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I 




THE 




Oilttt'l 10 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 




VOL. XXXVII. 
, 1883, TO SEPTEMBER, 1883. 



NEW YORK: 

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO., 
9 Barclay Street. 



1883. 



Copyright, 1883, by 
I. T. HECKER. 




THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK 



CONTENTS. 



Abbot Feckenham. 5". Hubert Burke, . 313 

A Day in Macao.//. Y. Eastlake, . . 666 
A Descendant of the Puritans. M. F. Egan, 481 
Albertus Magnus. The Rev. J. J. Dough- 
erty^ . . . . . . .197 

A Mediaeval Culturkampf. Mary H. 

Allies, 502 

American Law, Religion in. C. H. Robinson, 145 
Ampere's Struggle with Doubt. T. F. Gal- 

wey, ........ 418 

Anselm, St., The Youth of. E. Raymond- 
Barker^ 334 

Armine. Christian Reid, 23, 159, 348, 525, 685, 805 
Arnold, Some Remarks on Mr. Matthew. By 

an Englishwoman, ..... 577 
At Caughnawaga, P. O. A. M. Pope, . . 607 
Bancroft's History of the United States. R. 

H. Clarke, 721 

Calvin, John. E. Raymond-Barker, . . 769 
Caroline Sibaldus. William Seton, . . 299 
Catholic Church and the Colored People, 

The, 374 

Caughnawaga, P. O., At. A. M. Pope, . . 607 
Celtic Architecture. Bryan J, Clinche, . 224 
Church and Prohibition. N. F. Thompson, . 846 
Colored People, The Catholic Church and 

the 374 

Dante's Purgatorio, canto xxx. T. W. 

Parsons, 19 

" Drawing the Line. 11 A.F.Marshall, . 516 
Duffy (Sir Charles Gavan) and his Contempo- 
raries. Thomas P. Gill, .... 589 
Early Irish Church and the Holy See, The. 

S. Hubert Burke, . . . . .98 
Education in Ireland, Past and Present. 

Bryan J. Clinche, . . . ' . . 120 
English Waifs. Oswald Keatinge, . . 408 
En Route to the Yosemite. The Rev. E. M. 

Sweeny, 783 

Eschatology of Origen, The. The Rev. A. 

F. Hewit, i 

Feckenham, Abbot. S. Hubert Burke, . 313 
French-Canadian Men of Letters. Anna T. 

Sadlier, ....... 104 

Gomes and Portuguese Poetry. H. P. Mc- 

Elrone, 655 

Hall (Dr. John) on the Failure of Protestant- 
ism. Oswald Keatinge, .... 433 



Hopeful Aspects of Scepticism. Oswald 

Keatinge, 643 

Ireland, Education in, Past and Present. 

Bryan J. Clinche, . . . . .120 
Irenaeus (St.) and the Roman See. A. H. 

Cullen, ....... 464 

Irish Church and the Holy See, The Early. 

S. Hubert Burke, 98 

Irish Humor, Native. A If red M. Williams, 58 
Jacopo de' Benedetti da Todi. Jean M. 

Stone, ........ 630 

John Calvin. E. Raymond-Barker, . . 769 
John Howard Payne. A . J. Faust, . . 82 
Liberty, Unscientific. The Rev. Geo. M. 

Searle, 289 

Liquor-Traffic, The Management of the. TJie 

Rev. T. McMillan, 396 

Macao, A Day in.//. Y. Eastlake, . . 666 
Miss Amaranth Marion A. Taggart,. . 238 
" Morality in the Public Schools.' 1 The Rev. 

W. Elliott 709 

Native Irish Humor. Alfred M. Williams, 58 
Origen, The Eschatology of. The Rev. A. 

F. Hewit i 

Payne, John Howard. A.J.Faust, . . 82 
Plurality of Worlds, The. The Rev. Geo. M. 

Searle, ....... 49 

Psyche ; or, The Romance of Nature, . . 449 
Queen Elizabeth's First Clerical Victims. S. 

Hubert Burke, ...... 274 

Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens. A. 

J. Faust, 385 

Religion in American Law. C. //. Robinson, 145 
Roman See, St. Irenseus and the. A. H. 

Cullen, 464 

Russian Church, A Visit to. Mary H. 

Allies z86 

Santa Fe in the Past. 7^,? Very Rev. J. H. 

Defouri, ....... 549 

Scepticism, Hopeful Aspects of. Oswald 

Keatinge, 643 

Sir Charles Gavan Duffy and his Contempo- 
raries. Thomas P. Gill 589 

Skellig Michel. Bryan J. Clinrhe, . . 793 
Some Remarks on Mr. Matthew Arnold. By 

an Englishwoman, ..... 577 
Stephens (Alexander H.), Recollections of. 

A. J. Faust, . . . . . .385 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



Sundayisra in England. /I. F. Marshall, . 759 
Tale of a Haunted House.-C. M. O^Keefe, 617 
The Three Sisters. jW. P. Thompson, . . 212 
The Triumph of the Most Blessed Sacrament 

in the Louvre at Paris, A.D. 1667, 
The Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P. 
Prof. J. M. Kavanagh, .... 
The Wedding at Connevoe. A. M. Wil- 
liams, . ' 
Thomas Aquinas (St.) in the New-Eng- 
lander for January, 1883. The Rev. Jos. 
Bay inn, S.%, 



95 



829 
746 



63 



de Con- 



" Thought is Free." The Rev. 
cilio, 

Unscientific Liberty. Tht Rev. Geo. M. 
Searle, 

What Europe owes to Italy. J. C. Earle, . 

Who were the First "Germans " ? C. M. 
O'Keeffe 

Worlds, The Plurality of.- The Rev. Geo. M. 
Searle 

Youth of St. Anselm, f he. E. Raymond- 
Barker, 



318 



*57 



49 



334 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



A History of the Councils of the Church, 134 
Final Causes. 135 A Compendium of Irish Bio- 
graphy, 136 On the Desert, 137 The Chair of 
Peter, 139 The Works of O. A. Brownson, vol. ii., 
140 The Life of St. Lewis Bertrand, 141 Protes- 
tantism and the Catholic Church, 142 Mater Ad- 
mirabilis, 142 Die Hohe Messe in H Moll, 143 
The Echo, 144 The Life and Times of St. Anselm, 
285 Ragnarok, 285 The Christian Father, 286 
Patron Saints, 287 Four Days in the Life of Mary, 
Queen of Scots, 287 Life of St. Dominic, 287 
Charity as an Investment, 288 Servants of God, 
288 Growth in the Knowledge of our Lord, 288 
Contributions to the Archaeology of the District of 
Columbia, 288 The Storage of Electricity, 288 
Socrates, 423 Historical Portraits of the Tudor 
Dynasty, 424 Notes on Ingersoll, 427 Natalie 
Narischkin, 428 Cities of Southern Italy and 
Sicily, 428 A Treatise on Citizenship, 429 Cata- 



logue of American Catholic Publishers' Associa- 
tion, 430 Golden Legends, etc., 432 Conferences 
by F. X. Weninger, D.D., 575 Golden Sands, 
576 The Works of O. A. Brownson, vol. iii., 
576 A Book about Roses, 576 Annals of the Sis- 
ters of Mercy, 718 Conferences On the Theology 
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 719 A Critique of 
Design-Arguments, 720 The Monk's Pardon, 720 
Sure Way to a Happy Marriage, 720 Cathe- 
dra Petri, 852 Old-Testament Revision, 853 The 
Meisterschaft System, 854 Destiny, and other 
Poems, 855 Sermons for the Spring Quarter, 857 
Italian Rambles, 857 The Secret Policy of the 
Land Act, 858 Praxis Synodalis, 859 Top'cs of 
the Time : Social Problems ; Studies in Biography ; 
Studies in Literature, 859 The Story of Ida, 860 
An Outline of Irish History from the Earliest 
Times to the Present Day, 860 Dynamic Sociolo- 
gy, 860. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVII. APRIL, 1883. No. 217. 

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 

PART III. 

THE discussion of Origen's orthodoxy in respect to eternal 
punishment, in our opinion, resolves itself into an investigation 
of only one serious and decisive question. This is, namely, 
whether he held and taught any final, determined, and unchange- 
able state at all for created rational beings, in which they have 
attained their end. We do not see any plausible reason what- 
ever for ascribing to him the opinion that an apocatastasis, or 
restitution of all things, will take place at a future epoch, which 
will bring all angels and men who have sinned to a state of per- 
fect and unchangeable beatitude in God. The error which on 
a superficial view appears to be involved in his theory is some- 
thing very different from this. It is, that on account of a natural 
equality, and potentiality of self-movement in every direction 
with every degree of energy, which is perfectly free and per- 
petually changeable, in all created rational beings, the universe 
must eternally be subject to an endless series of fluctuations. 
We must acknowledge that such was the idea which seemed 
to our own mind to be contained in the Periarchon before we 
had examined the work of Prof. Vincenzi. This view is ex- 
pressed in the article on the " Future Destiny of Man " re- 
ferred to in a note to Part II. of this present article. There 
is the same reason for ascribing to Origen a denial of the 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



2 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. [April, 

eternal beatitude of the just as for ascribing to him a denial of 
the eternal misery of the unjust. And there is the same reason 
for giving him the credit of orthodoxy in respect to eternal 
punishment as for admitting that he held the Catholic faith con- 
cerning everlasting beatitude. 

The principal treatise by Origen which must be considered 
is the Periarchon. This is a sort of summary or manual of. the 
course of systematic lectures and instructions given by Origen 
as the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria. The Greek 
title is Uepi 'Apx&v, the title of the Latin translation is De Prin- 
cipiist\\z.t is, A Treatise on Principles. Origan's predecessor, 
Clement, announced his intention of producing a work On Prin- 
ciples against the Marcionites and other heretics who laid down 
certain false principles of knowledge and belief. There is no 
evidence that he fulfilled his promise, but it is thought to be 
probable that he committed, instead, the task to his disciple and 
successor. The First Principle which Origen sets forth is the 
Eternal Word of God, after which come the prophets, apostles, 
ithe teaching church, and reason illuminated by the Holy Spirit. 
The scope and design of his treatise, as explained by himself, is 
4x> set forth the revealed truth held and taught in the church, for 
the instruction of the faithful and the confutation of heretics. 
In regard to those matters in respect to which the tradition and 
teaching of the church are not clear, Origen professes to follow 
probable reasoning, with a modest submission to the judgment 
of wiser men and to a clearer manifestation of the truth which 
may be made in a subsequent time. His treatise is divided into 
four books, treating respectively of God, the World, Free-Will, 
.and the Holy Scriptures. 

It is plain that Origen, brought up in Alexandria, the second 
in rank of the apostolic and patriarchal sees, with the light of a 
pure and apostolic tradition in one of its chief centres, with a 
wonderful genius, with a most thorough instruction received in 
the Academy founded by St. Mark, with the advantage of for- 
eign travel and of personal visits to Rome, with the privilege of 
extensive acquaintance among his wisest and holiest contempo- 
raries, with the vast erudition acquired by a long lifetime of 
study, had the best possible opportunities for learning most 
thoroughly and accurately what was the true and genuine Chris- 
tian doctrine. At the time when he composed the Periarchon, 
although this was at an early period of his life, he already en- 
joyed a number of the advantages just enumerated in a sufficient 
degree to secure to him immunity from all errors, except such 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 3 

as the greatest of the early Fathers were liable to fall into from 
the circumstances of their time, the like of which must be con- 
doned to Origen, as well as to canonized Saints and Doctors. 
His honesty, diligence, purity of intention, and eminent sanctity 
of life cannot be reasonably assailed or doubted. Whence was 
it, then, that his writings, and notably the Periarchon, were so 
frequently and severely incriminated? Let this question be 
answered by Vincenzi : 

" How was it, some one will ask me, that these things happened in respect 
to Origen and his works? I reply that where good seed was sown in the 
field by the husbandman, tares were afterwards mixed up with that seed by 
another. An enemy did this ; and he used such cunning that the reapers, 
not knowing how to separate the tares from the wheat, and to detect the 
enemy who had oversowed them, cast all together into the fire to be 
burned up. And rejecting the labor of the husbandman,. his acuteness, in- 
genuity, and fidelity in cultivating the Lord's field, as an evil work, they 
assigned to him a portion with reprobates outside of the vineyard of the 
Lord ; not even condoning to him such things as they have condoned to 
other writers, who, undertaking to make exposition of certain doctrines at 
a time when they had not yet been explored and defined by the supreme 
authority of the church, appear to have said what is not entirely correct. 

" But if you wish to learn what kind of tares have been oversown upon 
the wheat, you may know that these are all the false interpretations, cor- 
ruptions, falsifications, interpolations, invented by envy and malice, and 
from hatred to the catholic dogma and its defender, Origen. And the 
framers of these falsifications acted with such treachery and zeal that they 
so mixed together one Periarchon an impious work of Gnostics, among 
whom the Marcionites were chief, and another the work of the orthodox 
Origen two volumes which had been before distinct and separate works 
from different authors, with different scope and doctrine that there ap- 
peared to be in this composition but one work of one author" (vol. ii. 
Pref. p. xxv.) 

It is with this depravation of Origen's doctrine in prior pos- 
session of their minds, and under the influence of a supposed con- 
demnation of his person" and writings by the Fifth Council, as 
well as of a violent presumption against him created by St. 
Jerome, Petavius, and others, that most scholars have been in the 
habit of perusing the genuine text of his writings. Reading 
obscure passages in it under such an unfavorable light, and 
seeing them through a hazy medium, one can scarcely fail to 
interpret them in a heterodox sense. Justice and fairness re- 
quire that we should put away all this, and lean toward any 
interpretation which is probable, by which such passages can 
be harmonized with other parts of Origen's writings which are 



4 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. [April, 

clear in sense and clearly orthodox, and with the general tenor 
and scope of his teaching. m m 

Now, there are more than sixty passages in Ongen s writ 
in which he unequivocally teaches the doctrine of eternal pun- 
ishment as a Catholic dogma. One or two will suffice as a 

sample. 

In the preface to the Periarchon Origen most distinctly af- 
firms the necessity of an accurate measure and rule of doctrine 
certam lineam manifestamque regulam ponereto determine contro- 
versies about the genuine Christian dogma. Traditional teach- 
ing received from the apostles and permanent in the church, is 
the rule which he lays down : Ilia sola credenda est veritas qua 
in nullo ab ecclesiastica et apostolica discordat traditione. Going 
.on then to note a distinction between those things which the 
apostles taught in a definite and manifest form, and those which 
they taught in a more general way, leaving them to be more tho- 
roughly investigated by those who should come after, he pro- 
ceeds to specify the principal dogmas which are clearly mani- 
fest. Species vero eorum qua per prcedicationem apostolicam mani- 
feste traduntur, ist<z sunt. He enumerates the doctrine of One 
God the Creator and Author of Revelation, of Jesus Christ, God 
and Man, who was incarnated, crucified, and rose again, and of 
the Holy Spirit, united with the Father and the Son. Then he 
subjoins: 

"After these things, that the soul having its own proper substance and 
life, when it has departed from this world, shall be disposed of according to 
its merits, either to possess the inheritance of eternal life and beatitude, if 
its deeds have gained this for it ; or to be bound over to eternal fire and pun- 
ishments, if the guilt of its crimes has drawn it aside to this doom." 

The eternal, irreparable lapse and doom of Satan is affirmed 
in the following passage of the sixth book against Celsus : 

" But, more accurately speaking, the adversary is that one who first of 
beings living happily and enjoying peace, losing his wings, fell from felicity ; 
the one who, as Ezechiel says (c. xxviii.), walked blameless in all his ways 
until iniquity was found in him ; and who when he was in the paradise of 
God, sealed and crowned with the likeness of His beauty, and as it were satu- 
rated with good things, lost all. In a mystical sense it was said to him : 
You are made a ruin, and you shall not be for ever, sis rdv at&va." 

A parallel passage from the Commentary on the Epistle to 
Titus explains more fully the sense intended by Origen in the 
foregoing : 

"This is what we must think regarding the devil himself, who is de- 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 5 

scribed as having offered resistance before the face of God, and as having 
deserted his own state, in which he had been as one having no stain; who, 
indeed, would have been able, if he had so willed, to persevere even to the 
end in the same state in which he was from the beginning." 

This implies that the devil, having- been at his creation con- 
stituted in grace with the power of free choice, and in a state of 
probation, lost by sinning all power of attaining successfully the 
end of his probation, and consequently could not have the op- 
portunity and means of regaining and being restored to the con- 
dition from which he had fallen. 

In the same Dialogue with Celsus, Origen proceeds to argue 
from the dogma of eternal rewards and punishments, as a pre- 
mise admitted by both parties, with a view of refuting objections 
against the resurrection : 

" How [says Celsus] can one help regarding these notions of yours as 
absurd, aspiring to possess a body, and hoping for its resurrection from 
the dead, as if nothing belonging to us were more excellent and precious, 
and yet exposing the same to all kinds of tortures as if it were a worthless 
thing ? . . . I direct my argument to those who hope that the soul or 
mind . . . will enjoy eternal life with God. These are justly persuaded 
that such as have lived rightly will be endowed with felicity, but that the 
unjust will be tormented with wholly eternal miseries Ttajuttar aiooviotS 
KanoiS. From this dogma neither they nor any one else ought to depart." 

In the course of his rejoinder Origen says : 

" When we fall in with some whom the calumnies spread abroad against 
Christians have seized upon in such a way that, believing Christians to be 
entirely devoid of piety, they will not give ear to those who promise to teach 
them the mysteries of the divine Word ; then, as common humanity demands, 
we labor earnestly that the doctrine concerning the eternal punishment await- 
ing the impious may be confirmed, so that it may even be received by those who 
will not become Christians. So, also, we endeavor to persuade them that 
those who live well will be endowed with eternal felicity, seeing that many 
things pertaining to the right ordering of life, which are altogether similar 
to our doctrines, have been said by the enemies of the faith." 

On Ezechiel vii. 26 : Trouble shall come upon trouble, and rumor 
upon rumor, or, message upon message : 

"The first trouble is in this life, because it is evil and impious and has 
no visitation of God; the other trouble is on account of torments to come 
after this life. But there shall be message upon message, perhaps because 
after the prophets who have threatened many things concerning the eter- 
nal punishment rrjs ataoviov xoXadeaoS the preaching of the Gospel should 
come after, clearly explaining the truth concerning Gehenna and other 
endless torments." 



6 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. [April, 

That Origen always means to express the idea of eternity 
apartepost, or duration without end, in its strict and literal sense, 
when he speaks of the opposite states of souls after the judgment 
under the predicate of eternity, is manifest from his own clear 
explanation of the Scriptural usage of terms of this kind : 

" Now, concerning eternal life, although we have also in other places 
often said the same thing, yet we must now briefly remark that in the 
Scriptures eternity is sometimes taken for a duration which has no end in 
the present age, though it has in a future one. Sometimes the space of a 
certain time, or even of the life of one man, is called eternity ; for instance, 
in the law concerning the Hebrew servant, he shall be a servant to you for 
eternity. Doubtless here eternity means the whole time of a man's life. 
Again in Ecclesiastes it is said : One generation goeth and another generation 
cometh; but the earth standeth for eternity : here eternity denotes the time 
of this present world. But where (the apostle) speaks of eternal life we 
must look to that which the Saviour himself said : This is life eternal, that 
they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent ; 
and again : I am the way, and the truth, and the life. And the apostle him- 
self says in another place that we shall be rapt in the clouds to meet Christ 
in the air, and so we shall be always with the Lord. Therefore as the being 
always with the Lord has no end, so also it must be believed that eternal 
life has no end. 

" For the wages of sin is death : but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ 
Jesus our Lord. This which he has just said, the wages of sin is death, is 
similar to that which he had said before, but the end of these is death. Of 
whom, then ? Of those, doubtless, for whom you are now ashamed, whose 
fruits he disdains even to mention. And, again, the grace of God is eternal 
life in Christ Jesus our Lord is similar to that which he said : You have your 
fruit unto sanctification, but the end eternal life. He well preserves the meta- 
phorto wit, the figure of military service which he adopted from the be- 
ginningin saying that death as the wages due is paid to those who fight 
under sin as a king, yea rather as a tyrant, over those who obey him. 
It was not worthy of God, however, to speak of his giving wages to his 
soldiers as a debt, but as a gift and a grace, which is eternal life in Christ 
Jesus our Lord. Nor do I think it is without a purpose that to the words 
eternal life he added in Christ Jesus our Lord, but perhaps because he 
wished it to be known that eternal life by itself is one thing, and eternal 
life in Christ Jesus another thing. For they also who will arise to confu- 
sion and everlasting opprobrium will really have eternal life, yet not in 
Christ Jesus, but in confusion and eternal opprobrium ; the just, on the 
other hand, who will rise to eternal life, will have eternal life in Christ 
Jesus " (in Epist. ad Rom., lib. vi. 5, 6). 

It is plain enough from this passage, which is in conformity 
with what Origen everywhere teaches, that he recognized two 
final, immutable, and perpetual states, one of eternal fruition of 
the supreme good gained by grace and merit, the other of eter- 
nal loss incurred by demerit. The orthodox interpretation of 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 7 

his doctrine does not rest on the mere usage of certain terms 
which may vary in meaning- in different connections. The real 
sense of these terms is shown by the logical connection of ideas 
in his philosophy and theology, by a view of his scope and 
method, and a comparison of the different parts of his system 
with each other which makes them harmonious and reveals their 
consecutive order and interdependence. 

The principal terms used in Scripture to denote that infernal 
world which is inhabited by those who are not in the heavens 
where Christ reigns with the angels and the saints, are : Scheol, 
Hades, Latin Infernus, all which are represented in English by 
the term Hell, Gehenna or the Gehenna of Fire ; and The Outer 
Darkness. Not only the terms Hades and Infernus are found in 
the original text and the version of Origen used in two senses, 
one generic for the habitation of various classes of departed 
souls of men, and the other specific for the place of punishment 
of the damned, but the same is true of the terms Gehenna and 
Outer Darkness. The real sense of these and other terms belong- 
ing to Eschatology and its cognate topics, in any passage of 
Origen, must be determined by its scope and context, and no- 
thing can be inferred against any Catholic dogma from those 
sentences in his writings where only an improper interchange 
between genus and species alters their sense and makes it hete- 
rodox. 

The Eschatology of Origen is a doctrine in which the Resur- 
rection and Last Judgment are presented as the final term of a 
long age or series of ages which had a beginning, and which are 
followed by an eternal and unchangeable state. In the ages be- 
fore this Final Term all probations, passive purgations, conflicts, 
redemptions, inchoate and progressive formations and move- 
ments, in the universe, are accomplished. In the eternal, end- 
less age after the Final Term, the accomplished finalities of the 
work of God, and of the good and evil works wrought by the 
free-will of rational creatures, subsist for ever in the order es- 
tablished and governed by the unresisted, irresistible will and 
sovereignty of Almighty God. So far as angels are concerned, 
their probation was over before the probation of mankind began, 
and the eternal destiny of the holy angels and of the fallen angels 
was irrevocably determined. So far as man is concerned, his ex- 
istence is divided into three portions, the time from the begin- 
ning of the existence of the soul as the form of his body until 
death, the time of the separate existence of the soul between 
death and the resurrection, and the endless duration of his im- 



8 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. [April, 

mortal life after the resurrection. The first of these stages is 
the only period of probation, grace, and merit. During the 
second stage the soul is passive, and recipient of that action of 
God upon it which is requisite in order that it may be perfect- 
ed by the resurrection ; having no self-active power to modify 
its own state or final destiny by any exercise of its free-will. 
Everything which Origen affirms in respect to the redemption, 
the purgation, the regeneration and restitution, of man and of 
the inferior beings related to him, must be referred to this 
period. And also, in regard to other rational creatures, all that 
is said concerning the way in which they too are made subject 
to the reign of Christ and assigned to their due place in the 
kingdom of God must be referred to the age or ages anterior to 
the day of the Last Judgment. 

The explanation which has been previously made of the doc- 
trine of St. Gregory of Nyssa, respecting the universal apoca- 
tastasis, suffices also for this part of the incriminated teaching of 
Origen, and need not be repeated. After this restitution has 
been accomplished, after the universal resurrection has taken 
place, after all things have been subdued by Christ, even the 
last enemy, death ; then, Origen constantly affirms, the sentence 
of eternal condemnation is pronounced upon all those angels and 
men who are found by the unerring justice of God wanting that 
sanctity and merit which are necessary for admission into the 
kingdom of super-celestial beatitude. 

And when the Son of Man shall come in hzs majesty, and all the Angels 
^ ^ Up n tke ^ f his ma J' est ^ and " ll **' ^all be 



** A 

gathered before him, etc. (Matt. xxv. 31, 32). 

ventary of OHgen : "Those who keep the commandment of God 
are already near to the Word, and they are called, that they may be made 
yet nearer, hearing. Come, ye blessed of my Father. But those who do not 

Whr^e th T 1 arC fai " 'I him ' th Ugh th ^ to ""and near 
ore ha presence before him which they seemed to them- 

that th K taken fr m them When the ^ hear , Depart from 

Te seen^^^er" F n Th are "** tO * * hi8 P 6 ' Presently (hall 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 9 

works worthy of malediction. Now, those who depart from Jesus will fall 
into the eternal fire, which is of another kind from this fire which we have 
in use. For no fire among men is eternal or even of long duration, since 
it is quickly extinguished. But the eternal fire is that of which Isaias 
spoke at the end of his prophecy : Their worm shall not die, and their fire 
shall not be quenched. Perhaps it is of such a kind of substance that, being 
by its constitution invisible, it burns things which are invisible, as the 
apostle says, Cor. II. c. iv. : For the things which are seen are temporal, but 
the things which are not seen are eternal. .If, therefore, the things which are 
seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are-eternal, it follows 
necessarily that if that fire be visible it must be temporal. But if it be 
eternal it is also invisible, by which they who depart from the Saviour are 
punished. That is similar which Job also says : A fire shall devour him which 
is not kindled. But do not wonder at hearing of a fire which is invisible 
and punitive, when you perceive that there is a heat invading the bodies of 
men which causes no little torment, especially to those who are the most 
severely afflicted by it. And consider that he says indeed that the king- 
dom has been prepared from the foundation of the world for no others than 
the just; and therefore their king, Christ, shall give it to them. But he 
shows the eternal fire as not prepared for those to whom it is said, Depart 
from me, ye cursed, as the kingdom was prepared for the just, but for the 
devil and his angels ; because as respects himself, he did not create men for 
perdition, but for life and joy. Sinners, however, join themselves to the 
devil ; and as they who are saved are made equal to the holy angels, and 
become children of the resurrection, and sons of God, and angels, so they 
who perish are made equal to the angels of the devil and become his chil- 
dren." 

Another passage from the Periarchon proves conclusively that 
the cessation of that passive purgation before the judgment 
which eliminates the vitiosity of nature and effects that regene- 
ration of the soul which prepares it for the resurrection, did 
not imply, in the mind of Origen, the termination of the punish- 
ment which is the proper reward of demerit, and that the com- 
mon restitution of all men to integrity and perfection of nature 
did not imply equality in their final destination : 

' In those who shall deserve to obtain the inheritance of the kingdom 
of the heavens, that manner of the reparation of the body of which we have 
spoken above, by the command of God repairs a spiritual body from an 
earthly and animal body, which can dwell in the heavens ; to those, how- 
ever, who are of inferior desert, or more abject, or of the last and lowest, 
in proportion to the worthiness of the soul and life of each one, there is 
also given glory and honor of the body : in such a way, nevertheless, that 
the body of those even who are to be destined to eternal fire or punish- 
ments, by the very permutation of the resurrection is in such wise incor- 
rupt when it arises that it cannot be corrupted and dissolved even by punish- 
ments " (lib. ii. c. x. n. 3). 

We will now examine some of the principal passages in the 



I0 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. [April, 

works of Orio-en which have been interpreted in a sense contrary 
to the orthodox doctrine of the perpetuity of punishment after 
the Last Judgment, in general, and in particular of the irretriev- 
able condemnation incurred by those angels who fell from grace 

by sinning. 

Commenting on the declaration of our Lord that one who 
blasphemes against the Holy Spirit shall not teive remission 
either in this world or in the world to come, Origen says, ac- 
cording to the Latin version of his text : 

" Nee tamen sequitur, si non habet remissionem infuturo satculo, non habere 
in superuenturis sczculis Nevertheless, it does not follow that if he has not 
remission in the age to come, he does not have in ages which are to suc- 
ceed it" (Injoann., torn. xix. 3). 



The Greek text reads: ov ^evroiys si w ev rep 
aioovi, r\drj ovdk eV TOI? ai&ffi roit fVfp^ojweVozS'. In the Latin 
version the particle ov nevroiye, which is sometimes adversative 
and properly translated tamen, but also frequently affirmative, 
when it may be rendered into Latin by sane certo, has been un- 
derstood by the translator in the former sense. If the Greek 
particle is understood in the affirmative sense a literal transla- 
tion would read : non sane, si non in saculo futuro, nee aliquando in 
superventuris saculis not indeed, if not in the age to come, neither 
ever in ages coming after it. The sense of the passage, there- 
fore, according to Vincenzi, who proves that the context abso- 
lutely requires this interpretation, is as follows : Surely, if one 
who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit does not receive remission of 
this sin in the age which immediately succeeds the age of this present 
world, he will never receive it in any subsequent ages. 

There are three passages in the First Book of the Periarchon, 
respecting the apostate angels, which have given special offence 
to ecclesiastical writers, as seeming to insinuate the future re- 
pentance and salvation of these fallen spirits. The interpreta- 
tion which has been commonly given to them, and which natu- 
rally suggests itself to a reader who has his mind preoccupied 
with the common notion of the Origenistic theory, is in accord- 
ance with that idea which we have formerly alluded to, of the 
essential and perpetual vertibility of free-will in all rational crea- 
tures, whether celestial or infernal. A closer examination shows 
that this view of their meaning is superficial and incorrect. The 
first passage is as follows, being an inference from the words of 
the prophet Ezechiel concerning the prince of Tyre, who is 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 11 

taken by Origen to represent some superior power cast down 
from heaven on account of his rebellion : 

" From which [he says] it is most plainly demonstrated that those hos- 
tile and malignant powers were not constituted or created with such 
a character by nature, but from being better became worse and were 
changed into something baser; also, that those other blessed powers are 
not of a nature of such a quality as to be incapable of receiving its con- 
trary, if any one of them so wills and is negligent, and does not guard the 
blessedness of his state with all carefulness " (c. v. n. 4). 

The first clause of this sentence is irreproachable. But from 
the second it has been inferred that Origen teaches the perpe- 
tual liability to sin in the holy angels, implying the perpetual 
capacity of repentance in the apostate spirits. 

Halloix rebuts this inference by the argument that from a 
mere metaphysical possibility in nature an actual liability in 
moral character cannot be inferred. He interprets the doctrine 
of Origen to be that the holy angels have their wills freely de- 
termined to good with such force that any future lapse is cer- 
tainly and effectually prevented, while the evil angels are mor- 
ally incapable of conversion on account of their confirmed wilful 
malice. Yet in both classes of beings their nature remains as it 
was created, not having any essential repugnance to the state 
opposite to the one in which they are existing by virtue of their 
voluntary self-determination. Therefore, if Origen affirms that 
the holy angels would fall from beatitude if they should sin, and 
the evil angels would be restored to beatitude if they should 
convert themselves to good, he is merely stating a hypothetical 
case which will never be realized. Such an hypothesis does not 
contradict the dogma of the perpetuity of the two states of 
blessedness and misery. 

Vincenzi explains the sentence differently, by an exegetical 
criticism on the manner in which Ruffinus translates the Greek 
aorist into the present tense instead of the preterite : 

" Let no one [he says] accuse me of temerity, if in the author's locu- 
tion, beat as quoque illas virtutes non esse talis natures, quce contrarium non 
Possit recipere, si velit ac negligat ; et status sui beatitudinem non omni cautela 
custodiat, translated into Latin by Ruffinus so as to denote a present or 
future time in which a mutation of this sort could take place if, I say, 
in that locution I substitute a preterite tense, rendering in this manner: 
beat as . . . potiierint, si voluissent, ac neglexissent, et si omni cautela non custo- 
dissent status sui beatitudinem. With this exposition of the sense of these 
words everything is plain, and no error concerning these spirits, as if they 
now could sin, is found in Origen. The connection of the argument and 



12 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. [April, 

of the words, especially when collated with the preceding context, demands 
this rendering " (vol. i. pp. 159, 160). 

The emendation proposed by Vincenzi makes the last clause 
of Origen's sentence above quoted to have this sense in Eng- 
lish : " that those blessed powers were not of such a nature that 
they could not have received the contrary, if they had willed, and 
had been negligent, and if they had not guarded the state of their 
beatitude with all carefulness." An argument in favor of this 
rendering is the fact that it agrees with a parallel passage cited 
by St. Pamphilus in his Apology and translated by Ruffinus with 
the preterite tense : 

" It is to be regarded as contained in the tenets held by the church 
that no man has been given over to perdition by God, but that every one 
of those who perish perishes by his own negligence and fault; since, hav- 
ing liberty of choice, he was able and was bound to choose the good. The 
same must be held concerning the devil himself, who is described as hav- 
ing resisted in the sight of Almighty God, and as having deserted his own 
state in which he had been without stain ; who indeed would have been able 
to persevere even unto the end in this state in which he was from the be- 
ginning, if he had willed" (Apol. S. Pamph. c. i.) 

In the second passage Ruffinus has translated the Greek text 
so as to make Origen say of the demon: Se ita prceceps nequitice 
dedit ut revocari nolit magis quam non potuit He has given himself 
so vehemently to iniquity that it is rather true that he does not 
will to be, than that he could not be, reinstated. The explana- 
tion of this sentence is the same with that of the foregoing. In 
the remaining passage Origen says : 

"Whence also the whole present life of mortals is subject to certain 
struggles and contests, because namely those beings are striving and war- 
ring against us who have fallen from a better state, without any retrospec- 
tion (sine ullo r0-/)-that is, those who are called the devil and his 
angels, and the other orders of wickedness to which belong those hostile 
Dowers of whom the apostle has made mention. Now, if, indeed some 
from these orders, who act under the principality of the devil and obey his 
malice will be able some time in ages to come to be converted to good- 
:ss, by reason that there is in them a power of free choice; or, rather, 
manent and inveterate malice may be converted by habit as it were 
>f nature, you who read may even judge for yourself " (c. vi. 3). 

If it be granted that Origen here suggests the possibility of 
a future conversion of some fallen spirits, it does not follow that 
he refers to the devil and his angels. Nor does he assert any 
opinion that such conversions will take place, but merely pro- 
poses, a conjecture that they may be possible. The future ages 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 13 

of which he speaks need not mean ages after the Last Judgment. 
Supposing that he intends to insinuate that some other rational 
creatures besides men, who have fallen under the dominion of 
the devil, have not yet become so confirmed in evil that they 
have lost all chance of obtaining forgiveness by repenting before 
the day of Final Judgment, this is not to call in question the 
certain doom of eternal punishment in the case of the devil and 
all other apostate spirits who are finally impenitent. At the 
utmost he only proposes an erroneous opinion as probable, and 
this error not a heresy subversive of the Catholic dogma, a slip 
to which even the greatest of the orthodox Fathers were liable, 
and which must be condoned to Origen as well as to writers 
whose sanctity has been solemnly recognized.* 

The result we arrive at is that the doctrine of eternal pun- 
ishment was clearly taught by Origen in the Periarchon, a work 
of his early life, in the Controversy against Cefsus, a work of his 
later years, often affirmed and never denied or questioned in 
any passages of certain authenticity in his other writings, and 
that he, therefore, consistently maintained it from the beginning 
to the end of his career. We have his own testimony that the 
contrary doctrine was imputed to him by a calumny : 

"Some of those who take pleasure in accusing their neighbors impute 
to us and our doctrine a crime of blasphemy which they have never heard 
from us. Let them take heed of themselves in this matter, since they are 
unwilling to observe that precept which says that mil-speakers shall not pos- 
sess the kingdom of God, asserting that I say that the father of malice and 
perdition, and of those who are cast out from the kingdom of God i.e., 
the devil will be saved : which not even a man of disturbed intellect and 
manifestly insane could say " (Ruffin. de adult. Ubr. Ortg.) 

In respect to the Periarchon, the silence of St. Pamphilus, who 
expressly vindicates its orthodoxy from all the other principal 
aspersions cast upon it, respecting this one point, shows that 
when he wrote, it had not yet been assailed on that side. The 
same Pamphilus, a learned and holy priest and martyr of Cassa- 
rea, the teacher and spiritual father of Eusebius, gives the fol- 
lowing testimony, in which Eusebius fully concurs, to the entire 
orthodoxy of Origen, and to the falsehood of the accusation 
made against him : 

" Therefore, undertaking to show from the evidences of his writings 
what he thought concerning single points, we will collect testimonies 
principally from those books which his accusers most vehemently incrimi- 
nate i.e., from those which he wrote in the retirement of leisure and quiet. 

* Vincenzi's explanation is different, but we do not find it satisfactory. 



I4 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORiGEN. [April, 

For they assert that these books, especially, differ from the doctrine 
preached in the church : wherefore we will cite chiefly from the books 
which he entitled Periarchon, since a great number of the sentences on 
which the accusations of calumniators are based are found in these books. 
Therefore, from these very books we will set forth among the first princi- 
ples contained in them what kind of exposition of the faith he made use of; 
and afterwards, from these principles gathered from many passages scat- 
tered through these and other books of his in which his opinions are ex- 
pressed, we will show that he kept to the doctrine preached by the apos- 
tles " (S. Pamph. Apol.) 

Besides the learned St. Pamphilus and his great disciple Euse- 
bius, Didymus the Blind of Alexandria, St. Athanasius, St. John 
Chrysostom, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Ambrose, and 
others, must be reckoned among the admirers of Origen. St. 
Augustine expresses surprise at the accusation of heresy made 
against him by St. Jerome. St. Jerome, his great antagonist, 
before he had been deceived by the cunning of Theophilus, be- 
longed to the same number, and Vincenzi asserts that his two 
other principal antagonists among the orthodox Fathers, St. 
Methodius and St. Epiphanius, appear to have in the end either 
retracted or modified their unfavorable opinion. " For a great 
many years," St. Pamphilus says, " he was the Teacher of the 
Church Magister Ecclesice" 

But even this fact of his high reputation and influence is 
turned into a weapon against him by an allegation that not only 
St. Gregory of Nyssa, but also St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. 
Ambrose, and even St. Jerome, show in their writings a waver- 
ing and uncertainty of belief in the dogma of the eternity of the 
punishments of hell, due to their admiration of the writings of 
Origen and their deference to his teaching. These Fathers are 
supposed to have amended their error afterwards an apology 
for their orthodoxy founded on a conjecture which is not merely 
groundless but false. In our opinion the allegation itself has no 
basis, and rests on inferences from a misinterpretation of the lan- 
guage of these Fathers. And we think it not amiss to give suc- 
cinctly some reasons for this conviction. 

To begin with St. Jerome. He is accused of questioning 
merely the eternity of the punishment of those sinners who are 
Christians. As he denied emphatically in his Apology against 
Ruffinus that he had ever advanced any opinion as his own 
which he had afterwards imputed to Origen as an error, and 
as the longest and most explicit statement of his opinion on the 
point in question is found in a work written twelve years after 
his attack on Origen, we need only notice this last ; and what- 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. 15 

ever error it may contain, St. Jerome never retracted it. He is 
refuting- Pelagius. He denounces his doctrine respecting hell as 
unmerciful. But why? Because he dooms those who have 
lived and died with Christian faith to eternal torments, if they 
have sinned, without hope of pardon to the penitent. Then he 
concludes : 

lt But if Origen says that all rational creatures shall be exempt from 
perdition, and grants repentance to the devil, what is that to us who say 
that both the devil and his satellites and all the impious and prevaricators 
perish for ever, and that Christians, if they have been caught (by death) in sin, 
shall be saved, after enduring punishments ? " (Dial. adv. Pelag., lib. i. 28). 

A Christian, in St. Jerome's sense, was a member of the 
Catholic Church, one who was not impious or a prevaricator, 
that is, had not abandoned the profession and practice of the 
Catholic religion, and, if he should be in the state of sin when he 
was about to die, would make use of all the means within his 
power the sacraments, penitential acts, prayers to God that he 
might be forgiven and reconciled to God. For all such Chris- 
tians, whether they have only venial sins to be expiated, or mor- 
tal sins to be expiated in respect to the satisfaction due to the 
justice of God after they have been forgiven, the pains of purga- 
tory are the means of purification and salvation. There is no 
reason to suppose that St. Jerome intended to say anything 
more than this, or that he believed in the final salvation of any 
who died impenitent. 

St. Ambrose is supposed to teach the temporary nature of 
the punishments of hell in one passage of his commentary on 
Psalm cxviii. : 

"There is also hope of the mercy of the judge [i.e., in a human tribu- 
nal]. The cells of a prison are worse than exile itself, nor is return inter- 
dicted in perpetuity to all who are banished. If human judgment does 
these things, how much more is the same to be awaited from that of 
Christ by all ! The judgment of the devil is deferred, that he may be al- 
ways subjected to punishments, always bound by the chains of his own un- 
righteousness, that he may endure for ever the judgment of his own con- 
science. Therefore that rich man in the Gospel, although a sinner, is op- 
pressed by penal sufferings, in order that he may sooner escape from them. 
But the devil is shown to have by no means come to his judgment, to be 
by no means as yet subjected to punishments, except such as he who is 
conscious of such great crimes endures from his perpetual fear, so as never 
to feel secure " (Expos, in Ps. cxviii., xxiii.) 

The meaning of this passage is cleared up and all difficulty 
removed from it by an examination of the scope and line of 
argument of St. Ambrose in the context. 



1 6 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEAT. [April, 



He is explaining the one hundred and fifty-fourth verse, 
Judge my judgment and redeem me. He says that the saints ex- 
pect their judgment with confidence if they are conscious of 
their innocence. Then he adds that one who is just before God 
has another ground of confidence in the mercy of his judge. 
He continues, that judgment begins with the saints and from the 
house of God. Their judgment and chastisement.has nothing in 
common with those of the devil and his companions. " For he 
quickly chastises those on whom he has mercy ; so that they 
may not be longer distressed by the expectation of future judg- 
ment, or tormented by a protracted endurance of the misery of 
guilt ; so that each one may render even double for his sins, and 
thus at length be absolved. For the punishment of the guilty is 
a kind of absolution of their offences." Then he introduces the 
comparison of human judgments, in which some persons escape 
from the severest punishments by being leniently sentenced to 
lighter ones. After this follows the passage above quoted. 
The whole line of argument requires that we understand him to 
be speaking in that passage not of all sinners, or of any who 
have been condemned to hell, but only of those who are " saved 
so as by fire " namely, Christians who expiate their sins in pur- 
gatory. In common with some other Catholic interpreters he 
regards Dives, not as a reprobate, but as a true son of Abraham 
who had found mercy from God, notwithstanding his sins, and 
was suffering a temporal punishment in Hades. 

We come now to St. Gregory of Nazianzus. There are 
several counts in the indictment against him. In his Sermon ad 
Lumina, preached at Constantinople, he expresses a charitable 
hope that Novatians may perhaps be finally saved after a labo- 
rious purgation by fire. It is inferred that this fire must be the 
fire of hell which is consequently regarded by St. Gregory as 
a temporal punishment. This is a gratuitous conjecture. Let 
him be understood as suggesting the possibility that some 
Novatians, being baptized and holding the principal articles of 
the Catholic faith, might be free from the guilt of formal schism 
and heresy, and escape being sent to any worse place than pur- 
gatory, and we have a much more natural and probable expla- 
nation of his meaning. 

In another magnificent sermon on Baptism, his discourse on 
Light leads him to speak of Fire, and first of that which is puri- 
fying. Then he proceeds : 

There is another fire not purging, but an avenger of crimes ; whether 
it be the fire mixed with brimstone which was rained down on Sodom, the 



1883.] THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEX* 17 

like of which God showers upon all sinners, or that which is prepared for 
the devil and his angels ; or even that which goes before the face of the 
Lord and burns his enemies round about; or, finally, that fire more dread- 
ful than all these which is joined with that unsleeping worm, and is never 
extinguished, but is perennial and everlasting for the punishment of 
wicked men. These, truly, all have the same power to ruin and destroy; 
unless, indeed, in this place also, some one may think that we should un- 
derstand that a milder fife is meant, and to be explained in a manner 
worthy of God as the one who inflicts the punishment " (Orat. xi. in S. Bapt* 
xxxvi.) 

It is evident that St. Gregory here insinuates that one might 
explain the nature and intensity of the punishments of hell in a 
sense less literal and severe than the common one, without pre- 
judice to faith. The translation given above has been made 
from the Latin version in Caillu's edition. It renders the sense 
of the original correctly but not literally in the last clause, which 
reads thus in the Greek text: zi M ro3 cpi\ov HavravOa voeiv 
TOVTO qn\cfv6pQ07t6repov y uai rou nokdZovroS snag'toot. Petau 
renders it literally into Latin : nisi malit quispiam /we humanius^ 
et ut puniente dignum est, intelligerc "unless any prefers to un- 
derstand (in this place) this (fire) more humanely and as is 
worthy of the one who punishes." 

In the first of his beautiful Carmina, written near the close of 
his life, St.. Gregory gives another faint hint at a possible ame- 
lioration in the condition of lost souls : 

" Who also made men who were before not existing, and will restore 
them after dissolution, and will bring them to another life, where either 
fire or the illumination of God shall be their portion. But whether of God 
all shall be also at last (partakers) let our discourse await another time " 
Ei 6s Osov, nal ditavra.^ ttivtfrspov, a/l/loOz 



Petau remarks upon these two passages that St. Gregory 
evidently expresses a doubt whether the punishments of men 
condemned to hell at the Last Day may not at some time have 
an end, and whether all may not at last be partakers of God. 
The inference is not, however, a necessary conclusion from the 
premises, and, in fact, it is not warranted in any way. St. Gre- 
gory, in the first passage, does not distinctly express a doubt of 
his own, but merely says that some one may have such a doubt, 
implying that it would not be against the faith. In the second 
he alludes to something similar, which he passes by for con- 
sideration at some other time. But if, as we may conjecture, he 
hints at his own hesitation in assenting fully to the most severe 
view of intense and perpetually unmitigated torment by tire in 

VOL. XXXVII. 2 



T g THE ESCHATOLOGY OF ORIGEN. [April, 

hell, and even insinuates as possible that all lost souls may final- 
ly receive some rays of light from God, this is a very different 
idea from that of the final and universal salvation of all rational 
creatures, or even of all men. St. Gregory teaches most dis- 
tinctly, in the same sermon from which an extract has been made, 
that all the unbaptized are excluded from eternal salvation, even 
though they may be innocent of actual sin. Of these last he 
saysT " They receive from the just judge neither celestial glory 
nor punishments " ( xxiii.) If those who are subject to no 
positive punishment for actual sins are excluded forever from 
the beatitude of the saints on account of original sin, much more 
those who are condemned to hell for actual sins. Doubts or 
conjectures, or private opinions, respecting the nature, intensity, 
or duration of positive punishments for sins committed during 
the time of probation, or respecting some degree of merely 
natural and imperfect good of which the subjects of eternal 
doom are not for ever deprived, cannot justly be made equiva- 
lent to a denial or a doubt of the Catholic dogma that there is a 
Hell and that it is eternal. Those Fathers who were more or 
less disciples of Origen are free from any blemish on their ortho- 
dox doctrine, in this respect, and this argument against him, as 
well as the other arguments, falls to the ground. 

We might make the vindication of the illustrious Alexandrian 
much more complete than we have done. But we forbear from 
making any further demand on the patience of our readers. 

We regard Origen as the greatest and most brilliant light of 
that age of the church which elapsed between the time of St. 
Paul and that of St. Augustine. He adorned his Christian pro- 
fession not only by his genius, his learning, and his literary in- 
dustry, but also by his virtues, his sanctity, his heroism in en- 
durance. It is to be hoped that in these latter ages he will 
receive that full meed of honor which he has deserved and of 
which he has been so long deprived.* 

* An English translation of the Periarchon, the Contra Celsum, and some other works of 
Origen can be found in the Ante-Nicene Library. 



1883.] DANTE'S PURGATOKIO. 19 

DANTE'S PURGATORIO. 

CANTO THIRTIETH. 

SOON as those luminous images (the seven 

Which rise or set ne'er knew nor cloud, save sin 
The pure Septentrion of the highest heaven, 

Which unto every one that place within 
His duty taught, even as the one below 

Helps every helmsman the right port to win) 
Stood still, between them and the Gryphon came 

The spirits of truth then turned them towards the ear- 
As towards their peace : and one, as with supreme 

Commission chanting, shouted thrice afar 
" Come, spouse, from Lebanon ! " and soon the same 

The rest repeated, joining in the stave. 
Even as the blessed, at the latest sound 

Of summons, each one from his burial cave 
Shall, newly garmented in body, bound 

With Hallelujahs ! thus on that divine 
Chariot, at hearing such a sage's words, 

An hundred sprang as to a moving shrine 
Angels of life eterne, ministering Lords! 

They all were saying : " O Benedicte* Tu 
Qui venis! " ever scattering like the Spring 

Roses all round, adding, as more they threw, 
" In plenteous hands oh ! store of lilies bring." 

I have erenow at day's beginning seen 
Heaven's orient part all of one roseate hue 

And all the rest a beautiful blue serene ; 
And the Sun's face at sunrise from the view 

Shaded by vapor, through whose misty screen 
His tempered beams the eye long time sustained, 

Thus, underneath -a falling cloud of flowers 
Which from those angels' hands each moment rained 

Into the chariot and around in showers, 
Wreathed, over a white veil, with olive crown 

Appeared a woman, in a mantle green, 
And living flame the color of her gown. 



DANTE'S PURGA TORIO. [ A P ril > 

My heart then, which so many a year had been 
Free from that old-time trembling when I saw 

Her presence once that violent surprise 
Which overwhelmed me so with love and awe- 
Now, without further knowledge of mine eyes, 
Through some hid virtue that from her went out, 

Felt all the might of that first passion rie. 
Soon as that sublime force my vision smote 

Which, ere my boyhood's close, had pierced me so, 
I turned, with such look as a child might wear 

Who to his mother runs in fear or woe, 
Toward my left hand, to say to Virgil there, 

And would*have said the words to my lips came 
" No dram of blood that in my heart is left 

Trembles not now ; I feel that old-time flame." 
But of his guidance Virgil had bereft 

Statius and me too ! Virgil, my control ! 
Virgil my Sire, to whom as loved the most 

For my salvation I had given my soul ! 
Nor all the joys our ancient mother lost 

Could save the cheeks he late had purged with dew 
From turning back to darkness and to tears. 

" Dante ! weep not that Virgil parts from you, 
Weep thou not yet ; however deep appears 

This wound, a sharper sword must pierce thee through." 

From stem to stern as high an admiral stands 

To view the mustered mariners of his fleet 
And give good heart, encouraging all hands, 

Hearing my name, which I must needs repeat, 
I turned at sound thereof, and saw that dame 

Stand on the car's left side, who first was seen 
Through festive flowers from angel hands that came, 

Bending her eyes with a majestic mien, 
On me, who stood on this side of the stream. 

Although the veil which from her forehead fell, 
Girt by that frondage of Minerva's tree, 

Suffered me not to see her features well, 
Queenly she looked, and yet upbraided me, 

Continuing thus, with sweet restraint of style 
As 'twere she kept her warmer words behind ; 

" Behold me well the one I was erewhile 
Good sooth I am : I am thy Beatris. 



1883.] DANTE'S PURGATORIO. 21 

So, hast thou deigned then to approach the Hill? 
Didst thou not know man tindeth here his bliss?" 

Down dropped mine eyes into the lucid rill ; 
But seeing myself there, to the greensward near 

I turned abashed, and hung my head in shame. 
So to the child a mother seems austere 

As she to me did ; for the taste of blame 
Is bitter, sure, if pity grow severe. 

She ceased : straightway those angels in accord 
" In te speravi, Domine ! " begun 

And sang to " pedes meos " no further word. 
Like snow whose hard mass, thawless to the sun, 

Among the living timbers on the spine 
Of Italy, congealed by winds that blow 

From the bleak. waste beyond Sclavonia's line, 
Sinks down into itself with ceaseless flow,' 

(If but a breath come from the shadowless land,) 
As melts a candle its own flame before ; 

So without sighs and tearless did I stand 
Listening their chant whose notes for evermore 

Repeat the rhythm of heaven's eternal spheres : 
But when those harmonies gave me to know 

Their pitying of me, more than if mine ears 
Had caught the words " Lady, why chide him so?" 

The ice that had been round my heart comprest 
To spirit and water turned and with full flow 

Of tears and groans came gushing from my breast. 

Then, to the right side of the chariot, she * 

Turning, stood motionless and next addressed 
Thus the bright substances who pitied me: 

" Ye hold your watch in heaven's eternal day, 
That night or slumber should not steal from you 

One pace of Time's march on the ages' way. 
Whence to mine answer greater care is due 

That he, there weeping, mark the words I say, 
And his grief measured be by his defect. 

For not alone by those great circles' force 
Which to some issue every seed direct, 

According to what stars are then in course, 

* Beatris was coming towards Dante and first accosts him from the left side of the chariot 
her left side. Now, in addressing the angels, she stands on the other side of the chariot, turn- 
ing her back on Dante, who listens to these charges as if before a jury. 



22 DANTE'S PURGATORIO. [April, 

But through divine gifts, largely rained from founts 

Of vapor so far hidden from our view 
That human vision nowhere near it mounts, 

Such was this being, when his life was new, 
In virtual grace, that all right training would 

Have made in him the wonderfullest proof: 
But alway land grows more malign and rude, 

Given to bad seed all husbandry aloof- 
The more the soil be vigorous and good. 

I with my beauty held him for a space 
And with my young eyes kept his footsteps firm 

Mine own to follow in the ways of grace. 
Soon as the threshold of its second term 

My life had reached, and I my being changed, 
* Earthly for heavenly this man wholly gave 

Himself to other loves from mine estranged. 

o 

And when from flesh ascending through the grave 

My spirit in grace and goodness was increased 
I was less dear, less lovely in his eyes ; 

Then he to false ways turned and wholly ceased 
Pursuit of real good, but followed lies 

That never yet one promise made entire : 
Nor did my prayers avail, wherewith I sought 

By dreams and otherwise, in him to inspire 
Wish to return he gave so little thought. 

So low he sank that every influence fell 
Short of salvation ; nothing could bestead 

Save thisto show him the lost race in Hell. 
For this I sought the gateway of the dead, 

Till my prayers moved and many a tear that fell- 
One who thus far his upward steps hath led. 

God's high decree were violate should he 
Pass over Lethe's river and partake 

Its precious beverage, and no reckoning be 
Of penitential drops for penance' sake." 



1883.] ARMINE. 23 



ARMINE. 

CHAPTER I. 

IN one of the tall houses that on the left bank of the Sein'e 
overlook the quays, the river, the palaces and gardens of beau- 
tiful Paris was a pleasant suite of apartments, into a room of 
which the sun was pouring a flood of brightness on one of those 
April days when, after the mists and fogs of winter, Paris seems 
rejoicing in brilliant life, when the trees of the Tuileries are a 
mass of tender green and the chestnuts are in bloom along the 
Champs Elys6es, when the very air suggests thoughts of pleasure 
and the roll of carnages is borne continuously to the ear. On 
such a day one is inclined to think that all the world, in a literal 
sense, is abroad, thronging the boulevards, the gardens, the Bois 
de Boulogne ; yet it is, after all, only a small proportion of the in- 
habitants of the great city whom one beholds. Apart from the 
vast army who carry on the business of life and who are bound 
fast to daily toil, whatever form that toil may take, there is the 
multitude of those who are the victims of physical suffering, to 
whom sunshine brings only the realization of pain, and for whom 
there is little repose, even 

"When God himself draws the curtain." 

It was on one of these that the sunshine fell as it poured that 
day into the apartment on the Quai Voltaire. Falling through a 
window which commanded a wide outlook of sky, it streamed 
across a couch on which lay a man in the prime of life, yet for 
whom life in any active sense was as much over as if he had 
attained the extreme bound of human existence nay, in any 
physically active sense as much as if he lay already in a narrower 
bed than that on which he was now prisoned. Paralyzed from 
the waist downward, unable to do more than lift himself to a 
sitting posture, absolutely unable without assistance to move 
from his couch, racked by constant suffering suffering so in- 
tense that physicians well used to all forms of human agony 
spoke of it as almost unexampled there was nevertheless an- 
other sense in which life was not over for him. No one could 
look at his face singularly attractive, though pale as ivory from 



24 ARMINE. [April, 

long confinement and worn by pain without seeing the un- 
dimmed light of a spiritual and mental life which was a source 
of blessing not only to himself but to all who were privileged to 
approach him. 

And there were a few people out of the great world of Paris 
who valued this privilege a few who felt when they entered his 
chamber that they trod upon sacred ground. t For here that 
virtue of patience, which is of all virtues hardest to impatient 
human hearts, was practised in heroic degree ; here was detach- 
ment from the world so complete that there was no longer even 
regret for its loss, yet an intellectual interest in all great ques- 
tions as keen as that of any one who mingled in its hottest strife ; 
here was that fine sympathy which suffering teaches to the high- 
est natures, an interest which never flagged, and a penetration so 
seldom at fault that a word or two from his lips often solved a 
problem or settled a difficulty for those who had hardly been 
conscious of being read. 

And who was the man with whom God had dealt thus hard- 
ly, yet thus well ? Raoul d'Antignac had been born in Louisi- 
ana, but he was descended from an ancient French family, his 
grandfather, the Comte d'Antignac, having taken refuge there 
during the Reign of Terror. The latter died without returning 
to France, and his son quietly settled, lived, and also died in the 
New World. So, no doubt, would his grandson have done but 
for the Civil War, into which he rushed with all the ardent 
soul of a boy of twenty, and out of which he came sick at 
heart and well-nigh ruined in fortune. It did not take him long 
to decide what to do. He was not bound, as many men were, 
by responsibilities which could not be thrown off, to stay and 
face the dark problems of those days. His only near relative 
was a sister younger than himself, who lived with her guardian. 
Selling, therefore, his now almost valueless estate, he left Ame- 
rica, went to Rome, and entered the ranks of the Papal Zouaves. 
It was a service and a life which suited him in the highest de- 
gree. Though he had not up to that time been exemplary in 
the practice of his faith, his was essentially a loyal nature, and 
he would even in his most careless moments have died for it, as 
he would have died for his flag. But it was a symbol rather 
than a reality to him something handed down from the past, 
which a D'Antignac could not deny and not until his residence 
in Rome could living faith be said to have awakened in him. It 
was then united to that passionate personal devotion to the 
Holy Father which Pius IX. inspired in those around him, and 



1883.] ARMINE. 25 

which in the case of young D'Antignac was founded upon the 
kindest personal notice. They were golden years the flower of 
a life early shadowed by stern hardships and dangers, and soon 
to be more deeply shadowed still---which the young man passed 
in the Eternal City between '65 and '70. In the brilliant so- 
ciety of those days no one was more flatteringly received than 
the handsome Creole, who was the boldest horseman, the best 
dancer, in Rome, and about whom lingered like a perfume some- 
thing of that grace of the ancicn regime which his grandfather 
had borne from Versailles to Louisiana. 

And it was here that he came for the first time in contact 
with one of his own kinsmen and formed a friendship of the 
most close and enduring nature. Among the Frenchmen of the 
corps was the young Vicomte de Marigny, who, struck by 
D'Antignac's name, soon discovered that they were cousins, the 
Comte d'Antignac who went to America having been his great- 
uncle. This recognition was not only pleasant to one who had 
felt himself a stranger in a strange land, but the friendship of 
which it was the first link was destined to exercise a deep and 
lasting influence over the life of D'Antignac. For De Marigny 
was a Frenchman of the school of Montalembert a man whose 
intellect bowed down before the majesty of revealed truth, and 
who to the homage of his mind added the love of his heart and 
the service of his life. This lofty type of character, with its ar- 
dent devotion, was a new revelation to the young Louisianian ; 
and it was De Marigny who first led him, as it were, into the 
temple of faith. He was afterward to advance further than his 
teacher, to climb higher on the steep path of perfection ; but he 
never forgot whose hand had guided him over the first steps, and 
the strong attachment which then sprang into life was never to 
know diminution or shadow of change. 

But the events of 1870 ended this life in Rome. Like many 
of his comrades, D'Antignac would willingly have died on the 
walls of the Holy City, but the command of the Sovereign 
Pontiff was positive no one of his little band of soldiers should 
be sacrificed vainly ; there should be enough resistance, in the 
face of overwhelming odds, to show Europe that Rome was 
violently taken but no more. So, when the breach in the walls 
was made and the Piedmontese troops entered the city, where 
many a barbarous invader had preceded them, the papal sol- 
diers, like St. Peter in the garden of Gethsemani, reluctantly 
sheathed their swords and went to fall with tears at the feet of 
him whom they could no longer serve the saintly pontiff, who 



26 ARMINE. [April, 

gave them his parting blessing in words that each man will 
carry engraved on his heart for ever. 

Brothers and companions-in-arms as they had been for many 
days, the hour for separation had now come, and, leaving the 
desecrated city they could no longer defend, they went their 
different ways. There was but one way, however, for the 
Frenchmen the road to France, where, sinking all political dif- 
ferences, they offered their swords to whatever government 
could be said to exist, for the defence of their native soil. It 
was natural that D'Antignac should go with them. In that hour 
he felt that he, too, was a Frenchman. " Find me a place in the 
ranks that is all I ask," he said to De Marigny, who replied that 
if nothing else proved possible he knew one general who would 
take him as a volunteer on his staff. But in that hour France 
was not so rich in swords that she could afford to refuse any 
that were offered, especially the sword of one who had already 
seen nine years of military service. D'Antignac was appointed to 
the command of some of the hastily-levied troops, and had time 
to distinguish himself by daring gallantry before the end which 
was well nigh the end of all things came for him. It was in 
one of the battles on the Loire. He had been severely wounded, 
but still kept his saddle to rally his men for a desperate charge, 
when a cannon-ball killed his horse, which in falling backward 
crushed the rider under him. Those near rushed to his assis- 
tance, but he bade them go on. " This is no time to help the 
wounded," he gasped. " Come back afterward, if you can. 
Forward now !" So they left him in mortal agony, while they 
went forward to win one of those brilliant victories which even 
in that campaign of disaster proved of what French soldiers are 
still capable; and when at last those who were left came back 
and drew him from under the fallen horse, they thought him 
dead. 

But he was only, as he often afterward said of himself, half 
dead. Besides his wounds the fall of the horse had injured his 
spine so that paralysis of the lower half of the body followed, 
and was accompanied by suffering which the surgeons declared 
could never be more than alleviated and must increase as time 
went on until at last the vital power of the man's strong frame 
would yield under it. Fray for me that it may be soon," he 
said to De Marigny when he first heard his sentence; and it was 
almost the only expression of agony which even at the first es- 
caped him. But it was not to be soon. The brave heart was to 
be tried, the great soul perfected, by years of suffering, by that 



1883.] ARMINE. 27 

anguish of helplessness which seems doubly terrible when it falls 
upon a man in the flower of his life. After the end of the war and 
of the awful days which followed he was, by his own request, 
taken to Paris, " where science can do her best or worst for me," 
he said ; and there the sister who had meanwhile grown to wo- 
manhood in Louisiana came to devote her life to him. 

This, then, was the man into whose chamber the sunshine 
streamed with its message of hope and gladness on that April 
day. It was a cheerful scene which it lit up a room where 
cultivated taste had with moderate means produced the most 
charming result. The walls were covered with engravings and 
photographs of the greatest pictures of the world, and on brack- 
ets bronze copies in miniature of the noblest statues. There 
were rows of shelves filled with volumes, and tables where books 
and papers lay, around slender vases filled with flowers. Every- 
where the tokens of a woman's hand were evident. The bed in 
a curtained alcove could hardly be observed, and it was not on 
this but on a couch that D'Antignac lay, near the sunny window 
which overlooked the river, with its constant animation, the 
rich architecture of the palaces, and the verdure of the gardens 
beyond. Here he was propped to a partly sitting posture by 
large pillows, while across his limbs a soft rug of warm, rich 
colors was spread. On the wall above, his sword and the medal 
of a Pontifical Zouave hung at the feet of a large ivory cruci- 
fix. 

So, looking, with eyes full of a calm that contrasted striking- 
ly with the suffering-stamped face, out on the brilliant city and 
far blue sky, he had lain for some time motionless, since a book 
which he had been trying to read had dropped from his hand. 
Presently he extended this hand to touch a bell that stood on a 
small table by his side, but at the moment there was a low knock 
at the door of the room, and in response to his " Entres ! " the 
door opened, showing the slender figure of a girl, who carried in 
her hand a large bunch of lilac. 



CHAPTER II. 
I 

" Bon jour, M. d'Antignac," she said, advancing into the room. 
" I hope chat I find you better to-day." 

"Ah! it is you, Mile. Armine," said D'Antignac, smiling. 
" Yes, I am better than when you were here last, for then I 
could hardly speak to you. To-day I am at my best, and I 



28 ARMINE. [April, 

am glad to see you. You come like a nymph of the spring," he 
added, as she held out the blossoms for him to inhale their fra- 
grance. 

" I felt a longing for the country to-day," she said ; " so I 
went out to Auteuil, and I have brought this back for you. I 
thought of you very much, the country is so lovely just now." 

She uttered these words with an accent that implied much 
more than was said of the compassion with which her eyes were 
filled as she regarded him. But he only smiled again. 

" It is better than seeing the beauty of nature for one's self, 
to be in the minds and hearts of one's friends when they see it," 
he said. " And this lilac is a fragrant proof of your remem- 
brance." 

44 I pulled it with my own hands. I thought you would per- 
haps value it more than if it had been bought in the flower-mar- 
ket." 

" They are such kind, helpful hands that I should be ungrate- 
ful if I failed to value whatever they bring me," he said, looking 
at them as they were busy arranging the lilac in a vase. 

She cast a glance at him which was almost reproachful. 

" Do not speak to me in that way, M. d'Antignac," she said, 
" if you do not wish to make me ashamed. For what have my 
hands ever done what can they ever do for you that will bear 
the most remote comparison to what you have done for me ? " 

" We are none of us accountable for the opportunities which 
are given or withheld from us," he answered, " only for how we 
use them, and for the will which is more than deeds ; else why 
should the giving of a cup of cold water under some circum- 
stances be more than the giving of a fortune under others? In 
anything that I have done for you, ma sceur, I have simply 
been God's instrument." 

" Is a saint and I suppose you would refuse to let me call 
you that more than God's instrument?" she asked. 

44 No more," he replied. " But we must not dream of saintli- 
ness, poor struggling people like you and I. Sit down and tell 
me of your day at Auteuil. With whom did you go ? " 

"Only with Madelon ; and we went and returned by the 
Seine. I love the river, and love it not less because one can dis- 
embark at your door." 

;< You are a subtle flatterer," he said. " But indeed I love 
the river, too, and am glad to be where I can look down upon it. 
It is like nay, it is a poem of nature in the midst of the fever- 
ish, turbulent city. For the very water that flows under our 



1883.] ARMINE. 29 

bridges and along our quays has flowed under forest shade and 
along green fields, has reflected the soft hills and held the heaven 
in its heart." 

Involuntarily he looked as he spoke through the wide, open 
window, up at that heaven, so blue, so fair, so distant, and the 
girl watching him thought that he, too, held it in his heart. So 
thinking, she did not reply, and silence fell for a minute. 

It was a minute long enough to photograph Armine Du- 
chesne, as she sat there with her hands clasped in her lap and 
her eyes fastened on the worn face of the man before her. They 
were beautiful eyes large, soft, golden-brown, and thickly 
fringed. The face in which they were set was delicate in out- 
line, and in complexion of that clear brunette paleness which is 
seldom seen out of a southern country a face striking from its 
refinement and sensitiveness, with a depth of feeling belonging 
to the type, and a depth of thoughtfulness not so common. It is 
usually possible in France to tell at a glance the social position of 
any woman ; but the most practised observer might have found 
it difficult to decide to what rank this woman belonged. The 
simplicity of her toilette put the idea of a great lady as much 
out of the question as the exquisite refinement of her personal 
appearance made it impossible to think \\zrbourgeoise. A French- 
man might have solved the riddle by saying, with a glance at 
her face, "Artiste" but it would have been an incorrect solution. 

Presently D'Antignac, looking toward her and meeting the 
gaze of the full, soft ey.es, said : " Helene was speaking of you 
only this morning and regretting that we have seen you so sel- 
dom of late." 

" It is I who have most cause to regret it," she answered 
quietly ; " but my father has been at home, and when that is the 
case I have less time to go out. He has always much for me to 
do, writing, translating She paused, and a shade of trouble 
was in her glance. " I often wonder," she went on, after a 
moment, "and it has long been in my mind to ask you, how 
far I am right in lending even my feeble aid to such work. 
Sometimes the pen drops from my fingers; I feel that I can- 
not go on, yet it is work which my father will do himself if I 
refuse to help him. And can I refuse to help him, who has 
always been good and kind to me?" 

Her voice took a tone of entreaty in uttering the last words, 
and the slender hands lying in her lap clasped themselves more 
closely together. D'Antignac hesitated for an instant before 
answering, and when he spoke it was evidently with reluctance. 



30 ARMINE. [April, 

" You do not need for me to tell you," he said, " of the re- 
sponsibility attending the use of the pen. No one can tell how 
far the influence of a book may extend or when that influence 
may end." 

" But does that responsibility include one who, like myself, 
has been only a machine to do another's bidding? I often say 
to myself that I am simply the pen my father useV 

" The comparison is not good. A pen has no sense of re- 
sponsibility ; you have. But," he added, after a pause, " do not 
understand me as saying that you are wrong. I do not say so : 
I do not know. Fate if 'one may use such a term has been 
hard upon you, my poor Armine. You are bound not only by 
the ties of nature but by your own heart-strings to one whose 
work in life your mind and soul condemn. And where filial 
duty ends at the bidding of a higher duty I am not wise enough 
to say." 

" If you are not wise enough to say, where shall I go to 
learn? " asked the girl, with a faint smile. 

" Surely," he said, "you do not need for me to tell you where 
you will find a much better director than I am one not only 
with more authority, but with much higher wisdom." 

" With more authority, yes; with higher wisdom ah ! I doubt 
that," she said. " If you are in doubt I am content to remain 
so, and to aid my father like a machine, a clerk" 

" You are more than that to him," said the other; " but I un- 
derstand how it is you do not wish to be told by a voice of 
authority what will compel you to refuse that aid." 

" It would go hard with me," said the girl, " for you do not 
know my father as I know him. To you he is the most danger- 
ous of those who wish to tear down all the fabric of religious 
and social order ; but to me he is not only my father, but also 
one whom I know to be a passionate and sincere enthusiast. He 
does not think of himself, M. d'Antignac: he is not one of those 
who desire to bring about a revolution in order that he may rise 
on the ruins of what is cast down. He is blind he is mad, if 
you will but he thinks, oh ! indeed he thinks, of others rather 
than of himself." 

" I believe it," said D'Antignac gently, deeply moved by the 
feeling in her last words; "but you must forgive me if I say 
that is altogether apart from the question. Your father's 
motives concern only himself ; his deeds concern and influence 
many. But I do not wish to say anything which will make your 
position harder, so let us talk no more of this." 



1883.] ARMINE. 31 

There was a moment's pause, then the girl said wistfully : " Do 
you know I often wonder what the lives and thoughts of other 
women are like ? I suppose from the books which I read, and 
from the glimpses of them which I have had, that they are not 
like mine. Their lives are full of simple cares and their minds 
of gentle thoughts; is it not so? But I have known nothing 
save an atmosphere of revolution and revolt. Terrible sounds 
have rung in my ears as long as 1 can remember; I have heard 
my father and his companions talk passionately of the sufferings 
of humanity, and preach remedies more terrible than those suf- 
ferings. Then I used to go with my mother to church and 
look with a strange sense of amazement and doubt at the crucifix 
that symbol of all which I had heard so often denounced. 
Even in my childish mind these great problems found a battle- 
field and drove away simpler thoughts. My mother died, and 
there was no one to throw a ray of light on perplexities which I 
could not solve for myself, until God sent you, M. d'Antignac." 

" I am grateful," he said, "that even in my helplessness God 
gave me such work to do." 

"Your helplessness!" she repeated. u Who is there that 
with health and strength does half so much for others ? " 

He lifted one thin hand as if to silence her ; but before he 
could speak the door again opened and a lady entered, followed 
by a man of distinguished appearance. 

" I knew that I might bring M. de Marigny in at once, my 
brother," the lady said. 

" Surely yes," answered D'Antignac with a quick glow of 
pleasure on his face. He held out his hand, adding eagerly, 
"So, Gaston, you are back in Paris! " 

" I arrived last night," the other answered, " and, after the 
transaction of some necessary affairs, you see where my first 
visit is paid." 

His voice was very melodious, and the expression of his face, 
as he looked down at the pale countenance which looked up at 
him, was so full of affection that the girl who was regarding the 
scene felt her heart warm toward him, stranger though he was. 
She also looked at him with some curiosity, for she had heard 
of the Vicomte de Marigny, and what she had heard lent in- 
terest to this first sight of him. 

But her attention was claimed by Mile. d'Antignac, who 
turned toward her, saying, as her brother had said: 

" Why, Armine, it has been long since we have seen you." 

" It has seemed longer to me than to you, I am sure," Armine 



32 ARMINE. [April, 

answered. "But I could not help it; I have been detained at 
home. And now "she rose " it is time that I should go." ,^ 

" Not until you come and have a little talk with me," said 
Mile. d'Antignac decidedly. " I cannot let my brother monopo- 
lize you." 

" It is I, rather, who wished to monopolize //#," said the girl-, 
smiling. 

It was such an exquisite smile so sudden and sweet that it 
struck the vicomte, whose glance had fallen on her, and who at 
the same moment marked the delicate refinement of her face and 
the pathos of her largej soft eyes. He drew back a little as she 
advanced to the side of the couch to take the hand that D'An- 
tignac extended. 

" Thank you for the flowers and the visit," he said, "and do 
not let it be long until you come again." 

" You ought to know that I always come when I can," she 
answered. Then, with a bend of the head in acknowledgment 
of the vicomte's bow as she passed him, she went with Helene 
from the room. 

" My brother is happy now," said the latter, as she opened a 
door which led into her own salon a small but exceedingly 
pretty apartment" for he has Gaston cle Marigny with him. 
They are like brothers, or more than brothers; for I fancy few 
brothers have such comprehension, affection, and sympathy for 
each other as they have." 

" It is the first time that I have ever seen M. de Marigny," 
said Armine. 

'The first time!" repeated the other, with some surprise. 
" How does that happen, when he is so often here? " 

Armine shook her head. " I do not know," she answered. 
" But when we were living in the same house and were together 
most 1 think I heard you say that he was not in Paris." 

'True," said Mile. d'Antignac. "He was at that time in 

ttany with his father, who was dying of a lingering disease- 
although even then we saw him occasionally. Now he has just 
returned from Rome, and how much he and Raoul will have to 
talk of! " 

"How much, indeed!" said Armine. "But I fear that it 
will make M. d'Antignac sad, he seems to have such a peculiar 
attention for Rome." 

" Nothing makes him sad," answered his sister " His seren- 
ity is never ruffled, his cheerfulness never fails. He seems to 
have such conformity to God's will that he accepts whatever 



1883.] ARMINE. 33 

happens with perfect acquiescence. When M. de Marigny came 
to bid him good-by he said a little wistfully, 'Ah! 1 should 
like to see Rome again/ But he added almost immediately, 
with a smile, ' Yet it matters little, since I hope some day to 
enter a more eternal city.' ' 

" If he does not enter it the rest of us may despair," said 
Armine quickly. " I suppose one should not wish him to re- 
main where he suffers so much ; but what will the world be like 
when he leaves it ! " 

" Desolate enough for some of us," said Helene, while her 
eyes filled with tears. They were fine eyes the only beautiful 
feature of her face. It was a typical French face, even to the 
slight dark down on the upper lip a face seen as often among 
the Creoles of Louisiana as among the people from whom they 
sprang and which in this instance only the eyes and the flash 
of regular white teeth redeemed from plainness. But it was a 
strong though not a handsome face, full of the expression of that 
sense which we call common, notwithstanding that in reality it 
is the most uncommon of all, and which is chiefly shown in ad- 
ministering the practical affairs of life. Certainly Helene d'An- 
tignac did wonders in administering for her brother and herself 
the moderate fortune which was all that remained to them of a 
great estate. 

" I do not suffer myself to think of the future," she said after 
a moment. " To-day is all that we possess ; and when to-morrow 
becomes to-day it will bring the strength it needs for whatever 
we may have to do or endure. That is what Raoul always says. 
But now tell me something of yourself, my dear little Armine." 

Armine smiled perhaps at the term of endearment, since she 
was considerably taller than the speaker as she answered : " Oh!, 
there is nothing to tell of my life. You know how monotonous 
it is outwardly, and how full of disquiet inwardly," she added 
after a slight pause. " My father never leaves me that I do not 
feel as if it may be a final farewell. I know just enough to know 
how closely he is connected with desperate plans, and to tremble 
for what the result may be to him. For he," she said, looking at 
Helene with the same half-proud, half-pathetic air of apology 
she had worn when speaking of him to D'Antignac, "is not of 
those who simply direct, who put others forward in places of. 
danger. If there is a service of special peril he takes it upon 
himself. I know that." 

" My poor child, it is a sad knowledge for you," said the 
other. 

VOL. xxxvn. 3 



34 ARMINE. [April, 

" Yes, it is sad," said Armine, " but we have all to bear our 
burden in one form or another ; is it not so ? I never feel so 
sure of that as when I look at M. d'Antignac. And doubts 
which confuse and trouble me are never so laid to rest as by his 
voice." 

" I do not wonder at that," said his sister. " He has a peculiar 
power of touching the heart and convincing the mind. But do 
you know what he said the other day ? Some one was speaking 
of the great sermons which the Pere Monsabre is preaching in 
Notre Dame, and he said, ' I wish that Armine would go to 
hear them.' ' 

" Did he? " said Armine quickly. " Then I will go. I could 
not hear a wish of his without attempting at least to fulfil it ; 
and surely it is easy to go to Notre Dame when the Pere Mon- 
sabre preaches." 

" It is easy to go," said Helene, " but not so easy to hear the 
preacher. It is said that at least five thousand men attend these 
conferences ; and, since he addresses men chiefly on the great 
questions of the age, the nave is reserved for them, and women 
must take their chances in the aisles." 

" I shall take mine," said the girl, smiling. " Thank you for 
telling me. And now I must bid you adieu. My good Madelon 
is waiting for me below, and I do not wish to keep her longer." 



CHAPTER III. 

" THAT is an interesting face," said the Vicomte de Marigny, 
:as the door closed behind the two feminine figures. 

"Armine's?" said D'Antignac. "Yes, an interesting face, 
and a more interesting character. You have heard me speak of 
her the daughter of a red-hot Communist, a man who devotes 
his life to forwarding revolutionary aims all over Europe." 

" And yet she has that Madonna countenance ! " said the other, 
smiling. " Nature indulges in odd freaks sometimes." 

" Oh ! Duchesne is himself a man of refinement, a man of 
-talent, and there is some suspicion a man of birth," answered 
D'Antignac. 

"Duchesne!" repeated the vicomte, with an expression of 
surprise. "Are you talking of him ? But how is it that you 
chance to know such people ? " 

" I do not know him at all ; I have never seen him," replied 



1883.] ARMINE. 35 

D'Antignac. " But in the house in which we lived before coming 
here he had an apartment. H61ene used to meet Armine on the 
stairs and took a fancy to her face. This led to acquaintance and 
finally to intimacy. You may conceive my surprise when I 
found this girl this child almost pondering upon the deepest 
problems of life. Her mother had been a Catholic, and some 
faint memory of her teaching remained in Armine's mind, to- 
gether with the wild doctrines she had imbibed from her father. 
When one finds such mental confusion it is usually difficult to 
clear the ground sufficiently for the reception of first principles ; 
but I have never met with an intelligence which apprehended 
the logic of truth with greater quickness than that of Armine. 
It had been so long in darkness that it seemed almost to leap 
toward the light." 

" And how did the father take her conversion ? " asked De 
Marigny with interest. 

" I do not fancy that he knows anything about it," said D'An- 
tignac. " A man who is busily engaged in trying to overturn all 
the governments of Europe is not likely to have time to inquire 
closely into the beliefs of his daughter. The time may come, 
however, when she will be forced to astonish him by declaring 
them, for he makes her of use .in preparing matter for the revo- 
lutionary propaganda, and she begins to question how far it is 
right to lend her aid to such work. She has just asked my 
opinion ; I confess that I shrank from giving a positive one." 

" Has she no director ? " 

D'Antignac shook his head. " No. Faith is only an intel- 
lectual conviction with her as yet. She shrinks from the prac- 
tice, fearing that it will bring her into some attitude of antago- 
nism to her father. I see that, and I do not press her. God, I 
think, has his own designs with such a soul as hers. But enough 
of this ! Tell me, Gaston, of yourself, of Rome." 

" I will tell you first what will interest you most," said De 
Marigny. " I was received in private audience by the Holy 
Father and had the happiness of hearing that he approves all my 
plans and hopes. I wish that you could have heard him speak 
of France. You would have been struck by two things by the 
heart of the father and the mind of the statesman. He appre- 
ciates clearly all our perils and our needs ; he sees that chief 
among those needs is the union of all conservative elements 
in concerted action against the destructive forces that have 
acquired power through our divisions. When I told him that 
the end to which I intended to direct all my effortjwas to form 



3 6 ARMINE. [April, 

a common basis on which Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapar- 
tists could meet, he said, ' It is a noble aim/ ' 

- Yes, it is a noble aim," said D'Antignac. " But have you 
forgotten that such a conservative alliance was formed once 
before, and betrayed by the Bonapartists? " 

" No, I have not forgotten," replied the other, " but I trust to 
the wisdom which time has taught them. AIL thinking men 
must recognize the deadly, nature of the peril which menaces 
us now, must see the darkness of the gulf on which France 
stands. Those who would blot out every glory of our past will 
soon leave us no hope in any future, if men cannot be roused 
from their partisanship for this or that dynasty to act together 
as Frenchmen and Catholics and thus save their country and 
their faith." 

" France is so cursed with party madness and party blindness 
that I have little hope of their doing so," said D'Antignac ; " but 
ends apparently as hopeless have been gained by courage and 
ability like yours, my Gaston. You must expect, however, to 
be accused of disloyalty to your own party." 

" By some of its members those, for example, who have not 
hesitated to attack even the Papal Nuncio it is likely. But 
what then? It does not matter in the least to what misunder- 
standing or accusation I am subjected, if the end is gained. 
And if it is not gained well, then I shall at least feel that I 
have not been one of those who stood by and saw France fall 
into the gulf of atheistic revolution without an effort to save 
her." 

" And what battle-cry will you find to unite Legitimist, Or- 
leanist, and Bonapartist ? " 

" We know," said De Marigny, " that there was once a battle- 
cry which stirred men's hearts and carried them victorious 
through many a conflict. It was ' God and the king.' But since 
we are not agreed what king we desire, I shall inscribe on the 
banner which I wish to raise the name of God alone. For the 
line of battle is now sharply drawn. It is not for any politi- 
cal preference that we have to fight, but for the very existence 
of faith, for the right to hold, practise, or teach religion at 
all. Whatever else they disagree upon, our opponents are 
united in enmity to all that is signified by the name of God ; and 
we therefore should sink our differences to unite in defence 
of it." 

" But, unhappily, while they are fiercely united on that point, 
you have to overcome the indifference of multitudes of those 



1883.] ARMINE. 37 

who nominally hold the traditions of faith ; you have to awaken 
generous ardor where there is now only selfish apathy." 

" Then, in addressing- such men one must touch their self- 
ishness by showing them the dangers that lie before a godless 
people. Surely France, of all countries, should not need to 
be taught by another revolution of what atheism is capable ! 
Those who have ears to hear may hear on all sides the sound of 
a coming storm which will not be content with throwing down 
the church only, but which will not leave one stone of social or- 
der standing upon another. If men are prepared to supinely 
yield their religion they must be prepared to yield also their 
property, and probably their lives." 

" The last arguments may touch them," said D'Antignac, 
smiling. " I am inclined to think that the world is perishing for 
lack of logic. Certainly a little clear thinking would make many 
of the evils which afflict modern society impossible. Well, I can 
do nothing save wish you God-speed," he added, with a touch of 
wistfulness ; " but you know that in this battle, as in the many 
we have fought together, my heart is with you though I lie use- 
less here." 

" Useless ! " repeated De Marigny, much as Armine had 
spoken before him. " That you are not, or ever can be while 
life animates you ; for you animate others to battles which might 
else be fought with but half-heartedness. I can answer for my- 
self that when courage or purpose flags I come here for a spirit- 
ual or mental aid which has never failed me." 

D'Antignac's look of thanks was at once eloquent and pathetic. 
" If," he said, "you do not exaggerate in order to please one who 
has few pleasures " 

" You must know," interposed the other quickly, "that I do 
not exaggerate in the least ; that you are what I have said, not 
only to me but to many others." 

44 Then there is compensation for all that 1 miss or endure," 
D'Antignac went on ; "for to sustain in any degree those who 
fight is as much as fighting one's self, without the dangers that 
attend victory. You don't need for me to tell you what those 
dangers are," he added, with another smile. 

" I do not think that there is any need for me to guard 
against them," said De Marigny, answering the smile. *' If I 
succeed it will merely be the success of one who lays a founda- 
tion for others to build upon." 

" So much the better," returned D'Antignac. " To dig deep 
is better than to build high. Foundations are the most neces- 



38 ARMINF. [April, 

sary as well as the most difficult part of any work, and if you 
have not glory with men your glory with God will be all the 
greater. And now let me hear your plans in detail." 

These details the vicomte proceeded to give, and they were 
not only listened to with interest, but eagerly canvassed and dis- 
cussed by this man who, prisoned on his couch of pain, showed, 
nevertheless, the most intimate acquaintance with the various 
phases of French politics and a striking knowledge of the world 
in his suggestions and advice. 

But the conversation was presently interrupted by Helene, 
who entered with a card in her hand. 

" Do not fear," she said, with a smile at her brother, " that I 
am going to introduce a visitor. I told Pierre to deny you to 
any one as long as M. de Marigny was with you. But here is 
Mr. Egerton's card, with his compliments and hopes that you are 
better to-day." 

" Egerton ! " repeated D'Antignac. " If any one but Gaston 
were here I should say that I was sorry not to have seen him." 

" Then I am sorry to have been the cause of your not having 
that pleasure," said the vicomte, smiling. " But who is this Mr. 
Egerton who is to be regretted ? " 

" To be regretted only when you are out of the question," 
said D'Antignac. " Who is he ? A young, rich, idle American, 
clever and with intellectual tastes a man of whom something 
brilliant is expected by his friends, but who will probably never 
verify their expectations, because he has no motive for exertion." 

" Has he no ambition?" 

I None. And, when one thinks of it, why should he have any? 
He already possesses in large degree that to which all, or nearly 
all, modern ambition tends wealth. What has he to gain by 
subjecting himself to the drudgery of labor in any form ? " 

" It seems to me," said De Marigny, "that the best answer to 
that question lies in the fact that in all ages men that is, some 
men have felt that there is much besides wealth which is worth 
the price of labor : rewards so great, indeed, that wealth will 
bear no comparison to them." 

II That is very true," said D'Antignac ; " but it must not blind 
us to the fact that in our age those rewards are constantly dimin- 
ishing in value are of worth only as they lead, indirectly per- 
haps, but surely, to a golden end. We hear much of work which 
is to be unselfishly undertaken for the benefit of humanity, but as 
a matter of fact we see less of it than ever before in the history 
of the world. Egotism is more becoming a controlling force : 



1883.] ARMINE, 39 

men are more and more asking themselves, Cut bono ? of any end 
which does not promise them power or pleasure." 

" But the gratification of ambition does promise both," said 
De Marigny. 

" Yes ; but wealth can purchase both without the long vigil 
of labor which is essential to attain any really high degree of ex- 
cellence in any path of human effort. And when a man has that 
golden talisman he may say, * Why should I " scorn delights and 
live laborious days " for an object which is certainly remote, and 
which may prove very unsatisfactory if I gain it, when here in 
my hand is the key to unlock all the doors of life, to enable me 
to taste all pleasures and most powers, to fill with varied enjoy- 
ment the few years granted me in which to live ? ' ' 

" If he thinks those few years are the sum of his existence 
there is no reason why he should not ask such a question," said 
De Marigny. 

" And answer is impossible until you have proved to him that 
he has a spiritual as well as a physical and mental life, and that 
these few years are not all in which he has to live," said D'An- 
tignac. "As philosophers, if not as Christians, we must perceive 
that every disease which is afflicting our age has its root in the 
same cause the widespread extinction of religious faith. When 
man loses his dignity as an immortal being no end remains. to 
him which is not worthless and illusory, save the end of gratify- 
ing his personal tastes and desires." 

" And has this man of whom you speak no faith ?" 

" Not the least. What man of culture, outside the Catholic 
Church, has faith now ? " 

" Yet I am interested in him," said Helene, who, with some 
needlework, had sat down near the open window. " He is intel- 
lectual and he is reasonable. I have not found in him any of 
that ignorant arrogance which characterizes so many of those 
who are known as ' positive thinkers.' ' 

" And who are at least positive in the expression of their 
crude opinions," said the vicomte, smiling. 

" Well, that Mr. Egerton is not," she said. " He has the good 
sense not to be positive in anything not even in denial when 
all is doubt with him. It is honest doubt, I think which makes 
me sorry for him." 

" There is no need to be sorry for him on that account," said 
M. de Marigny. " It is the best ground for congratulating him. 
If he is honest in doubt he may at length receive light to say 



40 ARMINE. [April, 

D'Antignac made at this point a slight negative motion of 
the head. " He does not desire to say it," he observed. That 
is the worst of eras like this. Men do not wish to be left behind 
in what they regard as the great intellectual movement of the 
age. They regard it as the highest triumph of human intelli- 
gence to be in doubt about everything. Even the desire for faith 
is dead in them. " 

" But it may be wakened," said Helene. 

" Yes," said the vicomte, " it may be wakened." 

He glanced as he spoke at the ivory crucifix, and then at the 
worn face beneath. " And here," he added, " is a good place to 
waken it." 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE same sunlight which was streaming over the wide 
boulevards and over pleasure-grounds thronged with people 
poured on this afternoon some of its rays into one of those nar- 
row streets of old Paris which seem to have been purposely 
built to exclude all such rays a street in the immediate neigh- 
borhood of the Sorbonne, where two young men met face to 
face an hour or so after Helene d'Antignac had taken to her 
brother the card of a visitor whom he did not see. 

"What, Egerton, is this you?" exclaimed one. "How 
comes it that a butterfly from the Champs Elysees has fluttered 
over here into the Quartier Latin? " 

The speaker was evidently a denizen of the region. On him 
the stamp of the student was set, in dress and air as well as in 
the large portfolio which he carried under his arm. He was 
short and thick-set, with little grace of appearance, but his dark, 
heavily-bearded face was pleasant as well as sensible, and out 
of it looked bright, good-humored eyes. He might easily have 
passed for a Frenchman, not only from resemblance of type but 
from resemblance of .manner, acquired naturally by long resi- 
dence among Gallic people; but when he spoke English it was 
at once apparent that he spoke his native tongue, though an 
English ear would have detected with an American accent. 

The man whom he addressed was a much more distinguished- 
looking person. Tall, slender, handsome, with an air of elegance 
pervading his careful toilet, he was certainly the kind of figure 
more likely to be encountered in the Champs Elyse"es than in 
the Quartier Latin. But that he did not deserve the epithet be- 
stowed upon him was sufficiently evident from the intellectual 



1883.] ARMINE. 41 

character of his face and from the observant glance of his clear 
eyes. Any one who had followed the regard of those eyes for 
some time past would have seen that he did not move indiffer- 
ently through this classic quarter of the colleges of Paris, this spot 
sacred to learning, where for so long Europe sent her scholars 
and students in multitudes to gratify that passion for knowledge 
which, except among the philosophers of Greece, never existed in 
the world to a greater degree than in the schools and among the 
schoolmen of the middle ages. 

Like most of his generation, Alan Egerton knew little of 
those ages save that they were generally credited with having 
been " dark " ; but he would not have been an educated, much 
less an intellectual, man, if he had not known the fame of the 
University of Paris, and if he had not felt a certain thrill in pass- 
ing over ground which has been the chosen arena of the human 
intellect, and where the very stones were suggestive of a thou- 
sand kindling memories. Nor was he one of those with whom 
custom stales such memories. Many times before had he looked 
on the ancient, time-stained walls of the Sorbonne, many times 
before trod the narrow streets, but never without a keen realiza- 
tion of all that the first had enshrined and all that the last had 
witnessed. He was looking down one of these streets with a 
glance which noted all its picturesqueness when accosted by the 
salutation recorded above. 

" Ah ! Winter," he said, with a smile, "you are the man I am 
in search of. I have been to your apartment, but, not finding 
you, strolled in this direction, thinking it likely I should meet 
you." 

" Yes, the lecture is just over," said Winter, shifting his port- 
folio a little. "And what may your lordship want?" 

" I want," said the latter, " to say that I have changed my 
mind on the subject we 'were speaking of last, and that I believe 
I should like to hear your revolutionary tribune." 

Winter gave him a quick glance. " You are in need of a new 
sensation, then ? " he said. 

" Partly," the other answered ; " partly, also, I am in need of 
information. It struck me after our last conversation that I know 
very little about this tremendous movement called Socialism " 

" Very little indeed," put in Winter. 

" And that since it is well to inform one's self on all subjects, 
and since I am here in Paris with little to do, I might as well 
embrace the opportunity you offered me, especially as you pro- 
mised that I should hear some real eloquence." 



42 ARMINE. [April, 

" You will undoubtedly hear it," said Winter emphatically. 
" But you will also hear some very plain speaking-. Duchesne 
does not wear gloves when he deals with silken gentlemen like 
yourself, who, possessing all the goods and pleasures of the 
world, still find life only a weariness and a burden." 

" It strikes me that we should rather be pitied than denounced 
for that," said Egerton pleasantly. " However, I sjiall not mind 
how roughly M. Duchesne handles us, if he affords me a little in- 
tellectual amusement." 

"Intellectual amusement!" repeated the other. " Yes, that 
is all you care for. Questions which are convulsing the world, 
shaking nations to their centre, and making thrones tremble, 
only serve to amuse an intellectual sybarite like yourself." 

"And why not ?" demanded the other, with undiminished 
g-ood-humor. " If their importance is so great it surely will not 
diminish it that they serve to amuse an insignificant intellectual 
sybarite. That is a good term, Winter, by the way. I am 
much obliged to you for suggesting it." 

"Don't let the obligation overpower you," sai-d Winter, "for 
I don't myself think it very flattering. But it describes you 
exactly. I am never with you that I am not struck by the man- 
ner in which you trifle with all beliefs and hold none." 

" None has ever yet showed me good reason why I should 
hold it," replied Egerton. " I have not your faculty of enthu- 
siasm. I cannot see a prophet in a revolutionary ranter, or a 
coming Utopia in the reign of the mob." 

Winter uttered something like a growl, but beyond this did 
not speak, so they walked on in silence for a moment Egerton 
having turned and joined him until, leaving the narrow street 
with its high, dark houses, they turned into the boulevard 
which under the Second Empire was opened through the quaint, 
winding, mediaeval ways, bringing daylight to many an obscure 
spot where crime and wretchedness dwelt in darkness, but also 
demolishing much of the picturesqueness and spoiling much 
of the charm of this old famous quarter. As they entered the 
broad thoroughfare which is known on the left bank of the 
Seine as the Boulevard St. Michel, and which forms a direct 
line with the Boulevard de Sebastopol on the right bank the 
Napoleonic and Haussmannic idea having been to lay out as 
many straight and tedious avenues, which cannon could readily 
sweep, as possible Egerton said : 

4i You have not yet told me when and where I can hear this 
Duchesne." 



1883.] ARMINE. 43 

" I have not told you," Winter answered, " because I don't 
know. I don't even know whether or not he is in Paris now. 
But if you are not in haste I may be able to find a man who is 
pretty certain to know." 

" I am not in the least haste," Egerton replied. 

" Then we will go to a cafe which he frequents and where 
there is a chance of meeting him at least he is often to be found 
there at this hour." 

They proceeded, therefore, along the Boulevard St. Michel 
until, after crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, which intersects 
it, Winter turned into one of the cafes that are numerous in the 
neighborhood. It was a dark-looking place, not rendered more 
cheerful in aspect by the clouds of tobacco-smoke rising from 
the groups of men who were sitting around various small tables, 
drinking moderately and talking excessively. Winter received 
a running fire of salutations as he passed among them ; but he 
did not pause until he reached a table in a corner near a win- 
dow where only one man was sitting buried in a newspaper, by 
which stood a glass of absinthe. On this man's shoulder Winter 
laid his hand. 

" Bonjour, Leroux," he said. "I am glad to find you." 

" Bonjour, cher Winter," returned the other, glancing up. 
" How goes it with you to-day ? And why are you glad to find 
me ? " 

" Because I want some information that you can probably 
afford," replied Winter. " But first let me introduce my friend 
Mr. Egerton, and, if you do not object, we will join you." 

" With all my heart," said Leroux, adding, with a motion to- 
ward his glass as they sat down, " Will you join me in this also ? " 

" We prefer a bottle of wine eh, Alan ? " said Winter. 
" You had much better drink it instead of that poisonous stuff, 
Leroux." 

Leroux shrugged his shoulders. " I am getting up inspira- 
tion for my night's work, as an engine gets up steam," he said. 
" It is a matter of necessity." 

" M. Leroux is a writer, a feuilletonist whom Paris knows 
well," said Winter, addressing Egerton. 

" Whom Paris does not yet know so well as it may, perhaps, 
some day," said the feuilletonist calmly. " Eh bien, you have 
not yet told me what it is that I can do for you." 

" Briefly, then, you can tell me whether Duchesne is in Paris, 
and, if so, when and where he is likely to speak. My friend 
wishes to hear him." 



44 ARMINE. [April, 

Leroux turned a pair of keen eyes on that gentleman. 

" Monsieur has heard of Duchesne, then ? " he said. 

" Yes, I have heard of him," Egerton answered ; " but what 
I have heard would not have made me desire to listen to one 
of his speeches, if Winter had not assured me that he is sin- 
gularly eloquent ; and real eloquence is something very uncom- 
mon." 

" Monsieur is not, then, interested in the cause to which 
Duchesne lends the aid of his eloquence ? " 

" One cannot be interested in what one knows little about," 
replied Egerton indifferently. "I confess that I am not very 
favorably inclined toward it. But I am open to conviction," he 
added, with a smile. 

" In that case it is well that you should hear Duchesne," 
said the other; "and, as it chances, he speaks to-night in the 
Faubourg Montmartre. I did not think of going, for I have 
heard him often ; but he is always worth hearing a man of won- 
derful power, ma foi! and I shall find pleasure in accompany- 
ing you." 

" You are very kind," said Egerton ; " but is it necessary that 
you should give yourself that trouble ? Can I not go alone, or 
with Winter?" 

" The meeting is, of course, not secret we have advanced 
beyond that," said the other; "but people of your class and 
general appearance are not common in Montmartre, and, in 
order that you should see and hear to the best advantage, it is 
well that you should be accompanied by some one better known 
than our friend Winter." 

" I am only ' a looker-on here in Vienna ' like yourself," said 
Winter. " You had better accept Leroux's offer. He is one of 
the army of which Duchesne is a leader." 

" Then I accept it with thanks," said Egerton. " But, if 1 
may be permitted to ask a question," he added, looking at Le- 
roux with a very clear and comprehensive glance," it is, What 
ultimate end does this army propose to itself ? " 

The other smiled a little grimly. " An end which is not 
likely to please men of your order," he said. "A thorough 
equalizing of all the inequalities of fortune, a share of the sun- 
shine for every human being, and such an entire recasting of 
society as will make it impossible for one man to accumulate 
wealth from the labor of others." 

" They are apparently very fine ends," said Egerton. 
" What I fail to perceive is any means by which they can be 



1883.] ARM IN E. 45 

secured which would not be a worse tyranny than that which 
you wish to abolish." 

" It will seem a tyranny, doubtless, to those who are the suf- 
ferers," said Leroux ; "but they may console themselves with 
thinking what worse things the great mass of humanity have 
endured for many ages." 

" That is, I am to be comforted for being robbed of my coat 
by the consideration that other men have lived and died without 
coats." 

" If you choose so to put it. Have you not an English pro- 
verb which says that 'turn about is fair play '? Well, the So- 
cialists do not propose so much as that ; they do not say to you, 
' Turn about with these men who have been so long crushed by 
want and agonizing in distress ' ; they only say, ' You shall share 
with them the fruit of their toil ; the great bulk of humanity 
shall no longer groan and travail that a few may wear purple 
and fine linen. We demand and we will have an equal share of 
the goods of earth for every human creature." 1 

" I, for one, am willing to admit that the demand is natural 
on the part of those who make it," said Egerton, " and I am 
willing to go a step farther and declare that I should be glad to 
see the thing accomplished, if it could be done without great and 
overwhelming injustice." 

" Do you mean that equality would be injustice?" 

" I mean that to forbid a man to profit by the powers of mind 
or body which exalt him above another man would be mani- 
festly unjust." 

" And would it not be, is it not, more unjust for him to use 
those powers of mind or body to take from the other man his 
right of prosperity and happiness, to make that other a mere 
machine to minister to his pleasure and to do his bidding?" 

Egerton did not answer. He was, in fact, confronted with a 
subject on which, as he confessed to Winter, he had thought 
little, and that little in a vague manner. There was to him, as 
to most generous natures without a firm basis for thought, some 
attraction in the ideal which Socialism presented ; but he could 
not blind himself to the practical difficulties in the way of the 
realization of that ideal, though not sufficiently equipped with 
arguments to be able to present those difficulties in a forcible 
manner. It was Winter who now broke in, saying : 

" The new gospel of the world that on which Socialism 
rests is the gospel of man's duty to his fellow-man. We have 
outgrown and flung by the childish fable of a Supreme Being 



4 6 ARMINE. [April, 

with the power to bestow arbitrary rewards and punishments, 
and the belief that there is another life of more importance than 
this. We have faced the fact that this life is all of which we 
know or can know anything, and that it is our duty neither to 
spend it in misery ourselves nor to suffer any one else to do so." 

" It seems to me," said Egerton, " that in such case the word 
duty becomes unmeaning." 

" On the contrary, it becomes more imperative in its mean- 
ing than ever before," said Winter, " for the object of it is close 
beside us instead of being remote as formerly, and is altruistic 
instead of egoistic." 

" Yes," said Leroux, " the immortal principles of the French 
Revolution that first great assertion of the rights of man are 
now the watchwords and battle-cries of humanity throughout 
the whole world. The fundamental truth which Jean Jacques 
Rousseau was the first to announce, that 'man is naturally good 
and that by institutions only is he made bad/ is the foundation of 
all the teaching of modern philosophy and the hope of the human 
race." 

It occurred to Egerton that this hope of the human race was 
very much belied by its past experience ; but he kept silence 
with the modesty befitting one who was receiving new and 
enlightened ideas. Whether it was owing to absinthe or inspi- 
ration, Leroux proceeded to expound these ideas at length and 
with considerable eloquence, so that when Egerton finally part- 
ed from his companions having made an appointment for the 
evening he felt as if it were hardly necessary to journey to 
Montmartre for more of the revolutionary gospel. 

As has been already said, however, there was much in this 
gospel which attracted him. He was not one to wrap himself in 
material comfort and scoff at dreams for relieving the misery of 
mankind. He recognized the truth that in these dreams there is 
a great deal of noble and generous ardor, if not a large amount 
of practical wisdom. As he walked slowly toward the Seine, 
glancing here and there into those narrow streets, lined with tall, 
dark houses, which open from the modern boulevard, and where 
the poor of the great city still dwell in wretchedness and squalor 
and crime, some of the sentences which he had been hearing 
came into his mind. " An equal place in the sunlight for all." 
Surely it was little of physical, mental, or moral sunlight which 
these children of poverty knew from birth to death ! " The 
great bulk of humanity shall no longer groan and travail that a 
few may wear purple and fine linen." He looked down with a 



1883.] ARMINE. 47 

slight whimsical smile at the careful attire which with him rep- 
resented this purple and fine linen. " Well, if it could be made 
absolutely certain that they would no longer need to groan and 
travail and live in darkness, I should be willing to resign it," he 
thought. 

It was at this moment that he entered the Place St. Michel, 
and his glance fell on the fountain, above which stands the 
sculptured figure of the great Archangel trampling his infernal 
foe, the enemy of God. No Christian faith or knowledge had 
this man of culture ; to him that majestic angel, the captain of 
the heavenly host, was no more than a poetical myth ; but as 
an allegory and a type of the eternal battle between good and 
evil, between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, 
it struck him at that moment with peculiar force. Was it not 
seething and roaring all around him, this battle? and was not 
this wonderful Paris the chief battle-ground of the world, the 
place where strife was hottest, where the loftiest good confront- 
ed the deepest evil, and where light and darkness met in an 
irreconcilable struggle ? And then there rose in his mind the 
question which in these days many a perplexed soul is asking 
itself: " Where is light?" 

Leaving the Place, he walked toward the Quai St. Michel, 
and as he emerged on it he lifted his eyes to see a glorious and 
beautiful sight the great front of Notre Dame, with its massive 
towers rising in the golden sunlight of late afternoon. Many 
volumes have been written upon the architectural splendor of 
this noble church, but no words can express the air of steadfast 
repose in which it seems steeped, as if the ages of faith had 
breathed their spirit over every stone. Like that truth which is 
unchanging amid the changing fashions of time, it stands in the 
heart of the turbulent city, on that island of the Seine where the 
Parisii built their huts and founded the town of Paris, where St. 
Louis administered justice, and where for eight hundred years 
successive storms of human passion have raged and innumerable 
millions of human beings lived and died around those mighty 
walls, within the shadow of those splendid towers. Well may 
they wear their aspect of immovable calm, and well may the 
host of sculptured figures look serenely down from over the 
vast portals through which the Crusaders passed ; for this old 
sanctuary of faith has heard the battle-cries of the League and 
of the Fronde, and the wilder cries of Revolution, yet stands 
and looks over the great city of to-day as it looked over the 
" good town " of Philippe le Bel. 



4 8 ARMINE. [April, 

Some of these thoughts were in Egerton's mind as, having 
crossed the bridge, he paused in the square before the cathedral 
and looked up at its marvellous facade. And as he looked the 
eloquent words of a writer from whom the light of faith was, 
and yet is, veiled recurred to his memory. " There are," says 
Victor Hugo, "few more beautiful specimens of architecture 
than that facade, where the three porches with their pointed 
arches ; the plinth embroidered and fretted with twenty-eight 
royal niches ; the immense central mullioned window, flanked 
by its two lateral windows, like the priest by the deacon and the 
subdeacon ; the lofty and light gallery of open-work arcades sup- 
porting a heavy platform upon its slender pillars ; lastly, the two 
dark and massive towers with their slated penthouses harmo- 
nious parts of a magnificent whole, placed one above another in 
five gigantic stages present themselves to the eye in a crowd 
yet without confusion, with their innumerable details of statu- 
ary, sculpture, and carving, powerfully contributing to the tran- 
quil grandeur of the whole a vast symphony of stone, if we 
may be allowed the expression ; the colossal product of the com- 
bination of all the force of the age, in which the fancy of the 
workman, chastened by the genius of the artist, is seen starting 
forth in a hundred forms upon every stone ; in short, a sort of 
human creation, mighty and fertile like the divine creation, from 
which it seems to have borrowed the twofold character of va- 
riety and eternity." 

It is this twofold character of variety and eternity but 
chiefly of eternity which the mighty stones of Notre Dame 
most fully breathe, and which at this moment appealed even 
more than its beauty to the man who gazed. " It had that re- 
posethe old faith," he thought with something like a pang of 
regret. It did not occur to him to question what he had long 
accepted as a truth, that this old faith, having helped mankind in 
upward progress, was now to be thrown aside as a thing fit only 
for the infancy of the human intellect; but he felt that none of 
the new creeds offered the sublime repose which was expressed 
here. "If I could put myself into the thirteenth century how 
undoubtingly 1 should enter and kneel before that altar!" he 
thought. " But a man must belong to his age." 

He did not enter. He turned and walked away, while the 
great front of Notre Dame with its solemn grandeur mutely an- 
swered that man's dreams and theories indeed pass with the 
passing time, but that God's eternal truth is for all ages. 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



1883.] THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. 49 



THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. 

THERE is perhaps no physical science, as things now stand, 
which may be freely studied with so little danger to faith as 
that of astronomy. This is no doubt due principally to two 
causes. The first is that the department of this science on 
which most labor has heretofore been spent, and which con- 
stitutes the chief part of it as usually presented, is in a perfect 
state, or very nearly so, and therefore is entirely true ; we refer, 
of course, to that which treats of the masses, distances, move- 
ments, and forces existing in the universe and having astro- 
nomical importance. And the statements made on these points, 
being true, do not conflict with faith, which has only to fear the 
error still remaining in sciences as yet imperfectly formed. 

The second cause of the safety of astronomical study is the 
spirit in which this science has been and is pursued in all its 
branches, and which its votaries seem to have caught from the 
great man who may almost be called its founder a spirit of 
caution, of not stating things as certain until they are proved; 
in short, the mathematical spirit, which is satisfied with no evi- 
dence not perfectly conclusive. Sir Isaac Newton and the 
other illustrious investigators who followed in his path did not, 
like many modern scientists, determine beforehand that such or 
such a theory must be true, and support it with the zeal of ad- 
vocates ; therefore they not only arrived more speedily at the 
ultimate truth, but also passed through less error on the way 
to it. They were calm, impartial, and patient ; ready at any 
time to change their minds/ even when well settled, if facts 
should require it ; and therefore they were seldom obliged to 
change minds so prudently determined. And the same spirit 
is, as we have said, in their successors to-day ; astronomers 
have, as a rule, no " views " in the incomplete branches of their 
science which they are resolved to see through at any cost, and 
therefore those who look to them for information are in little 
danger of taking the uncertain for the certain, what is tempo- 
rarily probable for what is fixed for ever. 

For these two reasons, then, astronomy as actually taught 
by astronomers is a safe matter of study, both in its conclusions 
and in the spirit in which it is followed. Still, its real results are 
VOL. xxxvu. 4 



50 THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. [April, 

of course sometimes misunderstood by the unprofessional, and 
hasty conclusions drawn from the facts which it teaches. One 
such conclusion regarding a matter of great interest is our 
present subject; that matter is what is commonly called the 
plurality of worlds. 

" You hold, do you not," an inquirer will perhaps say to an 
astronomer, " that the fixed stars are all suns like our own ? " 

" Yes, we believe them to be so." 

" And they have planets circling around them as the earth 
does around the sun ? " 

" Yes, that is quite likely." 

"And these worlds may probably be inhabited like our 
own ? " 

" Yes, that is very probable." 

" And how many stars are there ? " 

" No actual count can be made. Ordinary telescopes will 
show millions of them." 

After such a conversation the inquirer leaves with the im- 
pression that astronomy teaches the existence of countless mil- 
lions of worlds inhabited like this earth, and perhaps proceeds 
to ask himself, " How can Christianity as commonly taught be 
true, if astronomy is correct? How can God have shown such 
singular favors to us, a mere speck in his intelligent creation? 
How can he have passed by millions of millions of beings like 
ourselves, and come only to us here in this little world of ours ?" 

Now, we shall set aside the question whether these fancied 
xesults of astronomy can be reconciled with the teachings of 
faith. Some think that they easily can be; indeed, that the 
^knowledge of God which we have by revelation would be rather 
in favor of the supposition that there are vast numbers of other 
worlds besides our own, inhabited by intelligent creatures, than 
.against it. Faith, it must be understood, by no means depends 
on this astronomical conclusion; it stands with or without it. 
But with this matter we have at present no concern. All that 
we wish to show is that this result of astronomy is in point of 
fact, as has just been said, only a fancied one; that the real 
science is entirely non-committal on the question of a plurality 
of worlds, and, indeed, that its actual discoveries, so far as they 
give direct evidence, are rather against such a plurality than 
ior it. 

All that the astronomer actually teaches in the above sup- 
posed dialogue is that the fixed stars are suns like our own ; 
he does not teach positively that they are attended by planets, 



1883.] THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. 51 

much less that these planets are inhabited. He may think so 
as well as his questioner, but he does not pretend to know. 

As to the fixed stars being- suns, that is a fair conclusion from 
actual observations and measurements. The distance of some 
of them is approximately known by methods precisely similar 
to those resorted to by ordinary surveyors ; and the astrono- 
mer's results in this matter cannot be questioned, unless we also 
question the determination of the height of the Himalaya Moun- 
tains, or of others on which man has not yet trod ; or, indeed, 
unless we doubt either the evidence of our senses or 'the formulas 
of trigonometry. The astronomer's result is not so accurate as 
the other, and is acknowledged by himself not to be so, owing 
to the inadequately short base-line which he is obliged to use, it 
being- in the most favorable case only about one hundred thou- 
sandth of the distance which he has to determine. But it is 
correct enough for him to assert positively that the stars whose 
distance has thus been measured are just about so far away that 
our sun, if put where they are, would, on the known laws of 
the diminution of light with increased distance, look like one of 
them. We know, then, that these stars are luminous bodies com- 
parable in splendor with the sun, and that in fact some of them 
decidedly surpass it in intrinsic brilliancy. With regard to 
their dimensions nothing can be positively determined, as they 
show no disc, but appear simply as points ; but this they would 
do, unless vastly larger than the sun. In the case of the double 
stars, however, something- can be ascertained about their mass or 
weight from the rapidity with which they circulate about each 
other; and the conclusions thus reached tend to confirm those 
derived from their light, and to equate them, roughly speaking, 
with our own sun, or star as it may therefore truly be called. 

With regard to the immense majority of stars, on which no 
special measurements for distance have been made, all that can 
be said is that none of the brighter ones, say those visible with 
the naked eye, the positions of which have been often well ob- 
served, can be many times nearer to us than those whose dis- 
tance has been found, and that probably few of them are as 
near. About the innumerable remainder we can only say that 
they are, on the whole, far beyond the limits of our solar system, 
though some objects taken for stars have afterward proved to 
be planets. This is quite evident ; for if the* Milky Way, for 
instance, composed of telescopic stars, were anywhere near our 
system, it would shift its position very perceptibly, which it 
does not do. 



5 2 THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. [April, 

This, then, is all that is absolutely known about the distance 
and real size and brilliancy of the stellar host. Still, it is.reason- 
able to presume that the stars not yet measured accurately for 
position are similar to those that have been, and no nearer to 
us; and, indeed, that probably most of them are much farther 
away, their faintness being due to their greater distance ; and 
that, therefore, the millions of stars which telescopes reveal are 
really all, or at least almost all, suns. We may as well grant 
this ; millions of suns may as well be admitted as thousands. 

But, admitting them, have we anything as yet to prove a 
plurality of worlds? To this it must be answered most decid- 
edly in the negative. The very fact that the stars are suns 
(a fact confirmed also by spectroscopic observation) is itself a 
strong proof that they are not worlds. For our own sun cannot 
be so regarded without a great strain on credulity. 

For what is the sun, so far as science reveals it to us ? Sim- 
ply a blazing mass of matter, partly in a gaseous state, partly in 
a liquid or viscous one, but giving no evidence of solidity any- 
where, or of any permanent forms. Its surface is torn contin- 
ually by storms raging with a fury which we cannot begin to 
imagine. One hundred miles a second is a velocity not at all rare, 
as it would seem, in solar winds. The great " protuberances " 
have been seen to rise at this rate from the sun's limb, though 
resisted by a force about twenty times as great as that of gravity 
here. Immense chasms, called spots, appear frequently on the 
solar disc, and spread in a short time so as to cover an area 
greater than that of our whole globe. Every atom on the sun's 
surface is probably always moving at a rate far surpassing the 
most violent and rapid movements here. A Western tornado let 
loose there would pass entirely unnoticed. 

But the enormous temperature of the sun is in itself and in 
its consequences the most fatal barrier to any possibility of life 
or organism. This temperature cannot be exactly estimated, 
but the most recent observations place it at a point immensely 
exceeding that of the hottest iron furnaces, and it is not impro- 
bably sufficient to dissociate or break up, at least partly, some of 
the supposed chemical elements, and at any rate to reduce them 
to vapor. The centripetal force due to the sun's immense mass 
seems to be all that holds it together. 

In such a state, of things the idea of inhabitants, in any ordi- 
nary sense, is simply absurd. Far better conditions for life are 
found in empty space. 

"But," it may be said, "granting that the sun's surface is 



1883.] THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. 53 

uninhabitable, may there not be regions in its centre which are 
shielded from the immense heat prevailing on the outside, and 
where life is consequently possible?" 

Of course no one can say that some arrangement may not 
have been made for this purpose. But why should we look for 
such a habitable orb in the centre of the sun rather than any- 
where else in space ? All that we know about the sun from ob- 
servation makes such a supposition not, indeed, utterly untenable, 
but certainly very improbable. All that we see is a blazing, 
raging wall of fire. There may be some arrangement by which 
people can live close behind it, yes ; but it does not seem at all 
likely that there is, and observations give no evidence of it. If 
you know that there are people somewhere and cannot find them 
anywhere else, then you will believe them to be there, of 
course ; but it is, as it would seem, the last place to look for 
them. An d priori principle is required to find people in the 
sun ; facts do not point that way. The amount of the matter 
is that astronomy, as far as it says anything at all, tells us that 
the sun is not a fit place to live in. It does not say, " You 
cannot believe in life there," but it does say, " I have done 
nothing to encourage such a belief." And, as its judgment is 
that the stars are suns, it says the same regarding them. 

Science, then, in this immensely preponderating part of the 
visible creation, gives no sign of the existence of life, and the 
strongest signs against it. Let us turn now to the small but 
more promising remainder. 

The planets certainly do not present the same difficulties to 
habitation as the sun and the stars. They are not so enormously 
heated, nor, so far as we can see, vexed by furious storms like 
those which agitate the sun's surface. There seems, however, 
to be some reason for thinking that the larger ones are in a liquid 
state, perhaps resulting from high temperature ; and of course 
two of the smaller ones namely, Mercury and Venus would be 
uncomfortably hot for us on account of their nearness to the sun. 
The remaining one, Mars, would also be rather cold ; but its defi- 
ciency in heat received from the sun could be made up, no doubt, 
from some internal source. And, at any rate, here, as on Mer- 
cury and Venus, though we might not be comfortable, other 
beings might do well ; matter could exist in its three states, 
solid, liquid, and gaseous ; chemical combinations and bodily 
forms could be preserved. Even on the asteroids, though they 
are too small to have any heat of their own and are far from the 
sun, life in some forms might exist, though we could not live. 



54 THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. [April, 

The secondary planets, or satellites, also do not seem to be un- 
inhabitable. 

But are there any positive indications leading us to believe in 
the actual existence of life on the planets? So far we have 
nothing but a mere possibility of it. 

If we look at the nearest heavenly body to us, the moon, so 
far from being encouraged to believe in life there, its possibility 
even seems to disappear ; at least the possibility of a life enjoy- 
able by intelligent beings. The only occupation for inhabitants 
of the moon would seem to be astronomy, for which, no doubt, 
there would be an excellent opportunity, owing to the absence 
of the atmosphere, with its disturbances which cause so much 
annoyance to star-gazers here. In the contemplation of other 
bodies, particularly of the earth, the denizens of the moon might 
derive a satisfaction which they would seek for in their own 
world in vain. 

For what is the moon, as clearly revealed to us by powerful 
telescopes? Merely a ghastly desert of bare rock, pitted by 
what would seem to be the enormous craters of extinct vol- 
canoes, and rising in many places into jagged and , precipitous 
mountains. Water, if there were any in the liquid state, would 
surely show itself by some evaporation and condensation, and, if 
it or any liquid existed in the form of lakes or seas, would be 
distinguishable by the want of permanent markings on its sur- 
face. But everything seen in the moon is permanent and .un- 
changing, except the shadows cast by the enormous mountains 
and by the edges of the craters, as the sun slowly passes over 
them in the long lunar day. No atmosphere, or the merest trace 
of one; if possibly respirable, it cannot be of density sufficient to 
diffuse the sun's light over the sky. The sun is a blazing ball in 
the black vault of heaven, against which the bare rocks which it 
illumines stand out in terrible distinctness. Can we imagine a 
life enjoyed by intelligent beings here? 

It may be said that the beauty of nature is not absolutely 
necessary to happiness, and that if there are possibilities on the 
moon for the maintenance of life its inhabitants may find other 
sources of enjoyment, and shut what senses they may have to 
their dismal surroundings. True; but what argument is such a 
place as the moon for the existence of such beings ? The condi- 
tions of some sort of life may exist in empty space ; the asteroids 
themselves may be large animals, for aU we can positively say to 
the contrary ; what advantage is there in a place like the moon 
for life upon its surface, except that there is something to stand 



1883.] T HE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. 55 

on and the means of moving- about from one horrible scene to 
another ? 

Of course it may be urged that we have never seen the other 
side of the rnoon. That is true. Good conditions of life may 
exist there. They may ; but astronomy teaches us nothing about 
it, except that there is probably solid ground on which to rest. 
On that basis we may build what we please, but that basis is all 
that science furnishes. 

And it fails to teach us even as much as this about the other 
planets and satellites, with one exception, of which we will im- 
mediately speak. We know not if they are solid or liquid ; we 
fail to see any certainly permanent marks on their surfaces. We 
do not see any conclusive reason against the existence of intelli- 
gent life on them ; but we fail to find anything by observation 
which leads us positively to believe in it. 

There is, however, one planet namely, Mars which does ap- 
pear to be in a habitable state. It has a surface with permanent' 
markings seeming to be land and water, and white patches at 
the poles, probably consisting of snow, as they diminish when, 
turned toward the solar rays. It seems also to have an atmos- 
phere ; in short, here there is some positive evidence of a place 
fitted up for habitation. The evidence, of course, is not conclu- 
sive ; if we could come as near to it as we are to the moon the 
seeming probability of life might disappear. The moon seen 
with the naked eye, or even with a low-power telescope, does 
not show the true character of its surface. However, the advo- 
cates of a plurality of worlds can make a good point out of this 
interesting planet, and no one can object to their doing so. 

We have, then, in our solar system one planet, our own, which 
we know to be inhabited, and another which gives strong signs 
of being habitable. But to establish a state of things which can 
give trouble to the believer in revelation, whatever his views 
may be, we must have more than two worlds. We must have 
hundreds at least, not to say thousands. Where are the rest to 
be found ? 

" Why, of course," it will be said, "in the similar planets 
which no doubt revolve around the millions of stars which we 
know to exist, and which you yourself admit." Yes, we admit 
the stars, but where are the planets? 

We risk little in saying that it will for ever be impossible 
from our present position to discover a planetary system round 
any of the stars. Many of them have faint companions, it is 
true ; but these faint companions are immensely brighter than 



5 6 THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. [April, 

our largest planets, and are almost certainly in most cases, and 
probably in all, suns like their principals. Astronomy, then, gives 
no proof of the existence of planets revolving around the stars, 
and never can give any of a planetary system like our own. It 
is, and must always remain, non-committal on this point. 

Some few objects are known in the stellar regions which may 
possibly be very large planets that is, which may be shining by 
reflected light, or, if self-luminous, still not at so high a tempera- 
ture as to render life out of the question on their surfaces. One 
at least there is which does not shine at all, or so faintly as to be 
utterly invisible to us, and which yet is known to exist in the 
immediate vicinity of the bright star Procyon by its disturbance 
of that star's position. The companion of Sirius is also a diffi- 
cult object even for quite large telescopes, and yet it also is so 
large as to disturb its bright neighbor very perceptibly. These 
objects, and perhaps others, may be habitable ; but the mere fact 
of their slight luminosity does not prove them to be cool or even 
solid. A gas may be heated more than a solid can be, and yet 
be scarcely visible, at any rate at stellar distances. The plane- 
tary nebulae are perhaps the hottest bodies in the universe, and 
yet they can only be seen with telescopic aid. 

The testimony of astronomy, then, as given in the whole uni- 
verse, fails to establish the existence of other inhabited, or even 
habitable, worlds than our own. It finds, indeed, only a few ob- 
jects which are at all promising for the maintenance of life. No 
one who is disquieted by the idea of a plurality of worlds, or 
still more by that of an immense multiplicity of them, need be 
kept in disquiet by the evidence which it gives, or is at all likely 
to give. 

"But," it may be insisted, "does not the existence of suns 
necessarily involve that of planets? Would not other suns form 
them, as it is said ours formed our system ?" 

" No," it may be answered, " not necessarily, even if we adopt 
the so-called nebular hypothesis, which we are not bound to do. 
Of course on that hypothesis there would be a strong probability 
of their formation ; but even if they were formed we should still 
have only absolutely unknown planetary systems, the inhabitants 
of which must be more entirely creatures of speculation than 
the systems themselves." 

But the argument which is perhaps the strongest to most 
minds still remains. People say, ' What is the use of all these 
suns, if they are not inhabited and shed light on no inhabited 
worlds?" This is the difficulty which principally troubles the 



1883.] THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. 57 

religious man, who naturally seeks for a design or plan in all 
the works of God. 

To this it may be answered, " What is the use of our sun 
itself, on this principle ? " Only an almost incalculably small 
fraction of our sun's light and heat reaches any of the planets. 
The vast mass of it is shed abroad in space, and, so far as we can 
see, utterly wasted and thrown away. If an uninhabitable sun 
without planets seems an impossibility, how shall we account 
for our own sun, which is only infinitesimally utilized by the 
planets which it has ? The work which it does for us could be 
done, so far as we can see, equally well by a very little piece of 
itself placed at a short distance from us. The sun must have 
other ends to serve, it would seem, in the Divine Mind, than the 
material service which it renders to us. If those ends be en- 
tirely separate from- ourselves and having no reference to us, at 
least for the present, why cannot the stars subsist for similar 
ones ? And if one of these ends be the manifestation to us of 
the glory of God, why do not the stars serve that end where 
they are? Must there be corporal, animate, and intelligent 
beings living nearer to them than we, in order to justify their 
creation ? We see and appreciate them ; the angels and the 
saints also praise God for them ; is not that enough ? If there 
were people like ourselves living in planetary systems around 
them, no doubt all this would be increased ; but such an increase 
is not necessary. For what limit could we assign to it? To re- 
quire it indefinitely would be to call for more inhabitants even 
here. 

An undue importance attached to matter is at the bottom, as 
it would seem, of much of the difficulty felt on this subject. We 
forget that the material creation is of itself of slight importance 
compared with the spiritual. The vast masses and distances 
existing in the universe overwhelm us ; but really there is little 
more significance or importance in a large mass of matter than 
in a small one, in a long distance than in a short one. When we 
look at the matter without prejudice we shall probably see the 
glory of God displayed as much in any one of the numberless 
organisms with which this earth abounds as in the whole ma- 
chinery of the solar system. We understand and appreciate the 
working of the latter more completely than that of the animal 
body, and for that reason, perhaps, seeing it more thoroughly, 
admire it more; but if we knew both equally well the body 
would be the more wonderful of the two. Indeed, if the solar 
system were reduced to the dimensions of our bodies, though 



5 s NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. [April, 

still worthy of admiration, it would fail to impress us ; and it 
would never occur to us that it was so grand and beautiful that 
it ought to be inhabited. And yet why should it not ? Why 
should mere size make such a difference ? 

Really there is no reason why the great masses of matter 
which we see in the universe should require a special explana- 
tion, any more than if they were all reduced a thousand million 
diameters and placed on the earth before us ; unless we hold 
that a whale requires a special purpose for its existence, but that 
a dog or cat is to be taken as a matter of course. 

Now, in conclusion, let it not be understood that we wish to 
show that there cannot be, or even that there is not, a plurality 
of worlds. For many reasons we all must desire it, for the 
glory of God and for our own sakes. Here we see the places 
to put. many intelligent creatures, and possible accommodations 
for them ; very well, let us put them there, if we wish, by all 
means. But let us not imagine that we are required to do so; 
that all this matter requires spirit to dwell in or upon it; and let 
us not imagine, either, if indisposed to believe in the plurality 
of worlds, that the positive results of astronomy require us to 
do so. 



NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. 

IT is, of course, a truism to say that humor displays the charac- 
teristics of the race from which it emanates, as well as of their con- 
dition and circumstances and their education and development. 
We should not expect delicate wit among the cave-dwellers ; and 
Charles Lamb has moralized upon the growth of humor with the 
coming-in of candles, and the check that there must have been 
upon facetiousness when you had to feel your neighbor's cheek in 
the dark to know whether he appreciated a pun. It may be said 
that there are certain sorts of humor common to all mankind, as 
is manifest not only in the resemblances of folk-lore from the 
most ancient stories of the early races of India, in the birthplace 
of humanity, to the plantation stories of the negroes of the South, 
and which are a proof either of its common origin or its common 
characteristics, but also in the jests and sayings that have sur- 
vived from the earliest dawn of literature to the modern end- 
men of minstrel troops and the clowns of the circus. But, aside 



1883.] NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. 59 

from the wit, which is the growth of culture and depends upon it 
for its appreciation, and which is so cosmopolitan as to be but 
slightly marked, except in verbal forms, with national character- 
istics, the native humor of a people has a flavor and indigenous 
element partaking of their characteristics to an essential and 
significant degree. In fact, from a strongly-marked specimen 
it might be possible to reconstruct the race in essential fea- 
tures, as learned scientists can re-create in their minds an ani- 
mal of the paleontologic race from a fossil toe-bone or eye- 
tooth. 

Among the most strongly marked of the native humor is 
that of the Irish. It reveals not only their characteristics but 
their history, and exhibits not only the qualities of the original 
race and the results of the intermingling of blood and language, 
but the misfortunes of the Irish and their efforts to rise against 
them. If that which was purely Gaelic is lost in distinct form 
and survives only in tradition and admixture, and the present 
product shows a trace of the incomplete intermingling of the 
languages, the substance of the whole exhibits the characteristics 
of the original race as influenced by their history and circum- 
stances. Comparing it with that of Lowland Scotch and Ameri- 
can, the two other provincial varieties of what may for conve- 
nience be called the common English stock, it presents a strongly- 
marked difference. Lowland Scotch humor is dry and caustic, 
and generally has a strong infusion of sarcasm and bitterness. 
A hard, knowing smile is the highest tribute to its efficiency, 
and the difficulty of the Scotch nature in apprehending any 
touch of mellow humor or burlesque travesty has been made 
proverbial by Sydney Smith. Perhaps as perfect and character- 
istic a specimen of Scotch humor as can be found is the familiar 
one, recorded in Dean Ramsay's Recollections, of the preacher 
who was " sootherin' ".away on some fifteenthly head of the doc- 
trine of atonement by faith, until the endurance of even a Scotch 
congregation was worn out, and no one was in a state of proper 
wakefulness except a half-witted fellow in the gallery. The 
preacher, indignant at the disrespect, awoke his audience by a 
reproof for sleeping under sound doctrine when an idiot like 
Jemmy Irving was wide awake. " Yis," was the answer of Jem- 
my, angered at the unflattering designation, " and if I hadna 
been an eediot I wad hae been sleeping too." This is better 
than the response to the toast of " honest men and bonnie 
lasses" to the effect that it might be drunk without offence to 
the modesty of any of the party, although that has the full Scotch 



60 NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. [April, 

flavor of caustic bitterness, inasmuch as it is more native and 
idiomatic. 

The original quality of American humor was supposed to be 
that of pecuniary meanness dignified by the name of smartness 
and " ctiteness." There was some truth to this so far as the na- 
tive race of New England was concerned, but that was altogether 
too provincial to be considered a national characteristic, although 
the generic Yankee was long accepted as typical of the people, 
and is so still to foreign comprehension. The original Yankee 
had a strongly-marked individuality and has taken a permanent 
place in literature from the genius of Lowell. But he never 
represented the prevailing characteristics of the American people 
even in the Revolutionary era, and has long been outgrown as 
a type even, if not approaching extinction in his own home. 
Neither is the peculiar dialect and form of that later and much 
more luxuriant growth called Western humor to be accepted as 
the generic type, although it contains much that is characteris- 
tic. It is somewhat difficult to fix on what may be considered 
the peculiar substance of American humor, as it represents, as do 
the people, such various elements, and even an unformed national 
character. It is at once so luxuriant under the stimulus of the 
newspaper press, which, with a great deal that is forced and arti- 
ficial, exhibits a rich and varied growth, and it takes so many 
forms, that the characteristic essence is difficult to determine. 
We take it to be, however, a sort of extravagance and confidence 
suited to the size of the country and the capacities of life, and 
which was perceptible in the humorous mendacity of the smart 
Yankee, as in the more exaggerated boastfulness of the Western 
backwoodsman who "could grin the bark off a gum log." Un- 
questionably the generic phase of American humor at the pres- 
ent day is that developed in the newspapers, and of this there is 
an abundance equal to the fertility of the soil. Perhaps as fair a 
specimen as may be taken at random out of the heap, which is 
daily buried under its own accretions, and showing the reckless- 
ness, extravagance, and easy absurdity which mark American 
humor, is this waif and stray of the anonymous newspaper humor- 
lst ; " The fl y is not a determined positivist. He always * specks 
so.' " This, if not in any form of dialect, is essentially character- 
istic. 

Irish humor differs from the Lowland Scotch in that it is sel- 
dom sour and harsh, and from the American in that it has a 
touch of deep feeling in its extravagance. What has been at- 
tributed to it as a prevailing characteristic, that of blunder and 



1883.] NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. 61 

confusion of language, merely results from the imperfect inter- 
mixture of the speech of the two races, or the Celtic thought in 
English words. In essence it is an attempt to encounter or to 
relieve misfortune by gayety, and the deep feeling is always 
struggling through the jest. This is not to say that there is not 
much that is the result of native joyousness of temperament, 
but it is the struggle of that temperament against misfortune, 
which has been so prolonged as to make an element of the 
national life. The loudest laugh is not the sign of the merriest 
heart, and the strongest effort of mirth may be the offspring of 
recklessness to escape despair. The humors of the wake might 
be taken as a striking specimen of the character of Irish merri- 
ment. They are very far from being the evidence of irreverence 
and lack of feeling which they seem to a colder and more pros- 
perous people, but a struggle to escape overwhelming grief or 
the kindly purpose to relieve it ; and, except in the most degraded 
instances, they always verge perilously close upon lamentation 
and wailing, as they are always interspersed with them. Every 
keen observer of Irish humor has observed this, and only the 
dull or prejudiced can fail to perceive it. There is none of the 
humor of the melancholy Jacques in the Irish race. That woo- 
ing and dallying with melancholy, as if it was a treasure to furnish 
food for wit and genteel cynicism, is entirely absent from Irish 
humor, and the people are too familiar with misfortune to make 
it a friendly companion. It rather roars and flings and capers, 
and is ready for any extravagance in order to escape the presence 
of misery. William Maginn, himself an example, in life as in 
literature, of the characteristics of Irish life, its wild merriment 
to escape real misery, has declared in a moment of sober 
thought and keen perception that the really unhappy person of 
the two is not Jaques but Falstaff ; and there is truth in the fact, 
if not in the meaning of Shakspere. He says: " Is the jesting, 
revelling, rioting Falstaff, broken of fortune, luckless in life, sunk 
in habits, buffeting with the discreditable part of the world, or 
the melancholy, mourning, complaining Jaques, honorable in 
conduct, high in moral position, fearless of the future, and lying 
in the forest away from trouble which of them, I say, feels 
more the load of care? I think Shakspere well knew and de- 
picted them accordingly." 

The commonly conceived and representative form of Irish 
humor is that which is known as the " bull," the unconscious 
confusion of language with meaning, and, as a mere blunder, is 
of course not a faculty. The genuine Irish "bull" is, however, 



62 NA TIVE IRISH HUMOR. [April, 

not a blunder, but is a powerful expression of meaning in defi- 
ance of language. Its cause, as we have said, is the rapidity of 
Celtic thought in the English speech not entirely familiar to the 
tongue, at least to the extent of adapting itself to the processes 
of the brain, and its result in its best form is a much more vivid 
condensation of meaning by a short cut through the properties 
of nature and the rules of accidence. The Irish " bull " has suffer- 
ed, like all forms of Irish literature and national expression, from 
the counterfeit and burlesque. It was a favorite form of ridicule 
for English buffoonery and prejudice 'to represent the speech of 
the Irish as crowded with dull and gross blunders, which were the 
invention of very much clumsier wit than their own ; and like 
the brogue, which was represented as the Irish dialect, the false 
" bull " betrayed its counterfeit by its silliness and its vulgarity. 
English jest-books from the days of Joe Miller to the present time 
contain a collection of stupid blunders in speech and meaning 
which are described as Irish "bulls," but which were never born 
in the quick wit and vivid eloquence of the Irish people, any 
more than the language in which they are clothed the "och, 
hubbaboo," etc. has any connection with the native Doric. The 
coarse burlesque has in a measure gone out of date since the 
growth of a native Irish literature and a more intelligent know- 
ledge of Irish character and dialect, and in its present form is 
chiefly confined to the jokes of the minstrel-halls or the "penny 
gaffs," but it is still taken as a representative form of Irish 
humor. 

It has existed and does exist in the form which AVC have de- 
fined as the hurry of the thought beyond the limits of language, 
and the strength of the imagination confounding the properties' 
of words and nature, and the best " bulls " are deliberate hyper- 
boles of humor. The most famous master of this form of ex- 
pressionthe unconscious and the deliberate crush of words and 
sense to express meaning was Sir Boyle Roche, whose name has 
become a synonym and whose flowers of eloquence are treasures 
of literature. He did not escape, even in his lifetime, the suspi- 
cion that he was shrewder than he appeared to be, and that if he 
did not purposely invent his wild metaphors, he at least culti- 
his faculty of 'blunder to divert attention from political 
conduct very well calculated. for his profit, and to weaken public 
indignation at treacherous and ruinous measures of legislation 
by the sense of humor. This suspicion would be strengthened 
by the real pith and meaning in some of his most laughable 
tropes and expressions, but Sir Jonah Barrington describes him 



1883.] NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. 63 

as dull and earnest and with a real confusion of intellect, and it 
is probable that his 'wisdom, like that of Sancho Panza, was a 
double factor with his stupidity. But, at any rate, his " bulls" 
furnish the best examples of blunder with a meaning, and of- 
ten express with force and conciseness what a rigid accuracy 
would have failed to reach. This aphorism is strong enough to 
be a proverb : " The best way to avoid danger is to meet it 
plump." Nor is this other, delivered to enable Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald to avoid an apology to the House, without a pregnant 
meaning : " No gentleman- should be asked to make an apology, 
because no gentleman could mean to give offence." 

The famous bull about posterity had a very sensible meaning 
to it, and the blunder was in the expression and not in the argu- 
ment. It is worth while to give it in its exact language and as 
it was delivered, to rescue it from the mutilated form in which 
it is commonly current. The question was on the immediate 
payment of a national tax instead of funding it with the debt, 
when Sir Boyle arose and delivered the following unanswerable 
argument: "What, Mr. Speaker, and so we are to beggar our- 
selves for fear of vexing posterity ! Now, I would ask the hon- 
orable gentleman and this still more honorable House why we 
should put ourselves out of the way to do anything for posterity ; 
for what has posterity done for us? " 

Others of Sir Boyle Roche's " bulls " were mere blunders, but 
one of them may be taken as an example of the vividness of the 
imagination simply overcrowding sense, which is an essential 
property of the genuine Irish bull : 

" Mr. Speaker, if we once permitted the villanous French masons to 
meddle with the buttresses and walls of our ancient constitution, they 
would never stop nor stay, sir, till they brought the foundation-stones about 
the ears of the nation. There, Mr. Speaker, if those Gallician villains 
should invade us, sir, 'tis on that very table, may be, these honorable 
members might see their own destinies lying in heaps atop of one another. 
Here, perhaps, the murderous Marshallan-raen [Marsellois] would break in, 
cut us to mince-meat, and throw our bleeding heads upon that table to 
stare us in the face." 

That confusion of ideas to the loss of personal identity is 
considered an extreme example of the " bull," and the following, 
which was made by an Irish gentleman to Lord Orford, is said 
to be the most perfect on record : " I hate that woman, for she 
changed me at nurse." But Miss Edgeworth discovered that it 
was not originally Irish, and that a similar expression had been 
put at an earlier day into the mouth of Sancho Panza : " Pray 



64 NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. [April, 

tell me, squire," says the duchess, " is not your master the person 
whose history is printed under the nam6 of the sage Hidalgo, 
Don Quixote de la Mancha, who professes himself the admirer of 
one Duicinea del Toboso ? " " The very same, my lady," answer- 
ed Sancho ; " and I myself am that very squire of his who is 
mentioned, or ought to be mentioned, in that history, unless they 
-have changed me in the cradle." +.._ 

There are, however, genuine and original examples of this 
extreme form of mental confusion of identity among the native 
flowers of blunder. This is complete as well as complex, and, in 
the language of Mr. Burke, is " a perfect and well-rounded speci- 
men of perversity " : "I thought I saw Tim Doolan coming 
down the street, and it was Paddy Donovan. Paddy tuk me for 
my brother, and when we met it was neither of us." 

The resemblances of folk-lore are remarkable, and it is possi- 
ble that these may be found to have originated in the first record 
of primitive humor or to have its counterpart in the fireside jests 
of a hundred different races. It is from one of the peasant stories 
of Ireland entitled The Three Wise Men : 

"At last all were married to the other sisters, but the dickens a foot 
farther than the four corners of the big bawn they'd separate from one an- 
other. 

"They were all conversing one day in the bawn, and one of them made 
a remark that put them all into a great fright. 'Aren't there four brothers 
of us altogether? ' says he. 'To be sure,' says one, and 'To be sure,' says 
another. ' Well,' says he, ' I'm after counting, and I can't make out one 
more than three.' 'And neither can I,' says one, and ' Neither can I,' says 
another, and ' Neither can I,' says the last. 'Some one must be dead or 
gone away.' Well, they were all in a fright, I can tell you, for a while. At 
last says the one that spoke first, ' Let every one go and sit on the ridge 
of his house, and I will soon see who is missing.' Well, they done so, and 
then the poor fellow that stayed to count, after looking all round, cried out : 
'O murdher, murdher! there's no one on my own house. It's myself that's 
missing.' " 

There are specimens of " bulls " which are too keenly feath- 
ered with wit and malice to be admitted as blunders, whether they 
were the result of accident or not. Of this sort was the reply of 
the Irish lady to George II. as to whether she had seen all the 
ghts ot the metropolis : Oh ! yes, please your majesty, I have 
seen every sight in London worth seeing except a coronation"; 
and this of S.r Boyle Roche to the assertion in a speech by Cur- 
ran that he " was the trusty guardian of his own honor " I had 
understood that the honorable gentleman had always been op- 



1883.] NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. 65 

posed to sinecures." These are the flowers of wit and not of 
blunder. 

The native humor of a people is generally to be found in its 
most characteristic forms in its proverbs and proverbial ex- 
pressions, which have been described as " the wisdom of many 
and the wit of one," and they reflect the habits of thought and 
prevailing objects of interest which make the common life rather 
than any individual idiosyncrasies. For some reason the native 
speech of Ireland is not-enriched with so great a number of pro- 
verbs as that of many other countries notably Spain and Scot- 
land probably because the turn of thought is rather toward the 
imaginative than the sententious form of expression. There is 
something of Oriental flavor in the redundancy and figurative- 
ness of Irish expression which escapes the condensation and 
dryness necessary to the perfect proverb. There are some, 
however, of marked originality and picturesqueness of expres- 
sion in the list of Irish proverbs. The following has always 
struck us as remarkably felicitous and graphic : 

"The life of an old hat is in the cock of it." 

This expresses at once the courage in the face of adversity, arid 
lightness of heart under the load of misfortune, characteristic of 
the Irish race, with the utmost vividness, and might have fur- 
nished a motto for a chapter in the Clothes Philosophy, if Car- 
lyle had had any knowledge whatever of laughing at fate. As 
a whole it is one of the most perfect and picturesque expressions 
of proverbial wisdom. 

There are many other proverbial expressions in prose and 
verse inculcating the wisdom of meeting misfortune with good- 
humor, such as would be the natural result of the temperament 
and condition of the Irish race ; as, 

" Why should we quarrel for riches, 

Or any such glittering toys ? 
A light heart arid a thin pair of breeches 
Goes well through the world, my brave boys " ; 

" Trust to luck, trust to, luck, stare fate in the face ; 
The heart will be aisy, if it's in the right place " ; 

" The worse luck to-day, the better to-morrow," and others, al- 
though none equal the first in vividness and originality. 

" Like Madge's cocks that fought one another, although they 
were of the same breed," is a proverb, unfortunately, but too 
VOL. xxxvn. 5 



65 NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. [April, 

natural an outgrowth of the internecine strife so long the bane 

of Ireland. 

Many of the proverbial expressions of great vividness and 
power of expression are the sadder lessons of woe and misfortune 
such as " It's a sad burden to carry a dead man's child " 
which do not come under the head of humor. 

But if the native Irish speech is deficient, in.English, of pro- 
verbial sententiousness, it more than makes amends in the rich- 
ness and eloquence of its bitterness and kindliness in banning 
and blessing. The eloquence of the Irish beggar-woman in re- 
warding charity with blessings and niggardliness with cursing is 
widely renowned, and the impulsive speech of the people in ex- 
pressing good or ill will is without a rival in its imaginative 
force. There is a flavor and force in epithet and expression 
strikingly Oriental in its character in Irish vituperation, and 
:some of its phrases more than rival the Arabic figurativeness. 
The following, selected by Carleton, are as characteristic as any, 
.although the whole language is full of others equally remark- 
. able : " The curse of Cromwell be upon you "; " May you die with 
a caper in your heel," significant of hanging; "May the grass 
grow at your door and the fox build his nest on your hearth- 
stone," and others of .even worse import expressions of fami- 
liar and traditionary use, and full of the highest degree of 
imaginative bitterness. They would not misbecome the mouth 
of an Eastern prophet in a fury of inspired malediction. Those 
which give a humorous turn to the ill-will, or are merely the 
badinage of satiric affection, are hardly less graphic, such as 
" The devil go with you and sixpence, and then you will want 
for neither money nor company," and " Six eggs to you, and 
half a dozen of them rotten," and many others that require but 
a moment's recollection of the familiar Irish-English dialect to 
bring up. There are several specimens of sustained eloquence 
.and fecundity in these sort of backward blessings which have 
been put into the form of verse, such as the celebrated " Litany 
of Doneraile," by Patrick O'Kelly, the " brother bard " who af- 
forded so much amusement to Scott and his party on their visit 
to Ireland, and whose modesty was signified in the following tri- 
.bute to his own greatness : 

" Three poets, of three different nations born, 
The United Kingdom in this age adorn : 
Byron, of England ; Scott, of Scotia's blood ; 
And Erin's pride, O'Kelly, great and good." 

The bard, having lost his watch and chain of Dublin manufac- 



1883.] NATIVE IRISH HUMOR. 67 

ture while on a visit to Doneraile and as a consequence of being 
"overtaken " with drink, pours forth his maledictions on the de- 
voted inhabitants in some twenty verses and, until the rhymes 
on its concluding syllables are exhausted, with a very graphic 
fecundity of expression. A still more famous example is the 
lament of Nell Flaherty for her drake and her invocation of a 
catalogue of woes upon the villain that stole it. " The villain 
that stole Nell Flaherty's drake " is, in fact, almost as celebrated, 
although equally unknown, as " the man that struck Billy Pater- 
son," although there must be a belief that he perished soon after 
his foul deed, if he was visited by but a tithe of the misfortunes 
invoked upon his head. The ballad has long been a standard 
favorite in the stock-in-trade of the itinerant singers, but has 
more force and eloquence than the ordinary products of the 
ha'penny muse. 

The current speech of the Irish peasantry is full of power- 
ful humor and racy expression to a degree that is proverbial. 
The note-book of every tourist is filled with examples of the wit 
of guides and car-drivers, and the books of native authors, de- 
scribing the native life, derive much of their richest flavor from 
the natural and spontaneous expressions of the people. Many 
pages might be filled with these flowers of humor in song and 
jest, and out of the abundance it is difficult to make a choice. of 
single specimens most completely representing the characteristic 
spirit of native Irish humor. Perhaps these two will do it as 
thoroughly as any, the first expressing the figurative strength of 
the imagination, the flavor of poetry, and the depth of earnest 
feeling, and the second the spirit of extravagant humor in acci- 
dent and misfortune. 

The first was uttered by a fool, in the natural sense of the 
word, whose class has been distinguished for a more vivid wit 
and strength of expression than was the gift of wiser men. This 
fool was standing among some workmen cutting turf in a bog 
when an unpopular agent, who had acquired by his passion and 
vindictiveness the significant nickname of " Danger," was seen 
passing along the high-road. " Ah, ha !" said the fool, " there 
you go, Danger, and may I never break bread if all the turf in 
this bog id warm me to you." 

The second was the expression of a man who had been 
knocked down and run over by some cavalry soldiers in the 
streets of Dublin. As he picked himself up, fortunately without 
serious harm, a bystander exclaimed, " Down on your knees, 
you villain, and thank God ! " 



68 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN [April, 

" Thank God, is it ? " said the victim of the accident. " What 
for? Is it for letting a troop of horse run over me? " 

If these do not convey an idea of the prevailing characteris- 
tics of Irish humor we shall despair of doing so, although the 
catalogue of specimens might easily make a volume. In this 
brief sketch we have paid no attention to the wit andjeux d' es- 
prit of Irish society which, particularly at the pariod of its best 
estate, just previous to the Union, were richer and more abun- 
dant than that of any other nation that we know nor of the 
humor to be found in the national literature, although both are 
very tempting subjects, but have only attempted to convey an 
idea of that which is the outgrowth and characteristic of the 
people. 



ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN THE NEW-ENGLANDER 
FOR JANUARY, 1883. 

MR. A. BiERBOWER recently wrote for the New-Englander a 
long article under the title u St. Thomas Aquinas ; or, The Scho- 
lastic Philosophy in Modern Theology," wherein he very earnestly 
labors to show that the Angelic Doctor's philosophical and theo- 
logical works, so highly praised by generations of great men, and 
so much recommended to our diligent study by the present Su- 
preme Pontiff, are " historic curiosities," " out of date," of no use 
whatever in our time, and, still worse, pregnant with " the three 
greatest intellectual vices, prejudice, slavery, and dishonesty." 
As St. Thomas is known to be the greatest representative of 
Catholic thought, it is evident that the attempt to slight him or to 
discredit his theological doctrines is an attack 'on the Catholic 
Church itself an attack which Protestant editors of Methodistic 
proclivities may still consider an honorable task and a Christian 
duty ; which, however, in the case of our writer, who is not a 
bigot, must be the outcome of intellectual dizziness, unless it be 
a mere compilation from some infidel encyclopaedia or from some 
of the thousand detestable productions by which our " enlight- 
ened " age is contaminated. It will not be amiss to pass in re- 
view the principal parts of the calumnious article ; for, though it 
deserves no attention, we can draw some interesting instruc- 
tion from the very blunders with which it teems. 

Our writer starts with the notion that in the thirteenth cen- 



1883.] THE NEW-ENGLANDER FOR JANUARY, 1883. 69 

tury, with the dawning of that light which, in his borrowed cant, 
was to slowly brighten into the Reformation, a movement was made 
by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus " to 
reconcile science and religion." This notion is absurd. Reli- 
gion could be, and was, elucidated and confirmed by scientific 
reasoning ; but when was religion in need of being reconciled 
with science? or when was science in conflict with religion? 
Error, prejudice, and sophistry existed, of course, in the thir- 
teenth as well as in every other century, but with these religion 
never sought reconciliation ; on the contrary, it waged perpetual 
war against them a war, too, carried on with the friendly help 
of science, history, and philosophy no less than with argument 
from Scriptural and ecclesiastical authorities. If Mr. Bierbower 
believes the contrary let him try to substantiate his view, not by 
the useless repetition of threadbare slanders, but by pointing 
out a single scientific truth with which religion had to seek re- 
conciliation. 

Of this pretended reconciliation he adds that to effect it " it 
was harder then than in our day, because religion at that time 
included all the mediaeval theology, with its accretion of fabu- 
lous legends, which have been largely eliminated by the Refor- 
mation." Does the author believe that the church has now 
repudiated the mediaeval theology ? We assure him that this is 
not the fact. We might also assure him that no fabulous legends 
have eVer found favor with theology, while, on the other hand, 
it is not true that the " Reformation " has largely eliminated 
either traditions or anything else from the ecclesiastical record. 
"Reformers" have unfortunately succeeded only in eliminating 
themselves out of the one universal church of God, just as the 
Jews did in rejecting Christ, thus bringing upon themselves, not 
upon him, a lasting disgrace and a richly-deserved condemnation. 

"St. Thomas Aquinas," says our critic, "systematized the 
whole of Christian theology with a view to accommodate it to 
Aristotle." Is this true? Is it not evident, on the contrary, 
that St. Thomas really labored to accommodate Aristotle to 
Christian- theology ? That he "Christianized" Aristotle, even 
our critic admits; but where do we find him to have sacrificed 
theological truth to Aristotle ? 

Next we are informed that " Duns Scotus, in the spirit of 
Kant, gave up all Christian doctrine as incapable of rational 
proof, and demanded it to be received on authority, which au- 
thority should also compel obedience; at which point reconcil- 
iation practically ended, to be succeeded by the subjection of 



7 o ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN [April, 

science until the Renaissance of the sixteenth century." Our 
reader already knows that a reconciliation of religion with 
science was never attempted, as the one never was in conflict 
with the other; we need only add that Scotus' spirit was not 
" the spirit of Kant," and not only did he not give up all Chris : 
tian doctrine as incapable of rational proof, but he himself found 
out and maintained many and solid rational proofs of Christian 
doctrines. It is not the scientific reasoning of theologians, but 
only the revealed mysteries, that he demanded to be received on 
authority ; but this had always been demanded by the doctors of 
Christianity since the apostolic time, and demanded, too, with 
the implied addition that, such authority should also compel obe- 
dience ; for, as our Lord declares, if any one does not obey the 
church, let him be anathema. 

What shall we say of that nightmare of all infidels, "the sub- 
jection of science"? In the case of revealed truths every one 
must allow that reason and science (among Christians) have but 
to bow and submit, after the Renaissance no less than before it ; 
for our poor reason and our lame science are not the standard 
and measure of God's unfathomable mysteries. But philosophy 
and science have a free field within the range of natural know- 
ledge ; and so long as they have been content to expatiate in this 
their own sphere they have been respected by theology. In- 
fidel science and materialistic philosophy have, of course, no 
claim to be respected, whatever our author may say to the con- 
trary. 

What follows is very curious. In the thirteenth century, 
according to our writer, " Christianity was accepted by all, and 
sj had to be reconciled with whatever was held by any. Though 
unlike any of the previous systems, yet it had to be shown in 
unity with all of them. It thus had to be reconciled with Ju- 
daism, with paganism, and with philosophy." The reader will 
ask: How could this be done? And our author answers : " In 
reconciling it with Judaism it was attempted to harmonize the 
Old and New Testaments, and to explain the rejection of the 
ceremonies and sacrifices, as well as the laws of Moses, by the 
theory of their fulfilment in Christianity. In reconciling it'with 
paganism there was a compromise, or combination, known as 
Catholicism, in which the idolatry, or image-worship, of the 
pagans, together with their divinities and ceremonies, were pre- 
served under other names and associations. In reconciling 
Christianity with philosophy there was a combination, first with 
Platonism, or rather Neo-Platonism, in a mystic theosophy con- 



1883.] THE NEW-ENGLANDER FOR JANUARY, 1883. 71 

cerning the Logos, the Trinity, and the soul in relation with the 
divine mind ; and afterward, on the superseding of Platonism by 
Aristotelianism, with the latter in a logical system of nature and 
its supernatural relations." This is rare erudition indeed ! Un- 
fortunately for our author, the whole Christian world knows 
that in the thirteenth century nothing was done which may serve 
to justify or excuse his assertions. No attempt was made to 
harmonize the Old and New Testaments, for the simple reason 
that they had always been known to harmonize since the Holy 
Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, had filled with his light the 
minds, and with his fire the hearts, of the apostles in the Cenacle. 
Similarly, the theory that the Mosaic ceremonies and sacrifices 
had had their fulfilment in Christianity was fully established in 
the clearest terms and in the most peremptory manner by St. 
Paul the Apostle in many of his letters which he did, too, in 
spite of obstinate Jewish opposition, so far was he from harbor- 
ing the preposterous idea of " reconciling " Christianity with 
Judaism. 

But then what is known as Catholicism " was a compro- 
mise with paganism," for it preserved "the idolatry, or image- 
worship, of the pagans." Must we answer this ? There was 
a time when every Protestant preacher could reckon on the 
credulity of his hearers for the acceptance of such a gross false- 
hood ; but we believe that that time is past, and accordingly we 
need not expend a word in refuting what even moderately -in- 
structed Dissenters would now be ashamed to maintain. We 
will only remind the author that Catholicism is not an invention 
of the thirteenth century. The church was Catholic since the 
day when the apostles were commissioned to preach the Gospel 
to all nations. On the other hand, Christianity did not await 
the thirteenth century for paying due honor to the images of our 
Lord, his Blessed Mother, and his saints. Images were honored 
(though by no means worshipped] in all Christian times, and their 
veneration was uniformly upheld by the oriental and occidental 
churches, even in defiance of the iconoclastic emperors and their 
long and cruel persecutions. 

Finally, we are at a loss to understand how the love either of 
Platonic or of Aristotelic philosophy, which the Christian thec*- 
logian may have professed, can be construed into a reconciliation 
of Christianity with philosophy. Had the theologians aban^ 
doned any of the Christian doctrines for the sake of Plato or Aris- 
totle, the thought of such a reconciliation might have been ad- 
missible. But such is not the case. They, the theologians, uni* 



72 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN .[April, 

formly looked upon philosophy, not as a sovereign, but as the 
handmaid of theology ; and the thought that they may have 
sacrificed any portion of Christian doctrine to Plato or Aristotle 
is altogether unworthy of a writer conversant with the history 
of theology. 

" Reconciliation," adds the author, " from this time forward 
consisted mainly in showing that there is nothing, in science con- 
tradictory to what may possibly be true outside of our know- 
ledge namely, in those things which are accepted on faith/' 
These last words contain the main prop of our author's theory. 
He believes that what is accepted on faith is " outside of our 
knowledge." According to such a theory we ought to say that 
because we accept on faith the creation of the world the fact oj 
creation is unknown to us ; and because we believe that Adam 
sinned, and his sin was inherited by all his descendants, we 
do not know anything concerning Adam's disobedience or the 
original sin. This is just as much as to pretend that we do not 
know the existence of Pekin, Australia, or Tartary, because we 
only trust geographical maps or the descriptions of travellers ; 
and we know nothing about Alexander, Hannibal, or Totila, 
since we have not seen them ourselves, but only believe the tes- 
timony of historians. The theory is new, and, we fear, will not 
be " accepted on faith." 

Mr. Bierbower, having given us these bits of perverted me- 
diaeval erudition, leads us by degrees to an examination of St. 
Thomas' works; and while preparing a general attack and a 
complete demolition of the same, he feels bound to make a little 
show of liberality by admitting that the saint was " the intellec- 
tual Charlemagne of the middle ages, who conquered and or- 
ganized in one intellectual empire all the sciences " ; nay, he was 
"the spiritual Hildebrand, who subordinated in one moral sys- 
tem all our thought." But, after all, " he added little that was 
new to philosophy, and not much to theology. He mainly col- 
lected what had been written before, and argued for or against 
well-known propositions. Like a judge, he summed up, ex- 
pounded, and decided, but did not make or suggest much that 
was original. He was a storehouse, in whose mind was gath- 
ered and arranged in system all existing knowledge ; and he dis- 
coursed intelligently about it, giving.it fixed form and state- 
ment." 

This may look fair enough ; but our progressive writer im- 
mediately adds: "He reconciled, however, a past religion to a 
past science ; he did not much that will affect the present age 



1883.] . THE NEW-ENGLANDER FOR JANUARY, 1883. 73 

or . its problems. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is ac- 
cordingly essentially worthless to-day. No scientific man gives 
any serious attention to his distinctions, or can arrive at any 
discoveries or formulations of truth through them, while the 
speculative philosopher has passed to other subjects and other 
methods. St. Thomas is hopelessly out of date, and all the 
galvanizing from that powerful battery, the Vatican, will hard- 
ly bring him to life in this century." 

Alas ! how hastily Mr. Bierbower believes in his dreams, 
though he believes so little in revelation. " A past religion"! 
Is, then, the Catholic religion less widespread in our age than 
it was in the thirteenth century? New churches, new colleges, 
new monasteries are every year erected, new dioceses formed, 
new missions opened throughout the wide world, new saints are 
canonized, new definitions of faith are made, and everything 
shows a superabundance of Christian life that wins the hatred 
of free-thinkers and provokes the jealousy of the well-paid but 
unsuccessful Protestant proselytizers. If all this shows that the 
old religion is past let Mr. Bierbower himself decide. 

He is no less mistaken in his second statement concerning the 
old science that is, the scholastic philosophy. Modern thought, 
we know, does not sympathize with it. But can we ticket it " a 
past science " only because a few scores of sceptical unbelievers 
ignore it and hate its crushing power ? Infidels are not yet, 
and very likely will never be, the rulers of the philosophical 
world. No, sir ; neither Catholicism nor metaphysics are " out of 
date " ; they need no galvanizing; they both live, and thrive, and 
fight their battles, and conquer, in spite of all your puny efforts 
and idle talk. 

But the Thomistic philosophy, we are now told, is a science 
"essentially worthless." Why? Apparently because nowa- 
days everything must be worthless which does not pay readily 
in dollars and cents. We willingly concede that St. Thomas did 
not write for the utilitarians, nor did he expect that his distinc- 
tions, definitions, and syllogisms would engage the attention of 
the empiricist whose ambition is satisfied with a United States 
patent and its advantages. He wrote for speculative philoso- 
phers; and though our author affirms that these "have passed 
to other subjects and other methods," we make bold to tell him 
that even in this he is again at fault. There are now, on an 
average, one thousand Catholic bishops, one hundred thousand 
regular and secular clergymen, and a considerable number of 
educated Catholic laymen who can fairly be reckoned among 



74 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN [April, 

decent speculative philosophers. These have not passed to 
other subjects and other methods ; they still follow with consci- 
entious fidelity the scholastic method, and glory in the study of 
the high questions which modern men have "given up." Their 
philosophy, too, challenges all the theories of your Herbert 
Spencers, Mills, Darwins, and of the whole crew of their mate- 
rialistic, sceptical, atheistic, or pantheistic followers, who pro- 
fane the name of philosophy by attaching it to hollow, mon- 
strous, and often degrading doctrines. Your men who " have 
passed to other subjects and other methods," besides being ex- 
ceedingly few as compared with our great body of Catholic 
doctors, are also so divided among themselves, so destitute of 
sound principles, so inconsistent in their views, so loose in their 
terminology, so reckless in their conclusions, that, were it not 
for some graces of style, for the patronage of secret societies 
and the imbecility of the half-educated multitude, most of them 
would have already seen their name consigned to the catalogue 
of the sophists, or perhaps even inserted in that of charlatans. 

Nor can our author accuse us of exaggeration. He himself 
confesses that the present "progress" in modern philosophy 
"consists less in solving the questions which it discusses than in 
giving them up." To be sure, if questions are given up we can- 
not see that much room will be left for speculative philosophy. 
He also confesses that " we [that is, the modern thinkers} have re- 
duced ourselves to ignorance of the very terms in which the scho- 
lastics did their thinking, and by sweeping away their distinc- 
tions we cannot seriously consider their questions." And, as if 
this were not yet sufficient to make us see the depth of degrada- 
tion to which modern philosophical thought has descended, he 
takes the trouble to inform us more in detail of the present de- 
plorable state of things in the following words, which we b<?g our 
reader to keep in his mind for future reference: 

" We do not consider to-day whether the soul is material or immaterial, 
because we do not know the difference between matter and immaterial 
stuff, as we once thought we did. We do not consider whether the mind 
is simple or composed, because we do not understand what simple is, or 
what composed is, in that remote and refined sense as applied to something 
beyond our tests. We do not consider whether space is finite or infinite, 
because we do not know, since Kant, whether there is any space or not. 
We do not consider whether time is eternal or not, because we do not 
know whether there is any time. We do not consider the old questions of 
the forms and modifications of substances, because we do not know what 
form, or modification, or substance is. We do not consider what is abso- 
lutely true, or right, or perfect, because we do not know whether there is 



1883.] THE NEW-ENGLANDER FOR JANUARY, 1883. 75 

any absolute, as we once seemed so well to know. These questions, with 
the resolving and sublimating of their factors, have passed away from phi- 
losophy, except as historic curiosities ; and their primitive simplicity, which 
once divided men in issues, interests us no more." 

Could anything be more instructive? We now see that the 
haters of the scholastic philosophy, the representatives of mod- 
ern progress, the men who presume to write articles against the 
Angel of the Schools, " have reduced themselves to ignorance of 
the very terms in which the scholastics did their thinking" ; they 
" do not know " whether the soul be material or immaterial ; 
they "do not know " whether there be any space or not ; they 
" do not know " that there is anything to be called time ; they " do 
not know " what is form, what is modification, what is substance, 
what is right, what is true. All these realities have been " sub- 
limated " that is, deliberately and remorselessly set aside as " his- 
toric curiosities." And yet we fancy that Mr. Bierbower, not- 
withstanding his declaration that he, as a philosopher, does not 
know the existence of time, may yet, as a plain American citizen, 
rejoice in the possession of a good watch and know the hour of 
dinner. Nor can we doubt but that, though he, as a modern 
thinker, does not know whether there is any space, he may still 
relish a short drive of a couple of miles outside of Chicago to 
breathe the pure air of the country ; for, though he cannot de- 
cide whether air be " a substance, a form, or a modification," yet, 
as a man of sense, he will practically recognize that air, life, 
health, and comfort are not " historic curiosities," and that their 
factors resist " sublimation." 

But if we admit with our writer that modern thinkers are 
ignorant of the definitions of the most common things, and even 
of the terms by which such things have been uniformly expressed 
by the best philosophers of the past, what will be the inference 
but that such speculative thinkers are either buffoons or hypo- 
crites ? For how can they pretend to speculate, if they do not 
care for the definitions of things? And what terms can they 
employ to make themselves understood, if they are ''ignorant " 
of the traditional language of philosophy ? They may, indeed, 
invent new terms, as they have done ; but how can these terms 
convey any definite notion, since definitions " have passed away " 
from their philosophy? Let, then, Mr. Bierbower either confess 
that his picture of modern speculative philosophy is a black 
calumny, or else encourage the modern thinker to speculate in 
railroads, politics, or money, where he can have a chance of suc- 
cess, rather than in philosophy. 



76 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN [April, 

It is pretty evident, we think, after these remarks, that our 
writer's reasoning, instead of proving that his speculative phi- 
losophy can successfully defy the old schools, demonstrates the 
impossibility of a healthy philosophy not based on recognized 
principles, not ruled by good definitions, not studious of the 
wisdom of past generations. Now, this is the reason why the 
Vatican " that powerful central battery," as our author calls 
it, or rather that dynamo-machine, as we might say (for batteries 
are growing obsolete, and the language of progress is impera- 
tive) sends out a stream of irresistible power, not to galvanize a 
defunct doctrine, but to enlighten the world with the pure light 
of a true and saving philosophy. Wisdom was not born yes- 
terday. The accumulated labor of the profoundest thinkers of 
the past is the base of our intellectual civilization. The modern 
world may be foolish enough to reject such a precious inheri- 
tance ; but the Pontiff of the only true Church, to whom the 
spiritual and intellectual progress of Christianity is a matter of 
the gravest concern, sends out a warning to which no lover of 
truth can be indifferent, and for which all educated men should 
offer him expressions of sincere gratitude. But let us return to 
our writer. 

Mr. Bierbower gives us a sketch of St. Thomas' life, on 
which \ve have no time to dwell. Suffice it to say that it is very 
offensive. He does not find anything very remarkable in the 
life of the saint, " except what is not true." He remarks that St. 
Thomas, when a boy, " would steal to give to the poor," and 
charges Archbishop Vaughan, his biographer, as holding that 
" saints often get to be so good that a little stealing does not 
hurt them." With the same levity he pretends that St. Thomas 
was "a spiritist." As the devil once appeared to him in the 
shape of a negro St. Thomas rushed at him with his fist, whilst 
Luther is said to have in a similar circumstance thrown at the 
devil an ink-bottle ; whereupon our writer makes the pleasant 
remark that " Protestants have ever fought the devil with ink, 
while the Catholics have fought him with force." .Alas! what 
blissful ignorance of history. 

Of St. Thomas as a philosopher our writer says among other 
things that he was in advance of his contemporaries, " but only 
as a leader, not as a reformer or revolutionist." This is true, of 
course. 

" His mind was naturally rational and discriminating, and his 
writings are usually fair and logical. His method is to take a 
proposition, or text, or word, and to expound its meaning, and 



1883.] THE NEW-ENGLANDER FOR JANUARY, 1883. 77 

discuss every question that rises in connection with it, as well as 
to adduce what the Fathers, Aristotle, and Scripture say on the 
subject." This is the method prescribed by reason in the inves- 
tigation of truth ; and yet this is the method that our writer 
considers unworthy of modern philosophers. 

" Aquinas . . . distinguished clearly between theology and 
science, which had before been badly jumbled. The peculiar 
Christian doctrines, he taught, cannot be proved by reason, and 
we should not attempt it. They are to be received on faith. 
The most that reason can do is to show that they do not contra- 
dict science, and, in a few cases, to confirm them by analogies or 
other assistant proofs." This is not St. Thomas' teaching, as we 
shall see further on. 

" He next taught that there are two sources of knowledge, 
revelation and reason." Certainly. " By revelation we get 
theology." Not theology itself, but the subject-matter of theo- 
logy. " By reason we get science or philosophy." Of course. 
" By revelation he means not only the Bible, but also the church, 
Fathers, and decrees of councils." Not exactly. The church, 
the Fathers, and the councils are only witnesses of the Christian 
faith. " By reason he means not only the faculty we 'call by that 
name, but the general body of pagan and Mohammedan philoso- 
phy, and particularly Aristotle." By no means. That body of 
pagan philosophy was indeed respected by St. Thomas wherever 
he found it to agree with reason, but was freely contradicted 
and refuted by him wherever he found it to be wrong. 

" In answer to the question how we know that what we get 
by faith is true (seeing that it is not proven) he would say that 
we are inwardly moved by God to accept the documents of 
revelation and the teaching of the church, from which, being 
once accepted, it can easily be demonstrated." But this is not St. 
Thomas' answer. He teaches, on the contrary, that we possess 
the strongest rational motives for admitting both the truth of 
what we believe and the duty of believing it. Nor does the 
holy doctor say that what we get by faith is " not proven " ; he 
only says that the articles of faith are not intrinsically evident to 
our understanding, which is quite a different thing. Facts may 
be known without being understood ; and most of our knowledge, 
even of the natural order, comes to us by authority without in- 
trinsic evidence. It is therefore a fallacy to confound the know- 
ledge of the fact with the knowledge of its explanation, as the 
author has done. Nor is it St. Thomas' doctrine that dogmas 
once accepted can be easily demonstrated. Demonstration is, 



78 ST. TJ/OMAS AQUINAS IN [April, 

for St. Thomas, a proof based on the intrinsic evidence of things ; 
whereas faith, according to him and to all our theologians, has 
nothing to do with intrinsic evidence, but is based on the sole 
authority of Him from whom the revelation proceeds. Not even 
the strongest motives of credibility can beget such evidence ; 
they only make truth so evidently credible that its rejection, on the 
part of the well instructed, would be an act of dishonesty and an 
evidence of unpardonable imprudence. This goes far to explain 
what our author finds so hard to understand viz., how " the in- 
tellect assents to articles of faith in obedience to the command of 
the will without being forced by proofs." If those articles were 
presented to us with proofs of intrinsic evidence our intellect 
would indeed be "forced" to assent, and our faith would be 
without merit; but since they are presented to us only with 
extrinsic proofs, our intellect, while " forced " to admit their 
evident credibility and the duty of believing them, is still free 
to withhold, though imprudently and dishonestly, the assent of 
faith. 

Our author mentions some of our motives of credibility, and 
he adds: " These make faith easier ; and while they do not prove 
it, make itfless irrational." Thus, according to him, when we 
believe on motives of evident credibility we are still acting 
" irrationally." To act rationally we should only believe when 
we have seen. But, if so, then there is not, nor has there ever 
been, on earth a rational man. People go every day from New 
York to Liverpool with no other protection than a ticket ; and 
they do not doubt but that their steamer takes them to Liver- 
pool, not to Rio Janeiro, Lisbon, or the Cape. Their intellect, 
however, is not " forced by proof" to see this. Will, then, our 
author call them "irrational "? A man, feeling unwell, consults 
a skilful physician, who prescribes some pills, the nature and 
composition of which are a mystery to the patient. Clearly, his 
intellect is not "forced by proof" to admit that such pills are 
good for him, and yet he takes them as ordered. Will our 
author say that medicines must not be taken before a perfect 
analysis is made of their ingredients? In these cases, and in 
numberless others, we act rationally, though our intellect is not 
" forced by proof," but only believes on what it considers suffi- 
cient motives of credibility. Is it, then, only in the case of reli- 
gious faith that our intellect must be " forced by proof " under 
pain of acting irrationally ? If Mr. Bierbower finds leisure to 
compare the knowledge acquired by faith with that obtained by 
intrinsic proofs, he will easily discover their different nature, and 



1883.] THE NEW-ENGLANDER FOR JANUARY, 1883. 79 

will then realize the fact that the source of his blunders is to be 
traced to his " sweeping away of scholastic distinctions." 

And now let us hear what are, " when reduced to plain lan- 
guage," the principles which our writer finds involved in the 
Thomistic doctrine on faith : 

" First, we may take some things for granted without proof; secondly, 
we must not consider some things when there is danger that we will doubt 
them ; and, thirdly, if we find any of certain things untrue we must not 
admit the fact. Here we have the three greatest of all intellectual vices 
prejudice, slavery, dishonesty. . . . We are to come with predilection to 
our investigation of religion ; we are not to investigate at all where we are 
likely to learn anything different ; and we are not to admit our conclusion, 
if found to be unfavorable. Taking for granted what we want to know, we 
are not to consider what discredits it, or to admit anything found contrary 
to it. Starting out to find the truth, we are to take up something without 
looking at it, then not to examine it, and if we ever learn our error after- 
ward, not to acknowledge it. ... Religion is thus, according to Aquinas' 
system, never actually examined, is never allowed on principle to be ex- 
amined, and its acceptance is never to be affected by examination, if had." 

We cannot but admire the singular acuteness of the man 
who, alone among thousands, has been able to discover all this 
nonsense in the Thomistic doctrine ; the more so because this 
same man " does not know " a great number of things once 
known to everybody, but which, " with the resolving and sub- 
limating of their factors, have passed away from philosophy." 
Perhaps, however, his strange discovery may be accounted for 
by saying that the old logic, too, has now been "'sublimated" 
like all the rest, or by recalling to mind how our progressive 
writer has " reduced himself to ignorance of the very terms in 
which the scholastics did their thinking " ; for, if so, what else 
'could be expected from him but that he would attach to the 
terms of the Angelic Doctor a false and impossible meaning? 

Where did St. Thomas say that " we must take some things 
for granted without proof " ? Nowhere. But, says our writer, 
does he not " accept the dictum of St. Anselm, Credo, ut intelligam 
I believe, that I may know " ? Certainly he does. What then ? 
Then, our writer infers, " we are to accept some things that we 
do not know to be true, and then to deduce the rest of our 
knowledge from them, or base our intelligence on our igno- 
rance." But this is a vicious argument. The dictum of St. An- 
selm does not mean " I believe what I do not know to be true " 
it means just the opposite : I believe what I know to be true ; 
but as every known truth can and does lead to the knowledge of 



So 57*. THOMAS AQUINAS IN [April, 

other cognate truths, I recognize also that there is a knowledge 
which depends on belief: Credo, ut intelligently 

But St. Thomas, says our author, " asks us to accept without 
evidence the principle of revelation, the Scriptures, the councils, 
and the teaching of the church." This is a false charge. St. 
Thomas never asks us to accept anything without evidence. He 
himself furnishes the student with the best evidences of Chris- 
tianity, though he does not develop them in separate treatises, 
as they were not controverted in his time. The treatise De locis 
theologicis became necessary only when the " Reformers " had 
begun to trouble the minds of the faithful with their malicious 
falsehoods and fanciful Scriptural interpretations ; and when the 
errors of the Protestant sects had so unsettled the minds of 
many as to make unbelief respectable and fashionable, the same 
treatises went on multiplying everywhere in defence of Christian 
faith, till libraries are full of them, and no man who reads can hon- 
estly pretend that ourrfaith has been accepted "without evidence." 
But if the form given to these polemical treatises was new, their 
substance was old, and most of it was culled from St. Thomas' 
works so false is it that " he asks us to believe without evidence." 

As our author seems not to understand the grounds of our 
belief, we will offer him a specimen of our method of reasoning 
concerning the evidences of faith. Mathematicians maintain 
that two lines may continually approach without ever being able 
to meet. This is, to the vulgar, a mystery, or, as others would 
say, an absurdity ; and they would ask: Where is the evidence? 
Now, the only evidence they are capable of appreciating may 
be put in the following syllogism : What competent judges 
declare to have been rigorously demonstrated is true. But 
mathematicians, who alone are competent judges of the question, 
uniformly declare that a curve called hyperbola and a straight 
line called asymptote, though continually approaching, can never 
meet, and that this is a theorem rigorously demonstrated. It is 
true, therefore, that two lines may continually approach one an- 
other without ever being able to meet. This argument contains 
the extrinsic evidence of the theorem, the only one, as we have 
said, that common people with no mathematical training can ap- 
preciate. The intrinsic evidence is by no means wanting, but it 
is only implicitly presented, inasmuch as it is testified to by all 
competent authorities. If, then, the theorem be accepted on the 
strength of the above syllogism, who will say that it is accepted 
without sufficient evidence? Is not the uniform authority of 
mathematicians the best criterion of mathematical truth? 



1883.] THE NEW'-ENGLANDER FOR JANUARY, 1883. 81 

And now let us come to our case. A revealed truth say, 
" that God is one essence in three Persons " is promulgated, and 
men are commanded to believe it. The}' ask: Where is the evi- 
dence? And the evidence is given them in the following syllo- 
gism : What God has himself revealed and taught us to believe 
is undoubtedly true; but G*od has revealed and taught us to 
believe that he is one essence in three Persons ; and therefore 
there is no doubt that God subsists in three Persons. Here 
again the evidence is extrinsic : it only proves the truth of the 
mystery, without explaining it. The intrinsic evidence, which 
would give us a clear insight of the mystery, is withheld from 
us in the present life, but with no detriment to our faith ; for 
such evidence is not the ground of belief. When, therefore, the 
mystery is thus proposed and believed, who will pretend that it 
is believed " without evidence"? Is not God's infallible word 
the best and surest criterion of all truth ? Our author can onljr 
reply that he has no evidence compelling him to admit that God 
has spoken. But this evasion has no bearing on the present 
question. If he has no evidence of the fact of revelation, and if 
his ignorance of revelation is invincible and inculpable, we shall 
certainly not require him to believe: we would only require 
him to study. But how can a writer who professes to have 
examined St. Thomas' works be still laboring under inculpable 
and invincible ignorance of that which forms the main subject of 
the Thomistic teachings? As for us, when we know that God 
has spoken, whether by words or by miracles, by prophets or 
by apostles, by angels or by Christ, by Peter or by his succes- 
sors, we know that there is more than sufficient evidence for our 
belief. It is vain to tell us that " we take for granted what we 
want to know." The only thing we want to know is the fact of 
revelation ; and this we do not take for granted, but we ascer- 
tain it by proper evidence. The ignorant, indeed, may not be 
able to gather such evidence; but, as in all other things, so in 
religious matters, it is the duty of the ignorant to listen to their 
natural guides, in doing which they act most wisely, as they 
obey the command of the apostle, who orders us not to trust our 
abilities, not to indulge in private views, not to form sects, but 
to hear the church. 

The second charge viz., that, according to St. Thomas, " we 
must not consider what discredits our faith " is notoriously ab- 
surd, not only because our faith is in no danger of being dis- 
credited, but also because St. Thomas himself, by the confession 
of our writer, " states fairly and strongly the opposite views, so 
VOL. xxxvii. 6 



82 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. [April, 

much so that many Catholics have objected to his influence as 
making infidels by raising objections which he cannot answer." 
Thus our author gives the lie to himself. 

The last charge that, if we find among our articles of faith 
anything false, " we must not acknowledge the fact " needs no 
discussion, as it is only a silly impertinence. 

And here we must stop. We do not know to what religious 
denomination Mr. A. Bierbower belongs. He "may have been 
educated in some Christian sect, but his writings certainly do 
not afford the least evidence of a Christian spirit. Indeed, his 
article on St. Thomas Aquinas might have been written as well 
.by a Jew or a pagan. Its prominent features, as we have proved, 
-are levity, ignorance, and presumption. We apprehend that 
those among the contributors to the New-Englander whose 
names are preceded by the qualification " Rev." must feel some 
-embarrassment in seeing themselves associated with a writer 
vwho openly labors to uproot the foundations of Christian faith. 




> 

-A 

[OHN HOWARD PAYNE. 
w a tax 10. 

"It is a more than pleasing, it is a generous, labor to attend to the neglected and to 
iremember the forgotten." BURKE. 

IN the tales of fairyland, so real to our childish faith, we all 
remember the bright throng which assembled at the birth of the 
young prince, each bringing to his cradle her gift of some beauti- 
ful thing which was to enrich his future life; and so numerous 
were the treasures poured out upon him that it seemed as if 
nothing more could be bestowed to secure for this happy and 
favored being an unclouded destiny. But the malignant face of 
2 uninvited fairy always peers out from the background of 
the picture, and, when no one is looking, she casts in her gift 
among the rest, and the fatal spell begins to work, silent and 
unsuspected. 

Perhaps no name in the literary annals of the century suggests 

iear an illustration of the truth underlying the old fairy tale 

as that of John Howard Payne, in whose checkered and mourn- 

3ry a fresh interest has been of late revived through the 

: bringing his remains from their resting-place at Tunis 

> his native shores. There is something peculiarly fitting 



1883.] JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 83 

in the fact that this pious duty should be performed by a personal 
friend, the venerable and munificent Corcoran, thereby proclaim- 
ing- his affectionate regard for that gifted soul which in all its 
earthly course succeeded in but one thing that of awakening in 
those who knew him best the most devoted attachment. At the 
time when Payne, a mere boy in years, was arousing the wild- 
est enthusiasm throughout the country by his wonderful imper- 
sonations, his name upon every lip, his footsteps followed by ad- 
miring crowds, the cynosure of all eyes, courted and flattered by 
all classes of society, this friend, an unknown student in the halls 
of the quiet old college of Georgetown, carried away with the 
delight of his splendid acting, became one of the warmest ad- 
mirers of the young tragedian, although he did not until long 
afterwards make his acquaintance. To-day that student, a gray- 
haired man full of years and of honors, president of the alumni 
association of our oldest Catholic university, the millionaire 
philanthropist whose name is synonymous with all good and 
generous deeds, stretches out his kindly hand in a last greeting 
to his early friend and calls him home. In. regard to the cha- 
racter and talents of Payne one is forced to set a&icfe the ordinary 
standards by which such judgments are usually, formed. The 
plain statement of facts in the earlier portion of fiis^e-xtraordinary 
career sounds like the extreme of exaggeration. \ Born in the 
city of New York soon after the close of the Revolution, which 
left all the elements of society seething and heaving under new 
and untried conditions, forcing into eager and restless develop- 
ment all resources of the people, intellectual as well as material, 
the abnormal activity of life surrounding him from his first con- 
sciousness seems to have had a proportionate influence upon his 
mental growth. At an age when the average boy is content 
with a judicious mingling of sport and study this high-strung 
spirit was finding utterance for itself in editorial work of ability 
so marked that veterans in such labor were led to inquire whose 
it might be. To the honor of that much-abused class be it said 
en passant that- he received cordial recognition and encourage- 
ment from its members, and from at least one of them substantial 
aid. Modest and unassuming, he was yet frank and unem- 
barrassed in the expression of his views, and his conversational 
powers were found to be out of all keeping with his thirteen 
years. Poetry was so innately a part of himself that he wrote 
without effort verses considered to be worthy of being sung on 
ceremonial occasions, and he threw off odes, satires, sonnets, or 
anniversary stanzas with the ease of the practised literary hack. 



84. JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. [April, 

Payne possessed a remarkable facility in the acquisition of 
language, and it is almost incredible that, with the very limited 
opportunities afforded him, he should have been enabled to at- 
tain his well-known mastery of the French an accomplishment 
to which he was to owe, in a later time, his daily bread. The 
polished address always so noticeable in him was the natural 
result of his home-training. Brought up in a household num- 
bering seven children, his surroundings were all those of refine- 
ment and culture, though not of affluence. The social rank of 
the family was of the best, and his father a man of rare attain- 
ments and spotless name, while his mother, a noble woman, was 
well fitted in all respects for her place in such a group. In 
short, it would be hard to conceive a pleasanter picture than 
that of Payne's childhood affords. It will, then, readily be per- 
ceived whence his loving heart drew inspiration for his song of 
" Home," when recalling, in the sad retrospect of after-years, 
the memory of those golden days which came all too soon to an 
end. Before the young poet was sixteen the happy circle was 
broken up, the death of both parents occurring within a short 
period, and the children separated, never to be together again as 
a family. The world was all before him where to choose, and 
without hesitation he determined upon the stage, the object of 
his earliest aspirations. Of his phenomenal success we have 
already spoken. His first appearance was in Boston, to which 
city his family had several years before removed. Payne's un- 
doubted dramatic ability was supplemented by a noble bearing, 
an expressive and remarkably handsome face, and a beautifully, 
modulated voice. He delighted in roles requiring impassioned 
acting, into which his sensitive and enthusiastic nature enabled 
him to throw himself with an effect nothing short of marvellous 
in one so young. No parallel instance is to be found in his- 
trionic art, save that of the English prodigy, Master Betty, to 
whose merits the great Macready pays such graceful tribute in 
his Reminiscences and Diaries. In some recently-published re- 
collections of Payne* it is surprising to find Mr. John T. Ford, 
the oldest theatrical manager now living in this country, assert- 
ing that " the haughty and sensitive Macready was forced to act 
subordinate roles with Betty." When the " young Roscius," as 
he was called, appeared first, under the management of Mac- 
ready's father, the son was a school-boy at Rugby ; and on one 
occasion, as a special indulgence, the latter was taken with one 

his school-fellows to see Master Betty act Richard III. He 

* Washington Evening Star, December 18, 1882. 



1883.] JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 85 

says that he " could form but little judgment of the perfor- 
mance," but that both were carried along by the enthusiasm 
around them.* By the time that Macready had earned the 
right to be " haughty and sensitive " Betty had long lost the 
prestige of his brilliant youth, and no possibility of rivalship 
was ever thought of between them. Payne was now seemingly 
on the high-road to fame and fortune, looking forward to the 
inevitable trip across the water for an English verdict, without 
which no American actor's cup of happiness was then full. But 
just here began the evidence of that leading defect in his mental 
make-up, the lack of decision which gives the keynote to all his 
after-failures. Inexperienced, confiding, easily swayed by those 
he trusted, he was beset by a multitude of counsellors, well- 
meanirig, no doubt, but sadly injudicious. Persuaded by these, 
he quitted the career for which nature had designed him and 
took charge of some half-developed library scheme in connec- 
tion with the Boston Athenaeum. The necessary result ensued 
and the enterprise failed ; and Payne found himself without em- 
ployment, his hold upon the public of his own country broken, 
and without means to seek his fortunes abroad. So great was 
his popularity, however, that this difficulty was soon removed, 
and through the kindness of friends he made the journey in 
1813. The then existing state of feeling between England and 
our own country made him the victim of misplaced official zeal 
and subjected him to an imprisonment in a Liverpool jail. In a 
letter to a friend he wrote : " The mayor treated us with great 
politeness, and indulged us with permission to be removed to 
our present lodgings, which are delightful, and for which we are 
permitted to pay five guineas apiece weekly. The only thing 
that interferes with our comfort is the confinement within our 
massy gates." Upon the examination of their passports by the 
authorities at London orders were sent for their release, after 
fourteen days' detention. The young actor carried with him 
letters of -such a character as ensured him a pleasant reception, 
and he was taken by the hand by Coleridge, Southey, Sheil, 
Barry Cornwall, Charles Lamb, arid all that coterie of English wit 
and learning. His first appearance upon the stage was at Drury 
Lane, in Douglas. He had never seen the lady, Mrs. Powell, who 
was to support him, until they were both dressed for the play. 
But her womanly heart must have felt for the youth in so trying 
a position, for she received him with such genuine kindness, and 
seconded him so ably in every point, that he was at once re- 

* Macready's Reminiscences and Diaries, p. 12. 



86 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. [April, 

assured, and " the performance throughout was received with 
unbounded applause." * Leslie, the artist who painted his por- 
trait in the character of Young Norval, has sketched this epoch 
in Payne's life in a few airy sentences rather misleading as to ac- 
tual facts. After stating that Master Payne had acquired a small 
fortune in America by his personations, he says that he played 
a short engagement at Drury Lane, " but with 4ittle applause, 
excepting from the American friends who mustered to sup- 
port him." He mentions having attended 'one of these per- 
formances in company with Benjamin West, who was " pleased 
with Payne." f In contrast with Leslie's assertion is the well- 
known fact that the leading English journals were unanimous in 
praise of the ability displayed by the adventurous youth, and 
that the interest he aroused was continually increasing as he 
became known in the provinces. In Liverpool he received the 
highest commendation ; in Manchester he was pronounced equal 
if not superior to Betty ; and in Dublin he had the advantage 
of Miss O'Neil's support, where, appearing together as Romeo 
and Juliet, the enthusiasm they awakened was unbounded. The 
popularity which Payne achieved during this engagement was 
increased by the fact of his playing gratuitously for benefits to 
various members of the company. He was everywhere feted 
and loaded with hospitable attentions. He was intimately ac- 
quainted with Daniel O'Connell, and travelled in his party on 
one occasion when the latter was making a sort of triumphal 
progress through Ireland. Charles Phillips, in one of his florid 
speeches made at this time, and which has since become a stock 
piece for declamation, mentioned Payne in direct terms of high- 
est compliment. That Payne returned to London, at the close of 
a singularly successful series of engagements, not much better off 
than when he arrived in England, it is quite safe to say, was 
owing in great part to the unthinking indulgence of his expensive 
tastes. Impulsive and unpractical, it is not surprising that he 
should have enjoyed to the full the sunshine of what looked like 
prosperity, without taking thought for the future. Still, what- 
ever his own share of blame in the result, it is certain that he 
was most unfairly treated in his business affairs with the Drury 
Lane Theatre. With his usual unsuspecting frankness, he seems 

> have left pecuniary matters very much at the discretion of his 
employers, and unhappily became the victim of his trust in 

anagenal human nature. Finding himself powerless to enforce 

* Gabriel Harrison's Life and Writings of Payne, p. 35. 
t Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections, p. 146. 



1883.] JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 87 

his claims for past services, he accepted a position offered hin^by 
one of the stockholders of the theatre, which necessitated his 
residence in Paris. Here he was to examine new plays, translate, 
adapt, and arrange them for the English stage, and further by 
all the means in his power the interests of the theatre. His fine 
dramatic instinct and quick intelligence peculiarly fitted him for 
the work, which was executed with a skill and celerity unpre- 
cedented, to the entire satisfaction of his patron and the pecuni- 
ary advantage of thfe managers. Everything which he sent over 
was received with thanks and commendation. But when Payne, 
finding himself nearing the end of his means, ventured to request 
the payment of his stipulated salary, a great change occurred. 
Manuscripts then in hand were returned to him, and upon going 
in person to London for explanation and redress he was coolly 
informed that the contract with himself, having been made by an 
individual member of the committee, was not binding. Thus 
deliberately cheated out of the fruits of long and conscientious 
labor, and driven to extremity, he became a subordinate member 
of the rival theatre of Covent Garden. Being honorably treated 
in regard to salary, he was enabled in some degree to repair his 
embarrassments, but added nothing to his reputation as an actor. 
Afterwards he was induced, most unluckily as it proved, to 
undertake the management of a minor theatre an enterprise 
which utterly failed, leaving him seriously involved. 

His next essay was the production of his first original play, 
the tragedy of Brutus ; or, The Fall of Tarquin, by which he will 
be" chiefly remembered in the line of dramatic authorship, as in 
poetry he will be for ever associated with his one immortal song. 
The play, as originally conceived, was for Edmund Kean ; and 
old as the subject is, having been over and over again used be- 
fore Payne took it up, it has in his hands a surprising vigor and 
freshness. The leading defect, to the mind of the play-goer, is 
the absorption of the whole interest, action, and expression into 
the role of Brutus. But this was in accordance with the im- 
perious demands of the actor, whose will was law within the 
sphere of his despotic sway, and who was so completely the idol 
of the day that every word, and glance, and tone was received 
with a rapture of delight. Had the play possessed far less of 
merit than it does Kean's approval would have secured its suc- 
cess. In the preface to the work Payne acknowledges his in- 
debtedness to his predecessors for such ideas, and even diction, 
as seemed best suited to strengthen his own conception, and 
adds: " Such obligations, to be culpable, must be secret; but it 



88 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. [April, 

may be observed that no assistance of other writers can be avail- 
able without an effort almost, if not altogether, as laborious as 
original composition." The prologue of the play was written by 
Payne's admirer and friend, the Rev. George H. Croly, author 
of the once popular romance Salathiel. Enthusiastically wel- 
comed by the press and the public, and remunerative as it was 
to its author, the irony of fate decreed that this dawn of pros- 
perity should be turned into disaster. Rapacious creditors 
urged their claims, and Payne was throwft into prison. Not 
even yet disheartened, he began at once another play, now but 
little known, called Thdrtse ; or, The Orphan of Geneva. This 
also succeeded, to better purpose for the poor author, who was 
finally enabled to go to Paris, where it is pleasant to find him in 
company with Washington Irving. In his allusion to his first 
meeting with Payne there is a little touch which brings out the 
womanly side of his character, the gentleness which no trou- 
bles ever could embitter. In his little room, opening upon a 
garden, were two pet canaries, which flew about at will all day, 
and returned to a dainty, moss-covered shelter at night. Payne 
had, of course, many friends at the French capital, and Irving's 
letters secured him from any lack of society. Together they 
went everywhere and enjoyed the gay life around them. Among 
those to whom Payne presented his compatriot was the great 
Talma, with whom Irving was greatly pleased. But, delightful 
as were their surroundings, the two authors were not tempted to 
idleness, and in a short time they were jointly employed upon 
the work of adapting plays. In consequence of one of Payne's 
rapid changes of fortune he was at one time in possession of a 
fine suite of apartments in the Rue Richelieu, and when the in- 
evitable reverse came his friend took them off his hands with 
all their handsome appointments. The latter writes gleefully to 
his brother of his new quarters, delighting especially in their 
being near the great national library. The partnership in lite- 
rary work continued for some time, and, spite of the fact that it 
was dangerous for Payne to be seen in London on account of his 
financial embarrassments, he was always the bearer of such plays 
as were to be submitted to managers there. On one occasion he 
wrote to Irving that he had secured a lodging under the name 
of Hay ward, which he was every moment forgetting, and that his 
bed was over a livery stable, where coaches were entering every 
hour and where every horse had a bad cough.* In another let- 

* Life and Letters of Irving, vol. ii. p. 170. 



1883.] JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 89 

ter he speaks of having grown too portly for the stage since he 
had begun to " fatten on trouble and starvation." 

The two friends translated from the German, rewrote and 
adapted available English plays, and altered French pieces. 
Among the latter was Charles II. ; or, The Merry Monarch, an 
adaptation from La Jeunesse de Henri Cinq, by many supposed 
to be Payne's sole work, in which Charles Kemble made a fine 
impression.* That Irving was not credited with his rightful 
share in this and other plays was no fault of Payne's. Himself 
the soul of generosity, he would never have dreamed of such an 
act, if Irving had not stipulated for the concealment of his name. 
Charles Lamb entered into and enjoyed the broad comedy of 
The Merry Monarch with keenest zest. The least successful work 
during this partnership was that of Richelieu, which was not 
brought out until 1826, when Washington Irving was minis- 
ter at the court of Spain. Payne wrote a charming dedication 
of the play to him, m which he states that it is " imperative upon 
him " to offer him public thanks and acknowledgment for the 
aid which gave to the work its highest, value. Its want of 
acceptance by the public was due to the lack of incident, and it 
was pronounced better fitted for reading than for representation. 
The joint work seems to have produced a considerable remu- 
neration, and at all events was an important aid to both authors 
at the time. The most cordial relations continued unbroken 
between them through life, and even when their paths were most 
widely divergent. 

The opera of Clari, the Maid of Milan, brought out in 1823, 
and in which was incorporated " Home, Sweet Home," so 
well characterized in an after-dinner speech by Mr. William 
Davidge, the comedian, as " the brightest jewel in the coronet 
of simple song," was the work of Payne alone. An endless 
number of anecdotes have been told about the circumstances 
under which this song was written, but the one generally re- 
ceived seems to be that which fixes it as subsequent to the failure 
of Payne's undertaking as manager of Sadler's Wells Theatre, 
when one night, walking the streets of London, he passed before 
the windows of a stately mansion in which merry children were 
dancing in a lovely group ; a sudden, overwhelming sense of his 

* In the Library of Choice Literature edited by A R. Spofford and C. Gibbon, vol. viii. 
p. 362, we find the following in regard to the plays of Payne: ''Among his best dramas 
are Virginius and Charles II." Harrison says: "The Virginius of Payne never appeared; 
parts of it, however, were quoted in the London Magazine and highly commended " (Life of 
Payne, p. 75). 



90 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 

own lonely, almost destitute condition smote upon him, and out 
of the gloom and darkness his beautiful words sprang forth, the 
inspiration of a single moment. 5^ non 2 vero, e ben trovato. But, 
unfortunately for the romance of the story, there is another ver- 
sion, equally well authenticated as having been told by Payne 
himself, which gives an entirely different aspect to the subject. 
In this the author is said to have told his particular friend, Mr. 
James Rees, of Philadelphia, that the words of the song were 
suggested to him by an air sung by a peasant girl in Italy. He 
was so attracted by the melody that he spoke to her and asked 
her to repeat it, so as to enable him to jot down the notes, as 
she could not give him the name of the song. He sent both 
words and music to his friend, the celebrated composer, Henry 
Bishop, who, happening to know the air perfectly, adapted 
Payne's words to it. The acknowledged difficulty of writing 
a really great song brings to mind the fact that of all the songs 
endeared to us by early and familiar association there is not one 
that Americans can claim exclusively except this. Tender old 
ballads by the score we borrow from the Irish, Scotch, English, 
and German, but of our own there is but one. The wonderful 
influence of" Home, Sweet Home" is not easily explained. Its 
spell is one of feeling, subtle as a perfume, which eludes the 
scalpel of the critic and defies analysis. Simple as the utterance 
of a child, it has yet the pathos of a strong man's yearning. It 
touches the heart by its suggestion of sympathy with all other 
hearts, and its soft tones bring to the dullest ear some echo of 
what Wordsworth calls 

" The still, sad music of humanity." 
The words of the song as originally written are these : 

" 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home ! 
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, 

(Like the love of a mother, 

Surpassing all other,) 
Which, seek through the wide world, is ne'er met with elsewhere ; 

There's a spell in the shade 

Where our infancy played, 
Even stronger than time and more deep than despair ! 

"An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain ! 
Oh, give me my lowly, thatch'd cottage again ! 
The birds and the lambkins that came at my call, 
Those who named me with pride, 
Those who played by my side 



1883.] JOHN ^HOWARD PAYNE. 91 

Give me them, with the innocence dearer than all ! 

The joys of the palaces through which I roam 

Only swell my heart's anguish. There's no place like home !" 

The precise form in which Payne himself finally arranged it 
for the opera, and which is preserved in his own handwriting, 
is as follows : 

'' 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home ! 
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, 
Which, seek through the wide world, is ne'er met with elsewhere ! 
Home, home, sweet, sweet home ! 
There's no place like home ! 
There's no place like home ! 

"An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain ! 
Oh, give me my lowly, thatched cottage again ! 
The birds singing gaily, that came at my call 
Give me them, and the peace of mind dearer than all. 
Home, home, sweet, sweet home ! 
There's no place like home ! 
There's no place like home !" 

It will be seen that this version, now universally sung, differs 
from the first only in being condensed into smaller compass, and 
it certainly loses nothing of its sweetness by the change. The 
alteration was evidently made with reference to its operatic ef- 
fect, not from any lack of adaptability in the omitted verses to 
the beautiful air. 

Payne's own literary taste must have made him aware from the 
first of the perfection of this song, for in the opera which formed 
its setting the heroine, Clari, says of it : " It is the song of 
my native village, . . . the first music heard by infancy in its 
cradle ; and our cottagers, blending it with all their earliest and 
tenderest recollections, never cease to feel its magic till they 
cease to live." The popularity of the song was unprecedented 
and made the fortune of every one connected with it, except, as 
usual, the author, who received eighty pounds as his share of 
the proceeds. 

From this time forward Payne's history seems to have con- 
stantly repeated itself by its record of alternate sunshine and 
shadow. During his residence abroad, covering a period of 
twenty years, he led by no means an idle life. On the contrary, 
the work he accomplished, had it met with anything approach- 
ing proper compensation, would have made him entirely inde- 
pendent of the frowns of fortune. But, as we have seen, he lived 



9 2 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. [ A P ril > 

only for the present. The associate of men far richer than him- 
self, and dependent upon his play writing for means to gratify 
his refined and expensive tastes, he too often allowed shrewd and 
avaricious employers to take advantage of him rather than sub- 
ject himself to the annoyance of securing his rights. He pre- 
pared about fifty pieces, covering the whole range of stage pre- 
sentation, many of them entirely original ; and even those which 
were called adaptations were his own in so many particulars as 
almost to make the term a misnomer. The genius of the French 
stage is so utterly unlike the tone of the English mind that the 
effort to transplant from one to the other involves much more 
than would at first sight appear. Let any one who questions 
the difficulty of the task undertake to put into French a single 
scene from any of the most familiar plays of Shakspere, and he 
will soon be convinced. As a matter of course, managers in this 
country had availed themselves of Payne's plays again and 
again. Equally as a matter of course, the author had derived no 
iota of profit therefrom, but, with his usual insouciance, he had not 
allowed the fact to give him any concern. Some of his friends 
in New York, however, indignant at the injustice done him, de- 
termined to take some steps towards reparation, and induced 
him to return to the United States, hoping that the good feeling 
of the people at large would sustain the undertaking. His re- 
ception amounted to an ovation in some respects, and personal- 
ly he was treated with honor everywhere. But when the ques- 
tion of his position as an author in search of his unquestionable 
rights came up, an opposition was at once formed, and he found 
himself, like Charles Dickens on international copyright, fighting 
the air. Still, he had abundant reason to be satisfied with his 
welcome home, in the renewal of old ties and in the field for 
fresh adventure opened to him. His championship of the Che- 
rokees, and the air of romance which marks the account of his 
intercourse with them, were quite in keeping with his imagina- 
tive turn of mind. 

Payne's appointment to the consulate at Tunis was in defer- 
ence to the wishes of Webster and Marcy during the Presidency 
of John Tyler,* and there seems every reason to suppose that he 
filled the post creditably. His letters from this far-off spot, so 
little known even now, are full of interest. Indeed, for vividness 

* While Payne was seeking a foreign appointment the son of the then President drew 
him the following acknowledgment in a confidential moment : Mr. Tyler, it has cost me 
more diplomacy, since I have been in Washington, to conceal my poverty than would be neces- 
sary to conduct the foreign affairs of the government." 



1883.] JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 93 

of word-painting they cannot be surpassed, the scenes depicted 
seeming to be actually brought before the eye. In one address- 
ed to his sister in 1844 is a passage which may serve as a clue to 
the philosophy, or want of philosophy, which characterized him : 
" But, after all, what signifies that which we call fame? What 
matters it even during life, to any one but the inventor, whether 
his invention bears his name ? And when he is dead who cares 
a jot or knows the difference ? . . . The main point is gained 
when an obtuse world is persuaded to permit a great improve- 
ment, either mechanical or moral, to make it happier or better." 
Recalled under Folk's administration and reappointed by Fill- 
more in 1851, John Howard Payne died at Tunis in the following 
year.* 

In completing this account of the career of Payne, which we 
have tried to give in an unbiassed spirit, it is due to his memory 
that we refer to the cloud under which his name has seemed to 
rest. There has been a sort of implied condemnation in the 
mention of him, a hint of reproach, unexpressed but unmistak- 
able, which constitutes the worst form of injustice. Perhaps this 
injustice has been confirmed in the minds of some persons by 
the only portrait of him which has been publicly exhibited within 
our recollection, the work of Mr. A. M. Willard, of Cleveland, 
Ohio. The artist's reputation is guarantee for the excellence of 
the painting, but as a likeness it is simply hideous a fact suffi- 
ciently accounted for by its having been copied from an old 
daguerreotype. It suggests a face ruined by dissipation rather 
than the half-melancholy expression said to have marked the 
later years of a notably handsome man.f Patient investigation 
into every accessible collection of facts regarding him, and fre- 
quent conversations with a few surviving contemporaries who 
knew him well, fail to show any ground whatever for such a 
state of things. His whole career, so far as can be ascertained, 
presents an unstained record, and he seems to have been entirely 
free from petty vices. If in anything he belied the delicate 
natural refinement which appeared to characterize him, there is 
at least no evidence to prove it. His faults were such as are 

* There has been so much confusion in regard to the precise date of his death as to necessi- 
tate some pains to ascertain the truth. Through the kindness of the Hon. William Hunter, As- 
sistant Secretary of State, we are informed that the official despatch from Mr. C. Gaspari, Vice- 
Consul-General of United States at Tunis, on the gih of April, 1852, states that Mr. Payne died 
at nine o'clock in the morning of that day. 

fin speaking of Mary Lamb when in Paris in 1822 Crabb Robinson says: "Her only 
male friend is a Mr. Payne, whom she praises exceedingly for his kindness and attentions to 
Charles. He is the author of Brutus, and has a good '/ace" (Diary, vol. i. p. 477). 



94 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. [April, 

entirely compatible with much that is purest and best in erring 
human nature ; and while it must be a source of regret that such 
gifts as his were, never productive of any great thing, we need 
not therefore deny him the tribute of kindness and respect. 
For a temperament like Payne's it was a crowning misfortune 
to have been thrown into the desultory kind of life which we 
have briefly sketched. The very versatility he possessed was a 
drawback to him, in that he was tempted, for temporary advan- 
tage, to seize whatever presented itself, without regard to the 
future. His clear literary style would have made him an ac- 
ceptable writer on general subjects, his powers as a dramatic 
critic were strongly marked, and as an actor he would undoubt- 
edly have succeeded. But in dividing his energies amongst all 
these he frittered away the possibility of becoming great in any 
one of them. Drifting with the tide of the hour, he made no 
real effort to acquire the habit of concentration, and so the evil 
went on increasing. Yet while lamenting all this lack of pur- 
pose, and even of ordinary prudence in affairs, one cannot but be 
struck with the singular sweetness of his nature. There was in 
him so much calculated to please, such an infinite variety, wit, 
humor, sentiment, grace of manner, and personal fascination, that 
one feels it impossible to judge him harshly. No flattery was 
ever able to spoil his frank and simple modesty, nor disappoint- 
ment to array him against his fellows. Surely, if it is something, 
in this work-day world, to have planted but a flower where before 
there was none, that life which gives some added beauty to 
human existence, whether by written word or gracious deed, 
cannot be deemed altogether useless. 

The spot chosen for the final resting-place of John Howard 
Payne is one of great beauty. Overlooking a varied landscape 
and almost within sound of the busy life of the federal capital, it 
is yet an ideal necropolis in its restful calm. The rustling of leaves 
and the song of birds seem only to emphasize the quiet of the 
place. The summer sun is tempered by the shade of forest trees 
which give it the name of Oak Hill, and the dreariness of winter 
brightened by numberless evergreens. The ceremonies of the 
re-interment are to be held on the ninety-second anniversary of 
Payne's birth, the 9 th of June next. There, in his native land, 
and surrounded by his own people, while the breath of flowers 
about his grave floats upward like a prayer, let him be laid to 
his final earthly rest, with no thought less kindly than befits a 
brother's tomb. 



1883.] TRIUMPH OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT. 95 



THE TRIUMPH OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRA 
MENT IN THE LOUVRE AT PARIS, A.D. 1667. 

i. 

THEY gathered in Louis' famous court, 

Noble and valiant men, 
And bravest, noblest among them 

They reckoned the great Turenne. 
But oft, when they looked upon him, 

They sighed with doubt and dread : 
" Now God have mercy on him ! 

For he hath not the faith," they said. 
Though Louis, Magnificent Monarch, 

Uttered his high behests, 
Or with almost tender pleadings 

Melted into requests ; 
Though Bossuet, the famous bishop, 

Expounded with marvellous skill, 
Command and wisdom alike they failed 

Their purpose to fulfil. 

II. 

" Your faith is fair beyond compare," 

So spake the great Turenne. 
" Happy ye that believe it 

Yea, happiest of men ! 
Yet a faith so strange and wondrous 

My soul cannot receive." 
Then the cry of men went up to God : 

" Make this great soul believe ! " 

III. 

One day, within the Louvre, 

The chief with the bishop spoke, 
When from the palace gallery 

A sudden flame outbroke ; 
And Turenne, for ever ready 

If peril or death were nigh, 
Sprang to the scene of danger 

As if to the battle-cry. 



96 TRIUMPH OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT. [April, 

Over the hurrying tramp of men 

His well known voice rang out : 
Many the foe of France had fled 

Before that clarion shout ! 
But the wind rose high and fanned the flame, 

And it would not be controlled ; 
From the Louvre to the Tuileries 

The fiery billows rolled. 
And men stood back in horror 

At sight of the surging tide, 
And the furious clouds of blinding smoke 

Pouring far and wide. 



IV. 



Then up rose Bossuet, the bishop, 

Bossuet, Eagle of Meaux, 
And away from the clamorous multitude 

Did the mighty bishop go ; 
And they knew by the power of his presence, 

And the light in his eye that shone, 
That unto the court of the King of kings 

Had the mighty bishop gone. 
Unto the palace chapel 

Steady and calm went he, 
His eagle gaze to God upraised, 

Undazzled, unfalteringly. 
With the faith that moveth mountains 

And will not be gainsaid, 
" This is thy hour, O God of power! " 

So the bishop prayed. 



Hark! through tumult and trembling, 

And cries of command and fear, 
What solemn sound of holy bell 

Do serf and courtier hear ? 
Down on their knees with one accord 

The awe-struck crowd they fell : 
He bringeth the Blessed Sacrament 

With the sound of solemn bell. 



1883.] TRIUMPH OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT. 97 

VI. 

Roaring flame to face him 

As he entered the long- arcade, 
Yet straight to meet its fury 

His way the bishop made. 
" Thou who didst calm the winds and waves, 

Calm now the winds and flame ! 
Lord, my God, in my hands upheld, 

Do honor to thy great Name ! " 

VII. 

He lifts the Holy of Holies 

High o'er the prostrate throng. 
O marvellous Benediction, 

To be remembered long ! 
With horrible smoke for incense, 

For tapers the raging fire ; 
But the bishop is rapt in Jesus Christ 

And in one intense desire. 
No doubt in his eagle spirit ! 

God will make known his Word. 
One prayer is filling the bishop's heart : 

" Make his eyes see, O Lord ! " 

VIII. 

Silence ! the awful wind is dumb. 

Silence ! the flame is still. 
God in his Blessed Sacrament 

Has wrought his servant's will. 
Silence and then, with peal on peal, 

From the adoring throng 
One grand Te Deum laudamus 

Rose eloquent and strong. 

IX. 

The Almighty God hath conquered, 

Conquered once and again, 
For prostrate and vanquished before him 

Lieth the great Turenne. 
VOL. xxxvir. 7 



98 THE EARL Y IRISH CHURCH AND THE HOL Y SEE. [April, 



THE EARLY IRISH CHURCH AND THE HOLY SEE. 

IVY grows nowhere so luxuriantly as in Ireland, which is 
peculiarly the country of ruins a land through which the archi- 
tect, the minstrel, and the historian must ever wander with 
emotional feelings. There are large towers completely veiled 
by ivy, and tottering walls kept up solely by the stems that had 
grown into thick timber. In no part of Ireland does the ivy 
look so picturesque as around the ruins of the monastic abbeys 
;and convents of Meath, many of which were founded by the 
English of the Pale. The ruins of the once magnificent abbey 
of Bective is one of the most remarkable a place where the 
itourist or pilgrim might linger in holy thought within the walls 
that once contained the splendid library, now ornamented at 
every point, from top to bottom, with thick, rich clusters of the 
ivy green. To the Catholic mind especially there is something 
-emotional in a visit to the ruins of Bective Abbey. The awful 
solitude of the place adds a solemn interest to its beauty and 
brings the contemplative mind back to the simplicity and piety 
<of the olden times. In the library of Bective Abbey were once 
deposited some 'five thousand MS. volumes written in Greek, 
Latin, Hebrew, and Spanish. The arts and sciences were culti- 
vated there on a large scale. The Bective community were in 
.correspondence with the great monastic houses of England, 
Spain, and Italy. Every year Bective was visited by Continen- 
tal scholars, minstrels, and pilgrims. The hospitality was pro- 
fuse to all classes. Paul Markham, an English monk, who visit- 
ed Bective, relates that the milk of twenty cows was given daily 
to the poor of the neighborhood, and the monks employed one 
hundred laborers on their farms, besides a large number of men 
who were working about the abbey. During the summer even- 
ings, according to this English monk, some member of the com- 
munity delivered lectures to the men of the locality on foreign 
countries, especially England, and those addresses were listened 
to with marked attention by the " wild Irish " ; and although 
they had little knowledge of reading or writing, they were 
nevertheless acute and intelligent, and, better still, admirably in- 
structed in all the principles of the Catholic religion. To whom 
were they indebted for these blessings but to the much-calum- 
.niated monks.? Mr. Dixon, a recent writer on the Reformation 



1883.] THE EARL Y IRISH CHURCH AND THE HOL Y SEE. 99 

epoch, contends that " little as the Irish and their clergy cared 
about the Reformation, they cared just as little about the pope, 
who had been only known to them for centuries as abetting 
their English conquerors." 

A painstaking visit to the archives of the Vatican will con- 
vince the Rev. Canon Dixon that he is much mistaken in at- 
tributing to the Roman pontiffs a desire to " aid and abet "the 
government of England in the oppression of the people of Ire- 
land. The contrary was the fact. Mr. Dixon's large, compre- 
hensive, and tolerant mind should not be led astray by writers 
of the now exploded Burnet school of thought and veracity. It 
is true that many of the " clerical statesmen " of England in the 
old Catholic times acted in an unfriendly, if not a despotic, spirit 
towards the Irish people; but there is no direct evidence to 
prove that the pontiffs in any way approved of such a policy. 
Besides, history shows that the English king's of those times 
were men rather difficult to control in their desire to extend 
their conquests and maintain them by treachery and barbarism. 

The questions here incidentally raised are of immense im- 
portance in relation to the progress of Catholicity amongst the 
Celtic race. And the issue is one in which every student of his- 
tory must feel an interest. The greatest misapprehension ex- 
tant is the belief that the creed which the advisers of Queen 
Elizabeth would force upon the unwilling people of Ireland was 
simply that which existed before the Norman invasion. Many 
Anglican writers have stated that Elizabeth " did not abolish the 
ancient Church of Ireland, but merely removed the abuses of 
Rome, its priesthood and their superstitions." 

All the notable Irish scholars and confessors before the Eng- 
lish invasion are now claimed as " Protestant saints " because, 
as those who make the false and preposterous claim allege, Ire- 
land was only brought into connection with the see of Rome 
through her Norman invaders. Well, for historical facts : Thir- 
teen hundred years ago St. Columbanus * addressed Pope Boni- 
face in these words: 

" We are the scholars of St. Peter and of St. Paul, and of all the Disci- 
ples, subscribing by the Holy Ghost to the divine canon. We are all Irish, 
inhabitants of the most distant part of the world, receiving nothing save 
what is the evangelic and apostolic doctrine. None of us has been a 
heretic, none a Jew, none a schismatic ; but the faith just as it was de- 
livered to us by you is still held unshaken." . 

* Columbanus is the Latin form of the original Gaelic appellation of the great Irish apostle 
to the Continent, Colm ban that is, the " fair (or white) dove." 



ioo THE EARL Y IRISH CHURCH AND THE HOL Y SEE. [April, 

Again, I repeat, the records testifying to the above are nu- 
merous, in Rome, on the Continent, and in Ireland itself; yet 
such men as Lord Plunket and Archbishop Trench * are so re- 
gardless of historical records that they continue to make as- 
sertions which they knoiv to be untrue. 

In the reign of Edward VI. Protestantism had failed to win a 
single Irishman from the olden faith. Protestantism had, how- 
ever, succeeded in uniting all Ireland against the sovereign and 
government of England. The old political distinctions which had 
been produced by the conquests of Strongbow and the other 
English invaders faded before the new struggle for a common 
faith.f This statement is furnished from the research of a dis- 
tinguished English Protestant historian of the present time. 

I refer the reader to Dr. Maziere Brady's Marian Bishops 
and his other learned works bearing on the Irish Church. Dr. 
Brady has spent many years in his researches amongst the 
archives of the Vatican, and he has made out a most triumphant 
case to prove that the Irish Church was never anything but 
Roman Catholic and in communion with Rome from the days of 
Pope Celestine.J 

* Lord Plunket fills the office of Protestant Bishop of Meath, and Dr. Trench holds the 
Protestant see of Dublin at ,8,000 per annum. Both these prelates are the deadly enemies 
of Catholicity and of the Irish people also. 

f See Green's History of the English People, vol. ii. p. 236. 

JAn Ulster parson, writing some years back under the signature of an "Orange True 
Blue," expressed " his regret that there were no martyrs in the Irish Church." The parson was 
arguing on the assumption that St. Patrick was a Protestant. The simple reason for there 
being no Protestant martyrs is to be found in the fact that no such church, as a congregation 
of believers in it, existed. At a subsequent period a political body with ecclesiastical powers 
conferred upon it by Queen Elizabeth started into existence, but had no congregations 
save the English officials and the hangers-on of the lord-deputy and his semi-military court. 

The English " Reformers" who visited Ireland in Elizabeth's reign do not appear, as far as 
the clergy were concerned, to be a credit to the "reformed creed." I refer the reader to Ed- 
mund Spenser, the author of the Faerie Queene, "on Religion [Protestantism] as he witnessed 
it in Ireland," p. 254. 

There is one fact respecting the Irish Catholics which has been wilfully concealed by various 
writers from the rising Protestant generation namely, that when religious persecution was 
adopted in England and abroad against Protestants the Irish Catholics acted in an oppo- 
site spirit, and many of the English Reformers and the French Calvinists found a safe retreat 
amongst the much-misrepresented Catholics of Ireland. Several Protestant historians of the 
' ' past " have had the justice and magnanimity to record the facts which I have here stated. 
"It is but justice to this maligned body" (the Catholics), writes Dr. Taylor, "to acknowledge 
that on the three occasions of their obtaining the upper hand the Irish Catholics never injured a 
single per son in life or limb for professing a different religion from their own. They had suf- 
fered persecutions and learned mercy, as they showed by their conduct in the reign of Queen 
Mary, in the war from x6 4 i to 1648, and during the brief reign of King James II." (Taylor's 
History of the Civil Wars of Ireland, vol. i. p. 169). Dr. Leland, another Protestant historian, 
bears similar evidence as to the conduct of the Irish Catholics towards the " Reformers." 
Those Reformers who went to Ireland," observes Leland, "there enjoyed their opinions 
and worship in privacy, without notice or molestation " (Leland's History of Ireland, book 
iii. p. 18). -Godwin, an anti-Catholic writer, describes the Catholic priesthood under the rule 



1 883.] THE EARL Y IRISH CHURCH AND THE HOL y SEE. 101 

No amount of honest inquiry has yet shown that the Irish 
race in the sixteenth century were not as devoted to the belief 
of Rome as their fathers who more than one thousand years 
before had journeyed through the forests beneath the starlight * 
to visit at the rise of the sun those lone shrines and holy wells 
sacred to the saints and sages of their faith. No change can 
research find between the religion professed after the " Refor- 
mation " and that cherished by the " Red Branch Knights " 
the same as that held by the envoys of literature whom Ireland 
sent to the court of Charlemagne, to illuminate Germany, Hun- 
gary, and Italy, or confound the syllogists of Paris ; the same 
as that bled for by the true men whom the most famous of a 
long-descended line of kings led to victory at Clontarf. The 
Irish Celts, under their olden monarchs, professed and practised 
the same creed as the English, Saxon, and Norman did under 
Alfred and the Plantagenets. The " Reformation " in Ireland 
was more a political revolution, accompanied by its equivalent 
confiscation, than a religious change; and, from the temper of 
the times and the social condition of the country, was doubly 
distasteful to the Celtic race antagonistic to a long-cherished 
belief as well as hostile to their temporal interests. The last 
boon a conquered land will receive at the hands of its task- 
masters is their creed, whatever that creed may be. The religion 
of the olden race of Ireland has been written imperishably on the 
national heart written in a long-continued and pitiable history ; 
and even perverse inquiry is unable to impeach its immutability. 
The mixture of temporal and eternal interests has not only in- 
tensified the Anglo-Irish contest, but it has also imparted to it 
much of its melancholy interest, enabling its historians by ex- 
hibiting the struggles of energy against wrong, depicting the 
transient sunshine of success amidst the darkness and sorrow of 
perennial discontent, and now and again displaying the elements 
of Hope to weave a rainbow over a land which has been so 
long a Valley of Tears ! 

The Protestant impeachment of the Catholic Church in Ire- 

of Elizabeth's lord-deputies in these words: "The Mass priests of Ireland were in the hour 
of their persecution disinterested and fearless in sustaining their wretched flocks and up- 
holding their religion. In the hour of their trials they stood forth superior to human infirm- 
ity ; with resolution inflexible they encountered every possible calamity, suffered the utmost 
hardships and privations, and counted nothing worthy of their attention but the glory of God 
and the salvation of souls " (see Godwin's Commonwealth). The religious orders and the 
secular clergy of Ireland were opposed to persecution of conscience, "declaring that the 
principles of the Catholic Church were those of kindness, persuasion, and charity." 

* The ancient Celtic race commenced their pilgrimages on nights when the moon or stars 
shone brightest. 



102 THE EARL Y IRISH CHURCH AND THE HOL Y SEE. [April, 

land for "ignorance and want of taste " is only a part of the 
general slander piled up by Puritan writers against Catholicity 
throughout the world. If Protestantism chanced to be produced 
contemporaneously with printing, the schism of Luther can only 
claim that it used, with considerable noise, an invention not its 
own. The Catholic Church has done more for " learning, art, 
science (proper) and elegant classic taste " than, all human insti- 
tutions put together. The church, in all ages, was famed for its 
culture of music and architecture."* Archbishops Anselm and 
Lanfranc are well known to have been not only architects them- 
selves but the liberal patrons of that noble art in England. The 
beautiful hymns of the ancient church have proved a mine for 
imitative appropriation to all modern beliefs. The cultivation 
of music refined and chastened the manners of those who pur- 
sued it ; and the sublime and solemn harmony used at Mass, and 
during the divine service in general, elevated the soul and 
softened the heart of the worshipper. Did the vandalism which 
denounced and destroyed this lofty and beautiful adjunct of 
divine worship better a subsequent race of people ? The great 
Dutch school of music of the fifteenth century was silenced by 
the Huguenot iconoclasts stifled in blood and rapine and has 
never revived. 

The Catholic Church is truly distinguished from all others 
aspiring to the title by the magnificence, the loveliness, the pro- 
fusion, and the grandeur by which she is environed. Her cere- 
monies have educed, and are still eliciting, all the skill of inge- 
nuity, all the riches of art, all the brightest results of imaginative 
effort. She has wrought all the mines of thought and matter to 
manifest her absorbing reverence for the Omnipotent. She in- 
spired the architect to display the resources of his genius, and 
basilicas arose, attesting with their solemn domes the sublime 
ardor of a God-loving people. She summoned to her aid the 
noblest forms of sculpture, the passion and the glory ; the fearful 
and the benignant revelations of painting, the entrancing and re- 
splendent masterpieces of music. All gifts and all arts she led 
with gentle but invincible suasion to the footstool of the Eternal. 
The vessels employed in her sacrifices were composed of the 
most precious metals, decorated with gems, and fashioned by 
such magic artificers as Benvenuto Cellini. Her tabernacles 
blazed with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, 
opals, and pearls. Her altars, barred with lapis-lazuli, costlier 
than the gold of Ophir, and wrung from the depths of the Ural, 

*Thorndale's Memorials of English Abbeys. 



1 883.] THE EARL v IRISH CHURCH AND THE HOL Y SEE. 103 

bloomed with flowers, which likewise strewed the paths of her 
procession. Incense floated heavenwards from the swing of her 
thuribles. Cloth of gold composed her vestments, and cloth of 
silver formed the banners upon which were embroidered the 
mementos of her saints. Poetry was brought into the sacred 
service; and the hymns of the church, realizing the conception 
of Tennyson, "perfect music set to noble words," are exemplars 
of solemn beauty. Oratory poured from her pulpits for instruc- 
tion, supplication, or admonition such eloquence as flowed from 
the lips of Bossuet, of Bourdaloue, of Fenelon, and of Massillon. 
Again, so abhorred in the estimation of the church was idleness 
that even the hermits of the deserts, and those recluses in mon- 
asteries unfitted for higher employments, toiled unceasingly in 
the pauses of their prayers. 

The Catholic Church requires no vindication respecting her 
earnestness in aiding the advancement of knowledge and in ex- 
citing intellectual emulation. The witnesses who have testified 
to the contrary are now reduced to the number of the consciously 
false. The Catholic Church is emphatically her own vindica- 
tion, by the amplitude and perennial beauty of her sacred edi- 
fices ; by the melody of her matchless ritual ; by the labors of her 
illustrious writers ; by the voices of her eloquent dignitaries ; by 
the music which floats amidst her cathedral arches ; by the signs 
of the life-giving influence by which her apostles are ever accom- 
panied throughout the earth, strewing, as it were, the most 
barren sands with flowers and verdure; by her immense and 
immutable dominion. 



104 FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 



FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 

IN the old pioneer days of Canada, besides those simple 
and charming narratives, the Voyages of Champlain, there was 
that immortal monument to the first struggles 6f a people, the 
Relations of the Jesuit missionaries, some portions of which are, 
even from a literary point of view, inimitable ; there were the 
graceful and elegant epistles of Marie de 1'Incarnation, in which 
the wit and exquisite delicacy of a Frenchwoman are combined 
with the gentleness and earnestness of a religious. And though 
all these were, indeed, the products of the soil, owing their in- 
spiration in great part to those sapphire streams which in winter 
lie like lakes of frosty pearl under the cloudless heavens, or in 
summer bear, the canoes of the voyageurs on their way to distant 
trading-posts, to those giant hills, those infinite forests, that im- 
measurable vastness of all nature though they were truly Cana- 
dian in sentiment, they were not the work of Canadians. 

The history of Canadian literature, properly so called, dates 
back not half a century, but it has in that period produced un- 
paralleled results. The question naturally occurs to us, Why 
were a people who owed their inheritance to an ancestry so 
glorious, a people who claimed kinship with, aye, and lineal de- 
scent from, one of the most intellectual nations upon the globe, so 
long in giving expression to their thoughts and sentiments, in 
immortalizing the great deeds going on about them ? For the 
early Canadian settlers were actually living out a grand epic 
which did not want for heroes, martyrs, battles, struggles of all 
kinds. The cause was in the very existence of these struggles. 

Let us now consider momentarily the rise and progress of a 
new province in literature. To us this new province has a special 
interest, for it is almost wholly Catholic. It may be described as 
a new and powerful Catholic colony appertaining to the universal 
domain of letters. Its Catholicity and its patriotism are its two 
solid bases. Its Catholicity entails absolute purity of morals ; 
its patriotism a generous and elevating sentiment. In this truly 
remarkable literature, taken in general, there is scarcely a trace 
of the Voltairean cynicism which has blighted the productions 
of some of the finest French intellects of the day. There is an 
ardent love of country which has no relation to the cold sneers 
of the modern cynic ; a hopeful and healthy aspiration towards 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 105 

the future which owns no kinship with the morbid ravings ot 
optimists; and, above all, there is a devotion to principle and an 
earnest love of truth, both the outcome of this purely Catholic 
spirit, which augurs well for Canada's intellectual, moral, and 
material future. Any thoughtful mind, in perusing the works 
which have issued, or are issuing daily, from the French-Cana- 
dian press, must be convinced of this. A French author * de- 
votes considerable attention to the moral and intellectual future 
of New France. The praise which he bestows upon its litera- 
ture is thoughtful and well considered. He finds in Canadian 
authors " an artistic instinct, polished form, and purity of taste." 
He declares that they naturally possess " the sentiment of the 
beautiful," but dwells especially upon what he calls the most 
striking point of all about them. This is "that always and 
everywhere in their writings is a breadth of conception and a 
power of generalizing thought which belong to the higher 
sphere of the operations of the human mind." He predicts for 
them "a long youth and a rare vigor in their future develop- 
ment." 

We now proceed to a hasty review of a few of the men of 
letters who guard the outposts of Canada's intellectual domain. 
To follow any rule or order, of merit, or precedence, or even of 
chronology, is not our purpose. We are merely as a wanderer 
in a virgin forest coming upon clearings of marvellous beauty 
and fertility, or -one traversing a wilderness who discovers a 
gold-mine. 

Some of the earlier efforts in poetry or prose are to be found 
in M. Huston's Repertoire National, ou Recueil de Litter atiire Cana- 
dienne, published in 1848. This collection, which reflects the 
greatest credit on its compiler, contains selections from many 
whom we can scarcely now consider in detail. Such are Joseph 
Quesnel, Michel Bibaud, Real Angers, Barthe, Turcotte, De- 
rome, and others. A study of this group of authors so fully ap- 
preciated by their countrymen would be of the greatest interest. 
But we are compelled to hurry on to where other and more 
resplendent lights, brilliant as the Aurora Borealis of these 
northern realms, are arising through the shadows of war and 
party strife and an imperfect, or imperfectly understood, liberty. 

In the department of poetry we shall begin with a name 
Cremazie which we believe to be, in the order of time, one of 
the first that Canada has produced. He is a child of the soil, 
with a hearty, whole-souled patriotism about him. We feel that 

* Rameau, in his La France aux Colonies. 



io6 FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 

he is a worthy compatriot of the Beaujeus and Salaberrys who 
gave to Canada 

"A new Thermopylae." 

Of such heroes he is the bard, the Minnesinger, who chants the 
glories of his race in ringing lines which no translation can ren- 
der. But at times, in his wind-swept, harp-like tones, there are 
notes of deep sadness, or a prophetic inspiration, a vision of new 
glories to ris.e up phcenix-like from the ashes of the conquest. 
In some of his war-songs as, for instance, " Le Vieux Soldat 
Canadien " there is something of the fire and tenderness of the 
old Norse sagas : a wail for youthful days of strength and 
vigor for ever departed, a desolate, touching loneliness still vivi- 
fied with the breath of battle that once gave life to his worn and 
wasted frame. As the poem is intended for a personification of 
the nation, these points strike us as the more apt and telling. 
We repeat that it is impossible to do any justice whatsoever 
to the poetry of M. Cremazie when translating it into another 
tongue. Its spirit and genius are essentially French, no less 
than its measure and rhythm. That M. Cremazie is regarded 
as among the first of Canadian poets is shown by a comparison 
drawn by an author, himself no mean critic, between some verses 
of M. Cremazie and some upon a similar subject by Lamartine, 
giving the preference to the Canadian. Whether this preference 
be justified or not, it proves that among people of culture in his 
own country Octave Cremazie is given a very high rank indeed. 
In this poem which is made the point of comparison M. Cre- 
mazie appears under a totally different aspect from that in which 
we have before considered him. This will be seen from the sub- 
ject of the verses, " Les Morts." Lamartine is represented by his 
famous " Pensee des Morts." With that, which is probably fa- 
miliar to many of our readers, we are not concerned, but we will 
quote at random some exquisite lines which occur here and 
there in this ode from the Canadian poet : 



Again : 



Or: 



For you the heavens have neither storms nor stars, 
The spring no balm, the horizon no clouds, 
The sun no rays ! " 



" Motionless and cold within your deep-dug grave, 
Ye ask not whether grave or blithesome be 
The echoes of the world." 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 107 

" The scorching wind of pain, nor envy's breath, 
Come not to dry your bones, O tranquil dead, 
As in the day of life. 

"Within the cemetery's calm ye find at last 
That vainly sought in all our mortal life 
Ye find sweet rest." 

It describes how, while the living- suffer, the dead hear only the 
" voice of the sanctuary," and it dwells upon the infinite value to 
the soul of a remembrance at prayer " that alms of the heart." 
It deplores the selfishness of those who survive, and, speaking of 
the human heart, proceeds : 

" Far it knoweth alone in its joy or its pain ; 
But those who may serve or its hatred or pride, 
The dead serve no more. 

"Ah ! unto our ambitions or our futile joys, 
O dusty corpses ! ye can nothing add ; 
We give to you oblivion." 

Even this imperfect rendering- may give some idea of the ex- 
quisite tenderness and beauty of the poem. M. Cremazie has 
some fine verses upon Castelfidardo. The two lines, addressed 
to the Holy See, which close the poem contain a fine thought : 

" Thou shalt remain alone 
To close the gates of Time ! " 

The " Drapeau de Carillon " is another of his patriotic poems. 
In his verses on the " Two hundredth anniversary of the arri- 
val of Mgr. de Laval in Canada " his passionate love of country 
breaks out with new force : 

"O Canada, more beautiful than a beam of spring." 

He apostrophizes her lakes, larger than those of the Inferno, 
her limpid streams, her heaven-crowned hills. In this, as in 
all his writings, there is religion side by side with the sublime 
love of country, the manly and healthful singing of nature, and 
of history. As he says himself, speaking of their ancestors : 
"They planted the white flag at the side of a cross!" He 
pays a tribute to " the sons of Loyola, and their mission sub- 
lime," who "left to thy children their memory blest!" He 
sings of " gentle Charity, Hope, and Faith," and declares the 
" temples of the true God, and the colleges many," to be the 
" true strength and honor of their country ! " Well may an 
eminent French- Canadian author* declare that "some of M. 

* The Abbe Casgrain. 



io8 FRENCH.CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 

Cremazie's poetry is truly remarkable for inspiration of thought ; 
the spark of true poetry rivals the ringing rhythm and perfec- 
tion of style." Octave Cremazie is one of the innumerable 
names which make Quebec a great literary centre. 

Again, in the department of poetry is a name familiar to many 
of our readers that of Leon Pamphile Lemay. As the translator 
of " Evangeline " into French M. Lemay is specially .entitled to the 
attention of Americans. This work, which, from the peculiar 
versification that Longfellow employed in the immortal poem, 
would seem one of insuperable difficulty, was accomplished by 
Lemay with an ease and inspiration truly remarkable. We 
remember having read a highly complimentary letter addressed 
by Longfellow to Lemay which did full justice to the translator's 
efforts. Pamphile Lemay 's Essais Poe'fiques made him known to 
his countrymen. His poetry is of a different order from that of 
M. Cremazie. It is tender, melancholy, and dreamy. In his own 
words : 

" A dim veil 
Of sadness and of pain enshrouds its beauty." 

Yet there is a simplicity, a pathos, a true poetry, which he 
seems to find in familiar objects, and imparts with a subtle deli- 
cacy of touch such as the painters of miniatures were wont to 
employ. There is a settled sadness in his strain, a half-uncon- 
scious melancholy not, perhaps, the deep, irreparable sorrow of 
one for whom, as he himself expresses it, 

"The day has more shadows than the night," 

but a sadness which is not " akin to pain." 

From Pamphile Lemay we turn to a poet who rivals him 
"in elegance and elevation of thought," but whose Muse takes 
a more joyous note and sings with the freedom and clearness 
of a bird upon the wing. Louis Honore Frechette is to-day, 
throughout Canada and the United States, greeted as the poet- 
laureate of Canada. His verses to Pamphile Lemay are in- 
teresting on more than one account, because of the early 
friendship which evidently existed between them, and the gene- 
rous freedom from all envy or jealousy which induced him to 
hail the distinction deservedly won by a former associate. They 
are dated from Chicago and addressed to Pamphile Lemay as 
poet-laureate of the University of Laval. The poetry of M. 
Frechette is of a high order ; it shows a variety of conception 
and a tenderness and delicacy in the treatment of his subjects. 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 109 

His lines to various persons, whether distinguished in public 
life or endeared to the author by some private ties, are particu- 
larly happy. Amongst these are lines to Longfellow, which 
must be appreciated by all admirers of the immortal author of 
" Evangeline." He is a truly national poet ; but his inspiration 
is not found, like that of Cfemazie, so much in the past as in 
present goods. That grand, dim old Canada, region of the 
savage huntsman and the pioneer, the voyageur, the trapper, and 
the missionary, with their all but fabulous doings, is not the 
* Canada which Frechette usually sings. It is Quebec as it now 
stands : 

" Perched like an eagle on her promontory's height, 
Bathing her rocky feet in the giant flood below ! " 

It is Montreal as it now is; the glories of Niagara, the Saguenay, 
Mille Isles (the Thousand Isles), Cape Eternity, Belceil Lake, 
Lake Beauport, Cape Tourmente, and so on it is the beautiful 
natural scenery which still retains a picturesque wildness. It is 
to people now living or but recently departed that his strophes 
are addressed. He sings rather of what Canada still has than 
of what has passed away from her for ever. He is the poet of 
the present, as Cremazie of the past ; the poet of joy and joyous 
nature, as Lemay of sadness and the autumn tints of earth ; he 
sings the " Alleluia," and this poem is not without significance, 
for he also hymns the alleluia of his country. There is a 
warmth, a freshness, a human life and joy about the poems which 
is as refreshing as the sound of wholesome and unrestrained 
laughter. It may be questioned whether he has the deep reli- 
gious fervor of some of the other Canadian writers, but his Muse 
is nevertheless Christian and 

" Chants the triumph of a God ! " 

In this poem of the " Alleluia " there are some fine stanzas. The 
author feels that his theme is a grand one, and his verse is 
proud, triumphal, joyous such a song as Judith might have 
sung to the people of God. He hears 

"The voices sounding yet in the meadows of space," 

and the 

" Brilliant concert of worlds, 
The silent rocks, 
The immensity of space, 
And ye, ye caves profound, 
Singing of heaven's King !" 



no FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 

M. Frechette's greatest work is undoubtedly his drama or 
tragedy of " Papineau," based on thrilling events in the history 
of his race. We cannot attempt any appreciation of it here, 
though there are grand bursts of patriotism and love of country 
scattered throughout. It will suffice to say that it was crowned 
by the French Academy. His " Discovery of the Mississippi " 
is very fine and dedicated to a member of the French Academy. 
His "Canadian Year," verses for each month, are most pleasing; 
so those upon the natural scenery of Canada, which are very 
fine. 

