Full text of "The Catholic world"

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6 TORONTO. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



or 



GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, 



VOL. XXXVIII. 
OCTOBER, 1883, TO MARCH,- 1884. 



NEW YORK: 

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO., 
9 Barclay Street. 

1884. 



Copyright, 1883, by 
I. T. HECKER. 



THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK 



CONTENTS. 



Ancient Celtic Art. Bryan J. Ctinche, . i6 
Annamese Conflict, The Franco-. Alfred M. 

Cotte, 202 

Answer to Neal Dow, An. The Rev. C.A. 

Wai-worth^ 679 

Armine. Christian Reid, 98, 218, 401, 544,687,840 

Bancroft's History of the United States. 

R. H. Clarke, LL.D., ... 76, 252 

Banneker (Benjamin), the Negro Astrono- 
mer. Th e Rev. John R. Slattery, . . 343 

Beatrice Cenci, The True, .... 589 

Benjamin Banneker, the Negro Astronomer. 

The Rev. John R. Slattery, . . .342 

Bethlehem, Reminiscences of. M. P. Thotnp- 

son, .477 

Celtic Art, Ancient. Bryan J. Clinche, . 162 

Cenci, The True Beatrice, .... 589 

Chantelle. M. P. Thompson, ... 64 

Christmas Eve, The First, . . . . 450 
Comet of 1812, The Returning. The Rev, 

George M. Searle, . . . , 278 
Conscience, Hendrik. The Rev. Camillus 

P. Maes, ... . ... 289 

Dynamic Sociology.- The Rev. Walter El- 
liott, 383 

Early Fruits of the "Reformation" in En- 
gland. 5". Hubert Burke, . 194 

Elizabeth. Ireland under. S. Hubert Burke, 366 

English Catholics and Public Life. Orby 

Shipley, 390 

Episcopal Convention, The Protestant. The 

Rt. Rev. Mgr. 'T. S. Preston, . . .433 

First Christmas Eve, The, . . . .430 
Franco- Annamese Conflict, The. Alfred M. 

Cotte, , 202 



Haunt of Painters, A. Elizabeth G. Martin, 639 
Hendrik Conscience. The Rev. Camillus 

P. Maes, 989 

" If Thou wilt enter into Life." Elisabeth 

Gilbert Martin, 798 

" If Thou wilt be Perfect." Iizat>efA Gil' 

pert Martin, ...... 798 



Infallibility and Private Judgment. Atikur 

H. Cullen, 51, 

Ireland under Elizabeth. 5". Hubert Burke, 
Ireland, The Turk in. IV. P. Dennehy, 
" Italy, A Religion for." The y. Rev. /. T. 
Hefker, ....... 

Law of Marriage, Some Aspects of the. The 
Rev. A . F. He-wit, 

Luther and the Diet of Worms. The V. Rev. 
I. T. Hecker, _. 

Marching through Georgia, .... 



Neal Dow, An Answer to. The Rev. C. A. 

Walworth, ....... 

Negro Problem, Some Aspects of. The Rev. 

J. R. Slattery, 

Ninth Century Ant'phon and its Composer, A. 

A. /. Faust, Ph.D., .... 
Novelists, Two New. A.J. Faust, Ph.D., . 

Our Grandmother's Clock, .... 

Poet of the " Reformation," A. R. M. 

Tohnston, . . 

Poitou, Traditions and Folk-Lore of. M. P. 

Thompson, ....... 

Priscian, The St. Gall. -Joseph Manning, . 
Protestant Episcopal Convention, Th. The 

Rt. Rev. Mgr. T. S. Preston, '.' 
Protestantism vs. the Church. The V. Rev. 

I. T. Hecker, 

Psyche ; or, The Romance of Nature, . . 

" Reformation " in England, Early Fruits of 

the. S. Hubert Burke, .... 
"Reformation," A Poet of the./?. M. 

Johnston, ....... 

Religion and Science, The Supposed Issue 

between. The Rev. Geo. M. Searle, 
"Religion for Italy, A."TAe V. Rev. I. 

T. Hecker, 

Reminiscences of Bethlehem. M. P, Thomp* 

son, ........ 

Ribadeneyra, The Youth of Pedro de -Jean 

M. Stone, 

Scepticism and its Relations to Modern 
Thought. Condi B. Fallen, . . 



3*3 
366 
536 

799 



MS 
8 10 

679 

604 

13 

781 

177 

355 

769 

753 



t 
464 



194 
355 
577 
799 
477 
613 

24* 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



Sociology, Dynamic. The Rev. Walter El- 
liott, 383 

Some Aspects of the Law of Marriage. The 

Rev. A. F. ffeivtt, 731 

St, Gall Priscian, The. -Joseph. Manning, . 755 

Story of Nuremberg, A. Agnes Repplier, . 523 
Supposed Issue between Science and Religion, 

The. The Rev. Ceo. M. Searle, , . 577 

The Coiners' Den. C. M. CPKeeffe^ . . 488 
The Four Sons of Jael. The Rev. John Tal- 

bot Smith, 308 

The Wizard of Ste. Marie. William Seton, 28 
Thomistic-Kosmmian Emersonianism. The 

V. Rtv. I. T. Hecker, . . . .799 

Torpedo Station, The. Ella McMahon, . 106 
Traditions and Folk-Lore of Poitou. M. P. 

Thompson, ....... 769 

Turk in Ireland, The. W. P. Dennehy, . 536 



Two New Novelists. A. J. Faust, Ph.D., . 781 

Uncle George's Experiments. Mary M. 

Meline, 643 

What shall our Young Men do? The Rev. 

A . F. Ifewit, 665 

When Visions Pass William Livingston, . 125 
Wicked No. 7. William Seton, . . . 505 
Wisdom and Truth of Wordsworth's Poetry, 

The. A ubrey de l^ere, .... 738 
Wordsworth's Poetry, The Wisdom and Truth 

of. A ubrey de Vere, .... 738 

Yosemite, The. The Rev. Edward Mc- 

Siveeny, ....... 830 

Young Men, What shall (our) do IThe Rev. 

A . F. Hewit, 665 

Youth of Pedro de Ribadeneyra, The. Jean 

M. Stone, 613 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 134 The 
Life of St. John Baptist de Rossi, 135 Life and 
Revelations of Saint Margaret of Cortona, 135 A 
Memoir of the Life and Death of the Rev. Father 
Augustus Henry Law, S.J., 135 Catholic Ser- 
mons, 136 Select Specimens of the English Poets, 
with Biographical Noiices, etc., 136 Historical 
Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty and the Reforma- 
tion Period, 137 Mediaeval Sermon-Books and 
Stories, 139 Les Socie^s Secretes et la Socie'te', 
140 Irish Local Names Explained, 143 A Wash- 
ington Winter, 142 Sir Walter Ralegh in Ireland, 
X43 The Heginnings of the Roman Catholic 
Church in Yonkers, 144 The Ulster Civil War of 
1641, and its Consequences, 144 Pious Affections 
towards God and the Saints, 283 The Life of Mar- 
tin Luther, 283 Sermons and Discourses by the 
late Most Rev. John MacHale, D.D., Archbishop 
of -Tuam, 284 Growth in the Knowledge of our 
Lord, 284 The Seraphic Octave, 284 Jus Ca- 
nonicum juxta ordinem Decretalium recentioribus 
Sedis Apostolicse Decretis et rectae ration! in om- 
nibus consonum, 284 The Illustrated Catholic 
Family Annual for 1884, 285 Annals of Fort 
Mackinac, 285 Crown of Thorns, 286 Simon 
Verde, 286 The Feast of Flowers, 286 Filial Love 
before All, 286 The Queen's Confession, 286 
Rose Parnell, the Flower of Avondale, 286 The 
Normal Mus'c Course, 287 Manual for the Use 
of Teachers, 287 The Martyrs of Castelfidar- 
do, 287 The Little Hunchback, 287 Without 
Beauty, 287 Tales by Canon Schmid, 287 A 



Course of Philosophy, 426 The Return of the 
King, 427 Nights with Uncle Remus, 427 Ne- 
crology of the English Congregation of the Order 
of St. Benedict, from 1600 to 1883, 428 Alethau- 
rion, 429 Reminiscences of Rome, 429 The 
Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, 430 His- 
toire de Mademoiselle Le Gras, Fondatrice des 
Filles de la Charite 1 , 431 Short Sermons for the 
Low Masses of Sunday, 431 An Appeal to the 
Good Faith of a Protestant by Birth, 431 La Vie 
de N.'S. Je"sus-Christ, 570 Ben-Hur, 572 The 
Eternal Priesthood, 574 Groundwork of Econo- 
mics, 575 Ordo Divini Officii recitandi Missaeque 
celebrandae pro anno bissextili 1884, 576 A Classi- 
fied and Descriptive Directory to the Charitable 
and Beneficent Societies and Institutions of the 
City of New York, 576 Michael Angelo, 576 
God and Reason, 713 Banes et Molina, 714 Life 
of the Ven. Clement Maria Hofbauer, C SS.R., 
715 Moore's Irish Melodies, 716 Nano Nagle, 716 
A Roundabout Journey, 717 The Life of the 
Venerable Father Claude de la Colombiere, S.J., 
718 The Bear- Worshippers of Yezo and the Island 
of Karafuto (Saghalin), 718 A Little Girl among 
the Old Masters, 718 A Natural- History Reader 
for School and Home, 719 Guenn, 719 An Ambi- 
tious Woman, 720 A Day in Athens, 856 Phi- 
losophy in Outline, 857 The Works of Virgil, 858 
Brownson's Works, 859 The New Parish 
Priest's Manual, 859 The Life of Elizabeth, Lady 
Falkland, 860. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVIII. OCTOBER, 1883. No. 223. 



PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. 

ONE among- the events which have greatly affected the de- 
velopment of Christianity was the religious movement of the 
sixteenth century called Protestantism. Millions of Christians 
within a 'short period of time separated themselves from what 
they had been taught to believe was the Christian Church. It 
is unnatural, as it is unchristian, that men who have a common 
nature and a common destiny, and who acknowledge the same 
Mediator and Saviour, should stand towards each other in hos- 
tile attitude. All is not right where such a state of things exists. 
To produce such results there must have been error somewhere, 
and guilt too. For humanity means common brotherhood. 
Truth is one. And Christianity is, in the highest sense of the 
words, Love and Truth. 

These disagreeable facts are becoming more and more ap- 
parent, and people are becoming more and more convinced of 
these primary truths. Who knows ? perhaps the time has come 
v. r hcn, if men would consider impartially the causes which have 
brought about the deplorable religious dissensions and divisions 
existing among Christians, a movement would set in on all sides 
towards unity, and the prayer of Christ that " all who believe in 
him might be made perfect in unity " would find its fulfilment. 
This is our hope. To contribute to this result we labor. 

It is in the spirit of impartiality and charity that the investi- 
gation of this subject should be pursued. Perhaps we shall not 

Copyright. RKV. I. T. HECKER. 1883. 



2 PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. [Oct., 

succeed in this task as we would wish. Be that as it may, one 
thing our readers may be assured of : we approach it with the 
sincerest desire to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth. We have nothing to hold back. The man who 
fears to face the whole truth is a coward. 

The main point which faces every one who thinks seriously 
and consecutively on this subject is the church question. By 
resistance to her authority Protestantism was an attack against 
the church. It is, therefore, impossible to investigate this matter 
thoroughly and to settle it satisfactorily without first examining-; 
What is the church? Is the church a voluntary assembly of 
Christians? or is the church* a society established by Christ, 
through whose instrumentality Christ makes men Christians ? 
Do Christians make the church? or does the church make Chris- 
tians ? That is the question. The first is the statement of Pro- 
testants ; the second is affirmed by Catholics. 

If Christians make the church, as Protestants maintain, then 
to make the church we must first have Christians. This forces 
one to ask : How, then, does Christ make men Christians ? For 
all men who believe in Christ agree that the only way of be- 
coming a Christian is by a personal communication from Christ. 

Now, man is a rational soul and a material body united in 
one personality. This personality is ordinarily reached through 
the instrumentality of the body. Christ came in contact with 
men, when upon earth, through his bodily organization. The 
question, then, resolves itself practically into this : How does 
Christ, from generation to generation until the end of time, reach 
men in order to make them Christians ? or what is the principle 
of Christ's personal communications to men ? The chief answer 
that Protestants give to this is, The Bible ! 

If the reading of the Bible were the ordinary means ap- 
pointed by Christ to receive the grace of salvation for all men, 
then the first thing one would suppose is this : as God -wishes all 
men to be saved, he would bestow upon all men the gift to read 
at sight. But such is not the fact. It stands to reason, then, that 
the reading of the Bible cannot be the appointed way, for those 
who do not know how to read, of reaching Christ in a saving 
manner. 

Again, everybody knows that one has to learn how to read. 
This is no slight task. It takes years to do it. Millions upon 
millions in the past never knew how to read. Millions upon 
millions do not know now how to read. Millions upon millions 
for generations to come will not know, most likely, how to read. 



1883.] PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. 3 

To make salvation depend upon reading the Bible excludes all 
these souls from eternal life. A religion based upon such an 
hypothesis is not a practical religion. Therefore it cannot be 
Christianity. 

Once more, if the reading of the Bible were the ordinary 
means of obtaining the power of God unto salvation, then one 
would reasonably expect to find recorded in the Bible from the 
lips of the Saviour himself words of the following import : 
" Unless a man read the Bible and- believe what he reads, he 
cannot enter into the kingdom of God." But such words are 
found in the Bible nowhere. The idea that one is to become a 
Christian by reading the Scriptures is not scriptural. 

The Bible in its completeness, such as we now have it, did 
not exist in early apostolic days. Yet Christians laid down their 
lives during this period in testimony of the divine character of 
the Christian religion. Then, too, were given to the world the 
brightest examples of Christians. All these never saw the com- 
plete Bible, for the New Testament was not then all written. 
How, then, could the reading of the Bible, such as we have it, be 
the ordinary way of making men Christians ? 

The art of printing was invented about the middle of the 
fifteenth century after the birth of Christ. Previous to this it 
was a small fortune, almost, to possess a copy of the Bible. This 
limits salvation to the wealthy only. The poor and the illiterate, 
who make up the bulk of mankind, were on this hypothesis ex- 
cluded, from necessity, at least for fourteen centuries and upwards, 
from the kingdom of heaven ! The thought is atrocious. 

What is the Bible? The genuine Bible consists in what the 
Holy Spirit inspired. But certain books are held as inspired 
by some whose inspiration is denied by others. It is noto- 
rious that men learned in these matters do not agree. Who is 
to judge which is which what is the true canon of Hoi) 7 Scrip- 
ture? 

What is the Bible? Surely not the simple written words, 
but their meaning as intended by the Holy Spirit. Who is to 
determine, in case of doubt, what was the meaning intended by 
the Holy Spirit ? This hypothesis supplies to the bulk of man- 
kind no such judge, no such criterion. 

But suppose that everybody knew how to read, or all men 
were gifted to read at first sight ; suppose that everybody had a 
copy of the Bible within his reach, a genuine Bible, and knew 
with certitude what it means ; suppose that Christ himself had 
laid it down as a rule that the Bible without note or comment, 



4 PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. [Oct.. 

and as interpreted by each one for himself, is the ordinary way oi 
icceiving the grace of salvation, which is the vital principle of 
Protestantism suppose all these evident assumptions as true, 
would the Bible even in that case suffice to make any one man, 
woman, or child .a Christian ? Evidently not ! And why ? Be- 
cause this is a personal work, and the personal work of Christ, 
for Christ alone can make men Christians. And no account 
of Christ is Christ. Though this was the special message of 
George Fox and his followers, nobody nowadays needs to be 
told that the contents of a book, whatever these may be, are 
powerless to place its readers in direct contact and vital rela- 
tions with its author. No man is so visionary as to imagine that 
the mental operation of reading the Iliad, or Plicedo, or The 
Divine Comedy suffices to put him in communication with the 
personality of Homer, or Plato, or Dante. All effort is in vain 
to slake the thirst of a soul famishing for the Fountain of living 
waters from a brook, or to stop the cravings of a soul for the 
living Saviour with a printed book ! 

No doubt the written works of great men teach great truths, 
and great are the truths taught by inspired men ; but one may 
know the whole Bible by heart without being thereby nearer to 
Christ. Christ nowhere enjoins reading the Bible. His words 
are: " Come unto ME, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest." No book must be interposed between the 
soul and Christ ! 

It was the attempt to make men Christians by reading the 
Bible that broke Christendom into fragments, multiplied jarring 
Christian sects, produced swarms of doubters, filled the world 
with sceptics and scoffers of all religion, frustrated combined 
Christian action, and put back the Christian conquest of the 
world for centuries. 

Three centuries of experience have made it evident enough 
that if Christianity is to be maintained as a principle of life 
among men, it must be on another footing than the suicidal 
hypothesis invented in the sixteenth century after the birth of its 
divine Founder. 

Undoubtedly the Bible is a precious book. It is the most 
precious of all books. The Bible is " The Book." The reading 
of the Bible is the most salutary of all reading. Catholic readers, 
read the Bible ! Read it with prayer, that you may be enlight- 
ened by the light of the Holy Spirit to understand what you read. 
Read it with piety, that you may have the dispositions which will 
enable you to profit by what you read. Read it with gratitude 



1883] PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH, 5 

to God's church, who has preserved it and placed it in your 
hands to be read and to be followed. 

God forbid that a word should ever proceed from our lips or 
be written by our pen that would diminish the inestimable value 
of the Bible ! But it is not by fostering- a false conception of its 
purpose, or by placing- an exaggerated estimate upon its con- 
tents, that one learns its precious value. Great as this may be, 
Christ is more, greater; and even the Bible is not to be put in 
comparison with Christ. " What did you do with your Bible?" 
asked once a Christian of another. " What did I do with my pre- 
cious Bible?" replied the saintly man. "Why, I followed its 
counsel : I sold it and gave the money to a poor man in distress ! 
Does not the Saviour say, ' Sell all that thou hast and give to 
the poor, and then come and follow me ' ? " To substitute the 
Bible for Christ is bibliolatry. 

Abandoning all effort to conceive, on the Protestant hypothe- 
sis, how men can be made rationally Christians, let us suppose 
for a moment that individual Christians, no matter how made, 
are the instrumentalities by which Christ makes his church. 
Consider the consequences which flow from this assumption as a 
working principle. Grant this, and what is there to hinder any 
body of Christians to resolve themselves, whenever they think 
there is a sufficient reason, into a church ? Why should not the 
discovery of a new truth, or a new interpretation of an old one, 
or the desire for a new rite or ceremony, or the revival of an 
obsolete one, or impatience with a hoary custom, produce a new 
sect, an additional ecclesiastical assembly, a church ? Why not? 
Who as a Protestant can give good reasons why the protest 
against error, or the discovery of new religious truth, should 
stop with Martin Luther, or John Calvin, or Henry VIII., or 
John Knox, or George Fox, or John Wesley, or Mother Ann 
Lee, or Emmanuel Swedenborg, or Alexander Campbell, or 
Joseph Smith ? Was not the setting up a new church a thing 
commendable, a duty, a triumph of principle? Was it not on 
this individual conviction of duty or presumed personal right 
that Martin Luther had the hardihood or heroism to make his 
world-famous assumption at the Diet of Worms ? Was it not 
upon the same assumption that every single one of the so-called 
Reformers proceeded ? And what right had any one of these 
men that every other Christian man has not, and may not, at any 
time he deems it proper, also assume and freely exercise? What- 
ever unspent force the Protestant movement may still possess, it 
moves in the direction of breeding- new sects and forming- new 



6 PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. [Oct., 

churches. Thus Christ, who prayed for unity, is made, upon the 
Protestant principle, the author of division and the promoter of 
wrangling sects ! 

But sectarianism is not the ultimate outcome of the religious 
revolution of the sixteenth century. Suppose a number ot 
Christians cannot agree to form another sect or make another 
church ; what good reason, assuming the Protestant basis, can be 
given why every individual may not determine to be his own 
sect or church ? As a working principle Protestantism resolves 
itself into individualism. 

" If it was the resuscitated spirit of Jesus that began the 
revolt in the sixteenth century," as the author of the volume 
entitled Ecce Spiritus would have men think, then Jesus was the 
author of individualism ; and if of individualism, then of free- 
religion ; and if of free-religion, then Christianity means anything 
that you please to call it. For if free-individualism is the high 
court of jurisdiction, then there is no room left for an appeal. 

If free-individualism is Protestantism carried out to its logical 
consequences, then men who know how to put two ideas to- 
gether in a logical form fail to see why the cloak of Dr. Martin 
Luther at the Diet of Worms does not cover under its folds 
equally the Anabaptist John of Leyden, M. D. Bennett, the late 
free-love editor of the Truthseeker, the " insane " Freeman, and 
the murderer Guiteau. The declaration as insane of Freeman, 
who killed his daughter Edith, and the condemnation as a mur- 
derer of Guiteau, who killed President Garfield, may pass with- 
out note or comment in a Protestant community, but men who 
look below the surface of things trace without difficulty the 
features of Martin Luther in the lineaments of Freeman and 
Guiteau. 

For men to whom thinking consecutively is a necessity do 
not hesitate to say that a religion which affords no criterion 
between the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and the criminal 
conceits of passion, a religion which delivers the Bible to the 
interpretation of each individual for himself, leaves itself open 
fairly to all sorts of attacks, and cannot reasonably condemn 
those who rely upon the premise which it furnishes them for 
their justification when they follow it out to its logical conclu- 
sions. They do not hesitate to affirm that when Freeman was 
declared insane and sent to an asylum, and Guiteau was put on 
criminal trial, Protestantism was sent to Bedlam and tried for its 
life in a criminal court. And when Guiteau was condemned by 
an American judge and jury as a murderer, and this verdict to 



1883.] PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. 7 

all appearance was ratified by the American people, then and 
there the standpoint of Protestantism was also condemned. For 
if the oracle within each individual is the high tribunal, in reli- 
gion, of last appeal, when these men appealed to this oracle 
within in evidence that they had done, according to its teach- 
ing, good and praiseworthy acts, and notwithstanding they were 
condemned, then the principle upon which Protestantism was 
started by Martin Luther was declared insane and condemned. 
And now, to show their consistency, a bronze statue is about to 
be erected, or is already erected, in honor of the parent in the 
very city which hanged as a criminal, upon an infamous gallows, 
his logical child ! O consistency, thou art a jewel ! 

But this reparation comes too late, for if a statue were erected 
in every village, town, and city in the length and breadth of this 
extensive land in honor of this pseudo-reformer, it would not 
hide from intelligent men the falseness of the fundamental prin- 
ciple of the religious secession of the sixteenth century, or ex- 
punge its condemnation by judge and jury from the authentic 
records of our American criminal courts ! 

But Freeman and Guiteau still claimed to be Christians, 
though Protestant ; and the more venturesome spirits, on the 
basis of " the divine right to bolt," feel at liberty to push forward 
their protest against all Christian truths, whether intellectual or 
ethical, as though chaos were the garden of paradise and zero the 
ultimate goal of all felicity. Is it surprising, when such views 
circulate in a community, that in the course of time the com- 
plaint should be made of the lack of candidates for the sacred 
ministry, the falling off of church membership, and the cry of 
alarm should be sounded of the impending danger of its extinc- 
tion ? Protestantism, like all other heresies, failing to secure a 
rational foothold, disintegrates ; and when men once discern this 
fact no effort can save it from rapidly extinguishing itself. 

We now turn our attention to Catholics and ask them the 
same question : What is the church ? or, How does Christ con- 
tinue to fulfil his mission upon earth from generation to genera- 
tion unto the end of time ? We have Christ's own promise to 
remain upon earth until the end of the world, in these words: 
"Lo! I am with you always, even unto the consummation of the 
world." And all Christians, as has been said, agree that Christ 
alone can make men Christians. The problem to be solved is 
this : How does Christ fulfil his promise ? The Protestant solu- 
tion of this problem is no solution. And, if in courtesy we allow 
it to be one, it is unsatisfactory and self-destructive. How 



8 PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. [Oct., 

stands the case with the Catholic solution? It is no answer, as 
we have seen, to say that the church is made by Christians. Let 
us reverse the answer, and say that it is Christ, by the instrumen- 
tality of the church, makes Christians, and see whether the diffi- 
culty does not disappear. 

For Christianity, once the Incarnation is admitted, must some- 
where exist as an organic force to be an effective and practical 
religion. This statement is based upon the truth of the principle 
that without organism there is no vital force. Christianity is 
life, and no believer in Christ will for a moment deny that since 
God became man Christianity is an organic force. Or what 
believer in Christ will entertain the thought that Christ will 
yield the advanced position he gained by becoming man ? Life, 
then, to operate upon men effectually, must be organic, incor- 
porated, one. That Christ is the true life of men in the highest 
sense of the word he himself affirmed : " I am the life of the 
world." To a Christian mind this needs no further proof. 

This is why Christ himself, before his ascension, designed 
his church. Christ chose and appointed her first officers, con- 
ferred upon them their special powers, instituted her sacra- 
ments, laid down the principles of her discipline, and formed 
the main features of her worship. Christ was the architect of 
his church, and the Holy Spirit incorporated what Christ had 
designed. 

Hence the church of Christ is the logical sequence of the 
Incarnation, and not an accident or after-thought of Christ's 
mission upon earth to men as their Mediator and Saviour. The 
church may justly be said to be the expansion, prolongation, and 
perpetuation of the Incarnation. Behold the device by which 
Christ fulfils his promise to remain upon earth unto the consum- 
mation of the world ! 

We have now found the key of the Catholic position. This 
gives us the Catholic solution of the problem, Who built the 
church? A Catholic can claim with confidence as his motto: 
" Christ yesterday, to-day, and for ever ! " 

No other explanation of Christianity than the indwelling 
Christ in his church as the absolute and historical religion is 
tenable. Hence those sectarians who feel called upon to defend 
the Christian religion against the attacks of infidelity find them- 
selves forced to uphold the divine origin and character, not of 
the truncated and parvenu sect to which they belong, but the 
great historical Catholic Church so much so that some of the 
more recent expositions and defences of the Christian religion 



1883.] PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. 9 

might pass, with little or no essential alterations, the ecclesiastical 
censorship of the press of the Church of Rome. 

Men build churches! Churches built by human hands! 
what else could these be fitly called than towers of Babel? 

The Catholic idea, then, is this: that Christ, the only-begotten 
Son of God, became man, and, after his ascension, continues his 
mission upon earth through the instrumentality of his church as 
really and truly as when he was manifest in the flesh and walked 
among men, in the country about Judea. And all enlightened 
and upright men, when they see her as she is, recognize spon- 
taneously the Catholic Church as " the Body " or " the Spouse 
of Christ," just as the Israelites without guile recognized at first 
sight Christ as the Messias. 

We have seen who made the church and what is the nature 
of the church ; let us see now how Christ, through the instrumen 
tality of the church, makes Christians. The work of the church 
of Christ is the continuation of Christ's own work upon earth 
with men. Christ's work was thr communication of life to the 
world, to give the grace of filiation with God to men, women, 
and children. As human beings are constituted they can nei- 
ther act nor be acted upon independently of their bodily organi- 
zation. Hence 'life, to be communicated to men, must be orgar- 
ic. But the communication of sonship with God belongs exclu- 
sively to the only-begotten Son of God, the God-M.an. Hence 
the power and life of the church can be no other than the in- 
dwelling Christ. As the soul is the life of the body, so Christ 
is the life of the church. This is why St. Paul calls the church 
" the Body of Christ." This is the reason why he who has not 
the church for his mother cannot have the Son of God for his 
brother, and he who is not the brother of Christ cannot have 
God for his father. Therefore he who has not the church for 
his mother cannot be a child of God. For the object of Christ 
in the church is not to interpose the church, or her sacraments, 
or her worship between himself and the soul, but through their 
instrumentality to come in personal contact with the soul, and 
by the power of his grace to wash away its sins, communicate to 
it fellowship with God as the heavenly Father, and thereby to 
sanctify it. None but a denier of the Divinity of Christ will 
incline to regard such a doctrine as springing from " a material- 
istic view of Christianity." 

For underlying the Incarnation there is necessarily an idea 
of materiality. " The Word was made flesh." God, who made 
the rational soul, made also the material body, and it is the ra- 



io PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. [Oct., 

tional soul united to the material body that constitute man. It 
is spirit and matter united by the authority of Christ that con- 
stitute a sacrament. The Incarnation is the universal sacra- 
ment, from which divine source the specific sacraments derive 
their grace and efficacy. 

The denier of the Divinity of Christ is ready to admit that 
once grant the Incarnation, and one is inevitably landed, if con- 
sistent, into the Catholic Church. But he should not forget that 
the laws of logic work both ways ; therefore he ought to be 
willing to accept the logical consequences of his denial. To 
deny the Divinity of Christ involves the denial of the Trinity. 
But this costs the Unitarian nothing. But the denial of the 
Trinity involves the denial of the living God ; for no man can 
form a rational conception of the life of God exclusive of the 
idea of the Trinity. Hence to think, and to think consecu- 
tively, a man must become a Catholic. Catholicity or agnosti- 
cism are the only alternatives left for men in our day. 

Catholics repudiate both formalism and materialism. They 
repudiate materialism, and consider it an insufferable tyranny for 
an assembly of men who profess to be Christians to insist upon, 
as most Protestant sects do, the reception of a sacrament whose 
inward reality they have repudiated ! This is rank material- 
ism. If this be the only door open to Christianity, then it is 
no wonder that serious-minded men who have a conception of 
Christianity as a spiritual religion, rather than to enter by such 
a door, seek a home in solitude and content themselves in its 
haunts with nature and nature's God. At least they are resolv- 
ed to keep their faculties uncrippled and their hearts upright. 
Catholics repudiate formalism. A sacrament is no idle cere- 
mony or mere outward sign, or rite, or symbol. A sacrament 
is a sensible means, instituted by Christ, to convey grace to the 
soul. These are the three essential elements of a sacrament, 
lacking any one of which it is no sacrament. 

Man is not a bodiless spirit, and a sacrament without a sen- 
sible sign or medium is not fitted for the twofold nature of 
man. Christianity has abjured shadows ; and a sacrament is not 
a symbol of a process, but the very process itself of conveying 
grace to the soul. If a sacrament lacks the grace of Christ, then, 
it is powerless to regenerate and sanctifv souls. A sacrament 
without grace is a fraud. God alone is competent to institute a 
sacrament. For God alone is the author and source of grace, 
and a sacrament not instituted by Christ has no valid reason for 
its existence. The realities which the Jewish ordinances fore- 



1883.] PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CHURCH. 11 

shadowed and promised the sacraments of the church of Christ 
possess and bestow upon men. The sacraments bear the same 
analogy to the church as the church bears to the Incarnation, 
and as the Incarnation bears to the twofold nature of man. The 
Incarnation, the church, and the sacraments rest upon the same 
foundation. 

But does God's mercy dispense no grace outside of the sac- 
raments ? God's mercy is not tied to the sacraments, but or- 
dinarily he operates through their instrumentality. The sacra- 
ments were not instituted to hedge in the action of God's mercy. 
On the contrary, the sacraments were instituted by Christ in 
order that the precious gifts of God's mercy might be more 
freely distributed and more abundantly received. Christ alone 
is the inward reality of the church, of her sacraments, of her 
discipline, of her worship, and the church exists solely for her 
inward reality Christ. 

Neither should it be overlooked that when a church fails to 
supply sufficient external appliances and supports to spiritual 
truths and to the inward feelings of devotion awakened by grace, 
when her worship becomes colorless, then religion fails to ex- 
ert that influence over the minds and hearts of men which 
properly belongs to its sphere. And when religion fails to give 
to the great bulk of mankind that fair share of spiritual com- 
fort and inward satisfaction which men legitimately seek from 
it, they become restless, sad, and sour. The consciousness of 
spiritual destitution has led even the Unitarians to observe 
Christian festivals and decorate their religious structures with 
Christian art and with flowers ; while stiff Presbyterianism 
gives its reluctant consent to the introduction of the " kist o' 
whustles " into their places of divine worship in order to lend 
more attractiveness to their singing the praises of the Lord. It 
is to this reaction against the repudiation of the corporeal side 
of man's nature under the pretence of a spiritual Christianity 
can be traced the extravagances of ritualism, the crude efforts 
of Salvation Armies, and the rise of other disturbing elements. 

There is a heresy of the spirit, as there is a heresy of the 
forms, of religion. Both are mischievous, fatal to man's hap- 
piness, destructive of human society. Christ stigmatizes the par- 
tisans of both extremes as " fools." " Ye fools," he said, " did 
not He who made that which is without make that which is 
within also?" All attempts at separating the without from the 
within, or the within from the without, 'betray heretical tenden- 
cies and end in spiritual death. 



12 PROTESTANTISM VERSUS THE CuuRCir. [Oct., 

True religion, Christianity, takes human nature as ;ts Maker 
made it, and neither seeks its destruction nor to alter its constitu- 
tion. It is a radical misconception to suppose that the reception 
of the sacraments abases it. The sacraments are due to the wise 
provision of God to convey to men, in a way fitting to their na- 
ture, the grace of Christ. And the aim of Christ is the purifica- 
tion of human nature from all alien mixture, and, by its elevation 
to a higher plane of life, to enhance immeasurably its activity, 
its dignity, and its joy ! 

Behold the Catholic solution of the problem of the church 
question, and how Christ through her instrumentality remains 
upon earth and makes men Christians ! 

Men hold the state sacred ; and so it is. They can scarcely 
forgive those who revolt against the authority of the state. 
How great, then, must be the crime of those who revolt against 
the authority of the church of Christ ! 

Men whose intelligence has a controlling influence in the 
formation of their religious belief look upon Protestantism as 
being as destitute of an intellectual as it is of a moral basis. 
All the force it ever had was borrowed, and this is all spent, or 
nearly so. They have learned to cease to respect it as the re- 
presentative of Christianity. They see also clearly enough that 
he is on the wrong road who imagines that the age is seeking a 
new form of heresy. The age is weary of heresy, whether theo- 
logical, philosophical, or scientific. Men are sick as death of 
heresy, and heresy is in the last stages of consumption. What 
the age demands is more life, not less. Men seek fulness. The 
increasing tendency of the age is towards unity. 

They also misunderstand their age who fancy that the re- 
pudiation of sectarianism is a movement which ultimates itself 
in infidelity or free-religion. Men of our times distinguished 
for their intellectual gifts have committed this mistake, and now 
find themselves entrapped into the pits of agnosticism, scepticism, 
and positivism. But there is no rest for souls in these stray 
places. The age is awake to better things. The repudiation of 
sectarianism, with sound and healthy minds, is a movement for- 
ward to genuine Christianity. 

They, too, misinterpret the promise of the age who look for 
the solution of its problems to a new coming of Christ. Christ 
has come. Christ is here, now upon earth. Christ ever abides 
with men, according to his word. What the age promises is the 
rending asunder the clouds of error which hinder them from 
seeing that Christ is here. What the age promises and men 



1883.] A NINTH-CENTURY ANTIPHON. 13 

most need is the light to enable their eyes to see that the In- 
carnation involves Christ's indwelling presence in his church act- 
ing upon man and society through her agency until the con- 
summation of the world. Christ is here, and was never more so. 

The faces of upright men who best represent their age are 
set Christward. False Christianity has been forced to unmask 
itself. Men seek a closer fellowship with God. They ask to 
worship God in his very beauty, grandeur, and holiness. Some 
simply feel this. Some point out the way to it. Others are in 
the way. Others, again, have reached the goal ; these are the 
early-ripened stalks of the approaching rich harvest of God's 
church. 

Nothing less can satisfy the inmost desire of the soul, when 
once awakened, than truth in its wholeness and fulness. The 
mists of heresy are lifted up to make way for the glorious vision 
of the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth. 
The winter is past, the spring has come, and the voice of the 
turtle-dove is heard in the land. 



A NINTH-CENTURY ANTIPHON AND ITS COMPOSER. 

" Ecclesia Domini luce perfusa per orbem totum radios suos porrigit. Unum tamen 
lumen est, quod ubique diffunditur, nee unitas corporis separat. . . . Unum tamen cuput est, 
et origo una, et una mater fcecunditatis successibus copiosa." ST. CYPRIAN, De unit. Eccl.^ v. 

QUITE enough has already been said by well-equipped spe- 
cialists in disparagement of the spirit and the manner in which 
both Mr. Froude and Mr. Buckle deal with historical facts and 
difficulties which oppose their prejudices and jeopardize their 
conclusions. It is not our purpose, therefore, to offer still fur- 
ther proof of their mode of tampering with or exaggerating au- 
thenticated principles of history at variance with preconceived 
theories, but merely to note the fact that the judicial blindness 
which comes 'over men of such intellectual gifts illustrates the 
narrowing and destructive power of an historical school that is 
built up by suppressing perplexities and distorting truths in 
order to establish conclusions. While both these historians have 
been subjected to the searching criticism of Catholic and Pro 
testant writers, they are by no means the first or chief offenders 
against the recognized canons of historical investigation. The 
majority of Anglican critics who have exposed their unfairness 



14 A NINTH-CENTURY ANTIPHON [Oct., 

and inveighed against their fallacies have themselves, in the in- 
terpretation of the early ecclesiastical position of Britain, acted 
on the very principles which they have condemned, and accept- 
ed theories which destroy conventional usages and established 
institutions growing out of the great historical fact of Chris- 
tianity the supremacy of the see of Rome. When Henry VIII. 
and his obsequious parliaments had fully settled the question of 
the royal supremacy, by which " the king was to be the pope of 
his kingdom, the vicar of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, 
the channel of sacramental graces," * a system of church au- 
thority was bequeathed to the church of the realm thus severed 
from the centre of unity, the chair of Peter, which the state had 
the power to enforce, but which was soon recognized as so re- 
pugnant to ancient precedents that a novel line of defence was 
invented in justification of the then new order of ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction. Like Mr. Froude and Mr. Buckle, temporizing 
prelates adopted an ingenious but sophistical theory, which Dr. 
James Kent Stone f felicitously calls the " autocephalous theory " 
of the Anglican Establishment. The alleged independence of 
the early British church in ritual, as in jurisdiction, was an after- 
thought of the English revolt, and from that day to this it has 
formed an important part of historical controversies. Anglican 
writers no less able than Mr. Froude and Mr. Buckle have dis- 
played a like ingenuity in torturing every fact which lends an 
appearance of reality to the anomalous position of the Establish- 
ment, thoroughly English, thoroughly insular, and thoroughly 
modern. The spirit in which they have sought to energize a 
mythical theory devoid of light and life, by investigation of 
events antedating by centuries the usurpations of the royal 
supremacy, reminds one of the old story of the man who, when 
informed that the facts contradicted his theory, coolly remarked, 
" Tant pis pour les faits." 

Nothing in the whole history of Anglicanism strikes the Ca- 
tholic mind as more incongruous than the vehemence with which 
writers of ritualistic tendencies excuse and defend that strangest 
of liturgical medleys, the Book of Common Prayer. % Compiled 

*Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. p. 43. 

t The Invitation Heeded, p. 269. 

\ It is interesting to place side by side the thought of two Oxford men of a half-century ago, 
whose subsequent history is now well known : " I can see no other claim which the Prayer- 
Book has on a layman's deference, as the teaching of the church, which the Breviary- and Missal 
have not in a far greater degree" (R. H. Froude's Remains, vol. i. p. 402). " I do not wonder 
you should envy the Latin service-books, for anything more elevating and magnificent than the 
western ritual is not to be conceived. There is not such another glory upon the earth. It gives 
to men the tongues of angels, it images on its bosom the attitudes of heaven, and it catches 



1883.] AND ITS COMPOSER. 15 

in the main from various Catholic sources, the ancient missals, 
breviaries, and sacramentaries supplying all that is worthy of 
notice in its different offices, it nevertheless bears the unmistak- 
able traces of the compromising and Erastian spirit in which it 
was finally adopted as the ritual of the English Establishment. 
Its several parts are highly paradoxical, being sufficiently Ca- 
tholic to please the taste of High-Churchmen, and at the same 
time sufficiently Protestant to satisfy the piety of Evangelicals. 
While the advanced Anglican deplores the ultra-Protestant bias 
which Cranmer's Continental divines, Martin Bucer and Peter 
Martyr, gave to what his La^v-Church co-religionist calls the 
incomparable liturgy, yet it is his solace to glory in the Eastern 
sources whence he alleges the major part of it is derived. " All 
history," says a High-Church writer of " Tracts on the Prayer- 
Book, " " assigns to the British rites an oriental origin." * We look 
with no especial favor on what is called popular opinion as to any 
question, much less as to matters ecclesiastical ; but despite our 
distrust of what is merely popular, we must admit that facts 
sometimes enter into the traditions of society in regard to the 
Catholic Church which no special pleading of her acutest op- 
ponents can controvert. Of this character, in the current belief 
of all mankind save the Anglican body, is the question of the 
Catholic sources of the Book of Common Prayer. Such reflec- 
tions are awakened by the frequent inquiry of Anglicans as to 
the origin and authorship of the beautiful antiphon. Media Vita,\ 
an excellent translation of which is found in the burial service of 
both the English and American Book of Common Prayer : " In 
the midst of life we are in death : of whom may we seek for 
succor, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly dis- 
pleased ? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O 
holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter 
pains of eternal death." $ 

glorious shreds of echo from the eternal worship of the Lamb. It has a language of its own a 
language of symbols, more luminous, more mystical, more widely spread than any other lan- 
guage on the earth " (F. W. Faber's Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches, p. 614) . 

* The Prayer-Book not Romish, No. i. p. 9. 

tThe Rev. Frederick Gibson, of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Baltimore, in answering an 
inquiry made in a former number of the Churchman as to the authorship of Media Vita, says 
in the issue of April 12, 1879, p. 404 (the italics are his) : " This antiphon, introduced into the 
Sarum service book soon after its compilation, but never received into any part of the Roman 
Breviary, is one among many proofs that our ancient English books are independent of the 
Roman, though kindred to them." If this is a sample of the " many proofs " which satisfy An- 
glican critics, it takes but little evidence to convince them. 

J ' Media vita in morte sumus ; quern qua^rimus adjutorem, nisi te Domine, qui pro pec- 
catis nostris juste irasceris ? Sancte Deus, sancte fortis, sancte et misericors Salvator, amara- 
morti ne tradas nos." 



1 6 A NINTH-CENTURY ANTJPIION [Oct., 

St. Gall,* an Irish monk and disciple of St. Columbanus of 
Bangor, who had declined to follow his apostolic countryman 
into Italy, founded near Lake Constance, in Switzerland, the 
celebrated monastery which bore his name. A few humble huts, 
constructed on the confines of vast forests haunted by bears and 
wolves, at first sheltered the little community from the incle- 
mency of the seasons, but in time they disappeared, and in their 
stead arose the walls of that magnificent monastic school, des- 
tined to live in history among the great abbeys of the middle 
ages, with Bobbio and Fulda, with Monte Cassino and Cluni, 
which conferred such incomparable benefits on literature and 
civilization : 

" He founded here his convent and his rule 

Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer; 
His pen became a clarion, and his school 
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air." f 

Mediaeval history has preserved the fame and grandeur of its 
early name, around which are gathered associations, traditions, 
and legends whose diverse and complex interests are full of 
fascination for the antiquary and of affection and awe for the 
hagiologist. Before the death of its saintly founder, in the early 
part of the seventh century, St. Gall had become a centre of 
Christian life and thought in the Germanic world. \ No less 
than five monks named Notker are numbered among its illus- 
trious scholars. Some writers have so confounded one or other 
of these with the author of Media Vita, who was canonized by 
Pope Innocent III., that it is important to give a list of the four 
who also bear the name of Notker, in order to guard against the 
mistakes which others have made. They are Notker, surnamed 
Physicus, who was both painter and musician, and for a time 
physician at the court of Otho I. ; another, of- whom little is 
known, is said to have been abbot of St. Gall ; a third, Notker 
Provost, or Notger, who flourished about the year A.D. 1000, was 

*"Gall" and "Callus," the names by which this monk is usually known, were merely 
corrupt forms of " Gael " the Irishman the name he himself loved to be called. In the same 
way Columbanus is the Latinized form of Colm ban, two Gaelic words signifying "the Fair 
Dove " ; just as that other Irish apostle, who brought Christianity among the Saxons by 
disciples who went out from his foundation at lona, was known as Calm cille, " the Dove of the 
Cells," on account of the great number of monastic communities subject to him. 

t Longfellow's " Monte Cassino." 

J Ozanam's Etudes Germamques, ii. 123. " 

Butler says: " Sigebert and Honoratus confound Notker with Notger, Bishop of Liege, 
who lived a century later, and who was not, as they imagine, abbot of St. Gall. It is equally an 
error to confound him with Notker Labeon and Notker the Physician, who had been in the 
same monastery" (Lives of the Saints , vol. iv. p. 163, note). 



1883.] AND ITS COMPOSER. 17 

bishop of Liege and author of a Life of St. Remains ; a fourth, called 
Notker Labeo, or Teutonius, who died about A.D. 1002, was the 
most celebrated of all these, save the author of Media Vita. He 
excelled in many branches of learning- and enjoyed great repute 
as painter, poet, astronomer, and mathematician. Possessing the 
diligence and industry of the cloister, he made many translations 
of the sacred and profane writers. The manuscript of his trans- 
lation of the Psalms into High German is still extant, and is 
regarded by bibliographers as one of the most valuable monu- 
ments of the oldest German prose.* The work is printed in 
Schilter's T/eesaurus. 

How beautiful even to our modern, prosaic eyes, accustomed 
to the garish lights of publicity in all that we do and in all that 
we say, are the simple and unostentatious accounts which the 
monastic annalists have given us of the good old monks, so 
cheerful in temper, so liberal in heart, and so unobtrusive in 
life ! How serene and peaceful in the picture of mediaeval 
Europe stand the monastic communities, undisturbed by turbu- 
lence from without or by anxieties from within, regulating the 
daily round of cloistral duties by punctual obedience to rule, 
which allotted, with wise economy, an appropriate portion of 
time to the sacred offices of the choir, the learned labors of the 
scriptorium, and the manual exercises of the field, thus pursuing 
in undeviating diligence from generation to generation their 
appropriate work for religion and society ! Happy, tranquil 
spirits, with no other aspiration than to do their duty in humility, 

" Plying their daily task with busier feet 
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat," t 

and, when it is done, content to lie down in forgotten graves 
with that vast monastic brotherhood whose very names have 
long since faded from the records of earth ! Brave, noble souls, 
who in unselfish love wrought with brain and hand that other 
ages might enter in and possess the heritage of their labors with 
little thought of the nameless sleepers of centuries ago, who sang 
the praises of God, deciphered the almost obliterated parchment 
page, and reclaimed the wild morass ! But in every human 
epoch 

" Strongest minds 

Are often those of whom the noisy world 

Hears least." I 

* Pierer's Universal-Lexikon, band xii. p. 141, sub Notker. 

tKeble's Christian Year. St. Matthew's Day. J Word :\vorth's " Excursion," book i. 

VOL. XXXVIII. 2 



1 8 A NINTH-CENTURY ANTIPHON [Oct , 

Such an one is St. Notker, author of the antiphon Media Vita, 
one of the most interesting characters in the history of the old 
abbey of St. Gall, whose figure is seen high among the lights 
which shone above the intellectual horizon towards the sunset of 
the ninth century. His career is especially noteworthy because 
it extends by some dozen years into that age which Baronius* 
calls iron from its barrenness of good, leaden from its hideousness 
of superabounding evil, dark from its scarcity of writers, and in 
which Muratori, adopting the first characteristic given to it by 
his illustrious predecessor, finds grounds for thankfulness to God 
for his own times not, indeed, that these were exempt from vices 
and abuses, but that they were golden in comparison with the 
tenth century : " Motivi a noi di ringraziar Dio, perch& ci abbia 
riserbati ai tempi presenti, non gia esenti dai vizi ed abusi ; ma 
tempi aurei in paragone di quelli." f The life of a simple monk, 
whose days are passed in a seclusion remote from the eye of the 
world and in the exercise of those qualities of mind and heart 
which test the gift of vocation, possesses few of the striking 
features of detail which captivate the pen of the modern biogra- 
pher and the interest of the modern reader. The lights and 
shadows which lend beauty to the picture of a career spent in 
the discussions of the public arena with its ardent ambitions and 
triumphs, or in the intellectual pursuits of authorship with its 
keen jealousies and defeats, are almost wholly wanting in the 
representation of the life of the monastic. His is an interior 
career which seeks no combat save that which lies within the' 
subjugation of self ; no victory save that over his own nature. 
He is called to a state of repose whose highest condition is what 
the biographer of St. Maurus calls " sum ma quies"\ It is the 
antithesis of those mental and moral perturbations and rivalries 
which play a prominent part in the world of action and of 
thought, and give to the narration of biography an artistic 
splendor and a potent fascination. In our day art and artist are 
one. We cannot dissociate the creation of the author from the 
varied influences in his life of which that creation is the visible 
outcome. All art is the product of an environment made up of 
biographical details which shed light on criticism. In the de- 

* " En incipit annus Redemptoris nongentesimus, tcrtia Indictione notatus, quo et novum 
inchoatur faeculum, quod sui asperitate, ac boni sterilitate ferreum, malique exundantis deformi- 
tate plumbeum, atque inopia scriptorum appellari consuevit obscurum" (Anna/. Eccles. ad 
arm. 900). 

f " Secolo di ferro, pieno d'iniquitd in Italia per la smoderata corruzion dei costumi non 
meno ne' secolari, che negli Ecclesiastic! " (Annul. cTItalia t ann. 900). 

{ Mabillon, Act. Benedict^ t. iv. p. 37. 



1883.] AND ITS COMPOSER. 19 

velopment of man lie the growth and prevalence of sentiments 
and principles of which authorship is the exponent. Personality 
is nothing more than the manifestation of the relations between 
character and circumstance, and art the transformation into ideal 
forms of the philosophy of life and conduct. The opinion of 
Voltaire may appear grand as principle, but it is worthless as 
criticism: "Je ne considere les gens apres leur mort, que par 
leurs ouvrages ; tout le reste est aneanti pour moi." In certain 
aspects of monastic life, allowing for individuality of tepmera- 
ment and condition, there is a oneness of aim and pursuit which 
unifies growth and controls aberration. Biographical details, 
however valuable in reaching critical estimates of men who have 
figured in literature, science, and art, lose importance in a survey 
of writers developed under monastic rule; for unity of situation, 
purpose, and life produces unity of result. The career of one , 
modified by limitations of epoch and country, is apparently the 
career of all who have not been called by public exigency or 
peculiar fitness to exchange the cell and the cowl for the palace 
and the mitre. 

The life of St. Notker forms no exception to this general 
monastic principle of which we have been speaking. It presents 
none of those piquant and romantic episodes which enhance the 
interest. of the reader with something of the charm of an histori- 
cal novel. It is comparatively barren of incident, and but for 
the fact of his place in the sacred calendar and the circum- 
stances which gave rise to his celebrated antiphon his name would 
lie in the dusty tomes of great libraries, among the forgotten 
worthies whose good deeds and works would only be appre- 
ciated by scholars who delve into the records of ecclesiastical 
chroniclers. Beyond a few facts gathered together by the annal- 
ists who revered his memory, and the pious traditions which 
cluster about it, we know but little of his early days. The 
exact date of his birth is uncertain, but the majority of wri- " 
ters whose opinions on mediaeval subjects are worthy of con- 
sideration represent him as the senior in age by some months of 
his friend and patron, Charles le Gros, the last emperor of the 
Carlovingian dynasty. They agree in dating his birth about 
the year A.D. 830. His native village was situated in the old 
province of Thurgovia, in Helvetia, which, at the disruption of 
the vast empire founded and held intact by the splendid genius 
of Charlemagne, was divided, and the present canton of Thurgau 
became a part of the dominion of Louis of Bavaria, So St. 
Notker was, in the parlance of our day, a German Switzer. Hi.> 



2o A NINTH-CENTURY ANTIPHON [Oct., 

lineage was both ancient and noble. Following the custom of 
his age and country, St. Notker was trained from youth in a 
monastic school. Dedicated to the service of God from child- 
hood, the neighboring monastery of St. Gall, but a short dis- 
tance from his ancestral estate, was his home from the period at 
which he left the paternal roof until called, at the advanced age 
of eighty-two, to sleep in everlasting rest with the soft tranquil- 
lity of an innocent child. Divers were the out door occupations 
which filled up the hours of recreation among the monks of St. 
Gall. Fruit-trees were to be planted or pruned, gardens to be 
seeded or worked, and nets to be woven or tended when spread 
for fish or birds. In these various pursuits the monastic dis- 
ciples assisted their masters, who combined, as in our industrial 
and agricultural schools, both mental and manual labor. Sur- 
rounded by beauties, always fresh and always new, which keep 
the poetry of life unvexed by art, towering Alp and shimmering 
lake breaking the monotony of the landscape, 

" Unquiet childhood here by special grace 
Forgets her nature, opening like a flower 
That neither feeds nor wastes its vital power 
In painful struggles."* 

Sweet to eye and to heart must have been the face of St. Not- 
ker as a child among such scenes of Arcadian beauty and mon- 
astic piety. Gray-headed monks too old for work, who crept 
with infirm step about the cloisters of St. Gall, noticed the 
demure little boy of quiet manners and studious ways, whom 
they surnamed Balbulus the stammerer from an impediment 
in his speech. Some, of larger insight into human character 
than their aged brothers whose faculties were dimmed by weight 
of years, discovered in the sensitive boy a poetic fervor, supple- 
mented by a humility of spirit almost preternatural in one so 
young. Under the direction of Ison and Marcellus, his instruc- 
tors, and in communion with pure souls bound to each other by 
that most enduring and ennobling of all ties, the profession of a 
higher theory of life than that which prevailed in the world, St. 
Notker advanced in the sphere of human knowledge and in the 
wisdom of the saints. Among his fellow-disciples, who always 
held him in tender affection, was Salomon, afterwards bishop of 
Constance. When the period had arrived for the fulfilment of 
the special purposes of his monastic training he made his re- 
ligious vows, and from that time forward we find him pursuing 

* Wordsvorth's Poems o/ Imagination, part iii. No. 16. 



1883.] AND ITS COMPOSER. 21 

with ardor and devotion the every-day duties in the life of a 
monk of the ninth century. Possessing talents of a high order, 
which claimed greater scope for development than that afforded 
in the mere routine of transcribing sacred or profane writers, he 
spent much of the time usually given to that kind of labor in 
original composition, and became distinguished as a scholar, 
poet, and musician. 

But although so richly endowed with mental gifts differing 
from, or superior to, those of his associates, St. Notker was never 
neglectful in the performance of his full share of work, both in 
the garden and in the scriptorium. Like the true monk as well 
as the true poet, he loved nature and understood the tranquil- 
lizing power which lives in her majestic symbols. Her book, 
wherein he read the mystical meaning in which things earthly 
prefigure things heavenly, lay open to his mind and heart.* 
After the manner of St. Ephrem, who saw the sign of the cross 
in the outstretched wings of the tiniest bird, or of St. Dunstan, 
who heard the melody of the antiphon Gaudete in Ccelis when 
the wind swept the strings of his harp suspended on the wall, 
St. Notker, moved by the sound of the slow revolutions of a mill- 
wheel in midsummer when the water was low, wrote the words 
and music of his hymn, Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia. When 
a messenger of his friend and admirer, Charles le Gros affection- 
ately called " our Charles " by the monks arrived at St. Gall on 
a spiritual mission in behalf of the emperor, he found St. Notker 
weeding and watering the herbs in the garden. The interview 
was brief and the lesson taught suggested by the lowly occupa- 
tion in which he was engaged. "Tell the emperor to do what 
I am now doing," was the saint's reply. Hearing the advice, 
Charles at once caught its import and said : " Ah ! yes, that is the 
sum of all: destroy the weeds of vice and water the herbs of 
grace." On another occasion during a visit of Charles le Gros, 
who delighted in the companionship of the monks, the evidence 
of confidence and love shown towards St. Notker excited the 
envy of the chaplain who attended the emperor, and he deter- 
mined to revenge himself by jeering at the stammering speech 
of the saint and by perplexing him with knotty questions. Ap- 
proaching St. Notker, who was composing sacred melodies on 
his psaltery, the chaplain of Charles addressed him : " Master ! 
solve for us a point in theology, we pray you. What is God 

* In one of his homilies St. Chryso?tom beautifully illustrates the wisdom of God in calling 
the Magi, not by prophet, not by apostle, not by scripture, but by a star, as their art related to 

the Stars, and adds : 'AAV IITO TUC oixcuoixcai awrpojxav irpayfiaTuiV afi/iarai rq; irAarr)? avrovf. . 



22 A NINTH-CENTURY ANTIPIION [Oct., 

doing now ? " The attendants of the jealous and conceited in- 
quirer, knowing the secret purpose of the question, were as- 
tonished at the promptness and wisdom of the reply : " God is 
doing now," said the saint, " what he has done in all past ages, 
and what he will continue to do as long as the world lasts: he 
is setting down the proud and exalting the humble." 

St. Notker was a central figure among the transcribers and 
illuminators of manuscripts in the spacious scriptorium of St. 
Gall, in which quiet reigned because all the busy monks were 
intent upon their special work: 

"Against the windows' adverse light, 
Where desks were wont in length of row to stand,. 
Tne gowned artificers inclined to write ; 
The pen of silver glistened in the hand ; 
Some on their fingers rhyming Latin scanned ; 
Some textile gold from balls unwinding drew, 
And on strained velvet stately portraits planned ; 
Here arms, there faces, shone in embryo view : 
At last to glittering life the total figure grew." * 

As a collator St. Notker was zealous and accurate, and his ser- 
vices were of incalculable value to the library of St. Gall. 
Through intercourse with the learned men of his times he be- 
came acquainted with the character and contents of other libra- 
ries than that of his own community, and by such knowledge he 
was enabled to procure copies of scarce manuscripts or to bor- 
row them for transcription. From Liutward, Bishop of Ver- 
celli a Ghibelline city of northern Italy, whose episcopal see 
dates back to the fourth century, and whose cathedral library is 
rich in ancient manuscripts he received a copy of the Canonical 
Letters in Greek, which he copied with his own hand. 

It is painful to think that such a man as St. Notker, whose sim- 
plicity of character and sweetness of disposition are the themes 
of panegyric with the historians of the abbey of St. Gall, did not 
escape the envious promptings which stirred the bosom of Sin- 
dolphe, a brother of the same community. Allowing for the 
natural glow of enthusiasm which would animate the portrait- 
ure drawn by a monk of St. Gall three centuries after the close 
of the earthly career of the saint, other evidence is not want- 
ing in confirmation of the testimony of Eckehard, who says that 
"no one ever saw him unless either reading, writing, or pray- 
ing; he wrote many spiritual songs; he was the most hum- 

* Fosbrooke's lirttish Maiiac/tism, Economy of Monastic Life, part ii p. 529 



1883.] AND ITS COMPOSER. 23 

ble and meek of men, and most holy." * We sometimes find 
in the cloister, as in secular life, that men of dissimilar tastes and 
talents are often attracted to each other by the very dissimilitude 
which at first sight appears incompatible with the ordinary no- 
tions of gravitation in the moral and intellectual world. Asso- 
ciated with St. Notker from the date of his novitiate were Rat- 
pert and Tutilon, two monks wholly unlike the saint in temper 
and character, yet among them there had grown an affectionate 
regard for each other which had never been chilled by open 
strife or secret distrust. Common aims and common dangers 
shared together seem to have softened those little asperities, fre- 
quently united with quick feelings, which are yet not inconsistent 
with holiness of life. But this union of confidence and affection 
awakened in Sindolphe a suspicion that it had some other mo- 
tives than those which appeared on the surface. In his igno- 
rance and jealousy he attempted to poison the mind of the abbot 
against them, but the latter had sounded the shallowness of Sin- 
dolphe's undisciplined will, and took no heed of his insinuations. 
Tutilon, learning of these wayward acts, was watchful of his 
foolish brother, and soon found means to administer a wholesome 
lesson. St. Notker and the two monks had repaired together 
on one occasion to the scriptorium for study, and Sindolphe, 
believing that he might overhear something which would con- 
vince the abbot of their unworthiness, secreted himself under 
the window outside and placed his ear close to listen to their 
conversation. Tutilon, keen-eyed and alert, observed the action, 
and, sending the sweet-tempered Notker into the chapel, per- 
suaded Ratpert to take a whip, and, coming up softly to the un- 
suspecting Sindolphe, to beat him severely ; while Tutilon, open- 
ing the window, seized him by the head, calling for lights that 
he might see the face of Satanas, who had come hither with evil 
intent. Besides his bodily chastisement, which amused even the 
grave abbot, the unamiable monk had to endure a still further 
penance in the well-merited raillery of the community of St. 
Gall. But whatever may have been the peculiar trials to which 
the conduct of Sindolphe subjected St. Notker, it is pleasant to 
believe that they were unable to destroy his high serenity or to 
tarnish his purity of soul, as in later times the advocatus dioboli 
was unable to present evidence which in any way interfered with 
his being a saint. In his long career many honors commensu- 
rate with his talents and vocation came to him, but in meekness 
of spirit he turned away from them all, even the episcopal dig- 

* Eckehard, Mtn. in Vita. 



24 A NINTH CENTURY ANTITHON [Oct., 

nity more than once pressed upon him, to pursue the humble 
path of a simple monk. As an author his fame spread abroad, 
and he was remarkable for the variety and extent of his erudi- 
tion. On this account certain writings continue to this day to be 
wrongly attributed to him, notably among these the Gesta Caroli 
Magni. He compiled a life of St. Gall in verse, and wrote a 
martyrology "which he chiefly collected," says Butler, "from 
Ado and Rabanus Maurus, and which was for a long time made 
use of in most of the German churches."* His skill in music 
found expression in many sequences and proses which estab- 
lished his reputation as a master of ecclesiastical chant, and his 
small treatise on the value of letters in music is still extant in 
the Scriptores ot Gerbert. Ruodbert, Archbishop of Metz, re- 
quested him to compose a hymn in honor of St. Stephen to be 
used at the opening of a church dedicated to the proto-martyr. 
He complied, and accompanied it with these words: " Sick and 
stammering, and full of evil, I Notker, unworthy, have sung the 
triumph of Stephen with my polluted mouth, at the desire of 
the prelate. May Ruodbert, who has in a young body the pru- 
dent heart of a venerable man, see a long life full of merits ! " 

The voice of the thoughtful monk, who had chastened his soul 
in solitude and turned a deaf ear to human applause, has gone 
out into all the earth and his words unto the ends of the world. 
The antiphon Media Vita in worte sumns, which commemorates 
the insecurity of life and the certainty of death, has preserved 
the name of the severe ascetic in the literature of the church and 
among those who have ceased to be partakers of the lot of the 
saints. It was sung for centuries at St. Gall, and formed part of 
the solemn supplications every year in Rogation week during a 
religious procession to an awe-inspiring region situated between 
two mountains and spanned by a bridge beneath which the roar- 
ing torrent dashed over the sullen rocks. Peak to peak rever- 
berated the penitential song of the monks, until its last echoes 
died away among the lofty summits, of Alpine solitudes. The 
antiphon soon spread over Europe and thrilled the hearts of pil- 
grims from the stern regions of the inhospitable north and from 
the vine-clad shores of the blue Mediterranean. Sung by Crusa- 
ders, it stirred the most listless and apathetic on the eve ol con- 
flict, and at the close of day it was a prayer for protection 
through the awful perils of the night. So profoundly had it 
moved the mediaeval world that it was heard in the ranks of 
opposing armies going to battle. But by and by the imagina- 

* Lives of the Saints, vol. iv. p. 163. 



1883.] AND ITS COMPOSER. 25 

tion of the ignorant began to invest it with a sort of supersti- 
tious charm, which led the Synod of Cologne, in 1316, to inhibit 
its use except by express permission of a bishop. Two accounts 
of its origin, slightly differing in detail, have been given by 
monastic annalists, and both are in harmony with the moral 
vision of St. Notker, through which the lowliest and the loftiest 
aspects of nature were solemnized to religious uses : 

" The animating faith 
That poets, even as prophets, . . . 
Have each his own peculiar faculty, 
Heaven's gift, a sense that fits him to perceive 
Objects unseen before." * 

The monks of St. Gall made frequent excursions into the 
neighboring country, some for recreation, some on missions of 
mercy, and others for herbs and flowers which clung about rocky 
projections or grew in mountain recesses perilous of ascent. 
Their circuit of ordinary travel, hedged in by a snowy palisade 
of Alps, abounded in scenery of infinite variety and grandeur. 
The earliest version of the origin of the antiphon is that, during 
one of these rambles in the wild region of the chasm of Martis- 
toble, St. Notker was drawn thither by the sound of the hammers 
of workmen engaged in the construction of a bridge across the 
yawning abyss. The spectacle of the masons suspended over 
this awful gulf on movable scaffolding, adjusted by means of 
ropes which swayed to and fro by the very motion of their 
bodies, presented to the mind of the saint a realistic picture of 
the uncertainty of life, and suggested the train of pious thought 
elaborated in his great antiphon. 

The flora of the mountain ranges and the outstretching val- 
leys was pretty well understood by the monastic herbalists, who 
had traversed the whole region on foot and given to some of the 
plants and flowers the names which they retain, although in a 
corrupted form. Between the pages of well-used manuscripts 
preserved in the libraries of religious houses are still traceable 
the dim, faint outlines of the rare flowers gathered, perhaps, from 
rocks and ravines seldom touched by human foot save that of the 
monk, and in this way the delicate petals and stems were dried 
for the hortus siccus of the monastery. The monks w ere physi- 
cians of both body and soul. They made many discoveries in 
the medicinal -properties of herbs which entered largely into the 
practice of the healing art. The sampetra, or samphire plant, 
well known in Great Britain, was highly esteemed for its aro- 

* Wordsworth's "Prelude," book xiii. 



26 A NINTH-CENTURY ANTIPHON [Oct., 

matic and curative qualities. It grows on rocky cliffs and pro- 
montories the sight of which almost confuses the vision and makes 
the brain reel. Shakspere, by a few touches, paints the appalling 
dangers of the hunter of samphire in the inimitable scene be- 
tween Edgar and the eyeless Gloucester, in which the unhappy 
earl is led to believe that he is ascending the chalky cliff ol 
Dover, there to shake his great affliction off : 

" How fearful 

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low ! 
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air 
Show scarce so gross as beetles ; half way down 
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade ! 
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. 
The fishermen that walk upon the beach 
Appear like mice ; and yond' tall anchoring bark, 
Diminished to her cock ; her cock, a buoy 
Almost too small for sight : the murmuring surge, 
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, 
Cannot be heard so high." * 

The second account of the composition of Media Vita relates 
that the clinging form of an adventurous gatherer of the plant, 
hugging, as it were between life and death, a precipitous rock 
which juts over the very edge of the torrent below, his body at 
one moment wrapt in a violet mist, then apparently within -the 
full sweep of the foaming spray, so pierced the imagination of St. 
Notker that not only the words but even the hieasured move- 
ment of the original melody of the antiphon sprang spontaneous- 
ly from his awe-struck soul. 

Of the career of its composer but little more remains to be 
told. St. Notker was now an octogenarian and the weariness 
of years weighed heavily upon him. The animation that had 
lighted up his face in the flush of manhood was gone, his eyes 
were hollow, and his flesh was wasted with the long" conflict of 
life. His body, frail and shrunken, was scarcely equal to its 
functions, and the intellectual fibre, once so strong and vigorous, 
was worn out. The candle was burnt to the end and its dying 
light fluttered in the socket. In his own person was fulfilled the 
prophecy of old : " The days of our age are threescore years and 
ten ; though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, 
yet is their strength then but labor and sorrow." The verdure 
of spring, so grateful to the languid eyes of the sick m:m, had 
now begun to clothe valley and hill with its richness. Winter 

* " King Lear,'' act iv. sc. vi. 



1883.] AND ITS COMPOSER. 27 

was relaxing its icy hold, and nature, like a young giant re- 
freshed with sleep, was putting forth the strength and fulness of 
life. Even the coldness of the snow-crowned Alps seemed to 
decrease under the lustre and warmth of a vernal sun. The 
quickening influences of reawakened nature, which touched all 
visible forms with the glory of resurrection, made no impression 
on the attenuated frame of the saintly ascetic stretched on his 
narrow couch. His mission was nearly accomplished, and only 
the feeble pulsations showed that life was not quite extinct. The 
morning of the 6th of April, A.D. 912, wore away as usual in the 
cloisters of St. Gall, and no change was apparent in the face of 
the dying monk; but when silence and night settled over the sor- 
row-stricken community the joy of eternal day had dawned on the 
vision of the saint. So quietly and peacefully came his release 
from the earthly tenement that none knew the moment when 
he ceased to breathe. If we would realize the greatness of such 
a saintly character in its completeness, we must remember that 
St. Notker closed his career in the second decade of a century 
rife with ecclesiastical scandals and abuses without a parallel in 
the history of the church. It is not unreasonable to believe that 
such men as the author of Media Vita, with ken quickened and 
outlook widened in the high spiritual plane in which they dwelt, 
discerned the beginnings of those moral evils and human perver- 
sities which menaced religion and society. When encompassed 
by such calamities, foretold by our Lord, where did they look for 
consolation, where seek a refuge, but under the shadow of the 
divine promise given for all ages and for all conditions of the 
world? " Upon this rock 1 will build my church, and the gates 
of hell shall not prevail against it."* In better and purer times 
the life and example of the monk of St. Gall engaged the thought 
of the church, and he was canonized by a pope whom Mr. Ed- 
mund S. Ffoulkes regards as "one of the most eminent and exact 
canonists that ever adorned the chair of St. Peter." f 

In an age like ours, full of novelty and discontent, we turn 
with greater confidence of edification to the saintly exponents of 
the ancient faith than to the eloquent teachers of the new, 
because they have exercised themselves with the weightiest 
interests involved in the destiny of man. It is this fact that 
makes their career and their words a perpetual benediction, ever 
present and ever operative amid the perplexing enigmas of life. 
The universal law of pain and of death, the vehement play of 
passion and the remorse of guilt, the misunderstanding of friends 

* St. Matt. xvi. 18. f Christendom's Divisions, part ii. p. 200. 



28 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

ami the separation of kindred, the pangs and desolation of be- 
reavement that rend the soul these and a thousand lesser ills 
that Iret and torture are subdued or elevated when measured by 
tHfe supernatural gifts revealed in the lives of the saints. "So 
long as people were conscious of possessing themselves an in- 
terior moral force they believed the possibility of its existence in 
other men," says an historian of St. Gall, " and valued this mode 
of dying to the world, partly as an example of high self-command 
of taking up the cross to follow Christ, and partly as the ope- 
ration of a deep conviction and of an all-subduing faith. But 
when they no longer felt themselves strong for moral efforts 
they ceased to believe that others were capable of making them, 
and loved rather to persuade themselves that such strength had 
its origin in an aberration of the intellect."* 



THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 

ONE mild, moonlight night in April, 1648, the Jesuit mission- 
ary Father Daniel reached the western shore of Lake Huron. 
His well-worn shoes and tattered cassock told that he had jour- 
neyed many a league, and, seeing near by a bed of moss, he was 
fain to lie down and pray himself to sleep, lulled by the voice of 
the whip poor-wills. And while he slept the expression of weari- 
ness passed from his face ; he smiled ; his lips murmured words of 
delight, for a golden vision had arisen before him. Again he was 
in his far-off ancestral home in Normandy ; strains of sweet music 
fell on his ear; he beheld dear friends beckoning him to come to 
them ; his father and mother, too, he beheld. In fact, all that 
might go to make life on earth a paradise came before him in 
this tempting, intoxicating dream. But by and by in the sky 
overhead appeared a great, flaming cross ; onward through the 
air it slowly moved toward the west, then just ere it disappeared 
below the horizon Father Daniel awoke. He opened his eyes 
with a look of bewilderment, as if he could not realize where he 
was, and as he gazed about him he heard the melancholy howl 
of a wolf. But presently the truth burst upon him: more than 
a thousand leagues he was from dear old France, alone in the 
wilderness of North America. Then, making the sign of the 

* Geschichte des S. Gall, ii. 205. 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 29 

cross, he said aloud: "Ad majorem Dei gloriam." While he 
was wondering how long he had been asleep he heard, besides 
the howl of a wolf, the sound of a human voice among the 
bushes, and in another moment an Indian stepped forth into the 
moonbeams. He was tricked out in his war-paint; in his right 
hand he carried a tomahawk, and a solitary scalp dangled from 
his waist. " You are doubtless one of the pale-face medicine-men 
from the mysterious land of the rising sun," spoke the savage ; 
" otherwise you would not be resting here so peacefully with- 
out any arms to protect you." " I carry this, and I have no 
fear,". answered the priest, rising to his feet and holding up a 
little crucifix. Atsan for such was the other's name smiled, 
then asked whither he was going. 

" To Ossossan6," replied Father Daniel. " There I hope to 
found a mission of the holy church and to teach the red men to 
love one another." 

" Well, I hope that the Hurons of Ossossane will listen to 
you," said Atsan, " for then they will forget how to be warriors; 
they will become squaws, and my tribe will easily vanquish 
them." " Pray, to what tribe do you belong?" inquired the mis- 
sionary. 

" I am an Iroquois," said Atsan proudly. 

"An Iroquois?" echoed Father Daniel, who felt a cold 
stream through his veins at this much-dreaded name. , " Well, 
is this the first year that you are a brave ? For I perceive that 
you have taken only one scalp. Or are vou weary of shedding 
blood ? " 

" I might have girdled my loins with scalps," said the Iro- 
quois ; "but for a secret reason I have vowed during twelve 
moons to kill no more Hurons." "You interest me; there is 
some romance in you," continued Father Daniel, taking him by 
the hand. " And while I am going to preach the faith among 
those whom you" call your enemies, yet I trust to meet you 
again." 

" It is possible we may meet again," said Atsan. " And when 
that day arrives I shall perhaps tell you why my tomahawk re- 
fuses now to strike any Hurons." " Well, is it far to Ossos- 
sane?" inquired the priest. "It is half a day's march." "Oh! 
that seems a very short distance to one who has trudged all the 
way Irom Quebec," said Father Daniel, smiling. " I have taken 
two whole moons to get where I am." 

" If you like I shall keep you company part of the way to 
Ossossane," pursued the Iroquois; "for there are more wolves 



30 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. '[Oct., 

than one roving through the forest, and you are too brave a pale- 
face to be devoured by the wolves." Accordingly, as day was 
beginning to break, the missionary resumed his journey to the 
chief town of the Huron nation, and, as he spoke the Iroquois 
tongue pretty well, he endeavored to give some instruction in 
the faith to his swarthy companion. He spoke in simple, win- 
ning language, and when at length they separated within a 
couple of miles of the journey's end they had become quite good 
friends. "The Iroquois medicine-men are wise," were Atsan's 
parting words, " but they are not like you : they teach us not to 
love our enemies." 

Some Hurons of Ossossan6, who had been on a trading ex- 
pedition to Quebec the previous summer, had brought back 
word that Father Daniel might shortly establish a mission among 
them, as Father de Br6beuf and Father Jogues had already done 
in other places along Lake Huron. His appearance, therefore, 
this April day was not altogether unexpected. Still, the excite- 
ment and curiosity were great when Father Daniel passed 
through the palisade which surrounded the town, and at the 
head of the multitude who advanced to meet him were the chief 
sachem, Ontitarho, his handsome daughter, Weepanee, and a 
noted medicine-man, or wizard, named Okitori. The last had a 
vicious countenance and scowled when he saw the priest bow to 
the maiden, who wore about her neck a string of party-colored 
shells, and whose loose, dark hair, which fell to her waist, was 
adorned with discs of shining copper. Almost the first question 
which Ontitarho put to Father Daniel was whether he had met 
any Iroquois on his way through the wilderness ; and when the 
latter frankly owned that he had met one solitary individual of 
that tribe the previous night, the other Indians drew nearer to 
him and listened with eager ears. It was evident that the mis- 
sionary had imparted startling news, for where one of this ruth- 
less tribe was found lurking there must needs be others; and 
immediately the trembling squaws declared that they were afraid 
to venture beyond the stockade to prepare the corn-land. For 
stretching along the lake for the distance of a mile was a strip 
of uncommonly fertile soil, and no better corn could be seen any- 
where than the co:n which was grown by these industrious 
Huron women. 

Weepanee alone appeared calm and unconcerned, and ex- 
pressed her willingness to sally forth and hoe her father's patch 
of ground. Whereupon the chief shook his head, and Okitori 
again frowned when he heard Father Daniel say: "Of such as 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 31 

you, Weepanee, I hope that my Christian flock may be com- 
posed ; you have a fearless heart." 

" To-morrow," spoke Ontitarho " unless the enemy in the 
meanwhile shows himself to-morrow you may go forth and till 
my land. But to-day you must stay and help to build the 
Blackrobe a mission-house." Accordingly with willing hands 
Weepanee assisted in this good work. Hundreds of men and 
women were thus busily employed, and by the time evening; 
arrived there was a not unseemly structure ready for Father 
Daniel to occupy. It was seventy feet long, composed of bark 
laid, over an arched, arbor-like frame ; in the walls were nume- 
rous crevices which served for ventilation, and through the roof 
was a hole for the smoke to escape. Father Daniel himself made 
a cross of two hickory boughs, which he placed as far as possible 
from the smoke-hole ; and if he had no bell wherewith to summon 
his flock to prayers, he was furnished with a tin kettle which had 
found its way here from the French settlements on the St. Law- 
rence, and which made a pretty loud noise when he struck it 
with the stick of copper which Weepanee gave him. " I am 
glad that you are pleased with what we have done for you," 
spoke Weepanee just as the sun was setting. " Indeed I am," 
answered the priest. " And although this is not the first mission 
which the church has established among your people, I hope 
that it will surpass the others in numbers and in zeal." " I 
heard you say," pursued Weepanee, now lowering her voice to 
a whisper, " that you had met on your way hither a solitary Iro- 
quois brave; pray describe him to me." 

