoisted. Out upon the ocean the taut vessel dashes
with its wings all set, bending its bow now and then to the swell
of the ocean, or clearing a white-capped breaker as it comes roll-
ing from Labrador to expire on the rocks of Ireland, and to cast
its spray among the tears of the friends who are anxiously gazing
from the beach at the transport which is to convey their beloved
ones from home. They return murmuring prayers for a safe
voyage, and congratulate each other that the wind is fair, and
that soon their young darlings will be in generous France.

The Rev. John Lee, who had conducted his countrymen to
Paris some thirty years before, was appointed superior of the new
house in the Rue de Sevres. After his death he was succeeded
by Dr. Messingham, author of Florilegium, or Lives of Irish Saints.
To the pen of this pious and scholarly man we are indebted for a
sketch of the Baron de Lescalopier. He writes :

" He was great in authority, profound in humility, merciful to the poor,
kind to strangers in fine, he was all to all. For we poor exiles for the
cause of religion shall long remember how he transferred us to a magnifi-
cent house from the obscure place where through poverty we were obliged
to dwell, and, having increased our means and the number of our students,
brought us forth into public notice. We remember, too, what delight it af-
forded this most religious president to live with us, poor exiles for the faith,
and what pleasure he seemed to take in our conversation ; he even hum-
bled himself to that excess that he, who was wont to sit in the Supreme
Council of France amongst the nobles of the land, would not unfrequently
place himself last at the table of the Irish exiles. He would remain with
us many days together, and he often said if he survived his wife he would
remain always amongst us and found a seminary for us with a fixed yearly
income, which he long since would have done had not death anticipated
his designs. When the priests of our seminary had completed their
studies, and were about to return to their country to break the bread of
life to the famishing people, and to draw from the Sacred Scriptures the
waters of sound doctrine to refresh their parched souls, this pious and pro-
vident nobleman had them thoroughly examined by an able theologian,
and to those who were found duly qualified for the pastoral duties this
most liberal friend presented a suitable outfit and a sufficient provision for
their journey. He then presented them to Cardinal de Betz, Archbishop
of Paris. These things, although truly rare and wonderful, nevertheless
are true and have often been witnessed by me."

The baron's good intention of founding a college for the Irish
with a fixed revenue was never carried out. Death prevented

408 ' THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. [June,

an accomplishment of his design. It was a serious loss to the
establishment.

In the course of the year 1865 the administrator of the Irish
College, Monsieur Lacroix, wishing to purchase some ground
which bordered on the villa of the Irish College at Arcueil, dis-
covered that one of the proprietors was the Count Lescalopier.
Upon inquiry the gentleman informed him that he was of the
family of the good president who more than two hundred and
fifty years before had proved so kind a friend to the Irish, and
that he was happy to renew old acquaintance by presenting as a
gift to the Irish the portion of land they now desired.

After the baron's death the college struggled on, supported by
the generosity of Mme. de Lescalopier and some other friends.
In 1624 it was threatened with destruction. The bishops of Ire-
land wrote a strong letter to the Catholics of France, recom-
mending to their charity this interesting institution and its dis-
tinguished head, Dr. Messingham. This letter was written at a
time of great distress. It bears the impress of sorrow, and is a
touching appeal to their friends beyond the sea in favor of a
cherished establishment. It is dated September 4, 1624, and is
signed by David Roothe, Bishop of Ossory and vice-primate of
all Ireland ; Maurice O'Hurly, Bishop of Emly ; Thomas Deare,
Bishop of Meath ; Richard Arthur, Bishop of Limerick ; and Mau-
rice Qualy, Vicar- Apostolic of Leenane, Killaloe, who was soon
after made Archbishop of Tuam. Notwithstanding this appeal
the little community was obliged soon after to leave the house in
the Rue de Sevres. Their next abode was at the corner of Rue
St. Thomas and Rue d'Enfer, and there they remained till the
priests were transferred to the Lombards' College, when the stu-
dents removed to another building in Rue Traversine immedi-
ately behind their old quarters, the College de Navarre.

In those days the hardships of all the Irish studying in Paris
were very severe ; several of the priests could not find rooms in
the house at St. Thomas Street, and were glad to be received
again in the old College de Montaigu, with its beans and her-
rings, in order to acquire the learning necessary to fit them for
their great labor.

Louis XIII. in 1623 granted the Irish permission to receive
donations and alms to support them during their studies. In
1672 Louis XIV. renewed this permission, and added, moreover,
that of purchasing a house, which might serve as a college or
hospice, in the city of Paris. This was considered at the time a
special favor, and gave the Irish faculty a certain legal position,

1 88 1.] THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. 409

as regarded the university, by permitting them to enter into
possession of the ancient College des Lombards, which had
been founded in 1333. It was almost in ruins in 1677 when the
Irish superior applied to the king for permission to occupy it.
The request was granted. The king, Louis le Grand, was glad
of the opportunity to mark his appreciation of the services ren-
dered by his faithful Irish soldiers, who were very numerous
in his army. The building was dilapidated, a mere shell, and
it had to be rebuilt. Who was to bear the expense of this
was the next question. The king was very kind, but it was im-
possible to live in an old ruin that had been untenanted for
years.

At this time there were at Paris two Irish ecclesiastics, who
came forward most providentially in the present crisis. They
were Patrick Maguire, Abbot of Tuley, who had been chaplain to
the Queen of England, and Malachi Kelly, prior of St. Nicholas
de Chapouin and chaplain to the Queen of Poland. They placed
the means they had acquired during many years of hard labor
in rebuilding the old College of the Lombards. On application
Cardinal de Bonzy, Archbishop of Narbonne and Grand Almo-
ner of France ; John Bentivoglio, Abbot of St. Valerius ; and the
Abbe Valenti waived their respective rights and handed over to
the Irish the eleven original bourses which remained in existence
after the lapse of three hundred and fifty years. When the build-
ing was completed the following inscription was placed over the
door :

COLLEGIUM B. M. VIRGINIS,
PRO CLERICIS HIBERNICIS,
IN ACADEMIA PARISIENSI

STUDENTIBUS,
INSTAURATUM ANNO 1681,
PRO ITALICIS FUNDATUM
ANNO 1330.

The generosity of Fathers Maguire and Kelly was rewarded
by their being appointed provisors of the college for life, with
power to nominate their successors, which power, however, was to
cease with them. They also, besides rebuilding the house, be-
queathed to the community an annual income of one hundred
pounds a large sum in those days. It was in this way that the
College of the Lombards was transferred to the Irish and be-
came the first regular college which they possessed in Paris. It
was received with great gratitude, and continued for over a hun-
dred years to afford shelter and tuition to the sons of Erin.

410 THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. [June,

In 1732 a Rev. Father Farrelly, one of the provisors, pur-
chased with his own money two houses which joined the col-
lege, and presented them as a gift for the accommodation of the
priests who were residing outside. When furnished all the
rooms, sixty in number, were occupied in twenty-four hours. It
was on this occasion the Irish bade adieu to Montaigu College,
which had been the first to open its doors to them one hundred
and fifty years before, and had never been closed against them
afterwards. Hundreds of priests had been trained within its
walls for the arduous mission of Ireland.

At this time the sufferings of the Catholics of Ireland exciting
the sympathy of the king and nobility of France, Louis XV.
ordered that eighteen hundred francs should be paid yearly to
assist the priests who. had finished their course and were about
to return to their country ; he also contributed handsomely to the
college chapel.

There were many things to endear the College of the Lom-
bards to the Irish student, and chiefly the fact that many great
men and noble benefactors were interred in the vaults beneath
the chapel. Amongst them were Dr. Maguire, Archbishop of
Armagh and Primate of all Ireland ; the learned Mories, Regent of
the University of Paris, who had died in the College of Navarre,
and requested that his remains might rest amongst the Irish in
the Lombards' College ; the venerable Abbe Bailli, a man of
great learning and saintly life, who had always been a friend in
need to the institution. In his will he had bequeathed his heart
to the college, as the best testimony he could offer of his affec-
tion towards a people whom he regarded as confessors of the
faith.

The affectionate interest taken in the exiled students by the
bishops of Ireland never ceased. Bernard O'Gara, the Arch-
bishop of Tuam, wrote under date of July 3, 1735, in Latin, to Car-
dinal de Fleury, imploring him for the mercy of God to exert
himself for the benefit of the little colony, and he graphically de-
scribed the state of religion in hoc miser abile regno in this misera-
ble kingdom. May 7, 1736, he writes to the Irish priests in the
Lombards' College, addressed to the Abbe MacGeoghegan,* a
long letter on the state of religion in this deplorabilis patria de-
plorable fatherland.

In 1770 the community in the Lombards' College amounted to
one hundred and sixty, of whom one hundred were priests and
sixty were ecclesiastical students. This number being too large

* Chaplain of the Irish Brigade in France and author of the History of Ireland.

1 88 1.] THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. 411

for the limited accommodations, the Rev. Lawrence Kelly, then
prefect of studies, purchased a house and garden, Rue de Cheval
Vert, now Rue des Irlandais, and built a college, since known as
the College des Irlandais. In this college were collected all the
students, while the rest remained in the College of the Lombards.
Dr. Kelly's undertaking was a herculean task and cost him great
labor and anxiety. When he had completed the buildings his
monument he sank under his exertions and died July 14, 1777, in
the fifty-seventh year of his age. His remains rest amongst the
successors of his cultured children under the altar of the hand-
some chapel. Unselfish, self-denying was he. The comforts of
life, and even life itself, he sacrificed to build the hallowed and
historic Irish College. The two communities continued to
flourish till 1792, when they were scattered.

It was fortunate for the Irish establishments in France at the
time of the Revolution that the administratorship of the Lom-
bards' College was held by Dr. Walsh. He was superior of the
Irish College at Nantes in 1779. In 1794 the Archbishop of
Paris consulted the bishops on a fitting person to take charge of
the Irish establishments in the capital, and at their request Dr.
Walsh was transferred from Nantes to Paris and placed in the
Lombards' College, which was occupied by Irish priests. At
this time Dr. Kearney was in charge of the Irish College proper.

The fury of the Revolution had extended all over the kingdom,
and the massacres of the capital were repeated in the various
cities of France. Numbers of ecclesiastics fled to Paris for pro-
tection. There were few who would venture to receive them.
In this melancholy state, despairing of their safety, the brave
man and priest, the generous Irishman, moved to compassion,
and laughing to scorn human prudence, opened the doors of his
college and took in a number of French priests and religious
who had fled from various parts of France. Well was the bread
cast upon the waters by old Montaigu College in 1578, when the
Rev. John Lee, with his band of Irish students, knocked at her
doors and asked for shelter and tuition to uphold the religion of
their fathers in their native land. It was magnanimously return-
ed by Dr. Walsh, at the risk of his life and of that of his commu-
nity, two hundred and twenty-eight years after the arrival of
Father Lee in Montaigu College.

There was a law passed about this time ordering the sale of
all property belonging to the subjects of nations at war with
France. In consequence the Irish colleges of Toulouse, Douai,
Lille, and Ivry, and the church of St. Eutrope, Bordeaux, which

412 THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. [June,

was also Irish property, were sold. It seems providential that
the Irish colleges of Nantes, Bordeaux, and the two houses of
Paris remained undisturbed. It is hard to explain how they es-
caped. Over one of the principal doors of the Lombards' College
a few years ago one could see, printed in large letters, " Propridtt
nationale ; b vendre" National property ; for sale.

Order was restored at last ; the storm of blood had gone by ;
the vigilant superior took advantage of the first moments of the
calm to collect the scattered remains of the Irish foundations.
Part of the property had been sold. Compensation was made,
however, by France, which placed a very large sum of money in
the hands of the English commissioners. The claim of the supe-
riors of the Irish College amounted to ^"90,000. The just claim
was refused by the commissioners on the ground that the French
exercised control over the Irish foundations. But was the
money returned to France? It ought to have been, and would
have been if in honest hands ; but it never was, and is still in the
possession of England. Thus the Irish suffered from both par-
ties: from the revolutionists as British subjects, and from the
English as being under French control.

From 1792 to 1800 may be considered an interregnum as re-
gards the Irish College in Paris. When it was taken possession
of in the name of the Republic, and the students expelled, there
existed at St. Germain-en- Lay e an academy for the education of
young men, at the head of which was the estimable Abbe McDer-
mott. Later it was broken up ; the abbe was allowed to enter
into possession of the Irish College and to carry on his academy,
in which the ttite of Parisian society had their sons, among whom
were Eugene de Beauharnais (Josephine's son), Jerome Bonaparte,
and Champagny (afterwards Duke de Cadorre).

From 1801 to 1815 the disturbed state of France caused the
college many inconveniences, but towards 1816 it began to as-
sume a more regular appearance. In 1818 a royal ordinance was
passed (December 17) declaring that the seminaries of the Irish,
English, and Scotch should no longer exist. The English and
Scotch departed. Dr. Walsh defended the Irish College, appeal-
ing to the king in the council of state, and was successful. The
college was never again threatened.

How well it has flourished during the past seventy years un-
der the administration of Dr. Kearney, Dr. Ryan, Dean of Cash-
el, Dr. McGrath," of Kilkenny, Dr. McSweeney, Dr. Miley, the
Rev. James Lynch, and its present most efficient superior, the
Rev. John McNamara, Congregation of the Mission, one need

1 88 1.] THE IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS. 413

only read the names of its alumni, who have been distinguished in
almost all parts of the world. Among its modern archbishops
and bishops in Ireland were Bishops Plunkett,of Meath ; Murphy,
of Cork, many years dead ; Keane, of Cloyne, dead a few years
past ; O'Hea, of Ross ; Power, of Killaloe ; McCabe, of Ardagh ;
Moriarty, of Kerry, recently deceased; Archbishop Croke, of
Cashel ; Bishops Ryan, coadjutor of Killaloe ; Lynch, coadjutor of
Kildare and Leighlin ; Donnelly, of Clogher ; Gillooly, of Elphin,
now living. Its benefactors other than founders of bourses were
Louis XIV., King of France ; the Rev. John Lee, the Rev. Pat-
rick Maguire, the Rev. Malachi Kelly ; Baron de Lescalopier ; M.
Luttrell, military officer in France ; Mr. O'Crowley, military
officer in France ; the Right Rev. Dr. O'Maloney, Bishop of Lime-
rick ; M. Bonfield, merchant of Bordeaux ; the Most Rev. Dr.
Maguire, Archbishop of Armagh ; M. de Batru de Vaubien,
M. Lubin, M. Brown, M. Maury, the Very Rev. Lawrence Kelly,
the Very Rev. Patrick McSweeney.

At present the Irish College possesses eighty-three bourses,
well endowed by Irishmen for the benefit of their countrymen,
and a contingent interest in the ^90,000 retained by England.
Of the four colleges which remained at the beginning of this cen-
tury one only, the College des Irlandais, of Paris, is occupied by
Irish students. The college at Bordeaux and the old Lombards'
College are let to merchants. The college at Nantes was sold
by Dr. Miley.

The house built by Dr. Lawrence Kelly one hundred and
eleven years ago remains ; old Montaigu has passed away ; the
celebrated Abbey of St. Victor, where the university commenced,
and in which St. Bernard, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and many
other saints resided when they came to Paris, has been de-
molished to make room for the great wine-stores ; the Abbey of
St. Genevieve has been transformed into a government school ;
the famous Carmelite abbey has disappeared, and its site is oc-
cupied by a new market ; the ancient priory of the Dominicans,
where the royal family of France sought their confessors for over
three hundred years, and in whose church St. Thomas preached,
and which contained more royal tombs than the abbey at St.
Denis, is no longer to be found.

These abodes of learning were close to the Irish College. As
one passes along the narrow streets he finds that he is treading
in the very footsteps of Sts. Bernard, Louis, Bonaventure,
Thomas, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Francis de Sales, and
Vincent de Paul. All the religious communities which dwelt

414 REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE\ [June,

there three hundred years ago when Father Lee and his com-
panions arrived are gone ; not one remains. The Irish alone have
held their ground, and were never so prosperous.

How their foundation has succeeded I might say, Circumspice
orbem look around the world. Wherever there is a cross in air
in the eastern or western hemisphere, to the Irish missionary
more is due for its erection than to any other ; and he owes more
for the preservation of the faith in his native land, after God, to
the Irish College in Paris than to any other institution of learn-
ing in the world. The College of Montaigu gave him good
teachers but poor fare beans and herrings ; wealthy Navarre
gave him rank with the nobles of France and generous enter,
tainment. The illustrious president of the French Senate placed
the better part of his fortune at his disposal, and the French peo-
ple have always taken pains to show the Irish student that he is
not in a foreign land, but in that of France, where his race is
honored and respected.

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

MADE TO A DEVOUT SERVANT OF OUR LORD, CALLED MOTHER

JULIANA,

An anchorete of Norwich, who lived in the days of King Edward III.

THE FOURTH CHAPTER AND THE FIRST REVELATION.

Lo ! as I looked in the Face of the Crucifix held up before me,
Tearfullie gazing, soudeinlie saw I running the red blood
Down from under the garland borne for the sins of all people ;
Trickling down both hott and freshlie, livelie and plenteous,
Right * as it was in the time that the garland was pressed on his

forehead ;

So saw I both the same God and man who for me had suffered.
Trulie and mightilie I conceaved that it was Jesu,
Who without meane,f of his graciousness, witsafed to make me

this shewing.

In this my heart was uplifted, soudeinlie fulfilled of gladness
By the most blessedful Trinitie. So I understood ever,
Without ending, it shall be in Heaven to all that come there.
God is the Trinitie. He is our Maker, our Keeper, our Lover ;

* Right as just as. f Without meane directly, without medium.

1 88 1.] REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. 415

He is trulie our joye everlasting and blisse without ending,
By and in our Lord Jesu Christ, our all worshippful Saviour.
As this was shewed in the first sight, so it was shewed in all

others :

For when Jesu appeareth, there is the Trinitie shewed.
Then I said, " Benedicite Dominus ! " * This in my meaning
Said I for reverence, lifting my voice up full of emotion.
Great was my wounder and marveile that He who is so rev'rent,
Dreedful, and mightie, high above all the works of creation,
Will be so homelie f with a poor creature so far below him.
Thus I took it our Lord Jesu shewed me this comfort
First to prepare me and strengthen me fore \ the time of temp-
tation.

For me thought by his courteous sufferance, and with his keeping
Ere I should die, by fiendes and their wiles I well might be

tempted.

With this sight of the blessedful Passion, and of the Godhead,
That was shewed to my understanding, I conceaved trulie
That to me it was strength enough, and to all who be saved,
To overcome all fiendes of hell and all our enemies ghostlie.
In this he brought to my understanding our Ladie Saint Marie,
Whom I beheld in bodilie likenes, ghostelie seeming
As a faire maiden, young and meeke, of simple behaviour,
Waxen a litle above a child, and of lovesome appearance ;
Having the stature she was possessed of when she conceaved.
Also I saw of her blessedful soule the truth ancl the wisdom,
Wherin I understood the rev'rence beholding that moved her
Seeing her God, who like is her Maker, marvailing greatlie
Over God's choosing her who was onlie his pitiful creature.
Marveillous mysterie ! She who was made giving birth to her

Maker !
It was her truth and her wisdom, seeing and knowing God's

greatnes

And of her self the litlehead, || made her saie meeklie
Unto Gabriel : " Lo ! me here, God's litle hand-maiden ! "
Verilie in this sight I saw she more is in beautie,
Fullhead,!" sweetnes, and worthines than all God made beneath

her.
Saving the blessed manhood of Christ, there be nothing above her.

* Benedicite Dominus an exclamation answering to our " Lord, bless us/"
t Homelie -familiar, friendly. JFore before. Beholding befitting.

II Litlehead littleness, insignificance.

If Fullhead -fulness, excellency ; head or hood, used as in Godhead, Motherhood ^ state or
condition of anything.

416 BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. [June,

BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY.

THE Chicago Times of April 3 gives a verbatim report of a
lecture delivered in Bloomington, Illinois, by Bishop Seymour,
of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Springfield in that State.
The purpose of the lecturer is to show the difference between
Catholicity and "Romanism." As he is a representative man
among the High-Church party, and as his theory is somewhat
original, it is worth while to offer a summary of it, together
with some comments.

The lecture opens with the statement that the external organi-
zation of the church is divine, and that the external union of all
true believers in Christ under their legitimate pastors, bishops,
priests, and deacons is a bond of divine origin and sanction, just
as sacred and divine in the order of grace as the union among
the members of the natural family, parents and children, brothers
and sisters, in the order of nature. He further holds that to this
external spiritual society God confided his revelation to be pre-
served for all ages and infallibly expounded to all mankind.
"This revelation, then," says the lecturer, "is given to the
church of God ; it is put into her hands, which were created by
God for this reason among others, expressly that she might re-
ceive that revelation, that she might hold it fast, that she
might guard it, that she might instruct men as to what it means,
that she might not go wrong and lead men to their own ruin."
As to any visible authority in the church which shall be su-
preme over all bishops the lecturer says nothing, though we sur-
mise he believes a general council has such authority. Of course
he rejects the doctrine of the supremacy of the see of Peter.
Indeed, it is that see's claim to supremacy which deprives Roman
Catholics " in this land " of the note of Catholicity. His lec-
ture is given to apply the test of catholicity, or universality, to
the Roman communion. It is to be regretted, however, that he
does not more clearly define the term Catholicity. " It is univer-
sality as distinguished from locality." "It is at home in every
land." He compares it to the sunlight or the moonlight,
shining directly on all lands not on one land alone and through
it reflected on the others ; it is, like the air, everywhere diffused.
As these figures of speech seem the lecturer's chief reliance for
conveying his idea of Catholicity (for he uses them more than

1 88 1.] BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. 417

once), it is a pity that they were not better chosen. For the sun
does give its light through a medium the atmosphere and for
that reason all the more beneficially, and even shines with a re-
flected light by the moon.

Furthermore, the lecturer's own theory of Catholicity will
not let Christ shine directly on the Christian soul, but only
through the reflection or medium of bishops. When, therefore,
we ask the lecturer how is the church Catholic, or universal, and
he answers, By being at home in every land, shining like the
sun's rays and diffused like the air, we confess that we are not
satisfied with this definition. If we ask any Catholic child of the
"Roman obedience," How is the church Catholic, or universal?
he answers from his little catechism, " Because she subsists in all
ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all truth." Here we get
something definite and intelligible.

At any rate, the lecturer sets out to prove that the Roman
communion is not truly Catholic. But at the very outset he is
met with a distressing fact : he finds that she has got the exclu-
sive name and repute of Catholicity. It is lamentable that Epis-
copalians " hear all around them Romanism called Catholicity ;
hear Roman churches called Catholic churches, Roman institu-
tions called Catholic institutions." He says : " The great mass of
men play into the hands of Romanism. Our newspapers, our
ordinary people, call them Catholics. They call their churches
Catholic ; they do all they can by voice to acknowledge their
claims." " Ordinary people " justify themselves by saying that
pretty much the whole Christian Church of any living power
which claims catholicity belongs to the Roman communion ;
hence Rome might as well have the name, since she seems to have
the substance. Of course this seemingly universal power of
Rome must be accounted for. The lecturer professes to be able
to account for it by an exposition of history. By some exposi-
tion or argument it must be explained ; for the present state of
things in the Christian world is so much in favor of Rome's Ca-
tholicity that the " great mass of men " call her Catholic and
refuse to call any other church Catholic. How did this ever
come to pass, and why was it ever permitted by God or man,, i&>
the terrible How and the dreadful Why tormenting our Episco-
palian brethren. How could God ever permit it ? How could it
maintain itself among men after men began to find it out and set
against it every engine of destruction ? How is it able to flourish
so much at this day, deprived of all external support and in the.
midst of the light of the nineteenth century ? Persecuted all over

VOL. xxxiii. 27

418 BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. [June,

Europe, it yet hangs on, and even increases in life and power ;
cast into this land, too, in the midst of a chaotic mass of English,
and French, and Germans, and Spanish, and Irish, and Poles, and
Bohemians, rich, poor, ignorant, and learned, it feels as much at
home as the sunlight and the atmosphere ; and having quickly
formed its motley following into a most orderly array, well offi-
cered with numerous and able bishops and priests, supplied with
colleges and seminaries and countless schools, an efficient press
and pulpit, and having smilingly avoided every snare and rejected
every bait, and having settled its own household here in the unity
of the Spirit and the bond of peace, it turns now with eager eyes
and burning words, offering to the free American people to con-
vert them all to the true religion how is all this spectacle to be
explained, if Rome really be osly a monstrous usurpation? What
is the reason of Rome's supremacy ?

The lecturer is not the first one who has undertaken to solve
this problem. Luther blamed it on the devil, and many of
Bishop Seymour's brethren agree with Luther ; and it was once
all but an article of faith in the English Church that the pope is
Antichrist. Macaulay's theory is that Rome's triumph was a
stupendous work of human genius. Others say that it all comes
from the inherited tradition of imperial organization among the
Roman people. But Bishop Seymour's theory is in effect that
the whole miserable business is to be blamed on Divine Provi-
dence. Let us give a fair summary of his opinion.

In the first place, there was St. Peter, an apostle like the other
apostles, no more and no less, only with a sort of honorary pri-
macy, a kind of a right to preside at their meetings, with perhaps
a casting vote in case of a tie. But it so happened that Christ
the Lord had uttered words concerning this particular apostle
which, to the superficial observer (" ordinary people "), sounded
like the charter of a supreme authority. Christ had solemnly
and publicly named Peter the foundation-rock of the church, the
bearer of the keys to open and shut with divine authority, the
shepherd of sheep and lambs, the strengthener of his brethren,
even the apostles. Peter himself, of course, knew that all this was
figurative, or limited to himself alone, and he was doubtless
aware that men learned in Greek and Hebrew (like Bishop Sey-
mour) would not be deceived by it. But it might be a cause of
temptation to the common run of men, plain, ordinary people,
who are apt to think the plain meaning of Scripture the real
meaning ; but especially was it going to be a temptation to
Peter's successors, if any sad accident, such as possession and

1 88 1.] BISHOP SEYMOUR 's REASON WHY. 419

control of some powerful city, should arouse their ambition by
giving" them undue prominence in the church. And, alas ! see
what a mysterious dispensation. Peter, having chosen Antioch
for his episcopal throne, a city destined to no great career,
should have remained there. But the Holy Ghost tears Peter
away and sends him off to take possession of Rome, " the regal
city," says the bishop, " of the whole world " the very last place
he should have pitched on. Why was it not plain to Peter that
his successors having in those unfortunate words of Scripture a
semblance of supreme power, the very place he should have
shunned was that supreme metropolis to which all roads led,
where all authority centred, and where persecution was going to
have its fiercest focus of rage on the one hand and of glorious
endurance and victory on the other ? " When Christianity was
born," says the lecturer, " Rome was the regal city of the world."
What a lamentable misfortune it was that the bishops who suc-
ceeded to the apostle who was called Rock, Key-bearer, Shep-
herd, and Strengthener of all the church should be permitted,
nay, caused, by the Holy Spirit of God to get possession of that
city ! And then to obtain undivided possession of it ! For Di-
vine Providence removed the very first Christian emperor out
of the pope's way to a new regal city in the East. Then even
their perverse ambition would have led the popes to leave Rome
for the new Rome on the Bosphorus. Had that happened the
world would have been saved from Romanism, for Constantino-
ple was going to be overwhelmed first with Arianism and then
with Mohammedanism. But Peter's successors stayed at Rome.
This explains, as the lecturer tells us, how it began that

" the patriarchate of Rome occupies the position that she does to-day in
making these monstrous claims. I said awhile ago that it was because
she fell under a temptation, and a temptation that was so strong that it
would seem almost impossible that she could resist it."

The removal of the seat of empire to the East

"left the Pope without a rival. He was the head of the Christian
world, and all looked to him, because in Rome were the elements of know-
ledge, of influence, and all looked to Rome for government." " This, then,
was the temptation that presented itself to the Bishop of Rome, that he
was the bishop of the greatest city in the world. He was without a rival,
because the political pontiff had gone to the far East and was dwelling in
Constantinople."

Then followed another " temptation." Providence, having
first laid a snare for the church by those singular words of Holy

420 BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. [June,

Writ about Peter's office, and again by giving Peter's successors
possession, and undivided possession, of something like supreme
dominion, makes another mistake by permitting Rome to save
the whole church from heresy.

" Then, in the next place," says the lecturer, " during the centuries that
followed the persecutions the great heresies arose : the heresy of Arianism,
the heresy of Nestorius, the heresy of Eutychius the heresy that denied
that Christ was God, the heresy that denied the intellectual person of
Christ, the heresy that divided Christ into two persons. During these
heresies Rome successively saved the church, and all the Eastern patri-
archates fell under their influence. But during all this time, by God's
mercy, the bishops of Rome, with one or two exceptions [what exceptions ?],
remained orthodox. Now, you know what the prestige is of a man or a
woman who has stood firm for the right when under temptation and trials.
It increases in geometrical progression as the years go by. And when,
therefore, Rome in the midst of heresies saved the church and was for the
most part orthodox and sound, it gave her a wonderful prestige and she
was indeed conservative of the faith."

Now, God proves men by their works, and our Lord bids us
try each other by the same test. How very singular, then, that
the Holy Ghost should cause (for it was all "by God's mercy")
the ambitious, scheming, tempted, fated Rome to wrestle with
the most gigantic heresy the church ever met, conquer it, over-
throw it, exterminate it, and become " conservative of the faith "
of the whole world ! No wonder that men would begin to think
that our Lord really meant what he said when he made Peter's
office the chief one, and declared it the Rock against which the
gates of hell should not prevail.

The next " temptation " was that Rome became the ark of
the true religion in the Moslem deluge. That scourg*e of God
" in the East," says the lecturer,

(t was triumphant, and it crushed under its iron heel Alexandria, An-
tioch, Jerusalem. Three of the patriarchates were overthrown, leaving
Rome and Constantinople alone, and then in a later day the Mohammedan
power crushed Constantinople. Consequently the great patriarchates that
alone could contest with Rome were gone, and she stood alone, represent-
ing the historical continuity of the church from the first. Think, then, of
the advantage which this gave her in a human point of view. She stands
untrammelled by any rival influence through the ages," etc.

" Human point of view," indeed ! And is there no divine
point of view from which to study history? The Scripture
claim of Rome's power is, we maintain, manifestly just; but not
even a Protestant Episcopal bishop can deny that it gives at
a kind of a doubtful title, or a title to some sort, of supre-

i88i.] BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. 421

macy in the church. And what better way, what other way at
all, if we believe revelation to have been finished when St. John
wrote the last of the inspired books of the New Testament, could
God choose to settle all doubts about it than, as a matter of fact,
to extinguish all rivalry to that claim and to display through the
ages the most startling interposition of his power in favor of
Rome's supremacy ?

But let us follow the lecturer :

"Again, the fourth reason : During the middle ages Northern barbari-
ans swept down upon the Roman Empire and overthrew it, and out of its
ruins grew up the modern nations that now dot the map of Europe. Out
of this blending of the northern German races and the southern races
came our modern Italians, Austrians, Prussians, Germans. They have re-
placed the old nations of antiquity. During this dismal period, when might
made right, when the strong arm did its own sweet will without reference
to law or order remember that there was no police then, remember that
the career of those mediseval knights and barons was a career of lust, and
cruelty, and rapine, and ruin in those days of sad disaster and dreadful
havoc men looked around to see if there was any power to stay the bar-
barian and bid him spare the weak, bid him respect the innocent. Where
was that power ? It was only to be found in Christianity. And where was
Christianity strong enough to make itself heard and felt in such a day ?
Only in the arm of its mightiest bishop. Consequently during the middle
ages the Bishop of Rome was the succor of the defenceless, the helper of
the weak, the protector of the innocent."

Then the lecturer instances how Rome quarrelled with Philip
Augustus for his adultery and compelled him to repentance ; and
he might have instanced the many other crowned robbers and
adulterers whom she fought some without avail, and some to
their repentance, but always in the end to her own greater emi-
nence from the old Roman emperors down to Victor Emman-
uel ; not forgetting Henry VIII. of England, the founder of " our
own pure apostolic branch." He might have told us, too, of
the great modern heresies of Luther and Calvin (for he seems
to think them heresies) ; how, with a great brood of other here-
sies, they swarmed into the " English branch," and there, even
unto this their feeble old age, have ever found a comfortable
home ; whereas Rome fought them bitterly and long, and now
beholds their gradual extinction in the fogs of unbelief, in the per-
plexities of chronic doubt all to her greater glory.

Such were the stupendous events, extending over fifteen or six-
teen hundred years, on which the bishops of Rome, according to
the lecturer, built their usurpation providential causes, marking
the epochs in the life of the human race, each one lifting Rome

422 BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. [June,

ever higher among men until at last she became the very symbol
of the true religion. Is not this a most singular theory of usurpa-
tion to be advanced by one who believes in Divine Providence ?

Ingersoll has a lecture entitled " The Mistakes of Moses." In
view of his exhibit of history Bishop Seymour might call his
lecture "The Mistakes of Divine Providence."

The bishop's objection to Rome is that her religion is local,
belongs to Italy, is Judaizing in its tendency. The Catholic
Church, he says, is at home in every land ; but Rome is foreign.
Our answer is that if any external organization is going to hold
supreme spiritual sway among all men it must be foreign to every
nation foreign in the seat of its chief officer, that he may be free
of allegiance to any human power. That is why Catholics main-
tain that the Bishop of Rome should be subject of no prince and
citizen of no state, but a prince and state unto himself. The true
religion is the divine majesty manifest among men, and it is the
duty of the nations to find themselves at home in her bosom rather
than her duty to seek to fit herself into their narrower compass
and link herself to their temporal destiny. No Catholicity can be
in its formative principles a national church. National Catholi-
city is a contradiction in terms. In religious matters any man of
sense, Catholic or Protestant, is a citizen of the world ; the good
fortune of the Catholic is that he has an external organization
which is adequate to a cosmopolitan religious society ; the mis-
fortune of the Protestant is that he has no society at all, or a na-
tional that is, an uncatholic society. To say that the unit of the
church's organization is the bishop, and the aggregate all the
bishops under Peter's infallible presidency, is to catholicize the
church. To say that the unit is the bishop, and the aggregate
the nation's bishops, is to decatholicize the church, to localize it,
nationalize, Judaize it.

That the church of Christ should not be like the Jewish it
must not be national. The lecturer objects to the name Roman.
But the church is only named from Rome because Peter set up
his supreme authority there. Peter, and not Rome, makes the
Roman communion Catholic.

And, saving in this essential note of Catholicity, can the lecturer
say that our religion is not " at home " here in our republic ?
What is the one great moral truth underlying American institu-
tions ? That man is capable of self-government. Now, the innate
dignity of human nature has always been taught by the Catholic
Church. On the other hand, the ninth article of Bishop Sey-
mour's own Thirty-nine Articles says that every person born

1 88 1.] BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. 423

into this world deserves God's wrath and damnation, and that
this infection of nature remains even in those that are regenerate.
Many orthodox Episcopalians hold to the total depravity of hu-
man nature and its incapacity to do any good act. Such a doc-
trine is plainly against the power of human self-government. No
man can hold such a doctrine and be a Roman Catholic. No man
can believe in total human depravity and be a consistent believer
in American institutions. Which doctrine, then, is most at home
under a government built on human dignity ? Can he say that
we do not love this nation and the free ways of this people?
that we are not sincerely interested in its public welfare in time
of peace, or are not willing to risk our lives for it in time of war?
Pius IX. certainly felt himself " at home " here, for he said that in
no part of the w r orld was he so much Pope as in the United States.
John Carroll, the first American " Roman " bishop, was the friend
and adviser of the founders of this republic, and felt quite at
home here. Bishop Seabury, the first bishop of the lecturer's
American church, was a rank Tory during the Revolutionary
war, and wrote and worked against the patriots, and, no doubt,
was far from feeling " at home " here.

The lecturer is fond of saying that the Roman .Church is an
intruder in America. Now, if this accusation has any force at
all it must be a practical one ; it must mean that all the clergy
and people calling themselves Catholic in his diocese of Spring-
field should pay him obedience as their bishop. The very state-
ment of the case reveals its absurdity. Why will not Bishop
Seymour respect the consciences of his poor erring subjects?
The unfortunate Illinois Catholics are sincerely convinced that
he is no bishop at all. And then the " Roman " clergy fancy that
they have a prior claim. The " Roman patriarchate " had mis-
sionaries all through that region two hundred years ago, and
never have lost their grip either on soil or people. Its bishops
in Louisiana and California have priority of possession. And
how shall Catholics of the lecturer's type " national Catholics "
settle this matter? By vote of bishops ? The Romans are in the
majority. By vote of people ? The Romans are in an over-
whelming majority. And what shall be said of the bishop of the
Reformed Episcopal Church in Illinois? He disputes the lec-
turer's claim ; who shall decide ? And what shall be said on the
score of doctrine ? In this very lecture the bishop utters various
heresies, according to the belief of Illinois Catholics. If we put
aside imagining and theorizing on the subject of jurisdiction, and
look at things just as they are, it comes to this : if the Catholic

424 BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. [June,

clergy and people of Illinois are intruders what ought they to
do? Submit to Bishops McLaren and Seymour; enter a com-
munion which is not agreed on its own name or character, rent
into a score of factions, and always the boasted home of every
kind of religious opinion. Well, it must be said of our Presby-
terian and Methodist and Baptist brethren that, however erro-
neous their doctrines may be, they would neither ask nor permit
any man, layman, bishop, or pope, to join their communions, unless
he had some substantial agreement with them on essential points
of belief. With the average High-Churchman jurisdiction, titles,
orders, succession these are the essential things. Bible, reason,
tradition, Trinity, Incarnation, heaven, hell in such matters let
each man decide for himself. We do not say that the lecturer
means it, but in effect the theory of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, as seen in the actual state of things, is this : You may
deny reason, revelation, tradition, God, conscience, eternity, and
I shall commune with you, as 'I do with many others of such
opinions ; but, sir, you shall not deny that I am a bishop.

The fundamental error of Bishop Seymour is deeper than any
mistaken historical theory. His great error is this : he does not
realize that a man cannot save his soul simply by union with an
external society. The human soul is saved by what it knows of
divine truth and what it lives of divine life. The good of a
church is to anchor the uneasy human intellect to divine truth
and to lead the wayward human heart to a participation in the
divine sanctity ; in plain words, to bring a man out of the state
of ignorance and keep him out of it, and to get him and keep
him out of the state of mortal sin this is the business of the true
religion. One of the special functions of an external religious
authority is that it shall be a divine criterion of the possession of
truth and innocence. The working of the Holy Spirit in the
interior and exterior life of man must appear on the face of any
visible society claiming to be divine. Their action, though dis-
tinguishable, is inseparable.

The primary, the vital question is not what church has true
bishops, but what is the good of bishops anyway? The Catholic
Church answers that the episcopal order, in its head and mem-
bers, has been given by the Spirit of God a public and ever-en-
during life, in order to secure by public teaching and external
ministry an outward test of inward truth and innocence a test
rendered necessary by the external character of man's life. Un-
less, therefore, any external religious body claiming a divine ori-
gin can claim and prove the inerrancy of its teaching and the

1 88 1.] BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. 425

sanctity of its ordinances, it cannot so much as enter the field of
controversy.

Now, in this view of the case the difficulty with the bishop's
church is, first of all, a practical difficulty. In its actual working
it cannot and does not teach with divine authority. It does not
even claim to be able to do so. It has publicly and solemnly in
its Thirty -nine Articles disclaimed infallibility. It admits to mem-
bership and invests with high honors men like Dean Stanley,
who are professed unbelievers. Furthermore, its external disci-
pline of a moral life is far lighter than that of the evangelical
societies, who assume no divine external order at all. The lec-
turer said that God gave his revelation into the hands of the
church. But, practically speaking, what, according to the lec-
turer, is the real body of bishops to whose hands God committed
divine truth with a promise that they " might not go wrong and
lead men to their ruin " ? Is it the Anglican and Protestant
Episcopal? No ; for they frankly admit that they may go wrong.
Is it the Greeks? No. Is it the Romans? Least of all. Is it
all of them together? No; for they are not all together, have
not been for many hundred years. Then, as a practical matter
of fact, God has dropped revelation into hands too weak to hold
it, and it has fallen from between them among swine. The real
church of the lecturer is a failure ; after all, that is clear ; the
bishop may live, if he pleases, upon his ideal church, but the
honest Illinois farmer craves something more substantial. He
extends his arms to them in vain. Practically, again, what right
has the bishop, as a bishop, in his representative capacity, to ad-
vance a theory of a divine episcopal society ? The claim of a
society is the joint claim of all its members. If there is dissen-
sion the hearer has a right to know it beforehand, and is likely
to say : Gentlemen, before you present the credentials of your
association please agree among yourselves as to what your asso-
ciation really is. Not the least misfortune of the lecturer is that
his church has no accepted notion of its own character. His
own extreme High-Church opinion is hopelessly in the minority,
and by many of his brethren is fairly detested. Unto this day
kings and queens, parliaments and courts and prime ministers,
convocations and synods and conventions, have never been able
to make men understand whether Bishop Seymour's church be
really Protestant or really Catholic, content with a purely spiri-
tual and invisible church and having the external merely for its
utility and convenience, or insisting on the external order as
necessary and divine. The bishop, indeed, is for the latter opin-

426 BISHOP SEYMOUR'S REASON WHY. [June,

ion, but the vast mass of the rank and file of clergy and laity are
for the former ; and all sections admit or retain in membership,
yes, and in high places, men who doubt church, and creed, and
Scripture, and even future life.

While the bishop blandly, and we believe honestly, invites en-
trance to his fold as the one true abode of peace and love, a per-
fect Bedlam of controversy on every point, from the dignity of
reason to the swing of a censer, roars and rages around him.

It really seems to us that if we had to argue for the divinity
of a church which hundreds of years ago had quite slipped down
from the high throne of all ecclesiastical pre-eminence, and had
been ever since mingled in familiar companionship with the war-
ring throng of human sects, we should hardly dare to claim actual
universality as one of its notes. The truth is that the difficulties
of the bishop's own branch he seeks to saddle on the whole
Christian religion.

As to the lecturer's objection to the name " Catholic" being
given us, it is a naive admission of a popular suffrage. If the
plebiscite of the human race has any authority, then " Rome " is
the Catholic Church. " Say there is no church at all, if you will,"
says Cardinal Newman, " and at least I shall understand you;
but do not meddle with a fact attested by mankind." If " ordi-
nary people " cannot tell what is the true Catholic, or universal,
Church, what is the good of the note of Catholicity ?

The truth is that the Roman Church is the only one that ex-
cites any genuine emotion in the bosoms of unbelievers. And
this emotion, whether of amazement or dread, or hatred or ad-
miration, is aroused not simply by numbers however vast, or ex-
tent of sway however world-wide, or by the fact that an old man
shut up in Rome rules all this vastness and yet seems to rule not
at all ; nor is the feeling of wonder born of the spectacle of the
peculiar life of so many men and women containing themselves
in chastity, though license riot in high places and low ; nor is the
feeling born of the spectacle of an organized benevolence ade-
quate to the relief of every human misery ; but men wonder at
the Church of Rome because her members, who are living mem-
bers, in truth and unity, in liberty and obedience, in chastity and
in charity, are really set apart from the world. Their lives are
more than natural. They are men and women really born again
in a spiritual re-birth. They form a real, existing, present spiri-
tual society. They are evidently informed with an influence
which is above the world. That is why men willingly call us
Catholics.

1 88 1.] SPRING. 427

The bishop's lecture proves that an honest man who is a true
student of history makes a poor advocate of a bad cause. As a
student of history he tells us of transformations and revolutions,
heresies and schisms, barbarians and " dismal periods," whirl-
pools and earthquakes, tempests and destruction, and Rome al-
ways and through it all the only conservator of the faith, Rome
the only representative of the divine continuity in the external
manifestation of God through the ages, Rome the only succor
of the defenceless and reprover of the guilty. So much he tells us
as a witness of history. After that he may say what he pleases ;
any man who believes in God's overruling providence will find in
Bishop Seymour's facts a divine commentary which decides the
real meaning of the Petrine texts of the New Testament.

SPRING.

GENTLE Spring has come, and now
Blossoms fringe each spreading bough.
'Tis the time of joy and singing ;
Hope in every heart is springing,
Hope to all fresh promise bringing
Spring and Hope are come.

Welcome to each heart, fair Spring,
Is thy early blossoming :
Infancy with babbling glee,
Youth with fervent ecstasy,
Manhood calm, rejoice to see
Spring and flowers come.

Visions of the future bright

Fill the fancy with delight ;

Yet perchance such visions teeming

Are but idle, empty dreaming ;

All unreal, naught but seeming,

Though with Spring they come.

Soon will Spring's bright hour of promise
Fade away and vanish from us ;
Ah ! not all its blossoms, surely,
Will survive the change securely,

428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June,

And expand to meet maturely.
Spring will soon be gone.

Yet when Spring and Hope are gone
Faith and duty still hold on,
Humbly trusting, firm, confiding,
Looking for those joys abiding
When, all fear of change subsiding,
Heaven's Spring shall come.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

UNE ANNEE DE MEDITATIONS. Madame Augustus Craven. Paris : Didier,
1881 ; New York : F. W. Christern, 37 W. Twenty-third Street.

Madame Craven wrote these pious meditations for her own use. The
circumstance that a perusal of them in manuscript made a great and pleasing
impression on some Protestant friends, and the advice of persons of weight
whom she consulted, induced her to publish them. They begin with Christ-
mas and come back again to December, following in great measure the
events of our Lord's life and the mysteries commemorated by the church
at different seasons. They are delightful spiritual reading, in Madame Cra-
ven's own charming style and manner, and will also suggest thoughts for
those who wish to meditate for themselves, yet need a good deal of help
from a book. The thoughts are not commonplace or dull, neither are they
repetitions from other books. They sparkle brightly, they flow in a pure,
fresh current from the mind and heart of the author one who is familiar to
us through her former exquisite productions, and who will be a welcome
companion to many through this book of meditations in their most sacred
hours of retirement and devotion. C. Kegan Paul & Co., of London, have
published an English translation.

INSTITUTIONES THEOLOGIC^E AD USUM SEMINARIORUM. Editio xiii.
Juxta Cone. Vaticanum, sive recentiores Constitutiones Apostolicas, nec-
non animadversiones a nonnullis S. C. Indicis consultoribus proposi-
tas, accurate recognita. Auctore A. Bo.nal, S.S.S., Presbytero. Tolo-
sae : Douladoure, Via Saint-Rome, 39. 1879. 6 vols. Paris : Berche
et Tralin, Rue de Rennes, 69. Prix fort, 18 fr. ; net, 13 fr.

This latest edition of Bonal's Theology has been already two years out,
but we have seen it only very recently, having heretofore only had access
to the eleventh edition, the one which has been on sale in New York. Not
having as yet had time to examine the improvements introduced into this
latest edition, we borrow from M. 1'Abbe Sabathier, canon and vicar-general
of Rodez (critical notice in the Univers of June 17, 1879), an account of the
same. The ameliorations are numerous, consisting chiefly in additions to
the part which treats of moral theology. The new censures decreed since
1869 are inserted, with other decisions, in all more than two hundred in

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 429

number, the greater part being of recent date, and there is also a discussion
of the authority of the Syllabus and of certain questions connected with
Probabilism. M. Bonal's Theology contains both the dogmatic and moral.
The dogmatic part, which is included in the first four volumes, is the one in
which we have taken the most interest, and of which alone we can profess
to speak from personal knowledge and examination. The special value of
the Theology consists, in our opinion, in its adaptation to the present need
of a dogmatic text-book in seminaries a need which has arisen since the
Council of the Vatican rendered Perrone, and the other older books for-
merly in general use, in some measure obsolete. We cannot complain of a
paucity of excellent treatises on the entire dogma or particular topics,
published within a recent period. The names of Kleutgen, Franzelin,
Gatti, Schrader, Mazzella, De Augustinis, Schouppe, Katschthaler, Jung-
mann, Hurter, Heinrich, Scheeben, and others, are all more or less renowned
in this branch of sacred science. Some of these authors have prepared
text-books which are expressly fitted for the use of ecclesiastical students,
and which are held in high estimation. M. Bonal is to be ranked among
these, and, we think, has at least succeeded in producing a work which am-
ply suffices for its purpose.

The great success of the work is a guarantee of its excellence. It has
been adopted by the majority of the seminaries of France, and by a number
of others in Europe and America. The testimonies in its favor from the
highest authorities are numerous. It was carefully examined at Rome by
consultors of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, and several of the
most important treatises by the Master of the Sacred Palace, the learned
theologian and celebrated author, Father Gatti. Their testimonies in its
favor, and similar ones by several bishops and theologians of France, are
very strong. There can be no question, therefore, of its strict Roman or-
thodoxy. The late illustrious Dom Gueranger wrote in 1874 : " I recognize
in the Theology of M. Bonal, in its present form, a very great superiority
over all the other manuals or compendiums of theology actually in use in
seminaries." The Bishop of Rodez writes : " This work, which the ablest
men, and, I may add, those who are most difficult to please, have examined
with the greatest care, is at this present moment the most complete manual
of theology, and the one most suited to the actual needs, which can be put
into the hands of pupils and professors. It is in harmony with the most
recent decisions of the Council of the Vatican and the Roman congrega-
tions, and combines throughout orthodoxy of doctrine with unquestion-
able learning. I cannot but desire to see a teaching so correct, and ani-
mated in all respects with the genuine spirit of the Roman Church, adopted
more and more extensively in the seminaries."

In treating of those numerous questions of importance which are not
categorically determined by the church, M. Bonal is quite free and indepen-
dent in his spirit, and not devoted to an exclusive advocacy of the opinions
of any one master or school. Some very excellent authors are, in our view,
too closely fettered by the shackles of system, and do not think and argue
with sufficient mental freedom. M. Bonal has studied St. Thomas, and the
greater part of his doctrine is derived from him. He is a moderate adherent
of the Dominican school of expositors. He writes, however, with a judicial
calmness and impartiality, and devotes most of his time to a development of

430 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June,

the deep, interior ideas and principles of the Catholic faith and doctrine from
the Scriptures, the Fathers, and reason. As a text-book his work has many
advantages. The size of the volumes is convenient. The treatises are not
too long or the texts cited too numerous. The treatment is compendious
and brief, as it should be, yet combining in a remarkable way comprehen-
siveness with clearness, and furnishing the teacher with ample basis for
fuller exposition. The distinction between doctrines which are of faith,
those which are theological conclusions determined by the church, those
which are certain and those which are probable, is carefully marked.

The same qualities which make this Theology such a serviceable text-
book make it also a most useful companion for the priest who is in the ac-
tive duties of his sacred calling and lacks the time or opportunity of study-
ing more extensive works. Since it embraces both parts of theology, the
dogmatic and the moral, it is in this respect doubly useful. It is, however,
much more than a mere elementary compendium. The author has deeply
studied St. Thomas and has caught something of his spirit and style. We
can adopt with full personal assent the words of M. FAbbe Sabathier :
" Ce manuel de theologie ne ressemble a aucun autre. La doctrine la plus
forte, la plus substantielle coule a pleins bords dans ces 4,000 pages. St.
Thomas s'y retrouve partout avec ses plus illustres commentateurs. Ce
n'est pas une collection plus ou moins aride de textes : c'est la doctrine elle-
meme, dans ses principes et ses conclusions speculatives et pratiques, qui se
deroule sans interruption, qui edifie le cceurautant qu'elle illumine 1'esprit."

PROSPECTUS OF THE DESCRIPTIVE AND PICTORIAL ATLAS OF THE CES-
NOLA COLLECTION. Prepared under the direction and supervision of
General L. P. di Cesnola, LL.D., Member of the Royal Academy of
Science, Turin ; Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Literature,
London ; Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
etc. Boston : J. R. Osgood & Co. (211 Tremont Street).

This Prospectus is a sample of the magnificent and costly work which
it announces. It is printed in the best style of typographic art, on super-
fine paper fourteen by seventeen inches in size, and contains a Historical
Notice of the collection with six pages of illustrations, and the description
of the proposed Descriptive and Pictorial Atlas, its terms of subscription,
etc. The atlas will be commenced as soon as the subscriptions received
give adequate security to the publishers, and is intended to comprise three
volumes of the same large size with the prospectus, each volume contain-
ing one hundred and fifty plates of illustrations, with a page of description
accompanying each plate. One-third of the illustrations will be colored
chromo-lithographs, and the remainder heliotypes from negatives taken
directly from the objects. Monthly numbers will be issued during fifteen
months, the price of each number being $10, and of the whole $150. The
edition is to be limited to five hundred copies, obtainable only by subscrip-
tion, and after the complete issue of the edition the plates will be destroy-
ed. Subscriptions are received by Mr. Osgood in Boston, and by General
di Cesnola in New York.

The majority of persons capable of appreciating and enjoying such a
splendid work of art as this atlas promises to be are of course precluded,
by its great costliness, from all hope of ever possessing a copy. We ven-
ture to call the attention of those who have the direction of universities

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 431

where great libraries are collected, and of other great public libraries, to
the importance of securing copies for the benefit of students and others
who resort to their treasures of learning and art. We trust that our
great Catholic colleges will not suffer themselves to be left out in the
cold on this occasion. One hundred and fifty dollars is not such a vast
sum that a prosperous college need shrink from expending it for so valu-
able a work, which in a short time will be beyond the reach of all who
have not seized on the present opportunity of subscribing for it.

NICOLAI LANCICII, SJ. Opusculum spiritale. De piis erga Deum et
ccelites affectibus insinuates in quaternis punctis meditationum pro
singulis diebus totius anni. Novam editionem curavit et textum re-
cognovit Carolus Moser, presbyter curatus in Pill. Cum approbatione
reverendissimi et celsissimi Episcopi Bruxinensis, Joannis de Leiss.
CEniponte : Typis et sumptibus Feliciani Rauch.

This is a new and revised edition of the old and well-known Meditations
of Father Lancicius. It is designed especially as a book of meditations for
priests. It is peculiarly fitted for this end, because Father Lancicius, in-
stead of instituting a new order of subjects for himself, has been content to
follow the order laid down by the church in the Breviary and Missal. In
using these meditations priests will find the subjects that are proposed for
daily consideration by the church in her offices enlarged on and developed
by one who is a master in the spiritual life.

According to a pious custom, Father Lancicius also devotes a medita-
tion every Saturday to the Blessed Virgin.

GRADUALE DE TEMPORE ET DE SANCTIS, etc. Curante Sacr. Rituum Cori-
gregatione. Editio stereotypa. F. Pustet, Ratisbon, New York, and
Cincinnati. 1881.

A new and very elegant edition of the Gradual published by Mr. Pus-
tet in 1871. Several important improvements have been made : i. The
change of clef in the course of the same piece has been avoided. 2. The
final and dominant are indicated by the syllables ut, re, mi, etc., as is also the
verbal accent by the form of the notes. 3. In the Commune Sanctorum the
several proper parts of the Mass are given in full. 4. The Alleluias for
Paschal time are inserted in their place. 5. The new feast of SS. Cyril and
Methodius is found on the appointed day. 6. A fly-sheet gives the Gloria
Patri at the Introits for all the tones, and the Alleluias at the Introit,
Gradual, Offertory, and Communion of Paschal time. And the index is re-
vised with especial care. The all-leather binding is a serviceable improve-
ment.

We are very glad to see that some person having knowledge as well as
authority has struck out the Si\y in the last phrase of the Alleluia for the
first Sunday in Advent, and from the same phrase wherever it occurs on
other days.

THE STORY OF ST. FRIDESWIDE, VIRGIN AND PATRONESS OF OXFORD. By
Francis Goldie, SJ. London : Burns & Oates. 1881.

A delightful little memoir of one of England's saints, whose memory still
survives and is cherished even at Oxford after a thousand years. There is
also good evidence that her memory was feared as we'll as loved, since for

432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 1 88 1.

five hundred years after her death no English king dared set foot in Oxford,
for fear he would be struck blind, as was the Saxon noble Algar, who came
thither with intent to ravish the holy nun. We join with the pious bio-
grapher in his concluding prayer : " May her memory once more become
glorious in the city which once gloried in her name, and may young men
and maidens try to emulate, in days of self-indulgence, St. Frideswide's love
of God and her fear of sin and stain ! "

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. From the French by Mrs. Cashel Hoey.
London : Burns & Gates. 1880.

Mrs. Cashel Hoey has written some readable novels, but she has shown
herself to be at fault in her choice of the translation she offers to the pub-
lic under the title of What Might Have Been. Like the majority of French
stories, at least such as come to us here, it hovers on the verge of what
ought not to be. We have the usual melodramatic plot : two ill-matched
couples, an unfaithful wife, ditto husband, the fashionable libertine with
charming manners, etc. The hero and heroine are supposed to be highly
moral personages, and it is somewhat difficult to say just where the great
harm lies ; nevertheless it is there, and the book leaves a bad taste in the
mouth, so to speak.

When two people have unhappily made a mistake in marriage there
is only one thing to be done viz., make the best of it and bear the brunt
of the consequences. It is absurd, if not sinful, to waste sympathy on the
woes of such unfortunates in their virtuous (?) sighings for what might
have been.

Catholic writers cannot be too particular in their choice of subject, nor
Catholic publishers exercise too rigid a censorship on what they present to
the public. They should be the salt of the earth.

The book is neatly printed and bound, and the translation worthy a
nobler theme.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE OPERATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES LIFE-
SAVING SERVICE for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1880. Washington :
Government Printing-Office. 1880.

Government documents are not usually interesting to any but those
who have a special professional interest in them, but Mr. Kimball's annual
report of his benevolent bureau is an exception. Particularly will the
reader be taken by the narratives of hair-breadth escapes, on all the navi-
gable waters of the country where life-saving stations are found, that are
given in the nearly one hundred pages devoted to the exploits of the va-
rious life-saving crews during a period of twelve months.

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Statement by Foreign Missions and Livingstonia Committees
relative to Reports on the Blantyre Mission of the Established Church of Scotland. 1880.

MARRIAGE IN THE PRE-CHRISTIAN AND CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONS. A tract by the Rev. R.
Belaney, M.A. Cam. (No. i), and an Address by Mgr. Mermillod on the occasion of the
marriage of Viscount de Seze to Mile. Berthe de la Graviere. London : Burns & Gates.
1881.

THE COMPANY OF THE HOLY WOMEN, COMPANIONS OF JESUS. A drama, with chorus and
music. By the Rev. Henry Formby. The Catholic Publication Society Co.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIII. JULY, 1881. No. 196.

DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES.*

AN article on " The Scientific Relations of Modern Mira-
cles," by Dr. William A. Hammond, has lately appeared in the
International Review. It is for the most part an attempt to dis-
prove the miraculous virtue of the water of Lourdes, but it has
a general and much wider aim namely, to convince those who
may read it that all phenomena, or at least all modern ones,,
known as miraculous, are to be attributed to the effect of ima-
gination, or what the author calls " expectant attention," joined
in some cases with special physical conditions tending to pro-
duce visions or ecstatic states not in any way supernatural or
beyond explanation by medical men.

There could hardly be a better instance of what in a recent
number of this magazine we have called " scientific dogmatism "
than this ill-considered and, as it wou!4 seem, hastily-written arti-
cle. As a prominent specimen of this spirit, so foreign to the
truly scientific man, we select one paragraph. " When the time
comes," says Dr. Hammond, " if ever it should, in which our
knowledge of natural law will be complete, the supernatural will,
have ceased to exist. Experience teaches us the absolute truth
of this view. What were considered miraculous phenomena five
hundred years ago are to-day known to be within the operation
of natural law ; and things which many among us now conceive
to be supernatural will, with the advance of science, be no more
regarded as the special and exceptional acts of a superior being

* International Review, March, 1881.

434 DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. [July,

than are eclipses, comets, shooting-stars, epidemics, etc., which,
not very many years ago, were looked upon as miraculous warn-
ings or punishments. The belief in miracles is only another
mode of expressing ignorance ; and man instinctively takes refuge
in the supernatural till his knowledge of the natural is sufficient
to explain the events which are passing around him."

This extraordinary passage is, we say, a remarkable instance
of " science falsely so called." If Dr. Hammond stood, or even
claimed to stand, as the church does, on an elevation illumined by
another light in addition to that of physical observation and na-
tural reason, if he claimed to be a prophet and to know all that
natural science has to reveal in the future, then his words would
.be bold, but that would be all. As he does not, however, make
any such claim, they must be taken as an attempt at logical rea-
soning ; and as such they are certainly amusing. The argument
is as follows : Many events formerly supposed to belong to the
supernatural order are now known to be the result of natural
laws ; but all so-called miracles are supposed to belong to the
supernatural order, therefore all so-called miracles will hereafter
be known to be the result of natural laws.

Just before this ludicrous slip Dr. Hammond somewhat im-
prudently remarks that theology and logic have very little in
common ; we venture to think, however, that if he had studied
the works of the great theologians, which are probably the best
specimens of reasoning that the world has seen, his own logic
would have been somewhat improved.

The real conclusion from his premises, which are admitted by
all intelligent persons, would have been, so far as any conclusion
could be drawn from them, that we ought not to hastily ascribe
every strange phenomenon to a supernatural interference, but to
take warning by past experience and consider whether some as
yet unknown natural law might not have produced it. That is
to say, we ought to use the caution which the church is always
careful to use, and of which most evident examples are to be
found in the very book which Dr. Hammond takes as his text,
and must therefore be supposed to have read, giving an account
of the apparition and miracles of Lourdes, but which it is possi-
ble he may have perused rather carelessly, as he invariably drops
one " r " from the name of M. Lasserre, its author. That, however,
may be the way it is spelled in his edition. Yes, we say, experi-
ence does teach us this : that we should be, like the church, care-
ful and slow in resorting to a miraculous explanation of extraor-
dinary and seemingly supernatural phenomena. But it is equal-

1 88 1.] DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. 435

ly plain that there are cases in which, when we are sure that we
have the facts, nothing but a supernatural interference is admis-
sible as an explanation. For instance, let it be established that a
man is really dead, and that he afterward returns to life, it is
hardly probable that Dr. Hammond or any of his school will
claim that there is a natural law by which the dead can be re-
suscitated, and that we only need to wait for its complete de-
velopment in order to prolong our life indefinitely. It is plain,
therefore, not only that Dr. Hammond's reasoning is false, and that
we are far from being absolutely certain that even a single pheno-
menon now physically unaccountable will ultimately be referred to
natural law simply because some have already been so referred ;
but also that there are some such phenomena not merely sup-
posable but historical, and lying at the basis of the Christian re-
ligion, which we are sure can never admit of a natural explana-
tion, and which must be denied as matters of fact by any one
who holds the conclusion which he pretends to deduce.

We need not, however, spend more time on this point, though
it is an important one. We will pass to another, not introduced
so prominently in the article, but still deserving of special notice.
A few words may be said on it without reducing too much the
space we must devote to the main question.

In speaking of it we will begin, as before, with Dr. Ham-
mond's own words. " Undoubtedly," he says, " a great many
persons have recovered, some instantly, after using the water of
Lourdes. It is equally a fact that many more have received no
benefit whatever, and there are still more in which the improve-
ment has been but temporary. These two latter classes are not
regarded by the faithful, or even by. themselves " (the patients are
probably meant by this last word), " as proper tests of the cura-
tive influence of the water. When it fails it is from the depth of
iniquity of the patient or a lack of sufficient faith. When a re-
lapse takes place in the physical condition of the apparently cured
person, it is because that person has committed some sin or
otherwise fallen from grace."

Now, it seems almost incredible that a man informed as Dr.
Hammond should be could make a statement like this ; that he
could present such an explanation as the one which would be
given by even an ordinarily-instructed Catholic for the total or
partial refusal of a miraculous favor. There is no more reason
for ascribing such a refusal to a lack either of faith or of grace
than there would be if the favor asked were not miraculous in its
character. We doubt if there is any Catholic who believes that

436 DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. [July,

a prayer for any temporal object will be infallibly answered as
the suppliant desires, though of course the words of our Lord
might be understood as conveying such a promise. Every one
of the faithful knows that such prayers must always be made
conditionally ; that an apparent blessing must be asked for under
the condition that it is real as well as apparent, that it is condu-
cive to the best and highest interests of the one who asks it.
When a Christian asks for any ordinary temporal boon, and does
not receive it, he probably simply says to himself: " God knows
best ; most likely this which I have asked for would be bad
for me instead of good." And of course he says the same if
the thing asked for would require a miracle for its attain-
ment.

This statement of Dr. Hammond seems, then, extraordinary
enough ; but the conclusion which he draws from it is even more
so. " Hence," he goes on to say, " it is difficult, if not impossible,
to convince superstitious and ignorant persons that all the effects
ascribed to the water of Lourdes can be just as readily obtained
in like cases by other apparently inactive means if the subject
will bring to bear the same amount of faith in the one case which
is exercised in the other."

Dr. Bowditch said, we believe, that when, in translating La-
place's Me'canique celeste, he came, as he frequently did, on the ex-
pression " hence we easily see," he got out several sheets of fools-
cap and prepared for a good day's work, the result of which was
put in a note to the text. Dr. Hammond may be a second La-
place, but we doubt if Dr. Bowditch or any one else, with any
number of sheets of foolscap, could supply the " missing links "
between the previous statement which we have quoted and this
conclusion which is drawn from it. What he means is, of course,
apparent on a little study. It is, that it is hard to prove to Ca-
tholics (as of course, also, to any one else) that the water has no
special virtue of its own ; because, as is plain, its failures may be
ascribed to other causes. But the absurd idea that Catholics al-
ways attribute these failures to a lack of faith or grace would
show that they ought to be more ready than others, who might
perhaps explain them differently, to ascribe efficacy to faith even,
without the water ; instead of being slow to do so, as Dr. Ham-
mond imagines.

These will serve as choice specimens of Dr. Hammond's logi-
cal power. We must proceed to the main question namely,
whether all modern miracles at Lourdes or elsewhere can be ac-
counted for on his theory of " expectant attention," combined

1 88 1.] DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. 437

with physical conditions more or less capable of naturally pro-
ducing the desired effects.

Dr. Hammond does not distinctly formulate his argument to
prove this, but we will do it for him. It is as follows : There is
a large class of events which, though considered by some people
as miraculous, can be accounted for on this theory ; but modern
miracles at Lourdes and elsewhere all belong to this class ; hence
they can all be thus accounted for.

He takes great pains to establish his major premise, which
nobody doubts. He wastes a great deal of valuable time and
paper in showing that abnormal physical conditions may produce
false visions or illusions, which are, as we all know, from what-
ever cause they may proceed, naturally liable to take a form cor-
responding to an idea pre-existing in the mind of the subject.
He also labors much to show that what he calls " expectant at-
tention " may have a good deal of effect in the cure of some func-
tional disorders, especially those of a nervous character, and
narrates at some length an experiment of his own, in which he
cured a person of an affection of the muscles of the neck by the
use of Croton water, pretending that it had come from Lourdes ;
the genuine Lourdes water having previously been given under
the name of " aqua Crotonis " without effect. He seems to ima-
gine that this proves his point ; though there is really no evidence
that the cure was not a true miracle, worked by our Lord in re-
ward of the faith and piety of the patient. In his little attempt
at argument he innocently assumes that Almighty God cannot
work a miracle without genuine Lourdes water, or at least would
not for fear of Dr. Hammond. What a pity that he did not
select some person who could be induced to put faith in powder-
ed snakes and lizards or the dried blood of a witch for he says it
makes no difference in what faith is put, and mentions these as
objects for it or, better still, in bread pills, which are said to be
often efficacious ; he would have had a much stronger case.

However, as has been said, no one doubts that some apparent
or even real functional diseases which resist other means of treat-
ment may be cured by the help of favorable mental influences ;
confidence that health will be restored is sometimes as good as
any other means to restore it. And as it is often hard to know
exactly the amount and character of the disorder in the cases of
which Dr. Hammond speaks, or to be sure that it is beyond the
reach of physical remedies and confidence on the part of the
patient, we willingly admit that cures may be and have been by
some considered miraculous when in point of fact coming from

438 DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. [July,

natural causes. And it is for this reason that the church is sus-
picious of alleged miraculous cures of this kind, in which, accord-
ing to common medical science, the imagination may have
played a prominent part.

Every one who knows anything about the conduct of the Ca-
tholic Church or of her ministers knows how stories of visions,
particularly when coming from the more impressible and imagi-
native sex, are, as a rule, received. The reception that Berna-
dette's account met with even from her family, but especially
from the parish-priest, is a good example of this ; but we do not
need to go to France to find it: alleged visions are always and
everywhere required to show extraordinary and peculiar proofs
before they can be accepted as genuine.

So much, then, for Dr. Hammond's major premise. There
are many events which, though considered by some people as
miraculous, can be accounted for on his theory ; and in this class
come many visions and some cures of functional diseases. Grant-
ed, notwithstanding his bungling in trying to show it.

But now for the. minor ; that is, that modern miracles at
Lourdes and elsewhere but we will take Lourdes, for that is
what he specially attacks all belong to this class.

First, then, as to visions. Bernadette certainly claimed to
have a vision ; that was the beginning of all the talk about
Lourdes. Can this vision be naturally accounted for?

Dr. Hammond says that it can, and that he can account for it.
He would undertake, we presume, to account for all visions.
But he gives a particular theory for hers which is amusing
and worthy of special mention, as it is the only thing like an ori-
ginal idea in his article.

It is that the vision carne from her taking off her stockings
before crossing the stream. Taking off stockings, packing
trunks, and buttoning boots are actions likely, according to him,
to bring on a sort of temporary cerebral congestion ; and cere-
bral congestion, he says, is one of the principal causes of visions.
It would have been a beautiful confirmation of this theory if
Moses had taken off his shoes before the vision of the burning
bush, instead of afterwards. Modern infidel research, however,
with its indifference to testimony, and to facts in general, may no
doubt soon establish to its own satisfaction that such was the
case.

This is quite a plausible theory ; we must again compliment
Dr. Hammond on it. There is, to be sure, one trifling argument
against it which is likely to occur to any one who has read at all

1 88 1.] DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. 439

about Lourdes ; it is that the vision occurred eighteen times, and
that there seems to be no probability that at any time except the
first the little peasant girl was taking off her stockings, nor even
that she was packing her trunk or buttoning her gaiter-boots.
In fact, she had, we fear, neither trunk to pack nor gaiter-boots
to button. But here again the modern savant of Dr. Ham-
mond's school will find no difficulty. The mere remembrance
that she once had taken off her stockings at the place would, on
the principles of that school, be quite enough, in an imaginative
and hysterical temperament, to bring on congestion of the
brain.

But this is not the whole of the theory of the learned doctor.
No, it remains to be shown why it was the Blessed Virgin that
appeared to Bernadette. This, however, is readily explained.
It is for the general reason previously laid down, that visions
take a form familiar to, or expected by, the seer. Bernadette, of
course, being a Catholic, was far more familiar with representa-
tions of Our Lady than of her divine Son. Dr. Hammond takes
particular pains, both here and in a story which he tells about a
young person who saw Mary while she was a Catholic, and
Christ after she had apostatized, to insinuate the stale calumny
that the Mother has the place in the Catholic system which the
Son has in the Protestant one.

This explanation would be quite conclusive for those who did
not know better, had not Dr. Hammond himself, in his eagerness
to sneer at Catholic devotion, unfortunately demolished it. This
he does by incautiously remarking that the vision had not the
ornaments which have been assigned to our Blessed Mother by
what he calls " human vanity," and with which Bernadette was
accustomed to see her represented, and which it would have had
had it been formed by the little girl's imagination. The fact was
that it so far failed to correspond to her idea of Our Lady that
Bernadette did not even suspect for quite a long time who it was
that had appeared to her ; she was not enlightened even when
the answer, " I am the Immaculate Conception," was given to her
earnest questioning, the term being to her an unfamiliar one.

But, after all, may not Dr. Hammond be right at least in sup-
posing some natural explanation of this vision, though not very
happy in the particular one which he selects ?

On general principles we might be inclined to think so. Al-
leged visions, as has been said, particularly if alleged by women
or girls, are somewhat liable to suspicion of illusion. They re-
quire special evidences to prove their genuineness. So we should

440 DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. [July,

ask ourselves whether this had any special marks of a real super-
natural character.

We shall find that it had ; and it had one mark above -all
which alone was sufficient to put it beyond question, so that we
need not discuss the others. This mark or sign was not, indeed,
the one which the parish-priest ventured to suggest, but one of a
similar character, and as a more practical and permanent one, sub-
stituted by the wisdom of God for that which had occurred to
the mind of his minister.

This sign, as all the world knows, was the formation of an
abundant spring of water where none had existed before, by
means which the vision itself directed. It is the wildest flight of
imagination not only to suppose that Bernadette herself could by
any knowledge of her own or by accident have hit on such a
spring, but also to believe it possible that, if she had happened to
strike the place where it w r as, it could in any natural way have
been set running by the means which she adopted.

Dr. Hammond, with the disingenuousness which he shares
with others of greater ability whom he imitates, omits to give
any description of the way in which the fountain of Lourdes was
formed. "A spring," he says, "began to be developed." What
were the facts ?

They were that Bernadette, in obedience, as she said, to a
command received from the apparition of the grotto, dug a hole
with her little hands in the dry ground at its base. The bottom
of the hole became damp; a tiny rill flowed from it, which soon
increased till it gave, as Dr. Hammond himself admits, a hundred
thousand litres a day. (A litre, we may remark, is a little more
than a quart.)

Now, if Dr. Hammond, with his decidedly larger hands and
greater strength, will, by grubbing in the earth for all the rest of
his life, produce a similar fountain, and will restrain the fountain
of Lourdes or any other one of the same volume and pressure by
a few handfuls of earth packed ever so tight, then the intelligent
world will admit that this stream may have had a purely natural
origin. Till then, however, all who have examined into the facts,
and have not obstinately made up their minds that the Creator
has no control over the world which he has made, will see in
the spring of Lourdes, even without inquiring if it has ever
worked a single miracle, satisfactory evidence that it was formed
by more than human power, and found by more than human
wisdom.

Dr. Hammond, as a last resource, clutches at the fact that the

1 88 1.] DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. 441

water had only the usual ingredients of waters of that district.
Here, as usual, he trips himself up. If the water had contained
any unusual chemical element or compound he almost seems to
think that if it were supernatural some supernatural substances
should have been found in it then indeed its virtue might, in des-
peration, have been ascribed, for a time at least, to that chemical
element or compound. He actually fails to see that the crown-
ing proof that its cures are not natural ones lies in its absolutely
ordinary composition.

But we must come to these cures. Here Dr. Hammond, in
the vain struggle to establish his minor premise, resorts to a
bold assertion. He says that the water of Lourdes has never
" healed an ulcer sooner than any other water, or removed a
tumor except those phantom ones to which hysterical women are
subject, or cured a case of organic disease of the heart," or done
a number of other things which he has selected because he
thought he was safe. He means, however, to say that it has
never cured any real organic disease or lesion at all.

There is but one remark to make on this assertion. It is that
its author either absolutely refuses to believe or acknowledge
what he knows to be attested facts ; that he says " these things
have not been cured by the water of Lourdes, because they can-
not be " ; that evidence against his theory goes for nothing with
him ; or that he closes his eyes and ears to the evidence, and re-
fuses even to examine it, because he does not wish to be forced to
accept it. In the first case he makes a scientific and logical
blunder, as usual ; he argues in a circle ; he judges of his theory
by evidence determined by that theory. In the second case he
simply acts dishonestly dishonestly to his own soul, that is ;
but in both cases he acts so to others by giving the impression
that no such cures as those above mentioned have been claimed.

He cannot plead that no evidence contrary to his statement
has come before him ; for in the very book from which he
quotes cures are narrated as having been worked by the water
of Lourdes which are of the character of those which he says it
has never produced.

We pass over the first miracle due to the water of the foun-
tain that of Louis Bourriette. This poor man was immediately
cured of an almost entire blindness of his right eye, coming from
an organic lesion produced by a blast of rock some twenty years
' previous to the cure. But as the difficulty was said by Dr.
Dozous, who had attended him, to be amaurosis, we presume that
Dr. Hammond will maintain that the n-erve was restored to

442 DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. [July,

proper action in a natural manner perhaps by a violent excite-
ment of his nervous system generally. For the credulity of unbe-
lievers is greater than that of those who have faith. Dr. Dozous,
however, could not go so far. He preferred to take the easier
course of believing that a miracle had occurred.

Passing over this case, then, and others in themselves clearly
showing miraculous agency, let us take several here and there
that of Blaise Maumus, for instance, who, on plunging his hand
into the spring, saw the disappearance of an enormous wen which
he had in the joint of his wrist. This might have been a " phan-
tom " tumor, whatever that may be ; but unfortunately Blaise was
not a hysterical woman ; in fact, he was not a woman of any kind.

Blaisette Soupenne, however, undoubtedly belonged to the
gentler sex. She was at the impressible and imaginative age of
fifty, and hysteria had taken in her the form of warts, eversion
of the eyelids, and total disappearance of the lashes. The warts
vanished on the application of the water, the eyelids resumed
their natural form, and the eyelashes began to grow. Dr. Ham-
mond, perhaps, would not count a wart as a tumor; he could get
out of this little trouble without much tax on his inventive
powers. He says, it is true, in the end of the passage already
quoted, that the water of Lourdes has never produced an ever-
sion of an ingrowing toe-nail ; but neither does this commit him
hopelessly. A toe-nail is not an eyelid ; anybody can straighten
out an eyelid, you know, but when it comes to a toe-nail, that is
a very different sort of a job.

Let us take a case recorded a little farther on by M. Lasserre
that of Henry Busquet. This young man had, at the time of
using the water, a large, suppurating ulcer on his chest and neck,
with two glandular swellings near it. The baths of Cauterets
had proved more prejudicial than useful to him. He bathed his
sores with the water of Lourdes before going to sleep. On awak-
ing the iilcer had become d solid scar and the glandular swellings had
disappeared.

And yet, in the face of this statement of M. Lasserre, this man,
who pretends to have read his book, has the impudence to say, as
we have quoted him just above word for word, that the water of
Lourdes has never " healed an ulcer sooner than any other wa-
ter." This is simply telling M. Lasserre that he lies. It would
have been far better if he had said it in so many words ; then,
instead of a concealment of facts, we should merely have had Dr. '
Hammond's opinion against M. Lasserre's veracity. Readers
could have taken their choice.

1 88 1.] DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. 443

Once more. Mme. Rizan, of Nay, was on October 16, 1858,
lying at the point of death. She had been suffering for about
twenty-five years from an almost entire paralysis of the left side,
with a partial atrophy. For more than a year the paralysis had
become total, and her limbs were much swelled, as in cases of
dropsy. She had two painful bed-sores, and her skin was worn
away in several places, leaving the flesh bare and bleeding. She
was spitting blood. The color of death was on her face and her
eyes were glazed. She had been given up by the doctor, who
said that she would certainly die before morning.

That night she drank of the water of Lourdes, and was washed
with it by her daughter. In two minutes she was entirely re-
stored to health. The swellings subsided under the very hand
which applied the water to her. She got up, dressed herself
without assistance, and ate heartily.

This is one of the most aggravated cases of "hysteria" on
record. Why not call everything hysteria at once and be done
with it ?

So much for the present on the character of the diseases
cured at Lourdes. As an additional and convincing evidence
to show how utterly Dr. Hammond's " expectant attention "
theory fails to explain the cures at Lourdes, it \vill be suffi-
cient to adduce one case, also from M. Lasserre's book. It is
the second one detailed by him, the next after that of Bourri-
ette. It is that of the two-year-old boy of Croisine Bouhohorts,
who had always been sickly, and was now actually dying of a
slow fever, when the mother, with an intensity of faith which
seemed to those around her like insanity, determined to plunge
him into the miraculous spring. It was in the month of Febru-
ary. She kept him there for a quarter of an hour, then brought
him home and laid him in the cradle. Dead, one would suppose.
No ; the agony of death had changed to a quiet sleep. Next
morning he awoke bright and well ; before night he was travel-
ling around the room and pushing the chairs about. He had never
been able to walk before.

Expectant attention, indeed, in a baby two years old ! Dr.
ammond's pages should blush, if he himself is incapable of shame,
at such a transparent absurdity or barefaced pretence uttered by
one before whose eyes the account of this case in all its particu-
lars must or should have come.

But one loophole is open to him. The cure was, he may
perhaps venture to say, in this case a natural one. The reaction
after the bath was what saved the child. If he maintains this

444 DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. [July,

we congratulate him on his discovery. Here is a new method
of curing all diseases. Wait till a patient nears the gates of
death, then do what you can to push him through ; nature, how-
ever exhausted, will rebel at this treatment, and convalescence
will ensue. This is a new course of procedure, of great scientific
value ; let him persuade some one to try it, and let him try it
himself, if he dares.

It may be well, though it can hardly be necessary, to say that
Drs. Peyrus, Vergez, and Dozous, who examined this case, all
regarded a natural explanation of it as quite impossible. We
give a short extract from the report of Dr. Vergez, from which
M. Lasserre quotes more at length. He says :

" She " (the mother) " sought the cure of her son by means absolutely
condemned by experience and by medical science, and yet she did not on
that account obtain it less immediately ; for a few moments later he fell
into a calm and deep sleep which lasted for about twelve hours. And, in
order that this fact should stand out in the clearest light, and that not the
slightest uncertainty should remain about the reality and instantaneous-
ness of its production, the child, who had never walked, escaped from his
cradle, and began to walk about with the confidence which comes from
practice, showing by this that the cure was effected without any interme-
diate state of convalescence, in an altogether supernatural way"

Now, all these facts which we have mentioned, and many
others given by M. Lasserre, are, we must repeat, in Dr. Ham-
mond's possession. Let him deny them if he will, or disprove them
if he can ; but let him, if he does not wish to lose altogether the
esteem some may still have for his opinion, take care how he
coolly selects out of the evidence before him such things as he
fancies he can explain, pretending that no claim has been made
for anything else.

So much, then, for M. Lasserre's book. We will proceed to
give briefly a few others from a small collection called the Won-
ders of Lourdes, made by Mgr. de Segur, a translation of which
is to be easily had in this city. The first we shall take from this
collection is similar to the one just given, but even more conclu-
sive.

It is that of a little baby of two months, whose " mouth, lips,
and throat were covered with purulent pimples, which were
rapidly turning to gangrene. It was all one fearful sore, exhal-
ing a most offensive odor."

This child was taken by his Protestant mother to a doctor.
The doctor was away. The mother went home in despair. The
child's aunt, however, took him to a Catholic lady who happened

1 88 1.] DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. 445

to have some of the water of Lourdes. Hardly willing to recom-
mend it under that name to a Protestant, this lady said :

" Would you like us to give the child some water which I have
here, and which will refresh him?"

The aunt assented gladly. A little of the water was adminis-
tered then and there, and more from time to time during the
night. Next day there was no trace whatever of the sore.

The next is also one which utterly precludes any idea of "ex-
pectant attention." It is that of a Protestant free-thinker, on
whose hand a tumor had formed nearly as large as an egg, which
medicine and surgery were unable to remove, and on which he
wore a leaden plate to compress it as much as possible.

He was persuaded to accompany his wife and a friend of hers
to Lourdes, not to be cured, but merely to enjoy the excursion.
When at the grotto he stood with his hat on and smoking 'his
cigar.

His wife's friend insisted on his trying the water. Forced by
her importunity, he drank a glass of it. The tumor instantly and
absolutely disappeared. He was, though not converted, persuaded
to leave the plate as an offering in the grotto, where it remained
at the date of Mgr. de Segur's writing. The particulars of this
case were given to him by one of the missionaries of Lourdes.

The third case is that of Francis Macary, a joiner at Lavaur,
sixty years of -age, for thirty years a sufferer from varicose veins,
frequently breaking into large, deep ulcers. In one night, after
applying the water, the varicose swelling and the ulcers vanished.

We select from others the following medical testimony to this
cure :

" I, the undersigned, certify that for about thirty years M. Macary, joiner
at Lavaur, was afflicted with varicose legs with enormous nodes, frequently
complicated by large ulcers, in spite of the constant compression caused by
gaiters or appropriate bandages ; that these accidents have disappeared
suddenly (tout a coup), and that to-day there remains only a sensibly dimin-
ished node on the inner and upper part of the right leg.

" LAVAUR, Aug. 25, 1871. ROSSIGNOL, M.D.

"Certificate of the above signature.

"LAVAUR, Sept. 3, 1871." ET. DE VOISIN, Mayor.

The fourth case is that of Pierre Hanquet, a master-mason of
Liege, from whose testimony, given under oath, but too long to
quote in full, we take the following: '''All my troubles vanished in
an instant, like a dream. The stooping, consumption, erysipelas, swell-
ing, arid other afflictions of the body and of the mind, all had disap-
peared. I hardly knew myself "

44 6 DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. [July,

He had been ill for more than ten years, and bedridden for
five. His complete cure occupied, as he estimates, about one
minute and a half. Drs. Termonia and Davreux certified to his
naturally incurable state, and to the suddenness and completeness
of his actual cure.

We give one more attestation of a cure of a disease which is
organic, if any one is :

" I, the undersigned, declare that Madeleine Latapie, of the village of
Julos, aged eighteen, was afflicted with anasmia and consumption (phthisic
au deuxieme degrd} for four years, and was in such a state of prostration
that all the resources of medicine were powerless to arrest the progress of
the disease, as several other physicians have agreed with me in declaring.

" Without knowing from what cause, I see her suddenly cured. I de-
clare that this cure excites my astonishment in the highest degree, as well
as that of the whole community. C. LARRE.

" ADE, May 19, 1869."

Dr. Larr6 had attended Madeleine throughout her illness. It
is perhaps worthy of mention that she had gone to Lourdes be-
fore without obtaining relief, and that, naturally, her " expectant
attention " must have been less on the second than on the first
occasion.

But we are overrunning our limits. We have space only to
allude to the cures of Franchise Pailhes, of Maquens, at the point
of death from disease of the heart ; of Marie Lassabe, afflicted with
cancer of the tongue ; of Marie Faget, with a terrible cancer of the
breast, which vanished entirely and suddenly ; of Eulalia Bourge,
in the third stage of consumption ; and, finally, of hundreds of
persons, not only at the grotto but elsewhere, cured of almost
every disease that human flesh is heir to, by the power of God,
by the intercession of his holy Mother, and by the water of
Lourdes.

These cures and their character are known to the world.
These things have not been done in a corner. The same is to be
said of those worked at Knock and elsewhere by means of the ce-
ment of the church where the apparition occurred. At these, also,
this pseudo-scientist Hammond imprudently ventures to sneer.
He says it plays a " part in the therapeutics of certain nervous
diseases." We have before our eyes at this moment, and will give
as a comment on this foolish statement, an account (one out of
the many), signed by a sergeant of the English army, describing
the cure of his infant child. The disease was dysentery nervous,
of course. Really, however, it is a waste of time to go on ex-

1 88 1.] DR. HAMMOND ON MIRACLES. 447

posing 1 the absurdity of this bungling attempt at disproving the
miraculous.

We have a little friendly advice to give in parting to Dr.
Hammond. It is that he has got on the wrong track. If he
really wants to deny his God, and do his cause some injury in a
small way, let him follow the only practicable line the line which
all (comparatively) sensible infidels have followed. That is, of
course, simply to say that a miracle is out of the question ; that
no amount of evidence will establish it. Entrench yourself,
learned doctor, in this position, and no amount of argument will
drive you out of it. Reject all the ordinary laws of evidence and
certainty ; that is your only resource. Of course you will not
appear very sensible in the eyes of those who adhere to ordinary
rational principles, but we are sure you will not mind that. Do
not, however, betray the cause of your companions by attempting
to construct a positive theory ; you will always find that facts
will not fit it. Pull down, but do not try to build up ; it is not
the infidel's forte. And one word more : read some book on logic
any one will do before writing your next article.

Very well, then. There are imaginary visions and miracles,
as everybody knows ; but Dr. Hammond fails most signally in
trying to stamp those at Lourdes or Knock as such on the whole.
Here and there among them such may, perhaps, be found ; but
the mass of them will stand, and all his " scientific relations of
modern miracles " will not explain them away.

And now one naturally asks why it is that Dr. Hammond
and his co-laborers in the same cause should make such desperate
attempts to show that God does not exist, or that if he does he
can do nothing in the world which he has created.

For such is the real object of these attempts to discredit mira-
cles.* The human mind instinctively and correctly presumes,
that if a miraculous event really has occurred, God must be its
author ; though it may, of course, happen that, if such an event
is examined, it will be found to have the mark of Satan on it.
But there are few to whom this is likely to suggest itself, espe-
cially in this age, in which the devil has managed, for obvious
reasons, to get his own existence so generally denied ; and in
cases like those we have examined it could not be seriously
considered by any one.

These attempts to deny miracles are therefore made, as we
have said, in order to get rid of Almighty God, from whom mira-

* We are not speaking of the efforts of Protestants to evade the proof of Catholic miracles
as such. This is not one of them.

448 UPON THE SHORE. [July,

cles must be supposed to come,. or at least to make him a mere
impersonal abstraction, inactive and powerless. And what mo-
tive is there for that ? Why should man want to get rid of his
Creator ?

There is only one answer. It is to banish, as far as possible,
uneasiness about those moral laws which man has always known
in his inmost heart to be sanctioned or established by him ; to
put out of sight the idea of personal responsibility to him. This
is plain to all, even to infidels themselves in their more lucid in-
tervals. To the world at large it is as clearly and continuously
evident as the body of the ostrich is when its head is hid in the
sand. It is on this account that poor human nature tries not to
see God, and, to gain this end, rejects evidence, throws reason and
common sense away, and finally takes refuge, as the wisest course
left to it, in Ingersollian silliness.

It has, however, been suggested to us that Dr. Hammond
may not be an infidel after all ; that he may have taken his extra-
ordinary and erratic course in order to bring out what evidence
for miracles there might be. This is possible ; and, as charity
is a great virtue, we gladly offer him this mantle which it fur-
nishes to shield him from the criticisms to which he may at
any time be exposed.

UPON THE SHORE.

A LONG, low stretch of gray, receding sands ;
A wide expanse of waves, where streaks of spray
And sun-gold gleamings on the surface play,

Tinting the dark-hued sea. A maiden stands

The water's edge beside ; her slender hands

Clasp wild-flower blossoms ; rippling tresses stray
Around her neck ; sweet eyes look far away,

As if their gaze sought dreamed-of, distant lands.

Ah ! thus how oft we stand upon the shore
And glance along life's fair but dang'rous sea,

Yearning to know what lies beyond the wave ;
How oft forget that He whom saints adore
Can calm the storm as once on Galilee,
That fervent Faith alone can guide and save.

1 88 1 .] AN EPISODE OF THE BA TTLE OF GE TT YSB URG. 449

AN EPISODE OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG.

OF late years so much has been written of " war-correspond-
ents " by themselves, of course one might almost suppose that
war is carried on by them, and that generals and soldiers are
merely puppets to be manoeuvred for the amusement of the read-
ers of the great journals. In fact, a conspicuous part of the
despatches sent to their journals by these fluent gentlemen is
little more than a vehicle for the recital of their own adven-
tures which rival FalstafFs and of how they snub or bully in-
competent generals, and of how they hound skulking soldiers for-
ward to the field of duty. The arrogant self-glorification of the
average war-correspondent's bulletins has nearly succeeded in
hiding under a commonplace sham the history of the fatigues,
and self-denial, and generous daring of the men who make or save
the destiny of a country, yet are seldom fortunate enough to be
able to compete in descriptions of their own exciting work with
the deft cavaliers of the pencil who live in the wagon-train or in
the general's kitchen-squad, and send off grand accounts from
beyond the range of the enemy's farthest-reaching rifle-cannon,.
War-correspondents there have been who were worthy to chron-
icle heroic actions, for they were themselves of heroic- mould ;,
but these are, with a few exceptions, for some reason not usually
among the famous of their profession.

July 3 was the third and last day of the battle of Gettys-
burg. The skirmish-lines at the centre had lain all night within
sixty or seventy yards of one another. After hours of watchful-
ness dawn had found both sides still watchful if not wakeful ; for
the veterans, even if scarcely able to unglue their eyelids, quiv-
ered with instinctive readiness in every part of their tired bodies
at the first shot or at the least sign of a movement in the opposite
line. But as the July morning sun thawed away the chilliness of
the last hours of night and sent its rays upon unprotected faces
and into blinking eyes, a humping of shoulders and a stretching of
limbs were at once followed by a curious peering forward to see
what the enemy, beginning to stir too, might be about. The
horses at the batteries on the ridge behind set up an angry
neighing, and gave impatient and rattling shakes to the harness
that for more than two days they had constantly worn. Here

VOL. XXXIII. 29

450 AN EPISODE OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. [July,

and there, in friend and enemy's lines alike, little whiffs of blue
smoke ascended from hollow places where some determined
spirits were striving to get a cup of hot coffee while there was
yet an opportunity.

Before the sun was visible from all parts of the battlefield the
third and memorable day's decisive work was begun. Fast and
furious became the musketry fire at the centre from near the
foot of the cemetery hill, and following the direction of the Em-
mittsburg Pike almost to the peach-orchard in front of Little
Round Top. And deadly it was as well as fast, for it was the
fire of skirmishers only, and, though loud and rapid in the ag-
gregate, was slow and studied as far as each individual skirm-
isher was concerned. Every few seconds a heavy report, fol-
lowed by the skurrying flit and the explosion of a shell, told that
the artillery, too, of both sides was getting its mouth, if not its
eyes, open, and was testing the range for the serious business in
store. If a skirmisher stood up he could see his line extending far
to the right and left of him, puffs of smoke darting forward from
it at intervals ; but had he been allowed to live long enough to
try and arouse the recumbent figures in that line he would have
found that many, very many, had gone to sleep for ever ; for day-
light of the 3d already showed a field of dead.

A fine Pennsylvania-Dutch barn to the left and front was a
'strong point for the Confederate skirmishers, who made the
most of its advantages. But at last, harried by the singing of the
bullets that issued from it, a New York regiment, with colors fly-
ing, dashed ahead across the meadow to the barn, took it, and set
it on fire. With the advance of the New-Yorkers the whole Fed-
eral skirmish-line of the centre bounded forward, but was soon
forced slowly back to its original ground, and the green sward
between it and the Confederates was strewn with another layer
of dead and wounded. To be slain on the field of battle for
one's country is glorious ; to be wounded and left to lie helpless
and in pain where the bullets of friend and foe hiss through the
air or strike with a wicked thud into the ground near by, and
to have a summer's sun burning the already fevered body and
adding to the horrible thirst, is pitiful in the extreme.

What I am trying to describe is not the famous charge of
Pickett's brave columns, famously repulsed by Hancock's tried
veterans. That came later in the day. I am relating an epi-
sode only in the grand tragedy one of those episodes that in
other countries and other times have been immortalized by art.

The skirmishers on both sides lay very close to the ground,

1 88 1 .] AN EPISODE OF THE BA TTLE OF GE TTYSB URG. 45 1

making the most economical use of any little depression, of a
fence-rail or two from the fences thrown down during the night
or the day before, or, as in many cases, relying on the doubtful
shelter of their knapsacks, which they unslung and pushed out
before them. Little groups were gradually and spontaneously
formed along the line, and these groups acted together, firing by
volley into any puff of white smoke that would be thrust out
by the enemy, with the fair chance in this way that one bullet at
least of the volley would count.

Midway between the contending lines was a solitary tree that
in peaceful days had given shade to the harvest hands at their
nooning. Early in the morning some Confederate sharpshooters
had crawled out to this tree, where they lay at its roots and were
able to reckon their game with every shot. So destructive, in
fact, did their fire become that the wildest imprecations were
shouted at them by the Federals, and threats were made that if
taken they would get no quarter. All at once there came a lull
in the firing at this part of the line. A Confederate was seen to
rise up from the base of the tree and advance toward the Fede-
rals with his hand raised. Shots were fired at him, but there
was curiosity at his approach, and the word was, " Wait till we
see what he wants to do." Some thought he had a mind to desert
and encouraged him with shouts of " Come over, Johnny ! We
won't fire."

But if the Confederate spoke, what he said could not be heard
in the din of the cannonading and musketry, then growing heavy
and continuous as the day wore on. Forward he still came, and
all eyes were now strained to see what it could be that he meant
to do. There can be no truce on a battlefield till the battle is lost
or won. The man who raises a white flag then, or gives any
signal of the kind, has no right to look for its recognition by the
other side. He. may only trust to their shrewdness to under-
stand an emergency. It might be merely a trick to deceive.
Suddenly the Confederate dropped upon the grass and for an
instant was lost to the sight. It was thought he had been hit.
But only for an instant, for a thrill of enthusiasm passed through
the Federals, murmurs of admiration were heard, and then a
cheer, as hearty as if given in a charge, burst forth from their
throats, and the cheer, repeated and increased in volume, proved
that unselfish, noble actions are possible, and that there are noble
hearts to appreciate and to respond.

The Confederate sharpshooter, who had been doing his best
to destroy his antagonists, had seen in front of him a wounded

45 2 . CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [July,

Federal lying helplessly on the ground between the lines and
begging in his agonizing thirst for a drink, and, at the almost cer-
tain risk of his own life, had gone forward to give some comfort
to his distressed enemy. This it was that caused the Federal
cheer and for a few moments checked the work of death in
that neighborhood. When the sharpshooter had performed his
act of mercy he hastened back to the tree, and with a warning
cry of "Down, Yanks; we're going to fire !" the little, unpre-
meditated truce was ended, and was soon forgotten in the grand
events that followed almost immediately after.

The next day the Fourth of July a heap of Confederates
was found under that tree. Whether the hero of the day before
was one of the ghastly dead will probably never be known.

CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

PART I. FROM A.D. 29-33.

JERUSALEM is the most sacred and interesting spot in the
world for all that portion of the human race which looks back
upon Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, with special reverence
as the patriarch of Monotheism in the second period of human
history. Jews, Mohammedans and Christians have a common
feeling of intense desire to make good their claims of inheritance
from Abraham and of rightful possession of the privileges of the
sons of God, by holding sovereign dominion in Jerusalem, the
chosen sanctuary of the Most High. The Moslem will not aban-
don the dominion which he holds so long as he can maintain it.
The Israelite cannot abandon his claim without giving up Juda-
ism altogether. No true Christian can be willing that his reli-
gion should be expelled from the holy places where the mysteries
of redemption were accomplished, or be subject to insult and
oppression from either Jew or Moslem. Jerusalem must, there-
fore, continue to be an object of contention between the disciples
of the three religions until the one which is destined to prevail
shall obtain the decisive and final victory over its antagonists.

The present and prospective condition of Jerusalem and
Palestine tends to enhance and intensify the sentiments of the
Christian world toward the Holy City. Everything relating to
it is regarded with the deepest interest by all who think or feel

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. ^ 453

at all seriously about Christianity. We have, therefore, thought
it likely to prove an acceptable topic to our readers, if we should
take up the Christian history of Jerusalem, presenting a summary
of the principal facts relating to the beginning and the subse-
quent fortunes of the church founded there by the apostles, to-
gether with the great secular events connected with the history
of Christianity in the city and land of its divine Founder.

The first period of the history of Christianity terminated
when Jesus Christ withdrew his natural and visible presence in
the body from Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The second
period began when the administration of Christ's spiritual king-
dom, the church, was left by him in the hands of the apostles,
under his invisible control through the Holy Spirit. Its solemn
inauguration occurred on the Day of Pentecost, ten days after
the Ascension. These ten days were spent by the disciples of
Jesus in prayer and preparation for the descent of the Holy
Spirit.

" All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with
the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brethren.
Now the number of persons together was about a hundred and
twenty" (Acts i. 14, 15). These first living foundation-stones in
the new temple of God had been carefully prepared by Jesus
Christ himself during the time of his public ministry. There
were the eleven apostles, the seventy-two disciples, and above
thirty other trusty men admitted to their fellowship, actually pre-
sent in Jerusalem, besides the women, the young people, the ab-
sent members of the flock, and others, who were in all at least
five hundred in number, and probably much more than that, since
we are informed by St. Paul (i Cor. xv. 6) that Jesus " was seen
by more than five hundred brethren at once," after his resurrec-
tion. The names of the seventy-two are not known with cer-
tainty. There is an early and probable tradition, however, that
Matthias, Joseph Barsabas, Barnabas, Cephas, and Sosthenes were
of the number. Besides the eleven, and the two candidates for
the place of Judas, the sacred narrative furnishes us with the
names of Lazarus, Simon of Bethany, Jairus, ruler of a syna-
gogue in Capharnaiim, Zachasus of Jericho, Mark, Nicodemus, a
member of the Sanhedrim, Joseph of Arimathea, Joseph Barna-
bas, a Levite born in Cyprus who sold a piece of land and gave
the price to the apostles, Simon and Joseph sons of Cleophas^ the
latter of whom may have been identical with Joseph Barsabas,
Menahem the foster-brother of Herod Antipas, and Mnason.
The seven deacons, also, or some of them, were probably of this

454 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [July,

original number. The narrative of the gospels makes it certain
that a considerable number in Judea, Samaria and Perea had
been solidly converted by the preaching of our Lord. It is pro-
bable that the apostles and principal disciples were baptized be-
fore the last Passover, as well as a certain number of others who
believed in Christ during his public preaching, some by the Lord
himself, and the rest by the apostles. All who had not received
the sacrament already were certainly baptized after the ascension.
There must have been some thousands who had been seriously
and piously affected by the sermons they had heard and the mira-
cles they had seen, and who were therefore well disposed to be-
lieve in the reality of the resurrection when it was announced to
them on credible testimon}^, and to be received into the church
by the apostles and evangelists. The preaching of our Lord
was not, therefore, without effect among the Jews. For, although
the princes of the people and the majority of the nation rejected
him, the elect portion were imbued with the faith, were sancti-
fied, and became the fruitful germ from which sprang the great
tree of Christianity bearing fruit for the healing of the nations.

A great number of the believers in Christ who did not live in
or near Jerusalem would naturally have remained there during
the time of Christ's tarrying on the earth among his disciples, or
have come up again to the city with the other Jews to keep the
Feast of Pentecost. The one hundred and twenty men who
were called together by St. Peter to constitute the first solemn,
deliberative assembly of the Christian Church were the heads and
chiefs of the young community. The assembly was composed in
great part of those who were already bishops, or, if not actually
set apart by our Lord to the office of bishops or presbyters, yet
designated by him as fit candidates for these offices, and even-
tually associated with the apostles in some one of the three
grades of the ministry. The rest were chiefs of the laity, men of
character and probity, who were therefore very properly invited
to participate with the apostles in consultations for the common
good, as has often been practised since this first occasion in the
Catholic Church. The first act of this assembly was the election
of an apostle in the room of Judas. St. John Chrysostom says
that St. Peter might have acted alone by virtue of his supreme
authority. He chose, however, to act in and with the assembly
of the apostles and brethren. Two candidates were selected by
common consent. One of these was Joseph Barsabas, who was,
perhaps, a brother of James the Less. He is commemorated in
the Roman Martyrology on July 20 as one who, " having served

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 455

in the ministry of preaching with great holiness and suffered
much persecution from the Jews, finished his career victoriously
in Judea." The other was Matthias. Having prayed to God to
direct the issue, lots were cast, as had often before been done by
their Jewish forefathers, and the lot fell upon Matthias.

On the seventh Sunday after the Resurrection, which was the
fiftieth day, and which was the Sunday immediately following the
Jewish Feast of Pentecost, the sensible manifestation of the gifts
of the Holy Spirit which were conferred at that time upon the
church took place, as minutely related by St. Luke. The city was
still full of strangers who had come for the feast. Crowds were
assembled in the Temple at nine o'clock in the morning for the
morning sacrifice. The signs and wonders which occurred in the
assembly of the disciples at about the same hour drew a great
multitude of these worshippers to the spot. They saw the signs
and heard the discourse of St. Peter, they heard the other apostles
and disciples speaking and praising God under the influence of
divine inspiration, and three thousand were converted who were
all in due time baptized and added to the church.

The oratory where the apostles and disciples were wont to
assemble for the mystic sacrifice of the New Law, for prayer
and psalmody, for pious conferences and fraternal counsel, the
mother and model of all Christian churches throughout the.
world, was the same upper room in the house of a wealthy dis-
ciple where Christ celebrated his last Passover and the first
Eucharistic Oblation. This house was on Mt. Sion, and over the
spot where the sepulchre of David was supposed to lie. After
the destruction of Jerusalem a church was built on the same spot,
which gave place to the larger church of Sion in later times, which
was restored and beautified by the Crusaders. At the present
time the Ccenaculum is a Turkish mosque. This small domestic
chapel sufficed for the one hundred and twenty disciples, and the
women and children belonging to their society, as a place of as-
sembly and worship. It could not have been large enough, how-
ever, for more than a few hundred persons to meet in. We are
naturally curious, therefore, to know in what place and manner
the apostles could address the multitude who came together on
the Day of Pentecost. The descent of the Holy Spirit undoubt-
edly took place within this little church of Sion. Probably the
multitude crowded the neighboring street and the disciples came
out among them. They may have gone up to the Temple and
listened to St. Peter's sermon in one of its great courts, or in
some other public and open place at no great distance from the.

456 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [July,

Coenaculum. St. Luke informs us that this numerous commu-
nity " continuing daily with one accord in the Temple, and break-
ing bread from house to house, took their meat with gladness and
simplicity of heart : praising God together and having favor
with all the people. And the Lord added daily to their society
such as should be saved " (Acts ii. 46, 47). St. Luke says in an-
other place : " And they were all with one accord in Solomon's
porch " (v. 12) ; and again : " And they ceased not, every day in
the Temple and from house to house, to teach and preach Jesus
Christ" (v. 42). Some have supposed that a place was given
to the apostles within the precincts of the Temple where they
could celebrate all the offices of Christian worship. This
seems a very unlikely supposition. The disciples of Christ
certainly took part with the other Jews in the regular Tem-
ple worship, and resorted thither for private devotions. So
long as the priests and rulers were forced to tolerate them, they
could avail themselves of the liberty they enjoyed to address
the people assembled in the courts of the Temple. Baptism
was probably administered at some one of the pools of Jeru-
salem in the open air, before persecution rendered this impossi-
ble. But for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and all other
purposes of the special worship to which only disciples were
admitted, the apostles must have made use of the Ccenaculum
and of similar Oratories in private houses. If all who were bap-
tized remained in Jerusalem, their means of supplying church-
room were certainly very limited, for we are told that new con-
versions were made in such numbers that " the number of the men
was made five thousand" (Acts iv. 4). Many suppose that this
number of five thousand must be added to the previous one of
three thousand, and that, in any case, it is to be considered as
including only men, and not women or children, so that the whole
number may be estimated as at least amounting to fifteen thou-
sand. It would appear, however, that a large part of these were
inhabitants of Palestine or more remote regions who were only
staying at Jerusalem on the occasion of the great Feasts. Still,
it is likely that the church of Jerusalem, during its first period,
numbered some thousands of men, women and children, and that a
great many little particular assemblies had to be held in the most
convenient private rooms which could be found in various parts
of the city. This first period lasted about three years, i.e., ac-
cording to what seems the more probable reckoning, from A.D.
29 to A.D. 32. Without venturing to affirm anything as positive-
ly certain about the disputed question concerning the date of our

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 457

Lord's crucifixion, we simply express our opinion, founded on the
best examination we have been able to make, that it took place in
the month of April of the year 29 of the vulgar era, so that the
first Christian Pentecost, the proper date of the New Law of Mt.
Sion, fell in the month of June of the same year. The date of
Saul's conversion may be probably assigned to the beginning of
33, and that of the stoning of St. Stephen and the persecution
which followed to the latter part of 32. During these three
years, although the apostles were more than once severely molest-
ed by the Jewish rulers, the general esteem and favor of the bet-
ter part of the people for them, aided by the powerful influence
of Gamaliel in the Sanhedrim, secured for them a great degree of
immunity from any steady and organized persecution, and opened
a wide door for their activity in preaching and making converts.
The sudden change which was wrought in the popular sentiment
by the events which took place between the Passover and the
Pentecost of the year of the crucifixion is most remarkable. It
can be ascribed to no other cause than to the actual fact of the
resurrection of Christ, and the utter inability of his enemies and
murderers to rebut the evidence of this fact contained in the testi-
mony of the centurion and soldiers who guarded the sepulchre
to the supernatural phenomena of which they were eyewitnesses,
and of the disciples of Christ, including such men as Nicodemus
and Joseph, to his visible appearance among them. The party of
Caiphas and that of the leading Pharisees were paralyzed by the
effect of their unexpectedly sudden and apparently successful and
decisive stroke at the time of the Passover, and doubtless the tem-
porary alliance between them, cemented only by their common
hatred of Jesus, was succeeded by renewed mutual animosity,
when they found that its only result was ignominy to themselves,
increased zeal and influence to the disciples of the crucified Christ.
It does not seem to us evident from the narrative of the gospels
that the violent and infuriated mob which actively co-operated
with the chief priests in the tumultuary proceedings by which
the condemnation of Jesus was extorted from Pilate, embraced the
whole body or even a majority of the people assembled in Jerusa-
lem at the Passover ; and even of this mob, the greater number
were probably carried away by a temporary excitement which soon
cooled down and left them disposed to a reaction of sentiment.
This reaction certainly did set in, and resulted not only in the con-
version of some tens of thousands of Jews during the first thirty
years of the apostolic age, but in a considerable immediate acces-
sion in Judea and the rest of Palestine to the Christian Church

458 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [July,

and in a temporary sentiment of favor toward the apostles which
was much more general, and was only later changed into the
fierce and sullen hatred into which the obstinate Jewish race \vas
at length hardened after their day of grace was over. The coun-
sel of Gamaliel to the Sanhedrim was : " Refrain from these men
and let them alone : for if this design, or work, be of men, it will
fall to nothing : but if it be of God, you are not able to destroy it :
lest perhaps you be found to oppose God. And they consented
to him " (Acts v. 38, 39). Besides the passages already quoted
from St. Luke respecting the great increase of believers, we are
also told that "the number of the disciples increasing " made the
appointment of seven deacons necessary, and that after their or-
dination " the word of the Lord increased ; and the number of the
disciples was multiplied very much in Jerusalem : a great multitude
also of the priests obeyed the faith " (vi. 7). These were doubtless
priests of an inferior order, and we have never met with any notice
of any of them as having become Christian priests or otherwise re-
markable, and, in fact, they were not specially fitted by their edu-
cation for the ministry of the gospel. They may have continued
to exercise the functions of the priesthood in the Temple, if they
were permitted by the chief priests to do so, since there could
have been nothing more incompatible with the Christian law in
sacrificing than there was in assisting at the sacrifices, which was
habitually practised by the Christian Jews. There were also
Pharisees who believed, for, besides the notable Pharisee Saul of
Tarsus, we read that at a later epoch " there rose up some of
the sect of the Pharisees that believed, saying : They must be cir-
cumcised, and be commanded to keep the law of Moses " (Acts
xv. 5). Lucian and St. Augustine report that Gamaliel was bap-
tized shortly before his death, with one of his sons.

St. Luke, moreover, says that the general effect of the signs
and miracles which accompanied the preaching of the apostles
was that " fear came upon every soul : and there was great fear
in all. And all they that believed were praising God together
and having favor -with all the people. And by the hands of the
apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people.
But of the rest no one durst join himself to them : but the people
magnified them. And the multitude of men and women that be-
lieved in the Lord was more increased, and there came also to-
gether to Jerusalem a multitude out of the neighboring cities, bring-
ing sick persons, etc." (Acts ii. 43-47, v. 12-26). Josephus was a
Pharisee and had the blood of the Asmonean pontifical race in
his veins. His parents were adults at this time and he was born

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 459

soon after. His own opinion concerning Christ and his followers
is expressed in the following remarkable testimony : " Now there
was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him
a man ; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such
men as receive truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both
many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was Christ.
And when Pilate, at the instigation of the principal men amongst
us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the
first did not forsake him ; for he appeared to them alive again the
third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten
thousand other wonderful things concerning him " (Whiston's Jo-
sephus, vol. ii. p. 535). We do not interpret the meaning of Jo-
sephus when he says, " He was Christ," to be that he was truly,
in the belief of the historian himself, the great Messiah of the
Jews, but that he was the person called Christ by his disciples.
Yet, Josephus evidently regarded him as a holy man, a prophet,
one unjustly persecuted, and it is well known that he ascribes the
great misfortunes which befell Jerusalem to God's vengeance
upon priests and people for their sins, especially the wicked
assassination of James the Just.

The great increase of the faithful, the multiplication of the
labors of the apostles, and the obvious necessity of giving a sys-
tematic organization to the growing infant church were the occa-
sion of the appointment and ordination of seven deacons during
the first year of this epoch, and of the designation of St. James
the Less called the brother of the Lord because of the near rela-
tionship of one or both of his parents Cleophas and Mary to the
Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, and the close intimacy in which
their respective families had lived at Nazareth as the local bishop
of the church of Jerusalem. Nicephorus and Photius assert that
this was done by the express command of our Lord.* Eusebius
says that " James first received the Bishopric of the church of
Jerusalem," and that his chair had been preserved with great
veneration as a relic, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catecheti-
cal Lectures refers to the same well-known, indisputable fact
(Catech. iv. and xiv.) St. Jerome says that this was done " imme-
diately after the Passion of the Lord " (Catal. Script.) The com-
memoration of the institution of the See of James, which was
called the Thronos TJieadelphicos, is assigned, however, in the
most ancient Fasti to December 27, from which it seems probable
that St. Peter and the apostles governed the church and fulfilled
all the offices of the ministry in common for several months be-

* See Marshall's Notes on Episcopacy, p. 40.

460 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [July,

fore establishing its permanent and local hierarchy. There is no
account in the Acts of the first ordination of presbyters, but we
find them existing in the church of Jerusalem at the time of the
council of the year 49. Undoubtedly they were ordained as soon
as the time arrived when the wants of the faithful required
priestly ministrations for which the apostles actually present in
the city did not suffice. It is easy to infer from the circumstances
of the case that special reasons determined St. Peter not to
assume himself the episcopal rule of the local church of Jerusa-
lem, and dictated to him and his colleagues the propriety of con-
fiding it to St. James, even supposing that the Lord did not give
them a positive commandment to that effect. Although Jerusa-
lem would appear to have had a prior claim to become the seat
of the primacy, yet this claim had been forfeited by the crime of
rejecting Christ. It was the cradle of the Christian Church, the
point of departure for the apostolate to the nations, but not the
centre and head of Christendom. It was at Antioch that the
catholic character of the church first distinctly manifested itself,
and there the disciples were first called Christians. Antioch was
a more suitable see for Peter as a provisional seat of the primacy,
until the time came for him to establish his chair permanently in
Rome. During the time which elapsed between Christ's Passion
and the destruction of the Temple, the Christians of Palestine were
in many respects a peculiar community within the church, not yet
emancipated from the observances of the Old Law. The same
was true to a considerable degree of the Hellenistic Jewish Chris-
tian everywhere. It was, therefore, a most wise and prudent
measure, to set over Jerusalem and its affiliated churches a spe-
cial bishop, patriarch and apostle, to whose immediate care they
were confided. St. James was especially fitted for this office.
He was a descendant of David, a kinsman of Christ, a strict ob-
server of the Law and of the most ascetic mode of life practised
among the Jews from his childhood up. He was held in the
highest honor by all Jews and was known by the cognomen of
" The Just," that is, the holy or righteous man. He passed a great
part of his time in the Temple in prayer, and is said to have been
even permitted to enter as often as he pleased the Holy of Ho-
lies. This is asserted by Metaphrastes and by the Lesson in the
Office of the apostles St. Philip and St. James in the Roman Bre-
viary. It is far more probable, however, that it w r as only into
the Holy Place he had free access, for the earliest authentic
statement is made by Hegesippus, who merely says that he went
into the Holy Places, i.e., the Court of the Priests and the outer

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 461

Sanctuary where incense was daily offered on the golden altar
before the veil of the inner Sanctuary. The episcopate of St.
James continued for thirty years. During- the first ten or twelve
years, the other apostles were often at Jerusalem for longer or
shorter periods, and while the Jewish rulers were obliged to be
very tolerant of the Christians it seems that the faithful from all
parts made their abode during at least certain parts of the year
at Jerusalem. It was only after the dispersion of the faithful by
persecution, and the final departure of the apostles for their re-
spective missions, that the church settled down into the ordinary
condition of a local parish or diocese. When this took place, and
St. James was left with his presbyters and deacons and his sta-
tionary flock comprising only the permanent Christian inhabi-
tants of the city, it does not seem likely that the number of the
people was very great or the pastoral duties unusually onerous.
Probably, the bishop, aided by a small body of clergy, could
easily supply all the spiritual wants of the faithful, and thus St.
James had abundant leisure for that life of prayer and contem-
plation to which he was specially inclined. Yet, he was also an
.apostle, evangelizing places outside of Jerusalem, and a patri-
arch, superintending the other bishops and churches in Palestine,
looked up to in general by the faithful of the circumcision as their
head.

The beginnings of the church in Jerusalem during the first
three years from the ascension of Christ are so wonderful and
deeply interesting that, although St. Luke has given a fuller ac-
count of events during this time than any which has been pre-
served of a future period, we naturally regret that it is not even
more complete and minute. We could wish to know all the par-
ticulars respecting the preaching of the apostles, the common and
private worship and devotions of those primitive disciples of
Christ, their daily manner of life, the personal history of each one,
especially of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John, of Lazarus,
Mary, Martha, Simon, Nicodemus, Joseph, the other Mary, Sa-
lome, and all those whom we have learned to know and love
through the unparalleled history of the gospels. If we could see
a picture of those first Christian assemblies, obtain a glimpse into
those domestic interiors where families of saints lived an ideal
life, listen to those conversations which apostles held with one
another before they went forth to conquer the world, look into
the minds and hearts of those holy men, women and children who
had been glorified by the light of the countenance of the risen
Lord and rapt into heaven with him when he ascended to his

462 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [July,

throne of glory, we should see a spectacle unlike any other ever
seen in this world. The Son of God, the Light of the world,
who had made a temporary heaven about him on the earth while
he made it his place of sojourn, left an after-glow at his departure
like the mystic twilight which succeeds the setting of the sun.
His memory was vivid, the love for him was intense, the won-
derful scenes which had passed before those favored eyes caused
all earthly things to be forgotten. The Holy Ghost had filled
the hearts of the faithful with his most perfect gifts. The great-
est saints, endowed with the greatest graces, those who are now
the brightest constellation in the highest of the heavens, were
gathered together in one society around the Queen of Saints, the
Prince of the Apostles, the evangelists and prophets of the New
Law, on the spot where David chanted of the Messiah to come,
where Isaiah prophesied, where Christ preached, died, rose again,
and ascended into heaven. In such a society, the whole body of
the faithful became animated with the desire of perfection, all
spontaneously practised those counsels of perfection which were
suited to their respective states, and lived according to the most
spiritual and sublime teachings of Christ. Klopstock in his great
epic poem, " The Messiah," has imagined, in a way worthy of a
Christian poet of the highest order of genius, the scenes of the
great forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. A
poet equally gifted and inspired by the spirit of faith might find
the theme of another epic poem in the first three years of the
Christian Church in Jerusalem.

One sad episode in the very earliest history of the apostolic
church gave only too clear evidence that sin cannot be shut out
from any society composed of men in the state of probation, even
though founded and directed by God. The wealthy members of
the church, as is well known to all, gave up their private pro-
perty for the common good, and all lived according to the mode
of a religious community, sharing alike in a distribution made by
their superiors. Ananias and Sapphira attempted to practise
deception in this matter, by giving only a part of the proceeds of
a sale of property, while professing to have surrendered all, and
were punished by a sudden and preternatural death. How long
the community of goods lasted in the church of Jerusalem we
are not informed. Neither can we know with certainty how
universal this voluntary surrender of private property was
among the faithful. The sudden and terrible punishment of the
two delinquents had for its effect, we are told in a passage which
has been cited above, that " of the rest no one durst join himself

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 463

to them." This is a difficult passage and has been variously in-
terpreted. It cannot mean that all were deterred from becoming
members of the church, for this would contradict the express state-
ment that the number of the disciples was continually increased.
Neither does it seem probable that such persons as were disposed
to renounce their property with perfect sincerity would have
been afraid of incurring the punishment of hypocrisy and double-
dealing. The meaning seems rather to be that there were no
other persons like Ananias and Sapphira who dared to intrude
themselves from bad motives into the society of the apostles and
the other more perfect Christians who were most intimately as-
sociated with them, and to make false pretences to wish to imi-
tate their life of voluntary poverty and self-abnegation. This
entirely unworldly life of the primitive and most fervent period
of the apostolic church could not possibly be exacted as obliga-
tory on all Christians, or be even recommended as a model for the
majority. It was essentially a special and peculiar mode of life
suitable only for the smaller number. It was perpetuated, and
has existed at all times and everywhere in the Catholic Church
in particular communities founded for this express intent, and in
the solitary life of hermits, or of persons living in the world yet
separated from the ways of ordinary life.