M. Frechette at present lives in Montreal, but for some time 
resided in Quebec, and, crossing the boundaries, remained 'five 
years in the great metropolis of the West, Chicago. He is still a 
voung man, and, if he fulfils the promise of his youth and early 
maturity, will leave a name behind him unrivalled in the Cana- 
dian world of letters. His genial and social qualities have made 
him a host of friends. 

L. J. C. Fiset also is an author who deserves a share of at- 
tention from the student of Franco-Canadian literature. His 
" Voice of the Past," composed on the occasion of a great national 
festival of Canadians, St. John the Baptist's Day, 1858, proves 
him to be of the school of patriotic poets. He, too, predicts a 
glorious destiny for his country, but with his eyes fixed retro- 
spectively upon its past. He apostrophizes the red man : 

" Pale Manes of the Huron and Algonquin tribes, 
Ye demi-gods of forests, crownless kings, 
What thoughts do ye not bring ! " 

He cries out : 

" Would ye announce to us that hope 's a dream, 
That all things change and scarcely leave a trace, 
That all roads lead to naught ? " 

He pays a fine tribute to Champlain, Montcalm, Wolfe, and 
" the immortal Cartier." To all who have sacrificed themselves 
upon the altar of country he exclaims : 

" Dormez, ombres chtrtes" 
" Sleep, dear shades ! " 

There is a fine inspiration in many things that M. Fiset has 
written. If he lacks the fire which characterizes the war-poems 
of Cremazie, or the deep and solemn beauty of the same writer's 
stanzas upon death, he has none the less true poetic feeling and 
sublimity of thought. His " Meditation " on the banks of the St. 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. in 

Lawrence is such a one as might well be made beside that queen 
of rivers, under the blue, star-frosted canopy of the northern 
night. His " Ode to the Prince of Wales " is also very graceful, 
prettily conceived, and prettily carried out. 

A moment's glance at a group of minor poets may not be 
out of place. We have lately read a poem entitled " Labor 
and Idleness " (" Travail et Paresse "), by a young verse- 
writer, Ophis Pelletier. This production seems to us re- 
markable \vhen we consider that the writer died very soon 
after leaving college. It is full of imagination ; the Jieureux 
stjour of labor is described, and the description fairly teems with 
palaces inlaid with gold and jewels, diamonds, pearls and 
rubies, many-colored marbles, the myriad-tinted plumage ol 
strange, bright birds, waves of crystal, the beauties of spring, 
and the richness of autumn. There is a wealth of imagery 
and a luxuriance of fancy which time would, perhaps, have 
somewhat pruned. This is but one of many which the young 
poet, early called to the haven of such souls as his, leaves be- 
hind him. 

There are many light, pretty verses from the pen of Felix 
Marchand, of which we may instance " The Young Mother at the 
Bedside of her Son " and " Lines to Spring." A semi-humorous 
squib from the pen of Charles Laberge, who has written con- 
siderable, is also before us. It is an ingenious conceit and well 
carried out. M. J. Lenoir, another writer who was too early 
called away, has left various poems which display a marked 
ability. The priesthood, as in every other department of lite- 
rature, is represented in verse. We may instance lines by the 
Abbe Raymond, the Abbe Charles Trudel, and others. 

A poet of considerable note among his countrymen is Napo- 
leon Legendre. His poems have been most cordially received" 
by the public, and it is a proof of the literary eminence which he 
has obtained that he has been made a member of the Royal So- 
ciety of Canadian Literature. M. Frechette has dedicated one 
of his poems to him. 

Another poet of merit is Ner6e Beauchemin. His verses 
are sweet, tender, and full of feeling, and there is at times a 
certain loftiness of expression which must inevitably strike the 
reader. M. Frechette has addressed some lines to him also, in 
which he calls upon him to break with his " pure song " the 
monotony of vulgar existence. 

But before taking leave of the poetic department of Canadian 
literature we must not omit to mention that there are a large 



H2 FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 

class of authors who have distinguished themselves, if not equally 
in prose and poetry, at least to a great extent in both. Thus 
the Abbe Casgrain, a writer of great vigor and correctness of 
thought, has given to the public some very pleasing verses on 
various subjects. His translation of Byron's " Prisoner of Chil- 
lon " is a really creditable production. He tells us himself that 
he did it while very young, but since revised it. He gives us a 
reason for having undertaken the translation in the political ap- 
plication which he found therein to the struggles and disasters 
which his country had experienced. It is dedicated to his friend, 
Alfred Garneau, a son of the great historian mentioned further 
on in these pages. In this dedication the abbe declares that he 
could not help drawing a parallel between the hapless Bonni- 
vard and the "national historian " of Canada, Francois Xavier 
Garneau, and that hence he desires to place this' memorial upon 
the latter's tomb. The Abbe Casgrain has also written some 
characteristically Canadian poems, such as " Le Canotier " (the 
boatman) and " Le Couvreur des Bois "(the trapper). However, 
having read with attention his many pleasing verses, we unhesi- 
tatingly assign him his place, as an eminent man of letters, 
among prose authors. His biography of Marie de 1'Incarnation 
is, in the best sense of the word, charming. He penetrates the 
inmost recesses of that chosen soul, and brings forth to the light 
of day those qualities which made her one of the most remark- 
able women of an epoch which produced many remarkable wo- 
men. The Abbe Casgrain has written several shorter biogra- 
phies, among which are one upon F. X. Garneau, the Chevalier 
Falardeau, J. B. Faribault, who himself acquired a claim to 
literary distinction by his valuable compilation, Catalogue of 
Works on the History of America. The abbe's account of Phi- 
lippe Aubert de Gaspe, of whom we shall have a word to say 
later, is delightful. These are but a few of the biographies, as 
well as essays upon general subjects, which this distinguished 
ecclesiastic has given to Canadian literature. He belongs to an 
old and honorable family in the Province of Quebec, and has a 
wide connection there. As a writer he is singularly gifted. In 
biography he seems to seize the salient points of his subject 
with marvellous facility. His Paroisse Canadienne in the sev- 
enteenth century gives an insight into .rural life under a dif- 
ferent order of things, when the seigneurs still held sway and the 
old feudal manners of European countries were repeated, with 
modifications, under the frosty splendors of a Canadian sky. In 
his Opuscules, Canadian Legends, and others of the kind the Abbe 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 113 

Casgrain provides not only the best and most instructive read- 
ing that can be given to the young folk, but reading that pos- 
sesses a certain attraction for people of any age. 

Another author who has dealt somewhat in poetry is the 
distinguished historian, F. X. Garneau. No name in Canadian 
annals so deservedly wears the laurel wreath as his. It is the 
more universally and impartially accorded that M. Garneau 
has slept for years " under the shade of lofty pines, close to the 
famed battle-fields of the past, in view of his native city of Que- 
bec." It is with something like reverence that we approach 
the consideration of one who, it has been said, "is known whith- 
ersoever the name of Canada has reached ; his fame is insepara- 
ble from the fame of his country."* For he raised to his native 
land " its most splendid monument." His praises, which are in 
every mouth, make us feel how poor and insufficient must be 
our notice of him in the present paper. Francois Xavier Gar-, 
neau takes deservedly a front rank not only in the hearts, the 
sentiment of his compatriots, but in the critical and literary esti- 
mate of him. M. Chauveau describes him as " a man of initia- 
tive courage, heroic perseverance, indomitable will, disinterest- 
edness, and self-sacrifice." There is no doubt of the enduring 
greatness of the Histoire die Canada, and of its taking a lasting 
place among the noblest chronicles of other times and other 
nations. 

Born at Quebec on the I5th of June, 1809, M. Garneau died 
in February, 1866, so that his years of labor were few. The 
story of his youth is most interesting. His first instructor was 
an old man, known as the Bonhomme Parent, who taught in the 
Rue St. Real in Quebec ; but he afterwards attended a school out- 
side the St. Louis Gate established by the celebrated Joseph 
Frangois Perrault, a man who was apparently the Msecenas of 
early Canadian literature. Young Garneau is then described as 
grave, taciturn, and of an almost morbid timidity a quality 
which he retained till his death. The prettiest picture of his 
youth is where we see him listening to the olden chronicles 
which his grandfather delighted to pour forth. That good old 
man had been an eye-witness of many of the events which his 
illustrious descendant afterwards rendered immortal. There in 
that ancient city of Quebec, so well fitted to be the storehouse 
of memories of glory, and with its walls and gates symbolizing a 
past at variance with the genius of the present century, it was a 
sight to see the old man, bent with years, pointing out to his 

* P. J. O. Chauveau. Funeral oration over the remains of Garneau. 
VOL. XXXVII. 8 



ii4 FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 

grandson the scene of this or that combat, reproducing the con- 
fusion, the horror, the glory, the shame, the pride of conquest, 
or the cruel agony of defeat, and pouring all into the ears of a 
boy a boy eager, inspired, kindling with an enthusiasm which 
was later to find vent in an imperishable monument to his sacred 
country. 

In 1840 M. Garneau began his History df Canada. His 
three years in England, France, and Italy had enabled him to 
examine many archives and store up valuable information. 
But he also went to Albany to* consult some State papers which 
had been compiled for the State of New York by permission of 
the French king. The first volume of M. Garneau's work ap- 
peared in 1845, a second in 1846, and a third in 1848. It has 
since passed through several editions, one of which is now being 
edited and revised by his son, M. Alfred Garneau, also favorably 
known to literature by his poetry. The work was received, 
we may say, with acclamation ; for the few exceptions taken 
to it are, for the most part, unimportant.* That it should be so 
received by his fellow-countrymen is not surprising, but its re- 
ception in France was really an ovation. Firmin Didot, Pavie, 
and Moreau, in the Nouvelle Revue Encyclopddique, La Revue 
des Deux Mondes, and the Correspondant, of Paris, all hailed it 
with delight and devoted considerable space to it. Henri 
Martin, the distinguished author of the Histoire de la France 
and other important works, speaks of M. Garneau and his work 
in terms of the highest praise. Dr. Brownson, the prince of 
reviewers, spoke of it enthusiastically. In fact, the History was a 
complete success more than that : a triumph, national as well as 
personal. One of the most valuable testimonies to its impor- 
tance was a letter addressed to M. Garneau by the commander 
of the French frigate Capricieitse, sent to Quebec by Napoleon 
in 1855 to establish commercial relations with Canada. 

M. Garneau is described as an " humble and devout Catho- 
lic," a man of unbounded integrity and conscientiousness, and of a 
gentle, affectionate, and altogether lovable character. He is said 
to have been " the type of an accomplished gentleman, of ex- 
quisite politeness and reserve." His style as a writer was at 
once polished and dignified, with great freedom of thought and 
expression, and unusually vigorous and energetic. Besides his 
greatest work he has written some minor sketches in prose, such 

* The one serious objection to some portions of the first volumesnamely, a straying from 
the path befitting a truly Catholic historian was removed, and the author fully retracted all 
dangerous opinions. 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 115 

as Travels in England and France. We began to speak of him 
as a versifier and have not yet mentioned his productions in 
the poetic department. Many of his fugitive pieces are to be 
found in M. Huston's Repertoire National before mentioned. 
His " Oiseaux Blancs " (Snowbirds), his " Winter," and his " Last 
of the Hurons " are the principal. Had M. Garneau written 
nothing else these poems would no doubt entitle him to a place 
among men of letters ; but their beauty and poetical expression 
are so obscured by the glory of his great productions that we 
can only offer them as a proof of his versatility. M. Alfred Gar- 
neau, the son of the historian, to whom we have before alluded, 
has inherited much of his father's talent. His verses are always 
appreciated, and appearing, as they do, in many of the principal 
periodicals, do not need the reflected glory of his father's name 
to recommend them to the public. 

The Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau also appears in the twofold 
character of poet and prose-writer perhaps, rather, in a three- 
fold character, as orator too. M. Chauveau's discourses in 
French and English, especially upon great national occasions, 
are admirable. Lofty and sustained in style, they combine force 
with beauty, enthusiastic outbursts of loyalty and patriotism 
with the calm of a finished speaker. His address upon the 
translation of the relics of Mgr. de Laval is an illustration. 
Another delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of a monu- 
ment Aux Braves de 1765 is full of exquisite thoughts and senti- 
ments. His funeral oration over the remains of Garneau is one 
of his happiest efforts. There M. Chauveau unites the friend,, 
the patriot, and the generous appraiser of another's well-earned 
fame. In a momentary glance at M. Chauveau as a poet we 
find an appreciation of him by an author * who is no mean 
critic. He speaks of the " ravissante verses of M. Chauveau 
upon childhood." This is a strong expression, but the writer 
proceeds to justify it, and compares some of his poems, especially 
one upon " First Communion," to the best of a similar class of 
writings by Madame Segalas, Beauchesne, or Victor Hugo him- 
self. This is high praise, and may be proved by an examination 
of such fugitive pieces of M. Chauveau's as have appeared from 
time to time. Yet we must regard M. Chauveau mainly as a 
writer of prose of elegant, classic prose, with a peculiar charm 
of style, a peculiar harmony of diction, a peculiar grace of ex- 
pression. To our thinking there is no so polished master of the 
belle langue of France among all whom the Dominion has pro- 

* The Abbe Casgrain. 



ii6 FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 

duced. His novel of Charles Gue'rin, a story of earlier Canadian 
life, is one of his first productions. His book upon the visit of 
the Prince of Wales, his correspondence in the Coiirrier des 
tats Unis, as well as his essays upon literature, history, politics, 
and education scattered through many periodicals and embrac- 
ing- a number of years, are all models of style. Many of his most 
interesting articles are to be found in the different numbers of 
the Journal of Public Instruction, which M. Chauveau himself 
founded in 1857. I n a ^ n ^ s writings are found two sentiments 
which pervade them as the deep chords of the organ pervade a 
hymn a truly Catholic spirit and an ardent patriotism, which 
lead him into prophetic utterances upon the grand mission of his 
race. There is no doubt that M. Chauveau is one of the inner 
circle of chosen spirits that have long ruled the literary destinies 
of Canada. He has led a busy life, having filled many impor- 
tant offices in the Dominion. He was for some time president of 
the Senate, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and is now 
high-sheriff of Montreal. He is also vice-president of the Royal 
Canadian Society of Literature, recently founded by the Mar- 
quis of Lome, to whom great praise is due as the generous pro- 
moter of every scheme for the moral and intellectual advance- 
ment of the country over which he rules. This Society received 
a cordial recognition from the French Academy, upon which, we 
believe, it is modelled. The secretary of the Academic Fran- 
$aise, M. Camille Doucet,. despatched a congratulatory letter to 
the infant association upon its initial meeting in October, 1882. 

The Abbe Ferland is a name without which even the slight- 
est sketch of Canadian literature cannot be said to be complete. 
In his own style he is inimitable. We were struck at once with 
the vivacity, life, and coloring of what he has written. The 
.Abbe Casgrain thus speaks of him: "The Episode of 1759 and 
his Histoire de Gamac/ie" he says, " may sustain a comparison, 
.as models of style, in finish of execution, with the most delicate 
sketches, the most exquisite word-paintings, the most admi- 
rable crayons of Prosper Merimee or Octave Feuillet." Now, 
who that has read productions from the subtle and witty pen 
^of Prosper Merimee which could only have been the work of a 
Frenchman, and are only to be defined by French epithets will 
not consider this the highest praise ? And surely the tender- 
ness, the warm human feeling, the vivid sketches of character in 
the works of Octave Feuillet are unsurpassed of their kind. 
Yet all this is not too much to say of the Abbe Ferland, and we 
wall go farther a^d institute a comparison between him and the 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 117 

American, Washington Irving. With some differences of style 
and local mannerisms, this will be found, we flatter ourselves, to 
be just. The Abbe Ferland's style is fascinating, and carries 
the reader now into the ice-bound Labrador, into various nooks 
and corners of his own country, or again back into the dim and 
misty regions of primeval Canada. M. Rameau, a French au- 
thor before quoted, says of him : " The vivacity of feature which 
distinguishes his pictures and the Attic flavor of the French spirit 
prove that upon the banks of the St. Lawrence our tongue has 
degenerated no more than our character." His long and de- 
tailed account of his stay in Labrador is most interesting. In 
connection with it are published Notes upon the Plants which he 
collected there. These notes, which are really valuable in a 
scientific point of view, are by another ecclesiastic, the Abbe 
Brunet, also of Quebec. The Abbe* Ferland's most important 
work is his Cours d'Histoire, though he has written many his- 
torical sketches, such as A Fragment of History. Like M. Gar- 
neau, the Abbe Ferland has passed away from Quebec and from 
Canada when at the very pinnacle of his fame. His death, 
which preceded his co-laborer's by a very short time, was like- 
wise deplored as a national loss. 

We shall next claim the attention of our readers for a man 
who has been called " the first thinker of Canada fitienne Pa- 
rent." The Abbe Casgrain remarks " that the first period of 
Canadian literature, from 1840 to 1860, had the rare good for- 
tune to produce a thinker like fitienne Parent, a historian like 
Garneau, and a poet like Cremazie." Casgrain points to a vital 
defect in this profound thinker namely, he allows himself to be 
carried away now and again from the straight path of the high- 
est philosophy, which is and must be under the influence of 
religion, into the crooked bypaths of what is called modern 
thought. This is certainly to be deplored. However, his studies 
upon Spiritualism and his lectures upon The Intellect in its Re- 
lations with Society are both remarkable for their depth and 
vigor. Reading them one must find a certain aptness in the 
comparison instituted between Parent and Victor Cousin. 
There is the same subtility of perception, range of thought, and 
power in grasping a subject. M. Parent's discourse upon The 
Importance and the Duties of Commerce is an admirable illus- 
tration of his style. His views on political economy, his ex- 
cellent and practical suggestions on many vital points, are 
worthy of careful note. The following paragraph is taken from 
the foregoing : " The principles of political economy," he says, 
" are not absolute like those of morality, with which we may 



nS FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. [April, 

not tamper; they are but human theories and are necessarily 
flexible and variable like those who conceive them. Morality 
comes from God and is as immutable as its Author ; policy 
comes from man and is as changeable as man himself and his 
surroundings." In 1852 he delivered at Saint-Roch another 
discourse, Considerations on the Destiny of the Working Classes, 
which is full of profound thought and just and careful obser- 
vation. Some of his works are not unworthy of the great- 
est of political economists. M. Parent was born at Beauport, 
near Quebec, in 1801, but spent portions of his long life in 
various cities of the Dominion, such as Toronto and Ottawa, 
in consequence of being connected with the government. He 
died in 1875, in the latter city, at the age of seventy-four. He 
was then under-secretary of state. 

One of the most poetic figures in literary Canada is undoubt- 
edly Philippe Aubert de Gasp6, whose first work is a phenome- 
non, insomuch that it was written when the author was some 
seventy five years of age. He led, in the time-honored manor of 
the Seigneurs de Gaspe, an almost patriarchal life, and in his book, 
Canadians of Old, he simply put into stirring prose events and 
circumstances which would have rung out in fiery verse in the 
war-ballads of the ancients. This book made an extraordinary 
sensation. The reviews thereupon are a panegyric. It was 
hailed with delight as an essentially true and perfect description 
of local manners, customs, and dwellings. When put into an 
English dress by Mrs. Penne"e, of Quebec, it elicited warm praise 
from journals of eminence. 

A word here of a man who, having made himself prominent 
as among the first of Canadian artists, has likewise devoted him- 
self to the culture of letters. In spite of his busy life as a paint- 
er M. Bourassa has written considerable, and the quality is in 
greater proportion than the quantity. His style is refined, deli- 
cate, spiritual ; there are the dreamy visions of an artistic world 
in it, the peace, the calm that come from a long preponderance 
in an organization of the ideal. But there is warm human sym- 
pathy in every line of his writings, whether M. Bourassa goes 
into fiction or confines himself to reality, as in his travels in 
Italy and other parts of the Continent. 

Oscar Dunn, among a school of younger authors, is a man of 
mark. As a journalist his ability is undisputed. He has edited 
the Journal of Public Instruction and been connected with other 
periodicals. There is an earnestness, strength, and vigor in what 
he writes, as well as a fund of solid information, practical sense, 
and keen perception of the points at issue. His Lecture four 



1883.] FRENCH-CANADIAN MEN OF LETTERS. 119 

Tons touches ably upon many current topics. Mr. Dunn, still a 
young man, is among the rising litterateurs of the day. 

A witty and brilliant writer is Arthur Buies, now residing in 
Montreal, though formerly of Quebec. His book upon the Sa- 
guenay is charming in its vivacity and deeply interesting in its 
accounts of that favored region. M. Buies has written a great 
deal, and his writings have become very popular. Faucher de 
St. Maurice, also of the younger school of authors, has contri- 
buted to current literature many agreeable books of travel, such 
as Two Years in Mexico, descriptions of places on the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, and many others. M. George de Boucherville, bro- 
ther of a former premier of the name, has confined himself prin- 
cipally to novelettes which are of a light but very pleasing cha- 
racter. The best known is, perhaps, One Lost and Two Found, 
an English rendering of the name which, perhaps, scarcely ex- 
presses it. M. de Boucherville belongs to an old and distin- 
guished family prominent in the political and social life of the 
province ; hence his name served as an introduction to works 
which at once took a hold of the people. 

We close with the following prediction of Canada's literary 
future from the pen of Abbe Casgrain, to whom we have been 
more than once indebted in the preparation of this paper : 

" If, as is indisputable," he says, " a literature is the reflection of the 
morals, the character, the aptitudes, and the genius of a nation ; if it retains 
the imprint of the places wherein it took rise, the different aspects of na- 
ture, landscapes, views, and horizons, ours will be grave, meditative, spiri- 
tual, religious, evangelizing like our missionaries, generous as our mar- 
tyrs, energetic and persevering as our early pioneers. It will also be of 
vast proportions, like our rivers, our wide horizons, our mighty nature; it 
will be mysterious as the echoes of our immense and impenetrable forests ; 
vivid as the lightning flashes of our Aurora Borealis ; melancholy as our 
pale evenings of autumn, wrapped in their vaporous mists; deep as the 
austere blue of our heavens, chaste and pure as the virginal mantles of our 
long winters. But it will be essentially religious and believing ; such will 
be its characteristic form and expression ; or, if not, it will die, and of a 
moral suicide. This is its only condition of being, its sole motive power ; 
it has no other, any more than our race has any principle of life without 
faith and religion. From the day it ceases to believe it will cease to exist. 
The incarnation of its thought, the embodiment of its intelligence, litera- 
ture must carry out its destiny.* 

"Thus," he continues, " it will be the faithful mirror of our little nation 
in the various phases of its existence, with its ardent faith, its noble aspira- 
tions, its outbursts of enthusiasm, its traits of heroism, its generous pas- 
sion of self-sacrifice. It will not be stamped with the seal of modern real- 
ism, which is the outcome of materialistic thought, and will have, on this 
account, greater spontaneity, originality, and activity." 



120 EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [April, 



EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 

ONE gratifying fact in the recent history of Ireland is the 
progress that has been made in popular education. Eachtof the 
last four census returns shows a steady increase throughout the 
country in the number able to read and write, and the growing 1 
numbers of schools and scholars indicate a still faster progress 
in the immediate future. Forty years ago, when the population 
numbered over eight millions, Ireland had only two thousand 
three hundred national schools with a nominal attendance of two 
hundred and eighty thousand pupils. Now, though the popula- 
tion has fallen to a little over five millions, the number of schools 
has risen to nearly eight thousand, attended by eleven hundred 
thousand children. The pupils in the Christian Brothers' schools 
have risen in the same time from six to twenty-five thousand. 
The distinctively Protestant schools, which in 1841 had nearly a 
hundred thousand pupils, have, it is true, fallen in their atten- 
dance, but even with that deduction the increase in the number 
of school-children in Ireland is enormous. In 1841 scarcely five 
per cent, of the population attended schools, while twenty-five 
per cent, is the attendance in the present year. Whatever may 
be said of the Irish schools in comparison with those of other 
lands, it is undeniable that they have made a greater relative 
progress of late years than those of almost any civilized nation. 
The Irish Catholics are fast effacing the badge of ignorance im- 
posed on them by the Penal Code a code whose effects, it 
should be borne in mind, have survived the Act of Catholic 
Emancipation. 

The increase in the number of schools and pupils is of course 
not sufficient alone to show that education in a country is in a 
satisfactory state. Schools, like other institutions, may be ineffi- 
cient or efficient, and a mere list of their numbers, though use- 
ful, is by no means a sure index of the state of popular educa- 
tion. Irregular attendance of pupils, and careless or incompe- 
tent teachers, can keep a people in ignorance though the country 
be overspread with schools. Such, it is said, was really the case 
in Ireland thirty years ago. According to the reports of the 
government inspectors not more than thirty per cent, of the 
pupils whom they examined could read fairly. Of late years 
the system of yearly examinations has been established as a 



1883.] ED UCA TION IN IRELAND, PAST A ND PRE SEN r. 121 

guide to the partial payment of the teachers, and in consequence 
a fair estimate can be formed of the real efficiency of the Irish 
schools. It will, perhaps, be a surprise to Americans to learn 
that in the elementary branches of reading, writing, and arithme- 
tic the Irish common schools are now decidedly ahead of those 
of England, and even of Scotland. A certain amount is paid 
to the school in which he has been taught for each pupil who 
successfully passes for the first time an inspector's examination 
in any one of those three branches. In England last year, of 
every hundred pupils who had been taught reading eighty- nine 
could read, while in Ireland the number was over ninety-two. 
In writing and arithmetic the percentage of pupils that passed 
muster in English schools was respectively eighty and seventy- 
five, while in the Irish it rose to ninety-four and seventy-six. 
This result is all the more remarkable as the pay of the Irish 
teachers averages almost exactly the half of that paid to the 
English. In fact, the general superiority of the English schools, 
with the enormous funds lavished on them and their ample sup- 
ply of normal schools and other educational appliances scarcely 
known in Ireland, was until lately scarcely questioned even in 
Ireland itself, while in England it was assumed as a matter of 
course. But the figures are there made up, too, by officials of 
the government in both cases, and they tell an unmistakable tale 
in favor of the common schools of Ireland. 

It is hard to say whether the Irish national schools should be 
regarded as denominational or otherwise. In practice the great 
majority of them are recognized as either Catholic or Protes- 
tant by the people. A large number of the girls' schools are 
taught by nuns, and the great majority of the managers in 
whose hands the appointment of the teachers and general con- 
trol of the schools are placed are either Catholic priests or min- 
isters of the various Protestant denominations. The pupils al- 
most invariably correspond to the religion of the managers : 
Protestant pupils attend the schools under Protestant manage- 
ment, and Catholics almost exclusively make up the attendance 
in the schools managed by the Catholic clergy. By a strange 
anomaly, however, tne government authorities persist in regard- 
ing all alike as undenominational. A school may be attached to 
a church or meeting-house, and its manager may be expressly 
appointed because he is a clergyman and likely to recommend it 
to his co-religionists, but the authorities refuse to recognize the 
religious character of the school itself. Catholic doctrines must 
not be taught, Catholic prayers used, or even Catholic books 



122 EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [April, 

shown in any national school except at stated times. The na- 
tional system connives at Catholic schools, but refuses to offi- 
cially recognize them. In the schools under its immediate con- 
trol the teachers are invariably chosen from different creeds, no 
matter what the religion of the district and in spite of the fact 
that almost no class of the population wishes for irreligious 
schools. Normal schools come under the head of the institu- 
tions entirely controlled by the Education Board, and to them 
the system of mixed teachers, in nearly inverse ratio to the 
religion of the people, is strictly applied. In consequence few 
Catholics attend them ; and this, perhaps, is the most serious evil 
of the system. Why a government which professes no creed 
should spend the public money on institutions which the great 
majority of the public refuse to use is a puzzle to strangers, but 
in truth it is only a surviving relic of the system which once 
refused to acknowledge the legal existence of a " papist " in 
Catholic Ireland. 

To form a correct idea of Irish public education it is neces- 
sary to bear in mind what has been the attitude of the govern- 
ment towards the mass of the people during the past few gene- 
rations. As far as three-fourths of the nation are concerned, the 
policy of the government was not merely not to educate, but 
to take every precaution against their being educated by any 
means. Other governments have been grossly neglectful in the 
matter of public education, but to the English government of 
Ireland during the last century alone belongs the bad pre emi- 
nence of actively enforcing national ignorance by all the powers 
of law. Its notion of public education was summed up in the 
extirpation of " popery," and any teaching which did not include 
that was absolutely felonious. A highly significant chapter in 
history could be formed from various acts of Parliament relat- 
ing to public education in Ireland. In 1733 the first essay at a 
common-school system was made in Ireland, and its object was 
stated to be " to instruct the children of Roman Catholics and 
other poor natives in English, in industrial occupations and the 
principles of the Protestant Establishment." Thirty-five years 
later the Hibernian Military and Marine Schools were establish- 
ed, and their purpose was concisely stated : " to save the sons and 
daughters of absent or deceased soldiers and sailors from popery, 
beggary, and idleness." The next essay, made in 1792, after the 
first relaxation of the Penal Code, was milder in words, though 
not, indeed, to " popery." A grant was made to establish schools 
to an " Association for Discountenancing Vice and Promoting 



1883.] EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 123 

the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion " that is 
to say, the religion by law established in Ireland. The associa- 
tion with the long name proved as unsuccessful as its predeces- 
sors in the task of rooting out Catholicity, and in 1806 the Lon- 
don Hibernian Society reduced its undertaking to the simpler 
form of " building schools and circulating the Scriptures in Ire- 
land." The onslaught on " popery " was evidently weakening, 
and, in fact, five years later a society was formed which actually 
promised to discourage proselytism in its schools, and only asked 
that the Bible should be read therein without note or comment. 
To this society, composed almost entirely of Protestants, lay and 
clerical, the whole sum annually devoted to education by Par- 
liament was entrusted for nearly twenty years. As a matter of 
course in those days the great bulk of these funds was applied 
to supporting schools directed by Protestant ministers and taught 
by Protestant teachers, but Catholic schools were not absolutely 
excluded from a share in them, provided they would make read- 
ing of- the Bible part of their teaching. Even the Douay, or 
Catholic, version would do, but " no Bible, no school money " was 
the rule. It was certainly a mighty abasement in the claims of 
government to come down from the " extirpation of popery " to 
merely asking the Irish Catholics to read the Bible, but even 
this the Irish Catholics were not willing to concede. They had 
ever steadily refused to acknowledge any right in the authorities 
to teach religion, and they entertained well-founded suspicions 
of their honesty ; so after a few trials they refused absolutely to 
have anything to do with the Education Society. For a while the 
latter paid little heed to the fact that its schools were useless to 
four-fifths of the population. They applied the funds entrusted to 
them to the schools that made no objection to Bible-reading, and 
let the Catholics go without any. But an end came to this plea- 
sant state of things. O'Connell thundered at the door of Parlia- 
ment until Catholic Emancipation was wrung from the fears, if 
not from the justice, of George IV. and his ministry. The Ca- 
tholic complaints of their exclusion from the benefits of public 
education grew louder and louder and would no longer be de- 
nied. Finally, in 1831, the then Irish Secretary of State, Lord 
Stanley, proposed to establish a system of national education 
from which all interference with any form of religion should be 
strictly excluded, and provision made for the separate religious 
instruction of all denominations. A board of seven commis- 
sioners was appointed to carry out this system, and for the first 
time the Catholics of Ireland were admitted to share in the 



124 EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [April, 

public-school funds on nominally equal terras with the rest of 
the population. 

Though admitted in principle, however, the equal rights of 
the Catholics were far from being secured in practice. The 
practical control of the whole system was left in the hands of the 
Board of Education, in accordance with the bureaucratic organi- 
zation of government in Ireland, and on the board the Catholic 
representation was little more than nominal. Two commis- 
sioners out of seven was deemed an ample guarantee of Catholic 
interests by the government, while five were appointed to secure 
the rights of the Protestant sects, which formed scarcely a fifth 
of the nation. Six of the commissioners were unpaid, and the 
seventh was the virtual director of the whole administration. 
The latter office was conferred on a Scotch Presbyterian min- 
ister who had previously conducted a private school in Dublin. 
The assistants in this were quickly transferred to the Education 
Office, and the Normal School for training teachers was specially 
entrusted to their care. Their worthy chief also took on him- 
self and his assistants the work of providing nearly all the books 
to be used in the Irish national schools. It need not be said that 
everything relating to Irish nationality and the Catholic Church 
was most carefully excluded from these books. So far, indeed, 
were the precautions carried in that respect that Lover's little 
ballad, " The Angels' Whisper," having been inserted in one of 
the readers, it was afterwards removed as smacking too strongly 
of Catholic ideas ! But the mere exclusion of Catholic ideas 
from the school-books was not all. Dr. Whately, an English- 
man, had lately been made Protestant archbishop of Dublin and 
also a member of the Education Commission. As the number of 
his flock was not so great as to occupy much of the archbishop's 
time, he resolved to try his hand at " rooting out Romanism " 
through the agency of the national schools. In public this 
model archbishop professed the strongest wish to carry out the 
principles originally laid down for the system, but in private he 
did not hesitate to record his hopes of quietly undermining the 
faith of the Irish people through the agency of the national 
schools. The Bible had been expressly excluded from the list 
of school-books, but his grace quietly endeavored to slip it in 
again under a new form. A special translation of portions of 
Scripture was made by himself and two other Protestant clergy- 
men, and introduced into the national schools under the title of 
Scripture extracts. It was intended to gradually extend the 
extracts till the whole Bible should be included in them, and by 



1883.] EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 125 

that time it was hoped that the Irisn Catholics would wake 
up some morning to find themselves genuine Protestants. Dr. 
Whately, however, had underrated the intelligence of the Irish 
people. He succeeded, indeed, in getting his " extracts" into 
use in a considerable number of schools under Protestant teachers, 
but an attempt to force them into the model schools in a country 
town led to an outcry which ended in his own withdrawal from 
the board. The Scripture extracts were dropped and some 
attempts made at satisfying the claims of the Catholics to equal 
rights. The numbers of the board were ultimately increased to 
twenty, of whom one-half are Catholics, though by no means Ca- 
tholic representatives, as they are only government nominees. 
Notwithstanding these concessions, however, it. cannot be said 
that the system is by any means as yet satisfactory to the Irish peo- 
ple. Its traditions are wholly out of sympathy with the popular 
wishes, and in Ireland official traditions are a power greater than 
viceroys or acts of Parliament. Mixed education is the official 
ideal in the Irish school system, and, though it unwillingly con- 
cedes a control over the primary schools to the Catholic repre- 
sentatives, it continues the struggle to force its own theories on 
all the higher branches of education. Thus the Irish Catholics 
are virtually excluded from the normal schools, and to some 
extent also from the model schools and technical schools which 
are supported out of the taxes levied on them. In popular edu- 
cation no doubt much has been done, but until its entire manage- 
ment is brought into sympathy with the will of the people no 
system of national education can properly fulfil its object. 

The state of university education in Ireland is a most peculiar 
one, and constitutes by no means the least important grievance 
under which the Catholic population still labors. It must be 
borne in mind that universities in Europe have a much more 
important legal position than they have in America. Admission 
to, or rank in, the professions of law and medicine are still to a 
considerable extent under university control, either directly or 
indirectly, and education in a university is of much higher prac- 
tical importance for success in any profession than it is in the 
United States. Down to 1849 a complete monopoly of univer- 
sity education in Ireland was secured to Trinity College, an 
institution framed on the most offensive principles of Protestant 
supremacy as formerly embodied in the Penal Code. Its gov- 
ernors, its teachers, and the holders of its scholarships were all 
required to profess the doctrines of the English Church ; its 
course of studies was entirely Protestant ; and the Protestant 



126 EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [April, 

9 

Archbishop of Dublin was, in virtue of his office, its highest 
officer, or Visitor. That Catholics might enter its classes, but 
could not hope to share in its prizes or offices, only added bitter- 
ness to the injustice of maintaining such an institution as the 
national university of Ireland. A fraction of less than one-eighth 
of the population was the only class recognized by law as entitled 
to share in its endowments. It should be remembered that 
Trinity owes its rich endowments, not to the liberality of mem- 
bers of the favored denomination, but to grants of public pro- 
perty made in former years at the expense chiefly of the Irish 
Catholics. Lands amounting to one per cent, of the entire soil 
of Ireland were settled on it for the purposes of public education, 
and the whole of the revenues derived from those lands is still 
applied to the benefit of a mere handful of the Irish population. 
In consequence Irish Catholics were practically debarred from 
university education in their own land except under terms of 
inferiority and at the most serious risk of losing their faith. As 
a matter of fact few Catholics, not one-tenth of the whole num- 
ber of students, ever entered Trinity ; nor, though its fellow- 
ships have now been nominally thrown open to them, are there 
at present, we believe, a hundred Catholics among its twelve 
hundred students. 

The injustice of thus excluding the majority of the nation 
from the advantages of a higher education induced the govern- 
ment to establish a second university, the " Queen's," in 1849, 
with colleges in Belfast, Dublin, and Cork. The revenues of 
Trinity were not interfered with, but grants were made from the 
public funds to the new university, which was avowedly intended 
for the benefit of the majority of the population, which declined 
to profit by the Protestant teachings of Trinity. Unfortunately 
the government, while admitting the justice of the Irish Catho- 
lics' objections to Trinity, simply provided an equally objection- 
able substitute in the Queen's University. The Anglican portion 
of the population was left to receive Anglican religious train- 
ing in its university, while it was thought ample justice to the 
Catholics that they should not be required to receive it in the 
Queen's University. Catholicity was alike excluded from both, 
and the teaching staff of the Queen's colleges was overwhelm- 
ingly Protestant and to a considerable extent tin-Irish. Indeed, 
the Belfast College was virtually handed over to the Presby- 
terians, a body numbering little over a tenth of the population 
of Ireland. A Presbyterian minister endorsed by the General 
Assembly of his church, practically if not formally," was made its 



1883.] EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 127 

president, and not a single Catholic, except one whose profes- 
sorship was merely nominal, was placed on its staff. Cork 
College received a Catholic as president, but a majority of 
Protestant professors, though eleven-twelfths of the inhabitants 
expected to send students to attend its lectures were Catholics. 
In still more Catholic Gal way a few Catholic professors were 
deemed quite enough concession to Catholic educational claims. 
In all three colleges the teaching was based on the exclusion of 
all religion, the idea of the founders evidently being that though 
Catholics might object to laying aside their religion in favor of 
a distinctive form of Protestantism, they could have no objec- 
tion to laying it aside when they were not asked to take anything 
in exchange. As might have been expected, such was not the 
case. Though considerable inducements have been held out to 
students in the shape of scholarships and substantial prizes, the 
bulk of the Irish people have steadily held aloof from the Queen's 
colleges. In the medical department a certain proportion have 
used them, especially in Cork, but compared with the population 
of the country.their number is insignificant. In Cork and Gal way, 
where the populations are Catholic in something like the pro- 
portions of twelve to one, two hundred and twenty-five students 
entered last year, of whom one hundred and twelve were Catho- 
lics ; while in Belfast, the capital of a province about half Catholic, 
only eight Catholics out of a hundred and fifty students were 
found to present themselves for admission. 

An experience of thirty years having conclusively shown the 
utter inutility of the Queen's University to the majority of the 
Irish people, it was dissolved last year and a new institution 
established in its place. This is the present Royal University 
of Ireland, which now shares with Trinity College the exclusive 
right of granting degrees in the country. Unlike Trinity, it is 
not a teaching body. Its functions are to examine candidates 
from any college, and, after the requisite number of examinations, 
extending over a number of years, to award degrees. A certain 
number of prizes and exhibitions are offered for the most suc- 
cessful students at the various examinations, but they are by 
no means so numerous as those formerly offered in the Queen's 
University. It is also provided that after seven years the fellows, 
or examiners, shall be chosen by competition from the graduates. 
These fellowships are thirty-two in number, and the pay of each 
is two thousand dollars a year. For the present they are ap- 
pointed by the senate, which is the governing body of the 
university and is composed nearly equally of Catholics and non- 



128 EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [April, 

Catholics. Besides acting as examiners the fellows may be 
required to teach in any college approved by the senate in 
which students are following the course prescribed by the uni- 
versity. It is generally understood that a certain number, ten 
or twelve, will be assigned to the Catholic University which has 
been for many years maintained by private contributions in 
Dublin. Meanwhile the Episcopalian Trinity College is left in 
full enjoyment of its princely revenues, and the Presbyterian or 
indifferent Queen's colleges continue to receive a support of a 
hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year from the public 
funds. Still, small as is the concession, it has already had a 
marked effect. The now defunct Queen's University, after thirty 
years' existence and with all the inducements offered in the shape 
of numerous exhibitions, could only muster three hundred and 
seventy entrances last year. The new university, though hur- 
riedly opened after both the Queen's colleges and Trinity had 
filled up their classes, had fully five hundred entrances. In other 
words, the number now commencing a university career in Ire- 
land is nearly double what it was two years ago. This increase 
is mainly drawn from the ranks of the Catholic population, and 
it would be hard to overestimate its importance on the future 
of the country. 

From the universities we turn naturally to the schools from 
which their students are drawn. In America they would be 
called either colleges or high-schools, but in Ireland they are 
usually designated intermediate schools, as occupying a place 
between the primary schools and the universities. Their total 
number is between three and four hundred, of which about two 
hundred are for boys, with a total attendance of about twelve 
thousand. It would be more accurate to say that such was the 
attendance a couple of years ago, for changes are now so rapidly 
going on that it is impossible to say what it is at present. In- 
deed, until quite lately scarcely any reliable information could be 
obtained by a stranger about the condition of the Irish interme- 
diate schools. Since Catholic Emancipation government took lit- 
tle or no concern in the matter, and there was no general system 
among the schools themselves from which information could be 
readily obtained. Under the system of Protestant ascendency 
a good deal of public money had been devoted to founding and 
endowing classical schools as feeders to Trinity College, and, of 
course, for the exclusive use of members of the state church ; but 
when the political importance of that institution began to wane 
it was not thought worth while to take any further interest in 



1883.] EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 129 

the matter. The Protestant schools already established, such 
as the Royal Schools, the Diocesan Schools, Erasmus Smith's 
Schools, and the Incorporated Society Schools, were left in the 
enjoyment of their revenues uncontrolled by the state and 
preserving a certain connection with Trinity College. If the 
Catholic majority wanted colleges they were left to provide 
them at their own cost, while the wealthy minority was am- 
ply supplied at the public expense. Such, in plain words, was 
the educational equality enjoyed by the Irish people for a full 
half-century after Catholic Emancipation. 

The injustice of the existing arrangements, however, at length 
was made too notorious by the repeated complaints of the Ca- 
tholics, and in 1878 a measure was introduced for the improve- 
ment of intermediate education in Ireland. At that time there 
were about twelve thousand pupils attending such schools, not 
more than half of whom Were Catholics, though the latter form 
nearly four-fifths of the population. The disproportion is not to 
be wondered at, as, owing to the circumstances just referred to, 
the number of Protestant colleges and collegiate schools was 
nearly double that of the Catholic. It is true that very few of 
the former had been established in recent years, but the old 
endowments kept up the supply independent of any special pub- 
lic liberality on the part of the non-Catholic population. With 
these endowments the government did not meddle, but it appro- 
priated five million dollars from the surplus funds of the dises- 
tablished church to promote intermediate education in Ireland 
on the terms of equality for all religions. A board of seven com- 
missioners, three Catholics and four Protestants, was entrusted 
with the management of this fund, the interest of which was to 
be divided among Catholic and Protestant schools alike in the 
form of prizes to students and results fees to the teachers. The 
board was to employ a staff of examiners and hold yearly ex- 
aminations of all pupils who presented themselves in the subjects 
set forth in its programme. These included all the subjects usu- 
ally taught in a college course, as ancient and modern languages, 
English literature, mathematics, the physical sciences, music, and 
drawing. A three years' course in each was arranged, and six- 
teen, seventeen, and eighteen years fixed as the maximum age 
for winning prizes in the first, second, and third or highest classes 
respectively. The first examinations were held at various places 
through the country in 1879. 

The new system at first was not regarded with much hope 
by the Irish Catholics. They had complained that the public 
VOL. xxxvn. 9 



130 EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [April, 

endowments were unfairly applied to give a small section of the 
population superior educational advantages over themselves, and 
in answer they were offered permission to compete with the 
favored section for funds to carry on their own education. The 
whole grant was much less than the endowments enjoyed ex- 
clusively by the minority, but it was only in that grant that the 
majority were allowed to aspire to compete for some share in 
their own revenues. Among the favored classes there was little 
doubt but that they would nearly monopolize the benefits of the 
new arrangements. Their schools were amply provided with 
teachers from the Protestant university and long trained in pre- 
paring their pupils for its examinations, while both advantages 
were wanting to the Catholic schools. The Catholics them- 
selves had little hope of rivalling their favored opponents, but 
nevertheless they threw themselves eagerly into the competi- 
tion. The results of the public examinations proved a complete 
surprise to both parties. Not only did the Catholic schools win 
a large proportion of the results fees awarded for pupils who 
" passed " the examination, but their pupils carried away many 
of the highest prizes awarded to individual merit. A rapid in- 
crease followed in the number of candidates at the next year's 
examination, and a still greater the following year, and the re- 
sults were still more favorable as the Catholic schools grew fa- 
miliar with the examinations and systematized their teaching. 
In 1879 I GSS tnan four thousand presented themselves for exami- 
nation, and two thousand three hundred passed. The following 
year the candidates rose to five thousand five hundred, and the 
passes to four thousand ; and in 1881 nearly seven thousand pre- 
sented themselves, of whom forty-seven hundred passed. In fact, 
the numbers of students increased so rapidly that the board had 
to reduce the scale of its prizes very considerably this year, and 
at the same time to raise the standard of merit. The result has 
been a slight decrease in the number of girls for both sexes 
share in the Intermediate Examinations this year, but the com- 
petition was, if anything, far keener among the students, and a 
complete majority of all the prizes was carried off by the pu- 
pils of the Catholic schools. Candidates are divided into three 
grades according to age, and gold and silver medals are awarded 
to the first and second respectively in each grade. In all three 
the gold medals, and in two the silver ones, were won by the stu- 
dents from Catholic schools, and of a total of somewhat over sev- 
en hundred exhibitions and prizes of all grades they obtained four 
hundred in spite of the advantages enjoyed by their competitors. 



1883.] EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 131 

The emulation among the schools which has been awakened 
by the public examinations is a more important benefit to Irish 
education than the money-grants. There has been an immensely 
greater amount of study in all the Irish schools since the passing 
of the Intermediate Act. Catholic and non-Catholic schools 
alike have advanced in consequence, but it is more especially 
among the former that progress is noticeable. The latter, in- 
deed, already possessed a certain system of competition among 
themselves in the form of the entrance examinations for Trinity 
College, while the Catholic schools were entirely isolated and had 
no facilities for testing their strength even among themselves. The 
establishment of a definite three years' course of studies, too, has 
had a useful effect in bringing system into all the schools. A very 
important point, too, which is especially revealed by the latest 
examination is that the Christian Brothers' schools, which were 
hitherto regarded as essentially primary in their education, are 
pushing into the rank of intermediate schools, and their pupils 
hold their own well among their competitors. Higher classes 
are formed for-these .pupils, and thus the increase in the facilities 
for higher education among the Irish Catholics of late years is 
much greater than is indicated even by the number of new col- 
leges founded. Under the action of the new university exami- 
nations a similar progress will no doubt be made by Catholic 
boarding-schools. Many of them will become university col- 
leges, at least in part, and the next few years promise to work a 
complete educational revolution in the condition of Ireland. 

It should not be forgotten that the system of competitive ex- 
aminations which is now so extensively applied to the Irish schools 
and colleges is open to some objections. It is asserted by many 
that its tendency is to induce students to seek rather a shallow 
knowledge of many subjects than real learning in any one, and 
also that it tends to promote a spirit of self-sufficiency that is pre- 
judicial to genuine advancement. To some extent these charges 
are well founded. The principle of competitive examinations is 
applied in the British Empire to an extent that would astonish 
Americans. Not only every branch of the civil service but also 
commissions in the army, and even clerkships in most of the 
banks and other public institutions, are now filled in accordance 
with the results of competitions in book-knowledge. The ex- 
aminations vary according to the different offices and are often 
on an enormous scale. It is quite common to have seven or 
eight hundred competitors examined for perhaps a hundred 
offices in the Inland Revenue or Post-Office. The Indian civil- 



132 EDUCATION IN IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [April, 

service examinations are a far severer test than those of an ordi- 
nary university in the amount of knowledge required to secure a 
pass. Unfortunately, however, it has been found that to pass 
an examination the system of cramming is far more effectual 
than real study. Civil-service "grinders " are a prominent class 
among the ranks of teachers and by no means a desirable one. 
The grinder's business is not to instruct so much as to familiar- 
ize his pupils with the particular questions they are likely to be 
asked on a given subject ; and to such a point of perfection has 
the system been carried that it is quite possible for a skilful 
grinder to make a pupil with the merest smattering of a subject 
pass an examination in which a thoroughly competent rival igno- 
rant of the examiner's peculiarities would be ignominiously re- 
jected. The length of the course, however, and the number of 
subjects, will probably be a sufficient guard, for some years at 
least, against any system of mere cramming in the Irish schools. 
Meanwhile there is no question but the amount of study in them 
has been largely increased and a definite direction has been 
given to it such as it never possessed before. For the present 
there is no danger of too large an educated class in Ireland. 
From the circumstances to which allusion has already been made 
the Irish Catholics are by no means adequately represented 
either in professional or literary life, and there is an ample field 
for them to fill in both in their own country. It is only through 
the colleges that they can work their way into it, and the in- 
creased work in the colleges now going on cannot fail to show 
increased work in the active business of life in the course of the 
next few years. 

Much undoubtedly is still needed to make public education in 
Ireland what it should be. The want of trained teachers in the 
national schools is a serious evil and cripples their teaching in 
all subjects above the elementary ones. The model and similar 
schools might afford the means of a cheap and full education to 
many thousands of pupils who are now unable to pay their way 
in colleges and have in consequence to content themselves with 
a very limited range of schooling. Technical schools, such as 
are common on the Continent of Europe, are almost unknown in 
Ireland except in connection with the reformatories, and the 
agricultural schools under the National Board of Education are 
almost utterly worthless. ^The whole system needs to be put 
in sympathy with the feelings and religion of the people, tho- 
roughly and not in a half-permissive way as at present. Let 
the Irish people regulate their own education according to their 



1883.] ED UCA TION IN I RE LA ND, PAST A N^D P RE SEN T. 133 

own wants, and not have it fixed by the theories of a knot of 
officials, and the real effect of the national schools would be 
doubled. The endowments made from the public resources and 
now practically monopolized by a small sect should be shared 
among all classes of the nation, Catholic and non Catholic alike. 
Until these things are done there can be no real educational 
equality in the country, and the Irish Catholics will have just 
reason to complain that they are still by law depressed below a 
section of their countrymen. 

Making all allowances, however, for the grievances which 
still exist, it may be said that the outlook for Catholic education 
in Ireland is now brighter than it has ever been for centuries. 
Schools and scholars are both increasing in numbers. The Ca- 
tholic colleges have acquired a confidence in themselves to which 
most of them were strangers a few years ago, and for the first 
time in modern history a large body of Catholic young men are 
entering vigorously on university studies. All over the country 
university classes are being formed in the colleges which until 
lately aspired to no higher teaching than that of school-boys. 
What the effects of this educational movement will be in the 
course of a few years is too wide a field of speculation to enter 
on here. Knowledge has its perils as well as its advantages, and 
the Irish Catholics must face new responsibilities with the new 
learning which the present time is fast bringing to them. But 
if we may guess the future from the past, it may well be hoped 
that a people which has steadfastly refused to yield its faith to 
violence or barter it for human knowledge is destined to fill no 
ignoble part in the world when she once more regains the in- 
heritance of learning which was her proudest boast in the dis- 
tant past. 



134 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

A HISTORY OF THE COUNCILS OF THE CHURCH. From the Original Docu- 
ments. By the Right Rev. C. J. Hefele, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg, 
formerly Professor of Theology in the University of Tubingen. Vol. 
iii., A.D. 431 to A.D. 451. Translated from the German, with the au- 
thor's approbation, and edited by the Editor of Hagenbach's History of 
Doctrines. Edinburgh: T. & T.Clark. 1883. (For sale by the Catho- 
lic Publication Society Co.) 

The first volume of this History, translated into English, was noticed 
on its appearance. The second volume we have never received. This 
third volume contains the history of the oecumenical councils of Ephesus 
and Chalcedon, of the Robber-Synod of Ephesus, and of several particular 
councils held at Rome, Aries, Orange, and other places. It is a pleasure to 
see a book so well printed, in which the niceties of the editorial and typo- 
graphical art are so well observed. Nevertheless the omission of a Table 
of Contents is a defect, and the headings at the top of the pages might 
have been made more serviceable for finding easily the particular topics of 
which the reader is in search. 

The translation has been well done, and the editor has deserved well of 
the Catholic reader by the exact manner in which he has reproduced the 
author's work just as it is in the original text, without any of the caveats 
or other animadversions in an un-Catholic sense by which we are fre- 
quently annoyed in similar works edited by Protestants. There is no 
protest whatever on his part, except a very modest little reminder in his 
preface that he is a " non-Roman editor." The Greek text of the most im- 
portant conciliar acts of the two great councils is given in beautiful type, 
and the original Latin of St. Leo's Dogmatic Letter, adding much to the 
value and beauty of the volume. In short, we cannot sufficiently praise 
the scholar-like fidelity and accuracy with which the editor has fulfilled a 
task of the very greatest utility to the cause of Catholic truth. 

We may here express our sense of the great excellence and value of 
the translations from the Fathers, published by the Messrs. Clark, and exe- 
cuted and edited by several eminent Protestant scholars. The twenty-four 
volumes of the " Ante-Nicene Library," and the fifteen volumes of "Select 
Works of St. Augustine," translated and edited with a literary honesty and 
critical accuracy very creditable to all who have taken part in the work, 
form a most valuable patristic collection. 

Hefele's History of Councils is a narrative and exposition of one great 
department of ecclesiastical history as far down as the Council of Con- 
stance, which is quite unique in its thoroughness and critical ability. It is 
an excellent text-book of instruction in seminaries, not only for acquiring 
a knowledge of important facts and events, but also for the aid it furnishes 
to the study of dogmatic theology. We hope to see the entire work trans- 
lated and published, and can only regret that the author did not continue 
his history at least as far down as the Council of Florence. 

The present volume is not second to any part of the entire work in 
importance and interest, perhaps may be considered as taking precedence 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 135 

of all. It relates to the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, in which 
the Catholic faith was in conflict with heresies quite as vital and danger- 
ous, more subtle and lasting in their noxious influences than Arianism. 

In the fifth century, and principally through the Councils of Ephesus 
and Chalcedon, the doctrine of Christ shone out in its full splendor, and, 
together with this doctrine, the dignity of the Blessed Virgin Mother of 
the Lord, and the power of his vicar the Roman pontiff, were manifested 
as reflections of his glory. It is singular to find Protestant editors and 
publishers bringing out and putting into circulation a work like that of 
Hefele, in which the evidence of the supremacy by divine right of the 
Roman pontiff is so fully exhibited. The circulation of such a work, and 
also of the works of the Fathers, must have a great influence in promoting 
conversions to the Catholic Church. The editors do not appear to us to 
concern themselves very much about the effect of their learned labors on 
the cause of Anglicanism. They seem rather to be animated by a zeal for 
collecting interesting facts and documents illustrating the history of Chris- 
tianity as a matter of curious study and inquiry, than by the desire of 
diffusing what is called " Anglo-Catholicism " which was apparent in the 
editors of the "Oxford Library of the Fathers." Whatever their private 
motives may be, or the effect of their studies upon themselves, a great 
many of -their readers will profit by them. We rejoice in the good which is 
done by their means, and the highest reward which they could receive for 
their labor would be their own conversion to the Catholic Church, which 
we heartily desire, and for which we recommend all their Catholic readers 
to pray. 

FINAL CAUSES. By Paul Janet, Member of the Institute, Professor at 
the Faculte des Lettres of Paris. Translated from the Second Edition 
of the French by William Affleck, B.D. With Preface by Robert Flint, 
D.D., LL.D., Professor of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. Second 
Edition. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883. 

Final Causes are what in common language we call ends in nature, for 
the sake of which efficient causes produce their effects. Many modern 
scientists deny that there are any final causes in nature. If there are 
none such, there is no design, no intention ; no power, either unconscious 
or conscious, identical with nature or superior to it, co-ordinating and di- 
recting causal forces in nature as means to an end ; manifested in the order 
of the universe. Consequently, there is no argument from design proving 
the existence of an intelligent architect of the world, much less of an infi- 
nite and eternal creator who has brought all things out of nothing, into 
existence. 

M. Paul Janet proposes in the work before us to show that the prin- 
ciple of finality in nature is proved by a valid process of induction and a 
reductio in absurdum, the only possible alternative of this principle being a 
dissolution of all law and causation into the chaos of pure chance ; which 
destroys the possibility of science ; and that this finality in nature is only 
intelligible when it is reduced to the intention and design of an intelli- 
gent First Cause, whose idea is realized in this finality. 

M. Janet has a fine philosophical mind and an extensive knowledge of 
the systems of metaphysicians and physicists. He criticises the theories of 
Kant, Hegel, Spinosa, Darwin, Spencer, and others, in regard to their bear- 



136 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 

ing on the idea of final causes, refuting all that is either involved in any of 
them, or connected with them, or deduced from them by inference, which 
is agnostic or atheistical. His argument, in brief, is that an incalculable 
totality of different causes and divergent elements conspiring and con- 
verging to the production of a single and common effect i.e., the order 
of the universe, in which there are many parts which are themselves par- 
ticular effects produced by a similar coincidence of separate causes cannot 
be explained in any other way than by an ideal design a.nd intention pre- 
existing to nature and giving law to it, which idea must be in an intelligent 
mind having the knowledge, power, and will to produce, as first cause, the 
total result. Every other explanation is shown to resolve itself into the 
doctrine of chance. Not content with merely reducing all opposite theo- 
ries to this manifest absurdity, the author shows that it is an absurdity by 
a comparison between the fortuitous operations of chance and the regular 
operations of the laws of nature. In his selection of illustrative facts the 
author is especially admirable and interesting, making the best use of his 
extensive knowledge of the discoveries of modern science, and lending a 
great charm to his rigorous process of reasoning. His book being, more- 
over, well written, as well as well reasoned and richly freighted with facts, 
has a singular fascination for any reader capable of following a close argu- 
ment, and enchains the attention without effort from the beginning to the 
end. 

M. Janet finishes his main argument in a very complete and satisfactory 
manner, having achieved what we may call a decisive logical triumph over 
the adversaries of final causes, at the conclusion : that there must be an 
intelligent, transcendental First Cause, whose intelligence proposes the end 
of nature which his power accomplishes in and through nature. After 
reaching this conclusion he proceeds to discuss, quite briefly, the supreme 
end itself, the idea of it in the divine mind, the nature and reason of evil 
which seems to furnish an objection against divine wisdom, omnipotence, 
and goodness, and some other cognate topics. We do not find his reason- 
ing in this part of his work always equal to that by which he has accom- 
plished the preceding and principal part of his task. Nevertheless there 
are germs and elements from which we may hope that the fine philosophi- 
cal mind of the author may at some future time construct a more complete 
theory of the Creative Idea and the supreme end of creation. 

The work on Final Causes has given its author great and well-merited 
fame in Europe. The learned gentlemen who have translated and edited 
this admirable work for the English-reading public deserve our thanks. 
There is no book we know of which we can so fully and earnestly recom- 
mend to really sincere and intelligent persons as a refutation of the so- 
phistry of Herbert Spencer and other agnostics. 

A COMPENDIUM OF IRISH BIOGRAPHY : Comprising sketches of distin- 
guished Irishmen, and of eminent persons connected with Ireland by 
s 6 r J7 ^ 6ir wr , itin S s - % Alf red Webb. Dublin : M. H. Gill & 
1878. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

This is an octavo volume of five hundred and ninety-eight pages in 
double columns, alphabetically arranged, and is a handsome book in paper, 
type, ink, and general appearance. It is not a catch-penny work of the 
green-and-gold, sunburst and wolf-dog" class unfortunately so familiar 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 137 

in certain sorts of Irish "national" literature, but an excellent, carefully 
wrought out dictionary of Irish biography that will be of great value for 
reference by all students of Irish history, ancient, mediaeval, or modern. 
The author is not a Catholic, though, and therefore some of his reflections 
are not acceptable to the Catholic mind. For instance, in his sketch of 
the celebrated scholar of the ninth century, Joannes Scotus Erigena, Mr. 
Webb goes to the late George Henry Lewes and to the Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica for an estimate of Erigena's metaphysical system. 

Another criticism that may be made is that Mr. Webb, following not, 
it is to be presumed, from design but from Dublin custom the English su- 
percilious carelessness in this matter, sometimes arranges the names alpha- 
betically under the corrupt English forms, and neglects to give these names 
in their proper form. As one example of this : The noble chief of the clan 
O'Mor, who figured so brilliantly in the Confederation of 1641, is found 
under the caption of More, Roger a corrupt English attempt at the true 
name, Ruadhri (or Rory) O'Mor. " Roger," except for a fancied resemblance 
in sound, is no better a rendering of Ruadhri than would be Jacob or 
Adoniram. The degradation of Ireland, its language, literature, and tra- 
ditions, during the last century is, however, responsible for this sort of 
thing, and not any want of good-will on Mr. Webb's part. This singular 
trick of '"translating" Gaelic proper names has, by the way, become al- 
most universal in Ireland, and has resulted in nearly obliterating the an- 
cient personal and family names. Under this system Conn has become 
" Cornelius," Donal, or Donald, has become " Daniel," Siodla (Sheela) 
"Julia," etc., while MacGabhain (or MacGowan) has become " Smythe," 
MacSedn (MacShane) Johnson, etc. A most remarkable instance of this 
is in the forms which have been taken in English literature by the name of 
the celebrated chieftainess of the clan O'Maile, or O'Malley, in the time of 
Queen Elizabeth. The prefix O' (more properly Ui] is the Gaelic for a 
descendant; but it is masculine, and in the case of a woman is replaced by 
the feminine Nt, which aspirates an m immediately following it and gives 
it the sound of our English w. The heroine, then, who married one of the 
De Burgos and visited Elizabeth in great state, after having made war on 
the English queen, was Gra Ni-Mhaile, and she is universally so called in 
Ireland still; but Mr. Webb puts her down as " Grace O'Malley, or Grania 
Uaile," the latter form being mere nonsense. 

There are several grievous omissions, too ; among them, Carolan, the 
last of the bards of whom we have any published accounts, and the late 
Archbishop MacHale, who was certainly so thoroughly identified with the 
Irish public life of the last three-quarters of a century as to have deserved 
a full mention. Other names, too, which have risen to notice within the 
last five or six years, since the publication of this Compendium, will of course 
be missed. 

These objections aside, Mr. Webb has made a volume that deserves a 
"wide sale. 

ON THE DESERT: With a Brief Review of Recent Events in Egypt. By 
Henry M. Field, D.D., author of From the Lakes of Killarney to the 
Golden Horn and From Egypt to Japan. New York : Charles Scribner's 
Sons. 1883. 

It is not so easy as it used to be to write an interesting book of travels, 



138 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 

yet several of the recent ones are really among the most interesting. Dr. 
Field's On the Desert is very pleasant reading, being for the most part " a 
portfolio of sketches, which claims only to present a few pictures of the 
desert." The part which has interested us the most is the narrative of the 
journey from Mt. Sinai to Gaza across the desert. The author's amiable 
temper and descriptive talent, the mingling of poetical sentiment with a 
subdued humor, and an easy, agreeable style of writing, make him a genial 
companion to the reader who goes with him in imagination from Cairo to 
Jerusalem. 

There are some passages of more serious purport, in which the author 
gives his views and sentiments on religious and political matters obviously 
suggested by the scenes around him. We regret to find him, in the midst 
of pleasing and reverent reflections on the sacred places of our Lord's 
nativity and human life, and notwithstanding the pious respect which he 
shows toward the Blessed Virgin, repeating the charge of idolatrous wor- 
ship of Mary against the vast majority of the adorers of her divine Son. 
From the mouths of the ignorant or fanatical we hear such a charge with- 
out much emotion. But it gives pain to hear it from one who is capable of 
making such well-informed and reasonable judgments upon matters which 
he has taken the pains tp examine carefully. Perhaps, after all, Dr. Field 
is not quite so serious in his intention as Dr. Bellows was in accusing all 
Christians of idolatry in their worship of Jesus Christ, and quite consis- 
tently preferring Mohammedanism to Catholic Christianity, since Islam is 
in fact justified, if this be really an idolatrous religion. It may be that he 
uses the term "idolatry" only in an improper and metaphorical sense for 
excessive devotion, for otherwise we can hardly understand the poetic 
sympathy which he betrays for that which he condemns. 

The chapters on the Mosaic law and religion are excellent, and their 
insertion amid the description of a journey from Egypt to Palestine is 
opportune, as likely to attract the attention of readers who might not look 
at a book expressly treating of such a topic. But it is the " Review of 
Recent Events in Egypt " which, in our opinion, has by far the greatest 
value and interest of any part of this volume. Dr. Field arrived in Egypt 
early in the spring of 1882, and then passed on over the desert to Pales- 
tine, just in time to see the beginning of those remarkable events whose 
final outcome we are now anxiously awaiting, and expect to find fraught 
with consequences of moment, to the whole world. He saw Arabi at a 
social entertainment, and conversed with men who were the best able to 
give him information on the state of Egypt. We have been glad to find 
that he has a hearty and wholesome hatred of Turkish and Moslem misrule 
and barbarism, and his general estimate of the whole case is one which we 
consider to be sound and enlightened. We should 'like to make a long 
quotation from the chapter on " England in Egypt," but we must content 
ourselves with the closing paragraph : 

" Seeing that such issues are depending on the action now to be taken, 
may we not say that there are interests involved higher than those either 
of England or of Egypt the interests of Christendom and of civilization in 
the East? England has an opportunity to strike a blow at barbarism such 
as is not given to a nation in a hundred years. Our only fear is that she 
may weakly consent to give up her advantages, and thus lose by diplomacy 



1883.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 1 39 

what she has gained in war. If so, the latter end of this movement will 
be as impotent as its progress hitherto has been glorious. If she fails to 
complete what she has begun if, after subduing the military revolt and 
restoring order, she abandons the country it will quickly relapse into its 
former anarchy. Then indeed will ten devils enter in where one wasdriven 
out, and the last state of that country will be worse than the first. Let her 
not by any weak compliances throw away an opportunity such as may 
never be hers again. ' Who knoweth but she has come to the kingdom 
for such a time as this ? ' The future of Egypt, and to a large extent of 
the whole East, is now in the hands of England, and may God give her 
wisdom and firmness to do her duty ! " 

THE CHAIR OF PETER; or, The Papacy considered in its Institution, De- 
velopment, and Organization, and in the Benefits which for eighteen 
centuries it has conferred on Mankind. By John Nicholas Murphy, 
author of Terra Incognita. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1883. 
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

The most striking difference of this book from others on the same topic 
is the superior excellence of its mechanical execution. It is brought out 
in the best style of London typographical art, with large, clear type on 
thick paper, neatly bound, with the coat of arms of Pope Leo XIII. in a 
gilt impression on the cover, all the titles and lettering in good taste. This 
is no small advantage. For the reading-matter of a well-printed volume 
makes a much better impression on the mind than the same matter would 
make under a worse form. The circumstance that the volume has been 
issued by its actual London and New York publishers is also in its favor, 
since it is thus introduced to a wider and more general public than that 
which patronizes Catholic publishers, without any damage to its circula- 
tion among Catholic readers. 

The author's treatment of his topics is generally accurate, judicious, and 
sufficiently thorough. The subject of the primacy has been so frequently 
and ably treated by previous writers that there is nothing new to be said 
on it, and a new writer can only show a special ability for handling it in 
his method. In this respect the author has shown a creditable skill and 
judgment in the arrangement and presentation of evidence. We note in 
particular the copiousness and apt usage of his citations from non-Catho- 
lic authors. Another useful peculiarity of his method consists in the nume- 
rous notes in which an account is given of each author who is quoted, 
very serviceable for estimating the value of the testimonies and judgments 
of these various writers. 

The chief distinctive value of this work is to be found in that part of 
its contents which actually makes up the principal bulk of the volume, 
where other matters than the evidence for the primacy are discussed. 
The excellent history of the temporal power of the papacy, the sketch of 
the destinies of fhe Roman See through the different ages, the account of 
the Greek schism, of the great Western scission, of the Reformation, of the 
present state of the Catholic Church, etc., make, in connection with the 
argument for the primacy in the first part, a complete exposition of the 
origin, influence, and history of the papacy. On this account the book, 
taken as a whole, is perhaps the most instructive and generally useful 



140 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 



treatise on the Roman See which either Catholic or non-Catholic readers 
can peruse. 

Although this volume has been in general so carefully edited, we have 
observed several references in the notes to the index which lead to no- 
thing. For instance, on page 39, the note on Theodoret. Again, the author 
has either expressed himself obscurely or committed an oversight respect- 
ing a fact of history in his brief account of the patriarchate of Jerusalem. 
He seems, viz., to ascribe only an honorary precedence tp Jerusalem after 
as well as before the Council of Chalcedon, whereas it was precisely a real 
patriarchal jurisdiction, in addition to the honorary precedence recognized 
by the Council of Nicaea, which the Fathers of Chalcedon, with the ap- 
probation of the Roman legates, carved out for Juvenal of Jerusalem by 
cutting off a portion of the patriarchate of Antioch. In the account of the 
Greek schism we think the author overstates the difference between the 
Latins and Greeks respecting the doctrine of the Double Procession, and 
the influence of this difference on the actual revolt of the Greeks from the 
authority of the Holy See. Finally, we respectfully suggest to the learned 
author that a stronger statement of the status of the doctrine of papal 
infallibility before the definition of the Council of the Vatican would make 
his exposition of that important dogma more adequate and complete. We 
esteem this work as one of great value and importance, extremely useful 
to intelligent Catholics, and likely to do great good by diffusing generally 
among educated persons knowledge* and information respecting that 
greatest of all institutions existing on the earth, the Roman Church. We 
trust it may have the extensive circulation which it deserves. 

THE WORKS OF ORESTES A. BROWNSON. Collected and arranged by Henry 
F. Brownson. Vol. ii. Philosophical Writings, Part ii. Detroit: 
Thorndike Nourse. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic Publication So- 
ciety Co.) 

The most important part of the contents of this volume is the " Essay 
in Refutation of Atheism." 

The articles on Victor Cousin and on the Cartesian Doubt are both 
among the most masterly productions of Dr. Brownson's pen. There is a 
great deal of temporary and personal controversy mixed up with the dis- 
cussion of doctrines in the various articles comprised in this part, most of 
which has lost its importance except in so far as it belongs to history. 

The line of philosophical argument in which Dr. Brownson exhibited 
the greatest intellectual power, and in which he achieved a great success, 
was the demonstration of the objective reality and certainty of that which 
is known by the intellectual and rational faculty of the human mind. Sens- 
ism, subjectivism, scepticism, agnosticism, the errors of Locke, Condillac, 
Hume, Descartes, Kant, Spencer, and others of the same genus, were the 
principal object of his attack. In philosophy he was chiefly occupied with 
the Preamble of Science, as in theology with the Preamble of Faith, as 
a polemic controversialist. On this ground he was the greatest cham- 
pion we have had in this country. 

In our opinion it is this part of his works which will retain a perma- 
nent value and immortalize his name. Other parts of his theological and 
philosophical writings preserved along with those just mentioned are more 
of literary curiosities than real contributions to Catholic philosophy. Leo 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 141 

XIII. has practically settled and swept away a great many of the disputes 
among sincere and loyal Catholics, and, together with the bishops in all 
parts of the world, has prescribed as the system to be taught in colleges 
the Metaphysics of St. Thomas as understood and interpreted by the gene- 
ral scholastic tradition. 

The great principle for which Dr. Brownson was always contending, 
that the first principles of knowledge and reasoning are given to the mind 
by God at its creation, that it has intellectual cognition of the objectively 
real and true in the necessary and eternal reasons as its primary object, is 
a fundamental doctrine in all the text-books of this philosophy which are 
now in use in the colleges and seminaries. Dr. Brownson always honestly 
desired and endeavored to follow the teaching of the Holy See, and had he 
lived no one would have rejoiced more than he in that encyclical of Lee 
XIII. in which he enjoins the teaching of philosophy and theology accord- 
ing to the doctrine of St. Thomas. 

We hope Mr. Brownson's filial work will be continued and completed 
without interruption or delay in a successful manner. 

THE LIFE OF ST. LEWIS BERTRAND, Friar Preacher of the Order of St. 
Dominic, and Apostle of New Granada. By Father Bertrand Wilber- 
force, of the same Order. Illustrated by Cyril James Davenport, of the 
British Museum. London : Burns & Oates. 1882. (For sale by the 
Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

St. Lewis Bertrand was one of those heroes of the faith whom divine 
Providence raised up in the sixteenth century as an offset to the evil in- 
fluences of the Protestant heresy. His work was fulfilled in two ways, by 
a life of unceasing prayer and mortification and by seven years of arduous 
missionary labor among the Indians of South America. The effects of the 
former will be known only at that great day when all secrets shall be re- 
vealed, yet who can tell the miracles of grace which were wrought in that 
troubled time, who can reckon the number of souls turned to God and 
the true faith by the fervent prayers which ascended from so many cloisters 
from the hearts of saints inflamed with burning zeal for souls ? 

The life of St. Lewis Bertrand was so wholly supernatural that it 
almost seems like that of a being of a higher order than mere humanity. 
Naturally speaking, everything was against him. Delicate and sickly from 
childhood, he not only embraced and followed the rule of an austere order, 
but added heavier penances of his own, with that inventive cruelty cha- 
racteristic of so many saints. Nor did his severity towards himself abate 
during his active life. Heroic penances were his delight, even in the 
midst of labors themselves beyond mere human strength. The missionary 
career of St. Lewis Bertrand was truly apostolic. In his long journeys 
through the forests of South America in quest of souls he followed lite- 
rally our Lord's injunction to the seventy disciples. Carrying nothing with 
him but his Bible and his breviary, he journeyed barefoot for hundreds of 
miles through trackless forests, surrounded by wild beasts and venomous 
serpents, who were powerless to harm the man of God, even as the jaws 
of the lions xvere closed before the prophet Daniel. In him was fulfilled 
the promise, "If they shall drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." 
He possessed the gift of tongues, so that the savages " heard him speaking, 
each in his own tongue, the wonderful works of God." What wonder that 



I 4 2 



NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [April, 



these miraculous gifts, these heroic labors and sufferings, should have borne 
great fruit ? We read that in the seven years that St. Lewis Bertrand spent 
on this continent his converts were numbered by thousands and tens of 
thousands. 

A life such as this is a rebuke to our weakness and self-indulgence. 
Far above us as St. Lewis is in the grandeur of his life and deeds, his career 
is yet replete with practical lessons for us, if we but learn them aright. 
The biographer deserves our thanks for giving us for the first time in Eng- 
lish this record of a saintly life. The book is well gotten up and most ap- 
propriate as a prize for convent schools, etc. 

PROTESTANTISM AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. A catechism for the use 
of the people. By John Perrone, S.J. Translated and adapted, with 
notes, etc., by a priest of the Diocese of Hobart. Hobart, Tasmania : 
Printed by Davies Bros, at the Mercury office, Macquaire Street. 1882. 
Paper, two shillings. 

The book before us is an English adaptation of a work of the celebrated 
Jesuit theologian Perrone, and is, as its title implies, controversial in cha- 
racter. The ability of its author, who enjoys a world-wide fame, is beyond 
question, and his name is a sufficient guarantee for the excellence of the 
volume. The book is intended for the people's use, and will, we believe, do 
much to instruct those within and without the church. It is written in the 
form of a conversation, in which pertinent questions are asked, difficulties 
proposed, and satisfactory replies given. In the first part of the work the 
author shows the falseness of Protestantism. He demonstrates that the 
very foundation on which the fabric of Luther and his followers is reared 
the principle, namely, of private interpretation of Holy Writ is laid on 
sand, inasmuch as a certain canon of Scripture can only be got through 
an unerring teacher, and so, since Protestants are without such a teacher, 
it is impossible for them to know what is really the word of God, what not. 
A word about the instability of the system of the Reformers as manifested 
in their changes of doctrine, the means used to spread their errors, and the 
intolerance of the leaders of the sects which, by the way, non-Catholic 
historians are exposing more fully every day is also given. The second 
part is a lucid treatise on the church, the pope, and several other Catholic 
doctrines which are frequently the subject of controversy auricular con- 
fession, the Mass, the cult of saints, and the use of indulgences. The 
church's relations with the Inquisition and her attitude with regard to 
abuses have also received attention. Space does not permit us to speak at 
length on the treatment of these topics ; let it suffice to say that the work 
has been thoroughly well done. The answers to the objections which non- 
Catholics often raise are especially excellent. On the whole we think the 
book will prove a valuable help to all who have occasion to explain the 
church's doctrine, as well as to those who, burdened with difficulties, are 
earnestly seeking the truth. 

MATER ADMIRABILIS : A Hand-Book of Instruction on the Power and Pre- 
rogatives of Our Blessed Lady. By Rev. C. O'Brien, D.D. Montreal : 
D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1882. 

Dr. O'Brien, who was rector of the parish of Indian River when he 
sent this little work (a neat i6mo volume) to the press, has been recently 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143 

elevated to the see of Halifax, N. S. It is not unworthy of one whose 
appointment to this eminent dignity has called forth such high eulogiums 
of his distinguished merit. The author's special intention in writing it was 
to promote devotion to the Blessed Virgin by giving instruction in the 
dogma upon which it is founded, so that it may become an intellectual as 
well as an emotional homage to the glorious Mother of God. Dogmatic 
treatises on the character and office of our Blessed Lady are generally too 
large and expensive, and also too much above the capacity of the majority 
of persons, for popular use. The smaller and more popular books are too 
exclusively acMressed to the emotions. The aim of the author has been 
to prepare a hand-book in which doctrine and practical devotion are com- 
bined in such a way that the intellectual and emotional elements are pre- 
sent in due proportion, under a simple form and small dimensions. If 
some more ambitious writers of books in which the homage paid to the 
Blessed Virgin by Catholics is treated with a supercilious and unbecoming 
levity would condescend to seek for information in such a small work as 
this, they might find in it some valuable instruction in sound theology 
very useful to themselves and sadly needed. The pious and docile be- 
liever or inquirer, seeking for the truth or for clearer knowledge of the 
truth concerning the place which the Blessed Virgin holds in the economy 
of redemption, and her relation to our Blessed Lord, will find a brief but 
clear exposition of these topics in this book. It contains also aids to the 
practice of devotion to the Blessed Virgin in the shape of particular direc- 
tions and exercises of prayer, so that it is eminently instructive and 
practical. The Catholic doctrine respecting the Blessed Virgin springs 
out of the doctrine of the Incarnation and is closely connected with it. 
The supereminent honor and homage due to Mary, and rendered to her 
in Catholic devotion, is the sequel and companion of the divine worship 
due to Jesus and offered to him as the Incarnate Word. This is what 
Archbishop O'Brien sets forth in an excellent manner in his little book, as 
the basis and motive of a solid and tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin 
Mary a devotion indissolubly connected with Catholic faith, and insepara- 
bly joined with sound Christian piety. 

DIE HOHE MESSE IN H MOLL, Si MINEUR, B MINOR. Von Joh. Seb. Bach. 
Clavierauszug. Boston, New York, Chicago : White, Smith & Co. 

This excellent reprint of one of the grand works of the great composer 
is from the "Collection Litolff," and being, doubtless, very much cheaper 
than the original foreign edition, will be welcome to artists and students of 
such monuments of musical genius. 

It can hardly be said that at any age there has been such a debasement 
of musical art as is displayed in the inane frivolities of the present reigning 
dramatic Muse ; but at the same time there is good evidence of a revival 
of what is more worthy, nobler, and more truly artistic in the profound 
studies which are being made of the divine melodies of the Catholic 
Church, embraced under the generic title of Gregorian chant, from which 
it may be said Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the greatest of composers, 
drew the inspiration of his sublimest works. He began his art-life as a 
choir-boy. The sanctuary of religion was to him the nursing-breast of a 
mother, as it has been to every great musician. 



i 44 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April, 1883 

Gounod, in a letter lately read before the French senate, sums up his 
defence of the choir-schools (which the infidel government of France wishes 
to abolish) in these two propositions which he calls "incontestable ": 

1. That every great musician has been formed by the choir-schools or 
by their influence. 

2. To suppress them is to adopt the surest means of ruining serious 
and true musical education, and to support them is to defend and support 
the cause of musical honesty. 

THE ECHO. A monthly journal of Catholic church music. J. Singenber- 
ger, editor. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co. 

The success attained chiefly among Catholic Germans throughout this 
country by the excellent monthly musical journal styled the Cecilia has 
induced the diligent and learned Chevalier John Singenberger to venture 
upon the publication of a similar work in the English language. The Echo 
has now had six months' issue, offering, as the Cecilia does, a monthly sup- 
plement of music, original and selected pieces, in the style of composition 
approved by the Cecilia Society as worthy to be sung in church. 

We would gladly see the Echo as widely distributed among our English- 
speaking Catholic clergy and laity as the Cecilia is among our German 
brethren. It is devoted to the good cause of ameliorating the condition of 
church music; and, although we ourselves would prefer the church chant 
alone for all liturgical services at all seasons and on all festivals, still we are 
much rejoiced to know that in several parts of the world, notably in many 
American churches, in Germany, and in Ireland, there has been an extra- 
ordinary change for the better in the character of the music sung at Mass 
and Vespers, brought about through the influence of the Cecilian Society 
and its publications. 

Some excellent articles, such as "The Origin and Value of Gregorian 
Chant," by Dr. Witt, and an " Historical Inquiry into the Rise and Fall of 
Church Music," are now appearing in the pages of the Echo, and we heartily 
commend their perusal to every priest, seminarian, organist, or choir-master 
in the country whose profession requires of them the study of the funda- 
mental principles of church song, and at least an intelligent and decent 
performance of it according to their respective functions. 



MISSA BREVIS IN HONOREM B. MARINE VIRGINIS. By J. G. E. Stehle. With voice parts. 
New York : J. Fischer & Bro. 

PAMPHLETS RECENTLY RECEIVED. 

ESSAY ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. By " Fidelis." 

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CATHOLIC UNION OF NEW YORK. 1882. 

TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NEW YORK CATHOLIC PROTECTORY. 

5EV endhi EN Decem N b N er A i ^882^ F T " E ST ' FRANCIS HOSPITA L, NEW YORK. For the year 

PASTORAL LETTER OF JOHN JOSEPH KEANE, BISHOP OF RICHMOND, to the Clergy and 
Laity of the Diocese, February 2, 1883. 

SKETCH OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE XAVERIAN BROTHERS; also, the approbations of the 
Archbishops, Bishops, and Vicars-Apostolic of the United States and Canada 

BRIEF IN FAVOR OF SENATE BILL No. 136 AND ASSEMBLY BILLS Nos. 130 AND i entitled 
''An Act to secure to inmates of Institutions for the Care of the Poor Freedom of Wor- 
ship, on behalf of the Catholic Union of New York, in the City of New York 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVII. MAY, 1883. No. 218. 



RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. 

DURING the past decade various radical changes have been 
effected, not only in our organic laws by constitutional conven- 
tions, but increased power has been bestowed upon purely legis- 
lative bodies by the dicta of courts of last resort, upon the 
theory that legislatures possess a "police power" which is 
superior to written constitutions and calculated to bring for- 
ward and enforce those principles which are recognized by reli- 
gion and morality, but which lie dormant in the organic law 
of those constitutions. The line once sharply drawn between 
the respective rights of God and of Caesar has now become so 
shadowy under our laws as to be unobserved to the casual eye. 

There is not, and cannot be, in the United States any con- 
flict between the church as an organized body and the state as a 
political institution. But a conflict between religion and politics 
exists in its worst form, inasmuch as the latter has encroached 
upon, and is still further seeking to encroach upon and eliminate, 
the former, by creating out of a purely secular power an au- 
thority in religious and moral questions an authority which 
political governments never assumed before, and which, even in 
theory, was never conceded them. The command of Christ to 
" render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and unto God the 
things which belong to God " is ignored, and the fear of politi- 
cians that an organized church would compel mankind to accept 
heaven instead of hell as a future abiding-place has driven the 
state into a paganism more dangerous to the soul than open 
persecution. 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



146 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. [May, 

From a religious and moral standpoint the state has become 
a void more chaotic than that on the morning of the creation. 
For then " the Spirit of God moved over the waters " ; now it is 
' legislated out as an intruder, and an abstract liberty of con- 
science accorded the people which, even as an abstract idea, 
must give way to the vagaries of constitutional conventions and 
legislative bodies. 

There was a time in the history of our judicial tribunals 
when religious and political questions were passed upon directly ; 
when the relations between church and state were clearly de- 
fined ; when each was restricted to its own limited province, 
beyond which it could not go without being stopped by the 
strong hand of a court, exercising equitable jurisdiction, staying 
any attempted encroachment. These decisions have ceased to 
possess any operative force, and what was res adjudicata then 
has, for the reasons hereafter shown, become open questions 
now. Indeed, a learned American writer on constitutional law 
(Sedgwick), estimating the eccentricities of our political system 
at their true value, was moved to predict that, " as the cycles of 
human affairs revolve, the interest of the questions connected 
with these decisions will again become actual and pressing." 
The theory was that a church and a state were necessary in a 
good government and enjoyed a separate and independent exist- 
ence without any union, and the opinions of the courts went to 
the point that there not only could not be a union of the two, 
but that one could not encroach upon the other. Then came 
the terror of our constitution-makers and legislators that the 
church would become so powerful as to either absorb or rule 
the state. Then were engendered constitutional provisions and 
legislative enactments which expressly precluded any church 
from ever having any part in the political system. The end of 
the wedge was thin, but the butt was large, and it has been 
driven home by repeated judicial decisions until the state has 
absorbed the church, and politics has usurped the functions of 
the religious and moral instructor. More properly speaking, 
religion and morals have been eliminated from our organic laws 
and legislative enactments, and now, to the amazement of very 
good people, religion has become a wrong-doer whenever it in- 
terferes with the legalized pursuits of the ungodly. 

It is difficult to imagine that blasphemy and other violations 
of the Commandments of God are legal under our laws ; that the 
sanctity of the home and fireside may be destroyed with im- 
punity ; that the poor may be oppressed and mocked without 



1883.] RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. 147 

restraint ; that family ties may be ruthlessly broken ; that poly- 
gamy flourishes amongst us uncondemned ; that there is no 
remedy or restraint against drunkenness, debauchery, and liber- 
tinism of every description. Yet under our laws all these things 
are perfectly legitimate. Indeed, upon payment of a sufficient 
consideration, termed " license fee," the law will specially pro- 
tect the majority of these hideous crimes with all its power. 

The apprehension that the church might interfere with the 
state has brought about a condition of things, under the sanction 
of our laws, which permits the commission of any and all crimes 
and irregularities prohibited by the Christian law, without the 
same being considered wicked or even wrong. The state has 
become the great expounder of religious and moral ideas. If 
this be true can any one wonder that religion stands in subjec- 
tion to the laws of Caesar ? Can any one doubt that religion has 
been wholly eliminated from our laws? Can any one say that 
the state even fosters religion and morals ? 

The Supreme Court of Ohio, in the case of Bloom vs. 
Richards, 22 Ohio, 387, expressly decided 

" That neither Christianity nor any other religion is a part of the law of 
the state." 

The Supreme Court of the United States, in 20 Wallace, 663, 
declares that 

"The sovereign power is in the people, and is expressed in the constitu- 
tions, the fundamental or organic law. What is not therein expressed lies 
dormant, to be called into life by amendments or entirely new constitu- 
tions. Legislatures cannot go behind the constitution to inquire into the 
dormant powers of the people and pass laws accordingly ; they are bound 
and restricted by so much of the sovereign power as has been expressed in 
the organic law or constitution." 

This dictum establishes a ground for the principle laid down by 
Judge Cooley in his work on Constitutional Limitation,, p. 88 : 

"Even if a constitutional provision be unjust this will not authorize 
the courts to disregard it, or indirectly to annul it by construing it away." 
And the learned author says further : " It is quite possible that the people 
may, under the influence of temporary prejudice o.r a mistaken view of, 
public policy, incorporate provisions in their charter of government in- 
fringing upon the proper rights of individual citizens, or upon principles 
which ought even to be regarded as sacred and fundamental. . . . The 
remedy for such injustice must be found in the action of the people them- 
selves through an amendment of their work when better counsels pre- 
vail." 

The principle here laid down has been, upheld by every court 



I4 8 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LA w. [May, 

of last resort in the Union. It is law. No matter that all re- 
ligious and moral responsibility has been destroyed, and with 
it remedies for wrongs, and that courts are denied the power to 
afford justice ; we must wait until " better counsels " prevail. 

The statute law recognized in the slave-holder ownership in 
his slaves as personal property, and the Supreme Court of the 
United States, in the famous Dred Scott ca'se, declared this 
to be the law. The judgment was legally correct but morally 
wrong. 

Again, the Supreme Court of Maine held that a requirement 
by a superintending school committee that the Protestant version 
of the Bible should be read in the public schools of the town, by 
the scholars who were able to read, is not in violation of any 
constitutional provision, and is binding on all the members of 
the schools, though composed of divers religious sects ; and the 
court uses this remarkable language : 

"A citizen is not absolved from obedience because the laws may con- 
flict with his conscientious views of religious duty or right. To allow this 
would be to subordinate the state to the individual conscience. A law 
is not unconstitutional because it prohibits what a citizen may conscien- 
tiously think right, or require what he may conscientiously think wrong. 
The state is governed by its own views of duty. The right or wrong of 
the state is the right or wrong as declared by legislative acts." 

Under such a ruling the Talmud, the Book of Mormon, or any 
other book might be lawfully prescribed by the school commit- 
tee. The latter illustration of judicial vagary comes within the 
so-called "police power " of the state to prescribe such rules as 
it may think proper for the conduct of its citizens an alarm- 
ing power which is constantly adding to the chaos of American 
law, and gradually bringing about a condition of things paral- 
leled only by the arbitrary power existing under martial law, 
where might makes right. 

To the same effect was the decision of the Supreme Court of 
California, in 1882, in ex-parte Koser IX. P. C. L. J. p. 163, which 
court, passing upon the Sunday law, declared that 

"The policy of the law in California is fully committed to the secular 
phase of Sunday laws, and the argument that the observance of the Chris- 
tian Sabbath is made compulsory upon those who, under the authority of 
non-Christian churches to which they belong, have to regard and keep sa- 
cred some other day than the Christian Sabbath, and.therefore discrimi- 
nated against them and in favor of Christians, seems to interpose the authority 
of churches against the power of the state-to exalt the inferior at the expense 
of the superior, the protected against its protector" 



1883.] RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. 149 

The italics are not in the original, but are used here to empha- 
size the point made in this article. The theory of the Supreme 
Court in this last case was that 

"The legislature possesses the undoubted right to pass laws for the pre- 
servation of health and the promotion of good morals." 

To this one of the judges (McKinstry), in his dissenting opin- 
ion in the same case, very justly answers : " All arguments based 
upon the supposed physical benefits derived from a stated day 
of rest would have little application and furnish little ground 
for enforcing a 'Sunday law ' upon one who has taken his rest 
on the preceding day." 

It might be added that, under the same rulings and for the 
same reason, legislatures might pass any law, and, however 
much it might interfere with the rights of the citizen or afflict 
him with oppressive burdens, the answer would always be the 
same as given in the California case last cited : " We have no 
right to question the wisdom of the legislature in passing an act 
of this kind." And however unconstitutional it might be upon 
its face and in its effects, the rule laid down by the United 
States Supreme Court, and maintained by Judge Cooley, 
that courts cannot go behind the organic law, would be indi- 
rectly abrogated upon the plea of the "police power " of the 
state. From whatever point of view we scan this question- 
whether we stand to the written organic law and let dormant 
principles rest, or whether we bring into existence these dor- 
mant principles under the " police power" theory we must 
surely be convinced that the state, through its legislatures and 
courts, in default of a rejected Christianity, is attempting to fab- 
ricate a crude religious and moral code, without the guidance of 
inspiration and influenced solely by "temporary prejudice or a 
mistaken view of public policy." It is needless to prophesy the 
result when it is considered that " better counsels " will never 
prevail, since the divine principle which alone can induce these 
"better counsels" has been abolished by law. It is immaterial 
whether the lawmaker or judge is Catholic, Protestant, Jew, 
Mormon, or infidel ; it is patent that the encroachment upon the 
religious and moral rights of that portion of the community who 
profess any belief in religion and morality is becoming greater 
every year. Both lawmaker and judge, by attempting to re- 
concile a host of conflicting opinions, and endeavoring to con- 
strue, by their light alone, a flood of contradictory laws, all 
based upon the fear that some church or religion would inter- 



150 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. [May, 

fere with their prerogative to worship the world, the flesh, and 
the devil, have ceased to remember those principles of justice 
and equity, or, more properly speaking, religious and moral 
principles, which form the basis of all laws. 

Judge Keht, the father of American jurisprudence, defines 
law to be "a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme 
power of a state." Blackstone, the English commentator, gives 
as the definition of law " a rule of civil conduct prescribed by 
the supreme power in a state, commanding what is right and pro- 
hibiting what is wrong." The difference between the two defi- 
nitions is italicized, and that difference makes a law without or 
with religious and moral principles. The English definition re- 
cognizes a pre-existing criterion or principle of right and wrong. 
The American definition recognizes nothing but an after-cre- 
ated, arbitrary rule of right and wrong. In England the pre- 
sence of Christianity, as a part of the common law, established 
the criterion of right and wrong. In the United States the abo- 
lition of the common law effaced the principles of right and 
wrong as established by Christianity ; hence the necessity of the 
definition of "law" by Judge Kent to fit the American idea. 
Under our law an act is not wrong unless it hag been prohibited 
by express legislation, and even then it is not wrong because it 
is wicked. In other words, an innocent act becomes pernicious, 
or a pernicious act becomes innocent, whenever an arbitrary 
body of politicians, termed a legislature, are prompted by a de- 
sire to reward their friends or punish their enemies, and agree 
to call certain acts lawful or unlawful ; or when a judge, anx- 
ious to please the party that elected him or desirous of securing 
votes for his continuance in office, construes the law strictly in 
accordance with the organic law, or loosely under the " police 
power" idea. In both cases passion and prejudice sway the 
judgment, and the vox populi is consulted as the source of reli- 
gious and moral principles. 

In the federal system there is no principle which has the au- 
thority of law unless it is embodied in the Constitution or acts 
of Congress. The federal courts have no jurisdiction of what 
are known as " common-law offences "; and there is no "com- 
mon law " of the Union. Neither does the common law obtain 
in the several States which have adopted a code, or which, be- 
fore they were annexed to the United States, belonged to coun- 
tries governed by the civil law, such as Louisiana, Florida, Texas, 
and California. The English colonies and the States carved out 
of them originally adopted the common law, but have so altered 



1883.] RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. 151 

it as to repeal it altogether. Local laws, depending upon the 
passions, prejudice, necessities, or demands of the people, have 
abolished fixed principles, and substituted therefor prohibitory 
laws subject to constant changes according to the will of the 
legislator. The inevitable consequence is that an act criminal 
in one State may be perfectly lawful and proper in another State, 
and an act or omission pronounced criminal by one legislature 
may by a subsequent legislature be declared innocent. Hence 
the singular spectacle is presented of men condemned to lose 
their lives, liberty, and property for committing an act which 
one legislature declares criminal, but which the very next legis- 
lature declares not criminal. But there is no redress. 

Our legislatures and courts have dared to do what Lord 
Bacon did not even dare to advise : they have cast the laws into 
a new mould, and were not content with pruning and grafting 
the law, but ploughed it up and planted it again " a perilous 
innovation." Webster said : " Written constitutions sanctify 
and confirm great principles, but the latter are prior in existence 
to the former." It must be plain even to the average reader 
that Webster never would have uttered these words if he had 
viewed our present constitutions and late decisions of our courts. 
Our constitutions and law sanctify and confirm nothing but the 
desires of the majority of voters. There is no longer any ques- 
tion of principle, but only questions of policy and expediency 
are considered. 

The colonies, leaving behind them the penal code of the 
country whose common law they adopted, found themselves 
obliged, as the passage' of statutes under the colonial economy 
was no easy matter, to establish, each by itself, a system of cri- 
minal jurisprudence which depended much more on the adju- 
dication of the courts than the enactments of the legislature. 
The result was that whenever a wrong was committed which, 
if. statutory remedies alone were pursued, would have been 
unpunished, the analogies of the common law were extended 
to it, and it was adjudged, if the reason of the case required it, 
an offence to which the common-law penalties reached. The 
maxim, " For every wrong there is a remedy," had its origin in 
the common law, but it is not susceptible of application in the 
United States, where the common law has been abolished and 
the statute law has become the sole guide. It is matter of sur- 
prise to many that for some grievous injury or injustice suf- 
fered they cannot obtain redress, or what they term " justice " ; 
but there need be no cause for wonder, for the rule falls with 



152 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LA w. [May, 

the abolition of the reason for that rule. The exclusion of the 
element of religion and morality is simply reacting upon the au- 
thors of their elimination, and the just are punished equally with 
the unjust. The very small number of cases of " damna absque 
injtiria" under a system which had some respect for the " sanc- 
tified principles " alluded to by Webster, have, under our " un- 
principled " system, increased to a volume of 'respectable pro- 
portions and form an important branch of law. 

A long line of uniform decisions agree upon the point that 
" the executive, legislative, and judicial departments together 
represent the sovereignty of the people and derive their autho- 
rity from the people." And the Supreme Court of the United 
States holds that " the theory of our political system is that 
the ultimate sovereignty is in the people, from whom springs 
all legitimate authority." By " people " is understood the ma- 
jority of those who possess the right of suffrage. It is clear 
from this that the people are the reservoirs and sole depositories 
of religious and moral principles. The people enact the laws, 
the people execute the laws, and the people sit in judgment upon 
their validity and are only responsible to themselves. The wild- 
est dreams of pagan states never conjured up a similar condition 
of things, for even paganism recognized supernatural principles 
and moral responsibility. Judge Cooley, in his treatise on Con- 
stitutional Limitations before referred to, seems loath to give 
up religion and morality, for he says : 

"It is frequently said that Christianity is a part of the law of the land. 
In a certain sense and for certain purposes this is true ; the best features of 
the common law, if not derived from, have at least been improved and 
strengthened by, the prevailing religion and the teachings of its sacred 
book, especially those which regard the family and social relations, which 
compel the parent to support the child, the husband to support the wife ; 
which make the marriage-tie permanent and forbid polygamy." 

There is room for a digression here which is irresistible. 
The learned author alludes to " the prevailing religion and the 
teachings of its sacred book." This means the Protestant reli- 
gion. Now, he concedes that the common law was not derived 
from that religion, but argues that the common law was " im- 
proved and strengthened by it." How improved? By making 
the," marriage-tie permanent." Sedgwick, also a learned Ame- 
rican writer on constitutional law, says: "The facilities with 
which laws annulling the marriage contract were obtained from 
the legislatures of the several States in our early history " (when 
Puritans made the laws) " was discreditable to our system," but 



1883.] RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. 153 

that " many of our recent constitutions have shown their increas- 
ed respect for the sacred institution of marriage by prohibiting 
expressly and absolutely all divorces except such as are granted by 
the courts of justice." Thus the "prevailing " religion made the 
marriage-tie " permanent " by increasing the facilities for sunder- 
ing that tie. Furthermore, our laws and our courts now declare 
that there is not only nothing " sacred " about the marriage-tie, 
but that it is a mere civil contract or agreement, to be entered 
into or cancelled by agreement of the parties, the same as any 
other contract for instance, a contract for the sale of a horse. 
Another improvement upon the common law made by this " pre- 
vailing religion" was to "forbid polygamy." The geography of 
the learned author must have been an expurgated edition, for 
he overlooks the Territory of Utah with its Mormon polygamy, 
which is perfectly legal under the laws of Utah and the United 
States, and can never be extirpated unless as a war measure, like 
the emancipation of slavery, which was undoubtedly another 
" improvement" upon the common law, and, according to Lord 
Mansfield in Somerset's case in 1771, "slavery was repugnant 
to the common law." But to return. The learned judge con- 
tinues : 

" For several reasons Christianity is not a part of the law of the land in 
any sense which entitles the courts to take notice of, and base their judg- 
ments upon, it, except so far as they can find that its precepts and prin- 
ciples have been incorporated in, and made a component part of, the posi- 
tive law of the state." 

This is in full accord with the point that the religion and morals 
of the state are created by the legislature that is, the state has 
absorbed the church. 

It was held by Mr. Justice Story in the Girard will case, 2 
Howard (U. S. Supreme Court Reports), 198, that " although 
Christianity is a part of the common lazv of the state, it is only so 
in its qualified sense that its divine origin and truth are admitted" 
But with the abolition of that common law of the state, the di- 
vine origin and truth of Christianity is open to controversy ; and 
whatever small portion of the divine law was incorporated in 
the common law, whatever effect it had upon restraining irre- 
ligious and immoral tendencies, that restraint has now been re- 
moved and full rein given to such vices as the people, in their 
sovereign wisdom and power, may license as lawful or permit 
by expunging punishment therefor from the statutes. It is 
declared by all of our authorities that 



154 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LA w. [May, 

" Criminal laws are shaped by the prevailing- public sentiment as to what 
is right, proper, and decorous, or the reverse ; and they punish those acts 
as crimes which disturb the peace and order, or tend to shock the moral 
sense or sense of propriety and decency, of the community." 

Suppose, as is often the case, the community has no moral sense 
or sense of propriety and decency? Suppose the community 
should be infidel, and that religious ceremonies should shock 
their sense of propriety and decency ? Inasmuch as there is no 
fixed principle or criterion except the will of the majority, there 
would be nothing to prevent that community from abolishing 
religious ceremonies or inaugurating a saturnalia of licentious- 
ness based upon the prevailing public opinion. The constitu- 
tional provision protecting others in the minority in the free 
exercise of their religion would not avail those who raised the 
question, because the courts would say, as did the Supreme 
Court of California in the case above cited : " We have no right 
to question the wisdom or policy of the legislature in prescribing 
what it deems best for the health and morals of the people " ; 
and it would only be left for some future Justice McKinstry to. 
show the absurdity of the ruling by inquiring whether there is 
any " sacred principle " outside of the will of the majority which 
can determine what is right or wrong, and whether it would 
not be wisdom, as well as policy, to invoke that principle in aid 
of the court. 

The church left the impress of the divine law so indelibly 
upon the common law that Lord Hale was moved to assert that 
Christianity was a part of the laws of England, and that to re- 
proach the Christian religion " was to speak in subversion of the 
law " ; and it was the judgment of the English people and their 
tribunals that " he who reviled, subverted, or ridiculed Chris- 
tianity did an act which struck at the foundation of civil so- 
ciety." There is nothing in the argument that such an opinion 
was consequent upon the union of church and state as it existed 
m England, because that union consisted only in the recogni- 
tion of the church as ah establishment carrying out and inter- 
preting the laws of God. The English tribunals never went so 
far as to declare any conflict between divine and civil law ; on 
the contrary, they were jealous of any encroachment of the one 
upon the other. The law of God, as declared by the church, 
was deemed of as great importance to the welfare and preserva- 
tion of society as was the civil law for the government thereof. 
Both labored, pari passu, for the good of society, composed of in- 
dividuals having souls to be saved as well as bodies to be regu- 



1883.] RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. 155 

lated. Where the civil law could not reach the divine law was 
called in as an auxiliary. Licentious and immoral acts which 
were not provided against in the civil law were regarded as 
crimes against the divine law, and human nature was restrained 
as much as it is possible to restrain anything human. The in- 
centives for the commission of offences against all law were 
lessened by one-half. One-half of the barrier has now been 
broken down ; man is regarded as a being or a body without a 
soul one-half a man ; and hence the difficulties and irregularities 
in our system of laws, which provides for a government of one 
half only, leaving the other half to become the victim of sport. 

As a compensation for dismissing the soul of man from con- 
sideration our constitutions have allowed our citizens liberty of 
conscience and freedom of religious worship the former a mere 
abstract liberty, equivalent to liberty of thought, something be- 
yond the reach of the state, and therefore accorded ; the latter 
a concession which the state now seems to regret having made, 
and is, as has been urged, liable to be construed away under the 
" police power " theory. And this is all, absolutely, that the 
state concedes to religion. Everything else that the state could 
possibly acquire or confiscate has been absorbed, except virtues 
and " sanctified principles." The following doctrine of our 
courts of last resort, from the United States Supreme Court 
down, sufficiently demonstrates the truth of these observations : 

" Persons of every religious persuasion are equal before the law, and 
questions of religious belief and religious worship are questions between 
each individual man and his Maker. As long as public order is not dis- 
turbed judicial tribunals have no jurisdiction. Religious societies, when 
incorporated, are simply private civil corporations the same as any other. 
The church connected with the society is not recognized, in the law, as a 
distinct entity ; the corporators of the society are not necessarily members 
thereof, and the society may change its government, faith, form of worship, 
discipline, and ecclesiastical relations at will, subject only to the restraints 
imposed by thejr articles of association and the general laws of the state." 

Indeed, such corporations are not regarded as ecclesiastical, but 
merely private civil corporations ; the members of the society 
being the corporators, and the 

" Trustees the managing officers, with such powers as the statute confers, 
and the ordinary discretionary powers of officers in civil corporations^ The 
administration of church rules or discipline the courts of the state do not 
interfere with, unless civil rights become involved, and then only for the 
protection of such rights." 

It must be apparent, from the legal principles established by 



156 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. [May, 

our courts, that religion and morals are an unknown quantity 
in our laws. That there is something lacking in our system 
which mere laws cannot supply ; that there is absent some prin- 
ciple of equity and justice which is the foundation of all human 
laws ; that there is a failure in the state to properly govern 
and protect the people, even in their constitutional rights, is 
evidenced by the ferment now going on among the people, who 
are not quite sure what the matter is, but imagine that the laws 
need reforming. Hence constant changes are being effected, 
and to such an extent that our laws and judicial decisions have 
become kaleidoscopic a jumble of crude ideas clothed in lan- 
guage supposed to remedy the evils complained of, but which 
only prove disastrous to the very interests sought to be pro- 
tected. 

Legislatures and parties are changed ; new parties spring 
into existence, advocating new and strange political schemes 
for remedying the evils of too much law ; new constitutions 
are brought before the people, with supposed " blessed " privi- 
leges, printed in language so plainly that he who runs may read ; 
the rich are becoming richer, and, correspondingly, the poor 
are becoming poorer. Communists, Socialists, Sand-lotters, and 
tramps from every country in the world are incorporating in 
our systems of laws effete and exploded ideas, the nonsense of 
which even a Digger Indian would blush to ignore. The state, 
not content with the dignity of par ens patrice, aspires to assume 
the role of " universal father." Hence the laws passed to fos- 
ter and protect " societies for the prevention of cruelty to ani- 
mals," "societies for the protection of trees, plants, vines, etc.," 
" societies for the prevention of cruelty to children "in fact, so- 
cieties for the prevention and protection of everything in nature, 
except to prevent cruelty to conscience and for the protection 
of common sense. The atheist loudly and insolently blasphemes 
and denies his Maker, and, inconsistently enough, " thanks God " 
that he lives in a country which will protect his freedom of con- 
science to utter his blasphemies. 

It never occurs to the minds of those who are so eager for re- 
forms that we are living under a government of laws, and not of 
men. This is conceded by the Supreme Court of Maine, which 
court furthermore declares that " this can hardly be deemed a 
blessing." The effect of this " government of laws " is to destroy, 
whenever it may seem necessary in the wisdom of the legisla- 
ture, the constitutional guarantees provided for in the constitu- 
tions. How can there be any such thing as " freedom of con- 
science " and "liberty of religious worship" under a system 



1883.] RELIGION IN AMERICAN LA w. \ 57 

which repudiates the very " conscience " and " worship " upon 
which that freedom and liberty are based ? 

There was a time, however, in our history when liberty of 
conscience was recognized by a quasi-recognition of religion, or 
the church, as the regulator of conscience. The third article of 
the original Massachusetts Declaration of Rights recognized 
and declared a relation between church and state, and the 
Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared the purpose of this 
provision to be threefold, to wit : " ist. To establish, at all 
events, liberty of conscience and choice of the mode of worship. 
2d. To assert the right of the state, in its political capacity, to 
require and enforce the public worship of God. 3d. To deny 
the right of establishing any hierarchy or any power in the state 
itself to require conformity to any creed or formulary of wor- 
ship." This provision was stricken from the Bill of Rights by a 
popular amendment of the constitution in the year 1833, an( 3 of 
course the decisions thereunder ceased to be operative. 

The first constitution of Connecticut contained a provision 
for the support and maintenance of religious worship as a duty 
resting upon the state ; but this is now abolished. 

The New Hampshire constitution permits the legislature to 
authorize " the several towns, parishes, bodies corporate, or reli- 
gious societies within the State to make adequate provisions, at 
their own expense, for the support and maintenance of public 
Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality, but not to 
tax those of other sects or denominations for their support." 
An attempt was made in 1876 to amend that constitutional pro- 
vision by striking out the word " Protestant," but it failed, 
although at the same time the acceptance of the Protestant reli- 
gion as a test for office was abolished, and the application of 
moneys, raised by taxation, to the support of denominational 
schools was prohibited. 

Whatever argument may be urged against the propriety of 
such recognition of liberty of conscience as appears in the above 
citations, they certainly bear testimony to the fact that there 
were some religious ideas, but the same are now wholly abol- 
ished. The dry abstraction is all that is permitted us, and per- 
mitted us only by grace of the law. Here is a resume of what 
our kindly disposed and, to speak sarcastically, our freedom- 
and-liberty-loving system accords the piously disposed citizen : 

In Pennsylvania no person who acknowledges the being of 
God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on 
account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any 
office or place of trust or profit under the commonwealth. All 



158 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LAW. . [May, 

persons in North Carolina who shall deny the existence of 
Almighty God are disqualified for office. The same is a consti- 
tutional provision in Mississippi and South Carolina. Tennessee, 
however, goes one step further and requires as a condition pre- 
cedent to holding office not only a belief in God, but in a future 
state of rewards and punishments. On the other hand, the con- 
stitutions of Georgia, Kansas, Virginia, West Virginia, Maine, 
Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon, Ohio, New Jersey, Nebraska, 
Minnesota, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Rhode 
Island, Nevada, and Wisconsin expressly forbid religious tests 
as a qualification for office or public trust. Very inconsistently, 
however, the constitutions of Mississippi and Tennessee contain 
a similar provision. The constitutions of Alabama, Colorado, 
Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode 
Island, and West Virginia provide that no person shall be denied 
any civil or political right, privilege, or capacity on account of 
his religious opinions; and the same in Maryland, except that 
there must be a declaration of belief in the existence of God. 
Illinois further provides that the liberty of conscience secured 
by it shall not be construed to dispense with oath'or affirmation, 
excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent 
with the peace or safety of the state. The constitutions of Cali- 
fornia, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Mary- 
land, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New York, and 
South Carolina also contain provisions that liberty of conscience 
is not to justify licentiousness or practices inconsistent with the 
peace and moral safety of society. It is not stated anywhere 
what criterion of morals is to be regarded, or who or what is to 
determine what shall constitute licentiousness, other than the 
legislatures or the people themselves ; and in this we are forced 
to discover the source of our difficulties. 

It is not necessary to become an alarmist to discuss this ques- 
tion of religion in American law for whatever it is worth. The 
state, with the help of the courts, is fast becoming, nay, has be- 
come, essentially pagan in its modern phase. It tends to destroy, 
and is destroying, social and family relations ; it is crushing out 
of all semblance of shape religious and moral ideas ; it panders to 
and fosters infidelity, and at the same time refuses by a mistaken 
policy to assist religion in the repression of what is evil and the 
spread of virtue ; it offers a stone to the spiritually hungry, and 
kindly permits the church, if it can, to save souls which are con- 
stantly exposed to scandals, crimes, and the examples of vice and 
immorality winked at, if not sanctioned, by law. 



1883.] . ARMINE. 



ARMINE. 

CHAPTER V. 

IT was with an agreeable sense of penetrating below the 
strata where his life was spent, and exploring certain social and 
political phenomena, that Egerton went with Leroux to the 
Socialist meeting in the Faubourg Montmartre. But his light- 
heartedness vanished and something like a sense of weight seemed 
to fall upon him when he entered the place of meeting and found 
himself in the midst of a throng of men mostly artisans, as he 
perceived at a glance some of whom looked weary, many of 
whom looked pale, but all of whom looked resolute and grave 
with a'n almost menacing concentration of purpose. It was 
plainly for no mere, airing of discontent, no mere purpose of 
listening to political harangues, that these men were assembled. 
Their aspect was significant of their mental attitude, and seemed 
to say that the time for words had well-nigh passed and the time 
for action well-nigh come. As Egerton looked around he felt 
that if he had ever stood on the crest of a volcano before the 
mighty flood of lava and flames burst forth, and had felt the 
trembling earth grow hot beneath his feet, he should have had 
much the same feeling as that which came over him in this 
assembly of desperate, earnest men, strong with that almost re- 
sistless force which union gives, and ready at a word to over- 
throw all which we know under the name of civilization. 

" Duchesne is not here yet," said Leroux, with a quick glance 
around when they entered. A very energetic and fluent speaker 
was, however, on the platform, and Egerton during the next 
fifteen minutes heard much fiery declamation on the usual revo- 
lutionary themes the rights of man, the oppression of govern- 
ments, the tyranny of capital, and the infamous qualities of the 
bourgeoisie, whom the proletariat now hates more intensely than 
he ever hated the aristocracy. But suddenly a side door opened 
and a dark, slender man with a face of higher culture than any 
other present made his appearance. " Duchesne ! " said Leroux ; 
and when the orator on the platform hastily finished his ad- 
dress, and this man stepped forward, there was a movement of 
sensibly quickening attention among the audience. " A man of 



160 ARMINE. [May, 

education and a man of talent," thought Egerton, regarding 
critically the keen face and dark, brilliant eyes. There was a 
moment's pause, while those eyes passed over the sea of faces 
and (he felt) noted his own countenance, before the speaker said, 
" Mes frtres" in a singularly melodious voice. 

By the tone of those words Egerton was at once interested. 
It was not the tone of a demagogue, but of one who felt the 
brotherhood which he expressed. Nature had done much for 
this man in giving him a voice which could put meaning into 
the simplest utterances, could sink into men's hearts to sway 
them with magnetic power. But it was soon apparent that he 
had also much besides this. As he went on Egerton was struck 
by that clearness and precision which distinguishes French 
thought even in its wildest aberrations ; that is, given certain 
premises, the Frenchman uncompromisingly carries them out to 
their logical conclusion, and does not, like the Englishman, halt 
at a middle and illogical point of compromise. You might 
readily take issue with Duchesne upon his premises ; but, grant- 
ing those premises, there was no escape from the merciless logic 
of his conclusions. And the eloquence with which those conclu- 
sions were pressed was genuine, burning, almost resistless. If 
he decreed the destruction of all existing forms of social order, 
it was that the new order should arise from the ruins of the old 
the new humanity, strong in solidarity, ruled by justice and love, 
with equal rights of property and happiness secured to all, and 
an ideal of perfection set before the race to which it might 
advance unimpeded by the social fetters now fastened on it. 
And toward this ideal France should march in the van, as she 
has ever marched on the long road of human progress. But in 
order to do this she must first shake off the bourgeois rule which 
had fastened itself upon her in the name of the liberty, equality, 
and fraternity which it profaned. 

This (in substance), and much more than this, was the matter 
of a speech that seemed to Egerton the most thrilling to which 
he had ever listened. The enthusiasm of his nature was stirred 
by the glowing words which painted the future of mankind as 
contrasted with its past of wretchedness ; he seemed in listening 
to discern what the other saw with the clear gaze of a prophet 
and described with a power that lent unspeakable fascination to 
the vision. All the misery of all the centuries seemed sum- 
moned before him, all the long travail of toil and pain in which 
myriads of millions had lived and died without hope of escape. 
He did not wonder that the men around him were like reeds 



1883.] ARMINE. 161 

shaken by the wind. It was not denunciation alone in which 
this man dealt. He indicated, in terms that could not be mis- 
taken, the means to the end ; but he did not dwell on those 
means. It was the end on which he fixed his gaze, and which he 
described with passionate fervor. 

" Eh bien, what do you think of him ? " said Leroux when the 
address was concluded. 

Egerton turned quickly. " Think of him ! " he repeated. 
" I think that I have never heard anything like it before ! He 
ought to be sent to preach a new crusade." 

" What else is he doing ? " asked the other. " He does not 
spare himself ; he comes and goes, speaks, organizes, works in- 
cessantly. You might think from his speech to-night that he is 
visionary, but it is not so : he has great practical ability." 

" His face indicates it," said Egerton. " That keen glance 
does not belong to a visionary." Then, after a moment, he 
added : . " I should like to know him. Is it possible ? " 

" Entirely possible," replied Leroux. " I will introduce you 
at once." 

So Egerton followed him up the now thinning room to 
where the' orator of the evening stood, surrounded by a group 
of friends. He turned as Leroux approached, and the latter held 
out his hand. 

" Let me congratulate you," he said. " You spoke well more 
than well. And let me present M. Egerton, an Englishman no, 
an American who wishes to offer his congratulations also." 

" They are most sincere congratulations, monsieur," said 
Egerton. " I have seldom heard such eloquence." 

" You do me too much honor," said the other, with the air of 
a man of the world. " But my subject is one to inspire eloquence, 
if one has any power at all. You are interested in it. or you 
would not be here," he added, with a quick glance. " 1 hope 
that you are in sympathy with us ? " 

" I am in sympathy with you," Egerton answered. " But my 
sympathy does not mean going all lengths, and I confess that I 
am in doubt on many practical points." 

" Yet we are very practical," said the other, with a smile. 
" Indeed, the fault that most people find with us is that we are 
too practical." 

'" Oh ! I know that you aim at revolution," said Egerton ; 
" and that is certainly practical enough. But the difficulties of 
which I speak will confront you afterwards." 

"There are difficulties in everything," said Duchesne. " Can 
VOL. xxxvu. u 



1 62 A RMINE. [May, 

you conceive the smallest undertaking without them ? And 
what we aim at is not small, for it is nothing less than the 
regeneration of society." 

" But you denounce all forms of government," said Egerton. 
" and I am unable to conceive a state of society without some 
power to maintain law and enforce order." 

" In other words, because man has long been a slave you 
think that he cannot exist without a master," said the other. 
" But we hold that he is capable of governing himself, and that 
when the institutions are abolished which have been the cause of 
his crime as well as of his wretchedness when he has his fair 
share of the goods of earth and the happiness of life he will 
no longer need to be throttled by police and overawed by the 
bayonets of standing armies." 

There was a murmur of assent from those around, and one 
man remarked that they would soon make an end of all such in- 
famies as police and armies. 

" How?" asked Egerton. 

" By any means that will serve our end," he answered. 
" Desperate diseases require desperate remedies." 

" It is impossible, M. Egerton," interposed Duchesne quickly, 
" that you can form any clear idea of our plans and aims from 
what you have heard to-night ; but I shall be happy if you will 
afford me the opportunity to explain them to you more at 
length." 

" 1 shall be very happy if you will take the trouble to do so," 
said Egerton, who, apart from his curiosity about Socialism, felt 
great interest in this socialistic tribune. 

' Then if you have no farther engagement for this evening, 
and will do me the honor to accompany me home I regret to 
say that I must leave Paris to-morrow morning." 

Egerton eagerly accepted the invitation, and Leroux, to 
whom it was also extended, accepting likewise, Duchesne bade 
his other friends good-night, and the three went out together. 
The cab in which Egerton and Leroux arrived had been kept 
by the advice of the latter cabs not being easily obtained in 
Montmartre so Duchesne entered it with them, after giving his 
address to the coachman. This address rather surprised Eger- 
ton, for he had expected that the advocate of social equality, 
notwithstanding his refined appearance, would probably live in 
the Faubourg St. Antoine, but instead it appeared that he had 
his abode in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs. 

After leaving the Montmartre quarter it was through the 



1883.] ARMINE. 163 

most brilliant part of Paris that fcheir road lay, passing down the 
Rue Chaussee d'Antin to the Place de 1'Opera with its floods 
of electric light, its sparkling cafes, and constant stream of 
carriages crossing the Boulevard des Italiens, with its flowing 
throng of well-dressed people and following the Avenue de 
1'Opera to the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, where, before a 
house which occupied an angle of the street, the cab stopped. 

" I am sorry that you will be forced to mount au quatrieme" 
said Duchesne, as they entered under the porte-cochere; "but 
rents are very high in this quarter, and as 1 find it necessary 
to live in a central part of Paris I compromise by ascending 
toward the sky. Fortunately, my daughter does not object." 

" So he has a daughter ! " thought Egerton. " And she does 
not * object ' to living au quatrieme in the Rue Neuve des Pet- 
its Champs ! Where does she expect to live, I wonder, when 
la Revolution Sociale has taken place? By the bye, I must ask 
Duchesne whether, under such circumstances, Montmartre will 
come down in force and take possession of the hotels of the rich, 
or whether everybody will be driven to Montmartre to live." 

These somewhat flippant conjectures were cut short by their 
arrival on the landing-place of the fourth floor, where Duchesne 
with a pass-key admitted them into a vestibule on which three 
or four doors opened. Unclosing one of these, he led the way 
into a small but very cosey room, oblong in shape and evidently 
cut off from the salon, with which it communicated by a draped 
doorway. This apartment had an altogether masculine air and 
was plainly a place for study and work. On a large table a stu- 
dent's lamp burned in the midst of a litter of books, pamphlets, 
and newspapers. There were some comfortable leather-covered 
chairs and an array of pipes and cigars. 

Leaving his guests here with a few words of apology, Du- 
chesne passed into the next room, where his voice was heard 
mingled with feminine accents. He returned in a few minutes, 
saying with a smile : " I find that my daughter has prepared for 
me a little supper, in which she begs that you will join us." 

Both men rose at once Egerton with a strong sense of curi- 
osity concerning the daughter of this well-bred Socialist -and 
they passed into the next room, which proved to be a very 
pretty salon. Before the open fire a slender, girlish figure stood. 
It turned as they approached, and Egerton thought that one of 
the most charming faces he had ever sees was revealed by the 
movement. If he had been struck by the father's refinement 
both of physiognomy and manner, what could be said of this 



164 ARMINE. [May, 

delicate, sensitive countenance, *with its large, soft eyes of golden 
brown eyes which regarded him gravely and, he thought, with 
a certain surprise ? 

" M. Egerton is an American, Armine," said her father ; and 
then he added, " My daughter has some friends who are Ameri- 
cans." 

" Yes, some very special friends," said Armfne in her musical 
voice. 

" May I ask who they are ? " said Egerton. " I find gene- 
rally that nothing expedites acquaintance like discovering that 
one has acquaintances in common." 

" The friends of whom I speak are M. and Mile. D'An- 
tignac," she answered. " Although their name is French, they 
are Americans by birth." 

" The D'Antignacs is it possible ! " said Egerton, as much 
surprised as the Vicomte de Marigny had been when he heard 
of the acquaintance from the other side. " I am glad to say that 
I know them very well and admire them immensely. In fact, I 
esteem it an absolute privilege to know such a man as D'An- 
tignac. He is the truest hero I have ever seen." 

The beautiful eyes gave him a quick look of approval. Then 
saying simply, " M. d'Antignac's heroism seems to me beyond 
all words of praise," she turned, spoke to her father, and led the 
way through another draped door into the salle a manger, where 
a small, bright supper-table was set. 

" Armine seldom fails to have this ready for me when I come 
home at night," said Duchesne as they seated themselves. " She 
is aware that speaking is exhausting to the vital energies." 

" And I am also aware that you will spend several hours of 
the night after your return in work," said the girl. " And then 
you know, papa, that you never have so much appetite as at this 
hour." 

" It is true," said he. " Whether it is good for health I 
know not ; but I am never conscious of appetite at any other 
hour." 

"But mademoiselle provides so bountifully that I should 
think ^you would be rendered unfit for your farther night's 
work," said Leroux, with a glance over the table. " At least I 
know that I dare not indulge my appetite freely if I have brain- 
work to do." 

"The word appetite with you and with me, mon cker, pro- 
bably represents very different quantities," said Duchesne, smil- 
ing. 






1883.] ARMINE. 165 

A glance at the two men one lean as a greyhound, the 
other with every mark of what phrenologists call alimentive- 
ness made this sufficiently evident. Meanwhile Egerton had 
turned to the young hostess, and, anxious to wake again the look 
of interest and pleasure in her eyes, said : 

" I have to-night had the pleasure of hearing your father 
speak, mademoiselle, and it has proved indeed the most genuine 
pleasure. Eloquence like his is so rare that I have seldom, if 
ever, heard anything to equal it." 

The golden-brown eyes looked at him again ; but what was 
it that he read in them now doubt, hesitation, anxiety ? It was 
certainly not the expression he had expected, but one which 
equally surprised and puzzled him. 

" My father has great eloquence yes, monsieur, I know that 
well," she said in a low tone and a little sadly. " But how is it 
that you have been to hear him? Do you, then, belong to his 
school of thought ? " 

" I have a friend," said Egerton, " who calls me a trifler dip- 
ping into all schools of thought but making none of them my 
own. Absolute conviction of mind is, indeed, no easy thing. I 
envy a man like your father who has attained to it, who with 
passionate fervor believes that he holds the true panacea for 
the ills of humanity." 

" But you do not think that conviction is the only thing 
necessary ? " she said in a still lower tone. " For you know it is 
possible to hold false principles with passionate fervor." 

"Yes," he answered, though still more surprised, " that is 
the point. One must test things beliefs, creeds, theories ; and 
the most of them will not bear testing. I am about to test your 
father's," he added after a moment, " for I should be glad to 
share his enthusiastic belief in the future of humanity, if pos- 
sible." 

She did not answer ; indeed, at that instant Duchesne address- 
ed Egerton and so interrupted the conversation. Nor was he 
able to return to the subject, for talk after this was general, and 
chiefly on the political events of the day, which Duchesne and 
Leroux discussed with that biting sarcasm which has long been 
the prevalent tone in France, with all parties, toward the totter- 
ing ministries which have ignominiously succeeded each other 
under the Third Republic. It was not until they returned to 
the salon that Egerton found an opportunity to say a few more 
words to Armine. " Now, then, my friends, to enjoy your cigars 
you must return to my den," Duchesne had said, leading the 



166 ARMINE. [May, 

way thither and followed promptly by Leroux. But Egerton 
paused to admire some fragrant violets which filled a dish in the 
centre of a table near the fire, and then to say to Armine, who 
stood by the table : 

" Have you seen the D'Antignacs lately, mademoiselle?" 

"I saw them to-day," she answered. " M..d'Antignac was, 
for him, rather well that is, not incapable, from pain, of seeing 
or talking to any one." 

" Then I shall certainly have cause of complaint when I see 
him next," said Egerton ; " for, as it chanced, I called there to- 
day and was denied admittance." 

" Oh ! there are many reasons why that might have been," she 
said eagerly. " He was perhaps by that time too tired to re- 
ceive a visitor ; for when I left the Vicomte de Marigny was 
with him. And you know his strength is easily exhausted." 

" He is a wonderful man," said Egerton, feeling his interest in 
socialistic theories beginning to wane, and wishing that it were 
possible to remain in this pleasant room, with the soft firelight, the 
fragrance of violets, and that charming, sensitive face to study. 

" Yes," she said, " he is a wonderful man, I think, and in 
nothing more wonderful than in the fact that he keeps his intel- 
lect undimmed through so much physical suffering. Have you 
ever heard him talk, M. Egerton, on the great questions that are 
disturbing so many minds questions like those of which you 
are thinking ? " 

" Now and then I have," said Egerton, again surprised. 
" But I rather avoid than seek such discussions with him, be- 
cause he takes as the basis for all his views certain dogmas 
which I cannot accept." 

" Perhaps that is because you do not understand them," said 
the girl, with a slight smile. " I must not detain you now ; but 
you will probably pardon me for offering you this advice : Give 
to M. d'Antignac's views the same chance which you are giving 
now to my father's. Let him explain to you the basis on which 
they rest." 

" Can it be possible that you accept that basis ? " exclaimed 
the young man, too much amazed to remember the law of good- 
breeding which forbids a direct personal question. 

How clearly the soft, full eyes met his now ! " Why should 
it surprise you if I do ? " she asked quietly. " I should at least 
be ranged with the great majority of the wise and good and 
great of the world, should I not? But it does not matter what 
I believe, monsieur, farther than this : that units make millions, 



1883.] A K MINE. 167 

and that it is better to be on the side of those who build up 
than of those who tear down." 

She drew back with the last words, bending her head a little, 
and Egerton felt that he had no alternative but to accept the evi- 
dent dismissal. 

" I have come here to-night to hear why we should tear 
down," he said, smiling ; " but an oracle has spoken on the other 
side when I least expected it, and I should be very ungrateful 
if I did not heed its utterances. I shall certainly do nothing 
rashly, mademoiselle ; and I have now the honor to bid you 
good-night." 

CHAPTER VI. 

ORACLES are more likely to be heeded when their utterances 
are supported by the soft light of golden-brown eyes than even 
when enforced by all the eloquence of a practised speaker, which 
no doubt accounts for the fact that it was a rather divided at- 
tention which Egerton gave the tribune of Socialism when he 
returned to the small study and smoking-room. Not that he 
failed to be impressed, as he had been before, by Duchesne's 
eloquence and fervor, and not that he was able to refute the 
premises from which the other drew his conclusions. The solid 
earth seemed reeling beneath him as he listened ; for how could 
the man who had no belief in God, and to whom a life beyond 
the grave was, in the jargon of the day, "unthinkable," answer 
the stern deductions drawn from materialism by those who have 
logic enough to see that law, duty, obedience must rest on God, 
or else that they have no basis at all? He could not answer 
them ; he could only listen silently to the enunciation of that new 
yet old doctrine which says to men, "Ye shall be as gods," and 
which declares that the first of the rights of man is the right to 
rise against his fellow-man and say : " I will be no longer subject 
unto you ; I will no longer toil in pain and darkness while you 
dwell in the sunshine and fare sumptuously. Since this life is 
all, we will have our full share of its possessions ; and we know 
now, what we have been long in learning, that the power to take 
that and anything else is ours ! " 

As Egerton listened he felt like one who is fascinated yet 
repelled. He would desire yes, he said to himself, he would 
certainly desire to see the great bulk of humanity freed from the 
hopeless fetters of toil and poverty which weigh upon it ; but in 
order to reach this end was it necessary to destroy everything 



1 68 A RMINE. [May, 

which up to this time the world had reverenced ? Why not, 
(he asked) engraft the new order on whatever was good of the 
old? 

" Because there is nothing good in the old," was Duchesne's 
reply ; " because it was founded upon falsehood, is rotten through- 
out and doomed to destruction, root and branch. No ; we must 
break up and utterly fling away the old forms, in order to cast 
the life of the world into new moulds." 

Egerton did not answer; he seemed to be looking medita- 
tively at the smoke from his cigar as it curled upward before him, 
but in reality he was hearing again Armine's voice as she said : 

" It is better to be on the side of those who build up than of 
those who cast down." 

It was the tone of that voice which he carried with him when 
he went away, more than the passionate accents of Duchesne, 
though the last also vibrated through his consciousness and 
seemed to give new meaning to the look of the brilliant capital 
when he found himself in its streets. Leroux had preceded him 
in departure having a night's work to accomplish so he walk- 
ed alone down the Avenue de 1'Opera to the great boulevard 
flashing with lights, where the crowd still flowed up and down 
and the cafes were still thronged with well-dressed idlers. It is 
at this time that Paris wears her most seductive aspect, her most 
siren-like smile ; that the brightness in the mere outward appear- 
ance of things stirs the coldest blood, makes the quietest pulses 
beat a little faster ; and that Pleasure in her most alluring guise 
holds out forbidden fruit on every side, saying, " Take and eat." 

But to Egerton at this moment it was like a great carnival 
under which grim forces of destruction were lurking and biding 
their time the time when the tocsin of revolution would sound 
once more in the Faubourg St. Antoine, that old home of re- 
volt, and Montmartre and Belleville would answer back. Was it 
fancy, or did the hoarse clamor sound already in his ears ? He 
looked at the tranquil air of things around him, at the shops 
gleaming with luxury and beauty, at the elegant toilettes and 
smiling faces of those who passed him. " Do they not hear it ? " 
he asked himself. " Do they not catch the low, menacing mur- 
mur of the storm which when it breaks will whelm all this in 
ruin? What is to be the end? Is Duchesne right? Must all 
be destroyed in order to rebuild on a better basis the new civili- 
zation? But I am afraid I have not much faith in democratic 
Utopias." 

So thinking, he crossed the Place de 1'Opera, filled with light. 



1883.] ARMINE. 169 

and as he looked up at the front of the new Opera- House, that 
in its gilded splendor seems a fit type of the order which cre- 
ated it that order of the Second Empire which strove to estab- 
lish itself by stimulating to an enormous degree the passion for 
wealth and outward show in France, and the tradition of which 
is therefore still dear to the bourgeois soul a recollection sud- 
denly smote him like a blow. 

" By Jove ! " he cried, speaking aloud, as he stopped short at 
the corner of the Rue Auber, " I had forgotten entirely that I 
promised to appear in the Bertrams' box to-night ! " 

As he stood still, regarding the ornate front of the great 
building, it became suddenly alive with movement. The opera 
was just over for an opera in Europe never ends before mid- 
night and the greater part of the audience was pouring out of 
the main entrance. Egerton hesitated for a moment ; then say- 
ing to himself, " At least there is a chance," he crossed over, and, 
penetrating through the line of carriages, took his place at the 
head of the steps, which the electric lamps flooded with a light 
bright as that of day. He had not stood there very long when 
the chance to which he trusted befriended him. Two ladies, 
attended by a gentleman who wore a light overcoat above his 
faultless evening dress, passed near him, and one of them, paus- 
ing to lift the long silken train that flowed behind her, saw him 
and exclaimed involuntarily, " Mr. Egerton ! " 

In an instant he was descending the steps by her side and 
saying :" How very fortunate I am! I took my station here 
with the faint hope of seeing you and apologizing without de- 
lay for my failure to appear, as I promised, in your box to- 
night/' 

She turned a very handsome head and regarded him with a 
pair of proud, bright eyes. 

" It is a pity that you should have taken any trouble for that 
end," she said carelessly. " Of course when mamma asked you 
to look in on us she only meant if you cared to do so." 

" I should have cared exceedingly," he said ; " but can you 
conceive that I absolutely forgot the opera in the excitement of 
attending a Socialist meeting in Montmartre ?" 

She laughed slightly. " Yes," she said, " I can very well 
conceive it. An opera must seem very stale and flat compared 
to such a new entertainment. And did it amuse you ?" 

" I was not in search of amusement so much as of new ideas," 
he answered ; " and it has certainly given me those." 

" You are to be congratulated, then," said the lady, with the 



170 ARMINE. [May, 

faintest possible shade of mocking in her voice. " We are all, I 
think, dreadfully in want of new ideas. I should not mind jour- 
neying to Montmartre myself in search of them." 

" A want of ideas'of any kind is the last complaint I should 
judge you likely to suffer from," said Egerton gallantly, yet with 
a shade of possible sarcasm in his voice as subtle as the mock- 
ery in her own had been. 

" But I believe it is a question whether ideas are innate or 
not," said she coolly. " Therefore one must occasionally receive 
some from the outside ; and I should welcome even Socialism as 
a relief from social platitudes." 

At this moment the lady in front turned around, saying 
quickly, " Why, where is Sibyl? " And then she, too, exclaimed, 
" Mr. Egerton ! " 

" Good-evening, my dear Mrs. Bertram," said Egerton, un- 
covering. u I have just been expressing to Miss Bertram my 
deep regret at not having enjoyed part of the opera with you." 

" A very hypocritical regret, I should think," said Miss Ber- 
tram, " considering that you were so much better employed." 

"That raises the question, Egerton, how were you em- 
ployed ?" asked the gentleman, who had turned also. 

" Ah ! Talford, how are you ? " said Egerton, recognizing 
him. " I confess," he went on, smiling, " that I am not so certain 
as Miss Bertram appears to be that I was better employed. I 
have been to a Red-Republican meeting in Montmartre." 

Mrs. Bertram uttered a slight exclamation indicative of well- 
bred horror. " What could possibly have taken you to such a 
dreadful place?" she asked. 

" And what did you learn after you got there? " inquired the 
gentleman called Talford. 

" Well, for one thing I learned that opera-going will soon be 
an obsolete amusement," said Egerton, who had a sensation as 
if an ocean and not a few streets must surely divide this world 
from that which he had so lately left. 

" I do not feel just now as if I should deplore that very 
much," said the younger lady. " One grows tired of operas 
which last to this hour; composers should have some mercy. 
Come, mamma, here is our carriage." 

After they had been put into it the elder lady leaned forward 
to say good-night again to both gentlemen, and add with some 
empressement to Egerton : Come soon and tell us what the Red 
Republicans are going to do." 

As the carriage drove off, the two men turned by a simul- 



1883.] ARMINE. 171 

taneous movement and walked along- the broad pavement in si- 
lence for a moment. Then Mr. Talford said : 

" Mrs. Bertram regards you with favor." 

" It is more than Miss Bertram does, then," said Egerton, 
with a laugh. " A more disdainful young lady it has seldom 
been my fortune to meet." 

" She is decidedly original," said the other. " One never 
knows what she will say or do next. But she is very clever and 
charming, if a little incomprehensible." 

" She is very clever and no doubt very charming," said Eger- 
ton ; " but in my case I usually find the sense of being puzzled 
greater than the sense of being charmed." 

" I like a woman who is able to puzzle one," said his compan- 
ion. *' Most of them are very transparent not because they 
have not the will to be otherwise, but because one has learned 
to see so clearly through all their little artifices. Now, if Miss 
Bertram has artifices they are not of the usual order, and so one 
does not see through them." 

" The point with you, then, is not whether artifice exists, but 
whether, like the highest art, it is able to conceal itself," said 
Egerton. 

" Oh ! for the matter of that," said the other carelessly, " you 
cannot expect a woman to be a woman without artifice of some 
kind." 

" Can one not ? " said Egerton meditatively. They were 
by this time crossing the Place, and he glanced down the broad 
Avenue de 1'Opera toward the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs. 
What artifice had the direct glance of those soft, golden eyes con- 
cealed? "You ought to know better than I," he went on after 
a moment. " At least I am quite willing to admit that your ex- 
perience has been much greater than mine." 

" So much the better for you, my dear fellow," said the 
other. " One begins to learn after a while, like that very blase 
gentleman King Solomon, that most things are vanity ; and 
women, unfortunately, are no exception to the rule." 

He spoke quietly, but with the decision of one who utters a 
truth upon a subject with which he is thoroughly familiar. And 
certainly if the experience of twenty years can qualify a man 
to pronounce a judgment, Marmaduke Talford was qualified to 
pronounce one upon the fair sex. In many parts of the civilized 
world had he studied it during that period ; at the feet of many 
enchantresses had he remained for a time. But no spell had 
ever been great enough to hold him long, nor firm even to rivet 



172 ARM IN E. [May, 

round him the fetters of matrimony. Now he had reached the 
eminence of forty years, and was conscious that his blonde hair 
was growing thin on the top of his head. Perhaps these things 
made him a little thoughtful ; at all events, his friends began 
to fancy that they saw a change in him. He had never been a 
prodigal, had nfever wasted his substance nor lived riotously ; 
but there could be no doubt that he had gone deeply into plea- 
sure though with a certain fastidiousness and discretion which 
characterized him in most things and if he now began to say, 
Vanitas vanitatum, it was because he, too, had indeed learned, 
like the king of Israel, that " % all things are vanity " after one 
has exhausted them. 

The feeling of this was certainly uppermost in his mind ; for, 
after a pause which Egerton did not break, he went on speaking : 
" After all, it is a mistake to leave one's self nothing to believe 
in. And ignorance is the parent of belief. Therefore what- 
ever one wishes to believe in one must remain in comparative 
ignorance of. Women, for example since we are speaking of 
them if you wish to cherish the common superstition about 
feminine virtues, do not make any attempt to know the sex 
other than superficial!}'." 

" That is rather an appalling doctrine," said Egerton. " Do 
you not think it possible that you may have been unfortunate in 
your experiences ? " 

" I am very sure that I have not been," said Talford. " On 
the contrary, I am inclined to think that I have been fortunate 
when I compare my experiences with those of others." 

" And you make your axiom general in its application ? " 
said Egerton. " You think that ignorance is the only ground for 
belief in anything ? " 

11 I not only think so, but I am certain of it," answered the 
other ; " and if it is not a very cheerful realization well, we 
cannot help that, you know. One has either to shut one's eyes 
and decide to be deluded, or to open them and face the truth." 

Then said Egerton, like Pilate of old : " What is truth ? It 
must be something absolute in itself, and not a mere negative 
state of universal scepticism." 

The other shrugged his shoulders slightly. " I should define 
it, then," he said, "as what we can see, and feel, and touch : the 
material world with its goods and its pleasures, the fact that we 
are alive and the equally undoubted fact that -we must die 
voifa tout! If any man tells me that he believes aught beyond 
these things, I say to myself, ' It may be so, but you are either 



1883.] ARMINE. 173 

deceived or a deceiver.' See, mon cher it is not often that I am 
betrayed into this vein of moralizing but is it not evident that 
it must be so? For example, we hear enthusiasts talking of the 
glorious virtues of humanity this humanity which has been 
robbing and cheating and cutting each other's throats as long 
as history has any record of it, and which a little experience of 
men will soon assure us is only likely to continue the same course, 
with variations, in the time to come. We hear of the beauty 
of universal brotherhood, and of a sublime altruism which is 
some day soon to display itself. Bah ! these things will do for 
dreamers in their closets, ignorant of the practical world. But 
men of the world know that the millennium was never farther off 
than now, when mankind is realizing more than ever that the 
gold which buys all things including men and women is the 
only secure good of life, and that pleasure is its only true end." 

There was a moment's silence. On those last words the bril- 
liant sc.ene around them was a striking commentary. But Eger- 
ton's thoughts went back to a very different scene to the 
crowded homes of Montmartre, and the eager, resolute faces of 
those who listened to other conclusions drawn from the same 
doctrine that life is all, that wealth rules the world, and pleasure 
is the supreme good. Presently he said, in the tone of one who 
speaks a thought aloud: " I wonder what it will be?" 

" What? " asked Talford, a little surprised. 

The other roused himself. " Why, the result of the strug- 
gle," he said, " between men like you and you are but the type 
of a large and constantly increasing class and some others to 
whom I have been listening to-night. It is a struggle bound to 
come, you know." 

"I suppose so," answered Talford indifferently, " though I 
do not pay much attention to the blague of Socialists and An- 
archists. But I can tell you what in my opinion will be the re- 
sult: it will be wild uproar, much killing on all sides, and then 
the final end of that ridiculous modern farce called the rule of 
the people. Power will assert itself in one form or another, 
with a single strong hand, and make an end for ever of the in- 
sane folly which declares that a thinking minority shall be ruled 
by an ignorant and brutal majority." . 

" Thank you," said Egerton, with a smile. " Your opinion is 
exceedingly clear, and you and I may not be much older when 
we shall see it verified or disproved. Meanwhile, I have re- 
ceived a number of sufficiently varied impressions to-night, 
which will furnish me with food for meditation." 



174 



ARMINE. [May, 



Talford laughed, and, looking up at the Madeleine, by which 
they were now passing, said : "You live in this neighborhood, 
do you not?" 

" Yes, my apartment is yonder," answered Egerton, nodding 
toward a house which occupied the corner of a street running 
into the boulevard. " I often dream in the morning before I 
wake that I am wandering in the gardens of 'Cashmere; that 
rises from the odors of the flower-market held here, which pene- 
trate into my chamber." 

" Ah ! " said the other, "you are at the age for flowers, real or 
metaphorical. Enjoy your youth, happy man ! Do not waste 
one golden hour in listening to Socialist madmen. That is the 
best advice I can give you ; and now bon soir." 



CHAPTER VII. 

IT chanced that the next morning, being Wednesday and 
therefore one of the days of the flower-market of the Made- 
leine, Egerton was waked by those delightful odors of which he 
had spoken ; and in some subtle way the fragrance brought be- 
fore him a fair face with a pair of proud gray eyes, and it occur- 
red to him that in order to make his peace with Miss Bertram it 
might be well to send her some of the flowers, of which he knew 
that she was extravagantly fond. 

Nor can it be said that this idea commended itself to him 
solely as a matter of social duty. He had spoken truly in say- 
ing to Talford that she puzzled more than she charmed him ; 
but there could be no doubt that she charmed him in conside- 
rable degree. She was a very pretty and a very clever woman, 
whom he sometimes thought might prove dangerously attrac- 
tive to him if she had been a shade less incomprehensible, less 
capricious, and less haughty. A man does not like to be puzzled, 
but still less does he like to be treated with scorn when in no 
way conscious of deserving such treatment when, indeed, the 
world in general conveys the impression to his mind that he 
has a right to think very well of himself. Now, with Sibyl Ber- 
tram, Egerton had frequently a sense of being weighed in the 
balance and found wanting ; and though vanity was 'not inor- 
dinately developed in him, he naturally felt that such an attitude 
on her part was not only unflattering but manifestly unjust. If 
he had made any pretensions the matter would have been dif- 
ferent, since whoever makes pretensions inevitably challenges 



1883.] ARMINE. 175 

criticism ; but it would be difficult for any one to make fewer 
than he did a fact which conduced not a little to his popularity. 
For a man who asserts no disagreeable intellectual superiority 
over his fellow-beings, yet who is unobtrusively clever and un- 
deniably well-bred, is generally certain of popularity, even with- 
out the farther endowments of good looks and wealth. These 
endowments, however, Egerton possessed, and he was therefore 
the less accustomed to that position of being weighed and found 
'wanting in which Miss Bertram placed him. He had sometimes 
tried to persuade himself that it was all mere fancy on his part ; 
but there had been times when the language of the gray eyes 
was too plain to be mistaken, when he had felt himself looked 
through and through, and judged to be a very inferior sort of 
creature. 

But if the daughter was disdainful and incomprehensible, the 
mother was always cordial and agreeable, with a peculiar charm 
and warmth of manner which had more than once suggested the 
thought to Egerton that she too perceived, and wished to make 
amends for, her daughter's hard judgment. There was another 
thought which might have suggested itself to a man so eligible ; 
but it has already been said that he was not greatly afflicted 
with vanity, and it may be added that he was not at all afflicted 
with the coarseness of mind which, together with vanity, makes 
a man suspect a matrimonial snare in every woman's civility. 
Instead of suspecting that Mrs. Bertram wished to entrap him 
as a suitor for her daughter, he felt simply grateful for an un- 
varying kindness which contrasted strikingly with that young 
lady's exceedingly variable manner ; and it was the thought of 
the mother rather more than of the daughter which finally de- 
cided him to send the flowers, especially when he remembered 
that it was their reception-day. 

So a basket of cut flowers, freshly beautiful and fragrant, 
made its appearance in due time, and was presented, with Mr. 
Egerton's compliments, to Mrs. and Miss Bertram as they sat 
at breakfast in their pleasant apartment in the neighborhood of 
the Pare Monceaux. The elder lady uttered an exclamation of 
pleasure when she saw the lavish supply. 

"Oh! what lovely flowers," she said. "See, Sibyl, are they 
not exquisite? Our drawing-room will be like a bower to-day. 
Mr. Egerton is certainly charming." 

" You mean that his flowers are," said Sibyl, looking up with 
a smile from a little bright-eyed Skye terrier to whom she 
was administering sugar. " But they are delicious ! " she added, 



176 ARM IN E. [May, 

unable to resist their beauty as her eye fell on them. She held 
out her hand for the basket and almost buried her face in the 
fragrant blossoms. " How I love flowers ! " she said, as if to 
herself. " They are among the few satisfactory things in life." 
Then, glancing at her mother, she added : " This is Mr. Egerton's 
apology for having forgotten our existence last night, mamma." 

" Forgetting an engagement which was hardly an engage- 
ment and forgetting our existence are different things," said 
her mother. " I think you are scarcely just to Mr. Egerton, 
Sibyl." 

Sibyl made a slight gesture of indifference as she put the 
basket down again on the table. " I do not feel sufficient interest 
in him to be unjust," she said ; " and I am quite willing for him 
to forget our existence as often as he likes, provided he sends 
such an apology as this. A basket of flowers is much better 
than an hour of his or any other man's society, at the opera or 
elsewhere." 

Mrs. Bertram elevated her eyebrows slightly as she looked 
at her daughter. For this young lady occasionally puzzled her 
as well as other people. " It is not like you to affect to despise 
men's society," she said. 

" I am not affecting to despise it," answered Sibyl. " I like 
it very much, as you know that is, I like the society of men of 
sense. But I would certainly not exchange this basket of flowers 
for an hour of the society of any special man, even if he were 
capable of giving me a new idea which Mr. Egerton is not." 

" New ideas are not to be picked up like flowers," said Mrs. 
Bertram, without adding that she thought her daughter had 
already more than enough of these very objectionable articles. 
"And I confess that I do not understand why you should think 
so poorly of Mr. Egerton. I do not pretend to be intellectual, 
but he has always struck me as very clever as well as very 
pleasant." 

"He is clever enough, I believe," said Sibyl carelessly 
" that is, he is a man of culture ; but he always gives me the im- 
pression of a man who lives merely on the surface of life. He 
does not think sufficiently of any new ideas, or if he has them he 
does not take the trouble to impart them." 

" But," said the elder lady, " you do not intend to demand of 
all your acquaintances that they shall have new ideas to impart 
to you ? Because if so " 

" I shall certainly be disappointed," said Miss Bertram with a 
laugh. " No, do not be afraid. I have not quite lost my senses. 



1883.] ARM IN E. 177 

But the general dearth of ideas only makes me more grateful to 
those who have some ; and, now that I think of it, Mr. Egerton 
has probably begun to realize his deficiency, for he remarked 
last night that it was in search of something of the kind that he 
had gone to the Socialist meeting in Montmartre." 

" A most extraordinary place to go for them," said Mrs. 
Bertram. " I cannot understand such a freak in a man of sense 
and that Mr. Egerton is" 

" Oh ! he went, no doubt, from mere curiosity," said Sibyl. 
" I fancy it is that and the necessity to kill time which take him 
to most places. But how a man can lead such a life," she added 
with sudden energy, " in a world where there is so much to be 
thought -and said and done, I confess that I cannot understand ! " 

" What do you expect him to do ? " asked her mother. 
" You know he inherited a large fortune ; why should he, there- 
fore, trouble himself with business ? " 

" That is the one idea which an American has of doing some- 
thing making money," said Sibyl. " Forgive me, mamma, but 
do you really think there is nothing else to be done nothing 
better worth doing?" 

" Of course I do not think so ; of course I know that there are 
many things better worth doing," said Mrs. Bertram, though 
she did not specify what these things were ; ''but I do not see 
what you can expect a young man like Mr. Egerton to do 
except amuse himself, for a time at least." 

" That is just the point," returned the young lady calmly. 
" I do not in the least expect him to do anything else. I am 
quite sure that he will never do anything else. Here, Fluff! do 
you want another lump of sugar ? " 

Fluff replied, with a short bark and one or two eager bounds, 
that he did want it, and Mrs. Bertram abandoned the subject 
of Egerton and his real or imaginary shortcomings, saying to 
herself, with a slight sigh, that it was quite certain one could not 
have everything, but that she should have been glad if Sibyl had 
been a little less original. Though far from being herself the 
scheming mother common in fiction and not wholly unknown in 
real life, she had more than once thought what a pleasant and 
satisfactory son-in-law Egerton would make if he would fall in 
love with Sibyl, and if Sibyl were like other girls and would 
accept the fortune placed before her. But it was now plain that 
this castle in the air would never be realized on the solid earth ; 
and, with another sigh, she took up the flowers and carried them 
away. 

VOL. XXXVII 12 



1 78 ARMINE. [May, 

They were filling the salon with their fragrance when Eger- 
ton entered it late in the afternoon of the same day. A glow of 
golden sunset light was also filling it and bringing out all the 
harmonious tints of the hangings and furniture ; for this room 
was not in the least like an ordinary Parisian apartment, but had 
been the home of the Bertrams long enough for them to impress 
a very distinctive character upon it. Needless to say this 
character was aesthetic in the highest degree, for a young lady 
so devoted to new ideas as Miss Bertram was not likely to follow 
other than the latest light in decorative art. Then, too, the 
mother and daughter had travelled much and had gathered in 
numerous places many curious and pretty things. All of these 
the richly-mingled colors of Eastern stuffs picked up in Algerian 
and Moorish bazaars ; the gleaming crystal frames of Venetian 
mirrors, with their suggestions of the deep canals and the green 
sea- water; the beautiful wood-carving of Tyrolean villagers, the 
rich hues of old Spanish leather, with pictures and china, quaint 
screens and peacock fans all made, it seemed to Egerton, a very 
suitable background for Sibyl Bertram's presence. And al- 
though when she went out she was Parisian in her toilette from 
her hat to her boots, she had a fashion, when she received her 
friends at home, of arraying herself in a different manner. It 
was not that extreme artistic dressing which originated in Lon- 
don, and with which (through caricatures at least) the eyes of 
all the world are familiar now. Like most American women, 
Sibyl had too much good taste to make herself aesthetically ridi- 
culous ; but she struck a medium of graceful picturesqueness 
which suited her admirably. 

For she was not in the least a line-and-measure beauty. The 
brilliant, changing face could not be judged by any acknow- 
ledged standard, but the charm of it was so great that few peo- 
ple were inclined to judge it at all. The pellucid skin; the per- 
fectly shaped if rather large mouth ; the luminous gray eyes, 
which brightened and darkened with every passing thought ; 
and the broad, fair brow, from which thick, soft masses of bronze- 
brown hair waved, made up a whole which to the modern taste 
was more attractive than classic loveliness. The gift of expres- 
sion was hers also in remarkable degree, and when she spoke 
with any earnestness her voice had tones of wonderful sweet- 
ness. 

On this afternoon she wore, as usual when at home, a dress 
more fanciful than fashionable. It was a black brocaded silk of 
softest, richest fabric, cut in simple but beautiful lines, slashed 



1883.] ARMINE. 179 

here and there to introduce a trimming of old gold, which also 
appeared in the puff that headed the sleeves, which otherwise 
fitted the arms tightly until they terminated in a fall of rich yel- 
low lace below the elbow. The square-cut neck, out of which 
the white, columnar throat rose, was also surrounded with this 
lace, and a cluster of deep yellow roses was fastened in front. 
It was on this charming figure that Egerton's glance fell when 
he first entered the room, though she was standing at some dis- 
tance from him, talking to Mr. Talford, while a slanting stream 
of sunshine touched her hair, and also brought out the strange, 
deep harmonies of form and tint in a Japanese screen behind her. 

It was Mrs. Bertram who, at his entrance, rose from the sofa 
where she was sitting and came forward to receive him with her 
usual cordial graciousness. 

" I have hoped that you would not forget us to-day," she 
said. " I want to thank you for the beautiful flowers you sent. 
See ! they welcome you," she added, with a smile, motioning to a 
table which bore part of them arranged in some graceful vases 
of Vallauris ware. 

Egerton replied to the effect that he was delighted if the 
flowers gave her pleasure, but he wished to himself that, instead 
of fragrant lilies-of-the-valley and delicate white and pink-tinted 
roses, he had chosen such golden-hearted ones as those which 
Miss Bertram wore. " But perhaps she would not have worn 
them if I had sent them," he thought. 

He followed Mrs. Bertram to the sofa where she had been 
sitting, and shook hands with the elderly lady a member of the 
American colony, whom he knew well to whom she had been 
talking. A pretty, blonde young lady who sat in a low chair 
near by, drinking a cup of tea and chattering volubly to a young 
man who stood before her, also held out her hand to him. 

" How do you do, Mr. Egerton ? " she said. " I have not 
seen you in an age. Why do you never come to see us nowa- 
days ? " 

" My dear Miss Dorrance, why are you never at home when 
I do myself that honor? " he replied. 

" Because you do not come at the right time, I presume," 
she answered. " But, indeed, that is the case with so many of 
our friends one misses them so by being out that I have de- 
cided on a reception-day. It did not seem worth while when 
we first arrived in Paris, but it has now become necessary. 
Hereafter, then, we shall be happy to see you on any and every 
Friday." 



i8o ARMINE. [May, 

" You are very good ; I shall certainly remember to pay my 
respects. And you are still at the H6tel du Rhin ? " 

" Dear me ! no ; have I not seen you since we went into apart- 
ments ? The doctors decided that mamma must remain here for 
some months, so papa telegraphed to Cousin Duke to settle us 
comfortably, and he has put us into an apartment, with servants 
to look after, which I consider a nuisance." 

" It is probably quieter and better for Mrs. Dorrance, 
though," said ., Egerton. " I hope J;hat her health has im- 
proved ? " 

" Oh ! very much. She is able to take a short drive every 
afternoon. She is in the Bois now at least she was to send the 
carriage for me when she returned, and it has not yet arrived." 

At this moment, however, a servant entered a pretty, white- 
capped maid who, while she presented Egerton with a cup of 
tea, announced to Miss Dorrance that her carriage waited. At 
this the young lady rose and, with a rustle of silk, crossed the 
floor to where Sibyl stood, still talking to Mr. Talford. 

" Good-by, my dear," she said. " 1 must run away now. Do 
come to see us soon. You know mamma always enjoys your 
visits so much. Cousin Duke, are you coming with me?" 

Mr. Talford signified that he was, saying with a smile: " Miss 
Bertram will have no more attention to bestow upon me, since 
here is Egerton, who can tell her, on the best authority, all about 
the next revolution." 

" Are you interested in revolutions, Sibyl ? " inquired Miss 
Dorrance, opening her eyes a little. 

" Immensely," answered Sibyl, with her slightly mocking 
accent. Then, as Egerton drew near, she held out her hand to 
him with a very graceful show of cordiality. 

" And what does Mr. Egerton know about them ? " pursued 
Miss Dorrance. " I should not think it was the kind of thing he 
was likely to be interested in." 

'Your penetration in judging character does you infinite 
credit, my dear Miss Dorrance," said Egerton ; " but it is some- 
thing which may before long concern us all so closely that I am 
only, like a wise man, trying to gain some idea of the nature of 
the coming storm." 

" I hope that you will give your friends the benefit of your 
information, then," she said, " so that they can get away in time. 
But I do hope we will be able to finish the present season. 
Everything is charming in Paris just now." 

" As far as my means of information will allow me to speak," 



1883.] ARMINE. 181 

said Egerton, " I think I can assure you that you will at least be 
able to finish your spring shopping before milliners and modistes 
are whelmed." 

" They never will be," said she with confidence. " If there 
was a revolution to-morrow I am sure that Paris would set the 
fashion for the world the day after." 

" That is very true," said Egerton. " But it might be the 
fashion of the bonnet rouge" 

CHAPTER VIII. 

AFTER Miss Dorrance had withdrawn, attended by her cou- 
sin, and also by the young gentleman to whom she had been 
devoting her conversational powers when Egerton entered, the 
latter felt as if fate was kind to him. The pretty room, the sun- 
set light, the fragrance of flowers, and Sibyl Bertram's fair face 
made a whole very pleasing to the artistic perceptions which he 
possessed in considerable degree. And he fancied that this face 
regarded him with a kinder expression than usual, as its owner 
sat down in a quaint, luxurious chair and motioned him to an- 
other. 

"I hope you have come to tell me about the Socialist meet- 
ing," she said. " I have a great curiosity with regard to those 
people. If I were a man I should long since have gone to hear 
what they had to say. It seems to me. that in these latter days 
they are the only people who are in earnest." 

" They are certainly in earnest," said Egerton : " terribly in 
earnest you would think, if you heard them. I confess that it 
makes one a little uncomfortable. Earthquakes may have their 
uses ; but to feel one's house trembling around one the sensa- 
tion is not pleasant." 

" But if it fell one would find one's self in a fresher, purer 
air," she said. " That might be worth the shock. One feels 
sometimes almost suffocated by the artificial atmosphere in 
which we live." 

Egerton glanced around him with a smile. " If it fell," he 
said, "it might carry all the setting of your life with it, and 
you can hardly fancy what it would be to find yourself in a 
crude, hard existence, without anything soft or delicate or beau- 
tiful about you." 

" And do you think, then, that the setting of life is of such 
importance to me ? " she asked, with a subtle tone of scorn which 
he had often before heard in her voice, 



1 82 ARMINE. [May, 

" I think that it must be of importance to all people who love 
beauty as you most surely love it," he answered. 

"Yes, I love it," she said. " But beauty such as this "she 
made a slight, disdainful motion of her hand toward her sur- 
roundings " is not to be compared to the higher beauty of 
thought and feeling and conduct. And if o^ne had that one 
might willingly, nay, gladly, let the other go." 

" Perhaps one might," he said, though somewhat surprised, 
"if one were certain of the higher beauty. But, before resign- 
ing what one has, one would like to be sure of what one is to 
gain." 

" If we waited to be sure we would never gain anything," she 
replied quickly. "Ail great things are achieved by faith and 
courage." 

"The courage might be easily forthcoming," he said, as if to 
himself ; " but where is one to find the faith ? " 

There was a moment's silence. Apparently Miss Bertram 
was not ready with an answer to that question. She looked 
away from him, out of the window, through which there was a 
glimpse of the green tree-tops of the Pare Monceaux, golden in 
the last light of evening. An animated twitter of conversation 
came from the sofa where Mrs. Bertram and her visitor sat, but 
no distinct words reached these two who suddenly found them- 
selves halting before the great problem of modern life. It was 
Egerton who at length spoke again. 

" I can imagine nothing," he said, " which would be a more 
desirable possession than such a faith, as I can imagine nothing 
too arduous to be borne, nothing too great to be attempted, if 
one were so happy as to possess it. But to desire a thing is not 
to see one's way clear to obtaining it. One may try to delude 
one's self into a state of enthusiasm for this or that cause; but 
deep underneath is the chilling sense, which sooner or later will 
assert itself, that the feeling has a fictitious basis and that there 
really is nothing worth troubling one's self about in the 
world." 

' That may be so with you and men like you," said Sibyl, 
turning her eyes back on him. " But there are others, many 
others, in the world who think differently." 

" Yes," he said, "and I envy them. I do more than that 1 
try to share their beliefs. But I have either too much logic or 
too little enthusiasm. I have never been able to do so. And, 
honestly, Miss Bertram, are you much better off ? Have you 
a strong faith in anything?" 



1883.] ARMINE. 183 

Now, this was taking an unfair advantage, Sibyl felt. It 
was not pleasant for her, who had always made evident her con- 
tempt for this pleasant trifler, to be forced to own that she was 
not much better off in the matter of earnest belief than he was. 
She colored and hesitated a little before replying. Then she 
said with some emphasis : 

" Yes; I have faith in heroism and virtue and unselfishness, 
and in the ultimate triumph of good over evil." 

" Have you ? " said Egerton, smiling a little. " But can you 
define in what heroism and virtue and unselfishness consist? 
And what form will the triumph of good over evil take? Nay, 
what is good and what is evil? You see this is an age of uni- 
versal scepticism and the very foundations of thought are tot- 
tering." 

" One thing at least is not tottering, but daily growing 
stronger," she said, " and that is our conception of the impera- 
tive duty which we owe to those around us I mean to all hu- 
manity." 

" That certainly is the creed which is being proclaimed on 
all sides as the new hope of mankind," he answered, " and there- 
fore I went last night to hear the fullest and most complete ex- 
position of it." 

" And what did you hear?" she asked a little eagerly. " You 
have not told me yet." 

" What I heard," he answered, " was the logical outcome of 
modern political and religious theories. I heard a democracy 
preached which will not tolerate a plutocracy more than an aris- 
tocracy which demands an equal share of the goods of life for 
all, and which will not hesitate at any means to gain this end. 
I heard the destruction of all forms of government, the annihi- 
lation of all existing society, decreed ; and I heard the ideal of 
the future painted that future in which, recognizing fully that 
there is and can be no certainty of any future life, man is to be 
trained to make the utmost of this present existence, and put his 
hopes not in any personal immortality but in the progress of his 
race. I must add, also, that these statements which I make so 
barely were presented with an eloquence which I have never 
heard equalled." 

"By whom?" 

" One of the leaders of the extreme Red-Republican party, 
whose name is Duchesne. If earnestness is your ideal he would 
be a man after your heart. There is in him none of the stuff of 
which Gambettas and C16menceaus are made that is, the stuff 



1 84 ARMINE. [May, 

of the demagogue who inflames the people with wild and dan- 
gerous doctrines merely to serve his own ends and secure his 
own aggrandizement. This man has a strong nature, a deep, 
fiery heart, and I do not think there is a doubt of his absolute 
sincerity. He would die on a barricade to-morrow, if he thought 
that his death would serve the cause of humanity." 

" Ah ! " said she quickly, with a sudden light in her eyes, " I 
should like to know such a man. One grows weary of men who 
believe nothing, who hope nothing, who are plunged in selfish- 
ness and indifferentism." 

Egerton had an uncomfortable feeling that he was one of the 
men thus described, but he said with a smile : " It might be pos- 
sible for you to know him, if you really wished to do so. He is 
not a man of the people, though he espouses their cause as pas- 
sionately as if he were. Everything about him indicates inher- 
ited as well as personal refinement. And he has a charming 
daughter with a face like a poem." 

" So you have not only heard him speak in public you 
know him ? " said Miss Bertram, with some surprise. 

" I have that pleasure, though my acquaintance only dates 
from yesterday evening. But having been presented to him 
after the meeting, he invited me to his house, in order that he 
might expound the socialistic doctrine more at length ; and there 
T met the daughter." 

" Who is, of course, an enthusiastic Socialist also." 

" It would seem to follow naturally that she should be ; yet 
I do not think she is. As far as I was able to interpret a few 
words which she said to me, they were words of warning rather 
than encouragement." 

" Of warning ? How strange! Against what? " 

:< Against being led to join the party of destruction." 

" But if they are pledged to destroy, is it not in order that 
they may rebuild on a better basis?" 

'That is what they declare, and men like Duchesne descant 
with passionate eloquence on the wonderful fabric which will 
rise upon the new foundations. But it is part of the wisdom of 
experience to distrust untried theories." 

" Exactly," she said sarcastically. " That has always been 
the wisdom of experience to endeavor as far as possible to re- 
tard human progress. But if there had not been people in all 
ages to listen to and believe in some untried theories we should 
still be dwelling in caves, most likely." 

' Then we should not be tormented with the problems of 



1883.] ARMINE. 185 

modern civilization," replied Egerton ; " and that would be a 
most decided gain." 

But it was evident that his view of matters could by no possi- 
bility please Miss Bertram. There was an incorrigible lightness 
about him which provoked her now as ever. 

" Yes," she said, " it would no doubt be much pleasanter for 
those whom chance has elevated to the top of fortune's ladder, 
if those below would only be quiet, take their few crumbs of 
daily food, live in penury, die in misery, and make no clamor for 
some better ordering of affairs. But people who think of some- 
thing besides enjoying life are willing to bear their share of the 
burden of modern perplexity, if out of all the upheaval and re- 
volt a juster social state may be evolved." 

The old note of scorn was in her voice, but for once Egerton 
did not heed it. He was thinking more of the eloquent expres- 
sion of her face, of the light in her fine eyes. 

" I see," he said, " that you are deeply imbued with the social 
theories of the time. But, though you talk of perplexity, you 
seem to have scant sympathy with it. You are apparently un- 
able to realize that one may stand in doubt amid this strife of 
ideas, this war of contradictions." 

" No," she answered, " I am not unable to realize a state of 
doubt, for it is very much my own ; but I confess that I cannot 
understand an attitude of indifference in the face of a strife on 
which so much depends." 

" I am not indifferent," he said. " Just as one may have a 
heart without wearing it on one's sleeve for daws to peck at, so 
one may feel the need for some anchor for one's thought, some 
end for one's life, without proclaiming such a need all the time in 
tragic accents." 

She looked at him for an instant before replying, and then she 
said : " I realize that also. But it seems to me that one ought to 
be able to find such an end." 

" Perhaps one ought," he said. " Probably it is my fault as 
well as my misfortune that I have not found it. But, at least, I 
am endeavoring to do so. And you hardly need for me to tell 
you that in these days the matter is not easy, for all old standards 
are losing or have lost their value, and everything which we 
have taken on faith is being questioned, analyzed, and flung aside. 
But this grows too egotistical. Pray forgive me ; let us talk of 
something less serious." 

" Do you remember what I said to you last night?" she 
asked, with a slight smile. " I said that I should be glad to hear 



1 86 A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. [May, 

something besides social platitudes. You have given me some- 
thing else, and I am obliged to you as much obliged as for 
the flowers, for which I have not yet thanked you." 

" I wish 1 had been fortunate enough to send you some yel- 
low roses," said Egerton, looking at those which she wore. 

" Oh ! I like the others best," she answered carelessly. " It is 
only by an accident, or rather by the necessity of harmony in 
toilette, that I am wearing these to-day." 

Yet they seemed made for her, Egerton thought, their fra- 
grant splendor matching her fair, stately beauty and the rich 
dress of black and gold, in which she looked like a figure stepped 
from one of Titian's pictures. Other visitors coming in just 
then, he took his leave a few minutes later. But he seemed to 
carry the fragrance of the roses with him a fragrance which 
by contrast recalled that of the violets that had filled Armine's 
salon with their sweet, subtle odor the night before and seemed 
to set beside the woman he had left the slender figure, the deli- 
cate, sensitive face and soft, dark eyes of the Socialist's daughter. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH * 

LACORDAIRE somewhere speaks of those Catholics without 
the fold to whom the author of the singularly interesting memoir 
of a visit to the Russian Church here in question most certainly 
belonged. It would form an interesting study to compare va- 
rious types of minds, and to show how some, seemingly of them- 
selves, belong to the church without even knowing her, whereas 
others who are outwardly hers never, by some mental defect, 
grasp the soulfilling idea of a visible church upon earth. Six- 
teen years before Mr. Palmer renounced heresy he was seeking 
in vain for the realization of the vision which faith had revealed 
to him. More Catholic in England than his creed, or rather 
Catholic in spite of it, he was comparatively far more orthodox 
than the Orthodox Church at St. Petersburg. His book will 
throw a strong light upon that troublesome corner whose un- 
certain shelter is suggested by friends at home to doubting Ang- 

* Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church in the Years 1839, 1840. By the late William 
Palmer, M.A. < ected and arranged by Cardinal Newman. London : Kegan Paul, Trench 



I883-] 



A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 



187 



licans. It will offer a timely and effective stumbling-block in the 
way of English converts to the Eastern Church, and destroy the 
prestige which our countrymen, in their ignorance of the state of 
the case, have so willingly vouchsafed to this erring communion. 

Mr. William Palmer was born on July n, 1811. He was the 
eldest son of the Rev. William Jocelyn Palmer, rector of Mix- 
bury, Oxon., and his brothers are the Earl of Selborne the pre- 
sent lord-chancellor the Rev. George Horsley Palmer, and Arch- 
deacon Palmer of Oxford. Of his sisters only one now survives, 
Miss Emily Palmer, who has given up her life to good works in 
an Anglican sisterhood. It will be seen that his family life was 
necessarily full of Church-of-England traditions. His father may 
perhaps be described as one who, born and bred in the Anglican 
Establishment, transferred to it by some wonderful alchemy of 
mind the reverence which a Catholic gives to the church. This 
was expressed by him in an answer which he once made to his 
eldest -son, who inquired of him : " Do you consider the English 
Church to be the Catholic Church ? " He replied, " We ought 
to act towards her as if she were." If WQ suppose this answer 
carried out consistently through the actions of a long life in the 
rule of a parish, in the services of his church, in the discipline 
of family life, we have the atmosphere in which William Palmer 
was brought up, and the training from which he went to claim 
admission as a Catholic to the Russian Church. To men such 
as old Mr. Palmer the English Establishment owes a debt of gra- 
titude, for they have been her element of life. The outcome of 
Tractarianism has been a great movement towards the church ; 
Ritualism is too illogical for the mass, but the Protestant mind 
clothed in a Catholic overcoat not too sweet with incense is the 
very thing to prolong her existence. 

Two of the rector of Mixbury's sons are Anglican clergy- 
men ; another by his own ability is occupying the first position 
of a subject of the English crown ; and William, too, was to strike 
out a path and to achieve an eminence of his own. It may truly 
be said that -the world was to him a mirror in which he read the 
thoughts of eternity. He used this life as a halting-place to a 
better country, and those questions most interested him which 
involved the highest teaching of Christian dogma. As his Emi- 
nence Cardinal Newman remarks in the preface, which some 
may view as the most attractive portion of the book, he hid be- 
neath an almost " formal exterior " a wealth of tenderness and 
affection. At the age of twenty-eight this outwardly grave and 
stern young Englishman undertook the journey to St. Petersburg 



1 88 A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. [May, 

with a deep and settled purpose : that of seeing for himself what 
were the chances of a union between the Russian and Anglican 
churches, and of claiming 1 his right to be admitted to commu- 
nion in what he considered a sister church. Whilst impressed 
with the solemnity of the Greek rites, his mind was not set at 
rest as to the great question. We have seen hojtv his father an- 
swered his inquiry respecting the church. He met with much 
the same sort of logic at St. Petersburg, where the statement, 
" We are the Orthodox Church," covered a certain flaw in the 
title-deeds, and he fought many hard battles for the precious 
title of Catholic which is freely bestowed by the Easterns upon 
the Westerns. 

His English communion, however, carefully abstained from 
giving him any document which might have led to his journey 
being viewed as in any way official. Armed, therefore, with a 
somewhat curious letter, beginning " To all faithful believers in 
Christ," from the president of his college, Dr. Routh, he pro- 
ceeded to the Russian capital, and arrived there in August, 1839. 
He was a sincere advocate of the branch theory that is, he 
thought the Catholic Church ran out into three principal com- 
munions, the Latin, the Anglican, and the Eastern, and he gave 
to each communion the privilege of being orthodox only in its 
own territory. Thus he considered that an Eastern in London 
would be bound to attend the services of the Anglican Church, 
and an Anglican at St. Petersburg those of the Russian, under 
pain of schism. This makes Christianity geographical, but it is a 
common and favorite error. He nowhere states the sum total 
of his impressions. The reader, however, draws a very clear 
conclusion from what he has recorded. That Eastern Church, 
which he studied with so much good faith, is in truth a branch, 
a dead one, cut off from the tree of unity, with every sign of 
decadence in spite of the gift of orders and the sacramental 
system as far as it can exist with defect of jurisdiction. 

One of Mr. Palmer's difficulties at St. Petersburg was to explain 
his own position. He clung to the assertion that he belonged to 
the Catholic and apostolic religion, whereas in the face of this 
claim a Scotch banker had described him to an inquiring Rus- 
sian as "a member of some new sect," and Count Nesselrode had 
said, " The Anglican Church is just like the rest, simply Protes- 
tant and heretical. I must know, for I am an Anglican myself." 
Curiously enough, Mr. Palmer argues quite as a Catholic in 
pleading the unity of the one church. There are many striking 
instances of this ail through the book, whether his polemical 



1883.] A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 189 

powers were directed to high-born Russian ladies or dignitaries 
of the Russian Church. A simple Catholic child would have 
satisfied the learned man as to the one point at issue, which 
neither metropolitan nor princess could solve for him. " In the 
Creed," as he one day observed to the metropolitan, " we de- 
clare that the church is one, and we believe in the unity of 
the church." Like our friends nearer home, the bishop replied : 
" It ought to be one, but it is not" Again, Mr. Palmer haying 
one day solemnly stated at a friend's house that " I am a Chris- 
tian, and my church not Greco-Russ, but Catholic and Apos- 
tolic," a Russian pope drew the instructive conclusion that "he 
is, then, a Catholic and under the pope." 

All, indeed, the reproaches which Protestants cast in the 
teeth of the Catholic Church are merited by the Russian com- 
munion. Faith is there to a great extent bigotry and super- 
stition ; the fundamental knowledge and love of our Lord are 
wanting- amongst the peasantry, who consequently give an ex- 
cessive culte to their icons and attach themselves to the outward 
forms of religion. The illiterate make the service of God to 
consist in exterior observances, and are as stern as their com- 
munion in admitting no power of dispensation. Mr. Palmer 
tells a story of a peasant who, seeing a foreigner eat flesh-meat 
on a fast-day, gazed at him for a few minutes in sheer astonish- 
ment, and then struck him dead. The higher orders are fast 
losing the idea of the church, and are allowing a pernicious 
spirit of liberalism to destroy what Catholic life they have. The 
great thing, as Mr. Palmer was often told, seemed to be to them 
to " seek Christ." Whoever did this was in the right way. But 
no such unbiblical Christianity imposed upon him. " Truth lies 
not in opinion," was the great thesis with which he met their 
arguments. 

But if this book reveals the Russian Church to be just what 
Protestants make the Catholic, there is a point of great sympa- 
thy between the two denominations. They both accuse the Lat- 
ins of intolerance and extol, falsely, their own charity. Here 
again Mr. Palmer administered a lesson of sound doctrine. To 
possess the truth and not to communicate it, to be rather in a 
state of total indifference as to those outside, was not charity, 
but cruelty, and suicidal to the interests of the church. It is, in 
fact, a condition which betrays the want of the truth, and makes 
it a matter of opinion or private judgment. 

It would be well to draw from these memoirs a clear view 
of the Russian Church, and to see it through Mr. Palmer's eyes. 



A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. [May, 

With all his Catholic tendencies he was attracted by whatever 
of beauty he found in a communion wanting in the marks of the 
church, but still many degrees higher in the religious scale than 
the Anglican Establishment. As he owned many years later to 
an intimate friend, a nameless feeling kept him from going to 
Rome before he had weighed all other systems in the balance. 
Thus, at a personal disadvantage, he may possibly have worked 
the salvation of many. He broke up the ground for future 
doubters, and clearly proved its quality and the nature of the 
soil. 

The Czar Peter, improving on the work of his father the 
Czar Alexis Michaelovich, who deposed the great Patriarch 
Nicon, champion and representative of the church's original 
freedom in Russia, suspended the appointment of a patriarch for 
twenty years, and then turned the patriarchate itself into a 
board which he called the Holy Synod. He established by 
oukaz this board (1721), on which he conferred from his own 
person jurisdiction over the Russian Church, composing it of 
five permanent members the three metropolitans of Novgorod 
and St. Petersburg, of Moscow, and of Kief, and two archbish- 
ops, the emperor's confessor and the high almoner of the army 
and fleet. Three more members, chosen from among the other 
bishops, are elected for two or three years. The rite of corona- 
tion, as it is now exercised, gives a strange prominence to the 
czar, who does not receive his crown, but crowns himself, and is 
only assisted ministerially by the representatives of the spiritual 
power. The great champion of the independence of the Russian 
Church was the Patriarch Nicon, who lived under the Czar 
Alexis, and who described the state supremacy as " an apostasy 
even from Christianity itself, vitiating the whole body of the 
Russian Church." 

Mr. Palmer draws a remarkable contrast between four Rus- 
sian bishops who have received the honors equivalent to our 
process of canonization, and this great man, whose reward for 
defending the spiritual independence against the secular ruler 
was fifteen years' imprisonment, degradation, and an obscure 
end. The parallel case is seen in the church during life, but 
never, we think, after death. " Because I have loved justice and 
hated iniquity," said one of the foremost of the popes, " there- 
fore I die in exile " but all generations call him blessed as St. 
Gregory VII., restorer of the liberties of the church. Possibly 
the life-long devotion of Mr. Palmer to Nicon dated from that 
visit when, as still an Anglican, he knelt to kiss the damp tomb 



1883.] A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 191 

in the grounds of the New Jerusalem Monastery, esteeming it a 
privilege. Long years afterwards, when he had reached the per- 
fection of that principle for which Nicon had contended in a 
false system, he set himself with an unstimulated zeal to compile 
a voluminous biography of the schismatic patriarch, and himself 
died before he had completed his labor of love. Of the four 
Russian bishops who were canonized by the veneration of the 
people he says that their virtues were " inoffensive, or rather 
useful," as seeming to "give a sort of respectability to the un- 
canonical innovations in which they had acquiesced." One of 
the extraordinary anomalies offered by the Russian Church is 
certainly the secular character of the Ober-Prokuror of the Holy 
Synod. During Mr. Palmer's visit this post was occupied by a 
certain Count Pratasoff, with whom he had .many dogmatical 
conversations. A poor monk in the bitterness of his soul ex- 
posed the evil in plaintive words to Mr. Palmer: " What we want 
is a patriarch. As it is now, Pratasoff is our patriarch, though 
a soldier, as he represents the emperor. He goes to balls and 
theatres, dances well, and is ' un tres galant homme mais! ' This 
mais says as much as a full statement concerning the duties of a 
patriarch. There is no argument either in Scripture or history 
which favors Peter the Great's scheme of an emperor, as such, 
governing the church with a despot's rule, aided and abetted by 
the imperial machinery of a so-called Holy Synod. 

Another sign of decadence is noticeable in the clergy. It is 
no longer St. Peter's net taking fishes both large and small. In 
Russia only the flounders swell it; that which should be viewed 
as the highest honor has come to be the almost exclusive inheri- 
tance of peasants. Russian priests form a caste. They visit the 
merchant class, but never mix with the nobility, and, except when 
actually officiating, meet with meagre respect. Enforced mar- 
riage, according to M. Mouravieff, whom Mr. Palmer quotes, is 
the scourge of their church, and this may possibly account for 
their low grade in society. Poverty is not romantic. There is 
a halo about an unmarried priest of small means who has re- 
nounced this world's affections for the love of God and gives 
himself up entirely to the service of the altar, but the danger of 
a needy married clergy is that all the superfluous energy will be 
expended on making the two ends meet, and that there will be 
no room for the ideal. So when Mr. Palmer expressed a wish 
to take up his abode with a priest he was dissuaded on the 
ground that he would find it utterly impossible. We doubt, 
indeed, if any one but he himself would have lived through those 



1 92 A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. [May, 

four months at the priest Fortunatoff's house. He has chroni- 
cled the dirt without complaint, though to him it must have 
been torture. Discomfort and bad food he viewed as quite 
secondary matters. His account of his bed and the first night 
he spent in it are worthy of note : " My room is about ten feet 
square. A long chest between two and three feet high, length- 
ened out by a chair, is the bedstead ; on this is* a straw mattress, 
one very narrow sheet, and a light counterpane ; my carpet-bag 
serves for a pillow, and the scarceness of bed-clothes is remedied 
by my wadded cloak. . . . The first night I slept not a wink ; 
when I confessed this to the priest he said, ' I guess what it is,' 
and, taking a lighted tallow candle, he examined the crevices and 
corners of the room, and found long clusters of the vermin 
wedged in and hanging together like bees in a hive. They friz- 
zled and fell into the candle and almost put it out. This clear- 
ance is no doubt much, but still my nights are bad enough." 

Whilst becoming familiarized with the inside of the Russian 
Church, Mr. Palmer was gaining absolutely nothing as to the 
original end he had had in going to St. Petersburg. The Rus- 
sians he conversed with paid an involuntary homage to the Lat- 
ins by calling them Catholics, but their mind as to Anglicanism 
was that it had been an " apostasy from an apostasy." The con- 
trast between the Anglican and the Russian churches which is 
brought out in these memoirs is very marked. It is a difference 
not of degree but of kind. The Russian, as forming part of 
Eastern Christendom and springing from what once was ortho- 
dox, has retained true orders, though without jurisdiction. The 
Anglican, as a church system, is a sham from first to last. Its 
beginning was a revolt from the head of the church ; neither did 
its founders break with St. Peter's See for a point of doctrine, as 
the Greeks had done. First obedience to the Roman pontiff 
was relinquished for a royal lust, and later on the issue of that 
fatal passion consummated the destruction of Catholic dogmas. 
Priesthood and sacraments were swept away that the daughter 
of Anne Boleyn might reign. 

After the first angry burst of passion which ushered in the 
Anglican schism had burnt itself out, it was necessary to make 
a pretence at some kind of religion. The Thirty-nine Articles 
were framed, and never did a creed in any part of the world 
flourish for so long on so much negation. Mr. Palmer took with 
him to St. Petersburg a copy of these Articles and a written com- 
mentary on them by himself. One point in particular seems to 
have attracted the attention of the Russian authorities, who read 



1883.] A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 193 

both consubstantiation opposed to transubstantiation. After a 
while, as if the matter were not quite clear to them, they ended 
by saying that " on the whole they sided with Rome." Mr. 
Palmer, whose mind in its precision was very different from that 
of his communion, explained to them how he understood the 
doctrine of the Holy Eucharist as the "spiritual body of our 
Lord, and that he believed the natural substances of bread and 
wine to remain after the consecration " ; but all that he got from 
the archpriest was, " Your doctrine is a terrible heresy." The 
one point about which he displayed not a theoretical but a 
practical confusion was the unity of the church throughout the 
world as opposed to that geographical Christianity of which we 
have already spoken. He honestly thought that in Russia it was 
his bounden duty to conform to the Oriental Church, and once 
when the archpriest invited him to attend the English services 
at St. Petersburg he answered with perfect naivete: " How can 
the Church of England be in your diocese ? . . . There cannot 
be de jure two confessions or two bishops in one place." This is 
the inevitable inconsequence of the illogical branch theory, and 
in the end that communion alone answers the demands of honest 
men which declares itself to be the only ark of salvation. The 
Russians do not work this out; for whilst theoretically admitting 
the great divisions of Eastern and Western Christianity, they 
were fairly surprised at Mr. Palmer's ingenuous system for get- 
ting the better of a bad cause. He recounts two visits to the 
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, in one of which he informed 
the bishop that his church had excommunicated the " Roman- 
ists " in England and Ireland, Greece and Russia, as "schis- 
matics." " That is what I cannot in the least understand," 
replied the metropolitan ; " they are all the same with the Latins 
of the Continent. Communion depends on unity of belief. If 
they are fit to be communicated with abroad they ought to be 
one with you at home ; if they are. to be excommunicated at 
home they are to be excommunicated everywhere." As Mr. 
Palmer states at the outset, the Archbishop of Canterbury had 
objected to put his signature to Dr. Routh's letter, and his lauda- 
ble endeavor to be admitted to Russian communion carried with 
it no episcopal sanction formally expressed. This was ferreted 
out by the metropolitan and the Holy Synod's secular Obcr- 
Prokuror, Count Pratasoff. "Us ne voulaient pas se compro- 
mettre," laughed the latter to the bishop. 

This first interview, however, in November, did not bring 
about a definite answer. It was not till the middle of Janu- 
VOL. xxxvu. 13 



194 A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. [May, 

ary that the metropolitan distinctly refused communion to Mr. 
Palmer. He had been reading the Thirty-nine Articles and Mr. 
Palmer's Latin dissertation on them, and without going so far as 
the first authorities at Constantinople, who pronounced them to 
be " thirty-nine heresies" his sober reflection was that " there are in 
them many erroneous propositions such as could not be allowed 
by us." And he added : " You are the excellent defender of a 
bad cause." It is impossible to say what might have been the 
effect on the dogmatical atmosphere of St. Petersburg of a dozen 
such minds as Mr. Palmer's. Though the Russian Church is a 
respectable body in some particulars, as compared to the Angli- 
can, its vagueness and want of clear definition often rendered 
argument with a keen controversialist painful if not impossible. 
The instinct of all heretical bodies is a mysterious darkness, a 
dim twilight, in which only faint outlines can be distinguished. 
To be imperiously called upon to point out all at once and to de- 
scribe each object is seriously aggravating, and it is much to the 
credit both of Mr. Palmer and his Russian divines that they part- 
ed good friends. Who knows whether a prolonged battery from 
his arsenal might not have called forth a special sitting of the 
Holy Synod, and special canons to meet the inconvenience of 
such cases as his? 

The significant words of one of the Serghiefsky monks to Mr. 
Palmer deserve to be pondered. " There is a fair outside," he 
said ; " we have preserved all the rites and ceremonies and the 
creed of the early church. But it is a dead body ; there is little 
life." The primary cause of this numbness is, of course, the 
separation from the seat and centre of life, and even they who 
dispute the cause will be obliged, in perusing this work, to admit 
the effects. A want of development runs through and pervades 
every department of the Russian religion. It is now what the 
church herself was at the time of the Greek schism, save that as 
years roll on it loses more and more of that vivifying Catho- 
lic life and spirit which it can no longer draw from the proper 
soprce. Were we to compare the church in St. Gregory VII.'s 
time with the actual church in Russia, we should probably find a 
great resemblance in the broad outlines ; yet how often did that 
great pontiff groan over the degeneration of Christians ! Men 
so lived then that they merely satisfied the church's precept of 
yearly confession and communion, and managed at the utmost to 
keep off numbness instead of warming the marrow of their lives 
by the fire of the sacraments. Yet outwardly there was more 
rigor, and what may strike any student of the;eleventh century is 



1883.] A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 195 

the depth of its crimes and the height of its penance. During 
nineteen centuries of unwearied teaching the church has given 
increasing precision and drawing-out to the doctrines which 
were committed to her care ; and,* as opposed to former ages 
when dispensations were seldomer granted and public penances 
were more frequent, the leaning of these her latter times has 
been one of charity and love as typified in the devotion to the 
Sacred Heart. As St. John wrote : " He said many things which 
are not written in this book." These he committed to the 
church, whose natural and human growth would be directed by 
his Spirit. To be indeed, as some heretics fondly crave, en- 
tirely like the primitive church would be an unlivable state of 
things. We should have services, as in Russia, of a length in- 
compatible with the exigencies of modern life, and the result 
would be, as there, that the mass of the people would not go. 
The fasting would be so rigorous that modern constitutions 
could not stand it, and the difficulty would produce, not fervor, 
but discouragement and a reaction in the wrong sense against 
penance in general. That most sweet and consoling doctrine of 
the communion of saints would be distorted ; for without the 
more intimate knowledge of our Lord which the church has 
brought about through various ages to her members by succes- 
sive definitions, the illiterate people might be in great danger of 
giving undue preponderance to the culte of creatures as nearer 
their own level. In truth, the Russian who is about to commit a 
crime first covers his icon and then sets fearlessly to work, and 
in so doing he draws contempt upon the whole doctrine of the 
invocation of saints. Without the active principle of life, the 
Russian Church presents on the one hand a distorted picture 
of what the church really was at the time of the Greek schism 
in 1050, and on the other a striking example of the necessity 
of development and definition. They have no systematic theo- 
logy of their own, but borrow from Catholics, Lutherans, and 
Calvinists. The result is a wide-spreading spirit of liberalism 
amongst the clergy and a proportionately feeble inclination to 
convert the rest of the world to their views. This indifference 
announces an advanced stage of decadence, and is a contrast 
to the proselytizing zeal of Protestant dissenters. " In Russia," 
Mr. Palmer said in conversation with Princess Dolgorouky, " I 
have not met with a single person who has shown solicitude to 
bring me to the orthodox communion for the salvation of my 
soul." 
i&j The Russian discipline with regard to the sacraments is still 



196 A VISIT TO THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. [May, 

that of the eleventh century. Mr. Palmer's friends have told 
him and us how it answers. The system of yearly confession 
and communion tends to increase all existing evils, to strengthen 
the clergy caste, to open thie last barrier to the strong current 
of liberalism which is blowing from within and from without, 
to give undue proportions to icon worship whilst the presence of 
the Blessed Sacrament is shut off by the closed Holy Doors. In 
a word, the weak vitality of the Russian rests upon excrescences 
of faith or corruptions as opposed to proper developments. 
The letter is there, but the spirit has long since departed. 

In 1855 Mr. Palmer, who had tested all systems and found 
them wanting, was received into the Catholic Church in Rome ; 
it was in the same Eternal City that he breathed his last on 
April 5, 1879, and there he lies in the new cemetery by San 
Lorenzo fuori le Mura. He left unfinished his cherished work 
on the Patriarch Nicon, but in God's eyes he had done his ap- 
pointed task, and, if we are not mistaken, his Notes of a Visit to the 
Russian Church will be to him, amongst generations of English- 
speaking Catholics, the heathen poet's non omnis moriar. The 
pagan craves for himself an immortal personality, but the Chris- 
tian ideal is our Lord and his work upon earth. To add a stone' 
to that great edifice and then to rest under its shadow is highest 
joy. Whilst the body is lying in its tpmb the hand still writes 
on, speaking to men either the testimony of truth or falsehood. 
Of William Palmer it may be said that from beyond the grave 
he is witnessing to the divine beauty and unity of the Catholic 
Church as it was given to him to see it in the undefiled strength 
of an upright conscience. 



i883-J ALBERT us MAGNUS. 197 



ALBERTUS MAGNUS.* 

IT seems strange to a reflective mind that so much should be 
known of the science and so great an interest taken in the arts of 
the middle ages, whilst the lives of many of the greatest artists 
and scientists should be allowed to remain in obscurity. The 
life of a holy man, says a writer of our own day, is the grandest 
structure, the loveliest statue, the most expressive and brilliant 
picture that can be formed, the most perfect poem that can be 
sung in honor of the Most High. What wonder, then, that the 
Christian scholar loves to linger long over the ruins (for such we 
may well call the scanty details left us by time) of those venera- 
ble servants of God who during the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies enlightened the world by their knowledge and virtue? 
Simultaneous with those grand, majestic piles raised to the honor 
of the Almighty in the many Christian centres of the thirteenth 
century, there arose those grander temples, the living tabernacles 
of the living God. St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Bonaventure, Marco 
Polo, Roger Bacon, and Albertus Magnus all displayed in their 
various spheres the wondrous works of God ; and as the high 
cathedral spires towered over the hundreds of lesser surrounding 
edifices, ( so did the learning, and piety, and genius of these giants 
of Christianity surpass the virtues and accomplishments of their 
contemporaries. Such especially was Albertus Magnus in re- 
gard to the extent and development of his wonderful science. 
To use the expression of an ancient biographer, " he surpassed 
all from the shoulder upwards, as Saul of old surpassed all the 
warriors of Israel." In the divers paths of mediaeval research 
we constantly meet with Albert the Great. Legend, history, 
architecture, all vie with each other in repeating his glorious 
name. And yet, although he was the greatest scholar of mediae- 
val times, his merits are unhappily too little known and still less 
appreciated by philosophers, theologians, and historians of out- 
time. 

Albert was born at Lauingen about 1193. Of his childhood 
but little is known ; all that is told us is that " he was carefully 
educated from his earliest years. He was taught the command- 
ments of God and the principles of science." Another writer 

* Albert the Great, of the Order of Friars Preachers : His Life and Scholastic Labors, 
Translated from the French by the Rev. T. A. Dixon, O.P. 



198 ALBERTUS MAGNUS. [May, 

tells us that at school " he soon gave sure signs of what he 
would one day become. Instead of yielding to the frivolous 
amusements of the companions of his age he delighted to visit 
the churches and to chant the hymns and psalms with the 
clerks." When the days of his childhood had passed, and the 
gay world of youth was opened out before bim, he quickly 
allowed his ingenuous soul to be captivated by the brilliant 
charms of science. The cap of the student or the buckler of the 
warrior was to be selected as his portion for life. He could not 
hesitate between the peaceful and noble study of the sciences 
and the tumultuous din of war, with the too frequently unjust 
and disastrous triumphs of the warrior. Hence he was sent 
from Germany to Padua, whose rising university at that time, 
and for centuries after, rejoiced in the possession of the most 
accomplished masters of the liberal arts. Here it was that he 
laid the foundation of that vast knowledge which was so shortly 
to astound the world, and whose principles, developed as he 
knew how to develop them, drew upon him the odium attached 
to those who participate in the black arts. It is at this period of 
his life also that the legend of the " Vision " is placed, which, 
although not authenticated fully, is too charming to be passed by 
in silence. It represents Albert as being uncommonly dull. All 
that which he learned in the evening was forgotten on the fol- 
lowing morning. What he believed he understood soon became 
impenetrable darkness. He asked for light by prayer, but his 
prayers seemed unanswered. Then in anguish of spirit he re- 
solved to bid farewell to study and to return to his native town. 
On the evening on which he was to put his resolution into effect, 
as he was about to leave, his chamber was suddenly illumined 
with an extraordinary light, and three virgins of celestial beauty, 
Our Blessed Lady, St. Barbara, and St. Catherine, appeared 1 to 
him. One of them asked the cause of his discouragement ; he 
answered that it was the dulness of his intellect. The saint then 
consoled him and bade him ask of his mistress what he desired. 
Filled with happiness, Albert approached the Queen of Heaven, 
and, falling on his knees, besought her to bestow on him a vast 
knowledge of human wisdom. Our Lady then said to him : " Be 
it done to thee according to thy wish. Thy progress shall be so 
extraordinary that thou shalt not have any equal in philosophy. 
I will protect thee always and will not suffer thee to perish by 
straying from the true faith when surrounded by the snares of 
sophists. But, that you may know that it is to my bounty and 
not to the exertion of your own mind that you are indebted for 



1883.] ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 199 

this immense knowledge, you shall be completely stripped of it 
before your death." 

It is supposed that, after having completed all his minor 
studies, he devoted ten years to the study of philosophy in 
Padua. Although this may to us seem an unreasonably long 
time to devote to one special branch of science, yet in that age it 
was not deemed too much, nor was it an unusual thing. Hence 
Albert remained a student of art and philosophy in Padua until 
he had attained his thirtieth year. But all this scientific study 
in no way caused him to be unmindful of the religious needs of 
his soul. Besides being a scientist, he was a saint. "In the 
midst of the tumultuous and ofttimes debauched life of the young 
men of the city," says his historian, "he reflected seriously on' his 
last end." He frequently visited the churches and had constant 
intercourse with the holy men of Padua. 

The time had now come for him to determine upon a state of 
life. Yet it seemed impossible for him to decide so momentous 
a question. It became the source of much anxious thought and 
mental suffering. In his difficulty he turned to God and with 
tears besought him to make known his true vocation. One day, 
whilst in his favorite church of the Friars Preachers and kneel- 
ing before the shrine of Our Lady, it is related that she, through 
her statue, addressed him in these words : "Albert, my son ! leave 
the world and enter the order of Friars Preachers, whose foun- 
dation I obtained from my Divine Son for the salvation of the 
world. You shall apply yourself to the sciences, according to 
the Rule ; and God will fill you with such wisdom that the 
whole church shall be illumined by your learned books." He 
immediately decided to become a religious. But the project 
was hard to be realized. Insurmountable difficulties rose up 
before him. His uncle, under whose care he had been placed 
when he first went to Padua, was far from pleased with his reso- 
lution. He forbade him all intercourse with the Dominican 
friars, and exacted of him a promise that he would not carry out 
his design till after the expiration of a fixed time. Shortly after 
the term of his probation had ended the famous Jordan of Saxony 
arrived at Padua. Crowds flocked to the church to hear the 
eloquent Dominican. Among the audience was Albert, who 
listened spell-bound as the holy orator portrayed in glowing 
colors the happiness of the cloistered life. No sooner was the 
sermon completed than Albert sped to the door of the convent, 
and, casting himself on his knees before Friar Jordan, exclaimed, 
" Father, you have read my heart," and with tears begged to be 



200 ALBERT us MAGNUS. [May, 

received into the order. Jordan most willingly accepted Albert 
and gave him the Dominican habit in 1223. That he might pro- 
secute his theological studies and acquire sacred science, the 
young novice was sent by his superiors to Bologna. As might be 
expected, he soon surpassed his fellow-disciples, although there 
were gathered together in that Dominican convent the brightest 
intellects of central and southern Europe. Whatever embraced 
the circle of knowledge was laid open to his intelligence ; the 
thickest darkness quickly disappeared before his keen perception. 
Here it was that he gathered the strength necessary for the 
gigantic literary undertaking which has immortalized him the 
Christianizing pagan philosophy. 

Already were his talents recognized. He was sent by his 
superiors to lecture at Cologne. From this place he was bidden 
travel through the various German seats of learning, found 
houses of his order, lecture upon the Holy Scriptures, and ex- 
plain the " Sentences of the Lombard." Besides this he de- 
veloped his new system of philosophy, by which he brought the 
various pagan authors to testify to the truth of Christianity. 
After the explanation of the Holy Scriptures his mind seemed 
to know no pleasure so great as the development of the philoso- 
phy of Aristotle. Thus during ten years he travelled from end 
to end of Germany, in order to establish by his teaching new 
homes of science destined to inflame souls and to conquer 
hearts to the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. In 1243 he 
was recalled to Cologne to undertake the direction of the school 
already flourishing there. It is here that God brings to him a 
disciple worthy of him, and who was afterward to excel him in 
the domain of science and theology. We must remember that 
men, not youths, were his pupils, and gathered at Albert's feet 
now were men who ever after plumed themselves on having 
been his disciples when they themselves became shining lights 
of the church. One there was, his dear disciple, who by the 
depth of his genius, the breadth of his knowledge, the number 
of his works, and the holiness of his life has ever since been re- 
garded as the ideal of the doctor and the sage of the church. 
Had Albert done nothing else during his many years as master 
than prepare so grand a character as Thomas of Aquin, he cer- 
tainly would have been entitled to the reverence and love of 
after-times. "Thomas," says an ancient writer, "hastened to 
Cologne with the ardor of a thirsty stag which runs to a foun- 
tain of pure water, there to receive from the hand of Albert the 
cup of pure wisdom which gives life, and to slake therein the 



1883.] ALBERT us MAGNUS. 201 

-burning thirst that consumed him." So closely are the two lives 
twined for years that we feel we would do an injustice did we 
pass on without saying- something of Thomas. At first at Co- 
logne he was looked upon as rather stupid. His companions 
doubted much if he would be able to follow the lectures of the 
great master Albert. They went so far as to style him the great 
ox. But one day a manuscript exposition of the De divinis No- 
minibus Of the Divine Names written by the young Thomas 
for the benefit of a companion, chanced to fall into the hands of 
Albert. The great man was much pleased with the work and 
sought out the author. Keen-sighted and well able to read 
character, Albert had already noticed the wonderful talents of 
Thomas. He bade him prepare for a public disputation, and 
announced that he himself would be the disputant. Thomas 
answered every abjection with great skill and cleverness, till at 
last Albert, no longer able to restrain his admiration, cried out : 
" You call this young man a dumb ox ; but I declare to you that 
so loud will be his bellowing in doctrine that it will resound 
throughout the world." From that moment Albert felt himself 
bound to cultivate with the greatest care this precious plant 
confided to him by his superiors. He procured him a cell near 
his own, allowed him to share the result of his own laborious 
researches, made him the companion of his walks, and after- 
wards confided the duties of the lectorate to him when absent 
himself. 

In 1245, Albert was sent by his superiors to found a chair of 
their order in Paris, and Thomas accompanied him to continue 
under the great master his theological studies. Here it is that 
one of the most glorious periods of Albert's scholastic career 
opens to our view. He began the explanation of the Sen- 
tences. Among the disciples gathered around his chajr were 
princes, bishops, counts, priests, rich and poor, religious and 
seculars. So great was the crowd which came to listen to him 
that no hall could be found of suitable size to accommodate the 
multitude, so that frequently he was obliged to lecture in the 
open air. 

In the autumn of 1248, at the command of his religious supe- 
rior, he again set out for Cologne to lecture in that city and 
establish the famous Dominican school which one hundred and 
forty years afterward was to become the far-famed University of 
Cologne. Thomas was again his companion in travel and his 
pupil after their arrival at the convent. Albert had scarce re- 
appeared, his name had hardly resounded through the Rhen- 



202 ALBERTUS MAGNUS. [May, 

ish provinces, when multitudes of students flocked from every 
country around his chair. The principal work to which he felt 
himself called was, besides teaching, writing. It is in this ca- 
pacity, especially as a philosophical writer, that he truly merits 
a glory which has scarce yet been given him. It is on this rock 
of science his greatness as an educator of the human race rests. 
And it was precisely during the years of his professorship at 
Paris and Cologne that he prepared the most important of his 
works on these matters. However, sa}^s his biographer, " we 
must observe that all these writings of Albert on philosophical 
subjects are not entirely his own compositions. They are, on 
the contrary, for the most part paraphrases that is to say, 
enlarged translations of the writings of Aristotle. Albert com- 
pleted, corrected, and Christianized this philosophy." 

During the first residence of St. Thomas of Aquin at Cologne, 
Albert explained the books attributed at that time to St. Denis 
the Areopagite. There is an ancient tradition connected with 
this explanation which, even though legendary in its character, 
still abounds in interesting detail. It is related by Rudolph and 
Peter of Prussia, his two admiring biographers, and we simply 
give it as we get it : 

" When," says Rudolph, " the master was expounding the works of 
Denis, and had completed the book on the Divine Hierarchy, his courage 
failed him at the sight of the difficulties which the rest of the work con- 
tained. He resolved, like St. Jerome with the book of Daniel, to put aside 
the work and leave it unfinished, when the faithful Master, who permits 
not the laborers of his vineyard to be tried beyond their strength, sent to 
him in sleep the Apostle St. Paul, who encouraged him to renewed ardor. 
The visit is thus detailed : A religious, renowned for his learning and 
great virtues probably St. Thomas of Aquin one day found a document 
in Albert's handwriting in which the following occurred: 'When I had 
completed with much toil the book on the Celestial Hierarchy I began to 
explain the hierarchy of the church. I got through the first chapter, on 
the Sacrament of Baptism, without much difficulty. But when I entered on 
the second my courage failed me and I despaired of being able to continue 
it, when after Matins I had a vision. I found myself in a church in which 
St. Paul was celebrating Mass. Consoled beyond measure, I hoped he 
would enlighten me concerning my task. When the apostle had said the 
"Agnus Dei" a multitude of people entered the church. The apostle 
calmly saluted them and inquired what they wished. "Behold," they 
exclaimed, "we have brought to you one possessed of a devil, whom we 
beseech you to cure." Having cast out Satan, St. Paul gave Holy Com- 
munion to this man. At the ablution of the fingers I offered my services, 
and with fear said : " Sir, I have long wished to be instructed in the mys- 
terious subjects contained in the book of St. Denis, but especially on the 
grace of true sanctity." He answered me with much kindness of manner ; 



1883.] ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 203 

' Come with me after Mass to the house of the priest Aaron, which is 
on the other side of the river." After Mass I followed him. When we 
reached the banks of the river he passed over without difficulty. But it 
was otherwise with me, for I had scarce touched the water when it began 
to rise to such a degree as to render the passage impossible. The apostle 
entered the house of Aaron, and, while anxious as to how I should follow 
him, I suddenly woke. On reflection I discovered the meaning of this 
dream. The first chapter, explained by me, treats of the expulsion of 
Satan from the body of man by baptism, then his participation in the sac- 
rament of the Holy Eucharist. The following chapter leads him who 
receives the Holy Unction to the house of Aaron, for it treats of the 
chrism with which bishops are consecrated The deep waters increasing so 
suddenly arrested my pen ; but the apostle, through God's grace, rendered 
the passage easy to me. I then commenced to write again, and accom- 
plished with God's help what to my feebleness appeared impossible.' " 

Albert possessed a wonderful knowledge of chemistry, natu- 
ral philosophy, and medicine. His spare time, when freed from 
the onerous duties of lecturer, was taken up with experiments in 
these sciences. So well did ,he succeed in these things, and such 
marvellous results did he often obtain, that the common people 
feared him, and even among the learned it was bruited abroad 
that he was in secret collusion with the dark powers. He stud- 
ied the nature of the many diseases to which mankind is heir, and 
in consequence was often able to effect cures when the physician's 
art had failed. This was ascribed to his power of magic, and 
many of the simple people looked upon him with terror. Even 
the brothers of the convent feared to enter his dread workshop, 
and crossed themselves devoutly when obliged to enter within 
its mysterious precincts. History is full of legends about his 
wonderful power in mechanics, and represents him to us as not 
only surprising the lowlier classes, but as astounding the edu- 
cated by his contrivances. Even Thomas of Aquin is related 
to have been terror-stricken by what he saw within the hidden 
sanctuary of his master. It is said that one day Thomas, whose 
curiosity led him to observe his master's work, profited by his 
absence to examine the interior of his laboratory. With a beat- 
ing heart he entered. Strange animals which he had never be- 
fore seen, instruments artistically made, vessels of most curious 
shape, were there exposed. Thomas' astonishment increased in 
proportion as he looked around. Something drew him towards 
the corner of the room. A scarlet curtain, reaching in long and 
close folds to the ground, seemed to him to conceal an object. 
He approached, and, timidly drawing aside the curtain, found 
himself face to face with a beautiful maiden. He wished to fly, 



2O4 ALBERTUS MAGNUS. [May, 

but felt himself detained by magical force, and was compelled 
in spite of himself to gaze on the enchanting figure of a young 
girl. The more he gazed, the more it shone before his eyes, the 
greater became his confusion. But this was not all. The strange 
form addressed to him the triple salutation : " Salve, salve, 
salve." Frightened beyond measure, Thomas imagined that the 
prince of hell was sporting with him. In the fear and uneasiness 
that possessed him he strove to defend himself as best he could 
against the tempter. He seized a stick which was near him, and 
exclaiming, " Begone, Satan ! " struck the imaginary demon re- 
peated blows, till the automaton (for it was nothing else) broke 
in pieces. Then, seized with terror, he turned to fly from the 
room, when he was met at the door by Albert. The master, 
seeing what had happened in his absence, and that the fruit of 
his long application was annihilated, cried aloud in grief : " O 
Thomas, Thomas! what have you done? In one instant you 
have destroyed the labor of thirty years ! " It would appear 
that Albert had 'made an automaton capable of pronouncing cer- 
tain phrases and of walking across a room whilst sweeping it. 
This was the demon which terrified Thomas and which occupied 
the thoughts of the inventive Albert. A host of other traditions 
have been handed down concerning him, many of them even 
ludicrous, but which fortunately have been denied by his earliest 
biographers. For instance, he is said to have transported the 
daughter of the king of France through the air to Cologne. 
Another states that he rode to Rome on the back of the devil to 
absolve the pope from some peccadillo into which he had fallen. 
Another tells us that he traversed the globe with Alexander the 
Great. Yet from these relics we may well gather the impres- 
sion which Albert must have left upon his age, since legend, and 
fable,- and poetry all combine to weave an historic garland for 
him. However, although he excelled in sciences and arts, in 
metaphysics and philosophy, the grandest claim which he has to 
our love and veneration comes from the fact that, whilst first in 
letters, he was also first among his peers in virtue. 

After five years spent in blissful activity as professor at Co- 
logne, Albert, in 1254, was appointed provincial of the Domini- 
can Order in Germany. Here, we may say, a new life opened 
upon him. He was to bid farewell to his dear cell and the silent 
cultivation of the sciences, and burden himself with the govern- 
ment of a large number of convents and friars. He began by 
surpassing all others in the rigorous observance of his vows. 
Although far advanced in years, he made all his visitations on 






1883.] ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 205 

foot. He never carried money, but as a faithful lover of reli- 
gious poverty, when necessity obliged him, he begged from door 
to door the scanty subsistence which he and his companions in 
travel required. In the convents in which he remained for any 
length of time he wrote books, and left them at his departure, 
either to indemnify the brethren for the little which he had 
eaten or to afford them some share in his vast learning. 

It was about this time that the famous dispute between the 
University of Paris and the religious orders took place. The 
university men were most anxious to retain their literary pro- 
minence before the people, and were unwilling that the monks 
should have chairs in their institutions. They were jealous ofj 
the ascendency which the religious were obtaining in the arts 
and letters, and determined to stop it by entering into a close 
corporation. In 1253 the lay professors of the University of 
Paris, because of some supposed wrong done to their students, 
refused longer to lecture. The religious, however, not feeling 
themselves called upon to make the quarrel their own, continued 
their lectures. This became the subject of new strife. The art of 
stifling an enemy with roses was not known in that day, and so 
the various champions on either side strove by strong invective 
or bitter sarcasm to overcome their opponents. Each new attack 
or defence served but to make the war more bitter, till at last. 
the case was brought before St. Louis, King of France. From 
him the religious appealed to the pontiff, and thus the matter 
became subject for pontifical decision. At the head of the uni- 
versity men was William of St. Amour, a man of acknowledged 
genius, but likewise of intense pride. Like many other philoso- 
phers, he sinned by endeavoring to prove too much. He began 
by insisting that it was entirely out of place for a religious bound 
by a vow of poverty to expect or attempt to lecture in a univer- 
sity. From this untenable position he descended to personalities 
about those who did lecture; then he went still lower, accused 
the orders of hypocrisy and heresy, and published a pamphlet 
denouncing them. This document was quickly copied and scat- 
tered throughout France. The war became general, and not a 
literary centre could be found in southern Europe which had not 
its advocates and champions of university men and of religious. 
Seven theologians were sent by the university to the pontifical 
court to sustain the cause of the laity. Foremost among these 
was William of St. Amour. For the defence of the orders three 
religious had set out from various convents, and were journey- 
ing towards Anagni, at which place the pontifical court was then 



2o6 ALBERTUS MAGNUS. [May, 

sojourning. . Albert headed the list, and was nominated by the 
pontiff himself. Thomas of Aquin came from Paris, and the 
learned and saintly Bonaventure made the third. Albert on his 
arrival immediately procured a copy of William's book and com- 
mitted it entire to memory. When the trial came off, and the 
pamphlet of St. Amour was read in the presence of the assembled 
judges, Albert " rose up and replied to the aucfacious reproaches 
of the adversaries with such delicacy of mind, such experience of 
matters, with an eloquence so animated, that all his auditors were 
in admiration of his wisdom and blessed God for having sent 
such a hero to deliver the camp of Israel from the hands of the 
Philistines." Thomas of Aquin followed, reproducing the argu- 
ments of Albert. We need scarcely say that the victory was 
won for the religious. The pontiff published a bull which con- 
demned the book of William of St. Amour as an execrable 
calumny and commanded it to be destroyed. A copy of it was 
publicly burned in the presence of the Holy Father in the church 
at Anagni, and another met with the same fate in the university 
at Paris in the presence of King Louis. The lay professors were 
obliged to take an oath that they would open their corporation 
to the friars, allow them to lecture with them, and not close their 
schools again without the permission of the pontiff. Before the 
assembly quitted Anagni the pontiff called upon Albert to lecture 
upon the Gospel of St. John. This he did with such suavity and 
erudition that the judges and assembly confessed " they had 
never before heard anything like it from the lips of man." 

There is a legend, told on the authority of Thomas of Can- 
timpre, concerning this epoch in the life of Albert. It relates 
that about two years before this conflict between the religious 
and the university professors a friar named Gavilus, whilst at 
prayer in St. Peter's, beheld in ecstasy the church suddenly filled 
with a large number of serpents, whose frightful hissing alarmed 
not only those who were in the basilica but the whole city of 
Rome. The frightened friar soon beheld a man clad in the 
Dominican habit enter the temple. Whilst viewing this stranger 
with astonishment he was told that his name was Albert. The 
reptiles fell impetuously upon Albert, covered him from head to 
foot, bit him upon all parts of his body, and clung to him, writh- 
ing with apparent passion. With boldness and courage Albert 
shook the serpents from him and ran to the ambo of the church, 
where he began to read the Gospel of St. John. When he came 
to the passage, "And the Word was made flesh," the hissing of 
the reptiles suddenly ceased ; they were chased from the church, 



1883.] ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 207 

peace was restored, and the monk came to himself. Gavilus did 
not understand this vision, but, speaking about it some time after 
to a holy recluse of Germany, was told by the latter that the 
hero of his vision was at that moment only a few leagues distant. 
The friar hastened to the castle of Ottenheim, where Albert was 
stopping, recognized him as the one seen in the vision, and 
repeated it to him. Albert could not explain it. But after his 
controversy with the university men he understood its meaning. 
It is given by some authors as a fact, by others as a legend. We 
will not take it upon ourselves to decide whether it be the one 
or the other. But, knowing the frequency with which God 
reveals his mysterious future to his beloved children on earth, 
we see no solid reason for refusing credence to it and placing it 
among the recorded facts of the life of Albert. 

In the sixty-sixth year of his age Albert was appointed 
bishop of Ratisbon by the direct command of the pope. He re- 
sisted with all the powers of his soul so great a promotion. He 
alleged his incapacity, his old age, his vows of poverty, and a 
hundred other excuses. The general of his order, on being ap- 
prized of the honor conferred upon him, immediately wrote him 
a pressing letter exhorting him to retain his humble habit and 
refuse the mitre. On bended knee, and by the humility of the 
Most Holy Virgin and of her Divine Son, the superior conjured 
Albert not to abandon his state of abasement. The superior 
regarded the reception of dignities as a fault against humility 
and poverty. But Albert had no need of the exhortations of his 
superior. He had, before the arrival of this document, request- 
ed to be freed from so onerous a position. Yet all in vain. A 
papal decree from Anagni bade him accept the proffered dignity, 
and informed him that longer resistance would be rebellion : 

"We are interested, as is fitting, with paternal affection in all that con- 
cerns this church [of Ratisbon]. Knowing, then, your numerous merits, 
and having agreed with our brethren the cardinals, we have resolved to 
place you over this church. For as you have ardently drunk of the pure 
source of the divine law, and of the salutary waters of science, in such 
sort that your heart is replete with the fulness thereof and your judgment 
is sound in all that relates to God, we firmly hope that this church, which 
is overturned in spiritual matters as well as in temporal, will be healed by 
you, and that your unceasing efforts will repair all its injuries. We, there- 
fore, command you to obey .our will, or rather that of Divine Providence, 
to submit to our choice, to repair to this diocese and assume its govern- 
ment according to the prudence which the Lord has imparted to you. May 
you, with God's grace, make constant progress in its reformation ! " 

Having obtained the permission of his superiors, Albert, 



208 ALBERTUS MAGNUS. [May, 

after his ineffectual resistance, set out with great fear and regret 
for his new see of Ratisbon. He was exempted from his vow of 
poverty, because as bishop, and consequently temporal prince of 
the city, the possession of property became a necessity to him. 
He entered the town in the silence of the night, and betook him- 
self to his beloved convent in which, twenty years previous, he 
had fulfilled the duties of lecturer. But on th'e following day, 
when he took possession of his cathedral church, he received an 
ovation from the people of the city, who congratulated one an- 
other upon the fact that so learned and holy a man had been 
selected for the position. Albert immediately began his duties. 
During all his years of episcopacy he conformed his life to the 
rules of his monastic order. It is said that he traversed his vast 
diocese on foot, supporting himself only w r ith a modest staff, 
whilst a beast of burden carried his episcopal robes and books. 
This will the more excite our admiration when we remember 
that Albert was now verging on his seventieth year. Moreover, 
it was in perfect opposition to the customs of the other German 
bishops of his time, who, as temporal rulers, loved to assemble 
at the national diets or diocesan synods surrounded by men-at- 
arms and attended by servants mounted on chargers. 

Whilst attending to the multitude of affairs pertaining to his 
office of bishop, he still found time to write an ample commen- 
tary on St. Luke, a work which ancient historians never tire of 
praising. In it, they say, Albert shows himself a second St. 
Luke that is, " a physician who thoroughly knows how to heal 
souls." Hochstrat who saw this book in the sixteenth century, 
declares that it seems to him impossible that a person in the 
space of one year could have transcribed such a volume, even if 
he had had no other occupation. It is replete with interesting 
matter. Among other things the author relates that in St. 
Luke's time certain men under assumed names, such as Apelles 
and Basilides, put forth many errors concerning our Lord ; that 
there was in existence an apocryphal gospel on the infancy of 
our Saviour, likewise the so-called acts of St. Thomas and St. 
Matthew, which were filled with absurdities. In the acts of St. 
Thomas these writers went so far as to affirm that heaven was 
situated on a high mountain whose summit touched the moon. 
Albert then relates that our Saviour freed Magdalen from seven 
devils and cured Martha from a serious illness ; that the little 
child presented to. the disciples was named Martial, and that 
he became in time bishop of Limoges. He tells us also that the 
seamless garment of our Saviour must have been made by his 



1883.] ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 209 

Blessed Mother, and that it was made in a manner similar to 
that in which certain gloves are manufactured to-day. It was 
also Mary, according to the opinion of the Fathers, who wrapped 
the loins of her Son with a veil, which she took from her head, 
when the executioners despoiled the Redeemer of his garment. 

In this commentary, too, he states that the severity of his con- 
duct had incited many storms of persecution against him during 
his episcopacy, which rendered his position almost insupportable 
to him. His severe remarks on the reformation of morals was 
a rock of scandal and a constant reproach to many. Calumny 
raised itself against him. The old story of his connection with 
evil spirits was dragged forth once more, and his knowledge of the 
black arts was publicly asserted by those who sought to screen 
themselves from censure by concentrating public opinion upon 
the venerable bishop. He resided in a little cottage outside the 
city walls, and this was explained by his enemies (for, like all 
good men, he had an abundance of these in the wicked whom he 
sought to correct), who gave as a reason that he might be freer 
from publicity in his dealings with the spirits from the other 
world. But the very position of a German bishop preyed upon 
his mind and drove peace from his heart. It was so totally op- 
posed to his inclinations, the desires of his heart, and the ideal 
which he had formed of a representative of Christ, that he felt him- 
self a continual prey to uneasiness and the troubles of conscience. 
As bishop he was not only pastor of souls, but likewise a tem- 
poral ruler. He was expected to hold the crosier with one hand 
and wield the sword with the other. He found himself, as tem- 
poral prince, obliged to take part in festivities, to be present at 
public gatherings, and- this always in state as a vassal of the 
realm. To a religious who had learned to cherish evangelical 
perfection, and whose soul sought constantly after the higher 
spiritual consolations, this life was especially galling. We need 
not be surprised, therefore, to learn that Albert was anxious to 
be freed from it. After earnest and continual supplication his 
resignation was accepted, and in 1262 he was once more Albert, 
the Dominican monk. However, we must not imagine that he 
was now to spend his days in idleness. Although seventy years 
of age, he was still young enough to use his powers of eloquence 
in defence of the Holy Land. Hence, in the following year, we 
find him traversing Germany whilst preaching the crusade. On 
concluding his labors in this respect he returned to Wurzburg, 
where, in all probability, he prepared his commentary on St. 
Mark. In this he tells us that on the night when our Lord was 
VOL. xxxvn. 14 



210 ALBERTUS MAGNUS. [May, 

taken in the Garden of Olives St. Mark was also seized, de- 
spoiled of his clothing, and lost a thumb. He also states that 
the original copy of St. Mark's Gospel is preserved at Aquileia ; 
moreover, that the woman who exclaimed, " Blessed is the 
womb that bore thee," was called Marcella and was a servant of 
St. Martha. 

He returned once more to his favorite city of Cologne, reoc- 
cupied his old cell, and again gave himself up to the pleasing 
duties of expounding and writing. He wrote chiefly of the sac- 
rifice of the Mass, of the Holy Eucharist, and of the Blessed Vir- 
gin. Rudolph says of him that " he could not finish any work 
without something in praise of his heavenly Mother," and Peter 
of Prussia calls him " Mary's secretary." In his Mariale he 
treats of every conceivable question concerning the Annuncia- 
tion, going into details which almost appear ridiculous ; for in- 
stance, the questions: " Under what form did the angel appear? 
Had it the form of a serpent, a dove, or that of a man, and why ? 
To what sex did the angel belong? What was its apparent age 
at the moment of the Annunciation ? Was it a child or a young 
man? What was its clothing? Was it white, black, or of vari- 
ous colors ? At what moment of the twenty-four hours did the 
Annunciation take place ? " and so on. Then again he asks : 
" Did the Blessed Virgin possess a knowledge of the seven libe- 
ral arts ? " This he answers in the affirmative, saying that many 
saints have been divinely instructed in earthly sciences, hence 
these praises should not be denied to Mary. " The book," says 
his biographer, " is less a dogmatic and learned treatise than a 
poem, in which the imagination, like an industrious bee, gathers 
from every object of creation and from the flowers of science 
the honey of its arguments in her praise." 

During the following years Albert was called away from his 
professor's life, first to Paris to defend the memory and reputa- 
tion of his dear St. Thomas, who had died ; then he was sum- 
moned to take part in the Council of Lyons. On the conclusion 
of these labors he returned to Cologne, where he continued till 
his memory gave way. This, as we have seen before, had been 
predicted in his youth. 

"The blessed Father Albert," says one of his writers, " now bent with 
age, was one day delivering his lecture to a numerous and illustrious audi- 
ence in the convent of Cologne, and, while he painfully sought for proofs 
to establish his thesis, his memory suddenly forsook him, to the great sur- 
prise of every one. After a brief silence he recovered from his embarrass- 
ment and expressed himself thus : My friends, I am desirous to disclose to 



1883.] ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 211 

you the past and the present. When in my youth I devoted myself to 
study, and distinguished myself therein, I chose for my inheritance, under 
the impulse of the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Mother of God, the order of 
Friars Preachers, and the Divine Mother encouraged me to apply myself un- 
ceasingly to study. This I have done through persevering efforts and the 
help of prayer. What I could not gather through books I have ever ob- 
tained through prayer. But as I frequently with sighs besought this sweet 
and compassionate Virgin, and on one occasion ardently importuned her to 
bestow upon me the light of eternal wisdom, and at the same time to 
strengthen my heart in faith that I might never be absorbed by the science 
of philosophy nor shaken in my belief, she appeared to me and comforted 
me with these words : " Persevere, my son, in virtue and in works of study. 
God will guard thy knowledge and preserve it pure for the good of the 
church. In order not to waver in thy faith, all thy knowledge and philo- 
sophical distinctions shall vanish at the close of thy life. Thou shalt be- 
come like a child in the innocence and simplicity of thy belief. After this 
thou shalt depart to God. And when thy memory shall one day fail thee 
in a public lecture, it will be a sign of the approaching visitation of thy 
Judge." My friends, what was then foretold is about to be accomplished. 
I know and recognize now that my time is spent and that the term of my 
life is at hand.' Having thus spoken, he ended for ever his teaching. He 
descended from his chair, bathed in tears, and, bidding an affectionate and 
tender farewell to his students, retired to the privacy of his humble cell." 

" Every philosophical principle," says Rudolph, " then escaped 
his recollection, and he remembered no more than the text of 
the Holy Scriptures and that of Aristotle." He withdrew his 
mind from all exterior things, and, separated from the earth and 
living only for God, he journeyed in thought and desire to his 
eternal home. Some time after Sigfried, Archbishop of Cologne, 
came as usual to see the aged religious, and, knocking at the door 
of the cell, called out : " Albert, are you there? " The venerable 
master did not open the door, but merely answered : " Albert is 
no longer here ; he was here once upon a time." From this time 
the thought of death was ever present in his mind. He chose 
his place of sepulture in the church of his monastery, and daily 
visited his grave. Having received all the sacraments of the 
church, and sighing for the moment of dissolution, he gave up 
his beautiful soul into the hands of his Maker on the i$th of 
November, 1280, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. 



212 THE THREE SISTERS. [May, 



: .; : THE THREE SISTERS. 

THE highest point of central France is the Pic de Sancy, 
which springs from the volcanic mass of Mont Dore, its preci- 
pitous sides furrowed and rent by old subterranean fires, and 
lashed by two torrents that afterwards unite to form the Dor- 
dogne. From the top you look off at the north over a wild sea 
of billowy mountains that enclose the fertile plains of Limagne, 
prominent among which is the round summit of the Puy de 
D6me. At the east the far-off horizon is bounded by the Alps. 
At the south are the sharp peaks of Cantal, and beyond them 
the Cevennes. At the west is a boundless view towards Limou- 
sin. In the immediate neighborhood is a giant family of peaks 
and cones, riven and seamed, and covered with huge detached 
rocks, black as- if they had passed through the fire. Glistening 
here and there are the blue waters of little lakes where once 
poured forth torrents of lava. And directly beneath the Pic is 
the yawning gorge of Enfer, worthy of the name, lined with 
rocks that seem blackened with the fumes of Tartarus, and over- 
hung by a forest of gloomy firs. In one place towards the east 
the chain seems to open, and an isolated mount advances 
through wild, surging peaks like a promontory in the stormy 
ocean, and on one side of it you are surprised to see a small 
chapel of hewn volcanic rock, substantial enough to resist the 
fierce winds that reign so large a part of the year in these moun- 
tains. This is the chapel of Notre Dame de Vassiviere, one of 
the most popular sanctuaries of Auvergne. The sight of this 
chapel among the seething mountains, looking down into a maze 
of tortuous valleys filled with sighing winds and the noise of the 
rushing torrent, is like the refreshing vision of the Virgin among 
the chasms of the great middle region of expiation. It stands on 
a shelf of the mountain covered with verdure in the summer, 
reminding one of that green recess in the mountains of Pur- 
gatory to which Sordello led Dante and Virgil, where, amid the 
fragrance of flowers and tender herbage brighter than the 
emerald newly broken, rose the sweet chant of the Salve Regina 
from a multitude of souls. The sky above is as blue as the azure 
mantle of the Madonna, the light has that golden purity and 
softness which so struck Chateaubriand in Auvergne, and the 



1883.] THE THREE SISTERS. 213 

earth, where the rock does not crop out, is covered with rude 
vegetation. But snow lingers the greater part of the year on 
the surrounding heights, volcanic though they be ; the winds are 
often too violent to encounter with impunity, and the place be- 
comes in winter a horrible solitude which no pilgrim ventures to 
break. The herdsmen themselves descend with their flocks and 
herds from the fat pastures that give the mountain its name, 
sometimes written Vacciviere. The bell of the chapel ceases to 
ring, and the Virgin herself is taken out of the sanctuary and 
borne down with plaintive chant along the sorrowful Way of 
the Cross, which the pious mountaineers have set up on the 
declivity, to the neighboring town of Besse. 

A small village once stood on Mt. Vassiviere, but it was 
ruined in the fourteenth century by the English freebooters, who 
left a fragment only of the old church standing in which was 
a Virgin that perhaps inspired them with respect. The way 
to the castle of La Tour d'Auvergne, the seat of an illustrious 
family of which Besse was a dependency, lay across this moun- 
tain, and the traveller generally paused before the ruined oratory 
to say a prayer and quench his thirst at Our Lady's well. But 
it was not till two centuries later that the church was rebuilt 
by the people of Besse, aided by the offerings of the numerous 
pilgrims who in summer were attracted to the mountain by the 
increasing fame of its Virgin. The peasants themselves cut 
rocks out of the neighboring lava-beds for the walls. It is only 
a small building, forty-eight by twenty-four feet, to which the 
form of a cross has been given by the addition of two little side 
chapels, in one of which is the statue of Our Lady that is, in 
the season behind a strong grating, surrounded by lamps and 
tapers and numerous votive offerings after the taste of the good 
peasantry. The chapel was consecrated by Bishop Antoine de 
St. Nectaire in 1555. Near by is a stone cross and an oratory 
beneath which flows a sacred spring of pure water not abun- 
dant, but never-failing where pilgrims come to drink and fill 
their flasks to carry home. 

When Pope Clement XL conferred an indulgence on Notre 
Dame de Vassiviere he expressly declared in the document that 
it would be made void by receiving any sum, however small, 
even as a voluntary offering, for gaining the indulgence. 

Our Lady remains on Mt. Vassiviere about three months only 
of the year. The rest of the time is spent in her chapel at 
Besse, which is about two leagues distant. Her descent and 
ascent are the two great events of the year in these mountains, 



214 THE THREE SISTERS. [May, 

and it is quite worth while, apart from any religious motive, to 
witness a scene so extraordinary and picturesque. 

Besse is a mountain village of about two thousand inhabitants 
that stands on a basaltic rock, its houses built of lava giving the 
place a severe, gloomy aspect, and the roofs covered with slabs 
of gray stone. It has some interesting features of mediaeval 
character, such as the Maison de la Reine Marguerite; but the 
people have a still more antique aspect, for their dress, without 
their suspecting it, is after the fashion of the ancient Romans, and 
their language has many a Latin idiom. Nor is this strange 
when we consider how long the Romans held possession of this 
country. From the centre of the town rises a tall spire of the 
eleventh century belonging to the collegiate church of St. An- 
drew, which is surrounded by old graves. The Romanesque 
nave of this church has some curiously carved capitals on its 
pillars, and out of the aisles open a series of chapels, each of 
which has its special family that for generations has considered 
it a privilege to provide for its altar. Twelve columns support 
the arches of the choir, in which are two rows of oaken stalls 
for the canons, and two ambones at the end after the ancient 
fashion. Behind the choir is a chapel brilliant with gilding and 
the blaze of lamps and tapers which, as they are consumed, are 
constantly renewed, like the prayers of successive worshippers. 
This is the winter sanctuary of Notre Dame de Vassiviere, who, 
the greater part of the year, stands here in the dim seclusion of a 
grated niche. Here people are always to be found at prayer. 
Every morning are Masses and the singing of popular hymns. 
And all through the day the whispered prayer, the clink of the 
rosary, and the bowed form wrapped in silent contemplation are 
never wanting to testify to the piety of the inhabitants. But 
this is nothing extraordinary. There is not a town or hamlet 
in any Catholic country where the traveller will not find some 
such secluded chapel, or oratory, or favored altar, where the soft 
tide of devotion never seems to ebb. It is the custom for a num- 
ber of people at Besse to bind themselves by a temporary vow 
to Notre Dame de Vassiviere (generally for one year) for the 
purpose of obtaining some special grace. These votaries furnish 
a certain number of candles for her chapel, and walk, candle in 
hand, in the processions directly behind the clergy. This devo- 
tion is called the reinage, and the members are styled kings and 
queens for the time. 

Before going back to her mountain home the Virgin is 
brought out of her niche into the choir, and for nine days re- 



1883.] THE THREE SISTERS. 215 

mains enthroned in full view of the people who come here in 
crowds to see the Bonne Dame qui va partir. At certain hours 
a special place around her is reserved for the poor and infirm 
from the neighboring- hospital, who more than the rest seem to 
need the protection of a higher power. In the evening the 
peasants flock in from the mountain-sides and ravines. The 
whole parish assembles. The throne of Mary is doubly lit up, 
and benediction is given from the altar. At length comes the 
day when the Virgin is to ascend the mountain. This is called 
the F$te de la Monte'e. It is on the 2d of July the day of the 
Visitation that commemorates Mary's rising up in haste to go 
to the mountains of Judea to see her cousin Elizabeth. The 
bells solemnly announce her departure. An immense proces- 
sion is formed at seven o'clock in the morning. Mt. Dore and 
all the attendant peaks are lit up by the joyful sun. The 
valleys are ready to put off their gloom. The people have 
on their festive garments and most cheerful holiday aspect. 
Some of the worthiest members of the parish bring the Virgin 
out of the church on their shoulders. Others surround her 
with torches in their hands. Behind are the priests in white 
robes, making bare their tonsured heads. Then come the kings 
and queens of the reinage, candle in hand, and young maidens 
wearing the image of Mary on blue ribbons. The children and 
old people only go as far as the esplanade on the outskirts, 
where they weepingly bid Our Lady adieu as she is held up by 
the priest signing them with the sign of the cross. Then the 
procession goes winding up a path hewn along the side of a 
ravine, to the opposite bank of which flock the peasantry to 
salute the Bonne Vierge qui monte. Village after village joins the 
bannered line as it winds up the mountain-side, making the air 
ring with all the tender epithets given Our Lady in her litany, 
as well as with stirring hymns in the vernacular, one of which is 
specially popular with its powerful refrain, Courage, bon pe'lerin ! 
which produces a fine effect in the mountains. At the foot of 
Mt. Vassiviere they begin the prayers of the Via Crucis, going 
from one huge cross to another with the sorrowful plaint of the 
Stabat Mater. 

A crowd of pilgrims have been waiting on the holy mountain 
since the previous evening, some of whom have made ready for 
the reception of the Virgin. They come out to meet her as she 
draws near, and the two processions, like Mary and Elizabeth, 
meet to mingle their hymns of rejoicing. They proceed to the 
oratory of the fountain, after which the Virgin is triumphantly 



2i6 THE THREE SISTERS. [May, 

borne into the church, where the altars are illuminated and em- 
balmed with flowers. After the morning functions the mount- 
aineers pour into the church to kiss her feet by way of testifying 
their joy at her return. 

There are three great festivals on Mt. Vassiviere besides that 
of the MontJe. The first is the Sunday after the Visitation, which 
is called the Grand Dimanche, or the Dimanche des Processions, 
when all the neighboring hamlets and villages come here in pro- 
cession, with the cur6s at their head, brightening up the moun- 
tain paths with long lines of many-colored banners and crosses 
streaming with gay ribbons, and singing joyfully as they come. 
The shepherds and herdsmen hurry in from the four winds. 
Seven or eight thousand people, at the least, assemble on this 
'occasion if the weather is favorable. Mass is said in the open 
air before the church, the people kneeling on the greensward 
around, all taking part in the hymns and chants. Then, indeed, 
you may hear a multitude of souls sweetly singing the Salve 
Regina in a mountain recess as green and flower-enamelled aS 
that seen by the great Florentine. This Mass is offered for 
those who aided in erecting the Via Crucis on the mountain. 

The second great festival is that of St. Louis, which is sol- 
emnly observed on the mount. The origin of this special de- 
votion is not known, but he is the saint chiefly honored in this 
vicinity, and the name of Louis is generally added to the other 
names given at baptism. 

The third festival is that of the Nativity of Our Lady. On 
this occasion there are no processions, no banners floating in the 
air, no hymns and litanies echoing through the mountains. The 
people come in groups from every quarter, quietly praying as 
they come. Some ascend the mountain on their knees. The 
contrast with the Grand Dimanche is very striking, but, though 
less joyous, is truly impressive. The Mass of the day is offered 
for the benefactors of the chapel. There is no regular chaplain 
on the mountain, but the clergy of Besse come here by turns to 
officiate during the three months the Virgin remains. Their 
duties are by no means light, for besides the offices of the priest- 
hood they have the superintendence of the pilgrims, who arrive 
daily and often spend the night in the church. The Pere Branche 
relates how, among the visitors of past times, once came a Hugue- 
not, on whom the Madonna, all benign as she is, turned her back ; 
which is not at all surprising, to be sure, when we consider 
what short work his fellow-religionists generally made of such 
chapels. In the records of Notre Dame de Vassiviere is a docu- 



1883.] THE THREE SISTERS. 217 

ment of some interest written by M. de Coligny (of the same 
family as the noted admiral of the sixteenth century), whose 
son Gilbert married Louise Franchise, daughter of Count de 
Bussy-Rabutin, and granddaughter of St. Jane de Chantal : 

" I, Gaspard de Coligny, count of Saligny, marshal of the royal camp, 
etc., do certify and attest to whomsoever it may concern that in the year 
1639, and the month of August, being in the army commanded by Mar- 
shal de Chatillon * after the siege of St. Omer and the capture of Renty, 
the said army after the siege of Renty having gone to the abbey of Tou- 
relle, I found myself suffering from constant fever, the violence of which 
forced me to leave the army, and, being transported to St. Quentin to re- 
ceive medical treatment, I was attended by the Sieur de Orstois, the ordi- 
nary physician of his lordship the Cardinal de Richelieu, who having 
given me every attention, and moreover tried every remedy that he judged 
by his knowledge to be useful for the restoration of my health, did not, 
however, succeed, so that instead of being relieved I was reduced to such 
an extremity that all human remedies appeared to be useless. Whereupon 
the Sieur Dubouchet, a gentleman of my suite, suggested to me to implore 
the aid of Heaven through the intercession of Notre Dame de Vassiviere ; 
which being resolved upon, I addressed myself to the holy Virgin with 
prayers and vows, begging her to obtain from the Divine Goodness the 
restoration of my health, if useful to the salvation of my soul, promising, 
out of gratitude for such a benefit, to visit the said place of Vassiviere as 
soon as it would be possible ; and having ended my prayer, I felt in a mo- 
ment wonderfully relieved and all at once freed from the violence of my 
fever, which sudden change of condition in my person being long consid- 
ered by me and the said Sieur Dubouchet, we judged an.d acknowledged 
that it was the miraculous effect of the intercession of the Virgin, which 
made me repeat my vows, and in seven or eight days I was so convalescent 
that I had myself purposely conveyed from my chateau of Dome in Niver- 
nais to this present place of Vassiviere and before the image of the Virgin, 
to thank her for the celestial favor which she had obtained by her inter- 
cession. And here I acknowledge and declare before the said image that 
I firmly believe and judge that the recovery of my health is a miracle ope- 
rated through the intercession of the holy Virgin, and make this present 
declaration and avowal in the presence of the said Sieur Dubouchet (who 
has made his attestation before M. Charrier, the treasurer-general of 
France) ; the Sieur Fougerette, one of the gentlemen of my household; M. 
Antoine Godivel, practitioner at law and chatelain at Besse ; that venerable 
personage, M. Jean Mathieu, priest ; and M. Jean Duchieu, secretary and 
warden of this chapel ; and at their request I deliver this act to be placed 
in the archives of the said chapel of Vassiviere. Done the first day of 
June, 1642." 