" He was tall and fine-looking, and carried himself like a war- 
rior," replied Father Daniel. " Yet he could boast of only one 
scalp." 

"Are you sure? Only one scalp?" said Weepanee, ill con- 
cealing her emotion, which the wizard's keen eyes observed 
from a distance. Indeed, since morning Okitori had held aloof 
from the others and had watched with -sullen visage the work 
going on. He had already heard of the Jesuit missionaries. 
" And if this pale-face medicine-man who has come among us 
succeed," he muttered to himself, " then nobody will put faith in 
me ; Okitori's power will be gone." 

" What I have told you about this Iroquois seems to cause 
you joy," continued Father Daniel presently. " May it be that 
you know him ? " " Know him ? " ejaculated Weepanee, with an 
air of alarm, and glanc ng nervously round. But her father was 
not within earshot, nor was Okitori, although she perceived him 



32 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

watching- her. " Know him, did you say ? Oh ! no, indeed. 1 
would shun an Iroquois as I would a rattlesnake. I loathe all 
who belong to that cruel, bloodthirsty nation, and the one whom 
you met must be a faint-hearted fellow, since he has taken 
only one scalp." Yet Weepanee's expression belied her words, 
and while her lips were uttering an untruth her heart was 
in a flutter of joyous expectation. Father Daniel, however, 
deemed it best not to speak anything more on the subject at 
present. 

On the morrow Weepanee set an example of boldness, and, at 
the head of many other young women, led the way to the corn- 
land. A flock of wild turkeys had got there before her, who 
slowly withdrew to the edge of the woods as she approached, 
and a couple of foxes, too, slunk away. For a while she labored 
industriously with her primitive hoe made of a forked root. 
But sooner than her companions she seemed to fag, and then 
went off to slake her thirst, not at the lake, which was close by, 
but at Wolf Spring, a fountain hidden in the gloom of the primeval 
forest, and whose water even in midsummer was icy cool. When 
Weepanee reached this lonesome spot she did not immediately 
drink, but carefully examined the fresh green moss which grew 
about the rock out of whose cleft bosom the water bubbled. 
But not a trace of human hand or foot did she discover. " Yet 
what a pleasant couch this would have made for my Atsan! " she 
murmured. Nor was there a single twig broken off any of the 
laurel-bushes which surrounded the bed of moss. " I do not 
think he has been here," she said. " Where can he be?" 

Presently, while she was listening to catch the faintest sound, 
a loud, fearful cry rent the air above her head, and a moment 
afterward down through the branches of a whitewood-tree 
tumbled a huge panther with an arrow driven through and 
through his quivering body. " Oh! what a very narrow escape 1 
have had," exclaimed Weepanee, shuddering and jumping back 
from the dead brute atJier feet. " The Great Spirit guided me 
here exactly in time he was about to spring," spoke a voice 
which she recognized at once, and out of a dense laurel thick- 
et her lover emerged with outstretched arms. For a moment 
neither of them breathed another word ; their hearts were too 
full. Then looking up in Atsan's face while he caressed her, 
" Ay, "'said Weepanee, " as when a few years ago you generously 
saved my dear mother from the tomahawk of one of your own 
tribe, so to-day you have saved me from death." Then, while 
he embraced her again and again, "Can you wonder," she added, 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 33 

" that I love you even if you are an Iroquois ? Can you won- 
der? " " Well, am I quite safe here ? " inquired Atsan when the 
first passionate caresses had ceased. " Safe ? " said Weepanee, 
with a look of tender reproach. " Oh ! how could you imagine 
that I would allow any evil to befall you ? In the opening be- 
yond these trees are only some squaws at work with their hoes ; 
a few men without weapons are on the edge of the lake mend- 
ing their canoes. But the greater part of the inhabitants of Os- 
sossane will spend the day within the palisade listening to the 
preaching of a new medicine-man, a pale-face." " No doubt the 
one whom I fell in with day before yesterday," said Atsan. 
" And I told him, if they asked any questions, to frankly answer 
that he had met an Iroquois brave not far away. You see that 
I am not afraid." " Father Daniel told me that he had met you," 
said Weepanee. 

"Indeed! Well, how knew you 'twas I and not some other 
Iroquois?" asked her lover, smiling. 

" Because I questioned him apart, and he said that the Iro- 
quois whom he met had captured only one scalp, and by this fact 
I recognized my beloved." " Well, it was for love of you that I 
made the vow to kill no more Hurons during the space of twelve 
moons," said Atsan. 

' " I know it, and I am quite sure no other Iroquois is like unto 
you in goodness." Then shaking her head, " But, alas ! " she 
added, " your nation is terrible indeed ; your warriors are every- 
where ; at all seasons, in the most unlooked-for places, they 
appear stealthy as wildcats, blood-seeking as wolves. Alas ! 
alas ! you will end by exterminating us. There will be no 
Hurons left by and by." " None except Weepanee. But she 
shall live when the last fight comes; no arrow shall pierce her 
heart; no hand shall steal her scalp," answered Atsan, again 
clasping her in his arms. 

" Well, tell me," pursued Weepanee, " how soon may danger, 
threaten my native town ? " " There is nothing to fear at pre- 
sent," said herlover. " No war-party will march in this direc- 
tion for several moons perhaps not even then. But when we 
do advance 'twill be with warriors from each of the five tribes 
who compose our mighty league. Ay, Mohawks, Onondagas, 
Oneidas, Cayugas, and Senecas will take part in the final struggle 
with the Hurons." 

" Alas ! you will sweep us away even as grass disappears in a 
prairie fire when a whirlwind blows," moaned Weepanee. "O 
Atsan, Atsan ! what will become of my father? I dearly love my 
VOL. xxxvm. 3 



34 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

father. Between him and you my poor heart is divided. Oh ! 
what will become of my father ? " 

" When the fatal hour arrives, if I cannot save him, he will 
know how to die like a brave," answered Atsan. " But hark ! 
Is it he calling you?" Weepanee listened and presently heard 
her father shouting her name. " Flee! " she said, pushing Atsan 
away from her. " Not further than yon hollow tree," replied the 
Iroquois. And so saying, he went and hid himself in an ancient 
oak a short distance off, while Weepanee advanced to meet the 
chief, who kept shouting her name in lusty tones. But not many 
steps had she taken when whom should she come upon like a 
snake out of the grass he started but Okitori, whose small eyes 
twinkled maliciously, and he seemed to rejoice in her confusion. 
" The sachem's daughter is fond of solitude," spoke the wizard. 
" She loves to linger by the fountain and admire her pretty face 
in its limpid water." "I go there when I am thirsty," answered 
Weepanee. 

"Always?" said Okitori, with a cunning grin. Then, point- 
ing to one of her moccasins, " But whence that blood?" " Why, 
sure enough! Can I have hurt my foot?" ejaculated Weepanee 
in faltering accents. " Well, tarry here a moment while I go 
for a drink ; I, too, love Wolf Spring," said the wizard. At these 
words Weepanee's heart throbbed violently, and when in a few 
minutes he came back and questioned her about the dead pan- 
ther she could hardly speak. " What has happened, my child?" 
said Ontitarho, who now joined them. " You are trembling as 
if you had seen a demon in the forest." 

"A dead panther has scared her," put in Okitori. "The 
animal has barely done breathing, and its blood has spurted on 
her foot." 

" Why, sure enough," exclaimed the chief. " I wonder who 
killed it." " I saw not whence the fortunate arrow came ; the 
.panther seemed to drop from the sky," answered Weepanee. 
" Some friendly spirit from the Happy Hunting-Ground must have 
sent it as a gift, to Okitori," spoke the wizard, again smiling mali- 
ciously. "Its coat is superb; I will go and fetch it home." 
" Father and I will accompany you," said Weepanee, who was 
determined, should the wizard track her lover to his hiding-place, 
to intercede with her parent for Atsan's life, or else to die with 
him. Accordingly all three returned to Wolf Spring. But 
Okitori, albeit keen of eyesight, seemed not to observe the foot- 
prints which led away in the direction of the hollow oak ; while 
Weepanee kept pointing at a squirrel that was jumping from tree 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 35 

to tree, and begging her father to shoot it. Whereupon the 
guileless Ontitarho wasted half a dozen arrows on the little crea- 
ture, who escaped unhurt, to Weepanee's inward joy, for she 
took it as a happy omen that no ill would betide Atsan. 

On the morrow Weepanee was impatient to go again to Wolf 
Spring, but her father bade her stay and hear the new medicine- 
man discourse on the God of the pale-faces. Full of high hope 
was the heart of Father Daniel when he saw the crowd assem- 
bling in front of the mission-house in response to the call of his 
tin kettle. " This kettle hath done many good things since it left 
old France," he thought to himself, " but nothing half so good 
as this." 

We need not repeat all that he said to his attentive listeners ; 
enough to know that when he got through many expressed a 
willingness to be baptized, and among these was Ontitarho, who, 
being head chief, had great influence over the others. 

Weepanee, however, strange to say, refused to follow her 
father's example, which much grieved Father Daniel, who knew 
that she was a young woman of character and ability, and other 
maidens would probably hold aloof, too, from the sacrament 
when they saw her do so. He argued with her mildly but in 
vain. Weepanee kept inwardly repeating: "My God shall be 
the same God as Atsan's; I wish to go to the same Happy Hunt- 
ing-Ground that he goes to." But of course she durst not speak 
this aloud ; and great was the delight of the wizard, who was 
lying on the roof of the building, glaring down upon the priest 
with eyes like a wildcat. Okitori had done nothing thus far to 
interrupt Father Daniel. Angry words, indeed, he had muttered, 
but only to himself. When, however, the missionary, after bap- 
tizing a score or so of Hurons, paused to say that he hoped they 
would change the name of the town from Ossossane* to Ste. Marie, 
he could no longer curb his wicked tongue, and springing to his 
feet, " Friends and brothers," he cried, " what has come over 
you? Have you all become children again ? For the pappoose 
is ever crying after something new to play with. Has this 
strange Blackrobe, who appeared among us only yesterday, 
already turned your heads ? He bids you lay aside your toma- 
hawks and love your enemies. He bids you to think more of 
raising corn and tobacco than of sounding the war-whoop and 
adorning yourselves with glorious scalps. He even urges you 
to love the Iroquois, who have never spared the life of a Huron 
and who make bonfires even of our squaws and pappooses. O 
friends and brothers! heed the voice of Okitori. Keep the 



36 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

ancient name of your town. Ossossan6 was known as a happy 
spot, the happiest on all this broad and beautiful lake, long be- 
fore the great-grand si re of this false magician-doctor was born ; 
and 'twill be known generations hence, unless ye become chil- 
dren and do what he requests. But mark my words: if you for- 
get to be warriors, if you love your enemies, then the powerful 
Iroquois will one day come and jeer at your death-songs while 
the crackling flames consume you." When the wizard had con- 
cluded his appeal not a few braves shook their heads, especially 
the young and fiery ones, and it needed all the influence of On- 
titarho to make them change the name of the town to Ste. Mane. 
But even he, renowned though he was for wisdom, was not able 
altogether to undo the baneful effect wrought by Okitori's artful 
speech, and the discontented ones withdrew to the council-lodge 
muttering, " Okitori is right, Okitori is right." 

" I will call my native place Ste. Marie, if it pleases you," said 
Weepanee to Father Daniel after he had spoken to her private- 
ly a lew minutes. " And when you ask us to love the Iroquois 
it proves that your heart is full of goodness ; you would injure 
nobody ; you would be as peaceful as a squaw. But but I can- 
not love all who belong to that bloodthirsty nation ; no, not all." 

"Can you love any ?" inquired the priest in an undertone, 
for he recalled her look of delight when he first spoke of the 
Iroquois whom he had met journeying hither, and now he sus- 
pected that he had discovered the reason why she refused to be 
baptized. " You may speak to me in perfect confidence," he 
added. " Your secret shall never pass my lips." But Weepanee 
hesitated. " Even in a whisper I might be overheard," she said 
to herself. 

" Well, well, never mind," continued Father Daniel, who read 
in her countenance the inward struggle that was going on. 
" Never mind ; I shall say no more at present. But remember, 
my child, I am one whom you may in all things implicitly trust." 
"Oh! I know you are very good," answered Weepanee, with 
moistened eyes ; " and although I do not wish to become a 
Christian, I will call Ossossan6 Ste. Marie to please you." 

Three days elapsed before Weepanee ventured anew to meet 
her lover at Wolf Spring ; for wherever she went Okitori fol- 
lowed with his restless, wolfish eyes, and whenever she passed 
near him he would ask, " Who killed the big panther? who kill- 
ed the big panther?" But on the third day, toward sunset, 
while Father Daniel was giving an instruction in Christian doc- 
trine to a number of converts, among whom the most devout 



1883..] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 37 

was her father, Weepanee eluded the vigilance of the wizard, 
who was amusing himself by interrupting the priest with foolish 
questions, and stole away unobserved to the forest. She tapped 
on the hollow tree to call Atsan's attention, then began to bark 
like a puppy ; and presently out he came from the dark hole. 

" Look ! " said Weepanee, after he had kissed her " look ! 
I have brought you some pounded corn and a fish which I 
caught myself to-day. I should have come sooner, but there is 
a medicine-man who watches all my movements ; I was afraid 
lest he might follow me, and I could not get away until now." 
" Not the pale-face, I hope ? " said Atsan. " Oh ! no, indeed. I 
like Father Daniel ever so much ; he never annoys me. And you, 
too, must like him ; for do you know, dear boy, he says that we 
Hurons must love your nation ay, love those who wage con- 
stant war upon us." " Well, I am sure there is one Iroquois 
whom you do not hate," said Atsan, smiling. 

" I hate you so little, you who saved my mother's life," con- 
tinued Weepanee, " that I will not pray to the God of the pale- 
faces, although my father does, and although the Blackrobe in 
the kindest manner urges me to >be like my father. But I wish 
in all things to be like you." Here Atsan again pressed his lips 
to hers and said : " When my nation sweeps down like a hurri- 
cane upon Ossossane, Weepanee shall be spared ; she shall be 
adopted and become an Iroquois." 

At these words the maiden bowed her head on his shoulder 
and heaved a sigh. " Do you believe that your nation will soon 
attack us?" she asked presently, with tearful eyes. " I know not 
how soon we may be on the war-path," replied Atsan. "To- 
night I must leave you for what will seem an age to me. I am 
going away for the space of one moon in order to obtain fresh 
tidings of what my people are doing." 

"And then you will hasten back and tell me?" "Indeed I 
will." " O my beloved ! if I could only feel sure that my father 
would survive the last fight, that he would not be put to the 
torture and die in the flames, I should be happy," said Weepanee. 
" Ontitarho will kill many an Iroquois ere he chants his death- 
song," said Atsan. " If . they burn him I will never, never 
become a member of your tribe," pursued Weepanee. " Oh ! 
why cannot all red men love one another, as Father Daniel says 
that they should?" 

" Would you have the Huron and Iroquois braves turn 
squaws ? Would you have them do nothing but plant corn ? " 
said Atsan. 



38 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

" Well, I begin to think that Father Daniel ma)' be fight," 
pursued Weepanee. " If we buried the hatchet for ever my 
heart would be at ease, and you and I might have our wig- 
wam together immediately. But now, alas ! all is cruel uncer- 
tainty." 

For about a minute Atsan remained silent. Her last words 
had moved him deeply, and he, too, Iroquois though he was, felt 
a strange yearning for peace, lasting peace and quiet, which he 
had never experienced before. Presently turning toward the 
hollow oak, he pointed to a figure cut deep into the bark about 
five feet from the ground. " Very early this morning," he said, 
" I heard somebody at work on the outside of the tree. Look 
what an odd figure he has cut. What means it? " 

" That is a cross," answered Weepanee. " Father Daniel 
calls it the sign of salvation ; he has such a totem, made of two 
big sticks, stuck on the top of his prayer-house. He likewise 
wears a small one round his neck. It must have been he who 
cut that cross yonder." " I hope to meet him again some day," 
said Atsan. " Although we were only a few hours together, we 
parted excellent friends. The words he spoke were so different 
from the words of our medicine-men ; and I no longer wonder 
that he and the other Blackrobes who have come to preach 
among your nation have succeeded in winning the hearts of so 
many Hurons." 

" Could Father Daniel win a certain Iroquois' heart he'd win 
mine with it," said Weepanee. 

" Well, what the pale-face medicine-man teaches may be true 
it may," pursued Atsan, after reflecting a moment. " Yet to 
love our enemies is something beyond my wits to conceive. I 
find a delight, a rapture in the war-path which all the sunny days 
of a long life of peace could not equal." 

" Not even if you spent that life with me ? " said Weepanee, 
gazing fondly at him. 

Atsan's breast heaved, but he made no response. 

At length, running his fingers through her long, black hair, 
' No Iroquois maiden had ever hair so beautiful as yours," he 
said. " I could toy with it all day and never grow tired. 
Oh ! would that I might carry it with me." " What a fine 
scalp mine would make to grace an Iroquois war-feast ! " an- 
swered the maiden. " By the great Manitoti ! never never," 
exclaimed Atsan. Then, pressing her to his heart, " But I must 
now bid my love good-by. I must depart. Look for me by 
the time the first fireflies appear." " Dear fireflies ! may they 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 39 

come very soon," murmured Weepanee. And with these fare- 
well words she turned and walked sadly back to her home. 

For more than six weeks Weepanee saw nothing more of her 
Iroquois lover, and during this time Father Daniel did good 
work among the Hurons of Ste. Marie and its neighborhood, just 
as other Jesuit missionaries were doing in the Huron country 
further east. The zealous priest's heart was filled with holy joy 
as he pictured to himself the whole of this heathen land pene- 
trated and redeemed before many years by the light of the faith. 
Nor was there a more edifying member of his flock than Onti- 
tarho. But Weepanee, much as she loved her father and es- 
teemed the missionary, always shook her head whenever the 
latter spoke to her about being baptized. Yet near the sachem's 
corn-land she had diligently tilled another piece of ground and 
sown it with wheat wherewith to make for the kind Blackrobe 
sacramental bread. Needless to say that the wizard was greatly 
pleased to see Weepanee hold, aloof from Christianity. Never- 
theless her conduct in some things puzzled Okitori. " She re- 
fuses to have water sprinkled on her head and to make the sign 
of the cross," he muttered. " Nor will she enter the prayer- 
house and pray with her father. Yet she labors industriously to 
raise wheat for the pale-face magician, and whenever she hears 
me flinging gibes at him, and trying to confuse him when he talks 
about his God, she turns on me like a wildcat." 

But if Weepanee often saved Father Daniel from Okitori's 
insults, the wizard at night would have his revenge. Rising 
from his couch when all the others were asleep, he would wan- 
der about among the houses, crying aloud in a voice which 
roused the soundest sleeper: "Awake, brothers, awake! Be 
watchful, brothers, be watchful ! The Blackrobe preacher is in 
league with the Evil Spirit; the crosses which he cuts on the 
trees are meant to woo the demons of the forest. He bids us 
love the Iroquois, who have never spared a Huron. One day 
the Iroquois will rush out of the forest and spring on you like 
wild beasts. O men who have turned squaws ! be braves, be 
warriors again. Awake ! awake ! awake ! " And these words, 
uttered in shrill accents, which sounded shriller and more un- 
earthly for its being night-time, always wrought a baneful im- 
pression on Ontitarho, who for an hour afterward would lie 
awake repeating the prayers which Father Daniel had taught 
him, and trying sincerely to say : " I love my enemies." But 
his prayers did not always bring relief, and then, jumping to 
his feet, he would curse the Iroquois and cry out : " If my 



40 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

tongue says I love them it lies, it lies ! " Between the chief 
and the wizard a coolness had naturally sprung up, and now 
they seldom exchanged a word. Indeed, Okitori secretly hated 
Ontilarho for only for his influence Father Daniel would not 
have had so pleasant a time in Ste. Marie. " But the day may 
come," murmured the wizard, " when Ontitarho will crouch at my 
ieet and beg me to be merciful." For Okitori remembered that 
the missionary had seen an Iroquois journeying hitherward; nor 
had he forgotten the dead panther which he had once found by 
Wolf Spring, and he remembered Weepanee's blood-stained moc- 
casin and her confusion when she had seen him suddenly rise up 
out of the bushes. Every man, young and old, in Ste. Marie he 
had questioned about that panther. Not one said that he had 
killed the beast. "Who, then, did kill it?" was a question which 
Okitori had often asked himself. But, shrewd as he was, it was 
not until he had long meditated on Weepanee's odd behavior 
that he could bring himself to believe that his first suspicion was 
correct, and then he chuckled and said : " The sachem's daughter 
is at my mercy." 

One evening in June Father Daniel found Weepanee en- 
gaged in tyin^ together a number of fireflies. "Look!" she 
exclaimed with a radiant countenance. " These are the first fire- 
flies of summer. Oh ! I am so happy, so happy. And I am 
going to weave them into a shining festoon to hang before your 
altar, where you say God is ever present." The missionary 
thanked her warmly and said : " I hope one of these days to see 
you praying with us in the chapel. Many of your friends have 
been baptized. Why do you hold back?" 

Weepanee sighed. " Pray tell me what the difficulty is," 
continued Father Daniel. " The fireflies are now all ready to 
hang up before the altar. Look! look! how beautiful they are," 
said Weepanee, handing him the fantastic, flashing wreath of 
light. Then, before he could do more than express anew his 
thanks, she turned and walked rapidly away. 

" Strange, tender-hearted maiden! where may she be going?" 
thought the priest when, a quarter of an hour later, he saw her 
passing through the main gate of the town. It was growing 
dark. But the moon would soon be up. Might she be going 
into the forest? 

The full moon was just rising when Weepanee got to the 
hollow oak. She gave a peculiar cry, and in a moment Atsan 
o&JCfe^vmit of the dark cavity at its base. " How true you are 

vouf -romise, dear boy !" she said, as he caught her in his 



* 



1 883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 41 

arms. " The fireflies are flashing this evening for the first time, 
and here you are." 

" I might have arrived a little sooner," replied the Iroquois, 
" only that I wanted to obtain better information a's to what the 
warriors of my nation are meditating." " And what have you 
learnt ? " inquired Weepanee anxiously. 

" That before the snow falls deep enough to track a rabbit 
they will be on the war-path." " Alas ! alas ! " sighed Weepanee. 
Then for more than a minute she did not open her lips, but 
leaned heavily on his shoulder. 

It was with no intention to spy Weepanee's movements that 
Father Daniel in a little while entered the forest too. The 
wizard had begun to fling jeers at him while he was saying his 
rosary in front of the mission-house, and he had felt a yearning 
to be alone amid the silent trees, where his ears would not be 
shocked by Okitori's blasphemies. But to the very gate of the 
town the latter had dogged his steps, crying aloud : " Behold 
the Blackrobe going forth to cut more demon-marks on the 
trees. Like an evil spirit, he is fond of the night. Beware of 
the Blackrobe, who bids you love the Iroquois ! " 

Scarcely had Father Daniel begun again to tell his beads 
which he did facing the venerable tree in wlrose bark he had 
carved the deepest cross of all when he was startled by a hand 
clutching his arm, and, turning, whom should he discover but the 
young Iroquois that he had met three months before, while 
behind him stood Weepanee. 

" I am delighted to meet you again," spoke the priest, shak- 
ing his hand. 

" You have found out our love secret, but my dear Weepanee 
assures me that you may be trusted," said Atsan. " Implicitly," 
said Father Daniel. " Well, I once told you an untruth," spoke 
Weepanee, stepping forward. " I once said that I did not love 
any Iroquois. I now ask forgiveness for telling that untruth." 

" Would that your whole tribe might do as you are doing : 
would that every Huron loved an Iroquois ! " answered the 
missionary. " For then would reign unbroken peace, and our 
missions would flourish everywhere in this benighted land." 
Then, addressing Atsan, " Why," he added, " do not you red men 
bury the tomahawk? Why do you exterminate one another? 
Think how much happier you all would be if Hurons and Iro- 
quois lived like brothers." 

"Ay, how much happier!" murmured Weepanee, gazing 
with tender eyes on her lover. " You speak golden words," said 



42 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. ["Oct., 

Atsan. " But the Happy Hunting-Ground is not in this world ; it 
is somewhere far, far amid the stars." " Father Daniel preaches 
peace and good-will to others," said Weepanee. " He is not 
fond of bleeding scalps and tortured prisoners, like our loathsome 
wizard, Okitori. O Atsan! if we were all like Father Daniel 
and we might be, if we tried then the Happy Hunting-Ground 
would not be so far away." 

Encouraged by her words, the missionary now went on to 
speak in fervent accents of the holy Catholic religion, while the 
Iroquois listened without interrupting ; until at length, warned 
by the height to which the moon had risen, he was obliged to 
stop, for it was time to go back to the mission-house, where his 
flock were no doubt waiting for him to say the' evening prayers. 

" May I return to-morrow ? " he said. " Yes, indeed ; come 
and talk to us again to-morrow," cried Atsan and Weepanee at 
one breath. 

The following morning Ontitarho found his daughter saun- 
tering alone by the edge of the lake. Ever and anon she would 
pause and cast her eyes over the sparkling water ; then she 
would frown, for she saw Okitori watching her from a canoe a 
little distance off. "Why are you not at work?" inquired the 
chief. "Are there no weeds in my corn to weed out? Have 
I no moccasins which need mending?" 

" A heavy weight presses on my spirits to-day," answered 
Weepanee, " and the fresh breeze from the lake soothes me. 
Tis why I am here." "A weight on your spirits !" exclaimed 
Ontitarho. " Ah ! my daughter, why do you not become a Chris- 
tian ? Why do you not let Father Daniel baptize you ? Then 
you would never be melancholy." 

Weepanee made no response. 

" Is it the wizard," he continued presently, scowling at Oki- 
tori "is it that plaguing, devil-worshipping wizard yonder 
who has persuaded you to remain a heathen ? Why has he more 
influence over you than your father ? " " Okitori has no power 
over me for good or ill," answered Weepanee in a firm voice. 
" I detest him. Look at him crouching in his canoe like a wild 
animal. I can see his eyes glistening from here. I believe there 
is a demon in him." " Well, I wish with all my heart that he 
were gone from Ste. Marie," pursued Ontitarho. "He never 
ceases to annoy good Father Daniel. Did you not hear him last 
night howling through the town and crying out that the priest 
is in league with the devil ? " "I never knew a better man than 
Father Daniel," said Weepanee. " And I always take his part 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 43 

against Okitori, who calumniates him. But, dear father, while 
we may love our enemies, as he bids us to, is it wise to devote so 
much time to prayer? Oh ! I beseech you, do not forget how to 
use the tomahawk and war-club : our warriors must not become 
squaws. The Iroquois may appear before many moons, and we 
should be ready for them. Let the palisade be strengthened ; 
let our warriors practise with their arms. Let them pray to the 
God of the pale-faces, if they will, but at the same time they must 
not forget how to fight." 

" Verily, you presume to address me as if you were old in 
wisdom," answered Ontitarho somewhat harshly. " It is not 
thus that you used to speak to your father. How dare you in- 
sinuate that I pray too much?" At these chiding words Wee- 
panee bowed her head and began to cry. The sachem, whose 
heart was easily moved, and who loved her dearly, was trying to 
calm her when Father Daniel approached and asked what fault 
she had committed. 

" I do not find her at work this morning as usual," answered 
Ontitarho. " But she is a good girl and will now go to work. 
There are some weeds in my corn, Weepanee, are there not? " 

" Well, methinks Weepanee is a pretty good worker," said 
the priest. " She is raising for me as much wheat as I shall 
need; she keeps me well supplied with fish and Indian meal, and 
every evening she has promised to make me a fresh wreath of 
fireflies to hang before the Blessed Sacrament." 

" Thanks for taking my part," spoke Weepanee, smiling 
through her tears. " I like you ever so much, even if I am not 
one of your flock." 

An hour later Weepanee might have been seen in the school- 
room of the mission-house, whither Father Daniel had invited 
her. " I have been praying for you a great deal to-day, my 
child," said the missionary. 

" Your prayers will do me good," answered the maiden. 
" You comfort me; Atsan likes you, too." 

" I wish that your Iroquois lover would listen to my instruc- 
tions for a few days or rather nights, for 'tis only at night we 
can meet. He might then become a Christian," continued Fa- 
ther Daniel. " If he does, then so will I," said Weepanee. " The 
faith which you preach has much in it that is consoling. To 
love the Iroquois seems less difficult for me to do now than 
when I first heard you say we ought to love our enemies." 
Every word of this conversation, which lasted for half an hour, 
was overheard by Okitori, who had sneaked into the house a few 



44 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

minutes before the priest and concealed himself under a pile of 
beaver-skins, a gift to Father Daniel from Ontitarho. " Ha ! 
ha!" chuckled the wizard, " my shrewd suspicion turns out to 
be quite correct : Weepanee has an Iroquois lover." And so 
elated was Okitori at what he had heard that he could scarcely 
keep quiet in his hiding-place. 

As soon as Father Daniel had finished evening prayers this 
evening which he always said aloud in the midst of a throng 
of fervent neophytes, of whom none were more prayerful than 
Ontitarho he bent his steps toward the forest, not expecting to 
be back until morning ; for all night he would instruct Atsan, 
if the Iroquois would listen to him. 

His face wore a bright smile when he approached the moon- 
lit trysting-place where Weepanee and her lover were awaiting 
him. But presently his countenance fell, for he discovered that 
the young woman was in tears. 

" Atsan says he must depart ere the moon wanes," sobbed 
Weepanee. " Why, he makes you a very fleeting visit. What 
has happened?" said the priest, who was chagrined, too. "An- 
other Iroquois, a spy sent in advance of the war-party, is hover- 
ing about Ste. Marie," answered Weepanee ; " and Atsan does 
not wish this spy to find him holding converse with a Huron 
maiden ; otherwise it might fare ill with my lover." 

It had been well had Atsan departed earlier than he did, be- 
fore the moon had risen so high ; for the guileful wizard, who 
seemed never to sleep, had spied both Weepanee and Father 
Daniel quit the town, and immediately seeking Ontitarho, he had 
said : " O chief ! I know that the friendship which you once 
had for me is dead ; no Huron in your eyes is so detestable as 
Okitori. But if I have refused to become a Christian like your- 
self, if I am bitterly opposed to the Blackrobe medicine-man, who 
has turned the once warlike Ontitarho into a praying squaw, 'tis 
because I dearly love my tribe and wish not to see" the Hurons 
destroyed by the Iroquois." "What mean you?" exclaimed 
Ontitarho. " Father Daniel bids us to love our enemies, but he 
goes no further ; we may defend ourselves if they attack us. He 
is not partial to the Iroquois. We have no truer friend than 
'Father Daniel." 

At these words there spread over Okitori's ugly visage a de- 
moniac grin. Then, lifting up his hand, he merely answered : 
" Follow me." 

And now behold the wizard leading Ontitarho with cautious, 
stealthy step toward Wolf Spring. You could hardly hear a 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 45 

leaf rustle as they made their way through the trees and under- 
brush. At length Okitori paused and whispered : " Look ! yon- 
der in the moonbeams are three persons your daughter, an Iro- 
quois brave, and holding each of them by the hand is your dar- 
ling Blackrobe." 

Ontitarho's straining eyes rested with savage glare on the 
group a little distance ahead, and he discerned, sure enough, the 
priest and Weepanee, the latter greatly distressed at something, 
while beside her was undoubtedly an Iroquois. Scarcely breath- 
ing, Okitori and the chief now crawled nearer. 

" Well, if you must leave me," spoke Weepanee, " come back 
before the first snow, but come not as a destroyer of Ste. Marie." 
" Your dear scalp will be safe in my hands," replied Atsan. 
"And my father will you save him, too?" continued Wee- 
panee. 

" We will adopt him as well as you you shall both be made 
Iroquois." * It was these last words of Atsan which most infu- 
riated the sachem, and now while Weepanee and her lover em- 
braced for good-by he muttered : " I am a squaw indeed ! Oh ! 
why have I buried my tomahawk? I'd give all my beaver-skins, 
my birch canoe, my priceless wampum belt for a tomahawk." 

" Love your enemies and bury the hatchet," answered the 
wizard in a sarcastic voice, which Weepanee and Father Daniel 
heard, and they immediately turned their faces toward a clump of 
laurels a few paces distant. 

We may imagine the wonder of the Christian Indians of Ste. 
Marie the following day to see their chief absent himself from 
Mass. Nor would Ontitarho pause at noon to say the Angelus ; 
and when Father Daniel accosted him he turned his back and 
walked sullenly away arm-in-arm with Okitori, with whom he 
seemed to have renewed all his old-time friendship. Among the 
gossips many things were whispered about Weepanee, who had 
not been seen since the previous evening. Was she ill ? Or was 
it true that her father had forbidden her to leave her cabin ? 

The missionary was, of course, well-nigh heart-broken at what 
had occurred. He knew that Weepanee's love for an Iroquois 
had been discovered by Ontitarho, and that the latter had seen 
both himself and Weepanee conversing with Atsan. Nor did he 
doubt that the wizard was the author of all this trouble ; and it 
was sad to think where it might end. 

Ontitarho's example was ere long followed by others, and 
within a week a score or more of young men, who had never 

* In rare cases prisoners were adopted. 



46 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

altogether approved of the missionary's exhortations to peace 
and good-will toward their enemies, formed a circle around the 
wizard while Mass was going on in the chapel, and listened with 
delight to his exciting descriptions of combats between Hurons 
and Iroquois, from which the former always returned laden with 
countless scalps. " And how much more glorious are those 
trophies of victor}'," exclaimed Okitori, " than the stupid beads 
which the Blackrobe has given you to count your prayers by ! " 
Whereupon, one by one, his hearers tore their rosaries apart 
and trampled the fragments under foot. 

Father Daniel, however, was not sorry to see that precautions 
were being taken to prevent a surprise by the Iroquois, who, he 
knew, would be on 4 the war-path before many months. He ex- 
horted his pious flock to devote some hours daily to strengthen- 
ing the palisade. "And those of you," he said, "who in your 
zeal for religion have buried your tomahawks must dig them up 
again. For great will be the blow to the faith in the Huron 
land, if this mission of Ste. Marie be destroyed."- 

As time wore on, and Weepanee still did not appear, Onti- 
tarho was more and more plied with questions concerning her. 
But to nobody would he reveal the cause of her punishment ; he 
merely said that she was alive. And the poor girl suffered much 
during the long, hot summer, fanning herself with the wing of a 
wild turkey, and with never a soul to speak to. Only once a day 
did her father bring her food and water. On one occasion Oki % 
tori brought her a drink, but she dashed the cup in his face, and 
he came not a second time. 

Poor Ontitarho! His father's heart all this while was torn 
with anguish. That his only child, in whom he took so much 
pride, should be enamored with a hated Iroquois, and that the 
latter should talk of his tribe adopting both himself and her, was 
enough to drive him distracted. And in certain things his mind 
did, indeed, appear to wander. Nor would he believe that Father 
Daniel, whom he had once so revered, was not what Okitori 
said he was a spy and worthy of being put to death. " And if I 
was deceived in him, in whom may I trust? " he would ask. 

The wizard was certainly playing his part well. In his hands 
he held the life of both Weepanee and the priest. If he breathed 
a single word of what he knew regarding Weepanee she would 
immediately be stoned to death by the other squaws. And this 
her unhappy parent was well aware of. Therefore, in order to 
bribe the wizard to hold his tongue, Ontitarho made him gift 
after gift. He gave Okitori first five, then ten, then twenty 






1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 47 

beaver-skins ; and when these presents were declared not suffi- 
cient, he gave him the skin of a grizzly bear. Finally he made 
him a present of his birch canoe the largest and finest of any 
canoe on the lake. Yet still the wizard kept hinting that his 
tongue would not keep silent unless he received more gifts. 
" More, more, more ! " he would say, " or I will reveal that your 
daughter is betrothed to an Iroquois." 

" Mean, avaricious wretch ! " muttered the unhappy chief one 
day. " I am half tempted to dash your brains out and afterward 
to kill myself." 

But while Okitori was thus impoverishing Ontitarho he had 
actually wrung from him a promise to murder Father Daniel. 
Yet why did the sachem hesitate to keep his promise? Even the 
wizard, subtle as he was, was unable to account for the Jesuit's 
life being spared week after week ; and he would sometimes 
whisper in Ontitarho's ear: "Keep your promise. The Black- 
robe is hateful in my sight. Kill him soon ; I am growing impa- 
tient." Still Ontitarho's hand refused to strike the blow, because 
Weepanee had said : " Father, if a single hair of Father Daniel's 
head is touched I will proclaim aloud my own guilf; all who 
hear my voice shall know that I am bound by an undying love to 
an Iroquois, and then I shall die a cruel death." 

Nor was Father Daniel ignorant of the imminent peril which 
hung over him. Ever and anon he heard ominous threats, while 
Okitori grew so boldly impudent as to curse him from the very 
threshold of the mission-house. Once he even succeeded in 
breaking up his catechism class. When the priest walked 
through the town many of the young men frowned and clutched 
their tomahawks, and sometimes little children spat at him. Yet 
never a thought of flight entered Father Daniel's mind. He 
fervently prayed that Ontitarho might come back to the faith 
and that the wizard might be confounded in his wickedness. 
Where souls were to be saved, there Father Daniel would abide : 
Ad majorem Dei gloriam. 

One rainy' morning toward the end of September, after the 
wizard and Ontitarho had had a long and angry talk together, 
the sachem entered his daughter's prison-chamber with a very 
distressed countenance. "What troubles my father?" inquired 
Weepanee in tender accents ; for she loved him dearly, albeit he 
had kept her so long in solitary confinement, and perhaps made 
it impossible ever to meet Atsan again. " Tell me, father, has 
Okitori been urging you anew to kill the Blackrobe?" "Yes," 
answered Ontitarho ; " he has been pressing me harder than 



48 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

ever to fulfil my rash promise. But, estranged though I am 
from Father Daniel, 'twill break my heart to kill him. But the 
\vixard, who, alas! knows the great power he wields, has threat- 
ened that if I procrastinate one hour longer he will divulge the 
crime of which you are guilty your love for an Iroquois, a 
deadly foe of the Hurons and then in a few minutes I shall hear 
your death-shrieks." 

" Well, but, father, you dare not redden your hatchet with 
the blood of the Blackrobe ; for if you do, then, as I have said 
before, I will myself tell aloud what I have done and begin to 
chant my death-song." " Alas ! the way is dark ; I am bewil- 
dered. Oh! what must I do?" groaned Ontitarho, burying his 
face in his hands. " Bid the good priest to flee flee toward the 
rising sun," answered Weepanee. 

" Flee?" ejaculated the sachem, looking up. " Oh ! he would 
not budge an inch: he knows not fear. What a glorious Huron 
brave he would make, could he only change his skin and learn 
to hate the Iroquois ! Why, Father Daniel would rather be 
eaten by the wolves than to flee." 

" Well, if he tarries here his life may soon be in great dan- 
ger," continued Weepanee. "If the Iroquois attack us as 1 
expect they will before the first snowflake drops think you that 
he will escape from the massacre which will follow ? " " But 
may we not beat off the attack ? " said Ontitarho. " Has your 
heart become so wedded to the Iroquois that you believe they 
are certain to be victorious ? O my child ! shame, shame on 
you ! " " But they are coming in tremendous force," pursued 
Weepanee earnestly. " And I implore you to make Father 
Daniel, whether he will or no, flee toward the rising sun. Es- 
cort him yourself into the forest, show him the tsail, forbid him 
to return; and as my Atsan will doubtless be at the head of the 
Iroquois warriors, he will take the Blackrobe under his pro- 
tection." 

The chief made no response ; he was in tears, and so was Wee- 
panee. They were still weeping when a harsh voice outside 
was heard summoning Ontitarho to appear. " Come forth," 
growled Okitori, who was armed with a tomahawk" come 
forth and redeem your promise. I will wait no longer ; my pa- 
tience is exhausted." In another moment Ontitarho was facing 
him. " Are you ready ? " asked the wizard. " I am," answered 
the sachem. " I acknowledge that the Blackrobe is deserving 
of death ; he is a secret friend of our deadliest foes. Where is 
he?" "In the mission-house, teaching Huron children to love 



1883.] THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. 49 

the Iroquois," said Okitori, with a grim smile. " Then lend me 
your hatchet," said Ontitarho. Weepanee, who had heard what 
was said, was about to utter a shrill cry, which would undoubt- 
edly have proved her death-knell, when, with a heavy thud, 
down dropped Okitori half-way across the threshold, and spat- 
tered over the floor were his brains. " Well done, father ! " she 
exclaimed, springing forward and bending with savage delight 
over the quivering corpse of the wizard. 

" Well done ! " echoed Ontitarho, spitting upon it. " But 
now I must haste away and lead Father Daniel into the forest, 
whether he will or no. For great will be the uproar when 
Okitori's friends discover what has happened. They will thirst 
for his scalp perhaps, too, for mine." 

Scarcely had the chief spoken when yells and screams were 
heard without the palisade, and in a few minutes in through the 
gateway pell-mell rushed hundreds of terrified men and women, 
crying out : " The Iroquois are here ! The Iroquois are here! " 

In the great confusion which followed this startling alarm 
nobody heeded Okitori's mangled remains. Warriors, snatching 
their bows and tomahawks, hastened to meet the advancing 
enemy ; trembling mothers clasped their pappooses to their 
breasts. Weepanee clung to her father. But Ontitarho broke 
loose from her, and, flourishing aloft the wizard's gory hatchet, 
took his place among the foremost defenders. Meanwhile, sur- 
rounded by a crowd of old folk and those too young to fight, 
was Father Daniel. He was giving them his last blessing, after 
which to the post of danger he bent his steps ; and soon there 
was plenty for him to do. 

Many a dying Huron received absolution, and among these, 
with tears of repentance, crawled the valiant Ontitarho; an ar- 
row had pierced his breast, and as his life-blood ebbed away he 
murmured the name of Weepanee. " Baptize her, my father," 
he said " baptize her. For I wish to meet her in heaven ; 
every Huron of Ste. Marie must perish to-day. Oh ! seek Wee- 
panee and baptize her." 

What the sachem predicted seemed too likely to come true. 
Desperately as the Hurons were defending the town, the as- 
sault of the Iroquois was like unto a whirlwind of demons; in 
full strength they had come, and once inside the palisade there 
was no resisting them. Their tomahawks spared neither man, 
woman, nor child, with the exception of Father Daniel antf 
about twenty others ; for this day's victory would not end to 
the taste of the victors without a bonfire of prisoners. 

VOL. xxxvin. 4 



50 THE WIZARD OF SAINTE MARIE. [Oct., 

41 I claim these as my captives," spoke Atsan, grasping Wee- 
panee and the priest by the arm. 

Hut Father Daniel, who espied hard by a dying Huron, was 
resolved at all hazards to shrive him and give him absolution. 
But hardly had he escaped from Atsan's protecting hold when 
he was pounced upon by a number of yelling savages. 

" Let us begin the bonfire with the pale-face," cried these. In 
a brief space the missionary was bound to a stake. " Why does 
not your pale-face God save you now? Is your God a squaw ? " 
cried a mocking voice. "Are you hungry?" shouted another 
Iroquois. " If you are, here is something to eat." And so say- 
in ar, in derision he threw the victim an ear of corn to whose 

o " 

husks were providentially clinging a few raindrops. 

By a superhuman effort Father Daniel freed his hands, and, 
catching the ear of corn, he bent over Weepanee, who, despite 
her lover, had flung herself at his feet ; and now, even while the 
torch was being applied to the pine fagots scattered around him, 
he administered to the brave girl baptism. Yet indeed Wee- 
panee had run very great risk in order to receive the sacrament. 
Already the sparks were singeing her robe; nor was it easy for 
Atsan to save her. 

" Now is our only chance," spoke the latter presently in a 
hurried whisper, and pulling her away from the circle of howl- 
ing Iroquois, who were dancing about the writhing form of 
Father Daniel, dimly visible through the smoke and flames. 
" Come, come quick," he said. And with this Atsan snatched 
her in his arms and with the fleetness of a deer made off toward 
the forest. 

This night, at the stillest hour, when the Iroquois had fallen 
asleep after the fatigues of the battle and the excitement of tor- 
turing to death the Huron prisoners, Atsan stole back to the site 
of Ste. Marie, and, threading his way amid the smouldering re- 
mains of the houses, he sought the spot where Father Daniel 
had breathed his last. Peering above the ground was the 
charred stump of the post to which he had been tied, and, as 
Weepanee had requested, he stooped and gathered as much of 
the hallowed ashes as he was able to carry away in both hands. 
Then, just as the dawn began to break in the east, he and Wee- 
panee the latter with many a tear plunged deeper into the 
forest. On and on they journeyed, until, after travelling half a 
moon and enduring much hardship, they came once more in view 
of the water. It was a charming spot, just where Lake Superior 
falls into Lake Huron. " And in these bright rapids and long, 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 51 

sweeping eddres fish must abound," spoke Atsan. " Yes, let us 
pause here," said Weepanee. " And we will name our new 
home after the dear one where I was born and which Father 
Daniel loved so well." 

" For your sake I, too, love the name of Ste. Marie," answered 
Atsan, touching his lips to hers. "Therefore let us call it Ste. 
Marie." 

" And with drops from this pure, sparkling current let me 
baptize you," said Weepanee. " Then we shall both be Chris- 
tians." 

Many years afterward, when the first white explorers came 
here, a big cross was found planted at the edge of the water, and 
crosses, too, were faintly visible cut in the bark of some of the 
trees. They likewise found a few Indians settled near the rapids 
a happy, innocent band, who still retained such traces of the 
Catholic faith as Atsan and Weepanee had bequeathed to them. 
These red men have now disappeared, but this beautiful spot is 
known to-day as the Sault de Sainte Marie. 



INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 

I. 

" WE ourselves have, equally with those in the Roman Church, infallible 
truth, as resting on infallible authority. We do not need the agency of an 
infallible church to assure us of the truth of what has been ruled infal- 
libly. Nor, in fact, have Roman Catholics any more infallible authority 
for what they hold than we, seeing that it was ruled by the church in past 
ages, to whom, so far, the present church submits." * 

So wrote Dr. Pusey eighteen years ago in that far-famed 
work which in its time made, perhaps, a greater stir among re- 
ligious circles in the Established Church of England than any 
other publication during the latter half of this century, not ex- 
cepting the Essays and Reviews and Bishop Colenso's book on 
the Pentateuch ; a work perhaps the most singular of any pro- 
ceeding from the pen of an author, himself remarkable for his 
strange and persistent inaccuracies, his curious method of treat- 
ing the Fathers, and the still more incomprehensible way in 
which, when dealing with other authors, he let us hope not de- 

* Eirenicon, part i. p. 96. 



52 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Oct., 

libcratcly puts forward the objections which those writers had 
set down for refutation as their own personal views : a system 
of polemics which caused even so staid a journal as \.\\s Athenceum 
to exclaim : " It will be necessary for careful readers to compare 
the citations with the originals, and to look narrowly at the in- 
ferences derived from them. Since Father Harper exposed the 
manner in which Dr. Pusey treats the Fathers and others it is 
necessary to be cautious in the matter, for that learned Jesuit 
has shown that the Oxford professor's accuracy cannot be relied 
on." * But my intention here is not to criticise either the Ei- 
renicon or its author ; that has already been done with fearfully 
damaging effect by the learned religious above referred to. I 
have merely introduced the foregoing extract from Dr. Pusey's 
work because it appears to me to be as clear an exponent of the 
advanced Anglican idea of an infallible authority, its strength 
and its weakness, as one can well rind. Not very clear, I admit, 
and hopelessly illogical ; but what would you have? When men 
turn their backs upon God's everlasting truth they must take 
refuge in sophisms. However, de mortuis nil nisi bomun ; the au- 
thor has himself now passed out of the jurisdiction of our weak 
censure. May that Immaculate Mother whom his dear friend 
Cardinal Newman declared that he "loved well" have inter- 
vened even at the eleventh hour; and when the lips were motion- 
less and the eye glazed, and while the sweats of death were al- 
ready creeping over that frame from which the life was fast 
ebbing out, may his heavenly Father have once more opened the 
eyes of his soul to the light of Catholic truth and have given 
him the grace of conversion ! R.I. P. 

Leaving, therefore, the memory of one whom once, long ago, 
I revered as a saint, I purpose, taking the above passage as my 
text, to examine the question whether Anglicans really possess 
any infallible authority at all in a word, whether, in spite of their 
boasted superiority over other Protestant sects whose rule of 
faith is the Bible, and the Bible only, and the supposed security of 
their situation on account of their appeal to the judgment of the 
universal church, they have in reality, when their position comes 
to be carefully investigated and their principles analyzed, any 
better grounds of certainty for the doctrines they profess than 
the Biblicists whom they condemn, or are possessed of any ul- 
timate arbiter in matters of faith beyond their own private 
judgment. I think it will be seen that, beneath the light of strict 
investigation, Dr. Pusey's claim, on the part of his communion, 

* Atkenatim, October 7, 18/6. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 53 

of " infallible truth, resting on infallible authority" vanishes into 
thin air. 

I have emphasized the words resting on infallible authority, 
because it is not for a moment denied that Anglicans can attain 
to, and are in the possession of, some infallible truths, which they 
are able to know with certainty as such ; but then we are bound 
to admit this much not only of every Protestant as well, but 
even of every human soul which God has created. Take, for in- 
stance, the doctrine of the existence of God himself. This is one 
of those immutable and inevitable truths which can be known 
even by the light of nature, apart from revelation a truth which, 
although it is not, strictly speaking, intuitional in the mind of 
man, can yet in a secondary sense be said to be innate on account 
of the natural facility with which it can be comprehended, and 
whose proofs can be worked out and demonstrated with logical 
completeness (as, indeed, the)'" were by Aristotle, and by St. 
Thomas of Aquin following in his steps) by the simple workings 
of human reason, and that with a force and unanswerable lucidity 
which ftone have even attempted to impeach. Then, again, the 
Christian, of whatever denomination, if through baptism, validly 
administered, he has received the gift of faith, may apprehend 
with absolute certainty that is, he may know infallibly many 
truths forming part of divine revelation. Among such I may 
mention the doctrine of our Lord's divine mission, the eternity 
of heaven, the existence of angels, the authority of the apostles 
to preach the Gospel, the mercy of God in forgiving sins to 
the truly penitent these and many others can certainly be ap- 
prehended by any one of ordinary intelligence, and known infal- 
libly by the baptized Christian. In this sense, then viz., that 
Anglicans, with all Protestants, are able to know some religious 
truths with certainty Dr. Pusey and we are at one. But I do 
not imagine that this was at all the construction which he in- 
tended should be put upon his words ; indeed, he himself ex- 
pressly excludes all such limitation to those truths which can 
be known with certainty by the light of nature or deduced by 
natural reason from the pages of God's written word; he refers 
to truths of a more obscure kind, matters not at once palpable 
to the ordinary light of reason, questions to which there are two 
sides and which require an infallible authority to explain them. 

It ought to be scarcely necessary to remark here that " infal- 
libility " and " the knowing a thing infallibly " are net the same. 
Still, as Anglican writers appear frequently to confuse the two, it 
may be advantageous to introduce a few words of explanation. 



54 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Oct., 

To know a thing infallibly signifies nothing more or less than 
to know it with absolute certainty such certainty, for instance, as 
we have of our own existence and of the reality of the visible 
world around us. Or we may possess certainty as to matters 
not under our personal observation, by reason of the entire and 
implicit confidence we have in the credibility pf the person who 
supplies us with the information. In the former case we have 
metaphysical and physical certainty respectively ; in the latter 
case, moral. 

But this certainty, absolute and immutable as it is under the 
proper conditions, by no means precludes the abstract possibility 
of our making mistakes. I am perfectly certain that I hold this 
pen in my hand and that I am writing at the present moment. I 
do not admit the possibility of my being mistaken upon this 
point as long as I possess mens sana in corpore sano. I therefore 
know this fact infallibly, but I am not on that account infallible. 

Infallibility is an attribute which, if it be abiding and per- 
petual in its subjects, precludes the possibility of their ever mak- 
ing mistakes. Of course we can conceive of such a thing* as tem- 
porary or partial infallibility that is to say, an infallibility which 
has for its object certain special matters, or which exists under 
certain conditions and for certain periods of time. But whether 
it be absolute and permanent, or temporary and partial, it is 
manifest that it can only exist in an intelligence other than that 
of divine omniscience by special divine assistance and divine 
guidance. 

The infallibility with which Christ our Lord endowed his 
church and its visible head, though permanent throughout this 
dispensation, " even to the consummation of the world," is never- 
theless only partial. It has for its object matters only relating to 
faith and morals, including the adjudication of what are called 
dogmatic facts that is to say, matters of fact which are intimately 
bound up with dogma.* The Holy Father would riot be infal- 
lible with regard to a problem in mathematics, nor as to mere 
historical facts unconnected with divine revelation. On the 
other hand, it is of faith that the Catholic Roman Church and its 
visible head are infallible in defining dogmas binding upon the 
consciences of the faithful, and, by consequence, in their interpre- 
tation of the words of Holy Scripture, and the writings of the 
Fathers as witnesses to the tradition of the church. 

* As, for instance, the question, decided ex cathedrd by Pope Clement XI. in his constitution 
Vineam Domini, as to whether certain propositions attributed to Cornells Jansen were really 
contained in his book, the Augustinus. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 55 

Now, it would appear that Dr. Pusey, in the above passage 
from the Eirenicon, claims for his church a share in this infalli- 
bility, at all events as regards past ages. Let us examine more 
at detail in what the infallibility of Christ's church, according to 
his ordinance, consists ; \ve shall then be in a position to determine 
whether or no the Anglican communion has any share or lot in 
this matter. 

In a document familiar, of course, to all the readers of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD, and even to many Episcopalians namely, the 
Creed of Pope Pius IV. the following passage occurs : " I ac- 
knowledge that the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church 
is the mother and mistress of all churches, and whatsoever here- 
sies have been condemned, rejected, and anathematized by the 
church I equally condemn, reject, and anathematize." 

In a previous number of this magazine I pointed out that 
this supreme office of judging in faith and morals must, from the 
very constitution of the church, have existed somewhere from the 
beginning ; and I endeavored to show that, according to the 
teaching of St. Irenasus, which, from the prominent position 
which that Father held, may be regarded as being the general 
belief of the Christians of his time, this inagisterium, if I may use 
a theological expression, had its seat in the Roman pontiff and 
the bishops who were in communion with him. These constitute 
the Ecclfsia Docens, which expression, I need scarcely say, does 
not include the laity, but only the clerical order, and especially 
the bishops, who alone are the judges of doctrine co-judges, that 
is, with the pope. The clergy of the second order merely teach, 
each in his respective diocese, as representatives of the bishop 
and in subordination to him. 

The infallibility of the Catholic Church may be classed under 
two heads viz., her infallibility in teaching and her infallibility 
in believing. The former of these is infallibility properly so 
called, and constitutes the active infallibility of the church ; while 
the latter, constituting the passive infallibility of the Ecclcsia Dis- 
cens, is more correctly that inerrancy and indefectibility which 
the church possesses as a whole an inerrancy which is most in- 
timately connected with, and, indeed, may be said to depend upon, 
the infallibility of the Ecclesia Docens. We shall see in the course 
of our investigation that this passive infallibility is all that An 
glicans of Dr. Pusey 's school claim for the church, and conse- 
quently their theory leaves them practically without any infal- 
lible church at all. The office of the Ecclesia Docens is a threefold 
one: to wit, that of witness (testis), judge (iudex\ and teacher 



56 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Oct., 

(ningistra). She executes the office of witness whenever a dogma 
is defined as of faith, which simply amounts to the declaration 
that such doctrine formed part of the original deposit urn of reve- 
lation delivered by our Lord to his apostles; we see her perform- 
ing the office of judge whenever she interposes her voice to de- 
termine conflicting controversies, whether regarding matters ot 
faith or questions of the moral law; of magistra* \n her daily 
ministry of preaching. The duties of this threefold office are 
exercised with more or less frequency : that of magistra is perpe- 
tual and non-intermittent ; that oijudex is quite frequently called 
into operation ; while that of testis is more rare, being called into 
exercise only as occasion requires. But without the two former 
the ordinary magistcrium of the church could not be carried on 
at all. For the infallibility of the church's magisterium is most 
intimately bound up with her oneness ; indeed, the mere idea that 
inerrancy could exist in a body disunited as to its formal belief 
is an absurdity. But, except by unduly constraining the free-will 
of man or by rendering every individual infallible, there is no 
conceivable means by which a world-wide society of human 
beings can be maintained, and maintain themselves, in perfect 
unity of belief, except by the voluntary union of all the members 
with a common head. And this applies to the Ecchsia Docens 
no less than to the church at large. The unity of the episcopate 
consists in union with the "throne of Peter, the chief church, 
whence priestly unity takes its source." f Upon consideration it 
will be seen that this arrangement is a sine qud hon, for unity and 
infallibility are necessary co-ordinates. 

Before proceeding to apply this doctrine of the infallibility 
of the church to the position of Anglicans it may be well to for- 
tify our argument with two brief pictures, drawn from early 
ecclesiastical history, as illustrative of the working of the above 
theory. It is manifest that upon any hypothesis in which the 
Petrine centre of unity is omitted the church can only be re- 
garded as an infallible teacher so long as all the bishops hang 
together in one body. Judging from the experience of the past 
and by our knowledge of human nature, this will not be for long ; 
and when a schism has been effected to which partv are we to 
look for the truth, as both claim to be in possession of the genu- 
ine tradition ? Is ever)' one to judge for himself which ol the 
conflicting parties is right and which wrong? Then the very 

*The expression magistra implies much more than this far more, indeed, than can be ren- 
dered into any single word in English. I shall return to this subject later on. 
t Ante-Nicene Library : The Writings of Cypriui, vol. i. ep. liv. p. 173. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 57 

idea of an infallible church has disappeared. Or is it to be sup- 
posed that the truth goes with the majority? A dangerous 
doctrine indeed ; for have we not read somewhere that the world 
"woke up one morning and found itself Arian"? But even 
supposing that such a theory were admissible, it yet remains 
impracticable. For it is at least conceivable that the bishops 
might be equally divided in point of numbers, or be split into a 
number of small sects neither of which could claim any distinct 
majority. Something very much like this has actually happened 
among the oriental non-Catholic Christians, although, of course, 
the adhesion of Russia has accidentally given a large preponde- 
rance to the " Orthodox " Church. In this' case there would be 
absolutely no means of determining which communion had re- 
tained the tradition of the apostles in its integrity, except by the 
exercise of every man's individual private judgment. But then 
what becomes of the infallibility of the church? 

The two cases in point to which I would call the attention of 
my readers are those of the Novatians and the Donatists. Both 
of these schisms furnish us with very remarkable parallels, not 
with what the Anglican Church is in reality, but with what its 
devotees claim for it to be. And the lesson that we learn from 
the history of these two sects is this : that taking Anglicanism 
in its fairest form, admitting the validity of its hopelessly dis- 
credited orders; conceding to it an orthodoxy in matters relating 
to the sacraments which, as a matter of fact, it does not possess ; 
clothing it with that internal unity which never was and never 
can be one of its attributes, and so far giving free play to our 
imagination as to suppose that every Anglican clergyman is a 
Machonachie and every Anglican church a St. Alban's ; in fact, 
allowing ourselves to be lulled into that sensuous and delightful 
dream in which the nineteenth-century Ritualist passes his days 
and nights I say that if the Church of England were all this, 
were she everything that her Puseys and her Littledales claim 
that she is, she would still be nothing but a miserable band of 
schismatics, a limb cut off, a dead branch, a ship without rudder 
or steersman. I am so profoundly convinced that it is the non- 
apprehension of this fact which retains many a conscientious 
Anglican in his present position that it is my earnest wish, know- 
ing the wide circulation of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, to make some 
endeavors through means of its pages to open their eyes to the 
reality of their situation. 

Two widespread schisms troubled the early church, Nova- 
tianism and Donatism ; the former of these, arising from a dis- 



58 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Oct., 

puted papal election, lasted for three centuries and had its rami- 
fications throughout the whole Roman Empire, East and West. 
The peculiar error of this sect was a denial of the possibility 
of absolution being given to those who after baptism had com- 
mitted the mortal sin of apostasy. The schism of the Donatists, 
on the other hand, was chiefly, although not altogether, confined 
to Africa. It had its origin in the refusal of certain bishops, 
chief of whom was Donatus of Carthage, to receive back into 
Catholic communion those who, though subsequently peni- 
tent, had during persecution surrendered the Holy Scrip- 
tures to the heathen, on which account they received the name 
traditores. 

Now, in the case of both of these schisms the most remarkable 
point for our present consideration is the fact that although 
their position was considered so hopelessly untenable and dan- 
gerous in itself that the great saints Cyprian and Augustine re- 
spectively felt it their bounden duty to spare no pains both to 
denounce their errors and to endeavor to reclaim them ; although 
both in their own time and ever since they have been universally 
regarded as schismatics cut off from Catholic communion, never- 
theless the simple fact remains that, from the high Anglican point 
of view, their position was immeasurably superior to that which 
the Established Church of England has at any time enjoyed, 
both as regards their acknowledged doctrinal orthodoxy, the 
undisputed validity of their orders and, as a consequence, the 
reality of their sacraments, and, last but not least in the eyes of a 
Ritualist, the close similarity of their ceremonial with that of the 
Catholic Church and their freedom from state control. It must 
be remembered once for all and we cannot too strongly, in our 
controversy with Anglicans, insist upon this point that neither 
the Novatians of the third nor the Donatists of the fourth and 
fifth centuries were heretics in the strict sense of the word.* 
They denied no article of ths Creed nor any dogma which had 
been formally defined as of faith. Their respective errors were 
in their inception purely disciplinary, whatever erroneous opin- 
ions may logically be deduced from them ; the great flaw in their 
position being, as we shall presently see, in the eyes of St. Cy- 
prian and St. Augustine, that by disuniting themselves from the 
see of Peter they had cut themselves off from Catholic unity and 
from the promises and privileges attached thereto. Space will 
not permit me to enter into a detailed account of either of these 

Although, of course, there is a sense, as St. Augustine tells us, in which every schismatic 
\% a heretic. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 59 

schisms, the outlines of which, at all events, are generally known. 
I simply desire, in this connection, to call attention to the fol- 
lowing facts. I have already pointed out that could that ideal 
church which Anglicans of the Ritualistic school pass their time 
in dreaming about be really reduced to an accomplished fact in 
the case of their own church a consummation which, judging 
from the past history of Protestant Episcopalianism and our 
knowledge of the English character, is, even with the assistance 
of the " Order of Corporate Reunion," simply inconceivable 
their claim to be recognized by the rest of Christendom as a 
" branch " of the Catholic Church would be just as hopeless as 
ever ; they would even then, although having attained to every 
advantage which, in accordance with their theory, heart could 
desire, be in no better a situation than those ancient schismatics of 
whom we are speaking, whom the voice of the whole church 
condemned as being outside of Catholic unity, and whom these 
very Anglicans themselves would never dream of regarding as 
Catholics. 

For instance, the plea that every bishop is independent in his 
own diocese, and every metropolitan in his own province, by 
which it is maintained that the provinces of Canterbury and 
York were acting wholly within their rights in casting off the 
usurped authority of the Roman See in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth * this plea is entirely demolished by the history of the 
Novatians. Take as an example the well-known case of Mar- 
cianus. This prelate was bishop of the metropolitan see ot 
Aries. He had made open cause with the Novatians, on which 
account St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage and primate of the 
church in Africa, wrote an epistle to the then reigning pontiff, 
St. Stephen, calling upon him to send apostolic letters deposing 
Marcianus from his bishopric. " Wherefore it behooves you," he 
says, " to write a very copious letter to our fellow-bishops ap- 
pointed in Gaul, not to suffer any longer that Marcianus should 
insult our assembly. Let letters be directed by you [a te] into the 
province, and to the people of Aries, by which [guibus i.e., the pope's 
letters] Marcianus being deposed, another may be substituted in 
his place." f Now, surely we have here a very peculiar commen- 
tary upon the Anglican theory of, church government. It is 
quite a favorite device with the more advanced members of that 

* Which, by the way, they never did, for the -see of Canterbury was vacant, and the arch- 
bishop of York, with all his episcopal brethren, save one, of both provinces, was violently de- 
posed for refusing to do this very thing. 

t Ante-Nicene Library : Tlie Writings of Cyprian > vol. i. ep. Ixvi. p. 232. 



60 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Oct., 

communion to bring forward St. Cyprian as a model bishop, who 
believed that the diocese was the "ecclesiastical unit " and that 
every bishop was entirely independent in his own see. They 
quote St. Cyprian's speech to his fellow-bishops at the Council of 
Carthage, to which I need not further refer, as the readers of 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD will remember an admirable explanation 
of the holy bishop's conduct on that occasion in the issue for 
June, 1882. It is upon this ground, and this only, that those 
among them who have not discarded the idea of a visible church 
altogether uphold the right of the English metropolitans \vith 
their suffragans to repudiate the jurisdiction of the Roman pon- 
tiff. Now, what I would wish to inquire is this: If the pope 
possessed in the third century the power which St. Cvprian at- 
tributes to him of deposing from his see a metropolitan bishop bv his 
mere letters-apostolic, although that bishop was perfectly ortho- 
dox in creed, the undoubted possessor of valid orders and valid 
sacraments, and in canonical possession of his see, simply for 
uniting himself to a body which repudiated the authority of the 
pope, upon what possible grounds can Anglicans establish them- 
selves, whose orders and sacraments have ever been unrecognized 
throughout the whole of Christendom, who do not even pretend 
to hold the same doctrines regarding the sacraments either as 
the Roman Church or as the Greek schismatics, and who have 
synodically recognized the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, a 
body absolutely without orders and sacraments, and steeped in 
the most abominable Tieresies of Calvinism, as a " branch " of 
the Catholic Church upon what possible grounds, 1 ask, can 
such a society claim an advantage over the Novatians, who 
were saddled with none of these drawbacks, and who, with 
the exception of a point of discipline, and in their separation 
from the see of Peter, differed in nothing from Catholics them- 
selves ? 

I am aware that a reply is ready in the shape of a reminder 
that Novatianism was a schism in Rome itself the intrusion of 
one bishop into the diocese of another, and not a mere declara- 
tion on the part of the bishop of Aries of independence from the 
Bishop of Rome, which, according to Anglican ideas, would have 
been entirely justifiable. But even here the parallel between the 
two sects is closer than many may imagine. There is an amus- 
ing passage in the letters of the late Father Faber where he 
tells us of the arrival at Rome, during one of his visits there, of 
an Anglican prelate rejoicing in the title of bishop of Gibraltar. 
The jurisdiction, however, of this awful potentate (who omi- 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 61 

nously enough bore, I believe, the patronymic of Harris) * was by 
no means confined to that impregnable rock ; indeed, it extended 
almost all round the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, includ- 
ing the patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople, 
modestly leaving the two remaining patriarchal jurisdictions to 
the " bishop of the Church of England in Jerusalem," now hap- 
pily defunct.f On the arrival of this prelate in Rome the High- 
Church and Low-Church parties (as usual) got to loggerheads as 
to whether a cross should be carried before him on his entrance 
into the Anglican chapel to administer the rite of confirmation, 
and the dispute grew so loud that it reached the ears of the 
Sovereign Pontiff, Gregory XVI., himself. Some of the cardi- 
nals, scandalized that a handful of heretics should disturb the 
serenity of the Holy City, urged the pope that he should take 
some measures to call Mr. Harris, or whatever his name was, to 
a sense of his own insignificance. But they failed in making the 
good old man angry ; in fact, he was hugely amused, and is said 
to have observed with a chuckle, " 1 was not previously aware 
that Rome was in the diocese of Gibraltar" ! 

But the point in connection with all this to which I desire to 
call attention is as follows : If it was lawful for Dr. Harris to 
claim and exercise episcopal jurisdiction in Rome itself, and for 
the archbishop of Canterbury to hold communion with him and 
not with the pope, without (from the Anglican point of view, of 
course) incurring the guilt of schism, why was it not equally 
open to Marcianus to unite himself to the communion of Nova- 
tian and to repudiate that of Pope Stephen ? The only differ- 
ence that I am able to detect is this : that while Novatian only 
claimed ordinary jurisdiction in the Roman diocese, the authority 
granted by her majesty to Mr. Harris extended over three patri- 
archates including hundreds of dioceses. In point of fact, Nova- 
tian was the more modest of the two ! 

I have left myself but little space for touching upon the sub- 
ject of the Donatist schism, but inasmuch as this is in some 
respects the more remarkable of the two, since a closer parallel 
can be drawn between it and the facts no less than the ideal of 
Anglicanism, I must not altogether pass it by. 

Whatever may have been the opinions of the later and more 
fanatical Donatists, it cannot be denied that their schism had in 

*On consideration I think that this was another and later bishop of Gibraltar. But there 
was a Bishop Harris. 

I 1 refer, of course, to the bishopric, not to the estimable gentleman who lately filled it, of 
whom I know nothing. 

I 



62 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVA TE JUDGMENT. [Oct., 

its inception taken up a position precisely similar to that claimed 
by Anglicans who sit restively under the Royal Supremacy. 
The corruptions of Rome, say the latter, are our justification ; 
and inasmuch as the aberrations of that church from the strait 
path were such as to imperil our own salvation, if, indeed, they 
did not constitute her, as our own theologians for full a hun- 
dred and fifty years strenuously maintained, the Babylon of the 
Apocalypse, it was our duty so far to renounce communion with 
her as to repudiate her supreme jurisdiction and set out on an 
independent course of our own. Corruption, too, in the case of 
the Donatists, was their plea for breaking away from the unity 
of the church ; and although the precise grounds of schism were 
not in both cases the same, nevertheless the principle was iden- 
tical, and many of the facts on either side alike to an extraordi- 
nary degree. The Reformed religion in England, as manifested 
in the Established Church, in reality dates from the accession of 
Queen Elizabeth. The Church of England bears upon its brow 
the impress of her character, as, indeed, it was the creation of her 
mind. Its vagueness as to doctrine, its clumsy attempts at com- 
promise, its empty ritualism, its aristocratic ido?, its thorough 
and essential erastianism, all bear witness to the influence of her 
moulding hand ; and such as she made it it has, in spite of ex- 
ternal changes, ever remained. The same sort of influence, that 
of a powerful and unprincipled woman, had its share in the for- 
mation of the Donatist schism. Lucilla, a wealthy woman, whose 
spirit of self-will had been offended by her having been rebuked 
by the bishop of Carthage for the superstitious veneration of 
certain unauthenticated relics, threw herself heart and soul into 
the movement, encouraging the schismatical clergy with money 
and protection. Nor does the parallel between the African 
schism and the English defection end here. Just as the prime 
motive power which prompted the nobles of England to second 
Henry VIII. in his designs was the greed of plunder, so, although 
on a much smaller scale, were the schismatical clergy in Car- 
thage influenced by the desire to keep in their possession certain 
treasures which had been placed in their hands for safe-keeping 
in times of persecution. But these points of similarity were, of 
course, merely accidental ; let us pass on to those which can be 
brought nearer home. 

It is the common theory of High-Church Anglicans that the 
possession of valid orders and sacraments, together with the sin- 
cere profession of the Constantinopolitan Creed, is all that is 
necessary in order to establish a claim to the name of Catholic. 





1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 63 

They assert that, being in possession of these advantages, it is not 
their fault if they are not in visible communion with the rest of 
Christendom, but that the blame lies with the Holy See, which, 
having usurped to itself an authority unknown to the early 
church, is in itself the efficient cause of the schism, and actually 
going so far as to call it, with a recent French writer,* " the 
schismatical papacy." Now, the words which St. Augustine 
addresses to the Donatists are equally forcible with regard to the 
position taken up by Anglicans of the Puseyite school. The 
holy doctor tells them, in the plainest and most emphatic terms, 
that neither orders, nor sacraments, nor the profession of an 
orthodox creed, nor all three together, suffice to make them Catho- 
lics, if they are outside the visible unity of the church ; and he en- 
tirely destroys the quibble about " corruptions " as a justification 
for separation by the simple argument that if corruption had so 
far destroyed the Catholic Church that it became a duty to 
separate from it, then Donatus had no source from whence to get 
his orders and his sacraments ; but if it had not been so destroyed, 
then to separate from it was the sin of schism. He admits, it will 
be observed, all that they -claim on their own behalf. " You 
are with us," says he, " in baptism, in the Creed, in the other 
sacraments of the Lord ; but in the spirit of unity, in the 
bond of peace, in fine, in the Catholic Church itself, you are not 
with us." f 

But even here the difficulty was not ended. The Donatists 
were an exceedingly numerous sect, numbering their bishoprics 
in Africa alone by hundreds. They claimed to be the Catholic 
Church of the country, precisely as do high Anglicans, and even 
asserted that they were in some kind of communion with the rest 
of the church. Here Was a clear local case of that division of 
which I have spoken in an earlier portion of this article two con- 
flicting bodies both claiming to be the true and only representa- 
tive of Christ's church within their borders. By what test is it 
to be decided whether of the two claims is valid ? Whatever 
hazy " views " Anglicans may have upon this subject, the Fathers 
of that day never doubted that the true and only criterion of/ 
Catholic communion was visible union with the see of Rome. St. 
Optatus of Milevis, the great champion of Catholicity against 
Donatism, is most clear and distinct upon this point. It is in 
union with the Apostolic See that the fulness of Catholic privi- 
lege consists. " Therefore," he says, " of the above-named gifts, 
the chair is, as we have said, first, which we have proved to be 

* The apostate priest Guettee. t Ep. xciii. vel xlviii. Ad Vincent. Rogat. 



64 CHANTELLE. [Oct., 

ours through Peter.""'* And later on in the same treatise he repeats 
this expression, " through the chair of Peter, which is ours, through 
it {per ipsani\ the remaining advantages are with us." f Nor is St. 
Augustine himself behindhand in asserting this principle. In a 
hymn which he addressed to the schismatics occur the well- 
known words : 

" Come, brethren, if you wish to be inserted in the vine ; 
It is a grief when we see you lie thus cut off. 
Number the priests/row the chair of Peter itself, 
And in that line of Fathers see who has succeeded to whom. 
That is the rock which the proud gates of hell do not conquer." 

From all this it is plainly manifest that in the opinion of these 
holy Fathers, the spokesmen of the Catholic Church in their time, 
the Anglican Church could not, even did it possess the utmost 
advantages which its votaries claim for it, command a better 
position than the Donatists of old. In our next article we shall 
see the bearing of all this upon the subject of infallibility and 
private judgment. 



CHANTELLE. 

" Salut a toi, beau pays de Chantelle ! 
Cloitre, chateau, donjon, vieille tourelle ! 
J'ainie tes rocs et ta Double limpide, 
Et tes moulins qui blanchissent ses eaux ; 
Et ce sentier tortueux et rapide 
Tout ombrage de noyers et d'ormeaux." 

THE traveller in the northern part of Auvergne comes across 
a limpid, sparkling stream called the Double, whose windings it 
is pleasant to follow in the sweet spring-time, as when we first 
set foot on its banks. It has its source in the little fountain of 
St Eloi, near Montaigut-en-Combrailles, among the shady hills of 
Echassieres. Beside this bubbling spring stands, on a pedestal 
of granite, a colossal statue of St. Eloi, the patron of smiths and 
all workers in metals, extending his hand as if in benediction 
over the water at his feet. The stream issuing from this foun- 

O 

tain goes winding off between two lines of high cliffs difficult to 
cross, and worn into deeply-indented masses that often look like 
the battlements and towers of some feudal hold. One of these 

* Contra Donatis.'as, cap. vi. f Ibidem, cap. ix. 



1883.] CHANTELLE. 65 

is the Roc de la Busc, with bold peaks, which has the aspect 
of a citadel, with bastions and outworks over which have been 
trained espaliers, grapevines, honeysuckles, and other climbing 
plants, with a beautiful garden in the midst. But in the wilder 
parts of the valley flocks of sheep and asses browse along the 
steep, dangerous sides of the cliffs, which are shaded, at least on 
the northern side, by fine walnut-trees. The valley, thus shel- 
tered, is so warm that vegetation is earlier here than in the sur- 
rounding country. And in the spring, when the vines begin to 
put forth and everything is fresh, it is a genuine rendezvous 
for nightingales, larks, blackbirds, linnets, goldfinches, wrens, and 
other birds. And there are blue-winged dragon-flies, that love 
the flowers, and the bergeronette that follows the herd, lighting 
on their horns and feet. The murmur of the countless insects, 
the singing of the birds, the plaintive cries of the animals, the 
rippling of the swift current, the freshness of the verdure, the 
utter seclusion, make this narrow valley a delightful retreat. 
And the stream contains a great variety of fish to attract the 
sportsman. The cliffs, too, are full of recesses and caves, as if to 
tempt the lover of solitude and the contemplative life. And, in 
fact, as late as the middle of last century many pious hermits 
dwelt in these caves along the banks and on the summit of the 
rockers. Among these was Jean d'Artoul, who belonged to one 
of the most distinguished families of this region. He lived in 
his peaceful hermitage of St. Jean to the advanced age of ninety, 
and, when no longer able to go in quest of alms, accepted aid 
from his own family, who seem to have been so generous that 
robbers were tempted to his cave ; for we read of the archbishop 
that, after summoning them for three weeks in succession to 
appear and confess their guilt, he proceeded to excommunicate 
them for depriving the aged hermit of his means of subsistence. 