The infant church of Jerusalem was not exempted from out-
ward as well as inward trials, the beginning and foreshadowing
of greater tribulations which were to come. On the occasion of
a notable miracle which caused a great public excitement, St.
Peter and some other apostles were arrested and imprisoned.
Released by an angel, they were again arrested, brought be-
fore the tribunal, and scourged, with threats and prohibitions
which for the time being went no further, and had no effect to
hinder the liberty and success with which the apostles preached
the gospel to the people. This great and increasing zeal and
success of the apostles could not, from the very nature of the case,
however, permit the chief priests and princes of Judaism to re-
main permanently in a state of irresolute inaction. It was inevi-
table that a persecution should break out sooner or later, and after
three years had elapsed it began with the martyrdom of St.
Stephen.

TO BE CONTINUED.

464 THE COLLEEN DHYAS.

THE COLLEEN DHYAS*

IT was the " edge of the evenin'," although the dusk had long
shut in with the mist and rain of the afternoon upon a small ham-
let under the shadow of the Galtee mountains in the County Tip-
perary. The time of the year was the late fall, and for several days
there had been " soft weather " alternating with down-pours of
rain and " spates " from the hills, so that the small stream on which
the village was situated, and which turned the mill and gave it
its only industry beyond that of the spade, was making itself heard
in the darkness with a dull, rushing sound and hoarse murmur.
The night itself, however, was damp rather than rainy, and there
was even a faint relief to the sky along the dark, undulating rim
of the hill which shouldered above the village and crowded it
into a single street of low stone houses and cabins between itself
and the stream. The air was so warm that the upper half-door
of the village inn, which stood in the centre of one side of the
row of houses, of which it was the largest and most comfortable,
was thrown back and streamed with a soft yellow light into the
veil of the mist. It would have revealed to any passer-by the
tap-room and kitchen in one, a low-browed but warm and com-
fortable apartment with a floor of stone flags, and on one end the
spirit-counter and on the other the large open fireplace. The
candle on the counter lit up the buxom form and features of the
landlady " herself," as she was called in the household which
she ruled with thrifty and energetic sway ; " Anty," as she was
known to her gossips ; and as the respectable and well-to-do
Mrs. Anastasia O'Hara to her parish priest and the neighbor-
hood. Mrs. O'Hara was nearly sixty years of age, but her hair
had no more than a tinge of gray under the white frill of the cap
that rested upon it ; her eyes were still bright, and the deep color
of her cheeks was like the healthy red of the John-apple, and only
darkened and made permanent from the bloom of youth ; nor
was her stout figure solid beyond a matronly comfort, as it was
revealed by the jacket that was all that was visible above the
counter. She was occupying herself somewhat uneasily but
softly, so as rather to disguise her intent and interest in the figure
of a young man who sat on the settle in the wide chimney-place

* Correct Gaelic form, Cailin deas.

1 88 1.] THE COLLEEN DHYAS. 465

at the other end of the room, than with any definite purpose,
dusting a bottle and putting it back among the rest on the shelves
behind her, and singing in a low voice, with the melancholy ballad
accent of the Irish peasantry, the scrap of an air :

" His eyes were black, his coat was blue,
His hair was fair, his heart was true ;

I wish in my heart I was with you :

Shule, shule, shule, agra."

The young man on whom she looked with kindly and com-
passionate regard rather than curiosity was a handsome, tall
young fellow of some twenty-three or twenty-four. The red
glow of the turf fire lit his features, which were clouded and indi-
cated by their alternations a struggle with indecision rather than
abstraction. The countenance was handsome, with clearly-cut
features, closely-curling hair, and vigorous neck, and gave the im-
pression of one who in his normal condition was a gay and spir-
ited youth, although doubt and a touch of despondency for the
moment had drawn lines between the brows and tightened the
lips beneath the soft blonde moustache. They were not refined
with any particular intellectuality, but had the impression of
good-breeding. His garments as well as his features indicated
that he was one of the gentry ; a gold ring confined his necktie,
and there were other signs and tokens of accustomed wealth and
fashion in his belongings. He had not taken off his light caped
overcoat, which was still damp with moisture, and a Glengarry
cap and a stout stick lay on the settle beside him. A fine setter-
bitch rested her head on his knee and watched his face, occa-
sionally snuggling her head under his hand in the endeavor to
attract more attention than he was disposed to give.

The young man was Arthur Dillon Blake Harrington, of Tem-
pleowen House, as his cards read, the younger son of a resident
landlord with an encumbered estate and a tenantry tending upon
revolt. He had passed his youth in the region, where he had
been a favorite for his high spirit and good humor, although now
sharing the unpopularity of his class and of his father, who had
gone on from a reckless and profuse youth to the necessity and
then to the habit of grinding hardness and oppression. The
past few years he had spent in Dublin, nominally in preparing for
the bar as the only profession suited to his taste and position in
life, but for the most part in careless idleness and racketing, so
that his knowledge of the statutes was much more limited than
that of social life, the fashionable ball-rooms of- Merrion Square,

VOL. xxxin. 30

466 THE COLLEEN DHYAS. [July,

and the unfashionable ball-rooms of the Liberties. The famine
had brought a nearly fatal reduction in the rents, and there were
signs of the beginning of that tenant revolt which threatened
bankruptcy and dispossession in its train. His allowance was no
longer possible, and the past summer he had been at home, trying
to find solace for his exile in field-sports and in seeking amuse-
ment among the people, whose life was daily growing harder and
duller around him with want and the spread of the spirit of con-
spiracy and revolt. With the approach of winter his position
had become intolerable. His father's financial condition had be-
come more straitened and hopeless, and gloom settled within
as well as without. He was one of a large family, and it was evi-
dent that there was no future for him in Ireland. America
opened itself as a vista of unknown possibilities, where labor, if
necessary, would not be degrading to his social condition, and
there were friends of the family there who would help him to a
start in life. Since his determination had been made time had
brought him to the edge of departure, and the next day was to
be his last in Templeowen, It might have been supposed that he
would have spent the evening at home ; but there was no mother
there, and its atmosphere of affection was not warm, so that his
excuse in going out was not considered impossible. He had
made his way to his old and kindly favorite's inn, and was sitting
there, not downcast with his approaching exile so much as strug-
gling with a deeper feeling and a more indeterminate pur-
pose.

The evident gloom and depression of her " white-headed
boy " were too much for the sympathetic heart of Mrs. O'Hara.
Her song ceased crooning itself and her sympathy took the ac-
tive form of her profession. She poured some whiskey into a
tumbler, dropped into it a lump of sugar, and stepped over to the
kettle that was simmering on the hob by the fire. With the
steaming tumbler of punch in one hand, she laid the other kindly
on the shoulder of the young man and said :

" Drink this, Master Arthur, and try and raise your heart, agra
dawn" dropping into Irish expressions of endearment, as was her
habit in moments of familiar affection.

He took it, and his countenance cleared with an answering
smile ; whereupon the tender-hearted Mrs. O'Hara immediately
became in need of consolation herself, and she said : " Oh ! dear,
and you're goin' to leave us for ever. O the cruel times ! No-
thing but starvin' now, and troubles comin', and nobody with a
good word or a comfortable look."

1 88 1.] THE COLLEEN DHYAS. 467

" Take a drop of this yourself, Anty," said Arthur, " and keep
up your spirits. I'll be back before many years to see you, and
the country will pick up again when this is over."

" Not till I'm laid in Templeowen churchyard beside the old
man and my little Thomasheen. But, plase God, you're full of
life and strength, and you'll come back and take a look around
the old place. There was more than one that went to America
since I was a girleen did that ; but there were none of them that
came back to stay. They are like children when they are wean-
ed from the mother: they're never the same again. But it was
kind of you, Master Arthur, to come down and see me before
you go, this wet night an' all."

" As if I could go without a parting glass of your whiskey-
punch ! " said Arthur, with a more careless gayety. " I'll get no-
thing like it in the States, where they say, ' Come, poison your-
self,' when they invite a fellow to take a drink."

" Poison yourself, yerra wisha ! You're jokin'." But Mrs.
O'Hara's thoughts immediately became busy with the idea of
doing up several bottles of her best Roscrea to be sent up to the
great house in the morning for a place in Arthur's trunk.

" But are you going back home ? " she continued, as he rose
and put on his cap.

" No; I'm going down to the wedding at Morrison's. I mean
to shake my foot in a reel once more before I leave Ireland.
Good-night, Anty. I'll say good-by as I drive through town to
the station to-morrow. Have my deuch an dorruish if that's what
you call the parting glass ready."

So saying, he went out into the night, his dog following and
pressing for attention, which she did not receive.

Mrs. O'Hara listened for a moment to his footsteps on the
road, which the rains had stripped and hardened, and then, with
a sigh and a shake of the head, sat down on the hob and crossed
her hands below her knee. She had an idea that it was not a de-
sire to shake a foot in a reel that took Arthur Barrington to the
wedding at Morrison's on his last night in Ireland, when he ought
to have been at home with his family. She knew that he was wild
and thoughtless, but hardly enough for that.

Peter Morrison was a tenant-farmer on the Templeowen es-
tate, with his house about three miles from the village. His eld-
est son was married to the daughter of a neighboring farmer that
day, and the wedding-feast and dance were to be given at his
house that evening. He had other children, among them a daugh-
ter just budding into womanhood Alecia, otherwise Alley, Mor-

468 -THE COLLEEN DHYAS. [July,

rison. It was her image that caused Mrs. O'Hara's sigh of doubt
and foreboding.

The road crossed the bridge over the stream and climbed an
upland across whose bare expanse the damp wind sighed in
mournful and faint whispers in the darkness. The young man's
indecision hung about his footsteps, and he walked slowly even
after his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and his
feet were sure of the familiar way. The cry of a belated curlew
flying overhead startled him, and he drew to one side and climbed
the wall as a noisy and joyful party of young men and young wo-
men on their way to the wedding festival approached from behind,
and they passed without observing him. His steps grew even
slower as he turned up the narrow boreen that led to the house
of Morrison, and he whirled the stick in his hand with a mo-
tion of hesitation. But he came at last to the small field that
formed the steading to the house of Peter Morrison, with its hag-
gard of hay-ricks and barn adjoining. The house was a low one
with a thatched roof. Its windows streamed with hospitable
light, and around it stood the jaunting-car or two of the richer
neighbors and the low-backed cars of the poorer. The door was
open, and from it came the noise of talk and laughter.

Peter Morrison, as his name indicated, was not one of the ori-
ginal Celtic race, but a descendant of the colony of Cromwellian
troopers who settled in Tipperary, but whose sturdy fibre even
was not able to resist the solvent influence of the Celtic nature,
and merely added strength and stubbornness to national and
caste vindictiveness. He was the tenant of a small and unfruit-
ful farm belonging to old Barrington, and his life had been a hard
struggle to pay the rent and maintain himself on the place, which
had been the home of his ancestors, and, as he considered, right-
fully his own, as with his inheritance of Irish nationality there
had come also that of intense longing for the possession of the
soil and for material as well as political independence. He had a
fiery passion in his nature, the more violent for having been long
repressed and never worked off by any powerful explosion. He
hated old Barrington as a landlord and a Saxon, and he regarded
with grave and vindictive distrust the occasional presence of
young Arthur about his house. On this occasion his sullen
sternness had been somewhat exorcised by the festivity, and
perhaps also by the knowledge that the handsome, reckless
> young man would find opportunities to be about his house
and speak to his daughter no more. His suspicions had not
become definite, but he was glad that Arthur Barrington was

:88i.] THE COLLEEN DHYAS. 469

about to leave the country. He was about sixty years of age,
with a severe and hard countenance, gaunt in its outline, marked
by heavy, grizzled brows and overshadowed by a sort of hel-
met of iron-gray hair. His tall frame was somewhat bowed by
age and toil, but still strong and enduring, and even active
under passion. On this occasion he was seated in the low par-
lor in the circle of more intimate guests that lined the walls,
dressed in the somewhat rusty suit and small-clothes which he
kept for Sunday wear, relaxed in countenance, and even some-
what gay, as he listened to the familiar and official jocosities of
the rubicund Father Flynn, the parish priest, whose superannu-
ated bloom was that of healthy living and the smooth lines of
whose countenance were those of benignant good-will. The
priest occupied the central position between the father, who had
on his right his stout and rather stolid son and the bride, and the
daughter of the house, Alley Morrison, who sat in a low chair,
the hand of the priest resting on its back.

Alley Morrison was an Irish beauty of the purest national
type. About eighteen years of age, she was a woman in devel-
opment, although slighter in form than the usually vigorous type
of Tipperary maidens. ' Her thick, dark hair shaded a low and
softly white forehead, parting over it with a natural waviness.
Dark eyebrows shaded dark gray eyes of a liquid softness. She
had inherited just the least cast of Celtic upwardness to her fea-
tures from her Hibernian mother, but her cheeks had a softened
outline and a firm and healthy bloom ; her mouth was warm and
gay, and her chin, with a dimple in it, was as smooth as a china
cup. She was listening with a smile, half timid and half droll, to
the bantering jokes of Father Flynn, and if there was a slight
droop to her figure and a slight shade under her eyes it would
not have been noticed in the picture of beauty in youth and
health which she presented. She had early lost her mother, and
her father, both from affection and poverty, had been unable to
send her to a convent school, so that she had grown up in igno-
rance at home, with no knowledge of the world and no guide
wiser or safer than the poorer sort of woman-servants who had
succeeded each other in keeping the house and working in the
fields of Peter Morrison. Across her horizon within a few
months had come the gallant and gay *Arthur Harrington with
all the charm of his personal good looks, his fine clothes and ac-
quired good manners. Him she had seen, brilliant in his scarlet
coat, riding his chestnut mare to the meet. Him she had met as
with fishing-rod he had haunted the stream or traversed the up-

470 THE COLLEEN DHYAS.

land fields with a gun, and smiles and greetings had passed to
talk and accidental meetings by day to trysts in the dusk and
dark of the evening. He called her the Colleen Dhyas, from the old
song, as he had found her one evening milking her favorite black
and white cow ; and a pretty picture she was beside the docile
animal in the sunset light on the green field and hedge of flowery
thorn.

When Arthur stepped across the threshold into the room he
was greeted with a gloomy look and a spark of anger in the
eye of Peter Morrison, and they survived in the formal welcome
which could not be refused to the landlord's son. Morrison was
obliged to receive the affected heartiness of greeting and good
wishes, which Arthur uttered with the ease and assurance of
superiority, with a decorous if constrained response. Alley cast
down her eyes and paled and slightly trembled. Father Flynn
was hearty in his greeting to Mr. Arthur, and the circle of rela-
tives and neighbors were cordial in deferential welcome. Arthur
drank a good health to the happy pair in a sip of the port-wine
negus that had been prepared with gentility for the parlor com-
pany, although there was a decided preference in the male palates
present for the more satisfying whiskey-punch which they ex-
pected to come in after the supper and with the dance. There
was a slight struggle with the hilarity and something of a formal
difficulty and stiffness to the talk under the influence of best gar-
ments and politeness in the parlor, and the conversation had a
tendency to strike and bump on the generalities of the weather
and the hard times r while the frequent sounds of laughter and
the occasional preliminary squeak of the violin or drone of the
bagpipes came from the kitchen, where the younger and less
formal portion of the company had gathered. But the supper,
which had been making itself apparent in a plenteous and fra-
grant steam from the kitchen for some time, was soon brought in
and placed on the extended tables. The fat goose, the bacon
smothered in cabbage, the smoking potatoes, and the soft bread
made a feast of profusion and luxury, and Father Flynn having
carved and distributed the bird to an accompaniment of jocosity,
the jaws and spirits of the company were loosened and the humor
of the race and occasion began to come forth. Arthur occupied
a place at the table and was determined in his efforts of good
humor. The thin crust of stiffness in the company was entirely
broken when the supper was cleared away, and a blue jug of
whiskey-punch succeeded to the place of honor, in the centre of
the table, and the steaming glasses occupied the hands of the men

1 88 1.] THE COLLEEN DHYAS. 471

a mild sip not being refused by the ladies. As a part of the
more formal opening of the post-prandial festivity a fine old
farmer, without any diffident hesitation, sang in a mellow voice
the " Cruiscin Ldn"* with appropriate falsetto to the Celtic
chorus, which nobody chorussed but himself ; and from that time
the parlor company was fully merry and unconstrained, unless it
was that Alley said little and laughed less, that Peter's face re-
tained a shadow of gloom, and that Arthur's high spirits seemed
not altogether easy, and he once or twice appeared to have re-
course to the punch in a serious way.

At length there was a summons for the bride and groom to
open the dance in the barn, and the rest of the parlor company
followed. This had been cleared for the occasion and a new clay
floor beaten down. t The rude walls of small stones had received
a fresh coat of whitewash, and were illuminated with candles
stuck around in wooden sconces. At the upper end there was a
platform on barrel-heads, and on this were the fiddler and the
piper, both blind by right of their profession, and both in a
stimulated condition, impatient to put power into their elbows.
Around the room were the young and the old, crowded so that
the girls sat on the knees of the young men and the urchins and
girleens were wedged in every available space. The bride and
groom, and Arthur and Alley, were by ceremonial demand set
for the first reel, and the musicians dashed into the gay notes of
" The Hare in the Corn " with more power than harmony. The
bride was a handsome peasant girl, and the groom a stout, comely
young fellow ; but they were somewhat constrained in their new
garments and new honors, and the admiration of the company
was for Arthur and Alley. Arthur had cultivated his skill in the
old-fashioned dances assiduously in the process of seeing life in
Dublin and at wakes and weddings in the country-side, and kept
his determined gayety, though without familiarity or boisterous-
ness. Alley felt, too, the spirit of the occasion, or the necessity of
appearing to do so, and the grace and ease with which the two
carried themselves made them the object of admiring eyes and
drew forth subdued ejaculations of " 'Deed, she's a fine girl, "and
" He's a purty figure of a man." When the first reel was over
there was an indiscriminate occupation of the space, and fours of
all sorts and kinds were taking their turn at welting it out on the
floor. The young fellows took extra steps in the exuberance of
their vigor, giving an occasional " whooh " as they turned their
partners with a vigorous whirl ; and the young girls, with gay

* Pro. Crooskeen lawn=the full jug.

472 THE COLLEEN DHYAS. [July,

silk handkerchiefs across their shoulders, and the dress pinned in
a roll behind to show the colored petticoat and the vigorous foot
in a heavy shoe, kept up the balance with an energy that made
their eyes glisten and their cheeks grow red beneath their shin-
ing dark locks. The old men and old women took their turns,
and stepped it out gaily with as real if not as prolonged en-
joyment as their sons and daughters, to the hearty plaudits of
the company, who inspired them to hold it out with the best.
In the midst of one of these exhibitions, in which an old man, with
his caubeen on one side, was dancing with the variety and preci-
sion of step, if not with the lightness and vigor, which had made
him in his youth the glory of the parish, before his fat and laugh-
ing wife, and the hubbub of attention and talk was directed
toward them, Arthur managed to convey to .Alley's ear, as she
stood near the platform, and with a manner as though speaking
of the dancers :

" Meet me by the white-thorn in the farther field. I'll wait
for you."

Then he edged his way out without attracting attention, got
his cap and coat from the empty parlor, and, with his dog flounc-
ing against him once or twice, passed out of the range of the
lighted door into the darkness.

Alley stood where he had spoken to her, a paleness fixing it-
self in her face and little shudderings passing through her form,
while a few lingering moments passed away. Then she, too, fur-
tively glided out and to the house, where she wrapped herself in
her long cloak with the hood over her head, and stepped out of
the back door to keep her tryst. The mist had blown away, and
through the heavy and driving scud of the sky a glimpse of the
moon appeared as she stepped along the path beyond the byre
and over the stile to the field in which was the white-thorn.
Arthur's dark figure stood beside the twisted stem. Alley flung
herself upon his breast, but, with an impatient and masterful mo-
tion, Arthur put her off, and, holding her at once in his possession
and aloof by a grasp upon her shoulder, he said :

" Alley, you know I start for America to-morrow. You must
go with me."

"Oh! how can I, Arthur? How can you leave me? Oh!
what will become of a misfortunate girl?" And once more she
would have clung to him.

Again Arthur held her off and muttered an oath. " I'll do
the best I can for you, Alley. I can't stay, and you must come."

"And will you marry me, Arthur? "

1 88 1.] THE COLLEEN DHYAS. 473

" May be, if you're a good girl and don't vex me with your
whinings. Here's a ten-pound note, and it isn't many of them I
have, either. Slip away to the station so as to take th.e night
train. It leaves at eight o'clock. I'll meet you in Cork, and the
next day we'll be aboard the steamer in Queenstown Harbor."

Then, half good-naturedly, but still with a perceptible touch
of vexation, he put her off to go dazed and tremblingly back.

When she reached the barn she looked terrifiedly around, but
her father was not there. She waited and watched with growing
anxiety, but he was not seen again ; and as a groups of friends and
neighbors left. the dance they accompanied their farewells to the
married pair with ejaculations and inquiries as to where was Peter.

There were footprints in the soft earth on the other side of
the hedge of the field in which was the white-thorn, and he who
had stood in them might have heard the conversation between
Arthur Harrington and Alley Morrison.

Arthur never reached home that night. His body was found
in the avenue where, if he had gone by the usual way, he might
have been intercepted by a short cut across the fields, if his assas-
sin had left Peter Morrison's house at the same time. His breast
was riddled with a charge of slugs, as if fired by a blunderbuss.
His dog Bess remained with the body. She had licked her mas-
ter's face, but there were stains on her mouth, as if she had tasted
the warm pool ere it sank to a stain on the damp ground. She
was a good and affectionate dog, but she loved after her master's
fashion.

Peter was arrested, and there were inquiries about a brass-
mounted blunderbuss that he had been known to keep hid in the
thatch, and which could not be found. But numerous witnesses
swore that he had never left the barn on the night of the murder,
and the juror who ventured to make a doubt as to a unanimous
acquittal found the neighborhood very uncomfortable for him.
The incident was reported in the English papers as an agrarian
murder of the most outrageous kind, and in the Irish as the ven-
geance for agricultural tyranny and as a warning to all landlords.
Peter said little and seemed to care nothing for the result of the
trial on his own fate. After the acquittal he left the neighbor-
hood and it was reported that he had gone to America.

Some months after a neighbor, who had some business in Dub-
lin, told on his return, in a whispering way, how he saw a creature
like Alley Morrison at night under a gaslight on the slimy pave-
ment. " She was half drunk," he said, " and she looked the very
moral of despair." Poor Colleen Dhyas !

474 CALDERON DE LA BARCA. [July,

CALDERON DE LA BARCA.

IT is not strange that American and English writers of plays
should steal their material as they do, considering that Shakspere
and Calderon, and even Dante who owes as much to St. Thomas
as to himself " appropriated " with truly poetical grace and dig-
nity ; but it is amazing that our modern dramatists should ap-
propriate with such little discretion. While every tyro in the
dramatic art rushes to Feuillet and Dumas for situations and
motives, and forgotten comedies written when Fargueil was in
her prime are dismembered by the scissors of the modern dra-
matist, Lope de Vega and Calderon, who left innumerable trea-
sures, and Hartzenbusch, a late Spanish dramatist of great merit,
are neglected. As the rage for play-writing is now at its height
indeed, the lack of an international copyright has left literary
men small resource except journalism and the theatre the seeker
after dramatic situations would do well to drop his search for
French novelties and turn his attention towards that magnificent
national outgrowth of the most magnificent nation of Europe
the Spanish drama. It contains everything. Beside it French
dramatic art is stilted and colorless ; Faust loses much, because it
eternally questions and never answers ; Greek dramatic art, in-
dividual and strong, does not dwarf it ; for Calderon, the greatest
dramatic poet of Spain, lacked only the humor of Shakspere to
have been the greatest dramatic poet of the world.

Protestantism has done infinite intellectual harm to all of us
who have inherited the English tongue by narrowing our lite-
rary sympathies. Literature, as received by us, has made us feel
rather than believe that the English language was invented by
Luther and used by Shakspere in defiance of Rome, and that no
real literature ever existed outside of England, and no literature
in England until Shakspere's time. In fact, many Americans
seem to have the impression that Luther invented Shakspere and
the printing-press. This sectarian narrowness has caused Cal-
deron to be only a name, more or less connected with the Inqui-
sition, and consequently disreputable, and made us content with
a small portion of the glorious inheritance which Catholic Spain
has left us. It would be absurd to claim that Calderon was a poet
because he was a Catholic, but it is certain that Dante and he
would never have been great poets had they not been Catholics.

1 88 1.] CALDERON DE LA BARCA. 475

They were glorious flowers blooming at the end of a glorious
summer. Around them were the tinted leaves of decay which
hid in false splendor the track of death ; their roots were not
nourished by the sun-dried soil around them ; they struck deeper
and were vivified by eternal springs. The influences around
them would have made Dante a weaver of conceits and Calderon
an inventor of court spectacles. The church strengthened their
inspiration, and to her we owe them. Calderon is, above all, a
Catholic poet. As Emerson has it :

" The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning care below
The canticles of love and woe ;
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity :
Himself from God he could not free."

God, the Trinity, our Lord, true God and true man, His
Blessed Mother, and the saints, are always with Calderon. The
teaching of the church was the pivot upon which all the world
swung. Her life filled his heart and his soul. Humanity might
ask questions and nature present problems, but Calderon always
found their answer" and solution in the church. It is this cha-
racteristic of the great Spanish poet which causes Frederick
Schlegel to exclaim : " In this great arid divine master the enigma
oi life is not only expressed but solved." But the Schlegels were
smitten with that Calderon fever against which Goethe protested,
and their indiscriminate praise has done his reputation as much
harm as the coldness, prejudice, and ignorance of Sismondi and
Hallam. Hallam, however, was only ignorant of Calderon's real
merit, while Sismondi was evidently prejudiced and maliciously
bigoted. Catholics, as well as Protestants, are apt to have their
judgment in matters of art influenced by religious feeling ; but Ca-
tholics, when capable of judging, are more likely to give praise
to beauty in art, as art, than Protestants, who nevertheless pride
themselves on the catholicity of their tastes. It may seem ridi-
culous, but it is nevertheless true, that if the fact that Dante put
a pope into the Inferno had not given the Italian master a schis-
matical flavor he would not have become so well known among
us. Protestantism never accepted art as art or poetry as poetry,
and never encouraged either. Puritanism accepted Milton be-
cause of his un-Christian theology rather than of his sublime

476 CALDERON DE LA BARCA. [July,

poetry, and, if its blighting breath had not been tempered, it
would have taken from Shakspere much of his beauty and fresh-
ness. The opinions of Calderon that one finds in English books
show that minds imbued with the influences of Protestantism can-
not free themselves from its prejudices. Even Dean Trench, who
has written a valuable and appreciative essay on Calderon, ap-
proaches his " autos," or religious dramas, hesitatingly, and, broad-
minded as the dean is, he constantly offers apologies to his preju-
dices by carefully explaining that he does not admire Calderon's
" Romanism." After having made this plain he says : " And it is
not too much to say of the greater number of these marvellous
compositions that they are hymns of loftiest praise to redeeming
love, summonses to all things which have breath to praise the Lord ;
and he, too, that writes, writes as one that has seen Satan fall like
lightning from heaven, and rejoices in spirit with his Lord."
Calderon's " autos " were the perfection of the miracle-play, or
" mystery," which was the national drama of Spain. With the
skill of a trained dramatist he was manager of the court theatre
in the palace of the Buen Retiro and the insight of a poet
he seized the parables of the Scriptures, the doctrines of the
church, the religious legends of the people, and even the heathen
myths, and wrought them into these "autos" for the salva-
tion of his countrymen. They might, indeed, rather be called
moralities than mysteries. Every incident 'is arranged with al-
most mathematical precision, to the end that a moral may be
taught. Lope de Vega, Calderon's predecessor, had done much
to elevate the stage of the people ; but Calderon, at once priest
and dramatist, found both his vocations joined in the composi-
tions of his " autos." He could preach his sermons more effec-
tively to the eye than to the ear. The Germans recognized the
genius of Calderon with great cordiality, and Schiller regretted
that he had not read him earlier in life. For a long time the only
translations of any of these " autos " were in German. Until
Denis Florence MacCarthy translated " The Sorceries of Sin "
none of the " autos " of Calderon had appeared in an English
garb. Dean Trench had given an analysis of " The Great Thea-
tre of the World," and several scenes, and Mr. Ticknor and others
had given analyses of " autos " ; " but," as Mr. MacCarthy says
in his introduction to " The Sorceries," " the ' autos,' the most
wonderful of all. his productions, and the only ones (with but two
exceptions) which the great poet himself thought worthy of re-
vision, have been passed over, I may say, in almost utter si-
lence." The Germans, enthusiastic as they have shown them-

1 88 1.] C ALDER ON- DE LA BARCA. 477

selves over the secular plays of Calderon, shrank from the task
which Mr. MacCarthy completed with such thorough success.
The characters in " Los Encantos de la Culpa," which is called a
" sacramental allegorical auto," are the Man, Sin, Voluptuousness,
Flattery, the Understanding, Penance, the Smell, the Hearing, the
Touch, the Taste, musicians, and chorus. The scene opens to the
sound of a trumpet. A ship is discovered at sea. In it are the
Man, the Understanding, and the Five Senses. The Understanding
warns the Man that he is afloat on the world's wide sea and that
a mighty tempest threatens him. The Senses then declare their
characters and act the part of the crew during the tempest, with
wonderful dramatic spirit. The character of the play and its
motive, in the hands of so religious a poet as Calderon, may be
gathered from the title and the names of the dramatis personce.
But no analysis could do justice to the originality, the beauty,
the simplicity, and the intense dramatic quality of this poetical
drama. In this " auto," as in several others, Calderon uses the
Greek mythology in a manner which shows his skill and his deep
religious feeling. His fervor fuses the Christian religion and the
myths, so that their pagan character is entirely lost. In the
hands of a poet like Camoens the myths, intermingled with Chris-
tian personages and symbols, produce a grotesque and profane
effect. Calderon seizes them boldly, as if by the divine right of a
Christian. He illumines the faces of the gods with a new glory ;
he causes the pipe of Pan to jom in the heavenly chorus, and
makes Orpheus, whose music gives a new sense to the beasts, a
figure of our Lord. " The True God Pan " is the title of one ; an-
other is founded on the story of Cupid and Psyche, and another
on Ulysses and Circe. Most of his " autos " rest, however, on
a Scriptural basis, such as " The Vineyard of the Lord,"
" The Wheat and the Tares," and "The Hid Treasures " ; others
on Old-Testament facts " The Brazen Serpent," " Gedeon's
Fleece," "The Sheaves of Ruth," and " Baltassar's Feast";
others, while strictly moral, are somewhat less Scriptural for
instance, " Love the Greatest Enchantment " and " The Sorceries
of Sin " are Christian dramatic allegories, both founded on the
myth of Ulysses and Circe. The richness of imagery, the wealth
of fancy, and the firmness of grasp which the poet shows in
working out these marvellous acts make each a precious heri-
tage to poetry as well as to dramatic art. They are unique, and
they merit a thorough study. A Catholic alone can svmpathize
with their spirit and revel in the deep religious life which fills

478 CALDERON DE LA BARCA. [July,

them. A speech of Penance to Sin in " Los Encantos de la
Culpa " will give an idea of the beauty of the drama. This pas-
sage loses nothing of its beauty in Mr. MacCarthy's interpreta-
tion ^

I,*

Erst who wore the rainbow's dress,
Who if in a car triumphal
Thou to-day behold'st me seated
'Neath a canopy, wherein
Purple, pearl, and gold are blended,
Tis because I come to triumph
Over thee ; for whensoever
Calleth me Man's Understanding,
Never is the call neglected.
All the virtues which he squandered
In his ignorance demented
I have here regathered, since
Certain 'tis that when presented
By the hand of Grace they've been,
He who turneth back repentant,
Ever findeth them again,
Safely guarded and preserved.
And that Man may know that they
Can alone thy sorceries render
Powerless, thou wilt now behold
All the viands here collected
Vanish into air, and leave
Naught behind to tell their presence ;
Showing thus how human glory
Is as false as evanescent,
Since the only food that lasteth
Is the food for souls intended
Is the eternal Bread of Life
Which now fills this table's centre.
It is Penance that presents it,
Since without her (naught more certain)
Man deserveth not to witness
So much glory manifested.
Yet, ye Senses, 'tis not bread,
But a substance most transcendent :
It is Flesh and Blood ; because
When the substance is dissevered
From the species, the White Host [Hostz'a bianco} then
But the accidents preserveth.

*"Yo

Que el Arco de paz he fido,
Que fi oy en Cairo Triunfal," etc.

1 88 1.] CALDERON DE LA BARCA. 479

Sin.

How canst thou expect to gain
Credence from thy outraged Senses,
When they come to understand
How you wrong them and offend them ?
Smell, come here, and with thy sense
Taste this bread, this substance ; tell me,
Is it bread or flesh ?

The Senses Approach.

The Smell. Its smell

Is the smell of bread.
Sin. Taste, enter. Try it thou.
The Taste. Its taste is plainly

That of bread.
Sin. Touch, come. Why tremble ?

Say what's this thou touchest?
The Touch. Bread.

Sin. Sight, declare what thou discernest

In this object ?
The Sight. Bread alone.

Sin. Hearing, thou, too, break in pieces

This material, which, as flesh,

Faith proclaims and Penance preacheth ;

Let the fraction, by its noise,

Of their error undeceive them.

Say, is it so ?
The Hearing. Ungrateful Sin,

Though the noise in truth resembles

That of bread when broken, yet

Faith and Penance teach us better

It is flesh, and what they call it

I believe : that Faith asserteth

Aught is proof enough thereof.
The Understanding. This one reason brings contentment

Unto me.
Penance. O Man ! why linger

Now that Hearing hath firm fettered

To the Faith thy Understanding ?

Quick ! regain the saving vessel

Of the Sovereign Church, and leave

Sin's so briefly sweet excesses.

Thou, Ulysses, Circe's slave,

Fly this false and fleeting revel,

Since how great her power may be,

Greater is the power of Heaven,

And the true Jove's mightier magic

Will thy virtuous purpose strengthen.

480 CALDERON DE LA BARCA. [July,

The Man. Yes, thou 'rt right, O Understanding !

Lead in safety hence my Senses,
AIL Let us to our ship ; for here

All is shadowy and unsettled.
Sin. What imports it, woe is me !

What imports it that my sceptre

Thus you seem to 'scape from, since

My enchantments will attend ye ?

I shall rouse the waves to madness.
Penance. I shall follow and appease them.

( Trumpets peal. The Ship is discovered, and all go on board.}

The " auto " ends with the triumph of Penance over the en-
chantments of Circe, and, this new Ulysses having escaped, the
dramatis persona sing :

" Let this mightiest miracle
Over all the world be feted,
Specially within Madrid,
City where Spain's proud heart swelleth,
Which, in honoring God's body
Takes the foremost place for ever."

In another " auto," " The Great Theatre of the World," Cal-
deron takes for his theme,

" En el teatro del mundo

Todos son representados,"
which Shakspere had already rendered :

" All the world 's a stage,
And all .the men and women merely players."

In the beginning the Author summons his people, the Rich
Man, the Beggar, the King, the Husbandman, the Beauty, the
Hermit, or Discretion, and the Infant. They receive their parts
from him, with the words,

" ACT YOUR BEST, FOR GOD IS GOD,"

and a sublime drama of life goes on. Dean Trench* has given
an interesting analysis of this " auto," to which we refer the read-
er who is too indolent to rub up his Spanish.

Calderon was born in 1600, either in the beginning of January
or February, although his friend Vera Tassis makes the year of his
birth 1 60 1. Los Hijos de Madrid Calderon first saw the light in
Madrid gives February 14, 1600, as the day of his baptism. An-

* Calderon. By R. C. Trench.

1 88 1.] CALDERON DE LA BARCA. 481

other work, quoted by Dean Trench, Obelisco Funebre, states, on
the authority of the poet himself, that he was born January 17,
1600. His parents, according to the chronicles of the time,
were Christian and prudent people, who, being of illustrious
lineage, gave their children an education in conformity with it.
His father held a state office under Philip II. and Philip III.
Don Pedro, the poet, was the youngest of four children. His
brother, Diego, succeeded to the family estate, his sister entered
the Order of St. Clare, and Josef fell in battle in 1645. He learn-
ed the rudiments in the Jesuit College of Madrid. Afterwards
he studied some biographers say for five years philosophy and
theology at the famous University of Salamanca. No one can read
any play of Calderon's without being impressed with the deep-
ly religious bent of his mind, and with the evidence of theologi-
cal study which each of them displays. To the Summa of St.
Thomas he owed all that certainty, and firmness in grasping the
great questions of life which was the despair of Schiller and the
admiration of Goethe. Well might Augustus Schlegel, who, un-
like his brother Frederick, had not accepted the church, exclaim :
" Blessed man ! he had escaped from the wild labyrinths of doubt
into the stronghold of belief ; thence, with undisturbed tranquillity
of soul, he beheld and portrayed the storms of the world. To
him human life was no longer a dark riddle."

When the crown fell from Shakspere's dying head in England
Calderon had scarcely begun to sing in Spain. But the whole
chorus of Elizabethan poets, like birds in a glorious May-time,
were singing nobly or warbling pretty conceits. He lived to pass
the three score and ten allotted to man by eleven years ; while the
drama degenerated into spectacular and intellectually valueless
shows in Spain, it likewise degenerated in England into the
bastard, the soulless, the heartless comedy of the Restoration.
He lived to see the Spanish theatre, which he had built, following
Lope de Vega, to a most noble height, become a mere vehicle for
tours de force of scenic effects. And he does not seem to have
been conscious of this degradation. He even helped it along.
Nothing could have been more repellant to his nature than the
polished yet open obscenity of the English comedies in vogue in
his latter years. He would have been quick to perceive the evil
tendency of the wit of Congreve and Wycherly, and to raise his
voice against it ; but he failed to see that the splendid spectacles
which he offered to the eyes of the court on the great pond of the
Buen Retiro were as ruinous to the intellectual enjoyment of the
drama as licentiousness and frivolity. To the glory of this most

VOL. xxxni. 31

482 CALDERON DE LA BARCA. [July,

noble-minded of poets it must be said that no double entente, no
vile allusion or coarse pun such as Shakspere felt himself too
often bound to introduce, often making of great passages " sweet
bells jangled," ever appears in the works of Calderon. Yet Cal-
deron was the boldest of dramatists bolder, because* purer and
without any self-conscious delight in shocking his audience, than
the boldest of the French Romanticists. " The Devotion of the
Cross," a powerful drama, contains scenes which in a less firm
and pure hand would have left that sense of despair which we
feel at the end of a great Greek play when the Fates have done
their work. The impression derived from Sismondi that this
sublime play turns on the crime of incest is false ; and it is sur-
prising that even the most careless reader could have failed to
see that Eusebio and Julia, guilty though they were, were saved
from this unutterable crime. And in the scene, as translated by
Mr. MacCarthy, in which they are saved the masterly character
of Calderon's art shows itself. It requires the highest purity of
purpose and the aid of great genius to produce the effect of hor-
ror on the spectator's mind the horror which the witness of a
great crime feels without vulgarizing the intensity of the hor-
ror or degrading the audience by forcing them to sympathize
momentarily with the crime. Another Spanish writer possessed
this high purpose and this art, though in her case talent supplied
the place of genius. Readers of La Gaviota of Fernan Cabal-
lero will remember instances of it. It is easy to make an au-
dience thrill with sympathy for passion, or crime which is the
result of passion, and the effects of too many of the romantic
dramatists have been produced in this cheap way ; but it is not
easy to cause the sin to be abhorred while the audience is still in
sympathy with those who are on the verge of committing it.
Calderon, of all dramatists, was master of the means of producing
this effect. Pure as his intent always was, and thoroughly Catho-
lic as he everywhere shows himself to be, yet he did not hesitate
to touch the most secret springs of passion. A skilful master of
stage tricks, he was never misled into vulgar and easy effects.
All his situations were planned most artfully, nothing was left to
chance ; and consequently the interest lies in the action of the
drama, not in its characters. Calderon was a court poet and
dramatist, and the result of habitual contact with the members of
the most ceremonious and stately court in Europe is often ap-
parent in his plays. It is, therefore, amusing to read Voltaire's
complaints of the natural and uncultivated nature of the Spanish
drama ; and Voltaire's opinion of the Spanish drama is as valu-

1 88 1.] CALDERON DE LA BARCA. 483

able as his allusion to Hamlet as " a drunken Dane." Nothing
could be more artificial than the structure of Calderon's dramas.
*They are geometrical in their precision ; some of them seem to be
founded on a scholastic formula ; but nevertheless Calderon probes
the depth of the human heart and holds in his disciplined hand the
key to all the passions. French critics, always having the rever-
ence for their Louis Quatorze imitations of the Greek drama before
their eyes, could not appreciate Caideron. They found him too
spontaneous, almost savage, because his rules of dramatic art
differed from theirs. Dean Trench quotes a critical opinion from
a book published in Paris in 1669, Journal de Voyage d'Espdgne, in
which -the complacent French traveller says: "Yesterday came
the Marquis of Eliche, eldest son of Don Luis de Haro, and Mon-
sieur de Barriere, and took me to the theatre. The play, which
had been before brought forward but was newly revived, was
naught, although it had Don Pedro Calderon for author. At a
later hour I made a visit to this Calderon, who is held the greatest
poet and most illustrious genius in Spain at the present day. He
is knight of the Order of Santiago and chaplain to the Chapel of
the Kings at Toledo ; but I gathered from his conversation that
his head-piece was furnished poorly enough. We disputed a
good while on the rules of the drama, which in this land are not
recognized, and about which the Spaniards make themselves
merry." But the critic of to-day, recalling how Calderon, in '
spite of his strict rules and courtly elegance, touched the hearts
of the common people, will differ from the French interviewer
and thank Heaven that this Spanish poet triumphed over more
hampering regulations than ever bound Racine or Corneille. The
boldness with which he handled his motifs and characters excited
the ill-nature and reckless censure of Sismondi, who finds in
"The Devotion of the Cross " much that would be, if it were
there, abominable. " On devine sans peine," says another and
more appreciative French critic, " que Julia est la sceur d'Eu-
sebe ; et cette invention dramatique augmentant d'intensite irait
coudoyer 1'horreur et Tinsoutenable, si Calderon n'etait dou6 de
ce vrai genie dont 1'essence est pure. Nous allons le voir, dans
une occasion si difficile retrouver la moralite qui lui est, propre la
sublime pudeur qui ne 1'abandonne jamais. Ses ailes blanches et
vierges trempent dans 1'orage sans le fletrir, et effleurent la foudre
sans se boiler." The truth of this last beautiful sentence is often
forced upon the reader. The " white and spotless wings " of
his genius flutter amid darkness and storm, unsullied and un-
ruffled. In a turmoil of passion and jealousy, such as the " Phy-

484 CALDERON DE LA BARCA. [July,

sician of his Own Honor," of which there is a French version,
he remains calm and pure while his hearers shudder with horror.
His plays of which jealousy is the theme seem to have been
torn from a living and burning heart. They are almost unendur-
ably horrible, yet they are wonders of dramatic art ; and in the
warring of the elements Calderon never changes his plan or
loses' his grasp. Either the taste of the Spanish court was much
less coarse than that of the English, or Calderon's elevating stu-
dies of the Summa must have made him disdain low things ; for
although Cervantes and, it is said, the pleasant farceur, Tirso de
Molina, often made allusions which, in any age, would be con-
sidered indecent, Calderon's works are free from these blots.

Sefior Hartzenbusch tells us that Calderon was nineteen when
he left Salamanca, and surmises that " The Devotion of the
Cross" was written before he left the university. In it he ex-
presses the difficulty of pleasing an audience variously composed,
in the speech beginning

" Copla hay tambien para ti," etc.

" Take this rhyme along with thee :
Since, howe'er the poet tries,
Doubtful is his drama's fate,
For what may the crowd elate
The judicious may despise.
If you're seeking- for fame's prizes
Try some method less remote,
For 'tis hard to cut a coat
That will suit all sorts of sizes."

Calderon did not despise the applause of the populace be-
cause he wrote for the approbation of the knights. He pleased
both. He interested the people, in spite of themselves, in the he-
roism that the Moors had displayed ; this was not the least of his
triumphs. " The Chariot of Heaven/' his first play, written when
he was fourteen, has not come down to us. At the age of twen-
ty-five we find him serving in the Low Countries as a soldier, as
Cervantes and Garcilasso, the lyric poet, and other Spanish wri-
ters had served. In 1625 he was still in the army, if his " Siege
of Breda," a military drama, may stand as evidence of his pre-
sence at the taking of that town. Philip IV., a litterateur and a
lover of the drama, summoned him to court. In 1630 Lope de
^Vega acknowledged that his mantle had fallen upon the poet-
soldier, and on Lope's death, five years later, there was no one
left to dispute the bays with Calderon. Calderon was a favorite

1 88 1.] CALDERON DE LA BARCA. 485

at court. His lines were cast in pleasant places. The light of
the courtly glare in which he lived did not wither his genius ; it
was good for him ; he throve in the splendor and flourished.
Unlike so many of his brethren, he had no struggles with fate.
The spectacular pieces which his position as director of the court
theatre in the palace of the Buen Retire forced him to prepare
are the weakest and most unsatisfactory of his productions. Ben
Jonson's masques, which were fashionable at the English court
at this time, were somewhat similar, but in some respects more
meritorious. Calderon, who doubtless felt the arrangement of
these magnificent shows a heavy task, avenged himself by t@rtur-
ing the stage machinist. " Circe," which was represented on
the great pond of the Buen Retiro on St. John's Night, 1635, is
accompanied with most elaborate directions which would drive
the very modern stage-manager to despair. Here is a sample :
" In the midst of this island will be situated a very lofty
mountain of rugged ascent, with precipices and caverns, sur-
rounded by a thick and darksome wood of tall trees, some of
which will be seen to exhibit the appearance of the human form
covered with a rough bark, from the heads and arms of which
will issue green boughs and branches, having suspended from
them various trophies of war and of the chase, the theatre, during
the opening of the scene, being scantily lit with concealed lights ;
and, to make a beginning of the festival, a murmuring and a rip-
pling noise of water having been heard, a great and magnificent
car will be seen to advance along the pond, plated over with sil-
ver, and drawn by two monstrous fishes, from whose mouth will
continually issue great jets of water, the light of the theatre in-
creasing according as they advance ; and on the summit of it will
be seen seated in great pomp and majesty the goddess Aqua,
from whose head and curious vesture will issue an infinite abun-
dance of little conduits of water; and at the same time will
be seen another great supply flowing from an urn which the
goddess will hold reversed, and which, filled with a variety of
fishes, that, leaping and playing in the torrent as it descends, and
gliding over all the car, will fall into the pond." This is only a
glimmer of the wonders to follow. Calderon spared no expense
on these spectacles, and the king seems to have been lavish in his
expenditures for adding decorations and mechanism of the newest
pattern to the paraphernalia of the court theatre. Being a mem-
ber of the military order of Santiago, Calderon entered the field
in 1637 to help suppress a revolt in one of the provinces. How
long he remained in the army is not certain ; it is plain, how-

486 CALDERON' DE LA BARCA. [July,

ever, that Philip IV. preferred that he should remain at court.
He gave up the pursuit of arms, although he still clung to that
of literature, and received Holy Orders. His genius was of so
solemn and sacred a kind that he needed not to throw aside his
pen to take up the cross. His works had been psalms, and he
only needed the added grace of the Christian priesthood to
make him a perfect symbol of Catholic art. His life had been
calm and happy or as calm and happy as the life of such a
m,an, whose eyes were fixed on God, and who knew no real
contentment not seeing God, could be. On Whitsunday, May
25, fT)Si, he died, no longer a court favorite for Philip had
died in 1665 but revered and loved by the nation as no other
Spaniard had been revered and loved. He was buried in the
church of San Salvadore at Madrid. The glimpses which we
get of him from his contemporaries are few, but they make us
feel that his life was noble and that his works reflected it. His
relations with Lope de Vega and Cervantes he dramatized Don
Quixote were friendly and cordial. Not much is known of
his ways among men, but what is known shows him to be a
high type of a high and noble people.

With Calderon died the century and the glory of Spain.
Lope de Vega had modelled the statue out of rude stone, which
Calderon had completed. Out of the national life of Spain had
come the strong impulse which gave a new drama to the
world, to take its place proudly beside the drama of Greece
and the drama of England ; which gave a New World to the
Old, and drew from this New World those glittering streams
that gilded but could not revive it. Materialism had hidden
the cross and dimmed the old Spanish ideal. The body, in its
gorgeous trappings, had almost smothered the soul. Calderon
making spectacles for the court, while the enemies of Spain
were dismembering her, and her soldiers in new lands -sowing
the seeds of hatred in the name of God, whom their lust out-
raged, was a symbol of his country forgetting the ideal of other
days and substituting for it empty splendor and worthless
gold.

Calderon's fame, though eclipsed for a time, has never died in
Spain. On May 25 the second centenary of this greatest poet of
Spain and, after Shakspere, of the world was celebrated, with
all the pomp and splendor that religious and patriotic feeling
could give it, in his beloved city of Madrid. This city, which
he so proudly named as first in honoring God's body, has not for-
gotten to honor his as that of a servant of God and an inspired

1 88 1.] CALDERON DE LA' BARCA. 487

singer. The cable despatches tell us that, in the church of San
Jose,

"Thousands of tapers on the catafalque pointed to an imitation white
marble tomb, on the top of which lay a cloak bearing the red cross of the
Knights of Santiago, and a canon's robes and the cap which is still worn
by the orders to which Calderon belonged. The cardinal primate, as-
sisted by seven bishops, the royal canons, the rectors of every parish in
the capital, and nearly five hundred priests with their banners, crosses, in-
cense-bearers, and choristers in surplices and full robes, assembled for Mass ;
and in the procession not only the king, infantas, and court were present,
but delegations of both houses of the Cortes, the provincial deputies, the
town council, the civil, military, and ecclesiastical authorities of the capital,
the diplomatic corps, and the grandees, judges, scientific and literary cor-
porations of Spain and of foreign countries."

What other poet has been so honored in our time ? What
other poet could secure the unanimous homage of all the
estates of a whole nation ? Shakspere has been honored, but not
like this. The representatives of the church particularly the
order to which Calderon belonged royalty, the people of all
ranks and political opinions, unite in honoring him who gave a
new world of thought not only to Castile and Leon, but to all
nations. Calderon de la Barca belongs to the world. Until a
poet greater than Shakspere arises there can be none greater
than Calderon.

HADRIAN'S ADDRESS TO HIS SOUL.

Animula, vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quag nunc abibis in loca,
Pallida, rigida, nudula,
Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos.

TRANSLATION.

Soul ! ever roving, gentle sprite,
Long this body's friend and guest,
Whither, far from ken or sight,
Pale, rigid, nude, dost now take flight ;
No more, as wont, to laugh or jest.

488 ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA [July,

ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA AND HER CONTEM-
PORARIES.

ON the 1 3th of January, 1463, the notary Oberto Foglietta, of
Genoa, registered the marriage settlements of Catherine Fiesco,
in the parish of St. Lawrence, in a house belonging to the bride's
family in the lane called " del Filo," and of Giovanni Adorno,
also of noble birth, the contracting parties being the widowed
mother of the bride and her two brothers on her behalf, and the
bridegroom alone on his, while two neighbors signed their names
as witnesses. The instrument sets forth the amount of the dowry,
a thousand pieces of silver which, reckoning by the lira, or pre-
sent franc, would come to about $250 two hundred francs of
which were given by Adorno and eight hundred by Francesca di
Negro, the bride's mother and widow of Giacomo Fiesco, who
promised four hundred in jewels, gala-dresses, and cash at once,
and the remainder in two years, at present invested in a house in
the same street where her own dowry was invested, and which
during that time she agreed to give up to the young couple as a
residence. The bridegroom, in his turn, swears to settle the
amount upon his wife, the security being a house of his own on
the street known as that of St. Agnes.

Such complicated documents are not infrequent in the city
archives of Genoa, and represent correctly the ordinary legal
machinery of marriages and their attendant circumstances. Ca-
therine Adorno, sixteen years of age at the time of her marriage,
became the well-known St. Catherine of Genoa, an extraordinary
and gifted woman, who, though visited by very wonderful signs
of supernatural origin as her contemporaries and, later on, her
canonizers agreed was for thirty years directress of the city hos-
pital, almoner and visitor of the city poor, and keeper of the ac-
counts, and would have been, with more opportunities, an excel-
lent writer, her spiritual treatises having a remarkable stamp of
individuality, being expressed in fluent, elegant, and appropriate
language and bearing much likeness to the quaint allegorical
poems of Calderon. Yet education in her time was on a low
level, that of social intercourse being the only one worth men-
tioning as an influence in mature life. Girls, whether in convents
or at home and both systems were in full operation during the
great days of the Genoese republic were taught chiefly Bible and

1 88 1.] AND HER CONTEMPORARIES. 489

church history and religious dogmas, besides elaborate needle-
work and polite demeanor. Their future was fixed almost from
their birth ; one daughter out of several was usually intended to
marry and the others to take the veil, a wedding portion being
regarded as so much money taken out of the family treasury.
Thus, without regard to the inclinations of the children, cross-
purposes were often effected, and sometimes disastrously, for
scandals would follow and family rapacity was shown up as, for
instance, in the case of Paolina Franzoni, who had been forced into
a convent by fraud as well as violence, and whose profession was
voided and annulled at Rome by the papal authorities on the
facts being represented by her advocate several years later, when
her sister, married to a Durazzo, and who had profited by Pao-
lina's loss of worldly goods, was her most strenuous adversary.
On the other hand, girls who had a true vocation, or at any rate
a decided inclination, towards conventual life, but whose beauty
or priority of age made their marriage more convenient to their
parents, were more or less forced into alliances which only their
sense of duty made bearable to them. Catherine Fiesco was a
noteworthy example of this, the more so as her husband's temper
proved both eccentric and vexatious and reacted disastrously upon
his business affairs. Before ten years of her married life were
over he had contrived to fritter away most of his own and her
money, and they were reduced to unpleasant straits ; while his fits
of jealousy were such that, to please and soothe him, she spent
the earlier years of her marriage in an unaccustomed seclusion.
Genoese customs contained a mingling of outward devotion and
actual laxity, and gave occasion to severe repressive statutes from
the Council of State and equally stringent remonstrances from
preachers, confessors, and episcopal authorities. The domestic
annals of the middle ages, on the one hand fruitful in lives of ex-
traordinary sanctity, are also distinguished on the other by per-
petual abuses of sacred things and occasions, and among the
literary productions remaining to us from mediaeval times so-
cial satires by indignant reformers, chiefly priests, form an impor-
tant part. A social sketch recently published in Italian by a
Genoese notary, * familiar with the state archives and the details
of domestic life revealed in them, gives interesting and abundant
proof that human nature was not more heroic and self-restrained
in days gone by than it is at present, although the temper of the
special people among whom Catherine Adorno spent her life was

* Marcello Staglieno, Le Donne nel? antica societa genovese. Printed by the Deaf and Dumb
Institute' Press, Genoa, 1879.

490 ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA [July,

fervid enough to explain the thoroughness with which they en-
tered upon any occupation, whether worldly or spiritual.

The little pamphlet above mentioned vividly reproduces the
background of the picture in which she forms an exceptional
and admirable feature. Outside of the circle of the really pious
and devoted women, whose number in all places and ages has
been a minority, society in mediaeval Genoa was intensely frivo-
lous, and well justified the horror which "the world " inspires
among saints of that time. Society, though it made festivals an
excuse for dissipation, never questioned the principle of festivals ;
the state gravely and effectually supported the church, but quite
as much by policy as by conviction. The half-oriental seclusion
of women found a counterpoise in the exceptional liberty allowed
under the pretexts of collecting alms or attending processions,
when marriageable girls and married women were both allowed
by custom to wear such disguises as afforded them chances for
escapades, whether innocent or otherwise. The penitential pro-
cessions known as casaccie, peculiar to Genoa, took place long
after their original character and aim were lost sight of, and the
sackcloth with holes for the eyes and mouth only, which had been
the dress consecrated to this particular occasion, became a con-
venient mask for gadding and gossiping women visiting their ac-
quaintance on the pretence of making distant " stations " at country
churches or even within the city limits. Again, the collection of
alms in church, known as bacili, became, like the similar French
custom in modern times, and like our own too frequent church-
fairs, etc., occasions for scandal and abuse ; women in rich, and
not seldom immodest, dresses, bedecked with flowers and jewelry,
sat, wand in hand, at the door of the church and solicited alms,
touching the heads and shoulders of their friends, either playfully
or gallantly, in somewhat profane imitation of the forms of bestow-
ing certain indulgences forms still kept up in St. Peter's at Rome.
The synod of 1567 forbids women under fifty to collect alms in
this fashion. Archbishops, popular preachers, and state council-
lors alike inveighed against the dress and manners of women in
church, enacting penalties and maintaining spies to report upon
the conduct of women, generally of high rank, and to guard the
young from actual dangers; ecclesiastical orders were issued
against the opening of churches before daylight or the prolonging
of ceremonies far into the night ; and some sorrowing and indig-
nant persons, at the time of a French invasion, petitioned both the
council and the archbishop to revert to the apostolical custom of
dividing the sexes in church, believing, as they did, that the

1 88 1.] AND HER CONTEMPORARIES. 491

national calamities of the war were a punishment from Heaven.
At one time there was a decree of the council, or Signoria, bid-
ding the clergy of San Siro remove the special chairs, desks, and
carpets which a Princess Doria had insisted upon keeping for
her individual use in a chapel belonging to her family, and there
was again a similar decree in the case of a Princess Orsini who
had upholstered her pew in San Francesco with velvet benches
and cushions, while unseemly quarrels of precedence often took
place between noble ladies and the wives of rich and rising citi-
zens. While the fixed seats were thus prohibited, sacristans and
others managed to elude the law by providing removable ones of
various degrees for various prices, and so arose the present cus-
tom of piling chairs for use at Mass in a corner or chapel of a
church and renting them out. Many churches, however, have
modified. the latter detail by making the chairs free; and no one
can accuse these seats of coarse straw and ill-planed wood of
luxury.

Outside of the regular ceremonies, whose frequent recurrence
gave life and animation to the female world of Genoa, there were
particular " functions," special festivals, processions, and also
private or popular devotions in house-oratories or at street-
shrines ; and for all this, for the oil or candles which supplied the
only street-lighting of the city, for the flowers and ribbons des-
tined for a favorite image, or for the money to be distributed
among certain favored poor, special collections from door to door
were made by women, or windows were adorned and balconies
turned into temporary shrines with rich hangings, fresh garlands,
and multitudinous little lamps. Youth and high spirits could not
but often turn these opportunities to worldly account ; and an
education which, restricted as it generally was to the catechism
and needlework, was supplemented by the legend-lore and super-
stitious influence of old servants not too severe on clandestine
love-affairs, resulted in a disposition to Romeo-and-Juliet love-
making. What was innocent was crushed by an artificial stan-
dard of manners, while what was disreputable was unfortunately
condoned with less severity. Public opinion was everywhere
more lenient than civil and ecclesiastical authority, which it too
often set at defiance. Such a world necessarily seemed to enthu-
siastic souls too corrupt to be reformed, while an individual re-
fuge was afforded by open renunciation of it and isolation from
its customs and concerns. Many of the convents maintained an
honorable reputation from their foundation, the Capuchin nuns
and the Tur chine being especially exemplary and never' having

492 ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA

deviated from their original strictness ; while others became
scarcely less worldly than the world itself, and needed the hand
of a St. Teresa to bring them out of the state which the Prior
Silvestro Prierio, one of the consulting theologians of the Council
of Trent, described in forcible terms. Neither was there any lack
of vulgar contentions and small, feminine spite in ancient Genoese
society, whether among nuns or lay women. Again, want of
education and of serious interests was to blame for the vehement
partisanship of women for such and such an individual or order,
in the choice of a confessor ; in one convent a dispute about the
organ resulted in a disintegration of the instrument, of which
each sister retained one pipe as a memento or trophy ; in an-
other a ludicrous assault in the garden resulted from a personal
preference for a regular over a secular spiritual adviser.

The city life of young girls was comparatively dull, excepting
such occasions for display as have been mentioned already or
the excitements of a friend's wedding, which, however, were con-
fined to visiting and gossiping among their own sex ; for un-
married girls (and such is the custom in Italy even at present)
did not 'appear at marriage festivities. Little children were
never taken beyond the walls of the house (a garden was attach-
ed to every house of any note and size) after their baptism until
the age of seven, when they were taken to church to hear Mass ;
but even grown women frequented the streets very little, and of
course never alone. The occasional infraction of this rule
which is another still practically surviving in Italy was gene-
rally the cause of deplorable incidents ; for at one time it became
a custom for young men of inferior station to use violence or
offer rude liberties in public to girls of noble birth and reputed
wealth, with a view to compromising them sufficiently to make a
marriage likely between the maiden and her rough suitor, the
object being generally not the girl but her dowry. Of more
villanous practices also, in the reversed case of an unprotected
girl of low position and a dissipated young noble, there was no
lack in a city which, like all the rest, had its hired ruffians and
complaisant go-betweens in the favor and pay of its best families.

A peculiarity of Italian marriages before the Council of Trent
was what we should call their civil character, although in inten-
tion they were legitimate religious ceremonies and were always
styled " according to the rites and custom of the Holy Roman
Church," although as a matter of fact there was seldom any
church ceremony. The betrothal and wedding were both per-
formed' in private, and generally, but not necessarily, in the pre-

1 88 ij AND HER CONTEMPORARIES. 493

sence of a notary -public, who registered them as well as the ac-
companying settlements. Sometimes an old friend of the family
took the place of a notary, and an ecclesiastic not seldom appears
on the registers in the character of this friend, his clerical capa-
city, however, being simply an accident. After the Council of
Trent this custom was changed and the ceremony with which
we are familiar substituted under pain of severe religious penal-
ties. What really served as a proof of marriage in the earlier
middle ages, in Genoa and many other Italian cities, was the
public passage of a bride to her husband's house, witnessed by
the large concourse of people usually crowding the streets. The
receipt for the dowry was also taken as legal evidence. These
bridal processions were gay and picturesque, and gave occasion
to so much display that the council, time after time, enacted
sumptuary laws limiting the number of cavaliers and servants
attending the bride, and the sum total expended in the ornamen-
tation of her saddle, harness, litter, or other trappings. In the
twelfth century her dresses even were carried in public behind
her, hung on frames or lay figures, much as our milliners now ex-
hibit their goods ; but the council deemed this an abuse- and for-
bade it, though as soon as one technical point was struck at the
ingenuity of private luxury devised another vent. The bridal
procession was known as the " traductio" and took place some-
times on the same day as the wedding, though almost as often
two or three days after. Sunday was the favorite day for mar-
riages, because a state rule allowed wedding banquets on the
three first days of the week only ; at times the dissipation conse-
quent on these suppers called forth still more repressive legisla-
tion, and the bridegroom was required to limit the number of
the friends he might ask to the feasts at his father-in-law's to
two for the first and to eight for the second. If the traductio did
not occur the same day as the marriage the bridegroom returned
alone to his own house and waited the bride's arrival, which in
other Italian and some Spanish cities, if not in Genoa itself, was
occasionally delayed by the performance of a counter ceremony
called the serraglio, consisting of a make-believe carrying off of
the bride by her relations. The savage ideal of a bridal being an
affair of force and sale survived in this odd custom long after any
significance but that of a rough game remained to it in the mind
of the people. However little reality there was in this fashion,
it still gave opportunity at times for unpleasant practical jokes or
other unseemly disturbances, and the local authorities in most
cities repeatedly put bounds to these excesses or forbade the

494 $? CATHERINE OF GENOA [July,

continuance of the custom, till at last a commutation came to oc-
cupy its place, and the bride gave a ring or other costly pledge,
which was presented by her relations next day at the bride-
groom's house, and redeemed by the groom with a sum of money
to be spent in a convivial meeting by the supposed protectors of
the bride. The morning after the bride's entrance was also
marked by the custom of a public offering of broth or cordial, car-
ried to the door of the bridal couple's room by the mother-in-law,
or some ancient female relation of the groom if his mother were
dead ; and various other requirements of etiquette marked the days
on which she received congratulatory visits, and the first day on
which she went out in state to return them. Our notion of
honeymoon privacy did not make its way to Italy until the be-
ginning of the present century, when a few rich and travelled
people began to escape from the old tedious publicity by retiring
for a week or two to their country villas, and thereby much
scandalizing the conservative members of society, who saw noth-
ing but perfection in those "good old times" which were really
rather coarse. Marriages have gradually come to be, even among
antiquated circles in Italian society, something more than " alli-
ances " not universally so, by any means, for personal experience
recalls to my mind many cases, not twenty years ago, in which
these old fashions were closely followed ; but still the principle of
love-matches is not wholly ignored, and it follows that where
there is inclination a natural desire for retirement accompanies it.
But in republican Genoa of old it would have been somewhat of
a contradiction to shut up together for a month two young
strangers, one of whom had been looking forward to her mar-
riage as the period of her comparative social emancipation. All
that the bridegroom rejoiced in having secured was a suitable
bearer and transmitter of his name, while the bride's special sub-
ject of joy was her possession of so much jewelry, lace, and gold
cloth, and the appropriate display of them to her intimates. Al-
though the people were practically less ceremonious, even their
marriages were the subject of diplomatic arrangements, and con-
tracts of great solemnity are registered concerning business and
family matters combined, though the amount of money involved
is often very small. An exceptional arrangement was one re-
corded as occurring between a smith, Domenico Deferrari, in
1488, with another smith betrothed to his daughter, in which he
promises in cash, clothes, and jewelry a dowry of four hundred
francs, but fixes the date of the marriage at four years hence, ad-
mitting his future son-in-law to his home, table, and business part-

1 88 1.] AND HER CONTEMPORARIES. 495

nership during the interval, subject to the latter forfeiting all
these advantages if he should misbehave himsell towards his
future bride, or even persuade her to a clandestine marriage.
Though exceptional, such an arrangement is explained by the fact
that, to make a marriage tolerably certain, girls of tender age
were sometimes given away on paper, and such promises, and
virtually marriages, were considered legal after the child, either
boy or girl, had attained the age of seven, though twelve was the
actual age required by the canon law for a real marriage. Such
facilities for laying hands on important estates or dowries also
explains the frequent trials, resulting in a dissolution of marriage
between the two parties, which occur in the records of Genoa.
Marriage-brokers, also, were a peculiarity of the middle ages, and
something not unlike them, though no longer legally recognized,
exists to this day. In old times it was a legitimate profession,
and poor men, both lay and ecclesiastics, kept regular registers
of marriageable youths and maidens, with personal and genealo-
gical details, and especially commercialones touching their pos-
sessions or prospects. " Fast " women, too, were not unknown
even among the jealously watched and guarded wives of the
rich ; a Princess Doria who figured somewhat disreputably in a
divorce suit in the lax times of the eighteenth century was stat-
ed in the evidence given at the trial to have ridden on horse-
back in a man's dress, attended by her male friends and admirers,
several times back and forth between her villa and the city. But
turning from mere social effervescence such as processions, sere-
nades, mattinatas (the song at dawn under a bride's window), or
the less poetical and derisive welcome of tins, pots, horns, and
mocking laughter which awaited a second marriage and still
survives in Spanish popular custom, and which in Genoa went
by the name of tenebra to the more substantial consequences of
marriage, it is curious to see how, as far back as the eleventh
century, a wife's right to a third of her husband's property was
maintained by law, whether she had children or not ; and how, in
the case of the husband's bankruptcy, her dowry was the first lien
on his estate, and might be redeemed by application to the coun-
cil before other creditors could touch anything. Also, before
her first child was born, a woman had the absolute right of will-
ing her property the only instance in which she could act by
and for herself; for in all these documents the signatures are
almost invariably those of male relations acting for their sisters,
daughters, nieces, etc. But ignorance often deprived a woman
of her few privileges, and young widows sometimes had almost a

496 ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA [July,

valid excuse for a second marriage in spite of the popular pre-
judice againsj; such unions in the rapacity of relations of their
first husband who would try to cheat her out of her share.
Dress was considered of so much importance in mediaeval times
that a provision was made by law for the widow's weeds out of
the husband's estate, and bridegrooms, as they do still in France,
presented gala-dresses to their brides. In fact, it is chiefly the
English-speaking nations who have evolved the independent ideal
of a bride who scorns to receive necessaries from a man before he
is actually her husband. A good many women, not at all given
to nonsense about woman's sphere and duties, are highly shocked
and offended at the notion of even their trousseau linen being
marked in their new name, and resent it as suggesting the idea
that " they never had any clothes worth speaking of before they
were married." Artificial scruples had less weight with the Gen-
oese women, who cared little whence came the supply of finery
which they craved. Indeed, as a rule, the parents and husband
divided the burden of supporting the bride, and her property was
duly secured on certain real estate, often house property, belong-
ing to the bridegroom.

The country or rather the autumn villeggiatura, for Italians
know nothing corresponding to what we call the country was
the chief delight of Genoese women, and especially of unmarried
girls, who were there given a dangerous liberty in foolish con-
trast to the equally dangerous repression in the city. The dnngh-
ters of the rich enjoyed dances, suppers, concerts, and gossiping
leisure in their beautiful villas, where young men had opportu-
nities, unchecked by custom, to make love. This, however, even
with the most honorable intentions, generally came to an abrupt
and disastrous ending through the pressure of the arbitrary code
of social life. But of genuine country life and its healthy pursuits
as we know them the Genoese were ignorant, as are most Ital-
ians of any position even at present. Conviviality was the amuse-
ment of the older men, gossip and gambling that of the older
women, the latter passion being strangely intense in Genoa.
Women of high rank were always the foremost, and, before the
present lottery system was invented, vied with the men in bet-
ting on public, social, or domestic events. They had fortune-tell-
ing wheels and sundry like devices, and gathered together round
tables covered with embroidered carpets of rich stuff represent-
ing numbers and combinations of figures ; in the sixteenth cen-
tury loto was introduced, and from that came the present popular
Italian lotteries which have done so much mischief. The eccle-

1 88 1.] AND HER CONTEMPORARIES. 497

siastical as well as civil laws recorded in the Genoese archives
were constantly prohibiting such abuses, and signalize the dan-
gerous consequences of betting on births in illustrious families
(this was prohibited under pain of mortal sin), and many other
details on which the gambling propensity spent itself, both among
men and women. Politics and municipal elections, as well as
domestic events, were favorite betting subjects. Again, drunk-
enness and license we are accustomed too lightly to suppose
that the former does not exist in wine-growing countries are
often mentioned in these warnings, pastorals, laws, and regula-
tions. At marriages the old Greek custom of libations, and a
symbolic participation of the same cup by the bride and groom,
was early perverted into an excuse for drinking and noise, and
repeated injunctions under pain of mortal sin were issued against
the custom by the church authorities. The use of sweetmeats
of various kinds at weddings goes at least as far back as the
later Roman times ; nuts being the sine-qua-non of Genoese mar-
riages, as cake is of ours, though at present fashion has tabooed
these as vulgar, and boxes of French sugar-plums are the correct
substitute, so that, except in country districts among the moun-
tains, the saying, " When will you send me the nuts ?" as equiva-
lent to the query, "When are you going to be married?" has
lost its meaning. At the ceremony of the taking of the veil or
the profession of a nun similar customs were kept up, and the
archbishop received certain vials of syrup and boxes of home-
made sweets and candies as part of his fees, the vicar-apostolic
and others sharing the latter. In later times the presents of can-
dies were commuted for money contributions, paid out of the-
dowry of the novice or professa.

Such was the society in which Catherine Adorno found herself
at the time of her marriage. Her early childhood had been, say
her biographers, remarkable for devotion, bodily mortification, and
obedience; her health was always delicate and precarious. Her
style she wrote several spiritual dialogues and a treatise on pur-
gatory was pure, elegant, and impassioned. St. Francis of Sales
was accustomed to read the treatise twice a year, admiring its
literary merit as well as its religious import; and Schlegel, who
translated the dialogues into German, considered them models of
style. Her life, which was that of a Sceur Rosalie transported
into mediaeval conditions, is chiefly associated in the minds of
Catholics with her work and services at the city hospital, where,
before becoming the head, she labored some years as a subordi-
nate, her husband living there with her. It is quite possible,

VOL. xxxin. 32

498 ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA [July,

though her historians do not say so, that Adorno's circumstances
were such as to make such a home desirable ; for he was both ex-
travagant, careless, and eccentric, while her executive abilities and
her peculiar tact had long been known to her large circle of friends.
The hospital was very likely an honorable retreat as well as an
important charge. St. Catherine had the care of the accounts as
well as of the patients, and kept them accurately and faithfully.
Brought up as she had been in the use of devout practices, she
experienced, nevertheless, so passionate a spiritual change some
years after her marriage that she always dated from her " con-
version" ; but this event was only the culminating-point of a long
and painful trial of mind. Her Italian biographer says that
one day toward the climax of her suspense and uneasiness
of mind, and her nervous depression at the vexations of her
husband, she went into the church of St. Benedict and prayed, in
a species of desperation, " that for three months God would keep
her sick in bed." For five years after the first years of her mar-
ried life, when she secluded herself to please her exacting hus-
band, she " sought solace for her hard life, as womem are prone to
do, in the diversions and vanities of the world, . . . external af-
fairs and feminine amusements, . . . yet not to a sinful extent
. . ." ; and in connection with this brief indication the foregoing
social details of Genoese female life are interesting. It is a plea-
sure to reconstruct in fancy the ordinary and legitimate surround-
ings of great or holy personages, and the few glimpses afforded of
St. Catherine's gatherings of friends at her own house, when she
would discourse on holy things to them ; or of her own absent-
mindedness, her trances, her extraordinary fasts while still living
with a household of her relations and receiving visits, walking in
her garden, superintending her servants, according to the domes-
tic programme of her rank, are very interesting.

After the culminating moment of her " conversion," which
was during a 'confession she was making at the suggestion of her
sister, who was a nun, she experienced a singular self-knowledge
of her smallest sins, which state lasted fourteen months, but
which she took to be in itself an intellectual expiation of those
sins, so that she tells us herself that, this satisfaction having been
made, God " relieved her of the sight of her sins so entirely that
she never beheld again the least of them." She gathered about
her a devoted knot of spiritual followers, forming a society apart,
a guild of charity and .devotion, who helped her in her outer
works, and forced her to give them advice and guidance in their
own daily life and troubles. She began her life of self-denial by

1 88 1.] AND HER CONTEMPORARIES. 499

visiting the poor of the city under the auspices of " the Ladies of
Mercy," who, according to the custom of her day, gave certain
moneys and provisions into her charge for the purpose of distri-
bution, something after the fashion of modern district-visitors or
of the members of the Brotherhood of St. Vincent of Paul. She
was deputed to cleanse the houses of the poor and to cook their
food, to tend the sick in their own homes, and to take home ragged
and filthy clothes to be cleansed, pieced, and mended by her own
hands. Spiritual teaching formed part of her duties as visitor,
and naturally she continued these ministrations when attached to
the hospital. Many years after she had been there a rector was
appointed, who became her spiritual friend and director ; but for
the greater part of her life she says that God allowed her no
special spiritual help but such as he directly gave her in internal
visitations. Her dialogues, exalting and celebrating divine love,
remind one very much of the fourth book of the Imitation. While
remaining within the church's limits" of doctrine concerning
grace and free-will, she was strangely and deeply impressed with
the natural perversity of human nature, and its helplessness un-
less assisted by God, and she repeatedly dwells upon the supe-
rior sinfulness of man as a being possessed of a double instrument
of rebellion ; " for," she says, " the devil is a spirit without a body,
while man, without the grace of God, is a devil incarnate. Man
has a free-will, ... so that he can do all the evil that he wills ; to
the devil this is impossible, . . . and when man surrenders to him
his evil will the devil employs it as the instrument of his tempta-
tion." She was as acutely distrustful of self-love as it was natu-
ral considering her intimate union with God, and, in the quaint,
direct way that characterizes mediaeval literature, she says in
one of the dialogues : " Self-love is so subtle a robber that it
commits its thefts even upon God himself, without fear or shame,
employing his goods as if they were its own, and assigning as a
reason that it cannot live without them. And this robbery is
hidden under so many veils of apparent good that it can hardly
be detected. . . ." In many of the dialogues she treats " Self " as
a separate being and a born enemy, Humanity appearing as a sort
of Caliban, hindering the soul's perfection and acting as a clog,
even when only asking for toleration of its physical needs.

Some time before his death Catherine Adorno's husband became
a member of the Third Order of St. Francis, as many pious laymen
were used to do from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century ;
but his natural impatience was far from quelled, and broke out
in excusable though vexatious bitterness during his last illness.

500 Sr. CA THERINE OF GENOA [July,

He was sick for a long" time, and bore his sufferings as most men
do ; but as his death became more and more certain his wife grew
very anxious about his salvation. She prayed incessantly for
him, and.some inner warning seemed to tell her that her prayers
were heard at least so she once hinted to one of her younger
followers in the path of holiness. Her friends firmly believed in
the omnipotence of her prayers, so much so that they went to
her as to a spiritual physician, and even strangers to her followed
their example. The story of her adoption of a young widow,
Argentina del Sale, illustrates this trait. Marco del Sale was
sick of a cancer, and became so impatient over his hopeless dis-
ease that his wife, as a last resort, went to the hospital and begged
St. Catherine to go and see him, which the latter did at once,
and marvellously calmed him by "a few humble and devout
words." Argentina then accompanied her back, and on their
way they stopped at the church of Our Lady of Grace, and there
prayed for the sick man. When the poor wife returned home
she found a great change for the better in her husband's temper ;
he felt resigned to whatever might be God's will, and was anx-
ious to see Catherine again, which was readily granted him next
day. But the saint and the sufferer alike had forebodings of the
fatal end of the disease, and Marco, telling Catherine of a vision
he believed he had had, revealing to him his approaching death,
said : "Therefore I pray you, most kind mother, that you may be
pleased to accept Argentina as your spiritual daughter, retaining
her always near you ; and I pray you, Argentina, to consent to
this." He died the eve of Ascension day, as he expected he
would, and the legend adds that " his spirit knocked at the win-
dow of his confessor's cell, crying, i Ecce Homo,' Avhich when the
confessor heard he knew that Marco had passed to his Lord."
Argentina attached herself to St. Catherine and became her con-
stant companion. A lady friend of St. Catherine, and a great
contrast to her, was Tommasa, a cousin of her own, and, like her-
self, a married woman anxious to live a more than commonly de-
vout life. She prudently gave up by degrees the ordinary and
legitimate occupations of her rank, and dedicated her many
talents to devout purposes ; but Catherine, in her superior fervor,
wondered how Tommasa could make such slow progress and
could dream of the possibility of turning back. " If I should
turn back " (by which she meant only a return to blameless and
somewhat dull occupations), " I should not only wish my eyes to be
put out, but that every kind of punishment and insult should be
inflicted upon me." Madonna Tommasa, however, wrought a

1 88 1.] AND HER CONTEMPORARIES. 501

good work in a frivolous world, and, after the death of her hus-
band, became a nun in an Observantine (Franciscan) convent,
whence, after twenty years, she was sent to another convent of
the same order, to reform it by introducing the strict observance
which she had contributed to restore in her first monastery. She
was a skilful writer, painter, and embroiderer, had exquisite and
affable manners, and, though zealous, was never either fanatical
or inconsiderate. Her prudence and discretion won her many
disciples. Among her writings were two treatises, one on the
Apocalypse and the other on Dionysius the Areopagite; her
paintings and needlework were delicate and dignified represen-
tations of holy scenes, Biblical allegories, etc. ; she illustrated
manuscripts and copied the text with great skill. In her we see
another exceptional specimen of Genoese education. Another of
Catherine's friends, an unmarried woman, who lived some years
in her house and is said by the biographer to have had " a pow-
erful intellect," was, to the belief of those about her, possessed by
the devil ; at any rate, she was subject to violent paroxysms
which lasted till her death. Catherine's presence always soothed
her, and she called the saint Serafina, from her fervent spirit
of heavenly love.

Catherine's writings partook of some of the qualities that
distinguish those of St. Thomas, and abound in pleasing di-
versities as well as literary merit, Here they sound like a
theological treatise, there like a sweet poem such as the Minne-
singers of Germany in previous centuries had composed. Of
the action of grace she says : " Grace increases in proportion
as man makes use of it. Hence it is evident that God gives man
from day to day all that he needs, no more and no less, and to
each according to his condition and capacity ; . . . because we are
so cold and neglectful, and because the instinct of the spirit is to
arrive quickly at perfection, it seems as if grace were insuffi-
cient." Poetical fancy was not wanting in St. Catherine's writ-
ings, but among similes common to most poets the following ap-
pears original : " At length that befell the soul which happens
to a bombshell when, the fire being applied to it, it explodes and
loses both fire and powder ; thus the soul, having conceived the
fire of pure, divine love, suddenly lost that which had before in-
flamed her, and, deprived of all sensibility, could never more re-
turn to it." The language of the Imitation continually occurs to
one's memory.

She constantly interchanges the personal for the abstract in
her allegorical account of the journey of the Soul, the Body, and

502 Sr. CATHERINE OF GENOA. [July,

Self-Love, which reads very like some of Calderon's poems. Oc-
casionally the Spirit, meaning the higher part of human nature,
is distinguished from the Soul, though not systematically. The
Soul and Body agree to call in Self-Love as an arbiter, so that
neither shall be wholly starved or confined, but both enjoy some
part of the delights peculiar to each. This partnership, however,
fails to work satisfactorily, and the Body, after much fasting and
subjection, breaks loose and asserts itself so as to cripple the
Soul, who sorrowfully allows it for a time to have its way, but
subsequently is allured by earthly delights and comes down to
the level of the Body. Then follows a period of sin, in which Re-
morse plays an occasional part as Mentor, but is often stifled, and
at last, after much conversation in the mediaeval style, the light of
God is restored to the Soul, who gains definitive mastery over her
companion and dismisses their common arbiter. The conceit is
entirely foreign to our notions, the nearest thing to it in later
English being some of Herbert's poetry.

St. Catherine's treatise on purgatory has some very poetical
similes, and the leading idea namely, that the soul's conscious-
ness of the requirements of divine purity is such that it volun-
tarily casts itself out of God's presence until purified is almost
identical with that of Cardinal Newman's poem on death, " The
Dream of Gerontius." A rather original simile is that of the
single loaf destined for the satisfaction of the hunger of mankind.
Purgatory is likened to the pains of the hungry man who is
detained from possession of the loaf, the sight of which alone is
supposed to appease hunger, while hell is portrayed by the de-
spair of the man who is certain that he never will possess the
mystic bread. This has a flavor of the legends of the Round
Table, and would serve well for Tennyson's pen. One thing
more is worthy of remark in St. Catherine's writings on this
subject. She warns devout persons to rely upon daily watch-
fulness against sin rather than upon the gaining of plenary indul-
gences and the precarious fact of actually possessing perfect con-
trition, for she says : " Did you know how hardly it is come by
you would tremble with fear and be more sure of losing than of
gaining it."

1 88 1.] SUMMER READING. 503

SUMMER READING.

MILTON tells us that his poetical vein never happily flowed
but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal. As kindly Nature
flatters many of us with the fancy that we are only mute, inglo-
rious Miltons, we find a point of sympathy with the . bard in our
indisposition, during the summer months, to very profound think-
ing or deep reading. This disinclination to festival study we
complacently take as the relaxing of the bent bow. We of course
are aware that the power of concentrating our thoughts is the
one and only infallible sigto of genius. We have read how St.
Thomas, following out a chain of reasoning, startled the guests
at a royal banquet, and made the dishes shiver, by bringing down
his clenched hand upon the table and crying out, after a long and
most unsociable silence : Conclusion est contra ManichcBos. Socra-
tes stood motionless in thought during a storm which drove the
hardy Greek warriors into shelter. Sir Isaac .Newton would
pass whole days en deshabille in his room, working out the mathe-
matical calculations which changed astronomy ; and his old proto-
type, Archimedes, shouted to the soldier about to slay him : " Do
not tread out my circles ! " It is comforting to think, however,
that these giants found intellectual recreation just as we do : that
St. Thomas was fond of poetry and pleasant tales, and that Socra-
tes dearly loved his joke. It is funny to think of Napoleon I. find-
ing mental delight in working out logarithms, especially as he
liked chess ; but, after all, no funnier than Cardinal Richelieu's
liking for jumping, or the pleasure which a greater man, Fran-
cisco Suarez, took in winning a game of football for his " side "
among the students of Salamanca. We must have recreation,
and mental recreation is far more necessary that that which is
only and merely physical.

What this exordium is designed to lead up to is the first-rate
summer reading which we Catholics now have in the shape of
all sorts of good novels, charming biographies, and well-written
religious books. Our young folk are really to be envied ; for
who of us that has passed even the sixth lustrum does not remem-
ber the grim Catholic literature which our fond parents put into
our hands ? Not that the dear old " governor " would not gladly
buy for the youngsters all the Catholic tales current, but the trou-
ble was that the tales were chiefly dogmatic theology under a

504 SUMMER READING. [July,

very thin disguise. As it would be heresy to make any com-
plaint about the interest of the story, especially as the governor
aforesaid professed to be delighted with it, we used to content
ourselves with the story proper and do an unconscionable amount
of skipping. The turned-down leaf at page 17 frequently bore
testimony to an heroic struggle to reach a stadium, attained at
last with the feeling of relief similar to that described so often
in Xenophon's Retreat. Not every Catholic Sunday-school in
those days had a library and we are sorry to say that few of
them have one now and our Catholic papers were mainly occu-
pied with controversy, very acceptable, no doubt, to the old folk,
but we children sighed for a larger instalment of the story.
The family Bible, we fear, was chiefly consulted for its engrav-
ings, or for determining beyond the possibility of evasion the
birthday of one of our number with a view to a feast not alto-
gether spiritual. There it stood, however, a monumental dis-
proof of the Protestant calumny that Catholics dare not read the
blessed Book.

Since " Rome or Reason" has become the thesis, absurd as it
is, the controversial literature of our youth seems somewhat an-
tiquated. The discussions of controverted points between Ca-
tholic and Protestant form, nevertheless, a very interesting por-
tion of the older Catholic library. People nowadays seldom
have the fun and the instruction we used to have in reading the
answers and rejoinders of two famous divines. The healthy and
bracing old-school polemic has given place to a sickly investiga-
tion of the origin and evolution of primitive man. Instead of the
exciting cut and slash, we have long processes of chemical ex-
periment and endless comparison of geological data. The Duke
of Argyll's essays in the current Contemporary are, no doubt, very
scientific in their analysis of the religious motive which prompts
the worship of serpents, etc. ; but both Catholic and Protestant
divines, in the old polemical days, would cordially agree in de-
nouncing the Hibbert Lectures and burying the whole school
under the Tables of the Law. The profound confidence, or
rather faith, of Catholics in the truth of their side in these discus-
sions invariably led them to publish them fully and fairly, some-
what to the chagrin of Protestants, who did not show the like
eagerness for publication, and who in time began to fight shy of
our champions, especially as the latter, like Wellington's soldiers,
did not seem to know when they were beaten. Through the
dint of the brave old controvertists the salient points of Catholic
teaching became known to wide circles. England, Hughes, and

1 88 1.] SUMMER READING. 505

Purcell brought before the American the truths of the faith just
in that form in which we have been educated; for there is noth-
ing which the American loves more dearly than a speech. Theo-
retically he admits the greater permanence of writing and its
ultimate supremacy over all spoken language, which, indeed, de-
pends for its continuance in the world upon the pen of the
scribe ; but practically the " talk's the thing." It is said that the
ablest men in Congress are those who never make a speech, and
that the best scholars in the Protestant Church are very dull in
the pulpit. At the same time it remains true for us that the
man who is keen in debate and ready in speech commands the
attention of a people who count such orators as Webster and
Choate, Clay and Calhoun. Our very primers thrill with ora-
tory in its highest sense. Of our Webster, Sydney Smith, who
lived in a splendor of English oratory second only to that of
Brinsley Sheridan and Edmund Burke, and who knew and had
heard O'Connell, said in his shrewd, humorous way : " This
American beats them all. He is a steam-engine in breeches.
For the sake of our cherished British oratory don't invite Web-
ster to make an address in the House. It would be letting the
lion into his native forests. We keep him in the drawing-room
and pat him on the head."

It was through the sound historical studies of Catholic contro-
vertists that Protestants became enlightened upon the character
of the Reformers and the consequent untenableness of their pro-
fessions to a special divine mission and call to " reform" the
church. At present many Protestants go further in their de-
nunciation of the Reformers than the most redoubtable of our
old champions. The Protestant divine is also at present non-
plussed by the vindication of the maligned character of Pope
Alexander VI. Voltaire disproves the famous old lie about his
attempt to poison the cardinals, and, as Roscoe has shown, our
idea of Lucrezia Borgia rests on nothing more solid than the
libretto of the opera. Blondel, a Calvinist divine, has torn into
tatters the fable about the Popess Joan ; and, in short, a broader
historical method and discipline has shown us the Church of
Rome in all ages as indeed the City upon the hill, and the Candle
giving light to the entire household of mankind. Like Mr.
Froude in his injudicious publication of the Carlyle Reminiscences,
leisurely scholars in Germany are yearly editing tomes about the
Reformation which Protestantism would willingly let die. Those
indefatigable antiquaries that abound in England and belong to
wealthy literary societies are publishing monastic records which

506 SUMMER READING. [July,

quite dissipate the century-credited lies about the corruptions of
the religious orders. Your genuine antiquary is frightfully
touchy about the accuracy of his facts and figures, and he is just
about the last man in the world to get into a dispute with upon
his special themes. He smiles contemptuously at Scott's and
Dickens' attempt to identify his noble study with the associa-
tions suggested by Ochiltree or Bill Stubbs, especially in our
day, when his library resembles a chemist's laboratory, and when
palimpsests and varnished and bedaubed " old masters " are sub-
mitted to his scientific manipulation with unquestioning confi-
dence. He indulges in a loud guffaw when he detects the clumsy
interpolation in a monastic chronicle or register of a passage by
one of Henry VIII. 's troopers. One by one the Protestant lights
are going out. If you deny Luther's statement about his confer-
ence with the devil (and there was precious little hallucination or
mental unsoundness about Martin), you will be favored with a
dozen incontrovertible books on the subject, and very likely you
will receive several long letters from German-European librarians,
written in that perplexing script and the smallest of -characters,
and containing extracts from original documents. If you quote
Llorente's Spanish Inquisition as an authority upon the " unnum-
bered victims," you will be confounded with a letter from another
librarian, couched in the most exalted terms of respect, but giv-
ing you plainly to understand that, while kissing your hands,
your correspondent proves that as an authority Llorente of
himself most miserable shipwreck has made, as the attested docu-
ments cited (four pages of Spanish abbreviated text) will abund-
antly convince you. Although we have many Protestant divines
with a Pangloss string of D.D.s and LL.D.s after their names
(the colored ministry in particular delighting in these mystic let-
ters), it is singular that but few of them are known to the scholars
of Europe, notwithstanding vigorous advertisements, for a quota-
tion from them does not appear to carry much weight. But
then they are known at home, unlike Ueberweg, who was famous
throughout both continents, while his landlord knew him only as
a student with more books than clothes.

We confess to a kindly regard and affection for the old con-
troversial books, even if the polemical ground in our day has
somewhat shifted. Eventually we shall return to the ancient bat-
tle-field, for we think the present scientism is only a scare.
There is a vast deal of solid learning in such books as Bishop
Trevern's Amicable Discussion, in Hughes and Breckinridge 1 s Discus-
sion now, we believe, out of print and in fact in hoc genere omni.

1 88 1.] SUMMER READING. 507

The trained search for leading principles which so distinctively
marks Catholic theology stimulates and refreshes the mind, and
we think that just such books would make better summer reading
than half the novels and three-fourths of the poetry which seem
to be derigueur at.summer resorts. Besides, Catholics are sure of
meeting many Protestant friends at these places, and perhaps of
deepening friendships and acquaintances which always require
the leisure and intercourse that only the vacation may afford. It
is a real pleasure to listen to an intelligent gentleman or a lady
simply and unheatedly explaining a doctrine or a practice of Ca-
tholicity. Religion in our, land comes in for a large share of dis-
cussion, and the helpless dependence of Protestants upon mere
human authority what this minister says, or that seems to make
them long for the complete order and synthesis of Catholic doc-
trinal authority. They quickly see the beauty of the Ecclesia
Docens and the Ecclesia Discens.

It may sound ungracious, but it is true, that many people at
the summer resorts take to religious theorizing and discussion al-
most as a novelty. Most of the year business men are too busy
to give much heed to religion, for their spare time is taken up
with our everlasting politics. The only way for them to escape
this double pressure, at least for a season, is a run to a watering-
place, where they promise themselves a chance to do a little read-
ing while relaxing. They quickly see that reading in some form
is absolutely necessary to " pull through " the day. Billiards at
ninety-four degrees lose all attractions. One cannot bathe all
day, and Saratoga water becomes mighty insipid. If you have
been once in the Cave of the Winds at Niagara you will never
enter it again, except under violent protest ; and if people see you
clambering up the White Mountains they may say that you are
an advertisement-painter for a medical firm. You become tired
f reading the local journal with its long lists of arrivals, and think
it would be just as well to read a few pages in the New York
Directory. You don't know any of the " arrivals " ; and as for
oing out to see distinguished visitors, you remember the summer
ou nearly got trampled to death while waiting at the depot for
the arrival of Major-General Smashem, who after all didn't come
on that train. You stroll to the newspaper- stand and see the dis-
mal array of tiresome old novels, joke-books, and flame -backed
society sketches and poetry. Your doctor has warned you not
to read the " unleaded " cheap library-books with their triple
columns and what a printer would call their generally " pi " ap-
pearance ; for you know you'd rather wear old Grimes' coat than

5o8 SUMMER READING. [July,

prematurely put on spectacles. Besides, the only refuge from the
mosquito at night, when he has compelled you to rise after heroic
struggles, is to sit down and read a procedure which infuriates
your insect enemy and lures him to destruction. Take the ad-
vice of a friend and stuff a few Catholic books into your trunk or
valise ; for if you have not done much reading in the religious
line you will make a grand discovery. Lamb envied the man
who had never read Shakspere, because of the pleasure in store
for him. That apparently gloomy old book, Father Nierenberg's
Temporal and Eternal, is simply delightful. History, romance,
tale, humor, exquisite allegory, and above all supreme truth
abound throughout its pages, and the very quaintness of the
English translation gives it a piquancy and a charm most relished
by those who are doomed to read the English of daily editorials.
And as for Father Faber's books, any young lady will tell you
that in point of interest and of style no novel can touch them.
Try as a Catholic to inform yourself, by way of recreation if you
like, in regard to the church in your own country. Take, for in-
stance, Bayley's Life of Bishop Brute* and his History of the
Church in New York, Shea's Catholic Missions and his Church
History, Spalding's Life of Archbishop Spalding, or other similar
books.

How often of an evening upon the porch a Protestant gentle-
man, in our days of much-wandering Ulysses, delights attentive
listeners with a description of trips to Europe and even Asia !
Hardly one you meet has not been in Rome, and, with American
polite insistance, has not seen the Holy Father. These men can
meet you on a broader plane than their Sabbath-school training.
We once formed one of a group around a fine old American
farmer who had visited Rome, and his words suggested to every
one present something of our reading or seeing. The good man
knew little about art or architecture, except as these glorious forms
impress every human spirit as created and, at least ex quadam
convenientia, destined to the vision of the Infinite Beauty. " Most
other churches," said he, expressing a conception as sublime in
its way as Byron's, " seemed to me dark and gloomy ; but when
I got into St. Peter's I felt like shouting, * Glory hallelujah ! ' My
poor wife cried like a baby, and said : ' John, if we ever get into
heaven it will be something like this.' "

It is in the nature of things that we cannot talk incessantly
about our neighbors, not even maliciously which God forbid !
and a day comes when we view with glowering rage the man
who asks us if it is hot enough for us. The pleasure of yachting

1 88 1.] AMONG THE MOORS. 509

is threatened with extinction, as ladies will persist in getting
aboard, screaming at every billow, jumping up at every lurch,
and keeping everybody in a state of nervous excitement, until,
disgusted, your true yachter insists upon putting back to shore.
You cannot pace the beach with any poetical feeling without
meeting the man who knew your grandfather, but is otherwise
at sea regarding the family into which your brother married. If
you are at a country house, and pick up a farmer's book on the
horse say Youatt's, for example and express a desire to see the
stables, you will come off safely with a broad grin of contempt
from the farmer's boy, who sees "city chap" written all over
you ; and you will groan in spirit over a few old almanacs or a
stray " reading-book." Away from the city you will resent the
intrusion of the newspapers as so many couriers sent to fetch
you back. In your ennui you will fiercely buy all the papers and
find them all stupid. You will envy your amiable wife her pla-
cidity, for she at least can spend some time in dressing, and those
long conversations with her feminine friends, from which you
escape, appear to be interesting. Again, experto crcde, and steady
the Saratoga trunk with books and magazines which can be read
when, the mountains grow monotonous and old Ocean is more
than usually sad.

AMONG THE MOORS.*

IN the early years of the last century Count Bourke, of an
Irish family, was ambassador extraordinary from the king of
Spain to the Swedish court. In 1719 he was at Madrid, and his
wife, Countess Bourke, daughter of the Marquis de Varennes,
lieutenant-general of the king's armies and governor of Bouchain,
resolved to join him there. She therefore procured a pass-
port for herself and all her family, with the exception of a boy,
three or four years old, whom she left with her mother, the Mar-
quise de Varennes.

At Avignon she was met by her brother, a naval officer, who
accompanied her as far as Montpellier. Here a change took
place in her plans : she was dissuaded from undertaking the jour-

* Translated from a book published at Paris in 1721, entitled Voyage pour la Redemption des
Captifs, aux Royaumes d'Alger et de Turn's, fait en 1720. Par les PP. Francois Coraelin,
Philemon de la Motte, et Joseph Bernard, de 1'Ordre de la Sainte Trinite, dits Mathurins.

5io AMONG THE MOORS. [July,

ney by land, as it would have obliged her to pass through the
French and Spanish armies. Marshal Berwick had indeed pro-
mised her his protection as far as the Spanish frontier, and his
son, the Marquis of Berwick, had offered to give her escort
from the frontier to Girone, where he was in command of the
troops of his Catholic Majesty ; but her fear of the armies, and
the fact that she had already made several voyages, unfortunate-
ly induced her to accept the advice of her friends, who considered
that the safest, shortest, and least expensive course would be to
go by sea from Cette to Barcelona, and thence proceed to Ma-
drid. The voyage from Cette to Barcelona was expected to take
twenty-four hours.

Countess Bourke, therefore, got her passport changed and went
to Cette. Many French vessels were in the harbor, but all had
already their cargoes on board, and not one was destined for any
Spanish port ; she was therefore obliged to charter a Genoese
tartan which was ready to set sail for Barcelona.

The countess' party consisted of a son and daughter, aged
respectively eight and nearly ten years, Father Bourke, a waiting-
maid from Valence in Dauphine, a governess for the children, a
young girl whom she had taken in charity from the nuns of Ville-
franche near Lyons, a fourth maid from Strassburg, a maitre d' ho-
tel, and a footman. She sent on board her effects, amongst which
were some costly plate, a portrait of the king of Spain set in a
hand of massive gold and ornamented with diamonds, three
beautiful chalices, rich altar vestments, and six sets of court
dresses. The valuables were contained in seventeen bales or
sealed cases.

The tartan set sail on the 22d of October, 1719, and on the
2$th at daybreak an Algerian corsair with fourteen guns was
seen seaward about two leagues from the tartan, which was
then opposite to and within sight of the coast of Palamos. The
captain of the corsair sent his long-boat with twenty armed
Turks to take possession of the tartan. The Turks fired seven
or eight times, but no one was wounded, the crew having hidden
themselves or lain down flat on their faces. The Turks boarded
the tartan, sword in hand. One of them struck a servant of
Countess Bourke's twice with his sword ; they then went to the
poop-cabin, where the lady was, posted four sentinels there, and
brought the tartan to the corsair vessel. On their way the Turks
pillaged right and left. They found some hams, which they
threw into the sea ; the pies were not treated in the same way, for
they devoured them greedily, only throwing overboard what lit-

1 88 1.] AMONG THE MOORS. 511

tie they left ; they drank the wine and brandy as freely as they
ate the provisions.

All the Genoese crew were compelled to go on board the
corsair and were at once put in chains. The corsair captain
boarded the tartan, went to Mme. Bourke's cabin, asked her who
she was, what was her nation, whence she came, and whither she
was going. She replied that she was French and was travelling
from France to Spain. He asked for her passport, which she
showed him, keeping it in her own hands for fear the barbarians
should tear it ; on the corsair's assurance that he would restore
it when he had examined it she let him have it. He read it with
his interpreter and gave it back, saying that it was good and that
she had nothing to fear for herself, her suite, or her property.
She represented to him that, as she was free in virtue of her pass-
port and by birth, he might send her in his long-boat to the Span-
ish shore, which was near at hand ; that such respect was due to
the French passport ; that by acting thus he would spare her from
much fatigue and her husband from mortal anxiety ; that if he
rendered her this service she would know how to repay it when
the opportunity should arise. He replied that, being a renegade,
he could not do what she wished ; that his head was at stake ; that
the dey of Algiers would easily imagine that under pretext of the
French passport he had taken ransom for a family inimical to his
state and restored them to a Christian land ; that it was absolutely
necessary that she should follow him to Algiers and be presented
with her passport to the dey, after which she should be handed
over to the keeping of the French consul, who would have her
conveyed to Spain by whatever means he and she might think
fit ; that he gave her the option of coming on board his vessel or
remaining in the tartan, where she would be quieter and more
at liberty, as he had with him nearly two hundred Turks or
Moors, who were not fit associates for her and .the women who
accompanied her. Mme. de Bourke agreed to remain in the
tartan, and the captain put seven Turks or Moors to manage
the vessel, which he fastened to his own so as to tow it. He took
from the tartan three anchors, and all the provisions excepting
those which belonged to Mme. de Bourke, and the corsair then
steered for Algiers. Mme. de Bourke gave her watch to the cap-
tain, and another watch, with four gold louis, to the Turkish
commandant of the tartan. On the 28th and the two following
days there was a furious tempest, during which the towing-cable
was broken and the tartan was separated from the other vessel.
Its compass had been destroyed in the fury of the attack. The

5i2 AMONG THE MOORS. [July,

commandant and the other Turks were very ignorant of the art
of navigation, for the corsair had not sent his best sailors on
board ; they therefore gave themselves up to the will of the winds
and of the sea. The tartan, however, was driven safely to
shore on the ist of November, in a gulf called Colo, east of
Gigery, on the coast of Barbary. The anchor was cast, and the
commandant, who did not know the coast, sent two Moors-to
swim ashore and find out from the natives where they were.

The Moors of the neighborhood had seen the tartan and
came in great numbers to the shore to oppose a landing, believing
that she was a Christian vessel come to carry them or their cattle
away ; but they were undeceived by these Moors, who told them
that she was a prize taken from the Christians, and that a great
French princess was on board and was being conveyed to Al-
giers. One of the two Moors remained on shore while the other
swam back to fulfil his commission, and informed the command-
ant of the name of the place where he had anchored, and of the
distance from Algiers, near which town, it was evident from the
direction of the wind prevalent for some days, they must have
passed. These tidings made the commandant anxious to go there
and rejoin his corsair ; so, without even taking time to weigh
anchor, he cut the cable and set sail, without anchor, ship's boat,
or compass. About half a league from the gulf he paid dearly for
his imprudence, meeting a contrary wind, against which he could
not make way, and being driven back towards the shore. He
wished to take to the oars, but the weakness of the crew made
them useless, and, spite of all his efforts, the tartan struck on a
rock and was shattered ; the poop was immediately under water,
and Mme. de Bourke, who was praying in the cabin, was drowned,
together with her son and her maids. Those who were at the
prow, and amongst them Father Bourke, Sir Arthur, an Irishman,
the maitre d hotel, one of the maids, and the footman, clung to
the remains of the ship which were on the rock. Sir Arthur, see-
ing something in the water struggling with the waves, went in
and found that it was Mile, de Bourke; caught hold of her and
saved her, and, handing her to the maitre d'hdtel, charged him to
take care of her, adding that as for himself he would cast himself
into the sea, being the only one of the party who could swim. It
had been better for him if he had not trusted to his skill, for from
that moment he was seen no more. The priest was the first to
get down from the fragments of the tartan to the rock on which
she had struck ; he held on for some time by his knife, which he
had stuck in a crevice of the rock, but he was often covered by

1 88 1.] AMONG THE MOORS. 513

the waves, and ultimately cast on a dry rock separated from the
shore by a small arm of the sea. He endeavored to seize a plank
which was near him, but it was carried away, and at length by
means of an oar he reached the land.

The Moors who were there seized him, stripped him, cutting
away his garments even to his shirt, and otherwise ill-treated him.
A great many of them went into the sea, hoping to find rich spoil ;
the maitre d'hotel, who had Mile, de Bourke in his arms, beck-
oned to two of these barbarians, who approached, and when they
were about four steps off he threw her to them with all his
strength ; they received her, and, taking her one by the hand and
the other by the foot, they brought her to shore, where they
took off one shoe and one stocking in token of servitude. The
maitre d'hotel, from whom I learned all details of this tragic
event, told me that while still in his arms, seeing the barbarians
coming, she said with an air beyond her years : " I am not afraid
that those people will kill me, but I dread lest they should make
me change my religion. However, I will suffer death rather than
fail to keep what I have promised to God." He confirmed her
in this generous sentiment, assuring her that he was of the same
purpose, and she earnestly exhorted him to hold fast.

The maid and the footman both threw themselves into the sea
and were taken by the Moors, who brought them to the shore
and stripped them. The maitre d' hot el was the last to trust
himself to the waves, and used a rope to get from rock to rock ;
before he could land a Moor met him and took everything from
him.

In this pitiful plight the captives were at first taken to the
cabins on the neighboring mountain. The Moors drove them
with blows along difficult and rugged paths which cut their feet ;
the maid was worst off, having wounded herself in several places
on the rocks and being almost covered with blood. They had
each a bundle of wet garments, and by turns they carried the
young lady. Half-dead they reached the mountain, and here
they were received by the shouts of the Moors and the cries of
their children. Numerous dogs, excited by the tumult, joined it
y barking ; one of them bit the footman's leg badly and another
ok a piece out of the maid's thigh.

A division was now made ; the maid and the footman were
iven to one man, Providence permitting that Mile, de Bourke
hould remain with the abb6 and the maitre d' hotel under the
same master. He began by giving to each a bad cloak covered
with vermin ; and, after their fatigues, their only food was a very

VOL. xxxiii. 33

514 AMONG THE MOORS. [July,

small piece of bread, made of buckwheat, kneaded without leaven,
and baked under the ashes, and a little water ; their resting-place
was the bare ground. The maitre d' hotel, seeing that the child
was benumbed with cold from her soaking garments, got a fire
lighted with some difficulty and wrung them out before it ; so in
half-dried clothing she spent the first night with great discomfort
and many alarms.

In this place there were about fifty inhabitants, living in five
or six cabins made of reeds and branches of trees men, wo-
men, children, and cattle of all sorts together. The barbarians
assembled in the cabin where were the three captives, and
held a council as to their fate. Some voted for their death,
believing that they would secure an entrance into Mohammed's
Paradise by the sacrifice of these Christians ; others from in-
terested motives opposed this idea, hoping to obtain a great
ransom, and the assembly broke up without coming to a de-
cision. The next day they summoned many Moors from the
vicinity and threatened the captives, some showing them fire and
making signs that they would burn them alive, others drawing
their swords as if they would behead them ; one seized Mile, de
Bourke by the hair and held his sword to her throat ; others
loaded their guns in their presence and pointed them at them.
The maitre d' hotel made them understand by signs that he and
the other captives would deem it a great happiness to die for
their religion, while the loss would fall on their captors, who
would get no ransom for them. The most ardent were a little
softened, but the women and children redoubled their insults. A
strict watch was kept lest the Christians should attempt to es-
cape or should be forcibly carried off ; and, in fact, some days after
the bey of Constantine desired the Moors to send them to him,
unless they wished him to come and take them. The Moors re-
plied that they did not fear him or his camp, not even if he was
leagued with that of Algiers. This tribe does not acknowledge
the authority of Algiers, though living in that kingdom and na-
turally among its subjects. They are independent and bear the
name of Cabails, which means men of cabal* or rebels ; in the
mountains of Coucou they find an impregnable rampart against
the Algerian forces. Such was the state of our poor victims,
worn out with fatigue, without rest or food, bereft of all human
aid, in the hands of barbarians who were so full of hatred that
fire flashed from their eyes when they spoke to them, and the
white, which is so remarkable in the eyes of Moors and blacks,

* Of course this etymology of Cabail or Kabyle will not stand in our day. ED. C. W.

1 88 1.] AMONG THE MOORS. 515

was no more to be seen. The maid and the other servant were
suffering equal hardships in the same village, and were without the
consolation of seeing their mistress or hearing any tidings of her.

These dreadful hardships, which they had to bear without any
consolation, save that which they found in their religion, seemed
little compared to the fearful spectacle which met their eyes.
The Moors, not satisfied with the possession of the Christian cap-
tives, wished also to seize the treasures which the sea had swal-
lowed and which they believed to be of value. These hardy
mountaineers are also good divers, and they soon recovered the
bales and chests which had been lost, as well as the dead bodies ;
they made the maitre d' hotel and the footman accompany them
to the sea-shore, in order to help to carry back to the mountain
whatever spoils they could save. Drawing the corpses to shore,
they took their clothing and cut Mme. de Bourke's fingers to get
off her rings ; for this purpose they used sharp stones, fearing to
profane their knives by the touch of a Christian body.

The sight of the dead bodies of those so dear to them thus ex-
posed to the effects of the weather, the attacks of wild beasts,
and the horrible insults of the Moors, who amused themselves by
throwing stones at them, was one calculated to fill our captives
with grief and dismay. The mattre d'Jidtel endeavored to represent
to them as best he could amidst his consternation that their con-
duct was an outrage on humanity, and that at least they might
allow the dead to be buried ; but the barbarians told him they
did not bury dogs. One of the Moors, having laden the footman
with a bale of goods, wished to make him take the shortest way,
passing close to the bodies ; but it was impossible to induce the
poor man to do so, and, rather than look on a sight so full of
misery, he climbed the steep rock.

The maitre d" hotel returned sorrowfully to the mountain, not
venturing to tell Mile, de Bourke of what he had seen.

The Moors divided the spoil. The richest stuffs were cut in
pieces and given to the children to ornament their heads, the
plate was sold by auction, and the three chalices, of which one
alone was worth at least four hundred livres, were sold together
for less than five livres ; being tarnished by the sea- water, they
were supposed to be of copper and of little value. The books
were deemed useless, and were therefore ceded to the maitre
akotelzud. the footman, who had been compelled to help in carry-
ing the burdens ; the maitre d'hdtel also recovered his writing-
case, which, as we shall see, proved of great service.

During the three weeks spent in this place Mile, de Bourke

518 AMONG THE MOORS. [July,

profound respect for their marabouts ; they fear them more than
any other power ; their malediction is more dreaded than the men-
aces of Algerian force ; and the poor ask alms not in the name of
God, but in that of the marabout. The marabout summoned the
commander of the mountains and the chiefs of the cabins of the
village ; he told them that his object in coming was to claim five
French people who had escaped from shipwreck ; that France
being at peace with all the kingdom of Algiers, they ought not,
against the faith of treaties, to detain these French subjects, who
had suffered enough in losing their family and their goods, with-
.out also being deprived of life and liberty ; that, although the
Moors were not subject to the authority of Algiers, they never-
theless enjoyed the advantage of peace with France, and that
they would commit an act of great injustice if they did not re-
lease them, having gained enough by the rich spoils they had
taken. The Moors did their best to defend themselves by bad
reasons, and while these arguments were going on our captives
gradually lost the joy they had felt in the prospect of immediate
deliverance. Trouble followed the momentary consolation ; but
what was their consternation when the interpreter informed them
that the Moors, in submission to the authority and reasoning of
the marabout, consented to restore the abbe and the servants to
liberty, but that the sheik, or commandant, insisted on keeping
the young lady, saying that he meant her to be the wife of his
son, who was fourteen years old ; that he was not unworthy of
her, and that even if she were the daughter of the king of France
the son of the king of the mountains was quite her equal. This
new incident was more grievous than all that had passed ; captiv-
ity seemed less cruel than the necessity of leaving their young
lady unprotected in such hands.

Sad was their position and great the alarm of Mile, de Bourke
while the sheik remained inflexible ; but at length the marabout
having drawn him aside, put some gold-pieces in his hand and
promised him a greater quantity, he became more tractable. It
was agreed that the sum of nine hundred piastres should be paid
at once as a ransom for the five captives ; and the marabout, leav-
ing a Turk as hostage, together with several jewels belonging to
his wives, took the whole party with him. They took their way
towards Bougiah, halting in the cabins of the Moors when they
could meet with them. Amongst other places they lodged in the
dwelling of an old Moorish woman, who was most indignant that
the barbarians had not put these Christians to death, saying that
they were fools not to have sacrificed them to Mohammed, inas-

1 88 1.] AMONG THE MOORS. 519

much as they could thus have gained his Paradise ; she went on,
in her fury, to affirm that if such a chance had happened in her
village, and these Christians had been in her power, they should
not have escaped, and that if her husband would not have killed
them she would have cut their throats with her own hands.
While in this rage the old woman was preparing couscoussou to
regale the marabouts, but in so dirty a manner that the very
sight of it was enough to cure the most urgent hunger and to
disgust the least fastidious taste.

At Bougiah, where the captives arrived on the Qth of Decem-
ber, shirts were given to them to wear under their cloaks ; for
the garments which had been bought and sent to them by the
ambassador had served as presents to induce their captors to give
them liberty. On the evening of the loth they were taken on
board the vessel, which brought them to Algiers at daybreak on
the 1 3th.

The captain of M. Dusault's ship having caused a cannon to
be fired, the tartan replied by four guns, thus announcing their
arrival, which was most anxiously expected. The ship's boat was
sent to convey them to land, and the consul and all the principal
people of their nation met them and accompanied them from the
port to the ambassador's hotel, which was crowded with Chris-
tians, and Turks, and even Jews. The ambassador received the
young lady at the entrance of the court, and, taking her by the
hand, led her to the chapel, where she heard Mass, and when it
was ended we sang a Te Deum as a thanksgiving for this happy
deliverance.

Those present could hardly refrain from tears ; the Turks
even and the Jews seemed touched. This child, who was not yet
ten years old, after having passed through all the miseries and
alarms which we have related, had yet a certain air of nobility
and of good breeding. She bore the impress of that constant
soul which had been proved in her misfortunes. Her servants
told me that she was the first to encourage them ; that she often
exhorted them to die rather than be unfaithful to God. Like
young Tobias in his captivity, she gave them lessons of salvation ;
and like him she abhorred not only the abominations of the un-
believers, but even the least things which savored of supersti-
tion. Many attempts were made to anoint her head with oil,
after the custom of the Moors, who are in the habit of doing this
to their children. But whatever force was used, she would never
permit it, fearing lest it might be some practice of the law of
Mohammed.

520 THE MINSTREL'S CURSE. U ul y>

After a little repose the first thing to be thought of was the
fulfilment of the engagement by which her liberty had been ob-
tained. We gladly took the nine hundred piastres from our cof-
fers, and they were immediately sent to the Jews to be whitened
according to the taste of the Moors of the mountains. M. Dusault
added presents for the grand marabout and the others who had
done such good service. These were sent by a Moor who had
come from the marabout and was only waiting for an opportu-
nity to return to Bougiah.

Mile, de Bourke and the waiting-maid returned to France
early in 1720 with M. Dusault, the ambassador.

The abb6 and the two men, with P. Phil6mon and P. Come-
lin, and about sixty other captives, left Algiers on the 4th of
January, 1720, were obliged to put back till the I5th, and finally,
after many and great perils, reached Marseilles on the 2Oth of
March. Their journey through France to Rouen, where the
order had a house, was a triumphal procession. Everywhere
they were received with rejoicing, bells were rung, processions
were formed, solemn functions took place in the churches, and
presents were heaped on the ransomed captives.

THE MINSTREL'S CURSE.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND.)

THERE stood, in days long vanished, a castle high and grand ;
Low glanced it down to the ocean, wide looked it over the land ;
Around about it circled bright beds of fragrant flowers,
Amidst them sprang fresh fountains in sparkling rainbow showers.

There dwelt a haughty monarch by wealth and conquest known ;
Gloomy, with pallid visage, he sat upon his throne,
For all his thoughts were Terror, Fear trembled where he stood,
And what he spake was Fortune, and what he wrote was Blood.

1 88 1.] THE MINSTREL'S CURSE. 521

Once journeyed to this castle a noble minstrel pair,
One with bright golden ringlets, and one with thin gray hair ;
The old man, harp on shoulder, did gallant steed bestride,
The while his youthful comrade walked briskly by his side.

Spake the graybeard to the stripling : " Now valiant be my son ;
Think of our fondest ballads, sing in thy sweetest tone
Of love, and joy, and sorrow, with all thy wondrous art ;
Be ours to-day to soften the monarch's stony heart."

Now stand the twain together in the lofty audience-hall,
The king and queen in grandeur enthroned above all
The king in fearful splendor, like the bloody Northern light ;
The lady mild and gentle, and as the full moon bright*

The old man sweeps the harp-strings so grandly and so, well

That richer, ever richer upon the ear they swell ;

Then bursts with heavenly clearness the young voice from its

thrall :
A distant spirit-chorus it seems to rise and fall.

They sing of love and spring-time, of happy, buoyant youth,
Of freedom, manly valor, of holiness and truth ;
They sing of every sweetness that stirs in human breast ;
They sing of all ambitions by human heart confessed.

Forget their scorn and mocking the circling courtiers round ;
The monarch's fiercest warrior bends, humbled, to the ground ;
The queen, her soul dissolving, half sadly, half in joy,
Takes the rose that decks her bosom and gives it to the boy.

" Ye have bewitched my people ; my wife enthrall ye now ? "
Shouts the proud monarch, rising with dark and angry brow.
He draws his sword ; it glistens with treacherous, deadly gleam,
And from the singer's bosom bursts forth a crimson stream.

As if by storm-winds scattered flee all the courtier swarm.
The smitten youth has fallen ufjon the graybeard's arm ;
He wraps his cloak about him, fast binds him to his horse,
Then turns to leave the castle with harp and bleeding corse.

J.11C

522 THE MINSTREL' s CURSE. [July,

Before the lofty portal he halts, that minstrel old,

And takes his harp so priceless, more precious far than gold ;

Against a marble column he shatters it in twain,

Then cries, while hall and garden re-echo him again :

" Woe to thee, mighty castle ! May never harp or song
Ring with melodious sweetness thy blighted walls among
Naught but despair and sorrow, and desolate decay.
Thou art to grief and ruin by vengeance doomed to-day.

" Bright gardens sweetly blooming in the May-light, woe to thee !
Unto that desolation shalt thou a witness be ;
Beholding, may r st thou wither, thy fountains all run dry,
And so, in days to follow, uncared for, fade and die.

" Woe to thee, cruel murderer, accursed of minstrelsy !
Thy strife for bloody wreaths of fame be all in vain for thee ;
Thy very name forgotten, the cry of thy despair
Be, like a dying heart-groan, lost on the empty air."

The gray-haired man has spoken- the heavens have heard his

woe :

The mighty halls are ruins, the walls are lying low,
Only one lofty column to tell of grandeur past
One shaft, half-broken, tottering, headlong to fall at last

And lies within that garden a waste and desert land ;
No tree its shade dispenses, no fountains pierce the sand.
The monarch's name has vanished ; song, legend know it not.
The minstrel's curse has fallen : " unhonored and forgot."