Here follow the signatures of M. de Coligny and the five wit- 
nesses. 

* Marshal de Chatillon was the grandson of Admiral de Coligny, and also named Gas- 
pard. 



218 THE THREE SISTERS. [May, 

In the list of visitors to Notre Dame de Vassiviere we find 
also the honored name of Massillon, the eloquent bishop of Cler- 
mont, who came here in the summer of 1727. 

The Virgin is carried down the mount the first Sunday after 
the 2 ist of September. All the herdsmen from the pastures come 
with their families to spend the last hours at the feet of the 
Bonne Dame. The church is filled the evening before. All 
night is spent in prayer. Everybody goes to confession and 
receives the Holy Eucharist in the morning. When the statue 
is taken down these pious mountaineers all rise and press for- 
ward with emotion to kiss her feet and bid her adieu. They 
touch her with their rosaries. They press the fringe of her blue 
mantle. The procession starts late in the afternoon, in order to 
reach Besse early in the evening. Fires on the mountains an- 
nounce her descent. The town is illuminated. The ways are 
strewn with flowers and green branches. Arches of verdure 
span the streets. Transparencies recount the benefits of the 
Virgin of Vassiviere. The old walls are adorned with garlands 
and a thousand lights. The church of St. Andrew, without and 
within, is more resplendent than the rest of the town. The peo- 
ple go out in pomp to meet the Vierge qui descend, as at the ap- 
proach of a queen. A touching meeting takes place on the es- 
planade, where the Virgin pauses while they sing their songs 
of welcome. The solemn march now becomes a triumph. The 
Virgin, clothed in a rich mantle of gold, is surrounded by torches. 
The clergy attend her, and the magistrates act as a guard against 
the pressure of the enthusiastic crowd. There are fireworks and 
other demonstrations of joy as they enter the town. The bells 
ring. The church is already crowded, and beneath the arch of 
the sanctuary sown with golden stars is a throne resplendent 
with light for her whom they call the Reine des Montagues. As 
soon as she appears on the threshold there is a prolonged cry. 
Every eye is fastened on her. And the exclamation of St. Ber- 
nard as he entered the church of Spire rises from all these glad 
tongues : " O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria ! " 

Coming down from Mt. Vassiviere, following one by one the 
fourteen huge crosses, you come suddenly upon a beautiful basin 
of water of crystal purity, encircled by a sinuous rim of verdure 
which you can trace by its vividness of color as it encompasses 
the clear mirror of the little lake. The sides of the basin rise 
directly up from the valley to the height of one hundred feet. 
This is Lake Pavin, the crater of an extinct volcano now filled 
with water. There are several of these curious lakes in this 



1883.] THE THREE SISTERS. 219 

region, such as Lac Chauvin and Lac Estivadon, like bowls of 
mountain water reflecting the blue sky and beaded over with 
silvery bubbles. They are best seen from the neighboring 
heights. The country around is of surprising beauty, with its 
peaks, and cliffs, and fallen prisms of basalt half buried in the 
lush vegetation. Further on, rising out of a charming, well- 
wooded valley, is the old feudal castle of Murol, that seems to 
grow out of the lofty rock on which it stands, so it is difficult to 
tell where the hand of man begins and that of nature ends. It 
overlooks the beautiful Lake Chambon, on the banks of which St. 
Sidonius Apollinaris is said to have lived, and the beauty of the 
spot and richness of vegetation are worthy of a poet. Here is 
an extensive wood of beeches through which winds the silvery 
Couze. 

Not far off, at the north, is La Roche Vend6e, on which once 
stood the celebrated fortress where Aymerigot Marcel, the cap- 
tain of the English freebooters to whom Froissart devotes 
several chapters, lived with his band. From this redoubtable 
hold he used to issue forth, not so much to shed blood as to pil- 
lage and take captive those who could afford to pay a heavy 
ransom. " There is no pleasure or glory in this world," said he 
to his followers, " like what men-at-arms such as ourselves en- 
joyed. How happy were we when, riding out in search of ad- 
ventures, we met a rich abbot, a merchant, or a string of mules 
well laden with draperies, furs, or spices from Montpellier, 
Beziers, or other places ! Everything Avas ours, or at least ran- 
somed to our will. Every day we gained money. We lived 
like kings, and when we went abroad the country trembled. 
Everything was ours going and returning." He kept his wife 
and treasures, however, in the neighboring castle of St. Soupery, 
so named from Superius, a saint of this region who suffered 
martyrdom with St. Salvie, Bishop of Amiens in the time of 
Charlemagne. The tower of La Roche Vendee is now wholly 
gone. Only a few vigorous pines grow from the rocks where 
it once stood, a terror to the country around. 

The names of many other places of which we had read early 
in life in the delightful pages of the old chronicler fell pleasantly 
upon the ear as we came across them in this region, such as 
Issoire, La Nonnette, etc. One, however, is associated with 
gentler, holier memories than any he recounts. This is Notre 
Dame d'Orcival, an ancient sanctuary of great renown, that 
stands in a narrow valley enclosed by mountains, about fifteen 
miles north of Mont Dore. Some think its name derived from 



220 THE THREE SISTERS. [May, 

Ursi vallis the valley of the bear ; others from Orci vallis\\\z 
valley of hell. Both derivations testify to the wild, sinister as- 
pect of this region before it became, under the protection of 
Mary, a valley of holiness and peace. The black, calcined rocks 
of the volcanic mountains, and in their midst the gloomy valley 
where perhaps once stood a temple of Pluto, naturally suggest 
the latter derivation, and the old bear-skin 'coverings of the 
church doors, fastened by bands of iron terminating in curious 
heads of wild beasts finely wrought the wild beasts that per- 
haps infested this country when covered with forests make the 
former equally probable. 

How popular the church of Notre Dame d'Orcival was a 
thousand years ago is proved by the number of chains and fet- 
ters that in the ninth century were suspended on the front by 
captives delivered from the cruel Norman through the media- 
tion of Our Lady of Orcival. And beneath the church is an- 
other memento of that age and of Our Lady's power a fountain 
that sprang up at the prayer of the people when, besieged by 
the Normans, they were dying of thirst. But it was still several 
centuries earlier, when all this region was a wilderness, that a 
hermit came to this sequestered valley and banished the shades 
of Orcus and tamed the ferocious beasts. When his cell grew 
into a monastery settlers gathered around either to profit by the 
teachings of the monks or by their charity. In this way grew 
up the compact village that now fills the valley. 

The present church of Orcival was built in the eleventh cen- 
tury. It is, perhaps, the finest Romanesque church in Au- 
vergne. Old legends say the plan was drawn by an angel, and 
in the night, white the builders were asleep, the work was carried 
on by an invisible hand. It stands on the steep bank of a tor- 
rent, and from whatever point it is viewed it is at once majestic 
and beautiful. There is, indeed, a certain severity in its aspect, 
but you are struck by its elegance and the harmony of its style 
and proportions. The columns of the nave and choir have 
stoned capitals quaintly carved that are not unprofitable to 
study. On one you see the fall of Adam and Eve. On another 
the folly of avarice is represented by a miser whom two demons 
are about to draw into perdition by thrusting their long hooks 
into the purse suspended from his neck. The moral is point- 
ed by the words, O foL dives. And so on. In every stone is a 
sermon. And there are numerous side chapels into which you 
can retire, as into your closet, to reflect on what you have just 
been taught anew, and two staircases lead down from the tran- 



1883.] THE THREE SISTERS. 221 

septs into a solemn crypt, the graceful arches of which meet in 
the centre, supported by twelve pillars of stone at once solid and 
beautiful. The high altar is turned to the east, and above it 
stands, surrounded by angels, an ancient statue of the Blessed 
Virgin attributed to St. Luke, carved out of some incorruptible 
wood from the East. This is Our Lady of Orcival. The face 
is nearly black, but the remainder of the statue is covered with 
silver at the expense of the people of Clermont, who, out of 
gratitude for protection in time of pestilence, have for ages 
taken care of the statue, resilvering it when necessary, and pro- 
viding it with crowns, as well as veils and draperies of rich 
tissue. 

All the great barons of the province in mediaeval times were 
benefactors to the church of Orcival. The Counts d'Auvergne 
gave it the chapel of St. Barnabas on the Puy de Dome with 
lands adjacent, and a procession was made there every year on 
the festival of that saint by the clergy of Orcival. William VII., 
Count d'Auvergne, for benefits rendered, enjoined on the prior 
to go with his brethren in procession to La Chaise Dieu every 
year, on the anniversary of his father's death, to pray for his 
soul and the souls of his ancestors. The Montpensiers and lords 
of Allegre were also benefactors. Gilbert de Chabannes, grand 
seneschal of Guienne in the fifteenth century, and lord of Roche- 
fort, of which Orcival was a fief, and who sprang from one of the 
most ancient families of France a family allied with its kings 
was so generous to the church that the clergy allowed him 
to erect a tomb before the high altar, in which his second wife, 
Catherine de Bourbon- Vendorne, a woman of eminent piety and 
justly venerated in these mountains for her bounty to the poor, 
was buried. It is said the loaves she was carrying to the needy 
one day were changed into roses when her husband sought to 
know what she had in her mantle a beautiful legend also related 
of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Germaine of Pibrac. 

Many silver lamps were in former times given to the altar of 
Notre Dame d'Orcival by various towns that owed to her their 
deliverance from the plague. And several were given by private 
individuals, such as the father of the unfortunate Cinq-Mars. 
And two were presented by Jean Voette, counsellor- at-law of 
Clermont, together with fifteen hundred livres for their mainte- 
nance, and two " trees " of wrought iron on which to suspend 
them each side of the altar. 

Among the great memories of Orcival is the visit of Louis, 
Duke of Bourbon, who in 1385, after delivering the country from 



222 THE THREE SISTERS. [May, 

the English freebooters, came in solemn pomp to the church of 
Our Lady, attended by a brilliant company of knights and lords, 
and hung up the flags he had captured before the venerated 
image of Mary, rendering her homage for his success. And in 
1390 Sir Robert de Bethune, Viscount de Meaux, before pro- 
ceeding against the free companies that were once more ravag- 
ing the country under the leadership of Aymerigot Marcel, as 
related by Froissart, came to Orcival with more than four hun- 
dred lances and one hundred Genoese crossbows, and a large 
number of knights and squires whose names are given by the 
great chronicler, to commend the result of their expedition to 
Our Lady. And not in vain, for they soon captured the almost 
impregnable hold of La Roche Vendee. 

The great festival at Orcival is that of the Ascension. A 
crowd assembles the evening before, and after the vesper ser- 
vice the Virgin is taken down and the people press forward to 
kiss her feet. The church remains full all night nave, choir, 
the galleries, and crypt, which are all illuminated. Nothing dis- 
turbs the silence and devotion of the multitude. Priests are 
hearing confessions the whole night. Masses commence before 
the dawn, and the number of communicants is immense. More 
pilgrims arrive in the morning from all parts of Auvergne and 
even beyond. There are generally ten or twelve thousand in 
all. After High Mass the procession takes place. The Virgin is 
brought out by four cures who have the right. Their feet are 
bare and their heads uncovered. They proceed up a winding 
road dug along the acclivity to the Tombeau de la Vierge, as the 
site of a more ancient church that once contained the Virgin of 
Orcival is called. Here they sing the Salve Regina and the 
officiating priest, holding the statue in his hands, gives a blessing 
to the people who fill the valley and cover the sides of the 
enclosing mountains. 

Apart from this grand festival a great number of villages 
come here, parish by parish, in procession. Twenty-two towns 
come annually in fulfilment of a vow. One of these is Royat, 
which was attacked by a terrible pestilence in 1631. Nothing 
stopped its ravages till the people had recourse to Notre Dame 
d'Orcival. From that time they have never failed to make an 
annual pilgrimage here. The sight of this pious band returning 
home from their expedition is touching. You perceive the long 
file winding through the sinuous valley as they approach Royat. 
You see the gay colors of their dresses and banners among the 
green leafage of the trees. You catch fragments of their hymns 



1883.] THE THREE SISTERS. 223 

borne on by the wind. At the edge of the village they are wel- 
comed back by the old people and children who were not strong 
enough to endure a march of ten hours. 

This sanctuary, that had been venerated for more than a thou- 
sand years, whose altars had invariably been served by men of 
irreproachable lives, did not escape in the Revolution. The 
wrought-iron screen of the choir was torn down, all the decora- 
tions were destroyed, the statues were burned, the sacred vessels 
and priestly robes carried off, and of the nine harmonious bells 
four were broken in pieces. The very tombs were opened and 
the ashes cast out to the winds. Even the body of the holy Ca- 
therine de Bourbon- Vendome, found entire, was not spared. 
The statue of Our Lady was fortunately concealed in a recess of 
the wall, and was brought forth in 1800 and placed on the altar 
where it now is, rendering the church of Notre Dame d'Orcival 
the most noted place of pilgrimage in Auvergne. 

There are a countless number of rural chapels of less extended 
repute in this country which are both delightful and profitable 
to visit. You may .not behold in them the splendor of city fes- 
tivals. There is no grandeur of architecture, or wealth of art 
in any form, that appeals to the eye. There are no rich paint- 
ings or works of sculpture ; no trained choirs or choice instru- 
ments of music to please the fastidious ear. You see only the 
simple festivals of a rural people, who perhaps have only a dim 
consciousness of the grandeur of nature around them and the 
picturesqueness of their own pious observances. But certainly 
few religious demonstrations are more touching than in such un- 
pretending chapels. The golden age of mediaeval times seems 
to have lingered in these mountains, where, at the popular fes- 
tivals, the confessionals are crowded night and day, thousands 
of people press forward to the table of the Lord, and pilgrims 
with bleeding feet come to fulfil their vows. 

One of these chapels is on the western side of Mont Dore, 
not far from La Tour d'Auvergne. It is Notre Dame de Fon- 
taine Sainte, so called from its miraculous spring. It stands in 
a charming, picturesque region in the midst of rich mountain 
pastures where graze vast herds of cattle. Everywhere are 
scattered chalets, called in this vicinity burons, where quantities 
of cheese are made. The women wear an antique coiffure some- 
thing like a veil, confined by a fillet around the head. Their 
skirts are short to facilitate their progress over the hills, and the 
bright kerchiefs around their necks are confined by stomachers 
similar to those you see in the Roman Campagna. The chapel 



224 CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. [May, 

of Notre Dame de Fontaine Sainte is associated with all the joys 
and sorrows of this rustic people, but it has nothing noteworthy 
to attract the curiosity of the mere traveller. It is only one of 
the small centres of rural devotion that diffuse around them a 
secret moral influence that is incalculable in its benefits. In fact, 
it is scarcely known except among the mountaineers of western 
Auvergne, who hold it in equal reverence with Notre Dame de 
Vassiviere and Notre Dame d'Orcival, which in their pious 
naivete* they call The Three Sisters. 



CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 

MADAME DE STAEL once compared architecture to frozen 
music. It might perhaps be equally well described as petrified 
history. The growth or decay of a people, and the stages of 
its material and mental progress, can be read in its buildings 
as well as in its literature, and often more clearly and fully. 
The gigantic works of the old Romans tell of their imperial 
power and wide dominion as forcibly as the pages of Livy or 
Tacitus. The intellectual supremacy of Athens in the ancient 
world is proclaimed as loudly by the perfected beauty of the 
Parthenon as by the story of Thucydides. The Gothic cathe- 
drals bring before us the religious fervor and the cultivated 
thought of the middle ages as we should never conceive them 
from a perusal of the dry contemporary chronicles, and the ma- 
terialism of the eighteenth century finds expression alike in the 
secular character and inartistic style of its buildings. Nor are 
the historical lessons to be drawn from architecture confined to 
wide generalities. The sharp distinctions of style between the 
neighboring cities of Italy tell us of the exclusive spirit of the 
mediaeval republics in that land, even as the uniformity of style 
through modern France shows the centralization which is so 
striking a characteristic of its government, be it monarchy, em- 
pire, or republic. The fortress-palaces of Florence indicate the 
turbulence of its restless democracy, as well as their wealth and 
artistic feelings ; and the light and graceful buildings of Venice, 
with the numerous foreign elements engrafted on their designs, 
tell of the domestic order and wide commerce of the queen of 
the Adriatic. 



1883.] CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 225 

But if history can thus be read in buildings as well as in 
books, the same principles of investigation must guide us in the 
one study as in the other. Literary history, if it be worthy 
of the name, does not confine itself to recording decisive bat- 
tles and describing the characters of mighty leaders. It seeks 
to bring before us the whole of human society as it existed in 
days now gone by, and not merely a few prominent characters 
or events. It finds often more valuable information in long- 
neglected sources, in memoirs, in letters and old charters, than 
in official annals or the pages of courtly historians. To the mod- 
ern writer the journal of a Pepys is more interesting than the 
elaborate history of a Clarendon. He would sooner trace out 
the growth of commerce, of learning, of popular liberties in a 
nation than tell the succession of its brilliant nobles and states- 
men. The latter is an easier and more attractive task, but the 
former is a far more useful one. In like manner, if we seek to 
read history in architecture we must not confine our attention 
to the great masterpieces or the finished styles of art exclu- 
sively. We shall often find in humble buildings and rude monu- 
ments a key to the principles of art which guided the construc- 
tion of the greatest, as well as a record of the steps by which 
progress was made, such as we might seek in vain in the latter. 
Considered artistically, the rude buildings of early times may be 
regarded in the same way as we look on the early sketches of a 
great painter or the first essays of a distinguished writer. In 
architecture the work of each age is but a step in the progress 
of the race. And its historic value must be judged not merely 
by its intrinsic merits, but also by comparison with what went 
before and what followed it. In this way alone can we properly 
read history in architecture, and when it is thus read it instructs 
at once in the progress of society and the principles of art. 

In architecture, as in literature, however, though it is easy to 
trace progress through certain periods, the first stages are gen- 
erally lost in obscurity. The architecture of most European 
nations can be traced back to a Roman origin, deeply modified, 
indeed, by local character, but essentially Roman both in con- 
structive and decorative elements. In France, Spain, and along 
both banks of the Rhine, as well as in Italy, Roman architecture 
once prevailed, like Roman language and law, and, though de- 
based during the decline of the empire and the invasions of 
the barbarians, it still furnished the models for the buildings 
which later generations erected. The modified Roman style 
was transplanted into the German territories by Charlemagne 
VOL. xxxvii 15 



226 CEL TIC ARCHITECTURE. [May, 

and his successors, and thus in none of these countries can we 
trace the growth of architecture from the simple buildings of 
the native tribes, such as they are described by Caesar and 
Tacitus. Even in Italy itself the forms derived from Greece 
so modified the old native art that it is with the utmost diffi- 
culty we can trace back a few of its elements. .The old buildings 
have been mostly swept away, and the saying of Augustus that 
he had found Rome of brick and left it of marble is a good illus- 
tration of the fate of early Italian architecture. 

There is, however, one country in western Europe on whose 
soil we can still trace the growth of architecture from the rude 
stone hut and cairn of the earliest stages of civilization up to the 
perfection of the groined and richly-decorated church or cathe- 
dral. Through the whole duration of the Roman Empire Ire- 
land remained untouched alike by the imperial arms or the im- 
perial civilization ; only the introduction of Christianity brought 
Rome, and that at first but slightly, into contact with Ireland. 
St. Patrick and the early missioners who planted Christianity in 
the remote western island, though obedient to the Holy See, 
and in uninterrupted communion with it, made, apparently, no 
attempt to introduce a foreign civilization or foreign customs 
among their converts. They obtained a modification of the 
native laws in such points as they conflicted with Christianity, 
but otherwise they did not change either the political or 
the social organization of the country. Their stone churches 
were built on the type of the Celtic clochdns, or beehive- 
shaped houses, and their monasteries were formed on the model 
of the Celtic dun, or walled hamlet, and not on that of the 
Roman villa, as on the Continent of Europe. Thus the Irish 
Celts after the establishment of Christianity, as well as their 
pagan forefathers, were left to work out their mental and ma- 
terial civilization from their own resources. Whatever they 
achieved in letters, laws, or art bore an essentially native cha- 
racter, and in nothing is this more clearly expressed than in 
their architecture. 

The purely Celtic architecture of Ireland extends in point of 
time from about the date of Julius Caesar, or perhaps earlier, to 
the close of the twelfth century. After that time the buildings 
that continued to be erected were modified to a great extent by 
Norman influences, though in the unsubdued districts the native 
art continued to live on, though with declining glories, at least 
three centuries later. The number of buildings older than the 
Norman invasion is, however, extremely great. Of round towers 



1883.] CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 227 

alone considerably more than a hundred are still standing-, most 
of them nearly perfect. The more or less ruined churches and 
oratories of every kind, from the rude cell of uncemented stone to 
the vaulted cathedral with its richly-carved arches and arcaded 
walls, are scarcely if at all less numerous than the round towers. 
Stone forts of cyclopean masonry whose origin is lost in the 
darkness of prehistoric times, and early monasteries built on the 
type of these pre-Christian abodes, are to be found in abundance 
along the western coasts, and even the pyramid-tombs of Egypt 
are represented in the sepulchral mounds of Meath, and of perhaps 
other districts. From the rudest of these erections to the most 
finished the series is uninterrupted. The stone fort is succeeded 
by the monastic enclosure where the monks dwelt in rudely- 
built cells and a larger cell served as a church. The cell of dry 
stone is succeeded by the square church with its straight walls 
laid in mortar ; and this in turn is followed by the church con- 
taining a nave and chancel, and later on provided with a lofty 
belfry. In succession we trace the progress from rude rubble- 
work to coursed masonry, and from that to the use of cut and 
moulded stone-work, and from the curved roof formed by over- 
hanging courses of stone to the perfect construction of the true 
arch. Each step in progress finds its expression in different 
buildings, each indicating a stage in the development of native 
art, and the whole forming a series such as no other country of 
Europe can parallel. 

Among the prehistoric monuments of Ireland the sepulchral 
monuments of New Grange, in Meath, claim a foremost place, 
though more for their mass and their analogy with the pyramid- 
tombs of Egypt than for their constructive features. On first 
sight they resemble natural hillocks, and it is only on close ex- 
amination that they are found to consist of stones heaped up by 
human labor and now covered with a thick carpet of grassy sod. 
These hillocks are scattered in considerable numbers along the 
banks of the Boyne, not very far from its mouth, in a district 
which is believed to have been one of the royal burying-grounds 
in pagan times. Indeed, although there is no record of the ori- 
gin of those monuments, the Irish annals mention specially that 
the monarchs of Ireland were buried in this place until shortly 
before the fifth century. Three mounds are prominent for bulk 
among the many smaller ones, and are known as the hills of 
Dowth, Knowth, and New Grange. The latter is the largest, 
and has been opened to inspection for nearly two centuries. It 
covers nearly -two acres, and is eighty feet high at present, with 



228 CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. [May, 

a rounded outline such as a heap of loose stones would naturally 
take when piled together. But New Grange and its companion 
^hillocks are more than mere cairns. Their interior is honey- 
combed with chambers and passages carefully built of huge 
blocks. The central chamber of New Grange is round and about 
.twenty feet in diameter, with a square recess about eight feet 
square projecting from each of three sides, and a passage leading 
Jfrom the fourth side to the outside of the mound, the whole 
of the chambers thus forming the figure of a Celtic cross in 
,.plan. Whether this resemblance be accidental, or whether it 
had anything to do in suggesting the peculiarly Irish form of 
(the ornamented cross in Christian times, it is impossible to 
say. The passage-walls are formed by huge blocks of stone, 
and the roof is covered with immense flags, one being seven- 
teen feet long and six wide. The central chamber is domed 
rudely by courses of stone projecting inward, each course 
overlapping the one beneath until they nearly meet, when the 
opening is covered by one large block. The height to the 
centre of the roof is over eighteen feet, while the height of the 
passage is only about six and the side-chambers somewhat 
more. As in the Egyptian pyramids, so in New Grange, the 
piling up of a mass of material seems to have been the only ele- 
ment of architecture aimed at by the builders. The amount of 
stone, mostly loose field-stones, piled up amounts by measure- 
ment to nearly two hundred thousand tons, or a greater quantity 
than has been employed in the construction of any European 
cathedral except St. Peter's. No mere savage tribes could have 
accumulated such masses, which, like the Pyramids, imply the 
existence both of a numerous population and a strong and organ- 
ized government in the country where they were raised. Rude 
in design as they are, they must, on account of their mass at 
least, be ranked among architectural works, and they derive an 
additional interest from being among the oldest monuments 
of western Europe as well as of Celtic buildings. 

A step in constructive skill beyond the New Grange mounds 
is found in the stone forts of the western coasts, whose origin is 
also attributed to the pagan times. Several of these forts are 
found in the small islands of Arran off the coast of Galway, but 
the most perfect existing example is the Staigue Fort, as it is 
called, in Kerry. In this/ although mortar was not yet used, the 
stone blocks were evidently quarried instead of being gathered 
from the ground like most of those used at New Grange. They 
are also carefully laid in bond, running lengthwise into the 



1883.] CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 229 

walls from both sides, and packed so tightly with smaller pieces 
that the work is yet almost perfect. Indeed, one is struck with 
astonishment at the perfection of masonry that has been attained 
without the use of mortar. The walls, which are nearly eighteen 
feet high, are carried up with a peculiar curved batter both in- 
side and outside, and access is given to the top by flights of stone 
steps on the inside. The gateway is formed with huge square 
blocks and is covered with similar stones, and in places small 
rooms are formed in the thickness of the walls. From the 
analogy of other similar enclosures it may be presumed that 
stone huts were built for shelter within the walls of the fort, 
which is an unroofed circular enclosure about ninety feet in 
diameter. A ditch twenty-four feet wide and six feet deep, now 
partially choked up, surrounded the walls. Remembering that 
the tumuli at New Grange were both a work of greater labor 
and evidently connected with the residence of the monarchs of 
Ireland, we can only account for the superior construction of 
the Staigue Fort by admitting that considerable progress had 
been made in building skill among the Irish Celts between the 
date of the first and that of the second. Indeed, we find some 
masonry of the early Christian period so like that of the Fort 
that we are fairly justified in attributing its erection to a time 
not very distant from the arrival of St. Patrick, in the fifth 
century. 

The monastic enclosure of Innismurray, on the island of the 
same name off Sligo, has many points of resemblance to the 
pagan forts, on thetype of which it was evidently built. Like 
theirs, its walls are built of dry stone and are provided with 
gateways, but there are no stairs for giving access to the top, 
nor any of the other defensive features so well marked in Staigue 
Fort. It also differs from the latter in the existence of several 
buildings within it which show the nature of the monastic cells 
and churches in the early days of Christianity in Ireland. No- 
thing, indeed, could well be more simple. The cells were built 
of stone piled together in overhanging courses and in the form 
of a beehive. The doors were very small, three or four feet high 
and from two to three wide, and the windows were small aper- 
tures rudely formed in the walls. The churches in the Innis- 
murray enclosure are somewhat better built and show traces 
of mortar of a primitive kind, being evidently another step in 
advance. The mortar in one is a mixture of clay and lime, which 
seems to have been simply poured on the dry stone-work like 
modern grouting. In another the mortar is lime and sand, 



230 CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. [May, 

applied in the same way. The windows of the churches also 
show that the art of cutting stone was known, as the lintels are 
cut into the form of an arch. A passage in one of the Irish his- 
tories attributes the construction of the first stone-and mortar 
building to a time shortly after the coming of St. Patrick, and 
in actually existing ruins we find a primitive mortar used in 
buildings side by side with dry-stone masonry resembling that 
of the pagan forts. 

Indeed, though the churches in Innismurray were built with 
mortar, such as it was, other Christian churches were built in a 
fashion closely resembling the beehive-shaped cells we have just 
mentioned. A nearly perfect specimen of a church of this kind, 
dating back to probably the sixth century, exists still in Kerry 
and is known as Gallarus Oratory. Anything more unlike a 
modern church, or indeed a modern building of any kind, it 
would be hard to conceive. Yet we shall find its type gradually 
developed through successive Irish buildings until it was per- 
fected in the scientific structure of Cormac's Chapel or St. 
Doulach's. The disposition to improve old forms rather than 
to borrow new ones is strongly marked through all the Cel- 
tic buildings and forms one of their most marked peculiarities. 
This Gailarus church resembles in shape a large boat with 
square ends, turned bottom upwards. Internally it is fifteen feet 
long and eleven wide, and the courses of stone in the side-walls 
project inward as they rise until they meet at the top. The sec- 
tion of the side- walls, both outside and inside, thus has the form 
of a Gothic pointed arch, though the beds of the stones are hori- 
zontal and the principle of arch construction is nowhere intro- 
duced. The door of the oratory, as of most of the early Irish 
buildings, is small and low, not over four feet in height, and 
the opening opposite which served as a window is still smaller. 
The whole appearance of the structure is extremely singular 
and vividly suggests the primitive stage both of art and science 
among its builders. The chief interest attaching to it, indeed, is 
that it represents the first type of an Irish Christian church, 
from which the noble buildings of later ages were gradually 
developed in the course of time. The second stage of progress 
is shown at Innismurray, where, side by side with cells of dry- 
stone masonry, we find three small churches built up with 
straight walls on which rests a roof formed on the same prin- 
ciple as that of Gallarus. Even between those little buildings 
themselves a difference can be noted. All three are laid in 
mortar, but in one the mixture used is clay mixed with slacked 



1883.3 CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 231 

lime, while in the others true mortar is used, made apparently 
from broken shells. 

The buildings just described are only a few specimens of the 
many early Celtic remains scattered over the west of Ireland. 
The little islands along the coast seem to have been favorite sites 
for the primitive monastic communities, and their remoteness 
and the respect of the people for their origin have both aided 
in their preservation. In some instances, as on the remark- 
able rock known as Skeliig Michel, which rises several hundred 
feet above the Atlantic at a distance of twelve miles from the 
western shores of Kerry, the long-deserted monastery still serves 
as a place of pilgrimage to the surrounding country. The popu- 
lar religious practices thus bind the long-past age and its rude 
buildings with the present time. It is worth notice that few 
remains of secular buildings of the same age are to be found. 
They no doubt were constantly changed to meet the wants of 
each successive age while building was still a rude art, and, 
moreover, they seem to have been usually built of more perish- 
able materials than the churches and cells. The remains of the 
palace of Tara are only indicated by foundations of earth, on 
which, no doubt, a wooden superstructure was once raised. 
Even for fortifications earthen walls seem to have been preferred 
by the Celts after the time of St. Patrick, and the stone forts of 
the west are not represented in later times. The burial-mounds, 
too, seem to have been abandoned after the introduction of Chris- 
tianity. The Christian cemeteries of the eighth and ninth cen- 
turies which still exist, and indeed sometimes are used even now 
for their original purposes, have no resemblance to the prehis- 
toric sepulchres. Sculptured grave-stones and crosses are the 
burral monuments of Christian Ireland ; and though many of 
them are in the highest degree remarkable as works of the stone- 
cutter and sculptor, they need not be further alluded to in our 
remarks on Celtic buildings properly so called. 

The strange building near Kells, in Meath, known as Columb- 
kill's House, stands midway between the primitive oratories like 
those we have just described and the buildings of the eleventh 
century. In appearance it resembles a house more than a 
church, and its doors and windows are put in without any 
attempt at symmetrical arrangement. The fact of its being 
divided into three stories, and still more the construction of its 
roof, show an advance on any of the early buildings, while its 
want of ornament or anything like architectural arrangement of 
parts shows that its builders were far behind their brethren 



232 CELTIC ARCHITECTURE, [May, 

of the tenth century. Its date is uncertain, but as a colony of 
monks from Columbkill's monastery in lona took up their abode 
at Kells in the early part of the ninth century, it is most likely 
thai it was built about that time. Though small, being only 
twenty-seven feet in length by twenty-four in breadth, it was 
evidently a monastery complete in itself, unlike the arrangement 
of the earlier communities, where the monks lived in separate 
cells surrounded by a wall of enclosure. The lower story of the 
Keils monastery was used as a church, the middle as a refectory, 
and the loft above as sleeping-rooms. The construction of this 
roof is the most noteworthy point about the building. The 
second story is arched with a barrel-vault of stone, and above 
that a high, pitched stone roof is carried up with straight sides 
externally, but with the form of a pointed arch on the inside. 
The lower part of this roof is built with level courses of stone, 
like the Gallarus Oratory, except that they are laid in mortar ; 
but above the top of the round arch the stones are disposed in a 
rude pointed arch with the help of very thick mortar-beds. The 
appearance of true arched construction is in itself a great ad- 
vance, but it is even more interesting to trace the origin of the 
pointed arch above, and to observe the tentative way in which 
the early builders began the substitution of arching for the over- 
hanging courses with level joints used in the early oratories. 
In subsequent buildings the upper pointed arch was as truly 
formed as the lower, and thus a form of roof peculiar to ancient 
Ireland was produced, the construction of which, both inside and 
outside, was wholly of stone. 

In the buildings hitherto described we had to rely on con- 
jecture and internal evidence for the date of their erection ; but 
in Tomgraney church, in the County Clare, we have a nearly 
perfect building whose date is fixed by contemporary records. 
The Irish annals inform us that this church and its round tower 
were built in 964. No traces of the tower remain, but the church 
yet stands comparatively perfect and shows a remarkable ad- 
vance, in architectural design, on the House of Columbkill and 
the earlier buildings'. In size it is much larger, being eighty 
feet long and twenty-seven wide ; its masonry is excellent and 
equal to good modern work, and the introduction of buttresses 
on the angles of the front gives it an appearance of strength and 
finish that is wanting in the older buildings. But it is in the 
finish of the window-jambs that the greatest advance is percep- 
tible. They are not only dressed, as in some of the older build- 
ings, but the stone is elaborately carved into ornamental pat- 



CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 



233 



terns. The design is the chevron, or zigzag 1 , such as the Nor- 
man architects introduced into England in the following cen- 
tury, but which is here wrought out with a delicacy and finish 
far surpassing the Norman work. The bold mouldings of the 
chevron are filled with interlaced tracery of the finest character, 
which seems rather copied from the Celtic goldsmiths' work 
than from any foreign source, and which is yet applied with the 
utmost taste to its new purpose. The doorway, on which in 
later buildings the most elaborate finish was lavished, is in this 
example a plain, square-headed opening. It looks as if in the use 
of carving, as in other points, it was only by successive stepbS that 
novelties were introduced into Celtic architecture. In this is 
perhaps the strongest proof of its originality as well as of its 
progressive character, which was kept up through the confusion 
of the Danish invasions, and only died away after the establish- 
ment of the foreign government of the Anglo-Normans in Dub- 
lin. 

The record of the building of a round tower in connection 
with this church brings us to consider these peculiarly Irish 
buildings. The origin of the round towers has been for a long 
period the most disputed question in Irish architecture. They 
have been attributed to the Phoenicians, to the Fire-Worshippers, 
to the Danish vikings, and in fact to anybody and everybody 
except to the very people who were using and building them at 
the time of the Norman invasion. It is one of the curiosities of 
literature that this extraordinary controversy on the origin of 
the round towers should have ever arisen in the face of their 
close and all but invariable connection with Christian churches 
and the actual records of the erection of many of them. Brian 
Boroimhe is said expressly by the Irish annalists to have built 
thirty-two, and the very name in Irish cloic-theagh, or bell-house 
expresses accurately their use. It would be as reasonable to 
separate the bell-towers of Gothic architecture from the buildings 
to which they are attached as to seek to separate the round towers 
from their churches. In several cases they are actually connect- 
ed with and bonded into the masonry of the churches, and occa- 
sionally, as at Glendalough, they rise out of the roof itself. The 
character of their masonry and the structure of their doors and 
windows are precisely similar to those of the churches which 
they adjoin, and whatever variations they exhibit in this respect 
are no greater than those shown in the work of the churches 
themselves. That many of them are detached from the churches 
is a feature common to the architecture of other lands. Giotto's 



234 CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. [May, 

campanile at Florence may serve as one instance, and it is by no 
means an isolated one. In this structure the towers show all the 
variations of style that characterize the contemporary buildings. 
Some, like that at Clondalkin, near Dublin, are built of stones 
picked up from the neighboring ground and roughly laid in 
coarse mortar. Others are built of coursed rubble, and in a third 
class the stones are not only selected with care, but dressed to 
the curve of the walls by the hammer. Finally, in the round 
tower of Ardmore, in the County Waterford, the masonry is of 
the finest square blocks, uniform in size and dressed with the 
utmost skill. This tower is also relieved by projecting string- 
courses and diminishes regularly by offsets at each. Its door- 
way is ornamented with the very well-marked patterns peculiar 
to the Irish twelfth-century work, and in every respect it tells 
its age as unmistakably as it is possible for a building to tell 
it. It would be as reasonable to refer the Tour de St. Jacques 
in Paris, with its Gothic architecture, to prehistoric times as 
this tower of Ardmore, and, though the most highly finished, 
it is only one of a class. The details of the doorway in Tima- 
hoe, in the Queens County, are equally definite in their ornamen- 
tation, though the masonry is inferior to that of Ardmore. 
The question of the origin of the Irish round towers cannot 
again be raised, and their date can be safely assigned to the last 
four centuries of Irish independence. 

The division into nave and chancel the latter somewhat nar- 
rower than the former and separated from it by an arch be- 
comes a feature in many of the later Irish churches and adds a 
good deal td their effect, even in small buildings. The chancel 
arch was often richly ornamented, and is always an important 
feature in the internal arrangements. The ruined church of 
Inniscaltra, built by Brian Boroimhe on an island in the Shannon, 
offers an early example of the division into nave and chancel 
all the more valuable because its date can be fixed by history 
at the beginning of the eleventh century. The arch between 
the two is recessed, and the jambs below the springing incline 
inwards a form peculiar, we think, to Ireland, and apparently 
borrowed from the inclined sides of the older door-openings. 
The door itself is square- headed, but an arch is formed in the 
thickness of the wall outside it, and the springings ornamented 
with carved heads, a curious counterpart of the capitals used in 
Gothic doorways in other countries. Nothing is more note- 
worthy in these ancient Irish buildings than their gradual ap- 
proximation by spontaneous progress to the forms of the Ro- 



1883.] CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 235 

manesque buildings which on the Continent of Europe had 
been developed in the course of centuries from the old Roman 
architecture. In the Romanesque, doorways, jambs, columns 
with semi-classical capitals and bases, generally support the 
archways. In the Irish buildings the inclination inward of the 
jambs shows that the idea of the Roman column was unthought 
of, but that the native taste, nevertheless, introduced ornament 
at the springing of the arch as the most important point. The 
Inniscaltra church is small, the chancel being fifteen feet long and 
the nave thirty-one by a width of twenty. Still, its dimensions 
are much larger than those of the primitive oratories, and it 
must be remembered that the Irish Celts seldom aspired to 
erect churches on the cathedral scale. Their genius was shown 
rather in the perfection than in the size of their buildings, and 
we should no more undervalue their works on that account than 
we should despise the architect of the Parthenon because his 
building is petty compared to the Roman Colosseum. 

The introduction of the Cistercian Order into Ireland early 
in the twelfth century led to the erection of abbeys on a larger 
scale and with more complicated buildings than had before ex- 
isted. As we have seen, the primitive Irish monasteries were 
villages of small cells surrounded by an enclosing wall. It is 
not before the twelfth century that we find traces of large com- 
munities living under a single roof, though such may have ex- 
isted and been obliterated by time. The beautiful monastery 
of Mellifont, founded in 1142, was the earliest Cistercian estab- 
lishment in Ireland ; and the abbeys of Cong, where the last king 
of Ireland ended his troubled career, and of Holy Cross near 
Thurles, belong to the same century. All three have suffered a 
good deal from time and abuse, but the walls still remain in 
good condition and show that the Irish builders found no dif- 
ficulty in meeting the requirements of the new class of build- 
ings. The same century was also marked by the erection of the 
first churches that for size deserved to be ranked as cathedrals. 
As might be expected from the history of other countries, these 
Irish cathedrals have been in great part replaced by later build- 
ings, but some of them still retain portions of genuine Celtic 
work and indicate the size of the originals. Cashel Cathedral 
was built in the middle of the twelfth century, but was after- 
wards rebuilt in the Gothic style of a later day. Its dimensions, 
which are two hundred and ten feet in length by one hundred 
and seventy across the transepts, show that very considerable 
churches were coming into use in Ireland as in other countries. 



236 CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. [May, 

The portions of the Cathedral of St. Jarlath at Tuam which have 
been incorporated into the new church also indicate a build- 
ino- of considerable size. The chancel arch is formed in six 

o 

recesses, each having a distinctive ornamentation of a most ela- 
borate kind, and the innermost being twenty feet in diameter. 
Killaloe Cathedral contains a noble monument of Celtic art in 
the arched tomb of Miirtogh O'Brien, the third from the last 
monarch of Ireland. It is formed in the thickness of the wall, 
with several arches receding one behind the other, and all 
carved in black marble with a delicacy of touch and a variety of 
design that it would be hard to parallel anywhere, and which 
prove conclusively that Celtic art was in full progress down to 
the closing days of the Celtic monarchy in Ireland. 

It is, however, in the smaller buildings which have escaped 
the alterations of following ages that we can best make out the 
character of the native Celtic architecture. Several churches of 
the period we allude to now still remain nearly perfect, and 
some are actually used at present. St. Doulach's Chapel near 
Dublin, a church at Clonfert, the cathedral at Killaloe in Clare, 
and Cormac's Chapel on the Rock of Cashel, are among these 
still complete buildings. The last is perhaps the most finished 
specimen of native Celtic architecture, and as it remains almost 
wholly unaltered since its erection it is worthy of description. 
Its dimensions are small, as its whole length is only fifty-three 
feet, but the artistic disposition of its parts, and the richness and 
taste with which it is decorated, more than compensate for its 
si^e. Like most of the later Celtic churches, it is divided into a 
nave and chancel, with an arched recess behind the chancel for 
the altar. The arch separating the nave and chancel is recessed 
into six faces, all richly ornamented, and the walls inside are 
arcaded in both divisions. The nave roof is a barrel-vault 
divided by moulded ribs, while the chancel is not only ribbed 
but also groined. An arcade runs around the walls of the altar 
niche, and the wall over it is ornamented with carved heads. 
The windows are high up and throw a solemn light over the 
whole in perfect keeping with its sacred character. The door- 
ways to the nave are on the sides, and are recessed on the out- 
side, with receding arches highly ornamented. At the end of the 
nave next the chancel a square tower rises on each side, making 
the whole building cruciform in plan. The doors from these 
towers to the nave are beautifully finished in keeping with the 
rest of the architecture. On the outside the walls are arcaded 
with two stories of arches. The roof is entirely built of stone. 



1883.] CELTIC ARCHITECTURE. 237 

A circular .vault is turned over the nave and chancel, and above 
each pointed vault carries up the masonry to near the ridge of 
the roof, which is formed on it with blocks of stone carefully 
adjusted so as to throw off the rain. Between the two vaults 
are lofty chambers, which were apparently heated originally by 
flues running under the floor in a fashion unknown in any build- 
ing of the time. Indeed, as a whole this small chapel is un- 
equalled either in construction or finish by anything of its time. 
Considering that it is essentially a work of native artists, it goes 
far to justify the opinion of the latest English writer on archi- 
tecture, Fergusson, when, in speaking of the Celts, he says: 
" Had their arts not been nipped in the bud by circumstances 
over which they had no control, we might have seen something 
that would have shamed even Greece and wholly eclipsed the 
arts of Rome." 

The period of pure Celtic architecture closes with the 
twelfth century. In later buildings the influence of the Norman 
builders modified its forms into a close resemblance with those 
adopted in France and England, and at the same time gradually 
extinguished the artistic feelings which were so marked in the 
earlier works. 



238 Miss AMARANTH. [May, 



MISS AMARANTH. 
I. 

AN old-fashioned house, low of stature but wide-spreading, 
standing with dignity well back from the street beneath* its shad- 
ing elms, was sending back to the sun from its many window- 
panes, in a hundred little sparkles, the one broad beam of light 
he poured on its western side. A veritable patriarch of a New 
England homestead was this, retired from the dusty highway, 
perfectly unmoved by the " Eastlake " and " Queen Anne" move- 
ment, relying on its Puritan builders and entire respectability, 
as a thorough New England house should. Painted white with 
green blinds, one saw it among its over-arching trees long before 
he reached it by the twisting road. Entering the little white 
gate, the shady, broad flagged walk led straight up to the door 
surmounted by a fan-shaped transom, painted green also. The 
ponderous brass knocker was little needed, for the door was 
nearly always open, showing the wide, low staircase, the great 
hall sofa and chairs, high-backed and claw-footed, while at the 
other end of the hall stood the great clock, keeping time as truly 
as in the days when anxious-eyed women watched its creeping 
hands for the hour to come which should sound the last knell 
of colony days. Entering but before entering it would be as 
well, perhaps, to know who had entered as master through the 
many years of its existence, and had been carried out silently 
over its wide door-stone, to make way for others, even to the 
present day. It had been built in the year 1740 by one Chilton, 
who had brought to it as its first mistress a certain Dorothy 
from one of the Cape towns. She, dying, left ten sons and two 
daughters to " rise up and call her blessed," which they did, 
if we may trust her crumbling tombstone, decorated with an 
uncherubic cherub's head. 

The two daughters married and went away to other homes 
among the hills, and of the sons two only survived the Revolu- 
tionfor the old house sent her sons to fight for freedom, like a 
Spartan mother. 

The homestead was the portion of the elder of the remaining 
Chiltons, and his descendants lived their peaceful, uneventful 
lives there, father and son, till the early part of the present 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 23 

century. Then Richard Chilton, following his wife to an early 
grave, left an only daughter to bear the name, who, marrying, 
brought to her husband, William Armstrong, the Chilton home- 
stead as dowry. William Armstrong had three "likely "sons 
and as many daughters. Of these the eldest, John, lived in the 
homestead and had two children, James and Amaranth. 

Amaranth Armstrong's whole life was her brother James. 
She venerated him as a superior being ; she loved him as her 
tender brother ; he was the visible and audible expression of her 
repressed life. She was not beautiful, yet came nearer to being 
so than many pretty girls. Her light hair she always wore 
brushed smoothly back from her temples, disclosing the blue 
veins that showed so plainly through the delicate skin. Her 
clear complexion, with its varying color, was her greatest beauty, 
except, perhaps,* her earnest, honest gray eyes, that looked life 
squarely in the face and said much the reticent lips would never 
utter. Her reading had been chiefly the English classics Shak- 
spere, Milton, and Young her recreation, with Baxter's Saint's 
Rest and Bunyan for Sundays. With such companionship 
among the rocks and hills of Massachusetts, Amaranth grew to 
womanhood the strong, sweet, repressed womanhood found in 
the best type of New England character. The dread problems 
of Calvinistic theology laid hold of her girlish soul early in its 
development, but did not prevent her from serving the God 
they misrepresented. At twenty she made public " profession of 
religion " and united herself with the church in the old white 
" meeting-house " behind whose high-backed pews her childish 
head had vainly tried to peep over. Not so her brother. James 
Armstrong met differently the same difficulties that his simple 
sister thought she had solved. He could not believe in Calvin's 
Christianity ; he remained outside, and just in proportion to her 
great love for him Amaranth mourned over his " unregenerate " 
condition, in which, according to her faith, if he should die he 
must be for ever lost, in spite of his godly life and honest en- 
deavor. She prayed for him unceasingly, that he might " be 
brought in"; that God of his "uncovenanted mercy" would 
change his heart. But yet what if James were not one of "the 
elect," were not predestinated? The thought was torture, and 
there seemed to be no way for her out of her difficulty, nor for 
James into the church. 

When Amaranth was twenty their widowed mother died, 
leaving her nominally the head of a household of which she had 
been virtually the head since she was sixteen. Offers of mar- 



240 Miss AMARANTH. [May, 

riage were not wanting- to her, but she refused them all with- 
out hesitation, except in the case of a young minister who had 
received "a call " to an inaccessible town in the New Hampshire 
hills, and who wanted her as a sort of coadjutor minister. Even 
in this case she only hesitated lest it might be a " leading," and, 
refusing him too, lived on contentedly with her brother. So 
matters went on for five years, and then James announced his 
intention to go abroad. Amaranth prepared his things for the 
journey with hands that would sometimes tremble, and eyes 
that often had difficulty in finding the eye of the needle. Yet 
when she kissed him good-by, with fast-falling tears, she little 
dreamed of the years and changes that lay between their parting 
and their meeting. 

James Armstrong went to England with the intention of stay- 
ing there two months, then pushing on to the Continent, and 
returning to the United States in a year from the time of his 
departure. How little we know, when we make our plans, what 
design God has for us, enfolding, moulding, and enlarging our 
tiny idea in his great one ! 

The two months passed by and still Amaranth received letters 
with the London post-mark. At last one came that she read 
with bated breath and horror-stricken face. " My sister," he 
wrote at the last of the letter, " I have refrained from telling you 
of the interest that has detained me in London so long beyond 
the time I expected to stay, because of the pain I knew it would 
cause you, and I did not wish to disturb you without necessity. 
But now it seems the time has come when I must tell you. I 
have heard Dr. John Henry Newman preach several times. I 
have also met some of the English Jesuits and Oratorians, and 
have talked with them. I dare not in conscience resist longer 
the conviction that has come to me that the Church of Rome is 
Christ's true church, and that I must submit myself to her do- 
minion. I am suffering sorely in mind, and also in body, from 
the struggle I am enduring and from the pain I am this moment 
inflicting on you. Write to me, my sister. Tell me you know 
I will only do what I believe to be right ; tell me also anything 
you think may hold me. But remember. I have been over the 
old ground many times, and I do not know but that my next 
letter may tell you I am a Catholic. There is such a thing as 
grieving the Holy Ghost, and where he leads I must follow at 
Pray for me, dearest Amaranth, and forgive me the 
anguish I am causing you. Be sure I suffer, too. May God 
give us both grace to know and do his' will !" Amaranth 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 241 

answered: "What can I say to you, my poor deluded brother? 
The cry of King David comes to my lips : ' Would to God I had 
died for thee! ' or even, my beloved brother, would that you had 
died ! There is nothing I can say except, Fly. Fly at once. 
Go to Scotland, to Germany. Seek a Christian minister and talk 
with him. You have trusted to wily Jesuits; of course they 
would deceive even you. It is a temptation of the devil. The 
Holy Ghost could never lead you into the Romish Church, for 
he cannot lie. And, oh ! think, James if you become a papist I 
can never see your face nor write to you again. Send me 
word by return of mail that the danger is past and you are 
flying from the seducers, for my heart is breaking." 

The next mail brought her no answer; the second did. " My 
dearest little sister," it ran, " your letter came, but too late. The 
day before its receipt I made my profession in the hands of a 
Jesuit priest. I knew I must be a Catholic, no matter what you 
said, so I thought it better to be fortified by the sacraments be- 
fore the letter came. And when I was baptized all my doubts 
vanished, the clouds of night rolled away, and the sun has arisen 
that shall not set for all eternity, I am gloriously happy ! I 
never dreamed there was such bliss on earth. I go about these 
foggy London streets singing an internal and eternal Te Deum. 
And so you thought it was the work of the devil ! Why, my pre- 
cious little Amaranth, if the devil had the power to make people 
happy in this way it would never do to keep him in hell. You 
think the Catholic Church wrong, and so, you say, it cannot be 
the Holy Ghost who led me to it, because he cannot lie. Now, 
I thought it wrong, but I believe the Holy Ghost to have led me 
to it, so now I know it is true, because he cannot lie. Which is 
the better logic? I think we have both been the innocent abet- 
tors of a wrong. It is natural that we should have believed what 
we were taught and what our parents believed, yet is it right to 
hear only one side of a case? In what court, of justice would a 
trial be allowed in which the accused was not heard ? As the 
voice said to St. Augustine, so I say to you : ' Tolle, lege ' Take 
and read. Examine the Catholic Church, and, if you condemn, 
at least know what you are condemning. You say you will 
never see my face again if I am a Catholic. That may be true, 
Amaranth, for I go to Rome to prepare for the priesthood. The 
God who has given me the truth shall never have less than all of 
me in return. Can it be that my little sister can be so unjust as 
to refuse to write me because I follow my conscience? If so, 
amen. * He that loveth father or mother more than me is not 
VOL. xxxvii. 16 



242 Miss AMARANTH. [May, 

worthy of me.' When I am a priest ' when I am a priest ' : if 
you only knew the meaning of those words ! but when I am 
one and say Mass, I shall offer it for you and love you always 
more and more. In the meantime may God and his Mother 
watch over you ! that sweet Mother whom you do not know. 
But she is like her Son : she takes care of people even though they 
scorn her. Why, Amaranth, the thing that strikes me most for- 
cibly in the Catholic Church is not the new but the old. I find 
we knew nothing about God or Christ Jesus, holding them off as 
we did in that Calvinistic coldness. Write me and say you did 
not mean what you said, but would still be, as I am, as fond and 
dear as before." Amaranth answered in an anguish that was 
greater than her strength could bear : " What you ask cannot be. 
You have cut yourself off from me for this life. May God give 
you grace to see your mistake, that we may not be separated for 
eternity ! Farewell, James, farewell, my only brother." After 
that papers were sent from a London lawyer giving Amaranth 
all of her brother's portion in the family estate, but no letters 
passed between them again. 

For a few weeks Amaranth moved about the old house with 
slow and heavy step, putting away all the personal belongings of 
her brother as we do after a death. But the effort was futile ; 
she could not banish the thought of him by the putting out of 
sight his later possessions. His childish face looked out at her 
from the corners where he used to hide, to jump out at her as 
she passed. The empty halls rang with his boyish shout, and 
the trees seemed to hold the ghost of the kind boy who always 
climbed the most dangerous places to get her the ripest fruit. 
The whole place, the vacant chairs and lonely board, spoke elo- 
quently of a beloved, life-long companionship for ever ended. 



II. 

Under the pressure of such an existence health failed, and 
Amaranth was stricken with a fever, under which she lay for 
weeks, unconscious of joy or sorrow, with life and death waging 
a war for her possession in which life bade fair to be beaten. 
But she inherited a good constitution and a strong vitality, 
thanks to which she again resumed her broken life in the old 
house. Slowly she made for herself new interests ; she took the 
minister's family to live with her in the spacious homestead, thus 
giving herself companionship and saving " the society " the ex- 
pense of a parsonage. She interested herself in the few poor 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 243 

families in the town and joined the sewing-society, that unfailing 
source of consolation to the feminine soul. She began to be 
known as Miss Amaranth, to be looked upon as a mother in 
Israel, and with her benevolent objects and the quiet care of her 
own affairs her days were made up. Her man of business in 
Boston had persuaded her to invest all her property, except a 
few bonds, and the old house to which she clung, in a certain 
mining stock company which was very safe and paid a slightly 
higher percentage than other equally sure investments. The 
income this gave her was large even for a city life ; for a wo- 
man alone in the country it was princely. Accordingly, under 
these conditions, as time went on her grief diminished, though 
by no means disappeared; she found comfort in* ministering to 
others, and fifteen years after her brother's departure saw her 
grown older but almost happy. On the afternoon when the 
story begins she sat sewing busily in her own corner between 
the south and west windows of the " sitting-room." It was a 
very cosey corner, in which stood her little mahogany, brass- 
handled work-table, where lay her favorite books, and before 
it sat her hospitable rocking-chair, with cushions to coax the 
weary. A beautiful engraving of the Sistine Madonna, which 
James had brought from Boston some years before,, hung be- 
tween two windows. The spring cleaning was all done : Ama- 
ranth was too true a daughter of the Puritans not to have her 
broom and mop take active part in the spring renovation of 
everything. This reign of terror being over, she could sit in 
peace and sew on the little cotton skirts for the children of a, 
missionary to China, whose wife found that among the many ad- 
vantages her present position possessed over her former one in 
her own country unlimited bohea and ready-made clothing were 
not insignificant. The afternoon was warm for early May ; she 
could even open the south window a little way. The air was 
full of spring sweetness, perfumed by damp earth and tender 
blades of grass; a jay on the elm-tree uttered an occasional quick, 
sharp note of joy, and a robin answered from the lilacs. Ama- 
ranth sang as she sewed, " The Lord is a tower of strength," and 
the Sistine Madonna looked down from the wall with wonderful, 
tender eyes on the New England woman singing with a sure 
little thrill in her voice of that Babe as "a tower of strength 
against the enemy." Through the open window Amaranth 
could see Seth, " the hired man," planting the early vegetables, 
and the robin occasionally darting down to profit by the market 
afforded him in the newly-turned earth. 



244 M ISS AMARANTH. [May, 

Far down the road she could hear the familiar rattle of 
Farmer Holt's wagon on its way home from the nearest large 
town. Farmer Holt's place lay past the Armstrong homestead, 
on the eastern outskirts of the village, and often on his way to 
and fro he good-naturedly acted as deliverer of mails. Soon the 
jogging old white horse rounded the curve of the road and 
stopped at the Armstrong gate. 

Farmer Holt dropped the reins ; his whole body condensed 
itself, supported by his elbows resting on his knees, ready for a 
talk with Seth, who, nothing loath, left his hoeing, pushed back his 
hat, and, leaning on the gate-post, gave himself up to the charm 
of the hour. Amaranth knew that if there were letters to be 
delivered she should eventually receive them ; but impatience on 
her part would be quite thrown away, as planets in their motions 
were no more regular, and were far more rapid, than the move- 
ments of the farmer and Seth. At last Farmer Holt gathered 
\ip the reins, slapped the old horse, and remarked : " Ged ap, 
Qanaan ! It's time we was further." Canaan moved his ears, but 
remained otherwise the same. " Oh ! I declare for't," ejaculat- 
ed the farmer, " ef I'd a-forgot them socks Mis' Holt would ha* 
ben likely to ha' reminded me forcible. You jest give them to 
Miss Amaranth, an' tell her my wife thought mebbe she could 
find some use for 'em 'mongst the poor folks. An' tell her Mis' 
Holt sent her regards, an' told me to say to her ef so be as she 
could find time to copy them receipts against I come down 
again, she'd take it kind. Come up, Canaan ! " But Canaan 
Switched his tail and stood his ground. " Well, fer land's sake ! 
<ef I haint come nigh to fergittin' that letter!" cried Farmer Holt, 
standing up and searching his capacious pockets. " Here, it's 
from Boston, fer Miss Amaranth ; but I donno the writin', fer I 
took notice particler. Ged ap, Canaan ! " This time Canaan 
started with a vigor that threw Farmer Holt on the seat and left 
no opportunity for the repeated good-days customary on these 
occasions. Seth turned from the gate with a nonchalant air and 
came toward the house. " Here, Miss Amaranth," he said, speak- 
ing to her through the open window" here's a letter for yer, 
and some o' Mis' Holtses socks, and she'd like them receipts 
before he's down agen." Amaranth took the letter ; the writing 
was that of her lawyer in Boston. She tore the envelope hastily 
open. The letter was short, but she read it slowly, and her face 
grew ashen as she read. 

It takes but a few words to give the death-blow to the happi- 
ness of a life, and lawyers understand brevity. In this case two 



1883.] MISS AAfARANTH. 245 

pages were more than enough to tell Amaranth of the utter ruin 
of the mining company in which her property was invested, and 
through it the total loss of all the money which she had placed 
in their stock. But this was not all. Mr. Sharp told her con- 
cisely the income from the bonds that she had deposited would 
not be large enough to more than pay the expenses of her place, 
and that the only possible course for her to pursue was to sell 
the homestead and invest the proceeds, otherwise there would 
not be nearly enough to support her. This, with the large, bold 
" Yours to command Cutler Sharp," and some commonplaces of 
sympathy, was all. It did not occur to Amaranth to question the 
honesty of the man through whose advice the bulk of her pro- 
perty had been lost. He had invested in the same company, and 
it was characteristic of the woman to feel, even in the first pain 
of the news, a pang of sympathy for a fellow-sufferer, whose 
grief was doubtless augmented by the thought that through him 
her trouble had come, although the few words of regret he had 
written gave little ground for the supposition. There was no 
sleep for Amaranth that night ; the morning saw her on her way 
to Boston, her head full of all sorts of vague plans by which she 
might restore her fallen fortunes and retain the homestead. The 
whirl and bustle of the great city gave her a feeling of helpless- 
ness and distrust of her plans even before she reached Mr. 
Sharp's office. 

Here she passed an hour in close conversation, but received 
nothing but discouragement from the lawyer. Mr. Sharp was a 
" practical business man " ; he had neither time nor inclination 
for considering sentimental feelings he had never found them 
of any value in the law. 

The case lay in a nutshell. Here was a single lady who had 
met with reverses no uncommon thing. These reverses had left 
her insufficient property to support her unless she sold a piece of 
farm land, which would give her a good income for the rest of 
her life. If she did not sell her house she would be obliged to 
earn her own living, for which (aside from the utter absurdity of 
doing such a thing without necessity) she was by habit and edu- 
cation utterly incapacitated. Amaranth returned to her hotel, 
and shut herself up in her bedroom with " a nervous headache " 
a complaint that in this prosaic age takes the place of broken 
hearts, despair, and other more picturesque ailments of heart 
and brain. On the morrow she came back to Mr. Sharp, and the 
result of this final interview was that she took the train at two 
o'clock with every feeling deadened, uncertain even if she were 



246 Miss AMARANTH. [May, 

on the right railroad, only knowing that somehow she was going 
back to break up her whole life and sell that home where but 
no, she could not think further ; she was going back. In the 
beautiful May twilight, through the moist, sweet air, Seth drove 
her up from the station. The trees, which were in bud the after- 
noon the letter came, had burst into blossom in the two days in- 
tervening. The robins were singing that lovely note which 
changes as the heat comes on ; away off from the bushes came 
the liquid song of that dear little brown bird whose tiny, plain 
body is the repository of the sweetest note of our New England 
woodlands. 

A neighbor stopped her on the way home to tell her the news 
of one of her poor families ; Ponto, the great watch-dog, sprang 
to meet her at the gate ; Demosthenes, the cat, sat upon the 
broad door-stone in sleepy dignity ; and a thousand hallowed 
memories of the father and mother dead, and of the brother lost, 
crowded upon her in the broad hallway. The homeness of the 
whole, animate and inanimate, the terrible thought that it was 
gone for ever, overpowered her, and she sank helplessly on the 
broad stairs. The next weeks passed like a dream. Amaranth 
acted with a passivity which she mistook for indifference. The 
packing up and disposing of the household goods, the linen, the 
china, everything that those hands had touched which she loved 
so dearly, had made her re-live her mother's death, her brother's 
loss, and all the happy days of her childhood, till pain sank to 
a weariness and quietude which weighed her down like a load, 
and made her rise in the morning as exhausted as she had lain 
down. 

She had decided to go to Boston at first, as a place where 
she was likely to find distractions, and a friend there had under- 
taken to find her a boarding- place. This lady had written to 
Amaranth that though the " West End " or " Back Bay " was 
the.'* proper " quarter, she fancied Amaranth would better enjoy 
the " South End " ; would she leave to her the Selection ? Ama- 
ranth, to whom the proposition of removing to the South Pole 
would have been indifferent, assented, and her friend's next letter 
informed her of two of the most delightful rooms on the same 
floor, looking on a pretty square, to be had unfurnished, and 
which she had engaged, in Amaranth's name, for the last of June. 
Amaranth found a purchaser of the homestead in one of their 
neighbors. The sum thus obtained, added to the bonds she 
already possessed, would, as Mr. Sharp had told her, give her 
sufficient income to make her rather more than independent for 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 247 

the rest of her life. Although she thought herself free from any 
distrust of the lawyer, nevertheless she did not again give him 
the investing of her property. How the last hours in her home 
were passed Amaranth never knew ; her furniture had been sent 
on to Boston, and she sat in the denuded rooms, quiet and pas- 
sive, waiting for the time to come when she should quit them 
for ever. As in a dream she pressed the hands of the kind folk 
among whom she had felt all her joys and sorrows ; still in a 
dream she passed out from the great door, following Seth to the 
carriage. Looking back from the turn of the road, she saw the 
homestead for the last time, with the June sunshine resting ten- 
derly on its venerable front, the elm-trees shading the little 
white gate, and with a sharp cry she wakened. 



III. 

The lethargy came upon her again as the train whirled her 
off to the great city. Her life looked blank before her ; she said 
to herself it could hold for her no new sensations, neither joy 
nor sorrow. Utterly weary she reached Boston that night ; her 
friend had met her at the station, but the well-meant efforts to 
cheer her wearied her, and the elaborate trimming of Mrs. Ver- 
non's dress gave her a sense of helpless annoyance. She whirled 
through the busy streets, past Samuel Adams standing persis- 
tently in the way of drivers and horse-cars, past the Common, 
beautiful in its summer verdure, up, up through what seemed 
to her a wilderness of streets, to a certain " swell-front " house 
standing in a pretty square. Here Amaranth and Mrs. Vernon 
descended and rang the bell, which was answered by a bright- 
faced girl, who ushered them into a home-like parlor with less 
of the cotton-lace and chromo decoration than one usually finds 
in a city boarding-house. Mrs. Knight, the landlady, entered, 
clad in neat widow's garb, and with a kindly face that invited 
confidence. The introductions being gone through with, Mrs. 
Vernon hastened away to her own West End dwelling, where she 
expected to entertain that evening a little company of literary 
and radical geniuses ; for Mrs. Vernon had profited by the time 
she had spent in Boston since her marriage, and presented in 
her own small, blonde, fashionably clad personality an alarming 
amount of most advanced " views." Amaranth was taken im- 
mediately to her rooms, where the home furniture had been ar- 
ranged to the best advantage by Mrs. Vernon, who, although riot 
without a sense of Amaranth's incongruity with her own radical 



248 Miss AMARANTH. [May, 

friends, that might have influenced her selection of the South 
End as her dwelling-place, had still a kindly interest in her com- 
fort. 

" You need not come down to tea, rny dear," said Mrs. 
Knight, "for I'll send Maggie up with yours, if you like." Ama- 
ranth wearily assented and thanked the good soul for her thought- 
fulness. 

Left alone with the old familiar furniture, Amaranth could 
hardly tell whether it lessened or increased her loneliness ; it was 
so strange to sit in her mother's chair and look out, not on the 
lilacs and syringas, but on the little city park, with the flam- 
ing flowers, and scarcely less brilliantly dressed children playing 
there. The little tray went down again almost untouched ; but 
Amaranth slept the sleep of utter exhaustion that night, and 
arose considerably refreshed in the morning. She was not a 
person to spend her life in vain regrets ; she thought over her 
new situation while dressing, and resolved to enjoy the many 
good things Providence had left to her. 

Nevertheless as she walked into the dining-room her heart fail- 
ed her ; she was naturally shy, and her life had made her more so. 

Mrs. Knight, rising from the table, presented her to her fellow- 
boarders, and, having shown her to her seat, reseated herself. 

After the momentous question of her preference for tea or 
coffee had been decided Amaranth ventured to look around. 
At one end of the table four girls were talking volubly of music 
and art, and it was apparent, even to Amaranth's inexperience, 
that they were intending to impress two harmless-looking youths 
stranded at the other end of the table. At Mrs. Knight's right 
sat a large, matter-of-fact woman, with two boys between her 
and her still larger and more matter-of-fact husband, who was 
eating his breakfast with an entire oblivion to all other concerns. 
Between the musical and artistic young ladies and Amaranth 
sat a fluffy little woman in a much-beruffled white wrapper, who, 
catching a word from the musical girl, turned enthusiastically to 
Amaranth. "Oh! don't you just dote on music?" she cried. 
" I do. And did you ever hear anything so perfectly sweet as 
the Symphony concerts? But of course you did not hear them, 
for you only came last night. I say to Mr. Flower (that's my 
husband; he's away on business now) I never could see how peo- 
ple live without 'music and art. That's what I just love about 
the Church of the Holy Compromise, where I go the lovely 
windows, and music, and boys, and reredos, and everything. 
You really must come with me some Sunday." Amaranth mur- 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 249 

mured some response and turned her eyes toward her opposite 
neighbors, in dismay at the torrent which had been poured upon 
her. She met the gaze of two bright brown eyes, dancing with 
mischief, which were drooped as soon as they met hers. The 
owner was a slender little creature of sixteen, with hair like spun 
gold and lips that danced into a smile in the corners, unless she 
drew them down tight, as she did when Amaranth looked up. 
Bsside her sat her mother a lovely face framed with prema- 
turely gray hair, and with a sweet, sad mouth and quiet, brown 
eyes full of tenderness and serenity. On her other hand sat 
another daughter, older, as different from the little laughing 
fairy as night from day. Quiet, dignified she sat, her pale olive 
skin serving to set off the red, mobile lips, the great dark eyes, 
over which the black lashes drooped, and the heavy braids of 
glossy black hair which surmounted the white forehead. Ama- 
ranth's eyes rested on this group with pleasure, and she felt that 
the sweet-faced mother drew her heart as much as the Madonna- 
like elder and little kitten of a younger daughter aroused her 
admiration. As they rose to leave the table she thought that 
though the rest of the inmates interested her little, the fam- 
ily opposite her would surely be delightful friends, if ever she 
might call them by that name. In the course of the forenoon 
Amaranth heard a gentle knock on her door, which opened, when 
she said " Come in," far enough to admit the laughing face of 
her little neighbor of the morning. 

" I came up to see if you were lonely," said the girl, coming 
into the room like sunshine. " Mamma was afraid you would not 
like to be intruded on so soon, but I knew you would not mind 
me; no one does." Amaranth smiled at the child who stood 
with a confiding shyness, like a bird, in the middle of the room 
and motioned her to a seat by her side. " I am May Fairfax," 
the girl went on. " Really my name is Mary, but no one ever 
calls me so ; I am afraid it is because I am so little like a Mary. 
That was my mother you saw this morning, and my only sister, 
Gertrude. We came here from Baltimore, and I thought it a 
pity to let you be lonely when we knew just how dreadful it 
was. You won't think it impertinent of me to come, will you? " 
Amaranth showed unmistakably that she did not, and she and 
Miss May plunged into a conversation immediately ; or rather 
May talked and Amaranth listened with charmed attention, for 
she had never met anything at all like the beautiful girl, with 
her womanly mind and childlike unconsciousness of self. When 
May went away she said : " I shall bring mamma and Gertrude 



250 



Miss AMARANTH. [Ma}-, 



very soon, and I know you will fall in love with Gertrude right 
away, for she is as lovely as she looks. But you will keep a 
place for me, won't you ? Because you know I am your friend, 
and I discovered you." Then she ran laughing down the stairs, 
leaving Amaranth with the feeling that life could not be as un- 
desirable in Boston as she had thought it would be, if there were 
such bright little friends in it. 

The friendship grew and strengthened, and Amaranth found 
Mrs. Fairfax all she had thought her when she saw her sweet, 
calm face for the first time. Gertrude, too, deserved her sister's 
eulogy. But for all the presence of this family did much to help 
her through the first hard days in the new surroundings, she had 
many sad and lonely hours. 

Her thoughts were filled with the lost brother as they had 
not been for years. While in the old house she seemed to be 
linked to him, although he was gone for ever ; now, alone in a 
great city, with a sense of loneliness upon her that can only be 
felt in great cities, the thought that he was living, and yet so 
far away, made her yearn for him with a longing that seemed to 
annihilate space. Through her waking, hours in the night some- 
times she felt a burning hatred for the church that had stolen 
him from her ; again she felt an attraction that drew her almost 
irresistibly to that church which was his. 

A sense of unrest and dissatisfaction in her own faith which 
had been growing up in her for the past few years served to in- 
crease her loneliness. The teaching that had satisfied her youth 
could not answer the needs of her more mature years. One day, 
after two weeks or more had passed, Amaranth, talking with 
Mrs. Fairfax of the death of her husband, was led to speak of 
her own great trouble, and told Mrs. Fairfax of the loss of her 
only brother through his conversion to Catholicity. Mrs. Fair- 
fax listened with sympathy and much interest. " Ah ! my dear 
Miss Armstrong," she said, " I fully understand that this has 
been to you a life-long trial. And yet it occurs to me how 
much your poor brother has suffered for his conscientious con- 
victions ; for you see he could not do otherwise than become a 
Catholic, if he believed that religion to be true. Still, of course, 
he has had comfort in his work as a priest, and you have had 
nothing. I suppose I can understand your feelings in the mat- 
ter better than if I had always been a Catholic, though it is 
twenty-five years now since my husband and I were converts." 

Amaranth heard her with surprise and dismay. She a Catho- 
licMrs. Fairfax, whom she thought so much more like an ideal 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 251 

Christian than any one she had ever known ! And Gertrude 
with her grand, calm soul, and dear little May, whom she al- 
ready loved so much were these the fruit of Catholic teaching ? 
Yet it must be so, since both were born some time after their 
parents' conversion. 

Amaranth felt as though the ground which she had always 
thought so firm was slipping beneath her feet. There are mo- 
ments when one feels the force of a truth beyond all argument, 
and Amaranth instinctively felt that if these lovely characters 
were so different from all she had known because they were Ca- 
tholics, then something was radically wrong in her conception 
of the Catholic Church. 

As soon as she could do so Amaranth returned to her own 
room, and for a few days she saw less than formerly of her new 
friends. 

Mrs. Fairfax was a wise woman. In addition to a natural 
keenness in reading human minds she had suffered enough to 
give her an insight to the workings of the heart. She saw in- 
stantly the effect produced on Amaranth by the discovery that 
they were Catholics ; she saw, too, the possibility of Amaranth's 
conversion through her love for her brother prompting her to 
study his faith. She knew perfectly the fear and distrust which 
Amaranth's training had given her for everything Catholic, so 
she kept her daughters a little aloof from her for a time, lest she 
should think them inclined to proselytize, and to give her time 
to accustom herself to the new idea and become, as it were, re- 
acquainted with them on a different basis. 



IV. 

In the meantime, one day Mrs. Flower calling on Amaranth 
in her room, Amaranth took the opportunity to ask where Mrs. 
Fairfax and her daughters went to church. " Is it possible you 
don't know ? After all this time, too ! " cried Mrs. Flower. 
" But then some people are so different, aren't they ? Now, with 
me it is the first thing I speak of. They go to this big white 
church around the corner built of unpolished stone. It's lovely, 
really ; and such music! But then isn't it a pity that the Fair- 
faxes are Catholics Roman Catholics, I mean? Of course we're 
all Catholics. Their church is alwa}^s open, you know ; at least 
the chapel in the basement is. Don't you think that is a sweet 
idea? We thought of having our church open all the time the 
Church of the Holy Compromise, you know. But there really 



2 $2 Miss AMARANTH. [May, 

was no use in it, as nobody ever wanted to go in. So Dr. Rew- 
bricks gave it up. But I was dreadfully disappointed, the idea 
is so sweet and consoling, I think. I do love my church so ! But 
do you know I have never been to confession yet! I tell Mr. 
Flower (I do so want you to meet Mr. Flower, you would like 
him so much ; but he is nearly always away) I say to him that I 
don't know what I should confess, for I never do anything really 
bad, you know, and I never have religious doubts. But he tells 
me to confess the number of dresses I buy a year ; he thinks 
that's bad enough ! He's just too droll ; but he doesn't care a bit 
for church." 

As a shallow brook rattling over stones leaves the siftings of 
earth that forms its bed, so, after all this chatter, Amaranth re- 
tained the fact that the church where Mrs. Fairfax went was al- 
ways open, and the idea occurred to her to go there alone some 
time and see what it was like. The desire to go gained ground, 
and, characteristically, she kept it from the Fairfax family, though 
she then saw as much of them as before, and May especially was 
her companion in her walks and little excursions. Accordingly, 
one Friday afternoon Amaranth started off alone to explore the 
unknown dominions of the Pope of Rome as presented to her 
by the large church near by. 

The afternoon was warm, and as she passed down the shady 
walk between the church and the adjoining college she met a 
man in a long black gown, belted at the waist, with rosary sus- 
pended. He was reading a small book as he walked under the 
trees, but raised his eyes as Amaranth passed, and courteously 
took off his queer little three-cornered cap. She was struck 
by the expression of his face, which was benevolent and good ; 
she had expected to see a Jesuit look different. A door was 
ajar on the side of the church from which she was approaching, 
and with considerable trembling she pushed it wider open and 
entered. Everything was very still ; a small group of people, 
chiefly women, were sitting before little wooden structures, cur- 
tained with green baize, that stood at intervals around the 
church, and from which some one would emerge frequently and 
another person go in. Amaranth moved a little way up the 
aisle, fearing every one would look around at the sound of her 
footsteps ; but seeing that no one seemed aware of her presence, 
she gathered confidence and went nearly up to the altar. She 
took a seat on the right, in front of one of those mysterious 
structures, the curtains of which were looped up, showing no one 
inside. Here she had plenty of chance to observe the place and 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 253 

the people who knelt around the rail. Statues stood in niches 
around the sanctuary, and one, representing a man in a black 
gown like the one the priest had on whom she met in the yard, 
had been taken from its niche and placed on a pedestal near the 
rail. This statue bore a book with the inscription, " Ad Majo- 
ram Dei Gloriam "; and Amaranth was sufficiently versed in 
Latin to know that this was far from meaning, " the end justi- 
fies the means." 

The utter silence of the place, broken only by the rustle of 
people going to and from confession, began to have its effect on 
Amaranth ; distrust faded away, a sense of rest and content stole 
into her soul, and a peace such as she had never felt, the fore- 
taste of the " peace which passeth understanding," took posses- 
sion of her whole being. Her life had been blameless ; as far as 
she had known him she had served God faithfully ; who shall say 
that when she came into his Sacramental Presence for the first 
time he did not speak to her personally ? 

How long she had sat there she did not know ; quiet, rest, 
peace how much her lonely soul needed these ! and she drank 
them in, unconscious of lapse of time. 

A shadow fell between her and the light; she looked up, to 
meet a face crowned with snow-white hair a face whose tender- 
ness and benignity, purity and holiness, surpassed that of all faces 
she had ever seen. 

" My child," said the old priest, " do you wait for him ? " 
pointing to the empty confessional and speaking English very 
imperfectly. " He will not come, for he is to what you call 
this place? Ah! yes: to Nova Scotia gone to give a mission. 
He will not return before the Assumption, I think. Can I help 
you ? " Amaranth raised her eyes to the kind, keen eyes bent 
on hers. Such an expression of tender, holy love as she saw in 
that gaze ! Her own face flushed, and she looked frightened, 
yet eager and questioning. Hastily she explained that she had 
only come to see the church; she was not a Catholic. "Ah!" 
said the priest, reading the hungry, eager eyes aright, " but 
may be, please God. Oh ! it's not a hard thing to be a Catho- 
lic ; only more faith, and more hope, and more love, and more 
everything," he added, laughing a little. " Good-by, then, and 
God bless you, my child ! " Turning, he passed through a door 
at the end of the chapel and was gone. Amaranth, too, arose 
and left the chapel, and hastened home, filled with conflicting 
emotions ; above all with wonder. After she was safely back in 
her own room the prejudices reappeared, and she felt distrust 



Miss AMARANTH. [May, 

of the priest she had seen, of her own feelings while there- 
of all. 

Yet withal the impression lasted ; the thought that that was 
James' home, those priests his brothers, and the recollection of 
that wonderful face, drew her steps back to that spot when she 
went out alone to walk. Besides these things, the gradual weak- 
ening of her own religious convictions had left room for new 
impressions for the thought that something might be true which 
she had not known, and the daily intercourse with true Catho- 
lics like Mrs. Fairfax and her daughters was not without effect. 
Strangely enough, it was little, girlish May of whom Amaranth 
occasionally asked questions, rather than of Gertrude or their 
mother. May protested her inability to answer, but answered 
well nevertheless, and did much in this way toward helping the 
work which was going on. 

Amaranth went at last to High Mass one Sunday with May 
alone, her mother and Gertrude having been to an earlier one. 
The ceremonies repulsed her ; not that she was lacking in any 
sense of the beautiful, but her training was against outward ex- 
pression of deepest feelings, and she did not comprehend the 
meanings that they bore. The sermon, however, she understood 
thoroughly, and it seemed to be addressed to her alone, so per- 
fectly it answered her needs and objections. This was the be- 
ginning of her presence at the Mass, and late autumn found her 
regularly in the corner of the pew, sometimes alone, sometimes 
with one or other of her friends, who were watching prayerfully 
her progress. 

At Christmas May gave Amaranth a. prayer-book, and shortly 
after that Mrs. Fairfax took her, at her own request, to see one 
of the priests. 

From this .time the real struggle began. Who can measure 
the progress of divine grace as one by one old prejudices fell, 
one by one each dogma of the Catholic truth established itself? 
Amaranth did not yield without a battle ; but she was conscien- 
tious, and no unworthy motive or lack of generosity held her 
back. At last she went one day to the chapel again, and, kneel- 
ing down at the altar- rail, prayed long and fervently. Then she 
arose, and, going to the college, rang the bell, and when the good 
old lay brother had admitted her, and summoned the priest who 
had instructed her, she told him that she was ready to be re- 
ceived into the church. Then for the first time she ventured to 
ask for information of her brother, and learned with deep emotion 
that he had returned to America some time before, was a Jesuit 



1883.] Miss AMARANTH. 255 

priest, and knew, through the correspondence carried on be- 
tween him and her instructor, of his sister's probable conversion. 
"And now," said this kind friend, " I have good news for you. 
Father Armstrong wrote me that when you were ready to be 
received he would come here, if you desired, and give you condi- 
tional baptism and receive your profession." Amaranth rushed 
to her home, and, shutting herself into her room, poured forth 
her soul in a letter to her brother, more hers now than when 
they had been rocked to sleep in the arms of their human 
mother. Her answer came : " Thank God, Amaranth, and for 
all eternity, thank God ! I will riot write more, for we shall 
meet soon. Do not mourn, dear sister, over the loss of these 
years ; do not blame yourself for what you did. For you acted 
as you thought right. I have never doubted of your ultimate 
conversion. I firmly believed that one who loved God and 
served him as you did outside the church would know the truth 
sooner or later. I knew God would never select me for his 
grace and leave you. I cannot write, but I shall see you soon ; 
there are no words in which I could express my joy but those of 
the Te Deum and Nunc Dimittis" 

Amaranth's baptism was to be on Easter Monday. On Holy 
Saturday, when the Alleluias had been sung and the church 
begins to feel the joy of her risen Spouse, James Armstrong 
came, clothed in the habit of the Society of Jesus. 

We will not speak of the meeting of the brother and sister; 
for hours they sat in blissful communion, and both felt that, 
though earthly partings might come again, they were united for 
all eternity. 

The sun rose brilliant on Easter Monday ; all the earth seemed 
to share in the glory of the Resurrection. A small party were 
gathered in the little chapel opening out of the large one, to be 
present at Father Armstrong's Mass ; his sister was one, her rev- 
erend instructor another, and Mrs. Fairfax with her two daugh- 
ters completed the list. The Mass ended, the priest, descending 
from the altar, asked of his sister the solemn questions, anointed 
her head and breast with the Holy Chrism, and then, with trem- 
bling voice and quivering hands, said the words and poured the 
water on her bowed head that made her one of the great Church 
Catholic. Following that voice whose boyhood's tones had 
guided her through childish terrors, that voice that she had 
never thought to hear again, she repeated the glorious profes- 
sion of faith, took the oath of fidelity to the teaching of Christ's 
church, and rose up, no longer alone and homeless, but a sister 



256 Miss AMARANTH. [May, 

of the saints in heaven, and a daughter of that household upon 
which the sun never sets. 

Through the Easter week of rejoicing Father Armstrong 
stayed near his sister, and, in its course, from those brotherly, 
anointed hands she received for the first time the Lord whom 
she had always loved, and to whom she was at last united. 

Then Father Armstrong returned to his work, and Ama- 
ranth's quiet life with her friends was resumed. The tie be- 
tween Mrs. Fairfax who had been her sponsor and herself 
made her feel as though she were one of them, and her own 
mother could scarcely have loved May more tenderly than did 
Amaranth, who lavished on the girl all the unused maternal love, 
which is often stronger in childless women than in mothers. 

In the course of the year Gertrude Fairfax was married, but 
with'-'that 'exception nothing happened to break the monotony of 
thjbir^Mle together. Amaranth threw herself into the new life 
wi^iht'-a ,jo'y and ardor that surprised herself. Youth seemed to 
:co^'.tiack to her face ; her eyes were all alight with the inward 
joy : ; and now, when she had given up all hope of happiness, she 
found herself repossessed of her brother and happy to a degree 
of which she had never dreamed. But after she had had this 
help for the first two years of her Catholicity she was called 
upon to resign it; it seemed that God's whole plan for her had 
been to mould and complete her soul by leaving her alone. 

Little May, the light-hearted girl who always ran through 
the house with a skip and a jump, singing as she went, who had 
always declared her incapability to bear any sorrow, startled 
them all by asking permission to say good-by to all the plea- 
sures of life and join the Order of the Visitation. It was a ter- 
rible sacrifice to her mother, but she was too good a woman to 
hesitate in making it. To Amaranth the struggle was even 
harder ; loving May almost as if she had been her own child, she 
also felt the fear and aversion to a religious vocation which is 
almost universal among Protestants, and which is often the last 
prejudice to leave a convert. But when the wrench was over, 
and after some months she saw their darling happier in her 
chosen lot than all their love could have made her in the world, 
she grew content and returned to Boston, satisfied with her life 
without her who had been its earthly light. Amaranth was not 
unprepared for the next change that befell her the return of Mrs. 
Fairfax to Baltimore, to be near Gertrude. She said good-by 
to her, the last of the dear friends, and took up the burden of her 
life alone. 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? 

Yet not alone : she saw her brother occasionally, and letters 
passed between them every week. In addition to the many 
good works around her that occupied her time Father Arm- 
strong allowed her to share in his by making her his almoner. 

Not alone, for all the poor folk around her knew and blessed 
her ; not alone, for all the saints were her friends and loved her. 

Not alone, for Jesus had given himself to her in his Catholic 
Church, and she was content. 

And so the river of her life flowed on in peace, without a 
ripple on the surface of its calm bosom, widening and deepening 
ever till it should reach the boundless sea. 

" An uneventful life, and not worth recording ? " Ah ! it may 
be so, but it is the history of a human soul, and in God's eyes 
neither uneventful nor worthless. \ibP 

&<R 




*; 

WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS,"?* 

A VERY inscrutable problem is the origin of the German 
people. When Tacitus wrote his Germania in the latter part 
of the first century the country we term Germany was oc- 
cupied by Celts. But when the light of history dawns a sec- 
ond time upon the country we find it in the possession of das 
Deutsche Volk. Latham, in his work on Tacitus, is sadly puzzled 
by this fact, and, after long labors to elucidate it, reluctantly 
confesses : " It looks as if the Germans of Tacitus were not 
the Germans of subsequent history." No ; they were not. A 
migration which unquestionably took place is covered with 
clouds and darkness that seem to be impenetrable. The Ger- 
mans know nothing of it themselves ; and of course other people 
know, if possible, still less. They were not in those times a 
literary people. " We can follow the High-German as well as 
the Low-German branch of the Teutonic," says Max Muller,f 
" back to about the seventh century after Christ, but no far- 
ther." During these six hundred years the interval between 
Tacitus and Charlemagne the Teutonic race ascended the 
Danube, as Max Miiller fancies, and took possession of the coun- 
try they now occupy. Higher than this " history cannot as- 
cend." Hence Latham says : 

" When the Germans of Charlemagne and his successors conquered 

* Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache. Von Jacob Grimpi. Fifth edition. Leipzig: 1881. 
t Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. i. p. 205. 
VOL. XXXVII. 17 



258 WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS"? [May, 

(or reconquered) Transalbian Germany there was neither trace nor record 
of any previous German occupancy. Yet such previous occupancy rarely 
occurs without leaving signs of its existence. Sometimes there are frag- 
ments of the primitive population safe in the protecting fastnesses of some 
mountain, forest, or fen whose savage independence testifies their original 
claim upon the soil. In this way the Welsh of Wales and the Basques of 
the Pyrenees are monuments of that aboriginal population which held 
possession of Spain and. Britain long before the beginning of history, and 
which partially holds possession of them now. Yet there is no want of 
natural strongholds in the country in question. The Saxon, Switzerland, 
and Bohemian range, the forests of Lithuania, might well have been to 
the Germans of Tacitus what Snowdon was to the Britons of Agricola or 
the Pyrenees to the old Iberians ; in which case the present Germans of 
those countries would be the oldest inhabitants of them not the newest, 
as they are." 

Some of the German scholars of our day resemble " Japhet 
in search of a father." They traverse the whole world in search 
of an ancestry. Thus Von Hammer calls the Germans " a 
Bactriano-Median nation." Althamer makes Germanus equiva- 
lent to homo prorsus virilis and the same as Alaman i.e., Ganz- 
mann. Wackernagel, on the other hand, explains Germanus by 
Germanus i.e., Volksgenosse. Luden thinks the term Germania 
is nothing more than the German Wehrmannei ; while Von 
Hammer makes the name Germani, or Sermani, in its primitive 
import to have meant those who followed the worship of 
Buddha ; and hence the Germans, according to him, are that 
ancient and primitive race who came down from the mountains 
of Upper Asia, and, spreading themselves over the low country 
more to the south, gave origin to the Persian and other nations. 
Hence the name of Dschermania, applied in earty times to all 
that tract of country which lay to the north of the Oxus. Jacob 
Grimm is less hazardous than Von Hammer. He would find 
the ancestors of the Germans in Germany itself, and make the 
Germans of Tacitus the progenitors of the modern Germans. 

We are informed by Tacitus, in the second chapter of his 
famous work, that the inhabitants of Germany were accustomed 
to celebrate in songs of 'great antiquity the founders of their 
race the god Tuiscon and his son Mann. These are the first 
specimens of the native language which we find in the pages 
of Tacitus. But they are not German, and they are certainly 
Gaelic. Tus is a Gaelic word signifying " first." There is no 
word which in meaning resembles Tus more closely, perhaps, 
than the German word Ftirst. It signifies " a chief," and has an 
, affinity, in form, to the Latin word dux, in meaning to princeps. 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? 

The well-known patronymic Mclntosh whose correct Gaelic 
form is Mac-an- Tuis* signifies the " son of a chief." Tus signifies 
" primary, a beginning." Thus in Furlong's Irish version of 
the "universal prayer "the second paragraph begins with the 
words, Adruigkim tu mar mo cead Tus " I adore you as my first 
beginning'' And thus we read in Donlevy's Irish Catechism, 
Do cum Dia ar d-tus Adam " God formed Adam in the first 
place." 

The second syllable of Tuiscon is as Gaelic as the first. The 
word con in Gaelic signifies " sense, meaning, intelligence, wis- 
dom." It seems to be the radix in such compound names as 
Connal, Maccon, etc., which are often, though erroneously, sup- 
posed to derive their origin from the genitive case of cu, " a 
hound." Eacconn signifies "rage, madness, want of sense." Eac- 
con duine signifies " a silly, foolish man " ; eacconach, " mad, dot- 
ing, absurd," the prefix eac being a negative particle. If this be 
so, Tuiscon signifies " primal wisdom " and seems to be a most 
suitable name for the divine mind of the universe. 

Among the European scholars who attempted to explain 
this epithet Leibnitz holds a first place ; but, ignorant of Gaelic, 
which at that time was little known to Continental scholars, 
the efforts of Leibnitz were futile. He was obliged in his 
despair to suppose the manuscripts corrupt and substitute the 
word Theutates for Tiiiscon. It was an evasion of a difficulty 
rather than an explanation. This evasion has been adopted by 
many of his successors. They suppose fheut, or Theutates 
not Tuiscon to be the founder of their race, and from him they 
fabricate the term Teuton first and Deutsche afterwards. 

Absurd as this may appear, it is scarcely more so than what 
we find in a recent commentator on Tacitus, who is not ashamed 
to say as an illustration of this subject : " The root of the word 
Teuton is thu, or do, which originally represented the idea of ' ac- 
tivity,' of 'living, procreating, nourishing,' and also of ' taming, 
educating, and ruling.' From this root are formed the following 
words, some of which are still used in the popular dialects : Teut 
' God, creator, ruler, father, nourisher ' (Tkor, Tuisco}" 

It is to be observed, in this instance, that while the word 
to be translated is Tuiscon, the word this commentator chooses 
to translate is an entirely different word namely, Theut. He 
shuts his eyes to the object of inquiry and directs his attention 
to an object we have not inquired about. This is not all : he ap- 
pears to consider three words which have no radical connection 

* Tuis being the genitive of tus. 



260 WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS"? [May, 

namely, Tuiscon, Tkor, and Theutio^ be identical. Now, the 
Celtic word theut (more correctly tuatd) signifies " a layman, an 
illiterate person"; thor (properly toir) signifies" a noise, thun- 
'der"; while Tuiscon (not Tuiscd) signifies "primal intelligence." 
Indeed, it is impossible that the alleged founder of the Deutsche 
Volk could derive his name from the German thun or the English 
do, for we are expressly told that Teut, or Teutates, was a Celt, 
-and, being Celtic in his race, it is almost certain that his name 
likewise was Celtic. We learn from Leibnitz that Teut, or Teu- 
tates, was the most famous of the Gallic Celts, and occupied with 
armed force a large portion of Europe and Asia. He was the 
Mercury of the Celts ; and we know from Tacitus, Deorum mdxime 
Mercurium colunt. Tuatha, or Teutates, represented that portion 
of the Gaelic nation which was devoted to mechanical and com- 
mercial pursuits the Tuatha-de-Danaans of early Irish history. 
They were a conquered people who had been subjugated by the 
Milesians, and who, like other conquered races, applied them- 
selves in their slavery to manufactures and industry. In short, 
under the name of Teutates the Gaels worshipped the genius of 
Commerce, who invented their arts and protected their high- 
ways. 

Tacitus goes on to tells us that Tuiscon, the founder of the 
German nation, issued from the earth. If this signifies that 
human wisdom results from the contemplation of the physical 
universe, the notion harmonizes remarkably with the philosophy 
of Bacon and the ideas of modern times. Be this as it may, 
certain it is that, according to Tacitus, Tuiscon had a son named 
Mann a name which appears to some German writers to be 
perfectly German. But this is by no means clear, fpr the Celts 
venerated a famous hero named Manannan MacLir, or " Manus, 
the son of the sea." One of the most beautiful of Moore's 
lyrics relates to this Lir, possibly the mother of Manus, whose 
daughter, " the fair-shouldered," was transformed by enchant- 
ment into a swan and condemned to wander for many hundred 
years over lakes and rivers in Ireland till the coming of Chris- 
tianity, when the first sound of the Mass-bell was to be the sig- 
nal of her release. Moore says : 

" Silent, O Moyle ! be the roar of thy water ; 

Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose, 
While, murmuring mournfully, Lir's lonely daughter 
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes," etc. 

The subject of this beautiful songFionnuala, the daughter of 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS"? *26l 

Lir was the sister of Manannan, who, according to Cormac's 
Glossary, " was a famous merchant who resided in, and gave name 
to, the Isle of Man. He was the best merchant in the west of 
Europe, and could divine, by inspecting the skies, how long the 
fair and foul weather would last." 

The word Lir is the genitive case of Lear, which signifies 
" the widespread extensiveness " a figurative name of the sea. 
" His real name," says O'Flanagan, " is obscured in the glare 
of fabulous story." He appears to be the Neptune of Gaelic 
mythology, for he is termed Sidhe na Ccruac " the spirit of the 
cliff " and was possibly worshipped on those Irish headlands 
which, according to O'Connor (Rerum Hibernicarum), were re- 
garded by the Phoenicians as sacred. He is termed Mac Lir 
thainigh accein that is, " the son of the sea who came from afar." 
Accein is derived from a, " from," and dan, " distant." Manan- 
nan is compounded of " Mana," the Isle of Ma.n, and an, "of, or 
belonging to." 

So far as these words go there is nothing in them to prove 
what Jacob Grimm vainly labors to establish that the inhabi- 
tants of Germany in the days of Tacitus were Deutsche Volk. 
Jacob Grimm's Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache may be de- 
scribed as an ingenious effort to transmute Celtic words into 
German. He says, for instance, that that noble tribe, the Mar- 
comanni, derived their name, without doubt, from the German 
word Mark, " a border." They were borderers, he fancies 
lived on the selvage of some undefined territory ; they were the 
Grenzesoldaten of some archaic monarchy. But he cannot divine 
on what frontier they kept guard. Here are his words : Ohne 
Zweifel druckt der Name aus Grenzebewohner i.e., Without doubt 
the name comes from " borderers." He admits, however, that 
the demarcations of ancient territories were forests, not men, and 
he cannot find in the word Mark any trace of the word forest, 
or Wald. What Grimm endeavors to prove is simply that the 
Marcomanni were " border-men " because they lived in a central 
district ! They lay in the heart of the country selvaged by the 
Rhine on the west, by the Danube on the south, and by the 
Maenus, or Main, on the north ; therefore they were Grenzesolda- 
ten. This derivation is quite on a par with the lucus a non 
lucendo. The Marcomanni bore the name of " borderers," for- 
sooth, because they were really " middlemen " ! " Nevertheless," 
he says, "the appearance of these people in the army of Ariovis- 
tus seems to militate against my derivation and intimate a dif- 
ferent origin for their name." The truth is that the name is 



262* WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? [May, 

derived from the Gaelic marc, "a horse," and bcann, "a horn." 
Their helmets were possibly decorated with horns. 

In an account of the invasion of Greece by the army of Bren- 
nus,* Pausanias (p. 335) tells us that in the language spoken by 
these formidable invaders the horse was termed marc. Accord- 
ing to Irish orthography the word Marcomannijuust be written 
Marcai-m-beann. Of this we have many illustrations. " The old 
name of Dunmanway, in Cork," says Joyce, " was Dun-na-mbeann 
(Dunnaman), the fortress of the pinnacles. Dunnaman," he adds, 
" which is a correctly Anglicized form of Dun-na-mbeann , is the 
name of a townland in Down," etc. 

Grimm has attributed not only the vocables of the venerable 
Gaelic language but some of the customs for which the Gaels 
were most remarkable to his countrymen. He has endeavored 
to purloin the heroes of the Celts, somewhat as McPherson en- 
deavored to purloin the Ossian of Ireland. For instance, fos- 
terage in ancient Ireland, and its kindred on the Continent, was 
regulated by law. The privilege of nursing the children of their 
chiefs was so highly prized by the Irish that on receiving the 
infant they paid a high price for the favor. An old English 
writer says: " It is not to be passed over that the Irish in par- 
ticular look upon their foster-brothers in a higher degree of 
friendship and love than their own brothers, which Spenser 
takes notice of in his View of Ireland" " The genius of Ire- 
land," says Grattan, " is affection," and the Brehon laws con- 
cerning fosterage prove this to demonstration. Having imbibed 
milk from the same breast, the youths loved one another in after- 
life with a fervency of affection surpassing that of twins. When 
peace was established between rival chieftains their political 
alliance was confirmed through the medium of fosterage. If 
O'Neil was reconciled to O'Donnell he received into his family 
the infant son of his rival, and reared it as his own. Irish his- 
tory has preserved the memory of the intrepid self-devotion of 
foster-brothers who received the enemy's fire made a target of 
their own bodies shed their blood, and lost their lives in the 
vicissitudes of war, to save their " milk-brothers " from de- 
struction. When Caesar, in his Gallic War, draws a picture of 
Celtic chivalry he says (1. vi. c. 15), after describing the Druids : 

" The knights are another class. Familiar with war, when necessity 
arises or hostilities break out (which before the arrival of Caesar was of al- 
most yearly occurrence, as they alternately repelled or made inroads into 
adjacent territories), and as each chief is great in proportion to the number 
of his kinsmen and friends, they love to surround themselves with ambacti." 
* Brain, or Brenn, Gaelic for " chief." 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? 263 

Speaking of this word, Jacob Grimm asks, Sind es wirklich Gal- 
lische ?" Is it really Gaelic ? " and then takes a world of pains to 
prove that it is not. It has its root, he thinks, mamt, " an employ- 
ment," and comes directly into the German from the Gothic and- 
bahts, "a deacon," or ampahts, "a servant." He confesses, how- 
ever, that the Romans at an early period had borrowed this term 
from the Gaels. Ambactus, says Festus, lingua Gallica servus appella- 
tur that is, " Ambactus in the Gaelic language signifies a servant." 
For this explanation Festus quotes Ennius. And an old glossary 
explains ambactus in the following words : dov\o$ ^iffOcoro? GO? 
"Evvio?. Jacob Grimm describes a Gaelic coin representing an 
ox-head and containing an inscription in which ambactus occurs. 
The word gave rise, he says, to the mediaeval Latin arnbas- 
ciare and ambasciator the Spanish embaxador, Italian ambascia- 
dore, Portuguese embaixador, French ambassadeur, and English 
ambassador. " Being deeply rooted in the German language and 
growing out of its very substance," says Grimm, "it must be a 
stranger to the Celtic tongue, which can furnish no explanation 
of its meaning unless the idea or the word be subjected to vio- 
lence." 

But the true root of the word ambactus is, am, " a people," and 
beact, " a ring, a circle, a compass." The ambacti were the en- 
circling swordsmen, the medios satellites, the royal guards of the 
chief. 

Notwithstanding that passion for Sanskrit which is the in- 
curable malady of many German philologists and blinds them 
to more copious and adjacent fountains, Jacob Grimm does not 
venture to derive ambactus from badsch " colere." Die Deutsche 
Wurzel liegt ndher i.e., the German root is more at hand and India 
too distant. He goes on to derive the second syllable, bact, from 
the English back for a very extraordinary reason. Lncian says 
in his Toxaris that when seeking to avenge an injury a Scythian, 
to enlist a faction, sacrificed an ox to the gods, cooked the flesh 
in a caldron, spread the hide on the ground, and, sitting on the 
skin, feasted his friends. Every man who trod on the ox-hide 
and partook of the flesh pledged himself thereby to assemble 
partisans and assist in avenging the wrong. Spenser, in his 
View of Ireland, tells the story quite as well as Grimm : 

" You may read in Lucian that it was the manner of the Scythians, when 
any one of them was heavily wronged and would assemble unto him any 
forces of people to join with him in his revenge, to sit in some public place 
for certain days upon an ox-hide, to which there would resort all such per- 
sons as, being disposed to take arms, would enter into his pay or join him 



264 WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? [May, 

in his quarrel. And the same you may likewise read to have been the 
manner of the Irish." 



This is what Lucian terms naOi^eaOai enl rfj$ fivpffrjS. The Scy- 
thian seeking to enlist partisans lay upon his back while explain- 
ing his grievances, and the men whom he gathered round him 
and excited to sympathy or fired to anger were termed ambacti 
because, forsooth, the injured Scythian lay on his back ! Here is 
what Grimm writes : Lage in bak wie in Tergum zuweilen, in Tergus 
immer auch die Bedeutung Corium, so wagte ich, da ienes Ambactus 
mehr einen edle?i Gefdhrten als Knecht aussagt, Andbahts sogar auf 
das symbolische Betreten der fivpffa zu ziehen that is, he ventures 
to derive the word andbahts, which he deems identical with am- 
bactus, from the custom of begging help while lying on the ox^ 
hide, as he deems the office of ambactus more honorable than that 
of servant. 

Jacob Grimm on this occasion has fallen into a serious mis- 
take. The Gaelic ambact has no connection whatever with the 
English word back ; but it has a most intimate connection with 
the French word bague, " a ring." In fact, beact and bague are 
identical, at least as to meaning. The verb beactaim, "to em- 
brace, to encompass," and the adjective beactamail, " round or 
ring-like," show that the word contrary to the opinion of Grimm 
has its roots in the Gaelic, the language of ancient France, 
In endeavoring to make it Teutonic he has subjected the word 
to violence and distortion. His derivation is fanciful and far- 
fetched, and Diefenbach, in his Origines Europcce, entirely disap- 
proves of it. It is worthy of observation also that this French 
name for a finger-ring is utterly unknown in the other languages 
of Continental Europe. The Latins term a finger- ring annulus ; 
the Italians, anello; the Spaniards, anillo ; the Portuguese, annel 
or argola; the Germans, Ring; the modern Greeks, npixos, etc. 
We seek in vain for the origin of the French word bague 
m any of the Continental languages. They contain nothing 
even remotely akin to it. We are compelled in this way to re- 
gard it as a modification of the Gaelic beact a word which sig- 
nifies not only a ring but a moral quality. 

Writing on this subject, W. K. Sullivan* informs us that 
" rich princes in Ireland prided themselves on being surrounded 
by a brilliant and richly-armed retinue." To a portion of this 
body-guard the term amus was applied. " Theamus of Ireland," 
says Sullivan, " is the ambactus of Cesar's Commentaries:' " The 

* Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, v. i. 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? 26$ 

Gaulish ambactus" he adds, " is generally considered to have 
been a servant or attendant, and the functions given to the 
Irish amus correspond to this view." Sullivan, however, labors 
under a mistake. The word amus is not the word ambact. 
Amus is derived from am, "without," and fios* "knowledge." 
The amus was a military apprentice, the squire of mediaeval 
chivalry. The epithet was likewise applied to a madman Tigh 
na namus signifies a " Bedlam." In both cases the idea of ig- 
norance is conveyed by the word amus an idea which ambact 
never conveys. 

Another example of Gaelic chivalry is found in the third 
book of Caesar, which is likewise appropriated by Grimm and 
wrongfully transferred to the honor of the Deutsche Volk. In his 
account of the Aquitanian war Caesar informs us that a chief 
named Adcantuanus, who was invested with supreme authority, 
endeavored, at the head of six hundred devoted followers, to 
break out of the beleaguered city of the Sotiates. These heroic 
associates of Adcantuanus were termed soldurii. Each soldu- 
rius had a comrade with whom he shared whatever property he 
possessed. If disaster befell one the other was bound to partici- 
pate in it or perish by his own hand ; " and it was never known 
in the memory of man," says Caesar, " that when one soldurius 
fell the other refused to die." Jacob Grimm roundly asserts 
that no Celtic language is capable of elucidating the word sol- 
durius taugt Soldurii zu erldutern. It is pure German, he says, 
and its root js the Gothic skula, " a debtor." But in this instance, 
as in many others, Grimm prefers Germany to truth. The true 
form of the word is found in the Greek of Athenaeus, and is 
written by him ffihodovpoi. The first syllable of this word is 
siol y " a tribe." Thus the children of Israel are termed Siol Israel ; 
in the Irish Bible the Irish family of Macnamara, for instance, are 
term Siol Aodha, " the tribe of Hugh," etc. The second syllable 
is ochda> "of the breast." It is the genitive case of uchd y "the 
bosom." The third part of the word is a modification of urra, 
"a chieftain," and the whole means " the tribe or children of the 
chief's breast." It is a variation of the well-known phrase, A 
chuid mo croidhe. The words applied to the heroic clansmen of 
Lochiel were likewise applicable to the soldurii : 

" They were true to the last of their tJlood and their breath, 
And like reapers went down to the harvest of death." 

The satellites of Adcantuann seem to" have been identical 

* The/" in this and similar cases becomes silent through the junction with certain letters, 
according to the well-known eclipsts, as it is called, of Gaelic grammar. 



266 WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? [May, 

with the " Red Branch Knights " of Conor, King of Emania, 
who in Irish chronicle make so brilliant a figure, and whose 
memory still lives in the title of their residence in the County 
Armagh, in Ireland. "Military orders of knights/' says O'Hal- 
loran, " were very early established in Ireland. Long before the 
birth of Christ we find a hereditary order of chivalry in Ulster 
called Curaidhe na Craoibhe ruadh, or the Knights of the Red 
Branch." 

But if Jacob Grimm can maintain with any show of reason 
that soldurius is German, he cannot at least deny that Adcan- 
tuann is Gaelic. The central syllable in this title for such it is 
can, signifies "the head," and is a misspelling of ceann, a Gaelic 
word having the same meaning and sound. The prefix ad is 
intensitive. It is an augmentation of the signification or sense, 
and signifies "illustrious " in this instance. Adcantuann was the 
supreme head of the Sotiates, who, as ^appears from the syllable 
tuan, belonged to the Firbolg race. They were plebeians and 
he was their leader. This is shown by the final syllables, the 
Gaelic form of which is tuathanach (from tuanna), a word that 
signifies "of or belonging to the rustics." He was chief of the 
plebeians. From all this it seems evident that neither the ambacti 
nor soldurii belonged to the race of the Deutsche Volk. Neither 
the titles nor those who bore them were of the race of the modern 
German people. The two words are purely Gaelic, and those 
whom they designate likewise belonged to the race of the Gael. 
They were the "knights companions," or Duinibh uasul, of the 
Gaelic chieftains. 

To render this more intelligible it is necessary to observe 
that the inhabitants of Ireland consisted in archaic times of 
three nations, two of whom had been conquered by the third. 
They were named respectively the Firbolg, the Tuatha-de- 
Danaan, and the Gaels (Milesians), or Tighernai, the last of 
whom had mastered the other two. Hence we find in those 
terrible raids with which they occasionally ravaged the Conti- 
nent of Europe during two hundred years, such terms as Volgse, 
Volcae, Belgas, Bolgus and Teutomarus, Teutoni, Teutomates, 
Tigurini, Teutomal, etc. 

As an illustration of this we may state that the Eburones, for 
instance, of the Latin writers were governed by two chiefs, one 
of whom was termed Catevolcus, the other Ambiorix. The 
Eburones consisted of two nations, who are represented in these 
names. The Firbolgs are rul.ed by Catevolc, whose name is 
cead, "first"; te, "person"; voices (bholccs\ "of the Firbolgs." 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? 267 

The other chief is am, " the"; bi, " life " ; toruis, " of the expedi- 
tion." The sound which is has in the Gaelic language (is/i) is 
represented in Latin by ix. The O'Moores of Leinster, for in- 
stance, occupied a district in the now Queen's County termed 
Laeighis (pronounced lees/i), which in Latin is commonly written 
Leix. 

The name of the Eburones is derived from the place in which 
they resided namely, the two banks of the Mosa, or Meuse. Eb, 
or Ib, signifies a " tribe," ur signifies " the margin or brink," and 
obhan * (pronounced oan) signifies " a river." The Eburones in- 
habited the two sides of the Mosa. 

An unbroken chain of testimony, whose primal links are con- 
nected with the age of Alexander th'e Great, attests the existence 
of a people in classical times who were termed Kimmerii and 
Cimbri. The peninsula which is now termed Jutland where it 
selvages the Northern Ocean is indicated by many ancient 
authors as the residence of these people. In conformity with 
the genius of the Latin language they are termed Cimbri by the 
Romans, while the Greeks term them Kimmerii for a similar 
reason. " The Greeks," says Strabo, quoting Posidonius, '* give 
the name of Kimmerii to those whom we now call Cimbri." 
This alteration is regarded by Plutarch as trifling and pardon- 
able, and calculated to excite no surprise. The modification of 
the name is ascribed to time by Diodorus Siculus, who has no 
doubt as to the identity of the peoples. Ancient writers of high 
authority give us an explanation of the name. Cimbri in lingua 
Gallica latrones dicuntur, says Festus i.e., " Robbers in the Gae- 
lic language are termed Cimbri." * Plutarch agrees with Festus. 
In the life of Marius, cap. ii., Plutarch says : KijAfipovZ snovojjid- 
$ov<7i Fspjjaroi rov? \-q6r d$.\ Strabo in like manner (s. 292, 293) 
indicates the Cimbri as nXdvrfT^ and hyGrpixoi " wanderers and 
plunderers." But no word which resembles Cimbri and ex- 
presses robbery is to be found in the Gaelic language, according 
to Jacob Grimm : Nun kennt aber keine der heutigen Kelt isc hen 
Sprachen einen solchen Ausdruck. " The Irish for a robber," he 
adds, " is creachadoir, or spionneadoir " and the Welsh term 
Cymro has no connection whatever with Cimbri. 

In what he has said on this subject Grimm does not prove 
that the Gaelic is destitute of the word Cimbri, but he proves 
that he himself is wanting in a knowledge of the Gaelic lan- 
guage. The work cimb is found in Cormac's Glossary and sig- 

* Appearing still in English geographical names e.g., Stratford-on-Avon, etc. 
t" The Germans term robbers Cimbri." 



268 WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? [May, 

nifies " money." This is the most ancient form of the vocable, 
and the Romans, when writing Cimbri, seem to have had it before 
them. The letter b is dropped as superfluous by modern writers, 
and is not to be found in O'Brien and O'Reilly. This is the first 
syllable ; the second is raidhe (pronounced ree) and signifies a 
" tribe." Thus the Calraidhe (Calry) are the tribe of Cal ; Ciar- 
raidhe (Kerry) the tribe of Ciar, etc. The Cimbrf, in short, were 
warriors in search of booty soldiers on the look-out for gold. 
They realized the definition of a Gael as given in Cormac's Glos- 
sary, and translated by Pictet : Homme allant par violence (pit- 
lage, vol) a travers tout pays habite" " A man who, searching for 
plunder, traverses every inhabited land." * 

There is no word in the Irish or perhaps any other language 
which carries the mind back to a period so archaic and remote 
as this word dm. It means not only money but slaves. Every 
one knows that there was a time when wealth consisted exclu- 
sively of cattle, as is evident from the fact that/iCKKftz, " money," 
comes from peciis, " a herd." But this was comparatively a 
modern period. There was an age still more remote the twi- 
light of time when property consisted exclusively of captives 
and bondsmen, and man was the principal property of his fellow- 
man. This idea seems to be established by the fact that while 
cimb signifies "money," cime signifies "a slave." St. Patrick 
was a cime. The men who captured him in Gaul, and transport- 
ed him to Ireland and sold him to the Cothraighe, were Cimbri. 

It is evident from all this that Jacob Grimm is in error when 
he asserts so confidently that Cimbri is a word not to be found 
in the Irish dictionary. The fact is, it is to be found in no other 
dictionary ; no other language can supply its interpretation, as is 
evident from the fact that Grimm has explored them all in vain 
for this purpose. And, as he well observes, the national name of 
the Welsh has no connection whatever with it. That national 
epithet is not Cymro, according to Pictet ; the true form is Cyn- 
Bri. It is compounded, he says, of cine, " a tribe," and Bri, a 
proper name. The first colony that ever settled in Britain was 
led by an adventurer named Bri. The inhabitants of that island 
were the descendants of these colonists. Tain is " a region," Bri 
a man's name, etc. 

The Cimbri, unlike the Cyn-Bri, were not a nation; they 
were a profession. The Romans are termed by an orator in 
Tacitus Raptores orbis, but it by no means follows all the citizens 
of the Roman republic deserved so opprobrious a name. They 

* De PAffinitt des Langues Celtiques avec le Sanskrit. 



1883.] WffO WERE THE FlRST "GERMANS"? 269 

were not all robbers any more than they were all soldiers. The 
Cimbri are found everywhere. Few in number but renowned in 
history, the Cimbri, says Tacitus, occupied a gulf near the Che- 
rusci and were proximate to the Northern Ocean. Here they 
pitched their tents and entrenched their camp, the vestiges of 
which on either side of the river lend corroboration to their 
fame. Their settlement, consisting of castra and circumvallationes^ 
was military, not civil, and their residence apparently transitory 
in duration and hasty in construction.* Of all the writers by 
whom the Cimbri are mentioned a contemporary of Aristotle's 
named Philemon is perhaps the most ancient. He says that in 
their language the sea near which the Cimbri abode was termed 
More morusca, which signifies, according to Pliny, mortimm mare, 
" the dead sea." An explanation of this term is to be found, 
says Thierry, in the Welsh tongue, where mer signifies a " sea," 
and morosis " dead." But this Welsh explanation has been ob- 
jected to by Latham, who observes very truly that of all the 
season earth the Baltic is the last that should be termed " dead." 
Mad with tempests and torn by whirlwinds, it is never tranquil, 
never dead. This difficulty is easily removed by having re- 
course to the Gaelic language. The term more morusca consists 
of three words muir, the sea ; marbhach (pronounced morowci), 
" deadly, cruel killing " ; and uiscefi " water." The Baltic is a 
deadly sea because it is stormy and tumultuous because, in 
short, it is not dead. It is a devouring and insatiable flood. The 
name applied by the Cimbri to the Baltic is derived from the 
Gaelic verb marbhaim (pronounced morowiin), " I kill," and this 
owing to the turbulent character of that furious sea, swollen with 
the invasive rush of the Atlantic Ocean, lashed with polar gales, 
and paved with the bones of mariners. In harmony with this 
view a Greek writer quoted by Strabo describes the Cimbri as 
Celts a term which, in his system of geography, embraces all the 
inhabitants of western Europe. Nor is this all. The Cimbri are 
spread by the well-informed Pliny over a wider surface. He 
does not confine them to Jutland ; he discerns them roaming the 
Mediterranean and encamping on the margins of the Rhine. 

As to that terrible band of Cimbri who, between the years 
113 and 100. rushed, sword in hand, into Italy and spread havoc 
and destruction through its northern provinces, and who, as 
Florus informs us, were believed to have issued from the re- 

* In some respects not all by any means recalling the predatory expeditions of later times 
by the Northmen. 

t Uisge appears in modern times in English geographical names in the form Usk as applied 
to a river. 



270 WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? [May, 

motest countries in the west, we can only say of them that they 
formed not a nation but an expedition. This is evinced by the 
titles of their leaders. The supreme commander of the Cimbri 
is termed by Plutarch Boiorix that is, " the life of the enter- 
prise," the vital principle of the expedition. His title, if written 
in full, would be fear, " a man " ; beo, " living- " ; thoruis, " of the 
foray." (In Gaelic t when aspirated becomes silent.) He was 
the life of the foray. Another is termed Cesorix that is, ceas, 
"the eyesight"; thoruis, "of the raid." Let us here observe, 
once for all, that an "expedition, journey, pilgrimage, or tour" 
is always understood by the word torus. When compounded 
with certain other words the initial of torus, ceasing to be 
sounded, becomes, according to the euphonic rules of Gaelic, 
mortified or eclipsed. The word then becomes simply orus. 
Torus is the nominative case ; toruis (pronounced toristi) the gen- 
itive. This is the modification of the word which in Latin ver- 
sions of Gaelic names is often represented by orix. 

Our Celtic historians, such as Thierry and Godwin, entire- 
ly unacquainted with the language of the Celts, affirm that 
Boio-rix as they write it signifies " King Boio." But this is 
simply impossible. Righ, not rix, is the Gaelic for " king," and it 
is quite evident that these Cimbri were Gaels. Righ is likewise 
the human arm, because the king is the arm or executive of 
the nation. The character which historians ascribe to Boiorix 
seems to prove that he was worthy of this title. We are told, 
on the authority of Livy, that his age was youthful, his temper 
violent, and his courage intrepid. All the inferior chiefs were 
subjected to Boiorix, the guiding spirit of the great invasion. 

Speaking of this expedition of the Cimbri, a commentator of 
Tacitus says: " Strabo places them on the ocean; Mela in .the 
islands of the Baltic ; Pliny to the east of the Elbe, and on the 
peninsula which took its name from them ; Tacitus places them 
in the same quarter; Ptolemy at the extremity of the Cimbric 
Chersonese. But upon examination it does not appear that they 
ever inhabited these places." No, they were not the inhabitants 
of these coasts ; they merely landed at them. Their home was 
" the farthest part of the west." They fortified a camp on the 
margins of the Elbe, and then marched into the interior, sword 
in hand. The truth is that these expeditions were Irish, pre- 
cisely like that which in after-ages and in a different locality 
carried St. Patrick a chained prisoner into Ireland. These war- 
riors were the knights-errant of pagan times, ransacking Europe 
m search of adventure, gold, and renown. Owing to the fre- 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? 2/1 

quent recurrence of these invasions, repeated during centuries, 
the peninsula in question was termed " Cimbric " by the Greeks 
and Romans. 

Speaking of the Gaelic chiefs of Scotland, Sir Walter Scott 
says : " A young chief was always expected to show his talents 
for command as soon as he assumed it, by leading his clan on a 
successful enterprise of this nature (a foray, or creacadh) either 
against a neighboring sept, for which constant feuds usually fur- 
nished an apology, or against the Saxons, or Sassanachs, for which 
no apology was necessary." J. O'Donovan, in his notes to the 
Annals of the Four Masters, corroborates this statement by assur- 
ing us that the Irish had a similar custom. He describes the 
ceanurra, or captain, of an Irish "nation " as organizing a foray as 
soon as he was inaugurated when he stepped down from the 
"far-seeing hill." 

When the newly-chosen chief descended from the rock of in- 
auguration he hastened at the head of his clansmen to invade 
some adjacent principality. Now what was true of the provin- 
cial chiefs was likewise true of the Ardrigh, or supreme monarch 
of Ireland the Imperator Scotorum, as he is termed in a venerable 
manuscript. He summoned his urriaghs, marshalled his tribu- 
taries, prepared his fleet, embarked his forces, and set sail for the 
Continent. Being unable like a modern potentate to mort- 
gage posterity for the payment of his army, he promised them 
abundance of booty, kingdoms to ravage, and termed them 
cimbri, or pursuers of wealth. We must always remember that 
the Irish monarchy existed at least two thousand years. "Com- 
pared to lerne" said Archbishop Ussher, " the name of Rome is 
modern." Donald O'Neill, in his celebrated letter to Pope John 
XXII. , written in 1316, affirms what has never been denied that 
previously to the arrival of St. Patrick one hundred and thirty- 
six kings reigned in Ireland. Many of these kings, however, 
were righe go freasabhra, " reges cum reluctantia" sovereigns 
whose sway was reluctantly submitted to, whose dominion was 
not commensurate with the extent of the island. They as- 
sumed the title of Ardrigh, however, when two provinces and a 
fragment of a third acknowledged their authority. But this was 
a rare occurrence. The number of Irish kings who in the 
course of ages could boast of being righe gan freasabhra " rulers 
whose authority was entirely unopposed " was comparatively 
few. These were the men, however, who led armies on foreign 
expeditions. In his Life of Nelson, Southey says that Henry 
II. 's object in invading Ireland was to paralyze the Irish nation 



2/2 WHO WERE THE FlRST "GERMANS" ? [May, 

and prevent the havoc of his dominions by expeditions of this 
nature an object in which he certainly succeeded. Speaking 
of these expeditions, W. K. Sullivan says : 

' The political organization of Ireland was very weak for purposes of 
defence against an invading enemy; the chief king had no power over the 
numerous subreguli beyond what he could enforce by his arms, and there 
was no cohesion even among clans the most closely .related. . . . Such 
countries, however, might have sent forth very formidable invading armies 
in which the principle of military honor, fidelity to the chosen war-chief, 
and a sense of the common danger in an enemy's country would give that 
unity of action which could not be attained at home." 

Owing to the frequent repetition of these expeditions and the 
restless character of the Cimbri, owing to the appearance of 
their armed bands at widely separated points of the Roman 
frontier; the classical writers were persuaded that the north 
of Europe was eminently populous, crowded with warlike com- 
munities. They describe the Cimbri as extending from the 
Baltic to the Euxine, and flourishing at one and the same time 
on the Rhine and the Mediterranean. They give them armies 
of three hundred thousand men, exclusive of women and chil- 
dren. These exaggerations originated in the mobility and rest- 
lessness of the Cimbri, constantly changing their place of en- 
campment and living in chariots and wagons. They appeared 
in all the splendor of arms, with plumed helmets and dazzling 
spears, sometimes at the Euxine, sometimes at the Baltic, and 
sometimes on the Rhine ; but it by no means follows that they 
occupied the intervening country. The French, for instance, at 
the present day hold Algiers ; they have also a settlement on 
the Gulf of Guinea, but do not occupy the territory between 
these settlements. The Cimbri were TcXavrjre?. They were 
constantly doing what the Helvetii were restrained by Ccesar 
from accomplishing, what Orgetorix advised them to do ut dt 
finibus suis cum omnibus copiis exirent. Niebuhr pronounces the 
expedition of the Helvetii "one of the most extraordinary 
phenomena in history." But this was by no means the case. 
The Cimbri pursued the same practice. It appears astonishing 
to Latham that a people acquainted with the arts of agriculture 
should desert their country, burn their houses, and become as 
nomadic as the Tartars of Asia, who are destitute of corn. The 
following extract from Keating is calculated, we think, to elu- 
cidate this custom. Keating informs us that the Feine-na-h- 
Erionn* the ancient militia of Eirespent one-half of the year 

* Fin, or/eine, means a rustic or farmer in its literal acceptation ; fingast, a diligent farmer. 



1883.] WHO WERE THE FIRST "GERMANS" ? 273 

in hunting-, and during the other half were billeted on the agri- 
culturists, and thus combined the vigilance, energy, and agility 
of men who live by the chase with the industry, skill, and social 
virtues of the class who live by agriculture. Thus when they 
conquered foreign countries they were prepared for either mode 
of life, and were ready, like the Cimbri, to lay aside the sword 
and use the ploughshare, or, like the Helvetians, to turn their 
back on the plough and unsheathe the sword of war were by 
turns military nomads and settled agriculturists. We do not 
see anything incompatible in these occupations. What Tacitus 
says of the Suevi, "multum sunt in venationibus," would not 
hinder them from assiduously applying themselves in the inter- 
vals of war to the arts of peace, or from occasionally throwing 
off the restraints of a monotonous tranquillity and sallying forth 
like one man, sword in hand, to carry war and devastation into 
the precincts of " peaceable nations, neighboring or remote." 

To return. The object of Jacob Grimm's work is to demon- 
strate that in the days of Tacitus the Vaterland was inhabited, as 
it is now, by Deutsche Volk. More ancient writers, however, such 
as Pelloutier, maintain that those inhabitants were Celts. J. 
Grimm labors to establish his theory by showing that the names 
of the tribes mentioned by Tacitus are " High-German." In 
seeking to effect this object, however, he entirely fails. For 
instance, as every Irish scholar knows, the word sturrich (pro- 
nounced sturrei) signifies in Gaelic the summit of a hill. From 
this word the name of a tribe mentioned by classical writers, the 
Sturiori, is naturally derived. Grimm, however, has a different 
etymology. He fancies it comes from the German sturm the 
English storm and this for a cogent reason : the Sturiori, he 
maintains, were Cimbri; the Cimbri were a stormy people. 
Therefore the Sturiori were Deutsche Volk. 

To conclude, we are compelled, after a reading of the 
Geschichte der Detitschen Sprache, to declare that very many of 
Grimm's derivations are, to say the least, far-fetched and fantas- 
tic. We regret that we cannot fully coincide with him in his 
efforts to prove (ingenious as those efforts are) that the Catti of 
Tacitus and Hessians of modern times are one and the same 
people. We may be considered as fastidious ; but we cannot 
believe that these names are identical. Grimm's conclusions are 
possibly true, but we hesitate to accept them. We think it is a 
case in which " the vowels go for nothing, and the consonants if 
possible for less." 
VOL. xxxvn 18 



274 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. [May, 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. 

ON the 1 5th of May, 1559, Elizabeth and her Council arranged 
a plan at once to test the Catholic bishops of England. Her 
highness accordingly commanded the prelates (fourteen in num- 
ber) to appear before her at Greenwich Palace. Sir William 
Cecil and Sir Nicholas Bacon were present ; and it is needless 
to inform the reader that Cecil and Bacon were the uncompro- 
mising enemies of Catholicity. The queen informed the prelates 
that it was her will and pleasure that they should take the new 
form of oath about to be tendered to them, or else surrender 
their sees immediately. 

Dr. Heath, Archbishop of York, was first called upon to take 
the Oath of Supremacy. The aged prelate seemed deeply 
affected, yet he replied in a firm and respectful tone. He 
begged to remind the queen of the awful duties she had to 
account for before the Almighty God. He admonished her " to 
follow in the steps of her good and virtuous sister, who had 
brought back the country to the ancient religion which had 
flourished in it for so many centuries." He contended that the 
see of Rome was the mother of all churches ; that history and 
tradition, and the writings of the Fathers, and the learned coun- 
cils of holy men that were held at different times, all proclaimed 
the Pope of Rome as the head of that church which their Divine 
Master had founded. In conclusion the archbishop admonished 
the queen to think well on the policy she was about to adopt, 
and not to be led astray by the politicians who surrounded her, 
and whose motives were so well demonstrated to the world by 
their conduct in her brother's reign. " What will be the result 
to after-generations?" exclaimed Dr. Heath. "Ah! my good 
old master King Henry would not deny that we are the real 
shepherds of Jesus Christ. But King Henry was deceived on 
his death-bed. And now I warn your highness against the false 
prophets that are at this moment undermining the church of 
God. Your brother was awfully deceived by his Council and a 
certain wicked man* up to the last dread struggle between life 
and death." 

The members of the Council who were present seemed some- 

Thc "wicked man" here alluded to was, most likely, Cranmer, or perhaps Lord Hert- 
ford, better known as " the Protector Somerset." 



1883.] QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. 275 

what ruffled, and the queen felt annoyed at the allusions to her 
father. However, she was well schooled in deception by Cecil, 
and concealed her resentment for another occasion. Amidst a 
breathless silence the queen addressed the bishops : 

" My lord archbishop, I will consider you in the words of Josue 
' I and my realm will serve the Lord God.' My sister could not bind the 
realm, nor bind those who should come after her, to submit to a usurped 
authority, ftfy lords, / take those ivho maintain here the Bishop of Rome and 
his ambitious pretences to be enemies to God, and to me as the sovereign ruler of 
this realm" 

The queen delivered this address in tone and gesture most em- 
phatic. The bishops were ordered to retire from the royal pre- 
sence, the queen's " pleasure being that they should be allowed 
twenty-one days to reconsider their position and the demands 
made by the crown." With one exception (Dr. Kitchen) they 
remained firm to their faith and brave mariners of " Peter's 
ship." When the time for " further consideration " elapsed the 
bishops declined the Oath of Supremary. They were immedi- 
ately arrested, after the fashion of common malefactors, and 
committed to the worst dungeons in the Tower or the Fleet. 
" They were compelled," writes Farlow, "to pay for their own 
food, whilst they were left without the means to do so ; but 
some kind-hearted people made up a purse for the deposed pre- 
lates and sent it to them. Many of the ' good-givers ' were of 
the Reformer class." 

The news of the sudden change of religion in England 
created considerable excitement on the Continent, and the name 
of Queen Elizabeth became detested in Paris, Vienna, Rome, 
Madrid, and other great cities. 

Nicholas Heath, the deposed archbishop of York, was de- 
scended from the Heaths of Apsley, near Tamworth, where the 
family enjoyed a large landed property for many generations. 
In 1531 Nicholas Heath received Holy Orders, and eight years 
subsequently he was consecrated bishop of Rochester, and at a 
still later period was translated to the see of Worcester, where 
he remained till the accession of Edward VI. Upon Queen 
Mary coming to the throne she released Dr. Heath, then in the 
Tower. In 1555 ne was elevated to the archbishopric of York. 
The death of Dr. Gardyner, Bishop of Winchester, opened a 
fresh field for the display of his talents as a politician, when he 
became lord-chancellor of England. In that high capacity he 
signed the death-warrant for the execution of his " late persecu- 
tor," Archbishop Cranmer. It is affirmed that Heath felt hor- 



276 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. [May, 

-rified at signing the fatal document, being of opinion that a 
.churchman should have " no concern whatever with the shed- 
,ding of blood." The warrant is still extant, signed " Nicholas 
Heath, Lord-Chancellor of England." It has been stated that 
Bishop Gardyner never signed a death-warrant. As lord- 
chancellor he signed warrants for the queen in several cases of 
treason. Archbishop Cranmer, who never filled the office of 
-chancellor, placed his name, as Regent of the Realm, to the war- 
rant for the execution of Sir Thomas Seymour; and at a later 
period, at the suggestion of Lord Warwick, whom he feared and 
hated, the archbishop consented, in a similar manner, to the exe- 
cution of his own patron, " dear friend," and brother-Reformer, 
the Duke of Somerset, the idol of the Protestant party. 

There are several trustworthy Protestant contemporaries 
who have furnished posterity with a noble character of Arch- 
bishop Heath. " He was a man," writes Hay ward, " most emi- 
nent and of generous simplicity. He esteemed everything pri- 
vately unlawful which was not publicly beneficial and good."* 
Another writer, of Calvinistic tendencies, remarks : " Archbishop 
Heath's career, though not marked by any striking events, was 
most honorable to his character, and ought to make his memory 
revered by all denominations of Christians." f English histo- 
rians, excepting a few Puritan writers, agree in their commenda- 
tions of Dr. Heath. \ 

In the year 1561 Archbishop Heath was again removed to 
the Tower to undergo an examination for an alleged " popish 
plot"; but the scheme fell through, owing to the sudden death 
of a witness. About the same period the newly-created arch- 
bishop of York " affected indignation " at the idea of any popish 
priest "calling himself an archbishop." So Dr. Heath was 
duly cited, and excommunicated as a " popish pretender." 
Heath's successor in the see of York was an apostate priest, 
and a man whose moral character would not bear an investi- 
gation. 

Foss, a high Protestant authority, exonerates Archbishop 
Heath from any participation in the'" stake-fires " which were 
in operation during his chancellorship. In fact, he protested 
against those horrible scenes, but was outvoted in the Council by 
the men who subsequently held office under Elizabeth. 

Archbishop Heath was more fortunate than many of his 

* Hay ward's Annals of Elizabeths Reign, p. 13 

t Lord Campbell's English Chancellors, vol ii p 81 

J See Godwin, De Preasul, Anthony Wood, and Burnet. Machyn's Diary, p. 238- 



1883.] QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. 277 

clerical brethren. After a time Queen Elizabeth permitted him 
to retire to a private residence at Chobham, in Surrey. In this 
quiet retreat he resided for a few years, pursuing with devotion 
the sacred studies to which he had been so long and so ardently 
attached. He died in the year 1579, and was buried in the 
chancel of the parish church of Chobham. Such was the end 
of the eventful life of the last Catholic archbishop of York and 
lord-chancellor of England. 

Cuthbert Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, met with a striking 
reverse of fortune. In early life he enjoyed the friendship of 
Sir Thomas More, Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, Bishop 
Fisher, Archbishop Warham, and other eminent scholars and 
divines. More states that " the world had not then anything 
more learned, or prudent, or better than Cuthbert Tunstal." 
The amiable and excellent Archbishop Warham was one of his 
immediate friends. In a letter from Warham to Cardinal Wol- 
sey he speaks of Tunstal, on his promotion to the see of Dur- 
ham, in terms of eulogy, and describes him as a man of " virtue, 
learning, and goodness." * Camden, writing at a later period, 
presents Tunstal to posterity as " an able negotiator and a most 
exquisite master of all critical learning" a high compliment 
from such an eminent authority. In 1541 Tunstal assisted Dr. 
Heath, then Bishop of Worcester, in a revised edition of the 
Bible. Fie was most competent for this labor, being a noted 
Greek scholar at thirty years of age. His private character 
was " without spot or stain, and commanded the respect of even 
the malignant revilers of clerical honor." There is, however, a 
dark side to this sunny picture which a sense of truth cannot 
conceal. The clerics of the sixteenth century, like human na- 
ture in all times, were not perfect. Unfortunately for the high 
reputation of Tunstal as a priest, he became a courtier and 
joined the party of Stephen Gardyner. He advocated the di- 
vorce of Katharine of Arragon ; he took the Oath of Supre- 
macy to Henry VIII. ; he was silent, or nearly so, when Lord 
Crumwell and Dr. London issued their monastic reports and 
entered upon a crusade of sacrilegious robbery of the English 
monastic houses. 

In 1535 Tunstal wrote to Reginald Pole, denouncing the 
pope for not "quickly agreeing to the assumptions of the Eng- 
lish monarch." He preached at St. Paul's Cross against the 
spiritual power of the pope in England. He described Clement 
VII. in very uncourteous language as " a disturber of the peace 

* MS. Correspondence of Warham and Wolsejr. 



278 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. [May, 

of Europe." Father Peto and the heroic Remonstrant Soldiers of 
the Cross answered him from the pulpit in fearless contradic- 
tion, for they cared not for the favors or the power of princes. 
Notwithstanding the many warnings Tunstal received from the 
Invincible Soldiers of the Cross, still he adhered to the policy of 
the king. And his letters to Reginald Pole prove that he was 
completely in the monarch's interest.* Protestant writers in- 
sinuate from the above impeachment that Tunstal was a Re- 
former ; but he was no such thing. According to Dean Hook, 
he did not believe in Roman Catholicity, and made some such 
statements to the apostate Parker, whom Elizabeth placed in the 
see of Canterbury. But upon the death of King Henry, Tun- 
stal, Gardyner, and several other prelates had reason to lament 
the course they had adopted in the former reign. They now 
stood forward to guard " Peter's ship," but as far as England 
was concerned it became almost a hopeless task. Tunstal, Gar- 
dyner, and several other prelates were speedily relegated to the 
Tower or the Fleet by the Protector Somerset and that arch- 
apostate and marplot, Thomas Cranmer. 

Dean Hook contends that all the deposed prelates were 
" treated with kindness by Sir William Cecil and Queen Eliza- 
beth." But the conduct of the Reformers to Dr. Tunstal was 
marked by peculiar baseness. As I have already remarked, upon 
Henry's death Tunstal was deposed and stripped of his private 
property. Being released from prison by Queen Mary, he never 
actively remembered his former wrongs; he never persecuted, 
and in his broad diocese no man suffered for his belief. When 
Elizabeth felt herself established on the throne she deprived 
him not only of his episcopal revenues, of which he had been a 
munificent dispenser, but of the wreck of his private fortune and 
personal liberty. The early associations that existed between 
Elizabeth and Cuthbert Tunstal place the queen's conduct to 
him in a specially unamiable light. He was the prelate who had 
baptized her at Greenwich Palace, and was also one of her god- 
fathers. For many years previous to his deprivation he was 
in the habit of sending presents to Elizabeth on her natal day, 
accompanied by " some pretty lines," breathing good wishes for 
his goddaughter. 

Although the incarceration of this aged prelate may seem 
not harsh to some minds, as it presented the distinction of his 
being merely remitted to the " honorable custody " of Arch- 
bishop Parker, the confiscation of his private property was not, 

* The Pole Correspondence, MS., chap. vi. p. 375. 



1883.] QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. 279 

perhaps, half so annoying to Tunstal as the choice of his im- 
prisonment. Choice is not the word, for the bitter irony of Sir 
William Cecil may be seen in the apparent lenity of its destina- 
tion. No two men were more opposite in character than Cuth- 
bert Tunstal and Matthew Parker. Dean Hook represents 
Parker as a Protestant saint ; but the records of his actions 
prove him to have been the very opposite. He persecuted his 
former co-religionists, without pity or remorse. But the days 
of retribution came. When Parker had played the part Eliza- 
beth required, she quarrelled with him and sequestered a por- 
tion of his revenues. A great calamity followed to Parker the 
loss of his sight. The queen next ordered him to retire upon 
a limited pension. In the days of Parker's prosperity he has 
been described as " a haughty, domineering prelate." He per- 
secuted the dissenters in a manner that they never forgave.* 
We are assured upon the authority of Archbishop Laud, who 
held the see of Canterbury for the Anglicans in Charles II. 's 
time, that the Puritan fanatics broke open the tomb of Parker 
and flung his remains upon a neighboring dung-hill. And, by the 
way, in due time the Puritans sent Laud to the scaffold as 
" something worse than a papist." Archbishop Laud was "a 
worthy little man," amiable and tolerant. His great crime, in 
the eyes of the Puritans, was his chivalrous attachment to the 
unfortunate house of Stuart. But whether living or dead, the 
apostate Matthew Parker, the priest- hunter, seems to have won 
the contempt and hatred of all parties. 

To return to Bishop Tunstal. Until the reign of Henry 
VIII. many of the legal functionaries were clerics, and the 
offices of the exchequer were for a long period filled by priests, 
to the well-grounded dissatisfaction of the laity. Dr. Tunstal 
held the office of Master of the Rolls for six years. He was not 
only a great canon and civil-law judge, but an eminent diploma- 
tist, who discharged several political missions to the satisfaction 
of the king. King Henry's high opinion of Tunstal induced 
him to appoint that prelate as one of the executors of the " royal 
will." At a subsequent period Tunstal denounced the Duke of 
Somerset for violating King Henry's " most Catholic will." For 
his frankness Tunstal was committed to the Fleet by the Council 
of King Edward VI. 

It was the destiny of Cuthbert Tunstal to live in the reign of 
every one of the Tudor family ; to witness the beginning and 
almost the end of the Protestant Reformation. The character of 

*Aikin's Court of Elizabeth ; Neal's History of the Puritans. 



280 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. [May, 

Tunstal was solid and prudent ; his countenance, refined though 
florid, expressed benevolence and intelligence; his learning, 
which recommended him to the favorable notice of Erasmus, 
had gained him a reputation beyond the shores of England. For 
some years he was regarded as the leader of the constitutional 
party among churchmen a position which he enjoyed so long as 
moderation, dignity, and integrity were sufficient to maintain it. 
But he failed to show the energy of a leader as the troubles of 
the times increased.* 

Dr. Tunstal did not long survive the loss of his honors. He 
died at Lambeth Palace, November 18, 1559, and Maurice Chaun- 
cey relates that it was bruited at St. Omers that " an unpleasant 
altercation took place between Dr. Parker and his wife as to 
whether Tunstal should be allowed to have the visits of a Catho- 
lic priest at the time of his last illness." Father Davern, an Irish 
Dominican, then in concealment in London, " heard it stated that 
one of the chaplains of the Spanish ambassador was permitted 
by the queen to attend Tunstal, and that Parker and his in- 
tolerant wife were compelled to give way." It is certain that 
other bishops were not permitted the benefit of a priest at their 
last moments, thus placing them on a level with murderers or 
outlaws, who were, by the barbarous laws of the Tudor rulers, 
denied the rights of all religious consolation at the hour of death. 
Cuthbert Tunstal was a member of an ancient family, his father 
being Sir Thomas Tunstal, and his mother of the honored name 
of Neville a name long associated with all that was chivalrous, 
brave, and generous in the English realm. 

Dr. Day, Bishop of Chichester, was amongst the few prelates 
who had sufficient courage to oppose the innovations of the king 
in church matters. Day was neither a time-server nor a coward. 
He was not moved by terrible threats. When King Henry 
VIII. issued letters for the conversion of altars into tables, Dr. 
Day refused to enforce the order in his diocese ; and being 
threatened with deprivation, he pleaded vigorously for the rights 
of conscience. Finding, however, his efforts to be unsuccessful, 
he expressed his final decision in terms which command the 
respect of every honest man. "/ account it to be a less evil," said 
he, " to suffer the body to perish than to destroy the immortal soul. I 
would rather lose all that I ever had in this world than act against 
the convictions of my conscience.''' 

Dr. Day was committed to the Fleet prison for his brave 

f En ^ land f rom the ^olition of the Roman Jurisdiction,^ R. 



W 



1883.] QUEEN ELIZABETH 's FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. 281 

declaration, but at the accession of Queen Mary he was restored 
to his diocese, where his exemplary conduct endeared him to all 
classes. Upon the accession of Elizabeth, Dr. Day became more 
firmly attached to "Peter's ship." He refused to acknowledge 
Elizabeth as the " vicegerent of Christ." His property was con- 
fiscated, and he was sent from one jailer to another, enduring in- 
sult and privation. So this worthy and amiable prelate shared 
the fate of the other bishops, whose long imprisonment and con- 
fiscation of property are amongst the worst deeds of Elizabeth 
and her Council. 

Dr. Whyte became Bishop Gardyners successor in the see 
of Winchester. He was the first prelate whom Elizabeth de- 
posed. On descending from the pulpit, after preaching the 
funeral sermon for Queen Mary, the new monarch ordered his 
arrest, and he remained in the Tower till his health was totally 
prostrated. He was subsequently released and permitted to 
reside at the house of his sister, where he died in 1561. Cam- 
den states that, although allowed to live with his relative, he 
was prevented from practising his religion. And yet another 
contemporary alleges that during the imprisonment of Arch- 
bishop Heath the queen ordered every facility to be rendered 
to him in the performance of his religious duties. Dr. Whyte is 
described by an Oxford professor " as an eminent scholar, a 
pleasing poet, an able theologian, an eloquent preacher, a prelate 
of primitive behavior, and, altogether, a worthy, good man." Sir 
William Cecil has left on record his own "private opinion" of 
the bishop of Winchester. " He was," writes Cecil, " sincere, 
candid, honest, and hospitable ; very attentive to the duties of 
his see, and charitable to God's poor." If Dr. Whyte deserved 
this character which he did fully why did Sir William Cecil 
advise such treatment towards him ? The fact is, virtue was 
the very worst recommendation for prelatical prosperity in the 
days of Cecil and his royal mistress. 

Thomas Thirlby was a native of Cambridge, and in time 
received his education at Trinity Hall. Thirlby became emi- 
nent in civil law. He was " considered to be a rigid and de- 
vout priest, who won the respect of his contemporaries, both lay 
and clerical." So writes Thorndale. Thirlby 's introduction to 
Henry VIII. led to his promotion. The king knew how to win 
over men of ambition and talent. In 1534 Father Thirlby was 
appointed to the archdeaconry of Ely, and, in a few months 
subsequent, his royal patron made him dean of the Chapel 
Royal. The new bishopric of Westminster was next conferred 



282 QUEEN ELIZABETH' s FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. [May, 

on him. This see was dissolved in the reign of Edward VI., 
Thirlby having agreed to the terms proposed by Somerset's 
Council. Upon the accession of Queen Mary, Thirlby was in 
high favor at court, and was soon translated to the see of Nor- 
wich. Queen Mary sent him to Rome on a special mission, to 
represent to the pope the state of religion in England at that 
period. His Protestant contemporaries speak of Thirlby as a 
man opposed to religious persecution ; nevertheless he sent three 
men to the stake for heresy.* It may fairly be stated, in his 
defence, that the Council " pushed forward those persecutions of 
conscience." It is recorded by several persons who were pre- 
sent at Archbishop Cranmer's trial that Thirlby shed tears in 
pronouncing one of the decrees against his former friend. 

Dr. Thirlby was a most munificent benefactor to the diocese 
of Ely. He also added to the endowments of Jesus College, at 
Cambridge, which was first founded by Bishop Alcock. 

In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign she employed Thirlby 
in diplomatic missions to France and Scotland, which, it is 
stated, met with the queen's " entire approval." When his pre- 
sence was required in his diocese Sir William Cecil, by " the 
queen's command, called on Thirlby to take the Oath of Supre- 
macy to her highness in all things concerning religion." He at 
once refused and was committed to the Tower. When enter- 
ing that fortress he had on his person gold to the amount of five 
hundred crowns ; and the usual search having been gone through, 
the lieutenant of the Tower remarked on his having " so large 
a sum on his person, coming there as a prisoner." Thirlby re- 
plied with a smile: " I love to have my friends about me, not 
knowing what fare I may meet with in this place." 

Dr. Thirlby was next consigned to the custody of her own 
archbishop, Parker, who retained him a close prisoner for nearly 
ten years. He died in 1570. 

The accounts as to how the Marian bishops fared under the 
rule of Queen Elizabeth are contradictory. Ratclyffe says that 
| every degradation was heaped upon them by the bishop- 
jailers and their wives a class of women who specially de- 
nounced the olden bishops for their celibacy." And, again, Dr. 
Ratclyffe maintains: "As far as public opinion dare to express 
itself in Elizabeth's reign, there was a general disapproval of 
making the deposed bishops the prisoners of the 'new prelates.' " 
Ratclyffe was a Protestant physician well known in the social 
circles of the period. 

To commit the bishops to the worst dungeons in the Tower 

* Records of the Cathedrals of Ely and Norwich. 



1883.] QUEEN ELIZABETH" s FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. 283 

would not have been so painful and humiliating as that of being 
placed in the custody of the men who had just taken possession 
of their dioceses. What feeling could the deposed prelates 
experience towards their jailers? This degrading and cruel 
action was done for the purpose of debasing the bishops. The 
motives are clear enough. "The bishops conformed more or 
less to the new order of things," observes Dean Hook, " but 
Dr. Whyte and Dr. Watson could not conscientiously submit. 
Watson was at first committed tf> the custody of Grindal, the 
new Bishop of London, and afterwards to that of Coxe, Bishop of 
Ely. Instead, however, of meeting courteous treatment with 
courtesy, Dr. Watson was found * preaching against the state,' 
and it was deemed necessai*y to place him under closer re- 
straint." * So writes Dean Hook. Wisbeck Castle became the 
next prison of the unfortunate prelate. Here he remained four- 
and-twenty years a close prisoner. Dr. Watson died in 1584. 

Dean Hook is very emphatic in his statement as to a change 
of sentiment in the Catholic prelates; but he produces no autho- 
rity for his allegation. If the Catholic bishops conformed in any 
way Elizabeth would have been glad to retain them, if it were 
only for an incitement to win others ; for she heartily detested 
the Puritan element amongst her new bishops. Neither Home, 
Barlow, Coxe, Jewell, nor Grindal enjoyed her confidence ; they 
were forced upon her by circumstances. 

A notable writer of those times admits that when party feel- 
ing ran high when did it not ? " occasionally instances of harsh- 
ness must have occurred." f This admission on the part of Sir 
William Cecil's secretary (Camden) allows a wide margin for 
the persecutions of this age. Grindal, like Coxe, is a specimen 
of the clerical jailers of the times. He was one of John Fox's 
correspondents in framing the marvellous history of the " mar- 
tyrs." Grindal's whole nature was impregnated with the hatred 
of his Catholic countrymen, and both in the diocese of London 
and Canterbury he was the instigator of persecution against Ca- 
tholics. Liberty of conscience was a sentiment he could not un- 
derstand. 

Dodd affirms that few clerics received such rapid promotion 
in Henry's reign as Dr. Bonner. He was indebted for his pro- 
motion, not to any personal merits, but to the fact of being a 
near relative of Lord Crumwell. Within a fortnight Bonner 
was installed bishop of Hereford, and then was transferred to 
the see of London. He was expediently grateful : he spoke and 

* Dean Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury \ vol. ix. ; Godwin, p. 363. 
t Printed at length in Somers' Tracts, vol. i. p. 193. 



284 QUEEN ELIZABETH s FIRST CLERICAL VICTIMS. [May, 

acted with the court; he advocated the divorce of Katharine of 
Arragon ; he supported the King's Supremacy and the dissolu- 
tion of the monastic houses. In later days came the revulsion. 
After the death of Henry, Bishop Bonner became conscious of 
the immense mischief he had done to the church in the days of 
his " good old master." During the brief rule of the Protector 
Somerset and his colleagues Bonner was committed to the 
Tower, where he was kept in close confinement, not permitted the 
" use of pen, ink, or paper, and no fire'' When Bonner was called 
upon by Lord Hertford to take the Oath of Supremacy he at 
once refused to do so ; and that refusal may be considered the 
best action of his mischievous life. Bonner was no cowa/d, as 
alleged by the Puritans. It is only justice to Bonner to state 
that he was severely rebuked by the Council of Queen Mary for 
not acting with " expedition in the case of some obstinate here- 
tics." But he should have remembered that his first duty was 
to God, and taken a warning from the memorable sermon of De 
Castro, the Spanish friar.* Bonner was a thorough man of the 
world, and his ambition for office led him to an unenviable 
notoriety in the eyes of posterity, who have in too many in- 
stances adopted the reckless assertions of such writers as John 
Fox, Speed, and Burnet ; yet, strange to say, the Puritan writers 
just quoted admit, in favor of Bonner, that, "as the law stood, 
he could not refuse to hear those heresy appeals, as they were 
sent forward by the Council." Dodd takes the same view of the 
question. A recent Anglican writer describes Bonner as "a 
clerical judge who had never been a very zealous persecutor, and 
was sick of his work." f Bonner's secret despatches to Lord 
Crumwell from Rome, " concerning the divorce of Queen 
Katharine," place him in the worst light. He speaks of Clement 
VII., in his correspondence upon the divorce of Queen Katha- 
rine, in a manner both rude and insulting.^ Like his kinsman 
Lord Crumwell, Bonner had no party, and was detested by every 
one who adhered to the virtuous Queen Katharine. 

Bishop Bonner was most unjustly imprisoned by Queen 
Elizabeth >r ten years. His last days were remarkable for forti- 
tude and resignation. He was half-starved by his jailer, and his 
apparel became threadbare ; still, he maintained his manly cour- 
age, amidst insults and wrongs deliberately heaped upon him by 
Cecil and Bishop Home. 

* Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, vol. iii. pp 22O 286 

t Green's History of the English People, vol. ii. p. 260 

tin Brewer's State Papers Pope Clement appears in a most favorable Ifcht, and his con- 
duct with respect to the divorce of Queen Katharine has been defended in an equitable spirit 
by a Protestant and an Anglican clergyman -Professor Brewer 



i88 3 .] 



NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 



285 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ST. ANSELM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY AND 
PRIMATE OF THE BRITAINS. By Martin Rule, M.A. In two volumes. 
London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1883. 

Mr. Rule is a lay gentleman, who, although he was baptized in the 
Anglican sect by the name of Martin Luther, has dropped the name to- 
gether with the errors of that heresiarch and returned to the bosom of the 
true church. He dedicates the elaborate and admirable life of the great 
Doctor of the Church and illustrious English prelate, St. Anselrn, in beau- 
tiful and affectionate terms, to his wife, who appears to have been a partner 
in the labor of love which produced this tribute to the memory of a man 
wonderful alike as a theologian, a ruler, and a saint. The author has 
found his materials in Eadmer, Orderic, and William of Malmesbury, in 
St. Anselm's correspondence, in other ancient records, and in the personal 
inspection of all the places connected with the events of the saint's life. 
He has used great diligence and care in gathering and weaving together 
all these materials, and has shown great taste, skill, and artistic power in 
constructing a continuous, comprehensive, and fascinating narrative of the 
personal and public career of St. Anselm. This narrative includes, neces- 
sarily, an account of a great many of the most important events of the age 
in which he lived that is, of the eleventh century and the first years of the 
twelfth, the age of St. Gregory the Great, of William the Conqueror, 
William Rufus, and Henry I. 

The book has been published in the best style of Mr. Kegan Paul, and 
must take its place among the standard historical works of the English 
language. It is among the best and most valuable contributions which 
Catholic scholars of England have made to the ecclesiastical history of 
their own country. Its perusal has suggested to us the great need which 
exists of a complete and masterly history of the Catholic Church of Eng- 
land. Such a history we do not possess, either in a separate form or as a 
portion of the history of the universal church. We have it, in a certain 
way, as it is involved in, and interwoven with, the general history of Eng- 
land, narrated by the several eminent authors who have made this history 
their theme. In their pages, not even excepting Lingard, there is much 
which needs correction, and a great deal more is lacking. In all the works 
of specifically ecclesiastical historians there are very great deficiencies in 
respect to the history of the English Church. It is to be hoped that this 
great want may be supplied, though it might cost the labor of a lifetime. 

RAGNAROK : THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL. By Ignatius Donnelly, au- 
thor of Atlantis : The Antediluvian World. New York : D. Appleton 
& Co. 1883. 

The view maintained in this work is that the " drift " with which a 
large part of the earth is covered, and for which no perfectly satisfactory 
explanation has ever been given, is the result of the collision of the earth 
with a comet, which, by its after-effects, also produced the glacial age. 



2 86 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May, 

The objections to other theories in vogue are forcibly presented, and strong 
arguments given for this one. 

The author has an enthusiastic confidence in it which we need not 
share ; but there is nothing absurd in the idea of such a catastrophe having 
occurred in the past, as it also might occur in the future. The chances, of 
course, are against such a thing happening; but the event is quite in the 
order of nature, and positive evidence of its having taken place is deserv- 
ing of consideration. 

So far as we are able to judge by modern observation, the larger com- 
ets, if they should strike the earth, would probably devastate a great part of 
it and strew it with debris much like the drift, both in quantity and quality. 
The mass of the drift is certainly immense, but it is very slight compared 
with that of the whole earth ; and a comet might be insignificant as a dis- 
turbing body in the solar system by attraction, and yet by actual impact 
produce very serious effects. 

There are some scientific inaccuracies in the work, but the main thesis 
can stand well enough independently of these. It is a plausible and an 
interesting one. 

The author brings to its support various legends of antiquity collected 
from different parts of the world, and among others a Scandinavian one 
called " Ragnarok " (rain of rocks ?) which gives its name. to his book. In 
this endeavor to obtain historical evidence for his theory he strains many 
points and makes many forced interpretations. A remarkable example is 
the attempt to identify the catastrophe of Sodom with the great cometic 
disaster. In general we can by no means agree with the explanation given 
to the book of Genesis, which almost every reader will probably consider 
wild and improbable. 

Ragnarok, however, will on the whole repay perusal and furnish 
much matter for reflection as well as excitement for the imagination. It is 
a pity that the author should have injured his case by advocating it too 
strenuously and inconsiderately, but a good deal of it is left in spite of this 
injury. 

THE CHRISTIAN FATHER: What he should be and what he should do. 
Together with a collection of prayers suitable to his condition. From 
the German of Rev. W. Cramer by Rev. L. A. Lambert, pastor of St. 
Mary's Church, Waterloo, N. Y. With an Introduction by Right Rev. 
Stephen V. Ryan, D.D., C.M., Bishop of Buffalo. New York: Ben- 
ziger Brothers. 1883. 

This is a companion volume to The Christian Mother, which was intro- 
duced to the American public by the Archbishop of Baltimore and highly 
commended by us on its appearance. It is introduced by another prelate, 
the Bishop of Buffalo, with the strongest terms of praise and approbation. 
There is no need to say any more by way of recommendation. We have 
been particularly interested by a narrative entitled " The Red Farmer of 
Munster," which is a description of his own father by a priest. We would 
like to see these two books in the hands of all parents, and of all young 
people who are beginning their married life in Christian wedlock. The edi- 
tions published are neat, but it would be a happy thought to publish others 
also in the most costly and elegant style for presents, and for that class of 
persons who are most in need of such books, and yet disdain to have them 
on their tables unless they are very dainty articles. 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287 

PATRON SAINTS. By Eliza Allen Starr. First and Second Series. Balti- 
more : John B. Piet & Co. 1883. 

Less than two years since we had occasion to notice in this magazine 
the issue of the second series of Eliza Allen Starr's sketches called Patron 
Saints. The volumes now at hand are a new edition of both the first and 
second series of this lady's pen-pictures of God's blessed ones. We can- 
not say too much in praise of these books ; in their way they are excellent. 
We are convinced that they have already wrought much good, and we 
trust that they will find a place in every Christian family, there to teach the 
lesson of love to God. Miss Starr has dedicated her sketches to the young, 
and she has been true to the object for which she wrote. She wished 
to give the young people bright, entertaining reading, through which she 
would enkindle in their hearts a love of virtue by showing the glory of 
those in whose lives the thought of God was the inspiring motive of their 
every action. We are of opinion that she has succeeded in accomplishing 
what she purposed. 

Her style is pleasing ; she has acquired the art of keeping her reader's 
attention to the end. In her choice of subjects she has been very happy, 
having selected those which abound in the lessons she would impart and 
which at the same time are full of poetry, so engaging with the young. 
Not the least of the merits of these books is that the sketches are short, 
there being more than fifty in the two volumes. 

As to the etchings, of which there are a number in each volume, they 
serve to remind those having a knowledge of the originals of the works 
of which they are copies, and we trust that the day is not far distant when 
the patronage accorded such books as those we have been reviewing will 
enable publishers to enlist the services of some of our eminent artists in 
the execution of illustrations. 

FOUR DAYS IN THE LIFE OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. A drama for young 
ladies. By a member of the Order of Mercy. Edited by a member of 
the same Order, authoress of The Life of Catherine McAuley, etc. 
New Orleans : T. Fitzwilliam & Co., 62 Camp Street. 1883. 

An interesting little drama for the exhibitions of girls' schools, in which 
Mary Stuart and her " four Maries " are introduced in four epochs of the 
ill-fated queen's life, the first scene representing Mary and her companions 
as little children, the last the parting at Fotheringay Castle just before 
Mary passed to the English headsman. 

LIFE OF ST. DOMINIC. By the Rev. Pere H. D. Lacordaire, of the Order of 
St. Dominic, and member of the French Academy. Translated by Mrs. 
Edward Hazeland. London : Burns & Oates. 1883. 

One cannot read the lives of the saints too often, especially in these 
times when faith, conviction, and courage are so sorely in demand. Two 
men of the stamp of St. Dominic and St. Francis sufficed to turn the tide 
of the prevailing corruption of their age, purify the members of the church, 
and renew her vigor. 

This is an eloquent life of St. Dominic, founded on original researches, 
from the pen of the undaunted Pere Lacordaire. Those who have not 
read it will do well to do so, and those who have should read it again and 
again. 



288 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May, 1883 

CHARITY AS AN INVESTMENT. Lecture delivered Sunday, January 14, 1883, 
by Rev. Ferreol Girardey, C.SS.R., in St. Alphonsus' Church, for the 
benefit of the poor visited by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. 
Father Girardey's lecture is an able and original paper. It is refreshing 

to read a new treatment of so trite a subject as the pious work of the So- 

ciety of St. Vincent de Paul the care of the poor. 

SERVANTS OF GOD ; or, Stories of the Saints. From approved sources. 
Boston : Thomas B. Noonan & Co. 1882. 

This volume contains a judicious selection of the best of all pious read- 
ing the lives of the saints. This book will do good service, since its pe- 
rusal cannot fail to suggest holy thoughts and good resolutions. 

GROWTH IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR LORD. Meditations for every day 
of the year, exclusive of those for each festival, day of retreat, etc. 
Adapted from the French original of Abbe de Brandt by a " Daughter 
of the Cross," Vol. iii. London ; Burns & Gates. 1883. 

In the January number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD may be found a no- 
tice of the first two volumes of this work. These excellent meditations 
will be appreciated by all who are desirous to be more like the Master. 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 
An essay to accompany a collection of aboriginal relics presented for 
the Toner Medal, 1882. By Louis A. Kengla, Student of Georgetown 
University, D. C. Washington : R. A. Waters & Son, Printers. 1883. 

Mr. Kengla has added some Indian remains to the collection of his col- 
lege, and in this pamphlet gives^i description of them with some sugges- 
tions as to the mode of work followed by the Indians in making them. 
Colleges in other parts of the country might take a hint from Mr. Kengla's 
pamphlet and do their share in preserving and classifying the archaeolo- 
gical remains in their vicinity. 

THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY. By Henry Greer, author of the Dictionary 
of Electricity. Illustrated. New York : 122 East Twenty-sixth Street. 
This is a well-written and interesting account of this very important 
and practical modern branch of the science, presented in a pamphlet of 
forty-two pages. The system of Mr. Brush is specially described, but the 
methods of other inventors are also treated at some length, and a general 
history of the progress in this department is given. The subject is pre- 
sented in too technical a way to be intelligible throughout to the ordinary 
reader, but the statements of results attained, and of the advantages of 
storage-batteries over the ordinary machines, are clear enough to make 
the treatise worth any one's reading, and to excite an interest that would 
induce to a study of electrical science, which has made such wonderful ad- 
vances in the last few years a science which is not, in its practical aspect, 
very difficult to master. 

A ^ f Sacrifke " B ? Frances N ble. Boston; Thomas B. 



TAL f? THE WINDOW B b E v R I A a d D ' c 7 Re "' W V H ;, Anderdon > S.J.; and THE HANDKERCHIEF 
AT^THE ,W] DOW, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton. Boston : Thomas B> Noonan & Co. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVII. JUNE, 1883. No. 219. 



UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. 

CONFESSIONS of the failure of Protestantism as a religious 
system by persons educated and living under its influence have 
become quite frequent of late years. Our attention has lately 
been called to an article containing such a confession in the 
International Review for April. It is entitled " Influence of Sec- 
tarianism in Religion," and was written by a Mr. William Myall. 
We do not know who Mr. Myall may be, and must beg his 
pardon if we omit any additions which should be made to his 
name ; but, so far as we can judge, he is one who would not at- 
tach great importance to any such which might be his by right. 

The title of his paper is necessarily brief and does not con- 
vey much idea of its drift. We may say, on the whole, that its 
real purpose certainly a difficult one to express in few words 
is twofold. It is, in the first place, to show that the sort 
of sectarianism which now exists, and which sprung from the 
action of the first Reformers (though by no means intended or 
sanctioned by them), is destructive to all belief in the positive 
dogmas of Christianity. 

This is manifestly true, and cannot be denied by any one 
who will spend only a few minutes in examining the question. 
For this sectarianism is the recognition of the right of every 
one to believe, or rather to theorize, in religious matters as he 
pleases. This perfect freedom of speculation, of course, brings 
matters to such a pass that there are almost as many so-called 
Christian religions as individuals. When this state of things 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



290 UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. [June, 

has come in, as we may say it has now in the Protestant body, 
no reasonable man can, without an overweening confidence in 
his own mental powers, hold firmly an opinion for it is nothing 
more which so few share with him and so many oppose. It 
becomes, therefore, impossible for intelligent men to attach them- 
selves firmly to any Protestant system. Firm persuasion of the 
truth of any distinctively Christian dogmas disappears ; there 
is a constant flux and. reflux; everything may be successively 
entertained as probable, or everything abandoned. 

The recent progress of physical science also helps, as Mr. 
Myall shows, in this destructive work. Some of its real dis- 
coveries seem inconsistent to many Protestants as sometimes 
even to ill-instructed Catholics to be incompatible with what 
they have been accustomed to hold as essential to Christianity. 
And its crude theories, like that of evolution, which he instances, 
are taken by the mass of them for real discoveries. They have 
in the true sense of the term, which he unconsciously recognizes, 
and which we will shortly more fully explain, faith in the con- 
clusions of science, or of what they regard as such ; religious 
faith they have none, but merely opinion. Their faith, in its 
contest with weakly-grounded opinion, naturally comes off the 
victor. In the case of the learned few who really know the 
grounds of scientific results, and the processes by which they 
are attained, this knowledge answers the same purpose that faith 
does for the multitude. 

The tendency, therefore, of so-called Protestant Christianity 
has then always necessarily been, and conspicuously is now, to 
leave the field of dogma and to resolve itself into a mere moral 
system, commending itself to the natural feeling of all except 
perhaps the most depraved, but having no right to attach 
Christ's name to itself, except that he is viewed as the one who 
surpassed all others in the conformity of his life to it. It finally 
protests not only against Catholic teaching, but also against the 
teaching or the holding by any one as important of anything 
concerning the soul which is not clearly attainable by reason ; 
and receives Christ's own teaching only as the teaching of a good 
man, whose moral doctrine was more pure and perfect than that 
of others only on account of the more perfect purity of his own 
character. In other words, religious, or, to say the least, Chris- 
tian, faith has then, as will be seen, gone from it for ever. For 
what is faith ? 

In its general sense it is belief in the teaching or evidence of 
some one whom we trust. Thus, as has just been said, the 



1883.] UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. 291 

popular mind at the present day has faith in the teachings of 
scientific men and takes their results on faith. Very few of 
those who believe in the commonest and most certain of these 
results would be able to give any reason for their belief, except 
that those who have examined them testify that they are cor- 
rect. And this faith shows itself not only in the more abstract 
and unpractical matters of science, but in those also upon which 
the greatest interests depend. How many of the immense num- 
ber who cross the ocean know anything of the laws governing 
the movements of the heavenly bodies, upon which, however, 
they must rely if they wish to reach their destination safely? 

Indeed, the very existence of society, and all our daily actions, 
involve the exercise of faith continually. One cannot even take 
a dose of medicine without making implicitly an act of faith 
both in the doctor who orders it and the apothecary who makes 
it up. If we insisted on examining everything for ourselves, 
and arriving at our own conclusions in all the daily affairs of 
life, things would come pretty much to a stop, both for the in- 
dividual and for society. Even those who are at the head of 
intellectual progress, those who add to human knowledge by 
their own researches, depend, and must depend, on faith for the 
very means they use. No advance could be made in the short 
term of human life if every one were to wait to verify personally 
the conclusions of all those who had preceded him. 

Such, then, is faith in general something which every one 
uses, and which we cannot get along without. And evidently 
it may be exercised in matters not attainable by ordinary 
thought and experience in this world as well as in those which 
are. In this case it becomes, in a certain sense, religious or 
supernatural faith. If a friend appears to us after death, and 
gives reasonable proofs of his identity, we may of course put 
confidence or faith in what he may tell us of his experience since 
his departure. A moment's trustworthy evidence of this kind 
would outweigh a whole lifetime of speculation. Spiritualists,, 
so-called, think that they have this evidence ; Catholics also put 
some confidence in revelations of this kind, though our religious 
faith in its strict sense is not founded on them. But the mass of 
Protestants have abandoned, or are fast abandoning, even this 
low and uncertain form of faith. Still more have they dropped 
the higher and more certain faith which is the life of the Catho- 
lic Church, and which remains in it to-day just as it was eight- 
een centuries ago. 

What is this more certain faith? It is the belief in the 



292 



UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. 



[June, 



evidence or revelation, not of man, but of Almighty God. This 
evidence or revelation they are coming to regard as never 
having been given, or as being unattainable in the only place in 
which they are willing to look for it that is to say, in the Bible, 
which they blindly accepted in the beginning as being God's 
pure and only word. They have been driven to this, of course, 
by the ever-increasing disagreement among themselves as to its 
sense, as well as by the arguments of science and rationalism 
against its veracity. 

This, then, is Mr. Myall's first point, somewhat more devel- 
oped and explained. Protestants, while retaining the habit of 
faith in general, have lost, or are rapidly losing, their Christian 
faith their belief, that is, in the revelation or testimony of 
Christ ; in some cases because they have come to regard him 
whom they look on as the Founder of their religion as not hav- 
ing been either himself divine or authorized to speak in God's 
iiaame ; in others because, though retaining a belief in his autho- 
rity to teach, they cannot satisfy themselves what his dogmatic 
teaching really was. Their minds, as Mr. Myall truly remarks, 
.are " set adrift upon a sea without harbor and without shore." 

His second point is that this loss of faith, or this elimination 
of the dogmatic part of Christianity, of that which alone, ac- 
cording to him, distinguishes it from other religions, has been a 
great benefit to the human race. We say " according to him " ; 
for, in point of fact, there is a true and special Christian morality, 
though of course depending on its dogma, and therefore in one 
sense forming a part of it. 

And why does this loss of faith seem to him such a benefit? 
Of course for the usual reason current nowadays namely, 
because by it the human mind has been set at liberty. The 
nonsense of this claim, which Mr. Myall seems to have some, 
faint idea is original with himself, is apparent enough to all in- 
telligent Catholics, and, it is to be hoped, to many even of those 
who are outside of the church ; still, it may be well to take this 
occasion to expose it fully. 

Liberty is a fine-sounding word ; and liberty in various 
senses, which we need not detail, is really an excellent thing, 
and a worthy object for which to make great sacrifices. But all 
liberty is not good or desirable, as a few minutes' reflection will 
show. A fool, for example, enjoys, if we may say so, a more or 
less complete emancipation from the laws of thought ; given a 
major and a minor premise, he need not adopt the conclusion 
which necessarily follows from them, and to which others, are 



1883.] UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. 293 

bound. Or a man not a fool, but simply ignorant in some de- 
partment of human knowledge, is more free to indulge in ex- 
ploded hypotheses regarding it than one who is better informed. 
The latter is not free to give interior assent to them ; he knows 
too much. Other instances might be given ; but these will 
suffice and lead up to the case in hand. 

Let us come closer to it. It evidently would not be a bene- 
fit to civilized mankind in general to lose that faith in the 
genuine results of natural science of which we have spoken, and 
thus acquire liberty to speculate freely. We venture to think 
that Mr. Myall himself would be much chagrined if, on waking 
up some fine morning, he should find that astronomy, geology, 
chemistry, and the rest had suddenly reverted, in popular esti- 
mation, to the state in which they were before the great dis- 
coveries of the last few centuries. What benefit would the 
human race have received, or what progress would it have made, 
if the rotundity of the earth, for example, should again become 
an open question ? Every one will readily agree that such a 
change in the mental position of mankind would be, though 
certainly a freeing from the constraint of the grooves in which 
its thought now runs, by no means a salutary one, and the very 
opposite of progress. 

The fact is, as any one can see, that every addition to human 
knowledge is, in one sense, a diminution of liberty of thought. 
One field of speculation is closed by it. We are now, for in- 
stance, free to indulge in theories about an open polar sea ; when 
the first adventurous voyager reaches the pole, if he returns to 
tell his story, the age of liberty of thought in that direction will 
have come to an end, and that of faith will begin. Faith yes, 
in this case, exactly that ; not the conclusion of reason, but 
simply belief in the testimony of some one who does not surmise, 
but knows what he is talking about. 

It is, then, absurd to claim that liberty to speculate vaguely is 
an improvement on adhesion to dogmatic or positive teaching, 
merely in itself considered. When the teacher is a reliable one, 
well informed in the matters of which he treats, it is the height 
of folly to insist on continually guessing when we have an op- 
portunity to know the truth and to bring our minds from their 
wanderings into permanent allegiance to it. It would be just 
as sensible for a boy to stay from school and insist on develop- 
ing from his own interior consciousness what he might there 
learn. " Why this slavery of school?" he might say. " Liberty 
of thought is what I need." 



294 UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. [June, 

A boy might perhaps be excused for such a silly notion. But 
a grown man should be ashamed to adopt it. Any reflecting 
mind will perceive that, so far from untrammelled liberty of 
thought being the true way to progress in knowledge, the only 
way to make such progress is to restrain and direct the action 
of our minds by subjecting them to the influence of instruction 
and information from some external source, and thus take away 
part of their liberty. Only let the source be one on which we 
can safely depend. 

The attempt to develop from within one's self what ought to 
be sought for outside is indeed precisely the mistake for which 
the men of the present age justly blame what we may call the 
ante-Baconian scientists, and which made all the labors of those 
scientists of so little value. If a man refuses to use a telescope, 
or to listen to any one who does, preferring to determine by 
a priori reasoning how many satellites Jupiter ought to have, 
knowledge of the truth will be for ever impossible to him. Of 
course we do not mean to say that this kind of reasoning should 
be altogether discarded ; no true scientific man does that. It 
must go hand-in-hand with observation ; it directs observation 
and explains its results. But when once clear and certain ob- 
servations have settled a point, reasoning as to what ought to 
be is expelled by the knowledge of what is. A peg is put at 
this point gained, a milestone of progress is set up ; henceforth, 
in this matter, "nullaVestigia retrorsum." 

In this domain of natural science fortunately the mind of civ- 
ilized man is, on the whole, on the right track. Prejudices, it is 
true irreligious ones mainly just now may lead it somewhat 
astray for a while ; but so far, at least, modern science has, as a 
rule, kept to its true methods, and its vagaries have been soon 
corrected. But in rejecting error in one department of know- 
ledge too many of the votaries of progress have fallen into it 
in another. In religion they have taken up precisely the false 
procedure which their ancestors so long clung to in physical 
science. They refuse to observe, to examine into facts, or to 
take account of the observations or the testimony of others ; and 
of course they are perpetually beginning anew. The only thing 
which saved their predecessors from doing so in physics was a 
respect for authority, principally for that of one master genius ; 
but there is no one speculator in religion in modern times to 
whom the rest will bow as the former physicists did to Aristotle ; 
partly from the want of so great a mind, partly from a want of 
humility in themselves. And thus even the semblance of an 



1883.] UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. 295 

advance in knowledge in this department becomes impossible for 
them. 

Simply, then, from this cause, from this puerile disdain for 
what others have learned before them, this absurd idea that 
liberty of thought unchecked by information will lead to truth, 
they expose themselves to the just contempt of those whom they 
foolishly regard as the slaves of dogma. Revolving in an end- 
less circle, they take up one after another theories which they in 
their ignorance regard as original, but which in fact have been 
for a time entertained and then thrown aside ages ago. 

The example of these unfortunate religious speculators, their 
want of success, more and more conspicuous every day, in at- 
taining any certain and positive results, should be enough to 
show the absurdity of expecting anything from thought uncon- 
trolled by positive information in matters lying outside of the 
personality of the thinker himself, even if this absurdity were 
not sufficiently evident for intrinsic reasons. 

If one will only stop a moment and consider he will see that 
religion, outside of the existence of God and our responsibility 
to him, and the general principles of morality (all which are 
plain enough to our interior consciousness), is an extraneous 
matter, and that to arrive at any scientific knowledge of it it is 
absolutely necessary to find some facts outside of ourselves for a 
basis of the science which we wish to construct. To make pro- 
gress we must begin by restricting our liberty of thought in the 
acceptance of these facts, exactly as in physical science we begin 
by taking for granted the existence of the material world which 
is its subject. 

If we come to the conclusion that there are no such facts, or 
that we cannot get at them, our only sensible course is to de- 
sist from efforts which merely waste our time and intellectual 
strength, and devote our attention to other subjects. We have 
no business to indulge a liberty of thought which can lead no- 
where for want of a basis to start from and materials with 
which to work. But we should not come to such a conclusion 
without careful and patient study, and a sincere purpose to 
surrender the fancies of our minds, if necessary, to the certainty 
of the truth. 

Christians worthy of the name have come to the conclusion 
that facts relating to the supernatural world have been revealed 
by the authority of God through the great Teacher whose name 
they bear and whose disciples they profess to be. They may 
be, if you please, mistaken in this conclusion ; this mistake, if it 



296 UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. [June, 

be a mistake, is the proper thing to bring- against them, instead 
of the ridiculous charge that they have given up liberty of 
thought by the acceptance of what they consider to be proved 
facts. 

And if from these which they regard as proved facts other 
consequences follow ; if on these facts a scientific and connected 
system is built up, though this system does very much control 
and direct the mind in its action, it is equally absurd to charge 
them with abandoning any right or useful liberty of thought in 
embracing it. The whole question is not whether liberty is 
surrendered, but whether it is surrendered to the truth or to an 
imposture and a delusion. Is the system which you have adopt- 
ed the true one ; is it the only one which explains the facts which 
you admit, and puts them in the proper relations to each other 
and to the truths derived from other sources? This is the 
reasonable inquiry to make, the reasonable issue to take, if you 
wish to find fault with any Christian scheme of doctrine. 

This is, however, precisely what Mr. Myall, and others who 
think and write like him, fail to do. They act precisely as one 
would who, seeing the vagaries of the more or less crazy objec- 
tors to well-established conclusions of physical science, should 
say to them : " My friends, you have done and are doing a good 
work. For any set of men to claim that they have discovered 
the truth, and have a right to teach it to others, is an intolerable 
assumption, an attempt to place an insupportable yoke on the 
necks of thinking men. Put no faith in any who would thus im- 
pose on you. This so-called science is an abominable tyranny ; 
we wish you all success in your endeavor to rid the world of 
it, and to bring in that liberty of thought to which we are all 
entitled." 

For this is, barely and simply, the benefit which Protestant- 
ism, in its failure to establish anything positive, has, according to 
Mr. Myall, brought to mankind. It has freed us, he says, from a 
dogmatic Christian system which previously held possession of 
people's minds and restricted their liberty of speculation. His 
point is not that the system held and taught by the Roman 
Church is a false one ; no, the objection to it is this and nothing 
more : that it is a system which, if accepted, will impede men 
from thinking freely on points lying within its bounds or affected 
by its Conclusions, as every scientific system must of necessity do. 

It is really a pity that an intelligent man should make a fool 
of himself in this way. Make a fool of himself, that is, in his out- 
ward utterances; for his real interior position is not one of such 



1883.] UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. 297 

entire stupidity as would appear from his words. His real belief 
is one that he has inherited blindly from his ancestors, if, as we 
suppose, he has been born and brought up among- Protestants. 
It is that the Catholic doctrine is something not founded by any 
legitimate process either on reason or on revelation, but is rather 
a tissue of purely human invention ; and that, being an artificial 
construction of this kind, designed for human ends, and not for 
the sake of truth or with the means of arriving at it, it is 
naturally feared by its contrivers that some truth may be dis- 
covered, if the mind of man be allowed to rove at will, which 
will be inconsistent with it. Hence he believes that the autho- 
rities of the church are always making (the mistake certainly 
would be amusing to us, if it were not so ruinous to those who 
adopt it) " efforts to crush knowledge and enslave the human 
mind." 

To try to show the falsity of the idea which he has of the 
church in this would be out of place here. Catholics know it 
well enough ; and non-Catholics will not be convinced of it by 
anything which can be said in the limits of a magazine article. 
If Mr. Myall's thanks to Protestantism had been based on its 
having freed the world from an abominable imposition such as 
he supposes the church to be, even without substituting anything 
in its place, we should have only had to hope that some day 
he might by reading and study convince himself of his mistake. 
His course would have been reasonable, on the basis of the error 
in fact under which he labors. But in supposing, as he does 
ostensibly, that the mere giving every man liberty to speculate 
as he pleased in matters of religion, without regard to the results 
previously attained, could advance true religious science, or that 
the same principle applied in other departments could possibly 
lead to fruitful results, he falls, as has been seen, into a ridiculous 
blunder. 

The fact is that the real cause of the advance of knowledge 
and science which the last few centuries have witnessed was the 
adoption of a principle diametrically opposite to that of liberty 
of thought in physical investigations. It was by restraining 
and directing of thought by information and observation, and by 
the deduction of laws resting on the solid foundation of facts 
that the science of modern times has been built up. A man who 
speculates at will, without acquainting himself with the results 
of his predecessors and contemporaries, who disregards the sys- 
tems which they have solidly established, is ruled out of scien- 
tific society ; is excommunicated, we may say, and regarded as a 



298 UNSCIENTIFIC LIBERTY. [June, 

heretic or an ignoramus. When any branch of knowledge is 
once started in its proper line of development, and is using its 
proper methods, this is the only course to pursue. We cannot 
be stopping to listen to the ravings of every theorizer who is out 
of the true line of its progress. Such meddlers in what is not 
their business must either be instructed in it if they wish to learn 
and show any aptitude, or they must be confuted, or even 
crushed by the weight of authority if there is no other way to 
dispose of their case. The treatment by scientific men of a cer- 
tain rash weather-prophet whose name was a little while ago in 
every one's mouth is an instance in point of the way in which 
this sort of thing should be met. There can be no possible ad- 
vantage, as far as the attainment of truth is concerned, in allow- 
ing liberty of thought or of speech to such men, if it could be 
prevented ; indeed, it is quite questionable whether the free 
expression of opinion by them is not such an evil to other in- 
terests than those of science as to justify the use of some forcible 
means to stop their mouths. 

It is, then, simply nonsense, worthy of no one certainly who 
has arrived at manhood, to remark, as Mr. Myall does in the con- 
clusion of his paper, and as its final result, that Protestantism 
"promoted the growth of knowledge by maintaining the right 
of the individual to think and to declare his thoughts." What- 
ever else may be said in its favor, such thinking and declaration 
only promotes the growth of knowledge when the thoughts are 
well considered and in harmony with the knowledge and science 
which the world has previously acquired. If the system which 
Protestantism attempted to destroy had been a false one, a ser- 
vice would indeed have been rendered to mankind by attacking 
it in any way, and a certain preparation for a true system would 
have been made ; but no positive promotion of knowledge of any 
kind could result as long as the principle of unrestrained liberty 
of thought, fatal to all attainment of any recondite truth by man- 
kind in the mass, should be generally entertained. 



I883-] 



CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. 



299 



CAROLINE SIBALDUS. 

IT was Christmas evening in the year 1705. The insurrec- 
tion of the Bavarian peasants against Austria, who then gov- 
erned their native land, had just been ruthlessly suppressed, and 
the snow around Munich was dyed with the blood of five hun- 
dred slain. Among these was an old blacksmith named Sibal- 
dus, in stature a giant, as bold as a lion, and whose death-struggle 
with the enemy is represented in a faded fresco on the outer 
wall of St. George's Church at Sendling, a few miles from the 
capital. 

On the threshold of this church this winter evening sat a 
young woman whose grief was too deep for tears ; but ever and 
anon she would utter a moan and cry out, " Mein Gott ! mein 
Gott ! " Along the highroad were passing groups of prisoners 
on their way to be mutilated or beheaded, and not a few turned 
their eyes upon the sorrow-stricken maiden as they went by ; for 
many of them knew Caroline Sibaldus and had had their horses 
shod at her father's smithy. 

Thus bewailing the fate of her kindred, Caroline remained 
where she was until twilight deepened into night. Then rising, 
she. withdrew into the sacred edifice, before whose altar the 
lamp was burning, and here she shivered and told her beads 
hour after hour and until the dawn crept in through the stained 
windows overhead. 

It had been a long, cruel night for Caroline. But now, 
when she heard the first rooster crowing, instead of going forth 
to greet the approaching day she lay down on the stone floor 
and fell asleep. In a little while, however, a ghastly dream 
caused her to start and open her eyes, and whom should she be- 
hold bending over her but a young officer whose torn and dusty 
uniform and a bloody gash on the cheek told that he had been 
in the desperate fight of the day before. " I have been watch- 
ing you, maiden," he said in a tender voice, while Caroline rose 
to her feet, not a little disturbed by the apparition. " And as 
the beads lay twined round your fingers your lips moved ; you 
seemed to be praying. But what a hard couch to rest on ! " 
" I was dreaming," replied Caroline. " I saw my dear father, my 
two brothers, and my lover, the faithful student Plinganser, who 
nobly espoused our cause, all covered with blood." Then, her 



300 CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. [June, 

eyes flashing, she added : " And are you one of the hated Aus- 
trians who trod upon us poor people as if we were worms, 
who drove us mad until we rebelled ? Are you ? " 

" I am not," answered Count Arco von Zinneberg earnestly. 
" On the contrary, I belong* to a small band of Bavarian nobles 
who sympathized with the peasants and who drew our swords 
in your behalf. But, as you know, the foreign tyrants have been 
victorious. Bavaria is still under their heel, and I am here at 
this early hour a fugitive in quest of a hiding-place." " Oh ! 
then God bless you," exclaimed Caroline, extending to him both 
her hands and smiling through her tears. " I love all who sided 
with us. They will never find you where I shall hide you. 
Come with me." So saying, she made a genuflexion before the 
altar, then conducted him to a dusky, narrow passage-way in its 
rear, which evidently was not often visited, for the officer's face 
brushed against more than one spider's web. " Now stoop and 
pass your finger through an iron ring which you will find in the 
floor," said Caroline. " I shall do the same, and between us 
both we may be able to lift up the stone." 

Count Arco did as she requested, and after a little hard pull- 
ing a broad, flat stone was displaced and immediately rushed 
forth a blast of damp, mouldy air. " Is it down into this caver- 
nous pit I must descend ? " he asked. " Yes, it is here the good 
priests of St. George's have been buried for centuries," returned 
Caroline. "But fear not the ghosts of these saintly men; they 
were all friends of the people." " Well, I should rather not go 
down into my gloomy hiding-place just yet," went on the of- 
ficer. " And I should prefer to keep you out of it altogether," 
said Caroline. " Therefore do what you think best for your 
own safety." 

Count Arco concluded to stay near the mouth of this sub- 
terranean chamber, where it was still pretty dark, and only go 
down when pressing danger compelled him, while Caroline sal- 
lied forth to try and procure him some food ; and she herself, 
too, was half famished. But not a single house remained of 
what only one day before had been the pretty village of Send- 
ling ; everything had been burned or razed to the ground except 
the tall black chimney of her father's forge. This was still 
standing and pointing like a grimy, revengeful finger toward the 
heavens. Of course no food was to be had here, and Caroline 
was obliged to go further in search of it. 

More than an hour elapsed ere she returned, and then it was 
with eyes red and swollen, for she had cried a great deal. Over- 



1883.] CAROLINE Sis ALDUS. 301 

joyed was Count Arco to see her again. " I began to fear," he 
said, " that some evil might have befallen you." 

" Well, I went as far as the Sendling tower and beyond it," 
answered Caroline ; " and by the great gate lay a pile of bloody 
heads, and I could hear the shrieks of prisoners who wejre being 
tortured before they were beheaded." Then, after a pause, 
" But, kind sir," she went on, " you need have no fear." " Why ? 
Is it because I have such a good hiding-place?" said the other, 
taking from her the chunk of black bread and the glass of beer 
which she had brought. " No, but because no harm is going to 
happen to you. You must know that I penetrated a good dis- 
tance into the city ; I kept my ears wide open and heard some 
officers by the palace say that Count Arco von Zinneberg would 
undoubtedly be pardoned if he surrendered himself. And that 
is your name, is it not? " " Verily, you bring me glad news," 
exclaimed the officer, who felt strongly tempted to embrace 
Caroline. 

Nor can we wonder at his temptation. Despite her humble 
origin and^ plain country garb, Caroline was an uncommonly at- 
tractive young woman. Her teeth were like the snow, her eyes 
as bright as sparks, and she was tall and healthy, as became the 
daughter of Sibaldus. She was likewise modest and blest with 
a golden heart which any nobleman might have been proud to 
win. " She walked far to fetch me my breakfast," thought 
Count Arco, as he surveyed Caroline ; " and if I am indeed 
pardoned I shall never forget her kindness." Then, after he had 
eaten a few mouthfuls, " Ah! " he said aloud, " you too have dis- 
covered the marks of blood which I first observed a few minutes 
ago." As the count spoke the girl's eyes were bent on the floor 
near the edge of the dark hole. " What horrible deed has hap- 
pened here? Whence comes this blood?" she presently ex- 
claimed, with a shudder. " No doubt some mortal fray took 
place here yesterday," answered Count Arco. '* Alas ! yes. 
Some poor peasant has been slaughtered even in God's holy 
temple," said Caroline, crossing herself. How different might 
have been her after-life had she now procured a lantern and 
boldly followed the tracks of blood down under ground whither 
they led ! 

During the day Caroline visited every part of the ruined 
village, found a little corn for her starving chickens, and saw her 
father and brothers decently interred. But of her betrothed, 
Plinganser, no tidings reached her. " If he is among the killed 
I shall be left all, all alone. Oh ! what will become of me ?" she 



302 CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. [June, 

sighed, when toward evening she re-entered the church where 
Count Arco was anxiously awaiting her. Caroline found him on 
his knees praying. But as she drew near he turned, and, seeing 
tears in -her eyes, "Dear girl," he said, "I cannot restore to 
you those whom death has taken away. But come with me to 
Munich. There my mother, with whom I dwell, will provide a 
home for you." 

" How very good you are ! " murmured Caroline, letting him 
steal one of her sunburnt hands. 

" And let us go at once before it is dark," he continued. Ac- 
cordingly they left the church and bent their steps cityward^ 
Count Arco not without some misgivings about how the Aus- 
trian commander might receive him, and Caroline eyeing nar- 
rowly every youth whom they met ; and once, when she saw 
somebody who looked a little like Plinganser, her poor heart 
throbbed ever so fast. 

" You are right," spoke her companion when he perceived 
her emotion "you are right not to give up the hope of finding 
your betrothed." " Hope is a virtue," answered Caroline. "I 
will never believe that my Plinganser is dead ; I will hope all my 
life." " Well, may I ask how you came to make his acquain- 
tance ? " said the officer, who felt, at every step he took, more and 
more interested in the artless maiden. " I first met Plinganser 
in the meadow behind our house," replied Caroline. " He was a 
student of botany and was looking for a certain flower which he 
was very desirous to find. By good luck I brought him the 
very flower he wanted. Oh ! how glad he was so glad that he 
gave me a kiss." Here Caroline clasped her hands and looked 
up at the sky. " I was very young then," she added presently, 
" but I shall never forget that happy day." " And he came there 
often afterward, did he not ? " inquired the other, with a faint 
smile. :< Yes, very often. He said that the finest flowers grew 
in our meadow. And when he was tired of roaming over it 
with me we would go and sit by my father and watch him shoe 
the horses. It was Plinganser who taught me to play on the 
zither. Oh ! I wish you could hear him. Nobody can play on 
the zither like my Plinganser." I hope one day to meet your 
lover," said the count. Well, you will help me find him, will 
you not?" said Caroline. 

" Have no doubt about it." Oh ! he loves me so much," she 
continued. Many times has he told me that he would not give 
me up for a princess. And Plinganser is not like other men : he 
will keep his word. How delicious it is to be so truly loved ! " 



1883.] CAROLINE SIBALDUS. 303 

They had now come to the Sendling gate, and were about tc 
pass into the city, when Caroline stopped, turned round, and 
gazed wistfully toward the heights where so lately her home, 
her happy home, had been, murmuring, " Plinganser ! Plinganser ! 
where are you ? Oh ! why do you not come to me? " 

What the girl had reported to Count Arco proved to be 
correct : thanks to his rank and many excellent qualities, he was 
pardoned for having espoused the cause of the rebellious pea- 
sants, and gfeat was his mother's delight when he was restored 
to her ; the cut on his cheek proved to be only a trifling wound ; 
and Caroline, too, was welcomed with open arms. The homeless 
orphan found anew home in a grand house a palace it seemed to 
her. But after being dressed in the robe of a city damsel a 
strange fear took possession of her namely, that Plinganser 
might not recognize her were he to meet her. " But I am sure 
that I should always know him," she said. " Whether poor or 
rich, young or old, a beggar or a prince, my heart would always 
warn me if he came nigh." 

" Caroline," spoke Count Arco about a fortnight after she 
had come to live under his parent's roof, " be not offended if I 
urge you to keep your thoughts from dwelling so constantly on 
your lover." 

" Pray why ? " inquired Caroline, looking at him with sur- 
prise. " You, who have been kindness itself to me how can you 
have the heart to advise me to forget Plinganser ? Is it because 
he has no fortune and must earn his bread by teaching botany?" 
" No, indeed," answered the other; " but because I am told that 
the young man was seen to fall near the threshold of the Send- 
ling church, covered with wounds, and well-nigh all the stu- 
dents whom he led were killed. He can hardly have escaped." 

"Alas! Is it possible? Can it be true?" sighed Caroline, 
wringing her hands. " Every place whither the wounded were 
taken I have carefully searched," added the count. " Through 
all the surrounding hamlets I have ridden ; nowhere did I dis- 
cover Plinganser." At these words Caroline bowed her head on 
her friend's breast and sobbed bitterly. 

The next morning she came to him with a countenance pale 
and excited, and when he asked what was the matter, " Brother," 
answered Caroline she loved to call him brother, albeit it made 
not a few people smile " I have had a strange dream. Me- 
thought I saw a peasant girl kneeling at the altar of St. George's 
Church ; she looked very like myself, and I heard a voice bid- 
ding me follow the red stains which we discovered behind the 



. 

304 CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. [June, 

altar. Therefore, dear brother, I must hasten to Sendling. 
Will you accompany me ?" " Of course I will," replied Count 
Arco. " In Plinganser's absence you are indeed my true, my 
faithful knight," said Caroline, looking gratefully up at him. 

Accordingly, without delay their steeds were ordered, and to 
Sendling they rode in haste, Count Arco wondering whether 
Caroline's ceaseless mourning for her betrothed had not at 
length disturbed her reason. Having got to the church, they 
lost not a moment in opening the burial-vault underneath it ; 
then, holding a taper in her trembling hand, and with loud-throb- 
bing heart, Caroline led the way down. Carefully she ex- 
amined each one of the ancient steps they had been laid in 
the thirteenth century exclaiming every moment : " I see the 
blood. It leads me on. I see it." " Why did we not do this 
when we first noticed these stains? " said the count. 

Caroline's only response was a deep-drawn sigh. Slowly she 
advanced, partly groping her way, for the taper threw but a 
feeble light. Several skulls lay in the path ; she reverently 
stepped across them. On the right and left stood a pile of 
mouldy coffins, and Count Arco could not but think what a very 
odd adventure this was. On and on, with head bent low, his 
guide proceeded. But hard though Caroline strained her eyes, 
the trail was not always easy to follow, and weird echoes were 
awakened by the officer's sword clanking and jingling behind 
him. Suddenly came a piercing cry, and lo ! out went the taper. 
Count Arco was no coward, but at this moment his heart jumped 
into his throat and he clutched the hilt of his weapon. Pre- 
sently bony fingers seemed to be touching him ; he heard doleful 
moans, and beings of some kind were rushing past. But without 
trying to discover if this were merely imagination, he resolutely 
felt his way among the coffins to where poor Caroline was lying 
in a swoon. Then, lifting her in his arms, he bore her out of this 
gloomy, ghostly abode ; and imagine his surprise, when he got to 
the floor above, to find tightly grasped in one of her hands a 
student's blood-soiled cap. 

^ A week elapsed ere Caroline recovered from the shock which 
this discovery of Plinganser's cap had given her. 

" Does it not prove," she said, " that Plinganser was con- 
cealed under the church immediately after the battle? Alas! 
why did I not explore the vault that morning when I stood at its 
very entrance ? Oh ! where is my dear, wounded Plinganser 
now ? Did he die of his wounds, or is he hiding far away ? " 
Nor was Count Arco quite so confident as before that the 



i88 3 .] 



CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. 



305 



missing student had been killed. Although not superstitious, 
Caroline's dream, and the adventure which followed, had 
wrought a deep impression on him. And so truthful was his 
nature that although 'he felt himself day by day becoming more 
and more attached to the girl, yet he did not conceal from her 
his belief that the youth might really be alive, hidden in some 
remote spot, for a price had been set on his head. 

More often now than before was Caroline seen in the count's 
company, and he boldly took her part when he heard people 
sneeringly remark that she was only the daughter of a black- 
smith. Nay, even against his own mother he sided with Caro- 
line. The latter had hung Plinganser's -cap by her bed. The 
old countess would fain have had her throw this unseemly object 
away. 

" I pray thee, mother," spoke her son, " let the cap be where 
it is. Let Caroline continue to keep hope alive in her breast, 
even though it dooms me to a vain, unrequited love." 

And thus passed one year away and then another and an- 
other ; the Austrians withdrew from Bavaria ; the elector got 
back his throne ; and Caroline Sibaldus still continued to dwell 
under the hospitable roof of Count Arco von Zinneberg, During 
all this time she never failed morning and evening to beseech 
God to restore to her her betrothed. " But 1 will wait," she 
murmured; "I will be patient. O Lord! thy will be clone." 
In the meanwhile Caroline was taught many accomplishments, 
and as her talents developed her beauty grew more striking, 
and few were left to sneer, though many envied her when they 
saw her riding on a magnificent palfrey side by side with the 
tall and brave Count Arco. The count's mother was sorry that 
he did not choose a spouse from among the many fine damsels 
at court. But his prayer when he rose in the morning and went 
to rest at night was very like Caroline's prayer. " I will wait, O 
Lord," he said ; " I will be patient. Perhaps in thy own good 
time my heart's love may be vouchsafed to me." 

Half a mile from the city, on the left bank of the Isar, stood 
an ancient oak-tree, beneath whose shade Caroline and the 
count were wont to sit and converse. The river at this point 
was deep and flowed swiftly and darkly by, neither eddy nor 
whirlpool breaking its smooth surface. But a little below rose a 
rock in shape somewhat like a cross, against which the waters 
dashed with fury, and it was whitened to its very top with foam. 
One summer evening Count Arco was seated under this broad- 
spreading oak, holding Caroline's hand in his and gazing with 

VOL. XXXVII. 20 



306 CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. [June, 

delight on her lovely face, whose expression of sadness added to 
its beauty, and he wondered what manner of man Plinganser 
must have been, for whom she could mourn so long. 

" Of what are you thinking, sister ? " he asked. Caroline 
heaved a sigh, then replied: "A strange fear ever and anon 
takes possession of my heart : may not Plinganser have passed 
me by without knowing me, dressed as a high-born lady, speak- 
ing courtly language, and surrounded by rich and proud people ? 
Ought I not to don anew my lowly peasant garment ? " 

"What! ever dwelling on Plinganser?" exclaimed Count 
Arco. "Have not two years of silence laid him at rest? If he 
loves you as you love him ought he not to have sent you a mes- 
sage given you some sign that he was living?" Then, as Caro- 
line made no response, " Sister," he went on, " from the bottom 
of my heart I envy Plinganser ; I would give my two eyes to 
change places with him. Nay, I would even be Plinganser dead, 
in order to possess the love of a being like yourself following me 
beyond the tomb." 

At these words he bowed his head and a tear dropped on 
Caroline's hand. " Count Arco must wed a high-born lady," 
spoke Caroline presently in faltering accents. " I am not des- 
tined to be your bride. Continue to call me sister, while I call 
you brother ; unless you do this "- - here her voice fell to a 
whisper " I shall perhaps be sorry that we ever met." 

" Your speech is cruel," said the other, who had caught the 
whisper. " But if you are never to be mine, at least you cannot 
hinder me from giving you a proof of my undying devotion: no 
other woman, be she ever so rich or high in rank, will I ever 
seek to win, and from this day forth I will devote all my time to 
searching for Plinganser, whether dead or living. I may per- 
haps discover where he is buried, and over his grave I shall pray 
God to let me die." " Oh ! speak not thus," exclaimed Caroline. 
"Why, what would become of me here in Munich alone without 
you? No, no, dear brother, you must live live many years, 
and wed and be happy." At this moment a raft, laden with 
charcoal was seen floating toward them. Within a few feet of 
the bank it swiftly glided, and presently, with the agility of one 
born amid crags and precipices, a young woman leaped ashore, 
poising deftly on her head a basket filled with edelweiss. At 
the sight of her Caroline turned pale and cried out : " It is she ! 
Yes, yes, the very girl whom I saw in my dream praying in the 
church at Sendling." 

" And she does bear a striking resemblance to yourself," spoke 



1883.] CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. 307 

Count Arco. " She may not be quite so tall, but she has the 
same deep-set, bewitching- eyes, and a pretty dimple in the cheek, 
just as you have." 

Presently the stranger stood before them, holding the basket 
in her hands, and begged them to* buy a few flowers. " I have 
come a long distance," she said. " In a lonely, enchanting spot, 
where the green grass touches the snow and which the chamois 
haunt, I gathered these edelweiss. My life's happiness depends 
on whether I sell them for much money or for little." " In- 
deed ! " said Caroline, who was touched by the maiden's ear- 
nestness. " Well, let me have not one bunch but the whole 
basketful." And so saying, she handed to Babette for this was 
the stranger's name a big purse filled with gold. 

" What ! is all this money for me ? " ejaculated the latter in 
amazement. Then looking up at the blue sky, while her eyes 
filled with glad tears, " O my God ! " she cried, " thou hast 
answered my prayers. Blessed be thy holy name for ever ! " 

"You have been praying, then, to be made rich? as if riches 
could make one happy," spoke Count Arco, with a sad smile. 
"O kind sir!" replied Babette, " you cannot think how poor I 
was before I received this generous gift; my father and mother 
are dead, and I am in love deep, deep in love with a young 
man as poor as myself. Well, I suppose we should have married 
anyhow, no matter how poor, and fed on edelweiss and mountain 
air. But I never gave up hope that God would help me hope 
never died in my breast ; and now behold ! " here she looked at 
the purse " I am rich rich." " Well, in return for what I have 
given you," said Caroline, " I wish you to implore the Almighty 
to restore to me, if he be living, a youth whom I passionately 
love, and will love to my death." " Ay, that will I do," an- 
swered Babette; "and my husband for we shall be married in 
less than a week will go on his knees and add his supplica- 
tions to mine." " Well, where is your home to be ? " inquired 
Caroline. " Near the source of this beautiful river," answered 
Babette, pointing towards the purple mountains. Then ad- 
dressing Count Arco, "And, gracious sir," she added, "will 
you not some day make us a visit? I am sure you are fond of 
hunting ; and chamois abound near our home." 

" I will," returned the count. " I am about to set out on an 
exploring tour through the whole of Bavaria. I shall begin with 
the mountains ; therefore expect me before a great while." " I 
feel strangely drawn to you," spoke Caroline, giving Babette a 
kiss. " We must now separate, but we must surely see each 



3 o8 CAROLINE SIBALDUS. [June, 

other again." With this she and Count Arco mounted their 
horses and galloped back to town, while Babette followed them 
leisurely with the basket of edelweiss. 

" Something tells me that this will be for me a marked day/' 
murmured Caroline inwardly as she re-entered her 'sleeping- 
chamber. "I cannot get over the startle which meeting this 
young woman has given me : she is the very one whom I saw 
in my dream the very one." 

Then turning to Plinganser's cap, which was hanging on the 
wall, " Dear cap," she said, " must you hang there for ever? 
Will he never come back to me? " After gazing on it a moment 
she advanced and was about to press her lips to this speechless 
object, when, lo ! as if touched by invisible fingers, down it 
dropped at her feet. 

Immediately a piercing shriek rang through the house, and 
when Count Arco hastened into the room he found Caroline 
lying on the floor senseless and one of her hands was grasping 
the cap, just as on the day when he had carried her out of the 
burial-vault. 

" Well, you are indeed an exceedingly odd couple," exclaimed 
the Countess von Zinneberg when presently she arrived and 
discovered her son supporting Caroline in his arms and begging 
her to tell what she had seen to alarm her and cause her to faint. 

" I dare say she saw a ghost," added the dame, grinning. 
" Humph ! if I had had my way and thrown that ugly cap out of 
the window she'd have long ago been like other young women 
got married to some honest fellow, and you, my son, would not 
have remained single." 

True to his word, at sunrise next morning Count Arco set out 
on what, for all he knew, might prove to be a journey lasting 
many months. People shrugged their shoulders when they saw 
him ride away ; for the secret had got abroad, and they won- 
dered how Caroline Sibaldus was able to wield so much influ- 
ence over him. It was even whispered that he might be mad. 
At the same hour Babette departed for her home in the moun- 
tains, having made Caroline a solemn promise to visit her again 
ere long: every day, almost, a raft would be floating down the 
Isar, and on one of these rafts she must come, bringing fresh 
edelweiss. " My future happiness, after God, will be owing to 
you," said Babette. " My guardian angel must have guided me 
to you. Nor shall I forget the object for which you asked my 
prayers. May your lover soon come back ! Good-by." 

In about three weeks Count Arco returned to Munich, and it 



1883.] CAROLINE SIB ALDUS. 309 

was evident from the condition of his poor horse, as well as his 
own wan looks, that he had gone many a league and endured 
not a little hardship in his quixotic expedition. " Dear brother, 
welcome, welcome back ! " cried Caroline as she flew to meet 
him. " Pale and thin you are, but what means that sparkle 
in your hollow eye, that flush on your cheek? Oh! tell me, 
have you discovered anything to give me joy?" Count Arco 
hesitated what response to make. There was indeed gladness in 
his heart, and it revealed itself on his countenance ; but, alas ! 
what a selfish gladness it was. If Caroline knew what he knew 
might not her own tender heart break with anguish ? Or if she 
survived the cruel shock if she did not die might not her 
reason be dethroned ? 

As these thoughts passed through his 'mind Count Arco's 
expression changed to one of profound melancholy. 

"Speak!" exclaimed Caroline, who was trembling with 
anxiety. " I am sure that you bring, me news of some kind. 
Tell me quick, is it good or bad? O brother! how you are 
torturing me." 

" When she learns the truth may God grant her the strength 
to bear it! " murmured the count, averting his face to hide the 
tears. " But other lips than mine must tell it to her." " Brother, 
brother ! "* continued Caroline in imploring accents, " what two- 
fold secret trembles on your lips ? why are you joyful and sad 
almost at the same moment ? Do speak ! " Still Count Arco re- 
fused to answer: down his cheeks the tears fell. "Alas! alas! 
I have guessed it ; my darkest fears have come true ; my bright 
hopes are all gone," moaned Caroline presently, leaning against 
the wall for support, while her countenance became white as 
death. The count caught her in his arms, but she broke loose 
from him, and, tottering into her room, she fell on her knees and 
gave way for a while to heartrending grief. But by and by 
the sweet, consoling voice of faith made itself heard, and then 
Caroline, raising her thoughts to heaven, prayed for the soul of 
her dear, dead Plinganser. " By his grave," she murmured to 
herself, " I will have a little chapel erected, and there I shall have 
many Masses said. And when it pleases God to call me hence I 
will be buried by the side of my betrothed." 

The following day the elector sallied forth on a hunting ex- 
pedition, taking Count Arco with him, who was a great favorite, 
and the ruler of Bavaria seldom went anywhere without him. 
Caroline, who had passed a sleepless night, accompanied her 
protector to the outskirts of the city, her face hidden by a veil ; 



310 CAROLINE SIBALDUS. [June, 

and when she silently pressed the count's hand, and he parted 
from her with a downcast look, the other nobles wondered very 
much what had come to pass between them. But let us follow 
the hunting party. Into the deep forest they soon plunged, and 
as they went along the elector made Count Arco tell him as 
much as he knew about the rebellion of the peasants against the 
Austrians a few years before. It had been a patriotic movement, 
in which the peasants had suffered severely, great numbers of 
them having been put to the rack or beheaded ; and the elector 
cherished the memory of all who had fallen in that memorable 
uprising. " On the walls of the church at Sendling," he said, 
" I shall cause to be painted the heroic Sibaldus fighting his 
death-fight." Then presently he added : " And the student 
Plinganser shall not be forgotten, for he rallied round him in the 
cause of the fatherland well-nigh every student in the univer- 
sity. When his burial-place is found I shall erect above it a 
magnificent monument." Scarcely had these words been spoken 
when in the shadowy path not far ahead two persons were seen 
approaching ; one was a man of a noble countenance, but poorly 
clad, and who hobbled along with difficulty, for he had a wooden 
leg and he had likewise lost an arm. His companion was a 
comely young woman, barefooted, and carrying on her head a 
basket of edelweiss. " Poor people ! " exclaimed the elector, 
reining in his steed when they were near by. " They have 
probably come a good distance; they look weary." Then, ad- 
dressing the man, who had doffed his hat, " How came you, my 
friend," he said, " to lose your leg and arm ? " 

"I am the student Plinganser," was the response, "and I 
became a cripple fighting for my dear Bavaria." 

Quick off his horse at these words the elector dismounted, 
and, to the amazement of his gaping retinue, with his own hand 
assisted Plinganser to mount into the saddle. 

Then immediately to Munich he despatched a messenger with 
orders to have the church-bells ring out a joyous peal and can- 
non to be fired, while more slowly the procession followed, of 
which Plinganser and himself formed the head. Close behind 
them came Count Arco, silent and anxious, while by his side was 
the dumbfounded, blushing Babette. Yes, back to Munich the 
whole hunting party went, the elector leading the horse on 
which Plinganser sat; and we may be sure that when they got 
near the capital great were the crowd and the excitement, the 
booming of guns and ding-dong of bells. " What can all this 
uproar mean? " thought Caroline, just as the sun was setting; 



1883.] CAROLINE SIBALDUS. 311 

and hosts of other people were asking the same question. But 
she was too impatient to wait until the elector entered the 
town; forth to meet him Caroline hastened, riding a beautiful 
palfrey the first of the many presents which Count Arco had 
made her. 

Not far from the spot by the river-bank where grew the ma- 
jestic oak-tree. which he and she were so fond of, Caroline met 
the returning huntsmen. 

First appeared the ruler of the land, to her great astonishment 
afoot and leading a steed on which rode a beggarly-looking man 
seemingly past middle life, so much had hardship altered his ap- 
pearance. " My Father in heaven ! " cried Caroline after gazing 
on the latter a moment. But this was all she could utter; 
everything began to swim before her eyes, and scarcely had 
Plinganser's wooden -leg touched the ground when, quickly 
dismounting and thrusting everybody aside, the joy-distracted 
maiden flung herself on his breast. 

Confused beyond measure was Plinganser; Count Arco 
trembled, while many voices exclaimed : " What does all this 
mean ? " Not a little puzzled, Babette gently placed her hand 
on Caroline's arm and said : " Did you, then, know my husband ?" 

" Husband ! husband ! " answered Caroline, turning upon her 
her flashing eyes. " Begone ! You are babbling nonsense. He 
is my betrothed my faithful Plinganser." " Husband, can she 
be mad ? Do pray undeceive her," pursued Babette. 

" Caroline, you have heard the truth. I I am her husband," 
spoke Plinganser in a broken voice and with eyes bent on the 
ground. Caroline staggered backward, a singular expression 
came over her face, then a loud, wailing cry quivered upward 
through the air, and, springing upon her steed before Count Arco 
could catch the rein, away she galloped toward the Isar. The 
river was near by, and into its dark, deep water she spurred her 
horse. 

But Count Arco hesitated not an instant what to do : right 
after her he plunged, and Caroline had barely risen to the sur- 
face when one of his strong arms was grasping her tightly. On, 
swiftly on, the current swept them toward the cross-shaped rock 
which, as we have said, broke the stream's impetuous course at 
a point a little below the oak-tree. 

"Will he reach it? will he reach it? If he does he may 
save her," exclaimed a number of voices. Yes, the bold swim- 
mer did get to the rock, and, assisting Caroline to climb a few 
feet out of the water and imploring her for God's sake to hold 



3i2 CAROLINE SIBALDUS. [Juno, 

fast to it, he himself dropped back and in another moment was 
whirled out of sight. Once, twice, three times did the excited 
spectators on shore declare that they caught glimpses of him as 
he was swept along ; but it was on the further side of the river, 
and, owing to the deepening twilight and the absence of any 
boat, it was impossible to rescue him. But would not Caroline 
too be drowned ? How long might she be able to cling to the 
slippery rock? The crowd lighted huge bonfires, shouted to 
Caroline to keep up her courage ; while a few of the more sen- 
sible ones ran up the bank a little distance, and, cutting adrift a 
raft, steered it skilfully toward her. It sped like an arrow with- 
in a foot of the rock, then a tremendous shout burst from a 
thousand lips as Caroline was drawn aboard. But blending 
sadly with the people's joy came the thought that the noble, 
daring Count Arco von Zinneberg had lost his life. 

" May the merciful God pardon me ! " sobbed Caroline to 
Babette, who was walking beside the litter on which the ex- 
hausted girl was being carried to her home. " Oh ! it was a 
grievous, a mortal sin to try and drown myself. And I have 
likewise caused the death of one who loved me so unselfishly, 
who gave his life for mine." To these words Babette and Plin- 
ganser made no response ; in mournful silence they listened to 
her lamentations, while ever and anon Caroline would cry out : 
" Come back ! come back ! good, faithful Count Arco, come back 
to me! " "Well, here I am," answered the count, as, leaning on 
the arm of an honest fisherman, he appeared before her aston- 
ished, tear-dimmed eyes just as the litter reached the courtyard 
of the palace. 

What immediately followed we leave undescribed. But 
Plinganser, we may be sure, was now quite forgotten by Caro- 
line ; and when the count's mother heard what had happened, 
and saw her son and the maiden whom he so passionately loved 
in such unutterable happiness together, she embraced them both 
and said : " By no wish or word of mine shall you two ever be 
parted." Then presently arose a hearty laugh when Count 
Arco related how into a fish-net full of pike and eels the eddy 
had happily swept him. And no fish had ever brought the 
fisherman such a price as this fish ; for the count's mother filled 
his pockets with gold, and the elector likewise handsomely re- 
warded him. 

" Dear Caroline," at length spoke Plinganser, " if you owe 
your life to Count Arco von Zinneberg, so do I owe mine to 
my beloved spouse. Severely wounded in that battle on Christ- 



1883.] ABBOT FECKENHAM. 313 

mas day, she carried me into the burial vault beneath the little 
church at Sendling, where the enemy were not able to find me. 
There in the darkness we remained for what seemed to me an 
age. At length Babette got me out into the blessed sunlight 
again, and then, with the help of a couple of mountaineers, she 
had me taken into the depths of the forest, where she nursed 
me until I recovered from my wounds. My only regret is that 
she has such a poor maimed fellow for a husband." 

"No, no, do not say that!" exclaimed Babette, kissing him 
fervently. " I am only too proud to be the wife of Plingan- 
ser, who led the students of the university in the great revolt 
against the Austrians." 

And so, after all his waiting, Count Arco von Zinneberg won 
the hand and the heart of Caroline Sibaldus, while for many 
years and until their death Plinganser and Babette were given 
a home in the palace of the elector, where Plinganser resumed 
his study of botany ; and it is scarcely necessary to add that his 
devoted helpmate had no better friend in Munich than the 
daughter of the blacksmith of Sendling. 



ABBOT FECKENHAM. 

AMONG the many prisoners discharged from the To\ver by 
Queen Mary was the Rev. John Feckenham, a learned Benedic- 
tine monk of Evesham, who was imprisoned by Somerset and 
Cranmer for " not conforming " at the accession of Edward VI. 
Queen Mary appointed Feckenham to be one of her chaplains 
and dean of St. Paul's. In a few months later this distinguished 
Benedictine monk was elevated to the rank of lord-abbot of 
the revived " Royal Monastery of Westminster," which had 
only recently been suppressed by the Protector Somerset. 

Feckenham, accompanied by fourteen Benedictines, resumed 
the labors of his order in its ancient shrines ; but the times were 
sadly changed, and the shortness of Mary's reign again con- 
signed to extinction the hopes of these monks. When Eliza- 
beth's negotiations with Wootton to fill the primatial chair 
failed, the next cleric named for the see of Canterbury by 
Elizabeth, to the surprise of the Protestant party, was Fecken- 
ham. The story appears almost incredible, were there not 



3*4 



ABBOT FECKENHAM. [June, 



vouchers for its authenticity. Feckenham was esteemed by all 
parties. Even the seditious Anabaptists acknowledged that he 
was " a man of peace " ; they remembered that in Mary's reign 
he publicly protested against persecution for religious opinions 
and was always on the side of mercy and charity. 

Feckenham was the last abbot who held a seat in the House 
of Lords. Camden sums up the character of Feckenham in 
these words : " He was a learned and a good man, who deserved 
well of the poor and drew unto him the love of his adversaries. 
He had all the good qualities peculiarly required in the difficult 
times he lived in, and especially that temper and moderation 
so commendable in the controversies of life." A later writer 
affirms "that the abbot was fixed in the olden religion, without 
passion or prejudice against the new one. He formed his con- 
duct upon a view of the miseries which are incident to mankind, 
and gave just allowances to the infirmities of human nature. In 
a word, his zeal was limited within the bounds of discretion ; 
and in all the parts of a social life he was disposed to be a friend 
to mankind." 

The abbot's conduct to Lady Jane Dudley (Jane Gray) has 
been eulogized even by Puritan writers. He renewed again 
and again his entreaties with Lords Pembroke and Paget to 
spare the life of Lady Jane, but his eloquent appeals were made 
in vain. 

Mr. Froude, in describing Feckenham's mission to Lady Jane 
Dudley, says : " He was a man full of gentleness and tender 
charity, and felt to the bottom of his soul the errand on which 
he was despatched ; he felt as a Catholic priest, but he felt also 
as a man." 

For Elizabeth herself, in the hour of her trials, the abbot was 
likewise an intercessor, and prevented many acts of harshness 
from being carried out against her. From the beginning of 
Elizabeth's reign Feckenham had openly opposed the chief 
measures of her government, but it is stated that the queen 
thought it possible that, through the offer of preferment, the 
abbot could be brought to terms. However, he remained reso- 
lute not to accept the ordinance of the Royal Supremacy. 

' The failure of these extraordinary negotiations," writes 
Dean Hook, " brought that conviction to the mind of Elizabeth, 
at which her councillors had already arrived, that if her throne 
was to stand she must make common cause with the Protestant 
party." 

Men like Cecil, it was plain, would support her on no other 



1883.] ABBOT FECKENHAM. 315 

terms. So Elizabeth hesitated for a while, and then became the 
sovereign of a party who were bold and unscrupulous as to the 
means by which they attained their ends. 

The question has often been asked, " Was Elizabeth sincere 
in offering the primacy to Wootton or Feckenham ? " It was 
alleged that she was " under obligations to Wootton, and desired 
to pass the compliment." 

The queen, however, thoroughly understood the high char- 
acter of Feckenham, and that he would never consent to become 
the tool of Sir William Cecil. What manifests the duplicity 
of Elizabeth in this transaction is the fact that, at the very time 
she was negotiating with the friends of Wootton and Fecken- 
ham, Cecil had his arrangements nearly completed to place 
Matthew Parker in the see of Canterbury. The date of the 
confidential correspondence between Cecil and Parker leaves 
little doubt as to the intentions of the queen. Abbot Feckenham 
made a powerful speech in the House of Lords against the 
revolution which Elizabeth and her Council were making in 
" church and in state." Only a fragment of Feckenham's bril- 
liant and argumentative discourse has reached posterity. Roger 
Ascham, who was "concealed in a nook," relates in one of his 
numerous letters that the abbot was listened to " with profound 
attention by the lords, because the holiness and goodness of his 
life commanded the respect of every one, and argued much in 
favor of popery for having such a man as its advocate." 

The lord-abbot of Westminster addressed the peers in these 
words : 

" My good lords, in her late majesty's reign [Mary] your lordships may 
remember how quiet and governable the people were till revolution cast 
its seeds amongst them. It was not then the custom for the people to dis- 
obey the commands of their queen. There was then no sacrilegious plun- 
dering of God's house ; no blasphemous outrages; no trampling the holy 
sacraments under the feet of wicked men. The real Catholic never 
dreamed of pulling down the pix and hanging up the Knave of Clubs in its place. 
They did not hack and hew and indecently o.utrage the crucifix in those 
times. They reverenced the holy season of Lent; they fasted and ab- 
stained; and the wicked appeared in the churches filled with tears for their 
past errors and crying out to Heaven for mercy. Where are they to be 
found now? Alas! in the ale-houses, or some places worse. In the reign 
of Queen Mary the generality of the people, the nobility, and those of the 
Privy Council were exemplary for their public devotion. It was the cus- 
tom for the judges and other public personages, before they undertook the 
duties of the day, to go to a church or chapel and beg the protection of 
God. Now, however, the face of everything is quite changed. What is 
the cause? Again I ask, what is the cause of this awful change? English 



3 i6 ABBOT FECKENHAM. [June, 

men, and English women, had been the models of Christian perfection for 
centuries. t The records of the outraged abbeys and convents have at- 
tested these facts. Think well over the Past and the Present" 

Looks were exchanged, and a murmur ran through the 
House of Peers. It was, however, dangerous to express an 
opinion against the queen's policy. But Feckenham stood for- 
ward fearless as the advocate of Truth and Justice. 

The lord-abbot met the fate of the bishops. The Oath of 
Supremacy was tendered to him " with three days' considera- 
tion," but he replied at once that his " conscience, his honor, and 
every feeling that was dear to him demanded the rejection of 
the oath proposed." He was arrested, and never more recov- 
ered his liberty. 

There was something vindictive and cruel in consigning the 
deposed bishops and clerics to the custody of their Puritan suc- 
cessors. The sufferings of Feckenham were not easy to be en- 
dured; he was placed as a prisoner with Dr. Home, the new- 
ly-appointed bishop of Winchester, an apostate priest and a 
narrow-minded Puritan, who could not speak respectfully to 
any one whose religious sentiments were opposed to his own. 
Feckenham made petition to the queen to remove him from the 
insults that daily awaited him from Home, his reputed wife 
and retainers. What was Feckenham imprisoned for? Why 
not let him leave the country ? First to rob a man of his private 
property, and then call on him to swear to a religious faith in 
which he did not believe, was despotism of the Tudor regime in 
its worst phase. Then to be imprisoned for life was a punish- 
ment that none but the worst statesmen could inflict. All of 
these transactions have been defended as necessary to "promote 
the growth of Protestantism." Comment is needless, for the 
whole of those proceedings impress a black and iniquitous spot 
upon the reign of Elizabeth ; yet her conduct in this respect has 
been defended by English writers. Here is an extraordinary 
passage from a recent work : 

[< While refusing freedom of worship, Cecil, like his royal 
mistress, was ready to concede liberty of conscience." 

The author again remarks : 

" It was a far greater gain for humanity when the queen de- 
clared her will to meddle in no way with the consciences of her 
subjects." * 

The work in which the above passages occur has been exten- 
sively read by English Churchmen and Dissenters. 

* Green's History of the English People, vol. ii. p. 292 ; ibid. p. 298. 



1883.] ABBOT FECKENHAM. 317 

Feckenham was detained in prison by Elizabeth for five-and- 
twenty years, receiving bad food and every indignity that it 
pleased the jailers of those days to inflict. He died (1585) in 
one of the dungeons of the Castle of Wisbeach, in the Fens.' 35 ' 

Among Feckenham's works was a very learned treatise on 
the Holy Eucharist in reply to Hooper. At the time Dodd wrote 
his history this work was still in the " original MS." Bishop 
Home assailed the abbot in a series of letters which place the 
writer in a very undignified position. But Home cared not 
what he wrote when a papist's character was at stake. Queen 
Elizabeth was often indignant at his conduct. 

In the days of his prosperity Feckenham had been a munifi- 
cent benefactor to the poor of London. He erected public foun- 
tains of pure water for the people, and distributed daily the milk 
of twelve cows amongst the sick and indigent. He also pro- 
vided food and clothing for thirty orphan girls of " reduced 
families." His bounty was extended to all irrespective of creed 
or party. 

I may here remark that the venerable "elms" which now 
stand in Dean's Yard, Westminster Abbey, were planted by Ab- 
bot Feckenham. One particular anecdote has been preserved of 
the good, kindly abbot. When engaged in planting the trees 
above referred to, a debate was going on in Parliament respect- 
ing the religion of the country, and a messenger having brought 
word to Feckenham that the majority were in favor of " the Re- 
formation," and that he was planting his elm-walk in vain, " Not 
in vain, I hope," replied Feckenham ; ''those that come after me 
may, perhaps, be scholars and lovers of retirement, and whilst 
walking under the shade of these trees they may sometimes 
think of the olden religion of England and the last abbot of this 
place." 

The fate of Feckenham is one of the saddest on the rolls of 
those days of persecution and injustice. 

* Camden's Annals ; Anthony Wood's Athena, vol. i. p. 500 ; Reyner's Historia Benedic- 
torium ; Dodd's Church History, vol. i. p. 525 ; Froude, vol. vii.; Archbishops of Canterbury, 
vol. ix ; Pomeroy's Chronicle (black letter). 



WHAT EUROP& OWES TO ITALY. 



[June, 



WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 

As it was in the counsels of Providence that Judasa and 
Jerusalem should be sources of unnumbered blessings to mankind, 
so, after Christ had suffered and risen again, Italy and Rome 
became the great watersheds from which fertilizing streams of 
religion, art, science, and literature have been diffused over the 
nations of Europe. By Italy, however, is not here meant so 
much that 

"Magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, 
Magna virum," 

of which Virgil sang in such powerful notes; not the Italy of 
the Pelasgi in the south, the Etruscans in the centre, and the 
Celts and Ligurians in the north ; not Rome regal, republican, 
or imperial, the Roman Empire of the East or West, of Con- 
stantine or Theodositis, but rather that Italy of which Odoacer 
was the first king, and which rose on the ruins of ancient 
Rome and is commonly called Italy during the middle ages, 
or modern Italy. From this mediaeval Italy the greater part 
of the nations of Europe received the language they spoke and 
the rudiments of law and letters ; and from this same highly- 
favored land came, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
their earliest instruction in poetry, art, and science. While the 
Ostrogoths and Visigoths were ravaging its fair fields, and Bel- 
isarius and Narses were trying to establish the imperial au- 
thority ; while the pagan Longobards descended from the Alps 
with their wives, children, old people, Avagons, oxen, and flocks, 
other forces were at work destined to redound to the good of 
the people of Italy, and through them to Europe at large. 
Odoacer, the King of Italy, though an Ariars, was inclined to 
show respect to the Catholics ; and the same was true of Theo- 
doric, who conquered and succeeded him. Theodolinda, Queen 
of Lombardy, prevailed on her husband, Agilulph, to embrace 
the Catholic faith, and he was the first Lombard king who was 
consecrated with the iron crown formed of the nails with which 
Christ was fastened to the cross. But these facts, which miti- 
gated the horrors of war and barbaric invasion, sprang from 
a cause to which must be referred the ultimate diffusion of the 
faith of Christ through Europe, the civilization of the middle 
ages, and that of modern society, so far as it is in accordance 



i88 3 J 



WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 



319 



with the word of God and the instincts of Christianity. The 
papal authority had been consolidating itself at Rome ever since 
the time of Constantine. The seat of empire being removed to 
Byzantium, Rome was left comparatively free from imperial 
domination and from Italian political and military combinations. 
The pontiffs had time and opportunity to consult for the good 
of Italy and of Europe at large. What we owe to Italy we owe 
in great part to the popes. They were an earthly-divine provi- 
dence to other nations : they watched with paternal solicitude 
over all. 

Let us run through a few of the benefits which they show- 
ered on outlying countries benefits mainly spiritual, but having 
the promise of this life as well as of that which is to come. 

Did Clovis, King of France, embrace Christianity through 
his wife Clotilda and receive baptism at Rheims from the hands 
of Remigius? The pope, Anastasius II. (496-498), wrote him a 
letter of congratulation on his happy change. By that letter 
the Roman pontiff again placed himself in the forefront of the 
church militant in France. 

Did the Emperor Justin endeavor to convert Arians by 
force? John I. (523-526) went in person to Byzantium and 
pleaded successfully for a policy of toleration. 

Did the Emperor Justinian support Eutychianism and deny 
the two natures in Christ ? Agapetus (535-536) betook himself 
to Constantinople and reclaimed Justinian from his heresy. He 
is made to say in the Paradiso of Dante : 

" II benedetto Agapeto, che fue 
Sommo Pastore, alia fede sincera 
Mi dirizzo con le parole sue." * 

Thus the Pope of Rome witnessed for orthodoxy in the East as 
in the West. 

Not the Anglo-Saxons only, but the Arian Goths, owed their 
conversion to the faith to Gregory the Great and the missions 
which he sent forth. The Holy See had in his time (590-604) 
large landed properties in Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, and even in 
Africa, and St. Gregory assiduously concerned himself in the 
administration of these and in distributing the revenues to the 
poor. He embraced opportunities as they occurred, and left 
grander projects to his successors. He was not aware how in- 
calculable a benefit he was conferring on mankind in future ages 
by his mission of St. Augustine to England. 

* // Paradiso, canto vi. 16-18. 



320 WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. [June, 

John IV. (640-642), who was a native of Dalmatia, sent large 
sums of money into his country and Istria in order to redeem 
captives. These sufferers also were indebted to Italy through 
the pope. 

Zacharias (741-752) made his political influence felt in France 
when he approved the elevation of Pepin le Bref to the throne, 
saying in reply to a question submitted to him by that prince : 
"It is better that he who has the power should have also the 
title of king." 

Adrian I. (772-795) presided by means of his legates at the 
Second GEcumenical Council of Nicasa, which condemned the 
Iconoclasts and defended the proper use of sacred images and 
pictures. By ratifying and also by disapproving the acts of 
great councils the popes made the nations their debtors in a high 
degree. Without a standard of orthodoxy from which there 
was no appeal, Christendom, with all its contingent advan- 
tages, would have fallen to pieces. 

Leo III. (795-816) was a prince among princes, and by his 
alliance with Charlemagne vindicated the cause of the oppressed 
throughout a vast empire. What Europe owes to Italy cannot 
be considered distinct from the question of what Europe owes 
to the popes. The Anglo-Saxon, Frank, and (in the time of 
Nicholas the Great, 858-867) Bulgarian apostles obtained their 
missions from the see of St. Peter, and placed the people whom 
they converted to the faith under its immediate jurisdiction. 
They addressed themselves in all grave and difficult questions 
to Rome ; and Nicholas in particular, when dealing with a ques- 
tion of divorce between Lothaire, King of Lorraine, and his 
wife, Teutberge, enforced the law of the church as regards mar- 
riage, which is the basis of civilized society. 

After having been preceptor to the Emperor Otho I.'s son, 
and also to the son of Hugh Capet, Gerbert became pope in 
999. He aided in the development of intellect and surrounded 
himself with brilliant disciples. His influence in Europe was 
increased by the reputation he possessed for geometry, mechan- 
ics, and astronomy. Indeed, he was said to be versed in all the 
learning of his time. The introduction of the Arabic figures 
into Europe is ascribed to him, and also that of pendulum clocks 
and the motive power of steam. He invented a horologe and 
composed music, being in all respects in advance of his age.* 
Thus he exalted Italy and made Europe her debtor. 

Gregory VII. (the illustrious Hildebrand), Urban II., Pascal 

* Havard, Le Moyen Age, 252-255. 






1883.] WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 321 

II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II. preserved the church in many 
countries from becoming secularized by resisting- Henry IV. and 
another emperor of Germany in the investiture quarrel. Con- 
ceding to the emperor the temporal investiture of bishops and 
mitred abbots, the pope reserved to himself the spiritual inves- 
titure, or right of conferring ecclesiastical titles. The former 
was done by means of the sceptre, the latter with' the crosier and 
ring. Thus right was regarded on either side and society left 
free to progress. 

But Europe at large was threatened by a Mohammedan 
conquest. Religion and civilization were at stake. The great 
Italian benefactors of mankind were alive to the gravity of the 
situation. The Turks must be resisted ; and what Europe owes 
to Italy in this particular is powerfully illustrated by the fol- 
lowing passage : " Sylvester II. was the originator of a union 
of Christian nations against them. St. Gregory VII. collected 
fifty thousand men to repel them. Urban II. actually set in 
motion the long crusade. Honorius II. instituted the order of 
Knights Templars to protect the pilgrims from their assaults. 
Eugenius III. sent St. Bernard to preach the Holy War. In- 
nocent III. advocated it in the august Council of the Lateran. 
Nicholas IV. negotiated an alliance with the Tartars for its 
prosecution. Gregory X. was in the Holy Land in the midst of 
it, with our Edward I., when he was elected pope. Urban V. 
received and reconciled the Greek emperor with a view to 
its renewal. Innocent VI. sent the Blessed Peter Thomas, the 
Carmelite, to preach in its behalf. Boniface IX. raised the mag- 
nificent army of French, Germans, and Hungarians who fought 
the great battle of Nicopolis. Eugenius IV. formed the confed- 
eration of Hungarians and Poles who fought the battle of Varna. 
Nicholas V. sent round St. John Capistran to urge the princes 
of Christendom against the enemy. Calixtus III. sent the cele- 
brated Hunyades to fight with them. Pius II. addressed to their 
sultan an apostolic letter of warning and denunciation. Sixtus 
IV. fitted out a fleet against them. Innocent VIII. made them 
his mark from the beginning of his pontificate to the end. St. 
Pius V. added the " Auxilium Christianorum " to Our Lady's 
Litany in thankfulness for his victory over them. Gregory XIII. 
with the same purpose appointed the festival of the Rosary. 
Clement IX. died of grief on account of their successes. The 
venerable Innocent XL appointed the festival of the Holy Name 
of Mary for their rout before Vienna. Clement XII. extended 
the Feast of the Rosary to the whole church for the great vic- 

VOL. XXXVII 21 



322 WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. [June, 

tory over them near Belgrade." * They were beaten back and 
forced out of a great part of Europe, while the crusades which 
had been directed against them resulted in keeping open the ac- 
cess of pilgrims, travellers, and merchants to Eastern provinces 
whose produce, mental and material, enriched Europe. 

We have now reached a period when the popes more clearly 
and fully became identified with Italy in the benefits they diffused 
on surrounding nations and tribes. Centres of learning sprang up 
all over Europe, fed from Italian sources and incited to emula- 
tion by the famous Italian universities. Art, science, literature, 
discovery, seemed continually flowing from Italy as their home 
and fountain-head, and of these we shall find abundant instances 
if we follow the stream of time. 

The Pandects of Justinian were discovered by accident in 
Amalfi about 1135. They were carefully copied at Pisa, and 
they greatly contributed to propagate the true principles of jus- 
tice and its better administration in France, Germany, and Italy. 
The manners of the age were still semi-barbarous and the codes 
in use often conflicting. The Pandects led to the disuse of duels 
between litigants a most uncivilized and^ uncertain way of de- 
ciding on which side the right lay. 

While the victory of" blind old Dandolo " over Murzuphlus 
at Constantinople (1205) increased the wealth and influence of 
Venice, it tended also to pour into Europe more profusely the 
treasures of the East. Once discharged on the wharves of 
Venice, they soon found their way northward. 

The value of Dante's poetry to the literary world at large 
can hardly be too highly estimated. It exalted the mind and 
charmed the ear by the most exquisite music and elaborate 
rhyme; it conveyed a mass of knowledge on a wide range of 
subjects ; suggested thought and inquiry ; painted living and 
dead men with dramatic power ; enlisted sympathies on the side 
of the good and great of all ages, and cursed and withered vice 
in all its forms. It exalted human love and divine ; it vindicated 
the glorious truths -of Christianity, and launched with uncon- 
trollable fervor into the regions of imagination. His own per- 
sonal history gave life to Dante's chief poem ; and this element 
of interest had been wanting in the three great epics which had 
preceded by many centuries his immortal production. No book 
of human composition had ever before combined so many varied 
subjects of interest, and in this respect it will more than bear 
comparison with all the great poems that have since appeared. 

* Newman on the Turks, lect. iii. 



1883.] WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 323 

Europe owes its taste for hymns to Jacopone ; for extended 
poems and epics to Dante, Tasso, and Ariosto ; for sonnets to 
Petrarch ; for ascetic writings to St. Catherine of Sienna ; and 
for the classics to the Italian authors of the Renaissance in the 
fifteenth century. 

The dawn of European art appeared first in Italian skies. 
There shone forth Cimabue (1240-1300), the father of modern 
painting-, whether on canvas or glass, as well as of wall frescoes. 
There Giotto (1276-1336), his pupil, became famous for sculp- 
ture, architecture, and painting ; and the time would fail to tell 
of Giorgione, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Perugino, Correg- 
gio, Giulio Romano, Michael Angelo, Titian, Paul Veronese, 
Tintoretto, Caracci, Domenichino, Guido, Salvator Rosa, and 
Carlo Dolci, who succeeded one another during four hundred 
years. Suffice it to say that Europe marvelled at the splendor 
of their productions, bought them, studied them, copied them, and 
imitated them as models of art. The debt is too great ever to be 
paid ; it is enough if we continue to be grateful. It increases as 
time goes on. About the end of the fourteenth century Taddeo 
Bartoli was perhaps the greatest artist of Siena. In his pictures 
in tarsia that is, pictures executed in colored wood we find 
illustrations of the Nicene Creed. The originals exist in the choir 
stalls of the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena. Some 
years ago Mr. Henry Casolani, of Birkdale, in England, drew the 
sketches from which lithographs have just been made and pub- 
lished in London. This is but one out of countless examples of 
what we mean. 

The revival of sculpture was coincident with that of paint- 
ing. The Florentine Donate di Bardi (born 1383) was the 
earliest professor of it among the moderns. No need to speak 
here of Michael Angelo, Benvenuto Cellini, Bernini, and Canova. 
Two among them were great as architects as well as sculptors; 
and of St. Peter's at Rome it is still true that 

"Thou of temples old or altars new 
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee- 
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true." 

But we must pass on from the well known to the less known, 
if we would enlarge on what Europe owes to Italy. 

It may here be remarked that the presence of the popes in 
Rome seems to have been necessary for the due action and in- 
fluence of Italy on the rest of the world. When the Ro- 
man pontiffs exercised their dominion in a foreign country, and 



324 WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. [June, 

passed seventy years in Avignon, " the sciences, arts, and the in- 
dustries of Rome, which had served as a model to all nations, 
wholly disappeared." ' 

Before the year 1492 the only divisions of the earth yet 
known were Europe, Asia, and Africa. The circumference of 
the globe was unexplored, and few believed or even dreamed that 
our world was round. Many maritime discoveries, however, had 
been made, particularly by the Portuguese. The Azores, the 
Canary Islands, and the coast of Guinea had become known, and 
some explorers had reached the extreme southerly point of 
Africa and had given it the name of the Cape of Good Hope. 
The next great discovery of a territorial description was to be 
accomplished by an Italian named Christopher Columbus. Ten- 
nyson hailed, as every warm-hearted traveller near Genoa ever 
will hail, the house at Cogoleto in which he was born and where 
his father was a wool-carder. There, to his mind's eye, the 

"Young Columbus seemed to rove, 
Yet present in his native grove, 
Now watching high on mountain cornice, 
And steering, now, from a purple cove, 

" Now pacing mute by ocean's rim ; 
Till, in a narrow street and dim, 
He stay'd the wheels at Cogoleto, 
And drank, and loyally drank to him." 