In the lower part of the valley, where it widens, are tan- 
neries, tileries, grist-mills, and factories of various kinds. In the 
space of a single league there are fifteen of these industrial es- 
tablishments. One of the mills is called the Moulin-Dieu, because 
it formerly belonged to the hospital at Chantelle a beautiful 
instance of giving the highest of names to what was consecrated 
to the poor, so especially beloved of God. The hospital itself, 
founded and endowed in 1240 by Archambaud IX., Sire of Bour- 
bon, is styled in the charter, Domni Dei, sen pauperum de Cantella. 
In this mill of God were ground the one hundred bushels of 
barley and the one hundred and eleven bushels of wheat annu- 
ally given to the hospital by the Prince de Conde. 
VOL. xxxvnr. 5 



66 CHANTELLE. [Oct., 

The Double is a dangerous, capricious river, with all its at- 
tractions, for the rains often swell it to an enormous size, giving 
it a furious current and causing it to break through its embank- 
ments and carry off the mills. And sometimes it dries up to a 
mere silvery thread. The water is very pure and possesses re- 
markable bleaching powers. As the people say, it is extrenicment 
savonneuse. Hence it is a favorite resort of peasant women, who 
come here to wash their clothes, which they spread on the odor- 
ous bushes and plants to dry. One of their favorite places is be- 
yond the blackened ruins of Motte-a- Bourbon, where, on the top 
of a peak that rises from the very edge of the torrent, is a rock 
worn by the elements into the shape of a statue that looks like a 
Madonna, called by the peasants the " Bonne Vierge de la Mere 
Madeleine " from the name of the owner of the soil. The washer- 
women, before they begin their work, never fail to look up at 
this statue and make the sign of the cross. 

Following the Bouble as it flows along its bed of granite from 
one sparkling cascade to another, we pass Cluzor with its pic- 
turesque monastery and several manor-houses, among which is 
Deux-Aigues, where Sir John Chandos held imprisoned a short 
time the mother of Louis le Bon of Bourbon. Then the stream 
rushes past the fortress of Montel, that stands on a height over- 
looking the fair valley of Bost, and the tower of Vignere, and 
comes breathless and foaming with impetuous haste to the town 
of Chantelle, after which it slackens its speed, as if weary, and 
descends softly into the plain, passing in its course the chateau 
de Chareil, noteworthy for its frescoes and carved chimney- 
pieces, and Cintrat, a hermitage of the Premonstrants, built in 
the woods, and finally empties into the Sioule near the pretty 
town of St. Fountain. 

In this varied panorama nothing attracts the eye so strongly 
as Chantelle, an old fortified town of ancient Bourbonnais, stand- 
ing on a mountain or plateau of granite surrounded by gentle 
hills that form a verdant zone. Its lofty position, its embattled 
walls, the majestic towers of its formidable castle, and the turrets 
of its old priory give it a most picturesque and feudal aspect. 
The spot where it stands affords such natural means of defence 
that Caesar himself established a castrum here and made it the 
centre of several Roman roads, remarkable for their solidity, 
leading to Lyons, Clermont, Autun, Limoges, etc. It is only 
within a few years the old- milliary stones that marked the legal 
distances were removed. Here, as everywhere they set their 
foot, the Romans left an ineffaceable impress. Roman blood 



1883.] CHANTELLE. 67 

mingles in the veins of the people. There are still many Latin 
words in use, even among the peasants. The shepherd urges on 
his dog with the cry of -velox, and says fore (from foras) instead 
of " begone." The housewife calls a chair a selle (sella), and her 
water-pitcher a pote, from potare. The very children play at 
games called rapio and capio te. The cock, so dear to ancient 
Gaul on account of its consecration to Jupiter, is called at Chan- 
telle by the name oifan, from the Celtic word for Jove, the wor- 
ship of whom the Romans introduced here, as shown by a statue 
of him recently found in a spot still known as the Champ du Tem- 
ple. And the river Double, that flows beneath its walls, was ori- 
ginally called Jouble, from lovis bulla. 

Chantelle, however, seems to have been one of the first places 
evangelized in the province, and had in the earliest ages its 
church, baptistery, and band of neophytes. St. Antoninus, a 
disciple of the great St. Austremoine, was its first apostle. The 
church here was of so much importance in the fifth century that 
St. Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont, came here more 
than once, and showed by his writings how much he loved this 
region for its primitive piety. His first visit was on his way 
from Bourges, where he had been to install the archbishop, Sim- 
plicius. While at Chantelle he stopped at the house of Ger- 
manicus, a man of standing, quite advanced in years, but with the 
true French regard for his personal appearance. The spiritucl 
bishop, in a letter to his friend Vectius full of the perfume of an- 
cient times, describes his host as a man of excellent health and 
still fresh notwithstanding his twelve lustres, lithe of limb, brisk 
in his movements, with a firm hand, vigorous lungs, and teeth as 
white as milk. And to give himself a more youthful appearance 
he wore such garments as would add slenderness to his figure, 
well-adjusted buskins, his beard closely trimmed, and his hair 
arranged in the shape of a wheel or crown. The bishop seems 
to have groaned somewhat over this evidence of vanity and 
worldliness, and recommended Germanicus not to attach too 
much importance to these exterior advantages, but rather to 
clothe himself with all Christian virtues and thus restore the 
youthful innocence of his soul. It was not to exercise his wit the 
accomplished bishop wrote to Vectius, but to enlist his aid in 
drawing Germanicus to more serious things, the former being 
their mutual friend and living in the vicinity of Chantelle. 

This Vectius was an illustrious personage of the race of 
Vectius Epagathus, one of the early martyrs of Lyons, whose 
memory is still celebrated in that city. Losing his wife while 



68 CHANTELLE. [Oct. 

still young 1 , he retired with his only daughter to his estates near 
Chantelle, where, surrounded by his vassals, he attended to the 
cultivation of his domains and led a life of exalted piety and 
patriarchal simplicity not to be found in our day. Here he was 
visited by St. Sidonius, who gives an interesting description of 
his manner of life. His household was admirably regulated. 
He educated his daughter with special care, endeavoring to 
make up for the affection of the mother she had lost. He exer- 
cised great hospitality towards strangers, and treated his vassals 
as a kind administrator rather than master, never speaking to 
them in a haughty, threatening tone ; and they in return were 
honest, industrious, and devoted to his interests. His sobriety 
was remarkable. He never ate meat, even the game he brought 
home from the chase. He read daily the sacred books, especially 
during his meals, and often chanted the Psalms devoutly. And 
he spent much time in serious meditation as he paced the well- 
trimmed alleys of his garden or the sombre paths of the forest. 
But austere as were his private habits, Vectius did not disregard 
the exigencies of social life, and he retained the manners of a 
genuine Roman patrician, as he was by descent. His address 
was noble and dignified, and his conversation grave and elevated 
in tone. His dress, too, was invariably rich and scrupulously 
clean, and he had a special regard to his girdle cultus in singulis. 
His .favorite exercise was the chase, and he allowed no one to 
surpass him in the training of horses, dogs, and falcons. 

But to return to Chantelle. The most ancient church here 
is under the invocation of St. Vincent the Martyr, and stands on 
the banks of the Bouble. Its foundation dates from the earliest 
ages. Beside it, in the tenth century, Airald, a nobleman of un- 
common piety, consentiente nxore med, as he says with the con- 
sent of his wife, Rothilde, Viscountess of Limoges and sovereign 
lady of Chantelle founded a monastery, moved thereto by the 
thought of the judgments of God, of whom mercy and pardon 
were implored against the last great day. The charter was wit- 
nessed, among others, by Count Guy of Bourbon and St. Odo, 
abbot of Cluny. 

The place where this convent was built is exceedingly roman- 
tic. It stands on a bold promontory of granite, surrounded on 
one side by tall cliffs, and looking off on the other over a land- 
scape of commingled beauty and wildness. At its base is the 
torrent once sacred to Jove, hastening impetuously away, some- 
times to disappear in the dark woods where the Druids once held 
their rites, and then coming forth with a deep, solemn murmur 



1883.] CHANTELLE. 69 

to display its winding-, silvery current. In the distance are the 
plains of Bourbonnais, bounded by the mountains of Forez. 

The church of St. Vincent was rebuilt a century or two later, 
and is still the pride of Chantelle. It is of the Romano-Byzan- 
tine style peculiar to Auvergne, and in the form of a Latin cross, 
with a lantern at the intersection of the nave and transepts, and 
its head turned duly to the east. There were once five belfries 
with melodious bells that rang in chime the boast of the whole 
country around. These were destroyed by the Huguenots, who 
also sadly defaced the church, after their wont. But where in 
France do we not come upon the traces of these heavy-footed 
sectaries, who went through the fair garden of the church, re- 
morselessly trampling down the flowers ? . . . The great bourdon, 
a modern bell, now removed to the parish church, is called by 
the peasants the Taureau de St. Vincent, and the vine-dressers 
do not fear hail, thunder, or lightning when they hear its roar. 

The interior of the church is striking. The sides of the broad 
nave extend upward and meet in one grand arch like two hands 
joined in prayer. The capitals of the pillars are covered with 
flowers, birds, and fantastic animals, with man as the centre of 
creation. The choir, which is at the east end, inclines to the 
right like the head of the expiring Saviour. Five painted win- 
dows admit a rich light. Here are the remains of an ancient 
zodiac, and ten griffins are depicted as drinking from curious 
antique vases, emblematic of the Eucharistic communion. In the 
right transept is the altar of the Cinq Plaies, and in the other the 
Chapelle des Rois for the special use of princes, with beautiful 
flamboyant tracery of the fifteenth century. Here are to be seen 
our first mother plucking the fatal apple, and that ennobler of 
our fallen nature, the second Eve, with the glorious Assumption 
crowning the whole. And on the walls is pictured a long pro- 
cession of canons, with the dean at their head, coming to offer 
the keys of the church to Our Lady. Everywhere in the church 
are the remains of paintings and carvings, not always in the 
highest style of art, but always expressive of the mysticism and 
piety of the ages of faith. 

Around the high altar are three chapels. The middle one, at 
the very apsis of the church, is the chapel of the Saintes Re- 
liques, where once stood twenty-two beautiful shrines full of 
relics, mostly brought from the East by Archambaud VI., Sire of 
Bourbon, when he returned from the holy wars. These have 
fortunately been preserved, and the great festival of the Holy 
Relics, celebrated for the first time in the church of St. Vincent 



70 ClIANTELLE. [Oct., 

more than seven hundred years ago, is still kept up. It takes 
place the Sunday before Pentecost, at the most beautiful season 
of the year, when all nature seems to be exhaling the perfume of 
flowers and fresh vegetation. In former times the shrines were 
taken down from their niches on the eve of the festival, the bells 
ringing out a joyful chime through the valley and deep gorges, 
that was echoed by hundreds of cliffs till lost in the mountains 
of Forez. Vespers were sung, there was a salvo of artillery, and 
then came a joyful peal of trumpets by way of prelude to the 
f//e. In the morning the outer walls of the ducal palace were 
hung with tapestry, and the castle and public edifices were gay 
with flags, chief among which floated from the highest tower of 
the chateau the banner which Archambaud VI. of Bourbon had 
planted with his own hands in a breach he had made in the walls 
of Laodicea. A procession was formed between long files of 
soldiers from the garrison. First came the pilgrims of St. James, 
staff in hand, and mantles adorned with scallop-shells, singing 
hymns learned at Compostella. Drums were beating. In the 
distance the slow and solemn voice of the priests could be heard 
intoning the supplicatory : 

" O bone Jesu, Salvator mundi ! 
Exaudi preces populi tui ! " 

The choristers every now and then took up a versicle of the 
grand litany, to which the vast crowd responded : Ora pro nobis ! 
There were the Templars, in rich armor, with their mystic 
ensigns, and poor hermits from the cliffs along the Double, with 
shaven heads, long beards, sandalled feet, and their brown robes 
confined by a cord. The monks and sisters of different orders 
came out of their retreats. The prior of St. Vincent, clothed 
with the insignia of his office, presided. Behind him was the 
Duke of Bourbon with his family and court, attended by the 
magistrates of the country, and followed by a company of cav- 
alry. Amid these were borne the twenty-two rich feretories, or 
shrines, all of wrought metal, or wood artistically carved or 
painted, given by the sires of Bourbon and other nobles. These 
were borne by venerable old men chosen from the notabilities of 
Chantelle, clothed in floating white robes confined at the waist 
by a scarlet cord. They wore a white cap embroidered with 
flowers, but their feet were bare, like those of St. Louis when he 
received the sacred Crown of Thorns. This long procession 
went around the ramparts of the town, and through the prin- 
cipal streets and squares, which were filled with kneeling people 



1883.] CHANTELLE. 71 

weeping and praying. But the most touching part of the scene 
was in the Grande Rue, where were gathered all the infirm, who 
eagerly passed beneath the shrines, pressing against them their 
bandages and flannels with pious faith. The soldiers, too, 
touched them with their swords, and the crowd with their rosa- 
ries and medals. The Revolution interrupted these solemnities, 
but they were resumed in 1840, and are still celebrated with 
great splendor, attracting a prodigious crowd. A few years ago 
forty mountaineers from the Pyrenees took part in the proces- 
sion in the costume of ancient minstrels. They had been to the 
Holy Land in fulfilment of a vow, and bore a banner blessed at 
the Holy Sepulchre. These pious troubadours sang a Mass 
called the Messe solennelle de Jerusalem, with various airs learned 
in Syria and Constantinople. 

One of the great memories of Chantelle is that of Anne of 
Beaujeu, daughter of Louis XL, who married Duke Pierre de 
Bourbon. Brantome says she possessed rare beauty and an 
energy beyond her sex. When she came to take possession of 
her duchy she was so struck with the picturesque site of the 
castle of Chantelle, with its immense view across Bourbonnais, 
Forez, and La Marche, and the deep ravine through which 
comes pouring down the impetuous Bouble, that she resolved 
to make it her residence as soon as freed from the regency. 
Here she ended her days, gathering around her brave knights 
and fair ladies, poets and troubadours, and learned men. She 
established a school for the young nobles, did much to improve 
the town, and showed a pious liberality to the churches and re- 
ligious houses. She also converted the old Carlovingian castle 
into a feudal hold of truly royal proportions and strength by 
adding to its defences and building three massive towers named 
St. Pierre for her husband, St. Anne for herself, and St. Susanne 
for her daughter, whose birth had been predicted by St. Fran- 
cis of Paul, and who married the Grand Constable of Bourbon. 
On these towers she placed colossal statues of the saints whose 
names they bore. It was under Anne of Beaujeu and the Grand 
Constable that Chantelle became emphatically a fortified town. 
All that military art could do at that time was done to add 
to the natural defences of the place. This was the period of its 
greatest glory. Here came all the young nobles of Bourbon- 
nais to acquire knightly accomplishments, to joust, use a lance, 
and obtain a knowledge of fencing, hunting, hawking, etc., as 
well as mental training. Frangois de Beauquaire, lord of Puy- 
guillon and bishop of Metz, an historian and one of the lights of 



72 CHANTELLE. [Oct., 

the Council of Trent, was brought up at the castle of Chantelle 
among the young nobles of the province, and was still there at 
the defection of the Constable. His brother John was the friend 
and almost constant companion of the duke, with whom he had 
been educated. 

In those days there were more than a hundred chateaux 
in the vicinity of Chantelle, besides commanderies and rich ab- 
beys, and in the town itself were many distinguished residents. 
The names of the nobles who composed the court of the Duke 
of Bourbon in the reign of Charles VII. are to be found, to- 
gether with their armorial bearings, in an old MS. on parch- 
ment preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. Among 
them figures the name of Chatard, happily illustrated in the 
hierarchy of our country. It was in the castle of Chantelle that 
Louis le Bon, called a " moult bel ct gracieux chevalier qui aimait 
fhonneur sur tout" founded the military order of Esperance, or 
Notre Dame du Chardon. For this purpose he gathered here 
in 1366 the very flower of the French chivalry, ready for any 
knightly deed at the first sound of "Bourbon Notre-Dame!" 
the old war-cry of the Sire Archambaud. Only twenty-six 
knights, distinguished for their nobility and valor, were admitted 
to the order at first. Among them was the peerless Du Guesc- 
lin, whom Duke Louis loved with a " sainct amour.'" They 
wore a cap of green velvet with bands of cramoisie, adorned 
with pearls and the device Alien! that is, Be ready to serve 
God and the country wherever honor is to be won. Their 
baldric was of blue velvet embroidered with gold, and lined 
with red satin. On it gleamed the inspiring word Espdrance / 
It was fastened with a clasp of pure gold, on which was the 
head of a thistle (chardon) enamelled in green. The founda- 
tion of this order was celebrated by jousts, tournaments, 
hunting parties, dances, the lays of minstrels and troubadours, 
and Sumptuous repasts, which grande et joyeuse vie lasted for 
days. 

At that time arms were manufactured at the castle itself 
noted for their efficiency, as the enemies of France often testi- 
fied. Froissart tells how Louis le Bon brought forth all sorts of 
engines of war from his arsenal at Chantelle to go to the rescue 
of his mother, taken prisoner by the English, and used them to 
such purpose as to terrify the bonne dame herself, who sent word 
for him to desist, which he did out of filial respect. 

It was at Chantelle the Grand Constable first took refuge 
from Francis I. His downfall was owing to the vengeance of 



1883.] CHANTELLE. 73 

a disdained woman the queen-mother, Louise de Savoie, whose 
hand he had twice refused. With him departed the glory of 
Chantelle. The brilliant court was for ever dispersed, with the 
exception of the noblesse de robe. The ducal lands were confiscat- 
ed. The chateaux one by one fell to ruins. The town, deprived 
of its ancient defenders, was taken by the Huguenots, who de- 
spoiled the churches and convents and swept away its artistic 
riches. But the natural beauties of the place could not be in- 
jured, nor its grand old castle, which time alone can destroy; for 
the stones themselves could be more easily broken than the ce- 
ment that fastens them together. Of the twenty-seven towers 
that defended the town several are still standing, two or three 
hundred feet in circumference. The donjon is at the north end 
of the town on a cliff in the form of a horseshoe, around which 
sweeps the Double like a natural moat. A subterranean passage 
beneath the stream once communicated with a castle on one of 
the heights beyond, so. a sortie could be made to harass a besieg- 
ing army, and perhaps drive it into the river. 

In spite of its misfortunes Chantelle has preserved its mediae- 
val aspect. At every step, particularly in the quarter of St. 
Nicolas at the east end of the town, you see Gothic doorways 
with their escutcheons, sharp spires and gables and high-pitched 
roofs, carved balconies and projecting upper stories. Some of 
the streets still have high-sounding, historic names, such as Rue 
Pepin le Bref, Rue Anne de Beaujeu, etc. Among the houses 
of the nobility still remaining, with their towers and coats of 
arms, is that of Chauvigny de Blot, one of the most ancient 
families in the country and allied with the Bourbons, established 
at Chantelle as early as the twelfth century. The last of the 
name to reside here was known as the Sire de Blot. He lived 
in the eighteenth century and still kept up many of the customs 
of ancient times. Every day at dinner, after the example of 
moult anciens et preux seigneurs, he had his steed led through a 
glazed door (still to be seen) into the dining-hall during the 
dessert, and here served with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine, 
to which the noble animal did full justice. And the wine of 
Chantelle is not to be disdained even by a horse. It is a drink 
fit for kings. " Come with me to Bourbonnais," said Henry IV. 
to his courtiers, "and we will have some of my good Vin de 
Chantelle." 

The Sire de Blot had not only the manners of the ancien re"- 
gime, but the virtues and piety of a bygone age. He was re- 
markably compassionate and charitable to the poor. It is related 



74 CHANTELLE. [Oct., 

of him that walking out one day with his little daughter of five 
or six years of age, they were accosted by a beggar, to whom the 
child paid no attention. "My daughter," said he, "do you not 
know that we should regard the poor as the very image of 
Christ? Kiss the ground for not returning this good man's 
salutation, and give him these alms." When the Sire de Blot 
died his body was exposed for two days on a /*'/ de parade in a 
chapelle ardente, and he had the obsequies of a prince. 

The manners and customs of the people at Chantelle are as 
quaint as their ancient town. On the wedding day the bride- 
groom, before going to church, comes all dressed, with long rib- 
bons streaming from his button-hole, to formally demand his 
bride. " Seek her," says the father. But she has hidden, and 
often has to be sought for a long time. On returning from 
church a broom is put across the doorway, which the bride 
thrusts away with her foot most energetically as a foresign of 
her vigorous housewifery. Then a soup, hot with pepper, is 
brought forth. The bride takes the first spoonful, her husband 
the second. All the guests take their turn. This is to show that 
everything in the married life is not quite palatable. 

Once a year all the peasants go through the vineyards, fields, 
and orchards in the evening, torch in hand, brandishing their 
lights among the trees and vines with mysterious cries. It is a 
curious sight to see all these lights moving to and fro in the 
darkness like luminous insects in the air. This is always done 
on a Sunday evening, and the day is known as the Dimanche des 
brandons. It is perhaps the remnant of some old Druidical 
custom. 

On Whitmonday takes place the Procession des bit's, which is 
terminated by a festivity akin to the Fete de la Rosiere annually 
held at Nanterre. The cure" goes early with his parishioners in 
procession to the chapel of Charboulat to say Mass, and afterwards 
breakfasts on the green with the crowd. Charboulat is a little 
village near Chantelle that grew up around a grange that once 
belonged to the canons. Near by, in a clump of willows, is the 
miraculous spring of St. Pierre, good for fevers, with a niche to 
receive offerings. And at no great distance is the fountain of St. 
Giez, still noted in diseases of the eye. After breakfast the proces- 
sion makes the round of the parish and returns to Chantelle. At' 
the entrance all the young men of the place, with fronds of grace- 
ful ferns in their hats, come to meet it and present to. the priest 
the queen of the festival a young maiden chosen for her virtues. 
The cure" gives her his blessing, places a crown of ferns on her 



1883.] CHANTELLE. 75 

head, and makes her a short address. Then a cortege ot white- 
robed maidens with the white banner of Mary, and fern-leaves in 
their hands, surround the queen and lead her away, singing mer- 
rily as they go. In the afternoon young and old collect a vast 
quantity of ferns, which they burn at night in a great pile on the 
public square. The queen sets fire to it, and the people dance 
gaily around. The cure himself comes for a few moments to see 
this joyous rural spectacle. 

Only a few of the lowest class of people here seem to be 
entitled to any family name. They are generally known by 
some sobriquet, which has to be added to their Christian names 
for want of a better perhaps derived from domestic things, as 
La Bouteille, or Lapaille ; or some reminiscence of war, as Ma- 
rengo and Dragoon ; or from their province, as Bourbonnais, 
Picard, Auvergnat, etc. Even titles are given them Em- 
pereur, Prince, Duke, and Baron. At baptism the names of 
festivals are often given, such as Noel, Pasques, and Toussaint, 
which frequently become patronymics. And there are strange 
feminine names, like Esteniette, Pasquette, Lionette, Bastienne, 
Benoiste, Ysabiau, etc.* 

In every household curious prayers in rhyme are daily said, 
called Les Or & Dieu (Orationes ad Deum). Among these devo- 
tions is a kind of meditation on the Passion which has something 
of the local picturesqueness. The Holy Virgin, going in pur- 
suit of her Son, meets a pious woman, who gives her an account 
of what 'she has seen : " They have taken our Lord. They led 
him up the steep Calvary by a narrow way rough with stones. 
Our Lord fell down. They raised him up again, but with blows 
of whips and staves. Our Lord grew faint : he asked for drink. 
They gave him a horrid draught mingled with the gall of toads 
and serpents." Two of the lines tell us of 

" La petite alouette qui est dans son nid, 
Qui chante le nom de Jesus Christ." 

These Or a Dieu end with the following assurance : 

" O qui les sait, et qui les dit, 
Mettra son ame en Paradis." 

*We are indebted for many of these details to the Abbe Boudant's interesting Histoire de 
Chantclle. 



76 BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 
BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.* 

II. MARYLAND TOLERATION. 

IN our last article, reviewing Mr. Bancroft's History of the 
United States, we took exception to the distinguished author's 
views on two important subjects viz., his rejection firstly and' 
his silence secondly in regard to the discovery of America by 
the Northmen, and his greatly changed and apparently preju- 
diced position in regard to Catholic toleration in Maryland and 
we objected to the alterations which the author has seen fit to 
make in the text of his last two editions, 1876 and 1883, showing 
a great change in his opinions since the publication of the fifteen 
preceding editions, embodying the result of nearly fifty years' 
study, especially in regard to Catholic toleration in Maryland. 
Having devoted that article to the consideration of the North- 
men in America, we propose in the present article to review Mr. 
Bancroft's altered positions in relation to Lord Baltimore and 
religious toleration in colonial and Catholic Maryland. We 
will first give in the following parallel columns the alterations 
in relation to Lord Baltimore and Maryland made by Mr. Ban- 
croft in the first volume of his history : 

FIFTEEN OLD EDITIONS. EDITION OF 1883. 

" In an age when religious contro- " In an age of increasing divisions 

versy still continued to be active, among Protestants his mind sought 

and when the increasing divisions relief from controversy in the bosom 

among Protestants were spreading of the Roman Catholic Church ; 

a general alarm, his [Lord Balti- and, professing his conversion with- 

more's] mind sought relief from out forfeiting the king's favor, in 

controversy in the bosom of the 1624 he disposed advantageously of 

Roman Catholic Church ; and pre- his place, which had been granted 

ferring the avowal of his opinions him for life, and obtained the title 

to the emoluments of office, he re- of Lord Baltimore in the Irish 

signed his place and openly pro- peerage." 
fessed his conversion " (pp. 238, 239). 

"The nature of the document "The conditions of the grant con- 

itself [the charter of Maryland] and formed to the wishes, it may be to 

concurrent opinion leave no room the suggestions, of the first Lord 

to doubt that it was penned by the Baltimore himself, although it was 

* 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. 



1883.] BANCROFTS HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. 



77 



first Lord Baltimore himself, al- 
though it was finally issued for the 
benefit of his son " (p. 241). 

"Christianity was by the charter 
made the law of the land, but no 
preference was given to any sect ; 
and equality of religious rights, not 
less than in civil freedom, was as- 
sured " (p. 243). 



" Yet the absolute authority was 
conceded rather with reference to 
the crown than the colonists ; for 
the charter, unlike any patent which 
had hitherto passed the Great Seal 
of England, secured to the emi- 
grants themselves an independent 
share in the legislation of the pro- 
vince, of which the statutes were to 
be established with the advice and 
approbation of the majority of the 
freemen or their deputies " (p. 242). 

"Calvert deserves to be ranked 
among the most wise and benevo- 
lent lawgivers of all ages. He was 
the first in the history of the Chris- 
tian world to seek for religious se- 
curity and peace by the practice of 
justice, and not by the exercise of 
power; to plan the establishment of 
popular institutions with the enjoy- 
ment of liberty of conscience ; to 
advance the career of civilization 
by recognizing the rightful equality 
of all Christian sects. The asylum 
of papists was the spot, in a remote 
corner of the world, on the banks of 
rivers which as yet had hardly been 
explored, the mild forbearance of a 
proprietary adopted religious free- 
dom as the basis of the state " (p. 244). 

"At a vast expense he [the 
second Lord Baltimore, Csecilius] 
planted a colony, which for several 
generations descended as a patri- 
mony to his heirs " (p. 245). 

" Lord Baltimore, who for some 



finally issued for the benefit of his 
son" (p. 157). 

" Christianity, as professed by the 
Church of England, was protected, 
but the patronage and advowsons of 
churches were vested in the pro- 
prietary ; and, as there was not an 
English statute on religion in which 
America was specially named, si- 
lence left room for the settlement of 
religious affairs by the colony " (p. 
158). 

(Omitted.) 



" Sir George Calvert deserves to 
be ranked among the wisest and 
most benevolent lawgivers, for he 
connected his hopes of aggrandize- 
ment of his family with the estab- 
lishment of popular institutions ; 
and, being a 'papist, wanted not 
charity toward Protestants ' " (p. 



" He planted a colony, which for 
several generations descended as a 
lucrative patrimony to his heirs " 
(P- 159). 

"Lord Baltimore was unwilling 



BANCROFJ'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 



unknown reason abandoned his 
purpose of conducting the emigrants 
in person, appointed his brother to 
act as his lieutenant ; and on Fri- 
day, the 22d of November [1633], 
with a small but favoring gale, 
Leonard Galvert and about two 
hundred people, most of them 
Roman Catholic gentlemen and 
their servants, in the Ark and Dove, 
a ship of large burden and a pin- 
nace, set sail for the northern bank 
of the Potomac " (p. 246). 



"Mutual promises of friendship 
and peace were made [with the In- 
dians], so that upon the 27th day 
of March the Catholics took quiet 
possession of the little place, and 
religious liberty obtained a home, 
its only home in the wide world, at 
the humble village which bore the 
name of St. Mary's " (p. 247). 

"A cross was planted on an 
island, and the country claimed for 
Christ and England" (p. 246). 



"No sufferings were endured, no 
fears of want excited ; the founda- 
tion of the colony of Maryland was 
peacefully and happily laid. Within 
six months it had advanced more 
than Virginia had done in as many 
years. The proprietary continued 
with great liberality to provide 
everything that was necessary for 
its comfort and protection, and 
spared no costs to promote its in- 



to take upon himself the sole risk 
of colonizing his province; others 
joined with him in the adventure; 
and, all difficulties being overcome, 
his two brothers, of whom Leonard 
Calvert was appointed his lieu- 
tenant, ' with very near twenty 
other gentlemen of very good 
fashion, two or three hundred labor- 
ing men well provided in all things,' 
and Father White with one or two 
more Jesuit missionaries, embark- 
ed themselves for the voyage in the 
good ship Ark, of three hundred 
tons and upward, and a pinnace 
called the Dove, of about fifty tons " 
(p. 159). 

" Upon the 27th the emigrants, 
of whom by far the greater number 
were Protestants, took quiet pos- 
session of the land which the gov- 
ernor bought " (p. 161). 



"This [the Mass] being ended, he 
[Father White] and his assistants 
took upon their shoulders the great 
cross which they had hewn from a 
tree ; and, going in procession to 
the place which had been designated 
for it, the governor and other Catho- 
lics, Protestants as well participating 
in the ceremony, erected it as a 
trophy to Christ the Saviour, while 
the litany of the holy cross was 
chanted humbly on their bended 
knees " (p. 161). 

" No sufferings were endured, no 
fears of want arose ; the foundation 
of Maryland was peacefully and 
happily laid, and in six months it 
advanced more than Virginia had 
done in as many years. The pro- 
prietary continued with great libe- 
rality to provide everything need- 
ed for its comfort and protection, 
expending twenty thousand pounds 
sterling, and his associates as many 



1883.] BANCROFT" s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 79 



terests, expending in the two first 
years upwards of forty thousand 
pounds sterling. But far more 
memorable was the character of the 
Maryland institutions. Every other 
country in the world had persecut- 
ing laws. ' I will not,' such was the 
oath for the governor of Maryland 
' I will not by myself or any other, 
directly or indirectly, molest any 
person professing to believe in 
Jesus Christ, for or in respect of re- 
ligion.' Under the mild institutions 
and munificence of Baltimore the 
dreary wilderness soon bloomed 
with the swarming life and activity 
of prosperous settlements ; the Ro- 
man Catholics, who were oppressed 
by the laws of England, were sure 
to find a peaceful asylum in the 
quiet harbors of the Chesapeake, 
and there, too, Protestants were shel- 
tered against Protestant intoler- 
ance " (p. 248). 



" Such were the beautiful aus- 
pices under which the province 
of Maryland started into being ; its 
prosperity and its peace seemed 
assured ; the interests of its people 
and its proprietary were united, and 



more. But far more memorable was 
the character of its institutions. 
One of the largest wigwams was 
consecrated for religious service by 
the Jesuits, who could therefore say 
that the first chapel in Maryland 
was built by the red men. Of the 
Protestants, though they seem as 
yet to have been without a minister, 
the rights were not abridged. This 
enjoyment of liberty of conscience 
did not spring from any act of co- 
lonial legislation nor from any 
general or formal edict of the gov- 
ernor, nor from any oath as yet im- 
posed by instructions of the pro- 
prietary. English statutes were not 
held to bind the colonies, unless 
they especially named them; the 
clause which in the charter of Vir- 
ginia excluded from that colony 
' all persons suspected to affect the 
superstitions of the Church of 
Rome' found no place in the char- 
ter of Maryland; and, while alle- 
giance was held to be due, there 
was no requirement of the oath of 
supremacy. Toleration grew up in 
the province as the custom of the 
land. Through the benignity of the 
administration no person professing 
to believe in the divinity of Jesus 
Christ was permitted to be molest- 
ed on account of religion. Roman 
Catholics, who were oppressed by 
the laws of England, were sure to 
find an asylum on the north bank 
of the Potomac ; and there, too, Pro- 
testants were sheltered against Pro- 
testant intolerance. From the first 
men of foreign birth enjoyed equal 
advantages with those of the En- 
glish and Irish nations " (pp. 161, 
162). 

"The prosperity and peace of 
Maryland seemed assured. But no 
sooner had the allegiance of Clay- 
borne's settlement been claimed," 
etc. (p. 162). 



8o 



BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 



for some years its internal peace 
and harmony were undisturbed. 
Its history is the history of bene- 
volence, gratitude, and toleration. 
No domestic factions disturbed its 
harmony. Everything breathed 
peace but Clayborne " (p. 248). 

" The controversy between the 
king and the parliament advanced ; 
the overthrow of the monarchy 
seemed about to confer unlimited 
power in England upon the em- 
bittered enemies of the Romish 
Church ; and, as if with a foresight 
of impending danger and an ear- 
nest desire to stay its approach, 
Roman Catholics of Maryland, with 
the earnest concurrence of their 
governor and of the proprietary, 
determined to place upon their sta- 
tute-book an act for the religious 
freedom which had ever been sacred 
on their soil. . . . Thus did the early 
star of religious freedom appear as 
the harbinger of day," etc. 



"But the design of the law of 
Maryland was undoubtedly to pro- 
tect freedom of conscience; and 
some years after it had been con- 
firmed the apologist of Lord Balti- 
more could assert that his govern- 
ment, in conformity with his strict 
and repeated injunctions, had never 
given disturbance to any person in 
Maryland for matter of religion ; 
that the colonists enjoyed freedom 
of conscience, not less than freedom 
of person and estate, as amply as 
ever any people in any place of the 
world. The disfranchised friends 
of prelacy from Massachusetts and 
the Puritans from Virginia were 
welcomed to equal liberty of con- 
science and political rights in the 
Roman Catholic province of Mary- 
land " (pp. 255, 257). 



" For his [Lord Baltimore's] own 
security he bound his Protes- 
tant lieutenant, or chief governor, 
by the most stringent oath to 
maintain his rights and dominion as 
absolute lord and proprietary of the 
province of Maryland; and the oath, 
which was devised in 1648, and not 
before, and is preserved in the ar- 
chives of Maryland, went on in 
these words : ' I do further swear 
that I will not by myself, nor any 
other person, directly trouble, mo- 
lest, or discountenance any person 
whatsoever in the said province 
professing to believe in Jesus 
Christ, and, in particular, no Ro- 
man Catholic, for or in respect of 
his or her religion, nor his or her 
free exercise thereof within the 
said province,' " etc. 

"The design of the law of Mary- 
land was undoubtedly to protect 
freedom of conscience; and, some 
years after it had been confirmed, 
the apologist of Lord Baltimore 
could assert that his government, 
in conformity with his strict and 
repeated injunctions, had never 
given disturbance to any person in 
Maryland for matter of religion ; 
that the colonists enjoyed freedom 
of conscience, not less than freedom 
of person and estate. The disfran- 
chised friends of prelacy from 
Massachusetts and the exiled Pu- 
ritans from Virginia were welcom- 
ed to equal liberty of conscience 
and political rights by the Roman 
Catholic proprietary of Maryland ; 
and the usage of the province 
from its foundation was confirmed 
by its statute. The attractive in- 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 81 

fluence of this liberality for the pro- 
vince appeared immediately," etc. 
(pp. 168, 169). 

" Maryland at that day [1642] In the mixed population of 
was unsurpassed for happiness and Maryland, where the administration 
liberty. Conscience was without was in the hands of Catholics and 
restraint ; a mild and liberal proprie- the very great majority of the peo- 
tary conceded every measure which p l e were Protestants, there was no 
the welfare of the colony required ; unity of sentiment out of which a 
domestic union, a happy concert domestic constitution could have 
between all the branches of govern- harmoniously risen " (p. 166). 
ment, an increasing emigration, a 
productive commerce, a fertile soil, 
which Heaven had richly favored 
with rivers and deep bays, united to 
perfect the scene of colonial felicity 
and contentment " (pp. 252, 253). 

Several distinct questions are raised, either directly or in. 
directly, by the extracts we have made from Mr. Bancroft's ear- 
lier and later editions of his history : 

As to the motives which actuated the first and second Lords 
Baltimore, George and Caecilius, father and son. fr Was Maryland 
sought out and founded as an asylum for Catholics from Pro- 
testant persecution in England ? The effect of the Maryland 
charter upon religious toleration. Was religious toleration in 
Maryland co-existent with the origin and first planting of the 
colony, 1633, as the policy and, at the command of Lord Cascilius 
Baltimore, the common law of Maryland, or did it have its origin 
in the Act or Statute of Toleration in 1649? Was the Religious 
Toleration Act in Maryland the work of Catholics or Protes- 
tants? Was Maryland a Catholic or a Protestant colony? Who 
was the author of the Act or Statute of Toleration? 

We think injustice has been done by Mr. Bancroft to both 
George, the first Lord Baltimore, and to Csecilius, the second 
Lord Baltimore, in respect to the motives which actuated them 
in founding the colony of Maryland an injustice made all the 
more marked and noticeable by the changes which the historian 
has been pleased to make on this subject in his two last editions, 
and by the contrasts presented in our parallel columns giving 
extracts from the fifteen earlier editions and from the editions of 
1876 and 1883. Mr. Bancroft has thus certainly retracted in the 
last two editions much of the good he had^previously written 
and published in relation to the characters and motives of these 
two illustrious men. Let us consider this subject in the true and 
impartial light of history. 

VOL. XXXVIII. 6 



82 BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. [Oct., 

Mr. Bancroft intimates that George Calvert lost and suffered 
nothing by abandoning Protestantism and embracing Catho- 
licity. His remarks on this point are that Lord Baltimore's 
" mind sought relief from controversy in the bosom of the 
Roman Catholic Church, and, professing his conversion without 
forfeiting the king's favor, in 1624 he disposed advantageously 
of his place, which had been granted to him for life, and ob- 
tained the title of Lord Baltimore in the Irish peerage." It is 
thus clearly intimated that Lord Baltimore not only lost nothing 
by his conversion, but even made his change of faith the occasion 
of great temporal gain. 

None acquainted with the persecutions and penalties endured 
in England at that time by Catholics could believe there was 
nothing to lose by abandoning the dominant religious party to 
join the down-trodden minority, by leaving the persecutors to 
join the persecuted ; or that any one could find relief for his 
mind from controversy by uniting himself with the very people 
whose religious tenets were then made the subject of incessant 
attack and misrepresentation, whose religion was the very 
ground of the controversy then raging. It is difficult for us in 
America, in the nineteenth century, to realize the deplorable con- 
dition of Catholics in England at the period in question. It 
would be unjust for us to judge those times by the standard of 
our own times and country. 

James I. ascended the English throne when Europe was in 
the midst of that great religious war which lasted for more than 
a century. With a shrewdness for which few of his contem- 
poraries gave him credit, he consulted entirely his own personal 
interests in selecting his course amid the contending religious 
factions of the day. The Established Church had strong hold 
upon the king, though its supporters always had reason to doubt 
his true loyalty to it. He managed to cause the Catholics to 
regard his accession to the throne as auspicious to 'them, for he 
"had before endeavored to enlist them in his favor by holding 
out hopes of relief from the cruel laws then in force against 
them." The Puritans hoped to gain him to their cause, be- 
cause he had been educated in the Kirk of Scotland and had 
professed that faith, and they hoped he would reform the Church 
of England according to their standard. But neither the Catho- 
lics nor the Puritfns could accept him as the spiritual head of 
their churches, while this servility was freely-offered to him by the 
prelates, clergy, and people of the Establishment. This, together 
with the political and religious power it carried with it, gained 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 83 

the selfish and vacillating 1 monarch to the Church of England. 
The following account of the sequence as it affected Catholics 
is from the pen of a Protestant historian of Maryland, Mr. 

Scharf : 

" Having thus chosen his faith, he began to persecute the others, 
though his persecution seems at first to have been inspired rather bj' 
avarice and policy than bigotry. On February 22, 1604, he required all 
priests to depart the realm before the igth of March, under pain of having 
the sanguinary laws of Elizabeth put in force against them ; many of them 
were shipped off. In that year and the next one priest and five laymen 
were executed for their religion. To the dismay of those Catholics who 
had relied upon assurances of the king's lenity, the legal fine for recusancy, 
twenty pounds per lunar month, was again exacted, and not only for the 
time to come but for the -whole period of the suspension. This atrocious 
exaction, by crowding thirteen payments into one, reduced many families 
to beggary. To satisfy the wants of his needy countrymen, whose impor- 
tunities were incessant, he transferred to them the claims on his more 
opulent recusants, with authority to proceed against them by law in his 
name, unless the sufferers should submit to compound by granting an an- 
nuity for life or the immediate payment of a large sum. 

"The prisons had been crowded with priests, yet from 1607 to 1618 only 
sixteen had been put to death for the exercise of their functions. From 
the fines of lay Catholics the king derived a net income of thirty-six 
thousand pounds per annum, equivalent to more than twice that sum in 
our day. 'When the king,' says Dr. Lingard, 'in 1616, preparatory to the 
Spanish match, granted liberty to the Catholics confined under the penal 
laws, four thousand prisoners obtained their discharge.' . . . Hated and 
persecuted by Puritan, Independent, and Churchman, the Catholics of Eng- 
land now drained the bitter chalice of persecution. They were deprived 
even of incidental protection ; for to pardon a single Catholic was to give 
mortal offence to a Puritan, who was conciliated even when persecuted. 
Yet they were guilty of no treasonable designs ; nor had the plots of a few 
'fanatics tainted the body of the English Catholics. Lord Montagu, un- 
der the stern reign of Elizabeth, had borne fearless and unquestioned tes- 
timony to their loyalty. 'They dispute not, they preach not, they destroy 
not the queen,' he exclaims in his powerful appeal to the Lords. They had 
seen their proudest hopes wither on the scaffold of Mary of Scotland, and 
gave vent to no' open murmur. In that memorable year, when Europe 
watched in fearful suspense to see the result of that great cast in the game 
of human politics, ... in that agony of the Protestant faith and En- 
glish name, they stood the trial of their spirits without swerving from their 
allegiance. 'They flew from every county to the standard of the .lord-lieu- 
tenant ; and the venerable Lord Montagu brought a troop of horses to 
the queen at Tilbury, commanded by himself, his son and grandson.' But 
neither uncomplaining submission, nor courage, nor patriotism that, supe- 
rior to the ' scavenger's daughter ' and the dungeon, to insult and wan- 
ton spoliation, had rushed to the shore when the terrible Armada came on, 
could soften the cruelty that demanded their lives and the avarice that 
lusted for their fortunes. There was not one generous pulse to stay the 



84 BANCROFT' 's HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 

hand that crushed them ; and the work of death and confiscation went on 
more mercilessly than before. 

"Archbishop Whitgift's Court of High Commission, clothed with 
almost unlimited powers, studied to entrap the unwary dissenter, and em- 
ployed every artifice to hush for ever the uncouth voice of liberty of con- 
science. The cruelty of this tribunal must have been excessive, since 
Strype and Burleigh, employing terms by which they meant to express the 
height of fiendish malice, stamped it as worse than the Spanish Inquisition. 
. . . As the oath of supremacy denied the spiritual supremacy of the pope, 
the Catholic found that perjury or apostasy were conditions precedent to 
his enjoyment of civil privileges. . . . There was a wide difference between 
persecuting the Catholic and persecuting the Independent. In the first 
case it was unprovoked oppression ; in the last partly defensive. The 
Catholic, as we have seen, guilty of no political offence, could not expiate 
his sin by any political virtue. A dctp-rooted antipathy sealed his doom, 
though his behavior as a citizen -was unquestioned. . . . Irritated to the acut- 
est suffering by the unremitting sufferings to which they were exposed, 
. . . the Catholics of England and Ireland . . . joyously contemplated the 
possibility of escape from a thraldom so oppressive. . . . To. all imagina- 
tion pictured a far-off landivhere, amid the grandeur of nature, they might 
pursue their ivay undisturbed, and regulate matters, both spiritual and tem- 
poral, according to their faith and conscience ; and many had long turned their 
eyes to the vast forests and boundless fields of the New World, whither Provi- 
dence was directing them, to sow the seed that was to ripen into a mighty 
people. ... To George Calvert, the first Baron of Baltimore, and his son 
Caecilius Calvert, belongs the glory of providing a shelter from Anglican 
intolerance not only for their brethren in the faith, but for the oppressed 
of every Christian denomination." 

The Catholics of England, who remained true to their faith, 
their conscience, and their God under such an ordeal of perse- 
cution as this, deserve and have received the admiration and 
praise of all Christendom. But what shall we say of one who 
in such times, following the convictions of his conscience, aban- 
doned the society of the ruling party in the state, jeopard- 
ed life, fortune, and reputation, and laid aside the honors and 
emoluments of office, to join the unfortunate and the persecuted, 
and to walk in that narrow and thorny path, described in the 
sacred volume, in which the Saviour had led the way ? It 
seems rather ungenerous in the historian to dismiss this sublime 
act of heroism and self-denial with the few words, " professing 
his conversion without forfeiting the king's favor." The king, 
having thrown* his whole personal and royal or official power 
with the Established Church and become the leader of the per- 
secution, could not and dared not show favor to a personal 
friend among the Catholics. The favor of King James did not 
and could not save Lord Baltimore from the loss of his office as 



1883.] BANCROFT s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 85 

secretary of state, nor that of Charles I. prevent him from re- 
alizing the necessity of going into retirement in Ireland. The 
Rev. E. D. Neill, a bitter critic of Lord Baltimore, in his Founders 
of Maryland writes : 

" In 1625 he announced his conversion to the Church of Rome, and 
when Charles I. came to the throne the oath of allegiance being offered 
him" (this, we think, the author has mistaken for the oath of supremacy) 
"as one of the Privy Council, he hesitated, and was relieved of duties at 
court and went to his estate in Ireland " (p. 41). 

Mr. Scharf, a Protestant, thus notices the conversion of Lord 
Baltimore in his History of Maryland : 

" Thus we see that while high in favor at the court of James and Charles, 
holding the station of secretary of state, and respected and trusted above 
all others, he resigned an office of great importance and large emoluments, 
and with it his brilliant hopes of higher political distinction, in obedience to 
the dictates of his conscience, and voluntarily associated his fortunes with a 
church in the minority, laboring under disabilities, and the object of popular 
odium. Few recorded changes of faith bear more convincing marks of 
sincerity." 

That Lord Baltimore personally experienced the bitter cup 
of persecution, in common with his fellow-Catholics, we have 
many proofs. He had now already founded his colony in New- 
foundland when we learn from a letter of April 9, 1625, that 
"it is said the Lord Baltimore is now a professed papist; was 
going to Newfoundland, and is stayed." And again we find that 
King Charles admonished him to return from Virginia to En- 
gland and abandon all attempts of settling in Virginia. For it is 
laid down by Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on 
the Laws of England, under the title of " The Rights of Per- 
sons," book i. chapter vii. section 265, that the king has power, 
" whenever he sees proper, of confining his subjects to stay 
within the realm, or of recalling them when beyond seas." Not 
only this, but we find that the Rev. Erasmus Sturton, who had 
been the resident Protestant minister at Ferryland, Lord Balti- 
more's Newfoundland colony, made formal complaint against 
his lordship to the authorities of England that, in violation of 
law, Mass was publicly celebrated in Newfoundland. And when 
he went to Virginia with his family and his entire colony from 
Newfoundland he was treated with the utmost intolerance as a 
papist; required to take an oath which would have been on his 
part an act of open apostasy, which he refused, while willing to 
take the oath of allegiance to his sovereign ; and that he was, on 
account of his faith, actually driven from Virginia and forced to 






36 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 

return to England, his family lost at sea, and his colony broken 
up. Of his son Caecilius, the second Lord Baltimore, it is well 
said in the charter of Maryland that he was treading in the 
steps of his father; for not only did he continue his father's noble 
work, but, like him, as we shall see, he suffered persecution from 
the religious bigotry of the age, which, though foreseen and 
staring him in the face, did not deter him from making the sac- 
rifice for conscience' sake. Mr. Bancroft further states, " in 1624 
he disposed advantageously of his place, which had been granted 
him for life, and obtained the title of Lord Baltimore in the Irish 
peerage." These few words contain many historical errors : 
the only place he held for life was the clerkship to the crown, 
and of the peace, and of the assizes and Nisi Prius, and this 
office he resigned on April i, 1616, eight years before he became 
a Catholic; the office he resigned on becoming a Catholic was 
that of secretary of state, and this he did not and could not hold 
for life ; the large grant of land in Ireland from the king was 
made before 1620-21, and he was not raised to the peerage as 
Lord Baltimore until one year after his conversion. So much 
for the details of Mr. Bancroft's accuracy as an historian. How, 
then, could any of these circumstances have influenced Lord 
Baltimore's motives, as intimated by Mr. Bancroft in the passages 
quoted above ? 

The religious and pious motives which actuated both the first 
and second Lords Baltimore have scarcely been handled with 
justice in the history before us. While they receive a measured 
amount of praise, the impression is now studiously sought to be 
made that they were actuated by love of gain and worldly profit 
rather than by any zeal for religion or devotion to the cause of 
liberty of conscience. 

We think both were actuated by the highest and purest re- 
ligious motives. Now, we find a beautiful incident in the life of 
George, the first Lord Baltimore, which shows that even during 
the last part of his Protestant years, while perhaps his mind was 
tending towards the Catholic faith, he was deeply imbued with 
religious sentiments. In 1623, the year before his conversion to 
the Catholic faith, George Calvert obtained from King James I. 
a grant of the territory at Ferryland, in Newfoundland, for an 
English colony. The name which he selected for this new 
colony is a touching tribute to an ancient English tradition trac- 
ing the foundation of Christianity back to the apostolic age. 
In Somersetshire was situated the ancient district of Glastonbury, 
in which, according to tradition, St. Joseph of Arimathea had 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 87 

landed and first planted the Christian faith in Britain. This dis- 
trict was anciently called Avalon,* and this name was selected 
by George Calvert for his new colony in America, thus showing 
that there was something more than red tape and formula in 
attributing to him in the charter of Avalon the motive of 
" being excited with a Laudable and pious Zeal to enlarge 
the extents of the Christian world," and in the language of the 
charter of Maryland, prepared in his name and after his death 
issued in the name of his son Caecilius, " treading in the steps of 
his "father, being animated with a laudable and pious zeal for ex- 
tending the Christian religion." George Calvert's zeal for re- 
ligion is further manifested in his carrying with him two semi- 
nary priests to his colony of Avalon on his first voyage thither 
in 1626-7, and also another, making three in all, in his second 
voyage in 1628; and in the courage he manifested in following 
his religious convictions by refusing to take the oath of supre- 
macy tendered to him by the Protestants of Virginia at a time 
when he was anxious to conciliate the king rather than offend 
him. " His public spirit consulted not his private profit, but the 
enlargement of Christianity and the king's dominions," says Ful- 
ler, an English historian, who was a contemporary of Lord Balti- 
more. His religious sentiments, and what he suffered for his 
faith and for his efforts to found an asylum for his Catholic 
countrymen in America, are clearly referred to by himself in a 
letter of condolence addressed by him to his friend Wentworth, 
Earl of Strafford, who had just lost his wife, dated October u, 
1631 : " There are few, perhaps, can judge of it better than I, who 
have been myself a long time a man of sorrows. But all things, 
my lord, in this world pass away ; statutum est wife, children, 
honor, wealth, friends, and what else is dear to flesh and blood ; 
they are but lent us till .God please to call for them back again, 
that we may not esteem anything our own or set our hearts upon 
anything but him alone, who only remains for ever. I beseech 
his almighty goodness to grant that your lordship may, for his 
sake, bear this great cross with meekness and patience, whose 
only Son, our dear Lord and Saviour, bore a greater for you ; and 
to consider that these humiliations, though they are very bitter, 
yet are they sovereign medicines, ministered unto us by our 
heavenly Physician to cure the sickness of our souls, if the fault 
be not ours." 

* It is singular and apparently undignified in Mr. Bancroft, differing from other authors, to 
trace this name to a poetic fiction, for he states that this colony was " named Avalon after the 
fabled isle from which King Arthur was to return alive." 



88 'BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 

His zeal for the marriage of King James' son to the Infanta 
of Spain can be explained upon no other theory than his desire 
to ameliorate the condition of his own church and of his fellow- 
Catholics. This projected marriage was finally broken off ; but 
the project was accompanied not only by great promises on the 
part of the king to relax the severity of the persecution against 
Catholics, but also with many acts of amnesty and pardon ; for we 
are told by Dr. Lingard in his History of England, vol. vii. p. 96: 
"When the king in 1616, preparatory to the Spanish match, 
granted liberty to the Catholics confined under the penal laws, 
lour thousand prisoners obtained their discharge." And by the 
same authority we are informed that King James promised the 
king of Spain in 1620 that he would relax the laws against Ca- 
tholics ; that in July, 1620, in order to reconcile the pope to the 
Catholic marriage, the promised relaxation actually took place ; 
and that in 1623 the king bound himself by the word of a king 
that the English Catholics should no longer suffer restraint, 
provided they confined the exercise of their worship to private 
houses." Lord Baltimore was the principal promoter of this 
measure, fraught with so many actual results of relief to his 
church and her children, and with so many others promised but 
not granted. He drew upon himself, for his zeal in this regard, 
the odium and abuse of his Protestant countrymen, and Mr. 
Bancroft himself states that " as a statesman he was taunted 
with being 'an Hispaniolized papist.' ' Mr. Bancroft also admits 
that the oath of supremacy was purposely tendered to him by 
the Protestants of Virginia in order to exclude him from that 
province, and that he suffered this wrong solely on account of 
his religion a wrong that resulted in a long train of disasters 
to him : threats and insults at the hands of the brutal Tindall, the 
breaking up of his colony seeking an asylum in Virginia from 
the inhospitable climate of Newfoundland, the loss of his wife 
and all his younger children at sea, and his own recall to En- 
gland. And yet Mr. Bancroft, as we have above stated, clearly 
intimates that Lord Baltimore lost but little and gained much by 
his conversion to the Catholic Church. We treasure, however, 
all the good Mr. Bancroft has written of our hero, especially 
since he has become so guarded in his measure of praise in the 
two editions we are noticing, and hence it is with satisfaction 
we repeat from his pages that, " being a papist, he wanted not 
charity toward Protestants." 

Mr. Scharf thus alludes to the religious motives of George 
Calvert in answer to the charge that he was indifferent about 



1 883.] BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 89 

religion: " We have seen him embracing and making open pro- 
fession of a faith that was in the minority and subject to disabili- 
ties and persecution. This does not look like indifferentism." 

Of Csecilius Calve.rt, the second Lord Baltimore, it has been 
well said by the concurrent voice of historians, including Mr. 
Bancroft, that he inherited not only the title and estates of his 
father, but also his intentions and his spirit. With such men as 
George and Caecilius Calvert the language of the charter, de- 
claring their purpose to be to enlarge the boundaries of Chris- 
tendom, were not mere words of form and legal verbosity. 

There is now extant a Dcclaratio, or announcement or pro- 
spectus, as it would be called in modern phraseology by the pro- 
jectors of colonization projects attributed to Lord Baltimore, 
Ccecilius Calvert, himself, the Latin MS. of which was found by 
Father McSherry, S.J/, in 1832 among the archives of the Damns 
Professa of the Society of Jesus at Rome, at the same time that 
he discovered the MS. of Father White's Narrative of the Voyage 
to Maryland. It is believed to have been prepared by Lord 
Baltimore, or under his direction, with the view of inducing 
colonists in England to join his expedition to Maryland, and also 
of influencing the provincial of the Jesuits to accede to his 
request to send some missionaries of the society with the colony. 
Translations of this Declaratio and of Father White's Narrative 
were published together by the Maryland Historical Society in 
1874. At the end of the Declaratij is appended a note in Latin, 
of which the following is a translation: " Here ends the account 
of Cecil Calvert, Baron of Baltimore, which he himself faithfully 
compiled from the reports scattered through England by tra- 
vellers who had sought their fortunes in the New World." The 
contents show that this document was issued immediately after 
the issue of the charter, towards the last of 1632. From it we 
quote : 

" Therefore the most illustrious baron has already determined to lead a 
colony into those parts. First and especially, in order that he may carry 
thither and to the neighboring places, whither it has been ascertained that 
no knowledge of the true God has as yet penetrated, the light of the Gos- 
pel and the truth." 

And again we quote from the same document as follows : 

"The first and most important design of the most illustrious baron, 
which ought to be the aim of the rest who go in the same ship, is not to 
think so* much of planting fruits and trees as of sowing the seeds of reli- 
gion and piety surely a des-ign worthy of Christians, worthy of angels, 



90 BANCROFT" s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 

worthy of Englishmen* The English nation, renowned for so many an- 
cient victories, never undertook anything more noble than this. Behold, 
the lands are white for the harvest, prepared for receiving the seed of the 
Gospel into their fruitful bosom. They themselves are everywhere send- 
ing out messengers to seek after fit men to instruct the inhabitants in 
saving doctrine and to regenerate them with the sacred water. There are 
also men here in the city [London], at this very time, who declare that they 
have seen ambassadors who were sent by their kings, for this same pur- 
pose, to Jamestown in Virginia, and infants brought to New England to 
be washed in the saving waters. Who, then, can doubt that by such glo- 
rious work as this many thousands of souls will be brought to Christ ? I 
call the work of aiding and saving souls glorious, for it was the work 
of Christ, the King of Glory. For the rest, since all men have not such 
enthusiastic souls and noble minds as to think of nothing but divine 
things and to consider but heavenly things, because most men are more in 
love, as it were, with pleasures, honors, and riches [than with the glory of 
Christ], it was ordained by some hidden influence, or rather by the mani- 
fest [and] wonderful wisdom of God, that this one enterprise should offer 
to men every kind of inducement and reward." 

So far as the religious motives of the second Lord Baltimore 
are involved and these have been more questioned than even 
those of his father the first and prominent events and circum- 
stances attending the foundation of Maryland clear this question 
up most favorably. His first step was to secure religious men 
and missionaries to attend to the spiritual wants of the colonists 
and to labor for the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. 
Father Blount, provincial of the English Jesuits, was his chief 
adviser at the beginning and fitting out of the colony. Both he 
and Father Blount were connected by family ties through the 
Howards and Arundels; and a recent able and valuable docu- 
ment prepared by General Bradley T. Johnson, and published 
by the Maryland Historical Society, The Foundation of Mary- 
land, states that Lord Baltimore was assisted by the counsel 
of Father Blount and by all the power of the Society of Jesus. 
The popular sentiment of Protestants in England was most hos- 
tile to his enterprise, and for the avowed reason of its Catholic 
and religious character ; and no effort was left untried by his 
enemies to prevent the Ark and Dove, with their heroic leaders, 
the colonists, and missionaries of the Catholic faith, from depart- 
ing from England for their asylum in the Land of Mary. So 
truly Catholic and religious was the enterprise that it was cur- 
rently reported in England that his vessels were to carry over 
nuns to Spain and soldiers to serve the king of Spain. The 
allegiance of the colonists to the king of England was violently 

+Angelis et Anglis. 



1883.] BANCROFT* s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 91 

and fraudulently questioned upon the sole ground of their being 
papists and yielding spiritual allegiance to the pope. The voy- 
age to Maryland, as shown by Father White*s Narrative, was 
a religious and devotional pilgrimage to the very shrine they 
were going to erect in the forests to the Virgin Mother, and the 
prayers of the Missal and the Catholic litanies resounded o'er 
the sea. Truly did they chant on their floating chapel, A solis 
ortu, usque ad occasum, laudabile nomen Domini. "No sooner do 
they touch the shores," writes the Protestant historian Scharf, 
" than they engage in solemn thanksgiving with all the forms of 
Roman Catholic worship ; an altar and a cross are erected, lita- 
nies sung, and Mass celebrated. Next they name capes and 
islands, bays, rivers, and their new city, after saints ; showing not 
only the religious feeling that inspired them, but their eagerness 
to enjoy their new freedom. These facts, and a host of others in 
the early history of the colony, show the motives and intentions 
of the founders and first settlers in a light so clear that misty 
speculations and a priori inferences vanish before it." 

The Rev. E. D. Neill, who is no apologist for Lord Baltimore, 
but his severest critic, writes also on this subject as follows: 

" Deeply interested in the propagation of religion under the forms Balti- 
more approved, he despatched with the colonists Fathers Andrew White 
and John Altham, alias Gravener, of the Society of Jesus, with John 
Knowles and Thomas Gervase as assistants, two of whom appear on the 
catalogue of Jesuits of Clerkenwell College, that was in 1627 broken up." 

The same author, though evidently out of sympathy with the 
event, likens the religious ceremonies of occupation on the banks 
of the St. Mary's in 1633 to those described by the poet Alexan- 
der Smith in Edwin of Deira, commemorative of the first plant- 
ing of Christianity in Great Britain : 

" In the bright 

Fringe of the living sea, that came and went, 
Tapping its planks, a great ship sideways lay ; 
And o'er the sands a grave procession passed, 
Melodious with many a chanting voice. 
Nor spear nor buckler had these foreign men ; 
Each wore a snowy robe, that downward flowed ; 
Fair in the front a silver cross they bore, 
A painted Saviour floated in the wind ; 
The chanting voices, as they rose and fell, 
Hallowed the rude sea air." 

With such facts before him, and with such a sublime picture 
realized in the truth of history on the banks of the St. Mary's 



92 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 

River in 1633, it seems ungracious in Mr. Bancroft to attribute 
to Lord Baltimore the motive of personal or family aggrandize- 
ment, though, as he admitted, this motive was entertained by one 
of the wisest and most benevolent of law-givers, who united it 
with the establishment of popular institutions. Selfishness seems 
an inconsistent motive to attribute to such a character, especially 
to one who encountered in his person, his family, and his church 
the bitterest experiences of religious persecution, and yet, though 
a " papist, wanted not charity toward Protestants." 

It is quite certain from unanswerable evidences that both 
George and Cascilius Calvert, the first and second Lords Balti- 
more, in their colonizing enterprises at Avalon and Maryland, 
practised unbounded liberality toward their colonists, and that 
they greatly expended and impaired their fortunes in those 
noble efforts to extend the benign influence of the cross of Christ 
and the rule of the English sceptre. Lord Baltimore the first 
refers, in a letter to his friend Wentworth, May 21, 1627, to the 
great expenses and outlays he had put himself to in building up 
his colony of Avalon ; and Mr. Bancroft acknowledges " how 
lavishly he expended his estate in advancing the interests of his 
settlement." In the unfortunate attempt to return his wife and 
younger children to England from Virginia, where he had been 
compelled to leave them when he was recalled to England by the 
king, and all were lost together with the bark on which they had 
sailed, it is related, on the authority of the Ayscoup MS. in the 
British Museum, that his lordship's personal property, with "a 
great deal of plate and other goods of great value," were lost 
with the wreck. Caecilius, the second Lord Baltimore, received 
the inheritance depleted by the expenses and losses sustained by 
his father in the efforts to make the Avalon colonization a suc- 
cess, and by 'his preparations for that of Maryland. The delays 
thrown in the way of the sailing of the colony from England, and 
the compulsory return of the ships from Gravesend after they 
had set sail, entailed great additional expense; Mr. Hawley, his 
agent and probable partner, having to board a number of the 
men and women of the expedition with the people of the neigh- 
borhood in consequence of these delays and the impossibility of 
keeping so many people on the ships so long inactive; and 
though this expense only amounted to sixty pounds, Mr. Hawley 
was unable to pay and was thrown into the Fleet as a prisoner, 
and the creditors petitioned to the Privy Council for relief and 
asked that Lord Baltimore might be compelled to pay the bill. 
In 1641, after the colony had been planted eight years, so great 



1883.] BANCROFT" s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 93 

had been the drain upon his resources to sustain the colony that 
he was actually a poor man, as shown in Neill's Founders of Mary- 
land, and was actually forced " to depend upon his father-in-law, 
Earl Arundel, for bread to support his family." With these 
facts within his reach, Mr. Bancroft, vol. i. p. 159, states that 
" Lord Baltimore was unwilling to take upon himself the sole risk 
of colonizing his province ; others joined with him in the adven- 
ture." Would it not have been more just, as well as more his- 
torical, to have stated that the efforts of the two first Lords Balti- 
more to lound English colonies in Avalon and Maryland, and the 
little return they received therefrom inconsequence of their gene- 
rous methods of dealing with their colonists, had rendered them 
pecuniarily unable to undertake the founding of the colony of 
Maryland without the aid of partners gr friends who joined them 
in the business adventure? 

In every work of philanthropy and benevolence there is a busi- 
ness or financial side of the work. In that period of English his- 
tory it was a most common aspiration of the nobility to take part 
in American colonization, but there were none besides George 
Calvert and his son Caecilius who made the cause of religion, as 
we have shown, and the desire to provide an asylum for the per- 
secuted members of their own or of a despoiled church, as we ex- 
pect to show in another article, the chief objects of their labors. 
There were none that practised such benevolence toward their 
followers and associates; none that extended such justice and 
charity to the Indians in their dealings with them ; none that 
thought so little or derived so little of profit from their enter- 
prises. It was these facts that elicited such encomiums upon the 
Calverts from their contemporaries, and from historians to the 
present day, most of whom are Protestants. The Rev. E. D. 
Neill, a sectarian minister, has vainly endeavored to check this 
just and enlightened current of historic truth in his Founders of 
Maryland, 'lerra Marice, English Colonisation in America. It was 
Mr. Gladstone who, smarting from his defeat by the Catholic 
bishops on the Irish University Bill, turned against the church 
he had imagined he was serving, and, in The Vatican Decrees 
in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance and Rome and the Nc^vest 
Fashions in Religion, endeavored to sustain this ungenerous effort 
of an American sectarian. It was Mr. Bancroft who, coming 
from his Berlin mission affected apparently with Bismarckism 
and turned by the atmosphere of the Falk laws and the German 
persecution which he had been breathing, in his Centennial 
Edition retracted so much of good that he had written 'of the 



94 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 

Catholic founders of Maryland, and repeated the retraction in 
the author's Last Revision of 1883. What reason can Mr. Ban- 
croft give for omitting from his two last editions that beautiful 
passage adorning the pages of fifteen previous editions, on page 
247? " Mutual promises of friendship and peace were made [with 
the Indians], so that upon the 2;th day of March the Catholics 
took quiet possession of the little place, and religious liberty 
obtained a home, its only home in the wide world, at the humble 
village that bore the name of St. Mary's." 

There were one or two instances in the history of Avalon and 
of Maryland in which either George or Cascilius Calvert mani- 
fested a determination to prevent abuses, waste, or peculation on 
the part of their agents or others in the business management of 
those colonies. Both of them owed this to themselves, to the 
colonies, and to the very business necessities and proprieties of 
life. They were also determined that their own fortunes should 
not become wrecked in their efforts to build up the fortunes of 
others. To have done otherwise would have proved them- 
selves to be imbecile and unfit to lead such enterprises. What 
would have become of Avalon the first year if George Calvert 
had allowed himself to become a bankrupt ? What would have 
become of Maryland, even before the Ark and Dove finally sailed 
from Gravesend, had Caecilius Calvert become then, what he 
certainly became in 1641, an impoverished and dependent patron 
of a hazardous and costly work of public enterprise and bene- 
volence? As George Calvert himself stated in one of the Straf- 
ford letters, he would have proved himself a fool if he had done 
otherwise, or, as he himself expresses it, " if the business be now 
lost for want of a little pains and care." 

These circumstances, which would, and no doubt do, com- 
mend themselves to the approval and praise of all fair-minded 
men, to all men of business education, and to historians, have 
given occasion to Mr. Neill to assert, in his tract, Maryland not a 
Roman Catholic Colony, that " the colony was not founded from a 
religious but from a pecuniary motive." Mr. Bancroft, too, has 
been induced by these circumstances to attribute to Lord Balti- 
more the aggrandizement of his family as a motive inducing him 
to assume the thankless, difficult, and, so far as his private for- 
tunes were affected thereby, the impoverishing task of founding 
the colon}' of Maryland. That the proprietaries of Avalon and 
Maryland required the practice of business integrity from their 
representatives, agents, and colonists adds to the completeness 
and symmetry of their characters. Indeed, it is a characteristic 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 95 

mark of generous and noble minds bent upon vast and munificent 
enterprises to be exact in their methods of business, and such 
exactness is quite necessary to their success in building up their 
private fortunes and thus providing the means for their benevo- 
lent undertakings. Instances of this kind are not wanting in our 
own time and country (we wish we could select the names from 
among the wealthy Catholics of the land), and we will refer only 
to two of the most liberal of public benefactors, Mr. George 
Peabody and Mr. William W. Corcoran. These are names re- 
nowned for works of goodness, charity, munificence names of 
which every American, every member of our race, may be proud ; 
and yet strictness in their own business integrity, and rigid ex- 
actness in their requirements of all with whom they had dealings, 
were strong and admirable traits in their characters. We admire 
and commend the Lords Baltimore for the very cause on account 
of which Messrs. Neill and Bancroft have either detracted from 
their merits or diminished their praise. 

From one of the passages quoted above from Mr. Bancroft 
we infer that he attributes to Caecilius Calvert an unwilling- 
ness not only to incur the entire risk of the financial enterprise, 
but also to accompany in person and share the dangers and pri- 
vations of the ocean and the wilderness. In his earlier editions 
Mr. Bancroft says that " Lord Baltimore, who for some unknown 
reason abandoned his purpose of conducting the emigrants in 
person, appointed his brother to act as his lieutenant." In the 
editions of 1876 and 1883 Mr. Bancroft classifies this fact with 
that of his unwillingness to incur the entire pecuniary risk. To 
us the reasons for this act are quite apparent. Lord Baltimore 
in 1632, in the Declaratio already referred to, had publicly an- 
nounced his intention of accompanying the expedition to Mary- 
land, and had fixed September of that year for sailing with his 
colony. But we have already seen the difficulties attending 
the fitting out of the expedition, some of which proceeded from 
financial causes and others from the malice of his personal and 
sectarian enemies. Had he gone to Maryland his enemies or 
opponents in England would have possibly, even probably, suc- 
ceeded in destroying his work entirely. , In addition to these 
the opposition made from Virginia in England to his planting 
a colony on the Chesapeake, the machinations and violence of 
Clayborne and Ingle, as well as opposition from other sources, 
required his presence in England to meet the storm raised 
against him. He could evidently serve Maryland more power- 
full}- by remaining in England than by going to St. Mary's. The 



96 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Oct., 

turbulent and revolutionary times that followed in England soon 
after the issue of his charter and the departure of the colony 
for the banks of the St. Mary's, which extended their baneful in- 
fluence to the colonies, and with extraordinary violence to Mary- 
land especially, rendered his presence in England most neces- 
sary and imperative. The important part he is believed to have 
taken in those unhappy- events in the endeavor to secure pro- 
tection, and existence itself, for Catholics in England, and their 
worship of God according to their consciences, required his 
presence in England, while the best and most loyal efforts of his 
faithful lieutenants in Maryland, with his aid in the mother- 
country, were barely able to keep the colony on the banks of the 
St. Mary's from extirpation. The view we have taken is sup- 
ported by the Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 
by Brother Henry Foley, S.J., series v. vi. vii. viii., in which 
we read, " It had been Lord Cecil Baltimore's intention at first 
to lead his expedition himself; but deeming it more judicious to 
look after the interests of the colony in England, he gave the 
command to his brother Leonard, whom he commissioned lieu- 
tenant-governor." 

The following tribute to the character and life of Csecilius 
Calvert, which is most pertinent to our theme, is from the pen 
of that accomplished and just Protestant gentleman, General 
Bradley T. Johnson, in the paper entitled The Foundation of 
Maryland, recently published by the Marykmd Historical So- 
ciety : 

"The life of Cecil was spent in struggles to found and maintain the 
institutions of liberty in Maryland. From June 20, 1632, until his death 
[November 30, 1675], more than forty-three years, he had passed through 
the most eventful epoch of English history. He saw parliamentary insti- 
tutions overthrown and the whole power of government usurped by the 
king. He saw the monarchy destroyed and all governmental functions 
absorbed by Parliament. He witnessed the expulsion of the Parliament 
again, and liberty and law prostrate under the dominion of the sword ; and 
then he lived to see the ancient balance of the constitution restored, with 
king, Lords, and Commons re-established, after an interregnum of nearly 
twenty years, and right and justice once again trampled upon in the frenzy 
of a political and religious- reaction. Under all these extraordinary con- 
vulsions of society and revolutions of government he succeeded in plant- 
ing and preserving in Maryland the rights of legislation by the freemen, of 
habeas corpus, trial by jury, of parliamentary taxation, of security against 
martial law, and of liberty of conscience. 

"While the king was collecting aids and subsidies in England by the 
processes of the Star Chamber, no taxes or fees could be levied in Mary- 
land save by the vote of the General Assembly. While the right of per- 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 97 

sonal liberty was denied in England by the Long Parliament, the Writ of 
Right protected the humblest citizen in Maryland. 

" While the New Model lived at free quarters in England, no soldier 
could be billeted on the homes of the people here. While the Churchmen 
were fining and whipping Roman Catholics and Puritans, and while the 
Puritans were fining Churchmen and whipping Quakers, and denouncing 
death against all who refused to accept their creed as laid down in their 
Ordinance of 1648, all alike, Churchmen, Roman Catholics, Puritans, Pres- 
byterians, and Quakers, found safety, toleration, and protection in Mary- 
land. 

"From 1634 until 1680 no man was ever molested in Maryland on ac- 
count of his religious opinions, except in the short intervals of Ingle's oc- 
cupation, the sway of the Protector's commissioners, and Kendall's brief 
usurpation. 

"The man who could have thus founded a state in such institutions, in 
such times, and have safely preserved them through such revolutions, is 
entitled to be ranked with those who have been great benefactors of man- 
kind." 

More than a century's experience of the blessings of civil 
and religious liberty under our own free institutions should en- 
dear, by association of ideas, the name of Calvert to every Ame- 
rican. That he was a Catholic should not prejudice his name 
with Protestants. His faith connects his principles and his 
education with the best ages of English history, when Alfred and 
other Catholic kings laid the foundation of those liberties and of 
that jurisprudence which are now the pride and security of the 
English-speaking countries of the world in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 



VOL. xxxviii. 7 



f)8 A K MINE. [Oct., 



ARMINE. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

" I WONDER," said D'Antignac one morning 1 , " how our poor 
little Armine comes on." 

" I have thought of her often lately," said He"lene, who was 
moving about the room putting things in order so quietly and 
deftly that it was only by the results any one would have per- 
ceived what she was about. " I should like to hear something 
Of her." 

" Gaston writes that her father is most energetic in stimulat- 
ing opposition to him," said D'Antignac; "so I suppose we shall 
not hear from her till the election 'is over." 

" Why should we hear from her then ? " 

" I did not mean that we should exactly hear from her, but 
rather that we should see her, for Duchesne will no doubt re- 
turn to Paris." 

" I suppose so," said Mile. d'Antignac. " I hope it is not 
sinful," she added after a moment, during which she had taken 
down a small statuette from its bracket, dusted and replaced 
it, " but I cannot help thinking what a good thing it would be 
if M. Duchesne should be blown up, metaphorically at least, 
by some of his revolutionary schemes, and Armine could be 
free." 

" It would be a desolate freedom, I am afraid," said D'An- 
tfgnac. " As far as I know, her father is her only relative, and 
she is certainly very much attached to him." 

" But she could order her life as it pleased her then, and 
not be transported from one part of Europe to another by every 
political wind." 

"Order her life as it pleased her !" repeated D'Antignac in 
a musing tone. " There are few of us who are able to do that, 
and fewer still who, if we had the power, would find it easy to 
do. To please ourselves is, perhaps, as difficult a task as could 
be set us in this world, and to know what is best for us simply 
impossible. The safe path, therefore, is the path of God's pro- 
vidence. It is the A B C of religion that the graces which we 

o o 

receive and the merits we may obtain in the state and circum- 
stances of life to which it has pleased him to call us are greater 



1883.] ARMINE. 99 

than we could obtain by leaving that path, even for one of ap- 
parently higher perfection." 

" Yes," said Helene, " I know that, and I was not wishing 
Armine to leave the path which is so rough, I am sure, to her 
feet ; I was only wishing that she might be released from the 
necessity of following it. But, after all, such wishes are very 
foolish, a part of the littleness that besets us in our poor human 
horizon." Then, with a start, " There is the door-bell ! I hope 
Cesco will not think of admitting any one." 

" It is too early for visitors," said D'Antignac. 

But this proved to be a mistake, for a moment later Cesco 
opened the door and said : " Mile. Duchesne begs to know if 
she may come in." 

"Armine!" cried H61ene. "Yes, certainly. My dear child," 
she went on eagerly, advancing to meet the girl who appeared 
in the door, " this is a most unexpected pleasure." 

" Almost as unexpected to me as to you, dear Mile. d'An- 
tignac," said Armine, kissing her in the pretty foreign fashion 
on both cheeks. " I am so glad to see you again ! And M. 
d'Antignac how is he ? " 

" He will tell you himself," said Helene, leading her for- 
ward. 

D'Antignac raised himself the only exertion of which he 
was capable unaided to a sitting posture, and held out his 
hands, saying : 

" ' On parle de soleil, et en void les rayons ' / We were just 
talking of you and wishing for news of you." 

" Were you, indeed? " said Armine. " How good of you to 
think of me ! O M. d'Antignac, how I have longed for a 
word from you ! " 

" You shall have as many now as you like," he answered, 
smiling. " But the first must be to say that Brittany has not 
done you much good. You are looking paler and thinner than 
when you went away." 

"Am I? It -is likely," she said. "No, Brittany did me no 
good. I wish 1 could have stayed in Paris." 