1 88 i.l INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 523

THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE CANON AND
INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

THE writer of this article proposes to make a brief and simple
statement of the dogma of Catholic faith and the interpretation
of the same which is given by approved theologians, for the in-
formation of Catholic readers. The peculiar and general interest
just now felt in the Bible, its several parts, the genuineness,
authority, correct text and translation of the sacred books,
although originating with and principally affecting Protestants,
necessarily must attract the attention of Catholics, and excite in
their minds a curiosity and desire for information respecting the
doctrine of the church which the most of them have not previ-
ously felt. They have the advantage of possessing a sure rule
of their belief in regard to all which is of practical importance.
Their immediate and infallible rule of faith is the teaching of the
church, which is easily ascertained. The sense and meaning of
the terms used in the definitions of faith can be learned from the
exposition given by competent authorities in a secure and satis-
factory manner, precisely as in questions of law or science, and
without much trouble. Those who have the capacity and desire
for more extensive and minute information, concerning those
matters which are outside the circle of faith, can do the same
that is done in the instance of any other branch of human know-
ledge : read and reflect upon the books of the learned and wise.
For a further explanation of the distinction between matters
strictly of divine and Catholic faith, and those which fall under
another category, although certain or probable by authority or
reasonable proof, the reader is referred to two articles on " The
Genesis of Faith," in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for January and
February, 1881.

To begin, now, with the statement of what the dogma of
faith is, concerning the Canon of Scripture and its inspiration, it
may suffice to cite the last solemn definition of the church, that
of the (Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. This definition clearly
and distinctly sums up the doctrine revealed by God through
the apostles and by them delivered to the church, and all the
preceding teaching and definitions of the church from the times
of the apostles, whether by her ordinary magisterial teaching,
the decisions of Popes, or those of General Councils.

524 THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE CANON [July,

In respect to the Canon and the Inspiration of Holy Scrip-
ture, the definition of the council is contained in the Fourth
Canon of the Second Chapter of the Dogmatic Decree on Catho-
lic Faith :

" If any one shall refuse to receive for sacred and canonical the
books of Holy Scripture in their integrity, with all their parts, ac-
cording as they were enumerated by the Holy Council of Trent ;

" Or shall deny that they are inspired by God ; let him be
anathema." *

In the Declaration which precedes the Canons, the council
teaches that " the church does hold them as sacred and canonical,
not for the reason that they have been compiled by human in-
dustry alone, and afterward approved by her authority ; nor only
because they contain revelation without error, but because, hav-
ing been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they
have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to
the church herself." f The enumeration of the canonical books
is found in every copy of the English Version commonly called
The Douay Bible. We need not speak further on this point, since
it is so clear that it requires no explanation.

There are two other points which do require some further
explanation, in order to make the meaning of the council clear ;
first, what is intended by the term " inspiration," and, second,
what is intended by the phrase " in their integrity, with all their
parts."

In regard to the first point, the council very explicitly de-
clares what it means^ negatively, that is, by condemning and re-
jecting certain loose explanations of inspiration which have been
before now advanced by particular authors. It is not enough to
consider any canonical book to be sacred and inspired because,
although a merely human work in itself, the church has approved
it, or because it contains in it an unerring statement or record of
revealed truths. This very Dogmatic Decree was drawn up by
human industry and approved by the church, and it contains un-
erring statements of revealed truths. It is not, however, reckoned
among the inspired documents of the sacred Canon. The same is
true of the Creeds, and of all dogmatic decrees of Popes and QEcu-
menical Councils. Inspiration must, therefore, denote something
more than actual freedom from error or infallibility. It is some-
thing which justifies and verifies the affirmation that God is the

* Bishop Lynch's translation, THE CATHOLIC WORLD, September, 1870, and in The Vicar
of Christ, by Father Preston, p. 399,
f Ibid. pp. 389, 390.

1 88 1.] AND INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 525

author of every book written under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit.

" In their integrity, with all their parts " evidently means that
each book as a complete whole has God for its author, and not in
certain parts only, other parts being purely human and having
the sacred writer himself and not God as their author.

It is equally evident that inspiration denotes that action of
God upon the human agent whom he uses as his instrument and
medium in the composition of a book of Holy Scripture, by vir-
tue of which the book written by the man who is inspired, e.g.
Moses, Matthew, or Paul, has for its author God himself. The
word " inspiration " is used to denote this action because it is an
action especially appropriated to the Holy Spirit. Spiration is
the specific name denoting by what kind of procession the Third
Person of the Blessed Trinity proceeds from the First and Second
Persons. Inspiration, or breathing into, denotes, with special re-
ference to the Holy Spirit " The Lord and Life-giver," the
creative act which gave rational being and life to the first man.
It denotes in general every action and influence of the Holy Spirit
on the human soul which awakens in it some new vital activity,
especially that which is supernatural, either in the mind or in the
emotions. In the present instance, it is that divine motion whose
result and effect in each particular case was the writing of some
portion of the Holy Scripture, and whose complete permanent
effect has been produced in the total collection of sacred books
contained in the Canon of Holy Scripture.

This may suffice as a presentation of the dogma of Catholic
Faith defined by the Council of the Vatican, that " the books of
Holy Scripture are inspired by God," as explained by the Sove-
reign Pontiff with the Fathers of the council in their dogmatic
decree.

It is easy to show by testimony that, from the time of Moses
to Christ, the Books of the Law, the Prophets, and other sacred
writings admitted by competent authority into the Canon were
regarded as the Word of God. Moses continually affirms that
the Lord spoke to him, dictating the laws which he should enact
and prescribe. The prophets always speak in the name of God.
The language of Christ, of the Apostles, and of the other Evan-
gelists, recorded in the New Testament, explicitly sanctions and
confirms the belief of the Jews that their sacred writings con-
tained the Word of God. For instance, St. Matthew says (ii. 15) :
" And he was there until the death of Herod : that it might be ful-
filled which the Lord spoke by the prophet," etc. The Lord said :
" How, then, doth David, in the Spirit, call him Lord ? " (ib. xxii.

526 THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE CANON [July,

43). St. Peter said : " The Scripture must be fulfilled, which the
Holy Ghost foretold by the mouth of David " (Acts i. 16). And
again : " We have the word of prophecy more sure : to which ye
do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place,
until the day dawn and the daystar arise in your hearts : knowing
this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of private interpre-
tation. For no prophecy ever was brought by the will* of man,
but holy men of God spoke, being moved [Latin inspirati\ by the
Holy Ghost" (2 Ep. ii. 19-21). St. Paul writes to Timothy:
" But abide thou in the things which thou hast learned and which
have been committed to thee: knowing from whom thou hast
learned them ; and that from infancy thou hast known the sacred
writings which can instruct thee to salvation, through faith which
is in Christ Jesus. Every scripture divinely inspired is useful
for teaching," etc. (2 Tim. iii. 14-17). St. John says: " I was in
the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a great
voice, as of a trumpet saying, What thou seest write in a book,
and send it to the seven churches ; ... he that hath an ear, let
him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches " (Apoc. i. 10, 11 ;
ii. 7).

One testimony from Josephus will suffice to represent the be-
lief of all Jews who have adhered to the traditions of their nation :
" With us there is not an innumerable multitude of books differ-
ing from and contradicting one another, but there are twenty-
two books only, containing a description of the whole time, which
are deservedly believed to be divine. . . . Moreover, facts show
what reverence we accord to our books. For although so many
ages have passed, no one has dared to add to or take from them
anything or to make any change in them. But it is innate from
birth in all Jews to esteem these writings as divine teachings,
and that they should persist in them, and, if necessary, willingly
suffer death for them " (Against Appion, lib. i. sect. 8). .

The Christian Fathers and ecclesiastical writers from the ear-
liest period give unanimous and multifarious testimony to the
primitive and universal belief of the church. Origen says it is a
part of the manifest teaching of the church that " the Scriptures
were written by the aid of the Holy Spirit " (De Princip. Pref.)
Clement of Rome calls them "true utterances of the Holy
Spirit " (i Cor. 45), and Irenseus says : " The Scriptures are
perfect because spoken by the Word of God and his Spi-
rit" (lib. ii. c. 28, vel 47, n. 2). St. Augustine says that a
Christian must receive all things which are written in the gos-
pels, "as if he had seen the very hand of the Lord which be-
longed to his own proper body writing them " (De Consens.

1 88 1.] AND INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY -SCRIPTURES. 527

Evang., i. 35). St. Gregory Nazianzen writes : " We who extend
the perfect veracity of the Spirit even to each minute point and
line, do not concede, nor is it lawful to do so, that even the
smallest matters have been laid down by the sacred writers with-
out good reason " (Orat. xi. De Fugd, 105). Such testimonies
are only specimens from a multitude. They are single voices
from an unbroken chorus of thirty-five centuries. James of Je-
rusalem, in the Apostolic Council, said in his speech recorded
by St. Luke : " Moses from generations of old hath in every city
them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sab-
bath " (Acts xv. 21) ; and this continuous reading of the books of
the Hebrew Canon still goes on. All the other books of the Ca-
tholic Canon have been read in the public and private offices of
the church, throughout the world, together with these more an-
cient ones, from the time when they were first delivered to her
keeping. It is the testimony of apostolic and universal tradition,
in which the tradition of the foregoing ages and the divine doc-
trine of Christ and his apostles is embodied, expressed, and trans-
mitted, which the Councils of Trent and the Vatican have de-
fined and proposed to all the faithful as a dogma of divine and
catholic faith, revealed by God.

For an explanation of the notion of inspiration we must go to
the theologians. As we are obliged to be brief, and do not at-
tempt a learned but only a popular explanation, we must beg
of the reader to be satisfied with a simple statement of the doc-
trine commonly held and taught in the schools, as we find it in
those text-books which are approved by ecclesiastical authority
and commonly regarded as the best, omitting for the most part
citations and references, which we could easily give in great
number.

Since it is Catholic doctrine that God is the author of Holy
Scripture in all its parts, we must explain inspiration in such a
way as to include everything necessary, in order that this pro-
position may be verified and justified, and need not hold any-
thing more than this. That God is not the author of the sacred
books by the immediate production of the text of Holy Scrip-
ture, but by the mediate instrumentality of their human com-
posers, is evident. Now, that any person may properly be
called the author of a work actually written out by another, it is
requisite that the conception of the work should be his Own, and
that its execution should be so supervised and directed by him,
that it may really express that which he intends and exclude
whatever is foreign to or different from this intention. The per-
son employed as an instrument of the principal author writes at

528 THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE CANON [July,

the instigation and from the suggestion or command of his prin-
cipal, according to the concepts which he communicates, and
under the direction of his judgment and will. In order, there-
fore, that the sacred books may be ascribed to the Holy Spirit
as their principal author, all that has just been stated must be
verified in them. In the words of Hurter (Theol. De S. S., th.
xxv.), " A fourfold element is therefore requisite for inspiration :
I. An efficacious movement of the will to write ; 2. An illumination
of the intellect, in virtue of which the mind of the writer may con-
ceive all those things which God wills that he should write ; 3. Di-
vine direction, that the writer who is inspired may omit nothing
which God wills to have written, much less add anything alien
from it ; 4. Assistance, that the writer may not use words unfit to
express the sense of the concepts which are from God."

If we consider the work of an inspired writer in respect to his
own human agency and operation, in the sense in which it is as-
cribed to him as its secondary author, it is not necessary, accord-
ing to the notion of inspiration given above, that he should be re-
garded as a mere amanuensis of the Holy Spirit, writing down
words dictated to him in a supernatural manner. Such a view
has been held both by Catholic and Protestant authors. It is no-
ticed in the theological treatises, but it is not adopted by the best
modern writers, and may be regarded as an antiquated theory.
Human study, thought, labor, application and use of acquired
knowledge, exercise of the poetic, rhetorical, or descriptive facul-
ty, the free play of native intellectual gifts, of spontaneous emo-
tions, selection of words and images, construction of sentences
and style of writing in general, in accordance with the writer's
own idiosyncrasy, are in no wise excluded by inspiration. When
it is question of committing to writing those things which the
writer knows by personal experience, testimony, or research and
study, revelation, or supernatural communication of knowledge
which could not be or has not been acquired by the writer by
natural means, or a communication in a new and supernatural
mode of what is already known otherwise, is not requisite, and
there is no reason for supposing it granted. Revelation is to be
supposed only in those things in which it is necessary ; viz., in
the making known of divine mysteries and truths which God
wills to disclose and teach to men, of divine laws and precepts
which God imposes, of facts which are beyond the human ken,
prophecies of future events, and whatever may be of similar kind
to these. Divine or angelic locutions in words of distinct human
speech are not requisite, unless there is a particular reason .why
God should send a message by an angel, or speak to men himself,

1 88 1.] AND INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 529

or dictate secretly in the spirit of his inspired messenger certain
words expressive of divine ideas. In all cases where the sacred
writer was competent to write what was already known to him
in a natural way, and to select the words expressive of the sense
which he intended to convey, and where the Holy Spirit moved
him to commit only such matters as these to writing, it suffices
to admit only that divine illustration and direction by virtue of
which he writes all and only that which falls in with the divine
counsel and fulfils the divine intention.

This divine influence on the inspired writers most assuredly
did not supply them with a supernatural instruction and edu-
cation in natural science, rhetoric and the art of composition.
Their natural defects in these respects were left in them, al-
though, of course, God did not select instruments so defective as
to be unfit for the purpose for which he employed them. It was
God's intention to give mankind in the Holy Scriptures one of
the principal means of becoming wise unto salvation, not to-
satisfy the curiosity of the human mind, or to furnish perfect
models of classical writing. Doctrinal and moral instruction and*
prophecy constitute the most important contents of the Bible..
The history of God's supernatural providence and of the way of
salvation, with examples from the lives of individual persons,,
underlies the whole complex texture ; and thus incidentally the-
Bible becomes a literature, a treasury of various kinds of know-
ledge, in a thousand ways a book of extraordinary interest and'
value to all sorts of readers and students, apart from its highest
value as a source and vehicle of divine revelation and sacred in-
struction. But, in all these things, God has, as it were, left
things to take their natural course. There are great gaps and'
omissions in respect to all things which pertain to the realm of
nature, and to the course of events, which God did not fill up.
It was no part of God's intention to teach us natural science.
Therefore, the sacred writers were left in just the amount of
knowledge or ignorance which belonged to their time and condi-
tion, and speak of things according to their phenomenal appear-
ance. It was not the purpose of God to furnish us with a com-
plete secular history, or even with a fuller record of sacred his-
tory than was sufficient for the end and scope of his written word.
According to the same law, God has not preserved in a super-
natural way the sacred books from the accidents to which they
were naturally liable like other books, except so far as was neces-
sary to the end for which he has provided the church with the*
Holy Scriptures. Possibly, some inspired books,, chiefly impor-
tant for one particular time or number of persons,, hav.e perished^.
VOL. xxxiii. 34

530 THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE CANON- [July,

Certainly, some parts of the text have undergone such accidental
variations in transcription that the original reading cannot be de-
termined, and many others can only be made certain or probable
by the most careful criticism. It would be impossible now, with-
out a miracle, to present the text of the books of Holy Scripture
in a form absolutely perfect and certain, as it was in the authentic
originals. There are a thousand natural causes operating to pre-
vent substantial and essential alteration or corruption of the text,
to hinder wilful or accidental changes of any kind from being
multiplied indefinitely or incurably, and to preserve the sacred
books in their pristine integrity ; as well as numerous opposite
causes tending to their injury. It is certain from criticism alone,
that these sacred books have been preserved in their substantial
integrity.

But a Catholic has another and higher ground for his confi-
dence in the Scriptures as the Word of God. It is the infallible
authority of the church. The dogmatic decree of the church
defining that the books of the sacred Canon are to be received in
their integrity and with all their parts, refers, of course, prima-
rily and in the absolute sense to the original, authentic Scriptures
as they existed in their first autographs. It can apply to mod-
ern copies only in so far as these are correct and unchanged.
There is no Hebrew or Greek text of any edition or in any an-
cient MSS. which the church guarantees as absolutely perfect.
Before the Christian Church was founded it belonged to the Jew-
ish ecclesiastical authorities to approve of the rolls which were
prepared to be used in the public service, in schools, and in tri-
bunals, from which the copies were taken for private use which
were in general circulation. In like manner, it belonged to the
prelates of the Catholic Church to approve of the manuscript
books of Holy Scripture in the Greek language for public use,
from which private copies were transcribed. The collation of
manuscripts and the determination of the correct text by criticism
belongs to learned men. Competent human and scientific author-
ity must settle the question of the value and accuracy of any edi-
tion of the Old and New Testaments in their original languages.
Where Greek has been the ecclesiastical language, the Septua-
gint Version of the proto-canonical books, and the Greek text of
Alexandria of the other books of the Old Testament, with the
original Greek text of the books of the New Testament, have
been those which have been used in public acts , and, while Greek
remained a living language, in private reading also. Where the
Latin language prevailed, as it was the language of the Liturgy,
it became necessary to provide Latin versions of the Scriptures.

1 88 1.] AND INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 531

Approbation of these was left to local prelates. The Roman
Church had one, and this was the foundation of the version called
the Latin Vulgate, edited by St. Jerome at the express desire of
the Pope. This most ancient Latin Version still remains in the
Psalter, and the text of the remainder is extant, although no care
was taken to preserve either this or any of the other Latin ver-
sions preceding St. Jerome's revision, and these others have all
perished. St. Jerome's Revised Vulgate, the Psalter excepted,
was universally adopted in the Latin portion of the church, by
degrees and by common consent, without any formal edict of the
Holy See, or any decrees of councils. The Council of Trent
formally sanctioned and prescribed it as the one authentic Latin
version, but without prejudice of the Hebrew and Greek origi-
nals, or the Septuagint Version of the Hebrew books.

This introduces the question of the authority of versions,
which we must lightly touch on, though not fully discuss. The
Bible in Hebrew and Greek is a dead letter for all except a
small number of scholars. If it ceases to be God's Word when
translated into other tongues, the vast majority of Christians are
deprived of the use of the Written Word. But is this so ? By
no means. The spoken and written signs are the lesser and ma-
terial part of the Word. Ideas are its formal, life-giving princi-
ple. The change of certain words for their equivalents cjoes not
change the inner word or transfer the authorship of books to
their translator. Macbeth in Schiller's version is the Macbeth of
Shakspere, and not the German poet's drama. The Alexandrian
Jews had their sacred scriptures in Greek, and these were received
by the Hellenistic Jews in general, by the apostles, and by the
Christian Church, as the Word of God ; and as such are quoted
in the New Testament. Ancient and faithful versions may even
better represent their originals than more recent texts of the
very originals which have become altered by design or by acci-
dent in a long series of transcriptions.

The ancient Latin version of the Scriptures called the Itala,
revised and corrected by St. Jerome, was made and perfected un-
der the most favorable circumstances for correctness, and pos-
sesses the great advantage of being in a language which has un-
dergone no subsequent alteration, and is, nevertheless, learned
with comparative ease, widely known, and in continuous usage in
the schools of the learned. It has received the solemn sanction
of the Holy See and the QEcumenical Councils of the church, and
all Catholics not only may but must receive it as the Word of
God. It is authentic, that is, really in conformity with the first
authentic originals in respect to the sense conveyed by its Ian-

532 THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE CANON [July,

guage, and externally attested by all kinds of traditional and cri-
tical evidence and by the supreme authority of the church. In
the words of Hurter (ut supra, th. xxx. prop. 3), " The Vul-
gate is authentic in this sense, that, negatively, no pernicious error
can follow from it ; and that, positively, it is conformed to the
original Scriptures in those things which of their own nature
pertain to faith and the rule of morals, and in which the sum of
history and prophecy is contained." The official sanction of the
actual printed text as it stands in Latin Bibles, Missals, Bre-
viaries, etc., goes no further than this : that it must be printed
without alteration by inferior or private authority, and made use
of in all public ecclesiastical acts. But in all lesser matters it is
open to criticism, discussion and dispute by scholars, and, more-
over, the authority of the Hebrew and Greek originals remains
undisputed.

Vernacular versions are left to the approbation of local au-
thorities. We have no space left for any remarks upon the Eng-
lish Version in common use among Catholics or any others in
the English language. Our common version is one which is
trustworthy and sufficient for all practical purposes. The ver-
sion of Archbishop Kenrick, the work of a prelate of great learn-
ing and holiness, remarkable for his critical accuracy and cautious,
unbiassed judgment, is correct and faithful in the highest de-
gree, according to the text of the Vulgate, though somewhat
stiff and ungainly in style. For any one who wishes to study the
Bible carefully in English it is the best edition which can be
used, particularly on account of the numerous learned and criti-
cal notes, and the prefaces to single books. It has also the ad-
vantage of being published in separate parts which can be pur-
chased singly.

We are obliged to sum up and close in very few words the
answer we have intended to give in this article to a question
which many Catholics may be supposed to ask : How are we to
know what is the genuine Written Word of God, and to under-
stand its true sense when we read it?

The answer is : Catholics know which are the inspired books
by the Canon which the church has determined by her infallible
authority. The learned have the original texts of the canonical
books in those editions which are approved by the most compe-
tent scholars ; and the Latin Version which has a special eccle-
siastical sanction as an authentic rendering of the genuine origi-
nals, unerring in respect to faith, morals, and all other essentials.
Those who can only read vernacular versions have a sufficient
guarantee of the conformity of such versions to the authentic

i88i.] AND INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 533

text, in all essential things, in the approbation given to them by
their bishops, and the testimony of competent scholars to their
trustworthiness. In the case of variant or doubtful readings,
those who are capable must determine for themselves by study
if they can, and if not, they must be contented to remain in
doubt. Others must take the opinion of orthodox commentators
of the best repute, and, if these disagree, be satisfied to let the
matter rest where it is.

In regard to the sense of Holy Scripture the church gives to
the faithful by her own direct teaching an unerring rule of be-
lief and criterion of truth in respect to all things pertaining to
Catholic faith and doctrine and to morals. In these things, the
true sense and interpretation of the Written Word are given to-
gether with the Letter, and there is no room for doubt. In all
other things, nothing more is required than divine faith in all
which is contained in the Holy Scripture, according to that sense
which the Holy Spirit intended when he inspired the sacred
writers. If that sense is plain and obvious, then the Scripture
explains itself. If it is not plain to the reader, he must look
for an explanation from orthodox and approved expositors.
Where there is room for difference of opinion, each one may
adopt the opinion which seems to him to be preferable, or dis-
miss the difficulty as, for him, insoluble.

It is not only permissible; but commendable and desirable,
that the laity should read the Bible frequently, carefully, and
devoutly, in so far as they can read different parts of it, or the
whole, understandingly. It has its obscurities and difficulties,
but it is full of sacred history, of devout praises of God, of
doctrinal and moral instruction, of exhortation, and of every-
thing that is sublime, consoling, edifying and salutary to de-
vout believers. Considered merely as a world of literature in
itself, it is the most excellent and interesting of books. The
most learned, enlightened and assiduous students can never ex-
haust its treasures. It has God for its author ; and like the
visible universe, it bears on its surface and in its depths in-
numerable, unmistakable vestiges of the Creator who made the
worlds by his Word ; " Who formerly spake to the fathers by
the prophets, at different times and in various ways : and lastly
in these days hath spoken to us by his Son " (Heb. i. i, 2).*

* The curious reader is referred to a series of articles by the eminent Biblical scholar, Dr.
Corcoran, on "Vernacular Versions," etc., in the American Catholic Quarterly, April, July, and
October, 1879; an d to an article on the Douay Version, etc., in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, No-
vember, 1870, entitled "English Translations of the Bible." This article, which is full of in-
formation, was written by Dr. John Gilmary Shea.

534 ^ WOMAN OF CULTURE. [J ul y

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE ASYLUM.

IN affliction the weak soul goes to the bottom, however
strong may be its physical casing, but the soul of the brave
grows only stronger from its conflict with the storm. And the
brave soul is he whose courage springs from the bosom of God ;
who puts on the armor of a divine patience to battle with his foes;
who offers submission to the fury of the blast, bending but not
breaking ; who is powerful with the consciousness of living faith,
the knowledge that, though he may be harrowed and ploughed
with anguish and wrong and misery, bent down in slavery before
the eyes of the world, there is yet One who will crown him as a
victor when the struggle is over, even while the crowd are ap-
plauding his conquerors and deeming him the poorest wretch
that ever perished.

McDonell the madman had put on the armor of this patience,
and thanked God, as the dark asylum gates closed behind him,
that the divine will had taken this violent means to bring him
mercifully to his senses again. For his eyes were at last opened,
and the wicked malice of his late tamperings with justice and
grace seemed scarcely less heinous to him than the crime which
had indirectly brought about all his wanderings from the truth.
His whole life now stood out before him mountain-like, and the
prospect was not cheering. If he were not prepared against
melancholy and gloom of any kind, the dark deed of spoliation in
his early life, his desertion of his faith, his carelessness towards
his wife, and his criminal neglect of his own child would have
pressed him into the shadow of death with the anguish of re-
morse. The opportunity had again been given him, for a last
time perhaps, of repenting and atoning for these misdeeds. With
the eagerness of a true penitent he seized on the means of salva-
tion, determined to bear every trial with a sublime patience un-
til such time as it pleased God to release him by death or other-
wise from his imprisonment. One thing he thought upon most
frequently and hugged to his heart with a fond conviction of its
coming to pass : he would find means to restore the property

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 535

he had stolen. God would give him that happiness, for he would
pray hourly for the favor. Yet not one word against his daugh-
ter would ever escape him, not one act which could endanger
her or cause her a moment's undeserved pain. He would win
his freedom, as he had lost it, legally, and the physicians who pro-
nounced him mad should pronounce him sane.

With such thoughts and prayers and resolutions he heard the
great gates clang behind him. He thanked God in his heart for
the wretchedness which had come upon him with the violence of
a tempest, for tempests purify the air and leave the earth prettier
than before. The gloomy walls of the asylum, with their barred
windows, were in sight as they drove up the winding avenue,
and he could not resist the involuntary chill which ran through
his body when his eyes first rested on them. His determination
soon overcame that. His body was weak from disease, and
would not obey the iron will that ruled so easily in days of
health. Yet he schooled his countenance and his heart, that the
one might possess resignation and tranquillity and the other ex-
press them clearly. The portals of the establishment were open
to receive him, and the officials were waiting there to confer
upon him the honor of a formal reception as befitted his impor-
tance in the world. Everything that could offend the sensitive
nerves of the mad was absent. The wide halls, polished, echoing,
and rank with the smell which prevails in all these institutions,
could not, however, be got rid of, and they gave another chill to
the old man who with trembling step descended from the car-
riage. His slim, stately form, graceful yet, and honorable with
its coronet of silver hair ; his handsome, shrewd, manly features,
beaming just then with affected cheerfulness ; his calm, command-
ing eye, clear, steady, and reasonable enough to give any but
practised ones no doubt of his sanity, made an evident impres-
sion on those who saw him. He noticed it himself with a great
bounding of the heart, careful, too, that no sign of extraordinary
emotion should escape him.

It is not a pleasant office which the chief of an as}<lum has to
welcome a patient of a mildly insane disposition, with reason
enough to understand the peculiarities of his case and resent any
familiarities. Dr. Stirling had never found the office more diffi-
cult than in the present instance ; and as his patient offered him
no occasion for any extended remarks, he was forced to content
himself with the ordinary salutations between host and guest in
every-day life. The gentleman's manner was neither hurried nor
slow, and had about it no unusual flourishes. He took the whole

536 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

proceeding as a matter of fact, talked with the courtesy and gen-
tleness of a sane man, and altogether so behaved himself that the
officials were left in considerable doubt as to the man they had
to deal with. The superintendent, desirous of having some mani-
festations of insanity, took him first into his own apartment and
introduced him to his wife and daughter. Luncheon was just
taking place, and the patient sat down with them, forcing himself
to take a little tea and to eat a few tidbits, though his appetite
revolted against the food, and to talk with the gravity and cheer-
fulness becoming one of his years. How hard it was to do that
little 1 What sobs he smothered as he sat there, what bursts of
rage and grief he controlled, as incident after incident reminded
him of the liberty he had lost and the misery he had won ! He
would not allow himself to think of these things. He restrained
even the ordinary freedom of his manner through fear of appear-
ing too gay of disposition for an old man. He was a good con-
versationalist, and used his powers now to great advantage, ven-
turing even to talk of the asylum and the peculiarities of its crazy
inmates.

" You have a little paradise here," he said, looking around the
sitting-room, " and one that I would not expect to find in this
neighborhood. Are you never troubled with the cries of the in-
mates, or other disagreeable sounds that must be heard within
these walls ? "

" Oh ! never," the doctor said, glad to have his patient himself
come to the point he was so anxious to touch upon. " The more
violent cases are too far from this part of the building to occasion
us any disturbance. Mrs. Stirling could not endure such a trial.
Your apartments are not distant from these, and we shall always
be happy to have the pleasure of your company. What do you
say, Trixy ? "

" Why, papa/' answered his daughter, a sprightly young lady
of eighteen, " I am charmed with Mr. McDoneli already, and I
should be very sorry if after this we were to see no more of him."

" Thank you, young lady," said the complimented ; " I am very
much pleased at your good-will towards me. Are you not afraid
to trust yourself much in the company of those who are
mad ?"

" As for that," answered the doctor, " Trixy is the angel of the
institution, and can intrude where others often fear to go."

" Besides," said Trixy, with a blush for her own boldness,
" you are too much of a cavalier ever to do harm to a young
lady."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 537

" Ah ! you have already so well read me that you begin to
flatter. I confess I am helpless in a coaxing woman's hands."

" I am afraid," said Mrs. Stirling, " that your gray hairs will
not save you from the experiencing of Trixy's humors. She is
an outrageous flirt, has half the asylum at her feet, receives pro-
posals every day, and does so many graceless things that you
would be surprised to know them all. Do be careful, sir, in deal-
ing with her."

" Ah ! that I shall," said Mr. McDonell. " Yet I can scarcely
be responsible if some day I should go on my knees to her. I
am eligible almost, or hope to be in time ; and there is something
poetic, if curious, in the union of May and December."

" Too poetical ever to come to pass," laughed Trixy, and then
they rose from the table.

" I do not believe you are mad," whispered the impulsive
girl as he was leaving to follow the superintendent to his own
apartments. He would have thanked her there and then with a
mad, feverish gratitude for that blessed declaration ; but recalling
himself, he only smiled, saying with a shrug of the shoulders :

" Have you not seen the commission of lunacy ? Four learn-
ed and eminent physicians signed their names to that document,
and, whatever I may have been before, I am surely mad now.
Ah ! young lady, do not let your likings run away with your rea-
son, as mine did."

And he smiled again, and spoke with such a gentle sarcasm
that the young lady was more than ever persuaded of his sanity.

The rooms assigned to him at the asylum were furnished as
became his position and the state of his reason three apart-
ments decked out with taste and luxury, containing books and
means of amusement in abundance, with every appointment that
belonged to the suite of a modern wealthy gentleman. The cage
was gilded enough to suit any captive. But its bars showed all
the more hideously for the elegance so inconsistent with their
ugliness. The sun threw their shadows against the rep curtains
with mournful significance for him. Yet his hopeful heart did
not fail him, and he expressed his satisfaction to the doctor,
and looked through the hateful window out on a wild bit of lake
scenery frozen and snow-rimmed as his own life.

" Whenever it pleases you to dine with our family," said the
doctor, "remember that the hour is five and that you are always
welcome ; otherwise your meals will be sent up to you at your
request. A valet has been sent, whose only office is to attend
upon you. And I would caution you to avoid as much as pos-

538 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. ["J ulv >

sible the other parts of the asylum. The sights there are not
cheering, and would not have the best effect on your delicate
health. You will find in your neighbors amusement enough for
years of leisure."

" Thank you, doctor. I shall follow your instructions, and
shall avail myself of your invitation to dine with you every day.
If my valet has arrived I beg that you will let him come to me
immediately."

The doctor withdrew, and presently the man whom his ene-
mies had employed as valet appeared. The sight of him instant-
ly confirmed his suspicion that this valet was but a paid spy. He
was a carefully-dressed individual, a Scotchman, with some evi-
dences of good breeding around him, but hard and forbidding in
feature as a devil. To this humiliation the merchant also sub-
mitted. It was part of his punishment, and he was anxious to
suffer even unto death.

" Your name ? " he said curtly.

" Alexander Buchan commonly called Sandy."

" Well, Sandy, 1 suppose you understand your business. The
first thing I shall require of you is that you will keep out of sight
until I send for you, and these rooms are forbidden to you dur-
ing my absence from them."

" I understand, sir," said Sandy, bowing himself out of his
presence.

McDonell knew very well that Sandy's chief office would be
to keep his eye on him and to have cognizance of everything of
importance going on ; but he thought it well to limit at once his
range of excuses, and confine his powers of deviltry to the nar-
rowest possible scope.

He was settled at last, caged, imprisoned in the eyes of men,
made mad. And, after all, the bitter draught was not so bitter as
he had imagined. In that very home of despair sympathy had
met him at the doors, and walked with him through its dreary
halls, and consoled him with its sweet assurance in his sanity.
He looked out of the prison-windows across the waste of forest
and ice that stretched to the horizon. The sun lay like a veil of
tissue over its dreariness, softening the rougher places, hiding
the meanest, and giving a wild beauty to the homely scene. Its
warm radiance fell around him, and kissed his white hair and his
trembling hands as a daughter should have done, and brought
new strength to his heart. It seemed as if God were looking
down upon him with a great, resistless eye, applauding his resig-
nation and his penitence, bidding him be of good cheer and have

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 539

the will to suffer on for His sake and his own. Overcome, he
raised his eyes and his hands heavenwards and prayed for his
daughter prayed that she might be saved from the evil conse-
quences of her sin and his neglect, that God might be to her the
lather which he had not been, and, pitying her misfortune and her
ignorance, bring her to faith and repentance. Thus ended the
first day at the asylum.

Early the next morning, when his breakfast and his valet had
both been dismissed, and he was preparing for a ramble about
the institution, his door opened and a tall, dignified lady entered.
She had a gilt crown on her head, a sceptre in her hand, and a
veil reaching to her feet about her form, and was preceded by a
stout, merry-looking gentleman' in corduroys. The latter carried
an umbrella, and a handkerchief which he was constantly apply-
ing with great care and gentleness to his nose. He bowed pro-
foundly to McDonell, winking and smiling, and announced in a
loud, dignified tone :

" Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ire-
land."

This apparition would have set McDonell a-laughing but for
the serious expression of Her Majesty's countenance and the
warning gestures of the merry-looking attendant, who still
applied his handkerchief, and, being compelled to stand where
the sun shone on him, hoisted his umbrella with great dignity
and waited the proceeding of events. The lady stretched out
her sceptre towards McDonell, who kissed it respectfully.

" Gracefully done," said she. " You have been bred in courts,
I am certain, though I cannot recall having seen your face dur-
ing my short and mournful reign. You are aware, then, that it
is not etiquette for a queen to visit her subjects ; but knowing
your inexperience in the rules of this vile institution, I thought
it proper to concede a point or two until you had become better
acquainted with us."

McDonell said that he was highly honored.

" Some day," she went on, " you shall know how I was de-
prived of my throne by an impostor who rules in my name.
Perhaps you may help me to recover my rights, though I see
that, like myself, you are a prisoner here, perhaps unjustly so ; for
you have not the usual appearance of a mad person any more
than myself. I assure you of our royal favor."

McDonell thanked her again for her kindness.

" You see," she whispered, becoming more familiar and more
forgetful of her royal dignity, " though you may not be aware of

540 . A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

it, they are all crazy here, even the doctor and his wife, although
I may make an exception for his daughter. This little fellow here
is such a fool as to believe his nose is made of sugar. I have
tweaked it often enough to prove the contrary ; but you see he
still holds to the opinion, and uses a handkerchief to keep off
moisture, his umbrella to keep off the sun, and for the world he
wouldn't wash his face or go out in the rain. The very thought
throws him into agonies."

" How very strange, your Majesty ! "

" What are you here for? " said Her Majesty sharply.

" I was too lavish with my money, ma'am."

" A very grave fault, but not necessarily springing from in-
sanity. I suppose they have invented new forms of the disease
since I was last in the world."

"Very many," said McDonell, checking a rising indignation.

" Ah ! well, I pity you from my heart. You do not look or
act crazy. Be assured of our royal favor."

She gave him her hand to kiss, and departed with her atten-
dant, who came back directly to disabuse his mind of any impres-
sion the royal lady might have left there concerning him.

" She is hopelessly mad," said the little gentleman, with an ap-
plication of his handkerchief, " and I humor her. We all humor
her, in fact, and I am her lord high chamberlain. She probably
told you about my nose. It's my weak point. My friends tried to
persuade me that I was infatuated darn the whole lot of 'em !
They would get me into the rain, and would try to souse my nose
with water, regretting only that my whole head wasn't sugar. I
am afraid of that calamity, but by care and the virtue in this silk
kerchief I think I can keep the disease from spreading. Well,
when I wouldn't be persuaded my friends sent me here. All the
loons of this institution laugh at me, of course. Each one is sure
that his neighbors are the mad people of the place. I could not
tell you in an hour all their tricks to wet my nose. I woke up
once in time to catch Victoria preparing to moisten my nose.
Another built quite a bonfire under it. All of 'em threaten, if
the establishment runs short of sugar, to soak it for general use.
They would do it, sir, and I visit the kitchen daily to see that
sugar is not wanting. The doctor, who is the only one with any
belief in the fact, and that dear sprite of his, Trixy, have issued
very, very stern prohibitions against any interference with my
nose. Now, my dear sir, what do you think of it ? I would like
to have your opinion."

" It certainly has not the appearance of sugar," replied

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 541

McDonell, " but appearances are deceptive. If you would kindly
allow me to feel it "

" Oh ! by all means, dear sir ; only be sure that there is no
moisture on your fingers, and handle it carefully."

After the examination had been cautiously proceeded with,
" Your nose is sugar, or of a similar substance, I think," said
the merchant.

" Sugar, or of a similar substance," repeated the delighted
gentleman" the doctor's very words ! What a remarkable co-
incidence ! 1 must tell him of it immediately. But pray, sir,
are you crazy ? "

" Well, a number of physicians so decided, and it was the
general belief of those who knew me. For myself I cannot say,
since in matters of that kind outsiders are the best judges."

" Give me your hand, sir," cried the little gentleman warmly.
" If there is a sane individual here besides myself and the doc-
tor and Trixy, it is you. Such modesty ! Such confidence in the
judgment of others ! Sir, my judgment is that you are as sane as
myself or the doctor, and I put it against the world. Why, the
maddest of the fools in this house is the loudest in swearing to
his own sanity. I am happy to know you, and, if you wish, I
shall introduce you to our circle as my particular friend."

" You honor me too much, and I shall be glad to avail my-
self of your invitation. Shall we go immediately ? "

" Straight, sir. We have a room at the other end the gentle-
men, I mean where we assemble to spend our hours of leisure in
the cold weather. The ladies have another apartment. Twice a
week we have reunions in the doctor's pleasant domicile, and
every Saturday a meeting of our literary society. You must
join it, my dear sir. A man of your sound sense would not sur-
prise me by attaining to the presidency. We are very amicable
as a rule, although I must admit there was a little indignation
when an obstinate old fool, who 'fancies that he carries some
other body's head on his shoulders, wrote an essay to prove that
my nose was solid flesh. Oh-h-h ! "

At this point the little gentleman jumped through the door of
the room with a yell of terror so keen in its anguish that every
nerve in McDonell's body tingled with fright. Before he could
follow to learn the cause of this singular proceeding his friend
returned to the threshold, peeped cautiously in, with his hand-
kerchief to his nose and his umbrella ready for action, and whis-
pered :

" Wasn't it water, my dear, dear sir wasn't it water? "

542 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

" Not at all," said McDonell, much relieved and decidedly
angry.

" Well, well, what a nervous creature I am ! You must have
been astonished at the rudeness of a lord high chamberlain. But
consider to what I am subjected daily, and you will not wonder
at my alarm. We shall now go to see our friends."

They went together through the halls to the room where the
gentlemen spent their leisure hours in laughing at one another's
infirmities. The merry gentleman cut up many amusing capers
on the way in his fear of falling into an ambuscade. With his
umbrella well in front, and his handkerchief to the sensitive organ,
he walked in the exact centre of the corridor, cautiously ap-
proaching dark corners and rushing past them at full speed.
When they had arrived at their destination these precautions
were laid aside. He introduced the stranger to all present, with
pompous diction, as "the craziest of the whole lot of you," which
assertion he had previously assured McDonell would be infallibly
disbelieved and make them all his friends and defenders. So it
turned out ; for each gentleman privately questioned him as to his
sanity, and he, returning the same answer which he had made to
Trixy and the others, immediately went up in their estimation
like a rocket.

" Mad !" said the gentleman who had the disagreeable office
of carrying another man's head on his shoulders "mad, sir?
The only feature of madness about him is that he has been seen
walking with a man whose nose is made of sugar."

" He has at least the satisfaction of knowing with whom he is
walking," returned the merry gentleman. " My nose is my own,
if it is sugar. I warn you, colonel, not to attempt to borrow
from him as you borrow from others. I have told him some
of your dodges, and he knows that I would no more lend you one
cent than I would lend you ten thousand dollars."

" Does he know the reason why ?" sneered the colonel ''that
you haven't either to lend."

" He does," answered nosey, with a withering smile ; " and he
knows, too, that the law allows no debts that have been contracted
with a man who has lost his head."

The attendants here interfered to prevent a quarrel.

" Crazy, both of 'em," whispered a venerable old man to Mc-
Donell, drawing him at the same time to a remote part of the
room. " It does not become us to pay attention to their ravings.
I understand that you have been a business man of some note in
the world, and that you commanded considerable influence. I

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 543

was once in a similar position. Now everything is in the past
tense with me. Envious competitors and grasping relatives put
me here. I turned my attention to literature. I have written a
grammar, a most valuable work, and full of new theories respect-
ing the language, etc."

And he rambled on in a crazy way, attacking existing notions
of grammar, defending his own, and ending by proposing that
McDonell should buy the right to print after allowing him a
fair percentage on sales. As the old man got excited over this
business matter, an attendant came at once to the rescue.

McDonell passed an amusing hour among them, and saw that
the means of diversion at his command were neither few nor un-
inviting, and that, so far as his own mind was concerned, there was
no danger of its giving way through horror of his associations.
These were pleasant enough, and so much more pleasant than he
had expected as to give him, from their novelty, positive pleasure.
However, the confinement, the distressing thoughts from which
he was never freed, foretold serious danger to his health if he
could not counteract their effects. As the days proceeded he
saw, indeed, that, despite the cheerful influences of the Stirlings,
the ridiculous and mirth-provoking scenes among his asso-
ciates, and the gentle resignation to God's will which he cul-
tivated, he was surely failing. He had very little, in fact
nothing, that he could afford to lose, and yet the first week had
left its broad mark of wasting strength upon him. At the end
of the second Dr. Stirling's face plainly showed his anxiety. A
change of tactics was necessary. There was no time to be lost,
for a month in that establishment meant death. He could not
hold out long enough to gain a legal restoration to freedom, and
he began to meditate some plan of immediate escape. It was a
long time before he could think out anything methodical, and
then it seemed impossible to execute without outside assistance.
Sandy, the valet, who watched him like a fox, cunning enough
never to be caught, might be bought with gold, but his own ene-
mies could buy this man at a higher price. The keepers in 1 that
part of the building were unapproachable. With the gardeners
and porters the inmates could not have any communication. His
thoughts were tumultuous and feverish, and threatened to hasten
the catastrophe he was anxious to avoid. As the days passed, and
the impossibility of getting a helper still loomed up before him,
a numb despair began to take hold on his faculties. Not even
his strong confidence in God nor his earnest prayers for strength
and patience, could shake off this sinking of overpowered nature.

544 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

He had been fifteen days in the asylum when he chanced
to come one morning upon Juniper.

" Do 1 not know you ?" he said, taking him by the arm.

" I owe my position here to you," said Juniper in surprised
yet grateful accents, " but I was not aware that you were here,
sir." .

" Thank God that I have met you ! I am here unjustly, and
I must escape. You must help me. Come to this place again
to-night. Your reward will be large enough to make up for
the loss of your position. Will you come?"

" Willingly, sir, but not for money," said grateful Juniper.

"We will talk of that another time."

And he went away thanking Heaven for this providential meet-
ing. Sandy, with a puzzled face, stepped out from a place of
concealment, and looked first after the keeper and then after his
master doubtfully. He had heard nothing, and he was not sure
whether it was more than an ordinary meeting.

CHAPTER XXIV.

REVERSES.

TIME flies, and criminals with every moment grow more and
more at ease with themselves and the world which has not
known of their crime. Unless its effects are physical and con-
tinual, and, like the ghost of Banquo, rises pale, and bloody even, at
the feast, sin cannot well disturb the mental balance of the atheist
and the brute man. The one has dulled all the finer sensibilities
of nature. Nature's feebleness alone can bring to his mind with
anything of pain a recollection of former misdeeds. The other
has but to deal with himself. He knows of no judge to hurl a
sentence from the tribunal, knows no court of jurisdiction supe-
rior to his own, has no idea of an injured superior to haunt his
pleasures and his rest. The world cannot know his sin. To self
only is he accountable, and never, when properly pampered in his
education, can be found a more corrupt and partial personage.
There may be present the vague fear of a sudden revealing of the
secret, if there exists any evidence of the perpetrated crime.
An accomplice may occasion uneasiness, and even alarm, at times.
But these fears are shadowy at the most and purely accidental.
There is hope of their removal and ultimate destruction. With
the fallen Christian the case is different. Remorse is with him
an undying flame fed from the possession of faith of faith in the

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 545

existence of a God who will punish and reward, and whose judg-
ments are sure, swift, and unavoidable. Not the depths of the
sea, not the bowels of the earth, can hide him from the avenger.
The corruption of the grave is no protection, for even out of its
rottenness shall his suffering consciousness be evolved, as a plant
springs from such a soil to stand under the lightnings of heaven.
He has indeed the refuge of the great atonement. But, sin hav-
ing once entered, remorse sits down at the table, and the sin-
ner thereafter mingles his bread with ashes and his drink with
tears.

The relief which the atheist experiences had of course been
allowed to Nano, and had brought her a peace similar to the
quiet of an ocean immediately after a storm. That is, the waters
were troubled yet, and the wind blew, and the sun, though bright
enough, had an ugly escort of dark clouds. The undertone of
sorrow still continued, and would hardly cease until her death.
She enjoyed comparative quiet, and could think with some de-
gree of calmness of the old man who on his knees had cried for
mercy from his child. The pleading voice pleading where it
should have commanded was fresh in her memory, nor was it
likely that the scene which had given rise to the words would
quickly fade from her mind. It gave her now no uneasiness.
Her health had improved since that eventful time, in proportion
as her father's had failed, and her nerves were fast resuming their
normal steadiness. Society was her judge and tribunal, and its
ears probably would never be assailed with the story of her
wrong-doing. Killany, for interest's sake, must be silent, and there
was no other who might do her injury. Free from troubles of
conscience, prospective mistress of a large estate, surrounded by
friends and worshipping admirers, love dawning in her heart,
she could often fancy herself as happy a woman as the world
knew as happy as she could reasonably expect to be with a
ghastly skeleton in her closet.

Right at this period of happy composure there came a doubt
and a first reverse the only means of touching her conscience as
to her sin. She had often said, There is no God. These words
were always on her lips of late, so frequently uttered that, with
her usual quickness, she began to fear there was hypocrisy in her
own belief. She was too anxious to fortify it with the form of
words. She many times made an effort to break herself of the
habit. Like an irrepressible spring the words flew to her lips
again and gushed out with blasphemous readiness. Doubt had
entered her mind by stealth, and was there in the deep soil, a

VOL. xxxin 35

546 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

tiny, unnoticed plant, with roots struck deep and promising vigor
in every part. Her security against remorse was thus broken in
upon. She could never make the admission that there existed a
supreme Lord of the universe. Her soul revolted at the long
train of sequences which followed from such an admission. Ro-
mish superstition and dogmatic exclusiveness, or the rigid, hol-
low, colorless frame of Protestantism, would then force themselves
upon her, and hold down in bondage the mind accustomed to
wander gipsy-like through the world of speculation. She had
seen and understood in a faint measure the connection of the doc-
trines of revelation with the existence of a God, and with her to
admit the one was to admit the other. The admitting of revela-
tion meant the undoing of all that she had done in the past. She
shuddered at such an alternative, and fled to culture for refuge
and certainty. Doubts are not easily shaken off, and hers was of
vigorous growth. It was destined to grow until in its anguish
her heart would speak out its native belief, and she would say
even more readily than now she denied it, There is a God.

The first reverse came in the shape of a junior partner of the
firm over which her father had once presided. He took advan-
tage of the confusion of the time to steal over to the States with
sixty thousand dollars of her property, and left a strong proba-
bility behind that, in spite of the work of detectives, he would
never be discovered. This made a gap in her fortunes of most
unpleasant dimensions, and caused her a meditation on the old
superstition of a retribution. Perhaps there existed such a thing,
and the laws of Nature, working with an intelligence of which
man was still ignorant, might take it upon themselves to avenge
any departure from their rigid discipline. The sensualist, the
glutton, the overworked were Nature's avengers on themselves.
Why not also the undutiful child and the robber ? There was a
law of compensation, and the ledger of the humblest person that
breathed could show as even a balance as that of the richest and
most powerful. Where was to be her compensation ? Was this
the first entry on the credit side of nature, the defalcation of one
of her own servants? It was hard to say and unpleasant to
think of, and she was very fierce with anything that disturbed her
peace of mind. Her doubts made her angry, her reverses made
her weak. She put away both with resolution, declaring they
were vapors in her sky, and a few hours of sunshine would de-
stroy them. Her doubt was an exhalation like those which al-
ways surround the sun of truth. Her money losses were inci-
dents which time would undo and make good to her again. It

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 547

must be recorded that after this stoical view of the situation she
ate heartily and slept soundly for a short time.

Killany, as her business manager, and the other trustees re-
ceived the sharpest of lectures from the lady for their remissness,
and they were compelled, according to law, to supply the defi-
ciency out of their own pockets. This was formal only, since
she intended to reimburse them when- she came into the estate
herself. About this time she began to think of Olivia, and re-
called the promise made to Sir Stanley in that young lady's re-
gard. Strangely enough, she had forgotten it, and over a week
had elapsed since Sir Stanley's visit. Since one fatal day Olivia
had not set foot in McDonell House a fact which at first had given
its mistress great uneasiness until the baronet's explanation had
been made. The two weeks that had fled were short enough;
but she had lived years of thought in that period. It seemed
to her as if she had never seen and known her friend at all, but
had only dreamed of the sweet bit of virtuous beauty as she
dreamed of ethereal possibilities of culture. In spite of an effort
to cast aside the feeling, she believed that something had stolen
in between Olivia and her to change the current of their affec-
tions. So keen did this impression become that she resolved no
longer to put off a visit to her friend.

Her carriage drove up to Olivia's door some days after the
bombshell prepared by Mr. Quip had descended on the quiet
household, and several ladies of fashion, seeing her, were aston-
ished as at an apparition. It was to be supposed that if any one
knew the character of the Fullertons it was Miss McDonell, who
thus outraged every principle of etiquette by calling so openly
on the ostracized. They could not believe her deliberately
guilty of such boldness. There were certain limits beyond which
even a leader could not go, and no one was usually more circum-
spect than Miss McDonell. The incident, not being satisfactorily
accounted for, left the ladies and society in a tumult of contra-
diction and excitement. Nano, unconscious of the stir this visit
was creating, found her friend in a very different state of mind
and body from that which Sir Stanley had described. She was
pale yet from the effects of her nervous suffering, but her eyes
were sparkling, and her talk sparkled in unison, as became her
cheery nature. She was gay under the strange yet great intelli-
gence which Mr. Quip had brought her. The greetings between
her and Nano were about as cordial as between good acquaint-
ances. Hand-clasp and lip-meet were not made, and it struck
Nano disagreeably, though it was her own fault mostly, that for

548 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

the first time Olivia omitted the offer of hand and cheek. This
was the entering wedge of th.eir estrangement. She still felt her-
self unworthy to touch in affection the pure, stainless girl, who
was so utterly unconscious of wickedness like hers. In Olivia's
presence, and with Olivia's distant manner like a scroll before her
eyes, she knew that a gap had come between them which would
not easily, and perhaps never, be closed. This consciousness was
dimly snared by her friend, who chid her innocent soul for its
instinctive revulsion from one who had so lately been, and still
was, her dear and admired friend. With such feelings the young
ladies began their conversation.

" It is so long since I saw you last," Nano said, " that I am
astonished to see you so cheerful and bright. You have been so
exclusive for over two weeks that I feared you were still suffer-
ing from those vaguely-hinted sorrows which, by the way, you
have never explained, as you promised."

" And I never will explain them now, dear Nano," answered
she, with such a heartfelt sigh and such an expression of relief.
" They have all fled and have left not a rack behind. But you
you are almost bright, too, for the time. You have got over
your suffering very well."

" I suffered more in the time preceding my father's departure
than since," the lady said, calmly fixing her clear eyes on Olivia's
questioning ones. " You know there never was much love lost
between us. What little was aroused by his sickness vanished
under the tortures I endured from him. Now I am free to a cer-
tain extent, though you may think my freedom has been sadly
purchased."

" It was a bitter necessity. You are alone now. You have
not a relative in the world."

" That does not disturb me. I have friends who will more
than make up for me what I have lost."

" How can you speak so, Nano ? "

" I could not speak truthfully otherwise. How is it with you
and Sir Stanley, if I may be allowed to ask?"

A gentle blush overspread Olivia's face.

" It is not a fair question, Nano, but I do not deny your right
to know. He is well and I am well. He has asked me to marry
him, and I have said, Wait a little."

" When you should have said yes, plumply and honestly, if
^you had followed your own heart. And the surroundings were
so favorable moonlight and ice ! Do not say that your emotions
ran away with you in so cool a place."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 549

" Rather say that I became more cautious, for I hesitated and
laid down conditions."

" Well, when do you intend to give the favorable word ?"

" Not just yet, you may feel certain. Perhaps "

" I will hear no more suppositions. The answer must be an
absolute ' yes ' this time. You have still your secrets. I re-
commend open confession, which is good for the soul. For a
tiny creature like you to carry mind-burdens is a dangerous
task. They will wear your body away, and, like weeds on
a grave, sprout from its corruption. Confess, my child, con-
fess."

" I do that regularly. I have no secrets from any one. My
mind-troubles are known to my confessor, and from him I get
more consolation than any other, could give."

" That terrible superstition confession ! " said Nano, raising
her hands in affected horror. " How can you endure its humilia-
tion! What has become of your self-respect, Olivia, that you
should submit to any one so absolute a power over you ? I can-
not understand the Catholic infatuation on this point."

" Did you not say just now that open confession was good for
the soul?"

" I merely quoted a saying ; and, besides, I never could mean
confession as you understand it."

" I don't care to discuss the question. I have said so many
hard things of your likes and dislikes that is, your doctrines and
other people 's doctrines that I am not going to offend any more.
When you have committed in your life a dark, heavy sin
which you would not dare to communicate to a dearest friend
even, and when its weight is pressing upon the conscience to
the destruction of assured peace of mind and health of body, you
may appreciate then what it is to be a Catholic and to have the
rest and secrecy of confession at your disposal. No doubt you
will consider it a very beautiful superstition, and recommend it
as such to your cultured friends."

Nano winced visibly at this innocent yet suggestive reply.
It touched rudely on a very tender spot.

" In that case," she replied, " I would prefer to keep my se-
cret to myself."

" And live in the constant fear that it may be discovered ?
A woman with a secret dread at her heart is but half a woman.
There, I shall not be drawn into an argument. I shall discuss
these questions no more. They do you no good, and excite me
too much."

550 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July.

" You are like a vision when you are in earnest over a thing,"
said Nano, watching her flushed face with admiration.

" I have never seen you in earnest over anything," said
Olivia shortly.

" I keep it for my thoughts, and out of my conversations,"
returned the lady, and a shadow so deep settled on her counte-
nance that Olivia was startled.

" If you look like that, Nano, your earnestness must be over-
whelming."

" I beg your pardon for an inadvertence. And I must go,"
she said, rising abruptly, " without fulfilling my promise to a
friend who believed you to be in the last stages of depression,
and was anxious that I should discover the cause."

" Well, thank Heaven ! the depression is gone, and its cause
with it. Your errand failed of its purpose for want of an ob-
ject."

" I am very glad it is so, Olivia. So long as you are your-
self I am content and happy."

She held out her hand with something of the old manner,
and then, as if recollecting herself, drew it away again, and with
a formal adieu left the room, leaving Olivia in a state of wonder-
ment and pain at her inexplicable actions. Out in the carriage,
away from the eyes of every one, her face grew white with sud-
den anguish, and she clutched and tore the velvet cushions like
one in convulsions.

" Why do I envy her," she moaned, " if not for that purity of
hers which I lack, which I never had, and never will have ? My
remorse is personified in her, and while she lives, oh ! while her
memory exists in me, so long shall I suffer these intolerable ago-
nies which I thought were for ever gone. My God ! shall I ever
know peace again ? But no, no," she added with a shudder ;
" there can be, there is, no God."

Unhappy woman ! Faith was knocking at her heart, and the
sin she would not acknowledge held and barred the entrance.

CHAPTER XXV.

A MERITED PUNISHMENT.

DR. FULLERTON was a grave, studious man, with no love for
society, though cheerful enough in his disposition, fond of his
books, his home, and his profession, and cherishing only one dream
outside of the ordinary aspirations of his life to wed with Nano

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 551

McDonell. He was skilled in men and the world's ways as
thoroughly as in their lore. Long years of conflict with the
world and its handmaids, poverty and misery, had not been passed
in vain. He had conquered, taking away with him a fine touch
of cynicism in his nature, strong enough to sweeten, as healthful
salt can sweeten, the tenderness, the piety, the cheerful, warm
affections of his manly soul. As a student he did not pay much
attention to the affairs of that particular social world to which he
belonged. His books were of greater interest than its gossip.
They were his world, stretching out like vast and limitless
prairies, great tracts of wilderness yet to be trodden by the hardy
traveller, intellectual Africas peopled with the most wonderful
creations. Here he found his entertainment. He was ambitious.
His desire was to sit with the famous of the land in the history of
the nation. He was willing to work that he might reach the emi-
nence, and he put aside all the allurements of youth, girded him-
self as the mountain-climber girds, and gave himself to labor and
to study in solid earnest.

Hence it was that the causes of Olivia's late mental disturb-
ance were so difficult for him to discover. The cuts direct
which he received from the people with whom he was acquainted
were as numerous and severe as those which were showered on
unfortunate Olivia ; but the scholar paid no attention to them, and
went on his way serenely unconscious of the events which were
transpiring. For this indifference Olivia was extremely thankful.
She knew not what she would have to face if Harry became ac-
quainted with the matter, and if the current di.d not change this
must soon happen. We know with what relief she welcomed the
astonishing disclosures of Mr. Quip. She considered the dan-
ger in a great measure averted if Mr. Quip were able to do but
a tithe of what he had promised ; and she therefore pressed
upon her brother the urgency of closing at once with his offer,
lest delay might prove hurtful to their interests.

Fate was hovering, however, over Killany's head. Dr. Ful-
lerton was still inclined to be sceptical over Mr. Quip's revela-
tions, and delayed the promised decision for more than a week.
In the meantime Killany, delighted with the success of his vil-
lanous slanders, and encouraged, as cowards ever are, by the
meekness, all misunderstood, of his victims, became bolder and
openly laughed and sneered at what he elegantly termed the bar
sinister on the Fullerton escutcheon. He won great praises from
his lady friends for his kindness in providing a position for
Harry, who, despite his poverty, which was his greatest obstacle,

552 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

and his religion, which with wealth was no obstacle at all, had
made a great sensation among the ladies by his Saxon figure
with its yellow curled head and eyes of violet hue. The hearts
of many susceptible ones, bursting open the guards of prudence,
fluttered uncontrolled in his presence. They pitied his recent
misfortune, and the gentlemen, too, regretted it. In Olivia's re-
gard there was a change of front for one party, the ladies fiercely\
condemning her, and the gentlemen vowing and swearing (mostly
over their punch) that it was a shame anything in the matter of
birth should be allowed to affect so divine a young woman. At
last society got in quite a rage over the whole subject. The
leaders, Mrs. Strachan and Miss McDqnell, were yet on terms of
intimacy with Olivia, and Sir Stanley Dashington did not in one
particular abate his well-known affection for brother and sister.

No one had yet the hardihood to inform Sir Stanley of the.
position of his friends. Murmurs and whisperings died away at
his ears. But it was impossible to conceal it for ever, and when
the matter was at its culminating point some miserable little
puppy popped it at the baronet, and was choked, and strangled,
and shaken out of his five senses for his officiousness before a
number of ladies, too, so excited did the Irishman become. For a
few minutes there was a scene of fainting, screaming, cologne-
water perfumes, and noisy demonstrations from the gentlemen
present, which brought the baronet to his senses and drew forth
an apology sufficient to atone for a severer misdeed. He wished
to take his frightened victim aside and question him ; but the
ladies, dear creatures I took it on themselves to give him all par-
ticulars, which showed conclusively that the scandal had spread
in all directions, and was as common among the interested as
the latest song or the latest novel.

He hastened, therefore, to make Harry acquainted with the
astonishing fact. The doctor was standing at the door of his
office, looking wonderingly down the street. He had just come
in from a round of professional calls, and had met that Hughes
who on a former occasion had shown him some rudeness which
was as yet unexplained. Harry had forgotten it under the pres-
sure of his many duties, until it was recalled to his mind by a
second meeting with the gentleman. Having addressed him
courteously as he was passing the office, Hughes received the
salute in a rather constrained and frightened fashion, stared,
seemed surprised, yet afraid to express his surprise, and finally
turned away, leaving the doctor as before to wonder what it
meant. When the baronet came along he mentioned the matter.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 553

" Come in," said the latter " come in to the office, and I will
explain it. It is simply damnable."

Then it was that the doctor noticed a high color in Sir Stan-
ley's cheek, a sparkle in his eye that was not usually there, and a
general excitement of manner which the man of fashion rarely
permitted to take hold of him. Once in the inner sanctum the
story was soon told, while Mr. Quip kept his ear to the keyhole
and made faces at the carpet in his astonishment. The doctor
listened quietly with lips that paled at first, and afterwards be-
came swollen and red with compression.

" That explains many things," he said, " which for so long a
time have mystified us. Olivia's illness, whose cause we could
not discover, her seclusion, and the falling-off of her friends were
no doubt owing to this slander. Poor little mistaken woman !
How she suffered, and would suffer to the end ! Probably she
knows the slanderer ! "

" What do you propose doing ?" said the baronet.

"Wait here until I return," answered the doctor. " I shall
have news for you then."

Sir Stanley laid his hand on his arm.

" I know you will punish the traducer," he said, " and I wish
you to remember that I claim a hand in it. I am wronged
as deeply as yourself, since this slander touches the honor of my
wife to be."

" I shall remember," said the doctor, and went away, taking
his riding-whip with him. His -appearance was composed and
grave as usual, and excited no attention on the part of the people
in the streets. He was looking for Hughes. He went first to
his residence, but, finding him absent, sought him at his office.
He was not there, and he would have waited until his return but
that his feverish impatience would not permit him to rest. Go-
ing out on the street again, he saw the man he wanted in the
office of a hotel, talking with friends and acquaintances of the
doctor's own. He could not have desired a better opportunity.
Stepping up to the group, whom he greeted with a familiar nod
and was not astonished to see it coldly returned, he touched
Hughes on the arm.

" If you please, I would like from you, sir, an explanation of
the manner in which you have lately thought fit to return the
salutations which one gentleman is supposed to give another of
his acquaintance. Not that I prize particularly your good-will,
but I fancy there is a deeper meaning in your actions than the
matter itself signifies."

554 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

" You may take what meaning you please from it," returned
Hughes with stiff composure, and the others laughed softly. " I
am not bound to account to any man for my behavior towards
him so long as he is treated according to his position."

" Very justly answered," coolly replied the doctor, giving
a gratuitous glance of scorn to the chorus, " and for that very
reason, that I am unjustly treated not only by you but by many
others, do I demand an explanation. I shall have it from each of
these gentlemen in turn. I begin with you, because I recall that
you were the first to adopt towards me that demeanor which has
since become the fashion. Now, sir, do you look upon me as not
your equal, and why ? "

" I do," said the other, not so confidently, but firmly still,
" and the wherefore is that I have been taught to look upon those
born out of wedlock as not fit associates."

The coterie seemed very much to expect that the doctor
would vanish under this crushing reply, and were surprised to
see him standing there determined and unmoved.

" Of course you have the best authority for the assertion you
make," he said. " It is a dangerous one to make of any man, and
brings often the most serious consequences. I should like to
hear the name of the person who gave you this bit of informa-
tion."

" What I know," was the cold reply, " I know upon good
authority. Let that suffice. It ought to suffice for you. I will
be catechised no further."

" You will answer one more question, sir. You will tell me
the name of him who gave you the office of scandal-monger to
the city, who chose the most gossiping fool he knew to spread his
slander to the world. I here pronounce it a lie, and him who
dares to utter it on no better authority than hearsay a liar. If
you refuse to do as I bid, then you take his responsibility upon
your own shoulders. You shall suffer now what is only meant
for him."

He swung the whip along the mosaic pavement of the office,
tilting its swaying top against the colored blocks with nice calcu-
lation, while he awaited the gentleman's answer. Hughes stood
looking at him irresolutely. If his manner had been fiercer he
would not have hesitated as to his action ; but the doctor was
grave, restrained, cool even to an appearance of weakness, yet
decided and earnest, and warm enough in his words.

" I ask you again," said Harry more mildly, " to tell me the
name of this person. I do not ask it under threat, but by a right

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 555

which is mine in law and in justice. In law you must do this or
make good your own statement. In any case your silence will
bring upon you the penalty of that other's dishonoring accusa-
tions."

" My informant was Dr. Killany," said Hughes.

" Thank you. You have made the task which I have set my-
self quite easy, and set an example to these gentlemen which I
am sure will be followed."

It was followed. All volunteered their information. He found
that the majority had received the slander at second-hand, and at
a considerably later date than Hughes. From the hotel he went
direct to his own home to obtain from Olivia her knowledge of
the affair. He found with her the general, who was listening de-
lightedly to Olivia's assurances of her own ability to disprove
Killany's slanders. Both ladies instinctively jumped at the ap-
pearance of the doctor. He was stern and muddy, and still car-
ried the ominous whip in his hand ; and he stalked into the par-
lor with blazing eyes and yellow hair curling viciously close to
his head. The general would have departed immediately, but the
doctor compelled her to reseat herself and listen to his words.

" You are probably aware of the matter," he said shortly,
" and it is because of the foolishness of some of you that the good
name of my sister and myself has been bandied about with jest
and scorn in every corner of society. Olivia, who is the man that
first ventured to start this report concerning us? You know
him, and I must know him too."

Olivia hesitated, with pallid cheeks and tear-streaming eyes.

" What would you do, Harry ?" she said, terrified.

" What might not have been done,' ; he answered sternly, "if
you had not so foolishly concealed it all from me this month past.
Come, tell me at once."

" But remember, Harry," she pleaded, " what Mr. Quip has
told us, and how soon we may be able to disprove this slander
peacefully. I pray you let there be no violence."

" Violence ! " he laughed. " No, there shall be no violence.
The dog ! I shall whip him from the city like .the cur that he is.
Will you tell me, girl, and undo in part the bitter mischief that
has already been occasioned by your silence ? "

" Mischief not so serious," broke in the general vigorously,
" but that it can be speedily undone. I make myself responsible
for restoring to you your old position. Olivia is right : there
should be no violence."

" You will not tell me, I see," he exclaimed moodily, and pay-

556 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [July,

ing no more attention to tears and sobs than to a rain-storm, in
which he never hoisted an umbrella. " You are a pair of con-
spirators and noodles, and in your mistaken desire to avoid the
unavoidable you only heap the mischief higher. Killany so far
is responsible."

The cunning fellow ! Both women could not help looking
at each other, and both started.

" Killany is the mari," said the doctor, smiling. " Ah ! well, it
was not improbable."

And he was stalking out of the room when the two rushed at
him and flung their arms about him, and declared in chorus that
he would never, never leave that room until he had promised to
leave the matter in their hands, or at least to do Killany no
physical harm. At which he laughed and showed them his whip.

" I shall do no more than beat him," he said.

"And if he has the spirit of a man he will shoot you," cried
the general, while Olivia shrieked out " Blood ! " in a hysterical
way, and, when he shook her off, fell into the general's arms faint-
ing. Very cruelly he left her there and went on his errand of
justice.

Mrs. Strachan, after reviving and consoling Olivia as well as
was possible under the circumstances, fled to McDonell House
with the intention of making the mistress acquainted with the
little drama about to be enacted. Killany was coming out of the
door and greeted her with his sugary smile. He owed her one
for her astonishing patronage of Olivia. The general stood look-
ing at him a moment doubtfully. " No, I will not," she said at
last, turning away. " It will be no more than a whipping, and the
coward richly deserves it."

The friendly hand that might have saved Killany from dis-
grace was withheld, and he went on his way to meet his shame,
while Mrs. Strachan detailed to the horror-stricken Nano the
sufferings of his victims.

In the meantime the baronet was awaiting with exemplary
patience the doctor's return. Killany arrived before him, and
was engaged in conversation with Sir Stanley when the avenger
entered.

" Well ? " said the baronet eagerly.

." There stands the man," cried the doctor, for the first time
trembling with passion, as he pointed his finger scornfully and
hatefully towards the astonished Killany. " See his face whiten,
the coward ! who would dare to blacken the name of an honest
man by his vile slanders."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 557

Sir Stanley hid his surprise in his anger and contempt.

"What is the meaning of this, gentlemen ? " said the doctor,
comprehending at least the menace of the whip.

" You shall hear, and feel, too," said Fulierton, controlling him-
self by a great effort. " Are not you the man who says that my
sister and I have no right to the name we bear ? "

" I am," said the physician boldly. " I do not think you can
prove your right to it."

" I shall prove it now on you," answered the doctor grimly.
" I shall write on your face in blood the marks of your infamy.
You are a liar ! You have deliberately injured me, and without
any motive. You do not deserve the treatment of a gentleman.
Take this, and this, my friend." He raised the whip to bring it
down across the pale, bold, even smiling countenance ; but quick
as thought Killany had drawn a pistol and levelled it at his
head.

" No violence, if you please, gentlemen," he said coolly. " I
have rather the best card in the game."

The whip never stopped in its descent, but swerved enough
to strike the weapon from his hand to the floor. It went off just
as the whip, raised a second time, fell once, twice, thrice with
terrific swiftness and force on the pale, derisive, but desperate
face. The doctor fell to the ground backwards, his hands clasped
over his disfigured countenance, half-unconscious, and unable to
defend himself. Still the pitiless blows rained on him, cuttihg
and merciless, on hands, and shoulders, and body, leaving red
or bloody stripes where they touched the white, delicate skin.
The report of the pistol brought Quip from the outer office, and
with him two other gentlemen. They would have interfered, but
the baronet politely declined to permit it until the avenger had
been thoroughly satisfied.

" When your master recovers," he whispered to Quip, who
was rejoicing inwardly, "you may hint that if he be found in the
city within the month I shall have the honor of administering a
similar chastisement."

Dr. Fulierton and the baronet then withdrew.

As for Killany, he lay there unconscious, and recovered only
to rush into a blasphemous denunciation of his enemies and him-
self. His disgrace would now become as public as the slander
had been. His days of good fortune were over, and he must go
forth, as he had so often done before, a branded outcast from
society.

TO BE CONTINUED.

558 Tnn NEW VERSION OF A [July,

THE NEW VERSION OF A PROTESTANT NEW TES-
TAMENT.

THE greatest novelty of the season, far excelling any work
produced by even the most popular writer, is undoubtedly the
Anglican recast of King James' version of the New Testament.
The English-speaking portion of our Protestant fellow-citizens
have been fairly on the tiptoe of expectation for an opportunity
to judge whether the new spring style of this part of the Bible
may suit their preconceived ideal of aesthetic culture, or whether
the old and heaven-descended volume, as ninety-nine one-hun-
dredths of devout Protestants have all along singularly'believed,
is to be rudely displaced by changes made through the icono-
clastic hammer of modern research, philology, and progress.

That any one should dare to put forth his hand, like Oza of
old, even when the oxen shook the vehicle of God's covenant,
certainly seemed an act of appalling impiety ; but if that was a
crime, what name can be given to the act of making evident
changes, chiefly by diminution, in what was proudly called the
very compendium of the whole duty of man, and his guide both
in faith and morals ? In the preface, or title-page, it was duly
set forth that the authorized version had been " translated out of
the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently
compared and revised," and that it was " appointed to be read in
churches " ; but during this transition state uncertainty takes the
place of any rule. Meanwhile private judgment is deemed per--
fectly competent to sit in an official capacity on the question as
to what is the word of God, and we can in some measure under-
stand the following wail of one who appears to hold earnestly
and with clinging tenacity to his fetich, and writes, in a strain
actually touching, as follows :

" Now, the common authority we take to be the approval of the people
in the churches. The pride of pe'dantry may be gratified by finding a
translator's blunder here and there ; but will religion be served by a break-
ing down of the old landmarks ? Through all the centuries men have been
born, and lived and died, and we trust saved, under the old beacon-light.
Communities who 'just knew, and knew no more, the Bible true,' have
gone on in old faith and old hope and are these to be asked now to sur-
render all the teachings of childhood, to tear down from its shelf that old
clasped Bible, with the family records on its fly-leaves and the family as-

1 88 1.] PROTESTANT NEW TESTAMENT. 559

sociations clinging to it all over, and set up in its stead a strange volume
which, though perhaps retaining all the essential teachings of Christianity,
takes from their surroundings many of the memories of childhood and
weakens faith in all Scripture by denying the truthfulness of parts ? "

This gives the gist of what all our Protestant communities
think about " the Book," which, to tell plain, unvarnished truth,
has been and is the theme or occasion of more nonsense than
ever was imagined outside the walls of an insane asylum, not to
speak of the grotesque idolatry and superstition of which it was
the source and origin.

The cry has been rung with all its changes upon us since we
were a boy that " the Bible " (meaning always the above-mentioned
version) " the Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is the religion of
Protestants " ; but we very soon found out that this clarion shout
was a lie, and that each sect forced its members to accept its own
preconceived and efformed interpretation, and for this purpose
had Procrustean beds of orthodoxy cast, without ever daring to
assert the absolute certainty of their fit, into which woe betide
those who refused to lay calmly their members and intellect.
By the fact of efforming " confessions of faith," " symbols,"
"discipline-books," etc., they admitted that more than the Scrip-
tures is needed. And as they all, with one accord, appeal to the
Scriptures for proof of their different and contradictory teaching,
it was well said even of the best version, when interpreted by pri-
vate judgment, that every man finds in the Bible that which he
brings to the dead letter of Scripture :

*' Hie est liber in quo quasrit sua dogmata quisque,
Invenietque ibi dogmata quisque sua "; *

whilst, on the other hand, the words of St. Augustine are un-
changeable and unsullied truth : " Non crederem Evangelic nisi
me commoveret auctoritas Ecclesias Catholicas " " I would not
believe the Gospel, were it not for the authority of the Catholic
Church."

The new version, however, for Protestants has appeared, and
is certainly a widespread disappointment to those who had some-
how fondly imagined " a vain thing " namely, that the apex of
perfection had hitherto been attained in the former " most dread
sovereign's," or King James', version, which, for the melodious

*Or:

Each man here seeks for his own view,
Certain here to find it, too.

560 THE NEW VERSION OF A [July,

harmony of the English then spoken and its dignified solemnity of
style, assuredly deserved many of the eulogies which have been
scattered like flowers profusely on its conquering path. Among
these, for its beauty, we may transcribe the words of Father Faber,
who speaks on the power of literary excellence in sustaining tra-
dition :

" If the Arian heresy was propagated and rooted by means of vernacu-
lar hymns, so who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous Eng-
lish of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in
this country ? It lives on in the ear like a music that never can be forgot-
ten, like the sound of church-bells which the convert hardly knows how
he can forego. Its felicities seem often to be almost things rather than
mere words. It is part of the national mind and. the anchor of the na-
tional seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry, in ex-
tenuation of whose grotesque fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads avail-
ingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead
passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its
verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its
words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that there has
been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good speaks
to him for ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing which doubt
never dimmed and controversy never soiled. It has been to him all along
as the silent but oh ! how intelligible voice of his guardian angel ; and in the
length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant, with one spark of
religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon
Bible." *

It will require a very long time and, what the new version is
still less likely to command, an attentive and devout reading to
enable it to displace (among Protestant Bible-readers) the older
and more accustomed sounds ; for of it people will say emphati-
cally, as was said of the new wine in the unchanged text:
"The old is better." This verdict, nevertheless, may be here-
after set aside simply because it will look like culture to leave
the majority and be enrolled among the ostensibly better edu-
cated.

As we are practical, it may be as well to place just here our
estimation of the work and our judgment upon it. We must
premise by saying that none of these modern versions, however
well made, have of themselves among scholars any real or critical
value whatever. Their purity and fidelity must be determined
by the grade of learning and other necessary qualifications their
translators possessed, and the reliability and number of the an-
cient codices, or manuscripts, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Greek, and

* Life and Letters, 1852, p. 373, ed. Bait.

i88i.] PROTESTANT NEW TESTAMENT. 561

Latin, to which they had access and which they used in a proper
manner. Any and all versions emanating from public or private
individuals or societies, having no approbation from the church,
" whose it is to judge of the sense of the Scriptures," are purely
human productions, to be weighed in the balance as one does the
classical authors, with their doubtful and discrepant readings.
When, however, these contradictions are presented as the word
of God they are simply self-condemned. This version under-
goes the fate of any merely human production ; and were it ten
times as faithful in all its renderings and a thousand times more
perfect in its wording, it would still have the original sin on its
head of being not the word of God, but merely a human attempt
at the task of translating discrepant manuscripts, a work deserv-
ing, indeed, some praise for scholarly skill manifested, yet essen-
tially wrong if tending to leave the people (who should be
taught, and who have no right or power to teach) under the false
impression that they can, by any amount of earthly research and
learning, tell what is or what is not the word of God ; or, having
found the actual text of Sacred Writ, that they can judge, without
fear of being deceived, what is the exact sense of the oracles ot
God.

We are glad to be able to say that the new version in many
points (and so far as we have cursorily examined it) approaches-
much more closely to the best manuscripts in Greek, and conse-
quently to the Latin Vulgate, or Catholic reading, than many, or
even the majority, of Protestants will care to hear. These some-
how labored under a long delusion that special defectiveness be-
longs to the Vulgate, whence also our Rheims and Douay trans-
lations are chiefly taken. Scholars, however, have given the-
very greatest praise to the Latin version, concerning which a
most apposite testimony may be found in the London Quarterly,,
July, 1878, article "Dr. Martin Joseph Routh " (President of
Magdalen College, Oxford). In an authoritative and deliberate,
manner, and evidently after long study and research, this learned
professor of the Sacred Scriptures leaves his judgment as to the
value of the Vulgate when critical accuracy is sought. The
words of such a witness are worth giving in full :

' Do you remember, sir, about a year ago asking me to recommend to
you some commentary on Scripture ? . . . Well, sir, I have often thought
since that if ever I saw you again I would answer your question. If-you
will take my advice (that of an old man, but I think you will find the hint
worth your notice), whenever you are at a loss about the sense of a pas-
sage in the New Testament, you will ascertain how it is. rendered in the
VOL. xxxin. 36

562 THE NEW VERSION OF A [July,

Vulgate the Latin Vulgate, sir " (here he kindled and eyed me to ascertain
whether there was any chance of my misunderstanding him). " Not that
the Latin of the Vulgate is inspired nothing of the sort ; but you will con-
sider that it is a very faithful and admirable version, executed from the
original by a very learned man by Jerome in the fourth century, certainly
made, therefore, from manuscript authority of exceedingly high antiquity,
and in consequence entitled to the greatest attention and deference."

The author of the article in which the above occurs also sub-
joins:

" It is only fair to add that I have since discovered for myself several
proofs of the soundness of his advice ; and the anecdote is put on record in
the hope that other students may profit by it likewise."

' In so far, therefore, as this evidently timid revision of the New
Testament in English approaches the Vulgate we may congratu-
late its authors. Yet they always seem to halt between two
opinions. They know full well that they stand on exceedingly
dangerous ground before their acknowledged judges and supe-
riors the English-speaking Protestant community, which is not
likely to yield important points so readily.

In truth, the previous question still remains and may be con-
densed in some such formula as this : " At the alleged bidding of
manuscripts (some of them recently found) confessedly imperfect,
not one of them even professing to be the original, large portions
of what we were hitherto taught to venerate as Sacred Scripture
have been blotted out, made doubtful, or entirely changed. Have
we any likelihood that the work will be left in its present par-
tially expurgated condition ? We all know that equally available
arguments may be brought against the grammatical accuracy,
correct translation, and even the existence of a very large num-
ber of texts as yet untouched. When are these revisions to
end?" This version is a mere compromise, as may be seen from
the unaccepted changes (some of them very good, too) suggested,
as it is stated, or said to have been actually presented, by the more
radical American correctors, and left, like " errata corrige/'atthe
end of the new version. It is notorious and admitted that the
greatest care was exercised on purpose not to infringe on the do-
main of texts controverted theologically among Protestants, thus
leaving an unmeasured margin for future changes. Whatever
else has been done in the way of eliminating dogma by actual
blotting out of verses or nearly whole chapters, it may be safely
asserted that Unitarians and Universalists are those who can most

i88i.] PROTESTANT NEW TESTAMENT. 563

securely boast. It is still questionable whether this will tend
to make the new version more popular, though the inclination
among evangelicals has been to rid themselves of any dogmatical
teaching whatever, and the broadest views up to the verge of
deism are prevalent among those who were formerly sticklers for
the letter of so-called Scripture.

But let us for a moment consider the real magnitude of this
work of temporary revision, which involves such vast labor and
erudition. It has taken these learned men more than ten years to
produce the present abbreviated abortion, satisfactory to no man
in any of the sects, if he be honest and calmly ask himself the
straightforward question : " Does this now fulfil all my desire ? "
No one man has the time to spend in the reading up of codices,
manuscripts, commentaries, and rules of criticism ; not many can
be found who have the previous learning requisite for such a task ;
fewer still have the means to meet the expenses implied in mak-
ing personally such an examination. Yet were all this done it
would still be only private judgment, merely human and fallible.
How, then, can that be a rule of faith for people at large which
is, in the first place, unattainable by the vast majority, and, second-
ly, when attained utterly indefinite and consequently not worth
having? All who have seen the revision, if capable of judging,
admit that it is not only not perfect, but that it is susceptible of
and demands, from a Protestant standpoint, still further emenda-
tions. We do not call in question the learning and conservatism
of the English revisers ; but we are credibly informed that there
are some on the American board who could not, and cannot now,
read an ancient codex ! These be thy gods, O Protestantism !
But supposing that they even could, " with many a weary step
and many a groan," drag through a part, would it not after all be
the actual fulfilment of the apostolic prophecy : " Always learn-
ing, yet never coming to a knowledge of the truth" ?

The principle upon which the revision hinges is that private
judgment suffices to know, first, what is Scripture, and, secondly*
what is the exact meaning of the same. To both of these unwar-
rantable assumptions we take, of course, the most decided excep-
tion. We put forward instead thereof the true the.ory, a thor-
oughly reasonable one, which asserts and easily proves that by
way of authority, or through the testimony of a perfectly credi-
ble and authorized witness only, can we know which are the true
Scriptures, or, knowing them, understand their meaning.

This witness must be antecedent to the Scriptures, and be able
to vouch for their authenticity, genuineness, and substantial incor-

564 THE NEW VERSION OF A , [July,

ruption. This the books cannot do for themselves, as is supremely
evident in the nature of the case. This witness must be of so
credible a character that perfect reliance may be placed in the
testimony offered.

In reference to the books of the Old Testament, we have the
Jewish synagogue and that singularly scattered yet undying
nation everywhere giving a living testimony to the care they
always took of the divine records. These books portray their
crimes and vices with such frightfully vivid colors that no nation
wishing to escape infamy would have paraded them about had
they been of merely human origin. Their canon of Scripture
was fixed by divine authority ; they required a prophet, who
proved his authoritative mission in order to determine the canon.
Even this, however, was but one step. There was no doubt,
no question mooted in the mind of the treasurer of Queen
Candace (Acts viii. 27) concerning the authority of the book of
the prophet Isaias. The subordinate question came in with all
its potency : " Thinkest thou that thou understandest what them
readest ? " who said : " And how can I, unless some man show
me ? " The sense was not, therefore, remarkably clear. The same
thing is quite plain from Christ's words to his apostles in St.
Luke xxiv. 45 : " Then he opened their mind, that they might
understand the Scriptures " (of the Old Testament, of course).
Evidently they had before not understood " that all things must
needs be fulfilled which are Avritten in the law of Moses, and in
the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me,"

Now, the books of the New Testament must be vouched for
in" an equally authoritative manner, first as to what they are, and,
secondly, as to their meaning. The founding of the Christian
society was antecedent to the writing of any of the books of the
New Testament, as may easily be proved historically. Just as we
know from the synagogue, as the authoritative witness of the
Hebrew religion, what are their records, and their value and
sense, so also we can know the true and authentic narratives of
the New Testament from that society which is known by the
title of Christian, and from it only. The existence of such so-
ciety is as much a matter of fact as is that of any corporate body
the members of which are still extant, or their successors, in an
organized form or government. Applying this method to the
subject-matter before us, we have the definite testimony of a per-
fectly credible witness to the question, first : " What are the
Scriptures of the New Testament?" and, secondly: "What is
the sense or meaning of the same ? " We do not prove the

1 88 1.] PROTESTANT NEW TESTAMENT. 565

Scriptures from the church, and her existence again from them,
for we could not know with any certainty what are or what are
not inspired, sacred, and canonical writings ; but by the testimony
of that ever-living 1 witness which as a society, and independent
of and antecedent to the Scriptures, was actually instituted to
permeate all succeeding ages and never to be ignored. Now, the
office or duty of this society is as necessary and authoritative
for Christians as was that of the Jewish synagogue, prior to the
coming of Christ, to testify to the Hebrew nation what was their
sacred canon. The truth of that priority of existence, besides
being in the nature of the question, appears manifest by many an
opportune admission made by critical scholars. A genuine speci-
men is the following from Constantine Tischendorf in the preface
to the Sinaitic version : " I have no doubt," says the learned
writer, " that very shortly after the books of the New Testament
were written, and before they were protected by the authority of
the church, many arbitrary alterations and additions were made
in them." Here he admits, in common with every right-minded
thinker, that the church is the protector of the Scriptures as well
as the real voucher for them.

Nor should we forget the evident plan laid down and acted
upon by Christ, who neither wrote anything himself nor gave
even the semblance of an order to do so to any of his disciples.
Yet his plan embraced all time, as it took in the uttermost part of
the earth. Had the reading of books been essential, how very
few during all the ages were able to read ; and would not the art
of printing have been accelerated, since it was a tardy supple-
ment of the Incarnation ?

He chose, on the contrary, to call around him selected disci-
ples, whom he instructed to be witnesses of his teaching and acts.
After years of formation and direction he empowered them to
go forth and teach. Only a small number, indeed, put in writing
any part of the words or works of their Master. Those even
who did protested that the writings were incomplete, but that the
teaching would be permanent : " Go . . . teach all nations, . . .
teaching them to observe all tilings whatsoever I have command-
ed you : and behold I am with you all days, even to the consum-
mation of the world " (St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). This plan was
followed by the apostles and continues to the present day. The
church gives testimony of the most direct kind as to what is the
teaching of Christ, and she gives it in the most intelligible form.
When any reasonable doubt arises she is the supreme teacher,
and in this capacity teaches all nations. She acts the very neces-

566 THE NEW VERSION OF A [July,

sary part of the last or supreme court of judicature, making use
of her accumulated documents as evidence of what is the law
and what must be the application thereoi

This theory commends itself at once to the mind of every one
because of its perfect simplicity and universal adaptability. By
it all are made equal, whether learned or unlearned, high or low,
rich or poor ; hearing the church as the mouthpiece of Christ,
they actually hear him : " He who hears you hears me ; and he
who hears me hears Him who sent me." Whilst this is clear and
definite, the delusion of private judgment must of pure necessity
be productive of as many different views as there are diversiti<
of calibre and grades of education in the human mind. It is not
worth while to do more than suggest for consideration what
is the actual state of society wheresoever this monstrous system
has even temporarily obtained a foothold. In our own country,
which is the very paradise of sects increasing also daily nearly
every imaginable view in theological matters has found or may
find ready followers. Apparently it seems of little importance
to them that their teachings are directly contradictory on almost
every point, from a denial of the divine personality of Christ to
the rejection of a future life negation in all things, both in doc-
trine and practice, from the overthrow of the Commandments to
a setting aside portions, verses, whole chapters, or even books of
Scripture, as is evident in the new reading.

Unless, therefore, we have an infallible witness we can never
know with certainty what is the Scripture. We may have hu-
man probability, such as we have for the authentic and genuine
classics of Greece and Rome. No doubt, humanly speaking, the
church treasured up with even greater care the different parts of
the sacred writings. She had them entirely in her hands, and
preserved the books of the Old Testament, by the witness of the
series of prophets and the traditions of the Jews, during the long
interval from the Pentateuch to the historical works, through the
Psalms and prophets. The line of high-priests did not fail till
the fulfilment came in Christ. He gave testimony concerning
the old covenant. His commission to his disciples made them a
corporate and perpetual body. This permanent body collected,
in the course of time, the testimony committed to writing by a
certain number of the immediate followers of Christ. Few, in-
deed, of these had written anything, as is evident. It can easily
be proved, on the other hand, that they all obeyed the command
to go and teach. They were to be " the witnesses unto me in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the utter*

i88i.] PROTESTANT NEW TESTAMENT. 567

most part of the earth " (Acts i. 8). We do not need to have re-
course to a miracle for the preservation of the precise words of
Scripture, since that was a practical and living matter in the
church, and the letters given for specifically mentioned purposes,
or to meet particular exigencies, must have been preserved and
venerated very highly. It has been well said that the liturgies,
dating from apostolic times and kept with oriental tenacity, re-
tain very accurately the sense of the Scriptures, whilst the ma-
terial text might be very nearly transcribed from the myriads of
references found in the early Fathers of the church. These cer-
tainly may be used as a precious legacy of corroborative testi-
mony, and they go far to establish the actual text of the original.
Lest, however, any reasonable doubt might be left unanswered,
or any room for cavil remain, both the synagogue and church
have given in an authoritative manner their attestation as to the
canon of Scripture. There is, therefore, no doubt in the church
as to the number, authenticity, substantial integrity, and absolute
genuineness of these books, which had long passed from hand to
hand among the churches, and were finally stamped with the
seal of extrinsic authority in council. It would have been im-
possible to corrupt all the manuscripts of the Old Testament, for
the Jews would have made themselves heard ; nor could the parts
of the New in general use in the liturgies have been essentially
changed, since the different nations possessing these ancient docu-
ments would have complained not only on religious but on na-
tional grounds.

When St. Jerome, by request of Pope Damasus, made a re-
vision of the Latin Vulgate from the oldest manuscripts of the
original tongues, the Psalter was left in its present condition, be-
cause it was a good translation and by actual use among the re-
ligious was endeared to them even in its wording. In the Coun-
cil of Trent the fathers insist that the ancient and well-known ver-
sion, approved and recognized by long ages of use, should be
printed quam emcndatissime , and in all services and offices must
be followed. They did not assert that the Vulgate had fallen, as
it were, from heaven, nor did they forbid scholars to have full
recourse to the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Greek, and Latin versions,
since the original texts are not extant ; but they did assert au-
thoritatively that the Vulgate with all its parts, mentioned book
by book seriatim, as read in the Catholic Church, is sacred and ca-
nonical. That puts an end to disputes so far as Catholics are con-
cerned, and is thoroughly clear and intelligible. " Roma locuta
est : causa finita est " Rome has spoken, and the matter is settled.

568 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July,

For us, therefore, this new version of a corrupt and heretical
reading has no special interest, unless in so far as it approaches
(where not curtailed) somewhat, by times, nearer the Catholic
truth. In this we see some reason for congratulation. It is also
an admission that " the Book " was frightfully corrupt, and that
Protestants have been fighting for a version confessedly wrong ;
else why correct it? The differences in readings are patent and
obvious. They are, like Falstaff's lies, " gross as a mountain,
open, palpable."

The tendency of the revision among thinking Protestants will
be either to make them forsake a sinking craft, leaky, untrust-
worthy, and floundering, in order to make a safe harbor, or they
will renounce all semblance of Christianity. It is one of the
rudest shocks Protestantism, as such, has been obliged to undergo
in this doubting century. Should it bring many to " the ark of
worship undefiled " through the principle of authority, we shall
be pleased indeed. They can hardly fail to see that they have
built their habitations on the shifting sands of ocean's shore.
We are fixed on the rock, against which the tempests of time may
beat in vain.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE CAT. An Introduction to the Study of Backboned Animals, espe-
cially Mammals. By St. George Mivart, Ph.D., F.R.S. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. 1881.

One taking up this book for the first time, and glancing over its pages,
would probably wonder for what class of readers it was written. It would
seem to him as if it were intended for cat-doctors, if such people there are,
so minutely does it describe every part of the feline organism. But a little
closer examination, and even a consideration of the title, given above, would
put him on the right track, and the scheme of which this work is a part
would become evident. This scheme is, indeed, set forth clearly in the pre-
face. "The natural history of animals and plants," says the eminent au-
thor, " may be written in two ways : (i) living beings may be treated as one
whole, their various powers and the more general facts as to their organi-
zation being successively portrayed as they exist in the whole series ; or
(2) one animal (or plant) may be selected as a type and treated of in detail,
other types, successively more divergent in structure from the first, be-
ing described afterwards."

He proceeds to say that we may take our type either at the lower or
the upper end of the scale of creation ; but that the latter course is prefer-

1 88 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 569

able and has been taken in the actual development of zoological science.
Man's anatomy was first studied, and that of other animals based on his.
But the author has chosen not to treat of the human subject, but to select
another of the higher animals, in order that the knowledge derived from
reading may be more conveniently supplemented, as it is so important that
it should be, by actual examination of the organism in question ; since his
work " is intended for persons who are interested in zoology, and especial-
ly in the zoology of beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes, and not merely for
those concerned in studies proper to the medical profession."

It is not, then, strictly speaking, a professional book, but one of value
and interest to any reader interested, as so many are now, in natural science
in general. And to such it aims to present science in its true light, not, as
the author remarks at the end, as a knowledge of mere facts and pheno-
mena, but as a knowledge of causes. To help on the progress of that true
science in this department, " no course," he says, " is perhaps more useful
than that of the careful study of a succession of types belonging to different
families of living beings."

Aside from the value of the work simply as a scientific treatise com-
mending itself by its ability and thoroughness to all readers, it has, together
with the other works of its distinguished author (Lessons from Nature,
Genesis of Species, Contemporary Evolution, etc.), the recommendation of giv-
ing an example of science pursued in a reasonable and Christian way, and
a proof much needed nowadays, as it would seem that to study natural
science and to attain a high position among scientific men, it is not neces-
sary to cut adrift from faith or to leave it behind one on coming out of the
church-door. Such works coming from such men ought to show, and will
show to all who read them, that true religion, instead of hindering natural
science, is a help to it, not only by the supernatural light which it sheds
on it, but also by the systematic and scientific character which it itself has,
and which it cannot fail to impart to those minds which it thoroughly im-
bues.

CHRIST IN His CHURCH. A Catholic Church History. From the original
of Rev. L. C. Businger. By Rev. Richard Brennan, LL.D. Together
with a " History of the Church in America." By John Gilmary Shea,
LL.D. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis : Benziger Brothers. 1881.

This is not precisely a history according to the usual plan, but rather a
series of distinct historical views of particular parts of the Catholic religion.
The author is a writer of reputation and his work is instructive and edifying.
The name of the translator is a sufficient guarantee that his part of the
work is well done. At the end is a chronological table of events, in which
there is a lack of critical accuracy in several points. The year A.D. 34 is
given as the date of the first Pentecost, whereas it is generally agreed on
by authorities in chronology that it was either A.D. 29 or 30. Innocent
VII. is marked in the table as having resigned in 1406, whereas he did not
resign but died. Gregory XII. is marked as having resigned in 1409, where-
as it was only in 1417 at the Council of Constance.

Dr. Shea's " History of the Church in the United States," we need not
say, is drawn up with the care and correctness to be expected from its

5/0 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July,

author. There is an inaccuracy in the names of several American converts
which it would be well to correct in the reprinting. These names should
be the Rev. C. A. Walworth, the Rev. F. A. Baker, and the Rev. A. F.
Hewit. The statement that Father Hewit is editor of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD is also incorrect. Father Hecker has been from the beginning,
and still continues to be, the editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

The publishers would have done better to make less effort to pro-
duce a showy volume, or else to carry out their design in better taste
and with more care than they have done. Some of the portraits, par-
ticularly those of Cardinals Manning and Newman, far from adorning,
actually disfigure the volume.

CHRISTIAN TRUTHS. Lectures by the Rt. Rev. Francis Silas Chatard, D.D.,
Bishop of Vincennes. New York : The Catholic Publication Society
Co. 1881.

It can safely be predicted that this volume will become a favorite
manual of controversy on some of the chief points of Catholic doctrine.
To speak of it as popular in style might create the false impression that it
is superficial and showy two qualities that have to too great an extent
come to be looked upon as necessary for popular success. These lectures
are popular, however, in the best sense of the term. They bear every evi-
dence, in their clean and correct language, their fulness and aptness of ex-
amples, and their accuracy of quotation, of having been carefully thought
out for the instruction, and not for the amusement, of the people. But
though they address themselves very decidedly to the intelligent and
thoughtful, they are singularly free from dryness. The subjects are : the
personality of God, the existence of the soul in man, God and the soul-reve-
lation, faith and its requisites, the rule of faith, infallibility, liturgy and de-
votions of the church, penance, the Blessed Eucharist, early Christianity.

The first four lectures, as well as the last, were delivered in this coun
try; the others were given during their author's residence in Rome, where
he was rector of the American College. The last lecture points out how the
symbolical paintings and etchings of the Roman Catacombs testify to the
identity of the faith of the Christians under Pope Marcellinus in the third
century with 'that of the Christians under Pope Leo XIII. in our own
day.

HISTORICAL PORTRAITS OF THE TUDOR DYNASTY. By Sarsfield Hubert
Burke. London : John Hodges, King William Street, Strand. 1881.

We owe to the manly candor of the Scotch historian, Fraser Tytler, an
assertion more veracious than complimentary to England that no writer
could, in the opinion of the English people, commit " a greater historical
heresy than to tell them the truth." The exemplification of this observa-
tion is notably given by the reception which Mr. Burke's book has met
with from many sections of the English press. Some of the most respecta-
ble papers have admitted the fidelity with which his researches have been
set forth and the potency of his proofs ; whilst the sectarian press have
bitterly attacked the motives of the writer, or contradicted his facts without
even an attempt at producing evidence to contravene his statements, so
elaborately collected by a researchful industry almost unparalleled in English

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 571

history. " Truth does not sell in proud England " was the statement of
William Cobbett, whose works, nevertheless, after being sold in millions in
Ireland and America, subsequently took possession of the shelves of myriads
of English homesteads. Whilst tons of Foxe's falsehoods, fantastically illus-
trated and multiplied threefold on the original allegations, in modern years
have emanated from the Protestant press, the calm, judicious, and proof-
sustained exposition of the truth is disregarded by very many who ought to
know better, and is placed out of the reach of many inquirers by reason of
its price.

The second volume of the Historical Portraits presents a varied and
most interesting cabinet of written portraits, drawn with a truthfulness sub-
stantiated on almost every page by quotation of the authority from which
each statement is derived ; and whilst the motto of the book, " Time unveils
all truth," is conscientiously adhered to, the romance connected with the
subject of any of the portraitures is deftly dealt with and picturesquely de-
lineated. Mr. Burke has been accused of eccentricity in the spelling of his
names a proof of the bona fides with which he has searched for and ob-
tained from long-neglected adyta in the mouldy chambers of London and
provincial institutions the veritable manuscripts written by or addressed to
the men and women he portrays. The eccentricity of the author consists
mainly in his unwonted fashion of writing English history : he does not,
like Mr. Froude, ignore, much less misrepresent, documents which he has
found or with which he has been furnished, and, clinging to impartial
truth, he has no taste for the autocratic caprice of individual dogmatism
or a desire to stifle truth under the flowers of a labored but factitious rhetoric.

The editor of one of the most beautiful and fashionable papers in Lon-
don has declared that the chapter concerning the death of Lady Jane Grey
or, as Mr. Burke more correctly designates her, Lady Jane Dudley (for
had she not a right to her husband's name ?) ought alone to establish the
fame of the book. The scaffold speech of this poor young victim of her
kindred's treasonable ambition was, singular to say. taken by a lady at-
tached to the Spanish embassy, and is for the first time printed in the
English tongue, in this volume, from the Spanish notes.

Never, perhaps, has a work been more diversely treated than this. It has
been sullenly remarked by some Catholic papers that the author has no right
to exhibit the evil-doings of the bishops and clerics who gave way to the
licentious tyrant, Henry VIII. as if all the world did not know, or ought
not to know, that it was so-called Catholics who, having aided and shared
in the confiscation of the monasteries the heritage of the poor establish-
ed an anti-Roman cultus, which was afterwards made more divergent by
the caprice or ingenuity -of quasi-Reformers. Because the author has
proved that bad Catholics proved it with an impartiality almost miracu-
lous for its stern directness were the originators and architects of the
present Established Church of England, his work is regarded with horror
by the members of the English " Church Association " and by the so-called
Evangelicals, and is correspondingly received with greeting and support by
High-Churchmen and Ritualists, who have, it is said, more extensively
purchased the work than have the Catholics of England. Why should
Catholics of the present day be angry to have it proved that there were
very bad professors of the olden faith three hundred years ago, as there

572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July*

may be now? Henry VIII. was, when young,. so active and convinced a
Catholic that he wrote a book against Luther, and received from a too
confiding pope the title of " Fidei Defensor." Then why be irate if it is
proved that subordinate spirits had not the courage to resist his will, and
imitate, even in the lowest degree, the sublime examples of those grand old
confessors, Fisher, More, Warham, and the illustrious Carthusians ? Luther,
too, was a very bad and sacrilegious Catholic, yet he was adopted as an
apostle of a new creed by the robber Ritters of Germany ; and how well
fitted he was to consort with those monsters, and to be patronized and pro-
tected by them, his Tischreden, or " table-talk" that ineffable melange of
obscenity and coarseness furnished to us by Audin in his great biography
of the "German Reformer" lamentably proves.

We are glad to see that the third volume of these Historical Portraits is
in the hands of the printer; and its table of contents indicates a programme
of matter which has never been equalled for its importance to the rightful
and true understanding of a most eventful phase of English history.

THE SERVANT-GIRL QUESTION. By Harriet Prescott Spofford. Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1881.

Mrs. Spofford's book is a resume of that much-agitated subject, the ser-
vant-girl question. It contains nothing new, and its views do not differ
materially from what has gone before, save that the author is inclined to be
more fair in her judgments than the majority of writers have hitherto been,
and, as between mistress and maid, to give honor to each where honor is
due. In short, it is not one-sided.

While giving an occasional odd fling at the devotion of the Irish girl to
her religion and the inconvenience it entails upon orderly American house-
holds, she is yet disposed not to find too great fault with said inconve-
nience, as well she may, for in the attachment of the Irish girl to the teach-
ings of the church lies the secret of the many virtues for which Mrs. Spof-
ford gives her credit.

The author's remarks are not always consistent. In one chapter she
admires the ease and facility with which these children of nature adapt
themselves to new circumstances and surroundings, eulogizing their pa-
tience, endurance, etc. ; but a few pages later on she takes occasion to de-
precate their unfaithfulness, wilfulness, and carelessness, referring at the
same time to their impudence, and even insolence. Admitting that these
charges are true in a measure, the two opposing facts lead one to suspect
that the secret of the change must lie in the "fundamental principles" of
American housekeeping. The girl that comes to us so willing to do and so
eager to learn, so susceptible to good influences and docile as a child in
obedience to authority, is very often treated like a machine by the mistress
wno employs her. The rough edge once worn off, she is left to her own
devices and inefficient resources ; no thought or care is given to her men-
tal or moral progress; being human, she will necessarily seek companions
and amusements and how many women in a hundred ever know or care to
know what friends or what manner of relaxation their servant has ? No
supervision is exercised over her outgoings or incomings ; so much labor,
so much wages, is the sum of the relation between the greatest number of
employers and employed. With rare exceptions the Irish girl is plastic clay

1 8 8 1 .] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 573

in our hands, to be moulded as we please, always taking care to remember
and respect her religious and filial devotion, which are the paramount vir-
tues of her soul. Add to this the undeniable fact that as a rule most
servants in this country have too much to do, and we have the real
cause of the growing exigencies of the servant-girl question. An impudent
or insolent servant should be an unknown quantity in a respectable house-
hold. Presumption of that sort ought not be suffered more than once ;
no lady need be at the mercy of impertinence, and we confess to feel but
little sympathy for those limp females who spend half their lives in fear of
Bridget or Nora.

Mrs. Spofford gives a case in point, which, by way of illustration, we
quote entire :

"'Julia,' said a kind mistress of our acquaintance lately to her rather
superior servant, ' if you had made the fire half an hour earlier this morn-
ing the potatoes would have been baked for Mr. Blank's breakfast.' ' I
had to use my own judgment about that,' Julia replied loftily. ' Certain-
ly,' said her mistress; 'but you had sleep enough, as you went to bed at
eight, to have spared the half-hour this morning.' ' That was my busi-
ness,' answered the down-trodden one."

The " certainly " of that mistress is the key to her weakness. There is
no evidence to show that " Julia " was discharged, or even reproved ; but if
that fair daughter of Erin and others of like ilk be held as " superior " spe-
cimens in certain localities, then we marvel not that American housekeep-
ers in the affected districts have ceased to struggle with the inevitable.
We cannot conceive of such impertinence in a servant, nor of a state of
relations between mistress and maid that would warrant the thought or
implication of the same. Neither has it ever been our misfortune to have
been obliged to go about in a condition of grime and discomfort through
fear of arousing the temper of an irascible laundress ; and we have yet to
see the day when such an announcement as " Bridget, we are to have some
friends to-morrow " has drawn the suggestion of a frown to the forehead
of any Bridget or Nora who has had the privilege or ill-fortune, as the
case may be, to officiate at the culinary shrine. With regard to Mrs. Spof-
ford's "last resort" viz., the introduction of Chinamen into our kitchens,
chambers, and nurseries refinement and delicacy, not to speak of Christi-
anity, shrink from the mention of such a possibility. We do not fear it.
It is too disagreeable an alternative.

In conclusion we quote the best passage and the truest in Mrs. Spof-
ford's book, feeling confident that our sentiments will be endorsed by thou-
sands of housekeepers throughout the land :

" Yet if once in a while a kind Providence sends to your door, as it has
sent to our own, an Irish girl such as there is a tradition that there used to
be, and such as it is not altogether too much to expect now, then the prose
seems a better thing than the poetry. Then you have not a servant mere-
ly, but a friend a great-hearted, warm-hearted friend ; one who feels your
interests as her own ; whose industry is faithfulness, whose faithfulness is
devotion, whose sympathetic soul and sweet, blarneying tongue are like
sunbeams through the house ; in the light of whose superiority differences
of religion and nationality seem but contemptible trifles ; to whom the
children run ; to whom you turn yourself ; whom you counsel with rather
than command ; whose clean and wholesome ways are ways of pleasant-
ness, while, if all her paths are not paths of peace, she clears off after a

574 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [ J uly ,

flare-up so brightly that reconciliation is a pleasure ; and whom if, when
her days of usefulness are over, you forget, then should God forget you."

MOTHERHOOD : A Poem. Boston : Lee & Shepard ; New York : Charles
T. Dillingham. 1881.

If a mother should take up this little book she would not be likely to
lay it aside until she had read every page from beginning to end.

The author has treated the solemn and mysterious theme of mother-
hood with the greatest dignity and delicacy, and at the same time with a
simplicity, a strength and beauty of thought and expression, that shows the
true inspiration of the poet.

To give some idea of how the subject is treated we quote some verses
from the " Hymn of Motherhood " :

" O beautiful new life within my bosom,

New life, love-born, more beautiful than day,

I tremble in thy sacred presence, knowing
What holy miracle attends my way !

My heart is hushed ; I hear between its beating
The angel of annunciation say,
1 Hail, blessed among women ! ' while I pray.

" O all creative Love ! thy finger touches

My leaping pulses to diviner heat.
What am I, that thy thought of life should blossom

In me, in me thy tide of life should beat ?
Beat strong within me God-tide, in high passion,

With quickening spirit earth-born essence greet !

Fountain of life ! flow through me pure and sweet.

' O all sustaining Love ! come close beside me

Me, so unworthy of this wondrous gift.
Purge me, refine me, try me as by fire,

Whiten me white as snow in glacier- rift,
That neither spot, nor stain, nor blemish darken
These elements that now to being drift ;
Inspire, sustain me, all my soul uplift."

The author, in her preface, begs her readers and critics to respect the
incognito of a poem Avhich was written as an expression not of individual
but of universal experience, and from a desire to portray in its purity and
holiness the most beautiful instinct of humanity.

The book is. well gotten up, in a style that is attractive and appropriate.

MY FIRST COMMUNION : the Happiest Day of my Life. A Preparation and
Remembrance for First-Communicants. Translated from the German
of Rev. J. N. Buchmann, O.S.B. By Rev. Richard Brennan, LL.D.
New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis : "Benziger Brothers. 1881.

This is a pretty little book, well got up and illustrated, and containing
much valuable matter. It is hardly intended as a formal course of prepara-
tion for First Communion to be used by either instructors or instructed,
but rather as a book of spiritual reading, to impart to the soul of the young
communicant that piety which is even more salutary than knowledge, and
which will, above all things, tend to make First Communion, what it should
be, the beginning of a new and holy life. It will also serve, as implied in

1 88 1 .] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 575

the title, as a valuable keepsake and reminder through life of that great
day, to revive and renew the impressions then received. It contains, how-
ever, a great deal of instruction, and for this alone is well worth having.
Nothing could be better to give as a present or prize to children on their
First-Communion day.

Aus JUNGST VERFLOSSENEN TAGEN. Von E. Arwed. Mainz : F. Kirch-

heirn. 1874.

DER SAPHIR. (The same.) 1876.
MARIO VON MARTIGNY. (The same.) 1880.

These three German novels belong to the same class with those pub-
lished by the Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn during the later period of her
literary life. They have those characteristics of works of fiction which
make this species of literature so attractive and enticing, and yet are
written with a serious purpose. The principles and convictions of the
author are thoroughly Catholic. The scenes and persons he represents are
taken from the modern European society in which religious and political
revolution shakes the foundation of old Christian states, bringing conflict
everywhere, in the bosoms of individuals, in the domestic circles of families,
in social and in political life. The author possesses considerable dramatic
power, talent for describing scenery, an intimate knowledge of history and
society, high moral sense, poetic feeling, and the art of enchaining the at-
tention and keeping up interest in his characters and the development of
his plot, while conveying in the most earnest manner the lessons he wishes
to instil into the minds of his readers. There can be no doubt that the in-
fluence of fictitious writings on the intellectual and moral tone of society is
very great. Works of this kind are more or less read even by votaries of
the gravest and most solid branches of science and literature, and almost ex-
clusively by tens of thousands who can be reached and affected through no
other vehicle. Those who aim at counteracting the noxious effects of bad
literature by merely furnishing that which is innocent but only amusing
certainly do a good work. It is much better, however, to give instruction
with amusement. Those who write well fictitious works of this higher
class, for the purpose of illustrating history or contemporary events and
of combating error and instilling truth, really accomplish a noble and use-
ful task. We look on it as a thing most desirable to have works of this
kind multiplied, and would like to see a considerable number of the best
which have been written in Germany translated into English.

THE STORY OF IRELAND. By Dion Boucicault. Boston : James R. Os-
good & Co. 1881.

In this little pamphlet of twenty-four pages Mr. Boucicault has with
consummate skill, but without the least exaggeration, traced the most tra-
gical career of Ireland under English dominion. There is no fustian, no
pathetic appeals are made for sympathy ; there is nothing but such a bring-
ing out of the salient points of the " situations," one might say, as might be
expected from the accomplished dramatist. The physical, blood-curdling
horrors of the tale are not told ; they are merely suggested. In one sen-
tence Mr. Boucicault has forcibly and truthfully described with what re-
luctance England, under the pressure of fear or policy, has from time to

576 NEW PUBLICATIONS'. [July, 1 88 1

time mitigated her cruel administration of government in Ireland : " The
claws of England had to be torn away from the body of Ireland one by one"
But the savage hold has not yet been released.

Mr. Boucicault should not have touched the relation of the church in
Ireland to the Holy See before the Anglo-Norman invasion. It has no-
thing to do with the question at issue, and he has only fallen into the sad
mistake of giving credit to theories that are altogether opposed to the facts.

THE TWELVE ANNUAL REPORTS OF ST. MARY'S INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL FOR
Boys of the City of Baltimore, from the year 1869 to 1880. Press of St.
Mary's Industrial School, Carroll P. O., Baltimore Co., Md. 1881.

In this volume are bound together all the reports which since its foun-
dation in 1866 have been made of this excellent institution for the care of
neglected, abandoned, or unruly boys. The late Archbishop Spalding
opened the school on a farm presented by a charitable lady, Mrs. Emily
McTavish, and he put it in charge of the Xaverian Brothers, under the
control of an executive committee of responsible laymen. Judging by the
reports here given, St. Mary's is in a flourishing condition.

REPORTS OF THE PRESIDENT AND RECORDING SECRETARY of St. Mark's
Academy, St. Louis University, for the year 1880-81. St. Louis: John
J. Daly & Co. 1881.

St. Mark's Academy, an association for discussing the questions of the
day, conducted under the patronage of the faculty of St. Louis University,
is now in its fourth year, and has had delivered before it seventy-seven
essays, lectures, and reviews, the work altogether of its own members.

RULES OF THE ASSOCIATES OF THE HOLY ANGELS. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1881.

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN, 1881. American Academy Notes. Second edition. Cas-
sell, Fetter, Galpin & Co.

DECENNIAL SOUVENIR OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER'S CHURCH. New
York : Stephen Mearns, No. 73 Barclay Street. 1881.

ON THE SUNRISE SLOPE. By Katherine E. Conway. With introduction by the Rev. Patrick
Cronin. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1881.

SANCTISSIMI DOMINI NOSTRI LEONIS XIII. LITTERS APOSTOLIC/E, quibus extraordinarium
Jubilasum indicitur in usum cleri practicis notis illustrate. Neo Eboraci : Benziger Fratres.
1881.

AN EXAMINING CHAPLAIN UNDER EXAMINATION. A Review of Dr. Stearns' Rejoinder to
The True Faith of our Forefattters. By the author of the same. Baltimore : John B.
Piet. iSSi.

HENRI PERREYVE AND HIS COUNSELS TO THE SICK. By Kathleen O'Meara, author of Life of
Frederic Ozanam, Bells of the Sanctuary, etc. London : C. Kegan Paul & Co. , i Pater-
noster Square. 1881.

LECTURES ON CHRISTIAN UNITY. With an appendix on the condition of the Anglican Commu-
nion and of the Eastern Churches. By the Very Rev. Thomas S. Preston. V.G., LL.D.
Second edition. New York : Robert Coddington. 1881.

POEMS FOR CHILDREN. By Sister Mary Alphonsus Downing, of the Third Order of St. Domi-
nic, author of Voices from the Heart, etc. Revised by the Right Rev. Dr. Leahy, Bishop of
Dromore. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1881.

GLADSTONE AND IRISH GRIEVANCES. An essay on the Irish land laws, tenures, and grievances ;
their proposed solution ; the Gladstone Coercion Act and Land-Bill ; and the Land League.
By Henry A. Brann, of the New York Bar. New York : Benj. H. Tyrrel, Printer, 74
Maiden Lane. 1881.

Literary Bulletin.

113

LITERARY BULLETIN.

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCI-
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the Soul.

IV. Faith and its Requisites.
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VI. Infallibility, No. i.

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Catholic Devotions.
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THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCI-
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" Picking up this little book just after
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him by the church. However, we also
perceive that on some pages the name
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the will of God in the distribution of
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the will of God in sickness, regarding
death, etc."

114

Literary Bulletin.

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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIII. AUGUST, 1881. No. 197.

RESTITUTION! IF NOT, WHY NOT?

THE disestablishment in 1869 of "the church" established in
Ireland by

" Tudor's wrath and Stuart's guile,
And iron Strafford's tiger jaws,
And brutal Brunswick's penal laws,"

was considered by many thoughtful men * at the time as the ini-
tiative of the reparation due by the English government to the
Catholics of Ireland. The elaborate bill of disestablishment put
an end to the paying of tithes by Catholics to the rectors and
curates of the Protestant Church ; but it amply provided for the
future of the well-paid shepherds, who had for many dismal de-
cades indifferently tended their small flocks in the cities of Lein-
ster, the villages of Munster, the towns of Ulster, and the parishes
of Connaught.

Twelve years have passed since an act of the English Parlia-
ment destroyed what it had, during more than two hundred years,
taken tons of treasure and cataracts of blood to introduce and
protect in Ireland ; but not a thing has been done to make the
measure popular with the people, whom it was supposed to pro-
pitiate, by the harsh government which it was hoped had re-
solved to make some reparation for the past. The verbiage and
tautology of the act have had no influence upon the heart of

* Vide THE CATHOLIC WORLD for July, 1870, page 472 et seq.
Copyright. Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1881.

578 RESTITUTION ! IF NOT, WHY NOT? [Aug.,

Ireland ; in sooth, not one man in a thousand knows anything
about it.

Twelve years is time enough foh the British government to
show the Catholics that it was in earnest in the matter of reli-
gious equality and religious reparation. But that government has
done nothing to heal the wounds of the nation it has so long legis-
lated for, and " in whose feelings and affections, wants and inter-
ests, opinions and prejudices"* it has no sympathy, if we except
the Land Bill, which is purely secular, now before the House of
Commons, and which has been demanded by threats of force,
or some kind of legal protection for the toiling tenant's improve-
ments, by the friends of the progress and civilization that Great
Britain boasts so much of, but which she impedes, as far as she
dare, when they approach the sister-island. The necessity for a
change in the land laws was brought about by the poverty and
suffering of the people in the west of Ireland during the past
two or three years, notwithstanding the Land Act of 1870; but
the disestablishment in 1869 of " the church " established by

"Tudor's wrath and Stuart's guile,"

and the Land Bill of 1870, did not, can not, nor will the in-
choate bill of 1 88 1, make reparation for the wrong done the re-
ligious feelings and affections of the people by the expropriation
of their magnificent churches and the destruction of their vene-
rable abbeys, whose spires and ruins are conspicuous on the banks
of the Shannon, Boyne, and LifTey, and near " Cashel of the
Kings," upon whose rock stands the grandest of all the broken
fanes of Ireland, and whose beauty, strength, and simplicity of
arch and architrave tell of burning faith and craftsmen of rare
skill.

Where are these churches and abbeys existing to-day, or in
ruins, in Ireland ? Ay, where are they ? " There's the rub " to
the English statesman, like the late Earl of Beaconsfield, who
never saw Ireland. We present in the following table a partial
list of a few perfect, and many in ruins :

* Charles James Fox.

RES TITUTION ! IF NO r, WH Y NOT?

579

CHURCHES, ABBEYS, ETC., TAKEN FROM THE CATHOLICS OF IRE-
LAND, NOW IN RUINS OR IN POSSESSION OF PROTESTANTS.

PROVINCE OF LEINSTER.

LOCALITY.

COUNTY.

CHARACTER
OF EDIFICE.

ORDER OR
INVOCATION.

FOUNDER.

YEAR.

Dublin City.

Malahide.
Dal key.
Tully.
Glendalough.

Downs.

Kilbride.
Slane.

New Abbey.
Great Connell.
Kilcullen.