The talents of the boy at fourteen could not escape observation, 
and, his conduct being praiseworthy, his father allowed him 
time to apply to arithmetic, geometry, and other sciences con- 
nected with navigation. He had heard with keen interest of the 
discovery of new latids by the Portuguese, and he followed the 
instincts of genius by learning navigation in theory from books, 
and then afterwards in practice by several sea-voyages. How 
beautiful and attractive is life at such an age and with a noble 
ambition stirring in the brain ! He took service under a Genoese 
captain; joined in expeditions against the Turks and the Vene- 
tians; engaged in combats; weathered many a storm ; acquired 
knowledge, reputation, and experience ; sailed to the coasts of 
Portugal; was wrecked, and arrived at Lisbon in rags and with- 
out a maravedi in his pocket. But Providence and his own genius 
him a path through every difficulty and trouble. He 
there was a new world, and he resolved to discover 

* Bosco, Italian History, translated by Morell, p. 61. ! > , . 



1883.] WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 325 



it. Years were spent in vain efforts, and he was jeered at as a 
madman ; but at last the necessary ships were obtained, and he 
sailed with three vessels from the coast of Spain, August 3, 1492. 
History contains nothing more thrilling than the story of his 
first voyage the despair and mutiny of the crew, the un- 
daunted resolution and perseverance of their captain and leader. 
At length land was reached October 12, 1492. Columbus set 
foot on St. Salvador, and the natives worshipped him and his 
companions as gods. He. stayed in Cuba; he landed in St. 
Domingo. He had brought Christ across the waters. It had 
been his first thought. His dream was realized, at least in part, 
and the glorious scenery, the perfumed breezes, the wild exube- 
rance of vegetable life, the water pure as crystal, filled him with 
delight. He had found the new world and what a world ! 
Would a lifetime or many lifetimes suffice to explore it ? Is 
Europe indebted to him for the discovery ? Are the vast white 
populations of North and South America indebted? The debt 
is owed to Italy, for Columbus was an Italian. Something is 
owing to Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine, also for his discove- 
ries, but they must not be suffered to obscure the fact that 
Columbus discovered not islands only but the continent of 
America.* 

" His presence and his persuasions," writes Bosco, " having 
entirely regained the confidence of the king, he set out for 
his third voyage, and this time discovered that vast continent 
the credit of which has been unjustly given to Amerigo Ves- 
pucci." Father Knight, the Jesuit, thus records the momentous 
event : " Columbus turned westward and anxiously explored the 
northern boundary of the gulf [of Paria]. Here first the 
Spaniards set foot on the mainland. Columbus was too ill to 
go himself, but he caused Mass to be said on shore, for it was 
Sunday, and he sent his worthy lieutenant, Pedro de Terreros, 
to take possession of the land in the accustomed way for the 
Spanish sovereigns, and to erect a cross as usual. Pedro cle 
Terreros was the first and Andre de Corral the second who set 
foot in South America. If Columbus had known at this particu- 
lar moment that he had really reached the continent, it is very 
certain that no fit of gout would have kept him prisoner in his 
bed. He was actually sailing west for the express purpose of 
finding some safer outlet to the north than the dreadful Dra- 
gon's Mouth, and this makes it clear that he at that moment 
mistook the long promontory of Paria for an island. But it 

*A. G. Knight, S.J., Life of Columbus, p. 178. 



326 WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. [June, 

seems equally clear that when he found time to reflect he dis- 
covered his mistake." 

Another discovery, of very minor importance, was made by 
this adventurous and, we may add, saintly Italian. The mag- 
netic needle of the compass had long been known to point a lit- 
tle to the east of the north, and not due north. Columbus, sail- 
ing westward, found that the needle gradually lost its eastward 
direction and pointed due north, and then gradually moved a 
little way to the west. On his return, and in nearly the same 
place where it had changed, it gradually passed back to its first 
position. The reason why the magnetic needle, though always 
pointing northward, varies a little in different parts of the world 
is not even now clearly understood, but the fact remains.* 

The intellectual movement of the Renaissance resulted in the 
literary treasures of Europe being augmented by the possession 
of many works of ancient Greece and Rome previously un- 
known. Palla Strozzi sent into Greece at his own expense to 
inquire for ancient manuscripts, and had Plutarch and works by 
Plato bought for him. Poggio Bracciolini, when at the Council 
of Constance, found in the dust-hole of a monastery Cicero's 
orations. He copied Quintilian and discovered Lucretius, Plau- 
tus, Piiny, and many other Latin authors. Guarini travelled in 
the East in search of codices. Giovanni Aurispa returned to 
Venice laden with hundreds of manuscripts. Old Latin classicism 
became engrafted anew on the flourishing stock of Italian litera- 
ture and language. Europe at large was alive to the value of 
these rare importations. Birth and wealth were no longer 
everything : mind and industry began to have their appreciated 
value. Society was elevated and adorned sometimes, it is true, 
at the expense of religion, but not necessarily and not always. 

The academies that arose in Italy in the fifteenth century had 
influence all over Europe. They were those of Florence, Naples, 
and Rome. Cosmo de' Medici was the founder of the first. The 
philosophy of Plato was especially prized and studied in this 
school of learning, and that philosophy has important points of 
contact with the doctrines of Christ. " The academy promoted 
art, particularly through classic models, and it strained every 
nerve for the revival of ancient learning. The Roman academy 
was founded by Giulio Pomponio Leto, with a similar view of 
discovering and investigating ancient manuscripts and monu- 
ments. The author of the lives of the first hundred popes, Pla- 
tina, was a member of this institution. 

* Buckley's History of Natural Science, pp. 56-7. 



1883.] WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 327 

To none of Italy's sons is science more indebted than to 
Galileo Galilei. Unfortunately for himself, he .was greatly in 
advance of his age and not so discreet as he might have been in 
the mode of advancing his opinions. He shocked the pardon- 
able prejudices of many who had been brought up in a different 
system, and came into trouble from which he barely escaped 
with his life. The decrees, however, against him and the Coper- 
nican system of astronomy were subsequently rescinded, and his 
name, discoveries, and purely scientific teaching are now in as 
much honor at Rome as in other centres of learning. To him 
we are indebted in the first instance for discovering and explain- 
ing the principle of the pendulum as an instrument to be append- 
ed to a clock in order to regulate the motion of the wheels and 
impart to them an invariable movement. 

But the pendulum was a trifle compared with the telescope. 
From Pisa Galileo went to Padua, where he was professor of 
philosophy, and invented that instrument which so wonderfully 
enlarges the range of human vision that now " science reaches 
forth her arms to feel from world to world, and charms her 
secret from the latest moon." Galileo was the first to detect the 
mountains of that orb, and the deep, dark hollows, and the wide 
plains which he mistook for oceans. He gazed with delight on 
the tiny stars of the Milky Way, on the planet Jupiter, and on 
Jupiter's four moons. He felt sure that his new instrument 
would help him to read wonderful truths in the glorious uni- 
verse of God's creation, and he threw his whole heart and soul 
into the study. He discovered also the rate of falling bodies, 
the phases of Venus, and the sun-spots. But his great achieve- 
ment, for which science is most indebted to him, was the con- 
firmation of the truth of the system of Copernicus, that the earth 
moves round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. It was 
this and his mode of dealing with Scripture, which seemed to 
teach the contrary ,lth at brought him into straits with which 
we are all familiar. Rolling years have cleared his lame and 
confirmed his judgments. In the spot where he stood on his 
trial and suffered a kind of honorable imprisonment we have in 
our time seen another Italian astronomer arise to teach and de- 
vote his life to the study of astronomy with immense success 
and European reputation. This was Angelo Secchi, of the So- 
ciety of Jesus. 

Born at Reggio in 1818, he studied theology in the Jesuit 
college at Loreto, and made considerable advance in the know- 
ledge of mathematics and physics, for which he had evidently 



328 WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. [June. 

a special talent. He afterwards in the United States gave him- 
self to the science of astronomy at Georgetown College, where 
he became professor of mathematics and astronomy. He sub- 
sequently professed physics at the Collegio Romano in Rome, 
but, being with his brethren driven for a time from the Eternal 
City, he travelled in France, England, and America. He was 
thus prepared in every way, especially by the* education ac- 
quired in foreign lands, to play the part of a great astronomer 
and follow in the steps of Galileo. On his return to Rome 
he entered once more upon those solar studies which were 
to occupy him to the close of his life. The observatory at the 
Collegio Romano was then in a sad state, but he succeeded 
in erecting it afresh over an arm of the church of St> Ignatius, 
and in procuring the new instruments required for stellar obser- 
vation. This observatory became one of the most famous in 
Europe. The revelations made by Kirchhoff concerning the 
solar spectrum were accepted by Secchi with delight, and he 
took the most lively interest in the ne\v mode of analyzing the 
constituents of the solar envelope. He studied with ardor all 
the heavenly bodies, and aimed at determining the physical 
condition of the remotest stars, and even at discovering their 
displacements by the variations in their spectrum. 

European and Italian science were brought together into 
close quarters when Father Secchi, in 1867, delivered his con- 
ferences on the sun to the young men studying at the school of 
Genevieve in Paris. It was out of these lectures that his great 
work on the sun was constructed and brought to a close in the 
year in which he died. He knew that he should leave behind 
him an enduring monument of his genius and industry, as well 
as a landmark showing the utmost stage astronomical science 
had reached at the time of his decease. His essay also on side- 
real astronomy, called The Stars, deserves to be borne in mind. 
Considering the periodical character of the spots and prominen- 
ces in the sun, he infers, as we might expect,, that the sun is 
truly and in every sense a star, but variable and endowed with 
a movement proper to itself. Night after night, under the clear 
moonbeams that fell on the splendors of Rome, Father Secchi 
took his rapid journeys through the starry skies, catalogued the 
four hundred and forty-four colored stars, calling each by a 
name, and marked its ascension and decline, magnitude and spe- 
cial colors, which are often variable and magnificent beyond de- 
scription. He described in simple language the stars, or rather 
suns, which night reveals, escorted by satellites. These were 



1883.] WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 329 

sometimes of immense and dazzling brightness, and sometimes 
comparatively obscure. He felt that he was not alone. Per- 
haps at the same moment other star- watchers of European fame 
were observing from their towers the same stupendous phe- 
nomena and arriving at the same, or very nearly the same, 
conclusions as his own Schellen, Tait, Croll, Lockyer, Hug- 
gins, Guillemin, Roscoe, Proctor, and Helmholtz. But he 
did not observe suns, or stars, only. There were times 
when he encountered masses or groups of heavenly bodies 
emitting indistinct light and possessing no definite shape. 
Sometimes he could detect no distinct points, no centre. The 
Milky Way was an immense agglomeration of complex 
masses of stars, each one apparently composed of numberless 
systems of a high order. There were nebulas of vast extent 
which seemed to consist of incomplete stars, having luminous 
concentrations of matter towards their centre alone. Others, 
shaped like a ring, looked as though they had arrived at a point 
where they would break up and subdivide into planets. Father 
Secchi did not assert nor believe that the universe is absolutely 
limitless, but he concluded that it is practically so. A thing, he 
said, composed of distinct and discontinuous beings can never 
be infinite, difficult though it be to some minds to imagine a 
void, and though the telescopes of Lord Rosse and Capel, of 
Melbourne, Paris, and Washington, are continually disclosing 
more and more phenomena of creation in the realms of space. 
He placed himself side by side with the greatest observers of the 
heavenly bodies, and helped by his example to rebut the charge 
often brought against the Catholic Church of being hostile to 
the investigations of science. He welcomed every astronomi- 
cal truth that was clearly established either by his own observa- 
tion or by that of his scientific brethren throughout the world. 
He did not differ from Herschel in acknowledging that the Milky 
Way agglomerates perhaps eighteen millions of stars, or suns, 
yet is but one among other cosmic systems as great or greater 
than itself. The sun, he taught, is a star in the nebula called the 
Milky Way, and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is nineteen 
trillions of miles distant. The light of Sirius could not reach us 
in less than twenty years, that of Capella in seventy-two years, 
and that of the pole star in fifty. But there are stars in the 
Milky Way of which the light would require ten thousand years 
to leap the space which intervenes between them and the earth. 
Nay, there are astronomers who maintain that the light of some 
nebulas, travelling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-five 



330 WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. [June, 

thousand miles a second, would not arrive within our view in 
less than seven hundred thousand years. Having pushed to the 
utmost length the study of the heavenly bodies by means of 
spectrum analysis, Father Secchi discovered the existence of the 
solar chromosphere, and he holds the first place among the in- 
vestigators of this department of science. To him we are in- 
debted for the knbwledge of the fact that the. SUIT is surrounded 
by a vast ocean of flame to a depth of five thousand miles, ac- 
cording to Lockyer's measurement. There furious storms per- 
petually rage. The least billows of its liquid fire are hundreds 
of miles high, and the crests of the waves are calculated to at- 
tain the elevation of fifty thousand or seventy thousand miles. 
The spectroscope, which Secchi so ably utilized, reveals the fact 
that this ocean of colored flame consists of the glowing vapor of 
at least fifteen of the elementary substances which form the 
earth's crust. The same father has diagrammed and classified 
some of the swells on this sea, that appear sometimes as promi- 
nences on the sun itself. One of this kind has been measured ris- 
ing to the height of two hundred thousand miles, and the storms 
in this ocean of fire rush with the swiftness of one hundred and 
sixty miles a second. Secchi has done honor to Italy, to science, 
and to religion as the foster-nurse of science in our own day, and 
is mentioned here at some length as having carried on the scien- 
tific traditions of Galileo and obtained the recognition and thanks 
of Europe. 

Material science is not exalted .'here above its real value. 
The Apostles' Creed, as we read even in Alton Locke, is worth all 
the objectivities and subjectivities in the world ; but the debt of 
Europe to Italy is our theme at present, and of that debt scien- 
tific discoveries and advance form a conspicuous part. As in the 
year 1609 Galileo brought into view distant worlds by means 
of the telescope, so, about fifty years later, Malpighi, a native of 
Crevalcuore, near Bologna, revealed the wonders of exceedingly 
minute structures by means of the microscope. Fibres, vessels, 
and germs had before his time been as much hidden from sight 
through their minuteness as the moons of Jupiter were through 
their distance. He applied the microscope chiefly to anatomi- 
cal investigation, and demonstrated the fact of arteries being 
connected with veins by means of capillaries. He described the 
air-cells from which the blood derives its oxygen. He showed 
how it becomes oxygenated and throws off its carbonic acid. 
He published a careful description of the nerves, vessels, and cov- 
erings of the tongue ; explained the nature of the cells contain- 



1883.] WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 331 

ing the coloring matter of the negro's skin ; described the silk- 
worm, the peculiar vessels in which it secretes the juice from 
which its silk is made, and the changes which the different parts 
of its frame undergo while being turned into a moth. He was, 
in fact, the first to attempt to trace the anatomy of insects. 
Nor did he neglect plants and the delicate and beautiful con- 
trivances of nature as seen in vegetable anatomy. 

There were in the last century two Italians to whom Europe 
owed the discovery, first, of animal electricity, and, secondly, of 
chemical or voltaic electricity. Each of these has given his 
name to science, the one as the inventor of the galvanic battery, 
and the other of the voltaic pile. Aloisio Galvani, a Bolognese, 
born in 1737, led by the observations of his wife, detected the 
peculiar effect of currents of electricity on the limbs of a frog, 
and his discoveries were spoken of far and wide under the name 
of galvanism. Volta, a professor of natural philosophy at Pa- 
via, took up the subject where the lecturer Galvani left it. 
A controversy arose between them which lasted till Galvani's 
death in 1798, and many years after it became known that each 
of the naturalists had been right, though apparently at variance. 
Volta was right in ascribing the convulsion of the frog's legs to 
the contact of two metals in connection with a fluid ; while Gal- 
vani was right in affirming that there is an electricity in animals 
which acts without any other help. An Italian named Nobili 
detected in 1826, by means of a galvanometer, the passage of an 
electric current in the frog, and it has since been found to be 
common to all animals. It is to Volta's pile, called after his own 
name, that we owe all the powerful galvanic batteries with which 
our experiments of most value are now made. Galvani, Volta, 
and Nobili placed themselves on the line which Franklin had 
started, which has led to the electric telegraph and has a future 
still before it of which none can divine the end. 

In the autobiography of Dr. Granville, who was one of 
Volta's pupils, many interesting facts will be found in reference 
to him and other professors in the University of Pavia at the 
commencement of the present century. Spallanzani, for exam- 
ple, explained the phenomenon of digestion by assuming and 
proving the existence of an acid principle in the stomach, to 
which he gave the name of gastric juice, and in virtue of which 
food was converted into chyle, the primordial element of the 
blood. Scarpa made important and valuable observations on 
aneurism, the ligature of the principal arteries, and the treatment 
of hydrocele by injection. He was the chief of surgeons, and no 



332 WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. [June, 

anatomist before his time pushed forward so successfully the in- 
vestigation of the nervous fibriles of the heart. Attracted by 
the fame of Volta and his pile, " pupils and professors," says Dr. 
Granville, " from Padua, Bologna, Pisa the three most re- 
nowned universities of Italy flocked actually to Pavia. I re- 
member Galvani, coming over from Bologna on the occasion, 
showing us his frog experiments and engaging .in earnest and 
animated discussion on the then-called animal electricity with 
our eminent professor." * 

But it is in the aggregate rather than in details that Italy 
stands forth as the great benefactress of Europe ; and it has not 
unfrequently happened that the reigning pontiff has seemed to 
sum up the benefits bestowed at a particular period both in his 
own person and work and in the surroundings of his court. 
Popes who have not been remarkable for personal piety, perhaps 
even the reverse, have nevertheless been prominent as leaders 
of religious and secular civilization, and have carried on the 
movement which shows that unremittingly, however slowly, the 
human spirit struggles towards the light. It was so with Leo 
X., the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Tuscany 's great bene- 
factor. As a lover of learning Leo encouraged artists and lite- 
rary men with great liberality. To the poor he was beneficent, 
to all affable. He desired above all things to enhance the glory 
and welfare of his country, assiduously promoted the fine arts, 
welcomed foreigners of distinction, and strove to keep far away 
the terrible scourge of war. Sciences and letters, ancient and 
modern, flourished under his fostering wing. By him the Uni- 
versity of Rome was re-established and richly endowed. He 
brought to light and published ancient authors and founded the 
Laurentian Library. His reign was so illustrious through the 
progress of arts and letters that the brilliant epoch which he 
adorned has been called the age of Leo X. Then arose the 
poets Ariosto, Vida, Sannazaro, Berni, Ascolti, and Alamanni. 
Cardinal Bembo, Machiavelli, Caravaggio, Guicciardini, Fra- 
castor the physician and poet, Giulio Romano, Cardinal Sadoleto, 
Michael Angelo, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, and many others of 
distinguished name, added lustre to the group. Tartaglia, an 
orphan of Brescia, whose life had been providentially preserved 
when he was left in early boyhood severely wounded on the 
door-step of the house where his parents had been murdered, 
grew up a studious and profoundly learned man, and was the 
first in Italy who, by applying geometry to mechanics, revived 

*Vol. i. p. 46. 



1883.] WHAT EUROPE OWES TO ITALY. 333 

sciences which liad languished throughout Europe and might* 
have been lost but for his application and genius. The Complu- 
tensian Polyglot of Cardinal Ximenes was sufficient to secure 
him a lasting remembrance in the republic of letters. It exhi- 
bited in one view the Scriptures in th'eir most ancient languages ; 
and the 'compiler, it should be recollected, was greatly encour- 
aged in his difficult task by Leo X., who threw open to him the 
precious collection of the Vatican, and supplied him especially 
with the Greek MSS. required.* But for the labors of such 
men Protestants would never have possessed a Bible at all. 

St. Peter's is in itself a boon to Europe. Pope Julius II. was 
desirous of making Rome the finest city in the world. The am- 
bition was laudable, for what else ought the metropolis of Chris- 
tendom to be? He invited Bramante, a celebrated Florentine 
architect, to Rome, and charged him to build near to the Vati- 
can, in which the popes resided, a basilica so magnificent that it 
might be considered the grandest monument upon earth. At 
the entreaty of Bramante, who felt the pressure of his advancing 
age, the pope invited Michael Angelo Buonarotti also to the 
sacred city. He was entrusted to commence a mausoleum for 
Pope Julius, and at the same time set about painting several 
pictures on the walls of the papal chapel, since called the Sistine 
from the name of Pope Sixtus, by whom it was erected. The 
grand roof of the chapel also was ornamented by him with 
paintings of Scriptural subjects. Leonardo da Vinci at this time 
was flourishing at Milan, and being a poet, painter, geometrician, 
mechanician, and musician, skilled in all bodily exercises, able to 
tame the wildest horses and make marble statues, as well as work 
wonders on canvas, all the princes of Italy were eager to secure 
his services. Julius II. did not rest till he had persuaded him to 
come to Rome to employ his genius in embellishing the Vatican, 
which Bramante was then active in repairing. During nearly 
the whole of the pontificate of Leo X. he continued his labors at 
Rome, aiding in the construction and decoration of those immor- 
tal works whose repute was to go forth into all lands. The 
basilica of St. Peter's, with its immense and lofty cupola, being 
of such vast proportions, so rich in marble work, statues, paint- 
ings, and monuments, executed with great variety of style, re- 
quired more than two centuries to bring it to completion. It 
represents the zeal of many popes, the skill of several architects 
from Bramante to Buonarotti, the services of many eminent 
painters and sculptors, and the genius of Christian Italy. 

* Hefele, Life of Ximenes, p, 136. 



334 THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. [June, 

If Italia has possessed to her own harm the fatal gift of 
beauty, that wonderful gift has been the stimulus of life, reli- 
gious, artistic, scientific, and literar}', to the nations near and far. 
Every one of her famous cities has contributed to the charm and 
might of her European influence. Around Rome as the central 
light have shone the lesser but radiant stars of Florence, with its 
Duomo and Santa Croce, its Dante and schools of painting ; 
Padua, Bologna, Pisa, and Pavia, with their renowned universi- 
ties ; Naples, with its sunny bay, museum, and neighboring cities 
of the dead ; Palermo, with its memories of Metellus, Belisarius, 
and Robert Guiscard ; Genoa la Superba, with its magnificent 
harbor ; Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, throned upon her 
hundred isles, opulent with the memory of Giorgione, Titian, 
Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese, and beautiful as the bride of the 
sea with her canals, gondolas, and palaces in Saracenic and Arabic 
style ; Milan, with its chanting choirs: 

"The giant windows' blazon'd fires, 
The height, the space, the gloom, the glory, 
A mount of marble, a hundred spires ! " 

Just at present the civilized world seems to be wandering in 
self-chosen ways, and Italy has followed evil examples. Let us 
hope and pray that she will return into the paths of dignity and 
truth, so that Europe may still recognize her majestic intelligence 
and continue to bask in the light of her radiant and many-sided 
influences. 



THE YOUTH OF SAINT 'ANSELM * 

No science has perhaps gained more -by modern facilities 
for travel and research than that of hagiology. In most of the 
old-fashioned lives of the saints wherewith we were edified in 
the days of our youth the man was entirely lost sight of in a 
host of the most astonishing and in themselves eccentric details 
that the author could rake together. Not unfrequently the 
life of one saint, by altering name and date, might have done 
duty for half a dozen other saints equally well, so absent were 
those characteristic touches which form a portrait, those fea- 
tures of the mental and moral physiognomy by which saint 
fers from saint even more than sinner from sinner; for it 

*See The Life and Times ofSt.Ansclm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the 
/?/. By Martin Rule, M.A. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1883. 



1883.] THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. 335 

seems as if the higher we gaze up the scale of perfection the 
more varied are the beauties of which our feeble vision becomes 
gradually cognizant. " Star differs from star," not only in the 
hue and brightness of its glory, but in the marvels which com- 
pose its orb, infinitely more than pebble differs from pebble 
along the unmeasured reaches of the shingly beach ; and yet no 
two pebbles even are alike. 

Montalembert, in his Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, made 
us, as it were, personally acquainted with her as a woman as well 
as a saint. By thus bringing her within reach of our human 
sympathies he inspired our admiration with a new life and our 
hearts with fresh courage for our own conflict. The track then 
marked out by Montalembert has in more than one instance 
been successfully followed by other Catholic writers, and by 
none more so than by Mr. Rule, whose work on The Life and 
Times of St. Anselm is one of the most beautiful and at the same 
time solid and instructive biographies that we have ever seen. 
Several years of loving labor have been spent upon this work, 
and the result or rather one result is an accumulation of de- 
tails, many of them entirely new, which greatly enhance the 
interest of the narrative, as well as the accuracy and complete- 
ness which give it an especial value. 

Tracing by personal investigation the footsteps of the saint 
from his mountain-girdled cradle at Aost'a to his tomb at Canter- 
bury, the author has verified, often by repeated visits, every to- 
pographical notice or reference of mediaeval and other writers 
on the spot; sparing no pains in the recovery whether of de- 
tailed record, oral tradition, or incidental allusion which might 
aid him to unearth long-buried and forgotten facts. The infor- 
mation thus laboriously collected supplies more than one missing 
link, disentangles more than one rusted knot in the chain of me- 
diaeval history, and is, moreover, of effectual assistance to Mr. 
Rule in his able refutation of the saint's detractors, enabling him 
to correct mistakes into which, one copying from another, all 
modern biographers of Lanfranc and St. Anselm have fallen.'-" 

* Very notably Dean Hook, Dean Church, and Mr. Freeman. Also, M. Charma, Heir 
Hasse and his translator Mr. Turner, Washington and Mark Wilks in '1 he 'Hires Arch- 
bishops, and we know 'not how many writers besides, all repeat the same blunders, usually 
accompanied by moral reflections wide of the mark, because basele s. Who, for instance, has 
not been told, ad nauseam, that when Lanfranc, the learned Pavian, on his way to Le Bee, was 
left tied to a tree by robbers, he wished to pray, but could not, because he did not know a single 
prayer ? when the facts are these : As day dawned in the wood, Lanfranc, already a monk at 
heart, began to recite Matins and Lauds offices comprising, besides hymns, versicles, responses, 
and antiphons, two lessons out of St. Paul's Epistles, the Te Dtum, Benedicite, Benedictus, and 
twenty-one psalms. But the task was too much for him, exhausted as he was. He broke down. 



336 THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. [June, 

The style is clear and simple, almost epistolary in its:easy flow. 
Here and there, but rarely, an expression perhaps too colloquial 
has slipped in. Many of the lighter pages have about them a 
certain poetical delicacy, while graver ones rise at times to 
eloquence. The narrative hangs well together, and the varying 
groups of the numerous dramatis personce never encroach unduly 
upon the luminous and woridrously attractive central figure. 
The work is elucidated by plentiful notes, many "of which are, in 
fact, condensed dissertations; and each volume is completed by 
an appendix, of equal value and interest to the learned if not to 
the ordinary reader. 

St. Anselm has been dead for nearly eight hundred years, 
and it may be safely averred that Mr. Rule is the first writer 
who has made any serious effort to find out who he was. By 
carefully following up one or two stray indications he arrived 
at the certainty that the saint was of princely race ; but we can 
imagine what months of reading and research among the nu- 
merous histories of Lombardy, of Trans-Juran Burgundy, of 
Aosta, Susa, and Ivrea, his excursus on St. Anselm's pedigree 
alone must represent. We have not space to enter into the par- 
ticulars of this research, in the 'course of which no matter what 
stray facts are economized and turned to account ; we can do 
little more than give the author's conclusion's and refer to the 
book itself for the rest.* 

Anselm, the son of Gundulf and Ermenberg, was born at 
Aosta between the April of 1033 and 1034. " Gundulf was, not 
improbably, a son or grandson of Manfred I., Marquis of Susa, 
who in his turn was maternal uncle of Arduin, Marquis of Ivrea, 
and for some thirteen years king of Italy ; and thus of the 
kindred of Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, and father of the illus- 
trious Matilda. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt that 
Ermenberg was a granddaughter of Conrad the Pacific, King of 
Trans-Juran Burgundy, and thus first cousin to the Emperor 
Henry II., and kinswoman more or less distant to every consid- 
erable prince in Christendom." 

And then he cried out in self-abasement : " O Lord God, how many years have I spent upon 
this world's learning ! I have wearied body and soul with secular studies, but have not yet 
learnt to recite the Office of thy praise ! Deliver me from this trouble and I will strive to do 
thee service as I ought " (vol. i. p. 87). The foot-notes here, as elsewhere throughout the 
book, are very valuable. They here point out the then accepted sense of servire and servitium 
words proper to the Divine Office, or, as we still say, divine service. And also, with reference 
to the same incident, there is a note on the sense of midusi.e., stripped of the outer garments, 
as a monk without his tunic or a soldier without his armor, but not necessarily stripped bare. 

* Pp. 1-4 should be read in conjunction with pp. 402-415, where medieval terminology for 
the exact specification of social rank is fully treated. 



1883.] THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. 337 

The sovereign magistrate of Aosta had from time immemo- 
rial united in himself the titles of bishop and count, until on the 
death of Bishop Anselm II., about 1020, a nephew succeeded him 
in the episcopate only, while the secular honors were bequeathed 
to a brother-in-law, Humbert the White-handed, Count of Mau- 
rienne, and progenitor of the royal house of Savoy. 

Gundulf and Ermenberg had a palace at Aosta. Tradition, 
supported by documentary evidence, points to the beautiful 
domain of Gressan, about three miles distant, as their country 
home. This property is still called Clochatel, vernacular for 
enclos du chateau. We will quote the description given of St. 
Anselm's early home : 

" Sweet, peaceful Clochatel ! Nowhere in this favored valley does 
noontide heat scorch less fiercely, as nowhere does evening gale or breath 
of morn blow more refreshingly, than here here, where, when autumn 
days grow short, the neighboring husbandman wends homeward, bending 
beneath his gathered wealth of maize, and the burnished poplars hang 
forth to the sunset their foliage of silver and gold, and the chestnut falls 
soft on the turf, and the bells of the drowsy kine make a mellow discord, 
and down the vast valley to right and left the giant crags blaze with an 
amber glory ; whilst far away the clear blue shadow rises, creeping slowly 
over avalanche and glacier, and as it rises the sky-touching snows of 
Combin, of Velan, and of the nearer Becca di Nona one by one quicken 
into rosy splendor and fade into night." 

St. Anselm has left a description of his mother not in the 
days of her early beauty, but as a matron in middle life ; pious, 
thoughtful, conscientious in fulfilling the duties of her position, 
in ruling her household, managing her inheritance, and in main- 
taining a state suitable to her husband's princely rank and her 
own ; her will being in all things guided by a sanctified reason. 
If her son's generosity of character was inherited from Gundulf, 
it was to her he owed his habit of submitting thought and action 
to the test of a higher law, and of seeking the agreement of 
reason with the revealed verities of faith. 

With regard to the character of Gundulf, who has been very 
unjustly treated by the modern biographers of his son, we have 
a fresh exposure of the way in which an inaccurate reading, or 
rather the misapprehension of the meaning conventionally attached 
to certain expressions in other ages than our own, has resulted in 
unmerited aspersion. That in his generous open-handedness he 
spent his fortune heedlessly is the worst that can be said of Gun- 
dulf during Ermenberg's lifetime. In the tenth century it had 
become an immemorial tradition with Christian parents to con- 
secrate only sons to God. Gundulf regarded his son as future 

VOL. XXXVII. 22 



338 THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. [June, 

bishop of Aosta, but his young wife, fearing for her boy the dan- 
gers of the wealth and state attendant on this dignity, hoped 
that he might rather choose the monastic life. 

The following account of the child's early vision or dream 
acquires a new interest from the description of its local frame- 
work : 

" Heaven was to [Ermenberg] an ideal court, of which her own domestic 
traditions had afforded her an image ; and in that heaven dwelt God, ruling 
all things and sustaining all things. So she taught her wondering child, in 
phrase suited to an infancy too tender to grasp other and more mysterious 
truths; and he in his turn developed her teaching into the conviction that 
God was willing his abode should be seen by mortal eye. Looking about 
him, therefore, day by day, for his best mountain way to heaven, he scanned 
the snowy dome of Velan, the icy flanks of the Ruitors, the slippery pin- 
nacles of Combin, all the aerial heights that stand far off round about the 
valley of Aosta ; but, to his untutored vision, none was higher than the 
Becca di Nona,* whose noontide shadow lay every day across the valley 
down below the city, as none was nearer for his untried strength, and none, 
therefore, when the happy moment should come, less likely to disappoint 
him. For when, at evening, all the other mountain summits are already 
eclipsed, the Becca di Nona gleams bright in the firmament; and whereas 
they stand wrapped in eternal shrouds of snow and ice, time is, year by 
year, when the summit of the Becca di Nona is for a few short weeks laid 
bare by the autumnal warmth. The season was autumn when little Anselm 
discovered this ; and, noting well that at the foot of the mountain there 
lay a titanic ledge of rock, called then, as now, the Gargantua, he nursed his 
divine ambition, till one night as he slept the summons came. He must 
climb the mountain and hasten to the court of God. He set forth, crossed 
the river, scaled the Gargantua, where, grieved at finding the King's 
maidens gathering in his harvest after too careless and indolent a fashion, 
he chid their sloth and resolved to lay charge against them, but passed on 
forthwith, for he must not delay. So, leaving the region of corn and vine- 
yard, he plunged into the forest, and threading his way upwards through 
belts of pine and over lawns of turf and lavender, and scaling precipitous 
blank rocks, had already reached the summit, when, lo ! heaven opened. 
The Invisible, in fashion as a king, sat befo're him enthroned in majesty, 
and with none near him but his seneschal, for the rest of the household 
had been sent down into the world to reap his harvest. The child crossed 
the threshold. The Lord called him, and he obeyed ; he approached and 

" This mountain stands almost due south of Aosta. Its English name would be Noontide 
Peak. Our word noon is a corruption of nonai.e., hora nona, the word having obtained its 
present meaning at a time when the ecclesiastical office of Nones was said by anticipation at 
mid-day and not about three o'clock. I have no doubt that the Becca di Nona received its 
name when it was customary to ring the bells for the office I have mentioned, just as the sun 
stood over it ; and my conviction is confirmed by the fact that the older name of the Mons 
Emilius, which stands a little more to the east, is Pic de Dix Heures, or Ten-o'clock Peak. When 
the unworthy designation of Mons Emilius shall have been supplanted by a better, the Valdo- 
stans could not do better than give their Becca di Nona the alternative name of Mont St. 
Anselme." 



1883.] THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. 339 

sat down at the Lord's feet ; was asked with royal grace and condescension 
who he was, whence he had come, what he wanted ; answered the questions 
and was not afraid. Whereupon the King gave command to the seneschal, 
who brought forth bread and set it before him. It was bread of an exceed- 
ing whiteness,* and he ate it in the Lord's presence. He ate it and was 
refreshed, and slept his sleep, and awoke next morning at Aosta, and, 
remembering his journey, or rather not so much remembering it as retrac- 
ing it step by step and incident by incident, flew to his mother's knee and 
told her all. 

" Ermenberg wept tears of consolation, but her joy was not like his. 
Wonder what the vision might mean, wonder whether it was in the body 
or out of the body that this had happened, added bewilderment to her 
bliss. But Anselm's was unalloyed. He had been to Paradise corporally, 
and with corporal mouth had eaten the Bread of God. 

" Thus did Heaven set its mark on the child ! " 

It was the custom of the age that a child destined for high cle- 
rical dignity should be entrusted to the care of a nutritor, or guar- 
dian, usually some great prelate or high-born canon, who should 
have entire charge of his training, and under whose guardian- 
ship the boy was " as carefully tended, and certainly as sedulously 
whipped, as if he had remained at home." The nurseries of that 
date offered none of the modern incentives to learning. Not a 
nurse in Christendom, and very few mothers, could have taught 
the alphabet, and even if they could there was then no literature 
in the vernacular dialects, not even in the lingua romana, the 
least " barbarous " of them all ; hence none but Latinists would 
presume to take charge of an abecedarius, and consequently eccle- 
siastics were the sole teachers even of little children. The seve- 
rity of the discipline to which these children were subjected,, and 
which was considered essential to the formation of character,, 
appears to us, with our modern ideas, almost incredible ; and still 
more so the instances of deep mutual affection between master 
and scholar with which these frequent castigations did not ap- 
parently interfere. They represented, in fact, an universal tra- 
dition, older than St. Paul and older than Solomon,, and they 
were for the most part fashioned to a passionless ideal ; but 
nevertheless the sufferings of school- boy life were regarded by 
even grave historians of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as 
the very acme of human woe. 

When, therefore, not long after his dream, and before he was 
four years old, Anselm asked to go to school, Ermenberg at first 
resisted, knowing what it meant. However, she subsequently 
yielded, and he was sent to the home of one or other of her 

* Panem. 



340 



THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. [June, 



brothers, Lambert and Folcerad, both canons of St. Ours at 
Aosta. Among other details exhumed by our author we find 
it established as apparently certain that Anselm wore the white 
habit as canon of St. Ours from his fourteenth year, and proba- 
bly from the age of seven. 

After a year or two of attendance at the elementary school- 
it seems to have been that of the Benedictine monastery outside 
the city walls, whither his clericus, the attendant in orders cus- 
tomary for boys of his rank, accompanied him daily Anselm 
was confided to a private tutor, probably a disciple of Lanfranc. 
To this period belongs the touching anecdote which follows, and 
which has not appeared in any previous biography of the saint : 

" Tutor and pupil began their labors with equal zeal ; but the zeal of 
the former was greater than his discretion. . . . He had so good a pupil 
that, bent upon converting the thoughtful, meditative, ever-reasoning child 
into a prodigy of learning, he entered upon a course of discipline which 
. . . was, for such a child, the cruellest that could be contrived a course of 
discipline in comparison with which the purple stripes on Guibert of 
NogerU's little back were very mercy.* Guibert, when his case was at the 
worst, could at any rate look his mother in the face and say, ' If I die of 
my whippings I mean to be whipped ' ; but when Anselm's was at the 
worst the brightest star of the eleventh century had been well-nigh 
quenched in its rising. The infatuated pedagogue confined him to the 
house in the fond hope of forcing him by incessant application into a pre- 
mature intellectual ripeness ; and, deeming it waste of time that so active a 
mind should be allowed to relax a tension to which it was only too prone 
by temperament, kept him prisoner over his books, and paid little heed to 
the attenuated features and throbbing pulse of the willing victim, and to 
all the other indications of an overwrought brain. At last the brain re- 
fused to work, and the precocious little student felt as if reason were top- 
pling from her throne. The uncles, appealed to in this emergency, tried 
all the rude skill then in fashion, but to no purpose, and were fain in their 
perplexity to send him home to Ermenberg. Here fresh alarms awaited 
the poor child. He had forgotten the bustle and pomp of that princely 
home ; ... he sought solitude, shunned the looks of others, and, when fa- 
ther and mother plied him with solicitous tendernesses, turned away a 
flushed lace and said nothing. On one such occasion Ermenberg cried 
out, 'Ah me, I have lost my child ! ' . . . She gave peremptory orders to 
her servants that the child was to be allowed to do whatever he pleased, 
thwarted in nothing, and implicitly obeyed in all he should choose to re- 
quire. Her injunctions were respected ; time and care did the rest. 

" In future years it was remarked that never had nurse like Anselm en- 
tered an infirmary. . . . Ermenberg had taught him the science of he sick- 
room." 

While yet a boy Anselm debated within himself how best to 

* See vol. i. p. 24. 



1883.] THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. 341 

fashion his life to the divine will. And here, from the circum- 
stances of the times, his comparison of the monastic life and of 
the canonical, as they should have been rather than as they were, 
was a comparison of ideals. Remarkable as this was in a boy of 
thirteen, still more so was the fact that, after testing each by all 
that he knew of the divine will, he should at once have cou- 
rageously endeavored to carry his decision, the result of abstract 
reasoning on his part, into practical effect. For, having arrived 
at the conclusion that the monastic life would be most conducive 
to this end, he presented himself, when not fourteen years of age, 
at a neighboring monastery and asked to be admitted as postu- 
lant. To his great distress he was refused. He then prayed for 
the grace of an illness. His prayer was heard, and when re- 
duced to a grievous state of sickness he sent to the abbot, re- 
newing his petition, thinking to move him to grant it by letting 
him know that he was like to die ; but in vain. The abbot knew 
that in case of his recovery Gundulf would not be at all likely 
to forego his son's inheritance of the ancestral throne of the 
bishops of Aosta and all that this inheritance involved. " Thus," 
wrote Eadmer, " He whose foreseeing eye can by nothing be 
deceived was unwilling that his servant should have share in the 
religious life of that place, because he had some others hidden in 
the bosom of his mercy whom, as became evident in due time, 
he was preparing to be formed by Anselm to the doing of his 
will."* 

Anselm, recovering from the strange illness which left him 
for years afterwards in delicate health, entered on a studious, 
innocent, and exemplary youth, even in those early days distri- 
buting his income amongst the poorer members of his order, and 
forming those habits of life which led him later to be regarded 
as a model of the clerical character. He has left it on record 
that although for a long time his health was not sufficiently 
robust to endure the usual discipline of the cloister, yet the sole 
desire of his heart ever was to fulfil the sacred resolution of his 
boyhood and the one end which he kept steadily in view. 

The following passage seems to us so important in relation to 
a mistake into which all the modern biographers of the saint 
have fallen that we give it in full, although passing over the 

* That Dean Church's rendering of this passage is erroneous is shown by an exhaustive note 
on the mediaeval sense of the word implicari. This does not here mean to be entangled (as he 
translates it), but simply to take part in, to be employed or engaged in e.g., implicabar divinis, 
" I spent my time in the study of sacred literature," not " I was entangled in divine things," 
which would be a specimen of that untruthful literalness which is far from being uncommon. 



342 THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. [June, 

five pages immediately preceding, which, by the testimony they 
produce, give additional weight to every word : 

"Thus, pure, studious, recollected, and hopeful, he passed the days of 
his youth, when, as he entered on manhood, a change, if change it may be 
called, came over him which challenges our careful attention ; for some 
fluent foreign writers have made of it a text for period after period of use- 
less rhetoric, and for one of the most astounding calumnies to be found in 
the annals of all history. They have not converted a molehill into a moun- 
tainthey have done worse : by the strangest of alchemy they have con- 
verted a diamond into a dunghill, and transformed a blameless adolescence 
into that which the pen refuses to describe. Nothing could be more cruel, 
as nothing could be more false, and there is not the shadow of a sugges- 
tion from end to end of Eadmer's account to lend excuse to it. This is 
what Eadmer says : ' As bodily health, early manhood, and a successful 
secular career welcomed him with their smiles, the fervor of his heart, 
which had been set on embracing the monastic estate, began by slow de- 
grees to cool ; so much so that he rather wished to pursue his course along 
the paths of the secular life than leave them and become a monk.' Then 
comes a passage intelligible enough as written by such a man as Eadmer : 
' He also began insensibly to neglect those literary pursuits of which he 
was by habit a very enthusiastic student, and to turn his attention to 
manly sports.' This is all ' He began.' Pray, is it so very wicked in a 
young man of twenty, though he be a subdeacon or even a deacon, to 
study the bias of a bowl or the curve described by a javelin ? But let 
Eadmer tell his story : ' After all, however, his love and his devotion for 
his mother held him back somewhat from these pastimes. But on her 
death, like a ship that has lost its anchor, he narrowly escaped drifting 
utterly off into the billows of the world.' The billows that is to say, the 
tempestuous sea of secular life (whether clerical or not) outside the walls 
of a monastery. In the language of the age monastic life was habitually 
compared to a peaceful haven, while those whose calling lay without the 
cloister were regarded, and regarded themselves, as storm-tossed mariners. 
Thus St. Gregory the Great, who had been compelled to exchange his cell 
on the Ccelian Hill for the throne of Peter, laments that the ship of his 
soul was now beaten by the billows and the storm, so that when he cast a 
backward glance at the haven he had left he groaned for very sorrow." 

To resume our quotation : 

" The case is clear and simple enough : Anselm was not yet a monk, but 
he had resolved to become one, . . . and hence when, in old age, he re- 
viewed his mortal career, it was not without regret that he pointed to one 
period of it in which the intensity of his desire for the religious profession 
was allowed to relax ; to one short interval in which, mortification not be- 
ing his sole joy, he suffered the little bark of his heart to use his own 
phrase to ride indolently at anchor and run risk of drifting out to open 
sea. But, be it a thousand times repeated, he was never out of harbor, and 
he has nowhere accused himself of what never happened. . . . His utmost 
extravagance of conduct may have been that he once provided himself 



1883.] THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. 343 

with a pair of hawking gauntlets, but we do not know that he even put 
them on." 

But besides that it would be unreasonable to apply to such 
terms as fluctiis s<zculi a meaning utterly wide of the sense in 
which they were used for five centuries from the days of Gre- 
gory the Great, it is inexcusable to -forget that St. Anselm was a 
monachus monachorum, and fervent enough in his love of monas- 
ticism to deem it a disadvantage to have lived a day in the 
world after having once formed the resolution of leaving it. 
Here, then, we learn the meaning of the tears he dropped upon 
Eadmer's account of this brief period of his life : 

" For what is the purport of that account ? Not that for one brief day 
or hour he definitively relinquished the idea of becoming a monk, but that 
his boyish fervor began insensibly to cool ; not that he deliberately con- 
sented to a temptation to live henceforth in the world, but that he enter- 
tained the thought that a life in the world might be the preferable state ; 
not that he discarded his studies and threw his energies into sports inno- 
cent in themselves, but that he was on the point only on the point of 
doing so. Do we ask, then, what can be the secret of all this emotion ? 
There is only one thing that can explain it, and that is his estimate of the 
blessedness of the religious state. . . . He held it a supremely blessed thing 
that a soul created for God should in the earliest morning of life be trans- 
planted to lawns of paradisiacal security, there to put forth its blossoms 
and its fruit, unhurt by chilling winds and nipping frost, and he deemed 
it a grievous loss to have been surrounded, for however short a time after 
reaching the age of reason, by any other accessories than the alternate 
prayer, and chant, and silence, and discipline, and labor, and penance of the 
cloister." 

Whether in this we one and all feel with him matters not ; 
our only present business is to understand him. In short, this 
portion of Mr. Rule's work completely pulverizes the assertions 
of those who, with Mr. Freeman, pretend that St. Anselm's 
youth was dissolute. Ermenberg died in 1056 in giving birth to 
a daughter, Richera. Anselm tried in vain to console his father, 
who became morose and gloomy not only from grief at the loss 
of his wife, but also from disappointment that she had borne him 
a daughter instead of a son. His irritation also against Anselm 
for not having chosen a position which would enable him to 
make a figure in the world developed into an ungovernable vio- 
lence, as one incident after another showed him that the time 
was gone by for transforming the studious and ascetic youth 
into a mere man of the world. The gentleness and patience with 
which Anselm invariably received his father's upbraidings only 
had the effect of exasperating him beyond all bounds. Anselm, 



344 THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. [June, 

therefore, resolved, on his father's account as well as his own, to 
leave home and country and adventure exile. 

He went forth, therefore, with no unseemly haste, but 
equipped for a long journey, and attended, as became his condi- 
tion, by his clericus de terrd, and accompanied by probably four 
other members of his household. Descending the valley of 
Aosta, the little band pushed on to Ivrea, to Susa, and thence to 
Mont Cenis. They were still toiling through the trackless snows 
of the mountain solitudes when Anselm, whose sensitive nature 
had been so bruised by recent sorrow, violence, and injustice, 
became ill from exhaustion and fatigue. Food alone could save 
him, and all the provisions were consumed. His clericus in 
despair ransacked the empty wallets, and lastly a sack of proven- 
der thrown across the back of the ass, when lo ! a manchet of 
bread, of exceeding whiteness, like that of the heavenly food he 
had eaten in his childhood in the presence of God. He ate and 
was restored, and resumed his journey, weeping tears of thank- 
fulness and hope. 

Upon reaching Cluny, " the pride of Burgundy," he re- 
mained there for a time, and afterwards with the monks of St. 
Benignus at Dijon ; but the load-star of his wanderings ever was 
Le Bee, whither his heart had long been drawn by the presence 
of Lanfranc. Having at last reached Normandy when Lanfranc 
was absent at Rome, he waited at Avranches for his return. On 
the very day that term opened at the humble monastery by the 
Risle, Anselm was waiting betimes at the door of the thatched 
shed which was Lanfranc's lecture-room. 

" His heart beat high as he stood outside that lowly shed of rude timber, 
flint, and mud. And if it be true that, after hopes alternately thwarted and 
deferred through many years, his enrollment amongst Lanfranc's disciples 
was an event of utmost interest to himself, it is impossible for us to forget 
that issues of enduring import in the moral and intellectual destinies of 
mankind were to follow from the relation now established between the il- 
lustrious teacher and his illustrious disciple. The disciple was to succeed 
the teacher first as prior of Le Bee, and then as archbishop of Canter- 
bury; and the friendship of the two men during nearly thirty years, the 
part which each of them played in the same stirring events, their intimacy 
with the same great personages, have placed them side by side on the page 
of history. But though we regard them as contemporaries, we must not 
forget that at their first meeting the younger man had barely completed 
his twenty-sixth year, whilst the older was already in his sixty-third. Nor 
did they present a less remarkable difference in respect of character and 
of endowment. Lanfranc was the greatest teacher of the eleventh cen- 
tury ; Anselm was to be distinguished as its profoundest thinker." 

Before concluding we must mention another circumstance 



1883.] THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. 345 

which has been strangely distorted because strangely misunder- 
stood. It relates to the motives which actuated Anselm in the 
choice of a religious life motives in regard to which M. Charma, 
for example, and many besides M. Charma, are wide of the mark. 
Eadmer, in that part of his account relating to his master's 
resolution to enter the monastic life, 

" breaks the thread of the biography in order to record the considerations 
which engaged Anselm's mind as soon as he had formed that resolution. 
But that is not all. Eadmer's account of those considerations is given in 
the very words of the saint himself, as he used to tell the story in his old 
age, and is accompanied with a description of the saint's manner in the 
telling of it. Nothing could be more graphic : 

"'We must, therefore, violate the dramatic unities, and, bidding our 
laggard imagination fly from Le Bee to Canterbury, shift our date from 
1060 to 1108 or thereabouts. The scene is a room in the monastery of 
Christ Church, and the principal dramatis personce not a secular clergyman 
of twenty-six, but a Benedictine monk who has already entered on the 
eighth decade of his life a monk, yet more than a monk ; for he wears on 
his white, slender hand a ring which distinguishes him from his surround- 
ing religious. He is seated in his chair ; and, together with a countenance 
of inborn nobility and sweetness, every line of which indicates a rare sus- 
ceptibility of feeling, he has an eye lightened with a fire that always glows, 
but seldom, if ever, flashes, and hair that lies snowy white in tonsured ring 
over brows deeply marked by thought and the buffetings of an adverse 
fortune. It is Archbishop Anselm, now near his end, and he is speaking : 
" I said to myself, Now I am going to be a monk ; but where ? If at Cluny 
or if at Le Bee, the time I have spent in study will have been lost. The 
life at Cluny is so severe that I shall soon make a sorry figure of myself, 
for I have not the strength to endure it ; and as to Le Bee, Lanfranc's is 
too towering a genius for me there to be of use to any one. I shall, there- 
fore, best carry out my purpose in a place where I may display my know- 
ledge and be of service to many others." 

" ' So does the old man speak . . . with a sort of playful smile at his 
own expense. 

" ' " No, I was not yet broken in ; my contempt for the world was only 
in the bud, and that accounts for my not seeing the danger. I thought all 
this came from charity to others. . . . But what am I saying ? A monk ! 
To be a monk what ! is it to wish to be set before others, honored more 
than others, made much of at their expense ? No! no ! Down, then, with 
your pride and thought of self, and turn monk in a place where, as is just, 
you will be set last of all for the sake of God, and accounted least and 
unworthiest of all, and in comparison with all the rest not cared a straw 
for ! And where can this be done ? Why, at Le Bee, if anywhere. At Le 
Bee I shall be of no importance ; for at Le Bee is a man who shines with 
the light 'of a transcendent wisdom which is enough for all of them ; . . . 
they will all honor and make much of him. At Le Bee, then, shall my rest 
be. At Le Bee shall God, and God alone, be the rjeacon of my life ; at Le 
Bee the love of God, and that alone, shall be my study; at Le Bee the 



346 THE YOUTH OF SAINT ANSELM. [June, 

thought of God, the blissful and undying thought, shall be my solace and 
my satisfaction." Such,' continues Eadmer, ' were his musings, his long- 
ings, and his dearest hopes.' " 

And it is this wonderful soliloquy which has been so unjusti- 
fiably travestied by modern historians as to prove that they can- 
not have studied the subject.* 

After Anselm had thus chosen the monasteryof Le Bee as 
preferable to all others, the question presented itself whether the 
life of a hermit might not, after all, be for him the best. Gundulf 
had died since his son had withdrawn himself from his wrath- 
died a holy death and in the monastic habit and Anselm, 
although his preference was for the cloister, debated with him- 
self whether he ought rather to live in a hermitage or in a 
hospice which he should found out of his own inherited estates.f 
He went for counsel to Lanfranc, saying that he wished to 
choose that of the three alternatives which he should decide to 
be best. Lanfranc declined to give an opinion, but referred him 
to their venerable diocesan, Maurille, Archbishop of Rouen. The 
two went together and laid the case before the archbishop, who 
at once declared in favor of the ordinary monastic life. His 
word was law, and his visitors were ready to return to Le Bee 
on the morrow. 

" In those days the Seine at Rouen, taking its tortuous course further 
to the north than now, washed the very precinct of. the metropolitan 
church, and it requires but little imagination to see the prior of Le Bee 
and his pupil putting off in a boat from the ferry close under the sacred 
pile, and slowly making for the southern bank of the river. That ferry- 
boat carried no ordinary freight Lanfranc and Anselm, each bound to the 
other by the ties of a new and supernatural sympathy ; Lanfranc and An- 
selm, monks both of them, in heart at least, for the difference of garb will 
not last long, and in a few short hours Anselm will have exchanged the 
white dress of the secular clergyman (canon ?) for a coarser habit. It 
is a morning in spring, and three winters have passed since he crossed 
Mont Cenis. The passage of Mont Cenis then, and that of the Seine now 
what a contrast! That was a deliverance undoubtedly from thral- 
dom, from suffering, from the shadow of death, but it was a perilous jour- 
ney over solitudes of snow, and, to one sick at heart and jaded in body, a 

* Sae the further remarks on the expression scire meum (pp. in, 112), and the note, show- 
ing how, from the same want of care, the compilers of the Histoire Litttraire de la France hare 
entirely missed the meaning of Anselm's reply to Avesgot. 

tThe mistake has been made by Longueval (Hist, de PEglise Gallicane) that Anselm was 
crating as to whether he should be a monk, or a hermit, or remain in the world; and this 
ustake has been industriously copied. Were it needed we have the testimony of John of Salis- 
bury on the matter: "An enim expeteret eremum, an claustrum monachorum, an ex proprio 
patnmomo domo construens peregrinis, pro facilitate, et pauperibus ministraret, habebat incer- 
tum " ( Vita Sti. Anselmi, cap. ii.) 



1883.] THE YOUTH OF ST. ANSELM. 347 

venture into blank uncertainty; but this is a peaceful transit from sus- 
pense and deferred hopes to security and a terrestrial heaven. And peace- 
ful influences fill his pure heart with an ineffable happiness. No sound 
breaks the pervading calm save the confused and harmonious din of ham- 
mer, chisel, and crane plied by the builders of Maurille's cathedral. He 
turns and gazes on its massive but unfinished tower. Clear and hard it 
strikes against the pearly sky, and stretches in vain pursuit its tremu- 
lous reflection across the flood. A peaceful reverie to Anselm. Lan- 
franc gazes on him with brimming eyes and an interest too deep for 
words. Nor he alone : others are watching. Ermenberg stoops from her 
blissful throne, and Gundulf, who once, in weakness and rage, drove 
him from his old home, now pursues him with blessings to his new." 

Mr. Rule's Life of St. Anselm may be compared to a series 
of historical pictures carefully painted on the spot. All we 
have attempted is, by drawing attention to one, and this by no 
means one of the richest, but one of the simplest among them, to 
give some idea of the handling and interest of the rest. 



348 



A R MINE. 



[June, 



ARMINE. 



CHAPTER IX. 

IT was on the day after his visit to Miss Bertram that Eger- 
ton again made his appearance at the door of the D'Antignac 
apartment, and on this occasion was admitted. He was received 
by Helene with great cordiality, and taken at once to her bro- 
ther's room, where he found the scene which had grown familiar 
to him, as to many others the bright chamber with its broad 
windows, its sunshine and pictures and flowers, and the couch 
where, with pathetic immobility, lay the wreck of a man's strong 
frame, and where out of a pale, suffering-stamped face looked 
such grave, serene eyes. 

Those eyes glanced up as the door opened, and with a smile 
D'Antignac laid down a book which he was reading to hold out 
a wasted hand. " A friend who has been long absent is doubly 
welcome," he said, with his peculiar charm of tone and manner. 

" That ought to depend upon the reason of the absence," said 
Egerton, responding to the smile. 

The other shook his head. " One must take for granted that 
the reason has been good," he said. " We should never doubt a 
friend. However, you mav give an account of yourself, if you 
like." 

" The account, then, will include an attempt to see you not 
many days ago. I was sorry to have failed." 

" I was sorry, too. But I did not hear of the visit till you 
were gone." 

" It was I who gave the order that Raoul should be denied to 
any one who called," said Helene. 

"Oh! I am never surprised and certainly never offended at 
being turned away," said Egerton. " On the contrary, I take it 
as a special favor when I am admitted." 

" And how ought I to take a visit from one who has naturally 
many more entertaining places to go than to the chamber of an 
invalid ? " asked D'Antignac. " But, besides giving me pleasure, 
you are performing one of the corporal works of mercy which 
is a good thing for you, though I dare say you know very little 
about the corporal works of mercy." 

" I must confess I don't know much," answered Egerton, 



1883.] ARMINE. 



349 



" though I am glad to be performing one. But if there is any 
merit connected with such works, I am sure my visit to you 
cannot possibly be classed among them, as it gives me too much 
pleasure." 

" If flattery could spoil me as it is more than likely that it 
does my friends give me enough for the purpose," said D'An- 
tignac. " But sit down and tell me about yourself. What have 
you been doing since I saw you last ? " 

" That," said Egerton as he sat down, " would make a long 
story, if it were worth telling which it is not. Since I was 
here last I have, with one exception, done nothing worth remem- 
bering for five minutes." 

" You are severe on yourself," said Helene. 

"If that is severity it will apply very justly to the most of 
my life," said the young man quite seriously. " But you do not 
ask what is the one noteworthy exception." 

" We wait for you to tell us," said D'Antignac. 

"Remember, then, that I define it as noteworthy, not praise- 
worthy ; for I am afraid of falling in your good opinion when 
you hear that I have attended a Socialist meeting." 

" There is no reason why you should suffer such a fall from 
the mere fact of attending the meeting," said D'Antignac. " The 
question is, Why did you attend it? " 

" From curiosity chiefly. I have a friend who is a student 
over in the Quartier Latin, a fiery Red Republican, and I have 
heard him talk a great deal of a man of remarkable genius and 
eloquence who is one of the leaders of the extreme Socialists. 
Now, you know, although one hears a great deal about Social- 
ism, it is generally only from one point of view ; and I always 
like to hear both sides of a question. So I went with a friend of 
my friend's a Bohemian journalist, also Red Republican to 
hear this revolutionary tribune. He is indeed a man of remark- 
able eloquence, and after the meeting was over my companion 
introduced me to him, when I found him to be that singular ano- 
maly, a gentleman-Socialist. His name is Duchesne." 

D'Antignac smiled. " I felt sure that you would name him," 
he said. "And what then? Did he convert you to his doc- 
trine?" 

" Hardly. I am not prepared to assist in cutting my own 
throat. Yet I should not answer for myself if I were subjected 
to his influence often. He has not only the gift of persuasion 
and the power of eloquence in extraordinary degree, but he is 
well supplied with the heavy artillery of argument. And I must 



350 ARMINE. [June, 

admit that some of the problems of the time seem to me in- 
soluble." 

" So they are," said the other quietly, " in the light of any- 
thing that you can bring to bear upon them. You have gained 
a step if you recognize that. Many men either deny the exist- 
ence of these problems or have a panacea ready for all the evils 
that afflict the world." 

" I have nothing of the kind," said Egerton. " The evils seem 
to me so gigantic and the remedies proposed either so ineffectual 
or so terrible that I have a sense of despair in contemplating the 
picture which human society presents." 

" That is a common state of the most thoughtful minds," said 
D'Antignac. " Pessimism is one of the rapidly growing evils of 
the days on which we have fallen. Whoever is without faith, 
yet has a sufficiently clear vision to see the tendency of the age, 
and not only the tendency of this age but the tendency of all 
ao-es, * if in this life only we have hope,' must fall into it." 

" I am not a pessimist," said Egerton, " nor do I think that I 
could ever become one. These things are very much matters of 
temperament, you know. But if I am not a pessimist, I am still 
less an optimist of the positive school one of those who see the 
future of the world rose-colored by the light of their own imagi- 
nations. I am quite sure that the humanity which we know, and 
have known, through history, for ages, will undergo no great 
change in the time to come that selfishness will still rule men 
and crime will still exist among them." 

" In other words, original sin will still remain with its conse- 
quences," said D'Antignac. " But original sin is one of the 
things which positive thinkers ignore. To them humanity only 
needs to be relieved from the belief in eternity and the fear of 
God to become great and good, wise and benevolent. The an- 
archistswho are the most perfect developments of advanced 
thought do not, it is true, exhibit these virtues yet in transcen- 
dent degree. But perhaps when they have assassinated ail rulers, 
slaughtered all capitalists, overthrown all governments, and de- 
molished all altars, they may begin to do so." 

" Men like Duchesne at least think so," said Egerton. " He 
gives me the impression of being an honest enthusiast one who 
looks reluctantly at the first act of destruction, but who sees be- 
yond it the new earth, the new civilization, the new creed of the 
future."" 

"Such dreamers are to be pitied," said D'Antignac, "but 
they are none the less accountable because self-deceived. The 



1883.] ARMINE. 351 

spirit which fills them the spirit which is as far as possible re- 
moved from the reason which they profess to adore is shown 
in the violence of their animosity toward the idea of revealed 
religion, of a law which all men are bound to obey under a pen- 
alty of spiritual death." 

"That reminds me," said Egerton, " that if the eloquent 
Socialist ' almost persuaded' me, an oracle of a different kind 
spoke under his own roof-tree, and directed me to you." 

" It is not difficult for me to imagine who that was," said 
D'Antignac. " You met Armine." 

" Mile. Duchesne ? Yes, I met her, and was exceedingly inter- 
ested. No doubt she would be interesting under any circum- 
stances ; but as the daughter of a fiery Socialist, and your friend, 
you will confess that was enough to stimulate my curiosity." 

Mile. d'Antignac laughed. " Quite enough," she remarked. 
" But we have known Armine for a long time. She was hardly 
out of childhood when I met her first the most slender, quiet 
creature, but always with that poetic face and those sibylline 
eyes. Before I had exchanged a word with her before I knew 
who she was I felt instinctively sorry for her. And you may 
be sure I feel sorry for her now." 

" Do you mean that you are sorry for her because her father 
is a Socialist ? " asked Egerton. 

" Partly, yes ; for he is not only a Socialist in theory, but, as 
Armine says with pathetic pride, he does not content himself 
with urging others to danger: he is ready to lead them. Nay, 
from what she lets fall, I fancy it would not surprise her if he 
were any day implicated in a dynamite plot on the other side of 
Europe." 

" I should not think," said Egerton, " that Duchesne was that 
kind of man. He looks to revolution, of course ; but I cannot 
imagine him endorsing assassination." 

" Personally I know nothing about him," said M. d'Antignac, 
" but if he does not himself endorse assassination he is the com- 
panion of those who not only endorse it but declare it to be 
their chosen and approved weapon. It is difficult for any man 
to disavow the policy of the army in which he has voluntarily 
enrolled himself. And the utterances of the leaders, as well as 
the acts of the revolutionary societies all over Europe, are un- 
mistakable on this point. From Mazzini, the idol of 'liberals' 
and apostle of assassination, to Michael Bakunin, the father of 
Nihilism, their outspoken teaching is as clear as the acts of their 
followers have been decisive." 



352 A RMINE. [June, 

" I am afraid there is no doubt that assassination plays a large 
part in the revolutionary programme," said Egerton. " But is it 
not the old story oppression producing violence?" 

" Unfortunately they have not always that excuse. Bakunin, 
of whom I spoke a moment ago, declared publicly in a speech at 
Geneva that 'such deeds are justified by the necessity of rooting 
out from men's minds the habit of respect for the powers that 
be.' In other words, secret tribunals are to condemn kings and 
ministers to death for no other crime than that of ruling or 
attempting to rule and in order to break down the last faint 
tradition of ' the divinity which doth hedge a king.' Has the 
world, in what are called its darkest ages, ever known anything 
to equal that? In the broad light of this much-lauded nineteenth 
century we see Europe dominated by powerful organizations 
which defy every law of God or man, which proclaim anarchy 
as their end, terror and bloodshed as their means, and which are 
already strong enough to dictate the policy of governments." 

Egerton did not answer for a moment. Then he said : " It is 
true. Yet surely there is something to be said for that move- 
ment which we call Socialism. Putting aside its objectionable 
features assassination, war against religion, and wild theories 
about property can it be denied that the grievances of the poor 
are real and undoubted ? And in the face of those grievances 
we can scarcely blame desperate men for advocating desperate 
measures." 

" In the first place," said D'Antignac, " it is not possible, in 
considering and judging Socialism, to put aside what you call its 
objectionable features; for they are not simply features, but in- 
tegral parts. Without the denial of religion there could be no 
such thing as Socialism. And men never stop at denying God : 
they immediately proceed to make war against him. Now, they 
can only reach him through the church, which is his visible 
witness and representative on earth ; and so you will find secret 
societies, wherever they exist, arrayed against Catholicity." 

" I have accounted for that," said Egerton, " by the fact that 
the Catholic Church, embodying the spirit of a past age, is op- 
posed to popular rights." 

" It has often been a source of wonder to me," said D'An- 
tignac quietly, "that men of culture like yourself are not 
ashamed of displaying gross ignorance with regard to what, even 
from your own point of view, is one of the most important in- 
stitutions the world has ever known. On every other subject 
you are careful to be thoroughly informed, to accept no assertion 



1883.] ARMINE. 353 

without proof; but when there is question of that church to 
which you owe every fragment of your civilization" you are 
content to receive the unproved assertions of her enemies and to 
betray, whenever you speak of her, an ignorance for which a 
child should blush." 

"I am sure I beg pardon," said Egerton, " if I have displayed 
in any way an offensive ignorance. Nothing was farther from 
my intention. And I may add that no one admires more than I 
do the glorious achievements of the Catholic Church in the 
past. But it seems to me that, however beneficial her influence 
was at a certain point in the progress of the human race, it is 
now an outworn force. Having: lost her hold on the intellect of 

o 

the world, she is incapable of leading modern thought." 

" My poor friend," said D'Antignac, " your ideas are in sad 
but not uncommon confusion. Your reasoning seems to be 
something like this : because modern society three hundred 
years ago threw off the authority of the church which the Son 
of God had commanded to teach all nations in his name and 
witness through all ages to his truth ; because it has persistently 
ever since turned a deaf ear to her admonitions and disregarded 
her solemn warnings, and because it is now face to face with the 
logical result of its own principles ; because men have trans- 
ferred the right of revolt from the spiritual to the political 
sphere, and there is consequently only choice between tyranny 
and chaos in government ; because ' private judgment ' has led to 
universal scepticism, and because the people, deprived of the 
hope of heaven, are about to rise up and take forcibly the things 
of earth, therefore the Catholic Church is an outworn force, un- 
fit to guide the society which owes all that it possesses of good 
to her." 

" I'do not think," said Egerton, " that I am stupid enough to 
have been guilty of such false reasoning as that. But you must 
admit that the ideas of modern society are wholly opposed to 
those of the Catholic Church." 

" Certainly I admit it, and I add that the result is before you 
in the evils which afflict that society. The Catholic Church 
teaches man that he is a being subject to instruction and bound 
to obey a law which God has revealed ; modern thought tells 
him that he is the supreme judge of truth, and that whatever his 
finite intelligence cannot apprehend is to be denied and ignored. 
The Catholic Church inculcates as cardinal virtues obedience 
and humility ; modern thought says that obedience is slavish and 
humility folly. The Catholic Church echoes for ever the words 
VOL. xxxvn 23 



354 ARMINE. [June, 

of her Lord, * Blessed are ye poor'; modern thought says, 
' Blessed are ye rich.' The Catholic Church says that the road 
to heaven is by self-denial and sacrifice none other, indeed, than 
the road of the cross ; modern thought affirms that an ' en- 
lightened selfishness ' should be the guide of all our actions, that 
sacrifice is futile, and that the cultivation of our faculties and the 
amassing of wealth is the true end and aim of .life. This is the 
contrast of ideas. And ' by their fruits ye shall know them.' 
The condition of the world at present its higher classes absorbed 
in the pursuit of gain and the pleasures of life, its lower classes 
sunk in animalism and despair, governments threatened with 
revolution and society with dissolution these things flow direct- 
ly from a common fountain : denial of the authority of the church, 
from which in logical sequence has proceeded contempt of all 
authority, both human and divine, infidelity in the spiritual and 
revolt in the political order." 

" And do you think," said Egerton, " that the great problem 
of labor and capital which underlies Socialism of the rich, with- 
out effort on their own part, growing constantly richer, and the 
poor, with all their efforts, constantly poorer flows from the 
same cause ? " 

"From what else can it flow?" asked D'Antignac. " Is it 
not entirely a product of the modern world, of the materialism 
which has become the gospel of life, and the selfishness which is 
its law? Echoing a statement which you have accepted with- 
out consideration, you said a moment ago that the Catholic 
Church is opposed to popular rights. Yet where, in the history 
of the world, have the people ever found such another friend ? 
She stood between them and the tyranny of their rulers during 
all the long centuries when civilization was slowly emerging 
from barbarism ; she flung round them her mighty protection 
and waged continual warfare in their behalf ; she raised them 
from slaves to freemen, and she laid down in her theology that 
to wring his toil from the laborer for less than its just value 
is a sin, and to defraud him of his wages is ranked with wilful 
murder, as one of the sins 'crying to heaven for vengeance ' ; she 
blessed those great guilds of the middle ages which secured to 
the artisan his rights, and of which the grades-unions of our 
day are merely unworthy imitations; and she framed laws 
against usury of which the world helpless to-day before the 
immense power of capital is only beginning to realize the wis- 
dom." 

There was a pause. 



1883.] ARMINE. 355 

It is difficult for one to whom these truths are so familiar as 
to be commonplace to understand that to Egerton they were 
much more novel than the views of Socialism with which he had 
been lately entertained. Nor let it be imagined from this that 
he had not the culture which has been claimed for him. Those 
who know most of modern culture are best able to realize how 
entirely it regards the history of the world and the claims of the 
church through a distorted medium the accumulated prejudice 
of three centuries of error. The man of letters or of science who 
has flung aside contemptuously the mutilated creed of Chris- 
tianity is still as fast bound by an inherited tradition of dislike 
to Catholicity, is still as childishly ignorant of the true relation 
of the church to human civilization, as the most narrow-minded 
adherent of the sects he scorns. The mother of learning is to 
him a house of bondage for the human intellect ; her dogmas, in- 
stead of divine truths enlarging the sphere of knowledge, are 
fetters on speculative thought ; her beautiful devotions are idle 
superstitions ; and her influence, to which we owe all progress, 
is held to be fatal to progress. No one outside the church can 
escape the contagion of these ideas. They are in the very air ; 
they are iterated and reiterated in every department of litera- 
ture ; and the more a man has yielded himself to the current of 
his age, the more is he likely to regard with animosity the one 
steadfast witness of revealed truth. 

Egerton was not conscious of entertaining any of this ani- 
mosity. He would certainly have described himself as entirely 
unprejudiced and prejudiced, in a vulgar sense, he certainly was 
not ; but that his ideas were those of the " liberal" thinker of his 
day and generation was sufficiently evidenced by the fact that as 
he listened to D'Antignac he felt like one whose point of view is 
shifted so suddenly that familiar things grow unfamiliar, and 
who may be called upon to readjust all his mental attitudes. 

" I see," he said at length, with a smile, " that if Mile. Du- 
chesne wanted me to have an antidote to her father's teaching 
she knew very well where to send me for it. Yet what strikes 
me most is that on several points especially in your view of 
modern civilization you are practically agreed with him." 

" Extremes meet in many things," said D'Antignac. " We 
are, however, exceedingly disagreed in our view of remedies. It 
has been very well observed that the difference between Social- 
ism and the Gospel is that the latter says to the rich, * Give ' ; 
the former says to the poor, ' Take.' ' 

" You have certainly given me a great many new ideas and 



356 ARMINE. [June, 

subjects for thought," said Egerton; " but I fear that I am pay- 
ing an unconscionable visit, and that I have made you exhaust 
yourself with so much talking." 

"No, I am not exhausted, though I think it very likely that 
you are," said D'Antignac. But as he lay back on his pillows he 
looked so pale that Egerton, with sudden self-reproach and a 
glance of apology at Hellene, rose to take leave. 

" So far from being exhausted, I have never been more en- 
tertained, not even by M. Duchesne," he said, as he drew near 
the side of the couch. " I only hope that Mile. d'Antignac will 
not punish me for my want of consideration by shutting the door 
in my face when I come again. Taking advantage of your state- 
ment that man is ' a being subject to instruction,' I shall return." 

" You will be welcome," said D'Antignac, glancing up with a 
smile. Then, retaining for a moment the hand which the other 
gave, he added: " But if you really desire instruction let me beg 
you to go to Notre Dame on Sunday afternoon to hear an orator 
as eloquent as the Socialist whom you went to Montmartre to 
hear." 

" With all my heart," said Egerton. " There is nothing to 
me so attractive as eloquence. Who is this orator? " 

" He is a famous Dominican friar, the Pere Monsabre. Go 
to hear him. And while you listen I will be like the beggar on 
the pulpit stair and pray that light may enter your mind and 
grace touch your heart." 



CHAPTER X. 

As Armine had said to Helene, the wishes of D'Antignac had 
such weight with her that it is likely she would have gone to 
Notre Dame to hear the Pere Monsabre, whatever obstacles had 
been thrown in her path. But, as it chanced, there were none. 
Her father had been called away suddenly by a telegram from 
Lyons one of the mysterious summons which always oppressed 
the girl with the dread of some unknown catastrophe and she 
had nothing to do but set forth in the bright afternoon with 
Madelon, who had been her bonne in the past and was maid and 
companion in the present, for the He de la Cite and the great 
cathedral of Paris. 

They found, when they arrived, a crowd pouring into the 
church through its vast portalsthat is, a number of persons, 
and those persons chiefly men, which would have formed a 



I 



1883.] ARMINE. 357 

crowd elsewhere, but inside the cathedral the immense space of 
its nave and aisles offered room for an army. Near the sanc- 
tuary, however, and especially in the neighborhood of the pulpit, 
the throng was already dense, a serried mass of entirely mascu- 
line forms, for at the entrance of the nave a gendarme on each 
side waved back all feminine intruders. 

Into that charmed space Armine made no effort to enter. 
She passed with Madeion down one of the aisles, that seem to 
extend indefinitely before the gaze, with their massive columns 
and the majestic pointed roof which, having " set itself like a con- 
queror upon those broad Roman capitals," rises to a height and 
into an obscurity which the eye can scarcely pierce. Pausing 
as nearly as possible opposite the pulpit, which is placed against 
one of the great pillars of the nave, she selected her position and 
would have kept it had not Madeion begged to make a short 
visit to the chapel of the Blessed Virgin. 

" We need stay but a few minutes ; and see ! Vespers have not 
even begun," she whispered. 

It was true that Vespers had not begun, and, with the pros- 
pect before them of a long time of waiting, Armine consented. 
They passed around the choir the outer walls of which are cov- 
ered with the quaint carvings in alto-rilievo of the principal 
events in the life of our Lord, begun by Maistre Jehan Roux 
and finished by Maistre Jehan le Bontelier in the fourteenth 
century to the Lady Chapel, which is immediately in the rear of 
the high altar. 

As is generally the case in French churches, it was filled with 
a quiet, devout throng, many of whom, in the present instance, 
were men. Armine knelt down by Madeion on one of the low 
chairs, and as she did so perceived in front of her a slender, 
graceful man about whose appearance there was something fami- 
liar, though his face was buried in his hands. Presently, how- 
ever, he lifted it, and then she recognized the Vicomte de Ma- 
rigny. It was no surprise to her to see him there. She had 
heard the D'Antignacs speak of him too often not to know a 
good deal about him, and several times he had been mentioned 
by her father's friends as one whose ability and ardor might give 
the friends of freedom trouble. Her father, too, had once said a 
few words which showed that he regarded him as no common 
foe. These things had impressed De Marigny's name on her 
memory even before she saw him ; and when she did see him the 
clear-cut face and dark, earnest eyes stamped themselves quite as 
ineffaceably. 



358 ARMINE. [June, 

But soon, like rolling thunder far in the distance, the sound 
of the great organ reached them, and Armine, rising, touched 
Madelon, who was dropping the beads of her rosary through her 
fingers in apparent oblivion of her desire to stay but a few 
minutes. M. de Marigny rose also at the same instant, and in 
passing saw Armine. A slight, courteous bow indicated his 
recognition and brought a faint flush to the pale cheek of the 
young girl as she acknowledged it ; for she had not imagined 
that he would know her, and, for some reason which she did not 
explain to herself, she was pleased that he did. 

A great disappointment awaited her when she returned to 
the aisle and attempted to regain her place within hearing dis- 
tance of the pulpit. The attempt was hopeless. In the interval 
of her absence the tide of humanity had overflowed from the 
nave, and a dense throng extended along the aisles as far as there 
was the least prospect that the preacher's voice could be heard. 
Armine paused at the end of the choir and stood looking hope- 
lessly at the dark mass of people. The Pere Monsabre had not 
yet appeared in the pulpit, but when he should appear how was 
she to hear him ? 

Her disappointment and concern were written so plainly on 
her face that the Vicomte de Marigny who, like herself, had been 
stopped by the crowd observing it, hesitated an instant, then 
stepped aside, spoke to an official of the church, and after a 
moment returned and went up to her. 

" Pardon, mademoiselle," he said, " but you are anxious to 
hear the sermon ; is it not so ? " 

" Yes, M. le Vicomte," she answered, turning to him, sur- 
prised by the address, yet with the ease of perfect simplicity. 
" I am very anxious to hear it. But there seems no hope." 

' There is always hope," he answered, smiling. " I can give 
you a chance to hear it though I fear not a very good one by 
going into one of the galleries, if you care to do so." 

"Oh! I should like that," she replied quickly. "You are 
very kind." 

"This way, then," he said, with an air of such grave courtesy 
that it inspired even Madelon with confidence. They followed 
him, and the official to whom he had spoken led them up a 
narrow stone staircase into the gallery that runs under the flying 
buttresses of the aisles. As they emerged upon this M. de 
Marigny heard Armine utter a low exclamation. She felt as if a 
new revelation of the majesty of the great church was borne to 
her. How solemn were the lines of its noble architecture, how 



1883.] ARMINE. 359 

vast its glorious space, when seen from here ! The pealing 
strains of the organ were rolling in waves of mighty harmony 
through the massive arches, and above its deep thunder rang the 
choristers' voices, chanting those poetic psalms of the king of 
Israel which the church has adopted to be her words of praise as 
long as time shall last. The cathedral itself was like an inspired 
psalm, eloquent in every line of faith and worship. The golden 
lights on the great altar shone as distant stars ; the clouds of 
incense mounting upward from the swinging thuribles of the aco- 
lytes were a visible expression of the prayer they symbolized ; 
while the play of light and shadow on the great arches and pillars 
revealed at once their immensity and their repose. It seemed to 
the girl as if a mighty hand were laid upon her, and, acknow- 
ledging its influence in every fibre, she sank upon her knees. 

It was the deep spiritual significance underlying these things 
which thrilled her so powerfully ; but it is to be feared that only 
their outward beauty struck Egerton, who was leaning against 
one of the pillars of the nave near the pulpit. He was too 
thoroughly cultivated not to appreciate that beauty fully not to 
feel the perfect harmony between the great cathedral and the 
majestic ritual which it enshrined ; not to be conscious that, grant- 
ing the premises of the Christian faith, just such homage as this 
man owed to his Creator and Sovereign. But culture, which can 
open the eyes of sense, is powerless to open the eyes of the spirit. 
Indeed, by dwelling too much upon external things it is quite 
possible that it may miss their inner meaning altogether. Yet 
to one significance of the scene Egerton was not blind. He said 
to himself that it was no longer possible for him to think of the 
Catholic faith as a decaying and outworn force. Was that de- 
caying which could bring together in the capital of modern 
civilization this vast multitude not composed of women, nor 
even chiefly of pious men (though many of the latter were there), 
but of that class of intellectual men who in these later times have 
so largely parted with belief? And was that outworn which 
could put forward such a champion as he whose calm and 
thoughtful face looked now from the great pulpit of Notre 
Dame? 

This is not the place to give a summary of one of those fa- 
mous sermons which have so deeply and widely stirred intellec- 
tual France and arrested the attention of that keen French mind 
which is so logical even in its errors, and proved once again how 
capable of solving all problems of modern thought the science of 
God's truth is. As we are aware, eloquence was at all times 



360 ARMINE. [June, 

singularly fascinating to Egerton ; but this eloquence enchained 
him, not only from the perfection of its literary form, but be- 
cause every forcible and clearly-elucidated proposition carried to 
him a growing sense that here was a system of thought which 
was at least absolutely harmonious, not only with itself but with 
all the facts of human existence a system which to those ques- 
tions that modern philosophy declares unanswerable is ready 
with aai answer clear, precise, and logical. That answer, as those 
who belong to the household of faith are aware, does not vary. 
The message is the same, whatever be the voice of the speaker. 
But there are some voices which have greater power than others 
in delivering this message, and under the mighty arches of Notre 
Dame few have ever sounded more powerful than that to which 
men all around Egerton were listening now with rapt attention. 

At another time he would probably have felt that this atten- 
tion was as remarkable as the sermon. But now he had no 
thought to spare for it. For was it not to him directly that the 
penetrating voice spoke, with its sharp lance of logic and its fire 
of eloquence ? Various and contradictory had been the voices 
sounding in his ears for many days, diverse, indeed the gospels 
which they preached ; but here was one which seemed able to 
reconcile all that perplexed and make clear what was dark. 
Something of what he had felt in listening to D'Antignac he 
felt now in greater degree like one whose point of view is sud- 
denly shifted, and to whom what has been before meaningless 
confusion now reveals itself as order and symmetry. But it 
must be added that in all this his intellectual pleasure was greater 
than his spiritual enlightenment. It was his mind alone which 
received these impressions: his soul had no more share in them 
than if it had been as non-existent as modern science represents 
it to be. 

Meanwhile the little party of three in the high gallery found 
that their position was not very favorable for hearing. The 
voice of the preacher was lost in the great space which inter- 
vened between them, only fragments of his sentences coming 
now and then to the ear. M. d Marigny, having heard him 
frequently, regretted this less on his own than on Armine's ac- 
count; and when, after an interval of painfully-strained atten- 
tion, she looked at him with her eyes of soft gloom, and, smiling 
faintly, shook her head to indicate that she could not hear, he 
said in a low tone : 

" I am very sorry ! Should you like to return below ? " 

" Oh ! no," she answered, with a glance at the closely-packed 



1883.] ARMINE. 361 

crowd beneath. " What should I gain by that ? I should hear 
no more, perhaps not so much, and I should miss the sense of 
freedom which we have here. Why, this " she looked up at the 
mighty roof out into the vast space" is more glorious than any 
sermon." 

" It is a sermon in stone," he said, smiling. " I am glad that 
you have some compensation for not hearing the preacher." 

" It is a great compensation," she said simply. " I was never 
here before, and it is wonderful." 

Her face was indeed full of the wonder eloquent with admi- 
ration, as she stood gazing up at the great flying buttresses, at 
the multitude of carved forms in which the genius and faith of a 
past age still live. What the preacher was proclaiming below 
these massive stones spoke even more eloquently above. It 
seemed to Armine as if they said : " O faithless and unbelieving 
generation, while you wander far and near seeking peace in hu- 
man ideals, we remain to testify to the one Ideal in which all 
peace abides." Surely it did abide here; and surely it was 
weary even to think of the feverish world, roaring and strug- 
gling so near at hand. A sudden memory came to the girl of the 
passionate unrest in which her father lived, of his hopes and as- 
pirations, his struggle and revolt. She put her hand to her eyes 
as if to shut out the vision, and when she took it down it was 
wet with tears. 

They surprised herself, and she dashed them quickly away, 
but not before M. de Marigny had caught a glimpse of the crys- 
tal drops on her lashes and cheek. He was a man of quick in- 
tuitions as well as of quick sympathy, and an instinct told him 
what she was feeling. He, too, had thought of the contrast be- 
tween the social ideal which the preacher was painting in words 
that seemed almost inspired, and that which the false humanita- 
rian ism of the age presents; he was a soldier in the thick of that 
battle, the sound of which rang in poor Armine's ears, and he 
knew none better how far off was any prospect of peace. But 
for him, also, the great stones of Notre Dame had a message a 
message of courage and faithfulness and hope. "Should we be 
here," they seemed to ask, " if the men who wrought upon us 
had not each done his life's work faithfully, patiently, for the 
honor and glory of God, leaving the completion of the whole to 
after-time ? They labored with eternity in their hearts, so they 
were content to behold only in vision the stately pile which 
they were building for the multitudes that were to come after 
them." 



362 ARMINE. [June, 

Few more words were exchanged, but Armine caught the 
flash of comprehension and sympathy in De Marigny's eyes as 
she brushed away her tears ; and when eyes speak, words are un- 
necessary. They listened quietly to such fragments of the dis- 
course as reached them, and were thrilled by the great rolling 
burst of the organ which followed. Then when all was over and 
they had descended Armine paused a moment to thank him 
again. 

" I shall tell M. d'Antignac that I owe it to your kindness 
that I heard anything of the sermon at all," she said, with one of 
her most exquisite smiles. 

" I fear that the sum of your obligation is very small," he an- 
swered, smiling in return, and thinking again what an interest- 
ing and touching face this Socialist's daughter had. " I fear you 
only heard enough to make you desire to hear more." 

" That could not be helped," she replied. " I am glad to 
have heard what I did, and for the loss of the rest there was com- 
pensation, you know." Then, bending her head with a gentle 
graciousness which would not have misbecome a princess, she 
turned away with Madelon. 

This short conversation took place at the foot of the stairs, 
and as Armine moved away she found that, although the greater 
part of the crowd had left the building, a number of persons yet 
remained, and one of these a gentleman slowly walking toward 
the choir and looking with interest around him she met a mo- 
ment later. It is doubtful whether she would have noticed or 
recognized him had not his recognition been immediate as soon 
as his glance fell on her. 

" Mile. Duchesne ! " he said quickly, not pausing to think 
whether he had a right to claim her acquaintance in this man- 
ner. 

She paused, and there was an instant's indecision in her re- 
gard. But before he could speak he saw that she recollected 
him. 

' Ah ! M. Egerton," she said. " I am glad to see you here." 
;< You are very good," he answered. " But do you know why 
Kim here ? It is because by your advice I went to see M. d'An- 
tignac, and by his I came to hear the Pere Monsabre." 

A soft light of pleasure flashed into her face. " I felt sure 
that he would know what was best for you," she said. "And 
I hope that you had better success than I in hearing the ser- 
mon." 

" I heard every word of it," he answered ; " and I have never 



1883.] ARMINE. 363 

enjoyed a greater intellectual pleasure not even the pleasure of 
hearing your father, mademoiselle." 

She shrank a little. " That is very different," she said hur- 
riedly. " I I do not think I would remember that, if I were 
you." She paused, hesitated an instant, then added, glancing as 
she spoke toward the distant altar : " Here is order and peace- 
there chaos and tumult. It seems to me that one need not take 
long to choose." 

Then, giving him no time to reply, she passed on quickly. 



CHAPTER XI. 

EARLY in the following week Egerton called at the apartment 
in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, but was informed by 
-Madelon that M. Duchesne was not at home, and he had not 
courage or audacity enough to ask for Armine. He was aware 
that French custom did not permit young ladies to receive visits 
from young gentlemen ; and although he thought it likely that 
M. Duchesne, who was so anxious to uproot the tyranny of gov- 
ernments, would hardly insist on his daughter being bound by 
the tyranny of social laws, there was something in Armine her- 
self which made it impossible for him to expect from her any 
infraction of those laws. He was, therefore, forced to content 
himself with leaving a card bearing his address, which he hoped 
might meet the eye of the busy Socialist leader. 

It was a few days after this that, remembering the young lady 
who in Mrs. Bertram's drawing-room had told him that her mo- 
ther and herself received on Friday, he went to pay his respects ; 
for they were old friends whom he was conscious of having 
neglected a little. He found them established in pleasant apart- 
ments on the Champs Elysees, and when he was shown into a 
large white-and-gold salon full of many figures and the soft 
hum of well-bred voices, Laura Dorrance came forward to re- 
ceive him, saying : 

" Why, Mr. Egerton, I thought you had quite forgotten us! " 

" Do I prove forgetfulness by coming on the first Friday 
after you told me it was your day of reception?" he asked. 

" We do not expect our special friends to wait for that day," 
she answered ; "and, although you do not deserve for me to say 
so, we consider you one of our special friends. Mamma has 
asked about you several times lately. Come and make your 
peace with her." 



364 Ax MINE. [June, 

She led the way across the room to where, half-buried in a 
deep chair, sat a delicate-looking lady, whose reception of Eger- 
ton was so cordial that no one would have imagined the peace 
between them to have been ever broken. More gently than her 
daughter, however, she intimated some surprise at the length of 
time since she had last seen him, to which, before he could an- 
swer, a young lady sitting by replied : 

" Mr. Egerton," she said, " has probably been too much oc- 
cupied in attending Socialist meetings to pay social visits." 

The slight satiric ring of the voice was so familiar that at the 
first sound of it Egerton knew whom he should see, even before 
he turned to find himself confronting Sibyl Bertram. She was 
looking particularly handsome in a dress of garnet velvet and 
a great Gainsborough hat with drooping plumes of the same 
color. Gainsborough himself might have been glad to paint her 
in this costume, with its warm lights and rich depths of shadow. 
Involuntarily Egerton smiled as he met the luminous gray 
eyes. 

" Miss Bertram's kindness, no doubt, prompts her to suggest 
an excuse for one who has none to offer for himself," he said. 
" But since I have only attended a single Socialist meeting, I 
can scarcely claim that it has occupied much of my time." 

" Oh ! " said Miss Bertram, " 1 fancied you had by this time 
attended many." 

" In short, joined the Socialist army," he said. " Is that what 
you would be likely to do in my place? " 

" I cannot answer at all for what I might do in your place," 
she replied. " But at least if you joined what you call the So- 
cialist army you would have a definite aim in life." 

" Perhaps I am not so much in want of a definite aim in life 
as some of my friends are good enough to take for granted," said 
Egerton, who began to feel that the persistent hostility of this 
young lady was too unprovoked. " In fact," he went on, turn- 
ing to Mrs. Dorrance, " it strikes me that there is something 
positively unhealthy about many of the cries of the present day. 
We are told to be earnest, to have an aim, to regard life as ' un- 
speakably solemn/ and many other adjurations of the same 
kind, which, if they were observed, would certainly tend to 
make life ' unspeakably solemn '; for the best kind of happiness, 
that which is simple and natural and not given to constant in- 
trospection, would vanish out of it, if we should have a multi- 
tude of people striving after visionary ideals, not so much with 
the hope of reaching them as because the attitude of striving is 






1883.] ARMINE. 365 

held to be good. But I think the attitude of repose and sat- 
isfaction with things as they are is better." 

" It is certainly more comfortable," said Mrs. Dorrance, smil- 
ing, while Miss Bertram rose and walked away as if in silent 
protest against such philosophy ; " but I think you must be what 
is called an epicurean, Mr. Egerton." 

" Some people consider me one," said Egerton, looking a lit- 
tle resentfully after the graceful figure in the garnet velvet 
dress. 

Mrs. Dorrance observed the direction of his glance and smiled 
again. " No doubt Sibyl does," she said ; " but there is a French 
word which describes Sibyl very well. She is exaltte charm- 
ing, but decidedly exaltte" 

Egerton felt that he could very easily have described Miss 
Bertram's manner to him with an English word ; but he did not 
care to talk of her, and began to inquire about Mrs. Dorrance's 
health, for the sake of which she was staying in Paris. It is a 
subject which no invalid can resist, and she was still describing 
her improvement and relating the hopes and fears of her physi- 
cian when some fresh arrivals created a diversion in Egerton's 
favor, and he moved away, greeted several acquaintances, and 
finally approached Miss Dorrance, who was talking to a young 
lady lately arrived in Paris and full of enthusiasm for the fashions 
she had been inspecting. 

" I have been to most of the famous establishments," she was 
saying " to Worth's, Felix's, Pingat's and I find that one has 
really no idea of style until one sees it here at the fountain- 
head." 

" Oh ! the cut of the great houses is simply indescribable," 
said Miss Dorrance. Then she looked up, caught Egerton's 
glance, and smiled. " I don't suppose you need to be told, Mr. 
Egerton," she said, "that to most women Paris simply means a 
milliner's shop." 

" But that is not #//it means, I imagine," said Egerton. 

" I am afraid that it is very nearly all that it means to most 
of us," answered Miss Dorrance. " Here is Fanny, for example, 
who has been in Paris ten days and is quite familiar with all the 
famous shops; let us ask her if she has been to the Louvre." 

" Why, of course I have," answered Miss Fanny promptly. 
" But it is not a place for elegance : one goes there for bar- 
gains." 

" For bargains ! " repeated Egerton in amazement. 

" She is speaking of the Magasin du Louvre," said Laura, 



366 ARMINE. [June, 

with a burst of laughter. "O Fanny! what will Mr. Egerton 
think of you ? " 

Miss Fanny was in an instant covered with a blush. " I was 
not thinking," she protested. " Of course I know ; but we were 
talking of shops." 

" Yes, it was very unfair to ask the question without making 
it clear whether the Magasin or the gallery \yas meant," said 
Egerton, smiling. 

" Well, I must say I am not at all ashamed of thinking more 
of shops than of galleries," observed Miss Dorrance. *' For one 
thing, they are much more necessary to one's comfort and well- 
being. Sibyl dragged me to the gallery of the Louvre when I 
first came, but I have never been there since ; and you are at 
liberty to despise me, if you like, Mr. Egerton ! " 

" If I were capable of liking to despise you," said Egerton, 
" such frankness would disarm me. But why not go again ? A 
taste for the fine arts can be cultivated as well as a taste for chif- 
fons" 

She shook her head. " One does not have to cultivate the 
last," she said. " It is inherent in women, at least. There is 
Sibyl with all her sestheticism, she is not above it. Otherwise 
she could not dress so well." 

" Miss Bertram certainly dresses very well," said Egerton, as, 
almost against his will, his eyes turned again toward that young 
lady. 

Yet he had been conscious all the time that she was standing 
near, talking to Mr. Talford, and it occurred to him that there 
was something significant in this constantly-recurring conjunc- 
tion. It was quite true that Mr. Talford had been long ago set 
down as "not a marrying man"; but the most incorrigible of 
such men sometimes find their fate at last, and here was just the 
fate that would be likely to conquer this man a brilliant, beau- 
tiful woman, who would reflect credit on his taste, and of whom 
he had said (as Egerton well remembered) that, if she had arti- 
fices, they were not of the usual order and therefore not transpa- 
rent. It was not very exalted praise, but a man must speak ac- 
cording to his nature, and perhaps he shows his nature in no- 
thing more distinctly than in his attitude toward women. 

But she ! Egerton felt tempted to laugh aloud at the thought 
that she, who went to the verge of rudeness in condemning his 
own lack, or what she esteemed to be his lack, of elevated senti- 
ment, should look with favor on the world-worn and cynically 
blast man that he knew Marmaduke Talford to be. There was 



1883.] ARMINE. 367 

something in it which struck him with the force of the keenest 
humor, yet was not altogether humorous. He began to feel in- 
dignant with this exaltde young lady, whose professions and prac- 
tice were so widely at variance. For there could be no doubt of 
the graciousness with which she treated Talford, and, contrasting 
it with her manner toward himself, he was moved to resolve that 
if she attacked him again he would return a Roland for an 
Oliver. 

It seemed as if the opportunity might soon be given him ; for, 
with that instinct which tells people when they are spoken of or 
looked at, Miss Bertram turned and approached them. 

" You are talking of me confess it ! " she said with a smile. 

"There is no reason why we should hesitate to confess it," 
said Miss Dorrance. " We were only speaking good of you : we 
were spying that you dress very well." 

"And you consider that speaking good of me?" said the 
young lady. " I know that 'the apparel oft proclaims the man,' 
but I confess I did not know before that the dress is the woman." 

" The dress is the embodiment of the taste of the woman," 
said Egerton ; " and therefore in praising the beauty of your 
toilette we are really praising your taste, which is part of your- 
self." 

"You are ingenious, Mr. Egerton ; I always expect that from 
you," she said, looking at him with a glance which was not un- 
kindly. " But I am bound to remind you that taste is a market- 
able commodity, to be bought like everything else in this good 
city of Paris." 

" Not jw/r taste, Sibyl/' said Miss Dorrance. " Why should 
you slander yourself by intimating such a thing? I was claim- 
ing for you that, despite all your fancies for high art and many 
other high things, you have a genuine love of chiffons, and that 
your toilettes are the result of that love." 

"I flatter myself that my fancy for art has something also to 
do with my toilettes," said Miss Bertram. "But may I ask what 
possibly led to such a choice of subject? " 

" I think Mr. Egerton's advising me to go to the Louvre and 
cultivate a taste for pictures led to it," said Miss Dorrance. 

" And I only ventured to offer the advice because Miss Dor- 
rance confessed that she had been there but once," said Egerton. 

" I think I took her then," said Miss Bertram, " mindful of 
the difficulty which I experienced, when I first reached Paris, in 
inducing any one to take me. ' But of course you want to go to 
the shops first,' my friends would say. And one of them, out of 



368 ARMINE. [June, 

patience with my persistence, at last exclaimed, ' How can you 
talk of rushing off to see pictures as if you were a Cook's tou- 
rist ? ' " 

" I don't suppose you understood the feeling which prompted 
the remark then," said Mr. Talford, "but no doubt you under- 
stand it now/' 

" I understand it, but I have no sympathy with it," was the 
reply. " Why should those who have the means and leisure to 
live in great centres of art, ancl who are often shamefully in- 
different to everything except social trifles, scorn those who, 
less fortunate than themselves, can only see these great and 
glorious things by taking advantage of cheap travel? The 
possession of riches is no more a test of culture than it is of 
merit." 

" Very true," said Mr. Talford ; " but many of the possessors 
of riches do not care more about culture than they do about 
merit. In possessing money they own the golden talisman which 
can command everything in the modern world." 

" I do not agree with you," said Sibyl, with the ring of scorn 
in her voice that Egerton had often heard. "The world is mer- 
cenary, of course we all know that but the things which are 
best worth having in it money cannot buy. Love and faith, and 
culture in its true sense that is, the fine perception of the beau- 
tifulare not to be bought. Then heroism the rarest and 
greatest thing on earth can money buy that? " 

She looked very beautiful her gray eyes opening wide in 
her energy and Mr. Talford answered that it would be neces- 
sary to define heroism before they could decide whether money 
could not buy it. The promise of reward would, he thought, in- 
duce a man to risk his life in what is called a heroic manner, as 
well as the hope of glory. 

" We .are speaking of different things," said Miss Bertram. 
' You are talking of actions, I am alluding to a quality. Money 
cannot purchase the heroic soul any more than it can the mind 
of Plato. I should beg pardon for stating such a self-evident 
truth, if you had not made the astonishing remark that it can 
command everything." 

" I confess that I was thinking of tangible things." said Mr. 
Talford, smiling. Heroism is rather out of my line. I have 
never seen a hero. I am afraid I should not recognize one if I 
met him." 

"It is very likely," said Sibyl. "It is with that as with 
everything else, I imagine. Sympathy is necessary for under- 



1883.] ARMINE. 369 

standing-. He who does not believe in heroism will never re- 
cognize a hero." 

Her incisive tone made Egerton smile. After all, it appeared 
that Mr. Talford did not fare much better than himself at the 
hands of this imperious, clear-eyed young lady. It was Miss 
Dorrance \vho now interfered in his behalf. 

" My dear Sibyl," she said, " tell us how to recognize a hero. 
Or rather, tell us who is a hero. You speak as if you knew 
many." 

" On the contrary," answered Miss Bertram, " I do not know 
one." 

" Then perhaps you are deficient in the sympathy which is 
necessary for understanding," said Laura a little maliciously. 
" What do you think, Mr. Egerton ? " 

" I think," replied Egerton, " that heroism is all around us to 
a greater extent than we know or believe. It often hides under 
very humble disguises, and we must look closely in order to de- 
tect it." 

" Probably we must also make a journey to Montmartre," 
observed Mr. Talford, with an inflection of sarcasm in his voice. 

"Oh! no, that is not necessary," answered the other. " No 
doubt it is to be found in Montmartre for wherever poverty 
abounds it exists in the form of endurance and self-sacrifice but 
my acquaintance with that faubourg is not sufficient for me to 
speak with certainty. But I do not think that any of us need 
go far to look for it. In our own acquaintance we can certainly 
find at least one example of undoubted heroism." 

" In our own acquaintance ! " repeated Miss Dorrance and 
Mr. Talford in a tone of incredulity not very flattering to their 
acquaintance. Sibyl Bertram said nothing ; she only looked at 
Egerton with a questioning glance. 

" Surely," he said, " you all know, or have heard of, M. d'An- 
tignac ? " 

There was a moment's pause. Then Laura said : " I know 
Miss d'Antignac. She came to see mamma I believe mamma 
and her mother were old friends but she said that she very sel- 
dom went out, and, although she asked me to go to see her, I 
have never found time." 

" I advise you to find time," said Egerton. " Miss d'Antignac 
is not only worth knowing herself, but by going to see her you 
may meet her brother, who is the person of whom I spoke." 

" Oh ! the man who was shot to pieces in some of the French 
battles," said Mr. Talford. " Yes, I have heard of him. But if 

VOL. XXXVII. 24 



370 ARMINE. [June, 

being wounded constitutes a hero, we may find heroes by dozens 
at the Invalides." 

" Being wounded no more constitutes a hero than any other 
accident," said Egerton. " But to endure a life of absolute help- 
lessness and torturing pain, not only without murmuring but 
with a patience and cheerfulness nothing less than sublime, and, 
despite constant suffering and failing strength, to take the keen- 
est interest in the lives and troubles of others, and to spare no 
effort to help or cheer them that I call true heroism." 

" You are right, Mr. Egerton," said Sibyl Bertram quickly. 
" It is heroism. And I, too, remember now that I have heard 
of the D'Antignacs, but I do not know them. I have only heard 
that they are more French than American, and that Miss d'An- 
tignac does not go out." 

" She goes out very little," said Egerton. " Her brother is 
her first care, and he absorbs most of her time and attention. 
But she receives her friends. I have been there once or twice on 
Sunday evening when the rooms were filled." 

" But on such occasions I suppose you do not see the brother ?'' 

" On every occasion when I have been there his couch has 
been the central point of the assembly the spot where talk was 
best and wit keenest. But I am told that there are times when he 
can see no one ; and then the doors between his room and Mile. 
d'Antignac's salon are closed." 

" Laura," said Miss Bertram, turning to her friend, " I wish 
you would go to see Mile d'Antignac and take me with you." 

" Of course I will," said Laura. " I really would have gone 
long ago, if I had thought of it. Mr. Egerton, do you think 
we might present ourselves at the Sunday evening recep- 
tion? " 

" I am sure you might," Egerton replied. " It is altogether 
informal, and I am certain Mile. d'Antignac will be very happy 
to see you. I was there last Sunday evening. Having gone by 
D'Antignac's advice to Notre Dame to hear the great preacher, 
Pere Monsabre, I went to tell him what I thought of the ser- 
mon." 

Mr. Talford smiled. What a singular fellow you are ! " he 
said. "One while you have just been to Montmartre to hear 
a Socialist orator preach anarchy ; then again you go to Notre 
Dame for a sermon. And which do you prefer dynamite or 
infallibility?" 

Egerton looked a little annoyed. He would not have minded 
this raillery in the least if Sibyl Bertram had not been by, but to 



I 



1883.] ARMINE. 371 

his fancy her eyes seemed to say, with their accustomed disdain, 
" When will you find anything in which to believe ? " 

" Surely," he said a little coldly, "one may enjoy the elo- 
quence of a great orator, whether he be a Socialist in Mont- 
martre or a priest in Notre Dame, without necessarily becoming 
a convert to his doctrines. For myself, I confess that eloquence 
is my passion, and I seek it wherever I can find it. That I find 
it in Notre Dame is not remarkable, for no one can be unaware 
of the halo of genius that has long surrounded the French pulpit. 
I heard on Sunday no mere string of moralities, but a strong, 
masterly discourse dealing with the great social and philosophi- 
cal problems of our time a discourse addressed to intellectual 
men, a multitude of whom listened to it with breathless atten- 
tion." 

" You don't say anything about intellectual women," ob- 
served Miss Dorrance. 

" For the very good reason that the Pere Monsabre does not 
address his conferences to them," Egerton answered, smiling. 

"That is very ungallant of him, then," said the young lady, as 
she rose to shake hands with some friends who came forward to 
make their adieux. 

Miss Bertram drew back a little from the gay chatter which 
ensued, and something in her glance made Egerton aware that 
she wished him to follow. She moved to a table near by and 
began touching some flowers in a vase as she said, without look- 
ing at him : 

" I feel that I owe you an apology, Mr. Egerton. I had no 
right to speak as I did when you first arrived to imply criticism 
on your conduct and opinions. I beg your pardon." 

" There is no reason why you should," said Egerton, greatly 
surprised and forgetful of the irritation he had felt. " What you 
said was true enough. I have no specially definite aim in life I 
am very much of an epicurean." 

" It was it is no affair of mine," said Sibyl, with an air of 
uncompromisingly taking herself to task. " Of course it seems 
to me a pity for a man to spend his time and his talents in mere 
amusement, intellectual or otherwise ; but every one must judge 
for himself. And I have no right to scorn you, for my own- 
life is no better." 

"So she does scorn me!" thought Egerton, half- amused,- 
half-dismayed by this confession. He hesitated for an instant, 
hardly knowing how to answer. Then, with a strong sense of 
humor, he said : " Perhaps we are neither of us so contemptible as- 



372 ARMINE. [June, 

you imagine, because we are not trying to reform the world. It 
seems to me that there are a sufficient number of people already 
engaged in that work-^especially since they are not at all agreed 
in the manner of setting about it." 

Miss Bertram smiled. " I have no ambition to reform the 
world," she said. " But I do not see how one can be indifferent 
to the great needs of mankind and content to spend one's life in 
the pursuit of trifles. Yet that is what I am expected to do, and 
perhaps I am impatient with you, Mr. Egerton, because I envy 
you. How free you are ! how able to do what you will with 
your life, your energy, your means ! And yet " 

" And yet I do nothing," said Egerton. " It is true ; but, in 
my place, what would you do ? " 

It was a home-question which confused the young lady. She 
hesitated, blushed ; after all, it was easier to criticise, to con- 
demn, than to point out the path of action.' 

" How can you ask me ? " she said at last. " It is not I who 
can tell. Your opportunities for judging are much better than 
mine. I have not heard either M. Duchesne or the Pere Mon- 
sabre." 

With that shaft she turned and rejoined the group she had left. 

A little later Egerton had taken leave of Mrs. and Miss Dor- 
ranee when he was joined by Mr. Talford in the antechamber. 
" Our roads lie in the same direction, I presume," said that gen- 
lleman ; and, Egerton assenting, they were soon walking to- 
,gether down the Champs Elysees. 

Their talk was idle enough for some time comments on the 
equipages, the toilettes, the faces of the crowd which filled the 
great avenue. But presently Mr. Talford said carelessly : 

".Do you still find Miss Bertram incomprehensible ? " 

"Not .incomprehensible, perhaps," replied Egerton, "but 
decidedly puzzling, as well as very exaltee. Mrs. Dorrance sug- 
gested the last term, and it suits her exactly. She is very clever ; 
she has read a great deal of modern agnostic literature, and she 
.thinks that we should all be 'up and doing' on some great 
work for humanity, of the nature of which she is not quite 
clear." 

" I dare say not," remarked the other, with a low laugh. 

" It does not, however, prevent her from attending to all the 
requirements of society and devising very charming toilettes," 
said Egerton, whose plumes were always ruffled after an en- 
counter with Miss Bertram, " nor yet" Then he paused ab- 
ruptly. 



1883.] ARMINE. 373 

:< Well?" said Talford, looking up, and the expression of his 
glance made Egerton aware that he divined what was in his 
mind. 

" You must excuse me," he said, " if I was about to add, nor 
yet from treating with great consideration you, who, she must 
be aware, do not pretend to exalted sentiments of any kind." 

" It is for that very reason that she treats me with considera- 
tion," said Mr. Talford calmly. " The woman of the world re- 
cognizes that I am frankly and simply a .man of the world. She 
does not expect exalted sentiments from me. While as for you, 
my dear fellow, you are neither fish nor flesh you are neither 
of the world worldly, nor yet enough of an idealist to please her. 
Indeed, it is doubtful whether you could gain her approval by 
going to any lengths of idealism. My experience of women is 
that if one is foolish enough to attempt to meet their demands, 
those demands immediately grow with fulfilment. Whereas if 
one keeps one's own position they adapt themselves to that." 

" I have not the least intention of making any attempt to 
meet Miss Bertram's demands," said Egerton. " Her disap- 
proval is altogether a matter of indifference to me. I cannot 
truthfully say that, either," he added after a moment; "for 
sometimes it irritates me and again it amuses me exceedingly. I 
confess that I have been very much amused by the inconsistency 
of her position toward you and me." 

" There is no inconsistency in it," said Talford. " It is very 
plain to me. Miss Bertram has in her two women one fond of 
visionary things, dreams of heroism, self-sacrifice, ardor, etc. ; 
the other a woman of the world who recognizes what are the 
matters of real importance in life. It is rather an unusual and 
quite an attractive combination which the two elements form." 

" And if your theory is correct, which of the two do you take 
to be the strongest ? " asked Egerton. 

The other looked at him for a moment without replying. 
Then, " Wait two months and you will not need to ask," he said. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



374 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND [June, 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE COLORED 

PEOPLE. 

THE census of 1880 tells us of nearly seven millions of colored 
people in the United States, nine-tenths of them living in the 
former slave States. Otily about one hundred thousand of them 
are Catholics. We wish that we could say that all our Catholic 
colored people lived in the country, that their lives were spent 
working in the fields and woods in the pure open air, that they 
shared the chances of all thrifty country people of acquiring a 
piece of land, and especially that they enjoyed the advantages 
of country life in bringing up their children in innocence of soul 
and vigor of body. In Louisiana, indeed, there are numerous col- 
ored Catholics among the sugar and cotton plantations; but lack 
of information on our part prevents our bringing them within the 
scope of this article. There are also many colored Catholics in 
some of the lower counties of Maryland and in parts of Ken- 
tucky ; and of these it suffices to say that they^are good Catholics 
and that their temporal prospects are encouraging. But as the 
Catholic whites of the South in ante-bellum times lived for the 
most part in the cities and larger towns, it is there that the Ca- 
tholic colored people are now mostly to be found. There they 
are house-servants scattered everywhere; poor laborers and 
washerwomen ; barbers and waiters ; longshoremen and hands 
coming and going with oyster-boats and fishing-smacksstriv- 
ing to keep the Catholic faith and the commandments of God, 
and to hold their own in the struggle for life in the teeming 
streets and alleys of the colored quarter. You will find some 
of them in every Catholic congregation in the Southern cities. 
Their spiritual necessities are well cared for. The people re- 
gard them with kindness and the clergy bestow upon them the 
same affectionate care as upon the other members of their flocks, 
and often give them special attention. Whoever is acquainted 
with the Southern priesthood will not be surprised at this, for 
they are edifying men, well educated, pious, zealous, and often 
practising the very highest virtues of their state of life. It is to 
them and^their predecessors in the sacred ministry, as well as to 
the conscientious masters of ante-bellum times, that we owe it 
that there are any colored Catholics at all in the South. 



1883.] THE COLORED PEOPLE. 



375 



The congregations composed of colored Catholics exclusively 
are for the most part, we believe, in charge of the fathers of 
St. Joseph's Society for Foreign Missions. They are a commu- 
nity of secular priests bound by vow of obedience, and also of 
poverty as far as concerns everything received intuitu missionis. 
They are also bound by a peculiar vow to devote themselves 
exclusively to the colored people. The Josephites, as these 
priests are called, have twelve fathers among the colored peo- 
ple in this country, and are now in charge of six congregations 
two in Baltimore, one in Washington, two in Charleston with 
three out-missions, and one in Louisville. In these parishes the 
baptisms of infants are over seven hundred annually ; they re- 
ceived two hundred and sixteen adult converts into the church 
last year. Of white female religious^ engaged in this work there 
are six sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, three of the 
Holy Cross (Notre Dame, Indiana), and two Sisters of Charity 
of Nazareth (Kentucky). These religious conduct the schools 
attached to each of the above-named parishes, and a house for 
waifs in Baltimore. Of colored sisters the Oblates of Provi- 
dence have a large convent, academy, and orphan asylum in Bal- 
timore, conducted by thirty-three religious. The Benedictines 
have charge of a flourishing industrial school for colored boys 
in the diocese of Savannah. It will be seen that the diocese and 
city of Baltimore have taken the lead in this apostolic work, as 
it has in times past in so many others for the good of religion. 

As to the religious disposition of the colored Catholics, some 
personal knowledge and much inquiry have given us a high opin- 
ion of it. They have kept the faith with wonderful fidelity. As 
was to be expected, the Protestants have caught a few here 
and there by the use of money, and some have apostatized from 
human respect. It must be borne in mind that the dissolving 
forces of the war and of emancipation scattered families in every 
direction and drove great numbers away among utter strangers 
to their religion. Some of these, settling down in country places 
and finding themselves the only Catholics for many miles around, 
have had the weakness to deny their faith and here and there 
even to join Protestant churches. Many, from the ignorance and 
vice of parents and a poverty deeper than any known among 
whites in this country, have been turned adrift on the streets 
in childhood and so into the clutches of the noonday demon. 
Mixed marriages have done great harm. But these evils have 
told against the colored man's faith no more, as a rule, than they 
would against the white man's under like circumstances. We 



376 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND [June, 

might give many examples in proof of this. One or two will 
suffice. 

On an island in the far South, at a great distance from any 
Catholic church, fifty families of .Catholic negroes whom the 
vicissitudes of the war had left to shift for themselves passed 
seventeen years without seeing a priest. At last, after efforts 
again and again renewed, they were visited by a zealous mis- 
sionary. He found that in spite of the proselytizing attempts of 
the Protestants of the neighborhood they had kept the faith with 
the utmost fidelity. The children had been validly baptized, and, 
as they grew up well instructed in the rudiments of religion, a 
Catholic service of prayers and hymns held publicly on Sundays 
and holydays, the dying assisted with every religious aid except 
the sacraments, and every soul, without a single exception, stead- 
fast in the belief, and as fa*r as possible in the practice, of our 
holy religion. Another instance : Not very long ago a tall, fine- 
looking black man, a real ebony Apollo, presented himself to a 
priest in Baltimore to be instructed for First Communion. Fully 
twenty-five years ago, when a little boy in the same city, he had 
been kidnapped on board a coastwise schooner and sold into 
slavery in South Carolina. All that he remembered of his mo- 
ther, whom he was never to see again, was that she was a free 
woman and a Catholic, had taught him his prayers and warned 
him against false religions. Through slavery and freedom, in 
town and country, amid scoffs and revilings. he had held his faith, 
and at last, wandering back to the place of his childhood to seek 
his mother, was instructed and received the sacraments. 

And now it is time to ask, What is the outlook for purely 
missionary labor among the colored people? What prospect is 
there of the conversion of the non-Catholics? We answer that 
everything seems to indicate that the time is come for the Catho- 
lic Church to undertake the conversion of the black race in the 
United States. In the first place, as a body they are entirely 
without prejudice against our holy religion. To the common 
run of them all religions are the white man's religions, and they 
feel free to pick and choose at will. They are for the most part 
nominal adherents of the Methodist and Baptist sects, but in 
reality they follow no form of religion. Even church-members 
have but the vaguest notions of any fundamental truths of re- 
ligion, and the efforts of Protestantism have failed to impress any 
distinct religious character on them. Meantime the supersti- 
tious practices usual among all ignorant people are rife among 
them. The use of spells and charms, the belief in dreams and in 



I88 3 .] 



THE COLORED PEOPLE. 



377 



fortune-telling, are common. As to colored ministers, there are 
some among them who are educated men and a few who are 
men of ability. But they are exceptions and are lost among the 
others, who are but common men, of little or no schooling of 
any kind, who have risen above their fellows because they are 
good hymn-singers and fervent exhorters of the lowest type. Of 
course they have some power over the people, especially as reli- 
gion and party politics have to a great extent worked for the 
same ends among the colored people of the South. But, like 
their attempt to prevent Bishop Keane, of Richmond, from mak- 
ing converts, the influence of the ministers is but partial and tem- 
porary. 

We have said that the colored people have no prejudice 
against the church ; we may say even more : we venture to 
affirm that they positively admire it. As soon as they know 
anything about its real doctrines and practices they are attracted 
to them. Especially are they won by the life and character of 
the Catholic priesthood. A priest may go in and out of the 
most dangerous colored localities or among the worst colored 
roughs with as much freedom as in the midst of devout white 
Catholics. 

It often happens that a colored man who had never spoken to 
a priest before in his life will send for one and gladly receive in- 
struction and be admitted to the sacraments in his last moments. 
Perhaps he had heard of the church years before from some 
Catholic comrade, or had once or twice attended Catholic service, 
and the impression produced had never faded from his mind. 
Protestant mothers often require no more than the solicitation of 
a Catholic friend to have their children baptized and to bring 
them up Catholics. 

But it is in the country places that the missionary's labor 
would find its best reward. The great mass of the country 
blacks have scarcely so much as heard of the Catholic Church, and 
the testimony of the most competent witnesses leaves little doubt 
that good priests, willing to live and labor among these simple 
people, would eventually be surrounded by congregations of 
converts. It is true that Protestant missionaries are everywhere 
in the South. But what of that? What can Protestantism do 
or what has it ever done as a missionary force, save to raise 
money from an over- prosperous people and spend it in the sup- 
port of impecunious clergymen and their wives and children? 
The Protestantism offered to the colored people is the cast-off 
raiment of the perplexed and doubting whites. The very de- 



378 



THE CA THOLIC CHURCH AND 



[June, 



nominations which send the " open Bible " into the South freely 
allow doubts of its inspiration in their own homes, even in their 
own pulpits. We do not mean to say that Protestant mission- 
aries are insincere, or even that they do no good. If for no other 
reason, they deserve credit for helping to solve the greatest 
problem of the Southern people the education of the colored 
children ; for Protestant missionaries, male and female, are fond 
of keeping school. But the multitudes of pious and religious 
hearts among the colored people, harassed with doubts, tor- 
mented with misgivings, struggling against temptations what 
can Protestantism do for them ? Can it answer the questions of 
the soul ? Can it teach an ignorant man a really certain doc- 
trine ? Does it so much as claim a right to teach at all ? Can 
it arm weak natures with supernatural strength ? Does it so 
much as claim to possess divinely-appointed ordinances for 
the assistance of struggling humanity ? And its " open Bible " 
what can it do for men and women who cannot read? To lead 
earnest and inquiring minds from one delusion to another, and 
finally to believe in delusion as the soul's incurable disease, is 
what Protestantism can do, does do, and must ever do, whether 
its victims are white or black. 

How different the Catholic Church ! Certainty of belief, an 
inner power of grasping and holding on to difficult truths, an 
unison of expression, a world-wide and immemorial organization 
plainly superior to any human invention certainty, solidity, 
perpetuity : these are the notes of Catholic belief. And joined 
to them is the supernatural character of the Catholic's spiritual 
life, especially in the reception of the sacraments of penance and 
the Eucharist. The true church is the ark floating securely on 
the restless billows of human opinion and human frailty ; what 
hearts will welcome it and cling to it for safety more eagerly 
than the colored people ? 

And in the wide circle of civilized races there is none which 
stands so much in need of the true faith as the black race of 
the United States. In the civil order, indeed, much has been 
done for them. But for all that they are an outcast and despised 
people, and that for no passing cause. It is not from conquest, or 
poverty or misfortune, or even crime, but for a cause deadlier 
and deeper than poverty, conquest, and crime put together- 
race. They are. not of the right color ; their faces and bodies 
mark them off from other men and their children from other 
men's children. A man may raise himself out of poverty, or 
marry himself out of it ; he may conquer misfortune, he may 






1883.] THE COLORED PEOPLE. 379 

change his name and his abode, and his past crimes cannot stand 
in his way. But the Ethiop cannot change his skin, or move 
away from his facial outline, or help transmitting his misfortune 
to his little ones. He and his are "niggers" for ever. This it 
is that crushes the colored people down. It is race-prejudice 
that weighs them down. Those who fancy that equality on the 
statute-book or in the court of law 'is real equality know nothing 
of race-prejudice and of the power of caste, or forget that laws 
and courts have little to do with the every-day life of men. His- 
tory tells of but one power that can produce a real equality 
among men, and that without shock or lesion to true social dis- 
tinctions. It is the Catholic Church. 

Wherever a Catholic missionary will appear among the 
colored people they will behold a personification of the Christian 
doctrine that all men are brethren. That doctrine does not, in- 
deed, level men in the human sense, does not deprive wealth or 
family of social station, does not break down those barriers that 
are the metes and bounds of the gifts of Providence in the natu- 
ral and civil order. But it elevates men so completely above 
the whole natural and civil order by regeneration into a divine 
brotherhood and equality that the petty distinctions of this life 
are quickly forgotten. Catholicity antagonizes no truth or legiti- 
mate distinction. We have said that the white Catholic mis- 
sionary will personify this doctrine to the colored people. A 
simple man can soon tell if any one loves his soul ; and whoever 
loves us deeply is one with us : though the differences be those 
between king and pauper, they are lost in a true love. Now, 
what any priest does for love of his people must often lead him 
to the borders of the heroic. The missionary to the blacks will 
go over the border. They will see a man who for the honor of 
God has given up all things for their sake. His celibacy, his 
voluntary poverty, his snapping of the ties of relationship and 
home, his freely living among poor strangers, his ceaseless toils 
for them all these life-gifts of an educated white man would 
win converts to any kind of religion ; much rather for a religion 
which enlightens the mind, warms the heart, invigorates the 
moral nature, purifies and elevates the whole man, pours into 
the soul emotions of the deepest influence while leaving it un- 
touched by morbid excitement. 

And now a word about the difficulties. But let us bear in 
mind that in doing things for the honor of God we should not 
be easily scared by difficulties. Conservatism may be a virtue, 
but we meet with men who have so much conservatism that they 



380 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND [June, 

are sodden with it. They are fond of calling living and wakeful 
men dreamers, and of putting down what they call theoretical 
people. They are fond of introducing into the discussion of 
religious undertakings the prudence of the bank director dis- 
counting a note. Prudence has acted on their souls as a certain 
kind of water acts on wood : they are petrified with prudence. 
If you speak of old mother-church bearing nw children, they 
lift their slumbrous eyelids in wonder, and the chances are you 
will hear them say : " He is a dreamer." There is a class of 
persons, and they are not all Protestants, who look on the church 
as a sort of vast, sublime, antique curiosity. Their favorite 
praise of the church is embodied in the words " time-honored." 
Her note of apostolicity overshadows every other. When they 
say, Be prudent, they mean, Begin nothing new, make no experi- 
ments, have no aspirations, venture nothing, disturb no old order 
of things. Like the sleepy brakesman, no matter what signal 
they hear, they jump to their posts and put down the brakes. 

And it is just such persons who depreciate the colored 
people as a race and say that our efforts would be wasted on 
them. They pick out certain races of men as best fitted for our 
holy religion, and say, or leave you to infer, that other races are 
unfitted. They are loath to follow divine Providence over the 
boundaries of certain countries. They wish to divide our Lord's 
heritage very unequally among men. They cling to race-lines. 
When speaking of religious matters you often hear them use the 
words Teutonic and Celtic, Latin and Saxon. Now, when we 
say that the Catholic Church is something which has its races 
and its regions, in which alone it can flourish, do we not make it 
a false religion? False religions are always local. It is race 
and nationality that hold false religions together and give them 
their few generations of life. As a wide-spread body a false reli- 
gion has either followed abroad some great human power as an 
appanage of its greatness and accepted by other nations at the 
edge of the sword, as was the case with Mohammedanism, or 
it is a congeries of local errors, just as Protestantism is. But 
Christ is catholic and rules over nations, or rather he rules over 
men and knows no nation or race, nor is he a respecter of per- 
sons. The human heart and mind are his kingdom, and his reli- 
gion is made to win any kind of men and wherever it can find 
them. It is precisely the same low view of men and religion 
that inspires some of our Protestant brethren when they dread 
our success among the colored people, because, as they say, we 
can attract them with a gaudy ritual and offer them a religion 



1883.] THE COLORED PEOPLE. 381 

which does not tax the intellect and is purely emotional a 
calumny not less against the race than the Catholic Church. It 
is the deep void in the human heart, and the infinite Being who 
made it and who alone can fill it, that are the terms in the 
problem of any person's conversion. If some colored people are 
over-emotional it is because they are simple and unlettered, and 
not because they are black. All things considered, that perhaps 
ought not to be put down to their disadvantage. Bring down 
God, his truth, his worship, his promises, his pardon ; throw open 
the fellowship of his external society do this for the colored 
people, or any other people equally free from prejudice, and you 
will convert them. Emotional conversion is altogether a Pro- 
testant affair ; it succeeds or fails just the same with the whites 
as with the blacks. 

Time was when we heard the gravest accusations against the 
colored people. It was hard to see how God could have created 
so wretched and helpless a race of beings as they were consid- 
ered to be. Yet if the worst had been true Christian zeal would 
have been only the more inclined to choose them as the first 
object of charity. But year by year the colored people have 
won their way into public estimation. They were once called 
incurably idle ; and now agriculture flourishes more under their 
free labor than when they were organized and controlled by 
their white masters. Men said that if they were set free they 
would rot with vice and perish away ; and now it is seen that 
they increase faster than the whites. The gravest forebodings 
were uttered as to their influence on politics, for it was said that 
they were of a temper so soft and yielding that they would sur- 
render without a murmur to the guidance of others ; and yet 
who can say that any white race, placed in similar circumstances, 
would have voted otherwise than the blacks have done? Of all 
the accusations against them we admit that the one seemingly 
best founded is that they lack the courage of their convictions. 
But this timid temper, if it exists, is a vice due to slavery and 
not to their African blood ; for the tribes from which they have 
sprung are as fierce and warlike as were the barbarians who 
roamed the German forests and are the ancestors of the present 
Teutonic races. It was thought that their relation to the other 
races of the Union was like that of a soft stone laid in among the 
hard ones of an arch, to be soon crushed or riven, bringing, 
perhaps, the whole structure in ruins to the ground. But now it 
is plain that this broad black line of race-politics crosses every 
other line in such wise as to conduce to the strength of the 



382 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND [June, 

whole political system. It begins to be plain that the colored 
race is upon the threshold of a great future. This may be but 
the time of childhood for them ; yet we believe that they are 
going to be a rich, intelligent, and powerful people among us, 
and we believe that no nation of the past displayed in its begin- 
nings better promise of a high religious destiny. 

So much for a difficulty which may be called sentimental. 
It remains for us to consider the real difficulties. For there is a 
true prudence which is the wise forecast of well-regulated zeal. 
It studies ways and means and methods. It measures obstacles 
and calculates the resources to overcome them. Now, the two 
real difficulties of the missions to the colored people are men 
and money applicants for the missionary priesthood and the 
money for their training and support. As to the first difficulty, 
we are persuaded that if the missionary cause be fairly brought 
before the people, and widely and fully made known, the Spirit of 
God will cause the hearts of the noblest of our young men to 
throb with longings for the holy adventure of the missionary 
life. The hardships of the life will only be an attraction, will 
only serve to make the new missionaries what they ought to be 
a sort of corps d' 4 lite of the whole body of the clergy. Like the 
choice of the lovers in the play, the one who passes over the 
golden and silver caskets and takes the leaden one is both the 
noblest suitor and the most fortunate. If Frenchmen, and Ger- 
mans, and Italians, and Belgians are found in sufficient numbers 
to leave civilization behind them and to go into the midst of the 
cruellest heathen nations, who will say that our own young 
church has no sons brave enough to suffer the common hardships 
of a poor man's life for the conversion of their own fellow- 
citizens ? 

It seems to us that there are signs of the will of God among 
us which point to the opening of a missionary era. The clergy 
throughout great part of the country seem to be at last nu- 
merous enough for the ordinary spiritual concerns of the peo- 
ple. In 1840 the Catholics of the United States were compara- 
tively insignificant in numbers ; yet in 1880, when they approxi- 
mate seven millions, there are more priests in proportion to the 
Catholic population than in 1840. In other words, the increase 
of the clergy has more than kept pace with even the prodigious 
increase of the people. The question is no longer, " Where shall 
we get the priests?" With some bishops we are informed that 
it is rather, " What shall we do with our young priests?" We 
hear in various quarters of young men of piety and education 



. 1883.] THE COLORED PEOPLE. 383 

applying- for places in the seminaries and refused for want of 
vacancies in the dioceses. As to the religious orders, it is hardly 
an exaggeration to say that their novitiates are overflowing. 
The Spirit of God is among the young men, -and in his own good 
time he will turn this religious ardor into the missionary field. 
The emigration, indeed, shows no signs of slacking, nor are we 
sorry for it. The new Irish are fully as good Catholics as the 
old Irish. So are the new Germans. They are all more wel- 
come than ever before. If they stay in the cities there .are 
churches and priests ready for them ; nor is it otherwise in the 
country. The rushing of this living tide of old-country Catho- 
lics into the church in America is the sound of the river whose 
flowing maketh glad the city of God. Meantime from every 
quarter of the country we hear of new churches dedicated, debts 
paid off, schools opened, colleges opened, and encouraging words 
spoken about universities. We would not be understood as 
taking a rose-colored view of religious affairs ; we are quite 
ready to admit that our present difficulties, if not as critical as 
former ones, are very serious indeed. What we do maintain is 
that zeal for the sacred ministry is so great among us that if we 
should dread a lack of missionaries for the colored people it 
would not be because we were prudent, but that we were dis- 
trustful of Providence or ignorant of the spirit actually at work 
in the church. 

The financial difficulty will be more serious. Large sums of 
money must be raised to support a missionary college or semi- 
nary and for the current expenses of carrying on the missions, at 
least until congregations of converts are formed ; for we are per- 
suaded that as soon as formed these congregations will be self- 
supporting. We know of one congregation of colored Catholics 
which supports three priests, a school of four hundred children, 
and inside of five years has paid off a debt of ten thousand dol- 
lars. The colored people have been accused of many things, but 
never, we think, of being stingy. Funds have already been raised 
sufficient to justify hopes of starting a missionary college at an 
early day, and a spirit of generosity has been manifested in 
various quarters which justifies the strongest confidence of 
overcoming the financial difficulties. 

Of course such a work will not be left entirely or mainly to 
private zeal. That would be to express a sort of contempt of it. 
Hence the American episcopate, in the Second Plenary Council 
of Baltimore, uttered no words of deeper earnestness than those 
recommending to the bishops and their clergy, the religious 



384 THE COLORED PEOPLE. [June, 

orders and the people, the conversion of the freedmen. The 
colored people were yet in the very chaos of reconstruction, and 
the whole country under the influence of the highest political 
excitement, when the bishops hastened to anticipate private zeal 
and to stimulate individual effort, and the language used is so 
energetic as to remind one of the letters of St. Francis Xavier 
from the Indies. And we may be full sure that the bishops are 
still of the same mind. They would gladly see the aid of the 
whole Catholic body enlisted for this great cause in such a pub- 
lic and permanent form as would bring us men from every dio- 
cese and money from every parish in the country. 

It is time, therefore, that the great heart of the Catholic 
Church in America began to beat with missionary longings. 
" Her empire," says Dr. Newman of the church, "is a continual 
conquest." The revolutions of nations and the migrations of 
races are but the moves of the divine plan towards the final and 
universal spread of the truth. It is enough to make one's heart 
leap within him to realize that we, right here and now, have 
been most plainly set apart by Almighty God for the conversion 
of this noble American people, white and black. If the gifts and 
calling of God are without repentance, then he will build up the 
church in this republic, that its citizens, while striving upon 
earth, may be led to the knowledge and love of eternal things. 



1883.] RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 385 



RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 



""Orov d> ditofipsi liivfjtiTiS sv 
OtrtOTS yevoir j av ovroS 

SOPHOCLES, Ajax, 523. 

THE public career of the late Alexander H. Stephens, cover- 
ing the most eventful years of our national history, has been 
fully treated in a comparatively recent publication which bears 
his own imprimatur in the following words : u I think all the 
essential facts in regard to me and my acts are substantially cor- 
rect." f It is therefore a work of supererogation to review the 
political events of that life so lately closed, or to call up afresh 
the stirring scenes which lend to it a certain picturesqueness. 
It is better to allay than to arouse the 'passions which have agi- 
tated our land and drenched it in blood. Peace is now the su- 
preme vocation. It will be our aim, then, to touch as lightly as 
possible on the old issues which have distracted the country, in 
recording a few of the impressions and recollections of the man 
rather than the statesman, in individualizing the picture of him 
as we knew him in the intimate relations of personal inter- 
course. 

Alexander H. Stephens was a man of the people, a genuine 
product of our country and its form of government. In a 
large and unpartisan sense he was a democrat by birth and by 
conviction. Aristocracy in any of its phases never touched his 
thoughts or his acts. Through the shifting scenes of public and 
private life he was always faithful to those principles of equality 
which he regarded as the outcome of republican institutions. 
In his fellow-man he only saw the man, unawed by conventionali- 
ties of station or society. He judged him by what he was in and 
of himself, and not by his rank or his wealth, which were looked 
upon as the mere accidents rather than the results of character. 
These were advantages in the esteem of Mr. Stephens only when 
they made their possessors noble and beneficent. He never paid 
court to them in his own person, and when unaccompanied with 
moral or intellectual worth he utterly despised them. Of the 
public men whom we have known this can be affirmed of but 

* But he whose memory of benefit falls away can never be a noble man. 
t Life of Alexander H. Stephens. By R. M. Johnston and W. H. Browne. Philadelphia : 
Lippincott & Co. 1878. 
VOL. XXXVII. 25 



386 RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. [June, 

few. The poverty and ill-health which planted so many thorns 
in his early path likewise impressed a lesson never obscured 
through a career of one-and-seventy years. It broadened his 
sympathies for others similarly circumstanced; and although by 
the sheer force of intellect he conquered innumerable obstacles, 
yet the courage and fortitude expended in the contest never 
sapped that generosity of soul which appreciated the poorest 
and lowliest of friends. Men who have attained great eminence 
in spite of physical infirmities are always interesting charac- 
ters, for we naturally admire the nerve and energy which pain 
cannot vanquish or poverty subdue. In the Blithedale Romance 
Hawthorne puts a sentiment into the mouth of Coverdale the 
converse of this, which he admits may be softened or subverted 
by the education of Christianity, but of man in his unregenerate 
state it is too 'true. " Most men," says the ill patient of Brook 
Farm, " have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely hostile 
feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity 
of any kind causes to falter and faint amid the rude jostle of our 
selfish existence." The bodily sufferings of Heine enhanced the 
fascination of his writings ; the partial blindness of Prescott ex- 
tracted the venom from the critic's pen ; and to-day no member 
of the English cabinet is so eagerly watched for by visitors in 
the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons as Mr. Henry 
Fawcett, the blind postmaster-general. The personal appear- 
ance of Alexander H. Stephens was quite unique. His dark, 
brilliant eyes, which Cicero calls the windows of the soul " ut 
imago est aniini vultus, sic indices oculi " * showed the latent 
power as well as fire which resided in that delicate organization, 
and there was an occasional expression about the mouth, when 
his face was enlivened in conversation, which denoted that he 
possessed the weapon of sarcasm, even if he seldom drew it 
for use. We never saw the poet Heine, but there was much 
that reminded one of the commoner of Georgia in the personal 
description of a friend who knew him in Paris when he was 
so frail that his wife carried him about in her arms. Unlike 
Heine, however, who was an invalid during only the last ten 
years of his life, Mr. Stephens had never known perfect health. 
From the cradle to the grave his lot was that of physical suffer- 
ing. He was never absolutely free from pain, and yet we never 
knew such a cheery invalid, so exempt from the morbid charac- 
teristics of the valetudinarian. Confined for many years to a sick 
man's chair which he pushed about his rooms with ease, as the 

* Or., iii. 594 



1883.] RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 387 

wheels moved at a touch he would often demonstrate some 
point or illustrate an assertion with considerable gesticulation. 
His attenuated physique was as sensitive to the changes of the 
weather as a barometer, and even on moderately warm days he 
wore gloves and hat when indoors. The Spartan simplicity 
of his life was exhibited in everything about him, and his man- 
ners were as unaffected as a little child's, betraying neither the 
consciousness nor the dogmatism of greatness. He had no 
disposition to dwell upon his maladies nor to make a parade of 
them. In fact, they had become second nature, and he never 
spoke of them unless inquiries led in that direction, when he was 
frank as to his mode of living and the general condition of his 
health. The buoyancy of his spirits was unflagging, and even 
when racked with pain, and death itself seemed imminent, there 
was a certain heroic calmness which defied gloom and shed a 
real lustre over great mental gifts. It was this self-sustained 
equipoise of character which enabled him to bear the ills of early 
life and bestowed upon his acquirements in later years their 
power and significancy : 

" With a noble nature and great gifts 
Was he endowed : courage, discretion, wit, 
An equal temper and an ample soul, 
Rock-bound and fortified against assaults 
Of transitory passion, but below 
Built on a surging subterraneous fire, 
That stirred and lifted him to high attempts, 
So prompt and capable, and yet so calm," * 

It was our custom for some years to pass part of every New 
Year's day with Mr. Stephens, and we well remember the pe- 
culiarly pensive mood in which we found him on January i, 
1882. In response to the usual salutations and good wishes of 
the season he said it was the last New Year's day he would ever 
spend at the federal capital. It made a deep impression at the 
time ; for although we saw him every few days, it was the first 
really pathetic as well as prophetic utterance we ever heard 
from him about himself. The succeeding New Year was his last, 
but it was not passed in Washington. A man so intellectual, so 
versatile, and so genial was formed to enjoy and need society. 
Wherever he happened to sojourn he gathered about him hosts 
of friends, old and new, who delighted in his companionship ; and 
although himself almost wholly debarred the pleasures of visiting, 
his home at Liberty Hall in Georgia and his lodgings at the Na- 

* Henry Taylor's Philip van Artevelde, 



388 RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. [June, 

tional Hotel in Washington had their habituts, who were con- 
stant in attention and devoted in affection. As a host Mr. 
Stephens was proverbially hospitable and considerate. He pos- 
sessed in a large degree that keen social instinct upon which the 
intellectual elements of a successful dinner so greatly depend. 
It enabled him to collect around his board not only those who 
were personally pleasant to him, but who were congenial and 
agreeable to each other. We can recall a number of instances 
which displayed his delicate tact and forethought in arranging 
special dinners and guests while he was in Congress. Notable 
among these was the modest dinner given in his parlor at the 
hotel in honor of the present archbishop of Baltimore. Mr. 
Stephens always entertained a high regard for the Catholic 
clergy, many of whom he numbered among his best of friends. 
He was not acquainted with the amiable and distinguished pre- 
late whom he desired as his guest, and was specially solicitous 
that a note should reach his grace, who was then in Washington. 
We gave him such information as would further the object in 
view, and in a short time an invitation to meet the archbishop 
at dinner proved the success of his efforts. Nothing of little 
moment in itself seemed to annoy Mr. Stephens more than to 
be thwarted in arrangements of hospitality, and it is amusing 
to remember that no less than three messages reached us to be 
present, when we had already accepted in the first instance. 
There was a touch of the ludicrous about the last, which came 
through our friend, the Rev. Dr. Wills, then pastor of a Presby- 
terian church in the neighborhood. This anxiety on the part of 
the generous host was due to the fact that his nearest Catholic 
friend, Col. R. M. Johnston, of Baltimore, was unable to attend, 
and that Mr. Stephens wished a Catholic to aid him in doing 
honor to the primate of the church in the United States. Some 
twelve or fourteen gentlemen made up that delightful company, 
.and the disappointment which the absence of a few had given 
irise to was soon forgotten in the charming bonhomie of the host 
.and the quiet refinement of his eminent guest. Mr. Stephens 
often afterwards recalled that little gathering and the easy flow 
of animated and intellectual conversation, so interesting in topics 
.and so kindly in tone, and always with some special reference to 
his pleasure in having met the archbishop of Baltimore. We 
must advert to one bit of stupidity, too good to be omitted, on 
the part of a then representative of this country at a foreign 
court. Mr. Stephens had his dinners invariably served in his 
private parlor, and this custom sometimes subjected him to the 



1883.] RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 389 

contretemps of an unsolicited visit. During dessert a gentleman 
possessing neither the presence of mind nor the savoir-faire ne- 
cessary for such an emergency was ushered into the presence 
of the company. The situation of the visitor, awkward enough 
in itself, reached the grotesque through the simplicity of his 
inquiry when presented to the chief guest namely, " if the arch- 
bishop was an Episcopal archbishop ? " The quick-witted pre- 
late, whose urbanity never deserts him, took in the unfortunate 
position of the ambassador, and kindly came to the rescue with 
the remark that he believed the Episcopalians had no arch- 
bishops in this country. A wag of the clerical character of 
Sydney Smith, oblivious of the confusion of the moment, could 
not have resisted the reply, Can an archbishop be other than 
episcopal? " L 'esprit est bon serviteur, iin me'chant maitre" The 
blunder of the plenipotentiary reminded us of a similar one 
which we heard the then Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Colum- 
bus Delano, perpetrate in introducing the late Canon Kingsley 
to an audience in the Congregational church in Washington 
as " chaplain to her royal highness the queen." We must add, 
however, that the face of Mr. Kingsley was as imperturbable as 
that of the archbishop. A few persons but slightly acquainted 
with Mr. Stephens supposed that he was inclined to inquire into 
the claims of Catholicity. This mistaken supposition arose from 
two facts which stand prominent through his whole life. He 
was recognized as the uncompromising antagonist at the South 
of political principles tending to abridge the rights of any class 
of citizens. His pronounced sentiments uttered at the period 
when a party of proscription threatened to sweep the Southern 
section of the country, and his intimate social relations with 
some of the Catholic clergy and laity, were the sincere expres- 
sions of his widely tolerant mind. In no sense was he an ethi- 
cal or political proscriptionist. " With him," as Mr. James G. 
Elaine says of the late President Garfield, " the inquiry was not 
so much what a man believes, but does he believe it." ' If con- 
viction of the truth o/ Catholicity led any of his friends into the- 
Catholic Church, Mr. Stephens was neither tardy nor reluctant 
in signifying his admiration for loyalty to that conviction. This 
was notably so in the case of his brother's former law partner, 
his own nearest friend and biographer. Fidelity to honest coru 
viction, however opposed to his personal views or feelings, al- 
ways commanded his hearty respect, and, if held at cost of a real 
sacrifice, was in his eyes the highest moral heroism. As to the 

* Memorial Address, p. 57. 



390 RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. [June, 

question of State rights which finally involved the nation in 
civil war, there was, we apprehend, no essential difference be- 
tween his opinions and those of Southern public men generally. 
His opposition to the movement prior to the secession of Georgia 
was on the ground of inopportuneness, and the irresistible logic 
of events proves beyond controversy that if his counsels had 
prevailed the terrible conflict, almost without a rjarallel in mod- 
ern civilization, would have been averted. He frequently pro- 
tested against the common assertion that social or political os- 
tracism for opinion's sake was peculiarly a Southern mode of 
disparagement. He maintained that it was the outcome of in- 
tolerance everywhere, and cited two memorable cases of un- 
popularity and desertion by friends in Massachusetts, when 
Mr. George Bancroft became a Democrat and when the late 
Charles Sumner left the Whig party and opposed Mr. Winthrop. 
The continued friendship of Mr. Prescott for these two men, 
under the social ban of the aristocratic circles of Boston, height- 
ened his regard for the character of that eminent writer.* Some 
of his opponents, measuring him by party lines, looked upon Mr. 
Stephens as a kind of political Mephistopheles, who owed his 
success in practice to his inconsistencies in principle. But men 
of this baser sort, whose ken is restricted by the horizon of 
party, belong to the third degree of Machiavelli's divisions of the 
capacities of mankind, who can neither understand things of 
themselves nor when they are explained to them by others, f 
To such minds his attitude towards the administration of Mr. 
Hayes will always appear inexplicable; but whatever may have 
been its weaknesses, that administration assuredly brought sub- 
stantial results to those States long cursed by the most venal 
political adventurers against whom a nation desirous of peace 
had to contend. They were of the " reptile species of politi- 
cians," delineated by Macaulay^ as "willing to coalesce with 
any party, to abandon any party, to undermine any party, to as- 
sault any party, at a moment's notice," so long, as they could hold 

* No letter in all literature is more honorable to the writer than Hawthorne's to his pub- 
lishers, who urged him to drop Mr. Franklin Pierce's name from the dedication of Our Old 
lawthorne says: " My long and intimate personal relations with Pierce render the 
3n altogether proper, especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence 
kindness ; and if he is so exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the 
me, there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by him " (Analytical 
Index to the Works of Hawthorne, p. 36). 

t " E perche sono di tre generazioni cervelli : 1'uno intende per se ; 1'altro discerne quelli che 
itende ; e il terzo non intende per se stesso, ne per dimostrazione di altri : quel primo e 
e ccellent,ss,mo, il secondo eccellente, il terzo inutile (II Principe, cap xxii ) 
\ Essays, vol. v. p. 425, " The Earl of Chatham " 



1883.] RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 391 

an estate in the federal offices. Mr. Stephens lent his support 
to the then President because his course gave peace and home- 
rule to every section of the republic. Another characteristic 
equally independent of party affiliations was his genuine admira- 
tion of Gen. Grant, whom he always spoke of as a man without 
guile. We remember remarking to him that the most fatal mis- 
step which that world- feted general ever made was when he re- 
signed a life-position for which he was fitted by education and 
experience to embark on the untried and troubled sea of Ame- 
rican politics, when he quite agreed with us, and spoke of the 
destruction which a political career wrought upon an otherwise 
symmetrical character. 

In anecdotical force and fulness Mr. Stephens resembled the 
late President Lincoln ; and in the greatest freedom of social life, 
with no restraints to check his utterances but those of good 
breeding, we never knew him to garnish his speech with ribald 
jest, indelicate allusion, or profane word of any sort. Since his 
death it has been charged that when nervously overwrought 
with pain he was given to profanity. If such were the fact it is 
remarkable that it never came under our observation ; and we 
have more than once sat by his bedside when his nerves were 
tingling in exquisite torture. His anecdotes used for purposes 
of illustration were either drawn from Southern life or from 
scenes in public affairs of which he was an eye-witness. He was 
a good story-teller, and his success as a raconteur was greatly 
aided by facial powers peculiar to himself. No anodyne more 
effectually allayed the sense of suffering than a joke, especially if 
it smacked of the languages of Greece and Rome, which had for 
him the fascinations felt by the old-fashioned scholar. The pre- 
sence of some of his friends appeared to suggest subjects of a 
classical turn ; and this was always true of Mr. Joshua Nicholls, 
an alumnus of Georgetown College in the days of the eloquent 
Father Ryder. Mr. Nicholls had lived much abroad, and to the 
culture of his Alma Mater he had added an accurate knowledge 
of the languages of southern Europe. Possessed of a sunny 
temper which misfortune could never cloud, he was a welcome 
guest, and on the occasions of his visits and those of Col. R. M. 
Johnston, a life-long friend, Mr. Stephens was most joyous in 
spirit and felicitous in conversation. At a dinner late in March, 
1 88 1, just before his return home, these two gentlemen were pre- 
sent, and of the many anecdotes " that were wont to set the table 
in a roar " we recall one of the times in which John Quincy Adams 
figured as a leading actor, but when told^ on paper it loses the 



392 RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. [June, 

aroma with which dainty viands and sparkling wines suffused it. 
Illinois had sent a new delegation to the Twenty-eighth Congress, 
including Stephen A. Douglas, John A. McClernand, John 
Wentworth, Orlando B. Fichlin, and John J. Hardin, who was 
subsequently killed in the battle of Buena Vista. Three of this 
number, it was commonly believed, aspired -to the Presidency, 
and as a preliminary training for candidature were frequently on 
their feet in the halls of Congress. A noisy discussion arose as 
to the pronunciation of the name of the State which they repre- 
sented. Mr. Campbell, of South Carolina, gave it the French, 
and others participating in the debate a different, pronunciation. 
As a dernier ressort an appeal was made to John Quincy Adams, 
one of the most elegant scholars then in public life, to settle the 
question. Mr. Adams arose quoting the verse of Virgil : 

"Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites," * 

and adding, " From the discussion I should say the correct pro- 
nunciation should be All-Noise" This ended the debate. Any 
witticism of a classical flavor met in our reading was duly noted 
and chronicled for the benefit of an appreciative hearer. The 
lasty># c esprit reported was taken from the lately-published Life 
of Sir Anthony Panizzi, librarian of the British Museum, who had 
a sort of malevolent satisfaction in exposing the errors com- 
mitted by Sir Henry Ellis in his printed catalogue of the 
Museum library. Mr. Stephens, having given some attention to 
the subject of indexing the proceedings of Congress, had gained 
considerable knowledge of the difficulties in the art of cata- 
loguing, and, despite the irreverence of Panizzi's comment, he was 
struck with its adroitness. It appears that a French translation 
of a work of Jeremy Bentham, whose name was turned into 
French on the title-page, was catalogued " Bentham (Jerome]." 
Panizzi wrote on the margin opposite the book the following 
annotation : " In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt" f 

Mr. Stephens frequently called for us to accompany him on a 
pleasure-drive or a business visit to the departments, and during 
the latter we occasionally got some insight into the occult influ- 
ences which determine the success or failure of the applicant for 
public office. The last visit of this nature to the Department of 
State was during the secretaryship of Mr. William M. Evarts, to 
whom Mr. Stephens introduced a young man from New York 
desiring a consulship, who had come to Washington with the 
recommendation of the Legislature of that State. On this occa- 

* Bucolica, eel. iii. 108. t Vol> { p . I44> 



.1883.] RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 393 

sion inquiries were made relative to the appointment of Mr. 
Ernest Dichman, of Wisconsin, as minister to Bogota, in whom 
Mr. Stephens felt an interest. The conversation, of the secretary 
evinced a friendly disposition towards that candidate, who was 
highly commended by Mr. A. S. Hewitt, of New York. Mr. 
Evarts expressing surprise at these efforts in behalf of Northern 
men led Mr. Stephens to remark that he had very many warm 
friends at the North. Shortly afterwards the appointment was 
made and evoked a good deal of adverse criticism, of which Mr. 
Stephens had to bear the brunt. We have mentioned these two 
cases to demonstrate the fact that he did not restrict his good 
offices to citizens of his own State or section, but that he was 
always ready to serve merit to the extent of his ability. At this 
same interview we heard with keen satisfaction the declension 
of Mr. Evarts to consider the reappointment of a person lately 
from Georgia to the consular service, for he had rendered him- 
self particularly odious at the seat of government as a collector 
of political assessments among the employees of the departments. 
When we returned to our carriage for a drive in the beautiful 
suburbs of the capital a lively conversation ensued as to the 
claims of this person to public station, and we are free to say 
that we neither shared the views of Mr. Stephens nor acquiesced 
in them when presented. He conscientiously opposed the col- 
lection of money for political campaigns, but candor compels us 
to say that as a man of affairs his chief fault was that which Sir 
Henry Holland attributes to Lord Melbourne as a cabinet min- 
ister, " of too generously condoning what was faulty in others." * 
The personal attachments of Mr. Stephens were strong and 
deep, and sometimes warped his judgment. In his friendships 
there was a chivalrous delicacy for the feelings and opinions of 
friends, none of whom he ever deserted when they saw fit to 
differ with him or to oppose him. No two graces ever more 
conspicuously adorned the career of a public man, through 
evil as through good report, than his high-bred courtesy and 
magnanimity. For the late President he cherished an almost 
romantic attachment. They had served together as members 
of the Committee on Rules, shared its labors during the heat 
of summer at Long Branch, and beguiled the close of each 
day's work with the fascinations of whist, for which they had 
great fondness. When the sudden and startling news of the 
tragedy which finally closed that brilliant .life aroused the sym- 
pathy of the nation for its unoffending victim, no soul was 

* Recollections of 'Past Life, p. 196. 



394 RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. [June, 

more deeply touched than was that of Alexander H. Stephens. 
Equally marked was his affection for children. The busiest hour 
of his busy life would never tempt him to overlook or slight 
such little visitors, and his keen glance softened and grew beau- 
tiful when it fell upon a child's face. An instance in point oc- 
curred on the occasion of the reception held on his seventieth 
birthday, February 11, 1882, when his rooms at the National 
Hotel were filled to overflowing with some of the most distin- 
guished men and women then resident at the capital. Mr. Ste- 
phens was receiving the congratulations and good wishes so heart- 
ily bestowed. A crown of laurel, with an appropriate inscrip- 
tion in letters of gold, had been presented to him, and the air 
was heavy with the perfume of exquisite flowers, the offerings 
of friends from all parts of the country. Just after President 
Arthur and Vice-President Davis had made their cordial greet- 
ings and passed on, two little figures came timidly forward, half- 
frightened at finding themselves in such a brilliant company, 
yet eager to reach the side of their always kind friend. At the 
first glimpse of them Mr. Stephens extended his hand and drew 
first the fair-haired girl, then the boy, in a close embrace and 
kissed the bright little faces before all the guests. The memory 
of that kiss, it may safely be said, will never be lost to either of 
the children. An autograph album was arranged upon a table, 
in which those present were requested to inscribe their names 
as a memento of the evening. Fearing the little ones would not 
feel themselves entitled to write theirs, Mr. Stephens made a 
special point of asking them himself. Not many months after- 
wards the younger of the two was brought low by a well-nigh 
fatal illness, and although the close of the Congressional session 
was near at hand, with all the multiplicity of duties, haste, and 
confusion thereby entailed upon members, Mr. Stephens found 
time for kind inquiries and sympathy. As soon as the little in- 
valid was permitted to take the air he placed his carriage at our 
service with a grace which made the acceptance a favor to him- 
self. During the summer of 1882 the custom among children of 
giving monograms engraved on silver coins as tokens of remem- 
brance had reached its height. Mr. Stephens, having been asked 
to add his to a little girl's collection, was greatly perplexed to 
find out just what was expected of him. Amusing as it was to 
see the interest manifested and the minute attention paid to this 
trifling matter in order to be sure that it should be rightly done, 
it is yet very touching in the recollection, now that the thought- 
ful care fora child's gratification is become a thing of the past. 



1883.] RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 395 

The letter which accompanied the little gift was about to be de- 
spatched when he, in dictating- the address, found himself unable 
to remember the middle name of the recipient, and quietly or- 
dered his servant to unpack a box of papers which stood ready 
for the journey to Georgia, that the proper address might be 
found among them. Unimportant as such things may be in 
themselves, they are very endearing when associated with a man 
whose whole sphere of action lay in the public view, and illus- 
trate the tenderness which would have made beautiful a home- 
life that he was destined never to know. 

Prior to his election as governor of Georgia the manage- 
ment of the Century Magazine had requested from him a paper on 
Stephen A. Douglas. Just as he was collecting materials for 
the work the nomination was made and the subject put aside. 
Those who remember his able and interesting paper on the 
authorship of the Letters of Junius, whether his arguments be 
considered conclusive or not against the identity of Sir Philip 
Francis, will regret that he did not give to the world his view of 
the life and labors of such a popular man as the Little Giant 
of the West. In his most laborious years Mr. Stephens never 
relinquished the habits and pursuits of^ the student. Few men 
now in American politics can turn from their absorbing interests 
to examine with the intuitions of the scholar literary and histori- 
cal questions in which he was quite at home. His conservatism 
of thought made him an opponent of all radicalism, and he had 
no sympathy with what Mr. William Swinton calls the "new 
lamps of history "that is, the historical school of which Froude 
and Buckle are representatives. Literature as influenced by the 
positive philosophy of Comte was distasteful to him ; and he 
believed that Macau lay will hereafter be read, not for the value 
of his historical opinions, but as a rhetorical master in whose 
style one may see the marvellous flexibility of the English lan- 
guage. The record of the life of Alexander H. Stephens lies 
open to the world, and from first to last the most prejudiced eye 
will fail to find one act of self-seeking or of questionable motive. 
He was indeed " ruggedly honest," as has been aptly said of him 
since his death, and among his strongest personal friends are 
numbered many honored names of men entirely opposed to him 
in political faith, who knew how to value his sterling integrity. 
To say that he had some weaknesses is only to admit that he was 
human, but in view of his real greatness these little foibles are as 
motes in the sunshine. With clean hands and a pure heart he 
passed through a life which to a less noble nature would have 



396 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [June, 

been full of snares and pitfalls, without once faltering in what he 
considered the path of duty ; and now that the end is reached it 
is seen, more plainly than before, how brave and strong and true 
he was. 

" To lay up lasting treasure 
Of perfect service rendered, duties done 
In charity, soft speech, and stainless days" 
These riches shall not fade away in life." * 



THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 

IT is not a pleasant task to direct public attention to the faults, 
the deficiencies, or the vices of others, yet it is a task that must 
be performed at certain times to vindicate the cause of truth and 
justice. The drunkards and their crimes are frequently exposed 
to view ; and sometimes their brutal deeds receive an undue 
prominence in the columns of the daily press to the exclusion of 
other information vastly more important. Many of our best 
citizens, who are striving to make the world better and happier, 
have discovered by continued observation and the evidence of 
constantly-recurring phenomena in short, by the process of in- 
duction that there are others besides the drunkards who should 
be held accountable for the prevalence of intemperance and its 
attendant evils ; and they have been taught by sad experience 
that there are in the world not a few avaricious persons delibe- 
rately plotting by night and by day to promote the excessive 
use of adulterated and intoxicating drinks. No one can deny 
that these abettors of drunkenness deserve censure and stern con- 
demnation, especially when they assume an attitude of defiant 
opposition to the precepts of religion as well as to the dictates 
of common sense, many of which are embodied in the salutary 
restrictions of the civil law. 

That drunkenness prevails to an alarming extent in the United 
States is unquestionably true ; that it is a prolific source of crime 
and poverty cannot be denied even by those who are enriched 
from the sale of intoxicating beverages. Apart from other chan- 
nels ot information, the records of the police courts sufficiently 
demonstrate that the vice of intemperance is widespread, and 
that every State in the Union is obliged to spend thousands of 

* Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia. 



1883.] THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 397 

dollars annually because a large number of its citizens become 
drunk and disorderly. Homes are made desolate, families are 
brought to a state of destitution, children suffer hunger and want, 
because the money that should be spent in providing the neces- 
saries of life is squandered for drink. Surely this is an evil * of 
great magnitude. Certainly every friend and well-wisher of a 
drunkard would entreat him to renounce that which is leading 
him to destruction. Every Christian who loves his neighbor as 
himself would feel prompted to erect a strong barrier before a 
person addicted to intoxication. For the same reason that medi- 
cines are carefully guarded and judiciously distributed, intoxi- 
cating drinks should be used with prudence and moderation. 
Several of the remedies discovered by medical science are bene- 
ficial if taken in small doses, but are poisonous if taken in large 
quantities, so that the patient must choose to take a little of such 
medicine or to take none. 

Considering the gigantic proportions that intemperance has 
attained as a social evil an evil which has been justly compared 
and classified with those three great scourges of the human race, 
war, famine, and pestilence what opinion should be formed of 
those who daily look with unconcern at the delirious and de- 
graded victims that frequent their stores ? What judgment should 
be pronounced upon those who by every means in their power, 
for selfish purposes, encourage the growth of this destructive 
vice ? Accusations of a very serious character are frequently 
made against those interested in the sale of intoxicating drinks. 
Trustworthy evidence has been adduced to show that a very 
large number of them, though they see more clearly, perhaps, 
than others the evils of intemperance, are unwilling to exert a 
remedial influence. Undoubtedly the act of giving the intoxi- 
cating draught and the act of taking it are closely connected. 
There can be a direct co-operation, a mutual responsibility, when 
a liquor-dealer entices and urges another to excess in drinking, 
especially in the case of one who he knows will become intoxi- 
cated. Most assuredly any seller of liquor who continues to 
supply it to one that he knows to be an habitual drunkard is 
guilty of deliberate co-operation. Viewed from this standpoint, 
any intelligent person can perceive that certain moral and men- 
tal qualifications are needed for the proper management of a re- 

* The statistics and data concerning intemperance in the United States have been lucidly set 
forth in the profound and eloquent lecture recently delivered in Chicago by the Rt. Rev. Bishop 
Ireland before an audience composed of a large number of the Catholic clergy, several Protes- 
tant ministers of various denominations, some of the State officials, and many of the most pro- 
minent citizens. 



398 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [June, 

tail liquor-store. In the lecture already mentioned Bishop Ire- 
land describes clearly the difference between the ideal liquor- 
dealer, possessed of the requisite qualities for his avocation, and 
the sort of a being that may be designated as the persistent type 
that usually predominates in all large cities containing three 
hundred thousand inhabitants and upwards : 

"The ideal saloon-keeper, an upright, honorable, conscientious man, 
will never sell liquor to an habitual drunkard, or to a person who has al- 
ready been drinking and whom another draught will intoxicate ; he will 
never permit minors, boys or girls, to cross his threshold ; he will not suffer 
around his counter indecent or profane language : he will not violate law 
and the precious traditions of the country by selling on Sunday ; he will 
never drug his liquor, and will never take from his patrons more than the 
legitimate market value of the fluid. Upon these conditions being ob- 
served I will not say that liquor-selling is a moral wrong. The ideal sa- 
loon-keeper is possible ; perhaps you have met him during your lifetime; 
may be Diogenes, lamp in hand, searching through our American cities, 
would discover him before wearying marches should have compelled him 
to abandon the search. I have at present before my mind the saloon as 
it usually nowadays exhibits itself, down in an underground cellar, away 
from the light of the sun, or, if it does open its doors to the sidewalk, seek- 
ing with painted windows and rows of lattice-work to hide its traffic from 
public gaze, as if ashamed itself of the nefariousness of its practices. The 
keeper has one set purpose to roll in dimes and dollars, heedless whether 
lives are wrecked and souls damned. The hopeless inebriate and the yet 
innocent boy receive the glass from his hand. He resorts to tricks and de- 
vices to draw customers, to stimulate their appetite for drink. Sunday as 
on Monday, during night as during day, he is at work to fill his victims 
with alcohol and his till with silver and gold. This is his ambition ; and I 
am willing to pay him the compliment that he executes wall his double 
task." 

For reasons not satisfactorily explained to the sovereign peo- 
ple or to their most temperate and enlightened constituents, a 
majority of the members of the Assembly and of the Senate of 
the State of New York have lately attempted to legislate for 
the large cities containing three hundred thousand inhabitants 
and upwards in such a way as to extend the privileges of liquor- 
dealers and to remove from them the salutary restraints imposed 
by the excise law that was framed by wise men in the year 
1857. Eminent citizens opposed the measure on the ground that 
the public good of any city or town in the State could not be 
promoted by granting enlarged facilities for the sale of liquor. 
Among others the Hon. Charles A. Peabody, formerly a justice 
of the Supreme Court, speaking on behalf of the Episcopalian 
Church Temperance Society, declared that further limitations in 



1883.] THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 399 

the sale of liquor were urgently needed in view of the undeni- 
able fact that the stores where liquor is sold already too nume- 
rous are often the rendezvous of bad men, who assemble there 
for the purposes of vice. Chief-Justice Noah Davis, who has 
been on the bench of the Supreme Court of New York City 
almost twenty-six years, strongly condemned the proposed 
amendment to the excise law as a concession to the liquor-sell- 
ing interests regardless of the demands of the better classes of 
the community. Alluding to his varied opportunities of observ- 
ing the beginnings and the consequences of crime, he stated 
that in nearly every case where he was compelled to pass sen- 
tence of death the poor culprit pleaded that he was drunk when 
he committed the murderous deed. The following words of 
Judge Davis are worthy of remembrance : 

"The law is, unfortunately, so unjust that it makes drunkenness an 
aggravation of crime, and yet licenses thousands of places to make men 
drunk. I have passed thousands of sentences for minor offences, homi- 
cides, assaults, and larcenies, and I solemnly aver that in a great majority 
of cases intemperance has been the direct cause of crime. Every life given 
by God is worth protecting from the sting of the venomous serpent, in- 
temperance." 

To the Rev. C. A. Walworth, of St. Mary's Church, Albany, be- 
longs the honor of having been among the first to detect and ex- 
pose the true character of the excise bill proposed in the Legis- 
lature as a substitute for the wholesome restrictions carefully 
and studiously devised twenty-six years ago to regulate the sale 
of liquor and to suppress intemperance, pauperism, and crime. 
Long experience in- missionary labor and in the performance of 
parochial duties, his extensive knowledge of civil law for he 
was admitted to the bar before he became a priest together 
with his exceptional gifts, enable Father Walworth to discuss 
such topics judiciously. At an interview with the Senate Com- 
mittee on Cities he brought up the broad merits of the cause at 
issue between the sincere and thoughtful citizens of the State 
and the upholders of the liquor-trade. He affirmed what all 
Catholics hold namely, that neither the use nor the sale of 
liquors is a sin per se, but only per accidens. But a thing inno- 
cent in itself might be changed into a sin by circumstances. 
When places opened for the sale of liquors become, as a general 
rule, resorts for drunkards and schools of intemperance, they 
then contribute occasions of sin. They constitute a great moral 
evil, and ought to be treated as such by the government as well 
as by the church. The dangers of the trade should be made re- 



400 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [June, 

mote in every possible way. The excise laws of 1857 recog- 
nized these principles of moral theology ; in their original sym- 
metry they constituted a wise, beautiful, and thorough system. 
They have been mutilated by additions, and, although too gene- 
rally evaded, cannot be regarded as entirely inoperative. The 
legal complications that now exist have been constructed to suit 
the wishes of the worst liquor-dealers. 

Besides supplying the foregoing information to the Senate 
committee, Father Walworth also delivered in the old Assem- 
bly Chamber a powerful speech at a mass-meeting of citizens 
presided over by ex-Mayor Judson, of Albany. The call for the 
meeting was signed by several prominent representatives of the 
Catholic clergy and by a large number of the best citizens of all 
denominations. Though differing from one another somewhat 
in regard to the best means of opposing intemperance, they were 
all agreed that the State should not sanction the proposed change 
of the excise system. Speeches were made by the chairman, 
Mr. Robert Graham, of New York City, and by Bishop Doane, of 
the Episcopal -Church ; the most telling speech, however, was 
that of Father Walworth, from which the following extracts are 
taken : 

"Who are our adversaries ? Of course it is an obvious answer to say 
our great adversary is the liquor-interest. True, it is so. But I wish to 
make a distinction even here. It is not for the interest of all engaged in 
the trade to have the traffic unrestricted. Don't think so. That it is for 
the business interest of the distiller and the brewer, and, with [some few 
special exceptions, of the wholesale dealer, to have the traffic extended to 
its utmost limits, and to have the greatest possible amount of drinking 
done, I freely admit. But I do insist that many a grocer and many a res- 
taurant-keeper would be better off if the sale were limited to a few by high 
licenses and other strong restrictions. I know that many of these men 
burn with shame to find themselves associated in the same trade with the 
keepers of low dance-houses, brothels, bucket-shops, and other dens of de- 
bauch and misery. These help to swell the purses of manufacturers and 
rectifiers, but they bring no profit to bona-fide grocers or keepers of hotels 
or refreshment-houses. I have little sympathy with this trade in any shape, 
but let us be just, and in no case denounce even the blameworthy except 
so far as they are censurable. These men are not all and altogether reck- 
less and ruthless. Their consciences are weak God help them ! 

''There is a class of men whose influence against our cause is most un- 
fortunate. They are not opponents but obstacles. They are temperate 
men, and oftentimes call themselves temperance men. They may be, per. 
haps, in their own personal practice, total-abstinence men. But when a 
great occasion arises to show themselves one like this they have no 
heart for the work. They are afraid of something. They are afraid they 
may get hurt They are good soldiers at a temperance drill, but they do 



1883.] THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 401 

not like the smoke of battle. Their heart is always in the right place ; but 
it isn't much of a heart. When you ask them to give a temperance ad- 
dress they are ready. But when you ask them to sign a call like this, in 
face of the enemy, they draw their horns back into their shells. They 
would gladly do it, but but what? Why, they are ' so situated.' I pre- 
sume I need not explain any further. By your laughter you show that you 
are able to take in the situation. 

" Now, I pity these men. They are constitutionally timid. I have a re- 
pugnance to urge men of this kind. It seems to be impolite and actually 
cruel. I would as soon think of frightening a lady by putting a spider 
upon her neck. When I meet one of these tender philanthropists, and see 
the perspiration gather on his face at the idea of doing some good deed 
which may ' hurt his prospects,' I dislike to wait for his slow-coming, 
painful apology. On the contrary, I feel like apologizing to him for dis- 
turbing his ' situation.' I would rather say, as Burns did to a field-mouse 
when he saw it scared out of its nest by a plough : 

" ' Wee, sleekit, cowrin', timorous beastie, 
Oh ! what a panic's in thy breastie. 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 

Wi' bickering brattle. 
I wad be laith to rin and chase thee 

Wi' murdering pattle.' 

" But sometimes these unwilling friends of temperance take higher 
ground. They actually become champions for the extension of the liquor- 
trade, and plead a sense of duty. We find such men in the Legislature. 
'My duty to my constituents,' they say, 'requires me to vote against 
restrictions upon the liquor-trade.' Well, duty is a noble and a beautiful 
thing. It is hard to plead against duty. I love to recall the magnificent 
sentiment which Walter Scott puts in the mouth of the celebrated Claver- 
house : ' Faithful and true are words that are never lost on me.' But who 
are these constituents ? Do you mean to say, honorable sir, that it will 
be for the welfare and true happiness of the people who live in your dis- 
trict to make this trade more free ? ' Well, no ; not exactly that. As a 
friend of sobriety I couldn't say that.' Do you mean that the population of 
the district which sends you to the Legislature desire it? 'Well, no; not 
exactly that. A very large part of the voters in my district did not wish 
me to come to the Legislature at all. I see you do not understand what a 
constituency is. We politicians understand it very well.' Ah ! now I have 
it. The voters of your party are unanimous, or nearly so, in desiring it. 
Have I got it now ? ' Well, no ; not exactly yet. But one thing is certain : 
I could not have got here at all if it had been known that I was in favor 
of restriction.' 

" Now, gentlemen, to speak to the practical point, what attention will 
this Legislature pay to this meeting, and what will they do ? It is easy to 
see. If, in their opinion, we are likely to fold up our sentiments in talk, 
while the liquor-traders embody theirs in action ; if our fears and indigna- 
tion are to make no difference with our votes, while the liquor-interest will 
exert itself to crush those who legislate for good order and sobriety why, 
then this nefarious bill will pass. The State will (for a time at least) be 
VOL. xxxvil 26 



402 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [June, 

abandoned to drunkenness and misery. And New York City, in particular, 
will become a pandemonium of lawless crime ; and Sundays will form no 
exception to the evil. 

" I trust that it will not seem to any one present, because I speak ear- 
nestly and boldly, that therefore I allow my judgment to be carried away by 
my feelings. I think that I am in perfect possession of my reason and 
shall have no cause hereafter to wish any of my words recalled. I ac- 
knowledge that sometimes friends say to me : Father Walworth, you are 
not prudent, and especially in this temperance business. You stand in 
your own light. If you have any ambition, it is not wise. You block up 
your own way. No man, moreover, that talks so freely can hope to be 
popular. Sometimes the shot you scatter lodges near home. You hurt 
the feelings of friends. 

" In truth, I am not insensible to observations of this kind. I have my 
own ambitions, such as they are, and they are great, vast. Magnificent 
aspirations fill my breast ; but I am willing to bide my time, and I trust 
that in the end I shall not be altogether disappointed. I try hard to keep 
my boat headed in the direction of my hopes. As to popularity, I should 
be sorry to be found playing the demagogue at any time. Yet I should be 
very glad to have the whole world respect me and love me. A very dear- 
bought popularity would it be, however, if I should gain it only by the loss 
of something more valuable. 

"Another caution touches me nearer. I have a circle of familiar 
friends, whose friendship is more dear to me than all the treasures of this 
earth. Yet even that I could deny myself rather than close my mouth in 
this holy cause. Let no one ask me to do it. I cannot. There are voices 
continually resounding in the chambers of my heart that will not let me. 
There are voices that haunt my dreams by night. I hear, of course, the 
greedy clamors that come from so many distillers and brewers. I see the 
smoke of the malt, and I hear the hissing of the still. I hear the clink of 
many bottles and the rolling of many barrels. I wish no harm to any 
honest trader. But behind all this, and beyond all this, and beneath all, 
and above all, and mingled with all, I hear a sound of riot and a cry of woe. 
I hear the sound of woman's voice in despair. I hear the accents of 
children complaining of cold and begging for bread. I hear the voices of 
multitudes of men, made in the image of God, with hearts like my own, 
made to love and be loved I hear these hoarsely shouting as they rush 
into crime, or pitifully pleading on their knees for help help against 
their own weakness. These things will not let my tongue be silent until it 
lies silent in the grave. 

" How soon that time may come I know not. But this I know : so 
long as memory lingers within these cells of life and thought, so long will 
I remember with a proud pleasure the opportunity given me this evening 
to stand in this hall of famous recollections, the very centre of an area 
within which cluster the most joyous remembrances of my childhood, to 
stand before an audience like this, with privilege to plead this cause." 

It is to be hoped that the eloquent defence of the temperance 
movement contained in this able speech by Father Walworth 
may be circulated far and wide. The good seed that he has 



1883.] THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 403 

sown so fearlessly may be destined to produce an abundant 
harvest long after the termination of his earthly career. 

Within the past year many earnest men holding- distinguished 
positions have been engaged in gathering reliable information 
concerning the number, the location, and the management of 
retail liquor-stores in New York City. In this important work 
the members of the Episcopalian Church Temperance Society 
have taken a prominent part. Under the laws of this organiza- 
tion tho'se who use moderately and those who abstain entirely 
from intoxicating drinks unite together on equal terms to oppose 
the excessive use of liquor. At a mass meeting of citizens of 
New York, held under the auspices of the above society, eminent 
speakers advanced strong arguments to show that it is for the 
public good to have the sale of liquor restricted within reasonable 
limits, and that a maximum license fee of five hundred dollars per 
annum would be effective in reducing the number of drinking- 
places. Under such a system the licensed dealers would become 
active and interested agents in preventing the unlicensed traffic 
that is now carried on largely in defiance of the police. Not 
content with exposing the lawlessness that abounds among the low 
groggeries, the citizens present at the mass meeting referred to 
unanimously approved the appointment of a deputation to wait 
upon the excise commissioners to urge upon them restriction in 
the issue of licenses, and upon the police commissioners to 
inform them of the violations of law respecting the sale of liquor 
to minors, to intoxicated persons, and at forbidden times. It was 
also decided that this deputation should interview the mayor to 
ask for the appointment of competent and reliable excise com- 
missioners. 

St. Paul's Temperance Guild, of New York City, deserves 
honorable mention for its continuous efforts since its formation 
to lessen in every possible way the evils of intemperance. To 
this end they recently decided at a public meeting to send a let- 
ter to Mayor Edson containing a condensed statement of the 
testimony derived from many sources and from many conscien- 
tious persons residing in the Twenty-second Ward. A few pas- 
sages from this letter may be appropriately quoted in connection 
with the evidence already presented with reference to the man- 
agement of the liquor-traffic: 

" From selfish motives, to increase their profits, some retail liquor-deat- 
, r ,y_and perhaps some of the wholesale dealers also adulterate what they 
sell with injurious substances ; allow habitual drunkards, in defiance of the 
law, to purchase drink and lounge in their stores ; encourage the use of 



404 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [June, 

strong intoxicating liquors, and seek to dissuade the citizens of this city 
from doing what they ought to do to promote their own well-being. Some 
of these retail liquor-dealers are responsible for co-operating with the 
drunkards in depriving destitute women and children of food and clothing. 
The money that should be spent in providing the necessaries of life is 
gladly taken by these inhuman monsters in exchange for their destructive, 
adulterated beverages. These considerations* your honor, are not illu- 
sions of the imagination. The statements which we make are based on 
facts, stern realities, and may be verified by your own observations in this 
neighborhood. 

"As citizens, therefore, entitled to the protection of the laws which 
you are appointed to defend and enforce, we demand a rigid supervision 
over those authorized to sell liquor ; we wish to see more strenuous efforts 
made to put into practical operation laws to regulate the sale of intoxicat- 
ing liquors, and to aid in suppressing the degrading vice of intemperance. 
With proper deference, we ask you to consider the reasons that have in- 
duced the excise commissioners to grant licenses for the sale of liquor in 
over nine thousand stores. We beg leave to inform you that some of the 
individuals who have obtained a license for this business are unfit to be 
placed in a position where they can do damage to others. In conclusion, 
your honor, we cherish the hope that you will seriously reflect on the in- 
formation communicated in this letter, and that you will speedily devise a 
plan to sustain us in our efforts to enforce the existing laws for the sup- 
pression of that most destructive vice, intemperance" 

It is not within the scope of the present article to give a de- 
tailed account of the work accomplished during the past year by 
the various Catholic organizations devoted to the cause of tem- 
perance. But it is proper to state that the delegates of the Ca- 
tholic Total Abstinence Societies, representing the Metropolitan 
"Union of the State of New York, at their last annual convention 
in the city of Troy unanimously adopted the following resolu- 
tions, proposed by Father Walworth : 

<( i st. That the object of this Union is not merely to provide for the 
safety or the perfection of its own members, but also to ' oppose and up- 
root the baneful vice of drunkenness ' by the systematic application of 
every available means, religious or otherwise. 

" 2d. That the sale of intoxicating drinks upon the Lord's day is not 
only a violation of the laws of the State and the precepts of the church, 
but also a fruitful source of intemperance ; and that we are bound in the 
very nature of this Union to oppose it and to seek by every available 
means to uproot it. 

" 3d. That, in view of the curse of drunkenness which lies like a blight 
-upon this generation, it is right and necessary to urround the sale of in- 
toxicating drinks by salutary restraints of law, and that it is the especial 
.vocation of temperance men and the duty of all good citizens to sustain 
such laws and encourage their enforcement." 

It is important to call attention to these resolutions as show- 



1883.] THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 405 

ing that the Catholics of New York State have determined that 
"it is right and necessary to surround the sale of intoxicating 
drinks by salutary restraints of law," and that it is the duty of 
all good citizens to sustain such laws. The same policy was 
sanctioned by the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America 
in the convention held August 2 and 3, 1882, at St. Paul, 
Minnesota. It was declared in one of the resolutions adopted 
that the delegates did not rely upon " any compulsory means to 
suppress drunkenness," and that all lovers of virtue and so- 
briety, whether they be total abstainers or believers in tempe- 
rance, should enforce salutary measures for elevating from the 
depths of sorrow and degradation thousands of our men, women, 
and children who need their assistance and guidance. 

The evidence brought forward in the preceding pages is suf- 
ficient to show that all good men should be actively interested 
in the suppression of intemperance. The unrestricted sale of 
beer which is so often used among intemperate women or any 
other intoxicating drink would produce disastrous results. No 
honest, respectable dealer can wish to liberate from the wise re- 
straints of civil law the reckless individuals who are degrading 
his business. Salutary restrictions and limitations are feared 
only by those who are unfit to have a license at all. As con- 
ducted by disreputable men and there are many of them the 
liquor-traffic is dangerous to public morals and to the prosperity 
of the state. Let all who desire to vindicate the liquor-dealers 
from the accusations made against them endeavor to co-operate 
with the champions of temperance in an earnest effort to have 
laws made based on the sound principles admirably stated by 
Bishop Ireland in the following quotation from his lecture at 
Chicago : 

"The sole logical plea upon which prohibition can ever seek to obtain 
a hearing is this : that liquor-selling has become among us such a nuisance 
that the most sacred interests of the people, the salvation of the common- 
wealth itself, are imperilled, and that all other means less radical have 
been tried in vain to avert the calamity. It must be borne in mind that 
under our free government it is a very dangerous proceeding to infringe to 
any considerable degree upon private rights and liberties under the plea 
of the public welfare. The very essence of our republican government is 
that it will respect, as far as it may be at all possible, private rights. Indi- 
vidual taste as to what we are to eat or drink is one of the most personal 
of our natural rights, one of the very last subjects, indeed, even in extreme 
cases, for public legislation. The case is, certainly, supposable when mat- 
ters should have come to such a pass, as I believe they have in China as 
regards the use of opium, that nothing but prohibition would suffice ; then 



4o6 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [June, 

salus popnlt suprema lex would be my principle. Even then, however, we 
should have to consider whether public opinion had been so formed as to 
warrant the practical enforcement of prohibition. The first work must at 
all times be to appeal to the intelligence and moral nature of men. Legis- 
lation by itself will be idle speech. It has its purpose : it removes and less- 
ens temptations ; it assists and strengthens moral sentiment; but alone it 
neither creates nor takes the place of virtue. So far, in America, I imagine 
public opinion is not prepared for prohibition ; nor have we with sufficient 
loyalty tried other less radical measures to be justified in invoking the 
forlorn hope absolute prohibition. If in the future, however, the country 
shall be precipitated towards extremes on the liquor-question, the liquor- 
dealers will themselves have brought about the crisis : they will reap the 
whirlwind where they will have sown the wind. By resisting, as they do 
at present, all rational and moderate measures for the suppression or 
diminution of the evils of alcohol, they will have forced us to cut them off 
as men madly and incurably opposed to the interests of the common- 
wealth. 

"HIGH LICENSE. 

" What is at once practicable, and would be most serviceable in dimin- 
ishing the evils of intemperance, is to demand of liquor-sellers high 
license-fees. There are two grounds upon which we base our plea for 
high license. One is the economic ground : if a traffic of any kind puts 
unusual impediments in the wheels of government, State or municipal, and 
increases to an inordinate degree its expenses, the traffic should be made to 
bear its due proportion of those expenses. Before saloon-keepers have 
reason to complain of injustice or harsh treatment they should be made to 
pay over three-fourths of all sums spent annually in maintaining police 
forces, criminal courts, jails, public charities. In allowing them to pay but 
trifles of those sums the State or city is guilty of deep injustice towards 
the sober citizen, who is taxed to repair the harm inflicted by liquor upon 
society. The second ground for high license is the moral consideration 
that it is the duty of government to prevent as well as to punish wrong- 
doing, when no principle is violated by such prevention, and to put re- 
strictions upon a traffic which is dangerous to public morals. 

" Not many who would be candidates for a bar could pay one thousand 
or five hundred dollars ; nor would the wholesale dealer be anxious, as he 
is now, to advance the license-fee. High license would drive saloons from 
the outlying districts into the more central portions of the city, where 
police control is more effective. It would end the unholy alliance between 
groceries and liquor, and the poor laborer or his wife could buy a pound of 
tea or sugar without being invited to buy also a glass of whiskey or beer. 
The impecunious fellows, ashamed to beg and too idle to work, willing, 
however, to sell whiskey, are often the men most careless of consequences; 
their idea is to make money. They would be kept out of the business. A 
salutary fear would rest upon all liquor-dealers of violating city ordinances, 
lest they lose their license, which has some value when it costs five hun- 
dred or one thousand dollars. Nor would so many drink if we had high 
license. There are men who will seek out whiskey or beer wherever it is 
and pay any money for it. There are many others, however, who will not 



1883.] THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 407 

drink when temptation is not thrust upon them. The poor working-rrfan 
after his day's work will not walk several blocks to find a saloon. If it is 
next door, and the selfish keeper, envying the dollar he has earned so hard, 
invites him with a sickly smile and a shake of his clammy hand to cross its 
threshold, the poor man will yield and get drunk. Diminish the saloons 
and you diminish the number of drinkers. A low license-fee is an open en- 
couragement to the indefinite and irresponsible multiplication of rum-holes 
in every street and in every block of our cities. 

"DANGER FROM INTEMPERANCE TO OUR POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 

" If we do nothing to stop the evil the solemn question for the Ameri- 
can people is not out of place : Will the republic survive ? No people so 
much as we need, for the very life of their political institutions, to culti- 
vate sobriety ; and yet America takes rank among the intemperate nations 
of the world. In monarchies and empires it matters far less how the peo- 
ple behave : the ruling power may still guide aright the ship of state. In a 
republic the people are the rulers ; each citizen exercises through his vote 
sovereign power. The right of suffrage is a most sacred trust ; the life of 
the commonwealth depends upon its proper exercise. From each one of 
us God will on the judgment day demand an account of our civic as well 
as our private acts, and, before Him, the citizen will stand guilty who will 
have aided by his vote to place in office, State or municipal, bad or dan- 
gerous men. Nor will the plea of mere party politics excuse him ; loyalty 
to the country is the first and highest political duty. If ever the republic 
fail it will be because our form of government presupposes men better 
than they are. Behold, then, our danger a danger which no republic in 
Rome or Athens ever encountered, a danger peculiarly our own alcohol ! 
Woe betide the republic of the west if hundreds of thousands deposit their 
ballots while the fumes of alcohol darken their brain ; if the caucus of the 
reigning party is held around a saloon-counter ; if the party slate is ever 
written near the whiskey-bottle or the beer-glass ! Woe betide her if the 
men chosen by popular vote to enact or administer our laws cringe through 
fear before saloon-keepers, receive their inspiration from the whiskey and 
beer elements in the population, and speak and act at the bidding of King 
Alcohol ! Yet, if we look well at things, the peril is upon us. The liquor- 
element shows itself most bold in politics ; if daring and courage were the 
sole qualifications for power, it would assuredly deserve to' reign. On the 
other hand, the moral and conservative men in the population too often 
shrink away into quiet security, timid and inactive. As the result, the 
most incapable and the worst men in city and State may at any time be en- 
trusted with the reins of authority, and be permitted to shatter with fatal 
blow the pillars upon which rest our most cherished institutions. If the 
republic is to be perpetuated, alcohol should be made to feel that it is 
barely tolerated, and that it must never, under severe penalty, court power 
or seek to control politics. Alcohol cannot be the political king, else the 
republic becomes a mere memory of the past." 



408 ENGLISH WAIFS. [June, 



ENGLISH WAIFS. 

WHOEVER has honestly attempted to benefit the so-called 
" dangerous classes " will eventually arrive at the sorrowful 
conclusion that the task is next door to hopeless. The force 
of habit is too strong. The sad condition described in Scripture 
of a man delighting in evil, loving it for its own sake, " rolling it 
under his tongue as a sweet morsel," is, alas ! a realizable fact. 
Consequently many persons who have spent months and years 
in vainly trying to benefit adults, finding no result, have con- 
cluded that the young, the rising generation, merit most attention. 
They represent the future. And the constant increase of crime 
makes it most imperative to do something for these, who if suf- 
fered to grow up in infamy will become so many scorpion-whips 
to the nation. And surely, apart from all political considera- 
tions, there can be no sadder sight than thousands of depraved 
children, who, as Kingsley long ago remarked, are " cradled in 
vice, nursed in crime, polluted from the womb, yea, damned 
before they're born." 

Charles Dickens did good service to society in calling at- 
tention to this race of pariahs. We see them accurately de- 
picted in his pages pale, emaciated creatures, clad in vermin- 
peopled rags, grimy, filthy, audacious, and cunning, whose am- 
bition is to become adroit thieves, whose acme of delight is a 
full stomach. He stimulated legislative enactments, and to-day 
the eye is less offended in London streets by this continual re- 
proach, the juvenile Lazarus at the gate of Dives. It cannot fail 
to interest those in New York who, like the admirable Father 
Drumgoole, feel the immeasurable importance of this work if 
we take a comprehensive though brief glance at the various 
measures adopted in England for the benefit of the homeless 
and outcast children. 

The Poor Laws of England have been deservedly denounced 
by no less a person than Mr. Fawcett, the present postmaster- 
general, as " a curse to the laboring classes." And Mr. Pretty- 
man, in his valuable work Dispauperization, traces to them the 
terrible scourge of pauperism with which the country is so man- 
fully struggling. But he dares not tell us how much may be 
traced to the unequal distribution of wealth, and the small num- 
ber of persons who possess the entire landed property of the 
realm. 



1883.] ENGLISH WAIFS. 409 

The basis of all recent legislation for the aid of destitute 
children is the well-known law of Elizabeth, of 1602. By this 
enactment the parish is responsible for the maintenance of such 
children as have no protectors. In the year 1881 the number 
of such in England (exclusive of Wales) amounted to 442,338, 
and in this category there is not a child older than sixteen years. 
This shows since 1851 a diminution of a hundred thousand. 

All these children are not assisted in the same way. A large 
number 295,888 get " out-door relief"; that is, they remain 
with persons who take care of them, and who receive certain 
doles of money or provisions. The rest receive " in-door relief " ; 
that is, they are taken in and done for at the Union workhouse. 
The children of these establishments are happily far better off 
than Oliver Twist, and the awful crime of " asking for more " is 
not of so frequent occurrence. They are divided officially into 
three categories " casuals" " orphans" "deserted." Respecting 
these last a word needs to be said. The English law makes no 
provision, as does the French law, whereby a mother may give 
up her child to the care of the state, while she remains free her- 
self. This state of things largely contributes to infanticide ; and 
when this is not the case, and the wretched woman has still some 
lingering tenderness for her offspring, she leaves it helpless upon 
a doorstep, where happily it may be found, and from that time it 
becomes the charge of the parish. 

The first place with which this poor waif makes acquaintance 
as soon as he can walk is the receiving-ward of the workhouse. 
Here he mingles with professional tramps, who never think of 
anything but begging and pilfering. Not unfrequently the nar- 
ration of their adventures arouses in young minds that nomadic 
tendency which all of us possess, and the taste for " padding 
the hoof" otherwise tramping is implanted, never again to be 
wholly eradicated. 

It was a long while before the consequences of this evil asso- 
ciation were realized. But by two acts, one passed in 1845, the 
other in 1848, the government decided on a complete separation 
of the pauper children from the adults. The formation of dis- 
trict schools was the result. The metropolis is statistically di- 
vided into thirty unions, containing one hundred and ninety par- 
ishes. Eleven of these have separate schools for their children. 
They are mostly situated some miles from London. One of 
these, for the Lambeth Union, is situated at Norwood, and may 
be regarded as a fair specimen of the rest. The dormitories are 
narrow and ill-ventilated, and the vicious practice obtains of 



4 io ENGLISH WAIFS. [June, 

compelling the children to sleep two in one bed. The school- 
rooms, however, are large and lofty, and there is a large play- 
ground and plenty of good air. The children are taught for 
certain hours of the day, and then instructed in some trade, such 
as shoe-making, tailoring, gardening, etc. The deck and spars 
of a ship afford opportunity for teaching youths destined for the 
navy. Occasionally the guardians find that a littte more outlay 
on the education of the children is far more profitable than inju- 
dicious economy, since it lessens the chance of having to main- 
tain them in future years. ' The cost of each child in the thirty 
unions varies from 16 los. to ^36 i6s. annually. 

Too much praise cannot be given for the efforts to keep the 
schools healthy. All children arriving from the workhouse are 
placed in a probationary ward which, as in the South Metropo- 
litan District School, is built apart. They undergo a mild quar- 
antine, for many are afflicted with contagious diseases. Gene- 
rally these rooms are constructed of such inexpensive material 
that they can be burned in the event of severe epidemic. Great 
attention is paid to drill, and gymnastics, and bathing, so that 
the poor shrunken form of a street Arab soon becomes healthy 
and robust. 

Girls are instructed in domestic work, but not in cooking. 
The garb imposed on the children is coarse and ugly a real 
badge of servitude. There is little to complain of in the educa- 
tion except, perhaps, that there is too much of it. Mrs. Senior 
remarks : " It would be far wiser to teach girls how to cook a po- 
tato or darn a stocking than the heights of mountains and the 
length of rivers." The instruction is declared to be unsectarian, 
but the service of the Church of England is the only one used. 
To the honor of the commissioners it must be said that they are 
scrupulous about compelling the attendance of Catholic chil- 
dren. If there is a Catholic priest in the vicinity he is invited 
to give them instruction, and always consents. But if there is 
no priest, these poor children are in a state of absolute spiritual 
destitution. This is why Cardinal Manning has labored so 
energetically to procure the establishment of a school specially 
for Catholic children. The government has partially yielded. 
A large number of Catholic children from London are sent to 
St. Mary's orphanage, directed by the Belgian Freres de la Mise- 
ricorde ; while an equally large number of girls are sent to a 
convent of nuns whose mother-house is Notre Dame de la De- 
livrance, in Normandy. 

Independent of the trades taught in these district schools, 



1883.] ENGLISH WAIFS. 411 

boys who have reached twelve years of age are eligible for one 
of the training-ships. Several of these lie at the mouth of the 
Thames, and the boys are carefully trained for maritime service. 
The captain in command knows how to combine a strict disci- 
pline with that reasonable amount of freedom necessary to youth. 
However loud the uproar of " wild and careless play," if he but 
sound twice on his whistle there is instantaneous and absolute 
silence. He seeks to arouse in them a manly emulation, a sense 
of honor, and the gold stripe awarded for good conduct is much 
appreciated. Its removal for grave offences is regarded as a 
serious punishment. The authorities have not discarded the rod 
as a final punishment for the worst form of offences ; and my 
own experience shows there is wisdom in this. Do not discard 
it in theory, but in practice. If a very severe chastisement is 
needed, it is everyway better to birch a boy than injure his 
health with confinement and severe tasks. No one was ever the 
worse for a judicious flogging. 

To see these bright, happy-looking fellows in their smart uni- 
form, glowing with ruddy health, as agile as monkeys, and quite 
as mischievous, it is matter of hearty congratulation to think so 
many have been rescued from the sorrowful career of misery in 
which they were born. The authorities have, indeed, difficult 
material to mould into this shape. I once questioned one of 
these training-ship lads, one much trusted by the captain, and 
this was his story : 

" We had slept in a barrel, a sugar-barrel you know, my sister and I, 
when the boy's beadle twigged us, and takes us to the workhouse. They 
gave us some grub, but I couldn't eat half of it, because I never got such a 
lot all at once. I was a good while before I could eat it all. Then they 
took me to a bath, and told me to get in and not be afraid. I wasn't afraid 
because I used to dive in the Thames mud for pennies. So I jumped in, 
but I screamed out directly, for it was hot, and I never had had a hot bath 
in my life. I thought they wanted to kill me, and no threats could make 
me get in again. I was said to be a bad 'un, and I think I was. So I was 
marched to the school and the master asked my name. I wouldn't tell 
him. He insisted, and I told him to find out. Then a monitor took hold 
of me, but I giv him a punch in the head that sent him sprawling. Then 
the master got out his stick, so I had to tell him my name was Carrots. 
He said it wasn't a proper name, but I never had any other, So he set-to 
to find out, and in a week he said my name was William Brown. I shall 
never forget the first time I went to church. I'd never been inside one 
before, and when I saw the chaps in white gowns I was stunned. But I 
got whacked coming out for going to sleep, so I kicked the master's shins. 
Then they sent me here, sir ; and it's no use playing up here, and I'm very 
happy, and hope soon to get a real ship." 



412 ENGLISH WAIFS. [June, 

And there was undoubtedly in him the stuff of a jolly tar. 
This is but one way of meeting- the difficult query, What is to be 
done with the children when they groiv up f Orphans and deserted 
children remain at the district school until they are sixteen. 
But this is not the case with casual children. These leave the 
school at the same time that their parents quit the workhouse. 
These generally take refuge there during the winter, for there 
are seventy thousand more casuals in the workhouses during 
January than during July. It is quite impossible to make any 
satisfactory impression on these young tramps during their 
short stay. But though little good can be done to them, the}' do 
a great deal of harm to the other children. The irruption of 
this floating element of depravity into the stable population of 
the schools is an unmixed evil, and; calls for a more rigid classi- 
fication. 

The only remedy yet tried has been to " farm " the children ; 
that is, to place them with peasants, who send them to the 
National school, and take care of them for a fixed payment. But 
generally they are much worse off than in the workhouse. 
Apart from the privations they suffer, the very low state of 
morals among the English peasantry exposes them to the greatest 
dangers. This may be seen by the following fact : The propor- 
tion of illegitimate births in three agricultural counties, West- 
moreland, Norfolk, and Salop, was last year eleven per cent. It 
is in these districts that overcrowding in the deplorable hovels 
of the laborers produces the most flagrant immorality. Conse- 
quently the guardians of the poor have almost abandoned the 
plan of farming the children. 

It may be asked, What are the moral results of the district- 
school system ? According to the reports of her majesty's in- 
spectors of schools, and taking an average of the last five years, 
we find that of the boys five per cent, turn out badly, and nine 
per cent, among the girls. The remainder have turned out rea- 
sonably well. We must set off against these government figures 
those of a committee promoted by Lord Shaftesbury and Lord 
Kinnaird to inquire into the prostitution of London. These 
quite impartial persons, gentlemen of high rank, found that fifty- 
four per cent, of the girls discharged from the schools led a 
wholly bad or suspicious life, thirty-nine per cent were well or 
passably conducted, the rest were dead or had disappeared. 
The result of this inquiry is that the workhouse plan of educa- 
tion succeeds badly for girls. It has been said that they are 
dazzled by the glamour of prostitution offering them (infancy) a 



1883.] ENGLISH WAIFS. 413 

life of idleness and plenty, and the old ingrained laziness prefers 
this terrible risk to plain living and hard work. 

It has long been a vexed question with statesmen and phi- 
lanthropists, What are we to do with our juvenile criminals ? The 
late Mr. Hill, Q.C., recorder of Birmingham, and the present 
Home Secretary, have given serious attention to the subject. It 
is one of absorbing interest, and every now and again thrusts 
itself upon the public attention and claims a hearing. Three 
acts of parliament regulate their treatment. The first in date 
and the least known is that of July 22, 1847, entitled The 
Juvenile Offenders Act. It defines offences to be of two sorts, 
indictable offences and those susceptible of summary conviction, 
either by two justices of the peace sitting in petty sessions or a 
stipendiary magistrate. In the number of indictable offences is 
simple larceny, a crime of the most frequent commission by 
the gamins of London, and which they regard as no crime at 
all, " nicking " being their chief source of livelihood. Formerly 
a child who had stolen an apple was sent to the county jail, 
to await the tri-monthly sessions ere he obtained acquittal or 
sentence. The Home Secretary has now given the stipen- 
diary magistrates the power of inflicting a flogging in lieu 
of imprisonment, which, if not more salutary to the offender, 
is at least more economical to the taxpayer. But the English 
law has not repudiated imprisonment as a punishment for juve- 
nile offences; by no means. In 1879 J > 88 3 children were sen- 
tenced to hard labor, and 1,070 to be flogged. Be it understood 
that the old cat-o'-nine-tails is now replaced by a stout birch rod, 
which, however, if vigorously wielded produces a decided impres- 
sion. It has been found that the most hardened young reprobate 
would rather suffer three months at the treadmill than one 
birching. Minors condemned to imprisonment under the act of 
1847 were sent to the settlement at Parkhurst, in the Isle of 
Wight. It worked ill. The youth was no sooner discharged 
than he was reconvicted for fresh offences, each time more 
aggravated than the last. Th.e lads were simply trained for 
penal servitude. The public became so convinced of the neces- 
sity of establishing more efficient means of dealing with juvenile 
criminals that in 1852 a parliamentary commission was instituted, 
which prepared the draft of the well-known act of 1854 on refor- 
matory schools. 

This act empowered magistrates to send young delinquents, 
found guilty of theft, incendiarism, wounding, etc., to a correc- 
tional education for a period of not less than two years and not 



414 ENGLISH WAIFS. [June, 

more than five. This was to be preceded by an imprisonment in 
solitary confinement for fourteen days (since reduced to ten). 
This act was intended to meet the case of the most incorrigible 
class of waifs, to whom has been appropriately given the name of 
street arabs. But it was found inadequate to the purpose, and a 
new act, the Industrial Schools Act, was passed in 1866. This spe- 
cially applies to vagabond children and juvenile criminals ; but 
the former require to be under fourteen years old to secure its 
benefits, though it takes cognizance of delinquents under twelve. 
It extends also to children " without proper guardianship " ; to 
those whose parents are in prison or who associate habitually 
with thieves, and to those who prove incorrigible at home or in 
workhouses. This act originated the officer known as the boys 
beadle, whose duty it is to get hold of street waifs and carry them 
off to the magistrate. He is the first instance of a beneficent 
Bumble. 

The strict fulfilment of this act has received an impetus from 
the London School Board, which by the act of 1870 is charged 
with the surveillance of all schools of primary instruction. The 
Brentwood school is owing to the activity of the board. The 
education of the waif is thus secured, but at the cost of the 
state. The day industrial school is of later growth. In this the 
scholar is fed and taught, but returns home at night. Consider- 
ing what the homes are to which the children return, it is quite 
safe to say that any good which they may obtain during the day 
is completely nullified at night. The parent when able is com- 
pelled to pay his quota toward the expense of his child. In 
1880 19,044 \*js. were recovered for school- fees from this class. 
This has proven good in two ways: it lessens the taxpayers' 
burden, and it places an obstacle in the way of those unnatural 
parents who in too many cases speculate on their children, cal- 
culating to live later on upon the proceeds of their nefarious 
lives. 

There are in England and Scotland sixty-seven reformatory 
schools, containing in 1881 5,612 children. There are also 120 
industrial schools, containing 12,900 children. About two hun- 
dred is the average in each school, the largest numbers being in 
training-ships. Most of these establishments are indebted to 
private chanty for their maintenance. It is true the government 
pays five shillings per head recently reduced to two shillings- 
weekly, but this is quite inadequate. Legacies, parochial grants, 
etc., and subscriptions publicly solicited make up their revenue. 

The discipline of the reformatory school differs widely from 



1883.] ENGLISH WAIFS. 415 

that of the industrial school ; necessarily because the character 
of the inmates differs so widely. It is only in the former that 
you see those old faces upon young shoulders, faces wearing the 
scars of crime, the brand of infamy. But the difference of treat- 
ment is not perceptible to the observer. In both places strong 
efforts are made to keep up the appearance of a large public 
school ; everything savoring of jail is avoided. There is an indus- 
trial school near Hyde Park that can only be distinguished from 
neighboring mansions by a tiny brass plate on the door; and 
one for girls at Hampstead is a pretty villa with ornamental 
grounds. When the education imparted is agricultural the 
school is called a farm. There are four reformatory and five 
industrial schools held on board ships. The boys in the latter 
are eligible for the royal navy, but those of the former are for- 
ever debarred by reason of their conviction of crime. 

The first and most important of the reformatory schools is 
the Philanthropic Society's Farm School at Redhill. It was 
founded in imitation of Mettray, and the wise and benevolent 
founder of the French school, M. Demetz, was invited to lay its 
foundation-stone. Here the children are divided into families, 
under the general superintendence of a chaplain, who is also the 
governor. They are employed in field labor and in acquiring 
trades that are useful to agriculturists. They are taught to 
become carpenters, blacksmiths, bakers, farriers. As they are 
chiefly destined for rural life or for emigration, the society has 
obtained most satisfactory results. Out of 236 children liberated 
during the three years preceding 1881 only twenty-six have 
been reconvicted. This gives an average of eleven per cent., 
whereas at Mettray it is fourteen. 

Redhill Reformatory has about three hundred inmates, but 
that of Feltham has eight hundred. This immense establish- 
ment is conducted entirely upon military principles. Drilling 
occupies a large part of the boys' time, accompanied by athletic 
exercises, which are found very beneficial to health. They are 
prepared for all trades, agriculture, shoemaking, military music, 
the navy, etc. It is quite a small world by itself. It supplies its 
own wants, growing its vegetables, washing its linen, manufac- 
turing furniture, clothing, and all requisite utensils. It has its 
own church and its own cemetery, where these poor outcasts 
sleep side by side beneath little green mounds unmarked by any 
token whatever. I noticed one that had two common shells laid 
upon it. They told me the mother of the child lying there had 
brought them all the way from London to place them there.^ 



ENGLISH WAIFS. [June, 

There have been but eight per cent, of reconvictions at Felt- 
ham in three years. And this is very satisfactory, because the 
most part of the children go back to the depraving influences 
of their parents and associates. 

To form a correct idea of the general results of the education 
imparted in reformatory schools we must consult other things 
than statistics. What effect has it upon the general criminality ? 
The training terminates at sixteen, sometimes earlier. Four 
thousand and seventy boys and girls were set at liberty in one 
year, according to the latest report. Of this number five hun- 
dred and ninety went to sea, sixty-eight entered the army as 
musicians, one hundred and fifty-four emigrated, eighteen hun- 
dred and twenty-three were found situations, and the remainder 
went to their friends. It is always with the latter that difficul- 
ties chiefly arise. Statistics prove that it is nearly always the 
children that go back to their so-called homes who fall again 
into crime. The chaplain of each school keeps a register, called 
Book of Discharge, in which, arranged alphabetically, the name 
of each child is entered, and a sort of moral account opened 
with him. The cause of conviction, antecedents, those of his 
family, his conduct while at the school ; then everything that 
can be gleaned about him after his discharge, either from him- 
self or from others. If he disappears, the date is carefully 
noted and the cause hinted at. This is approximatively the 
surest method of testing the results of the education imparted in 
the reformatories. We make some few extracts from this book. 
Out of the whole number of boys discharged we find a propor- 
tion of seventy-two per cent, conduct themselves satisfactorily, 
while fourteen per cent, are reconvicted. For the girls a propor- 
tion of seventy-four per cent, who behave well against six per 
cent. ; the remainder doubtful or disappeared. For the industrial 
schools the proportion is seventy-nine per cent, of well-con- 
ducted against five per cent, of reconvictions. For the girls 
eighty-one per cent, against three per cent. The rest doubtful. 
These results are certainly satisfactory. 

We venture to observe that any careful person, however re- 
luctant, must come to the conclusion respecting the Catholic in- 
dustrial schools and reformatories that the boys are not so well 
managed as the girls. This does not detract in the least from 
the self-denying labors of persons like the Brothers of Mount St. 
Bernard. There is no lack of zeal or piety, but. there is of that 
quality which the French aptly term savoir-faire. The nuns 
have a far more difficult task, for it is well known that a bad girl 



1883.] ENGLISH WAIFS. 417 

is harder to manage than a bad boy. Yet they succeed better. 
The explanation given of this fact is : " In Catholic schools they 
strive to obtain obedience through the affections, without devel- 
oping the sentiment of responsibility, and when this affection 
fails the child succumbs without making any resistance." I fear 
the good brothers who undertake this difficult task set about it 
in the mistaken belief that they have only to treat these boys 
like other boys to obtain the same results. On the contrary they 
have to deal with boys who are unlike any ordinary boys, and 
must be exceptionally treated. The subject is really so envi- 
roned with thorny difficulties that we hesitate to make even a 
suggestion, lest in our ignorance of all the circumstances it 
should appear impertinent. If we have ventured upon this re- 
mark it is from our great regret at the partial failure of the bro- 
thers, and from a sincere wish to see the contrary. An acquain- 
tance of many years with the class in question in some of the 
largest London parishes entitles us to an opinion. 

As to the influence of the laws of 1854 and 1866 upon the 
general criminality of England it is very difficult to pronounce. 
At first sight this influence might seem null. The criminality of 
adults has a tendency to increase. In 1877 the number of sen- 
tences pronounced amounted to 154,276, which is 40,000 more 
than in 1866. But, as Sir Edmund Du Cane, the inspector-gen- 
eral of prisons, remarks, this increase may be' accounted for by 
the increased severity of the laws, and their more energetic ad- 
ministration. It is not logical to infer that the increase of crime 
is due to the inefficiency of the laws for the repression of juve- 
nile offences. In the adult prisons the number of criminals un- 
der twenty-five is to-day less than a fourth, while the average ten 
years ago was a third. This warrants the belief in an ameliora- 
tion. The number of young delinquents has also diminished. 
In the first years of the Industrial Schools Act the annual num- 
ber of delinquencies amounted to 10,000. To-day it has de- 
creased to 7,200, and this despite the increased energy of the 
London School Board. This decrease can only be explained by 
the diminution of juvenile crime. 

It would seem almost superfluous to remark that the present 
difficulties of the government in curbing juvenile crime are 
chiefly attributable to long years of past neglect, during which it 
ignored the subject. It is doing the same with another monster 
evil, prostitution. The stupidity of this procedure is apparent. 
The rapid growth of the evil will soon render remedial mea- 
sures almost impossible. 
VOL. xxxvii. 27 



4 i8 AMPERE'S STRUGGLE WITH DOUBT. [June, 

It is to be feared that many causes are at- work in New York 
which are fostering juvenile crime. But it is now capable of 
efficient repression. Let legislators and men of influence watch 
carefully over the many things that tend to corrupt the youthful 
mind. Let them ignore nothing. By these means they will 
avert that terrible condition of things which the English suffer 
from, who, despite the most heroic efforts to overcome the 
evil, feel at the best of times that they have only " scotched the 
snake, not killed it." 






AMPERE'S STRUGGLE WITH DOUBT. 

THE histories of the mental conflicts between faith and 
doubt are interesting and instructive especially when they deal 
with the actions of great minds or when they throw light on the 
subsequent career of men of note. 

Some months ago, in the pages of the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
M. Renan published a series of. memoirs of his own religious, 
or irreligious, opinions, and lately a valuable criticism of these 
memoirs was translated in THE CATHOLIC WORLD from a French 
contemporary.* In that criticism it was conclusively proved 
that whatever else might have been M. Renan's motive for 
abandoning the Christian faith, the love of the truth was not, as 
he has boasted, the real motive ; that, in fact, taking M. Renan's 
own premises for granted, his conduct jn giving up first the 
sacerdotal career he had at one time entered on, and then the 
Catholic faith, was the result of not loving the truth with that 
self-sacrificing love which the truth demands and deserves. It 
was shown, indeed, and M. Renan's own memoirs were used in 
the illustration, that no one baptized and properly instructed in 
the faith can lose the faith unless he does not love the truth as 
it ought to be loved. 

The same periodical which has so ably refuted M. Renan's 
pretension to have abandoned Catholicity in deference to his 
love of the truth gives us in a series of articles an insight into 
the religious vicissitudes of the greatest mind that science has 
boasted in France in this century. Between Ampere the Elder 

* THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1883 : Was it Love of the Truth made M. 
Renan an Infidel ? " 



1883.] AMPERE'S STRUGGLE WITH DOUBT. 419 

and M. Renan, as the Controverse points out, there is scarcely a 
foothold for comparison, except on the ground of notoriety. M. 
Renan has won some reputation as a Semitic scholar, but it is 
doubtful if he would ever have been heard of outside of small 
groups of specialists in philology had it not been for his Vie de 
Jt'stis, which, like everything that attacks the divinity of Christ, 
was warmly welcomed by the infidel, or so-called Liberal, press 
of Europe, and thus made its writer's name known to the world 
at large. But Ampere, to whom we owe the invention of elec- 
tro-dynamics, looms up as a giant among scientists. There can 
be no doubt of the clearness and the power of reasoning, no 
doubt of the genius, of a man who, in a country like France, 
was selected at the age of thirty-four to be inspector-general of 
the newly-founded university. And the certainty of the man's 
greatness of mind is the better established from the fact that 
it was the great Napoleon himself remarkable for his insight 
into men who personally made the choice of him for this 
honorable and important position. The mere mention of Am- 
pere's name suggests nothing that is not great and magnani- 
mous. 

Andre Marie Ampere was born in 1775 and enjoyed every 
advantage of education. His religious training was wisely fitted 
into the thorough course of studies he followed, so that when he 
became distinguished at Lyons for his abilities as a scholar he 
was still known to his family and friends as full of sound, manly, 
Catholic piety. In 1804 the year of Napoleon's coronation 
he was invited to Paris and became one of the faculty of the 
Ecole Polytechnique, and he was still a Christian in feeling and 
practice, as his correspondence at this epoch and for a short 
time after proves. But a change was taking place gradually in 
him, and he was beginning to sacrifice his convictions. 

The Revolution in its first outburst had broken up and 
scattered many of the infidel philosophical coteries that had 
contributed their share towards bringing it about. The salon 
of Madame Helvetius at Auteuil, where Condorcet, d'Holbach, 
Turgot, and others had shone by their learning and wit, but 
especially by their sneers at Christianity, had disappeared with 
the rest, but there were survivors from the ruins. Helped by 
the wonderful success of the Empire, materialism in philosophy 
on the one hand and sceptical ideology on the other became 
more fashionable than ever. These two apparently contradic- 
tory forms of infidelity had their representatives in Cabanis and 
Destutt de Tracy, whom Ampere, soon after his arrival in Paris, 



420 AMPERE'S STRUGGLE WITH DOUBT. [June, 

numbered among his most intimate friends. Cabanis, celebrated 
for his treatises on medicine and philosophy, explained all things, 
even the formation of ideas, by physical causes, while Tracy, 
who was the disciple of Condillac, taught Condillac's system in 
his laments d'lddologie. 

In 1805 Ampere writes to one of his old friends at.Lyons: 

" Be careful not to let my mother know of the doubts that trouble me. 
No one knows better than you how fully I believed in the revelation of 
the Roman Catholic religion, but since coming to Paris I have fallen into 
an unbearable state of mind. How I regret the change from the time 
[when he was a Catholic, that is] when I lived in those thoughts, though 
they may have been chimerical ! . . . My dear Bredin, let me have a can- 
did outline of your own present beliefs. . . ." 

And again, in 1806, he writes to the same friend : 

" You talk of the immortality of the soul, yet so far I have not had any 
doubts about that ; still, I know that only a revelation can demonstrate the 
certainty of it. But though the edifice is standing its foundation is crum- 
bling. What is to become of me at that terrible time when my body shall 
be far away from me ? To what sort of existence shall I pass ? 

" How it is that the religious sentiment once so active in me is nearly 
extinguished, or why uncertainty has taken its place, I cannot tell. I am 
puzzled, but it is a mystery which not all the metaphysics in the world can 
explain. Sometimes I feel my old ideas reviving and my doubts disap- 
pearing. . . . There have been days when the admirable thirty-seventh 
chapter of the third book of the Imitation has done me good. . . ." 

Writing still later about Maine de Biran, one of the greatest 
metaphysicians of the century, whose acquaintance he had re- 
cently made, he says : 

" I am still much taken up with metaphysics and have become intimate- 
ly acquainted with Maine de Biran, whose work has just been crowned by 
ithe Institute and is shortly to be published. His metaphysics, like Kant's, 
.is spiritual, though even further removed than Kant's from materialism. 

My way of looking at intellectual phenomena is simpler, and, as it seems to 
; me, more in harmony with facts, but it does not raise the soul so high as 

does his, nor give so lofty an idea as his of the innate and essentially free 

power of, -the will, as shown in all his explanations." 

In the meantime Ampere, having lost the wife whom he de- 
.votedly loved, married again ; but this second marriage was un- 
fortunate, and his domestic troubles issued in a lasting separa- 
tion from his ill-matched partner. 

In ,1814 Ampere became a member of the Institute, being 
chosen on the first ballot. About this time his sagacious friend 
Bredin writes of him: "At last he has attained to the highest 



1883.] AMPERE" s STRUGGLE WITH DOUBT. 421 

honors that a scientist can win ; and among all those men whose 
colleague he now is, not one has so large and so mighty a brain 
as his. The greatest difficulties of science are mere sport for 
him ; heights which others try to climb only with painful efforts 
are reached by him naturally, and apparently at his ease. He is 
not affected by the desire of succeeding, as he loves science 
purely and for itself alone." The next year, the year of Water- 
loo, brought disaster to the Empire. But Ampere had never 
been a courtier. He owed his standing and his fame to his own 
merits exclusively. In fact, he had never felt any liking either 
for Napoleon personally or for the destructive methods of the 
man. 

What interests us most, however, at this period of his life is 
that having sounded all the notes of doubt, having familiarized 
himself with all the philosophical systems that attempt to thrive 
without the aid of revelation, Ampere was again turning his 
mind toward Christianity. But this time, instead of the simple 
method he had naturally followed when a boy under his precep- 
tors, he began a deep and scientific study of Christianity in its 
moral and historical aspects, bringing together in his own way 
the Gospels, the prophets, and the Fathers of the Church, and 
through them all slowly, methodically, and thoroughly sifting 
out the fundamental truths relating to faith. His correspon- 
dence during this period is an interesting record of the details 
of his movement back again to Catholic Christianity. 

To make the new birth of Ampere's faith more apparent it is 
worth while to follow for a little the letters between him and 
Bredin, who also seems to have wandered away, though not so 
far as Ampere. Ampere had written in 1817 to ask Bredin ex- 
actly what he believed as to the Catholic Church, at the same 
time advising him to beware of the sects ; and Bredin in reply 
had admitted the existence of a divinely-established church hav- 
ing Jesus Christ for its founder, but he was in doubt as to the 
whereabout of that church, and could not fully make up his 
mind as to what had become of it after its foundation. Bredin's 
view seemed to be that the church exists wherever the Father is 
worshipped in the spirit and in truth, but that no boundary line 
about the church could be definitely made out ; that the church 
took in the entire congregation of repentant sinners ; that the 
true church was at Jerusalem with the apostles, at Rome with 
St. Peter ; that it is to be seen in the palace and in the hovel ; 
that even the Jesuits are not excluded from it ; that it is in fact 
wide open to all the world, and good-will is the only passport re- 



422 AMPERE'S STRUGGLE WITH DOUBT. [June, 

quired for admittance. Bredin, it is plain, was breathing an air 
which was full of such compounds as Gallicanism, Jansenism, 
and the vapid latitudinarianism that survived the Revolution. 
The strong, healthy Catholicity of the saints and doctors of the 
church was in his mind diluted with the prevalent self-conceit 
which, under the semblance of charitable-mindedness, found fault 
with the truth as too inflexible. 

Bredin wrote that he was looking about for a priest to whom 
he could unbosom himself, but that he would not be satisfied 
with less than a St. Francis de Sales, and Ampere (March I, 
1817) replied: 

" My dear friend, this morning I have received the great grace of abso- 
lution. On my return I found your letter, which has embittered the sweet 
peace I have felt since hearing the sacred words, amplius lava me ab miqui- 
tate mea, et a peccato munda me. . . . From your language I had supposed 
you a faithful child of the church, but I was blind. I had said to you that, 
thanks to the Infinite Mercy, I was become a Catholic, and you seemed to 
be very glad of this. Were you then a Catholic ? Yes, you were a Catho- 
lic for a moment, but the light has left you for a time, just as it left me 
after my coming to Paris. To-day it is in the Catholic Church only that I 
can find the faith and the gradual accomplishment of the promises which 
God has made, and made to her only." 

Ampere, having wandered away from the faith to return to it 
after years of mental struggle, felt none of that impatience for 
the doubts or hesitation of others too often shown by those 
whose faith has never been subjected to great intellectual tests. 
He was now full of zeal for the cause of Catholic truth, but his 
zeal was fired with charity, not contempt. In 1818 he writes to 
Bredin : 

"... I have a wish to see you that is something like what Gall calls 
a fixed idea, and the homesickness I once before felt has taken hold of me 
anew. I am thinking only of my past. . . . Why have I allowed vain oc- 
cupations to draw me away from heavenly things into *an unpardonable 
idleness ? In the eyes of the world I have now attained to fortune, fame, 
to that which men most strive for; but, my dear Bredin, God has shown me 
that all is vain except loving and serving him." 

One day in 1833 a 'youth making his legal studies at the 
university wandered into the church of St. Etienne du Mont, as 
much from idle curiosity perhaps, and from habit, as from any 
distinct religious motive, for he was then a prey to doubts as to 
the truth of Christianity. The young man was Frederic Oza- 
nam, destined to win fame in the republic of letters, and to be- 
come known the world over to Catholics as the founder of the 
Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul. Ozanam, weary, despon- 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 423 

dent, and sceptical, moved up the aisle, looking listlessly about 
him, when suddenly he saw, kneeling- humbly in a remote cor- 
ner of the church, an old man wrapt in prayer before the Blessed 
Sacrament, and commemorating the mystery of the Incarnation 
on the beads of his rosary. The venerable worshipper was the 
greatest savant of France, the illustrious Ampere, and his pre- 
sence and attitude there, away from the noise and bustle and 
strife of the human life outside, produced an immediate effect. 
Ozanam went softly out, after making a prayer of thanksgiving 
at the altar, refreshed in spirit and comforted in mind.* 

As M. Valsonf from whose articles in the Controverse the 
details of this article are taken remarks, Ampere was at this time 
in the highest enjoyment of his talents, was at the very zenith of 
his scientific glory. But his towering intellect, his world-wide 
fame, coincided precisely with his humble prostration of himself 
before the altar of the church to which he had returned to be for 
ever after a faithful son. Ampere's conversion shows also the 
usefulness of the sound religious training he had received in the 
home of his parents. It was this which formed his morals and 
served as an anchor to prevent his drifting too hopelessly into the 
sea of denial, where his faith would have suffered shipwreck. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

SOCRATES. A translation of the Apology, Crito, and parts of the Phtzdo of 
Plato. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883. 

Father Gratry has said : " The Socratic and Platonic school is the most 
moral of all the ancient schools, and the one which has best known, un- 
derstood, and described the real impulse toward the Supreme Good which 
exists in the soul. In fact, Socrates, as is very properly laid to his charge 
by the modern sophists, is the founder of moral philosophy" (Connais. de 
Dieu, c. ii.) The story of his death has lost none of its fascination for the 
mind and the imagination, none of its power to stir the best sensibilities of 
the heart, by the lapse of twenty-four centuries. Plato the disciple of Soc- 
rates, and Aristotle the disciple of Plato, keep their place among the six or 
eight men of the highest order of genius who are the princes in the realm 
of philosophy. The distinguished writer quoted above has also said : " St. 
Augustine sees in antiquity one true doctrine and two other doctrines of 
sects : the two sects being those of Epicurus and Zeno ; the true doctrine 

* Ozanam,. who also was from Lyons, lived for a time in Ampere's house while following; 
his university course. 

t M. Valson is the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences of Lyons. 



424 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 

that of Plato. According to St. Augustine, a doctrine is to be judged by 
the point where it places these three things : the supreme good, the 
causes of existing realities, the centre of stability in reasoning. Now, 
Epicurus places these three things in the body and the senses, and the 
character of his sect is foulness; Zeno places them in man himself, and his 
sect is marked by pride ; Plato places them in the true God : his is the 
true philosophy. This is what St. Augustine says." 

The sect of abject and foul materialism and the sect of windy pride 
subsist in our own day, revived in worse than their ancient forms, and flood 
the world with their counterfeit science and base literature. When we 
read the best of the pagan classics they seem by comparison like Christian 
productions. The study of this portion of Greek and Latin literature is a 
powerful antidote to the mental and moral malaria by which the atmos- 
phere is poisoned. Good translations, especially from the Greek, enable 
readers of English who cannot enjoy the originals to share largely in the 
profit and pleasure derived from a study of the classical authors. It is a 
pleasure to find, where there is so much lamentable waste of time in read- 
ing and writing that which for the most part, if not noxious, is trash, and if 
not trash is noxious, an example of devotion to solid studies and of gener- 
ous effort to make these useful to others, specially fitted to awaken the 
emulation of that class of young people most exposed to the temptation of 
frivolity. The translator of the three famous pieces of Greek literature 
given in English in the volume under notice, having been introduced by 
Prof. Goodwin, of Harvard University, does not need any further commen- 
dation for accuracy and faithfulness in rendering the true sense of the 
Greek. On the qualities of the style as a specimen of English composi- 
tion, we may express our opinion that we could not wish for anything 
more suitable to the purpose of expressing easily and correctly what was 
spoken and- written in Greek, as if it had been first composed in English. 
The Apology of Socrates is the speech which he made before the Athenian 
assembly which condemned him to death. The Crito is one of the Dia- 
logues of Plato in which the events and circumstances of the last scenes in 
the life of Socrates are recounted. The Phtzdo is another Dialogue, one of 
Plato's masterpieces, containing an argument for the immortality of the 
soul. Some parts of it, very judiciously we think, are omitted, and their 
place supplied by short abstracts which link together the translated por- 
tions, so that the reader does not lose the continuity and true pith of the 
discourse, yet is relieved from its long digressions. 

The cheap edition in paper covers costs only fifty cents, and thus is in 
reach of the generality of lovers of good books. It is, however, a model of 
neatness and of all the proprieties dictated by good taste. May it obtain a 
wide circulation and be followed by more of the same good sort ! 

HISTORICAL PORTRAITS OF THE TUDOR DYNASTY AND THE REFORMATION 
Pi HOD. By S. Hubert Burke, author of The Men and Women of the 
Reformation, "Time unveils all Truth." Vol. iii. London : John Hodges. 
i3. (New York : For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

Some admirers of Luther, especially in the free regime of Prussia, in- 
tend this year to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. 
That celebration will be the signal for much foolish talk about the causes, 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 425 

methods, and results of the so-called Reformation. But it will do good, 
too, for by drawing public attention to the career of the apostate friar and 
of his abettors it will be the means of leading many logical minds among 
non-Catholics to examine for themselves into the history of the irreligious 
disturbance of the sixteenth century in the northern countries of Europe. 
There will be Protestants who, amid the noisy rhetoric, will quietly study 
for themselves ; who, not influenced by the imaginative and lying Gene- 
vese D'Aubigne or his echoers, nor by the traditional falsehoods that 
originated with Fox and Burnet, or were given currency by them, will 
weigh the testimony of contemporary writers, including that of the " Re- 
formers " themselves, as to the value of the movement given shape by 
Martin Luther. 

A good deal will be said, no doubt, as it has repeatedly been said, of 
" the corruption of the clergy " at that period in the countries where Pro- 
testantism broke out like a tumor; and much of this will be true. One 
fact, however, which will perhaps astonish those Protestants who take up 
an honest study of "the Reformation " is that it was precisely the most cor- 
rupt members of the clergy, the men chafing under a virtuous restraint, 
who threw themselves the most recklessly and bitterly into the move- 
ment. And these clear-headed Protestant students, pursuing their inves- 
tigation, will be able, without any sophistry, to reason that a movement 
which followed on the corruption so often charged, and which numbered 
among its supporters a large proportion of the most corrupt, could not, in 
any proper sense of the word, rightly lay claim to the name of a reforma- 
tion. 

But the corrupt clergy alone would have been powerless. One of the 
first acts of "the Reformation " everywhere was the confiscation of pro- 
perty of churches, monasteries, and asylums especially. This in itself is 
suggestive. Besides, there is scarcely an instance of a " Reformer " who 
did not gain something of this world's goods by " reforming " ; if it was not 
a rich estate from a neighboring religious order, or absolute plunder dur- 
ing riot, or during siege and sack, then it was surely a wife. The immense 
domains of the English nobility to-day are largely the work of the "re- 
forming" and noble rascals who hung about the courts of the Tudors and 
got their share in the plunder of the church property, which had always 
been held as the heritage of the poor. Instead of the beautiful, benevo- 
lent monasteries, which it left in ruins on every hillside, "the Reforma- 
tion " built the workhouses and prisons, changing "merrie England " into 
avaricious England that grinds the poor and the lowly. In England, as 
elsewhere, " the Reformation " made the rich richer, but the simple though 
good and contented poor it degraded into beggars or sullen sots. The 
Catholic Church is essentially the church of the whole people, but "the 
Reformation " in England divided the people into classes, even in its con- 
venticles. The profligate prelate and the bankrupt noble, the one taking 
some one else's wife, perhaps, the other grasping the lands and goods of the 
neighboring monastery, attached themselves to the schismatic Establish- 
ment, to the remnant of what had not been destroyed or plundered. But 
the more obscure though equally profligate priest who had thrown himself 
into the heresy associated himself with a band of ne'er-do-wells, perhaps 
with the survivors of the Lollard communists of the towns, and set up a 



426 NEW PUB Lie A TIONS. [J une, 

new form of disorder under the name of Anabaptists, Brownists, or what 
not. 

Men and women, alike Catholics and Protestants, were deprived of 
their goods, were imprisoned, were tortured, or even lost their lives, on 
account of their religion, or their want of religion, in each of the bloody 
reigns from Henry VIII. to Elizabeth inclusive; yet it is a fact, not often 
enough dwelt on, that the persecutors were more or less the ^same, or were 
connected in unbroken succession, through the worst period of all these 
reigns. When the ordinary Protestant reads, for instance, the account of 
Cranmer's trial under Queen Mary, in his indignation he is not apt to re- 
member, perhaps he does not know, that the proctor who so skilfully and 
mercilessly conducted the case against Cranmer was, in the reign of the 
next queen, as zealous against Catholics. When the Protestant reads with 
horror the account of poor Latimer's cruel fate he perhaps does not re- 
member, or does not know, that under Henry VIII. the same Latimer, then 
a schismatic of Henry's kind, sat in the court which sent John Lambert to 
the stake for denying Transubstantiation ; and that later, as a Protestant 
under Edward VI., Latimer sermonized, or rather taunted, Dr. Forrest, a 
Catholic priest, while the unfortunate priest was hanging in chains roasting 
over a fire. 

The researches made of late years among the English State Papers, and 
other original sources of information, concerning the beginning and the 
growth of "the Reformation" in England, have unearthed a curious mass 
of testimony as to the evil character of many of the chiefs and underlings 
in that movement. But it is hard to efface early impressions, and the 
ordinary non-Catholic, whose childish notions of Cranmer, Latimer, and 
the other "godly" heroes of that period were derived from their Sunday- 
school reading, and especially from the Munchausen tales of Fox's Book of 
Martyrs, will not easily give up the prejudices of a lifetime. 

Destructive as was " the Reformation " of nearly everything that it 
could destroy of what was good and beautiful in art and literature, no less 
than in religion, its history is nevertheless interesting from its picturesque- 
ness, as well as from the lessons it teaches. It is a confused scramble of 
a motley crowd for the wealth of churches, monasteries, and hospitals, 
the fortunate and educated " Reformers " taking on conservative airs after 
coming into possession, whereat the disappointed rabble in homespun, and 
all who have been left in the lurch, or have been, as they believe, cheated 
of their fair share of the plunder, repeat the pillage and set about to re- 
form "the Reformation." 

For something more than two years the author of the Historical Por- 
traits of the Tudor Dynasty has been a valued contributor to the pages of 
this magazine. His readers will be glad to know that he has now brought 
out a third volume of his Historical Portraits, resuming the sketch of Car- 
dinal Pole's mission, continuing with the events of Mary's reign down to 
her death, and then giving a glance at the condition of religious affairs in 
England at Elizabeth's accession and for some time after. He intends to 
complete his valuable series of pictures of the Tudor times in a fourth 
volume. In the third volume (p. 92), now published, he defends himself 
from some unjust criticism: "During the four-and-twenty years I have 
been connected with English and foreign literature I have never wilfully 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 427 

or otherwise misrepresented facts. In Cranmer's case I have merely pro- 
duced statements drawn from the records of his actions during the reigns 
of Henry VIII. and his son Edward VI. I positively affirm that the 
charges I have preferred against the archbishop are derived from the 
State Papers or Protestants of high repute. In the course of my re- 
searches I have met with documents which place Cranmer's private and 
public life in a far worse position. Yet I have hesitated to use such ma- 
terial, and disregarded the suggestions offered for placing it on record." 

Mr. Burke's style is candor itself, exceedingly artless, and not a little 
quaint at times. The volumes are well printed, though not uniform in 
size nor in the color of the paper, and the proof-reading is not what it 
should be. Quotation-marks are often wanting, either at the beginning 
or the end of a passage cited, and this is an exasperating defect in some 
places. The punctuation, too, is occasionally bewildering. But there can 
be no question of the great value of Mr. Burke's Portraits, which should 
find a place in every respectable library. 

NOTES ON INGERSOLL. By Rev. L. A. Lambert, of Waterloo, N. Y. Pre- 
face by Rev. Patrick Cronin. Buffalo, N. Y. : Buffalo Catholic Publica- 
tion Co. 1883. 

This little book is the best answer to Ingersoll that has yet appeared. 
Others have answered his arguments, and have done it well ; some have 
put him aside and gone to the sources from which he drew, and have re- 
futed his teachers. But Father Lambert here deals not only with the argu- 
ments of his adversary but also with the man himself. Ingersoll, the volu- 
ble, shallow, scoffing, jeering mob-orator, is subjected to a thorough-going 
course of treatment; his motives are revealed, his impertinence rebuked, 
his misstatements and false assumptions and bullyings fitly punished. 
Considering how much of Ingersoll's success has been due to his effrontery 
and his mastery in a certain low sort of wit, the wisdom, even the necessity, 
of Father Lambert's method in answering him will be appreciated. Doubt- 
less such a course presents some difficulties to a respectable clergyman. 
The fact that Father Lambert is a priest, a serious student of Scripture and 
theology, and a journalist of reputation made it, we fancy, no little difficult 
for him to obey the Scripture injunction, ll Answer a fool according to his 
folly." It detracts nothing, however, from the repute of a master of fence 
that he can break heads at quarter-staff. The exigencies of self-defence 
sometimes impose on a peaceable man the unpleasant task of using na- 
ture's weapons upon a wayside bully to blacken his eyes and throw him 
into the gutter. 

The truth is that the common run of assailants of the Christian re- 
ligion have caught Ingersoll's tone. It is a scoffing, sneering atheism that 
Christian men have to contend with in private life, at their places of busi- 
ness, among chance acquaintances and in travelling,' and from the evil side 
of the home-circle in social intercourse. Here, then, is what we consider 
not only a real hand-book of the proofs of God's existence and providence, 
the truth of Scripture, a future state of rewards and punishments, and the 
other fundamental truths of religion, and so a treasury of matter for all 
serious argument, but especially a model of the manner in which to deal 
with Ingersollism. Let any fair-minded man read these twenty short 



428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 

chapters, and enjoy their wit and sarcasm, and ponder over the solid 
arguments everywhere contained in them, and we are sure that he will 
agree with our estimate. The introductory chapter is perhaps the gem of 
the book, but there is a vein of fine humor all through and several pas- 
sages of real eloquence. It is well printed and bound. 

NATALIE NARISCHKIN, SISTER OF CHARITY OF ST. VINCENT OF PAUL. By 
Mrs. Augustus Craven, author of A Sister's Story. Translated by Lady 
Georgiana Fullerton. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

Madame Craven's original work was reviewed in this magazine on its 
first appearance. Since it has now found a translator who is the equal of 
the author as a writer, we recall the attention of our readers to what we 
have said of the illustrious subject of the biography and the charming style 
in which it has been written. We repeat, in brief, for the information of 
all who need it, that the holy Sister Natalie was born in 1835 and died in 
1874; that she belonged to the family of the highest princely rank in Rus- 
sia next to the imperial family itself, was converted from the schismatical 
Russian Church to the Catholic Church, and, after her reception into the 
congregation of Sisters of Charity, passed the rest of her life in a religious 
house at Paris. Her biography is both delightfu! 4 and instructive in the 
highest degree. 

CITIES OF SOUTHERN ITALY AND SICILY. By Augustus J. C. Hare, author 
of Walks in Rome, Walks in London, etc. New York : George Rout- 
ledge & Sons. 1883. 

Mr. Hare in this, as in his two preceding volumes of Italian travel, goes 
over a good deal of ground that is far from familiar to the ordinary English 
traveller or to those American travellers who customarily follow English 
footsteps. The author is evidently fond of his ^subject and has a sympa- 
thetic heart for all in Italy that is not essentially Catholic. Mr. Hare's 
pleasant style is easy and delightful reading, even apart from the intrinsic 
pleasure of the subject-matter, and he knows how to give a definiteness to 
his descriptions by apt quotation. It would be difficult now for any one 
limited to English and intending a tour of Italy to dispense with Mr. 
Hare's volumes, for there is a warmth of color about his descriptions that 
renders them a needed supplement to the rather dry pocket guide-books 
of Baedeker, Murray, and others. 

But though Mr. Hare's volumes are admirable in their way, they are 
not without a very great defect, which has been hinted at above. Not 
only has Mr. Hare no sympathy with the religion of Italians: he seems to 
be laced up in the old-fashioned Protestant prejudice against all things 
Catholic. 

Mr. Hare in his introductory chapter remarks that English travellers 
nearly always play at follow-the-leader," but he is himself playing at the 
same game when he follows stereotyped Protestant prejudices in describ- 
ing or criticising either the popular superstitions or the Catholic customs 
that he observes among the impulsive peasantry of southern Italy. What, 
for instance, would Mr. Hare's American co-religionists think of a Catholic 
foreigner who, after a trip through this country, should on his return to 
his home publish his travels and point out as among the most noteworthy 
characteristics of their religion the consulting of clairvoyants," a belief 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 429 

in the virtue of a horseshoe when hung over a door or even over a bridal 
couple a horror of the number thirteen at a social feast and of under- 
taking anything on a Friday, or the like ? Of course there are curious 
superstitions surviving in Italy, and in other ancient lands, from pagan 
times, and a scholar like Mr. Hare ought not to betray the inveterate 
blindness of many Protestants in this matter, who cannot dissociate the 
harmless traditions of an ancient people from the religion of the Catholic 
Church. Mr. Hare evidently means no offence, yet he does very offen- 
sively jumble together the sacred rites of the Catholic Church and the 
curious, old customs of an ignorant people. In the one paragraph he 
speaks of the " evil eye," " charms," and " andidotes," along with "half the 
population " of Naples " kneeling in the streets," and the Blessed Sacra- 
ment being carried in procession during an eruption of Vesuvius. And, by 
the way, in this very passage Mr. Hare seems to regard the prayer of the 
people in the face of calamity as a " superstition " ! In describing the 
cathedral of Naples he undertakes to give an idea of the scene when the hot- 
blooded Neapolitans gather to witness the liquefaction of the blood of their 
beloved martyr-patron. But whom does he quote for the main part of the 
description of this religious ceremony? Voltaire and Alexander Dumas! 

In his brief sketch of Sicilian history Mr. Hare is again in the clutches 
of his Protestant prejudice when he ascribes, p. 374, to " the jealousy of the 
popes " the attack upon and defeat of fifteen thousand Saracens by seven 
hundred Christian Normans in 1061. It is true that it was the popes who 
everywhere, when they could, marshalled the Christian princes against the 
Moslem and thus saved Europe from Mohammedanism; but even Protes- 
tant prejudice ought to be able to see something nobler than jealousy in 
this. It is strange, by the way, how this antipathy to the popes has led so 
many Protestant historical writers to betray a sort of tenderness, one 
might say a love, for Mohammedanism against Christianity whenever deal- 
ing with the heroic efforts made by Catholicity during the middle ages 
against the Moslem invasions. Witness, for instance, Washington Irving, 
who almost sheds tears over the departure of the Moors from Granada. 