" We have wished so, too," said H61ene kindly. " When 
did you return ? " 

" Last night," she answered. " You might be sure that it 
was lately ; that this is the first place to which I have come. I 
longed to come earlier, but feared to disturb you. I felt, until 
I entered your door, as if I could hardly be certain of seeing 
vou." 



TOO ARMINE. [Oct., 

" But why ? " asked Mile. d'Antignac, smiling a little. " You 
surely did not think us likely to have vanished in a fort- 
night?" 

" Oh ! no," the girl answered ; " but I did not know that my 
father might not forbid my coming, and, though I should have 
disobeyed him in order to see you again, 1 was glad not to 
have been forced to do so." 

The brother and sister exchanged a glance. Then the for- 
mer said : " What has happened ? Why should you fear that he 
would forbid your coming?" 

" Because he has already done so by implication," she an- 
swered ; "and although he left the matter there for the time 
being, I do not think it will end there. Some change has come 
over him. He, who was so kind, so tolerant, has become no, 
I will not say unkind : he is never that when he remembers 
himself but certainly very intolerant. As I have often told 
you, if he knew that I did not think with him he ignored the 
difference ; but the time has come when he ignores it no lon- 
ger. It angers him, and he seems to have conceived the re- 
solution to make me believe all that he believes and hope what 
he hopes." 

" And do you know why he has so suddenly conceived this 
resolution?" asked D'Antignac. 

She shook her head. " No," she answered. " There is only 
one thing which suggests an explanation, but that is incredible." 
" The thing which seems incredible is often the thing which 
is true," said D'Antignac. 

She did not answer for a moment. Then she said : " I scarce- 
ly believe you will think so when you hear what this is ; but 
it is easily told." 

Nevertheless she paused again, and the blood rose in her 
clear, pale cheeks, though her glance did not waver or turn 
from him as she went on : 

" One day my father told me that he wanted me to go with 
him to Marigny that is, to the village and, though I tried to 
avoid it, I had no good excuse for refusing. So we went, and 
what I feared came about. I met the vicomte, and he spoke 
to me. I am sure that only his kindness made him do so, and 
he simply said a few courteous words; but my father saw us 
together and was very angry. I never saw him so angry be- 
fore, and for the first time in my life he spoke to me as if he 
suspected me of something wrong. He asked where I had met 
M. de Marigny, and I told him. Then he said he understood 






1883.] ARMINE. 101 

why I had no sympathy with him ; that he would tolerate no 
acquaintance with M. de Marigny, and that I should go no 
more where I was likely to meet him. This terrified me, but 
I hoped that he spoke in haste and would forget it, especially 
when I told him that I had met M. de Marigny only twice in 
all the time that I have been coming here. But from that day 
he is changed. He has said nothing more of the meeting with 
the vicomte ; but he dwells bitterly on what he never seemed 
to think of before my want of sympathy with his objects in 
life-; and only last night he told me again that he intended to 
withdraw me entirely from influences ' that have been so per- 
nicious.' I knew what that meant, and my heart died within 
me. It means that I shall come here no more. I trembled lest 
he should plainly say, ' Do not go again.' He did not say it 
then, but I know that he will, or else he will send me from 
Paris. He has spoken of that. In any case I see nothing but 
separation from you." 

Her eyes filled with tears ; her voice trembled and broke 
down. The bitterness of the separation seemed already press- 
ing upon her. Mile. d'Antignac rose impulsively, and, going 
over, placed her arm around her. " My poor Armine," she said, 
" life is indeed hard for you ! But be patient ; let us hope your 
father's anger will pass, and that he will prove more reason- 
able than to do what you fear." 

"It is not merely anger," said Armine. "If it were it 
would pass ; indeed, it would be already passed. He does not 
seem angry now ; he seems only to feel a deep sense of injury 
that I am so alienafed from him in sympathy, and to fancy 
that I am a piece of wax to be moulded by whatever influence 
is nearest me." 

Meanwhile D'Antignac, lying back on his pillows, said 
nothing; but his grave, dark eyes, which were fastened on the 
girl, were as full of tenderness as of penetrating thoughtful- 
ness. There was infinite comfort in this gaze, Armine felt 
when she met it, as she looked at him and went on : 

" Now you see why I said that the only apparent reason 
for the change in my father is one which seems incredible. It 
dates apparently from the day when he saw me speak to M. 
de Marigny ; and although that might have angered him as 
I felt that it would it is impossible to conceive that it could 
change his whole conduct toward me, that it could make of 
importance what never appeared to be worth a thought to 
him before." 



102 ARATINE. [Oct., 

" You remember what I said a few minutes ago," D'An- 
tignac answered. " What seems to us incredible is often the 
thing which is true. I fear there can be no doubt that your 
father's change of feeling and conduct does spring from that 
occurrence, simple and trivial as it looks." 

"But it is impossible! I cannot believe it!" said the girl. 
" My father is a man of sense. He must have realized, when 
he came to think, that the meeting was nothing a mere acci- 
dent. And what is M. de Marigny to him but a political op- 
ponent? " 

D'Antignac did not reply, " M. de Marigny is much 
more to him than a political opponent," but after a pause he 
said : " We cannot possibly tell all the motives that ma}' influ- 
ence your father. He may have been gradually rousing to a 
sense of the differences that divide you, and the final realiza- 
tion probably came when he saw ) r ou in friendly intercourse 
with a man against whom he was just then peculiarly embit- 
tered, as most men are against their political opponents 
when that thing most fatal to charity, a heated contest, is 
going on. You are certainly aware that it requires very little 
flame to kindle a large fire." 

There was silence again for a moment. Armine sat with 
her eyes growing momently more sorrowful. Presently, with 
a deep sigh, she said : " I dreaded to go to Marigny ! I felt in- 
stinctively that harm would come of it. But I did not dream 
of anything so bad as this the prospect of being separated 
from you." 

" I am sorry from the bottom of my fieart that you ever 
met Gaston de Marigny here," said Helene, who was still 
standing beside her, with one hand resting on her shoulder. 

"I am sorry, too," said D'Antignac; "but regret is quite 
unavailing, and in a certain sense unnecessary, since we had 
nothing whatever to do with bringing either him or Armine 
here on the occasions when they met. It was a natural acci- 
dent, rising from our acquaintance with both." 

" Oh ! " said Armine quickly, '" do not think that I blame 
any one. It was only a natural accident, but how could you 
think what I could never have believed that my father 
would object to such a meeting? I should not have imagined 
that M. de Marigny was more to him than a name; and if 
any one had suggested that he would not wish me to meet 
him on account of his politics, I would have said : ' You do 
my father injustice. He is an enthusiast, but not a fanatic. 



1883.] ARMINE. 103 

Because he wishes to abolish the order to which a man be- 
longs he would not refuse to meet that man in social life.' 
But it seems I was wrong," she added, her voice falling from 
the proud tone which it had involuntarily taken, as she uttered 
the last words. 

" No, my dear Armine," said D'Antignac, " you were not 
wrong. Your father, no doubt, would have felt in that way of 
any other man than the Vicomte de Marigny. But there are 
reasons reasons which go beyond the present generation 
for his disliking the vicomte personally ; and this dislike was 
naturally intensified by the political contest. As for his in- 
jured sense of your lack of sympathy well, it is hard for a 
man to find contradiction and want of belief in those nearest 
to him, especially those (like wife and daughter) who, he 
thinks, should instinctively look up to and receive their ideas 
from him. Remember that always with regard to the differ- 
ences of opinion between you, and say little. It is quite true 
that the law, ' Honor thy father,' rests on no authority com- 
manding his respect, but it commands yours, and must be 
obeyed." 

" I do not think," said Armine, " that my father himself 
would say that I have ever failed to obey it." 

" I am sure that you have not," D'Antignac answered. 
" But you must not begin to do so. You said a little while 
ago that even if he had forbidden you in distinct terms to 
come to us you would nevertheless have come. That was 
not right. Only when a duty to God conflicts with the com- 
mand of a parent may the last be set at naught. Now, there 
was no duty involved in your coming here." 

"Yes," said the girl impetuously, " there was. For have I 
not learned here that there is such a thing as duty ; that it is 
not a mere term, signifying nothing, which every man may use 
to suit himself? And where should 1 go to learn what is that 
duty, if I did not come here? You are my conscience, M. d'An- 
tignac. Surely you must know that." 

" If I am," said D'Antignac in a voice of gravity, but also 
of exceeding gentleness, " there is the more reason that I 
should speak plainly, and that I should say then it is well that, 
at any cost of pain to either of us, our association should be 
broken off, for a time at least. It is well that you should learn, 
in a spiritual sense, to stand alone; and that, for such guidance 
as we all need, you should go to one better fitted than I to give 
it. I have been to you all that it is necessary or fitting that I 



104 ARMINE. [Oct., 

should be. It is not fitting that I should direct your conscience, 
or that you should find in me a substitute for the aids of that 
religion which you hesitate to embrace, and with regard to 
which I am bound to remind you that God's commands are not 
to be set aside for any fear of man. ' I am come not to send 
peace upon earth, but a sword,' said our Lord ; and that sword 
has pierced many hearts before yours." 

As he spoke his tones growing gentler yet more impressive 
with every word the girl gazed at him like one who hangs 
upon the lips of an oracle, with the whole being absorbed in 
the act of listening. When he ceased there was a silence which 
seemed long, until she said in a low voice : 

" One's own heart does not matter. But to pierce another's 
that is hard." 

"Do you think that is not included in the saying ?" asked 
D'Antignac. " To a sensitive soul the pain which it costs to 
inflict pain is greater than any that can be inflicted. But there- 
in lies the cross. And the hearts which are pierced how do 
we know what waters may not flow from them at last ? Yet 
even if they remain closed to the end let us beware how we 
put the love, any more than the fear, of man between us and 
the command of God." 

Armine bent her face into her hands. " It seems to me that 
you are hard upon me very hard, M. d'Antignac," she said. 
" You tell me that I must obey my father and come to you no 
more. Yet you also tell me that I must do that which will be 
in his eyes the worst offence which I could commit, which will 
make him regard me as a traitor and an enemy." 

"Have I seemed hard to you, my poor Armine?" D'An- 
tignac asked with the same infinite gentleness. " Well, it is sim- 
ply this: I have spoken to you as to one who is strong enough 
to do what is right. I grant you that courage is needed; but 
what then? Souls as tender, frames as weak as yours have 
possessed it. And when you called me your conscience you 
put a responsibility upon me. After that I could not be si- 
lent." 

" Do you think that I wish you to be silent?" Armine 
asked. " Oh ! no ; I am glad that you have spoken, though 
what you put before me is very hard, and I may not have the 
courage and strength it demands. Will you despise me if I 
prove not to have them?" 

" No, I shall not despise you, but I shall think that you make 
a great mistake," D'Antignac answered. " You will weigh in a 



1883.] ARMINE. 105 

balance obeying God or paining- your father ; and to avoid the 
last you will neglect the first. But do you ever think that you 
may be frustrating God's intentions towards you in some man- 
ner which concerns not only yourself but others? In the great 
economy of grace we cannot tell how one soul may act upon 
another, or what it is intended to supply. You may be intended 
to make reparation by your faith for your father's war against 
religion ; by your courage in confessing, for his bitterness in 
denying; to atone by prayers for blasphemies, and by good 
works for evil deeds. At least we know that such reparation is 
possible." 

" Is it ? " said the girl. A sudden light came into her face. 
It was evident that D'Antignac had touched a chord which 
responded like an electric flash. " If I thought that," she went 
on in a low tone " if I believed it possible that / could ever 
make reparation for the things of which you speak I think it 
would cost me little effort to face any opposition." 

" It is entirely possible that you should make it, and it may 
be the special work which God demands of you," D'Antignac 
replied. " But on such a point I speak with diffidence. Again 
I say, you must go to one better able to direct you." 
1 " Ah ! I shall never find one better able," she said with a 
little cry. " But if I must leave you if you bid me not come 
back to you I will go to whomever you wish." 

"Do you mean that you will go to a priest?" he asked, 
regarding her searchingly ; for up to this time she had always 
shrunk from such a decisive step. 

" Yes, if you think that I should that I ought," she an- 
swered like one in despair. 

" I am sure that you should, and I think that you ought ; 
that the time has come when you must act," he replied. " I 
will give you a note to a priest whom I know well, who is at 
once ardent and wise ; who will know what is best for you, yet 
who will not press you. He is for the present attached to 
Notre Dame des Victoires, where you will find him when you 
wish to deliver what I shall give you. Helene, will you hand 
me my writing-desk?" 

" O M. d'Antignac, pray do not write now ! " cried Armine 
before Helene could move. " You must be tired, for I have 
made you talk so much ! I will come back lor the note. It will 
give me the happiness of thinking that I may come back!" 

" But if your father forbids you to come ? " asked D'An- 
tignac, 



106 ARMINE. [Oct., 

" Then I can send Madelon. But I do not feel it possible 
that I can be exiled from this room, which has been my haven 
of peace, my refuge of safety, for so long ! " 

" Nevertheless," said D'Antignac gravely, " you may be 
so exiled. And if your father does forbid you to return I do 
not wish you to have the temptation of thinking, 'I will go for 
the note,' nor yet do I wish to run the risk of any accident 
in its reaching you. It need not belong; a few lines will be 
enough merely to introduce you. I will write another letter 
explaining your circumstances. He"lene, my desk." 

H61ene was ready with the desk a very light and con- 
venient affair, which could be easily placed before him and he 
wrote a few lines, which he enclosed, addressed, and gave to 
Armine. Then he lay back on his pillows with an air of 
weariness, while Helene quickly removed the desk and brought 
him a dose of medicine. 

Armine waited until he had taken this, and then said in a 
low voice : " I think I had better go now.'.' 

Yet it was pathetic to see the struggle she had to nerve 
herself to the point of departure even after she rose to her 
feet. She looked around, and her eyes filled with tears that 
threatened to overflow. But controlling herself with a strong 
effort, she went to the side of the couch and said hastily: 

"Adieu, M. d'Antignac! Thank you a thousand times for 
all your kindness. I will come back when I can." 

" We shall look and pray for thy coming, ma sceur" said 
D'Antignac tenderly, as he took the hand she offered in both 
his own. " God grant that it may be soon ; but, whether soon 
or late, may he go with thee and strengthen and bless thee 
for ever ! " 

A minute later, when Armine with tears bade farewell to 
Mile. d'Antignac in the ante-chamber, her last words were: 

"I feel like one thrust out of Paradise!" 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

"AND where now, mademoiselle?" asked Madelon when 
she joined Armine at the foot of the staircase and they issued 
together from the porte-cochere. 

Armine did not answer for a moment. Indeed it had been 
her evident hesitation in turning homeward which impelled 
Madelon to ask the question. They stood in the shadow of the 
archway for an instant; then the girl said: 



1883. ARMINE. 107 

" Do you remember, Madelon, when we used to live in the 
Rue de Vaugirard, how I loved the Luxembourg Garden? I 
have not been there in such a long time, and I feel just now 
as if I should like to see it again. Let us go there. At this 
time of day there will be few people about, and I can find one 
of my old haunts to be quiet in, while you go to see your 
cousin, who lives near by." 

"You are very good, mademoiselle," said Madelon, "and 
I should like to see my cousin, who has not been well of late; 
but to leave you alone in a public place that is not pos- 
sible." 

" Well, we will go and walk through the garden, and after- 
wards, perhaps, I will go with you to your cousin's," said Ar- 
mine, who knew that she generally had her own way in the end. 

So they turned from the river, passed through the quarter 
of the Faubourg St. Germain with its stately hotels of the old 
nobility, and, presently reaching the boulevard of the same 
name, found themselves near the old abbey church of St. 
Germain des Pr6s. 

Of the hurrying multitude that pours by this ancient and 
most interesting sanctuary there are probably few who give a 
thought to the panorama of French history which it has power 
to unroll to the mind's eye. Yet it stands as a witness and 
relic of that Christian civilization which has made France. 
Here, in the dawn of the light which was to wax so brilliant, 
Childebert, son of Clovis, founded the monastery and church 
in which his body rested for many centuries. To the student 
of mediaeval history the fame of that great monastery, with its 
splendid domain and seignorial rights, is very familiar ; but 
even such a student, looking at its surroundings to-day, must 
find it difficult to draw the picture of " that abbatial palace 
where the bishops of Paris deemed themselves fortunate to be 
entertained for a night ; that refectory to which the architect 
had given the air, the beauty, and the splendid window of a 
cathedral ; that elegant chapel of the Virgin, that noble dormi- 
tory, those spacious gardens, that portcullis, that drawbridge, 
that girdle of battlen>ents cut out to the eye upon the green- 
sward of the surrounding fields, those courts where men-at- 
arms glistened among copes of gold the whole collected and 
grouped around three lofty spires with circular arches, firmly 
seated upon a Gothic choir, forming a magnificent object 
against the horizon." * 

* Victor Hugo. 



io8 ARMINE. [Oct., 

So the ages of faith saw St. Germain des Pie's, and so, 
with certain changes, it remained until the sacrilegious hand 
of the Revolution fell upon it, suppressing, confiscating, and 
(with a fine sense of the fitness of things!) converting the 
abbot's palace into a saltpetre manufactory, where an explo- 
sion occurred which destroyed the matchless refectorv and 
valuable library. Afterward the work of destruction went on 
with celerity ; for an age which is powerless to construct 
knows well how to destroy. Streets of houses without an 
architectural idea have been opened through the noble build- 
ings, of which hardly a trace now remains to delight the an- 
tiquary. Not even the chapel of Notre Dame, built by Pierre 
de Montreuil in the thirteenth century, and famed as one of 
the most exquisite pieces of architecture of an age which covered 
Europe with glorious cathedrals and erected, by the hands of 
the same architect, the Sainte Chapelle, has been spared. The 
ancient church alone stands as it was rebuilt by the Abbot 
Morardus in the tenth century, after the Normans had de- 
stroyed the older church looking upon a new and strange 
world: a world from which all sense of the beautiful, as of the 
elevated, seems to have departed ; a world intent only on sor- 
did gain or ignoble pleasure ; a world that in severing itself 
from the deep roots of the past destroys its hope of a future, 
and where the light which Clovis and Childebert kindled wanes 
more and more dim. Around these old walls the glowing, pic- 
turesque life of the middle ages, with its genius, its passion, 
and its ardent faith, bringing heaven down to earth, has swept, 
and passed, to give place to a narrow, dull, material lite, which 
refuses to look up to where glory still shines in the clouds, but, 
with a strange infatuation without parallel in the history of 
mankind, seeks the secret, the motive, the end of existence in 
the dust beneath its feet. 

But under this antique porch, with its square-buttressed 
tower, all the great past of France seems to meet those who 
still hold that past worthy of honor. An innumerable host, 
stretching back through the ages, of kings, cardinals, prelates, 
scholars, and saints, have crossed this threshold and passed 
under the lofty arches of the nave to adore upon the altar 
the same Sacramental Presence before which Clovis bent his 
pagan knee and rose up the first of Christian kings. Armine, 
when she saw before her the venerable, well-known walls, said 
to Madelon : " Ah ! there is St. Germain des Pre"s. Let us go 
n for a few minutes." And when they entered the subdued 



1883.] A RMINE. 1 09 

light of the beautiful interior, rich with splendid color, proved 
grateful to eyes fresh from dazzling sunlight striking on 
asphalt pavements. All was steeped in quiet the ineffable 
quiet which broods in the sanctuary as in no other spot of 
earth; a quiet in which it seems as if by listening intently one 
might almost hear the rustling of angel-wings around the 
tabernacle where dwells our hidden Lord. A -few figures 
were kneeling here and there. In the nave stood a man with 
the appearance of an artist, studying intently those, frescoes 
of Flandrin, to which no higher praise can be given than that 
in their beauty and devotional feeling they are worthy to be 
placed above those Roman arches which date back to the 
time of the Abbot Morardus. 

Armine passed with her companion up the nave and knelt 
before the high altar. At that altar past and present met, as 
they meet in eternity before Him who is unchanging, " yester- 
day, to-day, and for ever." On a line with her as she knelt 
was, on one side, the chapel containing the marble figure of 
Casimir, king of Poland, who died abbot of the monastery, 
kneeling on his tomb and offering up his crown to God ; on 
the other the chapel of St. Marguerite, adjoining which is 
the chapel in which James, Duke of Douglas, lies, his sculp- 
tured figure reclining on his tomb. Armine saw these things 
almost without seeing them ; but they entered into and made 
part of what she was feeling. The king who had surrendered 
all things to follow Christ, though dead yet spoke to her, as 
did the soldier of a warlike age whose dust lay in the quiet 
keeping of that church which he had not followed his ur- 
happy country in forsaking. But deeper and more penetrat- 
ing than these was the voice which from the still depths of 
the tabernacle seemed saying to her soul: " He that loveth 
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." To 
. these grave and terrible words what voice of earth can add 
weight? From them what appeal is there when the moment 
of final choice comes? When Armine rose at length to leave 
the church where these words had been, as it were, spoken 
to .her, she felt as if hesitation were no longer possible, as if 
she had now only to nerve herself to action. 

. Again in the streets, they walked toward the Luxembourg 
and soon entered the garden by the Rue de Vaugirard. As 
Armine had said, it was not an hour when loiterers abound 
in its pleasant shades, and most of the seats under the spread 
ing chestnuts were unoccupied. The girl gazed around her 



no ARMINE. [Oct., 

lovingly. How well she knew the long arcades, the spacious, 
stately terraces with their statues and great flights of steps 
descending to the parterre gay with flowers and the rainbow 
spray of flashing fountains! It had been the dreaming-place 
of her early youth, when from the study of history she had 
come here to see its figures move before her imagination 
princes and courtiers and great ladies with manners and bear- 
ing of infinite grace. The marble queens of France who look 
serenely, .and perhaps a little disdainfully, from their pedestals 
at the bourgeois thron'g that ebbs and flows through scenes fit 
only for a court were like old friends to her, and she knew 
every nook musical with the voice of water. 

Toward one of these nooks she made her way, turning to 
the left and following a path that led to a spot where art 
had endeavored to imitate nature, where a fountain burst out 
of rock and fell into a great brimming basin edged with ferns, 
the boughs of trees arched overhead, forming a shade deep, 
green, and delicious. Under this shade, by the side of the 
fountain, a seat was placed ; and here Armine sat down. 

"Now, my good Madelon," she said persuadingly, "you 
see what a quiet place this is. No one is at all likely to 
trouble me by coming here; so you can with a clear con- 
science leave me for a little while, and go to see your cousin, 
who I know lives very near." 

" Oh ! yes, mademoiselle ; only a step away in the Rue 
Soufflot," said Madelon, and then stopped. She was much 
tempted, being not often able to see this cousin, who kept a 
small shop in the neighborhood ; but her sense of responsi- 
bility was strong. She did not really fear harm or insult for 
Armine if left alone, but her pride would have been wounded 
if the girl had been seen unattended by any one who knew 
her. There was apparently little prospect of such a thing 
here, however, so she finally consented to go, promising to 
return very soon, and exacting from Armine a promise that 
she would not stir until that return. 

Armine had no desire to do so. The quiet was delightful 
to her, and as she listened to Madelon's receding steps she 
drew a deep sigh of relief and pleasure. For to those who 
are able to enjoy it there is nothing more refreshing to soul 
and body than solitude. It is like an invigorating bath to 
the mind tired of society, of the trivialities which make up 
most conversation, of the effort necessary to preserve that ap- 
pearance of interest essential to good breeding, and also to 



1883.] ARMINE. in 

the mind fatigued in the less common way by too much 
stimulation. Armine did not live enough in society to be 
conscious of either form of weariness ; but all meditative na- 
tures spend their happiest hours alone. Poets, artists of all 
kinds, thinkers, and saints belong to this class. " The light 
that never was on sea or land " shines for them at such times 
and peoples solitude with glorious images. Armine, with her 
sad heart and troubled mind, would have been amazed to be 
told that she was of the stuff of which these dreamers are 
made ; but no one who looked at her with an appreciative 
regard could doubt it. As she sat now by the brimming 
basin, in the softly flickering shade, with her clear, deep, wist- 
ful eyes, she looked like the ideal of one to whom such glory 
might .be revealed. 

This, at least, -was the thought of a young man, who flattered 
himself that he was very appreciative, when he suddenly came 
in sight of her. She did not hear his fcotstep, and for a 
moment he paused regarding the charming picture which she 
made. Then he came forward, and with a start she looked up 
and recognized him. 

"Mile. Duchesne," he said, "this is a delightful surprise! 
I did not know that you were in Paris." 

" I have not been in Paris much more than twelve hours, 
M. Egerton," she answered. " We returned my father and 
I last night from Brittany." 

" And it is my good fortune to meet you to-day ! " said 
Egerton. " I am certainly very much indebted to the chance 
which has brought me here." 

" It seems rather a singular chance," said Armine, "for I 
remember that you were one of the last of our acquaintances 
whom I saw before I left Paris. And now you are one of 
the first whom I meet on my return ! You seem likely to be 
met in very unlikely places, monsieur." 

" But the Garden of the Luxembourg is not an unlikely 
place," he said. " Any one might be here." 

" Not any one who lives on the other side of the Seine," 
she answered. " In the Champs Elys6es, now, I should have 
thought it natural to meet you ; but here you are out of your 
orbit." 

"As much as I was in the Madeleine?" he asked, smiling. 
" But there is this difference : I was drawn into the Madeleine 
by the contagion of your example, while no such contagion 
drew me here, for I had no idea of seeing you." 



112 A ft MINE. [Oct., 

"Of course not; how could you have had?" she said 
quickly. 

" Yet, all the same, it is remarkable," he went on. " That 
I should come over here to see a friend, who proved not to be 
at home who never is at home, by the bye; then that 1 should 
stroll into the Luxembourg to look at the pictures, and that 
finally I should wander down to this quiet spot and find you 
if it is only a bit of accidental good fortune, I can only say 
that it reconciles me to some accidents which are not fortu- 
nate. And now, mademoiselle, am I intruding upon you? 
Shall I go away ? Or will you permit me to sit down 
and talk to you for a little while?" 

His manner was so frank and so respectful that Armine 
hesitated for a moment before replying. She was aware that, 
according to French usage, such a tete-a tete -was inadmissible; 
but Egerton was a foreigner, belonging to a nation with differ- 
ent social rules. She had an instinctive sense that she might 
trust him not to presume in any way upon her permission, 
if she gave it; and, more than that, she felt a revival of her 
interest in him, and a sense as if this meeting was not due 
merely to chance. So she answered : 

" You do not intrude, for I have no right to monopolize 
this place. It is simply an old haunt of mine, where I insisted 
that Madelon should leave me while she went to pay a visit 
near by. I did not think it probable that any one would dis- 
turb my solitude. That does not mean, however, that you need 
go away, if you care to stay." 

" Of that there can be no doubt," he replied. And, having 
remained standing up to this time, he now sat down on the 
bench near her. 

" It is a beautiful place," he said, glancing around, " and 
you looked, when I saw you first, as if you were indeed at 
home in it. Yet, according to the rule which you' laid down 
awhile ago, you should be out of your orbit here as much as I." 

"Oh! no," she said, smiling a little, "for five or six years 
ago we lived very near here, and the garden is as familiar 
to me as possible. That is why I spoke of this spot as an old 
haunt of mine. While Madelon would gossip with her friends 
on the terrace, 1 used to come down here and dream." 

"It seems made for dreaming," said Egerton. "And that 
you came here for such a purpose explains why I thought, as 
I first caught sight of you, that you looked like a sibyl seek- 
ing inspiration." 






1883.] ARMINE. 113 

" Did you think that?" she said, with a glance of involun- 
tary surprise. " Well, I am not a sibyl, but when you saw me 
I was seeking inspiration. Only it was a different inspiration 
from that which you probably mean." 

" I don't know," he answered. " The inspiration which I 
mean dealt with the deepest questions of life ; and there can 
be no deep question in life which does not reach beyond it. 
Now, the sibyls looked into the dread secrets of that which 
lies beyond, and spoke with the voice of the gods. I can-- 
not tell, of course," he added after a moment's pause, 
"what form of inspiration you were seeking; but to say 
that you looked like a sibyl means more much more than 
to say that you looked like a muse." 

"It is very extravagant to say that I looked like either," 
she observed quietly. " But the inspiration which I was seek- 
ing was on a question stretching beyond this life. For you are 
right in saying that there can be no great question which ends 
here." 

" And yet," he said slowly, " I wonder if you know what 
it is to be assailed constant!)' with the doubt whether all things 
do not end here whether whatever seems to go beyond is not 
merely a vain dream or a baseless hope?" 

She looked at him for an instant without replying ; then she 
said : 

" Yes, I have known what it is not only to be assailed by 
such a doubt, but to live in it. The belief that all things do 
end here is the belief in which I was educated ; but I found it 
as difficult to believe that as you find it to believe in another 
life. My mind revolted against a creed so narrow and so 
blind, and I felt, what I read long after on an inspired page, 
' If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most 
miserable.' " 

"Miserable yes," he said. "But what then? A man can- 
not believe a doctrine simply because it would be comfortable 
and consoling. And to a man of this generation, who breathes 
the air of his generation and keeps pace with its mental ad- 
vance, faith has become well-nigh impossible. I grant that the 
most of us had not much to begin with a few shreds of Chris- 
tian hope and belief which were handed down to us after hav- 
ing been subjected to various eliminating processes, and had 
little to distinguish them from barest rationalism. When put 
to. the test of logic could such faith as that stand ? Ignorance 
is its only safeguard ; and however much ignorance may be 
VOL. xxxviii. 8 



1 14 ARMINE. [Oct., 

bliss, one hardly cares to indulge it in connection with this 
momentous subject. So one goes on, opening one's mind to 
conclusions and opinions of the time, and when at last an hour 
comes with some need for faith one puts out one's hand to 
seize a wreath of mist, a vapor unsubstantial as a dream." 

"And is that what you feel? Is that your position?" asked 
Armine, her eyes full of interest. 

" That is undoubtedly my position," he answered. " I am 
blamed by my friends for having no earnestness of convictions, 
no depth of feeling on any subject. Men like D'Antignac on 
one side, and your father on the other, regard me with scorn 
and impatience ; yet to believe with the one I find as impos- 
sible as to feel with the other without belief." 

" I am sure," said Armine, " you are wrong when you speak 
of M. d'Antignac as regarding you with ' scorn and impatience.' 
I do not think it would be possible for him to regard any one 
with such a feeling as that certainly not one of whom I have 
heard him speak as kindly as of yourself. And if you find it 
impossible to believe what he does, that is probably because 
you do not know why he believes. Even in my slight expe- 
rience I have found that men are chiefly sceptical because they 
are ignorant." 

Egerton smiled. " The world generally regards the con- 
verse of the proposition as true," he said. " And yet, in a mea- 
sure, you are right: many men who turn to scepticism are pro- 
foundly ignorant of the claims of religion upon their reason. 
They grasp eagerly the wider freedom which unbelief offers, 
and the faith they demolish is a thing of straw set up by them- 
selves. But I do not belong to this class. Unbelief has no 
charms for me. I have tested all that it offers to compensate 
for what it takes away, and I have found all hollow and un- 
satisfying. How can it be otherwise ? For when men tell us 
that we have no souls to save and no God to serve, they drag 
down our whole conception of life, its meaning and its duty. 
What does a man who denies God mean by talking to me of 
duty ? Have not I as good a right as he to my conception 
of it which maybe that of the most consummate selfishness? 
As for the welfare of humanity, why should I care what be- 
comes of a few units in the infinite mass of succeeding genera- 
tions, which crawl here for a little while in wretchedness and 
then go down to nothingness? No; if the day comes when the 
last gleam of blue sky the last hope of immortality is lost to 
me, Schopenhauer will be my prophet, and I shall believe that 



1 883.] ARMINE. 115 

if a man can be said to have a duty it will be that of aiding as 
far as possible in the extinction of this misery-cursed human- 
ity." 

In the earnestness of his feeling he had almost forgotten 
to whom he spoke, but the girl who listened had understand- 
ing as well as sympathy for him. Over the ground where he 
was wandering her feet had already passed, and from where 
she stood, at the gate of the city builded upon a rock, she felt 
like stretching out a hand of succor to this wanderer in a world 
of shadows. But before she could decide what was best to 
say he spoke again : 

" You must forgive me for the egotism into which I have 
been betrayed. I only intended, when I began speaking of 
myself, to make you understand what I mean in saying that if 
you have gained any inspiration, if you possess any sibylline se- 
cret bearing upon such a state, pray give me the benefit of it." 

" I will most willingly," she said. " But in order to do so I 
think I will ask you first to endure a little egotism from me" 

" I can ask nothing better," he answered eagerly. 

But for a minute she was silent, and as she sat with her 
hands clasped together in her lap, and her eyes fastened on the 
brimming, flashing water in the gray, fern-clad basin, it seemed 
to Egerton that she was looking into the past as well as into 
the future, and her words, when she began to speak, proved 
that he was right. 

" Perhaps you will think it strange," she said, " but as long 
ago as when I used to sit here hardly more than a child 
or only passing out of childhood such thoughts as you have 
described were present with me. It was singular, was it not, 
that I did not accept my father's opinions? But I could not. 
I suppose I had a questioning mind at least I always found 
myself asking, 'Why? Why?' to the mystery of existence, to 
the riddle of history, to the crime and the infinite sorrow of 
life. These are dark problems, and I might not probably I 
should not have felt all their darkness and weight, if I had not 
heard the evils of the world talked of so constantly and their 
remedies so passionately advocated. But those remedies how 
could I believe in them ? How could revolutions unravel the 
mystery of life, or the establishment of communes end its sor- 
row ? There was an unreal sound in the cries I heard, though 
I did not know then that the brotherhood of mankind has no 
meaning unless it rests on the fatherhood of God. But when 
men insisted that the human race only needs to be freed from 



1 16 ARMINE. [Oct., 

' superstition ' and restraint to become great and good, I looked 
back over history and out on the world around us, and won- 
dered where they found any warrant or ground for such a 
hope." 

" There is none! " said Egerton quickly ; for had not he, too, 
heard the same cries and asked the same questions of history 
and of life ? " But it seems almost incredible that you should 
have reached such conclusions alone and unassisted ! " 

" Why should it seem incredible? " she asked. "It seemed 
to me that the thing which taxed credulity was the existence 
of the world without God, and the belief that for all the mani- 
fold and terrible injustice of life there should be no redress, no 
compensation, no merit to be gained in suffering, no punish- 
ment for crime." 

" It is an awful existence in which we find ourselves, if all 
those hopes are blotted out of it," he said. " But, as I remark- 
ed a moment ago, we can't shut our eyes to things because they 
are unpleasant." 

" But you can shut them to other things," she said quietly, 
" because from them, as you think, the advancing thought of 
the world has turned away. So a man might close his eyes 
and refuse to believe that the sun shone at midday." 

" Am I such a man?" he-said. " I think not. I think I am 
willing to open my eyes. But you surely during the time of 
which you speak you had some religious faith ? " 

She shook her head. " Not the least," she answered. " My 
mother had died early in my life, and the books upon which I 
was educated painted Christianity as the last and worst of the 
superstitions of mankind, a mere survival of ignorant myths. 
Yet, notwithstanding this, the idea of religion little as I knew 
of it had an attraction for me, as I presume it must have for 
every one who does not entirely stifle the spiritual side of nature." 

" Yes," said Egerton, " I fancy that even the most hard- 
ened materialist must feel at times the longing and the im- 
pulse toward faith. But we are trained to distrust both that 
impulse and the attraction of which you speak." 

" I know," she answered, " that we are trained to test 
everything by the scales and the crucible. Yet what is 
stronger proof than this universal need of the existence of that 
for which our natures so strongly crave? Let those who 
answer by talking of an inherited impulse tell us what other 
deeply-implanted instinct of man, found in all races, extending 
through all ages, has proved to be founded on a delusion." 



1883.] ARMINE. 117 

The energy of her speech and the clearness of her thought 
moved Egerton's surprise more and more. Notwithstanding 
his interest in drawing her out, he had not expected to receive 
anything of value ; but now he owned that the sibyl had a 
message for him. 

" But you did not reach a final conclusion alone ? " he 
asked presently. 

" No," she replied ; " I had a helping-hand. Is there not 
always a helping-hand for those who need and will take it? 
Mine was the hand of M. d'Antignac. I was attracted to him 
first by his suffering and the heroic patience with which that 
suffering was borne. Then I began to ask what was the 
secret of the wonderful calm in which he lived, that atmos- 
phere you know it of peace that no storm can ruffle. The 
beauty of his faith thus dawned upon me first ; the glory and 
majesty afterwards. When I began to speak to him of the 
difficulties and perplexities with which I was struggling, then 
and not until then he led me into the temple of faith and 
showed me how all creation finds meaning and harmony 
there." She paused an instant, and there was almost a rapt 
look in her eyes as she went on. " It was like a vision of 
the new Jerusalem," she said, " of a world reconciled to God. 
It was no longer a thing of chance and chaos, a mad pande- 
monium of crime and suffering: there was a motive and 
meaning to all. If men suffered, it was that through suffer- 
ing they should rise to heights where suffering alone could 
lead them ; and if they sinned, it was because God gave to 
the being he created free-will, in order that his service might 
be voluntary and possess merit. There is no merit in the 
service of a slave. Good and evil are placed before us, and 
God disdains to lay a fetter on our choice. But it is a 
choice for all eternity." 

" How can you know that ? " said Egerton. 

" There is only one way by which we can know that or 
anything else," she answered. "By the voice of the church 
which is ' the pillar and ground,' the teacher and guide of 
truth." 

" And you are, then, absolutely a Catholic ? " said Egerton 
after a pause of some length. 

She hesitated an instant, then said : " I have long been one 
in belief, but I have never openly confessed the faith, on 
account of my father, fearing his grief even more than his 
anger. It is terrible to wound one whom we love ; and that 
will wound him very deeply. But it seems as if the time has 



n8 ARMINE. [Oct., 

come when I may no longer be a coward when I must act 
and bear the consequences. I told you that I was seeking in- 
spiration here. It was the inspiration necessary for such a step." 

"But is it essential that you should take it?" asked Eger- 
ton, startled ; for he felt instinctively how terrible Duchesne's 
anger was likely to be. 

" There is no compulsion but that of my own conscience," 
she answered. " That has been weak enough heretofore ; but 
now She rose suddenly, for she saw Madelon coming down 
the path toward them. " I must go," she said ; " and I fear 
that, after all, I have not been able to give you any help." 

" On the contrary," he replied quickly, " you have said 
many words which I shall not soon forget. But this is not 
adieu ; may I not come to see you ? " 

" You know that my father is always glad to see you," 
she answered gravely ; " but I fear his influence for you." 

" You are very kind to fear for me," he said ; " but, with 
all his power and magnetism, M. Duchesne has never been 
able, and I am quite sure never will be able, to rouse me to 
enthusiasm in his cause. I admire his devotion to that cause; 
but it is as you remarked a little while ago one must believe 
in the fatherhood of God before one can acknowledge the 
brotherhood of man." 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

LEFT alone after Armine had walked away with Madelon 
Egerton sank back on the seat and began in his accus- 
tomed fashion to consider the interview just past. Character- 
istically, his mind dwelt most on the personality of Armine, 
which had been revealed to him in a clearer light than ever 
before. It was like a pathetic picture the idea of the girl, 
at an age when most girls are free from care or thought, sit- 
ting by this fountain in the garden of the old palace, ponder- 
ing the deep problems and weighing the fierce war-cries of 
the tumultuous age in which her lot was cast. Egerton had 
known, in a degree at least, how heavy the weight of the 
time can be to a soul which is unable to satisfy itself with 
the mere surface of life, with the pursuit of gain or of plea- 
sure ; but what was his realization of this compared to that 
of Armine? In her very childhood she had struggled with 
giants those giants called Ideas, which had drenched France 
with blood and convulsed all Europe and she had come vic- 
torious from the struggle. He could not forget the rapt look 






1883.] ARMINE. 119 

of her eyes when she said, " It was like a vision of the new 
Jerusalem of a world reconciled with God." The look had 
struck him even more than the words, for it indicated an as- 
surance beyond the power of expression. Nor could he think 
it a mere exaggeration of sentiment. The memory came back 
to him of a day when he had stood under the mighty arches 
of Notre Dame and listened to a voice which while he lis- 
tened reconciled for him, too, this crime-darkened, suffering- 
steeped world with the gracious purpose of its Creator. He 
remembered how eloquently that voice had justified the ways 
of God with man, and made it clear that those who in their 
madness constitute themselves the critics and judges of God 
display in their arraignments an ignorance equal to that of a 
child who should fretfully declaim against the heat of the 
sun that ripens the wide harvests of the earth. 

Since that day it had more and more dawned upon him 
that if an answer to the riddles of life was to be found at 
all it must be sought in that Catholic theology which modern 
philosophers ignore, while they seek in systems without a base 
what such systems can never give, and then fling them aside, 
crying: "We have tested this thing called revealed religion, 
and found it without a single reason for its existence worth the 
attention of a philosophical mind." A multitude follow their 
lead as blindly as another multitude followed, three hundred 
years ago, those who substituted human opinion for the voice 
of God and led the human mind into a quagmire of error 
where it has struggled ever. since. And among this multitude 
Egerton might have remained but for yes, he said to himself 
with something like a start of surprise, but for the voice of 
Armine. If he had made a long mental journey since the day 
when he stood before the great portal of Notre Dame, and 
thought complacently, yet with some strange yearning toward 
the repose of faith, that a man must belong to his age, it was 
to her voice that he owed the first impulse on that journey. 
How well he recalled the evening when he met her first, and 
when, amid the passionate utterances of the apostle of destruc- 
tion, her simple words had made so deep an impression and 
sent him to D'Antignac as a questioner rather than merely as 
a friend ! 

Yes, it was to Armine he owed whatever light had come to 
him ; and that being so, was it more than chance which had 
led his feet here to-day? " It is strange," he thought. '"The 
ways are many* have I not seen that somewhere? A So- 
cialist meeting was to me the vestibule to Notre Dame. And 



120 ARMINE. [Oct., 

now, coming in very idleness to seek Winter, who first roused 
my curiosity with regard to Duchesne, I find a sibyl with a 
message. Shall I ever heed it ? God only knows. And yet 
if there be a God there can certainly be no duty higher than 
the duty of acknowledging him." 

He rose, and, leaving the fountain, walked slowly along the 
al!6e which led to the broad terrace with its stately flights of 
steps descending to the parterre before the palace. Again he 
thought- of Armine in her childhood and girlhood, of the poetic 
face and the clear, searching eyes, as she had wandered here, 
alone amid the bourgeois crowd, bearing already the penalty of 
isolation which all must bear whose mind or spirit elevates 
them above the multitude that surrounds them. What was 
to be the fate of this delicate creature strong in mind, but 
sensitive as a mimosa in feeling whom fate had placed where 
mind and heart were set so cruelly at variance ? He felt his 
interest in her growing almost insistent in its demands, as if 
urging him to put out his hand to help her. But was it in his 
power to help ? He knew that it was not ; but he determined 
that at least he would know how it fared with her in the 
struggle, and that he would not lose the position in which her 
confidence and sympathy had placed him. 

While thinking in this manner he had been walking to- 
ward one of the gates of the garden, and he now passed 
through into the Boulevard St. Michel, having before him the 
narrow streets and the steep hill of the Quartier Latin, when 
a hand fell on his shoulder, and, as once before in the same 
neighborhood, he was accosted by the man whom he had 
crossed the Seine to seek. 

"So here you are!" said Winter. " I thought I should find 
you." 

" How did you know that I was to be found ? " asked Eger- 
ton, turning. 

"Oh! the concierge, chez woi, told me that'ww monsieur bien 
distingut* had been inquiring for me. So, judging it to be you, 
and judging also that, having nothing to occupy your time, 
you would be likely to stroll into the Luxembourg Garden 
that is the benefit of having a palace for near neighbor I de- 
cided to take a turn in search of you. Et voilb ! " 

He uttered the last words in a tone of satisfaction which 
Egerton felt unable to echo. His meeting with Armine had 
thrown him so entirely out of accord with Winter that it was 
only by an effort he could recall himself to the plane of the 
latter or remember why he had sought him. He had too 



1883.] ARMINE. 121 

much of the social faculty to suffer this to be apparent, how- 
ever, and when Winter presently inquired concerning his im- 
mediate intentions he said : 

" I was on my way home ; but, now that we have met, the 
best thing- to do would be to breakfast together. I presume 
that you know a good cafe in the neighborhood." 

" I know half a dozen where you can get a better breakfast 
than in your gilded haunts on the Boulevard des Italiens," 
said Winter. " If you want to fare well in foreign towns you 
should avoid all places where strangers congregate. Their 
presence has always two effects to increase prices and to 
deteriorate quality." 

" Unhappily true," said Egerton ; "so I put myself in 
your hands. Take, me where our degrading influence is un- 
known." 

Winter laughed, but proceeded to guide him to one of those 
cafes where students, artists, and journalists congregate, where 
the foreigner, unless he belongs to the Bohemian ranks, is un- 
known, and where one finds few mirrors and little gilding, but 
good service and distinctively French cooking. 

The two men sat down at a small table, and, after they had 
ordered breakfast, Egerton looked around. " It strikes me," he 
said, "that I have been here before. Is not this the cafe where 
you found the man who so obligingly went with me to the 
meeting in Montmartre where I first saw Duchesne?" 

" The same," Winter answered. " It is a great resort of 
Leroux's. I should not be surprised if he dropped in at any 
moment. If he did he might give us news of Duchesne, who 
has been out of Paris lately " 

" He is back in Paris now, however," said Egerton involun- 
tarily. 

"Indeed! Have you seen him?" inquired Winter. 

" No," replied Egerton, slightly vexed with his own thought- 
lessness and determined not to mention Armine ; " I have only 
heard of his arrival." 

The other looked at him with some surprise and a little 
curiosity. 

" You seem well informed," he said. " Only yesterday I 
heard a man, whom I should have supposed likely to know 
more than you, regret his absence." 

" Yesterday he was absent," said Egerton, " but he arrived 
in Paris last night." 

"You are sure of it?" 

" I am perfectly sure." 



122 ARM IN E. [Oct., 

"Well," said Winter, with a slight shrug, "it seems that you 
have become a Socialist in earnest, since you are admitted to 
the confidence of the chiefs of the party. Up to this time I 
have never believed in your conversion. 'He is only playing 
with that, as he has played with other things,' I said to Leroux 
when he told me how you were impressed by Duchesne ; ' he 
has no stability in him.' ' 

" You are very kind," said Egerton. " There is nothing 
so refreshing as the good opinion of a friend candidly ex- 
pressed." 

" There is no worth in a friend who is not candid," said 
Winter. " And you must confess that up to this time stability 
has not been your most striking characteristic." 

" I have laid no claim to it," said Egerton. " I have thought 
more of finding truth if truth were to be found than of pre- 
serving a character for consistency ; which, after all, often sim- 
ply means that a man is not accessible to new ideas." 

" If you have been in search of truth I retract all my criti- 
cisms," said Winter, "for my opinion has been that you were 
simply in search of novelty. Eh bien, you have discovered 
what you sought, then, in the principles of Socialism as ex- 
pounded by Duchesne?" 

" By no means," Egerton answered. " Principles which 
would reconstruct the world on a basis of communal tyranny 
are not to my fancy. That part of Socialism which -dwells upon 
the wrongs and the miseries of the poor is true ; but when it 
comes to a question of remedies it is impossible to follow men 
who, if they had the power, would proclaim to-morrow a cru- 
sade of wholesale robbery." 

" Who by one violent revolution would set right the wrongs 
of centuries and demolish social conditions which nothing short 
of revolution can overturn," said Winter. " It is natural that 
you do not welcome such a prospect, since you are one of the 
class to be dispossessed ; but it proves that I was right in be- 
lieving that you were only amusing yourself with Socialism, as 
with other things." 

Now, Egerton was amiable almost to a fault, but the scarcely 
veiled contempt of the other's tone was too much even for 
his amiability. He looked up with a spark of fire in his glance 
as he said: 

" You are entirely Tnistaken. I have not been amusing my- 
self with Socialism. It is rather a grim subject for amusement. 
But I was attracted by the ideal which it presented ; and in 
order to judge it fairly I heard its claims presented and its 






1883.] ARMINE. 123 

aims declared not by outsiders but by its warmest supporters 
and advocates. Consequently I have a right to say that I have 
weighed Socialism in the balance and found it wanting. It may 
convulse the world and destroy society I grant you it has 
power enough for that ; but it has no power to construct 
another society. The basis on which it rests is too unsound." 

" Do you mean," said Winter, "the basis of the equal rights 
of man ? " 

" Yes," answered Egertorr, " the basis of the equal rights of 
man. For how can you prove that man has any rights? It is 
an assertion without a shadow of proof. In the pagan world 
there was but one recognized right that of force. The Chris- 
tianity which you despise, in declaring that man has an im- 
mortal soul, gave him the charter of all the rights he possesses. 
But in destroying and denying Christianity you throw your- 
selves back upon Nature ; and neither you nor any other man 
can prove that naturally that is, according to the nature re- 
vealed to us by positive science man has any rights above 
those of the horse and dog." 

There was a moment's silence after this bold challenge 
a challenge which no positivist can answer, and which was 
perhaps for the first time presented to Winter. It evidently 
startled him a little, and probably he was not sorry for conver- 
sation to be interrupted by breakfast, which the garc.on just 
then placed on the table before them. But as he poured out a 
glass of red wine a minute later he recovered himself sufficiently 
to say, with the sneer which always comes readily in default of 
argument : 

" Oh ! if you have gone back to the fables of religion there 
is nothing more to be said. It is very natural in that case 
that you should turn your back on the rights of man." 

" It would be so far from natural," said Egerton, " that I re- 
peat and insist upon the assertion that it is religion which first 
introduced into the world the doctrine that man had any 
rights at all ; and without religion that. is, without some form of 
theistic belief, however vague you cannot prove the existence 
of a single right to which he may logically lay claim. All the 
high-sounding declarations of the French Revolution merely 
asserted in a political sense what the Catholic Church had for 
eighteen centuries asserted in a spiritual sense that all men are 
equal before God. But obliterate the idea of God, and where 
is your equality ? Science absolutely denies it, Nature as has 
been well said abhors it, all experience disproves it. And since 
neither Nature nor science gives man his charter of equal 



124 A R MINE. [Oct., 

rights, where do you find it? Only in Catholic theology. Your 
leaders have stolen it thence, but the fire of heaven in their 
hands can only kindle conflagration on earth." 

" By Jove ! " said Winter, with a stare. " Well as I thought 
I knew you, this is a change for which I was hardly prepared ! 
From liberalism to Catholic theology, from positive science 
to the dogmas of the church, would prove a very long step for 
any one but yourself. You seem to have taken it, however, 
with wonderful agility; and but for the fact that your con- 
versions never last long, I should expect to hear of you soon 
as 'received* at the Madeleine." 

" You could hear nothing better of me, if I had the neces- 
sary faith," said Egerton quietly. " But because 1 point out 
a simple fact a fact easily verified by history it does not fol- 
low that I must accept that on which the claims of the church 
rest. Yet the man is intellectually blind who denies that they 
are mighty claims," he went on after a moment ; "and between 
that church as she stands, with all her glorious past behind her, 
pointing to the great fabric of Christian civilization as her 
work, and clothed in that mantle of infallibility without which 
she would have no right to speak for what is a fallible church 
but a human society a little more absurd than any other, in- 
asmuch as it attempts to teach great truths of which avowedly 
it has no certainty ? and liberalism with its creed of human 
progress, which the future alone can prove, the choice is to be 
n\ade. These two forces divide the world. One or the other 
must win the victory the kingdom of God or what your new 
thinkers call the kingdom of man." 

Winter looked up with the defiance which is the charac- 
teristic attitude of his school. " The human mind has out- 
grown the fables of the church of which you speak," he said. 
" The kingdom of God which it invented has passed away, and 
the kingdom of man has come." 

"Has it?" said Egerton. "Then God help but how if 
there is no God ? Can we call upon matter to help man thus 
left at the mercy of the blind forces of nature and the blinder 
passions of his fellow-man, for whom justice, mercy, and right 
must soon become mere idle words signifying nothing, since 
deriving authority from nothing? But let me tell you this: 
that as I am never so hear being a Catholic as when I talk 
to a positivist, so there will be nothing so likely to drive men 
to the kingdom of God as the founding of your kingdom of 
man." 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



1883.] WHEN VISIONS PASS. 125 



WHEN VISIONS PASS. 

A BOY beside my mother's knee, 
I dreamed myself a name 
That girt the land on wings of fame 
And crossed the throbbing sea. 

Ah, simple dream ! 
Than scenes of elfin-land more fair 
The child passed by, the youth came on, 
Yet roses warmed the air. 

A student bending o'er the page 
Where dwells the brilliant past, 
Mine was the light illumed the vast, 
The wondrous coming age. 

Ah, luring dream ! 

That taught my youthful mind to dare 
The days stole by and manhood came, 
Yet found my brow still bare. 

A man endowed with pride alone, 
I sought to pierce the skies, 
To grasp what far beyond me lies 
And know as I am known. 

Ah, wild, wild dream ! 
That urged but failed to lead me there 
The night has passed, the morning dawns 
And finds me here at prayer. 

Gone with the song for ever mute, 
The lily's bloom that died, 
Still as the soothing tones that hide 
Within a voiceless lute. 

Ah, buried dreams! 
My soul is filled with fragrance rare 
Of that which knows no fading hues- 
God's love and tender care. 



126 



THE TORPEDO STATION. 



[Oct., 



THE TORPEDO STATION. 

IN the Redwood Library at Newport is a deed of sale by 
which are transferred to Benedict Arnold and John Green three 
small islands in the bay viz., Nante Simunk, the Indian name 
of Goat Island, now better known as the " Torpedo Station " ; 
Weenat Sliasitt, or Coaster's Harbor, and a small island called 
Dyer's Island for the sum of 6 los. To the deed are affixed 
the following classic signatures : 



Witness: 

JOHN SANFORD 
Awashans 




his 




marke 



his marke 



JAMES S 



SWEET 
his marke 



MAY 22nd 1658. 

This is the earliest historical mention of Goat Island, where 
our present depot for the construction of defensive torpedoes 
stands. At this date it was covered with a heavy growth of 
timber, and, according to an early historian, the war-whoop of 
Cachanaqueant, then chief sachem of the Narragansets, rang 
through its forests ; but we know not against what enemy the 
martial powers of the great sachem could have been directed, 
unless against the goats which overran and gave their name to 
his dominions, for the island, which is not more than a mile in 
length, and perhaps only a quarter of a mile in width, could 
hardly accommodate two hostile tribes. We can more easily 
credit the piscatorial exploits related of the red men, for the 

waters about the island still abound in fish. 

i 

In 1673 Benedict Arnold sold the island to Newport. Some 



1883.] THE TORPEDO STATION. 127 

twenty years after Queen Ann's fort was erected on it. In 1879, 
when the stones of which it was built were transported to form 
a sea-wall about the island, it was found to contain a curious 
chamber, the use of which could not be accounted for in the 
records of fortifications. It was oval, measuring about ten feet 
in length and eight feet in width, open at the top, but with no 
visible means of entry or exit. In a corner of the chamber lay an 
earthen pot and a bottle of medicine. The fort was built chiefly 
from the proceeds of general forfeitures, especially from plate 
and money taken from the unfortunate pirates, with which no 
locality is more closely associated than the harbor of Newport. 
Cooper's " Red Rover " was not the only daring adventurer who 
boldly took advantage of the " placid basin, outer harbor, con- 
venient roadstead, and clear offing." Pirates were wont to lie 
in wait for the rich planters of the South who fled from the 
tropical heat of their own provinces to the salt breezes of the 
New England shores. Newport, which was called the Garden 
of America, was the favorite resort on the coast at that time, 
and Cooper, in the novel to which we have alluded above, tells 
us that " it was never more enticing and lovely. Its swelling 
crests were still crowned with the wood of centuries, its little 
vales were then covered with the living verdure of the north, 
and its unpretending but neat and comfortable villas lay shel- 
tered in groves and embedded in flowers." A low headstone on 
the northern end of the " Station " marks the place of interment 
of twenty-six pirates who were buried there in 1728. They had 
attacked the British sloop-of-war Greyhound, mistaking her for a 
merchantman. They fled on discovering their mistake, but the 
Greyhound gave chase and captured them. After a summary 
trial they were executed on Gravelly Point and buried on Goat 
Island shore between high and low water mark. 

There is a singular though well-authenticated pirate story 
connected with Newport, in which the generosity of the husband 
quite equals that of Enoch Arden. The hero, Governor Samuel 
Cranston, was.a man noted for his strength of intellect and power 
of administration. His public career was quite as remarkable 
as the singular romance of l)is early manhood : he was thirty 
successive times chosen to fill the highest office in the colony, 
and in every crisis conducted public affairs with so much skill 
that there was scarcely a dissentient voice against him, and- his 
popularity survived political convulsions which deposed every 
other official in the colony. In 1765, business being somewhat 
dull, he started in an adventurous spirit on a voyage to Jamaica. 



128 THE TORT EDO STATION. [Oct., 

The ship in which he took sail was attacked by pirates off the 
Keys of Florida, and all on board were inhumanly massacred 
with the exception of Mr. Cranston, who was spared and re- 
tained for labor on the ship. After seven years of this servitude, 
which comprised the most cruel suffering and privations of every 
sort, he secured a boat, in which he gradually secreted provi- 
sions, and, watching his opportunity, commit ted himself to the 
mercy of the winds and waves, trusting in Providence. After 
tossing about for many days, uncertain whither his frail bark 
was drifting and watching with a sinking heart his diminishing 
stores, he fell in with an English ship bound for Halifax. From 
there he made his way to his home, where the first news he heard 
was that his wife was on the eve of marriage with Mr. Russel, of 
Boston. He entered the kitchen of his house and asked food 
from the servant. After his hunger was appeased he inquired 'if 
Mrs. Cranston was mistress of the house, and requested to see 
her; he was told it was impossible. "I have a message from her 
husband," said Mr. Cranston. " You cannot see her," answered 
one of the servants ; " she is preparing for her marriage this even- 
ing." " Go to your mistress," persisted Mr. Cranston, " and tell 
her that I saw her husband to-day at noon crossing Howland's 
Ferry." This startling intelligence interrupted the bride's toilet 
for the moment, and Mr. Cranston was summoned to the library. 
He briefly rehearsed the sufferings endured by her husband, she 
listening with deepest sympathy and interest. At length Mr. 
Cranston rose, and, standing before her, asked if she had ever 
seen him before. He was dressed as a sailor, with a tarpaulin 
hat partially drawn over his eyes. In answer to her puzzled 
silence he pushed back his hat, and, pointing with a significant 
glance to a scar on his forehead, asked if she had ever seen that 
before. She screamed and fell on his neck, crying, " My hus- 
band ! " Perhaps the scar to which he significantly drew her 
attention, and her ready recognition of it, may explain his sub- 
sequent generosity. However, when her paroxysm subsided 
he retired, and, after dressing himself to befit his rank and station, 
presented his arm to his wife and led her to the parlor, where 
the groom and the officiating clergyman were waiting. He 
then insisted upon the ceremony proceeding, and not only re- 
signed her to Mr. Russel, but settled upon her the dowry due 
heras his wife. 

Extraordinary as this story may appear, it is gravely told 
in a history of Newport now in the Redwood Library. Arnold, 
in his History of RJiode Island, however, gives another and more 






1883.] THE TORPEDO STATION. 129 

probable version, which runs that Mr. Cranston, after making 
himself known to his wife, went into the drawing-room and en- 
tertained the wedding guests with an account of his adventures. 

On the west end of the island was Fort Wolcott, constructed 
by Major L'Enfant, the engineer of West Point, and named for 
Oliver Wolcott, a brave man of the Revolutionary war, a mem- 
ber of Congress, and a " Signer." 

For many years previous to the fall of 1869 all that remained 
of the military fortifications of the island was a rambling old 
barrack occupied by an ancient ordnance sergeant and his family. 
The sergeant was quite a well-known character in Newport ; he 
was named Morrison, and prided himself on his kinship with 
Burns' " peerless Highland Mary." He devoted himself to the 
peaceful pursuit of raising turkeys of a famous breed, which 
brought a good price when he was able to save them from ma- 
rauders, who sometimes succeeded in landing despite his vigi- 
lance. Admiral Porter tells a story of his going to the island 
one stormy day in company with General Sherman, who was 
dressed in a rough suit of citizen's clothes, and he himself in a 
great pilot-coat. They had no sooner landed than they were 
ordered off the premises by Morrison. " I have lost a good 
many turkeys these dark nights," said the sergeant quite can- 
didly, " and I would not be surprised if you were the fellows 
who took them "; and, eyeing the two heroes suspiciously, added : 
" I am not going to allow any more tramps on the island." 
"What if we refused to go?" said the admiral, relishing the 
joke. "Then, faith, I'll put the authorities on ye." "What 
if we have 'more authority than the authorities?" answered 
the admiral. "This is General Sherman." "And this," said the 
general, " is Admiral Porter." " Oh ! I have lost my place," ex- 
claimed the sergeant. " No, you haven't," said the general ; " I 
like your zeal." The old fellow was quite fond of children, and 
for many years the island was famous picnic-grounds for the 
little ones, whp loved to hear his stories of the war of indepen- 
dence and the old wife's tales of the pirates buried there how 
on dark nights she could see a black gallows with all the bodies 
dangling, and when the winds were high she could plainly hear 
their bones rattle in the chains. T*& children could never Jbe 
induced to remain on the island after nightfall. 

In 1869, when Captain Mathews was sent to the "Station," 
the old sergeant was very loath to abandon his position, and it 
was with much difficulty that he was persuaded to resign ; for 
VOL. xxxvni. 9 



130 THE TORPEDO STATION. [Oct., 

some time after the advent of the naval officers letters still came 
to him from the department addressed " To the Commanding 
Officer of Fort Wolcott." Finally a small house was hired for him 
in Newport, which his daughter still occupied at a recent date. 

Very different is the present aspect of the island from its 
appearance in 1869 when Captain Mathews took command. The 
old barracks have been metamorphized by a mansard roof, and 
a broad piazza running the whole length of the front of the 
building. One-half of the barracks makes a handsome residence 
for the commanding officer, while the other is converted into 
offices. 

In the old fort is the chemical laboratory of the " Station." 
Some of the explosives are kept in small magazines about the 
island; the greater part of them, however, are deposited as a 
matter of precaution in a casemate on Rose Island, where the 
only habitation is a light-house. Nitro-glycerine and other ex- 
plosives are manufactured at the "Station "in small buildings 
on the west bank. In front of the fort stands the electrical 
laboratory, which contains electrical instruments, batteries, and 
machines. Further to the front is the " machine-shop " build- 
ing, the lower part of which is devoted to machinery, one room 
exclusively to the large dynamo-electric machines. The second 
story contains a torpedo museum and torpedo fittings; the mu- 
seum is used also as an instruction-room where officers are 
taught the handling of torpedoes. Near the latter building is a 
large store-house for torpedoes and their fittings ready to be put 
on board ship. In a boat-house on the wharf are stored mov- 
able torpedoes and steam-launches used in torpedo exercises. 
To the right of the commandant's house are the officers' quar- 
ters pretty cottages of uniform dimensions, with beautiful lawns 
running to the water's edge, interspersed with bright flower-beds, 
and kept with the neatness and good taste which usually dis- 
tinguish naval stations. Over this portion of the island is an air 
of domestic life and peaceful beauty quite incongruous with the 
mysterious and devastating weapons manufactured there. One 
of the principal curiosities of the " Station " is the torpedo salute 
given to the President and other high officials. On these occa- 

o 

sions torpedoes are planteccfct certain distances in the water, and, 
when exploded, send up a stream of water to a height measuring 
one hundred feet. Sometimes arrangements are made by which 
a lady may fire the salute, which is done by simply running the 
fingers over a key-board. 






1883.] THE TORPEDO STATION. 131 

Notwithstanding the number of years torpedo warfare has 
been in operation its results haye not fulfilled the anticipation 
of scientists. The earliest and best-authenticated instance of 
the use of torpedoes dates back as far as the sixteenth century, 
when in 1584 some floating mines invented by Zambelli were 
sent from Antwerp against a bridge across the Scheldt erected 
by the Prince of Parma. The submarine warfare of that day 
was at least effective, if not as scientific as ours; for the result 
of this explosion and only one of the mines went off is thus 
described in a lecture by Lieutenant Barber, of our navy : 

" At the instant of the explosion the air was filled with stones, beams, 
chains, and bullets ; the wooden castle on that part of the bridge near 
which the mine exploded, together with its guns and soldiers, with part of 
the boats of the bridge, were all thrown into the air, while houses were 
toppled down and people within three hundred yards of the scene were 
killed by the concussion of the atmosphere. The earth trembled for 
leagues around, and some of the great tombstones were found a mile away 
from the river." 

David Bushnell, of Connecticut, was the first to introduce 
torpedo warfare on our side of the water. One of his earliest 
attempts was the famous " Battle of the Kegs," when he cast 
adrift from Bordentown in 1777 a number of floating torpedoes 
in the shape of kegs for the purpose of annoying the British ship- 
ping at Philadelphia. The effect of his experiment, however, 
proved more amusing to the Americans than disastrous to the 
British. For the latter, fearing the rapid formation of the ice, 
had warped in their ships to the wharves, thus escaping Mr. 
Bushnell's unfriendly designs. The kegs were charged with 
gunpowder, and were to fire and explode by a spring-lock on 
touching the bottom of a vessel. One which was taken up by 
the crew of a barge exploded, killing four of the men and wound- 
ing the rest. The alarm of the explosion set the whole city in 
commotion. Soldiers and sailors lined the wharves. House- 
keepers and children hurried to their homes for shelter. The 
British ran to their places of muster ; horns, drums, trumpets 
sounded everywhere to arms, while cavalry and horsemen added 
to the din and noise by dashing to and fro in wild confusion. 
The kegs themselves could not be seen only the buoys which 
floated them were above water so imagination ran riot. They 
were kegs filled with armed rebels : the points of their bayonets 
had been seen sticking through the bung-holes; they were 
filled with combustibles which would turn the Delaware into a 
sheet of flame and envelop all the shipping ; they were magic 



132 THE TORPEDO STATION. [Oct., 

machines, which would mount the wharves and roll in flames 
into the city. The firing was incessant, and the best efforts of 
officers and men were concentrated upon every visible floating 
stick or chip. The story of the day has come down to us in 
Francis Hopkinson's * humorous song entitled " The Battle of 
the Kegs," of which the following is an extract : 

" These kegs, I am told, the rebels hold, 

Packed up like pickled herring, 
And they've come down to attack the town 
In this new way of ferrying. 

" The soldiers flew, the sailors too, 

And, scared almost to death, sir, 
Wore out their shoes and spread the news, 
And ran till out of breath, sir. 

" 'Arise, arise ! ' Sir Erskine cries. 

' The rebels, more's the pity, 
Without a boat are all afloat, 
And ranged before the city.' 

" The royal band now ready stand 
All ranged in dread array, sir, 
With stomach stout, to see it out 
And make a bloody day, sir. 

" Such feats did they perform 

Among those wicked kegs, sir, 
That years to come, when they get home, 
They'll make their boast and brag, sir." 

No doubt the opposition this mode of warfare encountered 
in its early stages from humanitarian principles militated against 
its progress. England, who now ranks first in torpedo warfare, 
condemned it on the occasion of the blowing-up of their line- 
of-battle ship Plantagenet as " a villanous, invidious, improper, and 
cowardly means of warfare." About the same time a writer in 
the Navy Chronicle stigmatizes Fulton's invention as " revolt- 
ing to every noble principle," and their projector as "a crafty, 
murderous ruffian" The Earl of St. Vincent's criticism, however, 
would lead us to suspect the disinterestedness of England's pro- 
test. " Pitt," he indignantly exclaimed, " was the greatest fool 
ever existed to encourage a mode of warfare which they who 
command the sea did not want, and which, if successful, would 
deprive them of it." 

* \Ve are indebted to a son of Francis Hopkinson for our national air, ' ' Hail Columbia." 



1883.] THE TORPEDO STATION. 133 

The most widely known and generally adopted torpedo of 
the present day bears an English name the Whitehead torpedo. 
It was constructed from some crude ideas left among the draw- 
ings and papers of ( an Austrian officer. To briefly describe it, 
it is a vessel made of iron and steel, very nearly the shape of a 
spindle of revolution, measuring in length nearly fourteen feet 
and in diameter fourteen inches, and carries an explosive charge 
of twenty pounds of dynamite. The invention has been suc- 
cessfully kept a secret since its introduction into notice in 1868. 
Several European governments have purchased the secret at 
a high price, with or without the right to manufacture Austria 
first, and conceding the right to manufacture to Mr. Whitehead 
at the rate of six hundred dollars each for a small size and one 
thousand dollars for larger. England, it is reported, paid fifteen 
thousand pounds for the secret. Mr. Whitehead at different 
times offered his invention to our government for twenty thou- 
sand pounds, but it was not deemed advisable to purchase it. 
Some years ago an offer was made to the Chief of the Bureau 
of Ordnance by a former employee at Woolwich to sell the secret 
and furnish the necessary drawings for a moderate sum ; the offer, 
of course, was rejected. 

There is no place more attractive to the summer residents 
of Newport than the Torpedo Station, where the warmest day 
is tempered by the salt breezes which sweep over its velvet 
terraces. A comfortable little steam-launch. plies back and forth 
to Newport every half-hour for the accommodation of the officers 
and visitors. The view from the island is most extended and 
rich in picturesque beauty. A vast sweep of blue waters bounds 
the horizon on the north and south, interspersed with small 
islands, each surmounted by a light-house. To the south, on one 
of the " Dumplings," rises the circular stone tower built in the 
administration of Adams. This is an exceedingly picturesque 
relic. The parapet has crumbled and the bomb-proofs are 
choked with 'rubbish. It is about one hundred feet from the 
crown of the parapet to the water, and, though the elevation is in- 
considerable, is one of the chief points of observation in Narra- 
ganset. At night the scenic effect of the surrounding country 
is very striking. On the north " Goat Island Light " 

" Through the deep purple of the twilight air 
Beams forth with sudden radiance of its light, 
With strange, unearthly splendor in its glare." 



134 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 

On the southern extremity of an adjacent island " Beaver-Tail 
Light" 

"Starts into life, a dim, gigantic shape, 
Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge." 

And the waters on the south are bathed in the soft splendor 
of " Lime Rock Light," the home of Ida Lewis, the " Grace 
Darling " of America : 

"The maiden gentle, yet at duty's call 
Firm and unflinching as the light-house reared 
On the island rock, her lonely dwelling-place." * 

The bay is usually studded with craft of every description, 
each carrying colored lights at the mast-head. Viewed from 
the broad balcony of the commandant's quarters in the quiet 
stillness of a summer night, with the mellow light of a harvest 
moon over all, the scene is one of entrancing beauty ; and when 
there is added the accompaniment of music from the well-trained 
fort band, we could readily believe ourselves on the dreamy 
shores of the Adriatic rather than on the coast of prosaic New 
England. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

THE WORKS OF ORESTES A. BROWNSON, collected and arranged by Henry 
F. Brownson. Volume iv., containing the Writings on Religion and 
Society prior to the author's Conversion. Detroit : Thorndike Nourse. 
1883. 

This volume of Dr. Brownson's works has for us more a biographical 
and historical interest than any other. The letter which it contains to Dr. 
Channing on " The Mediatorial Life of Jesus " in 1842 was the turning-point 
of Dr. Brownson's conversion. The letter had no effect on Dr. Channing, 
who appeared satisfied without further inquiry with his vie\vs of Chris- 
tianity, and to make them the basis of his preaching and action. Not so 
with Dr. Brownson ; his mind was more intellectual, and he sought after a 
radical and philosophical basis for the Christian faith. The moment he 
found this he found the Catholic Church, which is the only system of 
Christianity which is satisfactory to the demands of reason and at the 
same time embraces all the truths of revealed religion. Perhaps Dr. 
Channing had an inkling where such philosophical speculations would 
eventually lead, and he shrank from the consequences. But one would 
rather believe, in his case, it was more from defect of mind than of will 
which was in the way of his seeing the value of the truths which this let- 
ter contains. Not many did see its value, and to the few who did it threw 

* Wordsworth's epitaph on Grace Darling. 



1883.]. NEW PUBLICATIONS. 135 

a flood of fresh light upon Christianity, and became to them, as it was to its 
author, the turning-point of their entrance into the fold of the Catholic 
Church. This volume contains an engraved portrait of Dr. Brownson as 
he appeared forty or more years ago. 

THE LIFE OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST DE Rossi. Translated from the Italian 
by Lady Herbert. Introduction, on Ecclesiastical Training and the 
Sacerdotal Life, by the Bishop of Salford. London : Richardson. 
1883. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

This life of a Roman ecclesiastic of the last century, who was canon- 
ized in 1881 by Leo XIII., has a singular interest from the fact that the 
Canon De Rossi is the first secular priest, not a bishop or a martyr, who 
has been canonized in modern times. It is true that St. Philip Neri and 
some others, belonging to institutes which have no religious vows, were, 
strictly speaking, secular priests. Yet this last term in common usage 
denotes only priests who are living and working in the ordinary way of the 
ecclesiastical state. St. John De Rossi devoted the labors of more than 
forty years in the priesthood, a considerable private fortune, and the reve- 
nues of his canonry to the temporal and spiritual welfare of the poorest 
and most neglected classes of the population of Rome and the adjacent 
provinces. His example shows how much can be done among the same 
classes of the population in all large cities, and the fact that he has been 
canonized for his zeal in the humblest and most self-sacrificing labors of 
the priesthood, and thus set before the secular clergy as a model, is an 
encouragement to those who have a vocation to works of the same kind. 

Bishop Vaughan's introduction speaks of the reasons why so few of 
the secular clergy have been canonized, with a special view of vindicating 
them from suspicions or aspersions which lessen their claim to be re- 
spected and honored as a class. He afterwards proceeds with great 
strength and earnestness to recommend the adoption of all suitable means 
for the best training of ) r oung ecclesiastics. His remarks are worthy of 
most serious attention and are most appropriate to the occasion which 
called them forth the publication of a new Life of a saint who shed 
lustre on the sacerdotal order by his apostolic virtues. 

LIFE AND REVELATIONS OF SAINT MARGARET OF CORTONA. Written in 
Latin by her confessor, Fr. Giunta Revegnati, of the Minor Order. 
Translated by F. McDonogh Mahony. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. 

As one of the readers of the lives of the saints we feel grateful to Fa- 
ther Mahony, who has given to the public an interesting life of this re- 
markable person. The student of spiritual life may learn from this vol- 
ume how our Blessed Lord turns a soul which has gone far astray into 
the roads of sin into the paths of virtue and of sanctity. St. Margaret of 
Cortona was a second Magdalen. Her life is full of instruction, encour- 
agement, and aid to all who would lead a Christian life or who seek the 
paths of perfection. No one can read her biography without profit. 

A MEMOIR OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE REV. FATHER AUGUSTUS 
HENRY LAW, S.J., formerly an Officer in the Royal Navy. Part iiL 
London : Burns & Gates. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic Publication 
Society Co.) 

We are well pleased to find the Life of Father Law as a religious and 
priest continued and completed by his own venerable father, the Hon. 



136 NEW PUBLICATIONS. .[Oct., 

William Towry Law. It is chiefly told in the words of Father Law's letters 
and diaries, and is thus all through more of an autobiography than a 
memoir. The same bright, affectionate, and playful spirit which made the 
letters of the school-boy and the young midshipman so winning and 
attractive is preserved throughout his correspondence as a novice and a 
priest. Father Law was ordained in 1864. In 1875 he was sent to the 
Jesuit College at Grahamstown, in South Africa, where he remained until 
April, 1879, when he was sent on the Zulu Mission. In September he was 
at Gubuluwayo, which he left in May for Umzila's Kraal in Zululand in 
company with Father Wehl and two lay brothers. At the end of August 
the small caravan reached its destination after a fatiguing journey of three 
hundred and fifty miles, having lost Father Wehl and abandoned their 
wagon on the way. On November 25 Father Law died of fever and a 
want of food almost amounting to starvation. His last letters and the last 
entries in his journal breathe the same cheerful and undaunted spirit 
which he had shown throughout his life, together with heroic faith and 
charity. The story of his sufferings and death is very pathetic and closes 
the narrative of the life of a lovely and noble character. 

We have been told on good authority that Father Law was a lineal 
descendant from George Law, the author of that celebrated book, the 
Serious Call. Certainly he acted out from his youth to his grave among 
the African heathen the high maxims of perfection contained in the work 
of his illustrious ancestor. 

It is to be hoped that the entire Memoir may be reprinted in this 
country in one complete volume, and may have the wide circulation which 
it deserves. The warm language of Cardinal Manning's letter expresses 
the sentiments which every one must feel who has read this beautiful 
Memoir. 

CATHOLIC SERMONS. A series of sermons, on Faith and Morals, appearing 

every week. Conducted by Rev. J. B. Bagshawe. Vols. ii. and iii. 

London : Lane & Son. 1882. (New York : The Catholic Publication 

Society Co.) 

The first volume of these Sermons has already been noticed in these 
pages, and all that was then said in its praise can with justice be repeated 
in favor of the volumes now before us. Indeed, they merit the greater 
commendation of successfully uniting simple and clear exposition of 
Catholic doctrines with a pleasing and attractive style a merit rarely 
found in sermons of a doctrinal character. The greatest -excellence of 
these sermons is found in this : that with a lucid exposition of dogma, 
besides making faith intelligent, they serve to make it practical by point- 
ing out in readily-appreciated illustrations the influence the various arti- 
cles of our belief should have on our conduct. Father Bagshawe in this 
regard has very happily realized the truth laid down by Cardinal Manning 
in his work on the Sacred Heart, " Dogma is the source of devotion." We, 
therefore, cannot but regard these as a valuable addition to the stock of 
published Catholic sermons. 