Lorum.
St. Mullin's.

Rahill.
Acaun.

Clonmines.
Dunbrody.

Bannow.
Glascarrig.

Carnsore Pt.
Mellifont.

Monasteroris.
Bective.

Ardagh.
Monasterboice.
Spillary.
Clonmacnoise.

Durrow.
Thomastown.

Dublin.

Wicklow.
Kildare.

Carlow.
Wexford.

Meath.

Longford.
Louth.

King's.
Kilkenny.

Church.
Cathedral.

Church.
a

" The Seven
Churches."
Church.

Abbey.

Monastery.
Church.

Abbey.
Church.
Abbey.
Church.
Church and
Abbey.
Abbey. |

Church.
Abbey.

Church.
Abbej.

Church.
Abbey.
Church.

Abbey.
Abbey.

St. Patrick's.
St. Audeon's.
Holy Trinity, or
"Christ Ch."
St. Doulough's.

St. Patrick.

1190
1014*
I038f

530

Sitric, King of
the Danes.
St. Doulough.

St. Kevin.

54<4

Franciscans.

Gerald Fitzge-
rald.
Roland Fitzeust-
ace.
Myler Fitz-
henry.
Roland Port-
lester.

1450
1 202

1486

Observantines.

Augustinians

1358
1182

Hervey de Mont-
marisco.

Benedictines

Griffin O'Con-
don and wife.
St. Vogues.
Donoch O'Car-
roll.

1363
1142

Cistercians.

O'Melachlin,
King of Meath

1146

520

Dominicans.

The O'Melach-
lins, Princes
of Meath.
St. Colum.
The Butler fam-
ily.

546

Dominicans.

* Only the western end of these noble ruins is used by a score or two of Protestants. They are out of the way
of ordinary travelj extending from the high ground at High Street and Corn Market to the low land of Cook Street.

t Like its senior, St. Patrick's, it has been almost entirely rebuilt at an expense of, they say, 700,000, o
o, by George Roe, Esq., the rich distiller of Thomas Street, Dublin. Like the muni
Mr. Roe is a Protestant. The leading brewers and distillers in Ireland are Protestants

unificent restorer of

0, or $3 coo -
St. Patrick's,

George Roe, Esq., the rich di

e is a Protestant. The leadin .

t The famous Seven Churches in Glendalough, County Wicklow, are too well known to be written of in this
paper. They are, however, as interesting to-day as they were when Walter Scott and many others carved "their
initials upon St. Kevin's bed," which hangs twenty-five feet perpendicularly over the dark, deep lake

" that lake whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbled o'er."

5 The term "abbey " is in Ireland frequently and somewhat inaccurately applied to religious establishments
which belonged to friars, and therefore were not under the jurisdiction of an abbot.
fi The most beautiful in all Ireland.

RESTITUTION ! IF NOT, WHY NOT?

PROVINCE OF LEINSTER Continued.

[Aug.,

LOCALITY.

COUNTY.

CHARACTER
OF EDIFICE.

ORDER OR
INVOCATION.

FOUNDER.

YEAR.

Jerpoint.
Graignaraanagh.
Kilkenny.

Kilkenny.

Abbey.

Abbey, Bl'k.
Friary.

Cistercians.*

Dominicans.
Franciscans.

Donald, Prince
of Ossory.
William Mar-
shall.
The Earl of Pem-
broke.

1180
1212

1225

Clonamery.

Church.

Aghaboe.
Ballyadams.

Queen's.

Abbey.
Church

Dominicans.

The Fitzpatrick
family.

1390

Fore.

West Meath.

Abbey and

St. Fichin.

630

Monastery.

PROVINCE OF MUNSTER.

LOCALITY.

COUNTY.

CHARACTER
OF EDIFICE.

ORDER OR
INVOCATION.

FOUNDER.

YEAR.

Ardfert.

Kerry.

Abbey

Church.

Franciscans

12^

Aghadoe.

Abbey.

Derrynane.

Innisfallen.

(

Muckross.
Inchicronan.
Corcomroe.

Clare.

Franciscans.

Regular Canons
of St. Augustine

Mac Car thy of
Desmond.
Donald O'Brien,
K'gof Munster

1340
1190
IIQ4-

Drumcliffe.

Church

Ennis.
Killone.

Abbey.

Franciscans.

Donald O'Brien,
Prince of Tho-
mond.

1240

Quin.
Kilballyowen.

Friary.

Observantines.

MacNamara.

*423t

Killaloe.

Oratory.

St. Molua4

Timoleague.

Cork

Franciscans

Abbeystrowery.

Abbey

Ardmore.

Church

St Declan ; held

Ballinatray.
Ballybeg.

Abbey.
Abbey.

Molanfides.

in great vene-
ration.
Raymond le
Gros.

I237

Inniscarra

Church

Kilcrea.

Friary

Franciscans

1465

Glanworth.
Monkstown

Abbey.

Dominicans.

The Roche fam-
ily.

Gougane Barra

Monastery

St. Finbar.

Ardfinnan.

Tipperary.

Abbey (La-
dy's).

Benedictines.

Donald O'Brien,
K'gof Munster

1184

There was another, founded by Donach O'Dough. t There was a Franciscan house here in 1302.

J Kincora, the site of Brian Boru's castle, is in the vicinity. St. Thomas' Priory was endowed this year.

i88r.] RESTITUTION! IF NOT, WHY NOT?

PROVINCE OF MUNSTER Continued.

LOCALITY.

COUNTY.

CHARACTER
OF EDIFICE.

ORDER OR
INVOCATION.

FOUNDER.

YEAR.

Athassel.
Holy Cross

Tipperar)'.

Priory. .
Abbey

Regular Canons
of St. Augustine

Fitzadelm de
Burgo.
Donald O'Brien,

1 200
1182

Fethard.

Monastery.
Church

Augustinians.

K'gof Munster
Walter Mulcot.

1306

Clonmel

Churches (2)

Sts. Nicholas &

Abbeys (2).
Church

Stephen.
Franciscans and
Dominicans.

Desmond foun'd
Franciscan h.

1269

Roscrea

Abbey

620

Adare.
Kilmallock

Limerick.

Friary.

Abbey, Bl'k.
Friary ch &

Franciscans.

Trinitarians.
Dominicans

O'CarrollDemp-
sey and wife.
Clangibbon.

1490
1300

I2QI

Mungret

monastery.
Abbey

Abbeyfeale.
Stradbally

Waterford

Monastery

Cistercians.

Brian O'Brian.

1188

Rosserk

Abbey

Mothel

PROVINCE OF ULSTER.

LOCALITY.

COUNTY.

CHARACTER
OF EDIFICE.

ORDER OR
INVOCATION.

FOUNDER.

YEAR.

Bonnamargy.

Antrim.

Abbey.

Fran. Tertiaries.

I 524

Kilroot.

Church.

Lavd

Church *

Trummery.

Dungiven.
Saul

Derry.
Down

Abbey, f

Fran. Tertiaries.

O'Cathan.
St Patrick

IIOO
4a2

Inch

Sir John de

1180

Greyabbey.

((

Courcy.
Africa wife of

Donegal.

Monastery.

Franciscans.

De Courcy and
daughter to the
King of the
Isle of Mann.

Kilmacrenan.

Killydonnell.
Enniskillen.

<
Fermanagh.

Abbey.
Church. |

Augustinians.
Franciscans.

The O'Donnell
family.

St. Molush.

I2OO

1407

Abbey.

Adjoined the

Clones.

Abbey.

Church.
Dedicated to Sts.

Inishkeen.

Monaghan.

Abbey and

Peter & Paul.

Stone Cross

Supposed be the burial place of Ossian.

t About two miles southwest of this venerable ruin, on the banks of the beautiful river Roe, was born the father
and the ancestors of his Eminence Cardinal McCloskey.

t The church of St. Molush is 76 feet by 21. The house of the saint adjoined, and had a roof entirely of hewn
stones. These ruins are held in profound veneration, and are constantly visited on Sundays and holydays by the
people of the surrounding country.

The principal of this abbey was the first mitred abbot in Ireland.

582

RESTITUTION ! IF NOT, WHY NOT?
PROVINCE OF CONNAUGHT.

[Aug.,

LOCALITY.

COUNTY.

CHARACTER
OF EDIFICE.

ORDER OR
INVOCATION.

FOUNDER.

YEAR.

Clare-Gahvay.
Gort.

Galway.

Abbey and
Monastery.
Abbey.

Franciscans.

John de Cogan.

1290

Knockmoy.
Kilbennall.

Church.

Augustinians.

Cahal O'Ccnor

1190

Killenda.

Abbey.

Meelick.

Ross.

Galway City.

Church.

St. Nicholas.

1320

Moyne.
Murrisk.

Mayo.

Abbey.

Franciscans.

The O'Dono-
ghoe family.

1460

Crosspoint.

Church.

Cong.

Ross Hill.

Ballintober.
Artermon.

Sligo.

Augustinian
Canons.

O'Conor Crov-
dearg, King of
Ireland.

1216

Ballymote.

Ballysadare.
Banada.

Friary.

Abbey.
Friary.

Franciscans.

St. Fechin.
Franciscans.

The McDonogh
family.
St. Fechin.

1301
642

7Q2

Burrishoole.
Clonshanville.

Oran.

Roscommon.

Abbey.
Church.

Dominicans.

De Burgo.
McDermot
Ruadh.
Ruaridh O'Con-

I486
1358

Boyle.

Abbey

or, last King
of Ireland.
MacDermot of

1148

Moylurg.

A magnificent exhibition this of English civilization ! An in-
teresting fragment of the churches, abbeys, and friaries suppress-
ed or plundered, according to London law, by England for " the
better good and government of Ireland " ! Holy ruins ! your
crumbling quoins and bleached arches have defied the black rain
of centuries, and bear witness to the indestructibility and immu-
tability of the ardent faith which erected you, and proclaim,
louder than the tongue of man, the deep wrong inflicted upon
the first Christians of western Europe. But the inheritors
of that faith and the heirs to the wrongs of the Catholics of
Ireland, from Tudor to Guelph, have beheld the universal and
legal condemnation in Ireland of " the church " of

" Tudor's wrath and Stuart's guile."

The Rev. Dr. Maziere Brady, a son of the late Lord Chancel-
lor of Ireland, and at that time a minister of the Protestant

1 88 1.] RESTITUTION! IF NOT, WHY NOT? 583

Church, though now a Catholic, in the article in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD for July, 1870, referred to above, calls attention to the
paucity of Protestants in parts of Ireland where Catholic churches
exist which are in the possession of Anglicans, and to others
that are in ruins.

What he says is as applicable to the churches in Dublin now
in the possession of Protestants, and to others in other parts of
Ireland, as they are to Cashel ; for, as he remarks':

" It is ridiculous to urge as an objection that Protestants in general at-
tach a value other than a pecuniary or a political one to the sites of the
shrines of ancient Irish saints. Few Protestants have any veneration for
Saints Patrick, Brigid, or Nicholas. Not one Protestant in a thousand has
as much as even heard of the names of Saints Elbe, Aidan, Colman, or
Molana."

This is the testimony of a learned but logical Protestant minister,
since become a Catholic ; yet twelve years have passed away, and
nothing has been done to vertebrate the act of 1869 which dises-
tablished " the church " of

" brutal Brunswick's penal laws."

If these churches, originally built by Catholics, were neces-
sary for Protestant services an argument, though a bad one, might
be found to excuse their being kept from the Catholics ; but are
they necessary ? Let us see. There are in the city of Dublin
twenty Protestant churches, exclusive of the two cathedrals re-
ferred to, besides the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle. Their ave-
rage seating capacity is about 1,500 to 2,000, the cathedrals much
greater. At these figures we should have about three thousand
to each church, which would give an Anglican population, exclu-
sive of dissenters, of from 65,000 to 70,000. But the Anglican
population is 49,116 ; dissenters, Jews, and others, 8,592.* There
are ten Catholic parish churches, besides seven churches of regu-
lars and one auxiliary, making in all eighteen churches, not one
of which is as large as either of the two cathedrals now in Pro-
testant hands and built by Catholics. The Catholic population
is 196,495. Note the difference.

Matthew Arnold, in the Nineteenth Century for April, 1881,
touches upon this subject of religious reparation, but in a very
cautious manner, as is usual with the average Englishman when
writing about Ireland, which is about as familiar to him as the

* Thorn's Almanac and Official Directory, 1869.

584 RESTITUTION ! IF NOT, WHY NOT? [Aug.,

valley of the Ohio. But Mr. Arnold recalls to mind many of the
reasons why it was supposed in 1869 that the disestablishing act
was the initiative of the long-delayed but often-spoken-of repara-
tion. " The Liberal ministry resolved to knit the hearts of the
empire into one harmonious concord, and knitted they were ac-
cordingly " by the legislation of 1869 and 1870. Knitted ! If so,
the unravelling began very soon after the knitting process had
ended.

Suppose a land bill passed to-morrow in the House of Com-
mons to which Home-Rulers, Radicals, Liberals, and Conservatives
gave their consent; would that heal the wrongs of centuries while
churches and abbeys remained in the possession of men who are
the heirs and successors of the " grantees of confiscation," spolia-
tion, and religious persecution ? No, it would not, it could not.
No land bill can make Ireland contented. Restore the Catholic
temples now in Protestant hands, which are retained through
pride only, and to please the British Philistine, who is always
unhappy when any concession is made to the Catholics, because
he dreads " popery," and is extremely choleric when anything in
the shape of justice is done for the Irish, because he has injured
them and of course hates them.*

We are told by English sophists and sceptics that Scotland,
however, is contented, is prosperous, is happy under the British
flag. We do not deny the fact, but we do the inference. Scot-
land's king became England's in 1603, and the union of both par-
liament and crown took place ninety-four years later. Scotland's
prosperity began as soon as her first retinue returned from " Lun-
non town " after having accompanied the king, and the going and
coming has been kept up ever since, to her great pecuniary bene-
fit. But notwithstanding the benefits conferred, and the rapid
prosperity of the Scottish people, she rose twice in rebellion
against the House of Hanover in the last century. How she suf-
fered at the hands of the soldiers of " the bloody Duke of Cum-
berland" history tells us; but suddenly there was a change the
heart of Scotland was sought, was conciliated ; hence the con-
tent, prosperity, happiness. Hostility of the English against the
Scotch, from the accession of George I. to the battle of Culloden,
is to be found in all kinds of London literature of the last cen-
tury. In a book of translations from Horace f we have found

* " Hoc habent pessimum animi magndfortund insolentes ; quos Iczserunt et oderunt " (Sen-
ca, De Ira, ii. 33).

t London. Printed for Jacob Tonson, Shakspere's Head, over against Catherine Street, in
the Strand. 1715.

1 88 1.] RESTITUTION ! IF NOT, WHY NOT? 585

one of the odes addressed to Augustus imitated and dedicated to
the Duke of Marlborough. Among the verses was the follow-
ing:

" Who fears the French or who the grumbling Scot,
Or the dark mischiefs dark Bavarians plot ? "

i ,i < I j
The great Junius, too, in his preface to the first edition of his

immortal letters, says :

" Without any abstract reasoning upon causes and effects, we shall soon
be convinced by experience that the Scots, transplanted from their own
country, are always a distinct and separate body from the people who re-
ceive them. In other settlements they only love themselves ; in England
they cordially love themselves and as cordially hate their neighbors."

Nothing worse was ever said of the " rebellious Irish " who
protested, when they were no longer able to fight, against the
spoliation of their churches, the expropriation of their abbeys,
monasteries, and friaries, and the pillage of their homes. But the
pacificators of Scotland never sought the heart of Ireland. Is it
not about time to do so ?
" The church " of

" iron Strafford's tiger jaws "

has been disestablished, and many of the churches taken from the
Catholics are of no use to the few remaining Protestants, but would
be of great use to the tens of thousands of Catholics surrounding
them. Could British statesmen contemplate how the Catholic
who lives in the parish of St. Nicholas, Dublin, would receive the
news that St. Patrick's was to be restored, they would hasten to
make restitution of the ancient temple. It is not unreasonable to
suppose that if the banks of the Shannon once more echoed the
hymns of praise to God issuing from the halls of Clonmacnoise,
there would be exceeding great joy among the people ; were
Mellifont and Monasterboice once again in Catholic hands and
their cloisters filled with learned, holy men, who would not rejoice
from Carrickfergus to Carnsore Point ? Let the abbey of Dun-
brody become again a Catholic shrine, and the light of its glory
shall glisten afar off and upon the stream that laves its walls, glid-
ing to the dark waters of the Suir, upon whose banks stand many
noble ruins of Catholic Ireland, from Cashel's rock to the bay of
Dunmore. But let these stand in their decay and desolation a
few decades longer, and English statesmen will find the Catholic
peasants breathing, as they gaze upon the ivy-twined arch and

586 KNUT THE KING. [Aug.,

moss-covered sill, not orisons for their return and rehabilitation,
but vengeance upon the despoilers and the laws which not only
have robbed them of churches and abbeys, but keeps the
shrines of their fathers' piety and munificence as roosting-places
for rooks and daws, in open mockery of the religion of the peo-
ple and as a proof of " the irrepressible conflict " which exists
between the Christian Irishman and the sceptical Englishman.

KNUT* THE KING.

LOUD was the bell of St. Peter's rung

For the Mass of Thanksgiving ;
At the high, high altar the abbot sung ;

Below knelt Knut the king.

Fitful his look on the missal-book ;

For, crowding the pictured page,
He saw the sins of his hasty youth

With the mercies that blessed his age.

War-smith f struck in the forge of Sweyn

The hammer of Thor to swing ;
From his red right hand he had washed the stain

In the side of the thorn-crowned King

Under the Keys he had sheathed the sword ;

O'er the rod he had stretched the Rood ;
As one six nations hailed him lord

" Our king, the just and good ! "

* " Knut." That this the modern spelling of the name comes nearest the king's own sig-
nature is shown by his own hand :

"Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely,
Tha [when] Chnut ching rew thereby ;
Roweth, chnihtes, noer the land,
And here we thes muneches saeng."

Fragment of a ballad written by Knut, printed in Knight's " Half-Hours of English His-
tory.' 1 ' 1

t "Mighty war-smiths." Song of the Battle of Brunanburgh.

1 88 i.J KNUT THE KING. 587

A pilgrim, sceptre and crown aside,

He had wended his way to Rome.
He had come, with a conqueror's pomp and pride
(Borne on the breast of the morning tide),

Back to his island home.

His eyes were dimmed and his heart was full

As he made the Offering
That yielded his people's footing free
'Twixt the sunless north and the tideless sea,*
Given with the lord pope's golden bull
. And the seal of the Fisher's Ring

Scarcely the sonorous blessing sung,

Gray courtiers stood around.
Eager, with envious haste, the young

With garlands strewed the ground.

Monk Anaclete, with tottering feet

And century-furrowed face,
Signed the Holy Sign upon lips and heart
To witness Heaven he had no part

In profaning the holy place.

As, whispering clear (so the king might hear),

Three thanes told vauntingly,
Though many a land they had walked and scanned

The length of Christendie,

* "I discoursed with the lord pope, the lord emperor, and the other princes on the grievan-
ces of my people, English as well as Danes. I endeavored to obtain for them justice and se-
curity in their journeys to Rome ; and, above all, that they may not henceforward be delayed
on the road by the shutting up of the mountain passes, the erecting of barriers, and the exaction
of heavy tolls. My demands were granted both by the emperor and King Rudolph, who are
masters of most of the passes ; and it was enacted that all my people, merchants as well as pil-
grims, should go to Rome and return in full security, without being detained at the barriers or
forced to pay unlawful tolls. I also complained to the lord pope that such enormous sums had
been extorted up to this day from my archbishops when, according to custom, they went to the
Apostolic See to obtain the pallium ; and a decree was forthwith made that this grievance like-
wise should cease. Wherefore I return sincere thanks to God that I have successfully done all
that I intended to do, and have fully satisfied all my wishes. And now, therefore, be it known
to you all that I have dedicated my life to God, to govern my kingdoms with justice, and to ob-
serve the right in all things. If in the time that is past, and in the violence and carelessness of
youth, I have violated justice, it is my intention, by the help of God, to make full compensa-
tion." Letter (written from Denmark, where Knut spent several months before returning to
England) " To Egelnoth the metropolitan, to Archbishop Alfric, to the bishops and chiefs, and
to all the nation of the English, both nobles and commoners, greeting."

588 KNUT THE KING. [Aug.,

And marked, to marvellous greatness grown,

King Rudolph's following,
And counted the steps of the Kaiser's throne,
None (save high Heaven's Vice-King alone)

Was greater than Knut the king.

To bid King Knut to the banquet-hall

(Their godlier office o'er)
Stayed Abbot John, with his beadsmen all

Ranged by the chancel-door.

But straightway out of the sacred fane
Strode the king with uncheerful air,

Nor reverence made to the tonsured train,
Nor hearkened the abbot's prayer.

Loudly he spake : " Ere fast I break

One triumph remains for me
Me, Knut the king : to obedience bring

Yon rebel, the lawless sea.

" Now fetch me my golden throne," he said,

" And my jewelled sceptre forth
To the shelving sands ; and men shall know,
As I bid the waters to ebb or flow,

What the will of a king is worth."

His sceptre the trembling courtiers brought,

And set, by his silent sign,
The golden throne where he stood alone

By the brink of the flowing brine.

Prostrate around monks kissed the ground

For the pride of the haughty Dane,
Since overmuch grace from Peter's face

Had maddened the son of Sweyn.

While the royal hand on the silver sand

With the sceptre traced a line,
" By victories past, proud sea, thou last

And greatest of lieges mine,

" I rule the land upon which I stand.

Now as monarch I order thee :
Let not a wave rise further (save
In homage to kiss as a shrinking slave

The edge of my robe), O sea ! "

1 88 1.] KNUT THE KING. 589

He said, and sate. Looked his train aside

From a sight they dared not see,
As quick the flow of the hurrying tide
(With crested swell, as in answering pride)

On the throne broke mockingly.

Tranquil he fixed his gaze afar

As if ruler of boundless space.
Yet the rude waves rose, and the scornful spray

Flew in his lifted face.

Breathless the still, awe-stricken crowd

Waited the end to see,
Till, with threatening hand, Knut cried aloud :

" Ye flatterers, rede to me

" How it may be, if o'er earth and sea

The Lord has not ceased to reign,
Men dare belittle the Son of God

To honor the son of Sweyn !

"Vain is the boast of the sword, and vain

The pride of a passing throne.
Give praise to the Mighty* who rules the main

To him, and to him alone ! "

Then with faltering speech the abbot spoke :

" In the goods thy hand hath won,
And the gracious gift of a humble heart,

Twice blest art thou, my son ! "

Back bonded ceorl and belted eorl,f

Abbot and king, again,
Ere they broke the fast, in order passed

And filled St. Peter's fane.

Knees to the earth, his jewelled crown

Knut, king of the English men,
In the house of the King of kings laid down,

To wear it never again.

* "Then was the Mighty angry." The Monk Cadmon.
t Contemporary spelling of churl and earl.

590 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. [Aug.,

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE.

THE Latin Version of the Holy Scriptures which the Council
of Trent declared to be authentic consists in part of a translation
made from the original texts by St. Jerome. This part embraces
all the books of the Old Testament written in Hebrew or Chaldee
the original text of which was extant in St. Jerome's time, viz.,
of all those of the Hebrew Canon, except the Psalter ; and of the
books of Tobias and Judith, belonging to the Second Canon. It
consists also in part of a revision of the old Latin Vulgate ac-
cording to the original, likewise made by St. Jerome, including
all the books of the New Testament. A third part consists of
the old Vulgate version of the Psalms which was made from the
Greek text of the Septuagint, and of the books and parts of
books belonging to the Second Canon of the Old Testament not
translated by St. Jerome from the Hebrew or Chaldee, but which
were either originally written in Greek or extant only in a Greek
translation. These latter are the books of Baruch, Wisdom, Ec-
clesiasticus, and Machabees, with parts of Esther and Daniel.
Some critics suppose that St. Jerome revised those parts of the
old Vulgate which remain in the authentic Latin Bible, but others
are of a contrary opinion. He translated the Psalter into Latin
from the Hebrew, but his translation was never adopted, on ac-
count of the inveterate use of the old version in the religious
communities and the offices of the church ; nevertheless his emen-
dations of the old version were adopted.

It is impossible to say who was the author or who were the
authors of the old Latin Vulgate, or to determine with certainty
when and where it originated. It was undoubtedly made some
time between the latter part of the first and the middle of the
second century. It seems certain that the translator, if it was
the work of one hand, was an African ; or at least that such a
person had a predominating influence in the production of the
version, if there were several individuals engaged in the work.
Many excellent critics think that it originated in Africa, while
others regard Rome or Italy as its birthplace. It was very soon
diffused everywhere among those Catholic Christians who spoke
Latin, and adopted into public and ecclesiastical as well as private
use, as soon as the primitive Greek liturgy gave place to one
composed in the Latin language. That recension which was used

1 88 1.] SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. 591

in Rome and Italy was called the Itala. There were other recen-
sions also, and we learn from St. Jerome and St. Augustine that
there was a kind of passion in their time, and before, for translat-
ing the Scriptures into Latin, or at least amending and improving
the common version. The translation of the books of the Old
Testament in this common version was made entirely from the
Greek text, and mainly from that of the Seventy in the instance
of the books translated from Hebrew in the Septuagint version.
The Itala still exists in parts, though not as a whole. There are
four manuscript codices of the Gospels, two of the Acts, and four
of the Epistles of the New Testament. Those parts which per-
tain to our present Latin Vulgate have been mentioned. There
are other fragments, also, extant, and from all the sources at his
command a learned Benedictine of the eighteenth century, Dom
Sabathier, endeavored to reproduce as completely as possible the
text of the Itala, a work which employed him during twenty
years and which was published in 1743.

Some fragments of the Itala unknown to Sabathier have been
published during the present century by Munter, Ranke, Vercel-
lone, and Lord Ashburnham, The several parts of the New Tes-
tament have also been edited during the last and the present cen-
turies. Within the few months past, M. Ulysse Robert has had
published by Firmin-Didot of Paris, in folio, the text of a MS.
called the Codex Liigdunensis, containing the greatest part of the
ancient Latin Version of the Pentateuch. It is much to be desir-

that a convenient edition of all the extant parts of the old Vul-
gate not contained in our common Latin Bible should be pub-
lished ; together with St. Jerome's text, in parallel columns, at
;ast for the New Testament. This would make it easy to see
just what alterations the great doctor made in his revision.

Leaving aside all other parts of the Vulgate, we will now
confine our attention exclusively to that large portion of it which
came from the hand of St. Jerome, either as a new translation
from the original text, or as a revision of the Itala according to
the same original. We repeat, again, that his translation from
the original Hebrew and Chaldee embraces all the books of the
Jewish Canon of the Old Testament, except the Psalter (which he
revised by the Septuagint) ; and the books of Judith and Tobias ;
and his revision of the Itala according to the original Greek text,
all the books of the New Testament. We have already remarked
that it is uncertain whether he did or did not revise some or all
of, the remaining books of the Second Canon of the Old Testa-
ment according to the Greek text. It is, therefore, to his version

592 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. [Aug.,

of the Hebrew and Chaldee books of the Old Testament and of
the entire New Testament that we propose to confine our atten-
tion at present.

St. Jerome has always been regarded as the Doctor Maximus
of the Catholic Church, in respect to Biblical learning. He was
born in Dalmatia, about A.D. 346, a little over twenty years after
the First Council of Nicsea, and lived twenty years into the
fifth century, dying in 420 at the age of seventy-four years. His
parents were Christians of good family and ample means, who
gave him a good education from childhood and sent him to study
at Rome when he was eighteen years old, in the school of the
most celebrated preceptor of that time, Donatus, where he culti-
vated assiduously Latin letters, rhetoric, philosophy and law, and
procured for himself at great expense and trouble a valuable li-
brary. According to a common practice of that age, his pa-
rents had not brought him to baptism in his infancy, and he was
baptized during his residence in Rome, when he was twenty
years of age. His Roman education was completed after about
five years. The time when he devoted himself to the study of
the Greek' language and learning does not appear with certainty,
but his letters show a knowledge of Greek some three years after
his leaving Rome, and he had ample opportunity for acquiring
that language during his stay in the East between his twen-
ty-fifth and twenty-eighth year. Besides, it is evident that a
greater part of his time, whether at home or travelling, was spent
in study, for he carried his library about with him wherever he
went on his journeys, and learning was always his ruling passion.
At the age of twenty-eight he retired to a solitary place in Chal-
cis, where he gave himself up to a most severely ascetic life of
penance and study. Here he devoted himself with new zeal and
ardor to the study of the Holy Scriptures, to which, since his
conversion, he had paid great attention. At this time he began
to study Hebrew, a task which he regarded as one of the sever-
est of all his penances. "After Quintilian's acuteness, Cicero's
flowing style, the dignity of Pronto and the grace of Pliny, I be-
gan to learn that [Hebrew] alphabet, and to meditate upon its
grating and gasping sounds. My own consciousness and the
memory of my companions are witnesses of what I suffered, what
labor I undertook, what difficulty I underwent, how often I de-
spaired and left off, and then in my struggle to learn began again ;
thanks be to God for the delicious fruits of knowledge that bit-
ter seed has furnished me '' (Epist. cxxv. ad Rustic.) After four
or five years Jerome left the desert for Anticch, where he was

1 88 1.] SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. 593

persuaded to permit Bishop Paulinus to ordain him deacon and
priest, under the express stipulation that he should never be as-
signed to any church or obliged to exercise any sacerdotal func-
tion, which he never did to the end of his life, through humility.
In the year 382, when he was thirty-six years old, he was sum-
moned to a council held in Rome under Pope Damasus, who
retained him there as his secretary and adviser in ecclesiastical
affairs. He remained in Rome nearly three years, i.e., until after
the death of Damasus and the accession of Siricius. During
this time he edited, first, his revision of the Four Gospels, and
afterwards that of the other books of the New Testament. After
leaving Rome he fixed his final residence at Bethlehem, where he
became the rector of a large monastery. During many preceding
years he had been engaged in studying and commenting upon the
Scriptures, and the rest of his life was chiefly devoted to the
composition of his great works in this department of sacred learn-
ing, as well by translating and revising the text as by comment-
ing and explaining. This period of the life of St. Jerome em-
braces thirty-four years, from his fortieth year to his seventy-
fourth, and it was entirely devoted to prayer, the instruction of
his disciples, study and writing, on the very spot where our Lord
was born, and close by the scene of his crucifixion, resurrection,
and ascension into heaven.

The work of revising the Vulgate version of the New Testa-
ment was committed to Jerome by Pope Damasus. The rea-
son for it is plain from the statements made by both St. Jerome
and St. Augustine. The latter says (Doctr. Chr., 1. ii. c. 2) that
" Those who have translated the Scriptures from Hebrew into
Greek can be numbered, but not so the Latin translators. For,
in the first times of the faith, as soon as a Greek codex fell into
the hands of any one who seemed to have some little knowledge
of the two languages, he undertook to translate." St. Jerome
says that among the Latins there were " as many exemplars, al-
most, as codices." Sabathier, Wiseman, and Vercellone under-
stand these and similar statements to mean that there were many
recensions and various readings of the one version, the old Vul-
gate. Dr. Ubaldi, whose Introductio in S. Scripturam is the best
work of the kind with which we are acquainted, and Prof. Lamy,
in common with many of the older critics, think differently, i.e.,
that there were many distinct Latin versions. In either case,
there was great need of an authentic Latin Vulgate which should
supersede all versions or recensions then existing, and Pope Da-
masus wisely resolved to provide for this necessity, at least in

VOL. XXXIII. 38

594 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. [Aug.,

respect to the New Testament ; although his death in 384 pre-
vented his fully executing his design by giving official sanction
to St. Jerome's revision, or providing, as we may suppose he in-
tended to do, for the issue of an approved text of the Latin ver-
sion of the Old Testament.

Jerome undertook with reluctance the task imposed on him,
as we see from his Preface to the Four Gospels, of which we will
transcribe the greater part for its curious interest and the infor-
mation it conveys :

"JEROME TO THE MOST BLESSED POPE DAMASUS I

" You compel me to make a new work out of an old one, and, after the
copies of the Scripture have been scattered through the whole world, to sit
as a kind of arbitrator between them ; so that, in respect to their variations
from each other, I am to determine which are the readings conformed to
the genuine Greek text. The work is a pious one, but it is a dangerous
undertaking for one who will himself be obnoxious to the judgment of all,
to pass judgment on others : to make an old man alter his speech, and
bring back a world already hoary with age to the rudiments of childhood.
For what scholar or unlearned person is there who, on taking this volume
into his hand and perceiving that what he reads differs from that to which
his palate was already accustomed, will not at once loudly vituperate me
as a sacrilegious counterfeiter, because I venture to make additions, changes
and corrections in the ancient books ? Two considerations, nevertheless,
console me in view of such invidious treatment: that you, who have
commanded me to do this work, are the High-Priest ; and that the testi-
mony of these fault-finders themselves proves that whatever varies from it-
self is not authentic. For, if we must implicitly trust the Latin exemplars,
let them answer which ones among them : for there are almost as many
exemplars as codices. But if we must seek the true text from many exem-
plars, why may we not correct those things which have been badly trans-
lated by faulty interpreters, or more perversely amended by unskilful and
presuming correctors, or which have been either added or altered by drowsy
copyists ; by recurring to the Greek original ? . . . This present short
preface promises only the four Gospels, which are arranged in the follow-
ing order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, amended by a collation with Greek
codices, but those ancient ones. But, in order that these may not have a great
discrepancy from that Latin reading which has become customary, we have
used our pen with such moderation that, correcting only such readings as
seemed to change the sense, we have suffered all the others to remain as
they had been before. . . .

" I desire that you may have health in Christ, and be mindful of me,
Most Blessed Pope."

St. Jerome revised the Psalter in accordance with the received
text of the Septuagint during his residence in Rome, and his re-
cension was adopted for use in the divine office. He made a new
revision afterwards at Bethlehem in accordance with Origen's

iS8i.] SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. 595

corrected text, which was adopted in France. It seems to have
been his first intention to continue the revision of the Italic ver-
sion of the entire Old Testament in the same way, and in point of
fact he did accomplish a great deal of work in this direction,
although, as a large part of his MSS. were stolen from him, it is
uncertain to what extent his corrections were actually incorpo-
rated into the Vulgate. His careful study of the Septuagint and
also of the original Hebrew text led him to take the resolution of
translating the Scriptures anew from their mother-tongue. This
great task he accomplished with incredible pains and labor in the
course of about fourteen years. Thus our Latin Vulgate was
completed about the year 404. It was not, however, as a whole,
generally accepted and adopted in the church, except by slow de-
grees. There does not seem to have been much opposition to the
new version of the New Testament, but the version of the old He-
brew Scriptures met with extensive and even violent opposition.
The Septuagint was held in such high esteem, being even con-
sidered as inspired, that Jerome was taxed with presumption for
venturing to go back of it to its original source. Among others,
St. Augustine was dissatisfied with the translation from the He-
brew, and some rather sharp correspondence passed between the
two great doctors. At last, after two hundred years had elapsed,
the old version went into total desuetude, and the Hieronymian
Vulgate became fully established by universal consent in that
place of honor which the Council of Trent has confirmed and sanc-
tioned by its supreme authority.

Of course, this version was itself liable to the same accidents
in repeated transcription which have beset all other manuscript
texts. Hence, from time to time, it has been necessary to make
new recensions of the Vulgate. These emendations of the receiv-
ed text of the Vulgate have not been revisions of the version, but
only corrections aiming to purify the text from errors and restore
its primitive integrity. The first work of this kind was executed
by Alcuin at the command of Charlemagne. It was repeated in
the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries by learned bishops,
abbots, and other scholars, and by universities and religious
orders. The Fathers of the Council of Trent expressed a wish
that a new and correct edition might be issued, which the Lou-
vain theologians strove to fulfil by their new and corrected edi-
tions of 1547 and 1574. Pius IV. instituted a congregation for
the more thorough and complete fulfilment of the council's in-
tention, and at length in 1590, under Sixtus V., the Sixtine Edi-
tion was published, which, having been subjected to a new ex-

596 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. [Aug.,

amination and correction under the Popes Gregory XIV. and
Clement VIII., received final sanction from the Holy See and is
the Vatican Edition which all editors and publishers are obliged
to copy as their standard. The conformity of the text of this
edition to the genuine primitive text of the Vulgate is unques-
tionable. Not only are there excellent codices of Alcuin's recen-
sion, and others much more ancient, in existence, but there are
innumerable citations in the commentaries of St. Jerome, and in
other ecclesiastical writers from the fifth century down, with
which the present text has been collated. It cannot be con-
sidered, however, as entirely free from errors. The official sanc-
tion given to it does not guarantee its absolute correctness, or
prevent critics and Commentators from noting errors and pro-
posing emendations by collation with codices of the Latin ver-
sion or of the original texts. It forbids only the making of cor-
rections in the printed text of the Vulgate by private authority,
and does not exclude a further and more perfect recension under
the direction and authority of the Holy See, or a revision of the
version itself, under the same authority, according to the original
texts. In regard to all things pertaining to faith and morals and
to the substance of other matters contained in Holy Scripture,
we are rendered secure of immunity from error in the actual
text of the Latin Vulgate by the authority of the church. Other
things are of minor importance and may be left to science. Thus
much on the origin, history, and actual correctness of the exist-
ing text of the Latin version.

We turn now to the consideration of the intrinsic excellence
of the version itself and its relative authenticity as conformed to
and truly representing the primarily and absolutely authentic
originals.

It is not necessary to waste any time in proving that the
Hebrew text of the books of the Jewish Canon, and the Greek
text of the canonical books of the New Testament, are now exist-
ing in their substantial integrity, and therefore, of course, were
accessible to St.' Jerome in the fourth century in an uncorrupted
state. As to various readings and doubtfulness of the true, au-
thentic text in some particular parts of the Hebrew Scriptures,
e.g., in the chronology of the patriarchs, where the Hebrew text
as it now stands, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch
differ from each other, we will say nothing of St. Jerome's facili-
ties for ascertaining the most correct Hebrew reading, as com-
pared with those of modern scholars. This would require a dis-
cussion of the value of the Masora, and would be of trivial utility,

1 88 1.] SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. 597

since the various readings of the Hebrew text in respect to words
and letters are of small importance. We leave aside, moreover,
all that part of the Vulgate which does not come from St. Jerome
by translation or acknowledged revision.

St. Jerome was in every way fully competent to the work of
translating the Hebrew Scriptures, and all the circumstances
amid which he executed the task were favorable to its perfect
fulfilment. Besides his early studies in Hebrew, he applied him-
self at Bethlehem to the same under the tuition of Barabbas, a
Jewish instructor, whom he engaged at a high price to come to
him during the night, because he was afraid to come by daylight
and openly ; afterwards under another learned preceptor from
the school of Tiberias, another still who was a distinguished Jew-
ish doctor of Lydda, and another special instructor in Chaldee.
It is to be presumed that besides the best Hebrew MSS. he had
also the Targums or Chaldee paraphrases, and he certainly had
the aid of Origen's vast work, the Hexapla, containing a critical
text of the Septuagint, and the Greek versions of Aquila, Sym-
machus, and Theodotion. It is needless to speak of his know-
ledge of Greek and Latin :

Bethlaei praeclari nominis hospes,

Hebraeo simul, et Graio, Latioque venustus

Eloquio ; (Prosp. Carm.)

or of his consummate diligence and conscientiousness. The
watchful eyes of Jews, heretics, and suspicious Catholics, besides
those of all impartial scholars and of the whole body of Christians
most jealous of the integrity and purity of the Scriptures, were
upon him, ready to detect even the smallest mistakes ; which must
have had the effect of rendering him doubly cautious.

The revision of the Latin version of the New Testament was
a much easier work, and one in which the advantages which St.
Jerome possessed over and above those enjoyed by modern
critics, for ascertaining the correct Greek text, as well as for
making the translation accurate, were almost inestimable. There
is less need of enlarging on this point, because the excellence and
accuracy of the Latin Vulgate are so generally admitted, and so
far from being less are more esteemed as time goes on and critical
inquiries are becoming more minute and searching. The history
we have given in brief shows that it was by its intrinsic merit,
and not by the force of extrinsic authority, that St. Jerome's ver-
sion in the course of two centuries obtained, in the face of exten-
sive prejudice and opposition, the universal suffrage of Catholics;

598 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. [Aug.,

which was finally confirmed by a solemn decree of the church.
But, in addition to this, we have the testimony of St. Augustine
(De Civ. Dei, xxiii. 43) that the Hebrews of the period in which it
was published approved of it, i.e., of the Old-Testament portion,
as veracious. Several eminent rabbins of subsequent times have
acknowledged the same ; e.g., R. Azarias, R. Kimchi, Aben-Ezra,
R. Joseph Albo, and R. Elias. Although Luther, Calvin, and
other Protestants have decried the Vulgate, yet a number of the
best scholars among the older Protestants have praised it highly,
such as Grotius, Casaubon, and Walton. Almost all the modern
critics, among whom are Mill, Davidson, Routh, and Tischen-
dorf, have given testimony in its favor; the authors of the Eng-
lish version of King James did the same tacitly, by the use they
made of the Douay translation ; and the recent revisers, among
whom are several very eminent scholars, have given a signal and
open suffrage to its fidelity and conformity to the correct Greek
text of the New Testament. Discussion and controversy are
really at an end, except with reference to a few disputed pas-
sages, in respect to which either the correct reading of the origi-
nal text, or the correct reading of the text of the Vulgate, is still
contested.

Let us now say a few words of the value of excellent ver-
sions, especially ancient ones, in determining the true verbal text
and authentic interpretation of the original, inspired documents
of divine revelation. The bare letter of the Word becomes with
time, change in language, the recession of the prophetical ages
into the dim past, partially unintelligible as to its sense, and
doubtful as to its pure, unaltered identity, unless accompanied
and supplemented by something else having the nature of attest-
ing and interpreting tradition. Hebrew is not only a dead lan-
guage but the skeleton of one, which, when alive, was very im-
perfect. It had no vowels, unless the letters corresponding to
our V and Y be considered as sometimes doing duty as vowels.
The sounds of two of the consonants, Aleph and Ayin, are not ac-
curately known. Vowels, accents, punctuation, division of words,
sentences, chapters, as we have them in a modern Hebrew Bible,
are all a later invention, supplying the tradition of the usage
which enabled the ancient Jews to read and pronounce intelligi-
bly and correctly the written signs of their mother-tongue in
their manuscripts. We can partly imagine what trouble a Hin-
doo, knowing only his own language and its literature, and hav-
ing only an old Hebrew codex, with a grammar and dictionary
explaining nothing but the primitive elements and the literal

1 88 1.] SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. 599

meaning of the single words of the Hebrew language, would en-
counter, if he endeavored to study the Hebrew Scriptures. If
he could have an ancient version in Sanskrit, made by men who
knew both languages and were conversant with the history and
literature of both countries, his task would be made comparative-
ly easy. We can understand, therefore, the immense value of
the Septuagint Version for all who spoke and read Greek, espe-
cially for Christians not of Jewish origin after the ruin and dis-
persion of the Hebrew nation, as one great means of preserving
and explaining the true sense of the Hebrew Scriptures. One or
two examples will show how great is the uncertainty in which we
should be involved by a servile adhesion to the bare literal text of
the original, without the help of versions and other comments
and interpretations furnished by tradition. St. Matthew quotes
a prophecy of Isaiah (vii. 14) which is translated in the Revised
Version : " Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring
forth a son " (Matt. i. 23). Kenrick has also " the virgin," the
Douay and King James "a virgin," the Vulgate " virgo " there
being no definite or indefinite article in Latin the Greek text of
St. Matthew after the LXX., "he parthenos," the " he " being the
Greek definite article. The Hebrew has " ha almah," " ha " corre-
sponding to the Greek " he," and " almah " to " parthenos," " vir-
go," and " virgin." Now, the Hebrew ha can be a demonstrative
pronoun signifying "this" ; and the rabbins maintain that almah
can denote a young, marriageable woman as well as a virgin.
We turn now to Dr. Leeser's Jewish Version of Isaiah, where we
find the following translation: " Behold, this young woman shall
conceive, and bear a son." Here it is the testimony of the Sep-
tuagint to the sense given by its authors to the Hebrew words
which is the most decisive critical argument in favor of the Ca-
tholic interpretation. Again, let us take the famous prophecy
of Daniel, ix. 24-27. Our readers can look in their Douay or
King James version for it, if they choose. We will give Ken-
rick's translation, which is a revision of the Douay : " Seventy
weeks are shortened upon thy people and upon thy holy city,
that transgression may be finished, and sin may have an end,
and iniquity may be abolished ; and everlasting justice may be
brought ; and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled ; and the
Holy of Holies [Sanctus sanctorum, St. Jerome], may be anoint-
ed. Know thou therefore, and take notice : that from the going
forth of the word to build up Jerusalem again, unto Christ [Mes-
siah, Heb.~\ the Prince, there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two
weeks : and the street shall be built again, and the walls in strait-

6oo SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. [Aug.,

ness of times. And after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain :
and the people that shall deny him shall not be his. And
a people with their leader that shall come, shall destroy the
city and the sanctuary ; and the end thereof shall be waste,
and after the end of the war the appointed desolation. And
he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week : and in
the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fail : and
there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation : and
the desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the
end."

Compare now with this Leeser's translation : " Seventy
weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city,
to close up the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to
atone for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and
to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy
things. Know therefore and comprehend, that from the going
forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the
anointed* the prince will be seven weeks ; and during sixty and
two weeks ivill it be again built with streets and ditches [around it],
even in the pressure of the times. And after the sixty and two
weeks will an anointed one \ be cut off without a successor to follow
him ; and the city and the sanctuary will the people of the prince
that is coming destroy ; but his end will come in a violent over-
flow ; but until the end of the war devastations are decreed
[against it]. And he will make a strong covenant with the many
for one week ; and in the half of the week will he cause the sacri-
fice and the oblation to cease, and this because of the prevalence \
of the abominations which bringeth devastation, and until de-
struction, and what is decreed shall be poured out upon the waster"

This is a translation by a learned Hebraist, who was, we
believe, an honest man, and would not wilfully mistranslate. It
is, so far as we can judge after a careful examination of the
Hebrew text, a translation which gives each word by itself a
rendering which it will bear. Yet, any one can see that it not
only destroys the Christian interpretation of the prophecy, but
makes it very obscure and indefinite in every sense. The Greek
and Latin versions, without departing from verbal fidelity or
making a paraphrase, furnish an interpretation of great authority
by which the prophecy is made intelligible as one of the most

* Cyrus. L. f Agrippa or Seleucus Philopator. L.

\ Referring to the defiling of the temple by the idolatrous sacrifices of Antiochus. L.
The Greek version of Daniel adopted by the church is that of Theodotion, which differs
considerably from the Septuagint.

1 88 1.] SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATIN VULGATE. 60 1

splendid predictions in the Old Testament of Jesus Christ, his
rejection and murder by his faithless people, and the judgment
of God which fell upon them and still remains.

These are examples illustrating the necessity of an interpreta-
tion which shall determine with certainty the true sense of the
original texts of the Holy Scriptures. Frequently, this true
sense is only probable, without such an interpretation. There is
an Unwritten as well as a Written Word of God, which the
church has received and transmits by Tradition together with
the Written Word. The former is necessary to the true and cer-
tain understanding of the latter, and to the correct translation of
inspired books into the common ecclesiastical or vernacular lan-
guage in which they can be practically used. The Hebrew and
Greek Scriptures remain, in their venerable sanctity, accessible
to the learned, and perpetual witnesses to the incorrupt trans-
mission of the inspired Word. In the Latin Vulgate, they are
interpreted by the voice of the Fathers and Doctors of Latin
Christendom and of the primitive church into a tongue which
for all Western nations is a common sacred language, the higher
vernacular of the church and the school, which combines in itself
the dignity and invariability of a dead with the familiarity of a
living language. Hallowed by the use of fourteen centuries, this
version is not, and is not likely to become, antiquated and un-
serviceable. It is possible that it may be subjected to a revision
for the correction of the minor errors and blemishes of its author-
ized and standard edition, under the direction of the Holy See ;
but it is morally certain that it will never be superseded by a
new Latin Version.

602 WEETAMOO. [Aug.,

WEETAMOO.

A TALE OF KING PHILIP'S WAR.

ONE autumn evening in the year 1661 live persons were as-
sembled around the dying couch of an aged Indian chief. The
name of the latter was Massasoit. The others were his two sons,
Alexander and Philip ; Sassamon, a Praying Indian ; Sasco, a son
of Philip, and a maiden of the Pequod tribe called Weetamoo.

" My children," spoke Massasoit, " I am about to depart for
the Happy Hunting-Grounds ; I can say only a few words more.
Listen!"

" We are listening," answered Philip.

" It is now forty years," went on the chief, " since I made a
friendly league with the pale-faces ; yonder hangs the wampum
belt to commemorate it. And during all these years the tomahawk
has remained buried. O my children ! keep it buried." Here he
turned his dim eyes on Alexander, the elder son, and made an
effort to utter something else; but his breath was going fa , * ; t
was well-nigh gone, and only Weetamoo, who fell on her l f >
and bent her ear to his lips, caught the faint whisper, " Keep ec j
hatchet buried." These were the last words of Massasoit. ny

" Philip," spoke Alexander, as soon as he perceived thal^
father was dead, " "I am now sachem of the Wampanoags. 4.
are my brother. Give me your good- will to carry out the dy,_
wish of our parent."

" Call me not Philip," said the other. " The pale-faces at Ply-
mouth have bestowed that name upon me, as they have chris-
tened you Alexander. But call mjs no longer Philip ; let me be
known henceforth by my true name Metacomet."

" Our father liked the name of Philip," pursued Alexander
mildly.

" I loved my father as dearly as you did," rejoined Philip ;
" but the Great Spirit hath not created us all alike. My heart
rebels against the pale-faces, and it was ever a puzzle to me how
he could be so friendly towards them." Then addressing Wee-
tamoo, " Child," he added, " you are mourning for Massasoit.
Well, I too shall mourn for him. No sleep will come to me to-
night ; until the morning-star I will lament and sigh. But now
pause a moment and listen ; and, Sasco, my son, listen too."

1 88 1.] WEE TA MOO. 603

Here Metacomet drew himself up to his full height ; then with
kindling eye he went on : " The Pequod tribe, to which you be-
longed, Weetamoo where is it to-day ? After battling bravely
for their homes six hundred of them braves, squaws, and pap-
pooses were roasted to death in their wigwams. The few who
escaped the flames were made slaves of ; and but for the interces-
sion of my father you would have shared the fate of your kindred.
Tell me now, Weetamoo, can you love the pale-faces?"

Weetamoo made no response, but thought of Massasoit's last
words, " Keep the hatchet buried." She had been very fond of
the good old man, who had adopted her and given her the name
she bore, which signified " bluebird " ; and now it pained her to
hear Metacomet expressing sentiments so contrary to his last
mortal request.

" And you, Sassamon," continued the speaker " you carry
about with you wherever you go the mighty medicine-book
which the pale-face prophet Eliot has translated into our lan-
guage, and you are styled a Praying Indian because you have
joined the band of Indians who meet once every moon at Natick
to pray and read this medicine-book. But, Sassamon, if you love
your race beware of what you are doing. Already the Pequods
have been swept out of existence. It may next be the turn of the
Wampanoags to disappear. But we will die hard ; and when the
hour of trial comes I hope that you will show yourself a brave,
and fling your Bible into the fire while you dance the war-
dance."

" O Philip ! " began Sassamon.

" Call me Metacomet," interrupted Philip haughtily.

"Well, then, Metacomet " But the latter, who felt that
wrath was getting the better of him, and who feared lest he
might come into collision with Sassamon, as well as with his
peace-loving brother Alexander, clapped his hands to his ears and
rushed out of the wigwam.

A week after the death of Massasoit Weetamoo was wander-
ing alone through the forest. Her heart was heavy, for she was
thinking of the departed chief and wishing that he had lived, in
order that the long, unbroken peace might have continued. It
was an Indian-summer day, and she paused awhile beneath a
broad-spreading chestnut-tree to eat a few nuts which the jay-
birds were letting drop. As Weetamoo was thus engaged she
heard a voice a short distance off. " It is Sassamon," she said.
" Perhaps he is interpreting a dream for somebody, or reading
aloud his medicine-book." And approaching and peering through

604 WEETAMOO. [Aug.,

a cluster of wild grapevines, she espied the Praying Indian seated
on a stump, reading his Bible. He had abandoned the garb of his
race and was dressed like a white man.

" I prefer our own native costume," thought Weetamoo. " But
Massasoit had a high opinion of Sassamon : he always got him to
interpret his dreams ; and now that the venerable sagamore
is gone to the shadowy land, I must not let Metacomet turn
me against him because Sassamon chooses to dress like a pale-
face." Presently Weetamoo pushed her way through the vines,
and the Praying Indian looked up and smiled as she drew
near.

" I wish you knew how to read, Bluebird," he said, " for then
we might read this medicine-book together ; it was Massasoit's
wish that you should learn to read it."

" It is a great medicine-book, is it not ? " observed Weetamoo,
turning over the leaves.

" Yes," answered Sassamon, " and those who study it grow
better and wiser, as well as more powerful. See how the pale-
faces are thriving. Look at their broad cornfields, how full of
corn they are ; look what terrible weapons they use, which
spit out fire and lead ; and look at their immense canoes, with
sails as large as these trees around us, in which they journey far,
far across the boundless ocean. O Weetamoo ! if we follow not
their example and study this medicine-book, I fear that ere long
we red men shall all disappear."

" Why? " inquired Weetamoo. " Will there not be deer and
moose for us to hunt? Will not the rivers be full of salmon?
Why should we not continue to dwell in the land of our fa-
thers?"

" Because the great Manitou loves better the people who read
this Holy Volume," answered Sassamon.

Weetamoo shook her head as if she doubted these words.
Then suddenly her eyes sparkled as they fell on a string of glass
beads hanging from his pocket. " How pretty those are ! They
look like dewdrops," she exclaimed.

" They were given to me by a pale-face because I was good
and learnt to read," said Sassamon. " And now I give them to
you."

" How generous you are ! " said the enraptured maiden, as he
placed the beads round her neck. " Now I must hasten to the
fountain to gaze at my image in the water." " Stay," said Sas-
samon, catching her arm. " You need not the fountain to tell
you that you are beautiful. If the whole Wampanoag tribe were

1 88 1.] WEETAMOO. 605

to be destroyed you at least would be spared. The Great Mani-
tou would take pity on Bluebird and let her live she is so beau-
tiful."

"Oh ! but do let me run to the fountain," pleaded Weetamoo.
"Stay," repeated Sassamon, " and I will show you something
which can reflect your lovely visage much better than the clear-
est water." With this he produced a small mirror and held it
up before her.

Weetamoo merely gave it a glance, then started back with an
expression of awe.

" Fear not," said the Praying Indian. " All things wrought
by the pale-faces are wonderful. But this will do thee no harm.
Take it ; I give it to thee."

Slowly, timidly Weetamoo allowed her eyes to turn again
on the glass. " Truly," she said, " they must be a marvellous
race who made this. And now it is mine. Oh ! how very gene-
rous you are."

" The religion of the pale-faces teaches me to be generous,"
answered her artful admirer.

" Well, since I am not able to read, I do wish you would teach
me," said Weetamoo, " for I am impatient to know what this
great medicine-book contains." " Sit down beside, me on this
stump, and let me give you at once your first lesson," said the
other. Accordingly, Weetamoo sat down. Then, after letting
him clasp one of her hands in his, she bade him commence.

But hardly had Sassamon spoken ten words when the cry of
a hawk was heard.

" What is the matter ? " he inquired, as the girl sprang to her
feet. Without replying, Weetamoo, whose quick ear had told
her that it was not a hawk, bounded off into the woods. She
traversed a dark and deep ravine, the haunt of catamounts and
rattlesnakes, and in a few minutes found herself beside Sasco,
whose open, honest countenance formed a striking contrast to
the guileful visage of him whom she had just quitted. " My
Bluebird fears not the hawk that called her," spoke the son of
Metacomet, kissing her full on the lips ; then, after kissing her
again, " I love the breath of spring," he added, " but thou to me
art sweeter than the springtime."

" I am never so happy as when I am with you," said the
maiden, smiling. " What delightful hours we two have spent
together seeking for the hollow trees where the bees hide their
honey ! The gaudiest feathers of the jay-bird and yellowham-
mer you always bring me to twine in my hair ; and my new gar-

606 WEETAMOO. [Aug.,

ment of otter-fur is a present from you. But, O my beloved ! "
here Weetamoo's expression grew sad " I have a feeling that
our happy days are soon to end, unless you do what Massasoit
would have had you do : namely, cherish peace with the pale-
faces, and learn to understand their great medicine-book the
book which Sassamon is constantly reading." " Never! " replied
Sasco. " It brings ill-fortune to our race. The red men who
study that book become like unto squaws. Their arms grow
weak ; they forget how to chase the moose and the bear, and
how to spear the salmon. Why, look at Sassamon ! What is he
good for ? He warped the noble mind of Massasoit by falsely
interpreting his dreams, and I fear that now and then you go to
him and tell him your own visions. O Weetamoo ! you are a
darling, peerless maiden ; but I dread the influence of Sassamon.
He is a snake hidden under the leaves." " He is generous. He
gave me these pretty beads," said Weetamoo.

" They were made by a pale-face," rejoined the youth, frown-
ing. "And he gave me this also," she added, drawing forth the
little mirror. Sasco had barely looked into it when, just as
Weetamoo had done, he sprang back. But it was not the reflec-
tion of himself which startled him ; an arrow, shot by an un-
known hand, had flown between the glass and his face, and was
now quivering in the bark of a whitewood tree close by. He
gazed in every direction, but could discover nobody.

" It must have been an arrow sent at rand om by some foolish
boy," he said.

" My beloved," spoke Weetamoo, shuddering, " let us not
tarry here. Come away come away." " Bah ! it was not
aimed at me, I tell you," answered the youth. " Such an acci-
dent might not happen again in a lifetime." " Well, well, as you
wish," said Weetamoo. With this they sat down on the dry
leaves and proceeded to hold sweet converse together.

A more peaceful, retired spot it would have been difficult to
find. It was the primeval forest. Flowing in a semicircle around
them was a brook, the murmur of whose water had always a
charm for' Weetamoo, who believed it to be the spirit of the
stream that was speaking ; and she would sometimes address it and
pray that it might furnish herself and Sasco with plenty of trout,
for here they often came in springtime to fish with their bone
fish-hooks. Just above, where they were reclining was the skele-
ton of a beaver, dangling from the limb of a beech-tree and quite
out of the reach of fox or wolf. Presently Weetamoo looked up
at it and spoke. " Good beaver," she said, " thy brethren cannot

1 88 1.] WEETAMOO. 607

take offence. My beloved is a magnanimous hunter, and after
stripping 1 off thy fur he hath so hung thy bones that no evil may
befall them."

This speech gratified Sasco, who felt sure that it would bring
him good luck ; and, thrusting his hand into her long, black hair,
he exclaimed : " The stream hath a soul, and so hath the beaver ;
the Great Manitou hath filled all things with his mysterious
breath. But, O Weetamoo ! how ineffably sweet must have been
his breath when he breathed into thee and gave thee life." At
these words she turned her big, lustrous eyes upon his, while
Sasco gazed upon her. Happy moments !

They had not been long in each other's company when they
were interrupted by the appearance of Metacomet. The latter
was evidently pleased to see them together. Weetamoo was the
daughter of a Pequod sachem, the bravest: of his tribe ; through
her blood might be transmitted the valor of her exterminated
kindred, and fair and spacious would be the wigwam which
Metacomet would build for his son if he wedded Weetamoo.

But presently a cloud passed over his face. " Whence come
these baubles ?" he asked, pointing to the mirror and the string
of glass beads. " Sassamon gave them to me," replied Weetamoo
frankly.

Anybody else would have quailed before Metacomet's stern
look. " Sassamon ! Sassamon ! " he repeated, slowly shaking his
head. Then, letting his eyes fall to the ground, he seemed to be
lost in deep meditation. At length the sagamore knelt down,
and, after brushing the leaves off the ground until he had cleared
a small space round about him, he proceeded to trace with a
stick a rude sketch of the New England settlements. The west-
ern boundary was the Connecticut River, while a line at right
angles to the coast, and passing a little east of the Merrimac,
formed the boundary on the east.

" Pay heed, my children," he said, pointing to what was in-
tended to represent a hilly peninsula jutting into Narraganset
Bay. " This, you know, is Mount Hope.* Here for many gene-
rations the Wampanoags have abode in peace and happiness.
But within my lifetime a woful change has taken place. The
pale-faces, coming from a mysterious region beyond the horizon,
have invaded our domain, until now they well-nigh outnumber
us. Four colonies are already marked out Plymouth, New Ha-
ven, Connecticut, and Massachusetts and numerous towns dot
the land over which our fathers held sway. They are destroy-

* Corruption of Indian word Ontaup, meaning headland.

6o8 WEETAMOO. [Aug.,

ing our beautiful forests ; they are driving away the game, and
ere long the salmon will disappear from our streams. Sasco, are
you listening?" "I am," answered the youth. "And you, last
remnant of the Pequods, are you listening?" "I am," answered
Weetamoo, whose heart was already filled with dark forebodings.

" Well, my children," pursued Metacomet, " I wish you to
keep what I am about to tell you a profound secret." " We will
keep it a profound secret," they both replied.

" Good ! And now open your ears." Having said this, Meta-
comet paused a moment and looked cautiously about him ; then
in a lower voice he continued : " I am going to form a confede-
racy of all the tribes around us. I will unite in one large army
all the warriors of the Nipmucs, Narragansets, Mohegans, and
Wampanoags, and when the hour is ripe to strike I will teach
the pale-faces that this country belongs to the red man." " But
Alexander, your brother will he consent to this scheme ? " said
Weetamoo in a quiet tone.

" Alexander is dead," replied Metacomet.

" Dead ! " cried Sasco and Weetamoo at one breath. " Ay,
last night, while journeying to Plymouth, bent on a mission of
friendship, he suddenly expired."

A profound silence followed this announcement. It was
broken by the sagamore, who said : " Why, Bluebird, do you
weep ? " "I am thinking of good Massasoit, who implored you
to keep the hatchet buried," sobbed Weetamoo.

" It cannot be," answered the other. " No, no, it cannot be,
If we defend not our God-given rights we must shortly vanish
from the earth. But 1 vow that we shall not be exterminated
without a bloody struggle. Either the pale-faces shall be driven
into the ocean or else I, Metacomet, will be the last chief of the
Wampanoags."

One calm, frosty night, while the full moon was shining down
upon the wigwams which dotted the southern side of Mount
Hope, while all was still save in the cornfield back of the Indian
village, where a herd of deer were tearing the corn-shocks apart,
Weetamoo arose and stole out into the forest. Along a well-
beaten path, which led to the highest point of the hill, she bent
her steps, and in about a quarter of an hour found herself in an
open space nearly an acre in extent, in the middle of which rose
a huge mound of earth. This was the burial-place of the Wam-
panoags. It was a well-chosen site. Here the first whip-poor-
will was heard in springtime ; here this ghostly bird uttered its

1 88 1.] WEE TA MOO. 609

last plaintive note in the autumn; from the pine-trees which
stood around the clearing like giant sentinels there issued what
seemed to be a never-ending sigh ; and here once every twelve
moons the whole tribe came together to weep and mourn for the
dead. Weetamoo, who had been roused from her sleep by a
frightful dream, hoped that a visit to this hallowed spot might
soothe her troubled heart. She cast her eyes a moment over the
waters of the bay, glistening and dimpling in the moonlight, then
clasped her hands and tearfully gazed on the mound.

Presently a voice called her by name, and, turning, she dis-
covered Sassamon within a few feet of her. " You take me by
surprise," exclaimed the girl ; " you move as noiselessly as a
spirit. Pray, where have you been during the past week ? r "
" At Natick, taking part in the devotions of my brethren, the
Praying Indians," answered Sassamon. Then, after a pause, he
added : " But you take me also by surprise. What brings you
hither at this midnight hour?"

" I was disturbed by a dream," replied Weetamoo. " A
dream ! Ah ! tell it to me." " It was almost too ghastly to be re-
peated," said Weetamoo.

"What was it? what was it?" inquired the other eagerly.
After hesitating a moment Weetamoo began : " Methought," she
said, "that I beheld the head of Metacomet circling round me in
the air ; round and round and round it went, and blood was
dripping from it." "And Sasco did you not see his gory head
likewise ? " asked the Praying Indian. " No, but I saw his face
looking at me ever so mournfully. Presently his whole body
came in view, and then he began to wave his hand and to move
away. And away, away he moved, until finally he disappeared
in a kind of mist. But all at once, just ere he vanished, his sad
expression changed to one of great joy, and Sasco cried out,
' Weetamoo ! Wetetamoo ! ' ever so loud ; whereupon I awoke."
" There is much in your dream," said Sassamon thoughtfully.
" It is capable of two interpretations."

" Oh ! tell me, quick, what it portends," cried Weetamoo.
" The first part," answered the Praying Indian, " wherein you
saw Metacomet's bloody head, means that if the sachem goes
against his father's wishes, and digs up the hatchet, his head will
be cut off and the Wampanoag tribe be destroyed. The last part
of your vision, wherein you beheld Sasco's mournful visage sud-
denly change into bright smiles, signifies the happiness which is
in store for him and you in case you and he persuade Meta-
comet not to make war on the pale-faces."
VOL. xxxiu. 39

610 t WEETAMOO. [Aug.,

Here Sassamon paused and waited for Weetamoo to speak.
But as she said nothing, he presently continued : " And now that
I have truthfully interpreted your dream," he said, "let me in-
form you that while I was at Natick the pale-face chiefs pressed
me hard to answer a question which I was not able to answer
namely, whether the long and blessed peace which the good
Massasoit concluded with them so many years ago is about to be
broken by his son. Now, Weetamoo, you love the truth, you
love it dearly, and here at this hour, when no other ears are lis-
tening, perhaps you may be willing to tell me what the pale-faces
are so anxious to know : is Metacomet meditating war? "

Weetamoo did indeed love the truth ; Massasoit had taught
her to love it and to hate lies. But how respond to Sassamon's
question? Had she not pledged her word to Metacomet that she
would keep what he had revealed to her a fortnight before a
profound secret ? And if she betrayed this weighty secret what
dire consequences might ensue! The semi-Christian savage, who
perceived that she was embarrassed, had his suspicions doub-
ly aroused, and, after throwing a glance up at the moon, said :
" Weetamoo, did you not love Massasoit ? " " As dearly as if he
had been my own father," she replied. " Well, unless you give a
truthful answer to my question Massasoit, who detested false-
hood, will ask the Great Manitou to place his hand across the
moon and hide it for ever."

Still the girl kept mute. " Answer quickly," continued Sas-
samon. " Does Metacomet meditate war? "

" No," responded Weetamoo.

Within half a minute after she had spoken the light of the
moon did, sure enough, begin to wane, and she could plainly dis-
tinguish a spirit-hand passing across its face. Weetamoo had
always believed that Sassamon was a potent magician and pro-
phet ; now she stood in tenfold greater awe pf him than ever
before. " Look ! look ! " he exclaimed, squeezing her arm.
" Look at the night-sun disappearing for ever from the sky."
And while the sorcerer pointed upward dimmer and dimmer the
moon kept growing, until in a brief space the trees, the burial-
mound, the gleaming surface of Narraganset Bay, even Sassa-
mon himself, faded from her vision.

It were impossible to describe the feelings of Weetamoo at
this moment ; the cold sweat started out upon her brow ; she
quivered in every limb.

" O Weetamoo, Weetamoo ! " said the crafty Sassamon, who
had been informed of the coming eclipse when he was at Natick,

1 88 1.] WEETAMOO. 611

" it may not yet be too late. Speak, I beseech you ! Speak the
truth, and the all-wise Manitou may perhaps consent to give back
to us the night-sun."

" I lied, I lied!" gasped the terrified girl. " Metacomet is
plotting war against the pale-faces." Then, sinking upon her
knees, Weetamoo bowed her head and burst into tears. " Well,
Massasoit has already petitioned the Great Spirit to forgive your
wicked lie," said Sassamon. " Behold, the moon is coming back."
But Weetamoo seemed not to hear what he spoke. She refused
to be comforted, to see the returning light. The agonizing
thoughts which were rushing upon her were like unto the dream
which had driven away her slumber. This traitor to his race
would, of course, hasten to communicate to the pale-faces the im-
portant secret which terror had wrung from her lips ; and then
Metacomet (whose plans were not quite ripe), as well as her own
darling, loving Sasco, would be seized and cast into prison pro-
bably put to death. Nay, would not the whole Wampanoag
tribe be effaced from the earth, as the Pequods had been ? And
among the farthest red men in the land of the setting sun would
not the name of Weetamoo be accursed ?

" You have given pleasure to Massasoit in the Happy Hunt-
ing-Grounds. He is now smiling upon Bluebird," spoke Sassa-
mon presently in a soothing tone. " Therefore dry your tears
and come with me this very night to Natick. There I will teach
you to read. I will impart to you some of the wisdom of the
pale-faces, and when Metacomet starts out on the war-path you
will be safe from all harm. Ay, come with me at once to
Natick."

Before Weetamoo could make reply the screech of an owl
was heard, and as on a former occasion she had been enticed
away from the Praying Indian by the cry of a hawk, so now her
practised ear told her that it was not an owl but Sasco who was
calling. In vain Sassamon strove to hold her back ; she broke
loose from his grasp, and in another moment was out of sight.

" My Bluebird comes to me by night as well as by day," spoke
her lover, opening wide his arms ; and into them she flew as a
bird into its nest. " But you are agitated," went on the youth.
"I can feel your heart throbbing. Well, a little while ago some
dogs came running into my wigwam, uttering unearthly howls.
Perchance 'tis that which has alarmed you. What has hap-
pened ? "

Weetamoo did not answer immediately. At length, while he
was fondling with her raven hair, she spoke and said : " My be-

612 WEETAMOO. [Aug.,

loved, I have something of great moment to impart to you. But
ere I do so you must make me a solemn promise.'' " Most cheer-
fully will I promise Bluebird anything that is not impossible,"
returned the other, little dreaming what she was about to exact
of him. " Well, Sasco," pursued Weetamoo in tremulous accents,
" days of woe are approaching. I was awakened by a horrible
dream a dream of evil omen and I have seen wonders in the
heavens. War is nigh ; and now you must promise that if the
fatal hour arrives when the pale-faces are surrounding you pro-
mise promise that you will then let me fling myself at your feet,
and that with your own tomahawk you will take away my
wretched life." " You astound me ! Are you awake? Are you
raving ? " exclaimed Sasco. " Ay, I am awake stark awake,"
answered Weetamoo ; " and as I do not wish to abide here
without my beloved, I repeat that when your last hour is come
you must take me with you to the Happy Hunting-Grounds."
" I still can scarcely believe that you are awake/' said Sasco.
" Nevertheless, I am willing to promise that if what you pre-
dict comes to pass, rather than have you live to be carried off
by the cowardly Sassamon, we shall journey together to the
shadowy land where Massasoit is awaiting us."

When Sasco had uttered these words Weetamoo grew calmer;
then presently she went on to tell him how the moon had been
hidden from her sight by the hand of the Great Manitou, and how,
under the influence of mortal fear, she had divulged to Sassamon
the deep-laid scheme which Metacomet was planning. " Can you
forgive me? Can you forgive me?" she said, when she had
made this startling confession.

Without breathing upon her a single word of reproach, or
evincing any sign of the profound emotion within his breast,
Sasco bade her retire to her wigwam, and as she turned to go he
merely observed : " If the secret has been revealed only to Sassa-
mon, Sassamon shall never live to repeat it to a pale-face." With
this he hastened up the hill in quest of the Praying Indian. But
the latter had taken alarm and was already speeding to the near-
est settlement. Nevertheless, up to within a mile of Seekonk
did the keen-eyed, daring young warrior pursue him. And if
only the ground had been softer, or had the fleeing man's trail been
less difficult to follow in the moonlight, the colonists of New
England would doubtless have been taken unawares, and Meta-
comet might have succeeded in wresting the country from their
grasp.

On the last day of November, while the snow-birds were flit-

1 88 1.] WE ETA MOO. 613

ting about in the silent woods, Weetamoo and Sasco met beneath
a leafless maple-tree to bid each other good-by. ' " Grieve not,"
spoke the youth. " I shall not be absent many moons, and when I
return to claim you as my bride I will show you dangling from
my waist the scalp of Sassamon."

" Of Sassamon ! " ejaculated Weetamoo. " O dear boy ! touch
him not. He is a mighty medicine-man and may bring untold
evils upon you and me. Potent spirits are fighting on his side."

" Bah ! I defy him. Sassamon is a squaw ; nor can I believe
that my grandsire truly loved such a dastard," rejoined Sasco.
" Alas ! Massasoit did love him ; he still listens to his petitions ;
and could the wise old sachem return to earth would he not bit-
terly chide his son and his grandson for digging up the hatchet ? "
Then, seeing that the youth made no reply, Weetamoo continued :
" Sasco," she said, "turn not a deaf ear to my last appeal. You
know that my heart belongs to you, to you alone, and in the
Happy Hunting-Grounds I should be heart-broken without you.
Therefore abide with me, and we shall flee together to the beau-
tiful prairies in the far southwest, where the snow seldom falls,
where game is abundant, and where the pale-faces will never mo-
lest us. Oh ! it is not too late. Fly not in the face of Massasoit and
the Great Manitou. Have the courage to listen to Weetamoo's
last appeal."

Sasco's only response was to lift his finger and cry, " Hark 1 "
The sound of a drum was heard and the chanting of many voices.
In another moment he was gone to take part in the war-dance.

Before the first snow of this* memorable winter fell the war
known in New England history as King Philip's War broke out.
Metacomet, after sending his squaws and aged people to the Nar-
raganset country for greater security, led his warriors, ten thou-
sand in number, against Seekonk, Deerfield, and other towns, which
he completely destroyed. Even Weymouth, within twenty miles
of Boston, did not escape his fiery arrows, and by the time spring
came round again along three hundred miles of frontier, from
the Penobscot River to the mouth of the Connecticut, the war-
whoop of the red man was heard.

" What troubles you, my son?" inquired Metacomet one win-
ter day thirteen moons later. Sasco was lying with his face
buried in the dead leaves, groaning piteously. " I have received
tidings of Weetamoo which wring my heart," answered the youth.
" Two moons ago she quitted her home among the Narra-
gansets. Nobody knows whither she went ; and when, after a
while, she came back her friends did scarce recognize her her

6 1 4 WEE TAMOO. [Aug.,

eyes were so sunken, her tongue was so dumb except to utter sin-
gular cries ; nor could she sleep for the horrible spectres which
haunted her. And now, alas ! the poor dear girl has been de-
clared by the medicine-men to be under the spell of a malignant
spirit, and I fear that she may be stoned to death."

" I know where she went," spoke Metacomet ; " my scouts
informed me. But I did not tell you, lest your heart might burst
with grief and rage. Weetamoo trudged to Natick all alone
through the deep snow, and at Natick she put herself in the
power of Sassamon, who has filled her with devils." " Sassamon !"
cried the youth, springing to his feet and striking at the empty
air with his tomahawk. " O Great Manitou ! give him to me, I
beseech thee. Give me Sassamon to torture and to kill." While
he was in this paroxysm of wrath a voice which Sasco well knew
exclaimed : " Ay, save me from Sassamon. He is close upon my
track. He is coming, coming." Then, ere he could recover from
his astonishment, Weetamoo bounded through the hazel bushes
and flung herself on his breast.

For several minutes after this unexpected meeting neither of
the lovers could utter a word ; their hearts were too full to speak.
At length Sasco moved back a step and gazed intently on Weeta-
moo. He found her indeed very much changed ; and while he
was studying her she began to talk about wonders which she
had beheld in the sky how not only the moon but the sun had
been veiled by a ghostly hand ; how sometimes she communed
with Massasoit ; and she ended by imploring Sasco to keep the
solemn promise which he had made her. Here a faint smile
played on Weetamoo's lips for an instant : her fingers were feel-
ing the keen edge of his tomahawk.

The spot where the Pequod maiden had joined her betrothed
was a few miles northeast of Mount Hope. Five sanguinary bat-
tles had been fought with the colonial troops during the past sum-
mer and autumn, and in the last engagement the Indians had
been completely routed. But their valiant leader, who never
despaired, had once again rallied them, and now Metacomet was
falling back to the headland which had been so long the home of
his tribe, and where the spirits of the dead Wampanoags buried
there might inspire his followers with renewed courage and
strength in their last, supreme struggle for existence.

But the sagamore's warriors were few compared with what
they had been. They numbered only a thousand, and were
closely pursued by the whites under the command of Colonel
Church. It was dusk by the time they reached the summit of

1 88 1 .] WEE TAMOO. 6 1 5

Mount Hope. A bitter cold wind was blowing from the north ;
the sky was overcast ; not a star could be seen, while the surround-
ing pine-forest gave forth weird, mysterious sounds. * No rest did
Metacomet allow them, fagged and famished though they were.

With might and main many a fallen tree was lugged up the
height and formed into a breastwork, while a fresh supply of
arrows which the sachem's forethought had concealed here was
unearthed and distributed among them. But where was Weeta-
moo during these dark, busy hours? Closely wrapped in a bear-
skin robe, she was sleeping in Sasco's care, who preferred to be
with her rather than with his fellow-braves. It was Weetamoo's
first slumber in many a night ; and as the youth ever and anon
uncovered her face he heeded not his own weariness, but wished
that this sweet night might never end.

Perhaps the girl might not have opened her weary eyes until
morning had not the wind towards midnight suddenly veered
round to the west, and in an incredibly brief space swept every
cloud from the sky. Then lo ! from the north there darted forth
vivid streaks of light which reached as far as the zenith, and even
beyond, filling the superstitious children of the forest with dis-
may. Sasco laid down his precious burden and hastened to ask
his father what this awe-inspiring sight portended. Metacomet
albeit he had never before witnessed an aurora borealis half
so grand as this one suppressed his own feelings of wonder, and,
telling his warriors that these fiery lines in the heavens were the
fingers of the all-powerful Manitou spread out to shield them
from their enemies, bade them form a circle around the burial-
mound and dance another war-dance. While the dance was in
progress a voice whispered in Weetamoo's ear and said : " Wee-
tamoo ! Weetamoo ! open thine eyes and witness what is going
on in the land of the stars." Thus called, she opened wide her
eyes, and after lying a moment, dazed and bewildered by the mar-
vellous Northern Light, Sassamon, now dressed in the garb of
his race, snatched her up in his arms, folded the robe tightly
about her, then hurried her away.

" O cruel man! why have you brought me here?" asked
the trembling girl when in a little while Sassamon reached the
camp of the pale-faces. " Because," answered the other, " in one
of your waking dreams you have revealed to me that Sasco has
promised to take your life when his own last hour shall have
come ; and as to-morrow all the red men gathered on Mount
Hope are doomed to perish, I did not wish Bluebird to share
their fate."

616 WEETAMOO. [Aug.,

Weetamoo's agony when she heard this cannot be described ;
nor was it lessened when the Praying Indian went on to tell her
that she should dwell with him at Natick in a beautiful wigwam,
and learn to read the medicine-book where the pale-faces got all
their wisdom. As for Sasco, when he returned to where he had
left Weetamoo, and found her gone, his fury knew no bounds. He
guessed what had happened, and it required all his father's au-
thority to prevent him from following Sassamon even into the
^enemy's camp.

At break of day Colonel Church's soldiers advanced to the
attack. The first musket-shot was answered by a wild war-
whoop, and a thousand arrows whizzed through the air. Then
followed a volley of musketry, immediately after which, con-
cealed by the smoke, the pale-faces charged and well-nigh suc-
ceeded in breaking through the circle of fallen trees.

But Metacomet, who seemed to be in every part of the narrow
battle-ground at the same moment, rushed to meet the assailants,
tomahawked five who did get within the enclosure, then, spring-
ing on top of the burial-mound, he waved aloft their bleeding
scalps.

Of no avail, however, was the prowess of the red men. A
weapon entirely new to them was by and by wheeled to the edge
of the forest, and when the cannon boomed they fell into despair,
for it was surely a supernatural being that was now roaring at them.
Flat on their faces they flung themselves, all except Metacomet ;
even this deafening, howling god could not make him quail.
" Arise ! Sasco," he cried " arise! and by the tomb of our fore-
fathers let us die like braves." At this appeal the youth rose to
his feet. The cannon-balls in the meanwhile were ploughing up
the earth around him, and like the humming of bees sounded the
bullets.

Presently, in the midst of the carnage, appeared Weetamoo,
the cord by which she had been bound still clinging to one of her
wrists. " Strike, strike, Sasco ! " she cried, as she knelt at his
feet and bowed her head. " Noble daughter of a sachem, I am
proud of thee ! Thou art no coward ! We shall go to the Hap-
py Hunting--Grounds together," exclaimed Metacomet.

She answered him not, but kept repeating in passionate ac-
cents, "Strike! strike!" Nor did the great chief ever speak
again. Straight through his heart Sassamon had sent a ball.
" Shame, Sasco ! shame ! " cried Weetamoo. " You are false to
your promise. Look ! your father is dead. Oh ! let me die with
him and you."

1 88 1.] WEETAMOO. 617

41 1 cannot, I cannot," answered Sasco, averting his face.
" Your dear blood I cannot spill. Let the pale-faces keep my
rash promise. We will die in each other's arms." Saying this,
he tossed his tomahawk high in the air, then, bending down, he
clasped Weetamoo to his breast. But although on every side
the ground was strewn with corpses, it was fated that the lovers
were not to perish here. Already the soldiers were in full pos-
session of this last retreat of the red men of New England, and
amid the yells of the struggling, dying warriors Sasco and Wee-
tamoo were made prisoners.

On the morrow no place in all the land was more silent than
Mount Hope, and the tiny snowflakes which dropped from the
gloomy sky covered the dead Indians with a spotless winding-
sheet. One of them was headless ; his hands, too, had been cut off.
This Indian was Metacomet.

But it was a gladsome day for Sassamon, for now he had
triumphed. And, strange to relate, she who had been so faithful to
Sasco now actually smiled on her captor. Weetamoo expressed
a desire to become a Christian. Her sudden conversion was
looked upon by all as a wonderful providence, while she declared
that it was owing to a dream wherein Massasoit had appeared to
her and told her what to do. Convinced of Weetamoo's sincerity,
Sassamon took off her shackles. But, although unbound, she re-
mained always close to him, nor did she once inquire for Sasco.

At length, a week after the battle, the Praying Indian, com-
pletely off his guard, went with Colonel Church to the town of
Newport. Thither Weetamoo accompanied him. She insisted
on carrying his Bible. Happy indeed was Sassamon.

From Newport a few days later a ship spread her sails to the
breeze. She was bound for the island of Bermuda. On this ves-
sel were Sasco and a few other Wampanoags, who had been con-
demned to be sold into slavery.* A group of Praying Indians
were watching the departing ship ; among them were Sassamon
and Weetamoo ; while at a little distance off stood a pole, on the
top of which was stuck the head of Metacomet.

" Let us sing a hymn of thanks that King Philip's wicked war
is ended," spoke Sassamon, opening a copy of the old Bay Psalm-
book. A murmur of approval sounded through the group, and
presently the hymn began. But scarcely had the first line been
sung when away with the fleetness of a deer sped Weetamoo to-
wards the water's edge. Out into the sea there projected a long

* See Palfrey's History of New England.

618 MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND ELIZABETH. [Aug.,

narrow ledge of rock, its far end whitened by the foam of the
breakers. For this wave-beaten point the fugitive made as if
wings, not feet, propelled her. It was in vain that Sassamon and
his friends gave chase ; in vain they cried out, " Come back !
come back ! " The bark with her cargo of slaves sailed on for
Bermuda, and the moaning ocean swallowed up Weetamoo.

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND ELIZABETH, QUEEN
OF ENGLAND.

IT is wonderfully irritating to the equitable student of history
to perceive at the present time so many English speakers and
writers persist when, in the first instance, invading the platform,
and, in the second, degrading even journals notoriously subvented
by fanaticism in statements which must be disgraceful to their
disseminators if consciously false, and little less deplorable if
sent forth in ignorance. When I read such statements for even
the most intense spirit of inquisitiveness could not induce me to
go hear blatant folly and all uncharitableness I very much in-
cline to the opinion that in general the assertions made about
" persecutions by papists " at the conventicles of East Lon-
don and at Exeter Hall (in those " May meetings " where geo-
graphical philanthropy leaves the native pagans to riot, slay,
and die " on uneasy pallets, stretching them ") are enunciated in
ignorance ; not because too many of the utterers are not wicked
and despicable enough to publish sectarian falsehoods, but because
nearly all the " religious " literature of Protestantism, and even
that section of the chronicles of the past denominated " history,"
are false, and often consciously as well as malignantly so, when
dealing with matters affecting the Catholic Church and its re-
bellious and illegitimate offspring the Established Church of
England.

This paper, however, I shall confine to an examination as to
the action of " good Queen Bess " and of Mary, Queen of Scots,
as to "persecution for religion's sake." The crimes committed
in the name of " Liberty " bear no calculable measure to those
which have been perpetrated under the cloak of religion. It was
not religion which inculcated persecution, but its so-called pro-
fessors who practised it. This is especially true as to England.

1 88 1.] MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND ELIZABETH. 619

The persons who burned Protestants at the Reformation were,
strange to say, themselves Protestants. Paradoxical this, but
true. Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Hooper, and other Protestant
"martyrs " had either assisted at the burning of heretics or par-
ticipated in consigning them to the stake. The men who burned
heretics in Mary's reign were masters of the situation and of the
queen, who was almost wholly guiltless of the burnings com-
mitted in her reign, inasmuch as during its brief duration she
was in ill-health and harassed by the most bitter domestic sor-
rows that can visit a woman. The men who held power in
Mary's reign had been Protestants in the preceding one of Ed-
ward, became " Catholics " now, and Protestants again on the
accession of Elizabeth. Well, then, if the fact of men on two
different occasions proclaiming their Protestantism be a sufficient
voucher for their creed, it may be fairly stated that if heretics
were burned the combustion was performed by order of
those also whom the church regarded as heretics. Bonner and
Gardyner, whose part in these lamentable transactions has been
so egregiously exaggerated, were subordinate to the higher
powers of the Council, consisting of the variable religionists
above referred to.

But to return to the special object of treating Mr. Froude's
statement regarding the persecuting tendencies of Mary, Queen
of Scots, which elicited from the London Times not only censure
for reckless assertion as to motives which never took the shape
of action, but a display of proofs that the beautiful and much-
maligned queen never entertained a thought of persecution. The
Scottish queen appears to have derived her ideas of religious
toleration from her mother, Mary of Lorraine. Shortly after
Mary's arrival from France she attended the kirk occasionally,
and even listened to the violent discourses of John Knox, which
were not likely to win many Catholics to the Calvinistic mode of
belief. In her political intercourse with the nobles Mary Stuart
never permitted her religious principles to interpose. She desir-
ed liberty of conscience for herself and extended the same to her
subjects. Mr. Froude, who is well aware of the policy pursued
by the Queen of Scots with regard to religious toleration, de-
scribes her liberty of conscience as " hypocrisy at one time, and sen-
timental affectation at another."

Upon her arrival in England Mary, Queen of Scots, found
that, from Queen Elizabeth down to the ignorant, ranting preach-
ers, all were opposed to " civil and religious liberty." She was
assured that the " good Queen Bess" was so solicitous for the

620 MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND ELIZABETH. [Aug.,

spiritual welfare of her subjects that she would not permit, them
to practise any faith but that which she deemed orthodox. This
was despotism similar to that of an Eastern tyrant, who would
manacle the conscience as well as the body.

When Mary became the prisoner of her English cousin she
demanded the free access of her chaplain, but was informed that
she should " accept the religion of the queen's creation the Re-
formed Church." This she at once rejected, which was the com-
mencement of a series of the most despicable insults, wrongs, and
oppressions, heaped upon one lone woman, and that woman a
close prisoner. The manhood of England was disgraced in those
days by its acquiescence in the tenets propounded for their ac-
ceptance by Queen Elizabeth. To Mary's letter to Elizabeth con-
cerning "liberty of conscience" she received "a rude reply,"
which showed that the " English lioness " desired to follow in
the track of her father. Mary refused to assist at the Anglican
service. She stated that her enemies alleged she " was not sin-
cere in her religion, and cared little for any creed." Sir Fran-
cis Knollys knew that this was most untrue ; for Mary's English
jailers had endeavored to induce her to take what they called
" the sacrament," but Mary never did so, nor was she ever pre-
sent when it was administered. The Queen of Scots said further
that, while under the charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury,* she had
not only heard a number of different Protestant preachers, but
had conversed with them in private, and she " never found any
two who, on the most cardinal points of the Christian faith, were
of the same opinion. Instead, therefore, of converting her to their
religion, they had confirmed her in her own creed." Mary further
adds that " there were only two things upon which all Protes-
tant preachers agreed namely, they all abused the pope and
prayed for the English queen, because they were bound by law to
pray for the said queen. With these exceptions, there seemed to
be amongst them as many different religions as heads /"

Elizabeth, at the commencement of her reign, had assured
Count Feria, the Spanish envoy, that she " had been forced into the
separation from the Papacy against her will." Very likely ; for
her chief supporters were the enemies of the Papacy and the men
who possessed the plunder of the ancient church. It is, how-

* Lord Shrewsbury was a Catholic or at least a professing Catholic and he proved to his
royal prisoner as stern and cruel a jailer as Amyot Paulet, or the noted Ralph Sadler, who declared
that " it was treason to practise any form of religion but what the queen commanded " 1 Such
was " liberty of conscience " under Elizabeth, so long handed down by historians as " the
good Queen Bess."

1 88 1.] MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND ELIZABETH. 621

ever, difficult to ascertain what were Elizabeth's real views con-
cerning- religion, for, after remodelling every diocese* in the king-
dom and governing the prelates with a rod of iron, she styled
them on her deathbed " hedge-priests."

There was one point only on which Elizabeth's mind seemed
unalterably fixed, and that was that every one should conform
to the religion which she herself professed ; and in order to carry
out her despotic policy she burned, racked, fined, imprisoned, and
sent to the scaffold honest men and women because they refused
to accept her views on religion.

Upon the religious sentiments of the Scottish queen Mr.
Hosack remarks : " Mary must have been more or less than
woman if she could have borne with untiring patience, in addi-
tion to her other wrongs and sufferings, the refusal of her keepers
to allow her the exercise of her own religion. Need we, then, be
astonished that, as years passed away and her hopes of liberty
became gradually fainter, she should cling with increasing fervor
to the faith of her fathers, and regard with renewed bitterness
those who were avowedly seeking its extermination ? If Mary
Stuart finally became a most formidable enemy to Protestantism
we must look for the cause, not in her own inclinations, but in the
barbarous policy of Sir William Cecil. Her imprisonment and
cruel treatment not only impeded the progress of the Reforma-
tion in England, but led of necessity to a succession of Catholic
conspiracies which kept the kingdom in perpetual alarm. That
these results were not foreseen from the first argues a singular
degree of blindness on the part of Sir William Cecil and his
colleagues ; for nothing can be clearer than that every complaint
which they made of the dangers incurred through the presence
of the Scottish queen in England was simply a confession of their
own wickedness." f

When at Buxton, in 1573, Mary, Queen of Scots, again peti-
tioned her " good cousin " to be allowed a confessor. Upon this
point Elizabeth burst into a furious passion. She not only re-
fused the request of her poor helpless prisoner, but added that
she did not believe the Scottish queen was serious in the request.
" Elizabeth made the established religion, and it was a much better
creed than Rome produced, and with that she ought to be contented"^.

* One of the many proofs on record as to the interest Elizabeth took in the "reformed
faith " is to be found in the fact that she left the diocese of Ely nineteen years without a bishop.
Notwithstanding this "spiritual neglect," Miss Strickland represents her heroine as "the nurs-
ing-mother of the Church of England."

t Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, vol. ii. pp. 180, 181.

\ Labanoff , vol. iv. p. 95.

622 MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND ELIZABETH. [Aug.,

If Mary Stuart had made such a reply to the Kirk preachers
how many more myriads of falsehoods would have been heaped
upon her memory by historians of the Puritan school ! We are
assured by recent writers that Elizabeth was always in favor of
" religious toleration, and from this resolve she never wavered.
She^would hear of no inquisition into a man's private thoughts
on religious matters, or into his personal religion." * The above
is in direct contradiction of the well-authenticated records and
other state papers of the reign of Elizabeth.

Whilst confined at Tutbury Castle Mary experienced quite
enough of the " tolerance and religious liberty " accorded by the
English queen and her officials to those who had the misfortune
to become the inmates of royal dungeons. Here is an incident:
A young Catholic gentleman, who was confined as a prisoner in
the castle on account of his creed, was compelled to join in the
services of the new form of religion. He indignantly refused,
and Sir Ralph Sadler immediately had recourse to violence and a
" curtailment of food " ; but this barbarous mode of propagating
religious opinions did not succeed, but only intensified the devo-
tion for the ancient creed.

Day by day Queen Mary saw from the windows of her apart-
ment the unfortunate man dragged forcibly across the courtyard
to take part in ceremonies forbidden by his religion and con-
demned by his conscience. Powerless to protect, Queen Mary
could only pity this unhappy victim of a so-called Christianity,
who, rather than continue to do violence to his own conscience,
resolved to put an end to his existence. The young gentleman
strangled himself, and was found dead in his cell one morning.
The jailers, with unprecedented brutality, suspended the lifeless
body of the young man from the turret opposite the queen's
chambers, "as a warning to the popish captive and her ladies." f

This horrible incident made a deep impression upon the
Queen of Scots. Gloomy as her own prospects were at this
time, she had resolved to write to Queen Elizabeth with respect
to the cruel persecution of " a young gentleman of stainless char-
acter, whose only crime had been to worship his Creator accord-
ing to the faith of his forefathers, and his own conscience." In
this letter Mary pointed out the shame and scandal to Christian-
ity which the English government had caused, and that if her
" good cousin " pursued such a policy her name would be handed
down to posterity covered with odium. Mary continued : " Jesus

* Green's History of the English People, vol. ii. p. 298.
t Labanoff, vol. vi. p. 160 ; Queens of Scotland, vol. vii.

1 88 1.] MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND ELIZABETH. 623

Christ never preached such principles as you have set forth as
his. His principles were those of mildness, persuasion, and charity ;
your mode of action is directly opposed to the New Testament."*
And again Mary Stuart writes : " Human force should never be used
in religion. God's truth comes inspired from heaven. . . . If ever it
come to pass that an open attack be made on me for my religion,
I am perfectly ready, with the grace of God, to bow my neck be-
neath the axe, that my blood may be shed before all Christendom ;
and I should esteem it the greatest happiness to be the first to do
so. I do not say this out of vain-glory while the danger is re-
mote."

Upon these incidents Mr. Hosack remarks that, " as the most
tolerant of European sovereigns, this was a subject upon which
Queen Mary had a right to speak."

It is certain that, as the " Head of the Church of England,"
Elizabeth claimed unrestricted jurisdiction in her own realm, and
the exclusive power to " alter or amend religion in whatever man-
ner she thought proper," warning the bishops "not to turn to
the right or to the left without her special sanction." f The Eng-
lish queen adhered to this " spiritual despotism," as it was styled
by a distinguished Puritan preacher, throughout her life, and
found ministers unprincipled and wicked enough to carry out her
policy a policy in the equity of which she did not herself believe ;
but, being the monarch of a party, she was compelled to a course
of inconsistency and dishonesty. As the daughter of Henry
VIII., however, dishonesty never annoyed her conscience, for des-
potism and cruelty were the marked attributes of her family in-
heritance.

Amongst the many extraordinary assertions made by Mr.
Froude concerning the Queen of Scots, he alleges that Philip of
Spain " expressed considerable doubts as to whether Mary had
any religion at all." Philip's letters to Queen Mary prove the
high opinion he entertained of her religious sentiments. In one
of his secret despatches to her, whilst she was confined at Fother-
ingay Castle, Philip says : " It is quite evident to the world that
your cruel imprisonment and all the wrongs inflicted upon you
are on account of your religion. ... If some active measures are
not soon adopted to release you, it is quite clear they will take

* Letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Queen of England, Labanoff, vol. iv. ; Mary, Queen
of Scots, and her Accusers, vol. ii.

f Elizabeth's masculine address to the bishops is still extant. It is well spiced with " big
oaths." I may add that at fourteen the princess, then styled "Golden Eliza," swore " like a
dicer."

624 A PSALM OF LIFE. [Aug.,

your life. Then your name will descend to posterity as a martyr
for our holy religion." Truly said. Queen Mary's imprisonment
in England, and her judicial murder at Fotheringay Castle, were
the results of personal malice on the part of Elizabeth and sec-
tarian, selfish fear on the part of her advisers. No assertions, no
amount of false reasoning on the part of Mr. Froude or those
who adopt his views, can deny the fact that Mary Stuart died a
martyr for her religion.

I here quote a significant sentence from Mr. Hosack's power-
ful defence of Mary Stuart : " The great and unpardonable crime of
the Queen of Scots was her religion'' ' Such is the judgment of a
learned Scotch advocate and High-Kirk Protestant.

A PSALM OF LIFE.

" WE suffer peace by pain and tribulation,"

A Christian Father saith :
One with those evils, through our acceptation,

Is the sure peace of Faith.

Permit the veiled blessing, men, my brothers !

Not with discouraged mind,
But, like pompanion-ships, cheer each the other's

Slow course against the wind

Strong in endurance, strong in mutual patience,

Though opposition blare,
And the more baffled, nobler the occasions

To bear and to forbear !

Be thoughtful. Light is broken in many prisms :

Our minds are not alike.
As brindled snakes lie coiled antagonisms

Oh ! charm them, lest they strike.

Be brave, be gentle. By the touch of mercy

Life's fairest grace is won.
Be thou, whose young ire frets like Hotspur Percy,

Serene as Washington.

* Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, vol. ii. p. 118, second edition..

1 88 1.] A PSALM OF LIFE. 625

Let fable teach. The Pythian god wins psean

In fight, in fiery love ;
Chafes Neptune ; white calms of the empyrean

Sit on the front of Jove !

Peace one with pain ! There is no contradiction.

The storm's moon may be pale,
But she is patient, shining through affliction :

So, true heart, never fail !

Thou noble soul, in trial that not despondeth,

Sing, soar in jubilant psalm !
Lo ! above brows of saintly anguish roundeth

The crown of saintliest calm.

That crown was woven for St. Lawrence, broiling

Upon his bed of coals.
'Tis not less due the living and the toiling

For earthlier martyr-goals.

For God, who gave us stars, flowers, grandeurs, beauties,

And his great day to come,
Hath sometimes ordered that life's manlier duties

Are but one martyrdom.

And there's the crown ! Oft, when the all-jarring thunder

Is dumb in the typhoon,
And the blown seas are chaos, a sweet wonder

Breaks soft as morns in June

A ring of light, of pure rest, a salvation,

In zenith of heaven's cope ;
The mariner's very hell of tribulation

Hails the blue eye of Hope.

Therefore be hopeful. O'er the storm-disc heaven

Is radiant and serene,
Over red battles, bickerings ; a still even

Shall fall on every scene,

And pain and tribulation be no longer,

To make your brows so wan.
With every struggle grows the athlete stronger :

Bear, brothers, bravely on !
VOL. xxxiii. 40

626 THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC [Aug.,

THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC POETRY OF

IRELAND.

IF it is admitted, for the purpose of historical definition, that
Turlogh O'Carolan was the last of the Irish bards, according to
the epithet popularly associated with his name, it is not because
he did not leave legitimate successors, who pursued the same
method of life, sang on the same themes and in the same language,
and rivalled him in genius, if not as a musician, as a poet. It was
rather for Carolan's social position and consideration, his claims
of blood and family, his widespread fame, and the dignity which
he maintained for himself and his profession, that he was marked
as a descendant of the lofty race of bards who held places of
honor in the courts of kings and chieftains, than for any absolute
eclipse of the line of Celtic poets at his death or any period of
barrenness to Irish poetic genius succeeding him. On the con-
trary, the race of Celtic poets continued unbroken for more than
a century after the date of his death in 1737, and has only been
definitely extinguished within living memory. Neither was there
any degeneration in genius in the Celtic singers who succeeded
Carolan, for in fluency, fancy, and pathos, in strength and sweet-
ness, the volume of later Celtic poetry includes some of the finest
productions in the language, if no single poet produced an equal
amount of verse or achieved an equal fame with the Last of the
Bards. But as the circumstances of Carolan's life, his wander-
ings among a wide circle of patrons instead of being the append-
age of a single court or the retainer of one great family, like his
predecessors, and the admitted degeneracy of the tone and style
of some of his verse to suit the altered quality and station of
. some of his entertainers, mark a descent from the ancient dignity
of the bards in their best estate, there was a still more marked
difference and degradation between him and his followers, who
ceased to be bards even by courtesy and became hedge-poets.
Carolan was an honored guest among what remained of the
Celtic aristocracy, and was an object of respectful curiosity and
interest, as a relic of ancient days, among their Saxon neighbors,
who felt the influence, even in decay, of a yet unextinguished
native aristocracy, beaten but not humiliated, and undegraded by
a long course of the stifling and crushing tyranny of the penal
laws. But after him there is no record of any Celtic poet being

1 88 1.] POETRY OF IRELAND. 627

received at the tables of the great, either Irish or Saxon ; and al-
though we may imagine that some of the more national and patri-
otic families welcomed the sound of the harp and the Celtic song
from some wandering professor, the Irish minstrels became guests
of the kitchen rather than the parlor of the castle or mansion-
house, and were to be described as essentially poets of the pea-
santry. The harp was discarded for the plebeian bagpipes or
the violin, and the profession of musician was divorced from that
of poet. The poet sang or recited his verses by the peasant's
hearth in the winter's night, and in the group about the cabin
door in the calm of the summer's evening, or under the smoky
rafters of the shebeen amid the joyous company of those who
were at. once his admirers and equals, and his reward was the
" bite and sup " at the one or the shower of half-pence or the
scoring-off of his reckoning at the other ; and although something
was lost of loftiness of theme from the worthiest pride and loy-
alty of the bards, there was a more direct simplicity of language
and a more genuine air of sincerity than were to be found in the
poetry whose chief staple was personal eulogy even when sin-
cere, and of degrading sycophancy when false. They became
more national in the sense of being direct representatives of the
people, and, while retaining something of the inherited style of
the bards, their songs were nearer to the heart and spirit of the
people, whose lives they shared and whose sentiments they felt.
The Irish are a strongly poetic people, and their circumstances
were such as to induce them to seek the relief which it v affords to
national misfortune. Consequently there was a bulk and quan-
tity of native Celtic poetry at this time, a considerable portion of
which has been lost, but which the remains, in volume and
value, show to have been equal to any peasant poetry of which
we have knowledge.

The condition of the Celtic population of Ireland during the
eighteenth century was the most unfortunate, hopeless, and pro-
scribed of any during their history. They had been finally
crushed and conquered at the Boyne, and during the hundred
years that followed it their history was one of continued and
increasing oppression under the penal laws, whose indictment
was framed in burning words by Burke as the most complete and
perfect device for the degradation of a people ever invented by
the wit of man. Their religion was proscribed, and its priests
could only minister to their flocks under the penalty of mutilation
or death. Their industry was extinguished through the jealousy
of English manufacturers, and the only markets that could be

628 THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC [Aug.,

found for even such a product as wool were through a daring and
dangerous system of smuggling. Agriculture was in its crudest
and poorest form, owing to the neglect and rapacity of the absen-
tee landlords and the boisterous dissipation and extravagance of
those who wasted their rents at home in every form of coarse
profusion and idle sport. They were denied education, penal-
ties being imposed on the sending of children to be educated
abroad, and such provisions as were made by statute for the mainte-
nance of schools at home being shamelessly neglected. The native
language of the people was under a ban, and such literature as
they had was as dependent upon oral preservation as if the art of
printing had not been invented. Under these circumstances of
oppression and degradation the tenacity with which the peo-
ple clung to their ancient faith, the zeal with which they strove
for education and cultivated learning, and the spirit with which
they maintained their national literature were as remarkable as
anything in history, and showed the undying vitality of the race,
which rose to victorious self-assertion from such depression, and
has partly achieved political equality and religious freedom. The
priests, though proscribed with death and banishment, maintained
the system of religious ministration fully and completely, and the
fervency of faith, intensified by persecution, was never suffered to
slacken for the want of authoritative exercise and abundant ser-
vice. Baptism and burial went on as though priests were pro-
tected and reverenced instead of being in peril of their lives, and
Mass was said in the glens and in the secrecy of lonely cabins as
though " priest-hunters " were not stimulated by the wages of
persecution. Hardly less zeal and devotion were shown in the
pursuit of knowledge. Native schools were, for a time at least,
forbidden, as well as chapels, but they were maintained in secret
while it was necessary, and where they received a tacit toleration
the lack of educational facilities from the government was made
up from the voluntary contributions of the people, and the hedge-
school flourished in the land. The language, which was despised
and contemned, was maintained with fervor and affection, and
was the only expression of the joys and sorrows of its people, the
vehicle of poetry and the disguise of its patriotism. And the
literature, which was denied preservation in printed books, was
cherished with a fervor and tenacity in oral tradition and in
manuscript in a manner that made it much more universal than
any tincture of poetry or learning that prevailed among the
peasantry of more fortunate lands. What survived to the late
date, nearly a century after the death of Carolan, when the first

1 88 1.] POETRY OF IRELAND. 629

attempt was made to preserve and collect in books the native
literature of Ireland, shows its quantity and gives evidence of its
originality, spirit, and strength.

The spirit of education and poetry was remarkably at one in
this period. The history taught in the schools was not from
English text-books, and, in fact, had little reference to the affairs
of a hated race, but was to a great extent the traditionary record
of Irish exploits which existed in most attractive form in the
chronicles of the bards, or was told again in verse under the in-
spiration of fervid feeling by the schoolmasters, most of whom
were poets, and all of whom shared the national regard for po-
etry. In the race of native poets of this period there is scarcely
one who was not a schoolmaster, and the profession which in our
day is supposed to act in suppression of the muse was there its
favorite. Poetry, if not taught, was honored in the hedge-school,
and the master who had the highest repute as a poet attracted
the most profitable collection of pupils and found eligible situa-
tions at will in his usually vagabond career. The hedge-school,
as it existed in our own day, has been frequently and graphically
described, and the lament expressed that something of its spirit
and humor, as well as the " unpractically " of its learning, has van-
ished with the barren common sense of the National schools. The
picture is vital, in the pages of native and foreign observers of Irish
life, of the group of ragged, bright-eyed, quick-witted, and eager

frchins squatted under the sheltered side of a hedge in summer
eather, or poring over their " read-a-made-aisies " on the rude
irms of the turf-built cabin, half hollowed into a bank, in winter,
hile the magisterial teacher, in rusty swallowtail and small-
othes, with his Caroline hat on one side of his intellectual brow
id a huge ferula in significant byplay, expounded the " humani-
es " with alternate jocosity and grandiloquence. This is its
humorous side and in its more degenerate days, when hard ne-
cessity had substituted English for Irish as the language of in-
truction, and something of earnestness and all of romance had
disappeared with the cultivation of an historic and proscribed
literature which had shrunk from the school to the fireside. No
icture of the native school remains, and we must imagine it as
best we may, with all the native humor undisguised and untinc-
tured with absurdity in struggling with an unfamiliar means of
expression ; with more spirit, as the substance of the teaching was
so largely Ireland's glory ; with teachers of a higher grade if of less
learning, inasmuch as they were either genuine poets or familiar
with poetry ; with more of earnestness, as proscription, if not an

630 THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC [Aug.,

actual danger, was still in the air, and, if possible, more rags and
poverty, as evinced in the anecdote of a Scotch traveller in the lat-
ter part of the last century, who saw a hedge-school in a grave-
yard making use of the gravestones to work out their problems
in arithmetic.* The teachers of these schools were the authors
of almost all the later Celtic poetry of Ireland, and the lives of
those whose careers are known to us present as remarkable a
similarity as those of the Elizabethan dramatists or the Grub
Street authors of Pope and Johnson's time. It may be readily
imagined that the rewards of authorship were by no means great,
nor the worldly circumstances of its professors flourishing. The
rewards of the hedge-schoolmaster in his later day were in a
grqat measure " in kind" potatoes, buttermilk, and turf being the
staples, and flitches of bacon and chickens the extraordinaries
and could not have been any better when the people were even
poorer and more destitute. Whiskey we may imagine in plenty,
as the gaugers were fewer and the excise chiefly a name ; nor was
a condition of habitual elevation held to be any drawback to the
imparting of learning, but rather the contrary, as Carleton says
that it was in his remembrance.f Otherwise we may believe the
hedge-schoolmaster was rewarded with little of what he doubt-
less called the pecuniam, and the poet with less, and that in inde-
pendence and wealth he was below rather than above the ave-
rage of the peasantry, except for the abundance of drink. The
greater proportion of those whom we know anything about had
been sent abroad to be educated for the priesthood, as it was na-
tural that a bright youth should be, and as it is now one of the
highest ambitions of the Irish peasant to send a son to Maynooth.
But from some escapade or an incurably mercurial disposition, or
other unfitness, the church-doors were closed to them, and they
naturally made the only other market for their education and
became schoolmasters. The poverty and the risks of their pro-
fession, the cheapness of its establishment, and its temptations to
irregularity, combined with a mercurial temperament, the de-
mand resulting from popularity, and the occasional inconve-
niences produced by a too free use of satire, inevitably induced a
vagrant, improvident, and Bohemian existence, and the majority
of them spent their lives in a continual if not very wide circle of
wanderings that is to say, seldom going beyond the boundaries
of their fame in their native province. They were welcome at
every peasant's hearth and in every shebeen, and besides had

* Sketches of the Native Irish. By Christopher Andersen.

t Tales and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. By William Carleton.

1 88 1.] POETRY OF IRELAND. 631

a sort of Freemasonry which made them free with each other
in rivalry or discipleship, and claimed to be a guild, with
its meetings and congresses, where all the poets of a province
would assemble and cap verses, reproducing after their fashion
the ancient gatherings of the bards at Tara. Notable meetings
of this kind are reported as late as the end of the last century at
Charleville and Bandon. Besides their higher functions as the
preservers of the national spirit in song, they were the satirists
of rustic society being especially severe upon the niggardly and
mean the troubadours of the neighboring beauties, and occasion-
ally, although only occasionally, the eulogists of some wealthier
patron. That so much that is noble, impassioned, and patriotic in
sentiment, so refined and poetic in imagery, and so pure in tone
was produced under such conditions of life is remarkable, and
it shows that the degradation was in circumstances and not in
spirit, and is likewise evidence of the strength of character, in-
telligence, and innate virtue of the people whom they addressed.
In particular in the freedom from sensuality and license of every
form there is no peasant poetry in the world fit to stand compa-
rison with the Irish.

The name of Donogh Mac Con Mara or Macnamara, as the
name is commonly abbreviated surnamed Ruadh, or the Red, is
among the best known of the hedge-poets, as he was one of the
most prolific and long-lived, and his career may be considered as
fairly typical of his associates. He was a native of Cratloe, in the
county of Clare, and made his appearance in the county of Wa-
terford about the year 1738, having been expelled from a foreign
seminary, to which he had been sent to be educated for the
priesthood, on account of some escapade resulting from his irre-
claimably mercurial disposition. He established a hedge-school
at Knockbee, in the parish of Sliable Cua, a district between
Clonmel and Dungarvan, in company with one William Moran,
a brother poet. Here the pair flourished until, according to tra-
dition, their academy was set on fire and burned down by a
spited young woman whose frailties one or* the other had satirized,
although it is about as hard to comprehend how that catastrophe
could have happened to the ordinary hedge school-house of turf
as to a stone-yard. However, the pair separated, and Macna-
mara was next heard of keeping a school in the barony of Imo-
kelly, near Youghal, and next at Middlethird, in the county of Wa-
terford. Here, having made up his mind to emigrate to Ame-
rica, he was fitted out by the generosity of his friends and pa-
trons, and embarked in a vessel at Passage, which was driven

632 THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC [Aug.,

back into port to escape a French frigate, and Macnamara re-
turned and resumed his occupation in the place he had left. He
produced a mock heroic poem on his voyage in imitation of the
sEneid, entitled " An April Fool's Tale," containing a good deal
of the classical spirit, and. of which the following is a specimen,
describing the shout of Charon :

" He lifted up his voice ; he raised a howl and yell
That shook the firmament as from some vast bell ;
Awakened one grand peal that roused the depths of hell.*

He made a more successful attempt at emigration later, and
settled some time in St. John's, Newfoundland, crossing the At-
lantic three times in the course of his long life, also for a time
keeping a school in Hamburg, where he wrote one of the several
popular songs, under the title of u The Fair Hills of Erin." He fin-
ally returned to Ireland, and, having become blind, was supported
during the closing years of his life by a rate-in-aid levied by his
brother school-teachers on their pupils. He died in 1814 and
was buried in Newtown churchyard, near Kilmacthomas, in the
county of Waterford. Macnamara, like some of his fellows, had
a considerable tincture of classical learning, as was evinced by a
Latin elegy composed on the death of his brother-bard, Owen
Ruadh O'Sullivan, which has been preserved. His Irish poetry, in
theme and style, does not differ from that of his associates, unless
in displaying more of a humorous and satiric spirit.

Of similar life, character, and attainments was John Clarach
MacDonnell, 1691-1754, who wrote one of the most spirited of the
Jacobite songs, " A Vision of Ireland," and proposed to translate
Homer into Irish, which has since been done by Archbishop Mac-
Hale. Among the other more notable poets of this era were Owen
Ruadh O'Sullivan, who followed the avocations of potato-digger
and pedagogue, having for his circuit the counties of Cork, Kerry,
and Limerick, and being a sort of Irish Burns in his popularity
with the rustic beauties and his jovial habits, like his prototype
not escaping the public reprobation of the church ; William Dall
O'Heffernan, " the Blind," a native of the hamlet of Shronehill,
Tipperary ; John O'Tuomy, surnamed "the Gay," a native of
Croome, Limerick, who kept a house of call, free to his brother
poets, in Mungret Street in the city of Limerick, until his popu-
larity and hospitality compelled him, like them, to take to the
road ; Andrew Magrath, called the Mangavie Sugach, or " Merry
Dealer," also a native of Limerick and a particular friend of
O'Tuomy's, the author of the original song, " The Pretty Girl

1 88 1.] POETRY OF IRELAND. 633

Milking her Cow " ; Egan O'Reilly, a native of the county of
Cavan ; the Rev. William English, who spent a portion of his
life as a schoolmaster at Castletownroche, in the county of Cork,
and afterward took religious orders, and died in 1778 in the convent
of Augustinian friars in the city of Cork (he was the author of the
beautiful song known as " Cashel of Munster," perhaps the finest
gem of this period) ; Timothy O'Sullivan, Peter O'Dornin, William
Cotter, Maurice Griffin, and others, of whose lives nothing but
vague tradition survives, but of whom it may be said almost uni-
versally that they were hedge schoolmasters and poets. In addi-
tion to the poems whose authors are known, there is also a con-
siderable number of single pieces, some of them the best that have
been preserved, which have no record or connection beyond their
existence or local origin. Much of this poetry has in all probabil-
ity perished, and of what remains the correctness is frequently
doubtful. No collections were made until the race of Celtic
poets was well-nigh extinct, and many of the songs were not in
writing at all and were taken down from oral recitation. The
first collection of any importance was the well-known Hardiman's
Minstrelsy of Ireland, published in 1837, with conventional
and imperfect translations by Thomas Furlong, although Miss
Brooke is entitled to the credit of first introducing the treasures
of Irish poetry to English readers in her Reliqucs of Ancient
Irish Poetry. Later collections were made by John O'Daly, an
Irish scholar and publisher of Dublin, who published The Poets
and Poetry of Munster, the first series translated by James Clar-
ence Mangan and the second series by Dr. George Sigerson, and
The Rcliques of Irish Jacobite Poetry, with translations by Ed-
ward Walsh. Neither was or professed to be complete, and, with
all the attention bestowed on the bardic remains of Ireland by
Irish scholars and literary societies, but comparatively little has
been done to rescue the later and more humble but not less in-
teresting and valuable minstrelsy.

There is a marked and striking contrast between the tone,
style, and personal loyalty of the Irish and Scotch Jacobite poetry,
produced both by the different circumstances and the different
temperaments and genius of the two races. Taking it all together,
there is no body of native poetry in the world which surpasses
the Scotch Jacobite songs in the fervor of personal devotion
called out by the presence of the Pretender, his hopes and mis-
fortunes, and " Bonnie Prince Charlie" is enshrined with a halo
of pathetic verse that makes his figure vital and resplendent and
will keep his memory green so long as Scotch poetry exists. He

634 THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC [Aug.,

appealed to the hearts of the people, and was taken home to them
with the sympathy both of national pride and the influence of
hereditary loyalty, intensified by a winning personal presence.
There is little, or rather none, of this personal feeling in the Irish
Jacobite poetry. In fact, the Stuarts were not, as there was no
reason that they should be, favorites with the Celtic people of
Ireland. The one under whom they made their last struggle for
independence lost the decisive battle by his cowardice, and fled
from the kingdom with a precipitation that earned him an un-
savory nickname. They were representatives of the alien rule
at their best ; and although circumstances made them for a time
the rallying-points for the cause of independence, their purposes
were never really at one with those of the Irish people, and they
never would have reigned in peace over a thoroughly Celtic Ire-
land. After the flight of James II. none of them personally
visited Ireland to attract any personal devotion, nor was the
hope of freedom completely associated with their fortunes.
Therefore, instead of a direct personality, as in the Scotch, the
Stuarts appear in the Irish Jacobite poetry as vague impersona-
tions of the unknown hero who was to come from across the
seas to rescue Ireland and set three crowns upon her brow, and
whose attributes and lineage were those of a descendant of the
ancient Irish princes rather than of the royal family of England.
Even the name of the Pretender seldom appears in Irish Jacobite
poetry ; and although he is obviously alluded to, it is rather in
the light of allegory than of fact. Allegory is, indeed, the staple
of the Irish patriotic poetry of this period.

The prevailing form and subject of the great mass of these
poems was the personification of Erin as a beautiful and forlorn
woman, whom the poet meets in some lonely glen or on the side
of a moonlit rath, and whom he addresses with some confusion of
classic mythology and Irish historical tradition, to ask if she is
Helen or Dido, or Naisi or Deirdre (ancient Irish heroines), and
who tells him that she is none of these, but Erin, who laments the
rule of the stranger and promises the advent of the hero who will
release her from her bondage and drive the tyrants into the sea.
Frequently she retains the disguise of the name of a human mistress
and is called Roisin Dubh the Little Black Rose Kathlin ni h-Ul-
lachan, or Grd ni M/iaile, or some other appellation well known to
personify Ireland, and her deliverer is spoken of as " The Fair-
Haired Youth," " The Blackbird," " The Merchant's Son," "The
Green Linnet," or by some other allegorical title a habit of
which frequent traces can be found in the later street-ballads, the

1 88 1 .] POE TR Y OF IRELAND. 63 5

names being applied to the young Napoleon, O'Connell, and even
to Marshal MacMahon. Many of the personifications of Erin in
the form of a young and desolate woman were of great beauty
and vividness. There was a great similarity in the epithets, as is
common in peasant poetry, and the poets not only copied each
other, or at least followed a prevailing fashion, but derived much
of their imagery and description in direct descent from the early
bards. The model was a national one, and the distinctive features
of Irish beauty were reproduced in the typical and glorified re-
presentative. The coolun, or head of abundant tresses, was en-
dearingly and beautifully described, sometimes as the sunny rays
of golden curls, and sometimes, and more nationally, as cean dubh
dheelish the dear black head. The brow of waxen and radiant
fairness, the pencilled eyebrows, and the eyes of gray-blue with a
light from the translucent wave, which the poets did not hesitate
to describe with an adjective whose literal translation is green,
were alluded to ; but perhaps the most frequent as well as most
brilliant and graceful compliments were paid to the roseate bloom
so particularly the attribute of Irish beauty, which was .com-
pared to the apple-blossom, the red hawthorn-berry, and the
radiance of the lily lit by the crimson ra} r s of the sunset. The
fair bosom recalled the breast of the swan, the thorn-blossom, and
the summer cloud. The tones of " the bird-voiced lady gay " re-
called the thrush or the blackbird in the hedge, the cuckoo in the
glen, or the lark in the morning sky. Her fair fingers were skilled
in embroidery, and for the whole lovely and blooming creature
there was no comparison so beautiful and frequent as that of the
bough of apple-blossoms, or " the branch of bloom." This per-
sonification of the nation in the form of a beautiful and melancholy
woman is common with oppressed nations, as may be seen in Po-
lish and Servian poetry, and may have been the effect of the
necessity of disguise, enabling the minstrel to express his patriotic
devotion as though a love-song to an earthly mistress, and thus
deceiving the ear of the alien oppressor, while reaching with
doubled and poetic force that of the native and friend. If some-
thing is lost in energy and directness, much is gained in beauty,
delicacy, and charm of fancy, and the personification is particular-
ly appropriate to the expression of lamentation, of long-delayed
and doubtful hope, and almost despairing faithfulness, which
make so much of the expression of a long-oppressed and heavily-
burdened race. A tone of melancholy, in spite of the strength of
expressed confidence and the vigor of determination, is as charac-
teristic of the native Irish poetry of this period as of Irish music,

636 THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC [Aug.,

and there is very little where it is not apparent. The following
is a fair specimen of the tone and sentiment of Irish Jacobite
poetry, except that it is not in the form of the visions we have de-
scribed. It is by John Clarach McDonnell and was translated
by Edward Walsh :

THE CRUEL, BASE-BORN TYRANT.