Were it not for this Protestant inability to penetrate the religious 
atmosphere that surrounds a different people, this new volume of Mr. 
Hare's travels in Italy would form a more useful companion to the traveller 
than it does now and would be an entertainment and instruction for home 
reading. 

A TREATISE ON CITIZENSHIP, BY BIRTH AND BY NATURALIZATION, with 
reference to the Law of Nations, Roman Civil Law, Law of the United 
States of America, and the Law of France ; including provisions in the 
Federal Constitution, and in the several State Constitutions, in respect 
of citizenship ; together with decisions rendered thereon of the Federal 
and State courts. By Alexander Porter Morse, of Washington, D. C. 
Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 1881. 

A clear understanding of the rights and privileges of citizenship is in 
no country of so great importance as in ours, where a large proportion of 
our people are citizens either by naturalization or by the naturalization of 
their parents. For unless his political status is clearly established by the 
federal government and his rights are as stoutly maintained, every natu- 
ralized citizen who sets out for a journey abroad is liable to petty annoy- 



430 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 

ances from nervous or ignorant officers of foreign governments, if not to 
unprovoked imprisonment in countries where the reign of law means the 
reign of an arbitrary administration, as is, for instance, the case with nat- 
uralized citizens of Irish birth who have any reason to visit Ireland now. 
There is no question that outside of certain limitations as to office-holding 
and as to voting fixed by the constitutions of the United States and of cer- 
tain States, a naturalized citizen is entitled to the same rights and privi- 
leges as a natural born citizen. The difficulty is in determining in any 
given case whether or not the requirements for naturalization have been 
complied with. It is a matter of evidence. 

Mr. Morse's work is a treatise on the whole subject of citizenship, 
but, owing to the course of the English and German governments with 
regard to many of our naturalized citizens, it is the international phase of 
citizenship as treated by Mr. Morse which just now the most appeals to 
public interest. Mr. Morse very justly says of the weakness of the Federal 
government in regard to its citizens when abroad that 

"The occasions have been too frequent in which the government of the United States has 
hesitated, or neglected, to protect sufficiently the persons and rights of naturalized citizens 
abroad. The measure and character of protection when it was extended was dependent alto- 
gether upon the character- of the executive or of the cabinet, rather than upon any well-defined 
and consistent action as the result of a pronounced foreign policy. . . . On occasions the at- 
titude of the United States towards her citizens abroad has been discreditable as well as 
pusillanimous, and it is usually in mortifying contrast with the conduct of Great Britain in 
respect of her subjects, " 

The italics are ours. To a great extent, then, the safety from annoyance, or 
worse, of the naturalized citizen whose business or pleasure takes him 
abroad depends on the personal feelings of the United States representa- 
tive to him, or to his class or race, rather than upon the will and the 
ability of his country to protect her citizens. And this was written nearly 
three years ago. Can it be said that there has been any improvement in 
this matter within these three years ? 

AN ALPHABETICAL CATALOGUE OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY THE MEMBERS OF 
THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC PUBLISHERS' ASSOCIATION. First compiled' 
by the Secretary of the Association. Revised, rearranged, and cor- 
rected to date by L. K. April, 1883. 

Some time, perhaps, in the far future a history will be written of the 
Catholic publishing trade in the United States, and very interesting read- 
ing no doubt it will prove to the American Catholic of that day. We are 
now in the building period of Catholicity in our country, both in the literal 
and figurative senses. It is a period, too, of great discontent and much 
complaint, and of constant yearnings for something that we have not, but 
that it is supposed we as Catholics ought to have. 

There are popularly supposed to be two sorts of Catholics, those who 
care " and those who do not care, and the careless ones are vastly in the 
majority and refuse to be waked up. Those who do care-that is to say, 
the small but intelligent body of Catholics who, not content with fre- 
quenting the sacraments, take an interest in all that bears on Catholicity- 
are apt to be roused to a condition of positive discomfort at what they 
think the selfish, stolid inflexibility of the majority. And this is particu- 
larly noticeable in the matter of Catholic literature, some of our more 



1 883.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 43 1 

zealous friends maintaining that we have no literature, and that it is neces- 
sary to bring the Catholic publishers to task for this, they having stamped 
out by their stupid walk the first sprouts of genius beginning to show 
above the newly-tilled soil ; others, equally sure that they are right, assert- 
ing that there is an indigenous Catholic literature, but that the publishers, 
while encouraging genius as much as it was their duty to do, have not, by 
fair prices for their books, encouraged that vague body known as " the 
public." The publishers' answer has been that they have done all in their 
power that, in fact, their own interests would impel them to do so to 
increase the sale of Catholic books and to increase the number of Catholic 
readers ; that the fault has lain with the public, or, at all events, with 
others than themselves. The publishers assert that if until recently their 
prices were fictitious, were nominal prices set at a very large percentage 
above the cost, it was not because they would have themselves chosen to 
make such prices, but because they were forced to do so, as most of their 
sales were made not directly to the readers themselves, nor even to 
retail booksellers, but to others who relied upon the profit from the sale of 
books as an aid in carrying on some special religious or educational work. 
The sum of it all is, at any rate, this : whoever has been at fault if anybody 
has been at fault Catholic literature has most certainly not thriven in the 
United States in proportion to the increase in wealth and general well- 
being of the Catholics. 

Of course there are very great numbers of Catholic readers in this 
country, and readers of a serious character, too, who do not read English, 
or who, at all events, do not customarily read books in English. Most of 
their reading they do in German or French. These large numbers must 
therefore be counted out in all estimates of the reading public on which 
our Catholic publishers generally may depend. Another thing to be borne 
in mind is that Catholic literature, of the higher sort at any rate, often in- 
volves a greater amount of intellectual discipline in the reader than does 
the corresponding grade of non-Catholic, or secular, literature. Serious 
Catholic writers, if they are deep, are apt to be very deep ; if lofty, very 
lofty though sometimes (alas that it must be confessed !), if shallow, very 
shallow so that, on the whole, the reader who is not a thinker is inclined 
to find serious Catholic literature dull ; and it is dull for him and that 
with" him is the main question if he does not understand it or cannot fol- 
low its reasoning, or if, from lack of trained habit, he cannot keep his 
mind long enough on the subject treated to enjoy it. In other words, 
a literature of any sort, in order to be in a flourishing condition, requires a 
reading public trained to appreciate it men and women who like and can 
appreciate good reading matter and are able and willing to buy it. 

But there is still another fact worth noting when discussing the sup- 
port given to Catholic literature, and it is this : in the United States, 
among non-Catholics quite as much as among Catholics, women and the 
clergy are the chief readers of books not counting professional and 
technical books. The American man reads the newspaper, and the book- 
seller depends upon libraries and the clergy principally for his sales of 
serious works. 

Still, the fact that the associated Catholic publishers have brought out 
a combined catalogue containing all the publications of the twelve leading 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 1883. 

Catholic publishers, at prices which now at last are based oti a reasonable 
advance over their cost, is perhaps an indication that a Catholic reading 
public is beginning to demand attention. It is, after all, to Catholic schools 
and colleges, and, in a very important degree, to Catholic home-training, 
that our literature has the right to look for the growth of an educated taste 
in the future. No Catholic household should be without books, and, above 
all, without a fair array, according to its means and circumstances, of all 
that is best in the various walks of Catholic literature. One of the best 
evidences of the right training received at home and in school will be the 
taste for Catholic reading. An almost certain evidence of a defect in the 
methods of any Catholic school or college will be that its average pupils 
find Catholic books " dull and heavy." That Catholic school or college 
may be regarded as the most successful which sends forth the largest pro- 
portion of readers of Catholic books. Dull and heavy some books by Ca- 
tholic authors certainly are, but only ignorance or flippant self-conceit can 
assert this of the great range of Catholic books that have come from the 
presses of Ireland, England, and the United States during the last half-cen- 
tury. 

GOLDEN LEGENDS FOR CHRISTIAN YOUTH. From approved sources. 
:6mo, pp. 269. 

EXAMPLES OF HOLINESS ; or, Narratives of the Saints. By the author of 
Toms Crucifix, and other Tales, etc. i6mo, pp. 317. 

HOLY LIVES ; or, Stories of the Blessed. From approved sources. i6mo, 
pp. 293. 

CHRISTINE ; or, The Little Lamb, and other Tales. Selected. i8mo, pp. 
257. 

THE FESTIVAL OF THE ROSARY, AND OTHER STORIES ON THE COMMAND- 
MENTS. By Agnes M. Stewart. Revised and enlarged. i8mo, pp. 260. 

THE LAMP OF THE SANCTUARY : A Tale. By Cardinal Wiseman. And 
other Stories, selected. i8mo, pp. 278. 

The above new editions of well-known and approved books for Catho- 
lic young folk are particularly welcome at this season when schools are 
looking about for prizes to their pupils. All of them are well printed 
and attractively bound, and reflect credit on their publishers, the Messrs. 
Thomas B. Noonan & Co., of Boston. 



Q. P. INDEXES, No. XII. The Q. P. Index Annual for 1882. (Pamphlet.) Bangor, Maine : 
Q. P. Index, Publisher. 1883. 

LITERARY SOCIETIES : an essay read before the Young Men's Catholic Union of the Arch- 
diocese of Baltimore at its fourth Annual Convention. By John T. Fallen, member of 
the Carroll Institute. Washington, D. C. : The Washington Catholic Print. 1883. 

THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ST. VINCENT'S HOSPITAL OF THE CITY OF NEW 
YORK, corner of Eleventh Street and Seventh Avenue, under the charge of the Sisters of 
:ober i, 1881, to January i, 1883. (Pamphlet.) New York. 1883. 

ST. THOMAS AND OUR DAY. An oration delivered June 22, 1882, at the thirty-eighth Annual 
Commencement of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. By the Rt. Rev. Francis S. 
Press a 1882 f Vincennes > Ind - (Pamphlet.) Notre Dame, Ind. : Scholastic 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MODERN SCIENCE. A Lecture by the Rev. J. A. Zahm, C.S.C., 
Professor of Physical Science in Notre Dame University. Delivered in the Cathedral, Den- 
Univ^ity PrS i88 3 0n y QVenin ^ March 26 > ^3. (Pamphlet.) Notre Dame, Ind : 

FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ST. JOSEPH'S INSTITUTE FOR THE IMPROVED INSTRUCTION 
OF DEAF-MUTES Foroham N. Y., to the Legislature of the State of New York, from Sep- 

- January I4 , *. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVII. JULY, 1883. No. 220. 



DR. JOHN HALL ON THE FAILURE OF PROTES- 
TANTISM. 

THERE are frequently ideas seething- in society for a long 
time which no one has the courage to seize upon and define. 
Perhaps this may arise from the same feeling as Coleridge 
describes : 

" Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And, having once turned round, walks on 

And turns no more his head, 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 

Doth close behind him tread." 

So many prefer a vague sensation of uneasiness rather than 
a definite reality, although the dread is worse sometimes to 
bear than the fact. We prefer to know the worst under any 
circumstances. 'Ev dt- cpaei nai oXeaaov. That man is wor- 
thy of praise who will boldly grapple with an indefinite bugbear 
and put it under microscopical observation. For how often 
such bugbears resemble the phenomena which once so puzzled 
the astronomers who had pointed their telescope to the moon. 
To their astonishment they beheld a prodigious creature of 
elephantine build, with long snout and seemingly endless tail. 
Oh ! the crowds that came to see it. And how those crowds 
were sold when it was discovered to be a mouse which had got- 
ten between the lenses ! 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



434 DR. JOHN HALL ON THE [July, 

A distinguished divine of this city, Dr. John Hall, deservedly 
commended for his learning and moderation, has lately seized 
upon one of these bugbears which has inflicted much uneasiness 
upon thoughtful people, "bobbing about uncannily." He, in 
common with the whole Protestant clergy, has felt a growing 
conviction that his system of religion is inadequate to the needs 
of society. He has watched with anxiety the mighty tide of 
infidelity which is slowly advancing and threatening to sap 
the very foundations of the strongest bulwarks reared against 
it. In short, the thought that sits heavily on the soul of Protes- 
tants is : Can Protestantism cope with the avowed scepticism of 
the age, and is it not, judged by its boasted claim to be superior 
to every other religious system as a social civilizer and regene- 
rator, the most complete of failures? 

This impression has sat upon the reverend doctor until at 
last he speaks. And it is apologetically. Qui s excuse, s accuse. 
He tries to show by figures that Protestantism is not a failure. 
We give Dr. Hall's own words as reported in the New York 
Herald, April 23: 

"Over thirty years ago a Roman Catholic dignitary in this city com- 
mitted himself to the public statement that Protestantism was a failure, 
and alleged causes for it. He was echoed more or less feebly in different 
directions since that time. Dating from 1517, when the Roman Catholics 
had one hundred millions of people and the Greeks thirty millions, there 
had been a great march of Christianity all over the world. Upon the low- 
est and most generous computation it would be safe to say that the Ro- 
man Catholic powers controlled lands to-day with a population of one 
hundred and eighty millions say two hundred millions and the Greeks 
one hundred millions. But what was the fact with regard to Protestantism 
and its alleged failure ? Statisticians said that over four hundred millions 
of the human race stood in the same relation to Protestant powers as 
those three hundred millions to Roman Catholic and Greek powers. 
Judged in that way, Protestantism was not a failure." 

Probably many persons who do their thinking by proxy, and 
accept without contradiction the clergyman's ipse dixit, might 
feel somewhat elated at these statements. But, setting aside the 
fact that every theologian worth the name will emphatically dis- 
allow the value of statistics as a proof of the church's merits, 
we repudiate the accuracy of the computation. 

Dr. John Hall claims for Protestantism four hundred millions 
of the human race. This includes the Buddhists, Confucians, 
Mohammedans, and the vast array of idolaters in the isles of 
the Southern Ocean. Can these by any laxity of expression be 
justly called Protestants ? As the late lamented Bishop Patter- 



1883.] FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 435 

son once told us, they protest against nothing except soap and 
trousers. Then will Dr. Hall include in the number of Protes- 
tants the vast multitude of free-thinkers, Socialists, and avowed 
atheists of England, France, and Germany, who protest against 
Protestantism vociferously ? If not, how does he make up his 
four hundred millions? .But this argument is so utterly beside 
the mark that we are surprised that any man of culture should 
put it forward. Does he forget that it is the very argument 
which non-Christians have used in all ages to disprove the claims 
of Christ? Was it not from the beginning the same? And who 
can look back on the insignificant and despised handful of men 
who originated the mightiest revolution which the world has 
ever seen, and not feel that the very weakness of the church is a 
most convincing argument in her favor ? Was it by the strength 
of his own arm that the shepherd-boy of Bethlehem vanquished 
the giant? Truly not. "Not by might, nor by strength, but 
by my Spirit, saith the Lord." It was not by the might of im- 
posing numbers that " the pride of the Portico, the fasces of the 
lictor, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the 
dust." The church rejoices in the fulfilment of the promise, " a 
little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong na- 
tion," but she ever bears in mind the fewness of the elect. 

Besides, if the computation of Dr. Hall be scrupulously accu- 
rate, we entirely repudiate the principle upon which it is made, 
which is the numbers over which Protestant powers exercise 
control. The argument of Catholics is grounded upon the num- 
bers of the faithful. From this mistake the lecture of Arch- 
bishop Hughes, upon which Dr. Hall animadverts, should have 
preserved him. 

"Protestantism, however," says Archbishop Hughes, "still numbers 
perhaps fifty millions of men an immense aggregate, it is true ; and among 
them may be found many of the most enlightened and best educated 
minds that the world can this day boast of. Yet, owing to the un- 
happy auspices of the first principle of Protestantism, if God would make 
known what is the specific creed of each individual of these fifty millions, 
it is probable that not ten out of the whole number could be found to 
agree on all points, in substance and detail, in the principles and doctrines 
of Christian revelation. On the other hand, the Catholic Church numbers 
two hundred millions, scattered over all the globe from the rising to the 
setting of the sun ; and I run no risk in stating that out of these two 
hundred millions there could not be found ten in whose inmost souls 
there exists the slightest deviation from the actual, and of course original, 
doctrines of the church in regard to the revelations of the Son of God." * 

* Works of Archbishop Hughes, vol. ii. p. 98. 



DR. JOHN HALL ON THE [July, 

It is evident that Dr. Hall has attempted (unconsciously, we 
suppose) to shift adroitly the point in debate. What is the 
argument used by Catholics based upon that of numbers ? The 
Catholic faith shows itself to be divine, because it unites men of 
all nations, races, tribes, in one common faith, and to an extent 
that no comparison can be made betweeji her and the sects. She 
is catholic, universal; they are not. The Catholic faith re- 
fuses to be localized, nationalized Italianized, Germanized, Gal- 
licized, Anglicized, or Americanized. The church is 

" Elect from every nation, 
Yet one o'er all the earth " ; 

whereas disunion is the chief characteristic of the sects. 
Whatever dogma they disagree about, they are sure to agree in 
wrangling among themselves and with every one else. It would 
almost seem as if this discordant element, which keeps the mind 
in a state of perpetual effervescence, was adopted as a substitute 
for that pious fervor and zeal so necessary to the maintenance of 
the Christian life. Our own observation goes to show that piety, 
in large numbers of Protestant congregations, is with difficulty 
pumped up, while the nagging and quarrelling disposition flows 
naturally and copiously. 

It is complained of by missionaries of the Church of England 
that their church is not adapted to the ideas of savages. It was 
Bishop Selwyn who used to illustrate this by a droll story. A 
missionary went to Greenland and began to discourse upon hell. 
As he pictured its everlasting fires he observed a glow of satis- 
faction overspread the countenances of his audience. He came 
to the conclusion that the prospect of continuous and gratui- 
tous warmth was more inviting than forbidding. He afterwards 
adopted some illustrations from the frozen circle of Dante's In-* 
ferno. The same prelate, undoubtedly the greatest missioner 
that the Church of England has ever produced (though we do 
not ignore Henry Martyn and Bishop Mackenzie), used to dwell 
on the unelastic character of Protestantism. He compared it 
to a suit of buckram. We should compare it to the coffins 
in Oliver Twist, which Mr. Sowerberry made an uniform size, 
and desired that the occupants should be starved to fit them. 
The Catholic Church sends forth her missioners with the same 
message that has been found adapted to the needs of men in 
every age and land. Boniface found it suited to the wild Ger- 
mans, Augustine to the wilder Saxons, and Francis Xavier to 
the Hindoos. As though it had been specially designed to meet 






1883.] FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 437 

the requirements of each, it became Saxon, German, Indian, 
without for one moment ceasing to be Catholic. She is one and 
common uni-versal. The Protestant faith is neither one nor 
common. It is an aggregation of individuals who differ from 
each other in their beliefs, under a common denomination which 
properly determines and suggests its character. It is the 
product of 

" Em Geist der stezt verneint." 

Those very Catholic missioners to whom Dr. Hall rather con- 
temptuously alludes disprove his theory. They did such brave 
deeds that romance pales before sober fact, and if they had been 
done by Protestant missionaries they would have been blazoned 
far and wide. But this is the normal conduct of a Catholic 
missionary. Not unfrequently they have reduced the aboriginal 
tongues to writing, and compiled grammar and dictionary, ere 
they could translate catechism and Bible. They go alone, with 
their lives in their hand, " strong in the Lord of hosts." The 
savage is reclaimed from barbarism and converted into an 
orderly, peaceable citizen, and the Catholic faith acts as one of 
the most powerful restraints upon his naturally nomadic and 
predatory instincts. Where it obtains to-day it is more potent 
to quell the native races than the rifles of the United States 
army. 

But Dr. Hall has too much common sense to imagine that he 
has disposed of the pregnant question, Is Protestantism a failure f 
by a citation of figures. There is the mighty factor of scepti- 
cism to be accounted for a factor which can no longer be ig- 
nored or pooh-poohed ; which cries aloud to all who labor for 
the amelioration of their kind, and ought to be explained, if any 
explanation is possible. Dr. Hall evidently feels this, and he 
essays an explanation. " Adverting to the anti-Christianfsm of 
the present day, he said that Fisher showed it was not to be at- 
tributed to Protestantism, as it had its origin in pre-Reformation 
times." 

According to this the scepticism and semi-paganism of the 
day is an outcome of " Romanism." Upon purely historical 
grounds I think Dr. Hall would find it extremely hard to prove 
this. It is curiously inconsistent in Dr. Hall to say " there 
never was a time when there was so much belief in Christian 
truth." We gave him credit for a large acquaintance with the 
critical literature of the day. No man who. carefully studies 
this can disguise the fact that at no time was there so much 



43 8 DR. JOHN HALL ON THE [July, 

of the spirit of paganism prevalent. The clever author of the 
Fight in Dame Eitropas School, a beneficed clergyman in England 
and a scholar of no mean standing, says in a recent work : 

" That Christianity, as the professed religion of Englishmen and women, 
will survive the scrutinies of the next fifty or eighty years is more than I 
may dare to say. ... Its present position before the world is hopelessly 
untenable, and would not be tolerated for a single day did it not manifestly 
suit the world's purpose to extend its gracious forbearance yet a little 
longer towards so valuable an ally. . . . Our modern Christianity will 
never be defended by any man who is not personally interested in the per- 
petuation of a contemptible unreality, or who does not, for some higher 
reason, judge it prudent to deprecate inquiry into a system which will not 
bear the light of day." * 

This is no isolated statement. Such ideas, more or less ex- 
plicitly stated, abound in our literature, and they are as nothing 
compared to the practical paganism which has grown to be 
considered more suitable to the advanced intellects of the times. 

But we intend to disprove Dr. Hall's statement indirectly 
and inferentially a kind of proof which is much more telling 
than any other. If it could be shown that scepticism and infi- 
delity are (as Dr. Hall, in common with all Christians, believes) 
antagonistic to the real welfare of mankind, and that these have 
been superinduced and fostered by the Church of Rome, it 
follows that as a civilizer and regenerator of society, to take no 
higher ground, the Church of Rome is and has been an utter 
failure. This is Dr. Hall's position. We propose to prove the 
direct contrary. 

It is quite capable of proof that all the definite knowledge of 
the supernatural existing in the world is the direct result of the 
teachings of the Catholic Church. She collected all the scat- 
tered rays of light found in time-honored systems like Buddhism 
(offshoots of the primal revelation) into one focus Christ, the 
very true light of the world. As darkness is but the absence of 
light, having no concrete existence in itself, so error is but the 
distortion of truth. As a majestic ruin is a standing witness to 
the glory of the fane in its pristine state, so the religious errors 
of the world, the spiritual ruins that encumber the church's path, 
are indirect evidence of the truth which once prevailed ; for 
errors, like lies, only obtain currency as " the counterfeit present- 
ment " of truth. 

Also, that modern scepticism is a direct growth of Protestant- 

* Modem Christianity a Civilized Heathenism. By the author of The Fight in Dame 
Europe?* School. New York : Worthington. Pp. 15, 16. 



1883.] FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 439 

ism. I emphasize the word modern, because it seems to me that 
unbelief nowadays is of a different kind to that of former times. 
A man then became an unbeliever less in theory than in practice. 
He rebelled chiefly against the moral restraints of religion, but 
rarely sought to justify himself by any other argument than 
sneering at the more conscientious and consistent lives of be- 
lievers. 

But now men having a desire to break down all moral bar- 
riers contained in the ideas of God, human responsibility, and 
future punishment, set about to prove them false after a fash- 
ion of their own a fashion. which Archbishop Whately conclu- 
sively showed could be made to prove that the best-known facts 
of history are pure fiction. 

If we can adduce any proof that Protestantism has engen- 
dered this fearful hydra, before which it stands trembling like 
Frankenstein before the monster of his own creation, surely we 
shall be entitled to ask, Where does the failure lie ? 

Let us take England as the most favorable specimen of Pro- 
testantism. Dr. Hall, though hailing, as he does, from Belfast, 
does not, we think, suggest Ireland. According to his theory we 
are entitled to look for the highest development of social virtues 
in England. For three centuries Protestantism has had full 
and uninterrupted sway in the land. Under the false plea of 
toleration England has tolerated no religion but her own, save 
upon moral compulsion. What is the result to-day ? Dare the 
advocates of Protestantism, Dr. Hall included, put the case 
fairly, as a lawyer would in court ? They dare not. Let us 
essay to do so ; and we protest against any circumlocution in the 
matter. 

Apologists for Christianity and special forms of Protestant- 
ism seldom have the manliness to face an opponent fairly. They 
treat his objections with levity and ignore that condition of 
mind which is really most hopeful 

" Longing and wishing to be right, 
Yet fearing to be wrong." 

They find that we have arrived at a time when men will believe 
only upon the surest warranty. For men suspect shoddyism 
in religion, as they do in many other things. But their deter- 
mination to be thoroughly satisfied ere they give in their ad- 
hesion does not imply radical unbelief, and is by no means a 
condition of mind to be treated contemptuously. They judge, 



44O DR. JOHN HALL ON THE [July* 

for the most part, of Christianity from the Protestant semblances 
of it with which they are familiar, and when they speak of 
Christianity they really only mean some sect. Now let us, with- 
out beating about the bush, plainly state what Protestantism has 
led such men thoughtful men, men well disposed, " perplexed 
in faith, but pure in deeds " to conclude. 

They argue that the question of the hour is not whether this 
form of Christianity is preferable to that, but whether all forms 
of Christianity pretending to come from God through Christ 
are not gross impositions from beginning to end. Revealed re- 
ligion is on its trial before the Avorld not for some trifling 
blemishes which a little mild correction may mend, but for its 
very life. 

Christianity is one of two things, and the whole question of 
the hour resolves itself into this : which of these two is it? It is 
a human philosophy, founded by a great moral teacher called 
Christ, who was so much better than Epicurus or Zeno inas- 
much as he hit upon a system which was better adapted for 
civilizing the world, and taught precepts nobler, purer, more 
disinterested, more unselfish than the precepts of any other 
school. Or it is a distinct revelation of God's will, brought 
down from heaven by Christ, the only-begotten Son, claiming 
not only to improve upon human philosophies, but to supply 
those essentials in which they were all lacking, establishing a 
kingdom mysterious, supernatural, unearthly, opposed in every 
sense to the traditions of this lower world. If it is a very 
excellent philosophy it is not essentially divine, because man 
could have found out such a philosophy for himself, unless we 
accept Matthew Arnold's idea of God as merely the indefinite 
source of every upright principle in the human mind. But if it 
be essentially divine it is not a very excellent philosophy, be- 
cause it forces man into the highly unphilosophic attitude of 
holding all things around him in utter contempt, in order that he 
may win a heaven thoroughly opposed to earth. 

This, we think, is a fair statement of the difficulties of intel- 
lectual sceptics. They see Protestantism attempting to com- 
bine these two positions, and imitating the frog in the fable with 
the same lamentable result. They regard religion as a mental 
phase highly respectable in its way, and as a social represser to 
be cultivated. People have always set up some kind of super- 
stition, and Christianity is probably a better kind of superstition 
than any other. All religions, too, have had their heroic ages 
and their myths, their ritual and their ceremonial, their pro- 






1883.] FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 441 

mises and their threats. Surely there can be no reason why our 
modern religion should be denied its rightful share. But if 
Christianity be what it claims to be, the divinely-appointed 
channel for saving throughout eternity the souls of men, Pro- 
testantism must be a libel upon it.* We do not say that it 
does not contain holy and devout souls by thousands. But their 
holiness is no product of their creed. We have seen the blue 
gentian blooming ten thousand feet above sea-level, in some rock 
crevice where all vegetation seemed impossible. So holiness 
among Protestants is cultivated despite their system. They dwell 
in a crypt into which there struggles some feeble ray of the 
outer sunshine, some echo of the song that swells through the 
long-drawn aisles overhead. In short, their piety is an indirect 
influence of Catholicism. 

Now, it is capable of proof that the perversion of truth by sec- 
taries in England has been the cause of a large part of the infidelity 
existing there. 

Take one doctrine upon which they are all agreed. We have 
to imitate Christ. They the Protestants claim that the Roman 
Church does not put this forward as the first duty of a Christian, 
and that they excel in doing so. There cannot exist two opin- 
ions as to the sort of life which he is represented to have led. 
The one characteristic feature of his conduct, the one point 
which separated him from the philosophers who had gone 
before and made him distinctively Christ, was his opposition to 
the world. It was not merely that he preached an unpopular 
austerity. This had been done before, and the openly vicious 
and luxurious had relished such preaching as little from the lips 
of Socrates as from the lips of Christ. The point at which phi- 
losophy stopped short (because it was of earth) and Christ began 
(because he was from heaven) was in the attack, not on vice, but 
on so-called virtue. He taught that the righteousness of men, 
as well as their wickedness, was displeasing to God ; that the 
heart was to be first subdued to him, and any merely outward 
observance, however rigid, was in itself worthless unless it 
became the exponent of an inner desire after truth, -an aspiration 
after a nobler life of which he was the source. He taught the 

o 

submission of the entire heart and conscience to his Spirit, as to a 
personal, ever-present guide, without whose co-operation deeds 

* See this argued cleverly in The Creed of Christendom : its Foundation contrasted with its 
Superstructure, by W. Rathbone Greg, author of Enigmas of Life. Only for " Christendom " 
read " Protestantism," and the very soul-harrowing phase of it in which Mr. Greg was educated. 
Probably he knows none other, and argues, Ex uno disce omnes. 



442 DR. JOHN HALL ON THE [July, 

might be passably fair and motives ostensibly honorable, but the 
inner life would yet be lived at enmity with God. He taught 
thus, and so men hated him not as they hated the philosopher 
who had quarrelled with their sensual, grovelling pleasures, but 
as they could only hate One who threw their very goodness in 
their teeth, and convicted them of blindness in the very things 
wherein the} 7 thought that their vision was so clear. And so 
they hated him ; and if there is one syllable of truth in the Bible 
from Genesis to the Apocalypse, this truth stands out most pro- 
minent of all : that for the self-same reason for which these men 
hated Christ their fathers had hated God ever since his prophets 
had revealed him, and their sons would go on hating him till the 
end of time would hate him as they hate him even now, 
because he interferes, not with the passions which they know 
already to be bad and evil, but with the standard it has pleased 
them to set up of the lawful and the good. A man needs no 
Christ to tell him when he has debased himself to the level of the 
beast. His country punishes him for open, notorious crime. 
His very excesses are themselves the avengers of his darling sin ; 
and society has for the most part a sterner sentence to pass upon 
special forms of guilt than either conscience or penal code. It 
is the office of Christ, the one precise office which makes him 
Christ and divides him from all the moralists that ever preceded 
him, to convict the respectable, courteous, good-natured indivi- 
dual, from the first beginning of Christian centuries at Jerusalem 
down to the last century that shall ever be to convict such a 
man of idolatry and stubbornness of heart, because he is being 
daily conformed to the world instead of being transformed into 
the likeness of God. For this they hate him ; and as they hate 
him, so has he declared that they will hate all those who belong 
to him. There can be no peace between two such armies as the 
soldiers of Christ and the servants of Satan. His soldiers must 
fight as their captain fought, causing animosity by their very 
earnestness, stirring up hatred by their very example. This is 
the one test, the only test, of Christian faithfulness. Any hypo- 
crite can prate about his faith and his feelings. The Christian is 
to take up a manful position at the point where he stands most in 
need of all his strength and courage ; and there, openly before 
client and friend and patron, there where the struggle is hardest, 
is to suffer and dare. 

Doubtless Dr. Hall and any orthodox Protestant would agree 
to all this theoretically. But, I ask, does Protestantism set forth 
such a Christ as this? Does it aim at the practice of a piety 



1883.] FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 443 

that in the slightest degree arouses the opposition of the world ? 
Does it afford any motive inspiring its believers with the bravery 
and daring hinted at ? 

Modern Protestantism has for years stultified the statement 
of Christ. He says, " Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." 
" Oh ! yes," says the bland minister, " we can ; there is a sense in 
which two and two do not make four, if you choose to think they 
make five. These things are not to be viewed in a popishly 
ascetic light, else what would become of my salary, so largely 
dependent on the good opinion of men who only value religion 
as a respectable adjunct of social usages?" That is, the plain 
teaching of the New Testament is to be accommodated to the 
tastes of the age. We recollect a clergyman who in the summer 
months was wont to act as locum tenens for country clergymen 
on leave. He always carried a stock of sermons nicely adjusted 
to every conceivable shade of view. On arriving at the town 
where he was to preach on the morrow he invariably sent for 
the parish clerk and sedulously got out of him the prevailing 
views of the place ; so that he \vas always orthodox wherever he 
went, and I have heard him claimed as a high Calvinist and a 
high Ritualist. Protestantism is always doing this on a larger 
scale. If its teachings be correct Christ is out of date. He must 
have commanded what is contradictory and absurd, and Chris- 
tianity becomes ridiculous. The modern Protestant gives the lie 
to very many precepts of his Master. Christ says, " Renounce 
the world ; come out of it ; have nothing to do with it ; live in that 
condition of detachment from it that the light of your example, 
shining before men, may be a silent yet eloquent reproach to the 
unbeliever. If you do this the world will be opposed to you, as 
it was opposed to me." The modern Protestant says, "No; I 
want the good opinion of my lord, and his grace. I shall take 
care to stroke him down, not up. I shall utter nothing capable 
of costing me the loss of an invitation to dinner or a day's 
shooting." 

And this is just the rub. The doctrine of Christ is opposed 
by the world on another score. It is everywhere perceptible 
that the principles that govern commerce have become lax. The 
feverish haste to grow rich gradually blunts the finer suscepti- 
bilities and makes the worse appear the better reason. Because 
the stern law of right which Christ taught interferes with that 
short cut to wealth which every tradesman seems hunting after, 
and makes the accumulation of a fortune more problematic, men 
try to convince themselves that these precepts are effete and 



444 DR. JOHN HALL ON THE [J u lj 

unsuited to the age. Catholicism does nothing to silver-coat 
this unpleasant pill. She does not soften down iniquity by 
calling it by euphonious names. She holds forth sin as the only 
and chief object of man's unmitigated abhorrence, the only 
thing he must hate, and hate with an ever-intensifying hatred, to 
be avoided in all its insidious guises ; and her aim is to instruct 
him how to detect these disguises and successfully to defeat 
them. 

Now, without being invidious, we ask, if the doctrine of Christ 
as here specified be correct, how is it that Protestantism is on 
such good terms with the world? "If ye were of the world, 
the world would love its own," was the Master's statement. 
Well, the world, if it does not love Protestantism, at least does 
not hate it. It is indifferent to it. The world finds that what 
Catholicism, with seeming severity, bluntly calls sins Protes- 
tantism ignores altogether. The world finds that the genus 
hypocrite is much more the growth of Protestant countries 
than of Catholic. The virtues of a respectable Protestant are 
practised much more with a regard to social convenance, a 
sense of the fitness of things, or a natural distaste of vice, than 
from any reference to a divine standard of right or " the ter- 
rors of the world to come." 

I recollect seeing a statue of Erasmus in a town in Holland 
which the inhabitants had so polished up with sand-paper that it 
resembled a huge brass candlestick. All the fine and delicate 
chiselling was obliterated. In a similar way the grand form 
of a Christian a Christ-followerset up in the Gospels has 
gradually become effaced by the friction of the loose ideas be- 
gotten of Protestantism. For at the root of all these ideas lies 
the right of private judgment. If I am a law unto myself, and 
competent to decide what is true and what is false, is not my 
decision of equal weight with yours who stand upon the same 
footing ? You say this is a sin ; I say it is not, because it suits my 
taste and convenience. I am as right in my opinion as you are 
m yours. No man believing in such a standard of appeal has 
any right to condemn any other man. 

The fact is, Protestantism has pared down the precepts of 
Christ till they are almost invisible. They have become like 
those gutta-percha faces which children delight in you can 
squeeze them into any kind of expression you like. We rarely 
hear of any hitch, however slight, between Protestantism and 
They regard each other as two of a trade. A newly- 
appointed rector, meeting his butcher on Monday, remarked, 






1883.] FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 445 

" Glad to see you at church yesterday, Mr. Brisket." " Oh ! 
yes," replied the butcher ; " I always return custom." The 
object of the Church of England has avowedly been for over a 
century to conciliate the world. How ? By toning down all that 
is obnoxious in its creed. In this respect High-Churchmen have 
been notorious offenders. The old Evangelical's who led the re- 
ligious revival sixty years ago, although so one-sided in doctrine 
as to alienate all men with church tendencies, were far more 
nearly right in their ideas about Christian practice. Their 
preachers did, at any rate, denounce with bravery every kind of 
worldliness, and warn men that the whole heart, and not a certain 
part of it, must be yielded up to Christ. But when they col- 
lapsed and the Tractarians took their place, straightway these 
last permitted their disciples to indulge in an almost unlimited 
amount of secularity. 

The average Protestant really lives without any practical 
faith in God. He is above doing a mean or immoral action, not 
from any promptings of conscience, any deference to an exalted 
standard of righteousness set up within his soul, but from fear 
of temporal consequences, or because it is as easy to do a good 
thing as a bad one, if there is no advantage to be gained by the 
latter. He has also "gentlemanly feeling" an unknown moral 
quantity which will keep him true to his word, cause him to 
eschew lying and avoid getting drunk, especially on indifferent 
wine. But his virtues are no more Christian than those of a 
Parsee, who disbelieves in Christ altogether. His virtues are 
common to civilized humanity. There is not one essential point 
of difference between the fine lady of Fifth Avenue and the fine 
lady of Athens and Rome, except that the former goes peradven- 
ture to Dr. Hall's, the latter went to her temple and her god. 
If in smaller points of culture the modern fine lady surpasses 
the ancient, they' have nothing to do with Christianity and are 
merely the product of civilization. 

There is nothing in modern English society under Victoria 
that might not have existed in the days of Agricola, as regards 
what are called the social virtues. What difference there is 
is owing to the undying influence of the Truth, which three cen- 
turies of apostasy and heresy have been unable to stamp out. 
And the virtues upon which such congregations as Dr. Hall's 
pride themselves are indirect emanations of that Holy Catholic 
Church they affect to despise. What made the disloyalty of 
Egalite Orleans more pronounced and odious was his striking 
family likeness to the poor King Louis XVI., whom he helped to 



446 DR. JOHN- PI ALL ON THE [July, 

destroy. The very virtues of Protestantism, tracing, as they do, 
their descent from the Church of Christ, proclaim it matricide. 

If we were not haunted by the fear of the inexorable editorial 
shears we could show that the present state of political dis- 
quietude that haunts the nations is a necessary product of 
Protestantism. Protestants boast of it. They say, We only 
could produce a Garibaldi or a Gambetta. Demago'gues and un- 
principled adventurers, who care not who sinks, so that they 
swim, are incompatible with those principles of submission to 
lawful authority and the observance of that golden rule which 
Socialism has filched from the Catholic Church the sacrifice of 
the individual to the well-being of the many : principles that were 
tried for a millennium ere Protestantism was incubated. The 
governments of Great Britain and of this country, as the two 
great representatives of Protestantism, are not based upon any 
one single specifically Protestant principle. 

And if we come closer, to that which touches us all most in- 
timately our families we discern the failure of Protestantism 
still more. As it has no spiritual coercion, nothing to enforce 
discipline, the child will only obey its parent when he pleases. 
If a father wins his child's respect it is by making a friend of him, 
by sinking the parental character into that of a chum and wist- 
fully suing for the allegiance he is powerless to control. We 
could gather evidence from exclusive Protestant sources to show 
that never at any time was there less obedience to parents. 
The very name is ridiculed and scorned. This is not so among 
Catholics. 

We live in an age when everything is at high pressure. As 
it is more difficult to get an honest living now than it was fifty 
years ago, so it is far more difficult to be a Christian. There are 
forms of vice and fraud known to-day that were not thought of 
when we were boys. The advance of the world is toward sheer 
materialism, and the church, as the true bride of her Lord, must 
see the antagonism of the age intensify daily till it reaches the 
final climax. But while difficulties are multiplying around what 
has Protestantism to oppose to them ? Absolutely nothing. The 
world ^is coming to think that the distinction between truth and 
lying is, after all, a matter of conventionalism ; that strict integ- 
rity and uprightness in business are quite impossible ; that it is 
quite lawful for a Christian man to use " sharp practice " and over- 
reach his neighbor in a bargain by cunning and misrepresenta- 
tion ; that " Get money, honestly if thou canst, but get money," 
is a shrewd and commendable maxim for a Christian merchant's 



1883.] FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 447 

conduct. And Protestantism looks on smiling and says, " It's 
none of my business." Now and then some one raves excitedly 
for five minutes, apparently to secure a column in the Herald 
and to keep his name before the public. But no man in his 
senses would take this for the honest denunciation of a man who 
means what he says. We fancy we see the wink in the ministe- 
rial optic as he denounces the rich, specially directed to the pew 
of the gentleman who has invited him to dinner. It is a part of 
the performance, and 

" Nobody seems any better or worse." 

But see him in the dining-room ; hear him mumble the thing 
called "grace," making it especially and commendably short. 
Does he not know that he goes into society on the very same 
footing as a layman goes because he is a gentleman and it is 
pleasant to meet him ? He dare not utter a syllable which would 
hurt the prejudices of his friends. 

And yet perchance the most indifferent among the Protes- 
tant clergy may be aware of the multitudes who are battling 
with life's mighty problems, like shipwrecked mariners cast 
adrift upon a shoreless ocean, clinging despairingly to the last 
plank, which they feel slipping from their grasp. What of these ? 
Have they for these no message from the Most High, no word 
of cheer or of counsel, who claim to be heaven-sent? Here, we 
claim, is your test. No man who has honestly striven to conquer 
self, to cast out the evil thing from his soul, to tame the lurking 
wild beast within him, to do things naturally distasteful, to ac- 
quire virtues directly opposed to his normal disposition, to bri- 
dle his tongue, to keep his temper, to speak rigidly the truth, 
above all to imitate in ever so lowly a degree the perfect exem- 
plar, Christ Jesus, but has found Protestantism utterly a failure. 
It has nothing definite to offer to meet the most definite and tan-- 
gible of ills. It resolves itself into vague, meaningless phrases, 
and, when the despairing soul asks bread, offers it a stone. Men 
like the late John Stuart Mill have been frightened away from 
Christianity by the hideous caricature which Calvinism presents 
of God. It was sufficient to cloud for a lifetime the brilliant in- 
tellect of Cowper, as it has caused multitudes to secretly hate 
Him whose crowning 1 characteristic is Love. There is every- 

o J 

thing in Protestantism to repel man when he thinks of God. 
There is everything in Catholicism ' to attract. As Christ 
claimed as a distinctive mark of his Messiahship, " the poor have 
the Gospel preached unto them," so the church points to her fit- 



448 FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. [July, 

ness to reach the poor as a divine sign of her unction from on 
high. Protestantism has never successfully coped with the 
poor, and mainly, I believe, through its vagueness. The God it 
presents is not Him, 

" Strong Son of God, Immortal Love," 

whose tenderest sympathy reaches to all forms of* suffering, but 
a harsh being alien to the tenderest and deepest sympathies of 
humanity.* As a system of philosophy it is valueless, because 
its premises are unsound, having no standard of appeal but the 
ever-varying and shifting judgment of the individual. As a sys- 
tem of government its direct outcome and real, legitimate se- 
quence is the most anarchical form of Socialism, because again it 
is the individual, not the many, whose welfare is to be the chief 
concern. As a social regenerator it is valueless, because it has 
no machinery for enforcing its precepts, no pains and penalties 
about which any one cares a jot. As a means of self-elevation, a 
soul-leverage, it is worse than useless. We want to feel our 

* Perhaps I may be allowed to quote, from a poem now out of print and composed when a 
Protestant, an idea which many Protestants share : 

" Mysterious power. Avhich we in colder climes, 
With bigoted beliefs and chilling rites 
That human nature dwarf to pigmy size, 
Instead of raising it to the divine, 
Can scarcely enter into, e'en when Art, 
The cultured worship of the Beautiful, 
Has shown us in her magic lens how rare 
Is the perfection of the smallest flower ; 
Those great interpreters of loveliness, 
The masters, could embody in a form 
Not only all sweet Nature's truthfulness, 
But those ideal graces which the mind 
Alone perceives perfume of character 
Caught from those mystic heights where sanctity 
Communes with heaven and sees the face of God. 
And the lone spirit of the cenobite 
Beheld in his Madonna, calm and pure, 
The beauty and the grace of womanhood, 
All that he would have prized in wife and child, 
Transferring to the saint that love and trust 
That human nature must bestow somewhere, 
Which is as necessary to the heart 
As a support unto the clinging vine. 
So to the solitary monk and nun 
Mary, the ever-blessed Mother- Maid, 
Becometh mother, wife, babe, sister, all, 

And her devotion half-idolatry 

The passionate expression of a love 
Which, once extinct in any mortal soul, 
Transforms it to the lowest demon grade." 

The Face of the Saint, pp. 30, 31. 



1883.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 449 

feet upon the everlasting Rock, not on the shifting sands. We 
want to feel, as we grope in the dark, the hands 

" That stretch through Nature, moulding men." 

We want to hear an infallible voice say, " This is the way." We 
want help from without help from above to make us prefer the 
spiritual to the animal, the heavenly to the earthly. And, tried 
by all these tests, there is no such failure as Protestantism. 

We lay down the pen with the conviction that those who be- 
lieve least in Protestantism are Protestants themselves ! 



PSYCHE ; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE.* 

FOREST TALKS OF A NATURALIST. 

BOITSFORT, June I, 1882. 

YAWNING already, my dear fellow ? Bored with one half- 
hour spent under an old oak-tree, awaiting the end of a shower ! 

And this is all that education has done for you taught you 
to wear this woe-begone countenance in the presence of Dame 
Nature, nothing comprehending of the pomps and mysteries 
she is celebrating around us. You see nothing, hear nothing 
but the growling of the storm in the distance. I have the better 
of you now, my poet, who only yesterday were looking down 
on scientists as beings devoid of aesthetic perceptions and a taste 
for the Beautiful. Will you dare to laugh the next time that 
you see me " hunting for little beasts " or dissecting flowers ? 

Look through my microscope, you vandal, and see the 
architecture of the spray of moss that you have trampled un- 
der foot, unconscious of the marvels of grace and beauty that 
you were crushing. See the slender, awl-shaped leaves so finely 
indented on the edges. How prettily they cling to the stem, 
winding about it in spiral curves ! In the middle rise flexible 
stalks of a red color, each bearing a pointed cap covered with 
silky, light yellow hair. 

. Now watch. I lift one of these hats with the point of my 
pen-knife. The cap covers a prism swollen at the base and 
covered with an elegant little lid in the form of a circular fold, 

* Translated by Miss Emma F. Gary from the Revue Generate of Brussels for Sept., 1882. 
VOL. XXXVII. 29 



450 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [July, 

ending in a point. We lift the fold, which is easily detached ; it 
covers a second lid in the form of a drum. Break the mem- 
brane of this instrument of warfare, and a myriad of little 
green seeds fall from the urn. Now, the series of operations 
that I have produced artificially before your eyes is accom- 
plished spontaneously in Nature every year. If you need proof, 
here is a more mature capsule ; the urn has bent over the stalk 
and flung its cap topsy-turvy, tossing its fertilizing dust to 
the breezes, which will sow in other places the polytrichum 
commune. 

Excuse the name ; I did not invent it. Latinists, scholars in 
us like yourself, have seen fit to cumber these graceful creatures 
with uncouth names and. make the approaches to Nature's do- 
main bristle with all possible difficulties. There was a time when 
a knowledge of words and phrases concealed ignorance of facts 
and made the seed of pedants spring up like mushrooms. This- 
was, we are told, the golden age of man, when a robust memory 
sufficed to lift the heaviest wits to the pedagogue's desk. The 
heritage of the Hellenists is hard to bear, so, with their leave, 
we will some day remodel their catalogues and barbarisms. 

All this apropos of peaked caps and moss. Examining again 
the curious stems which bear the progeny of mosses, we find 
beside them other stalks ending in a bell-shaped rosette. This 
rosette is the male flower formed by the union of the antheridia. 
Grayish spindles rest on a short pedicle, and, as you will see 
through the microscope, are fixed in the rosette. These are 
sacks formed of a single wall of cells which contain other ani- 
mated cells. Plunge one of these sacks in water, and the cells 
will press towards the outlet, burst through, and swim about in 
the fluid. The wall of each cell dissolves, and out wriggles a 
little serpent with a big head and a tail furnished with two 
lateral hairs which serve for oars. These antherozo'ides, en- 
dowed with sensibility and motion, may be compared absolutely 
with the spermatozoiides of animals, and prove that there exists 
no serious barrier between the two kingdoms of Nature. 

This marvellous unity of nature, suggested by Aristotle, was 
only revealed completely by modern science. Now it is demon- 
strated that the inferior vegetation called cryptogamic which 
prevailed throughout the whole ocean (algae), and afterwards 
covered the risen land with gigantic ferns, lycopodia, horse-tails, 
etc. that all these cryptogams, I say, are reproduced ac- 
cording to the laws of cellular polliferation. Indeed, their re- 
production is better understood to-day than that of phsenogamic 



1883.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 451 

plants, so that naturalists are no longer in danger of confounding 
their animated germs with infusoria. 

What are you doing now ? Despatching with a snap of your 
ringer that harmless rynchophorus which has dropped on to your 
coat-sleeve. This miserable insect, little as you suspect it, be- 
longs to one of the most interesting families of the order of 
coleoptera,* of which the cockchafer and the scarabseus of the 
Egyptians are types. This one is a weevil decorated by your 
masters with the euphonious name of rynchophorus, which means 
in plain terms trunk-bearer. 

Look for yourself: its head is shaped like a funnel with a 
long tube ending in two articulated horns (elbowed antennae), 
giving him a very eccentric appearance. Unhappily, this is no 
mere mask. That pointed head enables -his congeners to perfo- 
rate flowers and fruits ; and certain families of plants, such as the 
leguminous, know that it is a serious matter to make the ac- 
quaintance of this apparently grotesque and harmless personage. 

At the blossoming season the apple and pear trees in our 
orchards are visited by a little butterfly and a small weevil, which 
introduce their eggs into the germ (pistil). 

The pear-tree weevil (anthonomus pyri) spends the winter in 
the cracks of the bark. In the month of March the female per- 
forates with her trunk or snout the flower-buds and lays an egg 
in each gallery. The bud perishes, while the caterpillar (worm) 
absorbs the sap to its own profit and passes through its meta- 
morphosis. Periodical scraping of the bark is the only effective 
remedy to prevent its ravages. 

Granaries of wheat are also devastated by a weevil (wheat- 
weevil) well known to our agriculturists. 

There exist innumerable species of weevils. Nearly all our 
plants nourish at least one species, and some of them have ex- 
traordinary habits. For example, the lisette (cut-bud), which at- 
tacks fruit-trees. This industrious little creature has a trunk 
like an elephant ; but this appendage of its mouth, longer than 
its whole body, is not flexible and serves both as saw and auger. 
The claws and velvet of its feet enable it to walk upside-down 
on the smoothest leaves. Its back is like a cuirass of burnished 
steel. When the lisette attacks a bud she begins by marking 
with a stroke on the outer covering the place where she intends 
to cut through. Then she climbs above this mark and begins to 
work with her saw, head downwards. 

* Coleoptera are insects possessing two pairs of wings, the anterior v ings acting as sheath 
to the posterior wings. 



452 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [July, 

The woodman makes his principal notch on the side towards 
which he wishes the tree to fall ; but the insect would run the 
risk of getting her proboscis caught as in a vise. Therefore she 
attacks the branch on the side opposite to its natural inclination, 
so that its weight may drag it away from her. When she 
reaches the pith, the female, who accomplishes this work all 
alone, pierces a hole with her trunk. Then she turns round and 
lays an egg in it. Again taking her first position, she pushes the 
egg with her trunk into the bottom of the hole. You should see 
with what activity and certainty the microscopic worker, like 
some fairy elf, toils to preserve her species at the expense of the 
preservation of our fruits in other words, the reproduction of 
the tree. 

What did you say ? An engineer who, without graduating 
from a polytechnic school, knows what he is about ! Yes ; and 
remember -that each species displays new resources to attain 
by various means one common end the propagation of its 
kind. 

See that fly resting immovable on a bramble, waiting for a 
ray of sunshine to appear before taking flight. It is a solitary 
wasp, odynerus rubicolus, which scoops out galleries in the stalks 
of briers and brambles to lay her eggs in. As her larvas are 
carnivorous, while she lives on honey only, she changes her 
habits and becomes a huntress when the time comes for laying 
eggs, and when the gallery is finished by dividing it into cells 
with walls of a kind of mortar made of kneaded earth, and sepa- 
rated from each other by a wall of pith. Nature has given her 
a sting which distils a hypnotizing poison like the poisoned 
arrows of savages ; but this poison benumbs without causing 
death. And by a marvellous foresight, not akin to the instinct 
of the insect, the mother, armed in this manner, strikes the 
victim just in the centre of the nervous ganglia, where sensibility 
is concentrated, so that sleep is infallibly produced. The mother 
drags her prey into a cell and lays an egg beside it, then seals 
up the entrance, and repeats the same manoeuvres until the last 
egg is laid. Not less extraordinary is the fact that as the egg 
laid last occupies the entrance to the gallery, it 'is hatched the 
first to favor the exit of the others, which are hatched in the 
inverse order of their laying a series of phenomena which our 
friends the Darwinians would find it hard to explain by the 
happy accidents of natural selection. Therefore they prefer to 
ignore them, like our doctrinaires when they are confronted with 
a miracle. 



1883.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 453 

Here is another marvel, I said, picking a leaf from the oak- 
tree that had served us for an umbrella. 

These little red balls which stud the back of the leaf come 
from the sting of a little fly, and they will become nut-galls, 
which, as you know, have the property of fixing the salts of iron 
to make ink. 

Swammerdarn, the illustrious author of the Bible of Nature 
and revealer of the insect world, proved in the seventeenth cen- 
tury that the production of vegetable galls results from a wound 
made in the plant by the sting of an insect which emits a corro- 
sive liquid before laying eggs. The larvae then do not engender 
the swelling of the gall by gnawing the leaf and simply pro- 
ducing a flow of sap which hardens in the air to envelop the 
creature. 

Sometimes the auger is much longer than the body of the 
insect ; it is elastic and is coiled with its sheath around the 
viscera of the abdomen, just as the tongue of the woodpecker is 
wound round the os hyoides, like the spring of a watch, to be 
darted at will upon insects hidden in the dark. 

If you press the abdomen of these insects you see the oviduct 
issue from its horned sheath in the form of a hollow needle, and 
the auger often ends in a perfect arrow-head. This point 
secretes a corrosive liquid which produces an inflammation of 
the cellular tissue, and, like a thorn in the flesh, provokes the 
flow of liquids which change the external form and sometimes 
exhaust leaves and flowers. The cynips builds also actual nests 
for its offspring, and larders, towards which the nourishment 
flows in direct ratio to the appetite of the larvae. 

The fecula which at first accumulates in the vegetable tumor 
is afterwards transformed to fat and sugar, necessary to the 
nymph of the insect in accomplishing its last metamorphosis. 

The buds and flowers of the oak are attacked, like the leaves, 
by peculiar species of flies. We find galls of various forms on 
many kinds of vegetation, especially on eglantines, where they 
make large, hairy balls ; also on willows, brambles, nettles, etc. 

The insects which produce these excrescences present in per- 
fection the phenomenon of partheno-genesis ; that is to say, the 
species can propagate itself indefinitely, without impregnation, 
by eggs, so that nature dispenses with the aid of the male. This 
zoological eccentricity, which offers to physiology a problem 
still unsolved, was studied in a special manner upon plant-lice by 
Professor Balbiani,* of the Museum of Paris. It was discovered 

* Course of comparative embryology given as professor in the College of France. 



454 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [July, 

in the eighteenth century by the celebrated philosopher, Charles 
Bonnet, of Geneva, who was not, like many persons, content to 
decide a priori the problems of life. 

Speaking of this subject, M. Van Beneden says that nature 
wishes to produce millions of insects in a few hours to check the 
exuberance of vegetation, and, distrusting the co-operation of the 
male, she suppresses it, and the female alone brings a daughter 
into the world ready to give birth to a granddaughter. Genera- 
tions follow each other so rapidly that, if the daughter chance 
to meet some obstacle on her passage, the granddaughter may 
come into the world before her own mother. A single egg may 
produce by the end of a season several thousand millions of indi- 
viduals. By what means does Nature insure the fecundation of 
the egg? M. Balbiani asserts that it possesses internal fecunda- 
tion by a sort of hermaphrodism. The question rests with 
micographists, and researches undertaken at the University of 
Louvain upon the evolution of the cell may soon result in the 
solution of this problem. 

We are compelled to admire these admirable provisions of 
Nature. She arrives by the simplest means at aims the most 
varied and ingenious, and conceals under apparent evil and dis- 
order a wonderful, inexhaustible harmony. It is a providential 
arrangement which may be discussed but not reasonably denied. 
The progress of science confirms every day more conclusively 
the intuition of philosophers and of the ancient poets who cele- 
brated long before the Christian era the mind that animates 
nature (mens agitat molevi}. 

There is the sun shining out of the blue sky. The rain 
stopped long ago, and you did not notice it ; never mind ! The 
latter-day philosopher must have lent you his spectacles to look 
through. " Little beasts " are good for something, are they not, 
when it rains? Nature disguises under insignificant exteriors 
endless marvels of which the human mind never wearies when 
once it has tasted the fruits of the tree of science. It is a thorny 
tree, I confess, and pedants have made its approaches unattrac- 
tive ; but once sleep beneath its shade, and you shall never wake, 
for it is enchanted. Naturalists, burning with sacred fire, know 
ecstasies that wrap them as in a dream, so that they pass through 
the world unconscious of its weariness and cares. 

If sufferers from ennui did but know the power of her 
philters they would turn for consolation to the sorceress whom 
we call Nature. When the mind enters into communion with 



1883.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 455 

life and universal order, when the ear discerns the various 
themes of the grand hymn of creation, all petty passions of 
earth are estimated at their true worth, and forgotten in pro- 
portion as we rise and become absorbed in the contemplation 
of God's works. 

My friend made no answer. His head rested on his hands 
and he seemed lost in meditation. " What are you thinking of? " 
I asked, laughing. 

He replied gravely : " I was thinking that if intercourse with 
men alienates us from God, a comprehension of Nature leads us 
back to him in spite of ourselves. How can one deny Provi- 
dence in the presence of miracles of foresight and calculation 
incarnate in creatures so trivial that we may pass them a 
thousand times without noticing them ? 

" Why were we not taught to read this wonderful book where 
God's name is inscribed on every page and Providence is every- 
where revealed ? You are right. I play a sorry part among the 
wonders that surround me more crassly ignorant than a pea- 
sant, in spite of my classic incumbrances. Those who have 
planted the domain of God with thorns and nettles from the gar- 
den of Greek roots are criminal pedants." 

" I agree with you," said I. " It is undeniable that the study 
of dead languages and of the law is a bugbear to many minds 
that remain uncultivated all their lives for want of intellectual 
nourishment Even of those who pass the Pillars of Hercules 
their examinations there are many, especially among our young 
men of family, who gladly abandon such distasteful diet. But 
as the educated mind cannot rest inactive, it seeks false and 
hurtful nourishment from works of imagination of the class fur- 
nished by theatres and novels. The door closed to study is 
usually accessible to ennui, father of all vices and of every crime. 
When that takes possession of a man's mind he can appreciate 
no pleasures but those of excitement and the senses, however 
good his education may have been." 

Whose fault is it? The fault of those who, having a sound, 
wholesome, pleasant food to offer to the imagination, keep the 
door of Nature's temple tight closed, the better to ransack their 
dictionaries and guess the riddles of some prehistoric author. 

Nature, too, offers enigmas to us at every step ; but her 
problems fill the mind with wonder and interest. One feels like 
QEdipus guessing the secret of the Sphinx who devoured the 
passers-by an ingenious symbol invented by the Greeks to ex- 
press the miserable state of man struggling wildly among the 



456 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [July, 

complications of Nature. Dumb and implacable like the Sphinx, 
she offers her terrible enigma to all who pass through the world, 
torturing, oppressing, rending those who fail to understand it. 
Virtue only, armed with the buckler of science, can conquer the 
monster who is deaf to the poet's passionate appeal, to the mc- 
ther's prayer, to the lamentations of the dying. ft is easy to 
control rebellious minds by this grand and terrible spectacle, at 
once pathetic and sublime, which is more interesting than any 
romance and develops unconsciously rare and precious faculties, 
such as the spirit of observation and analysis. 

Whoever learns to read this Bible learns, in the very process, 
to love it. From that time the country has new attractions. It 
is changed, as Montaigne happily expresses it, " to a most holy 
temple not made with hands." 

The mind which dwells in communion with Nature, finding 
everywhere God's hand at work, becomes unconsciously im- 
pressed with the order, the extent, and the majesty of creation. 
Nothing develops more fully uprightness of mind and rectitude 
of judgment than the disinterested search after truth. One is 
forced to take life seriously and appreciate the value of time in 
the presence of this sublime spectacle, which recalls to man the 
true conditions of his existence, his place in creation, his noble 
destiny. 

The miracle of existence becomes then clearly apparent to 
all minds uncorrupted by self-indulgence or by that precocious 
scepticism which dries up the springs of religious feeling. 

See that clump of brier illumined by a ray of sunlight filtering 
through the great trees. Aladdin's wonderful lamp in the Ara- 
bian Nights never revealed more marvels. Drops of rain glitter 
on the leaves like diamonds of the first water. The insects have 
begun their dance again with renewed vigor. Flies, butterflies, 
coleoptera, orthoptera, neuroptera, and hymenoptera of every 
shape and color flutter, buzz, vibrate, chase each other, and hide 
in flower-cups, while overhead in the great beeches the concert 
of warblers, blackbirds, and goldfinches is resumed with fresh 
delight. It is the sublime harmony of life which enchants the lis- 
tener and evokes from the solitude of the forest, Nature's chosen 
temple, sweet and wonderful mysteries. The most evenly bal- 
anced mind is filled with emotion and admiration in the presence 
of such beauty. . . . 

Artist! poet! ' said my companion, laughing in his turn. 

Take care ! I shall report you to your friends the naturalists. 

You know they will bear no trifling on this point. Poet and 



1883.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 457 

scientist are irreconcilable terms in their opinion. The scalpel 
of science has pitilessly cut the strings of the lyre, and Apollo's 
disciples are, in the eyes of your teachers, so many idiots who 
personify in the nineteenth century those dark ages of history 
which correspond to the infancy of humanity." 

" You are not wholly wrong," said I. "But I believe with 
St. Augustine that the Beautiful, being only the perfection of 
order, cannot be separated from the worship of the True that is 
to say, science. The human mind cannot be mutilated with im- 
punity, and, if the man of science must distrust the flights and 
aberrations of the poet's imagination, he should guard against 
the exclusion of the ideal, which sears the heart and turns the 
understanding into a registering-machine." 

Many scientists have reached the point of measuring a man's 
worth and the reach and certainty of his judgment by his skill 
in managing a microscope or a scale. This new kind of phycho- 
metry is in vogue among positivists, arid elsewhere too a fact 
easily explained by the predominance of petty minds. They ap- 
pear to forget that fertile discoveries may be made even in the 
domain of the sciences of observation with the registering-ma- 
chines given to us by Nature. When the senses and understand- 
ing are early trained together, when judgment is not sacrificed 
to mechanical memory, we learn to see more clearly in many in- 
stances than these false priests of Nature. Influence the intellect 
by the intuitive teaching of phenomena, and the normal evolution 
of the faculties will be spontaneously accomplished and a taste 
for study unconsciously developed in the child. 

No more need of the ferule then : the marvellous, inexhausti- 
ble reality of creation satisfies a virgin imagination better than 
the make-believe wonders of fairy-tales. Substituting the real 
world for the imaginary, truth for artifice, in primary education, 
we infuse into man from the beginning the spirit of the laws of 
that Nature with which he must struggle until the hour of his 
death. 

" There is," says Charles Nodier, "a wonderful charm in the 
study of nature, and the man who does not penetrate the grace of 
these mysteries lacks, it may be, a sense for the enjoyment of life. 
All the pleasures of the soul have been described ; it is a pity that 
no one has described the delight that possesses a heart of twelve 
years old, formed by a little instruction and much sensibility for 
a knowledge of the living world, at the moment when he takes 
possession of it as of an inheritance on some lovely morning in 



458 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [July, 

spring. So Adam must have looked upon the world made for 
him when the breath of the Creator roused him from his child- 
like sleep. 

" Oh ! how beautiful the world seemed to me. 

" I already thought for I, have not changed my mind that a 
profound study of the facts of the creation was more worthy than 
any other to interest a sound intelligence, and that everything 
else was only fit to occupy the extravagant leisure of degenerate 
races. Even now it makes me shiver with delight to remember 
the sight of my first ' carabus auro-nitens.' He appeared to 
me in the damp shadow that lay on the trunk of an old fallen 
oak, where he rested, gleaming like a carbuncle dropped from 
the aigrette of the Grand Mogul. I remember standing for a 
moment fascinated with his light, and that my hand trembled so 
with emotion that I had to collect myself again and again before 
I could take possession of him. . . . 

" The world of butterflies is a series of enchantments and 
metempsychoses to the child who chases them with his delicate 
net. By his coat of mail, checkered black and yellow, we know 
the prudent Machaon, who, with faithful devotion to plants that 
give out precious specifics for sickness, will not fail to alight 
upon the fennel. ... 

" Go down into the meadow. These butterflies are shep- 
herds, and Nature has clad them in rustic vesture. Here is 
Tityrus, Myrtil,* Corydon. f One is distinguished among them 
all by the brilliancy of his azure mantle, beneath which in- 
numerable eyes gleam like stars in a clear night sky ; it is Ar- 
gus \ watching over the flocks. 

" Now pass with searching glance the verge of the woods, de- 
fended by Silenus and the Satyrs. Here is the band of Syl- 
vans || wandering among the solitudes with still more airy 
nymphs which mock your pursuit, soon leaving a brook between 
themselves and you, and vanishing like Lycoris without fearing 
to be seen behind the shrubs of the opposite bank. 

" Look ! you may know Mars by his cuirass of burnished 
steel flashing in the sunlight with gleams of gold and silver; 

*Satyrus Myrtil (Janira) ; July ; meadows and glades. 

t Lycaena Corydon flies in May and August along the banks of the Meuse. 

% Lycasna Alexis, a little azure-blue butterfly very common in all the meadows of Belgium 
during the month of June. 

CEil de bois, very common also in wooded roads and in fields. 

| A black butterfly with a transverse white line on each wing, and hovering in solitary 
woods with nymphalidae which are larger and have iridescent reflections on their wings. July, 
when the spring grain is ripe. Very common formerly in the forest of Soignies. The latter 
have almost disappeared since the destruction of the wocds. 



1883.] PSYCHE ; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 459 

Vulcan,* blazing with ingots of burning red like iron in the fur- 
nace ; . . . Apollo with his snow-white robe waving in the air, 
relieved by bands of purple." f 

I quote from memory ; this passage of the great writer and 
learned philologist I have not seen these fifteen years, but it re- 
mains so deeply graven in my memory that I can vouch for its 
correctness. 

Well, what do you think of it? 

Was I right in saying that no novel or legend or fairy-tale 
approaches this in interest? What can be more dramatic than 
the innumerably varied phases of the great struggle for exis- 
tence made by all living creatures, from man down to the mean- 
est insect, calling to their aid by turns strength, artifice, intelli- 
gence, patience, and boldness? Insects especially neither give 
nor take quarter in the warfare upon which Nature lavishes the 
resources of an inexhaustible imagination. The law of parasit- 
ism is universal an immense Curia from which nothing escapes. 
Every plant, animal, organ, has, so to speak, its own parasites ; 
but there are some that travel from one to another, accomplish- 
ing each phase of development in a different being or organ. 
Often the perfect insect lives on the flower, and its larvas on the 
fruit, stalk, wood, leaves, and roots. So also parasitic worms 
usually accomplish the first phase of their evolution in the body 
of an animal which will be devoured by some other when they 
have attained their perfect state. 

In short, we may assert that every imaginable process has 
been used to favor the parasitism which costs to agriculture 
millions every year. The diabolical artifices of these countless, 
invisible foes which harass every living thing and torment each 
other like imps of fairy lore explain to us the superstitious beliefs 
so deeply rooted in the rustic mind. Before science was capable 
of revealing the evolutions and metamorphoses of insects and 
cryptogams, the peasant, seeing his crops ruined and his flocks 
dying without apparent cause, was led to believe in the inter- 
vention of evil spirits. Multiform as Proteus, his enemies es- 
caped him by their insignificance, their transformations, their 
migrations and stratagems, now brought to light by naturalists. 

To-day science has pierced the darkness which the terrified 
imagination of our forefathers peopled with preternatural 
powers. It is through science alone that the cultivator can hope 

* Vanessa Atalanta Red Admiral passes the winter in the butterfly form like other Vanes- 
sidas, and flies from spring to fall. 

f Apollo flies only on high mountains near the region of snows. 



460 PSYCHE / OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [July, 

to exorcise the gnomes and elves of which legend, still vigorous 
in country places, has preserved all sorts of superstitious stories. 
Science has substituted inflexible law for the caprices of evil 
spirits. In their stead we find invisible workers, accomplish- 
ing blindly, in accordance with a direction invariable for each 
species, their natural evolution, which unwinds like a spring that 
can be easily clogged when once we understand its mechanism. 

One remarkable phenomenon is the identity in the mode of 
procedure and in the weapons employed by the most dissimilar 
parasites in seeking a similar end. 

As, for instance, the standing ear of wheat is attacked by in- 
sects of three different families : coleoptera, diptera (two-winged 
flies), hymenoptera (four-winged flies). * All these little insects 
wait for the period of blossoming of .the wheat to introduce an 
egg at the base of the spike under the last knot. This egg soon 
hatches out a larva, which establishes a barrier to intercept the 
sap for its own benefit by making a circular incision within the 
stalk. Then, when the harvest time approaches, the larva de- 
scends from point to point, perforating the knots, and takes up 
its abode at the foot of the stalk, which the sickle never cuts ; or, 
like the cecidomia, it bends backward and stretches itself out 
like a spring to reach the ground, as the salmon, ascending a 
stream, springs over the cataracts. Each of these insects for- 
tunately has a parasite, sometimes of the same family, which 
limits its ravages and multiplies in direct ratio to the fecundity 
of its victim. The platygastrum, a little four-winged black fly, 
introduces its eggs beside those of the cecidomia (whose pre- 
sence it recognizes by unerring instinct) by means of its auger 
ending in a spear-head. As soon as the larvas of the cecidomia 
begin their work the larvas of the platygastrum enter their 
bodies and devour them after the fashion of the ichneumon 
until the period of hatching arrives, when the astonished ob- 
server sees a different fly issue from the empty skin of the ceci- 
domia. 

So also the chlorops is destroyed by the alysis, of the family 
of ichneumons, with a prolonged abdomen ending in an auger. 
When we study the parasites of wheat we wonder how the pre- 
cious cereal can escape their attacks, and marvel no longer that 
the devastations of insects are estimated at two thousand mil- 
lions in France alone. While the cryptogams, flies, and coleop- 
tera attack the wheat, arachnides and myriapodes (one-thousand- 
footed) f attack the germs. 

* Saperda, chlorops, cephus, cecidomia. f Acarus and iules. 



1883.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 461 

The acarus has two pincers like those of the lobster, which it 
uses to perforate the cotyledons and grind the farina. The iule, 
which needs a liquid nourishment, insinuates itself into the inte- 
rior of the grain, when the farinaceous mass is transformed to 
vegetable milk under the influence of soluble ferments engen- 
dered by germination. It is a little millipede of one centimetre 
in length, formed of fifty rings, each bearing two lateral stigmata 
of vivid red color. The number of iules is considerable in the 
infested land ; we find them rolled one over the other in the 
grain of cereals. 

Another animalcule still more interesting,* of the family of 
trichinae, produces smut in the wheat during damp months. 
This is microscopic in dimensions, and possesses the strange 
power of drying up and reviving according to the weather. A 
drop of water will produce this miracle. You can see through 
the microscope the little worms dry up by the evaporation of 
the liquid. They can be preserved indefinitely in a box and re- 
suscitated at will by a drop of water. 

R6aumur followed minutely the evolutions of the fly which 
lays its eggs in the cabbage caterpillar. The victim appears to 
be slightly affected ; it eats with its ordinary appetite, without 
suspecting that it carries about the germ of death. Hardly are 
they hatched when the little larvae devour the caterpillar, but, 
by a providential instinct, they attack only the accessory parts ; 
without injuring the essential organs of life, they are nourished 
by fat which surrounds the digestive organ itself. 

When they have acquired their complete development, at the 
moment when the caterpillar prepares for the chrysalis state, 
they come out all together from their living prison, given up 
then to annihilation. 

The fruitful investigations of Reaumur were confirmed and 
carried on by a naturalist of the country of Linnseus. The Swede 
De Geer describes a very fine species of ichneumon which lodges 
its eggs in the eggs of other insects for instance, butterflies. 
The worm which issues from the ichneumon is so small that it 
finds within the shell of the other egg all the food necessary to 
enable it to reach its growth ; there it changes to a nymph and 
then to a fly ; the fly pierces the shell, which it has emptied 
of the contents, and which would now be only a prison. The 
amazed naturalist sees a little fly emerge from the eggs whence 
he had expected caterpillars. 

Reaumur and Vallisnieri observed also the manoeuvres of 



462 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [July, 

parasites upon cereals and fruits which belong to the same fami- 
lies and are both nearly of one species. I have already said that 
a weevil of the order of coleoptera and a moth of the order of 
butterflies are the most dangerous foes of our orchards and gra- 
naries. 

The pyrale of apples (carpocapsa pomonana) is a charming 
little butterfly, steel gray spotted with gold and bronze. The 
larva (worm), which hatches after the blossoming season, gnaws 
the fruit and digs out vertical galleries. The exhausted fruit 
drops off just at the time of chrysalizing, thus giving its parasite 
the opportunity to go into the ground, where it passes through 
its last change. 

The granaries of wheat are devastated not only by a weevil 
(calandra), but also by moths of the genus alucita, of which one 
species eats the inside of the grain, avoiding the perisperm, and 
another sews several grains together in order to lodge in the 
middle and eat them more at ease. I should never end if I were 
to describe all the atrocious tricks played by these charming little 
creatures whose secrets entomologists have revealed to us. 

It is sometimes easy to surprise the intentions of Nature in the 
peculiar structure of insects. For instance, nocturnal butterflies 
are distinguished from those which fly by day in having a little 
apparatus which fastens the lower to the upper wing. This appa- 
ratus, visible to the naked eye in the larger ones, is formed of 
a ring clasped to the great costal nerve of the upper wing, and of 
an elastic wand which is simply the isolated costal nerve of the 
posterior wing. When you remove the wand from the ring 
where it is fastened the powerful flight of the sphinx becomes un- 
equal and abrupt, like that of day butterflies. The observation 
of a caterpillar's foot through the microscope indicates whether 
the insect is adapted to the parasitism of leaves, stems, or wood. 
Certain species, like the sesies, present absolutely the same form 
and color as certain families of flies armed for war, such as the 
wasp and the ichneumons. The resemblance is so perfect that 
the enemies of these butterflies are taken in by it. So the end is 
attained by a veritable disguise, a mimicry ; it is the carnival of 
Nature. 

Others imitate the form or color of leaves or dead twigs. 
The moth of the alder, for instance, assumes during the caterpillar 
stage the form of a little knotty stick ; it keeps upright and im- 
movable to complete the illusion, and, indeed, deceives birds as 
well as men. 

The six parts of the mouth meant for grinding, among cater- 



1883. J PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 463 

pillars, transform themselves in the butterfly to a long, flexible 
proboscis, which rolls up like the spring of a watch ; anatomy 
finds in this snout, under another form, the six pieces in the same 
relation. 

But it is time for the train ; we must go. 

To end with, I remark a characteristic phenomenon of insect 
life which has attracted the notice of observers and struck the 
imagination of the poets of earliest antiquity. It is the metamor- 
phosis, celebrated by Ovid, which makes brilliant, aerial being 
issue from an unformed, repulsive larva. The ancients saw in it 
the symbol of resurrection and personified it under the form of 
a lovely young goddess with butterfly's wings. 

Psyche meant the soul, the divine breath which animates Na- 
ture. The soul, which becomes conscious in man, is unconscious 
in animals, realizing without knowing it all the marvels of life. 
It was the pantheistic and pagan conception of the universe, once 
more in fashion nowadays in the philosophical German school of 
Schopenhauer. Another school, that of Darwin and Hseckel, 
attributes understanding and conscience to animals as to man, 
and sees in the human soul only a result of the development of 
the souls of animals. 

I will not insist on this point to-day ; it is enough to have 
shown you that mind everywhere animates Nature, and that if 
materialism exists it can have no cause but corruption of heart 
or ignorance of natural things ; unfortunately this ignorance is 
encouraged by those even who have most reason to wish to dis- 
sipate it, to plead the cause of Providence by unveiling his mys- 
teries in the great work of creation. 



464 SAINT IRENMUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 



SAINT IREISLEUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. 

THOSE who have made a study of the controversial writings 
which have come down to us from the last century and the 
earlier portions of our own cannot fail to be struck with the 
very prominent position which of late years the question relating 
to the office and status of the Roman pontiff has assumed in 
works of a polemical nature on both sides. If we glance over 
the pages of that admirable work, The End of Controversy, by the 
immortal Bishop Milner himself, during the greater part of his 
episcopate, the foremost defender in England of the rights of the 
Holy See, " the champion," as Cardinal Newman has deservedly 
called him, " of God's ark in an evil time " we shall, if I remem- 
ber rightly, find but one short chapter devoted to the discussion 
of this point, while such other questions as the infallibility of the 
church, transubstantiation, and so on are treated of fully and, I 
venture to add, unanswerably. Nor is the cause of this altera- 
tion in the tactics of our adversaries, necessitating an equivalent 
change of front on our own part, far to seek. It cannot be attri- 
buted merely to the prominence which the Vatican definition of 
Papal Infallibility has given to this and cognate questions, for 
the controversy regarding them had been gradually assuming 
its present proportions for many years previous to the assem- 
bling of that council. I am inclined rather to think that it is the 
logical outcome of that Oxford movement, known as Tract a- 
rianism, which, while it carried its more consistent adherents, 
including their illustrious leader himself, into the bosom of the 
Catholic Church, so raised the religious and ecclesiastical tone 
of those who through blindness or perversity were left behind 
that,^ assimilating one by one all Catholic doctrines, or such a 
version of them as they thought could be made to square with 
their own anomalous and anarchical position, they at last found 
themselves in the situation of that worthy Anglican clergyman 
:lared his readiness to "swallow everything except papal 
supremacy ' Having arrived thus far, and inasmuch as the 
rty which has adopted these views forms no inconsiderable 
ion and that portion beyond dispute the most zealous and 
the clergy and laity of the Anglican Establishment, it is 
fficult to perceive how the controversy should have nar- 



1883.] SAINT IREN^EUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. 465 

rowed itself down to this single point, viz., What authority has 
the Roman pontiff by divine ordination, as a centre of unity and 
jurisdiction to the whole church ? 

The absence of any supreme and final authority, capable 
of deciding once and for all questions of faith and morals, 
and whose decision should be binding upon the consciences of 
the faithful, constitutes a fatal and irremediable flaw in the 
theory of Anglicanism, rendering the efforts of the Ritualists, 
whether in the way of ceremonial imitation of Catholic worship 
or in the simulation and adoption of fragments of Catholic doc- 
trine, both dogmatic and ascetical, merely a melancholy bur- 
lesque. The Ritualistic conception of the church, when resolved 
into its ultimate parts, resembles only the Hindoo idea of the 
world upon which we live, which rests upon an elephant, which 
rests upon a tortoise, which rests upon nothing / 

But the Ritualists, at all events those among them who have 
an elementary knowledge of ecclesiastical history, are perfectly 
well aware that from apostolic times downwards the church 
had always the power of excluding heretics from her commu- 
nion Marcionites, Montanists, Novatians, and so on. Now, it 
stands to reason, that the supreme authority in this matter must 
have existed somewhere throughout all these centuries, and the 
whole controversy turns upon the question, Where ivas it ? The 
test of true doctrine could not have been the ruling of individual 
bishops, for they did not always agree, and the truth is one. It 
was, perhaps some one will maintain, the universal doctrine of 
the church ; but this is merely putting one set of words for 
another without elucidating the 'meaning, for we are met at the 
outset by the question, How do you define the church of what did 
it consist, and what was its living voice? That of all the bishops 
all those who, being in valid episcopal orders, were in actual 
possession of a see? Was, for instance, Eusebius of Csesarea 
one of its bishops? If so, then the church could scarcely be 
said to be unanimous even on the doctrine of the /tomoousion, for 
he and many others were known to be Semi-Arians. Where, then, 
was this supreme authority, whose decision on matters of faith 
and morals was to be final and binding, and whom, when it had 
once spoken, Christians could not contradict without heresy? 
It was in the Chair of Peter, the Apostolic See ; " for with this 
church, on account of its more powerful principality, every 
church must agree." 

I do not here propose to touch upon the Scriptural evidences 
of St. Peter's primacy, nor the proofs, drawn from history and 
VOL. xxxvii. 30 , 



466 SAINT IREN&US AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

logic, that the Bishops of Rome were from the beginning recog- 
nized as his successors. What I purpose doing in the present 
paper is to take the above well-known passage from the writings 
of St. Irenseus, Bishop of Lyons, Against Heresies, and by a care- 
ful grammatical and logical analysis thereof, in all its parts, to 
endeavor to ascertain in what estimation he held the Holy See, 
and consequently, inasmuch as he is regarded on all hands as a 
representative writer, what was the acknowledged status of the 
Roman pontiff in the second century. 

In order that the whole sense of the holy bishop's words may 
be made clear to those who are not familiar with his writings, 
I will take the liberty of quoting him from the commencement 
of the chapter containing the above-cited words, out of the 
Protestant translation in the Ante-Nicene Library, published by 
Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, and translated by the Rev. Alexan- 
der Roberts, D.D., and the Rev. W. H. Rambaut, A.B. I do not 
know who these gentlemen are, but they are certainly not Roman 
Catholics. 

In book iii. chap. ii. St. Irenseus says : 

.. "When, however, they [the heretics] are confuted from'the Scriptures, 
they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not 
correct nor of authority, and assert that they are ambiguous, and that the 
truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradi- 
tion. For they allege that the truth was not delivered by means of written 
documents, but -vivd voce. But, again, when we refer them to that tradition 
which originates from the apostles, and which is preserved by means of the 
succession of presbyters in the churches, they object to tradition, saying 
that they themselves are wiser, not only than the presbyters, but even 
than the apostles, because they have discovered the unadulterated truth." 
"Chap, iii. It is within the power, therefore, of all in every church 
who may wish to see the truth to contemplate clearly the tradition of the 
apostles manifested throughout the whole world ; and all are in a position 
to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the 
churches, and to demonstrate the successions of these men to our own 
times, those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these 
[heretics] rave about. For if the apostles had known hidden , mysteries, 
which they were in the habit of imparting 'to the perfect' apart and privily 
from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom 
they were also committing the churches themselves. For they were de- 
sirous that these men should be very perfect and blameless in all things, 
whom also they were leaving behind as their successors, delivering up 
their own place of government to these men ; which men, if they dis- 
charged their functions honestly, would be a great boon [to the church], 
but if they should fall away the direst calamity. 

'Since, however, it would be very tedious in such a volume as this to 
reckon up the successions of all the churches, we do put to confusion all 



1883.] SAINT I RE N^ us AND THE ROM4N SEE. 467 

those who in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vain- 
glory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized 
'meetings, [we do this, I say] by indicating that tradition, derived from the 
apostles, of the very great, the very ancient and universally known 
church, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, 
Peter and Paul ; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men which 
comes down to our times by the successions of bishops. For it is a matter 
of necessity that every church should agree 'with this church, on account of its 
pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apos- 
tolic tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] 
who exist everywhere." 

This is the whole passage from St. Irenasus, given in the 
words of the Protestant translators themselves. I will only add 
that, in my humble opinion, the thanks of all readers of English 
are due to these gentlemen for the upright and honest way in 
which they have conducted this translation. We shall find in 
our analysis of this passage that the method laid down by St. 
Irenasus by which individuals may assure themselves as to the 
truths of divine tradition is precisely that which exists in the 
Roman Catholic Church at the present day, and in no other. If 
an individual be desirous of ascertaining what the Catholic faith 
is upon a given point, it matters not where he may be London 
or Paris, New York or San Francisco or Sydney he has only to 
go to the first Catholic priest whom he meets and ask him. And 
how, is it asked, is the inquirer to know that this person pos- 
sesses the true apostolic tradition? Because he will find, if he 
investigates the subject, that the tradition which the priest hands 
to him is that which he in turn receives from his bishop, who in 
his turn receives it from the Apostolic See, in which chair sits 
the successor of him to whom our Lord said, Feed my sheep. 

And this is precisely the rule which St. Irenseus lays down. 
" We refer them," says he, " to that tradition which originates 
from the apostles, and which is preserved by means of the suc- 
cessions of presbyters in the churches " ; and then, going a step 
higher, he says, " We are in a position to reckon up those who 
were by the apostles instituted bishops in the churches, and to 
demonstrate the succession of these men to our own times " ; and 
then, passing to the highest step of all, " We do put to confusion 
all those who in whatever manner assemble in unauthorized 
meetings by indicating " the tradition of the See of Rome ; "for 
it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this 
church, on account of its pre-eminent authority." Here, says he, is 
the summit of ecclesiastical authority, and when you have ascer- 
tained the doctrine of the Roman See you know ipso facto the 



468 SAINT IREN^LUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

doctrine of all other sees throughout the world which are in 
Catholic communion, for they of necessity take their keynote- 
from her. 

The Latin version of the passage under review runs as 

follows: 

"Ad hanc enim ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem necesse 
est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est eos qui sunt undique fideles ; in 
qua semper ab his qui sunt undique con'servata est ea quae est ab apostolis 
traditio." 

Let us examine the various parts of this sentence minutely, 
and see whether, in its strict grammatical and logical construc- 
tion, it favors the Anglican " view" of the matter or the thesis 
maintained by the theologians of the Catholic Church. 

The original Greek text of St. Irenseus has been lost. All 
that we possess of the original is the greater portion of the first 
book, which has been put together by means of the copious quo- 
tations found in the works of SS. Hippolytus and Epiphanius. 
But these fragments are of the highest value, as they enable us 
to compare them with the Latin translation a process which 
proves the latter to be a most faithful and accurate rendering. 
Those of my readers who desire to pursue this subject further 
may consult Massuet, Dissertatio Hi. De Irencei Doctrind. 

If, consequently, we find that the Latin rendering cannot, by 
the utmost efforts of Protestant ingenuity, be twisted into giving 
countenance to the Anglican view, I think that we may reason- 
ably conclude that such was not the "view " of the great bishop 
of Lyons himself. 

Now, Protestants of various kinds, both English and Con- 
tinental, Anglicans and Calvinists, have tried their '"prentice 
hand " upon this passage of St. Irenaeus ; but it is only fair to 
say that the Calvinists, like Salmasius, are, generally speaking, by 
lar the more honest and straightforward in their interpretation 
of the words, probably because they can afford to tell the truth 
upon the subject, while Anglicans feel that they 'have to carry 
the point against Rome per fas et nefas. 

The first objection to the Catholic interpretation which I will 
notice will be found substantially in Palmer's Treatise on the 
Church of Christ, vol. ii. p. 412, and in the works of other Angli- 
can writers. It is that, although St. Irenseus does say that it is 
ssary for all churches to agree with or resort to the Church 
Rome on account of its more powerful principality, yet he 
does not affirm that this principality is of divine institution, and 



1883.] SAINT IREN^US AND THE ROMAN SEE. 469 

therefore it is not divinely ordained that all churches should re- 
sort to or agree with the Church of Rome. 

Now, in reply to this objection it may first be observed in 
passing that it is not simply on account of its more powerful 
principality that St. Irenaeus declares that all churches must 
agree with Rome, but because, in addition to this, the faith has 
there always been preserved uncorrupted. 

But, be this as it may, it is manifest, when we couple these 
two facts together, that although St. Irenaeus does not assert it 
to be of divine institution explicitly and directly, yet he does so 
implicitly and in reality ; for, first, if that principality were purely 
of human and not of divine right, it is inconceivable that a neces- 
sity should be placed upon all other churches of agreement with 
the church possessing such principality ; and, secondly, if the 
purity of the doctrine of the Roman Church were simply acci- 
dental, how, by comparing their errors with its teaching, could 
all heretics be confounded ? Unless the doctrine of that church 
was always to be preserved pure by divine institution and privi- 
lege, heretics might no less be confounded by consulting the 
doctrine of any other individual church, especially of one found- 
ed by an apostle, which up to the time of St. Irenaeus had pre- 
served the faith incorrupt. We shall see the force of this argu- 
ment more clearly when we come to consider the words must of 
necessity nccesse est. 

Another very common objection, derived, if I remember 
rightly, from the Lutheran Griesbach, is this : It is possible that 
St. Irenaeus, for the words (which I have here translated) more 
poiver ful principality, wrote in the original Kpsirrova apxrfv, which 
can be rendered more powerful beginning. 

Now, supposing that the saint had so written, it is quite im- 
material to us. 'Apxrf, it is well known, can mean either begin- 
ning we princedom ; but princedom, which is the word the Latin 
translator uses, who of course had seen the original, never sig- 
nifies beginning. Judging, then, from the general accuracy of the 
Latin translation, so far as it is in our power to compare it with 
the original, there is the strongest probability that St. Irenaeus 
did not use any word which signified beginning, and this more 
particularly as the fact that the Roman Church had a " power- 
ful beginning " had commenced with more fatai, so to speak, than 
other churches would not in itself be a reason why every church 
should be under the necessity of agreeing with or resorting to 
it. How many churches had most powerful and glorious be- 
ginnings which afterwards fell away from the faith altogether ! 



470 SAINT IRENSEUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

It is noteworthy that the interpretation upon which I am in- 
sisting is precisely that given by Von Dollinger and Friedrich, 
the leaders of the " Old-Catholic " sect in Germany. Dr. von 
Dollinger, in the English translation of his Church History (vol. 
i. p. 256), after speaking of the Protestant ''attempts to wrest the 
words from their evident signification," himself gives the follow- 
ing rendering : " It is necessary that the faithful of every church 
should be in communion with this church, on account of its 
more powerful authority, in which communion the faithful of the 
whole world have preserved the apostolic tradition." So wrote 
Von Dollinger when he was an honored professor of Catholic 
theology. 

"Hei mihi, quantum mutatus ab illo ! " 

And, stranger still, Professor Friedrich, supposed to be. one of 
the authors of Janus, only two years before the assembling of the 
Vatican Council, in a work entitled Kirchen Geschiclite Deutsch- 
lands (vol. i. p. 409), has the following remarkable passage : 

" Interpret as we will the ' propter potiorem principalitatem,' Irenaeus 
testifies to the fact of the pre-eminence of the Roman Church in his time ; 
for this, even omitting the phrase in question, is clearly expressed in the 
passage, since it declares that every church must unconditionally and of 
necessity agree with the Roman Church, and measure its doctrine by her 
standard, for she is the guardian of apostolical tradition. But to the 
mind of Iren^us this tradition of the Roman Church herself is essential 
and fundamental for the whole church." 

Schneemann, as Father Addis informs us,* " shows that in 
each of the twenty-three places of the Latin version where it 
occurs * principalitas " signifies 'dominion.' It is used, e.g., for 
the supremacy of God over all 'principalitatem habet in omni- 
bus Dens' (iv. 38, 3); for Christ's headship over the church (iii. 
16, 6); for that attributed by the Gnostics to the spirit of light 
(iv. 35, 2)." 

As regards the Greek original of this expression potentior (or, 
as some manuscripts have it, potior) principalitas, Cardinal Fran- 
zelin, in his great work De Divina Traditione et Scriptiira, men- 
tions four different conjectures, three of which are Protestant 
and one Catholic : 

Griesbach (Lutheran) supposes Sid rrfv sxavGoTEpav 
Salmasius (Calvinist) " I? aiperor Ttpcoreiov. 

Thiersch (Lutheran) did (pepovtiav 

Massuet (O.S.B.) < -LTtsprspov 



* Anglican Misrepresentations, p. 8, to which valuable pamphlet I am indebted for the 
above quotations from D511inger and Fr.'edrich. 



1883.] SAINT IREN^US AND THE ROMAN SEE. 471 

It will be seen that only one of these learned men favors the 
word apxn Griesbach. This is the author to whom I referred 
above on the authority of the Anglican controversialist Heaven.* 
Why Griesbach's Greek for the word potentiorem differs in 
Beaven's quotation and in that of Cardinal Franzelin I am un- 
able to explain. 

The word &PX 1 ? is frequently used in Holy Scripture as signi- 
fying dominion or sovereignty as, for example, Rom. viii. 38 ; 
I Cor. xv. 24; Ephes. i. 21 and iii. 10 ; Col. i. 16 and ii. 10-15, 
and Titus iii. i. Our Lord himself also uses the same expression 
in St. Luke xii. 11 and xx. 20. Liddell and Scott, in their well- 
known lexicon, translate the word, when it refers to temporal 
sovereignty, by the first place or power, sovereignty, dominion, 
quoting Pindar, AioS apx^ &GOV apxai, and so on. As regards 
TCpoorelov and its cognates TtpGorsiav and Ttpoorevcov^ its meaning 
is virtually decided in Col. i. 18: That in all things he may hold 
the primacy (Ttpoorsvoor). 

Another objection is that all the apostolic churches had a 
certain principalitas, or pre-eminence, before other churches. It 
is, of course, manifest that any church founded by an apostle 
would have/^r se some sort of pre-eminence, take some kind of 
precedence, over those not so founded. But that is nothing to 
the point. I deny in toto for indeed the words of St. Irenaeus 
himself exclude the idea that any apostolic church, except that 
of Rome, rejoiced in anv principalitas on account of which all 
churches must unconditionally and of necessity agree ^cvith it and 
measure their doctrine by its standard. Nor, again, is it true that 
the apostolic churches, Rome only excepted, always preserved 
the apostolic tradition. And Anglicans in particular are espe- 
cially debarred from making use of such an argument, for their 
own Thirty-nine Articles expressly declare that the churches of 
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem too " have erred." If, on 
the other hand, simply a pre-eminence of honor is intended we 
may pass the objection by ; it is irrelevant. 

An immense amount of controversy has centred round the 
true rendering of necesse est it is necessary. Mr. Beaven (p. 67) 
observes: " Necesse est may imply, it is true, that it is the duty 
(sic] of every church to resort to PvOme, but its more natural and 
usual meaning is that as a matter of course (sic) Christians from 
all parts, and not strictly the churches themselves, were led to 
resort thither by the superior eminence of that church." I am 
not sure that an apology is not due to the readers of THE CA- 

* An Account of the Life and Writings of St. Irenceus, 1841, p. 65. 



472 SAINT IREN&US AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

THOLIC WORLD for introducing an objection logically so feeble, 
and so wanting in an appreciation of the meaning of language, as 
the above ; for the learned author, while admitting that it may 
imply what is its obvious and, as we shall see, inevitable significa- 
tion, presents us on his own part with an interpretation as the 
alternative which diametrically contradicts the words of St. 
Irenseus himself. For the holy bishop distinctly declares that it 
is strictly the churches themselves, and not the individuals com- 
posing them, who must resort to Rome for guidance. 

Let us, however, consider more at length the force of the ex- 
pression necesse est. If we turn to any standard Latin dictionary 
as, for instance, that of Dr. William Smith (one of the classical 
examiners in the University of London) we find the expression 
rendered thus: I, unavoidable, inevitable, necessary ; 2, needful, re- 
quisite. Now, if Mr. Beaven's words have any meaning at all, 
they signify that although Christians were attracted to Rome by 
the superior eminence of its church, still they were under no 
obligation to have recourse to it, and if they had neglected or 
refused to do so it would have made no difference whatever in 
their ecclesiastical status. But this, as we have seen, is precisely 
what the word does not signify ; its simple and solitary meaning, 
as we have ascertained, is inevitable, unavoidable necessity a 
sine qud non. 

I remember some time ago reading in an Anglican work a 
comment upon this passage, in which it was maintained that if 
St. Irenasus had intended that all churches ought, as a matter of 
right and wrong, to agree with Rome, he would not have used 
the expression necesse est, but oportct. Now, at first sight this 
objection seems very specious indeed, yet upon investigation it 
will not hold water for a moment. In my humble opinion, if 
St. Irenaeus had used oportct there might have been, supposing 
that this were the only evidence for papal supremacy, a loop- 
hole of escape for Anglicans. For oportct it behooves certainly 
implies a moral obligation, but not an absolute necessity. It be- 
hooves (oportct) a man not to sin, but still man, as man, through 
his free-will has the power of sinning, and if he does sin he does 
not cease to be a man. Had St. Irenaeus used this expression 
it might have been urged that, while he represented that all 
churches ought to agree with Rome in order to the perfection of 
their ecclesiastical status, nevertheless he did not say thai if they 
did not do so they would cease to be churches*'.*., to form part 
of the visible church of Christ. Now, this is very important, 
because it is precisely the position claimed by the most advanced 



1883.] SAINT IREN^US AND THE ROMAN SEE. 473 

section of Anglican High-Churchmen. " We know," they say, 
" that the whole church ought to be one and visibly united to its 
head the Roman bishop ; but our * unhappy divisions ' have 
placed us where we are, and we know that, in spite of these 
divisions, the Church of England has not ceased to be a true 
branch of the Church Catholic, and therefore it is our duty to 
remain in her." The Anglican divines of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, more honest in their Protestantism than 
those who claim to be their successors, used this same argument 
with regard to episcopacy. They granted that it was essential to 
t\\Q perfection of the church, but not to its existence. 

Now, St. Irenssus, by using this word necesse, deliberately 
cuts off this excuse. For this expression does not signify a moral 
necessity at all. A moral necessity, as I have said before, in 
relation to human beings signifies a moral obligation such as the 
obligation of man to love and serve God, his true end, which 
obligation, as I have also observed, by reason of the freedom 
of the human will, may be set at naught without the offender 
ceasing thereby to be a man. He ceases, it is true, to be a per- 
fect man, but he does not nevertheless cease to be a man. So, 
if agreement with the see of Peter were only a moral neces- 
sity, it might be set at naught by local churches, without their 
thereby ceasing to form part of the visible church ; the agree- 
ment being necessary to i\\Q perfection of these churches, to their 
perfect health, so to speak, but not to their existence as integral 
portions of the Church Catholic. 

Now, this, I maintain, is precisely what necesse est does not 
mean. The phrase is not at all an uncommon one in classical 
writers, but in every instance that I can think of it signifies an 
absolute necessity just such a necessity as that by which, as St. 
Augustine says, in order for a limb to form a living member of a 
living man, it must be visibly joined to his body. 

To refer to one passage, familiar, doubtless, to many readers 
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Caesar (De Bella Gallico, book vii. c. 
19) has the following : 

" Indignantes milites Csesar, quod conspectum suum hostes ferre pos- 
sent tantulo spatio interjecto, et signuni prcelii expectantes, edocet 
quanto detrimento et quot virorum fortium morte necesse sit constare 
victoriam." 

" Caesar clearly points out to his soldiers, indignant that the enemy 
could bear the sight of them, so short a distance intervening, and de- 
manding the signal for action, with how great a loss and with the death of 
how many brave men it would be necessary to obtain the victory." 



474 SAINT IREN.&US AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

Nothing can be clearer than the meaning- of neccsse in this con- 
nection. Csesar does not tell them that without the loss of 
these lives the victory may indeed be gained, but that it will 
be less complete, less perfect, and the consequent glory to the 
Roman arms less ; but that without the sacrifice of these brave 
men it cannot be obtained at all, that in order to secure this 
victory it is absolutely necessary (necesse) to make -this sacrifice 
a sine qud non. 

The distinction between an absolute necessity of this kind 
and a mere moral obligation is expressed by the terms necessitas 
mediizud. necessitas prcecepti respectively. These expressions are 
not unknown to Anglican theologians, as Father Ryder has 
pointed out in his masterly reply to Dr. Littledale's Plain . 
Reasons. The learned Oratorian mentions that both Stillingfleet 
and Bramhall explain these terms. The latter says : " Doth he 
know no distinction of things necessary to be known, that some 
are not so necessary as others? Some things are necessary to 
be known necessitate medii to obtain salvation ; some things are 
necessary to be known only necessitate prcecepti, because they are 
commanded." The former, we have seen, is the simple mean- 
ing of neccsse cst ; the latter is implied by oportet ought. 

But, urge our Anglican opponents, the " necessity " here re- 
ferred to is merely a necessity, an accidental necessity, of posi- 
tion the relative position, that is, between the Church of 
Rome and surrounding churches. It is difficult to decide what 
is exactly intended by this expression position. I take it for 
granted that mere location cannot be meant, for in that case 
the phrase would appear to be utterly without signification. I 
cannot conceive how the churches, say, of Damascus or Antioch 
should by reason of their location be under a necessity of going 
to Rome for instruction. If they were under that necessity at 
all the reason must surely be sought for elsewhere. The Ang- 
lican Grabe imagined that the churches were constantly under 
the necessity of sending embassies to the Roman emperors; but 
this absurdity is demolished by the Benedictine Massuet, who 
hints that the imperial throne was the last place where Christians 
could hope for right or justice. The only explanation that I 
have been able to think of is this: that, on account of their 
relative position to Rome as the capital of the empire, these 
churches were under the necessity of going there as the head- 
quarters of news and gossip. But what is the outcome of this 
theory? ^ It simply amounts to this: that if the expression necesse 
est implies an unavoidable necessity, and the dictionaries tell 



1883.] SAINT IREN^US AND THE ROMAN SEE. 475 

us that it does ; and if the churches in all parts of the world 
were under this unavoidable necessity of having recourse to Rome 
to learn the apostolic tradition, which was necessary to their 
spiritual life, and St. Irenaeus says they were, then that position- 
that relative position which imposed this necessity upon them 
of having recourse to -Rome, unavoidable, because without it they 
could not learn the truth must have been imposed by divine 
ordination. For it is inconceivable that that without which the 
churches could not live should be a mere accident of human 
origin. 

And yet when they are brought to Rome under this unavoid- 
able necessity, what, according to this precious hypothesis, is it 
from which they are to learn the apostolic tradition ? The in- 
fallible voice of Peter's successor, speaking from Peter's chair? 
Not at all. The religious gossip, the pious babble, the Exeter- 
Hall spouting of the city of Rome ! all fallible, all human, all 
just as likely to be wrong as these unfortunates themselves. 
What a frightful " position " ! What an awful burlesque of the 
light shining in darkness ! What a horrible piece of bathos ! 
Bound down by the iron chains of unavoidable necessity to receive 
as God's truth the gossip of a crowd of erring men, oppressed 
all the time with the sense of their own fallibility and with the 
cruel consciousness that, while obliged to believe, they may be 
wrong ! 

I thank my God that I have been delivered from a system 
which forces us to turn the " grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
tfie charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Ghost " 
into a tragedy like this ! 

Nor can it be said that the churches only resorted to Rome 
because it was the metropolis, but that they could, if they took 
the trouble, obtain the information elsewhere. Ncccsse cst does 
not, as we have seen, imply a mere moral, or relative, or partial 
obligation, but an absolute, unavoidable necessity. There was no 
getting out of it : they had to go ! Their unfortunate " position " 
left them no other means of obtaining (I will not say the truth, 
but) those doctrines which they were bound to believe, albeit they 
might have no more substantial basis than the fertile imaginings 
of Mrs. Sairey Gamp ! 

If Anglicans, instead of racking their brains to find out ob- 
jections and excuses, would adopt the- simple course of applying 
to the writings of St. Irenasus, they would find that he himself 
directly contradicts this idea. It was not, he tells us, by reason 
of the " position " of the churches that they were obliged to 



4;6 SAINT IRENALUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

agree with Rome, but propter potentiorem principalitatemon ac- 
count of the pre-eminent authority of the Church of Rome itself. 
Were this potent tor principalitas something simply accidental, by 
reason of its happening to be the church of that great city to* 
and from which multitudes were constantly going backwards and 
forwards from all parts of the empire, the expression necesse est 
could not properly have been used at all. Here again Angli- 
cans have fallen into an error simply from the want of carefully 
noting the saint's words. He does not (I have already called 
attention to this fact) state that it is unavoidably necessary for 
individuals to go with the multitude to Rome, and there ascer- 
tain in the crowd the apostolic tradition. It is manifest that had 
he said so he would have committed himself to an absurdity, 
because no such necessity existed or was recognized or put in 
practice. Those Christians who did go to Rome probably went 
there on business of their own, and not with any idea that they 
were obliged to do so, or that unless they did so they could not 
attain to a knowledge of the apostolic tradition. Is it not re- 
markable that one should have to state such a platitude as this ? 
St. Irenaeus, I repeat, does not say individuals, but that the 
churches, as churches (in the persons of their bishops, if you 
please, but that is the same thing), must have recourse to or 
agree with Rome. There is not necessarily any idea of locomo- 
tion here at all. It is simply an affair of concord and agreement 
in doctrine, and of applying to Rome not to the gossiping, gad- 
ding multitude, but to the Church of Rome, for the keynote of 
apostolic doctrine. What I maintain, therefore, is and I submit 
that I have logically proved it that the principalitas of the Ro- 
man Church, which was the cause of the unavoidable necessity 
laid upon all other churches of agreeing with it, could not have 
been the principality of imperial Rome, for that was essentially 
pagan ; nor any civil or social pre-eminence of the church there, 
for, as Barrow justly observes, none existed ; and inasmuch as it 
was a principality which constrained all other churches to agree 
with the Church of Rome, it could not have been a mere acci- 
dent, whether of position or otherwise, for in matters of faith 
(and of such St. Irenasus is treating) such absolute, unavoidable 
necessity can only exist by divine institution, and as such forms 
part (and that the very root and basis) of the essential and in- 
tegral constitution of Christ's church as it came forth from the 
hand of its divine Creator, and which consequently cannot be 
repudiated or denied without heresy. 

But, in spite of the apparent clearness of the holy bishop's 



1883.] SAINT IREN^US AND THE ROMAN SEE. 477 

words, the subterfuges of Anglican ingenuity are by no means 
exhausted. Perhaps, they will tell you, the words ad Jianc enim 
ecclesiam to or with this church, etc. do not refer in particular 
to the Roman Church, but to any church in which as a fact the 
apostolic tradition is preserved. One cannot help feeling that 
the enemies of the Holy See must be hard pressed indeed when 
they are driven to take refuge in such a piece of sophistry as 
this. For if, St. Irenaaus having said, as he does, Leaving aside 
all other churches, we point them to the Church of Rome, because 
with this church all churches must agree if by this church he 
does not intend to signify the Roman Church alone, then words 
have no meaning whatever and grammar is a lost art. To offer 
an example familiar to Anglicans, there is preserved, I believe, 
in the Tower of London a volume called the Sealed Prayer-Book, 
which is the identical and original Book of Common Prayer set 
forth by authority at the last revision in the reign of King 
Charles II., with which all copies, in order to be authentic, must 
agree, just as, St. Irenasus tells us, all other churches must agree 
with Rome. 

Now, suppose that any one were to say, " I refer you to the 
Sealed Prayer-Book, for with this prayer-book, on account of its supe- 
rior authenticity, all other prayer-books must accord," and should 
then proceed to argue that the words " this prayer-book " did 
not refer to the Sealed Prayer-Book, but to all prayer-books which 
contain the wording set forth at the last revision. What would 
one naturally reply ? I think the answer would be that, in the 
first place, the grammatical construction of the sentence would 
not bear any such interpretation, and, secondly, that the whole 
question turns upon the point as to which books did preserve the 
original wording, and that the Sealed Prayer-Book was the only 
criterion in this matter the final court of appeal, so to speak. 
Apply this same argument to the words of St. Irenasus, and the 
inference is surely irresistible. 

I can scarcely imagine it to be necessary to enter upon a pro- 
longed refutation of the argument of Barrow, that the " more 
powerful principality." refers not to that o{ the Roman Church, 
but to that of the pagan city of Rome. That the mere position 
of a heathen city as the head of the civilized world should be any 
reason why all churches should be bound to agree in doctrine 
with the church located there, apart from any attributes of that 
church in itself, is absurd. One cannot help suspecting that 
Barrow could only have intended this remark as what Locke 
calls an argumcntum ad ignorantiam. Indeed, he contradicts him- 



478 SAINT IREN^EUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

self in another place by stating that St. Irenaeus does not speak 
of the judicial power of the Church of Rome, but of its credi- 
ble testimony ; therefore (as an argumentum ad hominem) it was 
not the pagan city of Rome that is referred to. 

I have now, I think, met all the principal objections against 
the Roman interpretation of this passage an interpretation which 
simply amounts to this : that the Roman See is, as theologians 
say, the organ of infallibility to the church. Let us return for a 
moment to the simile of the Sealed Prayer-Book. A student of 
liturgiology is, we will suppose, about to write a work upon the 
Book of Common Prayer, and is naturally desirous that the 
sources of his information shall be as authentic and trustworthy 
as possible. He is told that the best way to secure this is not 
to depend upon any copy which he may pick up at the nearest 
bookseller's, but to investigate certain ancient editions, famous 
for the correctness of their type, which are to be found in such 
and such libraries. But, says his adviser, it will save you much 
trouble if you go to the fountain-head at once and obtain permis- 
sion from the proper authorities to examine the Scaled Prayer- 
Book ; for with this book, on account of its pre-eminent authenti- 
city, all other copies of the Book of Common Prayer, in order 
to be correct, must agree. By strict analogy, according to Bea- 
ven, Palmer, et id genus omne, this person' is not to be regarded as 
asserting that the true version is, as a last and final resort, to be 
found in the Sealed Prayer-Book, but in the scattered copies in the 
libraries ! 

It may, however, be contended that the analogy is incomplete, 
because the church in extenso is really infallible by divine institu- 
tion. That, of course, is perfectly true, but I do not think it breaks 
the analogy, for, in the first place, the infallibility of the whole 
church in extenso does not constitute the apostolic churches per 
se individually infallible; and, further, we may also say that 
all correct copies of the Book of Common Prayer have a meta- 
physical accuracy of their own, not, indeed, proper to them as 
prayer-books, but merely accidental, and this is all that could 
be said as to the purity of doctrine in the apostolic churches 
other than Rome in the time of St. Irenaeus. For the correct- 
ness of these prayer-books is not an essentially infallible correct- 
ness; that belongs only to the Scaled Prayer-Book, just as essential 
infallibility in doctrine belongs only to the See of Rome. The 
correctness of these other books is real but reflected; and just 
as the only test as to whether each separate copy forms one of 
the collection of authentic editions is to prove that it exactly 



1883.] SAINT IREN&US AND THE ROMAN SEE. 479 

agrees with the Sealed Prayer-Book, so, according to the axiom 
laid down by St. Irenaeus, the only proof that any given church 
possesses the true apostolic tradition is by showing that it in all 
things agrees with the Apostolic See of Rome. 

There is, therefore, nothing singular in the reference which St. 
Irenaeus makes to the apostolic churches. He does indeed say 
that, in his time, to consult the tradition and teaching of these 
churches was a way to ascertain the truth, on account of their 
acknowledged orthodoxy ; but he immediately proceeds to state 
most distinctly that it was not the best way, nor the final way, 
nor the way to get an answer absolutely and in every age infal- 
lible. The apostolic churches, Rome excepted, might err from 
the faith, and subsequently did err in the persons of many of 
their bishops, and consequently, being individually fallible, it is 
impossible that there should be a perpetual obligation laid upon 
all other churches of agreeing with either or all of them. One 
church only, according to St. Irenasus, possesses this high privi- 
lege, because it is the see of Peter, upon whom, as upon a rock, 
the Lord built the church, " to whom he commended his sheep 
as to another self," * and to whom he gave the supreme com- 
mission, "Butthou, when thou art converted, confirm thy breth- 
ren." 

Since writing the above I have carefully reread the passage 
from St. Irenasus, and it has occurred to me that one other ob- 
jection may possibly be raised. I have never seen or heard it 
made, nevertheless it may be as well to take it in advance. I 
foresee that it may be objected that St. Irenaeus refers to the Ro- 
man Se@, not because it is the see of Peter and therefore infallible, 
but simply to save the trouble of consulting all other sees. Now, 
I think that any Anglican who did advance this objection would 
be handling a very dangerous 'weapon, one which would turn 
upon him and utterly shatter his most cherished theories ; where- 
as, on the contrary, it makes nothing as against us. When I say 
any Anglican I mean, of course, one who belongs to that parti- 
cular section of the High-Church party which professes, as its 
rule of faith, to hold all those doctrines, and those only, upon 
which all the so-called " branches " of the Catholic Church are 
agreed. For if the words of the holy bishop really mean what 
the above objection asserts, it will be observed that St. Irenaeus 
gives no countenance to the agreement of churches at all per se ; 
all that he seems, upon that hypothesis, to say is that the various 
apostolic churches have, as an historical fact, preserved the teach- 

* St. Augustine, torn. v. serrn. xlvi. No. 30. 



480 SAINT IRENAEUS AND THE ROMAN SEE. [July, 

ing of the apostles intact, just as the Dominican Order claims to 
have kept the philosophical doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas in 
their purest form. But this must be an exceedingly uncomfor- 
table doctrine for the branch-theory Anglican. For it either 
forces him to admit that the only agreement of churches recog- 
nized in the second century was their common agreement with Rome, 
or else it destroys the idea of an infallible church altogether and 
throws him back upon the baldest Protestantism. Fortunately, 
the words of St. Irenaeus, taken as a whole, will not bear any 
such interpretation. The subsequent statement that all churches 
must agree with the see of Rome, on account of an inherent au- 
thority vested in her, entirely destroys the idea of a merely ac- 
cidental preservation of the traditionary teaching of the apostles 
in certain churches. Our divine Lord pledged himself to be 
with the church all days, and he promised the abiding presence 
of the Paraclete to guide and preserve her in the truth. If the 
whole church were to fall into error and teach false doctrine 
Christ's promise would have failed, and the criterion of certainty 
in matters of faith necessary to salvation would have passed 
away. But if it being necessary for all churches to agree with 
the Roman See that apostolic throne could itself fall away 
and teach error, the calamity above referred to would actually 
take place : the whole church would necessarily, from the very 
nature of its constitution, avert from the truth. To take a fa- 
miliar example, imagine a flock of sheep ; it is well known that 
in many flocks there is one sheep called the bellwether, which 
all the rest of the flock by natural instinct follow. Suppose, for 
the nonce, that a divine promise had been given to the rest 
of these sheep that in following the bellwether they should 
never fall over the cliff. Does not this imply that by divine 
interference the bellwether itself should never go over ? Now, 
it appears to me that, by the strictest logical necessity, this is 
precisely the office which St. Irenaeus accords to the Roman 
See, whose practical infallibility he thus asserts. The passage 
which we have been considering, so far from being adverse 
to that infallibility, is in itself only another way of asserting 
that the see of Rome is, as I have remarked above, the organ of 
infallibility to the whfcle church. The Catholic Church ^ ex- 
tenso, as the body of Christ, rejoicing in the indwelling of God 
the Holy Ghost, possesses, of course, a passive infallibility, and the 
Catholic episcopate an active infallibility; but that infallibility 
must have some mouthpiece, and a supreme and central autho- 
rity in the church is absolutely necessary for the following rea- 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 481 

sons: first, as a centre of unity, through means of which it may 
be manifest to all what are the limits of the church who com- 
prise the church and who do not ; and, secondly, inasmuch as the 
whole church cannot speak at once, and general councils must 
necessarily be of rare occurrence, as the ordinary organ of the 
church's infallible utterances. It was in order thus to facilitate 
and perfect the teaching office of the church, as well as to secure 
a means of unity, that the Petrine primacy was instituted, and it 
appears to me that it is simply this luminous and unimpeachable 
fact which St. Irenaeus is here alluding to. Indeed, I cannot un- 
derstand how the whole of his words (including the reference 
to the Roman See) can be assumed to have any other meaning, 
consistently with the supposition that they have any meaning 
at all. 



A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 



PRISCILLA ARDEN lived in Butterville, Mo., a city of some 
eight thousand inhabitants on the line of the M. K. and T. R. R. 
Its products are railroad men, barrels, and, of late, " culture," by 
which term the members of the best society designate art. 

Priscilla was the daughter of the editor of the Bazoo the 
Butterville Bazoo which had a marked success among its "es- 
teemed contemporaries " as a humorous " exchange " until the 
funny man degenerated into pathos and in despair took to rail- 
roading. Priscilla's father was also the postmaster. Her grand- 
father had come West from Massachusetts. She was descended 
from Priscilla Mullins through her grandmother, who was a Pa}*- 
body. Over the parlor organ in the front room there hung a 
genealogical tree, carefully framed in oak, between a testimo- 
nial from his brother Knights of Pythias to Mr. Arclen and a 
stuffed eagle on a bracket, presented to the editor of the Bazoo 
by a subscriber in liquidation of three years' subscription in 
arrears. Principally on account of this genealogical tree for 
the expatriated New England element was small but strongly 
respectable in Butterville and also in consideration of the poli- 
tical influence of the Bazoo, Priscilla's father had managed to hold 
his post since Lincoln's first term. His faltering in allegiance 
VOL. xxxvu. 31 



482 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

once in deference to the prejudices of the railroad men had done 
him no harm with the next administration. He was thin, wiry, 
with a white beard close cropped. His face was of that confor- 
mation which may almost be said to be a face of this decade, 
it is so common. It was like General Grant's before he became 
fat. And when the editor of the Bazoo offered his photograph, 
very artistically reproduced by the photo-engraving process, as 
a premium, many economical souls were induced to put their 
names on the list on the understanding that it would do for 
either Grant or Garfield. 

All that was left of Priscilla's mother was her photograph, 
which had the place of honor over the hair-cloth sofa in the 
'* front room." It represented a mild-looking woman with 
her hair puffed out at the sides, a wide lace collar, and an 
expensive silk gown evidently inflated by hoops. Priscilla did 
not remember her mother very well ; her father rarely spoke 
of her, though he had written a two-column obituary notice, 



beginning : 

O O 



" There is a reaper whose name is Death." 



Priscilla tenderly preserved it in a scrap-book. She had little 
on which to nourish the memory of this mother, and, in her 
desire to keep it green and to get nearer to the dead, she prayed 
every night and morning for the soul of the sweet, mysterious 
being, with whom her soul longed to be in communion. The 
Congregational minister shook his head over this. But Priscilla, 
who could repeat all the International Sunday-school lessons for 
years back, floored him with a text. Several old neighbors bore 
testimony to the great qualities of the deceased wife and mother : 
' She wasn't stuck up," and " she did her own work ; nobody 
ever saw anything slack about Mis Arden." So Priscilla took 
to her prayers. 

The Congregationalists were not numerous in Butterville, but 
they were intensely respectable. Several large bond-holders of 
M. K. and T. stock old inhabitants who had come West so far 
back as '59 were Congregationalists. Lately the Baptist min- 
ister, who had baptized Jesse James, had rather thinned the 
Congregationalist audience by preaching terrific sermons, as- 
by a magic-lantern and a blackboard, and with the Ford 
brothers for several Sundays, during their engagement at the 
Academy of Music in Butterville, in a front pew. 

Priscilla's religious views were peculiar. Her father was 
rather inclined to be an Ingersollian, but, as he wrote a religious 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 483 

column " Lay Sermons by Whitehead " in the Bazoo every 
Saturday, he felt the necessity of conforming to that Congrega- 
tional mode of worship, wherein the belief in eternal punishment 
was considerably softened, down. The editor of the Bazoo, being 
very advanced, dreaded eternal punishment, which he often 
alluded to in learned editorials as an " invention of the Inqui- 
sition." 

Priscilla's religious views had of late become seriously modi- 
fied. When she was fifteen she had been a " hard-shell " Baptist ; 
at nineteen, having read a course of Miss Yonge's novels, she was 
inclined to Ritualism, and longed to have an old English abbey 
or priory which she could restore to the Established Church. 
So scrupulous did she become that she broached the subject of 
turning over the deed of the house that her mother had be- 
queathed her to the descendant of the original Indian who had 
owned the plot of ground, if he could be found. The editor of 
the Bazoo was of the opinion that he could not be found, and 
coldly declined to advertise for him. Then Priscilla took to 
reading mild, soft, quietistic poems and essays about sitting with 
folded hands and waiting among lilies, and full of speculations 
about heaven. At twenty-two she had a religion of her own, as- 
most of the girls around her who thought on serious subjects^ 
had. She read all the sermons in the New York Herald, the ^ 
Monday edition of which reached Butterville on Wednesday, and' 
she was rather inclined towards ethical culture ; but she still sat 
under the Congregational minister. As Bessie Hartwicke, the- 
new " help," had shown a talent for housekeeping when she was 
left to manage the house alone, Priscilla concluded to relinquish! 
the domestic arts and cultivate Art. She took lessons in vocal 
music, and sang with much applause at a broom-drill given for 
the benefit of the Congregationalists, but repeated with even 
more success by the energetic Baptists, who offered a barrel of 
flour to the prettiest girl in the room on the night of the 
festival. 

Priscilla had dark, serious, blue eyes, shaded by long lashes, 
rather heavy eyebrows for a girl, a straight nose a little long, 
a soft, creamy complexion, oval, rounded cheeks which flushed 
easily. This habit of blushing at unexpected times without rea- 
son was a source of embarrassment to Priscilla. There was one 
thing that caused her some embarrassment; this was a slight 
shade on her upper lip. Priscilla was almost a brunette. She 
attired herself very simply, eschewed " bangs " and bangles, and, 
in her plain, neat hat and tight blue suit, there was- a= Puritan 



484 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

simplicity not unworthy of a descendant of that Priscilla who 
had said, 

" If I am not worth the wooing, I am surely not worth the winning." 

She had a neat, trim figure, but the Butterville people thought 
she lacked "style." However, the Baptists did not vote the 
barrel of flour to her, and therefore they found the notice in the 
next morning's Bazoo very much less grandiloquent than the no- 
tice of the Congregationalists had been. 

Priscilla, with her improved views, had set down the whole 
proceeding as vulgar. 

II. 

The sun, setting majestically into the level land which was an 
endless vista of prairie, cast a soft color on Priscilla's face as she 
sat one afternoon, paint-brush in hand, toning up the background 
of a panel of sunflowers and golden-rod. Tea was almost ready. 
There came a pleasant jingling from the kitchen. Casting a 
glance out of the bay-window, that was disproportionately large 
in comparison with the square, white house, Priscilla saw the 
editor of the Bazoo quickly approaching. She ran out into the 
kitchen to see that everything was right, and got back to the 
parlor in time to pick up the pile of " exchanges " which he had 
drawn out of his alpaca coat and thrown upon the floor. He 
fanned himself with his hat and pinched Priscilla's cheek as she 
kissed him. 

" Hem ! " he said, critically examining the panel, " those 
squashes are too yellow, and I don't understand that black splash 
in the centre is it black or brown ? " 

"Father ! " she cried reproachfully, " they are sunflowers." 

"Oh!" he said apologetically, "I thought they couldn't be 
squashes. Have you dropped your music for art, Pris ? " 

" I feel that I haven't the intensity that is, the power of ex- 
pression, the soulfulness that music imperatively requires. I 
think that I am more drawn to art. I had a lovely letter from 
Miss Allison, who used to teach mental philosophy at the Aca- 
demy, you know ; she said the letter is up-stairs * Let it be 
your sole cult to draw out soulfulness, to encourage the better 
part.' >: 

"So?" returned her father, abstractedly stooping for one of 
his papers. "Oh! I forgot. Priest Riordan was in the office 
to-day correcting an error we made about morning Vespers, or 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 485 

evening- Mass, or something. He is an honest man, pays his 
debts, and looks a great deal after the poor, though he's the very 
devil in controversy. He brought me a letter about kissing the 
pope's toe, written in answer to' Rev. Isaiah Tomkins. It took 
the hair off, I tell you. He intends to have some extra music 
next Sunday, and his leading Singer is sick. I told him you'd 
sing." 

The editor of the Bazoo said this half-hesitatingly, as members 
of the male sex do when they announce that they have made 
social arrangements unauthorized. 

" Just like you, father. But I haven't any more soul in my 
music." 

% " It seems to me you sing as well as the other girls." He 
noticed a slight contraction of the young lady's brow. " Much 
better than most of them. Have you any conscientious scruples 
about singing for the Romanists ? " 

" Oh ! no," returned Priscilla. " I believe in universal bro- 
therhood. And if I can help the culture of these poor people .1 
am willing to do it." 

" All right," said the father, as he drew on his slippers. " But 
I don't think they hanker after culture." 

" They ought to be taught that it's the most precious thing 
in life." Priscilla, in her imagination, saw herself as a second 
Hypatia teaching the consummateness of inanimate things to the 
Romanists who worshipped at St. Mark's. 

" I guess they know what they want by this time. I've been 
inside of a Catholic church only once or twice myself, but seems 
to me, as somebody said the other day, ' they worship God as if 
he were a king/ ' Polly, put the kettle on ! " 

Tea was well served. Priscilla made some remarks on the 
harmony of the form of the radish and its foliage. 

" Didn't know radishes had * foliage.' By the way, Phil Car- 
lisle was married to Mary Reilly on last Sunday." 

" No ! " cried Priscilla, blushing with interest. " To the little 
Irish girl ! Well, really, I shouldn't think Phil's folk would like 
that. The Irish are so ignorant, and I suppose she is no better 
than the rest. His family will think it a great come-down. She's 
a Catholic, too." 

" Don't be so particular, young lady," said Mr. Arden, cutting 
'the end off a cigar. " Marriage is a serious consideration, an 
anxious consideration, when a girl reaches your age." He 
laughed. 

" Marriage," said Priscilla, solemnly turning her tea-cup up- 



4 86 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

side down to read what fate had in store for her in the grounds, 
" is nothing to a woman with a mission. Miss Allison said that 

' Art is the' " 

" Miss Allison's an old maid. Phil Carlisle may congratu- 
late himself. Old Reilly isn't exactly a swell, but his daughter 
is a good girl, and she'll keep Phil straight. They were married 
at St. Mark's." 

Mr. Arden lost himself in his papers, concealed by a veil of 
smoke, and Priscilla went to help Bessie with the dishes. 

" I hear Phil Carlisle's throwed himself away on one of them 
Irish," said Bessie, who was of old Connecticut stock, "and gone 
and joined the Papishes. His folks must feel it awful." 

Priscilla shook her head sympathetically ; she kept to her 
sunflowers until the twilight was gone. 



III. 

When the room had become so dim that the gilt frame on 
her mother's photograph no longer shone, a weight of desolation 
fell on Priscilla's heart. The soft May breeze, chilling a little, 
bore in to her the scent of the lilac in the front garden. And 
the scent awoke in her a longing, an unrest ; the moon arose out 
of the flat earth and silvered the network of railroad tracks that 
were visible from the slight elevation on which the Arden house 
stood. 

All common things looked unreal ; yet Priscilla had never 
been so heavily oppressed by the reality of life. The vain pre- 
tences of hollow and sham culture seemed so worthless! Could 
she ever paint that moonlight ? Could any earthly being sing 
the inexpressible thought that the glorious shield hung in the 
heavens inspired? 

That moon had looked upon the Crucifixion. 

The thought, filling her mind so suddenly, made her shiver. 
The moon had perhaps shone through the massed clouds that 
hung over Calvary, and dropped a silver ray upon the thorn- 
crowned head borne down by the load of the sins of the world. 
She looked at the moon awestruck. This moon had seen it. The 
sacrifice that her ministers had of late vaguely alluded to as the 
atonement became at that instant very real to her. There was 
no more half-doubt, half-vagueness for her. Here, suddenly 
among her little pretensions and frivolity, the grace of God had 
touched her. 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 487 

Her father .was enjoying his last cigar on the front step. He 
rose, and his voice, interrupted her thoughts. 

" Come in," he was saying. " Yes, this is Mr. Arden's house, 
and Miss Arden is at home. Bessie, light the gas ! Priscilla, 
here is a gentleman to see you." 

Another voice said something. 

"Mr. O'Donnell, organist at St. Mark's? Glad to see you. 
Walk right in." 

Bessie was standing on tip-toe, struggling unsteadily to 
light the gas, when the visitor entered and relieved her of an 
effort that seemed likely to elongate her considerably. 

Priscilla held out her hand, after the rule set down in Butter- 
ville's unwritten books of etiquette where sociability was the 
one great requirement while her father read from the visitor's 
card, " Mr. Felix O'Donnell," and then said, " My daughter." 

Bessie, also following the Butterville etiquette, seized his 
hat, as a savage seizes a scalp, and disappeared with it. Pris- 
cilla pulled down the shades, and Mr. Arden, after saying it was 
a fine night, remarked, also following the Butterville usage, 
that " two's company and three's a crowd," and took himself off 
to the office. 

The Butterville axiom was that old people were always in 
the way when there were young ones " around." It was an 
axiom accepted without pangs and as a matter of course by 
the Butterville parents. Young people of opposite sexes were 
always constrained in " old company." 

He came back in a few minutes, having forgotten his bundle 
of papers, and, putting his head into the door of the parlor, 
said : 

" Don't go out, Pris. John Lowe said he would drop in to- 
night." 

"Very well, father," Priscilla answered. "Don't you be 
long!" 

" Oh ! I guess neither of you will hanker after me," he said, 
with a slight wink at the visitor. 

Felix O'Donnell looked at the bright-looking yet serious 
maiden who stood under the gas-jet, seeming so sweet and 
simple, and wondered why there was always a John Lowe or 
John Somebody Else dangling after every nice girl. He had 
never met this particular nice girl before, because she was not 
in his set. Society in Butterville was cut up by the churches 
into patches ; the Catholics, Avho had multiplied and increased 
from a small nucleus of railroad laborers, were numerous. The 



4 88 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, a knot of 
Second-Adventists, and a smaller knot of Spiritualists occupied 
various degrees in the social scale ; but the Catholics that is, 
the Irish were cut off by an imaginary and impassable gulf. 
St. Bonifacius was the patron of a small chapel of the German 
congregation, which kept very much to itself. - m ! ' 

Felix O'Donnell gazed at Priscilla with a little sarcasm in his 
mind. He was prepared to be on the defensive, and to laugh a 
little if Miss Arden should assume any airs. 

Felix was a tall, well-built young fellow, more nervous-look- 
ing and with hollower cheeks than his father, who had come over 
from Cahirciveen, with bright, well-opened blue eyes, a com- 
plexion much reddened by the sun, which had left his broad 
forehead very white, and a frank, slightly humorous expres- 
sion. 

He wore a black sack-coat and gray trousers, and carried a 
wide-brimmed straw hat. Priscilla concluded that he was not 
at all " stylish." Priscilla's ideal young man was " stylish " the 
hero of The Bride of Lammermoor in a frock-coat and straw-col- 
ored kid gloves. 

Felix remarked that it was a pleasant evening, and said he 
had called to ask Miss Arden if she would sing on Sunday in 
Mozart's " Twelfth." 

" Miss Donovan, the soprano, is sick," he continued. " Sun- 
clay will be a great feast in our church, you know or rather 
you don't know and Herr Stroebling, from Kansas City, is to 
come and play. I shall do the bass." 

" But I thought you were the organist." 

" I do very well for ordinary occasions," he said, with a plea- 
sant laugh, " but Herr Stroebling is a good organist. It's a 
great thing to have him come." 

Priscilla hesitated. 

" I have sung parts of the ' Twelfth,' " she said, "adapted to 
English words, at various times ; but you, in your church, you 
sing it in"- Priscilla paused. She felt sure it was in some 
dread and superstitious language ; she had heard so. 

"In Latin," said Felix. 

"But I can't speak Latin." 

" I can't either," said Felix. " I can pronounce it. That is 

that's needed. A few lessons, and you will do very well." 

" If you think I can succeed I will try." 

In reply Felix drew from his pocket a roll of music and sat 
down at the organ. Priscilla, without any apology or affecta- 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 489 

tion, began the " Kyrie Eleison." She sang in tune, but stum- 
bled over the words. 

The lesson lasted an hour. It was serious work. 

" A nice girl no airs," thought Felix. 

" What a soft voice ! " thought Priscilla. " He is not at all 
' Irish.' " 

"Now, what have I been singing?" asked Priscilla when she 
had learned the" Gloria " tolerably well and Bessie had brought 
in a pitcher of ice-water. 

Felix translated the words. 

" What ! " cried Priscilla, her reverent mind shocked, " have 
I been singing those beautiful words so carelessly and thought- 
lessly ? " 

Felix was startled. He had sung them carelessly a hundred 
times. It was a lesson. 

" I shall be glad to sing," said Priscilla, offering Felix the 
plate of apples which Bessie brought in with the solemnity of 
one serving baked meats at a funeral. " It is a great thing for a 
young man like^you to raise your people up to your level, and to 
devote your time to elevating the standard of taste among the 
poor Roman Catholics. Your choir must have a hard time." 

Felix was not accustomed to this point of view. He smiled 
when he understood her. 

" We do have a hard time reaching the level of the people's 
devotion. That is very much above us." 

" He is very modest," Priscilla thought. " You are a Catho- 
lic, too, of course." 

" Oh ! yes," answered Felix. Priscilla, following the Butter- 
ville etiquette, gave him the album of photographs. 

" I am not prejudiced," she said. " I have known some very 
pleasant Catholics educated ones. I met a girl in Sedalia when 
I was there with father. I found her very nice. You would 
never have guessed ' 

" No ? " said Felix, smiling, his politeness restraining him from 
finishing her sentence with a touch of sarcasm. " Will you 
play?'' 

Priscilla drummed through the overture to " Zampa " in that 
dismal succession of notes which only a parlor organ is capable 
of producing. When she ceased the croaking of the frogs in 
the pond in the next lot was delightfully refreshing. Then 
Felix played a voluntary out of his music-book, and took his 
leave, promising to escort Priscilla to the choir rehearsal on the 
following night. 



490 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

Priscilla sat with her hands folded, looking at the moon. She 
thought that she had never met anybody like this Mr. O'Donnell 
before. He was good-humored and agreeable, but there was 
something in his eyes that made her think he was laughing at 
her. Priscilla flushed at the thought. Laughing at her ! The 
idea! 

Mr. Arden returned with a stout, pompous-looking man hav- 
ing a bald head and an expression of entire satisfaction with him- 
self. He formed an appropriate background to a huge locket 
attached to a gold watch-chain. 

He apologized to Priscilla for not having " spent the even- 
ing " with her. He had been kept busy at the store. John 
Lowe was the prominent dry-goods merchant in Butterville. 
He was a celebrity ; he was the pioneer of the ninety-nine-cent 
" inducement" which had revolutionized trade in the great West. 
He was not proud, but he felt his importance. His advertise- 
ment occupied, on Saturdays, a whole page in the Bazoo ; and if 
he had run for mayor that journal would have supported him 
valiantly, though he was a Democrat. 

He finished his cigar, sitting on the lower step with. Mr. Ar- 
den, while Priscilla stood in the doorway looking at the shadow 
of the lilac-bushes on the path. It was a time for sentiment. 
The editor of the Bazoo felt that himself. He tried to find an 
appropriate quotation. 

" On such a night Leander swam the Hellespont." 

" Byron? " asked Mr. Lowe. 

" No, the immortal Will. No, old boy, twelve cents a line 
won't do for five insertions of that criss-cross ad., with the read- 
ing-notices changed every week. Composition's going up to 
forty cents a thousand, and " 

A long altercation followed, during which the editor of the 
Bazoo yielded a point or two with seeming reluctance. 

" Well, well," he said good-humoredly at last, " I'll go to 
bed. Bring me up a pitcher of ice-water, Pris, when you come. 
I'll leave you young people to do your courting. Good-night." 

Lowe laughed. Priscilla still stood in the doorway, smiling a 
little at her father's joke. The other " young person " was over 
forty. The clock struck eleven. Lowe cast admiring glances at 
.the serene, virginal figure on the sill of the doorway. The lilac- 
scent, enriched with dew, mingled with the heliotrope hidden in 
the dark. The trees were outlined against the silver haze in the 
The croak of the frogs was fitful, like a tremulous bass 
Lowe arose, threw away his cigar, and yawned.. 



1883.] A- DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 491 

Priscilla was wrapped in a half-mournful reverie, oppressed by a 
delicious sadness. 

" You had some music to-night ? Hopkins said he heard the 
organ as he came back to the store after supper. Who was 
here ?" 

Priscilla felt unreasonably irritated by this not extraordinary 
question. 

" A gentleman called." 

Lowe played with his watch-chain. 

" Oh ! " he said with a laugh, " you can't make me jealous." 

Priscilla flushed. What did he mean ? It was well enough 
for her father to joke 

" It was a Mr. O'Donnell, the organist at St. Mark's." 

" Catholic church ? Yes, I know O'Donnell. He manages 
the express-office. Honest fellow ; family awfully ignorant and 
Irish regular * Micks,' you know." 

" I don't know,", answered Priscilla, with a sense of offence. 
" He is a gentleman." 

Lowe glanced at her quickly. Her face looked very pure and 
sweet in the moonlight. He drew nearer to her. The door was 
slammed suddenly, and there was a sharp report. 

If Priscilla had not been a girl devoted to culture there 
might have been grounds for a suspicion that she had slapped 
Mr. Lowe. He picked up his hat and whistled. He was not 
accustomed to that sort of thing. He remembered that he was 
the pioneer of the ninety-nine-cent " inducement " in the West, 
and walked homeward in a calmer frame of mind. 



IV. 

Felix O'Donnell called at the Arden house and gravely prac- 
tised the musical parts with Priscilla. And on Sunday, which 
was Pentecost, Priscilla sang very well. She felt that she was 
not doing herself justice, since she did not understand what she 
was singing, and once or twice a fear the remnants of the teach- 
ing she had known before she became a disciple of culture en- 
tered her mind that she was engaging in idolatrous worship. 

The silence, the devotion, the decorum of the crowd of as- 
sistants surprised her. There was Teddy O'Brien, the foreman 
of her father's printing-office a careless, devil-may-care indivi- 
dual, and a commonplace one, on week-days. Yet to-day, kneel- 
ing, touched by the glory of some great mystery, he looked 



492 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

transfigured. To Priscilla it seemed that he saw God or his 
angels on the altar. There was Mrs. Malley, their next-door 
neighbor, a hard-working woman who had " put away " a snug 
sum of money during the war by selling pies to the defenders of 
the Union. A good-hearted but very vulgar woman was Mrs. 
Malley, who never forgot that she was " independent rich," and 
who was at constant warfare with Bessie a person, in fact, with- 
out interest to the cultured mind. Here was she, evidently for- 
getting her many-hued and well-kept cashmere shawl, and the 
fruit-orchard on her bonnet, in dumb, ecstatic devotion before 
this mystery. Looking around, Priscilla saw many that she knew. 
They were persons whom she considered to be in the lower walks 
of life persons whom she was accustomed to look down upon. 
Caste in Butterville was almost as well defined, though not so 
openly acknowledged, as in an English town. 

To-day Priscilla seemed to have changed places with these 
people. They were somehow beyond her. They possessed 
something she did not possess. They saw something she did 
not see. A vague yearning filled her mind, and a slight impa- 
tience, too. Why was she left out ? 

Could that be Father Riordan, whom she had seen every day 
since she was a child that figure, majestic, awful, raising the 
chalice in his hands ? He had taken anew character, in her eyes, 
with his gold-embroidered robes. She could never look at his 
rotund form ..and pleasant face again with the feeling that he was 
much like other men, only, of course, a Romish priest. It was 
not the fact that his decent suit of broadcloth had been replaced 
by these strange, solemn vestments which reminded her of the 
description of the garments of the Levites in the Old Testament 
that made the difference. It was something else, indefinable, 
mysterious. 

Priscilla did her best not to give the organist unnecessary 
trouble. In fact, she was the only person in the choir who did 
not insist on loping when the organist trotted. But nobody 
seeded: to mind that. The sermon rather weaned Priscilla. It 
-\yasr an old one of Father Riordan's on his favorite theme, the 
Tin-nkyu She was thirsting for some explanation of this mystery, 
/erfta: new acquaintance, Mr. O'Donnell, who seemed to be a 
young man like other young men, had lost himself in a strange 
rapture. What did it mean? What was it that transfigured 
these people ? 

When Mass was over Felix O'Donnell descended the stairs 
from the gallery with Priscilla. 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 493 

" It is not often," he said, " that we hear a voice like yours in 
our church. I wish we could hear it every Sunday." 

" I haven't much voice," she answered very truthfully, " but 
I am careful. Your service is is strange, weird ; no, those are 
not the words ! If I was sure it was right to say so I should 
call it heavenly." . 

" It is heavenly." 

There was a pause. They worked their way through the 
crowd to the opposite sidewalk. 

" I will sing again, if Father Riordan would like me to. But 
I feel uneasy because I don't know what I am singing. I am sure 
it must be all right, since the priest pays so much respect to the 
Bible on the altar, but " Priscilla laughed " I am a conscien- 
tious heretic, you know." 

Felix laughed, too. 

" Would you like a translation ? " 

" Yes, if you will bring me one." 

At this moment Mr. Arden approached, having elbowed his 
way through the throng on the sidewalk. 

"You did well, Pris," he said, offering Felix a cigar. "The 
music was tip-top ; reminded me of the Cincinnati festival, when 
you all came in together with a scream and a roar tout ensemble, 
you know. I must say, Mr. O'Donnell, you Catholics know how 
to treat the Lord. You go about your service reverently. You 
don't try to slap him on the back, as our people do." 

Mr. Arden was in great good-humor. He invited Felix to 
dinner. Felix declined. 

" My old mother would be lonely," he said. 

" Good boy ! " said the editor of the Bazoo. " Drop in when 
you like." 

" And," added Priscilla, with a smile, " bring me the transla- 
tion." 

The editor of the Bazoo was much impressed with ^Uie^e 
monies of the Mass. He believed, with Byron, > c :> v "' * *^* 




" Surely they are sincerest : '. 

Who are most impressed 'W 

With that which lies nearest." ... i n (0 . 

And, through his quality of taking instantaneous and dissolv- 
ing impressions, he had been enabled to make the Bazoo a lively 
paper. After dinner he read a little in Hallam's History of the 
Middle Ages, Maria. Monk's Daughter, Ivanhoe, and Burton's Ana- 



494 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [J"ly 

tomy of Melancholy (for Latin quotations), and produced a two- 
column article, headed : 

OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 

What They Do and How They Do It. 

Pagan Pomp Eclipsed by Papal Magnificence. 

A Display That Throws the Eleusinian-Mysteries in the Shade. 

Eloquent and Soul-Stirring Discourse by Father Ribrdan, etc., etc. 

The next day after this article had appeared Father Riordan 
entered the Bazoo office with ten close-written pages of foolscap, 
beginning : 

" MESSRS. EDITORS : The feelings of the Catholics in this com- 
munity have been shocked by a lengthy article " 

After some discussion the editor of the Bazoo agreed to 
admit the letter, provided it were cut down. 

" I thought I'd please you," he said, slightly irritated. 
" What's wrong about the Eleusinian mysteries? They look well 
in print. A fellow never knows when he is treading on the 
corns of you Catholics." 



V. 

Felix escorted Priscilla to the choir rehearsals regularly. 
Generally, on returning, he found her father and John Lowe, 
who had entirely forgotten Priscilla's insult to his dignity, finish- 
ing their cigars on the front steps. Priscilla's study of the trans- 
lation of the Ordinary of the Mass had satisfied her half-awak- 
ened doubts. She had found a new interest in life. 

She and Felix talked little during their short walks. He 
spoke seldom, but he was a pleasant companion for all that. He 
seemed to understand her, and, if he made a half-satirical com- 
ment when her cultured raptures were overflowing, it was 
always good-humored. She confessed to herself that a primrose 
by the river's brim swj a simple primrose to him. He had read 
Tom Moore, and Evangeline, and the Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 
He read a daily and a weekly paper. He had collected several 
books on rose-culture. His culture stopped short there. Withal 
Priscilla found it hard to patronize him. It was true he lived in 
the quarter of the town in which the Irish had settled. It was 
true that he was only slightly acquainted with the leading in- 
habitants. He had spent a few years at Father Riordan's school, 
and acquired that amazing facility in addition, subtraction, and 
multiplication that gave such a great superiority at the express- 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 495 

office. Priscilla soon discovered all this, and also that he lived 
with his mother, who was old. . As a descendant of Priscilla 
Mullins, as the daughter of the editor of the Bazoo, as a girl who 
for her accomplishments and social position was much " looked 
up " to in Butterville, she had felt somewhat like a Queen 
Cophetua extending her hand in graceful politeness to an inte- 
resting beggar-man. For Felix O'Donnell was Irish, and, though 
very nice, still not quite not quite, you know. u Of course one 
does not like to seem bigoted against the Catholics, but they 
are really not nice. The crowd at St. Mark's is awful." 

This is what Faith Evans, Priscilla's bosom-friend, said one 
afternoon as they were walking through the plaza, planted with 
infant trees, which in time was to be the Butterville Public Park. 
Faith Evans had been delivering a remonstrance. On the pre- 
ceding evening Felix, following the usage of Butterville society, 
had on the way from the rehearsal invited Priscilla to have ice- 
cream at Barker's. 

" Barker's " was a two-story frame house at the corner of 
Lincoln and Liberty Streets. A huge white awning stretched 
before it, on which was printed in black letters " Ice-Cream. " It 
was filled with the jeunesse dorfa of Butterville, of both sexes. 
The Willis boys, clerks in the shoe-factory, scions of an old 
family dating back to '52, were there with Faith Evans and 
several other young girls of the best society. It was hard to 
find room at the marble-topped tables.*; Faith obligingly made 
space for her friend and Felix ; but the Willis boys, who knew 
the value of " family," stared, and several of the jeunesse dcrce 
wondered who that "red-headed Irishman" was, though they 
knew very well. 

Priscilla was conscious of a slight blush ; she felt the atmos- 
phere. She was defiantly attentive to Felix. She even insisted 
on transferring a portion of her strawberry-ice to his vanilla 
a delicate attention which caused the jeunesse dor fa to conclude, 
as one woman, that the couple were engaged. Hence the re- 
monstrance from Faith Evans, a thin, tall, freckled girl wearing 
turbulent " bangs." 

" You must remember that you are very different from him. 
His associations are no doubt of a kind repelling to refined 
tastes. Even a flirtation " 

" I won't hear any more of this," Priscilla interrupted. " I 
don't know what you mean, Faith. I am sure he is as good as 
Jim Willis." 

Faith laughed ; and her revenge came to her. 



496 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

It was at twilight. Crossing the street just in front of them 
was an old woman, bent and shrivelled. She wore a small three- 
cornered shawl and a white frilled cap. She was clean, neat, 
and very pleasant to look upon ; but, as Faith at once remarked, 
" So awfully Irish ! Suppose she were .some relative of your 
6'Donnell." 

The old woman had a basket on one arm. Just as she 
reached the express-office Felix O'Donnell came out and kissed 
her. Then he took the basket and said : 

" So you've come at last, mother ! I've been waiting for half 
an hour in the doorway here. We'll have a long ride in the 
moonlight. But what's the basket for? " 

" Sure I thought you'd be after wanting something to eat, as 
you wouldn't lose time coming' to supper." 

Felix caught sight of the girls and nodded pleasantly. Faith 
laughed, as the son helped his mother to mount the omnibus 
which carried passengers through a stretch of pleasant country 
out to a park much resorted to by the inhabitants of Butterville 
in summer. 

Faith had had her revenge. She admitted to herself that 
Felix looked almost handsome in his gray business suit. 

" He is a good son, no doubt," she added aloud. "Imagine, 
though, a mother-in-law in that cap ! " 

Faith laughed again. 

Priscilla was shocked. His family must be very low people. 
Had the thing that Faith had warned her against ever entered 
her mind? She dared not answer. Had he meant anything? 
Had she encouraged him ? Perhaps she had. Well, there should 
be an end of it now. A girl must respect her position in life. 
She would not be laughed at and looked down upon by anybody. 

All this may seern 'absurd to people whose horizon is wider- 
than Priscilla's was ; it may also seem absurd that a young 
woman who could seriously think in this manner could at the 
same time have reasoned so deeply and prayed so earnestly as to 
have come to the conclusion that she ought not to be isolated 
from the devout group that had filled her soul with awe on the 
morning of Pentecost. 

She had told Father Riordan she could not sing the " O Salu- 
taris Hostia " at the offertory, though she had no difficulty 
about the " Ave Maria." He had spoken to her of that august 
Sacrifice in the presence of which every knee and heart bowed. 
She went home, saying to herself that she could not sing again 
unless she believed. The following Sunday she did not go to 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 497 

the choir. On the next Sunday she appeared, a little quieter, 
perhaps, but it was noticed that her voice was unusually ex- 
pressive. On Monday she went to the Benedictine father who 
served the chapel of St. Bonifacius. 

She would have gone to Father Riordan had not pride pre- 
vented her. Faith Evans' words awakened a sentiment of re- 
sentment in her mind. If people were thinking- what they had 
no right to think, if Felix O'Donnell was presuming what he had 
no right to presume, the news that she had entered the church 
would only confirm the opinions of one and encourage those of 
the other ; so she stole to St. Bonifacius' early in the mornings, 
and one morning she was received into the Fold. 

Her father had made no objection. " I don't want any 
fuss made about it," he had said. " I don't want paragraphs 
to get into the papers about it, and have that Cleveland Leader 
fellow call me a slave of Rome. You ought to follow your con- 
science, of course. I was once almost a Mormon myself. / 
won't interfere. Besides, what with Beecherism and the dearth 
of ministers, there will soon be no Congregationalism left. Then 
you'll be left, my dear. And Romanism would be very decent, 
if it wasn't for the Irish. Go your way, Pris." And he kissed 
her. 



VI. 

In the meantime Felix O'Donnell had to admit, in moments 
when he paused in his work to look into the busy street, that he 
was becoming interested in Priscilla. 

The social gulf that w r as so wide to her e}^es did not appear 
to his at all. But the difference in religion was to him an in- 
superable barrier. 

" If I had committed myself," he thought, " if she had a right 
to expect me to speak out, I should speak out at once." He 
almost wished he had. As it was, he felt that he had better nip 
his growing regard for Priscilla in the bud. Fie had great con- 
fidence in himself. 

He was as polite as ever. He helped Priscilla with her 
music of evenings after the rehearsals, but Mr. Arden and John 
Lowe were always on the front step within hearing of every 
word. 

Priscilla had determined that her religion should not inter- 
fere with her duty to her position. She talked seldom of cul 
ture, and this made her more charming in the eyes of Felix. 

VOL. XXXVII. 32 



498 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

These evenings were very pleasant to both of them. But 
Felix was so sure of his own secret and of himself that he en- 
joyed them with a clear conscience. As to Priscilla, she felt a 
glow of virtue. Here was a young man rushing to his doom 
in spite of all her danger-signals. She was cold, reserved. She 
might have flirted with him, then have declared herself fancy- 
free and sent him off lamenting. Confidentially" she told Faith 
Evans of her noble attitude. The astute Faith laughed incredu- 
lously. Priscilla expected a declaration every time she met 
Felix. She had done her best to ward it off ; yet she was begin- 
ning to be slightly anxious about it. 

Another proposal did come, however, or at least the prelude 
to it was made. The editor of the Bazoo announced one evening, 
after he had read all his exchanges, that John Lowe was a bash- 
ful man, and that he was " a long time coming to the point." 

" I tell you, Pris, he's dead gone on you ; but you're so hi- 
faluting, with your culture and that sort of thing, that he doesn't 
dare to say a word to you." 

Priscilla smiled as she thought of the scene at the door. 

" I told him all about your being a Romanist, and he said he 
thought one religion was as good as another. If you could stand 
it he could. He wants a stylish wife, a woman he can look up 
to; and by Jove, Pris! you're that woman." 

The editor of the Bazoo paused. Priscilla was still smiling. 
Half the girls in Butterville -would have jumped at an offer from 
the creator of the ninety-nine-cent " inducement " by which 
much old stock in the dry-goods line had, through the weakness 
of the feminine head for bargains, been turned into cash. 

" Besides," continued the editor of the Bazoo solemnly, " I 
am awfully in debt. That Owl Club Mine failure was a bad 
thing for me. The Bazoo is mortgaged over head and ears to 
John Lowe ; and now, Pris, I expect you to get me out of this 
hole' by marrying him." 

Mr. Arden spoke bluntly, yet hesitatingly. . He felt that Pris- 
cilla was doing him a favor by allowing him to mention the sub- 
ject. Marriage was so entirely a matter to be arranged by Pris- 
cilla herself that he considered he was interfering with an in- 
alienable right guaranteed to every American citizen" the pur- 
suit of happiness." 

Priscilla patted him on the cheek and kissed him.' *' I'll think 
of it, father," she said. 

He looked grateful and relieved. 

" Lowe will be here to-morrow night. I'm glad you're not a 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 499 

girl out of a story-book, hating- to listen to reason. Lowe will 
make a good husband, and you can cultivate your taste*in bric-a- 
brac with his money as much as you please." Then, seeing that 
the smile had faded from her lips and that she looked thoughtful, 
he selected a paper from his bundle of " exchanges " and said, 
with fatherly kindness : " There's the Detroit Free Press not 
much cut out of it. Brighten yourself up a little. There are 
worse things in the world than marriage." 

Priscilla took the Free Press to her room. She did not find it 
as enlivening as her father had expected. 

Should she say yes to John Lowe ? 

Priscilla, being a frugal American girl, knew exactly what 
money would buy. She neither underrated nor overrated its 
power. She imagined various pleasant advantages, and, by way 
of compensation for giving way to self-indulgence, drew a rapid 
sketch of a new chapel which she would persuade John Lowe to 
build in honor of St. Bonifacius. 

But John Lowe himself ? 

He was an honest man, somewhat vulgar and overbearing ; 
not not Felix O'Donnell 

Priscilla covered her face with her hands. She was humi- 
liated, crushed to the earth. She knew that there could be no 
man on earth who would be to her like Feli* O'Donnell. She 
remembered Faith Evans' incredulous laugh. Her face became 
hot ; tears of wounded pride filled her eyes. The people had 
been right ; even now the Congregationalists and Baptists, miss- 
ing her from church, were saying that she was coquetting with 
Rome for Felix O'Donnell's sake. It was very bitter, very 
bitter. 

And her father ? She was not at all afraid of what her father 
would say. She knew that in the matter of marriage all rights 
and prerogatives were a daughter's. All Butterville would de- 
spise any girl who let her father interfere in a matrimonial ques- 
tion. 

She stayed up late. She heard her father and John Lowe 
talking down on the steps. She closed the window. What vile 
cigars John Lowe smoked ! What a hateful voice he had, with 
his talk of per cents. Felix never but what was he to her? 
"Felix" indeed! "Mrs. Felix O'Donnell!" she repeated in 
scorn. " That name might belong to a washerwoman ! " 

She awoke in the morning with a headache. She thought it 
all over again. The Bazoo mortgaged and her father in trouble. 
No help from anybody but John Lowe. By ten o'clock she came 



500 A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. [July, 

to the conclusion that she would sacrifice herself' on the altar of 
filial love. At twelve she remembered that the house was her 
own and that she had hands wherewith to work. At seven 
o'clock, when she seated herself in the parlor with her best black 
gown on, indicative of sacrifice, and a spray of bleeding-hearts in 
her hair, she said to herself that she did not know what she would 
do. But in her heart she knew well enough. 

She refused John Lowe. It was all over in half an hour. He 
took it most philosophically. He wished her joy and hoped she 
would be happy with the other fellow. 

" I'd better take myself off," he said, with an attempt at 
sarcasm. " It's rehearsal night, and you may be waiting for 
him." 

Priscilla's expression was not visible in the twilight. She 
made no answer. So Felix O'Donnell's intentions were plain 
even to this stupid John Lowe ! 

It was rehearsal night. Would he never come ? Her heart 
beat at every step in the street. He had only to speak now, and 
she would answer as he deserved. What did she care for the 
world of Butterville? Faith Evans and the others might cut 
her, if they chose. A garret, a desert island with him, and she 
would be happy ! 

It was he at last ! Bessie came in to light the gas ; he un- 
rolled his music. He looked as frank and manly as any woman 
could desire the man of her heart to look. He took his place 
at the organ. They ran through an " Ave Maria," arranged on 
the duet of Azucena with her son in " Trovatore," several times. 
After that they went to the church. Priscilla was in a dream 
a delightful dream. The rose of a lifetime was blooming for 
her, and she had only to put out her hand to take it. This 
exquisite rehearsal, like a prelude to sure happiness, was all too 
short. 

They stood under the elm at her father's gate. He paused 
there and remarked how lovely the night was. 

It was coming! She must delay it a moment, as one delays 
to open a letter containing joyful news. She gave him the flow- 
ers she wore in her hair. 

" I have never given you a flower before, Mr. O'Donnell. 
Dear me ! how fragile they are. They have fallen from their 
stem. No, there are two ! " 

''Bleeding-hearts? Thank you," he said gravely. "Only 
two. It's a bad omen." 
Priscilla laughed. 



1883.] A DESCENDANT OF THE PURITANS. 501 

" I shall not be in the choir next Sunday, Miss Arden," he 
said, in a tone that had a singular constraint in it. " Mr. Stroe- 
bling will take my place. My doctor " he hesitated " forbids 
me to sing any more. My throat is slightly affected. I hope 
that, though we shall not rehearse together, you will not forget 
me." 

He stopped. 

Nothing more. A long pause. 

" Of course not, Mr. O'Donnell." 

" Good-night." . . 

" Good-night." 

He walked slowly away, thrusting the flowers away from 
him. He \vas angry with her, with himself. After such a com- 
fortable time, such an enjoyable acquaintance, she might have 
said something more. Coquette ! Did she think to draw him 
on with her flowers ? " Bleeding-hearts " indeed ! Some wo- 
men have no hearts ! 

But Priscilla ? Poor Priscilla, who had heroically determined 
to step down from her social pedestal for love's sweet sake, who 
had rejected the most eminent citizen of Butterville, who had of- 
fered herself, after much preparation, to the sacrificial knife and 
been refused her fate was hard ! She rushed up the steps, 
where John Lowe no longer sat, into her room, and wept aloud. 

It did not end here. In truth, the story only began. Father 
Riordan shortly afterwards alluded to Priscilla's conversion, of 
which many people in Butterville had heard. Felix could not 
believe it. He had been heart-sick, angry, disgusted since he 
had said good-night to Priscilla. The world satisfied him not. 
He was as hard to please as Flamlet must have been when he 
rejected the wedding-hash made of the funeral baked meats. 
His mother what do not mothers discover? divined the cause, 
but she was silent. 

Felix plied Father Riordan with questions until the good 
priest told him to go to the rector of St. Bonifacius'. 

To make a long story short, Priscilla got her proposal. 

" Well," said the editor of the Bazoo, after having received 
both congratulations and condolences," Pris has a right to choose 
for herself. I've made an assignment, and I'll be pretty well off 
after I pay fifty cents on the dollar. O'Donnell's an honest chap 
no vices. I'm going to run for the Legislature, if I have to 
change my politics. There's a big Irish vote in this place 
don't you forget it ; and Felix is a popular man ! " 



502 A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. [July, 



A MEDIAEVAL CULTURKAMPF.* 

IN some points of view the lives of the saints are the most 
pertinent of proofs of that mysterious and invisible centre of 
gravitation towards which every human mind is tending. We 
carry about with us the traveller's unrest as a proof that we are 
not in our true country, and seek to still the cry excelsior in 
earth's half-way houses. The saints are they who tarry for a 
moment, never put off their pilgrim's garb, are weary and blood- 
stained and foot-sore, yet give a cheerful and peaceful testimony 
to the far-off land whose beacon their eyes can descry in the 
darkness. As they bear witness to eternity, so will eternity bear 
witness to them, for there is no immortality like that of sanctity. 
Holiness which may have bloomed ages ago seems to have re- 
ceived a double share of the Creator-Spirit's gift of life, and the 
saint through the long ages is ever more present to us than the 
poet, the artist, or the musician. The living stone is built up 
into the edifice, whereas human genius gives out the divine 
spark which it has received, kindling a temporary fire ; the one 
is, the other does. Human intellect is the nearest approach to 
this immortality of sanctity, and its efforts are bequeathed to 
whole nations and countries either in the form of laws, or states- 
manship, or scientific discovery. The confessor dies with more 
than the halo of ordinary holiness, if we may so speak. He, too, 
leaves his inheritance to the Christian people the liberties of 
our Lord's kingdom on earth for which he has fought or, if 
needs be, given his life-blood. 

Even at the distance of eight centuries St. Anselm's figure 
comes before us as that of a man we know and love well, with 
his triple crown of philosopher, champion, and saint. That career 
begun in the unrivalled mountain valley of his Italian home, car- 
ried on by Le Bee's murmuring stream amidst the rough Nor- 
mans whom the church was fashioning for herself, and ended 
under the shadow of a great Christian cathedral, Anselm being 
himself its chief pastor, belongs, indeed, most truly to the lives 
which are immortal amongst the immortal. 

The light and purity of the mountain ranges of Aosta are 
reflected in Anselm's childhood and early manhood. There he 

* The Life and Times of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the 
Britain*. By Martin Rule, M.A. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1883. 



1883.] A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. 503 

was born between April 21, 1033, and April 21, 1034, the only child 
for many long years of Gundulf, who was not improbably a son 
or grandson of Manfred I., Marquis of Susa. His mother was 
Ermenberg, and she, as first cousin to the Emperor Henry II., 
was related more or less distantly to every considerable prince 
in Christendom. It can well be imagined that to live amidst 
perpetual snowy peaks acts upon the mind of a young and noble 
child as a natural incentive to goodness. Few anecdotes are 
told us of Anselm's childhood, but the few are replete with signi- 
ficance. As the man, so the boy ; and the boy, as he gazed at the 
mountains, saw in their physical ascent a means of bridging 
across the dreary road which leads from earth to heaven. Of 
all Aosta's heights the Becca di Nona (Noontide Peak) inspired 
the boy with greatest awe and desire, and one night he dreamt 
that, having reached the summit, he was received into the eternal 
kingdom, and that God gave him a delicious bread to eat which 
took away his weariness. The memory of his dream is perpe- 
tuated in the pants nitidissimus of one of his prayers, just as the 
dizzy bridge over the Cogne, the Pont d'Ael, supplies a forcible 
image of human life. 

Through the dimness, half shrouded in mystical legend, of 
Anselm's childhood we see the typical abbot and .archbishop in 
the far-off future. Not in vain had his bodily vision drunk in 
the glorious light of the mountains, whose heights had suggested 
to him the invisible, eternal hills. He belonged to the race of 
mountain-bred souls who live with the things of God and give 
only a cursory glance to those of this world. The story of his 
vocation is as full of poetry as his early life in general, though 
that which constitutes poetry in the retrospect means struggle 
at the time. A soft light in a landscape may represent hours of 
toil on the painter's part and still breathe forth repose. It was 
not romance but sharp earnest to Anselm to be refused the reli- 
gious life in his native place because a certain abbot feared the 
potent wrath of Gundulf, and no less a barrier than the Mont 
Cenis stood between his old and his new life. That perilous 
ascent was in some wise the realization of his childish dream. 
He bent his steps across fair France to the secluded spot in 
Normandy where the far-famed Lanfranc was forming the in- 
tellects of the rude Norman youth, whose " manners were bar- 
barous, though their hearts were set on heaven." When Lan- 
franc was called to wear the primatial mitre of Britain, Anselm 
succeeded him at Le Bee, as he was afterwards to succeed him 
at Canterbury. Fifteen years as prior and fifteen years as abbot 



504 



A MEDIEVAL CULTUKKAMPF. [July* 



of Herhvin's* monastery gave Anselm that wonderful insight into 
the hearts of men which was to supply the place of diplomatic 
education in his future dealings with king and people of Eng- 
land. The children of light have less human prudence in their 
generation, but their wisdom takes higher aim and looks beyond 
the narrow path of an earthly course. The beacon of Anselm's 
lamp has, indeed, never ceased shining. Its clear radiance falls 
over the picture which the hand of God is ever tracing on 
human canvas ; men shall pass away, but not a jot or tittle of 
His word until all shall be consummated. Le Bee had for him 
higher mountains than Aosta's peak the heights of contempla- 
tion and of the speculative intellect. Of those peaceful years 
little is recorded beyond his characteristic way of living down 
human jealousy. On his election as prior he was looked upon 
with unkindness by the older monks in general, and by one 
Osbern in particular. With the heart of a saint Prior Anselm 
heeded not his wounded feelings, provided he might gain those 
who so wounded him to Christ ; and Osbern he won to himself, 
and thus to God, by a chain which death could not part asunder. 
William Rufus ascended the throne of England in 1087, an d 
in 1089 Archbishop Lanfranc had gone to his rest. In the spring 
of 1093, the fourth year of Canterbury's widowhood, the Red 
King was enjoying the pleasures of the chase in the west of Eng- 
land. One of his courtiers incidentally mentioned the abbot of 
Bee as a man eminently suited to put an end to Canterbury's 
long mourning. " By the Holy Face of Lucca ! " swore the 
angry king, "neither he nor any other man shall be archbishop 
of Canterbury but myself." A sudden illness fell upon the rash 
speaker, and he was borne in all haste to Gloucester. In sick- 
ness is truth. William's conscience, oppressed with confiscated 
church lands and revenues, would not be quieted till Anselm 
came to relieve it of its burden, and the abbot of Bee was con- 
sequently summoned to reconcile him to God before he departed. 
There was not found one fitter than he to succeed Lanfranc, and 
at the king's bedside he was acclaimed archbishop by popular 
voice and royal election. The solemnity of the hour and of the 
circumstances did not dim Anselm's clear sight as to what was 
involved in the terrible burden of becoming primate with a 

"This Herlwin, Herluin, or Harlowen, also called Serlo, and surnamed " of Bourcq " or in 

'Latinized form "deBurgo," from the name of his birthplace, was a descendant of Pepin 

:magne through the Dukes of Lower Lorraine, and by his wife, the celebrated Arlette 

mother <rf \\Uliam the Conqueror also-was the ancestor of the Irish De Burgos, or 

in life he became a monk, and then abbot, of the religious establishment he 

founded at Bee. ED. OF THE C. W. 



1883.] A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. 505 

sovereign of William's kind. His words were prophetic: " You 
are for yoking to the plough a poor, weak old ewe by the side of 
an untamed bull. And what will come of it ? Not only untamed 
but untamable, the savage bull will drag the poor sheep right 
and left over thorns and briers, and, unless the poor thing disen- 
gage itself, will drag it to pieces. Where, then, will be her wool, 
her milk, her young?" His fingers would not grasp the crosier 
which the nobles of England thrust into his hands. What is the 
value of a repentance which is only prompted by fear of death 
and becomes an empty word as soon as that fear is removed ? 
It is undoubtedly true that the king's choice of himself was an 
accident of his illness. William did not want a lord and father 
in God, a man who would give to Cassar only those things which 
are Caesar's. In his usual health he would have suffered Canter- 
bury to be vacant as long as his crown was not endangered by 
so doing, and then he would probably have appointed a mere 
tool or creature for the carrying out of his greedy we will not 
say royal behests. Anselm measured the battle-field as he stood 
trembling by that sick-bed, and, with the intuitive knowledge of 
sanctity, foretold his recovery to the royal penitent whom he had 
just absolved. William was restored to health of the body, and 
with it ceased to care for the health of his soul. 

In the following August Anselm suffered himself to be 
enthroned in Canterbury cathedral. Fie was renouncing peace 
for the sword. We who live in the broad daylight of Catholic 
usages and traditions do not stop to consider what these blessed 
rights may have cost our fathers in the faith. The martyrs 
fought a battle which was apparent to the world at large ; and 
though their contemporaries may have despised those bloody 
combats, posterity has glorified them. The liberty of the church, 
too, has had, and is having, its bloodless martyrs in the men who 
have either to establish Catholic traditions or to maintain them 
in the face of the powers of this world and of darkness. St. An- 
selm fought the battle of the Norman consuetudines and of inves- 
titure, and that precedent built up by his life- struggle lasted 
until another English sovereign consummated what William 
Rufus had angrily purposed. 

Jealousy of the Roman primacy is the original sin of crowned 
heads, for if it is not born in the purple it is most certainly bred 
by the ambition of kings. A consuetudo to a Norman sovereign 
might be likened to what an act of Parliament is to us, and did 
not in the least imply antiquity. Before a pretension obtained 
the force of a consuetude it would have been in the position of a 



506 A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. [July, 

pending bill. William the Conqueror bequeathed four similar 
consiietudines to his son, and it will be seen that their consequen- 
ces involved nothing short of the Anglican schism that is, in 
place of the Church catholic and universal, a state religion pure 
and simple. These pretensions were: I. That no man in the 
English king's dominions should acknowledge a duly-appointed 
Bishop of Rome as pope except at his bidding f 2. That no one 
should receive a letter from the Roman pontiff unless it had 
first been shown to him ; 3. That the primate, when holding a 
general council of the bishops, should bid and forbid nothing 
but in pursuance of the royal initiation ; 4. That no bishop might 
prosecute a tenant-in-chief or a servant of the crown for incest, 
adultery, or other capitate crimen, without authorization from the 
sovereign. 

These consiietudines of the Conqueror imply rather a love of 
power than greed of money, but the consuetude nearest to the 
heart of the Conqueror's son was the traffic of holy things. Gold 
was his cry, and he would have it by fair means or by foul. Thus, 
although he was intolerant of Anselm's spiritual supremacy and 
jealous of the Holy See's claims, he was more eager for money 
than for domination. He would have sold his soul or his lesser 
pretensions for a good round sum, and he would have done 
worse. In virtue of consuetudo he would have transmitted to his 
successors on the English throne the custom of traffic in the high 
places of the church. In choosing Anselm to be primate he ex- 
pected to receive some gratification for his royal pains. The 
archbishop raised with great difficulty the sum of five hundred 
marks, which he offered as a free gift to his master. But Wil- 
liam's greed was fostered by an evil counsellor than whom there 
can be no worse a courtier-bishop. He whispered in the king's 
ear: " Dare he offer you five hundred marks? Let him make it 
a thousand." Anselm was inflexible. He resisted coarse taunts 
and threats, and made over his rejected gift to the poor tenants 
on his estates with the significant words, " Blessed be Almighty 
God, whose mercy has kept me free from the stain of an evil re- 
port !" 

It was the custom for a new archbishop, within three months 
after consecration, to approach the Sovereign Pontiff and ask 
for the pallium. If he delayed twelve months he forfeited the 
archiepiscopate. The particular relations between church and 
state made the sovereign's leave a necessary formality, but 
William absolutely refused to grant it on the ground that he had 
not acknowledged Urban II. as pope. Of what profit, might 



1883.] A MEDIAEVAL CULTURKAMPF. '507 

Anselm have said, is a fettered archbishop who may neither use 
his eyes to see, his ears to hear, nor his feet to walk? He 
looked abroad upon the land and saw everywhere a terrible 
licentiousness and immorality ; but if he might not go to Rome 
without the king's consent, neither might he call a council for 
the correction of abuses without the royal co-operation, for so 
the Conqueror's consuetudo had ruled it. Anselm's gentle invi- 
tation to William was answered by the angry words, " When I 
see fit I shall act not to please you, but to please myself." 
Seeing with the Red King meant much what " hearing " did. 
In other words, all rights and principles were made subser- 
vient to money. The movement of reformation should have 
begun in the monks and clergy, to be carried out in the hearts 
of the people ; yet was not the position of things entirely 
vicious when the king left not a few abbeys in England 
without pastors, in order to dispose of their revenues ? His 
pretensions aimed at no less than treating church lands as if 
they had been entirely his own. Impossible as it seemed to be 
to come to terms, Anselm felt the extreme urgency for Eng- 
land of his being at one with the king. His very first acts 
as primate had raised a storm. How, then, should he bear the 
thick of the battle? He besought his episcopal brethren to in- 
terpose, but their answer was a new perplexity : " If you want 
to have the king's peace," it ran, " you must help him hand- 
somely out of your money ; you really must. Give him five 
hundred pounds down and promise him as much, and we make 
no doubt he will restore you to his friendship. We see no other 
way of getting out of the scrape ; we have no other way of 
getting out of ours." Suggestions of this kind were worse than 
useless. They were a fearful revelation, and a further proof to 
Anselm that he would have to fight his battle single-handed. 

At the lapse of the twelvemonth which succeeded his con- 
secration it behooved him to make another attempt with the 
king in the matter of the pallium. Like a wayfarer over a dan- 
gerous mountain-pass, every step revealed a new difficulty or a 
vital peril. William now demanded of Anselm to renounce 
all obedience and subjection to Pope Urban, declaring that 
the primate of England could not possibly reconcile devotion 
to the king with obedience to the pope, except at the will and 
pleasure of his sovereign. This was the momentous question 
which the archbishop laid before the nation at the Council of 
Rockingham in 1095. The episcopal bench neither " barked nor 
bit," and the consilium for which the primate had in his humility 



5o8* A MEDIAEVAL CULTURKAMPF. [July, 

asked them was that of courtiers, not of princes of the church. 
They advised entire submission to their lord the king in this as 
in all future differences. A pause fell oh the assembly after they 
had offered their contemptible advice, and then Anselm spoke 
the burning- words which are in themselves the best explanation 
for the need of turning- to Rome's neutrality : " Since you, who 
are called the shepherds of the flock of Christ and*the princes of 
the people, will not give counsel to me, your chief, save ac- 
cording to the behest of a mortal man, I will resort to the Chief 
Shepherd and the Prince of all. Know, therefore, all of you 
without exception, that in the things which appertain to God I 
will yield obedience to the Yicar of St. Peter, and in those 
which by law concern the territorial rank of my lord the king 
I will give faithful counsel and help to the utmost of my 
power." 

One of the noblest rights of St. Peter's see is to guard the 
things of God against the encroachments of earthly rulers, and, 
in virtue of its independent supremacy, to prevent the formation 
of national churches. Had St. Anselm lent himself to the Red 
King's demands, and consented, like his episcopal brethren, to 
buy a fleeting peace, it is easy to see what would have been the 
consequences. England would have been given over body and 
soul to a coarse despot with neither fear of God nor love of man, 
and its political annihilation would have been consummated. So 
the instinct of the lords temporal told them, as one of them bent 
the knee before the deserted primate in Rockingham church and 
bid him not to be disquieted, for that the true heart of England 
was with him. Fear of the barons often supplied the place of! 
a higher sentiment in the Norman annals. If courtier-bishops 
would consent to any degradation in order to please the king, 
account had to be taken of those whose liberty was grounded 
on the free and independent action of the church. If William 
agreed to what was in truth a flimsy truce with Anselm, it was 
because his barons showed uncomfortable signs of being unruly. 
He was meditating other artifices with which to circumvent the 
archbishop and to make him yield to bribery. In the spring of 
1095 a ^ papal legate arrived "in England, bearing, at William's 
cret instigation, Anselm's pallium. As he had received the 
archbishopric of Canterbury gratis, he would at least be willing 
to pay for this new favora truly delicate attention on the king's 
part. So, at least, argued Anselm's suffragans, as they openly 
propounded what the royal bounty expected of him". For a 
moment Anselm was lost in amazement, for it might have ap- 



1883.] A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. 509 

peared to him as if even Rome was siding against him. But his 
line of conduct soon became clear. Not only did he absolutely 
refuse to buy the king's favor even for the much-desired pallium ; 
he also maintained that he could not receive this emblem of 
spiritual office from the royal hands. And once more William 
was foiled. The cardinal placed the pallium on the high altar 
of Canterbury cathedral, and the archbishop took it himself, 
quasi de manu beati Petri. 

It is not always the soldiers who enjoy the fruits of their 
victory. How often the gentle archbishop sighed after his 
happy days at Le Bee, when he could serve God in his own way ! 
As he gained a greater knowledge of William he arrived at the 
painful conclusion that he should achieve no lasting good dur- 
ing the king's lifetime. It was, however, just one of those bat- 
tles which wound but do not kill, where it is as glorious to be 
maimed for life as to die in armor; and what agony it is to pos- 
sess the intellect and heart of sanctity without the proper instru- 
ments of action ! When, in the spring of 1097, William returned 
victorious from his Welsh campaign, Anselm was watching the 
moment to bring once again before him the deplorable spiritual 
state of England. In the autumn of the same year things had 
come to so bad a pass, and there seemed so little prospect of 
reformation, that the archbishop announced his definite intention 
of seeking counsel of the Holy See, with or without the king's 
permission. The bishops he had found weak reeds, and as time 
went on they grew in servility and abjectness. " My lord and 
father in God," they said to their primate, " we know you to be 
a religious and holy man ; we know that your conversation is in 
heaven. We, on the other hand, are hampered by kinsmen who 
depend on us for subsistence, and by a multitude of secular 
interests which, to say truth, we love. We cannot, therefore, 
rise to your heights ; we cannot afford to despise the world as 
you do. But if you will deign to come down to our poor level, 
and go with us along the way which we have chosen, we will 
advise you as if you were one of ourselves, and, whatever be 
the business which concerns you, will, if need be, forward it as 
if it were our own. If, however, you simply choose to hold to 
your God as you have hitherto done, you will be alone in the 
future, as you have been alone in the past, so far at least as we 
are concerned." 

" Betake you, then, to your lord ; I will hold to my God," 
was Anselm's rejoinder. He would defy the Conqueror's consue- 
tudo and seek to loosen his chains before they grew too heavy. 



;io A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. [July, 

At their parting interview William did not refuse Anselm's 
blessing He, however, sent a rude message commanding the 
archbishop not to take any of his property out of the kingdom. 
But he did worse. At Dover a royal clerk, William of Veraval, 
joined the archbishop's party and subjected the primate to the 
indignity of having his luggage searched in quest of forbidden 
treasure. On their arrival in France a loose plank was discov- 
ered in the ship, and it was no fault of the miscreant who had 
been tampering with it, bent on evil, if the archbishop was not 
buried in a watery grave. Anselm, then, arrived at his weary 
journey's end, and leaving England, in spite of himself, to the 
men whose " conversation was not in heaven," he laid his wrongs 
before the great Pope Urban II. They were summed up under 
four heads: i. The personal conduct of the king; 2. His con- 
fiscation of vacant churches and abbeys ; 3. His oppression of 
the church of Canterbury by giving away its lands to whom he 
pleased ; 4. His trampling under foot the law of God by the 
imposition of arbitrary consuetudines. These grievances, per- 
sisted in without the intervention of an independent power, 
would have enslaved the church and debased it into a mere 
national institution. The conduct of St. Anselm proves it to 
have been an entirely intolerable state of things for a Catholic 
archbishop. The close connection between church and state 
rendered the co-operation of the king almost necessary for the 
well-being of the spiritual power; but Rome was coming to an 
important decision, which, once taken, would greatly facilitate 
the action of ecclesiastical rulers by loosening some of the cords 
of tight state bondage. In 1099 tne Council of the Vatican, by 
the mouth of Urban II., pronounced anathema on the man who 
should become the vassal (homo) of a layman for ecclesiastical 
preferment. In those days, as now, crowned heads attached 
more importance to the vassalship of spiritual than of temporal 
jords. ' They throw me the carcass " has been the indignant 
though unwarrantable cry of sovereigns since Charlemagne's 
time, and to bring souls under their sceptre has been their cease- 
less aim. The feudal system in particular lent a powerful arm to 
state encroachments. Homage was of two kinds, simple and 
liege. All that remained lawful to churchmen after Pope Ur- 
ban's decision was the former that is, the doing homage for 
the temporalities of a see or church preferment. Anselm, there- 
fore, who had refused investiture from the Red King on his conse- 
cration, but who had become his " man " in virtue of the existing 
state of things, would be unable to give a similar homage to 



1883.] A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. 511 

William's successor. " Over and over again has his life been a 
subject of complaint to the Apostolic See," was Urban II.'s com- 
ment on Anselm's report of William's conduct. Yet the sword 
of excommunication was averted by the primate's intercession. 
Anselm had no doubt reason to fear the very worst if the most 
formidable spiritual weapon should be used under actual circum- 
stances. With his courtier suffragans in his mind's eye he may 
have foreseen the apostasy of the whole kingdom. 

Whilst a dire widowhood had fallen on Canterbury in the 
lifetime of its pastor, and the estates of the see were confiscated 
and oppressed by the Red King, the persecutor was overtaken 
midway on his course. Forlorn ignominy covered that royal 
corpse which was found in a pool of blood in the New Forest one 
August evening during the first year of a new century (iioo). 
Anselm was on his way back from Rome, though not to Canter- 
bury. The question of investiture had been settled by earth's 
highest authority, simplifying the dispute for Catholic poster- 
ity, but involving much persecution for the time on those who 
held responsible posts and were engaged in the strife. St. 
Anselm, then, did but exchange his warfare. If he had fought 
with one of the most corrupt monarchs of the day, and seen him 
descend unhonored and unloved into a premature grave, he was 
now called upon to contend with different artifices : a polished 
scholar of fair exterior and real convictions, who still had the 
same pretensions over the spiritual power as his father and 
brother such was William Rufus' successor. If men turn to 
God when they are in sorrow, so do sovereigns call in the 
church to the rescue of their tottering crowns. 

By the extraordinary promptitude and energy \vhich Henry 
Beauclerc displayed on his brother's death he succeeded in hav- 
ing himself hastily crowned, but there were many turbulent 
elements which made the presence and weight of the primate 
necessary to establish him in his regal power. Duke Robert of 
Normandy, and the evil produced by the feudal system subjects 
who were too independent of their master were formidable 
enemies. Henry, therefore, penned an eager letter to Anselm, 
calling him " dearest father," and beseeching him to return with 
all speed for the good of his own royal person. If, indeed, the 
wrongs which Anselm had exposed to the Holy See were most 
grievous, their light side was the fact that they belonged rather 
to a person than a dynasty. When the Red King died Anselm 
might well trust the fair words of his successor, who promised 
to put an end to the iniquitous traffic of the preceding reign in 



5 i2 A MEDIAEVAL CULTURKAMPF. [July, 

holy things. It was not so with the question of investiture that 
is, of the sovereign conferring the insignia of spiritual dignity. 
Anselm had returned to Canterbury, when fear entered his heart 
that his struggle might be only beginning. He had become the 
Red King's man for the temporalities of the archiepiscopate, but 
Peter had now spoken, and the act could not be repeated for his 
successor. 

When Anselm's anointed hand had steadied England's crown 
on Beauclerc's head, and the primate's authority had appeased 
the troubled elements, Henry unlocked from his bosom the 
designs which he had been waiting for the right moment to re- 
veal. Two traditions had been handed down to the English 
sovereign, the one from the Conqueror, the other from the Saxon 
kings. These were homage and investiture ; and in 1102, at a 
favorable time, Henry requested Anselm to become his man, 
plainly announcing to the Holy^See that he meant to relinquish 
none of the Conqueror's consuetudines or of the ancient usages. 
At a great meeting of bishops and peers in Westminster Hall 
Henry openly asserted his claims, and, as at Rockingham, An- 
selm once more stood alone to defend the rights and liberties of 
the church. Then, as before, his suffragans played him false, 
choosing Caesar rather than our Lord at the price of a lie. No- 
thing could have been more definite than Pope Urban's words at 
the Council of the Vatican; but the courtier-bishops the names 
of three are given explained them away by saying special re- 
servations had been made for their royal master, and, emboldened 
by their abject servility, Henry summoned Anselm to do him 
homage there and then. They who would look upon this cere- 
mony as a mere formality would have been the very ones to 
urge the Christians to make a pretence of sacrificing to the gods 
with a mental reservation. Certainly the giving of homage in- 
volved the whole question of the- independence of the church, 
and if Anselm had yielded the point the Anglican schism and 
heresy would have been hastened by four hundred years. As 
the primate was inflexible, the king proceeded to invest three 
bishops-elect with ring and crosier. But remorse overtook them. 
One died suddenly, sending a message to Anselm from his death- 
bed. Reinelm, Bishop-elect of Hereford, returned his crosier 
before schismatical consecration, and was deprived of the royal 
favor; whilst the third, William Giffard, refused at the very last 
moment to suffer the imposition of the archbishop of York's 
hands. Another embassy to Rome was proposed by Anselm 
and joyfully acquiesced in by Henry. He would thus gain time ; 



1883.] A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. 513 

but in maturing the plan he came' to wish for the archbishop's 
departure, and soon he alleged as a plea that Anselm should go 
himself to Rome and bend the law of the church to his regies con- 
suetudines. " What have I to do with the pope on my own con- 
cerns ? What my predecessors had in this realm is mine," was 
the independent feeling which rankled in his breast. And so, 
pressing the archbishop to come to terms with the Holy See, 
but wishing in his secret mind to be rid of Anselm at all costs, 
he succeeded in gaining time and in imposing a second exile 
upon the primate. Whilst he was ruthlessly bent on exposing 
the frail old man to the fatigues of a journey to Rome, he mean- 
while despatched a special messenger of his own that same Wil- 
liam of Veraval whom William Rufus had employed on a simi- 
lar errand and this wily diplomatist was to leave no stone un- 
turned, no means untried, to secure the right of investiture for 
his royal master. Pope Urban II. had gone to his rest, and 
Paschal II. had succeeded him in the chair of Peter. Once 
more the king of England's claims were exposed to the Holy 
Father, and the king of England's envoy, flushed and elated 
with his own powers of oratory, went so far as to state that 
" not for the forfeit of his kingdom will my lord the king of the 
English suffer himself to lose church investiture." Then Pope 
Paschal replied in a voice of thunder : " If, as you say, your king 
for the forfeit of his kingdom will not suffer himself to relinquish 
church donations, know this and I say it before God that not 
for the ransom of his life will Pope Paschal ever let him have 
them." Anselm, before starting, had fully known the mind of the 
Holy See ; and Henry, who was equally acquainted with it, was 
only concerned to treat it as ncn avenu, to make a show of de- 
ference, but to countenance as much underhand dealing as suited 
his aims. Compromises, episcopal servility and deceit, the in- 
terception of letters to and from Rome these were the means to 
which he stooped and which he encouraged. Pope Paschal's 
words had denounced investiture. " Wipe off the shame of such 
an aloofment from yourself and from your royalty," was his vigo- 
rous expression in a letter to Henry dated November 23, 1103. 
Anselm had then resumed his way of sorrows, taking up his tem- 
porary abode with the archbishop of Lyons. In his loyalty to 
Rome and to the king he, pressed down by his seventy years, had 
accomplished that toilsome journey. But he had been deceived. 
He was fighting with want of knowledge when the real obstacle 
was a moral one and lay in the king's will. The full truth burst 
upon him when he was requested to become Henry's man and 
VOL. xxxvn. 33 



514 A MEDIEVAL CULTURKAMPF. [J"ty 

to adopt all the Norman consuetudines, or to keep out of the king- 
dom. In pressing- him to go to Rome Beauclerc had in fact im- 
posed exile, though he had not set about it with the loyalty of 
an honest man. Nor was Anselm allowed to enjoy the relative 
peace of absence from his archiepiscopal cares. The king seized 
his revenues, and the archbishop's tenants were playing fast and 
loose with such privileges on his lands as had escaped the royal 
despoiler. Anselm was in the position of an absent Irish land- 
lord whose moneys are plundered, while he can getf no -rent. 
Even the prior of Christchurch reproached him in stinging 
words for his absence. But if the close connection between 
church and state involved suffering on the part of the spiritual 
rulers in that age of formation, a sovereign had then to count 
with Christendom, and where there is a Christendom the threat 
of excommunication is by no means insignificant. The teaching 
of St. Thomas has embodied the mediaeval theory of withdraw- 
ing obedience from a prince under sentence of spiritual depriva- 
tion. A two-edged sword was suspended over Henry in the 
spring of 1105. To persist in his demand for the right of inves- 
titure and in disposing of the lands of the primatial see would 
draw down upon himself the excommunication of the archbishop 
and of the Holy See. He would then have to contend with insur- 
rection and unruly barons at home, and the ducal crown of fair 
Normandy would elude his grasp. There was no time to be 
lost, and he must choose between two evils. Anselm had once 
steadied the crown on his head; reconciliation with the pri- 
mate, then, was a necessary step towards retaining it. The king 
reasoned in this wise, as, in the summer of 1105, at the Castle 
of Laigle, he once more encountered the man whom he had so 
deeply wronged. The sight of Anselm contributed much to- 
wards that reconciliation. The monarch was overcome ; he fell 
upon the primate's true heart and wept. A rumor spread abroad 
that king and archbishop were friends, consequently that the 
strife concerning investiture and royal consuetudines was at an 
end. Henry's renunciation of both was the price required at his 
hands to obtain the peace of the church. 

But one more arrow from the royal bow. The game was so 

lesperate that Henry had been forced to give up the principal 

points at issue, lest excommunication should overtake him. His 

sequent conduct proves that he only yielded to dire neces- 

for instead of bidding Anselm return with all speed to his 

widowed see, the king, under pretence of settling points with the 

pope, sought to gain time, and it was not till the spring of 



1883.] A MEDIAEVAL CULTURKAMPF. 515- 

1 106 that Henry formally invited the primate to return. St. An- 
selm's thirteen years' struggle was at an end ; his evening- star 
rose in a peaceful sky. He had put from off the church the 
trammels of state investiture, and founded a precedent which was 
to secure the free action and independence of spiritual rulers 
until such time as the sovereign of England should resume the 
chains and the servitude of state supremacy and renounce that 
blessed obedience to St. Peter's see which Lanfranc and St. An- 
selm, St. Thomas and Stephen Langton, had made synonymous 
with giving to God the things which are God's. 

The results of Henry's Culturkampf had been disastrous to 
the faith and morals of the people of England. Since his acces- 
sion in noothere had not been one single episcopal consecra- 
tion. The dioceses of Winchester, Salisbury, and Hereford had 
been vacant for eight, seven, and six years respectively, Exeter 
for three, whilst the bishop of London was in a very precarious 
state. The parochial clergy generally were violating the most 
sacred canons ; the abbatial chairs were vacant throughout the 
land, and the monastic rule was sinking into disorder. Lawless- 
ness and immorality are the inevitable consequences of with- 
drawing from the church the ways and means of rendering obe- 
dience to the rightful spiritual authority. 

In every struggle for spiritual independence there comes a 
moment when the angel bids the protector and guardian of the 
Holy Family to rise and return to the land of Israel, for that 
those who sought the life of the Child are dead. Plots and con- 
spiracies may be aimed against that divine existence, but the 
Holy Innocents are there to shed their infant blood for him. 
That massacre was typical of what the confessor's strife would 
be through the ages to come. It is for him to ward off deadly 
wounds from the Bride of Christ, and to adopt as a keynote of 
his earthly course St. Anselm's words : Nihil magis diligit Dens 
quam libertatem ecclesice suce. 



1 6 "DRAWING THE LINE" 



"DRAWING THE LINE."* 

"WE really must draw the line," have said ihe majority of 
Ihe English people, *' at the admission of atheists into Parlia- 
ment." " And suppose you do so," rejoin the advocates for 
affirmation; "you will only substitute hypocrisy for blatancy. 
For on which side of your * line ' do you propose to place those 
members who have already taken the oath with their lips, but 
who have taken it as a mere formula without a meaning? Sure- 
ly it is better," argue the advocates for affirmation, " to clo away 
with the irreverence of formal oaths than to let members kiss 
a Testament or say formally, ' So help me God/ while in their 
hearts they are callous sceptics, if not infidels." 

Does this objection go to the root of the matter ? Is the 
question a question of the good faith of particular members or 
of the good faith of the whole of the British Parliament? " The 
Constitution is Christian," so say England's greatest lawyers 
such men as Coke, Blackstone, and Holt. It is so essentially 
Christian, add such weighty authorities, that any statute which 
should be opposed to the Christian faith would be null and void 
by the very necessity of the case, as being in mockery of the 
basis of the Constitution. " We will admit this," rejoin the 
advocates for affirmation ; " we will admit that, at one time, this 
was the case ; yet you cannot deny the fact that Jews now sit in 
Parliament, and even Socinians, who are more obnoxious than 
are Jews." Perfectly true. But there arises the question : 
Does it follow in common sense, or as a corollary which any 
Christian can approve, that because we have already done what 
is equivocal we should therefore proceed to do what is worse ? 

* Since Mr. Marshall sent this article from England the bill for the relief of Mr. Bradlaugh 

has been beaten in the British Parliament. A London Catholic paper (the Tablet, May 12), not 

usually friendly to the Irish party or its claims, in describing the scene in the House of Commons 

when a division was had on the bill, says: But, after all, it is the Irish members to whom the 

s are due, and English Catholics may well be gratefully reminded that it was Irish voices and 

ih votes which chiefly prevented atheism from having share in English law-making. As the 

f the representatives of Ireland filed slowly by into the hostile lobby to vote down the 

nmistry, there must have been many who were mindful of another time when the representa- 

that same Catholic Ireland cast party allegiance to the winds in their single resolve to 

vote as they thought best for what they prized the most-the interests of religion and morality. 

the Irish members only three were found on Friday morning in the ministe- 

bby, and of these we may record the names of two Catholics, Mr. O'Shaughnessy and 

Fhe O'Donoghue." Reminders of this sort are frequently necessarv. -ED. of THE CATHOLIC 



1883.] "DRAWING THE LlNE." 517 

Are we to admit atheists because we have admitted Jews, any 
more than we are to admit lunatics from Bedlam because we 
have admitted fools from the boroughs ? Is it not requisite, in 
a country which is still Christian, to "draw the line " at that 
very critical point where affirmation must imply that the basis 
of the English laws is no more essentially theistical than it is 
atheistical ? 

" But the legislature is not essentially theistical," is the ordi- 
nary rejoinder of the affirmationists ; "it is parliamentary, rep- 
resentative, constituent, and it means simply the * vox populi ' 
in action." This is true and it is not true. So long as the sove- 
reign takes a religious oath at the coronation, so long as 
prayers are said daily in the 'House of Commons, so long as the 
national church is state-endowed, state-protected, and its' head 
is also the head of the English legislature, how is it possible to 
say that the legislature of the country is not essentially, is not 
primarily, theistical ? It is more it is essentially Christian ; for 
the sovereign takes an oath to defend that (Protestant) religion 
of which she is in two senses the head, being the head of the 
legislature which appoints all the bishops, and receiving homage 
from those bishops as their pontiff. It does seem idle to say 
that the legislature is not Christian because it has conceded 
special privileges to a special few. It seems still more idle to 
argue from such concessions that the legislature has ceased to 
be theistical. Let us remember that great concessions were due 
to the Jews in reparation for long centuries of wrong ; just as 
great concessions were due to English Catholics, as well as to 
Irish and to Scotch Catholics, though Catholicism is not the 
religion of the legislature. Special instances of favor shown to 
such respectable Hebrews as a Rothschild, a Goldsmith, a De 
Worms, cannot be regarded as regrettable, except in the broad 
sense that " a Christian legislature ought to be Christian." 

& o 

" But," say the advocates for affirmation, " you see that you ad- 
mit that there have been exceptions ; and one exception is suf- 
ficient to destroy a principle." Very well ; if you insist on it 
we admit it, for it is useless to contend against proved facts. 
But what has this to do with a new principle? What conceiv- 
able justice or logical corollary can be urged i.n regard to the 
new atheism from the fact that the concessions which have 
hitherto been made did not include concessions to atheists? You 
might as well argue that, if some eccentric constituency were to 
return some zoological curiosity, bipedal, quadrupedal, or " pre- 
hensile," it would be the duty of Parliament to bring in a relief 



518 "DRAWING THE LINE" [July, 

bill, so as to seat the strange expositor of local views. Is the 
whole country to be insulted by the reconsideration of "dis- 
abilities " every time that an eccentric constituency chooses to 
return some eccentric representative ? We all know that there 
are certain classes of persons who are disabled from sitting in 
Parliament persons who, either morally or intellectually, are 
esteemed to be unfit to govern. Here, then, we have the princi- 
ple of disabilities. No one would dream of introducing a relief 
bill for the seating of a maniac or of a murderer; even persons 
who have been proved guilty of a felony are thereby disqualified 
from being " returned " ; why, then, argue that, because the con- 
stituents of Northampton have eccentrically elected a blatant 
atheist, there ought, in their special case, to be a relief bill ? No- 
thing could have been simpler than to politely inform North- 
ampton that it had misapprehended its voting powers, and that 
if it would kindly return some member who could sit no objec- 
tion would be made to his sitting. Instead of this the prime 
minister assures the House of Commons that Mr. Bradlaugh is 
"a good man of business," and that, being so, he is entitled to 
demand a new act to remove all existing disabilities. What a 
principle for the author of Vaticanism ! The prime minister 
who has just nominated an archbishop of Canterbury, and who 
reads the lessons in his parish church at Hawarden, sees no 
objection to altering the law to seat an atheist, and considers 
that the legislature ought no longer to be theistical, because a 
majority of Northamptonites have returned an atheist ! 

It is difficult to imagine a more humiliating position than that 
in which Mr. Gladstone has placed the country. The degrada- 
tion of the country, like the degradation of the ministry, seems 
complete under the dictation of Mr. Bradlaugh and of his few 
illiterate followers at Northampton. Not one Englishman of 
education or of position has demanded this revolution in the 
laws, though a very few have thought it " expedient under the 
circumstances "that is, because one constituency has demanded 
1 here are three senses in chief in which the national degra- 
dation is involved in this proposed revolution. First, there is 
the yielding to a mob outcry in regard to the most radical of all 
changes and in. despite of the expressed disgust of the nation. 
Next, there is the lowering of the English legislature in the eyes 
of its^own Christian subjects, as well as "in the eyes of the 
Christian world, from the high repute of being a champion of 
Christian faith which it has enjoyed, and perhaps merited, 
for twelve centuries. And, thirdly, there is the making England 



1883-] "DRAWING THE LINE." 519 

to set the example of irreligion, or at the least to encourage 
other countries in irreligion, and so to swell the torrent of 
unbelief and of modern paganism which is deluging half the 
nations of the earth. The immediate consequence of " banishing 
God from the House of Commons," as a writer has forcibly 
expressed it, " will be that God will be banished from the army 
and the navy, from courts of justice, from social compacts, from 
all honor." It is idle to reply that one or more professing 
atheists will have no influence on the faith of the nation. That 
is not true, nor is it the point. The point is that the oath, as it 
at present stands, is a national tribute to God's honor ; but the 
doing away with the oath is a national attestation to the non- 
importance of caring for God's honor. It is the preference of 
the individual before the Creator. If you say, " God is ; but I 
allow a man to affirm that he is not," you say that God necessa- 
rily has his honor, but that his creatures may affirm that he has 
none. There is no question hereof believing in particular doc- 
trines, nor even of believing in dispensations. The question is : 
Does God exist? If he does you blaspheme him in denying 1 
him, and you blaspheme him in legislating that he may be 
denied. Now, the House of Commons believes that God exists. 
How, then, can that house affirm that his honor is compatible with 
the legislating that his existence may be denied? Let us bring 
the case home to each individual member, and thus see how it 
stands in regard to conscience. 

Every member of the house has taken the oath, -"so help me 
God," presumably in earnest and in good faith. Every mem- 
ber of the house, therefore, believes in God. But if a man 
believe in God his first instinct is reverence, with an infinite 
preference for God's honor before all honor. If, being in that 
state of mind, he passes a law that a professing atheist may " sit ' 
with him on equal terms as a legislator, he is guilty of this im- 
piety more properly of this insanity that he profoundly honors 
and profoundly dishonors the same God. If a man should say, 
sitting in the House of Commons, "Queen Victoria is my sove- 
reign, and I honor her ; but I am prepared to admit members to 
this house who shall deny that Queen Victoria is Queen of Eng- 
land nay, who shall deny that Queen Victoria t exists at all," he 
would not only be thought disloyal, but so wanting in common 
sense that even the most radical of the members of Parliament 
would ridicule him. How much more shall a member of Parlia- 
ment be worthy of contempt who can say, " I adore the honor 
of God, but I adore it in such spirit that they who dishonor it 



"DRAWING THE LINE." [J u ty' 

most are as much entitled to my respect as are the best Chris- 
tians ; and I will sit, as an equal, with the arch-fiend himself, if a 
constituency should elect him by a majority, because a majority 
of electors is worthy of more honor that He who is alone worthy 
of infinite honor." 

" Drawing the line " at the making senators of atheists is a 
principle of which no Christian need be proud,'seeing that the 
old pagans, both the Greeks and the Romans, " drew the line " 
much more tightly than we do. It is not necessary to quote 
Demosthenes, Lycurgus, Socrates, any more than Cicero, Quin- 
tilian, Juvenal, on the point that an oath in the name of the 
gods was the most binding attestation in man's power. It is 
enough that these worthies attributed to an oath, whether made 
by a good man or by a bad man, a sacredness which gave to 
society a security which no mere promise or affirmation could 
give. Neither Greeks nor Romans would have courteously said 
to an atheist, " Sir, would you prefer to affirm ? " because the 
value of an oath was not the value which a Bradlaugh but the 
value which society put upon it. Is there not a shallowness in 
the reasoning of those objectors who talk of an oath not being 
binding on an atheist as though any individual, even in the 
natural order, had the right to proclaim his insolence in such 
fashion ? Imagine a man saying to a judge in a court of justice : 
" Sir, I do not recognize the authority of judges ; I do not even 
recognize their existence ; therefore pass your sentence on some- 
body else." Or imagine a man saying that, in regard to any 
compact in which faithfulness was the basis, the whole soul, he 
had his own ideas on the subject of faithfulness, and no pro- 
mise, no known principle, could bind him. The answer would 
be : "I do not care a pin what your eccentric conceits may 
account wisdom ; I expect you to promise in the way other men 
promise, and if you do not I account you a rogue." Sheer im- 
pudence is no title to our respect, though the affirmationists 
would seem to imply this. Mr. Bradlaugh has stated that he 
cannot swear by God, because he does not believe that God is. 
He knows of no being who is higher than himself, and can conse- 
quently swear by no one who is higher. Now, as has been said, 
the old pagans, however deluded they might be, were not de- 
luded into affirming by Bradlaughs. ^They "drew the line" at 
such idiocy or imbecility. They confessed to the existence of 
the immortals, even though sometimes they worshipped mortals 
after their death. They confessed that the human intellect, the 
best as the worst, was responsible to the uncreated, divine Wis- 



1883.] " DRAWING THE LINE" 521 

dom. Had some intelligent shoemaker, in some suburb of Athens, 
or in some by-street of Rome in its most depraved days, pro- 
claimed himself worthy to be a senator on the ground of his 
having a contempt for the public sacrifices, it is doubtful' 
whether even the lowest Greek or Roman mob would have 
asked him to make shoes for them any more. Still less would 
Demosthenes or Cicero have created a precedent for Mr. Glad- 
stone, and have stood up in a forum to plead the cause of the 
said shoemaker as a man for whom the laws ought to be 
changed. Cicero's fine sense of moral rectitude, coupled with 
his superb disdain for shuffling cowardice, would have saved him 
from being Gladstonian in policy. " But he would have been 
wrong," is the opinion of the prime minister. What he ought to 
have done, to be a first-rate Liberal minister, was to have ad- 
cjressed a Roman audience in this way : " This man is a good 
man of business, who despises the gods and offers insult to all 
sacrifice, to all religion. Therefore must the laws be changed on 
his behalf. And if, next year, the electors of Pompeii should 
elect a man who should say that he is himself Jupiter, it will be 
our duty to bring in an affirmation bill to enable that man to 
affirm that he is Jupiter." 

There is one grave point, however, in this controversy which 
the advocates for affirmation totally ignore. It is that the House 
of Commons is, in fact as well as theory, custos morum of both the 
church and the state. At one time it was the province of the 
bishops' courts and at another time of the Star Chamber and 
of the High Commission to give judgment in (more or less) re- 
ligious controversies, ecclesiastical, doctrinal, or moral. The 
Queen's Bench and the common law have now included within 
their spheres most of the offences which were at one time judg- 
ed " spiritually." But the House of Commons is the very root 
of the Common Law. Indeed, all laws, ecclesiastical or civil, 
are the sovereign yw/ of that assembly which rules the country. 
Now, the common law pronounces blasphemy to be criminal ; 
and if an overt and blatant atheist be not a blasphemer it would 
be difficult to say who can possibly be. one. Yet the House of 
Commons, which is custos morum of church and state, is now con- 
sidering whether the legalizing of blasphemy be not a consistent 
concession to modern thought. The house knows that there is 
a statute of William III. which punishes both written and spoken 
blasphemy ; yet since it has rather patronized than reproved the 
scholarly pleaders for rank materialism, and has accepted infidel 
magazines as an institution, it is in this difficulty, that it cannot 



5 22 "DRAWING THE LlNE" [July, 

well resent coarseness when it has made peace with graceful 
scepticism or refined wickedness. Yet this difficulty which is 
of its own making is no apology. As a matter of fact, to legis- 
late to permit a crime which is pronounced atrocious by the 
common law of England is revolutionary as much as it is apos- 
tate, and renders the statutes in regard to blasphemy quite 
nugatory. We know the answer which is given by the affir- 
mationists that " to affirm is not necessarily to deny God "; 
and on this point one word may be added. Dr. Benson, the 
new archbishop of Canterbury, has just replied to a deputation 
of some thirteen thousand Anglican clergymen that he thinks 
that affirmation involves no principle. He thinks that if Angli- 
can clergymen are allowed to " affirm " that they consent to the 
teaching of the Thirty-nine Articles and of the Prayer-Book, 
members of the House of Commons ought to be allowed to 
affirm without' an inference being drawn that they are atheists. 
But, in the first place, it is because Mr. Bradlaugh is an atheist 
that the new Affirmation Bill is proposed. And, in the next 
place, to draw a parallel between affirming a private consent 
to all the contradictory propositions of the Articles (many of 
which contradict one another, or are contradicted most absurdly 
by themselves), and the refusing to affirm in the name of God, 
on the ground that it is doubtful whether there be a God, is one 
of those efforts at " trimming " for which Anglican primates 
have been always equivocally famous. There is no question be- 
fore the house of swearing to (human) Articles ; the question is, 
Can a member, when he is giving assurance of his good faith, be 
allowed to omit the words, " so help me God," on the ground 
that God is, to him, a nullity ? Not if t\\e present statutes are to 
remain in force. Not if the House of Commons is to be custos 
morum. Not if the House of Commons is to make laws for the 
Established Church (which it always has done and always claims 
that it will do), and to define the limits of the spiritual teach- 
ing of the clergy, or to create the courts which are to give 
judgments on such limits. Not if the queen is to remain " De- 
fender of the Faith " and. to continue to govern "by the grace 
of God." Either sweep away all religion out of the whole realm 
or do let us make a stand at " belief in God." If we cannot make 
a stand at this point, at what point shall we ever make a stand ? 
And there is all the more reason why we should make our stand 
here, because half, the Continent of Europe is now looking to 
England for either a rebuke to, or an apology for, apostasy. 
Now that all the ancient, hereditary landmarks and strongholds 



1883.] "DRAWING THE LINE." $2$ 

of the Christian religion are being removed, one by one, in 
Southern Europe, is it a time for dragging in the dirt the hon- 
ored name of the British Parliament, which has at least been 
always credited with a certain vigor of independence and with 
a contempt for bowing the knee to a vulgar faction ? Have 
the Liberals who would vote any way with Mr. Gladstone for 
the sake of keeping their party together considered what 
must be the consequences which must follow on the new prin- 
ciple " that M.P.'s may be all atheists or blasphemers " ? At 
the present moment it is not permitted to an atheist to rise up 
on a public platform and preach atheism. But if a man may 
preach atheism from the bar of the House of Commons, it is 
obvious that he may preach it not only on public platforms 
but (consistently) in the pulpits of the Established Church. 
If the supreme law-court of the kingdom permit atheism per- 
mit it to be an optional "creed" for a law-maker how is 
it possible that a law-breaker can be tried in a court of justice 
for an offence which is purely optional in a law-maker ? And, 
further, consider the moral influence of such precedent upon 
all society, upon universities, upon youth. At Oxford and Cam- 
bridge there are now no religious tests ; but this is because Dis- 
senters, who are believers in God, do not believe in the Thirty- 
nine Articles. Or, as a Dissenter somewhat humorously put it, 
" I do not believe in the Thirty-nine Articles because 1 most 
firmly believe in God." But the moral effect of making atheism 
to be respectable by making it a robe of fitness for a legislator 
would be to make it to be respectable for undergraduates as well 
as graduates, and for candidates for Holy Orders and for all 
professors. It is no answer to say that every one is aware that 
there is an immense amount of scepticism at the universities. 
Scepticism as to particular evidences for revelation may be not 
(necessarily) an unbelieving frame of mind ; but the public refusal 
to confess to a belief in God, on the part of persons who make 
laws for church and state, is not only a public scandal, but would 
be a national apostasy, if the nation suffered the scandal to be- 
come law. The kind of argument which would pass through 
the youthful mind, as well as through the minds of the masses* 
should the affirmationists succeed in their designs, would cer- 
tainly be something of this kind : " The nation returns atheists to 
Parliament ; Parliament makes laws for church and state ; Par- 
liament is also custos morum of the kingdom ; ergo church and 
state, plus the national morality, may be, optionally, theistic or 
atheistic. But since atheism is the exact opposite of theism, 



524 "DRAWING THE LlNE." [July, 

therefore church and state, plus the national morality, may be, 
optionally, profoundly wicked or profoundly virtuous. I give 
it up." 

And at this point let us briefly, and for the sake of clear- 
ness, run over the ground which we have travelled. First, the 
question of religion is for the whole Parliament it is not for 
eccentric or bad members ; second, the past admission of Jews 
is no argument, because it leaves the Parliament what it was, 
theistic ; third, the Constitution and the throne being theistic, 
Parliament must necessarily be so also; fourth, no person of any 
established reputation has demanded what is proposed to be 
conceded, still less have the Anglican clergy done so ; fifth, all 
members of Parliament who have taken the oath have committed 
themselves to the confession, " God is," and therefore to the 
protection of God's honor; sixth, all civilized nations, before the 
birth of modern Liberalism, insisted on the importance of an 
oath, not only for the honor of the Deity, but as essential to the 
security of society ; seventh, the English Parliament, being custos 
morum of the nation, as making all the laws which govern so- 
ciety and as dictating the tenure of power of the Established 
Church, must be necessarily " religious " in its apprehension ; 
eighth, the change of character which would be involved by ig- 
noring religion would be a departure from twelve centuries of 
precedent; ninth, the result of such example would be most in- 
jurious to "foreign" nations, who naturally respect the oldest 
Parliament in the world ; tenth, the result of such example would 
be most injurious to English society, and especially to the uni- 
versities and to all youth. 

" Abyssus abyssum invocat " may be the normal course of 
doing wrong, but it is no more a Christian than a logical obli- 
gation. Up to the present time England has never ignored God. 
France once set up the goddess Reason on a Catholic altar, but 
England has not gone further than to multiply heresies or to in- 
dulge in frantic Puritanism or in " No- Popery." Nor has Par- 
liament ever suffered that a member should say (in Parliament) 
what has been said in recent times in the French Parliament, that 
11 religion is a worn-out superstition." A French senator cried 
put^recently during a debate, " There is no such thing as moral- 
ity " ; nor do we see how there should be in the apprehension of 
a senator who had previously said, " There is no God." England 
has not come to this at present. But it may come to it in pun- 
ishment for irreligion. A national callousness as to the honor of 
God is a sure forerunner of the denial of his name. 



1883.] ARMINE. . 525 



ARMINE. 

CHAPTER XII. 

IT was a part of Armine's daily order of existence, when not 
otherwise occupied, to take a walk with Madelon. Besides the 
chief end of exercise, there were many objective points for these 
walks the markets and shops where necessary business was to 
be transacted, the churches where of late the girl had liked more 
and more to go but among them all there was no more favorite 
point than the tall house on the Quai Voltaire. Thither she al- 
ways turned her face with a sense of pleasure ; and Madelon riever 
objected to that destination, for it chanced that the wife of the 
concierge was an old friend with whom she liked to enjoy a com- 
fortable gossip while Armine mounted to the apartment of her 
friends. 

One morning, therefore, as was often the case, they were to 
be seen leaving the Rue de Rivoli, with its tide of eager life, 
passing under the massive archway which leads into the Place 
du Carrousel, crossing that magnificent court which was sur- 
rounded and overlooked by the united palaces of the Louvre 
and the Tuileries until the hand of barbarism fell upon the lat- 
ter and the destruction which the Commune began the Republic 
fitly finished, emerging on the beautiful Quai du Louvre, pass- 
ing over the Pont du Carrousel, and entering the familiar house 
on the left bank of the river. There, leaving Madelon in the 
cabinet of the concierge, Armine passed upward and met Mile. 
d'Antignac just issuing from her apartment. 

" My dear Armine," she exclaimed, " I am glad that you were 
not two minutes later! You would have found me absent ; and 
the doctor is with Raotil, so you could not have seen him. But 
now I shall take you in" she opened the cloor from which she 
had emerged " and settle you comfortably in the salon-' 

" But you are going out," said Armine. " You must not let 
me keep you " , 

" I shall not let you keep me," said the other, with her frank 
smile. " But I shall keep you until I return. You will not mind ? 
I shall not be long I am only going on a little matter of busi- 
ness and there is a great deal that I want to say to you, so I 
should like for you to wait, if you can." 



526 ARMINE. [July, 

" I can wait, if you will not be too long 1 /' Armine answered. 
"And perhaps when the doctor goes I may see M. d'Antignac 
for a few minutes ? " 

" Perhaps," said Helene doubtfully. " He is suffering very 
much this morning ; but after the doctor goes you can send 
Cesco to inquire. If he can see any one he will see you." 

She unclosed the salon door as she spoke, and ushered Ar- 
mine into that pleasant room, full of the fragrance of flowers, 
and with windows open to the brightness of the soft spring day. 
A table in the middle of the floor was covered with French and 
English publications, and toward this Mile. d'Antignac wheeled 
a deep chair. 

" Sit down here," she said, " and amuse yourself for half an 
hour. I am sure you will not find it difficult to do so." 

" I could not find it difficult for much longer than half an 
hour," Armine replied. " The danger is that I might forget the 
lapse of time entirely." 

" Oh ! I shall be back before long," Mile. d'Antignac an- 
swered, " so you need have no fear of that. Make yourself easy 
in mind and body, and send Cesco to inquire if Raoul can see 
you, when the doctor leaves." 

She went out, closing the door behind her, and a moment 
later Armine heard the outer door of the apartment also close. 
All was then quiet. Through the open windows the sounds of 
the great city came in a softened murmur, suggestive of the ful- 
ness of life near at hand, but not loud enough to disturb. The 
girl sat down in the chair which her friend had drawn forward, 
and in which her slender figure was almost lost, and leaned back 
with a pleasant sense of repose. She was warm from her walk, 
and the coolness and tranquillity were delightful. After a little 
while she lifted off her hat and pushed back the loose rings of 
hair from her brow, round which, however, they curled again 
in damp, picturesque confusion. Then she put out her hand and 
took a book from the table. It was an English review, and she 
had just begun to look over the contents when a ring of the 
door-bell broke the stillness. 

The sound startled her for an instant. But a second thought 
reassured her. No one would be admitted, she felt certain, so 
she returned to the consideration of the review just as the 
Italian servant who had remained with his master ever since 
the Roman days of the Pontifical Zouave opened the door 
of the apartment and confronted a tall, dark gentleman, who 
said : 



1883.] ARMINE. 527 

" Ah ! Cesco, can I see your master this morning ? " 

" I am sorry, M. le Vicomte, but the doctor is with him now," 
the man answered. " If you can wait a little, however, no doubt 
he will see you." 

" I will go into the salon for a few minutes, then. Is Mile. 
d'Antignac at home ? " 

" No, M. le Vicomte, she has gone out.'' 

" Well, no matter. I will wait, nevertheless. Let M. d'An- 
tignac know, as soon as the doctor leaves, that I am here." 

And so it came to pass that, to Armine's surprise and dis- 
may, the door opened and closed behind her, and a step crossed 
the floor before she conquered her reluctance to rise from the 
large chair in which she was concealed. But it became neces- 
sary to do so when the step approached and paused at the table. 
She rose, therefore, and, turning, lifted her eyes to the surprised 
face of the Vicomte de Marigny. 

" Mile. Duchesne ! " he exclaimed in a tone of amazement. 

" I am sorry that Mile. d'Antignac has gone out, M. le Vi- 
comte," said Armine with apparent composure, though inwardly 
she was much discomposed. " And it is only by an accident 
that I am here." 

The vicomte smiled. " I was aware that my cousin was 
out," he said, with the exquisite courtesy of manner which had 
struck the girl before, " but I was not prepared for the pleasure 
of finding that she had left a substitute. I should beg your par- 
don for not observing you sooner, mademoiselle, but I really do 
not think" with a glance at the high back of the chair from 
which she had risen " that I was to blame." 

" I am sure that you were not," said Armine, smiling also. 
" Mile. d'Antignac asked me to wait for her," she added, " and I 
was the more willing to do so because I hoped to see M. d'An- 
tignac, perhaps. You are probably aware that the doctor is with 
him now." 

" It is for that reason I have intruded upon you," M. de Ma- 
rigny answered. " I am waiting until the doctor leaves. But 
because I have intruded I beg that you will not suffer me to 
disturb you." He looked at the book in her hand. " You were 
reading when I entered." 

-"No," she answered. " I had just opened this to see if there 
was anything in it which I cared to read." 

" It is the Contemporary Review, I perceive," he said. " You 
are familiar with English, then?" 

" Sufficiently so to read it easily," she replied; "but I do not 



528 ARMINE. [July, 

like to speak it. Indeed, I am not fond of speaking any language 
except my native tongues French and Italian." 

" They certainly spoil one for all others," said the vicomte. 
" But you are fortunate in possessing two native tongues. Most 
of us are forced to be content with one, and to undergo the 
labor of learning whatever other .language we acquire." 

" I should be at a loss to tell whether French or Italian is 
my native language," said Armine, " for as long as I can re- 
member I have been as familiar with one as with the other. 
My mother was an Italian, and I have lived in Italy as much as 
in France." 

" I fear, then, that France must occupy only a secondary 
place in your regard," said M. de Marigny ; " for I have myself 
lived in Italy long enough to appreciate the spell which it exer- 
cises, even when one has a country that one places before all 
others." 

" Yes, I like Italy best," she said. Then she paused and 
looked at him with the shadow of a thought in her eyes, which 
she seemed in doubt whether or not to utter. The absolute un- 
consciousness of the look struck him exceedingly. He recog- 
nized the beauty of the clear, golden eyes, but, moreover, he 
recognized that, gaze as far down in their depths as he would, 
there was not the faintest trace of coquetry to be perceived. 
And a Frenchman so naturally expects this trace that its absence 
always surprises him. 

"What is it, mademoiselle?" he asked, answering the look 
with a smile. "Are you wondering over the fact that even a 
Frenchman could place France before Italy ? " 

" No," she answered. " I was wondering which is best in 
its results on the world, I mean the spirit of patriotism which 
you express, or the spirit which ignores geographical bounda- 
ries and race distinctions to embrace all mankind as brothers." 

This unexpected reply made the vicomte remember what 
D'Antignac had said of his surprise when he found this girl pon- 
dering upon the deep problems of life. She was so young in 
appearance, and there was so much childlike simplicity in her 
manner, that he was the more surprised, though there was cer- 
tainly nothing childlike in the regard of those grave, beautiful 
eves. 

1 ThaUs a question," he said, " upon which the world is very 
much divided though modern, opinion leans more to solidarity 
than to national feeling but I believe that patriotism is an es- 
sential principle in the social order. All mankind are indeed 



1883.] ARMINE. 529 

brothers ; but there are few who will deny that those of our own 
household have the first claim upon us." 

"There are many who deny even that," she said. 

" There are unfortunately many who deny everything which 
human experience proves," he answered. " But," he added, 
with a remembrance of her father and a desire to avoid wound- 
ing- her, " no error can maintain any lasting influence unless it 
holds some fragment of truth ; and the solidarity of mankind, 
which Socialism teaches, is but an echo of the fraternity of the 
Christian and the catholicity of the church." 

She was silent for a moment, looking down and turning over 
absently the leaves of the review ; then, glancing up, she said : 
'* So you think there is some good in such teaching? " 

" Nay," he said, " you must not misunderstand me, A teach- 
ing may be none the less evil in its effects for containing a frag- 
ment of truth. To attempt to work out by natural means an 
ideal which requires a supernatural basis is not only an attempt 
foredoomed to failure, but also certain to produce unlivable con- 
ditions. It is to me," he went on after an instant's pause, "one 
of the saddest features of our time that so many spirits, full of 
self-denying ardor and noble zeal for what they believe to be a 
great end, should waste time, life, energy in pursuit of these vain 
ideals of human progress, which ultimately can only retard that 
progress instead of helping it." 

Her eyes were now full of quick moisture and grateful light. 

" You are right," she said in a low tone ; " it is sad, but I can 
answer for some of them that they are blind to any other light 
than that which they follow, and that they are indeed full of self- 
denying ardor." 

As she spoke a slight stir was audible in the antechamber 
evidently the doctor going out and a moment later Cesco 
opened the door communicating between the salon and his 
master's room. 

" M. d'Antignac will see you now, M. le Vicomte," he said, 
after a slight pause expressive of astonishment at the tctc-a-tete 
which he found in progress. 

M. de Marigny turned to Armine with an air of deference. 

" You will come also, mademoiselle, will you not ? " he said. 

" For a moment only," she answered. 

And so, to D'Antignac's surprise, it was Armine who entered, 
followed by the vicomte. 

" You did not expect to see me" she said with a smile, ad- 
vancing to the side of his couch. " But Mile. d'Antignac, whom 
VOL. xxxvii. 34 



530 



ARMINE. [J ll b' 



I met as she was going out, told me that I might beg to see you 
for a minute after the doctor left. So here I am just for a 
minute to bid you good-day and ask how you are." 

" Not very well," he said and, indeed, the wan languor of his 
appearance answered for him " but able to see my friends for 
more than ' just a minute.' Ah ! Gaston, how goes it with you ? " 

He held out one hand to the vicomte, while still detaining 
Armine with the other ; and when she made a motion to draw 
back he said : 

" No, I cannot let you run away at once. It has been too 
long since I have seen you. Sit down for a short while, at least, 
and tell me something of yourself." 

Armine shook her head. " I should be wasting M. de -Ma- 
rigny's time as well as your strength," she said ; " and, indeed, I 
have not anything to tell of myself. Nothing ever happens 
to me." 

" You can tell me, then, if you have seen again the inquirer 
after knowledge whom you sent to me, and if any change has 
come over the spirit of his views." 

"The inquirer after knowledge whom I sent to you?" she 
repeated with surprise. Then, with a sudden flash of recol- 
lection, she added, smiling, " Oh ! I remember you mean the 
American gentleman, M. Egerton. I had not the presumption 
to send him to you ; but since he spoke of knowing you, I asked 
him if he had ever heard your opinions on the questions which 
were interesting him. I am glad if what I said induced him to 
come to you, and I judge that what you said had some effect on 
him, since I met him in Notre Dame last Sunday afternoon." 

" He went by my recommendation, but I think from intellec- 
tual curiosity," said D'Antignac ; " and in the pleasure which he 
expressed afterwards I heard no echo of anything save intellec- 
tual gratification." 

1 Intellectual gratification may lead to mental conviction," 
said M. de Marigny. " It is quite true that faith is not of the 
intellect, but the steps toward it must be mental processes." 

" Credo, quia impossible est" said D'Antignac. 
' Yes, I have always thought that the sublimest expression of 
faith," said the other. " But a mind must first be led to believe 
in the possible before it can bow down before that which is im- 
possiblesave to God." 

"Egerton is very reasonable," said D'Antignac. "He is 
quite willing to acknowledge the possible, but I fear that he will 
halt long before the impossible. The mosts- careless Catholic has 



1883.] ARMINE. 531 

this great advantage over those whose lot has been cast outside 
the church : he is able to realize the supernatural, which modern 
thought grows more and more arrogant in denying." 

" And by the aid of that knowledge," said the vicomte, " he 
is able to understand many things which are a mystery and a 
stumbling-block to the modern philosopher. You see, made- 
moiselle," he turned to Armine, " I have reached again the point 
where our conversation ended." 

" And it must be the end for me a second time," she an- 
swered with a smile. " Yes, I must indeed go," she said in reply 
to a look from D'Antignac. " But I am sorry oh ! more than 
sorry to leave you suffering so much." 

" Do not be sorry," he said quietly. " ' Cette vie crucifie'e cst la 
vie bienheureuse! It was one who suffered as much as I who said 
that." 

" I know well that there are many more unhappy lives than 
yours," she replied. " Yet one cannot help wishing that you 
might suffer less." 

" Then I might merit less," he said. " Only pray for me that 
I may be patient." 

She murmured a few words in reply, then turned toward 
the door, which M. de Marigny moved forward to open. It 
seemed to Armine that he could have done so no more cour- 
teously if she had been the daughter of a duke. She thanked 
him with a glance from her soft eyes as she passed out, returning 
his salutation with a low " Bon jour t M. le Vicomte." 

He closed the door after her and went back to the couch of 
his friend with rather an abstracted look on his face. It was not 
a handsome face, but one that had the power to attract attention 
by its distinction and to hold it by its charm. This charm dwelt 
chiefly in the dark, deeply-set eyes and in the smile (when it 
came) of the usually grave lips. It was a thoughtful counte- 
nance, with many traces of that ardent and earnest soul which 
the Breton possesses, and which enables him to preserve a no- 
ble type of manhood among the rapidly-degenerating French 
people. 

After a moment D'Antignac spoke : 

" Eh bien, Gaston," he said. " Of what are you thinking ? " 

" I was thinking," replied the other, with a slight smile, " that 
I begin to understand the personal magnetism which Duchesne 
is said to possess. And I was also thinking that it is a singular 
chance which has brought me in contact with his daughter this 
morning, for I came to tell you that I have decided to stand for 



532 ARMINE. [July, 

Lafour's seat, and I understand that Duchesne is to be sent down 
to rouse opposition and elect a Republican, if possible." 
" But it will hardly be possible? " 

" There is no telling. Socialism is a very attractive doctrine, 
as well as the logical outcome of republicanism, and this man 
has great powers. Besides, he has reasons for special animosity, 
and therefore 'special exertions, against me." 
" Against you ? " said the other with surprise. 
" Well, not against me personally, perhaps, but certainly 
against me as the representative of my family. De Marigny is 
likely to be an odious name to him, because it is a name which 
he cannot bear." 

" Ah ! " said D'Antignac. " How often it is the case that the 
most passionate advocates of social revolt are those who are 
under that particular social ban ! This fact explains many things 
about him the refinement, the mystery, the reputation of gentle 
or noble blood." He paused a moment, then added : " It is not 
strange that you have regarded Armine with peculiar interest." 
" I think I should have felt that in any case," replied the 
vicomte. " I never saw a more exquisite face. And either 
there is something very pathetic in it or my knowledge of her 
life and its surroundings has made me fancy the expression." 

" It exists," said D'Antignac. " No exercise of fancy is need- 
ed to imagine it. Poor Armine ! she has known none of the sun- 
shine of youth. Her father, I judge, is kind to her, but abso- 
lutely absorbed in his work. She has never had any social life ; 
and two things have been always before her one the weight of 
hopeless misery which oppresses the vast mass of mankind, the 
other the spectre of revolution. It is quite possible that she 
might have become a prophetess of the latter herself but for the 
light of faith." 

" And for the hand which guided her toward that light," said 
the vicomte. 

D'Antignac shook his head. " It is not well to think too 
much of that," he said. " But tell me your plans for the cam- 
paign which is before you." 

" I came to talk them over with you," said the other, "since 
I must leave Paris to-night. But I see that you are suffering 
very much, and I think it would be better not to trouble you." 

" Do you know so little of me as to believe that you could 
trouble me?" D'Antignac asked. "Ah! no. Go on, tell me 
everything ! One can only rise above pain by abstracting the 
thoughts from it." 



1883.] ARMINE. 533 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WHEN Armine reached home on the day of the visit just re- 
corded she found her father, whom she had supposed far away, 
seated quietly at work in his cabinet de travail: This unexpect- 
ed appearance did not surprise the girl, who was accustomed to 
his sudden movements ; but she was surprised by the animation 
of his appearance and manner. Though always an amiable, he 
was not generally a genial, man ; but there was about him now 
the indefinable expression of one whose spirits are elated, and, 
after returning her affectionate greeting, he began to observe at 
once that she looked a little pale. 

" You need change, petite" he said kindly. " I must take you 
with me when I go away again. Should you not like to go 
down into Brittany for a few weeks ? The country is charming 
at this season." 

" I should like it of all things," she replied quickly, pleased as 
much by his thought for her as by the prospect thus opened. 

"And can you be ready by to-morrow ?" he asked "for 1 
can delay no longer." 

." Oh ! that is not difficult," she answered. " I have made too 
many sudden journeys not to know how to be ready in less time 
than that. And I have always wished to see Brittany. Have I 
not heard you say that it is your native country ? " 

" Only in a certain sense," he answered. " I was born in 
Marseilles the fiery cradle of revolution but I am of Breton 
race." 

" And shall we go to the home of your race? " she asked with 
eager interest. 

He did not answer for an instant. Then he said : " What does 
it matter? Why should we care for the home of a race when all 
mankind are our brothers ? The noblest spirits are those that 
forget name arid race and social ties for the sake of acknow- 
ledging their brotherhood with the poor and the oppressed. I 
saw such a man the other day one born to princely rank, but 
now the friend and companion of ouvriers, working not for an 
order or a family, but for the advancement of humanity." 

" Yet," said Armine hesitatingly for she always dreaded to 
take issue with her father on this subject " it seems to me that 
a man need not disown his ancestors because he devotes his life 
to what he considers nobler aims than theirs. None'the less he 
owes them gratitude for whatever is illustrious in his name." 



534 ARMINE. CJ ul y 

"It is a narrow sentiment," said her father, " and we wish 
to banish whatever is narrow from human life. But I see that, 
like most women, you have aristocratic proclivities, my little 
Armine. You would like to belong- to what is called an old and 
noble family, would you not? " 

" I do not feel as if I should 'care very much about it," she 
answered ; " but if I did belong to such a family I should be 
proud of it of that I am sure." 

" And so am I," said her father, smiling. " But now you must 
run away, for I have much to do." 

"Can I not help you?" she asked after an instant's almost 
imperceptible hesitation. 

" Not to-day," he answered. " This is work which I alone 
can do." Then, as she was withdrawing, he looked up and 
added : " I had almost forgotten : you must be prepared for a 
guest this evening. I met the young American who was here 
with Leroux you remember him, do you not ? on the boule- 
vard this morning, and asked him to dine with me, since it is 
my only evening in Paris." 

" Why need you have asked him for that reason ? " said Ar- 
mine, whose countenance fell a little. 

" Because I wish to see him," answered her father. " He is 
in a state when a word may decide him ; and he would be an ac- 
cession of value to our ranks. He has enthusiasm, position, and 
wealth, I am told. It is worth while to go a little out of one's 
way to gain such a man." 

Armine did not answer, but her face wore a disappointed 
look as she left the room. She had hoped that, being set in the 
way he should go by D'Antignac and the Pere Monsabre, Eger- 
ton would dally no more with the fascinations of Socialism ; 
but it seemed, if her father was right, that he was still in a state 
of mind when "a word might decide him," and that word would 
certainly be spoken with emphasis by the eloquent voice which 
had already made so strong an impression upon him. Why her 
interest should have been great enough for her to be sorry for 
this may be easily explained. She had, in the first place, in- 
herited from her father the philanthropic spirit, which was none 
the less strong with her because directed in an opposite chan- 
nel from his ; she had, in the second place, been interested in 
Egerton because he was a compatriot and friend of the D'An- 
tignacs ; and, in the third place, having extended her hand to 
draw the rash moth from the flame, she was not pleased to see it 
rush back. Whether she would have been reassured if she had 



1883.] ARMINE. 535 

known how much it was the wish to meet herself which made 
Egerton seek her father is doubtful. She was entirely devoid 
of vanity, and she would have been sorry to prove an attraction 
to draw him under an influence the power of which no one ap- 
preciated better than herself. 

Egerton, meanwhile, was congratulating himself upon that 
chance encounter with Duchesne which resulted in the invitation 
he had eagerly accepted. His interest in Socialism had been 
revived by contact with the man whose belief in it was so ardent, 
whose advocacy of it so impassioned ; but more than his interest 
in Socialism was his interest in the daughter with the poetic face 
who disavowed belief in all that made the aim of her father's 
life. His wish to see her again was stronger than his desire to 
hear the creed of revolution expounded, though both existed 
and agreeably harmonized together. For in calling this gentle- 
man an intellectual sybarite Winter had embodied a juster es- 
timate of his mental character than is often contained in a de- 
scriptive phrase. He certainly liked a variety of stimulating and 
intellectual impressions ; but the earnestness to seize, to make 
his own, to act upon any one, had so far been lacking in him, 
and there were many persons who believed that it would always 
be lacking. It was on this ground that the scorn of Sibyl Ber- 
tram was in a measure justified, although it remained an open 
question why she should have manifested such scorn. 

What he lacked in definite earnestness, however, Egerton 
made up in the eagerness with which he received and enter- 
tained new impressions. There was something of the imagi- 
native temperament in him, and those only who possess that 
temperament are aware of the great attraction which intellectual 
novelty has for it. That this element of novelty made the chief 
attraction both of Duchesne and Armine to him there can be 
little doubt, and it was with a sense of interest pleasantly excited 
that he presented himself at the door of their apartment a few 
minutes before seven o'clock the hour designated for dinner. 

He found the father and daughter in the salon, into which he 
was shown by Madelon ; and the marked distinction of their ap- 
pearance had never struck him so much as when he entered and 
saw them thus together, their faces of the same high-bred type, 
and the easy grace of their manners framed, as it were, by the 
air of elegance which pervaded the pretty room, notwithstand- 
ing the simplicity of its appointments. With all the manner of a 
man of the world Duchesne received his guest, and Armine, on 
her part, was not lacking in cordiality. They talked of indif- 



536 ARMINE. [July, 

ferent subjects for a few moments, when dinner was announced 
and they went into the adjoining- room to such a simple yet per- 
fectly-served repast as one only sees in France. For great din- 
ners, with great expenditure and many courses, are given else- 
where, but here only is the exquisite science of petits diners 
thoroughly understood. At table, also, conversation was for 
some time altogether commonplace ; but a chance remark from 
Duchesne with regard to his departure the next day made 
Egerton turn to Armine and say : 

i " You must see very little of your father, mademoiselle. He 
arrived only this morning, and he leaves to-morrow, he tells 
me ! " 

" I do see very little of him," she answered ; " but this time 
he is going to be very good he is going to take me with him 
when he leaves." 

" Indeed ! " said Egerton. The genuineness of her pleasure 
was evident, but he felt a little blank, as if a source of interest 
was about to pass out of his reach. " I hope," he said after an 
instant's pause, " that you do not go very far or intend to remain 
away very long." 

Armine glanced at her father, conscious that she herself knew 
very little on those points, and also that he seldom liked his 
movements to be inquired into ; but on the present occasion he 
answered without hesitation : 

" We shall neither go very far nor be gone very long. An 
election is to take place in Brittany soon to fill a vacant seat in 
the Chamber. The man who lately filled it belonged to the 
Right was a moderate Legitimist and clerical. But the man 
who offers himself now as a candidate for the seat is an intense 
Legitimist and a clerical of clericals. He is well known as a 
leader in his party. No doubt you have heard of him the 
Vicomte de Marigny." 

Egerton replied that he had heard of him, and he did not 
notice Armine's sudden start of surprise and attention. Mean- 
while her father went on speaking : 

He is a man to be defeated, if by any possible means it can 
be accomplished. But he has a strong hold upon the people of 
his district ; and although even in Brittany the leaven of new 
ideas has begun to work, as yet it works slowly." 

And^are you going to stand against him ?" asked Egerton. 
' No," answered the other, with a slight, smile. "The part 
which I have to play in the great onward movement of humanity 
does not lie within the walls of a legislative assembly. I am one 



1883.] ARMINE. 537 

of those who mould the public opinion which acts on the men 
who are there." 

" Then you go down into Brittany in order to mould this 
opinion ? " 

" Exactly. I am sent to aid in bringing about, if possible, the 
election of the Republican candidate." 

" May I ask what kind of a Republican he is ?" said Egerton. 
" I have been long enough in France to discover that there are 
many kinds." 

The other shrugged his shoulders. " Ma foi, yes many 
kinds indeed. He is, I believe, a moderate Republican of the 
bourgeois type ; but there is a fierce logic working behind these 
men of which they know little. In the end they must do our 
will or be swept away. It is so with their chief and leader, 
Gambetta. Oh ! yes, revolution was very fine ; the rights of the 
people were noble and great so long as the tide was lifting him 
toward power ; but when he has seized power he would like 
for the revolution to subside and be quiet. But the revolution 
has other ends in view than to make M. Gambetta dictator of 
France ay, or to make the fortune of any other man." He 
lifted his head ; a flash of fire was in his dark eyes. " The day 
for such men has passed," he said ; " the day for the people has 
dawned." 

" Has it ? " said Egerton a little sceptically. Yet as he spoke 
he felt himself stirred by the magnetic influence of this man's 
strong conviction, and he forgot to look at Armine, who sat quite 
silent with downcast eyes. " Yet the ends for which you and 
those who feel with you are working seem as far off as ever." 

" As far off as ever !" repeated Duchesne. He smiled with a 
mingling of amusement and scorn. " Forgive me, mon ami, but 
how little you and those like you know of anything save the 
surface of affairs ! Why, the triumph of all our ends is merely a 
question of time and, it may be, of very short time. Because 
you see the old tyrannies standing, the old abuses in progress, do 
you think the friends of 'humanity are idle? Nay, we work 
without ceasing ; nor is our work in vain. From end to end of 
Europe our organizations extend, and when the signal strikes, 
when the moment for uprising comes, it will not be France 
alone which will renew the days of '93. That was but a prelude 
of the great drama of revolution finally accomplishing its results 
which we shall see when the Volga answers to the Seine, and 
from the Baltic to the Mediterranean an emancipated Europe 
will rise and shake off its fetters for ever." 



53 8 ARMINE. [July, 

Unconsciously Egerton felt himself shudder a little. The 
man's voice, with its intense earnestness, its ring of positive pro- 
phecy, conjured before him those days of '93 of which the self- 
believing prophet spoke, and he seemed to see the blood-red 
cloud of revolution rising which was to whelm the civilization of 
more than a thousand years. 

" I know," he said after a moment's pause, " that Europe is 
honeycombed with your societies, but surely a century of revo- 
lution has proved that, after all, it is no easy thing to overturn 
an established government." 

" So far from that, it has proved just the reverse it has 
proved that nothing is easier than to overturn, any government, 
if the people are but united in what they desire. To secure this 
union of purpose is the work to which we give our lives, and 
wherever there is a chance for an opening wedge there we enter 
it % Such a chance is this for which I am now going down into 
Brittany. The people there have long pinned their faith to the 
nobles and the curt's, but it is time to let them hear the sound of 
the new gospels the dignity and rights of man, of the necessity 
of revolt instead of the duty of submission." 

" But," said Egerton, " I confess that I fail to see what you 
will gain if you elect a man with whom you have little more in 
common than you have with the Vicomte de Marigny." 

" Do you know so little of fundamental principles and the life 
that is in them as to think that?" said Duchesne. " Why, the 
most timid and opportune Republican has, in common with us, 
belief in the equality of men's rights and the supremacy of the 
popular will. That is the basis of all republicanism, whether 
marred by halting and compromise, or carried out logically to 
its inevitable conclusion that it is a crime to withhold from man 
any one of his rights. From that basis the Vicomte de Marigny 
totally dissents. He does not acknowledge the rights of man 
and he does not recognize the supreme authority of the people. 
An absolutist in politics and a bigot in religion, there can be 
no quarter between him and us. We may respect such an oppo- 
nent, but we cannot spare him." 

" Do you think it possible to defeat him ? " asked Egerton. 
" He is a man of power and influence, and in his own hereditary 
home " 

' The triumph will be to defeat him there," said the other, 
with a quick light in his face the light of animation and elation 
which had puzzled Armine. "They begin to realize that the 
middle ages have passed, these nobles, when their personal 



1883.] A RMINE. 539 

prestige wanes even under the walls of their chateaux, and the 
descendants of their vassals rise up against them." 