SELECT SPECIMENS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL 
NOTICES, ETC. Edited by Aubrey de Vere, Esq. i6mo, pp. xii.-joS. 
London : Burns & Gates. 1883. 

Anthologies of English poetry are numerous enough, but this one com- 
mends itself by the fact that it is by a poet who is distinguished for lofty 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 137 

ideals, grand and vivid imagination, as well as for exquisite taste and 
acknowledged scholarship. One would have a right to expect from Mr. De 
Vere just what is found in this little hand-book : an admirable selection of 
short poems. It begins at Chaucer, with the Prologue to the Canterbury 
Tales, and ends with a miscellaneous array which includes such names as 
Tennyson, Longfellow, Allingham, Leigh Hunt, Henry Constable, Cardinal 
Newman, Sheridan, Samuel Ferguson, Thomas Davis, Father Faber, as 
well as others who are known by one or two poems of uncommon merit. 
Except in the case of those brought together under the head of " Miscella- 
neous," a biographical sketch and a short criticism of the style is prefixed 
to each of the poets in the collection. 

HISTORICAL PORTRAITS OF THE TUDOR DYNASTY AND THE REFORMATION 
PERIOD. By S. Hubert Burke, author of The Men and Women of the 
Reformation. Vol. iv. London : John Hodges. 1883. (New York : for 
sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

This volume ends the very interesting study which Mr. Burke has for 
a number of years been making in London from the original records in 
the State Paper Office there on the manners of the people and the methods 
of the rulers in England during the period of the establishment of Pro- 
testantism. " The history of those times," says Mr. Burke (p. 535), " ap- 
pears like a dream in a chamber of horrors, yet all the incidents recorded 
are proved to be correct from contemporary evidence and well-attested 
State Papers." In the four volumes of this work the author has con-r 
densed a moving narrative of great events and of horrible crimes, yet so 
hedged about is this narrative with an almost overscrupulous anxiety not 
to exaggerate that the reader must occasionally desire a little more feel- 
ing. In fact, Mr. Burke does not need to asseverate his conscientious de- 
sire to be just; for this desire is clearly apparent throughout his Historical 
Portraits. Nowhere does he spare " bad Catholics," those selfish, haughty, 
unfeeling, and unscrupulous Catholics who helped to make the success of 
the " Reformation " possible. 

Several chapters in this volume are taken up with Mary Stuart, and to 
many readers, no doubt, these chapters will be among the most interest- 
ing in the volume, although the subject has been so much discussed that 
one might fairly expect to find nothing new here. But Mr. Burke has had 
the advantage, in preparing these chapters dealing with the unfortunate 
Queen of Scots, of access to hitherto unpublished manuscripts that were 
not within the reach of previous writers. Very striking portraits indeed 
are drawn of the rough, uncouth Scotch, and the more polished English, 
villains who helped Elizabeth to bring about the poor lady's destruction 
in furtherance o'f "Gospel religion " and their own personal ends. 

One instance of many of the pliability and duplicity of some Catholics 
in England during the " Reformation " is that of the Sydneys. " Sydney 
and his father had been Catholics in early life. The Sydney family and 
their relatives were noted for changing their religion whenever any 
'worldly considerations' were likely to be favorable to such movements. 
It was no wonder for Elizabeth to entertain grave doubts as to the genuine 
Protestantism of many of those about her court. According to the De 
Ouadra State Papers (Simancas), Sir Henry Sydney, Philip's father, was 
negotiating with King Philip and Queen Elizabeth for the restoration of 



138 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 

Catholicity to England, whilst at the same time persecuting the English 
Catholics " (p. 219). There can be little doubt that Elizabeth's Protestant- 
ism was purely political. "The queen, who admired the court customs of 
old times, maintained a fool and jester. Pace, styled the ' bitter fool,' was 
very popular. He was employed by Knollys and Cecil to turn the Mass 
into ridicule, for which he was sharply rebuked by his royal mistress. 
Sixtus V. was also an object of satire on the part of the court jesters, but 
rarely in the queen's presence, who, while she detested that pontiff, had 
a certain respect for his office " (p. 59). In fact, "nearly the whole of her 
servants were Catholics ; and many of them acted as her spies upon the 
"Protestant party, in whose integrity she had little reliance, unless where 
their interests were concerned, and in such cases she gave them little 
credit for honesty." 

But if Elizabeth's Protestantism was merely political it bore none the 
less hard on those Catholics (and Protestant Dissenters, too) who were 
courageous enough to avow their religious opinions. In contradiction of 
the assertion that has been made that the only persons put to the rack in 
Elizabeth's reign were the servants of the Duke of Norfolk, Mr. Burke holds 
up the State Papers of the period, and he remarks that "the rolls of the 
Tower teem with records of the cruelties that were inflicted in Elizabeth's 
time" (p. 100). "On one occasion Elizabeth asked Lord Burleigh 'if some 
more terrible mode of torture or death could be devised for those who 
denied her supremacy or plotted against her life.' The astute minister 
assured his royal mistress that the law was strong enough to have the re- 
quired vengeance ; he would, however, see that the jailers did their duty 
promptly " (p. 101). As all Catholics and Dissenters denied the queen's 
supremacy in religion, the prospect for them was sufficiently appalling. 
"At a later period of her life (1601) Elizabeth seemed to rejoice at be- 
holding the mangled remains of her victims. Holding the French en- 
voy (De Biron) by the hand, she pointed to a number of heads that were 
planted on the walls of the Tower, and next conducted him to London 
Bridge to witness a similar exhibition, and told him ' that it was thus they 
punished traitors in England.' " All who refused the oath of supremacy, 
consequently all Catholics, were traitors, then ! Chapter x., on "The Use 
of the Torture," is a heartrending one, yet necessary to be written and to 
be read in the cause of historical truth. 

The defeat of the Spanish Armada has always been a subject of exulta- 
tion with the English, yet how few English historians have told the truth 
about this ill-fated fleet! This unsuccessful attempt to invade England 
was, after all, but an attempt to administer merited punishment for the 
havoc and cruelties wrought by the English pirates. Those conscience- 
less scoundrels, among them Cobham, Cavendish, and Drake, sacrificed 
everything in their search for booty while in Spanish waters. Mr. Froude 
even admits this of the English cruisers in general : " English Protestants, 
it was evident, regarded the property of papists as a lawful prize whenever 
they could lay hands on it ; and Protestantism, stimulated by these in- 
ducements to conversion, was especially strong in the seaport towns " 
{History of England, vol. viii. p. 467). As Mr. Burke says, "almost every 
circumstance connected with the Armada has been misrepresented for 
sectarian and party reasons." But the Catholics of England contributed 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 139 

more than their share of what they had not yet been plundered of towards 
the defence of their country, yet "from the defeat of the Spanish Ar- 
mada till the death of the queen, during the lapse of fourteen years, the 
English Catholics groaned under the pressure of incessant persecution. 
Sixty-one clergymen, forty-seven laymen, and two ladies suffered capital 
punishment for some or other of the ' spiritual felonies and treasons,' which 
had been lately created " (p. 534). 

Mr. Burke's description of the doughty Shane (or, correctly, Seaghan) 
O'Neill's visit to London is amusing. Seaghan was " a most powerful 
man, beyond seven feet two inches in height, quite erect, with a large 
head and face; his saffron mantle sweeping round him, his black hair 
curling on his back and clipped short below the eyes, 'which gleamed 
from under it with a gray lustre, frowning, fierce, and savage-like.' " Per- 
haps the cockneys in their dread magnified the O'Neill's stature ; at all 
events Seaghan, on his return to Ireland, in imitation of his English ad- 
versaries, violated his treaties and oaths. Even after being treacher- 
ously slain by some Scottish MacDonnells among whom he was, he must 
still have looked grim to the inhabitants of Dublin Castle when his head 
was set up on a pole there by the suggestion of the Protestant Archbishop 
Loftus. 

But it must not be supposed that Mr. Burke's volumes deal with 
what is dreadful only. For those who have read to their heart's content 
of the feuds, conspiracies, sacrileges, cruelties, wars, and ruin that accom- 
panied and followed the " Reformation " movement everywhere, there will 
be found in his pages interesting and novel discourses on the literature of 
the period in its various forms, on courtship, marriage, the customs and 
the amusements of the people, etc. 

MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. By Professor T. F. Crane, 
Ithaca, N. Y. (Read before the American Philosophical Society, 
March 16, 1883.) 

This lecture is intended, the author says, to direct attention to " the 
great collections of stories made chiefly for the use of preachers, which, 
besides giving a picture of the culture of the later middle ages, such as can 
nowhere else be found, throw a flood of light upon the diffusion of popu- 
lar tales." The exempla, or stories with a moral, which became a regular 
part of the mediaeval popular sermon, were the source of many of the fa- 
vorite folk-stories of Europe. Speaking of the use of fables in Europe in 
serious instruction, Prof. Crane says that the first instance is the Dtrec- 
torium humana vttce, a translation into Latin (1263-78) by John of Capua, 
based on a Hebrew version by Rabbi Joel (1250). The Speculum Sapientia:, 
attributed to Bishop Cyril in the thirteenth century, is a collection of 
stories chiefly notable for the moral they bear. But the Dialogus Creatu- 
rarum, composed not earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century, by 
Nicolaus Pergamenus, " instead of the half-dozen fables in Cyril's work 
which may be compared with those of other collections, . . . offers a rich 
field for the student of comparative storiology, if we may coin a conve- 
nient word." Next comes the famous Gesta Romanorum, in which the 
moral aim of the story has almost or quite disappeared, the chief object 
being rather to amuse than edify. But a new impulse was given to the col- 
lection of exempla by the foundation of the two great mendicant preaching 



J 4o NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 

orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans. Exempla or "examples," as \ve 
are familiar with the word in Engrish Catholic literature were, according 
to Prof. Crane, rare before the thirteenth century, the time of the great 
scholar and preacher Jacques de Vitry, many of whose sermons contain 
three or four of these stories with a moral. After Jacques de Vitry came 
Johannes Herolt, and then fitienne de Bourbon, both Dominicans, this 
last writer having compiled a volume known as the Liber de Donis, in 
which the various topics for sermons to the people are arranged under 
seven divisions, according to the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. 

This interesting lecture gives, in its text and numerous foot-notes, an 
excellent bibliography of the subject, about which a somewhat extensive 
literature has grown up. 

LES SOCIE'TE'S SECRETES ET LA SOCIE'TE', ou Philosophic de 1'Histoire 
Contemporaine. Par N. Deschamps. Tome troisieme. Notes et 
Documents recueillis par M. Claudio Jannet. Avignon : Seguin freres ; 
et Paris : Oudin freres. 1883. 

In THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1881, a review was made of the 
first two volumes of this work, which had but recently been published 
shortly after the death of its principal author, Father Deschamps. This 
third volume, which M. Jannet has just given to the public, is a sort of ap- 
pendix to the first two, though it also contains a great deal of new ma- 
terial. 

The evil work of secret societies has been deplored time and again, not 
only by Catholics, for whom they are under the ban of the church, but by 
honorable non-Catholics as well. Even in aid of the holiest cause the 
machinations of secret societies are always, as they deserve to be, un- 
successful. The fearful oppression to which the agricultural classes of 
Europe have often been subjected has been provocative of harsh reprisals, 
but there is not in history a record of a people who have been freed by the 
action of secret societies from a tyrannical or an alien rule. On the con- 
trary, no ingenuity can prevent duplicity and treachery from being the 
certain accompaniments of secret-society attempts at liberation. Wher- 
ever a people have freed themselves from a heavy yoke it has been either 
by a spontaneous insurrection, the interference of a friendly power, or else 
by peaceable and wise constitutional agitation.. Unfortunately, the ma- 
jority of those who place themselves under the despotic rule of the secret 
societies are ignorant of all history, except, perhaps, that fragment of it 
which goads them on to use any means in their power. 

But there are some inferences and some assertions which Father Des- 
champs and M. Jannet have made that may, without any presumption, be 
questioned. As was said in the former review of this work, Father Des- 
champs and after him M. Jannet having been for many years intent on 
this subject of the conspiracy of the secret societies against religion and 
civil order, would naturally come to regard Freemasonry and its allies in 
rather exaggerated proportions, and thus would be apt to attribute to this 
one source whatever mischievous influence would be observed to be any- 
where at work. 

It is but fair to note that M. Jannet is, or was recently, the editor of 
one of the organs of the Legitimist party in France, and that, through an 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 141 

indomitable loyalty to his party, he is very apt to identify the cause of the 
Bourbons with the cause of religion, treating any opposition to his party 
as if it were something essentially impious and uncatholic. But it is where 
English-speaking nations and their politics and policies are concerned that 
M. Jannet seems to be most often at fault. Palmerston, it is notorious, 
conspired in his time with almost every conspiracy against established 
government on the Continent of Europe, and Gladstone also rushed en- 
thusiastically to the help of the discontented Neapolitans. No doubt, the 
general outbreak of 1848 was everywhere but in France and in Ireland 
favored, and in many cases helped, by the English ministry and the En- 
glish ambassadors, consuls, consular agents, etc., and by English private 
persons ; yet to infer, as M. Jannet does, that these English ministers were 
the puppets of a secret society must excite a smile in any intelligent En- 
glishman, Irishman, or American, whether Catholic or non-Catholic. It 
was not the principles of secret anti-Christian societies which actuated 
English ministries in their propaganda of constitutional liberty in all 
European countries but Ireland during the years from 1815 to 1870. Pal- 
merston and Gladstone, and other Irish or English statesmen, may, in their 
evenings of leisure, have put on a white apron and gone through the pan- 
theistic mummery of the lodge, but the manufactures and commerce of 
England, not the communistic or atheistic dreams of pseudo-philosophers, 
are now, and have usually been, the "principles " of British diplomacy. 

In like manner it is a mistake, and at the same time a fearful injustice, 
especially from a zealous Catholic writer, to represent, as M. Jannet does, 
the contest of the people of Ireland for the liberty enjoyed by almost 
every other civilized people as the struggle of a secret cabal against the 
wise administration of a virtuous government. It is well to translate a 
passage : 

" For a century the English government has maintained peace in Ireland only by recurring 
from time to time to Coercion Acts that is to say, to measures such as are brought about in 
France by a state of siege. The privilege of the habeas corpus is periodically suspended, thus 
authorizing the administration to arrest citizens without having to bring them to trial ; public 
meetings are arbitrarily prevented whenever the authorities think them dangerous ; seditious 
journals are suppressed of late the circulation of foreign publications has been forbidden ; and 
suspected foreigners are expelled by the police. 

"Certainly these precautions are perfectly legitimate, and the English government would 
fail in its duty if it did not take them " (tome iii. p. 534). 

Holding an opinion like the above, which it is sufficient for the purpose to 
characterize as strange, it is not at all to be wondered at that M. Jannet, 
though generously admitting that the Irish people are a good people and 
have been unjustly dealt with, yet should class constitutional agitation for 
Irish rights with whatever he regards as villanous in Continental politics. 
In spite, however, of the numerous mistakes with regard to " tenden- 
cies " in the politics, and with regard to the politics themselves, of the 
people of English-speaking countries, on which Frenchmen are usually 
at fault, this third volume is a valuable addition to contemporary history. 
M. Jannet has done a great service by assisting and completing the la- 
bors on which Father Deschamps had spent many years of study. The 
work here under notice is an encyclopaedia of information on the curious 
subject of secret societies in general and of Freemasonry and its branches 



142 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 

in particular. No one who desires to have a clear idea of the history of 
Europe during the last hundred and fifty years can afford to leave this 
work unread. In its pages will be found the solution of many of the dark 
and intricate knots in political intrigue in that time. The whole action 
of the gigantic conspiracy against the Catholic Church, which has been 
waged under the ever-changing forms of what is called Liberalism, is there 
patiently, and for the most part skilfully, set forth. 

IRISH LOCAL NAMES EXPLAINED. By P. W. Joyce, LL.D., M.R.I.A. New 
Edition. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic 
[Publication Society Co.) 

In this little book Dr. Joyce has condensed a' good part of the Irish 
local etymologies contained in his larger work in two volumes, The Origin 
and History of Irish Names of Places. Some Gaelic enthusiasts seem to 
regard Gaelic as the key with which to open all the locked-up trea- 
sures of etymology. Nevertheless, as one of the most ancient languages, 
and at the same time excessively rich in its grammatical forms, it is only 
fair to expect that a knowledge of it will help over many hard places. 
For instance, with this little book in one's hand, and a little philological 
acumen, one might explain many geographical names on the Continent of 
Europe in a much more satisfactory way than they have hitherto generally 
been explained. 

But it is wonderful to see what queer pranks have been played with 
Irish local names in the endeavor to retain somewhat of the original sound 
and at the same time to spell according to the English power of the letters. 
For example, " Ballinasloe " is an English phonetic attempt, and not a 
bad one either, at Bel at ha na sluaigheadh i.e., the ford-month of the hosts, 
or gatherings; but that is not nearly so queer a corruption as " Estersnow," 
in the county of Roscommon, which somehow has been tortured out of 
Disert Nuadhan, which means the desert, or hermitage, of St. Nuadha. 

A WASHINGTON WINTER. By Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren. Boston : 
James R. Osgood & Co. 1883. 

A fascinating book hardly a story, rather a glance at the men, women, 
and manners that go to make up what is called society in Washington. 
There is a story, too, running through these pages, but it is a story rather 
suggested than told, and, besides, the didactic purpose shows too strongly 
everywhere not to obscure whatever plot and incident may have been 
intended. The reader, on reaching the last page, will, if he is not a Wash- 
ingtonian, feel glad that he has been spared the contact with such var- 
nished villains as move with a decidedly natural gait through the social 
whirl of one winter in the capital of the Union. 

But, interesting and instructive as is a Washington Winter, one thing 
is disagreeably prominent, which of late years has helped to weaken the 
Americanism of too many of those who happen to have a grandfather. 
All through her book the author's indignation is apparent at the effort of 
parvenus to climb into "good society." There is an attempted contrast 
between " vulgarians " and "gentlemen." It is curious, by the way, how 
the references to "old families" are beginning to increase in our literature. 
But, with few exceptions, the progenitors of all our old families were 
parvenus, or " vulgarians," in their time ; yet they were also, in most cases 






1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143 

at least, honest men, with good health and a strong desire to better their 
condition, who, as a result of their industry, were able to get enough 
money together to pay their way as steerage passengers to this country, or 
perhaps had their way paid for them by the benevolence of others. Any- 
how, the American people are destined to make a sturdy race, and it is too 
early yet in our history to lay down the lines that shall divide our people 
into conventional classes. Vulgarity of manner, and of mind, is a despica- 
ble thing, but it is a mistake in a country like ours to dwell too much upon 
it as the characteristic of those who have risen from poverty. After all, 
however, it is a question to decide whether a vigorous vulgarity is or is 
not to be preferred to an emasculated and simpering " respectability." 

SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND. By Sir John Pope Hennessy. Lon- 
don : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic Pub- 
lication Society Co.) 

Speaking of the little that has been said of Ralegh's exploits in Ire- 
land by English writers, the author of this monograph, a gentleman well 
known for years in the British Civil Service, and now the governor of 
Hong Kong, remarks that Ralegh's life in Ireland " is still a fresh and 
living force in the unwritten history of the peasants from Youghal to Lis- 
more, and along the banks of the Blackwater and the Lee from Imokelly to 
the mountains of Kerry. It is possible to meet men and women on the 
old ploughlands of the Desmond estate who speak nothing but Irish (in 
the province of Munster there are thirty thousand peasants who at this 
day speak no English), and from their stories to pick up more of the real 
doings of Ralegh and his comrades in Ireland than from Hume and the 
historians" a fact which, without regard to Ralegh, proves the intense 
unchangeableness and the truth to tradition of the native Irish people. 
Seeing that even the industrious Froude, in his malicious though often 
truthful English in Ireland, makes no mention of Sir Walter Ralegh's 
exploits in the island of destiny, and that the other historians have for the 
most part been equally oblivious in this regard, the present writer has 
undertaken to supply the want. 

That Ralegh was active among his countrymen in the work of " paci- 
fying " that is to say, destroying as far as possible the native Irish is very 
apparent after reading a few pages of Sir John's narrative of his career. 
At Smerwick, in Kerry, in 1580, where the garrison that had been holding 
out for the Geraldines surrendered, the entire force, except a few sick and 
some officers put for ransom, were put to death by Grey, the English com- 
mander ; and, to quote Froude, "the bodies, six hundred in all, were 
stripped and laid out upon the sands, ' as gallant, goodly personages,' said 
Grey, ' as ever were beheld.' " Now, Hennessy finds in Hooker's Supple- 
ment to Holinshed's Chronicles that " Captain Ralegh, together with Captain 
Macworth, who had the ward of that day, entered into the castle and 
made a great slaughter, many or most part of them being put to the sword." 
Apparently Froude has not exaggerated the atrocity of the English, for 
Hennessy quotes Hooker's Supplement: "The fort was yeelded, all the 
Irish men and women hanged [special honors were reserved for the Irish, 
then as now !], and more than four hundred Spaniards, Italians, and Bis- 
caies put to the sword ; the coronelJ, capteins, secretarie and others, to 
the number of twentie, saved for ransome." According to Froude, this 



144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 1883. 

massacre met the approval of Elizabeth. Of course it did. Has there 
ever been a similar act of the English government in Ireland that has not 
been approved by the English sovereign, so far as anything practical goes, 
even with such well-meaning sovereigns as the two Charleses and the 
second James ? 

But, at all events, Ralegh did not lack courage, as was proved by his 
encounter between Cork and Youghal with David Barry, the seneschal 
of Imokelly. 

"The idea of giving real freedom to an Irish Parliament was not con- 
sistent with Ralegh's Irish policy. Few historians have noticed the fact 
that, at one moment in Elizabeth's reign, this all-important step was nearly 
taken." It is worth while to notice the last advice which Ralegh, then in 
England, gave to Elizabeth. It was at a meeting of the Council, where 
the question of how to deal with Cormac MacCarthy was under discussion, 
Cecil thinking that some mercy ought to be shown the hunted chief. 
" Whereupon Sir Walter very earnestly moved her highness to reject 
Cormac MacCarthy," for the reason, familiar then in English policy, 
that "his country was worth keeping." 

Any one reading Sir John's book will naturally conclude that the 
Irish have reason to remember Ralegh with detestation only, as a man 
whose settled policy towards them was one of extermination, or, if not that, 
at least deportation from the land that rightly belonged to them. Admi- 
rers of the man will find the chapter entitled " Irish Portraits of Ralegh " 
especially interesting. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN YONKERS. By 
Thomas C. Cornell. Yonkers: The Gazette Press. 1883. 

Last October the citizens of Yonkers celebrated the two hundredth 
anniversary of one of their oldest edifices, and to make the affair complete 
in all particulars the different religious societies were invited to compile 
the history of their growth. Mr. Cornell, in the pamphlet above, has made 
an interesting record of Catholic progress in Yonkers from the appear- 
ance, about 1836, of Father James Cummiskey, the first priest to minister 
there to the laborers at work on the construction of the Croton Aqueduct, 
down to this year, when there are two fine churches, besides others at no 
great distance from the town, and more than eight thousand Catholics. 
Local Catholic annals such as Mr. Cornell has so clearly arranged here will 
at some future day be of great use to the historians of the Catholic Church 
in the United States. 

THE ULSTER CIVIL WAR OF 1641, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES : With the 
History of the Irish Brigade under Montrose in 1644-46. By John 
McDonnell, M.D. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 

The most original and the most interesting part of Dr. McDonnell's 
narrative is that touching more particularly on the service in Scotland 
under Montrose of the brigade recruited in Antrim. He quotes the diary 
of Sir Thomas, the Lord Advocate of Scotland : "On ist September, 1644, 
being Sunday, was the conflict at Perth, where our people were mechant- 
lie defeated by the Irish. Item: on I3th September Aberdeen was taken 
by the Irish and our force defeated," the latter defeat clearly not to be at- 
tributed by the Covenanters to its occurring on Sunday. 






THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVIII. NOVEMBER, 1883. No. 224. 



LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 

THE celebration of the fourth centennial of Luther's birth- 
day is a noteworthy event. Especially noteworthy, since the en- 
terprise of substituting another foundation for that upon which 
Christ himself had placed his Gospel, begun at the Diet of 
Worms by Dr. Martin Luther, has proven an unsuccessful ex- 
periment. For it is evident now to the whole world that the 
faith of his followers in Christianity grows fainter and fainter. 
This is conspicuously true of the children of the cradle of Pro- 
testantism, his own countrymen, who are notorious for their in- 
difference to Christianity. There is scarcely any one doctrine 
held as of Christian faith by the father of the Reformation that 
his offspring have not repudiated, or are not prepared to re- 
pudiate on the first convenient occasion. They treat Luther's 
doctrines with the same courtesy with which he treated the 
doctrines of the Catholic Church. The more active intellect of 
Protestants everywhere to-day questions not so much this or 
that doctrine of Christianity as the why they are Christians at all ! 
They are for the most part convinced that Protestant principles 
furnish no solid reasons why they are still Christians. There are 
so-called orthodox Protestant sects which are willing to receive 
as members of their churches persons who make no profession 
of any doctrines of a distinctive Christian character whatever. 

Thinking and religious men who feel an uncontrollable reluc- 
tance to give up the Christian religion begin to ask if it be not 
possible to defend its divine claims on Catholic principles. Not 

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



146 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

a few of this class, finding, on mature investigation, this to be the 
fact, reverse the religious revolutionary movement of the six- 
teenth century by becoming Catholic. The alternative now star- 
ing intelligent Protestants in the face is this : either they must en- 
ter into the fold of the Catholic Church to remain Christians, or 
become agnostics, which is a mild word for atheists. The founda- 
tions designed by Dr. Martin Luther for Christianity, after three 
long centuries of experience, have crumbled away entirely, not- 
withstanding there are Christians, apparently intelligent, who 
celebrate with unusual tclat tne fourth centennial birthday of the 
pseudo-Reformer! This is noteworthy, a very noteworthy, a 
most noteworthy fact, worthy to be recorded for the memory of 
future generations. 

" Luther's appearance before the Diet of Worms," so writes 
Mr. Froude, " is one of the finest, if not the very finest scene in 
human history." His view of this scene is correct, if " to cleave 
a creed into sects, and fool a crowd with glorious lies," is a work 
worthy of the effort of a true Christian and a sincere lover of 
his race. But from a Christian point of view the most pitiable 
spectacle that has happened since the heresiarch Arius denied 
the divinity of Christ before the Council of Nice was Luther's 
appearance before the Diet of Worms. What else at bottom was 
this scene than a crafty attempt to shift the authority of Christ's 
church as the divinely authorized interpreter of revealed truth 
to the questionable suggestions, not to say illusions, of Martin 
Luther's imagination? a position which, viewed in its logical 
consequences and practical results, was an effort, under the plea 
of a resuscitated and purified Gospel, to undermine the Christian 
church, to repudiate the Christian religion, and to deny Christ. 

When Martin Luther appealed at the Diet of Worms from 
the jurisdiction of the court to the Scriptures, from the autho- 
rity of the church to his own individual judgment ; when he 
said, " Prove to me out of Scripture that I am wrong, and I 
submit," it might be fairly asked, Why this appeal? Was not 
the court legitimate? Was it not called by the proper au- 
thorities? W^as it not rightly organized? Was not the law 
which would have ruled in his case, in accordance with imme- 
morial usage, with right reason, with the jurisdiction of the 
state and of the church of Christ? If every accused per- 
son could change both court and law to suit his purposes, where 
would there ever be one found guilty ? Men might with just 
alarm ask: What, in this case, would become of society, what 
,of civilization ? The appeal of Dr. Martin Luther before the 






1883.] LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 147 

Diet of Worms was an artful dodge in order to escape legiti- 
mate jurisdiction, an impartial trial, a just judgment, and a pos- 
sible, not to say a probable, condemnation, and, should he prove 
contumacious, serious consequences. 

Luther showed a certain kind of bravery in appearing before 
the Diet of Worms, but, mark you, it was only after he had ob- 
tained from his political friends a safe-conduct. He lacked the 
courage of his opinions, and his political protectors showed no 
little discretion and dexterity in hiding him for their future 
political use so effectually that no trace of his whereabouts was 
discoverable. Luther, instead of fearlessly defending his convic- 
tions, played cunningly into the hands of the German potentates, 
and Christianity and humanity have paid bitterly during three 
centuries for this " fine scene" enacted in Germany. 

What gave birth to Protestantism was the radical spirit of 
free individualism against the divine authority of Christ's church ; 
hence the encouragement that it everywhere bestows upon apos- 
tates, such as an Achilli, a Gavazzi, or a Loyson. All heresies 
receive a welcome from its partisans, and every heresiarch finds 
an asylum in its bosom. It always abets fresh divisions and 
tends to create new sects. This is why it lends its sympathy to 
the " Old Catholic movement," and fosters it as much as it can. 
It curries favor with the state in hopes of obtaining power, and 
whenever or wherever the state usurps authority over the 
church it hails the act and expresses its delight, as is ex- 
emplified to-day in Prussia, in Italy, in Belgium, in France, and 
throughout the world, by its promoters in the public press. It 
is its nature to breed dissensions ; it lives in insurrections and 
rejoices in revolutions. The specific work of Protestantism is 
destruction, and what is called to-day orthodox Protestantism will 
in three generations, more or less, be limited most likely to some 
obscure sect. The rest of the world will be either Catholic or 
atheist. 

We do not hesitate to say " Catholic or atheist," because he 
who denies the truths of revealed religion will be led to deny 
the truths of reason, as the truths of divine revelation and the 
truths of reason spring from the same source, and once united, 
as they are in Catholicity, they are logically inseparable. Hence 
from the denial of the church follows the denial of the divinity 
of Christ ; from the denial of the divinity of Christ follows the 
denial of the Most Holy Trinity ; from the denial of the Trinity 
follows agnosticism, and agnosticism is the next lowest step of 
descent into atheism. Hence no man who thinks can deny the 



148 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

Catholic Church and maintain Christianity upon a consistent 
basis. Protestantism in its logical outcome is a protest against 
all religion. 

But the question might be asked here, Were not the people of 
the colonies of this country guilty, in the political order, of the 
same blunder in separating from England? No! Because En- 
gland had first violated the acknowledged constitutive laws which 
had from time immemorial governed the political society of En- 
glishmen. It was upon this ground that the colonists took their 
stand and made their appeal to the civilized world. They only 
claimed the rights which belonged to Englishmen, and, after all 
redress had been sought in vain, they rightly separated from 
England and refused to be treated as slaves. The rightfulness 
of the position of the colonists English statesmen of to-day do 
not hesitate to acknowledge, and to condemn the wrong which 
their predecessors attempted to commit. The spirit of the 
American government was not revolutionary. The American 
system of government differs from others in a more strict appli- 
cation of the great truth of the rights of man as taught by the 
common authority of the sages of the past in connection with 
the principles of political society. 

Luther had no such grounds to stand upon to justify his 
secession from the church of Christ. The church never did, and 
from the nature of the case never will, violate the constitutive 
laws of her government ; because she is divine. It is absurd to 
suppose that Christ will go back upon his own work. Did the 
church refuse to abolish the abuses complained of ? The calling 
of the General Council of Trent, and its conscientious labors, as 
is witnessed to by its decrees de reformations, are the sufficient 
answer. The church is the only organic body where reform is 
always in order, and, in the nature of things, separation never ! 

The reply of Simon Peter to our Lord may be appropriately 
and justly quoted in this connection. When our Lord inquired 
of his apostles, " Will you also go away ? " Simon Peter an- 
swered him : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life." Separation from the Catholic Church 
means, logically and practically, no church. No church means 
no Christianity. No Christianity, among intelligent men, means 
no religion at all ! 

Separation from a political government is one thing ; separa- 
tion from the church of God is quite and altogether another 
thing. For men are competent to form a political government, 
but to make the church, which is the organic issue from that 






1883.] LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 149 

bond of union of men with God which makes them children of 
God that the only-begotten Son of God alone can do. The 
separation of the colonies from England has no parity of reason 
and bears not the remotest analogy with the Protestant position 
towards the Catholic Church. The religious revolution of the 
sixteenth century was both wrong in principle and wrong in its 
procedure. It was the greatest of blunders, and, like all here- 
sies, is rapidly terminating in self-extinction. There has been no 
movement whatever which has started in the spirit of Protes- 
tantism that has not ended in ruin. 

It is a misapprehension common among Protestants to sup- 
pose that Catholics, in refusing the appeal of Martin Luther at 
the Diet of Worms, condemn the use of reason or individual 
judgment, or whatever one pleases to call that personal act 
which involves the exercise of man's intellect and .free-will. The 
truth is, personal judgment flows from what constitutes man a 
rational being, and there is no power under heaven that can 
alienate personal judgment from man, nor can man, if he would, 
disappropriate it. The cause of all the trouble at the Diet of 
Worms was not that of personal judgment, for neither party put 
that in question. The point in dispute was the right application 
of personal judgment. Catholics maintained, and always have 
and always will maintain, that a divine revelation necessitates a 
divine interpreter. Catholics resisted, and always will resist, on 
the ground of its incompetency, a human authority applied to 
the interpretation of the contents of a divinely-revealed religion. 
They consider such an authority, whether of the individual 
or the state, in religious matters as an intrusion. Catholics 
insist without swerving upon believing in religion none but 
God! 

Let us not be misapprehended on this delicate and most im- 
portant point. The application of reason to the interpretation 
of the contents of a divine revelation is one thing. The applica- 
tion of reason to the evidence that God has made a revelation is 
quite another matter. The use of reason in the first supposition 
reduces the truths of divine revelation to the truths of reason, 
and this is rationalism pure. The other use of reason, to in- 
vestigate and make one's self certain that God has made a reve- 
lation, is of obligation and consistent with Christianity, which 
proclaims both the truths of reason and truths above the sphere 
of reason, but these latter, the revealed truths, to be received 
solely upon the authority of God, the revealer, who cannot 
deceive nor be deceived. No rational creature feels any bond- 



150 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

age in believing what is above and beyond the grasp of reason 
upon the veracity of his Creator. 

This can be easily shown, and in a few words, by an analysis 
of the foundation of an act of Catholic faith. The Catholic faith 
rests upon three elementary facts the competency of human 
reason, the infallibility of the church, the veracity of God. He 
who undermines either one of these three positions destroys the 
Catholic faith. A Catholic who does not hold to the compe- 
tency of human reason in its own sphere, upon sound philoso- 
phical principles, is bound to hold it upon religious grounds, for 
he has no other competent voucher than reason for the divine 
claims of the Catholic Church. This is one of the essential 
principles of the Catholic Church, that she is accompanied with 
ample evidence of her divine character to elicit from reason an 
act of assent .which excludes all rational doubt. As a divine 
revelation springs from a source above the sphere of reason, it 
necessitates a divinely-authorized and divinely-assisted interpre- 
ter and teacher. This is one of the essential functions of the 
church, which Christ planned and the Holy Spirit incorporated, 
and with which Christ promised to remain until the consumma- 
tion of the world. As to the veracity of God, the third essen- 
tial element of Catholic faith, this is involved in the very idea 
of God's existence, which reason is competent to demonstrate. 
Cleared, then, from all extraneous matter, the main point in dis- 
pute between Catholics and Protestants is this: Catholics main- 
lain the necessity of the divine authority of the church in a re- 
vealed religion such as Christianity, against the introduction of 
human authority to be exercised, not upon the fact of revela- 
tion, but upon the contents of divine revelation. 

If you ask how the so-called Reformers could venture to sub- 
stitute the private judgment of man in the place of the authority 
of the church within the sphere of revealed religion, when with- 
out exception they held man to be " totally depraved," we 
reply, in the words of the Protestant historian Guizot, " The Re- 
formation did not fully receive its own principles and effects." 
That is, the Reformation was an insult to the common sense of 
mankind ! 

This, then, is the rational genesis of the Catholic faith. With- 
out the competency of reason, within its proper sphere, one can- 
not know with certitude the church of Christ. Without the 
divine authority of the church of Christ all cannot know with 
certitude all the truths of divine revelation. Without the vera- 
city of God one cannot believe without doubting what God has 



1883.] LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 151 

revealed. An act of Catholic faith includes necessarily each and 
all of these indubitable sources of truth. Hence when a Catholic 
makes an act of faith he says : " O my God ! I believe without 
doubting all the truths which the Catholic Church teaches, be- 
cause thou hast revealed them, who canst neither deceive nor be 
deceived." An act of Catholic faith is the synthetic expression of 
the highest value of human reason, the greatest dignity of man, 
the divine character of the Christian religion, and the supreme 
claims of God upon his rational creatures. Thus Catholics alone 
can point to their first principles and boldly admit all the conse- 
quences which rightly flow from them. Catholics cannot with- 
hold the exercise of their faith without doing violence to the 
dictates of reason. This agrees with what a celebrated Scotch 
metaphysician said to some ministers who visited him in his last 
sickness. " Gentlemen," said he, when they pressed the subject 
of religion on his attention, " were I a Christian it is not to you 
I should address myself, but to priests of the Catholic Church ; 
for with them I find premises and conclusion, and this I know 
you cannot offer." 

Another source of misapprehension of the Catholic Church 
frequent, not to say common, among Protestants is the supposi- 
tion that its authority is made a substitute for the guidance of 
the indwelling Holy Spirit. How many Protestants who pass 
for intelligent persons suppose that to make one's salvation se- 
cure and certain as a Catholic all that is required is blindly to 
follow the authority of the church and abandon one's conscience 
to the direction of her priests ! They imagine the Catholic 
Church is a sort of easy coach, in which one has only to enter 
in order to be landed without exertion safely within the portals 
of paradise ! Nothing is further from the truth than this idea, 
for it can easily be shown that the internal guidance of the Holy 
Spirit is thoroughly maintained and faithfully carried out in the 
Catholic Church only. 

What, then, is Christian perfection, or sanctity, or holiness, 
according to the Catholic idea? Holiness consists in that state 
of the soul when it is moved inwardly by the Holy Spirit. 
Read the lives of her saints, Christian reader, if you desire to see 
this conception of Christian perfection practically illustrated. 
What else are the different religious orders and communities 
which she so carefully provides for her children who feel called 
by a divine counsel to a life of perfection, than schools wherein 
the principle of the internal guidance of the Holy Spirit is more 
practically applied and more strictly carried out than is else- 



152 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

where found possible? spiritual schools in which men and 
women are rendered, not, as some foolishly fancy, stupid or 
degraded, or taught to destroy nature, or governed by arbitrary 
authority, but where souls are trained to follow faithfully the 
inspirations of the Holy Spirit; where nature is completed and 
perfected by the contemplation of its divine Archetype ; where 
men and women, Christian souls, are taught not to be slaves to 
animal gratifications, but with high minds " to be strengthened 
by God's Spirit with might unto the inward man." 

The Catholic idea of Christian perfection as a system is built 
up, in all its most minute parts, upon the central conception of 
the immediate guidance of the soul by the indwelling Holy 
Spirit. The Catholic Church teaches that the Holy Spirit is 
infused into the souls of men, accompanied with his heavenly 
gifts, by the instrumentality of the sacrament of baptism. These 
are the words of Christ : " Unless a man is born of water and the 
Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Thus a man 
becomes a child of God, according to the teaching of Christ, 
not by right of birth, but by the rite of baptism. By the crea- 
tive act man is made a creature of God ; by the indwelling pres- 
ence of the "Holy Spirit man is made a Christian, and, having 
taken up his abode in the Christian soul and becoming its abid- 
ing guest, he enlightens, quickens, and strengthens it to run in 
the way of perfection, which high estate is attained first by the 
practice of virtue in bringing the appetites of man's animal 
nature under the control of the dictates of reason. It is by the 
practice of virtue man is rendered, before all, a perfectly rational 
being. The men who kept under the control of reason the 
animal propensities of their nature by the practice of virtue 
illustrate the pagan ideal man. Zoroaster, Gautama, Confucius, 
Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and many other 
worthies of antiquity attained to a greater or less extent this 
ideal of man. Christian souls, by <he practice of recollection, 
prayer, fidelity to divine inspirations, moved and aided by the 
gifts of the Holy Spirit, render the dictates of reason submis- 
sive, pliant, and docile to the teachings and guidance of the 
Holy Spirit, until this becomes a habit and, as it were, spon- 
taneous. Thus Christian souls, by the interior action of the 
Holy Spirit, attain perfection that is, become divine men ! This 
is the ideal Christian man, the saint ! 

The key to all the secrets of the economy of the Catholic 
Church concerning spiritual life is here exposed. Hence the 
reception of- the sacraments, the exercise of church authority, 



1883.] LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 153' 

and the practice of virtue are never presented as a substitute, 
but as subservient to the immediate guidance of the soul by the 
indwelling Holy Spirit. 

But suppose there is a conflict between the divine external 
authority of the church and the inspirations of the abiding 
Holy Spirit in the soul, what then? Be a little patient, Catholic 
readers ; having answered the present calumny thus far, let us 
pursue it to its remotest corners of concealment. What then? 
Why, then the reign of nonsense ! For if the Holy Spirit acting 
through the authority of the church as the teacher and inter- 
preter of divine revelation contradicts the Holy Spirit acting in 
the soul as its immediate guide, then .God contradicts God ! 
Can anything be more absurd than this supposition ? It is 
enough to know that the action of God in the church and 
the action of God in the soul never have and never can come 
in conflict. 

One more question or doubt, and we pass on. But it might 
be objected that the Catholic Church hitherto described on these 
pages is the Ideal Christian Church, and not the Roman Catho- 
lic Church ! To this we reply : The Roman Catholic Church 
is the Ideal Christian Church in so far as the Ideal Christian 
Church is not an abstraction but existing, as it must, in men, 
women, and children, such as we are. Blindness to this plain 
truth is one of the main reasons why many fail to see the Catho- 
lic Church as she is, and entertain so many absurd and foolish 
notions about popes, priests, and Catholics generally. This 
blindness is one of the principal causes of the revolt of the six- 
teenth century, and demands more diffuse treatment, which we 
will now bestow upon it. 

.It has already been shown that Christ dwells in his church 
as the soul dwells in its body. But it must be borne in mind 
that the soul is not the body. So Christ is the soul of the 
church, but existing in her members, men, women, children, 
such as we are, ignorant, weak, with propensities and passions 
leading to the commission of sin unless kept under control. The 
popes-, the cardinals, the bishops of the Catholic Church, and her 
people, are not angels dropped down suddenly from the skies, but 
sinners, and saved, if saved at all, solely by the grace of Christ. 
If St. John, the beloved disciple, could say with truth, " If we say 
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," 
how much more we! Our Lord himself puts into the mouths 
of his disciples, when teaching them how to pray, this petition : 
" Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass 



154 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

against us." No man prays to be forgiven for what he has not 
done. 

" All the beauty of the king's daughter is within, surrounded 
with variety." The human side of the church is therefore a mix- 
ture of good and evil^ Christ himself has compared his church 
to a field of wheat in which tares spring up with the wheat. The 
wheat sown was good, but tares came up also. But how came 
the tares? " An enemy," said our Lord in reply, " has done this." 
Shall the tares be separated from the wheat? No, he answers, 
let them grow together until the harvest time comes. Then the 
wheat will be garnered up in the barns, and the tares be cast into 
the fire. This is a picture of the church. Good Christians are 
the wheat. They hear the word of God and keep it. They will 
be garnered into the mansions of paradise. Bad Christians are 
those who are deaf to the word of God, listen to the tempter, 
follow their passions. These are the tares, which will be cast 
into the fire. This is the sifting Christ will not fail to make of 
the members of his church at the day of judgment. In the mean- 
time the wheat and tares, good and bad Christians, occupy the 
same field. 

The idea of a church whose members are all saints is an 
abstraction which has never existed upon this earth. It has 
no record in history, no warrant in Scriptures, and contradicts 
the prediction of Christ when he said : " Scandals must come." 
Hence sensible and well-informed persons are not surprised to 
find abuses, corruptions, scandals among the members of the 
church. No instructed Catholic will hesitate to admit, though 
with grief and sorrow, that there have been evil-disposed men in 
the church as popes, as cardinals, as bishops, as priests, as people. 
He dreams who imagines Ihere ever was a time when the mem- 
bers of the church upon earth were all angels or saints. 

Such a state of things did not exist in Christ's own day. 
One whom he himself had chosen to be an apostle was Judas, 
the traitor. Feter, the prince of the apostles, denied Christ 
thrice. The Scriptures say that Christ upbraided the eleven 
because of their incredulity and hardness of heart : " the*y did 
not believe those who had seen him after he had risen." 

Such a state of things did not exist in apostolic times. St. 
Paul says that there were sins committed by the Corinthian 
Christians " the like of which was not among the heathens." 
Among his own perils he counts those from " false brethren." 
Again, he writes : " Ye have heard that Antichrist shall come : 
even now there are many Antichrists." The sect of Ebionites, 






1883.] LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 155 

which existed in his day, denied the divinity of Christ, looked 
upon Paul as an apostate, and rejected all the gospels except 
that of St. Matthew. There were those who called themselves 
Christians in apostolic times, and who protested against the 
doctrines of the church ; some denied her authority, others pro- 
claimed themselves to be the true church. 

Such a state of the church did not exist in the fourth century, 
when the divinity of Christ was controverted and denied by the 
Arians. This error was embraced by entire nations ; kings, em- 
perors, priests, bishops, patriarchs held it ; ecclesiastical assem- 
blies declared Arianism to be the true faith. Constantine, the 
first Christian emperor, banished Athanasius, the champion of 
the orthodox faith. But did the church succumb ? Not at all ! 
Conflict with error, abuses, and disorders is the lot of the church 
of Christ upon earth. It is for this reason she is called the 
militant church. Those who look upon the primitive church as 
the ideal church, exempt from abuses and corruptions, only dis- 
play their ignorance of ecclesiastical history. As in the past, so 
in the present, her enemies will be made to serve her cause. 
When the church is disfigured by calumny she becomes better 
known ; when wounded she conquers ; when most destitute of 
all human help she is most powerfully aided by God. 

The church of Christ on the divine side is always perfect, on 
the human side always imperfect. This is why reform in the 
church is always in order, separation never ! 

The nature of the church being understood, we can now take 
another step and ask : Shall we find errors, abuses, and corrup- 
tions in the church in the sixteenth century ? Evidently there 
must have been. It would be the greatest of all marvels if there 
had not been such. But were the evils of that period worse, 
more crying, than at any other period ? This is a grave and 
most pertinent question, and, lest our answer should be suspect- 
ed, we will let a Protestant of our day, well versed in history, 
answer this question in his own words. " It is not true," so says 
M. Guizot in J his History of European Civilization, " that in the 
sixteenth century abuses, properly so called, were more numer- 
ous, more crying, than they had been at other times." 

To obtain a correct idea of the condition of the church at 
this epoch let us set down naught in malice, but look the truth 
squarely in the face, and also extenuate nothing. The principal 
evils then complained of were the following : too great a diffu- 
sion of indulgences ; plurality of ecclesiastical offices ; irregu- 
larity of the lives of ecclesiastics ; corruptions of the Roman 



1 56 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

court. There will rest no doubt upon the mind of an impartial 
person that these evils did then exist, if he will take the time and 
pains to read the letters of the popes, the decrees of the councils, 
provincial and general, and the lives of the saints of this period, 
say from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century inclusive. 

One step more. Had the church within herself the means to 
reform these abuses and evils, or was it necessary to go outside 
her pale to accomplish this desired purpose? It would be a pity 
if the church had not, for in that case she would be less wisely 
organized than the state. Every properly organized state pro- 
vides itself with the means for the reform of any evils which may 
spring up within its own body, without necessitating recourse to 
revolution. Such was the foresight and care of the fathers of 
our republic that they not only provided means for reform, but 
even for the change, or even abolition, of the form of our politi- 
cal system by a two-thirds vote of the States. They acted upon 
the intention of removing all reasonable excuse for revolution. 
Now, Christ, who knew what was in man and foresaw the scan- 
dals that must arise can it be supposed for a moment that he 
acted with less prudence, sagacity, and wisdom? It was in view 
of this that the late Bishop Dupanloup said : " The church is 
the only society upon earth where revolution is never necessary 
and reform is always possible." 

What were the means provided by her Founder to bring 
about reforms ? First, her pontiffs. Second, her providential 
men and women her saints. Third, her councils, national and 
general. These latter gave birth, if M. Guizot is to be consid- 
ered an authority, to modern representative political govern- 
ments. But were these means employed in the church at this 
period ? A general council, the Council of Trent, was called in 
1545. What kind of men composed it were they intelligent, 
earnest lovers of truth, and sincere in their desire for the re- 
form of abuses ? Here are the words of the English historian 
Hallam on this very point: "No general council," says Hal- 
lam, " ever contained so many persons of eminent learning as 
that of Trent; nor is there any ground for believing that any 
other ever investigated questions before it with so much patience, 
acuteness, and desire of truth. The early councils, unless they 
are greatly belied, would not bear comparison in these charac- 
teristics." One thing is historical : the reform inaugurated by 
the decrees of the Council of Trent was radical and complete 
so much so that the abuses then complained of ceased to exist. 
" The decrees of the Council of Trent," so says the Protestant 



I883-] 



LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 



German historian Ranke, " were received by the spiritual princes 
of the empire, and from this moment began a new life for the 
Catholic Church in Germany." During the same period pro- 
vidential men and women labored incessantly in the different 
countries of Europe for the purification of the church. We give 
a list of these ; though incomplete, it is sufficient to show that 
there has scarcely been an epoch in the whole history of the 
church when she could exhibit an equal galaxy of great men and 
great women we mean great saints ! 

SAINTS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 






Spain. 

St. Ignatius, 
St. Francis Xavier, 
St. Francis Borgia, 
St. Teresa, 

St. John of the Cross, 
St. Peter of Alcantara, 
St. Thomas of Villanova, 
St. Lewis Bertrand, 
St. Paschal Baylon, 
St. Francis of Solano. 
B. Peter Claver, 

St. Joseph Calasanctius, of the 
Pious Schools. 

France. 

St. Jane, Queen, 
St. Jane Frances of Chantal, 
St. Vincent of Paul, 
St. Francis of Sales, 
St. Francis Regis. 

Germany. 
B. Peter Canisius. 

Portiigal, 
St. John of God. 

Poland. 
St. Stanislas, 
St. Josaphat. 

Italy. 

St. Pius V., 
St. Philip Neri, 
St. Felix of Cantalice, 
St. Aloysius, 
St. Jerome Emiliani, 
St. Catherine of Genoa, 
St. Charles Borromeo, 



B. Charles Spinola, 

B. Lawrence of Brindisi, 

B. John Marinoni, 

St. Andrew Avellino, 

St. Camillus of Lelli, 

St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, 

B. Sebastian Valfre, 

St. Leonard of Port Maurice, 

St. Catherine of Ricci, 

St. Cajetan, 

B. Hyppolitus Gallantini, Congre- 
gation of Christian Doctrine. 

St. Francis of Paula, of the Minims 
of Calabria. 

Holland Martyrs of Gorcum. 
Nicholas Pieck, 
Jerome Werdt, 
Antony Werdt, 
Thierry Van Emden, 
Willehad Danus, 
Godfrey Mervel, 
Antony Hoornaer, 
Francis De Roye, 
Cornelius Wyk, 
Peter Assche, 
Father John, 
Adrian Beek, 
Godfrey Van Duynen, 
Adrian Wouters, 
James Lacop, 
John Oosterwyk, 
Leonard Vechel, 
Nicholas Van Peppel. 

America. 

St. Rose of Lima, 
St. Alphonsus Toribio, Arch- 
bishop of Lima. 



158 ' LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

As to the supreme pontiffs of the Catholic Church. Because 
a man is called to occupy the chair of St. Peter he is not for 
that reason a great saint. A man may be a pope and his life be 
far from what it ought to be as a good Christian, and, above all, 
what it ought to be as one occupying so exalted a place in the 
church of God. Not all popes have been, like St. Peter, martyrs 
or saints, but a large number of them have been. The line of 
popes have been men far above any other line of rulers, in great- 
ness, in virtue, in intelligence, which can be named in the history 
of mankind. This is no boast, but sober truth admitted by com- 
petent and non- Catholic authorities. Leo X., who was pope at 
the period under consideration, was, according to men able to 
form a good judgment, more brilliant as a prince than as a Chris- 
tian pontiff. Notwithstanding a Protestant, Roscoe, wrote an 
eulogistic biography of Leo X., and non-Catholic writers of history 
have spoken of him and his pontificate with praise, yet Catholics 
remember his career with feelings of sadness rather than those 
of gratification. But it is the remark of Ranke " that since his 
time the lives of the popes have all been above reproach." 

This now brings Martin Luther upon the scene. Who was 
he ? Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, in Germany, in 1483. 
His parents were pious, honest, poor people, and sent Martin to 
school at an early age. For among a Catholic people ignorance 
is looked upon as a disgrace, and ignorance of what one ought 
to know and can know is held to be a sin. But if Martin's pa- 
rents were poor, we are curious to know how they could pay 
for his schooling. They had not to pay. There were in those 
Catholic times free schools. There never was a time among a 
Catholic people when a bright boy could not get, provided he 
was in earnest about it, a free and good education. No people 
hold knowledge in so high honor as Catholics. 

The sudden death by a stroke of lightning of a friend, with 
whom Martin was walking, caused the thought of eternity to 
impress itself upon his mind as it never had done before. He 
thereupon resolved to give himself wholly to God and his di- 
vine service. To accomplish this purpose most perfectly he 
joined the Augustinian friars, a community of priests following 
the rule given by the great St. Augustine. Luther at a proper 
age took the solemn vows, became a priest, was made a doctor 
in theology. Luther was now an Augustinian friar, an eloquent 
preacher, a professor of theology, and a man of no mean repute. 

Pope Leo X., who then occupied the chair of St. Peter, pro- 
claimed an indulgence. It was made known in Germany by a 



1883.] LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 

Dominican friar named Tetzel. Tetzel was a man of zeal, well 
versed in theology and gifted with eloquence. The people came 
in crowds to hear him and to gain the indulgence. Doubtless 
then, as now, there were Catholics who were more intent upon 
gaining the benefits of the indulgence than upon the dispositions 
which it required. This need excite no surprise, for then, as 
now, many people neglected to be instructed in their religion ; 
then, as now, there were priests who neglected to instruct their 
people. 

But how is this ? You only mention the abuse of indulgences, 
when the thing itself is an offence in the nostrils of all true and 
sincere Christians ! So much the worse, then, for such Christians. 
But suppose you tell us what is this thing which is so offen- 
sive to sincere Christians ? Why, everybody knows that ! No 
matter, tell us what " the thing itself is." Why, an indulgence 
is a license from the pope, for a stipulated sum of money, to 
commit crime. On this point any number of Protestant autho- 
rities, theologians, preachers, historians, literary men, poets, etc., 
might be quoted in confirmation of what we have said is an in- 
dulgence. Catholics may be negligent and ignorant, but here is 
a specimen of wilful ignorance which surpasses all we have ever 
met with among Catholics ! An indulgence a license to commit 
sin for money ! This is a falsehood cut out of whole cloth. He 
who entertains such an idea of indulgences should never again 
speak of wilful ignorance ! For an indulgence refers neither to 
the present nor future commission of sin at all. It refers only to 
the punishments of sin for which the sinner has truly repented 
and has received God's pardon. An indulgence is nothing less 
or more than a release from the temporal punishment due to 
sin repented of sincerely and pardoned by God. Why, is that 
all? It is. And the strangest of all is that objections should be 
made to the Catholic idea of indulgences by those who profess 
to believe that all that the greatest sinner has to do to receive 
full pardon and plenary indulgence for all his sins, past, present, 
and future, is to have faith ! Such is the omnipotence attributed 
to an act of faith by those who believe in " justification by faith 
alone." What hypocrisy to roll up the whites of one's eyes in 
a pretence of holy horror at the Catholic doctrine of indulgences, 
which is severity itself compared with their sweeping act of 
faith which alone suffices to wash all a man's sins away, and 
put him at once, without penance or purgatory, into the company 
of the angels in heaven ! 

But if one must be in a state of grace to gain an indulgence, 



160 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. [Nov., 

was there not a certain sum of money also required ? This is a 
question of some interest, and we would like to know what the 
Roman pontiff did with the money thus obtained. This is no 
mystery. It was devoted to pious uses. " Pious uses ! " Sup- 
pose you be a little more specific ? Well, some was spent in the 
erection. of public hospitals, some was spent in building bridges, 
some was spent in building churches, and some was spent in 
wars against the Turks. Is that all ? No, there is something 
more it would be well for you to learn. Why, what is that ? 
It is that you owe it in all probability to the money spent in de- 
fence of Christendom against the threatening Turks that you are 
not to-day a follower of the false prophet Mohammed. What! 
it is due to indulgences that I am not a Turk? In all sober truth, 
yes ! 

But after this episode let us proceed with our narrative. 
Tetzel, the Dominican, was the promulgator in Germany of the 
indulgence proclaimed by Leo X., which owed its origin, it is 
said, to his great desire to complete the magnificent church of 
St. Peter's at Rome. Would to God that Leo X. would be the 
last to wreck his reputation upon increasing too exclusively the 
material grandeur of the church of God ! Tetzel is charged 
with having employed extravagant language in his harangues, 
for which, it was said* his ecclesiastical superiors rebuked him, 
and poor Tetzel died of a broken heart. 

Germany at this moment was in an uneasy state. This in- 
dulgence proclaimed by Leo X. was looked upon as an abuse, 
particularly so by the secular princes, who, with their gaunt 
purses, saw with feelings of reluctance money taken from the 
pockets of their German subjects and employed in building 
churches in Italy. Luther's voice was now heard in attacking 
indulgences and crying out for reform ! Reform was undoubt- 
edly needed. All the sincere and earnest Christians, of that day 
were in sympathy with this cry. Luther's position at that junc- 
ture of affairs was^the right one. Listen to the letter which he 
wrote in 1519 to the then reigning pontiff, Leo X. : 

" That the Roman Church," he says, " is more honored by 
God than all others is not to be doubted. St. Peter and St. Paul, 
forty-six popes, some hundreds of thousands of martyrs, have 
laid down their lives in its communion, having overcome hell 
and the world ; so that the eyes of God rest on the Roman 
Church with special favor. Though nowadays everything is in 
a wretched state, it is no ground for separating from the church. 
On the contrary, the worse things are going, the more jhould 



1883.] LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 161 

we hold close to her, for it is not by separating from the church 
we can make her better. We must not separate from God on 
account of any work of the devil, nor cease to have fellowship 
with the children of God who are still abiding in the pale of 
Rome, on account of the multitude of the ungodly. There is no 
sin, no amount of evil, which should be permitted to dissolve 
the bond of charity or break the bond of unity of the body. 
For love can do all things, and nothing is difficult to those who 
are united." 

This letter has the true ring in it. The only position worthy 
of a true Christian and sincere reformer is within the church. 
Separation from the church is not reform. To stand up in 
God's church and to cry out for reform of real abuses and scan- 
dals, fired with genuine zeal and pure love for the beauty of 
Christ's spouse, is a noble attitude. Such zeal, such love, is 
capable of doing all things. Had Martin Luther fought it out 
on this line the name of Luther of Eisleben, the Augustinian 
friar, would have been handed down with benediction and 
praise along with the great names of Hildebrand, Bernard of 
Clairvaux, and Borromeo of Milan, to all future generations. 

But one is filled with astonishment in reading so strong and 
unanswerable a testimonial in favor of the Roman Church, and 
that from the pen of Martin Luther, and written in the year of 
our Lord 1519. Did he write it? One would scarcely credit 
the fact, were it not found in the History of the Reformation by 
that partisan, Merle d'Aubigne. Martin Luther wrote it ; was he 
an imbecile or a knave? Ignorant he was not. 

From a reformer Martin Luther became a revolutionist ; 
can you, honest reader, tell the reason for this change? Re-ex- 
amine the event and see, on sound, rational, Christian principles, 
if you can. 



VOL. XXXVIII. II 



1 62 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 



ANCIENT CELTIC ART. 

IT has been too much the custom to look on history as exclu- 
sively concerned with wars and politics. The lessons to be 
learned from the past are not confined to the rise and fall of 
states, and the characters and fortunes of statesmen and generals. 
Man has other fields of work in which the knowledge of what 
has been done by former generations is equally valuable to the 
present. Law, commerce, manufactures, science, literature, and 
art have each a history of their own as interesting as the subjects 
which have long been regarded as the proper province of his- 
tory. Nor is the value of such studies confined to their own 
departments. Each of them throws new light on the general 
current of human events, and enables us to understand history as 
we never could learn it from mere chronicles of political events. 
Science and scientists, law and lawyers, art and artists, are as 
much a part of humanity as politics and politicians, and the story 
of their progress in bygone days is as full of use to the men of 
the present. 

Especially, indeed, is this the case with art, which by its very 
nature is intended more for public use and instruction than for 
the gratification of the artist. Painting, sculpture, architecture, 
and music interest every class as well as their special professors, 
and there seems no reason why their history should not do so 
likewise. If men who have never seen a field of battle can feel 
an absorbing interest in the campaigns of Napoleon or Frederick 
of Prussia, men who have never touched a brush or chisel may 
find equal pleasure in the story of the works of Michelangelo or 
Titian. The interest attached to the history of art is not con- 
fined to its brilliant epochs or renowned artists alone. As in 
the history of nations, so in that of art, the key to great revolu- 
tions is often found in scarcely noticed periods, and a deeper 
interest frequently attaches to the obscure work of unknown 
artists than to the masterpieces of world-famed genius. Art- 
schools and national arts have vicissitudes of their own, which 
call forth our sympathies, as well as those of nations and indivi- 
duals. The bright promise of an age may be blasted by external 
circumstances or turned rudely from its natural course, and, on 
the other hand, the genius of a people may break forth in bril- 
liancy after centuries of oppression. National life and national 



1883.] ANCIENT CELTIC ART. 163 

art are, indeed, so closely bound together that if we read the last 
aright it is often the best chronicle of the first, and, moreover, a 
chronicle which tells its story not in words but in works. 

In the history of Europe Celtic art occupies a place distinc- 
tively apart from that of other races. The sculpture, architec- 
ture, and ornament of the other western nations of the European 
continent are derived more or less remotely from the Roman 
art which for four centuries was spread like the Roman language 
from the Rhine and Danube to the Atlantic Ocean. The branch 
of the Celtic race settled in Ireland alone retained its primitive 
civilization unmodified by foreign influences during the existence 
of the Roman Empire. Thus its arts down to the twelfth cen- 
tury retain a stamp of originality wholly their own while essen- 
tially progressive. During the seven centuries of its existence 
as an independent Christian nation the buildings, the literature, 
the painting, sculpture, and ornamental art of Ireland were of an 
entirely distinct character from those of the contemporary Euro- 
pean races, and in many points far surpassed them in artistic 
merit. The amount of art-work done in Ireland during that 
period, if it is to be judged by the number of its remains that 
still exist, exceeded that of any other country north of the Alps. 

The disparity in this respect between England under the An- 
glo-Saxons and Danes a period only one century shorter than 
the contemporary existence of the Christian Celtic kingdom in 
Ireland is most remarkable. Though unlimited wealth and the 
talents of a host of investigators have been employed for the last 
two centuries in preserving the antiquities of Great Britain, 
while during the greater part of the time the Celtic remains of 
Ireland were wholly neglected or even wantonly destroyed; yet 
at the present day the collections of the English museums are 
decidedly inferior to the Irish, both in the number and in the 
artistic merit of objects contemporary with the ages of Irish in- 
dependence. In gold and bronze ornament and in illuminated 
manuscripts the .chief relics of the painter's art in those early 
days the contrast between the wealth of the two countries is 
astonishing. In buildings a similar state of things is found. 
While the closest research has failed to discover even partial 
remains of more than twenty Anglo-Saxon buildings, the face of 
Ireland is still dotted by several hundred more or less ruined but 
still existing Celtic edifices. Besides this, a large proportion of the 
antiquities preserved in the English museums are of Irish origin, 
and not a few of those Celtic works are among the choicest art 
treasures of those collections. The " Book of Lindisfarne," admit- 



164 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 

tedly the finest illuminated manuscript in England, is the work 
of the Irish monks who settled in Northumberland in the seventh 
century, and a similar origin is assigned to many of the so-called 
Anglo-Saxon works. Of the gold and bronze ancient works pre- 
served in the British Museum a large portion, if not the absolute 
majority, are of Irish origin. The collections on the European 
continent also contain numerous examples of Irish work; indeed, 
in manuscripts some of them are even richer than those in the 
British Islands. Compared with the present time, indeed, the 
proportion of early art-works of Irish production is really won- 
derful. 

The early art-works of the Irish Celts carry us back to a time 
far beyond the beginnings of their written history. The earthen 
urns for holding the ashes of the dead, which are frequently dug 
up in every part of Ireland, show clearly that ornamental design 
was known and practised long before the introduction of Chris- 
tianity in the fifth century. While many of these urns are of the 
simplest form, others display a beauty of shape and an elegance 
of decoration that attest the existence of high artistic feeling in 
their makers. Nothing in their character implies any connection 
with the foreign works of a similar kind found elsewhere, and 
some of which are among the most valuable remains of ancient 
Grecian and Italian art. The form and the ornamental patterns 
of the Celtic urns are alike of home origin. One of the most 
beautiful is a little vase formed in the shape of the shell of the 
sea-urchin, and covered with patterns evidently copied from the 
markings of that most beautiful object. In size it is scarcely 
larger, being only two inches high and about three in diameter, 
thus giving an early instance of the patient elaboration of small 
objects which continued to the last to be characteristic of Celtic 
design. At the same time the beauty of its form offers a valu- 
able hint for modern designers, who are too apt to believe that 
they have exhausted all the resources of art when they have 
reproduced the forms sanctioned by the taste of ancient Greece 
and Egypt. 

The bronze weapons and tools, which are found in extraor- 
dinary abundance and variety, offer another class of examples of 
pre-Christian art. Iron, as it is well known from history, every- 
where superseded bronze as a material for weapons in Europe at 
an early date. Among the Romans it had done so at the time of 
Hannibal, two centuries before the Christian era, and among the 
Celts of Gaul and Britain iron weapons were commonly in use 
in the time of Caesar's campaigns. Accordingly we cannot be 



1883.] ANCIENT CELTIC ART. 165 

far astray in assigning the date of the latest of the Irish bronze 
swords and battle-axes to the commencement of the Christian 
epoch ; and even on the existing examples many stages of pro- 
gress can be plainly traced, showing a much earlier beginning of 
Celtic art. For other purposes of a more purely ornamental 
character bronze continued to be used after its abandonment as a 
material for weapons, and, in fact, it so continues to be used down 
to the present day. In the Christian times it was extensively 
used in shrines, crosses, bells, and other ecclesiastical objects, and 
hence it is but natural to suppose that it was also employed in 
personal and other ornaments. Of such the museum of the 
Royal Irish Academy possesses a collection unsurpassed, if 
indeed equalled, anywhere. These metal works may thus be 
divided into those which are undoubtedly pagan, as weapons, 
tools, and objects found in pagan tombs, on the one hand ; into 
Christian works, the exact date of some of which is well known ; 
and, finally, into those whose date may range from the earliest 
times of pagan Ireland to the last days of the Celtic monarchy in 
the twelfth century. Even in the latter class it is quite possible 
to assign at least the relative ages of many objects by compa- 
rison with those of the other two. Ornaments, such as rings, 
collars, and armlets, whose design corresponds closely with the 
patterns shown on the pagan weapons, may reasonably be as- 
signed to the same period ; while those whose workmanship 
resembles that of the Christian shrines and crosses may fairly be 
regarded as contemporary with them. The successive develop- 
ment of ornamental forms which may readily be traced in a large 
collection enables us finally to assign with probability something 
like definite ages to the works whose character is intermediate 
between the pagan and the late Christian styles. Thus a pecu- 
liar form of head-dress, resembling a half-moon surmounting the 
forehead, was common in ancient Ireland ; but while some of the 
specimens preserved are simple plates of thin gold, others are 
elaborately decorated with raised mouldings, rims, and buttons, 
and finished with ornamental discs at the ends. As we know 
from the history of art in other countries that the invention of a 
new form of ornament in its plain state always precedes its modi- 
fication by decoration, we can conclude that the Irish embossed 
diadems are a later form of art than the plain crescents. The 
plainer forms may, of course, have continued in use side by side 
with the ornamented ones, but the introduction of the latter must 
have followed, not preceded, them. Another guide to the compa- 
rative age of ornamental work is to be found in the technical skill 



166 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 

displayed in its manufacture. Beauty of design may, indeed, be 
found in articles of rude workmanship, and baldness or positive 
ugliness may be associated with high mechanical skill of execu- 
tion ; but those objects in which we find equal beauty of design 
coupled with superior finish are unmistakably later in point of 
time than their ruder prototypes. From the history of all 
schools of art that have run their course, whether in sculpture, 
painting, or architecture, we know that this is the case. The 
power of designing decays before that of mechanical execution. 
The school of Italian painting, for instance, has unquestionably 
fallen away since the time of Michelangelo and Raffaelle, as it 
unquestionably advanced from the time of Cimabue to the six- 
teenth century ; but the mechanical part of painting has con- 
tinued to progress. The use of oil in coloring, the knowledge of 
perspective and anatomy things unknown to men like Giotto and 
Fra Angelico are familiar to the artists of the present day, whose 
talents are wholly inferior to those of the early masters. The 
same rule holds good, we believe, in all the fine arts, and by it 
we are enabled to trace with reasonable certitude the history of 
Celtic art in its existing remains. As we find in works of the 
time immediately before the English invasion, such as the Cross 
of Cong, a taste and fertility of invention unsurpassed by any 
other remains of the school, coupled with a mechanical skill and 
a mastery of new elements of decoration not possessed by the 
earlier examples, it appears that, at least in ornamental metal 
work, Celtic art had been steadily progressive from the earliest 
times in spite of domestic turbulence and Danish invasions. Its 
decline began simultaneously with the establishment of the Nor- 
man foreign power in the country. It was " extinguished, not 
decayed." 

The ornament on the bronze weapons of the most primitive 
class is extremely rude, consisting merely of notches made by a 
chisel and arranged in a rude herring-bone form. In the axes of 
a later period this pattern is gradually developed into triangles 
of the chevron shape, and the edges are sometimes finished with 
a rope moulding closely resembling the pattern of the bracelets 
and collars of twisted gold wire which were a favorite ornament 
of the Celtic nations from the earliest times. The chevron pat- 
tern was worked out with still more finish on the trumpets 
which are very numerous in the collections of antiquities, but 
which, no doubt, continued in use long after the bronze weapons 
had been abandoned. Some of these ancient trumpets, which 
may have sounded the charge on Roman battle-fields, are won- 



1883.] ANCIENT CELTIC ART. i5/ 

derful specimens of Celtic metallurgy. One in particular in the 
Irish Academy collection is fully eight feet long, and not cast in 
a mould, but riveted together with the utmost care. Neither 
weapons nor trumpets, however, can compare as works of art 
with other objects used especially for personal decoration. These 
include breastplates, bracelets, necklaces and armlets, pins, 
brooches, and numerous other ornaments, all worked out in a 
perfectly original style, and many of them beautiful examples of 
forms unknown in other schools of art-workmanship. A favorite 
form of ornament on these is the divergent spiral or trumpet 
pattern, resembling in outline the shells of the snail set back to 
back. In bronze medallions four or more of these volutes are 
inscribed within a circle, and the combinations produced by 
other uses of this form are almost endless, and many of them 
most striking. 

The most remarkable, in an art point of view, of these ancient 
ornaments are the .pins and brooches used for fastening the 
mantles. Of these several hundreds are exhibited in the Irish 
Academy alone, varying in finish from the plain skewer of 
bronze to the beautiful Tara brooch, several inches in diameter, 
and perhaps the most artistic ornament of the kind designed 
anywhere. In the earlier times the pins seem to have been alone 
used, and the manner in which the brooch was developed from 
them is shown most plainly by numerous examples. The plain 
pin or skewer was followed by a headed one resembling a 
modern breastpin, but cast solid in bronze. Both forms seem to 
have been elaborately finished at times, and some of the speci- 
mens are beautifully inlaid with silver, gold, and niello. The 
curves on the shafts are varied and elegant in form, and a high 
finish was attained before the idea of connecting a ring with the 
pin was introduced. This, the earliest form of the brooch, at 
first was merely a small ring passing through the square head of 
a pin, and just large enough to turn freely around it. In this 
form of pin the ring, in fact, was a mere adjunct to the head ; but 
the hint it gave seems to have caught the fancy of the old Celtic 
goldsmiths, who gradually enlarged and decorated the ring until 
its diameter equalled the length of the pin itself. To provide a 
clasp was then all that was required to transform the pin into 
a brooch, and that step was quickly taken. The ring brooch in 
turn was worked into new forms by succeeding artists. The 
ring was filled with tracery, either wholly or partially, and after- 
wards jewelled. Amber and enamel beads were set in its front, 
and raised patterns of tracery introduced in the centre. The 



1 68 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 

circular brooch having 1 been thus elaborated, new forms equally 
original and graceful were derived from it. These were the snap 
or buckle brooches, which are among the finest specimens of Irish 
design. Some are formed in the shape of serpents, others pre- 
sent the favorite snail-shell pattern and numerous other forms. 
Indeed, the fertility of design displayed by the old Celtic artists 
even in these matters of personal ornaments is perfectly aston- 
ishing. In bracelets, in collars, in horse-trappings, in all the 
adjuncts of daily life that could possibly be decorated, art found 
employment, and it was an art that never seemed to content 
itself with the servile reproduction of old forms. Endless variety 
and uniform good taste were the most striking characteristics of 
Celtic art, if we except, indeed, the unwearied industry which 
never seemed to give up a work until it had been elaborated to 
the very utmost finish it was capable of receiving. 

Gold seems to have been among the earliest metals used in 
the decorative arts in Ireland, and the quantity of it so employed 
must have been very considerable. Even in the British Museum 
the majority of the ancient gold articles are Irish, while several 
hundred such are preserved in the various Irish collections. The 
amount of gold ornaments that from time to time are found in 
Irish bogs and under the surface of the ground, most of which 
have been sold to jewellers and melted down even during the 
last half-century, indicates a great abundance of the metal in 
former ages. Some goldsmiths estimate that they have pur- 
chased as much as fifty thousand dollars' worth of such relics 
during the present century. On one occasion, about thirty-five 
years ago, a hoard of golden ornaments, valued at over fifteen 
thousand dollars, was found while excavating a railroad cutting. 
The personal ornaments of gold do not present many art features 
to distinguish them from those in bronze and other metals such 
as have been just described ; but it is different with the ecclesiasti- 
cal ornaments, into the composition of which the precious metals 
usually enter more or less. These present distinguishing art 
features which make them worthy of special notice, and, indeed, 
they include the art masterpieces of ancient Ireland. They may 
be divided into reliquaries, chalices, processional and other 
crosses, episcopal crosiers, and some smaller articles. The reli- 
quaries of Celtic Ireland that have been preserved were mostly 
cases for books, though shrines for portions of the bodies of 
saints were also made, and one or two are still preserved. The 
special veneration for books transcribed by their early saints is, 
however, a peculiarly Celtic feeling, analogous to that which gave 






1883.] ANCIENT CELTIC ART. 169 

to bishops and abbots their title, not from their respective sees or 
abbeys, but from their founders. The most celebrated of these an- 
cient books was the copy of the Gospels known as the " Domnach 
Airgid," which is said to have been brought to Ireland by St. Pat- 
rick himself and given to one of his disciples. Whatever truth 
may be in that statement, there can be no doubt but the copy of 
the Gospels believed to have been thus brought to Ireland is of 
the highest antiquity. A few leaves of it have been deciphered, 
but the mass of them are glued together by time into a solid mass 
which it has not been deemed well to disturb for the present. 
As it is unbound, it was originally enclosed in a wooden box, 
which in the twelfth century was cased in a metal shrine of rich 
design. This second cover was again covered in the fourteenth 
century by a still richer case ; and thus the relic proper con- 
sisted of a book enclosed within three cases, the inmost plain, 
the second or twelfth-century addition of copper and silver, and 
the outside of silver relieved with gold. The latter is entirely 
Celtic, as well as the two inner cases, though made for the 
abbot of Clones a full hundred and fifty years after the Norman 
invasion. His name and that of the maker, John O'Bardan, are 
both inscribed on the top of the case and worked into its orna- 
ment. Though the whole size of the " Domnach " is only nine by 
seven inches, the artist has wrought figures of eleven saints 
around the Crucifixion on the top, and a figure of the dove above 
the head of the crucifix is formed into a reliquary for some small 
object. Scenes from mediaeval lives of the saints are represented 
on one end, and from the lives of the Irish founder of the church 
of Clones and St. John the Baptist on the other. The front is 
occupied by the figure of a horseman 'in the Irish dress of the 
time, the details of which are carefully worked out ; and, besides, 
there are circles filled with grotesque heads and enamelling, the 
whole forming a striking monument of careful industry and 
design. 

A scarcely less interesting historical object, of the sarne class 
as the " Domnach," is the " Cathac," or shrine of the psalter, be- 
lieved to have been written by St. Columba (Columcille) in the 
sixth century. Like the former, it consists of a silver case adorn- 
ed with bas-reliefs and enclosing the wooden box in which the 
vellum book was deposited. The book itself is in better pre- 
servation than that enclosed in the " Domnach," which is all the 
more remarkable from the use to which it was put for many cen- 
turies. It was, in fact, the battle-standard of the clan O'Donnell, 
and was carried on many a hard-fought field down to the close 



1 70 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 

of the sixteenth century. The silver case itself was made in the 
eleventh, and thus we have an example unique in history of a 
national standard preserved unscathed through over five centu- 
ries of war, and, indeed, through twice that period as far as the 
book which formed a part of it was concerned. 