What withered the pride of my vigor ?

The lowly-sprung tyrant train
That rule all our border with rigor,

And ravage the fruitful plain.
Yet once, when the war-trumpet's rattle

Aroused the wild clansman's wrath,
They, heartless, abandoned the battle

And fled the fierce iceman's path.

The loved ones my life would have nourished

Are foodless, and bare, and cold ;
My flocks by the fountain that flourished

Decay on the mountain wold.
Misfortune my temper is trying,

This raiment no shelter yields,
And, chief o'er my evils undying,

The tyrant that rules my fields.

Alas ! on the red hill where perished

The offspring of heroes proud
The virtues our forefathers cherished

Lie palled in their blood-stained shroud.
And oh ! for one hero avenger

With aid o'er the heaving main
To drive from Clar Fola * the stranger

And sever his bondage chain.

The love-songs, pure and simple, of this period express more
of the directness of passion, and do not indulge in the amplifica-
tion of description and elaborate compliment of the allegorical
personifications. These are more direct from the heart, and are
sometimes oriental in their fervor and abruptness. The lover falls
from a rhapsody OA^er the fair one's charms, which confound him
and make the candles swim upon the board, to sudden woe at the
thought of his poverty or his coming exile, and despair comes
with his empty glass. Very seldom does he sing of the full frui-
tion of happiness, or even of the flush of temporary elysium, such

* Clar Fola, or Fodla's Plain, one of the many names of Ireland.

1 88 1.] POETRY OF IRELAND. 637

as is to be found in the songs of Burns and other Scotch poets,
and his note is almost always one of melancholy and disappoint-
ment. He has a proper pride in himself and his genius, but
recognizes as almost inevitable that his circumstances and his
habits make the attainment of his wishes impossible, and that
the object of his devotion is destined for another and a more for-
tunate mate. The following is the beautiful and well-known
" Cashel of Munster," or, as it is sometimes entitled, " Clar Bog
Deal" the Soft Deal Board by William English; the transla-
tion is by Sir Samuel Ferguson :

CASHEL OF MUNSTER.

I'd wed you without herds, or.money, or rich array,

And I'd wed you on a dewy morning or on a day-dawn gray.

My bitter woe it is, love, that we are not far away

In Cashel town, though the bare deal board were our marriage-bed this day.

O fair maid ! remember the green hillside ;

Remember how I hunted about the valleys wide ;

Time now has worn me ; my locks are turned to gray ;

The year is scarce and I am poor, but send me not, love, away !

Oh ! deem not my blood is of base strain, my girl ;
Oh ! deem not my birth was as the birth of a churl
Marry me and prove me, and say soon you will
That noble blood is written on my right side still.

My purse holds no red gold, no coin of the silver white,

No herds are mine to drive through the long twilight.

But the pretty girl that would take me, all bare though I be and lone,

Oh ! I'd take her with me kindly to the County Tyrone.

O my girl ! I can see 'tis in trouble you are,
And, O my girl ! I see 'tis your people's reproach you bear.
"I am a girl in trouble for his sake with whom I fly,
And oh ! may no other maiden know such reproach as I."

The subject of the following song was one John O'Dee, a
blacksmith living near Youghal, as locally famous for skill as the
great Parra Gow himself, while his marriage with the handsomest
farmer's daughter in the parish was looked upon as the wedding
of Venus and Vulcan, besides particularly affecting the unfortu-
nate poet. Its author's name was Pierce Fitzgerald, and the
translation is by Dr. George Sigerson :

638 THE JACOBITE AND LATER CELTIC [Aug.,

SHAUN O'DEE.

I ne'er believed the story,

Prophetic bard, you sung,
How Vulcan, swarth and hoary,

Won Venus, fair and young,
Till I saw my Pearl of Whiteness

By kindred forced to be,
In her robes of snowy brightness,

The bride of Shaun O'Dee.

I ne'er thought God, the holy,

A bridal would allow
Where Mammon spurs them solely

To crown her drooping brow.
" The richest weds the rarest " :

That truth, alas ! I see;
Since my snowy pearl and fairest

Is bride to Shaun O'Dee.

Were I like most, ere morrow

A dire revenge I'd take,
And in his grief and sorrow

My burning anguish slake ;
For gloom o'ershades my brightness

Oh ! woe's my heart to see
Her form of snowy whiteness

Embraced by Shaun O'Dee.

The misfortunes of criminal affection are seldom the themes
of Irish poetry, ancient or modern. The female purity of the
Irish race has always been remarkable, and, although it some-
times happened that an unfortunate creature received the curses
of her kindred, and was driven from her home to huddle from
the storm under the hedge, the comparative rarity of such trage-
dies in Irish poetry is in remarkable contrast to that of other
nations. One or two are to be found in the verse of this period,
and among them one so dramatic and remarkable that we venture
to close our selections on this theme with it. Its author is un-
known, but it is credited to the province of Ulster. The transla-
tion, or paraphrase, is by Dr. George Sigerson :

MAIRE NI MILLEOIN.

" Will you come where golden furze I mow,

Mo Mhaire ni Milleoin ? "
" To bind for you I'd gladly go,

My Bliss on Earth, mine own.

1 88 1.] POETRY OF IRELAND. 639

To chapel, too, I would repair,
Though not to aid my soul in prayer,
But just to gaze with rapture where
You stand, mo buchal bdn." *

"Will you rove the garden glades with me,

O Flower of Maids, alone ? "
"What wondrous scenes therein to see,

My Bliss on Earth, mine own ? "
" The apples from green boughs to strike,
To watch the trout leap from the lake,
And caress a pretty cdilin t like

Mo Maire ni Milleoin."

" Will you seek with me the dim churck aisle

O Mhaire ni Milleoin ? "
" What pleasant scenes to see the while,

My Bliss on Earth, mine own ? "
" We'd list the chanting voice and prayer
Of foreign pastor chanting there ;
Oh ! we'd finish the marriage with my fair

White flower of maids alone."

She sought the dim church aisle with me,

My Bliss on Earth, most fair !
She sought the dim church aisle with me,

O grief ! O burning care !
I plunged my glittering, keen-edged blade
In the bosom of that loving maid,
'Till gushed her heart's blood, warm and red,

Down on the cold ground there.

" Alas ! what deed is this you do,

My Bliss on Earth, mo stor \
What woful deed is this you do,

O youth whom I adore !
Ah ! spare our child and me, my love,
And the seven lands of earth I'll rove
Ere cause of grief to you I prove

For ever ever more."

I bore her to the mountain peak,

The Flower of Maids, so lone !
I bore her to the mountain bleak,

My thousand woes ! mo vrone.
I cast my cota \ round her there,
And 'mid the murky mists of air
I fled with bleeding feet and bare

From Maire ni Milleoin.

* Mo buchal bdn my fair-haired youth. t Cdihn young girl.

\ Mo stor my treasure. Mo vrone my sorrow. J Cota great-coat.

640 POETRY OF IRELAND. [Aug.,

The only other form of verse remaining to be considered, ex-
cept the local satires, most of which have perished, is the lamenta-
tion. These do not form nearly so large a quantity in the poetry
of this period as in the bardic era, and have lost something of
their strength with the loftiness of theme associated with the
mourning for the death of a chief in battle or in exile, who was
not only the head of a noble line and the object of affection to a
wide circle, but one with whose fall the hopes of the nation were
darkened. The strength, vigor, and intensity of the bardic lamen-
tations have been marked ; and although those of a later date are
not without the eloquence of grief peculiar to the Irish race, they
are more domestic in theme, and rather keens for the loved one
taken from the hearthstone than lamentations for the prop of a
nation, the dignity of whose death or the remembrance of whose
exploits gave a dignity to grief. Such odes as that to Hugh
McGuire, or the Lamentation for the Princes of Tyrone and Tyr-
connell, are not to be found in the later Celtic poetry, and they
are rather the wail of a father for the prop of his age, who solaces
his grief by the recapitulation of his virtues and beauty, the keen
of a mother over the body of her fair-haired girl, and such cir-
cumstances of purely domestic pathos. Some of them contain
passages of great beauty, vividness, and eloquence that seem
wrung from the very heart of grief. Among the most remarka-
ble is a lamentation of Felix McCarthy over the bodies of his
infant children, which, however, is too long for quotation. A poem
entitled " The Fisherman's Keen for his Sons," supposed to have
been written by a fisherman named O'Donoghue, of Affadown, or
Roaring Water, on the western coast of the County Cork, for his
three sons and son-in-law, who were drowned, was translated by
Lady Fitzsimon, a daughter of O 'Council, and is of great beauty
and pathos. Among the best known is " The Lament over the
Ruins of the Abbey of Timoleague," by John O'Cullane, translated
by Sir Samuel Ferguson. We give a specimen from " A Lament
for Kilcash," written by a student named Lane, who had been
educated by Lady Ireagh, on the death of his patroness. The
translation is by James Clarence Mangan, and, while it exhibits
his occasional marvellous felicity and sweetness of versification,
is marred by the occasional prosiness and crudeness that is to
be found in some of his work :

No more on a summer day sunny

Shall I hear the thrush sing from his lair,

No more see the bee bearing honey
At noon through the odorous air;

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 641

Hushed now in the thicket so shady,

The dove hath forgotten her call,
And mute in her grave lies the lady

Whose voice was the sweetest of all.

There is mist on thy woods and thy meadows ;

The sun appears shorn of his beams;
Thy gardens are shrouded in shadows,

And the beauty is gone from thy streams ;
The hare has forsaken his cover ;

The wild fowl is lost to the lake ;
Desolation hath shadowed thee over,

And left thee all brier and brake.

Such were the lives and characteristics of the later Celtic
poets and poetry of Ireland. They are less known than they
should be, even to Irish scholars, and if half the pains had been
taken to rescue the Jacobite and peasant poetry of Ireland that
there has been with that of Scotland it would not be less in
quantity or in value, although different in expression and charac-
teristics.

CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS.

" The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is privileged beyond the common walk
Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heav'n."

YOUNG.

AMONG the places of deep religious interest at Rome are the
cells or chambers once occupied by the saints and now converted
into oratories. Some of them have been left in all their primi-
tive simplicity. Others are gilded and frescoed, and hung with
rich silks and paintings. But all of them are of the most touch-
ing character, and no one with a spark of religious enthusiasm
can enter them unmoved. We found it delightful to visit them
when they were solitary, with nothing to disturb our impres-
sions, and pray where the saints once prayed, kneeling where
they knelt, on the same cold stones, before the Madonna they
loved or the figure of Christ that was clasped in their dying
hands. How strange it seemed to press our feet on the very
pavement once trod by those whom we had invoked with awe in
the sacred recesses of the far-off churches of the New World, to

VOL. xxxni 41

642 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Aug.,

open one door after another their saintly hands once touched, to
lay hold, as it were, on the ladder by which they ascended to
heaven, and to breathe the fragrance they left on this lower air.
Every week we discovered a new spot thus hallowed :

" Beyond

Each chamber, touched by holy mem'ry's wand
Another opes, more beautiful and rare,
And thou in each art kneeling down in prayer,
From link to link of that mysterious chain
Seeking for Christ."

These rooms should also be visited on the day of their saint's
festival, when they are illuminated and adorned with flowers,
relics are exposed, the walls draped, and the floors strewn with
green leaves, such as the bay and box, after the Roman custom,
giving an odor of freshness and, as it were, of a new life. There
is a succession of religious functions and a stream of visitors of
all classes. Everything wears an aspect of joyous festivity. It
is the true birthday of the saints the day on which they entered
a higher, truer life.

Among the most interesting of these rooms are those of St.
Ignatius de Loyola, the illustrious founder of the Jesuits. He is
a saint of every land. Spain gave him birth. In France he pre-
pared himself for his work and met his first associates. Rome
set its seal on his mission. Every part of the world has expe-
rienced his influence and been watered by the blood of his fol-
lowers. His rooms, still preserved intact, are in the religious
house of the Gesu, now appropriated by the Italian government
and used as a barrack, with the exception of these sacred rooms.
They are four in number, and entered from a loggia covered
with frescoes of the life of St. Ignatius by Pozzi, a lay brother of
the order, celebrated for his skill in perspective, who lived in the
eighteenth century. In the antechamber are doors, a fire-place,
and a window of the saint's time. This opens into a small room
where St. Ignatius wrote the Constitutions of his order. Here
the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a flame. Opposite the
altar is a statue of him clothed in sacerdotal garments he used to
wear berretta, amice, stole, an alb of coarse lace, gray with age,
and a white chasuble that became dilapidated by time and was
repaired by the Archduchess Mary Anne of Austria in the year
1800. The door is worm-ea'ten, but protected from the more
wholesale devastations of relic-hunters by a wire netting. There
is a small balcony before the window, as in the saint's time. He
loved to come here to breathe the pure air and look up at the

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 643

sky, and would often exclaim : " How vile the earth appears when
I contemplate the heavens ! " The buildings are now so close
that you can only see a patch of blue sky. In this cell died Lay-
nez, the second general of the order.

The antechamber also opens into a room in which two saints
died St. Ignatius and St. Francis Borgia, third general of the
Society. It must not be supposed there were any of the elegan-
ces of the modern aesthetic divine in their room, though the for-
mer spent his youth at the proud court of Spain, and the latter
was the Duke of Gandia and a kinsman of the Emperor Charles
V. There were no luxurious arm-chairs or sofas, or soft raiment,
or rich carpets, or rare knick-knacks. A bed, a table, a chair or
two, composed the furniture of their austere cell, and of what
character may be seen from the simple pine chest against the
wall that belonged to St. Ignatius. The room is low and narrow,
with only one window. The walls, in their time bare, are now
hung with crimson damask and paintings, giving a rich effect ;
but, as in all the rooms, the beams across the ceiling are left un-
painted. The spot is pointed out where St. Ignatius breathed
his last, July 31, 1556, with the holy name of Jesus on his lips the
name borne and glorified by his order. Here is the same door
by which he entered and left the room ; the same brick tiles pave
the floor. On the wall is the solemn covenant by which he and
his first companions bound themselves to live under the holy
vows of evangelical perfection, signed by himself, St. Francis
Xavier, Laynez, Salmeron, Bobadilla, and all those first patriarchs
of the order. The altar in the room has on it the same stone
of sacrifice which St. Ignatius used, and there is the painting of
the Holy Family before which he often officiated, and which he
wished to have beside his bed when dying. Here St. Charles
Borromeo offered his first Mass. St. Francis de Sales said Mass
here several times when in Rome. St. Vincent de Paul came
here to pray. St. Philip Neri frequently came here to hold con-
verse with St. Ignatius, who was his intimate friend. St. Francis
Borgia, who occupied this room several years, here received St.
Stanislaus Kostka into the order. St. Aloysius was afterwards
received here by Claudius Aquaviva, fifth general of the order.
From the walls look down the saintly faces all authentic por-
traits of St. Philip Neri, St. Francis Borgia, St. Charles Borro-
meo, St. Francis de Sales, the noble face of St. Ignatius himself :
a face which St. Philip Neri said was resplendent with celestial
light reflecting the interior beauty of his soul, and which no
painter could ever produce an exact likeness of, because no hu-

644 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Aug.,

man art could depict the heavenly beauty of his expression. It
is also interesting to examine the autograph letters of these
saints which, with others written by St. Francis Hieronymo, St,
John de Britto, Blessed Alfonso Rodriguez, etc., hang framed on
the walls.

The next room used to be occupied by Fra Giovanni Paolo,
St. Ignatius' attendant. It is now used as a sacristy. Here and
in an adjoining room are some memorials of the Venerable Pig-
natelli, and the mitre, doctor's toga, and hair-shirt worn by the
Ven. Cardinal Bellarmin, both of whom were Jesuits. There is
also a portrait of St. Ignatius as a knight, clad in armor, pre-
sented by his family after his death, and a Madonna that be-
longed to St. Veronica Giuliani, a saint to whom all tribulations
and sufferings were as jewels and precious stones. Here, too, is
the parasol carried by St. Francis Xavier when admitted to an
audience by the Emperor of Japan.

Few rooms in the world combine so many sacred memories
as these, or where such vast schemes of divine charity were or-
ganized, embracing the whole world and still exercising a
powerful influence. No one can visit them without being pro-
foundly impressed.

The body of St. Ignatius is enshrined in the Gesu, one of the
largest and most magnificent churches in Rome, built for his or-
der by Cardinal Alexander Farnese. Its walls are of white mar-
ble veined with yellow, its pillars of giallo antico, its pavement of
great marble slabs, and its arches covered with Baciccio's won-
derful painting of the " Triumph of the Holy Name of Jesus."
The high altar is made of marble from the Indies, and above,
framed by splendid columns of giallo antico, is a painting of the
Circumcision, by Muziano. High up at the sides are the
tombs of Cardinal Bellarmin and the Ven. Pignatelli. In the
south transept, beneath Carlo Maratta's " Death of St. Francis
Xavier," is the right hand of that saint the hand that baptized so
many thousand converts in the East preserved in a reliquary of
silver gilt that is kept in an oval cabinet supported by an angel
of bronze.

In the north transept is the chapel of St. Ignatius, with col-
umns encrusted with lapis-lazuli and a pavement of the choicest
marbles. Beneath the altar in a shrine of bronze * reposes the

* The bodies of the saints at Rome are not, strictly speaking, in shrines like those to be
seen further north, such as St. Augustine's at Pavia, St. Peter Martyr's at Milan, St. Germaine
Cousin's at Pibrac, etc., but are generally in sepulchral urns beneath an altar, so that the priest,
when officiating, actually says Mass on the tombs of the saints, as in the days of the catacombs.

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 645

great Loyola, around whom twenty-five lamps are continually
burning. Above the shrine, in a niche, is his statue, robed, as if
for the altar, in a chasuble of silver set with precious stones. This
niche is usually veiled by a painting, by Pozzi, of Christ appear-
ing to St. Ignatius on his way to Rome, saying : "Ego vobis Romce
propitius ero" but the statue is always exposed on festivals. At
the sides are reliefs of the " Triumph of the Faith over False
Doctrines," and above is the holy Trinity, in which the Eternal
Father holds an enormous globe of lapis-lazuli.

A door on one side of the altar opens into a little domed cha-
pel, dim, solemn, secluded, and covered with beautiful paintings.
Here hangs the Madonna della Strada from an ancient chapel on
this very spot where St. Ignatius often went to pray.

When this church is adorned for a high festival, the holy
Name of Jesus in a garland of fire, lamps burning around the
tomb of St. Ignatius, the jewelled right arm of St. Francis Xa-
vier gleaming 'mid numerous lights on the opposite altar, the
walls glowing with rich hangings and polished marbles, and the
arches resounding with music, it seems a veritable foretaste of
the glory of the church triumphant.

The rooms of St. Francesca Romana are opened to the public
on her festival in March. The Ponziano palace, in which she
passed her married life and where she died, is now a house of re-
treat for young men, called the Casa dei Esercizii Pii, founded
uring the pontificate of Pius VII. Retreats used to be given
here several times a year to the soldiers of the papal army, and
in the chapel hang medals and crosses, as well as stilettos and
poniards, left as a pledge of their vows. This house is in the
Trastevere, not far from the Ponte Rotto of historic renown, in
a street parallel with the Tiber. Here, on St. Frances' day, the
rooms are hung with crimson and strewn with fragrant green
leaves, flowers and lights adorn the altars, memorials of the saint
are exhibited, paintings hang on the walls. Everything is bright
and cheerful, and yet religious. People are streaming in and
out, stopping for a short prayer. In the morning there are
Masses ; in the evening Benediction. In one of these rooms the
dying St. Frances saw with enraptured eyes the heavens open
and the angels descending, and while still gazing upward her soul
forsook its earthly tenement to meet them.

St. Frances was of high descent and allied with the Orsini
and Savelli families. Her husband, too, was of a noble race.
.St. Pontianus, pope and martyr, was among his paternal ancestry,

646 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Aug.,

and his mother was a Mellini. After his death St. Frances en-
tered the convent of the Tor de' Specchi, which she had founded.
This convent is likewise opened to the devout public on her
festival. It stands in the very heart of Rome, and is said to de-
rive its name from an ancient tower whose walls, in the days of
necromancy, were lined with magic mirrors, in which all the
secrets of the city were reflected and brought to light. In this
house the daughters of the best Roman families have for four
centuries been educated.

In the entrance-room, which is covered with frescoes of St.
Frances' life, standing on a table, filled with early spring flowers
which are carried away by visitors as souvenirs of the place and
the day, you see the large bowl in which she used to compound
medicaments for the poor. You are shown her veil, shoes, and
many other things she used, and are taken to her father's tomb.
The beautiful chapel, rich with gilding and marbles, is tastefully
adorned. A panegyric of the saint is delivered, which you listen
to surrounded by the nuns in their quaint garb that of widows
in the time of St. Frances. You go through the long refectory
and curious halls into a little oratory, once St. Frances' cell,
nearly filled with its altar and relics. On the walls are frescoes
of a remarkable character. You see the terrible vision when,
like the great Florentine, she was led through the citta dolente,
the sorrowing city, and beheld the varied sufferings of condemned
souls an awful vision she could never speak of without weeping
and trembling.

St. Frances' remains are enshrined in the church of her name
that stands on the Via Sacra amid the most imposing monuments
of ancient Rome, in a splendid sepulchral chamber adorned with
the rarest marbles and pillars of jasper, built by Donna Agata
Pamfili, sister of Pope Innocent X., who was herself an Oblate
nun at the Tor de' Specchi. Before the shrine is the statue of St.
Frances, in pure white marble, attended by the guardian angel
who was always visibly present to her.

Standing beside the church of St. Francesca Romana, with the
Coliseum at the left and the Forum Romanum at the right, you
see two tall palm-trees the largest in Rome on the steep edge
of the Palatine hill. They are in the garden of a Franciscan con-
vent called the Ritiro of St. Bonaventura, where the rule of St.
Francis is observed in all its primitive strictness. It was there
St. Leonard of Porto Maurizio embraced the religious life and
ended his days. You go up a narrow lane opposite the Arch of

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 647

Titus, shaded by trees, with the ruins of the imperial palace on
one side and the baths of Nero on the other, till you come to a
bend, where, in the angle, stands a tall black cross with the instru-
ments of the Passion on it. Here you turn to the left, and find
yourself in a Via Crucis shaded by acacia-trees, the Stations of
the Cross in niches along the high- wall, with a stone to kneel on
at the foot. Each scene of this Sorrowful Way is depicted in
fresco, protected by a wire netting, but greatly defaced by time
and the weather. These oratories one after another in the open
air form a striking, solemn approach to the church of the Ritiro,
which is at the end, facing you, with a statue of the Seraphic
Doctor over the door. Madame de Stael makes Lord Nelvil
come here " to see the friars who doom themselves to rigid
fasts and scourgings on the spot where crime once reigned,"
and the contrast between the abode of these poor ones of Christ
and the neighboring palace of the Caesars, whose ruins attest their
former splendor, is very striking. The first time Leonard of Port
Maurice saw these friars they seemed to him like angels from
heaven. He followed two of them to the Ritiro, and entered
the church just as the brethren were beginning Compline ; and
hearing the words, Converte nos, Deus, salutaris noster, he was
pierced to the heart, and resolved to embrace their life, saying
within himself, Hcec requies mea.

The church is small and wholly devoid of splendor, but you
are struck by an atmosphere of piety that makes it attractive.
An inscription on the wall states it to have been restored by a
member of the Torlonia family. There are only two side altars.
Beneath one are the remains of a martyr from the catacombs.
The pavement is entirely covered with tombstones. The first
time we visited the church there were a dozen or more friars
kneeling on these stones, praying with uplifted arms, but they
soon dispersed. One of them returned with a surplice on, and a
lighted candle in his hand to open the shrine of St. Leonard, who
lies beneath the high altar. His remains are not wrapped in rich
silks or precious stuffs, but dressed in the coarse habit of his
order, with the knotted cord of St. Francis for a girdle, a crucifix
on his breast, and a rosary at his side. He looks like a venerable
old man just fallen into a peaceful slumber.

On St. Leonard's day we found services going on at the three
altars, and the friars were singing the office behind a grated loft.
A few poor hangings were put up around the sanctuary to give a
festive appearance, and the pavement was strewn with green
leaves. Wooden candlesticks stood on the altar. The vestments

648 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Aug.,

were poor. There was no attempt at the splendor to be seen in
most Roman churches on such occasions. Everything bespoke
the poverty of St. Francis, but this very poverty was impressive.
The tomb of St. Leonard was uncovered, and lamps were burn-
ing before it. Lights, too, stood before his portrait and the two
cabinets on the walls of the church containing objects he once
used. These cabinets were now open. There was the great cru-
cifix he carried in his missions the Christ all bleeding, and the
head a little bent and a picture he also took with him, in which
the Madonna is bending tenderly over the Child, who holds a
cross he seems about to kiss : a picture in which we are struck
anew by the

" Spirit of Love Divine

That filled with tenderness the reverent eyes
Of Mary as she gazed upon her Babe."

St. Leonard's two great means of reaching the hearts of the
people were, appealing to the Passion of Christ and to the Divine
Clemency shown forth under the form of Mary. It was he who
instituted the Way of the Cross in the Coliseum, and founded the
" Lovers of Jesus and Mary " to celebrate this devotion every
Friday and Sunday where so many of the early Christians were
martyred ; but the government has put an end to this pious prac-
tice by removing the oratories. And it was he who, a century
and a half ago, suggested the plan, afterwards adopted by Pius
IX., of collecting the opinion of the Catholic world as to the pro-
mulgation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, so dear
to the Franciscans.

The government has taken possession of the Ritiro, but the
cell in which St. Leonard died has not been disturbed. You go
through a small court, now littered and growing up to weeds, as-
cend a stone staircase, and follow the narrow corridor paved with
bricks, out of which open small cells recently emptied, till you
come to the room of the saint, just as it was in his time. The
walls are merely whitewashed, the floor is paved with brick tiles,
the rafters are bare. There is an altar with a few faded flowers
on it, and a portrait of St. Leonard above, and there are a few
small pictures hanging around on the wall. It is a poor friar's
cell, but rich with an invisible presence.

In the garden there is a fountain beneath the palm-trees, with
an old sarcophagus for a basin, where one is tempted to linger on
account of the grand view of the Coliseum and the Ccelian Hill.

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 649

In the house adjoining the church of Santa Maria Maddalena,
near the Pantheon, is the room in which died St. Camillo de
Lellis, an old soldier who, after his conversion, began his gram-
mar course at the Roman college with a view to holy orders.
The younger students laughed at him and called him Tarde
Veniste. " Yes," said one of the professors, " he has come late,
but he will make up for it and do great things in the church of
God." He was ordained priest by Thomas Goldwell, the last
bishop of St. Asaph's, England, who took refuge in Rome from
the persecutions of Queen Elizabeth. All of St. Camillo's sermons
and conversations turned on the love of God, and a discourse in
which that was omitted, he said, was like a ring that lacked its
diamond. He founded the congregation of the Agonizanti to
attend the sick gratuitously of whatever class, whenever sum-
moned, even in their own homes, which was raised by Clement
VIII. to the rank of a monastic order. Its members are also
called Crociferi from the red cross on their black habit. One of
the first to join it was an Englishman named Roger. Angels are
said to have attended St. Camillo and his brethren when they
visited the hospitals to comfort the dying. No doubt they did.
Hence he is generally represented as accompanied by an angel.
His Constitutions, written by his own hand, are to be seen in his
cell. Here he died in 1614. It is now draped in crimson, and
there is an altar at one end. On a side wall hangs a painting of
his Last Communion, which was administered to him by Car-
dinal Ginnasio, protector of the order. Angels are hovering
around. On the opposite wall is a picture of the dying saint,
wasted to a skeleton by his vigils, labors, and infirmities, with his
followers around him listening to his dying words. " All pain
and suffering are a pleasure, so great is the happiness I hope for,"
he used to say. His heart beat with joy at the approach of
death, and in his last moments he extended his arms as if on the
cross, and died while the attending priest was uttering the words :
" May Christ Jesus come forth to receive thee with a glad and
joyful countenance ! " The picture of this scene is a striking one,
but, as Young says, no mortal hand can rightly portray the
deathbed of the just :

" It merits a divine :

Angels should paint it angels ever there,
There on a post of honor and of joy."

This house, which belongs to the devoted followers of St. Ca-

650 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Aug.,

millo, has been taken possession of by the government, and is
used for one of its schools.

The body of St. Camillo lies beneath the high altar of the
church, and the crucifix from which the Christ detached one
hand to bless and encourage him is in a side chapel. One chapel
belongs to a congregation of noble Roman, ladies who attend and
nurse the patients afflicted with the most loathsome diseases, in
the hospital of San Giacomo, which is served by the brethren of
St. Camillo's order. In this church is the Madonna della Salute
which used to belong to Pope St. Pius V., who was praying be-
fore it when he received news of the victory at Lepanto.

" Through the fiery air

Uprose, sole heard, the saintly pontiff's prayer
Rose, and a slumbering world escaped its doom.
Vanquished that hour beside Lepanto's shore,
Satan like lightning fell, thenceforth to rise no more."

In the Piazza Farnese is a small church attached to the house
in which lived the great St. Bridget of Sweden and her daughter
Catherine. St. Bridget founded a hospice here for Swedish pil-
grims, to which a church was added by Pope Boniface IX., who
canonized her in 1391 ; but the church and hospice fell into disuse
after the unhappy apostasy of Sweden. In the time of Pope
Paul III., however, the celebrated John Magnus, the last Catholic
archbishop of Upsala, took up his residence here, and here died
in exile and poverty for the faith. The house was, after various
changes, given to the Order of Our Saviour, first instituted in
Sweden by St. Bridget in 1344, and approved by Pope Urban V.
This order had two branches one of priests for the work of the
ministry, and the other of nuns for devout exercises. The nuns
became known as Brigittines, and were introduced into England
by King Henry V., where they acquired the splendid convent of
Sion House,* in which the entire community, including a certain
number of priests and lay brothers of the order, under the rule
of an abbess, corresponded in number to that of the twelve apos-
tles and the seventy-two disciples with Christ at their head.

The Swedes naturally preserved with great reverence the

*Sion House is a place of historic interest. Henry VIII. suppressed the Brigittines and
afterwards confined Queen Catherine Howard there. Edward VI. gave it to his uncle, the
Duke of Somerset, afterwards executed. It was then given to the Duke of Northumberland,
and became the residence of his son Lord Dudley and Lady Jane Grey. Queen Mary restored
it to the Brigittines. Elizabeth expelled them. It was from this house the children of the un-
fortunate King Charles I. were brought to have their last interview with their father.

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 651

rooms occupied by St. Bridget and St. Catherine, and they are
still in their primitive condition, with unpainted beams and a
brick pavement. They are gloomy, austere rooms for ladies of
rank, especially for St. Bridget's beautiful daughter, but she
never left them except to visit the churches. Miss Bremer, who
visited these rooms when in Rome, speaks with pride of St.
Bridget's influence even over the higher clergy, exhorting
bishops, cardinals, and even the pope, to a life of holiness and
good works, and tells us the saint was of " a wealthy, noble race
that of the Brahe, one of the noblest in Sweden yet lived
here and labored like a truly humble servant of Christ."

There are three of these rooms. The one in which St.
Bridget and her daughter slept has an altar and a painting of the
little household as they sat* at table. The middle chamber was
their dining-room, which had a window looking down into the
church, enabling them to take part in the public functions. In
this room St. Bridget wrote her revelations concerning the Pas-
sion, and the table at which she used to eat and write, and on
which she is also said to have died, is framed and hangs length-
wise on the interior wall of the church. The third room was her
oratory. It has a mystic air, which is increased by the frescoes
depicting some of her sublime revelations. Among other paint-
ings is one representing her dying on her table. A dove is her
usual attribute, significant of her spirit of inspiration. Her statue
and that of St. Catherine are on the gable of the church, facing
the broad Piazza, which is everywhere decked with the fleur-de-
lis the cognizance of the Farnese family, whose vast, imposing-
palace occupies one whole side of the square.

Near the Piazza. Navona is the church of St. Pantaleone, where
reposes the body of St. Giuseppe Calasanzio in a porphyry urn.
In the adjoining house is shown the room he occupied the last
years of his life, with the table, chairs, and lamp he used, to-
gether with his vestments and some autograph letters. His por-
trait hangs over the altar.

St. Giuseppe was of a noble family of Aragon, but, obeying a
divine impulse, left his native land and came to Rome, where he
spent the remainder of his life. Here he became a friend of St.*
Camillo de Lellis, and joined in his ministrations to the sick.
Struck with compassion for the poor vagrant children of the
Trastevere, he founded in 1 597 a free school at St. Dorothea be-
yond the Tiber, and gathered about him a thousand children in a
short time, admitting even those of the Jews, whom he defended

^52 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Aug.,

with energy against all outrages. He himself taught in this
school with reverent love, beholding in each one of his pupils, as
he said, the boyhood of Jesus. He established a fraternity to aid
him, generally known as Scolopians from their Scuole Pie, or
Religious Schools an order approved by Clement VIII. and
other popes. They have numerous schools throughout Italy,
not only for the poor but for the higher classes, and one of their
glories is to have had Pius IX. for a pupil. On the day of St.
Giuseppe's festival the church repeats the words of St. John
Chrysostom : " What task of more importance is there than to
train the faculties of the young and teach them how to live ? I
consider him who knows how to mould the youthful mind more
excellent than any painter or sculptor."

Behind the church of Santa Maria in Monte is the house
where died the Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre, the beggar of the
Coliseum. It was then occupied by a butcher's family, and is still
inhabited by laboring people. You go up a stone* stairway,
broken here and there, and, turning to the right, come to an
empty room with a portion railed off and hung with red to mark
the spot where the poor Beato breathed his last. Here is an
altar with his portrait over it, but everything bespeaks the desti-
tution in which he died. He was a native of France, but, feeling
himself called to a life of penitence without abandoning the world,
made himself a pilgrim and a stranger in a foreign land, and for
seven years went from one place of devotion to another till he
had visited the most celebrated sanctuaries in Europe. He had
a tolerable education and could speak six languages, and his
parents were in easy circumstances, but he chose to become one
of the poor ones of Christ and to subsist solely upon alms. At
Rome he spent most of the day in the churches, and at night
slept in the porticoes, or behind the fifth Station of the Cross in
the Coliseum. His tomb is in the church of Santa Maria in Monte,
which he used to frequent. It was on the steps of this church he
fainted one day, and was transported by a friendly butcher to his
own house, where he died. Before his tomb is a recumbent
statue clad as a pilgrim, and above is a painting in which he is
represented distributing alms in the Coliseum, giving away with
one hand what he had received in charity himself, and with the
other pointing to heaven, the radiance of which is reflected in his
own face. Around the altar hang ex-votos. This church is fre-
quented by the people, but is picturesque and full of objects that
excite one's piety. The spot is pointed out where the Beato

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 653

used to station himself for his devotions. It is good to kneel in
the same place and compare our spiritual poverty with the untold
riches of this holy mendicant.

In the Via dei Crociferi, near the fountain of Trevi, is an ora-
tory where the Beato Labre used to meet an association of
priests and laymen for spiritual conferences. Here are deposited
under seal most of the objects belonging to him his passports,
office-book, crucifix, and poor garments. We attended a morn-
ing service here more than once, but the most memorable occa-
sion was the day of his festival, when the rooms were crowded to
suffocation, and one Mass succeeded another all the forenoon.

On the hill of the Quirinal is the church of St. Andrea a
small, oval building which Hawthorne admired for its gem-like
beauty, and wished he could put in a box and send to America.
The interior, indeed, is quite dazzling. The walls are of highly
polished red Sicilian jasper veined with white. All the trim-
mings are of pure white marble, and everywhere are emblems of
purity and peace, such as the dove and the olive-branch. There
is a dome in the centre wreathed with angels, and out of it rises
a lantern with a garland of cherubs. The pavement is of differ-
ent colored marbles laid in figures, and in the centre are graven
the arms of Prince Camillo Pamfili, nephew of Pope Innocent X.,
who erected the church. All around the walls are chapels like-
beautiful cabinets, with paintings by Carlo Maratta, Borgognone,
Baciccio, David, Honthorst or, as the Italians call him, Gherardo
delle Notti etc., and each one has its tasteful altar or shrine..
The grand altar is in a chapel supported by four splendid Corin-
thian columns of red jasper, with the tomb of St. Zeno beneath.
Angels hold lamps at the side, and lilies are embroidered on the
curtain of the low screen. In another chapel is the tomb of
Charles Emanuel IV., King of Sardinia and Piedmont, who re-
signed his crown in 1815, and ended his life in holy retreat at
Rome, where he entered the novitiate of the Jesuits. All the
chapels are fresh and brilliant as beautiful marbles and paintings
can make them, but the one of surpassing beauty is that which
contains the shrine of St. Stanislaus Kostka, a novice of the Je-
suits belonging to a noble family of Poland, who died at the age
of eighteen, after a short life more like that of an angel than a
mere mortal. " I was not born for the good things of this
world," he said ; " what my heart alone desires are the good
things of eternity." His remains are in a splendid urn encrusted
with lapis-lazuli, set in bronze and gold, and in front is a crystal

654 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Aug.,

heart of a ruddy tinge, which, in the light of a lamp behind it,
glows like a fiery carbuncle. Beautiful lamps are suspended
above. Vases of lilies and white roses stand on the altar. Every-
thing is expressive of innocence and angelic purity. The paint-
ings on the wall are by Carlo Maratta, lovely in expression and
of artistic merit. In the one over the altar St., Stanislaus, radiant
with joy, is embracing the feet of the Child Jesus, held towards
him by the Madonna ; in another he is receiving the Holy Eu-
charist from the hands of an angel ; and a third represents him
bathing his breast, consumed by the intensity of his devotion,
with water from a fountain. Angels are hovering about in won-
der. Garlands of flowers, carved in white marble, frame these
beautiful paintings. On the arch is a fresco of St. Stanislaus as-
cending to heaven.

Adjoining the church is the novitiate of the Jesuits founded
by St. Francis Borgia, the greater part of which is now appro-
priated for the royal stables. The room in which St. Stanis-
laus died is opened to the public the i$th of November, but we
found access to it at other times. You are taken through the
sacristy and up-stairs, along corridors lined with engravings and
paintings among them the portrait of King Charles Emanuel
past a row of chambers, through the half-open doors of which
you see books, writing-tables, and everything indicative of a stu-
dious life, till you come to a square vestibule. Here are two
doors set in frames of verde antico, taken from the old cells of
St. Ignatius and St. Francis Borgia. This opens into an an-
techamber hung around with authentic portraits of the Jesuit
saints, besides one of Cardinal Bellarmin, and with framed au-
tographs of Peter Canisius, St. Leonard, and others. The next
room is the one in which St. Stanislaus died. Two other cells
have been added to it by large archways forming an alcove on
each side. In the centre, on the very spot where he breathed his
last, is a recumbent statue of the dying saint on a low couch of
giallo antico, the heavenly smile with which he welcomed death
on his face. This was executed by Legros, the French artist,
who was converted by the work of his own hands. The saint is
represented in the usual dress of his order, which is executed in
black marble, while his face, hands, and feet are of white. On
the wall at the head is a painting of the saint's dying vision, by
Minardi, in which the Madonna, attended by St. Agnes, St. Ce-
cilia, and St. Barbara, is coming to welcome his departing soul.
It was at this glorious vision St. Stanislaus' face lighted up with
a smile that was still on his lips when he expired.

1 88 1.] OUR RAIN AND OUR LADY. 655

The face of the statue is turned towards a copy of the cele-
brated Madonna at Santa Maria Maggiore, executed for Fran-
cis Borgia by special permission of the pope. It hangs over
an altar in one of the alcoves, and before it St. Ignatius and St.
Francis repeatedly celebrated Mass. St. Stanislaus is said to
have had great devotion to the Madonna of St. Luke, and used
to turn every night towards the church of St. Maria Maggiore to
utter a prayer.

The walls of the oratory are hung with crimson silk, the pilas-
ters and mouldings are covered with arabesques, and the ceiling
is ornamented with sunken panels that are gilded. The effect of
all this, with the altars, relics, and paintings, and the recumbent
saint in the midst, is charmingly picturesque. We remember at-
tending Mass here one December morning before sunrise, when
the only lights in the room were those on the altar before the
Madonna of St. Francis. With us was the last representative
(now hidden in a monastic cell) of the great Breton family to
which Oliver de Clisson gave so much renown in the days of Sir
John Froissart. All over Rome, in countless hidden sanctuaries,
are similar early services long before the ordinary world is
astir.

OUR RAIN AND OUR LADY.

NONE but sweet raindrops e'er leave our King's sky,
Though it lifts bitter waters from earth's serving seas ;

And. to earth's lightest thirsting our King's swift reply
Is a long dew of rain to his rivers and trees.

None but sweet answers e'er leave our King's sky,
Though ofttimes grief-bitter our words as we pray ;

And, our Queen but once pleading, her Son's swift reply
Is a long dew of peace for our hearts and our way.

656 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER XXVI.

REVELATIONS.

AT the conclusion of the office scene the avengers thought-
fully took their way homeward. In the incidents of the last few
hours there was food for infinite speculation, and now that a
duty to themselves and a sacrifice to injured humanity had been
accomplished successfully, they were at leisure to eat of the
metaphorical viands to their hearts' content. It was not the
pleasantest meal that could be offered them, and but for its ne-
cessity they might have altogether rejected the repast. This
ingredient, however, made it palatable, and they chewed and
chewed as they walked through the streets with an earnestness
and a disregard of each other that was wonderful to see. Both
felt that Killany was effectually disposed of, and both rejoiced at
the fact. The man had impudence enough in his composition to
ride down society's sneers and ridicule at his mishap. He could
make capital out of his just but sensational defence of his person,
and there was still the ugly slander, against which there was as
yet no rebutting truth, to give him an opportunity of posing as a
martyr, as the victim of a baseborn doctor's rage, as society's
favorite trampled upon by worthlessness and shame.

Dr. Fullerton had rather the more clouded thoughts. Sir
Stanley did not doubt for a moment of his friend's ability to prove
the slander malicious and untrue. He swung along over the
pavement with airiness of manner and triumph beaming from his
eyes, chuckling inwardly at Killany's bitter discomfiture, raging
to think that the man had caused his little Olivia so much suffer-
ing, and determined to have a private understanding with him,
if, on his recovery from the effects of his late whipping, he should
presume to remain in the city. The doctor, on the contrary, was
in the hottest kind of a dilemma. He had disgracefully pun-
ished a man for fixing on him the stigma of illegitimacy, and yet
he was not in a condition to prove his legitimacy to the world.
The recollection of the late conversation with Olivia opened his
eyes to a very wide extent indeed with regard to the nature of
the ground upon which he now stood. The difficulties which he
had then propounded to her and to himself stood out with more

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE, 657

prominence and ugliness than the humorous consolations and
trifling objections to the possibility of this actual matter which
he had given her. Sir Stanley must first know of the condition
in which he found himself. This pained him more than any other
fact. The baronet's confidence was as plain as the day in his
manner, and he had now so far committed himself that it looked
much like having set a trap for him to have drawn him into the
affair at all.

In due time they reached the quiet house in its drowsy street,
and withdrew into the drawing-room. Olivia was not to be seen,
and the baronet was for calling her at once into their presence.
Harry objected. Olivia felt herself in disgrace, and so he wished
her to remain until a clear idea of the foolishness and wrongful-
ness of her conduct had been impressed on her mind.

" I cannot see the necessity of that," said the baronet decided-
ly. " She behaved like a real heroine, suffering untold anguish for
your sake and mine, and determined to hold that secret so long as
it threatened danger to you and me. If her policy was a mis-
taken one her motives were high and correct, and you must re-
member that Mrs. Strachan was her adviser. I think that, hav-
ing borne most of the pain, she should have a trifling share in the
glory."

" I cannot find fault with your reasoning, Sir Stanley," said
the moody doctor, " but we have not the glory yet."

The baronet laughed so loudly that of course Olivia heard
him, as he intended she should.

" Now we shall hear some lofty sentiments on the hollowness
)f the victory you have won a pious method, I notice, of exalting
;he worth of the thing and sweeping in one hundred per cent, of
:he capital invested. Well, have it as you will ; I must see Olivia
icre,"

The doctor tapped the table with his fingers and remained
with his eyes moodily fixed on the grate. His silence was omi-
nous.

" Why, man," cried Sir Stanley after a long, impatient pause,
" you are going to sleep. One would think you had just com-
mitted a murder instead of having lashed a desperado intent on
filling you with lead from toe to forehead."

" I was thinking," replied the doctor, " of the chances of prov-
ing this Killany the liar that he is. I find that the immediate
prospect is not the best in the world ; in fact, I may say frankly it
could not be much worse."

Sir Stanley sat bolt upright in his chair, while the hues and

VOL. XXXIII. 42

658 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

lights of astonishment shot over his tell-tale face with an effect
very trying to the nerves of the sensitive doctor. Then he sub-
sided as suddenly, on second thought, into well-bred restraint and
concealment of his surprise and curiosity.

" You are disturbed," continued Hany, " and I do not blame
you. You know the story of our lives. I have not kept back a
single incident from you. It is a troublesome fact that I have no
written evidence by which to prove all that I say and surmise
about myself. Neither have I the viva-voce evidence of witnesses,
although I am confident that both exist. As evidence of some
kind should be forthcoming immediately in consideration of re-
cent events and future complications, you can understand the ex-
ceeding delicacy of my situation."

" A pretty bad box, I must say," answered the baronet du-
biously, and much distressed. " I suppose that the work of hunt-
ing up your antecedents would be gigantic labor for the time we
have."

" It would be simply impossible," answered Harry, relieved and
pleased to see that the doubtful look of the matter did not affect
Sir Stanley's faith and love.

" And haven't you the slightest excuse to force down the
throats of the mob and still their shouting until better could be
obtained ? A mere thread now would tie their tongues, at the
least."

The doctor hesitated. He thought of Quip's startling propo-
sitions, but they had come to wear so miserable an appearance
after a few days of meditation that he scarcely dared mention
them.

" There is a something, I know," Sir Stanley broke in. " Now
out with it, for I can see that you are doubtful as to its value.
We can't overlook anything in this affair, you know."

" Well, there is a thread," assented the reluctant doctor, " as
fine and perceptible as a spider's, and about as useful. I scarcely
care to mention it. You have seen that fellow Quip in Killany's
office, have you not ? "

" I whispered something in his ear that will delay his master's
recovery. Yes, I know him."

" He called on us not long ago and made a rather astonishing
and chimerical proposition. He offered to inform us of our ante-
cedents generally, of the whereabouts of the man who until a few
years ago played the r61e of our guardian, and assured us that
this guardian had appropriated a large sum of money belonging
to us. He agreed to produce the evidence necessary to obtain

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 659

our money and our name, if we give him, out of the few hundred
thousands which he declares are ours, the sum of five thousand.
As an earnest he left a paper, the marriage-certificate of our
parents "

" Marriage-certificate ! " cried Sir Stanley, brightening.
" Why, Harry, you unconscionable

" There, there," said the doctor, " you expect wonders from
this certificate, as I did at first ; but for present purposes it is
practically useless. It certifies to the marriage of William Ham-
ilton, of Glasgow, Scotland, and Olivia Carncross, of Babington,
England, by the Rev. Manuel Da Costa, in the city of Rio
Janeiro, at a date corresponding properly to our ages. How use-
ful the document is in the case before us is clear. I do not like
to expect much more from so wretched a chap as this Quip."

" He is a rogue, and a cunning one," said Sir Stanley confi-
dently, " and I have no doubt he is as well acquainted with the
contents of Killany's private papers as Killany himself. Now, it
is evident, from the assurance with which the fascinating doctor
circulated this falsehood, that he knew or thought he knew some-
thing concerning your past. He may have inquired at the col-
lege and at the convent, and received pretty conclusive answers
for his way of thinking. Do you not remember how smilingly
he asserted your inability to disprove his lies ? Perhaps he is
more closely connected with you and yours than you imagine.
Quip has become aware of something and wishes to put his
knowledge out at interest. I think it worth while receiving his
advances and seeing what he can do. It would be criminal to
neglect any opportunity in so important an affair."

" I agree with you. But I warn you that we have little to ex-
pect from him."

" Wait and see. Send for him at once. Have him here to-
night and let us examine his credentials. If he furnishes you with
a few hundred thousand dollars in cash he will have more than
earned his five thousand, filthy beggar as he is. It would be
worth that if he gave you a solid right to your new name. Ham-
ilton Carncross ! Henry Carncross Hamilton ! For a thor-
oughly rich, aristocratic tone that goes infinitely beyond Dashing-
ton. Well, be off about your business. I am going to find and
console Olivia. You are cruel towards her for an imprudence
which is as much a part of the sweet creature's make-up as her
eyes. I could not have the heart to take from her one or the
other."

" Bear her my assurances of forgiveness, Sir Stanley ; I "

660 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

"Won't you give me them yourself, Harry dear?" said a
tremulous voice from the door, and, turning, they beheld her
standing there, her eyes dimmed with tears and her pretty lips
quivering. Her face and form clearly indicated the force of her
late mental suffering, so thin had she become. She looked like a
penitent who was atoning for some great and dreadful sin, instead
of a cheery young heart whose only transgression had been her
innocence and inexperience. Sir Stanley was put in an apoplectic
rage by the melting sight, and said some hard things of Killany
while grinding his heel into an imaginary neck of the villain. As
for the doctor, he was all grief and contrition in a moment, took
her in his arms while the baronet chafed in the distance, and said
a hundred brotherly and assuring things to soothe the little heart.
It was a brief but violent storm, and, according to the nature of
such storms, left the air brighter and purer than before. Leaving
her to the care of the baronet, the doctor hastened on his impor-
tant errand.

That evening found Mr. Quip seated in the drawing-room of
the Fullertons, with a bundle of documents before him as por-
tentous and, in the eyes of the doctor, as harmless as a young bar-
rister's bag, and in his company a weazened, dried-up, wretched
old fellow whom he introduced as " Mr. Waring, clerk in the
wholesale house of McDonell & Co., and a man of some usefulness
in the important revelations about to be made." Mr. Waring was
very old and decrepit, and seemed mightily afraid of Mr. Quip,
sensible and shrewd as he evidently was. So afraid was he that he
kept his eyes fastened on him as a dog would on his master, and
forgot all the courtesies of social life, except as Mr. Quip reminded
him of them. Thus he bowed to the lady and gentlemen with his
eyes turned on the bird-like Quip, sat down in the same manner,
and continued to stare at the hatchet-face with a persistency that
made Olivia shiver. Only one thing could divert his attention
when Quip turned his hard eyes on him. The volatile medical
student was modestly at home. His manner was insolently cool,
but of that particular shade of coolness Mr. Quip was unable to
divest himself, and was, in fact, quite innocent of its presence.
He moved about with the cautiousness and facial expression of an
old crane wading through an unfrequented swamp, his eye cocked
now in one direction, now in another, and his narrow head follow-
ing every motion of the eyes. He accepted his seat gingerly, as
he always did. The arm or back ol a chair, as requiring a greater
effort at balancing, was more acceptable than a silken cushion.

When he and Mr. Waring had been satisfactorily disposed

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 66 1

of, the doctor said that he had already explained to Mr. Quip the
necessity of his presence that evening, and therefore the gentle-
man might begin without delay the revelations which he pro-
fessed it to be in his power to make. Mr. Quip opened out his
formidable bundle as a preparatory movement, cleared his throat,
looked so hard at Mr. Waring as to provoke the old man into a
gentle remonstrance, and then began the following account of his
own and other people's villanies :

" I must beg your pardon, madam and gentlemen, if I am
compelled to be somewhat prolix in my narrative, and still again
that I must shock you by my frankness. It is necessary to be
frank. You understand that my tale is concerning a set of ras-
cals, among which I must unfortunately class myself and my re-
spected friend, Mr. Waring, and, as a consequence, the deeds
which I now give to the light are as odorous as a batch of politi-
cal intrigues. What I have learned has been learned within the
past six weeks. Before that time I had only vague suspicions as
to how matters stood with certain parties residing in this city.
These suspicions had been roused by casual remarks of Dr. Kil-
lany's uttered in the privacy of his inner office, and from certain
papers which the doctor was so incautious as to leave in his sec-
retary. These papers I copied, appropriated the originals, and
left the copies in their ste'Ud. They were letters from a gentle-
man of the city who, finding himself in Killany's power to a lim-
ited extent, was willing to purchase his good-will by using his
influence in the doctor's behalf. That the doctor profited by this
is evident from the suddenly-acquired but permanent rank of a
fashionable physician. The first move in the right direction I
made when the doctor some time ago called me into his office
and made the proposition that I should find for him a person pos-
sessing some peculiar qualifications. The person might be of any
age or condition, male or female, and should be able truthfully to
swear to the death of any two children, these children to have
been a boy, and his sister some years younger. It was a strange
case and interested me at once. I had a friend, a wild, good-
natured medical student, at present a keeper in the insane asy-
lum, by the name of Juniper "

" Juniper ! " said the doctor in amazement.

" And this friend had a romantic story which he had heard
from his mother concerning two children whose parents had died
in New York after enduring a sea-voyage from Brazil. They
had left some property to the children, and both the children and
the property had been taken in charge by a friend whose name

662 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

Juniper had not learned. The boy was sent to an American col-
lege, the girl disappeared. But it was Mr. Juniper's idea of the
pathetic to have these children die in his version of the romance.
He told the story regularly. He described his visits to the boy
Hamilton, the death of the girl in some out-of-the-way place, the
boy's grief and subsequent decline, varnishing the whole with
many pretty inventions of his own, all tending to excite the deep-
est emotions of sympathy in the human breast. On Mr. Juniper
I settled as the very individual whom Dr. Killany required, and
at a favorable moment I drew him into a recital of the story with
the intention of offering him one or two hundred dollars to swear
as Killany wished. You may imagine my surprise when, in a fit
of pique, he declared that the children were yet alive and would
one day make a vigorous fight for their own. I took care to in-
form Juniper of the loss he had sustained in his first attempt at
telling the truth. It confirmed him, I suppose, in his habits of
lying, and it did something worse for him : it made him willing
to perjure himself in order to win his paltry dollars. Being
pinched for the right man, and having a game of my own to play
with which this accorded well, I accepted his offer, and the thing
was done precisely as we had agreed.

"It was necessary for Killany not only to have a witness of
this kind, but also to prepare a series of forged letters, newspa-
per-slips, and the like, in order to carry out his schemes. I was
directed to supply them, and I was requested to proceed to New
York, make what inquiries I could concerning two children of the
name of Hamilton whose father and mother had died in New York
some twenty years ago after journeying from Brazil. Marvellous
coincidences ! Juniper's children of the romance were stranded
in the same city, under the same name and similar circumstances.
This seemed to be the extent of Killany's information regarding
the Hamiltons, except that he knew also of their living for a long
time in some college and convent. Mine, to be sure, was a wild-
goose chase, had I not already heard Juniper's story. That made
the road clear. I obtained from Juniper his mother's address,
found the old lady, and received from her a written declaration
of facts concerning the Hamiltons. Here it is, and Mrs. Juniper
stands ready to swear to the truth of the same at any time."

The paper was read, and afforded to Olivia and the doctor
the first definite glimpse into their mysterious past. The reader
is already aware of much that occurred in that time, and, instead
of wearying with details, we shall let Mr. Quip resume his nar-
rative.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 663

" My object is now to prove your identity with the young
Hamiltons. The guardian who had taken the orphans in charge
was not very careful in concealing the traces of his crime. Mrs.
Juniper had managed to learn that the boy had been sent to a
Catholic college in the interior of New York State ; and as there
was but one, I went direct to the institution and found what I
sought. At a time corresponding to the date of Hamilton's de-
parture from New York a boy named Fullerton had been brought
to the college and remained there until manhood, supported by a
gentleman who never appeared at the college and never made
any inquiries about his ward. The boy had been brought in
charge of a man who had given no name and no address, but
whose description I got, and found that, by allowing for the dif-
ference of twenty years or so, Mr. Waring was the man."

Mr. Waring nodded with great energy, but said nothing.

" And this facetious old rascal," continued Mr. Quip, slapping
him heartily on the shoulder, " is the connecting link in the chain
of evidence. He was his master's right-hand man, and he can
swear that the boy whom he placed in St. Ignatius' College, and
the girl whom he sent to the Ursulines at Quebec, under the
names of Henry and Olivia Fullerton, were the Hamilton chil-
dren. He can swear to much more, if necessary ; only I have not
thought it necessary."

" Oh ! no, not necessary," muttered Waring appealingly.
" Never that."

" Don't fret, old man. I'll stick to my word so long as you
stick to yours."

" I'll stick," said Waring briefly.

" You can easily perceive, madam and gentlemen, the impor-
tance of what I have related. There exists no difficulty of prov-
ing that you are the children of Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton. That
is assured. For the rest let me continue to develop the facts. I
prepared for Killany the letters and newspaper-slips which went
to prove the death of the Hamilton children. They were flimsy
things and never would have stood in a court of law ; but they
answered his purpose, which was to prove to the heirs of your
guardian the fact of your deaths. They were scrupulous about
keeping money that belonged to other people, but, the owners
failing to appear, they thought to hold it justly. In the meantime
I was naturally anxious to ascertain what property Mr. Hamilton
had taken with him from Brazil. Here is a little correspondence
on the subject with a Brazilian lawyer. For a trifling expense
he discovered that Mr. Hamilton had left Brazil with thirty thou-

664 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

sand pounds in his possession, represented by a bill of exchange
on a prominent banking-house in New York. The ledgers of
that bank I examined. I found that the sum had been placed to
the gentleman's account, and had been drawn out shortly before
his death. It is clear what became of it.

" The man who was your guardian, your father's friend, whom
he trusted so thoroughly, is a highly respectable and unfortunate
gentleman of this city Mr. McDonell. He has been having his
troubles lately, as you know, and has wound up in the lunatic
asylum. I promised you at my first visit to show you the means
of getting back your property. The circumstantial evidence is
already strong enough to force from McDonell his stolen goods,
if he were not beyond any such arrangement ; or from his daugh-
ter, but that her control of the property does not begin until her
father dies, and the law has its vigilant eye on the trustees.
Without its knowledge and consent there is no getting at the
funds. Nothing that McDonell himself could do would be avail-
able so long as he remains in the asylum. If you wish to pro-
ceed in this matter quietly, so as not to attract attention to the
McDonells, it will be necessary to have the report of the lunacy
commission overthrown and McDonell pronounced a sane man."

" That is impossible," said the doctor in a low tone. " He was
mad as a man could be."

" He was not mad," said Quip so suddenly that a dread of
some terrible truth to be revealed seized upon the whole party.
" He was not mad, and here is my proof : I have learned no
matter how that after his late severe illness he wished to make
restitution to the orphans he had wronged, or to the poor."

"Ay, so he did, so he did," muttered Waring.

" Killany, who was dreaming of a marriage with Miss
McDonell, and wished to marry all the property as well, got
wind of it and determined to prevent it. Chance favored him in
McDonell's sudden illness. The old gentleman became weak-
minded. Killany starts a rumor around the city that he is mad,
and works so well on Miss McDonell that he got her to consent
to the thing by proving that the real heirs were dead, and by
showing up the madness of giving money to strangers who had
no more right to it than she. Between them they sent him to
the asylum."

" You are mad ! " gasped the doctor, completely taken aback at
this declaration. " You know not what you are saying of a most
estimable lady. I was one of the commission myself. I could
swear to his insanity."

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 665

" That may be," Mr. Quip coolly replied. " I heard the father
and daughter conversing on that night of the carnival. I was
back a full hour before you. I went only to spy on you and Miss
McDonell, because Killany feared you were bdth for making a
match of it. I was at the house when she returned. The old
man had discovered that they were making him insane,' and had
raised an awful row in the hall. It was just over when she came
in, and he dragged her roughly into the library. They went at
it hot and heavy.

" ' The world says you are mad, and your writings after this
aren't worth sixpence,' says she.

" ' Do you believe that I am mad ? ' says he.

" ' Not if yo.u give up this idea of squandering your money on
the poor,' says she. ' If you don't you go to the asylum.'

" That was the sum of it. Every time they met they talked
like that. It went against her feelings terribly, but Killany kept
her up to the mark. Any one with half an eye could see that
there was something wrong in that house and in the way things
were going generally. It cannot be long before McDonell is out,
if he does not die in the meantime. It may interest you to know
that Miss McDonell refused Killany's offer of marriage lately,
and he was awfully cut up about it. The castigation which he
received to day was a clincher. He will soon lay hands on all
the spare cash and leave this country. You must now take
steps for removing McDonell from the asylum. He is willing
and anxious to set matters right in a quiet way, and his daughter,
when she sees that the game is up, will be glad to get off easily.
You can go to law, if you wish. There is testimony of sufficient
strength to win your suit."

Mr. Quip placed his bag of papers on the table and waited
for the acceptance of his offer. The little circle which he had en-
tertained was silent, and the prevailing expression of countenance
among them was a great disappointment to Mr. Quip. A posi-
tive agony was traced on the doctor's handsome face. He was
pale, nervous, and frowning ; Sir Stanley looked surprised,
grieved, and helpless ; and Olivia sat with the tears dropping
slowly from her e}^es. She had made no friendly protest against
the accusation against Nano. For her the latter part of Mr.
Quip's story was simple truth. It only confirmed her suspicions,
and her downcast and conscious looks did more to confirm the
words of the eavesdropping student than anything else could
have done. Altogether they showed no appearance of having
just leaped at a single bound from poverty into wealth, from ob-

666 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

scurity and shame into prominence and honor. Mr. Quip was
annoyed, and wondered what next move these strange people
would make.

" Your story is not to be doubted, Mr. Quip," said Harry, the
first to break the silence, " and it is well backed up by documents
and witnesses. We shall have occasion to use both, and you may
consider your offer finally accepted."

" Thank you," said Quip, rising. " I am at your service at any
moment, and so is Waring. Aren't you, Waring, my old boy ? "

Mr. Waring, being knocked into his senses by a sharp slapping
on the back, muttered :

" Always, always, Mr. Quip ; but not for one thing, remem-
ber."

" I remember. Bid the lady and gentlemen good-evening,
and we may go."

Mr. Waring, profoundly saluting the party, with his eyes fixed
on Mr. Quip, said good-evening obediently, and they went away,
the encouraging shouts and slappings of Mr. Quip being heard
echoing for some time after in the quiet streets.

There was a long, painful silence in the little room.

" What do you think of it? " said Harry.

" That your case is proved," the baronet answered. He did
not venture to say more.

" And the other what of the other ? "

Olivia's uncontrollable sobs were the only answer, and they
were frightfully significant.

Another silence, while the doctor stood looking gloomily into
the fire.

" Ah ! well," he sighed, " that dream is over. God's will be
done."

" And what move will you make in regard to your property ? "
said the baronet.

" I shall leave the matter in the hands of Father Leonard.
He will be our commissioner."

CHAPTER XXVII.

A MEMORABLE NIGHT ITS FIRST PART..

SANDY, the valet, was uneasy after the accidental meeting of
McDonell and Juniper. Not having been able to approach near
enough to hear their brief conversation, he was all the more dis-
turbed because of this enforced ignorance of what his master
might be meditating. In the act itself there was not much to

A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 667

excite suspicion, for McDonell spoke many times a day to various
persons in the institution ; but nevertheless a large batch of
doubts and restlessnesses took firm root and flourished in the
valet's brain. It was his duty to be suspicious. He was paid
for it, and with the death or escape or recovery of McDonell
his salary ceased. He was not talented enough or principled
enough to win so easily as here a living in the generous but dis-
cerning world. His opportunities for watching his master were
limited. He was forbidden the room, except at stated times, and
dared not be seen spying upon him under penalty of expulsion
from the asylum. Night and the darkness of corner staircases
were his vantage-points, but they were too scanty in space, and in
convenience not at all proportioned to the work to be done.

He was uneasy over the late incident, because his quick eye

khad detected emotions in both Juniper and McDonell which had
never been present on similar occasions. The former walked
away surprised, thoughtful, and serious, as if meditating some-
thing of importance ; the latter was nervous and excited, and
hastened down the corridor with a feverish energy of gait which
he had not shown for days. These unusual signs of emotion
were enough for the keen-eyed valet. He kept guard that day
with reckless indifference to consequences. McDonell, however,
was drooping and sad as usual during the day. He made his or-
dinary visits and took his ordinary exercise, dining with the Stir-
lings, where Sandy heard him and Trixy laughing in a cheerful,
natural way. He was always cheerful in Trixy's presence. In
the evening he returned to the solitude of his own room, and the
valet saw no more of him, although he watched until the lateness
of the hour rendered it impossible to suppose that any keeper
or patient would dare venture forth on an unlawful errand. The
erry gentleman with the sugary nose, whose name was An-
drews, had called on McDonell and gone away again, as he had
been in the habit of doing for some weeks. If Sandy noted the
circumstance he gave it only the attention which an every-day
occurrence deserved ; yet herein was the suspicious gentleman
wickedly deceived. His policy of suspecting everything and
everybody was too unnatural to be successful, and in this case
it failed him. Within his master's room, between the time of
Andrews' entrance and exit, an episode had taken place which the
valet would have given his ears to have known.

" You are ready for the message which I am to entrust to
you?" McDonell said, as the merry gentleman entered with his
handkerchief to his nose and his umbrella spread for emergencies.

668 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

" Ready,' sir," answered Andrews heartily, " and ready to'
carry it through a rain-storm, though it should melt off my head
as well as my nose."

A declaration which drew tears of gratitude from the poor
merchant, who, having become accustomed to his friend's ways,
and being of late very weak and unsettled, wept when ordinarily
he would have laughed.

" Moisture, moisture," said Andrews, playfully putting his
handkerchief to the other's eyes. "You are dampening the at-
mosphere. My nose will not stand it an instant longer."

McDonell dried his tears, and the merry gentleman, hav-
ing applied the moistened handkerchief to his own nose, gave
such a yell of terror as is seldom heard outside of an insane
asylum.

" Devilish forgetful on my part," he muttered, on ascertaining
that his nose had not suffered. " Emotion is not my forte. I
have been told often enough to be calm on all occasions, and you
see how I obey the injunction. Every excitement of this kind
sends the blood bounding through my veins like a race-horse,
and of course the sugary formation at the base of my nose is more
rapid. If I go on in this way my head will soon be affected.
Think of a sugar head on me ! O Lord ! what a fate. I could
shed tears as readily as yourself but for the danger of an over-
flow on my nose."

" Here is the message," said McDonell, anxious to have a
delicate matter despatched as quickly as possible. " Excuse me
for dismissing you at once, for my man may be waiting, and it
would not do to miss him." Having recovered his equanimity
and his handkerchief, Mr. Andrews apologized for his long-wind-
edness and hastened on his errand ; and in this way was the valet
deceived and his suspicions lulled to reasonable repose for the
next few days.

McDonell had chosen the night of the i/th on which to make
his escape, and this he communicated to Juniper with his gen-
eral instructions. It had been rumored in the asylum, and it
had become a certainty in the city, that the Irish parade of that
day might be a source of serious danger to the lives and property
of the citizens. The Williamite mob had sworn vengeance on
the " croppy " who should deck himself that day in the green,
and a mob never discriminates. The authorities found it neces-
sary to summon their forces and to warn the citizens of the im-
pending danger. The confusion prevailing in the city would not,
of course, penetrate to the asylum ; but as the officers would have

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 669

their attention mainly directed against outside attack, the chances
of escape were fairer than they might ever be again. He had not
described his plans to any one save Juniper. Andrews was as
much acquainted with the venture as was necessary for the part
which he had been selected to play, and that this was not of small
importance will appear in the sequel.

Since the meeting with Jumper the valet had .made it a duty
every night to mount guard over his master's door from a conve-
nient hiding-place. It had not as yet been productive of any-
thing, and had caused himself much suffering from the cramped
positions he was compelled to maintain for hours ; but, with the
pertinacity and hopefulness of his kind, he continued at his post.
On the fatal night he was quietly engaged in his self-imposed
duty when Mr. Andrews came along to pay his usual visit to
McDonell. Seeing the dark, cropped head of the valet stretched
incautiously from its hiding-place, he gave it a sounding and vig-
orous whack with his umbrella.

" There, my spying friend," said he, "though you're not a
croppy, you got as honest a crack that time as any Irishman will
receive to-night. What's more, you haven't the spunk to return
it, as the Irishman would, which is one reason, perhaps, for my
readiness in seizing so desirable an opportunity. You were spy-
ing, and don't attempt to deny it. The doctor shall hear of this.
Things are coming to a pretty pass in this institution if the dwell-
ers are to be persecuted within as well as without. Be off to
your own quarters at once, and rest assured that you will never
sleep another night in the asylum."

Sandy slunk away meekly, but returned a moment later when
the sugary nose, which he swore to sponge and tweak at the first
opportunity, was safely housed in McDonell's room. Mr. An-
drews remained with his friend somewhat longer than usual that
evening. The asylum was, through its officials, in a state of sub-
dued excitement. The fighting had begun in the city within the
past hour, and the guardians of the institution had masked their
anxiety with a magnificent indifference which their activity in
making certain defensive arrangements shamefully contradicted.
The patients saw in it a confirmation of the rumors which had
circulated among them for days, and were impressed with an
overpowering awe. The guards and keepers were still vigilant,
but only with the more restless inmates. It was a happy mo-
ment for McDonell's attempt, and Sandy felt that if his master
had any thoughts in that direction this was his opportunity. He
watched, therefoVe, with all his eyes, and stared through the twi-

670 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

light gloom of the corridor at the strip of light on the floor
which marked his master's room.

The door opened at last, and Sandy, leaning eagerly forward,
was agreeably disappointed to see only Andrews, handkerchief
to nose and umbrella spread, come out and walk down the corri-
dor. Fearful of another encounter with him, he withdrew from
sight until the merry gentleman had passed and his steps had
died away in the distance. There was a long interval of quiet.
He heard McDonell moving about his room, as he was accustom-
ed to do when preparing for rest, and seeing that there was no
likelihood of any one passing at that hour, so engaged were the
officials with their defences, he stole to the door and listened.
McDonell was grunting ! Sandy stood with ears preternaturally
erect at this strange and unusual sound. McDonell grunted
again ! It was not a grunt of pain, but of fat, sensual satisfac-
tion, and bore a strong resemblance to a sound which he had
heard not seldom before. After a moment of indecision and
alarm his mind was relieved by a sneeze from the individual
within of so marked and well known a character that further
doubt was out of the question. His face turned white with rage,
oaths fell from his lips like hailstones, and he pounded and kicked
the door with a mad, vengeful recklessness that thoroughly ap-
palled the merry gentleman within. Mr. Andrews made no at-
tempt to admit him, hearty as was his contempt for the valet.
He was trembling with apprehension for his own safety. To be
caught in the act of assisting a fellow-madman to escape from the
asylum had too great terrors for him, and he was anxious only to
make his escape to his own room as speedily as possible. Sandy,
finding that it was lost time to remain where he was, rushed down
the hall to Doctor Stirling's room. Trixy met him at the door
and listened calmly to his excited explanation of McDonell's
escape. She had a particular aversion for Sandy, and never
failed to show it. On this occasion her manner was plainer and
less liable to be misunderstood than ever.

" Dr. Stirling shall know of it immediately," said she, closing
the door in his face ; and returning to the work which she had
laid aside, she composedly ignored the valet and his message.

In the meantime, favored by his disguise and the darkness,
McDonell proceeded along the hall with firm, unfaltering step
and unconcerned manner. Now that he was in the midst of the
danger, the old spirit and fire came back to him. He was cool ;
the nervousness of illness and confinement had, vanished. His
heart was filled with confidence and hope. He would be free in

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 671

a few moments, and he nerved himself to pass through every diffi-
culty and danger in order to obtain his liberty. At the end of
the passage he threw aside his umbrella and handkerchief, and
stood out in the light an entirely different man from the Mc-
Donell men were accustomed to see. His white hair had vanish-
ed, his white beard was gone. He had shaved off the one and
dyed the other, and his costume was that of a gentleman of
dandified and wealthy tastes. An eye-glass sat upon his nose
and he carried a stylish cane. He wandered aimlessly through
the halls until he ran against a keeper, who stared at him suspi-
ciously. The man had probably never seen him -before.

" I beg your pardon," said McDonell, with the most approved
drawl, " but really I believe I have missed my way. I was with
Dr. Stirling a few minutes ago, and I am now unable to find the
room."

" Come this way, sir," said the keeper, grinning broadly at a
mishap of frequent occurrence with strangers. " It's a very easy
thing to lose one's self in these big halls."

"I daresay."

And he was led up to the door of the Stirling apartments.
He knocked and entered. Trixy, as he very well knew, was
there alone. She came forward with a surprised air.

" I am sorry to disturb you," he said, " but having called
on your father, and in leaving the office missed my way, would
you be so kind as to send some one with me as far as the gate ? "

He had no intention of deceiving Miss Stirling indeed, he
as sure that he could not ; but he did not wish to bring the
oung lady into trouble on his account. Having already de-
ived two sharpers whose duty it was to have keen eyes, it
would appear a correct and natural thing to have deceived Trixy.
She had penetrated through his disguise at the first sound of his
oice, and, with a woman's quick perception of the situation, she
plied : " I shall be happy to show you to the door myself, and
shall send a boy with you for the rest of the way." All which she
very unconcernedly, and in a short time McDonell stood in
e road outside the asylum-gates, a free man, with full twenty min-
utes the start of the spy Sandy. He bore his extraordinary good
fortune with as great equanimity as he had suffered his evil for-
tunes. His first act was to thank God for so signal a favor.
Then he hastened to find Juniper. He had directed that the

fan should -meet him at a point a quarter of a mile distant from
ie asylum with a carriage ; and there, in fact, he found him, but
ithout the carriage.

R)
I

di(
th(

672 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

" They are having fierce times in the city," he explained they
could hear the uproar where they then were " and I could not
obtain a coach or vehicle at any price. The people in this neigh-
borhood are afraid to let anything go into the city. It will be
hard work to reach the depot, sir, for the mob has seized the rail-
road buildings, and trains can go neither one way nor the other."

" Annoying," said McDonell thoughtfully ; " had I foreseen
that I might have furnished you with means sufficient to buy a
carriage. Let it pass. Having obtained my freedom, I shall not
complain of trifles. I have many hiding-places in the city. Let
us go forward, in God's name."

The asylum being situated in the suburbs of the city, they had
a mile of walking before them ; but in the fictitious strength with
which excitement had endowed him McDonell could have walk-
ed a dozen. It was a clear, starlit night. The wind was high,
and the snow yet lay thickly on the ground. Juniper had no
idea of the direction his new master intended to take. His for-
tunes were now linked with the fate of his benefactor, and he
knew that from this fact they bore about them the faintest hue
of desperation. Being a careless, irreflective youth unwilling to
struggle against the stream, he was as content with the new posi-
tion as he had been with the old.

*' We must avoid the lower parts of the city, sir," he said after
a time. " It would not do to get into the mob. They would not
spare us."

" We shall be careful, Juniper," answered the master. They
hurried along with swift and silent speed. The cheers and
howlings of the rioters were every moment becoming clearer and
more frightful to the ear. At one time they saw far down the
street the glare of torches and the surging of the crowd, and an
advance-guard of small boys flung stones at them. This com-
pelled them to take a higher, safer, and less exciting thorough-
fare. In due time they came to a handsome residence on Wilton
Avenue. McDonell stopped at the entrance to the drive, and,
leaning his head against the gate-post, burst into tears. It was
his home. There his daughter lived, and he dared not cross its
threshold or ask for the shelter, or the protection, or the alms
which the poorest beggar in the world would there receive. He
wept bitterly, and raising his hands heavenward a habit misfor-
tune had given him he thanked God for his many mercies, and
for this above all, that he had deemed him, the sinner, worthy to
suffer in this way to be homeless and wretched on a winter night
and to know not where with safety he might lay his head.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 673

Juniper recognized the place after a casual inspection, and
was surprised to learn that the woman before whom he had been
willing- to perjure himself was the daughter of this man. A dim
perception of how matters really stood in that unfortunate house-
hold entered his mind, and as McDonell seemed about to enter
the gate he laid his hand on his arm. " I do not think it would
be safe, sir," he said. " You cannot take any risks, and if your
flight is discovered by the asylum officials there is no doubt but
that this place will first be visited."

" I cannot help it," said the agonized man. " I must take one
look at my home again. It may be my last. Stay you here and
watch. I know the ins and outs of the place and can easily avoid
pursuers."

He went slowly up the gravelled walk, half cleared of the
snow. His heart was really bowed with grief now, and his frame
with weakness and suffering. The excitement of escape was
gone. He was standing face to face again with his griefs. He
went on until he reached the house. A light was burning in the
drawing-room, and one of the curtains was pushed aside. He
stole up to the window. Ah ! she was there, and with her the
smiling Killany ; and it tore his heart even while it pleased him to
see how well and easily she carried her heavy burden of sin and
wrong. She was fresh and sweet as if the current of her life had
never known a storm, dressed with exquisite taste and richly,
and towards Killany her manner was as distant and chilly as he
had ever known it to be. There was no sign of emotion or of
servility, and on the doctor's part there was the old smiling
adulation and submissiveness. There was something more be-
sides in his manner. It was threatening ; she appeared to be get-
ting angry, and Killany was getting frightened. How that de-
lighted him ! And he pressed his face closer to the window, and
his eyes read every expression eagerly.

In the midst of the conversation she caught sight of his star-
ing, death-like face pressed against the pane. Their eyes met for
an instant his fatherly, pitying, and hungry for the affection of
the daughter who had spurned him, hers full of a slowly increas-

Iing horror. She closed her eyes only when she had fainted and
slipped quietly to the floor, and he, waiting until he saw the doc-
tor, after one quick glance around the room, proceed to restore
her, fled again into the wretched night. A man was driving fu-
riously up the avenue even then, and he had a presentiment that
it was the messenger with the news of his escape.
Juniper was at his post when he returned, and together they
VOL. xxxiii 43

674 -A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

proceeded to the residence of Father Leonard, where McDonell
was sure of a safe hiding-place. It had the misfortune of being
in the heart of the city, and was surrounded at intervals by a
mob anxious to burn it about his reverence's ears. A strong
body of police and military daunted all attempts in that direc-
tion. The rioters were forced to content themselves with block-
ading the streets that led up to the residence.

" Which makes it improbable," Juniper said, in his endeavors
to turn McDonell from his design, referring to this fact, " that we
can reach Father Leonard's safely."

" It is my only refuge," McDonell answered sadly. " My
own home is shut against me, most of my friends would fear me,
and here alone would I dare to trust myself for any length of
time. We must steal or force our way through."

Juniper trembled with apprehension ; but, with a devotion
scarcely to be expected from so hare-brained and reckless a youth,
he determined to remain with McDonell to the end. Indications
of their nearness to the scene of the riots were fast increasing.
The mob had been in this district, but had turned their attention
to new fields of labor after destroying whatever was destructible.
The streets were filled with debris : broken fences, trees, and win-
dows showed everywhere. The inhabitants had either fled or
buried themselves in the cellars. No light shone in the solitary
streets, for the lamps had been destroyed, and here and there
a fugitive, with a bandaged head, perhaps, stole fearfully along.
The cries and cheers of the mob had not diminished, although
the troops and civil authorities were closing in fast on the rioters,
and had limited their sphere of action to a considerable extent.
Bands of soldiers went by occasionally, when Juniper drew his
master into the protecting shadow of a building for fear of cap-
ture. They arrived at last in the critical neighborhood. As Ju-
niper had said, every avenue was held by rioters, and he who ven-
tured to pass through might do so only with permission of the
motley villains.

McDonell, silent and moody since his visit to his home, had
yet recovered the coolness and steadiness of manner which he had
displayed earlier in the evening. His spirits rose as the necessity
of a cautious advance became more imperative. The stronger
but less intellectual man-servant was become dependent on him,
and with this consciousness of old-time power he went on in his
perilous journey. They chose a street which led to the back
entrance of the priest's house. It was not so clogged with rioters
as the others. Men stood on the corners and in the gutters, and

WOMAN OF CULTURE.

6/5

on the verandas of deserted houses, planning, swearing, or bind-
ing up wounded heads and limbs. Nearly all the wounded were
carried to this quarter ; and as they were numerous, in spite of
the insignificance of their hurts, it presented the appearance of
an hospital. The intrusion of two respectably-dressed gentle-
men among them was the signal for a gathering of the sound
men of the party.

" Not so fast, lads," said a grimy youth with a large amount
of orange-colored ribbon on his hat and a rusty sword dangling
from his belt. " You don't pass this district without showing
your reasons and your papers. This is not the night for any one
wh<5 isn't a son of William to be abroad. Give an account of
yourselves."

" None other than a son of William," answered the merchant
gravely, " would venture as we have. We know our own side, it
is clear, or we would have come in with a few pieces of artillery,
not to speak of the horse and foot. My good fellow," and with
the word he slipped a gold-piece into his hand, " attend to your
broken-headed men and let us pass on, for we have urgent busi-
ness beyond."

" Go ahead, my hearties," said the youth, whose reasoning
powers were somewhat obscured by unlimited whiskey. " You're
all right. Knock down the first man that objects, and if he wants
references send him to me."

They were accosted several times during their onward course
by the scattered roughs, but the cool off-handedness of McDonell
for Juniper wisely said nothing was sufficient to tide them over
all difficulties. The barrier was passed, and they were on the
point of attaining comparative safety when a sudden change in
the scene of the riot caused a serious, and perhaps fatal, delay in
their movements. The battle, which with varying success and at
varying intervals had been carried on in the distant streets, sud-
denly made its appearance directly in their path. A disorderly
crowd of roughs, pursued by a steady, well-managed, and well-
drilled body of volunteers, suddenly rushed into the street. Ju-
niper pulled the disappointed and unwilling McDonell into a pro-
tecting doorway, and endeavored to force an entrance into the
house vainly. The mob having gathered in their vicinity and
stopped to take counsel of the leaders, the two fugitives were
soon discovered and dragged out into the midst of an angry and
hideous crowd mad with the consciousness of defeat. McDonell's
elegant and finical appearance drew the usual sarcasms from the
unwashed upon their more fortunate brother.

676 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

" What have we here? " said he who held the position of leader.

" A sound and true man," answered the grimy youth from a
veranda near " one of ours. I let him pass, and I think you can
do the same, captain."

" Are you a Papist? " asked the leader.

" No," answered Juniper truthfully. " We are not Orange-
men, but not Papists either."

" I did not ask you to answer for this man. Are you a Papist
or a Protestant ? " he said to McDonell.

"The soldiers, the soldiers ! " came-in a chorus from the mob
around. " They are retreating ! Down with the soldiers !
Down with the croppies ! Down with the priest ! "

" Quick ! " cried the leader" Papist or Protestant ? "

He had been standing with his eyes cast down, thoughtful and
indifferent, and he looked up at the imperative words with the
light of a new-born heroism shining in his face. His natural
courage had not deserted him, and there was added to it the
courage of his lately-awakened faith. All through his manhood
he had denied his faith. The first test offered to him on his re-
turn to the fold was one of life and death, perhaps, and sure at
least to bring him serious injury. Yet it seemed so necessary
that for a little longer time he should live there was so much
to be done, so much to be made right that now was all wrong.
The men around were silent from expectation. The glare of the
torches gave a rugged picturesqueness to their hideousness, and
brought out more clearly the elegance and refinement of the man
who was their prisoner.

" Speak out," they cried, " and swear to it. Papist or Pro-
testant ? "

" I am a Papist, "^he said unhesitatingly, paying no heed to
Juniper's looks of warning.

The mob seized on the words.

" A Papist," they roared, " and a spy ! Down with him ! "

The chief saw something pitiful or praiseworthy in the calm
bearing of the man, and he would have interfered to save him ;
but with yellings and hootings the ruffians fell upon McDonell,
beat him with clubs, trampled upon him, and kicked and crushed
him as well as, in the press, they were able. He made no useless
effort to save himself. Juniper, with a desperation born of pity
and affection for his master, fought against the crowd like a lion,
and had the consolation of seeing the chief by his side. They
struggled and fought in vain. Two against so many were only
making matters worse by their resistance, and McDonell was

T OMAN OF CULTURE.

6 77

every moment approaching nearer to his ugly fate when a figure
on horseback, diminutive but with a voice as shrill and piercing
as the tones of a trumpet, came dashing into the heart of the mul-
titude, scattering men right and left until he stood over the pros-
trate man and had cleared a space about him.

" Fools ! " he cried authoritatively, and his voice was heard
ringing along the street, " madmen ! do you know what you are
doing when you let the soldiers escape and beat the life out of a
Scotchman, and one who is no Papist ? "

McDonell caught the words even while losing consciousness.
" I am a Papist," he muttered feebly.

" He says he is a Papist," growled one who stood near enough
to catch the whispered words.

" You lie ! " said Quip coolly. " This man is a madman. He
escaped from the asylum to-night, and back he must go again.
You have not left much to carry away, and the more shame to
you for so using a Scotchman and a Protestant. Now follow the
soldiers. They are men who will give you men's work to do.
Away with you ! They are retreating ! "

" The soldiers ! the soldiers ! " roared the mob, catching the
word with enthusiasm. In an instant they were pouring down
the street in the direction taken by the volunteers, and over the
unfortunate McDonell stood only Juniper and the strange horse-
man.

" Quip ! " was all Juniper could say as the man dismounted.

"At your service," said the student, with a grin. " This man
is well-nigh murdered. Where were you going? "

" Don't know," said Juniper shortly.

" To the priest's, it is likely. Very good ; but the priest
does not chance to be at home. I have a safe place for him, I
fancy, and you will help me carry him there."

" Not a step," said Juniper firmly. " He goes where I choose
to bring him. You can get out. You have nothing to do with
the man."

" There's gratitude for you. After saving his life, too. Juni-
per, my very dear friend, I think I know McDonell considerably
better than you, and it is to friends I shall take him, and not to
his enemies. It doesn't matter much one way or the other now,
for the poor fellow will scarcely see the morning."

" Go ahead, then," said the appeased Juniper, " and look for
deviltry if you attempt any of your usual tricks."

Placing the bleeding and senseless body of McDonell on the
saddle, Quip rode away to the residence of the Fullertons.

678 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A MEMORABLE NIGHT ITS SECOND PART

FAMILIARITY with crime and danger had developed Nano
McDonell into a charmingly cool-headed lady with a fine talent
for intrigue and a great head for calculations. She had need just
now of some qualities of the kind. Mrs. Strachan, with a gusto
equalled only by the wonderful unselfishness which she ascribed
to herself, had made Nano acquainted with the slanders concern-
ing the Fullertons on that day which saw administered on Kil-
lany's person the deserved punishment of his baseness. Nano
had heard it with indignation and shame. She recalled the night
of the reception and Olivia's whispered anguish. The blow had
been struck within the shelter of her walls, and the report had
spread through the whole circle of fashionable society while she
was in ignorance of its existence. Had Killany been so unfor-
tunate as to have made his appearance at that moment a stormy
and unedifying scene might have taken place. The haughty and
aggrieved lady was in the mood for acting upon impulse an im-
prudence of which she was rarely guilty. Killany, however, be-
ing engaged in nursing his delicate and broken skin, did not show
himself in public for some days.

In the meantime Miss McDonell had time to consider the
situation and to reach wise conclusions. To a certain extent she
was in Killany 's power not absolutely, not entirely helpless,
for her own fearlessness had a counterbalancing effect. She had
treated him so far only with condescension, and refused to marry
him. It would not do to drive him into desperation. The re-
ward upon which he had counted so hopefully had been denied
to him, and to deprive him now of his office of trustee, as in her
first anger she had contemplated, would be folly. He could do
her serious harm, if he were so minded. She determined, there-
fore, to forbid him her house, and to have only such personal
communication with him as was indispensable. This would be
severe enough.

While awaiting his appearance her mind was filled with gloomy
presentiments of evil. Disordered liver is the assigned medical
cause, and, if correct, she was far gone in disorders. The air
seemed heavy about her. Her daily amusements and work had
lost their coloring, did not give her the pleasure she expected,
and were at times insipid and tiresome. She was filled with the

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 679

idea of fast approaching dangers. Ordinarily she expected them
and awaited their coming cheerfully. She was prepared. It
would be hard to move her from her position, and the conscious-
ness of its strength had made her confident. The dangers seemed
nearer, more portentous, more vague at this moment. She would
not permit herself to dwell upon her gloomy thoughts. She
could not endure sadness. Having at a high price purchased
perpetual and unfading enjoyment, she felt that she ought to get
the full worth of a bargain in which sadness was certainly not in-
cluded. The feeling of deeper melancholy had been fastening
upon her since that day when she had paid her last visit to Olivia.
The distress of mind which the presence of that little lady then
occasioned her made her undesirous of seeing her too often, and
the chilliness of the visit was quite sufficient of itself to daunt her
in the attempt. Nano reasoned with herself, of course, on the
absurdity of her feelings, but found that logic cannot minister to
a mind diseased or pluck from the heart a rooted sorrow. In
despair and indifference she waited for her presentiments to de-
velop themselves into substantial facts.

In thinking, as she often did, on the incidents of the past few
weeks and their probable or possible consequence, she was sur-
prised yet not grieved to find that a new phase of feeling had ap-
peared in her character. A feeling of hardness and bitterness
and cynicism against her destiny and the persons concerned in it
most was slowly enclosing her nature as in a network of steel.
A strong sense of rebellion, akin to the sense of injustice, was
roused when she thought of the revealing of her crime to the
world or of losing her estate, as if these acts were a wrong put
upon her, and not the commonest justice to herself and to others.
The peculiarity of the feeling was that it seemed to close her
heart and her mind to every appeal of affection, interest, and rea-
son, and in such a state she felt herself quite ready to kick against
the goad pettishly and stubbornly, though it should be to her
own sure and terrible destruction. This did not alarm her. She
did not see then to what lengths it was able to lead her. It only
pleased her that the natural softness of her disposition was
gradually yielding to something more stern, and useful in pre-
sent circumstances.

Killany's first visit was made on the evening of McDonell's
escape from the asylum. His first out-of-door appearance was
made fittingly on this stormy night of riot and misrule. He was
compelled to disguise himself partially and to make his way by
the unfrequented streets ; for the region of disorder lay directly

68o A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

in his path. She received him as she had of late been accustomed
to receive him, in order to make his discomfiture more telling.
His recent misadventure had reached her ears, and she rejoiced
that to it she could add another severe punishment he had be-
come so utterly contemptible in her eyes. His villanous nature
she could have' forgiven him, in so much as it was like her own ;
but the slanderer, the assassin, was too detestable a thing for asso-
ciation with, and was to be got rid of at any hazard. It touched
her to see that the man had really suffered from the bitter humil-
iation of his horsewhipping. His smile was a long time in get-
ting itself together on his smooth face, and its first glimmering
was sickly. The recollection of his shame looked out from every
new face, and brought a dark, hateful shadow over his counte-
nance. She respected him a trifle more, perhaps, for that display
of human sensitiveness, but it did not alter her intentions in his
regard. " For once, I believe," he said in taking his seat, " I
come without a business of any kind. The other trustees have
managed affairs in my absence, and I do not exactly know our
position. It is fortunate, is it not? It will be more pleasant for
us when my office has lapsed, and we may take up old relations,
talk philosophy and poetry, and renew the circle which has suf-
fered so severely this winter."

" I believe it does not matter much," letting her eyes rest on
his meaningly. " The picture which you have drawn will never
be put on canvas. I have decided that our meetings hereafter
be strictly confined to business matters, and I must request now
that your visits in future be made on that condition, and never
without a previous warning."

" You surprise me," he answered, confused at her cool, matter-
of-fact ways. " Are you quite certain of the extent of ground
your request covers ? "

" Quite, doctor. I have thought upon it for four days. In
fact, since your late difficulty "

" I beg of you not to mention that, Nano. It is too painful."

He spoke low and passionately, and his face, paling, showed
for an instant the traces of the whip on his cheek and forehead.

" Not so painful, not so disgraceful, as the act by which you
deserved it so richly. You struck at a woman through a
slander."

" Slander! " he angrily interrupted. " How do you know that
it is a slander? "

" Because of the man who conceived and published it, and the
manner he adopted. If you were certain of it you would not be

A WOMAN

68 r

content with a secret stab at your victims. It pleased you to
choose for your scene of operations this house, and so have you
dishonored it that after this night it must not know you again,
unless under pressing necessity."

" You are not in earnest," he said, quite subdued, " or perhaps
I do not understand."

" My meaning is clear enough, unless your late illness has af-
fected your mind."

" As illness affected another's," he said maliciously.

" Having dishonored this house, it is closed against you. You
will continue, I suppose, in your trusteeship. I shall not attempt
to disturb you, but the oftener you do your business by deputy
the more agreeable will it be to me."

"It is quite plain," he said 'slowly " yes, quite plain. You
dare not take from me that position. But you inflict upon me
every wrong consistent with your own safety. Can you guess
why I trumped up that charge against the Fullertons ? "

" Virtue and innocence is your natural prey, perhaps."

"As age, and helplessness, and other people's gold is yours,'*
he answered savagely, stung into passion by her scorn. She
laughed, partly in derision, partly from joy at finding the feeling
of reckless indifference and obstinacy stealing over her. " I did
it," he went on, "for your sake and because I loved you. If
you had been swayed by the Fullertons you would not stand as
you stand to-day. You would be decidedly virtuous and de-
cidedly poor. The house which you live in might not have
been yours to close against me. I wished to destroy their influ-
ence at one blow and I have not failed. No," he added, smil-
ing, " I have not failed, but my work is not yet complete."

" I am curiorus to know what lower depths you can reach."

" These : I loved you, as I said, and I feared a rival. That
rival was, and is, Dr. Fullerton. Perhaps you do not know that
the man, poor and nameless though he be, presumes to love you."

" His presumption," said she, " is not more startling, and is
far more acceptable, than yours."

" Well, you see I was right in fearing him. I had reason. I
might have put him out of the way with cunning poisons, but
with such things I never meddle. I let him live and destroyed
his good name. Unfortunately, I destroyed myself, too." ,

" For him I have sympathy ; for you, congratulation."

" Thank you. You will not congratulate always. I shall not
tell you how I am going to complete my work, for I have never
yet threatened you, and I shall not do so now. Indeed I shall

682 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Aug.,

not. But I ask you not to execute your purpose of turning me
from your doors. My stay in the city is to be short and will be
retired. Until I go I ask that you receive me here on the old
footing."

" You ask an impossibility." .

" Yet I did them wrong for your sake. Is that no excuse ? "

" It is rather an aggravating circumstance, and you caused
terrible suffering to my best friends."

" They are your friends no longer. You are drifting apart
and will soon be as strangers."

" To you I owe this in part. I am not angry or overwhelmed.
The loss of friends can be easily supplied."

" But not the loss of their good opinion. In this case it is
sure to follow."

" I begin to see your drift," she answered in tones of scorn.
" You will betray me to them. You justify every moment my
opinion of your meanness. Even that misfortune cannot move
me."

He was silent from despair. Nothing that he could say seemed
able to shake her resolution, and his desperation was rapidly de-
priving him of his self-command. He fixed his eyes on the floor
in thought. She chanced to turn to the window. The shutters
had been left open, and one of the curtains had been pushed aside.
In the dark space between, its outlines sharply and awfully traced
on the outer darkness, was her father's face. His beard was gone,
and his white hair, but she recognized the countenance on the
instant. Its dark eyes were fixed on her pityingly, and a smile
rested on the fixed, pallid face. She could not speak or move
with horror, and a moment later, to Killany's astonishment, had
fallen unconscious to the floor. He rushed to her* side, after one
swift glance around the room to find some cause for the phenome-
non ; but McDonell's face had vanished when his sharp eyes fell
on the window, and the sound of his retreating footsteps was
drowned in the tramp of a horse's feet on the avenue. It did not
take many moments to restore the lady to her senses, and it was
scarcely done when Quip came dashing into the room amid a
shower of protestations from the servant who attended the door.
Killany motioned for silence.

" Whatever information you have, keep it until I come to
you," he whispered, and Quip at once withdrew.

Nano sat up of her own accord, and was herself immediately.
She did not volunteer any explanations, and the doctor did not
ask for them. He felt sure that Quip would be able to throw

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 683

some light upon the matter, and, after a few inquiries and direc-
tions, started to leave the room, when she said curtly :

" Do you believe in apparitions, doctor? "

" No," he said. " Why do you ask ? "

" I saw one a few moments ago, and you have seen the effect
it had on my nerves. I am sure that the person I saw is dead.
Good-night. You will remember my injunction."

She went off to her own rooms, assisted by her maid, very
pale, but very composed. He sought Quip in the hall and heard
of the escape of McDonell.

" He has been here," he said, "and must have passed you on
the avenue. Take your horse and go direct to the priest's
house. If McDonell intends to remain in the city that will be
his refuge. When you have discovered his whereabouts come
to me. If he escapes death to-night," he thought, "it will be a
miracle. Well, my course is run at last, and it has ended badly.
I believe my downward course has begun, and it began with
that that "

He put his hands to his face in a passion, and the tears sprang
into his eyes. The blows of the whip had penetrated to his soul.
The scars were there for ever, and the recollection was horrible.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE MARTYR.

YONDER, signor, the peasant said,

Where the grass grows greenest the martyr fell ;
Eighteen centuries he is dead,

Hacked by the murderous fiends of hell.

But even to-day the vision bold
Of earnest faith, when the skies are fair,

Seeth a tremulous cross of gold
Hung in the limpid Roman air.

684 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Aug.,

CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

PART II. A.D. 33-5O.

PERSECUTION MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN CONVERSION OF SAUL PREACHING THE GOSPEL
TO GENTILES SECOND PERSECUTION BY AGRIPPA, AND MARTYRDOM OF JAMES MAT-
THEW'S GOSPEL COUNCIL OF JERUSALEM.

THE preaching of the Deacon Stephen brought upon himself
and the whole church a furious persecution, which made a crisis
in the history of nascent Christianity. Stephen was evidently a
person of extraordinary gifts and character and one whose bold
advocacy of the faith, for certain particular reasons stirred up in
an unusual way the animosity of the most violent of the Jews.
He has always been taken for a very young man, a supposition
which his whole manner of conduct and all the appearances in
the case favor. He was a Jew, but whether brought up in Pales-
tine or in some foreign country is uncertain. A traditional belief
or conjecture appears in ecclesiastical writers that he was a cousin
of Saul of Tarsus and one of his fellow-pupils in the school of
Gamaliel ; and if this were really the fact it accounts for the pe-
culiar animosity of the former towards him, and for the great in-
terest which the latter manifested in him, as will be presently re-
lated. His name, Stephanos, is Greek, but so also is the name Nico-
demos, and he had also a Syriac name, Cheliel. Stephen may have
been, therefore, like Saul, a Jew, born and brought up in his early
youth in a foreign country, but carefully educated in Jewish learn-
ing, as his oration before the Sanhedrim indicates ; which is confirm-
ed by the fact that he disputed with the members of certain syna-
gogues of Jews of foreign extraction like one who had formerly
been associated with them. St. Luke relates : " But certain men
of the synagogue that is called of the Libertines, and of the Cy-
reneans, and of the Alexandrians, and of those that were of Cili-
cia and Asia, rose up disputing with Stephen : and they were
not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke"
(Acts vi.9, 10). These Libertines, or Freedmen, were descendants
of Jews formerly carried into captivity who had been released
and had returned to Judea. Those of Cilicia were fellow-coun-
trymen of Saul, who was doubtless the chief man among them.
It is not necessary to repeat the account of St. Stephen's trial
and martyrdom given by St. Luke. The oration which he made

1 88 1 .] CHRISTIAN JER u SALEM. 685

before the council is of extraordinary interest as the first speci-
men of Christian eloquence on record from one who was not an
apostle. The action of Saul in keeping the garments of the as-
sassins indicates that he was present as an official of the Sanhe-
drim, to give sanction to the murder in their name ; although their
action in inflicting the punishment of death was perhaps illegal
and a usurpation of the prerogatives of the Roman procurator.
St. Augustine and other celebrated Fathers of the church have
pronounced splendid eulogiums on St. Stephen, to whose inter-
cession they all ascribe the subsequent conversion of Saul. He
has left testimony to the bitter repentance by which he expiated
his share in the death of the Proto-Martyr in his own expressive
words. " And devout men took care of Stephen's funeral and
made great mourning over him " (Acts viii. 2). Some sober and
judicious Catholic authors consider it to be certain that the chief
mourner on this occasion, after the apostles and the other breth-
ren of St. Stephen in the faith, was the great president of the
Sanhedrim, Gamaliel. The relics of the holy martyr were found
in the year 413 at Caphargamala, a country-seat which had be-
longed to Gamaliel, about twenty miles from Jerusalem, and
translated with great pomp to the Church of Sion in Jerusalem
by the Patriarch John. The bodies of Gamaliel, Nicodemus, and
Abibas, a son of Gamaliel, were found at the same place. The
discovery was made by means of a vision which disclosed to Lu-
cian, the priest of the place, the fact that these bodies were buried
there, and the genuineness of the relics was attested by numerous
miracles. These are related by St. Augustine in the twenty-sec-
ond book of The City of God and in several of his sermons.* The
discovery of the relics and their translation is commemorated by a
special feast on the 3d of August. The Fathers of the fifth cen-
tury and the best ecclesiastical writers from that time have con-
sidered the narration of Lucian genuine and credible. Accord-
ing to the common belief founded on this narrative, and the cor-
roboratory circumstances which give it an intrinsic probability,
Gamaliel with his son Abibas, but not the other members of his
family, became a declared Christian at this time and lived in retire-
ment to the end of his days, with Nicodemus as his companion,
at his country-seat.

Saul of Tarsus, as all know, although somewhat imbued with
Greek learning, and an apt pupil of his master in the lore of the
rabbinical school, did not imbibe from Gamaliel that spirit of

* See Butler's Lives of the Saints for August 3 ; also, the author's Studies in St. Augus-
tine, and a sermon on St. Stephen in Sermons by the Paulists, volume for 1862.

686 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Aug.,

moderation and those enlightened views in philosophy and reli-
gion which raised him so much above the narrow and fanatical
Pharisaism of his time. He was the fiercest and most zealous
agent of the newly-allied Pharisees and Sadducees who filled the
highest places in the priesthood and the Sanhedrim, and who now
began in earnest to persecute the Christians in Jerusalem, Pales-
tine, and Syria, but especially in Jerusalem. " At that time there
was raised a great persecution against the church which was at
Jerusalem, and they were all dispersed through the countries of
Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. They, therefore, who
were dispersed, went about preaching the word of God. . . . And
they, indeed, who had been dispersed by the persecution which
arose on occasion of Stephen, went as far as Phoenicia and Cy-
prus and Antioch, speaking the word to none but to the Jews
only. But some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who
when they had entered into Antioch spoke also to the Greeks,
preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with
them, and a great number, believing, were converted to the
Lord " (Acts viii. i, 4; xi. 19-21). As St. Luke wrote for Gen-
tiles, he doubtless included Galilee and Perea in the " countries of
Judea."

From the general tenor of the narrative it seems likely that
this dispersion refers rather to prominent men among the Chris-
tians and to adventitious residents in Jerusalem than to the whole
of those disciples of Christ who properly belonged to the perma-
nent population of the city. From this time the very numerous
congregation of the faithful in Jerusalem seems to have been re-
duced to a much smaller number, although the apostles for some
years to come made that city their principal rendezvous and cen-
tre of operations. After this date, the diffusion of the religion of
Christ went on extensively among the Jews both at home and
abroad, as well as among the Gentiles. The great event of this
time was the conversion of Saul, which undoubtedly checked, if it
did not entirely stop, the active measures of persecution. This
event probably occurred in January, A.D. 33. In 35 or 36 St.
Peter established his see in Antioch, whence he removed it to
Rome A.D. 42. About three years after his conversion Saul vis-
ited Jerusalem, and although he was received at first with dis-
trust, yet, through the intervention of Barnabas, he was after
a short time admitted to the confidence of the apostles and
brethren, " and he was with them coming in and going out in
Jerusalem, and acting confidently in the name of the Lord. He
spoke also to the Gentiles and disputed with the Hellenists ; but

:88iJ CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 687

they sought to kill him. Which when the brethren had known r
they brought him down to Cassarea, and sent him away to Tar-
sus " (Acts ix. 28-30). The first persecution had died away, and
at this period, if not sooner, had ceased altogether. During the
three years which elapsed between the death of Stephen and
Saul's first visit to Jerusalem, converts had been made and small
churches gathered all over Palestine. For St. Luke tells us that
" the church, indeed, had peace throughout all Judea and Gali-
lee and Samaria, and was increased, walking in the fear of the
.Lord, and was filled with the consolation of the Holy Ghost "
(Acts ix. 31).

It was at this time (A.D. 36-37) that the events occurred which
ended the official career of the two men who had the principal
responsibility between them, though in unequal proportion, of
the fearful crime of Deicide, in putting to a cruel and ignomini-
ous death the Son of God. Pontius Pilate had massacred, sev-
eral years before, a crowd of Galileans, partisans of Judas the
Gaulonite, while they were offering sacrifices. Now, he sup-
pressed in a bloody manner an extensive and dangerous insur-
rection of the Samaritans. Although such severities may have
been necessary, they made Pilate's administration odious. He
was complained of by the Samaritan elders to Vitellius, pro-
consul of Syria, to whom he was subordinate, and Vitellius or-
dered him to go to Rome and give an account of his govern-
ment. At Rome he was condemned and banished to Gaul,
where he is supposed by most writers to have committed suicide.
There is, however, a counter-tradition that he was converted.
His wife, Portia, was universally reputed by antiquity to have
been a Christian from the time of our Lord's death, and one of
:he finest episodes in Klopstock's great poem is the description
)f an interview between herself and the Blessed Virgin.

Vitellius visited Jerusalem about this time, and during his stay
there deposed Caiaphas, placing in his room Jonathan, a son of
Ananus, or Ann#s, whom he deposed after about a year, sub-
stituting in his place Theophilus. According to Josephus,
Theophilus had thirteen successors in the pontificate, viz.:
Simon, Matthias, vElioneus, Joseph Camith, Ananias, Jonathan
(murdered in the temple by Jewish dagger-men), Ismael Phabi,
Joseph Cabi, Ananus, Jesus Damneus, Jesus Gamaliel, Matthias,
Phannias. The last four are called by Josephus " unknown and
ignoble persons," thrust into office by the dagger-men during
the siege of Jerusalem. In the year 38 Herod Antipas was
deposed by Caligula and banished into Spain. Tiberius died

688 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Aug.,

March 15, A.D. 37, and was succeeded by Caligula, who reigned
until January 24, 41. His reign was one which brought much
evil and foreboded more to the Jews. He ordered a statue of
himself to be erected in the Holy of Holies, and it was at the
risk of his own life that Petronius, the successor of Vitellius,
refrained from attempting by force and at the cost of a despe-
rate conflict to carry out the insane monster's sacrilegious inten-
tion. Milman very reasonably conjectures that Agrippa even,
though a favorite of Caligula, would have dearly paid for his
timid remonstrance if the assassination of the tyrant had not
delivered him and the empire from his capricious malice.

" And the apostles and brethren who were in Judea, heard
that the Gentiles also had received the word of God " (Acts xi.
i). Besides the preaching of the Gospel to Gentiles by other
disciples which we have already mentioned, St. Luke recounts at
large the manner in which St. Peter had gone from Joppa, the
modern Jaffa, to Csesarea, at the invitation of the centurion Cor-
nelius, and had there baptized a number of Romans, mostly per-
sons connected with the military garrison of the place. When
St. Peter came to Jerusalem, not long after (A.D. 36), " they who
werd of the circumcision disputed against him, saying : Why didst
thou go in to men uncircumcised, and eat with them ? " (ibid. v.
3). The Jewish Christians only slowly and with difficulty opened
their minds to the full understanding of the catholic principles
of the religion of Christ. They firmly believed in Jesus as their
own Messiah, but they did not enter into the grand idea of uni-
versal redemption, and they still regarded it as necessary for
Gentiles to become " proselytes of righteousness," and thus by
the door of the Law of Moses to become partakers in the grace
of Christ. It was necessary for St. Peter to explain to them fully
that a divine revelation had made known to him the extension of
baptism and the privileges of membership in the church to the
uncircumcised. " When they had heard these things, they held
their peace : and glorified God, saying : God then hath also to the
Gentiles given repentance unto life " (Acts xi. 18). It was after
this that the news was received at Jerusalem of the evangelizing
of Gentiles in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, and being already
prepared to approve of and rejoice in the conversion of heathen
peoples, the church of Jerusalem sympathized in and promoted the
good work. This was the opening of a new era, and the grand,
universal apostolate throughout the whole Roman Empire soon
after commenced and was carried on during the remainder of the
apostolic age.

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 689

The accession of Claudius to the empire, after the assassination
of Caligula in January, A.D. 41, brought a great though a short-
lived change for the better into the political and religious condi-
tion of Jerusalem and Palestine, by the restoration of Herod's
kingdom to Herod Agrippa. Agrippa was a son of Aristobulus,
one of the ill-fated children of Herod and his noble, unfortunate
queen, Mariamne. Agrippa had been educated in Rome as a
prince, in the circle of the imperial family. During the last six
months of Tiberius he had been in disgrace, in prison, and in
peril of his life. His intimate friend Caligula had liberated him
and given him the tetrarchy of Philip, to which he added after-
wards that of Herod Antipas. Agrippa had made, however only
a temporary stay in Palestine ; he was in Rome when Caligula
was murdered, and he assisted Claudius most efficiently in tak-
ing quiet possession of the imperial seat. Claudius gave him all
the former dominions of Herod, and he came to Jerusalem in great
state, where he showed himself munificent to the temple and in
many respects both able and disposed to restore the splendor and
prosperity of his kingdom, if that had been any longer possible.
Agrippa put to death James the Greater, John's brother, the
first martyr among the apostles, and he imprisoned Peter, who
was delivered by an angel and immediately left the city. These
events took place during the Paschal time, probably of the
year 42.

Before this time, it is commonly supposed about eight years
after the ascension of the Lord, St. Matthew wrote his gospel in
the Syro-Chaldaic language, for the benefit of the Christians of
Palestine. It was very soon translated into Greek, if not by its
author, probably by an apostle or some disciple to whom the
work was committed under apostolic direction. There is some-
thing, according to our view, extremely appropriate and touch-
ing in the fact that the first gospel was written by Matthew the
publican. He was a man called to the apostleship by our Lord
from a class of persons whose condition and employment made
them outcasts, and, in the eyes of the Pharisees and other zealous
devotees of the religion of Judaism, fit only to be reckoned with
sinners and harlots. Who could be more fit to be the first to
make a written record of the acts and preaching of Jesus, the
Saviour of sinners, the Redeemer of the lost ? Besides this, he
was one of the first disciples of Christ, the companion of his
journeys, who had heard his discourses and witnessed his mira-
cles. This was not the case with Mark and Luke, who recorded
what they had heard from the immediate witnesses ; and although

VOL. XXXIII. 44

690 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Aug.,

St. John was an apostle and an eye-witness, yet his gospel is the
work of an aged man, for whom the events he narrates are al-
ready long gone by, and it was not his intention to write a con-
nected memoir so much as to fill up certain gaps in the earlier
gospels, and to present the sublime doctrine concerning Christ
and proceeding from his mouth, as a testimony to the faith and
against heresy. We are inclined to think that those who have
had the advantage of being familiar with the gospels from in-
fancy will testify that the ineffaceable impression of scenes and
events in the life of Jesus, which even the reading of critics can-
not destroy, is more to be traced to St. Matthew's gospel than to
any of the others. The Jewish Christians of Palestine seem never
to have cared for any other. The original text was early lost,
but the Nazarenes of the Decapolis had an altered transcript
called the Gospel of the Hebrews, and good critics consider
the ancient Syriac version to have been made, not from the
Greek, but from the Syro-Chaldaic original. It was an early
tradition that Matthew, having spent some years in preaching the
Gospel throughout Palestine, and being about to depart for a
distant mission, left behind him this artless, simple summary of
the Gospel he had been preaching to delighted listeners in Judea
and Galilee ; whose exquisite and natural charm surpasses the
highest efforts of human art ; as a memorial of his teaching and of
his Master.

Many suppose that the earthly life of the Blessed Virgin
Mary was exchanged for the heavenly glory before the Passover
of the year 42. We are inclined to agree w'ith those who think
that she accompanied St. John to Ephesus, and that her depar-
ture from this world occurred at Jerusalem twelve years later, in
the year 54.

The sudden death of Herod Agrippa at Cassarea soon after
the Passover of the year 44 brought back the rule of Roman pro-
curators, who, from the time of Felix, with the exception of Portius
Festus, were the worst and most venial of men ; and henceforward
Jerusalem and Palestine went rapidly onward toward the catastro-
phe of the year 70, when the direful predictions of the prophets and
of Jesus Christ were fulfilled. The church of Jerusalem gradu-
ally dwindled in relative importance with the decadence of the
city and nation, and paled before the rising churches of Antioch,
Ephesus, and Rome. Paul and Barnabas were sent forth, not
from Jerusalem, but from Antioch, and at Antioch the disciples
of Jesus Christ, who had before been called Galileans and Naza-
renes, were first called Christians. All Christians of Jewish

i88i.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 691

origin, however, continued to look with special affection and
reverence upon Jerusalem, and it was a frequent resort for the
apostles and their associates when it was convenient for them to
make a pilgrimage to the Holy City and its Holy Places, while
the city and temple continued to exist.

After Agrippa's death Cuspius Fadus was sent to Judea as
procurator, and he was succeeded by a man whose presence must
have been odious to the Jews, for he was an apostate from Alex-
andria named Tiberius Alexander, son of a former alobarch of
the Egyptian Jews, and nephew of the celebrated Philo. Dur-
ing the reign of Claudius a severe famine prevailed in Judea and
through other parts of the Roman Empire. This was predicted
by Agabus, who seems to have been a priest of the church of
Jerusalem, at Antioch ; and in consequence of this, liberal collec-
tions were made and sent to Jerusalem by the hands of Saul and
Barnabas. Josephus relates that Helena, queen of Adiabene,
who with her son, the King Izates, had become a zealous prose-
lyte, sent large supplies of grain, figs, and money for the relief of
the famine-stricken people.

The most notable incident of the latter part of the episcopate
of St. James was the apostolic council, held, according to the
Chronicon of F. Crampon, editor of the commentaries of Corne-
lius a Lapide (volume on Acts), in the year 49, according to Cardi-
nal Hergenrother (Allg. K. G.) some time between the years 50
and 52. The occasion of the council was a dispute which had
trisen at Antioch respecting the observance of the Mosaic ordi-
nances by baptized Gentiles. There were some who insisted that
circumcision and the observance of the statutes of the Mosaic
>de were necessary for salvation to all. This opinion contained
the germ of schism and heresy, as the event afterwards proved,
id it excited great disturbance and dissension among both
Jewish and Gentile Christians. Paul, Barnabas, and others were
therefore deputed to carry the^matter before the apostles who
were then at Jerusalem. St. Peter was at that time in the city.
St. James was there as the bishop of the see. St. John may have
easily come from Ephesus, and these, with St. Paul and St. Bar-
nabas, made five apostles, besides possibly some one or two oth-
ers who may have been within reach of a summons. Presbyters
were also there, who were admitted to take part in the delibera-
tions, as were doubtless also the deacons ; and although no dis-
tinct mention is made of bishops, it is probable that there were
some of this order present, who are included under the title pres-
byters, at that time commonly used as a general designation em-

692 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Aug.,

bracing all the distinct orders of the clergy. The laity were like-
wise admitted, and there is no reason to doubt that the principal
men among them had the liberty of making known their opin-
ions, and were actually consulted, at least in a private and in-
formal manner. This council is often said to have been the first
of the oecumenical councils of the Catholic Church, as, for in-
stance, by the learned Jesuit, Cornelius a Lapide. Nevertheless,
it is not classed among the oecumenical councils as the First in
the lists of councils given in ecclesiastical writings, this name be-
ing always given to the First Council of Nicasa. All bishops
were not summoned, but only those who happened to be near at
hand. The council resembles, therefore, in our opinion, rather
those consistories which the Popes are accustomed to assemble,
and which in the earlier ages included not only, as now, the car-
dinals of the Roman Church, but as many bishops as could easily
attend. The tribunal was, however, one which was fully compe-
tent to judge of matters relating to the universal church ; it fur-
nished a model and precedent for all future councils, even the
most general, and on that account it has always been regarded
with great reverence, as an apostolic Type and Forerunner of the
more solemn and numerous assemblies of later ages in which the
universal church has been represented, and in which matters of
faith and general discipline have been determined. The supreme
and final authority of oecumenical councils, which implies infalli-
bility in regard to faith and morals, is clearly proved by the lan-
guage of the Encyclical Letter which this council issued : " It
hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." The same is
also true of dogmatic and disciplinary decrees promulgated by
the Pope without the concurrence of a general council. St. Peter
was the supreme judge in this council, as his successors are in all
councils which finally determine matters of an oecumenical nature.
The other bishops present were also co-judges with him, and the
concurrence of the presbyters and even of the faithful gave an in-
creased moral weight and a collateral force to the decisive, judi-
cial sentence of St. Peter and his colleagues in the universal or
local episcopal authority, viz., those who were apostles properly
so called, or simply bishops with general or particular jurisdic-
tion conferred by apostolic authority. It is the same in all times.
Bishops are co-judges with the Pope, in doctrine as well as
in discipline. There is a very great doctrinal -authority in the
opinions of theologians and canonists, and a moral weight in the
consent of the faithful, which even amounts to a passive infallibil-
ity in respect to faith and morals. The entire history of this

1 88 1.] . CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 693

Council of Jerusalem is a signal exhibition of the Catholic organi-
zation, spirit, principles, and mode of procedure in the apostolic
church, and a manifestation of the identity of the modern Catho-
lic Church with itself as existing in the apostolic age.