"And so, mademoiselle," said Egerton, turning to Armine, 
" you are going to take part in a political battle ? " 

As she looked at him he $#w that all the pleasure which had 
been in her eyes when she spoke of leaving Paris with her father 
had died out of them, and instead there was the pained and wist- 
ful expression which he had seen more than once before. 

" No, monsieur," she answered quietly. " It does not fol- 
low that I shall take part in the battle because I go with my 
father." 

" I fear that Armine has but a half-heart for the cause," said 
her father. "A man's foes are of his own household, it is said ; 
but \hQu t petite" he added kindly, seeing that his daughter looked 
distressed, " thou art only, like a child and a woman, fond of 
clinging to the dreams of the past." 

4< The question is," said Egerton, " what are dreams and what 
are realities ? It is rather hard to determine. Your hopes, for 
example are they not dreams to the majority of the world?" 

" That is a question yet to be answered," said Duchesne. 
" But however much of dreams they may seem to those who are 
only able to recognize accomplished facts, be sure they will yet 
prove realities of the most stern and undeniable character." 

Egerton had himself little doubt of it, so he did not challenge 
the assertion. And in this vein the conversation continued un- 
til they rose from table. Coffee was served in the salon, and it 
was then that Duchesne apologized to his guest for the neces- 
sity of attending a revolutionary meeting in the Salle Rivoli. 
" Knowing that I must attend it," he said, " I should not have 
asked you to dine with us this evening had it not been my only 
evening in Paris." 

" Pray do not let any consideration of me trouble you," said 
Egerton. " I am very happy to have had the pleasure of dining 
with you, even though I must resign your society for the evening 
to the patriots of the Salle Rivoli." He paused a moment, 
tempted to say that he would spend half an hour longer with 
Mile. Duchesne, if he might be permitted. But in French society 
such a request would be inadmissible, and the air of this salon 
was too much that of French society for him to venture on it. 
So he asked instead if he might be allowed to accompany Du- 
chesne to the meeting. 

The latter hesitated a little before replying. Then he said : 
" If you will you may do so ; but I am bound to warn you that 



540 ARMINE. [July, 

you will hear a great deal of tumultuous nonsense. A meeting 
like this, full of unfledged and unpractical enthusiasts, is very 
different from the grave councils in which the real business of the 
revolution is transacted." 

" Yet what is that but government, and a very irresponsible 
government, too?" said Egerton. " As far as I can understand 
your councils demand implicit obedience, yet are- accountable to 
no one. Could a king of the most absolute type do more ? " 

It was quite evident that this home-thrust from so promising 
a disciple disconcerted Duchesne for an instant. Then he said : 

" If we demand obedience it is only from those who willingly 
give it for the sake of the end which we have in view ; and if our 
councils sit in secret and render an account to no one, it is only 
until our end the great end of freedom for all is gained. 
But," he added, glancing at the pendule on the mantel, " I see 
that I am nearly due in the Salle Rivoli, so we have no time to * 
discuss the subject now. But if you care to accompany me, and 
if I may detain you until I change my coat " 

Egerton professed, sincerely enough, his readiness to be de- 
tained for any length of time, and while Duchesne disappeared 
he turned to Armine. 

" I hope, mademoiselle," he said quickly, " that you did not 
misunderstand my question at dinner ; that you did not think I 
imagined you were about to take part in the political battle of 
which your father spoke, or that I could have meant to bring 
forward the points of difference between you ? I spoke, as one 
too often does, lightly, heedlessly." 

" It was very natural. Believe me I did not misunderstand 
you," Armine answered, regarding him quietly with her deep, 
soft eyes. " You did not mean to bring forward the difference, 
but it is always there, and my father feels it as well as I. But he 
is kind, he says little. Ah ! monsieur," she broke off abruptly, 
" it seems to you, perhaps, interesting and exciting to hear of 
plots and plans and revolutions, of preparations for the whirl- 
wind which is to destroy everything ; but do you ever think 
what that whirlwind will be when it comes ? And can you con- 
ceive what it is to live ever with the sound of its terror in one's 
ears ? " She extended her hand suddenly with one of the dra- 
matic gestures which are so natural to the southern races. 
' You play, you palter with it now," she said, " but God have 
mercy on you when it breaks ! " 

Her tone, her look were like a grasp of passionate earnestness 
laid upon one who is trifling with momentous issues ; and while 



1883.] A RMINE. 541 

Egerton was still silent with surprise Duchesne entered, say- 
ing : 

" Pardon, mon ami, but I am ready now." 

CHAPTER XIV. 

WITH that deep note of warning still ringing 1 in his ears, 
Egerton, however, felt less inclined for the meeting of the Salle 
Rivoli. His impressionable nature had been thrown out of ac- 
cord with it, and when he found himself in the street, instead of 
listening to the utterances of Duchesne, he was bringing again 
before his mental vision Armine's voice and glance and' gesture. 
What recollection was it that had been roused in that moment? 
Of what had she reminded him as she stood for an instant, her 
hand extended with that majestic motion, while her eyes were 
full of solemn light ? 

It was characteristic of the man that the answering of this 
question seemed to him just then of paramount importance, and 
that he felt Duchesne's conversation rather distracting than 
interesting. Consequently they had not proceeded very far 
when he suddenly paused, pleaded a forgotten engagement, and 
begged to be excused from attending the meeting. 

Duchesne was probably not sorry, for it is notorious that the 
scenes which the Salle Rivoli witnesses do not incline one to 
hope for much in the matter of order from these vociferous and 
turbulent reformers of the world. It is quite certain that if the 
revolutionary army was altogether, or even chiefly, composed of 
such material society would have little to fear from it. But be- 
hind these noisy recruits is the trained and tremendous power 
of the secret organizations before which governments stand par- 
alyzed and helpless. Yet these governments learn no wisdom. 
Everywhere the cry .of persecution is raised against the only 
power which is able to cope with the evils that afflict the world ; 
everywhere the church is confronted with the pagan idea of 
state supremacy, and everywhere souls are wrested from her, 
to become victims of the shallow theories of the materialist in 
religion and the anarchist in politics. Surely it is true as of old, 
"Whom the gods would destroy they first deprive of reason." 
Is the society which has revolted against God, and which replies 
to the solemn warnings of his vicar with scoffing jeers, indeed 
doomed to utter destruction ? It may be so, for the movement 
which began by denying the authority of the church has long 
since culminated in denying Him who said : " And whosoever 



542 ARMINE. [July, 

shall fall on this stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it 
shall fall, it shall grind him to powder." 

It must not be supposed that thoughts like these were in 
Egerton's mind as he parted from his companion and walked 
down the long avenue. It was an artistic, not a moral, impres- 
sion which he was striving to grasp, and suddenly it came to 
him ; suddenly he almost cried aloud, " Eureka ! " In the church 
of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome hangs a picture famous through- 
out the world Guercino's beautiful St. Margaret. No one who 
has seen it can ever forget the majestic air of inspired fearless- 
ness and command with which the saint 

" Mild Margarete that was God's maide, 
Maide Margarete, that was so meeke and milde " 

lifts the crucifix in one hand, while with the other extended she 
seems to awe back the dragon, whose hideous head and fearful 
jaws are powerless to daunt her. It was of this exquisite pic- 
ture that Armine's attitude and expression reminded Egerton, 
though in hers there had been warning rather than command. 
But the general resemblance of face and gesture was striking, 
and he said to himself that, " meeke and milde " as this girl ap- 
peared, he had 'seen a flash in her which proved that she, too, 
might face danger and death with the same lofty courage as the 
maiden of Antioch who has been so long enrolled on the list of 
God's saints. 

" But if she should ever be forced to put herself into an at- 
titude of antagonism to her father it will go hard with her," 
Egerton thought, with a sense of painful pity. At that moment 
he felt that D'Antignac had done ill to shatter her belief in her 
father's ideals. Surely it would have been better for her to go 
through life dreaming of a glorified humanity than to have ever 
before her eyes the red spectre of revolution, and to hear con- 
stantly the enunciation of a faith which she could not share. It 
was hard on both sides for Duchesne was evidently aware that 
his daughter's sympathy was withheld from him and might be- 
come much harder as events developed. Even now it was plain 
that Armine shrank from accompanying her father on the errand 
which was taking him into Brittany. Egerton could not forget 
how the pleasure had died out of her eyes when she heard what 
that errand was. " Poor girl ! how she must long for peace," he 
thought. And then he remembered it was not the first time 
the association had arisen in his mind another girl who chafed 
against the peace which encompassed her, and who would have 



1883.] ARMINE. 543 

asked nothing- better than to be able to fling herself into such a 
life as that which surrounded Armine. " And she would make 
a very fine priestess of revolt, too ! " he said to himself, with a 
laugh which would not have pleased Miss Bertram had she 
heard it. 

It was natural enough that after all this he should have 
dreamed of Armine that night dreamed of her more than once 
as St. Margaret holding aloft her crucifix before the dragon or 
that his first thought in waking should have been of her ; for 
whatever idea has colored our dreams in sleep is quite certain to 
be with us when we wake. And as it chanced to be one of the 
mornings of the flower-market of the Madeleine, the perfumes 
which filled his chamber presently suggested the thought of 
sending some flowers to her. He was by no means sure how far 
French custom permitted such an attention from a mere acquain- 
tance ; but he said to himself that it did not very much matter, 
since any infraction of custom on his part would be regarded 
merely as the pardonable ignorance of a foreigner. And it 
would be a graceful acknowledgment of hospitality, a graceful 
mode of saying farewell. Having thus decided that there was 
no reason why he should not give himself the pleasure he de- 
sired, he rose, made his toilet, and went out. 

It is a charming sight which the broad esplanade of the Made- 
leine presents on these spring mornings, when Paris is so fresh, 
so radiant, so like a city swept and garnished, and for a short 
space the country seems to have brought all its floral treasures 
and poured them out here in lavish wealth. The sunshine falls 
on great heaps of blossoms, the air is full of fragrance and the 
hum of cheerful voices, as people gather like bees around the 
flowers, then go away laden with them. 

As Egerton crossed the street toward this animated scene 
his glance was attracted by a slender figure pausing just in front 
of him, and which, before he could reach it, moved on with 
hands filled with lilies-of-the-valley. With a somewhat crest- 
fallen sense of being, as it were, anticipated, he recognized Ar- 
mine, and for a moment looked after her, uncertain whether or 
not to execute the intention which had brought him out. She 
was, as usual, attended by her maid ; and while he looked they 
turned into the enclosure surrounding the Madeleine and as- 
cended the great steps of its portico. 

Egerton at once decided to follow. A church was free to 
every one, and he might exchange a few words with Armine as 
she came out. What particular words he wished to exchange, or 



544 ARMINE. [July, 

why he should have wished to exchange any at all, he did not 
ask himself. It was not his custom to inquire the end of any 
fancy which occurred to him, nor, indeed, to trouble himself 
whether it had an end at all or not. Just now it was sufficient 
that his interest was excited by Armine, that'she was a new type 
of character, which he liked to study ; beyond that he saw no 
necessity for going. He turned, therefore, as "she had done, 
through the open iron gates, mounted the steps of the portico, 
and entered the church. 

The first impression which it made upon him was of a size 
which he had never realized before, having always heretofore 
seen it when crowded at High Mass and Vespers. Now it was 
comparatively empty vast, cool, and dim. A priest was saying 
Mass in one of the chapels, and before it a number of figures 
were kneeling. Egerton drew near and sat down on a chair be- 
hind these figures. For some time he did not remember or look 
for Armine. It was the first time he had ever seen a Low Mass, 
and he was absorbed in watching. 

Strange to say, it impressed him more than High Mass had 
ever done. Then the number of ceremonies, the music, the 
lights, the crowd, had distracted his attention from the great 
central fact. But now he seemed to realize what it meant for 
those who believed. The slow, majestic movements of the priest, 
the reverence of the server, and the silence of the worshippers, 
all seemed in harmony with the idea of offering to God a su- 
preme act of worship. Unlike many of those who are brought 
up outside the church, Egerton was at least able to conceive this 
idea, to understand that what he saw before him was that which 
the whole world, for more than a thousand years, had reve- 
renced as the stupendous Sacrifice of the New Law. So much, 
at least, culture had done for him. It had emancipated him 
from the narrow . ignorance which is the parent of narrower 
prejudice in those who are the unhappy inheritors of error. 

It was not until the Mass was half over that he perceived 
Armine, who was kneeling at one side, somewhat in shadow. 
But as soon as he saw her he was struck by the expression of 
her face. The pathetic look of sadness which, had been on the 
brow and in the eyes whenever he had seen it before was now 
replaced by a spiritual peace which changed the whole aspect 
of the countenance. Her hands were clasped, her eyes were 
fastened on the altar, the lilies he had seen were lying with her 
prayer-book on the chair in front of her it was an exquisite pic- 
ture that she made in the soft shado\v out of which her sensitive 



1883.] ARMINE. 545 

face looked, with beautiful, clear eyes full of repose. Egerton 
could not but think that it was a strange revelation after all 
that he had been thinking of her since they parted the night be- 
fore. Waking and sleeping he had seen her before him in an 
attitude of combat, resistance, warning ; and now what cloistered 
nun could have worn a face of greater serenity ? 

In the midst of these reflections he suddenly waked to a con- 
sciousness that the Mass had ended, the priest was leaving the 
altar, and some of the congregation were rising. He rose also 
and left the church, having decided to waylay Armine in the 
portico. He had time, before she appeared, to admire the picture 
at his feet the Rue Royale leading to the Place de la Concorde 
with its fountains flashing in the morning sunlight, the soft mist 
rising from the river, the front of the Palais du Corps Legislatif 
in the distance across the Seine : a famous space, a space which 
has witnessed some of the most terrible events of history, yet 
giving as little sign of it now as the sea gives of the wrecks over 
which it has closed ! 

The soft swing of the closing church-door made him turn as 
Armine emerged, the lilies in her hand, the same look of repose 
on her face. But the look changed and she gave a slight start of 
surprise as she saw who it was that came toward her with easy 
assurance, uncovering as he came. 

" Good-morning, mademoiselle," he said. " I am happy to 
have another glimpse of you before you leave Paris." 

" Good-morning, M. Egerton," answered Armine, pausing 
and regarding him with her grave, gentle eyes. " You are very 
good, but this is not a place or a time when I should have ex- 
pected to see^tt." 

" I imagine not," he said. " But you know or rather you 
do not know that I live in this neighborhood, and therefore it is 
very natural that I should be here. I confess " as she still re- 
garded him somewhat incredulously " that I am not in the 
habit of frequenting the Madeleine so early in the day ; but the 
force of example is accountable for my presence this morning. I 
saw you going to church, and I followed." 

" You can do nothing better than go to church, monsieur," 
she said a little coldly, " but I fail to understand why my exam- 
ple should have had sufficient force to draw you there." 

" I see that I must make an entire confession," he replied, 
smiling. " I was waked by the odors- from the flower-market, 
and it occurred to me that I might take the liberty of sending 
you some flowers. With that intention I came out, to find you 

VOL. xxxvu. 35 



546 ARMINE. fJ Lll y 

engaged in anticipating me "he glanced at the lilies in her 
hand. "-So then it was that your example led me into the 
church." 

" Where I hope that you found something to repay you for 
your kind intentions with regard to the flowers," she said, now 
smiling also. 

" Yes, I was repaid," he answered. He hesitated an instant, 
then went on : "A face of which I had been thinking all night 
with almost painful sympathy rose on me like the morning-star, 
full of peace," he said. 

He saw that she understood him at once, and, though she 
looked a little surprised, she was plainly not offended. There 
was an instant's pause, then in a low tone she said : " Why should 
you have thought of it with painful sympathy ? " 

" Because it gave me a revelation of how issues which I 
have treated lightly enough mean pain and perplexity to oth- 
ers," he answered ; " and because I realized the hardship that 
a young and gracious life should be robbed of its natural sun- 
shine by the dark shadow of misery and revolt ' 

She interrupted him with a slight gesture. " There was no 
need of pity for that" she said. " Those, I think, are happiest 
who do not try to ignore the misery which leads to revolt, but 
who are able to do something however little, so that it be in the 
right way to lessen it." 

" Ah ! in the right way," he said. " But that is the point, that 
makes the sadness that people with the same end in view are so 
hopelessly disagreed about the means of reaching that end." 

Something of shadow crept again into her eyes as she an- 
swered : " Yes, it is sad, but there is a thought which can give 
comfort, if we only dwell upon it often enough and long enough. 
God knows all, and God orders all. Out of the wildest tumult 
he can bring peace, if it be his will. Why, then, should we dis- 
quiet ourselves ? All issues are in his hand." 

"You have faith like that? "'said Egerton, struck more by 
the penetrating tone of her voice, by the light which came into 
her face, than by the words. 

" Sometimes I have," she answered. " It is a light which 
comes and goes that is my own fault, no doubt but this morn- 
ing it was with me when I woke'. I had gone to sleep almost 
overpowered by the sense of hopeless weight ; but when I woke 
a voice seemed to say, ' What do you know of the end ? Be pa- 
tient and trust God.' Was not that a morning-star of peace, 
monsieur? And all things are easy when we can trust God." 



1883.] ARMINE. 547 

It was a simple message, yet at that moment Egerton seemed 
to realize the deep wisdom which was contained in it. Surely, 
yes, all things must be easy to those who can trust with faith 
like this. It was no wonder that so great a change had come 
over the face which he had seen filled with pain and foreboding 
the night before. It was the difference between night and morn- 
ing. 

But at this point Armine remembered herself and made a 
movement to go. " You are very kind to have thought of me 
in that way," she said. " Believe me, I am grateful. And now I 
must bid you adieu. We leave Paris this afternoon." 

" I know, and I am sorry," he said. " But I shall hope to see 
you when you return. I trust that may be soon." 

" So do I," she answered, but from her tone he knew that she 
was thinking of nothing less than of seeing him on that return. 

She moved on as she spoke, and Egerton crossed the portico 
and descended the steps by her side, saying as he did so : " I 
hope you will permit me to fulfil the original intention for which 
I came out, and send you some flowers ? It is true that you 
have already provided yourself, but if you are a lover of them 
you must feel that one can never have too many." 

" You are very kind," she answered, " but because I am ra 
lover of them I think one can have too many, if one must leave 
them to fade. And that is what I should be forced to do to-day.. 
These lilies I got for M. d'Antignac. He likes them, and I am 
going to see him this morning, to bid him adieu. It is a word 
I must repeat to you," she added, pausing as they emerged from, 
the gate and holding out her hand. 

Egerton, understanding that it was dismissal as well as fare- 
well, accepted it at once, made his best wishes for her journey, 
and stepped back while she walked away with Madelon. For 
a moment he stood still, watching the slender, graceful figure. 
Then, conscious that this attitude was likely to attract attention, 
he turned quickly, to meet the half-surprised, half-amused face 
of Mr. Talford. 

" Good-morning, my dear Egerton," said that gentleman 
suavely. " Let me congratulate you upon having discovered the 
virtue and excellence of early rising. It is true that to the world 
in general the morning is pretty well advanced ; but I believe 
that you are seldom seen abroad before noon." 

"That depends entirely upon circumstances," replied Eger- 
ton. " But I was not aware that, as a general rule, you were 
inclined to the virtue and excellence of early nising," 



54 8 ARMINE. [July, 

" I may echo your words and reply that my habits in that 
respect entirely depend upon circumstances," answered the 
other. " But the circumstances are not usually of a devout 
nature, nor am I often rewarded by such a pair of eyes as those 
which were smiling on you a moment ago." 

" Those eyes," said Egerton a little stiffly, " belong to a 
young lady for whom I have the highest esteem and most pro- 
found respect. It was by the merest accident I met her in the 
Madeleine ; but since she is leaving Paris with her father to-day, 
I embraced the opportunity to make my adieux." 

" Ah ! " said Talford, elevating his eyebrows a little. He did 
not, however, permit himself to make any further remark, but 
merely inquired, after an instant's pause, if Egerton had break- 
fasted. 

The latter replied in the negative. " I came out in haste," he 
said. "I did not stop, but my coffee is waiting for me, I am 
sure. And uncommonly good coffee Marcel makes. Come and 
join me, will you not ? " 

" I have taken mine," replied Talford. " I did not come out 
in haste, but very much at my leisure ; owing, probably , to the 
fact that the eyes which were the cause of my coming are behind 
and not before me. Though, indeed," he added reflectively, " I 
hardly think that I could be excited by the most beautiful eyes 
to the point of going out on an empty stomach. Such enthu- 
siasm is part of the happy privilege of youth." 

" It is certainly," said Egerton with a laugh, " part of my 
happy privilege not to think much of my stomach." 

" Ah ! you will change all that as you grow older," said the 
other. " Then you will begin to understand that the stomach is 
a much more important organ than the heart though of course 
at twenty-five one does not think so. One can get on very well 
in fact, with great advantage in point of comfort without a 
heart. But a good stomach is a first essential for enjoying life. 
So I advise you, my dear fellow, not to take liberties with 
yours." 

' You are very good," said Egerton, " but I think that you 
had better come and give me the benefit of your advice over a 
cup of Marcel's coffee, when I can apologize at my leisure for not 
keeping my engagement with you last night." 

1 You owe me an apology," said Talford tranquilly, "since I 
should not need to be here this morning if you had kept your 
appointment. I was on my way to your apartment, when to my 
surprise I saw you descending the steps of the Madeleine. My 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 549 

object was nay, is to inquire if you are inclined to join me in 
accompanying my cousin Laura Dorrance and Miss Bertram to 
the Bois this morning." 

" On horseback, I presume ? " 

" Of course. They have been anxious to ride for some time, 
and I believe that all preliminaries with regard to habits and 
horses are now happily settled. I was directed by Laura to ask 
you to join the party, and I thought I should have an oppor- 
tunity of doing so last night. But since you failed to enter an 
appearance I was obliged to come forth in search of you or else 
run the risk of disappointing the ladies." 

" I am sorry you have had the trouble," said Egerton. " I 
should not have broken the engagement last night, only, if you 
remember, it was not positive. I shall be very happy to go. 
And now you will come in while I send for my horse?" 

" No, thanks. I must return to my own apartment, where I 
shall expect you in the course of an hour." He nodded and 
turned away, then looked back to add, " We shall take our 
dejeuner with Miss Bertram." 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 

IT is customary for a class of men to assert, at all times and 
places, that this continent is indebted entirely to the Saxon or 
Anglo-Saxon for its population, its civilization and progress. 
These men forget that this is an injustice of the gravest nature. 
Many others, who do not think for themselves, follow them, as- 
cribing to the Anglo-Saxon people the honor of winning for 
civilization, and the glorious destiny being worked out here, a 
continent which is the inspiration and spur of both. The. world 
forgets too often that it was a child of the Latin race, a stanch 
Catholic, a pious hero, who conceived the idea of the western 
continent; and that it was a Spanish sovereign, a stout Catholic, 
Isabella, surnamed the Catholic, who placed at his disposal the 
means necessary to pursue his researches in the pathless and 
unknown western oceans. 

Later the Spanish people won, through the gallantry of 
Cortez, the Mexico of to-day, and the splendid territory of New 
Mexico is but the hopeful progeny of the civilization he planted 



550 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

there. Consult, if you please, Solis, Torquemada, Tanco, and the 
more recent Prescott, Castaneda, Ternaux Campans, Conde y 
Oguendo, Davis,* and other historians of the conquest of Mexico, 
and you will find the hero Cortez, after burning his vessels for 
he must conquer or die marching at the head of his five hundred 
warriors, preceded by a banner on which was wrought in gold 
a beautiful cross on a black field, and beneath* the cross these 
memorable words : " Amici, sequamur crucem Friends, let us 
follow the cross." Horror-struck at beholding the human sacri- 
fices offered everywhere by the natives, he destroyed their idols 
satiated with human blood, and in their stead planted the cross, 
built churches, where devoted priests sacrified themselves to the 
welfare of the Indians. I would not say that no violence was 
ever committed, for it would be impossible among such a troop 
of venturesome men, but I say that Cortez made Mexico what 
it is. 

Soon after the death of Montezuma or rather Moctezuma 
the last of the Incas, who was, so the tradition says, descended 
from the pueblo of Cicuye, now Pecos, hear the river of that 
name, the Spaniards were attracted towards what is now New 
Mexico by the wonderful tales they heard from the Indians of 
its great riches in gold and silver. When Cortez conquered 
Mexico in 1521 he came across traditions among the Aztecs, who 
had founded the city of Mexico in 1325 traditions which still 
exist among the pueblos of New Mexico f that they came ori- 
ginally from Salt Lakes (Lagunas Saladas) far to the north, and 
that Moctezuma, mounted upon an eagle, subsequently led them 
from Pecos pueblo to the city of Mexico. They called what is 
now New Mexico the place of the Seven Cities, relating in glow- 
ing terms the wealth and greatness as well as the beauty of the 
Seven Cities. 

* W. W. H. Davis, The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico. I attach particular importance 
to the opinions of Mr. Davis. He visited New Mexico at a time when it was still " unde- 
veloped/' and his writings on the country show a thorough knowledge and much documentary 
mation. It is to be regretted that he fails absolutely to mention his sources of information 
any satisfactory manner. He refers, of course, to his sources in the archives of Santa Fe, 
even now, as they were when he wrote his Spanish Conquest, under the special care 
Mr. Samuel Ellison. I have the same chances as he had, for Mr. Ellison is a particular 
id and always ready to help in such a work. But the difficulties of comparing authors and 
nslatmg are not easily met. But there is no doubt that Mr. Davis is so painstaking and hon- 
t one is very much inclined to forgive him his lack of citations. His book, no doubt, is 
the standard history of New Mexico, and I follow most of his opinions. 

This is the opinion of all who have had the pleasure of reading his book, and in particular 

, Bandeher, the learned historian of the pueblo of Pecos. 
t C, mological Annals of New Mexico, by Hon. W. G. Rich, Secretary of the Territory, 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 551 

Among these Seven Cities was one, pre-eminent even in those 
remote times, called Tiguex, or Tegua, now Santa Fe. That it 
was renowned at the time of the founding of the Aztec confed- 
eracy in 1426 is very plain from the taxes it had to pay towards 
the general government, it belonged to the province of the 
Tarnos (or Tanos), which contained forty thousand inhabitants. 
Tiguex played a prominent part at the time of the expedition 
of Coronado in 1540, as we shall see as we proceed in this nar- 
rative.* 

It has been customary with many writers to ascribe the ear- 
liest information concerning the land of the Seven Cities to Cabeza 
de Vaca, who traversed it with three companions all that re- 
mained of the ill-fated expedition of Narvaez in Florida. This is 
an error. It is true Cabeza de Vaca, after untold hardships, 
privations, and dangers without number, succeeded on foot, with- 
out guide, in an unfriendly country, in reaching the Pacific 
Ocean, crossing the whole of New Mexico from east to west, 
but years before him the Spaniards had been aware of the riches 
in gold and silver of the Seven Cities, and had started explorations 
to that country. 

The first attempt to explore it was made about the year 1530 
by Nuno de Guzman, who was president of New Spain and 
resided in the city of Mexico. He had in his employ an Indian 
who was said to be a native of the valley of Oxitipar, which the 
Spaniard called Tejas, who represented himself as the son of a 
merchant in the habit of travelling through the interior of the 
country for the purpose of selling fine bird-feathers to be manu- 
factured into plumes, for which he obtained in exchange large 
quantities of gold and silver, which everywhere abounded. He 
said that he had made two trips with his father and had seen the 
cities he spoke about ; that they were seven in number, and so 
extensive and beautiful they could be compared to the city of 
Mexico, and that entire streets were occupied by those who 
worked in the precious metal ; that that country should be pene- 

* I am aware that the villages of the province of Tiguex have been located by Davis and 
some others on the banks of the Rio Puerco, which empties into the Rio Grande, but all they 
have for it are some nameless ruins seen on the banks of that river. Bandelier also says that 
there are no proofs of the existence of Tiguex being on the site of Santa Fe. But this is merely 
a negative assertion. As to the remnants of the pueblo near the church of San Miguel, the 
obstacle in Mr. Bandelier's mind is the number of doors and windows in that building ; but if he 
examines carefully he will see that these doors and windows are of recent date, probably opened 
after the establishment of Santa Fe as a city, as we see it called in Juan de Onate Discurso de 
las jornadas que hizo el Capitan de su Magestad desde la Nueva Espaiia a la provincia de la 
Nueva Mexico, September ^ 1598 "la Cibdad de San Francisco de los Espanoles que al pre- 
sente se Edifican." 



552 



SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 



trated in a northern direction, crossing a desert of forty days' 
journey.* 

Guzman and others, to whom these relations were made, 
placed implicit confidence in the narrative of the Indian. An 
expedition was immediately set on foot, to be commanded by the 
president in person, and composed of four hundred Spaniards, 
principally men of wealth, adventurous and gold-loving ; with 
them went twenty thousand Indian allies. They believed that 
the land of the Seven Cities, otherwise called Cibola, could be 
reached in a distance of about two hundred leagues. 

The army took up its march from Mexico with high hopes of 
success, directing its course towards what was then called the 
North Sea. It crossed the province of Tobasco, and in good 
order reached that of Culiacan, where the government of Nufio 
de Guzman terminated. Here Guzman encountered many diffi- 
culties and obstructions in his march ; dissatisfaction sprang up 
in his army, and many became anxious to return. In the mean- 
time Hernando Cortez had returned to Mexico, and therefore 
Nufio de Guzman, who had been his personal enemy, could not 
return. This induced Guzman to remain and to found a colony, 
and, with the Spaniards who clung to him, he established himself 
at Xalisco and Tolona, which two provinces formed afterwards 
the kingdom of New Galicia. The Tejas Indian died and all 
thought of visiting Cibola was abandoned. 

Nufio de Guzman remained, after the termination of this ex- 
pedition, eight years in authority, when he was deposed and 
thrown into prison, and the government was held by a resident 
judge, called the licenciado de la Torre. After the death of the 
latter the viceroy of New Spain, Don Antonio de Mendoza, 
appointed Francisco Vasquez Coronado to succeed him in the 
government of New Galicia. Coronado was a gentleman of 
Salamanca, in Spain, but had been established some time at 
Mexico, where he married the daughter of the treasurer, Alonzo 
de Estrada. 

At that time, by the means of Cabeza de Vaca, the viceroy 
received further information concerning the country of the 
Seven Cities. Cabeza de Vaca declared to Mendoza that he and 
his companions had made inquiries about the country through 
which they passed, and had been told, by the inhabitants, of great 

These Seven Cities were also called Ct&ola, a word whose origin is not known. It was 

wn under that name by the Spaniards ten years before the expedition of Coronado. In 

means "the buffalo," but I find it translated in Spanish lexicons "a quadruped called 

cican bull." New Mexico was then known as the country of the buffaloes (Davis, 

Conquest, p. no). 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 553 

cities where the houses were four stories high ; that the country 
was populous, and that the people cultivated and lived upon 
maize, pumpkins, and other vegetables, and that it abounded in 
cattle, which roamed about in great herds. The viceroy and the 
Spaniards listened with deep interest to these recitals. He com- 
municated the information to Coronado, who immediately re- 
paired to Culiacan with three friars and Stephen, the Barbary 
negro who had accompanied Vaca in his wanderings. There he 
induced two of the friars and the negro to undertake an explora- 
tion in that direction. They made immediate preparations for 
the journey. 

This expedition, the first which reached Cibola, or the Coun- 
try of the Seven Cities, was placed by Mendoza under the direc- 
tion of a Franciscan friar named Marcos de Niza, or Nizza. As 
his name indicates, he was an Italian by birth, of the city of Nice. 
He was a man full of zeal and well fitted for the journey by his 
former experience, having served under Alvarado in Peru, and 
was inured to hardship and danger. He was accompanied by Friar 
Onorato, and by Stephen, the Barbary negro before mentioned, 
and by a number of Indians. They set out from the town of San 
Miguel, in the province of Culiacan, Friday, the /th of March, 
I 539 They travelled in a northwesterly direction some little 
distance from the Gulf of California, and in a few days arrived 
at the town of Petatlan. The inhabitants of the country through 
which they passed treated them with great kindness and hospi- 
tality. They made entertainments for them on the roadside, 
furnished them with provisions, and gave them presents of robes, 
flowers, and many other articles. At Petatlan Father Onorato 
fell sick, which detained the expedition three days, when, leav- 
ing him behind, Father Marcos set out alone with Stephen and 
the Indians. 

This route of Marcos, mentioned by Davis in his History of the 
Conquest of New Mexico, p. 115, is opposed by Lieutenant Whip- 
pie, of the United States Engineers, and by Mr. Bartlett. But 
let us follow Davis. Marcos passed a town called Vacupa a 
town, as he says in his journal, of reasonable largeness. This is sup- 
posed to have been identical with Magdalena, on the river San 
Miguel. Davis himself, in a foot-note of the same page, 115, 
corrects his statement by saying that Niza must have followed 
up the Rio San Francisco, or Salt River, travelling some distance 
up the Gila valley, but not crossing the Mogollon Mountains, of 
which no mention is made. 

Be that as it may, Marcos de Niza continued his march, fol- 



554 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

lowed by a multitude of Indians from all the places he visited ; 
he suffered greatly from scarcity of provisions, the earth being 
burnt for want of rain, until, having crossed the desert, he reach- 
ed another people, who were much astonished at the sight of 
white men, as they had no knowledge of the Spaniards, nor did 
they hold traffic or intercourse of any kind with the people who 
lived on the other side of the desert. They* treated Father 
Marcos with the greatest kindness. They sought to touch his 
garments, and called him Hayota, which meant in their language 
a man from heaven. 

Before he had set out from San Miguel Father Marcos had 
received written instructions from Mendoza, in which he was 
told to observe the country, climate, soil, and productions, rivers, 
animals, the number of the inhabitants and precious metals, and, 
if possible, to obtain samples of everything he saw; but above 
all to remember that the expedition was undertaken for the hon- 
or and glory of the Holy Trinity and for the propagation of our 
holy Catholic faith. Ternaux Campans, in his Appendice, p. 249, 
says that Father Marcos de Niza received these instructions on 
the 29th of November, 1538. 

Acting upon his instructions, the good friar taught, as well as 
opportunity would allow, the people the knowledge of God. As 
he traversed the country he made diligent inquiry of the natives 
concerning all things of interest. He listened to all they had to 
say about the riches in gold of the plain Indians, and of the 
"great, round green stones they hung to their nostrils and their 
ears." 

After this he went on again three days and arrived at that 
town, which he says was of " reasonable largeness," called Wa- 
cupa, where he was well received by the inhabitants and was 
furnished with an abundance of provisions. The town was situ- 
ated about forty leagues from the sea. He reached Wacupa two 
days before Passion Week, and stayed there until Easter, send- 
ing three expeditions into the country about, and directing the ne- 
gro Stephen to proceed to the north with a body of men, and, if 
things should turn out prosperous, to send him back a man with 
a cross, the size of the cross to be an indication of his prospe- 
rity. As for himself, he would follow more leisurely. As Ste- 
phen proceeded he sent back cross after cross of great dimen- 
sions, which encouraged Father Marcos greatly ; for he was ra- 
ther a simple man and believed all that was told him. But poor 
Stephen, being of an overbearing disposition, alienating his men 
and displeasing the nations he passed through, was put in prison 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 555 

at Cibola, his followers scattering- in all directions, and finally 
was shot with arrows as he tried to escape from his prison.* 

Niza, having left Wacupa, marched by slow journeys up the 
country to the north, planting crosses as he went along and 
taking possession of the country in the name of the king, as he 
had been directed. He travelled five days through a well-settled 
country abounding in villages, being everywhere well received 
and hospitably, entertained by the natives. He received from 
them presents of turquoises and " ox-hides," which no doubt 
were tanned buffalo-skins. Thus he went, now coming across 
populous towns and villages, then traversing deserts where he 
had to suffer greatly for want of water and provisions. On his 
way he met an Indian who was a native of Cibola. This man 
confirmed all that the friars had heard about the people he was 
going to visit, lie was told of large kingdoms or provinces 
called Marata, Acus, and Totonteal.f By this time the father's 
retinue was very large, as many had joined his troops in the 
hopes of returning loaded with riches from Cibola ; so that his 
passage was quite a burden on the villages he passed through. 
Still, he was everywhere well treated. 

In due time Father Marcos presented himself before Cibola ; 
but, hearing of the death of Stephen and the hostility of the In- 
dians, he grew alarmed. He threatened the inhabitants of Cibola 
with the anger of the viceroy, but they laughed at his threats. 
The poor friar did not know what course to pursue. Besides, 
hearing threats in his own camp, he divided among his followers 
what remained of the presents given him ; but no one would go 
to Cibola to learn more about the death of Stephen and his fol- 
lowers. 

Upon the refusal of his men and the Indians he declared to 
them he would see the town at all hazards and in spite of all 
dangers. Observing his determination, a few chiefs and inter- 
preters expressed their willingness to accompany him. Marcos' 
journal says that the town is situated upon a plain at the foot of 
a round hill, and that in order to obtain a better view he as- 
cended a neighboring mountain. The houses were built of stone 
several stories high, with flat roofs, and were arranged in good 
order. The inhabitants were of light complexion and dressed in 
cotton goods and skins. They slept in beds. Their offensive 

* There is a difference of opinion among chroniclers as to what befell the followers of Ste- 
phen. Castaneda says they were let go, others that they were made slaves ; the probability is 
that some escaped and reached Spanish settlements, whereas others were held captives. 

t Old records write this name Totonteac. 



556 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

weapons were the bow and arrow. They possessed emeralds 
and other precious stones. They had vessels of gold and silver, 
which were obtained from the province of Pintado in exchange 
for turquoises. 

He went no further, deterred as he was by the dangers sur- 
rounding him ; he planted a cross and took formal possession 
of the country in the name of " the most honorable Lord An- 
tonio de Mendoza, Viceroy and Captain-General of New Spain 
for his Majesty the Emperor." He named the province of Ci- 
bola El Nueva Reyno de San Francisco.* By this same act he took 
also formal possession of the provinces of Totonteal, Acus, and 
Marata. He set out upon his return journey, his journal says, 
"with more fear than victuals." Everywhere he found the 
Indians mourning the loss of those who had perished with 
Stephen. He made haste and arrived at San Miguel, whence 
he had started, and there finding that the governor of New 
Galicia was in Compostella, thither he proceeded to give to 
Coronado an account of his journey. 

Friar Marcos' journal takes no account of distances, except 
by days' journeys ; as to days, he does not mention them. It is 
estimated, however, that from Culiacan to Cibola the distance 
is three hundred leagues. f Coronado, who was anxiously 
awaiting his return, had made in the meantime an expedition to 
the north into the province of Topeza. He took with him some 
Spaniards and Indians, but he found things far different from 
what had been represented. The mountains were high and 
rugged ; they could be crossed with the greatest difficulty only, 
and the appearance of the country was uninviting in the extreme. 
He immediately returned to Culiacan, and there Marcos met 
him. 

The friar gave Coronado a rather exaggerated account of 
what he had seen and been told by the Indians. Coronado grew 
excited. Both set out for Mexico, and there the viceroy lent a 
willing ear to the stones related. Soon the land resounded with 
the narratives made by Marcos. In a few days an army of four 
hundred Spaniards and eight hundred Indians was raised for the 
conquest ot Cibola. The viceroy appointed Don Francisco Vas- 
quez Coronado, governor of New Galicia, as captain-general of 
the expedition. Coronado is represented by authors as " a good 
gentleman and a wise, prudent, and able man " ; but Castaneda, 

* The new kingdom of San Francisco. 

t Query : Does Father Defouri mean French leagues or American leagues ? The French 
s two and a half of our miles ; our league has three miles. ED. C. W. 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 557 

the historian of the expedition, intimates that he thought more of 
the riches and of the lovely wife he left behind in New Spain 
than of the honor to be had in leading a numerous company of 
gallant gentlemen. A majority of the Spaniards who took part 
in the enterprise were of good families, and Castaneda says in 
his journal : " I doubt whether there has ever been collected in 
the Indias so brilliant a troop, particularly for the small num- 
ber of four hundred men." 

Little is known of Castaneda, the historian. His name is not 
found among the list of officers, and he is therefore supposed to 
have been a common soldier. He was evidently a man of edu- 
cation and accustomed to writing, and his narrative is superior 
to most of the narratives composed at that period. His book, 
which was written at Culiacan after the return of the expedition, 
from notes taken during the expedition, he left behind him in the 
shape of a manuscript of one hundred and forty-seven pages, 
written on paper and covered with parchment. It was pre- 
served in the collection of D'Uguina of Paris, and was translated 
into French by Ternaux Campans in 1838. I have never seen 
the original, but only some portions of Campans' translation. 

The viceroy, having caused Coronado to be proclaimed cap- 
tain-general, proceeded to appoint the captains and other chief 
officers. Castaneda says that he chose for standard-bearer of the 
army Don Pedro de Tobar. He gave the place of colonel to 
Lope de Samaniego. The captains were Don Tristan cle Arel- 
lano, Don Pedro de Quevara, Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, 
Don Rodrigo Maldonado, Diego Lopez, and Diego Gutierrez. 
Besides these were many others of the highest rank in all Spain, 
who were placed upon the staff of Coronado. 

The army had orders to assemble at Compostella, a town of 
small importance, situated in the State of Xalisco, then capital of 
New Galicia, one hundred leagues from Mexico. Owing to the 
difficulty of obtaining subsistence, it marched to the place of 
rendezvous in separate columns, the detachment to which Cas- 
tafieda was attached arriving there in good order on Shrove 
Tuesday, 1540. Two vessels were to carry the baggage as far as 
Xalisco. When the whole army was assembled at Compostella 
the governor came from Mexico to the place of rendezvous. 
He gave many instructions to the troops, had the officers again 
acknowledged by the soldiers, and passed the army in review. 
The expedition set out in two columns early in the month of 
January, 1541. The troops, as they marched out of the city, with 
colors flying and trumpets sounding, the bright beams of the 



558 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

morning sun flashing- upon the burnished armor of the proud 
cavaliers, presented a martial and brilliant appearance. The 
viceroy accompanied the army for two days, then turning back 
and retracing his steps towards Mexico. 

It may not be amiss here to glance a moment at the customs 
of the inhabitants of the province or kingdom of New Galicia, 
as they are the customs of almost all the other provinces. The 
town of Culiacan, which gave its name to the province, was the 
first founded but least inhabited town of New Galicia. It was 
founded by Nufio de Guzman two hundred and ten leagues 
from the city of Mexico. The natives of the province spoke 
three principal languages, besides numerous dialects of which no 
mention is made. The first tribe enumerated was called the 
Tahus, which was the most civilized and had made some pro- 
gress in the knowledge of the Catholic religion. Before coming 
under the influence of Christianity they had not been canni- 
bals, but had been sunk low in superstition and savage fierceness. 
They worshipped the devil, to whom they made offerings of their 
worldly goods, and they held in veneration a great serpent 
which they reared and preserved with care. But they did not 
sacrifice human victims. It was customary for some women 
among them to devote themselves to a life of celibacy, in honor 
of which great and indecent festivals were held. 

The second language of the province was that spoken by the 
Pacasas, a tribe less civilized and intelligent than the Talius. 
They ate human flesh and worshipped stones. Polygamy pre- 
vailed among them ; they occupied the country between the 
plain and the mountains. The third and last language was that 
spoken by the Acaxas, who differed but little from the Pacasas. 
They also were cannibals and hunted men to eat, in the same 
manner as wild animals. They adorned their houses with the 
skulls and bones of their victims, and those who could show the 
greatest number of such trophies were most feared and respect- 
ed. They had frequent wars among themselves, when they de- 
voured each other in great numbers. They built their villages 
in places difficult of access and separated by impassable ravines. 
Such was the civilization of that country at those remote times. 

The troops, having left Compostella in high spirits, soon felt 
.iscouraged. The soldiers did not know how to pack horses'; the 
most refined gentlemen were obliged to be their own muleteers, 
and necessity obliged the noble and the low-born to perform the 
same menial service. After a fatiguing march the army reached 
the village of Chiametla, where the provisions began to fail, and 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 559 

it was obliged to halt there to procure new supplies. While at 
that place the colonel, Lope de Samaniego, was killed by the In- 
dians of another village whither he went. His loss was deeply 
felt by the army. The arrow went through his head. They also 
wounded five or six men. His body was recovered and buried 
with the honors of war. All the inhabitants of the village who 
had taken part in the murder were put to the sword. 

Here great dissatisfaction arose among the troops, many of 
whom desired to return to Mexico. This desire was increased 
by meeting two officers, Melchor Bias and Juan de Saldibar, 
whom Coronado had se'nt beforehand to reconnoitre the country, 
and who were on their way back with the most discouraging 
accounts of what they had seen and heard. But Father Marcos, 
who desired the expedition to proceed at any cost, undertook to 
contradict their statements, and thus somewhat reassured the 
soldiers. Resuming their march, they arrived at Culiacan on 
Easter eve ; but the inhabitants, coming to pay him their respects, 
begged of him not to enter their city until after the feast, He 
accordingly encamped outside. 

The army entered Culiacan the next day after Easter. Great 
ceremonies took place ; a sham fight was organized, the citizens 
falling back upon the city and the army entering in triumph. 
The inhabitants, whom Castafieda calls " honorable gentlemen," 
offered a grand hospitality to both officers and soldiers. There 
they left all, or the greatest part, of their baggage, and the 
chronicler relates that the prospect of spoil had something to do 
with the hospitality. The army rested there for a month ; pro- 
visions were plenty, and the inhabitants supplied them liberally. 

The general, impatient to penetrate the unknown country of 
the Seven Cities, determined to go in advance with a few chosen 
men, leaving the army to follow more at leisure. Under the 
order of the viceroy he appointed his lieutenant, Hernandarias 
Saavedra, to take his place in the government of the province 
during his absence, and Don Tristan de Arellano was named to 
Saavedra's place in the command of the army. He set out 
fifteen days after his arrival in Culiacan, taking with him fifty 
cavaliers, a few foot-soldiers, his most intimate friends, and all 
the friars, as none wished to remain behind. The army was to 
follow fifteen days later. The party took their departure in high 
spirits. An accident which happened to a priest named Antonio 
Victorio retarded a little their march ; but the priest was sent 
back to Culiacan and the army went onward, meeting every- 
where friendly Indians who had seen Father Marcos before. 



560 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

They passed through the whole extent of the inhabited country 
and arrived in good order at Chichilticale, where the desert 

begins. 

We can trace the march of Coronado through New Mexico 
without much fear of mistake. Leaving Culiacan, he marched to 
the northwest nearly parallel to the coast of the Gulf of Califor- 
nia. It is not certain where he crossed the Gila River, but it is 
supposed near the place where the Casas Grandes are located. 
The ruins called Chichilticale are located upon that river. The 
river itself is not mentioned, but, strange to say, Castafieda in his 
whole journal mentions but a very few rivers. The origin of .the 
Casas Grandes has caused considerable speculation among an- 
tiquarians. In a paper addressed to the American Ethnological 
Society Albert Gallatin gives the following accounts of the ruins : 

" The ruins of ancient buildings known by the name of Casas Grandes, 
ascribed to the Aztecs, . . . are evidently of the same character as the an- 
cient buildings of Cibola, probably the remains of some of them. We have 
no description of the most southern of these Casas Grandes. Father Pe- 
dro Pont has given the description of the great house situated near the 
river Gila, considered as the second station of the Aztecs, and which he 
visited in the year 1775. The ruins of the houses which formed the town 
extended more than a league toward the east, and the ground was covered 
with broken vases and painted pottery. The house itself is a parallelogram, 
facing precisely the four cardinal points, east, west, north, and south, ex- 
tending seventy feet long from north to south, and fifty wide from east to 
west. It consists of five halls, three intervals, thirty-eight feet by twelve, 
and they are eleven feet high. The edifice has been three stories, and 
probably four, containing one underground. There was no trace of stairs, 
which probably were wooden and burnt when the Apaches set the build- 
ing on fire. The whole building is made of earth, the interior walls being 
four feet thick and well constructed, and the external six feet thick and 
shelving -outside. The timber-work consisted partly of mesquit, princi- 
pally of pine, though the nearest pine forest was twenty-five leagues dis- 
tant. . . ." 

General Emory, of the United States army, in his reconnois- 
sance along the Gila on his march to California, makes the follow- 
ing note of the ruins upon that stream : 

" The ruins of the Gila were first seen in longitude about one hundred 
and nine degrees twenty minutes. Thence to the Pijmos village, distant 
about one hundred and sixty miles in a straight line, the ruins were seen 
in great abundance. They are sufficient to indicate a very great former 
population. 

" The implement for grinding corn/and the broken pottery, are the only 
vestiges of mechanical arts among the ruins, with the exception of a few 
ornaments, principally large, well-turned beads the size of a hen's egg. 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 561 

The same corn-grinder and pottery are now in use among Jhe Pijmos. 
The first consists of two large stones, slightly concave and convex, fitting 
each other, and intended to crush the corn by the pressure of the hand." 

Castaneda himself says : 

" The name Chichilticale was formerly given to this place because the 
friars found in the vicinity a house which had long been inhabited by a 
tribe that came from Cibola. The house was large and seemed to have 
served'as a fortress. It appears that it was anciently destroyed by the in- 
habitants, who compose the most barbarous nation yet found in these re- 
gions." 

Don Antonio de Otermin tells us that Chichilticale means red 
house, and that it is the very location of the Casas Grandes. He 
wrote in 1681. 

The army pursued the same route as Father Marcos had 
traversed, and, in a little more than fifteen days after crossing- the 
desert, reached Cibola. But here again he was doomed to dis- 
appointment, for it was not at all the sort of place described by 
Marcos, and the description which Castaneda gives shows plain- 
ly that they had reached the town or pueblo of Zuili. For he 
relates that the Indians all fled from the fields at the approach of 
Coronado, and retired to the city, of which the only approach 
was up the narrow and steep pathway that led from the valley 
to the top of the rock, which the Indians prepared to defend. As 
the Spaniards, at the cry of " Santiago ! " advanced up the ascent 
to the assault, they were received with showers of arrows and 
large stones hurled down upon them. Coronado was felled to 
the earth, but he recovered, and the Indians, unable to withstand 
the attack, were beaten and the pueblo taken. The town was 
found well stored with provisions, which were taken up for the 
use of the army. They made terms, and soon the whole pro- 
vince was at peace. 

Coronado and his army, while in quarters at Cibola, were 
visited by Indians of various provinces, among others from the 
towns of Tiguex and Cicuye. They spoke of the riches of their 
country and in particular of cows covered with frizzled hair 
which resembled wool, which no doubt 'was the buffalo. He 
chose twenty men, under the command of Hernando Alvarado, 
who were to accompany the Indians on their return. After five 
days' march they reached Acuco, now Acoma. The Indians for- 
bade him to approach, but when they saw he was ready to attack 
them they begged for quarter. Their manner of making peace, 
as related by Castaneda, was " to approach the horses, to take 
their perspiration and rub their whole body with it, and then to 
VOL. xxxvu. 36 



562 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

make a cross with the fingers." They also crossed their hands, 
which act they held inviolable. They made great presents to 
the Spaniards. 

Alvarado continued on, and in three days arrived at a pro- 
vince called Tiguex. Here he was received with pacific demon- 
strations. This is most probably the site of old Santa Fe.* Al- 
varado was much pleased with the country and* sent word to 
Coronado to come and spend the winter there. He himself 
started further with the Indians, and in five days arrived at 
Cicuye, a large and strongly fortified village, which by all anti- 
quarians, and in particular by the learned A. F. Bandelier in his 
Etudes parmi les Indiens sede'ntaires, is proved conclusively to have 
been Pecos, a most beautiful location on the river of that name.f 

In Cicuye Alvarado was also well received. When the in- 
habitants saw the approach of his troops they marched out to 
receive them and escorted them into the town to the music of 
their drums and flutes. After a short rest he went still further 
east until he came in sight of vast herds of buffaloes, when he re- 
turned. In the meanwhile Coronado, having received Alvarado's 
message, resolved to make his winter quarters at Tiguex. He 
sent before him Garcia Lopez de Cardenas to prepare winter 
quarters. When this man reached Tiguex he turned all the 
inhabitants of the village out of their houses to make room for 
the soldiers. Nor were they allowed to carry anything away 
with them but their clothing, and they were obliged to seek 
shelter in the neighboring provinces. At this cruel treatment 
the Indians were much incensed, and they turned from their 
homes filled with hostility towards the strangers. All the dis- 
asters which afterwards followed Coronado, and his inability to 
discover anything or to make at that time a permanent settle- 
ment in the country, were due, I doubt not, to that cruel act of 
Cardenas. Thence arose seditions, wars, bloodshed, which cut 
short the life of many a brave Spaniard and destroyed whole 
villages of well-disposed Indians, when a milder course might 
have made friends of the Indians for ever. 

I will not follow Coronado or his lieutenants in the besieging 
and destruction of Tiguex at the end of the year 1541, and of 
that of Cicuye in the month of May, 1542, nor will I delay with 
his visit to Quivira and afterwards to the plains, where he went 
in search of gold and silver, and to the river " covered with 

* It would be impossible to imagine that the Tehuas, only three miles to the north, and the 
San Cristobal, just south, of the Galisteo, would have left the site of Santa Fe, the most 
delightful of all New Mexico, without taking hold of it and inhabiting it. 

t Davis locates Cicuye on the Rio del Norte 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST, 563 

canoes, which was seven leagues wide," as he had been told by 
the Indians. It is the common belief that he went as far as the 
Missouri River, to the point where now stands Fort Leavenworth, 
and, disheartened and disgusted, he returned by the same way 
amid innumerable herds of buffaloes, and, footsore and eaten up 
with vermin, he finally reached Cicuye, and thence Tiguex, where 
he passed the winter. Early in the spring he met with a serious 
accident, being thrown senseless from his horse, and was con- 
fined to bed for a long time with his life in great danger. When, 
recovering, he heard of the revolt of some Indians, this affected 
him seriously and caused a relapse. As anxious as his officers 
to return to Mexico, he caused them to petition him to lead them 
back to New Spain. But the soldiers regretted this petition and 
begged of him to revoke it ; but he sternly refused and shut him- 
self up, not wishing to see any one. They resolved to steal the 
petition they had given by writing, but he kept it about his 
person day and night. Many soldiers, and even officers, deserted 
the service, and, remaining at Tiguex, formed the first white set- 
tlement in that renowned place. These events happened at the 
beginning of April, 1543 a date to which we can well assign the 
foundation of Santa Fe, although the three hundred and thirty- 
third anniversary of the city is celebrated this year, 1883. Coro- 
nado left behind him Fathers Juan de Padilla and Juan de la 
Cruz; a Portuguese named Andres de Campo was left with them. 
Father Padilla remained some time in Tiguex, but, hearing of the 
good dispositions of the Indians of Quivira, he went to visit them, 
but was killed by them while on his knees at prayer. Father de 
la Cruz, having gone on a mission to Cibola, was also put to 
death ; and for a while the Spanish deserters and new settlers 
were without the means of practising their religion. 

Desertions were frequent on the return march ; all discipline 
was at an end, and when he reached Mexico Coronado had no 
more than a hundred men with him. The viceroy was much 
displeased with the manner in which he had conducted the ex- 
pedition, and received him coldly. He was soon afterwards de- 
prived of his province and fell into disgrace. 

The expedition of Coronado having resulted so disastrously 
for the Spanish arms, all desire of visiting New Mexico was dam- 
pened for years. The bright anticipations of the gallant cava- 
liers of his army were dashed to the ground, and for forty years 
no effort was made to penetrate into and explore the country, 
except by priests, here and there, who went in search of lost 
Spaniards and to convert the Indians. Among others are named 



564 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

Fathers Augustin Ruiz, Francisco Lopez, and Juan de Santa 
Maria. They were accompanied by twelve soldiers with a cap- 
tain ; but these soldiers, when they had reached the pueblo of 
Sandia, near Bernalillo, abandoned the fathers and returned 
home. Father Juan de Santa Maria came to the pueblo of Ti- 
guex, of which some houses are still extant and inhabited. He 
attended to the wants of the settlers, and then set-out to give an 
account of his mission ; but he was killed by the Teguas Indians 
near a pueblo called San Pablo, in the neighborhood of El Paso. 
Father Lopez also was killed whilst at his devotions outside of 
the pueblo of Paruay, on the Rio Grande, and Father Ruiz re- 
mained alone, mourning the loss of his companion. Still, he was 
not discouraged, and resolved to continue his mission. The gov- 
ernor of Paruay was much affected by the death of Lopez, and re- 
solved to save Ruiz by removing him to the pueblo of Santiago, 
a league and a half up the river ; but his death had been resolved, 
and it was impossible to save him. He was killed a few days after- 
wards and his body thrown into the river, then in flood, as food 
for the fishes. Thus the Teguas Indians completed their bloody 
and unholy work, putting to death three men of God who had 
come only with the strength of their charity and their zeal for 
the salvation of souls. 

Nevertheless the work of saving souls was progressing every- 
where, and priest succeeded priest in this arduous work. Old 
chroniclers tell us that by the year 1629 there were baptized 
thirty-four thousand six hundred and fifty Indians, and many 
others were in a state of conversion, and at that time there were 
already forty-three churches in New Mexico, all built by the In- 
dians. Among these are still standing to-day San Miguel, in the 
city of Santa Fe, built some time about 1560 by the deserters of 
Coronado's army ; and the church of Guadalupe, also in Santa Fe, 
built about 1590. In February, 1614, the body of Lopez was dis- 
interred and solemnly deposited in the church of the pueblo of 
Sandia with great ceremonies, a number of priests having come 
from Santa Fe and other pueblos, all marching on foot and 
dressed in full vestments. 

The Franciscan Order, alarmed at the return of the soldiers 
to Mexico, knowing well that their priests were without help in 
a heathen country, immediately appealed to men of good-will to 
go and rescue them. A cavalier at the mines of Santa Barbara, 
of the name of Antonio de Espejo, a native of Cordova, a man of 
wealth, courage, and faith, offered his services to the Franciscans; 
they accepted them, and, with the royal permission, an army was 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 565 

fitted out, which left Saint Bartholomew, in old Mexico, on the 
loth of December, 1582, and directed their course to the north. 

Espejo was, as I have said, a man of faith. Everywhere he 
pacified the Indians ; everywhere the fathers who accompanied 
him made conversions. He destroyed no property, and every- 
where persuaded the Indians to stay in their houses and be 
friendly with the Spaniards. Everywhere he passed he built 
churches, erected crosses, and formed settlements of white peo- 
ple alongside of the Indian settlements. Espejo did much for 
the pacification of the Indians. He, having learned the death of 
the friars, could do nothing. Lopez was buried by Ruiz, while 
the body of the latter was thrown into the Rio Grande del 
Norte. An old chronicler quoted by Davis (p. 249) says that 
" Espejo found at Paruay the body of the two friars, to which he 
gave Christian burial." Evidently this is an error. Espejo, hav- 
ing fulfilled his engagement with the Franciscans, still remained 
in New Mexico, visiting many provinces, making stanch friends 
of the Indians, and establishing priests and forming settlements. 
He went as far as Taos, but the Indians refused to help him ; and 
with his handful of men, fearing some treachery, he resolved to 
return to Mexico, and in the beginning of July, 1584, he took the 
line of march homeward. What I say here is taken from his 
own relation of his expedition, written afterward in Guardiana, a 
town of Mexico, for the Conde de Coruna, who forwarded the 
same to the king of Spain and the lords of the Council for the 
Indians. 

In quick succession followed one Humana ; but he was cruel 
to his men, and had great difficulty with the Indians, particularly 
those of Quivira, who set the grass on fire and almost annihilated 
his army. But the year following the return of Espejo, Don Juan 
de Onate, a native of Zacatecas and a gentleman of importance, 
conceived the idea of forming permanent settlements in New 
Mexico instead of leaving, as had been done before, a few sol- 
diers, generally deserters, to couple with Indian women, to form 
semi-barbarian families and of taking with himself whole fami- 
lies, men, women, and children. Having obtained the authoriza- 
tion of Don Luis de Velasco, the viceroy, he set about raising 
colonists for New Mexico. A great discrepancy is shown among 
authors as to the time of that petition for authorization and the 
setting out of Oiiate for New Mexico. Many give this date as 
the 2ist of September, 1595 ; but this must be an error, as re- 
cords in Mexico state that he left for New Mexico on his ex- 
pedition of colonization in the year 1591. Padre Frejes, in his 



566 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

history of the conquest of New Mexico, published in Mexico in 
1830, says that Onate set out in 1595; Mariana gives the date 
as 1598, while De la Renaudiere, in his history of Mexico, pub- 
lished in Barcelona in 1844, says that he took possession of the 
country in the last year of the sixteenth century, 1599. For my 
part I believe 1591 and 1595 to be right dates. Onate peti- 
tioned the' viceroy in 1591, and, receiving the necessary permis- 
sion from the viceroy, started at once ; whereas the papers sent to 
Spain for the king- to sign were not signed until 1595, or even 
later, for we find an agreement with Philip III., King of Spain, 
signed at San Lorenzo on the 8th of July. 1602. In this agree- 
ment Onate offers to furnish two hundred soldiers, horses, cat- 
tle, merchandise, agricultural implements. As a remuneration 
he asks for large grants of land, that his family should be en- 
nobled, the loan of a considerable sum of money, a fat salary, 
and to be furnished with arms and ammunition. He also asks 
permission to reduce the natives to a state of obedience, which in 
his mind meant a state of slavery ; he also petitions for six 
priests, a full complement of books, ornaments, and church ac- 
coutrements. 

After many difficulties Onate raised seven hundred soldiers, 
and one hundred and thirty married men, with their wives and 
children, who came into the country as permanent settlers. He 
went north as far as the neighborhood of Santa Fe, and there 
began the work of settling his people. Onate remained seve- 
ral years in New Mexico, engaged in subduing the natives 
and making settlements. While the soldiers were occupied in 
subduing the Indians, and the settlers were cultivating the soil 
and digging for precious metals, the priests were occupied in 
preaching and baptizing, and a great number of Indians were 
received into the church. Padre Geronimo de Jarate Salmaron, 
a Franciscan, who passed eight years in New Mexico, having his 
residence in the pueblo af Jemez, travelled all over the territory, 
visited all the pueblos, and went .personally to Mexico to lay 
in writing before his superiors the result of his missions. In it 
he gives the number of Indians converted, locates the various 
pueblos, gives the location of the principal mines, with such 
general information as might be of service to those who might 
succeed him. In the year 1629 Father Francisco de Apodaca, 
superior-general of the Franciscans in New Spain, had a friar, 
Francisco de Velasco, to examine Salmaron's Journal, and he 
approved it in a letter dated from the convent of San Francisco 
in the city of Mexico, August 18, 1629. But I regret to say 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 567 

I have not been able to see Salmaron's Journal ; it is not in the 
archives of Santa Fe. I take this narration from Davis. 

It seems that thus the Indians, being all, or nearly all, Chris- 
tians, as well as their rulers, the Spaniards, things should have 
gone on smoothly. The simple-minded natives were generally of 
an amiable disposition, helping the Spaniards in the cultivation 
of their fields and performing other menial duties. But in a few 
years the Spaniards began to assume the prerogatives of masters ; 
a rule of tyranny and slavery was established. Instead of letting 
the priests alone to see to the conversion of the Indians, fanatic 
Spaniards tried to convert them with the sword ; the estufas 
were filled up, their idols thrown down, their favorite dance, 
the cachina a piece of their religious worship, but indecent in 
its bearings was strictly forbidden. The Indians murmured ; 
they were forced to work the mines for their conquerors, and 
became intensely hostile to the Christians. They grew to look 
upon the Spaniards as intruders, and finally the cry of revolt 
was heard over every mesa of New Mexico. This was in 1640 ; 
but the then governor of New Mexico, General Arguello, de- 
feated them with the loss of only one man, and he cast a number 
of them into prison. In 1650, under the administration of Gene- 
ral Concha, all the pueblos of the Teguas nation that is, Isleta, 
Alameda, San Felipe, Cochiti, and Jemez entered into an of- 
fensive and defensive alliance with the intention of destroying 
the Spaniards with their priests ; they were to rush on the 
Spaniards on the Thursday of Holy Week, when all the Chris- 
tians would be defenceless at their devotions, and massacre 
them all. But the plot was discovered ; nine of the ringleaders 
were hanged and many others were sold into slavery for ten 
years. These energetic measures overawed the Indians and for 
the time kept them quiet. 

For some years the Indians bore their grievances in silence 
and sadness ; but during the administration of General Villa- 
nueva the Indians of the pueblo of Piros conspired with the 
Apaches, and, fleeing from their village, took refuge with the 
latter in the Magdalena Mountains. From this mountainous 
refuge they sallied forth and killed a few settlers, but they were 
soon overcome ; six of them were hanged and many others were 
sold into slavery. Soon after Estevan Clemente, governor of 
the Salt Lake pueblos, an Indian of much influence, took the 
lead of a new plot for a general massacre, also on Holy Thurs- 
day ; but the plot was discovered, Clemente was arrested and 
hanged, and his followers made terms with the Spaniards. In 



568 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

the year 1675, while General Juan Francisco Frecenio was gov- 
ernor, some Indians of the Teguas nation were arrested, 
whipped, and sold into slavery for practising 'witchcraft. This 
proceeding increased the hostility of the Indians towards the. 
Spaniards, and they resolved to kill the governor. Seventy 
Indians under the command of Pope, a distinguished San Juan 
Indian, repaired to the quarters of the governor in Santa Fe 
early one morning, and demanded the release of their brethren 
who were yet in prison. They laid presents before him fpr 
their ransom. The governor, much alarmed, promised to deliver 
them if they promised to renounce their superstition, when 
they quietly retired. And thus it went for a period of nearly 
a half-century and during the administration of fourteen gov- 
ernors. These repeated failures, however, did not dampen the 
love of the Indians for liberty. 

In 1680 Pope, mentioned above, a man of decided ability, 
visited all the pueblos and with an eloquent tongue pictured to 
the Indians the wrongs they were suffering, and roused them to 
a desire to throw off the yoke. Absolute secrecy was enjoined 
on all ; all the pueblos were invited except that of Piros. Help- 
ing Pope in his endeavors were Catite, a half-breed Queres 
Indian, Tacu of San Juan, Jaca of Taos, and Francisco of San Ilde- 
fonso. San Juan, however, remained faithful to the Spaniards, 
and was on that account called San Juan de los Caballeros the 
gentlemanly San-Juaners. Nicholas Bua, governor of San Juan, 
Pope's son-in-law, was put to death by the hand of Pope himself 
for fear he would betray them to the Spaniards. The time fixed 
for the rebellion was the loth of August ; all preparations were 
made to massacre every Spaniard in the country. But the 
Indians of Tesuque, three miles from Santa Fe, came to the 
governor two days before and divulged the whole. .The Indians, 
being apprised of this, resolved to work without delay, and all 
Christians,, priests or seculars, women and children, fell under 
their blows, except a few of the handsomest maidens, whom the 
warriors reserved for wives. General Otermin, the governor, 
was unprepared and paralyzed with fear ; the capital was be- 
sieged by an army, and Otermin with a few followers, unable to 
defend Santa Fe, resolved to leave it to its fate, and with all the 
Spaniards fled, and never rested until he reached El Paso, where 
the priests supported him and his followers for a whole winter. 

In the meanwhile Santa Fe was given up to pillage. The 
churches were desecrated and pulled down. The Indians, putting 
on priestly vestments, were seen riding about the city, drinking 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 569 

from sacred vessels which could not be carried away. In other 
pueblos and villages the priests and Spaniards, unaware of the 
rising-, remained quiet in their houses, and were all massacred 
with great cruelty and wantonness ; then the churches were 
razed to the ground ; the worship of the serpent, with its dances, 
was prescribed anew to all good Indians, and they w r ere ordered 
even to abandon the name of their baptism and take new ones. 
It was decreed in solemn council that " God the Father, and Mary 
the Mother, of the Spaniards were dead, and that the Indian gods 
alone remained "; they made offerings of flour, feathers, corn, 
tobacco, and other articles to propitiate their heathen deities. 
After this all these grim warriors repaired to the little Santa Fe 
river, and there, divesting themselves of their scant clothing, 
washed their whole body with soap-weed to " wash off their 
baptism." 

More than one hundred Spaniards, among whom were 
eighteen priests, besides civilized Indians, fell during the re- 
bellion and the withdrawing of ' Otermin. The , loss to the 
Indians was much more considerable. In Santa Fe alone more 
than four hundred were killed and many more were wounded. 

In September of the following year, 1581, Otermin, after suf- 
fering untold privations at San Lorenzo, near El Paso, amidst 
hostile Indians and the want of provisions, as well as sickness, 
resolved to return to Santa Fe and drive out the Indian Pope, 
who had assumed supreme power among the Indians. He re- 
ceived permission from the viceroy, Conde de Paredes, to fit 
out an expedition for that purpose. He immediately began to 
equip forces, and in this he was more than ever helped by the 
Franciscan fathers of El Paso. They supplied him with corn, 
beef, cattle, ammunition, wagons for transportation, and many 
other articles the soldiers stood in need of. There was. great 
difficulty in arming the soldiers, and, for want of anything else, 
he manufactured new armor of ox-hides. All the old inhabitants 
of Santa Fe, burning with the desire of retaking their old home, 
joined the expedition, begging the permission of bringing their 
families along ; Otermin granted their petition. 

All preparations being completed, the general, having under 
him Francisco Xavier as secretary, unfurled the royal banner on 
the morning of November 5, and, amid the sound of trumpets 
and the shouts of the people, took up his march for New Mex- 
ico. They travelled along the Rio Grande, but suffered much in 
crossing the barren region of country known as La Jornada del 
Muerto, where for a distance of ninety miles water is not to be 



570 SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 

found, except what collects in holes after a rain. The only vege- 
tation is a small grass and some tall weeds. La Jornada is properly 
a table-land between mountains, and shaped like a canoe. Its 
width varies from five to thirty miles ; a high range of mountains 
in the west shuts up all approach to the river, which makes a very 
long bend to the west. It has been named the Journey of Death 
on account of the number of persons killed, either by Mescalero 
Apache Indians, or by want of water, or by storms while cross- 
ing it. 

Otermin and his army crossed safely La Jornada del Muerto, 
and kept along the banks of the river. Everywhere they saw vil- 
lages deserted, farms destroyed, churches in ruin ; but although 
they saw Indians at a distance, they found every Indian village 
deserted. On the 5th of December Otermin took the pueblo of 
Isleta after a slight resistance ; being assured of their lives, the 
Indians laid down their arms and submitted. Otermin found 
the church destroyed and turned into a corral in which cattle 
were confined, the convent burnt, and all crosses overturned. 
He caused the whole population, men, women, and children, to 
be assembled upon the plaza, and reprimanded them in severe 
terms. They denied being guilty of the destruction of the build- 
ings, and put it on the Taos, Picuris, and Teguas Indians. They 
were ordered to restore all that had belonged to the church and 
the citizens, which was done. Father Ayeta, of El Paso, who 
had set out with the expedition, received back the goods in 
the name of his order, and preached to the Indians through an 
interpreter. The same was done at Sandia ; Father Ayeta said 
Mass on a portable altar and preached to the Indians. Many 
children were baptized under the name of Charles in honor of 
Charles II. of Spain ; then, with the shout of " Long live Charles 
II. !" and the vivas of the Indians, they set out for the north. 
This happened on the nth of December. But cold weather and 
terrible snow-storms set in and caused great sufferings to the 
army. Still, on the i6th they started and' went on to San Felipe 
and Cochiti. Everywhere church and convent were demolished 
and crosses thrown down ; marks of the inhuman worship of the 
Indians were seen everywhere. The houses were searched, and 
many articles of church property were recovered. 

At Cochiti the Indians tried to surround the Spaniards, and 
a battle was on the point of beginning ; but a parley was sounded 
in the Queres language, and after much discussion the Indians 
made peace "with God, Mary, the saints, and the Spaniards"; 
the chief kissed the foot of the priest, and peace was in fact pro- 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 571 

claimed. This, however, was only a ruse, because being a wet 
day, and their bows being unstrung, the Indians found them- 
selves in the power of the Spaniards. Catite, the chief who 
had shed tears of tenderness at the idea of peace with the Span- 
iards, now went sowing strife everywhere and hatred against 
them. The army was to be cut off at the pueblo of Cienegilla, 
near Santa Fe*, and a plot, well kept, was to destroy the Span- 
iards; but Juan, a Tesuque Indian, advised them of the affair, and, 
being on their guard, the plot failed. 

It was now question either of advancing or returning to San 
Lorenzo. Father Ayeta wrote advising the latter course on 
account of having only a small body of men, and because the 
Indians were not yet disposed to make peace. And thus it was 
done; the troops passed Isleta on the 2d of January, 1682, and 
arrived at El Paso on the nth of February, after many losses 
and much suffering. 

Otermin having failed to reconquer New Mexico, many years 
elapsed before other efforts were made. Still, after Otermin, in 
1685 an expedition was started under the governor, Domingo 
Jeronza Petrez de Cruzate, who made two successive attempts. 
Only fragments of Cruzate's journal remain in the archives of 
Santa Fe, but the records declare that he was captain-general in 
the years 1684, 1685, 1688, 1689. If other efforts have been made 
anterior to Cruzate no records remain. 

In 1692 a new expedition was entrusted to Don Diego de 
Vargas Zapate Ltijan, by the viceroy, Count Galvas, with the 
title of governor and captain-general. At once relinquishing the 
pleasures of home, he started for El Paso del Norte, rapidly 
formed an army, and, accompanied by several priests, set out for 
the north on the 3ist of August, 1692. Impressed as he was 
with the small number of his troop, he made rapid marches of 
which no record can be found, and reached Santa Fe on the I2th 
of September. On the 1 3th a great battle was fought with the 
garrison of the town, reinforced by the neighboring pueblos. 
The battle raged with great ardor on both sides from four in the 
morning to nightfall, when the Indians gave way, and the sol- 
diers, Vargas at their head, entered the city, and, after the fa- 
tigues of the march and of a hard-fought battle, found excellent 
quarters in the antique dwellings of the Indians. Santa Fe hav- 
ing fallen, twelve pueblos surrounding submitted, and were taken 
possession of in the name of the king of Spain. The priests 
baptized in Santa Fe seven hundred and sixty-nine persons. 

Having reduced Santa Fe and constituted officers over its in- 



5/2 



SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 



habitants, Vargas set out to bring other tribes under the rule of 
Spain. He moved against Taos, seventy-five miles north of 
Santa Fe, for the Indians of that place remained very hostile to 
the Spaniards. He began his march on the 5th of October for his 
expedition to Taos, and reached San Juan the same afternoon ; 
the Indians, who formed a large body of warriors under the com- 
mand of Don Lorenzo, their war-captain, received him with mili- 
tary honors. Vargas explained that his visit was in order to re- 
establish the power of Spain, and that the priests would absolve 
the rebels of the great crime of having abandoned the Christian 
religion. During the day Father Francisco Corvera baptized 
eighty-six persons, the captain-general standing as godfather 
for the daughter of Don Lorenzo and for several other children. 
The Indians made professions of peace and appeared entirely 
friendly. 

The next morning, amid a storm of rain and snow, the Span- 
iards resumed their march. The third day they descended the 
valley of Taos and approached the pueblo, Father Corvera giv- 
ing absolution to the command. The pueblo was assaulted and 
taken without resistance, for the Indians had abandoned it and 
retired into the gorge of a mountain to the east. Louis, a Picuri 
Indian, sent out to ascertain the meaning of smoke seen on the 
mountain-side, reported that the Taos were encamped there in a 
strong place. Vargas advanced at once towards the mountain, 
when the Indians sent one of theirs to parley. He was told to 
go back and tell his people that the Spaniards were there on a 
mission of peace, and that the priest was with them to reconcile 
the Indians with God and the church. Thus they returned in 
great numbers, having their chief, Francisco Pacheco, at their 
head; and then, all assembled on the plaza, he spoke to them 
more fully of his plans, and over ninety persons were baptized. 
Having then heard through two young men who had returned 
from Jemez that there was a great plot on foot to destroy the 
Spaniards, he told the Indians that he was going among them, 
and he invited any of them who wished to place themselves under 
his command. They promised to be in Santa Fe in eight days. 
He then returned to his capital, passing through the Picuris and 
San Ildefonso, where he was well received. He reached Santa 
Fe on the i3th of October. 

Having pacified the northern Indians, Vargas had now on 
hand the Pecos, Queres, and Jemez Indians, who showed hostility. 
On the i;th of October he despatched two squadrons of mounted 
men, with two pieces of artillery and pack-animals, with friendly 



1883.] SANTA FE IN THE PAST. 573 

Indians to San Domingo, to await his return from Pecos, and him- 
self set out with Fathers Corvera and Barros for Pecos. Vargas 
crossed the mountains, and at two o'clock on the same afternoon 
reached Pecos. The Pecos received him with honor, having 
erected a large cross and arches at the entrance of the pueblo. 
The whole population submitted and were absolved of their 
offence, and two hundred and forty-eight were baptized. The 
next day Vargas appointed officers for them, and soon after left 
for San Domingo ; at nine o'clock in the evening he reached the 
Galisteo River amid a storm of rain and hail. The pueblo of 
Galisteo was in ruin and deserted. The next day, being Sunday 
Mass was celebrated, and after Mass the troops resumed their 
march. Soon they reached the pueblo of San Marcos, also 
deserted except the church and convent. That evening they 
reached San Domingo, where they found the cavalry, as well as 
some messengers of the Queres who were sent out to announce 
the coming of the Spaniards, receiving crosses and rosaries 
around their necks. 

On the 2ist of October the Spaniards marched from San 
Domingo, first to Cochiti, then entering the country of the 
Queres, at the entrance of which they found a tall cross set up. 
Vargas dismounted and took possession of the country in the 
name of the king of Spain. The priests then proceeded to 
absolve the Indians, and one hundred and three persons were 
baptized. That night Vargas encamped at Cochiti, and the next 
morning, with a part of his troops, started for Cia and Jemez. 
The day after he entered Cia, which he found destroyed, just as 
it had been found destroyed a few years before by Cruzate 
and not rebuilt. It was situated on a mesa called Cerro Colo- 
rado, and its approach was by a steep and rocky road. Nothing 
was found there, the Indians having rebuilt a pueblo a little dis- 
tance off. All came to meet Vargas, carrying crosses in their 
hands, and the chiefs marching at their head. In this manner 
they accompanied Vargas to the plaza, where they had erected 
arches and crosses, and had provided quarters for them. The 
same was done at Jemez, where the people at first tried to resist 
him ; but he ordered them to lay down their arms, and com- 
manded them in the name of the king of Spain to be faithful 
children, and the whole population was baptized. From thence 
Vargas visited the provinces of Zuili and Moqui. On the 3d of 
November he was in the presence of Zuni. Vargas, seeing these 
Indians assembled in great number, sounded a parley, and, sat- 
isfied that all was right, he was directed by them to come up by 



574 



SANTA FE IN THE PAST. [July, 



the other side of the steep rock with his command ; but they did 
not come to meet the Spaniards, and declined to hold any inter- 
course with them. The messengers sent up to parley were held 
captives ; this conduct greatly provoked Vargas, but all he could 
do was to encamp in the plain below. The next day the nego- 
tiations were renewed* and with success ; this pueblo was large, 
and is still large, with two plazas, and the chucch was in good 
repair. 

After pacifying the province of Zufii Vargas went to the 
Moquis, which he pacified, and then marched for El Paso, where 
he arrived on the I2th of December. During the expedition 
Vargas rescued seventy-four Spanish women and children who 
had been made captive, and the priests baptized two thousand 
two hundred and fourteen Indians. 

While Vargas was absent the Santa Fe Indians had recap- 
tured the city, and those of Taos, Cochiti, Jemez, and others 
had all risen against the Spaniards. Therefore the next year 
the government of Mexico sent out another expedition under the 
command of Vargas, who succeeded, after as much labor as the 
preceding year, in recapturing Santa Fe and all the other towns 
of Mexico. But Vargas became avaricious, and, while he had 
plenty of corn brought to him, he saw the inhabitants of Santa 
Fe dying from want of provisions, and he did not help them. In 
the year 1695 the corporation of Santa Fe and the regiment in 
garrison there presented charges to the viceroy against Vargas 
for peculation. Vargas was accused of using public money for 
his private purposes ; grievous charges were made against him 
for appropriating public moneys. For these causes he was re- 
moved from office in 1697, and Don Pedro Rodriguez Cubero 
appointed in his place. How long Cubero remained in office 
records do not say ; neither can there anything be found con- 
cerning his administration. In 1703, however, Vargas was again 
sent to New Mexico as military commandant of the province, 
showing thus that, after all, he enjoyed the confidence of the 
viceroy. We may well say that the conquest of New Mexico 
terminated there, and that the power of the Indian nations was 
completely broken. At that epoch the authority of the Spaniard, 
both civil and ecclesiastical, was acknowledged in all the pueblor. 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 575 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

ORIGINAL SHORT AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCES FOR MARRIED MEN AND 
YOUNG MEN, MARRIED WOMEN AND YOUNG MAIDENS. By F. X. 
Weninger, D.D., Missionary of the Society of Jesus. 2 vols. Svo. Cin- 
cinnati, 1883. 

These Conferences are intended by Father Weninger to be the supple- 
ment to the Sermons published by him last year. The preceding vol- 
umes contained a three years' Course of sermons at High Mass for every 
Sunday and festival ; the volumes now issued are intended to perform 
a similar service for the Sunday Vespers. The author's aim has been 
to give more detailed and definite instruction than was desirable in ser- 
mons prepared for the High-Mass congregation. He has consequently 
divided them into four series for married men, young men, married 
women, young women and, the better to secure his object, he suggests 
the desirability of setting apart the afternoon of one Sunday in each month 
for each of these classes. If this is impossible the Conferences will never- 
theless be found useful for confraternity instructions, and even, with a 
little modification, for the sermon at High Mass. They are all formed on a 
certain definite plan, which is faithfully carried out in each and every con- 
ference. This may perhaps detract from the interest and freshness of 
treatment of each subject, but it secures that completeness and thorough- 
ness which the author has had in view. They are exceedingly practical, 
and go in great detail into the duties of each class. The style, while 
simple and unaffected, is earnest and forcible. It is not for us, however, 
to criticise the work of one who has for so long a time, so earnestly, 
and so successfully devoted himself to the missionary life. His long ex- 
perience renders it impossible that he should not know the wants of the 
faithful, and his success renders it certain that he has been able to supply 
those wants. Of course, on a subject which covers so wide a field, there 
will necessarily be some differences of opinion, and somewhat of doubt as 
to the wisdom or importance of this or that direction ; yet there is no one 
who will not derive assistance from these volumes, and who will not thank 
Father Weninger for having placed at his disposal the results of his life- 
long experience. 

In the choice of subjects there are two things we think specially 
praiseworthy. For young men the inculcation of the moral duties is made 
to depend on, and is interwoven with, the contemplation of the life and ex- 
ample of our Lord. This is, we are persuaded, the right way. He alone it 
is who is able to win the hearts, to realize the ideal of the young ; to make 
virtue attractive to them, to make them willing to fight that fierce battle 
with their passions which they are called upon to fight. If the knowledge 
and love of our Lord can be implanted deep in their hearts their salvation 
is secure ; not merely their salvation, but they will be induced to lead a 
noble, generous, Christian life which, while glorifying God and benefiting 
the church, will fill their own souls with happiness. Secondly, in the con- 
ferences for married women Father Weninger has drawn upon those trea- 
sures of Old-Testament history which, it has often struck us, are far too 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July, 1883. 

little known and valued. Every one of the thirty-six conferences for this 
class has for its subject some one or other of the holy women of whom 
notices are contained in the Old Testament. We hope that this example 
of Father Weninger will lead others to a more frequent use of that best 
source of all spiritual knowledge the Sacred Scriptures. 

GOLDEN SANDS : A Collection of Little Counsels for the Sanctification and 
Happiness of Daily Life. Illustrated by C. E. Wentworth. Translated 
from the French by Ella McMahon. New Y6rk : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
1883. 

Golden Sands, and several other similar books by the same author, have 
had a wide circulation and become very popular. Each one of the series 
has been noticed, as it came out, in this magazine, and we have now only 
to praise the typographical beauty of Mr. Putnam's new edition of Golden 
Sands. The illustrations are remarkably fine, and the artist, who has been 
hitherto unknown to fame, deserves, in our opinion, to become a favorite. 

THE WORKS OF ORESTES A. BROWNSON, collected and arranged by Henry 
F. Brownson. Vol. III., containing the philosophical writings on Re- 
ligion. Detroit : Thorndike Nourse. 1883. 

This third volume of Dr. Brownson's works is one of more general in- 
terest than the preceding ones. No one can read the productions of Dr. 
Brownson's pen without admiring his zeal for the faith, his earnestness, 
and his logic. Logic may not give to a man who has wrong convictions 
right ones, but logic will help to unsettle wrong ones and put a man far 
on the way of getting right ones. He was always fearless in the expres- 
sion of his opinions ; and, in our opinion, it is better that a sincere and ear- 
nest man should speak out in matters on which he is competent to form 
an opinion, at the risk of blunders from over-boldness, than that the truth 
should suffer imprisonment from over-timidity. There are those who con- 
sider Dr. Brownson is the greatest Catholic writer on religious polemics 
that this country has produced, and we are one of those. No clergyman's 
library can be considered complete without a copy of his works. No 
scholarly Catholic can afford not to know something about their contents. 
No student of the dominant tendencies of the age in religion, in philoso- 
phy and social questions, can do better than study their pages. We thank 
Henry F. Brownson for furnishing the public with the writings of his 
father in so convenient a form. 

A BOOK ABOUT ROSES : How to Grow and Show Them. By S. Reynolds 

Hole. New York : William S. Gottsberger. 1883. 

The matter of this book first appeared in contributions to an English 
horticultural periodical. Its author, an Anglican clergyman, is refresh- 
ingly enthusiastic on his beautiful subject, and as well informed and in- 
structive as he is enthusiastic. His enthusiasm, in fact, is so contagious 
that it is safe to say nearly everybody who reads his book, and has a spot 
of ground, will at once make earnest resolves to engage in rose-culture. 
Speaking of the cultivation of flowers generally, he relates the experience 
of a Scotch clergyman, who, in his visitations from house to house, had 
never failed to be well received wherever he saw plants in the window. 
Mr. Hole goes over the subject exhaustively, both as to the varieties to 
: from and the best methods of cultivating them, so that his read- 
ers, with a little perseverance, ought to have no excuse for want of success 
m their efforts with what he calls the flower of flowers." 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVII. AUGUST, 1883. No. 221. 



SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

BY AN ENGLISHWOMAN. 

IN the course of Mr. Matthew Arnold's most valuable work 
upon Popular Education in France he speaks of the particular 
danger which besets the American people. He says it has been 
educated without ideals. We think there could not be a truer 
description of our own day. Everywhere outside the Catholic 
Church, in art and music and literature, there is a want of ideals. 
Writers and statesmen court the smile of the present hour and 
worship the goods which they see. For them posterity is no 
more, because they have ceased to think of immortality, and even 
the men who would have aspirations, if they were not so cruelly 
jostled in the crowd of ambition, raise a stone now where for- 
merly they would have built a temple. Here is the difference 
between worldly and Christian endeavor. The one puts forth 
all its blossom in one night, fades and dies ; the least of seeds, 
the mustard-seed, after a season of patient travail in the bosom 
of the earth, becomes a great and enduring tree. The genius, 
then, of the present time is to found a fashion rather than a tra- 
dition, to be more sparkling than solid, and to produce J>tfaes dc 
circonstance in preference to works of inj^rin sic value; and this is 
precisely the result which may be^rfcpected from an education 
which unduly cultivates the intellectual part and leaves the 
moral man to run wild. Its high aims will be good pay and a 
lavish pandering to the tastes of the hour, with a parenthesis for 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKBR. 1883. 



578 SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Aug., 

the " immortal gods," if there be any. Works thus conceived are 
ephemeral, because they are not based upon the principle of life ; 
their brief share of human glory is their whole immortality. 
Certain wines have a delightful sparkle when fresh from the 
vintage, but they are not worth the bottle and the cork. 

Whilst the lack of ideals is the tendency of modern culti- 
vation, there will ever be a class of men who honestly believe in 
what we may call pure human aspirations based on good prin- 
ciples without dogma. Fame, duty, honor, cultivation of mind, 
hospitality, and liberality may be, and often are, the respectable 
human virtues with which they fill their existence, for which 
they write their books, paint their pictures, compose their mu- 
sic, and chisel their marble. Like M. Cousin, they would have 
been warm in their admiration of the primary schools of Hol- 
land, where Catholics and Protestants sat side by side, " pene- 
trated with the spirit of Christianity, though not with the spirit 
of sect." * We believe that the good principles without dogma 
may sustain one generation ; then the outcome of the Broad 
theory degenerates into agnosticism, positivism, pantheism, or 
any other of the pagan forms in which modern free thought 
delights. This is fully borne out by the consequences to the 
state of the " want of the spirit of sect." Only the spiritual- 
minded and what is their proportion ? will have any religion 
at all, and it will be the kind of religion which has not sufficient 
of the vital principle to be handed down, for it rests rather in 
the organs of sense than in the intellect, and has consequently 
more to do with the bodily than the mental state. 

Mr. Matthew Arnold, as the son of a man who may be looked 
upon as one of the most prominent of Broad-Churchmen, is a 
remarkable example of what the combined force of education, 
intellect, and traditional piety of the sort we have specified is 
able to effect. He is a typical man, portraying the double ten- 
dency of our times, which glorify intellect and decry dogma. In 
him, then, and in his writings, we are able to judge the sound, 
uncertain as to the future, but too definite as to the present, 
which the Zeitgeist is giving forth. He is at ease and at home in 
any department of letters ; he has the highest quality for criti- 
cism a mind unbiassed by prejudice and strictly upright in its 
measure of praise and blame. If he has thoroughly grasped the 
spirit of old Homer, he*ca#lPko speak with deep appreciation of 
Eugenie de Guerin when she makes her confession to an unsym- 
pathetic priest.f His pictures of nature teem over with Celtic 

* See Popular Education in France, p. 210. f Essays. 



1883.] SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 579 

brightness " magic," he has called it yet when he comes to 
treat of the highest questions of human life he is wanting in 
the " grand manner."* Genius makes the human, and faith the 
supernatural, " grand manner." The painter without ideals may 
be stupendous, and still never strike a chord the chord in the 
hearts of his admirers. We believe the criterion of real excel- 
lence is, after all, a very simple one, and that the true chord can 
never be struck in unbelieving hearts, and possibly never created 
except by a believing spirit. Mr. Matthew Arnold has eminently 
the virtues and defects of his time. It would be impossible for 
fine and polished and thorough criticism, but a criticism which 
has a visible, not an invisible, centre of gravitation, to surpass 
the pages which he has written on the elements in the English 
character ; and, again, his introduction to Popular Education in 
France contains pages worthy of Pascal. 

We could wish, indeed, that these two works had not been 
pieces de circonstance ; but whatever they may be, they prove the 
author capable of the highest efforts of thought. The introduc- 
tion to Popular Education in France is an apology for democracy, 
and speaks of equality as having bettered the condition of the 
French lower classes. Mr. Matthew Arnold and those who have 
looked at the world with his perspicacious eyes say to us, " Aris- 
tocracy has had its day ; now it is the turn of democracy," and we 
are forced to own that society proves them to be right ; but they 
do not tell us how the question affects the spiritual part of man, 
and whether, on the whole, the principle of authority maintained 
in social life does not tend to make him fitter for the next. He 
says : f " Can it be denied that to live in a society of equals 
tends in general to make a man's spirits expand and his faculties 
work easily and actively, while to live in a society of superiors,, 
although it may occasionally be a very good discipline, yet in 
general tends to tame the spirits and to make the play of the 
faculties less secure and active? Can it be denied that to be 
heavily overshadowed, to be profoundly insignificant, has, on the 
whole, a depressing and benumbing effect on the character? " 

There is great reason in all this, only, if we are not mistaken, 
it covers an insidious moral universal suffrage. The result pro- 
duced by education of mind, as distinct from the training of 
soul, in the lower orders is the oft-quoted " nothing menial " ; 
and if all social barriers be leveled and the world become a 
dead flat, this will be the appalling motto of society, N.on cuivis 
contingit adire Corinthum. Legislation may be seized with a 

* See his Lectures on Homer. \ Popular Education in France, introduction, xix. 



580 SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Aug., 

sudden fit of misdirected compassion for the lower orders, and 
may insist on giving- political weight with the same profusion 
as it scatters knowledge broadcast ; but the fear is that if we 
accustom our laboring hands to delicate kid gloves they may 
certainly refuse to work, and the pent-up energy which expended 
itself on tilling the ground will overflow in a less salubrious 
form to the detriment of society. With all respect to Mr. 
Matthew Arnold's judgment, we have heard a very different 
account of the French lower orders. Instead of that " self-re- 
spect, enlargement of spirit, and consciousness of counting for 
something in their country's action which has raised them in the 
scale of humanity,"* we are told of a lower rate of morality and 
of a notable falling off in dogmatic as well as practising religion. 
We are inclined to think that the wrongs endured by the French 
peasant before the Revolution and they were indeed crying 
were equalled by the false standard set up by the first Napo- 
leon. He taught France and vanity is one of the dominant fail- 
ings of the French nation to make glory their life's credo ; but the 
man who lives for fame cannot live for the cross, and France, in 
striving after a false liberty, equality, and fraternity, has lost her 
birthright of the faith. The book does not deal with this side of 
the question, which to us, as Catholics, greatly diminishes its 
worth. Its power lies in statistics, practical observations of the 
working of both English and French systems of primary educa- 
tion, and in genuine thought. He points out in a very sugges- 
tive manner the radical difference between French and English. 
Our force lies in our individuality, that of our neighbors across 
the Channel in their collectiveness. We are under, they are 
over, governed ; and, without making himself the apologist of 
either, Mr. Matthew Arnold endeavors to show what each might 
gain from the other. " I believe," he says, " as every English- 
man believes, that over-government is pernicious and dangerous ; 
that the state cannot safely be trusted to undertake everything, 
to superintend everywhere. But, having once made this profes- 
sion of faith, I shall proceed to point out as may be necessary, 
without perpetually repeating it, some inconveniences of under - 
government^ ; to call attention to certain important particulars in 
which, within the domains of a single great question, that of 
public education, the direct action of the state has produced 
salutary and enviable results." f 

Again, with the pen of a master he describes the Swiss 
democracy as the " elimination of superiorities," and he notes 

* Popular Education in France, p. xxi. \ ibid. , p. 1 1. 






1883.] SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 581 

the decay of vital aspirations in the Dutch people. At the time 
of the publication of this book (1861) Mr. Matthew Arnold was 
able to describe the French system of education as " religious." 
He could not now persevere in the statement, and this is one of 
the evils of Kptice de circonstance. It is made for the moment, and 
its future depends on the degree of real thought which is, as it 
were, evolved by the subject-matter. Whatever oblivion may in 
consequence of this circumstance fall upon Popular Education in 
France, we may safely predict a long life to the introduction ; but 
though we readily acknowledge the immortality of the intellect, 
we take objection to this eloquent closing sentence : " Human 
thought, which made all institutions, inevitably saps them, rest- 
ing only in that which is absolute and eternal." Here we have, 
as in a kernel, the heresy of Mr. Matthew Arnold : that glorifi- 
cation of man who moves and is not moved, and so comes to be 
a first principle of the universe. We are often called upon to 
admire the education which can make men profoundly religious 
without the spirit of sect, but dogma is to the life of the soul 
what bread is to the human body. A distaste for bread is one 
of the symptoms of anaemia, or want of blood. A turning away 
from dogmatic belief generates spiritual consumption, want of 
blood and power, and all the class of maladies known as nervous 
or hypochondriacal. But if the natural food of life be foregone 
it is evident that there must be excess in some other department. 
There will be unwholesome fancies, a craving for another food 
which may supply the place of bread. The breadless Christians 
found a school which produces consumptive or nervous patients 
in the religious order. They are interesting, wayward, refined, 
highly bred, but they are not sound. Dr. Arnold, the late head- 
master of Rugby, emulated the Dutch manner in his education of 
youth. He wanted to propagate Christian sentiment rather than 
Christian dogma, and he deliberately asserted not only that the 
church was entirely corrupt, but that if it did exist it must be an 
impediment in the way of knowing our Lord. The result of this 
system is becoming every day clearer ; it produces high intellec- 
tual excellence and moral goodness when it happens to be exer- 
cised on a noble nature, but, as it does not feed the soul on the 
bread of life, the spiritual nature of a man so trained lacks the 
first properties of well-being. It is not his temptation to say, 
" Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." The 
cry of modern intellect is rather, " Let us taste of the tree of for- 
bidden fruit, and we shall become like to the First Cause of all 
things." 



582 SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Aug., 

An extraordinary interest, so it seems to us, is attached to 
the luminous pages in which Mr. Matthew Arnold sets forth 
the character of the English, Celt, and Germanic genius.* We 
fail to apprehend ourselves and to be apprehended, because we 
do not take into sufficient account the many sources of our 
national life. The English spirit is characterized by " energy 
with honesty," the Germanic by " steadiness with honesty." 
The first of these substantives indicates that radical divergence 
between us which is not always freely admitted. Our Norman 
and Celt element gives us sentiment, and sometimes magic bright- 
ness, in place of the German commonplaceness. 

" Steadiness with honesty the danger for a national spirit thus com- 
posed is the humdrum, the plain and ugly, the ignoble ; in a word, das 
Gemeine, die Gemeinheit, that curse of Germany against which Goethe was 
all his life fighting. The excellence of a national spirit thus composed is 
freedom from whim, flightiness, perverseness ; patient fidelity to nature 
in a word, science leading it at last, though slowly, and not by the most 
brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and common into the 
better life. The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack 
of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsi- 
ness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank 
commonness everywhere, pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of 
the traveller in northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone 
this is the weak side; the industry, the well-doing, the patient, steady 
elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all departments of 
human activity this is the strong side."t 

Venerable Bede could find it in his heart to record Celtic 
sloth in his grave history.^ We, in return, have been always re- 
proached for our slowness. "For dulness the creeping Saxons," 
said an old Irish poem. The coarseness, thoroughness, and 
snobbery of the British character come probably from our. Saxon 
forefathers. We should be unbearable without those lighter 
touches of the Celt and Norman natures. To quote our author : 

" Sentiment is the word which marks where the Celtic races really 
touch and are one ; sentimental, if the Celtic nature is to be characterized 
by a single term, is the best term to take. An organization quick to feel 
impressions, and feeling them very strongly ; a lively personality, therefore, 
keenly sensitive to joy and to sorrow this is the main point. . . . The 
-essence of the Celtic temperament is to aspire ardently after life, light, and 
-emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our word gay, it is said, 
is itself Celtic. It is not iromgaudtum, but from the Celtic gair, to laugh. 
. . . The Celt loves bright colors ; he easily becomes audacious, overcrow- 
ing, full' of fanfaronade. The German, says the physiologist, has the larger 

* On the Study of Celtic Literature. f Popular Education in France, p. 97. 

I Historice Ecclesice Gentis Anglorum, cap. iv. lib. iv. 



1883.]' SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 583 

volume of intestines (and who that has ever seen a German at a table 
d'hote will not readily believe this ?) ; the Frenchman has the more de- 
veloped organs of respiration. That is just the expansive, eager Celtic na- 
ture : the head in the air, snuffing and snorting ; a proud look and a high 
stomach, as the Psalmist says. . . . For good and for bad the Celtic genius 
is more airy and unsubstantial, goes less near the ground, than the German. 
The Celt is often called sensual ; but it is not so much the vulgar satisfac- 
tions of sense that attract him as emotion and excitement : he is truly sen- 
timental." * 

English Philistinism is essentially Germanic in its results, 
which are not fully reached in England on account of our Celtic 
element. Philistinism in England, according to our author, pro- 
duces " doors that open, windows that shut, locks that turn, 
razors that shave " ; whereas in Germany it may lead to science 
as the habit of " steadiness with honesty." In speaking of our 
Norman element Mr. Matthew Arnold goes on to prove that the 
French are civilized Celts. The " stronger civilization " with 
which they came in contact built up a Latin house on a Celtic 
structure. 

The well-defined and* clear statement of the three elements 
in our national character may cause Englishmen to take a new 
view of themselves. Curiously enough, Mr. Matthew Arnold 
alleges these elements as an explanation of that feature in our 
very exterior which our neighbors, the French, are so quick to 
note. "Nearly every Englishman," says George Sand, whom 
he quotes, " however good-looking he may be, has always some- 
thing singular about him which easily comes to seem comic a 
sort of typical awkwardness (gauckerie typique) in his looks or ap- 
pearance which hardly ever wears out." We are not "all of a 
piece," and so we are bizarres. Our nature gains thereby, but 
our appearance suffers. 

Again, the Celtic element is predominant in our poetry. It 
is in poetry that the Celt chiefly excels, for it requires less strug- 
gle with the rigidity of facts, less labor, and less patience. He 
does well that which nature has given him. These lectures are 
a bit of special pleading against the terre-a-terre Philistinism in 
England. Before we become too commonplace in our German 
habit of going near the ground Mr. Matthew Arnold would have 
us found a chair of Celtic at Oxford. But much that he attri- 
butes to the emotional Celtic nature was due to the influences of 
religion. Never did a system so completely forego the softening 
dews of Christian idealism as Puritanism, which he describes as 

* Popular Education in France, p. 100. 



584 SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. {Aug., 

the characteristic feature of English piety. Luther, he says, was 
a Philister of genius, and what can be expected from a Philister 
in religion ? Not high ideals, or wide horizons, or breezy moors, 
or snow-covered mountains, but only as much piety as is com- 
patible with the perfect thoroughgoingness of every-day life. 
Subtracting the genius in the father, the sons will become gemein 
in the extreme, with absolutely no end of capacity for dull plati- 
tudes. We think whilst Mr. Matthew Arnold has admirably 
painted the Celtic handling of nature as forming a special gift 
for poetry, he has not sufficiently taken into account an obvious 
source of German commonplaceness : the soul of the nation 
lacks spiritual ideals. Dante and Shakspere and Milton were 
brought up in an atmosphere of Christianity, which they inhaled. 
It is just this temperature which the German poets lack, for the 
Christendom of Germany has been destroyed before the intel- 
lectual mind of the country was formed. Goethe and Schiller 
are its poetical representatives ; but besides the want of style, 
which is a purely literary failing of their country, they have not 
the advantage of breathing Christian air; their masterpieces will 
have the long life of genius, not the immortality of the highest 
ideal. 

The defect of Goethe and Schiller seems to be reproduced in 
Mr. Matthew Arnold's own poems. They have in them too much 
of nature, bright, sparkling, and tender though that nature may 
be, and too little of grace. Our social atmosphere is teeming 
with materialism, not Christianity ; and unless our poets seek an 
immortal nectar apart from the crowd, we shall have to make 
the sad confession that the age of poetry is beginning to decline. 
That which formerly was in the very air men breathed must now 
be supplied by individual conviction. Let not the poet forget 
that the wings of the " grand manner " are high ideals ideals 
which are based on faith in things invisible. 

Generalities are more freely conceded to poetry than prose. 
We should, indeed, say that they are the tendency not only of 
second-rate poetry and this does not apply to Mr. Matthew 
Arnold but of what has now come to be considered, such is our 
weakness, as an elegance, second-rate Christianity. The sure 
instinct of the lark bears him upwards. Not so our modern 
poet : he hovers about in mid-air, leaving his readers uncertain 
as to his ultimate destination. 

Notwithstanding the sweeping assertion as to "human souls," 
the following lines, which the bard Neckan accompanies on his 
golden harp, contain a touch of real feeling : 



1883.] SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 585 

" He wept : ' The earth hath kindness, 

The sea, the starry poles : 
Earth, sea, and sky, and God above 
But, ah ! not human souls.' " 

On the other hand, there is a false sentimentality in this verse, 
taken from his lyric poem, " Absence," an unconscious tribute 
against a power than which there is none greater on earth our 
free will : 

" But each day brings its petty dust 

Our soon-choked souls to fill, 
And we forget because we- must, 
And not because we will." 

What, again, can more truly represent the dreary waste which 
the spirit of unbelief is opening upon us than the following 
picture, taken from " Dover Beach " ? 

" The sea of faith 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 

But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world." 

In the next verse, too, it is the earth as it might have been 
without revelation, not as faith makes it : 

"Ah! love, let us be true 
To one another ; for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new, 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
And we are here, as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night." 

In those remarkable lectures from which we have largely 
quoted, On the Study of Celtic Literature, Mr. Matthew Arnold 
speaks of four ways of handling nature the conventional way, 
the faithful way, the Greek way, and the magical way. He 
credits the Celt with excelling in the latter way, and attributes 
to our Celtic element the power shown by English poets in this 
particular. In his narrative-poems he himself gives proof of 
Celtic magic in his delicate pictur.es from nature. The story of 
Tristram and Iseult is unworthy of the poet's ardor, yet if poetry 
is not based upon divine love we must often be contented to 



586 SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Aug., 

accept its feeble shadow, the overweening love which human 
hearts wrongfully give each other. Iseult is telling her chil- 
dren the tale of Merlin and the lovely fay " under the hollies one 
bright winter's day " : 

" They came to where the brushwood ceased, and day 
Peer'd 'twixt the stems ; and the ground broke away 
In a sloped sward down to a brawling brook. 
And up as high as where they stood to look 
On the brook's farther side was clear; but then 
The underwood and trees began again. 
This open glen was studded thick with thorns, 
Then white with blossom ; and you saw the horns, 
Through last year's fern, of the shy fallow-deer 
Who come at noon down to the water here. 
You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along 
Under the thorns on the green sward, and strong 
The blackbird whistled from the dingles near, 
And the weird chipping of the woodpecker 
Rang lonelily and sharp ; the sky was fair, 
And a fresh breath of spring stirr'd everywhere." 

Were it not, indeed, for an occasional chord of speaking 
melody, we should say that Mr. Matthew Arnold's genius as a 
poet lay in his sylvan descriptions of nature. Sohrab's dying 
words to his father, for instance, contain a great truth poetically 
expressed : 

" For some are born to do great deeds, and live, 
As some are born to be obscured, and die." 

In the poem " Rugby Chapel," which he has dedicated to his 
father's memory, a very strong breath of pantheism is blowing. 
The natural instinct of man to doubt the soul's immortality is 
in this nineteenth century of the Christian era what it was in 
Cicero's time. There is a forcible similarity between Sulpicius' 
letter to Cicero on the death of his beloved Tullia a master- 
piece of pagan sentiment and these lines. A " si quis etiam inferis 
sensus est" is running all through them ; for it is hard to classify 
in any of the regions known to faith the vague sphere allotted 
by Mr. Matthew Arnold to his father's spirit : 

" O strong soul, by what shore 
Tarriest thou now ? For that force, 
Surely, has not been left vain ! 
Somewhere, surely, afar, 
In the sounding labor-house vast 
Of being, is practised that strength, 
Zealous, beneficent, firm ! 



1883.] SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 587 

" Yes, in some far-shining sphere, 
Conscious or not of the past, 
Still thou performest the word 
Of the spirit in whom thou dost live 
Prompt, unwearied, as here ! 
Still thou'upraisest with zeal 
The humble good from the ground, 
Sternly repressest the bad ! 
Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse 
Those who with half-open eyes 
Tread the border-land dim 
'Twixt vice and virtue ; reViv'st, 
Succorest ! this was thy work, 
This was thy life, upon earth." 

After this decided bit of modern paganism the poem goes on 
to take a view of human doings scarcely encouraging when the 
dim hereafter which he allows them be considered. However, 
he deals more satisfactorily with life than with death, although, 
to our mind, in the following lines there is a serious lack of the 
" grand manner." The ideas are clothed in the every-day dress 
of humdrum life, not in poetical raiment : 

" What is the course of the life 
Of mortal men on the earth ? 
Most men eddy about 
Here and there, eat and drink. 
Chatter, and love, and hate, 
Gather and squander, are raised 
Aloft, are hurled in the dust, 
Striving blindly, achieving 
Nothing ; and then they die 
Perish and no one asks 
Who or what they have been, 
More than he asks what waves, 
In the moonlit solitudes mild 
Of the midmost ocean, have swelled, 
Foamed for a moment, and gone." 

" And there are some whom a thirst 
Ardent, unquenchable, fires, 
Not with the crowd to be spent, 
Not without aim to go round 
In an eddy of purposeless dust, 
Effort unmeaning and vain. 
Ah ! yes, some of us strive 
Not without action to die 
Fruitless, but something to snatch 
From dull oblivion, nor all 
Glut the devouring grave ! " 



588 SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Aug., 

We may, however, point out two poems in which our craving 
for ideal is more fully satisfied, and which breathe a more definite 
faith. They are " Stagirius " and " Monica's Last Prayer." The 
concluding lines of the latter are in telling contrast to the dark, 
November gloom of " Rugby Chapel '' : 

" Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole ; 
Yet we her memory, as she prayed, will keep 
Keep by this : Life in God, and union there" 

" Stagirius " has upon it the bloom of faith, though it may be 
faith rather in Jehovah than the God of the Incarnation. The 
eloquence of our day is apt to clothe all questions of the soul in 
a veil of mist. Throughout the poem the effort is sustained. 
We quote the first and last verses as a sample : 

" Thou, who dost dwell alone, 
Thou, who dost know thine own, 
Thou, to whom all are known 
From the cradle to the grave 

Save, oh ! save. 
From the world's temptations, 
From tribulations, 
From that fierce anguish 
Wherein we languish, 
From that torpor deep 
Wherein we lie asleep 
Heavy as death, cold as the grave, 
Save, oh ! save." 

" Oh ! let the false dream fly 
Where our sick souls do lie 

Tossing continually ! 
Oh ! where thy voice doth come 

Let all doubts be dumb, 

Let all words be mild, 

All strifes be reconciled, 

All pains beguiled ! 

Light bring no blindness, 

Love no unkindness, 

Knowledge no ruin, 

Fear no undoing ! 
From the cradle to the grave, 
Save, oh ! save." 

We do not pretend to give a general survey of Mr. Matthew 
Arnold's works. They bear upon them so largely the character 
of wide and solid culture that they can only be well apprehended 
by those literary tourists who carry out in letters the British 
zeal for exploring territory in the physical world. He is no 



1883.] Su? CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 589 

smatterer, yet, if we are not deceived, his works will not succeed 
in feeding- hungry hearts. They offer great pleasures of mind, 
but practically do not recognize the requirements of that which 
is higher than mind the soul. As it is the tendency of modern 
education and aim to make the human intellect monarch of every 
other human aspiration, so, in a writer who vividly portrays its 
excellences and shortcomings, will the reader be enabled to^weigh 
the system in the balance, and, we fervently hope, to find it want- 
ing. Learning has taken a great step out of the true way ; when 
once more it leads up to God, then the mind's flights will have 
surer wings, and those who are borne alolt a safer resting-place. 

With faith as his basis Mr. Matthew Arnold might have writ- 
ten for eternity, whereas his pen belongs to time, and, as in the 
case of worn-out human mortality, the earth will close over its 
tomb. 



SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY AND HIS CONTEM- 
PORARIES.* 

LITERATURE is generally a gainer when a man who has been a 
prominent actor in important events, after a lapse of time has 
cleared his judgment and mellowed the events into memories, 
undertakes the duty of writing their history ; more especially if 
the man be well fitted in special particulars for such a task. 
History thus written has its drawbacks. If among the attributes 
of the writer be observation and sympathy, the narrative will, of 
course, possess a freshness and warmth and human interest 
which must be wanting in all except the rare few of histories 
written by men generations removed from their subject. But 
such a book is always open to the danger of being colored by 
the views which the writer held when he took a partisan's share 
in the events he sets himself to chronicle ; to be tainted even by 
a partisan's not unnatural endeavor to vindicate his own case at 
the expense of an imperfect statement of the cases of those who 
differed from him. Still, this danger does not always befall ; 
there have been bright exceptions to this as to every other rule ; 
and if ever there was reason to look for an impartial and truly 
valuable contribution to contemporaneous history, it surely was 

* Four Years of Irish History 1845-1849. A sequel to Young Ireland. By Sir Charles 
Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G. London : Cassell, Fetter, Galpin & Co. 1883. 



- 9 o /* CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

when Sir Charles Gavan Duffy retired from public life at the 
close of a long career to write the story of Young Ireland. 

Sir Charles is an aged man : the frosts of full seventy winters 
have writ their story on his brow ; but his is one of those 
intellects which age seems but to ripen. Almost half a century 
of time stretches away between him and the Irish movements in 
which he took a part. All of the contemporaries with whom he 
held contention are laid beneath the much-condoning clay ; the 
pathos of the grave sheds its softening halo round their memory. 
The life of the exile in the colony of his adoption was one of 
prosperity and distinction, in which everything that happened 
was calculated to leaven whatever bitterness might have entered 
into his life before. As a writer, for grace, power, and clearness 
of style, Gavan Duffy was always without a compeer among a 
galaxy of brilliant writers. The subject of his book was one 
which might inspire a duller pen than that of the once editor of 
the Dublin Nation a subject which for lovers of freedom every- 
where possesses a fascination, and which to the student of the 
strange Irish problem is one of the most interesting in history. 
Nothing was wanting, to all seeming, to the ex-Young-Irelander 
and ex-prime-minister of Victoria to fit him for the task he had 
undertaken and to enable him to make the work in his hand a 
great one. 

It is a pitiful thing, therefore, to have to say, after mature and 
full consideration of this second volume of Sir Charles Duffy's 
book, that it is a disappointment in all the best particulars in 
regard to which the circumstances seemed to warrant expecta- 
tion. The book has its literary charm, 'tis true, for it is written 
with a vigor, movement, polished ease, and artistic effect which 
make it readable with the ease and pleasure of a novel. True, 
also, it has its historical value, as it could not help having where 
such a writer conscientiously set down what he recollected of 
such men and such events as his narrative treats of. But this 
Four Years of Irish History comes into the period where patriot- 
ism was brought down from poetry and oratory to the grim 
necessity of action, where the friction of men and parties really 
began, where bitternesses were engendered, where men were put 
through the crucible of desperate alternatives. And it reveals 
Gavan Duffy, after this great stretch of time, as possessed as 
strongly by the same animosities and jealousies as when his 
paper was banned by Conciliation Hall, or when he chafed at 
the Mitchelite secession, or when, a disgusted politician, he left 
his country " a corpse on the dissecting table." To all who are 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 



59' 



in a position to read between the lines the motif of this book is 
painfully evident. It is not the great opportunity to write 
unbiassed history that is availed of ; it is the opportunity for 
which a politician about whose record there was a difference 
of opinion waited to depreciate his antagonists, after his anta- 
gonists were all dead, and to glorify himself when there was 
none left to dim his manufactured lustre. Instead of being a 
narrative of very great and remarkable events, in which the 
writer's part was by no means the most important, this book is 
nothing more nor less than an apotheosis and vindication of the 
writer's self at the expense of almost every individual the promi- 
nent placing of whom might interfere with the intended effect. 
It is a glowing picture, in which Charles Gavan Duffy is the 
central figure, round whom all other persons and things are 
grouped as subordinate elements. History there is, to be sure, 
but the history is subservient to the ruling purpose ; it is just the 
fine historical background necessary to the portrait of so great a 
statesman. All whom it may concern are now presented with an 
elaborated announcement, delivered by himself at the end of his 
days, that Charles Gavan Duffy, alone out of all who took part 
in these troublous Irish events of thirty-five years ago, was the 
one human being without fault or blemish morally or intellec- 
tually ; that he alone knew what was right to do for Ireland, 
that he alone did what was right, that he alone never faltered or 
made mistakes. O'Connell, it is dinned with anxious iteration, 
was from the year of his imprisonment a victim to softening of 
the brain and the slave of his favorite son, John, and when famine 
fell upon the land all the dilapidated tribune could do was to 
sell himself to the Whigs, in order that he might have patronage 
to distribute to his family and his valetaille ; O'Connell's favor- 
ite son, John, was a venal, mischievous, miserable creature, the 
author's abhorrence and contempt for whom all the pages in the 
book are scarce sufficient to contain ; Mitchel was a truculent 
and unscrupulous Jacobin, whose head was turned with vanity ; 
Smith O'Brien was too scrupulous, too punctilious, too slow ; 
Fintan Lalor was a Marat whose mind, brooding in a de- 
formed body, begat a being by whom wise and constitutional 
patriots like Duffy expected to be sent to the scaffold in case of 
an Irish jacquerie ; Devin Reilly was a mad young fool, who 
taught ''revolting " methods of street-fighting in Mitchel's paper ; 
Father Kenyon grovelled to his bishop and betrayed the cause ; 
John Martin was an amiable old child, who had no business in a 
revolution. So on through the list of those who are dead, and 



S9 2 SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

who differed from him in action or said harsh things of him after- 
wards even the memory of Pigot is not left unaspersed goes 
Sir Charles Duffy, showing, not without a fair parade of plausi- 
bility, that of the whole lot the author of the fascinating book 
before us was alone the perfect man. For it is to be remarked 
that all this is done with very subtle skill. One does not see 
the drift at first. One has to think and think, and read between 
the lines ; and it is quite possible that people not more familiar 
with the events Sir Charles treats of than Sir Charles' book can 
make them, and bearing in mind the author's unquestionably 
beautiful and generous tribute to his friends of the sunny pre- 
famine period contained in his first volume, might rise from the 
perusal of this Four Years with the conviction that, for the 
patriot who was the guiding light and spirit of his time, and who 
was crossed in so many ways by unworthy and headstrong ri- 
vals, the writer was a singularly magnanimous and modest man. 
" The one aim of this book," the author assures us, " is to nega- 
tive long-received opinions and to disturb rooted preposses- 
sions." That may very well be, if one of the rooted preposses- 
sions is that the Famine was the historical fact of most mag- 
nitude and import in the Ireland of 1846-47, and not John 
O'Connell's treachery or Gavan Duffy's perfections ; and if the 
chief long-received opinion in the author's eye relates to the 
belief that C. G. Duffy was a fine patriot as long as patriotism 
kept in smooth water and the Nation was making thousands 
a year, but a rather knock-kneed revolutionist when the r6le 
demanded commercial sacrifice and physical suffering, and the 
stake was life or death. It is, indeed, a painful spectacle this 
old man, with the ability to write history, with a sacred trust 
in his hands, using that trust to exact vengeance at the end of 
his days for every injury that was done him, every slight that 
was put upon him, every hard thing that was said about him in 
his early career ; devoting all the powers of his skilful pen to 
vilipend a leader beside whom he was a political pigmy, and 
comrades who are not alive to answer him when he strives to 
cloud their memory in the incense which he burns round himself. 
The chapter of Irish history which opened with the Repeal 
agitation and ended on the common of Boulah is one of the most 
instructive in all the checkered story. At the present day Ire- 
land has the benefit of the experience and fruits of three separate 
national movements of widely differing characters not counting 
the Land League agitation or the movement on foot at present- 
one of them a moral-force agitation, one an attempt at insurrec- 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 593 

tion, and one a rather formidable conspiracy. When O'Connell 
first appeared upon an Irish platform a very different state of 
things existed. His thunder-voice was the first tocsin for two 
centuries that appealed to the Irish Catholic masses, as distin- 
guished from the Protestant colony, summoning them to a striv- 
ing for religious and national freedom. It was a summons, when 
they first heard it, they could not comprehend. The eighteenth 
century, after the broken treaty of Limerick, and the penal laws, 
was a time during which the Irish Celts had lain prostrate under 
a sort of nightmare in which famines, priest-hunts, tenant-exter- 
minations were the spectres that moved across the frightened 
retina. The patriotism of Swift and Molyneux addressed itself 
only to the Protestant Anglo-Irish, excluding dissenting Presby- 
terians as well as native Papists. The revolution of the Volun- 
teers was the movement of the same caste. The Catholics who 
had worked with Wolfe Tone, and who had taken part in the pre- 
mature insurrection which the government fomented and tram- 
pled out in blood and fire in 1798, were either hanged or other- 
wise dead in 1829 ; and the generation succeeding them were 
reared in utter ignorance, and had no national memories save 
hopeless ones of insurrection associated with floggings at the 
cart's tail and stranglings on the gallows. It was such a popula- 
tion O'Connell addressed when he first dreamed of Irish freedom. 
It was among such a people he essayed to enkindle the divine 
flame of patriotism ; it was such a race he hoped to inspire to 
mighty deeds and lead into a proud place among the nations. 
He who wants to judge O'Connell rightly, it is this fact he must 
before all and above all study and appraise. The attempt is 
without parallel in history. The Deaks, the Kossuths, the Maz- 
zinis, the Garibaldis, and all the other European patriots and 
sham patriots of that and subsequent eras could nor would never 
have moved without their public opinion already formed ; with- 
out their national parties prepared to leave a foreign parlia- 
ment in a body, like the Hungarians, and their drilled battalions 
eager for the clang of battle, like the levies of Italia Irridenta. 
No one would have dreamed of galvanizing into passionate na- 
tional life a huge chain-gang of cowed and ignorant slaves but 
O'Connell. No one could have done it but O'Connell. He was 
the man of his time. He did the work appointed to him, and 
he did it alone. When he went down to Clare and appeared on 
the hustings against Vesy Fitzgerald the people could not be- 
lieve their eyes, and the farmers who returned him triumphantly 
to the amaze of the world, and who defied the scowls of their 
VOL. xxxvii. 38 



594 Six CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

landlords, which to them meant sentences of death, were them- 
selves more amazed than any at the miracle. It was altogether 
alone, and despite the entreaty of every friend, he took the sub- 
limely daring resolution of bearding the Beresford in his fortress ; 
and when at the Waterford election he smote down the strongest 
champion of the ascendency, and trampled on his pride in the 
place where the house of Beresford reigned almost as a house of 
kings, people said a portent had appeared in the Irish sky. Step 
after step he had to move alone ; teaching, exhorting, inspiring 
friends and fighting enemies, he had to fulfil his mission alone and 
solitary. His difficulties were as colossal as his achievements. 
Any other man but the giant he was would have fallen down 
beneath them. This Titan, with the voice of thunder and of 
murmuring brook-music, and kingly heart and statesman's mind, 
and power to sway a people's passions as Jove compelled the 
clouds, this great figure filled up was, in short, himself the em- 
bodiment of Ireland's history for a quarter of a century. The 
people loved him with a wondrous love ; for he could touch the 
subtlest chords of the Irish heart, and all his attributes his fancy, 
his humor, his power of passionate hate and tenderest love were 
the attributes of the Irish genius intensified. His faults were the 
faults of all great movers of men, and they were dwarfed by the 
bigness of his virtues. Critics like Duffy, endeavoring to mag- 
nify them, are like Gulliver contemplating the freckles of the 
giants of Brobdingnag. He was one of the great men not alone 
of Ireland but of his time. Balzac thought that the three men 
whom the century had produced who towered high above all the 
rest were Napoleon, Cuvier, and " the incarnation of a people, 
O'Connell." When he died the capitals of France and Italy 
mourned him as one of their own illustrious dead. 

When O'Connell had aroused a national spirit into buoyant 
life over the land ; when his monster meetings, at which his nation 
used to marshal by the quarter-million with the order and disci- 
pline of mighty armies, were the cynosure of the age ; when his 
power and prestige had reached their perihelion, he began for 
the first time to feel a force beside him other than himself in na- 
tional propagandism. In 1843 the "Repeal Year "a young 
Protestant lawyer, who had gained a reputation among the col- 
leges and learned societies as a scholar and archaeologist, himself 
inspired 'by O'Connell's movement, gathered round him a party 
of talented young men similarly inspired, and silently, earnestly, 
devotedly, disinterestedly, nobly set to work. He was " an honest 
man armed with a newspaper," and much more. Of Davis it is 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 595 

true enough to say that with him " a soul came into Ireland." 
O'Connell, who had to rouse from deadly apathy, to drill, to or- 
ganize, to create from slave-material his army of erect men thirst- 
ing for freedom, had but scant time left to carry out the educa- 
tion of them as well. Davis undertook to teach what O'Connell 
had called into being. He and his Nation party enlightened and 
ennobled the patriotism of which O'Connell had supplied the 
bone and sinew. By glowing ballad and spirited essay they 
taught that Ireland was no mere province or colony, but an an- 
cient kingdom that had heroes who fought for her, martyrs who 
died for her, saints who gained her sanctity, and kings and scho- 
lars who won her renown. They spread before the youths and 
men in the Repeal reading-rooms, in accurate historic disserta- 
tions instinct with life and sympathy, the glorious story of Ire- 
land's past. They painted the high state of culture and civili- 
zation which existed in Ireland when other nations of western 
Europe had not emerged from barbarism ; they clothed the 
crumbling ruins in the country parishes with associations of the 
Island of Saints and Doctors, to whose courts and universities 
the princes of Europe used to come for education ; they followed 
St. Columbkille in his apostleship across the Continent ; they 
pictured the English Alfred sending to Ireland for professors 
when he wanted to found the first of English universities in Ox- 
ford ; they expounded the wisdom and enlightenment of the 
Brehon laws ; they explained the art which could work a Tara 
brooch, design an Ardagh chalice, or illuminate a Book of Kells ; 
above all, they dwelt upon every battle-field where an Irish sol- 
dier fought for freedom : their brightest colors, their most ardent 
praise, were reserved for the military patriots who summoned 
the clans in arms against the foreign enemy : their best study 
and energies were devoted to the cloudy-and-lightening period 
of Irish history since the first English conquest to bringing into 
prominence and setting before the masses of their countrymen 
the deeds of valor and prowess which ignorance had so long 
hidden from their ken. Their mission was to create the pabu- 
lum of an exalted Irish nationality; and that mission they bril- 
liantly fulfilled. 

Much controversy has been expended on the relations which 
existed between O'Connell and these young men. Sir Charles 
Duffy in his first volume laid the utmost stress upon O'Connell's 
jealousy of his fellow-workers ; and in the present volume he 
spreads the subject out from beginning to end of the book. But 
Duffy, for his own purposes, has exploited but the flimsiest out- 



596 S//? CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

ward seemings of this question. There were some points of 
friction, it is true, and passages in which poor human nature 
was not altogether perfect. But Davis* was too pure and impe- 
rial a soul to harbor paltry feelings, and he loved O'Connell with 
a strong affection, while O'Connell's great heart held Davis in 
its inmost core. The young men who surrounded Davis, too, 
O'Connell loved, and felt their party to be a noble power and 
ally ; and this he proved on more than one occasion. Davis, 
notwithstanding all the genius of his Nation phalanx, despaired 
of Repeal without O'Connell. ' O'Connell, when Davis died, was 
nearly paralyzed with grief ; his letter from Derrynane to the 
Repeal Association was brief that week, and was nothing but a 
passionate lament for the dead. " As I stand alone," he cried, 
" in the solitude of my mountains, many a tear shall I shed in 
memory of the noble youth. Oh ! how vain are words or tears 
when such a national calamity afflicts the country. ... I can 
write no more my tears blind me and after all, 

' Fungar inani munere.' " 

The saddest thing in all the world for any one who has sym- 
pathy in them is to read the story of the shattering of these 
bounding hopes. From the imprisonment of O'Connell to the 
first year of the famine was an interval of decline. The Repeal 
movement had never recovered from the disillusioning of Clon- 
tarf ; it had been the simulacrum of a " force " from that day, and 
England felt she might appoint her Devon commission to dis- 
cover the best methods for removing the multitudinous " Celts " 
who used to furnish its imposing materiel. Davis died in 1845, 
and the Young Ireland party was left without its head and heart. 
O'Connell's health began to fail him in 1846, and Conciliation 
Hall was passing into the hands of his favorite son John. While 
the two practically leaderless parties were embroiled in dissen- 
sions over questions of ethics and theology, a calamity fell upon 
the land which almost in a night bouleversed the entire Irish 
situation. 

The famine came. It was a dread phenomenon of such tre- 
mendous import that all questions which had hitherto affected 
the Irish people faded out of significance beside it. It struck at 
the very existence of the people. In a year the tens of thou- 
sands who made the might and glory of the monster meetings 
were dead of hunger and the plague. This new foe was slaugh- 
tering the Irish race faster than the whole English army, with 
artillery and musketry and steel working night and day, could 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 597 

slaughter them. And this slaughtering was done by such means 
and with such accompaniments that a traveller through the land 
might fancy himself walking in the Purgatory painted by Dante. 
Men who realized the full import of this phenomenon were ap- 
palled. To think of it and witness it was an experience which 
might shake reason from her firmest thrones. Of the very few 
who then really understood its nature, one was O'Connell, and an- 
other was a member of the Young Ireland party John Mitchel. 
It broke O'Connell's great heart, and, for a while, perhaps the 
strength of Mitchel's intellect was not proof against its presence. 
Charles Gavan Duffy assuredly was not one of the few. His 
own book proves it. Where its pages, if it purports to be a his- 
tory of the four years, should be occupied with the causes and 
effects of the famine and the true necessities of the new situation 
as they appeared to his judgment after thirty-five years' refleg- 
tion, they are taken up with endless twaddle about the squabbles 
between the young men and John O'Connell, and Duffy's own 
perfect plan for attaining Repeal in thirty years' time by his great 
" Parliamentary Party " programme as if that were what was 
in men's minds while they lay in articulo mortis by the ditch-side. 

The famine was a thing to be met by a national government 
putting forth all its energies and employing all its resources. 
One of the most awful anomalies in history existed then : while 
millions of the Irish population were dying for want of food, 
sufficient food, notwithstanding- the potato-blight, to feed twice 
the whole Irish population was being gathered off Irish farms 
and shipped away to England ! It has been computed that in 
every one of the years 1846, 1847, an< 3 1848 Ireland was export- 
ing to England corn, cattle, bacon, butter, and eggs to the 
amount of fifteen million pounds sterling. A national govern- 
ment would have stopped this drain and kept the food in the 
country to feed the people at any cost. But what Ireland want- 
ed was a national government ; and it was by no means the de- 
sire of the British statesmen who ruled her destinies to give her 
back her plundered property in order to keep alive her multitu- 
dinous and troublesome Celts. After delaying, to try how effec- 
tual delay would prove, they proposed measures of " relief " 
which added the only new horror which could intensify the hor- 
ror of the famine itself. To complete the ghastly travesty they 
appealed to the world for " charity " for the people they were 
striving to destroy. 

In the midst of this direful crisis O'Connell died. He was 
journeying towards Italy to seek in a warm climate the restora- 



598 Ssx CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

tion of his shattered health. At Genoa the summons reached 
him, and he died" heart-broken," as Mitchel says, " not by a 
mean vexation at seeing- his powers departing from him the 
man was too great for that but by the sight of his people sink- 
ing every day into death under their inevitable, inexorable 
doom." Thus was Ireland struck a double blow ; thus in the 
hour of her supreme need was she deprived of the only leader 
whose force would have been equal to the crisis. 

A situation of the most terrible character had to be met, and 
substantially the only men who were to meet it were the young 
men who constituted the party known as Young Ireland. The 
government had not only abandoned its duty but was conniving 
at the disaster. The Liberator was dead. These young men, 
without sufficient influence to be sure of a mass-meeting as- 
sjsmbling at their call, were alone with the mighty duty. Pos- 
terity is now sufficiently assured of one thing the Young-Ire- 
landers conscientiously and fearlessly did their best all through 
this crisis. But they were nearly all of them young, and scarce 
more than one of them realized the true character of the calamity 
they stood in presence of. That calamity changed everything 
vitally ; yet they continued to feed upon heroic and sublime 
dreams of ideal nationhood. Meagher in the depth of the famine 
never made a speech relating to Irish politics without abundant 
allusions to the histories of Rome and Sparta, as if he saw an 
affinity between the circumstances of skeleton peasants eating 
grass and shaking in famine-typhus and the iron warriors who 
made their slaves drunk that they might learn lessons of self- 
denial from contemplating the spectacle of debased humanity. 
Nevertheless they met in council to devise a plan. Duffy, who 
always posed as the wise man of the party, especially in the mat- 
ter of policies and plans, submitted his scheme. As a plan of 
campaign one of his contemporaries said afterwards " it was 
as perfect as Grant's against Richmond." But as a method for 
averting the particular crisis it was just as grotesque and foreign 
to the necessity as it would have been to Grant in his campaign 
against Richmond. It showed an utter inability to comprehend 
the situation. It was simply an elaborated and perfect scheme 
for obtaining, as Mitchel put it, the constitution of 1782 by the 
time they had reached 1882, and it included among its cardinal 
points the return of popular candidates to Parliament and the 
reform of the magistracy and the grand-jury system ; all this plan 
required was " patience," and it would free Ireland. The curse 
of Irish politics, exclaims Gavan Duffy, is " impatience." The 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 599 

people who were dropping dead in the ditches while the harvest 
was being- carried off their fields needed only grand-jury reform 
and popular candidates, and these they would obtain provided 
only they were not " impatient." James Fintan Lalor, from the 
Queen's County, sent up the only plan which had in it the ele- 
ments of opportunism ; but it was marred by its visionary spirit. 
It proposed a kind of peasant war carried out by method. The 
people were to seize upon the harvest their own industry had 
raised, were to refuse the payment of rents, provide themselves 
with what arms they could, retreat to mountain positions, adopt 
the tactics of guerrillas, and let the government say what it 
was going to do about it. The people would be saved from 
famine-graves and a real crisis would be brought about in the 
relations between England and Ireland. Would this scheme 
have been justifiable ? Undoubtedly it would. More people 
were being killed every week by the government-exploited 
famine than the English slew at Waterloo. If a man is starving 
he is justified in seizing the nearest loaf much more so if the 
loaf be by moral right his own. Landlords were neglecting 
their duty, and the rents which they then exacted have been 
proved by Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1880 to have been 
shameless plunder. Anything would have been justifiable that 
would have stayed the carnage which was transforming the 
whole country into a fetid charnel-house.* Was it practicable ? 
Duffy, in disparagement, is fond of saying in his book that the 
man who will not prove stanch at the polling-booth is not 
likely to prove a hero in the field at a call to arms. The ana- 
logy is entirely specious. A man who is dying with grass in his 
mouth will find it very difficult to see what he is to gain by try- 
ing to walk to town to register his vote for a parliamentary 
orator ; the same man will understand the logic at once when he 
is told to seize that bullock on the hill and kill it, and eat it and 
share it with his famished wife and children, and to gather up 
the wheat that grows upon his farm, and bear it away with him 
to the mountains instead of yielding it to a greedy landlord 
as an instalment of the rent. Smith O'Brien, the noble, the 
pure-hearted, but the man of quixotic punctilio, totally dis- 
sented from this. Besides his scruples he had a not unnatural 
leaning towards his own caste, and cherished a vain hope that 

* But the best collateral evidence in this regard is furnished by Duffy, who relates that Dr. 
Maginn, Bishop of Derry, in overtures with O'Brien and himself, assured them that " if the in- 
surrectionary movement were postponed for three months till the harvest would be stored he - 
would join it himself with twenty officers in black uniforms." 



6oo Ssx CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

the miracle was possible of transforming the alien landlords, the 
" English garrison," of the country, from the enemies to the 
friends of the Celtic people. Mitchel alone adopted Lalor's idea ; 
with John Martin and Devin Reilly he broke away from the 
Nation and the Confederation, and started a new paper, the 
United Irishman, for the express purpose of preaching the new 
policy. 

Mitchel was the man of that party who was most impressed 
by the famine. He was possessed, too, by that sacred confidence 
which causes men to feel they have " missions," and which 
impels them to follow out their object with indomitable will 
in spite of all obstacles and sacrifices. Such men, if there are 
enough of them, are the makers of revolutions. There were not 
enough of them in the Young Ireland party, and one came to 
grief where a dozen might have made a triumph. Mitchel de- 
cided on his policy because he saw the people dying, and inevita- 
bly bound to die, in frightful hecatombs, while the English gov- 
ernment was left uninterrupted to superintend the sacrifice. His 
soul grew black with hate of the tyranny which played its game 
with such diabolism. Better, he said, at the worst, the people 
die of bayonet- thrusts, like men resisting this, than like Swift's 
poisoned rat in a hole. The flaw in Mitchel's policy was want 
of method and calculation. He had an idea that the people 
would rise in spontaneous rebellion when the right opportunity 
came, and that the leader of the successful revolution would 
then be forthcoming, too " the man who would lead Ireland to 
freedom and glory," he said, " might be found walking the si- 
lent streets, his elbows out of his coat and without his dinner." 
Had he adopted Lalor's plan as well as Lalor's idea it would 
have been, as we have hinted, more methodic. Mitchel began 
to preach this policy in his paper in a manner singularly 
trenchant and vigorous. Duffy, in his Nation, remained consti- 
tutional and safe. O'Brien, Dillon, Meagher, and the rest wa- 
vered in anxious doubt. Just then an event occurred which 
swept the whole party off their legs. News came that Louis 
Philippe had fled from his throne, and that France, by the will of 
'her sovereign people, was again a republic ! This success of a 
popular rising intoxicated every member of Young Ireland from 
Mitchel even to the staid O'Brien. It is needless now to dwell 
on the madness which saw a parallel between moribund Ireland's 
case and that of rich France, inured to revolution; or between a 
famished people wrestling with a foreign enemy and a free 
-country changing one form of national government for another. 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 6ot 

All the Young-Irelanders went in for revolution now. Duffy was 
carried along with the tide and had to sound the tocsin of war. 
Mitchel wrote stark treason in the frankest vein. Had they 
waited till the harvest was gathered in, made quiet and cautious 
preparations in the meanwhile for a campaign of guerrilla war- 
fare, the insurrection of a people in despair might have had ele- 
ments of success. But this talking only served to inspire the 
government to strive and force their hand, which it set about 
doing without delay. The editors were promptly served with 
summonses for sedition. To suit Mitchel's case a Treason Fel- 
ony Act was passed through Parliament. Mitchel was brought 
to trial before an extra-well-packed jury in Green Street ; he was 
found guilty of treason-felony and sentenced to fourteen years' 
transportation. He was carried from Dublin that night on the 
Shearwater man-o'-war, the people looking on and making no 
sign. After Mitchel's arrest John Martin started the Irish Felon, 
and a band of students, the most distinguished of whom were 
D'Alton Williams, Kevin Izod O'Doherty, and John Savage, 
established another revolutionary organ in the Irish Tribune. 
But the government followed up their coup. Warrants were 
presently issued for the arrest of all the prominent Young-Ire- 
landers. 

There was positively no other alternative for the men unar- 
rested but to take to the country and summon the people to rise 
then and there. It was the only chance of putting their policy 
to the test, and of proving their sincerity in their professions to 
the extent of staking their own lives upon the issue. They did 
go to the country, and their attempted rising failed, chiefly 
because the people were almost totally unprepared for it, and 
partly because of O'Brien's scruples, which would not permit the 
insurgents to seize provisions and pay for them by the assignats 
of the provisional government. But it ended not ingloriously. 
That very " cabbage-garden " of the Widow McCormack on the 
common of Boulah, parish of Ballingarry, in the action of 
O'Brien that day with his half-dozen followers, witnessed as 
sublime and pathetic a scene of heroism as stands on the records 
of any nation, free or subjugate. 

At this cool and secure distance of time it is easy to criticise 
the action of these men. But placed in the immediate midst of 
the circumstances which surrounded them, put face to face with 
the enormity of the famine horrors, with the iniquity of a gov- 
ernment using the famine as a lever for the destruction of the 
people, with the death of the only leader who could inspire uni- 



602 Six CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

versal popular confidence put, in short, in a position where 
every man with a heart to feel was all but plunged in utter 
despair, and surrounded by the dazzling examples which the 
new-born nationalities of the Continent were supplying we 
would like to see the men who would have acted a better part 
than did these men of 1848. The worst that can be said of them 
was that they were young and unequal to the situation. We 
would like to hear who else was at that time equal to the situa- 
tion. In any event, no one disputes that they were as nobly 
disinterested, heroic, brilliant a band of patriots as any nation of 
the earth can boast of. Ballingarry may have been a sad mis- 
take. But the present generation of Irishmen are the wiser for 
the experience of that mistake ; and all generations of Irishmen 
will be the prouder and better for the example of men who 
proved that Irish patriotism is so sacred a passion that they who 
are possessed by it are ready to vindicate their principles in 
their blood. 

To return to Sir Charles Duffy. No human party has all its 
members perfect. Charles Gavan Duffy was not the perfect 
member of the Young Ireland party. We have shown what his 
plan was for meeting a famine and a truculent government. 
There are those who have described that plan as the outcome of 
poltroonery and an ardent anxiety for the safety of one's own 
skin. We do not go this far. But let us take Sir Charles' case 
at his own stating and we may be sure he states it to the best 
advantage and what do we find ? On his trial, on account of 
the nature of the charge brought against him, he had an oppor- 
tunity, which was denied his fellow-prisoners, of throttling before 
the world's gaze the infamous system of jury-packing which is 
the palladium of British misrule in Ireland. To do this success- 
fully had been one of Mitchel's chiefest aims. It would render 
trial by jury for political offences impossible in Ireland, and would 
prove Ireland's case more strikingly than cataracts of rhetoric. 
By very skilful and very creditable tactics on the part of himself 
and his counsel Duffy succeeded in preventing the jury being 
completely packed on five different occasions, and on five differ- 
ent trials the jury disagreed. The victory was almost within his 
hand, and what did Mr. Duffy do ? He was on trial for having 
sought the freedom of his country from foreign tyranny, and, 
instead of seeking to prove that that was no crime, he produces 
evidence of character ! This is literally true, and he does not 
even crush it out of his own book. Father Mathew was pro- 
duced to prove that Mr. Duffy's writings helped the cause of 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 603 

temperance; Bishop Blake to show that he was a God-fearing 
man ; William Carleton to testify what he had done for litera- 
ture ; and Dr. Manusell " came/' to use Sir Charles' own lan- 
guage, " from the office of the Evening Mail [!] to say what a 
loyal Protestant thought of the Young-Irelanders." What the 
loyal Protestant Orangeman thought of the Young-Irelanders we 
find stated on page 632 of Sir C. G. Duffy's present volume in 
the following terms : " The Evening Mail, which -had been flirting 
with nationality for two or three years, exhorted the government 
to put aside the form of law and put them down peremptorily 
by force." This was the sort of evidence (according to his own 
showing) by which Gavan Duffy sought to prove his character. 
Worse than this, Mr. Duffy sought to evade responsibility of 
some of the prosecuted articles by proving that it was not he 
who wrote them. Worse than all, however, while the govern- 
ment were in the dilemma of having to try him a sixth time or to 
set him free, confessing he had beaten them, he permitted a peti- 
tion to be hawked about Dublin, signed extensively by loyal Pro- 
testant Orangemen, and presented to the lord-lieutenant, praying 
that as he was of such a good moral character, as his health was 
delicate, as his property was injured, and as he was betrayed 
into his revolutionary transgressions only during a period of 
great excitement, the power he had assailed would refrain from 
prosecuting him again. Thus, in addition to this abject abasing 
of himself and yielding up of all his proud nationalist position, 
he did the very thing which freed the government from their 
dilemma. They could now let him free as an act of mercy, and 
not as an act of defeat. By and by, when Mr. Duffy was re- 
leased and set his new Nation going he could hardly find words 
for his disgust, his contempt, " his utter loathing " of the men 
who would say now that Ireland could win her rights by force. 
The London Times said in reference to that Nation that it was " a 
symptom of returning sense in Ireland." The truth is, Gavan 
Duffy never was a rebel in his heart, never was sincere in his 
bellicose professions, even when he was writing up insurrection in 
his paper. He always dreaded things coming to the final issue 
which he pretends to have longed for so ardently. In a matter 
which really involved decisive and critical action in an article 
advising the people to resist the disarming proclamation his 
heart fails him ; he tells people whom he has advised to take the 
ultimate step of revolution that if they only establish clubs quickly 
enough they may " still succeed by negotiation." * This was 

* Four Years of Irish History, p. 633. 



604 .S/ff CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY [Aug., 

when he and the others were in Newgate prison, and when there 
was nothing for it but fight or dishonor they might " still suc- 
ceed by negotiation " ! The Sir Charles of the present day has 
left us a curious confession as to the true inwardness of the war- 
like editor of those days. Some time after the passage of Mr. 
Gladstone's last land act, at a time when another set of Irish 
patriots were in prison, Sir Charles, fearing that his latter-day 
fellow-countrymen did not appreciate the gifts of England suffi- 
ciently, poured out his soul in a wonderful effusion to the Very 
Rev. Canon Tom Doyle, of Ramsgrange, County Wexford, in 
which he stated that when he was an Irish politician, had such a 
measure as that been granted to Ireland, he Charles Gavan 
Duffy would have "gone forth and beaten a drum upon the 
highway " to call the people together, that they might admire 
the noble boon and testify their gratitude to the generous govern- 
ment that bestowed it! Sir Charles has probably learned by 
this that it is not by " beating " drums upon the highways in 
gratitude for English generosity Irish politicians nowadays hope 
to do their country service. 

It was some of Mitchel's comments on these transactions 
which provoked the animus that obtrudes through Sir Charles' 
present book. Wrote Mitchel in his Jail Journal, referring to the 
resuscitated Nation : 

"Young Ireland calls upon his countrymen to accept the defeat of 
Ballingarry. Ireland's strength, he thinks, was tested at Ballingarry. If 
the country (says Young Ireland) could have been saved by human prowess, 
hdc dextrd fuisset at Ballingarry. Therefore Mr. Duffy is for the system of 
Irishmen growing individually independent, energetic, and truthful men 
(under British rule) ; and when they shall feel, after stern self-examination, 
that they are fit to manage their own affairs, then dissolve the union with 
England. Thus blasphemes this traitor; thus snivels rather this most 
pitiable sinner." 

Again, discussing the Duffy petition and evidence as to 
character : 

"Yet we cannot be angry with Duffy, who need not have been expected 
to get himself hulked for any principle, object, or cause whatsoever. Duffy 
never could sustain life without puffing ; the breath of his nostrils was 
puff; and these teak timbers are no flatterers. . . . You cannot get out of 
a man what is not in him; but yet this miserable grovelling of Duffy's is a 
disappointment to me. He had a grander opportunity than any one 
amongst us, and now he will let the 'government' march off the field 
with some semblance of having still a rag of law and constitution to cover 
them, when he might have torn off every shred and shown them as they are 
an armed garrison ruling a hostile country at the bayonet's point. . . . 
And so the proprietor of the Nation for his part begs pardon meant no 



1883.] AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 605 

harm by all these loud words of his, but was as constitutional as a Quaker 
all the time, and will never do the like again." 

Finally Mr. Duffy, when he would not be believed in at home, 
hied him for the antipodes, leaving his country " a corpse on the 
dissecting-table," utterly hopeless. He tries to explain this 
phrase by a foot-note ; but the explanation is anything- but an 
improvement on the phrase. Against Sir C. G. Duffy's career 
in Australia intrinsically we have nothing to say. For a British 
loyalist it was both a highly creditable and highly distinguished 
career. But for a man who insists on posing as an Irish rebel 
we confess it does strike us as incongruous to see him end by 
accepting a pension and a title from the government against 
which he has been in rebellion. 

This book of his is full of the " puffing " that Mitchel speaks 
of. It goes so far in its pretensions as to say that this is the 
" first time " the subject he treats of was approached. No less 
than four authors have written of this period P. J. Smyth, 
D'Arcy McGee, J. C. Luby, and John Mitchel and all of them 
more truthfully and conscientiously than Sir Charles Duffy. 
Mitchel's Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps), which is a book of 
real historical value, presents a marked contrast to this Four 
Years of Irish History. It is taken up entirely with the exposition 
of the famine and the methods of English misgovernment, where 
the latter treats only of Gavan Duffy. One illustration will 
be characteristic. Mitchel thus deals with the alleged alliance 
of O'Connell with the Whigs and with the little controversy 
between the Liberator and Young Ireland : " All this famous con- 
troversy seems to me now of marvellously small moment ; but I 
find a very concise narrative of it in Mr. O'Brien's words, which 
will be enough " ; and he forthwith dismisses the subject in an 
extract of less than half a page. This is the controversy to 
which Sir Charles Duffy devotes fully three times the amount of 
space that he does to the famine ; and of which he writes as if it 
were the most important circumstance of his history and the 
whole purpose of Conciliation Hall. " Thus," he cries in one 
place, " the great work contemplated from the beginning was at 
length consummated, the Nation [Duffy's Nation} was put on the 
Index Expurgatorius of Conciliation Hall." Duffy says more 
than once that Mitchel was ill-natured to his contemporaries in 
his books. We have not seen that ill-nature exhibited to any, 
except it -may be to Gavan Duffy. Mitchel's estimate of O'Con- 
nell was always generous and large-minded. In one place he 
says : " I warn the reader that whoso adventures to measure 



606 Six CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. [Aug., 

O'Connell must use a long rule, must apply a mighty standard, 
and raise himself up, by ladder or otherwise, much above his 
own natural stature." On the other hand, some of Duffy's in- 
sinuations approach the limits of meanness. He devotes chap- 
ters to the alliance with the Whigs, and in several places we 
come across passages like this : " He [the Liberator] was credited 
by the world not only with the prodigious work tliat he actually 
performed, but with much that was done by others. He was 
living in the midst of his private friends ; his nearest relatives 
were his agents and associates. He received an income from the 
people far beyond the official salary of the President of the 
American Republic or the prime minister of any constitutional 
kingdom in Europe ; and he controlled an expenditure which 
approximated to the civil list of some European sovereigns. In 
his youth he had tasted the supreme joy of self-sacrifice for the 
cause he loved, but he had long been an uncrowned king in autho- 
rity and inviolability, and he had come to regard the interest of 
his dynasty and the interest of the nation as necessarily identical 
and to treat dissent as treason." 

Hear Mitchel on this money question : 

" None of us ever suspected that O'Connell used one farthing of the 
money for any other purpose than furthering the Repeal cause according 
to his best judgment. The man did not care for money, save as a political 
engine ; and I have no doubt, for my own part, that when he died Ireland 
was in his debt." 

As we began by saying, Sir C. G. Duffy requires much read- 
ing between the lines. He has a method of disparagement pecu- 
liarly his own. It is never so unskilful as to be direct, except 
where he assumes the role of the impartial judge discharging a 
duty that pains him. In one place he praises a man for possess- 
ing a quality the lack of which he desires to emphasize in an- 
other. By and by the man who was praised is shown to be 
himself wanting in some other quality, and that will be sure to 
be the point in which his cardinal sin is to be exposed. In the 
end those who are to be are disparaged thoroughly, and the im- 
pression is ingeniously left on the mind that, on the whole, they 
have not only been fairly but kindly and delicately treated by a 
loyal friend. 

That this Four Years of Irish History is a very entertaining 
drawing-room volume, containing much pleasant personal gos- 
sip and a story told in the author's best style, we do not for a 
moment question. But it is no more an honest history than it is 
the Iliad. And we have been thus emphatic in our treatment of 



1883.] AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. 607 

it, and in pointing out what manner of politician the writer was 
who sits in superior judgment upon O'Connell and his other 
contemporaries, in order to enter a protest on behalf of men who 
are no longer living and to guard their memories from insidious 
slander. 

There is sometimes the slyest of poetic justice in the irony of 
fate. Duffy was the only one of all O'Connell's fellow-prisoners 
to give out the story to the world that the tribune's brain was 
being softened by the passion of love, which took possession of 
him for a beautiful young girl, in his old age. The printer's ink 
was scarcely dry on Sir Charles' first volume when he himself, a 
patriarchal septuagenarian, took to his bosom, for the third time, 
a fair and lovely wife this time, too, a lady who, to use his 
own phrase in regard to the object of O'Connell's love, is young 
enough to be his granddaughter. 



AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. 

THOSE of our readers who have travelled from Toronto to 
Montreal by water will remember that, before attempting the 
perilous descent of the Sault St. Louis rapids, the boat stops at 
the Iroquois village of Caughnawaga to take on board an Indian 
pilot. This veteran, by name Jean Baptiste, is a well-known fig- 
ure to Canadian eyes. His stately form has been handed down 
to posterity on the four-dollar notes of the Canadian Bank of i 
Commerce, and one of Notman's best photographs shows him 
guiding the Corinthian through the seething waters of the fall, 
with the dangers of which he is so familiar. It is chiefly 
owing to his name and fame that the travelling public know 
anything of Caughnawaga, and yet it has a past, a present, and 
a future all its own, far removed from the commonplace his- 
tory of river-side hamlets. The village gives its name to the 
Avhole Indian reserve, which lies in the county of La Prairie, 
on the southern side of the St. Lawrence, opposite to Lachine 
on the island of Montreal. The reserve has a river frontage 
of nine miles and extends four and a half miles back into the 
country. It is chiefly farmed by Iroquois, though there is a 
sprinkling of other nations, and even among the Iroquois there 
is a pretty general admixture of French and Scotch blood. 

As viewed from the Lachine pier, Caughnawaga has the ap- 



608 AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. [Aug., 

pearance of a large and flourishing village ; but in this, as in 
many other cases, " distance lends enchantment to the view." 
If you happen to take an interest in Indian education it would 
be well to visit the place on the day of the annual examination 
of the government school. There is a ponderous ferry-boat 
plying between Lachine and Caughnawaga, that a^ stated hours 
will convey you from the railway wharf at Lachine to a rather 
rickety pier on the Caughnawaga side ; but by far the pleasant- 
est mode of crossing is in a canoe paddled by two brawny red 
men, who smile loftily at your fears and guarantee safety. The 
current here is fearfully swift, and, let the braves pull never so 
strongly, you are pretty sure to be carried quite a distance down 
the river, to be paddled up again at the opposite bank until a 
convenient spot is seen for hauling up the canoe and helping 
you over the stones to dry land. 

Once landed you look about for the imposing little town you 
saw from Lachine. Can this collection of straggling gray houses 
be Caughnawaga ? warm-looking (indeed, far too warm on this 
sultry summer day), but for the most part uncleanly and most 
irregular in situation and in architectural design. The soil is 
dry, white, and sandy, the atmosphere close and none of the 
pleasantest. One is struck by the absence of whitewash, paint, 
flowers, and the small prettinesses that give such a charm to the 
French villages. The houses are open to the public gaze, and 
within can be seen bead-work and bark-work, and other evi- 
dences of the chief trade of the place work laid down for the 
time, for the workers have betaken themselves to the school- 
house to see, or perchance to receive, the reward of merit. 

The building now used as a school-house is about two hun- 
dred years old. It was originally the residence of the military 
commander; for the place was once well fortified, and troops 
stationed here to guard the early converts. Louis de Buade, 
Comte de Frontenac, known to the Indians as the great Onon- 
tio, or governor, has rested within its precincts ; Mantet, Courte- 
manche, and La Noue probably sojourned here while collecting 
their Indian army to subdue the Mohawk foes ; and the old walls 
doubtless have seen many a doughty deed and sheltered many 
a gallant soldier of France. Now they echo the sound of the 
pedagogue's voice as he leads his flock through the mysteries of 
Lindley Murray, soars with them to the planetary system, con- 
ducts them along the green pastures of history and geography, 
and aids them over the stumbling-blocks of arithmetic. There 
are one hundred and nine children on the roll of this school, but 



1883.] AT CA UGHNA WACA, P. Q. 609 

the average attendance is only forty-five. Indian boys can earn 
two dollars and a half by piloting- a raft down the rapids, and the 
money as well as the excitement is naturally a great inducement 
to them to play truant. The girls are enticed away by large 
payments for bead-work, so that it seems almost impossible to 
secure a regular attendance at school. On the occasion of an 
examination there is, however, a goodly number present. 

The lady patroness of the school, the parish priest, the grand 
chief of the tribe, and some other invited guests are provided 
with books and enter heartily into the questioning of the pupils 
and the awarding of prizes to the most deserving. Class after 
class of sturdy Iroquois children come forward to answer the 
questions put to them in English and in Iroquois, while the 
standing-room is filled to overflowing with interested spectators. 
Some women wear the " tte couverte " that is, a black shawl 
wrapped over the head, and the hair hanging in glossy braids ; 
others are more modernly attired, some few even fashionably. 
The feminine nature betrays its curiosity by an expression of 
lively interest in the proceedings ; the men, on the contrary, 
appear haughtily indifferent. Not so the small boys, who lite- 
rally swarm, perched on the window-ledges, on the tops of posts, 
on the backs of benches anywhere to get a peep. The room is 
gaily decorated with spruce and bead-work, and the pupils all 
have an air of neatness and cleanliness that reflects great credit 
on the training of their teacher. Their answers show a great 
amount of painstaking and perseverance on the part of in- 
structor and instructed, and prove that the Indian mind can be 
led in the paths of knowledge and rectitude. Now and then 
there is a slight hitch, owing, perhaps, to the confusion of tongues, 
or perhaps to the minds of the pupils having wandered to the 
tempting pile of prizes. For instance, to the question, " What 
was Christopher Columbus ? " the answer, " Round like an orange 
and slightly flattened at both ends," was rather disconcerting. 
It reminded the writer of what once happened in a school in 
Edinburgh, where the boys were in the habit of counting up and 
each learning his own answer. They went on successfully until 
one unlucky day when the government inspector came round. 
" Who made you?" said he to the head boy. No answer. The 
question was repeated, and the boy addressed replied : " Please, 
sir, the boy that God made is not here to-day ; I'm the laddie that 
Christ redeemed " ! However, at Caughnawaga catechism is a 
strong point, so much so that three boys are ties for the prize 
a handsome prayer-bpok hound in velvet and silver and given 
VOL. xxxvii. 32 



6io AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. [Aug., 

by the lady patroness. It takes nearly a quarter of an hour's 
dodging among the most lengthy and difficult answers before 
the winner can be determined upon. At the close of the ex- 
amination speeches are made in English and French by most 
of the visitors, and in Iroquois by the cur6 and by the grand 
chief, Mr. Joseph Williams, called in his native toqgue Skatsentie. 
Then the well-pleased children troop out into the village street, 
and the guests from Montreal, the parish priest, his assistant, 
the grand chief and his daughter, adjourn to another part of the 
time-honored mansion, where a most tempting dinner has been 
provided. 

The burning sun, so unpleasant in Caughnawaga streets, has 
a most beneficial effect on Caughnawaga gardens. The beans and 
peas trained under the shelter of the massive walls of the old 
regime cannot be surpassed ; the cucumbers and tomatoes spread- 
ing over the ruins of Count Frontenac's masonry are unrivalled ; 
fruit, too, and flowers, plump birds, lordly beef, the very nuttiest 
of cream and butter ; and, though it is early in the season, there is 
a watermelon, the gift of Chief Williams, who has just returned 
from visiting his branch business in the United States and 
brought with him some of the delicacies of New York markets. 
After dinner it is decided to visit the village, and while strolling 
through its streets a good many chapters of its history are told. 

The mission of the Jesuit fathers to the Iroquois was origi- 
nally established at La Prairie de la Madeleine, some miles lower 
down the river, and dates back as far as 1666. In spite of all 
obstacles, war, murder, and martyrdom, these holy missionaries 
persevered, and all through the checkered pages of Canadian 
history we read of the mission of the Sault St. Louis as a strong- 
hold of Christian Indians. Early in the eighteenth century the 
mission was removed to its present site and the Jesuits built 
their house and church. The latter was enlarged by a secular 
priest named Marcoux, but the house remains as it was in the 
days of its founders, the last of whom died in 1783. Since 1855 
the mission has been served by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate ; 
before that time it was attended by secular priests. Great care 
has always been taken of its precious relics of the past. There 
is the room used by Pere Charlevoix ; the bedstead on which he 
slept a narrow deal frame with four slender, unpainted posts the 
quaint wooden chairs; the old cupboard in the wall that served 
the historian for a bookcase, and that contains still the very 
books he handled and read, and the primitive desk at which he 
sat to write his interesting letters to the Duchesse de Lesguieres 



1883.] AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. 611 

in 1720 all look as though the intervening years were but a 
dream. On the walls hang the portraits of Pere Charlevoix and 
those of Pere Lafitte, of M. Marcoux, and of Bishops Plessis, 
Panet, and Turgeon. The latticed window reveals the old- 
fashioned garden with its sweet-smelling flowers and venerable 
trees planted by those dear, dead hands that first brought the 
Gospel to the Indians. Shade is a rare luxury in Caughnawaga, 
but there is shade as well as sunshine in the Jesuits' garden. 

Father Burtin and his assistant priests are most hospitable, 
and are delighted to do the honors of their historic abode. The 
church is a large stone building of somewhat rough architec- 
tural design. It possesses a very quaint pulpit and a bell of 
sonorous tone given by King George III. of England. Over the 
high altar is a picture of the titular saint of the place, St. Louis 
of France, sent to the mission by Charles X. There are few 
other pictures, but there is considerable attempt at decoration, 
now all faded and gray with age. The sacristy holds treasures 
indeed. A cope of cloth of gold given by Napoleon is shown 
with pride, likewise an ostensorium of massive gilt that for 
two centuries has flashed the divine Benediction over the be- 
lieving children of the forest primeval. It bears the inscription : 
" Claude Prevost ancien echevin de Paris, Elizabeth Legendre 
sa femme, nvon donne aux R.R. Peres Jesuites pour honnoreir 
Dieu en leur premiere Eglise des Iroquois, 1668." There is 
also a silver-gilt chalice given by the Empress Eugenie. Over 
a prie-dieu at the far end of the sacristy a curious painting 
attracts attention. It is that of a young Indian girl dressed in 
the bright-colored trappings of her race. She is standing by a 
river, on the bank of which is a mission cross. We were told 
that this was a likeness of an Indian saint called Catherine Te- 
gakouita, who had lived and died .in this mission. Her history 
has been written by Pere Charlevoix, and her memory is vene- 
rated in Canada. 

Catherine Tegakouita, known as " La Vierge Iroquoise," was 
born in 1656 at Gandahouague, a bourgade of the Agnier tribe. 
Her father was a pagan Iroquois, her mother a Christian Algon- 
quin. She was early left an orphan, her mother, who had been 
unable to have her baptized, having given her in charge to an 
aunt and uncle who were the principal people of the village. In 
infancy Catherine suffered from small-pox, which left her blind 
for some years. Owing to this affliction she contracted a taste 
for solitude and preserved her innocence in the midst of the 
utmost lawlessness. When very young she showed a preference 



6i2 AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. [Aug., 

for housekeeping- in place of roaming in the forest. Her first 
knowledge of Christianity was derived from the teaching of 
some missionaries who passed through the village. Some time 
later Pere Jacques de Lamberville arrived at Gandahouague* and 
received orders to establish a mission. Tegakouita felt a strong 
desire to become a Christian, but did not make it known, being 
afraid of her uncle. In the autumn it was customary for the men 
and women to go out and gather in the harvest of maize. That 
year a wounded foot kept Tegakouita at home. The father, in- 
terrupted in his instructions by the general exodus to the fields, 
took this season for visiting the wigwams, in one of which he 
found Tegakouita. He instructed her, and, after seeing her over- 
come many trials, baptized her on Easter day, 1676. She suffered 
untold persecutions, until an adopted sister, who was married and 
settled in La Prairie de la Madeleine, sent her husband, a zealous 
Christian Indian, to conduct Catherine to that haven, where, after 
a toilsome journey, she arrived in October, 1677. Catherine had 
always shown a most determined aversion to the marriage state, 
and had resisted all attempts to induce her to accept a husband ; 
and her confessor, becoming convinced that she knew her own 
mind, permitted her to consecrate herself to God by a vow.* 

After visiting scenes hallowed by the traces of the Jesuit 
missionaries, and dwelling on the simplicit}' and poverty of their 
early converts, it gives one rather a revulsion of feeling to enter 
the luxurious home of Grand Chief Williams a house giving 
evidence of the wealth and good taste of its owner. Here we 
were shown a photograph of the band who went to Windsor 
Castle to play lacrosse before Queen Victoria, and also another 
group of Iroquois photographed in Germany, in which country 
Chief Williams' father did considerable business in selling In- 
dian curiosities. The chief's daughter, a pretty child of about 
fourteen years, is a very fair musician, and entertained us at her 
handsome piano. This young lady is a small princess in the vil- 
lage, and, being an only child/holds very decided sway over her 
indulgent father. 

On the roadside, as we stroll to the end of the village street, 
is a curious-looking old tomb, an erection of earth, stone, and 
wood, almost as large as a small cabin. It is grass-grown and 
shaded by a tree that has sprung from its foundations. On a 
stone let in the front of this doorless dwelling we read : 

* Rev. J. A. Cuoq, of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, has written a life of Catherine Tegakouita 
in Iroquois for the benefit of her tribe. The same zealous missionary has compiled a valuable 
and comprehensive work entitled Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise, avec notes et appendices. 



1883.] AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. 613 

" Here sleeps sound, 
And will never hear 
This world no more, 
Thomas de Gaspe, 27 Mai, 1824." 

Strange to say, nobody in the place seems to have any knowledge 
of this tomb nor of its occupant ; in fact, many say they have 
" never noticed it." 

The population of Caughnawaga. numbers seventeen thou- 
sand ; of these there are very few pure Indians, and descent from 
European races is plainly discernible in feature and complexion. 
There is one man, bearing the Scottish name of McCumber, who 
rejoices in a family of thirty-six children. The French who 
marry Indian women and get possession of a portion of the Indian 
reserve clearly usurp the birthright of those for whom the land 
was set apart. The toleration of this by the government agent, 
as well as his offensively reminding the chiefs of their being as 
minors and unable to vote, etc., caused a commotion at Caugh- 
nawaga not long ago, but the new arrangement suggested by Sir 
John A. MacDonald, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, has given 
intense satisfaction. It was announced to the council of chiefs 
that the Department of Indian Affairs proposed at an early date 
to have the reserve subdivided into lots and to issue titles to 
each location, and that the department hoped soon that the whole 
band, or such members of it as may be deemed fit for the change, 
would be enfranchised. This promise has been in part fulfilled, 
and the grand chief is very sanguine as to its working well and 
benefiting his " braves." 

Once a month the grand chief summons the minor chiefs to 
meet in the council-house. The position of grand chief is not 
hereditary, but is accorded by the votes of the tribe ; the chief- 
ship of the subdivisions, however, descends from father to son. 

When a marriage is arranged it is etiquette for the respective 
chiefs of the tribes to which the contracting parties belong to 
inform the council of the arrangement ; word is then given to the 
priest, and the banns called on Sunday. On Monday the mar- 
riage ceremonies begin. 

The altar-rails are decorated, usually by being covered with 
carpet. Wedding presents are tied or hung on a long pole, which 
is carried in front of the bridegroom and bride, who are es- 
corted to the house of the bride's father, with whom it is cus- 
tomary for the young people to live two years. The festivities 
are kept up for three days. In some cases everything is decided 
by the parents, and the bride and groom know nothing about it 



614 AT CA UGHNA WAGA, P. Q. [Aug., 

until they hear their names called in church ! When a widower 
marries a widow he leaves his own children in his own house and 
goes to live in hers. The F$te Dieu, or Corpus Christi, proces- 
sion is a grand occasion of rejoicing to the Indians; so also is 
midnight Mass at Christmas, when the village is crowded with 
people, who come in sleighs from near and far to hear the Christ- 
mas chants sung in the Iroquois tongue. 

In the old histories of Canada there is usually reference made 
to Caughnawaga, or Sault St. Louis. Lambert, in his North 
America, 1806 to 1808, says: 

" Here I observed one of their little girls, about seven years old, with 
something in her arms which she seemed to be nursing, and was going to 
look at it when she ran away and hid it under her blanket, as if ashamed ; 
upon which I ran after her, and found it was a doll placed upon a little 
cradle-board and bandaged up with little pieces of colored cotton in exact 
imitation of the manner in which the Indian women nurse their children. 
I call it the cradle-board because it serves that purpose when the child is 
restless far better than the English cradle, it being the practice to suspend 
it by a string from the branch of a tree or the top of their wigwam, and 
swing it backwards and forwards till the child falls asleep. 

"In the course of our walk through the village we met the Chevalier 
Lorimier, an old French gentleman, who resides here as an interpreter for the 
government, who allows him one hundred pounds per annum. He was an 
officer in the French army at the conquest of the country, and in the Ame- 
rican war commanded a detachment of Indians, with whom he assimilated 
himself so closely in manners that he gained their affections and married 
one of their women. At her death he married a French lady of Lachine, 
who died a few years after, when such was his partiality for the Indians 
that he married another of their women, with whom he still lives. Sault 
St. Louis was granted, May 29, 1680, to the Order of Jesuits." 

Pere Charlevoix devotes many pages to the record of this 
mission, with which he probably made acquaintance in the early 
days of his service in the Society of Jesus, for he was sent to the 
Canadian mission when only twenty-three years old. He spent 
four years in America, returning to France in 1709, where for 
some time he taught philosophy in the colleges of his order. 
Eleven years later the king sent him to make a tour of the French 
settlements of the New World, an account of which is published 
in his Journal dun Voyage a VAmerique du Nord. He says : 

" What has been the preservation, or at least the safety, of Montreal 
^ all the country round it is two villages of Iroquois Christians and the 
'fort of Chambly. The first of these villages is that of Sault St. Louis, 
situated on the continent on the south side of the river, and three leagues 
above Montreal. It is very populous and has ever been looked upon as 
cone of our strongest barriers against the idolatrous Iroquois and the Eng- 



1883.] AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P. Q. 615 

lish of New York. It has already changed its situation within the space of 
two leagues. Its second station, when I saw it in 1708, was near a rapid 
stream called Sault St. Louis, which name it still retains, though at a con- 
siderable distance from it. It appears to have been entirely fixed at last, 
for the church which they are just about to finish and the missionaries' 
house are, each in their own way, two of the finest edifices in all Canada ; 
the situation of them is charming. The river, which is broad in this place, 
is embellished with several islands, which have a very pleasant aspect. 
The island of Montreal, well stocked with inhabitants, forms the view on 
one hand, and the sight has no bounds on the other side, except Lake St. 
Louis, which begins a little above this." 

His letter to the Duchesse de Lesguieres, dated Sault St. 
Louis, May i, 1721, runs as follows : 

" MADAM : I came hither to spentf a part of the Easter holidays. This is 
a time of devotion, and in this village everything inspires one with senti- 
ments of piety. All the exercises of religion are carried on in a very edify- 
ing manner, and we still feel the impressions which the fervor of the first 
inhabitants has left behind it ; for it is certain that this for a long time was 
the only place in Canada where you could perceive the great example of 
those heroic virtues with which God has been used to enrich his churches 
when in their infancy, and the manner in which it has been erected is 
something very extraordinary. 

"The missionaries, after having for a long time watered the Iroquois 
cantons with the sweat of their brow, and some of them even with their 
blood, were at last sensible that it was impracticable to establish the Chris- 
tian religion amongst them upon a solid foundation ; but they still had 
hopes of reducing a considerable number of these Indians under the yoke 
of the faith. They perceived that God had an elect few among these bar- 
barians, as in every nation ; but they were persuaded that to make their 
calling and election sure they must separate from their brethren, and there- 
fore came to a resolve to settle all who were disposed to embrace Christian- 
ity in a colony by themselves. They made known their design to the gov- 
ernor-general and intendant, who, carrying their views still further, highly 
approved it, being sensible that this settlement would be greatly advanta- 
geous to New France, as it has indeed been, as well as another similar to 
it which has since been set on foot in the island of Montreal under the 
name of ' La Montagne,' of which the superiors of the Seminary of St. 
Sulpice have always had the direction. 

"To return to this, which has served as a model for the other. One of 
the Iroquois missionaries communicated his design to some Agniers ; they 
relished his proposal, and this settlement was formed chiefly out of that 
canton, which had at all times been the most averse to the ministers of the 
Gospel, and had even treated them most cruelly. Thus, to the great aston- 
ishment of the French and Indians, those formidable enemies to God and 
our nation were touched with that victorious grace which takes delight in 
triumphing over the hardest and most rebellious hearts, abandoning every- 
thing that was dear to them that they might have no impediment in 
serving the Lord with all liberty a sacrifice still more glorious for 



616 AT CAUGHNAWAGA, P< Q. [Aug., 

Indians than for any other nation, because there are none so much at- 
tached as they are to their families and their native country. Their num- 
bers increased greatly in a short time ; this was in a great measure owing to 
the zeal of the first converts of the flock, who in the height of war, even 
at the haza'rd of their lives, travelled over cantons to make proselytes, and 
when fallen into the hands of enemies, who were often their nearest rela- 
tives, have reckoned themselves happy when dying in the midst of tor- 
ments, having exposed themselves to them solely for the glory of God and 
the salvation of their brethren. It was commonly left to their choice to 
renounce Jesus Christ and return to their canton, or to suffer cruel death ; 
and there is not an example of one who accepted life on that condition. 
Some have even perished, worn out with miseries, in the prisons of New 
York, when they could have liberty on changing their belief or engaging 
not to live among the French, which they imagined they could not do 
without losing their faith. Those converts who displayed so much fidelity 
and greatness of soul must have been prepared for it by the purest virtue. 
We cannot call in question certain facts which have been notorious over 
the whole colony, and which render those things credible for which we 
have the evidence not merely of Indians and their pastors. M. de St. 
Valier, who is head of this church to this day, wrote as follows in 1688 : 

" ' The lives of all the Christians of this mission are very extraordinary, 
and the whole village would be taken for a monastery. As they have 
quitted the allurements of their native country entirely, to make sure of 
their salvation, they are all led to practise the most perfect resignation, and 
to preserve among them such excellent rules for their sanctification that 
nothing can add to them.' " 

Caughnawaga has long since lost its monastic aspect, but 
reminiscences of the old voyageur-historians fill our minds as we 
saunter through the irregular streets and watch the little Indian 
children at play. Here and there a cradle of the old back-board 
pattern shows a lingering fondness for the old custom. On the 
wharf a bevy of Indian women sit motionless, waiting the arrival 
of the ferry-boat that is to convey them and their beaded wares 
to market. On the water or, more truly, in it some small boys 
are constructing a miniature raft. Up and down the platform 
pace two Oblate novices telling their beads. All is picturesque, 
even the stoical disregard of time. At length, wearied with 
waiting, we take advantage of a passing steamer, the BeauJtarnois, 
and, with our hands full' of beaded treasures and of sweet-smell- 
ing roses from the Jesuits' garden, we bid farewell to our kind 
entertainers and leave the dreamy world of Caughnawaga well 
pleased with the effect of Christian civilization as exemplified in 
the once ferocious Iroquois of Sault St. Louis. 



1883.] TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. 617 



TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. 

IN early years I do not care to say how long I had the 
reputation of telling a story better than most of my acquain- 
tances. I was regarded as a born raconteur and could portray 
character and narrate incident with a force and vivacity, a pic- 
turesque and startling effect, which never failed to rivet atten- 
tion, which quickened the pulses of my hearers, stirred them 
with rage, convulsed them with laughter, or paled their faces 
with alarm certainly chased away their heedlessness and ren- 
dered them breathlessly attentive. I could at that time make 
my dramatis personce live and move before the mind's eye, bound 
with passion or languish with exhaustion, and invest the crea- 
tions of the brain with such an aspect of reality and truth as to 
render indifference on the part of my hearers wholly impossible. 
Nay, I was even assured that I should one day acquire a fortune 
as a writer of fiction. I certainly then possessed a power which 
has since vanished of seizing on attention and keeping it spell- 
bound by an indescribable earnestness and forgetfulness of self, 
an absorption of my being into my subject, which was almost 
magical in effect. It was no merit of mine. I told a story as the 
bird of the poet 

" Trilled its thick-warbled notes the summer long," 

without any art, forethought, or consciousness of how it was done. 
I regret to say that this power of word-painting, this pictorial 
faculty, has faded and died away, as I fancy, from want of prac- 
tice, grown faint and feeble from lapse of time, and I no longer 
possess the knack of embodying with the energy that was once at 
my command " the Cynthia of the minute." I believe that the 
mind which confines itself to truth and scruples to exaggerate, 
that fails to give the rein to fancy from conscientious motives, and 
thus checks the exuberance of imagination, will disqualify itself 
by degrees as an acolyte in the temple of the Muses. Thus, 
it is alleged, by Sir Egertori Brydges at least, that the poet Gray, 
by addicting himself to historic study, clipped the wings of his 
genius and chained himself to earth when he might have soared 
Into the cerulean. But to my story. 

When I was a student in Trinity College, Dublin, I resided 
in a square of lofty and well-worn houses, built of brick, which 



618 TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. [Aug., 

tower in a distant quarter of the great parallelogram, far away to 
your right as you enter the principal gateway. It was by no 
means an aristocratic quarter in its living occupants or outward 
aspect, being vulgarly known by the dishonoring sobriquet some- 
times of Botany Bay and sometimes of Connemara. It was not 
free choice, it was stern necessity, that lodged me in this square. 
For then, as now, that most incurable of human* maladies, con- 
sumption in the purse, afflicted me in utter defiance of remedial 
appliances, not intermittently as in other men, but as a chronic 
complaint entirely and hopelessly incurable. 

From Botany Bay, as it was termed, I gladly migrated to a 
house in Ely Place, near the medical schools in that district. 

This house was erected long before the Union by a noble 
lord, who, on the consummation of that disastrous measure, mi- 
grated to London, and abandoned his mansion to a caretaker, who 
took little care of it. Though mouldering with ruin, slowly 
lapsing to decay in calm, solitary, and stately desolation, the man- 
sion of his lordship was a magnificent ruin, worthy of those stir- 
ring times when the pavement of College Green was torn with 
the wheels of coroneted equipages, when Stephen's Green re- 
sounded with the exultation of festive opulence, and Patrick's 
Church was filled with the glittering pageantry of knightly 
splendor. It contained an infinite number of naked apartments, 
all wainscoted or lined with oak. There was an Italian air in its 
arrangements which spoke of proud Genoa or gorgeous Venice. 
A massive solidity sheathed with beauty characterized the ar- 
chitecture. The staircases Avere wide and ample, the steps ex- 
tremely low, and the balustrades mathematically regular. It 
was evident that the artisans who built it and the architect who 
superintended their labor (Gannon I believe his name was) were 
masters in their several departments, who prided in the perfec- 
tion of their work, labored slowly and conscientiously, and pro- 
duced a result which, in spite of desertion, decay, and ruin, in- 
spired respect by its dignified desolation, suggesting that in its 
day, when resounding with life and echoing with courtly festi- 
vity, it was fit not only for a lord it was fit for a king. On the 
whole there was something in the air of this deserted house 
which alternately saddened and excited your mind. You could 
not contemplate it long without a certain depression of spirits, 
which crept over the most thoughtless and made the boisterous 
folly of youth assume the silent gravity of age. I often fancied 
that the architect in planning it had not quite made up his mind 
whether he should construct a calm abode for domestic peace, 



1883.] TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. 619 

consecrated to connubial happiness, or a fortress which should 
bristle with deadly weapons and be garrisoned with mail-clad 
men. One thing- was certain : fragments of faded tapestry cling- 
ing here and there in tatters to the wainscot showed that gentle 
scenes of pastoral felicity had formerly adorned the rooms. 
Shepherds playing on pandean pipes, shepherdesses armed with 
pastoral crooks, and sheep grazing upon verdure that was no 
longer verdant could be deciphered, with some assistance from 
imagination, on these disjecta membra ; while (in the bed-rooms 
at least) the naked rafters rested on a gigantic beam, which in its 
turn rested on massive walls capable of resisting the artillery of 
the period. No language of which I am master is capable of 
conveying the weird feelings with which at times I contem- 
plated those wainscoted panels, especially where they were bare 
of tapestry and sheathed with dust. They seemed to my mind 
to be curtained with horror, draped with repulsiveness, and I 
should never have taken up my abode within their precincts if 
not urged by the res angustce domi the strength and power of pov- 
erty and if a fellow-student who was wholly incapable of fear, the 
incarnation of audacity, had not consented to occupy a room in 
juxtaposition with mine. We are informed by Shakspere that 
poverty introduces us to the acquaintance of strange bed-fellows, 
but he has forgotten to add that we are occasionally compelled 
by poverty to occupy strange bed-rooms. This was my case, at 
least. 

I never concealed from my friend the superstitious apprehen- 
sions which goaded my mind, and he never failed to laugh at 
them. " Granted for a moment what is by no means proved," 
said my fellow-student, who delighted in an antithesis, " that 
the place is infested by ghostly visitors at night, yet you must 
admit that it is free from the visits of a landlord by day." He 
looked at me with an air of triumph in his eye and a smile on 
his lips, as much as to say, Is not that unanswerable ? It certainly 
was. 

The first night passed without an incident. I have nothing 
to record concerning it. Its history is a dull blank, and so it 
must have been happy. My friend, at our breakfast-table, ban- 
tered me on my previous apprehensions, and I blushingly ad- 
mitted his superior sagacity and my own ineptitude. The sec- 
ond night passed in the same way. But on the third night 
my horrors began. I was suddenly awaked in the dead of night 
I could not tell how by a dream I could not tell of what.. 
The incidents were wiped, as it were, out of my memory. I 



620 TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. [Aug., 

could not recall an iota of the incidents. But I was deeply con- 
vinced, profoundly conscious, that I had been dreaming of a 
great huddle of events, a confused medley of clouded and con- 
flicting circumstances. But, like the Babylonian monarch in the 
Bible, I had no memory of my vision. One thing was certain : it 
chased away slumber completely. I remained during the rest of 
the night wide awake. I could not win Morpheus to revisit 
my weary eyelids any more than Shakspere's Henry IV., 

" So full of ghastly terror was the time." 

Now, this was the more remarkable as my soporific abilities had 
never been called in question. My enemies might say I was a 
bad man, but neither friend nor enemy could say I was a bad 
sleeper. I even fancied that I could have challenged competi- 
tion as the champion sleeper of the Irish university. In other 
respects I might be outdone, but in this I was unapproachable. 
1 sincerely sympathized with Nabuchodonosor, who " called on 
the sorcerers and the Chaldeans for to show the king his 
dreams." This was precisely what I wanted sorcerers and 
Chaldeans ; " my spirit was troubled to know my dream," but I 
had no Daniel to recall it to my recollection. 

Gradually, however, my visions began of themselves to dawn 
on my waking memory. They came wildering over my brain 
in a manner which' strangely reminded me of the dawn of day. 
The mists and clouds which mantled and mixed them up and 
kept me in oblivious ignorance cleared slowly away. I began to 
make out what they were. The period of darkness gave way to 
a period of light, and glimpses of dreamland were vividly re- 
vealed to me. Order assumed the place of chaos, and lucidity, 
of darkness. What had I seen ? What had I been dreaming 
about? In the first place, I saw the room in which I slept as 
distinctly, as vividly as if I were wide awake, though there was 
no taper, and gas was unknown in those days. There could be 
no human light in the apartment. All was buried in darkness. 
Yet the chairs, the walls, the accidental disarrangements and ar- 
rangements of the furniture, were presented to my mind's eye- 
not the eye of the body with a lucidity that was perfectly pain- 
ful. The place seemed to be bathed in light. Now, as every 
one knows, this is one of the characteristics of clairvoyance and 
gives origin to its name. It seemed as if the invisible tenants 
who had possession of this house were lighting up the theatre of 
their subsequent performances with the view of making me ex- 
perience before my time the sufferings of the damned. This, 



1883.] TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. 621 

however, is an after-thought. I had at that time, as I lay on 
my bed, an agonizing anticipation that something inconceivably 
dreadful, involving my destruction, was about to take place ; 
that a tragedy was to be performed, as soon as the theatre was 
ready, of which I should be the helpless, hopeless, voiceless vic- 
tim. This was the most dreadful feature in my agony. It was 
not any bodily suffering. It was a foreboding of coming evil 
which made me miserable and bathed my face in perspiration. 
I should have bellowed forth my agony had I had the power ; 
but I was dumb. Though my eyes seemed perfect, my tongue 
was paralyzed. The nerves of volition refused to obey my will. 
My voice clove to the roof of my mouth, and in my efforts to 
roar I seemed to be well-nigh choked. I was something like 
the sheep, conscious that the wolf is prowling round the fold, 
sniffing at every crevice and thirsting for the blood of the woolly 
inmates, and making them quake but mute with fear. 

On the sixth night I awoke, as usual, " in the dead waist and 
middle of the night," to find my room brilliantly lighted up with 
a calm, mild, pearly light making all the furniture visible. But 
what was my horror and astonishment to see a form, apparently 
human, standing in the middle of the apartment with its back to 
the bed. It seemed to be a female, judging from its dress, which 
was evidently antique. It was a long sack or dressing-gown, 
which reached the floor, which in color was light, in fashion 
shapeless -pedesvestisdefluxit ad imos. At this sight I made a des- 
perate effort to give voice to my speechless agony, and possibly 
uttered a faint cry, for the figure wheeled round and looked 
sternly and indignantly at the bed. No language can convey 
the horrors of that infernal countenance, in which every evil pas- 
sion was visibly depicted. It was the t face of an elderly lady, a 
person apparently of aristocratic dignity, gray, worn, faded, and 
wrinkled, the face of a death's-head covered with dusky parch- 
ment, but fraught with infernal malice and more than mortal 
cruelty the face of a female fiend. 

Though my limbs were heavier than lead, chained apparently 
to my couch, I contrived by a desperate effort to sit up ; at 
which the old lady, agile as a monkey, bounded into the bed and 
seated herself near the foot, grinning in my face and mocking me 
with a hideous leer that was indescribably diabolical an expres- 
sion that excited my horror to an inexpressible degree and seem- 
ed worthy of the bottomless pit. In doing this she occasionally 
exhibited the interior of her toothless mouth, which gave out 
a pestiferous"exhalation that was utterly insupportable. Mean- 



622 TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. [Aug., 

time she sat precisely as I did, in fiendish mockery of my speech- 
less misery. She made no attempt to injure me ; content, ap- 
parently, to exhibit the infernal horrors of her diabolical counte- 
nance, which assuredly was more than enough. She seemed to 
imitate my position while grinning in my face with an expression 
of unutterable hate. Human nature could not long endure this, 
and I became insensible. The voice of chanticleer, echoing in 
an adjacent dairy-yard, put my visitor very possibly to flight, 
and I arose the following morning nervous and harassed and 
scarcely able to crawl. 

The next morning I felt an inexpressible reluctance to open 
my mind to my friend and tell him what I had experienced. I 
feared his cruel jibes, his mocking sarcasms, dreaded the lash of 
a tongue which cut like the skelp of a whip. But he could see 
only too distinctly that my sufferings had been terrible. The 
story which I shrank from communicating was painted graphi- 
cally in my countenance as if delineated by the pencil of an 
artist. My haggard visage betrayed in every line the agonizing 
ordeal I had passed through, and spoke clearly, though my 
tongue was silent. He could discern distinctly in my wan fea- 
tures that my jaded spirits had not been refreshed by " nature's 
sweet restorer, balmy sleep." He was too keen an observer to 
be deceived by my affected gayety and swaggering nonchalance, 
and after many inquiries I finally unbosomed myself and con- 
fessed, in a general way, that I had not slept wellj but was dis- 
tressed by harassing dreams. Being a medical student, he was 
unconsciously a thorough materialist. He made no account of 
the spirit-world. It went for nothing in his philosophy. All 
spiritual phenomena were attributable, in his esteem, to the state 
of the stomach, which affected the nerves of vision, and in this 
way gave rise to those optical illusions which I regarded as 
realities and ascribed to an awful external agency, but which he 
laughed at. 

I was utterly opposed to this view. " It is very true," I said, 
" that if a bell rings the cause is to be found in the wires or 
cords. The movement of the wires or cords unquestionably 
occasions the tintinnabulation. But what occasions the move- 
ment of the wires or cords ? The ringing of the bell is not to 
be attributed exclusively to the wires, but to the hand that pulls 
them." This seemed to make him mute for a moment, but only 
for a moment. He soon launched out into the vagaries of hypo- 
chondriathe strange hallucinations of men, otherwise sane, 
who were persuaded that they were teapots or glass windows : 



1883.] TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. 623 

the Frenchman, for instance, who in the first Revolution had 
been guillotined ; and when the Neuf Thermidor restored affairs 
to something like their former footing, and there was, as he 
believed, a general restoration of heads, he had got a wrong one 
the head of another man which sat uneasily on his shoulders, 
which made him miserable and should be removed at any 
expense. 

" Are we to suppose that the hallucinations of a drunkard," 
he asked triumphantly, " are to be ascribed to an external agency ? 
No ; they are to be ascribed to drink to the disorder of the 
stomach occasioned by its distention with alcoholic substances. 
In the same way the visions of an opium-eater are to be traced 
to that narcotic drug, not to any external phantasm." " You 
have only to push that doctrine a little farther," I replied, " to 
re-establish the errors of Berkeley to persuade us that the ex- 
ternal world has no real existence ; that nothing but sensation 
can be known to man, because nothing else is necessary, and the 
Almighty is too wise to create what is unnecessary." 

Though these arguments had evidently some slight effect on 
my friend, I must honestly confess that, in its turn, his reasoning 
was. not without a certain influence on me. I began to waver in 
my belief and to look upon the troubles of the night as a mere 
fantasy of the mind 

"A false creation 
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." 

He ended by prescribing a tonic, which I took, and which I 
honestly confess had a most salutary effect ; for the following 
night I slept long and tranquilly, wholly undisturbed by the 
ghastly phantoms which previously had made " night hideous." 
But though my friend and comrade was masked and buskined 
as a philosopher, and played the part of Stoic with consummate 
ability suppressed every indication of internal agony it turned 
out that his mind was as miserable as my own, harassed by 
equally unaccountable visions, and he bore a passion-torn heart 
under the deceptive appearance of external calm. Of this I had 
a most convincing proof a few nights subsequently, when, to my 
unutterable astonishment, he broke into my room in a manner 
wholly unexampled. He hurled the door wide open, drove it 
flying to the wall by dashing his back against it, as if pushed by 
some irresistible force. With his hair on end, his face bathed 
in perspiration, his eyes starting from their sockets, and his 
mouth covered with foam, he came staggering into my apart- 



624 TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. [Aug., 

ment backward while hoarsely vociferating some incoherency 
which I cannot recollect. In fact, my eyes were so occupied by 
his appearance that I had no ears for his words. After a few 
seconds, however, 1 comprehended his meaning. He was ac- 
counting for his perturbation by protesting in the most vehe- 
ment manner that there was no occasion for any explanation. 

" What in the name of heaven has happened you, man?" I 
exclaimed in a tone of distress and alarm. " You must have seen 
something terrible ? " And I gazed at him inquiringly. " Oh ! 
it's nothing, it's nothing," he replied ; " it's not worth talking 
about. It was only a dream only a dream ; I saw nothing ex- 
cept in a dream," he repeated as he grasped me convulsively 
while trembling in every limb. He was completely unmanned. 
" Haven't you some stimulant in the room," he asked. " If I had 
a little alcohol it would revive me, I fancy. Not that I require it 
it is scarcely necessary. It was only a dream ! It was per- 
fectly insignificant. Now don't let it disturb you. But I really 
think if I had a little whiskey it would keep me from fainting." 
While uttering these words the beating of his heart, his palpi- 
tation, was perfectly audible. 

" Sit down, my dear fellow," I replied, " and I'll get ydu a 
little spirits in a moment. I am sure it was only a dream, as you 
say. Now sit down here and wrap this blanket about you, and 
I'll fetch the decanter. But what has become of your candle ? 
Have you left it in your room ? Shall I go for it ? " 

" Oh ! no, no, no ; don't leave me for your life," he exclaimed. 
" Don't leave me on any account." And he grasped me convul- 
sively in evident fear and trembling. " I don't like to be alone. 
But have you got the alcohol?" Having swallowed a mouthful 
of whiskey, he continued : " It was nothing at all. I dreamt that 
a man was in my room and I jumped out of bed ; but it proved a 
mere fantasy nothing at all. Did you hear my cry ? Oh ! it's 
not worth mentioning. I never give heed to old wives' tales ; 
causas rerum cognosco" 

; ' This is a hateful old house ! " I exclaimed. " I think we 
ought to quit it. What do you say ? " 

" Oh ! yes, yes, yes," he exclaimed with the utmost eagerness ; 
' let us leave it at once. Hire a pair of rooms somewhere any- 
where. For my part I'll go and visit my sister in the County 
Carlow ; I'll be off to-morrow, and you can get the rooms while 
I'm away." 

After some further conversation I threw myself on the bed, 
while he (assisted by the whiskey) fell asleep in the arm-chair. 



1883.] TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. 625 

Buried in profound repose, I awoke the following morning to 
find my friend gone not merely out of the house, but, as I 
found on inquiry, out of the city. He had gone to Carlow for a 
few days. Having breakfasted in solitude, I sallied out in quest 
of rooms, but, owing to a series of disappointments and unforeseen 
contretemps, a whole week elapsed before I could accomplish my 
purpose and get apartments which suited at once the exility of 
my finances and the boundlessness of my requirements. 

Meantime I was obliged to undergo the somewhat dreadful 
ordeal of passing my nights in the haunted house. During the 
first night, however, when my apprehensions were greatest, the 
disturbances were insignificant. I slept tranquilly, and arose the 
following morning refreshed and jocund, and made the roof ring 
with snatches of old songs which blended lyrical excellence with 
philosophic truth such as, 

" When we've money we are merry, 
When we've none we're very sad," etc. 

During the third night, however, when my spirits were entirely 
restored and I was myself again, I heard, or fancied I heard, 
while seated in my room, a footstep in the dead of night de- 
scending the stairs. I had never before heard such a footfall. It 
was slow, heavy, flabby coming, coming, with strange regu- 
larity and the measured deliberation of age, as slow as if it 
would never arrive. Judging from the dull, moist sound, the 
thud with which it struck the boards, my fellow-lodger was 
barefooted unprovided with shoes. From the weight with 
which it pounded the stairs you might fancy it was a bear 
learning with difficulty and great pains to come down in human 
fashion. It was evidently desirous of making the most of the 
journey in no haste whatever to reach the bottom. I listened 
with a pale face and an intense straining of the auricular nerve, a 
breathless attention, my eyes starting from their sockets, while 
the stranger was coming with appalling tardiness nearer and 
nearer to my door. Seizing the poker, I suddenly started from 
my chair for I could stand it no longer and, throwing open the 
door, I shouted, "Who goes there?" There was no reply, but 
judge of my affright and consternation when I saw, or fancied I 
saw, standing with its back to the wall, directly opposite to my 
apartment, the outline of a human figure which gradually became 
more and more distinct. The body seemed draped in a lawyer's 
gown, while the head was covered with a judge's coif. There 
was a haughty arrogance in the air of the head, while the face 

VOL. XXXVII. 40 



626 TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. [Aug., 

expressed a lust of dominion, a passion for supremacy, that 
would say, with Milton's Satan, 

" Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." 

It was the face of a born tyrant, the glance disdainful and the 
expression despotical, 

"Pride in his port, defiance in his eye." * 

One could read in his pale cheek, his cruel gaze and fiendish 
physiognomy, that the occupation of his mind was the " study of 
revenge, immortal hate." He seemed to combine with the form 
of a man the sanguinary disposition of a tiger. It was, or seemed 
to be, a hellish countenance. The words of the poet were appa- 
rently applicable to my visitor : 

" For where his frown of hatred darkly fell 
Hope withering fled and Mercy sighed farewell." 

The gaze of that diabolical visage was fixed on me as if he 
would fain peruse my inmost soul, and -mine returned his glance 
with the inexplicable fascination of a nightmare. As well as I 
could discern, the main body of the figure presented an amor- 
phous haziness of outline, as if its principal constituent were 
vapor. It seemed a cloudy mass which in its interior was gently 
working itself up into a variety of shapes, undergoing a slow 
and secret mutation or metamorphosis which, I apprehended, was 
preparatory to some deadly and destructive attack on me. Yet 
I could discern no arms and no limbs a circumstance in which I 
felt a slight reassurance. The solidity if solidity it could be 
called was confined to the face, as if the materialization of the 
rest were of no importance, and nothing was necessary but the 
dreadful and diabolical physiognomy, dimmed as it was with 
every evil passion " pale ire, envy, and despair." 

In after-times I could never be persuaded as my sceptical 
friends were good enough to tell me that I was the victim of 
my imagination, the dupe of fancy, and that my mysterious visi- 
tor was a mere hallucination which my brain ga've birth to as the 
brain of Jupiter to Minerva. If this were the case, as I often 
argued, why was this cerebral fecundity confined to a single 
parturition? Why should not the pia mater be prolific a second 
time ? Why was my brain condemned to perpetual barrenness 
in all anterior time ? I could never elicit a satisfactory answer to 
these interrogatories, and am still persuaded that I was not de- 
ceived. But whether it were fancy or reality, hallucination or 
experience, the spectre, to my unspeakable horror, seemed to 
advance upon me with an expression of face that augured no 



1883.] TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE, 627 

friendly intentions. Uttering a horrible howl I dashed the poker 
at his form and rushed back into my room in a state of the most 
terrible fright, while closing the door with a bang that re- 
sounded and reverberated through the whole house like thunder. 
No language can express my consternation, as, listening with pale 
face, strained attention, and beads of sweat upon my brow, I 
heard him resume his slow, heavy, deliberate descent as if nothing 
had happened. 

The following night was perfectly tranquil, but on the second 
next night, as I was sitting in my room preparing to go to bed, my 
ear once more caught that hideous and horrible noise which on 
previous occasions froze my blood. At the same witching hour 
I heard once more the same reiterated flop, the same weighty, 
deliberate thud, the same naked, flabby foot descending the same 
stairs. It slowly reached the lobby, where it apparently rested ; 
then, passing noiselessly across the floor, resumed its descent at 
the head of the next flight. 

Catching up my candle and striding across the floor, I reached 
the door in a second, which I dashed wide open and shouted as 
before, " Who goes there?" All was silent save the echo. The 
lobby was empty ; but on glancing down the stairs I saw an 
object which may excite laughter in my readers, but filled me 
with unspeakable horror. It was not a man, but apparently a 
portion of a man a something, as large as the human foot, 
which was descending the stairs in the same unaccountable way, 
with the same detestable noise. What could it be ? You may 
smile, if you please, when I state it was, or seemed to be, a large, 
gray " Norway rat," which returned my gaze looked up at me 
with a profoundly human expression of hate that left no doubt 
t on my mind, convinced me profoundly, that under the form of a 
rat this was the very being I had seen on a previous night in the 
cloudy semblance of a man ! 

I was informed by the old chore-woman who made our beds- 
and prepared our breakfast that a shopkeeper in a neighboring 
street was intimately acquainted with the whole history of this 
house and would willingly satisfy my inquiries on the subject. 
To this " recording angel " I repaired. In a corporeal sense she 
proved to be a really great woman. Her form had been invested 
by the hand of nature with all the graces of a beer-barrel. She 
was eminently plethoric a kind of human porpoise, as round 
and complete in her external contour as a hogshead of lard. 
Her motion was a graceful waddle, like that of a corpulent 
drake. According to Plato, a circle is the most beautiful of 
all geometrical figures ; therefore she was geometrically beautiful, 



628 TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. [Aug., 

for she was perfectly circular. Strange to say, while her disposi- 
tion was penurious her waist was enormous. In fact, she was an 
elephantine kind of female, and, like Falstaff, " larded the lean 
earth as she walked along." In short, to use the emphatic lan- 
guage of her admirers, she was " a splendid fat woman." 

Regarded in her chronological capacity, she proved an incor- 
rigible egotist, like 

"Argus with his hundred I's." 

She had a partiality for monologue, wMch she vastly preferred to 
dialogue, and treated the slightest interruption as a violation of 
her prerogatives. After a few words explanatory of my object 
she exclaimed, with a triumphant laugh which revealed a hideous 
huddle of black and broken teeth : 

" Oh ! begor, you seen her ladyship ! Who is she, is it ? Oh ! 
the greatest old harridan that ever stepped. Sure that's the 
daughter of ould Whalley, of the County Wicklow, the King of 
the Orangemen ; and, by the same token, it's ' burn-chapel Whal- 
ley ' they christened on him, and it's well he desarved the name. 
Many's the chapel he burnt in his day, and many's the priest he 
kilt ; and many's the time the daughter jumped for joy to see the 
chapel afire, and she as bitter a pill as ould Whalley himself! 
It's well for you she didn't kill you. Many's the croppy * she 
helped to hang in her time. She tuk the mate from the fire one 
fine day when the father wanted a rope, and it's what she gave 
the father, the cord that hung the mate to hang the croppy. 
Why does she haunt the house, is it? She haunts that house 
because hell was too good for her. Bad as the divil is, she was 
worse, and he hunted her out of hell, they say, for fear she'd 
corrupt his morals. Oh ! you needn't laugh ; it's the thruth I'm 
spakin'. I'm sure you hard tell of Buck Whalley, any way ? 
Well, she was his sister the man that went to Jerusalem and 
played ball agin the wall there. He was the divil's bucko, the 
same Whalley, but he wasn't as bad as his sister, though they 
were all bad. If they were all gathered together and put in wan 
bag,^and the divil was to shake it, the first he'd let out 'ud be a 
villain, no matter which it was. Was she married ? Faix, then, 
she was. She was married to the worst man in all Ireland; 
Lord Chancellor Clare, the man that carried away the parliament 
and put it in Lunnon. Oh ! that was the villain entirely ; but 
bad as he was, his wife was worse. ' I'll make the Irish people,' 
sez he, 'as tame as house-cats,' sez he ; and now he's a rat him- 
self, and the divil's cure to him, and that's a warm plaister. Oh ! 

* An insurrectionist. 



1883.] TALE OF A HAUNTED HOUSE. 629 

it's the just judgment on him, for takin' away the Union ! Sure 
it was he hung the two Sheareses the finest young men in all 
Ireland. The villain fell in love with Miss Swete, they say, and 
when she wouldn't have him, but tuk Henry Sheares, he swore 
by all the books that .ever was shut or open he'd be the death of 
Henry Sheares ; and so he was, and his brother too. He hung 
them both, the murdherin' villain ! Oh ! there's no use a-talkin'; 
if all the innocent blood he spilt was gother in wan big hole, 
begor he might swim in it. I couldn't tell you half his villany if 
I talked till my tongue fell out." 

So she rattled on, recounting the horrible cruelties perpe- 
trated on the Irish Catholics during the year '98, all of which she 
attributed right or wrong to Chancellor Fitzgibbon, who, she 
was persuaded, provoked the rebellion first, in order to massacre 
the Irish afterwards. He caused the Orangemen, of whom he 
was chief, to burn the chapels, kill the priests, and torture the peo- 
ple to such a degree that they burst into rebellion, when he " fed 
fat the ancient grudge " he bore the Irish by butchering them 
without mercy and drowning them in blood, distracting and 
desolating the whole country, and plunging it into chaos in order 
to carry the legislative Union. 

She concluded by describing his funeral, which seemed to 
afford her unmixed satisfaction. When the coffin reached St. 
Peter's Church the people who crowded the cemetery seemed to 
be seized with sudden frenzy, lost all control over themselves, 
and expressed their undying wrath and abhorrence of Lord Clare 
by yells, shouts, execrations, and roars of exasperation. It was a 
frightful scene. They flung dead cats upon the richly-covered 
coffin in commemoration of his loudly-expressed intention to 
" make the people of Ireland as tame as domestic cats." 

The minds of the humbler Irish are cast in an antique mould. 
Like the Gauls as described by Caesar, like the Greeks as sung 
by Homer, like the Egyptians as depicted by Herodotus, like the 
Etrurians as delineated in their mural paintings, the Irish set 
an immense value on solemn and ceremonious funerals. They 
seem to fancy with the Greeks that the departed spirits must be 
miserable unless their bodies, attended by "love, affection, troops 
of friends," are publicly interred in a magnificent manner. On 
the other hand, the greatest possible calamity that can befall a 
man is to be shabbily or hurriedly buried, unattended by solemn 
ceremonies and processional pomp. Hence the imposing splen- 
dors with which they bury such men as O'Connell, and hence, 
too, the difficulty with which they were restrained from heaping 
stones and mud upon the coffin of Lord Clare. 



630 JACOPO DE" BENEDETTI DA TODL [Aug., 



JACOPO DE' BENEDETTI DA TODL 

SIR WALTER SCOTT once said that he would give all he ever 
wrote to have composed the Stabat Mater a no mean tribute of 1 
praise from the nineteenth century to the thirteenth, from the so- 
called age of enlightenment to the Catholic ages of faith. But in 
spite of the Stabat Mater and its wide fame, the name of Jacopo 
de' Benedetti is known to few, his history perhaps understood by 
fewer. It is not only the lapse of six hundred years which sepa- 
rates him from us, he is not only the most popular Franciscan 
bard of the middle ages, but he has been called the great con- 
vert of the thirteenth century ; and his conversion almost scanda- 
lizes us, while later on his fervor seems to have swept him into 
imprudence scarcely free from heresy. We see him in the 
world, in the cloister, in prison as the enemy of a great pope, and 
then, by what looks like an act of flagrant inconsistency, he is 
raised, probably within a century of his death, to the dignity of 
beatification. His strange career may be likened to a mountain 
torrent which, rushing wildly from its native rocks, flings itself in 
sparkling impetuosity over crag and precipice, but after a time 
is seen flowing through pleasant meadows, reflecting the blue 
heaven in its depths, and again, swollen into a broad, calm river, 
it loses itself at last in the great ocean of God. 

Jacopo was born at Todi, a town at the summit of a hill on 
the borders of Umbria, overlooking a fertile plain and the near 
conjunction of the river Naja with the Tiber. It was a place 
of some importance in the middle ages, strongly fortified, with 
three walls, and boasting a cathedral and a market-place. At the 
time when the outer wall was built the commune counted 
under its banner an army of thirty thousand foot-soldiers and ten 
thousand cavalry, and possessed fourteen strongholds in the 
neighboring country, all of which prosperity is as little remem- 
bered by the present inhabitants of Todi, numbering about four 
thousand souls, as is the history of all the celebrities who have 
gone out of her. They have for the most part little knowledge 
at all, save of poverty, or they might justly be proud of the fact 
that their city has given birth to forty-three saints, to seventy- 
four bishops, to thirteen cardinals, to eleven senators of Rome, 
to a patriarch of Antioch and an archbishop of Zara. But the 



1883.] JACOPO D BENEDETTI DA Tom. 631 

first public scene in Jacopo's life opens at Bologna. A gay pro- 
cession is passing through this venerable old city ancient al- 
ready in the thirteenth century. Four heralds of the university 
lead the way, and as the centre of the animated throng may be 
seen the figure of a young man on horseback, proud and erect. 
A scarlet mantle falls from his shoulders in graceful folds, a 
smile of satisfaction lights up his handsome features, and his 
whole bearing is expressive of native dignity and of laurels 
newly won. He is at the end of his university career, and he has 
gone through it with brilliancy, if not, alas! altogether blame- 
lessly. He has studied rhetoric and jurisprudence with such 
success that the schools have this day conferred upon him the 
title of doctor of laws a degree so well esteemed by princes at 
that time that it was almost always the stepping-stone to the 
highest honors in the state. 

No wonder, then, if Jacopo's heart swelled with pride, and if 
the future he painted for himself was all too golden in the sunny 
light of gratified ambition. 

A little later, and another gay procession is passing through 
the streets of his native city : Jacopo is bringing home his young 
bride, the loveliest, noblest, and most virtuous of her daughters. 

Success attends him everywhere ; his life seems to be 
crowned at the very outset; all his youthful dreams are realized, 
even to the popularity which he enjoys among his fellow-citizens. 
Bat it is a noble heart indeed that can bear unspoilt an over- 
measure of earthly happiness, and Jacopo's had yet to be tried in 
the furnace of suffering. Step by step he must descend from the 
proud height he had reached, till by a great repentance he 
should attain to a great sanctity. 

His all-absorbing care at this point of his history seems to 
have been how to repair the damage done to his fortune by the 
somewhat riotous life he had led at Bologna. If his vanity and 
ambition were gratified when he found himself surrounded, the 
moment he appeared on the market-place, by clients eager to 
gain the clever young lawyer for their cause, his cupidity was 
none the less fostered by his invariable success. It led to his 
becoming gradually indifferent to the highest dictates of honor 
and rectitude ; to this succeeded the stifling of conscience alto- 
gether, and at last he gave himself up without scruple to the 
sole pursuit of gain. He possessed talent enough to invent an 
attractive side to whatever cause he pleaded, and so by degrees 
he became involved in all the tortuous paths and labyrinths of 
the sophistry to which he had committed himself. But one 



632 JACOPO DE" BENEDETTI DA TODI. [Aug., 

single grain of salt still preserved the whole mass from corrup- 
tion. This was his love and veneration for his wife. What her 
gentle influence could not effect was to be brought about by her 
prayers ; but in a way little suspected by either. It was in the 
year 1268 ; Jacopo's fame was at its height, and the hour of retri- 
bution at hand. 

All the inhabitants of Todi were assembled in a large open 
space to witness the public games, and a tribune had been 
erected, on which the noblest maids and matrons of the city 
were seated. The loveliest among them all was Jacopo's young 
wife, Lucia, and by universal consent the place of honor was 
assigned to her. Little they suspected the sorrow of her young 
life, as she sat there in her magnificent attire, the recognized 
queen of the brilliant assembly ; little they knew how her eyes 
could rain streams of tears as she knelt, often for hours together, 
in some lonely corner of her palace, pleading for her husband's 
soul. The games began, and after each trial of strength or skill 
the conqueror raised his eyes to the tribune to receive a token 
of approval as his reward a smile, a flower, and sometimes a 
crown of laurel. Then the applause of the multitude burst forth. 
The e3^es of all present were fixed on a race which was just being 
run ; the goal was almost reached, and every breath was held 
with expectation ; already Lucia's hand had seized the crown 
Avhich she was to place on the conqueror's head, when suddenly 
from among the silent crowd there arose a shriek the tribune 
began to totter. It swayed to and fro for an instant ; another 
moment, a crash of falling timber, and all the loveliness of Todi 
was lying amid a heap of ruins. Jacopo had witnessed the catas- 
trophe from a short distance and was on the spot immediately, 
seeking with wild cries his beloved Lucia. But the uproar and 
confusion were so great that it was some time before one single 
victim could be extricated from under the heavy mass of beams 
and planks. Then one maimed and wounded body, one corpse 
after another, was borne away, and the air was rent with cries -of 
anguish and despair. But still Lucia was not found. At length 
Jacopo discovered her by the shining jewels she wore, and, rush- 
ing forward, succeeded in rescuing her, but apparently dead, 
from among the ruins. Carrying her away from the noise and 
tumult, he laid her on the grass, and, bending over her, called her 
again and again by the most tender names. After a little while 
the white lids unclosed, and she seemed to struggle for breath, 
when, in spite of her feeble resistance, he tore open her dress in 
order to procure her a little relief, but with a cry of horror he 



1883.] JACOPO DE' BENEDETTI DA TODI. 633 

sank down on his knees by her side. Under her rich dress of 
brocade of gold, under her sparkling jewels, he had discovered a 
rough hair-shirt. Her failing eyes met his inquiring, horrified 
gaze, and her lips moved in a supreme effort to speak. The 
words "penitenza per te ! " were just audible, then with the 
sigh which accompanied them her soul passed away. 

Italy is the land of contrasts. As night sometimes follows day 
without any interval of twilight, so love and hatred, indifference 
and zeal, a certain childlike simplicity and passionate fervor of de- 
votion, are often to be found in the self-same natures, and appar- 
ently without any connecting link. This characteristic was even 
more striking in the ages when men's minds were fashioned more 
simply, when lights and shadows were wont to be sharp and 
well defined, and the more subtle blendings of piety and worldli- 
ness were yet unlearnt. That men must live wholly for God or 
wholly to themselves is no less certain in the nineteenth century 
than it was in the middle ages ; but then by the force of contrast 
the boundary line was more patent to all beholders, and perhaps 
more valiantly defended, than in our days of compromise and 
half-heartedness. The darkness almost disappears and becomes 
light as we look back on the vast numbers of stars of the first 
magnitude which illumined the Italian sky from the eleventh to 
the middle of the thirteenth century. 

For some days after the death of his wife Jacopo remained in 
dumb, hopeless misery, shut up within himself, a prey to the ex- 
tremest agony of remorse. The sudden revelation that for him 
she had spent herself in a life of penance, of bodily austerities 
for him, so honored, so envied by all, in his high place crushed 
him to the earth. He lay stunned and with the whole weight of 
his sins upon him. 

Then a light came from heaven, piercing the darkest recesses 
of his soul He rose up, went and sold all his possessions, and 
distributed his fortune among the poor. Hitherto the love of 
worldly gain and the pride of intellect had led him astray. 
Henceforth his life should be one not only of austerity and mor- 
tification, but of ignominy, of utter humiliation. As success had 
been his loss, so failure should now be his gain. Of light is born 
love, and the new love which burned within him taught him not 
only to be poor with Christ's poor, but inspired him with a long- 
ing to be despised, to be glutted with reproaches, to be treated 
as a fool for Christ's sake. It was a stupendous resolution, and 
so far we can admire ; but the ignominy that he chose for him- 



634 JACOPO DE* BENEDETTI DA TODI. [Aug., 

self was real and practical, and the details are perhaps as he in- 
tended them to be almost repulsive. 

Through the streets of Todi a strange figure is pursued by 
the taunts and gibes of the children. " Jacopone ! " they cry (mad 
Jacopo), and throw mud and stones at him. He is clothed in a few 
rags ; his long, straggling locks hang over and nearly cover his 
face ; his looks are wild and terrible. Sometimes he stops, and, 
raising his eyes to heaven, heaves a deep sigh and wrings his 
hands, upon which the cry is raised again : " Jacopone ! Jaco- 
pone ! " The people said he became mad on the death of his 
wife, but often in the midst of his exhibitions of folly he would 
suddenly stand upright in the market-place and begin to preach 
to the astonished crowd collected around him for idle pastime. 
On these occasions words of such burning eloquence would fall 
from his lips, he would lash them with such scathing truths, that 
his hearers soon forgot to laugh, or lost all desire to do so, and, 
slinking away out of hearing of his denunciations, they would 
say to each other with scared looks : " He is no fool." Once he 
appeared at the marriage-feast of his niece entirely covered with 
feathers and presenting the most ridiculous appearance. His 
presence disturbed and cast a shadow over the frivolous amuse- 
ments of the guests, upon which his relations remonstrated with 
him. His answer is remarkable. " My brother," he replied, 
" thinks to render our name illustrious by his magnificence. I 
do so by my folly." On another occasion he met one of his re 
lations coming from the market, where he had bought two fowls. 
The man begged him to carry them to his house and to leave 
them there. Instead of this Jacopo took them straight to the 
church of San Fortunato and laid them in the burial vault of his 
family. A few hours afterwards his relation came to him, 
complaining that he had not found the animals on his return 
home. 

" Did you not charge me," replied Jacopo, " to take them to 
your dwelling-place ? And what is your house but that in which 
you will dwell for ever?" " Et sepulcra eorum domus illorum 
in asternum " (Psalm xlviii. 12). 

Jacopo continued to lead this kind of existence for ten years, 
preaching to his fellow-citizens by his austerities, by his sermons 
of burning eloquence, and by his pretended madness ; and per- 
haps this mysterious madness, more than all else, caused men to 
marvel and look into their own lives as they compared the once 
brilliant Jacopo with the humble penitent before them. Many 
would retire pensive and disturbed at the sight of him, ponder- 



1883.] JACOPO DE* BENEDETTI DA TODI. 635 

ing at least on the mutability of earthly things in the change 
which had come over his destiny. 

Meanwhile the thought of death left him no peace. He 
sought consolation in the ceaseless study of the Holy Scriptures, 
which he read again and again from beginning to end, dwelling 
particularly on the warnings and denunciations of the prophets, 
which he frequently imitated in his discourses. Of a- less healthy 
nature were the researches which led him from the study of 
theology into the obscurities of mysticism an error which, while 
it had its root in the dangerous sophistry of his past life, was not 
Without some influence on his subsequent career. 

He had become a tertiary of St. Francis, but he longed for 
a rule more austere, for an authority more complete ; and the 
strength and independence of his character required both. In 
the year 1278 we find him knocking at the door of the Francis- 
can monastery, humbly asking for admittance. Day after day 
he was sent away, and at last it was represented to him that the 
disturbed state of his mind did not allow of his becoming a friar. 
Then for the first time Jacopo's eye lost its wild expression ; he 
looked steadily and calmly into the venerable face of the reli- 
gious, drew from the folds of his ragged garment a sheet of 
paper, and handed it to him with the words, " These are the 
thoughts of mad Jacopo," then turned away and disappeared. 

It was a poem in Latin, the first he is supposed to have writ- 
ten, of which the following is a translation : 

" Why doth the world so fierce for idle pomp contend, 
Whose utmost happiness ere night must have an end ? 
Not sooner than its pride is to destruction brought 
The earthen vessel which the potter's hand hath wrought. 

" Rather thy trust in word written in snow repose 
Than on such promise as the world unto thee shows : 
Tis but deceit whate'er it* bids thee look upon 
As virtue's best reward ; trust in it place thou none ! 

" Far better 'twere to place thy trust in brittle glass 
Than in earth's empty joys, which must so quickly pass 
Dreams only, idle dreams, are all it gives to thee, 
And all its wisdom is deceit and vanity. 

" Say, where is Solomon, who once so mighty stood? 
And where is Samson, whom no enemy subdued ? 
And where is Absalom, with his long, flowing hair? 
And where is Jonathan, worthy all love to share ? 



636 JACOPO DE* BENEDETTI DA TODI. [Aug., 

" Where now is Caesar, who o'er half the world held sway ? 
Where Xerxes, he who spent in feasting every day ? 
Where Cicero, who had o'er all the gift of speech ? 
And Aristotle where, of intellect most rich ? 

" All, all that olden fame, and all that span of time, 
And all those troops of might, and all those powers sublime, 
And all that tale of wealth, of glory, and of pride, 
In one short moment lost, are dust, and naught beside. 

" Ah ! short is every pleasure, none without alloy, 
And like a shadow passeth every earthly joy, 
And, passing, sears each blessing God to man hath given, 
And lures him to despair, his soul with anguish riven. 

" O dust and ashes thou, O banquet worms to sate, 
O vapor naught ! wherefore dost thou thyself elate ? 
Perchance thy debt of life ere morrow thou must pay ; 
Then on the poor thy goods haste to bestow to-day. 

" O mortal beauty, which itself doth so uphold, 
What is't ? A blade of grass, a tale when all is told. 
Like as a fallen leaf the wind bears off in play, 
E'en so the life of man thus quickly fades away. 

" What thou must one day lose, ne'er count on it as gain : 
Whatever earth doth give earth soon takes back again. 
Be Heaven above thy goal, there let thy heart seek rest ; 
Who doth the world despise alone is truly blest." 

Together with these verses was a poem written in the crude 
but expressive and picturesque dialect of the Umbrian pea- 
santry a song so ardent, so full of divine charity, that the Fran- 
ciscans hesitated no longer, but threw open their doors to him 
immediately. "Sorrow and solitude," says Ozanam, " had trans- 
formed the lawyer into a poet." His madness was now dis- 
covered to be like the folly of St. Francis, who used to be found 
wandering about the country in floods of tears, weeping over 
the Passion of Christ. The same ardor of devotion led Jaco- 
pone to the foot of the altars, and thence out into the fields and 
forests, into all places where the Creator has revealed himself 
most fully in his works. Praying, singing, improvising psalms 
with rapturous tears, he would cling to the trunks of trees, 
weeping with a kind of despairing fervor, and when asked the 
reason of his sorrow his answer was always: "Ah! I weep be- 
cause Love is not loved." Being pressed one day to explain by 
what signs the Christian may assure himself that he loves God, 
he answered : " If I ask a certain favor of God and receive it not, 



1883.] JACOPO DE' BENEDETTI DA TODI. 637 

I love him, notwithstanding, more ; and if God does just the con- 
trary to what I ask, I love him twice as much as before." 

A fruit of this divine charity in him was a fervent and aposto- 
lic love of souls. In an ecstasy of pity and tenderness for sinners 
he even desired, like St. Paul, to become anathema, that he might 
win all for Christ. Forgiveness of injuries was the perpetual 
theme and refrain of his sermons. 

But in abandoning himself thus to what may almost be called 
the romance of the love of God he had not neglected the most 
sobering of all sciences the perfect knowledge of himself. If 
his whole life after his conversion resembled one long act of 
charity, it was inspired by a calm but entire and utter hatred of 
self. He steadily refused the dignity of the priesthood, which he 
was again and again solicited to accept, preferring in his hu- 
mility to remain a lay brother and to perform the meanest house- 
hold duties. So great was his love of humiliation that no suf- 
fering which they brought upon him was able to check the in- 
terior joy with which he overflowed, while no transport of joy 
could efface his constant and abiding sorrow for sin. 

Of the mortification of his senses one story is told which, if it 
offend our softness and delicacy, illustrates in a striking manner 
the indomitable energy with which he encountered temptation. 
Once in the midst of a strict fast he remembered the sumptuous 
banquets to which he used to invite his friends, and, being pur- 
sued with a temptation to break his abstinence, he took a piece 
of raw meat, hung it up in his cell, and kept it there until it be- 
came putrid. Then, addressing himself, he exclaimed : " Behold 
the food thou hast desired, and enjoy it now." Meanwhile the 
smell of the decayed meat had spread through the monastery 
and betrayed the infraction of the rule. This led to the dis- 
covery of the culprit and to his punishment. In the joy of his 
heart at being revenged, as it were, on himself, he composed a 
hymn of triumph beginning thus : 

" O giubilo del core 
Che fai cantar d'amore ! " 

We have called Jacopo the enemy of a great pope, and have 
said that the road to his beatification lay through a prison. The 
strange contradictions in his nature were not to cease when he 
had turned from the Codes and Pandects of Justinian, from the 
theories of Aristotle and Plato, to the Bible. If there was in- 
ward peace there was to be much outward strife, and from the 
abyss of humility to which he had descended were not to be ex- 



638 JACOPO Dti BENEDETTI DA TODL [Aug., 

eluded high words and intemperate zeal. Boniface VIII. had 
succeeded Celestine V. on the papal throne, not without oppo- 
sition ; for the two Cardinals Colonna and their partisans in Italy, 
together with the creatures of Philippe le Bel, had united to pro- 
test against what they chose to term a usurpation of the Holy 
See. This was sufficient to excite the passions of a people highly 
impressionable, to whom the most infamous stories had already 
been administered in order to prejudice their minds against 
Boniface. The question was whether to give allegiance to a 
pontiff accused of having forced his predecessor to abdicate, of 
having even taken his life. The memory of Boniface VIII., vilely 
calumniated, has long since been cleared and his character 
shown in its true light ; but the nature of this struggle, unlike the 
schism of a later age, was that it attacked the person of the pon- 
tiff alone the papacy remained still inviolate. 

The Franciscans were meanwhile divided into two bodies : on 
the one hand they were beginning to fall away from their first 
fervor and to become lax in discipline, on the other hand to 
throw off the authority of superiors on the ground that they 
were the promoters of abuses. The first were called conventuals, 
the second spirituals on account of their greater austerity and 
fidelity to the rule of St. Francis. From the moment of his en- 
tering the order Jacopo had declared himself on the side of the 
spirituals, approved and protected by Pope Celestine. But after 
a troubled reign of five months Celestine laid down the burden 
which he had reluctantly taken upon himself, and Boniface in- 
augurated a new era. One of his first acts was to revoke the con- 
cessions of his predecessor and to suppress the privileges of the 
spirituals, putting them under obedience to the conventuals. To 
the irritation which this caused was now joined the prejudice 
which had been occasioned by the calumnies spread abroad by 
the enemies of the pope. When the two disaffected cardinals 
with their adherents cited Boniface, by a solemn act, to answer 
before an oecumenical council for what they called his usurpation, 
Jacopo was called upon to certify to the authenticity of the act. 
He thus incurred, together with the whole hostile party, the ex- 
communication which before long fell upon him. At Palestrina, 
a fortified town belonging to the Colonnas, the spirituals pos- 
sessed a monastery, and there, in the midst of the pope's enemies, 
Jacopo had decided on the question which was occupying and 
fermenting all minds. His error was great, but it was the error 
of a heart devoured by zeal for the glory of God and the conso- 
lation of the church. With a great cry he raised his voice and 



1883.] JACOPO D BENEDETTI DA TOJDI. 639 

deplored her sorrows in a poem full of the tenderest love and 
grief. At the same time, however, he poured forth a stream of 
detestable abuse against the Vicar of Christ, in words which can 
only be partly excused by his profound conviction that they were 
directed against a usurper and the deadly enemy of Christendom. 
Boniface besieged Palestrina and reduced it to obedience, and 
Jacopo was condemned to expiate his verses in a dungeon. The 
details of his five years' imprisonment are among the most won- 
derful events of his life. His sufferings are again the subject of 
his triumph, and the clanking of his chains is mingled with his 
songs of joy. One thing only weighed upon him : while his 
companions in disgrace had thrown themselves at the feet of 
Boniface and had obtained pardon, he still languished under the 
sentence of excommunication. In vain he humbled himself and 
prayed for absolution, even though his sufferings might be in- 
creased and prolonged to the end of his life ; Boniface sent him 
no answer. At length with the year 1300 was proclaimed a 
universal jubilee to inaugurate a new century. The penitent 
might now surely hope for deliverance from his ban. Thou- 
sands of pilgrims flocked to Rome, dragging with them their 
children and their sick, to obtain pardon at the tomb of the apos- 
tles, and he could hear their footsteps and their prayers as they 
passed by his prison. He addressed a second letter to the pope, 
more humble than the first, but Boniface was inflexible. Not 
till he had fallen by sacrilegious hands at Anagni, and Benedict 
XI. was elected his successor, was Jacopo restored to the church 
and to St. Francis. 

From his miserable dungeon have come down to us two gems 
of priceless value, the fruit of 'his long captivity ; these are the 
Stab at Mater dolorosa y the hymn of the cross, and the Stabat Mater 
speciosa, that of the crib. The first is too well known to need 
repetition here, but we give Dr. Mason Neale's admirable trans- 
lation of the second, which he regards as the earlier in date. In 
his preface to the translation he says of the original: " It was, 
indeed, known to exist, but was buried in such obscurity that 
Ozanam, in his work on the Franciscan poets, believes himself to 
have been the first to reprint it. In the German translation 
of that history by Julius a great improvement on the original 
further particulars are given concerning it. I cannot but 
wonder that it has never hitherto appeared in an English trans- 
lation, nor even, so far as I know, been reprinted in this coun- 
try." 



640 JACOPO DE* BENEDETTI DA TODI. [Aug., 

STABAT MATER SPECIOSA. 

" Full of beauty stood the Mother 
By the manger, blest o'er other, 
Where her little One she lays : 
For her inmost soul's elation, 
In its fervid jubilation, 
Thrills with ecstasy of praise. 

" Oh! what glad, what rapturous feeling 
Filled that blessed Mother, kneeling 

By the Sole-Begotten One ; 
How, her heart with laughter bounding, 
She beheld the work astounding, 

Saw His birth, the glorious Son ! 

" Who is he that sight who beareth 
Nor Christ's Mother's solace shareth, 

In her bosom as He lay ? 
Who is he that would not render 
Tend'rest love for love so tender, 

Lone with that dear Babe at play ? 

" For the trespass of her nation 
She with oxen saw his station 
Subjected to cold and woe : 
Saw her sweetest Offspring's wailing, 
Wise men him with worship hailing, 
In the stable mean and low. 

"Jesus lying in the manger, 

Heavenly armies sang the Stranger, 

In the great joy bearing part. 
Stood the Old Man with the Maiden, 
No words speaking, only laden 

With this wonder in their heart. 

" Mother, fount of love still flowing, 
Let me, with thy rapture glowing, 

Learn to sympathize with thee : 
Let me raise my heart's devotion 
Up to Christ with pure emotion, 

That accepted I may be. 

" Mother, let me win this blessing : 
Let his sorrow's deep impressing 
In my heart engraved remain ; 
Since thy Son, from heaven descending, 
Deigned to bear the manger's tending, 
Oh ! divide with me His pain. 



1883.] JACOPO D BENEDETTI DA TODI. 641 

" Keep my heart, its gladness bringing, 
To my Jesus ever clinging 

Long as this my life shall last ; 
Love like that thine own love give it, 
On my little Child to rivet 

Till this exile shall be past. 
Let me share thine own affliction ; 
Let me suffer no rejection 

Of my purpose fixed and fast. 

" Virgin peerless of condition, 
Be not wroth with my petition : 

Let me clasp thy little Son ; 
Let me bear that Child so glorious, 
Him whose birth, o'er Death victorious, 

Willed that Life for man was won. 

" Let me, satiate with my pleasure, 
Feel the rapture of thy Treasure 

Leaping for that joy intense ; 
That, inflamed by such communion, 
Through the marvel of that union 

I may thrill in every sense. 

"All that love this stable truly, 
And the shepherds, watching duly, 

Tarry there the live-long night, 
Pray that by thy Son's dear merit 
His elected may inherit 

Their own country's endless light." 

And now the wild mountain torrent has reached the pleasant 
meadows at last. As it nears the ocean not a ripple disturbs 
even its surface. The Franciscan monastery at Collagone is the 
valley through which it next wends its quiet way. Here Jacopo 
spent the -last uneventful years of his life, rapt in transports of 
divine love, all his fiery impetuosity turned into the gentlest 
and most loving patience. 

In the friendship which united him to Brother John of Alver- 
nia is displayed the whole wealth of tenderness of which his 
nature was capable, combined with a supernatural capacity for 
rising always from the creature to the Creator. Everything that 
was lovely and lovable served him as bright, strong rays by 
which to climb to the Origin of all light. The following present, 
which he once sent together with a poem to his friend ill of a 
fever, will serve to show the kind of intercourse which existed 
between them. It was composed of two Latin sentences : " I 

VOL. xxxvii. 41 



642 JACOPO DE' BENEDETTI DA TODI. [Aug., 

have always considered it a great thing to know how to enjoy 
God. Why ? Because in the time of consolation humility may 
be exercised with reverence. But I have considered, and I con- 
sider it the greatest gift of all to know how to remain deprived 
of God. Why ? Because in the hour of trial faith is exercised 
without sight, hope without expectation of a reward, and charity 
without any sign of divine protection." This is perhaps the 
highest state of self-abandonment to which a soul may attain. 

At last, bowed down with the weight of years and spent with 
the ardor of his devotion, Jacopo fell ill and prepared himself for 
death. But on being pressed to receive the last sacraments he 
insisted on waiting for the arrival of John of Alvernia, from 
whose hand he desired to receive the Holy Viaticum. His com- 
panions represented to him that Brother John could scarcely be 
informed of his condition in time, and renewed their entreaties. 
But without answering Jacopo raised himself on his couch and 
began to intone the hymn Anima benedetta. Scarcely had he fin- 
ished singing when the monks saw two frati coming across the 
fields towards the monastery. One of them proved to be John 
of Alvernia, whom an irresistible presentiment had drawn to- 
wards the death-bed of his friend. With great peace and joy 
Jacopo then received his Lord. After a little while he began to 
sing Jesu nostro fidanza. Then he exhorted his companions to 
live a holy life, raised his hands to heaven, heaved one sigh, and 
died. It was Christmas eve, at midnight, and in the adjoining 
church the priest was intoning the Gloria in excehis. 

The precise date of Jacopo's beatification is uncertain, but in 
1596 a bishop, Angelo Cesi, raised a monument to him in the 
church of San Fortunato at Todi, bearing this inscription : 

" The bones of Blessed Jacopo de' Benedetti da Todi, brother 
minor, who, having made himself a fool for the love of Christ, 
deceived the world by a new artifice and gained heaven." 

Rome punished by the infliction of a temporal penalty the 
error of his intemperate zeal ; but, penetrating with calm, dis- 
cerning eyes below the surface, she discovered the jewel hidden 
among the thorns, and saw that it was good. 



1883.] HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. 643 



HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM.* 

As " there is a soul of goodness in things evil," though some- 
times hard to find, the acknowledged scepticism of the age does 
not seem to us wholly depressing. That men should have their 
minds exercised about the most momentous topics which can en- 
gage human attention is assuredly far better than that stolid in- 
difference, that careless assent of mental indolence, which cares 
not a straw for the whole subject. Where there is a fixed and 
honest desire to find the truth we may believe that, though for 
a time the mind be perplexed and puzzled by the labyrinth of 
paths that present themselves, it will yet distinguish the safe 
one, and that " good shall be the final goal of ill." Let a man 
feel that 

" Fatti non foste a viver come bruti 
Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza " ; 

let him find out by sad experience his powerlessness always to 
do the right or to attain his noblest ideal unaided, and he will 
look about him for help whereon to lean, a strength superior to 
his own. 

We would fain believe that the scepticism of the day is not 
the audacious rashness of the soul anxious to emancipate itself 
from moral restraint. Undoubtedly a great deal may be traced 
to this source, which has produced sceptics in all ages. But I 
find in most of the respectable works of avowed sceptics a germ 
that yields more hope than fear. They have become mentally 
disquieted. That which they call Christianity is but a dis- 
torted fragment of it as presented by a sect. The thoughtful 
mind looks in this cracked mirror and sees everything crooked 
and deformed. He applies to this self-constituted creed the 
keen logic of argument, and finds it halt and lame. He applies 
to it the most solemn test of all his own soul-cravings. He asks 
for bread and is offered a stone. He says practically, "Your 
creed, which you say is divinely taught, fails to make me conquer 
self or to reach any higher level of knowledge. It neither sheds 
light upon earth's darksome paths nor reveals any certain hope 

* The Republic of God. An Institute of Theology. By Elisha Mulford, D.D. " Theologi- 
cal Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century." By Professor Allen, of the Cambridge Episcopal 
School, Princeton Review, November and January. 



644 HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. [Aug., 

respecting the future. Then what claim has it upon my intel- 
lectual fealty ? " 

This is the implied if not avowed confession of the majority 
of sceptics. They feel all the ground shaking like a quicksand 
beneath their feet. The flimsy structures of heresy are being 
shaken to their fall by the " mighty and strong earthquake " of 
the needs of clamoring souls. Only the house built upon the 
rock will remain impregnable. 

It is so generally conceded that the " old lines " of theology, 
the creeds of the sects, are out of date that the panacea which 
suggests itself is to pare away objectionable features and restore, 
revive, repair, reassert the majestic ancient faith. We hail the 
first symptom as extremely hopeful. We believe that the second 
will, if honestly attempted, lead any earnest mind to the full and 
perfect truth as taught by the Catholic Church. 

The learned author whose work is before us, and his no less 
able reviewer, attempts to show how this can be done. Prof. 
Allen assumes that theology (by which he means the dictum of 
some sect) has become effete. Its moribund existence, having 
been galvanized now and again by violent shocks of public criti- 
cism, has at length succumbed. It remains only to bury it de- 
cently. The age requires a more wide-awake system, more con- 
sonant with its needs. Hence he speaks of the "renaissance of 
theology." The term is expressive. It suggests that, like any of 
the arts sculpture, painting, or architecture theology has fallen 
into decrepitude, long survived its golden age, and that the in- 
herent weakness and mortality which it possessed have reasserted 
themselves, requiring the potent exertions of some master-mind 
to restore it to its pristine glory. But believing, as we do, that 
theology, properly so called, is the enunciation of the divine Mind, 
and therefore contains an inherent vitality, not only because it is 
truth, whose are the eternal years of God, but inspired truth, 
maintaining its sway by a double prestige its essential nature 
and the guarantee of its Author we protest against the very idea 
of its renaissance, as we should shrink from applying the same 
term to God himself. 

It is impossible in the limited space at our command to 
analyze anything like exhaustively the plan suggested by Dr. 
Mulford or Prof. Allen for securing the " renaissance " of theo- 
logy. We can only select such salient points as are supposed 
erroneously to clash loudest against the teachings of the church. 

At the outset be it understood that the church has always 
taught that truth is one. She does not assert that before the 



1883.] HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. 645 

advent of Christ there was no knowledge of God possessed by 
man. On the contrary, as St. Paul asserts, mankind was groping 
after God in the dark, while here and there a clearer glimpse 
of the truth flashed upon some more gifted mind. But all the 
shreds of truth in the world prior to Christianity could not make 
up that royal vesture in which the soul needs to be clad ere it 
can claim its birthright as a citizen of heaven. Christianity not 
only revealed new truths, but gave definite form and preciseness 
to old truths which, as dim guesses or undefined outlines, had 
served to show a glimmering radiance through the long night of 
ages. If mankind was ever to arrive at an adequate knowledge 
of truth, something more than an earthly teacher was needed 
some one who intimately knew the divine Mind and could 
impart that knowledge in appreciable form, so that there might 
no longer be room to doubt respecting any important doctrine. 
Mr. Matthew Arnold assumes that Christianity in its present 
form is composed of a mass of accretions which have grown 
round the original deposit, and which he calls aberglaube, or 
extra-belief.* It is the critic's business to detect the false from 
the true. But how ? By the same faculty which decides every- 
thing in Protestantism private judgment. It is assumed at the 
outset that reason is perfectly adequate to the task, and that at 
the touch of its spear the disguised fiend of error will be seen 
in its true shape. Let it not be supposed that we think meanly 
of such a thinker as Mr. Arnold or lightly value the severe or- 
deal through which a sincere truth-seeker must necessarily pass. 
Truth-seeking is sometimes a daily martyrdom. As St. Augus- 
tine says : " Let those be severe on you who know not with what 
labor truth is discovered, who know not with what difficulty the 
eye of the interior man is treated of its infirmity." 

The one grand truth which has perplexed the minds of men 
in all ages has been, and is, the relation of the human soul to 
Deity. Assuming that there is a God, what do we know about 
him ? Dr. Mulford asserts that the existence of God is incapable 
of demonstration. Mr. Arnold conceives the contrary. He sees 
"a power not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," gradually 
causing all the events of history to take this tendency. And as 
this is the case, and all human history tends " toward the achieve- 
ment of righteousness and freedom," that tendency must pro- 
ceed from a source in which righteousness and freedom exist. 
Bishop Butler, in his Analogy, shows that it is possible to de- 
monstrate the existence of God from nature. But the deductions 

* Literature and Dogma. 



646 HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. [Aug., 

thus arrived at rather prove the necessity of special revelation. 
Man found out that God was great and terrible, and the pre- 
ponderance of evil in the world inclined him to believe that this 
great and terrible being delighted in it and originated it ; there- 
fore he became a fruitful source of dread. No man had reached 
that definition of God which Christianity glories, in " God is 
love ! " This was reserved for Him whom Theodore Parker 
eloquently describes as " the possibility of the race made real." 

Dr. Mulford rightly insists that the divine being and the 
divine personality are inseparable in thought. But we take ex- 
ception when he says that " it is through the deeper knowledge 
of himself that man comes to the knowledge of God." It is 
not all the truth. If we ascertain that there are innate in us 
certain passions and instincts which nothing earthly can satisfy, 
we may reason, from this point, that they were intended to be 
satisfied, and that, as nothing presently known can satisfy them, 
they must find their complete satisfaction in God.* But there 
is another phase of self-knowledge that dark soul-wrestling 
with instincts which our better self condemns, yet which seize 
upon the yielding senses with almost irresistible might ; that 
confronting of the heart with its real self, so skilfully con- 
cealed from all else ; those times of horror and great darkness 
when a man is as 

" Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, 
Girt round with blackness as a solid wall." 

Such self-knowledge has plunged men into madness, a reck- 
less defiance like that felt by the Roman criminal chained to the 
mouldering corpse. But, unenlightened, he could not guess at 
the possibility of forgiveness and all the blessings of restoration. 
And if he could hope for this, could he intuitively discover that 
there is a power which, acting within and upon us, uses our very 
weakness as a mighty power to attain to the holiness which we 
naturally repel, and to make the pursuit of virtue a delight 
instead of irksome? Therefore we cannot admit that " the more 
strongly the human personality is developed the more clearly is 
the divine personality apprehended." As God is only truly seen 
"in the face of Jesus Christ," so man only truly knows himself 
by the aid of that " Spirit of the Lord " that " searcheth the 
inward parts." It is by means quite external to himself that the 
life of the soul is sustained : " Now the just man shall live by 

* See St. Augustine's Confessions. This is elaborately argued by Canon Liddon, Uni- 
versity Sermons, sermon on Psalna Ixiii. i. 