It would be too long here to enter into a description of the 
other ornamented book-caskets which still exist in the museums 
of Ireland and other countries. The reliquaries proper, such as 
were used in other Catholic countries, were also a favorite labor 
of the Celtic artists, and specimens are preserved which may be 
fairly described as magnificent types of mediaeval art. A class 
of objects on which the skill of the metal-workers was much em- 
ployed both in Ireland and in other countries was the episco- 
pal crosiers. The crosier of William of Wykeham, the celebrated 
architect-bishop of Winchester, is still counted among the finest 
specimens of English art in the middle ages. Several similar ob- 
jects of at least equal merit are preserved in Ireland. That made 
for the bishop of Limerick in the fifteenth century, and still in 
the possession of his successor, is a fine example of later Celtic 
work. The pastoral staff of the abbots of Clonmacnoise, dating 
from the eleventh century, is still finer. The ornamental crosiers 
in Ireland were really cases for the old staffs of the first bishops 
or abbots of the sees or monasteries, which very frequently were 
preserved as relics through many ages. The staff of St. Patrick 
himself was thus preserved in Dublin down to the middle of the 
sixteenth century, when it was burned by the malevolence of the 
then governing fanatics. 

Great as was the skill shown in the objects already mentioned, 
it was surpassed by the Workmanship of the processional cross 
made for the archbishop of Tuam in 1123, and which is perhaps 
unequalled in its kind anywhere. It is about three feet high and 
covered with tracery in gold of patterns whose exquisite finish 
and variety of design are simply bewildering. One "face alone 
contains forty-six panels of open work, none of which is in any 
way a copy of the other, though the general character of the 
whole is preserved with consummate art. A crystal case on the 
centre enshrines a relic of the true cross, and jewels and enamels 
are freely employed in other places, giving the whole a character 
of the utmost richness without the least appearance of barbaric 
ostentation. The interlaced patterns of filigree are worked out 
with a finish of detail peculiarly Celtic, and even under a power- 
ful lens it is impossible to find a trace of careless execution in 
the smallest parts. A chalice with two handles, found in Long- 



1883.] ANCIENT CELTIC ART. 171 

ford, and thence known as the Ardagh Chalice, is an equally fine 
specimen of work in its kind. It is made of four metals, copper 
and brass being the basis of the work, on which the ornaments 
are raised in silver and gold. It is a good deal larger than a 
modern chalice, and is hemispherical in shape. A band of gold 
filigree runs around the cup and another around the stem, and 
circular medallions in low relief are disposed between the two. 
As an example of the combination of simplicity of form with the 
most elaborate ornament it would be hard to equal even at the 
present time the beauty of this triumph of old Celtic design and 
workmanship. 

The painter's art was chiefly employed in Ireland on the illu- 
mination of books, of which several beautiful examples are still in 
existence. Indeed, the illumination of manuscripts was the only 
kind of painting .known north of the Alps for several hundred 
years. Painting in oil, as it is well known, was only discovered in 
the fourteenth century, and fresco, though it continued in use in 
Italy, was hardly known elsewhere in western Europe down to 
the thirteenth century. Though distemper colors were used as 
a means of wall decoration in Ireland, they have mostly perished. 
In Cormac's Chapel there are, indeed, traces of former coloring 
still visible, but there is only one picture, properly so called, of 
Celtic production now remaining in Ireland. This is a repre- 
sentation of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, on the walls of the 
abbey of Knockmoy in Connaught, and, though interesting as 
preserving the dress of the time in which it was painted, it is in 
too dilapidated a state to enable us to draw any conclusion from 
it respecting the position of painting in ancient Ireland. The 
case, however, is very different with the illuminated manuscripts, 
many of which are preserved in Trinity College and in the Royal 
Irish Academy, as well as in numerous museums and libraries 
both in England and on the Continent of Europe. The Ambro- 
sian Library at Milan, the Royal Library of Turin, the National 
Library at Paris, and the old monasteries of St. Gall in Switzer- 
land, Rheinau in Germany, and many others, contain numerous 
valuable specimens of Celtic art in this line, and in England itself 
the Irish manuscripts known as the Books of Lindisfarne and 
Durham are recognized as the choicest works of the kind which 
that country possesses. 

The practice of decorating books by ornament had been fol- 
lowed extensively by the ancients, but it assumed greater impor- 
tance after the downfall of the Roman Empire. The first steps 
taken were confined to writing the first words of a chapter or a 



1 72 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 

page in a different-colored ink from the rest. Afterwards the 
initial letters were enlarged and made ornamental by the addi- 
tion of flourishes and color. Ornament was next carried around 
the margin of the page, forming a kind of frame for the text itself, 
and finally miniatures and pictures of various kinds were in- 
troduced to illustrate it. From the fifth century down to the 
close of the sixteenth the ornamentation of manuscripts was an 
important part of the painter's art in every country of Europe. 
Many of the great Italian artists of later times, including Giotto, 
Fra Angelico, and Perugino, employed their talent on the minia- 
tures of books, and the practice was only abandoned after the in- 
troduction of wood and steel engraving on paper. But even the 
finest illustrated works give a faint idea of the glories of the me- 
diaeval illuminations which were their prototypes, and which for 
over a thousand years were the chief art-works of the whole 
of western Europe. 

Celtic illumination, like the other Celtic arts, has a distinctive 
character of its own. It borrowed nothing from Byzantine or 
Italian painting, and it produced forms of ornament wholly un- 
known to those schools. The rudeness of its early attempts 
shows clearly the want of any model in pre-existing art, while its 
masterpieces are wholly unrivalled in their kind either for origi- 
nality or for exquisite finish. An Irish manuscript in St. John's 
College in Cambridge, which belongs to the sixth or seventh cen- 
tury, shows a representation of the Crucifixion which might well 
be the work of an infant, but was apparently the best attempt the 
writer could make, though the writing itself is by no means bad. 
Other books show a marked improvement on this primitive style 
of art, though of course perspective was unknown in those early 
pictures. The ornament gradually assumed a definite though 
by no means a mechanical type. Narrow bands interlaced diago- 
nally, serpents intertwined in peculiar knots, and the double spiral, 
which is such a marked feature of all purely Celtic" ornament, 
were the main elements of the border decoration, and can be re- 
cognized at a glance as Celtic by a trained eye. The initial letters 
were magnified to a size unknown in any other style, and filled in 
with tracery in almost endless patterns, until each of them became 
a veritable picture, covering often an entire page. Some of these 
ornamented letters are twelve or fifteen inches in height, and de- 
signed with an endless variety of form and ornament. Besides 
these ornamental letters small decorations in the form of animals, 
plants, or geometric tracery were used to fill up the broken lines 
at the ends of paragraphs, and pictures illustrative of the text 



1883.] ANCIENT CELTIC ART, 173 

were frequently made part of each page. The copy of the Gos- 
pels known as the " Garland of Howth," which was written in the 
seventh century, is the rudest of the illuminated manuscripts in 
the Trinity College library, but its borders are marked by the 
distinctive Celtic tracery, as well as the more elaborate works. 
The Books of Durrow, of Mac Regal, of Dimna and Armagh are 
all beautiful specimens of illumination and far superior in execu- 
tion to the " Garland of Howth." The " Book of Lindisfarne," in 
England, is reckoned by Mr. Westwood, one of the best authorities 
on the subject, as the finest illuminated work in that country, but 
he adds that it is undoubtedly Irish itself. The " Missal of St. 
Columban," an Irish saint of the sixth century, and founder of the 
monasteries of Luxeuil in France and Bobbio in Italy, is also a 
beautiful work. It is in theAmbrosian Library at Milan, in Italy 
for the old Irish books lie scattered far and wide over Europe. 
But the masterpiece of the Celtic school is undoubtedly the copy 
of the Gospels on vellum known as the " Book of Kells," from the 
ancient monastery in which it was long preserved and where it 
may have been written. It is in the library of Trinity College, to 
which it was presented in the reign of James I. by Archbishop 
Ussher. 

The style of decoration of this wonderful book is unlike any- 
thing which we are in the habit of seeing elsewhere in pictorial 
art. It has no resemblance to the miniatures of Italian art, and 
but little to the illuminated missals of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries of France and Germany, yet the beauty of its designs 
and the perfection of its work strike an impression of admiration 
mixed with wonder on every one who examines its pages. One 
is literally dazzled with the beauty and harmony of its coloring, 
the wonderful intricacy yet perfect symmetry of its lines, and 
the boldness with which mere letters are converted into works 
of the highest art. Nearly every one of its three hundred and 
thirty pages contains ten or twelve illuminated capitals, not one 
of which resembles another in finish, yet each is unrivalled else- 
where in ornamental lettering. The same variety is seen in the 
borders, in the figures of animals and flowers at the ends of 
broken lines, and in the small pictures of the Gospel scenes scat- 
tered over the pages. But the most wonderful parts of the 
whole are the four pages prefixed to the four Gospels, each of 
which is occupied by two or three initial letters wrought into a 
picture of surpassing beauty. The various shades of vermilion, 
crimson, blue, yellow, green, purple, and orange are blended 
with rainbow-like brilliancy through a network of tracery so 



174 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 

fine and yet so accurate that it resembles the perfection of the 
most delicate flower rather than the work of a human hand. As 
in the works of nature, so in these marvellous pages, the use 
of a powerful microscope only brings out features unobserved at 
first from their minuteness, but fails to show a single false stroke, 
or even wavering line, in its delicate traceries. Animals, birds, 
serpents, foliage, human faces, and angelic forms are blended 
with its lines in a composition which has no sign of confusion in 
its marvellous intricacy. It is, indeed, the very perfection of the 
draughtsman's skill, such as elsewhere has no parallel in the whole 
range of art. 

The age of the " Book of Kells " is unknown, but mention is 
made of it in the Irish annals in the year 1002 as already com- 
pleted, though how long before we have no means of learning. 
Though the later manuscripts still preserved fall short of its 
finish, many of them, such as the " Gospels of Ricemarch," exe- 
cuted in the eleventh century, are very beautiful works and show 
no trace of the formal copyism which is the sure mark of a decay- 
ing art. After the Norman invasion, however, Irish illumination 
seems to have quickly perished. The works executed after that 
date are few in number and show scanty traces of the exuberant 
fancy and patient industry so marked in the old manuscripts. 
It was not that illumination as an art had been abandoned, for 
many most beautiful works of the kind were produced in other 
countries for fully four centuries afterwards ; but the purely Cel- 
tic style seems to have been unable to survive the destructive 
influences of foreign rule and endless war. The more delicate 
art of painting seems to have been the first to succumb, for, as we 
have seen, metal work of a purely Celtic character was execut- 
ed for several centuries afterwards. The school of illuminated 
painting, which for centuries had been unrivalled in Europe, 
passed into speedy decay, and was at length so forgotten in its 
native land that its very existence was doubted in the last cen- 
tury. More recent investigations have in our own days been 
successful in calling attention to its merits, and thus throwing 
light on one of the most interesting chapters in the history of 
European art. 

Celtic sculpture is not less peculiar in its character than the 
other branches of the fine arts, and it bears the same stamp of 
laborious finish and endless variety. Colossal statues like those 
of Egypt, or even the life-size sculpture so common in Roman 
art, seem to have been little used among the Irish Celts. What- 
ever, indeed, they may have done in the way of religious art 



1883.] ANCIENT CELTIC ART. 175 

in that branch was destroyed by the fanaticism of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries. But it does not seem that statuary 
was ever much practised in ancient Ireland. Stone-cutting and 
moulding had been in use among the pagan Celts, and it was 
to elaborating it into relief carving of natural objects, and finally 
of the human figure, that their descendants turned their efforts. 
In their more ornamental buildings flat surfaces were covered 
with tracery hardly less elaborate than the metal shrines and 
illuminated writings which seem to have suggested its use. But 
it is in the detached monuments erected to record public events 
or to mark the tombs of the mighty dead that the best and most 
characteristic sculptor's work was employed. The crosses, cov- 
ered with relief pictures, in stone, which were the favorite monu- 
mental form in the days of old, are still numerous in Ireland and 
constitute almost as typical a class of its antiquities as the round 
towers themselves. A modern artist has engraved twenty- 
three of those monuments of Celtic times, and he has by no 
means exhausted the list. Every stage of progress in this form 
of monument is represented in existing examples, from the plain 
Cross of Finglas, and the flat stone marked with incised lines 
which covered the ordinary graves, to the combination of sculp- 
ture and ornament of the finest kind on the crosses of Tuam and 
Monasterboice. In some of the erect monuments the form of 
the flag is scarcely different from that laid over the graves. In 
others the form of the cross is marked by four circular holes in 
a plain slab, which in yet other examples is developed still more 
by projections at the top and sides in continuation of the arms. 
The next step was to give the body of the stone itself a circular 
form, with the ends of the arms projecting beyond it; and finally 
spandrels were pierced within the circle itself, giving the well- 
known form of the Celtic cross surrounded by a circle. It is on 
crosses of this form, which itself was evidently the outcome of 
considerable practice in monumental work, that the sculptured 
decorations were chiefly executed. We fortunately know the 
date of several of these, from which we can form an idea of the 
condition of the art at different ages. The great cross at Clon- 
macnoise, erected as a memorial of the monarch of Ireland, Flan, 
in the year 912, is indeed a beautiful work, but its execution is far 
surpassed by that of the crosses of Monasterboice and Tuam. 
The latter, having been erected in 1123, indicates that a progress 
had been made in sculpture almost up to the date of the Norman 
invasion. The Tuam cross is estimated to have been thirty feet 
in height, though it has been diminished by subsequent breaking, 



176 ANCIENT CELTIC ART. [Nov., 

while the Clonmacnoise and most of the other crosses are not 
over twelve or fifteen feet. The finest examples are, perhaps, the 
three crosses still standing in the graveyard of Monasterboice, 
near Drogheda, where generations have uninterruptedly found a 
resting-place from the present day back to a dim and unknown 
antiquity. Headstones erected by residents of New York and 
New Jersey over the graves of their relatives stand under the 
shadow of these Celtic monuments which have weathered the 
storms of at least eight hundred years. It must be said that, in 
an artistic view, the contrast between the baldness and poverty 
of the modern monuments and the elaboration and grace of the 
old crosses is anything but flattering to the work of the pre- 
sent time. The ancient crosses are covered with figures in small 
compartments ; in fact, they might be called pictures in relief 
rather than anything else. None of the figures exceed fourteen 
or fifteen inches in height, but they are worked out with an elabo- 
ration and spirit that are wonderful. The panels are divided by 
mouldings, and parts of the flat sides are also covered with in- 
terlaced ornament by way of relief to the monotony of such 
a number of figures. The mouldings, in the form of interlaced 
serpents with heads between their coils, are more like the work 
of a skilful painter than of a stone-cutter, and still retain their 
clearness of outline unaffected by time. The most remarkable 
thing about those crosses, however, is the skill with which any- 
thing of confusion or pettiness is avoided in such a variety of 
ornament No other school seemed to possess this power of 
elaborating details with subordination to the general composition 
in the same degree as the old Celts. The result was the same 
whether they wrought- in colors, in metal, or in stone, and it is 
the feature in their works which most conclusively shows the na- 
tive artistic feelings of the race. 

The decay of the once flourishing Celtic arts after the Nor- 
man invasion is most remarkable. Working in a track of their 
own during at least seven centuries, they had achieved results 
which gave promise of a still higher development in the increas- 
ing civilization of the middle ages, when their growth was sud- 
denly arrested. The thirteenth century was, indeed, the golden 
age of mediaeval art. The finest cathedrals of Europe, the sculp- 
tures of Rheims and Bourges, the glories of stained glass in the 
Holy Chapel of Paris, and all the noblest works of art in the 
ages belong to the thirteenth century, which may fairly 
rded as one of the greatest epochs of art. It was pre- 
|the commencement of this period, when the elements of 







1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER" s CLOCK. 177 

the civilization that had been gradually forming itself on the 
ruins of the Roman Empire were opening into maturity, that the 
native Celtic art, which had shown the greatest originality of all 
in western Europe, was suddenly crushed. It would be too 
long to attempt here to investigate the causes of this decay. 
The art of illumination was the first to perish, and the Celtic 
style of building and sculpture speedily followed. In ornamental 
works of metal it lingered on, though with diminished perfection, 
for some centuries, and did not wholly disappear until the de- 
struction of the Irish monastic schools under Henry VIII. On 
this subject, however, deeply interesting as it is, we shall not 
here enter. Our purpose is simply to show the character of art 
as it was developed by the Celtic mind in the last independent 
Celtic nation, and we shall not, therefore, pursue its history 
beyond the revolution which established a foreign race and alien 
arts on the soil of Celtic Ireland. 






OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. 

OUR grandmother's dear old clock was an object of childish 
reverence to the grandchildren whose home she came in her 
old age to share ; and to have grandmother was to have her 
clock, for if anything had happened to her old clock it would 
have broken her heart. This old clock was brought with other 
less sacred household gods when the spirit of adventure had 
seized upon grandfather and made him leave the honored bor- 
ders of old Virginia for a home in the far West. Like other 
pioneers, he builded better than he knew, and the little village 
where he invested his modest fortune had grown. and prospered 
far beyond anything he could have dreamed. 

At many a " children's hour " or on rainy afternoons we chil- 
dren would gather around grandmother's big chair and listen to 
the stories of the old Virginia days, when she was a young girl 
in her mother's home ; for those days were full of stirring inci- 
dents the days of the Revolution. The time when we used to 
listen to those stories was before the late war came, with its more 
recent thrilling episodes and wonderful successes, to cast into 
the background the heroism of the Revolutionary war. Grand- 
mother knew many stories and anecdotes of the courage and 

VOL. XXXVIII. 12 






178 OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. [Nov., 

fidelity of the patriots who had stood side by side, heart with 
heart and shoulder to shoulder, through all the dark hours of that 
war. 

There in sight of the old clock we often listened to those sto- 
ries, and to the story of the part that old clock had played in our 
family history a part which had caused it to be loved and cher- 
ished almost as if it were a living thing and had known and sym- 
pathized in the joys and sorrows of a life lengthened beyond the 
threescore years and ten. Many a scene had it contemplated 
from its quiet corner ! And now that all the actors in those 
checkered scenes of the past were gone except one feeble old 
woman, the clock seemed to have about it some of the pathetic 
dignity of the dear, white-haired old lady who loved it. The 
hours and days that the faithful hands had marked as they moved 
around the face of the clock, while they took from her the charms 
of youth, only added sweetness and grace to grandmother's soul; 
and in her -serene and beautiful old age, having learned to 
accept all things as coming through a Father's wisdom, she now 
could quietly wait the hour when she should hear its familiar 
" tick " for the last time, and there should be ushered in for her 
the life where should be time no more, and the light that makes 
all clear should shine for her. The following is the story, which 
I shall relate in substance, and as nearly as my memory will 
allow, in grandmother's own words : 

I wish that I could describe the old home at Mount Airy 
so that my dear children might know how wonderful it all 
was. Far away in the distance could be seen the Peaks of Otter 
like a blue line across the sky ; sitting or standing on the porch 
at the side of the house, we could see the river and the old mill 
covered with the Virginia creeper. This mill supplied the neigh- 
bors for miles around with their corn-meal and flour ; connected 
with it was a country store. All of these things seem very plain 
to my mind as I am telling you about them ; but if a fairy carpet 
were suddenly let down here, and I could be transported to the 
place once so familiar, I should find so many changes that it 
would not seem like the same spot. The store-house and the 
old mill were gone many years ago, and the mill-race has long 
since disappeared. Several colonies of crows had established 
themselves in the big trees behind the old mill. Doubtless the 
neighborhood of the mill was a land of plenty for them ; but, 
after the fashion of crows, they were not satisfied with what they 
could get right by their nests, but sent out parties every day in 
.search of fresh fields. To watch the return of these explorers 





1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. 179 

at sundown was a great amusement to us in our evening walks 
to the mill. I seem now to see them flying back in companies, 
and to hear their " caw," " caw " as those at home welcomed the 
new-comers; each party vociferating louder than the one who 
had come in before, as they related to their friends the news of 
the day. If it be true that crows can live a hundred years some 
of those very crows may be centenarians dwelling in the tops 
of some neighboring trees ; but the big gnarled trees that used 
to be their habitat have grown old and died or were cut down 
many years ago. Only the everlasting mountains are there, and 
the river goes on its way to the sea. 

The store-house and the mill, besides being centres of trade, 
were the headquarters for all the news that found its way to 
that quiet corner of the world. One day, just after Lord Dun- 
more's act of tyranny in sending the powder which belonged to 
the colonies on board a man-of-war, the word came to the mill 
that Virginia was rising in arms to resent this high-handed pro- 
ceeding of the governor. That morning, soon after the news 
came, Cato went on an errand to the mill ; he returned so quickly 
that when we saw him coming we knew something must be the 
matter. The length of time he usually took to accomplish 
these errands had become something of a joke in the household. 
He was a great authority in matters religious, social, and political 
with his colored brethren, and at the mill he almost always 
found an audience, some of whom needed to be labored with 
as to doctrine, others turned from the errors of their way and 
brought back into the fold, or else some sought to be enlighten- 
ed as to deportment and social ethics generally. 

But on the day I speak of he did not allow any grass to 
grow under his feet, so soon did he make his appearance before 
his master with the great news that troops were being mus- 
tered into service and that the din and preparation for war 
were being heard through the land. My father put aside the 
traditions of his early English home and cast in his lot with 
the people of his adopted country. His arrangements were 
soon made, and, bidding us a hurried farewell, he rode away to 
the scene of war, accompanied by Cato, his trusty body-servant. 
Cato came home in a year, leading his master's horse, but the 
master came no more to the wife and children who loved him 
and waited for his return in vain ; his grave was made far from 
home and kindred. From the day of Cato's return without his 
master something had gone from mother's life, and the world was 
never the same again to her; but, with the quiet heroism that 



i8o OUR GRANDMOTHER' s CLOCK. [Nov., 

glorified the women of the Revolutionary period, she took up 
again her life and its duties, and many a sick and wounded soldier 
had need to bless her name. 

Years came and went, carrying with them the lives of many 
men in the prime and vigor of life, and brave young soldiers 
who fleshed their maiden swords on the fields in which their 
lives went out, an offering for liberty and their native land ; and 
others had gone in the quiet precincts of home, no less martyrs 
and heroes, though theirs were the slower deaths from sick and 
wounded hearts which refused to be comforted because the 
loved ones could come back on earth no more. During this 
time many stories reached us of the hardships and sufferings of 
our troops ; it seemed as if each day grew darker as it closed 
around us. But the end was nearer than we knew. One day, 
towards the close of the war, an incident came to break the 
monotony of life at Mount Airy an incident which brought with 
it my fate, all unconscious as I was. So do the strong hours 
which influence our life ever come upon us. 

All of the details of that summer afternoon, even the minutest, 
are engraven on my memory with more faithfulness than the 
events of yesterday. I see with my mind's eye the far-away 
mountains, their blue tops mingling with the blue of the clouds, 
the sparkling of the little stream that ran through the lower 
meadows of Mount Airy farm, and the fields Of grain growing 
golden in the approach of harvest. We were all collected in the 
work-room, a large room on the first floor, that opened on a 
porch at the side of the house ; here the big spinning-wheel was 
kept, and the little one for flax, and here my brothers and myself 
studied and recited our lessons to mother, whose education was 
far superior to that of ladies generally of that day. I had just 
come in with a volume of Shakspere, for I was to recite Ham- 
let's soliloquy as one of my lessons. My mother .was spinning. 
I seem to see her now as she gave a turn to the big wheel with 
her left hand, stepped backwards a little way down the room, 
holding the thread with her right hand to keep it straight as it 
wound on the spindle. Mother, like most of the Virginia ladies 
of the early days, was a very skilful spinner, and the households 
during the war were badly off who did not practise this domestic 
industry. A moment or two after I entered a hurried step was 
heard on the porch and a young soldier in British uniform came 
in ; he had not had time to make any explanations before he fell 
on the floor in a fainting fit. Here was indeed a dilemma ! If it 
were known that we had harbored him we should have been in 



1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. 181. 

danger of the odious name of Tories : the Tories were even more 
obnoxious to the people than the British soldiers themselves. 
He was our enemy, for such his uniform indicated ; but my 
mother was a Christian woman, and the charity which ruled her 
life was all-embracing and could not have permitted her to turn 
aside from a sick and suffering enemy. She called Cato to come 
and help lift the young man on to the settee. A look of repul- 
sion came over the wrinkled black face as he caught sight of the 
uniform. " Oh golly ! mistis, he's a Britisher ; you's all bettah 
le'm go." "No, Cato, that cannot be; though he has come in 
the garb of an enemy, he is a sick and wounded soldier, and you 
and I and all of us will do what we can for him till he gets 
better and can go on his way, and we'll not inquire where it lies," 
was the reply of his mistress. Cato looked discontented ; his 
religion, sincere as it was, did not reach to the dignity of doing 
good to an enemy and forgiving injuries, but he made no further 
objection to helping. To question the word of his mistress 
would have been still further from his simple code of right-doing. 
The " divine rigfrt " of the slave-holder had not then been called 
in question, and if any one had asked Cato about the whole duty 
of slaves he would have answered r " De whole duty of de 
slaves am to fear de good Lor' and to 'bey de mastah and 
mistis " ; and " Cato Randolph " lived up to this doctrine. 

In God's own time the better day for the rights of man will 
come. One race has no " divine right " to hold another race in 
subjection. My mother, and many others who lived when she 
did, would have welcomed the new gospel. But while I am 
moralizing we have left the young soldier in an unconscious 
state. Mother had dressed the wound, which proved to be only 
a flesh-wound in the left arm, and he was just recovering con- 
sciousness, when Cato came hurriedly into the room with eyes 
wide open and so frightened that he could hardly speak : " O 
mistis, honey ! le' de young man go; thar's some sojers comin' 
'long de river road, and I don't misdoubt but dey's comin' right 
d'rectly h'yer. Good Lor' ! what'll 'come of us if dey finds him 
in dis house ? White folks'll jest say we's Tories." " Be quiet, 
Cato ! " said mother. " Send all of the negroes that are working 
about here straight off to the back fields ; some of them may have 
seen the young man coming in here, and I don't wish them to be 
questioned. You, I know, will not betray him, and I'll see that 
no harm comes to you if it is ever found out that we let him 
stay here." 

Then we immediately resolved ourselves into a committee of 



182 OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. [Nov., 

safety mother, my two young brothers, myself, and our faithful 
Rhoda, who was at a table in the corner cutting out some cloth- 
ing for the slaves. We must hide the stranger somewhere im- 
mediately, if we did not intend that the soldiers should have him. 
A grateful look took the place of the anxious, distressed one as 
he listened to our discussion as to where we should hide him, 
but he was too exhausted to say anything. But where could we 
put him with any hope that he would be safe ? Our house was 
a plain, old-fashioned country house, singularly bare of nooks 
or niches, with no hidden-away cupboards, mysterious panels, or 
corners that could not be easily explored. Time pressed. The 
soldiers could be seen coming up the hill, and soon the sound of 
the horses' feet on the stones would be heard. What should we 
do? Where should we hide him? We looked at one another, 
but no one had any suggestion to make. The gravity of the 
situation seemed to have bewildered us all. Just then the clock 
in the hall struck four. It seemed a note of inspiration to mo- 
ther and myself. We both spoke at once, " The clock ! " Why 
not hide him in the recess behind the clock ? Mother thought the 
very audacity of the plan might insure its safety. Right in full 
view, opposite to the front door, who could, suppose that any one 
would dream of hiding there ? No sooner thought of than the 
thing was done. Cato and Rhoda moved the clock out, the sol- 
dier walked in and took his place close to the wall, and the clock 
was soon ticking away in its old niche. We had scarcely time to 
reach our work-room and take up our occupations, so tragically 
interrupted a half hour before, when a loud knock was heard at 
the front door. The captain and his orderly walked in, and the 
captain announced his errand in courteous terms : " I am sorry, 
Mrs. Randolph, to cause this disturbance in the house where 
a brave soldier's family lives, but we have information that a 
British soldier was seen coming towards this place. Of course I 
could answer for your patriotism, but he may have hidden some- 
where without your knowledge, and I could not answer to my 
conscience and my country if I did not make a strict search for 
him. The men can search the outdoor places while the orderly 
and myself go. through the house." " You must do your duty," 
mother said ; " my house and the place are open to you." Not 
a tremor in her voice nor a look on her face showed the least 
consciousness of danger, whilst I, coward that I am, was afraid 
to look at the captain for fear that I might betray our secret by 
my frightened looks. 

They examined every cupboard, looked behind the fireboards, 






1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER* s CLOCK. 183 

up the chimneys, under the beds, and the orderly even ran his 
sword into one of the beds, for which he received a severe re- 
proof from the captain. All this time the clock ticked on undis- 
turbed in its corner. Our hearts throbbed with anxiety and fear 
as we listened for a sound from the front hall to tell us that the 
soldier was found ; but there was none, and at last the captain gave 
up the search and came back into the room to make more apolo- 
gies. In our anxiety we had taken no note of time. I had kept 
my book in hand as I sat by the window, but neither my eyes 
nor my thoughts were on its pages, but unconsciously were busy 
taking in all the accessories to the scene and fixing them for ever 
in my memory. The shadows of the trees falling across the 
walk, and, as they lengthened, gradually creeping on to the floor 
of the porch, while the sun came nearer to the top of the hill on 
the west; the turkeys coming home from some far-away field 
where they had been foraging ; the peacock spreading out his 
gorgeous tail and posing before the admiring eyes of his less 
gorgeous friends ; the chickens flying up to roost on the logs 
that projected from the kitchen corners ; the cows standing there 
waiting to be milked are all before me now. 

Mother, seeing how abstracted and anxious I looked while 
she was talking with the captain, told me to go to the kitchen 
and ask Debby to get supper ready for the captain and his men. 
Inconvenient as their presence was just then, old Virginia hos- 
pitality would not permit their going without supper. The 
kitchen was a low log building a little off from the " big house," 
as was usual where there were many slaves. As I stepped off the 
porch to comply with mother's request I saw the soldiers com- 
ing up from the quarters, which they had been searching. They 
were followed by some of the women and children, bent on find- 
ing out what the commotion was about. Fortunately none of the 
servants at the quarters had seen the stranger enter the house, 
and they could not answer any questions about him. 

The soldiers were talking and laughing ; for, though they 
had failed in their search, they could bear their disappointment 
good-naturedly with the immediate prospect of a plentiful supper 
before them a compensation which hungry soldiers would not 
be likely to refuse. Even then they were greeted, as they came 
up to the kitchen door, with savory whiffs from Debby's cooking. 
Debby, on hospitable thoughts intent, and appreciating " mistis' ' 
anxiety to get rid of the captain and his men, was hurrying the 
supper with all possible speed. The huge logs in the big fire- 
place, that extended almost the entire length of one side of the 



OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. [Nov., 

cabin, blazed and crackled ; their bright flames were reflected in 
the pewter dishes and plates and on the porringers arranged, 
with due regard to artistic effect, on the opposite shelves. This 
wealth of pewter was the delight of Aunt Debby's heart, and to 
keep it bright and shiny the begin-all and end-all of her clear- 
ing-up times. According to Debby's way of looking at things, 
the honor of all the dead and gone Randolphs, as well as that of 
the present generation, was concerned in the matter of keeping 
the pewter dishes bright. There was a time before this eventful 
day that Debby had a grievance about her pewter. In one of 
the great emergencies of the army mother and many other Vir- 
ginia women gave up their household silver and substituted 
pewter. When Debby found that some of her cherished pewter 
was to be melted and made over into spoons to supply the de- 
ficiency caused by this sacrifice, she sulked for days ; but finally 
when mother told her that many of our soldiers were barefooted 
and only half-clothed, and did not have enough to eat, she for- 
gave the vandalism and had no more to say about "po' white 
folks' way," and took her revenge by giving an extra " shine " 
to what was left. On the brightness of her pewter vessels, the 
exact twist of her gay Madras turban, and the immaculate white- 
ness of her three-cornered handkerchief and her apron she took 
her stand and defied her enemies. T-hese articles of her ward- 
robe were reserved for Sundays and grand " company " days, when 
she put them on and took her place behind her mistress' chair; 
they enjoyed a wide reputation in colored circles and were the 
despair of her rivals. 

Before night came on the captain and his men had gone 
down to the river road and disappeared ; the stranger had come 
out of his hiding-place, had eaten his supper, and vanished from 
our life, as we supposed ; though when he told us good-by and 
expressed his thanks for the great kindness he had received he 
said significantly that if his life were spared we should hear 
from him again. 

The state of the colonies at that time is pathetically told in all 
American history, and the courage, fidelity, and fortitude of the 
soldiers of the Revolutionary war need no eulogium from me. 
Not long after the incident at Mount Airy which I have just re- 
lated news of frequent disasters and losses in the army reached 
us; but courage and hope were still the watchwords, no matter 
how discouraging seemed the fortunes of war. Mother received, 
some weeks after this, a letter from an old friend urging her to 
come to Williamsburg to make a visit, and to bring " Polly " 



1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. . 185 

(that's myself) with her. Mrs. Preston was my godmother, and I 
had not seen her since I was a little girl. In those troublous 
times people did not think much about visiting ; the stern reali- 
ties of war did not well accord with gayety. 

If mother had not felt like accepting this invitation for her- 
self, the arguments used by her friend, that " it would do Polly 
good," and "she will never again have the chance to see so 
many distinguished people in one place as we shall have at 
Williamsburg," would have turned the balance in favor of the 
visit. General Washington and his corps, General Lafayette, 
and many officers, both French and American, were coming, or 
had already come, into that neighborhood ; for the interest of the 
war seemed to be centring in that part of Virginia, whilst along 
the coast vessels were passing up and down, waiting for what 
might happen. 

Williamsburg had been mother's home in her girlhood and 
was full of associations for her of pleasure and of sorrow, and the 
feelings with which she looked forward to seeing it again par- 
took of both ; but for me it was all rosy-hued and pleasant, as 
was natural at my age. The letter of acceptance was written 
and sent, and next in importance was, what should we wear 
while making this famous visit? Our country costumes were not 
suitable for the great people that we might expect to meet at the 
parties, balls, and entertainments which would be given in their 
honor while they were in Williamsburg or in camp not far off. 
Mother could not, feeling as she did about the soldiers, consent 
that much money should be spent in making ourselves fine while 
the army was often without food ; so she said we must draw on 
the resources to be found in the old trunks and cupboards to 
help us in getting ready. The silks, brocades, laces, slippers, and 
fans which mother and her sister Peggy had worn in their girl- 
hood and were amongst the toasts, belles, and beauties of the 
colony, had long been folded away as relics of days that were 
full of pleasure as they glided away, but were now associated 
with the sound of steps that would be heard no more and voices 
that were stilled for ever. These dresses now, for the first time 
in years, were brought out, and fortunately could be made to fit 
me without much trouble. Amongst these things were two white 
satin dresses the wedding dresses of the Pleasants girls, mother 
and her sister Peggy. All yellow with age they now were, but 
how rich and beautiful they had been in their freshness ! We 
thought it sacrilege to put them to use again, so they were 
folded away with lavender and sweet marjoram. 



1 86 OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. [Nov., 

These Pleasants sisters were twins, and married the same 
day to young English officers : many English gentlemen came as 
visitors when Virginia was a colony. The residence of the gov- 
ernor was often the scene of gayety, and during the sessions of 
the House of Burgesses no place in America could have shown 
more elegance and refinement than Williamsburg. 

Aunt Peggy, before the honeymoon was over, had started 
with her husband in a vessel from Norfolk for their future home 
across the sea, but the vessel never reached the shores of En- 
gland. The groom and his young bride, with all on board, were 
lost in a storm at sea. My father bought the Mount Airy farm 
and identified himself with mother's country and people, and was, 
as I have already told you, one of the early martyrs for liberty 
in America. 

After it was finally decided that we should go to Williams- 
burg, Cato was called in to consult about our journey, as to how 
we could make it in the best and safest manner. Cato, in his 
humble way, had ever since father's death constituted himself 
our " guide, philosopher, and friend," and had often shown such 
shrewdness, courage, and fidelity that we felt justified in follow- 
ing his advice on many occasions. " How about the carriage, 
Cato ?" was the question put to him one afternoon as he put his 
shining, ebony face into the window of the work-room. " Can 
it be made fit for us to travel in ? " 

" I dunno, mistis," was Cato's answer, rolling up his eyes 
until little but the white was to be seen, and assuming the conse- 
quential air he always took on when he was to act the part of 
Mentor ; " it's dun stayed so long shet up in the carriage-shed. 
Howsomever, me an' Pete'll tote it out and 'vestigate how it am." 

The 'vestigation showing that it might be made fit to travel 
in without any great loss to the dignity of the Randolphs, the 
old family coach, so long given up to desolation and. decay, was 
furbished up, whole generations of spiders having been turned 
out of the hiding-places they so long had had all to them- 
selves, with unquestioned liberty to weave all the webs they 
wished over the seats and across the windows. Now the cold 
charity of the world became their only refuge. It would be a 
curiosity, this old carriage, nowadays, with its inside pockets 
and other conveniences for travellers. To go in one's own 
family carriage or on horseback, accompanied by a servant, was 
the favorite way to travel with people of means who lived at the 
time we are talking about. 

All being ready for our departure, we started one bright 






1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. 187 

September morning, with Cato for driver and general care-taker, 
and Rhoda for our maid, down the road that would in time take 
us to Williamsburg. Circumstances and the war had prevented 
my leaving our own county since I had been old enough to 
take any notice of the country through which our road lay. It 
is no wonder that, full of glowing anticipations as I was, this 
visit to Williamsburg should have been a great event in my life, 
and that the impression it made on my mind should have been 
so strong that many of the years which lie between this time and 
that seem as unreal as dreams, whilst the year of that visit stands 
forth on the canvas with unlessened vividness. 

The road lay for a great part of the time between two rivers, 
the James and the York, and on both sides the scenery was very 
beautiful. After leaving the Blue Ridge country and descend- 
ing into the lowlands it had assumed new features. After the 
first days I missed the long line of blue in the horizon such a 
familiar sight all my life the big trees, and the little streams that 
have their birthplace in the mountains and hills, and, dancing 
suddenly down across the road, stop the traveller's journey 
until he can improvise rocky bridges or ford the stream at his 
own discretion. These little wayfarers were left behind as the 
third day brought us to the lowlands of Virginia and the pine 
bottoms. We missed, too, the familiar sound of " Whip-poor- 
will," "Whip-poor-will," and "Bob White," "Bob White." 
Now the call of new birds, as we disturbed them at their plea- 
sures, broke the quiet of the little thickets " Chuck-will's- 
widow," " Chuck-will's-widow," and " Chick-a-biddy," " Chick-a- 
biddy." 

Until we came down-stairs to breakfast at the little country 
tavern on the last morning of our journey we had not thought 
of any danger, and were quite surprised to find that a party of 
soldiers had reached there at daylight. Some intelligence had 
been brought to Colonel Preston that made him feel anxious 
about us, and he had detailed some of his men to act as our 
escort the rest of the journey to Williamsburg. We felt a little 
like prisoners when we looked out of the carriage windows and 
saw ourselves surrounded by soldiers, though they were a 
guard of honor merely ; neither British soldier nor Tory came 
in sight. 

There was something about the captain of this escort that 
suggested the young British soldier whom we had hidden behind 
the clock. Absurd ! I should have said, if I had given words to 
the thought. What could there be in common between an Ameri- 



1 88 OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. [Nov., 

can officer at the head of his men and a fugitive soldier whose 
life was at the mercy of the merest accident?" All the same, I 
kept on thinking- of the British soldier and wondering as to what 
his fate had been. 

It was near sunset when we reached Williamsburg ; the tents 
of the soldiers, grouped on the ridge and arranged along the 
line of the creek, looked very picturesque, with the dark pines not 
far off fora background. It was the hour for exercising and drill- 
ing the troops, and they were forming in the field on the out- 
skirts of town ; their bayonets gleamed in the sunset light, and 
the clouds made brilliant pictures of themselves on the face of 
the creeks. In the distance the white memorials of the dead 
were seen in the little city's churchyard ; not very populous had 
this corner of God's great acre been before the war, but now 
stones had sprung up and nameless graves been hollowed out 
since war and rumors of war had turned this rural neighborhood 
into a tented field and the heavy tread of soldiers had drowned 
the light footfall of happy children. But what was it all to the 
quiet sleepers beneath the stones or in the nameless graves? 
For them life's work was closed, life's story written, and they 
had passed into the silent land across the river, and for them 
there was now 

" No backward path, oh ! no returning, 1 
No second crossing that ripple's flow." 

This was my first sight of a drill or parade, and I was only 
too glad to wait until it was over, as our friend, Mrs. Preston, 
who had come out to meet us, suggested that we should do, and 
listen to the music. Our own soldiers did not look so fine and 
imposing as the French troops. As a rule, they, poor fellows ! 
could not have been very strict in regard to their uniform, but 
had generally to wear what they could get ; but, true as steel 
and good as gold, they kept on to the end. 

After a fortnight had passed the air became so filled with 
talk about the gathering-in of troops, our own and others, anti- 
cipations of battles and rumors of skirmishes which had taken 
place in the neighborhood, that mother became uneasy about 
home, and feared that if we did not go immediately we should 
not be able to do so in safety for a long time to come. 

I need not say that every hour of that fortnight was golden 
and life a holiday. A country girl, who had been in the habit of 
going to bed with the chickens and getting up with the morning- 
glories ; whose only variety in life had heretofore been an occa- 



1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. 

sional ride on horseback with mother or a servant to the little 
church in the nearest town, and whose only finery had consisted 
of a yard or two of ribbon was it to be wondered at that 
my thoughts did not rest so often as, perhaps, they should have 
done if I had been older and wiser, upon the sorrow and death 
that would follow in the trail of this pomp and pageantry of 
war? 

Many other visitors besides ourselves had come from the up- 
country to Williamsburg to see what they could never see 
again. The culmination of my pleasure came with the- ball 
given the night before we left Williamsburg in honor of the 
strangers gathered there. Mrs. Preston was chosen by the lady 
patronesses to act as hostess on the occasion and to receive the 
guests. And as such hostess she opened the ball with General 
Lafayette, he being the senior officer amongst the foreign officers 
at the assembly, though there were others of equal if not higher 
rank in the neighborhood. How tame and insignificant seem 
the dances of to-day in comparison with the figures of the stately 
minuet ! During the time that this dance was going on General 
Washington and a few other officers stood at the upper end of 
the hall, talking to some old friends amongst the ladies. He and 
mother had a conversation about old times : they had met years 
before in Williamsburg. But before long he and General Lafay- 
ette had disappeared. 

Mother and myself were still at the upper end of the hall 
when Mrs. Preston came up to us with the young captain who 
had acted as our escort into Williamsburg. " My dear Lottie," 
said she, " let me introduce Captain Pryor to you and Polly ; he 
claims to have had the honor of meeting you before this even- 
ing." 

Mother looked surprised. " I see you do not recognize me, 
and no wonder. I am the young man who sought your pro- 
tection one afternoon last summer," said he. 

" That must be a mistake," replied mother, " for the young 
man that sought shelter at our house last summer was dressed 
in the British uniform ; and it would be hard to think an Ame- 
rican soldier could have been going about the country in such a 
masquerade as that." 

" This is scarcely the time or place to make explanations," 
said he ; " but won't you take Mrs. Preston as my surety, and 
permit your daughter to dance the next dance with me? To- 
morrow I hope to have the honor of waiting upon you. I wi^l 
then set myself right in your estimation, I hope, and set your 



190 OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. [Nov., 

conscience at ease, if you have ever had any scruples about hav- 
ing given shelter to an enemy." 

It was a long time after this eventful evening, however, be- 
fore we heard that promised explanation. In the morning quiet 
reigned over Williamsburg. About midnight General Washing- 
ton gave orders for the troops to move on towards Yorktown, 
and before daylight the camps around Williamsburg were broken 
up, the tents folded, and the troops miles away, and Captain 
Pryor with them. Only a few companies were left for the pro- 
tection of Williamsburg and to guard the rear of the army. We 
heard, through our friend Mrs. Preston, that Captain Pryor had 
been wounded and taken prisoner at Yorktown. 

So again Captain Pryor seemed to have vanished from our 
view. Months had passed in the usual commonplace life, and 
now September had come again. I had gone one day on horse- 
back to visit some friends a few miles off, and it was nearly even- 
ing when I rode into the yard at home. I noticed Aunt Debby 
seemed in a hurry and flutter about supper, and wondered what 
it all meant. As soon as she caught sight of me she came run- 
ning up to the porch and said : " Oh ! jist you be in de greatest 
kind of a hurry, honey, and be sho' you ^put on your purtiest 
dress, for dar's de finest kind o' young man talkin' to Miss 
Lottie in de parlor" " Miss Lottie " was mother. 

I did not stop to follow Aunt Debby's advice, but went in 
without making myself pretty. My heart had whispered who it 
was, and had not misled me. Captain Pryor sat there talking to 
mother. He had already made explanations, and they were re- 
peated for me : 

" You will not so much wonder at General Washington's 
kindness to me when I tell you that he and my father were 
friends in their boyhood and afterwards served together under 
General Braddock. The hardships and mortifications of the un- 
fortunate expedition against Fort Duquesne united them in a 
still closer friendship. In many respects they were counterparts, 
alike in courage and fortitude ; father was less fortunate than 
his friend in having died before his great qualities became 
known beyond the narrow circle of his friends, while his friend 
has lived long enough to save and bless his country. The wife 
and young son of his dead friend and companion-in-arms were 
not forgotten by General Washington, and when he took the 
command of the American army he gave me a place near him. 

"I had been constantly with him when the occasion arose 
which made it necessary to send some one, on whose fidelity he 



1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. 191 

could rely, from New York to be the bearer of instructions and 
information to the Marquis de Lafayette. I had the honor of 
being- selected for that important service. After I had delivered 
my letters and instructions to the marquis, and he had read them, 
he turned to me, and, with the exquisite politeness that marks his 
bearing even to the common soldier, he expressed great plea- 
sure in making my acquaintance. .After a few moments of 
thoughtful silence he said : 

" ' Man ami, the good general recommends you very highly 
as a young man who can be trusted to perform a difficult and 
dangerous task. I need at this time just such a person.' 

" I bowed in return for his politeness, and told him that I 
should feel honored if he thought me the proper person to under- 
take it. He then entered into the particulars of the service he 
required. On that very morning he had received secret intelli- 
gence that a young British soldier would be sent, on a certain 
day mentioned, from Williamsburg with some information about 
the movements of troops and instructions to a party of Tories in 
the upper country who would be in waiting for this secret mes- 
senger. The British soldier was also to bring information from 
them to Lord Cornwallis in regard to the assistance he might ex- 
pect to receive from the Tories in that part of the country. They 
had been active and alert, and held secret meetings in the differ- 
ent upper counties. It was of great importance that this mes- 
senger should be intercepted ; for things seemed in many places 
to be going against our army, and the supplies of provisions and 
ammunition were getting down to a very fine point. 

" The service for which I was selected was to personate this 
British soldier, getting to the place of rendezvous before him, 
waylay him, and, if possible, get possession of his papers; then to 
present myself to the Tories in waiting with counterfeit papers, 
get the information which they would have ready for Cornwallis, 
and return to General Lafayette as soon as possible. 

" You will not blame me if, after learning the nature of the 
service required of me, I did hesitate for a few moments before 
pledging myself to its performance. On entering the army to 
fight for my country I took, like other patriots, my life in my 
hand, and was always ready to give it up, if need were, for my 
country. But to take even seemingly the part of a traitor and to 
act the spy in that disguise, and then to waylay and attack an 
enemy in the dark, were so entirely repugnant to every instinct 
of my nature, so contrary to all the traditions of honor in which 
I had been brought up, that some moments passed before I could 



192 OUR GRANDMOTHER'S CLOCK. [Nov.,' 

consent. But then came the thought that perhaps my country 
needed just this sacrifice of feeling on my part; and if duty called 
me to an ignominious service, should I hesitate to make good 
my pledge on the altar of freedom and country ? 

" I had gotten along safely (sleeping in the daylight at the 
houses of those who were friendly to the cause and had received 
private instructions to assist me on my way, and at night making 
what speed I could towards the place of rendezvous) until the 
afternoon that your Christian charity sheltered me. Having met 
with no one before to cause me any detention, I had grown a lit- 
tle too bold, and ventured to resume my journey before night set 
in. We will pass over the events of that afternoon, already too 
well known to you and Miss Polly. 

" If I had been compelled to remain much longer hidden away 
behind that blessed old clock all would have been lost. I would 
have personated the British soldier in vain. But, happily for me, 
the same Providence who watched over my safety that summer 
afternoon, and led me to your hospitable home, permitted things 
to happen which also detained the messenger. So that, after 
all my forebodings, I reached the Cross-roads farm the place of 
rendezvous being an old stable on that farm before my unsus- 
pecting adversary. I found a little thicket a short distance from 
the stable, but near enough to command any movements that 
might be made on the outside. A little glimmer through a 
chink in the logs warned me that the hour for the meeting had 
come. Soon a man walked on past me and approached the 
building, and, giving the word, was allowed to enter. After a 
while some one opened the door and peered anxiously up and 
down the road, but he did not see me. As soon as he had gone 
back into the place and closed the door I drew a little further 
into the shelter of the friendly thicket, for I was far from wishing 
to fall into the hands of the waiting Tories. 

" The hour that I spent in the thicket waiting for the messen- 
ger was far from a cheerful one ; the moaning of the night wind 
through the trees, the rippling of a distant rivulet in its rocky 
bed, the sound of some melancholy bird, the despairing cry of 
an owl, and the croaking of the doleful frogs, were depressing to 
my heart, already weighed down by the nature of the errand that 
had brought me to that lonely place. 

" At last my quick ear caught a sound of something treading 
on a fallen branch. A glimmer of light through the chink in the 
logs shot across the path, and the young British soldier stood re- 
vealed. More quickly than I can tell it I stood before him, spoke 






1883.] OUR GRANDMOTHER" s CLOCK. 193 

the countersign, and demanded his papers. My uniform and the 
knowledge I had of the password deceived him. He hesitated 
a moment ; that hesitation cost him dearly, for before he could 
cry out I had gagged him, pinioned his arms, and, dragging him 
to the nearest tree, fastened him to it. 

" I had taken him at such a disadvantage that he lost his 
presence of mind. Having him thus hors de combat, it was not 
difficult to secure the papers for which I had ventured some- 
thing dearer than life itself. Putting these in a secret pocket, I 
took the false papers in my hand, marched boldly up to the door, 
and knocked three times, the signal agreed upon. Nothing but 
decisive action could now save me; my life hung by a hair; the 
least failure in any emergency that might arise, the least mistake, 
and there would have been none to speak a word of mercy for 
me, or to tell that I had died as a brave man ought to die. 

" The scene which presented itself before my eyes, as I gave 
the password and stepped in before the assembled Tories, was 
indeed a sombre one. Two or three feeble candles made a pre- 
tence of lighting up the place, and cast a sinister hue over coun- 
tenances that were hateful to me, because they were the coun- 
tenances of men who were planning to rivet the chains of their 
country and to deliver it into the hands of her enemies, and all 
for gold. 

" I had given up the papers prepared for the occasion into 
the hands of the man who acted as spokesman for the others, and 
had received in return the packet meant for Lord % Cornwallis, 
when a slight sound on the outside arrested the attention of the 
Tories. To me the sound was like the knell of doom, for I had 
not counted on any person coming along to release my prisoner. 

" Two belated Tories coming to the meeting had found him 
tied on the outside, and were bringing him in with them to find 
out what it all meant. 

" In the confusion caused by the new arrivals I made my 
way to the door and prepared to avail myself of any chance for 
escape. When the door was opened I rushed out, almost into 
the arms of the bewildered soldier, and before the Tories could 
settle which was the true messenger I had made my escape. 
How I had succeeded in doing it God only knows ; but escape I 
did, though all the Tories of the neighborhood searched for me 
several days. 

"After many hairbreadth escapes and dangers innumerable 
I arrived safely back with my errand accomplished. I delivered 
the precious papers to General Lafayette, received in return his 
VOL. xxxvni. 13 



194 THE EARLY FRUITS OF THE [Nov., 

thanks and compliments, and when word of the service I had 
rendered reached the headquarters of the army I was promoted 
and became Captain Pryor. But where would I have been but 
for your kindness that summer afternoon? I don't know that I 
can ever do anything to repay it, but I can never forget it, dear- 
est friend for such you will let me call you, won't you, dear 
madam ? " 

This visit of Captain Pryor to Mount Airy farm was only the 
beginning of a series of visits, till at last well, you all know, 
dear children, that Captain Pryor was your grandfather, and that 
it was his life which the dear old clock was the means of saving. 
And you know that is the reason the clock is such a treasure to 
your grandmother. 



THE EARLY FRUITS OF THE "REFORMATION" IN 

ENGLAND. 

I WISH to call the attention of the readers of THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD to the social and religious condition of England in July, 
1561, not three years subsequent to the overthrow of Catholicity 
m its once stronghold England. Sir William Cecil and his 
Royal Mistress became alarmed for the " future of the reformed 
realm." A royal commission was accordingly despatched' to the 
southern and western counties of England, where violent com- 
motions disgraced the character of the country. Mr. Froude 
makes the startling statement for Protestants that if the opinion 
of the royal commissioner as to the character of the English gen- 
try be correct, then the change of creed " had not improved the 
people." The confidential commissioner desires the magistrates 
to " send in reports on the working of the laws which affected 
the daily life of the people ; on the wages, statutes, and acts of ap- 
proval ; the tillage and pasture lands, the act for the maintenance 
of archery, and generally on the condition of the population." 

A trusted agent of Sir William Cecil was commissioned 
privately to follow the circulars and observe how far the magis- 
trates reported the truth or were doing their duty ; and though 
the original reports are lost, the chief commissioner's private 
letters to Cecil remain, with Mr. Tyldsley's opinion on the cha- 
racter of the English gentry. The report says : 






1883.] " REFORMATION" IN ENGLAND. 195- 

" For tillage, it were plain sacrilege to interfere with it, the offenders 
being all gentlemen of the richer sort; while the ale-houses the very 
stock and stay of thieves and vagabonds were supported by them for the 
worst of motives. The peers had the privilege of importing wine free of 
duty for the consumption of their household. By their patents they were 
able to extend the right to others under shelter of their name ; and the 
tavern-keepers were ' my lord's servants ' or ' my master's'; yea, and had 
such kind of licenses, and ' license of license,' to them and their deputies 
and assignees, that it was some danger to meddle with them." 

The intention of the exemption, it was alleged, " had to do with 
the encouragement of hospitality in the houses of the country 
squires." Times were changing, and the old-fashioned open 
house for which England was so long noted was no longer the 
rule. Without " abolishing the wine privilege," the council re- 
stricted the quantity which each nobleman was allowed to im- 
port annually. Dukes * and archbishops were allowed teii 
pipes ; marquises, nine pipes ; earls, viscounts, barons, and 
bishops, six, seven, and eight pipes of wine.f 

The magistrates of " high and low degree did little to put the 
law in force." The lower classes were dreadfully oppressed by 
the new proprietary. The summary eviction of the small ten- 
ants, and cruel treatment they received, caused a wide-spread 
feeling of revenge against the lords of the soil. People in trade 
were extortioners and usurers, and generally put the law at 
defiance. 

The reports are not favorable to the condition of religion or 
morality in the fourth year of Elizabeth, when the apostate priests 
of the secular order and their Puritan bishops were safely in-t. 
stalled in their new livings. I quote the report, with a Protes- 
tant commentary : 

"The constitution of the church offended the Puritans; the Catholics 
were as yet unreconciled to the forms which had been retained to con- 
ciliate them. . . . Self-interest was interwoven with all religion. The^ 
bishops and the higher clergy were the first to set an example of evil." 
"The friends of the Church of England," continues Mr. Froude, "must 
acknowledge with sorrow that, within two years of its establishment, the 
prelates were alienating the estates in which they possessed but a life in- 
terest, granting long leases and taking fines for their own advantage." 

The council sorely rebuked them for these dishonest proceed- 
ings. Not a voice was raised in defence of the bishops.^ 

* When the queen sent the Duke of Norfolk to the scaffold England had no duke for the 
remainder of Elizabeth's reign. 

t See Domestic MSS. of Elizabeth's reign, vol. xx. 

t See Articles for the Bishops' Obligations, 1560, Domestic MSS. Elizabeth. 



196 THE EARLY FRUITS OF THE [Nov., 

The marriage of the priests was a point on which the Re- 
formers were frequently divided and peculiarly sensitive ; in fact, 
with few exceptions, they quite agreed with the papal Catholics 
on this subject. It is related, upon high authority, that the fre- 
quent surnames of Clark, Parsons, Archdeacon, Dean, Prior, Ab- 
bot, Bishop, Friar, and Monk are memorials of the stigma af- 
fixed by English prejudice on the children of the first married 
representatives of the clerical orders.* 

"And, though married priests were tolerated, the system was generally 
disapproved and disapproved, especially, in members of cathedrals and 
collegiate bodies, who occupied the houses and retained the form of the 
religious orders. While, therefore, canons and prebends were entitled to 
wives, if they could not do without them, they would have done better 
had they taken every advantage of their liberty." "To the Anglo-Catho- 
lic," remarks Mr. Froude, "as well as the papal Catholic, a married priest 
was a scandal, and a married cathedral dignitary an abomination." t 

Such was popular opinion in the reign of Elizabeth, and the 
queen was emphatic in endorsing the sentiment. Notwithstand- 
ing, the married priests multiplied and the spiritual flocks were 
completely neglected. 

The queen and her council soon found the difficulty of gov- 
erning a multitude who were no longer under the influence of 
religious feeling. There is still extant a proclamation issued by 
the queen for "expelling wives" out of colleges. It is in the 
handwriting of Sir William Cecil, and runs thus : 

" For the avoiding of such offences as were daily conceived by the pre- 
sence of families, of wives and children, within colleges, contrary to the 
ancient and comely order of the same, the queen's highness forbade deans 
and canons to have their wives residing with them within the cathedral 
closes, under pain of forfeiting their promotions. Cathedrals and colleges 
had been founded to keep societies of learned men professing study and 
prayer, and the rooms intended for students were not to be sacrificed to 
women and their children." t 

The church dignitaries treated the queen's injunction as the 
country gentlemen treated the statutes. Deans and canons, by 
the rules of their foundation, were directed to dine and keep 
hospitality in their common hall. Those among them who had 
married broke up into their separate houses, where, in spite 
of the queen, they maintained their, families. The unmarried 
"tabled abroad at the ale-houses." The singing men of the 

* J. A. Froude's History of England, vol. vii. p. 464. 

t Ibid., vol. vii. 

\ Domestic MSS. Elizabeth, vol. xix. 



1883.] " REFORMATION" IN ENGLAND. 197 

choirs became the prebends' private servants, "having the 
church stipend for their wages." 

" The cathedral plate adorned the prebendal sideboards and 
dinner-tables." The organ-pipes were melted into dishes for 
their kitchens; the organ-frames were carved into bedsteads, 
where the wives reposed beside their reverend lords ; while the 
copes and vestments were coveted for their gilded embroidery, 
and were slit into gowns and bodices.* Having children to 
provide for, and only a life-interest in their revenues, the chap- 
ters, like the bishops, cut down their woods and worked their 
fines, their leases, their escheats and wardships for the benefit of 
their own generation. Sharing their annual plunder, they " ate 
and drank and enjoyed themselves while their opportunity re- 
mained. . . . The priests decked their wives so finely for the 
stuff and fashion of their garments 'as none were so fine and 
trim.' ' By her dress and her gait in the streets " the priest's 
wife was known from a hundred other women," while in the 
congregations and in the cathedrals they were distinguished by 
placing themselves above all others, the most ancient and honor- 
able in their cities ; " being the church " as the priests' wives 
termed it '* their own church ; and the said wives did call and 
take all things belonging to their church and corporation as their 
own : as their houses, their gates, their porters, their servants, their 
tenants, their manors, their lordships, their woods, their corn." f 
Nothing could exceed the insolence of those wives belonging 
to the elderly secular priests so much lauded by Dean Hook for 
having taken the Oath of Supremacy to a young woman scarcely 
thirty years of age ! A strange proceeding altogether ! 

Mr. Froude fully admits and confirms the reports as to the 
condition of religion under the reformed bishops and priests in 
the third year of Elizabeth's reign. He says : " While the 
shepherds were thus dividing the fleeces the sheep were perish- 
ing." 

In many dioceses in England a third of the parishes were left 
without a clergyman, resident or non-resident. There were in 
the diocese of Norwich (1561) eighty parishes where there was 
no cure of souls ; in the archdeaconry of Norfolk one hundred 
and eighty parishes ; in the archdeaconry of Suffolk one hun- 
dred and thirty parishes were almost, or entirely, in the same 

*Mr. Pocock, F.S.A., has published a work full of sad memories on the fate of the mag- 
nificent vestments of the English church, furniture, ornaments, etc. In many cases the vest- 
ments were sold to strolling players. 

\ Complaints against the Dean and Chapter of Worcester, Domestic MSS. Elizabeth, 
vol. xxviii. 



198 THE EARLY FRUITS OF THE [Nov., 

condition.* In some few of these churches an occasional curate 
attended on Sundays. In most of them the voices of the priests 
were silent in the desolate aisles. The children grew up unbap- 
tized ; the dead buried their dead. At St. Helen's, in the Isle of 
Wight, the parish church had been built upon the shore for the 
convenience of vessels lying at anchor. The dean and chapter 
of Windsor were the patrons, and the benefice was about the 
wealthiest in their gift ; but the church was in ruin, through 
which the wind and rain made free passage. The parishioners 
were fain to bury their corpses themselves.f The narrator gives 
a sad picture of the "spiritual destitution " of the Isle of Wight. 

" It breedeth," said Elizabeth in a remonstrance which she addressed to 
Archbishop Parker, " no small offence and scandal to see and consider 
upon the one part the curiosity and cost bestowed by all sorts of men 
upon their private houses ; and, on the other part, the unclean and negli- 
gent order and spare keeping of the houses of prayer, by permitting open 
decays and ruins of coverings of walls and windows, and by appointing 
unmeet and unseemly tables with foul cloths for the communion of the 
Sacrament, and generally leaving the place of prayer desolate of all clean- 
liness and of meet ornament for such a place, whereby it might be known 
a place provided for divine service." { 

In the reign of Elizabeth the foreign element was just as 
" ungodly and dishonest " as the Germans patronized by Arch- 
bishop Cranmer in the days of Edward VI. Mr. Froude is again 
outspoken as to the impolicy of encouraging those " foreign 
saints." " Nor, again," he observes, " were the Protestant for- 
eigners who had taken refuge in England any special credit to 
the Reformation." These " exiled saints " were described by 
the bishop of London as " marvellous colluvies of evil persons, 
for the most part facinorosi clerici et sectarii" 

Between prelates reprimanded by the council for fraudulent 
administration of their estates ; chapters bent on justifying Cran- 
mer's opinion of such bodies, that they were good vianders, and 
good for nothing else ; and a clergy among whom the only men 
who had any fear of God were the unmanageable and dangerous 
Puritans, the Church of England was doing little to make the 
queen or the country enamored of it. Torn up, as it had been, 
by the very roots, and but lately replanted, its hanging boughs 
and drooping foliage showed that as yet it had taken no root in 
.the soil, and there seemed too strong a likelihood that, notwith- 



*Strype's Annals of the Reformation, vol. i. 

t Domestic MSS. of Elizabeth's reign ; Fronde's History of England, vol. vii. 

\ The Queen to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1560; Domestic MSS., vol. xy. 






1883.] "REFORMATION" IN ENGLAND. 199 

standing its ingenious framework and comprehensive formulae, it 
would wither utterly away.* 

"Our religion is so abused," wrote Lord Sussex to Cecil in 1562, "that 
the papists rejoice ; the neuters do not dislike change, and the few zealous 
professors lament the lack of purity. The people, without discipline, utter- 
ly devoid of religion, come to divine service as to a May-game ; the minis- 
ters, for disability and greediness, be had in contempt ; and the wise fear 
more the impiety of the licentious professors than the superstition of the 
erroneous papists. God hold his hand over us, that our lack of religious 
hearts do not breed in the meantime his wrath and revenge upon us ! " t 

" Covetousness and impiety " were not the only impediments 
to a genuine acceptance of the " reformed religion." The sub- 
mission of the clergy to the change was no proof of their cordial 
reception of it. The majority were interested only in their bene- 
fices, which they retained and neglected. A great many con- 
tinued Catholics in disguise and remained at their posts, scarcely 
concealing, if concealing at all, their inner creed, and were sup- 
ported in open contumacy by the neighboring noblemen and 
gentlemen. In a general visitation in July, 1561, the clergy were 
required to take the oath of allegiance. The bishop of Carlisle 
reported that thirteen or fourteen of his rectors and vicars re- 
fused to appear, while in many churches in his diocese Mass con- 
tinued to be celebrated under the countenance and open pro- 
tection of Lord Dacres ; and the priests of his diocese generally 
he described as wicked "imps of Antichrist, ignorant, stubborn, 
and past measure false and subtle." Fear only, he said, would 
make them obedient, and Lord Cumberland and Lord Dacres 
would not allow him to meddle with them. \ The Marches of 
Wales were as contumacious as the border of Scotland. In the 
August of the same year " the popish justices " of Hereford 
commanded the observance of St. Laurence's Day as a holyday. 
On the eve no butcher in the town ventured to sell meat; on the 
day itself " no gospeller durst work in his occupation or open 
his shop." A party of recusant priests from Devonshire were 
received in state by the magistrates, carried through the streets 
in procession, and so "feasted and magnified as Christ himself 
could not have been more reverentially entertained." 

In September, 1561, Bishop Jewell, going to Oxford, reported 
the fellows of the colleges so " malignant that if he had pro- 

* Froude's History of England, vol. vii. p. 468. 

t Sussex to Cecil, July 22, 1562 ; from Chester, Irish MSS., Rolls House ; Froude, vol. wu 
p. 468. 

\ The Bishop of Carlisle to Cecil ; Domestic MSS. ; Froude, vol. vii. p. 469. 
| Bishop of Hereford to Cecil ; Domestic MSS. ; Froude, vol. vii. 



2oo THE EARLY FRUITS OF THE [Nov., 

ceeded peremptorily, as he might, he would not have left two in 
any one of them." And here it was not a peer or a magistrate 
that Jewell feared, but one higher than both ; for the colleges 
appealed to the queen against him, and Jewell could but entreat 
Cecil, with many anxious misgivings, to stand by him. He 
could but protest humbly that he was only acting for God's 
glory.* The bishop of Winchester found his people " obsti- 
nately grovelling in superstition and popery, lacking not priests 
to inculcate the same daily in their heads," and himself so un- 
able to provide ministers to teach them that he petitioned for 
permission to unite his parishes and throw two or three into 
one.f 

Another report of the same visitation states that the bishop 
of Durham called a clergyman before him to take the Oath of 
Supremacy. The clergyman said out before a crowd, " who 
were much rejoiced at his doings," " that neither temporal man 
nor woman could have power in spiritual matters, but only the 
Pope of Rome "; and the lay authorities would not allow the 
bishop to punish men who had but expressed their own feelings. 

More than one member of the Council of York had refused 
the oath, and yet had remained in office ; the rest took courage 
when they saw those that refused their allegiance not only un- 
punished but held in authority and estimation.^: In 1562 the 
bishop of Carlisle once more complained that, between Lord 
Dacres and the Earls of Cumberland and Westmoreland, " God's 
glorious Gospel could not take place in the counties under their 
rule." The " few Protestants durst not be known for fear of a 
shrewd turn ; and the lords and magistrates looked through their 
fingers while the law was openly defied. The court was full of 
wishings and wagers for the alteration of religion." Yet the 
condition of the Catholics at this time was one of thorough sla- 
very, for they dared not practise their religion, under heavy pen- 
alties : imprisonment, the rack, and, next the scaffold. The spy 
system was practised to a fearful extent. The ambassadors, the 
members of the government, the bishops, the peers, and common- 
ers were " in turn watching one another." 

De Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, had spies amongst 
Cecil's household, and, in return, the ambassador was betrayed 
by one of his own secretaries. The queen had two persons in 
her pay who watched all the private movements of her prime 
minister. Cecil, however, was a match for the secret fencing of 

* Jewell to Cecil ; Domestic MSS. t Domestic MSS.; Froude, vol. vii. p. 470. 

J Domestic MSS. Domestic MSS., vol. xxi.; Froude, vol. vii. p. 471. 






1883.] "REFORMATION" IN ENGLAND. 2OI 

his antagonists, for he had a host of persons always at hand 
ready to swear to whatever was required by the council. This 
was an improvement upon the tactics used by the government of 
Edward VI. As much as Elizabeth admired Robert Dudley, she 
placed a Catholic gentleman named Blount to report upon his 
private movements. Judging of Blount by his actions, and the 
vile instrument he became in the hands of the queen, he fell little 
short of Robert Dudley in all that constitutes worthlessness in 
man. 

Sir William Cecil, who labored in vain to reform the bishops 
and clerg}' of the Anglican Church, informed the queen that the 
church could not " progress in spiritualities whilst the bishops 
shamefully neglected their duties." Cecil charged the bishop of 
Lichfield with making (ordaining) seventy priests in one day for 
moneyed considerations. " Some were tailors, some stone-ma- 
sons, and others craftsmen." " I am sure," he says, " the great- 
est part of them are not able to keep decent houses."* It was 
from the wild harangues of such illiterate men that Puritanism 
gained strength, and, at a later period, sacrilegiously trampled 
under foot the time-honored monarchy of the realm. 

Elizabeth sometimes acted with courtesy to the few servile 
men who represented the peerage ; but from first to last she 
treated her bishops with contempt, styling one an " old fool " 
and another "a hedge-priest." The rating the queen gave 
Archbishop Parker's wife is one of the most scandalous transac- 
tions connected with. her domestic life. In the eighth year of 
her reign Elizabeth gave a remarkable instance of her gross 
conduct to the newly-created prelates. Turning sharply upon 
Archbishop^ Grindal and Pilkington, of the see of Durham, the 
queen said : 

"And you, doctors, t make long prayers about this matter [the royal 
marriage]. One of you dared to say, in times past, that I and my sister 
Mary were bastards ; and you still continue to interfere in what does not 
concern you. Go home and mend your own lives, and set an honest ex- 
ample in your families. The Lords of Parliament should have taught you 
to know your places ; but if they have forgotten their duty I will not forget 
mine. Did I so choose I might make the impertinence of the whole set of 
you an excuse to withdraw my promise to marry; but for the realm's sake 
I am now resolved that I will marry, and I will take a husband that will 
not be to the taste of some of you. I have not married hitherto out of 

* Domestic MSS. , February 27, 1585 ; Notes of Conversation between the Queen and Cecil 
on Church Matters. 

t When the queen desired to become personally offensive to the bishops they were styled 
" doctors." 



202 THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. [Nov., 

consideration for you ; but it shall be done now, and you who have been 
so urgent with me will find the effects of it to your cost. Think you the 
prince who will be my consort will feel himself safe with such as you, who 
thus dare to thwart and cross your natural sovereign ? '' * 

A bold speech for a usurper ; but Cecil calmed down the storm 
and still further undermined any prospect of the queen's mar- 
riage. 



THE FRANCO^ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 

IT is especially when writing about China and her so-called 
tributaries that circumspection and consistency are jewels. 
Floods of ink have been wasted for these last few months, both 
in Europe and America, which could have been spared with 
profit for better pondered and less sensational editorials. 
Scores of solemn newspapers of all nationalities have lived in 
plenteousness at the expense of Tu-Duc, the Marquis Tseng, that 
thunderbolt of war Li-Hong-Tchang, M. Challemel-Lacour, and 
the "Celestial" Konang-Su, Emperor of China, without the 
least regard for impartiality or respect for historical teachings. 

Is France right or wrong in busying herself so immoderately 
about Tonquin? Is China wrong or right in keeping herself 
in so excited a mood about French gesta et facta in Tonquin? 
Shall there be war, yes or no, between France and China about 
Tu-Duc? Shall France, after all, annex Tonquin? And if so, 
what will England or Germany, or the rest of the world, do 
about it ? 

Such are the momentous questions which are monopolizing 
nowadays the attention of the political and commercial world. 
It is not our province to answer them in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 
for fear we should place it in the above-mentioned category of 
parasitical sensationalists. The Franco-Annamese conflict does 
not yet belong to history, at least in this its last phase. What we 
wish to do is this only : while leaving to our readers to draw 
their own conclusions, to enable them to see their way out of the 
medley of arguments /;# and con showered upon this much-vexed 
controversy. For this purpose we will examine i. What eth- 
nology teaches us about the races now spread over the Indo- 

* MSS. of Queen Elizabeth's reign. 



1883.] THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 203 

Chinese peninsula. 2. What history tells us of the development 
of nationalities in the former negro kingdom of Tsiampa, and of 
the sympathies and antipathies now existing among them. 3. The 
three great mistakes France has made in Tonquin from 1787 to 
the death of Francis Gamier in 1874. 



I. 

To one having some knowledge of the laws which in every 
quarter of the globe uniformly govern the growth, grouping, and 
migrations of humanity, it is sufficient to- glance at a map of the 
Indo-Chinese peninsula to understand what extraordinary strug- 
gles must have taken place on such a field for the inexhaustible 
appetites and passions of man, above all when deprived of Chris- 
tian training and of the soothing light of the Gospel. 

About the 25 of latitude north, between 98 and 102 28' lon- 
gitude east, you perceive an inextricable net-work of mountains 
nine thousand feet high, something like a solid sea whose waves 
were thousands and thousands of rugged plateaus and sharp- 
pointed peaks. This is the Chinese province of Yun-Nan. 
Enormous quantities of water rush down from the sides of these 
mountains, dragging earth in their impetuous course, and leaving 
it on their way to form at the foot of the mountains and between 
their most distant counterforts vast alluvial and more and more 
horizontal plains, on which slackened rivers wind about before 
emptying jnto the China Sea, 

The Irrawadi said to mean, like Mississippi, Father of 
Waters runs nearly from north to south through the greater 
part of the Burmese dominions and the British Pegu which 
occupies its whole delta, similar to that of the Nile and finally 
falls into the Gulf of Martaban. The Me-Nam, or Mother of 
Waters, rises in the table-land of China, and after a southern 
course of eight hundred miles, traversing the centre of Siam, 
enters the Gulf of Siam by three great mouths. The Mekong, 
or Cambodia, rises in Thibet, where it bears the name of Lan- 
Thsang-Kiang, and, after a long course through various provinces, 
falls into the China Sea by several mouths. Lastly, the great 
Red River, or Song-Koi, waters the extensive alluvial plain 
which forms the northern province of Cochin China, known as 
Tonquin, and falls into the Gulf of Tonquin. 

Rivers have been very properly called by a thoughtful geo- 
grapher " marching highways," for the same movement which 
transfers the granite of the mountain to the alluvial plain carries 



204 THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. [Nov., 

as surely the inhabitants of cold, uncomfortable ranges of lofty 
mountains to the warm and fertile plain. In fact, it was from the 
mountainous centre of Asia, sometimes called the roof of the 
world, that, along with the Yenisei and Lena rivers in the 
northern countries, the Amour, Hoang-Ho, and Yang-Tse-Kiang 
in the eastern ones, and the Cambodia, Ganges, and Indus in the 
southern regions, torrents of mountaineers flowed down to the 
various sea-shores. 

But the first settlers of a newly-opened valley never belong 
to the superior grades of mankind. Not until much later on do 
more civilized and intelligent populations appear, taking their 
place above the first inhabitants, and generally either destroying 
them or driving them away to the poorer parts of the country, 
or perhaps producing a mixed race by intermarriages, the re- 
sults of which, long after these invasions, are easily recognized 
by the keen eye of the ethnological observer. 

The first inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese peninsula were ne- 
groes, not identical with those of Africa, but looking very much 
like the Papuan, with their woolly hair, thick lips, and narrow, 
retreating foreheads. They are still to be found, in their more or 
less pure type, under the names of Moys and Kemoys, in the In- 
do-Chinese forests, and in Malacca under the appellation of Sam- 
mangs. Other negroes, with stiff hair and round, narrow heads, 
came next and lorded it over the aborigines, establishing regular 
kingdoms, among them that of Tsiampa, at present replaced by 
the empire of Annam. Their blood is still more or less trace- 
able in the very much mixed population of Indo-China, and some 
specimens of their pure type are to be seen in the mountains 
where they, under the name of Chams, or Tsiams, were, like the 
other negroes, driven back. To these two kinds of negroes we 
must add the Piaks, Charais, and Penongs, who are very similar 
to the Malays, either because they were originally from the 
Malay peninsula, or, as it is thought by Dr. Harmand, because 
they are continental Malays who had never left the continent 
for the peninsula. 

To that preliminary blending of the black and tawny colors 
is to be added, at a far later period, the infiltration of the yellow 
race carried away from the Chinese province of Yun-Nan by the 
rivers Mekong and Song-Koi, or Red River. From the amalga- 
mation of these oblique-eyed, broad, flat-faced Mongolians and 
the continental Malays came the present Annamites, with choco- 
late-colored skin and oblique eyes, who chew betel like Malays, 
and possess in common with them a characteristic widening of 






1883.] THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 205 

the great toe, the consequence of which is a faculty of prehen- 
sion of objects with their feet. InJact, besides tattooing-, this is 
the peculiarity which makes more impression on the Chinese, 
who still give to the Annamites the nickname of Caotchi that is, 
"the cloven-footed men." 

But the Mekong and the Song-Koi, which brought the An- 
namites to the old negro kingdom of Tsiampa ; the Me-Nam, on 
which the Thays came down to the present kingdom of Siam ; 
and especially the Irrawadi, to which are due the several Malay- 
Mongolian tribes of the Burman Empire, gave way before a still 
later invasion which to us is most interesting, as it was one of 
our own race of tribes belonging to that Aryan or Caucasian, 
Japhetic family, which left its ancient horqe in India to settle 
upon the shores of Europe, and from the languages of which 
come the dialects of Wales and Brittany, those of Ireland, Scot- 
land, and the Isle of Man, as well as those of Spain, Portugal, 
France, Italy, the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil, Greek 
and Latin, the old Prussian, and all the living dialects of Bel- 
gium, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and En- 
gland. 