Anglicans have endeavored to show that their system of par-
ticularism in the episcopate, which disintegrates the episcopal
order and the whole church into a mere aggregation of bishops,
each independent and supreme in his own diocese, and of sepa-
rate, self-subsisting local churches, has countenance from this in-
stance of the Council of Jerusalem. They pretend that James
presided and even gave the decisive sentence, as the Bishop of
Jerusalem, which, if it were true, would be fatal to the primacy of
St. Peter, not only as Pope, but even as the chief of the apostles.
St. Luke does not expressly state that Peter, James, or any other
person presided. That Peter must have been the president is
evident from extrinsic reasons, just as it is certain that there was
some one who did preside, that prayers were offered in the as-
sembly, that some order was observed in speaking, deliberating,
and voting. All respectable writers admit that St. Peter had a
priority among the apostles, and that the apostles possessed an
extraordinary power superior to that of ordinary bishops. St.
James, as an apostle, was more than he was as bishop of Jerusalem.
The priority and precedence of St. Peter in all things is clearly
apparent in the whole history of events at Jerusalem before this
council. It is evident that he did not lose it, by the designation
of St. James to the local episcopate. James would officially pre-
side in a synod of his own presbyters, or of his suffragan bishops.
This council was not, however, a mere local or provincial synod ;
it was an apostolic council for deciding matters relating to the
universal church. It has never been heard of in the Catholic
Church, or in any regular ecclesiastical society, that the fact of
meeting in a particular cathedral or parochial church gave the
bishop or rector a right to preside over a synod of his equals,
much less his superiors. The only pretence of a proof from the
text of the history of the council in the Acts, that St. James had
the chief part in it, is the circumstance that he spoke last and used
the word npivco, " I judge." Bishop Bloomfield (in toe.} candidly
declares that the interpretation of this word in the sense of final,
authoritative decision is untenable, and that it is only equivalent
to the Latin censeo, " I think." We have already vindicated the
right of St. James as bishop and apostle to sit as a true judge in
council with St. Peter. But what theory of church government
could stand with the hypothesis that he was sole judge in matters

694 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Aug.,

which concerned the foreign church of Antioch, and all other
churches as well ? Only the theory that the Bishop of Jerusa-
lem had the supremacy which has always belonged to the Bishop
of Rome. The non-jurors proposed to the Greek bishops assem-
bled in synod at Bethlehem that a primacy should be accord-
ed to the Patriarch of Jerusalem. But they were rather rudely
snubbed by these prelates, who replied to them that Jerusalem
had from the most ancient times held only the last place among
the patriarchal sees. The judgment of St. James did, however,
have a very special weight and importance. He was a most strict
observer of the Mosaic Law. As a relative and apostle of the
Lord, as the one who was regarded by the Jewish Christians with
a most peculiar veneration for his sanctity, and as Bishop of Jeru-
salem, he was emphatically the representative and mouthpiece of
those who were still strongly imbued with a spirit of reverence for
the ordinances of the Jewish religion. His full assent to all which
St. Peter and St. Paul had previously said, carried with it the con-
currence of those who were under his immediate jurisdiction or
his moral authority as a spiritual teacher. It is evident, how-
ever, that St. Peter was the principal author of the decision which
the wholfe council ratified. St. Jerome shows this in his eighty-
ninth Letter, a long one addressed to St. Augustine, and this is
the common sentiment of those other early Fathers who have
spoken on the subject. The result of the council was, that Ju-
das Barsabas and Silas were sent with Paul and Barnabas to
Antioch as bearers of a Letter containing a decree, in which the
observance of the moral law concerning one class of sins to
which the Gentiles were especially prone, and of certain posi-
tive precepts of the ancient patriarchal law forbidding the eat-
ing of meats which had been offered to idols, of the flesh of
animals which had been suffocated, and of blood, was enjoined
on those who were baptized, having previously been pagans;
and freeing them from the obligation of keeping any other laws
peculiar to the Jewish people. This action of the council is
ascribed in general terms to the apostles, the presbyters, and the
whole church. Its decrees are called the dogmata, i.e., sentences
of the apostles and presbyters, by St. Luke in Acts xvi. 4 : " And
as they (Paul, Silas, and Timothy) went through the cities, they
delivered to them to keep the dogmata which had been decreed
by the apostles and the presbyters who were in Jerusalem." The
precise discrimination of the respective parts of St. Peter, the
other apostles, and the presbyters in this authoritative judgment
is not made in the sacred text. These must be determined from

CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

695

extrinsic sources. There is nothing, however, which does not har-
monize with the immemorial doctrine and custom of the Catho-
lic Church, according to which supreme judgment is by divine
right the prerogative of St. Peter and his successors, whether in
or out of council, apostles and their successors the bishops be-
ing really and solely, by divine right, co-judges under their chief,
and presbyters or deacons sharing in this privilege only by virtue
of such ecclesiastical right as may be conceded to them.

The apostolic decree settled the question of the obligation of the
Mosaic Law in regard to Gentile believers. They were not to be
required to become proselytes as a condition precedent to bap-
tism. Believers of Jewish origin, however, were not at this time
expressly declared exempt from the observance of the ordinances
of Judaism. The church of Jerusalem remained, therefore, as it
had been from its foundation, and Jewish Christians generally
continued their ancient practice, not excepting even St. Paul and
the other apostles who were conversant with those of their own
nation. There was one great practical difficulty which was not
removed, and which occasioned trouble for a long time. The dis-
tinction among believers, dividing them into two classes, those
who kept the law and those who did not, was a great obstacle in
the way of friendly and equal intercourse. The believing Phari-
sees despised Gentile converts as an inferior class of Christians,
refused to eat with them, and were scandalized by the conduct of
their own brethren, who disregarded these old and narrow preju-
dices. Moreover, some of them exhorted Gentile converts to be-
come proselytes of righteousness by receiving circumcision, as a
more perfect way. St. Paul had great trouble with these Juda-
izers, and we shall presently see that he was obliged again to ex-
culpate himself before James and his presbyters and people, in
reference to his conduct on his apostolic missions.

TO BE CONTINUED.

696 FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. [Aug.,

FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE.

THE term Canadian would naturally convey to the mind of a
European or of a citizen of the United States the idea of a
native of Canada, any subject of the queen of England born
within the Dominion being unquestionably described by that
term. However, if you speak of a Canadian in the province of
Quebec you will invariably be understood to refer to a French-
Canadian. Men whose ancestors have lived in Canada for several
generations call themselves English, Irish, or Scotch, while their
neighbor of French descent is spoken of as a Canadian. The
reason for this would seem to be that the French element in the
population of Canada is the only one imbued with a truly national
spirit. The Englishman turns with a great longing to England,
the chief pride of the Scotch settler is in the land of the heather,
the Irishman looks lovingly back to the old sod, but the French-
Canadian's aims and aspirations are all for Canada; to him Canada
is a nation, and he has the comfortable assurance that by him she
became what she is. The language, the customs, the traditions
of France are dear to him, but he treasures them by his own
hearthstone ; he has put the crown of maple-leaves above the
fleur-de-lis and is loyal to his own land thoroughly, truly, and
without question Canadian. Let us look for a little while at
this wonderful race, and see into the details of their being, and
doing, and suffering since they were first aided in their efforts to
form a colony by the then king of France.

The sixteenth century had drawn to a close. Jacques Cartier,
who with his gallant band of seamen had opened to the Old
World the forest fastnesses of the New, and given to France the
unexplored tract of wood and field, mountain, lake, and river, in
the land of the setting sun, had died in his manor-house of Limoi-
lon, in sight of the white breakers beyond the harbor of Saint-
Malo, from which on the 2Oth of April, 1534, he had sailed forth
on his heroic enterprise and planted for the first time the sign of
man's redemption on the rocky pinnacle of a Canadian cliff.

Roberval had tried to found a colony, and failed.

The soldier of Navarre had ascended the throne of France,
had abjured Calvinism, and in the Church of St. Denis returned
to the faith of his fathers. Desirous of spreading that faith
among the heathen, anxious, perhaps, to atone for his own long

1 88 1.] FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. 697

disregard of it, he encouraged and aided those who were willing
to brave the dangers of the New World.

M. de Chastes, governor of Dieppe, being desirous of send-
ing out an expedition to Canada, the king granted him a patent
and assisted him in the undertaking. This expedition, as well as
that sent out five years later, was conducted by one Samuel de
Champlain, a captain in the French navy and a man distinguish-
ed in the service. This gallant sailor visited Tadoussac, Quebec
then Stadacoue Three Rivers, and pushed up the St. Lawrence
to where, under the shelter of a rugged mountain, Jacques Car-
tier had found in 1535 an Indian village called Hochelaga, not a
trace of which remained in 1608.

Champlain named the hill Mount Royal, and appears to have
foreseen that the site of the demolished Indian village would one
day be favorable as a trading station ; but that time was yet to
come.

Opposite to the green heights of Point Levis, and under the
shadow of a dark and rocky promontory, a narrow belt of land
skirted the water's edge and offered a convenient landing-place to
Champlain's crew on their return from investigating the shores
of the broad river that apparently had no end. That spot was
destined to be the cradle of the Canadian race ; the wind sighing
in the trackless forest of Stadacoue sang its lullaby, while the
frowning cliffs of Cape Diamond were its shelter and defence.
Here Champlain laid .the foundations of the city of Quebec on a
bright July morning, 1608. His men worked cheerily enough
during the summer months ; but some of them seem to have
played him false, as a plot was discovered the object of which
was to murder Champlain in his bed and deliver up Quebec to
some Spaniards and Basques lately arrived at Tadoussac. This
revolt quelled, Pontgrave, Champlain's companion, set sail for
France in September, leaving the navigator with twenty-eight
men to hold Quebec through the coming winter. October
passed with its wondrous beauty the beauty of coming death.
The forests glowed in crimson and yellow, purple, garnet, green,
and gold ; never had European eyes seen in nature such royal
loveliness. Alas ! the pageant did not last. November came,
bringing damp and desolation ; the leaves shrivelled and fluttered
to earth, snow came to shroud the leafless trees, and ice to stem
the current of the murmuring river. With winter came sickness
and death: in May only eight remained of the twenty-eight
Frenchmen whom Pontgrave had left full of life and hope.
Spring brought succor, and Champlain, with fresh reinforcements,

698 FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. [Aug.,

pursued his explorations, going by way of the rapids called La
Chine, on account of their being imagined by the discoverers
of that period to be a highway to China.

In 1638 we find Quebec the headquarters of the Company of
the Hundred Associates, formed in Paris, of which many men of
rank besides merchants and burghers were members. This was
a company having absolute power over the whole of New France
" from Florida to the Arctic circle and from Newfoundland to the
shores of the St. Lawrence," with a monopoly of the fur trade
and all other commerce for fifteen years. The company, on their
part, were bound to convey to New France some hundred rnei
artisans of all trades, and before the year 1643 to increase the
number to four thousand ; they were to lodge and support their
emigrants and to give them cleared lands for their mainte-
nance.

As one of the principal objects in furthering this settlement
of a new country was the diffusion of the faith among the savage
hordes and the building up of a church in the Canadian wilds, i1
was required that the emigrants should be Catholics, this stipi
lation being made in order to exclude the Huguenots at that time
leaving France in swarms so that they might not set up thei]
cold and empty heresy in the new country already consecrated
to the church of Jesus Christ.

In 1628 we find Quebec, after bravely resisting a prolonge<
siege, taken captive by the English, or rather by two Huguenots
Louis and David Kirth, serving under the* English flag. These
worthies do not seem to have made much of their conquest, ex-
cept to hold carousals and insult the Jesuits who had established
a mission in Quebec. One of the party carried his rage to such
an extent that it brought on a fit of apoplexy and launched him
into eternity.

By this time Henry of Navarre had been eighteen years in
the tomb to which the dagger of the assassin Ravaillac had sent
him, and Louis XIII. was on the throne of France, with Cardinal
Richelieu as his prime minister. Through the negotiations of
that great statesman Quebec was reclaimed from the hands of the
marauding Kirths, and in 1633 Champlain resumed his post as
governor alas ! to hold it for a little time only, as death soon
called him away. On Christmas day, 1635, Samuel Champlain
drew his last breath, and was buried in the church of the Recollect
friars, leaving behind him a name bright and beautiful, adorned
by deeds of dauntless courage and heroic virtue. His successor,
M. de Montmagny, was worthy of him whom he followed, and set

1 88 1.] FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. 699

a bright example as a governor, a soldier, and a Christian gentle-
man.

In 1642 Montreal was founded by a man whose name stands
prominently forward on the roll of the brave, wise, and good.
Paul de Chomedy de Maisonneuve came out with a party of voy-
agers, forty men and four women, among whom was Mile.
Jeanne Mance, a young French lady of good family and ample
means, for whom it was destined, with the aid of Mme. de Bul-
lion, to found the Hotel Dieu, or Hospital of St. Joseph, to-day one
of the most conspicuous charitable institutions of Montreal. M.
de Maisonneuve held the commission of governor, and his fol-
lowers formed part of " La Compagnie de Montreal," originated
in Paris with an idea of settling a trading-post on the site of
Hochelaga, the Indian village before mentioned as having in
Carder's time existed on the island of Montreal. A grant accord-
ing them permission to trade had been obtained from the " Hun-
dred Associates." Maisonneuve's motive in this expatriation was
not that of a mercantile adventurer : he longed to see the sav-
ages of the western land brought into the fold of the church, and
to further that object gave up the best years of his life. His
first word on the site of his future labors was a prayer ; his first
care that fair spring morning was to erect a rough altar whereon
Rev. Father Vimont, the Jesuit superior, who had accompanied
the party from Quebec, offered the Holy Sacrifice ; his first jour-
ney to Mount Royal was to plant a cross on its summit ; and his
first exercise of his gubernatorial power was to name his infant
city Ville Marie and to consecrate it to the Queen of angels and
of men.

At this time the European population of Canada was about
two hundred souls. Agriculture seems to have been utterly neg-
lected. The family of Hebert, who in June, 1617, established
themselves under the walls of Quebec, were the first, and, it would
seem, for some years the only people that had any fixed idea of
farming. In 1644 we read that wheat was sown for the first
time in Canada. In 1645 the Company of New France gave up
to the inhabitants the right of trading in furs, but not until 1663
do we find the record of the dissolution of the company. How-
ever, after the accession to the French throne of Louis XIV.
colonization seems to have taken a start.

Every spring brought out shiploads of emigrants. Sturdy
Normans and Bretons swelled the population, which grew be-
tween the years 1666 and 1680 from three thousand four hundred
and eighteen to five thousand eight hundred and seventy. So

7OO FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. [Aug.,

far the emigration had been almost entirely confined to men ; but
now a demand for wives began to be heard, and the king under-
took to send a supply equal to the demand. Shiploads of peasant-
girls were brought to Quebec and Montreal, and placed under the
care of a matron appointed by the king to act as duenna ; with
her they resided until their marriage, which was usually soon
after their arrival she, like a manoeuvring mamma of the pre-
sent day, disposing of her charges with great alacrity. In 1667
we find Talon, the intendant, writing home for the shipment of
some young ladies suitable as wives for the officers. His de-
mands were granted, but the demoiselles complained bitterly of
the discomforts of the voyage.

It is amusing to read of the embargo laid on single-blessed-
ness, old bachelors not being allowed to fish, hunt, trade, or enjoy
any privileges whatever.

The great majority of the settlers of this time were from Nor-
mandy and Brittany. These, with the shipments from Paris and
a few Huguenots from Rochelle, comprised the nucleus of the
present population of the province of Quebec. King Louis was
most anxious for the agricultural development of New France.
Convinced that a country cannot sustain itself unless it support
its inhabitants by the fruits of -the soil, he urged upon the colonists
the clearing and cultivation of the land. In view of more effec-
tual resistance against the Iroquois he created a number of noble
fiefs, which he granted to the officers of his troops, and invited the
soldiers to establish themselves there, ordering besides that all
these soldiers, become farmers, should assemble in distinct par-
ishes and submit to civil and mijitary authorities. In the three
stations, Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, he introduced the
branches of industry most necessary at the time, and took care
also for the instruction of children, as being the hope of the fu-
ture of the country. He offered a premium for large families :
to a family of ten he granted three hundred livres a year, to one
of twelve four hundred livres, while a table surrounded by fifteen
olive-branches received a bounty of eight hundred livres per
annum. The royal treasury must have been pretty well taxed,
as large families seem to have been the general rule, and we read
that in 1671 between six and seven hundred children were born
during the year.

Through the administrations of seventeen different French
nobles as governors Canada went on increasing in importance,
until in 1759 Quebec was taken by the English under General
Wolfe, and the standard bearing the lions of England floated

1 88 1.] FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. 701

over the old French town that had known no flag but the fleur-
de-lis.

In 1763 General Murray became governor-general of Canada,
and a treaty signed by Louis XVI. , King of France and Navarre,
ceded " New France " to England, reserving for her for ever
the right to retain her religion, her language, and her laws intact.
The- treaty appears to have been signed by the English with
" mental reservations," for through the succeeding years attempts
were made by the victors to infringe upon its agreements. Can-
ada, although perfectly tranquil, was at once subjected to the ex-
treme rigor of military rule. French laws were repealed, and in
their stead British ones were enforced. Every means was tried
to substitute the religion, the laws, and the customs of England in
the place of those of France. It is not to be wondered at that the
victims of this treatment grew restless. Their discontent was
plainly shown after the arrival in Canada of a number of New-
Englanders, who, on the declaration of American independence,
left their former homes to seek new ones in Canada, preferring to
live under the shadow of the British flag. These new-comers
were favored by the governors to such an extent that the Cana-
dians were driven to the limits of exasperation.

With a hope of putting an end to the antagonism between
the races, the colony was divided into two provinces Upper
and Lower Canada. However, matters became worse instead of
better. Upper Canada was favored in every particular, and

i Lower Canada would not endure it, more especially as, under the
guise of public schools, the religion of the country was im-
perilled. In 1800 the lands and buildings belonging to the Je-
suits were confiscated to the crown, and their college, the scene
of so much devotedness, that " haunted, holy ground," was turned
into a barracks. A hope was entertained of doing away alto-
gether with the French race, and proceedings tending to that end
were set on foot. The Montreal Herald of the 25th of November,
1837, said: "For a state of peace to be maintained we must make
a solitude : the French-Canadians must be swept from the face of the
earth?' But the French would not be annihilated ; through the

early part of the century the warfare continued, culminating in
1837 in open revolt, and resulting in the banishment of the
leaders of the insurrection. After unlimited martial law, hang-
ing, and transporting the French majority were told that they
were to have no voice in the matter at all, but that a federal
union of the provinces of Quebec and Ontario was to be accom-
plished. This was carried into effect in 1841. In 1867 the

7O2 FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. [Aug.,

scheme of a confederation of all the provinces became law, and
the Dominion of Canada took a place among the countries of the
world. Following the proceedings of 1840 a more liberal and just
policy was inaugurated, and the French-Canadians received per-
mission to conduct their courts of law in their mother-tongue.

After this concession the disaffection became visibly less and
finally disappeared. For a long time the rivalries of race that re-
tarded the development of the colony during more than seventy-
five years have ceased to exist, and perfect concord reigns between
the representatives of the two nationalities. To-day the French-
Canadian enjoys without restriction the free exercise of all the
privileges assured to him by the treaty of Paris ; indeed, it is
doubtful if any other people of the world possess more complete
civil and religious liberty.*

The descendants of the soldier-farmers of " Le Grand Mon-
arque " are essentially an agricultural race, contented with things
as they are ; the vision of things as they might be seldom rises
before them. Unlike the farmers of the Western States, who think
little, if they see a prospect of making money, of folding their
tents and departing for fresh pastures, the habitant \ loves dearly
and identifies himself with the spot of ground he calls his own.
He sows and reaps, and gathers in his harvest quite contentedly ;
if it be a good one he thanks le bon Dieu ; if a bad one he is no
less grateful for what he has. His farm is generally small, ow-
ing to the divisions and subdivisions it has undergone by the last
wills and testaments of departed ancestors ; but it is large enough
for his wants, and he thinks not of the morrow. Love of plea-
sure, love of music, and love of dress are the characteristics of
this people. They are simple in their tastes, and their cottages
bear evidence of greater neatness and refinement than those of the
like class in English-speaking countries. In summer their life, in
the country or in small towns, is almost entirely in the open air.
After the day's work the furniture of the sitting-room is carried
out to the sidewalk, and there, regardless of passers-by, the fam-
ily recreation is enjoyed. The housewife knits ; her liege lord
smokes his pipe ; the son tunes up his violin ; one daughter is at
work upon some article of finery, probably far beyond her means,
while another, at a table inside the cottage, has her arms embedded
in soft white dough, deep in the concoction of a galette chaude

* In this respect their future is in their own hands. If they are on the defensive they will re-
tain their rights ; if, on the contrary, they yield to the natural laisser-aller of their character they
will find their rights infringed upon.

fThe word is used in Canada to denote the farmers of the province of Quebec.

1 88 1.] FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. 703

for the family meal ; half a dozen small-fry clustered round the
doorway watch her proceedings with an interest born of expect-
ancy, and the never-failing baby, in its little frilled cap, is alter-
nately chidden or cajoled by the whole group. Whether you
find him perched on the high seat of his quaint caleche or see him
skilfully propelling a raft down some noble river, or whether you
meet him in his raccoon-skin coat and tuque bleue, tucked in his
low cariole, skimming over the frozen roads, he is always happy,
always singing ; and as the notes of " Malbrough s'en va t'en
guerre " fall on your ear you wonder if life have any dark side for
the French-Canadian habitant. The race is still remarkable for
its large families, ten, twelve, or fourteen children often falling to
the lot of a poor man, who looks upon them as blessings, and
is consequently " not ashamed to speak with his enemy in the
gates." Hospitality is a feature of the Canadian character a
graceful, gracious sort of hospitality, not the " come in if you
like" style, but "vous etes le bienvenu." Therefore you are
treated to th'e best the house affords, your execrable attempts at
French are heard and answered with a gentle patience, and your
wants forestalled in a manner that will surprise you, if you do
not know the country. The French-Canadian is sensitive and
naturally suspicious, particularly touchy with regard to his race,
but, convince him that you share his views, and he will be your
warm friend. Gentle, simple, and good, free from avarice and
discontent, the habitant of the country districts of Quebec is a
happy man.

The lower-class French-Canadian in the large towns differs a
little from his country cousin. He is not so polite, nor so amiable,
nor so contented, nor is his house so clean and dainty. He is
luite as improvident, and so are his womenkind ; a month's
wages of two young people often are expended in a wedding-
ring, a gaudy bonnet, and a drive with a gilded coach and pair,
while there is small hope of enough to live on through the com-
ing season. Still, they are peaceable and docile citizens. Though
law-abiding and averse to pugnacity, they dearly love lawsuits ;
perhaps in this the Norman blood betrays itself. Lawyers are " as
plentiful as blackberries " ; it seems that nowadays the ambition of
having a son an " avocat " goes side by side with that of having one
a priest. A simple, single-minded sense of duty prevails among
this people ; a proof of this was their resisting all temptation to
join the rebellion of the New-Englanders, and remaining peace-
fully under British rule indeed, taking up arms in the cause of
their conquerors, although the British yoke was galling them

704 FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. [Aug.,

sorely. This was due to the religious training they had received
in the early days of their existence a training which taught them
to respect first God and then the lawful authority under which
he placed them.* It would be strange if a nation baptized in the
blood of the Jesuit martyrs of Canada could be other than faith-
ful to moral and religious teaching.

The population of Quebec has in a hundred years grown from
70,000 to 1,256,000, not counting half a million who have emigrated
to the United States. There has been little or no immigration to
assist in swelling these numbers ; a healthy climate and a simple life
are the agents of prosperity. The descendants of the nobles who
held the seigniories of Louis XIV. form the French society of
Quebec and Montreal a society emphatically charming. It is with
these people, the aristocracy of Canada, that remain a great part of
the historical archives of the country. These scions of the old
noblesse, though nearly all conversant with the English language,
still retain in their own homes the language and customs of their
forefathers, and are endeavoring to raise the standard of Canadian
art and literature to compete with that of France. The great
majority of those who have written in English upon Canada have
noticed but slightly, if at all, the literature of the Canadians a
literature rich in beauty. The works of Valier, Bedard, De
Gaspe, Lafontaine, Papineau, Garneau, Chaveau, Lemay, De
Boucherville, Suite, and Lemoine would of themselves form a
library of historic interest. Nor have poets been wanting to
Canada ; from our own time, when we see Frechette crowned by
the Academy of Paris, back through the years of earlier writers
of song, Quebec has produced many choice gems of poetry.
The theme of the writers is usually their country and its bygone
days. In the works of almost all we find loving mention of the
old town, the cradle of the race, the scene of so much daring and
devotedness. Nowhere is Quebec more beautifully referred to
than in the following lines :

" Perche comme un aiglon sur le haut promontoire,

Baignant ses pieds de roc dans le fleuve geant,
Quebec voit ondoyer, symbole de sa gloire,

L'eclatante splendeur de son vieux drapeau blartc.

* Another explanation of Canadian loyalty to Britain at that epoch may be found in the
bigoted action of our Continental Congress in declaring its " astonishment that a British par-
liament should ever consent to establish " liberty of Catholic worship, as the British parlia-
ment had been prudent enough to do in Canada. When the American Commissioners, includ-
ing Father John Carroll (afterwards Archbishop of Baltimore) and Franklin, visited Canada to
invite Canadian co-operation, the English very shrewdly had the American protests against
toleration of Catholic worship printed and circulated among the Canadians. ED. C. W.

>8i.] FRENCH CANADA AND ITS PEOPLE. 705

"Et, pres du chateau fort, la jeune cathedrale

Fait monter vers le ciel son clocher radieux,
Et 1'Angelus du soir, porte par la rafale
Aux echos de Beaupre, jette ses sous joyeux.

" Pensif dans son canot, que la vague balance,

L'Iroquois sur Quebec lance un regard de feu ;

Toujours reveur et sombre, il contemple en silence,

L'etendard de France et la croix du vrai Dieu."

Within the last few years manufactories of all sorts have been
started in the province of Quebec ; these, combined with the
wealth of her mines, her fisheries, and her timber trade, will do
much towards increasing the prosperity of the Dominion. The
religious institutions are numerous and flourishing ; eighteen dif-
ferent orders in the city of Montreal alone carry on their good
works, while the numerous churches give that town the appear-
ance of a stronghold of Catholicity. The universities of McGill
and Laval are the pride of the Dominion, and the school system
is so perfect as to cause envy to the Catholics of less-favored dis-
tricts. A large and rapidly-increasing English population has
grown up side by side with the French in Montreal, and the
commercial wealth of the city is chiefly in the English coffers.
English banks and offices cover the ground where the Huron and
Iroquois fought in days gone by. Protestant churches are
springing up over the city, radiant in their modern materialism
and brand-new respectability, but they are very mushrooms com-
pared with the foundations of the old regime. The H6tel Dieu
of Mile. Mance, opened in 1634, yearly receives over 200 sufferers,
gives relief to 3,000 outdoor patients, and takes charge of 100 or-
phans. The spiritual daughters of Sister Bourgeois (contempo-
rary with Mile. Mance), who founded the Congregation of Notre
Dame, teach in Montreal alone 6,186 girls ; it is estimated that in
all their missions they instruct 17,200. The huge gray nunnery in
the West End, with its devoted Sceurs Grises, who so tenderly care
for hundreds of God's poor; the Providence Sisters, doing some-
what the same work in the East End ; the lofty towers of the great
parish church ; the quaint old latticed windows of the Seminary
of St. Sulpice, built in the days of Maisonneuve these are monu-
ments more abiding than the mushroom temples of a soulless re-
ligion. Let any one who has hopes of the downfall of Catholicity
in Canada witness the Fete Dieu procession in Montreal ; he will,
after seeing the immense multitude who kneel to adore as " Jesus
of Nazareth passes by," go home a wiser and we hope not a sadder

VOL. xxxiii 45

706 PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE AT DREI EICHEN. [Aug.,

man. " Cast thy bread upon the waters : thou shalt find it again
after many days " ; so says the Book of books, the truth of whose
words never fails. The church cast her bread upon the waters in
sending to Canada her missionary heroes. Centuries have passed
since the Jesuit fathers De Brebeuf and Lalemant perished at the
stake, victims to the fiendish cruelty of the Iroquois ; but the
flames that lighted their path to paradise still shine, a beacon to
those looking for the truth, and bear fruit in the Catholicity of
the land in which they sowed the good seed. Their death, and
that of Fathers de Noue, Daniel, Chabanel, Gamier, and
Jogues, rooted the faith. By the water's edge, in the forest
clearing, on the mountain-side, the cross of the Catholic towers
above all other works of man's hand. Over hill and dale, city
and hamlet, rings out the Angelus bell, while the descendant of
the white man and of the Indian alike worship that God for
whose greater glory the pioneers of France braved the dangers
of the forest wilds of Canada.

A PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE AT DREI EICHEN.

NEAR the Grdflich, Hoyoschen Stadt Horn* in Lower Austria,
among the Molderberg hills, stands the old church which con-
tains the celebrated shrine of Our Lady, " Maria, Drei Eichen."
Twice a year, in March at the festival of the Annunciation, and
in September, the festival of Our Lady's Nativity, the peasants
make a pilgrimage to this strange old church, while during the
summer and autumn the aristocracy whose castles are within a
day's drive of the shrine come with their families and attendants
to receive Holy Communion from the priests at " Maria, Drei
Eichen."

Last September, while visiting at one of the old castles in the
neighborhood of Horn and Altenburg, the peasants' anniversary
for a pilgrimage to the miraculous shrine occurred. It was the
eve of the festival of the birth of Our Blessed Lady. A good
old Catholic family had assembled on the castle terrace to watch
the approach of the pilgrims, for whom the villagers, with the
parish priest at their head, were waiting in the woodlands below.
In the old stone court and along the moat servants and hunts-

* The town Horn, domain of the Counts Hoyos.

1 8 8 1 .] PlL GRIM A GE TO THE SHRINE A T DREI El CHEN. JO?

men were singing this old refrain as they smoked their evening
pipes and watched the swallows flying southward:

" Um Maria's Geburt
Fliegen die Schvvalben fort ;
Um Maria's Verkundigung
Fliegen die Schwalben herum." *

As the sun went down, and that wonderful rose-purple light of
the Alpengluhen fell over the land, the banners of the pilgrim
train rose over the hill, and the bright hues of their holiday ap-
parel soon appeared through the hemlock grove. They had
come from a long, long distance ; all that day they had journeyed
up the eastern mountains, and a walk of six hours was still before
them. Wayworn and weary they were, but at sight of the family
on the castle terrace, and as the welcoming hymn of village pil-
grims rose on the air, the strangers raised their voices, waved
their banners, and commenced an old German choral which
filled with magnificent anthem -tones the shadowy woodlands
around.

A strange crowd it was : old women bending almost double
under the weight of years and the cruel bodily pains they had
long endured ; old men on crutches or feebly following the tot-
tering steps of tired little children over the moss and alpen violets
of the hemlock groves through which they passed. And this was
in old German Waldfahrt, the " woodland journey" to the steps
>f the blessed shrine where pain and suffering would be healed
through the sacrament of penance and the prayer of faith, where
the world of daily life would be made brighter to the weary pil-
grim for this his last glimpse, perchance, of the altar above the
liraculous oak-tree.

When the pilgrims had passed from sight Monseigneur
-, chaplain to the family, called the children around him to
instruct them more particularly upon the history of the shrine
ind the antiquity of the pilgrimage which they would join the
following morning. The eldest among the younger members of
the family had determined to leave the castle at midnight, and,
ittended by a guard of huntsmen, walk over to the Molderberg
dll, on which we could see, dimly rising on the horizon, the tow-
s of the old church. The little children, with their governesses

* " On Maria's birthday
The swallows fly away ;
At the Annunciation
The swallows come back again."

;o8 PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE AT DREI EICHEN. [Aug.,

and tutors, would drive over in the morning, while the chaplain,
after reading Mass for the household, would also drive over to
the church in time for the nine o'clock High Mass.

Following the children, I went to the garden below the ter-
race, where monseigneur had taken his favorite place in a cle-
matis arbor and opened their favorite story-book of legend and
poem.

" Drei Eichen, children do you know the story ? " he asked.

They knew it as children know things, fragmentarily, faintly,
and forgetfully.

" Once more, then, let me tell it to you," said the father, smil-
ing ; " some of my children may never have heard it." He glanced
at me standing under the clematis sprays, and motioned to me to
join the little group on the moss- bank beside his rustic bench.

This is the story he told us :

In the year 1658 there lived in the little town of Horn a pious,
God-fearing citizen ; he was by trade a furrier, and his name was
Mathias Weinburger.

In a small room opening off from his shop he had a " Vesper
picture " of the Blessed Virgin, formed out of wax, and before
this a lamp was kept burning. Every evening when the Angelus
rang from the turret of the convent he knelt with his household
before the shrine and repeated the rosary of Our Lady. At last
he became very ill, and his illness continued for so long a time
that his business failed and his poor family found no means
of earning their daily bread. More earnestly than ever the
good man prayed before his beloved picture ; and here one
night, after many hours spent in prayer, he fell asleep and
dreamed that the Blessed Virgin appeared to him with the cruci-
fied Saviour resting in her lap. She spoke and told him to
take her picture into the neighboring hills of the Molderberg,
and place it upon an oak-tree which rose in three separate stems
from the root, and there found a shrine free to all.

The poor man could not at first endure the thought of part-
ing with his loved picture ; but he was too earnest a Catholic to
withstand such a request from Our Blessed Lady, even when it
had been made known through the uncertainty of a dream. He
determined to carry the picture into the mountains and search
for the designated spot. From the moment he made this deci-
sion his strength gradually returned, and in a few days he was
able to attend to the business of his trade. Success attended him
in all things, but it drove the dream and his promise from his
mind. One day, returning from Eggenburg, where he had gone

1 88 1.] PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE AT DREI EICHEN. 709

to purchase furs, he lost his way in the Molderberg hills. He
wandered about until, overcome with fatigue, he sank down upon
the earth and slept. Again he dreamed. Before him was a
throne brilliant as sunlight, and he heard the sound of harps, and
sweet, soft voices singing. He suddenly awoke and found him-
self at the foot of a cedar-tree, and before him an oak through
which the wind was softly blowing. He did not heed that it
rose from the root in three separate branches, but before he
could leave his place at the foot of the cedar he fell asleep again.
Thunder rolled and lightning flashed around him ; then he
dreamed of an oak-tree rising before him in three separate stems,
to which he clung for support. The fearful noise of the thunder
awoke him. He sprang up from the earth. The evening was calm
and still ; no sound, save the Angelus floating up from the valley.
He looked around him ; before him stood an oak-tree yes, it was
the oak-tree of his dream : three oaks in one. Full of shame
and sorrow over his broken vow, he turned his steps homeward
toward the valley from whence the Angelus called him to vesper
prayer. The next day he placed his beloved picture on the oak,
and there it remained for many years. Its fame spread far and
wide ; hundreds of lame, halt, and blind came hither and were
healed. Through some unforeseen accident the tree took fire and
the picture melted. Fresh branches sprang from the spot where
fire had destroyed the oak, and this was taken as a sign that God
wished a perpetual shrine established here. With the permission
of the Benedictine monastery and convent of Altenburg and the
consent of Philip Joseph, Count Hoyos, a small stone chapel
was built. But this was far too small to contain the crowds of
pilgrims who came with votive offerings to the shrine. In 1744
Count and Countess Hoyos laid the foundation of the present
splendid church, and from that time to this very day crowds
of pilgrims and suffering, afflicted peasants make their " wood-
land journey " to the shrine at Three Oaks.

As the priest's story ended the Angelus rang from village
cross * and castle turret. Every one knelt not merely the chil-
dren gathered about monseigneur, but the old countess on the
terrace balcony laid her knitting aside, and the gardener with his
assistant, busy among the flower-beds, took off their caps and
knelt until the bells had ceased their vesper call. In Austrian
Catholic families the observance of the Angelus is especially re-

* In the centre of Austrian villages a small wayside chapel is placed at the foot of the
'Cross," and the Angelus rings here at seven o'clock in winter and eight o'clock in summer.

7io PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE AT DREI EICHEN. [Aug.,

markable ; in all parts of the Austrian Empire, indeed, work is
laid aside, conversation ceases, and the family and guests, if they
do not kneel, keep silence until the bell stops ringing.

The moon rose over the Molderberg hills an hour before
midnight, and when we set out upon our pilgrimage from the
castle, valley and woodlands were filled with pure, soft light.
The mild September night-winds just stirred the hemlocks
around the castle walls, and the pine forest before us began a
sweet, low music, as if to remind us we should raise our voices in
a hymn of praise. An exquisite hymn learned long years ago
rose to memory, and, although it was the birth-eve of Our Blessed
Lady, we sang the " Christmas Cradle Song " :

" Silent night ! Holy night !
All is calm, all is bright
Round the Virgin Mother and Child.
Holy Infant, so tender, so mild !

Sleep in heavenly peace."

Singing through the woodlands, resting beside the mountain
brooks flowing down from the hills in silver pathways, our eyes
raised to the golden crosses of the church-towers before us, we
gained the beech groves and the jewelled garnet rocks of this
hillside long ago consecrated by the mysterious three oaks. The
faint rose-light of early dawn flushed all the eastern heaven as we
knelt upon the threshold of the grand old church, now complete-
ly crowded by the poor peasants who had come from every di-
rection to seek pardon and peace or to gain relief from sickness
and pain. It was a long, long time before we could find a con-
fessional free. The peasants knelt in double rows before them ;
and although among those waiting were peeresses of the realm,
they all were too good Catholics not to see the need of equality
there, and humbly awaited their turn.

The church is in the form of a Greek cross with apsidal ter-
minations ; in each arm of the cross altars are placed. Under the
high altar the original oak-tree root is still preserved, and behind
this altar is a treasure-room where the thank-offerings are kept.
After High Mass, and while waiting for our breakfast, which was
to be served at the primitive roadside inn (kept only for the ac-
commodation of humble pilgrims to Drei Eichen), we visited the
treasure-room of the church. From jewelled coronets and pearl
necklaces of priceless worth, offerings of gold and silver hearts,
hands, and feet, these votive in-memoriams descend to simple knots
of ribbon, a baby's shoe, or a little pewter finger-ring. As we

1 88 1 .] PILGRIM A GE TO THE SHRINE A T DREI EICHEN. 711

looked at these latter I seemed to hear the echo of His voice who
blessed the poor widow's offering ; yes, truly in their poverty
they had given their all.

Here, as at all miracle-working shrines in Europe, besides the
votive pictures and tablets, the walls are covered with crutches,
useless now by the recovery of the owner, and little iron sup-
porting-shoes which poor children who have been healed once
wore. We had not time to examine all the superb priestly vest-
ments and altar decorations, nor the masterpieces of painting
and frescoes on the walls and the interior of the dome, before being
summoned to our breakfast. It was served in the grandest apart-
ment of the little inn, a large dormitory on the second floor.
Eight small beds, with plump bettdecke (down coverlids) cover-
ed with pink calico, lined the walls. A square table of red cedar-
wood in the centre of the room was covered with our breakfast,
consisting of coffee, honey, and large, oval-shaped rolls called
wecken. Eierspeise(& kind of omelette) was clamorously called for
by the children, and we, who had walked since midnight, were
glad to find some hot beef-soup served in covered cups.

We spent the morning wandering through the woodlands and
over the hills surrounding the church. These woods abound in
wayside crosses and small chapels, some of them raised over a
hundred years ago. A wayside cross on the road leading to
Horn has the date 1675, and the figures of Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph sculptured thereon are still in a good state of preser-
vation. An old sun-dial on the southeastern wall of the church
bears the words of the Psalmist : " A solis ortu usque ad occasum
laudabile nomen Domini." The rocks are filled with garnets,
which the children and maids gathered most diligently. Polished
and made into rosaries, they serve as very lovely souvenirs of the
shrine. During the pilgrimage days small booths are built near
the church, in which sacred pictures, rosaries, crosses, and candles
are sold as souvenirs to the peasants. No pilgrim would think
of returning home without some small gift or picture for his
friends and neighbors.

In the afternoon we drove to Altenburg, in order to attend
Benediction at the celebrated Benedictine abbey. To reach this
place from Drei Eichen we passed the town of Horn and two of
the grand old castles of the Hoyos family. The most modern of
these buildings is of a light cream-colored stone, and, with its
parks and gardens, covers a space quite as large as the old village
of Horn beside it. Everywhere the escutcheon, surmounted by a
count's coronet, is seen. At both ends of the village street, besides

712 PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE AT DREI EICHEN. [Aug.,

the crucifix which always stands at the entrance of an Austrian
village, are old broken stone statues of an ancestor of the family
Hoyos, and beyond the present castle are two immense round
towers, moss-covered and almost crumbled to decay, but support-
ing still the bastioned wall showing where the original castle
stood. The Ritterschloss of Rosenberg, another of the Hoyos
estates, is situated on the extreme point of a woodland promon-
tory, the rocks on one side going down four hundred feet to the
plain, through which flows a small stream called the Kampfluss.
Legends innumerable are told of this rock wall, and a weird, wild
place it is. It seems like a small village perched on the moun-
tain ; but it is all one building, joined together by gray stone bas-
tions, from which rise circular towers and fortress turrets covered
with lichens and ferns waving like plumes in every breath of
wind. It is the nearest point to the old Benedictine abbey at
Altenburg, founded in the year 1050 by Countess Hildberg von
Rebigan and her son, Count Hermann von Buige. This mon-
astery and convent surpass in size and magnificence of interior
decoration any abbey in Austria. The cloisters extend around
double courts, each eight hundred feet square. Vespers and
Benediction were just beginning as we were admitted to the
church. It is a strangely-shaped building, perfectly oval in form,
and lighted from the dome by curiously-colored glass. There is
a fine rose-window above the organ, frescoes and pictures in-
numerable cover the walls, and a tomb of sculptured marble in
the choir marks the burial-place of the saintly countess who gave
this magnificent property to the church. The convent is espe-
cially rich in missals. Several old books containing Gregorian
chants, from whence the priests still intone the service, were
shown to us after Benediction. They were written on vellum
in green, blue, and red inked lines. The longa and breves were
purple and black, while the responses were evidently of older
date than the others ; they were lined in brown, and the musical
notation, the comma and numce, were of a brilliant red hue.

The corridors of the building, into which we entered from the
sacristy, seemed miles in length. One of the shorter corridors,
through which we passed on our way to the guest-chambers, was
exquisitely beautiful. The walls were of pale lilac covered with
white traceries of ferns, and angels, bending down from the ceil-
ing, weaved garlands of lilies all through these traceries. The in-
terior of the building is extremely rich in stucco-work. The
apartments set aside for guests are about fifty in number.
Twelve of them were in perfect order, furnished and ready to be

;: 88 1 .] PILGRIM A GE TO THE SHRINE A r DREI EICHEN. 7 1 3
>ccupied. We walked through all of these rooms just to see the
ceilings. They are covered with elaborate designs in stucco-work,
no two alike except in general outline, so as to preserve the
dome-like arch and renaissance panelling of the sixteenth century,
at which period this wing of the monastery was added.

On our way to the library we passed through a corridor
containing the portraits of all the abbots from St. Hermann
(Count de Buige), the first abbot and founder, to the present day.
They were all numbered, and their names painted upon small tab-
lets fastened to the frame, with Latin inscriptions and strangely
abbreviated words which, we were told, explained the history of
their lives. Some of them looked more like soldiers than priests,
for they held swords. One picture, dated 1123, might have
passed for a portrait of Sir Galahad ; the face was full of spiritual
beauty, too pure and holy for earthly life. The name was painted
out in black, but a coroneted card fastened to the frame had the
word " Gottfried" traced in small German characters.

The library is one of the most artistic and scholarly of apart-
ments. It is a room of magnificent proportions ; it seems like
the nave of a church, for besides the tall, second pointed lancet-
windows, which overlook the surrounding mountains and plains,
the room is lighted from two immense circular domes. The first
of these is filled with a fresco of the Queen of Saba's visit to
Solomon ; the second has for its subject the marriage in Cana of
Galilee. Bookcases and pictures line the walls of the room from
floor to ceiling, while through the centre of the apartment are
placed tables and desks containing journals and periodicals of
the day, with all necessary writing and drawing materials. In
large glass cases under the domes are placed valuable missals and
illuminated MSS. of the eleventh century, A huge tower of cir-
cular steps is used to reach the books on the higher shelves ; it
rolls along in little iron grooves, so it can be easily pushed from
one bookcase to another.

The reverend father who showed us the building opened some
of the glass cases and bookshelves for us. We found many of the
earlier works of the Aldine and Plantin-Moretus presses, but
most interesting of all was a Bible printed at Venice in 1576, ex-
quisitely illustrated by illuminations painted by hand. There
was another, also from Venice, printed from wooden types and
containing colored wood-cuts. A missal of St. Benedict was an
exquisite piece of thirteenth-century workmanship. It was on
parchment, the capital letters in gold laid on miniature-like land-
scapes in which woodlands, flowers, and castle turrets were so

714 PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE AT DREI EICHEN. [Aug.,

naturally colored that it seemed like a painted photograph. A
geography of twelve tomes folio, printed in Amsterdam in 1560,
with maps clearly drawn and finely colored, was a curiosity of
erroneous ideas, as it so vaguely defined the boundaries of coun-
tries as they exist in our time. The superb missals and old, yel-
low MSS. shown us were so hastily explained by the reverend
father that it was impossible to remember more than the shadow
of their beauty. The views from the windows of this monastery
are singularly extensive. The Ritterschloss of Rosenberg looks
like a toy castle from the heights of Altenburg. The library,
built in 1700, is situated in the eastern portion of the building,
and overlooks the valley and the Molderberg hills ; from its west-
ern windows are seen the cloisters and gardens of the oldest part
of the convent the portion of this immense abbey reserved for
the Benedictine nuns cloistered there. We were not allowed to
see the sisters not even to enter any part of their property ; they
were iron-barred off from everybody. The only sign we had of
their living were the exquisite flowers on the window-ledges of
their iron-barred windows.

From the library we went down to the crypt on the ground
floor. It is intended to contain the tombs of the abbots, but as
yet no one has been buried there. It seemed strangely gaudy for
a mortuary chapel : the walls are curiously frescoed in poly-
chrome representing tropical vegetation, astrological signs, and
Egyptian hieroglyphics. From the gorgeous coloring of the
crypt we passed through vaulted cloister-walks into the great
garden, charmingly laid out, partly in the French style of clipped
hedges and forest trees, partly in the German arbor-walks and
shadowy nooks very tempting to students ; while beyond the
orangery, considered the finest in Austria, English landscape-gar-
dening and parterres of American hollyhocks, nasturtiums, and
double poppies filled the green openings of the woodlands with a
dazzling blaze of color.

Our carriages awaited us as we returned to the great portal
of the abbey, but we were not allowed to leave before partak-
ing of the evening Vesperbrod. It was served in the great recep-
tion-room, which had once been the Rittersaal. These apart-
ments, found only in old Austrian castles, are rarely opened to
strangers, as are the knightly halls of other lands. They are built
and decorated on a scale of magnificence hard to comprehend in
the present day. The great oak table laden with massive silver
urns from which flowed coffee of purest amber ; richly-carved
bread-trenchers with white rolls and dark brown Hausbrod; crocus
and cowslip blooms made of butter laid upon green leaves ; tall

1 88 1 .] PILGRIM A GE TO THE SHRINE A T DREI EICHEN. 7 1 5

crystal vases with delicately carved armorial bearings, filled with
wine ; and Sevres porcelain upon which ducal and princely coro-
nets were emblazoned, heaped with cold viands far too numerous
to mention, arrested our first glance, but, hunger and thirst duly
satisfied, the superb hall claimed every attention.

The arched ceiling contained a fine fresco, " Aurora banish-
ing Night." On either side the room is a huge open fireplace,
above which the walls are panelled in black marble arched toward
the ceiling, while the intervening spaces are filled with mytholo-
gical pictures in stucco-work ; but from the floor, the distance at
which we see it, it seems of marble or Caen stone. " Aurora
greeting Phoebus " adorned the arched panel on one side of the
room, while " Endymion, with Diana the Huntress led toward
him by Cupid " formed the subject of the other side. Above these
graceful alto-relievo suggestions of Day and Night was stucco scale-
work of white and gold, while from the golden coronet at the top
of the arch fell a stucco drapery of white curtains, which, parting
in the middle, displayed on the scale-work the escutcheon of the
family who had donated this castle.

Over the four great doorways on either side the fireplaces
are colossal figures. One represents " War," a figure seated on
cannon and spears ; marble cushions bearing laurel wreaths and
golden spurs surmount the huge column door-posts. " Renown,"
a figure grasping a sword, kneels among trumpets and drums,
helmet and gauntlets, cast down on the marble cushions. " Fame "
stands upon trumpets, crowns and palms at her feet; even in
those days artists rightly apprehended " Fame," for the crowns
have thorns, and the branches lying beside them reminded us of
the martyr's palm ! " Power," a figure in armor, is seated on a
throne formed of Roman battle-axes, imperial and kingly crowns
at its feet.

The sunset light falling through the western windows filled
this strange old hall with a dreamy violet haze ; it came from a
purple cross high up in the traceries of the middle lancet ; the
crystal and silver of the table reflected the hue ; the golden deco-
rations of the splendid room paled and grew dim ; sudden silence
fell upon us all. The great doors were thrown open ; we arose
to take leave of our kind host, but our voices were hushed, for
streaming down the long marble corridor before us came the
sweet tones of the Benediction Hymn :

" Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui."

The nuns were at Vespers in their convent chapel.

716

NE w PUBLIC A TIONS.

[Aug.,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

WORDS OF COMFORT TO PERSECUTED CATHOLICS. Written in exile,
anno 1607. Letters from a cell in Dublin Castle, and Diary of the Bo-
hemian War of 1620. By Father Henry Fitzimon, priest of the Society
of Jesus. Illustrated from contemporary documents, correspondence of
Irish Jesuits, and government officials. With a sketch of his life by
Edmund Hogan, priest of the same society. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son.
1881. ( For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

The life of an Irish or English Jesuit during the first century or two after
the so-called Reformation was a busy and exciting one in the extreme. A
Jesuit in those times was nearly always " a Jesuit in disguise." In and out
of prison, now known as Mr. This, now as Mr. That, sometimes acting as
valet to a Catholic nobleman or gentleman so as to avoid the Puritan
spies, the Jesuits, and the religious of the various orders in that day, were put
to their wits' end for the means to minister to the harassed Catholics. Yet
with all their hard work these missionaries found time to write a good deal.
And there is no trace of maudlin sentiment in their writing. Their English,
when they write in English, is of the vigorous, strongly-flavored sort that
characterized Elizabeth's and James I.'s time this in spite of Macaulay's
sneers at the English of Catholic controversialists toward the latter end of
the seventeenth century, by which time most of the Irish and English
Catholics who were allowed to get an education at all had been educated
on the Continent.

It was no trifling thing in those times not to be " Reformed." The fol-
lowing list of fines imposed for not attending the Protestant church service,
taken entire from the return of the " Court of Exchequer, Trinity Term,
fourth of James I. [that is, 1606], Munster," as quoted by Father Hogan, will
give some idea of "what it cost " then to be a Catholic in and about Cork :

Wm. Sarsfield, Mayor of Cork, fined in 100

Edmd. Galwey, gent., 60

Edmd. Murrough, merchant, .... 60

Thos. Coppinger, gent., 60

Henry Gold Fitz Adam, merchant, . . 50

John Tyrry fiz Francis [sic], merchant, 50

Walter Coppinger, gent., ICQ

Andrew Galwey, gent, (exonerated be-
cause sese con/ormavit) , .... ,50
Jeffrey Galwey, Sovereign of Kinsale, ico
Philip Roche, of same, burgess, ... 50
Jas. Meagh, " "... 5
Robert Meagh, " "... 50
Patrick Martell, " " ... 40

It is well to remember, as Father Hogan reminds us, that a shilling (and
a pound) in Elizabeth's time represented about twelve times as much as
now.

Father Hogan deserves thanks for this interesting volume on the labors
of Father Fitzimon, the irrepressible and adventurous Irish Jesuit, who was
such a terror to some of the " Reforming " controversialists of his time.
Father Fitzimon's letters, too, written while he was chaplain to the Austrian
army in the campaigns against the Bohemians, are exceedingly bright. All
these have been gathered together in this volume.

!i
!

1 88 1 .] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 7 1 7

ENGLAND WITHOUT AND WITHIN. By Richard Grant White. Boston :
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1881.

The people of our country represent every race of the Old World, yet
they are for the most part all alike firm in their devotion to our political
institutions. But as long as there exist communities or sections of the
American people tracing an unmixed descent from particular European
races we shall have disputes as to what constitutes an "American." Ger-
man, or Irish, or English, or French, or Dutch, or Scandinavian, or Spanish,
whatever our origin, we seem to think that our element, whichever it may
be, has done the most for the development and the welfare of the country,
and that it has the capabilities of being the most useful in the future. To
be sure, a few generations will so mix up the American people the mix-
ture has already taken place in some parts that, except for language and
surnames, the Americans of the time to come may be inclined to look upon
themselves as aborigines.

In the meantime the emulation goes on. So far the English-Americans,
with whom, if the truth were told, are confused many of Irish, and Scotch,
and French descent, show the largest amount of this rather harmless vanity,
and, the accident of language being in their favor, they have to all appear-
ances the advantage, for the present at least. Certain writers and speak-
ers there are who make a specialty of reminding us that we are a people of
" English blood," that our " kin beyond sea " are the English, and the Eng-
lish only, and so forth. It is true most of these " Anglo-Saxons " in theory
are to be found very close to the Atlantic coast, but it is also true that
shrewd English politicians, with an eye, perhaps, to future contingencies,
have gaily taken up the refrain and are disposed to make us believe, wheth-
er or no, that we are their first cousins.

A rather amusing instance of this pushing forward of one's particular
race as the race par excellence of the United States is given in Mr. White's
book. Mr. White is apparently prouder of the fact that he is of " English
blood " than he is of being a Christian. Indeed, he is not proud at all of
the people he calls " Americans," always writing the word with inverted
commas. " Americans," as such, are not his countrymen. He says : " When
I speak of my countrymen I mean only those whose families were here at
the time of the Revolution." And for fear he might not have made himself
absurd enough he says again : " I saw and have written from a Yankee's
point of view, applying the term Yankee necessarily to the descendants of
those to whom it was originally and peculiarly applied, in whatever part of
he country they may now dwell " that is, to the descendants of the New
England colonists. Very many genuine Yankees will no doubt object to
eing called Mr. White's " countrymen " on such terms. Some of "our
most select people," however, especially the descendants of Tories, will not
object.

Americans who make the tour of Europe may be divided into several
classes. First, there are the amusing, and to some perhaps exasperating,
barbarians who have no reverence for mere pompousness, and who stare
at the dignified personages of the Old World very much as the invading
Gauls did at the venerable senators of Rome. There are the triflers who go
to kill time and to amuse themselves. Then there are the observant and

7 1 8 NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. [ Aug. ,

more or less intelligent sort who go to learn. In addition to these there
are the poor, unhappy people who are continually apologizing for the rude
and unsophisticated ways of their countrymen and charging it all upon the
terrible vulgarity of " foreigners." Mr. White writes from the point of
view of these last. Most of his book has already appeared in the shape of
contributions to the Atlantic Monthly.

But in spite of all this Mr. White's book will be found both entertaining
and instructive, though probably neither the entertainment nor the in-
struction will be found just where Mr. White intended to have them found.
And he would have rendered his book more intelligible even to most of his
" countrymen," we are sure, had he furnished a glossary of the words pecu-
liar to England which he has taken such pains to drag in. The most inno-
cent of these words are such as " luggage " for baggage, and " shop " for
store.

SKETCHES OF THE LIVES OF DOMINICAN SAINTS OF OLDEN TIMES. By M.
K. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 1880. (For sale by the Catholic Publi-
cation Society Co.)

This unpretending little volume is a model in its way. Its style and
spirit show forth the deep spiritual and interior appreciation of the subjects
sketched. The object of the writer seems to have been to supply those
accustomed to attend churches and chapels served by the Dominicans
with brief notices of the saints and the earlier beatified members of the
order whose festivals are celebrated on days set apart during the year ; or,
as it is beautifully expressed in the preface : " Like ancient families in the
world, who generally possess a picture-gallery of their ancestors, so the
old Dominican Order also has its portrait series, which we are now going to
examine."

We venture the remark that it will be read with interest, profit, and de-
light by all good Catholics, whether they happen to be acquainted with
Dominican churches or not. The chaste yet distinct portraiture of the
most distinguished men and women of that religious family ; their burning
zeal for Christian truth manifested in the heroism of apostleship, in the
blood of martyrdom, in the highest types of art and science, in the beau-
tiful friendship between them and the Franciscans, will be found engraven
deeply on these pages.

GLEANINGS FROM OUR OWN FIELDS. Being selections from Catholic
American Poets. By George F. Phelan. New York : P. O'Shea, agent.
1881.

If wealth of the imagination is proof of the richness of literature Catho-
lics need feel no great fear of holding their own in the United States, for
in this small volume we have the names of thirty-two poets, native and to
the manner born, and doubtless there are many who will complain that the
list is far from complete. But, as Mr. Phelan explains in an introductory
note, he failed to obtain permission to print the poems of certain writers.
To begin with, he has wisely sought for minor poems only, though two or
three of these are somewhat ambitious in their aim.

It is a little volume that we predict will be well received, and looks like

1 88 1 .] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 7 1 9

one that will be even more valuable and be more sought for in some years
to come than now. The very fact, indeed, that an anthology of Catholic
American poetry can already be published is inspiring indeed.

THE LIFE AND REVELATIONS OF SAINT GERTRUDE, VIRGIN AND ABBESS,
OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT. By the author of St. Francis and
the Franciscans, etc. New edition. New York : The Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co. 1881.

It is now some fifteen years since thisLzfeof the great Benedictine saint
of the thirteenth century was first published, and its author, the accom-
plished and learned, no less than indefatigable, Sister Mary Francis Clare,
has in the meantime become known to the Christian world at large by her
charitable and patriotic efforts in behalf of the poor and suffering of her
country.

So far as we see, no alterations have been made in this edition. The Life
is one of those books destined to be in perpetual demand. The public, once
having known it, will not likely let it ever remain long out of print.

ENGLISH HISTORY READERS. No. i. Stories from English history. By
T. J. Livesey, Hammersmith Training-College, author of The Primer of
English History, How to Teach Reading, etc., etc. For Standard II. Lon-
don : Burns & Gates. 1881.

If any one should ask us how could English history be treated without
introducing Catholicity, or " sectarian " religion in any form, we should at
once refer him to these Stories from English History as a striking example
of how a book on English history, published by a Catholic house, written,
presumably, by a Catholic, and intended for use under what is, we believe,
a Catholic normal school, could solve the difficulty. The word Catholic
does not occur once in its pages, and all such undoubtedly Catholic per-

mages as St. Dunstan and St. Thomas a Becket are prudently omitted.

'he same prudence, we may add, carefully omits all reference to so Catholic
fact as Ireland. The " story" of the conversion of England tells just half
the truth, if even that much. This may be " unsectarian " history, but it is

ilse to facts, emasculated, and unfit for use among Catholic children.

NAMELESS NOBLEMAN. Round-Robin Series. Boston : James R. Osgood
& Co. 1881.

It is a pity that a writer with so much talent for constructing an interest-
g story as is the author of the above could not have kept clear of matters
f which she for the writer is evidently of the novel-writing sex is not well
nformed. The idea of introducing an unscrupulous priest, who uses all
sorts of doubtful means to accomplish what to him may appear a legitimate
end, was worn threadbare a century ago. But the great evil of introducing
Catholicity in the ignorant but apparently serious and well-meaning way
that is followed in this book is that simple-minded novel-readers are
given very false impressions of the one religion that is capable of putting a
strong check to the-end-justifies-the-means maxim a maxim which, instead

Eing the maxim of the Jesuits, or of Catholicity under any form, is the
;ant practice of the enemies of Catholicity and of Christianity in general.

720 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Aug., 1881.

CARROLL O'DONOGHUE : a tale of the Irish struggles of 1866 and of recent
times. By Christine Faber, author of Ambitions Contest, Fickle Fortune
New York : Peter F. Collier. 1881.

A fairly interesting story of the Fenian outbreak in the southwest of
Ireland. But the writer has evidently followed too much in the conven-
tional way of these stories, and one is constantly reminded of some of Mr.
Boucicault's dramatic efforts. Besides, the " brogue " is not accurate, nor is
the dialect. No Kerryman says, for instance, " yez " for " you " that is a
Leinster pronunciation most likely he would say "ye." And no Irishman
says " intoirely " for " entirely," Thackeray to the contrary notwithstanding.

There is, by the way, a fine field open for some one who is competent for
the task to trace the connection between the so-called Irish brogue and
the various pronunciations of English in Elizabeth's and James I.'s time,
when the English language first began to be generally spoken in certain
parts of Ireland.

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. Rt. Rev. S. V. Ryan, D.D. (Second edition.)
Buffalo : Catholic Publication Co. 1881.

This very neat second edition of the admirable works of Bishop Ryan
has been improved by some corrections and references to authorities
quoted, and we wish it may have the general circulation and receive from
Episcopalians the careful attention it deserves.

PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD Co. SUMMER EXCURSION ROUTES. Season of
1881.

This is the usual summer enticement for those who are sweltering with
the heat in the great cities of the North. Here we have page after page
that, amid the dry-looking figures of time-tables, suggest mountain, and
forest, and clear streams with pebbly bottoms, and fresh, sweet air, and re-
laxation generally.

A QUESTION. The idyl of a picture by his friend Alma Tadema. Related
by Georg Ebers. From the German by Mary J. Safford. New York :
William S. Gottsberger. 1881.

A finished little picture of Sicily in the old pagan times, having all the
fidelity to life that is in general characteristic of Prof. Ebers' beautiful
stories. Miss Safford's translation is so well done that one almost alto-
gether forgets in reading it that it is a translation.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIII. SEPTEMBER, 1881. No. 198.

THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME.

SOME years ago, whilst I was leading a life which was entirely
uninfluenced by religion, I was attracted to Ritualism. At this
time my life was a purely worldly one. I was going a great deal
into fashionable London society, and my higher tastes were
merely literary ; the people, too, with whom I was intimate, and
who were superior to the fashionable world, were simply cultivat-
ed sceptics. I had no spiritual feelings or desires, and, although
keenly interested in theological and religious disputes, my inter-
est was entirely intellectual. I enjoyed reading controversy, and
my sympathies were generally on the sceptical side in such read-
ing. Faith I had none ; not only did I not understand what was
meant by the word as used by Catholics, but even of what passes
amongst Protestants for faith I had none. I thought that I might
criticise and differ from the Bible ; the Prayer-book had no hold

Kme ; the opinion of no clergyman weighed with me ; my con-
t was unbounded. I considered myself superior to creeds, and
ked down somewhat contemptuously on the crowd of angry
and eager disputants around me, all fighting for the supremacy of
that which they held to be the truth. I thought, perhaps, that
each party might possess one item of the truth whilst claiming to
teach the whole, or that truth was only truth to those who could
receive it, and that truth was as many-sided as human nature.
Naturally such ideas were too vague and indefinite to influence
my life or conduct.

722 THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. [Sept.,

There was, however, always one exception that I made, one re-
ligion that even in my ridiculously presumptuous days I looked
upon with respect and I vaguely 'wished to belong to, and that was
the Catholic religion. I admired the consistency of the church,
her uncompromising attitude. I perfectly understood the hold
that she has over her children, the spirit of real obedience which
she implants in them, and the manner in which she guides and di-
rects them from the cradle to the grave a direction which even
as a Protestant I desired, and for which I instinctively longed
whenever I found myself in any difficulty. My idea, though
misty, was something of this sort : " We can be certain of nothing
in this world, and therefore we cannot know absolute truth.
Higher natures require no help from creed or priest. They do
right naturally ; but I feel that I have not got a higher nature,
and therefore external helps would be of use to me. In the
Catholic Church such helps are to be found, and therefore I wish
that I had been born a Catholic or could see my way to become
one." But at this time I had no intention that my vague wish
should lead to definite action. I was not prepared to make any
sacrifice at all for religion I cared too little about it. I attended
one service at church on Sundays, and this was about all I did for
religion. I never prayed, nor studied spiritual books, nor even
read my Bible. Of course I had heard much about Ritualism,
but it had not interested me. I thought it was merely an absurd
imitation of Catholicity.

I was in this state of mind when a faint and indistinct wish
awoke within me to go to Communion. I cannot say whence it
came. It arose before I was brought into contact with Anglican-
ism, and I cannot account for it. I did not like there and then to
go to the altar, I knew so little about what was necessary by way
of preparation. I thought, however, that as I was I could not
be fit to join in what all sects agreed to consider a very solemn
service.

Whilst I was hesitating and wishing for help and advice (it is
noteworthy that it never occurred to me to apply to the clergy-
man whose church I attended, but who was personally unknown
to me) I unexpectedly met and became intimate with an advanced
Ritualist; and I do not wish to avoid the confession of what I now
see plainly, though at the time less distinctly, that for some time
from this date my religious life was entirely influenced by this
friend. He was what I then thought a strange combination a
holy and a pleasant man, one whom it was impossible to dislike
or not to respect, and yet at the same time he was a decided

1 88 1.] THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. 723

Ritualist. I had thought that Ritualists were mere triflers ; but,
as usual, exaggerated and uncharitable judgments are followed
and punished by reaction.

I was glad of the opportunity of personally hearing about
Ritualism a subject which just then half-filled the papers ; and
the more I heard the greater was the hold which that system took
on me. Here then at last, I thought, was a dogmatic religion
something that asserted truth and did not simply deny error ;
something that built up for itself and was not content with pulling
down its neighbor's work. I was in the state of mind to catch
hold of some definite thing. The rope held out to me was Angli-
canism, and I seized it. My will was enlisted on its side, and I
wished to believe all that the High-Church party taught. I may
here say that even now I do not see that I was to blame in try-
ing to believe that alone to be true which I wished should be true.
The Prayer-book is so contradictory that a member of the Church
of England (and at this time I had no thought of leaving the Estab-
lishment) must first make up his mind what he intends to see in it
and to which part he means to attach importance, or its perusal
will leave him in greater doubt and bewilderment than he was
before he opened its pages. The two ideas which took possession
of me were, first, a belief in the Real Presence, and then a belief
in the virtue and usefulness of going to confession. In studying
the Prayer-book I dwelt exclusively on the passages which sanc-
tioned these two views, and simply ignored those which denied
them.

I was not, however, long content with the mere study of what
are called " church principles." Action, I felt, must follow.
I had sufficient Catholic instinct to know that if I wished to go
to Communion I ought, if I believed in it, to go first to confes-
sion. But this I looked on as a sort of putting my hand to the
plough. If I went to confession and Communion I realized that I
should be launched into a life from which I could not turn back
without serious falling away. I hesitated, and yet was attracted
by the system. The more I studied Ritualism the more I thought
it like Catholicism. In fact, I thought it would make me a Ca-
tholic without involving the sacrifice which all have to make
who are received into the church. 1 at length fully made up my
mind that going to confession would do me a great deal of good ;
but at this point I became rather nervous. I knew no clergyman
to whom I could go, nor how to make a confession, nor anything
about it. I felt assured, however, that I had only to make an ef-
fort and these difficulties would vanish ; so at last I made a sort

724 THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. [Sept.,

of bargain with myself. I much enjoyed religious conversations
with my Ritualist friend, and I wished to have one on the subject
of confession. I therefore said to myself : " Now, if you like you
may start the subject, but if you do so it must be for a practical
purpose. If you speak of it at all you must not shirk the natural
result of the conversation ; you must go to confession yourself."
I did start the subject, and after that I felt bound to go to a clergy-
man for confession and ask him to hear me. I could not break
faith with myself.

This determination was the turning-point in my religious life.
After having once been to confession and Communion my whole
heart and mind and wishes changed. I became as anxious to do
right as before I had been careless ; to strive as zealously to be
devout as before I had been indifferent. I threw myself, so far as
I was able, with all my energy into the High-Church movement.
I went to church as often as possible ; visited the poor ; sincerely
tried to mend my faults and to be kind and pleasant and unselfish
with others. I now gradually began to learn all that eventually
made me a Catholic. Looking back on my life, I cannot think that,
as a fact, 1 should ever have become a Catholic straight from infi-
delity. I think, without a miracle, it would have been impossible
that I could have made so great a change without any interme-
diate step, or that I should have been given the strength neces-
sary when I was leading a literally godless life a life without
prayer and without sacraments, which, though, as I now see, not
bringing of themselves the grace I imagined, still, by the care and
zeal and fervor with which I prepared for them, were means of
real grace to me.

I now read a great deal of High-Church literature, and I took
all that I read on faith. I really believed that the Prayer-book
ordered the most advanced ritual ; and though for a short time I
was doubtful as to its teaching the Real Presence, I read only
such books as dispelled my doubts. I thought exclusively of the
" verily and indeed " in the catechism, to the exclusion of the
" Black Rubric " in the Communion office and of the Thirty-nine
Articles. I remember once asking a prominent Ritualist clergy-
man what was the difference between the Roman Catholic and
the Anglican doctrine touching the Presence in the Blessed Sacra-
ment. He told me there was none. He was supposed to be an
honest man ; he had certainly signed the Articles ; and yet he can
hardly have been ignorant of the creed of Pope Pius V. The
" Black Rubric " was a great stumbling-block to me for a while.
I saw in it then what I now again see a distinct repudiation of

8 1.] THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. 725

the doctrine of the Presence of our Lord's Body in the Blessed
Sacrament. However, I read, and read uncritically, High-Church
explanations of it ; though these explanations, if I remember right-
ly, only amountefl to the statement that at one period of its exis-
tence the Rubric in question had been even more Protestant than
to-day. I was told that once it was positively heretical, but that
now a Catholic could accept it ; and I tried to feel satisfied. Then
I would stifle doubt by thinking : " Surely what satisfies Keble
and Pusey ought to satisfy you ? You must believe something
about the sacrament ; and if you follow the catechism you may
believe in the Real Presence. If another part of the Prayer-book
seems to deny it, theologians can explain away the apparent de-
nial. You are no theologian, and you must be content to take
their word for what is obscure to you." If the thought came to
me that such churchmen as Dean Close and Dean Stanley could
accept the catechism, and that therefore some " explanation "
which allowed of their doing so must be possible of the words
which to me were " a strong rock and a defence," I would argue :
" Yes ; but such guides as Low and Broad Churchmen are I can-
not follow, for they would forbid my going to confession ; and
though all else may be vague and uncertain, that confession has
done me good I am morally convinced."

I thought and was taught that Protestant ideas were gradual-
ly dying out, and that soon no view but the High-Church inter-
pretation of the Prayer-book would be taken by any one. Ritual-
ists were jubilant in those days ; people were beginning to take a
good deal of notice of them. On all sides were heard such say-
ings as these : " Give us but two years and we will convert Eng-
land " ; " Bring us before the courts and you will see who has the
law on their side " ; " A fair field and no favor is all we ask " ; and
I simply believed them all. Anglicanism had been of such great
service to me that I felt bound to trust it ; and I had an un-
measured enthusiasm for Ritualism and Ritualists which was un-
questioning and uncritical. I usually attended the services at an
East End, London, church, which I will call St. Philip's. It was a
new mission church, situated in a poor and unattractive neighbor-
hood. I respected its clergy, though personally they were un-
known to me. I admired their devoted lives, living as they did
in a most miserable corner of London ; and the Sisters of Mercy
who helped them I thought equally admirable. It would have
cost me so much to live as they lived that I thought they suf-
fered as in their place I should have suffered. -I was still very
ignorant. This was the only religion of which I knew anything,

726 THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. [Sept.,

and it seemed to me to give supernatural power to lead perfect
lives. I did not know or think about equally good Protestants,
who of course exist. I knew Catholics aimed at perfection a
perfection of which the Ritualist's ideal is but a*shadow, as I now
see ; but then I thought : " Here are English churchmen, without
making the sacrifice which is necessary in order to become Ca-
tholic, yet enjoying the same sacraments and doing the same
gooji work."

The services and music at St. Philip's were very beautiful. I
could look and listen and imagine myself to be in a Catholic
church, as I have never been able to do in any other Anglican
church. This seemed to give the whole thing what in those days
I called a " reality," though, as I now see, it was only the perfec-
tion of Catholic imitation. Every little ceremonial act copied
from what I had seen abroad, which was added to the Anglican
service, gave me distinct pleasure a pleasure I now look back on
as childish and contemptible. I am half amused, but a great deal
more ashamed, when I recall to mind the satisfaction which I felt
when I first saw the three clergy at " High Mass " (as we called it)
sit down on the sedilia whilst the choir finished singing a long
creed, instead of remaining standing before the Communion-table,
as is the English custom. I thought this was so delightfully
" Catholic." The bishops were subjects of mild jokes with us.
On one occasion an obscure colonial bishop celebrated at St.
Philip's. We thought it not unnatural that, being a bishop, he
should be the only person in the church who remained standing
during the " Et Incarnatus" We, superior beings, had been
taught to kneel as Catholics kneel ; but bishops, of course, were
ignorant! And yet, with all this folly, there mingled so much
that was real and earnest and good. The same men who were
imperilling the existence of their church rather than give up
their will concerning a posture or a dress, a candle or a picture,
were yet teaching me to love God with my whole heart and my
neighbor as myself, and to dread the slightest deliberate sin as a
greater evil than death itself.

I thought that the ultimate aim of Ritualists was the reunion
of Christendom. At first I imagined that it would be a kind of
" give and take " process which would effect this desirable end.
Anglicans would join the Greek Church, I hoped, and then Rome
would be glad to take us both back, and perhaps would bring
herself more into harmony with us. This hope, however, did
not last long. 'My ideas developed ; and then for many years I
looked on Ritualism as the schoolmaster which was to bring Eng-

1 88 1.] THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. 727

land into the church. My idea of reunion changed, and I only
longed for the day when my country should throw herself at the
Pope's feet and say : " Father, we have sinned and are no more
worthy to be called thy children ; make us like unto thy hired
servants." I was told and believed that every individual seces-
sion to Rome lessened the chance of the Church of England, as a
body, retracing its steps ; and that, as we had valid orders, we
had valid sacraments, and could therefore afford to wait. Rome
became my ideal of truth and consistency, and my hope was to
see the Church of England become more and more like the Ro-
man. Still, I never wished to deny all that Ritualism did for
me. All the good I got I put down to my habit of going to con-
fession. On this point I was thoroughly in earnest.- In many
ways I was very frivolous, but not in that. I never trifled with
confession, and it was of great service to me, though the fact
that it was so for a time kept me back from the church.

Of course if 1 had not believed in Anglican orders I should
have at once left the Establishment ; but I then knew nothing of
the Catholic doctrine of grace. Grace I believed to be given
through the sacraments, but of the difference between opus ope-
ratum and opus operans I knew nothing ; nor did I know that,
through the good disposition of the recipient, the benefits of the
sacraments might be received without their being validly admin-
istered. To deny that I had received grace through confession
and communion would have been impossible to me and untruth-
ful ; and I was sufficiently ignorant of theology to allow myself
to consider this mere subjective fact as an argument for Angli-
can orders. I argued that unless Anglican orders were real I
could not have received absolution, and that without absolution
I could not have received grace. If I could be sure of anything, I
felt sure that I had received grace ; therefore Anglicans had or-
lers. Although sometimes shaken by the thought that Rome
lenied our succession, I would again solace myself with the
thought that men like Pusey and Liddon could not remain where
tey were if they had reason to doubt that they were priests.
Jthough I did not know the history and facts of the case, they
lid ; and as long as they could remain it must be safe for me to
lo so. Dr. Pusey said one thing and Dr. Newman said the op-
>site. Dr. Pusey 's opinion was the one I wished to believe,
ind for a while I did believe it. And here I would say that the
>eculiar mischief of Ritualism is that, whilst utterly false and en-
tirely unreal, yet when accepted uncritically and on faith it will,
for a time, satisfy that which the church alone ought to and can

728 THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. [Sept.,

truly satisfy. If you live in a certain narrow and limited reli-
gious circle Ritualism allows of your forgetting all but itself.
You may imagine yourself in the most unreal paradise that can
be conceived ; you breathe the stifling and artificial air of a hot-
house ; you see everything as if illuminated by the unreal glare
of Bengal fire ; and you are the victim of a series of illusions
which must vanish at the first touch of honest criticism and be
destroyed by the first breath of wholesome common sense.

My paradise, thank God ! was not destined to last long. 1
remember well my first moment of doubt and the occasion of it.
I was at church, not at St. Philip's, but at one where the service
was elaborately but at the same time roughly and carelessly
performed. The music was bad, the choir was undevout, the
clergy were careless. Here I could not in the least imagine my-
self in a Catholic church. This was altogether an unfavorable
specimen of Ritualism : the parish was neglected and the clergy-
man was idle ; confession was discouraged and the services were
irregular. If all Ritualists were like the one I have in mind the
bishops would have had no difficulty in " putting down Ritual-
ism/' I could not, however, without descending to ridiculous-
ly small particulars, say in what this service differed from that
which I used to delight in at St. Philip's. I remember feeling an-
noyed at the slovenly and irreverent office I was attending, and
then the thought struck me : " Can this really be all right when
the bishops say that it is all wrong ? " I can hardly expect oth-
ers to believe that this was the first time that I doubted the truth
of Ritualism ; but it was. It seems so strange even to myself
now, but nevertheless it is the fact, that the thin end of the wedge
of doubt was only on that day inserted into my faith in Anglican-
ism.

I now began to look more critically into the whole system ;
and before impartial criticism Ritualism must needs fall. Al-
though I still had religious talks with my Anglican friend, I was
no longer to so great an extent under his personal influence. I
ceased to think his answers always satisfactory, and I examined
them more carefully. I would here say (space forbids my en-
larging on this point, touching which much might be Avritten)
that in looking back on the women whom I have left behind I
believe decidedly that, in most cases, it is personal influence
which keeps them in the English Church, and generally the influ-
ence of their confessor. I have known cases of otherwise intelli-
gent women who pinned their faith entirely to one man, and
who seemed to delight in subjecting their whole mind and soul

1 88 1.] THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. 729

to his guidance, to see in him pope, council, and church, father,
>rother, and friend combined. This unhealthy feeling, which, al-
though I valued confession highly, was always distasteful to me,
md in which I was never tempted to indulge, would not, I be-
lieve, arise if confession were the simple, straightforward ordi-
lance which it is in the church. The mystery and the excite-
ment which naturally follow from what, as a rule, is done by
stealth cause half the mischief which ensues from confession as
practised in the Establishment. Whilst under such influence wo-
men (I know nothing of men) will accept all they are told, de-
fine to read anything likely to shake their faith in Anglicanism,
jfuse to enter a Catholic church or honestly to seek after the
truth.

Whilst the first dawn of doubt was arising in my mind two
things happened to me : I read Newman's Sermons to Mixed
Congregations, which taught me the true nature of the church
as a living teacher ; and, secondly, I was startled by the decisions
of the Anglican law-courts. Ritualism, after all, was condemned ;
that which I had believed to be positively ordered was not even
lawful. There was at once an outcry that the judges were time-
serving and dishonest ; but these accusations could not satisfy
me. In cases in which I was in no way interested I had always
believed that the honor of English judges was above suspicion ;
and now, merely because a decision personally pained me, I could
not believe that the character of the bench had changed. These
accusations made me angry with the Ritualists rather than with
the judges. They had been confident that they were right, but
impartial judges said they were wrong ; sooner than own that
they had been mistaken, Ritualists asked me to believe that the
highest judges in England had become dishonest. Against this
rebelled. Ritualists used to talk a great deal about state tyr-
my, and try to fancy they were as praiseworthy as the Prussian
lergy, who were then making their noble stand against the secu-
ir power. But, unfortunately, I could never forget that whilst
ighting the state we were also and more earnestly fighting the
)ishops ; and this, in my eyes, was hardly Catholic behavior. I
in remember a letter which the Bishop of London wrote, as his
ishop, to an incumbent, asking him to give up the " eastward
position," which had been pronounced illegal. This he refused
to do, and the bishop was powerless to make him. I was annoy-
ed at this. I felt how fatal such a refusal was to all Catholic
idea of discipline. Yet to obey would have been tantamount to
throwing up the whole game. It became daily more difficult to

730 THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. [Sept.,

fit the square of Protestant fact into the round of our Catholic
ideal.

About this time the liberal school in the Establishment com-
menced an agitation in the hope of getting the use of the Athana-
sian Creed either abolished or modified. They were opposed,
and in the end were successfully opposed, by High-Churchmen,
the most prominent amongst whom did not hesitate to say that
they would be driven to reconsider their position as ministers in
the Establishment if the creed were touched. I myself could feel
no confidence that the English Church would retain the creed ;
and having now learnt from Dr. Newman what was meant by
having faith in the church, I was driven to face the truth that I
had not faith in the English Church. Moreover, I was forced to
conclude, from the logic of facts, that neither had Pusey nor Lid-
don faith in the Establishment, or they would not have been able
to suppose she could so far fall that they would be driven to
leave her. I never had any doubt where I should go if the
High-Church left the Establishment ; and this controversy and
uncertainty as to the fate of the Athanasian creed, I think, gradu-
ally accustomed my mind to the idea of leaving the English
Church. It certainly undermined my faith in her.

At the same time that Anglicans were admitting that it was
possible that their church should err I was struck by the unani-
mous way in which the whole Catholic episcopate accepted the
Vatican decrees. It did not matter whether individual bishops
beforehand had been personally favorable to the dogma of Papal
Infallibility or not ; the church spoke, and every single bishop ac-
cepted her voice as the voice of truth. There was no doubt that,
whatever might be the condition of other Christian bodies, there
was one church which was alive and could yet make her voice
heard and attended to. The Vatican decrees were a great trial to
English churchmen, and the tone of the whole party towards
Rome now changed. The Anglican press, led by the Saturday
Review, commenced writing in a tone of vulgar abuse which
threw all my sympathy on the side of those who were attacked.
It impugned, in the coarsest language, the motives both of the
bishops who were supposed to have urged on the definition of
Papal Infallibility and of those who submitted after it had been
defined. If these last were Catholics at all and believed in their
church I knew they could not do otherwise ; and the sympathy
which Anglicans showed to those newest of schismatics, the Alt
Catholics, merely disgusted me with Anglicans. Of the merits
of the case I knew nothing. I believed that Dr. Dollinger was

i88i.] THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. 731

a great theologian, and I believed that Dr. Newman was a still
greater. On one side was Dr. Dollinger and a few German pro-
fessors, on the other Dr. Newman and the whole church. I
thought that the church was more likely to be right ; at any rate,
the vulgar and low tone of writing on this topic which my friends
now adopted distressed me.

These were very unsettled years with me. The study of
Newman's sermons and the behavior of Ritualists shook my
faith in the English Church completely ; yet somehow I never
doubted, at this time, that we had valid sacraments. I thought
perhaps we might be like the Samaritans of old, not having part
in God's own city, Jerusalem, yet not altogether without his
grace. I was so ignorant, and it seemed such a presumptuous
thing for me to judge and condemn and leave the English Church
all by myself. If I had met a priest or any Catholic then I should
have joined the church ; but I knew no one to help me, and I
distrusted myself. I remembered that once I had misjudged
Ritualism, that I had already once changed, and this made me
doubtful of myself and my own judgment. I never denied, nor
do I wish now to deny, that Ritualism had been of great service
to me. When the Anglican bishops scolded the Ritualists I
would think : " I can only judge of things as they affect myself.
What was I before I became a Ritualist, and what do I try to be
now? It is an illogical system and looks absurd on paper, I
allow ; but it has helped me." When others ridiculed I felt I
did not care. From one point of view I could do as much ; but
from another I knew that it had brought me nearer to God.
This I again reiterate, though Ritualists were now beginning to
make me angry, and about this time I was severely tried. If I
recur to .the acts of individuals it is because the whole thing is
no system, but merely the different acts of different individuals.
Unless an Anglican follows himself and his own will he must
follow some one man, for no two Anglicans entirely agree to-
gether. A Catholic follows the church, but an Anglican must
follow an individual. He cannot follow the Prayer-book, for it
contradicts itself and needs an interpreter.

There was a clergyman who was a friend of mine and chap-
lain to one of the many small sisterhoods which of late years have
arisen. He asked me one day to come to an afternoon service
at their chapel. I found myself in a small but pretty and highly
decorated room, with a beautiful altar and a tabernacle in which
was reserved what we believed to be the Blessed Sacrament.
After some of the Hours had been sung by the sisters the clergy-

732 THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. [Sept.,

man proceeded to give benediction. Of course I knew that the
Blessed Sacrament was reserved in some Anglican sisterhoods,
and that benediction was constantly given ; but I had never be-
fore been present at the service. Before going I fancied that I
should like it. When abroad I had never missed an opportunity
of attending benediction, and had enjoyed doing so. But on this
occasion, I did not know why, but I left the chapel annoyed and
angry, almost indignant. It had seemed to me very like playing
with sacred things, and altogether profane and distressing. Here
were a priest, as I thought him, and some half a dozen women
turning a room into a chapel, and, without any authority from
bishop or Prayer-book, performing rites, with the most solemn
mysteries of religion, which were to be found in no Anglican
formulary. How far they may have been to blame I cannot
say ; I only know the effect which this benediction produced on
me. I knew that the clergyman could only have the power of
consecrating the Blessed Sacrament by virtue of his ordina-
tion by the bishop ; and to use the power in a way never con-
templated when it was given seemed to me altogether dishonest
and wrong. It may have been illogical to have been so much
distressed by this one thing, but different things* affect different
people differently. I can now feel thankful to be able, in that in-
stance, to disbelieve in Anglican orders. I am more glad than I
can say that it was not really the Blessed Sacrament that seemed
to bless me on that afternoon, and that Jesus was not specially
present in a way which forced me hardly to welcome his sacred
presence. After this day I would sometimes think : " Can God
really have given the English Church such a gift as the Blessed
Sacrament, and have in no way guarded it ? A Low-Churchman
shocks me at every turn in his irreverent treatment of the Sacra-
ment, and a High-Churchman takes it and uses it simply as he
wills."

During these years of my life I was gradually growing to see
Ritualism as it really is, only a sect within a sect. For some
time there were no means of testing what advance the party was
making. Our newspapers still talked of our great successes ; but
I was beginning to feel like a burnt child. I had believed Ritu-
alists when they told me that the law as to ritual was on our
side, and I had been deceived. Now they might say what they
liked, it all went for nothing with me. The Public Worship
Regulation Bill was now before Parliament, and I thought that
I could see a test in that. Parliament fairly represented the
country. If it passed a bill to " put down Ritualism " by a large

1 88 1.] THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. 733

majority, I should know that we Ritualists were not really mak-
ing way in England. The bill passed without even a division
and with the consent of the bishops. I now knew that, after
forty years' work, we had made no impression at all on the coun-
try. I think the passing of that bill was the death-knell to my
hopes of seeing the Church of England " Catholicized." Whilst
this measure was pending there was a great deal of loud and
excited talk touching the enormity of the bishops' sin in being
willing to give up their jurisdiction to a layman. I understood
law and history too little to realize this sin for myself; but I felt,
if all were true which the Ritualists said, that the Church of
England would be undone and that we should have to leave her.
This undisciplined talk unsettled me still further ; but, as usual,
it all ended in talk, and when the worst actually happened that
could happen the catastrophe was followed by no action what-
ever. Ritualists should either have talked less whilst the act was
pending or they ought to have done more after it was passed. I
expected some common action to be taken, but I expected in
vain ; there was none.

I was now beginning to feel contemptuously towards those
whom I had before admired. I felt as if I had been misled and
trifled with and deceived. But yet, even to the last, when tempt-
ed to harsh judgment, I would think : " After all, the Ritualists
led you to confession, and where would you have been without
that ? " It never even occurred to me, during these years when I
was feeling most acutely the faults of the Ritualists, that their op-
ponents the Protestants were right. After once accepting the true
doctrine of the sacraments I was never tempted to doubt in the
truth of what I believed. I could as soon have doubted of the
existence of God himself. My faith in Catholic doctrines was
absolute ; but my faith that the Church of England taught them
was fading away.

About this time I passed some months abroad and went to
Mass daily. I was mentally very unsettled and in great doubt.
I would spend the whole time a Mass lasted merely repeating
the one ejaculation : " Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee,
O Lord ! " Perhaps it was then and there that I gained grace
to become a Catholic, the gift which has been given me of faith
in the Church. I was longing now to be in the true fold, and
was only, or mainly, held back by the fear I felt of the presump-
tion and responsibility o'f judging and condemning the religion
in which God had willed that I should be born. I knew no Ca-
tholic and had no one to help me. Whilst in this sore distress,

734 THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. [Sept.,

for a moment my hopes of ultimate reunion were once more
quickened by a published Letter addressed to Cardinal Manning
by an English clergyman, who felt strongly that the English
bishops had betrayed their church and that it could no longer
be safe to remain within their communion. I had barely read
the pamphlet when both it and the idea of reunion with the Ca-
tholic Church were repudiated in a declaration in the papers
signed by nearly every High-Churchman I knew of. This de-
claration almost stunned me. What but reunion, I asked myself,
was the aim of the whole thing ? What had I been praying for,
hoping for, believing in ? Was it merely to make the High-
Church party the most influential school of thought in the Es-
tablishment, as before had been the Evangelical? No; I had
been taught that we were to undo the work of the Reformation,
and that England once more was to be Catholic and one with
the Catholic Church.

I now felt bitterly towards the Ritualists. They seemed to
me too self-conceited, too self-sufficient. They called themselves
" Catholic " and anathematized the whole Catholic Church.
They neither obeyed their own bishops nor wished to be one
with Catholic bishops. I felt angry ; my religion had completely
failed me, I see now that I ought there and then to have become
a Catholic ; but I did not know to whom I could go. I hoped
that many might be feeling as I did, and that I should not have
to go alone. At the time secession is such a wrench ; and I
thought I ought not to act hastily, that God would guide me
even more directly. If I may say a word to others, I would
earnestly beg such as may feel as I then felt to go at once to a
priest ; the effort, when once made, is trifling. If under Anglican
direction I should advise you to tell your director what you pro-
pose to do ; but should he attempt to dissuade you, on no ac-
count pay attention to what he may say. No impartial person
could advise your doing so. It seerhs more open to tell him, and
it is better in many ways. In the English mind the chief wish
is to believe that the church encourages deceitfulness. If you
are not prepared to proclaim your religious doubts on the house-
tops, even before you experience them, some persons are sure to
accuse you of deceit ; this is unavoidable. All that you can do in
order to avoid this suspicion it is well to do.

I must, however, bring my own story to a conclusion, though I
necessarily omit much. The end came at last suddenly. I unex-
pectedly had an opportunity of being introduced to a Catholic
priest, and I availed myself of it. After talking with me earn-

JSi.] THROUGH RITUALISM TO ROME. 735

tly for an hour he said : " You know and believe all that is nec-
essary ; I will receive you to-morrow." Need I say that I did
not refuse ? From that day to this I have been ever growing
more and more thankful to God for making me a Catholic. I
feel the joy of being one to the very centre of my being. My re-
ligion fills every corner of my existence, meets me and satisfies
me at every turn of my life. To those outside the ark of safety
I should seem merely to rhapsodize were I to recount the happi-
ness of being within the church. Those that are within know it
too well to require any telling. To these Cardinal Newman's
simple words, " It is a great gift to be a Catholic," are an old yet
ever-living truth. .

Some may object that I have told my story ill, in that I in no
way dwell on my acceptance of what Anglicans call " distinctive
Roman doctrines." But faith in individual doctrines was never
my difficulty. My only anxiety was to find God's own church.
Whatever she might teach I could accept with childlike confi-
dence, once assured that it was His voice that was teaching me.
After being received into the church I as naturally believed in
the Immaculate Conception, and endeavored to gain indulgences,
as I believed in the Blessed Trinity and attended divine service.
Each detail of my faith and duty came to me from the same di-
vine authority, and to each and all I felt bound with equal loy-
alty. In a few words, I would sum up my conversion thus : I had
ilways thought that I could be more religious as a Catholic than
anything else. Ritualism offered to make me a Catholic, and
tught me enough of Catholicism to allow of my turning round
>n my teacher and saying : " If this be the Catholic faith your
^ligion falls short of it, both in doctrine and indiscipline." This,
)ined to the complete change of front on many important occa-
ions and on many momentous topics of the Ritualist party,
med my eyes ; and God, in his great mercy, brought me safely
tt of the tempests of Anglicanism into the calm haven of his
ternal peace and truth.

736 ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. [Sept.,

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

WILL the news of the present time read as much out of date
and place one hundred years hence as the news which our fore-
fathers read in 1780-81 seems now? It is hard to say, but per-
haps some idea of what was " news " to London readers just a
century past may prove interesting to ours. Chance has placed in
our hands a file of the English Annual Register, extending over very
many years, and strangely indeed, like the whispered warnings
of old tombstones, comes before us the vainglorious records of
the men of the time whose story is chronicled.

On the loth of January, 1780, the Admiralty published the
following notification :

"ADMIRALTY OFFICE, January 10, 1780.

" Captain Clerke, of his majesty's sloop the Resolution, in a letter to Mr.
Stephens dated the 8th June, 1779, in the harbor of St. Peter and St.
Paul, Kampschata, which was received yesterday, gives the melancholy
account of the celebrated Captain Cooke, late commander of that sloop,
with four of his private mariners, having been killed on the I4th Febru-
ary last at the island of O'why'he, one of a group of new discovered islands
in the twenty-third degree of north latitude, in an affray with a numerous
and tumultuous body of the natives."

So that it took very nearly a year- to convey the news of the
death of the daring navigator to his native land. On the 26th of
January, 1780, news reached London that

" In the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, held at Philadelphia the
23d of September last, it was agreed that the claims made by the proprie-
tors of that province to the whole of the soil contained within the charter,
together with the reservation of quit-rents, purchase-money, etc., being no
longer consistent with the safety of the commonwealth, the Assembly
therefore, as representatives of the province, resumed the same, under cer-
tain restrictions and provisos, to themselves ; granting, however, to the
Penn family the sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling,
to be paid by different instalments of not less than fifteen thousand pounds
a year, nor more than twenty thousand, the first payment to be made at
the expiration of one year after the termination of the present war."

While on the Qth of February, 1780, the citizens of London
became aware that

" In Holt's New York Journal of November 29 there is inserted an act
of the United States, passed on the 22d October last, for the forfeiture

1 88 1.] ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 737

id sale of the estates of Sir Henry Clinton, Knt. ; John Murray, Earl of
>unmore, formerly governor of the colony of New York ; Wm. Tryon, late
>vernor of the said colony ; John Watts, Oliver de Lancy, Hugh Wallace,
[enry White, John Harris Cruger, William Axtel, and Roger Morris, Esqrs.,
ite members of the council of that colony'; George Duncan Ludlow and
'homas Jones, late justices of the Supreme Court of the said colony ; and
Fohn Tabor Kempe, late attorney-general of the said colony, and of several
)ther persons therein named ; vesting the property of their estates in the
)eople of the United States of America, declaring them guilty of felony
md for ever banished under pain of death."

On the i Qth of February it was known in London, by a letter
-eceived from Spain, that on

"The 1 6th January arrived in Corunna the American ship the Alli-
, of twenty-eight guns and one hundred and fifty men, commanded by
the famous American, Paul Jones. He sailed from the Texel the i;th of
ist month, having eluded the vigilance of the English, who had a squadron
looking out for him and expected him in the Downs. He crossed the
Channel and came here safe without meeting any of the enemy's ships. In
this cruise for ten or twelve days off our capes he took a Dutch ship laden
ammunition and provisions for Gibraltar, which he sent to Boston.
Captain Cunningham is with him, having escaped out of an English prison."

American example was evidently beginning to work what
English lords and ministers were wont to count bad results, and
;he sound of the cannon of Bunker Hill had evidently scattered
the mist which hung over the freedom of another people ; there-
fore it was that early in March it was current news in the Eng-
lish metropolis that

" The Dublin Volunteers, going to be reviewed in the Phoenix Park on
the ist instant, were met in Barrack Street by the king's troops going to
relieve guard at the Castle ; the former insisted on having the way,
which was obstinately refused by the latter on account of their being the
king's troops. And so tenacious were the Volunteers of supporting every
degree of national freedom that the Duke of Leinster was sent for ; but
otwithstanding his persuasions to give way to the royal army, the Volun-
ers insisted to a man to have the way or fight for it, and so determined
were they that they formed themselves for the fatal purpose. However,
the officers of both parties at length agreed that the Volunteers should
have their way to prevent the dreadful consequence. A sort of formal
excuse was next day sent to the lord-lieutenant to the Castle, but couched
such a form that justified their conduct, on the dignity of national inde-
pendence and freedom."

Well had it been for Ireland if her citizen-soldiers were, to al-
ways turn as deaf ears to their noble misleaders as upon this oc-
casion, and better still had it been for her had bayonets been
crossed that day in Barrack Street and " the dreadful consequen-
VOL. xxxiii. 47

738 ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, [Sept.,

ces " dreaded by the English scribe brought about. But instead of
a fearless soldier leader she had but a nervous patron of the fine
arts as commander-in-chief ; where a Washington was needed she
had only a Charlemont.

In the days of our forefathers, as we all know, the code of
honor, so far at least as it bound them to shoot one another on
fitting occasion, was binding on English gentlemen, and perhaps
the following account may be taken as fairly illustrative of men
and manners at such times :

"This morning (22d March, 1780) a duel was fought in Hyde Park be-
tween the Earl of Shelburne and Wm. Fullerton, Esq., member for Plympton,
in Devonshire. The cause of the above duel originated in some expres-
sions used by Lord Shelburne respecting Colonel Fullerton in a parliamen-
tary debate. The two parties met at five in the morning, the Right Hon.
the Earl of Shelburne being attended by Lord Frederick Cavendish as his
second, and Mr. Fullerton by the Earl of Balcarras. The place of combat
being chosen, the ground was measured out, and each party took his stand
at twelve paces' distance. Mr. Fullerton fired first, but missed his lordship,
who in return discharged his pistol, but without effect. Mr. Fullerton then
fired a second time, when the ball lodged in his lordship's thigh. Mr. Ful-
lerton, perceiving his lordship wounded, advanced towards him, telling him
he had now an opportunity of explaining what he had said in the House of
Lords. Lord Shelburne replied he did not come there to make any ex-
planations, on which Lord Balcarras returned Mr. Fullerton to his ground,
when Lord Shelburne very gallantly fired his pistol into the air, saying
Mr. Fullerton could not suppose he should now mean to fire at him. The
seconds, here interposing, put an end to the combat, and Lord Shelburne
walked to Hyde Park Corner, where getting into a hackney coach, he was
carried home, and Mr. Adair, being sent for, extracted the ball."

It would be somewhat difficult to tell what degree of satisfac-
tion the wounded honor of either of these gentlemen received
from this March morning's work, but it is easy to see from the
records of the Register that either of them might have killed
the other without much dread of experiencing serious annoyance
from the ministers of justice. In very truth it was somewhat
more criminal for a starving, famished outcast to steal where-
withal to constitute a meal (sufficient, indeed, to have him con-
demned to the gallows) than for some semi-stupefied debauchee,
reckless libertine, or wily gambler what you will to shoot to
death some fair-haired boy, some injured husband. Read this
under date 3Oth March, 1780, and admire the justice current in the
days " when George III. was king " :

" On Friday last at the assizes at Kingston, in Surrey, the trials on the
crown side came on before the Hon. Mr. Justice Gould and a special jury,
when Mr. Donovan (who voluntarily surrendered) was tried for having

[88 1.] ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 739

:illed in a duel in November last Captain James Hanson. The jury, with-
it going out of court, acquitted Mr. Donovan of the murder, and found

dm guilty of manslaughter on the coroner's inquest. The judge fined him
;n pounds to the king, which being paid in court, he was immediately dis-
larged."

'he full equity of such a sentence as this strikes us when on
mother page we read of a wretched creature condemned to
death for robbery of three shillings, or when we come on a de-
scription of one forenoon's work at Tyburn, when Jack Ketch
" swung off " seven criminals of, it ma}' perhaps be hoped, at least
equal guilt.

How his Britannic majesty's navy was manned at this time is
well known, and the gentle pressure exercised by his press-gangs,
in order to fill the gaps made by missiles of war in the ranks of
England's " hearts of oak" immortalized by Dibdin, hardly needs
recalling ; but perchance the following may not be quite unsuit-
able for quotation as illustrative of the ways of the period :

" LIVERPOOL, March 23.

" On Friday last, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a press-gang
assembled before the house of Mr. James Richards, in Hackin's Hey, in
this town, where a number of sailors had resorted to protect themselves
from being impressed ; and upon Richards refusing to open the door a
general firing ensued, which lasted half an hour. In the affray Richards,
the master of the house, received two wounds in the face, of which he now
lies dangerously ill at the infirmary. A soldier belonging to the Yorkshire
militia, who happened to be in the house when the press-gang came, was
shot through the body, and died of his wounds the next morning. The
coroner's inquest hath since sat on the body, and the jury have brought in
their verdict, wilful murder, against persons unknown."

Recruits passed through such baptisms of fire were not un-
likely to prove tough customers in actual warfare ; but an item of

lews such as we are about to quote may be taken as showing
that in that warfare all the daring was not the sole prerogative

>f one side. On the loth of April, 1780, it is noted that

"The following melancholy account is just received at the Admiralty,
nz., that as the Penelope sloop, which had captured three Spanish prizes
in the West Indies, was returning with the prisoners into Jamaica a violent
lie came on, which forced most of the Penelopes crew to go aloft, during
rhich time the Spaniards, who were not confined, rose, cut Captain Jones'
throat and massacred every man upon and between decks, afterwards shot
the remainder as they descended from aloft, and then stood away with the
ship for the Havannah. Captain Jones' son, who was put prize-master
into one of the Spanish vessels, brought over the above horrid relation."

The month of June, 1780, was rendered memorable by the ter-
rible riots brought about by the designs or follies of Lord George

740 ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. [Sept.,

Gordon and the leaders of his " Protestant Associations," and we
have page after page of accounts of the wrecking and demolition
of " Popish Mass-houses " and the free quartering of riotous
mobs, of their own motion, in the shops and houses of worthy
citizens, said wrecking, demolition, and free quartering being per-
mitted to go on virtually unchecked while applied only to the
property and chattels of those " Papists " whose " Mass-houses "
were just beginning to become apparent to lovers of Protestant
supremacy. However, disorder, as indeed is somehow its wont,
confused and dazed-like, not distinguishing, perhaps, friend from
enemy, ceased to make difference between Papist and Protestant,
and dared to burn government jails and to sack orthodox judges'
houses. Then military were quickly summoned, and volleys of
musketry and keen sabres soon brought about a subsidence of the
ebullitions of mobocracy. His majesty, however, in explaining to
his Parliament his reasons for authorizing the employment of
armed force against the " free Englishmen " who had worked
such havoc amongst the belongings of their fellow-citizens,
thought it necessary to speak in the following apologetic man-
ner :

" Though I trust it is not necessary, yet I think it right at this time to
renew to you my solemn assurances that I have no other object but to
make the laws of the realm, and the principles of our excellent constitu-
tion in church and state, the rule and measure of my conduct ; and I shall
ever consider it as the first duty of my station and the chief glory of my
reign to maintain and preserve the established religion of my kingdoms,
and, as far as in me lies, to secure and perpetuate the rights and liberties of
my people."

The "excellent constitution" so lauded by poor George III.
has undergone many a change and improvement since, and yet
some are to be found so perverse as not to be able even yet to
endorse his majesty's description of the secular system they are
parts of, thus displaying a density of vision doubtless to be as-
signed to democratic ignorance.

In May of this year highly self-glorificatory despatches came
to hand from my Lord Cornwallis, describing in brilliant periods
his " signal victory " over " the rebel army, commanded by
General Greene " ; but on October 20 his lordship had, as he put
it himself, " the mortification " to have to transmit the account of
the surrender of York and Gloucester and his army to the sol-
diers of the United States and France.

For some time previous to January, 1781, a French gentleman
had resided in Bond Street. Liberal with his money, of which he

88 1.] ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 741

seemed to have much, he had made his entrance into polite cir-
cles, wherein his courtly manners and title of baron gained him
due esteem. His name was Henri Francis de la Motte. Acting,
however, on, as it proved, good information, Lord Hillsborough,
as Secretary of State, ordered, on the 5th of January, De la Motte's
arrest on a charge of being implicated in treasonable practices.
As the baron was ascending the stairs leading to the secretary's
office, whither his captors were conducting him for examination,
he dropped certain papers. These were instantly discovered by
the escort and produced at his examination. On perusal of these
papers it became at once evident wherefore the unfortunate
baron had sought to get rid of them ; for they afforded infor-
mation enabling government to at once arrest his colleague in
his treasonable designs. This colleague was one Henry Lutter-
loh a German gentleman, who had lately taken a handsome house
at a place called Wickham, within a few miles of Portsmouth ;
and we are told that, " as he was considered a good companion,
he was well received by the gentlemen in the neighborhood."
Large sums of money in various mediums were found in -posses-
sion of Lutterloh, who seems to have eventually turned king's
evidence in order to avoid the fate which he thus helped to as-
sure to his companion. At the sessions held at the Old Bailey
in July De la Motte was arraigned on the charge of carrying on
a treasonable correspondence with the enemies of England and
of "our sovereign lord, the king." Of course in those days even
much less evidence than was producible in this case would have
satisfied any jury selected by the sheriffs of the time that the
brief held by his majesty's attorney-general was infallible, and,
therefore, there is no matter for wonder in the fact that the pris-
oner was speedily convicted, and was sentenced to death by the
horrible process which the statute law of England still holds
fittest doom for those whose political beliefs may lead them into
what government lawyers may style " high treason." '

On the I4th of July De la Motte was sentenced to death and
ordered to be executed on the 28th. He had been a prisoner in
the Tower from the time of his arrest, but on the morning of his
execution the keepers of that fortalice delivered him to the cus-
tody of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex. These latter func-
tionaries conveyed him, with proper guarding, to Newgate, from
whence, at about a quarter after nine o'clock, the unfortunate

* In 1867 General Burke was sentenced in Dublin to the same death as De la Motte. The
escape of the Fenian leader from this doom was chiefly ascribable to the pleading of the illus-
trious Cardinal Cullen with the viceroy.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. [Sept.,

Frenchman started on his progress to Tyburn. This progress
had somewhat of state imparted to it ; and as the mournful pro-
cession passed slowly through the half-sympathetic crowd, as the
June sun shone clear and bright on the thronged streets, 'little
wonder if the thoughts of De la Motte went back to pageants of
the past in which he played a brighter part, to other summer
mornings spent in luxurious lounging in the umbrageous alleys
of Versailles ; but the scrutinizing on-lookers saw no sign of fear
or weakness in the cold, calm, and handsome face, intently perus-
ing a book of devotion, fervently reciting the last prayers he was
ever to utter ; never a glance to right or to left told that he knew
all London was out to see him die. The procession was lengthy.
It was headed by the city marshal, and composed of strong
guards, the sheriffs in their state carriages attended by their offi-
cers and "a prodigious number of constables," and of course, as
we have said, included the prisoner on a rude sledge or substi-
tute for the historic hurdle. At last the gallows was reached,
and then, after some two minutes spent in most fervent devotion,
De la Motte desired the executioner to perform his task. This he
did. After the body had been hanging some time the legal but
horrid butchery began. The lifeless body was decapitated, the
gallant heart was cut out and burned. A miserable parody on the
ancient practice of thoroughly quartering the corpse was resorted
to in deference to some kind of prejudice, and it was only rough-
ly gashed instead of being quite divided ; but the scaffold ran
red and thick with the blood of a nobleman and soldier ere the
hangman's pay was earned. And this, this was done in the land
wherein such hypocritical outcries had been raised over the fate
of Andre !

With the following entry, suggestive of much thought as it is,
we think we may leave the Annual Register of 1781 :

"OCTOBER 29.

" On the 22d inst. the young Dauphin of France was baptized by the
name of Louis Joseph Xavier Frangois. The sponsors were the emperor
and the Princess of Piedmont, represented by the Count de Provence
and Madame Elizabeth."

Poor prince ! If ever life told the fact that it is well the fu-
ture is hidden from mortal ken, assuredly thine did ; and it being
so, the future being yet unrolled, as it were, thy father was free
to go on making padlocks and thy mother to design fairy palaces,
all unconscious of the mighty torrent and portentous avalanche
before which bars and padlocks and palaces were to fall shattered
and broken in those days as yet uncome.

:88i.] A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. 743

A SONG WITHOUT WORDS.

DULL, cold, gray as a stormy sea ! Not a person visible at
the opposite windows, not a person visible down the long vista of
the wide street, not a sign of life on the short up-grade between
me and the western sky. What a place it was for an eager soul
longing for the rush and struggle of the busy world ! What a
fate was mine fast bound with the adamantine links of hopeless
disease ! I pushed my chair away from the window and covered
my face with my hands, too unhappy, I knew not why, for one
comforting, cheering ray of spiritual sunshine to penetrate the
gloom around me. I was free from pain, I had my books and
my desk, and the prospect of a long, quiet morning such as
would once have seemed to me a foretaste of heaven ; yet I felt
an overpowering dread of both life and death. I was not often
the victim of such moods. The only thing that made them bear-
able at all was the knowledge that they were the effect of phy-
sical causes, and, when I had waited long enough, would pass
away, leaving me to my usual serene, enforced contentment.

I was roused from my apathy, after a time, by a voice in the .
street a man's voice, full and rich, singing a stave of a half-
familiar air, with a strange, pathetic thrill in its notes that made
it new ; a foreign voice the mellow warmth of sunny France,
without the care-free ring; a voice that spoke directly to my
heart and sent the sluggish blood rapidly to my heavy limbs. I
raised my head eagerly, and held my breath to follow its dying
cadence and the fainting echo of its owner's footsteps.

But it did not pass on, and I heard no step. I wheeled my
hair to the window I had found so barren of interest, and looked
gerly forth. No one on the opposite pavement, as I had ex-
ted ; no one beneath my window, unless they were flattened
gainst the house-wall. But in the middle of the street, creeping
slowly from the shadow of an intervening tree-trunk, there came
a crippled man a tall, straight, stalwart man, with a tawny
beard, and a soldier's bearing under his worn civilian's dress,
with a weather-beaten face and bright, pathetic, heart-broken
eyes under his broad, soft, shabby hat. He walked with difficul-
ty, supporting himself on a stout cane ; the stump of his left arm,
amputated at the wrist and closely, skilfully bound in snow-
white linen, was pressed against his breast. With a dumb pa-

744 A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. [Sept.,

tience pitiful to see he turned slowly from side to side, scanning
the unresponsive windows and pouring out his song upon the
flinty walls. It was as though in the whole wide world we two
sad creatures were alone and unheeded.

I cannot tell you what that man became to me in one moment.
My apathy was gone, my depression a thing of the past,' my for-
lorn condition the very gate of Paradise ; for there flashed upon
me a vision of all the years had held for him as contrasted with
my fate, an outlook into his future and mine, when I recognized
in his song the "Marseillaise." Under what different circum-
stances he must have learned it ! In what a defiant frenzy of
youth, and hope, and reckless, spendthrift humor he must have
trolled those passionate raptures, to which he still gave a thrill-
ing echo of hopeless emotions ! His eye .met mine in its weary
search, and, with the awkwardness of one as yet unused to mutila-
tion, he saluted me with grave courtesy. I signed to him to wait
and rang my bell.

" There is a man in the street I must speak to," I said to the
servant. " Go, ask him in a sick man, with his arm bound up."

The little maid withdrew in wondering silence, and I instant-
ly half repented of my impulse. It was an odd thing to do.
But the yearning pity that urged me to it was stronger than my
cautious prudence. ' Further, I remembered I had never re-
gretted former actions of a like nature, and busied myself in ad-
justing my position to meet my guest.

I could hear him coming slowly up the stairs and halting at
every turn. Then the trembling step drew nearer along the
hall, with a heart-beat in every sound. Molly opened the door,
rounder-eyed than ever, and demurely announced : " The gentle-
man, miss," and we were face to face he flushing and paling
with the exertion, but composed; I embarrassed, nonplussed,
wanting words and wits.

" You must not be surprised at my sending for you," I said,
plunging at once into the heart of the matter. " I am a prisoner,
as you see," touching the wheel of my chair, " and I sometimes
have very dreary days. This is one of them. It made me think
we might understand each other." He bowed gravely, but there
was a slight, a very slight, smile of doubt and dissent in his keen,
clear eyes.

" I may hope mademoiselle does not quite understand me" he
said, with the slight accent which renders our language with per-
fect emphasis. " It would be too sad a thing for her."

" Sit down, please." I motioned him to the chair Molly had

58 1.] A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. 745

t ought forward. " You are are not so strong as you would
sh. A rest will do you great good."
" I have come only from the hospital so near. But I am, as
mademoiselle so kindly says, less strong than I would wish."
He sat down wearily, yet kept the courteous attitude of a well-
bred man attending a lady's conversation. He was an older man
than I had thought him from the window, and had been most
handsome. The evidences of some story worth the telling were
patent to my woman's eyes, and, with that eagerness born of the
invalid's narrowed life among slight and monotonous events, I
hungered for it.

" You have suffered much," I said. " Was it recently ? Are
you just recovering ? "

" I have been many weeks in the hospital, which I left to-day.
It would have been, perhaps, less unfortunate for me had I left
it in the arms of others. I have no home, no friends, no hope of
happiness. I am old and poor, and a cripple ! "

There was no note of petition in the statement. Pity for him-
self such as another might express, a sort of sad wonder that a
man could come to such an evil state, but a dignity that forbade
the word-sympathy we tender the complaining poor. I was
silent and oppressed.

" Tell me your story," I entreated at last, with that direct-
ness possible when one is sure of the motive. I felt for him a
true and earnest sympathy, and instinctively I trusted him. It
was right that our lives, touching never so slightly, should leave
to each a warmer memory. How many, many times in my dark-
ened lot have I drawn from the oasis of a fresh heart found in
the desert waters of peace, and even the wine of strength !

" Mademoiselle will soon tire of it " (but he looked at me
eagerly). " It is not much, and it is sad. It is of pain, of loss, of
death, of care, with this ending " holding out the white-rolled
limb.

" Mine, too ! If I have kept the outward garb of easy circum-
stances, friend, it may belie the inner life beyond all human know-
ledge. I tell you I have suffered, and every sorrowful lot on
earth is kin to mine. Tell me ! "

I spoke with energy and fire. Always the fretting spirit
chafed against its bonds ; always there was the passionate longing
to fathom some gulf yet deeper, and learn from some stronger
spirit the blessed lesson of real and perfect endurance. The face
of my oddly-brought-about companion softened with a noble
compassion.

746 A SOIVG WITHOUT WORDS. [Sept.,

"Mademoiselle speaks truth," he said very gently. "The
outer and the inner life may differ widely : there may be the
breadth of heaven and hell within four walls. I have seen that
yes, often ! " He smoothed his long, soft beard and thought
a quiet moment of me, I was sure, and with a deeper interest
than before. The answering chord was struck between us.

" Mademoiselle/' he began, laying his mutilated arm easily
upon his breast, and holding it with his remaining hand, as though
in preparation for an undisturbed season of rest and talk, " I
have lived sixty full years. My name is Henri Rocher, and I am
of France of the south of France, observe, mademoiselle. It is
a beautiful country, and the people are good in their way,
none better. The good God has them in his care. But theirs is
often a hard, poor way as it is here, alas ! and I was foolish
enough to think an easier, pleasanter life would come to me if I
purchased it with the pain of exile. I came away from my home,
still young not thirty with a little money, good health, and a
light and happy heart. I left there my good parents. They have
died long since ah ! yes, it is years. But they were blessed in
their other children, who served them well and prospered a lit-
tle here, a little there and made them homes of comfort. They,
too, are dead. I am alone.

" It was a fine country I came to here very fine ! For the
man with hands, with feet, with head, with the tongue that keeps
silent as he wills, and speaks well and softly as he wills, it is a rich
country. But I had them not all. The hands, and the feet, and
the head yes ; but the tongue no ! I get into trouble here, I
get into trouble there ; I laugh, and sing, and tell all my thoughts.
They laugh and sing with me, and tell me nothing. Then trou-
ble, and I must begin again. I begin, and begin, and begin.
I build, I farm, I write, I do the business of a merchant, and I
live, sometimes well, sometimes not well; until I am forty years
old, and I love."

He paused to watch my reception of the last two words, upon
which his voice softened and hesitated, with something of the shy
reserve of a boy.

" It came late," was all I said, but my look answered
him.

" It came late ! But it came, and I found it sweet, and it made
of me a good man. It came late to her, mademoiselle. She was
young still, but she had been alone all her life. No one had made
her happy, no one had shown her any pleasant thing, and she was
so pale, and still, and sorrowful it made my heart ache when I

1 88 1.] A SO-NG WITHOUT WORDS. 747

saw her, always so busy, busy at her work in the shop where I
was a clerk. It was a hard, cruel place, and I told myself, when I
went to it, it would not be for long. But it was. One year I was
there, and then I knew it was love, and I spoke of it to her. At
first she was frightened and would not hear. But then she knew
it was of her true also, and soon, soon we went away together to a
little home in another city, where I had a better place. She was
never, never sorrowful again. We were both so happy I forgot
trouble could come. I worked for her hard and well ; we laugh,
and sing, and talk together, and all was right the world over, I
thought. But here in this fine country all was very wrong
wrong enough to bring the war of the rebellion, which could not
be worse."

No, verily ! It has passed from the lives of men and from the
hearts of women ; it is a turned page that led up to triumph and
the people's good. But there are those among us yet who know
of their own dear-bought knowledge, with Henri Rocher, the
" wrong" could not be worse. I turned away my head with the
quick assent of pain as his words came home.

" Pardon, mademoiselle," he said instantly. " It is, after all,
not so long ago for some of us. Well," going on quickly, " you
will believe me that things changed for us in those dark days. 1
came home many times, many times with a so heavy heart I could
not laugh, I could not sing, I could not talk to the little wife, who
again was pale and quiet, but not sad ah ! no. At last I lost my
place ; there was no other. Every one, every one thought only of
one thing the war, the army. I trembled before her at the
thought of the future. 1 remembered the good God was every-
where ; I had faith in the Blessed Virgin Mother, who would
protect the widow and the fatherless with her prayers, and I said
to my wife, ' I must go. The cause is good, the country is yours,
you have a brave little heart, and you have the good God and the
saints.' And she was so brave ! She was smiling at me, and not
sad, when I saw her last. She said to me for the last words : ' I
have been so happy with you, my Henri!' When I had been
gone one month they wrote to me, ' She is dead.' "

He sat in such perfect stillness the words seemed to have been
spoken of a parted spirit that instant called away. I felt the
keen pang of his long-ago grief as it struck home, and needed no
fuller explanation, no other word to paint the desolation of this
child-nature, unreflecting, free as the winds, satisfied in the pre-
sent, I was sure, until that blow came.

The best and purest men have always a wide margin of this

748 A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. [Sept.,

child-likeness to the closely-written pages of their life's story of
labor which has its eternal reward.

" I was taken prisoner after that," he presently resumed. " I
was ill a long time in a Southern prison, and one forgets all ex-
cept pain in such an experience. When I came out the war was
nearly over ; by the time my strength had come to me there was
peace. I could go where I would, I could work, I could begin
again. But, mademoiselle, nothing was the same to me. I was
forty-seven. One is no longer young at seventeen, even, if the
heart fails one. I tried. I came here, I went there ; I did this
little thing, I did that little thing, and I lived no more. I had
the tongue in order now, mademoiselle, but not the hands, nor the
feet, nor the head. Sometimes I found good friends, who made
it not so sad for me, and always, more than ever, the good God
was there. At last I came into a quiet place where I could work
my best and live by it. It is a rough little village on the river-
side, a people who have lived there years and years from the first
settlement. In the spring they fish, in the summer they farm, in
the autumn they shoot, in the winter they knit by the fire the
nets for the next year's fishing. They are never rich and never
in want ; they are seldom saints, and never the worst of sinners.
A death-in-life existence, mademoiselle, is it not ? To come from
France in youth, and hope for that in one's age, was scarcely
worth the journey, you would say ? But one may come to thank
God for it. Ah ! yes."

There was a gleam in his eye, a ring in his voice, as he uttered
the questions, that proved how great the restraint he had learned
to put upon himself, how hard the struggle before he reached the
peace of the last words.

" I rested there. I did as they did, and they were kind to me.
They never questioned me ; they gave me a share in their best ;
they nursed me when the pain of my old wounds came upon me ;
they let me pray my own prayers, although they would not join
me. I saw the years go by me slowly, slowly. I was fifty-five,
fifty-six, fifty-seven ; there was no change until I was sixty. That
was in the winter just passed. In December one night there was
a great fire for our so small village the church, the mill, the
store, and even some of our poor little homes. We worked we
of the men to save the poor women's little things, to shelter the
little children. In the work I was hurt. I was too old to be so
quick as I had need, and the noise, and the light, and the heat it
was bad, mademoiselle ! When I knew it was all over I was ly-
ing in the bed at the hospital, and this " He touched his ban-

1 88 1.] A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. 749

I aged arm with trembling fingers, and there was a pitiful agitation
f his whole frame and of his quiet face which proved the seve-
ity of his sufferings and the shock to his nervous system. I
new who sat before me now. This was the hero of a history I
new by heart. This was the brave old man to whom threaten-
ing agony and death counted for nothing in the cause of the
widow and her helpless children, whose steady head and trumpet
voice had led on the dazed and appalled villagers to such a work
as saved the greater part of their apparently doomed homes.
The papers had teemed with accounts of his heroism, with lamen-
tations over his injuries, with expressions of gratitude and pro-
Pphecies of future well-merited good fortune. That had been
nearly two months ago. I knew the fickle public.