1883.] HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. 647 

faith." * It is this which, as St. Anselm and St. Augustine both 
show, determines the will toward righteousness. If, as Matthew 
Arnold observes, conduct is three-fourths of religion, it follows 
that as man's natural bent is not toward good but evil, he 
requires some external aid to overcome or at least neutralize it, 
and so enable the higher self to triumph over the lower. 

But though morals are inseparable from religion, it is not 
strictly true that " Christianity is not a religion but a life." By 
religion Dr. Mulford means outward service as distinct from 
inward belief. 

We think Prof. Allen is hardly fair in making the following 
statement : 

" It should be remembered that the spiritual force which proved 
stronger than the Roman Empire was not regarded by the Romans as 
worthy to be called a religion, nor did it claim to be so considered by the 
Christians. It had taken on no ritual forms, no temples, no altars, no 
priesthood, no images. The Christian apologists disclaimed all these as 
unworthy or unnecessary; in the words of Minucius Felix in the third 
century : ' He who cultivates justice makes offerings to God ; he who 
abstains from fraudulent practices propitiates God; he who snatches man 
from danger slaughters the most acceptable victim. These are our sacri- 
fices, these our rites of God's worship ; thus amongst us [Christians] he 
who is most just is most religious. ' ' 

It seems almost superfluous to remark that the first part of 
this statement has been so completely refuted by archaeology 
alone that it would be impertinent to imagine a professor of 
Cambridge Episcopal School unacquainted with the fact. The 
discoveries of the basilica of St. Clement carry us back almost to 
apostolic times, and we find there abundant proof that at that 
early date a ritual differing very little from that in present use 
was adopted. But the arcana was kept secret from the public, 
and the mystery surrounding Chrjstian worship gave rise to the 
monstrous charges of infanticide and other atrocities then cur- 
rent. What the apologists disclaimed was the sensuous rites of 
heathenism which a man could practise who had no care to live 
a moral life. With the Christian the rite was but the exponent 
of the inner belief which had fixed its roots in the soul and gave 
forth fruits of holiness in the life. 

As soon, however, as disabilities were removed the ritual 
heretofore used in secret was openly displayed. To read Prof. 
Allen one would think that, from being a creed without any 
ceremonial, Christianity under Constantine leaped at a bound to 

* Hebrews x. 38. 



648 HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. [Aug., 

" splendid ritual/' and " with its pantheon of saints and angels, 
its fasts and festivals, more than made good to the old world 
what it lost in the seeming extinction of the old cults." This is 
what Dr. Middleton tried to prove long ago, that Christianity 
was only another form of paganism. Like Prof. Allen, he re- 
garded it as " a decline from the true conception pf the work of 
Christ." In what way ? The work of Christ was to save men 
by imparting truths which, if practised, would enable man to 
attain to a participation in the life of God. As the ills which he 
has to cope with are specific and real, the means of remedy must 
be also specific and real in other words, the plan of salvation 
needs to be systematized, if it is to be practicable. Political 
axioms never attain any lasting existence until they become sys- 
tematized and practical. The church was kept from error by 
the presence of that Paraclete who was to " guide into all truth," 
declaring himself in no dubious manner, but by an infallible living 
voice. It needed nothing less than this to determine through 
the lapse of ages what was the truth, to keep burning the lamp 
of faith unobscured by the dark and gathering mists of error. 
Like " a wise nursing mother," the church studies the very best 
methods of educating her children, and she has found that the 
universal experience of mankind goes to show that without ritual 
there cannot long exist any worship at all. Prof. Allen asserts 
that the adoption of a splendid ritual was a sign of inherent 
weakness and decay of the spiritual life. At the same time he 
asserts that the church is found unsuited to the requirements of 
the age. So far from being a departure from the plan of Christ 
for the spiritual education of mankind, ritual is strictly in accord- 
ance with that plan. We trace in the Gospels a considerate 
adaptation of the style of Christ's teaching to the intellectual 
capacity of those he addressed. No style is at once so attractive 
and so likely to retain its hold upon the memory as the narrative. 
The imagination is called in to the aid of reason, and seizes upon 
the idea much more quickly because of its picturesqueness. 
Hence the best-known parts of our Lord's discourses are the 
parables. 

In this same spirit the worship of the church is presented. 
It is proved that the power to worship unaided by any external 
medium is given to few. It becomes ecstasy, and is the special 
privilege of the greatest saints. Therefore the majority of man- 
kind need a symbolism * that preaches in a pictorial and sensible 
manner the great truths of faith. Nor is it " dependent on popu- 

*See this elaborately argued in Mohler's Symbolik. 



1883.] HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. 649 

lar sentiment." No portion of the elaborate ritual of the Roman . 
Church has thus originated, yet its suitableness to the popular 
mind, from the most cultivated to the most illiterate, is shown by 
the devout attachment of the millions who find therein those 
aids to prayer, those suggestions of doctrine, those " gales from 
Paradise," that waft our earth-bound thoughts to a purer region, 
where all life is worship because all life is love. As language is 
the exponent of thought, ritual is the exponent of faith. It is 
necessary, as is proved in Protestant countries like Switzerland, 
where its absence has almost eliminated the faintest ideas of the 
great cardinal facts of Christianity from the popular mind. The 
Puritan mind never rose up to this conception. The disinte- 
rested generosity which ritual implies is repugnant to that spirit 
which quotes texts of Scripture to hide its parsimonious mean- 
ness.* It peeps out in our Cambridge professor, who says : 
" The highest credit that can be given to Roman Catholicism is 
that it gave birth to Protestantism and the higher spirituality 
and freedom which are the Protestant heritage." Truly, as the 
late London alderman remarked, " wonders have never done 
ceasing." We were quite ignorant that Roman Catholicism 
gave birth to Protestantism. Luther and Calvin both asserted 
that it was a revelation from some source superhuman, and was a 
complete breaking loose from all Roman tradition. They pre- 
tended to conform themselves to some primitive model, and 
wholly repudiated the idea that they owed anything to the 
church from which they apostatized.f Even the flippant Eras- 
mus never asserted this. And where does Mr. Allen find evi- 
dence of "the higher spirituality" which is "the Protestant 
heritage " ? Has Protestantism enabled men to live nobler and 
purer lives ? Has it produced that long roll of illustrious men 
and women whose lives have ennobled their race, who labored 
to mitigate human ignorance and misery by a career which 
has extorted the admiration even of foes ? As to " the free- 
dom " begotten of Protestantism, we should think license a better 

* I once saw the yearly report of a parish whose vicar was much opposed to ritual and an 
enthusiastic member of the Church Association. It contained these items: "Item, for white- 
washing parish church, 2 ; for putting new leg to communion-table of deal, at wish of the 
vicar, for cheapness, 53." The communion-table was of old oak. This economical clergyman 
might be seen on the Continent every summer, spending money as lavishly as any member of 
the " Dodd Family Abroad." 

t Archbishop Parker would fain have destroyed even the time-honored phrases of the 
church, such as Christmas, Candlemas, etc., as Bishop Hooper would have abolished the sur- 
plice as "a rag of popery." See also Michelet's Memoirs of Luther, where a coarse phrase is 
employed to show his desire that the Reformation should adapt nothing from Rome, but com- 
mence its career naked. 



650 HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. [Aug., 

term. The rebel who throws off his allegiance to his country, 
the criminal who refuses to obey righteous laws, the child who 
kicks against parental control, all plead for freedom. The free- 
dom begotten of Protestantism is analogous to all three. It is 
the usurpation of lawful authority for purposes of self-gratifica- 
tion. It sets up /against all the world, acknowledging no other 
arbiter for time or eternity. Though convinced ' times without 
number of the inability of its reason to define the simplest prob- 
lem as, for instance, what is life ? it sets itself up as solely com- 
petent to decide upon the most momentous mysteries. What is 
the consequence? Just as, in a country where lawful authority 
is abolished and the unrestrained will of each man is carried 
out, we have the most dreadful excesses, anarchy in its worst 
forms, so Protestantism is religious anarchy, bearing in itself 
the seeds of disintegration. In all communities the Ameri- 
can Union, for instance the general and national weal must be 
the first consideration. This is secured by wise laws, judi- 
ciously administered, securing to each citizen as much of free- 
dom and happiness as is consistent with the welfare of the whole. 
It is so in the church. She is, as St. Paul says, sXsvOspa* free, 
but her freedom is based upon obedience. All her children are 
free, being only restrained from what is injurious. We all know 
that wise parental restraint saves the child from many evils 
which its own recklessness would incur. From what countless 
ills does the obedience of faith save the Catholic ! To him the 
way of salvation is clear as a mathematical demonstration ; it is 
defined so plainly that " the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot 
err therein." God is not to him the " Universum " of Strauss, 
nor the " Humanity " of Comte, nor the " Immensities " of Car- 
lyle, but Father, Friend, Saviour, Guide. Christianity is to him 
a science for every-day life, for the workshop as well as the throne, 
for its vales heavy with the shadow of death as well as the glo- 
rious heights of the sunlit hills of God. 

Respecting the question of revelation Dr. Mulford departs 
from the old fossilized idea of Protestantism that there has never 
been but one revelation. He thinks revelation is a continuous 
process " not that its substance knows any increase, but in the 
progress of humanity, under the tuition of a divine Spirit, there 
lies the ampler knowledge of its contents." When the "theory 
of development" first asserted the possibility that man had not 
yet unfolded all truth revealed to him, how did the orthodox 
"squeak and gibber" and denounce with bowlings! How did 

* Galatians iv. 26. 



1883.] HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. 651 

they quote ad nauseam the ill-comprehended text, " the faith once 
for all delivered to the saints " ! And while admitting as a truism 
that " there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt 
of in your philosophy," they assume to have gauged the pro- 
foundest depth of revealed truth, and denounce any fresh light 
that may be vouchsafed as an ignis fatuus. But probably Dr. 
Mulford would say : " I do not admit inspiration or revelation in 
the sense you do. It is not the communication of light and 
knowledge directly, but indirectly. It is largely dependent on 
the mood of the person, we might also say his taste. For if all 
the revelation of God which I can obtain is to come to me 
through the agency of a subtler sense, a keen discernment of the 
esoteric meaning of nature, it is obvious that a man not gifted 
with this subtler sense and keen discernment will be excluded 
from it." Dr. Mulford quotes the beautiful lines of Wordsworth 
as illustrating his meaning : 

" I have felt 

A Presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

To distinguish this voice as uttering a message addressed to 
us is the privilege of the true Christian. To him it is no be- 
wildering jargon nor leads him to pantheism, but is like the 
prelude of an harmonious symphony that suggests ever the 
guiding hand of Him who controls the music of the spheres. 
But if followed to its sequence, as Emerson followed it, it de- 
stroys the idea of personality in God. We cordially agree with 
Carlyle that " all history becomes an inarticulate Bible, and in 
a dim, intricate manner reveals the divine appearances to this 
lower world. For God did make this world and does govern 
it. The loud-roaring loom of time weaves the vesture thou 
seest him by. There is no biography of a man, much less any 
history or biography of a nation, but wraps in it a message out 
of heaven addressed to the hearing ear and the not hearing." 
But as so many are of the latter ^class, and so many more who 
hear fail to understand, we need an authoritative voice to tell us 



652 HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. [Aug., 

what may be believed with safety, to unravel the " dim, intricate 
manner." If God is the educator of every people it must be in 
some definite and tangible way ; and the Catholic Church only 
answers to this description. 

Dr. Mulford says nowhere did Christ and his apostles present 
the outline of a new religion. If so, does not^ this imply the 
necessity of such a definition ? Nowhere can we find from the 
Scriptures themselves what books are genuine and what spu- 
rious. Probably as many have been rejected by Ezra and the 
Nicene fathers as we now possess. But the church, guided by 
the Spirit, decided what was to be received as inspired. It is 
not difficult to trace the main truths of the Christian faith, of 
which the Apostles' Creed is a summary, in separate passages of 
the New Testament ; but it needed the church to define what was 
of faith, and this was one of the special offices of the Holy Ghost. 
Prof. Allen is in error in saying that the Holy Ghost does not act 
upon the soul through the channel of the sacraments. He says, 
moreover : " His work it is, by presenting Christ to the soul, 
so to transform humanity that the promise of the Incarnation 
shall be fulfilled at last and Christ's Body and Blood become the 
body and the blood of Christendom." This is in the usual vague 
style of this school. The only promise we are aware of of this 
kind is that by participation of the Eucharist we realize " Christ 
in us, the hope of glory," * really, not figuratively ; the source of 
spiritual invigoration, whereby a mystical union takes place be- 
tween Christ and the believer's soul as intimate as between the 
assimilated food he eats and his physical body. And it is by 
this supernatural mean that the life of holiness is maintained. 
If the Holy Spirit does not manifest himself through the sacra- 
ments, making them means of grace, then they are empty and 
meaningless forms. It is through them that humanity is trans- 
formed by the mortification of the body of sin, and its spiritual 
resurrection in the likeness of Christ. 

If there is one doctrine more than another which Christianity 
has " brought to light through the Gospel " it is our personal 
immortality. To show how great is the " higher spirituality and 
freedom which are the Protestant heritage," let us ask, What do 
the most cultivated of sceptics believe about it ? "A future life 
is no longer a matter of positive knowledge, a revealed fact, but 
simply a matter of faith, of hope, of earnest desire, a sublime pos- 
sibility, round which meditation and inquiry will collect all the 

*Colossians i. 27. "For then we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us. We are one with 
Christ, and Christ with us " (Communion Office in Book of Common Prayer}. 



1883.] HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. 653 

probabilities they can,"* But will this suffice? Do not most 
men think 

" Our own brief life should teach us this, 
That life shall live for evermore, 
Else earth were darkness at the core 
And dust and ashes all that is " ? 

Upon no subject do we so much need an authoritative declara- 
tion ; and but for such a declaration, taken as it is from Catholic 
truth and filched by every sect, the soul of man would walk in 
hopeless gloom. The shadow of eternal separation would brood 
over the heart and stalk ghost-like in to sit Banquo-like at our 
feasts. The air is now 

" Full of farewells to the dying 
And mournings for the dead." 

What if they were eternal, and the shadow of death quenched 
the light of love and hope for ever ? ' 

Those who, like the newly-established theists of this city,f 

* Greg's Creed of Christendom, p. 352. 

t The following is a report of the theistic creed as given in a sermon by the Rev. M. K. 
Schermerhorn, May 20, 1883 : 

" Renan truly represents the tendency of the most refined thought, and he says that the 
world seeks the permanent, discarding the transient. Voltaire is the most popular writer among 
the disciples of Zoroaster. India is adopting theism, and Christendom, too, is rapidly embracing 
it. A universal religion, however, presupposes universal belief. Almost every man believes 
certain things. And the totality of human experience may be taken as a foundation of a 
rational creed. 

"Men believe, first, in the existence of an infinite somebody or something which feels and 
knows and loves. We cannot say that all believe in God, since the word God implies certain 
Christian ideas. The definitions of the infinite being have never been the same for two succes- 
sive ages. There have been, however, certain universal conceptions of this being. They are of 
sensitiveness, intelligence, and affection. All recognize somebody or something that feels and 
knows and heeds, if not loves. Other things predicated of him or it the person or power or 
force that created, or at least is responsible for, man are transient impressions or beliefs, and 
therefore of secondary importance. 

"Second. Man believes in offering homage or devotion to this person or force. This is 
worship, whatever the form. The how and the what of this worship is transient and of secon- 
dary importance, but worship is the act of every man who has not reverted to the brute. 

" Third. All believe that the infinite in some way reveals itself or himself. This is revela- 
tion, in whatever form it is perceived. This, again, is recognized universally. It is true that 
nearly all sects declare their own revelation the only one, and style all others fables and chimeras ; 
but these ideas, again, are transient. 

" Fourth. There is universal belief in a self-conscious individuality in man that survives his 
body. Man is not his body, but a spirit. 

" The fifth and final universal conviction is that any violation of one's internal sense of right 
and wrong must be followed sooner or later by unhappy consequences, and that conformity with 
one's internal sense of right and wrong is followed by happiness. This is the essence of the doc- 
trine of rewards and punishments. Conscience is, as to the details of codes of morality, elastic 
and changing, but the golden rule is the essence of humanity's sense of right and wrong. This 
creed is the religion of the future. It is the theology of humanity, the creed of mankind back of 
all creeds. I have given it imperfectly, but in substance it will live for ever. It is the Alpha 
and the Omega." 



654 HOPEFUL ASPECTS OF SCEPTICISM. [Aug., 

think that they are going to replace the grand cathedral of a 
world's faith, the work of ages, by the lath-and-plaster struc- 
ture erected in a few months, would do well to weigh some 
weighty words of the author of Progress and Poverty : 

" Even the philosophic free-thinker cannot look upon that vast change 
in religious ideas that is now sweeping over the civilized world without 
feeling that this tremendous fact may have most momentous relations 
which only the future can develop. For what is going on is not a change 
in the form of religion, but the negation and destruction of the ideas from 
which religion springs. Christianity is not simply clearing itself of super- 
stitions, but in the popular mind it is dying at the root, as the old pagan- 
isms were dying when Christianity entered the world. And nothing arises 
to take its place."* 

What is dying out is not Christianity but its caricatures. If 
the former could die out what, indeed, could arise to take its 
place? The present is simply a natural reaction. Men see that 
Calvinism was an unnatural doctrine, f that its teachers had no 
authority, no basis, either in reason or revelation. They throw 
off the yoke of self-constituted authority. The human reason is 
making a pronunciamiento against the despotism of religious 
tyrants. For a time it will run wild, as in all revolutions, but we 
dare to say that this very wildness is a hopeful sign. Men soon 
get tired of lawlessness ; they seek something more solid than 
vociferations and the stump. Amid the increasing consciousness 
of the chaos of modern religions they will turn to that system 
which alone possesses elements of cohesion and order ; from self- 
constituted reason, proved to be a blind leader of the blind, to 
that august authority over whose unshaken seat flutter the 
white wings of the heavenly Dove ; from doubt to certainty ; 
from the obscurity in which they grope at noonday, as in the 
night, to the full sunlight of the perfect truth. Already in many 
a land the church has struck the unshapen block of error, and 
the perfect form of. Beauty has leapt forth. Her triumphs are 
but commencing, for this immense necessity of mankind is her 
opportunity. 

*The question, "Are we yet Christians ?" is argued, and replied to in the negative, with 
very incisive logic in Strauss' Der Alte und der Neue Glaube, where he says inter alia : " If we 
are to seek no subterfuges ; if we are not to halt between two opinions ; if our yea is to be yea, 
and our nay, nay ; if we are to speak as honorable and straightforward men, then we must 
recognize the fact that we are no longer Christians." He intimates elsewhere that he forms 
his judgment upon the Protestant model. 

An article in the Fortnightly Review, March, 1873, a very striking monograph by Arnold, as- 
serts the same even more forcibly. 

t See Arnold's St. Paul and Protestantism. 



1883.] -GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. 655 



GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. 

FRANCISCO DIAS GOMES was born at Lisbon in 1745. The 
son of a petty tradesman, yet Francisco profited by the good- 
ness of his humble parents, who took great care to secure him a 
sound and moral education. The boy was originally designed 
for the law, and passed through his preliminary studies in the 
schools of the Congregation of the Oratory. The royal pro- 
fessor, Pedro Jose de Fonseca, taught him rhetoric and poetry, 
and Francisco, even at that early age, exhibited uncommon 
judgment in selecting the best masters to form his style and 
mould his mind. Hardly, however, had he begun his legal 
studies at Coimbra when his uncle changed his destination. 
Francisco was named after this uncle, whose opinions, on ac- 
count of his wealth and superior position, dominated over the 
whole family of Gomes. He was, most likely, really desirous to 
promote the welfare of his nephew, but was alarmed that Fran- 
cisco should enter upon a profession which, though honorable, 
often profited the fortune little and the moral character less. 
The quiet gains of trade, he argued, afforded an easier and 
safer occupation for Francisco. The father, Fructuoso Bias, 
was as ignorant as his brother, except in the commonplace 
wisdom of the world. He readily listened to the advice of the 
elder Francisco, and so the poor boy was ordered to quit the 
university at once. Combining their superfluous means, father 
and uncle set Francisco up in business ; and very soon the young- 
fellow found himself installed in a huckster's shop, destined to 
pass his life and exercise his talents in the lowest branches of 
barter and trade. 

Thus was the genius of Francisco Dias Gomes hampered. 
The thread of his studies was broken for ever. He did not, it is 
true, lose ground, but he found it nearly impossible to advance. 
Chained down to a totally unfitting pursuit, he could only strug- 
gle against his fetters. The tree under unwholesome shade may 
exist, but cannot flourish ; a healthy child, feeding on the scanty 
food of poverty, will grow thin and pale. So with the under- 
standing of this young man. He felt his situation, and endea- 
vored to lead two lives, the higher and the lower, at once. He 
read enormously read everything ; but poetry was his favorite. 
Pursuing his passion, he acquired taste and extensive knowledge. 



656 GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. [Aug., 

But he lost all originality in the crowd of ideas he drew from 
others : it is easier to .remember than invent. That many men 
at forty are dead poets, that men of much learning are seldom 
poets of originality, have been constant observations since the 
beginning of the world. Our readers will recall the case of rare 
Ben Jonson, whose genius was handicapped by an immense load 
of knowledge. The only poet who moves easily under such a 
burden, and readily constrains it to his ends, is Dante. Gene- 
rally it leads to mere imitation, which may be shortly described 
as the instinct of rational beings. 

In this painful situation Gomes continued through life. A 
never-ending conflict between his inclinations and his business 
prevented his rise either in talent or in fortune. In neither did 
he ever attain beyond mediocrity. But what else could be 
expected ? Writing poetry, on the one hand, from inclination, 
without leisure to improve his talents or an audience to applaud 
and stimulate his efforts, he did not have it in him to become a 
rich merchant. Compelled, on the other hand, from necessity 
to trade in petty business, it was impossible for him to become 
an original poet. But Francisco attended to his business con- 
scientiously, and left the reputation of an honest man ; and he 
polished his verses with unwearied ardor, writing and studying 
until death overtook him with the character of a correct writer 
and a judicious critic. 

Gomes was little known to contemporary men of letters. 
The obscurity of his station, and his natural modesty and re- 
serve, allowed him but few of them for his friends. He was 
proud and independent, in all difficulties preserving silence, and 
hiding his troubles and cares in his own breast. It was not 
easy for his friends to discover his distresses, and still less 
easy to persuade him to receive assistance. His death may, 
in a measure, be ascribed to this excessive and surely mistaken 
austerity. In the spring of 1795 an epidemic fever attacked his 
family. Francisco would not condescend to beg assistance, but 
acted himself as nurse and physician to his stricken wife and 
children. Infected himself, he still 'refused to accept medical 
or any other aid, and would allow none to attend him but his 
half-recovered family. In this strait the unhappy man was 
destroyed by the fever. On the 3oth of September, 1795, he died, 
manifesting all that resignation and constancy which had ac- 
companied him through a whole life of sorrow and suffering. 
The Royal Academy of Lisbon came forward on this occasion, 
and, having neglected him in life, prepared to_celebrate him in 



1883.] GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. 657 

death. It was an act of charity to Francisco's family, as well as 
an act of duty to the public. The entire proceeds of the pub- 
lication of his poems and other works went to his wife and three 
little children, the expense being borne by the Royal Academy. 

The most important work of Gomes is an analysis -of differ- 
ent Portuguese poets, showing through them the progress of 
his country's language and literature.* This comprises a rapid 
sketch of the beginnings of the literature, and a more complete 
exposition of its spirit and progress in the succeeding chapters 
on Sa de Miranda, Ferreira, Bernardes, Caminha, and Camoens. 

The first epoch of Portuguese language dates from the foun- 
dation of the monarchy to the accession of Affonso V. In this 
period of four hundred years the process of formation was going 
on. The Goths and the ancient Celtic inhabitants of the penin- 
sula, were the progenitors of the Portuguese ; but Camoens and 
P. Vieira are right when they say that the Portuguese is the 
eldest daughter of the Latin. The origin may thus be called 
Gothic- Latin, tinged with Arabic. Of the two former tongues it 
partakes in equal degrees. While it was always sweet'and sono- 
rous, it was not effeminated with vowels like the Italian ; and 
though containing sufficient consonants to give it stamina, it was 
never clotted with guttural sounds like the northern languages. 
Indeed, for a long time it bade fair to be a perfect vehicle for 
poetry ; and the developments in this direction were early. 
There are poems, written prior to the fifteenth century, buried 
in old libraries, the best known of which are those of King Diniz 
in the convent of the Order of Christ at Thomar. The most 
favorable specimens are, however, embodied in the valuable Can- 
cioneiro of Resende ; and in this accessible form the student may 
behold the primal developments of his country's poetry. The 
vast improvement of the language may be seen at a glance by 
comparing the compact and elegant verse of Camoens with these 
originals. 

Until the end of Fernando's reign the people lay in ignorance. 
They were solely employed in the cultivation of their land, pro- 
ducing just sufficient for internal consumption and to keep up 
an appearance of foreign commerce ; f for the latter was ren- 

* Analyse e combina$oes filosoficas sobre a elocucao^ e estylo de Sa de Miranda, Ferreira, 
Bernardes, Caminha, e Camoens. For Francisco Dias Gomes. 

t It is strange that some mention of the Crusades is not made by Gomes. We frequently 
read of Portuguese ships and sailors being employed in those great wars, and to them as much 
as to anything else did Portugal, like other countries, owe it that her ships began to cover the 
seas and achieve those famous conquests. Cqnsult the second and third volumes of Michaud's 
History of the Crusades. 

VOL. XXXVII. 42 



658 GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. [Aug., 

dered impossible by the Moors, whose pirates haunted all the 
neighboring seas. Living thus like exiles in the solitude of their 
fields, they had no system of police or communication. Harsh 
sounds were often introduced into their naturally sweet tongue 
by the continual contact of the inhabitants with the outside bar- 
barians. As a general rule the whole language was as yet rude 
and unshaped, full of difficult diphthongs and awkward termina- 
tions, without syntax, without order, without harmony. 

The origin of all Iberian poetry was semi-Arabic. From this 
source came rhyme, which is recognized as of oriental family ; 
the invariable choice of subject in the early poems is intensely 
oriental. Morals in the shape of maxims, and love treated with 
fantastic metaphors and subtly refined, form the staple of early 
Portuguese, as of Arabic, poetry. It is never narrative, never 
dramatic. Other influences were undoubtedly at work upon it. 
In their blunted morality and broad allusion many of these early 
poems too plainly indicate that they are to be classed in the Pro- 
vengal family. But towards the end of the first epoch a new 
and a. better influence began to move the Portuguese language 
and imagination. 

The Italians were the first who in modern times recultivated 
poetry and raised it to a higher level. They took the metres 
which the Provencals and Sicilians had invented, and perfected 
their form and finish. Not only did Dante give poetry nobler 
and broader aims, and exalt the tongue he sang in, but he also 
introduced many important changes and improvements in the 
mechanism of verse. To dwell upon only one, to him we owe 
the accents of the hendecasyllable line, the most essential metre 
in the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages. This was the 
new influence that began to work on Spanish and Portuguese 
poetry. In the latter especially and Portuguese can only be 
called a dialect of the genuine Castilian, scarcely separated from 
it more than the Catalonian tongue concurrent with the Dan- 
tesque influence, may be placed the study of the Latin language. 
From this latter many terminations were derived and conferred 
on Gothic roots ; the words thus formed, while maintaining a 
due amount of vigor, took on a smoother and more liquid sound. 
We shall presently see how too great a drawing upon this source 
contributed towards the degradation of the Portuguese language 
in the third epoch. 

The revolution under Joao I. and the conquest of Ceuta gave 
birth to great projects, and Portugal suddenly appeared a na- 
tion of heroes, unexcelled by fore or after ages. With the 



1883.] GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. 659 

power of the state grew the power and beauty of the language. 
It is from within, not from without, that the language of a nation 
must draw sustenance ; its growth, no matter what is grafted on 
it, must be organic in order to flourish. The poetry of King 
Diniz and of Pedro I. is in a jargon which, while smooth and 
liquid, is so indeterminate as to be hardly intelligible. Half a 
century afterwards the Chronicles of Fernao Lopez appeared. 
This, the most ancient and venerable historian of the country, 
wrote in a language so perspicuous and so different from his pre- 
decessors that one might take it for an entirely new, idiom. 
Still, it was the same in root-forms, and only differed in so much 
as a shaping influence was at work. The middle limit was 
reached, but not till the end of Joao II.'s reign did the confused 
and lawless forms give way to a regular syntax and harmony. 

We now arrive at the second epoch, which may be broadly 
marked as extending from the reign of Affonso V. to that of 
Sebastian. In this period arose those great Portuguese writers 
who are the most illustrious of their country, and who may be 
regarded as the true founders of Portuguese literature. 

Sa de Miranda was the first who hewed his way through the 
tangled undergrowth of the idiom. Without models, save the 
example of the Italians before him, he subdued the lawless forms 
of the language, fixed the pronunciation, and tamed it to a com- 
bination of infinite harmonies. Many, too, were the improve- 
ments he introduced into verse. The octonary was commonly 
used ; he adopted the hendecasyllable and seven-syllable, which 
with the former is the best lyric mixture because of the concor- 
dant pauses. The sonnet had been brought in by Dom Pedro de 
Alfarroubeira, a celebrated poet, the mest enlightened prince of 
his time and the greatest man of his nation. Sa de Miranda per- 
fected and raised it to the finished state in which it has since con^ 
tinned. Also, the structures of the canqao, of the octave and 
triad stanzas, were for the first time used by him in the Portu- 
guese tongue , 

One imperfection which Gomes points out in Sa de Miranda 
is perhaps in harmony with the distinguishing excellence of his- 
style. The poet frequently falls into that worse than fault the 
ending of one line with an adjective and the beginning of the 
next with its substantive ; a poor and prosaic trick, which can be 
best described by the phrase of Dogberry, " tolerable, and there- 
fore not to be endured." The characteristic excellence of 
Miranda is simplicity ; his genius is governed, correct, moderate. 
He never kindles, never dazzles, never agitates ; he enlightens, 



660 GOMES AND FOR TUGUESE POE TR y. [Aug., 

he enlivens, he pleases, he adapts himself to the dim sight of the 
ignorant reader. Conciseness and perspicuity are the aims of 
his style ; he endeavors to express his conceptions in ready, not 
studied, language. The spirit of his thoughts embodied itself 
in the first shape that presented. Golden goblet or earthen 
cruse, it mattered not tQ him : the contents were the value, not 
the vessel ; yet was the vessel always well sized and clean and 
pure. Thus, as far as outward form goes, he had the making of 
a great poet ; like Homer, like Dante, like Shakspere, eminently 
sane, seeking to move the mind rather than amuse the eye. But 
while sanity and taste were not wanting, genius was ; he lacked 
imagination, the faculty of projection, that power which so often 
redeems bad taste and positive insanity. . So he appeals to the 
judgment alone, not the soul ; and to the intellectual his poetry, 
free from the redundant ornaments which too often weigh down 
the efforts of genius, will be more pleasing than verse of genuine 
poetry. In short, he was calculated best for the task that fell to 
him not of being a great poet, but of freeing the language of his 
country from barbarisms. 

Antonio Fefreira followed in the steps of Sa de Miranda. 
He occupies in Portuguese poetry the same position towards 
Miranda as Gower to Chaucer in English ; only the Portuguese 
Gower is not inferior to the Portuguese Chaucer in genius, but 
in many, and those the best, respects superior. As useful in his 
aims and as correct in his language, he developed -the mechanism 
of poetry nearer to perfect forms. Miranda had used the elegy 
and the Horatian epistle ; Ferreira gave them a higher finish. 
The latter also introduced the epigram, the ode, the epithala- 
mium, and, more important than all, the tragedy. The Italian 
Trissino's Sofonisba was the first regular tragedy of modern 
times. Probably from it Ferreira derived his idea of Castro, the 
second tragedy written by a modern, and the first by a Portu- 
guese. It still remains by far the best in the language, despite 
its sin against unity of place.* From Trissino, also, Ferreira 
drew the verso solto, which, with the sapphic choruses, varies his 
verse and relieves the monotony of a regular progress. All 
these innovations manifest the taste of Ferreira and the coura- 
geous temper of his genius. Ferreira flavors his writings with 
the spice of the ancients. Horace was his favorite author. 
From him and the other old poets Ferreira enriched the Ian- 
guage. His imitations of the classics are numerous, and the 

*A "sin' sanctioned by Shakspere. Critics have by this time struck this offence frcm 
their decalogue. 



1883.] GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. 66 1 

correct, flowing form of conjunction he caused to displace the 
ruder and less intelligible connections. Also he began the free 
use of elegant atticisms to which Camoens gave the last finish. 

Better than all, though, is another indication of greatness on 
the part of Ferreira. He avoided baby prettinesses and point- 
less digressions, devoting himself strictly to the matter in hand. 
What was thus lost in useless and superficial adornment was 
gained in a richer and deeper expression. His study is man ; his 
ar-t is a criticism of life. The same severity of taste made him 
concise, and he always attended less to harmony than to the 
brief embodiment of his meaning. The imagery of his poetry is 
grave in tone and nearly always rude in finish. Strong rather 
than sweet, Ferreira is animated and full of that fire which 
moves the heart and elevates the spirit. 

Diogo Bernardes called Ferreira his master and imitated him 
to a certain extent. Less correct, but more harmonious and 
more fluent, he is at once very negligent in style, but easy, 
natural, and graceful. His bucolics are held to be the best 
Iberian pastorals ; and Lope de Vega has no hesitancy in own- 
ing that from Bernardes he learnt how to write eclogues. 
Later the success of Camoens led Bernardes to imitate the 
better and more developed style. He did this successfully, but 
was not content with stopping there. What is totally indefen- 
sible, he proceeded so far as not only to cut his own clothes 
after the pattern worn by the great Portuguese, but also stole 
and wore the garments of Camoens. The effect was, as is 
always the case in such matters, demoralizing and ludicrous at 
once. The clothes did not fit at all. 

The language of Bernardes is fuller than that of his prede- 
cessors. All through, from Miranda to Ferreira, from Ferreira 
to Bernardes, we observe the growth of the language ; from 
point to point it grew more copious, more powerful, more 
varied. No doubt can be entertained of Bernardes' superiority 
of diction, whatever be thought of the matter it embodied ; or, 
as Francisco Manoel puts it, Bernardes is the poet of the land of 
promise all honey and butter. What is equally notable is the 
improvement in the imagery of Bernardes. In all instances it is 
freer, bolder, more abundant, more fanciful, more original than 
that of either Sa de Miranda or of Ferreira. But, like the Eng- 
lish Shakspere, he produces the most monstrous extravagances 
by the side of the greatest beauties.* 

Pedro de Andrade Caminha did nothing but flatter his con- 

* But Shakspere did so for a purpose ; possibly the same may be said of Bernardes. 



662 GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. [Aug., 

temporaries and write worse than any of them. The faults 
and imperfections of the others are condensed and embodied in 
him. Upon him is the rust of ruder times, with a few spots of 
polish where he has rubbed against his brother poets. His four 
eclogues are at once without value in thought and poor and 
feeble in style the soul of a driveller in the body of a paralytic. 
The epistles are better, containing occasional passages of strong 
and bold morality and of manly freedom. Not quite worthless 
are his funeral elegies ; they are, at all events, inartificial. That 
to Sa de Miranda on the death of Prince JoSo is not bad; the 
one to Antonio Ferreira on his wife's death is sufferable ; while 
that on the death of Ferreira himself is the best of all. But they 
produce no effect on the reader, so clumsy is the expression, so 
cold, so utterly dead the style. Gaminha struck the lyre with 
frost-bitten fingers. His amatory elegies are dull and dry whin- 
ings, without fancy, without feeling, without strength ; shortness 
constitutes their sole merit. His best productions are his odes, 
either because they were not written in the customary triads or 
because they may have been touched up by his abler friends, Sa 
de Miranda and Antonio Ferreira. Nor are his epigrams to be 
overlooked ; they are, indeed, the most excellent of his writings. 
His wit was just equal to the cleverness of such a task a steel- 
workman only capable of putting points to needles, but withal 
well finished and exceeding sharp. Caminha was a bad scholar. 
He often contracts three or four vowels, and even as many con- 
sonants. To read such lines is to set one foot in a quagmire and 
hurt the other against a stumbling-stone. 

To the shame of the four poets we have just spoken of, while 
they commended each other and lavished praise upon every 
rhymer of rank, they never mentioned Camoens. Noble and 
opulent, themselves, they could find laudations only for the noble 
and opulent. Camoens was well born himself, but miserably 
poor. Yet was he richer in talent than all of them put together. 
Genius and poverty ! one ever the object of envy, the other the 
object of contempt, yet so often associated. The great dons of 
poetry would not degrade their high estate by condescending to 
notice genius in misery, and genius in misery did not deign to 
notice them.* 

Camoens was a consummate master of the Portuguese lan- 
guage, not only knowing and being able to bring out the 

* The reader will observe with what quick sympathy Gomes writes of Camoens' genius and 
poverty. Perhaps Gomes felt a prophetic instinct in regard to his own fate when lie contem- 
plated the tragic end of Camoens. 



1883.] GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. 663 

strength and beauty of its varied rich vocabulary, but sounding 
its gravest defects. He further smoothed Miranda's syntax, but 
gave the greatest part of his attention towards introducing some 
uniformity in spelling. To nouns plural only he gave a singu- 
lar ; changed the terminations of proper names for the sake of 
euphony ; lengthened or abbreviated words, and coined them, 
when necessary, from the Latin. " Sometimes," says Antonio 
das Nevers, " he abused this liberty and made words almost 
macaronic." One of his best exertions, though, was the rescue 
of obsolete words, which, when he found themjwofthy of it, he 
revived and polished. 

But these are merits which escape the eye of a foreigner. 
The foreigner looks at Camoens as a dim-eyed man beholds a 
cathedral. He catches the strong features, the general plan ; 
but the minuter parts, the ornaments, escape him. There is the 
arch, but can he see the capital and frieze ? The battlements are 
taken in at a glance, but the caryatides that form them, and their 
varying attitudes of beauty, are beyond his vision. Camoens had 
to dig in the quarry, hew out his stones, and put them in place. 
The result is an edifice striking as a whole, but not less so when 
we draw near and examine the details. In him Portuguese 
poetry, Portuguese style, Portuguese language reached the 
height from which they have since declined. The Lusiadas came 
from his hands glowing with life, not only the product of his 
life's labor, but also the perfect flower of his country's poetry. * 

Gomes gives some curious details about Camoens, taken from 
a little-known work of the great bard the Hospital de Letras. It 
is noticed that Camoens there avows that his Ennius was Barros, 
whose chief excellence lay in the forcible use of popular words, 
and the perusal of whose Decades first kindled his imagination, f 
It shows how his translators and critics, even the best-intentioned, 
misunderstood his aims, when we find him complaining in the 
same work of the manner with which they handled his poetry. 
One of these was the bishop, Thome de Faria, who translated 
him into such Latin that " mat's parece Romance Punico que Ro- 
mano" But if one Faria lessened him another extremely magni- 
fied him. This was Manoel Severim de Faria, who wrote his 
life. Macedo was another translator who rather travestied than 
translated him. Besides these was a Castelhao and a Fran- 

* Camoens is one of the great poets more spoken of than read, at least in English. The rea- 
son is that there is no masterly translation of his work into our tongue. Captain R. F. Burton's 
is a useful version to consult. The same author is at present engaged on a commentary upon 
the Lusiadas. 

t By studying the same author Vieira acquired his power of using language, j 



664 GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. [Aug., 

chinoti, who, as they made him lose his very name, do not de- 
serve to have their own set down. Of the commentators Manoel 
Correa was too short and Manoel de Faria too long-. " But I," 
says Faria, " from my friendship think it short " ; yet was his 
trouble not so, for he spent more than twenty years over this 
book. Then there were manuscript commentaries by Joao 
Pinto Ribeiro and by Ayres Correa, the latter corrected by 
Frey Francisco do Monti. To the abbot Joao Scares and the 
sacristan Manoel Pires Camoens was indebted for an apology 
and a defence, " for which," he gratefully remarks, " may God 
forgive them ! " 

"Are there more Camoistas ?" sneeringly asks Lipsius. 
AUTHOR. " One Rolim and one Galhegos." 
LIPSIUS. " Both learned men, as I have heard." 

BOCCALINI. " Both, like many of our time, very learned, que sempre 
sab em o que nao import a." * 

Besides, Camoens, complains that certain booksellers have had 
little enough conscience to bind him up with a Sylvia de Lizardo ! 

Gomes then proceeds to lament the decline of Portuguese 
literature. The first cause he notices is the extravagant praises 
lavished upon each other by the Portuguese writers, which at 
once disgusted the reader and ruined the flattered. Then fash- 
ion prescribed quotation in society ; the choice expressions of 
the best authors were aped affectedly in conversation ; by this 
means they became trite and vulgar, worn to pieces by men who 
could not mount Pegasus, but could make use of his trappings. 
Even in his time, he bitterly adds, it was not very difficult to 
procure the entire original editions of the best Portuguese au- 
thors scattered through the junk-shops of Europe, because the 
national reading was too little to give them an honored place at 
home. 

But deeper causes can be found in the language itself. That 
introduction of Latin terminology, which at first softened the 
Gothic forms of words, at last, when carried too far, emasculat- 
ed its strength. The Latinists, blinded to all save their imme- 
diate objects, condemned superlatives, such as bonissimo, malis- 
simo, etc., and insisted upon their Latin anomalies, optima, pes- 
simo, etc. They carried this mode of trying Portuguese by 
Latin analogy throughout the whole language. Says Antonio 
das Nevers : " This people are not content that the Portuguese, 
as daughter of the Latin, should have the flesh and bones of her 

* " Who always know what has no bearing on the subject." 



1883.] GOMES AND PORTUGUESE POETRY. 66$ 

parent, but they would give her the skin and the complexion 
and the features." 

Greater confusion was caused by drawing from another 
source more alien to the Portuguese language than Latin. In 
the days of Gomes and just before in fact, throughout the 
eighteenth century the French predominated intellectually in 
Europe, and as much so in Portugal as elsewhere. The French 
language is straightforward, a direct phraseology ; while the 
syntax of the Portuguese is inverted, not perplexed with difficul- 
ties, but infinitely varied. Hence it will be seen at a glance that 
transplantations from one tongue to the other would be simply 
ruinous. Nevertheless French was the fashion ; everybody had 
French words and phrases on his lips ; and finally the foreign 
idioms became so great in number that they brought a multitude 
of vernacular words into disuse. The puppies of the day, grimly 
added Gomes, called the legitimate words of the old authors 
the " well undefiled " of Portuguese Gothic and rusty and obso- 
lete. A French dictionary was more necessary than a Portu- 
guese to enable the youth of Portugal to understand their na- 
tive tongue. 

NOTE. Since the above was written, a scholar has pointed 
out to me that in treating of the origin of the Portuguese tongue 
it is a mistake to ignore the influence of the Gaelic language, as 
Gaelic was at one time the language of all those so-called Celtic 
tribes who inhabited the north of the Italian peninsula, all of the 
Iberian peninsula, and all of what is now France ; that, in fact, 
wherever nasal sounds are found in a dialect spoken in the south 
or west of Europe the existence of these is to be interpreted as a 
survival from the Gaelic. Anyhow, the attention which of late 
scholars are giving to the study of that purest form of Gaelic, 
the Irish, will throw light on many obscure subjects. Portugal 
(Port na ghaeidheal i.e., the haven of the Gaels) ought, as it 
did being the mountain refuge of the Gaels retain the strong- 
est traces of those people in its language. To the Gaels, too, is 
attributed the origin of rhyme, and a plausible series of argu- 
ments is used for this. 



666 A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 



A DAY IN MACAO. 

IT was to be a great day in Macao. Few great days come to 
Macao; it is a dead-and-alive sort of place, where little incident 
arises to break the monotony in the lives of its people, who, as 
the years come and go, are still at the same work, performed in 
the same way, with the same surroundings and among the same 
scenes, as it was done ages ago. But now there had come a time 
when they were to rise above this even tenor of their ways and do 
honor to a certain Avarrior-god Hong Kung. Who Hong Kung 
really was it is hard to say ; for the Chinese are reserved in im- 
parting information of their country and its great men to the 
ignoble foreigner. He lived many years ago centuries, possibly 
and seems to have been a " pirate fierce and robber bold." He 
was somewhat of a socialist : he robbed the rich, that the poor 
might live. In this he was not much unlike some civilized great 
men. Chinese morality, like india-rubber, is susceptible of con- 
siderable stretching, so at his death they laid his mortal remains 
away in immortal marble, raised a statue to his memory in the 
Temple of the Five Hundred Josses at Canton, and, as Cassius 
says of Cassar, " he has now become a god, and they that honor 
him and write his speeches in their books " march through the 
narrow, sinuous streets of Macao to the music of " the ear-pierc- 
ing fife, the spirit-stirring dru " no, not drum tom-tom, every 
fifteen years, and have a big time generally. 

One can see a Chinese procession at any time without making 
a special effort. Every marriage ceremony is celebrated by a 
parade of hired coolies, with music and banners, bearing through 
the streets the wedding gifts to the happy bride bureaus, cabi- 
nets, tables, roasted pigs (done to a turn), in fine all sorts of fur- 
niture, all sorts of marriage-table meats for popular inspection. 
But this of Macao was to be beyond the ordinary ; it was to 
be (for the Celestials) a tremendous affair, so the community of 
Hong Kong, both native and foreign, rose as one man and went 
over to the city. 

A boat of the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao Steamboat 
Company was placed at their disposal, and the captain, a gentle- 
man from Georgia, U. S., did everything in his power for their 
comfort. In a small community like Hong Kong each individ- 
ual is more or less known to the other, so that these that had 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 667 

come to the boat on this morning were a good-humored party 
of friends bent on enjoying themselves ; and where they found 
the attendance upon their wants not so prompt as usual, or if 
the boat's accommodations seemed less convenient than formerly, 
they took into consideration their number and the occasion and 
were more good-humored than ever. 

It was an American-built boat, and its appointments were 
much like those of our river steamboats, save that round the 
stanchions in the saloon were stacks of loaded muskets with 
sword-bayonets, and about the walls were grouped loaded re- 
volvers. At a padlocked grating in the deck a man stood guard 
with drawn sword and a brace of pistols in his belt. These 
boats never leave the wharf without such precautions ; for of the 
many Chinese they carry to and from Canton and Macao, some 
may be pirates come especially aboard to seize and rob them. 
It has been done, in unexpected moments, in spite of such pre- 
cautions. Between decks the Chinamen were lounging upon 
bags and boxes, or stretched at full length upon a piece of mat- 
ting on the deck. Some were gaudily dressed and cleanly, 
others were unshaved, in rags, and dirty. No man can possibly 
look dirtier than a dirty Chinaman. Some were engaged in 
cooking their breakfast of rice, salt fish, and greens ; others, with 
half-closed, dreamy eyes, were enjoying the effects of opium, 
drawing the baleful smoke through a massive pipe two feet 
long ; others, again, with a little heap of cash between them, 
were assiduously gambling ; and gathered about a fish-tank a 
small group was engaged in a noisy game of forfeits so many 
fingers of the hands held up for the opponent to call off the 
number, a miscall ending in a loud laugh and a drink all round 
of samshoo. As the Chinese are a seclusive race, the women on 
board, out of respect for this peculiarity, were in a locked and 
guarded room by themselves. There were about forty, of whom 
many were engaged in certain matters of toilet it takes quite a 
while for the Chinawoman to rear her miraculous structure of 
hair, and the boat left at early morning. They were guarded, 
not so much from fear that they might rise in a body and take 
command of the boat, but rather to keep the men from their 
society. 

, Macao is thirty-eight miles from Hong Kong. The course, 
for the first half of the way, lay among many lofty, barren, though 
picturesque islands, and often close in to the mainland ; but from 
the mouth of the Canton River there is, for fifteen miles, a 
stretch of open sea, with just enough of swell upon the water to 



668 A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

give the boat a gentle rock. As she ploughed her way through 
this open space it seemed as though she was running out to sea, 
but in a little while the dim outline of the land upon the other 
side was discernible, and shortly, high upon a bluff overhanging 
the water, the light-house lay white in the morning sun ; below, 
the town, with its cathedrals and palaces, stretched in a great 
curve against the mountain-side. The buildings of Macao are 
of medium size; those that are a little more pretentious than 
their fellows such as his excellency the governor's house 
are called palaces. In America they would be called comfor- 
table villas. The churches, with one exception, are of an or- 
dinary style of architecture. The exception, as seen from the 
sea, is high upon the hills, showing against the blue sky bold and 
bleak and bare a noble ruin. It is the oldest foreign-built 
structure in China, and its crumbling walls stand weird-like and 
blackened with age. The gable wall lifts itself up in its entirety 
and is surmounted by a great black cross. Many years a cen- 
tury and more this wall has stood, and about its cross has grown 
a romantic story. How true it is I know not, but will give it as 
it was told me. 

Years ago, when Portugal was still in her power, one of her 
ships sailing to Macao was enveloped in a great storm. . The 
vessel was knocked about and buffeted by the waves, the fearful 
winds tore the masts from her decks, and she was on the eve of 
foundering. The mariners, in their despair, made a solemn vow 
to the Almighty God that if their vessel was allowed to come 
safely into port they would give a cross to the cathedral. The 
vessel arrived, though a hopeless wreck, and the sailors fulfilled 
their vow by making the cross from her timbers. 

They built better in those days than they do now, for this 
solitary wall of massive masonry, alone on the lonely hill-tops, 
withstood the great typhoon of 1874, while the buildings below 
it, and in a manner protected from the fearful tempest, sank in 
heaps before the awful wind. To the right, and below this old 
ruin, is a many-windowed structure of red brick and white plas- 
ter, looking cold and stiff in its newness. It is a great building 
for Macao, and was occupied for a short time as a convent, but 
is now turned into a barracks and central police station. 

The boat made a straight wake across the smooth water of 
the bay, as though her passengers were to land at the steps be- 
fore the governor's house ; but soon her course was altered, and 
she rounded a point of land jutting into the sea and entered a 
broad, shallow river that flows by the back of the town. Set 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 669 

high upon the rocky hills a ruined fort opens to the river once, 
perhaps, the pride and stronghold of the city, alive with gaudily- 
apparelled soldiers, its walls echoing their martial tramp, the 
island hills hurling back from the sea, in sombre reverbera- 
tion, the cannon's hollow roar ; now gloomy, silent, falling into 
decay, with great stones of its masonry scattered here and there 
over the mountain-side. 

The rivers of China are alike in that they are crowded with 
all sorts of native craft. Among huge junks and lorchas, some 
almost buried under their cargoes of wood, among sampans and 
hakka-boats, the steamboat wended her way. Save for a few 
fishing-boats, the bay fronting the opposite side of the town is 
deserted ; but this river teems with life and was the harbor for 
the city when the city was at her glory. It is the harbor still, 
but the water is shallower than it was, and Macao has now no 
shipping. She has lost her pristine glory, and with it have gone 
her wealth and her trade. A small man-of-war rode at anchor in 
the roadstead to lend the city her protection and to show that 
Portugal still held sway over these waters and this land ; but it 
was much like that of the Greeks which Dickens describes in 
his Italian notes. Riding at anchor, also, some distance out on 
the sea, a bark waited for a cargo of tea. 

The emperor of China ceded this city to the Portuguese in 
1585 as a recognition of their services in repelling the Japanese 
pirates that infested the coast, though many Portuguese had 
taken up their residence and had entered into trade here before 
this period, and Portugal's greatest poet, Camoens, here dwelt in 
banishment from 1555 to 1560. It was at one time of considera- 
ble commercial importance, but as Portugal's greatness declined 
little by little its commerce fell away, until the last remnants 
disappeared when its coolie trade was wrested from it some 
years ago. It is picturesquely situated on the slopes of a hill, 
the ridge of the hill traversing the centre of the city like a back- 
bone. Its streets are narrow and tortuous, and their names at 
the intersections are probably the only signs in the Portuguese 
language in Macao. The houses are 'low, whitewashed, and oo 
cupied mostly by Chinese. The descendants of those old Por- 
tuguese that made this city their home are for the most part 
Eurasian and form a distinct class by themselves. 

It was ten o ! clock when we stepped upon the wharf and made 
our way as best we could amid a throng of coolies, all crying at 
once for a fare, and thrusting their worn and dilapidated chairs 
across the road, thus barring further progress, until one was 



670 A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

obliged to unceremoniously drive them out of the way with the 
free use of a cane. The day was so insufferably hot, and the 
streets, under the blinding sun, had such an intense and painful 
whiteness, that it was a pleasant relief to sit within the shade of 
a chair and be lifted up and carried along with a solemn, regular 
movement. 

Even knowing that Macao's trade has gone, one is not alto- 
gether prepared to find that of all the hongs upon the water-side 
that once echoed the hum of business, many are^ silent and de- 
serted or converted into places of traffic for the thrifty China- 
man. It is amusing to note their signs, written in pretentious 
English and placed in conspicuous places. One, in letters of all 
sizes, ran : " Firs trate Darber and Hair Dresseb," as though the 
artist knew about what letters to use, but not exactly where to 
place them ; another : " A good Carpenter and Dress-maker "; 
yet others : " Sam Shing, No. i Dentist "; " Ice-cream and Bread 
Bakery." How a man can combine the business of " good car- 
penter " with that of " dress-maker " is known only to the inge- 
nious Chinaman. 

A few rods from the wharf, on the one side, the line of hongs 
suddenly stops and the city is continued by a great collection of 
huts built upon stilts over the* water, of old and refuse lumber 
gathered from about the ship-yards and the river-bank; and where 
it has not been found in sufficient quantity, the want has been 
supplied with old pieces of straw matting, the wood of oil-can 
boxes, with almost anything and everything the occupants could 
lay their hands on. A* rude bridge in places it is but a plank 
runs by the doors to these dwellings, which give shelter not 
only to the owners but also to all their earthly belongings, seem- 
ingly ; for the harmonious gatherings of goats, fowls, and vicious- 
looking curs about them is something remarkable. Among these 
huts are ten or a dozen very fair ship-yards ; and, judging by the 
number of junks to be seen upon the ways, ship-building or 
should I say junk-building? would seem a great industry among 
them. To see these great, unwieldy junks continually building- 
junks unpainted and with four or five masts springing from their 
decks at no fixed angle and from no set place, apparently, and 
reaching to no particular height strikes one as a curious lack of 
appreciation on the part of the Chinese of western naval archi- 
tecture. Even the great, staring eyes set in the bows if such a 
front can be called a bow that the huge, ungainly thing may 
safely pick its way through the water, do, not in the least recon- 
cile one with it. 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 671 

In passing from this particularly dirty Chinese quarter to the 
part of the city occupied by the Macaoese or Portuguese and 
other foreigners, one will not fail to note the surprising number 
of soldiers to be seen marching in small squads through the 
streets or lounging at the corners. There are some fifteen hun- 
dred or two thousand of them in the city, and,. from sunrise till' 
long after dark, above the ordinary noises of the streets rise the 
notes of the bugle. The place is so dead to everything that it 
seems as if there was nothing for Macao's sons to do other than 
join the standing army or enter the police force, either of which 
vocations brings in a like monthly income. 

There are few walks in Macao. For the most part it is a 
great Chinese town, with its streets hung with all sorts of lan- 
terns and with every available space covered with signs in the 
beloved character; with fruit-stands lining the sidewalks, and 
with stores where dried fish and ducks ducks boneless and flat- 
tened out to a marvellous thinness are displayed in abundance ; 
with restaurants with fine fittings in the interiors and exteriorly 
elaborately carved and gilded restaurants where the foreigner 
will step in at times, through curiosity or hunger, and call for 
dinner ; with wayside shrines, with small pagodas, and with now 
and then a temple or joss-house whose courtyards seem to be 
the home of every snarling cur in the town in short, with every- 
thing at once for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the China- 
man ; but there is one street, the esplanade of the town, the 
Praya Grande, that for beauty few of the thoroughfares of Hong 
Kong can rival. 

Fronting the bay, whose bold, rocky islands stretch away in 
the distance, the boat of the fisherman, with its bamboo sails, 
slowly moving among them, it sweeps in a great curve for a mile 
or more, where its extremities end on the one side in a fort and 
on the other in a rocky cliff, back of which is the fort we passed 
on entering the roadstead. Between these two points a wall of 
solid masonry rises perpendicularly from the water, extending 
two feet above the roadway, and broken in front of the gover- 
nor's residence by an inclined plane of stone jutting into the 
water for his excellency's use in landing or embarking. For the 
community at large a similar inclined plane juts into the water a 
few rods away. In front of the governor's house, also, the line 
of the wall swells out into a small semicircle, from the centre of 
which rises the pole with Portugal's flag, having at its foot two 
or three small mounted cannon and several pyramids of balls. 
The governor is also consul for Siam, and a hundred yards or 



672 A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

so further on is another pole, from which floats the red flag with 
its white elephant in the centre. At regular intervals through- 
out the length of the esplanade small shade-trees are planted a 
few feet from the low wall. Upon the opposite side of the way 
are the great buildings of the town. There are the residences 
of the wealthy natives and the temporary homes of those that 
usually dwell in Hong Kong. There is the Medical Hall the 
only foreign drug-store in the whole place and there are the 
hotels. Usually this street during the day is deserted by all 
save a coolie or two lounging in his chair, patiently awaiting a 
fare ; and it is a long waiting at times, for there is little to draw 
one from the coolness of his home into the hot streets. After 
dinner, when the blazing sun has set, then this place is thronged 
with promenaders wending their way towards a small park, near 
by the fort, where the regimental band plays nightly. But to- 
day, in spite of the sun, it is alive with people, and the hotels are 
doing a tremendous business. It is, indeed, rare for them to have 
their rooms so full of guests and the click of the billiard-balls 
so continually heard. Having occasion to receive some small 
change from the clerk of the Macao Hotel, I found, wrapped in 
many folds of clean white paper, a small, irregular clipping of 
silver of the value of five cents. I had never seen such money 
before, but shortly found that it was in more or less general cir- 
culation. The Chinese have a habit of stamping their character 
on the Mexican dollar, which in time becomes so cut up that 
small pieces scale from it, and these are collected and weighed 
into certain values and pass as money, while the original dollar 
so chopped appears as nothing more than a disc of silver cov- 
ered with a mass of characters ; and although the foreigner will, 
nine times out of ten, accept it as a dollar possessing full value, 
it is immediately weighed and discounted on presentation to a 
Chinaman. Why it is that the Mexican dollar is so chopped to 
the exclusion of all other coins is a mystery that a Chinaman 
could only explain. Even counterfeit Mexican dollars are so 
stamped, and the worse the counterfeit the more it is chopped ; 
thus it is well calculated to deceive the unwary. 

The Pray a Grande reaches to the gates of the fort, from 
which it dwindles to a small footway winding midway about the 
cliffs that rise abruptly from the restless water. With a gentle 
ascent it runs for several hundred yards, when it turns sharp 
about a hill and widens into a well-made road, where a granite 
arch is sprung over the entrance to a Parsee cemetery built in 
terraces upon the hillside. There are five or six of these terraces, 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 673 

each having eight or ten graves, all of a size and covered with 
similar slabs of granite, upon which are graven the names of the 
dead in English. From the sea the peculiar construction of this 
burial-ground, with the singular sameness in the style and dis- 
position of its graves, makes it appear like the banks of keys to 
some huge organ. Of course it is well known that the Parsees 
do not usually bury their dead, but in China in Hong Kong or 
Macao they have built no Towers of Silence, and, as far as out- 
ward appearances go, they dispose of their dead very much in 
the same fashion as Christian nations. There is also a Chinese 
cemetery in Macao, which is a departure from their method of 
sepulture. It is crowded with graves, and the granite head- 
stones, some old, broken, and displaced by the weather, give it 
the appearance of a foreign churchyard. Usually, in the moun- 
tainous country of South China, the graves are scattered all over 
the hillsides and enclosed by a low wall in shape of a horseshoe. 
A slab of granite covers the grave, bearing the name, age, and 
the dynasty in which the man died, and in the centre of the wall 
is a small shrine in which the relatives to the deceased at stated 
times burn their joss-sticks. In North China, about Shanghai, 
the mode of sepulture is somewhat different from this. But go 
wherever one will, in the north or in the south, he meets with 
graves apparently set in the fields; and until China has more ad- 
vanced views than it has at present they are likely to remain as 
they are and where they are, for the Chinaman worships his 
country through its great men, and it is his desire to lay his 
bones beside those of his ancestors. In regard to the place for 
these tombs a priest has been consulted, who in turn has con- 
sulted the Feng Shui, and the position selected will be the place 
of sepulture. This worshipping the country through its great 
men is probably what makes the Chinese so conservative and 
fills them with hate for the foreigners and foreign innovations ; 
and this superstition regarding the Feng Shui the god of the 
wind having the sacredness of the graves in his keeping is that 
which acts, or will act, against the introduction of railways. 
Furthermore, as the Chinese build no buildings but of a low 
height save the pagoda, which is built to propitiate this same 
god, and a few pawn-broking establishments about Canton they 
strongly object to foreigners erecting high buildings. But since 
Macao is a Portuguese town, they are not allowed to place their 
graves anywhere upon its hills, so they are compelled to bury 
their dead in one common cemetery. 

The attraction of Macao, that which draws the traveller in 
VOL. xxxvu. 43 



674 ^ DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

the East thither, are the Camoens Gardens the glory of the 
city, once so by their stateliness and beauty, now so only 
through the strange history of the man who lived in and beauti- 
fied them. 

Luis de Camoens was Portugal's greatest poet and author of 
the famous epic, the Lusiad. He was born in. Lisbon in 1517 
(though some place his birth in 1524), and at an early age took 
up the profession of arms. During an engagement off the coast 
of Africa he lost his right eye. Shortly after his return to 
Lisbon he joined an expedition to India, where his ready pen was 
quick to satirize high officials, for which, at about 1555, he was 
banished to Macao, where for five years he lived perhaps better 
than he had ever lived before. He was made commissary of the 
estates of deceased Portuguese in Macao, and became compara- 
tively wealthy, but afterwards lost his fortune by shipwreck off 
the coast of Cochin China. He returned to Lisbon in povert} 7 , 
where, it is said, an old and valued Javanese servant daily 
begged for him in the streets. He died in 1579. Then his great- 
ness as a poet was recognized. A monument was erected to his 
memory, medals were struck, and his Lusiad translated into 
several languages. Such, in brief, are the main features in his 
history. 

It was the procession that attracted us to the city, but, since 
it would not move until some time in the afternoon, we paid a 
visit to these celebrated gardens. Our way led through the 
densely-populated, dirty Chinese town. Chinese towns are pro- 
verbially dirty. One cannot conceive of the filth in the streets ; 
to realize it he must see it. Seeing it he will probably experi- 
ence a small respect rising in his bosom for their god Feng 
Shui as the instigator of a great hygienic measure in their 
method of building and in their style of worship. As was above 
said, their buildings are almost universally low ; a flood of warm 
sunshine pours down upon the narrow streets, and at every 
doorway is a little shrine, wherein are burnt the scented joss- 
sticks almost continually. Why may not this fact account for 
such towns not being decimated by cholera or typhus more 
frequently than they are ? The scent from these joss-sticks per- 
meates the air, and, to my mind, is a good disinfectant, holding 
the secret of the health of these cities. At first it is quite 
unpleasant to the foreign nose, but a few days of continuous 
smelling renders it rather agreeable than otherwise, and to my 
nostrils there seemed to be a smack of sandal-wood about it. 
The Chinese are religious devotees, and no matter where one 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 675 

may go, among high life or among the very dregs of their 
society, he finds these sticks burning at the family shrines or at 
the doorways. It is not to be supposed that this people is 
as fully acquainted with the science of medicine as the western 
nations. They have drugs, many of them good ones, but it is 
doubtful whether they administer them intelligently, and when 
they do administer them much jugglery and many charms accom- 
pany the prescriptions ; yet the death-rate is not higher among 
them than among Europeans. Is it not plausible that the constant 
presence of this aromatic odor keeps the death-rate down ? 

As we passed through these streets we could see the thrifty 
Chinamen at work at their different trades. The doors to the 
shops are always open, and, as the interiors are dark, they work 
close to the entrances. Here in one place is a coolie standing 
upon a heavy block of granite, the stone mounted on a wooden 
roller, which he, by a peculiar movement of his body, causes to 
move back and forth through a curved space in which silk is 
spread out. This he keeps rolling while he sings a nasal song, 
and balancing himself upon the stone by swinging his arms, until 
the silk in the hollow is smoothly " ironed " ; then, with a higher 
and more nasal note and a somewhat more vigorous exertion of 
his body, he drives the roller just out of the space, and the iron- 
ing comes to a stop until he brings new silk into position, when 
he again mounts the stone, and with a peculiar contortion starts 
the rolling, the singing, and the gesticulations. There are several 
of these coolies, all in a row, all ironing, all singing, all bare- 
armed and bare-legged, gesticulating like accomplished ballet- 
dancers. The sight is most interesting to a stranger, the more 
so that he is momentarily expecting to see one fall and break his 
neck. Vain expectation : they never fall. 

Here is a miller's shop what we in America would call a 
flour-and-feed store, only in this place there seems to- be nothing 
but rice. Here, too, are several bare-armed and bare-legged 
coolies, singing as nasal songs and gesticulating almost as wildly 
as the others were. These are mounted at the ends of beams of 
wood which rest upon fulcrums placed near the centres, with 
a cumbrous piece of wood dipping down at right angles from 
the other ends into pots sunk into the ground containing rice.. 
Thus by the continuous falling of the ponderous pieces of wood 
amongst the grain the rice is hulled. 

We pass by many shops of various interest : bird-fanciers , 
tinsmiths', tobacconists', shops where all sorts of trinkets in 
ivory are exposed for sale, silk stores, and goldsmiths' establish- 



A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

ments. We note with what a curious lamp the artisan solders 
his ornaments. It is merely a saucer containing a little oil, into 
which extend several wicks made of the inevitable rice. As he 
brings these wicks together the flame flares up, and as he begins 
to blow through his pipe we are surprised to find the heat it 
must give to cause the solder to flow so readily ; and when it has 
flowed to his satisfaction the most of the wicks are pushed to 
one side and their light blown out, leaving the few dimly burning. 
As we have some hours before us, we can afford to loiter on 
our way to the gardens in order to see whatever may be of 
interest. And, thus moving slowly on, we shortly come to a 
slaughter-house. At home slaughter-houses would not interest 
us, but here in this quaint city of the East we are anxious to wit- 
ness the Chinese method of felling an ox. The house, having 
merely openings for windows, without sashes or shutters, and 
doorless archways for entrances, was thus open to the public at 
large. It was floored with slabs of stone, and several gutters 
with running water converged towards a grating in the pave- 
ment. There were at least ten cattle already dead upon the 
floor, and many sorry-looking curs skulked about the doors, ready 
to seize upon such offal as they could steal. As soon as these 
dead cattle were so far dressed as to be moved others were led 
into the cleared spaces by a slim bamboo cord through the nose. 
Then a Chinaman, having in one hand this cord of not half an 
inch in thickness, and a not very large hammer in the other, 
placed his foot upon the rope, thus bringing the animal's head to 
the ground, and struck it a blow directly back of the horns. 
There was no hauling the animal by a heavy rope to a ring in 
the floor, and fiercely striking it between the eyes with an axe 
nothing but a simple leading it to a selected place and coolly 
knocking it down. Usually the first blow felled it, and after the 
second it was quite dead. Then its ears were severed from its 
head. They would thus despatch several at one time, and the 
moment these were felled would lead in others, kill them, and 
before proceeding further would cut off the ears. Why this was 
done I could never discover. Think of despatching a Texan 
steer after this fashion! Could one be gotten into such a place, 
running as it was with blood and so filled with felled cattle ? 
Yet these animals of China will walk into this place without 
making the least struggle, stepping over or around those that 
have already been felled, and stand calmly by while others are 
killed at their side. Truly the Chinaman's own apathy regard- 
ing violent deaths extends to the very cattle. 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 677 

In these streets, also, now and then are met the ruins of build- 
ings enough of whose outlines remain to show that they were 
of a superior style of architecture. Occasionally we passed a 
noble archway, once leading, perhaps, to the romantic home of 
some old Portuguese, now sprung over nothing, leading no- 
where ; a cow tethered under it to feed upon the scant grass 
growing between its stones ; a sow with pigs wallowing in the 
mud round about it, or a herd of goats packed close between its 
columns. 

Crossing an open lot just such a lot as it is the custom in 
the United States to throw ashes upon and through a gateway, 
we enter the gardens. The sudden transition from the crowded 
streets of the town, smelling of all the vile smells imaginable, to 
this beautiful retreat, with its cool shades and perfume of flowers, 
is something almost fairy-like. 

Of two large buildings within the enclosure one is now in 
ruins and was a palace in its day. It was probably the home of 
Camoens for the five years he remained on the island. Some 
years ago it was destroyed by fire, but its walls, now over- 
run with vines and creepers, are still standing, and within them 
trees and shrubs grow in profusion. A descendant of the poet's 
family, who occupies the remaining building as a residence, cor- 
dially received us. Cake and wine, and luscious fruit from the 
garden, were set before us, together with the peculiar jellies and 
candies of the Portuguese. A pleasure was taken in showing us 
whatever was of interest about their home. On a table in the 
drawing-room was kept an album, in which men of note visiting 
the place inscribed their names. It was nearly full of auto- 
graphs of men from all parts of the world, and among the num- 
ber was the familiar handwriting of U. S. Grant. About the 
walls were several plaques in curious and rare Chinese designs. 
Only their antiquity gave them a value, for to a foreign eye they 
had nothing to commend them. 

The gardens of the estate are quite large, and were at one 
time laid out in terraces and pathways, with clean-cut lawns and 
tropical flowers. They now grow as they will ; the pathways are 
impeded with tangled underbrush ; the flowers bloom in rank 
profusion. Many kinds of fruit-trees lift their gnarled trunks 
above this rank vegetation, with their fruits strewn about the 
dank grass. Yet this very wildness makes it still something 
beautiful. 

Up a long flight of granite and moss-grown steps, in a part of 
the garden so shaded by trees that the vertical sun can pierce 
t 



678 A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

the dense foliage only in small patches, so that the coolness is 
damp and the air has a heavy smell, is a cave in the side of the 
rocks. It is the Grotto of the Lusiad, and from its entrance may 
be seen through the heavy foliage glimpses of the twinkling sea 
with its solitary bark waiting for a cargo of tea. Far down the 
hills, towards the water, is a church with walled grounds dotted 
with snow-white tombstones and monuments. Below that the 
town stretches away to a point at the entrance to the roadstead, 
and skirting the water lies that portion of the city built upon 
stilts, far above whose huts rise the masts of the junks. The 
cave has been made beautiful by art, and about its entrance, 
graven deep into the rock, are passages, in Portuguese, from the 
Lusiad and from other of Camoens' great poems ; and one, the 
" Ode to Macao," is translated into English. Above the grotto 
is a bower overrun and almost hidden with vines. It is said that 
the poet wrote much of his great poem in this cave. He may 
have done so, but his quarters were somewhat contracted ; for the 
cavern is hardly wide enough to hold other than a small table, 
and is quite dark. Where the table must have stood now stands 
a granite pedestal with a bronze bust of the author, and, to pre- 
vent those acts of vandalism to which travellers and sight-seers 
are only too liable, the entrance to the cave is guarded by an iron 
railing. 

Macao, like all the cities of China that are on rivers or near 
to the sea, has a large population that lives almost entirely upon 
the water. No other nation in the world has such a vast number 
of its people dwelling in boats no nation, in fact, has any of its 
people dwelling in such a manner as the Chinaman nor in such a 
boat. These boats are of many kinds, yet all, from the smallest 
to the largest, having such a general plan about them as to pro- 
claim them at once to the stranger as Chinese. Many of them 
are mere dens of iniquity and vice, while in others, by patient 
toil, the owners eke out a virtuous existence. 

As there are sedan-chairs, jin-rik-shas, and wheel-barrows to 
carry one on the land, so there are small boats, called sampans, 
to transport one by water. These about Macao are much larger 
than those in the rivers of North China, and are unpainted. Fre- 
quently whole families, from the grandparents down to the little 
grandchildren, find a wretched existence upon them, earning per- 
haps a dollar a day by carrying passengers. The boats are all 
numbered, and the rate of fare is fixed by law. A generous law 
allows them ten cents a half-hour, but often the legal fare is but 
half that. The father of the family generally takes the helm, 



1883.] - A DAY IN MACAO. 679 

thinking, no doubt, that that is the hardest work, while the wife, 
the sons, and daughters pull a cumbrous oar. These sampan 
people are very poor, yet among them there seems none so poor 
but that the women can afford heavy amulets and anklets of 
twisted silver and ear-rings of jade-stone. Their clothing may 
be of the merest rags, their boat the sorriest craft, yet some one 
of the family will be found possessing these trinkets. Their skin, 
from exposure to the weather, probably, and from the reflected 
rays of the sun from the water, is of almost a copper color ; it is 
so much darker than the skin of the Chinese upon the land as to 
give them the appearance of a distinct race. On acquaintance 
they are found to be a good-natured and thoughtful set of people 
not intellectually thoughtful, but if you are in their boat till 
after dark, and the dinner hour be past, they are very apt to ask 
if they shall not cook you some rice. 

We stepped into one of these sampans to visit an island just 
across the water, celebrated for its ringing rocks. The way to 
these rocks led for some two miles by the side of a brawling 
brook lined with trees, whose dark green foliage, hanging over 
its running water, cast cool and heavy shades under the banks ; 
where its shallow bed of glistening sand protruded above the 
tumbling water tall, feathery grasses marked its course over the 
plain ; its water, now dashing over the stones and falling in a 
hundred miniature cascades, now swirling around a bend and 
gathering in sluggish pools under the shaded banks, then out and 
away again with a swift current, went bounding noisily to the 
sea. It was well stocked with trout, and flying hither and 
thither over the water were dragon-flies of the splendid color of 
scarlet. Its water at one time turned the wheels of a mill that 
stood in a cleared space close to some paddy-fields, but which 
fell in ruins during the typhoon of 1874, and whose masonry and 
millstones now lay scattered over the plain. In the paddy-fields 
the Chinamen were preparing the ground for the next season's 
rice. The fields were flooded with water; the huge water-buffalo, 
sinking to its belly in the mud, was laboriously dragging the 
clumsy plough through the soil, and as we passed over the narrow 
pathways between the fields to an open plain where the rocks 
were the sneaking, black-tongued, tawny curs (they hardly reach 
the dignity of dogs) ran barking and snarling from the huts 
toward us, though never attempting to bite. The native dog of 
China is cowardly, and has unsightly black gums and a tongue 
that lolls out of its mouth like a lump of charcoal. The plain 
towards which we were making was strewn with innumerable 



68o A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

great black rocks, appearing as though they had passed through 
a fierce fire. We visited many, endeavoring to discover which 
of them it was that rang. There were some poor women and 
children gathering the loose brush from among them, of whom 
we inquired the whereabouts of these special rocks ; but not suc- 
ceeding in making them understand us, we went on our way, 
flinging stones at those rocks about us. The women, seeing us 
do this, at once seemed to understand what we wanted, and one 
of them came forward and pointed out the way. There were 
some six or seven of these boulders, each weighing many tons. 
Striking them with a large pebble, they gave forth a clear, so- 
norous sound like a bell. Even walking over them or striking 
them ever so lightly brought forth a sound such as a hollow 
metallic substance would produce. These six or seven great 
stones were the only ones of several hundred about the plain 
that would ring on striking ; yet to all outward appearance they 
were exactly like the others, had the same blackened and burnt 
appearance, and were set as firmly in the ground. 

When we had returned to the city the streets through which 
the procession was to pass were thronged with people, most of 
them Chinese, but many were European or Indian. The streets 
had had a more or less lively appearance throughout the day, 
but were now so crowded that one wondered how it were pos- 
sible for the line to pass. 

The town was in holiday attire, with one of the streets entirely 
roofed in for some squares with bamboos, and hung with thou- 
sands of lanterns of every conceivable hue and design. Many 
were of the shape of birds and animals. Under this roof there 
were thousands of things displayed impossible to describe mag- 
nificent embroideries and choice rugs ; all kinds of gems ; fine 
carvings in wood and stone ; gilded gods of colossal size, some 
with grave, benignant faces, others with features distorted into 
painful shapes ; pieces of china so exquisite and rare as to make a 
collector's heart ache ; vases of both porcelain and stone, finely 
carved and twelve feet high ; and carved columns of stone that 
reached almost to the ceiling. Besides the lanterns and embroi- 
deries there also hung from the ceiling great boxes which rep- 
resented in the inside the interiors of the houses of the gen- 
try of the country, with furniture and inmates, and in others were 
represented the interiors of theatres with the play in progress. 
In all respects the scene under this cover was like some great 
industrial exhibition, save only there was nothing for sale. 

A theatrical troop, the best in the town, is obliged to give 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 681 

its services at this time, and as we approached the part of the 
space in which it performed the tragedy was already in progress. 
That is, I suppose it was a tragedy, for, as far as I was able to 
see over the heads of the people, the actors were rushing hither 
and thither over the stage as though something of moment was 
taking place, and a white devil was constantly appearing and 
disappearing. In all their plays there is a devil with chalked 
face and hands ; and but that he is gorgeously arrayed in flowing 
robes of damask silks and satins, and wears a heavy curved sword 
like Othello's, he would, for all the world, look like the clown 
in a pantomime. But in this play there were two devils, and I, 
not understanding a word that was said, concluded that it must 
certainly be heavy tragedy to require so many. 

We had not long taken our position in front of a station-house 
before the line of the procession began to pass by. It was not 
a military display, for the only weapons carried were curious 
curved swords. Nor was it an exhibition of the various trades. 
It is difficult to tell exactly what it was, save that to the Chinese 
and to the native Portuguese, unacquainted with the military 
displays of Europe and America, it was a gorgeous pageant, but 
to the foreigner there was a wearisome sameness about it, accom- 
panied with a horrible noise called music. It was merely a long 
string of coolies, twenty thousand or more, all straggling along 
the dusty streets to the music of hautboys and tom-toms, the 
clashing of cymbals, and the noise of gongs, making no attempt 
at marching, but each walking as it best suited him. What the 
Chinese appear most to want in these displays is not symme- 
try and order, but noise ; and in this they are certainly success- 
ful, for scarcely is one band past than another is approaching, 
and to the foreign ear it seems as though there was a spirited 
rivalry between them as to which could make the most of it. 
Many of the coolies were barefoot and hatless, others were 
resplendent in silks, while still others had thrown over their 
shoulders the gaudy cloaks of mandarins, their legs dressed in 
the tattered breeches of chair-coolies ; and some, being fat and the 
day warm, with the cloak thrown open, exposing the bare skin. 

Since the Chinaman seems to be nothing without his lantern, 
there were thousands of all styles and shapes in the line. Hand- 
some embroideries were borne along, and curious cabinets, some 
filled with rare carvings, others having pairs of stuffed storks or 
roasted pigs garnished with fruits, others again with miniature 
pagodas with tinkling bells, formed a feature of the procession. 
There were sedan-chairs in which sat coolies acting as mandarins, 



682 A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

preceded by their body-guards with whips to flog the way clear, 
and by gentlemen bearing the pink silk umbrellas. Bright 
young girls with painted cheeks and lips, and eyes made more 
almond-shape by art than was natural, their tiny feet peeping 
from beneath their dress in what to a Chinaman, most likely, 
was a bewitchingly coquettish manner, sat among the swaying 
branches of trees of iron and were triumphantly carried along. 
There are many small-footed women in Macao, as there are in 
every Chinese town, but the little feet of these girls were just 
a little too small not to excite curiosity. I examined them and 
found them to be of iron, while the natural feet (large feet, 
too, probably) were safely tucked away somewhere under their 
skirts. 

The principal features of the display were two dragons. The 
first one that came by was not more than thirty feet long and 
was a fire-eater. All the while that the procession was passing 
thousands of fire-crackers were everywhere exploding; but now, 
as this fire-eating dragon came abreast of us, it seemed to be the 
particular business of everybody to explode these crackers, not 
by the pack but by the box. The din was inconceivable, and the 
dragon, having a relish for this sort of food, ran hither and thither 
wherever the most noise indicated the greater number of crack- 
ers. It was always in the hottest place, and open-mouthed 
went through the motions of eating its customary meal. Three 
times it ran to the doors of the police-station and bowed its re- 
spects, and as many times there came from the entrance enough 
burning crackers to fill a barrel. One was considerably relieved 
when it saw fit to move on with the main line, though the crack- 
ers continued to explode. 

The second dragon was interesting only from its great size, 
being one hundred and twenty feet long and worked by sixty 
men. It had no propensity for fire-crackers as a steady diet, and 
was quite peaceable and orderly. Its head stood twenty feet in 
air, and the men that bore it ran from side to side of the street, 
occasionally rolling its eyes and protruding its tongue in what 
was supposed to be a lifelike manner. The men that manipu- 
lated its^ tail also ran from one side to the other of the street, 
making it act quite naturally, or rather in such a manner as one 
would be likely to suppose such a beast would carry its tail. 
The men bearing that portion of the animal between the head 
and tail had nothing to do other than to walk, the mere fact 
of their walking giving to the body an undulatory movement. 
This dragon also bowed its obeisance three times to the police- 



1883.] A DAY IN MACAO. 683 

station, and it was wonderful to see how dextrously the men 
turned the huge thing- about in the narrow street. 

The procession was three hours and a half in passing a given 
point. It was with a sigh of relief that we saw the end of it, and 
made a memorandum in our note-book to the effect that a fire 
must be built under us before we would again travel thirty-eight 
miles to see a Chinese parade. 

He has missed the main feature of Macao who fails to see fan- 
tan. Fan-tan is a game of chance at which the Chinamen, and 
some foreigners also, gamble away their loose cash. After din- 
ner, having procured as a guide quite a stylish "boy," proud of 
his glossy black queue reaching to his heels, and of his yellow 
damask silk breeches and purple satin coat, we sallied forth in 
search of one of these places. After passing through many dark 
streets and turning many dark corners we came to a thorough- 
fare brilliantly lighted, in places, by large lamps placed at door- 
ways. Over the doorways and upon the lamps was lettered, in 
English, "Gambling-House" a matter-of-fact statement enough, 
as straightforward and with as little circumlocution as the most 
fastidious could require. The interior of one of these buildings 
was merely a large room having a counter running its entire 
width, before which stood the gamblers, a motley array of Chi- 
nese and Portuguese soldiers. Back of the counter were two 
Chinamen, one to place the money upon the bets, and the other 
to manipulate the Chinese cash, of which there was a large, 
bright heap on a table before him. New copper cash is always 
used in this game, and it is said that after such use it is never 
put into circulation because of a superstition the Chinaman has 
regarding it. A square opening was cut in the ceiling directly 
over the table, about which ran a railing, thus making a sort of 
gallery. As the room below was hot and close and the company 
somewhat questionable, we sought the upper and took our seats 
by the railing. From here we could look upon all that was doing 
in the room below. There were several small baskets, with 
cords to the handles, to lower to the table, receive and haul up 
the winnings. Bundles of cigarettes and pots of hot tea were 
placed conveniently on small tables about the room, and at the 
centre of one of the walls was a small shrine having two or three 
painted figures, before which the scented joss-sticks were burn- 
ing. Thus, probably, the gamblers were " near to the church 
but far from God." 

The betting was upon the first four numerals i, 2, 3, 4. Any 
amount could be bet upon these, the money being placed on the 
number upon which the bet was made, a piece of paper of a cer- 



684 A DAY IN MACAO. [Aug., 

tain color representing- this number. Thus, for the numeral 3 
the color of the paper was red. Bets could be made by the same 
individual, so far as I know, upon all four numbers at once, 
though I did not see any made upon more than two at the same 
time. The winning number gave to the successful better not 
only the money he staked, but nearly double as much again. 
For instance, if he risked a dollar and won he received about two 
dollars and eighty cents. Many players could bet upon the same 
number and all win or lose, as the case might be. The bank 
made money by the other numbers losing. I think no bets are 
ever made on number 4, for a reason that will presently appear. 

Before any bet is taken the man sitting before the heap of 
cask takes of them a double handful, places them near the centre 
of the table, covering them with a bowl. The bets are then 
made. When they are all in the bowl is carefully lifted from 
the cash, and with a long rake the Chinaman slowly rakes them 
toward him, four at a time. Every one sees him take the four, 
and every one carefully watches him. So on he draws them by 
fours until the pile is diminished to twenty or so, by which time 
there is a great interest taken in this man's movements. There 
is a stretching of necks, a straining of eyes, and an endeavor to 
count the remaining cash on the table. Slowly he draws them 
in, and soon there is left but one or two or three, which is the 
number that has won. If four are left he draws them in and 
there is none left. I think the game is then played again with 
the bets as they are. 

Now, fan-tan, to a novice, seems to be a fair sort of a gam- 
bling game. Everything is done openly and before his eyes ; 
yet it is said that that Chinaman, when he lifts his double handful 
of cash to place them under the bowl, knows to a coin how many 
he has in his hands, and if he finds a man betting heavily on a 
certain number, that number of cash will never be left. How true 
this may be I cannot say, but it is a fact that superstition leads a 
man to bet on the same numeral over and over again. It is from 
these fan-tan places that the chopped silver passes into circula- 
tion. They have large quantities of this silver neatly made into 
packages varying in value from five cents to fifty cents, and they 
hand them out to the gamblers as money. In Hong-Kong if a 
Chinaman attempts to gamble at fan-tan, as he sometimes does, 
he is promptly arrested ; but the law tolerates the game in Macao, 
and there are several streets having many such houses. 

At half-past ten o'clock we were steaming out of the road- 
stead, making our way through a blinding storm of wind and rain 
back to Hong-Kong, where we arrived at two in the morning. 



1883.] ARMINE. 685 



ARMINE. 

CHAPTER XV. 

A BRIGHT spring morning is always certain to find the alleys 
of the Bois de Boulogne thronged with equestrians, and the 
morning when Egerton joined the party consisting of Miss Ber- 
tram, Miss Dorrance, and an elderly gentleman who, being a 
distant connection and great friend of the Bertrams, acted as 
chaperon, was no exception to the rule. The leafy bridle-roads 
which cross the avenues and plunge into the green depths of 
the great pleasure-ground were as full of animated movement 
as Rotten Row, with the difference that in Rotten Row all the 
animation is visible at a glance, while here it is only revealed in 
part. But this difference is in favor of the Bois ; for who does 
not know the beauty of a sun-and-shadow-flecked forest vista, 
and the charming fancies which horsemen and horsewomen 
passing out of sight or advancing along such a vista suggest? 
All the world of romance seems to open romance for ever asso- 
ciated with youth and beauty and strength, and here surrounded 
by glancing sunlight and dewy leaves, and soft mists lying afar 
over famous heights. 

The party of people who entered the Bois on this particular 
morning were pleasantly exhilarated by the brightness and beauty 
around them. Egerton was at first a little puzzled to imagine 
why he should have been asked to join what was already a par- 
tie carrte, but he was soon enlightened by the manner in which 
Miss Dorrance appropriated him. 

" In my opinion it was all nonsense asking old Colonel Faire 
to accompany us," she confided to him when the gentleman men- 
tioned was in advance, riding with Miss Bertram and Talford. 
" Mamma would never have thought of such a thing. She sees 
no reason why I should not go about with Cousin Marmaduke 
here as I would in America; and I see no reason either. But 
Mrs. Bertram is full of foreign ideas I suppose because she has 
lived abroad so much and she insisted that Sibyl must not go 
without a chaperon. There was no lady eligible for the posi- 
tion whom we could ask, so we finally compromised on this 
old gentleman. He is very nice, and a great friend of the 
Bertrams, you know ; but I did not care to have him bestowed 



686 ARMINE. [Aug., 

upon me as an escort and that was, of course, what would 
have come to pass so I insisted on your being asked to join 

us." 

" You are very kind indeed," said Egerton. " I am im- 
mensely flattered to learn that you think my society preferable 
to that of Colonel Faire." 

" Now, that is one thing about you that I don't like," said the 
young lady frankly "that sarcastic way of talking. You are 
evidently not flattered about something. Yet I am at a loss to 
know what it is, for I consider it decidedly a compliment to have 
asked you to join us, without comparing your society to Colonel 
Faire's at all." 

" I am ashamed that you should think I meant to be sar- 
castic," said Egerton, unable to explain the slight disappoint- 
ment which had prompted the tone of his speech. " It proves 
that there was something amiss in my expression, though not 
in my intention. For I am sincerely flattered, I assure you, 
and delighted to be able to rescue you from Colonel Faire." 

" Oh ! I have no special objection to Colonel Faire," she 
replied. " But he is tiresome as old men mostly are and I did 
not see why I should bear the burden of propitiating the pro- 
prieties when I care nothing about them in this particular form, 
while Cousin Duke would of course devote himself to Sibyl." 

" His devotion, then, has come to be a matter of course ? " 
said Egerton. 

" It seems to me that jumps at the eyes," said the young 
lady, with a shrug as Gallic as her idiom. " I really think he is 
in earnest: matrimonially in earnest at last." 

" Ah ! " said Egerton. " And do you think that Miss Ber- 
tram is matrimonially in earnest also?" 

" That is hard to tell," answered Miss Dorrance. " Sibyl is 
difficile. She always has been. People think her capricious, but 
it really is not caprice so much as that men for we are talking 
of men disappoint her. I have heard her say that she likes 
them as long as she can fancy something heroic about them ; 
but she very soon discovers that there is nothing heroic at all." 

' Then we are to suppose that she is in the stage of fancying 
something heroic about Mr. Talford," said Egerton, with the in- 
flection of sarcasm in his tone to which his companion objected. 
"It does infinite credit to her powers of imagination." 

Miss Dorrance shook her head. " I don't thyik," she said, 
" that even with her powers of imagination and they are con- 
siderable she can fancy anything heroic about Cousin Duke. 



1883.] ARMINE. 687 

He is very nice, and I have always been very fond of him, but 
he makes no pretensions of that kind." 

" No one could possibly accuse him of it," said Egerton, with 
the same inflection of tone. 

" He would tell you," pursued Miss Dorrance, " that in con- 
sequence there is no room for disappointment. And he may 
be right. Certainly Sibyl appears to like his society very well. 
One must see that." 

"Yes," Egerton assented, "one must see that." Then he 
paused, not caring to add that such a liking seemed to him the 
keenest of satires on Miss Bertram's high ideals and pretensions. 
The old sense of injury and indignation rose in his mind as he 
looked at the graceful figure riding in front, at the fine, spirited 
face showing in profile as Sibyl turned toward one or the other 
of her escorts. " No doubt Talford is right," he said to himself. 
" She has two women in her, and the idealist will go to the wall 
before the woman of the world. But it is impossible not to be 
amused by her inconsistency." 

He flattered himself that this was the predominant feeling 
with him that he was amused by her inconsistency when, the 
ride over, they were assembled at breakfast in the pretty apart- 
ment with windows overlooking the green foliage of the Pare 
Monceaux. Mrs. Bertram received them with her usual gentle, 
well-bred kindness ; the dejeuner to which they sat down was ad- 
mirably arranged and served, and something of the freshness of 
the outer world seemed to linger about them, as it does about 
people who have just come in from the most delightful of all 
forms of exercise ; while not only its freshness but its brightness 
also was reflected in Sibyl's face, as, in her perfect, close-fitting 
habit, but with her hat laid aside, she sat at table talking and 
laughing lightly. 

" Yes," she said in answer to some remark of Colonel Faire 
on her animation, " I am always exhilarated when on horseback, 
and for some time afterward. Like the lover in Browning's 
poem, I think that I could ride, ride, for ever ride without tiring. 
It is the most perfect of all physical enjoyments. Climbing a 
mountain is very fine. To sit upon an Alp as on a throne is a 
glorious sensation ; but one has to undergo much labor and 
fatigue to accomplish that end, while in riding the beginning 
as well as the end is delightful. When I am on horseback I feel 
in charity with all the world." 

" That is certainly delightful," said Miss Dorrance. " It is a 
pity that it has not the same effect on every one. Here is Mr. 



688 ARMINE. [Aug., 

Egerton, for example, who has seemed very much out of chanty 
with all the world this morning." 

" What, Egerton, after beginning the morning in such an ex- 
emplary manner ! " said Talford, with a smile. " I should have 
expected better things." 

" Did he begin the morning in a specially exemplary man- 
ner?" said Miss Dorrance before Egerton could' reply. " Then 
perhaps that accounts for the matter. I have always observed 
that people are apt to be severe on their neighbors when they 
feel themselves particularly virtuous." 

" I am sorry if I have seemed to be severe on my neighbors," 
said Egerton, " but it was certainly not in the least because I felt 
particularly virtuous. I presume that what Talford alludes to is 
that he saw me emerge from the Madeleine this morning. But 
whether it is exemplary to go to church or not is, I believe, de- 
termined by the motive that takes one there." 

" Yours, then, we are to suppose, was not devotion," said 
Miss Bertram. 

Talford looked at him with another smile. " There is devo- 
tion religious and devotion personal. Eh, Egerton ? " he said. 

" Undoubtedly," answered Egerton quietly ; " but since neither 
of the two actuated me, I cannot possibly claim either as a mo- 
tive." 

Miss Dorrance's eyes said, " What did actuate you, then ? " 
But as good-breeding forbids the asking of direct questions, she 
was forced to restrain this one to her eyes, so that consequently 
it was unanswered. 

Miss Bertram meanwhile said : " At all events, it was a plea- 
sant manner of beginning the day. Catholic churches are to me 
most attractive when there is no one in them." 

At this Mr. Talford laughed. " I doubt if Egerton would 
find them so," he said. " It was certainly not the case with the 
Madeleine this morning." 

"So far from that," said Egerton, " there were a number of 
persons in it. But I know what you mean," he added, turning to 
Miss Bertram; "and although a priest was saying Mass while I 
was there, I had the feeling of which you speak a sense as of an 
infinite charm of quiet, of repose, of devotion." 

" It is the feeling which induces so many Protestants to say 
that they feel so much more devout in Catholic churches than 
in their own," said Miss Bertram. " One can hardly define it, 
but every one who is at all impressionable must be conscious 
of it." 



1883.] ARMINE. 689 

" That is a saving clause," said Mr. Talford, " for I was about 
to remark that I have never felt it. But then it is almost unne- 
cessary to say that I am not impressionable." 

" Quite unnecessary," replied Miss Bertram. " We are quite 
sure that <a primrose on the river's brim ' is a yellow primrose 
to you, and nothing- more." 

" What more could it be?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows a 
little. 

" Without attempting to answer that question," said Colonel 
Faire, " one may be quite sure that there is such a thing as see- 
ing too much in a primrose, as well as many other things. Now, 
about that * infinite charm of repose and devotion in Catholic 
churches,' do you think that it is not simply an effect of the 
beauty which is so large a part of that system ; and when im- 
pressionable Protestants feel more devout there than in their 
own churches, are they not yielding simply to a pleasure of the 
senses ? " 

Sibyl looked at him and smiled. " That is an argument 
which I have heard before," she said ; " but it seems to me that 
those who use it forget that the senses are the only mediums by 
which we can receive any impressions. And if we receive great 
truths through our hearing, why should not devotion be roused 
through our sight ? If certain forms of beauty are capable of 
putting us in a reverential frame of mind, a wise system would 
certainly employ them. Architecture, painting, sculpture, music 
I am sure that the religion which neglects to use any one of 
these in its appeal to human nature neglects a very powerful aid. 
But in saying this," she added quickly, before any one could 
speak, " don't think that I mean to admit that it is the beauty 
of Catholic churches altogether, or even chiefly, which produces 
the effect of which we are talking. I have felt it in humble 
chapels that had no beauty, and I have missed it in great ca- 
thedrals which are no longer Catholic. Where is there in the 
world, for instance, a more beautiful building than Westminster 
Abbey ? Yet who can enter it and not feel that it is like a body 
from which the soul has fled?" 

" My dear Sibyl ! " said Mrs. Bertram in a slightly shocked 
tone of remonstrance, " how can you talk so ? I am sure 
Westminster Abbey is one of the most interesting churches in 
the world." 

Sibyl smiled. " Yes, mamma," she said. " But about this 
that we are talking of: I maintain that it is peculiar to Catholic 
churches, and that it cannot be the effect of beauty alone." 
VOL. xxxvn. 44 



6 9 o ARMINE. [Aug., 

Egerton regarded her curiously. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, it seemed always her fate to be surprising him. Cer- 
tainly he would not have expected to find in her this perception 
of what he had so lately felt himself the mysterious influence of 
that Presence which dwells in Catholic churches, and which is 
manifest even to many of those who have not faith but it was 
very plain that she possessed it, and plain also trlat he was very, 
far from understanding her singular character. 

Meanwhile Talford said : " It strikes me that an argument 
about something which half of us never felt, and which the other 
half cannot define, is something like discussing the nature of the 
soul, when we are not at all sure that we have a soul. Let me 
turn the conversation to a more mundane subject by asking " 
he turned to Mrs. Bertram " if you have seen the new play at 
the Frangais yet." 

" No," she answered. " We have not seen it for the simple 
reason that it has not been possible to obtain places. Sibyl and 
I tried twice, but found every seat engaged for so many nights 
ahead that we decided to wait until the first rush to see it is 
over." 

" And I wait with more philosophy," said Miss Bertram, 
" because I judge, from the amount of space which the journals 
give to descriptions of the actresses' toilettes, that it is a poor 
play." 

" I hope you will soon decide that point for yourself," said 
Mr. Talford. " I have not yet seen it either ; but I have been 
fortunate enough to secure a box for to-night, which I trust Mrs. 
Bertram will allow me to place at her service." 

"You are very kind," said Mrs. Bertram graciously. "It 
will be very pleasant to go to the Frangais to-night, since it 
is the evening for the monde. Then 'if Laura will accompany 
us" 

" Thank you, dear Mrs. Bertram," said Laura. " I shall be 
delighted. I am very anxious to see the play, and I told Cousin 
Duke so at least three days ago." 

" In that case no doubt it is to your desire that we owe his 
kind exertion," replied Mrs. Bertram, " and I am very glad to 
be able to be your chaperon." 

Miss Dorrance glanced at Egerton and elevated her eyebrows 
in a manner expressive of her scepticism on this point ; but she 
restrained her tongue, and a few minutes later they rose from 
table. 

It was when they returned to the salon that Egerton found 



1883.] ARMINE. ' 691 

his first opportunity to exchange a few words with Miss Ber- 
tram. She had moved to one of the open windows, and was 
standing there a tall, straight, graceful figure pointing out the 
pretty lights and shades in the park to Colonel Faire, when he 
joined her. 

After a little desultory talk the elder gentleman stepped back 
to answer a question of Mrs. Bertram, and the two were left 
t$te-a-tete just as Sibyl was saying that in the spring there was 
no pleasanter place of residence in the world than Paris. " And 
we have tried most places that is, most well-known places," she 
added. 

" I, too, like Paris," said Egerton. " Apart from those things 
which lie merely on the surface, its attractions are manifold, 
and I should make it my home, if I had anything to do here. 
But that is the trouble. Existence without an object must end 
in weariness." 

"You have found that out, then?" she said. 

" I never doubted it," he answered. " Yet it is difficult, in 
cold blood, without any compelling taste for any pursuit in par- 
ticular, to decide what to do. The need to make money is the 
great spur to effort with most people ; but I have money enough 
for my wants, so what is to be my spur?" 

" The desire to benefit humanity," answered Miss Bertram, 
" What better could you want ? " 

" I might readily be excused for wanting a better," he said, 
" but whether I shall find it or not is another question. I don't 
think humanity is able to inspire one with much besides contempt 
good-natured or bad-natured, according to one's disposition 
when regarded in the mass. Yet I should like to be able to 
do something toward relieving its mountain-load of misery,, and 
that is what has drawn me a little toward Socialism. But So- 
cialism recognizes only one way of relieving this misery that is, 
by seizing the property of those who possess any. Now, per- 
haps it is because I belong to the latter class that m.y sense of 
meum and tuum protests." 

Despite herself Sibyl laughed. " I fancy," she said,. " that 
you have only been amusing yourself with Socialism,, as with 
most other things." 

" No," he answered. " I have been seriously attracted by it, 
and again as seriously repelled. Among its leaders undoubt- 
edly there is a sufficient ardor and spirit of self-sacrifice to revo- 
lutionize the world. But then I confess that I do not regard 
with lively satisfaction the idea of a world in revolution." 



692 ARMINE. [Aug., 

" Apropos of leaders, have you seen lately the one who inte- 
rested you so much?" 

" Duchesne ? Yes ; I dined with him last night. And 
although I did not choose to say so to Talford it was Mile. 
Duchesne to whom I was speaking at the door of % the Made- 
leine when he saw me this morning." 

Miss Bertram's gray eyes opened wide in surprise. 

" What ! Does she go to church, and do you go there to 
meet her?" she asked. 

Egerton laughed. "She goes to church yes," he an- 
swered. " But as for my going there to meet her well, in 
candor I must confess that it was her example which induced 
me to enter the Madeleine this morning. But I had no inten- 
tion of meeting, nor indeed hope of speaking to, her, though 
I did manage to exchange a few words with her on the door- 
step." 

" She is a very interesting person, I think you said." 

" She is an exceedingly interesting person," returned he. " I 
never see her without wishing that I had an opportunity to 
know her better than I do." 

"And do you not know her well?" 

" Very far from it. Measured by the rules which govern 
acquaintance, ours is of the slightest I may say the very 
slightest description. Yet each time that I have seen her there 
has been something which gave me a glimpse of her inner self 
such as is not common in conventional intercourse." He paused 
a moment, then added: " I think that you would like her." 

" Do you? " said Miss Bertram a little doubtfully. " I am not 
sure of it. What interests you might not interest me at all, you 
know. But the father, now I should no doubt be very much 
interested in him, and I wish that I could see him." 

"I should be happy to make an effort to gratify you," said 
Egerton, " but he is a bird of passage much occupied with 
revolutionary schemes in many places ; and he leaves Paris 
to-day to superintend an election in Brittany. His daughter 
goes with him somewhat reluctantly, I think, because of the 
business in which he is engaged." 

" I remember that you said she does not approve his schemes. 
It is strange that a girl and a young girl, did you not say? 
should evince so much independence of thought or is it sub- 
jection of thought? Perhaps, like many women, having been 
brought up religiously, she is unable to emancipate herself." 

" To the best of my knowledge she was not brought up reli- 



1883.] ARMINE. 693 

giously," said Egerton. " Her mother died early, and she was 
left altogether to her father's influence and training." 

" Then how is it possible that she does not feel enthusiasm 
for his hopes ? " 

" She has probably seen and known too much of what those 
hopes mean. It is very different to look at a thing from afar, 
with a poetic glamour around it, and to draw near and see it face 
to face. Mile. Duchesne has seen revolution face to face more 
than~once in fact, she sees it, in anticipation, all the time." 

" On consideration," said Sibyl, with an air of reflection, " I 
think that I should like to know her if it were possible. There 
must be something interesting about one who has had such a 
life. But I suppose it is not possible?" 

" Most things are possible, if one has the will to bring them 
about," said Egerton. " There is one simple means by which 
you can know Mile. Duchesne, if you care to do so she is a 
great friend of the D'Antignacs." 

" Indeed ! So besides being interesting themselves, they have 
the additional merit of possessing interesting friends ! I shall 
certainly insist on Laura's fulfilling her promise of taking me to 
see them." 

"What promise is it that Laura is to fulfil?" asked that 
young lady, hearing her own name and drawing near. 

" The promise of taking Miss Bertram to see the D'An- 
tignacs," said Egerton. " I thought you had surely fulfilled 
it some time ago." 

" I don't think we have either of us found the necessary time," 
said Miss Dorrance. " But you need not be so reproachful, Mr. 
Egerton. I assure you that I mean to go, and to take Sibyl." 

" And I mean to be taken," said Miss Bertram ; " for what 
I have heard of M. d'Antignac not only from you but from 
others makes me wish very much to know him." 

" I hope that you will know him," said Egerton. " I am sure 
that you will then find that there is such a thing as heroism in 
the world, independent of any fancies with regard to it." 

She looked at him with a quick glance. 

" Do you mean my fancies?" she asked. "I confess that I 
have begun to doubt whether it has any existence independent 
of them." 

" There are times, I suppose, when we are all inclined to 
doubt it," he answered. " But it fares ill with us, in that as in 
most else, if faith dies into scepticism and we accept the lower 
for want of belief in the higher." 



694 ARMINE. [Aug., 

CHAPTER XVI. 

PERHAPS those last words which Egerton felt afterwards to 
be rather presumptuous in what they implied made an impres- 
sion on Miss Bertram, for the next time he called at the D'An- 
tignacs* he heard that she had been there with Miss Dor- 
ranee. 

" And I do not know when I have been so much struck by 
any one," said Helene d'Antignac. " What a brilliant, handsome, 
intellectual face she has ! I confess that I am very fond of clever 
people ; and one has only to look at Miss Bertram to see that she 
is very clever.". 

" Yes, she is certainly very clever," said Egerton " too 
clever for her own good, I am afraid." 

"How is her good threatened by her cleverness?" asked 
Mile. d'Antignac, smiling. 

" Oh ! in many ways," answered Egerton rather vaguely. 
" You will soon find out what they are, if you know her, as I 
hope you will ; for I think your friendship would be of infinite 
benefit to her." 

" I am afraid I do not feel within myself the power to be of 
infinite benefit to any one," said H61ene simply ; " but I should 
like to know this girl well, for I am quite sure that she is worth 
knowing. The cultivation of the acquaintance will depend on 
herself, however. I cannot pretend to pay visits. Those who 
wish to see me must come to me. My life is here." 

"Did Miss Bertram see M. d'Antignac?" asked Egerton. 

" No. Miss Dorrance said something about, desiring to see 
him ; but he was not well enough to be disturbed that day. If 
they come again as I asked them to do they may see him 
then." 

" I think they will come at least I think Miss Bertram will 
come," said Egerton. " She desires to see M. d'Antignac very 
much." 

" Raoul will like her," said Helene. " She is a person who is 
sure to interest him. He likes brilliant people, even if they are a 
little erratic." 

"So you have discovered that Miss Bertram is a little 
erratic," said Egerton, smiling. 

" I have not discovered, I have only suspected, it," answered 
Mile. d'Antignac. " Brilliant people often are. But I am sure 
she is none the less attractive for that." 



1883.] ARMINE. 695 

" She is very attractive," said Egerton, discreetly holding his 
peace with regard to certain drawbacks to this attractiveness. 

When he came again it was on Sunday evening, and he was 
not surprised to find Miss Bertram sitting by D'Antignac's 
couch. He had felt quite sure that she would return, and the 
expression of her countenance an expression compounded of 
gentleness, compassion, and vivid interest told him how deeply 
she was impressed, even before he found an opportunity to speak 
to her. Indeed, it chanced that just then two or three intellec- 
tual m'en were gathered around D'Antignac, and their talk was 
different from that which Miss Bertram was in the habit of hear- 
ing in the social circle which she chiefly frequented. One slight 
man, lean as a greyhound and dark as an Arab, was a professor 
of the Sorbonne ; another was a journalist of note, the author of a 
political brochure of which just then all Paris was talking ; while 
a third was an Englishman with rugged face and leonine mane, 
whose name was Godwin, who occupied an apartment above the 
D'Antignacs* and was one of their warmest friends. This man 
had been talking when Egerton came up. 

" Oh ! I grant that, as a nation, logic is your strong point," he 
was saying to one of the Frenchmen, " but it seems more likely 
to prove your destruction than your salvation. Taking certain 
principles, such as liberty of thought and the rights of man, you 
carry them out to a conclusion which cuts every belief from 
under your feet and reduces life to chaos. Whereas the Eng- 
lishman, strong in common sense and recognizing the multitude 
of mysteries that surround him in life, accepts with philosophy 
an illogical position for the sake of its practical advantages." 

The professor shrugged his shoulders. " The mot de Venigme 
is in the last sentence," he said. " Your countrymen, monsieur, 
would do much more than accept an illogical position for the 
sake of its practical advantages, especially since you will not 
deny that, generally speaking, their sense of logic is not keen." 

"Generally speaking it is very obtuse," said Godwin, "and 
so much the better for them. What has the fine logic of the 
French ever done but lead them into atheism, revolution, and 
anarchy? " 

"And does it not occur to you," said the other, "that the 
temper of mind which seeks truth, and truth only, even if it leads 
to what you call atheism, to revolution, and to anarchy, is better 
than that which contentedly compromises with error for the sake 
of the practical advantage of present peace and prosperity ? 

" No," answered Godwin, " I cannot admit that it is better 



696 ARMINE. [Aug., 

until you prove that your atheism, revolution, and anarchy have 
been of benefit, or are likely to be of benefit, to the human 
race." 

" It appears to me," said the other, " that it is late in the day 
even to make a question of that." 

" But it is a question in fact, the supreme question of our 
time," said Godwin. "And I, for one, deny that you have 
accomplished any good in comparison with the evils inflicted 
upon France, for example evils which every man must see and 
acknowledge, and for which the panacea is revolution, still revo- 
lution ; so that in the end this once great Frank nation will sink 
lower and lower in the scale of nations until no man can predict 
her degree of final abasement." 

His words struck home, and there was a moment's silence ; 
for no Frenchman of any sagacity, however much of a revolu- 
tionary doctrinaire he may be, can close his eyes to the waning 
influence of France abroad and to her shrinking population, her 
failing credit, and her moral decadence at home. 

It was D'Antignac's low but clear voice which broke the 
silence : 

"You are right enough, Godwin. The evils are tremendous 
almost beyond calculation which have been brought upon 
France by revolutionary principles. But I should not blame the 
logic of the people for that. It is only by following principles 
out to their logical conclusions that we can truly judge what 
they are. Now, in France alone has this test been applied to 
ideas which in a more or less covert form are working in every 
nation of Europe. Here alone were men who did not shrink 
from carrying out to their utmost consequences the principles of 
the great religious revolt of the sixteenth century ; and if the 
French Revolution which was the ultimate outcome and ex- 
pression of those principles startled the world, and especially 
England, into a reaction, you have surely French logic to thank 
for that." 

" Oh ! yes," said Godwin, with a laugh, " I grant that we have 
that much to thank it for. But the result for France was not so 
fortunate as for us." 

" The final result for France we do not yet know," said D'An- 
tignac. " How far she is to wander, how deep she is to fall, we 
cannot tell. The false light of human reason, the false ideal of 
human liberty which she is following, will certainly lead her into 
misfortune and humiliation greater, perhaps, than any she has 
known yet ; but the depth of her fall may be the measure of the 



1883.] ARMINE. 697 

height to which she will rise when she, who was the eldest 
daughter of the church, the first among barbarous nations to re- 
cognize and embrace the truth, shall again lift her eyes to that 
truth and be the first, perhaps, to return to that faith which so 
many of her noblest children have never forsaken. That is what 
the fine sense of logic which you deride may do for her. It is 
not logic which has been her bane, but the false principles which 
she accepted as a basis for thought. Given just principles, and 
there is no intellect in the world so lucid and so luminous as the 
French in its demonstration of truth. The compromises with 
error, the building up of high-sounding premises on unstable 
foundations, which are the characteristics of English thought, are 
unknown to the French mind. It either embraces truth in its 
entirety or it does not shrink from the utmost consequences of 
negation." 

Those who had never heard D'Antignac talk on some subject 
which deeply moved him could form little idea of how his eyes 
would glow, his whole face light up with the energy of his feel- 
ing. As Sibyl Bertram looked at him' now she thought that she 
had never before realized how clearly the spirit might reveal it- 
self through its fleshly covering. 

" Bien dit, mon ami" said the professor. " On that point we 
agree. The French mind does not shrink from the utmost con- 
sequences of negation. And therein lies our strength and our 
best hope for the future. The present may be dark and un- 
certain ; but it is by following the pure light of reason that we 
may at last solve our problems, rather than by returning to the 
twilight of that superstition which you call faith. For France, 
which has ever been in the van of human thought, is not likely 
to retrace her way. It is true that she was the first among bar- 
barous nations to accept Christianity, but it was then a step 
into the light. It would now be a step into darkness." 

"That," said D'Antignac, "is a favorite assertion of your 
school of thought or rather of opinion, for I do not honestly 
believe that there is much thought in the matter but assertions 
without proof, as you must be aware, carry little weight. And 
it is difficult for you to prove that Christianity is synonymous 
with darkness, when every ray of the light of your boasted civi- 
lization directly or indirectly emanates from it. There are many 
travesties of history, but none which can absolutely blind men to 
the fact that modern Europe, with its whole civil and moral 
order, is the creation of the church, and of the church alone. 
She rescued from barbarism and built up into nations the people 



698 ARMINE. [Aug., 

who now turn against her and wrest to their own destruction the 
knowledge which she taught ; and it does not require a prophet 
to tell that in proportion as her influence diminishes and the tra- 
ditional hold of the morality which she taught grows less the 
relapse of these people into essential paganism is certain." 

" We may see it in progress before our eyes,", said the jour- 
nalist. " What else is the tyranny of the state, the exaltation of 
material ends, the tampering with rights of property, the abro- 
gation of the marriage-tie for the law of divorce practically 
amounts to that ? There can be no doubt that we are more and 
more approaching the ideal of a pagan state, with a correspond- 
ing pagan corruption of morals." 

It was at this moment that D'Antignac glanced toward Sibyl, 
and, meeting the bright intelligence of her eyes, he said, with his 
exquisite smile : 

" I fear, Miss Bertram, that you think us sad pessimists. 
Have you ever reflected much on these subjects?" 

" I have reflected on them not very much, perhaps, nor very 
wisely but enough to be exceedingly interested in all that you 
have said," she answered. " You would not think so from my 
appearance, probably, but such discussions interest me more than 
anything else." 

" It is from your appearance that I have arrived at the con- 
clusion that they interest you decidedly," he said, still smiling. 
" Why should you do yourself so much injustice as to imagine 
otherwise ? " 

" Oh ! " said she, smiling too, " I know that I look like a young 
lady who thinks only of amusements and toilettes and con- 
quests. At least Mr. Egerton "with a slight glance toward 
that gentleman " has more than once told me so." 

" I ? " said Egerton, who had drawn near in time to hear this 
speech. " Of all unjust charges which you have ever made 
against me and I must be permitted to declare that they have 
been many this is the most unjust! When did I ever inti- 
mate in the remotest manner that your appearance so far be- 
lied you?" 

" I thought I remembered something of the kind," said she 
indifferently, "but it does not matter. I only hope M. d'An- 
tignac will believe that though I may look as if my soul was in 
chiffons, I have a few thoughts to spare for higher things." 

D'Antignac regarded her with a penetrating yet kindly ex- 
pression in his dark, clear eyes. 

" I should never suspect you of putting your soul in chiffons;' 



1883.] ARMINE. 699 

he said. " And I am quite sure that you have many thoughts to 
spare for higher things." 

" But to think even of the higher things with profit one 
must know how and what to think," she said quickly. " And 
that is difficult. For instance, what you have just been talking 
of the tendencies of modern life and modern thought. There 
are so many conflicting opinions that it is hard to tell what is 
and what is not for the benefit of humanity." 

" We may be quite sure of one thing," he answered : " that 
nothing is for the benefit of humanity which ignores or denies 
man's dignity as an immortal being owing his first and highest 
duty to God. That is the necessary condition for morality, pub- 
lic and private; and although there is a benevolence widely 
preached at present which substitutes man's duty to his fellows 
for his duty to God, it is like endeavoring to maintain a toppling 
house after destroying its foundation." 

Egerton, who knew how attractive the idea of benevolence 
thus described was to Miss Bertram, could not refrain from a 
glance to see how she liked this chance shot. She met his eyes, 
smiled, and said to D'Antignac: 

" Mr. Egerton is triumphing over me. He knows that I am 
a great advocate and admirer of what you condemn that is, the 
teaching which substitutes the pressing and immediate duty of 
helping one's fellow-creatures for a narrow and selfish personal 
religion." 

" It is a very attractive teaching to generous and forgive me 
if I add uninstructed people," said D'Antignac. " In reality it 
is the revolt of such people against a religion which you de- 
scribe very accurately as narrow, selfish, and personal. Such 
was and is the religion of those who in their beginning pro- 
claimed 'faith without works' as their battle-cry, who seized and 
robbed every charitable foundation, who contradicted the words 
in which our Lord laid down the rule of perfection when he bade 
him who desired to be perfect to sell all that he had and give to 
the poor, and who absolutely obliterated from the minds of Chris- 
tian people the knowledge of the corporal works of mercy, as 
well as the sense of the obligation to practise them. The result 
was that order of material prosperity which has crushed and 
ground down the poor, until on every side they are rising with 
cries of revolt which are like sounds of doom in the ears of those 
who have so long oppressed them. We know this movement 
as Socialism " it was now Miss Bertram's turn to glance at 
Egerton " and it is one direct consequence of the denial of the 



700 ARMINE. [Aug., 

necessity of good works. Another consequence is the outcry 
against the selfishness of religion. It is chiefly made by people 
who only know religion in the narrow form of which I have 
spoken ; but if you remind them that modern humanitarianism 
has nothing to show in practical result in comparison with the 
grand work of Catholic charity, they reply that this work is 
vitiated by the motive of being done for God rather than solely 
for humanity. They are not aware that all other duties are in- 
cluded in the supreme duty of serving God, as all the light of 
our material world emanates from the sun. Remove that great 
central light, and what artificial substitute can take its place ? 
So good works undertaken without the motive of divine charity 
are but rays of artificial light, transient and unsatisfactory." 

"But surely," said Miss Bertram, "you will allow that one 
may love one's fellow-man without loving God ? " 

" After a manner yes," said D'Antignac ; " but not as if the 
central sun were in its place. You realize what the old cavalier 
meant in the noble lines : 

' I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honor more.' 

Can you not, therefore, realize that a man must love his fellow- 
beings better for loving God supremely?" 

Sibyl shook her head. " I am afraid that I know very little 
of what is meant by loving God," she said. 

11 Modern philosophers have certainly made him unknown, if 
not ' unknowable,' to the generation they have educated," said 
D'Antignac. " But for all that he is to be known by all who 
choose to seek him. And knowing him " the pale face lighted 
as with a flame " none can fail to love him." 

They were simple words, yet, winged as they were straight 
from the ardent soul, it was to Sibyl Bertram as if they revealed 
a world of which she knew nothing, and before which she stood 
in awe and wonder. Suffering, sacrifice what meaning could 
such words have to souls which were filled with the love that 
seemed suddenly to shine on her like a light from the suffering- 
stamped face of this man ? 

Just then there was the stir of new arrivals, and two or three 
people evidently intimate friends of D'Antignac came forward 
to his couch. Sibyl drew back, and in doing so found herself be- 
side Egerton, to whom she said: 

" I have you to thank for being here, Mr. Egerton. I should 
never have thought of coming but for your advice." 



1883.] ARMINE. 701 

" I hope," he said, " that you do not regret having followed it" 

" Do you know me so little as to imagine that possible ? 
How could I regret finding myself in the most rarefied atmos- 
phere I have ever breathed ? I am inhaling it with delight." 

" I thought that it was an atmosphere which would please 
you," he said, with a smile. 

" If you really thought so you paid me a compliment which 
I appreciate. What an intellectual pleasure it is to listen to talk 
such as I have heard on all sides since I have been here ! And 
as for M. d'Antignac well, I have never before seen any one 
in the least like him ; but if you hear of my sitting all the time 
literally as well as metaphorically at his feet you need not be 
surprised." 

Egerton laughed. " I cannot imagine your sitting at the feet 
of any one, either literally or metaphorically," he said. 

" That is because you do not know much about me," answered 
the young lady calmly. " I have a great capacity for hero- 
worship, but I have never up to this time found the hero on 
whom to expend it. But pray tell me who is the lady talking to 
M. d'Antignac now? She has the air of a grande dame" 

11 She is a grande dame Mme. la Comtesse de St. Arnaud, 
sister of the Vicomte de Marigny and a cousin of the D'An- 
tignacs. I have seen her here before." 

" She has a striking air of distinction, and a charm of ap- 
pearance without being at all beautiful." 

" She is very like her brother. Perhaps if you saw him you 
might find another hero to your liking. He is D'Antignac's 
closest friend, and, I presume, a man after his own heart." 

" He seems to have a great variety of very different friends, 
this M. d'Antignac," said Miss Bertram. " By the way, did you 
not promise that I should meet your Socialist if I came here ? " 

" Duchesne ? Good Heaven, no ! That would be a little too 
much even for D'Antignac's tolerance. I only said you might 
meet his daughter, but not on an evening when they receive 
generally. I am quite sure that Mile. Duchesne has too much 
sense for that. The Comtesse de St. Arnaud, for example, might 
be surprised to meet the daughter of the man who is at this 
moment most vigorously opposing her brother's election." 

" Really, this is very charming ! " said Miss Bertram. " It is 
my ideal of a salon, where people of the most different tastes and 
opinions can meet on neutral ground, and where there is a cen- 
tral mind of intelligence high enough and sympathy wide enough 
to attract them all." 



ARMINE. [Aug., 

" There is certainly that here," said Egerton, looking at the 
man who lay on his pillows with interest so keen and chanty so 
gentle imprinted on every line of his face. 

" You called him a hero," said Miss Bertram, following the 
direction of his eyes, " but do you know that he looks to me 
more like a saint? " 

Egerton might have answered that saintliness is the high- 
est form and perfection of heroism ; but he was prevented from 
making any answer at all by the appearance of Miss Dorrance, 
who from some point suddenly swept down upon her friend. 

" Have you had enough of it, Sibyl ? " she asked. " If so, I 
think we might take leave. Oh ! how do you do, Mr. Egerton ? 
You see here we are ! Sibyl would give me no peace until I 
came. And now I suppose that she will be wanting to come all 
the time, for I think she has at last found an atmosphere suffi- 
ciently exalted to suit her. I confess that it is a little too exalted 
for me. I like something more sublunary ; but no doubt that 
is owing to my unfortunate want of taste. I do think M. d'An- 
tignac perfectly charming, however, and if I could fancy myself 
falling in love with anybody I believe I should fall in love with 
him." 

Miss Bertram drew her straight, dark brows together in a 
frown. 

" It seems to me," she said, " that there are some people who 
should be exempt from the association of such an idea." 

" Do you think it a very terrible idea ? " said Miss Dorrance, 
opening her eyes. " I thought it flattering at least I meant it 
that way. What do you think, Mr. Egerton? Is it not a com- 
pliment to say that one is inclined to fall in love with a person ? " 

" I should certainly consider it a compliment if you were 
to say that you were inclined to fall in love with me," replied 
Egerton. 

"Of course you would, and you would be -a monster of in- 
gratitude if you considered it otherwise. But Sibyl well, Sibyl 
is so exaltee that one never knows how she will look upon any- 
thing." 

" I look upon the use of French terms in English conversa- 
tion as very objectionable, especially when they are used to stig- 
matize one unjustly," said Sibyl, with a smile. " If you are 
anxious to go, Laura, I am quite ready ; but I must thank you 
again, Mr. Egerton, for having put me in the way of coming 
here." 



1883.] A RHINE. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



703 



SIBYL BERTRAM was right in saying that she had a capacity 
for hero-worship which only needed the appearance of the hero 
in order to declare itself ; but she had also too fine a sense of the 
essential characteristics of heroism to be deceived by any ordinary 
counterfeit. And since heroes do not abound in life, especially 
in the conventional order of life in which her lot was cast, she 
had fallen into a state of scepticism by no means extraordinary 
in a nature so 'ideal in its tendencies and so fastidious in its 
tastes. 

And to this mood Mr. Talford played the part of a well-bred 
Mephistopheles. His quiet but absolute disbelief in anything 
exalted ; his positive conviction that selfishness, pure and simple, 
dictated the conduct of every human being who was not a mad- 
man ; his easy cynicism and creed of worldly materialism, which 
he made no attempt to conceal, and which a wide experience of 
life seemed to justify these things were not without their effect 
upon Sibyl, though it was an effect which Egerton failed to un- 
derstand. She was not inconsistently tolerating this cynical man 
of the world while amusing herself with certain high ideals by 
which other people were uncompromisingly tried, but was rather 
deliberately asking herself whether this cynicism was not, after 
all, jthe true philosophy of life, and her ideals mere baseless 
dreams. 

For it must be remembered that the enthusiasm of which she 
was capable, the aspirations which she felt toward noble ends, 
had absolutely nothing to feed upon. The life of a young lady 
in commonplace society affords perhaps as little scope for any- 
thing of an exalted nature as can possibly be imagined, unless 
the great force of religion enters this life and by its wondrous 
alchemy transmutes the performance of ordinary duties into 
great deeds. But in the society in which Sibyl moved this force 
had no existence. It is a society which keeps up a bowing ac- 
quaintance with God, and which goes to church (in a new toi- 
lette) on Sunday with a comfortable sense of performing a vague 
duty and at the same time passing an hour or so in an agreeable 
manner, hearing some good music and probably some novel doc- 
trine, which can afterwards be discussed with much individual 
freedom of opinion ; but to religion in any vital sense its very air 
is fatal. For its standards are not only of the world, but of the 
most trivial interests of the world its fashions, amusements, and 



704 A R MINE. [Aug., 

scandals. To dine, to dress, to drive, to cultivate distinguished 
acquaintances and know the last items of fashionable gossip 
these are its supreme ends ; and where in them is there food 
to satisfy an eager mind or an immortal soul? Surrounded by 
these trivialities, Sibyl had sought refuge in a literature which 
fascinated her by the high ideal of human conduct which it pre- 
sented, by the teaching of an altruistic benevolence and of the 
possible ultimate perfection of humanity. This ideal fired her 
imagination and seemed to offer satisfaction to all the craving of 
which she had been conscious craving for some supreme and 
noble end, the pursuit of which she felt to be' necessary if life 
was to be of value. 

But when she looked around for the disciples who practised 
these teachings of enthusiastic masters, whose eloquence and 
genius have for a time blinded many to the baselessness of their 
hopes, she found that instead of placing their happiness in the 
happiness of others, and of directing every effort to the eleva- 
tion of the race, men and women were going their old accus- 
tomed ways and only accepting that part of the teaching which 
relieved them of responsibility to a higher power. Then came 
the tempter, in the form of Marmaduke Talford, to declare with 
a tone of assurance and authority : " You and all like you are 
dreamers, who know nothing of the actual conditions of life. 
Self-interest is, always has been, and always will be the basis of 
men's deeds ; and to fancy that any motive for conduct can be 
devised strong enough to supplant self-interest is to fancy what 
all past history and present experience belie. Accept, then, the 
plain fact that the material goods of life are the only things of 
which we can be certain, and its material pleasures the only ob- 
jects worth our pursuit." 

Now, it may readily be conceived that this was not a doctrine 
likely to please one whose nature yearned strongly and pas- 
sionately toward ideal good, unless in the recoil of disappoint- 
ment to which such a nature is subject. And it was a recoil 
which had set in strongly with Sibyl, as the impatient scorn 
which puzzled Egerton abundantly testified. " Why do you 
trifle away existence so ignobly? Why do not you, who are 
free as only a man can be free, find some high task worthy of a 
man's doing? " was the meaning that underlay all her contemp- 
tuous speeches. And it followed of necessity, had Egerton been 
able to perceive it, that she would not have been inclined to 
manifest this contempt to one whom she had felt to be incapable 
either of realizing or following the high intangible ideal that was 



1883.] ARMINE. 705 

in her thoughts. With Talford she showed none of it, because 
she was too keen an observer not to understand that he must be 
taken on a lower plane, as that which he defined himself to be 
a man of the world, worldly, and a materialist of the most pro- 
nounced type. No good to chide him with lack of ideals and 
aims at which he only smiled. And so it came to pass that 
Sibyl began to question whether this man, whose knowledge of 
life was so wide and varied, might not have grasped its true 
meaning, and if it might not be the part of wisdom to put away 
from her for ever dreams and hopes destined apparently never to 
be realized. For there is no compromise possible with a nature 
like hers. It either believes and hopes all or it believes and 
hopes nothing ; and the influence which was acting on her like a 
slow poison might have accomplished its end had not that which 
we call chance led her within the different influence of one whose 
heroism and whose sincerity she could not doubt. 

Something of this she said to her mother, though not a great 
deal ; for she was never expansive, unless sure of sympathy, and 
although there was much affection there was not much sympathy 
between mother and daughter. " I feel," she said as they sat 
at breakfast together the morning after her visit to the D'An- 
tignacs', " as if I had received a mental stimulant and spiritual 
refreshment. I have had the sensation lately of one half-starved 
both mentally and spiritually ; but I was fed and strengthened 
last night, and I am able again to make an act of faith in the 
possibility of human nobleness." 

" My dear Sibyl ! " said her mother in mild remonstrance. 
" Half-starved mentally and spiritually, and only able since last 
night to make an act of faith in human nobleness ! How very 
unflattering to all your friends and acquaintances!" 

Sibyl laughed. " You see I was not thinking of all my friends 
and acquaintances, but only of the truth," she said. " I did not 
know how nearly starved I was until the relief of refreshment 
came. And such relief! Mamma, you must go to see M. 
d'Antignac. I have never known any one in the least like him. 
He is so strong and so simple, so patient and so gentle ! He 
seems to look one through ; but one does not mind it at all, there 
is so much comprehension and sympathy in the penetration." 
" I don't know that I should care about being looked 
through," said JVIrs. Bertram ; " but he must be a very interest- 
ing person, and I am glad that you like him so much." 

" He is much more than an interesting person," said Sibyl. 
" I know what interesting people are. They please and amuse 
VOL. xxxvu. 45 



706 ARMINE. [Aug., 

one for a time by their cleverness or their wit or their origi- 
nality. I have been interested by a great many such people ; 
but when one gets to the end of them, when one knows all that 
one has to expect, there is an end of interest." 

" Yes," said Mrs. Bertram, who knew or thought she knew 
her daughter on this point, "and when you get to the end of 
M. d'Antignac there will be an end of interest in him also." 

" If you saw him you would not think so," answered Sibyl. 
" I can hardly express the manner in which he impresses me, 
but it is as if the interest he awakens does not depend so much 
on his personal qualities charming though they are as on cer- 
tain great truths and principles of life which he seems to have 
grasped most fully and to be able to draw upon with a wonderful 
simplicity and directness. Absolutely there does not seem to be 
any self-consciousness about him. And when one feels one's self 
to be bristling with that very objectionable quality, one appre- 
ciates all the repose and strength that is the result of its ab- 
sence." 

" You are certainly very enthusiastic about M. d'Antignac, 
and not very complimentary to yourself," said Mrs. Bertram, 
smiling. " Are you ' bristling with self-consciousness ' ? I don't 
think any one would find it out." 

" / find it out," said Sibyl, with a smile and a sigh. 

She did not pursue the subject farther, but a few days later 
her surprise and pleasure were great at receiving a visit from 
Mile. d'Antignac, who had told her that, though always glad to 
receive her friends, she seldom paid visits. Remembering this, 
Sibyl, as she greeted her, said quickly and cordially: 

" I am much flattered that you have thought of me enough to 
come to see me." 

" I am sure that you are well used to being thought of suffi- 
ciently for that or any other purpose," said Mile. d'Antignac, 
with a smile. " But I must be quite frank and tell you that it is 
as much my brother's thought as my own that has brought me. 
' Go to see Miss Bertram, and ask her to come and see me again,' 
he said. And I assure you that such a request from Raoul is 
flattering." 

" I feel it so," answered Sibyl. " It must be simply his kind- 
ness* He must know how much I wish to see him again." 

11 Perhaps he does know "it ; sometimes I think that there 
are few things which he does not know or divine," said Mile. 
d'Antignac. " But, however that may be, his interest in you 
and his desire to see you again] are most undoubted. I foretold 



1883.] ARMINE. 



707 



that it would be so," she said, with another smile. " I thought 
that you would please him, though I was not prepared for the 
determination he evinces not to lose" sight of you." 

"I must think better of myself since I am able to please 
M. d'Antignac," said Sibyl. "It seems to me incredible, for 
while I was talking to him I had a feeling as if he were looking 
me through and thinking what a poor, crude creature I was. 
But I did not mind the judgment. It seemed to be exercised 
with the compassion and gentleness of an angel." Then she 
suddenly flushed. " Perhaps this sounds to you extravagant," 
she said. " But it is really what I felt ; and although my friends 
will tell you that I am prone to sudden enthusiasms, / tell you 
that these enthusiasms have been for things rather than persons. 
Clever and original people have often interested me, but I was 
never before conscious of the least inclination to bow down as 
before something higher than myself. Indeed, it is I who have 
always judged. I never before felt myself in the position of 
being judged." 

" It is good for us that we should bow down occasionally, even 
in the most human point of view," said Mile. d'Antignac, looking 
kindly at the brilliant young face, " else we are apt to become 
spiritually and intellectually arrogant. And it is good, too, that 
we should be judged now and then by some one more impartial 
and less intolerant than ourselves. For to judge himself justly is 
impossible to man or woman either. One is either too lenient 
or too severe with one's self. Do not infer from this, however, 
that I think Raoul was really judging you. He was only ' tak- 
ing the measure ' of your mind, with a penetration which he pos- 
sesses in singular degree ; and the result is that he wishes to- 
see you again. I think that speaks for itself." 

"Almost too flatteringly," answered Sibyl, smiling. "But ] 
need hardly say that I shall be delighted to respond to his wish and 
to gratify my own desire. May I ask when he receives visitors ? 

" Any and every day after noon when he is well enough. But 
I must warn you that very often his most intimate friends come 
and he cannot see them ; for there are times when suffering con- 
quers even him and he exists simply in a state of agony, 
who know him best know that they have always the risk to run, 
but they do not mind it. They come, and if he cannot see 
they go away, to come again." 

" Surely a disappointment is little for them to bear when / 
is bearing so much," said Sibyl. " And is there no hope of, cure, 
of alleviation ? Can he never be better ? " 



;o8 ARMINE. [Aug., 

" Never here. He does not hope or dream of it. All his 
hopes are set in eternity, where alone he can know again the 
sense of existence without pain." 

" It must make him wish to hasten there," said Sibyl in a low- 
tone. 

" You would think so, and no doubt he does Jong for it in a 
manner we cannot understand ; but I have yet to hear the first 
murmur of impatience from his lips. And more than once he 
has said deliberately that, notwithstanding his suffering, he is 
more than willing to remain here as long as God has the small- 
est work for him to do." 

" It seems to me that his is a great work to aid, to counsel, 
to influence so many," said Sibyl. " I can judge what his influ- 
ence must be by the effect which he has had upon me. And 
when one thinks that a man who is a prisoner, tied to his bed 
and racked with suffering, can do so much to make the bur- 
den of life lighter for others, what shame should we not feel 
who spend our days in talking of great deeds, yet do not the 
least ! " 

" The least is often the greatest," said Mile. d'Antignac, un- 
derstanding the ring of self-contempt in the voice. " There is 
nothing more useful for us to remember than that. And when 
we see the number of those who, in undertaking to set the world 
right, are only setting it wrong, we may be glad to be pre- 
vented from trying our hand at the same business, with pro- 
bably the same result. But " she rose " these reflections are 
likely to lead one far afield, and I must not stay longer. I shall 
hope to see you soon, and I echo Raoul's wish as well as my 
own in saying that I trust you may like us well enough to make 
one of our inner circle of familiar and habitual visitors." 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



1883.] "MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." ;o 9 



" MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." 

IN the Atlantic Monthly for June last Mr. Oliver Johnson 
contributes an article under the above title in advocacy of 
teaching a system of morality in the public schools. The writer's 
style, though not without some force, is hardly up to the lite- 
rary standard of the Atlantic, and he fails to grasp the subject 
of American education. But he strikes us as a man of strong 
benevolent tendencies, more impressed, perhaps, by the philan- 
thropical and social aspect of things than by their religious ; a 
man moved more by his benevolent sentiments than his intellect, 
one who readily takes up any movement that professes to help 
the great body of the people. We call attention to his article 
because he represents a new departure among the public-school 
advocates, and especially for the honest frankness of his ad- 
missions. 

Until recently it has only been by a lofty condescension that 
we were permitted to say that there were two sides to the school 
question. Whatever breath could be spared from praising the 
system was expended in indignant condemnation of its opponents, 
and that with the most unjust and injurious suspicions and often 
very violent epithets. The advocates of parental and religious 
systems, having exhausted argument, were forced to be content 
with a standing protest and with the prophecy that time and ex- 
perience would plead their cause with fatal success. The event 
has verified the prediction. Mr. Johnson confesses failure, and 
he is but one of a multitude. The people were deluded into 
confiding to the public-school system the task of supplying the 
republic with good citizens. It has failed to do it. The repub- 
lic is becoming full of very bad citizens. Citizens were better, 
as a rule, when men were trained in schools chosen by their pa- 
rents and organized and conducted by persons and societies pro- 
fessedly religious. Furthermore, many earnest Protestants have 
laid the blame of the general decay of religion on the common 
schools. Sunday-schools and home could do something ; but 
in the common run of cases the mental faculties of the child 
had been fully taxed at school. The big mill under the school- 
board had left only chaff and bran for the little mills at home 
and in church. The regular business of education having been 
unreligious, the result has been a generation little inclined to 



710 "MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." [Aug., 

spiritual things. Hence in Protestant religious journals, in de- 
nominational conventions, from independent pulpits, startling 
voices have been heard ; and what they say is that, after all, 
the child has a soul, whose destiny is eternal, and it is a crime 
against him to crowd the theory and practice of winning eter- 
nal life out of the common business of his education. 

Distinguished educators, too, like President Eliot of Harvard 
and President Seelye of Amherst, have uttered like admonitions. 
Even Emerson declared " that the intellectual tuition of society 
is going on out of all proportion faster than its moral train- 
ing." But what seems to have fairly stampeded the public-school 
forces is that Mr. Herbert Spencer, when he visited us last win- 
ter, instead of praising our glorious school system actually con- 
demned it. The writer in the Atlantic tells us that he declared 
that the notion that education is a panacea for political evils is 
a delusion ; the fitting of men for free institutions is " essentially 
[Mr. Spencer's own words] a question of character, and only in 
a secondary degree a question of knowledge " ; and that " not 
lack of information, but lack of certain moral sentiments, is the 
root of the evil." 

So, says Mr. Johnson, " fierce controversies have arisen in 
many places, and are still raging, to the great detriment of the 
schools." " The Catholics almost unanimously, and not a few 
Protestants,. . . unite in pronouncing ' godless 'the schools in 
which the pupils are not instructed in the duties they owe to 
God." " The necessity of some more efficient method of teach- 
ing morality in the schools is generally acknowledged." 

" We have come, it would seem," continues our writer in the 
Atlantic, "to a time when the whole subject needs to be care- 
fully considered." Are not these important admissions ? When 
that side begins to admit anything at all we may report pro- 
gress. When the admissions touch the question of morality we 
have reached an epoch in the controversy. " The state," says 
Mr. Johnson, " must no longer content itself with imparting secu- 
lar and scientific instruction alone. The consciences and the af- 
fections, or, as Mr. Spencer says, the moral sentiments, of children 
must be cultivated, or the quality of citizenship will so deterio- 
rate as to endanger the republic. If the state is incapacitated for 
this work, then it has no excuse for engaging at all in the busi- 
ness of education and should take itself out of the way, leaving a 
clear field for other and more appropriate agencies." And if we 
ask him just what system of morality shall be taught, he answers 
that we shall agree upon a compromise code of morals. It 



1383.] "MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." 7ll 

should not be difficult, he argues, for infidels, atheists, and ag- 
nostics to be satisfied, because, he affirms, the Christian religion 
behef m revelation or even in God, are not bound up with our 
civil polity, and a system that might be called American moral- 
ity could dispense with these beliefs. Morality may be sue. 
cessfully cultivated by itself without reference to the superna- 
turahsm which forms so large a part of the current religions." 
There are many noble men, pure in every relation of life and 
devoted to the welfare of the human race, who frankly confess 
that they have no clearly-defined faith in God, no sense of his 
presence, no belief in supernatural revelation." 

That orthodox Protestants may also be contented he proves 
by his own testimony, and particularly by quoting at length 
from Dr. Spear, of Brooklyn, a prominent Presbyterian divine. 
" There is need," he sums up, " of an educational symposium of 
representative men of all shades of religious belief and specula- 
tionCatholic and Protestant, orthodox and liberal, Jew and ag- 
nosticto consider this subject," and "to agree upon a code of 
school morals embodying all that is essential and offending no 
honest scruples." 

Now, such an absorption of the parental jurisdiction as the 
school system amounts to, such an encroachment on the rights 
of unwilling minorities, could only be endured for the sake of its 
undisputed success. Here is a confession of failure. It is here 
admitted that no system of instruction can be a success which 
ignores morality, and the schools, for this reason, have failed to 
maintain American citizenship at as high a standard as that 
at which they found it. It is confessed that the schools have 
failed to make good citizens because the teaching of morality 
was left out. Furthermore for we are entitled to claim the 
logical inference if a system of schooling embracing a moral 
training had been adopted (or rather the older and more rational 
systems fostered and developed) the men and women of our 
generation would have been the wiser and better for it. The 
admission is tantamount to a confession of the immorality of 
unmorality. Mr. Johnson is entitled to our thanks for his frank- 
ness and our admiration for his fearless exposure, in the interests 
of truth, of the one American failure which may be called na- 
tional. Whatever we may think of Mr. Johnson's remedies, we 
must admit that he lays bare the ulcer : his diagnosis of the 
malady is complete. 

But we are by no means as much edified by his purpose of 
amendment as by his confession, for he has no idea of a radical 



712 " MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS" [Aug., 

reformation. He does not wish to realize (for if he did he is not 
a man to conceal it) that the fault is in the original construction 
of the state system ; that it lies in the foundation ; that the crack 
that seams the walls and threatens ruin to system, normals, in- 
stitutes, principals, superintendents, and salaries is owing to the 
foundations resting on a quicksand ; that it is not owing to a 
defective jointing up above or a dearth of moral sand or ethical 
lime in the mason-work of the superstructure ; but that the fault 
is original, in the idea and design and plan, in the very founda- 
tion and location. He still labors under the delusion that the 
state is so much more competent to teach children than any free 
systems which parents may originate in concert with their re- 
ligious advisers, that even morality must take its chance for gen- 
eral diffusion among the departments and grades and examina- 
tions and inspections of our education by law established. We 
sincerely hope that these confessions of Mr. Johnson and his 
party will clear the ground, on which they will not be again per- 
mitted to build. 

The truth is that these gentlemen seem infatuated with the 
notion that the end and aim of school-teaching should be uni- 
formity. It seems idle to ask them, Why not do as England 
does help along any free- school that is worth helping ; or, as 
they do in Canada, have separate school-boards, one for religious 
and another for secular schools, and taxpayer and parent left to 
free choice between them ; or why not try a kind of " local 
option," each city and county to elect for itself whether it shall 
have a variety of schools to choose from or a cramping unifor- 
mity to be endured, the state only enforcing a tax levy suffi- 
cient for a general diffusion of elementary schooling ? Why not, 
as it is admitted that the whole subject is to be reconsidered 
why not try anything rather than what has already failed ; any- 
thing rather than an army of public officials paid to form the 
consciences of the American people? But no; any such plan 
would soon show, at least in very many cases, what a difference 
there is between teaching school because you can do it and 
teaching school because you can secure an appointment from a 
petty office-holder. 

We have already permitted Mr. Johnson to suggest his 
method of moral teaching: a compromise code of morals is to 
be adopted. That is to say, this motley people is to be repre- 
sented in a moral code. The principles of morality are to be 
agreed on by a board of delegates of all religious and anti-re- 
ligious bodies ; it is to be accepted by the school-board or by 



1883.] ^MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS:' 713 

the legislature ; it is to be put into the hands of teachers to be 
imparted to the children. And so the country is to be saved. 
Of course we are to take for granted the spirit, zeal, and 
unction with which this new gospel will be taught. But may 
we make so bold as to inquire into its subject-matter? Will it 
not be a most mongrel morality, this moral code of compromises 
and concessions a bit from Tom Paine, another from Jesus of 
Nazareth, some sentences from Benjamin Franklin, then Saul 
of Tarsus, something, too, from atheistic Frenchmen, all sifted 
and sorted by a school-board nominated at a ward caucus and 
elected amid the turbulence of party strife ? And if morals are 
to be taught in our public schools the question arises, What is to 
be the standard of morals? Apropos to this question we find the 
following paragraph in a recent number of the Journal of Edu- 
cation : 

"The legislature of Vermont has wisely forbidden the use of tobacco 
by teachers and pupils in its public schools. It is none too early to begin 
the work of stemming the filthy tide that threatens to overflow even the 
youthful, green pastures of American life. One of the greatest trials of 
a clean American citizen to-day is the omnipresent curse of the weed in 
every disgusting variety of its use. Even the palatial Pullman car, for 
whose comfort you pay your last spare dollar, is everywhere pervaded by 
the stench of the smoker who forces himself in at one end, or your 
stomach is turned by the dreadful performance of the honorable chewer at 
his spittoon. Why is it that tobacco, of all things, seems to extinguish the 
gentleman in the most kindly and cultivated man ? A Christian gentle- 
man, even parson or priest, full of the most genial attentions and consid- 
erate to the last degree of your comfort in other ways, will puff you into a 
nausea or spoil an interview by making himself a tobacco-squirt, without 
the slightest suspicion that he is doing aught to give you trouble or is 
making life itself a hideous burden while in his presence. In this respect 
tobacco may indeed be regarded as ' the remainder of wrath ' that, spite of 
our theories of Christian perfection, still inheres in the infirm human nature 
of the saintliest man." 

Where are we to stop, if the legislature is going to deal, 
'through the schools, with moral infirmities which "inhere in the 
human nature of the saintliest man"? What are we coming 
to? men will say. They have gathered our children into these 
schools, and have put foot on our hearthstones, and now, under 
the name of moral precept, they have laid hands on our snuff- 
boxes and stopped our cigars ; presently they will be in our 
kitchens, and we shall have to eat baked beans and graham brez 
and pumpkin-pie, and be forced to drink hard cider ! 

It is an amazing thought that the public-school author 
are willing to assume the responsibility of making the American 



714 "MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." [Aug., 

people moral. How, it may be asked, will such a proposition 
be received by religious people ? How will they look upon a 
public, state-paid institution for teaching morals ? How will 
they regard the new species of morality to be called state mo- 
rality ? How will persons fervently given to religious practices 
look upon a system of compromises in the domain of right and 
wrong ? We think that it will be excessively offensive to them. 
In such matters religious souls are not apt to be compromisers. 
What seems prejudice, narrowness, bigotry to worldly men is 
often dearer than life itself to souls hungering and thirsting after 
justice. Compromises and symposiums and concessions are de- 
testable to earnest religious men of all sects when it is ques- 
tion of right living. They will say that as life at school is the 
life of after-years in miniature, so any attempt to train boys and 
girls to a virtuous life without supernatural motives will tend 
to make them men and women without God in the world and 
without hope. The maxims of worldly honor will forestall those 
of the Gospel. There may, indeed, be a species of orderly life 
compatible with a morality excluding God and a future life. 
But whatever soul has the least tincture of faith in the sublime 
truths of revealed religion will look upon an invitation to a 
symposium to form a godless code of morals to be taught to 
Christ's little ones as an invitation to a synagogue of Satan. If, 
as Mr. Johnson admits, the schools are objectionable to many 
Protestants because they are godless, where is the sense in 
helping them out with godless morality ? It is no very encour- 
aging omen that Mr. Johnson can quote ministers in good stand^ 
ing favoring a moral code for their children which lacks Christ 
as the law-giver ; no doubt there is a truckling spirit of compro- 
mise to be met with, extending the right hand of fellowship to 
scoffers and atheists. But we scarcely think that it would go so 
far as to sit in a symposium to eliminate the Deity from the 
moral conduct of men. Earnest Protestants, men and women to 
whom daily use of the Scripture is as much a delight as a duty, 
who believe that the heart should be renewed from on high, who 
have an unshaken conviction of Christ's divinity and the reality 
and need of his atonement such persons, it is to be hoped, will 
now begin to speak out, and perhaps to combine for a reorgani- 
zation of public schooling in the direction of liberty and religion. 
We hear them lamenting their dwindling churches, the thin ranks 
of their clergy, the masses of the people corroded with world- 
liness, everybody reading and multitudes believing the plain- 
est atheism and materialism, the learned world threatened with 



1883.] "MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." 715 

complete domination under men whose shameful unbelief is their 
boast, the marriage-tie bound and loosed in profane courts like 
the common agreements of business partnership ; and many of 
them say that all this is because the present generation was 
trained up in schools from which religious teaching and teachers 
were banished. Other causes may have helped, but only helped, 
to this miserable condition of things among non-Catholics : child- 
hood's noblest efforts, brightest hours, were spent in places, and 
amid surroundings, and subject to influences from which the 
laws of the land had banished religion. Unreligious education 
has made an unreligious people. If, in addition, the Protestant 
churches permit the state to teach their children a morality 
expressly and purposely unreligious, they may as well give up 
altogether. 

The opposition of the Catholic Church towards schools that 
are a dangerous negative evil will not be different in kind but in 
degree when they become positively dangerous. As the school 
system stands it teaches an evil lesson. It leaves wrong im- 
pressions ; it induces unreligious habits of mind ; it suffers ra- 
tional beings to grow to maturity with moral vacancies which 
become aching voids in after-years ; it is a public, powerful, vast 
influence which declares by its very existence that religion is not 
a weighty enough matter to hold first place in the preparation for 
life. Still, it has all along been protested that the defects in 
question were inevitable, were a tribute offered to fraternal uni- 
formity or a necessity for general diffusion of knowledge ; and if 
Catholics have never for a moment accepted any such plea as 
a valid excuse, they have at least been willing to admit its sin- 
cerity, and by inculcating especially strict family discipline, and 
by especially laborious efforts of the clergy and laity in the Sun- 
day-schools, have been able to tolerate the use of the unreligious 
schools till Catholic ones could be hastened into existence to 
supply Christian training. But matters will be quite otherwise 
when persons or systems shall undertake to actually teach mo- 
rality to Catholic children. Whatever Protestants may be will- 
ing to do about the matter, this much is plain : when school-com- 
mittees formulate systems of morals and undertake to have them 
taught in the public schools, the school grievance will be some- 
thing quite different in the eyes of Catholic parents from what it 
is at present. 

In their view of education Catholics but hold ground once oc- 
cupied by all classes in this country. To form good citizens was 
never deemed the office of the state in our early history, but just 



716 "MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." [Aug., 

the reverse : it was the duty of good citizens to form the state. 
It was the belief of the founders of our republic that men had 
reached a point of intelligence and virtue sufficient to discern 
and establish the public order suited to their common needs. 
To perpetuate this capability in individual men the chief resource 
was to let them alone. The public law had much to say about 
buying and selling, importing and manufacturing, making war 
and peace, and punishing criminals. But touching the moral and 
religious side of human nature what may be termed the let-alone 
character of our institutions was most carefully defined. Every- 
body admitted the necessity of elementary schooling, and so he 
did of a widely-diffused press. If one would insist on knowing 
why a state press should not therefore be established and main- 
tained by taxes, the answer would be instant : because it would 
not be free, and even if its sheets were given away it would not 
create a free spirit in men. Just so with state schools. A school 
endowed by the state and managed by public officers is not a 
free school, because it belongs to the state and not to parents, and 
is as much of an anomaly among- us as a state newspaper would 
be. In the golden age of our country nobody dreamed that in 
order to have good citizens the training-up of children should be 
made a state monopoly. What had made Americans capable of 
achieving independence was relied on to enable them to preserve 
its benefits. That Americans should merge their social privi- 
leges or their family autonomy or their religious differences was 
never desired or dreamt of at all. Rather the very contrary. 
Character formed in a spirit of individual independence was to 
be the character of the free men who should perpetuate the re- 
public, as it had been that of the free men who had founded 
it. And in every substantial particular that purpose has been 
maintained, and been, on the whole, approved as wise and prac- 
tical by experience, excepting that the mass of our people have 
permitted the invasion of the most sacred of all human sanc- 
tuaries -home by that public power whose interference they 
reject in every other domain of private prerogative. They have 
been misled by the plea of order, uniformity, security, econo- 
my, forgetting (let us hope not permanently) that these have 
been the excuses of usurpation since the world began. It should 
be our pride that an American is of the strong, free temper that 
makes him a good citizen, not from any training he gets from 
state systems, but because God has made us capable of acquiring, 
by the precept and example of our parents and by the practice 
of religion, that free obedience to lawful authority, that active 



1883.] "MORALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS." 717 

interest in the common welfare, that heroic spirit of sacrifice for 
the public defence, which must be the common virtues of a free 
people. And this is the morality that we need, and it is under 
the jurisdiction of parental authority arid in the atmosphere of 
religion that it can alone be taught The state, indeed, may well 
concern itself in the matter, but only to aid and encourage the 
endeavors of faithful parents, and reserve its dominating influence 
in education to the training of children whom the providence of 
God, in the loss of their parents or their parents' criminal neg- 
lect, have thrown upon public charity. 

As for the new morality, Herbert Spencer's and Mr. John- 
son's is well enough taught by the common jail without putting 
it into the common school. It amounts to this : to be good is to 
tread the path to the palace of the millionaire ; to be bad tends 
to the poor-house and the jail. None are more familiar with 
such morality than they who have never entered a school in their 
lives. 

The appliances for the preservation of morality under a gov- 
ernment such as ours must necessarily be private or the spon- 
taneous creation of private conviction and zeal. If we inquire 
what they are, we answer that the press, the lecture-room, the 
social society, and the multiform influence of men and women who 
reverence God and love their neighbor have very much to do 
with making good citizens. But these are not to be compared 
to the great trinity of the visible action of Providence in shap- 
ing the lives of men the family, the church, the school ; and these 
three are one. When the American people made the schooling of 
the children a purely state affair they undertook not simply to 
separate what it is the divine will should be joined together, but 
they cut off from the school training the most potent of all bene- 
ficial influences in forming the character of good citizens the 
active, spontaneous co-operation of parents and the hallowing 
forces of religion. 



7i 8 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Aug., 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

LEAVES FROM THE ANNALS OF THE SISTERS OF MERCY. In three volumes. 
Volume ii. : containing sketches of the Order in England, at the Crimea, 
in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. By a member of the Order 
of Mercy. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1883. 

A year ago volume i. of these Annals was noticed here, and it is plea- 
sant to learn that its great success with the reading public " was a genuine 
surprise to the writer." But the present volume is even more entertain- 
ing than its predecessor, while its contents are very much more varied. 
Almost every page teems with anecdote or with reminiscences of noted per- 
sons. Beginning with the first foundation of the Sisters of Mercy in Eng- 
land, in 1839, in that part of London south of the Thames known as Ber- 
mondsey, the author sketches the history of all the chief establishments of 
the Sisters of Mercy throughout England, Scotland, and the English colo- 
nies of the South Pacific. And, speaking of Bermondsey, it was there, ac- 
cording to the Annals, that the first Gothic church edifice was erected in 
England by Catholics since the " Reformation," and that edifice was also 
the first in all that time erected opening on a public highway. 

Among the ecclesiastics who appear in this volume, some of them with 
an outline of their life and others as the subjects of anecdotes, are Bishop 
Griffiths, Bishop (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, Bishop Grant, and Bishop 
(now Archbishop) Croke. Dr. Pusey also appears. He was present, it 
seems, in the Baggot Street convent in Dublin during the profession of 
some sisters, and a letter of the foundress of the order, Mother McAuley, 
refers to his visit : " We had a long visit from Dr. Pusey, Oxford, whose 
new opinions have created so much interest. His appearance is that of a 
negligent author, such as some of the poets are described ; his manner most 
pleasing; his countenance is not expressive of a strong mind, but in con- 
versation he does not betray any imbecility except the wanderings of all 
Protestants." 

The chapters dealing with the noble work of the Irish and English Sis- 
ters of Mercy in the military hospitals about Constantinople and Sebasto- 
pol during the Crimean War will arrest the attention of the greater num- 
ber of readers. To us who are familiar with what was done by this same 
order of Sisters of Mercy, as well as by other religious, for the sick and 
wounded of both sides during our civil war, the hospital arrangements of 
the Crimean War look small by comparison. Yet the hospitals of Scutari, 
Koulali, and Balaklava were perhaps the very first opportunity which the 
religious of English-speaking countries had had in modern times to display 
the charity and the orderliness of charity which belong to the Catholic 
Church. How well these sisters worked is shown in the bright pages of 
the narrative in this volume and by the testimony of others who were 
witnesses. The only thing that seemed to jar on the sisters in their mili- 
tary-hospital experience was a misunderstanding of Miss Florence Night- 
ingale with the medical officers under whose directions the Sisters were. 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 719 

But Miss Nightingale's success in the organization of the nursing staffs of 
the hospitals subject to her was not at all in proportion to her good inten- 
tions, and one may easily guess the reason of this after a perusal of certain 
pages in these Annals. Full justice is done to the self-denying and intel- 
ligent labors in the hospitals of the late Miss Mary Stanley a sister of the 
late Anglican Dean of Westminster who at the same time maintained the 
most affectionate relation to the Sisters of Mercy. 

Though these Annals have been compiled principally for the use of the 
Sisters of Mercy, they contain all sorts of out-of-the-way facts connected 
with the growth of Catholicity in England and in all the widely-separated 
lands where the Sisters of Mercy have established themselves, and hence 
are a valuable contribution to the contemporary history of the Catholic 
Church. 

FAMILIAR CONFERENCES ON THE THEOLOGY OF THE SACRED HEART OF 
JESUS. By Rev. E. M. Hennessey, C.M. Chicago: Union Catholic 
Publishing Co. 1882. 

The object of Father Hennessey in publishing this volume is to provide 
priests with a year's course of instructions on the devotion to the Sacred 
Heart of Jesus, and thereby to supply a want in English Catholic litera- 
ture which has often, in the course of his missionary labors, been forced 
on his attention. His endeavor has been to lay a solid foundation for the 
devotion on that upon which all true devotion must ever rest Catholic 
dogma ; and it is in St. Thomas he has sought the exposition of that dogma. 
Devotion, if it is to be genuine, must be intelligent. The will, from which 
devotion springs, depends upon the understanding. Nothing, therefore, can 
be better than to go to the great teachers of the church, and especially 
to St. Thomas, even when it is merely a question of writing a pious book. 
This^is what gives such solidity to the earlier spiritual writings of the 
Jesuits, the fruit of their observance of the Rule, in which those devoted to 
preaching are enjoined to apply themselves in the first place to the study 
of Scripture and the holy Fathers. And, if we mistake not, it is this which 
our Holy Father Leo XIII. wishes to lead writers of our times to do. So 
far as regards St. Thomas the case is clear; his repeated injunctions pre- 
clude .doubt on this point. But what is the meaning of the recent in- 
sertion into the calendar for the whole church of the offices of the two St. 
Cyrils and of St. Justin Martyr, except the desire of the supreme head of 
the church that we should be led to a more intelligent study of their 
writings ? Father Hennessey, therefore, has done well in going to St. 
Thomas, and the result is that the intimate connection between the de- 
votion to the Sacred Heart and the most fundamental doctrines is con- 
stantly brought out, and as a consequence the object he had in view at- 
tained namely, the supplying preachers with suggestions for their confer- 
ences on the Sacred Heart. In this point of view its publication is very 
opportune and will be of great use. The ground covered is vast in its 
extent, embracing, as it does, the love of God in the creation, in the Incar- 
nation, in the redemption, in the Holy Eucharist, in heaven. The treatment 
is far from dry ; on the contrary, it has evidently been Father Hennessey's 
aim to place everything vividly before the eyes of his readers. It is in the 
execution of this laudable and necessary object that we have the chief 



720 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Aug., 1883. 

fault to find. There is too perceptible a straining after effect, an artificial 
rhetorical tone to the sentences an unnaturalness, in short, which goes far 
to nullify the object in view. Especially we must condemn the Constant 
use of alliteration. Sometimes, as we all know, its effect is pleasing ; but 
when carried to the extent to which Father Hennessey has carried it, it 
ceases, in our opinion, to be so. We have no space to give the instances 
which the one page which contains the following sentence affords : " Let 
the cool and gentle zephyrs, laden with the delicious odors of fair fruits 
and fragrant flowers, faintly, fondly fan us." The artificial character pro- 
duced by efforts of this kind goes far towards taking away the pleasure 
the reader we will not say the hearer would otherwise receive from a 
work which, besides that solid exposition of doctrine to which we have 
already alluded, opens up many far-reaching and valuable trains of thought. 
One word more before closing : Fr. Hennessey, at the end of his preface, 
says that " his impression is that any good in these Conferences, after God, 
belongs to St. Thomas of Aquinas. These shortcomings have a very dif- 
ferent source and come from himself." Now, unless Father Hennessey 
takes upon himself the responsibility for the printer's blunders we cannot 
assent to this proposition. While the type is excellent and the paper good, 
the number of misprints is very large, some of them of a ridiculous charac- 
ter, and the punctuation is far from perfect. These may be considered 
small faults ; but, after all, we must not neglect little things, nor neglect, 
when there is question of books, that " philosophy of clothes " which is 
so important when dealing with men. 

A CRITIQUE OF DESIGN-ARGUMENTS. A Historical Review and Free Ex- 
amination of the Methods in Reasoning in Natural Theology. By L. 
E. Hicks, Professor of Geology in Denison University, Granville, Ohio. 
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883. 

This work has fallen into our hands soon after reading the great trea- 
tise of Paul Janet on Final Causes a circumstance not very favorable 
to the afore-mentioned work. In reading Paul Janet we feel that we are 
dealing with a master-mind, and are carried along easily and irresistibly 
from the beginning to the end of his argument by his ample and powerful 
intellectual current. Professor Hicks seems to us like one who is striving 
to act the part of a master. There is an assumption of superior and au- 
thoritative manner which is not adequately sustained. His book is not 
wanting in evidences of both the talent and the learning of the author, yet 
it is, on the whole, disappointing, and we have found it rather tedious 
reading, as, we fear, others may who attempt the task. 

THE MONK'S PARDON. A Historical Romance of the Time of Philip IV. of 
Spain. From the French of Raoul de Navery, by Anna T. Sadlier. 
New York : Benziger Bros. 1883. 

This story is skilfully worked out and of thrilling interest. It is much 
superior to the novel by the same author entitled The Idols. 

SURE WAY TO A HAPPY MARRIAGE. THE CHRISTIAN FATHER. THE 
CHRISTIAN MOTHER. New York : Benziger Bros. 1883. 

These are cheap but neat editions of three excellent little books which 
have already received due notice in this magazine. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVII. SEPTEMBER, 1883. No. 222. 

BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.* 

THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA. 

THE first two volumes of Mr. Bancroft's History of the United 
States from the Discovery of the Continent, the distinguished and 
learned author s last revision, has recently been issued from the 
press of the Messrs. Appleton. This work is universally recog- 
nized as one of the most important contributions to American 
history ; prominent eveif 'among the works published in our lan- 
guage, and of no light standing in the literature of the world in 
our century. Few works have gone through so many editions, 
and fewer still have been translated into so many languages, 
and been published in so many different countries. The interest 
attaching to his theme, the ability and literary elegance with 
which he has written the history of the great republic, and the 
reputation and standing of the author, have all contributed to 
enhance its importance. Mr. Bancroft has added new interest to 
his subject ; he has given light and shape to the hidden and dis- 
jointed treasures, written and traditional, illustrating our national 
life ; he has chiefly and successfully refuted a trite saying among 
Europeans, that America had no history. 

Personally the historian is an object of interest and respect. 
Few instances are known of such a work issued in a revised 
form by an author in the eighty-third year of his age, showing 

* History of the United States of America from the Discovery of the Continent. By George 
Bancroft. The Author's Last Revision ; vols. i. and ii. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1883. 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



722 BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

such evidences of unflagging industry and labor, and such un- 
diminished literary taste and elegance of diction. The earlier 
editions of his history, indeed all the editions except the last 
two, made Mr. Bancroft a favorite author among- Catholics. His 
pen was among the very first to glow with admiration and 
enthusiasm at the recital of the heroic deeds, sacrifices, labors, 
sufferings, and martyrdom of the early Catholic missionaries, 
who illustrated the beauty, purity, and charity of our church and 
of our faith on the virgin soil of America. Well has he said of 
the Catholic missionaries in America, that their lives had been a 
continual heroism ; their deaths the astonishment of their execu- 
tioners ; that massacres never quenched their enthusiasm; that 
they were not dismayed by barbarism or the martyrdom of their 
brethren ; not receding a foot, but, as in a brave army new 
troops press forward to fill the places of the fallen, there was 
never wanting among them heroism and enterprise in behalf of 
the cross. It was his pen which, to a great extent, gave shape 
and prominence to this beautiful and Catholic chapter in the 
history of our country and of our church, and which unfolded it 
in sheets of golden eloquence to the perusal of our countrymen 
and of the reading world ; and it was his leadership, in this 
fascinating field of historic beauty, which fired the heart and 
inspired the pen of some of our own Catholic writers to follow 
in the same noble path, and to continue in greater detail the 
exploration and development of the same historic treasures. 

In all the earlier editions of Mr. Bancroft's history it was the 
distinctively Catholic chapters that were most attractive and 
interesting. Second in importance and interest to his glowing 
account of the labors, virtues, and martyrdom of the Catholic 
missionaries was his just and honorable tribute to the Catholic 
colony of Maryland, the cradle of civil and religious liberty on 
this continent, the germ of free and equal government, which 
afterwards found development and expansion in the Constitution 
and government of the United States. In colonial Maryland the 
author recognized the fact that she was a Catholic settlement, 
composed chiefly of Catholic colonists ; that the government, too, 
was in the hands of Catholics ; and he attributed to the Catholic 
proprietary and to his representatives, and to the representatives 
of the Catholic people in legislature assembled, the enactment of 
the law extending religious liberty to all ; and that Maryland, in 
an age of persecution and in the midst of persecuting neighbors, 
offered an asylum to Protestants fleeing from Protestant perse- 
cution, who found among Catholics peace and happiness, and 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 723 

who gratefully called their new home the Land of the Sanc- 
tuary. 

The earlier editions of Mr. Bancroft's history, in ten volumes, 
contain ample foot-notes and references to authorities, which 
were of great value to the general reader, and especially to 
scholars, who were thus enabled to trace back the narratives to 
their fountain sources, and verify the facts by historic standards 
and test them by searching criticism. The edition of 1883, now 
in course of issue, after revision by the author, dispenses with all 
foot-notes, references, and authorities, in order to reduce the 
work to six convenient and portable volumes. This is to be 
greatly regretted. The student of history will feel that he is 
entitled to know by what authority the historian supports his 
statements, and will not consent to accept as history the unsup- 
ported narratives of even so respectable an author as Mr. Ban- 
croft. In vain has Mr. Bancroft been nearly fifty years in writ- 
ing and revising his volumes, if the result is to be such unsup- 
ported statements ; if authority is to be sacrificed to the conve- 
nience and economy of six portable volumes in place of the ten 
annotated volumes of the preceding editions. This is more 
especially the case since the reduced edition before us (1883) 
shows great and important changes, omissions, and alterations in 
the matter and substance of the historic narratives ; changes, 
omissions, and alterations made by the author himself after fifteen 
previous editions, and without references to historical authorities 
to sustain them. Singularly enough these changes affect sub- 
jects in which Catholics are particularly interested, and affect 
them in an unfavorable and unjust manner. As Catholics we 
challenge the historian to account for them, to explain them, to 
support them with adequate authority. We call upon him to 
inform his readers, throughout the world, what new light he has 
discovered at this late day ; and whether the fifteen earlier edi- 
tions of his work are to be discredited and rejected, though sup- 
ported by ample authorities ; and whether full faith and credit 
are claimed for this last edition alone, destitute as it is of foot- 
notes, references, and authorities. We think it is expecting too 
much of an intelligent and inquiring public to cast aside the 
fifteen editions, results of the author's best and longest study, in 
favor of this last revision. The fifteen editions of Mr. Bancrofts 
work prior to 1876 are the only ones we recognize as Bancroft's 
History of the United States. We know of one of his readers, 
who was getting the edition of 1883 as the volumes came out, 
and who, on discovering one volume missing from the old edi- 



724 BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. [Sept., 

tion he had, immediately sent to Boston for it, to complete his 
set of the old edition, as he was afraid it would go out of print, 
and he would not have a complete edition of Bancroft's History 
of the United States. We think Mr. Bancroft has mutilated his 
noble work ; and as we Catholics are affected thereby, we owe it 
to ourselves and to our cause to protest against the mutilation. 

During the period of time nearly half a century that Mr. 
Bancroft has been engaged on the History of the United States 
the intelligent and learned world was first startled, and then con- 
vinced, by the recovery and revelation of the testimony, then and 
now relied upon, to prove that our continent was discovered by 
the Northmen in the tenth century, and that the Catholic faith 
and worship were introduced with them five hundred years 
before Columbus planted the cross on the island of San Salvador. 
When Mr. Bancroft's first edition was commenced and the first 
volume published, in 1834, sufficient was known as to the claims 
of the Northmen as the first of Europeans to visit our shores to 
have challenged his most earnest and careful study and investi- 
gation. In that edition he rejects the claim of the Northmen, 
then supposed to rest mainly on tradition, and adopts the theory 
that the first discoveries made by the Norwegians in Greenland 
were in a high northern latitude, and that Vinland of the North- 
men (now recognized as parts of Rhode Island and Massachu- 
setts) was but another and a more southern portion of the same 
territory. In 1837 the Society of Northern Antiquarians at 
Copenhagen published that royal and splendid work, Antiquitates 
Americana, which reduced tradition to authentic history and 
gave to the world the indubitable proofs. From that time to the 
present few subjects have received greater attention from the 
learned than the claims of the Northmen as the first of Euro- 
peans to discover the American continent, and floods of light 
have been thrown upon the subject. Mr. Bancroft has taken a 
prominent place among the few, the very few, scholars and his- 
torians of the learned world who espoused the negative side of 
the question and denied the claim of the Northmen. The North 
American Review of July, 1874, in a critical notice of Gravier's 
Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Century, 
states that Mr. Bancroft represents the extreme negative view of 
this subject. On this subject, as well as on the claim of the 
Catholic colony of Maryland as the authors of religious tolera- 
tion, of enlightened legislation on the inviolability of conscience, 
on this continent, Mr. Bancroft's history has undergone grave 
and radical changes, alterations, and omissions, so that on both 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. 725 

subjects his last edition, revised by the author, discredits all the 
numerous previous editions. It is a singular circumstance that 
Mr. Bancroft's alterations of the text and matter of his history 
should in two such prominent subjects affect particularly the 
interests of Catholics. We purpose to treat these two subjects 
separately. We take issue with all his editions on the subject of 
the Northmen in America, for Mr. Bancroft has never conceded 
this historic fact and has failed to confront the subject with 
manly labor and criticism. We will treat this branch of our 
protest in the present article, and that of Maryland toleration in 
a subsequent one. 

When the fifteenth edition of Mr. Bancroft's history was pub- 
lished in 1854 not only had the mass of testimony supporting 
the claims of the Northmen been given to the world, but the 
works and researches of historical societies in this country, and 
of learned societies in Europe, had greatly added to the bulk and 
weight of the testimony. The vast majority of scholars and an- 
tiquarians had conceded the authenticity of the testimony and 
its truthfulness, and had recognized the leading facts and results 
claimed. At this period Mr. Bancroft dismissed the subject 
with the following brief allusions to it: 

" The national pride of an Icelandic historian has indeed claimed for 
his ancestors the glory of having discovered the western hemisphere. It is 
said that they passed from their own island to Greenland, and were driven 
by adverse winds from Greenland to the shores of Labrador; that the 
voyage was often repeated ; that the coasts of America were extensively 
explored, and colonies established on the shores of Nova Scotia or New- 
foundland. It is even suggested that these early adventurers anchored 
near the harbor of Boston, or in the bays of New Jersey ; and Danish an- 
tiquaries believe that Northmen entered the waters of Rhode Island, in- 
scribed their adventures on the rocks of Taunton River, gave the name of 
Vinland to the southeast coasts of New England, and explored the inlets 
of our country as far as Carolina. But the story of the colonization of 
America by Northmen rests on narratives, mythological in form and 
obscure in meaning; ancient, yet not contemporary. Their chief docu- 
ment is an interpolation in the history of Sturleson, whose zealous cu- 
riosity could hardly have neglected the discovery of a continent. The 
geographical details are too vague to sustain a conjecture ; the accounts 
of the mild winter and fertile soil are, on any modern hypothesis, fictitious 
or exaggerated ; the description of the natives applies only to the Es- 
quemeaux, inhabitants of hyperboreal regions ; the remark which should 
define the length of the shortest day has received interpretations adapted 
to every latitude from New York to Cape Farewell ; and Vinland has been 
sought in all directions, from Greenland and the St. Lawrence to Africa. 
The nation of intrepid mariners whose voyages extended beyond Iceland 
and beyond Sicily, could easily have sailed from Greenland to Labrador ; 



726 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

no clear historic evidence establishes the natural probability that they ac- 
complished the passage."* 

Again, at page eight, referring to the impression existing in 
Europe that other vast lands or continents existed across the 
Atlantic to the west, Mr. Bancroft writes : 

" Nor is it impossible that some uncertain traditions respecting the re- 
mote discoveries which Icelanders had made in Greenland towards the 
north-west, ' where the lands did nearest meet,' should have excited 'firm 
and pregnant conjectures.' " 

This language on the part of the historian, though vague, can 
be construed in no other light than as an admission that the 
Icelanders had discovered Greenland. In his first edition of 
1834, as well as in that of 1854, Mr. Bancroft admitted the dis- 
covery of Greenland. The history of Greenland, its discovery 
by the Northmen, its colonization and settlement by them ; its 
continued occupation by them and their descendants for a period 
of time greater than the time that the people of the United 
States and their ancestors have occupied America; the intro- 
duction of the Catholic faith into the country, the erection of a 
cathedral and churches, and a succession of seventeen Catholic 
bishops (a much longer line than the oldest Catholic see in our 
country can yet boast of) are events which no historian can 
either deny or evade ; events as well authenticated as any related 
in Bancroft's History of the United States. It would have been 
too much for even Mr. Bancroft, reluctant and sceptical on all 
questions of pre-Columbian history, to have denied the discovery 
and colonization of Greenland by the Northmen. But is it 
probable, is it possible, that the " intrepid mariners " who had 
already passed from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Green- 
land, and whose ships and arms had terrified all Europe, and 
who still continued to manifest their love of the sea, of adven- 
ture, of discovery, and of danger, could suddenly have changed 
their nature and their history ; have now failed to find the easy 
and probable lands within their reach, or have rested content with 
" Greenland's icy mountains," when more genial lands, teeming 
with grass and flowers and festooned with native grape-vines, 
were within more easy reach ? Mr. Bancroft admits that they 
could easily have sailed from Greenland to Labrador, but thinks 
there is " no clear historic evidence " of the fact. Now let us 
ask, Is not the documentary evidence confirmed : firstly, by the 
contemporaneous events and discoveries of the same people in the 
same regions, and by the ease with which the voyage to the 

* Pp. 5 and 6. 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 727 

southern lands could be accomplished from the lands already 
admitted to have been reached by them ; and secondly, by the 
probability that the discovery of Greenland would lead to the 
then easy discovery of America? It is conceded that after 
settling ir^ Greenland the Northmen continued to make voyages 
to other lands, and Mr. Bancroft, while admitting that they 
could easily have reached the shores of our country, gives his 
voice in favor of the more improbable theory that they preferred 
the still more inaccessible regions of the ice-bound north to the 
more accessible and inviting regions and natural vineries of the 
south. Professor R. B. Anderson, one of the best informed and 
most enterprising Scandinavian scholars of our age, now pro- 
fessor of the Scandinavian languages in the University of Wis- 
consin, a personal friend and correspondent of the present writer, 
justly argues in his able little work on this subject that " the 
discovery of Greenland was a natural consequence of the set- 
tlement of Iceland, just as the discovery of America afterward 
was a natural consequence of the settlement of Greenland." 
Between the western part of Iceland and the eastern part of 
Greenland there is a distance of only forty-five geographical 
miles. A, casual glance at any of our school-maps will clearly 
show that the transition from Greenland to Labrador, from La- 
brador to Newfoundland, from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, 
and from Nova Scotia to the coast of New England, were but 
easy and consequential passages in the onward progress of these 
intrepid mariners. 

Scarcely a book can be opened that does not treat of this in- 
teresting subject. There is scarcely a magazine of general lit- 
erature in our language, published either in Great Britain or the 
United States, that does not contain numerous articles on the 
subject, and as an illustration of this weTefer our readers to two 
of the leading serials, selected at random from our library for 
this reference, one Catholic and the other Protestant, viz., the 
Dublin Review, published in London, and the North American Re- 
view, published formerly in Boston and now in New York, in 
both of which numerous articles will be found in which the dis- 
covery of America by the Northmen is treated as authentic his- 
tory. Appleton's Cyclopcedia would not be complete without an 
article under this head, and the discovery and colonization of 
Greenland as detailed by the Icelandic writings once conceded, 
that of Vinland follows : " This [the discovery of Greenland] led, 
according to the Icelandic Sagas, to the discovery of the mainland 
of America by Bjarni, son of Herjulf, in the year 986." Even 



728 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

the ordinary school-books of our country give this event to our 
children as a part of authentic history, as witness one among 
many, Young Folks History of the United States, by T. Wentworth 
Higginson, Boston, 1875, in which, after giving the story of 
the Northmen, the opinion is expressed that the Vinland of the 
Northmen was on the American continent. As Mr. Bancroft's 
work purports to be a history of the United States of America 
" from the discovery of the continent," it puts in issue on its very 
title-page the question we are now discussing, viz., When was 
America first discovered? A work issued since Mr. Bancroft's 
edition of 1854, and before the author's last revised edition, 1883, 
a history of the United States, bearing the honored name of Wil- 
liam Cullen Bryant, and of his learned and researchful friend and 
relative Sidney Howard Gay, appeared in 1876, which bears a 
title equally significant with that of Bancroft's history, and ap- 
parently taking up the gauntlet thrown down by him, as follows: 
A Popular History of the United States, from the first Discovery of 
the Western Hemisphere by the Northmen to the end of the first Cen- 
tury of the Union of the States. 

It cannot be said that Mr. Bancroft's works have kept pace 
with the age, or that his recent labors have improved his ori- 
ginal task. If the order in which his sixteen editions have been 
issued were reversed, so as to make the author's last revision of 
1883 change places with the original edition of 1834, and the cen- 
tennial edition, 1876, were referred back to 1776, the dates would 
be more appropriate. 

Here we must note the great changes and omissions made by 
Mr. Bancroft in the text of his work on the subject we are dis- 
cussing, for in the edition of 1883 he omits all the foregoing 
passages ; no mention even is made of the alleged discovery of 
America by the Northmen, and the only reference made even to 
Greenland dismisses that great discovery and colonization as 
mere " uncertain " traditions, which are given as a possible part 
of the data influencing the faith of Columbus in the existence 
of land to the west. He says : " Nor is it impossible that some 
uncertain traditions respecting the remote discoveries which Ice- 
landers had made in Greenland towards the northwest, ' where 
the lands nearest meet,' should have excited firm and pregnant 
conjectures." Thus, while scarcely \ work on America or Scan- 
dinavia issues from the American or European presses that does 
not treat copiously on the subject, while the entire magazine and 
serial literature of both hemispheres teems with it, while the 
issue, ceasing to be a learned one, has become a part of our paro- 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. 729 

chial and common school education, a great work, the History of 
the United State.s of America from the Discovery of the Continent, by 
our most eminent historian, is issued from a leading press in the 
western metropolis, and contains not a word on the subject of the 
discovery of America by the Northmen in the tenth century ! 
The author ignores the whole period of time between Aristotle 
and Columbus, and condenses the contents of the opening passages 
of his first chapter into the statement that " Columbus, taught 
by Aristotle, discovers the New World." The profound re- 
spect which we entertain for the gifted and venerable author 
prevents us from animadverting, as we would otherwise feel in- 
clined, on the mutilation of his works. Can it be that Mr. Ban- 
croft felt the embarrassment of his earlier admissions that the 
Northmen had discovered and colonized Greenland, and the im- 
possibility of admitting that and in the same work denying the dis- 
covery by them of America ? Can it be that, after having denied 
the latter, he preferred to deny the former even in the face of 
the historic world, or, what is equivalent to such denial, refer in 
a casual way to mere " uncertain traditions of remote discove- 
ries " only of Icelanders in Greenland ? 

We yield to no one in our admiration and veneration for the 
character and services of Columbus. Mr. Bancroft views him 
as a great historical character, as the great admiral, as a leading 
and pre-eminent benefactor of his race in the temporal order. 
We view him as all this, and vastly more. We regard him as 
a man of God ; a member of the same communion in the faith 
with ourselves ; one with whom we could go hand-in-hand with 
thanksgiving to shed our blood for that faith ; we view him as 
the great lay missionary of our church ; we view him as a saint ; 
and we unite with millions of Catholics in petitioning the Holy 
See to grant the process for his canonization. We love historic 
truth and justice. The present writer has elsewhere recorded 
his appreciation of Columbus ; and after recognizing the claims 
of the Northmen and recording the visit of a Norse bishop of 
the church, the first to tread the soil of our republic, and after 
placing the name of Bishop Eric at the head of the honored list 
of American bishops, he said : " A long period of undisturbed 
paganism followed. But in the fifteenth century the genius of 
Columbus, stimulated and enlightened by his Catholic devotion 
and faith, presented a new world to Christendom, and the cross 
of salvation gleamed upon both continents of our hemisphere." ' 

* Clarke's Lives oftJie Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States, vol. i. 
p. vii. 



730 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

Appreciation for Columbus, in which we enthusiastically con- 
cur, is eloquently expressed by the late Mr. Edward Everett, in 
a learned article admitting- and detailing- the full historic claim of 
the Northmen, in the following passages : * 

" No single event in the history of civilization is of equal importance 
with the discovery of America ; and among the individuals of our race, 
whose character and achievements have raised them to fame, there is none 
perhaps more illustrious than Christopher Columbus. What can a mortal 
man do which approaches so near the work of his Creator as to bring an 
unknown world to the knowledge of his fellow-men ? Who among the sons 
of men has equalled this great exploit? not by casualty and happy coin- 
cidences, but with counsel aforethought, on well-weighed grounds, deliber- 
ately reasoned out and carried into execution, not under the smiles of pa- 
tronizing greatness and with the aid of power, but buffeting, toiling, begging 
his way to success and glory unmatched. The formation of such a character, 
the march of such an understanding, in the conception and accomplish- 
ment of its great undertaking, are worthy subjects of inquiry. No tale of 
fiction equals in interest the simple narrative of the adventures of Colum- 
bus ; and if one wishes to go farther, and retrace the steps by which he was 
led to the illustrious vision of a voyage to the East Indies by a western 
route the vision which resulted in the discovery of a new world he will 
find himself engaged in researches of the most curious and instructive 
character. 

" Columbus inherited an elder brother's share a double portion of 
the estate of great men envy ; envy which nothing could disarm, shame 
down, or satiate. His brilliant success excited inappeasable hatred, on the 
part of thoSe who were or were not rivals for the glory and profit of nauti- 
cal adventure. They resisted him in the outset ; hung like a mill-stone 
round his neck in his progress ; and poisoned the cup of his enjoyment, to 
the last drop. They reversed the benediction ; they turned into bitter 
ashes the beauty of his achievement, which had enabled Spain to stretch 
her jurisdiction, like the arch of heaven, over half the globe ; and instead 
of the garment of praise, they scourged him home from his world-discov- 
ery, clothed in the spirit of heaviness. Before his voyage was undertaken 
every imaginable obstacle was thrown in his way. After it was accom- 
plished, while the attempt could be made with any degree of plausibility, 
the reality of his discovery was denied. When that attempt was baffled by 
the innumerable proofs which poured in (to the astonishment and admi- 
ration of Spain and all Europe) of the certain discovery of mighty regions 
beyond the ocean, whose inhabitants, animals, and plants differed widely 
from those of the other hemisphere, then the heartless creatures turned 
round and maintained that the glorious old admiral had learned it all from 
books and elder navigators. Nor was it a life-estate alone which he held 
in the malice of his foes. It descended with his name. A perverse and 
wicked cruelty pursued the very blood of him who gave a new world to 
Castile and Leon. But all these poor attempts to blight a peerless repu- 
tation have for ages been buried in the forgotten tombs of their forgotten 
authors." 

* North American Review, January, 1838, p. 162. 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 731 

The Northmen were the most intrepid people known in 
modern history. Descended from a race that in early times 
migrated from Asia ; traversed Europe, fighting their way, until 
they reached the shores of the sea, and made Denmark their 
home and their nation ; thence they overran Norway and 
Sweden. Iceland is discovered and colonized by them, and the 
Ultima Thule of the ancients becomes the cradle of a new stock 
and a dependence of the mother-country. They were a people 
of no inferior attainments. Energy of character, unflinching 
courage, daring beyond any sense of danger or of fear, indomit- 
able perseverance, love of adventure, strife, and conquest, intel- 
lectual quickness and intuitive perception, and a certain tradi- 
tional culture in the midst of the rudest barbarism, were leading 
traits in the make-up of this remarkable people. They were the 
incarnation of personal will, brute force, and fanaticism. Nor- 
way was a country peculiarly favorable to the development of 
this sturdy race. The waters of Norway, flowing over a mag- 
netic sand and springing from the detritus of oxidulated rocks, 
are believed by Dipping and Gravier to have imparted an ex- 
traordinary energy of character to the inhabitants, who, in drink- 
ing them, imbibed iron, so to speak, with the draught. The 
coasts of Norway, indented with arms of the sea, gave a sea- 
faring direction to this energy, and developed in them the most 
hardy mariners of the world. They were the bravest of the 
brave. They were strangers to fear either of man or demon, or 
even of their own heathen divinities. They were taught irom 
childhood to court danger, hardship, privation, sufferings, ad- 
venture, and even death ; and to rejoice in the encounter. Their 
ships, rather than their houses, were their castles. Not only did 
they overrun northern Europe by their arms ; but now they be- 
came the scourge of the high seas, and the terror of all nations 
accessible by water. Well did they earn the name of sea-kings. 
Piracy was their favorite pastime. The women partook of the 
fierce character of the men. No Northman could win their 
hearts and hands unless he was intrepid in the midst of the clash 
of arms. The monarchs of all Europe trembled in their palaces 
at the mention of their name. Their outrages were not confined 
to northern seas. They overran a large portion of England ; 
wrested Normandy, the fairest province of France, from the 
French king ; conquered a considerable portion of Belgium, and 
made extensive inroads into Spain. Under the leadership of 
Robert Guiscard they mastered Sicily and lower Italy in the 
eleventh century, and maintained their conquests for years. In 



732 BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

the Crusades they led the van of the chivalry of Europe in res- 
cuing the Holy Sepulchre, and ruled over Antioch under Bohe- 
mund, the son of Guiscard. The countries of the Mediterranean 
were a favorite field for their depredations. Their unequalled 
ships passed through the pillars of Hercules, their columns de- 
vastated the fair fields of classic Greece, and we see them swing- 
ing their two-edged battle-axes in the streets of Constantinople, 
laying the foundations of the Russian Empire. The old Norse 
Vikings sailed up the rivers Rhine, Scheldt, the Seine and Loire, 
conquering Cologne and Aachen, where, as Professor Anderson 
expresses it, " they turned the emperor's palace into a stable, fill- 
ing the heart of even the great Charlemagne with dismay. . . . 
They carved their mystic runes upon the marble lion in the 
harbor of Athens, in commemoration of their conquest of that 
city," just as they are said to have left their runic inscriptions 
upon the rocks of America, in commemoration of their visits to 
our shores. In ship-building and navigation they exhibited the 
utmost skill. It has been remarked by several authors that, with 
such natural characteristics and development, they were the 
most likely people in the world to discover America in the tenth 
century, the period of their greatest enterprise. When they 
turned their direction westward, made Iceland and Greenland 
their colonies, it would have been strange indeed had they not 
pushed onward to the coasts of America. 

In their literature the Northmen were equally remarkable. 
Poetry, represented by the Skalds, and history, represented by 
the Sagamen, went hand-in-hand from the most ancient times. 
The poets and historians accompanied their armies inland and 
their navies at sea. Rude and untutored as the masses were, 
they were not without a certain intellectual stimulus. Memory 
and tradition were at first, and until their conversion to Chris- 
tianity about the year 1000, the vehicles for their strange and 
unique literature. The ancient custom of preserving family, in- 
dividual, and general histories, and of reciting them from memory 
in public, gave rise to and fostered this peculiar literature. 

The following passages from the pen of Mr. George W. Da- 
sent, the best Icelandic scholar in England, known as the editor 
of Cleasbys Icelandic Dictionary, and translator of several of 
the Sagas, will serve to inform our readers as to the true char- 
acter of the Norse literature, and as to the genuineness and re- 
liability of the Sagas, upon which, as historical writings, the 
claim of the Northmen, after the most ancient traditions, rests as 
the first of Europeans to discover, explore, and visit our coasts : 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 733 

" What is a Saga ? A Saga is a story or telling in prose, sometimes 
mixed with verse. There are many kinds of Sagas, of all degrees of truth. 
There are mythical Sagas, in which the wondrous deeds of the heroes of 
old time, half gods and half men, as Sigurd and Ragnar, are told as they 
were handed down from father to son in the traditions of the Northern 
race. . . . These are all more or less trustworthy, and in general far 
worthier of belief than much that passes for the early history of other 
races. Again, there are Sagas relating to' Iceland, narrating the lives and 
feuds and ends of mighty chiefs, the heads of great families which dwelt 
in this or that district of Iceland. These were told by men who lived on 
the very spot, and told with a minuteness and exactness as to time and 
place that will bear the strictest examination. . . . 

" But it is an old saying that a story never loses in telling, and so we 
may expect it must have been with this story ; for in the facts which the 
Saga-teller related he was bound to follow the narrations of those who 
had gone before him, and if he swerved^ to or fro in this respect public 
opinion and notorious fame were there to check and contradict him. . . . 

"There can be no doubt that it was considered a grave offence to pub- 
lic morality to tell a Saga untruthfully. Respect to friends and enemies 
alike, when they were dead and gone, demanded that the history of 
their lives, and especially of their last moments, should be told as the 
events actually happened." 

The Sagas were reduced to writing soon after the conver- 
sion of the Northmen to Christianity, which took place about 
the year 1000. What heretofore was oral tradition, now, under 
the culture of letters introduced by the priests and monks of the 
Christian Church, became written history. As an instance taken 
from many, we would mention Thorfinn's Saga, one of the prin- 
cipal documents and sources from which are taken the narratives 
of the voyages of the Northmen to our continent. This Saga 
must have been composed about the year 1007, when Thorfinn 
returned to Iceland and Norway from Greenland, and from his 
voyages to the lands and coasts now embraced within the boun- 
daries of the United States. Indeed, the oral recital of his voy- 
ages was contemporaneous with the events, and their reduction 
to writing must have taken place soon after the occurrences 
themselves. There is little room here for oral transmission. 
The same may be said, to a greater or less degree, of the other 
Sagas relating to our continent, since the sacred scribes in the 
monasteries were then at hand ready and zealous for their tasks, 
at and during the very periods of the transactions to be related, 
and, as we will see hereafter, these Sagas were all preserved and 
found at a recent period in an ancient Icelandic monastery. 

These Sagas, or Icelandic histories, bear within themselves 
intrinsic evidences of their genuineness and truthfulness. The 
style is simple and direct. They embody the ideas and even the 



734 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

superstitions of the race and of the age. Christianity was then 
a new faith to the Northmen, most of those engaged in the 
earliest voyages to our shores were not yet converted to the 
faith, and whatever of superstition is found in the Sagas is of 
pagan origin and kind. The Rev. B. F. De Costa, a Scandina- 
vian scholar, has remarked that " the Sagas am as free from 
superstition and imaginations as any other religious narratives 
of that age, and just as much entitled to belief." Inconsistencies 
and contradictions on minor points are justly to be looked for in 
such narratives, and their presence tends rather to confirm than 
discredit them, since they agree and mutually sustain each other 
on the more important points. 

As already remarked, the oral narratives- were reduced to 
writing by the Christian monks shortly after and during the 
conversion of the Northmen to Christianity. The monks had no 
motive for falsification or forgery, and their fidelity and truthful- 
ness in reducing the Sagas to writing cannot be questioned. 
The manuscripts containing the Sagas relating to America were 
found in the remarkable and celebrated Codex Flatoiensis, a work 
that was finished, as Mr. De Costa remarks in his Pre-Colum- 
bian Discovery of America, in 1387, or, at the latest, 1395. " This 
collection, made with the greatest care and executed in the 
highest style of art, is preserved in its integrity in the archives 
of Copenhagen. These manuscripts were for a time supposed to 
be lost, but were ultimately found safely lodged within their 
repository in the monastery library of the island of Flato, from 
whence they were transferred to Copenhagen with a large quan- 
tity of other literary material collected from various localities." 

These Sagas were given to the world by the Royal Society 
of Northern Antiquarians at Copenhagen in 1837, by the pub- 
lication of a volume truly grand and royal in style, size, and 
character, compiled by the learned Rafn, and entitled Antiqui- 
tates Americana, sive Script ores Septentrionales Rerum Ante-Colum- 
bianarum in America. In this great work, of which the present 
writer obtained a copy from Copenhagen, one of three or four 
copies in America, the Sagas are given in the original Norse 
text, in modern Danish, and in classical Latin. Fac-similes of 
portions of the Sagas are also given, showing them to have been 
executed in the finest style of the mediaeval monastic illuminated 
manuscripts. They bear numerous intrinsic evidences of their 
genuineness. Indeed, so completely and inseparably are the 
accounts of the voyages to our shores incorporated in the whole 
composition of these Sagas that interpolation was impossible. 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 735 

We propose here to give our readers a passage from one of 
the Sagas found in the Codex Flatbiensis, and published in Anti- 
quitates Americana, as a sample only of these singular and inter- 
esting writings. It relates to the voyage of Biarne to our shores, 
the time of which is fixed by the fact that Biarne sailed the same 
season that his father settled in Greenland, which was in the 
year 985. The coasts visited by Biarne, as related in the follow- 
ing Saga, are identified as those stretching from Newfoundland 
to Massachusetts. The verses in the extract constitute the first 
Christian song extant in connection with this period of Ameri- 
can history. 

" Heriulf was the son of Bard, Heriulf's son, who was a relation of 
Ingolf the Landnamsman. Ingolf gave Heriulf land between Vog and 
Reikianes. Heriulf dwelt first at Dropstock. His wife was called Thor- 
gird, and their son was called Biarne. He was a promising young man. 
In his earliest youth he had a desire to go abroad, and he soon gathered 
property and reputation ; and was by turns a year abroad and a year with 
his father. Biarne was soon in possession of a merchant ship of his own. 
The last winter [A.D. 985] while he was in Norway, Heriulf prepared to go 
to Greenland with Eric, and gave up his dwelling. There was a Christian 
man belonging to-the Hebrides along with Heriulf, who composed the lay 
called the Hafgerdmgar Song, in which is this stave : 

' May He whose hand protects so well 
The simple monk in lonely cell, 
And o'er the world upholds the sky, 
His own blue hall, still stand me by.' 

Heriulf* settled at Heriulfness [A.D. 985], and became a very distinguished 
man. Eric Red took up his abode at Bratthalid, and was in great consid- 
eration, and honored by all. These were Eric's children : Leif, Thorvorld, 
and Thorstein ; and his daughter was called Freydis. She was married to 
a man called Thorvald ; and they dwelt at Gardar, which is now a bishop's 
seat. She was a haughty, proud woman, and he was but a mean man. 
She was much given to gathering wealth. The people of Greenland were 
heathen at this time. Biarne came over (to Greenland) the same summer 
[A.D. 985] with his ship to the strand which his father had sailed abroad 
from in the spring. He was much struck with the news, and would not 
unload his vessel. When his crew asked him what he intended to do, he 
replied that he was resolved -to follow his old custom by taking up his 
winter abode with his father. ' So I will steer for Greenland, if you will go 
with me.' They one and all agreed to go with him. Biarne said : Our 
voyage will be thought foolish, as none of us have been on the Greenland 
sea before.' Nevertheless they set out to sea as soon as they were ready, 
and sailed for three days' until they lost sight of the land they left. But 
when the wind failed, a north wind with fog set in, and they knew not 
where they were sailing to ; and this lasted many days. At last they saw 
the sun, and could distinguish the quarters of the sky ; so they hoisted sail 
* The places now mentioned are well known places in Greenland history. 



736 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

again, and sailed a whole day and night, when they made land, They 
spoke among themselves what this land could be, and Biarne said that, in 
his opinion, it could not be Greenland. On the question, if he should sail 
nearer to it, he said : ' It is my advice that we sail close up to the land.' 
They did so, and they saw that the land was without mountains, was 
covered with woods, and that there were small hills inland. They left the 
land on the larboard side, and had their sheet on the land side. Then they 
sailed two days and nights before they got sight of land again. They 
asked Biarne if they thought this could be Greenland ; but he gave his 
opinion that the land was no more Greenland than the land they had seen 
before. ' For on Greenland, it is said, there are great snow mountains.' 
They soon came near to the land, and saw that it was flat and covered with 
trees. Now, as the wind fell, the ship's people talked of its being advisable 
to make for the land ; but Biarne could not agree to it, They thought that 
they would need wood and water ; but Biarne said : ' Ye are not in want of 
either.' And the men blamed him for this. He ordered them to hoist the 
sail, which was done. They now turned the ship's bow from the land, and 
kept the sea for three days and nights, with a fine breeze from southwest. 
Then they saw a third land, which was high and mountainous, and with 
snowy mountains. Then they asked Biarne if he would land here; but he 
refused altogether. ' For in my opinion this land is not what we want.' 
Now they let the sails stand and kept along the land, and saw it was an 
island. Then they turned from the land and stood out to sea with the 
same breeze ; but the gale increased, and Biarne ordered a reef to be taken 
in, and not to sail harder than the ship and her tackle could easily bear. 
After sailing three days and nights they made, the fourth time, land ; and 
when they asked Biarne if he thought this was Greenland or not, Biarne 
replied : ^This is most like what has been told me of Greenland ; and here 
we shall take to the land.' They did so, and came to the land in the 
evening, under a ness, where they found a boat. On this ness dwelt 
Biarne's father, Heriulf ; and from that it is called Heriulfness. Biarne 
went to his father's, gave up sea-faring, and after his father's death con- 
tinued to dwell there when at home." 

The following- references and answers to Mr. Bancroft's views 
are from the work of Mr. De Costa * already referred to : 

"The fact that Mr. Bancroft has in times past expressed opinions in 
opposition to this view will hardly have weight with those persons familiar 
with the subject. When that writer composed the first chapter of his 
History of the United States he might have been excused for setting down 
the Icelandic narratives as shadowy fables ; but with all the knowledge 
shed upon the subject at present, we have a right to look for something 
better. It is, therefore, unsatisfactory to find him perpetuating his early 
views in each successive edition of his work, which show the same know- 
ledge of the subject betrayed at the beginning. He tells us that these 
voyages ' rest on narratives mythological in form "and obscure in meaning,' 
which certainly cannot be the case. Furthermore they are not contem- 
porary, which is true even with regard to Mr. Bancroft's own work. 
Again, ' the chief document is an interpolation in the history of Sturle- 

* Pre-Columbian Discovery of America, General Introduction, xliii. 



1883.] BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 737 

son.' This cannot be true in the sense intended, for Mr. Bancroft conveys 
the idea that the principal narrative first appeared in Sturleson's history 
when published at a late day. It is indeed well known that one version, 
but not the principal version, was interpolated in Peringskiold's edition of 
Sturleson's Heimskringla printed at Copenhagen. But Bancroft teaches 
that these relations are of a modern date, while it is well known that they 
were taken verbatim from Codex Flatoiensis, finished in the year 1395. He is 
much mistaken .in supposing that the northern antiquarians think any 
more highly of the narratives in question because they once happened to 
be printed in connection with Sturleson's great work. He tells us that 
Sturleson ' could hardly have neglected the discovery of a continent,' 
if such an event had taken place. But this, it should be remembered, 
depends upon whether or not the discovery was considered of any particular 
importance. This does not appear to have been the case. t The fact is 
nowhere dwelt upon for the purpose of exalting the actors. Besides, 
as Laing well observes, the discovery of land at the west had nothing 
to do with his subject, which was the history of the kings of Nor- 
way. The discovery of America gave rise to a little traffic, and nothing 
more. Moreover, the kings of Norway took no part, were not the patrons 
of the navigators, and had no influence whatever in instigating a single 
voyage. Mr. Bancroft's last objection is that Vinland, the place discov- 
ered, ' has been sought in all directions, from Greenland and the St. Law- 
rence to Africa.' This paragraph also conveys a false view of the subject, 
since the location of Vinland was as well known to the Northmen as the 
situation of Iceland, with which island they had uninterrupted communi- 
cation. It is to be earnestly hoped that in the next edition Mr. Bancroft 
may be persuaded to revise his unfounded opinions." 

Two editions of Mr. Bancroft's work have been published since 
the above was written, the Centennial and the Author s Last Re- 
vision, without realizing Mr. De Costa's hope. 

In an affair of so much importance and interest to Americans, 
and to the civilized world, it is a matter of some curiosity as 
well as of some moment to canvass the prevailing sentiments of 
authors and of learned and literary men as to the authenticity of 
the Sagas, their truthfulness, and as to the claim of the North- 
men. Prof. Anderson, of the University of Wisconsin, has per- 
formed this task with industry and ability. He cites one hun- 
dred and twenty-seven works treating on the subject, and of 
these one hundred and thirteen give their judgment in favor of 
the claim of the Northmen ; nine, including Washington Irving, 
are in doubt ; and only five, including Mr. Bancroft, cast their 
judgment in the negative. Among the authors casting their 
judgments in the affirmative are such illustrious names as Adam 
of Bremen, Grotius, Torfaeus, Mallet, Crantz, Benjamin Franklin, 
Malte-Brun, Wheaton, Alexander von Humboldt, Edward Ever- 
ett, Rafn, Bryant, Hubert Howe Bancroft, and many others. 

VOL. XXXVII. 47 



738 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Sept., 

It would be interesting and instructive to give quotations from 
several of the learned men above named, and to let them speak 
for themselves upon so attractive a subject, but we must confine 
ourselves to brief quotations from a very few. 

Adam of Bremen, one of the most learned and enterprising 
divines of our church in the eleventh century, \\rote an ecclesi- 
astical history in four books, about the year 1075, the materials 
for which he collected by travelling as well as by study. He 
visited in person Sweno, King of Denmark, and attached to his 
fourth book is a geographical sketch, De Situ Danicz, in which 
he gives the following passage from his conversation with the 
king. " Besides, it was stated [by the king] that a region had by 
many been discovered in that ocean, which was called Winland, 
because vines grew there spontaneously, producing excellent 
wine ; for that fruits not planted grow there of their own accord 
we know, not by false rumor, but by the certain testimony of the 
Danes." This passage is singularly confirmed by a passage from 
the Saga of Eric the Red, published in the Antiquitates Ameri- 
cana, which gives an account of Eric's son Leif's voyage to Vin- 
land, in which he was accompanied by a German named Tyrker, 
who, having wandered from his companions on the shores, re- 
turned after some time loaded with wild grapes, and elated by 
his discovery. It was from this circumstance that Leif called the 
country Vinland. 

Malte-Brim, the celebrated geographer, after giving an ac- 
count of the traditions relating to the Northmen's visits to our 
shores, adds : " To entertain a doubt of the truth of accounts so 
simple and probable would be an excess of scepticism ; and if we 
admit them, it is in vain to look for Vinland, except on the coast 
of North America. That part of the world, then, was discovered 
by Europeans five centuries before Columbus ; and this discov- 
ery, the first of which there is historical proof, was not perhaps 
wholly unknown to the bold and skilful Genoese, who first suc- 
ceeded in opening a continuous communication between the two 
hemispheres." * 

Alexander von Humboldt, one of the most illustrious names 
in the annals of literature and science, in his Examen Critique de 
VHistoire de la Ge'ographie du Nouveau Continent, gives a synopsis of 
the evidence contained in the Sagas, and asserts with great con- 
fidence that the Northmen discovered America. He then adds : 
" In this class of events, as in others of a more remote antiquity, 
we know, so to say, the masses the reality of the communications 

* Malte-Brun, Histoire de la Geographic, p. 355, 



1883.] BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 739 

between Greenland and the American Continent ; but the detail of 
the events is vague, and often in appearance extraordinary. It 
is only the learned of Denmark and Norway who can remove 
those contradictions of dates and distances, those doubts on the 
direction and length of the voyages, which present themselves on 
the face of the spots described in the Sagas." * 

In the passages we have given in this article from Bancroft 
and from Humboldt the reader can but observe the difference in 
the methods of reasoning adopted respectively by them and the 
great difference in the results. Humboldt's method is compre- 
hensive ; he views the whole field of inquiry, and examines it in 
the light of contemporaneous history, of science, and of the litera- 
ture extant on the subject ; and by means of the collation and 
comparison of facts and circumstances, and by weighing evidence 
and detecting where the preponderance exists, he is not deterred 
by minor details and trifling discrepancies from appreciating 
what is real. Mr. Bancroft's method, on the contrary, is circum- 
scribed and short-sighted ; he is nervous on the subject, he is 
frightened at the details and discrepancies on minor points of 
fact into losing sight of the main facts, and of the grand results; 
he is thinking too much of his own reputation, and is frightened 
at the possibility of a blunder on his part. He does not bravely 
meet the question, Is all this reconcilable with any other theory 
than that of the discovery of America by the Northmen? 

We will conclude this article with the following passage from 
the North American Review of July, 1874: 

" The Sagas may, then, be accepted as authentic historical records. A 
detailed examination of them would result in almost complete proof of 
Norse visits to America. ... If one takes a map of North America, it will 
be seen at once that a vessel starting from Cape Farewell and steering 
almost due south would make the coast of Newfoundland, possibly Labra- 
dor. The first land made by the Norsemen after leaving Greenland was 
Helluland, distinguished by its rocky appearance, like the northern New- 
foundland coast. Farther to the south the next shores would be those of 
Nova Scotia, a thickly-wooded country, and called by the Norsemen Mark- 
land. Several days of open water and Cape Cod or Cape Kiarlarnes would 
be reached. The description of this cape in the Sagas; where it is fre- 
quently mentioned, corresponds perfectly with Cape Cod. The features of 
the shores are accurately described, long stretches of flats, and sand dunes 
rising up behind them. To the south of this cape a bay was entered by 
the Norsemen, and named from its numerous currents, for which Buzzard's 
Bay is remarkable. The large island covered with the eggs of sea-birds 
lies in the southern part of this bay.' The long beaches of Martha's Vine- 
yard and Nantucket are famous to-day, as in the tenth century, for large 
* Examen Critique, etc., torn. ii. p. 102. 



740 BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. [Sept., 

quantities of sea-fowls' eggs. In this country wild grapes grow in great 
profusion. Even supposing great changes of climate, this fact may be 
fairly taken to exclude Greenland and Labrador, in both of which coun- 
tries wild grapes would be an anomaly. Grapes do grow, however, in 
Rhode Island. Examples might be multiplied. It is a very strong case of 
cumulative evidence. Vinland must have been some portion of the east- 
ern coast of the American continent. Nothing, then, is more likely than 
that the Norsemen visited New England. The descriptions in the Sagas 
coincide exactly with the southeastern coast of Rhode Island and Massa- 
chusetts. The Sagas are in the main certainly accurate and truthful. If 
these premises are admitted, and it seems impossible to deny them, the 
visits of the Norsemen are sufficiently well proved. It seems unnecessary 
to state a proposition which appears so obvious ; but when the Norse 
visits are rejected in toto by so high an authority as Mr. Bancroft, it is not, 
perhaps, altogether useless to insist upon this evidence. . . . The Sagas are 
in the main exact, according to Mr. Dasent, and the identification of 
various places is often so obvious that it affords fair evidence to support 
the argument drawn from these sources. One important point is made in 
this notice (North American Review of July, 1869, notice of a book by Mr. 
De Costa) which offers strong proof of the value of the Sagas. The Sagas 
of Thorfinn and those of the sons of Eric are of unquestionably distinct 
origin, and yet they agree in many of the minutest details." 

It seems unwarrantable in Mr. Bancroft, first, to deny in toto 
what was so obvious to such numbers of learned critics, his- 
torians and geographers ; and secondly, after the accumulation of 
evidence and authority to support the affirmative, that he should 
in his Centennial edition, 1876, and Author's Last Revision, 1883, 
ignore the whole subject. It is a part of the history of this con- 
tinent, and of the United States, that such a claim of discovery 
has been seriously made, is supported by the vast majority of re- 
spectable authorities, and is supported by tradition, written docu- 
ments, and monumental remains. Under such circumstances 
how can an historian consistently be silent on the subject ? Mr. 
Bancroft does not even inform his readers of the existence of 
the Sagas, and leaves them without knowledge that such a claim 
exists. 

In a future article we hope to give an historical outline of 
what the Northmen did accomplish in America. In our next 
review of Mr. Bancroft's history we hope to show that Mary- 
land was a Catholic colony, and that religious toleration was, 
first, its cherished policy and custom ; and, second, its statute 
law. 



1883.] "THOUGHT is FREE." 741 



"THOUGHT IS FREE." 

THERE are a number of sayings quoted triumphantly by the 
experienced orator in our legislative halls or courts of justice, or 
by the stump-speaker on the political rostrum at election times, 
or by the youthful disputant in the debating society. These 
sayings are treated as the heirlooms of the consummate wisdom 
of our forefathers, as statements to be admitted at once and with- 
out protest or qualification, as principles so clear and evident 
to every reasonable mind that if any one were to attempt to call 
them into doubt or suspicion he would be looked upon as hope- 
lessly and irreparably insane. And there is some sense in which 
these principles must be true, or else we could not account for 
their immense popularity. Yet they are most generally quoted 
in a sense so directly opposite to the true one, in support of pro- 
positions so erroneous and absurd, in aid of theories so extrava- 
gant, as to render them more dangerous by far than any clear, 
open error of the worst nature and of the most heinous conse- 
quences. Hence the necessity for an educated person to define 
the true meaning of such popular sayings in order to fix the 
limits beyond which they cease to be true. 

We shall first examine the one at the head of the article, 
" Thought is Free." How often have we heard it quoted in 
every sense but the true one? And to enable our readers to 
understand easily our analysis we shall make use of the plainest 
possible method. We will suppose, then, that there is a great 
difference between thinking and not thinking. In the first place 
I am doing something, in the second I am doing nothing. I am 
not too hasty, then, in assuming that thought is an operation of 
some kind or other. The question arises, then, What is it that 
performs this operation ? And I may presume it to be conceded 
that thought is an operation of the mind or intellect. 

But what kind of operation is it? When an object is exhi- 
bited before me it makes an impression on my senses ; that im- 
pression is carried by means of the nerves to the brain ; from the 
brain that sensible phenomenon or phantasm passes in some 
mysterious way into the imagination, and by the imagination 
it is presented to the intellect. The latter purifies that impres- 
sion or image, so to speak ; it strips it of all individual clothing, as 
it were, and gets at the kernel of the thing that is, at the real es- 



742 "THOUGHT is FREE" [Sept., 

sence of the thing that that object really is. And the result of 
such process, the getting at the essence of a thing, is called 
idea, concept, or thought. Thought then, in the first place, is an 
operation of the mind by which the mind apprehends, perceives, 
or grasps what an object really is. 

But that is not the only operation of the mind to which in 
the English language we apply the word thought. That word 
is applied to judgment, reasoning, and any of the states in which 
bur mind may be in regard to truth. The first, as every one 
knows, is an operation of the mind by which the mind compares 
two ideas together in order to discover their agreement or dis- 
agreement, and on making that discovery affirms or denies that 
agreement, as the case may be. For instance, I compare the color 
blue with the sky, and, seeing that these agree, I affirm that " the 
sky is blue " ; or I compare the idea of squareness with a circle 
and I see that they disagree, and I judge and say "the circle 
is not square." 

Reasoning is that operation of the mind which, failing to see 
the agreement between two ideas, compares both with a third 
one, and, if it finds them to agree with that third idea, concludes 
that they must agree with each other, on the principle that things 
which are equal to a third must be equal to one another. For 
instance, I am in doubt as to whether virtue is to be loved or not, 
and fail to see the agreement between the two ideas of virtue 
and love. I have recourse to a third idea, true happiness : and 
first I compare virtue with true happiness, and perceive their 
agreement; then I compare love with true happiness, and dis- 
cover their perfect accord ; and then I formulate my reasoning 
thus : Whatever brings true happiness is to be loved. But vir- 
tue brings true happiness. Therefore virtue is to be loved. 

To these three operations of the mind we generally apply the 
word thought. But we may include opinion also as coming un- 
der the meaning of the English word thought. And in order to 
exhaust the subject we shall say a few words on the different 
states in which our mind may form itself in relation to truth. 
And first of all, it is well known that when the conception I 
have formed in my mind of any being or object corresponds to 
the reality, then I have truth, which is called the equation be- 
tween an object and its idea. For instance, the idea I have form- 
ed of man is that of an intellectual substance united to an or- 
ganism which it animates and individualizes. This idea is true 
because in accordance with the object it represents, and the 
clinging of my mind to that idea that man is a reasonable animal 



1883.] "THOUGHT is FREE" 743 

is clinging to a truth. Now, it may happen that our mind may 
cling to a truth unhesitatingly, or it may cling to it with a cer- 
tain hesitation, fear, or wavering. In the first case our mind is 
in the state of certainty ; in the second, in the state of opinion. 
Opinion, then, is that state of our mind in which it adheres to a 
certain proposition, yet with a certain fear or hesitation lest the 
contrary may be true. 

- When I say, then, Thought is free, I must mean by thought 
either an idea or a judgment, either a reasoning or an opinion. 
Now let us examine the word free. Free means absence of 
restraint ; not free, subject to restraint. Now, this restraint may 
arise from two causes from a physical cause or from law. That is 
to sa}r, one may be restrained either by bodily force, as when one 
forcibly holds a child to prevent him from hurting himself; 
or by law, when there is a law regulating and enforcing the per- 
formance or non-performance of certain actions. For instance, I 
am physically free to walk in a certain place, but there may be a 
law forbidding me to do so, and therefore restraining my physi- 
cal liberty. Now, when we say thought is free, whatever we 
may legitimately mean by thought, concepts, judgment, opinion, 
the question comes up, Do we mean thought is free in the first 
sense or in the second that is, do we mean to express that 
thought is free from physical force or free from law ? In the 
first place, it is evident that that saying can mean nothing less ; 
at least that thought is free from physical restraint ; that no 
material power can affect it in any way whatever. Here is the 
proof. A cause must be proportionate to the effect required 
from it. But there is and can be no proportion between material 
force and thought, which is a spiritual act. Therefore, material 
force cannot produce, affect, or modify thought. 

Again, what is external to man's mind cannot act upon it 
except it becomes internal. But force is external to man's mind, 
and can never immediately and directly become internal to it. 
Therefore it can never restrain thought. 

Thought is, then, free. No despot or tyrant, by any material 
power or force, can make a man think as he would have him : 
the body may be in shackles, but the mind is free to soar beyond 
the boundaries of the present time and space, and revel in uncon- 
trolled freedom of thought. In this sense the poet has said : 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage." 

But is thought free as to law ? Assuredly _ not. Thought is 



744 "THOUGHT is FREE." [Sept., 

subject to the law of evidence, as much as the universe is subject 
to the law of gravitation. And in order to render this clear we 
shall go over every operation of the mind to which we have 
applied the word thought, and show how each of those operations 
is subject to the law of evidence. And first as to that operation 
of the mind which perceives what a thing is, and .which is called 
idea, concept, etc. Now, if this idea or perception is the per- 
ception of an object external to us, we have the immediate testi- 
mony of our senses testifying to the reality and objectiveness of 
our perception. If it be the perception of some internal or 
psychological fact we have the immediate evidence of our con- 
sciousness testifying to the objectiveness of such fact. In both 
these cases, is my thought free ? Am I free to think the con- 
trary of that which is evidenced by the testimony of my senses 
or the internal voice of my consciousness ? If my vision testifies 
to the brightness of the starry heavens, am I free to think and 
assert the contrary? If my consciousness testifies to that con- 
tinual ebbing and flowing of thoughts and feelings which occupy 
my soul and which succeed each other incessantly, am I free to 
think the contrary and say that my soul is in perfect calm, occu- 
pied by one single thought? Thought, therefore, is not free 
as to perception. Is it free as to judgment ? Certainly not. 
Judgment, as we have said, is that act of the mind by which the 
mind affirms a quality of a certain subject, or vice versa. Con- 
sidered as to the foundation on which they rest, judgments 
are of two classes of immediate evidence and of mediate. A 
judgment of immediate evidence is that in which the predicate is 
contained and seen in the subject; as, the whole is greater than 
any of its parts, a triangle has three angles, the radii of a circle 
from centre to circumference are all equal, etc. Of mediate 
evidence, when we cannot see the predicate as included in the 
subject, and make use of a reasoning to find out their agreement 
or disagreement. 

So much of what are called analytical judgments ; that is, 
judgments in which the predicate is found by analyzing the 
subject. 

But there are other judgments the predicate of which cannot 
be found by any analysis of the subject, but is attributed to it 
on the testimony of the senses or of internal consciousness ; these 
are called hypothetical judgments : for instance, u that body is 
square," " that feeling is pleasant," -etc. In all these cases the 
predicate is affirmed of the subject on the testimony of the senses 
or of consciousness. As to reasoning, we have already touched 



1883.] " THOUGHT is FREE:' 745 

upon it, and, in fact, it resolves itself into three judgments. Now, 
is my thought free as to judgment ? When I see a predicate 
to be contained in the subject, or to belong to the subject, either 
by mediate or immediate evidence, or on the testimony of the 
senses or of consciousness, am I free to say that the predicate 
does not agree with the subject ? Can I say, for instance, that the 
whole is not greater than any of its parts ; that a triangle has 
four angles, etc. ? 

There is one thing left to which we have applied the word 
thought, and that is opinion. Am I free as to opinions ? It is 
evident that, if I would act as a reasonable being, I must adhere 
to my opinions in proportion to the reasons which support them, 
neither more nor less. If those opinions wax stronger and 
stronger as I meditate upon them, then I must cling to my 
opinions with greater tenacity, and if the reasons become weaker 
and weaker, so must my adhesion become looser and looser, and 
keep pace with the strength of the reasons. Consequently, as to 
my opinions, also, I am bound by the law of evidence. 

Thought, then, is not free in the sense that every one may 
think just what he pleases and how he pleases upon every con- 
ceivable subject. Thought is bound by the law of evidence. 
Force alone cannot affect thought, but law in its necessary rule 
can, and in submitting to law thought merely follows the es- 
sential conditions of its nature. 



746 THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. [Sept., 



THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. 

THE prevalent English or American impression in regard to 
the characteristics of an Irish country wedding is that it would 
be a scene of uproarious mirth and rude horse-play, in which the 
shouting and rioting guests would for the most part get drunk, 
and which would probably end in a friendly fight. This impres- 
sion, like a good many others regarding the Irish people, is de- 
rived from the dull slanders of cockney writers who never saw 
Ireland, and have merely kept up the tradition of the Teagues, 
that represented the monsters of ignorance and absurdity creat- 
ed by the prejudices of the first English dramatists. Much has 
been done in later years to banish this absurd and ridiculous 
caricature, which is about as true to nature as the English ad- 
miral in top-boots whom Thackeray saw on the stage of the 
theatre of the Porte St. Martin ; and the faithful pictures by 
native writers and the closer observations by visitors have shown 
that the type of the Irish peasant is not a blundering blockhead 
whose supreme idea of festivity is that of a drunken riot. But 
old prejudices are hard to dispel, and it is quite probable that the 
" Wedding of Ballyporeen " is still taken as a characteristic type 
of the Irish marriage festival, although any one who knows any- 
thing about the country would discover that it was a vulgar 
cockney fraud in the first half-dozen lines : 

" First, book in hand, came Father Quipes 
And the bride's dadda, the baillie, O." 

Father " Quipes " is about as felicitous an appellation as " Lor' 
Beef" in the French melodrama, and the " baillie " is a function- 
ary of the Goosedubs and not of Kilballyowen. But the whole 
ballad is beneath contempt, and as false as it is vulgar and dull ; 
nor would it be worth mention, except, as has been said, its 
spirit is so often taken as the characteristic of an Irish country 
wedding. It may be said that there has been of late years a 
diminution in the joviality manifested at Irish weddings, as in 
many others of the ancient customs of the people, produced by 
the change in manners and by the cloud of misfortune that has 
darkened down upon the land since the famine years, and that 
half a century ago they would be much less subdued and quiet 
than they are to-day. This is quite true ; and however authentic 



1883.] THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. 747 

for its time was the picture of the prolonged festivity, with its 
accompaniments of racing for the bottle and other extravagant 
features, given by Carleton in his sketch of Shane Fadtis Wedding, 
it would be almost impossible to find its counterpart in modern 
life. But at no time were there any such scenes of drunken 
ness and rioting as caricatured by English writers and accepted 
as national characteristics. 

An Irish country wedding contains much that is peculiar, but 
little or nothing that is extravagant, and its peculiar characteris- 
tics are simply the national or local habits and participants, and 
the dialect and humor of the people. One day, during a visit to 
the doctor in charge of a dispensary district in the west of Ire- 
land, I had been sitting in the surgery during the hours for the 
attendance of patients able to come to the office for their relief, 
and had been deeply moved and interested in the cases of real 
want and suffering, as well as amused by some of the imaginary 
complaints of the most unheard-of and complicated disorders, 
that were presented with a wealth of lamentation and eloquence 
that would have moved the hardest heart, if it had not been ap- 
parent that they were ingenious figments intended to procure an 
order for meal and meat from the relieving officer, or simply 
from the impulse to get attention and a bottle of medicine be- 
cause they were free. Most of the cases, indeed, were only too 
genuine, in which the patients, whose pinched and pallid faces 
showed that they suffered from want as well as from disease, 
had come for miles, with weary limbs and feeble steps, from 
the bed of straw on the earthen floor of some lonely cabin in 
the mountains, for the relief of pains that were the direct result of 
their miserable habitations and unhealthy and insufficient food ; 
and even the impostors had temptation enough in their wretched 
condition. To treat the genuine sufferers with a real and gentle 
sympathy and such relief as was possible, and to confound the 
frauds with a blatherskite blarney as ingenious as their own in 
its learned and authoritative phraseology, to the effect that their 
distressing symptoms were merely the exaggerated evidences of 
robust health, were the easy transitions of the doctor's manage- 
ment, and finally the large number of patients was reduced to 
one. This was a little, wizened old man with a complexion of a 
dirty white, either from his distress or from his customary seclu- 
sion from the rays of the sun, and apparently, from the appear- 
ance of his hands, the cobbler of the village. He approached 
with his hands locked in front of his apron, and, in response to 
an inquiry as to his ailment, ejaculated : 



748 THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. [Sept., 

" O doctor ! the wind of the world is in my stomach." 
" Well, have you a bottle ? I thought not. You never have 
a bottle except for whiskey. Take a spoonful of this every hour 
until you feel better; and, mind you, don't eat so much cold cab- 
bage, or you may find yourself turned into a balloon, and the last 
we see of you is your coat-tails as you are blown on a sou'west 
gale to America." 

" Ach, hach ! Long life to your honor, but you're funny with 
the old man. A spoonful every hour. I'll mind " (anglice, re- 
member). 

" Be sure you don't break the bottle, or your life will not 
be worth an hour's purchase. What's the news in Clogher, 
Mickle ?" 

" Not much, your honor, except the hard times, and sure 
that's no news. There's a daughter of Long John Rafferty's, 
Maurya, the second eldest, married to Willy McGrath whose 
father has the Connevoe farm this day ; and it will be a good 
wedding, for both families has strong ' backs ' " (a large number 
of relatives). 

" There, thou second Captain Cook, is a chance to see a 
genuine Irish wedding. We must go." 

" Oh ! but will you come, doctor dear? " 

" To be sure, you supralaprarian vagabond ! " 

" And will Mister Captain Yankee come, too ? ' 

" Don't dare to doubt it. And now get out and cure yourself, 
so that you can be on hand and sing us the ' Cobbler's Lament ' 
this evening." 

I had no reason to doubt of the heartiness of my welcome 
at the gathering, even if I had entered it with no other sesame 
than that of being an American, however singular it would have 
appeared in other regions for a stranger to make himself a guest 
at so peculiar and intimate a family party as that assembled at a 
wedding ; for the abounding hospitality and kindliness of. the 
people toward a representative of a country which afforded an 
asylum to so many of their friends had been too often exhibited 
to leave any room for question. But the doctor was the friend 
of the family, as of everybody in the district, and was entitled to 
bring any number of friends with the assurance of a hearty and 
familiar welcome. The marriage ceremony had already taken 
place, as usual, in the forenoon, that portion of the day being 
called the " bride's day " and presaging from its sunshine or 
storm the complexion of her married life. Happily, so far as 
this proverb goes, the promise of Maurya McGrath's felicity 



1883.] THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. 749 

had been an unclouded one, which is rare enough in the change- 
able skies of an Irish winter. 

After tea the jaunting-car was brought around to the hall- 
door, and, when we had bestowed ourselves comfortably dos-h-dos, 
the gossoon gave an encouraging " whup " to the mare, and we 
jolted down the avenue and into the broad highroad. As we 
passed through the single street of the village of Clogher the 
moon was rising and shedding a yellow light on the thatched 
roofs of the contiguous rows of cabins, the blue smoke from 
whose peat-fires rose softly wreathing upward in the calm even- 
ing air. The hospitable light was shining, through the open half- 
door of the hostel over the way, on a diminutive donkey and cart 
hitched to a ring in the jamb, and the plump figure of " Peggy 
Margaret," dearest and rosiest of landladies, came to the door at 
the sound of the wheels to wish us a cheery " good-night." In a 
moment or two we were past the dark church and its field of 
white headstones, had rumbled across the stone bridge over the 
stream, and were swaying along the quiet country road between 
the hedgerows. It was a warm night in the early winter, and the 
cattle were lying out in the fields, which were illumined by the 
mellow moonlight. Here and there twinkled the light of a cabin 
on the neighboring hillside, or was clearly marked by its white 
walls against the dark green of the fields. The outline of the 
distant mountain that dominated the landscape was drawn clear 
against the sky, and the light of a cabin near the summit shone 
like a tiny star. Our road lay up a long valley that seemed to 
shut us in closer and closer and with steeper hills as we pro- 
ceeded toward its head. At first the wayfarers were few, but 
as we approached our destination we passed several parties of 
young fellows and girls proceeding with chatter and laughter to 
the wedding, and more than one old man and \i\svanithee (anglicc, 
old woman) walking with more deliberation and sobriety to the 
same festival. Every one of them had a kindly response for the 
hearty salutation of the doctor, and it was apparent that he was 
an object of general good-will and regard. One belated beggar, 
known as " Briney with the Bag," who was making the best of 
the speed that his crippled limbs would permit in order to get a 
share of the feast, had his anxious heart consoled with a sixpence 
and an intimation that his approach should be made known, so 
that his ration might not be stinted. How many miles he had 
travelled in order to partake of the wedding hospitality was 
quite uncertain ; but the gentry of the staff and scrip scent such an 
affair from an incredible distance, and the wedding at a house of 



750 THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. [Sept, 

substance which had not a dozen or more of these unbidden but 
ungrudgingly-received guests would be considered to have 
something unlucky as well as extraordinary about it. 

Connevoe farm was at the very head of the valley, which shut 
it all around with such steep hillsides that it would seem as 
though its fields could not be pastured by anything but goats or 
ploughed except, with horses whose legs were shorter on one 
side than the other. That the farmer managed to get good 
crops from them, however, was apparent in the size and number 
of the stacks in the " haggard " and the general air of substance 
and comfort about the house and steading. The house was of 
stone and substantially built, although low, with its thatched 
roof newly laid, and other signs of neatness and thrift not always 
to be seen about the houses of even substantial farmers. How it 
happened that the tenant was thus able to live in the careless 
display of comfort was doubtless due to the fortunate accident 
of a long lease or an exceptionably reasonable landlord. Alto- 
gether the establishment looked very snug and cosy in its shel- 
tered nook, and was a welcome contrast to the appearance of 
hopeless struggle, if not distress, very common among the farm- 
ing population of the district. 

The windows and the wide-open door streamed with light, 
and the number of jaunting-cars in the yard indicated the impor- 
tance of a portion of the guests. Half a dozen hands were ready 
to take the- bridle of the doctor's mare as we drove up to the 
door, and there was a general welcome from the people about as 
we entered the doorway, where the broad and jovial countenance 
of the farmer met us and our knuckles almost cracked in the 
heartiness of his grasp. The lady of the house, just behind, 
greeted us with hardly less cordiality of welcome, while from 
behind her skirts ran out the youngest daughter of the family, a 
chubby lass of five or six, who had made the acquaintance of the 
doctor before, and, in spite of his cruelty in wounding her arm 
for vaccination, was deeply enamored of his smiles and his candy. 
With this young lady in the doctor's arms we were ushered into 
the low parlor, where the bride and bridegroom sat doing pen- 
ance in their new clothes and under the burden of their unaccus- 
tomed honors, amid their nearest relations and the more substan- 
tial portion of the company, who apparently did not quite suc- 
ceed in feeling the proper degree of unconstraint suitable for the 
occasion. The company were ranged around the room, in whose 
centre was a long table bearing the bride-cake and a decanter 
and glasses, both for ceremonial observance rather than for sub- 



1883.] THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. 751 

stantial eating and drinking, but which were by no means to be 
slighted in wishing good health and prosperity to the happy 
pair in a sip of negus and in the carrying away. a piece of the 
bride-cake to dream on. 

The company in the parlor consisted of the relatives of the 
bride and bridegroom and the well-to-do neighbors, dressed in 
their best, and a trifle subdued and formal mider the influence 
of the ceremonial occasion, except as the stiffness was invaded 
by the irrepressible younger fry, who made noisy fun among 
themselves in spite of the occasional reproving whisper and 
the restraint of lap or arm. The priest who had performed 
the ceremony was not present, having been summoned away 
by other duties, and there was a lack of his cordial influence in 
setting the neighbors to talk and inciting the cheerful merri- 
ment of the occasion. The bride, a comely and rosy girl, and 
the bridegroom, a stout, healthy young fellow, were silent and 
embarrassed with the novelty and dignity of their position, 
and could hardly reply to the occasional good-humored jest at 
their condition. By far the most notable figure in the room 
was that of the aged grandmother, apparently so old as to have 
reached the visible fading of vitality into passive quietude and 
immobility, who sat in her straw chair on one side of the turf 
fire and smiled upon the scene with the tranquil aspect of se- 
rene old age. Her abundant, snowy hair was crowned with a 
white lace cap, and her yet beautiful dark eyes illumined a 
face of tranquil benignity which, although perfectly pale and 
colorless, was firm in contour and showed none of the wreck 
of . feebleness in its features. She was neatly dressed, with a 
white handkerchief drawn across her shoulders, and as she sat 
with her arms folded in her lap she made a beautiful picture 
of happy old age enjoying the retrospect of memory and yet 
warmed and comforted by the happiness of the present hour. 

It was not long before the room was invaded by the volun- 
teer helpers, who had been preparing the wedding-feast in the 
kitchen, from which potent smells and the steam of abundance 
had pervaded the house and whetted the appetites of the waiting 
guests of the scrip and bag outside the door. The table was 
cleared of its cake and negus, and speedily laid with an abundant 
supply of boiled mutton, fowls, and pigs' heads, all embedded in 
masses of white cabbage, with white bread and tea, and every- 
body was invited to fall to by a hearty summons from the head of 
the house. In the kitchen there was a similar feast going on, 
with much more noise and clatter of dishes and noggins for the 



752 THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. [Sept., 

home-brewed beer which took the place of tea in that less aristo- 
cratic quarter, and the guests outside were soon supplied with 
an abundance. It was rather a difficulty to struggle with the 
abundance with which the hearty hospitality insisted upon piling 
the plate, and to which it would have been a discourtesy not to 
do full justice ; but there is an end to all things, even to an Irish 
wedding-supper, and at last the time came to adjourn to the ball- 
room, which in this instance, as generally, was the barn, which 
had been duly swept and garnished, the holes in its earthen 
floor filled with fresh clay and moistened and beaten to give 
smoothness and solidity. The barns in Ireland are not the large 
buildings, familiar in the United States, in which the hay and 
grain are protected from the weather, but merely shelters for the 
cattle. This one, like the most, was built of rough stones set in 
earth, with low walls and a thatched roof. 

Within it was lighted with dozens of candles stuck up against 
the walls with lumps of clay. At one end on a temporary plat- 
form were a couple of fiddlers and a piper, the two former as- 
siduously tuning their strings and rosining their bows, while the 
latter, with his bellows under his arm, was squeezing it to a sub- 
dued groan or two and fingering his pipes in the preliminary 
salute of the melody. This piper was a notable performer, one of 
the last and best of the ancient race of pipers, whose instruments 
are disappearing before the foreign fiddle and the cockney con- 
certina. He was called " White Phelim," being an albino, and 
had a deficiency of vision, although it did not amount, to the ab- 
solute blindness which is the usual badge of his profession. He 
was famous for his skill over a wide district, and no wedding or 
merry-making could be considered to have met all its require- 
ments without his attendance, and he was frequently invited to 
give his performances of the native airs in the drawing-rooms of 
the gentry. . His pipes had been used a generation before him, 
and the keyholes were worn into deep hollows by the continu- 
ous tapping of hardened fingers, and the skin of the bag was 
patched in many places. They were, however, a set of noble 
proportions, and, as we had the opportunity of ascertaining, 
their tone and quality had lost nothing by age, even if they had 
not been improved like those of a Stradivarius violin. The as- 
semblage in the barn, which included the guests of both parlor 
and kitchen, filled its proportions to the utmost consistent with 
giving room for a couple of reel sets, one on each side of the row 
of posts supporting the roof-tree ; and many of the young ladies 
were obliged, without any apparent evidence of reluctance, to oc- 



1883.] THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. 



753 



cupy the laps of the lads, and there was a great deal of laughing 
over the squeezing and adjustment. The elders " took a draw at 
the pipe " and passed it around in token of friendship and good- 
will, as they were prepared to approve or to criticise the dancers, 
and the children snuggled themselves into every vantage-ground 
of observance. 

The first dance belongs by right to the bridal .couple and 
their partners, and their places were supplied by a younger 
brother of the one and a sister of the other. The fiddles supplied 
the music, the piper's contribution to the entertainment being, 
as we found, more in the nature of an independent concert, 
although he did condescend to " put the wind under " some fa- 
vorite jigs, which were duly honored by the heels of the most 
accomplished dancers, before the night was over. The first 
dance was rather a tame affair, the performers being weighted 
down by the sense of ceremony and the uneasiness of being 
under the particular gaze of the assembly, and did not reach the 
proper spirit and energy of an Irish dance ; nor did the fiddlers, 
although anxious to do their best for the honor of their patrons, 
reach the full inspiration and vigor which came afterward from 
elbow-joints limbered by frequent liquid refreshment and the 
enthusiasm generated when the ball was in full fling. Still, the 
dancers did not do discredit to their race in the skill and ac- 
curacy with which they executed the steps, but there was an 
evident sense of relief when this decorous opening of the ball 
was overhand its conclusion gave room for the spirit of more 
genuine festivity and the dancing that was its own delight. As 
soon as the dance of ceremony was over there was a speedy fill- 
ing of the floor by other performers, and the real spirit of the 
dance began. The fiddlers, having taken a refresher from the 
ready tumblers of punch that were furnished them, wiped their 
mouths and commenced to put the life into that most inspiring 
of tunes, " The Wind that shakes the Barley," and the patter of 
steps and the lively grace of movement that are natural to every 
native-born Irishman and Irishwoman to accompany the viva- 
cious notes. The perfection and charm of an Irish girl's dancing 
has been the admiration of every one who has had the good 
fortune to see it, and been the theme for many poets and prose- 
writers, native and foreign. It well deserves its praise, and has a 
distinctive grace peculiarly its own. There are many forms of 
native and national charm in the dance ; the fiery amativeness of 
the Spanish woman in the bolero, the languid and sensuous grace 
of the Italian, the fire of the gipsy, and the meretricious vivacity 

VOL. XXXVII. 48 



754 THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. [Sept., 

to be seen in the promiscuous ball-rooms of Paris all have their 
admirers and their peculiar types of excellence. But the mod- 
esty combined with the hearty spirit of enjoyment, the healthful 
vigor, the easy precision and natural skill of the Irish girl, un- 
der the inspiration of the vigorous and spirited native airs, carry 
off the palm. Although they may step heavily in the common 
walk, and their frames and limbs seem almost too robust for light 
movement, there is scarce one of them who does not move with 
equal grace and vigor in the dance, and to whom the perfection 
of precision in accenting the rapid and complicated measure does 
not seem to be the gift of nature. And 'when the beauty and 
grace of budding womanhood, the light and erect carriage of 
perfect health, the lovely face, the modest eyes and abundant 
tresses, characteristic of Irish beauty, set off by a neat and ap- 
propriate costume, appear upon the floor, it is a figure long to 
be remembered. There was more than one such at the wedding 
at Connevoe. To see one of them with her dress pinned behind 
to show the gay petticoat, the handkerchief drawn across the 
shoulders, and the whole trim figure alert with life and vigor, 
while the feet in the buckled shoes pattered in perfect time, and 
the rosy cheeks grew rosier still with the exercise, and the eyes 
sparkled with modest pleasure, was to realize the truth of the 
portrait of Allingham's " Lovely Mary Donnelly " and to feel 
that there was no sort of extravagance in the expression that 

" The music nearly killed itself 
To listen to her feet," 

or in the many eloquent metaphors in which Irish swains have 
confessed the conquering power of beauty in the dance, to the 
most beautiful and expressive of all, " Dance light, for my heart 
lies under your feet, love." Nothing but poetry can create the 
proper apotheosis of the theme, and any humbler inspiration 
must fail. 

The floor was not allowed to be monopolized by the younger 
dancers. The elders took their share with as much vigor and 
spirit, if not with as much perseverance ; and more than one com- 
fortable dame, the mother of many children, stepped out as gaily 
and lightly as her daughter amid the smiles and applause of the 
company. Even venerable old men, who might have been 
grandfathers, caught the inspiration of their youth and took a 
turn on the floor with a temporary energy in their action not to 
be expected from their ordinary rheumatic gait, and sometimes 
with a skill and variety in their steps that more than rivalled the 



1883.] THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. 755 

younger dancers. Such exhibitions always excited a great deal 
of interest and applause, and were accompanied with frequent ex- 
hortations to hold out and dance each other down. The fiddlers 
were unwearied, only requiring periodical refreshment in a 
liquid form, which stimulated their activity without injuring 
their precision, and the fun grew flaming and hearty without be- 
coming boisterous. The doctor had figured on the floor with 
credit to his assiduous course of study and to the admiration of 
the assembly, when, instigated, as I believe, by his wicked sug- 
gestion, a comely young damsel appeared before me with a 
courtesy and a smile that would have secured obedience from a 
graven image. There was nothing for it but to step out, and, 
desperately swallowing my fears, I did the best I could with such 
recollections of " hoe-downs " in my youth and such improvisa- 
tions as necessity compelled, and have reason to believe that I 
acquitted myself without entire ignominy, although I must admit 
that the encomium which I received was to be attributed more 
to good-nature than to merit, and was even unkindly ironical on 
the part of the doctor. Nevertheless it was something to get 
rid of the infectious uneasiness in the heels, under the inspiration 
of the music, by actual exercise, even if I had not felt properly 
flattered by the compliment. It was not all dancing, however. 
White Phelim with his pipes was not there for nothing, and, al- 
though the enthusiasm of the dance gave no signs of subsidence, 
he was called upon to take his turn at the entertainment. 