These Aryans brought over with them in the Indo-Chinese 
peninsula the supremely atheistic doctrines of Buddha, that in- 
teresting but erratic son of King Couddhodama, who, in the 
beginning of the sixth century B.C., became the prophet of 
" utter annihilation " a so-called religion which still keeps down 
in the depths of barbarism, ignorance, and mental degradation 
more than one-third of the entire population of the earth. For 
the worship of Buddha were built by the Aryan invasion of 
southwestern Asia gigantic temples, the fine architecture of 
which bears comparison with that of the Renaissance. 

But, like the numerous ruins in Cambodia, like the celebrated 
Angkoor and the famous nine-storied pyramid of Boro-Buddor 
in Java, all these Aryan buildings of the most various forms and 
fantastic outline, covered with small spires and cupolas and 
countless niches occupied by as many statues of Buddha as 
large as life, seated in the usual attitude with his legs crossed 
are now buried in the midst of dense forests, the only vestiges 
of the passage of a truly superior race. The exceedingly hot 
climate which respected those statues of a Caucasian type, with 
elevated foreheads, well-shaped noses, and wide, horizontal eyes, 
was the unconquerable enemy of the conquerors whom these 
statues represent who, little by little, disappeared in the moun- 
tains and intermarried with the aboriginal negroes. Hence the 



206 THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. [Nov.; 

white savages degenerated sons of a once victorious race- 
known to-day as the Stiengs and the Lolos, whom the Annamites 
capture in large numbers and reduce to slavery. 

From this rapid sketch of the various invasions which peo- 
pled Indo-China it is easy to infer the diversity of tempers 
which could not but be engendered by the promiscuous associa- 
tion, through many centuries, of five different species of men 
belonging to so utterly unlike races as are the black, the yellow, 
and the white. But history has taken good care to throw still 
more confusion into the already much intricate skein of eth- 
nology. 

II. 

What is called to-day the empire of Annam is a territory 
about 965 miles in length, with a breadth varying from 85 to 400 
miles, and occupying the eastern portion of the Indo-Chinese 
peninsula, which lies between latitude 9 40' and 23 22' north, 
and longitude 102 and 109 30' east. It is divided into Cochin 
China proper ; Cambodia, at present mostly divided between 
Annam, Siam, and the French; Tsiampa, formerly the most im- 
portant kingdom of that mountainous region ; and Tonquin, the 
most northerly province of the empire, often called Drang-Ngai, 
or Outside Kingdom, by opposition to Cochin China, known as 
Drang-Trong, or Inside Kingdom. To these four great territo- 
ries may be added a part of the mountainous region of the Shan 
states, called the Laos country, and several islands in the Gulf of 
Tonquin. Like that of China, the early history of those south- 
western Asiatic countries is involved in obscurity. It is certain, 
however, that prior to the Mongol invasion and the conquest by 
Gengis-Khan, in the eleventh century, they formed a part of the 
empire of China. Hence the nominal vassalage still borne by 
the Annamese sovereigns to the " Brother of the Sun and Moon, 
Son of Heaven, and Lord of a Myriad Years " who reigns at 
Pekin. But from the twelfth century we see what came after- 
wards to be called Cochin China, as well as Tonquin and China, 
struggling among themselves, both the former to get rid of the 
latter's yoke and of each other's supremacy, each of them having 
already a king of its own and intending to remain independent. 
Both peoples, as we said before, were of Chinese origin, probably 
from the province of Yun-Nan, but while the Cochin Chinese 
had amalgamated with the Malayans, the Tonquinese had united 
themselves with the Aryan or Caucasian element, thus forming 



1883.] THE FRANCO- ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 207 

two most distinct and antagonistic strata, so to speak, on which 
the powerful action of time has not as yet exercised 'the least 
modifying influence. While the latter have remained through 
many centuries meek, gentle-, unwarlike, and industrious, the 
former, now the Annamese and the conquerors, are, like the 
Mongolian boatmen who ply the shores of the Yellow Sea, ex- 
tremely dirty in their persons, cowardly, cruel, and deceitful, 
and, like the Malays, strongly addicted to easy war and plunder. 
No wonder, then, if the Tonquinites clung desperately from 1363 
to 1788 that is, for four hundred and twenty-five years to 'the 
truly patriotic and national dynasty of Le, which has still living 
representatives as popular in Tonquin as the Annamese de- 
scendants of Gia-Long are odious and abhorred. 

The popularity of this famous dynasty of L is to be ascribed 
to the fact that to its head was due, in 1363, the independence of 
Tonquin and Cochin China, then united under his sceptre, from 
the despotism of China. It is only fair to state, however, that 
Koublai-Khan, grandson of Gengis-Khan and conqueror of China 
in 1279 in which he was, under the name of Chi-Tsou, the 
founder of the Mongolian dynasty of Youen was a man of a 
conciliatory character and did much for agriculture, letters, 
science, and even for Catholicity. The famous Venetian traveller, 
Marco Polo, brought him from Pope Gregory X. an answer to a 
letter he had written to His Holiness asking him to send to China 
some missionaries. Franciscan friars, of the order newly found- 
ed by St. Francis of Assisi in 1209, were in fact despatched to 
Pekin, of which Friar Jean de Montcorvin, after fifty years of 
preaching, was consecrated first archbishop in 1338. 

It was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that 
some Portuguese Jesuits introduced the Christian religion into 
Cochin China and Tonquin. The princes of the dynasty of Le, 
who still held possession of both kingdoms, though not without 
many alternate downfalls and restorations, were intelligent 
enough to appreciate the grandeur and sublimity of Catholic 
doctrines. In 1624 the whole imperial family abjured Buddhism, 
and they have remained ever since, from generation to genera- 
tion, faithful to the see of St. Peter. 

So important a conversion seemed to a saintly priest of 
France a favorable omen for the future of Catholicity in south- 
western Asia, and gave birth to one of the most admirable re- 
ligious societies known to modern times. Born in Avignon in 
1591, Father Alexandre de Rhodes entered the Society of Jesus 
in 1612, and repaired a few years after to Tonquin, where he be- 



208 THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. [Nov., 

came quite a favorite with the then reigning Le, already a con- 
vert, and "he resolved to apply to the Holy See for the organiza- 
tion of a missionary society with a special view to evangelizing 
Cambodia, Tonquin, and Cochin China, and creating in those ter- 
ritories an indigenous clergy. On his suggestion Pope Alexan- 
der VII., by a bull signed on the 8th of June, 1658, appointed 
as vicars-apostolic for Cochin China and Tonquin two bishops, 
who started at once with co-laborers, leaving behind them Mgr. 
Bernard de Sainte-TheVese, bishop in partibus of Babylon, who 
became the founder of that nursery in Paris of Catholic heroes 
and martyrs known as the " Seminaire des Missions- fitrar- 
geres," in the Rue du Bac. This truly apostolic society now sup- 
plies undaunted champions of religion to most of the foreign 
missions. There are now in Tonquin 42 French missionaries, 95 
native priests, 452 catechists, 350,000 converts, 675 churches, 4 
seminaries with 452 students, and 604 schools and orphanages 
with about 8,000 children. In the southern section of the em- 
pire of Annam, or Cochin China proper, there are 95,000 con- 
verts, under 20 French and 55 native priests and 161 catechists, 
provided with 271 churches or chapels, 2 seminaries with 153 
students, and 6 orphanages containing about 600 children. The 
large discrepancy between the results of French missionary zeal 
in the northern, or Tonquinite, division of Annam and the south- 
ern one, which is purely Annamite, will no doubt strike thought- 
ful observers as a new confirmation of the theory herein advanced 
of the evil influence of the admixture of Malayan blood, as com- 
pared with the beneficent influence of the Aryan blood, among 
the primitive Chinese elements carried over by the Song-Koi 
and the Irrawadi rivers to southwestern Asia. In this will 
also be found the secret of the unbounded sympathy of the pre- 
sent conquered populations of Tonquin for the French, whom 
they consider as half-brothers, and whom they look upon even 
now as their liberators from the insufferable tyranny of the 
Annamite Tu-Duc, in spite of the strange and often disgraceful 
way in which France, or rather the changeable French govern- 
ments, have dealt with them for more than a century. 

III. 

It was in 1774, in the very year which saw Louis XVI., the 
grandson of the so-called Louis le Bien-Aim, ascend the throne 
of France, that Gia-Long, the last offspring of the Cochin Chi- 
nese dynasty of Nga'i, had been obliged, after the massacre of 






1883.] THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 209 

his uncle and his elder brother by the three brothers Tal-Tsoung 
of the Le dynasty of Hanoi, to seek a shelter in the residence of 
Mgr. de Behaine, Bishop of Adran and Vicar-Apostolic of Cochin 
China. Through a reverse of fortune the Tonquinite kings 
were in 1779 once more subjected to the Annamite rule; but they 
took possession again, a few years after, of both Cochin China 
and Tonquin, pursuing Gia-Long up to the frontiers of Siam, 
whose king gave him hospitality and advised him to call France 
to his rescue. The dethroned monarch, who had left his eldest 
son in charge of Mgr. de Behaine, begged the bishop to start 
at once for Europe and solicit French help and protection for 
his cause. How the good prelate could accept such a mission is 
more than we shall venture to explain, for it was simply an in- 
vitation to a Catholic sovereign to help dethrone a Catholic 
dynasty for the benefit of a pagan one. It was done, however^ 
and after much negotiation Louis XVI. promised in 1788 to re- 
place Gia-Long on his throne, on condition that he should in 
return give to France the port of Touron, situated about no 
miles southeast from Hue, on the magnificent bay of the same 
name. 

This port of Touron is the one in which a French frigate 
and a corvette destroyed the Cochin Chinese flotilla in 1847. 
Again in 1858 a Franco-Spanish expedition seized it and did not 
evacuate it until 1860. In connection with the occupation of the 
city of Touron in the latter campaign we find in the Aventures 
et Dfaouvertes dans F Extreme-Orient, by Octave F6re, a startling 
episode of the baseness and coward cruelty we have ascribed 
as a characteristic to the Annamites. The rainy season had come, 
and to divert their melancholy a party of ten French officers, in 
spite of strict orders not to wander far from the encampments, 
went hunting in the company of some peasants of the village 
of Tien-Shang who had too courteously offered themselves as 
guides and scouts. The weather was beautiful, and each of the 
officers went his own way, it being understood that the whole 
party would reassemble at twelve in an appointed glade for 
breakfast. At the appointed hour everything was ready, and 
they were about enjoying their meal, when it was observed that 
a young and very amiable officer, who had left St. Cyr only the 
preceding year, was missing. After waiting for him for half an. 
hour his companions had resolved to go in quest of him, when 
one of the courteous natives who had accompanied him ap- 
peared, out of breath, terrified, and executed a too expressive 
pantomime, passing his yataghan round his neck and wrists. 

VOL. XXXVIII. 1 1 



210 THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. [Nov., 

At once the officers return to the camp, and, with the help of 
an interpreter, order the peasant to bring them where he had 
left their unfortunate comrade. They soon found themselves 
near the poor St. Cyrian, whose corpse, horribly mutilated, 
without head or hands, lay in a bloody mire near a dead 
monkey, evidently felled by a firearm. Guides and peasants 
were brought back to the East Fort, and acknowledged that the 
young officer had been treacherously knocked on the head from 
behind while he was examining the monkey he had just killed 
with his gun, then murdered, after a heroic resistance, and after- 
wards butchered by his slayers, who had no doubt carried his 
head and hands as a trophy to the mandarins, in order to get 
the reward of four hundred and fifty ligatures of sapecks about a 
hundred dollars promised for every head of a French officer by 
Tu-Duc. The very same evening the Touron peninsula was 
blockaded by the aviso La Dragonne, the village of Tien-Shang 
burned to the ground, and the mountain searched in every direc- 
tion, but the assassins were not to be found. They had already 
gone back to the outposts of the Annamites ; for they were simply 
disguised soldiers from the emperor's camp, who had been no- 
tified of the hunting by the obsequious peasants. 

But to resume. A treaty to that effect was signed ; but soon 
the great Revolution set in, sweeping in its mighty course the 
French monarchy and whatever it had dreamed of; for, as Shak- 
spere says in " Hamlet," 

" The cease of majesty 
Dies not alone ; but, like a gulf, doth draw 
What's near it with it." 

However, quite a number of French officers and engineers, 
urged by the same ardent love for adventure and liberty which 
brought Lafayette to Charleston on the 25th of April, 1777, went 
to Cochin China in 1800 and entered the service of Gia-Long. 
Thanks to their ability and exertion, a new army was raised, 
organized and drilled after the European fashion, and in 1802 
Gia-Long routed the Le's partisans, added Tonquin, Cambodia, 
and the Laos countries to Cochin China, and thus founded the 
empire of Annam. 

This we insist on calling the greatest blunder of France in her 
dealings v with the Extreme-Orient a blunder which the brave 
but inconsiderate officers just mentioned still singularly magni- 
fied by fortifying a la Vauban the principal cities of the new em- 
pire, such as Saigon, Hue", and Hanoi, as we learn from _the 






1883.] THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 211 

notes and reminiscences of the son of one of these officers, M. 
Chaigneau. By embracing the cause of the Catholic dynasty of 
Le, France would have affirmed her protectorate over Tonquin 
from the beginning- of the present century, and, besides opening 
that great country to foreign commerce, she would have spared 
thousands of lives which were lost through subsequent persecu- 
tions and useless wars. The Annamites would have been kept 
in due subjection by very little exertion on the part of her mili- 
tary establishments in Tonquin, where Catholicity would' be now 
the predominant religion, while China, .awed by so mighty a 
neighbor, would hardly have dared any longer to persecute 
Catholic missionaries any more than to refuse facilities for a 
fruitful commercial intercourse. Instead of a miserable, dilapi- 
dated town, Hanoi would be to-day the capital of a flourishing 
Catholic kingdom of thirty million inhabitants, the business centre 
and recognized emporium of eastern Asia. For nations as well as 
for individuals opportunity must be seized at once, under penalty 
of paying very dear for having allowed it to escape. 

Before his death, in 1820, Gia-Long, though he did not him- 
self persecute Catholics, did not fail to display the full measure 
of his deceitfulness and ingratitude. To the exclusion of his 
grandson, whose father had been the pupil of Mgr. De Behaine 
and died prematurely, the first emperor of Annam left his throne 
to an illegitimate son, Minh-M enh, who became one of the worst 
persecutors of missionaries and converts, and was succeeded by 
another persecutor, Thien-Tsi, in 1840. But it was reserved to 
Tu-Duc, the younger brother of Thien-Tsi, to be the Annamite 
Diocletian by sending to a glorious death a large number of 
martyrs, especially in Tonquin, where Mgr. Diaz, a Spanish 
bishop, was put to death in 1857. Tu-Duc had then been in 
power for ten years, having trampled on the rights of his elder 
brother in 1847. So much Christian blood crying for vengeance 
at last aroused France and Spain, by whom a concerted expe- 
dition was sent in 1858 against Tu-Duc, who lost Touron and 
Saigon in 1859, but did not surrender until 1862. Then was an- 
other opportunity lost by France of conquering Tonquin peace- 
fully. Ever since its annexation to Cochin China by Gia-Long, 
Tonquin had been more or less in a state of open rebellion. 
Faithful to its national dynasty, that unfortunate province resem- 
bled much the royalist Vend6e. If France had powerful allies in 
the white savages we spoke of as spread over the Tonquinite 
mountains, she had also devoted friends and natural allies in what 
we might call the Faubourg St. Germain of Hanoi that is to say, 



212 THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. [Nov., 

the L family and their unabated followers. When, in 1861, the 
legitimate representative of this family headed a revolutionary 
movement against Tu-Duc, and went with a powerful army to 
the very doors of Hu6, it was the duty of France to repair the 
wrong she had done in 1802 and to reinstate on his throne a Ca- 
tholic king, educated by her own missionaries, and whose fathers 
she had so inadvertently helped to dispossess. To accomplish 
so simple and at the same time so profitable an act of justice, 
she being there on the ground with her then invincible soldiers 
and navy, had only to raise her finger and the persecutor Tu- 
Duc was no more. 

But in 1862, as in 1802, the same policy prevailed which 
Count de St. Vallier, in a memorable speech pronounced in the 
French Senate on June 2 last, vehemently stigmatized as "not 
only bad, but hesitating, inconsiderate, incoherent, marked by 
perpetual changes and the most contradictory resolutions " all 
hard epithets, which may justly be applied to the policy of France 
whenever she attempts to plant her flag on colonial soil. Ap- 
palled at the impetuous advance of his ancient adversary, Tu- 
Duc, in order to save his Annamite crown, threatened again by 
young L6, came to terms with France ; and France, once more 
blind to her own interests and the interests of religion, signed 
with Tu-Duc a treaty of peace which quenched for the second 
time all hopes of Tonquin's independence. Saigon, the capital of 
Cambodia, fortified as well as Hu6 by French engineers at the 
end of the eighteenth century, had in 1860 been captured with her 
two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, together with the 
territory of Lower Cochin China, and had been provided with a 
permanent force of several large vessels and a garrison of ten 
thousand men. In 1864, July 15, treaties of peace and commerce 
concluded with the Annamite government provided that 

" The protectorate of the six provinces of Lower Cochin China should 
remain in the hands of France ; that three important ports on the coast of 
Annam should be opened ; that a space of nine kilometres along the shore 
of each port should be conceded to the French for the establishment of 
factories.; that French merchants and missionaries should be allowed to 
traverse the empire of Annam without hindrance, and that an indemnity 
of one hundred millions of francs should be paid." 

f This, of course, was something; but it was not until 1868 that 
the French government asserted its protectorate over the whole 
of Cambodia and thought of occupying the whole coast of Ton- 
quin, so as to isolate the Annamese sovereign and acquire over 
him the same ascendency which the British exercise in Burmah. 






1883.] THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 213 

Then it was that a well-known Italian adventurer and traveller, 
Captain Celso Cesare Moreno, explained, but to no avail, to Na- 
poleon III. the opportunity opened to French commerce in Far- 
ther India to oust England from the rice and opium markets of 
the Chinese Empire and become the principal purveyor of these 
two articles, so as ultimately to absorb the foreign commerce of 
the Celestial region. The only mistake and it was a decisive 
one of Captain Moreno was to suppose that the Mekong, the 
course of which the French were then the masters of, was navi- 
gable as far as the Chinese frontier, and that the Yun-Nan province 
could be unsealed, through the Mekong, to the commerce of the 
world, with all its prodigious riches and fecundity. The explor- 
ing expedition headed by Captain Doudard de Lagr6e and Lieu- 
tenant Francis Gamier, in 1867, had proved that, owing to the 
multiplicity of its rapids, the largest river of Indo-China was out 
of question as a commercial highway between the French pos- 
sessions in Cambodia and the Chinese provinces in which it rises. 
That dire truth Napoleon III. knew of; but it was ignored by 
Captain Moreno, whose project thus went justly unheeded. 

It was reserved to a French merchant, M. Jean Dupuis, 
who had long been established in Shang-Hai and was the pur- 
veyor of arms to the Chinese government, practically to demon- 
strate that the Song-Koi, or Red River, was the only navigable 
route to Yun-Nan. This was in 1872, when the Chinese had 
opened a vigorous campaign against the Mohammedans settled 
in the latter province, who since 1854 had been in a continual 
state of rebellion against China. Finding it exceedingly slow to 
forward by the interior roads of the Chinese Empire the arms, 
ammunition, and provisions of all kinds which he had been com- 
missioned to supply the Chinese troops, he proposed to the 
mandarins to explore the Red River with his own steamers. 
They not only authorized him to do so, but gave him letters 
accrediting him as their representative and ordering the viceroy 
of Hanoi to help him in his adventurous mission. Nothing is 
more amusing than the account given by M. Dupuis in his 
book, La Conqntte du Tonquin, of the panic created among the An- 
namite mandarins by his unexpected arrival before Hanoi with his 
steamers, Lao-Ka'i and Hong-Kiang, on the eve of Christmas, 1872. 
All the rich Annamite families fled precipitately, and the manda- 
rins secretly ordered the population of Hanoi to leave the city, in 
order to make M. Dupuis believe that he and his followers were 
considered as enemies and would be soon treated accordingly. 
But the true Tonquinites did not move. Then the mandarins 



214 THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. [Nov., 

spread the terrific news that the Frenchman's two steamers, like 
the wooden horse in Troy of old, held concealed within them 
thousands of soldiers, besides infernal machines ready to burn 
down the city, destroy its inhabitants, and conquer the whole pro- 
vince. The sudden arrival of the frigate Bourayne from Saigon 
seemed to give some appearance of truth to these wild falsehoods ; 
but still the Tonquinites remained undisturbed. What was de- 
signed to terrify them seemed to be to them the glad tidings of a 
near deliverance from Tu-Duc's yoke. Meanwhile the viceroy 
did not show himself, all negotiations about the mission of M. 
Dupuis and the help to be lent him for the exploration of the Red 
River being transacted between the Annamite secretary of the 
treasury and the Chinese secretary of Jean Dupuis, acting as his 
interpreter. On the 29th of December Mgr. Puginier, a French 
bishop having his residence in Ke-So, about thirty miles from 
Hanoi, hearing of the arrival of a French mission, came to Hanoi 
with his vicar, M. Dumoulin, born, like M. Dupuis himself, in the 
French arrondissement of Roanne. Very affecting was the unex- 
pected meeting between the venerable prelate, M. Dupuis, and 
Messrs. Millot, Begaud, and Fargeau, officers on the Lao-Kai 
and Hong-Kiang. The shrewd mandarins did all they could to 
induce Mgr. Puginier to discourage the French explorer from 
the accomplishment of his mission. " There was no water," they 
said, " in the Song-Koi, and, moreover, the famous rebels known 
as the ' Black Flags ' were entrenched in Lao-Kai and would ex- 
terminate the French party to the last man." The good bishop 
knew them too well, and did not even attempt to deter his 
countryman from obeying the orders he had received from the 
Chinese government. 

On the 6th of January, 1873, Dupuis had not yet seen the 
viceroy, who remained invisible in the citadel of Hanoi like the 
citadel of Hu6, built by French engineers according to the sys- 
tem of Vauban. Escorted by his ship officers and ten Chinese 
soldiers, the French merchant went that day to see the famous 
citadel, but he was no sooner perceived by the sentries than all 
the doors were shut and the drawbridges were raised, while the 
ramparts swarmed with Annamite soldiers, running to and fro in 
great disorder, as if afraid of a sudden attack from a large army. 
The party laughed heartily at so unseemly and unnecessary a 
demonstration, and went back to their ships, where they found 
Colonel Tsaii, who had been sent with fifty soldiers by General 
Tchen, commanding the Chinese troops stationed at Bac-Ninh 
and Thaiguyen, in order to inquire the meaning of the numer- 



1883.] THE FRANCO-ANN AMESE CONFLICT. 215 

ous despatches forwarded by the viceroy. The viceroy had 
described the French party as " brigands " of Saigon, whose in- 
tention was, under the pretext of a mission, to conquer Tonquin 
from the authorities of Yun-Nan. When shown the credential 
letters from these authorities Colonel Tsal, knowing the bad 
faith of the Annamite mandarins, became the stanch friend of 
M. Dupuis, went back to General Tchen without even seeing 
the viceroy, and returned to Hanoi' on the I5th of January with 
strong letters from Tchen ordering the viceroys of Hanoi and 
Son-Tay to supply the French mission with boats and boatmen 
all along the Red River, the expenses to be paid by the Yun- 
Nan mandarins. In case the viceroys should not promptly exe- 
cute his orders General Tchen threatened to come himself, at 
the head of his troops, to chastise as they deserved the stub- 
born Annamite authorities and to accompany the mission to 
Yun-Nan via the Song-Koi. This vigorous demonstration set- 
tled all difficulties. Dupuis successfully carried out his plans, 
and as a loyal Frenchman notified the French government of the 
important discovery he had made of the thorough navigability 
of the Red River. Soon his business became so prosperous that 
the Annamite mandarins and Tu-Duc himself did all in their 
power to help his cause with the French governor of Cochin 
China, who had remonstrated against him to the French govern- 
ment. Lieutenant Francis Gamier was sent again to Tonquin in 
1873, and he found easily enough that the complaints of the man- 
darins were prompted by mere jealousy, and instead of blaming 
Dupuis he himself helped, with the latter's undisputed influence 
and immense material, to accomplish his marvellous but ephe- 
meral conquest of Tonquin, so picturesquely described in Dupuis' 
account. But when the chivalrous Garnier was massacred with 
his handful of brave companions, at the very same place where 
on the 1 8th of May preceding Commandant Riviere lost his life, 
M. Philastre, sent by France to take his place in the citadel of 
Hanoi, adopted quite the reverse of his policy, expelled 'and con- 
sequently ruined Dupuis, and allowed Tu-Duc to massacre forty 
thousand Tonquinites merely because they had, through true 
sympathy for French designs in Tonquin, lent the most disin- 
terested help to his valiant predecessor. 

This is the third and most atrocious blunder committed by 
France, or rather by the French government, in Tonquin. Great 
indeed was the popular indignation when the correct news was 
received in Paris. It was not, however, until the 24th of Feb- 
ruary, 1 88 1, that M. Dupuis, who had come to France to plead on 



216 THE FRANCO-ANN AMESE CONFLICT. [Nov., 

his own behalf, received from the Chamber of Deputies an in- 
demnity of two millions of francs. Meanwhile the Black Flags, 
far from decreasing in number and audacity, rendered the pro- 
visions of the treaty of 1874 useless, and spread terror and death 
by their depredations and wholesale murders all along the Red 
River. Public opinion was again aroused in France, and M. de 
Vilers, then governor of Cochin China, received orders in April, 
1 88 1, to send the French naval division of Saigon into Tonquin 
waters. But as there was no definite plan, nothing was done 
towards the restoration of peace and security on the Song-Koi 
shores, so that Commandant Riviere found himself obliged to 
recapture the citadel of Hanoi, and then to give it back to the 
Annamites. The Annamites soon blockaded him so closely that, 
in a desperate attempt to break through with the few heroes 
who with him were shamefully abandoned to themselves by 
temporizing France, he gloriously lost his life. Pie was not 
avenged until the I9th of July last, by the victory of Colonel 
Badens at Nam-Dinh. 

On the following day, July 20, Tu-Duc, the shrewd An- 
namite whose duplicity had brought about so long and bloody 
troubles, gasped his last in the mysterious citadel of Hu6. Two 
factions of ambitious mandarins at once began over his corpse a 
contest for a new emperor of their respective choice. Some 
wanted Phu-Dac, a nephew designated as his successor by the 
will of Tu-Duc ; others, finding Phu-Dac opposed to a prolonged 
war with France, pronounced for another member of the impe- 
rial family, Vian-Lan. But on the i$th of August the French 
gunboats La Viptre and Le Lynx entered the canal of Thuan-An, 
and on the iSth, iQth, and 2oth made the voice of France to be so 
distinctly heard in Hu6 that the contest between the mandarins 
was suddenly silenced. A third candidate for -the Annamite 
throne was at once found in the person of Tu-Duc/s youngest 
nephew, who on the 2$th of August signed with Dr. Harmand, 
civil commissioner for the French government, the treaty of Hue, 
of which the following are the exact and complete terms : 

" The protectorate of France over the kingdom of Annam is formally 
recognized. The forts of Thuan-An, at the entrance of the Hue River, and 
the line of Vung-Khiva, which commands the communications of Annam 
with Cochin China, shall be permanently occupied by French troops. As a 
compensation for ancient and unpaid debts contracted by Annam to- 
wards France, the province of Bin-Thuan, bordering on Cochin Chiiui, is 
ceded to the French. Two new ports, Xuanday and Tourane, shall be 
opened. 

"A line of telegraphy shall be established between Saigon and 






1883.] THE FRANCO-ANNAMESE CONFLICT. 217 

Hanoi. Resident governors shall be sent by France to all capitals of the 
provinces of Tonquin even in those of Than-Hoa and Nghean, southeast 
of the Red River. These governors shall be assisted by French troops, in 
numbers to be determined by the French government. The French resi- 
dent in Hue shall enjoy the privilege, heretofore denied to foreign minis- 
ters, of personal interviews with the sovereign of Annam. 

" The customs of the kingdom of Anriam shall be given up entirely to 
French collection and control, in consideration of which France will serve 
annually to the government of Annam an income of 2,500,000 francs. 

" The French government shall be authorized to construct all along the 
Red River as many forts or posts as they will deem necessary. 

" The piastres and coins of Cochin China shall be legal tender all over 
the kingdom of Annam." 

Such is the convention made between the French govern- 
ment and the new emperor of Annam, Hiephma, subject, we 
must add, to the approbation of China, which does not seem 
quite disposed to bow before Dr. Harmand, Admiral Courbet, 
and M. Champeaux, formerly French consul at Hue", and who 
has been, by telegraph, appointed on the I5th of September the 
first resident governor near the court of Annam. 

While negotiations are pending between the ubiquitous Mar- 
quis of Tseng and the never-to-be found Challemel-Lacour, 
French Minister of Foreign Affairs, President Grevy has sent 
the insignia of the Legion of Honor to King Hiephma, to Grand- 
Censor Traudino-Tuc, to Ndji-Nen-Trang-Hiep, the Annamite 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Dr. Harmand, and last, but not 
least, to Mgr. Caspard. 

Mgr. Caspard is one of the most distinguished members of 
the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris. An Alsatian, he was 
born in Obernay in 1841 ; set out for Cochin China in 1865, when 
only in his twenty-fourth year, and was elected titular bishop ot 
Canata and vicar-apostolic of northern Cochin China in 1880. 
His residence is Hu6, which he did not abandon during the 
three days' bombardment in August. The late Emperor Tu-Duc 
had Mgr. Caspard in particular esteem. When the French 
consul, M. Rheiftart, the predecessor of M. Champeaux, left Hue 
in a hurry after the death of Commandant Riviere, the good 
bishop was called by the mandarins to be present at the inven- 
tory of the furniture of the consulate and signed the affidavits 
thereof. Later on the mandarins of the Court of Rites having 
caused an inquiry to be made about the resident missionaries in 
Annam, the bishop complained to Tu-Duc, who censured them 
severely and deprived them of one year's salary a too tardy 
attempt at justice and recognition of the treaty of 1874 ! 



218 ARMINE. [Nov., 



ARMINE. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

IT was about this time that Miss Dorrance said to her 
cousin one day : " Does it strike you that Sibyl is the victim 
of a grande passion f " 

Mr. Talford looked a little startled. " No," he replied. 
" I confess that it has not struck me. Whom do you take to 
be the object of the passion?" 

"Not yourself," said Laura, with a laugh, "nor yet any 
one r whom you know. But you have heard of M. d'An- 
tignac ? " 

" Heard of him I should think so, indeed ! " answered 
Mr. Talford. " Miss Bertram has entertained me on several 
occasions with rhapsodies about him. But what has that to 
do with the matter?" 

" Only that he is the object of the passion." 

Mr. Talford stared for a moment ; then he looked dis- 
gusted. 

" Women have strange ideas," he said. " There seems 
to me something equally absurd and revolting in the sug- 
gestion' that a young, beautiful creature like Miss Bertram 
could find any attraction in the man of whom you speak a 
hopeless invalid who, from what I hear of him, can only be 
said to be half-alive." 

"He is not much more, as far as his body is concerned," 
Laura replied; "but men have strange ideas if they imagine 
that what attracts a woman like Sibyl Bertram has anything 
to do with the body. It is the spirit ; and certainly there is 
enough of that in M. d'Antignac." 

"Is there?" said her cousin, with a slight laugh. "I con. 
fess to not knowing much about spirits, .either in the flesh or 
out of it. But I should not take them to be formidable rivals 
that is, if one were sufficiently in earnest to fear a rival." 

" Of course you are the best judge on that point," said 
Laura " I mean about being sufficiently in earnest ; but as 
for what constitutes a formidable rival well, that, I should 
say, depends on the woman concerned. With some women 
it would be a million of dollars, with others a handsome face. 



1883.] ARMINE. 219 

But you ought to know whether or "not Sibyl is like such 
women." 

" Miss Bertram is very ideal," said Mr. Talford, " but I 
do her the justice to believe that she distinguishes clearly 
between what is ideal and what is practical, and that no one 
is less likely to confound the one with the other. Her fancy 
for M. d'Antignac is very natural ; but it will not interfere 
with anything else." 

"Will it not?" said Laura, with a glance of amusement. 
" Well, we shall see. I thought it only kind to give you a 
warning." 

" A warning is justified by its need," said her cousin ; " but 
in this case I fail to perceive the need." 

Nevertheless, lightly as he had received it, the warning 
was not without its effect upon him, inasmuch as he began 
to ask himself if the time had really come when he must 
definitely bid farewell to the pleasant liberty of his life and 
take upon himself the fetters of matrimony. They were not 
fetters for which he was in the least eager, and he had more 
than once asked himself why he should think of assuming 
them. But these doubts had a fashion of vanishing under 
the influence of Sibyl Bertram ; and in the magic of her 
presence it seemed to him that he could do nothing better 
than to secure a companion so well calculated at once to 
stimulate interest and reflect credit on his taste. And it was 
characteristic of the man that he felt not the least fear of 
being refused. He was one of a class who are so steeped in 
materialism that they are honestly unable to conceive a dif- 
ferent standard in the mind of any one else. He knew his 
own advantages well, and to suppose Miss Bertram ignorant 
of or indifferent to them would simply, in his opinion, have 
been to convict her of want of sense. But there was no 
reason for such a suspicion. The peculiarity of her manner, 
which struck Egerton so forcibly, had not been lost on him, and 
he had, as we are aware, drawn his own conclusions from it. A 
more acute man might, indeed, have been deceived, not having 
the mot de I'enigme in a sufficient knowledge of the character of 
this girl. 

It was, therefore, without any of the fears which beset a 
timid lover that Mr. Talford weighed the pros and cons of 
freedom and matrimony. The first was the good of many 
years proved, enjoyed, tested, and prized ; the other an un- 
tried experiment, promising something to. one desiring novelty, 



22o ARMINE. [Nov., 

but also threatening much to one desiring change. Decision 
was difficult; but he knew that his desires inclined in one 
direction, and that a strong rush of inclination was all that 
was necessary to make these desires take the form of accom- 
plished facts. Meanwhile, it was quite true that he had not 
seen much of Miss Bertram lately owing partly to pre- 
occupation on her part, and partly to a lack of ardor on his 
and although he attached slight weight to Laura's flippant 
remarks about M. d'Antignac, he decided that it would be 
well to reassert the ' influence which he had no doubt that 
he possessed. And so, on the day after the conversation re- 
corded above, he presented himself in Mrs. Bertram's draw 
ing-room. 

It was unoccupied ; and while his card was taken to Miss 
Bertram he walked about the room, observing idly the variety 
of articles which filled it. But suddenly he paused to look 
at a picture that he had never seen before. It was the pho- 
tograph of a singularly handsome man, who wore a uniform 
which struck him at first as entirely unfamiliar, but which 
he presently recognized as that of the papal army. The card 
bore the imprint of a well-known Roman photographer, and, 
turning it over, he saw that a woman's hand had written on 
the back, " Raoul d'Antignac, Rome, 1867." He shrugged his 
shoulders slightly, and as he was in the act of replacing the 
picture on the miniature easel from which he had taken it, a 
sound of rustling drapery told him that Miss Bertram was 
entering. 

He turned, they shook hands, and after the first common- 
places of greeting were over it was natural that she should 
say, with a smile : 

" What do you think of the picture you were examining 
when I came in?" 

" It is the likeness of a handsome man," he answered care- 
lessly. "The original, I presume, is the M. d'Antignac of 
whom I have had the pleasure of hearing a good deal." 

" Yes ; a photograph taken when he was in Rome. His 
sister gave it to me, and I consider it a treasure; though I 
would rather have one of him as he is now." 

" But I have been under the impression that there is very 
little left of him not enough to photograph." 

" Do you remember the story of the lady who, hearing 
that her lover had been shot to pieces in battle, said that she 
would marry him if there was enough of him left to hold his 



1883.] ARMINE. 221 

soul?" asked Miss Bertram. "There is enough of M. d'An- 
tignac left to hold his soul, and enough also to make a most 
interesting picture." 

" Your story," said Mr. Talford, with a smile, " reminds me 
that I heard it suggested only yesterday that you are the 
victim of a grande passion for this interesting gentleman." 

" I suppose Laura made the suggestion," observed Miss 
Bertram quietly. " It sounds like her. But Laura's ideas of 
a grande passion and mine are very different." 

" So I presume," said the gentleman ; " and I confess I 
should like very much to know what your idea is." 

"Should you?" said Miss Bertram, smiling a little. "Par- 
don me if I say I think you are mistaken. I don't think you 
would care for my opinion or that of any one else on such a 
subject the last I can imagine of interest to you." 

This was not very encouraging; but a man of the world 
is not easily disconcerted, and after a moment Talford said : 

" Why have you conceived such an opinion of my insensi- 
bility ? " 

" Do you consider that insensibility ? " she asked. " I 
thought you would consider it simply good sense." 

" I certainly consider it good sense not to fall too readily 
into grand passions, which, generally speaking, are grand fol- 
lies," he replied ; " but nevertheless I should like to hear your 
definition of such a passion." 

" I am afraid that I do not know enough, nor have even 
thought enough of it, to venture on such a definition," she 
answered; "and probably I .could not improve on yours a 
grand folly. All feeling is folly to those who do not share 
it." 

Mr. Talford did not care to confess how nearly this was his 
own opinion. He felt that such an admission would not be a 
very auspicious opening for a suit in which the heart is sup- 
posed to play a prominent part. So he observed : " And yet 
feeling is necessary." 

Sibyl looked at him with the smile still shining in her eyes. 
" You have discovered that ? " she said. " Yes, I think we may 
not only say that feeling is necessary, but that the degree of 
feeling of which a man is capable is generally the measure of 
his worth. ' We live by admiration, hope, and love.' " 

" Do we ? " said Talford, unable to repress the scepticism of 
his tone. " It strikes me that we live by much more material 
means, and that, though admiration, hope, and love are very 



222 ARMINE. [Nov., 

good things in their place, they are not at all essential to our 
existence." 

" I should say that depended upon whether you consider our 
existence to be animal or spiritual," replied Miss Bertram ; " or 
rather, since it is both, on which you consider the most im- 
portant of the two." 

"Rather a difficult question, inasmuch as no one has yet 
proved where the animal ends and the spiritual begins," an- 
swered Talford, not unwilling to evade more direct reply. 
" But I beg that you will not misunderstand me. If admiration, 
hope, and love are not essential to our existence, they certainly 
enrich and give it value." 

" As luxuries that are desirable, but can be dispensed with," 
said Miss Bertram. <4 1 don't think I can admit that. On the 
contrary, I believe that they are vital elements in our life. I 
can answer for myself that if I find nothing to admire that is, 
nothing to look up to I feel life to be not only empty and 
worthless, but disgusting. Think of being doomed to believe 
that the meanness and littleness of which we are conscious in 
ourselves are simply duplicated all around us, that no one rises 
higher, and that there is nothing whatever above us ! Why, it 
is the most horrible of all mental nightmares ! Yet there are 
people in the world who not only accept but who cultivate such 
a belief." 

This being the belief on which her listener's whole life was 
based, it may be imagined that he felt inclined to reply as Tal- 
leyrand did to Madame de Remusat: " Ah! what a very woman 
you are, and how very young.V But he contented himself 
with smiling as he said: 

" I am quite sure that you will never cultivate such a belief, 
and I should be sorry to see it forced on you." 

" I have felt sometimes as if it were forced on me," she said ; 
" and it is from that my knowledge of M. d'Antignac has de- 
livered me." 

" Do you mean," he asked, " that you have found so much 
to admire in M. d'Antignac?" 

" I have not only found so much to admire in him," she an- 
swered, " but he has put the world right for me ; he has raised 
me from the level on which I was stifling, to belief again in pos- 
sibilities of nobleness. I was trying to believe in such possi- 
bilities when I met him, but it was a desperate and failing 
effort." She paused a moment, then added quickly : " I had 
begun to feel as if your philosophy of life, Mr. Talford, might 



1883.] ARMINE. 223 

be the true one after all. But it was like the taste of dust and 
ashes in its bitterness. If I felt as you do that is, if I felt 
as you talk I should be the most miserable of creatures." 

" The presumption is, therefore, that I should find myself 
the most miserable of creatures," Talford answered quietly \ 
" but, on the contrary, I fancy that there are few people who 
derive more satisfaction from existence than I do. My aspira- 
tions are limited to things within the range of my senses, and I 
expect nothing more from life than I am certain that it is able 
to yield. Ideal aspirations do not trouble me at all ; and as for 
possibilities of nobleness in human nature, I am content with its 
possibilities of usefulness. Believe me, my dear Miss Bertram, 
men like your friend M. d'Antignac are mere dreamers, whose 
ideas of life are no more to be trusted than the bravery of a 
soldier who has never seen a battle." 

" M. d'Antignac has seen battles," said she. " He has lived 
in the world." 

" Then he has learned little from it, for no man of any world- 
ly knowledge could cherish dreams like those of which I un- 
derstand you to speak." 

" I have never in my life seen any one who gave me less the 
idea of a dreamer than M. d'Antignac," she said. " If you saw 
him you would never apply such a term to him." 

" The only reason why I could possibly desire to see M. 
d'Antignac would be to discover what you find so attractive in 
him," said Talford, who began to feel that Laura's warning had 
not been so preposterous as he imagined. 

" In that case you might discover nothing," said Sibyl. 
" For, as I remarked a little while ago, whatever we are not in 
sympathy with seems to us folly." 

There was a moment's pause. Then Talford said quietly, 
but with a tone and manner not to be misunderstood : " I 
should like to be in sympathy with you on all points." 

The young lady flushed a little, but answered lightly : 

" You are very kind, but before you could attain such sym- 
pathy I fear that one or the other of us would have to be made 
over again ; and I cannot think that it would be a pleasant pro- 
cess, that of being made over. Happily there is no need to try 
it. We can be very good friends as friends go, with sympathy 
on some points and toleration on all." 

" I have always thought moderation a virtue," said Talford, 
"and have flattered myself that when I could not obtain what 
I wanted I was able to content myself with what I could get ; 



224 ARMINE. [Nov., 

but I am not sure that my philosophy will stand the test you 
propose. ' Very good friends as friends go ' I am afraid, Miss 
Bertram, that will not satisfy me." 

" Very good friends, then, without the clause," said she. 
" I think you must be unreasonable if you are not satisfied with 
that. At least," going on quickly, "it is all I can offer; and 
since you have been good enough to compliment me on being 
a woman of the world, let me suggest that our conversation 
has wandered into a region where people of the world can 
hardly feel at home. Let us leave sympathies and sentiments 
and talk of more practical things horses, pictures, music, or 
wh^t they are saying on the boulevards. Arid here " as the 
door opened "comes mamma to offer the needed inspiration 
a cup of tea." 

But instead of Mrs. Bertram the opening door disclosed the 
white cap-strings of Valentine, the maid, who announced " M. 
Egerton," and then drew back to admit that gentleman. 

It is probable that Sibyl had never before welcomed him with 
such sincere cordiality, and it is also probable that Talford was 
not sorry to see him, since his entrance relieved what might 
have been in another moment an awkward situation. For how 
can a man, having gone so far, not proceed farther? And yet 
Miss Bertram's manner certainly had not encouraged that pro- 
ceeding, nor inspired confidence of a favorable issue. Talford's 
experience of feminine nature was, however, large; and he 
knew that the resources of that evasion which it is hardly fair to 
call coquetry sometimes renders it difficult to foretell the nature 
of an answer up to the instant of receiving it. His vanity had, 
therefore, a loophole of -escape ; and it was a loophole which just 
now he was not sorry to have provided. 

" Though who can tell that I shall ever be so near the point 
again ? " he thought, with genuine regret and genuine k doubt of 
himself. 

"You have come in time to share the offer of a cup of tea 
which I was just making to Mr. Talford," said Miss Bertram, 
after she had greeted Egerton with unusual warmth. " We will 
have it without waiting for mamma, who has been out since 
breakfast indulging in the delights of shopping with some Ame- 
rican friends. There is an ' occasion ' at the Bon March6, and 
no feminine mind can resist the fascination of a bargain." 

" You have apparently resisted it, since I have the pleasure 
of finding you at home," said Egerton. 

" Oh ! but I know that mamma will find all the bargains and 






1883.] ARMINE. 225 

bring them to me without my undergoing the purgatory of 
crushing which is the penalty one has to pay for the cheapness of 
the great shops. I confess that I have a most undemocratic dis- 
like to coming into close contact with my fellow-beings. I am 
never in such a crowd that I do not think I should like to be 
an archduchess, in order to have room always made for me." 

" An archduchess with socialistic sympathies would be some- 
thing very piquant," said Egerton, smiling. " But it is unfor- 
tunately true that democratic theories and democratic practice 
are v0ry different things." 

" And the impossibility of the last proves the unsoundness 
of the first, only you visionaries will not see it," observed *Tal- 
ford. 

" Am I a visionary ? " said Egerton. " I hardly think so, 
though I should be rather proud of belonging to that much- 
reproached class; for it is surely better to see visions of higher 
things, even if they are not altogether practicable, than to limit 
one's eyes to the dusty road of actual life." 

" I have noticed that those who see such visions are rather 
prone to stumble on the road," said Talford. 

" But wha.t would the road be without the visions to brighten 
it?" said Sibyl. 

Talford elevated his eyebrows. "And why," he asked, 
" should visions of a future democracy be more attractive than 
a present democracy as typified in the bourgeois crowd of the 
Bon March6?" 

" I was not thinking of democracy," she answered. " I con* 
fess that I have never had much more fancy for that in the fu- 
ture than in the present. I have been touched by dreams for 
relieving the suffering of humanity, but I have never relish- 
ed the thought of enforced equality." 

" Yet that is what your friends the Socialists would insist 
upon," said Talford. 

" It is hardly fair to call them my friends, since I have not 
an acquaintance among them, and M. d'Antignac has nearly 
cured me of admiring them," said she, smiling. " If they have 
a friend present it must be Mr. Egerton." 

"I don't know that I have a right to call myself a friend," 
said Egerton. " My interest in them has sprung chiefly from 
curiosity, and some sympathy with their aims or, at least, their 
professions. No one who walks through the world with open 
eyes," continued the young man quickly, "can avoid being 
struck and saddened by the misery of human life, the hopeless 
VOL. xxxvin. 15 



225 ARMINE. [Nov., 

misery that encompasses the vast majority of the human race 
from their cradles to their graves. One feels absolutely para- 
lyzed in the presence of it. What is to be done ? Where is any 
help, any hope of making the lives of all these millions better for 
them? Now, we must admit that, with all its follies, Socialism 
tries to give some sort of an answer to that question." 

"But what sort of an answer?" said Talford, while Sibyl 
looked intently at Egerton, as if some new idea with regard to 
him was dawning on her mind. " It is the answer of a man who 
would burn down your house because it is defective in cor%truc- 
tion." 

".Oh ! I grant that the answer is not very wise," said Eger- 
ton ; " but I think there can be no doubt that it is an answer 
which the world will have forced upon it, unless some change 
comes over the spirit of society as we know it, unless it becomes 
less grossly material in its ends and less merciless in the method 
by which it seeks those ends. But I don't mean to inflict my 
opinions upon you," he broke off with a laugh. " The attraction 
which I have found in Socialism at least in the representative 
Socialist whom I know is that he feels so intensely on this 
subject." 

" I suppose you mean M. Duchesne," said Miss Bertram. 

" Yes, Duchesne, of whom you have so often heard me 
speak. He is so sincere an enthusiast, so ardent a visionary, that 
it is impossible not to be swayed by his personal influence when 
one is near him. In proof of which' I am going with him to- 
morrow to Brussels." 

" You ! " said Miss Bertram in a tone of surprise. " For what 
purpose, if I may ask ? " 

" To attend a meeting of delegates from various countries 
who wish to secure amity of aim among the different revolu- 
tionary societies in short, to revive the International. Du- 
chesne promises that I shall see all the most prominent lead- 
ers." 

" You must have become a revolutionist in earnest, to be 
admitted to such a gathering," said Talford. 

" By no means," answered Egerton. " I am bound to nothing 
Duchesne fully understands that. Very likely he thinks that 
I shall join them eventually, but I have never told him so. I 
represent myself simply as what I am actuated by curiosity. 
Of course I shall not be allowed to see or know anything that 
.would compromise them." 

" I should not be too sure of that," said Talford. " You 



1883.] ARMINE. 227 

might come to know enough to compromise your own safety if 
you refused to join them at last. I do not think that, if I were 
you, I would go to Brussels. Here, at least, you are known and 
have friends." 

" And, therefore, could not be disposed of by dagger or 
dynamite without exciting some inquiry," said Egerton, smiling. 
" I have not the least fear of the kind." 

" But the absence of fear is not always an argument against 
the need of fear," said Sibyl. " And if you have really no mo- 
tive but curiosity " 

" I assure you I have no other," said Egerton, meeting her 
eyes and thinking them kinder than he had ever seen them 
before. " But that is sometimes a tolerably strong motive." 

" It ought not to be strong enough to induce a man to run 
a grave risk." 

" But there is positively no risk at all," said he. " Talford is 
simply indulging in a jest at my expense. I shall have great 
pleasure in giving you the points of the coming revolution when 
I return. Meanwhile, you spoke once of desiring to know Mile. 
Duchesne. I may be permitted to say that you have now the 
opportunity of making her acquaintance. She is again in 
Paris." 

But this was a little too much for Talford. He frowned, 
and, while Sibyl hesitated for an instant, said curtly : 

" Upon my word, Egerton, I think you forget that Miss 
Bertram's curiosity is probably less developed than your own, 
and that she can hardly care to make the acquaintance of so- 
cialistic madmen or madwomen, who are even worse." 

" I should never dream of proposing such an acquaintance 
to Miss Bertram," answered Egerton. "Mile. Duchesne of 
whom I spoke is indeed the daughter of a Socialist, but she 
is herself neither a Socialist nor a madwoman, but a very 
charming person and a great friend of the D'Antignacs, whom 
Miss Bertram knows well." 

" I have heard them speak of her with high praise," said 
Sibyl. " If she has returned to Paris I shall probably meet 
her in their salon." 

" It is likely that you may," said Egerton, who did not 
know of the decree which had gone forth, separating Armine 
from her friends. 

" So it seems," said Talford, " that the remarkable M. d'An- 
tignac is picturesquely eclectic in his acquaintance." 

"Above all people whom I have ever met," said Sibyl, "he 



228 ARMINE. [Nov., 

gives me the idea of basing his regard entirely upon what a 
person t's, not at all upon what his or her outward circum- 
stances or position may be. By the side of his couch one 
takes rank simply according to one's merit." 

"But how if one should chance to have no merit?" asked 
the gentleman sceptically. 

" In that case one must rely upon a charity which is broad 
enough to cover a multitude of follies," answered the young 
lady, smiling. " But I am sure that you are by this time tired 
of hearing Aristides called the Just, so happily here comes 
Valentine with the tea ; and here, also, is mamma to tell us 
all about her bargains ! " 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

IT was quite true that Egerton, in a spirit of adventure 
and curiosity, had accepted Duchesne's invitation to accompany 
him to Brussels. " Of course," the latter had said in giving 
it, " you will not hear anything of the business of the meeting ; 
but you will see many of the most famous leaders of this 
great movement, and you cannot fail to be impressed by per- 
sonal contact with them." 

Egerton, who understood thoroughly the object of the in- 
vitation, had himself no doubt of being impressed, but con- 
siderable doubt whether this impression would take the form 
Duchesne desired. Nevertheless it was an opportunity, an ex- 
perience, which he could not let slip, though he hoped the 
intelligence of it might not come to Armine's ears. " For she 
would not understand," he said to himself ; and then he was 
suddenly struck as with the force of a new sensation by the 
thought : " Why should she take so much interest why should 
she care so much whether or not I yield to her father's in- 
fluence ? " 

It was a question which it }iad not occurred to him to ask 
before, so entirely had he accepted Armine's interest as a part 
of Armine's self as something which did not conform to or- 
dinary rules, but was the more simple and charming for that. 
And it has been already said that he had not much of the 
vanity of his sex, so that he was not inclined to interpret that 
interest as a man of coarser nature might have interpreted it. 
It had been so directly expressed, it had (he felt) so little to 
do with him personally, that he had accepted it simply as 
the manifestation of the girl's strong feeling on the subject 



1883.] ARMINE. 229 

which had most deeply colored her life. Yet now, in his 
hope that this Brussels journey might not come to her know- 
ledge, he was startled into asking- himself whether such in- 
terest was indeed entirely impersonal if he was merely a 
brand which she wished to snatch from the socialistic burn- 
ing, or one who had been fortunate enough to excite in her 
something of more than ordinary interest. 

However that might be, he felt quite sure of the interest 
which she had excited in him an interest deeper (he said to 
himself) than any he had ever known before. " Falling in 
love," in the conventional sense, seemed commonplace and 
poor compared to this emotion blent of so many subtle ele- 
ments admiration, interest, pity, and a sense as if she could 
' give something of which he stood in need, some spiritual light 
or moral strength. But he knew too much of the human 
heart in general and of his own in particular to be certain 
that this sentiment, fine and delicate as it was, possessed either 
endurance or strength. " I was delighted to see her," he 
thought, recalling the day when he had suddenly come upon 
her graceful presence by the fountain in the old palace gar- 
den, " but was it not as I might have been glad to open again 
a book that had fascinated me, or an interesting study that I 
had not exhausted ? And have not the days always come when 
I have exhausted every such study ? Yes, they are right 
Winter and Miss Bertram, and D'Antignac too, no doubt, if 
he spoke what he thought when they declare that I have no 
strength or conviction of feeling. The enthusiasm to espouse 
a cause, and the passion to love a woman, seem alike lacking 
in me ! " 

Notwithstanding this conclusion, however, it was interest 
in Armine the recollection of their conversation in the Lux- 
embourg Garden, and the desire to know more that was 
going on in her mind and soul which moved him to seek 
her father again, else he would probably have suffered that 
enthusiastic Socialist to pass out of his life. He called at the 
apartment in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, saw Du- 
chesne and received the invitation to accompany him to Brus- 
sels, but did not see Armine. There was no mention of her 
beyond Duchesne's brief reply to his hope that she was well ; 
lie was not asked to enter the salon, and some instinct that 
all was not well between father and daughter prevented him 
from begging to do so. 

It was an instinct well founded, for in truth father and 



230 ARMINE. [Nov., 

daughter had never in their lives been so far apart in feeling 
and sympathy as they were at this time. Armine's foreboding 
of some deeply-seated change in her father was more than re- 
alized. Since the day at Marigny he had never been " like 
himself," and instead of the kind and indulgent father she had 
known all her life he was now suspicious, harsh, and severe. 
She had reluctantly spoken of this change to the D'An- 
tignacs; but it was greater than she was willing to acknow- 
ledge, and had become more marked since she parted with 
them. For when, after much mental struggle and debate, she 
had taken D'Antignac's note to the priest to whom it was 
addressed, she found all that he had promised of instruction, 
comfort, and encouragement ; but she was told that before 
she could be received into the church she must acquaint her 
father with her intention. The girl knew what she would 
bring upon herself, but it was not in her to quail from any- 
thing in the form of a duty. She told her father of her reso- 
lution. And then the storm burst. 

It was a storm such as she had never known before, such as 
she had hardly conceived possible. She had been aware that 
Duchesne regarded the church with animosity, but she had not 
classed him with those who are so virulent in their hatred that 
there is only one explanation possible of the spirit which ani- 
mates them. She had supposed that he condemned and dis- 
liked that which was the chief bulwark against the spread of 
ideas to which he had devoted his life, but she could not have 
dreamed that he was capable of that unreason of blind rage 
which French atheism betrays whenever it touches upon the 
question of religion. It was quite true that she had not lived 
so long among the professed disciples of freedom of thought 
without learning what freedom of thought means from their 
point of view to wit, freedom for themselves and intolerance 
for every one else but the loyalty of the girl's nature had as- 
serted itself in this, as in all else where her father was con- 
cerned. She had refused to believe that he could be so narrow 
in the name of liberty, so tyrannical in the name of freedom, as 
others were around him. 

But incredulity was no longer possible. The proud faith 
in which she had lived faith in his reasonableness and noble- 
ness, however mistaken it might be lay shattered at her fc( t ; 
and it is not too much to say that a great part of her life lay 
shattered with it. For this faith had sustained the affection for 
her father which was the strong centre of her existence. To 






1883.] ARMINE. 231 

spare him pain she had been almost ready to deny her God 
at least by such passive form of denial as lies in not acknowledg- 
ing and now she felt as if it were sharpest punishment that 
with his own hand he demolished the ideal she had loved. 

For that ideal had little in common with the man who in 
violent words forbade her ever to approach a priest again, who 
spoke of religion in terms of bitter hatred, and told her that 
henceforth she could be trusted no longer, but would be placed 
under strict surveillance. " For I find that you have had too 
much freedom," he said. " I forgot too easily that folly and de- 
ception make up the character of woman. But I will take care 
that you see no more of those who have taught you to array 
yourself against me, and to betray, as far as lies in your power, 
that cause of freedom which is dearer to me than my heart's 
blood. We shall leave Paris soon ; until then I will place you 
with the wife of one of my friends, requesting that she will 
exercise over you the closest watchfulness." 

This meant, Armine felt sure, a species of imprisonment ; 
and she was not mistaken. Even more violent and intolerant 
(if such a thing were possible) than the men are the women who 
array themselves under the banner of free-thought. And such 
a woman was the one with whom her father placed her a wo- 
man against whom every instinct of her nature and her taste 
revolted. But she could do nothing save submit. Even appeal, 
she felt, would be useless, and she made no attempt to change 
or soften her father's resolution. She was only able before 
leaving his house to send a little note to the priest, which the 
latter took to D'Antignac a few pathetic words saying that she 
had followed his counsel, and that the result was what she had 
feared : her father, deeply incensed, had forbidden her to see 
him again, and to enforce his command had removed her to 
stricter guardianship. 

"My poor Armine!" said D'Antignac when he read these 
lines. " My heart aches for her. I know well what she is 
suffering." 

" It is a great privilege to have something to suffer for God," 
said the priest quietly. " This trial will clo her no harm, but 
much good, if she is made of the stuff I fancy her to be." 

" It would be difficult to fancy better stuff than she is made 
of," said D'Antignac. " If occasion tries her you will find that 
her soul is heroic in its temper." 

" I was very much impressed with her," said the priest. 
" Even without your letter I think I should have been. One 



232 ARMINE. [Nov., 

who sees much of human nature must unless very unobservant 
learn to judge character by apparently trifling signs. One 
of the things which struck me in Mile. Duchesne was that she 
said no more than was necessary of herself. But in all that 
she did say she showed remarkably clear intellect and very 
fine feeling." , . . 

" I suppose I am something of an enthusiast about Armine," 
said D'Antignac, smiling. " But I am sure that no one in the 
world knows her better than I do indeed, I doubt if any one 
knows her so well and my opinion is that she belongs to the 
highest and finest type of character, to that order of great souls 
for whom God has special uses." 

Then a gentleman who was looking over a paper at a win- 
dow glanced up and said : " What do you take those uses to 
be?" 

" Ah ! " said D'Antignac, " that I do not pretend to be able 
to tell. If I did I should probably make a great mistake. But 
you, Gaston, will agree with me that Armine Duchesne is no 
ordinary person." 

The Vicomte de Marigny for it was no other than he laid 
down his paper and came forward before answering. Then he 
said quietly : 

" My acquaintance with Mile. Duchesne is very slight, but 
I certainly think she is no ordinary person. You know" he 
hesitated for an instant " I saw her down in Brittany. Did 
she tell you that?" 

" Yes," D'Antignac replied. " She mentioned it as one rea- 
son or at least one apparent reason for a great change in her 
father. It seems that he was never the same to her after he 
saw her speaking to you at Marigny." 

" Poor girl ! " said the vicomte. " I am sorry, then, that I 
addressed her. I only did so in order to show her that I did 
not identify her with her father. It is perhaps necessary to ex- 
plain, M. 1'Abbe 1 ," he added, turning to the priest, " that her 
father the well-known Socialist Duchesne was in Brittany 
for the purpose of defeating my election, if possible." 

" If one may judge by the majority which returned you, M. 
le Vicomte, he might have spared himself the trouble," said the 
priest, smiling. 

" Brittany is always faithful," said the vicomte. 

" Yet even in faithful Brittany was there not an attempt upon 
your life made ? " asked the other. 

The vicomte shrugged his shoulders. " A trifling affair,^ 






1883.] ARMINE. 233 

he said. " I am quite sure that the perpetrators were not Bre- 
tons. A clumsy affair, too. It was the night after the election, 
and I was sitting in my study writing, when I heard stealthy 
steps beneath my window. Thanks to a friendly warning, I 
had a weapon near me, and I quietly laid my hand on it. The 
next moment something like a bomb was thrown through the 
open window and fell at my feet. It was instinct rather than 
thought which made me snatch it up and hurl it out again. It 
exploded when it touched the ground, as it had been meant to 
explode when it first landed at my feet ; and it is needless to 
say that if it had done so I should not be talking to you now. 
The moment that the detonation was over I rushed to the win- 
dow and fired at the figure of a man whom I could plainly see 
making off with great haste. But I presume that my shot did 
not strike him, since no one was found when the servants, who 
hastily gathered, searched the grounds. Voilti. tout ! " 

"Was no further attempt made?" asked the priest. 

" None, although I remained at Marigny for several days 
after. 1 had no business to detain me, but was simply deter- 
mined that the instigators of the attempt should not fancy 
that they had frightened me." 

" Whom do you suppose the instigators to have been ? " 

" Oh ! the secret societies that I have so often denounced ; 
there can be no doubt of that. They do me honor by es- 
teeming me a dangerous opponent." 

Then the conversation was diverted to the political situa- 
tion, and it was not until the priest had taken his departure 
that D'Antignac said to his companion : 

" You spoke of a friendly warning, Gaston ; may I ask 
who gave it ? " 

The vicomte did not answer. Instead he put out his hand 
and took up Armine's note, which had fallen on the couch and 
been left there by the abbe, to whom it was addressed. He 
opened it and read it over silently a proceeding excusable 
on the ground that he had already heard its contents read 
aloud and discussed. Then he drew from his pocket another 
note, which he placed beside it and offered to D'Antignac. 

There was some difference in the writing of the two a 
difference due to the nervous haste and agitation with which 
the first had been produced but even with this difference it 
was sufficiently evident that the same hand had written both. 
D'Antignac, at least, felt not an instant's doubt. He started 
and said in a tone of deep feeling : 



234 ARMINE. [Nov., 

"It was like her; but what it must have cost her, my 
poor, brave Armine ! " 

" I never doubted that it came from her," said the vicomte; 
"yet my certainty had no proof until now. I had, of course, 
never seen a line of her writing before." 

But D'Antignac, with his eyes still on the note, could only 
repeat again what was so often on his lips, " My poor Ar- 
mine ! " Then after a pause he looked at the vicomte. " If 
you knew her as well as I do," he said, " every word of this 
would be eloquent for you. You would understand the 
struggle which it must have cost her to write it." 

" I think I understand," said the other. " I cannot possibly 
know her as you do, but I know her somewhat. How could 
one look in her eyes and not know her somewhat? And this 
note " he held out his hand for it " brought me another 
message than that which it bears on its face : a message of 
a gentle heart, of a brave soul, of a nature that could not 
stand by and see wrong done unmoved, but that, even at the 
cost of bringing blame where blame was not due, felt bound 
to send a warning that might save a life." 

" She is all that," said D'Antignac, looking at him a little 
keenly ; " but it is strange that you should have learned so 
much of her on so slight an acquaintance." 

" It is strange," said the vicomte, as if he were answering 
his own thought as well as the words of the other, " but it is 
a curious fact that one learns more of some people at a glance 
than one learns of others from the acquaintance of a lifetime. 
Mile. Duchesne's character is very sympathetic. But what first 
probably excited my interest in her was the consciousness 
in my mind of the unacknowledged tie of blood between us." 

"How did you discover that?" asked D'Antignac. 

" I have always known that my granduncle left a son who 
called himself Duchesne, and who gave the family some an- 
noyance by asserting that he was the legitimate heir, though 
he could not prove the marriage of his parents. I might not, 
however, have been aware that the Socialist leader was his 
son but for the fact that the latter was at Marigny once sev- 
eral years ago to see a man, the son of my granduncle's 
confidential servant, from whom he hoped, no doubt, to obtain 
information." 

"And failed?" 

" Cela va sans dire. What could not be proved at the time 
was hardly likely to be susceptible of proof at this late date." 






1883.] ARMINE. 235 

" And this fact," said D'Antignac, " the cloud upon his 
father's birth, has no doubt not only embittered him against 
the order to which he does not belong, but also against you, 
who hold what he believes to be his inheritance." 

"He cannot possibly believe that," said the vicomte, "since 
there is not a shred of proof that his grandparents were 
married." 

" He may not believe it, but none the less he feels injured, 
you may be sure. It is almost invariably the attitude of 
those who have suffered in this way. It also accounts for his 
harshness to his daughter when he saw her speak to you." 

"Did she know or suspect the cause of his harshness?" 

" No. She spoke of it with simple wonder, unable to ac- 
count for what seemed to her an extent of prejudice simply 
incomprehensible." 

" Then I suppose that I must never speak to her again, 
unless I meet her here." 

" You are not likely to meet her," said D'Antignac. " Her 
father has forbidden her to see us chiefly, if not altogether, 
because she first met you here." 

The vicomte looked startled. " I am sorry I am very 
sorry," he said. " But I have nothing with which to blame my- 
self." 

" Nor have I anything with which to blame you," said the 
other, " except, perhaps, a little want of thought. Knowing the 
father to be what he is, I do not think that, in your place, I 
would have spoken to her at Marigny or, at least, I should have 
been content with a mere salutation." 

" It was hardly more," said the vicomte, in the tone of one 
who feels called upon to justify himself. " And her father was 
not with her. She was standing at the church door, and I had 
just left the presbytere. What was more natural than that I 
should have exchanged a few words with her, partly from cour- 
tesy, and partly, I confess, because she has always attracted 
me ? " 

D'Antignac smiled. "The last reason," he said, "is a strong 
one especially since you are not very easily attracted." 

" Far from it," said De Marigny. "It is my misfortune, or 
perhaps my good fortune, to be insensible to many charms which 
other men feel. But a face so sensitive and so poetic as Mile. 
Duchesne's I have seldom seen, and as seldom have I heard a 
voice so like a chord of music." 

" It may be as well that you are not likely to hear it again," 



236 ARMINE. [Nov., 

said D'Antignac with some significance. "There can hardly be 
two people in the world placed farther apart than you and the 
daughter of Duchesne the Socialist." 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

AND so it came to pass that Egerton saw nothing of Armine 
before he started with Duchesne to Brussels. If he had seen her 
it is likely that a word or even a glance might have changed his 
resolution and prevented his going on such slender chances do 
many of the most important events of life depend ! but, failing 
this, the journey recommended itself to him as one promising 
interest and novelty, and on the morning appointed he met Du- 
chesne at the Gare du Nord. 

The Socialist looked pleased to see him, and held out his 
hand, saying, with that peculiar charm of manner which Egerton 
had felt from the first of their acquaintance : 

" This is almost more than I hoped. I feared that at the 
last you might not feel interest enough to come." 

" On the contrary, I feel immensely interested, and should 
be sorry if anything had occurred to prevent my corning," an- 
swered Egerton, smiling. 

" You will not regret it," said the other, indulging in the 
rashness of prophecy. "Now, shall we take our tickets?" 

They took their tickets, took also their places in a first-class 
carriage, which they had happily to themselves, and so rolled 
out of Paris in the soft gray mist of early morning. 

How well Egerton remembered afterwards the appearance of 
everything the suburbs through which they passed, the emi- 
nence of Montmartre, crowned by the great unfinished Church 
of the Sacred Heart, which the Republicans are so anxious to 
demolish, and then the open country with its fields and poplars ! 
He remembered the look of it all, though he certainly was not 
conscious of paying special attention to what was at once so fa- 
miliar and so uninteresting. For a while both men glanced over 
the morning papers, which they had with them ; then presently 
Duchesne laid his down and began to talk. Never, it seemed to 
Egerton, had he talked better, with more force, more of the 
magnetism born of passionate conviction and enthusiasm. The 
conversation ranged over a wide field, dealing with the social 
conditions of mankind in many countries and during many ages, 
as well as with those great hopes for the future which Duchesne 
described with vivid eloquence. As Egerton listened he under- 



1883.] ARMINE. 237 

stood what Armine had meant in saying that she feared her fa- 
ther's influence for him. Exposed defenceless to this influence, 
he felt that he could not have answered for himself; he must 
have been carried away. Something of this he said to the 
man who, he could see, was intent upon his conversion : 

" One could easily be swept off one's feet by enthusiasm in 
listening to you," he said. " But I am sure you would not care 
for an adhesion which was not founded on the conviction of the 
mind." 

" Sometimes the mind needs to be instructed by the heart," 
said the other. " If you are once roused to enthusiasm convic- 
tion will follow, unless you stifle it." 

" I have no desire to stifle it," Egerton began. Then he 
paused abruptly ; for what was happening ? There was a shock 
that threw both men off their feet, a convulsion, as it were, of 
every atom of matter in the long line of swaying carriages, then 
a crash and a scene of wild terror, confusion, and horror baffling 
description. 

On the well-regulated railways of France accidents do not 
often occur ; but no human foresight can guard against all 
chances, prevent all carelessness. This accident was one which 
startled France at the time of its occurrence ; but there is no 
need to dwell upon its awful details as the newspapers dwelt 
upon them. The reporter takes in the whole scene and photo- 
graphs it in ghastly unity ; but the actors in the terrible tra- 
gedy are rarely conscious of more than their individual share 
of fear or suffering. 

It was so with Egerton. He had but a vague recollec- 
tion of anything after the convulsive shock after his last 
sight of Duchesne's face paling with excitement as he said, 
" It is an accident ! " Then followed the final crash, a heavy 
blow, and unconsciousness. When he came to himself again, 
after an interval of the length of which he had no idea, it was 
with a sense of physical pain such as he had never known 
before in his life. His whole body seemed full of a terrible con- 
sciousness of agony, under the effect of which he opened both 
his eyes and his lips the first to see, and the second to groan. 

Then he found that he had been removed a little from the 
debris of the wrecked train, and that he was lying on a stretch 
of green turf, with some one probably a surgeon bending 
over him. 

" Ah ! that is where you are hurt," the former said quickly, 
as the young man opened his eyes. 






238 ARMINE. [Nov,, 

" Yes," said Egerton faintly. He added after a moment, 
"I am hurt everywhere. Am I dying?" 

" I don't think so," the other answered. " As far as I can 
judge, your injuries only amount to some bruises and a broken 
arm. You have fared better than many of your fellow-travel- 
lers. Yonder is a man, for example, both of whose legs are 
so badly crushed that if he lives at all he will lose them." 

" Poor fellow ! " said Egerton, with a pang of sympathy 
to which these commonplace words gave but scant expres- 
sion. Through his own pain he entered into the greater 
pain of others, and his heart seemed to sicken within him as 
he caught a glimpse of mangled forms and heard the groans 
of mortal agony which filled the air. Then he thought of 
Duchesne and asked eagerly for him. 

"Duchesne!" the surgeon repeated. "Ah! yes, I am glad 
you asked. There is a man so badly injured that he will die 
within an hour, who says his name is Duchesne, and who 
asked me to bring to him his friend and companion, if I could 
find him alive some one with a foreign name." 

" I am the man," said Egerton quickly. " Ah ! monsieur, 
for God's sake help me to get to him." 

How this was accomplished the young fellow scarcely 
knew, for it was but by contrast with greater injuries that 
the surgeon had thought lightly of his.' As has already been 
said, his whole body seemed resolved into one mighty throb 
of physical anguish, and it was only the brave will which en- 
abled him, with the surgeon's assistance, to drag himself to 
where Duchesne lay, gasping away his life in an agony for 
which language has no expression. 

That it was Duchesne that this shattered, mutilated 
wreck of humanity could be the stately man he had last seen 
Egerton for a moment could not realize. He stood silent, 
in speechless horror. But when the eyes brilliant and dark 
as ever opened, he knew them at once. 

" So you are safe ! " Duchesne said feebly. " Forgive me 
for having brought you into this." 

"There is nothing to forgive," answered Egerton quickly. 
"Who could foretell anything so fearful? And I have fared 
better than others far better, my friend, than you, to whom 
I would gladly give my safety." 

" No," said Duchesne ; and if he spoke grimly it was be- 
cause it was only by a terrible effort that he could subdue 
his pain sufficiently to speak at all. " It is better as it is. I 






1883.] ARMINE. 239 

am not willing to die far from it, for I have much work yet 
to do but if it was to be one of us, I was the right one. You 
will suffer enough as it is for having been persuaded to come 
with me. Don't talk!" he said almost sharply, as Egerton 
began to speak. " There is something I must say to you, 
and I may not have many minutes in which to say it. Ah ! 
what agony," he cried out suddenly, and his whole frame 
writhed with a convulsion which haunted Egerton for many 
a long day afterward. When it subsided sufficiently for him 
to speak, great drops of sweat, like that which we are told 
accompanies torture, stood on his livid brow. 

" It is of Armine," he gasped faintly. 

Here Egerton, thinking to spare him, interposed with an 
assurance that he would charge himself with the future wel- 
fare of Mile. Duchesne ; but the words had scarcely passed 
his lips when the dying Socialist answered with a tone of 
pride: 

" My daughter is not dependent on the kindness of stran- 
gers. If she needed charity the comrades of her father 
would gladly care for her. But she has an inheritance which 
is hers by right, and this she must claim." 

There was another pause, which Egerton did not break. 
He feared by a word to exhaust the little strength which 
Duchesne possessed, and which he now perceived was neces- 
sary for some essential statement. Presently he was able to 
speak again : 

" She knows nothing of it ; it will be for you to tell her, 
and to direct her what to do. And I must tell you, if if this 
agony will let me speak ! You know or you have heard of 
the Vicomte de Marigny. But he has no claim to his rank 
or property. / am the heir of both ! " 

" You ! " said Egerton, thunderstruck. For an instant he 
thought that the mind of the speaker was surely wandering, but 
the dark eyes which met his own- were clearly rational. 

" Yes, I ! " repeated Duchesne. " I have not time for seeking 
phrases. I must speak to the point. Listen, then. The name 
which I bear I inherited from my father ; but I always knew 
that he assumed it on account of its revolutionary association, 
and because he could not prove his right to that of his father, 
who was Vicomte de Marigny when the Revolution broke out. 
It is a long story, for which I have not breath ; but when the 
Revolution was at its height this Vicomte de Marigny, flying 
for his life, was saved by a daughter of the people. She con- 



240 ARMINE. [Nov., 

cealed him in one of the sea-caves on the Breton coast, sup- 
plied him with food, finally arranged for his escape to England, 
and fled with him. That he married her my father always be- 
lieved, but knew not where to turn for proof, his mother hav- 
ing died in his infancy, and his father suddenly expiring on the 
eve of the Restoration. He had never acknowledged the boy 
whom he placed, however, at school in England as his legiti- 
mate son ; so his brother took possession of the title and estates, 
with no one to question his right." 

Again he paused, and it seemed almost impossible that he 
could continue save by a superhuman effort. Yet, as Egerton 
thought forgetting his own suffering in the sharp tension of 
the moment if he did not continue, where was there any point 
in this narrative on which to found a claim ? His heart almost 
stood still with suspense. He began to doubt again whether 
Duchesne was not wandering in mind, when suddenly the latter 
looked up and spoke, but even more faintly, with even greater 
difficulty : 

" It was at Marigny when I was there a few weeks ago 
that at last I found the proof. The son of the servant of the 
vicomte my grandfather is living there. He sent for me and re- 
lieved his conscience of a burden which he said had long op- 
pressed it. This was the knowledge he had received from his 
father, who was present at the marriage of my grandparents ; 
the place where the marriage took place, and where the record 
of it is no doubt to be found, is Dinau. It was a civil marriage 
there were no others allowed then between Henri Marigny 
(all aristocratic prefixes were also forbidden) and Louise Bar. 
beau. Tell Armine to search for the record of this marriage, 
and to claim the inheritance which is hers." 

" But why have you left this for her to do ? Why did you 
not claim it when you learned the truth ? " asked Egerton. 

" I am a Socialist ! " said Duchesne, with a chord of. inex- 
pressible pride vibrating through the tones of his voice. " From 
my youth I have lived only for the rights of man. I meant 
perhaps in time to claim this inheritance, in order that I might 
use it for great ends. But it is npt to be ; and I fear I 
fear" 

" What do you fear ? " asked Egerton, as the failing voice 
ceased. " If it is anything in which I can be of service to you, 
I promise to execute your wishes to the utmost extent of my 
power." 

The other gave the hand which held his a slight pressure. 



1883.] ARMINE. 241 

" Thank you, mon ami" he murmured. " It is a comfort to me 
that you are here, and I hope that you are not badly in- 
jured." 

" Never mind about me," said Egerton almost impatiently. 
" Speak of yourself. Tell me what it is that you fear, what I 
can do for you." 

" I fear for Armine, in whose hands this great trust will 
be placed," said Duchesne. " Will she use it as I wish ? I 
doubt, for she has fallen of late under fatal influences. I am 
punished for thinking that it mattered little what tolly a 
woman believed, and for letting her go her way as she 
would. Now, when so much is placed in her hand, she 
proves to be the slave of superstition. Ah ! " what a passionate 
cry it was " surely it is bitter to be struck down with so 
much undone ! I meant to take her far away from the influ- 
ences that have misled her, to show her the great work to 
which my life was pledged, to open her eyes, and then to say, 
' Here is something which you must use not for yourself but 
for humanity ! ' Well, I shall never say it now ; but you, my 
friend you will say it for me. That is what I ask of you." 