So simply had he told his tale, and so easily yet completely
avoided all special mention of himself, that I would not thrust
upon him my better knowledge of him. " And you have only
been discharged to-day ? " I questioned. " You have indeed been
long a sufferer ! You should not expose yourself too much to
this chill atmosphere." He bowed assent, but said nothing. I
was sure I knew the reason, and it puzzled me to get easily at the
question of means or no means.

" Will you go back to your village life ? " I asked, to bridge
the silence of my considerings.

" They are poor, mademoiselle. And I can no longer work."
" You must regain your strength," I said encouragingly,
" and then I doubt not you will find your skill greater than you
suppose. Until then "

"Until then, mademoiselle," he broke in gently but proudly,
" I must do as I have already done I must beg."

" No, no ! " I exclaimed, as he bent his head upon his breast,
and I saw the crimson flush even to his forehead. " If you mean
when you sang just now, you must call it by some more pleasant
name. It was an inspiration. Like David with his harp, you
have charmed away my mood of Saul. I owe you much."

" Mademoiselle is kind enough to say so," he said, and he
raised his head again with something of a child's pleasure and
pride in well-doing.

" I mean it," I continued. " Listen, my friend. Mine is a sad
lot : but one that brings its own blessings as well as its own pangs.
It makes between me and many a soul the links of a chain of
sunshine. I know those souls the ones I can comfort and the
ones who can comfort me. You belong to these last already.
Do not refuse me the double tie. I need no more than the out-

750 A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. [Sept.,

line you have given to fill in your life. I am sorry for your sor-
row, glad for your joy while it lasted, hopeful for you in death
as in life. We are of one faith I, too, am a Catholic ; we will
be, please God, of one heaven. Then you will let me share with
you the good of my lot, since I am kin to the evil? " He was
moved to tears when I paused after hurriedly pouring out my
arguments. But he shook his head, and there was no assent in
his firm-set lips or in the eyes he cleared to meet mine.

" I will accept from mademoiselle some little alms/' he said
presently. " It will be for her good as well as mine. Then I
will go my way, and the good God will help me. Perhaps some
other may be glad of my song and not grudge the payment. I
have rested and been comforted. It is often so the dear peo-
ple are often kind to me. The sisters would have given me
money," he added, as with a sudden thought of some unintention-
al carelessness upon his part, " but they had done so much. I
did not tell them all I meant to do. It is only beginning again."
And he smiled a sweet and patient smile that smote my heart
with shame and contempt for its cowardly sinking. Molly came in
at that moment with my medicine, and he rose at once. I offered
him, with the trifle he would accept, the hand which tendered it.
He bent over it with the grave courtesy of his years and his na-
tion (he was Frenchman to the core even yet !), and left the light
pressure of his whitening moustache upon its useless pallor and
wasted muscles. Then he went halting away, but not out of my
life, I was determined. I sat a long time in blessed thoughtful-
ness. It had not been much of a story, as the world runs, except
" between the lines." How wonderfully some natures assert
themselves ! I had seen it all as he spoke : the eager youth in
his foreign home ; the gay voyager to an unknown land ; the
cheerful, trustful struggles ; the ever-beginning, never-advancing
careers ; the late, sweet love, showing in its very self the tender,
genial, unselfish nature that must cheer the saddest lot ; the brief,
sweet, " never sorrowful " married life ; the going forth to battle,
not in the glowing ardor of pure patriotism, but in the patient
trust of "the best to be done"; the loss, so briefly told, that
altered everything ; the pain so patiently endured ; the blighted
life, so quietly accepted ; and now the end of the noble ministry,
to which he had never referred. I had had my lesson ! Here
was the deeper gulf and the stronger spirit speaking to me out
of its depths, with unconscious humility and submissive patience
which knew not its likeness to the Divine ! the true humility,
asserting not itself ; the real acceptance, which could not ques-

[88 1.] A SONG WITHOUT WORDS. 751

ion. I knew it was all there. That subtle something which
speaks to the very inner heart bade me rejoice that I had enter-
lined an angel unawares, and that the Spirit of Wisdom had
spoken to me through clean lips.

Yes, it was so ! That was over a year ago. To-day they laid
[enri Rocher in a quiet grave bore him away to it from the
lospital ward well known to him of old. He never regained his
strength ; his poor skill to labor never returned to him. He be-
gan his last career as a beggar at men's doors ; but it was with
the same sweet, patient spirit of acceptance that must have mark-
ed his way through life, the same ready forgiveness of all inju-
ries, the same tender desire to help all who needed help. And it
was but a short path, if a rough one, into " the world which sets
this right " ; I think, perhaps, it was not a rough one in the full-
est sense of the words. Others were glad of the song and did not
grudge the payment. They came to look for the upright, slow-
stepping figure along our quiet street, to know the first note of the
full voice spared him of his vanished youth and strength, to chat
with him in summer evenings, and cheer him with cautions and
smiles as the days grew chill. To me he often came, and never
left me poorer than he found me. He was deeply, truly, beauti-
fully pious, and I doubt if he could conceive of a mind utterly
alienated from God, so natural seemed the breath of life to him.
Dear soul! God loved it well, and led it, by his own path,
straight to him.

In a storm of the last winter he became over-chilled and
wearied during a walk he took in behalf of a poor sick neigh-
bor. From his poor little garret they carried him to the care
>f his friends, the good sisters, well knowing it was not for long.
\ly brother, being sent for one night last week, went to find our
[ear old friend (for, thank God ! such he was) making ready for

end of his patient life. He has told me all he could, and
lown me plain enough the grand old head laid low, the bright,
>athetic eyes no longer heart-broken, the voice stilled yet sweet
ind serene. He brought me the last messages, the last uncon-
scious lessons. I think, when it is all over here for ever and
men are called, I shall see Henri Rocher " go up higher " be-
cause of his acceptance of the life I know. With him I have laid
to rest my last consenting thought of rebellion. Through much
tribulation I have seen him enter into rest. And God sent him
to walk before me in my darkened hour, a light-bearer.

752 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS.

NEAR the Farnesina palace is the church of San Girolamo
della Carita, in which may be read the following inscription : " This
renowned temple was once the abode of St. Paula, the Roman
matron, and the asylum of St. Jerome, the great doctor of the
church. At a later day St. Philip Neri dwelt here a long time.
Under the high altar, erected in honor of the holy doctor, are
the bones of SS. Primitivus and Vitalis, and the remains of more
than two hundred martyrs."

Yes, this church occupies the site of the palace of the illus-
trious Paula, in whose veins flowed the royal blood of ancient
Greece. Her father, Rogatus, descended from Agamemnon;
her mother, from the Gracchi and the Scipios ; and she de-
rived her name from Paulus ^Emilius, who was one of her ances-
tors. Her husband, Toxotius, descended from ^Eneas and the
Julian family, that gave the name of Julia to* their daughter,
Eustochium. It was for this church Domenichino painted his
celebrated picture of the Last Communion of St. Jerome, in
which St. Paula is represented reverently kissing the wasted
hand of the dying saint.

The rooms occupied by St. Philip Neri for thirty-three years
are in the house connected with this church. You open the same
door he so often opened, go up the same stairs he ascended, and,
passing through an antechamber covered with old frescoes, enter
a room the saint had constructed in 1558 when his private apart-
ment became too small to contain the great number who came to
him for spiritual advice. On the wall is the portrait of the Beato
Giovanni Leonardi of Lucca, founder of an order of Regular
Clerics, a great friend of St. Philip's, the very sight of whom,
Cardinal Tarugi used to say, moved him to the love of God.
Here St. Philip held conferences on points of the Catholic faith,
to which came young men remarkable for their talents and piety,
among whom were Salviati, a relative of the Medici family ; Bor-
dini, afterwards archbishop ; Marzio Altieri, a Roman nobleman,
who used to say St. Philip's room was not a chamber but an
earthly paradise ; Tarugi, who was present at the death of St.

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 753

Ignatius de Loyola the son of a Roman senator and a relative
of two popes, who became archbishop of Siena and a cardinal,
but who always Called himself St. Philip's novice ; and Baronius,
whose greatness St. Philip, with his marvellous discernment,
foresaw, and whom he induced to write his annals of the church
a work of unprecedented erudition.

From the antechamber you go through a corridor lined with
the portraits of the saints of St. Philip's time St. Camillo de
Lellis, St. Felix de Cantalicio, St. Ignatius, St. Charles, etc. and
come to the private room he occupied so long, and which he only
left at the express order of Pope Gregory XIII. when it was de-
sirable he should remove to Santa Maria in Vallicella. This room
is now gilded and paved with marble, and there is an altar with
his chalice and paten. Here he began his conferences and used
to hear confessions. St. Leonard of Port Maurice made a gen-
eral confession in this room, and was filled with so lively a con-
trition for his sins as to be changed into another man. St. Charles
Borromeo used to come here, and, saying the divine office one
day with St. Philip, saw him radiant with light and embraced
him. Cardinal Frederick Borromeo took pleasure in simply lin-
gering here, even when he had nothing special to say.* Cardi-
nal Alessandro de' Medici, afterwards Pope Leo XL, used to re-
main here five or six hours at a time. Among those of humbler
station was Stefano, a shoemaker, who gave his weekly earnings
to the poor for the love of God, reserving for himself only
enough for the bare necessaries of life. Another man of humble
condition, bearing the name of Francesco Maria, could hear the
very angels sing, and wept if he heard any one speak of heaven.
St. Ignatius and St. Felix the Capuchin often came here. St.
Francis de Sales came here when a young man, and St. Philip
welcomed him with a kiss on the forehead.f In this room, too,
was heard the voice of Palestrina te Cette voix quon fcoute ct ge-
noux" as Victor Hugo says. St. Philip's room, Faber tells us,

* Cardinal Frederick was the nephew of St. Charles Borromeo, and almost as noted for his
benevolence of character and sanctity of life. Manzoni gives an admirable description of him
in his novel of The Betrothed.

t It was said that those whom St. Philip Neri embraced with special joy became martyrs or
illustrious confessors of the faith ; hence the students of the English College, before setting out
for their mission in England, used to go to receive his benediction. He always expressed great
pleasure at meeting any of them, and often stopped in the street to speak to them and give
them some proof of his interest. These traditions are embodied in a poem written in 1617 by
Hieronymus Caliarius, one of the Oratorian Fathers :

" Designat digito, quos laurea, debet in Anglis
Nerius insignes reddere martyrii
Eventus docuit, quid signa hsec tanta notarent," etc.
VOL. XXXIII. 48

754 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

was the haunt of all the painters and musicians in Rome. Music
he made an instrument of power in the order he founded, and
Palestrina was his penitent and died in his embrace. It was at
San Girolamo he founded the popular oratorios with a view of
substituting 1 innocent recreation for profane spectacles, especial-
ly during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent. He had a
beautiful hall constructed, still to be seen, somewhat resembling a
chapel, with an altar and an organ at one end, and at the other a
tribune for instrumental and vocal performers. Half an hour
after the " Ave Maria " the clergy began to sing the Litany of
Loreto, which was taken up by the choir to the sound of the or-
gan. The oratorio, which was generally some dramatic incident
in Biblical history or the lives of the saints, was intermingled
with short religious addresses from the pupils. The grand pro-
ductions of Palestrina and other eminent composers were often
sung by the best performers of the day ; but the institution de-
generated of late years, owing to the diminished revenues of the
order.

It was while at San Girolamo that St. Philip, touched by the
privation of poor pilgrims to the tomb of the apostles, founded
the hospice of the Trinita to receive them gratuitously, and also
a charitable confraternity of Roman nobles, to whom he gave a
red sack to wear, emblematic of the flame of charity that should
animate them a costume Dante, with the same symbolic meaning,
gives to Beatrice in Paradise :

" Vestita di color di fiamma viva."

Above St. Philip's room is the gloomy little chamber in which
he slept. Here is preserved a great number of objects he once
used. The ceiling is unplastered and the floor is of brick. On
the wall is a painting of the Tuscan embassy, with Alessandro de'
Medici at the head, come to visit the saint in this poor room when
he was ill, on which occasion he predicted Alessandro's elevation
to the papacy.

In the house of the Oratorians at Santa Maria in Vallicella,
which has been seized by the present government and is used for
the civil and criminal tribunals, is the cell occupied by St. Philip
the last years of his life, with a little oratory adjoining in which
he daily celebrated Mass. Father Faber tells how he visited
these rooms when a Protestant, little thinking he should ever
become a member of St. Philip's order. They were shown him
by the very father afterwards appointed by the pope master of

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 755

novices to the English Oratorians. In the oratory is the same
altar at which St. Philip officiated, with the same candlesticks,
flowers, and little bell, and over it hangs the same Madonna and
Child. The walls are covered with pictures that belonged to him.
The old door of his time is now protected by a wire netting and
set in a frame of serpentine marble. There is one small barred
window at the Gospel side of the altar. When St. Philip began
his Mass the day of his death he remained for some time looking
fixedly at the hill of St. Onofrio, just visible from the chapel, as if
he saw some great vision. On coming to the " Gloria in Excel-
sis " he began to sing a very unusual thing for him and he
sang the whole through with great joy and devotion.

In St. Philip's cell you see a coffer containing his sermons, the
old pine confessional he used, the bench on which he sat to in-
struct children, his bed, and the crucifix he held in his hand when
dying. His last days were spent in almost continual pra}*er and
ecstasy. He died May 26, 1595, after receiving the sacraments
at the hands of Cardinal Frederick Borromeo, with Cardinal Ba-
ronius on his knees praying aloud at his bedside. On the wall
is a beautiful portrait of St. Philip by Guido Reni, and in a room
below is another, by Guercino, representing him as sweet of as-
pect and keen of eye. In the sacristy is a fine statue by Algardi,
dignified and saintly, holding a book on which are graven the
words : Viam mandatorum tuorum custodivi.

St. Philip's remains are in the adjoining church, the first cor-
ner-stone of which was laid by Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici,
who also consecrated it when completed after his elevation to the
papacy. It is a vast church ornamented with marbles, and arches
frescoed by Pietro da Cortona. The high altar is surmounted by a
baldachin resting on four beautiful columns of porto-santo marble,
and the tabernacle is ornamented with precious stones. Beneath
the altar lie the bodies of two ancient martyrs, SS. Pappias and
Maur, which Cardinal Baronius aided with his own hands in bring-
ing into this church, and with what reverence and holy joy may
be perceived from his own words : " We have seen these holy re-
mains ; we have touched them, and, though unworthy, have kissed
them with joy. Aided by the fathers of the Oratory, we bore them
hither or\our shoulders rejoicing. It was indeed a great joy for
us to receive such guests with the feeling that they would never
leave us, and that we, venerating them as our patrons, could aug-
ment the honor due them, and surround them every day with
the increasing homage of our prayers." A painting of these two
saints by Rubens hangs on one side of the sanctuary, and op-

756 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

posite is another of SS. Nereo and Achilleo by the same artist.
Cardinal Baronius lies buried in one of the side chapels, where
hangs Baroccio's painting of the Visitation, before which St.
Philip loved to meditate, and near it is the tomb of Cardinal
Maury.

St. Philip's shrine is in a splendid chapel on the Gospel side
of the high altar, at the end of the right aisle. It was built in
the year 1600 by Nero de' Neri, a noble Florentine, at his own
expense. The walls are encrusted with jasper, agate, and other
precious stones. The dome is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and
supported by four columns of alabaster. The centre of the pave-
ment is of green oriental jasper, and around, set in beautiful mar-
ble, are roses of alabaster. The body of the saint lies beneath a
rich altar, and above it is a copy in mosaic of his portrait by
Guido. Of the countless number of chapels at Rome where it is
good to pray we know of none more attractive than this, with
its air of solemn seclusion like the privacy of one's own closet ;
and when lit up for some great festival with a circle of lamps
around the entrance, and people kneeling all along the aisle in
prayer, nothing could be more strikingly beautiful.

In the gloomy street of St. Pantaleone, not far from the
church of St. Andrea della Valle, is the grim, stern-looking Pa-
lazzo Massimo, with a semi-circular portico resting on Doric col-
umns. Entering the huge portal, you find yourself in a delight-
ful old court surrounded by galleries solitary, picturesque, with
antique sculptures, and a fountain, with plants growing around
it, giving a delicious freshness to the air. The contrast with the
noisy thoroughfare without, the marks of venerable antiquity,
the sun coming aslant across the court, lighting up the marble
Venus and the trickling fountain, and the shadowy galleries ris-
ing one above the other, make up a lovely, peaceful picture
which artists are fond of sketching. Ascending the stone stair-
case, you pass a bust of Fabius Maximus, the great Roman dic-
tator, from whom the Massimi claim descent, and over the en-
trance-hall is their motto, Cunctando restitute, in allusion to his
saving his country by temporizing and harassing Hannibal in-
stead of giving open battle.* Old inscriptions line the stairway,
and two antique lions guard the door of entrance in the first log-
gia.

In the third story is the room where St. Philip Neri restored
the young Prince Massimo to life, now converted into an oratory
and opened to the public on the anniversary of the miracle. In-

* " Not to contend is to conquer " was a saying of Fabius Maximus.

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 757

scriptions at the entrance record the indulgences conferred by
three popes on all who visit the room. It is a pretty little cha-
pel, with an altar between marble pillars, and a painting of the
miraculous event which here took place hanging over it. There
is also a statue of St Philip, and beneath the altar a portion of
his relics. St. Philip was the director of the Massimo family,
and took a special interest in the young Paul, who was the old-
est son. The boy died suddenly, and St. Philip, coming to visit
the family, found them all lamenting around his death-bed. The
saint, putting his hand on the boy's head, restored him to life.
After hearing his confession St. Philip said : " Art thou willing
to yield thy soul to God ? " "I am," replied the young prince.
" Then go ; may you be blessed, and pray God for us." And the
boy sank back with a smile and died. This was March 16, 1561.
Pope Piux IX. himself performed a solemn service here just three
hundred years after the event.

In a street leading from the Piazza delle Tararughe is the
Benedictine convent of Sant' Ambrogio, restored under the pat-
ronage of Pius IX. Here are the chambers once occupied by
St. Marcellina and her brothers, St. Satyro and the great St. Am-
brose. These rooms are now charming oratories, so adorned as
to excite one's devotion, and are often visited by strangers as well
as the people of Rome. You are admitted by a cordial lay bro-
ther, who conducts you through a pleasant loggia looking into a
court filled with orange and lemon trees, then up a spiral stair-
way to* a small room with an altar on which is a curious old cru-
cifix, the Christ with his head bent down and wearing a short
:unic. Beneath the altar, protected by a grate, is a portion of
the bedstead on which St. Ambrose used to sleep when young,
and on the wall is a painting and a bas-relief depicting him as the
:reat doctor of the church. This room looks down an arched
drcase, steep, gloomy, with stone steps worn smooth, and
quaint pictures of the Via Crucis on one side. This was the
Scala Santa of the nuns who at one time occupied this convent,
and they used to ascend it devoutly on their knees, meditating
on the Passion of Christ. To it were attached the indulgences
of the Lateran staircase.

St. Marcellina's room is larger and hung with damask. Over
the altar is a painting of her and her mother, and of St. Candida,
one of Marcellina's first companions, who accompanied her to
Milan and remained faithful to her all her life. St. Marcellina re-
ceived the sacred veil in the Vatican basilica from the hands of

758 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

Pope Liberius, in the presence of her mother and a vast assem-
blage. It was during the midnight service at Christmas, and the
church was illuminated by hundreds of torches and lamps. After
the sacred functions and the chanting of the Psalms, the pope,
before giving her the consecrated veil, delivered an address,
which St. Ambrose happily preserved. It begins: " Bonas, filia,
nuptias desiderasti O beautiful espousals which thou hast desired
and chosen for thy portion, my daughter." Marcellina's holy life,
spent in fasting, prayer, and the study of the sacred books, made
a great impression on the mind of the young Ambrose, as is im-
plied in the inscription on the wall of her room : " Hac in domo
S. Marcellina tenellos fratrum animos Ambrosii et Satyri ad
pietatem instituebat, semina iis ingerens uberrinrum latura fruc-
tum."

The third room is consecrated to the memory of St. Satyro,
at whose death St. Ambrose in a funeral oration said : " The
poor also shed their tears, precious and fruitful tears, that wash
away the sins of the departed. They let fall redeeming tears."

The remains of the four saints honored in this house are in the
ancient basilica of Sant' Ambrogio at Milan.

The cell of St. Gregory, so justly called the Great, is to be
seen in the church of his name on the Ccelian Hill, built on the
site of his paternal mansion. No spot in Rome is more interest-
ing to people of the English race. We cannot ascend that broad
flight of steps, between which the grass is now growing, without
being moved at the thought of the band of monks who, thirteen
hundred years ago, set out for England from this very place.
We pause in the arcades of the atrium to read the long list of
their names, as of a holy litany of the benefactors of our race, and
to examine the tombs of many English exiles, happy to have
found rest in so peaceful a spot. One is of a knight who be-
queathed all he had to " the poor of Christ," erected by Thomas
Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph's, one of his executors. Another
is to the memory of Sir Edward Carne, ambassador to the court
of Rome at the accession of Elizabeth, to whom the octogenarian
pope, Paul III., plainly said he "could not comprehend the
hereditary right of one not born in lawful wedlock." There are
also the touching lines telling us it was St. Sylvia who gave her
son, St. Gregory, to the church, and in the first chapel on enter-
ing the edifice is a painting of her by an English artist. The
reverence with which we enter the church is deepened by the
profound silence, and we go softly across the rich pavement of

[88 1.] CHAMBERS OF TXE SAINTS. 759

>pus Alexandrinum, up the solitary aisles pillared with ancient
>lumns of granite and bordered with chapels, till we come to a
ittle oratory bearing the following inscription :

" Nocte dieque vigil longo hie defessa labore
Gregorius modica membra quiete levat "

" it was here that Gregory refreshed his members, wearied by
igils and long labors day and night." Here is his episcopal
rone of marble like an ancient curule chair, with strange ani-
als carved on it, and looking through a grating is seen the
alcove where he used to sleep, sometimes on no softer couch than
a slab of marble or piece of sackcloth.

St. Gregory was a Roman patrician, and his mother belonged
to the Anicia family, to which the great St. Benedict also be-
longed, and from which the mediaeval house of the Conti claimed
descent. St. Trasila and St. Emiliana were his aunts, and among
his ancestors was Pope St. Felix III. St. Gregory's life and
claims on our veneration are too well known to need repetition.
He was a great orator, a great writer, but, above all, a great
pontiff, whose influence will never cease to be felt in the church.
He was a poet, too, and a musician. His name is inseparably
connected with that grave, majestic chant which gives such gran-
deur to the liturgy and impresses every one so profoundly. He
is rightly called the Apostle of England, on account of his zeal
for the conversion of that country. He actually started himself
to go there as a missionary, but was recalled at the wish of the
Roman people. His name became popular throughout Great
Britain as its benefactor, and was borne, among others, by a
Scottish prince in the eighth century the reputed progenitor of
the clan MacGregor. It is curious to think of this Highland
clan, once so formidable, sung in ballads and celebrated in ro-
mance, as deriving its name from a monk born on the Ccelian
Hill.

In the lonely Salviati chapel is the spot where the Madonna
appeared to St. Gregory and left her form impressed on the wall,
ill to be seen in a little niche. This is one of the favorite, sig-
ificant legends of the middle ages, in which the Madonna or
hrist on the cross is represented speaking to the devout sup-
pliant or bending graciously towards him, blessing him with
outstretched hand, and leaving some ineffaceable record of the
divine manifestation. We feel their force when praying on the
same spot, and accept their truth.

In the garden are three chapels restored by Cardinal Baro-

760 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

nius, containing beautiful paintings by Guido and Domenichino,
and statues of St. Sylvia and St. Gregory by Cordieri. One of
these is the chapel of St. Andrea, founded by St. Gregory him-
self, where he delivered many of his homilies. In another is the
triclinium, or marble table, where he daily fed twelve poor men,
among whom appeared one day a heavenly guest. It is said he
had such a sense of responsibility after he was raised to the papacy
that when a poor man died of starvation at Rome he fasted for
several days and abstained from celebrating the holy rites of the
altar. His compassion for the suffering extended even to the
other world ; and as St. Paul wept over the tomb of Virgil, so he
mourned over the fate of the Emperor Trajan, and, according to
the mediasval legend to which Dante makes allusion, procured
his very redemption a porta inferi. On an altar at the end of one
of the aisles of the church, where St. Gregory used to officiate, is
carved this beautiful legend in marble :

"There was storied on the rock
Th' exalted glory of the Roman prince
Whose mighty worth moved Gregory to earn
His mighty conquest."

On going out of the church we saw one of the Camaldoli
fathers just giving a dish of soup to a poor beggar among the
tombs in the arcades. It was pleasant to see the charity of St.
Gregory perpetuated on the spot where he lived. Pope Gre-
gory XVI. belonged to this monastery, and chose his name in
honor of St. Gregory. It was he who had the public garden,
opposite the church, laid out and planted. He never laid aside
the simple habits of the monastic life, and exclaimed on his death-
bed that he wished to die as a monk and not as a sovereign.

Near San Gregorio is the convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo,
likewise on the slope of the Ccelian Hill. The tall campanile,
with its open arches one above another, rising beyond the trees
of the Parco di San Gregorio ; the picturesque apse of the church
with its arcade ; the steep road leading to it that passes under the
flying buttresses ; the mediasval portico, with its granite pillars
opening on a square where reigns an almost pastoral solitude ;
the venerable church of the Romanesque style, with its long his-
tory ; the adjoining monastery of the Passionists, filled with the
ascetic fervor of the middle ages ; the garden, with its yawning
caverns of the Vivarium, where used to be kept the wild beasts
of the Coliseum, and where amid the tall cypresses you can see

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 761

St. Bonaventure with its palms, the Palatine with its ruins, the
Capitol, the Forum, the Arch of Constantine, and the Coliseum
all combine to make this not only one of the most beautiful spots
in Rome, but one of peculiar interest. In the convent is the cell
where St. Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Passionists, spent
the last years of his life, and where he died at the advanced age
of eighty-two. Pope Clement XIV. and Pius VI., as an inscrip-
tion on the wall states, both visited him in this room. The altar
is still here at which he said Mass in his last days, as well as the
arm-chair in which he was borne to the church when overcome
by the infirfaities of age. Some old engravings of his day hang
around, and you are shown the crucifix he carried in his missions,
his testament and other religious books, several objects of de-
votion, and his instruments of penance. He took delight in his
last days in listening to the Passion according to the Gospel
of St. John, and on the i8th of October, 1775, as the attendant
brother was reading the words, Sublevatis oculis in ccelum words
the saint had devoutly repeated every day for so many years at
the Mass he quietly gave up the ghost. His venerable remains,
clad in the garb of his order, are in a simple shrine at the end of
the right aisle of the church. Above is a painting of the Ma-
donna giving him the insignia of the Passionists. Three lamps
burn before the shrine, but the aged brother, before opening it
for us, lighted two candles. St. Paul lies peaceful and seemingly
asleep, with a crucifix on his breast and a branch of silver lilies in
his hand. Of all the saintly forms to be seen in the Christian
world this is certainly one of the most noble and impressive.

A magnificent chapel has been erected to receive the body
of St. Paul of the Cross, but the final decorations were sus-
pended when we visited it. It is in the form of a Greek cross
with a dome in the centre no gloomy chapel with subdued light
and severe of style, but radiant and brilliant, as if to depict the
glory of the saints. Splendid columns of Egyptian alabaster, the
gift of Pius IX., support the arch beneath which the saint is to
rest, and the same precious material is used to line the walls, in-
laid with other rare stones. On the arches are frescoes of the
life of the saint, and in the dome he is to be seen ascending to
heaven amid beautiful winged spirits. Angels of the Passion are
in the spandrils.

The church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo was built in the fourth
century by St. Pammachus, the friend of St. Jerome, on the
site of the house of John and Paul two saints who are com-
memorated in the Canon of the Mass. They were brothers and

762 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

in the service of Constantia, the daughter of Constantine the
Great, and were beheaded in the reign of Julian because
they would not, like him, apostatize. Their remains are in a
porphyry urn beneath the high altar, and the place where they
were beheaded is indicated by a slab on one side of the nave
with an iron railing around it. On the festival of SS. John and
Paul this little enclosure is filled with flowers. As far back as
the time of St. Gregory the Great the anniversary of their mar-
tyrdom was observed as a public festival and the vigil solemn-
ized by a fast.

SS. Giovanni e Paolo has many associations fhat render
it specially interesting to the English, It was Adrian IV., the
English pope, who in 1158 erected the portico with its granite
columns. Pope Clement X. gave the church and convent to a
community of English Dominicans in 1676, at the request of
Cardinal Philip Howard, a Dominican friar himself, who sprang,
as Macaulay says, " from the noblest houses in Britain, grandson
on one side of an Earl of Arundel, and on the other of a Duke of
Lennox." He at once began to repair the buildings, arid expend-
ed a large sum of money in the restoration of the beautiful cam-
panile and in decorating the church and cloisters. He also had
to support the friars he established here. The}'' were first gov-
erned by Father Thomas White, of a good family in Hampshire,
who celebrated the marriage between the Duke of York (after
wards James II.) and Mary Beatrice of Modena when the Bishop
of Modena refused to perform the ceremony. His brother, Je-
rome White, became one of the duchess' chaplains.

Erasmus Henry, the youngest son of the poet Dryden, be-
came a Dominican friar in this convent under the name of Thomas,
but seems to have returned to England after succeeding, at the
death of his cousin, Sir John Dryclen, to the baronetcy given his
great-grandfather by James I. in 1619. He could not inherit the
family estate of Canons Ashby without apostatizing, as a penal
statute of 1699 declared no papist could inherit landed property.
It must go to the nearest Protestant relative. Accordingly Can-
ons Ashby fell to his cousin Edward. Father Dryden, however,
resided at the manor-house and was allowed a pittance, but he
soon died of consumption in the forty-second year of his age.
The provincial of the Dominicans visited him on his death-bed,
but Father Dryden, after receiving the sacraments, urged him to
depart with all speed, lest there might be some treachery on the
part of his Protestant relatives.

But to return to Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Clement XIV. gave

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 763

it to the Passionists, who made it their headquarters. St. Paul of
the Cross, it is said, prescribed continual prayers in his order for
the return of the nations of the north to the church, and for thirty
years he daily prayed for the conversion of England in particular.
One day he cried at the altar : " Ah ! I see glorious things. I be-
hold my children in England." The penal laws were not then
abolished in that country, but his vision has been accomplished.
New apostles have issued from this house as once from San
Gregorio.

SS. Giovanni e Paolo is the titular church of the present Car-
dinal Howard. We had the pleasure of witnessing the interest-
ing ceremony of his taking possession of it on St. George's day,
1877. The basilica was hung throughout with crimson and gold,
and on the walls of the sanctuary was emblazoned the lion argent
of the Howards * with the motto : Sola virtus invicta. The high
altar was covered with a profusion of the rarest flowers a tribute
from Baron Von Hoffman. On the wall at one side hung the
portrait of the Sovereign Pontiff, and on the other a likeness of
the new cardinal. The nave was filled with foreign visitors to
the Eternal City, particularly English and American. The Pas-
sionist Fathers received his eminence at the portal, and, after the
usual ceremony of presenting holy water, he was conducted to
the altar of the Blessed Sacrament and thence to a throne pre-
pared for him in front of the tribune. The notary apostolic read
the pontifical diploma conferring this church on him as a title,
and after a brief congratulation to him from the general of the
Passionists the cardinal addressed the congregation in English, al-
luding to the connection of the churches on the Ccelian Hill with
Catholicity in England, passing in review St. Gregory the Great,
Pope Adrian IV., Cardinal Philip Howard, and St. Paul of the
Cross. The music was fine, the assembly brilliant. The car-
dinal finally withdrew to the sacristy, where he was followed by
the crowd to kiss his hand and receive his benediction.

In the Roman College founded by St. Francis Borgia, but
now used by the government for a lyceum, is the chamber once
occupied by the young St. Aloysius de Gonzaga while pursuing
his studies. He was the son of the Marquis of Castiglione, a
branch of the illustrious house of the dukes of Mantua, allied with
the royal families of France, Spain, and Austria. He received his

* " All in Lord Howard's livery dressed,
The lion argent decked his breast."

SCOTT.

764 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

first Communion at the hands of St. Charles Borromeo, and lived
in his father's palace as if in a cloister. His mother used to call
him il mio angioletto. In 1581 he went to Spain with his parents,
who accompanied Donna Maria of Austria, the daughter of
Charles V. and wife of the Emperor Maximilian. St. Aloysius
and his brother Rodolphus were appointed pages of honor to the
prince royal of Spain. He entered the Society of Jesus at Rome
before he was eighteen, and while attending the sufferers from
the pestilence of 1591 caught the disease himself and died at the
age of twenty- three, a martyr of charity. So great was his joy at
the approach of death that he made a scruple of it to his confes-
sor, Cardinal Bellarmin. No one ever more fully verified the
words of Crabbe :

' And never mortal left this world ot sin
More like the infant he entered in."

The chamber St. Aloysius occupied at the Roman College
is now an oratory and hung with red. The beams of the ceiling
are covered with arabesques, and on the walls hang scenes from
his brief life. Among these paintings is an authentic portrait.
Here are preserved the crucifix he used to wear and a volume of
notes on theology written by his own hand.

Near by is the room of the B. Jean Berchmans, a young Bel-
gian Jesuit beatified by Pius IX. His portrait is over the altar,
and you are shown an autograph letter written in very neat, legi-
ble characters, and many articles he used. In the same suite of
rooms is the chapel of the Congregation of the Blessed Virgin,
known at Rome as the Prima Primaria, to which are affiliated so
many branches throughout the world. This congregation was
founded in 1563 by Pere Leon, a young Jesuit professor from
Liege, who had been in the habit of daily assembling several of
the most thoughtful of his pupils to pray with them and read
some religious book. He found this practice so beneficial to
them that he organized a regular association and admitted
others. Gregory XIII. examined the rules and gave them his
approbation. Sixtus V., Clement VIII., Benedict XIV., and
other popes have conferred indulgences on it. Many sove-
reigns of Europe have belonged to it, as well as people of
every grade. Wherever there is a house of the Society of
Jesus a branch of this congregation is established, and the En-
fants de Marie for ladies are nearly as numerous. Pere Leon,
the founder, afterwards distinguished himself in France for his
devotedness to the soldiers in time of war, going out in search of

1 88 1.] CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. 765

the disabled and bringing them into the hospitals, where he served
:hem with his own hands and often provided for their wants.

The tomb of St. Aloysius is in the vast church of St. Igna-
:ius, built by Cardinal Ludovisi on the site of a temple dedicated
to the nymph Juturna, sister of Turnus, the unfortunate rival
of ^Eneas. This church was decorated by two Jesuit artists,
Grossi and Pozzi. The latter painted the apotheosis of the titu-
lar saint on the ceiling of the nave, remarkable for its perspective,
which has perhaps never been surpassed. The tombs of St. Aloy-
sius and the B. Berchmans are in the transepts opposite each other,
and are of the same general design. The former, on the southern
side, is in an urn of lapis-lazuli with silver mountings, beneath
an altar which has for its reredos four spiral columns of verde an-
ticoj wreathed with palms of gilded bronze, which frame a large
bas-relief of white marble the chef-d'oeuvre of Legros represent-
ing St. Aloysius borne to heaven by angels, his hands crossed on
his breast, his face beautiful with innocence and beaming with
heavenly joy. In the cloud of angels above him is one ready to
place a crown on his head. This shrine is enclosed by a balus-
trade of giallo antico. Two angels of white marble at the cor-
ners hold symbolic lilies, and six others of gilt bronze hold lamps
for ever burning. In the sacristy is a marble altar presented by
St. Aloysius' mother and his two brothers, Rodolphus and Fran-
cis, when he was beatified in 1605.

St. Aloysius is the favorite saint of the young Romans, and
>n the 2 ist of June his room is opened and adorned, and his
jhrine covered with lights and beautiful flowers. All the students
)f the Roman College receive communion, or did in happier
;imes, at his altar, as well as a vast number of others, and the
children gather around it to sing charming hymns :

" Luigi angelico,
Dal vostro viso
Di Paradiso
Spira belta."

'hey also bring written prayers addressed to Santo Luigi in Para-
liso, which are laid on his tomb and afterwards burned in a
>rasier in the garden amid the perfumes of incense. This prac-
tice sprang from the account of the saint's last moments, when he
spoke of heaven with such pious assurance that his friends con-
fided to him the most earnest desires of their heart, which he
promised to remember in heaven.

At the very extremity of the Trastevere, near the shore of the

766 CHAMBERS OF THE SAINTS. [Sept.,

Tiber, whence it takes its name, stands the convent of San Fran-
cesco a Ripa with a broad, spacious square before it. The gov-
ernment has taken it for a barrack, and the garden, noted for its
tall palm and for the orange-tree planted by St. Francis, is now a
drilling-ground for soldiers, and the frescoes of the Via Crucis
along the walls are nearly effaced. In the twelfth century the
hospital of San Biagio stood here, in which St. Francis of Assisi,
the glorious " Gonfaloniere di Christo," took lodgings when he
came to Rome, that he might minister to the sick. Pope Gre-
gory IX. afterwards gave the place to the Franciscans, and it be-
came their novitiate. The church was first built by Count Pan-
dolfo of Anquillara, kinsman to him who crowned Petrarch.
Count Pandolfo died a Franciscan, and is represented in their
habit on his tomb. The church was afterwards restored by Car-
dinal Pallavicini, and is extremely picturesque from the number
of its tombs and shrines.

The narrow cell in which the seraphic Francis lodged is still
to be seen. It was converted into an oratory by Cardinal di
Montalto, nephew of Pope Sixtus V., and is covered with paint-
ings and ex-votos. The retablo of the altar is a vast reliquary
containing eighteen thousand relics, which is opened by touching
a spring. This little room is a genuine cabinet of religious ob-
jects, among which is a curious old portrait of St. Francis,
painted on wood, and a stone which he used as a pillow.

In the convent of the Capuccini is the cell of St. Felix de
Cantalicio, which is quite unique. It is about seven feet in every
direction and made of reeds fastened to branches of trees and
roughly plastered. A wire netting now protects it within and
without. St. Felix occupied this cell for forty years, and in it he
died ; but it was then in another house at Rome, whence it was
brought here. He was a lay brother, and for nearly half a cen-
tury the quteur of his convent, but he found means to exercise
charity to the poor and to labor for the conversion of sinners.
Every boy in Rome was acquainted with St. Felix, and, knowing
how he delighted in the praise of God, used to greet him with
the pious salutation : " Deo gratias, Fra Felice ! " St. Philip
Neri held him in great estimation, and they used to kneel to em-
brace each other out of veneration one for the other.

There are several other rooms held in great veneration at
Rome, such as that of St. John Capistran at the Ara Cceli, a
Minorite friar who, armed with a crucifix, led on the Christian

[88i.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 767

my at the siege of Belgrade against the Saracens ; that in which
>t. John de Matha died, in the arch of Dolabella ; that of St.
Charles Borromeo in the Palazzo Altemps ; the room in which
>t. Cecilia was martyred, in the church of her name ; and those
>f St. Dominic and St. Pius V. at Santa Sabina.

All these hushed rooms, into which you step out of busy
thoroughfares, are full of calm, sinless peace. Nothing of the
world is here. You inhale ennobling thoughts. You taste the
serenity and beatitude of the saints, and have a new sense of that
high sanctity which changes not with time and takes not the hue
of any age.

CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM.

PART III. A.D. 50-137.

ST. PAUL'S ARREST, IMPRISONMENT, AND APPEAL TO C^SAR EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES
His MARTYRDOM EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS RETREAT OF THE CHRISTIANS TO
PELLA THEIR RETURN AND THE LINE OF JEWISH BISHOPS SECOND DESTRUCTION
OF JERUSALEM.

ST. PAUL made another short visit to Jerusalem during the
Paschal time, two years after the council. In the year 55, the
irst of Nero and the last of the Procurator Felix, during the
week of Pentecost, he came again, to take part in both the Chris-
tian and the Jewish festival. " And when we were come to
Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. And the day follow-
ing Paul went in with us to James, and all the presbyters were
assembled. And when he had saluted them, he related particu-
larly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his
ministry. But they hearing it, glorified God, and said to him-:
Thou seest, brother, how many tens of thousands there are among
the Jews who have believed : and they are all zealous for the law.
Now, they have heard of thee, that thou teachest those Jews who
are among the Gentiles apostasy from Moses : saying that they
ought not to circumcise their children, nor to walk according to
the custom. What is it therefore? the multitude must indeed
come together, for they will hear that thou art come " (Acts xxi.

768 CHRIS TIA N JER USA LEM. [Sept. ,

17-22). Here is another evidence of the great number of conver-
sions which had taken place among the Jews. It seems, also, that
the church of Jerusalem was still numerous, though a conside-
rable number of the multitude then in the city had most likely
come there from other parts to keep Pentecost. On the occasion
of St. Paul's last visit when he kept Easter in Jerusalem, he had
been under a vow, had shorn his head at Cenchrea and fulfilled
the customary rites in the temple, St. James now advised him to
accompany four poor men who had a similar vow to fulfil to the
temple, to pay their dues and provide for the customary sacri-
fices. "And all will know that the things which they have heard
of thee are false : but that thou thyself also walkest, keeping the
law " (ibid. 23, 24).

The advice was good, but entailed serious consequences upon
Paul. A great tumult was excited under the pretext that he had
profaned the temple, in which he would have been killed had he
not been rescued by the military tribune, Claudius Lysias, com-
mander of the garrison, who brought him with difficulty, under
guard of a numerous body of soldiers, to the tower of Antonia,
followed by a great and raging crowd. From the esplanade of
the castle he was allowed to address the people, which he did in
the Syro-Chaldaic tongue, the vulgar dialect of Hebrew then in
common use. His speech was a narration of his own career
thirty years before, as a pupil of Gamaliel and a persecutor of the
church, of his conversion, and of his mission as a preacher to the
Gentiles. They had heard him quietly until he came to this
point, when their Jewish fanaticism was again aroused, and they
clamored loudly for his blood.

Lysias at once brought him within the castle, shutting the
doors on the mob, and ordered him to be tortured by scourging,
in order to extort from him a confession of the supposed mis-
deeds by which he had aroused the rage of the populace. Paul
pleaded his Roman citizenship in self-defence, and thus secured
for himself respectful treatment. The tribune caused the Sanhe-
drim to be called together, that he might hear what could be al-
leged against Paul and his answer to the same. Under the admin-
istration of Cumanus, the predecessor of Felix, Ananias, son of Ne-
bid, had been high-priest. Cumanus, Celer his tribune command-
ing in Jerusalem, Ananias, and Annas the captain of the temple,
had all been sent as prisoners to Rome by the proconsul of Syria,
on account of their conduct in a violent conflict between the Jews
and Samaritans. Cumanus was banished, Celer was sent back to
Jerusalem and there beheaded, the other two were afterwards re-

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 769

leased and sent home. Agrippa the Younger, son of the former
king, who had been invested with the sovereignty of the temple,
deposed Ananias and appointed in his place Jonathan, a pontiff of
higher repute for virtue than any other of that age. Precisely
because of his virtue and his remonstrances against the vices of
Felix, the latter had caused him to be assassinated by some of the
dagger-men in the temple. Agrippa had not yet appointed his
successor, Ismael Phabi. " In this interval, probably," says Mil-
man (Hist. Jezvs, b. xiii.), " a kind of illegitimate authority had
been resumed by that Ananias, son of Nebid, who had been sent
in chains to Rome by Quadratus, and had been released through
the influence of Agrippa." The punishment of Celer explains the
great fear which Lysias showed of compromising himself. The
other circumstances throw light on St. Luke's narration of inci-
dents which occurred during and after this council. Ananias,
who was presiding in the place of the high-priest, commanded
soon after Paul began to speak that he should be smitten on the
mouth. The apostle sternly retorted on him : " God shall smite
thee, thou whited wall ! " When he was reproved for insulting
the high-priest, he answered that he did not know that he was the
high-priest i.e., as Milman says, " either did not know or did not
recognize his doubtful title."

It is not necessary to repeat what is so fully and graphically
related in the Acts, concerning the progress and issue of the des-
perate attempt of the chief priests to destroy Paul. Josephus
shows what sort of men they were, and how rapidly everything
was becoming worse in Jerusalem. Summing up his testimony,
Milman says : " Up to this period, according to the representation
of the Jewish annalist, the Pontificate had remained almost entire-
ly uncontaminated by the general license and turbulence which
distracted the nation. The priests were in general moderate and
upright men, who had endeavored to maintain the peace of the
ity. Now the evil penetrated into the sanctuary, and feuds
it the sacred family of Levi. A furious schism broke out be-
tween the chief priests and the inferior priesthood. Each party
collected a band of ruffians, and assailed the other with violent
reproaches and even with stones. No one interfered to repress
the tumult ; and the high-priests are said to have sent their
slaves to levy by force the tithes which belonged to the inferior
class, many of whom in consequence perished with hunger.
Even the worst excesses of the dagger-men seem to have been
authorized by the priests for their own purposes. The forty
men who, with the connivance of the priests, bound themselves
VOL. xxxni. 49

770 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Sept.,

by a vow to assassinate St. Paul, if not of the fraternity, recog-
nized the principles of that sanguinary crew." Ananias, who
was one of the foremost in violence and rapacity, came to a mis-
erable end during the siege of Jerusalem, having been dragged
out of a sewer where he had taken refuge, and murdered by as-
sassins of a party opposed to his own.

Felix was a man who was born a slave 'but rose to greatness
through the favor of Nero. He married three women of royal
blood, one of whom, the Drusilla mentioned in the Acts, was the
daughter of Agrippa I., and had left her lawful husband, Aziz,
King of Emesa. Tacitus says that he combined in his person the
vices of slaves and tyrants. Agrippa II. was king over the former
tetrarchate of Philip and a part of Galilee, but resided in the As-
monean palace at Jerusalem and had jurisdiction over the temple.
His sister Berenice, widow of Herod of Chalcis, afterwards wife
of Polemo, King of Cilicia, was at this time believed to be the
mistress of her own brother Agrippa. Such were the persons
before whom Paul had to appear as the prisoner and the preacher
of righteousness. Festus was an upright and honorable man.
Fear of the Roman tribunals, Paul's Roman citizenship, and his
appeal to Caesar were his safeguard from the imminent perils
which threatened him, and they caused the protection of the
whole military power of the governor to be thrown around him ;
although it must also be acknowledged that Festus and Agrippa
were of themselves disposed to act justly towards him, and to
acquit and release him if his appeal to Caesar had not prevented.
It is commonly supposed that St. Paul's arrest took place in the
year 58, and that his hearing before Festus and Agrippa at Cae-
sarea, which resulted in his being sent as a prisoner to Rome for
trial, occurred during the year 60.

From the time when St. Luke tells us : " Going on board a
ship of Adrumetum, beginning to sail along the coast of Asia, we
put to sea " (Acts xxvii. 2), sacred history is silent concerning Je-
rusalem and the church in Palestine. It closes with a notice in
few words of the apostle's lenient captivity under military guard
in Rome, and his continual activity in instructing those who came
to visit him at his private domicile. Thus St. Luke, who begins
his history with Jerusalem, finishes it with Rome. The church,
having made Jerusalem, the Holy City of the Old Law, its start-
ing-point, proceeds to establish its Eastern principal seats in
Antioch and Alexandria, and, passing thence into Europe and the
West, takes possession of its universal metropolis in Rome, the
New Jerusalem and Holy City of the New Law. St. Paul, at the

1 88 1 .] CHRIS TIAN JER u SALEM. 77 1

close of his long conference with the chief of the Jews at Rome,
" to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, per-
suading them concerning Jesus, out of the Law of Moses and the
prophets, from morning until evening " (Acts xxviii. 23), when
" some believed the things that were said, and some did not be-
lieve " ; plainly making known in language quoted from the pro-
phet Isaiah his judgment that the great body of the nation were
blinded and hardened in unbelief, emphatically declared, as God's
Legate : " Be it known, therefore, to you, that this salvation is
sent to the Gentiles: they will also hear."

The time had nearly come when the Judaic portion of the
Christian Church was to disappear, as a distinct and important
element in the universal society of the faithful, and the offspring
of the first disciples of Jesus and his apostles become absorbed
into the Gentile community of believers. Their special apostle
and chief bishop was drawing near to his martyrdom, his flock
was on the point of dispersion, and the heavy clouds of judgment
were gathering in the sky above Jerusalem, Judea, and Galilee,
betokening the approaching destruction of the temple, the priest-
hood, and the political existence of the ancient people of God.

One of the last acts of St. James was to send forth his Epistle
" to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad," or " in the
Dispersion " i.e., as Kenrick explains the words, " to all Jews, but
especially converts from Judaism, whether in Judea or scattered
among the nations." The Epistle was written between the time
of St. Paul's departure for Rome and the death of Festus, pro-
bably near the year 62, when the premonitory disturbances leading
to the rebellion of the year 66 had begun. It seems likely that
St. James' flock had already begun to disperse and be dimin-
ished. The greater number of the converts gathered during his
episcopate of thirty years, especially the earlier part of it, must
have been already asleep in the Lord. Those who were not
closely bound to the city, and who had connections or other mo-
tives for emigration outside of Judea, would be likely to depart
elsewhere. There were many temptations to discouragement
and tepidity just then besetting all Christians of Jewish origin.
The Epistle is one of solemn warning ; it is the last admonition
of an aged patriarch and apostle, before leaving the world, to his
children who are entering upon dark and dangerous days. The
last tones of David's harp and Isaiah's prophetic voice resound
and die away in the solemn words of the descendant of kings and
prophets, the dweller on Mt. Sion, the shepherd of the remnant
of Israel's true flock, the last saint of the sanctuary of Moriah,

772 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Sept.,

whose prayers hallowed and preserved the profaned temple and
guilty city, and whose blood was about to bring down upon them
the final stroke of divine vengeance through Roman catapults
and the Roman soldier's torch, civic factions and bloody interne-
cine strife of rival bands of assassins.

The general groundwork of doctrine and exhortation in the
Epistle does not present at first sight and on its surface anything
beyond what may seem a commonplace reminder of the ordinary
and obvious truths of religion and morals, such as is appropriate
to all classes of persons in all times and circumstances. Yet, re-
garded in the light of the actual circumstances, and the occasion
and end which moved the apostle to write ; its faint lines being,
as it were, held to the fire ; more specific and distinct meaning
comes out. We see the whole character of the apostle, as tradi-
tion presents him, expressed ; and the spirit of the first, most
fervent days of the church of Jerusalem manifests itself in the
denunciation of pride, avarice, undue exaltation of the rich above
the poor, and the false piety which disregards good works and
supports itself on mere professions, on the pretext of faith and a
display of sentiment. The menace of trouble to come, of ap-
proaching judgment and the downfall of the rich and powerful,
the exhortation to courage and steadfastness in trials, to repent-
ance and confession, to prayer and reliance on divine providence,
to detachment from worldly goods, take a new meaning when
we consider all that was about to happen within the next ten
years, which Christ had foretold, which his apostle foresaw,
which any prudent person might have foreboded.

The most salient doctrinal point in the Epistle of St. James is
the presentation of the sound Catholic doctrine of justification, as
opposed to a false doctrine of justification by faith alone. It
would seem that the apostle intended to counteract an abuse and
misinterpretation of certain persons who wrested the teaching
of St. Paul, as St. Peter declares some did, in a way destructive
of faith and true holiness. Luther, who revived this among
many other ancient heresies, very naturally held this Epistle in
detestation and summarily ejected it from his self-formed canon
of Scripture. Protestants in general, in great measure, we sup-
pose, through the conservative spirit and influence of the Church
of England, have preserved the entire canon of the New Testa-
ment sanctioned by Catholic Tradition and the authority of the
church. Yet we cannot fail to be struck with the many manifes-
tations which Protestantism makes of a spirit wholly alien from
that of the antique Christianity whose memory is preserved in

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 773

the Acts of the Apostles, in the history of the church of Jerusa-
lem, in the character, life, and doctrine of its first bishop. Mo-
dern, rationalizing Protestants, especially, and even the more or-
thodox, write of the early church and Christianity like foreigners,
curious inquirers into an interesting ancient religion to which
they do not themselves belong. We shall have a better oppor-
tunity, hereafter, to bring out the witness of primitive and apos-
tolic tradition as embodied and preserved in the apostolic see of
St. James, when we reach the epoch of Eusebius of Cassarea
and Cyril of Jerusalem. We return to the beloved brother of
our Lord, who is about to become a martyr and to follow his
holy deacon Stephen in the combat which won for him the
crown.

The probable date of St. James' martyrdom is A.D. 62. By
combining the accounts of Josephus and Hegesippus we arrive
at the conclusion that the chiefs of the most fanatical party in
Jerusalem took advantage of the interval between the death of
Festus and the arrival of his successor, Albinus, to put to death
James and some other principal men among the Christians. Ana-
nus, son of Ananus, or Annas, who was high-priest before Caiaphas,
was the high-priest. St. James was brought before the Sanhe-
drim and required to renounce Jesus under penalty of being
stoned to death. Having been conducted to an elevated place
above one of the porticoes of the temple, in the hope that he
would abjure his faith before the assembled people, he confessed
and preached Jesus as the Christ with a loud voice, and was then
thrown down upon the pavement underneath. Rising upon his
knees, he began to pray for his murderers, and his skull was shat-
tered by a blow from a fuller's club. Many persons were indig-
nant at this crime ; a deputation was sent to meet Albinus and ac-
cuse Ananus of an offence against the majesty of Rome in convok-
ing by his sole authority the Sanhedrim and inflicting a capital
sentence. Agrippa deposed Ananus, and Josephus expresses the
sentiment of the better class of Jews in his strong reprobation of
the atrocious judicial murder of James the Just.

His brother, or half-brother, Simeon, succeeded him as Bishop
of Jerusalem. Not very long after the martyrdom of St. James,
St. Paul sent to the Jewish Christians of Palestine his Epistle
to the Hebrews, which is addressed not only to them but to all
Christians of Judiac origin in general, though its motive was es-
pecially to guard the faithful of Palestine against the danger of
relapse to which they were exposed. There are good reasons,
both critical and traditional, for supposing that St. Paul em-

774 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Sept.,

ployed some other person, perhaps St. Luke or St. Clement, in
the composition of this sublime and quite unique document of
inspired doctrinal instruction ; dictating the substance anpl after-
wards reviewing and approving the form in which his ideas had
been embodied in language by his assistant according to his own
style and .manner of writing ; and thus making the Epistle en-
tirely authentic as really the work of St. Paul himself.

Whoever will attentively read the Epistle to the Hebrews in
the light of contemporaneous events will see its scope and its ap-
propriateness very clearly. In less than ten years the end of Ju-
daism was to come by a most appalling catastrophe. A Jew of pure
blood, brought up a Pharisee and educated in the school of the
rabbins, but miraculously converted from a fierce persecutor of
Christians into the chief of apostolic preachers and doctors, takes
this occasion to set forth the true end and meaning of the Mosaic
law, its temporary character, the sublimity and perennial endur-
ance of the New Law and new Priesthood of Jesus Christ in the
church, after the order of Melchisedech and not after the order
of Aaron. In truth, this Epistle was the funeral oration of Juda-
ism. There is no need to linger even for a moment over that
dark and bloody page of history which closes the annals of Jose-
phus and fills a little space in those of Tacitus.

. Simeon and his flock left Jerusalem while there was yet time
to do so, and migrated to Pella, a city of the Decapolis beyond
the Jordan. From this time until the end of the second century
we have but scant information concerning the church of Pales-
tine. When the war was over, the bishop and a certain number
of the faithful returned to the ruins of the Holy City and dwelt
there, and this remnant of the church of the circumcision linger-
ed on, with its regular succession of bishops, during the remain-
der of the first and one-third of the second century. The tradi-
tion is that Simeon governed his little flock for above thirty, per-
haps for forty years, and was at last crucified at the age of one
hundred and twenty years, near about the year of our Lord 100.
Between the martyrdom of St. Simeon and the second insurrec-
tion of the Jews which resulted in their definitive and total ruin,
in the reign of Adrian, A.D. 134-136, thirteen bishops succeeded
each other in the see of Jerusalem : Justus, Zachgeus, Tobias,
Benjamin, John, Matthias, Philip, Seneca, Justus II., Levi, Eph-
raim, Joseph, Jude; all Jews, and very probably all martyrs,
since the average length of their lives, between their taking the
seat of James and descending into the tomb, was less than three
years. Silently they followed each other to death and oblivion,

i
i

1 88 1.] CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. 775

leaving no trace in history, and with Jude, or Judah, the line be-
came extinct.

The region of the Decapolis was the seat of the Nazarenes and
the Ebionites. It is not very clear from history whether the
Nazarenes were a sect, or only a Judaizing party in the church.
The Ebionites, who sprang from the Nazarenes, were a grossly
heretical sect. Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, who made
each a new version of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, were
members of this sect, though Theodotion is said to have become
at last an adherent of pure Judaism. This heresy of the Ebionites
was the caput inortimm of that Judaizing element which gave the
apostles so much trouble in the church, and which St. Paul in
particular so constantly and strenuously and yet so prudently
and charitably combated, especially in his Epistle to the He-
brews. Its last remnants are commonly said to have disappeared
in the fifth century. Dr. Sepp, however, in the second volume
of his most interesting and curious work, Jerusalem und das Hei-
lige Land, maintains that he found a small number of descend-
ants from the Ebionites still existing in Damascus and the neigh-
boring region. He makes also some very ingenious and plausible
conjectures concerning the connection 'of certain persons who be-
longed, or professed to belong, to the family of David with this
ancient sect of Nazarenes and f Ebionites. The Judaizing Chris-
tians who had a true faith in Jesus Christ clung, nevertheless,
tenaciously to the belief that their nation was to emerge from its
oppressed condition and remain for ever the special kingdom of
the Messiah. Those who lapsed into schism and heresy, while
they still professed to honor Jesus as a prophet, reverted into the
narrow and worldly views of the Pharisees, and sympathized
with those of their countrymen who, having rejected the divine
d catholic idea of the Messianic kingdom preached by Jesus
irist and his apostles, were on the lookout for a conquering
essiah soon to appear from the descent of David. Dr. Sepp re-
the impostor Simon Bar-Chocab as having been one of this
avidic family, and derives his name from the village of Cocheba.
he similarity of this name of a town in the trans-Jordanic region
to the Hebrew word signifying a star, suggested his calling him-
self the Son of the Star, in allusion to Balaam's prophecy. These
conjectures furnish an explanation of the fear which the emperors
Domitian and Trajan entertained of a formidable insurrection
springing from the royal pretensions of David's descendants,
and the measures they took to search out and destroy them. It
seems likely, also, that the impostor Simon must have claimed de-

776 CHRISTIAN JERUSALEM. [Sept.,

scent from David, as otherwise he could not have carried away
into revolt the greatest part of the Jews, and among them their
most distinguished rabbin, Akiba.

The second revolt of Judea was instigated by the declared
purpose of the Emperor JElius Adrianus to rebuild Jerusalem as a
heathen city, under the name of ^Elia Capitolina, a purpose which
he was taking steps to carry into execution, soon after the year 130.
Judea and Galilee had become silently but rapidly repeopled with
Jews during the past sixty years. Their spirit was unsubdued,
their means of carrying on war had been cunningly and secretly
accumulated. Their outbreak was violent, partially successful,
and only suppressed by the exertion of the overwhelming power
of Rome. The slaughter and dispersion into slavery of the un-
happy children of Israel almost rivalled those of the war of 66.
The ruin of the Jewish nation, and its expulsion from its own
capital and country, was far more complete and final. From that
time onward Palestine has been occupied and inhabited princi-
pally by Gentiles, and the Jew has become a stranger and a so-
journer in the realms of his ancestors. For a long period Jews
were forbidden, under pain of death, to enter the new city of
JElia Capitolina. The very name of Jerusalem fell into oblivion
and was no more uttered among men until Constantine restored
it. A motley swarm of new colonists, Greeks, Syrians, Romans,
and other Gentiles, settled upon the Holy Land ; heathen temples
and idolatrous rites desecrated the sacred spots dear to Jews, and
those venerated by Christians, alike ; and it seemed as if the heri-
tage of the Lord had been finally and fully given over to the
heathen, and that Satan was enthroned as sole and supreme king
upon Mount Sion.

TO BE CONTINUED.

1 88 1.] ST. Pius FIFTH. 777

ST. PIUS FIFTH *

THE church, like nations, must ever undergo vicissitudes ; but
whilst nations, one after the other, succumb to attacking forces,
the church, putting forth the strength ensured her by her
Founder, gathers wisdom from her new experience for the direc-
tion of future peoples. Dynasties have crumbled, one like the
other, cities have become ruins, even Christian communities have
shared the fate of less favored peoples and have ceased to exist.
But through all these upheavals of human governments the
church has remained the same, a spectator of their troubles, the
historian of their falls. Not that she herself has not been tried
for she has undergone severer struggles than earthly powers have
ever endured but, unlike worldly monarchies, her strength is not
of this earth. The church which could withstand the mighty
shocks of the sixteenth century may well and safely put forward
its claim to divine organization and guidance. Its leaders must
have been divinely aided to guide it safely through the maelstrom
of doctrines which circled towards the dark vortex of infidelity
in that age, when the world, led on by an irregular monk, was
casting off all respect for legitimate authority and all reverence
for divine teachings. Had the popes, as leaders of the church,
but the safety of religion to consider, we might suppose their
task to be at all times a difficult one. But more was expected of
them. They were to save society and civilization. Thus their
battle was not only against the principalities of darkness ; it was
against the powers of this world, and in the century of which we
are writing it was chiefly against that power which, like a thick
and heavy thunder-cloud, was overcasting the fair fields of Eu-
rope, portending destruction wherever it should break the
power of the Mussulman.

Michael Ghislieri, the future Pope Pius V., was born of
noble family at Bosco in 1504. Through the constant wars
and intestine troubles of Italy his parents had been reduced to
poverty. They were unable to provide for their son as be-
came their rank, and in consequence thought seriously of put-
ting him to work. Whilst deliberating over this project some

* St. Pius Fifth : His Life and Times. An Historical Sketch.

7/8 ST. Pius FIFTH. [Sept.,

Dominicans chanced to give a mission in his native town, <
and on its conclusion took with them the young Ghislieri. He
received a solid education at their convent, and was in due time
appointed professor. He lectured with equal care and ability to
the novices. One of his biographers, speaking of his theological
lectures, says : " He treated divinely of that divine science, and
entwined the thorns of Calvary amidst those of scholasticism."
Students crowded from all parts to listen to his teachings, and
learned men were not ashamed of receiving instruction from a
youth of twenty. He was ordained priest at the age of twenty-
four, and in succeeding years was made prior of his convent, in-
quisitor, bishop, and cardinal. Yet, with all his dignities, he sighed
constantly for the peace and quiet of his convent home, nor could
he be prevailed upon to accept any dignity, except in the spirit
of obedience to his vows. It may, perhaps, be interesting to the
reader to know that on his promotion to the cardinalate he was
assigned the care of the venerable Church of the Minerva, the
same which is to-day under the watchful eye of our own dear
Cardinal McCloskey. Ghislieri had not been long ranked among
the princes of the church when Paul IV., the reigning pon-
tiff, died. Through the exertions of St. Charles Borromeo, who
was aware of the sterling virtues of his candidate, Ghislieri was
elected to fill the vacancy. Then came a struggle. The simple
friar, who ever retained the hope of returning to the quiet of
his convent, would not give his consent to the election. St.
Charles, with two of his companions, actually dragged the newly-
elected pope to the assembly of cardinals, and it was only when
informed that his refusal would be an opposition to the manifest
will of Heaven that the humble Dominican uttered the words
which ratified the choice of the conclave. The usual festivities
attending the coronation of a pontiff were begun, but with several
changes. The pope, who had taken the name of Pius, had wit-
nessed with sorrow many of the wild scenes which at such times
desecrated the streets of the Christian capital. These he would
stop. Among the immemorial customs attending a papal election
was the disbursement of alms. The money was thrown to the
people from one of the balconies of the palace. As might natu-
rally be expected, the immense crowd, in their anxiety to obtain
either aid or souvenirs of the event, jostled and pushed one
another without mercy or respect for age or sex. Frequently
women and children were trodden under foot by the surging
mob, and sometimes serious difficulties arose which were settled
only by blood. Pius resolved to do away with this degenerating

1 88 1.] ST. Pius FIFTH. 779

custom. He knew that within the city limits were many fami-
lies who, though once in prosperity, were now reduced to ex-
tremity, but whom family pride kept from making known their
needs. To these he privately sent the sum which would have
been distributed to the crowd, and exhorted them to pray for the
success of his reign. To the poor convents throughout Rome he
sent the sum of a thousand crowns, which amount had formerly
been spent in giving a dinner to the representatives of the foreign
powers. When some murmured at this he replied : " God will
not condemn me for having deprived the envoys of kings of a
sumptuous dinner, but he will hold me accountable for the neces-
sities of his poor." He was emphatically a man of prayer.

The more we study his character the more fully are we obliged
to acknowledge with his historian that it seemed as if the days
of Antony, and Hilarion, and the Fathers of the Desert had return-
ed to rejoice the souls of the faithful and illumine the world. His
fasts and prayers were extraordinary. He recommended himself
to the prayers of every community in the Eternal City. In order
to still further protect his pontificate he published a general jubi-
lee. His bed was a hard pallet, and under his pontifical robes
was hidden the coarse serge of his order. Each night, when all
around were enjoying sweet repose, he arose from his miserable
couch, and, descending to the church of St. Peter, made the visit
to the seven altars. It was thus he refreshed his soul for the
labors and crosses of the coming day. Often did he, on the eves
of important events, spend the whole night before the tabernacle,
like another Moses, praying for his people. The whole secret of
his inner life is opened to us by the motto which was his maxim :
" Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ."
Many pleasing anecdotes of his early years in the pontificate are
told, each indicative of the noble Christian spirit which animated
him in all things. Whilst cardinal he had been distinguished by
his efforts for the conversion of the Jews resident in Rome.
Meeting one day a celebrated rabbi, he sought to lead him to the
truths of Christianity. " When," said he at last, " will you be-
come a Christian ? " The Jew, who was anxious to be freed from
his importunate attempts, answered him derisively : " When you
become pope." The rabbi in the course of years had forgotten
the event, till, shortly after the accession of Pius, he was summoned
to an audience with the pontiff. Pius reminded him of his pro-
mise, and called upon him to make it good. The poor rabbi,
conscientiously adhering to his own faith, was much saddened by
this interview and retired in confusion. He slept but little, and

780 ST. Pius FIFTH. [Sept.,

besought the God of his fathers to protect him. Neither did
Pius sleep. His night was spent in unbroken prayer before the
altar of Our Blessed Lady, seeking the conversion of this poor
soul. His prayers were heard. The following day the rabbi re-
appeared, accompanied by his three children, and asked to be
baptized.

Italy at this time was a prey to banditti. Several pontiffs had
tried to rid the country of them, but their efforts were attended
with only partial success. At last Pius succeeded in effecting a
treaty with Naples and Tuscany, by which it was decreed that
banditti should be put to death wherever found. By these strin-
gent measures public security was soon effected in the three do-
minions. One of the leaders of a band of these robbers was Ma-
riano d'Ascoli. For a long time this chief had managed to con-
tinue his depredations and to elude the vigilance of his pursuers.
One day a countryman came to ask an audience of the pontiff,
and for a stipulated sum promised to deliver the banditti into the
hands of the papal troops. " How will you do it ? " asked the
pope. " He is accustomed to trust me," replied the mountaineer,
"and I shall have no difficulty in drawing him into my house."
The pope became indignant and exclaimed : " Never will we
sanction such treachery. God will afford us some opportunity
of punishing this robber without such an abuse of friendship and
good faith." The robber-chief, having been informed of the pope's
reply, withdrew from his dominions and never appeared there
again.

The sixteenth century was indeed a remarkable epoch in
history. It saw the revival of pagan art and the consequent de-
crease of Christian virtue. It witnessed the terrible sundering of
the church in the West and its wonderful strengthening in the
East. It listened to the fiery harangues of Luther and the con-
vincing replies of his many opponents. It was saddened by the re-
ligio-political murder of Mary, Queen of Scots, gladdened by the
renowned victory of Christendom over Turkish power at Lepan-
to, and edified by the heroic deeds of numberless saints, whose
lives, standing out in bold contrast with the laxity of the times,
seemed to partake rather of the blessedness of heaven than of the
miseries of earth. It was, indeed, the era of saints and of miracles.
A saint had, by his powerful influence, placed Pius on the throne,
and before the pontiff had taken his seat he proved to the world
his own title to sanctity. St. Ignatius had founded his order of
Jesuits, and his co-laborer, St. Francis Xavier, had, by his life, his
miracles, and his death, won whole nations to the faith. St. Fran-

1 88 1.] ST. Pius FIFTH. 781

cis Borgia, tired of the world and disgusted with the emptiness
of its vanities, had thrown off the martial cloak of the grandee of
Spain to assume the coarse soutane of the Jesuit father, St. Phi-
lip Neri was preaching his first conferences in the oratory of St.
Jerome, and gathering to himself those companions who were to
continue his work after his death. Among the first to present
themselves to him was Cassar Baronius, a young man of talent
and piety. To him are we indebted for those grand annals of ec-
clesiastical history which have immortalized his name. The Cen-
turiators of Magdeburg had given to the world an ecclesiastical
history in support of the claims of Luther and his followers,
teeming with falsehood and misrepresentation. St. Philip could
not bear to see the church thus attacked, and ordered Baronius
to prepare a work on church history. Baronius, stunned by the
immensity of the design, begged hard to be excused. He alleged
his own incompetence and a thousand other excuses, but St. Phi-
lip was inflexible. " Do what you are told," he said. " The work
may appear difficult, but trust in God and he will care for it."
Thus in the spirit of obedience was begun this great master- work
of literature and history. Baronius completed the twelve volumes,
containing the sacred history of the first twelve centuries of the
Christian era. The work was continued by others after his de-
mise and brought down to their own times. The history of the
inner life of St. Philip and his disciple would fill a volume. De-
spite his great learning and profound researches, Baronius was
the humblest and most obedient child of St. Philip. He sought
occasions of humility, and asked for the position of general cook
for the community. Often sent by St. Philip to assist in the hospi-
tals, he cared for the sick with that tender charity which the love
of God alone can inspire. One day Baronius was taken severely
ill with a fever. St. Philip sent to him, saying : " I do not wish
you to be sick ; bid the fever be gone." Baronius, thinking only
of obedience, exclaimed : " O fever ! in the name of Philip I com-
mand you to go away." The fever left him, and, rising from his
couch, he went about his accustomed duties. Another time he
fell dangerously ill and his life was despaired of. He had re-
ceived the last sacraments, and those around him were momenta-
rily expecting his death. St. Philip, retiring to his oratory, be-
gan to pray for his dear child. Almost immediately Baronius
fell into a quiet slumber. Whilst in this sleep he saw St. Philip
prostrate at the feet of our Saviour and his Blessed Mother, and
heard the saint appealing for his own life. " Lord," he said,
" give me Baronius ; restore him to me." Then, as the Saviour

7S2 ST. Pius FIFTH. [Sept.,

refused his request, he turned to Mary and pleaded with her. She
listened, then, turning to her Son, interceded for him. At that
moment Baronius, who saw that her prayer was granted, awoke
entirely healed.

At this epoch it was that the famous edition of the lives of the
saints was begun by the celebrated Jesuit, Bollandus. He knew
the immensity of his undertaking, but he said : " What a Jesuit
cannot accomplish the Jesuits can." " How old," asked Bellarmine,
" is the originator of this movement ? " " About forty." " Then,"
said Bellarmine, " he must make sure of living two hundred
years, for it will require that length of time to complete the
work." The work was begun and pushed forward with amazing
rapidity. After the death of Bollandus it was continued by
others appointed for the task, till now it has reached its hun-
dredth volume in folio. The age was an age of contradictions.
Whilst paganism was forcing its way into worldly Catholicity,
and Protestantism was stamping out all literature, Baronius, Bol-
landus, Bellarmine, Tasso, and a host of others were preserving
Christian letters for the blessing of future ages. Whilst many
Catholics allowed themselves to be carried away by the evil and
lax principles of those who had rebelled from the authority of the
church, St. Charles, St. Philip, St. Teresa, St. Francis Borgia,
St. Stanislas, St. Aloysius, and innumerable others were illumin-
ing the world by the bright light of their wonderful virtues. It
was an epoch in history which, by its miracles and incredulity,
by its sanctity and laxity, by its learning and ignorance, carried
the mind back to the early ages of faith, when the deserts
abounded with saints strong in God's love and perfect in the sci n
ence of heaven, and the cities teemed with thoughtless men
dreaming only of temporal success and pleasure.

But to return to P.ius. He watched closely the progress of
political events, and earnestly warned Catherine of France of the
evils she was preparing for herself and her country. He wrote
to Mary, Queen of Scots, to console her in the difficulties which
surrounded her movements, and upon her imprisonment by Eli-
zabeth he excommunicated the latter. Fearful, however, lest
this measure should tell against her whom it was intended to be-
friend, he did not mention Mary's name or cause in the publica-
tion of the bull. He did all in his power to arouse the sympa-
thies of France and Spain in behalf of the injured queen, but
without avail. But his greatest glory, and a glory which will re-
dound to his credit in all history, is the fact that, almost unaided
by any European power, he destroyed the ascendency of the Turks

i88i.] ST. Pws FIFTH. 783

in Europe, and saved the Western nations from becoming subjects
of the crescent, by the glorious victory, won by his prayers ra-
ther than his troops, at Lepanto.

To form a correct idea of this important event we must go
back some years in the history of southern Europe. The Turks,
having made themselves masters of the Eastern empire, sought
to push their conquests still further. No period seemed more
fitting for so gigantic an enterprise than that in which the Chris-
tians were at national and religious war with one another. Eng-
land and Germany, rent with schism, would oppose no barrier to
the entrance of the Mussulman ; France, racked by internal strife,
seemed in the very throes of dissolution as a nation ; and Italy
alone, under the guidance of the Papacy, was left to ward off the
impending stroke which threatened religion and civilization.

Early in 1565 the fleet of the Turks appeared off the island of
Malta. It was composed of one hundred and fifty-nine men-of-
war manned by thirty thousand janissaries, the greater number
of whom were Greek apostates. Following these came numerous
other vessels carrying the heavy guns and munitions of war.
The isle was defended by the famous La Valette, commander of
the Knights of Malta. He had been aided financially by Pope
Pius IV. Philip of Spain had given the promise of Neapolitan
troops, but they had not arrived. To the formidable array of
Turkish forces La Valette could oppose seven hundred knights
of his order and the eight thousand five hundred inhabitants of
the place. He did not hide the danger from his men. He rather
exhorted them because of it to renew their vows before the al-
tar and to strengthen themselves for death by the reception of
the Blessed Eucharist. Fortified by this heavenly manna, these
noble warriors cast aside every personal division or enmity as un-
worthy the soldiers of the cross, and devoted themselves with all
their energy to the relief of threatened Christendom. From the
1 8th of May till the middle of September the beleaguered garrison
withstood the assaults of the Turks. Twice the -little fort of St.
Elmo seemed about to fall into the hands of the besiegers, but the
words of La Valette inspired new courage into the drooping
hearts of his men, and, like true heroes, they swore one to the
other to defend the place till the death. They were true to their
word. On the 23d of June the Turks, after having lost eight
thousand men, forced the entrance, but not till the sturdy knights
were weltering in their gore. To intimidate the Christians the
Turkish general bade his soldiers tear the hearts from the knights
who still breathed. In sacrilegious derision they split the bodies

784 ST. Pius FIFTH. [Sept.,

of these heroes in the form of a cross, and, having tied them to
planks, cast them into the sea. The waves and tide washed them
ashore near the various Christian towns of the island, and as a
consequence a dread of the Mussulmans filled the breasts of the
people.

On the 1 8th of August the Turks made a sudden attack on
another of the forts. For a moment victory seemed to be with
them. Their standards were already floating on the top of the
walls. Fear and dismay seemed to have rendered the Christian
knights powerless. But only for a moment. Soon the intrepid
La Valette was seen advancing, pike in hand. So hurried had
been his movements that he had not waited for his helmet. Fol-
lowed by a handful of his knights, he charges furiously upon the
enemy. The crowd of fleeing inhabitants turn, look at the old
man, pick up courage, and rush to his assistance. The tide of
battle is turned. The Turks, seeing La Valette so quickly rein-
forced, imagine there are other troops in reserve and retire. La
Valette, unconscious of danger, follows them till he has driven
them from the field. At length, on the 7th of September, the long-
expected aid of the Neapolitan troops arrives, and the Turkish
leader, finding himself outgeneralled, abandons the siege. The
news of the deliverance of Malta soon spread throughout Chris-
tendom and gave universal joy. La Valette became a hero, and
his name was on every tongue. The danger, however, was not
over ; it was only stayed. In the following year Soliman, the
sultan, got ready a new and larger fleet with the intention of once
more attacking the island. La Valette began the construction of
a fortified city on the ruins of St. Elmo, and Pius V., who had
become pope, obtained large loans to aid the project from Por-
tugal and Spain. To hasten its completion the pontiff permitted
the knights to work upon Sundays and holydays. In the midst
of these preparations Soliman died and left his kingdom to his
son, Selim the Sot. Historians have wondered that the Turkish
Empire could retain its power and ascendency under such a ruler,
but the real fact is that Mussulman power at that time was up-
held and strengthened by the genius and cunning of renegade
Christians rather than by the ability of Turkish statesmen. It
was, indeed, an empire of apostasy. The first generals and minis-
ters of Selim's court were apostates ; of ten grand viziers who
were around the throne of the monarch, eight had at one time
professed Christianity.

Scarcely was the sultan placed upon his throne when he sent
a notification to the republic of Venice that if it wished to remain

1 88 1.] Sr. Pius FIFTH. 785

on friendly terms with him it should cede to him the isle of
Cyprus, inasmuch as this island had formerly belonged to Egypt,
which now acknowledged the sultan's sway. The republic of
Venice refused this concession, and war was declared by Selim.
After a siege of seven weeks the city of Nicosa was taken by the
sultan. The garrison had been promised security upon surren-
der, but they were all hacked to pieces to the number of twenty
thousand. Two thousand persons of either sex were condemned
to slavery. Mothers killed their children and themselves to
escape the brutal barbarity of the conquerors. Three vessels
laden with booty and a thousand young Christian women were
sent to the Turkish capital. But they never arrived. A woman
of the number, dreading dishonor more than death, set fire to the
magazine, and the vessels were destroyed in the mid-sea.

In 1571 Famagosta, after a siege of thirteen months, capitulated.
The terms were honorable, allowing all the inhabitants and the
garrison to depart in security. However, the sultan forgot his
word. The vessels, which were overtaken, were robbed of their
refugees, the commandants were put to the sword. The gov-
ernor of the town, after having been subjected to various insults,
was executed.

The outlook was indeed dark. It seemed as if the enemy
were to prevail and that an end had come to Christian civiliza-
tion. Venice, in its dire distress, called upon Pius for assistance,
and begged him to petition the other Christian nations for aid.
Most willingly did Pius do all that was asked. He ordered the
papal fleet, under command of Mark Antony Colonna, to proceed
to the assistance of the Venetians. He sent legates to Spain,
Portugal, France, Germany, Poland, and Russia. He represented
to these various powers that not simply was Cyprus in danger,
but every nation of the West, and proposed to them to unite
against their common enemy, the Turk. Spain and the Italian
princes alone answered the pontiff's appeal. These formed a
league with the pontiff and Venice for the preservation of Chris-
tian Europe. Pope Pius was declared head of the league. He
named Don John of Austria generalissimo of the forces, and sent
to him his standard for the crusade. Mark Antony Colonna re-
ceived another from the pontiff bearing the famous inscription,
" In hoc signo vinces." It was pending these preparations that
Nicosa and Famagosta had fallen into the hands of the enemy.
This only made Pius the more anxious for the crusade. When
all was ready he bade the generalissimo to give battle to the
Turk as the only means of breaking his power. At the same

VOL. XXXIII 50

786 ST. Pius FIFTH. [Sept.,

time he gave orders that all should deport themselves as Chris-
tian soldiers by approaching the sacraments, and assured them of
victory.

On the 8th of September, 1571, a fast of three days was ordered.
The entire army went to confession and received Holy Commu-
nion. Enmities were suppressed, bickerings were forgotten, and
all were filled with the idea of conquering or dying in the strug-
gle. Holy priests placed on each vessel assisted in the preserva-
tion of discipline and the maintenance of piety. Don John in-
sisted strenuously upon order. Two unfortunates who had been
found guilty of blasphemy were put to death. Finally, having
set sail, the fleet arrived at the Gulf of Lepanto, in sight of the
Turks, on the 7th of October.

It was in this same locality that the famous battle of Actium,
between Antony and Octavius, had been fought. Three hundred
vessels now bore the crescent of the sultan, whilst the Christian
standard floated from the masts of two hundred and nine. Don
John took up his position in the centre, with Colonna at his right,
and Veniero, the Venetian admiral, at his left. Running through
the line in a little skiff, the general held aloft a large crucifix, and
in loud tones called upon the chiefs and soldiers to do their duty.
At the same time the priests were busied hearing confessions and
giving absolution. At a given signal the trumpets were sounded,
and the Christian army, in obedience to the orders of Pius V., in-
voked the Holy Trinity and saluted the Blessed Virgin. Then
for a few moments all was still. It was the awful, dread silence
which precedes the crashing of some terrible thunderbolt. The
air seemed overcharged with electricity, which nerved the armies
and made them eager for action. With apparent admiration the
two adversaries gazed at each other, each fearing to open hostili-
ties. At length the silence is broken, and with the voice of thun-
der a ball speeds from the Turkish vessel. Don John replies by
another. The fight has begun, and in an instant has spread all
along the line. Furiously the cannons blaze away. Now the
rigging of one vessel goes down, followed by the mast of an-
other. Now a noble warrior pays for his brave exposure by
death, and his companions have no time to bear him away, so
fiercely goes the battle. The Christians are at disadvantage, for
the sun blinds their eyes, and the wind carries the smoke of their
adversaries' vessels so that they cannot aim. Don John perceives
this, and, changing position, brings his vessels into better quarters.
The Turks closely watch his movements. Now the Turkish ad-
miral comes forth and brings his ship into close quarters with

i88i.] Sr. Pius FIFTH. 787

Don John's and Colonna's. The other vessels follow, and a bitter
hand-to-hand combat begins. No quarter is given or asked. For
a whole hour the terrible warfare goes on, till at last the Turkish
admiral falls. A Spaniard, seeing this, boards the enemy's boat,
severs the head from the body, and holds it aloft. A cry of en-
thusiasm resounds from the Christian vessels, and with new vigor
they press the foe ; crestfallen by the death of their leader, the
enemy soon give way, and in confusion endeavor to save them-
selves by extricating their boats from their entanglement with
those of the crusaders. But all in vain. The defeat was com-
plete. The Turkish power and ascendency was broken, and
Europe and Christian civilization were saved. Thirty thousand
Mussulmans were killed and two hundred and twenty-four vessels
destroyed. Fifteen thousand Christians who had been reduced
to slavery by the Turks were freed. The Catholic army lost
eight thousand men. It may perhaps be interesting to the reader
to know that Don Cervantes, the celebrated Spanish writer, was
among the Christian warriors in this famous battle, and had his
left arm carried away by a cannon-ball.

Whilst the campaign was organizing Pius V. multiplied his
fasts and austerities. He had arranged for constant and unremit-
ting prayers in the many religious houses of Rome. He himself
persevered night and day in prayer for the preservation of the
church and civilization, and the overthrow of the enemies of both.
When hindered by the necessity of rest or the affairs of state
from fulfilling this self-imposed task, he confided it to men of re-
cognized devotion. He was one day engaged upon some very
important business with his treasurer and several bishops in the
Vatican. The treasurer was speaking when Pius suddenly made
a sign with his hand for silence. He arose quickly, and, hasten-
ing to the window, opened it, and remained standing for a few
moments at it, wrapt in contemplation. His countenance lighted
up. All about him bespoke some profound emotion. Suddenly
turning to those near him, he cried aloud in transport : " Speak
no more. This is not a time for business. Let us away to the
church, there to thank God. Our army has been victorious."
Bathed in tears, he betook himself to his oratory, and, falling on
his knees, made his grateful return to the God of battles. The
treasurer and the assembled bishops noted the hour and the date
of the prophecy, and when, some days after, the news was brought
to Rome, it was found to have been the precise moment in which
the cross had triumphed over the crescent in the Gulf of Lepanto.
As the victory had been won through the intercession of the

;88 57 1 . Pius FIFTH. [Sept.,

Blessed Virgin, Pope Pius added the title of Help of Christians
to her litany, and instituted the feast of the Rosary on the first
Sunday of October.

The defence of Malta and the victory of Lepanto brought to
a final close the great work of the crusades the work of Charles
Martel, of Charlemagne, of Godfrey de Bouillon, of Richard the
Lion-hearted, and of St. Louis : the defence of Christian human-
ity and Christian society against Mohammedan barbarism. The
crescent waned and was never again destined to appear in west-
ern Europe. Once more the Papacy had saved the world, and
had saved it whilst distracted herself by the rebellious conduct of
her children in Germany and England. Pius did not long survive
the victory. His work was done. The severe strain upon his
system arising from the anxiety of the campaign had undermined
his bodily strength, and he succumbed. He died in May, 1572.
Public rejoicings were ordered by the Turkish government be-
cause of his death. All Christianity mourned for him. It felt
that it had lost a kind father, a just ruler, and a holy bishop, and
such is the testimony borne to his character by all writers of
history.

[88 1.] . A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 789

gr
att
ne
me

A WOMAN OF CULTURE.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A MEMORABLE NIGHT ITS THIRD PART.

THE tumult prevailing in the city kept peace-loving citizens
within doors that evening. In the darkness the rival factions re-
cognized only two classes friends and foes. Neutrality was out
of the question ; and as broken heads were very evenly divided
between these two classes, there was no safet}^ in venturing
abroad near the scene of combat. Sir Stanley Dashington was
one of the few whom love of excitement and love of another de-
scription had drawn out into the streets. Being determined to
spend the evening with Olivia and her brother though an insur-
rection barred the way, and not unwilling to be an eye-witness of
the scenes enacting, he plunged boldly through the midst of the
contestants, and came out on the other side laden with honors
and victory, with his nose bleeding copiously and a cut over his
left eye. In this state he presented himself before his friends.
To see the alarm that spread over one pretty face at sight of his
bloody countenance and disordered clothing was a sufficient re-
ward to the baronet for what he had suffered ; and to have the lit-
tle hands prepare the warm water, and sponge the wound, and
bandage his head, and arrange and brush his clothing, was a bliss
to obtain which again he was willing and eager to rush into
another fray. Only the doctor took the matter seriously, and
grew sadder and envious at the mere sight of this fortunate lover
ttended by his mistress. It was then eleven o'clock, for the baro-
t had taken almost two hours to make his way through the
mob. He had strategized and fought with fists and sticks alter-
nately. At one moment he found himself leading a furious crowd
against the soldiers, and at the next he was running with useful
speed to avoid the same. Ups and downs of fortune passed with
the quickness of thought. Being brave, he was favored by for-
tune, and recorded with proper pride the number of heads he had
probably broken and the number of vain attempts at his own.

In the midst of their rejoicing came Quip and Juniper with
the senseless body of McDonell. A few words from the student
were sufficient to explain matters, and then began " the hurryings

790 A WOMAN- OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

to and fro, and gathering tears and tremblings of distress." The
unconscious man was put to bed hastily, and carefully examined
by the doctor. His body was badly cut and bruised, but no bones
were broken. His face had escaped injury. The cuts and
bruises, though not in themselves absolutely fatal, were serious
enough, considering the feeble state of health in which McDonell
was, to warrant the doctor's declaration that the man had but a
few hours to live. Sir Stanley went at once for the priest and
Quip for another doctor, while Olivia, assisting her brother at
times, drew from Juniper the details of the sad experience through
which his master had gone. The little lady was all tears and
sympathy and reverence for the dying man.

" He is nothing less than a martyr," she whispered to Harry.
" He might have escaped uninjured, but that he would not deny
his religion to the mob."

And when no one was looking she fervently kissed her mar-
tyr's hand. He was a man of suffering, indeed, and to the watch-
ers his face showed it plainly, so pale was it, so weary, so full of
pitiful longing as if for some escape from his endless difficulties.
Waiting for the return of consciousness for his heart was beating
perceptibly and his breathing could be distinctly heard Olivia
smoothed his darkened hair and wrinkled forehead ; and under
her magnetic touch a new expression formed on the sad counte-
nance. If his daughter but knew ! The thought of Nano recalled
the fact that no messenger had been sent to her. She mentioned
it to her brother.

" As there is no other present," he said, " send Juniper."
Which was accordingly done, and the brother and sister were
left alone with the man who in the past had so cruelly wronged
them. There were and could be no revengeful feelings towards
the poor wretch, even had he not been sanctified by the dignity
and reverence which surround a confessor of the faith. The mills
of the gods, grinding slowly, had ground out to him from the
fortune he had stolen only remorse, ingratitude, misery, and
death, while those whom he had cheated, tried and proved by
adversity, had been schooled to enjoy their good fortune in
moderation when it should come to them. He came back to con-
sciousness before any of the messengers had returned.

" I am a papist," were his first spoken words.

Then feeling Olivia's soft touch on his face, and fancying that
he was still in his old illness and that the past was but one of its
hideous dreams, he murmured : " My daughter ! Nano ! " and,
reaching for the little hand, pressed it to his lips. When he saw

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 791

her face and recognized her he knew it was not a dream, and the
old expression of weariness and resignation returned to his face.

"Where am I ? " he asked. " I was in the mob. And where
is Juniper ?"

"You are safe in the house of Dr. Fullerton," said Olivia,
checking her own emotion, " and Mr. Juniper has gone for your
daughter."

" My daughter ! " he said suddenly. " Ah ! yes, of course
my daughter."

The tone was significant, in spite of his feeble attempts to hide
his feelings.

" You are very kind," he said again. " You are Catholics, too.
Have you sent for a priest ? "

" Father Leonard himself will be here directly," answered the
doctor, thinking it a good opportunity to come forward. " I
must insist that you talk less, as you are in a dangerous condi-
tion."

A shiver passed through the wounded body, and his eyes,
startled and wild, sought the speaker's face.

" I am dying," he gasped slowly ; " and who are you that
speak to me with the voice and mien of one who died long ago? "

" It is my brother," said Olivia" Dr. Fullerton."

" Henry Hamilton," corrected the doctor, comprehending
many things from McDonell's frightened manner and strange
words, " the son of your dead friend."

The fear vanished from McDonell's face. He looked curious-
ly and eagerly at the doctor.

" This is the providence of God," he murmured " his justice
and his mercy shown in the one act. I thought to die in the
street and amid strangers without doing the work I had laid out
for myself. Instead I die with the children of my wronged
friend, and my one wish is to be accomplished. I know not upon
what grounds you claim relationship with William Hamilton, sir,
but your resemblance to him is sufficient. There is a silk bag
about my neck ; take it from me, Henry Hamilton. For your
sister and yourself the papers it holds were written. Use them
as you will. They will help you to your own again. In all
things I pray you to be merciful with my daughter. You will
find her wrong-doing faithfully recorded, but, where you can, be
gentle with her."

" How could we be otherwise ? " cried Olivia, with a burst of
sobbing. " We have so loved her ! "

" Have loved ! " he sighed. " Alas ! my child, so it will be with

792 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

her in the future : to lose her best friends, and to lose them
justly."

The doctor went into the outer apartment and thence into the
garden to hide his agony and the groans that burst from his
helpless lips. It was all true what Quip had said of her, and
there was no hope for him. She was guilty of the horrible crime
which had been laid to her charge. She had struck down her
father, she had connived with a low villain to retain wealth which
was not her own, and she could smile still and be gay under such
a burden ! Under the stars he fought out his battle, and when
he entered again her false image had been torn to shreds from its
resting-place over his heart and mingled with the rubbish of the
garden.

Father Leonard, the new doctor, and Mr. Waring all came
together in the wake of Mr. Quip and the baronet ; but the im-
portant work had been done in their absence, and the dying man
was left to the priest and Olivia, while the others wandered
about aimlessly pending the arrival of Miss McDonell. Juniper
had accepted the appointment of messenger to Nano with alacri-
ty. He had long been seeking an opportunity of approaching
the lady whom he had helped to deceive. Circumstances had
interfered. Once it was his hatred of Quip and the desire of re-
venge on that tormenting demon which prompted him to reveal
to Nano the share he had in deceiving her. Now there was a
hazy notion in his not very astute mind that he would be doing
the daughter of his benefactor a service. Their exact relations
he but dimly understood. He knew that McDonell feared and
loved his daughter, and he fancied that there was a connection
between the causes of that fear and Killany's conspiracy against
the truth. If his information would be of use in restoring father
and daughter to each other, he would have done an honorable
thing ; and so he fled with eager and hasty steps through the
night until he reached the residence visited by him earlier in the
evening.

The servant who brought the announcement of his coming
was stopped in the hall by Killany.

" Tell the gentleman that Miss McDonell receives no messages
or visitors to-night," he said.

Juniper, hearing the words, came to the door of the waiting-
room.

"Servant," he said, "do as you are bid by your mistress.
That man is not your master. Tell Miss McDonell that her fa-
ther has escaped from the asylum and is dying at the house of a

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 793

friend. I am come to conduct her to him. Tell her, too. I have
that to say to her which will open her eyes to the kind of people
she has been harboring of late."

The doctor was livid, but saw fit to smile and bid the servant
carry the message to his mistress, since it was so urgent.

" And so McDonell is dying? " he said smoothly. " My good
fellow, would you be so kind as to inform me where the gentle-
man lies? He is a very dear friend."

" What is the information worth ? " said Juniper, with a grin ;
for he, too, had heard of Killany's horsewhipping.

" Ten dollars," said the doctor, passing over the bill.

" He lies at a house occupied by one Dr. Fullerton," said
Juniper, with a light and significant laugh. " You'll not be apt to
go there."

The doctor staggered away as the servant came to take Juni-
per to his mistress's room. She was walking up and down as
she had walked for the past two hours, pale, unwearied, despair-
ing of she knew not what, her mind a blank, her heart a painful
weight in her bosom. The news of her father's escape relieved
her of the superstitious fear of the face at the window. That he
was dying, with strangers, and perhaps by violence, roused all
her dormant remorse and filled her from head to foot with a
sharp agony, not so much from affection as from a fear of dark
consequences. Juniper was awkward and nervous in so beautiful
a presence, and silently waited to be questioned.

" You say that my father is dying," she said. " How has this
happened, and where is he ? "

" He was trying to get to the priest's house, ma'am, and fell
into the hands of the mob. He is now at Dr. Fullerton's, and
the doctor says that he can't live longer than morning. I was
sent for you."

She started and clasped her hands suddenly. Of all places in
the world that he should be with Olivia and her brother !

" I have seen you before," she said. " You came here one
time to do some work for Dr. Killany, did you not? "

" I did," answered the man impulsively, " and it was all a lie
from beginning to end. I knew nothing about the children you
. spoke of, and the Hamiltons that I knew were living not long
ago. Quip told me that Killany wanted any man or woman who
could swear to the death of any two children, and he took me ;
and I know that Quip forged letters and newspaper-slips to de-
ceive you."

" Thank you," she said quietly. " We shall now go to the

794 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

Fullertons." And she gave orders that the carriage should be
brought round to the door. Her calmness was wonderful. The
revelation of Juniper was a terrible shock to her pride, and she
gave no sign. She seemed unable to feel any emotion. Tears
would have been a relief, or complete exhaustion. She could
obtain neither. She was in despair, ignorant of what to do
against these rising dangers and deceits, and she thought her
helplessness composure. Going down the stairs, she met the man
who had tricked her so cleverly, who had been her smiling Me-
phistopheles, persuading her of obtaining a happiness she was
never to know. The sight of him could not drive her into a fury.
He attempted to speak to her, but she waved him away and
called two of the men-servants.

"This gentleman," she said, pointing to Killany, " will now
leave the house. Should he enter it again at any time without
my special permission, you will turn him forcibly out of doors."

She had the satisfaction of seeing him wince at that. If trou-
bles were rising around her like an incoming tide, insults and the
bitterest humiliations met her tempter everywhere. He began
in his delicate way to bluster.

" Away with him ! " said the lady to her servants. Before he
was exactly aware of the situation the doctor found himself hur-
rying down the snowy pathway to the gate, guided by the strong
hands of the men-servants. Fate was against him, and yet he re-
mained unconquered, holding with the tenacity of a bull-dog to
his prey.

As Nano and Juniper proceeded to Fullerton's she had op-
portunity to make inquiries concerning the events of the night.
Nothing which she heard was reassuring. The darkness seemed
gathering about her in earnest, and with it came that new feeling
of recklessness and obstinacy which had so lately made its ap-
pearance. She remembered that at first it had pleased her. It
intoxicated her now with the idea that if her destiny was really
awaiting her she would ride to it sphinx-like and know no shame
or regret. Still, the prospect was not encouraging. To the se-
rious observer distance lends oblivion and death no enchantment,
and for her they possessed the same characteristics of terror,
pain, and humiliation.

The house was reached at last, and the baronet came out to
help her from the carriage. He who would once have loved to
do that office, and would have envied him to whom it fell, was
determined never to touch her hand or look on her face again.
In the eyes of those men gathered around the room where her

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 795

father lay she was a guilty and a pitiable thing, and, though they
strove to hide their real feeling towards her, she felt it by her
own strong sensitiveness. Quip was gazing at her curiously, as
he would gaze at a noted criminal, and Mr. Waring, grief-strick-
en at his master's fate, fixed his old eyes on her with an expres-
sion of hideous, decrepit horror. The baronet was courteous,
the priest subdued, and Olivia, timid and frightened because
of her knowledge, did not dare to raise her head.

He for whom she looked most eagerly was absent, and at
that hour it had a meaning. On all sides she was condemned,
even by those she loved. On all sides she was pitied, even by
those she despised and whose pity was an insult. An heiress, a
beauty, a genius, and a criminal ! these were her glories, and,
high as some of them lifted her, the last one cast her down into
the depths. Her pride and stoicism was a poor armor against
the arrows which human eyes could shoot. In its stead came
that feeling to which pride had given birth. It answered her
purpose fully, and she prepared herself against any display of
natural emotion.

He had been waiting for her with hopeful patience after the
last preparations for his long journey were made. His contri-
tion was a wonderful and pathetic thing to see. It had risen out
of great suffering. He had atoned as much as a man could atone
unaided for the sin of his life. ' His ill-gotten property was re-
stored to its owners ; for the long-continued denial of his faith
he had atoned with his life ; for his other neglects his illness and
imprisonment were large compensation ; and there now remain-
ed only his daughter. How he prayed that his petitions for her
might be granted ; that new suffering of his might purchase for
her faith and penitence ! She came in where he was lying, and,
the door being closed, they were left alone. She took a seat by
the bedside calmly, and gazed composedly but with an inward
feeling of dread on his death-marked face.

"Well," he said, " we have met again."

" We have met again, father," she replied. " They tell me
for the last time."

" For the last time in this world, Nano. There will be one
other meeting, a more sorrowful and terrible one, before our
God. I am very happy I have so strong a hope that heaven
has room for me. I wish to die with my bad deeds as far as pos-
sible undone. I have restored my property to the actual living
heirs. I would die content, Nano, if I had but the assurance that
we may meet again in heaven. My child, of all the wickednesses

796 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

I have been guilty of, that was the worst which took my fatherly
care and love from you and bestowed it on my gold. You might
have been such a woman as this Olivia Fullerton."

" I am what I have been made. I cannot change. I shall die
even as I have lived," she said, with a fierce, burning hate in her
heart for him that he had left her so utterly to the mercy of
strangers. It almost, in her own mind, justified her cruelty to-
wards him.

" With God all things are possible," he answered meekly ;
" and I shall pray that you may be saved. Nano, it is my dying
sorrow that I leave you in so wretched a state."

" I regret that I should be a cause of sorrow to you in this
hour. It may please you to know that I have dismissed Kil-
lany."

" God forgive him ! " he said fervently. " If he had found yoi
and me stronger in virtue he would not have had opportuniti<
to succeed so well in his wicked designs."

There was silence then between them until she thought of th<
heirs.

" You say you have found those children, and have takei
means to restore to them their property. I shall be happy t<
give them their own. Killany deceived me into the belief thj
they were dead, and until to-night I was ignorant of the decej
tion. I would not have acted so harshly had I known it at
first."

" Poor, poor child ! " said the dying man. " He deceived and
tricked us both. These children have grown to be man and we
man. Nano, you are in their house. They are Dr. Fullertoi
and his sister, and I find that they can prove their rights clearly."

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they had ground, in
the present instance, exceedingly small. This woman, who had
passed through the ordeal of the last two months with a marvel-
lous ease and composure, and had sat unmoved by the bedside
of her dying father ; who had seen her friends depart, and her
servant turned traitor and cheat, without giving a sign of. grief,
heard this stunning revelation with as much apparent indiffer-
ence as she usually displayed on similar occasions. But there
are limits to human endurance, and hers had been reached. She
was composed as one could be who has been struck dead in a sit-
ting posture. All her faculties were numbed. Something seem-
ed to have dashed like a bullet into her brain and stopped the
machinery. A minute after the words had been uttered she lay
on the floor unconscious, and in a swoon so terrible that it looked

[88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 797

:e death to the astonished people who rushed into the room,
had its effect on McDonell. . Paralysis seized immediately
ipon his enfeebled limbs, and even while they were bearing his
laughter from his presence the worn soul, all its light centred in
;he eyes so mournfully fastened on her still form, fled on its eter-
lal mission.

CHAPTER XXX.

TO THE LOWEST DEPTHS.

MENTAL or physical pain, if not too acute, is long in reaching
culminating point. It continues while endurance lasts, and
hen that fails pain is dead. Misery can heap itself to an aston-
ishing height, and find mortals to bear the burden even while
putting on the straw that- breaks the supporter down. Miss Mc-
Donell had come to the conclusion that her sufferings, her real
miseries, had begun and ended with the one fatal announcement
which her father had made on his death-bed. She did not dis-
cuss her wretchedness or endeavor to analyze it. The fact was
too patent. Whatever hopes she had before entertained of reach-
ing once more the eminence of virtue by an irreproachable life
died out. The strongest motive was gone from her. Poverty,
loneliness, oblivion would have been welcomed could they have
restored to her the friends she had lost. Her wealth was become
distasteful, even hateful. It had cost her the esteem of a noble
woman and the love of one man the only man in her world, and
who had gone out of it for ever.

It was April, and April rains were falling on the dead leaves

Pthe previous autumn. The leaden skies and the desolate
-eets, the grand, lonely house with its death-odors, the skeleton
3es naked and dripping, were in perfect accordance with the
x>d which possessed her. A curtain of dismal colors had fallen
tween the mirth of the winter and the promised gayeties of the
spring, and a similar curtain had fallen between the glory and joy
of her past life and the utter misery to come. Her trust in her-
self was gone. She played now the role of the unsuccessful
schemer, cheated by those whom she had thought faithful, cheat-
ed by herself when she dreamed of purchasing at a bargain. She
had become a laugher and a scorner. Diogenes seemed likely to
be made her beau-ideal of a philosopher and a man. What lit-
tle faith she had in personal good was lost. She sneered at her

798 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

loved transcendentalism, and threw her books into the flames.-
Iconoclasm was her religion. Having innocently broken her
most favored idols, she revenged herself by breaking the less fa-
vored ones in succession.

Her father had been scarcely laid in his grave with fitting
honors when she sent for Killany. Caprice had more to do with
the action than sound sense or discretion. She was inclined to
do rash and desperate things. He had once been ignominiously
ejected from her house, and threatened with a similar service
should he venture to make his appearance there again without
permission. This he had felt as no disgrace, neither as an
annoyance until by the death of McDonell his trusteeship lapsed.
Then a footing at McDonell House would have been a wonderful
advantage. His honor was expediency. He received her sum-
mons with gratitude, and came, smiling and subservient, at her
command. He was met with superciliousness. She had some
torpedoes to set off for his benefit. Their effect had already been
tried on herself, and she was desirous of noting in her cynical
way their effect on the arch-schemer, who was never surprised,
never taken aback at anything.

" My father in dying," said she, when the conversation was
fairly begun, " managed to leave the property we so struggled to
hold to the heirs of the estate. I was puzzled to know how he
could do that when you so successfully proved the heirs dead."

This was the first of the missiles she had prepared, and it
went off with considerable noise. He blushed at her nice in-
nuendo, and stammered out that he was as much surprised as
herself.

" A lawyer of these heirs has told me that I may as well com-
promise. I have not a chance in the courts, and ugly stories might
get out among my city friends. Dr. Hamilton and his sister Oli-
via lately Dr. and Miss Fullerton have kindly consented to any
arrangements I shall propose in the matter. They are the heirs."
The second missile was more successful even than the first, as it
rendered the doctor quite speechless. He wished, with a great
comprehensiveness, to call himself a fool, but the word was alto-
gether too weak to express his appreciation of himself. Miss
McDonell, perceiving the feeling, was delighted.

" They have given me my own time in which to make my
arrangements," she continued. " You are no longer my trustee.
I now make you my agent. The sum of three hundred thousand
dollars must be placed at the disposal of the Hamiltons as speed-
ily as possible. It will therefore be necessary to dispose of real

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 799

estate, bonds, mortgages, and merchandise to that amount. You
are commissioned to do this, and you will also convert into
money whatever of property is left to me."

" Which will amount to one hundred and fifty thousand," he
said, quite overcome by this unexpected mark of favor, but con-
jecturing that it came from disappointment and grief at the per-
sonality of the heirs.

" Very good. You may go, and when you have business to
transact send a deputy. 1 do not care to see you oftener than
can be helped. Thirty thousand of my property is yours. You
have already by your negligence cost me more, but I let that
pass. Without any questions or thanks or explanations, go."

He went with wise alacrity. Her smiling, decisive manner
was too much for him.

" Generous with her money," he thought. " However, I am
not sure that her generosity will stand the strain I shall soon put
upon it."

A remark which shows that Miss McDonell's cynical, brave,
devil-may-care recklessness in appointing such a villain as her
agent was not without something of foolishness in it after all.
Perhaps she thought to bribe him into faithfulness by her gift of
thirty thousand.

Real estate was then at a premium, and particularly that
which had been owned by McDonell. His investments had been
well made, and the mortgages, bonds, etc., were sold at full
value. Her share in the business which her father had carried on
was sold to the junior partners, and in two weeks the sum of
three hundred thousand dollars was placed to the account of Dr.
Hamilton and his sister. Killany announced by deputy that in
ten days all the remaining property would be represented by a
bank account of over one hundred thousand dollars. His deputy
was the agreeable Quip, whose share in certain transactions had
not yet become known to his over-confident master. Mr. Quip
called every other day with his report, and was so to call until
the doctor had finished his work.

The Hamiltons in the meantime had made their appearance in
society under the protection of their new name, their new for-
tune, and the powerful Mrs. Strachan. Their confidence in them-
selves and their indifference to every one, now that they could
stand face to face with the world, upset the slander which Kil-
lany's public whipping had already brought into question ; the
fact that brother and sister were to share some sixty thousand

Soo A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

pounds between them made general society affable, though not
cringing; and Mrs. Strachan's unconcealed pride in their com-
pany capped the climax gloriously. Society came to its knees
after a time, threw dirt at Killany, and begged pardon in the
many delicate but open ways which it employs for that purpose.
Having a great respect for it, with a safe amount of scorn inter-
mingled, Dr. Hamilton and Olivia chose to forgive and forget
past cruelties.

With the end of April the marriage-music began to melt on
the air in delicate cadences, and Hymen, in the person of the
baronet, to make furious and unceasing attempts to light the nup-
tial torch. Olivia declared that she was in no hurry, which Sir
Stanley refused to believe, and he reasoned with her in a variety
of ways. He argued that the little birds were mating in the
spring weather, and no time could be more appropriate for
them. He had been dallying so long on the American continent,
not having been home since he had come into his inheritance,
that the charge of absenteeism would soon be flung at his head.
Heaven alone knew what wrongs his tenants might be suffering
from his absence. For a longer delay she might hold herself re-
sponsible. It was the proper thing for a hero and heroine when
their troubles were over to go to the church at once and get
married. Those novels in which the reader is told that the lovers
intend to get married were not satisfactory, and authors risked a
good part of their reputation by prolonging useless dalliance
through three chapters when lovers should have become man
and wife and turned their attention to more serious duties and
more rational pleasures.

"Oh!" said she pettishly, for prosperity had spoiled -her a
little, " then you don't believe in the cooing and the wooing that
ought to precede these things."

" Don't I ? " says he, with a grin of delighted recollection at his
own doings in that direction. " You minx ! haven't I cooed and
wooed for a whole winter like a young dove? And haven't I
liked it, and haven't you liked it so well that you have consented
to listen to it for the rest of your days. And didn't I get a
bloody nose and a broken head one night in order to satisfy your
my tastes for the thing? And am I not about to fight a duel
with a man on your account, unless the said man, who has twice
abjectly petitioned for an extension of time, shall leave the city
immediately ? "

" Oh ! " hiding her blushes with her hands, " how absurdly you
can talk. Fight a duel just when you are going to get married ! "

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 80 1

" It gives a relish to the wedding, my love," says he. " You
have just got your money " coaxingly " and will you not say
next week for the time? Come, think how I have waited and
suffered, think how I am pressed for time. If you will consent I
will do more cooing and wooing in one week "

" I don't want it," says she curtly. " What are you thinking
of ? A week ! You take away my breath at the bare idea ! "

" Then you will not say next week? " And he began to bridle.

" Why, you dear, unreasonable fellow, who ever heard of a
young lady just come into a fortune getting married without a
trousseau?"

" Trousseau ! " echoes the baronet in despair. " A letter to
Paris, a month or two of waiting, and heaven knows what be-
sides ! I'll not stand it. I sha'n't wait longer than another week.
Why did you not think of this a month ago ? "

" Heated about nothing, Sir Stanley. I can get ready in a
week ; but then you know this is to be a grand affair, and one
needs at least two weeks "

" Stop right there," says Sir Stanley. " In two weeks it shall
be, and if you change your mind I start for Europe to-morrow."

It was settled afterwards in family council that the wedding
should take place early in the month of May now close at hand,
and preparations were begun on a great scale. Olivia and her
baronet would much have preferred a quiet, unostentatious cere-
mony, but Mrs. Strachan, having been consulted, went against it
so decidedly, and gave reasons so strong in support of her views,
that all agreed she was right and consented to follow her instruc-
tions. Society must know once and for ever that Miss Hamilton
was not afraid of scrutiny into her family records ; that she
tood before the world a lady of fortune, and not one whit less
equal to her husband before than after her marriage. As her
wealth was considerable, it would not be amiss to give society an
ea of its proportions in the magnificence of her last appearance

Miss Hamilton. The ceremony was to be performed at the
thedral, and the breakfast was to take place at Mrs. Strachan's
sidence.

It came off at the appointed time, and was, of course, a grand
(fair. All the city was present. Every fashion of the hour was
represented in the costumes of the ladies and gentlemen, and the
bride, as the centre of attraction, looked the perfection of the
character which she sustained. It was a triumphant hour for
Sir Stanley, but a rather mournful one for Lady Dashington.
That day saw her go out once more into a strange world. She

VOL. xxxin 51

802 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

had once thought that no other parting could be more sorrow-
ful than that which she had made with her loved convent and
convent life. It bore only a shadow of present suffering. " For
ever and for ever " were the words traced on her destiny. She
was to find a new soil, and a new home, and new friends, and all
the dear old associations were to be torn from her and thrown
aside. One face that should have smiled and wept with her in
that hour was not present. A card of invitation had been sent to
Miss McDonell, and with it Olivia had sent an entreating note,
affectionate as ever when the chilliness of the past was allowed
for. The invitation was declined with thanks, and the note re-
mained unanswered.

The breakfast, being under Mrs. Strachan's supervision, was a
success. Well-bred hilarity, a quality for which she had ever
been famous, prevailed. The guests were arranged with an eye
to the peculiarities of each grouping. Father Leonard sat vis-a-
vis with Sir John McDonough, who had a High-Church bishop
on his left, with some nonentity, however, between. The en-
deavors to get a decided opinion from Sir John on any one point
an amusement which kept that part of the table in perpetual
good-humor only served to show the dexterity, wit, and good-
humor of that slippery politician. Speeches were made by every-
body famous or stupid at such a bit of delicate tongue-fencing.
The priest told his little story ; and the attorney-general spoke
of the day on which he was married, without committing himself
in any way ; and the High-Church bishop, who was a wit, said
sharp things at the expense of his neighbors. The bridegroom
was in a merry mood between looking too often at his bride and
at the bottom of his wine-glass. In his speech he said many rash
brilliant things and many rash foolish ones, which were quite
excusable in a man just married, but afforded Lady Dashington
ample material for a first curtain-lecture. Dr. Hamilton had
been very cheerful and talkative through the whole ceremony.
It was a satisfactory event for him, inasmuch as it saw his sister
so well provided for. Olivia had watched him closely, but was
unable to detect any outward expression of the sorrow which she
knew to be eating up his heart.

At last the ordeal was over for the married pair, and, after
many tearful adieus, they were carried away to the station.
Olivia bore it very well, although she looked a trifle frightened,
as if the magnitude of her position had not yet been fully under-
stood. She hung about her brother, and would not take her eyes
from him even while the train was steaming into the depot.

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 803

" Keep a brave heart, little girl," he said consolingly, " and
have no fears for me. Such a steady old chap, with plenty of
money at his command and a loved profession, can never want
for happiness."

" Ah ! " she answered tearfully, " you will be alone. If the
wish of your heart could but be accomplished this parting would
not be so bitter for you and me. You have always had the suf-
fering, Harry, and I the pleasure. Even now it is the same.
Isn't it just possible, Harry, that she and you

He put his hand over her mouth with a gentle shake of the
bowed head.

" Never, never, Olivia. It can never be. I love her still, it is
true, but my respect for her is gone. I do not condemn her.
We can leave that to God. Yet do not trouble yourself about
me in that respect. When she is forgotten I shall perhaps find
another to fill her place."

He led her to the train and stood waving his handkerchief at
the tearful face as it moved away. It was the last of pretty, pure-
hearted Olivia. Very downcast he felt as he returned to the
guests at Mrs. Strachan's and took his place among them. He
was resolved that as soon as possible he would leave the city
and seek forgetfulness'and peace amid new scenes.

Having obtained the property so confidently assured him by
Mr. Quip, his first duty was to search up that individual, in order
to pay him his stipulated five thousand. Mr. Quip, however,
was not to be found, neither at the office, which was closed, nor
at any of his usual haunts in the city. Strict inquiry brought out
the fact that the gentleman was in jail, and thither went the doc-
tor, amused at this new freak of Mr. Quip's fortunes. The phi-
losopher greeted him cheerily and gabbled away with uncon-
scious coolness.

" All through our friend Mr. Juniper," he said in explaining
the circumstances of his imprisonment. " Miss McDonell pre-
sented him with some money for his devotion to her father he
knew that would be forthcoming, the rascal ! and on the strength
of my five thousand I asked him to lend me some. I have a habit
of borrowing, I must admit, and had practised considerably on
Juniper. He refused, and, going off with some old cronies, re-
turned to my lodgings in the evening gloriously drunk. I put
him to bed unthinkingly, and two days later find myself in jail on
a charge of robbery preferred by Juniper. He had no money
when he woke up next morning, and found it convenient, having
been under my care, to fix the charge on me. Unfortunately the

804 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept,

judge saw the matter in the strong 1 light which Juniper's counsel
and the prosecuting crown attorney threw upon it, and I am rus-
ticated for two months straight. You may put away my five
thousand dollars in a bank. There is another thing which 'has
made me uneasy, and which I wish you to settle. Killany has
fled to parts unknown. I was his go-between with Miss Mc-
Donell for some time, because he was her agent and she would
not look at him. When he was going he gave me a series of let-
ters to be delivered to her one by one every other day for
two weeks, exactly as if he were present in the city. He has been
gone ten days, and the whole affair has made me uneasy. I can
swear that he did not go without taking a fair share of some-
body's goods along with him, for he had none of his own."

Dr. Hamilton thanked Mr. Quip for his information, bade him
a final adieu, and hastened in alarm to the priest. Inquiries were
set on foot by both, and the result chronicled a new and last mis-
fortune for Miss McDonell. She was left as poor as the poorest.
The house had been sold from over her head by the smiling Kil-
lany, and with his ill-gotten gains that slippery gentleman had
fled to distant countries where he would be unheard of by his
Canadian friends for evermore. She bore her losses with the
same stoicism shown under the trials of the months that were
past.

" I am not in love with riches and station now," she said to
the priest, " and feel some relief in knowing that the metal which
brought me so much evil is no longer mine. I am going to New
York, I have position already assured me as editress of a maga-
zine, and the salary is quite sufficient to support me in comfort.
If I desired to be revenged on Killany I could not have done bet-
ter than to have permitted him to make away with this money.
He is now the beggar on horseback, and you can surmise the
direction he will take."

Nevertheless the priest was not pleased with her manner or
her looks or her decision. Her face had of late become marble
in its whiteness, and the lustrous eyes never for a moment lost
their expression of pain. The strain which she had borne with-
out once wincing was too severe for her physical powers long to
withstand, and he suggested that she should remain for some
time at leisure before attempting work of any kind.

" I am not safe without work," she replied, " and I am sure
that new scenes and new faces, and the excitement of being poor
and earning my own living, will be of benefit. All my old pur-
suits are distasteful, I could not remain here in any event. 1

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 805

shall go within a week. I have many friends in New York, who
are acquainted by this with my changed fortunes and are anx-
ious to serve me. If I get ill and, to tell the truth, I am not
desirous of it there will be many kind friends to care for me.
Good-by, father. Be assured of my gratitude for your many
kindnesses."

Within a week she had departed, alone and unattended, for
New York. It was the wonder of society for the proverbial
nine days. Dr. Hamilton had preceded her by one day ; Killany
was said to be in Italy ; Quip was in jail ; Juniper, haunted in his
drunken moments by visions of the long wharf and a 'woman's
face, had fled to the West ; and Olivia with her husband was
safely settled in Ireland. Thus one by one the characters of our
tale faded from the scene where they had played with so much
pathos, merriment, and pain, and left behind them no deeper im-
pression on the hearts or memories of men than the snow which
had gone in the spring. Their places were filled as rapidly as
they were vacated. It is our misfortune and our safety that, im-
portant as we may be to our little selves, with the world we are
of no importance.

CHAPTER XXXI.

LOVE AND DEATH.

IN logic certain premises being laid down, their conclusion is
inevitable. In the lives of individuals certain circumstances
being given and certain dispositions of a man's character, results
are looked for as confidently as a logical conclusion. Wonders
are not uncommon in the nineteenth century, but miracles are
such a miracle, for instance, as the conversion of a dying brigand.
It would be a miracle to upset the logical outcome of certain rea-
sonings. We have laid down premises in the life of Miss Mc-
Donell which predict and justify mournful conclusions. She
was a woman of talent, beauty, and gentle manners, spiced with a
certain amount of intellectual pride, and an inordinate amount
of personal pride. Her education and training had been at the
same time excellent and vicious excellent in its methods, but
vicious from the want of a proper selection of studies. These
had no real worth. They were all show. The soul received no
athletic training. Its temptations were all unstudied, unknown,
and unprovided for ; and we have seen how easily this proud, irre-
proachable woman fell in spite of the pretty, artificial bulwarks

806 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

which her education had taught her to look upon as impregna-
ble. By her dalliance with sin she had lost many important
things : the friend she prized most in the world, and who was
deserving indeed of a higher and better love than she could give ;
the affection of a man too noble in body and soul to take to wife
a woman so stained as she ; the wealth which was not hers, but
might have been ; and the respectable sum remaining to her in
her own right.