It was the first time I had heard the Irish pipes in perfection, 
and although the scene was not altogether congenial to the spirit 
of some of the finest airs of the melancholy or martial kind, 
which need the solitude of the lonely rath or the breadth of the 
broad hillside to have them speak with full power to the heart, 
their noble strength and the natural interpretation of the music 
were fully perceptible. The features of the piper were natural- 
ly rather heavy and commonplace, and he had somewhat of that 
dazed and uncertain look which accompanies imperfection of 
vision ; but when he had taken the seat of honor on the platform 
vacated by the fiddlers, and blown up his bag with a squeeze or 
two of his elbow, and his fingers tried the notes of the reed rest- 
ing on the pad of leather on his knee, his features assumed a 
vivified and inspired expression, and he doubtless felt the power 
and command of the accomplished artist. There was a hush 
upon the company in deference to his dignity or in gratified ex- 
pectation, and, perhaps with a desire to express as strong a con- 
trast' as possible to the light flippancy of the dance music, he 



756 THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. [Sept., 

gave out with strong force and power the finely martial strain 
of "Brian Boroimhe's March." The magic of the pipes to the 
sensitive ear is in the complete appropriateness of the instrument 
to the spirit of the music, the simplicity of the sounds by which 
the meaning is accented, and the historic associations, which are 
an actual power in music as in other forms of -art. There are 
some Irish airs which cannot be interpreted with full effect even 
by the violin, while their spirit is almost completely lost in the 
artificial sharpness of the pianoforte, and can only be fully ex- 
pressed by the peculiar melbdy of the bagpipe, for which they 
were composed. The drone and the treble, rude. as they may 
seem, are thoroughly adapted to the motive and emphasize the 
spirit and meaning by their very simplicity. As there are cer- 
tain martial airs that never reach their full effect and make the 
" heart-strings dumb," except with the beat of the drum and the 
shrill accent of the fife, around which the spirit of historic ap- 
propriateness also clings, so in a still stronger way the pipes are 
necessary for the adequate interpretation of the music which was 
composed for their peculiar capacities, and which carry with 
them the power of a moving tradition. I am by no means pre- 
pared to enter into a disquisition upon the antiquity of the Irish 
bagpipes, but I am confident that many of the old Irish airs, both 
grave and gay, which'are so ancient as to be without knowledge, 
of their origin, were composed for the pipes, and this from their 
inherent characteristics and prevailing motive. The instrument 
evidently dominated the audience and commanded an attention 
which was not given to the violins for themselves. The piper 
played several airs, favorites of his own or by request, and the 
whole gamut of Irish melody was evidently at his fingers' ends. 
The deep spirit of melancholy that pervades the sweetness of 
some of the Irish airs finds its most appropriate interpretation 
in the pipes, and not even the wider capacity and more delicate 
power of the violin can give their essence and effect like the 
drone and the chanter. But the spirit of the occasion was one 
of merriment, and after " The old Head of Dennis " and " My 
Lodging is on the cold Ground," the piper struck up with lively 
fingers " Miss McLeod's Reel," and in a moment the dancers were 
in their places " welting it out upon the flure." 

The exercise was also pretermitted at times for a vocal enter- 
tainment. There were several favorite singers in the company, 
and it would have been improper not to allow their talents 
an opportunity for display. After the conclusion of a jig there 
was a knocking for silence, and an admonitory " whish" passed 



1883.] THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. 757 

around. Then a voice was heard soaring up in the indescri- 
bable, long-drawn intonation in which the Irish country ballads 
are sung, and which is at once utterly laughable and lugubrious. 
The singer was a " jock," whose meaning is precisely as spelled 
that is, half a jockey, a sort of rough rider and breaker of gentle- 
men's colts, but not possessing the skill or the genius necessary 
for the course. This one wore a coarse imitation of the regular 
jockey garb a jacket, dirty knee-breeches of corduroy, and leg- 
gings and was evidently a prime favorite with the girls from his 
impudence and other accomplishments. He had pulled his cap 
over his eyes, and, fixing his eyes on the wooden noggin half full 
of beer in his hand, he was " rising " the song to its full key, 
slightly oscillating his body to the rhythm. There was no air to 
the song or ballad, except the inimitable melancholy cadence and 
intonation peculiar to the street ballad, and its substance was 
the performances of a famous racing mare, " Nancy Till," and her 
rider, John Clancy. At pauses in the song there were expres- 
sions of encouragement and approval, and at the end of the con- 
cluding apostrophe : 

" More power to John Clancy and sweet Nancy Till," 

there was quite an outburst of applause, which the singer re- 
ceived with becoming modesty, and, stealing his arm once more 
around his partner's waist, he slowly elevated his noggin until 
its bottom pointed toward the roof-tree. 

Then the host was persuaded without much entreaty, the 
false modesty of more fashionable society being entirely alien to 
the spirit of the occasion, to give his favorite, " The Little Brown 
Jug," which he sang with a mellow heartiness quite infectious, 
and in whose jolly chorus everybody joined. Several other 
ballads' followed, and among the singers a little old plough- 
man, with a face of weatherbeaten bloom and merry blue eyes, 
achieved a great success by his rendering of the " Drimin dhu 
dheelish," with a comic emphasis of melancholy that would 
have made his fortune on the variety stage, if he could have 
been transferred there, but which no imitation could at all equal 
in its unconscious humor. A stout young woman gave us " The 
Pretty Girl milking her Cow " in the original Irish, and two 
charming young girls, sisters, one with a natural soprano and 
the other with an alto, and an exquisite, untaught harmony and 
feeling, sang modestly yet bravely a sweetly pathetic ballad 
whose title I could not learn. I afterward induced one of them 
to repeat it for a transcript, and, as I have never seen it in print, 



758 THE WEDDING AT CONNEVOE. [Sept., 

t 
I venture to give it, although its simple pathos needs the voices 

that gave it for its full effect : 

" 'Twas early spring ; the year was warm ; 
The flowers they bloomed and the birds they sang ; 
Not a bird was happier than I 
When my loved sailor-boy was nigh. 

" The evening star was shining still ; 
The twilight peeped o'er the distant hill ; 
The sailor-boy and I, his bride, 
Were walking by the ocean side. 

" Scarce six months since we were wed ; 
But, ah ! how quickly the moments fled, 
Since we must part at the dawning day : 
The proud bark bears my love away. 

" Time's long past. He comes no more 
To his weeping friends on the silent shore. 
The ship went down in the howling storm, 
The seas engulfed his lifeless form. , 

" I wish that I was sleeping, too, 
Beneath the waves of the ocean blue, 
My soul to God, and my body in the sea, 
The broad waves rolling over me." 

It was a touch of pathos which the finest art could not reach. 

When the dancing began again we felt that we had had our 
full share of the merriment, and did not wait for the throwing of 
the stocking or the break-up of the festivity, at whatever hour of 
the night or morning that took place. Much to the discontent of 
the gossoon, who was in the height of enjoyment, the car was 
ordered round, and, after our good wishes to the bride and 
bridegroom, and many warm handshakings, we mounted the car 
amid a volley of " good-nights " and " safe-homes " ; we took our 
seats, and in a moment were rolling home on the silent highway, 
the dewy freshness of the night air blowing gratefully upon our 
cheeks, and the moon, riding high in cloud-racked sky, illuming 
the calm fields and solemn hills. 



1883.] SUNDAYISM IN ENGLAND. 759 



SUNDAYISM IN ENGLAND. 

THE French expression "s'endimancher" is descriptive of a 
conventional Sundayism which has passed away out of the 
customs of my country. Time was when black kid gloves, and 
even a sort of dress-coat, were regarded by the middle classes as 
outward and visible exponents of the inward orthodox appre- 
ciation of " once-a-weekism." But is Sunday any better kept 
now, when the middle classes, as a rule, do not " Sunday them- 
selves," than it was in the days when a full-dress Protestant 
piety rendered homage to a great Christian institution ? Proba- 
bly not. There was a something admirable and even French- 
men used to recognize it in the still proprieties and reverent 
dulness of the Anglican Sunday. It might be mainly conven. 
tional, though it was far from being wholly so ; it might be even 
consciously apologetic, though it was at least a national homage 
to the Christian faith. In the towns as in the villages, in the 
suburbs as in Mayfair, all classes used to recognize the " obli- 
gation " of Sunday, though in a sense very distinct from the 
Catholic. There was the obligation of observing decorum on 
the Sunday, and there was the at least traditional propriety of 
going to church. Indeed, not to go to "a place of worship," say 
thirty or forty years ago, or about the time when Queen Vic- 
toria came to the throne, was a mark of a certain looseness of 
character and created a prejudice against the mechanic, or even 
the clerk. Respectability made Sundayism canonical. Nor is it 
in a spirit of irony one would say this, but as fully recognizing 
what is due to respectability. The English Sunday was a capi- 
tal mainstay of the English people. They who went to church 
heard much that was good, and they who stopped away were 
made ashamed. In this year, 1883, the tone is changed. We 
are now busied with the question of opening museums on Sun- 
day, because open churches do not attract as they used to do. 
Our Anglican friends, even our Dissenting friends, have to con- 
fess this. Ritualism has not fascinated the humbler orders, and 
Dissent has lost ground against free-thought. Sunday is no 
longer that one day in the week when Christianity has its na- 
tional recognition ; it is only that one day when the shops are 
not opened, and which is devoted more to rest than to religion. 

From the social rather than from the religious point of view 



760 SUNDA YISM IN ENGLAND. [Sept., 

let us contemplate the aspects of the new spirit. The English 
Sunday of to-day as compared with the English Sunday when 
church-going and respectability meant the same thing, is an ap- 
preciable falling-off in a variety of social senses, and, in some de- 
gree, of old-fashioned conservatism. " Church and state " meant 
that at least there was a church ; but the church- is now as little 
thought of as the state by the masses in the English big towns. It 
is easy to laugh at Sundayism, in its old Anglican sense, as con- 
ventional, formal, hypocritical ; for my part, I should maintain 
that among .the humbler orders it was most real, though among 
the higher orders it might be " proper " or " decorous." What is 
the Sunday of to-day, in every one of our great towns, and in not 
a few of our more pretentious country places ? It is a day on 
which the people who are growing old, the highly respectable 
men and matrons of threescore, still render a sincere homage to 
their particular creed ; but it is a day on which the rising and 
even the risen generation think but little more about religion than 
about work. Socially the result is as follows : propriety has 
given place to mere indolence, the energy of going to church to 
mere secularism. The humbler orders and the shop-youths have 
largely thrown off that staidness which was the expression of 
wishing to believe and to be thought to believe ; the men now 
lounging during church hours about the corners of streets, 
leaning one arm on a curbstone while contemplating vacuity, and 
devoting the other arm to the service of a short pipe, waiting 
sadly for one o'clock, when the public-house may be opened or 
when the midday meal may offer pursuit to their unoccupied- 
ness. The more intelligent of the lower middle classes may con- 
descend to discuss free-thought which, in their idea, means the 
not going to church or they may even speak with admiration 
of some preacher they once sat under who was so clever as to 
attempt to harmonize the Mosaic record ; but they look upon 
religion as so essentially an interior matter that it is stowed away 
even beyond the ken of their own proprietorship, and they sit as 
lightly to all creeds as they do to all observances, save such as 
afford them quietness or emancipation. Hence, socially, the 
street aspect of the Sunday has come to be suggestive of a dies 
non ; while the domestic or family aspect is that of the "keeping" 
of an old custom which, in the days of our forefathers, must have 
been significant. Yet, since some sort of fictitious life must be 
given to the Sunday for it is painful to be idle all the day it is 
now proposed to open museums and picture-galleries, so as to 
make leisure to seem intelligent or reputable. 



1883.] SUNDA YISM IN ENGLAND. ?6l 

In the United States there has been a tightening of legisla- 
tion in regard to certain observances of the Sunday, but in 
England we seem inclined towards a loosening of the bonds 
which still unite the Sunday with Christian sentiment. It is 
true that the proposed changes are but apologetic ; they are 
regretful even more than they are concessive ; nor would they 
appear to the ordinary American to make more demand on the 
conscience than they do on the purses of the Britisher. The 
American wag who said that " Sunday in New York used to be 
kept like any other day in the week, and rather more so," might 
see nothing to be complained of in the very mild propositions in 
regard to the museums and the picture-galleries. Looking at 
the question from the social point of view, it is not impossible 
that we might be gainers by the change. From the religious 
point of view we should have to argue upon first principles ; 
and these I will not allude to at the present time. Socially the 
English Sunday has become so deteriorated into a mere lounging 
day, among the masses of our countrymen and countrywomen, 
that not even the Salvation Army can do more than tickle the 
humor of the thousands of strollers who won't be bored by reli- 
gion. And, socially, the upper classes are to blame for a deca- 
dence which their good example, their self-denial, might have pre- 
vented. The selfishness of the upper classes, in thinking chiefly 
of their own comforts and caring little for the reasonable rest of 
their servants, has bred a popular conviction that Sundayism, like 
respectability, is designed chiefly for those who can afford both. 
And, further than this, the vulgar worldlmess which has led the 
rich classes to oust the poor classes from all the best seats in all 
the churches leaving the poor classes to sit, like alms-people, on 
back benches, from which they may contemplate the bright toilets 
in the best seats has led the poor classes to look on churches as 
the Sunday show-places of rich people, who cannot even on one 
day give up their good things to the poor, nor, in God's house, 
put themselves in the back seats. There is some ground for such 
an irritable mood of inference. The silk dresses and the velvet 
jackets are swept majestically up the nave, graciously touching, 
perhaps, the cotton garments of the plebeian ; and from the 
ivory purses are taken the shillings -or the half-crowns for the 
front seats which should be devoted to the poor. Has this 
scandal had no social fruit or complement, no ethical or political 
results worth the naming ? It has made radicalism to come out 
of the churches, from the observation of the worldly selfishness 
which has walked into them. It has bred, socially, just exactly 



762 SUNDA YISM IN ENGLAND. [Sept., 

the same bad feelings which, religiously, it has suggested or pro- 
voked. Worldliness outside churches may be a matter of 
course ; but worldliness in the best seats in the churches ; world- 
liness at church-doors, on church-steps; worldliness as displayed 
in the driving off in a smart carriage, when the constitution 
would have been better for a walk in short, that obtrusion of the 
most conventional egotism, which, leaving its drawing-rooms at 
home, makes drawing-rooms of churches and " snubs " the poor 
in the only house they should call their own has, socially, in- 
jured the Sunday and filled the streets and the taverns with 
countless people who prefer either of them to hypocrisy. Free- 
thinking, in this country, has been largely begotten of irritation 
of the contemplation of the imposture of Sunday piety. Non- 
sense to suppose that people who possess nothing, and who are 
reminded of it in church more than anywhere else, are going to 
make Sunday not only the most uncomfortable day in the week, 
but the day on which their poverty is most thrust on them ! 

I remember the days when, being at Tait's school in Brighton, 
I was taken to sit under the Rev. James Anderson ; and, being a 
school-boy, I had a natural appreciation of the funny part of 
what was supposed to be religion. In those days (say in the 
year 1845) I na d never heard of the Catholic religion, save as a 
poisonous weed of foreign growth ; and I assumed that Mr. An- 
derson, who was chaplain to the queen dowager, must have a con- 
gregation of most typical propriety. At a few minutes before 
eleven o'clock the carriages arrived, and the half-crown people 
swept up to their front seats. There were two families of such 
exceptional distinction or of such very feeble muscular power 
that their footmen used to follow them up the nave, carrying 
their beautifully-bound prayer-books in silk bags. On arriving 
at the doored pew the footmen placed the prayer-books which 
were first cautiously taken out of the silk bags on the ledge of 
the private apartment called a pew, and then retired, manifest- 
ing their plush and brass buttons to the gaze of the admiring 
congregation. Now, this one example of fantastic imbecility, of 
positively comic vulgarity and bombast, may serve as a specimen 
of the kind of irritating incentive which has led to the modern 
paganism of the English Sunday. " To the poor the Gospel is 
preached " but only by kind concession of the rich, who most 
generously suffer them to study their beautiful toilets from safe 
distances under galleries or behind doors. I should wish to be 
responsible for my own opinion on a point which belongs to the 
social side of Sunday ism (indeed, the word " Sundayism " can 



1883.] SUNDAYISM IN ENGLAND. 763 

only be used in the social sense, for it would be out of the ques- 
tion to use it in the religious sense), and I would merely hazard 
my own impression that no small amount of radicalism, both of 
the free-thinking and the political kind, has been suggested by 
fashionable pietists or " swell Christians." That last expression 
meets the ideas of the censorious, though it grates upon the ears 
of the exquisite. I have all my life held the view which may 
not be welcome to the too comfortable, but which I contend is 
thoroughly conservative and Christian that inside churches the 
poor should have the best places and the rich should be left to 
sit where they can. Or, if seats must be sometimes priced and 
this is necessary in England from various reasons, of which we 
all admit the soundness let them be the back seats, or the side 
seats, or the unhassocked seats ; for inside churches the poorer 
classes should " come first." And this suggestion should have 
more force with Catholics than it can have with any kind of non- 
Catholics, because the nearer to the altar the more unfitting is 
pride ; indeed, " the world " should have no place inside churches. 
Perhaps I may be thought " radical " in insisting on a principle 
which would "snub" the rich to the advantage of the poor. 
But I think that the best way to keep radicalism out of the 
streets is to keep vanity and pomposity out of the churches ; and 
on this point, as on every other, I should maintain that it is the 
rich classes who create discontent among the poor. The same 
truth holds good in regard to the present state of France, which 
is rotten with impiety and with antagonism. " Faubourg-St- 
Germainism " has had no little to do with red-radicalism, with 
the class-hatred and religion-hatred of the French masses. 

On a Sunday morning in London we are awoke about half- 
past seven (it is a custom to sleep late on a Sunday morning by 
way of making up the arrears of the week-day mornings, and 
every housemaid warmly resents the being obliged to provide 
breakfast until an hour or two after the ordinary week-day time) 
by street-boys bellowing the Despatch, Lloyd's Weekly, Sunday 
Times, Referee, Reynolds , Observer ; nor do these juveniles desist 
from their frantic advertisement until kind patrons have dis- 
covered their pennies. Then comes a dead pause, say from nine 
to half-past ten, while the world is getting up or taking break- 
fast. At half-past ten the bells begin ; and now is seen the con- 
trast between the twos and twos of well-dressed church-goers- 
to whom the French apply the expression " s'endimancher," as 
descriptive of a specially Sundayed " get-up "-and the town 
loungers, who seem to be bent on showing their disdain for the 



764 SUN DA YISM IN ENGLAND. [Sept., 

propriety and respectability dear to the upper classes. Of 
course there are many Londons, and while the plebeian parts are 
demonstratively secular the fashionable parts are silent and cold. 
In the plebeian parts the town loungers linger sadly or laugh- 
ingly, as their mood may suggest on the particular morning, or 
possibly sit in their shirt-sleeves at the windows 0f their abodes, 
as though resenting the temptation to go out. A little later 
many of the middle-class young people, and also most of the 
shop-youths and Sunday holidayists, having achieved some sort 
of toilet which is respectful to conventionalism, and not unmind- 
ful of even poetic attractiveness, commence their walks, and seem 
to be generally in pain because there is really " nothing to be 
done." Still, they behave well, and they generally purchase a 
Referee, which informs them what horses have won races and 
what horses it will be desirable to be "on to," with a view to 
possibly losing half a crown. The London parks are not tumul- 
tuously attended, as they are regarded as rather " slow " by the 
young people ; but the penny steamboats are crowded in summer- 
time, and the Thames Embankments are not without their de- 
votees. Those who can afford it go to Richmond, or to Hamp- 
stead, or to some suburb attainable by omnibus ; but the immense 
majority of Londoners while away the day " anyhow " or in a 
merely listless meandering from street to street. From one to 
three the world dines ; from three to six the world saunters ; 
from six to eleven the streets are crowded with most of the 
classes who are not drinking in one of the fifteen thousand pub- 
lic-houses. This is the Sunday observance of the masses. Yet 
we leave out of the reckoning some half-million of " respectable " 
people who " keep " Sunday with English stay-at-home gravity. 
Thirty years ago a clerk or an artisan who " made a habit of 
not going to church on a Sunday " would have certainly lost his 
character, or would have been received with suspicion into any 
employment demanding honesty and steadiness. I do not think 
that there is, in these days, one employer in twenty who feels the 
slightest interest in the ideas of passing Sunday which may be 
approved by ahy person whom he employs. The social institu- 
tion of the Sunday has thrown the religious institution into the 
shade. Or, rather, it has survived it, in the same way as certain 
saints' days are kept as holidays without thought of the saints. 
" Well, at least, you have got rid of hypocrisy," will reply the 
blunt man of the world ; " you have got rid of all that detestable 
formalism which made church-going the cloak of sheer worldli- 
ness, and which was nothing but a conformity to the canons of 



1883.] SUNDAYISM IN ENGLAND. 765 

conventionalism, like the Sunday clothes which were assumed 
for the occasion." This is true. I can perfectly remember,when 
I was about seven years old, being taken to church and told 
"to behave as a good boy." My father's pew was in the front 
row of the parish church; and three huge boxes, for clerk, 
prayer-reader, and preacher, towered in front of me with hideous 
gravity. The central part of the church was devoted to the 
poor, who had to sit on wooden benches, without cushions or 
hassocks, through an hour and three-quarters of the dismal ser- 
vice. The rector read his sermon from a manuscript ; and I 
used to count the twenty pages as they were slowly turned 
through forty minutes, half pitying myself, but wholly pitying 
the church-paupers who had not my luxuries of cushion and 
hassock. Justice Maule's reasonable estimate of the proper 
length of a sermon, " twenty minutes, with a leaning to the side 
of mercy," was not the estimate of my essay-loving rector. The . 
sermon over (a most appreciable relief), the big people streamed 
first out of the church, followed by the lesser people and the 
least people. And directly we got outside two subjects of con- 
versation engrossed the congregation as they walked home : first, 
a criticism on the sermon, as to " views " and as to talent ; and, 
next, a criticism on the toilets of the Sundayed ladies. That 
three-fourths of such church-going was sheer hypocrisy or dis- 
mal cant it would be affectation to seriously question. Yet, at 
least, there was the public tribute to the institution of the Sun- 
day as primarily religious, secondly social. Cardinal Newman's 
well-known expressions about " shivering and shuddering " as 
descriptive of Anglican sensations under a divine service like 
the Frenchman's painful impression of that divine service as " a 
funeral service over a defunct religion "were applicable, it is 
true, to a past time in Anglican story before Ritualism had 
mantled coldness with ceremony. They are not applicable now 
in the same degree. Yet the difference is this : that whereas 
most people in former days went to church to appear respecta- 
ble, the same classes in these days go to listen to pretty music 
or to watch the priestly gestures of the clergy. 

It will be objected that the Sundayed appearance of all great 
towns is perhaps necessarily that of a holiday, not of a holy day ; 
and that it is unfair, if not puritanical, to infer from such an 
appearance that the masses are not earnest about religion. We 
must admit this. Yet, as the best possible illustration of the 
truism, let us remember what Rome was in the days of Pius I 
Rome during the whole of a Sunday. I leave out the fact 
that all Romans went to church between the hours of five and 



766 SUNDA YISM IN ENGLAND. [Sept., 

half-past twelve some to a Low Mass, some to a High Mass, but 
all to religious duties in a church and I take only the appear- 
ance of the Roman streets, or ; of such places as were frequented 
by the populace. Now, we must make every allowance for the 
difference between the temperament of the soft or the brilliant 
Italian and that of the cold, hardy northerner; ajid we must then 
ask, What' were the notable characteristics of the spirit of the 
Roman on the Sunday ? I think we may answer, " Joy, without 
an approach even to boisterousness ; and refinement, without a 
suspicion of puritanism." Now, it is just exactly these charac- 
teristics which are conspicuously absent in English towns on 
ail Sundays and on all holidays throughout the year. Joy, in 
the sense of a happy spirit and as distinct from the mere sensa- 
tion of being amused, is obviously an indication of a higher tone 
of natural temperament than is mere excitement, hilarity, bois- 
terousness. It will be answered that the spirit of joyousness 
or, let us put it, of a happy serenity must obviously come from 
a consciousness of innocent life as well as from the absence of 
care. Let us accept that very reasonable solution. Are, then, 
the southerners more innocent than the northerners, and have 
they fewer temporal cares ? The answer to both questions is 
yes. The southerners are more innocent, in the sense that they 
are full of faith ; and less careful, in the sense that they are more, 
content. In other words, the spirit of faith, in which south- 
erners for the most part are brought up, gives them a happy 
assurance of Christian safety, while their Almost child-like con- 
tentment with a modest degree of estate keeps them above 
material grossness of aspiration. Here we are nearing to the 
intelligence of English Sundayism. Mark that the southern 
Catholic, both on Sundays and on all holidays, is jubilant, polite, 
almost graceful ; whereas the northern Protestant, on all days 
on which he rests, is, as a rule, dreadfully heavy and unsympa- 
thetic. And I should say that the two reasons if I may repeat 
them once more are that the southerner is blessed by a happy 
faith, whereas the northerner has little religion beyond senti- 
ment; and that the southerner regards his poverty as tho- 
roughly honorable, even dignified, whereas the northerner ab- 
hors poverty and yearns for increase. 

Must it be said, then, that the absence of the Catholic faith 
and of contentment is the characteristic, the explanation, of En- 
glish Sundayism? I think so. And do I say this in disparage- 
ment of the masses? Certainly not. There is no blame to 
the masses in the fact that they inherit heresy, inherit dulness, 
inherit grossness or materialism. Who teach the masses to 



i883-J SUNDAYISM IN ENGLAND. 767 

think in this way ? The rich classes ! What has been church- 
going, during- the last three hundred years, but one of the social 
institutions of decorum, which has marked off the rich classes 
from the poor classes more emphatically than has any other insti- 
tution ? How easy it is to trace the travellings of human thought 
in the downward argument from decorum to scepticism ! " I 
have seen," argues the poor man, " that my superiors use Sundays 
in the same spirit of selfishness which marks their week-days ; 
they make their servants work quite as hard on the Sunday as 
they do on the Saturday or Monday ; they hear sermons 
chiefly to criticise the preacher, and sit in pews chiefly to 
criticise the toilets ; and now that free-thought has become 
fashionable among the upper classes, and is no longer a (material) 
injury to the poor classes, I shall give up the whole thing and 
live honestly and morally, and leave Sunday proprieties to those 
who care for them." 

To what conclusion can we come from such an estimate 
of town-Sundayism (I say nothing of village-Sundayism, of 
country-Sundayism, which belong to a quite different range of 
thought and are still imbued by a religious force of tradition) 
but that the future of our great towns is likely to be positively 
pagan instead of being only negatively or indifferently so ? It 
is humiliating to mark an audience on a Sunday evening gath- 
ered round an itinerant preacher in a London park, and listen- 
ing, half in listlessness, half in contempt, to his ejaculatory periods 
or bad grammar. Having no religious pabulum from the right 
sources, the idling masses catch at amateur preaching as a 
curiosity which may possibly be diverting. And here I reach 
the point when, if I may be allowed the suggestion, I would say 
that I think the time has fully come for the revival of the Cath- 
olic orders of preaching friars. I am perfectly certain that 
Catholic preachers, of sound learning and fair eloquence, would 
be listened to with profound interest and attention, as well as 
with the gravest respect The Church of England has never 
attempted an order of preachers. Manifestly the discordancy 
of their doctrines, coupled with a certain dryness of tone, would 
render their appeals too uninteresting. But the masses in our 
great towns are now waiting to be taught. They have a laugh- 
ing contempt for the affectation of the Salvation Army, which 
they know to be a mere machinery of emotionalism ; they ridi- 
cule the bombast of military titles, with the symbols and 
watchwords of soldierism ; they suspect the mixed motives 
of both the men and the women, whose aggressiveness is dis 
tasteful to quiet minds, and whose antecedents are known 



768 SUNDA YISM IN ENGLAND. [Sept., 

sometimes to be apologetic ; and though they are ready to listen 
respectfully to approved teachers, they do not value bawling and 
canting. Now, I believe that the order of St. Dominic, if it 
would revert to its* " predicant " capacity, would have every whit 
as much success now in English towns as it had in the thirteenth 
century in Spanish towns. If the design of the institution of that 
order was to preach the Gospel, convert heretics, defend the 
faith, is it conceivable that any town in the whole world can need 
such services more than does London ? Or, in any age, was there 
more call for such a mission, or a better disposition to show re- 
spect to it? I believe thoroughly in the backbone goodness of 
the English masses, and I am persuaded that they would show 
reverence towards true preachers, just as they now show con- 
tempt towards false ones. There was in one century a sort of 
military order of St. Dominic, composed of knights and of men of 
high estate, who waged war, material war, against heretics. We 
do not want such knights now ; yet if an order of lay brothers of 
St. Dominic would combine with the preaching friars for their 
protection little needed, yet morally a grave support we 
might witness a revival such as, certainly for three centuries, 
has not been contemplated because it has not been possible. 
The time is now ripe for such a revival. There are no restric- 
tions in England on the right of preaching. The best preachers 
always attract the best audiences. The itinerant " slang-whang- 
ers," as the street-preachers are called, are only suffered because 
there is no better sort. Let the best sort, the Dominican preach- 
ers, take the field in the old style of the conquering mission- 
aries of the thirteenth century and the Salvation Army, with 
its feeble comedy of revivalism, would be deserted by every sane 
man in its ranks. Is there any fear that the spiritual calm of the 
Catholic religion might be endangered by such a public " revi- 
valism " ? Not the least in the world, in my opinion, because 
the preachers would be the exact opposites of " revivalists " in 
the gravity, even the sternness, of their preaching. But suppose 
that there were some slight commotion, what would it matter ? 
St. Dominic and his brother missionaries did not trouble them- 
selves about commotion ; all that they cared about was the re- 
sults. If Spanish towns in the thirteenth century wanted re- 
vivalists, English towns in the nineteenth century want them 
more ; and since it is certain that the English towns-people have 
all the faculties of appreciation which are necessary for the wise 
acceptance of wisdom, why not at. least make an attempt, which 
can be ceased if not successful, but for which the masses are. 
ready, even impatient ? 



l88 3-] JOHN CALVIN. 769 



JOHN CALVIN. 

WHEN a man is set up as a demi-god common sense demands 
the credentials which servility ignores ; or when another is ex- 
alted by his partisans into a persecuted saint, Christians in 
general have a right to inquire into his claim to their reverence 
and to study the character of his sanctity. 

These remarks have been suggested by a laudatory article 
which appeared not long ago in one of our Protestant contempo- 
raries upon " the immortal Calvin," " one of the greatest lights 
of the Reformation," and which particularly dwelt upon the 
persecution endured by this are we to say luminous or glar- 
ing ? heresiarch. The object of the present notice is, while 
briefly sketching Calvin's career, to supply, solely from Protestant 
sources* certain facts which are indispensable to the right appre- 
ciation of this strong-minded, hard-headed " Reformation " saint, 
whose will was iron and whose word was fate. Born in 1509 at 
Noyon, in Picardy, Calvin was destined for holy orders by his 
father, who sent him to Paris to study. There he imbibed here- 
tical opinions from Robert Olivetan. His habits were studious 
and austere. Stern with himself, he was sterner still with others, 
and was dubbed " The Accusative " by his fellow-students. His 
father, Gerard Chauvin, hoping to withdraw him from heretical 
influences, removed him from Paris, first to Orleans, then to 
Bourges. At Bourges he made open profession of certain Lu- 
theran views. After the death of his father he returned, in 1529,' 
to Paris, which was then in a state of profound agitation in con- 
sequence of the "new teaching " and the number of Lutheran 
congregations by which this agitation was fermented. The king, 
Francis I., chiefly to gratify his favorite sister, Marguerite de 
Valois, coquetted with the Protestants, until, finding that by so 
doing he was giving serious offence to the mass of his subjects, 
he desired the doctors of the Sorbonne to examine the tenets of 

*The archives and registers of Geneva, quoted by Mr. Dyer, and by Dr. Paul Henry, 
D'Aubigne, and especially M. Bungener, are much more shy of the damaging nature to their 
hero of the materials which are there stored in abundance. The latter evidently fears to rake 
up too much the smouldering ashes of the past, in which some lingering sparks might burn the 
finder's fingers. Of these materials, however, the Rev. E. T. Espin, B.D., a beneficed Angli- 
can clergyman, late fellow and tutor of Lincoln College, Oxford, has boldly availed himself. 
We shall not scruple to draw largely upon his work (Critical Essays) in portraying the man 
who " first gave a scientific existence to Protestant theology on the Continent," and, it may be 
added, who gave the first impulse to rationalism. 

VOL. xxxvn. 49 



770 JOHN CALVIN. [Sept., 

the Lutherans, and at the same time allowed the severe penal 
laws against teachers of heresy to be carried into effect. 

Calvin now published his first book, Seneca's treatise De Cle- 
mentid, with a commentary, in order to impress upon the king 
the duty of toleration and mercy as taught even by a heathen 
philosopher. His stay in Paris, however, came- to an abrupt 
conclusion. Nicholas Cop, a friend of Calvin, and somewhat 
tainted with his views, having been elected rector of the Sor- 
bonne, had to inaugurate his tenure of office by preaching a 
sermon on the feast of All Saints. He rashly accepted Calvin's 
offer to write this sermon for him. When he had mounted the 
pulpit the astonished doctors heard with dismay, instead of a 
defence of the faith, an onslaught on the merit of good works and 
a declaration that man is justified by faith only. Cop, alarmed 
at the possible consequences of his exploit, quitted Paris as soon 
as he was out of the pulpit, and fled to Switzerland. His 
prompter likewise, being warned in time, lost no time in follow- 
ing his example. This was in 1533. After staying some time at 
the court of Marguerite de Valois at Nerac, Calvin returned in 
1535 to Paris, having been challenged to a disputation there by 
Michael Servetus. The latter, probably from fear of the Sor- 
bonne, did not, however, appear, and the two did not meet until 
twenty years afterwards at Geneva. 

Calvin's stay was short. The severe measures for the repres- 
sion of heresy, which had been lightened and even suspended 
for some time, were now renewed more stringently than ever, 
" provoked," writes Mr. Espin, " by the imprudence of the 
Reformers," who had been let alone on the promise that they 
would keep tolerably quiet, but which promise they did not 
attempt to keep. " Morning by morning the streets of Paris 
were found placarded with little, stinging theological squibs," 
heretical propositions, and profane abuse of sacred things, most 
particularly of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar. Their 
doctrines were further disseminated by means of anonymous 
tracts and leaflets. On the i8th of October, 1535, they went so 
far as to post copies of " True Articles on the horrible and great 
Abuses of the Popish Mass " on the walls of the Louvre, and 
even on the doors of the king's chamber. This proceeding is 
chiefly accredited to Farel, afterwards Calvin's leading ally in 
Switzerland. The consequences to the sectaries were terrible. 
The king, irritated by their folly and still more disgusted by 
their profanity, repented of his forbearance. He vowed that he 
would extirpate these malignants against the Kin of kings, and 



1883.] JOHN CALVIN. 77I 

rid his good city of Paris of their pestilent heresy. " As for 
me," he said to the assembled dignitaries of the church and 
state " as for me, who am your king, if I knew that one of my 
members was tainted with this detestable error, not only would 
I give it you to lop it off, but if I were to perceive one of my 
children infected I would sacrifice him myself." 

From the terrible retribution which followed against many of 
his sect Calvin fled to Basle. He there wrote his principal 
work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, which was the first 
systematic exposition of Protestant doctrine that had appeared. 
The publication of this book formed his first open assumption as 
the leader of a party. It was much enlarged in subsequent edi- 
tions, but the passages upon religious toleration were withdrawn 
from all those published after 1553. The man who had done 
Servetus to death could not, for shame's sake, allow them to 
stand. He published his first Latin edition under the name of 
Alcuin, concealing its true authorship under this anagram in 
order the more easily to promote its circulation in Italy. 

From Basle he went to Ferrara, where the Duchess Renee 
was friendly to Protestantism ; but his stay was short, in conse- 
quence of the remonstrances addressed to the duke by the pope 
and the king of France. 

After a visit to Noyon, Calvin, on returning to Basle, found 
it necessary, in order to avoid the invading army of the emperor, 
to go round by Geneva. Farel was there. This boisterous 
zealot had succeeded in wrenching this little republic from its 
allegiance to the church, and the Genevese, "for spiritual gov- 
ernment, had no laws at all agreed on, but did what the pastors 
of their souls could by persuasion win them unto." * 

Things were in this state when Farel invited Calvin to make 
his home in this abode which he had " swept " but was helpless 
to " garnish." He had not only denounced but abolished or 
destroyed everything bells, fonts, and altars, together with the 
ritual and liturgy, the faith and practice, of the Catholic Church, 
all which, to his puritanic fanaticism, savored of " idolatry and 
superstition." He had cleared the ground of everything but 
ruins, and had nothing to substitute for what he had swept away. 
To him Calvin's arrival was a godsend, and when the latter 
hung back, pleading his studies, Farel promised him the curse of 
God if he did not consent to associate himself with his work. 

He remained, and, after being at first nominated as a " teacher 
in theology," was appointed by the magistrates to the ministry. 

* Hooker, preface, ii. i. 



772 JOHN CALVIN. [Sept., 

He then immediately began to order and settle, on his own 
authority, everything- relating whether to religion or the com- 
monwealth. 

The Genevese had been noted for their gayety, fickleness, and 
free-and-easy living. Calvin observed " how needful bridles 
were to be put into the jaws of such a city." " Wherefore," 
as Hooker says, " taking unto him two of the other ministers " 
(Farel and Courault), " for more countenance of the action, 
albeit the rest were all against it, they moved, and in the end * 
persuaded with much ado the people to bind themselves by 
solemn oaths," firstly, wholly to forswear the papacy, and, 
secondly, to obey such orders concerning their religion and 
church government " as those their true and faithful ministers 
of God's word had, agreeably to Scripture, set down for that 
end and purpose." These " orders," embodied in a code called 
"Articles of Church Government," were gradually amplified 
into the vexatiously minute details of which we shall presently 
have to speak. 

The burdensome discipline to which they were now sub- 
jected by no means approved itself to the light-hearted Gene- 
vese, " whereupon they began to repent them of what they had 
done and irefully to champ upon L the bit they had taken into 
their mouths/'f Their murmurs being either sternly repressed 
by their self-imposed dictator or contemptuously ignored, many 
of the disaffected \ appealed to Berne. At Berne the external 
havoc wrought by the " Reformation " had been less complete. 
Unleavened bread was used for communion ; the fonts were left 
and used in the churches ; Christmas, Easter, Lady Day, and 
Ascension were observed ; and last, but by no means least in the 
eyes of the gay Genevese, brides were allowed to come to church 
or rather " meeting " with flowing tresses. 

Berne was a leading state in Switzerland, and the Bernese 
magistrates, being thus appealed to, interposed their good offi- 
ces, recommending Calvin to make some little concessions. No- 
thing of the kind, however, would Calvin and Farel listen to, 
and they remained obstinate even when a synod of the Pro- 
testant churches, held at Lausanne, had decided on a general 
conformity to the usages of Berne, and the civil magistrates of 
Geneva had resolved on compliance. As Easter Sunday drew 

* July, 1537- f Hooker. 

t These soon formed a distinct party, and were stigmatized by the stricter sort as " Liber- 
tines," the name of another of the Protestant sects. 
Espin, Critical Essays, p. 193. 



l88 3-l JOHN CALVIN. 773 

near Calvin and Farel not only refused to use the unleavened 
" bread, but even to administer communion to their backsliding 
flocks at all. The magistrates retorted by prohibiting them 
from preachingan order which they so "flagrantly trampled 
under foot as to mount their pulpits on Easter day " and inveigh 
bitterly against both the people and their rulers. This open 
rebellion on the part of the pastors could not be overlooked. 
Next day sentence of banishment was passed, and Calvin and 
Farel had to quit Geneva within three days. 

When they were gone the city breathed again and utterly 
declined the offers of the good-natured Bernese municipality, 
which, as usual, strove to make peace, and suggested a com- 
promise on the matter of ceremonial and the return of the ban- 
ished pastors. Calvin accordingly went to Strassburg, which 
had also fallen away from Catholic unity, but only for a time. 
There he remained three years as professor of theology and 
minister to a small congregation of French Huguenots. During 
this period he added largely to his Institutes, published his com- 
mentary on the Epistle to the Romans, and, lastly, married a 
wife. Being advised by his friends that he would do well to 
marry, as he " wanted a nurse who would make him more com- 
fortable," he commissioned them to seek the article required. 
He moreover stated the qualities he desiderated, writing to Farel, 
amongst others : " The only beauty that can please my heart is 
one that is gentle, chaste, modest, economical, patient, and care- 
ful of her husband's health." Various negotiations were forth- 
with set on foot. " I was offered," he wrote, "a lady who was 
young, rich, and nobly born, but two things urged me to refuse : 
she does not know French, and methinks she must be rather proud 
of her birth and education. Her brother, a man of rare piety, 
pressed me to accept. . . . What was I to do? I should have 
been compelled, if the Lord had not extricated me. I answer that 
I accept if she will learn our tongue. She asks for time to reflect ; 
and I immediately commission my brother ... to go and ask for 
me the hand of another person." To this " other person " he 
was betrothed, when some unsatisfactory details respecting her 
antecedents coming to his knowledge, he withdrew his promise. 
The search was resumed and resulted in the discovery of Ide- 
lette van Buren, widow of John Storder, an Anabaptist, and 
recommended by Bucer. The matter was settled to Calvin's 
satisfaction, seeing that he found in his spouse " a soul equal to 
every sacrifice." During these three years he had not ceased 
to look back with regretful longing to the days of his rule at 



774 JOHN CALVIN. [Sept., 

Geneva. Shortly after his departure he had written a letter 
" to the relics of the dispersion of the church of Geneva," de- 
fending- all he had done, and, denouncing the malice of his op- 
ponents, prophesied that " all their ways would tend to con- 
fusion." His own example of resistance to authority had effi- 
ciently promoted the fulfilment of his prediction. The magis- 
trates were powerless to enforce the laws ; all was impotence 
and anarchy. The Catholic portion of the population, although 
greatly reduced by sentences of death and banishment, and im- 
poverished by confiscation and oppression, had never been 
wholly crushed out. Not a few, moreover, taught by recent 
experience, openly returned to the old faith. Cardinal Sadolet, 
by desire of the Holy Father, wrote a letter to the senate and 
people of Geneva, showing their present disorders and sufferings 
to be the result of disobedience to lawful authority and revolt 
against the church of God, and urging them to return to their 
ancient allegiance as their only remedy. 

The Genevese returned a polite acknowledgment, but no 
answer to the letter. Calvin, however, wrote from Strassburg a 
reply which was so enthusiastically received by his party that it 
went far to procure his recall ; at the same time certain of his 
opponents among the " Libertines," having discredited them- 
selves by intriguing with the potentates whose territories en- 
circled Geneva, completed the reaction in his favor, and in 1540 
it was resolved by the council that he should be invited to 
return. He now professed himself disinclined to face the op- 
position which past experience led him to expect at Geneva ; 
while, the more he seemed to hold back, the more urgent the 
Genevan authorities became, not resting until they had gained 
their object. Calvin returned to Geneva in the August of 1541. 
The house given for his lodging was that formerly belonging to 
the lord of Freyneville ; he was to have " for wages yearly five 
hundred florins (about three thousand francs), twelve measures 
of wheat, and two casks of wine." 

Calvin's time was now come for putting into practice the 
ideas on church government which he had been elaborating at 
Strassburg. These ideas are embodied in the fourth book of his 
Institutes. No sooner, therefore, was he restored to office than 
he asked to confer with the delegates of the council ; and at this 
conference all his proposals were adopted almost without 
modification, and were finally voted by the Assembly General, 
January 2, 1562, from which day the Calvinistic republic takes its 
date. 



1883.] JOHN CALVIN. 



775 



Calvin's political reforms aimed at reducing the democratic 
element in the constitution. He had already had unpleasant 
experience that popular favor was fickle, and he determined so 
to arrange the machinery of the state as to render himself inde- 
pendent of that favor by tying the hands of his subordinates and 
practically leaving no one free but himself, or at least to reduce 
the government to an oligarchy obsequious to his dictatorship. 
As to the so-called church government, " there are," say the 
Ordinances, " four orders instituted by our Lord for the general 
government of his church pastors, doctors, elders or presbyters, 
and deacons." The pastors and doctors assembled in synod and 
were called " The Venerable Company." The chief engine of 
ecclesiastical authority, however, was the Consistory, a smaller 
council selected from " The Venerable Company " ; and of this 
Consistory Calvin very soon took upon himself the perpetual presi- 
dency. 

This court had " the care of all men's manners, power of 
determining all kinds of ecclesiastical causes, and authority to 
convent, control, and punish, as far as with excommunication, 
all whom they should think worthy." The pastors visited every 
house within their cure to inquire into the habits of its inmates, 
and spies were employed to watch for infringements of good 
manners and of discipline, and were paid for their information 
out of the fines levied on the accused. " The court met every 
Thursday, and, where its own spiritual censures seemed insuffi- 
cient, handed over culprits to the council. It is needless to 
add," continues Mr. Espin, "that severe pains and penalties of all 
kinds waited obsequiously on the behests of the Consistory ; for 
the civil courts were regulated by Calvin's code, which contem- 
plated it as the first duty of the state to make and enforce all 
such laws as conduce to the establishment and maintenance of 
' God's kingdom on earth ' [or rather, it should be said, to Cal- 
vin's own distorted notions of it]. Thus the ecclesiastical 
authorities borrowed all such effectiveness for their decrees as 
temporal punishments could afford, whilst the odium of these 
severities seemed rather to attach to the magistrates who were 
the immediate instruments of them." 

Even M. Bungener, whose partisanship leads him to give a 
very inadequate account of the spiritual and social despotism 
under which the people of Geneva now found themselves, cha- 
racterizes the result of Calvin's measures as the production 
of " a Protestant Rome "a qualification which, by the way, 
shows his scant acquaintance with any papal Rome outside his 



776 JOHN CALVIN. [Sept., 

own imagination. " The Consistory and its agents " we are 
quoting Mr. Espin " extended their inquisitorial interference 
down to the smallest details even of private life ; from the cradle 
to the grave, from church and market-place to his very dinner- 
table and his bed-room, the citizen was unceasingly guided and 
superintended in almost every act and thought. 4 Not only were 
all the grosser vices repressed with terrible severity, but lighter 
peccadilloes, youthful indiscretions, and many things deserving 
. rather the name of follies than faults were rigorously treated. 
Works of fiction, cards, all games of chance, and all dancing and 
masquerading were utterly prohibited. Holidays and festivals 
of all kinds were done away with except Sunday, z/" that, indeed, 
be an exception which had under penalty to be kept with strict 
attendance at sermon and seclusion at home. The number of 
dishes at dinner and dessert was limited ; slashed breeches, 
jewels, and various of the gayer kinds of silks and stuffs were 
banned. Bouquets given to brides might not be encircled with 
gold or precious stones. The bride's dress itself was matter of 
very careful regulation. It is on record : * Une epouse etant 
sortie Dimanche avec les cheveux plus abattus qu'il ne se doit 
faire, ce qui est d'un mauvais exemple, et contraire a ce qu'on 
leur evangelise, on fait mettre en prison sa maitresse, les deux qui 
font mente, et celle qui t'a coiffee ' (Registers of Geneva, cited by 
Dyer, p. 78). The citizens were not to be from home later than 
nine at night, and were strictly to attend all sermons together 
with their household, and not fail in being present at the quar- 
terly administration of the Lord's Supper; for so much, neither 
less nor more, of this ' means of grace ' did Calvin ordain for his 
people. Such are a few specimens of the municipal regulations 
formed under the control of the Consistory. And they were 
enforced with unsparing, sometimes frightful, cruelty. Impri- 
sonments, public penances, the stocks, fines, tortures, and death 
were dispensed with no sparing hand. A child was beheaded in 
1558 for having struck her parents; a youth of sixteen, for 
having threatened to do so, shared the same fate." * 

Dr. Paul Henry, quoting a recent Genevese writer, Galiffe, 
says : " To those who imagine that Calvin did nothing but good 
I could produce our registers, covered with records of illegiti- 
mate children which were exposed in all parts of the town and 
country ; hideous trials for obscenity ; wills in which fathers 

* Such incidents as these are passed over in the pages of M. Bungener ; but they may be 
found in abundance in the Life of Calvin, by Dr. Paul Henry, translated from the German by 
Dr. Itebbing. Dr. Henry, though an admirer of Calvin, is too candid to suppress facts. 



1883.] JOHN CALVIN. 777 

and mothers accuse their children not only of errors but of 
crimes. ... I could instance multitudes of forced marriages, in 
which the delinquents were conducted from the prison to the 
church ; mothers who abandoned their children to the hospital, 
whilst they themselves lived in abundance with a second hus- 
band ; bundles of lawsuits between brothers ; heaps of secret 
negotiations; men and women burnt for witchcraft; sentences of 
death in frightful numbers ; and all these things among the gene- 
ration nourished by the mystic manna of Calvin." 

From 1542 Geneva was under Calvin's heel. The Libertines, 
who were a sort of philosophic and pantheistic Anabaptists, gave 
him, indeed, no little trouble from time to time ; accordingly he 
found no measures too hard and stringent to compel the smaller 
sect to submit to his own larger one. Yet so galling was the 
pressure that " for nine years," says M. Bungener, " he guided 
Geneva as a vessel on fire, which burns the captain's feet and 
yet obeys him." At last, driven to desperation, his adversaries 
committed a blunder which gave Calvin a sudden and over- 
whelming advantage over them. They intrigued with France 
and Savoy, and in 1555 were drawn into open revolt against the 
government of their native city ; but their attempt to gain the 
upper hand was summarily suppressed. Suspected houses were 
searched, and members of many of the leading families in Geneva 
were put to death ; many more were banished, and Calvin's su- 
premacy from that time continued unquestioned and undisturbed. 
The remaining ten years of his life were spent chiefly in home ad- 
ministration on the hard lines he had laid down, in writing com- 
mentaries, and in controversy. It was through his means that, 
in 1566, the concordat called the Consensus Tigurinus was effected 
amongst the leading Swiss " churches," by which the Calvinistic 
doctrine respecting the Eucharist was adopted instead of the 
Zwinglian. His religious disputes were conducted by Calvin 
with a vituperative bitterness characteristic of the " Reformers " 
in general, but with a hard vindictiveness peculiarly his own. 
" Nothing," says Mr. Espin, " was too vile or too gross to be 
thrown at the heads of those who differed from him ; and it 
mattered nothing what the matter of the difference might be. 
Pighius, one of the most distinguished scholars of the day, died, 
exhausted by hard work, in 1542, during the course of his con- 
troversy with Calvin on predestination. Some time after, when 
combating Bolsec, a new opponent, Calvin seized the opportunity 
to show that the odium theologicum with him survived even the 
death of its object. " Pighius died a little after my book was 



JOHN CALVIN. [Sept., 

published," he observes,* " wherefore, not to insult a dead dog, I 
applied myself to other lucubrations." Then, after offering this 
insult to the dead, he offers another to Bolsec, whom he scorns 
as "too insipid an animal" to be regarded as an opponent at all. 
Bolsec was a monk who had apostatized, married, and settled at 
Geneva as a physician. Having dared publicly to challenge 
Calvin's favorite tenet of predestination, he was, after no incon- 
siderable amount of mutual invective and recrimination, banished 
for life, under pain of flogging should he ever again set foot in 
the city or territory of Geneva. Nor was Calvin more tolerant 
of the Lutherans, to whom some show of moderation might have 
been expected from him, especially with regard to the doctrine 
of the Eucharist, on which he, like them, was at issue with the 
Zwinglians ; but no, not by an iota must any dare to differ from 
the despotic dogmatism of this stern heresiarch. 

We shall see whether these expressions are warranted or not, 
now that we come to the story of Servetus. And this we give 
from the account (slightly abridged) of Mr. Espin. 

Servetus, whose proper name was Miguel Servede, was a 
native of Villanueva in Spain. He had already crossed Calvin's 
path, as we have seen. Clever, acute, restless, speculative, he 
was ever craving after novelty. He had studied law at Tou- 
louse, physic at Paris, and had dabbled in theology at Basle, in 
Italy, Germany, and wherever else he could find listeners for his 
eccentric opinions. After making one town after another too 
hot to hold him by his disputatiousness, he found it necessary to 
lay aside his own name and settle down quietly at Vienne as 
" Dr. Villeneuve." In 1546 he had written his Restitutio Chris- 
tianismi and submitted it to Calvin. This work went beyond 
anything Servetus had ever written in its wild and fanatical con- 
ceits. (For instance, he proclaimed himself to be the Michael 
of the Revelations, who was to compass the overthrow of the 
dragon !) Calvin had occasionally interchanged letters with Ser- 
vetus on theological subjects ; but on the receipt of the manu- 
script of the Restitutio Christianismi he broke off the correspon- 
dence with a harsh epistle of reproof, referring him to the In- 
stitutes for any further information he might require on the sub- 
jects of their correspondence. Servetus retorted by forward- 
ing Calvin a copy of the Institutes garnished with a number 
of manuscript notes containing bitter refutations and criticisms. 
These had evidently sunk deep into Calvin's memory. About 
this time he wrote to Farel, observing that Servetus had offered 

* See introduction to his tractate De Eternd Predestinatione Dei, bearing the date 1551. 



1883.] JOHN CALVIN. 



779 



to come to Geneva, " if he would allow him." " But," Calvin 
goes on, " I will not give any pledge ; for if he do come, and my 
authority avail anything, I will never suffer him to depart alive" 
" Dr. Villeneuve " could not keep quiet and be contented to 
practise, even though with much success, as a physician at 
Vienne. In an evil hour he got the Restitutio secretly printed 
(in 1552), and, though he did not circulate it thereabouts, a copy 
reached Geneva and fell into the hands of Calvin. At Geneva 
lived one William Trie, an exile from Lyons on account of re- 
ligion. His relatives, however, still had hopes of him, and one of 
them, named Arneys, carried on an exchange of controversial 
letters with him, in one of which Arneys pressed Trie with the 
argument on the diversities of Protestantism. Trie, who was 
pretty certainly advised by Calvin, retorted that discipline was 
strict at Geneva, but that in papal France, " whilst the truth was 
quenched in blood, the most monstrous heresies were vented 
with impunity," and instanced the Restitutio, printed at Vienne, 
and full of the grossest blasphemies against doctrines held 
sacred by all Christians, such as the Trinity. Arneys communi- 
cated with the ecclesiastical authorities of Vienne, and in the end 
Servetus was apprehended and handed over to the Inquisition. 
The only point in this part of the story that we need notice is 
that the evidence on which Servetus was tried, and eventually 
convicted and condemned by the Inquisition, was obtained by 
Arneys from Trie and supplied to Trie by Calvin, who furnished 
some printed sheets of the Restitutio and a number of letters ad- 
dressed to him in former times by Servetus. Servetus, how- 
ever, escaping from prison, had the madness to fly for refuge 
to Geneva, or he may have intended to pass through it only to 
some other place. In fact, he was on the very eve of departure 
when he was recognized by Calvin amongst his congregation, 
denounced, and arrested. The after-proceedings, continues Mr. 
Espin, are disgraceful to every one concerned to Calvin above 
all. The prosecution was undertaken at first by La Fontaine, 
formerly a cook, but then a student of " theology " and Calvin's 
secretary. Thirty-eight charges were drawn up against Serve- 
tus, most of them alleging heresies extracted from the De Trini- 
tatis Erroribus and the Restitutio, but not a few of them of a 
personal kind, charging Servetus with insulting in his writings 
various Fathers and theologians, ancient and modern ; and, last, 
but in such a place by no means least, the thirty-eighth count 
accused him of defaming and reviling CALVIN and the " church of 
Geneva." 



780 JOHN CALVIN. [Sept., 

When the charges came to be argued it soon became evident 
that the quondam cook was no match for the veteran contro- 
versialist ; he was, therefore, summarily set aside, and Calvin, 
the real accuser throughout, entered the lists in person against 
the man who was in truth his own prisoner. Servetus in vain 
protested that if he had committed any offence it was not in 
Geneva, since the books incriminated had not been printed or 
circulated there. In vain did he urge his ignorance of the laws 
of the territory in which he had so unhappily become a so- 
journer, and pray that he might be allowed an advocate to plead 
for and guide him. In vain did he appeal to the higher and 
larger councils. Calvin knew that in them his influence was not 
so assured, and his appeal was therefore disallowed. The rigor 
of his imprisonment was gradually increased, until he was denied 
the commonest necessaries of cleanliness and health. Calvin and 
the pastors not only appeared in open court against him, but 
stirred up the passions of the people from their pulpits to 
demand his blood. 

Servetus was aware that strenuous efforts were being made 
outside his prison walls to save him. The "Libertines" made 
his cause their own, and labored hard to get it carried before 
the more popular assemblies, where their strength lay. Thus 
Calvin's private animosity was fed by the additional ingredients 
of political and " religious " partisanship, and he threw into the 
contest all the vehemence and venom of his nature. He over- 
whelmed Servetus, both in public court and in his miserable 
prison, with the bitterest invectives and abuse, which the un- 
happy man, goaded by sufferings and insults, was not slow to 
return in kind. To such a pitch of excitement was Servetus 
worked up that he openly demanded of the council that he and 
his persecutor should change places, declaring that Calvin de- 
served to be imprisoned for his heresies quite as much as did he, 
his victim. The end of these altercations, between such men, 
could not be doubtful. Servetus, on the 26th of October, 1553, 
was condemned to be burnt as a heretic, the very next day being 
appointed for the execution. 

It was only on the morning of the 27th, at the time, in fact, 
when he was being led out to death, that Servetus learnt the 
dreadful fate which was on the instant waiting for him. He 
threw himself horror-struck at the feet of the judges, and be- 
sought as a favor that he might be beheaded. His supplica- 
tions were fruitless, and he fell into a sort of stupor, broken only 
by groans and cries for mercy. With a refinement of barbarity, 



1883.] JOHN CALVIN. 781 

Farel was the minister selected by Calvin to accompany the 
doomed man to the stake. Farel's conduct, as might have been 
expected, was to the last harsh, cruel, and pitiless. He up- 
braided him with his errors and obstinacy, and harassed his last 
moments by endeavoring to extort from him a disavowal of his 
errors. When the victim was fastened to the stake on the little 
hill of Champel, just outside the city, and the tire was lighted, it 
was found that the executioner had heaped up nothing but green 
wood ; and the bystanders, shuddering at the shrieks which 
issued from among the smoke, ran and piled on faggots, and so 
ended the torments of Servetus in about half an hour. 

About the whole of this affair the less said by Calvin's 
admirers the better. From first to last his conduct merits the 
most utter condemnation. The stubborn facts remain that Ser- 
vetus had crossed Calvin's path twenty years before the trial at 
Geneva ; that Calvin had, after an angry correspondence, declared 
that if Servetus came to Geneva he should never leave it alive ; 
that Calvin had done his utmost to slay him by the hand of the 
Inquisition ; that he had caused him to be arrested in a city in 
which the unhappy man was only tarrying for a season as a way- 
farer and a fugitive, and where he had done no wrong ; that 
Calvin himself drew up and personally pressed the indictments; 
that he brought his whole influence to bear against the removal 
of the case to a court where the accused would have stood a 
better chance ; that he wrote to Farel, whilst the trial was going 
on, to express a hope that " the sentence would be capital " ; that 
he did nothing to soften the rigors of a harsh imprisonment, and, 
lastly, aggravated the bitter hour of a most painful death by 
forcing on the sufferer, instead of a minister of consolation, the 
coarsest and most implacable of all his foes.* It is to the whole 
circumstances of the case, rather than to the fact that Servetus 
was burnt for heresy, that we must attribute the general execra- 
tion with which the deed was heard of throughout Christendom. 
It is a misrepresentation on the part of M. Bungener to say that, 
when the reformed Swiss churches were asked their advice 
pending the sentence, "there was a complete and awful una- 
nimity -Servetus must die ! " when, in fact, not one of them 
did more than exhort Geneva to be " firm and severe with so 
pestilent a heretic." Bullinger, indeed, advised death ; so did 

* In the account left by the Sister Jeanne de Jussie of the expulsion of the nuns from 
Geneva she thus describes Farel's personal appearance: "In the month of October (1532) 
there came to Geneva a mean-looking, wretched little preacher called Maitre 
shabby in his person, with a vulgar face, a narrow forehead, a pale but sunburnt c 
and a chin on which grew two or three tufts of red and tangled beard." 



782 JOHN CALVIN. [Sept., 

Beza, Calvin's close ally ; so did Farel, reminding Calvin that 
Servetus had been " his greatest enemy'' But the general senti- 
ment was utter condemnation of the deed, from the knowledge 
that Servetus was done to death by his private foe and in the 
most horrible of ways, under pretext of religion and justice, but 
with a premeditation and venomous hate which made these 
sacred names a mockery, and by a magistracy which was merely 
a band of Calvin's creatures. Moreover, at the very time when 
he was hunting Servetus to his doom Calvin was writing letters 
full of invective against the harsh treatment elsewhere visited on 
his own sectaries. And surely one who had in so many things 
revolutionized whole systems of theory and practice might on 
this matter also have been expected to be in advance of his con- 
temporaries. 

And here, in concluding, it will not be out of place to quote 
the following reflections : * 

" The Old-World legislation for preserving religious uniform- 
ity strikes us as a monstrous phenomenon. We marvel at a 
man like Sir Thomas More sentencing a heretic to death, or at 
Calvin employing against Servetus the unanswerable argument 
of the stake. We forget that the political theory of those days, 
with which public opinion was wholly in harmony, set a supreme 
value upon religious unity, and unhesitatingly employed the 
severest forms of coercion in order to preserve it. You will find 
this Old-World view clearly stated in Jeremy Taylor's Life of 
Christ. * God,' he says, ' reigns over Christendom just as he did 
over the Jews. When it happens that a kingdom is convert- 
ed to Christianity the religion of the nation is termed Chris- 
tian, and the law of the nation is made a part of the religion. 
There is no change of government, but that Christ is made king 
and the temporal power is his substitute. But if we reject Christ 
from reigning over us, and say, like the people in the Gospel, 
11 nolumus hunc regnare," then God has armed the temporal 
power with a sword to cut us off.' This theory, whatever we 
may think of it, accepted in an age of religious unity, is quite in- 
applicable to any age of religious disunity." 

I ,f And yet it is among the chief promoters of disunion that we 
find the fiercest intolerance. The religion which forbids private 
judgment in matters of revelation is historically more tolerant 
than the religions which uphold it. "It is true," says Balmez, 
" that the popes have not, like the Protestants, preached uni- 

* See the very able article entitled "The Religious Future of the World," by Mr. W. S. 
Lilly, Contemporary Review, February, 1883. 



1883.] EN ROUTE TO THE Yo SEMITE. 783 

versal toleration ; but the facts show the difference between the 
Protestants and the popes. The popes, armed with a tribunal 
of intolerance, have scarce spilt a drop of blood ; Protestants and 
philosophers have shed it in torrents." 

Moreover, acts which, in the Catholic Church, the chosen 
representative of the divine authority upon earth, we may (as 
in the case of any capital punishment, however necessary) regard 
with pain as the extremity of justice, we regard with disgust as 
the extremity of injustice when inflicted by one heretic upon an- 
other for a heresy divergent from his own. 

And what is now the state of Calvin's own town ? Geneva, 
which burnt Servetus for rationalism, has in our days expressly 
and officially repudiated all confession of faith whatever; and 
where it was penal to be absent from sermon, a score or two 
surround the pulpit from which Calvin preached. " Romanism/' 
says Mr. Espin, " seems to offer the only hope and prospect of 
winning back to something like a visible profession of Chris- 
tianity one of the most irreligious . . . cities of the Continent." 



EN ROUTE TO THE YOSEMITE. 

" OH ! here is the Happy Valley, the Vale of Peace," was our 
involuntary exclamation in the words of Rasselas, as we found 
ourselves settled at last in the quiet hostelry in the deep bosom 
of the Yosemite. To reach it we had undergone greater hard- 
ship than it was perhaps ever before our lot to endure, and after 
three days of varied manner and novel and absorbing incident, 
society, and scenery, the feeling of rest was actually luxurious. 
The decision to visit the place was so difficult to arrive at, on 
account of the fact that only one route was yet open and the 
others were daily issuing bulletins announcing the progress 
made in digging the way through the snow, that some of the 
party actually persuaded themselves that the grapes were, if not 
indeed sour, at least not worth the trouble of getting, 
others, again, the prospect of two long days in a common stage- 
coach was deterring, and truly the anticipation could be scarcely 
in excess of the reality ; while others, again, tried to console them- 
selves for missing the excursion by assuring themselves 
after all the valley was but of a piece with much similar landscape 



784 EN ROUTE TO THE Yo SEMITE. [Sept., 

to be enjoyed on their journey eastward. One argument, how- 
ever, in favor of doing" this famous bit of touristry rankled, as 
doubtless it does yet, in the breasts of those who dared not while 
they would. It was thus expressed : What will they say when, 
on our return from California, we shall have to answer that we 
didn't go to the Yosemite ? Be it strange or not; it is neverthe- 
less true that this last motive, sensitiveness to public opinion, 
is one of the strongest that urge us to action, and they who lost 
this opportunity of seeing the gem of the Pacific coast will 
never forgive themselves, for this cause at least : that Mrs. 
Grundy will consider them fools. 

At four P.M. May 20 we embarked on the largest ferry-boat 
except that for the overland trains at Vallejo we had ever seen, 
en route for Yosemite, in face of reports that the route was not 
in good order, the snow not sufficiently melted, the roads bad, 
etc. Indeed, there was but this one as yet open ; for though the 
temperature was quite high on the plains, the snows were still 
deep on the mountains of the coast range. Proceeding down 
the San Joaquin valley in the still, hot afternoon, we stopped for 
supper at Lathrop, where the democratic appearance, manner, 
and spirit of the travellers struck us forcibly, and we said to one 
of our companions, a Jersey man : " We love these people, they 
are so unaffected, free, and generous." They were almost ex- 
clusively of the sterner sex, and fraternized like so many boys 
when away from the warping influence of women. There is 
danger, of course, that when this conservative element is lacking, 
manners, from " free and easy," soon become careless, vulgar, 
nay, even barbarous ; dress is neglected a man with a neck-tie 
may even be held a " bloated aristocrat " ; refinement is ridiculed : 
Richard Percival Livingston, of New York, a youth of spare 
habit, is at once informed that he is to be henceforth known as 
" Slim Dick of York " ; no one dare object to smoking anywhere ; 
muddy shoes and shaggy overcoats are intruded without apo- 
logy. This is the extreme, however, and you must go into the 
latest mining towns to meet it ; but the general tone of Califor- 
nia society is quite a relief from the strait, puritanic, exclusive 
habits of the East, and is a tradition of the days when the con- 
veniences of civilization were wanting, when hands were few, 
necessity great, calamity frequent, and when, therefore, every 
man was glad to see, welcome, and tolerate a new inhabitant, 
without particularly scrutinizing his manners, dress, or forms of 
speech. 

The journey was long enough to Merced seven hours but 



1883.] EN ROUTE TO THE YOSEMITE. 785 

we looked forward to sleeping comfortably here. What was 
our disappointment when the conductor showed us a despatch 
advising us to go on two hours further to Madera. It was eleven 
P.M. ; we were fagged out already, and our prospect of rest was 
spoiled. The hotel we reached at one A.M. was a poor frame 
building, very uncomfortable. The ladies were, of course, pro- 
vided for somehow ; at least they disappeared. We, personally, 
had to sleep in our clothes, and occupied three different resting- 
places within four hours : two in the bar-room viz., the billiard- 
table and the barkeeper's cot the third the outside of a bed 
which had been just vacated by an earlier traveller than our- 
selves. 

Rising miserable at five, we breakfasted, and, despite our tardy 
protest, were sandwiched into an open stage, three on each 
cross-seat designed for two, and started at six, feeling profoundly 
alarmed and wretched at the prospect of travelling thus the live- 
long day. The weather was dry, however, but the wind blowing 
constantly one way, as it does for six months together, so that 
there are no branches on the windward side of the trees along 
the San Joaquin ; overcoats were soon in requisition, notwith- 
standing that a blazing sun made parasols necessary. Our dis- 
tress \vas not without its compensations, several of the company 
being persons of refinement and education, and even wealth for 
there is no "royal road " to the Yosemite. Our next neighbors 
were an Episcopal minister and his wife, who had travelled all 
through Syria and Palestine ; others of us had been in Europe, 
and an English couple were just arrived from Australia on their 
way around the world. The conversation of these people was 
very delightful to us, and relieved the effect of that of two boss 
shoemakers from Massachusetts. An occasional return to this 
old style of travelling is a very agreeable change. Modern rail- 
road cars, especially American ones, isolate people. They fail to 
become acquainted as they should, and their very nature resents 
this ; so that the longer they remain apart while desiring and 
needing each other's society, the more bitter does their coldness 
become, until at last it approaches mutual hatred. There are 
no more vindictive enemiet than neighbors who are not neigh- 
borly. What a pity ! How much knowledge, wit, sympathy 
are lost on this account! How much character lies dormant 
that would make the whole journey interesting ! " The proper 
study of mankind is man." " Sir, let us go out in the fields," 
said Boswell. " Oh ! confound your fields, sir," replied the doc- 
tor ; " one field is like another field. Let us take a walk down 

VOL. XXXVII. 50 



786 EN ROUTE TO THE YOSEMITE. [Sept., 

Fleet Street ! " Man is a social animal and cannot else be happy. 
The poor are happier than the rich by as much as they indulge 
their sociality more, and the rich themselves soon tire of their 
solitary state and return to live in tenements alias flats like the 
poor. 

For many miles now our road lay through a very English- 
like country, full of oaks, rocks, streams, and gentle hills, looking 
as if artificially laid out and tastefully kept. Our American 
parks are not old and rich enough in appearance, for one cannot 
compare these California parks to any except Phoenix or Bou- 
logne, or other such beautiful grounds in old Europe. In a field 
we sometimes saw what might be called a curious combination. 
It was an owl and a prairie-dog in company near the opening 
of an underground burrow. The snake was doubtless more 
retiring ; for they are usually three, and are supposed to agree 
very well 'together. The ladies of our party politely expressed 
much interest in the mildly facetious statement of the Episcopal 
clergyman that trappers sometimes compass the owl's death by 
merely walking around his standpoint, the bird never seemingly 
turning his body, yet always keeping his eyes on danger, and 
thus finally twisting his head off. Deer and other small animals 
sometimes appeared in the glades, but no ferocious bea&ts pre- 
sented themselves. 

Changing horses once, we reached Coarse Gold Gulch (shade 
of Oscar ! what a name) at high noon, where a new frame hotel 
was building. It had Chinese servants, who filled their places ac- 
ceptably, and a young and refined-looking New England cou- 
ple were proprietors. On account of the scarcity of women 
and the necessity of looking closely after the Celestials it is not 
rare to find the landlord and his wife doing the commonest work. 
After giving a cigarette to an Indian at the door, whom we 
vainly endeavored to draw into conversation, we packed into the 
stage again, and, leaving the foot-hills, began to rise into the 
mountains. Here we are led to say a word on the sacramental 
power of tobacco. As the pretext of a look at the baby breaks 
down the barriers between women, so the offer of a pinch, a chew, 
or a smoke bridges the oftentimes awul chasm that divides men. 
Properly do the red men consider it the emblem of peace and 
harmony, and pitiable indeed is the traveller in these latitudes 
who, if he doesn't take a social drink, is not blessed with even the 
one redeeming vice of the weed. 

Oaks now disappeared, and pines, firs, etc., filled the moun- 
tain-sides, while flowers of exquisite hue bordered the road, 



1883.] EN ROUTE TO THE Yo SEMITE. 787 

making with the grass an unequalled carpet of blue, scarlet, and 
green. The woods were perfectly clear of undergrowth, the 
floor (so to call it) being covered with pine prickles, while the 
majestic trees were clean of branches for a hundred feet up, so 
that one was reminded of a Gothic or Moorish temple and im- 
agined that a carriage could roll unobstructed through the for- 
est. The sight was very refreshing, the air very grateful to the 
nostrils and the lungs. We often got out to walk up the in- 
clines, to pick flowers, etc., the most sought after being the ex- 
quisitely beautiful snow-flower, a living crimson tongue, which, 
however, could not be carried far, as it melted, so to speak, in the 
hands. The yellow mud on the stage-wheels glistened with 
pyrites and with what some of us took for lamina, flakes or 
spangles, of gold. In the heart of the mountains we reached 
Fresno Flats, and Bret Harte's descriptions were realized. The 
humor of his Archseological Society on the Stanislao, as well as 
the threadbare honesty of " Truthful James," can only be ap- 
preciated by visiting these settlements. We could not help re- 
peating mentally over and over again the lines : 

"Then rose Abner Dean, of Angels, to a point of order, when 
A piece of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen ; 
He smiled a kind of sickly smile, and sunk upon the floor, 
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more." 

Fresno is a mining station of log and plank shanties, a store, 
saloon, post-office, and (bless the mark!) a " fashionable milli- 
nery." There was no street, in fact scarce a dozen houses, yet 
two city-dressed women were rolling handsome baby-carriages 
(duly freighted) along the paths. An old man, withered by fever 
and ague, at once began to tell us of a claim in the vicinity sup- 
posed to be worth three hundred thousand dollars. The miners 
buy supplies at these Flats, so-called from their affording a level 
building-site. There is a saw-mill here, and a wedge-shaped 
aqueduct on posts, varying from four to twelve feet in height, 
which floats cut lumber seventy-five miles down the slopes to 
the railroad. This is a flume. We passed under and by it 
several times in our journey, and admired the evidence of skilful 
engineering in its construction. The line of lumber in it at 
% once is several miles long and reaches the railroad in twelve 
hours by the current. It struck one of our Yankee friends that 
a small steamer might be put on it, and thus an " elevated steam- 
boat-line " established. 

From Fresno Flats we rose into a second story of the moun- 



;88 EN ROUTE TO THE Yo SEMITE. [Sept., 

tains, around which our road extended in a long and ever-wind- 
ing- course. We went almost constantly at a gallop, turning 
sudden corners and swinging along deep ravines with alarming 
speed, and constantly admiring the boldness and skill of the 
driver. Never had we seen anything to equal his command of 
the four-horse team, nor their correspondence to. his word and 
gesture and the intelligible snapping of the long whip ; nor had 
we known circumstances requiring greater caution, skill, and 
decision. The slightest mistake on the narrow track up on the 
high mountain-side, the breaking of a bolt, or the giving way of 
a trace were enough to precipitate us all down a thousand feet 
into darkness and destruction. There was absolutely no substi- 
tute for a fence on the dangerous side. But the California 
drivers are men of genius, and no excursions we ever took 
excelled for us in charm and interest some of those in their 
vehicles. We have seen the great stage thundering along at the 
rate of twelve or fourteen miles an hour on a precipitous road, 
when suddenly the driver signalled to his teams and bade them 
" lay down " ; and though the hoofs of the wheelers digging into 
the surface shed a train of sparks, and their bellies seemed to 
scrape the ground in the effort, yet they checked their speed at 
the word of command and stopped within the stage's length. 
Sometimes in crossing torrents the water was up to the hubs; 
then we dipped into ruts filled with snow, and at times had to be 
dug out by the road-menders who live in huts along the route. 
We had our first experience in log-rolling, as twice our way was 
blocked by great trees fallen across it. We frequently took part 
in road-mending, collecting rocks, etc., to make a bridge just for 
this once, and even essayed Mr. Gladstone's role of woodman ; 
and once all the male passengers had to keep the stage from 
toppling over while the driver guided it around an insurmount- 
able obstacle. At times we thought our vehicle could not resist 
the force of the water in crossing the swollen streams, and, while 
the gentlemen were silent, the ladies screamed at the driver to 
let them out then and there. He was evidently used to their 
alarm, however, or preferred waiting till the bank was safely 
reached before yielding to their request. At one point in this 
varied journey we were all recommended to leave the stage just 
on the brink of the water, and the timid husband of an English 
lady getting out at one side, a diminutive but gallant New York 
lawyer braced himself to help the derelict better half out at the 
other. She threw herself into her rescuer's arms. As there was 
really no danger, the incident caused us great merriment, espe- 



1883.] EN ROUTE TO THE YOSEMITE. 789 

cially at the husband's expense, and we felt refreshed and ready 
for new adventures. Stages are often upset, however, and no 
driver is " anybody " who hasn't some such tale to relate. One 
of our New York priests had lost his life the year before on this 
very route. At length, after a long, and in the end dark and 
weary, drive through the forest, we reached Clark's at half-past 
nine, a quiet, beautiful, and comfortable hotel in a valley adjoin- 
ing that for which we were bound. It was crowded, and we 
were thankful for a berth on the second tier in a series of bunks 
wherein to rest our exhausted limbs. 

From Clark's tourists turn aside to visit the big trees, and 
we took horse next day for this purpose. The distance was 
eight miles through the forest, the animal one of those gentle, 
graceful, sure-footed mustangs, the easiest saddle-horse known in 
our country. The road lay right through millions of enormous 
pines, those " green-robed senators of mighty woods " ; daylight 
was half eclipsed by their shade, and the 'silence of the " forest 
primeval " reigned throughout. So gradually had we become 
accustomed to this quality of vastness in the matter that it 
needed reflection to make us realize the immense average size of 
the trees that bordered our way as we came along, and the 
famous big trees did not make that impression they would 
have done if come upon suddenly. Indeed, it was only when we 
compared their size with that of the horses and stage, which were 
made to stand near one of them, that we felt their greatness. 
The big trees proper were supposed by Lindley, an English 
botanist, to be a new genus, and he called it Wellingtonia gigan- 
tea. Decaisne, a Frenchman, however, showed that they be- 
long to the Sequoia, already named by Endlicher, in 1837, after 
a Cherokee chief who invented an alphabet and written language 
for his tribe, and who died in exile in New Mexico in 1840, far 
from his native Georgian hills. Imagine an entire forest, ex- 
tending as far as the eye can reach, of trees from eight to twelve 
feet in diameter and from two hundred to three hundred feet in 
height, thickly grouped, their trunks marvellously straight, not 
branching until they arrive at from one hundred to one hundred 
and fifty feet above the ground, and then forming a dense canopy 
which shuts out the view of the sky ; the contrast of the bright, 
cinnamon-colored trunks with the sombre, deep, yet brilliant 
green of the foliage ; the utter silence of these forests, where 
often no sound can be heard except, when the wind is favorable, 
the low thunder of the breaking surf on the distant shore of the 
Pacific. Many of them are from thirty to sixty feet in circum- 



790 EN ROUTE TO THE Yo SEMITE. [Sept., 

ference and proportionately high. One was taken down by 
boring 1 concentric holes through it and then upsetting it with 
wedges and hawsers. It took five men twenty-two days to bore 
and three days to overset it. At six feet from the ground the 
stump was smoothed off, forming a room twenty-four feet across, 
and the bark was eighteen inches thick. By counting the rings 
in this it was found to be twelve hundred and fifty-five years old. 
Another tree had its bark stripped off in sections to one hundred 
and sixteen feet of its height, and the spoil taken to London, 
where it became one of the wonders of the Crystal Palace. The 
exceptionally great ones are in groves or groups, some number- 
ing a hundred, some five times as many. One of those we saw, 
the " Grisly Giant," has lower branches over six feet in diameter, 
like the largest elms of the Connecticut valley. We ourselves 
measured a tree, and found it sixty-four feet around at two feet 
from the ground. One of these monsters was burnt hollow and 
lay prone on the earth, and into its cavity three horsemen rode 
abreast thirty feet. Another of them is pierced in its upright 
position so that the great four-horse stages drive right through 
it. These trees are not only vast and magnificent to behold, but 
their timber is very durable and is much used in California 
under the name of redwood. 

Having sated our curiosity, we found that we had wandered 
away from our companions, and the deepening snow made 
known to us that we had gone far from the clearing. When 
our horse walked quietly and stepped easily the snow packed 
itself under his hoofs and we rode safely with five or six feet 
of it beneath us ; but when we attempted to hurry his pace he 
sank into it up to his belly. We became somewhat alarmed. 
The sun was setting and invisible, the gloom of the forest deep- 
ening ; we might meet wild beasts ; had no compass, even if we 
could find it of use, and were eight miles from human society. 
What would we do? We had heard of similar experience, and 
so at last determined to leave the brute to his own guidance 
and dropped the reins on his neck. He did not hesitate a 
moment, but, quickening his pace as much as the treacherous 
footing allowed, took what soon proved to be the right direc- 
tion, and we were spee.dily once more on the road to Clark's. 

Next morning we resumed under more favorable circum- 
stances that is, with decent sitting-room our journey to the 
Yosemite. A high mountain which divided us from our destined 
goal was to be climbed and then descended, and another day's 
staging to be undergone. As the vehicle slowly mounted the 



1883]. EN ROUTE TO THE Yo SEMITE. 791 

rocky side of the barrier the gaze of the travellers never wearied 
of the eternal forest, in which an occasional tall pine was seen 
charred and black and pointed, bereft of all its limbs, its life and 
beauty, probably by the lightning's stroke. The powerful simile 
of Ossian came to our minds where he describes the awful ap- 
pearance of Fingal's shade as he stalked in the midnight, review- 
ing the field of battle : 

" His spear the blasted fir, 
His shield the rising moon." 

Crossing torrents similar to those encountered on the two pre- 
vious days, and doing our share of bridge-building and more 
than once literally putting " our shoulder to the wheel," we 
reached by noon a clearing on the summit, where horses were 
changed, the driver opened his lunch-boxes, and all the company 
with him indulged their sharpened appetites with the daintiest 
viands and beverages of civilized lands. It was a charming place 
for a picnic. A very rustic-looking sled was shown us here, 
which had been constructed to transport one of our Eastern 
governors and his family over this mountain in advance of the 
regular season and while the roads were still impassable from 
the snow. It broke through the ice at a ford and the occupants 
were thrown into the chilling water ; but though they were 
drenched to the skin arid had to travel several hours in their 
wet clothes, they did not take cold and reached the valley in 
safety and triumph. The stream, before known as Indian Creek, 
bears now, henceforth, and for ever the name of the young lady 
who chiefly distinguished herself in this adventure; and the 
drivers are doubtless very grateful to her for the whole business, 
as it furnishes them a very eloquent and (to them, at least) de- 
lightful theme for conversation with their passengers. Facilis est 
descensus Averni, saith the poet and the proverb. That depends, 
we submit. The down-road into the Yosemite was a fearful 
journey for us. It was jagged and absolutely rocky, as it 
formed a kind of artificial water-way for the melting snows ; we 
were not crowded now in the stage, and hence the jolting tossed 
and pitched us without let or hindrance ; the horses sprang light- 
ly along, and the driver had no concern at all about springs or 
bolts or traces. The rocky road that approaches the Irish capi- 
tal deserves its fame, indeed, if it excel this one. We were in 
absolute danger of falling apart, like so many marionettes, and it 
seemed as if our four quarters would never regain their natural 
cohesion. At last, however, at about five P.M. we reached a ledge 



792 SKELLIG MICHEL. [Sept., 

a couple of thousand feet in height and looking down into the 
valley. It was Inspiration Point. Well named, truly, for the 
soul seems to receive new ideas of sublimity and beauty from 
the grand panorama of depth and height and color that bursts 
upon her here. It was a happy thought to contrive that the first 
impression of the Yosemite should be one that should stamp for 
ever on the mind of the visitor its unparalleled charms. With 
our courage now revived and our expectations more than real- 
ized, we continued our descent. The incline was continual, the 
character of the surface unchanged, the speed of the horses 
recklessly kept up, and the fatigue of the travellers reached the 
point of positive suffering before we at last crossed the river in 
which the Bridal Veil cascade results, and, speeding along the 
level plain, at length descended in the midst of the quiet vale 
and felt the delights of repose. 

t 



SKELLIG MICHEL. 

AT widely separated points in western Europe three sanc- 
tuaries of a most peculiar and singular kind, yet closely re- 
sembling each other in their most prominent features, are dedi- 
cated to the Archangel St. Michael. Unlike most other sanc- 
tuaries, it is not to churches or other buildings that they owe 
their sacred character. Such, indeed, exist or have existed in all 
three, but in the popular feeling they are looked on rather as 
adjuncts to a spot sacred in itself than as themselves imparting to 
it a religious character. All three are mountains surrounded by 
the sea, and in different languages all three bear the same name. 
In all the religious edifices are connected in a most peculiar way 
with the striking natural features of the places themselves, so 
that the latter are regarded in some sort as a species of natural 
monuments consecrated to the honor of the great archangel 
whose name they bear. Mont St. Michel on the shores of Nor- 
mandy ; St. Michael's Mount, in Mount Bay, in the south of 
Cornwall ; and Skellig Michel St. Michael's Rock in the At- 
lantic off the southwest coast of Ireland, are those three sacred 
mountain isles. Differing in history, in situation, and in the races 
surrounding them, they yet seem modelled on a common type 
peculiar to themselves. ' What were the circumstances which 



1883.] SKELLIG MICHEL. 793 

suggested this peculiar form of honor to the archangel, alike 
to Norman, Cornishman, and Irish Celt, we cannot now deter- 
mine. In each case its origin dates from the remotest times and 
almost baffles investigation. The religious character that once 
attached to the Cornish mount is now preserved by its name 
only, and to some extent by the similarity of its appearance to 
its French namesake. The " Reformation " has done its work of 
desecration on it as on other shrines of Catholic devotion in 
England. The Norman Mont St. Michel has been more for- 
tunate and yet preserves its sacred character and its buildings, 
dedicated as of yore to the honor of the patron archangel. 
Wars and revolutions of every kind have passed over it without 
essentially changing it. To the populations around it is still a 
place of devout pilgrimage, and even its monastery, of the date 
of the early Norman conquerors of England, is still the abode 
of a religious community. The anti-Catholic governments that 
have so often held sway in France during the last hundred 
years have strangely respected this island shrine. It has been 
left in comparative peace during the late assaults on the reli- 
gious orders, and is even protected by anti-Christian govern- 
ments as one of the most valuable artistic and historical monu- 
ments of the middle ages. It is almost impossible to forget the 
impression made by its appearance as first seen, raising its moun- 
tain bulk amid the expanse of sands left dry by the retreating 
tides, or surrounded by the waters of their flood. Its abrupt 
rise far from any range of hills; the strange fashion in which its 
surface is covered and, as it were, encrusted with buildings, until 
one knows not whether to regard the whole as some mighty 
erection of human hands ; the picturesque combination of the 
mass of walls with the outline of the hill until the top is crowned 
by the flying buttresses and graceful pinnacles of the Gothic 
church ; and the varied character of the buildings themselves, 
military, domestic, and ecclesiastical, and varying alike in age and 
use, from the loop-holed rampart with castellated gates which 
surrounds the base to the fishermen's houses perched on the 
sides and the monastery which surmounts the top all combine to 
fascinate the attention. The variety in the motives which bring 
visitors to its walls is also remarkable. The Breton and 
man dwellers in the country around periodically assemble to 
pay their devotions in its church, while artists, antiquaries, and 
mere tourists are drawn towards it in crowds by its his 
associations. 

Strangely interesting as is the Norman shrine of St. Micnae 



794 SKELLIG MICHEL. [Sept., 

and its Cornish namesake, they are surpassed in wild grandeur by 
the Irish island dedicated to the same saint. Twelve miles away 
from the nearest point of the west coast of Kerry, and not much 
further from Valentia, the terminus of the Atlantic cable, two 
masses of rock rise suddenly out of the waves of the Atlantic. 
The largest, which towers many hundred feet above the waters, 
has from time immemorial been dedicated to the archangel and 
bears the name of Skellig Michel (St. Michael's Rock). Like 
Mont St. Michel, it is a place of pilgrimage from the surrounding 
coasts, though one far more difficult of access and its religious 
observances are of a more stern and striking kind. Like it, too, 
it was once the seat of a monastic community, whose deserted 
abodes yet stand near its very summit. But in point of age the 
oldest buildings of Mont St. Michel's monastery are but as of 
yesterday when compared to the primitive buildings which still 
defy storms and time alike on the summit of Skellig Michel. 
Buildings so strange and so archaic it would be impossible to 
find in any other country of Europe. If the construction of the 
monastery of Mont St. Michel carries us back to the days of the 
Crusades, the buildings of Skellig Michel bring us back to nearly 
the fall of the Roman Empire and to a civilization such as must 
have preceded its rise. Yet even these far-distant times are 
closely bound to our own days by the religious observances 
which a common faith has never ceased to pay during the inter- 
vening centuries at this lonely rock. The forms of prayer used 
by the pilgrims from the adjoining coasts are of a singular and 
antique kind, in full keeping with the character of the place. The 
" Way of the Cross " is the favorite devotion, but it is conducted 
with peculiar observances around the sides of the mountain. 
The "stations" are distinguished by unwonted names, and one 
hears Irish litanies recited by the pilgrims that are long forgotten 
in other districts. In its buildings, its people, and its changeless 
form Skellig Michel is to all intents a still living relic of Celtic 
Ireland as it was in the days before the coming of Norman or 
Danish invaders to its shores. 

The appearance of Skellig Michel, as it is approached by sea, 
is singularly wild and striking. It consists of two masses of 
rock united at the base, the larger and northern one having 
somewhat the form of an irregular dome, while the southern 
shoots up almost to a point like a gigantic church-spire. The 
sides of the ..whole island are almost perpendicular from the 
ocean to the height of several hundred feet, and are cleft here 
and there by deep fissures running from top to bottom. The 



1883.] SKELLIG MICHEL. 795 

stratified beds of the slaty rock show out plainly all around, 
looking like courses of Cyclopean masonry. Lichens and sea- 
plants of many hues, pink, yellow, and green, fringe the sides of 
the rocks, but do not conceal their stony character or dark color 
of gray. Around their base the swell of the ocean unceasingly 
casts up its spray, and the sea-mists often hide the island in a 
fleecy veil, which comes and goes again as it were by magic, so 
swiftly does it rise or vanish. A smaller island of a similar rocky 
character is its only neighbor, and the two look like bulwarks 
raised to break the onward sweep of the ocean, or monuments of 
a land now buried beneath its waves. 

The landing is in the side of one of the fissures already spoken 
of, whose sides tower up some hundreds of feet above the cove. 
At its furthest end the action of the waves has hollowed a deep 
cave into the mass of the rock, into which they constantly flow 
and ebb with a deep, booming sound. From the landing a steep 
path ascends, running around the island with a continuous incline. 
It is protected towards the sea by a parapet of light-colored 
stone, which at a distance looks like a white cord binding the 
whole mass together. This road has been made of late years by 
the men attached to the light-houses, of which there are two on 
the island, that which is called the lower being a hundred and 
forty feet above the water. Immediately outside the road the 
cliffs descend abruptly to the water. The old monastery lies far 
above near the summit of the northern peak, and has to be ap- 
proached by long flights of steps cut in the rock by its former 
inhabitants. Originally these descended to the landing, but the 
lower hundred and twenty feet of their height have been broken 
away and are now replaced by the track made by the light-house 
men. The steps that still remain to be climbed are over six 
hundred and fifty, running along the sides of the cliffs over pre- 
cipices of appalling depth, at the foot of which the ocean waves 
incessantly break/ Along this giddy ascent the pilgrims make 
the stations of the " Way of the Cross." At one of them, but far 
below the steps, a projecting rock has been hewn into the shape 
of a cross. The names given to the various stations are peculiar. 
The " Stone of Pain " marks the station where our Lord first fell 
beneath the weight of his cross ; the " Rock of Women's Wailing " 
commemorates the comforting of the daughters of Jerusalem, 
and a narrow strip of grassy land between the two peaks of the 
island is known as the " Garden of the Passion." There is some- 
thing indescribably touching in thus following the "Way of the 
Cross" in mid-air around the rocky sides of the cliff. The 



796 SKELLIG MICHEL. [Sept., 

whole scene vividly reminds one of the purgatorial mountain of 
Dante as the pilgrims slowly climb the rugged pathway. 

To the south of the " Garden of the Passion " the spire-like 
peak already mentioned rises to a height of over seven hundred 
feet above the sea. Towards the west it falls almost perpendi- 
cularly from top to base. The projecting crags. that run up its 
sides like huge buttresses, and the absence of any fringe of shore 
at its base, give it a fantastic resemblance to a Gothic spire. In 
point of mass, however, the loftiest of Gothic buildings shrinks 
to littleness compared to the peak of Skellig Michel. It towers 
more than two hundred feet higher than the steeples of Cologne 
cathedral, and St. Peter's itself would be too small for its base. 
Away near its top are the ruins of an ancient oratory perched 
like the eyrie of an eagle on a narrow ledge in the face of the 
dizzy precipice. 

The monastery itself is on the northern side of the island. 
Leaving the " Garden of the Passion," the steps wind again round 
the sides of the island at ever-increasing heights until a small 
level spot is reached, which is known as the " Monks' Garden." 
A covered passage and a short flight of steps beyond lead into the 
monastic enclosure, fully six hundred feet above the sea beneath. 

It is not easy to conceive buildings more unlike the modern 
ideas of a monastery than what this primitive establishment 
presents to view. A ledge in the face of the rock about a 
hundred feet in depth and twice that length furnishes sites for a 
small church, two oratories, and six cells in which the monks 
resided. On the one side it is enclosed by the natural wall of 
the cliff, which rises high above, and towards the sea it is pro- 
tected by a wall of dry-stone work. The cells are the first 
object to attract attention. At the first glance one would take 
them for mere heaps of stones piled together, but a closer ex- 
amination reveals that they are really human habitations of 
a primitive type. The stones are laid in regular courses, each 
overlapping that beneath, until they meet at the top. On the 
outside these cells are circular and have the form of rude domes, 
with an opening in the top to serve as a chimney. On the inside 
they are square on plan and arched overhead. The doors are 
extremely small, about four feet in height and two and a half 
wide on an average. The window-openings are still smaller, and 
there is only one in each cell. As might be expected, neither 
doors nor windows are to be found at present in any of these 
cells, but in other respects the most of them are perfect, appa- 
rently in much the same condition as they were when they were 



1883.] SKELLIG MICHEL. 797 

inhabited by the monks. The two little oratories are different 
from the cells in shape. They are rectangular in plan and arched 
from the longer sides into something like the form of a large 
boat with square ends turned bottom upwards. Like the cells, 
they are built of dry-stone and are very small, not over fifteen 
feet long and ten wide. On the inside in the larger one the 
walls are carried up straight for seven or eight feet and then 
arched over in flat courses such as already described. The 
stones used are not particularly large, but the walls of both cells 
and chapels are extremely thick. In some of the circular cells 
they are fully six feet through. In fact, in spite of their small 
dimensions, the whole of these primitive buildings have an ap- 
pearance of massiveness and constructive skill that is most strik- 
ing. The little church, of a less primitive plan, and in which a 
rude mortar has been used, is in ruins. It is barely sixteen feet 
long, with perpendicular walls ; but the roof is now gone and 
the walls ruinous, while the older dry-stone buildings have bid 
defiance to the efforts of time and storm alike. The wall which 
bounds the outer side of the enclosure is a still more extraordi- 
nary specimen of mason-work without mortar. It stands on the 
verge of the precipice at a sheer height of six hundred feet 
above the ocean, in a position such as few workmen would be 
found willing to labor in even with the appliances of modern 
skill. Yet such is the care with which it has been constructed 
that it is almost impossible to move a stone from its place, and 
after more than a thousand years' duration it stands almost as 
complete as when first erected. It is built of long blocks laid as 
headers in the wall from both sides, with the spaces between 
closely packed with smaller stones or spawls. It slopes upwards 
from both sides, not in a straight line., as is usually the case, but 
with a peculiar curved outline which is accurately preserved in 
every part. The visitor's head swims as he looks down to the 
depths immediately below. Yet the outward face of the wall 
has been built with a regularity and precision that show how 
perfectly free from trepidation or carelessness its builders must 

have been. 

The extreme antiquity of all these buildings is the most s 
ing impression that they give- at first. That what lor ages has 
been regarded as an essential element of masonry, the use 
mortar was unknown to their builders is self-evident, 
who took such pains to rear their walls on the edge of 
beetling precipice would not have neglected so important an 
element of construction had they been acquainted wit 



798 SKELLIG MICHEL. [Sept., 

the same time the Christian character of the buildings is indis- 
putable. Over one of the doors a rude cross has been formed in 
white quartz stones, evidently built in at the time of erection ; 
and even without this mark it is almost inconceivable that any 
buildings of such a kind and in such a site should have been 
erected before the time of its first monastic inhabitants. It fol- 
lows naturally that stone-and-mortar buildings must have been 
first introduced into Ireland at a period subsequent to the estab- 
lishment of Christianity. Neither this fact nor the rudeness of 
this early specimen of monastic buildings need be regarded as 
evidence of the want of civilization in the country at the time. 
In Ireland, as in many other countries, wood and earth were 
long the materials used exclusively for dwellings ; and that such 
a state is by no means inconsistent with a considerable degree of 
progress in civilization we have abundant proofs elsewhere, as 
well as in Ireland itself. The necessities of such a site as an 
island rock doubtless first suggested the erection of those dry- 
stone buildings, surviving specimens of which are still to be met 
with in other places along the west coast of Ireland as well as 
on Skellig Michel. Their rudeness, too, is perhaps rather to be 
attributed to the deliberate choice of asceticism than to a want 
of knowledge of a better class of buildings. We know that in 
much later ages some religious orders, like the early Franciscans, 
expressly refused to erect any but the simplest and poorest 
buildings for their own use, and even for their churches. That a 
similar spirit should have actuated the men who chose a lonely 
rock in mid-ocean for their abode seems highly probable, and it 
accounts for much of the rudeness of the early Christian build- 
ings and monuments of Celtic Ireland. 

Unique as it is in the lonely grandeur of its situation, the 
monastery of Skellig Michel in its internal arrangements is only 
a type of numerous other ancient Celtic establishments whose 
more or less ruined remains are scattered all around the Irish 
coasts. Their model was very different from the Benedictine 
and similar abbeys which were founded on the Continent during 
the middle ages, and which seem to have only been introduced 
into Ireland in the eleventh century. The " lauras " of Egypt 
and Syria, in which a community lived in separate cells within 
a common enclosure, with the church as their regular meeting- 
place, seem to have been the type of the original Celtic estab- 
lishments. It is not necessary to suppose that they were copied 
from the remote communities of the Egyptian solitaries. It was 
rather that similar circumstances produced closely similar results 



1883.] SKELLIG MICHEL. 



799 



in widely separated countries. The enthusiasm with which 
Christianity was received in Ireland early led to a remarkable 
development of the monastic spirit. As may be gathered from 
its early records, it was no uncommon thing- for whole popula- 
tions on their conversion to adopt the rules of religious commu- 
nities. In such cases the enclosed village, or cahir, of a Celtic 
chief was transformed into a species of monastic establishment, 
with only the addition of a church within its limit. The spirit 
of asceticism soon led a number of more ardent spirits to seek 
remoter and more solitary abodes, and thus communities of 
either sex were afterwards founded which still retained the form 
and arrangements of an ordinary Celtic village with some slight 
changes. The desire of a more complete separation from the 
world naturally led to the selection of peculiarly wild sites for 
these establishments. Like the followers of St. Anthony in 
Egypt, the Irish religious pushed into the desert for their abodes, 
and the names Dysert, or Disert, prefixed to so many places in 
Ireland, still point out the sites of these primitive establishments. 
There was something peculiarly congenial to ascetic practices in 
the Celtic nature. A sort of contempt for merely bodily com- 
forts and a certain pride in enduring hardships have ever been 
a characteristic of the race. The Celtic warriors derided the 
effeminacy of the Norman invaders who went to battle only 
under protection of their coats of mail, and every one knows the 
anecdote of the Highland chief who kicked a pillow of snow 
from under his grandson's head as an unmanly luxury. Among 
a people of such a temperament the monastic spirit readily 
turned to the sternest forms of asceticism, both in the tenor of its 
life and in the abodes which it selected. The numerous rocky 
islands that fringe the Irish coasts offered abodes peculiarly 
suited to the feelings of the Celtic monks, and there is hardly 
one of them which does not retain traces of ancient monasteries 
even at the present day. They are to be found within a few miles 
of Dublin, on Ireland's Eye, Dalkey, and Lambay, at present, 
after seven hundred years of occupation by a foreign race, and 
they exist in far greater abundance in the remote and barren 
islands that fringe the western shore, where the primitive life of 
the people has scarcely been disturbed by. the vicissitudes of 

governments. 

The character of these insular abodes, thus chosen at first, t< 
all appearance, as places of retirement and self-mortification, 
exercised a remarkable effect on the Celtic Church. Living on 
sea-girt rocks like Skellig Michel or the Arran Islands, where 



8co SKELLIG MICHEL. [Sept,, 

the barrenness of the soil precluded any extensive cultivation, 
the monks naturally turned the labor of their lives towards an- 
other element. They became fishermen and voyagers from the 
necessities of their situation. What the forests and morasses of 
France and Germany were to the early Benedictines the sea was 
to a large proportion of the Irish Culdees. It vyas the natural 
field of their daily labors. To face the storms of the Atlantic 
in their rude corracles, such as are still used by the fishermen of 
Connemara and Kerry, was the ordinary occupation of many of 
the island monks. From fishermen to explorers the transition 
was not difficult. To a faith like theirs the missionary spirit was 
a motive even stronger than the love of solitude, and both com- 
bined to urge them on distant expeditions. The impulse which 
had driven the first communities to the islands impelled their 
successors to venture far into the ocean in search of still more 
remote solitudes. The desire of imparting the faith so enthu- 
siastically prized by themselves to the nations still plunged in 
heathenism led crowds of others across the sea to every part 
of Britain, Gaul, Germany, and even Helvetia and Italy itself. 
Thus voyages alike of mission work and of exploration became 
a special feature of Irish monastic life. The legends of their ex- 
ploratiogs were scarcely less famous in the middle ages through- 
out western Europe than the deeds of Arthur or the Paladins 
of Charlemagne. The voyages of St. Brendan and the other 
celebrated Celtic explorers have no doubt been strangely dis- 
torted by romance, but they contain a substantial germ of fact. 
The Irish monks in their open boats pushed their journeyings 
from the Canary Islands to Iceland. The Norwegians who 
colonized the latter distant island in the ninth century found 
Irish monks already established on its desolate shores, and they 
were also found in the Faroe Islands far to the north of Scot- 
land. That America itself was visited by their boats is more 
than probable. From Kerry to Newfoundland is a less formid- 
able voyage than that into the Northern Ocean to Iceland, but 
it would lead us too far to enter on the subject at present. 

That the missionary character for which the Irish Celts were 
so remarkable was due in great part to the influence of these 
remote island communities is pointed out by numerous facts. 
In Northumberland, and above all in Scotland, it was in pre- 
cisely similar situations that the Irish missioners established 
themselves. The establishment of St. Aidan at Lindisfarne 
island was scarcely less efficacious in spreading Christianity 
among the Anglo-Saxons of the north than the mission of St. Au- 



I88 3-1 SKELLIG MICHEL. 801 

gustine himself at Canterbury, and St. Aidan's community was 
moulded on the type of an Irish monastery. The fact that the 
early art of the Anglo-Saxons in illumination and metal-work is 
of a decidedly Celtic character shows that at need the members 
of the Irish communities could civilize as well as convert the 
nations with which they came into contact lona, in Scotland, 
is a still more striking example of the missionary spirit of Irish 
monasticism. In the motive which made Columbkili select it for 
the site of his monastery, " because it was out of view of the 
Irish shore," we have a striking exhibition of the same class of 
feelings that must have actuated the monastic colonists of St. 
Michael's Rock. And as the solitude of Columbkill's abode and 
the rigor of his penance were no hindrance to a life of self- 
sacrificing and unceasing toil, we may well believe that his was 
but the type of many hidden lives in the lonely islands of the 
Irish shore. 

The golden time of the Celtic monasteries, as well as of the 
Celtic Church, extended from the close of the fifth to that of the 
eighth century. It was during that period that most of the Irish 
islands received their primitive monasteries, whose remains in 
many of them are not less primitive than those of Skellig Michel. 
Besides the love of solitude, other causes were at work* during 
these ages which tended to make the islands attractive to mon- 
astic feelings. They were in all probability the least disturbed 
parts of the entire country. Their poverty, their position, and 
their remoteness all secured them from 'the civil broils, too nu- 
merous, on the mainland. The foreign wars which during the de- 
cline of the Roman Empire had engaged so much of the attention 
of the Celts of Ireland, as well as of the other neighbors of the 
weakened empire, seem to have come to an end simultaneously 
with the complete establishment of Christianity in Ireland. The 
fleets which the Roman poet Claudian describes as sweeping all 
Ireland across the sea no longer harassed the British shores in 
the sixth century. The Roman fleets had of course disappeared 
with the fall of the empire, and the Saxons during the Heptar- 
chy showed little inclination for expeditions by sea. The Irish 
colony in Scotland still continued to struggle for supremacy 
with both Picts and Saxons, but its intercourse with the parent 
country was of a friendly character. The national assembly of 
Drumcheat in Ireland formally recognized the right to complete 
independence of the Scottish colony, which afterwards grew into 
the modern Scottish kingdom. Thus the seas around Ireland 
were left in complete peace for nearly three centuries, and 
VOL. xxxvu. 51 



802 SKELLIG MICHEL. [Sept., 

during that time the island communities must have enjoyed an 
entire freedom from any attacks, that largely increased their 
numbers and importance. It does not appear, however, that 
they ever rivalled the dimensions of the great communities on 
the mainland, like Clonmacnoise, Bangor, or Lismore, or that 
they became, like them, the receptacles of numerous scholars. 
Their function must always have been what it originally .was 
places of retirement and training for the arduous duties of 
missionary life ; and thus the primitive type of their buildings 
remained unchanged during a long course of centuries, such as 
we still see it at Skellig Michel. 

The security so long enjoyed by the western seas came to 
a sudden end. At the close of the eighth century a new and 
terrible foe swept down from the north on the coasts of Europe. 
The tribes of Scandinavia had taken little prominent part in the 
great movement of nations westward which accompanied and 
immediately followed the fall of the Roman Empire. It was not 
until the invading barbarians had fully settled down in their new 
abodes, and that the Germanic tribes who remained in their origi- 
nal seats had been organized into national unity by the conquests 
and genius of Charlemagne, that the Scandinavians commenced 
their invasion of western Europe. It was the last wave of the 
northern invasions of southern Europe which had commenced 
five centuries before. In many respects it was different and far 
more terrible in its character than its predecessors. The Gothic 
and Frankish tribes, though pagans at the time of their first set- 
tlement on the old Roman territories, had shown no special hos- 
tility to the Christian religion, and had readily adopted it when 
settled down in their new abodes. It was different with the 
Danish and Norwegian vikings. They were not merely pagans, 
but they were professed enemies of Christianity. While the 
earlier invasions had been the movement of an entire people in 
search of new abodes, the Northmen came as pirates in search of 
plunder and slaves. That in many cases they afterwards settled 
down in the countries they had devastated is true, but in the 
first case their visits were those of pirates and plunderers. The 
sea was their chosen home, and their fleets swept down on every 
coast of western Europe from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. 
Ireland was one of the countries on which fell the brunt of 
their attacks after centuries of immunity from foreign foes. 
Their first appearance was in 795, and for nearly a century 
afterwards no part of its coasts was free from their incursions. 
The rivers, with the numerous lakes into which many of them 



I88 3-1 SKELLIG MICHEL. 803 

expand, gave them easy access to the interior, with a safe re- 
treat in case of danger, and thus no part of the country was 
safe from their ravages. As might be expected, the monasteries 
on the islands were a favorite object of their attacks. The art 
treasures which they contained, their religious character, and the 
defenceless nature of their inhabitants allured alike the greed and 
the pagan fanaticism of the northern vikings. Skellig Michel 
did not escape. In 823 it was plundered and its abbot, Eitgal, 
carried away captive by a pirate fleet, and a few years later it 
was again ravaged in a similar manner. Fortunately the nature 
of most of its buildings was such as to defy injury, except at the 
cost of more labor than the pirates had either time or incli- 
nation to bestow on them, and they were again occupied after 
the departure of the marauders. 

The close of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries 
was marked in Ireland by a lull in the Danish invasions. Scan- 
dinavian settlements had been founded in Dublin, Waterford, 
and several other seaports, and some sort of relations, more or 
less friendly, were gradually established between these and the 
Irish chiefs. At the same time the struggle with the Saxon 
Alfred for the possession of England, and the conquest of Nor- 
mandy from the French king, gave ample occupation elsewhere 
to the forces of the Norsemen. This interval of comparative 
peace gave a certain breathing-time to Ireland, but was far from 
sufficient to restore it to its former condition. The great schools 
which had formerly attracted crowds of foreign students had 
been repeatedly destroyed, and the missionary enterprise which 
had been so marked a feature of the earlier centuries was almost 
killed by the constant warfare to which the country had been 
exposed. Besides, the incursions of the Norsemen only ceased 
for a time. They were renewed in the tenth century for nearly 
eighty years, and, though checked again by the Irish monarch 
Brian's victory at Clontarf in 1014, they were occasionally re- 
peated for many years after that time. During these repeated 
invasions many of the islands were abandoned by the communi- 
ties settled' on them for safer abodes. Even a large body of the 
monks of lona sought refuge in Ireland, where they established 
themselves at Kells and other inland towns in the ninth century. 
Skellig Michel, however, continued to retain its community to a 
much later date. St. Malachy, the celebrated primate of Ireland 
and friend of St. Bernard, is said to have found a refuge from 
persecution on the Skellig in the early part of the twelfth cen- 
tury, and it was not until after that time that the community was 



804 SKELLIG MICHEL. [Sept., 

finally transferred to the mainland, where they were established 
in a magnificent monastery at Ballinskelligs, in Kerry. Though 
deserted by its former tenants, the religious character of Skellig 
Michel has since been preserved by the devotion of the popula- 
tions of the adjoining coasts, and by the pilgrimages of which it 
has never ceased to be the destination through all the inter- 
vening years. The monastery at Ballinskelligs, which was con- 
nected with the Augustinian Order, was finally broken up by 
Elizabeth of England. Its buildings have since been allowed to 
fall in ruins, and thus the primitive cells on Skellig Michel have 
survived the stately pile which superseded them. 

Whether viewed in its character of an ocean peak rearing 
itself in mountain bulk far from any other land, in that of a 
sacred isle revered as such through so many centuries and such 
great social changes, or as the seat of so strange a fragment of 
the past as its primitive monastery, this rocky island in the 
Atlantic possesses a deep and almost unique interest. Standing 
apart from the centres of population and the course of travel of 
the modern world, it is to-day almost the same, both in natural 
form and in its buildings, as it was in the earliest times of Chris- 
tianity in the western island. As the ruins of Pompeii call up 
before us vividly the life of the ancient heathen world now long 
passed away, so do the rude cells and storm-beaten site of this 
primitive monastery bring before us the fearless self-devotion 
and untiring toils of the daily life of the old Celtic Church. 
From the sight of their abodes we may gather better than from 
books what manner of men they were whose preaching and 
example established Christianity among the barbarian tribes of 
the German forests and Caledonian mountains and lakes. In our 
days we are apt' to think too lightly of the labors that first 
formed the rude savages who rushed down on the Roman world 
into the Christian civilization of modern times. The task seems 
an easy one because it has been accomplished, but at the cost of 
what sacrifices of human enjoyments and what stern self-abnega- 
tion on the part of the early missionaries it was really achieved 
may be gathered from the monuments hidden in the remote 
western islands. That great results can only be achieved at the 
cost of great sacrifices is the lesson of every age, and we may 
gather the secret of the successes of the early missioners of 
western Europe from the utter detachment from all the world 
holds dear that is shown by their chosen place of abode on the 
lonely rock of Skellig Michel. 



I88 3-1 ARMINE. 



ARMINE. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

FAR down in Brittany stands the old Chateau de Marigny 
in the midst of a wide domain. Terraces and gardens and 
green woods, intersected by long, grassy avenues, surround it, 
while beyond a great extent of moorland stretches toward 
the sea, which beats ever against the scarred and riven face of 
the cliffs that surround this stormy coast. Across the wide 
uplands breezes fresh with the briny freshness of the great 
deep blow and carry the thunder of the waves over the leafy 
tree-tops to the chateau, as it stands above its formal terraces 
with their time-stained marble balustrades and broad flights 
of steps leading down to the gardens below. 

Near the chateau is the village of Marigny, filled chiefly 
with the simple and devout fisher-folk of the Breton coast, 
among whom revolution makes scant progress ; but a few 
miles distant is a large town, and here a sufficient number of 
the discontented class are to be found to serve as a basis for 
the work of the political agitator. In this, as the most im- 
portant place of the district, Duchesne established himself when 
he came down to conduct the campaign against the Vicomte 
de Marigny ; and here all the elements of opposition centred 
around him. 

It may be thought that in loyal Brittany these elements 
would not count for much ; but in France, above all other 
places on the earth, extremes of good and evil confront each 
other. Who, for instance, that enters the crowded churches of 
Paris, with their devout throngs of men and women, but finds 
it difficult to realize that he is in the midst of that great 
capital where blasphemy and vice walk hand-in-hand along the 
glittering streets? And in Lyons and Marseilles hot-beds of 
revolution as they, are who does not know that one has not 
far to seek to find Christians with the virtues of the apostolic 
age, true confessors of the faith and spiritual children of the 
martyrs ? While regarding the immense hosts of pilgrims to 
the shrine of Notre Dame de Lourdes, with their passionate 
appeals to the Mother of God to save France, it is hard to 
understand that the same France which produced these pious 



806 ARMINE. [Sept., 

souls could also produce the maddened hordes of the Revolu- 
tion and the Commune. And so even in Christian Brittany 
the evil watchwords of an evil time are heard, and men are se- 
duced by the old promises of the tempter and intoxicated by 
the specious arguments and appeals of Socialism. 

Duchesne, therefore, found material enough to work upon, 
though probably not enough to secure the defeat of the Vicomte 
de Marigny. To effect this end, however, he spared no effort 
either publicly or secretly for there were secret meetings of 
societies which dared not yet avow themselves and their true 
aims in the light of day, but which, with many stern resolutions, 
pledged themselves to oppose the Vicomte de Marigny by any 
and all means. " For this is no ordinary man/' the speakers 
said, " with no ordinary power to retard and injure the great 
cause of humanity. He is no mere obstructionist whom the 
flood will sweep over, but one who defies and gives battle, who 
leads and sways men. Therefore he is to be crushed at any 
cost." And the assembly with one voice cried, " crasez le/" 
as, given a little more power, they would have cried, " A la 
guillotine ! " And so it was determined that M. de Marigny 
should be crushed by fair means, if possible ; but, these fail- 
ing, by any such as were justified by the need of advancing 
the cause of revolution. 

Meanwhile the days passed pleasantly and not without 
some gleams of pleasure to Armine. She saw little of her 
father and knew little of what he was doing ; but ignorance is 
welcome to one who shrinks from the weight of knowledge. 
She tried to forget for what purpose they had come, and to 
interest herself in the quaint customs and architecture of the 
old Breton town. She never tired of wandering through the 
picturesque, mediaeval streets, the sunshiny squares, the curious 
old courts and many churches. In some respects it was like 
other places in which she had been before, yet there was a 
difference, a flavor of distinct nationality which attracted and 
pleased her. Then the piety of the people was so deep, their 
devotion so earnest and spontaneous ! As she often knelt in 
the corner of some crowded church taking care always to 
shelter herself behind a great pillar, for it did not seem to her 
as if her father's daughter had a right to be there she felt 
thrilled in every fibre by the chant which rose from the depth 
of those Celtic hearts, by the intensity of the faith which 
breathed in every act and word of the worshippers. And it 
was then that she began to realize that her father's passionate 



1883.] ARMINE. 807 

devotion to his ideal was only the religious instinct of the 
Breton turned into another channel. He might disown the 
God of his fathers, but he could not divest himself of the ear- 
nestness which was his inheritance from them, or the instinct 
of faith which, having lost the heavenly, now sought an earthly 
end. . For no light scoffing or lighter indifference is possible 
to the Breton soul. Loyalty and enthusiasm are inbred in it, 
and, in its passionate tenacity, it is the stuff of which heroes 
and martyrs are made. 

But these tranquil and uneventful days did not last long. 
One morning Duchesne said suddenly : " You must be growing 
tired of this dull life, petite. It was hardly worth while to ex- 
change Paris for it. But you shall have a little diversion, or 
at least a little change, to-day. It is necessary that I should 
go to the village of Marigny, and I will take you with me." 

" To Marigny ! " said Armine. Despite her efforts she shrank 
visibly. " I am very well satisfied here, mon pere. I think I 
would rather not go." 

"Why not?" asked her father, with some surprise and a 
glance which expressed a shade of suspicion. " What do you 
know of Marigny? Why should you not wish to go?" 

" I know nothing of Marigny," she answered. " But I like 
this place, and I am quite content to remain here." 

" I am not content to leave you here, however," said her 
father. " There is no reason why you should not enjoy a visit to 
Marigny. You seemed anxious to see something of Brittany, 
and that is a typical Breton village. Besides, you will have a 
glimpse of the coast. It is only a drive of a few miles. You 

must go." 

" How soon shall we start ? " she asked, seeing that resis- 
tance was useless with no better reason than she had to give. 

" In an hour," her father answered ; " and we shall return this 

evening." 

In an hour they were driving along the road to Marigny, and 
Armine acknowledged that the motion and the air of the balmy 
day were as charming as the view of the country outspread -.n 
all its spring beauty under the golden sunshine. A soft breeze 
rippled the growing grain in the fields as they passed ; lark attei 
lark poured forth its song above them in the blue depths of the 
sky ; cool and deep on the hillsides lay the shadow of the im- 
memorial woods of Brittany, and the earth seemed carpeted by 
the wild flowers that grew and rioted in every available space < 
ground. As they advanced the breeze which blew steadily in 



8o8 ARMINE. [Sept., 

their faces grew more and more laden with the salt freshness of 
the sea ; and at length a wide, green heath opened before them, 
golden with the flowers of the broom, while afar on the distant 
horizon was a blue, flashing line of restless water. 

Along one side of their way, however, the shade still extend- 
ed. But suddenly the road turned ; they passed some iron gates ; 
the coachman, pointing with his whip, said, " Voila le chdteau / " 
and there was a glimpse up a long, straight avenue of a stately 
house standing with many-windowed facade above a flight of 
terraces. Neither Armine nor her father spoke. The latter did 
not turn his head ; but she, following with her eyes the direction 
of the pointing whip, saw the chateau, with its steep roof and 
iron balconies, and the broad steps leading down from the ter- 
race to the shady avenue, framed like a picture at the end of 
the green vista. It was but a momentary view. They passed 
on, and a few minutes later came in sight of the parish church, 
situated on the outskirts of the village on the side toward the 
chateau. It was an old and picturesque edifice, built of the red 
granite of the coast, the ruddy hue of which contrasted effec- 
tively with the green moss that clung about its tower and tiled 
roof. Around it was the graveyard, with the sunshine falling 
softly on the stone crosses of the graves and over a large Cal- 
vary which dominated the enclosure and sanctified death. 

The village itself was situated farther beyond, and its long, 
straggling street led toward a cliff, down the face of which a 
steep path went by rudely-cut and somewhat dangerous steps 
to the beach where the fishing-boats lay. Armine uttered a 
cry of delight when, standing on the edge of this precipitous 
steep, she beheld the great plain of heaving, flashing sapphire 
at her feet, the creamy line of surf breaking far below, the blue 
outlines of distant capes, and the majestic cliffs, storm-rent and 
torn into fantastic shapes by the never-ceasing warfare of the 
sea, stretching for miles on each side. 

But it was not until they had taken their dejeuner at the 
inn that she went out with her father and saw this sight, the 
grandeur of which thrilled and fascinated her. She knew the 
charm of southern shores, all the loveliness of earth and sea 
and sky which makes the coasts of Italy for ever enchanted. 
But what was it to the wild beauty of this Breton coast to 
this gigantic bulwark of towering heights, which, washed and 
worn into stupendous forms of arches, pinnacles, and spires, 
stood like the remnants of a titanic world and breasted for ever 
the rage of the sea? There was, however, no suggestion of 



1883.] ARMINE. 809 

rage or tempest in the scene now calm and peaceful as a dream 
of heaven. The waves were rippling gently on the yellow sands 
and around the base of the mighty monoliths and columns of 
crimson granite; the great crags rose like aerial battlements 
bathed in sunlight ; on the blue liquid expanse that melted afar 
into the sky white sails stole along and the great wings of 
gulls darted and flashed. 

" It is more than beautiful it is so grand that it fills one with 
awe," said Armine. " I should like to stay here for days, long 
enough to take it all in ! " 

" If I had time," said her father, " we would stay for a few 
days at any rate ; you would enjoy it even more than you think. 
I knew the coast well once. It is wild and picturesque, and 
terrible to a degree you can hardly imagine. Bjut there is a 
wonderful fascination about it. Many of these cliffs are honey- 
combed with caves, which the sea enters at high tide, where one 
may float in a boat and look up at walls hundreds of feet high, 
carved into strange architectural semblances and gleaming with 
color." 

" Ah ! " said Armine, " I should like to see that. Can we 
not stay for a little while ? It would surely be good for you to 
take a short rest you who work so hard ! " 

" There is need to work," said her father. " Rest is not for 
one who hears the cries of multitudes in his ears, who labors for 
the great cause of humanity. I have come here to-day for a 
purpose to see one who professes to have information which 
he will give to me, and me alone. And that reminds me that I 
have not more time to spare at present. I must take you back 
to the inn while I attend to this business." 

" Can I not go down there and wait?" asked Armine, point- 
ing to the shining beach below. 

He shook his head. " No ; I could not let you descend the 
path alone. Moreover, the place is too solitary. You might 
be annoyed." 

" Then, "said Armine with some hesitation, " I will go back 
through the village to the church. No one will annoy me there, 
and I I should like to see it." 

" You will probably find little to see," said her father indif- 
ferently ; " but it is as good a place as another to wait. I will 
join you there, then, in the course of an hour." 

And so Armine found herself walking back alone, her father, 
after some reluctance, having parted with her and gone his way, 
which led to the outskirts of the village in another direction. 



8io ARMINE. [Sept., 

She walked rapidly, for she was glad of an opportunity to enter 
the church, which she had hardly hoped to be able to do ; and 
she paid little attention to the appearance of the village, nor did 
she notice the people who looked at her curiously as she passed 
through it. But presently there came a sound which attracted 
her attention and made her almost unconsciously glance up. It 
was the clatter of a horse's feet along the street, and as she lift- 
ed her eyes they encountered the regard of the rider, who was 
no other than the Vicomte de Marigny. 

It was the meeting she had vaguely dreaded ever since 
she entered Brittany, and quite especially feared in going to 
Marigny. Now that it had come to pass her first impulse was 
to hurry on, hoping to escape recognition. But even in the in- 
stant of the impulse she realized that she was fully recognized. 
Something of surprise the vicomte's glance expressed, but there 
was not a shade of doubt in it, and as he met her eyes he lifted 
his hat and bowed. 

It was the perfection of what such a greeting should have 
been, with not a shade too much or too little empressement. The 
villagers looking on felt a sudden increase of respect for the lady 
walking down their street, to whom M. le Vicomte bowed as if 
she had been Madame la Comtesse from a neighboring chateau, 
and were quite sure that, notwithstanding her unattended con- 
dition, she must be a person of rank. Armine, meanwhile, ac- 
knowledged the salutation hastily, and, dropping her eyes, again 
walked on even more rapidly than before, her face flushed and 
her heart beating as she said to herself : " He is worthy to be 
M. d'Antignac's friend. He knows who I am he must know 
why I am here and yet he greets me as if I were a princess. 
He is a true gentilhomme" 

But after this burst of feeling a sense of keen regret over- 
powered her regret that he had seen her, regret that she had 
ever consented to come to Marigny. For so little had she 
imbibed the spirit of modern democracy that it seemed to her 
a shameful thing to come into a man's own home, among his 
hereditary dependants, and endeavor to seduce them from al- 
legiance to him. And that, she felt quite sure, was what her 
father was doing. Yet even as she thought this her heart was 
none the less loyal to that father. To him, she knew, the 
work in which he was engaged wore the aspect of a high and 
holy duty; but it had no such aspect to her, and therefore she 
was sorry to be identified with it in the opinion of the Vi- 
comte de Marigny. Why the opinion of the Vicomte de Ma- 



1883.] ARMINE. 811 

rigny should have mattered to her she did not ask herself. 
She only felt that it was hard to be regarded as an enemy 
by one whom she would willingly have served as a friend. 

But that life is full of hard things was no new experience to 
Armine. With the short, quick sigh of one who carries an 
habitual burden, she lifted her eyes again, and this time they 
fell on the group of Calvary in the churchyard which she 
was now approaching. Outlined against the fair blue sky 
stood the dark form of the cross, as another cross was once 
outlined against the sky of Palestine, and on it the divine 
Figure hung with drooping, thorn-crowned head the " sign of 
contradiction " now as of old. For even as the Jews gathered 
around the cross, reviling the Son of God in his agony, so 
modern revolutionists and infidels proclaim most clearly whose 
children they are and whose work they do when their first 
rage is directed against the crucifix, and their first work al- 
ways and everywhere is to tear it down. Nor is it remark- 
able that they do so. For how should a rebellious and self- 
seeking generation endure to look upon the supreme type of 
obedience, patience, and sacrifice? 

These things the crucifix preaches with a force which no 
eloquence of man can equal, and at this moment it had its 
message for Armine. She paused and stood for a moment 
motionless, her clear eyes uplifted with a wistful look and fas- 
tened on the touching form of Love divine. All was still 
around her. The quiet graves lay steeped in sunshine, which 
sparkled here and there on the little wells of holy water. 
The church stood in the midst, full of repose; from the gen- 
tle eminence on which it was placed there was a view of the 
country for miles around, and over the distant tree-tops a 
glimpse of the chateau, had Armine known where to look for 
it. But she was not thinking of the prospect, fair though it 
was. A moment had come to her like that of which she had 
spoken to Egerton on the portico of the Madeleine a mo- 
ment when the pain of tumult suddenly ceased and she felt 
herself in the guidance of a hand that never errs. After all, 
was it mere chance which brought her here? At this in- 
stant she felt a conviction, strong as a personal assurance, 
that it was not; and if it was not if, for any reason now 
dark to her, it was God's will then all was easy. She had 
only to bear with patience the old burden of pain and doubt, 
and a new burden of misunderstanding, which surely did not 
matter. 



8 12 ARMINE. [Sept., 

Saying this to herself, she walked up the grassy path and 
entered the little church. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE church proved to be old within as well as without, 
and, like many French parish churches, much in need of re- 
pair ; but it was not unpicturesque and was full of that solemn 
repose which pervades the humblest of these ancient temples 
of faith. High, narrow windows let down a dim light on the 
altar and the faded fresco above it ; while in the gloom the 
massive antique lamp before the tabernacle burned with its 
red light steady as a star. 

Armine knelt down on one of the low chairs with a singu- 
lar sense of having reached a spot toward which she had been 
journeying. The feeling which had so suddenly laid hold of 
her in the churchyard was still strongly present with her, like 
the close, firm pressure of a hand. She could understand that, 
for she had known it before; but why should she feel as if 
this place, into which she had entered as a stranger, had some 
claim upon her life which was not strange? She looked up 
at the dark old walls, at the dusky roof, at the altar with its 
candles and crucifix. Why should this spot seem more to her 
than many another where she had knelt before the same sac- 
ramental Presence? 

There was no answer naturally she could expect none 
but in a time which came after she looked back with a sense 
of awe to this strange feeling which signalized her first en- 
trance into the church of Marigny. 

At present, however, it was a feeling which passed, ab- 
sorbed by deeper and stronger ones. The sight of M. de Ma- 
rigny had recalled to her memory the impending conflict, which 
was but part of a greater and wider conflict fraught with tre- 
mendous issues. How tremendous, indeed, these issues were 
no one knew better than the girl in whose ears from infancy 
the revolutionary gospel had sounded, preached by many men 
in many tongues, but ever with the same burden. Young as 
she was, she had seen triumphs of which the revolutionary 
apostles themselves had hardly dared to dream ; and she was 
well aware what their aims now were. Was it not coming 
again, the day when shrines such as this would be closed by 
those who shamed and belied France by denying God in her 
name? She knew that it might be so; that the earth was 



1883.] ' ARMINE. 813 

hollow underneath, and that while those who should defend 
religion halted, delayed, wasted their strength in differences, 
the great attacking army was marching on, led by hearts 
like that of her father, strong in singleness of purpose and de- 
votion. As she thought of these things her own heart sank 
within her. She was like one torn in two, hardly knowing 
how to pray. It was, as Egerton had felt, a hard fate which 
arrayed this loving soul against one whom it was her natural 
impulse to follow and to honor ; harder still that she could 
not desire his success, though knowing how ardently he longed 
for it. -She thought of all his toil and sacrifice with a great 
pang of pain and pity. At this moment, as in many, many 
moments before, the riddle of life pressed heavily upon her. 
Honest, misguided souls, working with heroic fervor for an 
end full of evil who that looks out on the world to-day does 
not feel the pity of this ? And there are some to whom, as to 
Armine, it comes with the added force of personal feeling and 
knowledge. These will understand how she could only lay 
her heart at the foot of the crucifix, knowing that neither for- 
mal nor articulate prayer was necessary to enable God to 
read its hopes and fears. 

But at length peace came like gentle dew from heaven. 
" See, poor heart," a voice from the still depths of the taber- 
nacle seemed to say, " canst thou not trust for others, for a 
great cause, for France, as well as for thyself? What is thy 
pity to mine? What is thy knowledge to that exactest justice 
and tenderest mercy with which I read the hearts of erring 
men and comprehend their full degree of intent or of blind- 
ness? And for the rest, is my power less because men deny 
it, or because I suffer them to taste the full consequences of 
such denial?" And then again she felt that all things were 
easy to bear, as, indeed, all things must be to one who realizes 
that God's arm is not shortened ; that in the present and future, 
as in the past, he will most surely govern with omniscient 
wisdom the world which he has created ; and that the church 
is never stronger than in the hour when all human aid is with- 
drawn from her-nay, when all human power is arrayed against 
her and she leans for support on his promise alone. 

Half an hour later Armine was still kneeling, with her hea 
bent forward in her hands, when a step entered behind her, 
rang; on the paved aisle as it advanced, then paused, and aft 
an interval receded again. She hardly noticed it until 
heard the baize door swing shut as it passed out; and ther 



8 14 ARMINE. - [Sept., 

she lifted her head with a start, for she thought of her father, 
and remembered that he had promised to come to the church 
for her. Knowing his aversion to churches, however, she felt 
that she would prefer to go to meet him. She rose, therefore, 
gave a last look at the quaint old altar, the dim picture and 
the shining lamp feeling again as if some strange tie bound 
her to this place and then walked slowly out. 

The brightness of the day dazzled her eyes as she emerged 
from the obscurity of the church and paused a moment in the 
picturesque old porch, shading them with her hand until they 
became accustomed to the change. Indeed, the scene was 
enough to dazzle any eyes, flooded as it was just now with 
sunlight. The green fields stretching inland, the golden-starred 
heath stretching seaward, the flashing, distant water, and the 
blue sky bending down to meet it all were strong in vivid 
color, and so also were the glistening gables of the village 
and its stone-tiled roofs. 

Suddenly was it a sound or an instinct that made Armine 
look round ? She scarcely knew ; but look she did, to see a 
tall figure coming toward her from the direction of the pres- 
bytery, which adjoined the church. It needed an instant's 
glance only to assure her that it was the Vicomte de Marigny, 
and with a beating heart she turned quickly to go. But the 
vicomte was very near at hand, and as she was about to step 
out of the shadow of the porch he stood before her, uncov- 
ering and speaking with the same air of gracious courtesy as 
when they met last in Paris. 

" I am happy to see you at Marigny, mademoiselle. I hope 
that you are well ? " 

" Quite well, M. le Vicomte, je vous remercie" she answered 
in a low tone, while her eyes regarded him with an expression 
half-startled, half- wistful. 

" And you will let me inquire how you left our friend M. 
d'Antignac for it is likely that you have seen him since I 
have?" 

" I have seen him only once since the day I left you with 
him," she replied ; " and that was the next day. I bade him 
good-by then, for I was leaving Paris." 

" Ah ! " said the vicomte. He remembered now that he 
had heard of Duchesne's arrival in Brittany as almost imme- 
diately following his own, and of course his daughter was with 
him. Poor girl ! It was a sad fate for her to be tossed hither 
and thither by every wave of political agitation. He under- 



1883.] ARMINE. 815 

stood perfectly the look in her appealing 1 eyes at present, and 
all the chivalry of his nature was stirred to show her that he 
did not regard her as identified in the least with her father. 

" Then you have been some time in Brittany," he said. ;< I 
hope that it has pleased you ? We are, perhaps, inordinately 
proud of our country, we Bretons." 

" It seems to me that it would not be possible for any one 
not to be proud of such a country," she answered in a voice 
which had in it a thrill of pathetic music. " It is so beautiful, 
so interesting, and so full of the most touching traditions of the 
past ; but, more than that, the people seem to be so strong in 
faith and so simple in virtue. I think you need only pray, M. 
le Vicomte, that it may not change." 

He understood the sympathy which the words expressed, 
the look in the clear, golden eyes with their wistful light. More 
and more he was touched, interested, charmed by this sensitive 
face, which, with its quick and transparent changes of feeling, 
was, as Egerton had once said, " like a poem." 

" You are very kind," he answered. " I am glad that you 
have felt the charm of Brittany, for it is as much a spiritual as 
a material charm. And the longer you remained the more you 
would feel it. For my part, when I get down into my old 
chateau by the sea I feel as if I never cared to leave it and go 
back into the mad whirl of the Paris world. You wonder, then, 
why I go ? " with a slight smile, as he caught a look in her 
eyes. " Well, it is only because the humblest soldier in the 
ranks of a great army must not throw away his gun as long as 
he can fire a shot, and perhaps because I have a little pleasure 
in fighting, too. But you must not suffer me to detain you, 
mademoiselle. Being in the presbytery, when I saw you emerge 
from the church I could not refrain from coining to pay my 
respects. I have now the honor to bid you good-day." 

He bowed and turned again toward the presbytery, where the 
cure could be seen through the window, breviary in hand, while 
Armine stepped from the porch and walked toward the gate. 

She reached it before she perceived a figure on the road 
advancing toward the church, which she recognized at once to 
be that of her father. Knowing his long sight, her mind mis- 
gave her a little. If he had seen her speaking to the Vicomte 
de Marigny what would he think, and how could she explain 
the true significance of their short interview? She waved her 
hand and hurried forward to meet him. But his first wo: 
proved her fears to be well founded. 



8i6 ARMINE. [Sept., 

" Who was that man with whom you were talking in the 
porch ? " he asked as soon as they met. 

Now, perhaps it is impossible for any one not to look a little 
guilty when accosted in this manner, and when conscious that 
the name to be pronounced will have an obnoxious sound in the 
ears of the person addressed. Armine certainly colored a little, 
but her eyes met her father's full and steadily. 

" It was the Vicomte de Marigny," she replied. 

" The Vicomte de Marigny ! " repeated Duchesne. They 
had paused as they met, and were now standing face to face. 
He looked at his daughter for a moment in amazement too deep 
for expression, but not too deep for wrath. His face flushed ; 
there came a flash like lightning into the eyes, above which the 
dark brows knitted, as he said sternly : " And how is it that 
the Vicomte Marigny ventured to address you?" 

"Because I have met him before," she answered, "and I 
knew no reason why I should not acknowledge the acquain- 
tance." 

"You have met him before! Where?" 

" At M. d'Antignac's, in Paris." 

" And why have I never heard of such a meeting ? " 

" I only met him once or twice," she said, " and it never 
occurred to me to mention what seemed to me a matter of no 
importance." 

There was a moment's silence, while her father regarded her 
with eyes that seemed to look her through and through. Never 
before had Armine seen such an expression on his face, and 
never before had she been called upon to endure that hardest 
of all things to one conscious of integrity undeserved suspi- 
cion. Her father had always trusted her implicitly and treated 
her with a kindness that never varied. But now was it to be 
her fate now to stand like a culprit, trembling before a suspi- 
cion which she could not disprove? 

If she trembled, however, it was at least not perceptibly. 
Having uttered her few words of explanation, she stood with 
perfect composure and eyes as clear as noonday, meeting the 
glance bent on her. But it was evident that she had not dis- 
armed her father's anger. 

" So," he said at length in a bitter tone, " this explains why 
I have an enemy at my own hearth ; this explains why your 
sympathies are with priests and nobles, and why you seek the 
society of such friends as the D'Antignacs ! It also explains 
why you did not wish to accompany me to Marigny. Wei), 



l88 3-l ARMINE. 817 

he is a fool who looks for anything but folly and deceit in a 
woman ! " 

"It is likely that I might- be guilty of folly," said Armine 
in a slightly trembling voice, "but deceit if I have ever de- 
ceived or spoken falsely to you it would be just to charge me 
with that. But you know that I have never done so." 

"How should I know it?" asked her father in the same 
bitter tone. "Because I have not discovered the deception? 
That is poor proof. I begin to understand many things now 
to which I have been blind through too much trust. Oh ! yes, 
it grows very plain all your reactionary sympathies, your 
fondness for such places as that ! " He made a fierce gesture 
toward the church. " It is only an old story that a man 
should be betrayed by the one nearest to him." 

Then it was that tears came into the clear, dark eyes, forced 
there by wounded feeling rather than by indignation. 

" But what is it that you suspect me of?" she asked. " How 
do you think that I am deceiving you ? I have told you the 
simple truth. I met M. de Marigny once or twice at the 
D'Antignacs'. But our acquaintance was so slight that I could 
not have expected him to recognize me when he met me else- 
where. I was surprised when he came up to speak to me 
yonder ; but I am sure that it was only an instinct of courtesy 
and kindness which made him do so." 

" You are sure ! " said her father, with biting irony. " And 
what, pray, do you know of this man or of the order to which 
he belongs ? If you knew anything you would not talk of 
his acting from * courtesy and kindness.' His motive is plain 
enough to me. If your acquaintance with him is really what 
you represent, then he must suspect Come ! " he broke off 
harshly, " we will go. This is no place in which to linger. 
Whether by weakness or by intent, you have played into the 
hands of my enemy and made more difficult what is before 
me to do." 

He turned as he spoke and began to walk rapidly in the 
direction of the village so rapidly that Armine found it diffi- 
cult to keep pace with him. To walk very fast and to talk at 
the same time is next to impossible; so she made no attempt 
to answer his last speech which, indeed, was incomprehen- 
sible to her. How did he suspect her of having played into 
the hands of his enemy, and in what possible manner could 
she have made more difficult what he had to do? Were his 
words dictated merely by the unreason of anger ? If so, what 
VOL. xxxvn. 52 



8i8 ARMINE. [Sept., 

was the good of attempting to answer them ? She had already 
told the " simple truth." There was nothing else to tell. Her 
word was all that she could oppose to his suspicion, and it 
seemed that her word had lost its value ; so she could only 
walk on silently and sadly. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE drive from Marigny was both for Armine and her 
father a silent and constrained one. The first serious estrange- 
ment of their lives had arisen between them and was deeply 
felt by both, but naturally most by the girl, who tasted for 
the first time the bitterness of an alienated trust. It seemed 
to her as incredible as it was wounding that such a thing 
should be possible, that the father who had known her in the 
closest and most intimate manner all her life could doubt her 
truth, could believe her capable of deceiving him. 

And this is indeed the sharpest sting of suspicion where 
suspicion is undeserved that one is so little known as to be 
held capable of that which is suspected. The sense of out- 
rage is mingled with amazement and the keen realization that, 
however well we may think that we know or are known, we 
are but strangers to each other after all. " If I could show 
you my heart ! " many a misjudged soul has passionately cried ; 
but hearts are not to be shown in this mortal order, where we 
see many things besides the truths of God " as through a glass 
darkly," and have occasion for the exercise of faith in the 
human as in the divine. 

Occasion for the exercise of much patience, too, poor Ar- 
mine felt, realizing keenly how unjustly she was judged and 
how little she had done to bring this trial upon herself. She 
glanced now and then at her father as he lay back in a corner 
of the carriage with lowered eyes and a darkly-clouded brow. 
Here was a manifestation of character which she had never 
seen before, of some secret force of feeling to which she had 
not the key. For she found it almost impossible to believe that 
he could entertain such bitter animosity toward the Vicomte de 
Marigny simply because the latter belonged to a detested order 
and was his opponent in politics ; or if his intensity of feeling 
did rest on these grounds, it proved a narrowness of mind 
which she could with difficulty credit. For she had often said 
to herself recognizing clearly in those with whom she came 
in contact the envy which is the moving spring of democratic 



l88 3] ARMINE. 819 

sentiments that her father was at least free of this ; that he 
was blinded by a high ideal, not filled with mere hatred of all 
who were above him in the world. But now what other ex- 
planation was possible of his feeling toward M. de Marigny, 
unless there was some personal question involved, which' 
seemed too improbable to be considered ? And whatever was 
the cause of the feeling, to object to meet even a foe on the 
neutral ground of courtesy shocked the girl, who had never 
before seen in her father anything petty. 

In thoughts like these mile after mile of the way passed, 
and it was no wonder that her face was pale when they drove 
at sunset into the town which they had left in the morning. 
Her father observed this paleness as they alighted, and said in 
something of his usual tone: 

"You look tired. The drive has been too long for you. 
It would have been better if I had left you at home." 

" Much better," she answered in a low voice, while the tears 
sprang quickly to her eyes. She was about to add, " You know 
I did not wish to go," when she remembered that this dis- 
inclination had been charged against her ; so she turned with- 
out saying anything more and entered the house. 

Duchesne, after paying the coachman, followed, but found 
the salon of the apartment which they occupied empty. He 
glanced around it, took a step toward his daughter's room, 
then paused, as if on second thought, and went to a table which 
stood between two windows, where a pile of letters and papers 
brought by the day's mail lay. 

He was soon absorbed in these, and did not glance around 
when a servant came in, who laid a dinner-table with covers 
for two. But when Armine presently entered he turned, say- 
ing, in a manner which showed that, for the present at least, 
all that had lately passed was absent from his mind : 

" I find that I must return to Paris to-morrow. I have just 
received an imperative summons. I am needed, they tell me, 
for more important work than what I am about here. It is 
very plain that they do not realize how important this work is. 
But nevertheless the summons cannot be disregarded ; and, for- 
tunately, I have done nearly all that I can do. You must be 
ready to leave to-morrow by an early train, Armine." 

" Very well," answered Armine, with a great sense of relief 
and of positive gratitude toward the revolutionary authori- 
ties, whoever they might be, who thus opportunely changed 
the position for her. " I will pack everything to-night," she 



820 ARMINE. [Sept., 

said with cheerful readiness. " At what hour to-morrow shall 
we start? " 

" The earliest train goes at five, I think," said her father. 
" We must leave by that. Meanwhile " he began gathering 
together his papers hastily " I shall have much to do to-night. 
I have many persons to see. I do not think \ can wait for 
dinner." 

" But it is served/' said Armine, as the servant entered with 
the soup. " Pray do not go out without taking something after 
our long drive." 

" The drive was nothing," he said. But he sat down to 
table nevertheless, and, although he ate little and was silent and 
abstracted, Armine saw that the cloud of the afternoon had 
passed away. He was plainly thinking of other things ; and it 
was only when dinner was over, when his cup of coffee had 
been placed before him and the servant had left the room, 
that his thoughts came back to the occurrences of the day, 
an.d, glancing at his daughter, he was touched by the look of 
her wistful, pathetic eyes. 

"See, petite" he said not unkindly, "I spoke to-day harshly, 
and perhaps not quite justly. I am willing to believe that you 
meant no harm, that you were guilty only of folly. Let us 
think no more of it. But understand this: I can tolerate no 
acquaintance with the Vicomte de Marigny. If you meet him 
at the house of those friends in Paris of whom you spoke, you 
must go to them no more. Apart from that I am sure that 
you obtain no good from them." 

" I obtain only good ! " cried Armine quickly, alarm and 
appeal mingled on her face. " Oh ! do not say that I must 
give them up. They have been they are so much to me ! 
You know the length of my acquaintance with them, yet I 
have only met M. de Marigny in their house twice. If I ever 
meet him again I will promise not to speak to him, since you 
do not wish me to do so ; but oh ! do not say that I must 
give up M. and Mile. d'Antignac." 

" And why," said her father, regarding her keenly and sus- 
piciously, "are you so much attached to M. and Mile. d'An- 
tignac ? " 

" Ah ! it would take me long to tell that," she answered, 
clasping her hands in the energy of her feeling. " I only 
know that I have few friends very few and, after yourself, 
there are none whom I love like them." 

" So much the worse," he said sternly, " for they have 



I88 3-J ARMINE. g 2f 

taught you to array yourself in feeling against me and the 
ends of my life. Do you think I have been blind to that ? I 
said to myself, ' It is a girl's fancy; what does it matter?' 
But I have learned to-day that it does matter, and I blame 
myself for allowing associations which have resulted in such 
an end. For there may be power in your hand for evil or 
for good 

He broke off abruptly, and, setting down his cup of coffee, 
rose, while Armine watched him with a gaze full of surprise 
and apprehension. Power for evil or for good in her hand ! 
With a vague sense of amazement she looked at it as it lay 
before her. Could there be conceived a weaker, a more 
empty hand? That was the thought which flitted through 
her mind. Had her father lost his senses, or what did he 
mean ? 

He had evidently no intention of explaining. After a mo- 
ment's silence he said in an altered tone : " Eh bien, thou art 
but a child, and it may not matter. It is likely that we may 
not be much longer in Paris, and new associations will bring 
new ideas. Now I must go. Be ready for our early start in 
the morning ; and, in order to be ready, go to bed as soon as 
possible." 

He nodded and went out, while Armine proceeded to set 
about the duty of preparing for departure. It was a duty 
with which she was very familiar through long practice ; but 
as she moved about the apartment, gathering up all their be- 
longings with quick, deft fingers, her heart was heavy, for her 
father's words echoed in her ears, " We may not be much 
longer in Paris," and she knew all that this sentence of ban- 
ishment meant for her the lonely days in some strange place, 
the absence from those whom she loved and to whom she 
had grown accustomed to look for guidance, and the compan- 
ionship of those from whom she was to receive " new ideas." 
And what was to be the end? She dared not ask herself, 
dared not attempt to look forward into the future; but after 
her work was done, weary and exhausted by the exertions of 
the day, she commended her present and her future to God, 
and, lying down, fell immediately asleep. 

It seemed to her that she had been asleep a long time, 
but in reality it was not more than an hour or two, when 
she was waked by the sound of voices near at hand waked 
suddenly, abruptly, and with that sense of sharpened and acute 
hearing which people often feel when they are roused by 



822 ARMINE. [Sept., 

some unusual sound at night. Armine, no doubt, was more 
readily startled from having- gone to sleep with a weight of 
anxiety upon her mind ; but certainly when she came fully to 
herself she was sitting on the side of her bed, listening with 
strained attention to the voices murmuring in the next room. 
And these were the first words which she heard with entirely 
awakened attention : 

"You may be sure," said a deep, harsh tone, "that if the 
election goes against us as I am beginning to fear that it 
certainly will the clerical shall not take his seat. We have 
sworn that." 

"And how will you prevent it?" asked Duchesne's voice 
doubly clear and musical by contrast with the one which 
had spoken before. 

" It will not be difficult to prevent," said the other. " K 
little dynamite will settle the matter ; and if the chateau goes 
as well as its owner, why, so much the better ! The next re- 
volution will not leave one of those relics of the oppression of 
the people standing." 

" Perhaps not," said Duchesne ; " but it will be well to 
wait for the revolution before beginning to demolish them. 
We must go slowly, mon cher ; and, above all, we must avoid 
ill-timed violence. If M. de Marigny is elected he must be 
allowed to take his seat. It will never do for our enemies to 
say that, having failed to defeat, we proceeded to assassinate 
him." 

" Why not ? It will strike terror ; and that is a very good 
effect," said the other obstinately. " Other royalists and cleri- 
cals will hesitate to oppose the rights of the people as boldly 
as this man. He is one with whom there should be no 
quarter." 

" Bah ! " said Duchesne. " If he takes his seat what harm 
can he do one of a weak and divided minority ? No, Lafour, 
listen, and understand that I speak with the authority of the 
council which sent me when I say there must be no violence* 
It would be ill-advised in the highest degree. We are strug- 
gling here in Brittany, we are in a minority, and we have neither 
the ear nor the heart of the great mass of the people. The 
priests control them yet, and the priests would say, ' See ! are 
not all our warnings proved well founded ? ' No ; the thing 
must not be done. It is, after all, an extreme measure, only 
justified by the sacredness of our cause in extreme cases." 

"And is not this an extreme case?" persisted the other, 



1883.] ARMINE. 823 

who plainly did not wish to yield. " We are not strong 
enough to defeat the man by votes, else we might afford to 
despise him. We must, therefore, by more direct measures 
put it out of his power to misrepresent us." 

" It would be a blunder, which is worse than a crime," 
said Duchesne with incisive energy; "and I repeat once 
more that, with the power of the council, I positively forbid 
it. I have gained all that I hoped or expected in coming here. 
I did not either hope or expect to defeat De Marigny ; but 
we have used the election as a means to stir up popular 
feeling and popular thought, and to introduce the leaven of, 
revolutionary principles more fully than it has been intro- 
duced before. It will work and bear fruit, and your societies 
must do the rest. Every man brought into them is a man 
wrested from the influence of the priests." 

" Sacri? ! '" was the answer like a deep growl. "I should 
like to make an end of that influence for ever, to banish every 
priest from France. That is the only chance for our final 



success." 



"They will soon be banished from the schools they and 
all their superstitions," said Duchesne. "That will give us 
the next generation ; and when we have a nation of free- 
thinkers all that we desire will come about quickly enough. 
Patience, my friend; great results are not won in a day. 
We must work with our eyes on the future; we must not 
injure our cause by ill-judged haste in the present. Come, 
now, let us go over a few more details, and then I must bid 
you good-night, for I should like a little rest before my early 
departure to-morrow." 



CHAPTER XXL 

THE voices then turned to the consideration of things and 
people unknown to Attnine ; but she still sat motionless, as 
petrified, on the side of the bed. A vista of terror seemed 
open before her, and could any one have seen her in the 
darkened chamber she would have appeared to be ga* 
down it with dilated eyes. In truth, she was seeing many 
thino-s-the face that had looked into hers that day on i 
threshold of the church of Marigny, the old chateau standing 
above its terraces, and a vision of the violence that 
tened both. For she felt instinctively that there was 



824 ARMINE. [Sept., 

security that her father's commands would be obeyed. Why 
should men who have renounced all allegiance to divine or 
human authority obey their self-constituted guides farther 
than it pleases them to do so ? The law of private judgment 
has been found to be applicable to other things besides religion. 
It has risen in the form of resolution to overthrow govern- 
ments, and it will most certainly assert itself in the form of 
insubordination wherever and whenever it is safe to do so. 
This knowledge which seems curiously hidden from the self- 
willed and presumptuous ^leaders of our time is clearly evi- 
dent to all who look at things from a more logical point of 
view, and is abundantly proved by experience. 

Duchesne's command, therefore, did not reassure his daugh- 
ter, though it filled her with infinite relief so far as he was 
concerned. She had been shocked by the degree of personal 
animosity which he seemed to feel toward M. de Marigny, and 
which was absolutely unintelligible to her ; but now she recog- 
nized the temper of the generous foeman which she had missed 
before. He might hate, he might oppose with all his fiery 
strength, but no degree of hatred or opposition could lead him 
to things base and unworthy. With all her heart she thanked 
God for that knowledge. 

But M. de Marigny ! How could she go away and leave 
him in ignorance of the desires and (she felt sure) the intentions 
of his enemies ? If she might send him a word of warning a 
word which, though it needs must be vague, might put him on 
his guard ! She half-rose with the impulse to do this, then 
sank down again. No, it was impossible. For if such a word 
of warning came from her, would he fail to draw the conclusion 
that her father had a part in that against which she warned 
him ? And could she throw a suspicion so dark and so unjust 
upon that father who had just interposed his authority to save 
the man he hated, who refused consent to a mode of warfare 
as cowardly as it was base ? 

What, then, was she to do ? Had this thing come to her 
knowledge for nothing? Had she been roused so suddenly 
and strangely out of sleep as if some strong influence had 
bidden her wake and listen only to tremble and fear and take 
no action? If she left this man to such a threatening fate, 
without the word of warning that might save him, how would 
she bear the after-burden of self-reproach should he suffer 
harm ? Yet was it possible for her to cast on her father an 
odium which he could never disprove? Would she not be 



1883.] ARMINE, 825 

the most disloyal of daughters, would she not deserve all that 
he had said of her that day, if she could do so ? She felt like 
one tossed on a sea of doubt, longing for light and direction. 
But where should she turn to seek these things? She lifted 
her hands above her head and clasped them as in agony ; then, 
with them still so clasped, fell upon her knees. 

Before she rose the voices in the adjoining room had ceased, 
the visitor had departed, and she had heard her father retire 
to his chamber. Then all was still, and she had the quiet of 
the solemn night in which to decide on her course of action. 
But as time went on, and she still knelt motionless, half-fallen 
forward upon the couch from which she had risen, with her 
hands still clasped above her head, it seemed as if the decision 
would never be made. But finally the light for which she was 
pleading made itself clear. She rose, turned up the dimly- 
burning lamp, and going to her trunk, packed for departure, 
opened it noiselessly and took out writing materials. Then 
she sat down and wrote hastily these few lines : 

"M. LE VICOMTE : In case you are elected there are those among your 
opponents who desire to put it out of your power to represent them. 
They will do so at the cost of your life, if necessary. The sanction of the 
leaders has been refused, but an attempt against you may be made never- 
theless. Therefore be on your guard. One who wishes you well sends 
this warning, and only asks in return that your suspicions may do no one 
injustice, and that you will understand that what you have to fear is the 
undirected violence of a few." 

Even after writing this she hesitated again before enclosing 
it, and looked with an expression of piteous doubt at a crucifix 
which she had set on the table before her, writing the letter 
at its foot. " He will know I am sure he will know from 
whom it comes," she thought; "and if he should misjudge 
and think it is my father against whom 1 am warning him 
She paused and her head drooped forward on the paper. It 
seemed to her at that moment impossible to send the letter. 
She thought of her father sleeping tranquilly near by while 
she wrote to his enemy, to one who might seize the oppor- 
tunity to think the worst of him ! 

But as she thought this the face of the vicomte rose before 
her the noble lines, the kind, dark eyes and she felt that she 
might safely trust the justice and generosity which looked 
from that face. " But if it were otherwise, if I knew that he 
would misjudge, have I the right to hold back a warning that 
may save his life?" she said to herself. And then her last 



826 ARMINE. [Sept., 

hesitation was over. She folded, addressed, sealed, and stamped 
the letter, and, placing it under her pillow, lay down again. 

Not to sleep, however. She felt as if she could never 
sleep again, so strained and acute were all her senses. And 
then it was necessary to decide how she could post her letter, 
since they were to start so early in the morning. To go out 
herself at such an hour would be too extraordinary and would 
certainly excite her father's suspicion ; yet she was deter- 
mined not to entrust the letter to any one else. She thought 
of a dozen plans, only to discard each one ; and when at last 
the sound of a clock chiming four told her that it was time 
to rise she had found no practical solution of the difficulty. 

But Heaven came to her assistance. Her father was late 
for breakfast, and while she waited, conscious of the letter in 
her pocket more than of anything else, and still feverishly de- 
bating with herself how she could mail it, he entered with a 
key on his outstretched palm. 

" See ! " he said hastily, " I have broken the key of my port- 
manteau and cannot lock it. It is most unfortunate, for 1 
must hurry out and try to find another, though I doubt 
whether any shop is open at this hour." 

"O mon pere ! let me go for you," cried Armine eagerly, 
seeing in this her opportunity. " I have taken my breakfast, 
and while you take yours I can run to the shop of the watch- 
maker in the next street, so there will be no time lost." 

" But you cannot go alone ? " said her father, hesitating, 
while she eagerly extended her hand. 

" Of course not. I will take Marie " that was the house- 
maid " and we can go and return while you drink your 
coffee." 

He glanced at the pendnle ; there was indeed no time to 
lose. " Eh bien, go then," he said. " It will be best ; but do 
not delay if the shop is not open." 

Trembling with excitement and hardly believing her good- 
fortune, Armine left the room, called Marie, and ran down 
the street, followed by the astonished maid with her white 
cap-strings fluttering. There were but few persons abroad, 
few windows open. The narrow street lay all in cool shadow, 
only on one side the top of the tall houses were touched 
with light. Armine turned a corner and saw the watchmaker's 
shop, from the windows of which a boy was deliberately tak- 
ing down the shutters. But it was not on this that her eager 
attention was fixed, but on a tobacconist's shop two doors 



1883.] ARMINE. 827 

beyond. There was a letter-box which had been before her 
mental vision all night, and which she had vainly endeavored 
to find some excuse for reaching. Now the matter was taken 
out of her hand, the opportunity was made for her without 
need of excuse. She felt almost awed by such a fulfilment of 
her desire as she walked up to the narrow slit, drew the 
letter from her pocket, and dropped it in. 

The morning at Marigny was radiant with light and color, 
and sparkling with freshness, when the vicomte stepped out 
of the room where he had taken his solitary breakfast, and, 
lighting a cigar, walked slowly along the terrace, followed by 
two handsome dogs. 

The green alleys of the park stretched below full of 
shadows ; the old garden, though much neglected, was like a 
picture with its flowers and fruit-trees fresh with dew and set 
between old stone walls ; while, looking over this garden, there 
was from the terrace a glimpse of the sea of the blue, flash- 
ing, horizon-line of water afar and the fragrance of flowers 
was mingled with the salt breath of the great deep. 

But the vicomte had not come out on the terrace for the 
view, well as he knew and loved it, but because he had seen 
from the window of the breakfast-room a figure advancing up 
the avenue, and he knew that it was a messenger with the 
morning mail. He met the man at the head of the steps, re- 
ceived the bag from him, and, going to a shaded seat, estab- 
lished himself 'to open it at his leisure, the dogs placing them- 
selves attentively on each side of him, as if expecting a share 
of the budget. 

It was a large and sufficiently varied one. Numbers of 
newspapers, and letters of various sizes and shapes, tumbled out 
in a miscellaneous heap, which M. de Marigny proceeded ^ to 
glance over, opening some and throwing others carelessly aside 
for later inspection. Among the latter was a letter which, as 
it lay there in the warm, bright sunlight, told no tales of the 
midnight when it was written, or of the early morning when 
with trepidation and difficulty it had been posted in the quaint 
old street of the district town. 

But after he had finished reading a letter from Pans 
vicomte took up and opened this with its unknown superscrip- 
tion The few lines of writing which it contained were all 
on one page, and he observed with a sense of surprise that 
there was no signature. Then his glance turned to the open- 



828 ARMINE. [Sept., 

ing, " M. le Vicomte," and he read the simple words which 
Armine had traced under the influence of such strong feeling. 

As she had felt sure, he knew at once from whom they 
came. There was not even an instant's doubt in his mind. 
He could see the pathetic eyes, he could hear the pathetic 
voice, and, if he had doubted for a moment, the appeal that he 
" would do injustice to no one " would have convinced him 
who the writer was. Who, indeed, could it be but the Social- 
ist's daughter, to whom he had shown a little courtesy, and 
who thus put out her hand with a warning which might save 
his life? 

But as he sat gazing at it, for how long a time he did not 
know, it was not of the danger which it revealed nor of the pro- 
bable consequences to himself that he thought, but of the na- 
ture which these few lines so clearly indicated. He had felt 
its charm, the strong spell of its sympathy, from the first 
moment that he met the wonderful eyes that seemed looking 
at him now from the page on which his were fastened; but he 
had hardly been prepared for all that was revealed to him 
here. For he was himself possessed of the finest form of 
sympathy, and with its intuition he felt all that Armine had 
passed through. Where a coarser nature would have misun- 
derstood, he read with perfect accuracy every phase of feel- 
ing, even to the fear that had half-deterred her the fear lest 
her father should be misjudged through her act. 

Presently he rose. Even yet he had not thought of him- 
self at all. Threats and hints of personal danger had come to 
his ears before this, but he had not heeded them in the least, 
possessing a constitutional fearlessness which made it difficult 
for him to take account of such danger. Now, as he walked 
along the terrace, with the glad earth and the shining sea before 
his eyes, he was still thinking of the hand which had sent him 
the message rather than of the message itself ; of the brave 
heart, the loyal nature, and of the face that only yesterday had 
looked at him with a gaze as wistful and appealing as the last 
words of this brief letter. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



iS83.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 



THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 

FAMILIAR though his name, life, and labors are throughout a 
large portion of Christendom, we deem it due from an American 
Catholic periodical to record the following brief memorial of the 
great Irish orator, Very Rev. Father Burke, who died at the 
Dominican convent, St. Mary's of the Rosary, Tallaght, County 
Dublin, on Monday morning, 2d of July, 1883, in the fifty-third 
year of his age. Since the death of O'Connell in 1847 the 
demise of no Irishman has excited such deep and general grief 
at home and abroad, especially in the United States, as that of 
the eloquent friar and ardent patriot, whose triumphant vindica- 
tion of faith and fatherland is known wherever the Irish race is 
found. ' The Prince of Preachers," as he was styled by His Holi- 
ness the Pope, his defence of the Catholic Church, her doctrines 
and her influence, is the most popular and effective pulpit effort 
of this age ; while his earnest and enthusiastic exposition of the 
checkered history of his country, its glories and its sorrows, 
abounds with political rhetoric worthy of the palmiest days of 
the Irish school of oratory. 

Thomas Nicholas Burke, the only son of humble parents, was 
born the roth of September, 1830, in Kirwin's Lane in the town 
of Galway, generally known as " The Citie of the Tribes," from 
its having been settled or colonized by thirteen families, all of 
which, with two exceptions, were Anglo-Norman. Amongst 
these by far the most distinguished and influential was that 
from which our subject was descended. In Normandy one of 
them assumed the name De Burgo, from being governor of 
several towns ; while the family claimed Pepin, King of France, 
as an ancestor.* A De Burgo was half-brother to William, Duke 
of Normandy, whom the family accompanied in his conquest of 
England, where they obtained large settlements. A few years 

* The name of De Burgo is the Latinized surname of Herlwin, a member of the family of 
the dukes of Lower Lorraine, who was born at one of the family's strongholds, Bourcq (in Latin 
Burgum, whence De Burgo), and who married William of Normandy's mother, the famous 
beauty Arlette, by whom he had three sons, among them Robert, who became Earl of Kent 
after the battle of Hastings, and Odo, the celebrated fighting bishop of Bayeux. From Robert, 
who was, through the dukes of Lower Lorraine, a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, descend all 
the Irish branches of the De Burgo or Bourke race, though not necessarily every one who is called 
Bourke or Burke. For some of the De Burgos, when they became "more Irish than the Irish 
themselves," organized clans, the members of which, though they assumed the name of Bourke, 
were mostly old Irish, and bequeathed the adopted name to their descendants. ED. C. W. 



830 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

after the Anglo-Norman descent on Ireland Henry II. de- 
spatched William Fitz Adelm de Burgo, with Hugh de Lacy, 
on an important mission to Roderick O'Conor ; and, after the 
death of Strongbow, De Burgo in 1177 was appointed gov- 
ernor of Ireland a position subsequently held by others of the 
family. In 1179 Henry II. made grants of large tracts of Con- 
naught to De Burgo, over which they ruled for centuries with 
almost regal authority. Their descendants intermarried with 
the ancient royal houses of Ireland and with those of England, 
Scotland, and France. Their chief seats were Loughrea and 
Galway, which became the second seaport in Ireland, where 
they built a strong castle and founded a Franciscan monastery 
in 1247. Generally in alliance with the English, but frequently 
with the native princes, the De Burghs, De Burgos, Burkes, or 
Bourkes, became divided into several branches, among them Clan- 
ricarde and Clanwilliam, and for a considerable period repudiated 
their Anglo-Norman and adopted Irish names. They founded 
churches and abbeys over all their vast territories ; some of them 
were archbishops and bishops ; and it was only at a late period 
that a few of the titled members of the family abandoned the Ca- 
tholic Church, the mass of the Burkes, scattered over Ireland, al- 
though mainly in Connaught, being stanch Catholics. In the war 
of the Confederate Catholics, 1641-52, Lieutenant-General John 
Burke brilliantly captured Galway from the English forces and 
held it for seven months after the surrender of Limerick ; so that 
it was only when the flag was lowered, by order of General 
Preston, in the castle of Galway that the Confederate cause was 
lost. Ulick de Burgh, fifth Earl and first Marquis of Clanric- 
arde, a zealous Catholic, was commander-in-chief of the army 
in Connaught in that war a stanch adherent of the royalist 
cause, but more of a diplomatist than a soldier or a statesman. 
He succeeded the Marquis of Ormond for a short time as lord- 
lieutenant, and was a prime mover in the negotiations with the 
Duke of Lorraine to hand over to him some of the strong places 
in Ireland in consideration of pecuniary advances to support the 
war ; but the scheme fell through. Undaunted by their defeat, 
the Burkes were amongst the warmest supporters of James II. 
James, ninth Earl of Clanricarde, colonel of a regiment, having 
been made prisoner at the battle of Aughrim, was conveyed to 
Dublin and thence to England, outlawed and attainted, and his 
estates confiscated, but subsequently restored by an act of Par- 
liament in the first year of the reign of Queen Anne, 1702, as a 
provision for the earl's Protestant children. Ulick Burke, son 



1883.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 831 

of William, the seventh earl, who was created Baron Tyaquiti 
and Viscount Galway, was killed at Aughrim with many of his 
kindred, fighting beside Sarsfield, nth of July, 1691. Such were 
the Burkes of Galway and Connaught, from whose powerful 
clan the child of promise born in an humble home on the shores 
of Lough Corrib in 1830 was descended. 

Our object is not to supply a topography of the locality, nor 
to laud the remarkable family upon whose name our subject re- 
flects lustre, but to point to circumstances from which he drew 
inspiration and that exercised marked influence on his oratory. 
Born amidst the decay, if not the ruins, of a town that had had 
centuries of success, and surrounded by the remains of magnifi- 
cent churches such as that of St. Nicholas, whose name he bears 
monastic houses, castles, and municipal and commercial build- 
ings whose architecture still attests the taste and opulence ol 
the mediaeval period of their erection, it was impossible that a 
mind such as that of young Burke could escape the contagion of 
the piety and the patriotism which they suggested. Educated 
in the academy of Rev. Dr. O'Toole until he was seventeen years 
of age, the fine sentiment of Cicero must, as he heard of the 
former glories of Galway, have deeply affected the youthful 
student. Nescire quid antea quam natus sis acciderit, id cst semper 
esse puertim" To know nothing of what happened before you 
were born is to be always a boy." This noble sentiment was 
developed by his illustrious namesake, Edmund Burke, in the 
maxim, " No people who do not often look back to their ances- 
tors can look forward to posterity "a maxim thus eloquently 
extolled by D'Arcy McGee in his review in The Irish Writers of 
the Seventeenth Century of John Lynch, Bishop of Killala, a na- 
tive of Galway : 

" It is the utterance of an oracle ; and no priestess standing amid her 
statues in Delphi, no Christian doctor fresh inspired from the perusal of 
the words of the messengers of God, ever clothed in language a more pro- 
found truth. Thank God ! we Irishmen have an antiquity to look to, one 
that every day becomes clearer and higher within our view. We look- 
back, and we find valor with the soldier, and mercy and meditation wit! 
the Druid; song enthroned in the high places, and womanhood respec 
and beloved. We look, and find a paganism which sacrificed no human 
life on its altars; which yielded to Christianity a bloodless seat, nor 
one martyr to satisfy or give a pretext to its abdication. We 
young Christianity rearing colleges by the fairest rivers, where tore., 
might come and learn the truths of revelation and study the knowledge of 
the world and its inhabitants. We find its faith so deep and fearless 
its votaries outsail the sea-king into Iceland and dwell with the chamoi 



832 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

hunter in his glaciered world ; or, lo ! they sit at the foot of Charlemagne 
and teach hard by the throne of Alfred," 

Burke was born the last year that the wardens had eccle- 
siastical sway in Galway the first bishop having been ap- 
pointed in 1831 and from the lips as well as from the great 
work of the gifted historian Hardiman he made a study of his 
native city. Then and in more mature years he mastered the 
lives and works of the many eminent men born in or connected 
with Galway. Here was born, in 1560, Florence Conroy, of a 
native sept that crowned the kings of Connaught and placed in 
their hands the white wand of dominion. The twin orders of 
the thirteenth century, those of St. Francis and St. Dominic, had 
early been established in Galway ; Conroy embraced the former, 
as his townsman, Burke, did the other. Conroy received his 
education in the Netherlands and in Spain, where he attended 
the death-bed of Hugh Ruadh O'Donnell, Prince of Tyrconnell, 
in 1602, and saw his coffin laid with the brethren of his own or- 
der in the cathedral of Valladolid, King Philip of Spain erecting 
a monument over his remains. On a vacancy occurring in the 
see of Tuam, 1609-10, Conroy was appointed archbishop, but his 
duties in the Netherlands and the severity of the penal laws 
prevented his return to Ireland. Through his influence with 
the court of Spain Archbishop Conroy founded the first Irish 
college on the Continent, that of Louvain, in 1616 a college that 
has conferred incalculable benefits on Ireland. The archbishop 
died at the Franciscan convent in Madrid, November, 1629, but 
his remains were removed in 1654 to his loved Louvain. John 
Lynch, Bishop of Killala, one of the most remarkable literary 
men of his age, who came of a race of schoolmasters, was born 
in the town of Galway towards the close of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and in 1622 we find him there, the head of a large colle- 
giate " School of Humanity," perhaps at that date considerably 
the most numerously attended of the few Catholic colleges in 
Ireland. Of its efficiency and influence we have authentic offi- 
cial record. In the year 1622 James I. issued a royal commis- 
sion to inquire into the state of education in Ireland, at the head 
of which was the celebrated James Ussher then chancellor of 
St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, subsequently archbishop of Ar- 
magh which commission visited Galway and examined Lynch 
and his scholars. The following is Ussher's report of the 
school : 

" We found at Galway a public schoolmaster named Lynch, placed there 



1883.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 833 

by the citizens, who had great numbers of scholars, not only out of the 
province [Connaught] but out of the Pale ' and other parts, resorting 
to him. We had proofe, during our continuance in that citie, how his 
schollars profitted under him, by the verses and orations they brought us. 
We sent for that schoolmaster before us, and seriously advised him to 
conform to the religion established ; and not prevailing with our advices, 
we enjoined him to forbear teaching ; and I, the chancellor, did take recog- 
nisance of him and some others of his relatives, in that citie, in the sum of 
four hundred pounds sterling to His Majesty's use, that from henceforth he 
should forbear teaching any more without the license of the lord-deputy." 

His school closed by the strong arm of the law, we find 
Lynch archdeacon of Tuam in 1641, with strong opinions on 
the Confederate policy ; and when Galway fell into the hands of 
the Parliamentarians in 1652 Lynch with several others exiled 
themselves to the Continent. It was in the leisure thus secured 
he produced his greatest works, the chief of which is Cambrensis 
Eversus. Gerald Barry, Archdeacon of Brecknock, known as 
Giraldus Cambrensis, accompanied Henry II. in his expedition 
to Ireland in 1171-3 as court chaplain. On his return he spent 
several years of intrigue for ambitious episcopal promotion, 
having refused several bishoprics, with which view he devoted 
many years to writing his notorious work, Expugnatio Hibernica 
(Ireland taken by Storm), of which three editions were published, 
the first in 1188, and 'the last, dedicated to King John, in 1209. 
The author candidly avows that to write truthful history regard- 
ing Ireland was not his object, but to flatter the king and se- 
cure his influence. He produced the vilest, most malicious, and 
most untruthful caricature of Ireland, her church and her people 
misrepresentations that to this day have injured, with strangers, 
the character of the country. It is upon his sole authority the 
alleged bull of Adrian IV. was for centuries accepted as genu- 
ine, but now fairly proved to be a forgery.* To expose the cal- 
umnies and refute the sophistries of the unscrupulous Welsh- 
man, Lynch, the erudite Galway priest, wrote his Cambrensis 
Eversusft dedicated to Charles II., under the anonymous signature 
of " Gratianus Lucius " a work that relegated Barry's book from 
the domain of history to the realm of fiction. He returned to 
Ireland after the Restoration, and in 1669 published a Life of 
Francis Kinvan,\ Bishop of Killala, who was his uncle and also 
a native of the town of Galway. Lynch also wrote another re- 

* Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Bishop Moran, November, 1872. Analecta Juris Pontificii, 
May-June, 1882. Dublin Review, July. 1883. 

t Published in 1848, in three volumes, by the Celtic Society of Dublin, with a translation 
and copious notes by Rev. Matthew Kelly, Maynooth College. 

\ Published in 1848, with a translation and notes by Rev. C. P. Meehan. 

VOL. xxxvu. 53 



834 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

markable work his AlitJiinologia, depicting the sufferings of the 
Anglo-Irish race under Elizabeth, with interesting sketches of 
the chief actors in the Confederate war of 1641-52. This distin- 
guished man, some time after his return home, was consecrated 
bishop of Killala, in which dignity he died at an advanced age. 
Amongst the most remarkable men educated, though not born, 
in Gal way is the celebrated Duald Mac Firbis (Dubhaltach Mac 
Firbhisagli), or Dudley Forbes, author of the Chronicum Scotorum 
(Scots, or Irish), the last of a long line of the annalists of Lecain, 
parish of Kilglass, in Tircragh, on the Moy, in the County Sligo, 
who were hereditary antiquarians of their district. Born on the 
ancestral estate or patrimony sacred to his family, towards the 
close of the sixteenth century, he proceeded to the Brehon 
schools of north Tipperary and Clare to study Celtic archae- 
ology under the Mac Egans and O'Donovans, and then settled 
down in Galway to complete his education there in the College 
of St. Nicholas, where he compiled his large and comprehensive 
volume of pedigrees of ancient Irish and Anglo-Norman families 
in 1560. His volume, of which, according to O'Curry,* only a 
few copies are extant, opens thus : 

" The place, time, author, and cause of writing this book are the place, 
the College of St. Nicholas in Galway ; the time, the time of the religious war 
between the Catholics of Ireland and the heretics of Ireland, Scotland, and 
England, particularly the year 1650; the person or author, Dubhaltach, the 
son of Gilla Isa Mor Mac Firbhisagh, historian, etc., of Lecain Mac Firbis, 
in Tircragh, on the Moy ; and the cause of writing the book is to increase 
the glory of God, and for the information of the people in general." 

Besides this important genealogical work, Mac Firbis com- 
piled two others of still greater value, which unfortunately do 
not now exist namely, a glossary of the ancient laws of Erin, 
and a biographical dictionary of her ancient writers and most 
distinguished literary men. Mac Firbis was afterwards amanu- 
ensis to Sir James Ware, and assisted that eminent antiquary 
in most of his great works. The lamentable and tragic death of 
Mac Firbis, when close on eighty years of age, at Dunflin, in the 
parish of Skreen, barony of Tircragh, County Sligo, in 1670, is 
graphically described by O'Curry on the authority of Charles 
O'Conor, of Belanagare : 

" Mac Firbis, on his way to Dublin, took up his lodgings for the night 
at a small house in the little village of Dunflin, in his native county. 
While sitting and resting himself in a little room off the shop a young 

* Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History. Dr. Petrie's paper, 
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. 



1883.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 835 

gentleman of the Crofton family came in and began to take some liberties 
with a young woman who had care of the shop. She, to check his free- 
dom, told him he would be seen by the old gentleman in the next room ; 
upon which, in a sudden rage, he snatched up a knife from the counter, 
rushed furiously into the room, and plunged it into the heart of Mac Firbis. 
Thus it was that, at the hand of a wanton assassin, this great scholar 
closed his long career, the last of the regularly educated and most accom- 
plished masters of the history, antiquities, and laws and language of ancient 
Erinn." 

Roderick O'Flaherty, born at Moycullen, near Gal way, in 
1628, a scion of that powerful sept, was also partly educated at 
the College of St. Nicholas, presided over by John Lynch, author 
of Cambrensis Eversus, and was the friend and fellow-student of 
Mac Firbis. He devoted himself to the study of Irish history and 
antiquities, and produced his great work, Ogygia (the name by 
which Ireland was known to Plutarch), and, in reply to the pre- 
tensions of adverse Scotch critics, his Ogygia Vindicata, which was 
first published in 1775 by Charles O'Conor. He also wrote An 
Account of H-Iar Connaught. Nor can De Burgo's Hibernia 
Dominicana be dissociated from Galway. But on the long roll of 
distinguished men connected with the capital of Connaught few 
can lay claim to the eminence of the brilliant constitutional law- 
yer, Patrick Darcey. When the Irish House of Commons, in 
1641, impeached the government through a series of twenty -one 
questions addressed to the House of Lords, Darcey was ap- 
pointed prolocutor of the former at the conference of both 
Houses of Parliament held in the Castle of Dublin, 9th of June, 
and ordered to address the lower House on the answers given to 
those queries by the judges. This he did in his famous argument, 
proving the insufficiency and illegality of those answers in an 
address of matchless ability, never surpassed for profound and ex- 
haustive knowledge of constitutional law and defence of the legis- 
lative claims of Ireland as a sovereign nation. He anticipated 
Swift, Molyneux, and Lucas, who merely reproduced his argu- 
ments ; and one hundred and forty-one years after their delivery 
Grattan carried, in 1782, the legislative independence of the king- 
dom. A few months afterwards the rising in Ulster precipitated 
the crisis and led to the Catholic Confederation in Kilkenny, 
at which Patrick Darcey was elected chancellor. Nor must \ve 
fail to notice another remarkable Galway man, notwithstanding 
the sad taint of apostasy that unhappily attaches to his name- 
Walter Blake Kirwan, who, though he left the church, no temp- 
tation, not even the solicitation of royalty, could ever induce him 
to assail her doctrines or her morality. Born in 1754, he was 



836 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

educated at St. Omer; took orders in Louvain, where he rose to 
distinction ; but on his return to Ireland he joined the Protestant 
Church and obtained the rectory of a parish in the city of Dub- 
lin. The brilliant eulogium uttered by Grattan on Dr. Kirwan's 
marvellous pulpit eloquence, in the Irish House of Commons, 
1 9th of June, 1792, has the following passage : 

" What is the case of Dr. Kirwan ? This man preferred our country 
and our religion, and brought to both genius superior to what he found in 
either. He called forth the latent virtues of the human heart, and taught 
men to discover in themselves a mine of charity of which the proprietors 
had been unconscious. In feeding the lamp of charity he has almost 
exhausted the lamp of life. He came to interrupt the repose of the pulpit, 
and shakes one world with the thunder of another. The preacher's desk 
became the throne of light; round him a train, not such as crouch and 
swagger at the levee of princes, not such as attend the procession of the 
viceroy, horse, foot, and dragoons, but that wherewith a great genius 
peoples his own state charity in ecstasy, and vice in humiliation ; vanity, 
arrogance, and saucy, empty pride appalled by the rebuke of the preacher, 
and cheated for a moment of their native improbity and insolence. 
What reward ? . . . The curse of Swift is upon him ; to have been born an 
Irishman and a man of genius, and to have used it for the good of his 
country." 

In 1800 Kirwan obtained the deanery of Killala, and died in 
Dublin, 27th of October, 1805, aged fifty-one years, leaving his 
family poorly provided for. George III. granted his widow a 
pension of three hundred pounds a year, with reversion to his 
daughters.* 

No Irish Catholic, especially no Irish-American, can fail to 
recognize the entire relevancy of these local sketches, historical, 
ecclesiastical, political, and literary, of Galway, the birthplace of 
the illustrious Dominican who has just passed away, as the most 
cursory view of the titles of his lectures and sermons, eminently 
so of those delivered during his visit to America, must bring 
conviction that association with these scenes in his boyhood 
must have left a profound impression on his susceptible mind and 
warm heart an impression that found eloquent utterance under 
every one of the leading topics just enumerated. We have 
stated that young Burke was educated in Galway, chiefly at the 
academy kept by Rev. J. P. O'Toole, until he left in 1847, the 
year of O'Connell's death and of the assured outbreak of the 

*The writer of this sketch dined, in 1849, at the house of Rev. Father Nagle, P.P.,V.G., 
Gort, County Galway, when there sat on one side of him a Catholic bishop, and on the other a 
Protestant dean, both of that diocese of Kilmacduagh. The Catholic bishop, Dr. French, was 
son of a Protestant clergyman ; and the Protestant dean (Kirwan) son of a lapsed priest and 
the above eloquent preacher. 



1883.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 837 

great famine. The College of St. Nicholas, its distinguished 
students, the succession of eminent schoolmasters, the Lynches, 
and the closing of that college in 1622 by order of the royal 
commission of James I., have already been noticed. On the close 
of the Confederate war Erasmus Smith, a trooper in Cromwell's 
army, obtained grants of forfeited lands in six counties, amount- 
ing to upwards of eleven thousand and fifty acres, and in 1669 
he secured a charter incorporating a board of governors to 
establish and support from the rents of these estates five gram- 
mar-schools, one of which was erected in Galway and richly 
endowed. Catholics were left no other place for classical edu- 
cation than this Protestant college, which they attended in con- 
siderable numbers, as the master, in consideration of their fees, 
relaxed in their regard the rules relating to religion. But the 
governors having issued rules in 1712 for preventing such lax- 
ity, eighty-five "popish " scholars, seventy of whom paid for their 
schooling, left the college in one day, refusing to observe the 
prescribed Protestant practices. Catholics attempted to evade 
the penal laws prohibiting them from keeping schools, but the 
felonious academies were pounced on by spies, of even a better 
class of society, as we read in the case of Galway, and forcibly 
suppressed. From a return made to the Irish House of Lords in 
1731 we find the following report from Warden Taylor, mayor of 
the town: 

" I am also to acquaint your lordships that some time ago, on the in- 
formation of Mr. Garnett, master of the Free School [Erasmus Smith's col- 
lege], I gave him my warrant against Gregory French, whom he alleged to 
be a popish schoolmaster and to keep a Lattin school, and, having called 
upon Mr. Garnett to know what he had done in the said warrant, he said 
French had dropped the school." 

After the relaxation of the penal laws, towards the close of 
last century, the Catholics gradually opened schools, primary 
and intermediate, for both sexes. The Presentation Order of 
nuns established extensive schools there in 1815, and soon oc- 
cupied their present establishment, which had originally been a 
proselytizing charter school, on the failure of which it was used 
as a military barrack in 1798. The Dominican nuns near Salt 
Hill have a boarding-school for young ladies. The Brothers of 
St. Patrick early established primary schools for boys ; and their 
labors are now supplemented by those of the Christian Brothers, 
who have charge of an industrial school, while the Sisters of 
Mercy have very large schools, primary, intermediate, and in- 
dustrial, and have also charge of the workhouse hospital ; and 



838 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

finally, in 1863, the Jesuits established the College of St. Igna- 
tius for the superior education of the middle classes. The aca- 
demy kept by Rev. Dr. O'Toole, in which Father Burke was 
educated, demands notice, as marking a new era in the relation of 
the government to Catholics. The penal laws in relation to 
education, the operation of which we have illustrated in Galway 
in the case of forcibly closing the. colleges and schools in 1622 
and 1731, and the failure of 'Trinity College, the endowed 
schools, the charter schools, and the schools of the Kildare- 
Place Society to attract Catholics, a new scheme was devised 
that known as the mixed or secular system, now so familiar to, 
and opposed by, the Catholics of the United States. Galway 
was fixed upon by the government as the site of one of the three 
Queen's Colleges, the act for which passed in 1845, an d which 
were opened in 1849. Opposed by the vast majority of Catho- 
lics, clerical and lay, every seductive art was used to soften 
Catholic hostility to those institutions and reconcile the people 
to them. With this view Rev. Dr. Kirwin, parish priest of 
Oughterard, diocese of Galway, a distinguished preacher, was 
appointed president, and Rev. Dr. O'Toole, head of the academy 
in which Father Burke was taught, vice-president, of the new 
Queen's College in Galway. But on the disapprobation of the 
Holy See having been intimated to them, both ecclesiastics duti- 
fully resigned office. A few years afterwards, undeterred by the 
unpopularity and failure of the Queen's College, the government 
established model-schools under exclusive state management, on 
the same principle, beside the college. These, too, were in due 
time opposed, and both institutions are now threatened with 
being closed, having proved lamentable failures. We have given 
this full sketch of the working of education for centuries in the 
birthplace of Father Thomas Burke a subject deeply interest- 
ing to all Catholics, upon which he lectured in America, and that, 
from personal observation as well as profound study, he was so 
eminently competent to discuss. 

That young Burke should in 1847, when seventeen years of 
age, proceed to Rome as a candidate for the novitiate of the 
Order of St. Dominic may be noticed. Franciscans, Dominicans, 
and Augustinians had old foundations in Galway, with all of 
which he was familiar. The Franciscans were more popular 
with the native Irish, the Dominicans with the Anglo-Normans 
of the Pale. Located in the midst of the fishing colony of 
the Claddagh, the fathers of the Dominican convent were deep- 
ly endeared to all classes in Galway, one of the best streets in 



1 383.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BuRkE, O.P. 839 

the town, called after St. Dominic, being the entrance to it, where 
Father Burke's mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, lived 
and died. There are few of the old families in Galway that had 
not some members in the Dominican Order. Under these cir- 
cumstances, and acting under spiritual advice, there can be no 
difficulty in understanding how the promptings of grace and 
personal predilections led the gifted youth to the order upon 
which he was destined to shed a new lustre. He made his no- 
vitiate in Perugia, in Italy, where, on the 5th of January, 1849, 
he made his solemn profession. For three years he studied 
theology and philosophy in the College of the Minerva in Rome, 
when he was sent by the general of the order to Woodchester, 
in England, to organize the novitiate for the English province. 
He received ordination at Clifton on Holy Saturday, 1853, from 
Dr. Burgess, bishop of that diocese. Father Burke spent about 
two years on the mission in Woodchester, and while there pub- 
licly attacked and signally routed two itinerant mountebanks, 
pretended Italians, who visited the place, assailing the Catholic 
Church. He challenged their knowledge of Italian, proved their 
total ignorance of the language, and banished them in disgrace 
from the district. When the Irish Dominicans established their 
new novitiate in Tallaght, under the Dublin Mountains, the 
charge of this important foundation was entrusted to him. We 
shall presently give a historical sketch of Tallaght from the 
earliest times until the remains of the lamented orator were laid 
within that convent that he so loved. In 1867 he was appointed 
prior of the monastery of St. Clement's, Rome, but in two years 
was attached to St. Saviour's Church, Dominick Street, Dublin. 

St. Saviour's built some years since, in Dominick Street, the 
old haunt of the fathers, which gave name to the street, where 
they removed from Denmark Street is one of the handsomest 
churches in Dublin and one of the most frequented. At a 
public meeting for its erection Lord O'Hagan, then attorney- 
general, and who has since been judge and twice lord high chan- 
cellor of Ireland, eloquently described the labors of the order. 

It was while attached to St. Saviour's that Father Burke's 
marvellous powers as a pulpit orator first attracted special atten- 
tion. He preached for every charity in the metropolis, and his 
eloquence was rapidly courted and utilized throughout the pro- 
vinces. May, 1869, Father Burke delivered one of his most mag- 
nificent orations on the occasion of the transfer of O'Connell's 
remains from the vault in which they had been deposited on 
their return from Genoa, in 1847, to the national monument in 



840 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

another part of Glasnevin cemetery. Later that year, I2th of 
September, 1869, a triduum was given in the cathedral, Marl- 
borough Street, in thanksgiving for the disestablishment and 
disendow ment of the Protestant Church in Ireland after three 
hundred and thirty-three years of bondage and oppression, when 
Father Burke preached a sermon, before a number of the Irish 
prelates, of unusual power and ability. 

November, 1871, Father Burke proceeded to the United 
States, where he had been sent as visitator-general of the houses 
of the Dominican Order, from which mission he returned home 
March, 1873. This expedition was the most important inci- 
dent in his life. Immediately on his arrival, his reputation as a 
preacher and an orator having preceded him, the great orator 
was at once enlisted in the service of the church for charity, and 
by the Irish race into a defence and vindication of their father- 
land. We find him preaching on the feast of the apostle of 
Ireland in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, in 1872. Earlier 
that month we find him in Brooklyn discussing such topics as 
" The Catholic Church the Mother of Liberty " and " The Chris 
tian Man the Man of the Day," while in the same month we 
find Father Burke in the Dominican pulpit, New York, preach- 
ing on " The Catholic Church the Mother and Inspiration of 
Art," " The Groupings of Calvary," and, on Good Friday, 
" Christ on Calvary " ; while the following month, in the 
same church, his subject was " The Supernatural Life the ab- 
sorbing Life of the Irish People." In St. Michael's Church his 
sermon was on " The Blessed Eucharist." But while sermons 
and religious subjects formed the natural staple of his matchless 
eloquence, Irish nationality was the theme of many of his noblest 
orations. " The History of Ireland as told in her Ruins," a lec- 
ture delivered in the Cooper Institute, 5th of April, 1872, will 
never be forgotten by the thousands who heard it or by the 
millions who read it a lecture inspired by the ruins that lay 
round his boyhood in Galway, an outline of which we have 
sketched in the opening of this article. Of the same national 
fibre are " The National Music of Ireland," " The Exiles of Erin," 
" Genius and Character of the Irish People," and others. Froude 
having preceded him in America, falsifying history and vili- 
fying the Irish race, stimulated the eloquent Dominican to 
impugn his mischievous misstatements and refute his shallow 
sophistries. His six lectures, " The Sophistries of Froude Re- 
futed," in which he was kindly assisted by the personal counsel 
as well as the works of the late Mr. John Mitchel, produced a 



i88 3 J THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 841 

profound sensation in America and at home. In one of these, 

I he Normans in Ireland," Father Burke boldly grappled with 

he fabrications of Giraldus Cambrensis, in reference to the al- 

leged bull of Adrian IV., in a style worthy of his illustrious 

townsman, Dr. Lynch, author of Cambrensis Eversus. In fact, so 

familiar are the sermons and lectures of Father Burke while in 

America that any detailed notice of them by way of review is 

quite unnecessary, as perhaps no similar work in our day has 

obtained such wide-spread circulation. 

On his return to Ireland early in 1873 he was received with 
the enthusiastic homage becoming his genius and his labors. 
The day of his arrival a large dinner-party awaited him at Car- 
dinal Cullen's ; and a public banquet was given to him in his 
native town, Galway, presided over by Archbishop MacHale, to 
whom he dedicated a volume of his lectures in America. There 
is scarcely a Catholic cottage in Ireland in which Father Burke's 
familiar face, in photograph, woodcut, or lithograph, does not 
deck the walls ; nor is the humblest homestead without a volume 
of some of his lectures. The pope, O'Connell, and Father Tom 
Burke are essential works of art in all the dwellings of the Irish 
peasantry. 

He settled in his old quarters in Tallaght on his return, 
resuming his duties in directing the novitiate, but constantly 
drawn upon in preaching throughout Ireland, England, and 
Scotland for charitable purposes. Disease soon made its ap- 
pearance in the form of internal cancer. Absolute rest was en- 
joined, but it was easier prescribed than practised. Accom- 
panied by Father Towers, provincial of the order, he made a 
journey to Rome, where he was received by the Holy Father 
with that affectionate respect becoming his eminent services to 
the church. Improved by the visit and the cessation of his 
wonted work, Father Burke returned to Tallaght, but a fort- 
night after his arrival he proceeded to London to preach for 
three days at the opening of the new Dominican church at 
Haverstock Hill an effort to which he was physically inade- 
quate and in which he broke down. Prostrate there for some 
time, he returned to his convent in Tallaght, where he was con- 
fined to bed. On learning that he was named to preach in the 
Jesuits' church of St. Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, on Sun- 
day, 24th of June, in aid of the distressed children in Done- 
gal, contrary to all remonstrance he drove in and attempted 
the task, but failed in the pulpit after a feeble effort to proceed. 
He was brought back to Tallaght, and, suffering great torture 



842 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

during the week, received the sacraments on Sunday, ist of 
July, and expired early next morning. Thus passed away, in his 
fifty-third year, one of the most gifted men, one of the most 
pious priests, one of the most devoted patriots of the Irish race. 
He was the equal, if not the superior, of O'Connell as an orator ; 
had a far readier and more copious command of language, and 
was scarcely his inferior in wit, sarcasm, humor, and pathos. He 
combined the highest masculine courage with the tenderness 
and sympathy of a woman and the simplicity of a child. His 
dramatic power was of the highest order and added special 
effect to his oratorical genius. Father Burke has left a blank in 
the church that we can scarcely hope to see filled in this gene- 
ration. 

On Wednesday, 4th of July, his obsequies took place at the 
convent, Tallaght, where he desired to be interred. Every ef- 
fort, every popular appeal, in private and in the press, was made 
to have his remains removed into St. Saviour's, that he might 
have a public funeral ; but in vain, as his living and dying wish 
should be respected. Thirteen bishops, two of them archbishops, 
about two hundred priests, secular and regular, including digni- 
taries from most of the dioceses of Ireland, a large number of 
leading gentry, and a vast concourse of laity assisted at the in- 
terment. The prelates were the Primate of Armagh, the Arch- 
bishop of Tuam, and the bishops of Cork, Elphin, Down and 
Connor, Meath, Kilmore, Clonfert, Clogher, Ardagh, Ossory, 
Raphoe, and Galway (bishop-elect). Cardinal McCabe, who was 
absent in England, had a special representative present. Several 
of the other bishops were unable to attend, owing to retreats 
being held in their dioceses. The Most Rev. Dr. McEvilly, Arch- 
bishop of Tuam, who was an attached friend of Father Burke's, 
presided at the solemn obsequies. The new church, the walls 
of which are about fifteen feet high, were covered with an 
awning, so as to allow the coffin to be placed there and the ob- 
sequies celebrated, as the small temporary chapel was wholly 
inadequate for such an occasion. After the office the remains 
were borne by eight Dominican fathers from the new church to 
the area in front of the convent, where, covered by floral tributes 
sent by loving hands, they were interred until their final removal 
to the church when completed. 

Tallaght, the burial-place of Father Burke, has added a fresh 
glory to its early fame, and for generations pilgrims will lov- 
ingly wend their way up its slopes to honor his memory and 
breathe a fervent prayer at his tomb. Situated below the line 



1883.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 843 

of undulating hills which separates Dublin County from that 
of Wicklow, near the head of the charming valley of the Dod- 
der, on the road from the metropolis from which it is only six 
miles distant to Baltinglass, it commands a matchless panorama 
of the city and suburbs: Howth, Killiney, Bray Head, the Bay 
of Dublin, the plains of Fingal, on the north, and the wooded 
stretches of the Phoenix Park and Kildare closing the view on 
the northwest and west. Behind rise, within view, the crests of 
the Dublin Mountains, Saggart Hill, Killakee, and the Two and 
the Three Rock Mountain ; while on the Wicklow side of the 
chain are Seefingan and Kippure, reaching an altitude of close 
on twenty-five hundred feet. The northern face of the mountain 
is agreeably broken and diversified by glens and ravines that 
enhance considerably the scenic effect, as the Slade of Saggart, 
the Gap of Ballinascorney, Glencullen, and the Scalp. The an- 
cient road still exists, passing through Glenasmole (the Glen 
of the Thrushes), over which the kings of Leinster drove, up to 
about the sixth century, in their journeys from Ferns to Tara, in 
Meath, to attend the periodic council of the monarchs of Ire- 
land. In the seventh century a monastery was founded in Tal- 
laght, the abbots of which were bishops. In 787 there died as 
abbot of that foundation St. Maolruan, in which house lived at 
the same time Angus, the eminent hagiologist, compiler of the 
Martyrology of Tallaght, who succeeded as bishop and abbot. 
The identical site of that monastery is now occupied by the 
Dominican convent of St. Mary of the Rosary, the novitiate of 
the order, where repose the remains of Father Thomas Burke. 
The incursions and settlement of the pagan Ostmen, or Danes, 
in Dublin during several centuries led to the plunder and clos- 
ing of the early Christian churches in the city ; but the ab- 
beys in Tallaght, Clondalkin, and Swords continued to preserve 
the light of faith and of letters. Protected by its position with- 
in the territory of the native septs of Wicklow, the O'Byrnes 
and O'Tooles, Tallaght was not brought within the Anglo-Nor- 
man Pale for a considerable period after the invasion, so that the 
abbey flourished with the usual Danish and native raids and 
exigencies of the period. Large tracts of the Termon lands 
round the district were granted by the pope as ecclesiastical 
endowments to the see of Dublin and to St. Patrick's Cathe- 
dral ; hence the name Saggard (saggart, a priest) in the vicinity. 
It soon became the country residence of the Anglo-Norman 
archbishops; but they were liable to continual disturbance, the 
O'Tooles of Imalye sweeping down on them from the moun- 



844 THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. [Sept., 

tains. About the year 1340 Alexander de Bickner, Archbishop 
of Dublin, rebuilt the palace at Tallaght on the abbey grounds 
of St. Maolruan, the tower of which still remains, being used 
as a belfry of the temporary chapel, and in which the Domini- 
can fathers still say their office daily. A large deer-park was 
attached to the palace, and the archbishops, CathoHc and Protes- 
tant, continued to reside there as their country palace until 1803. 
Adam Loftus, one of the first archbishops of the Reformation, 
built the castle of Rathfarnham, beside the Dodder, upon church 
lands a castle about two miles below Tallaght, still in good pre- 
servation and inhabited. In 1821 an act of Parliament author- 
ized the taking down of the archbishops' palace in Tallaght 
and the application of the mensal lands to the general revenues 
of the see of Dublin. The lands, about two hundred acres, were 
let ; but the tenant having mortgaged them, the holding lapsed 
to the present Sir John Lentaigne, a Catholic, who rented, on 
lease, thirty acres round the site of the palace to the Dominican 
fathers for a novitiate in 1855, for which they paid a fine of 
two thousand pounds and a yearly rent of one hundred pounds. 
The grounds were enclosed ; a temporary chapel constructed 
out of stables and out-offices, the tower of the archiepiscopal 
palace serving as a belfry, and the erection of a convent pro- 
jected. In the extensive garden attached are some magnificent 
yews, cypresses, and laurels of ancient date, but the most remark- 
able objects are a few walnut-trees, one of enormous dimensions 
covering a rood of ground, all in splendid condition, believed to 
have been planted by St. Maolruan eleven hundred years ago. 
There is also the socket of a cross of same date. Another 
striking feature is the Friars' Walk, an ancient, closely-wooded, 
wide avenue, still used, as formerly, for processions of the 
Blessed Sacrament. 

Provision had to be made for the accommodation of thirty 
members of a community six priests, eighteen novices, and six 
lay brothers. There are sixteen Dominican convents in Ireland 
St. Saviour's (Dublin), Tallaght, Athy, Cork, Limerick, Water- 
ford, Tralee, Kilkenny, Newbridge (Kildare), Drogheda, Dundalk, 
Galway, Sligo, Esker (Athenry), Boula (Portumna), Newry 
with about seventy priests, to recruit whose ranks a novitiate 
such as that of Tallaght is only of moderate aims. When Father 
Burke was entrusted with this important charge he was only 
twenty-five years of age, and every element of the new founda- 
tion had to be constructed without endowment or funds. A 
handsome convent has been erected, the shell alone of which 



1883.] THE VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 845 

cost two thousand pounds apart from the furnishing and fitting. 
There is a small but very select library and several valuable 
pictures. In the spacious cloister is a handsome banner with a 
figure of Our Lady of the Rosary, which was borne before the 
papal nuncio, Rinuccini, at the Confederation of Kilkenny, the 
Dominican Black Abbey having been closely connected with the 
Catholic parliament held there. South of the convent, between 
it and the mountain, is the new church, upon the erection and 
completion of which Father Burke had set his heart ; but Pro- 
vidence having decreed otherwise, the duty devolves on the 
millions at home and abroad who loved and admired him to 
finish the good work as a fitting monument to his genius, his 
piety, and his patriotism. The church, designed by Ashlin, is 
Gothic, one hundred and forty in. length, seventy in breadth, 
and seventy feet in height to the ridge-pole. Half the length of 
the church will be devoted to the choir and the community, the 
other half being set aside for the general population of the 
vicinity, who for a considerable distance round frequent the 
church. Under the parochial arrangements Tallaght is a branch 
of the parish of Rathfarnham. The new church, including the 
cloisters, to connect the church with the convent and complete 
the monastery into the quadrangular building the type of all 
Dominican institutions will cost twenty thousand pounds. The 
walls of the new buildings, already about fifteen feet high, are 
of the best Calp limestone from Clondalkin ; the windows and 
doors are dressed with Ardbraccan limestone from Navan, a 
pleasing contrast to the dark Calp; and Caen stone is largely 
used in the interior. The roof within is stained pine. Alto- 
gether the whole convent, when completed, will be one of the 
handsomest monastic institutions in Ireland, worthy of the fame 
of the Dominican Order and of the eminent services that for 
six centuries it has rendered to the church, and nowhere more 
than in Ireland during her darkest days of persecution and 
gloom. Father Burke had charge, with slight intermission, of 
this last Dominican foundation for twenty-eight years, which he 
essayed to complete. He lived and died there, and bequeathed 
his honored remains to repose within the walls of the new 
church when finished. 



846 THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION. [Sept., 



THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION. 

THE admirable utterances of Bishop Ireland, -Father Wai- 
worth, and others of the Catholic clergy have done much to 
throw light on the question of prohibition, which is receiving 
such general advocacy from non-Catholic temperance people 
throughout the country. Yet it is evident that there are still 
misunderstandings even among intelligent Catholics regarding 
the attitude of the church on this question, to say nothing of the 
fact that many of our enemies openly assert that we are in league 
with the liquor-traffic because we do not always and everywhere 
advocate prohibition. It may not be important to enlighten 
those who would doubtless continue their calumnies under any 
circumstances, but it is essential that Catholics should under- 
stand their own position on the subject of prohibition. That it 
has not received more of favor among Catholics is due to the 
fact that it has been presented from stand-points which Catholics 
could not endorse without being guilty of absurdity, and perhaps 
heresy. It may be that this danger has been a little too anx- 
iously insisted on, and that some have made the mistake of sup- 
posing that the church is opposed to prohibition from any and 
all points of consideration without any qualifications and condi- 
tions whatever. 

But the trouble has arisen from a misunderstanding of the 
nature of the issue raised ; and for this we fear that the advo- 
cates of prohibition have themselves chiefly to blame. No doubt 
they are generally earnest men, and many of them religious men. 
Yet they do seem to have fallen into some confusion of mind 
concerning the relative bearings of the temperance question on 
the civil and on the religious side of human affairs. Temperance 
is primarily a Christian virtue, necessarily forming part of the 
Christian character. Now, to acknowledge that it needs any 
aids for its growth or preservation in the individual man other 
than the church can afford is more than Catholics can admit. 
Faith, observation, experience, all convince Catholics that any 
form or degree of this virtue, as well as of every other, is not 
only attainable but best attainable in the religious life accessible 
to all members of the Catholic Church. Such is the purpose 
for which our Lord founded his church. 

Temperance, whether it be the moderate use of alcoholic 



1883. THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION. 847 

drink or the complete disuse of it, if it be practised for the love 
of God, sympathy with the thirst of our Lord, as a good ex- 
ample to the younger members of one's family or .one's neigh- 
bors, or as a wise precaution against the growth of an inordinate 
appetite, or as a penance for past sin, is an act pleasing to God, a 
religious act, inspired by divine grace, and pertains to the reli- 
gious character of the individual. What relation it may have to 
one's civil character, touching his duties to the state, has hardly 
ever been fair matter of discussion under the head of prohibition, 
for prohibition has immediate reference only to the sale and 
manufacture of alcoholic drink as a beverage. If the class of 
temperance advocates called prohibitionists had stuck to the 
question of prohibition, and had advocated prohibition more and 
extreme views of abstinence less, they would have had many 
more adherents among Catholics. 

That has been the very difficulty. Prohibition has been ad- 
vocated too much as a dogma rather than as a policy. Its loud- 
est if not its most numerous advocates indulge in the sweeping 
condemnation of every use of alcoholic drink in any form or 
quantity except in medicinal doses and for only such purposes as 
medicinal poisons are used ; and it is from suck convictions that 
for the most part the prohibition sentiment seems to spring. It 
is thus made a theological question. To be sure, every practical 
matter of the kind is based on some theological principles, and 
we may agree with prohibitionists that drinking may be an occa- 
sion of sin. But we cannot agree that it is a proximate occasion 
of sin to everybody. Not only would they force us to admit 
that, but also that it is always a sinful act to drink alcoholic 
beverages except as one takes a dose of strychnine or arsenic at 
the prescription of the physician. 

The fact is that prohibitionists have crowded a question of 
civil policy back into the domain of ethical principles, and while 
sometimes, perhaps, right on the question of policy, they have 
generally gone wrong on the question of principle. It is true 
that human laws derive their binding force from their confor- 
mity with divine enactments, and the better the Catholic citizen 
understands his duties to the church the purer will be his con- 
ceptions of, and the readier will be his compliance with, his duties 
to the state. But farther than this it is scarcely prudent to 
combine their respective spheres of authority. While the state 
may well hesitate, under present circumstances, to enforce per- 
sonal temperance by law, so the church acts wisely by confining 
her application of great moral principles to the private con- 



848 THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION. [Sept., 

science rather than that of the general public. In short, the 
question of. prohibition as it concerns whole communities, and 
properly understood, belongs to the domain of politics rather 
than theology, and it would be a grave mistake to assert that 
there was dogmatic authority binding Catholics on any side of 
such question. What the state may do is to say that the liquor- 
traffic is the prolific source of certain evils and inimical to the 
general welfare ; and public authority being specially organized 
to preserve and not destroy, it cannot be a party to the de- 
struction of its own existence by permitting the continuance 
of so destructive an agent. The state has the power to do any 
and all things needed to fulfil the end of organized society viz., 
the preservation of the general welfare of the people. If the 
state comes to regard the liquor-traffic as a disorganizing agent, 
or as destroying its members or otherwise rendering them un- 
able to fulfil their part of that mutual relationship and obliga- 
tion which exists between the citizen and the state, then the 
question of restriction or prohibition stands forth plain and 
simple as one for state settlement. Viewed thus, the church 
could find nothing in prohibition to oppose. For instance, from 
judicial statistics it is ascertained that a very large percentage 
of crime originates from frequenting liquor-saloons ; this fact 
alone is enough to place prohibition on the list of preventives to 
be used against crime a basis which the church could not and 
would not oppose, since the state has a right to prevent as well 
as to punish crime. Again, equally as large a proportion of 
pauperism and lunacy, which demands state aid to provide 
for, is traceable to the convivial drinking commonly practised 
in liquor-saloons ; that may fairly place prohibition among the 
preventives of pauperism. Now, the church could not say it was 
otherwise than right for the state to seek relief from these 
burdens, which right might be extended to prohibition without 
infringing in the least upon the province of the church. It will 
thus be seen that prohibition, when it appears in politics, should 
be treated as a question of public policy, one of a variety of 
means for procuring the well-being of the state, the discussion 
of which by no means necessarily involves a conflict of religious 
principle between the parties for and against it. 

We hope that we shall not be understood as advising that 
Catholics should shirk a discussion of the abstract principles in- 
volved. We are persuaded that a true knowledge of Catholic 
morality might strengthen the cause of prohibition in some 
localities. For we know of places where drunkenness is so pre- 



l88 3-] THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION. 849 

valent that the wisdom which makes laws for quarantine and 
disinfection against yellow fever should be the wisdom of the 
law maker in dealing- with the surroundings of the vice of in- 
temperance. Read what Bishop Ireland said in Chicago last 
winter : 

" Saloon-keepers, the professional distributers of the alcoholic fluid, 
are posted at all street-corners of cities and villages, hard by all places of 
public gathering, with glass in hand and honeyed words on lips, coaxing 
men to buy and drink. I need not describe a saloon. Do not, however, 
picture to yourselves in the high regions of the abstract an ideal saloon. 
The ideal saloon-keeper, an upright, honorable, conscientious man, will 
never sell liquor to an habitual drunkard, or to a person who has already 
been drinking and whom another draught will intoxicate ; he will never 
permit minors, boys or girls, to cross his threshold; he will not suffer 
around his counter indecent or profane language ; he will not violate law 
and the precious traditions of the country by selling on Sunday; he will 
never drug his liquor, and will never take from his patrons more than the 
legitimate market value of the fluid. Upon these conditions being ob- 
served I will not say that liquor-selling is a moral wrong. The ideal 
saloon-keeper is possible ; perhaps you have met him during your life- 
time ; maybe Diogenes, lamp in hand, searching through our American 
cities, would discover him before wearying marches should have compelled 
him to abandon the search. I have at present before my mind the saloon 
as it usually nowadays exhibits itself, down in an underground cellar, 
away from the light of the sun, or, if it does open its doors to the sidewalk, 
seeking with painted windows and rows of lattice-work to hide its traffic 
from public gaze, as if ashamed itself of the nefariousness of its practices. 
The keeper has one set purpose to roll in dimes and dollars, heedless 
whether lives are wrecked and souls damned. The hopeless inebriate and 
the yet innocent boy receive the glass from his hand. He resorts to tricks 
and devices to draw customers, to stimulate their appetite for drink. Sun- 
day as on Monday, during night as during day, he is at work to fill his vic- 
tims with alcohol, and his till with silver and gold. This is his ambition, 
and I am willing to pay him the compliment that he executes well his 
double task." 

We ask no indulgence for a further extract from the same 
high authority, because it so calmly and fully reveals the com- 
mon opinion of Catholics on the subject we are treating : 

" Certainly temperance workers also must be practical in the means 
which they propose. We cannot lose time in dreaming about measures 
which present public opinion will not allow us to enforce. Neither must 
we, by remedying one evil, introduce another. Our principles of action 
should be always philosophically and socially correct. In dealing with the 
alcohol question it is of no purpose to say that the use of alcohol is always 
wrong, or that the selling of alcohol for drink is also intrinsically wrong. 
The propositions are not true. What is true is that the use of alcohol, the 
sale of alcohol, are things most perilous, and strong precautionary mea- 
VOL. xxxvn. 54 



850 THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION. [Sept., 

sures should be taken in both cases to prevent evil results. When civil 
communities, like families, agree by free option to exclude from their ter- 
ritory, completely and for ever, all alcoholic drinks, my blessing attends 
them. If no such general agreement exists, how far one portion of the 
population has the moral right to restrain by law the sale and use of liquor 
is the great question in temperance politics. The sole logical plea upon 
which prohibition can ever seek to obtain a hearing is this : that liquor- 
selling has become among us such a nuisance that the most sacred in- 
terests of the people, the salvation of the commonwealth itself, are im- 
perilled, and that all other means less radical have been tried in vain to 
avert the calamity. It must be borne in mind that under our free gov- 
ernment it is a very dangerous proceeding to infringe to any considerable 
distance upon private rights and liberties under the plea of the public wel- 
fare. The very essence of our republican government is that it will re- 
spect, as far as it may be at all possible, private rights. Individual taste as 
to what we are to eat or drink is one of the most personal of our natural 
rights, one of the very last subjects, indeed, even in extreme cases, for pub- 
lic legislation. The case is, certainly, supposable when matters should 
have come to such a pass, as I believe they have in China as regards the 
use of opium, that nothing but prohibition would suffice ; then Salus populi 
suprema lex would be my principle. Even then, however, we should have 
to consider whether public opinion had been so formed as to warrant the 
practical enforcement of prohibition. The first work must at all times be 
to appeal to the intelligence and moral nature of men. Legislation by 
itself will be idle speech. It has its purpose : it removes and lessens 
temptations ; it assists and strengthens moral sentiment ; but alone it 
neither creates nor takes the place of virtue. So far in America, I imagine, 
public opinion is not prepared for prohibition ; nor have we with sufficient 
loyalty tried other less radical measures to be justified in invoking the for- 
lorn hope absolute prohibition. If in the future, however, the country 
shall be precipitated towards extremes on the liquor-question, the liquor- 
dealers will themselves have brought about the crisis ; they will reap the 
whirlwind where they will have sown the wind. By resisting, as they do at 
present, all rational and moderate measures for the suppression or diminu- 
tion of the evils of alcohol, they will have forced us to cut them off as men 
madly and incurably opposed to the interests of the commonwealth." 

The following propositions have been gathered from the 
teachings of the best theologians : 

1. Whosoever drinks deliberately to such an extent as to lose 
his reason commits a mortal sin. 

2. Whosoever knows by past experience that a certain quan- 
tity of liquor has rendered him intoxicated, if he again drinks to 
the same degree whereby he doth, can, and ought to foresee that 
drunkenness will ensue, commits a mortal sin. 

3. Whosoever continues to drink, notwithstanding his pro- 
bable belief that intoxication will be the result, and notwithstand- 
ing that he foresees, or ought to foresee, this danger, commits a 
mortal sin. 



1883.] THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION. 851 

4. Whosoever knows by past experience that when intoxi- 
cated he is accustomed to blaspheme or utter other improper 
language, or to injure others about him, besides the sin of drun- 
kenness is guilty of those other crimes, either mortal or venial, 
committed during the state of intoxication. 

5. Whosoever knows by past experience that by frequenting 
ale-houses, gin-shops, and taverns, or by going thither in com- 
pany with others, he is generally accustomed to fall into drunken- 
ness, is obliged under mortal sin to avoid the proximate occasion 
of sin that is, to* abstain from frequenting such ale-houses, gin- 
shops, or taverns, or from going thither with such companions. 

6. Whosoever goes to confession and has not a true and firm 
resolution of so abstaining in the case aforesaid cannot be ab- 
solved ; and should he receive absolution it is not only of no 
avail, but he becomes guilty of sacrilegious confession. 

7. Whosoever does not adopt the proper means for the cor- 
rection of the vicious habit of drunkenness commits another 
mortal sin distinct from the actual sin of drunkenness, and more- 
over remains in a continual state of sin. 

8. Whosoever entices and urges another to excess in drink- 
ing, who he foresees will be intoxicated, commits a mortal sin. 

9. Any seller of liquor who continues to supply it to any 
individual that he knows will become intoxicated therewith 
commits a mortal sin, because he deliberately co-operates in the 
grievous sin of another. 

10. Whosoever is guilty of excess and intemperance in drink- 
ing, even though not to intoxication, but thereby insuring great 
distress to his family by squandering that which is needed for 
their support, commits a mortal sin against charity and justice. 
In like manner, whosoever thus renders himself unable to pay 
his lawful debts, although he may not drink to intoxication, com- 
mits a mortal sin. 

Under these decisions it is evident that the church not only 
condemns the sin itself, but looks closely into the proximate occa- 
sions of sin. There can be no doubt that the liquor-saloon is a 
proximate occasion of sin to a great many, zmd to these it is 
absolutely forbidden ; while the seller is held guilty of mortal 
sin by continuing the business after learning that he is "making 
drunkards "and what liquor-seller in all the land is entirely free 
from such a charge? There is here nothing equivocal, nothing 
uncertain, nothing by which any one has reasonable ground to 
misunderstand the position of the church touching, the sin of 
drunkenness and its proximate occasions ; farther than this there 



852 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Sept., 

is no necessity for her to go. She does not accept prohibition as 
a panacea for intemperance. Temperance, the counteracting 
virtue to the vice of intemperance, is a cardinal virtue in the 
church. Total abstinence, the heroic form of this virtue, is held 
aloft, with special blessings from our Holy Father, as a certain 
and safe remedy for every form of this vice. 

If all this should not appear radical enough to suit the views 
of some, let them suggest rules more equitable, searching, and 
especially practical, by which to deal with the conscience either of 
the saloon-keeper or his victim, without infringing on the Chris- 
tian liberty of innocent men. The state may say how far that 
liberty does or does not interfere with the liberty or rights of 
others or the general welfare, and may legislate accordingly. 
But the church, without at all touching this prerogative of the 
civil power, is quite persuaded that her spiritual means are ade- 
quate to meet all the requirements of her divine mission in deal- 
ing with this sin as far as private individuals are concerned. 
These words of Cardinal Manning echo the sentiments of every 
good Catholic on this subject : " When I see the utter desolation 
of homes, the misery of men, women, and children, from the high- 
est to the lowest class, the destruction of the domestic life of 
millions of our working-class, I feel that temperance and total 
abstinence ought to be familiar thoughts in the minds even of 
those who have never in all their life been tempted to excess. 
By the influence of word and example all should unite to save 
those who are in danger of perishing." 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

CATHEDRA PETRI ; or, The Titles and Prerogatives of St. Peter and of 
his See and Successors. By C. F. B. Allnatt. Third edition, revised 
and much enlarged. London: Burns & Gates. 1883. (For sale by 
the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

The object of this little work is to present, by means of extracts taken 
from the Fathers, councils, and chief ecclesiastical writers of the first 
twelve centuries, the doctrine of the early ages of the church .as to the 
power and prerogatives of St. Peter and his successors in the Apostolic 
See. It is divided into three parts. In the first are contained extracts 
giving the titles and prerogatives of St. Peter ; in the second those giving 
the titles and prerogatives of the see of St. Peter (not omitting the proof 
of that see being Rome) ; the third part gives the titles and prerogatives 
attributed to the Roman pontiffs in the early ages of the church. The 
whole is supplemented by notes on the history and acts of the first four 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 853 

General Councils and the Council of Sardica in their relation to the su- 
premacy of the pope, with an appendix containing among other things a 
note of extreme interest and value on the evidence for St. Peter's having 
founded the Roman See. The manner in which the author has arranged 
his extracts is admirable ; step by step his division leads up the mind to 
the clear perception and recognition of the true place and office of the 
pope. If St. Peter is (as the extracts in the first part clearly prove) the 
rock of the church, the key-bearer, the confirmer of his brethren, the 
Prince and Head of the Apostles; if his see is that of Rome and is 
supreme ; if union with that see is a necessary test of orthodoxy, and if 
as a consequence that see is endowed with the gift of inerrancy (all which, 
is proved by the extracts in the second part), we in our days are bound, 
with those of the early ages of the church cited in Mr. Alnatt's third part, 
to look upon the pope as the " Bishop of the Catholic Church," " the 
Chief of the Universal Church," "the Vicar of Christ." It is difficult for 
us to see how any one who has carefully weighed and considered the 
evidence adduced by Mr. Allnatt in support of these propositions can 
escape conviction. The best wish we can form for any one studying 
this subject is that he may fair in with this little work. It will at least 
put him upon the right road. A book of extracts, we admit, does not 
always inspire perfect confidence ; but the scholarly accuracy and ex- 
actness of Mr. Allnatt's work, the pains he has taken to give the pre- 
cise reference for every citation, the extent and depth of his knowledge, 
the modest unobtrusiveness of self which leads him for the most part to 
relegate his own remarks to the end of his sections or to the foot of the 
page, leaving the authorities to speak for themselves, will all inspire the 
greatest confidence the nature of the work allows, and lead the reader, if not 
satisfied, to make a fuller investigation for himself. The evidence brought 
from Protestant sources is of special interest and value, especially in con- 
futation of a recent writer who is as remarkable for the audacity of his 
assertions as for the vigor of his style. In one respect the work seems 
somewhat wanting in harmony and proportion. While for the early ages 
of the church the quotations are, as the necessity of the case required, full 
and numerous, between Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who died 
in the latter half of the ninth century, and St. Bernard, who died in the 
latter half of the twelfth, no writers are cited. It would have been better, 
it seems to us, either to have omitted the quotations from St. Bernard or 
to have given citations from the intervening writers. 

Mr. Allnatt's book is the best of its kind we have ever met with, one 
which is really invaluable and can hardly be too highly praised or recom- 
mended. 

OLD-TESTAMENT REVISION. A handbook for English Readers. By Alex- 
ander Roberts, D.D. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883. 

One thing is quite noticeable, and to our mind suggestive, in perusing 
this Introduction to the New English Version of the Old Testament viz., 
the deferential and apologetic manner of its author towards rationalistic 
critics, and particularly towards Dr. Robertson Smith. After a high 
laudation of the latter author's excellences he does venture to argue 
against him, but not until he has prefaced his remarks with the depreca- 



854 NEW PUB Lie A TIONS. [Sept., 

tory sentence, which is very poor English, as well as expressive of great 
poverty of spirit : " Now, it humbly appears to me" (p. 29). On the other 
hand, although the author does endeavor to be courteous and fair toward 
Catholic scholars, it is with a patronizing air, and his suppressed animosity 
betrays itself in the passage where, speaking of the Sistine edition of the 
Vulgate, he says : " Various clumsy and disingenuous efforts were made by 
the popes immediately succeeding to account for and correct its errors " 
(P- 235). 

The changes made in the text of the Revised Version of the Old Testa- 
ment do not seem, from what is disclosed by the specimens which Dr. 
Roberts furnishes and his explanations, to be so important as are those 
which are found in the Revised Version of the New Testament. Such as 
they are, being the result of a laborious effort on the part of very compe- 
tent scholars to arrive at critical and verbal exactness in the rendering of 
the Hebrew text into English, they must undoubtedly give to the Revision 
considerable value as a commentary on the original. In general we do 
not think it will or can deviate materially from the orthodox interpreta- 
tion of the sacred text. Yet, as there is almost or quite always some flaw 
in the work of even those Protestants who come nearest to orthodoxy, 
so here we find one most grievous corruption of a text of the highest dog- 
matic importance the fourteenth verse of the seventh chapter of the pro- 
phet Isaiah. It is thus translated : " Behold the young woman shall con- 
ceive and bear a son." On merely critical and exegetical grounds this 
passage can only be correctly rendered : " Behold the Virgin shall con- 
ceive and bear a son." Thus it reads as quoted by St. Matthew, in the 
Revised Version of his Gospel. What will an ordinary English reader 
think when he reads " the Virgin " in one place and " the young woman " 
in another ? 

In our opinion the revisers of the Bible have on the whole done more 
to shake than to confirm the popular belief in the Scriptures as the word 
of God. We give due credit to individual Protestant scholars for their 
learned and valuable works written against the sophistries of pseudo-criti- 
cism. Yet we fear that the ground they stand on is moving under their 
feet, and that they are subject to a compulsory and irresistible tendency 
towards rationalism, either open and undisguised or veiled under the 
mystic covering of what Dorner and his disciples call faith. 

The absurdity of making a collection of ancient writings, interpreted 
by a set of private critics, into the sole and proximate rule of faith is made 
more patent than it ever was before. Nothing can be plainer than the 
need of a concurrent tradition and an authorized keeper, witness, and ex- 
pounder of the Sacred Scriptures, in order tha-t all the faithful may know 
what really the word of God is and what it teaches. 

THE MEISTERSCHAFT SYSTEM. A Short and Practical Method of acquiring 
complete Fluency of Speech in the French Language, By Dr. Richard 
S. Rosenthal, late Director of the " Akademie fur fremde Sprachen " in 
Berlin and Leipzig, etc. In fifteen parts. Boston : Estes & Lauriat. 

How many thousands of men and women have given hard- study to 
French or some other modern languages, and yet, after all their labor, 
have not gained the ability to carry on a minute's conversation on the most 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 855 

simple even of subjects ! Specialists have been for years repeating that 
to acquire a speaking familiarity with a language it is necessary to train 
the tongue, the ear, and the memory, yet the systems generally favored 
depend nearly all for the most part on the exercise of the intellect. Even 
the so-called conversational methods that have occasionally been era- 
ployed have made use of a style of conversation such as never went out of 
the mouth of a native speaker. 

The " Meisterschaft " system is certainly a remarkable example of the 
beauty of simplicity. It limits itself to about two thousand words the 
vocabulary of every-day life which it combines in all possible ways in 
correct and idiomatic French. Any one familiar with the " Mastery " sys- 
tem, introduced some years ago by Prendergast, will find that the main 
feature of Prendergast's theory appears in the "Meisterschaft" system- 
Prendergast laid down a number of long, involved sentences, each of which 
he broke up into its component clauses, and out of these clauses again 
he formed a great number of phrases. But Prendergast's sentences were 
stiff, and his combinations of their elements lacked the heartiness and the 
freedom of the spoken language as heard from the mouth 'of a native. 
Even were one to gain a fluency from Prendergast's system, there would 
still be a rigidity of style, a tendency to talk " like a book," that one could 
overcome after considerable practice only among natives. Besides, Pren- 
dergast ignored the intellect too much he carried the parrot and the bow- 
wow theory to a pitch that was offensive to the thoughtful student, who 
was bidden, not to think, but only to chatter. 

The ''Meisterschaft," following Prendergast, takes a number of long 
sentences as the bases of the lessons, but, as any one knowing the lan- 
guage will see at once, the French of the phrases is the spoken French 
of the day. At the end of each of the fifteen little paper-covered books 
is a grammatical summary of so much of the French as has been gone 
through with in that book, so that the student is enabled to understand 
the grammatical reasons for the language he is learning. The system is 
intended for beginners, though it must be welcome indeed to all who 
have made some study of the language, but have been frightened off by 
the artificial methods generally in use and by the necessity they impose of 
learning long, dry lists of words. There can be no doubt but that any 
one of ordinary ability going through this method will be able to speak 
French with fluency and with tolerable correctness. 

DESTINY, AND OTHER POEMS. By M. J. Serrano. New York : G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons. 1883. 

The press of to-day is, unfortunately, prolific of poetry and poems, so 
that there exist in many minds a feeling of surfeit in regard to verses and 
versifiers, and the hope that self-respecting publishing-houses will not 
imperil their interests nor offend their readers by throwing on a long- 
suffering world octosyllabic effusions wherein the sound far offsets the 
sense. What a relief, then, it is to find a professed book of poems that is 
an exception to the gloomy verdict concerning its congeners, and what a 
boon to the reviewer to be convinced that he basks at last in the light of a 
true poetic mind ! We have sought out in Mrs. Serrano's volume traces of 
similarity to the poems whose music and thought impressed us most at 



856 NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [Sept., 

some period ; but though " Destiny " abounds in noble images and smooth 
harmonies, it possesses an originality of its own that sets it apart from all 
its peers. Most writers drop occasionally into philosophic moods wherein 
they descant upon life and its humdrum ways in pointed and pithy phrase, 
but few can sustain throughout many a lengthening page a flight of noble 
thought wedded to grandeur of expression. And this is whatthe authoress 
of " Destiny " has accomplished. The framework of the poem is nothing 
more than an excuse. The sentiments are everything, the incidents 
nothing; but the reader is quite willing to forego mere interest of plot for 
nobility of thought, and he surrenders himself with delight to a full-flow- 
ing tide of lofty ideas. This is the characteristic feature of the work ; every 
thought in it is exalted and breathes a nobleness that seems to struggle 
with the text for completeness of expression. This continued elevation of 
ideas gives, however, an air of dreaminess to the poem, and the reader is 
compelled to question, in despite of the pleasure which the very difficulty 
creates, whether flesh-and-blood mortals could discourse for hours in 
tropes and sparkling words concerning the deepest problems of life, and 
discuss in that way such questions as tormented men's minds from the be- 
ginning. That love is the theme of her verse seems not to have deterred 
the writer from introducing reflections drawn from every quarter, and 
most of the shades and lights of life have found room in her page. 

To Plato, gazing forth on the wide waters of an Eastern sea and be- 
holding in their ceaseless surge the type of the Eternal, no meeter or more 
adequate word occurred to measure the sublimity of our benign Maker 
than love. And so it has held supreme sway from the beginning, purified 
and exalted by the Spirit of Christ. " Love God and do what you please," 
is the utterance of a saint whose wisdom almost equalled his holiness. In 
the broad empire, then, of love the finest thoughts may find a home and the 
deepest philosophy seek expression. Without the least effort the authoress 
of " Destiny" has woven into her poem sentiments the most diverse and 
reflections upon every phase of life. The troubles that cut deep scars into 
our lives and leave the edges raw and unhealthy these, as well as the 
holiday lights that color a few moments with sunshine, form the staple of 
the dialogue between Ernest and Clarence. 

Sorrow for dead love is not. of itself a hopeful or healthful feeling, but 
when coupled with aspirations that reach beyond the grave it imparts 
serenity to the character, making it softer, sweeter, and more spiritual. 
Thus we sympathize with Ernest while he deplores the hardness of his lot, 
and long for the moment that will bring to him surcease from his sorrows. 

We have not offered even an approach to an analysis of this poem, but 
will content ourselves with a few extracts that will indicate the scope and 
intent of the main poem. Ernest, filled with the sad experience that had 
come with years of sorrow, says : 

" Full of bitterness the years that cling 
To faded glories of Life's spring 
For all their wealth whose stores contain 
No garnered harvest of ripe grain 
To nourish with sweet, wholesome food 
The hours of rest and solitude. 
Build, therefore, now no pleasure-house 
Of fragrant flowers and blooming boughs, 



l88 3-] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



857 



Laden with promise fair, thine age 

To shelter ; when the heritage 

Of youth is squandered its perfume 

Wasted on winds that rob its bloom, 

Quenched its warm light, its music stilled, 

Vanished the joys its hours that filled 

The branches, withered then and dry, 

Shall stand against the wintry sky, 

Whose living roots within the earth 

Hide not the promise of a birth 

Of fairer bloom and richer store 

Of fruit than crowned its bloom before. 

Nor grieve that thus youth's blossoms fade, 

For this their gracious bloom was made, 

That Beauty's self with fostering care 

Might guard the germ designed to bear 

The fruit of Truth, who is with her 

In essence one the minister 

Of Being each ; nor, reached her end, 

That with the elements shall blend, 

Again the form that Beauty leaves 

To grace, transfused, the life Truth gives." 

These few lines impart a shade of the tenor of the poem, and must 
suffice thereto within the narrow limits of a review. 

SERMONS FOR THE SPRING QUARTER. By the Very Rev. Charles Meynell, 
D.D. Edited by H. I. D. Ryder, of the Oratory. London : Burns & 
Gates. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

This volume contains eighteen sermons, every one of which is, in our 
judgment, a model of the best style of preaching. It would not be quite 
correct to say that they are " well worth reading," for that would imply 
something of an effort to read them which unfortunately one sometimes 
has to make with even very good discourses. It does not seem likely that 
any one went to sleep during the delivery of these sermons, as people 
often do owing, perhaps, to a lack of previous interest in the subject 
under some pulpit oratory which must be admitted to be of a high order. 
Their strong point is that they are interesting ; and if interesting to read, 
they must have been doubly interesting to hear. One is drawn on to finish 
when one has once begun, as by a story in which our attention is fixed 
from the start. Special admiration or criticism of one point or another is 
held in suspense until the whole is finished. 

It is really quite unusual to find discourses such as these, which, while 
fully satisfying the taste of the most intelligent and thoughtful, would at 
the same time be as intelligible and instructive to those of duller compre- 
hension, who are to be found in every congregation, and whom the 
preacher must always wish specially to reach. In a word, these are mo- 
del sermons; and it can never be said of them, as of so many volumes 
published nowadays, " Another wave upon the dead sea of common- 
place." 

ITALIAN RAMBLES. Studies of Life and Manners in New and Old Italy. 
By James Jackson Jarves, author of The Art Idea, Italian Sights, etc. 
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1883. 
The contrast implied in the title of Mr. Jarves' little volume and the 



858 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Sept., 

fact that Mr. Jarves is a Protestant serve to prepare the Catholic reader 
for what he will find a good many side-digs at Catholicity, or at all events 
at such ancient practices of the simple-minded peasants of Italy as have a 
religious feeling underlying them. Still, even those peculiarly Italian, or 
peculiarly Catholic, things which he has seen through his Protestant and 
Northern spectacles Mr. Jarves describes with a great amount of good 
nature. "United Italy politically," says Mr. Jarves, " now .stands face to 
face in hostility to the holy church," and one proof of this hositility is 
the inclusion of the clergy in the conscription. Secular priests, as a conse- 
quence, are becoming less numerous than formerly. " The present arch- 
bishop of Pistoia," our writer goes on to say, "in a few years has lost by 
death ninety of his county priests, and he cannot replace them all from 
the want of qualified candidates." 

But Mr. Jarves is better as an art critic than as a polemical writer. 
One of his most interesting chapters is that one treating of the ancient 
and modern glass of Murano the island of Murano being the seat of the 
Venetian glass-works. The chapter, too, entitled " A Lesson for Merchant- 
Princes " is instructive, as a lesson should be, as well as entertaining. A 
passage is quoted from the note-book of Ruccellai : " I think I have 
gained more honor and given more contentment to my mind by having 
expended my money liberally than in having made it " ; and well the Floren- 
tine merchant might say so, for among the public works of his native city 
which were due to his generous disposal of his wealth was the famous 
fagade of the church of Santa Maria Novella. 

THE SECRET POLICY OF THE LAND ACT. Compensation to Landlords the 
Corollary to the Land Act. By T. S. Frank Battersby, Senior Barrister- 
at-Law ; Senior Moderator a'nd Gold-Medalist in History, Political 
Economy, and Law, University, Dublin. Dublin: Carson Brothers, 
Grafton Street. 1883. 

This pamphlet is a confirmation of the assertion, frequently made of 
late, that the national feeling is taking hold at last of all classes in Ireland, 
instead of, as formerly, being confined to the so-called peasants and their 
near relatives. Mr. Battersby writes in behalf of the resident landlords of 
Ireland. He admits the necessity of a reform of the land-tenure, but and 
this, no doubt, will be a burning question before long he insists that 
though the greater part of the landlords came into possession by fraud to 
the injury of the great body of the Irish people, yet that this fraud was the 
work of England and not of the landlords. His words on this point are: 
"Mr. Parnell . . . bases his claim the land forthe people on confiscation, 
the rape of Ireland. He has not, no one yet has, ventured to rely upon 
fraud in the title of the crown. ... It is demonstrated beyond possibility 
of doubt, on documentary evidence coming from the custody of the crown 
and absolutely unimpeachable [recent publications of MSS. in the English 
State Paper Office], that the inception and methods by which the land of 
Ireland was acquired by the crown of England formed one tissue of fraud 
fraud upon the original proprietors, fraud on the planted proprietors 
and their descendants ever since with the result that the title of the 
crown of England to the land of Ireland was void ab initto." Strong lan- 
guage from the landlords' side ! But fraud ought not to have the protec- 
tion of the statute of limitations. The effect of the fraud remains to this 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 859 

day, and to-day England and the English people, not the Irish landlords, 
are enjoying the benefit of the fraud. The writer argues very forcibly that 
as restitution to the people of Ireland in the shape of a reformed land- 
tenure is necessary and right, the restitution ought to be made at the 
expense of the English who committed the fraud in the seizure of Irish 
lands, and not of the Irish landlords who are victims, along with the 
tenants, of this fraud. The land, he admits, should be given to the tenants, 
but the landlords should be reimbursed by England, who sold or gave the 
land to the ancestors of these landlords with an understood warranty to 
the title, a title now found to be fraudulent. An appendix takes up certain 
great confiscations, notably those of the territories of the clans O'Neill and 
O'Donnell, and by means of English State Papers illustrates the infamous 
methods made use of to dispossess the Irish of their land. Mr. Battersby 
supports all his positions with unimpeachable authority, and his pamphlet, 
which is full of interesting facts and statistics of Irish history, having to 
do both with the destruction of Irish manufactures by England and the 
confiscation of Irish land, is worth the attention of all concerned in the 
future of the Green Isle. 

PRAXIS SYNODALIS. Manuale Synodi Diocesanae ac Provincialis Cele- 
brandae. Neo-Eboraci, Cincinnati, S. Ludovici, Einsidlse : Benziger 
Fratres, Summi Pontificis Typographi. 1883. Imprimatur, Joannes 
Cardinalis McCloskey, Archiep. Neo-Eboracensis. 

This manual is the first of its kind which has been published. There is 
one by Gavanti for diocesan synods. The compiler of the present manual 
has made use of this and followed it so far as it goes. In completing 
Gavanti's work by adding everything which properly belongs to provincial 
councils, he has followed all the instructions given by Benedict XIV., and 
the precedents set by three celebrated councils of a recent date viz., those 
of Vienna, Prague, and Cologne. The compiler is a priest of this province, 
and a preface, which contains a summary analysis and a strong recommen- 
dation of the volume, has been prefixed to it, by the Most Rev. Archbishop 
of Petra. All those who have to take part in synods will find this Praxis 
most convenient. 

TOPICS OF THE TIME. Social Problems. Edited by Titus Munson Coan. 
TOPICS OF THE TIME. Studies in Biography. Edited by Titus Munson 

Coan. 
TOPICS OF THE TIME. Studies in Literature. Edited by Titus Munson 

Coan. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1883. 

These three little volumes in paper covers, evidently intended for sum- 
mer reading, contain, each according to its special subject, a selection of 
articles chiefly from English reviews. The editor apparently aims in his 
choice of writers to give two sides of the disputed social or political ques- 
tions taken up, though, as there is generally a third and a fourth side, there 
is something left to be said. Among the articles found in the first of the 
series is a rather Malthusian sort of article on "World-Crowding," one on 
" Secret Societies in France," and an article by the English Radical journal- 
ist Labouchere on the " Coming Democracy " of England. The second 
series includes among the rest an article of no value on the late Gambetta, 
and a very interesting study of the life of Dean Swift from Blackwood's 



86o NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Sept., 1883. 

Magazine. The third series contains another paper from Blackwood, and 
an instructive and suggestive one too, on " American Literature in Eng- 
land," and an article from the Contemporary Review on the work of the 
Bollandists, which, though telling scarcely anything that is new to well- 
read Catholics, is yet an exceedingly just and appreciative account of the 
methods pursued in the compilation of that wonderful encyclopaedia of the 
saints, the Acta Sanctorum. 

THE STORY OF IDA. By Francesca. Edited, with Preface, by John Ruskin, 
D.C.L. i8mo, pp. 84. Boston : Cupples, Upham & Company. 1883. 

A sentimental little story, told by an American lady, an artist, of a young 
Florentine girl who had been made the victim of a fraudulent marriage. 
The story of the young girl's life and happy death is interesting for that 
artistic simplicity characteristic of Italy. There is no plot, there are no 
striking situations, merely a pretty record of the decline of a life redolent 
of purity and devoutness. The heroine is a Catholic, the writer a Pro- 
testant, yet the artless piety of the Florentine is sympathetically, though, 
it must be confessed, rather sentimentally, met by the Protestant lady. 
Outside of whatever aesthetic suggestions Mr. Ruskin may find in it, the 
little book illustrates, though unintentionally perhaps, some of the evil 
results of the civil marriage as now enforced in Italy. 

AN OUTLINE OF IRISH HISTORY FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRE- 
SENT DAY. By Justin H. McCarthy. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co. 
1883. \ 

In the one hundred and thirty-four pages of this book Mr. McCarthy, 
who is a son of the well-known writer and Home-Rule member of the British 
Parliament, draws a very distinct and correct outline of the long tragedy 
that goes by the name of Irish history. The first chapter, dealing with 
" The Legends," a presentation of some of the principal myths of Erin, is 
excellent and so is the final chapter, on the Land League. 

DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY, or applied social science, as based upon statical 
sociology and the less complex sciences. By Lester F. Ward, A.M. In 
two volumes. D. Appleton & Co. 1883. 

A notice of this work will be given next month. 



AN UGLY HEROINE. A Novel of Domestic Life. By Christine Faber. Philadelphia : J. B. 

Lippincott & Co. 1883. 

ANNALS OF FORT MACKINAC. By Dwight H . Kelton, Lieutenant United States Army. Chi- 
cago : Fergus Printing Company. 1882. 
THE WILD BIRDS OF KILLEEVY. By Rosa Mulholland. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. 

(New York : For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 
EDITH. A Tale of the Present Day. By Lady Herbert. London : Richard Bentley & Son. 

1881. (New York : For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 
LES SOCIETES SECRETES ET LA SOCIET ; ou, Philosophic de PHistoire Contemporaine. Par 

N. Deschamps. Tome Troisieme. Notes et Documents recueillis par M. Claudio Jannet. 

Avignon : Seguin freres. 1883. 
THE IRISH QUESTION. An address delivered by Wm. Cabell Bruce, of Baltimore, on the 2oth 

of June, 1883, before the Norwood Literary Society of Norwood High-School and College, 

Nelson County, Va. Baltimore : Printed by King Bros. 1883. 



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