She had lost yet more important things. Her experience
with temptation had taught her the true character of her religion
of humanity, the value of the principle of beauty as a test of good
and evil in the world, and the precise amount of good to be re-
alized from the propagation of the doctrines of culture when un-
supported by the sterner and more general principles of religion.
She threw her disciples, her heroes, and her books overboard
along with her faith, and became the most dangerous and cyni-
cal of its enemies. Her situation was not bettered. Catholicity
had been her bugbear always, and now that the principles which
had once given it a beauty in her eyes, and the one man and one
woman who had made its beauty something more than pure
speculation, were gone, she never gave it a moment's thought.
Her mother's faith she despised for its hollo wness and its divi-
sions. There was nothing left for her but to sail on without any
definite belief save a belief of negations, carping as she went at
every one who held an opinion as to the eternal destiny of man,
and sneering at those who, like herself, had no opinions or had
done with them. One thing she had retained from the ruins of
her intellectual life her morbid fear of death. She was sincerely
in earnest when she told the priest that she did not wish to be ill.
Yet she feared illness daily, trembled at the slightest scratch or
ache, and read everything of a mortuary character that came in
her way. She knew death in all its aspects, and sighed to think
she could not meet it with the resignation of a Christian, or the
stoicism of a pagan philosopher, or the utter indifference of igno-
rance. Death was the only thought which could throw deep and
settled gloom over her ordinary cheerfulness.

When she went to New York she secured a pretty five-roomed
cottage on Long Island with a garden and a fine water-view. She
was determined not to be ill, never to think of or regret the past,
but to live in the living present, to have cheerful friends and cheer-
ful work, and to care for that precious life which the simplest ac-
cident might take from her. It was easy for her to do all this:
Her beauty, her talent, and her kind nature soon made her popu-

1 88 1.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 807

lar and dear to many. The cottage on Long Island was never
without its visitor, her coming was always welcomed in literary
and fashionable circles, and she reigned there a truer queen than
she had reigned at home. Outdoor exercise was everything with
her. Her walking, riding, rowing, gardening were constant.
Her editorial work, though delicate, was light. Her thoughts,
though tinged with a sombre hue, were cheerful enough. The
greater sufferings absorbed the lesser. So long as illness and
death remained away from her door she could be happy.

Still, she was not in good health, as anxious friends whispered
among themselves. No exercise could bring back the old glow
to her cheeks. Her face was marble still, and if her appetite was
good her sleep was capricious and troubled. Her disordered
fancy made matters worse, perhaps. When the cloudy fall wea-
ther began to appear she was showing evident signs of breaking
down. In truth her excessive pallor indicated clearly enough to
the practised eye the presence of organic disease. Miss McDon-
ell's will had been much too strong for her more delicate body,
and the forced equanimity which the will had compelled the'
body to maintain had been carried too far for safety. Violent
emotion would have been a relief. She suffered it often, but
would never give it expression, and the pent volcano cracked
the sides of its crater. She dreaded to consult a doctor, so fear-
ful was she of an adverse opinion, and day after day she put off
the duty in the hope of ultimate recovery, until the disease which
had first wounded and finally destroyed her father had come upon
her like a lightning-stroke.

She retired one night wretched, despondent, and ill. At mid-
night she awoke with sharp, needle-like pains extending down
one side from her head to her foot. They were not troublesome,
and she would not disturb the servant, hoping to see the attack
shortly pass away. Her sleep was uneasy for a long time, but
towards morning she fell into a heavy, lethargic slumber, so heavy
and painful that she felt as if she could never wish to be stirred
from her bed. As in a dream she saw the sun steal in across the
floor, and heard the servant making preparations for the break-
fast ; heard the little bell that announced its readiness, and smiled
to think of the servant's astonishment when the punctual mistress
did not make her appearance. Then came the footstep on the
stair, the knock at the door, which she was too indifferent to an-
swer, the gentle inquiry as to her delay, and then the opening of
the door. She smiled again at thought of the surprised look on
the girl's face, but her dreamy delight was broken in upon rude-

8o8 A WOMAN OF CULTURE. [Sept.,

ly by a scream of terror, as the servant rushed to the bed, and,
falling on her knees there, cried out, tearful and frightened :

" O Miss Nano ! what is the matter? what has happened? "

"Matter! Happened!" said the mistress, or rather tried to
say it, for the words mumbled in her mouth, and she had some
difficulty in moving her lips at all. In an instant she was awake
oh ! so wide and painfully awake and moan after moan burst
from her as the awful truth was realized that on one side she was
entirely paralyzed.

Her fate had come to her at last. Death was standing at her
door in the same hideous shape it had assumed for her father, and
beckoned her into the dreaded rottenness and oblivion of the
grave. People wondered at the fear and agony which the im-
pressive woman showed at the supreme moment. Her life had
been so gentle and kind, even though so brief, she had been so
positive as to her own convictions, that they who would gladly
have accepted oblivion in fear of the wrath to come could not
understand the fear she had for death. The doctors came and
kindly told her the worst. There was no hope for her. A
second shock would come to deprive her of the use of her unin-
jured limbs, and then speedy death. The worst being known, she
became tranquil and resigned herself to the inevitable in mute
despair. It was very terrible! Alone and helpless, and how
changed from the bright, honorable, powerful lady of a few
months past ! Wrecked in mid-ocean, seeing barks less fair, less
fortunate, and more careless go on in homely serenity to the
haven, while she, so full of promise and so beautiful, foundered by
the way ! Her thoughts were mournful enough and bitter as
death could make them, and the more painful because she knew
that, according to her own belief, they would soon meet with an
eternal ending.

It had pleased the divine wisdom to leave many fervent and
loving prayers unanswered in her regard. We cannot search
into the workings of the infinite mind of God. We can only ac-
cept the facts. She was dying as she had lived, a sceptic, and, as
she said to a friend, the nearer she came to the goal the more
impossible and ridiculous seemed the Christian eternity. Her
opinions might have changed when utter helplessness seized her,
and she could only hear and see and make no sign. If they did
no one knew. In her greatest misery one gleam of happiness
shot out from the darkness of her cloud. Dr. Hamilton, hearing
she was at the point of death, came to see her. He was a man
whom she had deeply wronged, and, though unintentional in his

i.] A WOMAN OF CULTURE. 809

regard, her sin was none the less heinous. She would have en-
dured anything rather than have injured him or Olivia, for she
had loved him. He had loved her, she knew, and he had thrown
her aside justly for her crimes. No word or look of love had
ever passed between them, but in this solemn hour there was no
masking of hearts. She could make no expression, and he was
apparently cold. He had a letter from Olivia unopened for her,
and asked if he should read it. By a moan she signified that he
should not ; but when he would have put it away she moaned
again, and then, after much doubt and effort to understand, he put
it on her breast and she was content.

He was anxious, as others had been, that she should not die
utterly without hope, and he spoke to her with that thrill in his
voice which only the lover possesses. For he was her lover still,
loving her all the more that her sins were so soon to be hidden
in death ; and he ventured to tell her then of his unchanged af-
fection, and how once he had hoped to have made her his own,
and to have taught her the sublime truths of the great faith, and
at least to have led her into that belief which all mankind, from
the savage to the sage, had in all ages shared belief in God.
He asked her at the last if she would not accept that primitive
article of faith, and pray in her heart for mercy and safety in
whatever should happen to her after death. To his great joy she
answered in the affirmative. He remained with her to the end,
for she could not endure to have him away from her side ; and
just before the sleep of death rested on her tired eyelids he knelt
down and in a touching prayer recommended her to the God
whom at the eleventh hour she so imperfectly recognized. In
her way she signified amen, and one last flash of the light and
glory of the mind within lit up her beautiful eyes as the lover
pressed his kiss of love, pity, and forgiveness on her face his
first and last. Pie had scarcely taken away his lips when she was
dead.

Poor Nano ! What a life and what a death ! We can at least
say, " Have mercy on her, God," as Dr. Hamilton did, and hope
that to the eye of God things may have been visible in her heart
which found her favor with him, unseen as they were by those
who stood about her dying-bed. She was beautiful and unfor-
tunate, and our pity and charity will forget everything else in her
life. She suffered much, and that may have been great atone-
ment coupled with her dying act of faith. We know that the
mercy of God reaches far out towards the suffering.

8 io LEPANTO. [Sept.,

LEPANTO.

DARKLY through the pictured panes

Dim morn dimmer falls ;
Bathes in coldly lurid stains

Pillars and sculptured walls,
White cheeks and sobbing- lips that say,
" Pray, Mary, Mother ! Pray, oh ! pray."

Breaks coldly o'er the Curzol isles the light of dawning day,
And slowly from their headlands grim the shadows glide away ;
Afar the waves beat mournfully against the rocky shore,
As if they loved the land they laved a joyous land no more !
Far towards the white horizon, rocked by the swelling tide,
Two hundred ships and galleys proud all fast at anchor ride.
Ay ! gaze upon them anxiously, while coldly breaks the day,
For there lies Europe's latest hope and Christendom's last stay !

Now over all the shining sea pour floods of glorious light ;
Now merrily the billows chase away the lingering night ;
Now glitters in the rising sun the gilded flag of Spain ;
The lion of St. Mark ramps o'er his chosen home, the main ;
And yon the keys and triple crown allegiance own to Rome ;
And there the German tri-color speaks of its northern home.
But highest from the loftiest mast, in many a broidered fold,
The flag of ALL the story of the world's redemption told.

How restless now the galleys heave upon the rolling bay,
With all their angry cannon, in all their rich array !
How many a gallant captain now far through the distance peers,
On fire to be the first to catch the flash of Turkish spears !
How many a champing soldier stamps, impatient for the fight !
How glances sword, and partisan, and cuirass burnished bright !
" Away ! Up anchors ! " How the words make every bosom

swell ;
For yonder, like a surging wave, comes on the infidel !

Our chief, Don John of Austria, Spain's truest prince and knight,
Now leaves the royal galley's side, in glittering armor dight.

1 88 1.] LEPANTO. 811

How swift he speeds from ship to ship ! What words of ringing

cheer

He has for all page, man-at-arms, and high-born cavalier !
He points up to the crucifix that waves above the fleet.
We feel no life can be than death in such a cause more sweet.
He speaks of Mary's Son, thorn-crowned and pierced in every

limb,
And asks what coward fears to die for Christ, who died for him.

He presses noble Doria's hand ; he smiles on proud Savoy,

And hears Orsini's warrior soul laugh out a warrior's joy.

The old Veniero next he greets with reverent courtesy,

And low before the veteran he bends his princely knee.

" Father, thy blessing here I come to crave for us this day ! "

The old man sobbed ; he signed the cross, and dashed a tear

away.
His white hair floated in the wind; his white beard swept his

breast.
" Oh! be," he cried, "by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit blest."

But now the paynim culverins send forth their hellish roar,

And many an eager warrior falls to rise, ah ! never more.

No answering shot may we return, no vengeance may we seek :

Our leader only must the stern command for battle speak.

O Heaven ! but it is horrible to stand inactive where

Their hissing shot red furrows through our quivering masses

tear,
And rushing down upon us, like proud steeds that spurn the

rein,
Three hundred ships in crescent line come cleaving through the

main.

Now, praised be God ! our chieftain's voice rings out the wished-

for word,
And quick the pasha's prow to ours we bind with hook and

cord.

We follow o'er the bulwarks high our prince's streaming plume ;
His axe among the miscreant rout soon maketh bloody room.
In vain may AH drive them on ; in vain before our spears
Even his huge bulk before his host its giant strength uprears.
Never so closely had they felt the edge of Christian steel,
Nor heard so near the battle-shout, " St. lago ! Close Castile ! "

812 LEPANTO. [Sept.,

Blared loud the Turkish trumpets, loud beat the Turkish drums,
And, swarming from their ships around, rescue, sore-needed,

comes.

A thousand bullets thin our ranks ; a thousand sabres keen
Come on to prove not yet the fight is with the Nazarene.
Before that tide of Moslem steel our prince is backward borne,
And Ali's mace his helmet from his flowing locks has torn.
We know how then another blow had ended there the strife
Had brave Cervantes' severed arm not bought his general's life !

Still never for a moment turn our soldiers from the foe ;
So close the fray that sword and axe and mace are useless now :
Poniard and dagger ply the work, and petronel's close ball.
Hoarsely Spain's war-cry breaks the air ; hoarsely their Leilies

fall;
And empty hands grip hostile throats whence gorget has been

broke,

And brigandine is riddled by the near-fired bullet's stroke.
No craven cry for quarter there ; no mercy sought nor shown ;
But by Mary's help in the fell fray the Christian holds his own.

The whiles the sea around is scarred with splintered mast and

oar,

And bloody streams from every ship and gilded galley pour,
The pirate foul, Siroco, bears betwixt us and the coast
To crush our rearmost vessels and divide our struggling host.
But well the crafty corsair's aim old Barbarigo knows,
And at the moment the changed wind straight to the landward

blows.

As desert lions onward rush to rend their daunted prey,
Before that wind comes streaming down proud Venice's array.

Now culverin and arquebuse tear wide the gaping planks
Of the doomed corsair's war-ships and sweep his turbaned ranks.
The severed rigging thunders down, the sails fall to the decks,
And all his gallant galleys drive on shore, dismantled wrecks.
And fierce Siroco 'mong the dead all stark and bloody lies ;
And brave old Barbarigo in his hour of triumph dies,
But, dying, saw the paynim's vanquished flag laid at his feet
The flag which he had soothly vowed should be his winding-
sheet.

1 88 1.] LEPANTO. 813

Ah ! sure 'twas God who changed the wind. See all the Chris-
tian line,

With bellying sails, before the gale come cleaving through the
brine.

Now, infidels, no longer shall ye plough our Christian waves !

No more shall Christian peoples yield before your conquering
glaives !

Colonna calmly leads the van, and he has sternly sworn

No slave to-day that tugs the oar shall fear a noble's scorn.

Well may ye quake before him, his, old Rome's patrician blood,

His, sires whom never yet in fight of old your sires withstood.

Veniero, Appiano, Santa-Croce follow fast ;

Doria's masts, Orsini's, bend before the favoring blast.

The Afric corsairs crash and reel 'neath Benedetti's shock ;

Galley with galley, ship with ship, through the long line enlock.

Awhile our Spanish infantry their rapid volleys ply

Volleys which shield, nor cuirass tough, nor bascinet may aby

Still closer rush the mingling ranks ; useless their mousquets now,

And on the Turkish decks they deal the fell pike's deadly blow.

Once more through the smoke-laden air flashes our prince's axe.
With desperate charge the foe we force back on their bloody

tracks.
All fiercely fighting back they go ; one stand they make their

last

'Neath where the crescent ensign still flies fluttering on the mast.
But vain against that gleaming axe is Ali's mace of dread ;
Turban and helm and head it cleaves : Ali lies with the dead.
And rjnging far through all our line far echoing o'er the sea
In many a tongue exultant peals our shout of victory !

The westering sunbeams flash through clouds of purple and of

gold.

Where are the crescent "banners the gray morning saw unrolled ?
thousand colors deck the waves, caught from the glowing skies ;
But 'mid them toss fire-blackened hulks, rise drowning wretches'

cries.

Beyond, fast o'er the glistening main, the flying Moslems urge
Few of the galleys that so long have been the Christian's scourge.
And, streaming free from many a mast that well the fight had

braved,
The holy cross triumphant floats, and Christendom is saved !

8 14 LATIN AND FRENCH PLAYS AT THE [Sept.,

Richly through each pictured pane

Poureth the sunset glow,
Painting with many a gorgeous stain
The clustered shafts of the ancient fane,

The carved tombs below.
A pontiff looks through the radiant beams,
As one who dreameth Heaven-sent dreams.
He sees a wild, tumultuous fight,
A shock of ships and arms, a flight

Troubling a sunset sea.
He sees triumphant borne in chase
A flag that speaks of Heaven's grace.
While round him, echoed in joyous tone
From ribbed arch and wall of stone,

Endeth Our Lady's rosary.

LATIN AND FRENCH PLAYS AT THE COLLEGE OF
LOUIS-LE-GRAND.

THE College de Clermont, so called from the Bishop of Cler-
mont, through whose will the Jesuits came into possession of the
grounds and buildings connected with their future school in the
Rue Saint-Jacques, was one of the earliest Jesuit institutions in
France. In 1564 the order opened its schools, which became an
eyesore to the University of Paris, the number of students in the
former being, in 1571, somewhere near three thousand. In 1579 the
pupils of the Jesuits gave their first play, entitled " Herod," and
it is likely that, according to the universal school custom of the
times, other plays were occasionally given during the few years
preceding the first expulsion of the Jesuits, in 1594, due to the
jealousy of the university and to the odium that was skilfully
directed against them on the occasion of the attempted assassina-
tion of Henry IV. by Jean Ch&tel, a former pupil of the Jesuits.
The king, however, recalled them in 1603, against the advice of
his less tolerant Parliament, but the College of Clermont in Paris
was not reopened until 1618, from which date until 1762 it made
good its claim to scholarship and popularity, and developed singu-
lar talent in the literary and dramatic line. It was not till the
reign of Louis XIV. that it changed its name to that of Louis-le-
Grand, thereby commemorating the special favor of that king.

i.] COLLEGE OF LOUIS-LE-GRAND. 815

The reforming spirit of the early Jesuits led to certain strict
limitations in the matter of stage representations by the students ;
and, considering the lax condition of the mediaeval drama at most
times of its existence, there was need for reform. This license
led to the curt wording of the rule relating to Jesuit college
plays in the Ratio Studiorum, or school plan, drawn up in Rome
in 1683, and more or less carried out in all the Jesuit schools :
" Let the subjects of tragedies and comedies, which should be in
Latin and few and far between, be sacred or pious ; let there be
no interlude between the acts, except it be in Latin and of a
decent tendency, and let no female character or even costume
enter into the plan of the plays." This severity, whatever may
be said of it artistically, was a natural protest against the abuse
of dramatic liberty which seemed to constitute the very spirit
of the mediaeval stage. Those middle ages, so obstinately misun-
derstood, or rather misrepresented, by their respective apologists
and calumniators, were as decidedly ages of coarse and blunt but
apposite criticism as they were of strong, naive, and action-pro-
voking faith. A certain vein of satirical realism runs parallel in
their literature to a vein of tender and romantic mysticism, and
the biting sarcasm which delighted to attack the vices of the
higher clergy, the courtier nobility, and royal and papal indivi-
dualities was nowhere more prominent or more popular than on
the stage. Church holidays divided the year and were the ac-
cepted occasions for fairs, plays, and all other worldly transac-
tions ; church buildings, being the best and largest, usually fur-
nished the stage itself, and church vestments in the earliest times,
at least as far back as the eleventh century, not seldom became
stage " properties." * The scandalous performances which in
spite of laws, ecclesiastical and civil, continually occupied the
mediaeval stage are very remarkable as part of the history of
civilization, and tally well with the degree of rude and aggressive
personal liberty which existed side by side with undeniable op-
pression and injustice. Sometimes ecclesiastical feuds inclined
church authorities to wink at this disrespect either of rivals in
their own field or of uncongenial lay authorities ; sometimes it
was the latter who secretly or overtly encouraged disrespect of
the clergy. Philip the Handsome, whom Dante has immortalized

* Matthew Paris gives an instance of this common occurrence. A certain Geoffrey, Master
of Arts in the University of Paris, established a school at Dunstable, England, and at its open-
ing gave " The Miracle of St. Catherine," borrowing the copes of the Abbey of St. Albans to en-
hance the gorgeousness of the representation. The night following his house took fire and the
copes were burnt, which he took as a warning and straightway became a monk in the abbey,
and, as happens in most legends, " subsequently rose to be abbot."

8i6 LATIN- AND FRENCH PLAYS AT THE [Sept.,

as the adversary of Pope Boniface VIII., encouraged a famous
demonstration called " Reynard's Procession," a street saturnalia
of the carnival type, in which students and populace joined with
young courtiers in hooting a figure clad in fox-skins and wearing
a pontifical tiara. This, with a squad of frightened hens which
Reynard pursued, was an allusion to the ecclesiastical claims of
the pope, disputed by the king. Political exigencies led often to
great indulgence in such matters as allegorical shows: unpopular
teachers and doctors were unmercifully travestied by students of
Paris and other universities ; chartered companies of wandering
actors arose and throve by fits and starts under the patronage of
kings, bishops, and barons ; saints' days especially, and patronal
feasts whether of places or of guilds, became the occasion of" mad,
indecent, and corrupt " scenes, so that, at least among students,
severe penalties were enacted against delinquents and a strict cen-
sorship established again and again, especially with a view to ex-
clude " biting and satirical " traits. A student either writing or act-
ing anything in contravention of these rules was liable to be public-
ly whipped by four proctors, in the college yard, in presence of his
kneeling comrades, to the sound of the college bell and in view
of the rector of the university. Besides which, if he shirked this
punishment, he was expelled, forfeiting his academic rights and
honors for ever ; while masters who should abet students in any
infraction of rules were to be suspended from their functions for
three years. The evil, nevertheless, broke out again continually ;
such rules could only be spasmodically applied in all their
original rigor, connivance in high quarters was not infrequent
(Louis XII., among others, was a kindly and indulgent mon-
arch, averse to restricting any liberties that did not seriously
interfere with practical government), and the course of unpol-
ished but not really corrupt taste was allowed to go blundering
on till another phase of civilization should succeed it. The ver-
nacular was much used in these rude national plays, and the Re-
naissance, with its classical pedantry, was not an unmixed benefit.
Coarseness did not die out with the old diction, but it clothed
itself in elegant Latin and masqueraded as the copy of the refined
immorality of the Roman Empire. An odd mixture of Christian
tradition with foreign and strained forms of so-called classicism
ensued, and satire lost to a great degree its healthy if coarse
point to become a mere mirror of current vices. This was one
of the points insisted upon by a Jesuit playwright of the seven-
teenth century i.e., that in portraying a career of vice and the
return of the prodigal to virtue the throwing of any veil of ro-

1 88 1.] COLLEGE OF LOUIS-LE-GRAND. 817

mance or interest over the former is to be carefully avoided.
We are familiar at present with the fallacy by which play writers
and novelists excuse their detailed representations of vice, for the
most disingenuous judge could hardly say that a morbid form of
attractiveness does not accompany the typical black sheep. The
Jesuits it has often been cast in their teeth as a reproach were
eminently unpartisan, the advocates of moderation in all things ;
in short, emphatically men of the world. Thrown into contact
with customs and conditions of extreme stage license, they re-
frained from what might be called fanatical opposition or condem-
nation ; they even modified the strictness of their original rules
to suit the times and become all things to all men. Had they
been laymen nothing would have been more commended than
this moderation. But it is hard to judge them as other men ; a
strange fate has pursued this unique organization and twisted
men's judgment of it into an unreliable partisan verdict; the
preachers of moderation have themselves provoked the most im-
moderate, often insensate, antagonism that ever confronted any
religious body. It is impossible, in speaking of the Jesuits, and
of even the slightest detail connected with their system or their
history, not to take a side ; it is idle to deny, to others or to
yourself, that you do take a side ; but the more true this is, the
more watchful should the observer be to sift his evidence and
qualify his judgment. Of the ability of the Order as a whole
there is little dispute.

Iln the hundred and fifty years of the dramatic existence of
e College of Louis-le-Grand it produced several playwrights
of repute. Ernest Boysse, author of a sketch of the Jesuit
drama,* represents that Latin tragedy, as developed among
the Jesuits, bore traces, as every dramatic work must do, of the
influence of the divers countries and times in which it flour-
ished. He thinks that, in spite of the kncTwledge of classic
rules and models possessed by the Fathers, their work, on the
whole, is much more like Shakspere's than like Sophocles' or
Seneca's. They disregard the " unities " and do not scruple to
make use of local legends and traditions. The German and
Flemish Jesuits produced very mystical and romantic dramas,
full of sombre fire and odd, fantastic imagery ; the Italians and
Spaniards were more classical and formal, and less addicted to
the supernatural. The early French Jesuits wrote much but pub-
lished little, and the annals of the college itself on this subject
are scarcely authentic or precise enough to justify a deliberate

* Le TMdtre des Jesuites. Ernest Boysse. Paris : Henri Vaton, Quai Voltaire. 1880.
VOL. XXXIII. 52

8i8 LATIN AND FRENCH PLAYS AT THE [Sept.,

judgment of the merit of the dramatic fragments mentioned.
Caussin, the confessor of Louis XI II., Petau, and Cellot represent
the sixteenth century, or rather the early part of the seventeenth,
when some of their works were collected. Choruses were freely
introduced into the tragedies of the latter author, whose subjects
were chiefly taken from ancient history ; the same may be said of
Petau's published tragedies, while Caussin chose Biblical and
mediaeval subjects e.g., the histories of Sedecias, King of Juda,
and of Nabuchodonosor, who is represented as being turned in-
to a bull. The stage details and directions are unfortunately
omitted. Some license is taken throughout the Jesuit drama
with the exact text, and even spirit, of Scriptural narrations e.g.,
Jephte's daughter is provided with a betrothed, who, during the
battle in which her father makes his vow, does some special deed
of arms for which the chief had sworn to give him his daugh-
ter ; and Ismael appears as an idolater on Mount Moriah when
Abraham attempts to sacrifice Isaac. This conscious inexactitude
a concession to the more and more artificial taste of French
society during Louis XIV.'s reign did not escape the censure
of the Jansenist editor of Les Nouvelles Eccle'siastiques, in which
publication may be found miscellaneous attacks against the plays
of the College of Louis-le-Grand. Pere Caussin had been professor
of rhetoric at the college, and in dedicating his pieces to the
Cardinal de Retz he makes some interesting remarks on the re-
spective merits of prose and rhyme as a vehicle of eloquence.
"There is much charm in verse," he says, " which the ancients
have rightly called powerful hooks. But speech, in its highest
and most carefully polished form, also exercises a great influence
on the mind. Eloquence is like a river which, freed from the
fetters of rhyme, flows more freely and acts with greater strength
the less art is plainly seen. Having recently discussed this
point with Peter Matthew [the chronicler of Henry IV.], who has
bent the powers of his great mind to the study of history, I found
him decidedly an advocate of prose." Arbitrary fashion after-
wards set aside this sensible verdict, but Caussin's theory has
been vindicated anew within the present century.

Of the moral aim and influence of the drama as connected with
a college career it is easy to guess what those Jesuits who have
written essays and directions on the subject have said ; what is
more interesting is their opinion on technical points. Jouvancy
and Lejay, both authors and professors of rhetoric, have recorded
some valuable opinions on the vanity of relying too much on mag-
nificence of dress or accessories, and Lejay propounded a theory

1 88 1.] COLLEGE OF LOUIS-LE-GRAND. 819

in advance of his age concerning three-act tragedies, which con-
stituted the entertainment for Shrove-week and the carnival holi-
days. ;< This form," he says, " seems to have been used neither
by ancient nor modern tragic authors. It is, however, suited to
the very nature of tragedy, which, according to Aristotle, is com-
posed of three parts the beginning, the middle, and the end.
If these three parts can be fitted into three acts without straining
or hindering the action, who should complain of it? This short-
ened form dispenses with the irrelevant narratives and episodes
to which one is often obliged to have recourse, to the annoyance
of the spectators, in order to fill up the conventional five acts."

The rhythm used in the Jesuit (Latin) plays was Seneca's iam-
bics, which seemed well suited to give briskness and point to the
dialogue. There were hardly any French plays among the earlier
ones (only one tragedy), but this rule was gradually relaxed and
became subject to many exceptions, comedies in French being
tolerated at the secondary or carnival representation, and the
Latin plays in August, at the break-up of the school, being inter-
rupted by French explanatory interludes, choruses, etc., which
really amounted to a second play. A capital instance of a
French comedy is the piece entitled " The Cousins," by Pere du
Cerceau. A tradesman in a small provincial town, having made
his fortune in Paris, goes home at forty to spend the rest of his
life in his native place. No sooner does he take up his residence
there, sighing for rest and rural obscurity, than a crop of cousins
start up and make life a burden to him. The municipality insist
on receiving him in state and offering him the mediaeval courtesy
of a " cup of welcome." One cousin begs him to honor his kin-
dred by standing godfather to his son ; another asks him to wit-
ness his daughter's marriage-contract. A physician-cousin is anx-
ious to bleed him, and a lawyer-cousin is ready to conduct a law-
suit for him ; while a philosopher of his kindred bores him with
metaphysics, and a snobbish cousin tries to engage him to doctor
his genealogy and prove his relation to some noble family of the
town. The subject reminds one of Moliere, and, as Boysse says,
handled briskly and humorously. A Parisian could not resist
he temptation to draw a moral from the obvious ending of the
If-made man's efforts to live quietly at home : the bewildered
bachelor returns to Paris and acknowledges his sentimental mis-
take.

In the " School for Fathers," also in French, there are situa-
tions very like some in " The Liar," one of the old-fashioned Eng-
lish dramas. A too easy father is rewarded by the intolerable

820 LA TIN AND FRENCH PL A YS AT THE [Sept.,

escapades of a young prodigal, who loses money, gets into debt,
thoughtlessly insults an unknown elderly gentleman who turns
out to be the father of his intended bride, and, in a word, goes
through the usual round of dissipation which exasperates parents
who have themselves forgotten their own youthful wild oats.

"The Gambler," by Poree, one of the best Jesuit comedy-
writers, is in Latin, and, in spite of its occasional stiffness, is very
amusing. Saint-Marc Girardin has carefully criticised this piece
and compared it with one of a similar cast by Regnard, who as a
secular writer had the advantage of a choice of accessories and love-
scenes that were forbidden to the Jesuit playwright. But, as Gi-
rardin remarks : " Regnard's Gambler is always ludicrous, where-
as in reading the play it strikes one sometimes that in a drama
based on the passion of gambling some hint of the horrible and
the tragic ought to find place. Father Poree, in his comedy, has
known how to introduce the tragic element, and has done it with
skill and discretion. There is nothing romantic, nothing unnatural,
nothing sensational about his work. Having shown us the gam-
bler, now in the seventh heaven, now in the depths of despair, ac-
cording to his luck, and having made us laugh heartily at him,
he introduces, by the side of the gambler on the road to ruin,
another gambler already ruined. The idea of this scene is sim-
ple and natural ; . . . the scene is . fine and dignified, and gives
the play a moral value which in Regnard's Gambler is too feebly
marked." The most characteristic and amusing scene is the one
in which the gambler's servant, having been paid a hundred dol-
lars for arrears of wages, and risked them at cards, losing the
whole, tries his best, or fancies he does, to commit suicide. Now
his chair is unsteady, now this beam is hardly safe, now that door
creaks, again the house-bell is rung, then a rope is wanting and
the wretch blames himself for not having laid by enough to buy
a stout rope, and so on. His master comes home suddenly, in
a rage at his bad luck, and still more at his folly in parting with
so important a sum as a hundred dollars for wages, and inter-
rupts the servant's preparations by asking him with threats for
the loan of the money back. The shock of the discovery that
the poor fool has followed his example is spiritedly represented.

Poree ranks high among French dramatic authors, as Saint-
Marc Girardin affirms " without reserve." " His humor is no
doubt," says this critic, " less broad than Dancourt's, and his dia-
logue less life-like than Picard's. His audience must be borne in
mind : his pieces were for the college boards ; they were written
in Latin and played by students. He never forgets the deco-

1 88 1.] COLLEGE OF Lou is-LE-G RAND. 821

rum of his profession, but in spite of these drawbacks his wit
is lively and biting, his fun is natural, healthy, always in good
taste, truly in keeping with the high spirits of the boyish actors,
the exuberance of youth not yet tainted by cynicism, rudeness, or
bad breeding."

The study of the classics inspired some of the writers with
pieces on a more ambitious scale, Lejay's Latin " Vota " being
rather a genuine satire than a legitimate acting piece ; it was
modelled on Juvenal's Tenth Satire, and touched on the senseless
desires of human nature as illustrated by the requests for redress
gathered by the messenger-god Mercury and to be laid before
Jupiter. An unappreciated poet and a countryman anxious to
shine in city society are two well-drawn types. Force's " Lazy
Man," a Latin comedy, is full of funny situations and significant
allusions ; the hero is too lazy even to answer his correspondents,
and wonders " what idle creature invented this useless and ab-
surd custom of letter- writing " ! The pleasures and advantages
he loses by his carelessness afford plenty of fun.

A French play of Cerceau, " The Discomfort of Greatness, or
the Sham Duke of Burgundy," is a western version of the legend
of Haroun-al-Raschid and the intoxicated beggar transported
into the palace and treated as a sovereign. What the peasant
conscript, Gregory, chiefly rebels against in his new position is
the prohibition of the king's physician to eat the luxurious food
the sham sovereign sees before him on a decorated table.

The most characteristic and original feature of the Jesuit
collegiate stage was the ballet, which in many respects was more
ike the Elizabethan " masque " than the performance known to
is under the name of ballet. In Vienna some remains of the old
idition make these dumb plays very attractive ; music is special-
written for them, and an easily understood and simply con-
ducted plot often a well-known popular legend or fairy-tale
acted in pantomime. The Jesuit ballets were not invariably
lumb, but often contained choruses, recitatives, and even ex-
)lanatory monologues ; the subjects were historical or allegorical,
ic latter predominating and reminding one of Calderon's elabo-
ite displays of typical personages. In the ballets was the chief
scope for imagination, complimentary allusions or the reverse,
magnificence of dress and decoration, and ingenuity of stage ma-
chinery. It also became the custom to engage the help of the
male dancers from the Italian opera, and the loan of stage cos-
tumes and accessories. The Jesuits kept up their reputation as
men of the world by not considering any apology necessary for

822 LA TIN AND FRENCH PLA YS AT THE [Sept.,

these ballets. They took it for granted that dancing was a fine
art and an innocent accomplishment indispensable to a gentle-
man. As to dramatic ballets, Jouvancy calls them dumb poetry,
and urges the propriety of their following the train of thought
suggested by the tragedy between whose acts they are intro-
duced. The practice of thus sandwiching two stories together
may be impugned on artistic grounds, though when the ballet
was practically a series of illustrative moving tableaux this cus-
tom was more defensible. Lejay, in an elaborate educational
treatise on dancing, traces this definition of the ballet : * '. . . A
dramatic dance imitating in a pleasing manner all kinds of ac-
tions, of customs, of passions, by means of figures, gestures, mo-
tions, and grouping, with the help of song, machinery, and other
theatrical apparatus." The three unities might be disregarded,
and the chief aim of the " poet " in the composition of a ballet
was defined to be this : " To draw from the subject chosen every
idea, every situation, every development possible, and then to
choose among these whatever is most striking, most likely to in-
terest the spectators, and most fitted for stage representation."
Benserade, a lay writer of ballets, wrote many for the court
theatricals, all modelled on much the same lines as prescribed by
Lejay. Louis XIV. figured in the " Ballet of the Arts," in which,
however, we of more strict, technical traditions in the matter of
realism should have found many flaws, since Agriculture was re-
presented by Arcadian shepherds, Navigation by pirates and cor-
sairs, Metal-working by a bevy of courtiers bearing jewels, and
War by court ladies arrayed as Amazons. Among the latter
were the historic names of La Valliere and Sevigne. A certain
regard for appropriateness of costume was inculcated by Menes-
trier, one of the earlier Jesuit writers, though long after his time
the public taste did not rebel against a virgin martyr appearing
with conspicuous beauty-spots on her cheek. The traditional
feathers and wampum of American Indians is mentioned among
his list of properties, but his directions as to the costume of al-
legorical characters are much more interesting. Summer was to
wear purple (arbitrarily called the harvest-color), with a wreath of
wheat-ears and a sickle ; Autumn, an olive or brown garb and a
wreath of hops ; the Winds were clad in feathers, the Sun and
Moon respectively in gold and silver cloth with masks garnished
with rays ; Envy wore a yellow robe embroidered with staring
eyes, and Hatred aflame-colored dress with a black trimming, and
a smoking torch of black wax held aloft. Faith was to carry
neither cross nor chalice, " because of the respect due to these

[88 ij COLLEGE OF LOUIS-LE-GRAND. 823

mbols as seen on the altar," and Religion was rather to appear
a red-robed, laurel-crowned martyr than as it was sometimes
presented i.e., with a cope, a censer, and a tiara. The Sick
orld was ingeniously represented on one occasion as crowned
with Mount Olympus, and dressed in parti-colored clothes simu-
lating a map. On its heart it wore inscribed the name of Gallia,
on its stomach Germania, on one leg Italia, and one arm His-
pania. On the back was a sprawling inscription, Terra Australis
Incognita. Atlas and Hercules carried the patient in their arms,
and the gods congregated to cure or pity him: Apollo and
^Esculapius felt his pulse, Bacchus and Ceres prepared his food,
while Mars was ready to bleed him ; but the final verdict was a
fast of forty days. This piece was performed on Shrove Tuesday,
and Lent was of course intended by the prescribing physicians.

The poetic and artistic ingenuity of many of the ballets and
interludes acted on the boards of Louis-le-Grand was great, the
more so as the rule was that these performances should never be
repeated. Infinite pains were taken with the decorations gene-
rally long galleries or colonnades of marble palaces and such
adaptable scenery, statuary and groups, trophies of arms, costly
hangings, and magnificent heraldic shields. A good deal was
done in rilievo work and temple perspectives on a large scale,
besides which there were also machinery, trap-doors, gilt chariots,
palpable clouds, mountain scenery, etc.

The modern game of living chess of which we have heard had
a precursor in one of the Jesuit ballets. The Hindoos of Ceylon
and the Persians are supposed to be fighting, the former repre-
senting the black chessmen and the latter the white. The enter-
tainment is connected with a tragedy bearing on the conversion
to Christianity of a sovereign of Ceylon, and is given by that
sovereign to his guest. " Two knights on each side go out skir-
mishing ; four towers appear and are reconnoitred by the knights,
while two bishops [in France this piece is called ' fool,' the head-
dress being interpreted in England as a mitre, while in France it
a fool's cap] rush across the board. The kings and queens en-
er last, accompanied by their pages, who are used as pawns.
The pieces being in position, a little shepherd lad appears and
boasts that he can bring victory to whichever party he chooses.
The king's son suggests that the Hindoos should win, and the
shepherd moves the pieces so skilfully that the latter checkmate
the Persians in three moves."

The use of ballets in schools has been discontinued, but the
custom of plays, Latin, Greek, and vernacular, has everywhere

824 LA TIN AND FRENCH PLA YS AT THE [Sept.,

survived. There is, however, too little originality in most. In-
stead of being written on purpose and suited to the peculiarities
of the actors, by teachers who have studied their characters and
appreciate their capabilities, college plays are often only adapta-
tions more or less clumsy, or hap-hazard repetitions of favorite
plays which always lose by comparison with the " real thing."
Objections to acting among students seem to have lost much
force in this century, so that the stimulus to keep the college
stage at a high and worthy level, technically as well as morally,
has disappeared, which perhaps accounts for the mediocrity of
most of our plays of this nature. If the custom is to be kept up
at all and in these busy times the expediency seems doubtful-
it would be well for academic playwrights to cultivate the fa-
culty of dramatic authorship as assiduously as it was cultivated
by the rhetoric professors of the College of Louis-le-Grand.

Music held an important part in these ballets, and instead of
pot-pourris adapted to them, as is often the case at present, origi-
nal compositions suited to the subjects were contributed by well-
known musicians of the day, such as Campra, the music-master
of the head house of the Jesuits in France, and the composer of
numerous popular operas of the latter seventeenth and early eigh-
teenth centuries. Of his music a contemporary critic says that
it was spirited, graceful, and varied, and the composer was chiefly
noted for the rare gift of hitting off the sense of the words in the
music which he set to the latter. Charpentier was a famous
teacher and composer, but published very little ; the Jesuit plays
were much helped by his music, which drew curious and admiring
crowds. Clairembault was organist to Louis XIV., and a clever
performer ; his cantatas especially deserve notice, though his
opera work was slight.

Besides the ballet music and the incidental pieces in the
tragedies, " musical tragedies " in French, or what we should
call operettas, were often performed in college. In the drama
of " Joseph and his Brethren " Campra introduced a " symphony
marking or describing the enthusiasm with which the Spirit
of Israel foretells the destiny of Joseph." Cherin's musical
" Praise of the King " was once sung as an interlude by the favor-
ite tenor Jelyot. St. Maximus, a Roman martyr of the early
ages, whose relics were kept in the college chapel, was the sub-
ject of one of Lejay's tragedies ; and, apropos to the " transla-
tion " of his body, we get a glimpse of the musician Marchand,
the rival of Aquin and the master of Rameau. On this occasion
he came forward to replace the absent organist, who unaccounta-

1 88 1.] COLLEGE OF LOUIS-LE.GRAND. 825

bly kept the procession waiting- in church, and the public was
electrified by the substitute's performance. He afterwards be-
came organist to the college, and refused many tempting offers
from the court to leave this comparatively obscure post.

The Jesuits were not niggardly as to the size and number of
their theatres, and their appreciation of the ample needs of the
drama might have satisfied moderns as exacting as Wagner. Their
principal stage was the huge courtyard of the college, commanded
by many windows, and covered with a velarium almost worthy of
antique amphitheatres. A smaller court afforded room for the
minor representations, and an indoor theatre was also provided
for winter performances. As the audience was always large the
students' families being admitted with as many friends as they
liked, and fashion having voted it " the thing " to attend the Je-
suit stage even the winter hall was of good dimensions. Jour-
nalists or their equivalents at that time were encouraged to be
present, and one of these, Loret, a carping critic in the Jansenist
interest, has left numerous versified allusions to these plays.
Abundant refreshments were evidently the order of the day, as
he enumerates the hams and pasties, the tongues and salads, the
pigeons and pies, the fruits and wines served up ; but he tells us
roundly that the arm-chairs were not to his liking, and that he
had to pay fifteen sous admission. It is know that servants and
workmen employed by the Jesuits were sometimes paid in tickets
for the plays, of which they disposed at the price of pit-seats at
the opera ; but regular entrance-money was never taken, and the
expenses of the performances were not charged on the public, or
even the parents of the actors, who, however, sometimes made
special and voluntary presents for the purpose. The Jesuits
were eminently grands seigneurs in their doings ; their pupils
were nearly all of the highest or wealthiest families in the king-
dom, and the teachers did not hold gentlemanlike behavior to be
inconsistent with virtue. Asceticism had little place in the edu-
cational programme ; as a rule the boys who studied under the
fashionable teachers turned out polished men of the world, elegant
courtiers, and famous swordsmen. In the later stages of the col-
lege women were freely admitted to the theatre ; the court ladies
came regularly, and even perpetrated rather unjustifiable jokes
on reverend ecclesiastics, as when Mademoiselle du Luc, from the
window of her nephews' room (they being at school there), threw
several pounds of hair-powder among a company of religious two
or three hundred Carmelites, Capuchins, etc., etc., invited guests
of the Jesuit fathers. A few instances are on record when a

826 LA TIN AND FRENCH PLA vs. [Sept.,

picked band of young actors performed either at court or in the
house of some great officer, ecclesiastic, or statesman. Whether
Moliere ever performed in any of these boyish plays is not posi-
tively known, though both he and Dancourt were old pupils of
Jesuit colleges, as were also Biancolelli, a young Italian actor, the
son of the famous Harlequin of Mazarin's Italian Company, and
the song-writer and librettist Laujon. Such men found royal pa-
tronage an easy way to fame and position, often also to riches,
and many such were mingled at school with the sons of the no-
blest families of France. Historical names abound in the list of
actors as well as of distinguished spectators at these yearly
plays at Louis-le-Grand.

The jealousy of rival schools and orders constantly put
the Jesuits on the defensive. Bishops and grave teachers, lay
and clerical, descanted on the loss of time, the temptations
to laziness, the danger of abuse, the stimulus given to the cul-
tivation of bad or questionable qualities for the sake of their
appropriateness to certain dramatic characters, and other serious
objections, while malicious worldly critics kept up a continual
mockery and issued pasquinades and travesties. The Jesuits,
however, had a very distinct theory on the subject and defended
it unflinchingly. Hard as they themselves were on the secular
stage, they contended for the modern doctrine of the mission of
the drama. The country colleges, less conspicuous than the fash-
ionable one in Paris, may have sometimes deserved censure for
the choice or the accessories of their plays, but criticism was too
fierce and incessant in Paris to allow the vigilance of the Order
to slack. Poree considered social education as an important
branch, and dwelt on the ease of manner, the graceful self-as-
surance, mingled with self-control, which acting in public im-
parted to the youths who each year left the college to enter
upon important careers, and finally to bear the honors of the first
places in church and state, on the bench, or in the field. He
contended, too, that acting wakened legitimate ambition and
emulation, stimulated love of work and study, and quickened
slow wits while it chastened quick ones. The general moral tone
of the pieces themselves was a matter of course, but it is unde-
niable that there is much to be said against not only acting, but
many other devices under clerical guidance or directed to chari-
table intentions devices which, in our times, have been abnor-
mally multiplied until the term religious dissipation is not un-
fitted to such forms of excitement. And to excuse this we have
not the plea of a courtly and aristocratic form of society.

i88i.] THE OPIUM HABIT. 827

THE OPIUM HABIT.

A QUARTER of a century ago an opium-eater by which is
meant a person who habitually uses opium or its preparations as a
stimulant was a rarity ; to-day opium-eaters are counted by the
thousand. Medical books written twenty years ago mention the
subject briefly or not at all, while in all recent works on thera-
peutics it forms an important chapter. Until recently the prin-
cipal source of information possessed by the public upon this
subject were the writings of De Quincey, a confirmed opium-
eater, whose famous Confessions were composed under the ma-
lign influence of the drug ; who whited the walls of the deadly
habit with the beautiful tints of rhetoric of a hand always mas-
terly but occasionally deceptive. The extraordinary headway
which the opium habit has made in this country is not apparent
to the general public for many and sufficient reasons ; but the
large number of cases met by physicians in private practice, the
institutions springing up in which its treatment is made a spe-
cialty, and the horde of charlatans who advertise nostrums guar-
anteed to effect a speedy and painless cure, show how widespread
and far-reaching is the evil, which is met in all conditions and
walks of life, from the laborer to the gentleman of elegant leisure,
and in both sexes. Opium-eating, unlike the use of alcoholic
stimulants, is an aristocratic vice and prevails more extensively
among the wealthy and educated classes than among those of in-
ferior social position ; but no class is exempt from its blighting
influence. The merchant, lawyer, and physician are to be found
among the host who sacrifice the choicest treasures of life at
the shrine of Opium. The slaves of Alcohol may be clothed
in rags, but vassals of the monarch who sits enthroned on the
poppy are generally found dressed in purple and fine linen. One
of the most eminent lawyers in the West is a confirmed opium-
eater, and has been addicted to the habit for years. Per contra, a
haggard, weather-beaten tramp who solicited alms of the writer
with which to purchase bread reluctantly pleaded guilty to the
charge that it was opium, not bread, he craved. A St. Louis
physician estimates the number of opium-eaters in that city at
ten thousand. Nearly every retail drug-store in the country has
its customers who regularly purchase thereat their supply of
opium ; and a wholesale drug firm in Chicago estimates its daily

828 THE OPIUM HABIT. [Sept.,

sales, outside of the trade, at from two to five pounds of morphia
or its equivalent. When it is taken into consideration that a fifth
of a grain of morphia is a medicinal dose, the reader may form
some estimate of the proportions which the pernicious habit has
attained. (Morphia is a product of opium, possessing nearly all
the qualities of that drug, but about five times as strong.)

The facilities for indulging in opium stimulation explain the
prevalence of the habit among the better classes. The gentle-
man who would not be seen in a bar-room, however respectable,
or who would not purchase liquor and use it at home, lest the
odor might be detected upon his person, procures his supply of
morphia and has it in his pocket ready for instantaneous use. It
is odorless and occupies but little space, while its use is only
made manifest in its effects, which are rarely recognized by any
but the initiated. He zealously guards his secret from his nearest
friend for popular wisdom has branded as a disgrace that which
he regards as a misfortune thus cutting him off from the advice
and aid of friends who would encourage him to abandon the
habit ; making, perhaps, spasmodic efforts to fight the unequal
contest alone, to meet with repeated reverses and to -fall still
deeper into the abyss from which he would escape. No person
detests the vice or despises its victim more than does the opium-
eater himself. He would purchase freedom at any cost less than
the terrible agony consequent on giving up the drug. Even life
is sometimes voluntarily offered as the price of redemption ; as
witness the many suicides whose most intimate friends could
assign no cause for the act of self-murder. How many of those
were victims of the opium habit struggled repeatedly to free
themselves and failed ignominiously each time ; despaired finally
and hurled themselves into eternity, taking their secret with
them is known only to the Almighty ; but that such cases occur
no person familiar with this vice in its various phases will deny.
The incentive to secrecy afforded by shame and fear of detection
is most unfortunate, for the sympathy and encouragement of
friends are potent aids to him who seeks release. A gentleman
who had been addicted to the habit for six years assured the
writer that were it not for the influence of his wife he would
never have had the strength of will to persevere to the end in
freeing himself from the habit.

The question will be asked : How can any one acquainted
with the subtle influence and dangerous qualities of opium con-
tract the habit of using it ? If the fool may ask a question which
the wise man cannot answer, surely the fool may without shame

1 88 1.] THE OPIUM HABIT. 829

1$
nfess his inability to answer the questions of the wise man.
hy do persons travel for pleasure on boats that may blow up
or sink ? Why do those who believe in eternal punishment com-
mit sin ? Why do men do wrong knowing what is right ? Hu-
man nature is frail, and mankind is continually tumbling into pit-
falls in the vain pursuit of happiness, or grasping the Dead-Sea
fruit to find it turn to ashes upon their lips.

The careless manner in which physicians prescribe opiates, and
the prevailing custom among druggists of duplicating prescrip-
tions, are prolific sources of the evil. The physician prescribes
morphia for a patient suffering from some painful disease, and re-
lief is obtained. Moreover, the sensations experienced under the
influence of the medicine are peculiarly pleasurable. He goes
back to the drug-store and has the medicine renewed without the
physician's advice or direction. He finally learns that it is mor-
phia he has been taking, purchases a quantity, and finds that by
its use he can relieve his pain or waft himself into Elysium at
pleasure. Finally he ascertains that his health is being injured,
or is otherwise warned of the danger, and attempts to give up its
use. Suddenly his eyes are opened to his folly and he realizes
the startling fact that he is in the toils of a serpent as merciless
as the boa-constrictor and as relentless as fate. With a firm de-
termination to free himself he discontinues its use. Now his suf-
ferings begin and steadily increase until they become unbearable.
The tortures of Dives are his ; but, unlike that miser, he has only
to stretch forth his hand to find oceans with which to satisfy his
thirst. That human nature is not often equal to so extraordinary
a self-denial affords little cause for astonishment. At length he
surrenders, but with bad grace, determined to renew the contest
at no distant day under more favorable circumstances ; returns to
the drug and is again happy happier than ever in contrast with
the misery lately endured but far from satisfied. He realizes
that he is being enslaved and sullenly resolves that it shall not
be. Little he recks that he is enslaved already, or that his late
submission has shortened his chain a link. He waits for the fa-
vorable opportunity, meantime increasing the quantity impercepti-
bly but steadily, and, when the effort is repeated, finds himself more !
firmly bound than before. Again and again he essays release
from a bondage so humiliating, but meets with failure only, and
at last submits to his fate a confirmed opium-eater. The efforts
made and the misery endured ere finally submitting can never be
realized by the self-righteous man who arrogantly inquires : Why
don't he stop it? Is it strange that opium-eating is styled by the

830 THE OPIUM HABIT. [Sept.,

people of the East the " Sorcery of Majoon," or that superstition
attributed the power of the poppy to the influence of an evil
spirit ?

In a medicinal dose the effects of opium on a person not habi-
tuated to its use are of the most pleasing character, though, like
other powerful drugs, there are persons on whom it produces
unusual and unpleasant effects. A few minutes after taking an
ordinary dose a tingling sensation is felt over the entire body ;
the heart's action is increased, the muscular system invigorated,
the spirits are animated, and the intellectual faculties stimulated
to an unusual extent. The eyes shine with a new-born light, the
face is flushed, body and mind evincing signs of unusual excita-
tion. In the lower animals the spinal cord is especially affected,
but in mail the force of the drug is chiefly expended on the brain.
The body seems to lose sensibility and weight, while the mind
enjoys a continuous round of pleasure, detached from earthly
cares and living in a superior world of its own. It is the human
conception of Valhalla, Elysium, and the Happy Hunting-Ground
combined. All sources of care and anxiety are forgotten for the
time being, and the most pleasing but extravagant fancies are in-
dulged in. This condition gradually merges into unconscious-
ness and sleep, followed on awaking by lassitude and nausea,
bearing a strong resemblance to the after-effects of a prolonged
" spree." The effects mentioned are but partially induced in the
confirmed opium-eater. The stage of excitement is not so pro-
nounced, and the soporific effect is limited to a drowsy, somno-
lent condition in which the subject is dull and morose, evincing
a dislike to disturbance of any kind. The eye. soon loses its lus-
tre, the cheeks become pale, the hands cold and clammy. The
physical and mental powers are depressed, the muscular system
relaxed, and the nervous organization gives unmistakable evi-
dence of great exhaustion. There is now an intense craving for
opium which nothing else can satisfy. Let the abstinence be
continued and the symptoms are intensified. There is a sicken-
ing feeling of oppression at the stomach, the body is bathed in
a cold perspiration, the sense of weariness is overwhelming, and
relief is vainly sought in momentary change of position. Every
fibre of the anatomy suffers and cries out for its accustomed
stimulant. A condition bordering on collapse ensues which no-
thing but opium can relieve. The agony of this state is indescri-
bable, the craving for opium so maddening and irresistible that
no sacrifice would be too great that would afford relief. An
army surgeon relates an incident of the late war illustrating this

cei

se^

88 1.] THE OPIUM HABIT. 831

int: An officer in an Indiana regiment, who had served bravely
d faithfully for two years, was addicted to the use of opium,
e was missing one night from an important outpost where he
ad been placed on duty. Next day he was arrested on his way
,ck to camp, tried by court-martial on the charge of deserting
n the face of the enemy, and sentenced to be shot. The facts ap-
red on trial that he was an opium-eater ; that on the night in
uestion he was suffering for want of the drug, and that so great
as the craving that he temporarily deserted his post to go to a
eighboring village to obtain it, though knowing that his life
ould thereby be forfeited.

The pleasures so ably described by De Quincey are only for
e tyro ; those confirmed in the habit rarely taste them, and
nly at the expense of a considerable increase of the dose. The
tter use the drug, not for the pleasurable sensations experi-
ced from its use, but to escape the misery resulting from absti-
ence therefrom. The opium fiend lavished his choicest plea-
ures upon them while luring them on, but now that they are
curely in his grasp such favors are denied. A curious fact may
mentioned in connection with this i.e., a dose of, say, three
grains of morphia taken regularly semi-daily produces in the con-
sumer few of the exhilarating effects described ; but let him be
without the drug for a considerable time and one- half that quan-
tity will yield many of the old-time pleasures as if the fiend
were fearful of his victim's escape and cunningly sought to win
him back by the means that had previously proved so efficacious.
The quantity of opiates which the system will learn by con-
stant use to tolerate is almost incredible. Few persons who have
been subject to the habit for a year or more use less than from
ve to ten grains of morphia, or its equivalent in other prepara-
tions, daily. Cases are not uncommon where one dram (sixty
grains) was used each day ; and the superintendent of a Michigan
sanitarium related to the writer the case of a lady who consumed
ninety grains of morphia per day. Indeed, it is difficult to con-
ceive to what extent the habit may be carried when we bear in
ind that there is a constant tendency to increase the quantity
nsumed. The National Dispensatory speaks of a woman forty-
ven years of age who had used opium since the age of seven-
teen without experiencing any evil effects ; and the New York
Medical Record records the case of a British officer who for
seventy years had used opium averaging during the latter years
ninety grains daily who had attained the extraordinary age of
one hundred and eleven years, and was still in the enjoyment of

832 THE OPIUM HABIT. [Sept.,

excellent health. The Chinese consume large quantities of opium,
and the people of the East Mohammedans use it as a stimulant,
alcoholic liquors being forbidden by their religion. Such cases
as those mentioned in the Medical Record and National Dispensatory
are exceptional, however, and prove nothing, except that some
persons have remarkably good constitutions capable of with-
standing an extraordinary amount of abuse. The Chinese and
Hindoos smoke opium, while Europeans and Americans eat it ;
and though the narcotic effects may be as pronounced in one case
as in the other, it does not necessarily follow that the constitu-
tional effects must be the same. It is also possible that the more
delicate nervous organization of the Caucasian may render him
more susceptible to the deleterious effects of narcotic stimulants
than is the Chinaman or Hindoo. The Emperor of China was so
impressed with a sense of the baneful effects of opium that he re-
fused to allow its importation into his empire, and finally yielded
only at the point of the bayonet, after a bloody and expensive
war with England, whose merchants profit by the unholy
traffic, as they did by the slave-trade carried on with the Ameri-
can colonies in years gone by.

The direct constitutional effects arising from the use of opium
are loss of appetite, nervousness, tremor, insomnia, hyperassthesia,
lessened secretions, emaciation, and low temperature; the two
latter arising from the arrest of metamorphosis, upon which the
nutrition and warmth of the body depend. Among the remote
effects are insanity and a host of nervous disorders too numerous
to mention.

The central point of interest in the subject under considera-
tion relates to the possibility of cure and the methods of its ac-
complishment. Under the old system of practice, which ascribed
the habit to innate depravity, very few of those thoroughly en-
slaved ever succeeded in casting off the yoke. A more enlight-
ened and humane sentiment views the habit as a diseased condi-
tion to be remedied, like other diseases, by those physical and
moral agencies which reason and experience show to be effica-
cious. While opium enslaves more than alcohol, it does not de-
base like the latter, or blunt the moral perceptions, and the
hearty co-operation of the patient can nearly always be relied
upon in any feasible effort for his release, provided his enfeebled
powers of mind and body are not overtaxed. To the question,
therefore, Can the opium-eater be rescued and restored to
health ? the answer may be simple and decisive : Yes, unless some
organic disease exists sufficient in itself to destroy life ; but it

8 1.] THE OPIUM HABIT. 833

were well for him in the beginning to realize that the path to be
trodden is not strewn with roses. For the man who voluntarily
surrenders his liberty there is no royal road to emancipation and
success. The steps taken in exultation and pleasure must be re-
traced in humiliation and pain, and " only he who perseveres to
the end shall be saved." The man who places his dependence on
drugs or " substitutes " leans on a broken reed ; but he who pos-
sesses a reasonable quantity of perseverance, moral force, and
strength of will, and exercises them, must succeed. There are
two methods of breaking up the habit. One consists in immedi-
ately giving up the use of the drug and suffering the conse-
quences. The other contemplates the gradual lessening of the
dose until a barely perceptible quantity is taken. To the former
there are many and valid objections. The suffering is most in-
tense. There is danger to life, as deaths have occurred from col-
lapse, while the ordeal is so much dreaded that but few have the
courage to attempt it, and fewer still to persevere. It may also be
urged that in general it is not possible to place the patient under
the rigid restraint which is absolutely necessary. Under the sys-
tem of gradually lessening the dose and the interval between
doses it is gratifying to note what progress can be made, especially
where the quantity consumed is large ; and it may be added that
the larger the amount previously taken the greater proportionately
is the rate of progress. Experience also shows, as already stated,
that the lessened quantity affects the system more pleasurably than
did the greater. When at all possible the necessary dose should
be administered by another person, thus removing the dangerous
temptation afforded by ready access to the drug. The progress
is also greater and the suffering less when the patient does not
know how rapidly the dose is being diminished. When the
quantity taken daily has been reduced to the minimum its use
may be abandoned altogether, and this stage is attended with far
less inconvenience than is generally anticipated. While the bat-
tle for liberty is being fought the patient should be treated as a
sick man which he really is and his unfortunate habit referred
to as a misfortune, not as a crime, which it is not. No person
ever voluntarily became an opium-eater or consciously formed
the habit, knowing the misery it entailed.

The question of substitutes for opium may be briefly dis-
missed with the reply : There are none. There is nothing which
the opium-eater may take which will supply its place or prevent
us\vant being felt. Chloral hydrate, bromide of potash, Indian
hemp, codeia (a product of opium), and so forth ad nauseam, have

VOL. xxxiii. 53

834 THE OPIUM HABIT. [Sept.,

been recommended for that purpose, but they are not substitutes
for opium. Whiskey has been recommended, but it seems to in-
crease the appetite for opium without supplying its place. Ja-
maica dogwood and cocoa have recently come into use, but fail
to sustain the reputation claimed for them. Not one of them is a
substitute for opium, while from the prolonged use of some a
habit may be formed as pernicious as opium-eating and as diffi-
cult to eradicate. Many persons use chloral habitually, as others
do opium, and find the practice as obnoxious to health and as dif-
ficult to free themselves from. In saying that the above-named
remedies are not substitutes for opium it is not intended to imply
that they may not often be used to advantage to remedy insom-
nia and nervous irritability ; but they are too powerful and dan-
gerous to be placed in inexperienced hands. Medical art can
render considerable aid, but no rules can be laid down for gene-
ral guidance, and an attempt to do so would carry this article be-
yond its proper scope. Self-reliance is of prime necessity. " He
who would be free, himself must strike the blow/' Science has no
power to license any man to violate Nature's laws with impunity,
or, having violated them, to exempt him from the penalty. Na-
ture acknowledges no pardoning power in man, nor does she per-
mit any going behind the returns.

The question of regulating the sale of opium is one for legisla-
tors and philanthropists to consider. Powerful organizations for
the suppression or sale of alcoholic stimulants exist throughout
the land ; but opium-eating is overlooked because the habit is a
secret one. Yet it would be no exaggeration to place the num-
ber of opium-eaters in the United States at a quarter of a million.
True, there are many millions who use spirituous liquors, but
only a small proportion use them to excess, while all who use
opium habitually use it to excess. The effects of opium are far
more deleterious than those of alcohol, and the habit more diffi-
cult to eradicate. Alcoholic liquors are so generally used that it
is difficult, if not impossible, to regulate or limit their sale ; but
opium-eating is as yet confined within more narrow limits and
may be controlled by salutary legislation and by a healthy, intel-
ligent public sentiment. Let it alone and opium may ere many
years be used as extensively in America as in China. Lest it may
be said that the writer is an alarmist and writing for effect, the
following extract from the Albany Evening Journal, which careful
inquiry has shown to be essentially correct, is subjoined :

" A quarter of a century ago the use of opium in Albany was meagre as

1 88 1.] -THE OPIUM HABIT. 835

compared with to-day. There were at that time but about 350 pounds of
opium and 375 ounces of morphia sold during a year. Then the population
was 57,000 and the consumption of opium about forty-three grains per an-
num to every inhabitant, while the rate of morphine was less than three
grains a year to each person. To-day, with the census showing our city to
contain more than 91,000, the annual consumption of opium has crept up to
3,500 pounds, and morphia to 5,500 ounces. This large increase in the con-
sumption of these drugs cannot entirely be charged to the growth of the
city. Since 1855 the increase in the city's population has been .59, while the
increase of the sale of opium during that time has been 900 per cent, and
morphia 1,100 per cent., making a total of these two drugs of 2,000 per
cent, in a quarter of a century, or 206 grains of opium and 24 grains of
morphine to every inhabitant. Besides this vast quantity of these drugs,
between 400,000 and 500,000 morphia pills are sold throughout the city in a
year. These pills contain from one-tenth to one-quarter of a grain of mor-
phine apiece. Taking on an estimate 450,000 pills as the average annual
consumption, averaging, say, one-sixth of a grain apiece, would make the
morphine in them weigh about 170 ounces. Opium pills also have a large
sale, but not half so many are sold as of the alkaloid.

" It is estimated by men up in the business that there are 500 times as
many morphine pills sold as any other kind.

"Of the 3,500 pounds of opium disposed of in this city annually, careful
inquiry made by a Journal reporter reveals the fact that fully one-quarter is
consumed by people in its native state. The remaining three-quarters are
used in making the different opiates, the largest proportion being used in
the preparation of laudanum. One druggist states that where twenty-five
years ago he made it by the gallon, he now prepares it by the barrel. A
quarter of a century ago an opium-eater was a rarity ; to-day the number
is large and on the increase. Fully four-fifths of the opium-eaters are
women."

" Fully four-fifths of the opium-eaters are women," says the
writer of the Journal article. Inquiry and experience forbid that
denial of the statement which inclination and gallantry would
prompt. It is to be hoped that the fact is not so bad as stated,
but that there is a large substructure of truth to the statement
cannot, unfortunately, be denied. That the physical and mental
diseases of parents are often transmitted to the offspring, some-
times in an aggravated form, is a fact that cannot be disputed.
What, then, can be expected from the issue of those unfortunates,
should Nature permit them progeny, except mental and physical
deterioration, with its consequent propagation of the evil, until
outraged Nature refuses longer to tolerate the offence and pun-
ishes by extermination the transgressors of her laws ?

836 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

IRELAND AND THE IRISH.

EVERY visitor to Ireland is struck at once by the exceeding
beauty of the country and the extreme wretchedness of the great
mass of the population. A fair land is Erin's land a " land of
green fields and rushing rivers," a land of purple mountains and
golden vales, of laughing brooks and crystal lakes. Yet, in spite
of all its beauty and loveliness, Ireland is, I think, the saddest-
looking land on the face of the earth. There is an atmosphere of
sadness round about it that is absolutely oppressive. One feels
in Ireland as" one would be apt to feel if, on visiting the home of
some old and dear friend, he found the mother dead, the house in
disorder, and father and children overwhelmed with grief and
anguish. During my stay of several months in Ireland a few
years ago I felt very much as I am wont to feel when attending
the wake or funeral of an old friend.

The country looks as though one of those wars of extermina-
tion which we read of in ancient annals had been lately carried
on there. It is a land of ruins a land of ruined churches, ruined
dwellings, and, so far as its enemies have had the power, a ruined
people. The face of the country in many parts has the appear-
ance of an abandoned graveyard plains of grass as devoid of
human habitations as the prairies of our Western wilds are to be
seen on all sides. Here, and there, and everywhere are groups
of ruined cottages, while every now and then you meet with
a lonely round tower looking sadly down upon the ruins of
churches and abbeys, round which, and within the shattered walls
of which, many a generation of a brave and faithful people are
buried. Buried ! That expression needs to be modified when
applied to Irish burying-places, where if the remains of the dead
were all once buried, they are so no longer. I have seen within
the ruined walls of Holy Cross Abbey, one of the grandest ruins
in all Ireland, human skulls and bones scattered over the floor of
its once magnificent church as thick as the leaves under the trees
of the forest when the autumn days have come. The ivy green
is constantly twining its beautiful arms in loving sympathy round
these ruins of church and abbey, of castle and cottage, else the
sight of them would be more heartrending and woe-begone
than it is at present ; but, even as it is, it is certainly sad enough.

But are there no houses at all left standing in Ireland ? Well,

1 88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 837

yes, there is still a good number of houses in Ireland, and of these,
as a rule, the most attractive are the barracks and the work-
houses ; but, like sin, their beauty and attractiveness are all with-
out, while within there is little room left for aught save despair
and disappointment. Names of things in Ireland, since the phi-
lanthropic Englishman came there to look after his own interests,
very often go by contraries. Thus workhouse is a misnomer
for poorhouse, though there is no denying the fact that some
very effectual work is being constantly done in every one of these
houses. There would be little injustice in describing these work-
houses as places where bodies are chemically prepared to meet
the condition of things I have just described as existing in Holy
Cross Abbey, without any hygienic detriment to the living in-
habitants of the surrounding neighborhood. One great object of
the barracks is to enable the landlords to supply proper speci-
mens from the farming population for poorhouse or workhouse
'experiments.

Besides the workhouses and barracks there are some other
palatial structures in Ireland where wealth and beauty reign
apart from the misery that lies without, for they are generally
hidden from the eyes of the profane by thick groves and high
stone walls. Many of these palaces, however, are no more used
to live in than the round towers, and if they happen to contain
any harps they hang as mute along the walls as if sound itself
were dead. These latter structures belong, as a rule, to people
who have as much knowledge of Ireland and the Irish as can be
expressed by the single word rent. At safe distances from the
castle walls are hovels, which some people nickname houses,
whose number is always greater in proportion to the barrenness
of the country where they are allowed to flourish. In front of
these hovels there are generally dung-hills on which the English
government allows Irish children to take exercise, provided they
do not crow for their fathers, who perhaps are in prison under
one of the half-hundred coercion acts which a paternal govern-
ment has lavished upon its ungrateful Irish slaves in fifty years.

There is, .generally speaking, not much room for the children
within the hovel, where their betters, in the eye of English rule
in Ireland, the pig, the cow, and the goat, have to be provided for,
since they contribute a great deal more than children to pay the
rent, which in many English minds is the only reason why Irish-
men should be allowed to live at all in Ireland.

I speak from actual observation when I say the best among
the ordinary farm-houses of Ireland are miserable makeshifts for

838 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

human dwellings, while the worst are in wretchedness beyond
any power of description to which I can lay claim. Who has
not heard and read of Connemara and of how the people are
obliged to live there ? As you round the coast of Con-
naught and get into Ulster the desolation increases and the
dreary wretchedness of the people becomes more terrible. Yet
in the midst of the ragged, windowless cabins of Donegal you can
see the poorhouse or the workhouse standing forth in all its
grandeur " the building with the accursed gables and pinnacles
of Tudor barbarism, staring boldly with its detestable mullioned
windows, as if to mock those wretches who still cling to liber-
ty and mud cabins," while it seems to them " like the fortress
of Giant Despair, whereinto he draws them one by one, and de-
vours them there."

But lest some one may think I have any desire to overstate
the wretched condition of the Irish people in their own land, let
us see what calm and cool-headed foreigners have written on this
subject. In the Contemporary Review for January, 1 88 i r there is
an article by an English writer, wherein are given the opinions
of various distinguished foreigners on the condition of the Irish
peasantry. One of these foreigners is the distinguished French
publicist, Gustave de Beaumont, so let us hear what he says on
this question of Irish misery and suffering.

" I have seen," he says, "the Indian in his forests and the negro in his
chains, and I thought that I beheld the lowest term of human misery ; but
I did not then know the lot of Ireland. . . . Irish misery forms a type by
itself, of which there exists nowhere else either model or imitation. In see-
ing it one recognizes that no theoretical limits can be assigned to the mis-
fortunes of nations."

He finds it a difficult matter to determine which are the sad-
dest-looking dwellings in Ireland, those deserted or those in-
habited. The testimony of Von Raumer, a German, is equally
strong. The days he spent in Ireland, he tells us, must be counted
among the saddest of his life. He tries to explain to his country-
men the meaning of " tenant-at-will," and here is the result of his
effort :

" How shall I translate ' tenants-at-will ' ? Wegjagdbare? Expellable ?
Serfs ? But in the ancient days of vassalage it consisted rather in keeping
the vassals attached to the soil, and by no means in driving them away.
An ancient vassal is a lord compared with the present tenant-at-will, to
whom the law affords no defence. Why not call them Jagdbare [chasable] ?
But this difference lessens the analogy : that for hares, stags, and deer there
is a season during which no one is allowed to hunt them ; whereas tenants-

88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 839

at-will are hunted all the year round. And if any one would defend his
farm (as badgers and foxes are allowed to do) it is here denominated re-
bellion."

Kohl, another German traveller, speaks in this same strain.
There are animals, he tells us, which live the year round on the
same root, berry, or weed, but human beings are forced to do this
nowhere save in Ireland. The testimony of English travellers
from Spenser to Tuke is no less strong. " It is undeniable," says
Inglis (1834), " that the condition of the Irish poor is immeasur-
ably worse than that of the West-Indian slave." So speaks Bar-
row the year after ; so speaks every traveller in Ireland, up to the
present time, who can be trusted in to speak the truth. The
Bishop of Autun, Mgr. Perraud, in 1860 found the condition of
things in Kerry, Mayo, and Donegal, if anything, worse than
Beaumont found it in 1835. I have heard Mr. Redpath declare
publicly that he had gone from negro cabin to negro cabin of the
South in the days of slavery, and that, going through the dwell-
ing-places of the Irish tenants -at-will in 1880, he found the people
who dwell in the latter much worse off, so far as all material
comfort is concerned, than those that lived in the former. Yet,
as the writer in the Contemporary Review very aptly remarks, in
spite of all this testimony of eye-witnesses, and the added tes-
timony of royal commission after commission, and blue-book
heaped upon blue-book, we may in vain look for a time when the
Parliament of England has not talked of the improvement of
Ireland, and demonstrated from statistics that real improvement
was going on there.

Now, what is the matter with Ireland ? Why is she ever go-
ing backward while every other nation round about her, less fa-
vored in many respects by nature, is striding forward on the
highway of political and material progress ? Where shall we
look for the cause of this strange anomaly ?

We must of necessity look for the cause of Irish misery and
ntent in the physical character and condition of Irish soil,
hich is too poor to support the burden of so many inhabitants ;
or in the physical and moral character of the people, who are
lazy, thriftless, and unwilling to use the means of support and pro-
gress placed within their reach ; or else we must conclude that
the real cause lies in the bad laws and the worse administration
by which the country is governed.

Is Ireland a poor country ? Why, the fertility of Irish soil has
been the theme of every foreigner that has ever seen and written
about Ireland. " Superior to England as a soil," says Leonce de

840 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

Lavergne. " It is the richest soil I have ever seen," says Arthur
Young. " Proverbially rich," says Kay. " God," said Mr. Bright,
" has blessed Ireland, and does still bless her, in position, in soil, in
climate." An old and intelligent Scotchman, with whom I spent
a very pleasant day a few years ago down by the banks of the
beautiful Shannon, told me that England in soil could not com-
pare with Ireland, and he showed his own preference for Irish
soil by coming to settle upon it for the purpose of farming, after
having first of all examined the soil of England. " Yes," said the
old man's son, a fine-looking young fellow, " St. Patrick seems to
have put some special blessing on the Irish land." The very
choicest and richest soil in this our own rich land is to be found
on the prairies of Illinois and in the blue-grass region of Kentucky ;
yet we have the testimony of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon, both
members of the English Parliament, and both speaking from ac-
tual observation, that Ireland's soil is richer even than the blue-
grass region and the garden of America. M. Moreau de Jerome,
in Statistics of Great Britain and Ireland, testifies to the superior
productiveness of Irish soil as compared with that of England
and Scotland. He gives the following table of proportions for
the three countries :

Wheat ,

England,

Scotland.
16

Ireland*
2O

Rye ,

, 10

Barley

Oats..

These are the very kinds of crops for which, we are told, the
soil of Ireland is unsuitable by reason of its excessive dampness.
I have no hesitation in declaring that the climate of Ireland is
rather moist for my fancy, and is no doubt unsuited to the rais-
ing of certain crops, while for others it is just the thing. The
extremes of heat and cold from which we suffer so much in this
country are almost unknown in Ireland. The climate of Irelan<
is much more uniform than that of England. The average tei
perature is about fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and in summer Ire-
land is the one spot in all this world I would like to live in.

Besides the fertility of its soil Ireland is full of mineral wealth,
though little or no use is made of it. An extensive coal-field un-
derlies the counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Clare, Kerry, Lime-
rick, and Cork. Iron, too, of a most excellent quality, though
apparently in small quantity, has been found in Ireland. Cop-
per and lead have been mined in as many as six different places
on the island. Sulphur is found in the County Wicklow, but, in-

1 88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 841

stead of being purified on the spot, it is shipped in its rough
state to Wales and there manufactured. There are silver-mines
in Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary, and during the last century
gold was discovered in Wicklow. Granite is abundant in many
parts of the country, while at least one town, Kilkenny, has its
streets paved with marble.

There is no country so admirably situated for carrying on the
fishing-trade as Ireland. Its rivers, lakes, and surrounding seas
teem with the finest fish, and the fishing-trade is the one branch
of industry to which the English government seems inclined to
afford some little encouragement. Yet how insignificant the en-
couragement must be we may judge from the fact that Ireland
has been in the habit of paying every year more than half a mil-
lion of dollars to Scotland and Newfoundland for cured fish.
The deep-sea fisheries of Ireland ought to give employment to at
least one hundred thousand men, while in reality only about one-
half that number are actually employed.

Close beside that forlorn-looking relic of departed greatness,
Galway, the ancient " Citie of the Tribes/' is, I think, the largest
fishing-village in all Ireland. It is called the Claddagh. Of this
village and its inhabitants I had imbibed some very poetic fan-
cies from reading Mrs. Sadlier's charming story, Maureen Dhu ;
but when I saw the Claddagh and its people I confess that all
the poetry soon oozed out of me. Like Galway itself, the Clad-
dagh has gone to decay and is no longer what it once was. One
of the fishermen, with whom I fell into conversation, bitterly la-
mented the decay into which his native village had fallen.
" Three thousand men," he said, " without counting the women
and boys, once gathered round O'Connell on this spot, and now
the whole village could hardly muster five hundred men." A
most woe-begone-looking place, truly, is the Claddagh now, what-
ever it was in the days of its historic greatness, when no police-
man dare show his nose in its narrow lanes or attempt within its
sacred limits to arrest one of its sturdy inhabitants. A great
part of the Claddagh people were forced to leave their native vil-
lage, and many of these, or their children, are now settled at
Gloucester, Massachusetts ; and what is left of the Claddagh by
the Galway Bay is but an unsightly assemblage of thatched cab-
ins, whose rickety doors, as they turn on their rusty hinges, seem
to grate out mournful lays for the days that are gone, and whose
broken windows allow free egress to the sighs and prayers that
go out nightly over the western waves in search of the Claddagh
exiles settled on Boston Bay.

842 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

In no one particular is Ireland so superior to England as in
the number, situation, and depth of its harbors, which are unsur-
passed, and hardly equalled, by any other country on the globe.
Ireland has fourteen harbors fit for the largest men-of-war to en-
ter, seventeen fit for frigates, thirty or more fit for coasting
vessels, and at least twenty-four good summer roadsteads. The
estuaries in the coast-line are set down at one hundred and ten.
As late as the reign of Charles I. the importance of Gal-
way as a commercial centre was equal to that of London. At
that time, we are told, it was not an unusual sight to see thirty
or forty large ships entering or clearing Galway harbor in one
day. But what a scene of loneliness that splendid harbor pre-
sents now ! a few lumber-vessels hugging the docks, and a
crowd of stalwart but hungry-looking men in front of the little
steamer that crosses the bay to Ballyvaughan, struggling with
one another and the few passengers to seize some bit of baggage
and carry it on board, in the hope of thereby getting a few pen-
nies.

The soil of Ireland is rich, its mineral resources are great, its
commercial advantages are unsurpassed ; so that if the Irish peo-
ple are poor and more wretchedly housed than the beasts in
other lands the cause cannot be found in the physical condition
of the country.

But the Devon Commission reported that the country was
over-populated, and recommended emigration as a special reme-
dial measure for Irish misery. This Devon Commission was
composed entirely of landlords, the man who gave it name being
himself an absentee landlord Lord Devon. Yet this commission
has been the gospel of English statesmen for the last thirty-six
years, though O'Connell said of it :

" You might as well consult butchers about keeping Lent as consult
these men about the rights of farmers."

According to the Devon Commissioners, tenant-right was land-
lord-wrong, and the true remedy for Irish discontent was to re-
move about a million of the population, which really meant
sweeping the people off the land upon which they were born to
America, the poorhouse, and the grave. Emigration was the
remedy for Irish misery in 1845, when the population of the
island was some three millions more than it is to-day ; yet it seems
English statesmen and philanthropists have been able to discover
nothing better since, and emigration is still the cry.

1 88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 843

If there were any meaning in this cry of over-population, why,
then, the less the population the more prosperous the people and
the less danger of want or famine. We know, however, that
when the population of Ireland, two hundred years ago, was re-
duced to one million, the misery of the people was greater even
than in the famine years of 1846 and 1847. If we g a little
further back in Irish history, to the days of " the good Queen
Bess," we shall find more men, women, and children dying from
starvation than perished in the three French revolutions of Jaco-
bins, Reds, and Communists. It may be urged that the famine
under the humane Elizabeth was the result of design, but that
now the case is different. Well, perhaps it is, though it is some-
what hard for Irishmen to see what great difference there can be
in having neither "horn nor corn," as was the way of doing in
the days of Elizabeth, and in turning the people out to die on the
roadside, as the landlords, assisted by the whole police and mili-
tary resources of England, are doing in this our own day. In
old times no bones were made over the matter : the object was to
get rid of the " mere Irish," and the gentle poet, Spenser, pro-
posed, as an easy means of obtaining that desired end, that the
Irish should not be permitted to till their lands or pasture their
cattle, whereupon he felt assured " they would quickly consume
themselves and devour one another." One would almost be led
to think that the mild-hearted Spenser had come back from his
place and was made editor-in-chief of the London Times, which
announced in our own day : " The Celts are gone gone with a
vengeance. The Lord be praised ! "

According to Paley who ought certainly to be an authority
for Englishmen, since his work is the text-book in Cambridge
University the final aim of all rational politics is to produce the
greatest quantity of happiness in any given district. But as the
quantity of happiness in any country is the sum of the happiness
of the individuals occupying the country, the quantity can be
augmented only by increasing the number of the percipients or
the pleasure of their perceptions. Under the proper kind of
government it may be affirmed, he says, with certainty that the
collective happiness of a nation will be nearly in proportion to
the number of its inhabitants that is, twice the number of inhabi-
tants will produce double the quantity of happiness ; so that in
all political deliberations it ought to be assumed " that a larger
portion of happiness is enjoyed among ten persons possessing the
means of healthy subsistence than can be produced by five per-
sons under every advantage of power, affluence, and luxury."

844 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

He declares that " the decay of population is the greatest evil
that a state can suffer ; and the improvement of it the object
which ought, in all countries, to be aimed at in preference to
every other political purpose whatsoever." " The importance
of population, and the superiority of it to every other na-
tional advantage, are points necessary to be inculcated and
to be understood, inasmuch as false estimates or fantastic no-
tions of national grandeur are perpetually drawing the atten-
tion of statesmen and legislators from the care of this, which
is at all times the true and absolute interest of a country "
(Moral Philosophy, chap, xi.) According to this same author there
can be hardly ever any question of competition between the in-
crease of population and any measure of sober utility, because
whatever tends to make a people happier tends to render them
more numerous. Hence in Holy Scripture the mother of chil-
dren is counted blessed, while barrenness is everywhere regarded
as a curse. In the palmy days of Roman greatness the fruitful
mother of children was not only held in the highest honor, but
also specially rewarded by the state.

It is an undeniable fact that whenever in any country the
population has diminished, instead of the means of subsistence
being increased and more largely dispensed, the people have
been invariably more degraded and reduced in condition than in
numbers. Look, for instance, at Greece, at Cyprus, at Egypt, at
Persia, at Asia Minor. Time was when the little country of
Galilee, it is said, possessed four hundred towns, containing each
from one to ten thousand inhabitants ; yet we know what the con-
dition of things is there at present under Turkish rule, which
has been so long and zealously supported by England.

With the resources that Ireland has, or might easily have
under a proper government, to talk of over-population is a delu-
sion and a snare. There are 20,808,271 acres of land in Ireland ; of
this 6,295,735 acres are waste, but 4,600,000 acres of this waste
land are reclaimable ; so that Ireland might have a total area of
productive soil, profitable for cultivation, of 18,064,300 acres.

Sadlier, one of the ablest statisticians who have written on
Ireland, shows that when the population was but 71 to every
square mile the country did not grow enough provisions to sup-
port its population of 2,300,000; whereas in 1821, when the popu-
lation had reached 6,801,827, the country was able to support not
only that number, but was besides able to export largely. In
1725 the population of the island was 2,300,000 and the times
were peaceful. Yet Ireland then imported grain at the rate of

1 88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 845

about 240,000 bushels annually ; but when, on the same space, the
population was trebled in number, she was able to export in one
year more than 8,000,000 bushels. The value of cattle and sheep
exported on the average of eight years ending 1727 was $3,115,885.
The value of cattle and sheep exported in 1821 was $18,529,-
965. While the people were starving in 1846-47 the exports of
the nation were valued at $75,000,000 double the amount neces-
sary to save every life sacrificed to the genius of English political
economy.

Of the 15,357,846 acres of land in Ireland just now fit for culti-
vation there are only 3,171,317 acres under corn and green crops,
the balance either lying fallow or used as meadow-land and pas-
ture. There are 10,261,266 acres under grass alone ; that is, more
than one-half of the entire land of Ireland is taken from the use
of the people and devoted to the raising of cattle and sheep,
principally for the English market. No wonder the population
of the island is diminishing at the rate of 100,000 annually ; yet the
English government would still fain help it on, and that highly
respectable sheet, the London Times, which has always shown a
stupid and ignorant hate of everything Irish, is perfectly willing
that the poor remains of the Church Fund should be used in aid-
ing the Irish out of Ireland. Pasturage, according to Paley, is
the occupation of a nation either imperfectly civilized, as are
many of the tribes in Central Asia, or of a nation like Spain, de-
clining from its summit by luxury and inactivity. One acre of
land which will but badly fatten one bullock is capable, when
properly cultivated, of yielding food enough to support four
persons.

"There is a man," says Father Lavelle (Irish Landlords), " living not
five hundred yards from my door, who has supported in comparative de-
cency a wife, an old mother, and seven children on the produce of less than
three acres of land. He also feeds a cow and a couple of pigs in the year.
These acres, left to themselves, would hardly supply food for the cow and
the pigs."

Mr. Curwen holds that one acre of potatoes would furnish food for
ten persons the year round. This may sound a little extravagant,
but even if we allow only one person to every acre of land this
would bring the population up to the estimate of Sir Robert
Kane, 20,000,000 a number which Sir Robert maintains could be
supported in Ireland with ease and comfort. M. de Beaumont,
one of the highest authorities in English eyes, says that Ireland is
able to support a population of 25,000,000, and Sir Arthur Young

846 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

says 100,000,000. Wakefield, an Englishman, who wrote about
1 809, says :

" Mr. Stepney last year had two acres and a half of potatoes, which fat-
tened four bullocks, maintained eighteen pigs, produced seed for four acres
more, and supplied his own family, consisting of twenty persons" (Account
of Ireland, vol. i. p. 450).

If, therefore, four out of five and a half millions, the number
of inhabitants at present in Ireland, are in a chronic state of semi-
starvation and liable to periodical visitations of famine, the cause
cannot, certainly, be laid at the door of over-population. Yet
the depopulation goes on, and the statesmen of England are urg-
ing the enactment of laws to increase it. The once happy home-
steads of thousands are being levelled to the earth, and where
erst the merry song and shout resounded we now hear the bleat-
ing of sheep and the lowing of herds. Evidently the cause of
Irish misery is not in the soil nor in the over-population of the
country, but perhaps we may find it in the character of the Irish
people.

If we credit the enemies of the Irish race, no lazier louts and
savages were ever gifted with the form of humanity for the dis-
grace of human nature than the Irish ; and if we have any com-
passion for them at all it must be only such as one might throw
away upon a brutal and drunken husband who, while in the act
of beating his wife, was come upon by a policeman and ruthlessly
knocked down. This is about Mr. Froude's idea of the question,
and he scouts the idea that Irish crime and lawlessness can be
traced to the unjust legislation of England. They are, he says,
the natural growth of Irishism and popery, and have "yielded
only to higher culture where the English sword gave strength to
English law." As Oliver Cromwell is Froude's patron saint and
the only man who ever governed Ireland properly, we may be
allowed to conclude that Froude, if he had things his own way,
would soon put an end to Ireland's misery by sending the Irish
to hell or Hades now that Connaught is over-populated.

I suppose scarcely any Irishman will deny that the Irish have
their faults, or maintain that in them humanity is perfect. To
my mind the difficulty is not in the fact that they have faults, but
that, after the treatment they have been subjected to for seven
hundred years, they should still possess any virtues. I freely ad-
mit, what I know to be true, that the Irish people have their
faults, and that, when maddened with strong drink or with a deep
sense of injury and injustice, they are capable of awful crimes

, Id

1 88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 847

and glaring- misdeeds ; but I absolutely deny that the Irish are a
criminal, a lawless, a savage, a brutal, a lazy, or a dishonest race.
There is not a country in the world where, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, life and property are so secure as in Ireland. Why,
I have had a cabman to follow me through the streets of Dublin
to find out if I was the owner of an umbrella which he found in
his cab. I wonder how many of our New York hackmen would
do the like ?

At the entrance of Galway Bay are three small islands, known
as the Arran Islands. The people who dwell on these islands are
the most primitive type of the Celtic Irish to be found at present
in the world. Speaking the Irish language, and cut off by their
position from communication with the mainland, they are almost
entirely ignorant of what the world calls progress, and are very
likely to-day, in point of civilization, what their forefathers were
hundreds of years ago. Now, among the people of the Arran
Islands the word crime has hardly any meaning. Some years
ago, to the great astonishment of the rest of Ireland, a murder
was reported as having been perpetrated on one of these islands.
A murder committed in the Arran Islands ! Such a thing was un-
heard of before, and so " all the world wondered."

But are not the Irish a lazy and thriftless people? Well, if
one were to judge from what their enemies tell us, or from what
one could see in a hasty journey through Ireland, we would be
dined to think so ; and nevertheless I think the judgment would
very false and unjust which would condemn the Irish for the
ndition of things existing in Ireland. The system, as Charles
avan Duffy says, under which the Irish have been forced to live
for centuries would have made of the Chinese or the Dutch a
lazy and thriftless set. Slaves have never been noted for their
nergy or industry, and practical slaves the Irish have been and
ill are under the government of England. No man will labor
ard to improve his condition if the result of his labor leaves his
condition worse than it was before. " When I was a boy," says
Mr. A. M. Sullivan, "I was full of glowing zeal for 'cottage
flower-gardens ' and removal of threshold dung-heaps ; but my
exhortations were all to no purpose. I was extinguished by the
remark, ' Begor, sir, if we make the place so nate as that the
agint will say we are able to pay more rent.' " To form any.
thing like a correct judgment, therefore, on this very important
question, we must look at the Irish people in surroundings differ-
ent from those in which they are placed in Ireland. Outside of
Ireland they are acknowledged to be both thrifty and industrious.

848 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

Of course such men as Fronde would not have people imagine
for a moment that the Irishman, as we meet him outside of Ire-
land, is at all a fair type of the Irishman as he runs wild in his
native bogs ; but in spite of Froude and the like of him, we must
conclude that the difference, in whatever it consists, must be
looked for in the surroundings and not in the man. We need
hardly go to Ireland to form our ideas of the Irish. We have
had them here among us in sufficient numbers and for a suffi-
ciently long time to enable us to form a correct judgment of their
character.

The abuse of the Irish race began with the English invasion,
and the English told the pope lies about them then, as they are
telling him lies about them to-day. However, the popes have
too long had experience of English falsehood to make us fear that
it is likely to be very effective with them in the future. The
howls of the English against the Irish were never so fierce as
since the great 'famine of 1846-47, and the reason of this is ob-
vious. When the population of Ireland had been systematically
reduced some three millions by famine, eviction, and exile, with
all the other concomitants which usually attend these stalwart
destroyers of the human species, England imagined her work was
done, or nearly so, and if she had not entirely exterminated the
Celt from the land that bore him, she had at least reduced him
to such a condition that he would never trouble her more.
Wherever her language was spoken and her literature circulated
she had poisoned the minds of the people against the Irish. Even
the Scotch, who are of the same blood and race, became more
bitter against their Irish brethren than the English themselves,
as witness such writers as Macaulay and Carlyle. When Sir
Robert Peel proposed to replace the Irish with good Anglo-
Saxons, Thomas Carlyle strongly advocated the measure.

" Ireland," said the gentle-hearted Thomas, " is a starved rat that crosses
the path of an elephant : what is the elephant to do ? Squelch it, by heaven !
squelch it ! "

In the meantime whole shiploads of Irish were making their way
across the Atlantic to the shores of this land, which had torn
down the Union Jack and replaced it by the Stars and Stripes;
but though the political power of England had been broken here,
nevertheless English ideas and English literature still governed
the social life of America. What, therefore, had England to fear
from an unorganized mass of half-starved, degraded, and ignorant
peasantry cast penniless and friendless on these shores'? Why,

1 88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 849

the very sight of them would prove to Americans that what
English writers, from Cambrensis down, had said about them was
true, and though the days had gone by when they might be re-
duced to slavery, still, practically speaking, the result would be
all the same. They would be a broken and despised race, hewing
wood and drawing water for American masters, until death came
to their relief ; and their children, in case they became educated
and were admitted to social and political equality, would be
ashamed of their parents and their religion. James I., by kidnap-
ping the children of old Irish families and seeing to it that they
were properly brought up in the hatred of their own race, had
succeeded in making O'Briens, Butlers, Fitzgeralds, and Burkes
more English than the English, and the bitterest enemies of Ire-
land. A similar phenomenon has happened more than once in
this land, but, thank God ! not so frequently as England may have
hoped it would happen.

There never was, probably, in the world's history a people
who labored under greater disadvantages, to begin with, than the
Irish in America. They were thrown helpless among a people
who had been educated to look upon them as an inferior race,
hardly equal to the naked savage who still lingered round the
borders of American civilization. They were without character,
without money enough, in many cases, to pay for a night's lodg-
ing after landing from the emigrant-ship. They were for the
most part uneducated ; the greater number of the men had never
done else than the commonest kind of manual labor ; many of the
Vomen had never cooked more than the potato, or perhaps a pot
of " yellow meal " or, as some of the poor people called it, " Peel's
brimstone." Their only stock in trade was their bright intel-
lect, which centuries of enforced ignorance and political slavery
had been unable to destroy, but which at first only made them
feel the more keenly and to the full their misery and degradation
in the midst of an active, energetic people. Frequently, when
seeking for employment, they were met with the insulting phrase,
" No Irish need apply." What wonder, then, if too often they
huddled together in some of our large cities and became the out-
casts and criminals of society, with their hands against every
man and every man's hands against them ? Even the faith they
had cherished amid persecution at home became too often dead
within them here. Churches were few and priests were few.
The Catholic Church in America seemed for a time at a loss how
to meet the frightful difficulty with which she was so suddenly
brought face to face ; yet she set to work quietly, patiently, but
VOL. xxxin 54

850 / IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

perseveringly, and the result is what we see around us to-
day.

Those who have gone through the crisis of which I speak
can scarcely help having some bitter memories left, while the
young Irish-Americans of to-day can form but a vague idea of
what their race had to contend with in this land thirty or forty
years ago. In the town where I was brought up we sometimes
saw a priest but once in the year. No Mass, no catechism, no
Catholic school was the condition of things in my boyhood, and
I am not yet an old man. One of the first scenes I witnessed in
the place mentioned was the only Irish boy then attending the
public school of the place, when school was over for the day,
running towards his home, with a crowd of other boys pursuing
him as for his life and yelling at his heels like a pack of hungry
hounds. I need not stop to detail what the Irish in this country
had to suffer from the time of the great famine exodus to the
breaking out of our civil war. I need not tell of Know-nothing-
ism and of the disgraceful deeds done in its name in various
towns and cities of this land. I do not hold the American people
responsible for these foul deeds against a helpless and persecuted
race, for the better part of the American public, from first to last,
set their faces against the spirit of Know-nothingism, and the
many essentially good people who for a time favored it had
rather inherited than formed their own ideas on the subject.
Americans are a thoughtful, observant people, and they very
soon understood that whatever of ignorance and wretchedness
attached to the Irish people was their misfortune and not their
fault ; that they thoroughly loved learning and sought to have it
imparted to their children, even when devoid of it themselves ;
that they truly loved freedom and were proud to become Ameri-
can citizens in name and in deed. They saw them, as a rule,
honest and industrious, unselfish and affectionate, repaying even
small favors with a romantic fidelity. They saw, too, that when-
ever the Irishman got anything like a fair start in the race of life
he was very apt to be found in the lead, whether at the bar, in
the senate chamber, or on the battle-field. The American woman
who hired the Irish girl from across the big sea, with all her
worldly fortune tied up in the little bundle she carried in her
hand, found her, if not well informed in the art of cooking and
housekeeping, at least bright and quick to learn, and with a man-
ner about her at once modest and extremely attractive. The
children soon grew to love her as an elder sister, and the mother
soon came to regard her as a friend and counsellor rather than a

1 8 8- 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 851

servant. When her first month's wages were given her she did
not think of spending them in fine clothes, but hastened with
them to the emigrant's bank and sent them with a message of love
to the poor old father and mother left behind her in the old house
at home. She told them not of her own hard work, but of how
kind and good every one was to her in this beautiful land, and
how the presence of those she loved, but was forced to leave, was
all she wished for in order to complete her happiness. Her mis-
tress saw that, though she was pious and fond of going to Mass
and Vespers, her piety never interfered with her work. In the
gray dawn of the Sunday morning, while the other inmates of
the household were buried in sleep, she might be seen bowed in
prayer at an early Mass in the nearest church, asking God's bless-
ing upon herself and those she loved, and who, she felt, were even
then praying for their dear little cailin in the old chapel where
she had often knelt beside them. Americans everywhere through-
out the land saw the men whom they had been taught to despise
as lazy and thriftless cleaving the mountains asunder to make
way for the railroad and the canal, binding together by the force
of their strong will and sinewy arms the furthest extremities of
this great continent. They saw them settling in the wild waste
and by their labor and energy changing it into a land teeming
with the fruitfulness of plenty. They saw those who, they had
imagined, would be out of place anywhere except in a mud cabin
building good houses and furnishing them with a taste from which
even Americans might take a lesson. Of course they saw the
great mass were still poor and struggling, but those who took
the trouble to inquire into the cause could readily account for
this, and the conclusion was that, if hard work and the willingness
to do it could make a people great, then were the Irish a great
people and fit to be lords of the land. They saw them, besides
supporting themselves and their families, building school-houses
d churches that are real monuments in the land and bring
ck the memory of deeds done in the ages of faith. Besides, the
fact got to be generally known that these poor emigrants were
every year sending back millions of dollars to Ireland either to
bring out friends and relatives or to enable them to satisfy the
greed of rack-renting landlords and to keep a firm grip on the old
homesteads. In five years, from 1848 to 1852, a people who had
fled from starvation sent back to the old land $20,884,800, with-
out counting the amounts sent by hand and private means ; for the
above is the sum reported by the " Colonial Land and Emigra-
tion Commissioners," published in 1853.

852 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

Truly, thought the American, these Irish do strange deeds
for lazy louts and thriftless scoundrels, for so " our cousins" over
the way have represented them to us. Slowly but surely the
citadel of generations of prejudice began to crumble away, until
with the true American no man enjoyed higher trust than the true
Irishman. Then came the war for the Union, and the green flag
was flung to the breeze beside the Stars and Stripes ; and wher-
ever on the battle-field these two banners waved side by side
there everybody knew was the thickest of the fray.

During this time the enemies of republican institutions in
old England were sending gifts to one another, and bidding one
another rejoice that now at last they were safe, since the Yan-
kee bubble had burst. Ay, they were doing more than this :
they were arming and fitting out vessels of war to prey upon
American commerce, and laughing to scorn American protests.
But the bubble, so called, did not burst; but when the green flag
and the starry banner had been borne in triumph from sea to sea,
and the cause of liberty was triumphant, then Uncle Sam looked
at his fat neighbor over the way, and, shaking his fist at him, said :
" Now, you grand old humbug ! I understand what all your
prating about the two great Anglo-Saxon nations means."
" Why, Uncle," said John, "what means all this warlike guise?
You know full well I jested ; you know your worth I prize."
" Well," replied Uncle Sam, " I am not fond of war for its own
sake, and besides the old lady here is hardly yet done hugging the
boys that have just got back after settling the little unpleasant-
ness we have lately had in our own family, and so I am inclined
to let you down easy this time. But you must pay for every
cent's worth of damage you have caused my boys while my
hands were tied, or by the I'll have them go over there and
wring your neck for you !" Down went John's hand deep into
his breeches-pocket, and he paid all that was asked like a nice
little man. Then the American soldier grasped the hand of his
Irish comrade and said : " It seems we are not to have a bang at
Old England this time. But patience, old boy ! the hour will
come, unless England does your country justice ; and when it does
come, see if we don't stand by you as you have stood by us in
our day of trial."

It had been said in the English Parliament that the Irish had
caused the loss of the American colonies, and now Irish and Ame-
ricans might at any moment combine to strike a death-blow at
England herself. This would never do. Contrary to English
expectation, the Irish race, after a generation of struggle and suf-

1 88 1.] IRELAND AND THE IRISH. 853

termg, had won for itself an honorable place in American history,
and Irish ideas were a real power in the land. It would never
do for England to let this state of things go on, so " the latest
historian " hurried, or was hurried, across the Atlantic with a
bundle of trash from the " Record Office " under his arm. A
flourish of trumpets heralded his coming. All the Jingoes in Eng-
land and America were on the tiptoe of expectation. The Ame-
rican people', as a rule, waited and said little. Froude might come
and say what he had to say for or against the Irish people, for
freedom of speech is one of the cardinal principles of the American
constitution ; but this in no wise lessened the heartlessness of
Fronde's mission, whose unmitigated meanness can only be appre-
ciated by remembering the condition in which England had forced
the Irish to emigrate to this country ; and now, if this man suc-
ceeded, the labor of half a century was to be ruthlessly dashed to
the ground. But Froude did not succeed. The American people
listened awhile to what he had to say, and then bade him take
back his depositions to the " Record Office," and stay there to
guard them, if he felt so inclined. " Too long," they said, " have
we taken on credit your account of everything Irish ; henceforth
we shall hold no man's proxy on this subject, and our errors, if
any, shall be our own. Why," said they, "here is an Irish
friar, called Father Burke, and he is just fresh from the old sod,
yet he might teach the like of you history for the rest of your
natural life. Your countrymen undertook seven hundred years
ago to civilize the Irish, but their system has been one of the
most contemptible meanness and atrocious cruelty. It is about
time, therefore, that they gave up their self-imposed task and let
the Irish govern themselves."

While I am fully convinced that the American people have
no sympathy with the wild talk of some Irishmen and so-called
Irish papers in this country, I am no less convinced that every
fair and honorable and just measure, undertaken for Ireland's
good and to restore to her her rights and liberty, will always com-
mand their warmest approval and practical support. They are
no less persuaded than Irishmen themselves that " if Ireland,
blessed with the soil and people she possesses, remains inferior to
the rest of Europe, the crying shame lies at the door of English
misrule and oppression and wickedness."

But has not Mr. Gladstone said that henceforth justice should
be the watchword of England in her treatment of Ireland ? So
he has, and I am sure no people are more anxious than the Irish
to give Mr. Gladstone credit for his good intentions. I was as-

854 IRELAND AND THE IRISH. [Sept.,

tonished while in Ireland some years ago, when Mr. Gladstone
was out of office, and after he had made his very unmannerly at-
tack on the church and the pope, to hear him spoken of in the
highest terms as a true friend of Ireland. He is certainly one of
the very few Englishmen who have taken the trouble to study
for themselves the real wants and grievances of Ireland, and who
are prepared to go out of their way to seek a remedy for them.
Mr. John Bright's advocacy of the most infamous coercion bill en-
forced in our day against the Irish, though it brought astonish-
ment with it, has hardly lessened his hold on Irish gratitude. As
a rule, I think, and in memory of past services, the Irish are much
inclined to be easy even on " Buckshot Forster," though they
laugh at his posing before the world as a martyr to stern duty.
These men, and others, have doubtless the very best intentions
towards Ireland ; still, since their advent to power they seem like
a lot of men getting ready to sit down between two stools. They
must fail, not from lack of good-will, but from the Englishman's
innate powerlessness to thoroughly understand anybody's wants
but his own, and because they are laboring against a current they
are unable to stem, burdened with their present encumbrances.
Patrick Henry once said that the only means we have to judge
of the future is by the history of the past ; and if we judge the
present and future legislation of England in regard to Ireland by
this standard, then must we say that nothing good for Ireland, in
the way of law-making, can come out of England.

Those who look for the Land Bill at present before Parliament
a bill of " labyrinths and neutralizations " to settle Irish troubles
will be doomed to disappointment. It does not go to the root of
the evil, and I believe Mr. Parnell when he says that if his own
and the efforts of the brave men who stand by his side for old
Ireland's sake were to end with any such land bill as the English
government is likely to pass, it would not have been worth their
while to have taken off their coats for this fight.

The only remedy for Irish misery and discontent is to give
Ireland the making of her own domestic laws and the power to
develop her own great resources ; to take from those men who
despise Ireland too much even to study her wants, but who rush
in from the coffee-room, or home from some gambling-house or
spa on the Continent, to vote against every measure for her relief,
the power of making or unmaking her laws. However long de-
layed, I am fully convinced that this must be the final issue of
the struggle at present going on in England and Ireland.

In the meantime it behooves all Irishmen, at home and abroad,

ri 88 1 .] NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. 8 5 5

to join to great courage and great perseverance great patience.
Thomas Davis I think it was who said : " Impatience and fury
are the marks of the slave, not of the freeman." Let all Irishmen
remember that the cause of Ireland to-day is the cause of justice
and of liberty, and by their love of that cause let them not tar-
nish it by any act of unmanly crime or outrage. Then, indeed,
may we confidently hope that the day is not far distant when by
manliness and justice the Irish in Ireland, as elsewhere, will have
proved, even to the satisfaction of their present enemies, their
right to be free, and Old Mother Erin will be, not what she is
now, a synonym for misery and famine, but a nation, " self-re-
specting, self-relying, self-advancing, free, and strong."

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE THEISTIC ARGUMENT as affected by Recent Theories. By J. Lewis
Diman, D.D., late Professor of History and Political Economy in Brown
University. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co., the Riverside Press,
Cambridge. 1881.

The lectures contained in this volume were delivered at the Lowell In-
stitute in the spring of 1880. Owing to the death of the author, which oc-
curred in February, 1881, after a short illness, Professor Fisher was request-
ed to superintend the publication of his dear and valued friend's latest con-
tribution to the defence of theism and natural religion. In fulfilling this
task it was found necessary to make a few changes in phraseology, and to
add more full and exact references to the books from which citations had
been taken. Few men could be found better qualified than Professor Fisher
for the work assigned to him ; and those who read the volume carefully
will have reason to feel thankful to the deceased author and his learned
editor.

A modern writer has asserted that the attempt to prove the existence
of God and to form a rational conception of his attributes leads the human
mind into a problem " hopelessly insoluble." Professor Diman, however,
has shown that such is not the case. With remarkable literary ability and
extensive historical and philosophical learning, he has furnished a lumi-
nous solution of this central problem of human thought. He has adduced
conclusive evidence from the visible world as made known by the most ad-
vanced scientists ; he has questioned his own conscience and examined the
basis of the moral law ; he has studiously investigated the universal history
of the human race, and from all these sources he has accumulated facts
and proofs to demonstrate that the world is governed by an eternal Ruler,
who is omniscient and regulates all things according to his own designs.
Besides the usual proofs given by Paley and other writers of former times.
Professor Diman has endeavored to show how the theistic argument has

856 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Sept.,

been affected by recent theories. Such being the special aim of his lec-
tures, he was obliged to examine the opinions of Mr. Mill, Mr. Huxley, and
others who have used their splendid intellectual powers in trying to
weaken since they could not disprove the reasoning by which the exist-
ence of a Supreme Being is demonstrated. In the preface to the volume
Professor Fisher testifies that " the discussion is conducted throughout
with absolute candor. The doctrines and the reasoning of adversaries are
fully and even forcibly stated. Nothing in the way of objection that de-
serves consideration is passed by. The entire field suggested by the theme
is traversed." This is certainly a high commendation, coming from such a
competent judge as Professor Fisher, and we see no reason to think that it
is in any way exaggerated. It is a book that will be read with great inte-
rest and profit by all who wish to know how the ancient theistic argument
may be maintained so as to refute the modern objections.

The following quotation from the concluding paragraph of the volume
will serve as a specimen of Professor Diman's style : " I have sought to
show not only that the rational grounds on which we believe in the exist-
ence of God have not been affected by any of the recent conclusions of
science, but that these conclusions lead us to a point where this belief is
forced upon us with irresistible power; that the new conceptions of nature
with which science makes us familiar render the presence and constant
operation of God a most reasonable postulate. Whatever the personal atti-
tude of some men of science, the bent and tendency of scientific thought is
in a wholesome direction. The term ' evolution ' need not disturb us in the
least. In laying so much stress on this truth modern science simply re-
peats what was taught by Thomas Aquinas centuries ago, that one increas-
ing purpose runs through the successive stages of creation up to man."

This opinion quoted from St. Thomas reminds us of the immense ad-
vantage that scientists might derive from a careful study of the Angelic
Doctor. Though St. Thomas would not furnish them the data of physical
science, nor teach them how to use the spectroscope, the telescope, or the
microscope, he would teach them how to think correctly, and how to se-
cure truth by establishing a perfect equation between their conclusions and
the facts on which they are based.

CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS ; or, Sketches of Education from the
Christian Era to the Council of Trent. By Augusta Theodosia Drane,
author of The Three Chancellors, Knights of St. John, The History of St.
Catherine of Siena, etc. Second edition. London : Burns & Gates.
1881.

It is gratifying to see a second edition of this fascinating book. For it
is seldom that so much of what is usually almost inaccessible is brought
together in so attractive a way as this. Here is a book which, throughout
its more than seven hundred and fifty pages, can and will interest alike
the gray-headed theologian and the superficial young reader, who is apt to
confound all that belongs to middle-age learning with "dusty folios " the
folios are, no doubt, usually dusty when found in Protestant college libra-
ries ; whence the epithet. Nor can any of our large class of professional
teachers afford to leave this book unread, for there is nothing in the Eng-
lish language that gives so clear an idea, and in so pleasing a style, of the
beginnings of all our modern school methods. Here, illustrated by a wealth

i S 8 1 .] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 857

of instruction and often amusing anecdote, is a history of the foundation of
most of the celebrated schools of northern Europe, especially of those of
England and Germany.

The first chapter is devoted to the rise of the Christian schools during
the centuries between the death of St. Peter and the fall of the Roman
Empire. The second chapter describes the labors of the Irish scholars in
their own country and throughout Europe. The third and fourth chapters,
very interesting ones, are devoted to the work of the Anglo-Saxon scholars
and missionaries. And so, in a most alluring style, the writer goes on
through the glorious era of Charlemagne down along through the dark
period known as the iron age, to the rise of the mendicant orders and of
scholasticism, and the founding of the great universities of Paris, Bologna,
and Oxford, tracing the history of the conflict between the new and the old
learning which came with the Renascence, and ending with a very interest-
ing sketch of what was done by the Council of Trent for the reform and
advance of learning.

The author is an Englishwoman who believes sincerely in the superior-
ity of her race, and this belief more or less colors most of what she writes.
She is so strongly English that at times she seems to be scarcely just to
the Irish. At best she is careful not to give them credit for more than they
deserve a care she does not always so rigorously employ in other cases.
She speaks, for instance, of the famous Scotus Erigena as an Irishman by
birth (p. 145), thus implying that by race he was something else than
Irish ; when the fact is that in the middle ages the Irish always called
themselves Scots Scott but so also did the Gaelic or Irish colonists who
settled at Argyle (Ar-Gael), on the west coast of Caledonia. The philoso-
pher, therefore, to indicate that he was a Scot or Irishman from the mother-
country, Ireland, and not from a colony at lona or at Argyle, surnamed
himself Scotus Erigena a Scot, that is, from Erin. And again, the author
speaks of a certain Irish scholar of the ninth century as " Moengall, to
whom the monks [of St. Gall] gave the less barbarous name of Marcellus,"
etc. Barbarous the name may sound to an English man or woman of to-
day, but barbarous it certainly was not to a monk of the great Swiss abbey
founded by St. Gall, who was himself a Gael of the most pronounced sort.
In fact, the reader who is acquainted with Montalembert's Monks of the
West will soon perceive that the author of Christian Schools and Scholars
measures out very gingerly the share of praise belonging to the Irish
scholars and founders of schools during the early middle ages. Yet even
that share, qualified and all as it is, is a glorious one.

Nevertheless, for all that concerns the history of learning in England
and Germany especially, before the so-called Reformation, the book is a
marvel of information. It is such a book, irr fact, as ought surely to be
found in the library of any Catholic in this country having pretensions
to intelligence.

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE SCHOOL. By Thomas Harper, SJ. Vol. II.
London : Macmillan & Co. 1881.

We are pleased to learn that the first volume of Father Harper's work
has been received with great favor in England, not only by Catholics but
by others also. The prompt issue of the second volume is most gratifying,

858 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Sept.,

and is an earnest that the whole of this truly magnificent work, in which
the Scholastic Metaphysics are presented in a most elaborate manner in
good English, will be ere long completed.

This volume contains the fourth and fifth books. The topic of the
fourth book is Principles of Being, including Analytical and Experimental
Principles, and concluding with a refutation of Kant's theory of Syntheti-
cal A Priori Judgments. This book fills up only 142 of the 729 pages of
the volume. The fifth book treats of the Causes of Being, extending
through the rest of the second volume and even thus only half exhaust-
ing the topic, which will be continued in the third and fourth volumes.

After a general consideration of the nature and difference of Principle and
Cause, Father Harper discusses at length Material Cause and Formal Cause.
This is, of course, for those who take a special interest in scholastic metaphy-
sics and the controversies which are being carried on within and without the
Catholic schools, the part of Father Harper's work which will be read with
the greatest curiosity. The most abstruse and difficult problems in all
metaphysics are to be found just here. Let the reader who desires to know
how Father Harper has treated these subjects devote a few months' study
to the book itself. We think it safe to say that the teaching of Aristotle,
of St. Thomas, and of those disciples of St. Thomas who follow him most
closely, is correctly and intelligibly presented by Father Harper.

THE STATUES IN THE BLOCK, AND OTHER POEMS. By John Boyle
O'Reilly. Boston : Roberts Brothers. 1881.

The interest awakened by John Boyle O'Reilly's Songs of the Southern
Seas an interest which was as much due to romantic circumstances sur-
rounding the life of the poet as to the literary value of the poems has
made this long-waited-for book a subject of eager discussion. The Songs of
the Southern Seas took the public by surprise. They were like streams
of fresh mountain air entering the sultry precincts of a close city. At
once picturesque, fresh, dramatic, and strong, their predominant quality
of manliness sometimes outraged the prejudices of the dilettante. Crude-
ness and haste showed themselves in the first book, and perhaps the au-
thor, maturing, regretted that he had not waited to improve on himself. In
this book he has improved on himself, and this is very evident to the cri-
tic, but the general public though this book has already reached a second
edition will prefer the clearness, vigor, and strong human interest of the
Songs. The Statues in the Block deals with meditations, dreams, not with
experience of strange climes and men. Mr. O'Reilly's philosophy is
comprised in the two words " love " and " philanthropy." His outcries for
men who suffer and perish are the appeals of one who feels but does not
reason. He demands a Utopia in which all men will be free and equal in
which nature will rule law, and cant and caste die. He cries :

" Prometheus, we reject thy gifts for Christ's !
Selfish and hard were thine, but his are sweet :
' Sell what thou hast and give it to the poor.'
Him we must follow to the great Commune,
Reading his book of Nature, growing wise
As planet-men, who own the earth, and pass;
Him we must follow till foul Cant and Caste
Die like disease, and Mankind, freed at last,

58 1.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 859

Tramples the complex life and laws and limits
That stand between all living things and freedom !"

The same philosophy, poetical and fervent, if transcendental and illogi-
cal, animates " From the Earth : a Cry," which is hot with the poet's indig-
nation against a world of sham and tyranny :

" Emperors, stand to the bar ! Chancellors, halt at the barracks !

Landlords and law-lords and trade-laws, the spectres you conjured have risen :

Communists, Socialists, Nihilists, rent-rebels, strikers behold !

They are the fruit of the seed you have sown : God has prospered your planting. They come

From the earth, like the army of death. You have sowed the seed of the dragon 1

Hark to the bay of the leader ! You shall hear the roar of the pack

As sure as the stream goes seaward. The crust on the crater beneath you

Shall crack and crumble and sink, with your laws and rules

That breed the million to toil for the luxury of the ten," etc.

The serious poems are lightened by flashes of half-cynical, epigrammatic
verses which at times make a pleasant relief, at others an abrupt discord.
Facing the pathetic " Well's Secret " are these lines :

" A man will trust another man and show

His secret thought and act, as if he must ;

A woman does she tell her sins ? Ah ! no ;

She never knew a woman she could trust."

Again, as a prelude to " The Temple of Friendship," he writes :

*' You gave me the key of your heart, my love ;

Then why do you make me knock ? "
" Oh ! that was yesterday, saints above !

And last night I changed the lock."

If there are any signs of carelessness in this book they will not mar the
pleasure of the reader who loves a clear stream, even if an occasional pebble
cause it to ripple. There are lyrics which have the melody and some of the
sensuousness of Moore with a new, indefinable, and rich quality given bv
the individuality of O'Reilly. The poet has gained new skill in the man-
agement of his material, he has acquired what musicians call technique, but
his reflective poems, strong as they are, show that action and experience
rather than thought or meditation strikes the brightest sparks from his
mind. He has not disappointed his admirers, and yet he has not yet ac-
quired that self-discipline which will enable him to give us those perfect
fruits we have every reason to expect.

ON THE SUNRISE SLOPE. By Katherine E. Conway. With a preface by
the Rev. Patrick Cronin. New York : The Catholic Publication Society
Co. 1881.

These poems bear unmistakable marks of poetic talent of a high order.
Good taste, imagination, and felicity of expression do not make a poet, but
Miss Conway shows in the best of her poems that she possesses the attri-
bute, undefmable, evanescent, which often gives verses of rude workman-
ship the charm that belongs to true poetry. The one defect of this book
is its distinguishing quality of sadness. A wail of grief is heard in even-
line, and despondency is only kept by faith from becoming despair. In
spite of the skill and taste of the poet in revealing her sorrows in appro-

86o NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Sept., 1 88 1.

priate forms, the minor key grows monotonous, and one cannot help wish-
ing that a little gayety, or even a little cynicism, were allowed to relieve
the mourning. But the faith and hope of the poet soar triumphant over
sin and the grave ; and there are lines in some of the poems which deserve
to live as long as hearts, torn by conflict, yearn toward the cross as their
only relief. Purity, sweetness, and strength essentially delicate and femi-
nine are characteristics of the poems. Miss Conway has the sensitive ear
for music, the vivid yet disciplined imagination, and the quick sympathy of
a true poet. She must learn to be less retrospective and introspective.
The world is sad enough itself without more sadness from the poets. Above
all she is Catholic and womanly in every line and fibre of her verse.

THE EXCELLENCES OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE ORATORY OF ST. PHI-
LIP NERI. Translated from the Italian and abridged by Frederick Ig-
natius Antrobus, of the same Congregation. London : Burns & Gates.
1881.

St. Philip is a very favorite saint. His uncommonly amiable and genial
character, united with a great many marvellous gifts, have made his Life
unusually attractive, and the knowledge of it has been very widely spread
through the Oratorian Lives of the Saints, where his biography finds a
conspicuous place. Through St. Philip's Life and the Lives of several
other Oratorians, the Institute of the Oratory has become known and es-
teemed throughout the English-speaking world. In England it has become
celebrated and endeared to Catholics by the great good it has done there.
The names of Newman and Faber have given lustre to the Institute which
they embraced, and several other Oratorian Fathers are well known for
their writings and their other good works on both sides of the Atlantic.

Father Antrobus, the compiler of the book before us, will be remem-
bered by many Americans as Mr. Antrobus of the British Legation at
Washington some twelve or fifteen years ago, before he gave up the diplo-
matic career to become a priest. His work is a modified translation from
the Italian, giving a complete exposition of the nature and excellences of
the Institute of the Oratory. The sweet and gentle spirit of St. Philip
breathes throughout its pages. Without doubt it will attract many voca-
tions to the Oratory in England, and, although we do not as yet possess
any houses of this Order in the United States, such a book must be edify-
ing and instructive to all religious, to devout persons in general, and to all
those especially who have a special love for the great St. Philip.

SYNNOVE SOLBAKKEN. By Bjornstjerne Bjornson. Translated from the
Norse by Rasmus B. Anderson. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
1881.

A short biographical sketch of the distinguished Norwegian poet and
novelist, and a spirited portrait, are prefixed to this pretty volume. The
story itself is a simple and charming one from Norwegian peasant life. Its
spirit is pure and healthful, and one easily discerns the hand of a master in
its sketches of scenery, character, and every-day life.

AP The Catholic world

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