" I promise to repeat to her all that you have said," Eger- 
ton replied ; " and if you will tell me any special disposition 
of the property which you wish made, I am sure she will 
respect your wishes." 

Duchesne did not answer for a moment. Then he said 
faintly and with great difficulty : " It is not possible ; I can 
only leave it to her. But you may tell her that it is my 
dying wish, nay, my dying command, that she will not marry 
the Vicomte de Marigny." 

Egerton felt his heart give a bound probably of surprise 
at those words. Then he said involuntarily : " Does she 
think of it?" 

" No," Duchesne answered, " but I suspect that he does 
at least I am sure that he will when he knows. But even 
from my grave I forbid it. Remember that." 

What could Egerton reply ? Could he expostulate with 
this dying man, and point out that such a marriage would 
be desirable, inasmuch as it would reconcile conflicting claims ? 
He almost felt as if he were bound to do so ; but as he hesi- 
tated he saw that it was too late. An awful change a 
change like unto no other came over Duchesne's face, and 
in a moment the young man knew that there is but one 
visitor who comes to mankind with such a touch. 
VOL. xxxviii. 16 



242 SCEPTICISM AND [Nov., 

" My friend," he cried, " you are dying. Will you not 
call on God once before you go to face him?" 

It was an appeal wrung from the depths of a heart which 
until this terrible moment had not been conscious of possess- 
ing faith, and was so earnest that it might have touched the 
dying man, if anything could. But as he opened his eyes for 
the last time something of the fire of a life-long defiance 
flashed into them. 

"There is no God," he said. " Vive Vhumanitd! " 

And with these words still on his lips the soul passed 
forth to meet Him whom it had denied. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



SCEPTICISM AND ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN 

THOUGHT. 

LOOKING out upon the intellectual life of the day, it is safe to 
characterize its attitude as a state of opinion. Dogmatic teach- 
ing in religion to a wide extent has been rejected on the ground 
that it is contrary to reason and science. The privilege of 
choosing or formulating a creed is refused to no one, and the 
equal favor of rejecting all is maintained by many. There no 
longer exists any obligation to believe, and, what is more, no one 
can condemn the belief or unbelief of his neighbor, for the 
reason that he has no definitive knowledge to lay down as a 
rational basis or criterion of belief. There is no evidence that 
one person has the truth and another has not ; one may have it, 
neither may have it. Such is the substratum of much of the 
religious thought of the day. Hence the wide-spread tolera- 
tion of conflicting opinions which passes current for liberalism. 
Opinion upon the momentous subject of religion, which is the 
state of the modern mind, or rather of a large school of modern 
thinkers, connotes a state of doubt ; and this condition has been 
arrived at through various underlying processes, one of which 
is a similar attitude in philosophical thought. Here also all de- 
finite knowledge has been thrust aside in favor of the supremacy 
of doubt, and as a result the foundation of the religious structure 
has been severely shaken. But, far from striking fear to the 






1883.] ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN THOUGHT. 243 

heart, it is hailed by a large following with acclamations of de- 
light. It is looked upon as the dawn of a clearer day, which still 
lies in the gray shadows of a passing darkness. Doubt is the 
beginning of enlightenment. We should not groan beneath the 
burden of bewilderment which modern scepticism has placed 
upon our shoulders, but heroically bear the onus of a transition 
state ; for we are right in the flux of a change from ignorance to 
knowledge. Although mostly blind ourselves, we are the bearers 
of light to future generations, whose millennial blessings upon 
their ancestors shall be the reward of all our sacrifices in bringing 
them to a completer knowledge. 

That we have not the means of knowing is the reason of our 
intellectual blindness, and, logically enough, having no premises 
known or knowable, can draw no conclusions. But doubt does 
not stop with itself ; it reaches out to denial. Prudence is for- 
gotten, and the modern school does not hesitate to deny where 
it doubts. As a consequence it endeavors to place opinion on 
a positive basis, and to do so makes truth subjective, whether 
consciously or not is of little moment to the matter in hand. 
Placing all truth in the thinking subject, as a result it denies 
objective reality. In this development we have idealism, the 
logical outcome . of scepticism. The charge of idealism alto- 
gether, and scepticism in the full force of the word, is repudiat- 
ed by modern thinkers ; and the object of the present article is 
both to inquire into the validity of these charges and to make 
an examination into what may be rational grounds for scepticism, 
if there be any. As a philosophical system scepticism has not 
wanted exponents for its scientific formulation. We find it ex- 
pressed with various distinctive modifications from Pyrrho down 
to Hume and others of our own day. But it is not here in- 
tended to consider it either in its historical development or in 
its many formulae. To discuss it in its essence as a rational 
principle is alone the object of the present paper. As such it 
presents two main divisions : the first, a principle which de- 
nies to man the possibility of attaining any truth ; the second, 
a system which postulates that man can know just so much 
truth as his material nature renders him capable of grasping, but 
denies him the knowledge of anything beyond or above his or- 
ganic powers. In this latter we may recognize modern agnos- 
ticism. Regarding scepticism in its baldest and primary signi- 
fication, we find its full expression in the opening passage of 
Goethe's Faust, in which the doctor soliloquizes after the fol- 
lowing fashion : 



244 SCEPTICISM AND [Nov., 

" Philosophy, ah ! and law and medicine, 

And, woe is me ! theology also, 

Now I have studied through with burning zeal ; 

And here I am at last, poor fool ! and am 

Wise as I was before : Master yclept, 

And doctor too. And now for these ten years 

I've led my pupils by the nose 

This way and that, and up and down, and see 

That we can know just nothing." 

Faust has studied philosophy, law, medicine, and theology, and 
the conclusion he arrives at is that man "can know just no- 
thing." This is scepticism pure. That man can know nothing 
is its fundamental principle and its ultimate conclusion. All his 
learning Faust regards as an illusion, and ends up where he 
supposes he began, in knowing nothing. The aspiration which 
he feels within him after truth is but vanity ; the arduous 
struggle of a lifetime in search of knowledge terminates only in 
the discovery that there is no truth, or, if there is, man cannot 
attain it. The seeker after light finds only impenetrable dark- 
ness, without a single ray to relieve its awful profound. Know- 
ledge is folly, truth a dream, and life a vanity. This is indeed a 
dismal creed, and, followed practically, would strangle all action 
and finally end in man's annihilation. Faust, believing himself 
hopelessly baffled in the pursuit of truth, with a strong natural 
inclination to the sensual persuading, falls back upon the ma- 
terial and the sensible, which he deludes himself to believe is 
the only tangible thing man can grasp. In Faust we have a 
fair type of a large class of modern sceptics, with this excep- 
tion, however : that they, unlike him, have never labored through 
the curriculum of the sciences. Philosophy, law, medicine, and 
theology to them are but names imperfectly understood ; but 
they let others beat the mazes of learning for them, and then 
accept the .conclusion ready-made that man can know nothing. 
They do not act practically upon this conclusion, for that is 
impossible, and by the law of their being their practical conduct 
gives the lie to their theory. But there are results in their prac- 
tical life which follow from their speculative belief, and these 
results are so serious as to largely affect their moral and social 
existence. What are rational grounds for this creed of scepti- 
cism is our inquiry. 

When the sceptic lays down his principle that man can know 
nothing, he enunciates a proposition in which there is an affir- 
mation of a truth namely,, the truth of the proposition that man 



1883.] ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN THOUGHT. 245 

can know nothing-. The form of the proposition itself is negative, 
and denies that man can know truth ; but the act of enunciation 
is affirmative, and declares that man actually knows a truth to 
wit, the truth of this very negative proposition. The position of 
the sceptic, then, is this : " It is true that I know this proposition 
to be true, and therefore actually know a truth, yet I deny that I 
can know any truth." Here, then, in his own words is a direct 
contradiction to his first principle the moment he asserts it. He 
condemns himself out of his own mouth. In the act of laying 
down a fundamental principle he stultifies himself by denying 1 
that very principle upon which he would build his whole sys- 
tem ! And not only does he do this, but much more that is in 
direct conflict with his own method, for he actually lays the 
foundation of all truth, unwittingly though it be. In the first 
place, he must assume the existence of man before he can 
predicate anything of him ; and the sceptic actually predicates 
of man the knowledge of a certain truth to wit, the truth of 
the proposition that man can know nothing. Underlying the 
sceptic's fundamental principle, then, is the necessarily assumed 
fact of man's existence. Hence that it is true that man ex- 
ists is another truth of which the sceptic cannot doubt, and 
must admit in order to declare his own principle. He must 
also assume in like manner his own existence, that he may 
give utterance to his proposition. In the second place, the 
sceptic affirms the truth of the principle of contradiction 
namely, that the same thing cannot be and not be at the same 
time. For when he declares that man can know nothing he 
assumes that nothing is not something; otherwise the contra- 
dictory proposition, that man can know something, would be the 
same as his proposition, that man can know nothing. Hence he 
must admit that a thing cannot be something and nothing at the 
same time ; or, to put it differently, the truth of the proposition, 
man can know nothing, which the sceptic holds as true, cannot 
be the truth of the contradictory proposition that man can know 
something ; or, formulated yet more simply, the same truth can- 
not be true and not true at the same time. The sceptic, there- 
fore, assumes the truth of the principle of contradiction before he 
can even state his first principle. In the third place, in asserting 
that man can know nothing the sceptic actually declares the con- 
trary, as we have seen in his act of enunciation. Now, that he 
may enunciate a truth he must first cognize that truth, and that 
he may cognize that truth he must have within him a cognizing 
principle. That he may know, there must be that by which he 



246 SCEPTICISM AND [Nov., 

knows. If this be not so, how does the sceptic come to the 
knowledge of the proposition he enunciates? Clearly, then, there 
is within him a principle by means of which he knows, and this 
is what we call intelligence. That this intelligent principle may 
attain the truth he must allow, for he has assumed that it has 
already attained the truth of his proposition. Here, then, is a 
third truth which he must take for granted to wit, the aptitude 
of reason to attain truth. The three primitive truths first, the 
existence of the subject, which is called the first fact ; second, 
the principle of contradiction, which is called the first principle ; 
third, the veracity of reason, which is called the first condition 
are denied by the sceptic, and yet in his very denial he is forced 
to assume them. In scepticism, therefore, we find its fundamental 
principle vicious, and containing a fallacy of so grave a nature 
as to be a direct contradiction of itself. Can that be called a ra- 
tional system which at the very outset repudiates all reason, 
stultifies itself in its first act, and denies the basis of all truth ? 
for such are the three primitive truths. Admit the proposition 
that man can know nothing, and what is the result ? You have 
denied your own existence, for you deny the existence of the 
subject ; you annihilate the principle of contradiction, for you de- 
clare that truth is not truth ; and you eliminate the first condi- 
tion of all philosophical inquiry, for you assert that reason can- 
not attain truth. You completely stultify yourself and stagnate 
in negation. You take away all terms of action and destroy 
thought. What consideration, then, should this system receive 
at the hands of honest men? And yet, strange to say, it has 
more than once been advocated by men of rare abilities. Unac- 
countable as it may seem to us that any rational being could 
seriously entertain the sceptical method of inquiry after truth, 
yet it is evident that the method in itself is a contradiction to 
reason, and it is certain that anything which the sceptics may 
have attained in their speculations is due to the tacit assumption 
of the three primitive truths, which they would deny, and not to 
the application of their own absurd principle of negation. 

Pure scepticism, as is evident, is an impossible basis for phi- 
losophical inquiry. But what of scepticism in its narrower 
meaning, as promulgated by modern agnosticism ? In this latter 
there is a strong positive as well as negative element, and at 
first sight the positive seems to predominate ; indeed, to such an 
extent that this school has received the appellation of positive. 
It emphatically affirms that man can know truths of a certain 
order, but that this knowledge is confined to the restricted 






1883.] ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN THOUGHT. 247 

limits of the realm of sensive experience. Matter and its rela- 
tions within itself are alone the objects of cognition. As the 
material is the only object of perception, so is it the only thing 
which exists, as far as man knows. Beyond this point his know- 
ledge does not extend. Hence the spiritual is unknowable, and, 
as far as he is concerned, has no existence. It may, therefore, be 
denied altogether. In this repudiation of the spiritual is also 
included, as a matter of course, the rejection of any supernatu- 
ral existence. In this denial of any nature beyond or higher 
than the material we find the scepticism of agnosticism. In the 
avowed declaration that knowledge of the material alone is cer- 
tain we have its positivism or dogmatism. Let us contrast these 
counter positions of positivism, and see if they may be reconciled 
in one harmonious whole. What are rational grounds for the 
elimination of the spiritual from the realm of the knowable, and, 
with this restriction upon intellectual cognition in view, what 
may be rational foundations for the assertion that man can know 
even the truths of the material, will constitute the present object 
of our inquiry. 

The fundamental principle of agnosticism may be stated in 
this wise: everything that is is matter. As this principle essen- 
tially denies the metaphysical, agnosticism seeks its verification 
in physical science, which is assumed to be the only method of 
attaining knowledge. It starts out with the hypothesis of evolu- 
tion, an<i in this claims that the justification of its first principle 
is found. Its fundamental, then, is hypothetical or conditional, 
and not scientific. For science is certain knowledge; an hypothe- 
sis is an uncertain supposition, which requires the verification of 
the condition upon which it depends before it can attain the 
dignity of an absolute truth. If all the conditions be fulfilled it 
ceases to be an hypothesis and becomes an established thesis. 
Therefore the principle that everything that is is matter is 
hypothetical, and cannot by any means be called scientific. It 
receives no verification whatever in the established principles 
of physical science, and it cannot be verified by metaphysical 
methods, since it rejects them. It has no verification by any 
means known or knowable. This dictum of agnosticism must 
not be taken by itself ; place alongside of it the condition of its 
verification, and it will present itself in its imbecility: if every- 
thing that is is matter, then everything that is is matter. In 
evolution agnosticism places its verification. But evolution has 
not been verified, and assumes the very point in question ; for the 
evolutionary theory, at least in the minds of its chief exponents, 



248 SCEPTICISM AND [Nov., 

is based on the supposition that matter is the one and only thing 
in the universe. Such verification, then, is nothing than begging 
the question. But granting that the evolutionary process is true 
and will yet be verified, it is by no means consequent upon its 
acceptance that we must admit that everything that is is matter. 
This is a question of another order, which must be proved by 
whomsoever holds it, whether evolutionist or agnostic. As the 
question now lies, it is taken without proof. Furthermore, such 
verification makes evolution itself inexplicable ; for unless there 
be behind the evolutionary process a non-material something 
which transcends and is the cause of evolution, we are only 
rejecting one inexplicable for another. If matter be the reason 
of the universe, if we can explain existence, essence, life, thought, 
as mere correlatives of matter, how can we explain matter itself ? 
Either we must give up the problem as insoluble or assume that 
matter is the sufficient reason of itself, which is absurd. For 
matter to be the sufficient reason of itself, it would be its own 
first cause, to speak in contradiction, and its own ultimate end ; 
and this is tantamount to saying that matter is the infinite, neces- 
sary, self-existent being. It cannot follow, then, upon the evidence 
of the truth of evolution, that everything that is is matter. 
Therefore to allow to agnosticism the truth of evolution is not 
to grant the truth of its first principle. Where, then, is the 
verification of the agnostic position ? It has none, unless it be in 
the impossible. It is a baseless assumption, without foundation 
in fact or reason, and may be therefore dismissed as destitute of 
any philosophical value. It is a system based upon an arbitrary 
and irrational hypothesis, leads to no truth, and, carried to its 
logical sequence, leaves us in pure scepticism. For, placing us 
in the purely material, it tells nothing whatever of matter. It 
cannot say that matter is even a reality, for with nothing behind 
matter what is it that makes matter real, or, in other words, 
what is its effect, that matter is matter ? Surely not itself, for 
then matter would be its own cause. Then it must be something 
beyond the material, which makes it to be material, gives to 
matter its truth and its reality. But agnosticism denies this 
something beyond matter, and therefore must accept the other 
conclusion, that matter is its own cause, which is to adopt as a 
fundamental principle an intrinsic contradiction. This certainly 
is not philosophical, whatever else it may be. What is irrational 
is not philosophical, and the claims of a system which admits a 
contradiction as its first principle to the dignity of a philosophi- 
cal science may be justly rejected. Agnosticism cannot vindi- 



1883.] ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN THOUGHT. 249 

cate the reality of matter, and leaves us in doubt whether our 
ideas of matter have any objective reality to correspond to them, 
or' whether they are mere images without objective validity. 
But to deny the objective validity of ideas is idealism. Agnos- 
ticism must accept this deplorable position as the result of its 
speculations. Whatever it ends with, it begins with an evident 
contradiction, and cannot be called philosophical. Therefore, as 
a method of inquiry after truth it may be rationally repudiated, 
since it begins with the negation of anything beyond matter, and * 
logically finishes with the negation of all things. 

Having now considered agnosticism in its philosophical atti- 
tude towards the objective world, let us proceed to examine its 
relations to the subjective or thinking world, and afterwards its 
effects upon the moral world. When the agnostic asserts that 
everything that is is matter, he denies the immaterial. At the 
same time he predicates of himself the knowledge of the truth 
of his proposition. He therefore assumes that he himself is a 
being who knows and thinks. But his proposition declares that 
everything that is is matter ; and since he himself is or exists, he 
also is matter. Furthermore, he knows and thinks, or, in other 
words, it is a function of matter to know and think. Here, then, 
at the very start is placed upon his shoulders the burden of a 
proof to wit, can matter perform the functions of thought ? As 
a fact of experience he sees that it is only in matter of a certain 
structure and in certain relations that the functions of thought 
take place. Matter, then, as matter, does not essentially think, 
but matter only under peculiar conditions. Therefore thought 
is riot essential to matter, and, if of a material nature, must be 
regarded as a mere accident of matter. Again, the agnostic does 
not see that matter itself thinks, but simply that thought is exer- 
cised within matter of a certain structure and in certain relations. 
This much he knows, and no more. Upon this knowledge, then, 
all he can infer is that thought is not essential to matter, and 
that thought, in as far as he knows, requires for the condition of 
its exercise an accompanying material action. Therefore, upon 
the assumption that everything that is is matter, all that his 
experience tells him is that thought is a mere accident of matter, 
and is the result of certain material conditions. But does this in 
any way go to show that matter can perform the functions of 
thought? Far from it the agnostic has begun at the wrong 
end, and has assumed the very thing in question. When he 
began his inquiry he took for granted that thought is matter, for 
at the start he laid down as his principle that everything is 



250 SCEPTICISM AND [Nov., 

matter ; and the only conclusion which his method reaches is 
the empty result that thought is a material accident. But let us 
begin at the other end, with thought itself, and by an analysis of 
it see whether it is the accidental result of material conditions, 
or whether it be something intrinsically different from matter 
and intrinsically independent of matter in its exercise. 

Thought is the act of intelligence, by which it cognizes or 
sees. The object of this cognition is truth. Now, an act is 
specified by its object, and a faculty by its act. Again, the act 
or operation follows the essence, since anything acts only inas- 
much as it is that which it is, and its essence constitutes it to be 
that which it is. For instance, in the physical order seeing is the 
act of the eye, and color is its object. The object of seeing, then, 
being color, which is material, that act or operation by which 
color is perceived, since it takes its species from the material ob- 
ject, is also material ; therefore that which acts materially, as in 
this case the eye, is also material in its nature. As truth is the 
proper object of cognition or the intellectual knowing, and as 
the act of cognition is specified by its object, we can know the 
nature of the principle of this operation by ascertaining the 
nature of that object about which its act is exercised. What, 
then, is truth ? Is it something material, made up of parts, with 
extension of parts beyond parts? Has it material qualities, such 
as hardness, softness, roundness, color, magnitude, etc.? If so, 
what sense attains its qualities ? Has any one seen it with the 
eye, heard it, felt it, smelt it, tasted it? Plainly it has never been 
attained in any of these ways ; but these are the only means 
we have of attaining the material. We certainly know truth, 
and if it be material it surely must be the object of one of the 
senses. It is evident the senses know it not, and yet we have 
attained it. Therefore it follows that there must be some fac- 
ulty which does grasp it, and that not material, for truth is es- 
sentially immaterial. Truth is the harmony (or conformity) be- 
tween the intellect knowing and the object known. It is neither 
the object nor the intellect, but is the entity of that harmony (or 
conformity) between the two. It has not a single material pro- 
perty ; it has no dimensions of length, breadth, or thickness, no 
parts, no size, no color, no weight in short, not one material 
attribute by which it may be known as matter is known. This 
immaterial object, then, is attained by some faculty we possess, 
which must be immaterial by its very nature, since through its 
act it grasps an immaterial object. We have, therefore, within 
us an immaterial principle, by which we cognize truth. Agnos- 






1883.] ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN THOUGHT. 251 

ticism denies this principle when it asserts that everything that 
is is matter. As a consequence it denies truth, and the power 
in man of knowing" truth. As we have seen, this principle of 
agnosticism destroyed the objective world, and now in its logical 
results would annihilate the subjective. Agnosticism, therefore, 
in reality is nothing else than pure scepticism, since it denies that 
there is truth and that man can know it. It must, therefore, bear 
all the odium of that " intolerable contradiction " scepticism. 
It is not philosophical and is more unsubstantial than the vaguest 
of dreams. To hold that a system which denies all truth is a 
safe method of arriving at truth can only lead to gross stulti- 
fication. 

Agnosticism carried to its legitimate conclusion, as we have 
just seen, effectually does away with both the objective and 
subjective worlds. Let us now proceed to trace its effects in the 
moral world. Here also it results in complete destruction. As 
is well known, matter acts under necessary laws; therefore it 
acts from necessity. Applying, then, the agnostic principle that 
everything that is is matter, since men are no more than matter, 
following their material nature, they act from necessity. They 
have, therefore, no liberty of action ; but without liberty there is 
no free-will, without free-will no responsibility, and without re- 
sponsibility no morality. When man acts as a purely material 
being, and thereby acting from necessity, he could not act other- 
wise than he was predetermined to act. Men are, therefore, not 
responsible for what they do, since responsibility can only exist 
where there is power of choice or freedom, and necessity rigor- 
ously excludes choice. A consequence, then, of the agnostic prin- 
ciple is the collapse of the moral order, and with it society. 
Necessity then becomes the only supreme and paramount law. 
As a fact, the whole history of the human race flatly contradicts 
the agnostic position, since all men at all times have regarded 
man as a free agent, and even agnosticism dare not openly deny 
it. The world, therefore, has always recognized the spiritual 
principle in man, since it -has ever admitted his free agency ; and 
in this fact, as much of a fact as any sensibly experienced pheno- 
menon, agnosticism faces a standing refutation of its rash princi- 
ple that everything that is is matter. 

It is evident, therefore, that a system which flies in the per- 
petual experience of man and overthrows the whole moral struc- 
ture can have no just claims to be called philosophical. It pur- 
ports to be the most positive system of inquiry after truth ever 
formulated, but in reality is the greatest monstrosity of negation 



252 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

to which error has yet given birth. It begins at zero and re- 
mains there. Its essence is nonentity, and its chief characteristic 
inanity. It negates itself and subsists on ignorance. It is a true 
intellectual imbecility. It arrogates to itself the dignity of a 
philosophy, and yet would annihilate all philosophy. It boasts 
itself the offspring of reason, and in its boast repudiates its gene- 
sis. It is, in short, what has been aptly termed an " intolerable 
contradiction." As we have seen, a logical inquiry into its tenets 
sustains the charges of scepticism and idealism. Its scepticism 
lies in its denial of anything beyond or above matter, and, as a 
consequence, in the denial of truth. Its idealism lies in its denial 
of objective reality,' and therefore the objective validity of ideas. 
In the assertion of its first principle, that everything that is is 
matter, it is pure materialism. Its materialism forces it into 
scepticism, its scepticism into idealism, and at last it finds its logi- 
cal outcome in absolute negation. It is the nightmare of science 
and the confounding of reason : 

" Confusion and illusion and relation, 
Elusion and occasion and evasion." 



BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.* 

III. MARYLAND TOLERATION. 

IN our last article, reviewing Mr. Bancroft's History of the 
United States in respect to the altered views expressed by the 
historian in his two last editions, 1876 and 1883, in regard to the 
motives of Lord Baltimore and the character of the Maryland 
colony founded by him, we endeavored to show, and we think 
successfully, that one of the motives of that illustrious states- 
man was to promote the cause of that religion which he had 
just embraced, and to which he was zealously attached ; that his 
son Caecilius, the second Lord Baltimore/inherited his father's 
zeal and motives in the same cause ; that neither of them was 
actuated by mercenary motives ; and that Csecilius wisely re- 
mained in England, in order to protect and promote the success 
of the colony, which he placed under the lieutenancy of his 

* 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. 



1883.] BANCROFT* 's HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 253 

brother Leonard in Maryland, and to struggle for the mainte- 
nance of the charter and colony against the opposition of his 
enemies and the enemies of his religion. 

In the present article we propose to show that another 
motive of both of these noblemen was to provide an asylum in 
the New World for their fellow-Catholics from the persecution 
they were then, enduring in England; that Csecilius Calvert 
having succeeded in obtaining a charter which fully enabled him 
to accomplish this great and noble purpose, its terms had from 
the beginning, and with this purpose, been so enlarged and 
elaborated as to enable him to extend the same protection of 
civil rights and liberty of conscience to all the oppressed of his 
countrymen and to all from whatever country they might come 
and of whatever sect or creed ; that the colony of Maryland was 
founded upon this principle, which was carried into practice 
and became the common law of the province from the founda- 
tion of the new commonwealth. 

That the Catholics of England suffered a most relentless and 
bloody persecution under the penal statutes enacted in the 
time of Elizabeth is too well known. Under James I. and 
Charles I. the penalties of recusancy were continued, and, the 
same laws being still in force, the persecution was still raging. 
Lord Baltimore, having joined the persecuted Catholics, endured, 
as we have shown in our last article, sufferings and persecu- 
tions, in common with his co-religionists, from which the personal 
friendship of those sovereigns could not save him. Charges 
were preferred against him before the English authorities on 
account of his carrying Catholic priests to his Newfoundland 
colony of Avalon and having the holy sacrifice of the Mass 
celebrated there. These circumstances showed an intention on 
his part of making that colony a refuge for his persecuted fellow- 
Catholics, where they might practise their religion. He was 
prevented from leaving England for Avalon on another occasion 
by a writ of ne exeat issued by the very king, his friend, doubt- 
lessly on the instigation of his enemies. On another occasion he 
was ordered by the king to return to England from Virginia, 
and was thus separated from his family, whom he was by this 
hurried order of return compelled to leave among his enemies 
in Virginia. In Virginia he was repelled from that then inhos- 
pitable shore, and the device of tendering to him the oath of 
spiritual supremacy, which they knew he could not conscien- 
tiously take and would not take, was resorted to designedly in 
order to exclude him from that country and to afford his 



254 BANCROFT" s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

enemies the pretext of accusing- him before the king. His 
speedy and compulsory return to England, under such circum- 
stances, and the consequent leaving of his family and a consid- 
erable amount of plate and treasure behind him, resulting in 
the loss of all at sea, are facts which at once place him among 
the foremost of English Catholics who had lost and suffered all 
for the faith. His son Caecilius came near witnessing the utter 
destruction of his colony firstly in England after it was gathered 
on board the Ark and Dove, and ready to sail, and secondly and 
repeatedly by the machinations and open warfare of Clayborne 
and other enemies of the ancient faith after it was settled in 
Maryland. He, too, was impoverished by his efforts to found 
and save that same colony. Indeed, he had been compelled to 
abandon his cherished purpose of leading his colony in person 
to a wilderness where their consciences would enjoy liberty, on 
account of the religious animosities of the age. 

At that time Catholics, by the laws of England, were for- 
bidden to maintain their religious services, or to express or 
manifest their worship of God by the grand and devotional 
ceremonial of their church, and were even required to attend the 
worship of the Protestant Church, under penalty of twenty 
pounds for each month of absence. Catholic priests were for- 
bidden to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, under penalty of 
two hundred marks for each offence ; and every one assisting or 
being present was subjected to a fine of one hundred marks ; 
a'nd both priest and layman so worshipping were subjected to 
one year's imprisonment. By a subsequent law every priest 
was banished from England and could not return under penalty 
of death ; and every person harboring, receiving, or assisting such 
priest returning to his own country was adjudged guilty of a 
capital offence. All Catholics who absented themselves from 
Protestant worship were thrown into prison and refused bail 
until they conformed to that worship and to the law proscrib- 
ing it ; and three months' refusal to conform subjected the poor 
Catholic to banishment from his native land. All this was not 
enough : by a still later law all Catholics refusing to conform 
were forbidden to appear at court, or dwell within ten miles of 
London, or go on any occasion more than five miles from their 
own houses ; were disqualified and forbidden from practising 
medicine, or surgery, or the common or civil law ; or of being 
judges, clerks, and such like ; of making presentations to the 
church livings within their own gift, or of acting as executors, 
guardians, etc. ; and Catholics who were married otherwise than 



1883.] BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 255 

by a Protestant minister forfeited all the property received in 
such marriage ; if their children were not baptized by a Protes- 
tant minister the parents were subjected to a fine of one hun- 
dred pounds for each case ; and wherever deceased Catholics 
were not buried in a Protestant cemetery the executor was 
liable to a fine of twenty pounds for each corpse.' Every child 
sent to another country for education forfeited all property to 
which he or she was entitled by descent or gift. The house 
of every Catholic, though made his castle by the common law 
of England, was now made liable to search, and his books and 
articles of furniture pertaining to religion might be burned, and 
his horses and arms taken from him. The appetite of bigotry 
was only stimulated by this legislation to demand something 
more odious, and finally a law was enacted by which Catholics 
were required by an oath of supremacy to renounce the pope's 
temporal power, or suffer imprisonment for life and the con- 
fiscation of their property. For the slightest relaxation, or 
rather forbearance, on the part of the king to enforce these laws 
enormous sums of money were exacted, so that even the rich 
were impoverished and the poor annihilated. It is a most im- 
portant fact, and one bearing most directly upon our subject as 
showing the motives and causes leading to the founding of the 
Man-land colony, that many of the Catholic nobility, gentry, and 
well-to-do people remonstrated with and petitioned the king, 
and in their petition announced to him that if such exactions and 
persecutions continued they would be reduced to beggary, and 
that unless relief were granted to them they would be com- 
pelled to seek in other lands that safety as to their property and 
their consciences which they were denied in England. 

Now, the argument we make upon these facts is this : The 
Catholics of England needed an asylum from religious persecu- 
tion outside of their own country ; they had at hand a leader 
experienced in colonization, one of their own number, one who 
had, like them, suffered for the faith, who was on such terms 
personally with the king as to be able to secure a charter and 
a grant of land, and who was ready and anxious for this great 
and noble work. Here we have the embryo Catholic colony 
in the persons of the Catholic gentlemen, their families and 
servants, who either were ready to embark in the first expedi- 
tion or in those that were soon to follow in the Cal verts, the 
Cormvallises, the Brents, the Clarkes, the Fenwicks, the Man- 
ners, the Lewgers, the Medleys, and others and the leader and 
founder of the proposed asylum in the person of Lord Balti- 






256 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

more. And in the preceding facts, detailing the persecutions 
they endured at home, we have the motive. Now add the 
crowning fact, that they who had the motive did in fact unite 
together and perform the very act to which they were thus 
impelled by so strong and overpowering a motive did in fact 
fly from the hand of persecution to a distant land to which the 
persecuting laws did not reach, arid founded a model common- 
wealth, and decreed that no man should be persecuted there 
for conscience' sake. They had warned their king that if the 
persecution did not cease or relax they would fly to a land 
of safety, of peace and liberty ; the persecution did not cease 
or relax, and they fled to a land where they and all that came 
enjoyed safety, peace, and liberty. From such premises who 
would dare to draw a conclusion other than that the motive 
which prompted the founding of Maryland was to provide an 
asylum for human conscience from the ruthless hand of persecu- 
tion? 

The foregoing view is strongly sustained by that able and 
exhaustive treatise on The Foundation of Maryland, by General 
Bradley T: Johnson, recently published by the Maryland Histo- 
rical Society. From numerous passages to this effect we quote 
the following: "It seemed as if England was no longer a place 
where men could be free ; and while the Protestants were thus 
preparing to seek new homes for themselves in the wilderness, 
the Roman Catholics, impelled by the same necessity and driven 
by even more cruel laws, began 'to concert among themselves 
measures by which a sanctuary for their religion and their liber- 
ties could be provided on the same continent where so many 
other Englishmen were finding refuge. . . . Thus it was that the 
principle of freedom of conscience, as a perfect, concrete polity, 
grew up in the mind of Lord Baltimore. . . . This purpose, 
wisely conceived and bravely persisted in through all obstacles, 
explains everything that has heretofore appeared ambiguous in 
the career of Lord Baltimore." 

Noscitur a sociis is an old maxim, which justifies us in judging 
of the motives of men from the companions and co-laborers in 
their enterprises. Let us apply this rule to the first Lord Balti- 
more in the earliest stages of his project for the colonization of 
Maryland. Catholics were his associates and partners through- 
out. Lord Arundel of Wardour, a prominent Catholic noble- 
man, was his associate and partner in his earliest efforts in this 
direction. Thus as early as February, 1630, we find Lords Balti- 
more and Arundel applying to the attorney-general for a grant 



1883.] BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 257 

of land south of the James River in the " Province of Carolina." 
The death of Lord Arundel on November 7, 1630, deprived Lord 
Baltimore of the co-operation of that nobleman. Another friend 
and leading counsellor of Lord Baltimore in his noble work was 
Father Richard Blount, provincial of the English Jesuits, him- 
self a scion of the old Catholic houses of Norfolk, Howard, and 
Warwick. Subsequently, when Lord Baltimore visited Vir- 
ginia after his abandonment of Avalon, this purpose was still 
held in view, though attention was now diverted from Carolina 
to the country north of the James and on both sides of Chesa- 
peake Bay, which was explored by him ; his companions were 
now again Catholics, priests and members of the Society of Jesus 
-Father White and two other Jesuits. They must have been 
specially charged with this task by their superior, for they made 
a report in writing to the provincial, approving the selection 
of that region for " the proposed Roman Catholic Refuge," as 
stated by General Bradley T. Johnson on the authority of the 
Woodstock Letters and Archbishop Carroll's Narrative. The De~ 
claratio, or " prospectus," so to speak, of the proposed colony, 
which we quoted in our last article, and which is attributed to 
the pen of Lord Baltimore, or to his direction, was probably con- 
curred in by these fathers, and is probably the report referred 
to. Its object was to induce the provincial to send some of his 
brethren as missionaries with the colonists. That it was by de- 
sign and in fact a Catholic colony is thus further seen from the 
fact that to provide missionary priests of their own faith to at- 
tend to the spiritual wants of the colonists was one of the earli- 
est and most earnest efforts of Lord Baltimore. 

Not only were Lord Baltimore's associates and partners taken 
from among the Catholic noblemen ; his chief advisers and con- 
suitors were Catholic priests of the most strictly Catholic and 
papal kind the Jesuits. In addition to the counsel and encour- 
agement of Father Blount, Father Henry More, another Jesuit 
who stood high in the Society during the Lords Baltimore's ef- 
forts to secure their charter, but was afterwards provincial of 
the Society when the colony had been established under Cascilius 
Calvert, was one of his most steadfast friends and advisers. Fa- 
ther More was a great-grandson of Sir Thomas More, the great 
English chancellor under Henry VIII., who suffered persecution 
even unto death for that same faith for which the Catholics of 
England were now suffering. The very association of his name 
with Lord Baltimore's enterprise is suggestive of Catholic suf- 
fering and of a Catholic asylum, for it was of an asylum for the 
VOL. xxxvin. 17 



25& BANCROFT* s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

conscience that his illustrious ancestor was dreaming when he 
recorded the vision of Utopia. It is well known that Lord Bal- 
timore had constant communication with Father More, which is 
an additional proof that Catholic interests, motives, and aspira- 
tions were the chief inspiration of the movement. 

In England every association and concomitant of the proposed 
colony was Catholic, and every effort was made to secure Catho- 
lic colonists and to remove all objections to the movement from 
the Catholic standpoint. The Jesuits were, in fact, the champions 
of the enterprise before the Catholic people of England. So dis- 
tinctively Catholic was the movement in England, from its incep- 
tion to the embarkation, and long afterwards as long as Catholics 
could hold their own, that nearly every objection raised against 
it was based on anti-Catholic grounds, and these in turn were 
answered on Catholic grounds. A storm of opposition was 
raised against the movement on the issue of the charter, as " it 
was understood," writes General Bradley T. Johnson, " to carry 
with it, especially to Roman Catholics, the right to enjoy their 
religion without let or hindrance." The same writer states that 
on the appeal of Lord Baltimore to the Jesuits it was determined 
" to give the whole power of the Society of Jesus to assist the 
enterprise." In furtherance of this purpose the Society under- 
took to answer, and did answer in a masterly manner, the vari- 
ous and numerous objections raised in England to allowing Ca- 
tholics to found in the New World an asylum or place of escape 
from the penal laws of the mother-country. Thus it was that 
during the preparations for organizing the colony the provincial 
of the Jesuits issued a series of answers to the objections which 
religious animosity had raised. This curious, interesting, and 
valuable document has recently been published by the Maryland 
Historical Society in General Johnson's book for the first time, 
and, as it has never been printed in any Catholic journal, we 
deem it well worth spreading upon our pages : 

" Objections Answered Touching Maryland. 

" Objection I. It may be objected that the Lawes against the Roman 
Catholics were made in order to their Conformity to the Protestant Reli- 
gion, for the good of their Soules, and by that means to free this King- 
dome of Popery rather than of their persons, but such a Licence for them 
to depart this Kingdome, and to go into Maryland, or any Country where 
they may have free liberty of their Religion, would take away all hopes of 
their Conformity to the Church of England. 

" Answer. It is evident that reason of State (for the Safety of King 
and Kingdome) more than of Religion was the cause of those Lawes, for 






1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 259 

there are no such divers other professions of Religion in England, although 
they be as different from the doctrine of the Protestant Church, established 
by Law in this Kingdome, as that of the Roman Catholiques is: And the 
Reason of State appears also in the Nature of those Lawes, for they ex- 
presse great doubts and jealousies of the said Roman Catholiques affection 
to, and dependence on, a foraigne power, and tend therefore, most of them, 
to disenable them (by confining, disarming, etc.) from plotting or doing any 
mischief to the King or State, and to Secure their allegiance to the King 
by oathes, etc., and the penalties of divers of them are abjuration of the 
Realme, which puts them out of the way of Conformity to the Church of 
England. Moreover, Conversion in matters of Religion, if it bee forced, 
should give little satisfaction to a wise state, of the conversion of such 
convertites, for those who for worldly respects will break their faith with > 
God doubtless, will do it upon a fit occasion much sooner with men ; and 
for voluntary conversions such Lawes could be of no use, wherefore cer- 
tainly the safety of King and Kingdome was the sole ayme and end of 
them. 

" Object. II. Such a licence will seem to be a kind of toleration of (at 
least a connivance at) Popery, which some may find a scruple of Con- 
science to allow of in any part of the King's Dominions, because they es- 
teeme it a kind of idolatry, and may therefore conceive that it would 
scandalize their Brethren and the common people here. 

"Answer. Such scrupulous persons may as well have a scruple to let 
the Roman Catnolickes live here, although it be under Persecution, as to 
give way to such a licence, because such banishment from a pleasant, plen- 
tiful, and one's own native Countrey, into a Wilderness among savages and 
wild beasts, although it proceed in a manner from one's own election, yet, 
in this case, when it is provoked by other wayes of persecution, is but a 
change rather than a freedom of punishment, and perhaps, in some men's 
opinions, from one persecution to a worse. For divers Malefactors in this 
Kingdome have chosen rather to be hanged than to goe into Virginia, 
when upon that condition they have been offered their lives, even at the 
place of Execution ; and they may with more ground have a scruple of Con- 
science to let any of the said Roman Catholiques to go from hence unto 
France, which few or none certainely can have in contemplation of religion 
only, and this Parliament hath given passes to divers of them for that pur- 
pose, that being more properly the Kings Dominion than is all that great 
part of North America, wherein Maryland is included, unto which the 
crown of England lays claim, upon the Title of discovery only, except such 
part thereof as is actually seated and possessed by some of his Subjects ; 
and therefore in the Preamble of the Lord Baltimores Patent of Maryland 
the enlargement of the Kings Dominions is recited as the motive of the 
grant, which inferres that it could not so properly be esteemed his domin- 
ions .before as when by virtue of such a grant it should be planted by 
some of his subjects, and if it be all the Kings Dominions notwithstand- 
ing ; then why have not such scrupulous persons a scruple to suffer the 
Indians (who ar.e undoubted idolators), as they do, to live there, which if 
they cannot conveniently prevent, as without question they cannot, unless 
it be by granting such a licence, they may as well suffer those whom they 
esteeme Idolators, as those whom they and all other Christians whatsoever 



260 BANCROFT* s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

repute and know to be so, to inhabit and possess^ that Countrey. More- 
over, they may also (as well as in this) have a scruple to treat or make or 
continue a League, or to trade with any Forraigners of that Religion, 
because in their opinions they are Idolators, or to permit the Public Min- 
isters of any such Forraigne Prince or State to have the free exercise of 
their Religion while they are in England, and may cease giving scandall to 
others by such tolerations or conivances : All which nevertheless we see 
done, even in these times, and allowed of, as well by the Parliament as the 
King, upon reason of State, for the good and safety of his Realme. So 
may this Licence be also thought by such persons a good expedient for 
the same purpose. And if any (of the weaker sort) should be scandalized 
at it, the scandall would be, acceptum not datum, and therefore not to be 
regarded by a wise and judicious Prince of State. 

" Object. III. By it the Kings revenue will be impaired in loosing 
the benefit which the said Laves give him, out of Recusants Estates, while 
they continue in England of that possession ef Religion. 

"Answer. The end of those Lawes was not the Kings profit, but (as is 
said before) the freeing of this Kingdome of Recusants, which deprives the 
King of any benefit of them, so as His Majesty will have no \vjong don 
him by such a licence, because he will loose nothing by it of what was in- 
tended him by the said Lawes : this is no ancient Revenue of the Crowne, 
for it had inception but in Queen Elizabeths time, and conformity or aliena- 
tion to a Protestant deprives the King of this Revenue. If there were no 
crimes at all committed in England, the King would loose i any fines and 
confiscations, whereby his Revenue would also be impaired (wch in the 
other as in this branch of it is but casuall), and yet, without question, the 
King and State would both desire it. The same reason holds in this, con- 
sidering what opinion is had here of the Recusants, wherefore it cannot 
with good manners be doubted that his Majestic will in this business pre- 
ferre his owne benifitte before that which the State shall conceive to be 
convenient for his safety and the publique good. 

" Object. IV. It would much prejudice this Kingdome by drawing con- 
siderable number of people, and transporting of a great deal of wealth 
from hence. 

"Answer. The number of the Recusants in England is not so great as 
that the departure of them all from hence would make any sensible dimi- 
nution of people in it, and the possession in Religion would make them 
lesse missed here. If the number were great, then consequently (according 
to the maximes of this State) they were the more dangerous, and there 
would be the more reason by this means to lessen it : And if it bee but 
small (as indeed it is), then their absence would little prejudice the King- 
dome in the decrease of people, nor will such a Licence occasion the trans- 
portation of much wealth out of England, for they shall not need to carey 
any considerable summes of money with them, nor is it desired that they 
should have leave to do so, but only useful things for a Plantation, as 
provisions for clothing and Building and Planting tooles, etc., which will 
advantage this Kingdome by increase of trade and vent of its Native Com- 
modities, and transferre the rest of their Estates, by Bills of Exchange, into 
Bankes beyond Sea, which tends also to the advantage of the Trade of 
England, for more stock by this means will be employed in it. 



1883.] BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 261 

" Object. V. It may prove dangerous to Virginia and New England, 
where many English Protestants are planted, Maryland being situated 
between them both, because it may be suspected that the said Roman 
Catholiques will bring in the Spaniards or some other forraigne enemy to 
suppresse the Protestants in those parts, or perhaps grow strong enough 
to doe it of themselves, or that in time (having the Government of that 
Province of Maryland in their hands) they may and will shake off any de- 
pendance on the Crown of England. 

" Answer. The English Colonies in New England are at least five hun- 
dred miles, and that of Virginia one hundred miles, distant from Maryland, 
and it will be a long time before planters can be of leisure to think of any 
such designe, and there is little cause to doubt that any people as long as 
they live peaceably under their own Gouvernment, without Oppression 
either in Spiritualls or Temporalls, will desire to bring in any Forraigners 
to domineire over them, which misery they would undoubtedly fall into if 
any considerable forraigne Prince or State (who are only in this case to be 
feared) had the possession of the English Colonies in Virginia or New 
England ; But the number of English Protestants already in Virginia and 
New England, together with the poverty of those parts, makes it very im- 
probable that any Forraigne Prince or State will bee tempted to undergo 
the charge and hazard of such a remote designe, it being well known that 
the Spanish Colonies in the West Indies are further distant than Europe 
is from thence ; if any danger were to be suspected in that way from the 
said Recusants, the like suspicion of bringing in a Forraigne Enemy into 
England may (as indeed it hath often beene) be had of them while they 
are here, for the difference of scituation may balance the difference of the 
power between this Kingdome and those parts, for the accomplishment 
of such a designe, and certainly (of the two) it were much better to throw 
that hazard, if it were any, upon Virginia and New England than to have 
it continuee here, much lesse cause is there to feare that they should grow 
strong enough of themselves to suppresse the Protestants in those parts: 
For there are already at least three times as many Protestants there as 
there are Roman Catholiques in England : And the Protestants in Vir- 
ginia and New England are like to increase much faster by new supplies 
of people yearly from England, etc., than are the Roman Catholiques in 
Maryland. Moreover although they should (which God forbid, and which 
the English Protestants in those parts will in all probability be still able to 
prevent) shake off any dependance on the Crowne of England, yet first 
England would by this means be freed of so many suspected persons now 
in it. 

" Secondly, it would loose little by it : And lastly, even in that case, it 
were notwithstanding more for the Honor of the English Nation that 
Englishmen, although Roman Catholiques, and although not dependant on 
the Crowne of England, should possesse that Countrey than Forraigners, 
who otherwise are like to do it : for the Swedes and Dutch have two 
severall Plantations already in New England and upon the confines of 
Maryland (between the English Colonies in New England and Maryland), 
and doe incroach every day more and more upon that Continent, where 
there is much more Land than all the Kings Protestant Subjects in all his 
Dominions (were they there) would be able to possesse. But the as- 



262 BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

surance of Protection from the Crowne and Sfate of England, upon all 
just occasions, either of danger from a Forraigne Enemy or of any wrongs 
which may be done unto them by his Majesties Protestant Subjects in 
those parts, and the benefit of trade with England for yearly supplies, 
without which they will not be able to subsist, will be strong tyes, if there 
were no other, to bind them to continue their dependance on it." 

It is a circumstance well worthy of notice that throughout the 
foregoing interesting and remarkable document both the ob- 
jections raised against the proposed colony of Lord Baltimore 
and the answers and defence of the project treat it as entirely 
in the light of a Catholic movement and as a Catholic colony. 
The name of Maryland Terra Marias which it received way 
also in honor of a Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria. But such 
were the piety and devotion of the colonists on the voyage out, 
and on their landing and always afterwards, that one would sup- 
pose that Maryland was named in honor of the Blessed Virgin 
Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Thus, too, their first city and 
county, their first altar, were named, in her honor, St. Mary's. 

The charter of Maryland bears an important relation to the 
motives of the Lords Baltimore and their principal associates. 
While there is in it an apparent or formal recognition of the then 
existing ecclesiastical laws of England, so broad a scope of power 
is granted to Lord Baltimore, the Catholic proprietary, that no 
English Protestant church or chapel, no minister or adherent 
of the Established Church of England, no ecclesiastical law of 
England, need ever be seen or tolerated or felt within the colo- 
ny, for all these are expressly placed within the free discretion, 
control, and power of Lord Baltimore, and he was a pronounced 
Catholic. " The charter," writes General Johnson in his Founda- 
tion of Maryland, " was considered in itself to be a license to liberal 
opinions. It was understood to carry with it, especially to Ro- 
man Catholics, the right to enjoy their religion without let or 
hindrance. And its liberal provisions were made the ground of 
grave objections to permitting them to enjoy its benefits." Im- 
pressed with this view of the entire control over ecclesiastical 
and religious interests, being by the charter conferred on Lord 
Baltimore, the Rev. Ethan Allen, " presbyter of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, Baltimore Co., Md.," in his pamphlet on 
Maryland Toleration, publishes the following passages : 

" This " (the charter), " it will be perceived, confined the erecting and 
founding of churches and chapels, and all places of ^worship, to his " (Lord 
Baltimore's) " license and faculty. None, consequently, could be built but 
such as he should permit and authorize. It placed thus the erecting of 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 263 

Protestant churches, and Roman Catholic ones also, at his will and plea- 
sure, so that, if he saw fit, he could forbid and prevent any of either name 
from being built." 

"Again, it gave him alone the right and power of presenting such 
ministers to the churches built as he should choose. . . . The conferring 
these powers thus placed the church, whether Romanist or Protestant, in 
his hands ; it could not move a step in the matter mentioned, only as he 
should see good." 

The charter, in respect to the civil, political, and proprietary 
rights, powers, and grants, was most comprehensive. The laws 
of the colony were to be enacted by the concurrent act of the 
lord proprietary and the freemen of the province, a clause 
distinctly recognizing the right of popular assemblies to partici- 
pate in the law-making power. On this branch of our subject it 
is an important fact, which deserves especial mention here, that 
shortly before the issue of the Maryland charter that is, in 1628 
the Petition of Right was passed in England, by which the great 
rights of the English people and principles of English liberty, as 
contained in Magna Charta, were reiterated and reaffirmed. It 
is true this had been done thirty-two times since the reign of 
Henry I. ; its being done at the time now mentioned is signifi- 
cant as throwing light upon a broad and liberal principle con- 
tained in the charter of Maryland, the tenth section, in these 
words : 

"We will also, and of our more abundant grace, for us, our heirs and 
successors, do firmly charge, constitute, ordain, and command, that the 
said province be of our allegiance ; and that all and singular the subjects 
and liege-men of us, our heirs and successors, transplanted or to be trans- 
planted into the province aforesaid, and the children of them, etc., be and 
shall be natives and liege-men of us, our heirs and successors of our 
kingdom of England and Ireland, and in all things shall be held reputed 
and esteemed as the faithful liege-men of us, etc., also lands, tenements, 
revenues, services, and other hereditaments whatsoever, within our king- 
dom of England, and other our dominions, to inherit or otherwise purchase, 
receive, take, have, hold, buy, possess, and the same to use and enjoy, and 
the same to give, sell, alien, and bequeath ; and likewise all privileges, 
franchises, and liberties of this our kingdom of England, freely, quietly, 
and peaceably to have and possess, and the same may use and enjoy, in the 
same manner as our liege-men of England, without impediment, molesta- 
tion, vexation, impeachment, or grievance of us, or any of our heirs or 
successors ; any statute, act, ordinance, or provision to the contrary 
thereof notwithstanding." 

It is only necessary to compare the legal and political condi- 
tion of the Catholics in Maryland under this clause, which makes 
no discrimination between religious creeds, with the miserable 



264 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

and unjust condition of the Catholics of England under the per- 
secuting laws of Elizabeth, which, as we have already seen, were 
at this time enforced against them in the mother-country under 
James and Charles. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise 
that bigotry in England was loudly arrayed against the charter 
and the colony then and there organizing under it, whereby a 
secure asylum was provided for Catholics in Maryland from the 
persecution then raging against them in England. 

As we have already seen in a previous article, the charter of 
Maryland was originally prepared at the instance of the first 
Lord Baltimore and in his name, and' that it was in all proba- 
bility prepared by himself. Owing to his death it was not issued 
to him, but to his son Csecilius, the second Lord Baltimore, who 
is represented by his contemporaries and by all subsequent his- 
torians as having inherited also his illustrious father's spirit 
and intentions. It thus devolved upon this latter nobleman to 
carry -those intentions into effect, to announce to the public the 
plan or propositions for the colony, to organize it and establish it 
as a commonwealth, to shape and direct its policy and laws, and 
to defend it before the world. It would not appear from the 
Declaratio, or prospectus, of the colony, which is attributed to 
his pen or to his direct inspiration, and which we quoted in a 
previous article, nor from the answers to the objections raised 
against the enterprise, which were prepared by the Jesuits of the 
English province and which we have set forth in this article 
above, that any effort was made in England prior to the sailing 
of the Ark and Dove to obtain other than Catholic colonists, for 
the only Protestants known with certainty to have come over 
with the expedition were the servants of the Catholic planters. 
It is claimed upon mere conjecture that Mr. Cornwallis and Mr. 
Hawley, two of the most prominent gentlemen in the early 
colony, were Protestants a claim which we will examine here- 
after. In any event they were merely the business representa- 
tives of the Catholic proprietary, moving and acting as his com- 
missioners and under his guidance and direction. In performing 
the task thus confided to him Lord Csecilius Baltimore, in ac- 
cordance with the spirit and intentions of his father, aimed 
chiefly at first at securing a Catholic colony which was exclu- 
sively under Catholic auspices and Catholic authority. But it 
was intentionally elaborated in the charter that the proprietary 
was empowered to shape the future commonwealth so as to 
enlarge its sphere of liberty and happiness, and make it the 
asylum for the oppressed of all creeds and nations. It is thus 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 265 

believed that the second Lord Baltimore applied the liberal 
principles of the charter far beyond the scope and purpose of his 
father, and that in doing so he proved himself worthy to be 
ranked among the foremost, most benevolent, and wisest legis- 
lators of the world. The following striking passages from the 
document already quoted, The Foundation of Maryland, by 
General Johnson, give a pleasing view of the enlightened policy 
and enlarged statesmanship of Csecilius Calvert : 

',' The minds and hearts of the great body of Englishmen, Protestant 
and Roman Catholic alike, were then intent on preserving these great 
muniments of liberty. 

"When the charter was issued Lord Baltimore must have been im- 
pressed with the imminent peril impending over all the free institutions of 
England. 

" Therefore it was that the undertaking of Arundel, and Baltimore, and 
Blount, of Norfolk and Howard " and here let it be remarked how exclu- 
sively Catholic is this honored roll of the patrons of the Maryland colony, 
as cited by a Protestant writer "committed to his hands alone, broadened 
and widened far beyond the aspirations of his father, or the hopes and ex- 
pectations of his father's associates ; instead of founding a Roman Catholic 
colony in Maryland, as the Pilgrims had founded a Puritan colony in New 
England, it became apparent to his wise mind that to secure any liberty 
at all he must secure it by the safeguards which, experience had proved, 
had protected it for so many centuries in England, and that to make these 
safeguards more efficient than they had been in England there must be 
extended to all the rights of all men, to the rights of person, of property, 
and of thought. He therefore determined to invite all men, of all Chris- 
tian people, to emigrate to the new colony, under the conditions of the 
charter. . . . 

" Lord Baltimore, from the very initiation of his enterprise, deliberately, 
maturely, and wisely, upon consultation and advice, determined to devote 
his life and fortune to the work of founding a free English state, with its 
institutions deeply planted upon the ancient customs, rights, and safe- 
guards of free Englishmen, and which should be a sanctuary for all Chris- 
tian people for ever." 

The view thus presented is creditable to the learned writer 
of The Foundation of Maryland. But historically there is nothing 
to show that such was the scope of the first Lord Baltimore's 
plan, and that the second Lord Baltimore designed at the be- 
ginning the foundation of a simply political community, however 
excellent in its constitution, rather than to provide an asylum for 
his fellow-Catholics from the direful effects of the religious per- 
secutions they had to endure in England. Had his policy been 
to found a model civil state or commonwealth there would have 
been nothing in this plan, noble as it would have been, to have 



266 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

engaged the special co-operation of the Catholic noblemen 
named above to the exclusion of all Protestant noblemen ; no- 
thing to cause the Society of Jesus to throw the whole power of 
the Jesuits into its support ; nothing to have caused the selec- 
tion of religious men to accompany the colony as chaplains and 
missionaries to be made exclusively from Catholic priests, and 
they were Jesuits ; nothing to have caused the lack of provision 
for the spiritual and religious wants of " all Christian people " 
who were thus included in the scheme, according to General 
Johnson ; for there was no Protestant minister, nor any minister 
besides the Jesuit chaplains of the Catholic colonists, in the 
colony for fifteen years from the foundation of Maryland. The 
more correct view would seem to be that, having succeeded in 
providing an asylum for the persecuted Catholics, the charity 
he felt for all men under persecution, the justice he practised in 
his dealings with mankind, the consistency which always marked 
his well-balanced character, naturally and logically led his mind 
to the result which General Johnson so eloquently describes. 
Cardinal Manning, in The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil 
Allegiance, states the case more correctly as one of consistency 
on the part of Lord Baltimore consistency with his own aspira- 
tions as the leader of the persecuted Catholics in search of an 
asylum, and consistency with a well-known Catholic principle 
and on page 88 writes : " Such was the commonwealth founded 
by a Catholic upon the broad moral law I have here laid down : 
that faith is an act of the will, and that to force men to profess what 
they do not believe is contrary to the law of God, and that to 
generate faith by force is morally impossible." If the minds of 
Protestants as well as of Catholics were, as General Johnson 
states, impressed with the necessity of preserving free English 
institutions, either at home or by English colonization in Ame- 
rica, why did they leave the task to the persecuted Catholics? 
When the latter undertook the work why did not the Protestants, 
who were thus impressed with the perils impending over En- 
glish liberties and institutions, not unite with Lord Baltimore ? 
If such was the character of the undertaking, if it was purely 
secular and political, why does General Johnson himself attri- 
bute it to Catholics and speak of it as their work, characterizing 
it as " the undertaking of Arundel, and Baltimore, and Blount, of 
Norfolk and of Howard " ? Why does he speak of it as a work 
" committed to his [Lord Baltimore's] hands alone " ? It is true 
the Catholics of that period of English history have been praised 
by the voice of history for their patriotism, for their unselfish 



1883.] BANCROFT* s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 267 

devotion to their country and allegiance to their king in the 
midst of the most unjust persecution which they were then 
enduring at the hands of the king and the authorities and people 
of England ; but is it supposable that a people thus circumstanced, 
and thus goaded on to seek relief from their torturing position, 
should forget their sufferings and their very necessities, and 
provide a secular and political asylum where Magna Charta 
might be preserved and maintained, perhaps, no better than 
in England, and where, perhaps (and this actually happened 
afterwards), they would find new persecutors of their faith and 
new enemies ot religious liberty ? How could a purely secular 
and political enterprise be inaugurated under religious auspices 
alone ? The very ships that bore the colonists from the mother- 
country to the new land of promise, and the various parts of them, 
were committed by Father White to the protection of God, of 
course, especially, and then to that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 
St. Ignatius, and the guardian angels of Maryland ; the voyage, as 
described by Father White, was a religious and Catholic pil- 
grimage across the ocean ; and the first act of the colonists on 
landing upon the shores of their new home was to erect a cross 
and bear it in solemn and triumphal procession, and recite on 
bended knees the Litanies of the Holy Cross. All this was to 
the secular and political sentiment of England the rankest super- 
stition. That Lord Baltimore, through a magnanimous policy, 
extended to all Englishmen the blessings of civil and religious lib- 
erty which he had succeeded in securing for his persecuted co- 
religionists does not show that he was a theorist in political in- 
terests and an experimenter in statecraft. Not only do his own 
acts and measures show that the relief of his Catholic people 
from persecution was his chief object, but this is also confirmed 
of the concurrent voice of history. 

The charter was the work of the Baltimores, father and son, 
and its provisions were such as to enable the lord-proprietary 
to carry their exalted purpose into effect. Skilfully drawn, it 
was calculated to allay the fears of the Established Church, while 
it afforded ample protection and control of affairs to the Catho- 
lics. The source from which the Baltimores derived the model 
or plan of their commonwealth is also Catholic, and we are in- 
debted to the author of The Foundation of Maryland for this 
valuable and interesting suggestion and information. We have al- 
ready referred with pleasure to the connection which Father More, 
the great-grandson of that illustrious Catholic jurist, statesman, 
and martyr, Sir Thomas More, had with the Maryland colony, 



268 



BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 



and we shall have. more to say on this subject in another article ; 
it is with equal satisfaction that we can now connect even the 
name of Sir Thomas himself with our model Catholic American 
colony. The prototype of the wise and benevolent polity 
founded by Lord Baltimore in Maryland can be found nowhere 
else than in the writings of Sir Thomas More, and we think 
General Johnson clearly shows that the Catholic commonwealth 
on the banks of the Chesapeake was modelled after " the best com- 
monwealth" the Utopia of the illustrious Catholic lay chancellor 
of England, Sir Thomas More. General Johnson writes : " The 
religious institutions of the ideal state were exactly such as 
Baltimore founded in Maryland." The points of resemblance 
between the Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the Maryland act 
of religious liberty of 1649 are interesting and instructive. We 
think our readers will appreciate an opportunity of reading both, 
and of then comparing them together. For this purpose we will 
transcribe them both in the following parallel columns : 



fj SIR THOMAS MORE'S UTOPIA. 

"There be divers kindes of reli- 
gion, not only in sondrie partes of 
the Islande, but also in divers places 
in every citie. Some worship for 
God the sonne, some the moon, 
some some other of the pianettes. 

" They received the Christian re- 
ligion with gladness, but they would 
not allow unreasonable disputations 
concerning it. 

"They also which do not agree 
to Christ's religion feare no man 
frome it, nor speak against any 
man that hath received it, saving 
that one of our company, in my 
presence, was sharply punished. 
He, as soon as he was baptised, 
began, against our willes, with more 
earneste affection than wisdome, to 
reason of Christ's religion, and be- 
gan to waxe so hote in his matter 
that he did not onlye preferre our 
religion before al other, but also 
did utterly despise and condempne 
all other, calling them profane, and 
the followers of them wicked and 
develish, and the children of ever- 
lasting dampnation. 



THE MARYLAND ACT CONCERNING 
RELIGION. 

" Confirmed by the lord proprietor by an in- 
strument under his hand and seal, the a6th 
day of August, 1650. 

"PHILIP CALVERT." 

" Forasmuch as, in a well-gouv- 
erned and Christian commonwealth, 
matters concerning religion and the 
honour of our God ought in the 
first place to bee taken into serious 
consideration, and indevoured to 
bee settled, Bee it therefore or- 
dayned and enacted by the right 
honourable Cecilius lord baron of 
Baltimore, absolute lord and pro- 
prietary of this province, with the 
advice and consent of the upper 
and lower house of this general as- 
sembly, that whatsoever person or 
persons within this province and 
the islands thereto belonging shall 
from henceforth blaspheme God, 
that is, to curse him, or shall deny 
our Savior Jesus Christ to be the 
Son of God,, or shall deny the Holy 
Trinity, the Father, Son, and the 
Holy Ghost, or the Godhead, or any 
of the said Three persons of the 



1883.] BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STA TES. 269 



" When he had thus long reason- 
ed the matter, they laid hold on 
him, accused him, and condemned 
him into exile, not as a despiser of 
religion, but as -a sedicious person 
and a raiser up of dissention amonge 
the people. 

"For this is one of the ancientest 
lawes among them, that no man 
shall be blamed for resoninge in 
the maintenance of his own reli- 
gion. For Kynge Utopus, even at 
the first beginning, hearing that the 
inhabitantes of the land were, be- 
fqre his coming thether, at contin- 
uajl dissention and strife among 
themselves for their religions ; per- 
ceiving also that this common dis- 
sention (whiles every severall secte 
took several parties in fighting for 
their countrey) was the only occa- 
sion for his conquest over them al, 
as soon as he had gotten the vic- 
tory : firste of all he made a decree 
that it should be lawful for everie 
man to favoure and folowe what re- 
ligion he would, and that he mighte 
do the best he could to bring other 
to his opinion, so that he did it 
peaceablie, gentelie, quietlie, and 
soberlie, without hastie and conten- 
tions, rebuking and inveheing 
against other. 

" If he could not by faire and gen- 
tle speeche induce them unto his. 
opinion, yet he should use no kinde 
of violence, and refraine from dis- 
pleasante and seditious wordes. To 
him that would vehemently and fer- 
vently in this cause strive and con- 
tende. was decreed banishment or 
bondage. 

" This lawe did Kynge Utopus 
make not only for the maintenance 
of peace which he sawe through 
continuall contention and mutual 
hatred utterly extinguished, but 
also because he thought the decrie 
would make for the furtherance of 
religion, whereof he durst define and 



Trinity, or the Unity of the God- 
head, or shall use or utter any re- 
proachful speeches, words, or lan- 
guage concerning the Holy Trinity 
or any of the sayd three persons 
thereof, shall be punished with 
death, and confiscation or forfeiture 
of all his or her land and goods to 
the Lord proprietary and his heires. 
"And bee it also enacted by the 
authority and with the advice and 
consent aforesaid, That whatso- 
ever person or persons shall from 
henceforth use or utter any re- 
proachful words or speeches con- 
cerning the blessed Virgin Mary the 
mother of- our Savior ; or the Holy 
Apostles or Evangelists, or any of 
them, shall in such case for the first 
offence forfeit to the sayd lord pro- 
prietary and his heires, lords and 
proprietaries of this province, the 
sum of 5;. sterling, or the value 
thereof, to bee levied on the goods 
and chattels of every such person 
so offending ; but in case such of- 
fender or offenders shall not then 
have goods and chattels sufficient 
for the satisfying of such forfeiture, 
or that the same be not otherwise 
speedily satisfied, that then such 
offender or offenders shall be pub- 
lickly whipt, and be imprisoned dur- 
ing the pleasure of the lord proprie- 
tary or the lieutenant or the chiefe 
gouvernour of this province for the 
time being ; and that every such 
offender or offenders for every sec- 
ond offence shall forfeit io. ster- 
ling, or the value thereof to be levied 
as aforesayd, or in case such offend- 
er or offenders shall not then have 
goods or chattels within this pro- 
vince sufficient for that purpose, 
then to be publickly and severely 
whipt and imprisoned, as is before 
expressed ; and that every person 
or persons before mentioned offend- 
ing herein the third time shall for 
such third offence forfeit all his 



270 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 



determine nothing unadvised, he as 
doubting whether God, desiring 
manifold and divers sortes of honour, 
would inspire sundry men with son- 
drie kinds of religion, and this sure- 
ly he thought a very unmete and 
foolish thing, and a point of arro- 
gant presumption to compell all 
other by violence and threatenings 
to agre to the same that thou be- 
levest to be trew. Furthermore, 
thoughe there be one religion which 
alone is trew, and all other vain and 
superstitious, yet did he wel foresee 
(so that the matter were handeled 
with reason and sober modestie) 
that the trueth of the owne powre 
would at last issue out and come to 
lyghte. But if contention and de- 
bate in that behalfe should contin- 
uallye be used, as the woorste men 
be mooste obstinate and stubbourne, 
and in their evyll opinion mooste 
contrary, he perceaved that then 
the beste and holyest religion 
woulde be troden underfote and de- 
stroyed by most vain supersticions, 
even as good corne by thornes and 
weedes overgrowen and chooked. 
Therefore all this matter he lefte 
undiscussed, and gave to every man 
free libertie and choise to beleve 
what he woulde." 



lands and goods and be forever 
banisht and expelled out of this 
province. 

"And be it also further enacted 
by the same authority, advice, and 
assent, that whatsoever person or 
persons shall from henceforth upon 
any occasion of offence or otherwise 
in a reproachful manner or way, 
declare, call, or denominate any per- 
son or persons whatsoever inhabit- 
ing, residing, trafficking, trading, or 
commercing within this province, or 
within any of the ports, harbour, 
creeks, Or havens to the same be- 
longing, an Heretick, Schismatic, 
Idolator, Puritan, Presbyterian, In- 
dependant, Popish Priest, Jesuit, 
Jesuited Papist, Lutheran, Calvinist, 
Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, 
Barrowist, Roundhead, Separatist, 
or other name or terme in a re- 
proachful manner, relating to a 
matter of religion, shall for every 
such offence forfeit and lose the 
sum of 10^. sterling, or the value 
thereof to be levied on the goods 
and chattels of every such offend- 
ers, the one halfe thereof to be for- 
feited and paid unto the person or 
persons of whom such reproachful 
words are or shall be spoken or ut- 
tered, and the other halfe to the lord 
proprietary and his heires, lords and 
proprietaries of this province; but 
if such person or persons who shall 
at any time utter or speak any such 
reproachful words or language shall 
not have goods or chattels sufficient 
or overt within this province to be 
taken to satisfy the penalty afore- 
sayd, or that the same be not other- 
wise speedily satisfied, that then the 
person or persons so offending shall 
be publickly whipt and suffer im- 
prisonment without bayle or main- 
prize until he, she, or they shall 
respectfully satisfie the party of- 
fended or grieved by such reproach- 
ful language, by asking him or her 



1883.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 271 



respectively forgiveness publickly 
for such his offence before the mag- 
istrate or chiefe officer or officers of 
the towne or place where such of- 
fence shall be given. 

"And be it further likewise en- 
acted by the authority and consent 
aforesayd, that every person or 
persons within this province that 
shall at any time hereafter prophane 
the Sabaoth or Lord's day, called 
Sunday, by frequent swearing, drunk- 
enesse, or by any unciville or dis- 
orderly recreation, or by working 
on that day when absolute neces- 
sity doth not require, shall for every 
first offence forfeit 2s. 6d. sterling 
or the value thereof ; and for the 
second offence $s. sterling or the 
value thereof ; and for the third 
offence, and for every time he shall 
offend in like manner afterwards, 
los. sterling or the value there- 
of; and in case such offender or 
offenders shall not have sufficient 
goods or chattels within this pro- 
vince to satisfie any of the afore- 
sayd penalties respectively hereby 
imposed for prophaning the Sabaoth 
or Lord's day, called Sunday as 
aforesayd, then in every such case 
the party so offending shall for the 
first and second offence in that kind 
be imprisoned till hee or she shall 
publickly in open court, before the 
chief commander, Judge, or magis- 
trate of that county, towne, or pre- 
cinct wherein such offence shall be 
committed, acknowledge the scan- 
dall and offence he hath in that re- 
spect given against God and the 
good and civil gouvernment of this 
province ; and for the third offence 
and for every time after shall be 
publickly whipt. 

"And whereas the inforcing of 
the conscience in matters of religion 
hath frequently fallen out to be 
of dangerous consequence in those 
commonwealths where it hath been 



272 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

practised, and for the more quiet 
and peaceable gouvernment of this 
province, and the better to preserve 
mutuall love and unity among the 
inhabitants here, Bee it, therefore, 
also by the lord proprietary, with 
the advice and assent of this assem- 
bly, ordained and enacted, except as 
in this present act is before declared 
and set Jorth, that no person or 
persons whatsoever in this province 
or the islands, ports, harbours, 
creeks, or havens thereunto belong- 
ing, professing to believe in Jesus 
Christ, shall from henceforth be any 
waies troubled, molested, or discoun- 
tenanced for or in his or her reli- 
gion, nor in the free exercise there- 
of within this province or the isl- 
ands thereto belonging, nor any 
way compelled to beleefe or exer- 
cise of any other religion against 
his or her consent, so as they be 
not unfaithful unto the lord pro- 
prietary, or molest or conspire the 
civil gouvernment, established or to 
be established in this province 
under him and his heyres ; and that 
all and every person or persons that 
shall presume contrary to this act 
and the true intent and meaning 
thereof, directly or indirectly, eyther 
in person or estate, wilfully to 
wrong, disturb, or trouble or molest, 
any person or persons within this 
province professing to believe in 
Jesus Christ, for or in respect of his 
or her religion, or the free exercise 
thereof within this prcrvince, other- 
wise than is provided for in this act, 
that such person or persons so of- 
fending shall be compelled to pay 
treble damages to the party so 
wronged or molested, and for every 
such offence shall also forfeit zos. 
sterling in money, or the value 
thereof, for the use of the lord pro- 
prietary and his heires, lords and 
proprietaries of this province, and 
the other half thereof for the use of 



1883.] BANCROFT* s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 273 

the party so wronged or molested as 
aforesayd ; or if the party so offend- 
ing as aforesayd shall refuse or bee 
unable to recompence the party so 
wronged or to satisfie such fine or 
forfeiture, then such offender shall 
be severely punished by publick 
whipping and imprisonment during 
the pleasure of the lord proprietary 
or his lieutenant, or the chiefe 
gouvernour of this province for the 
time being, without bail or main- 
prize. 

" And be it further also enacted 
by the authority and consent afore- 
sayd, that the sheriffe or. other 
officer or officers from time to time 
to be appointed and authorized for 
that purpose of the county, town, or 
precinct where every particular of- 
fence in this present act contained 
shall happen at any time to be com- 
mitted, and whereupon there is 
hereby a forfeiture, fine, or penalty 
imposed, shall from time to time 
distrain and seize the goods and 
estate of every such person so of- 
fending as aforesayd against this 
present act or any part thereof, and 
sell the same or any part thereof 
for the full satisfaction of such for- 
feiture, fine, or penalty as aforesayd 
restoring to the party so offending 
the remainder or overplus of the 
sayd goods and estate after such 
satisfaction so made as aforesayd." 

Another singular and interesting- circumstance in the history 
of the early colony of Maryland, one showing how completely 
that country was under Catholic r6gime, is the claim of the 
Jesuit fathers in the province that the canon law prevailed and 
should be observed and enforced in Maryland, and that the 
benefit of clergy privilegium clericale existed there. Father 
White insisted on these points, and was met with strenuous 
opposition by Mr. Lewger, the secretary of the province, a 
zealous Catholic. The controversy waxed hot and bitter. 
Father White appealed to the provincial, and Mr. Secretary 
Lewger to Lord Baltimore, in England ; and they in turn ap- 

VOL. XXXVIII. 1 8 



274 BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

pealed to Rome. The Jesuits made their claim that the state 
should " ye aid and mayntaine to the Church all her rights and liber- 
ties which shee hath in other CatJiolick Countryes" 

Such strange and crude notions have we often heard ex- 
pressed by intelligent laymen, both Catholic and Protestant, 
on this subject, that we will briefly, state what is the canon law 
and what is the benefit of clergy. Canon law is the general 
public code of laws of the Catholic Church. It includes selec- 
tions from the civil law of the Romans, selections also from the 
Sacred Scriptures relating to discipline ; the decrees of eccle- 
siastical councils ; decretal letters of the popes ; extracts from the 
writings of the Fathers ; extravagantes, or laws of exceptional 
character or outside of the regular code ; ecclesiastical customs, 
or common law ; bulls and briefs of the popes ; and, lastly, the 
concordats, or treaties, entered into between the popes and par- 
ticular kings or nations, which are made " in order to regulate 
those modifications of general legislation that the exigencies of 
times or other circumstances may demand, are a prominent 
feature in the present state of ecclesiastical polity, and are gradu- 
ally effecting important changes by making what was before but 
a solitary exception to become an almost universal rule." 

The benefit of clergy is^he exemption claimed for the clergy, 
and indeed for all, even laymen, aiding and engaged in the eccle- 
siastical service, from the penalties denounced by the secular 
laws of the land against certain crimes, exemption from the ju- 
risdiction of the secular courts in such cases, and the creation 
and maintenance of ecclesiastical courts with jurisdiction over 
such persons and offences. 

These claims are based upon the principle that the church, 
though a human institution, has a divine origin oi creation, and 
is a perfect, visible organization, possessing inherently all that is 
necessary for a complete and independent body, such as the 
power of legislation and jurisdiction over ecclesiastical persons 
and cases. 

No formal decision from Rome on the controversy between 
Lord Baltimore and the Maryland Jesuits has been made known, 
beyond the fact that Lord Baltimore received authority from 
Rome to displace the Jesuits in Maryland and supply their 
places with secular clergymen. The Jesuits, however, never 
left their missions nor relaxed their labors either amongst the 
English Catholics or among the Indian tribes. It is alleged by 
Father White that the new-comers, or secular priests sent out 
to supplant them, on hearing the case of the fathers, united in 






1883.] BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED SPATES. 275 

sustaining their side. At this juncture the whole controversy 
was amicably arranged in England between Lord Baltimore, the 
proprietary of the province, and Father More, the provincial of 
the Jesuits, whereby the jurisdiction of the canon law and the 
benefit of clergy were surrendered and abandoned by the So- 
ciety, and the Jesuits remained in undisputed possession of their 
beloved mission. 

The canon law, or corpus juris canonici, has never been pro- 
claimed or enforced in this country, nor are we aware of any 
other instance where the benefit of clergy has ever been claimed ; 
but in some particular sections of our country the canon law is 
considered as applicable and in force as far as circumstances will 
permit, in consequence of those sections having been colonized 
by European countries in which the canon law at the time of 
the colonization was in full force, and having received their ec- 
clesiastical organization therefrom. In England the claim of 
the benefit of clergy was resisted with traditional animosity from 
Catholic times, and from the time of Henry VIII. the En- 
glish lawyers and legislators had a superstitious hatred and fear 
of the long-extinguished pretension equal to that entertained by 
Lucifer for holy water ; and it was customary, in preparing 
English statutes of a criminal nature, to add after the denuncia- 
tion of the punishment the words "without benefit of clergy" even 
within a recent time. Some of the old colonial statutes of this 
country contained the same meaningless formula. In England 
the benefit of clergy was utterly abolished by the statutes of 
7 and 8 George IV. Although benefit of clergy never existed 
in the United States, we find, singularly enough, an act of Con- 
gress of April 30, 1790, wherein it is expressly provided that 
there shall be no benefit of clergy for any capital offences under 
the statute. 

The United States have always been and still remain a mis- 
sionary country under the jurisdiction of the Propaganda, as dis- 
tinguished from countries in which the full organization of the 
church is perfected and canon law promulgated and enforced. 
Beyond an occasional newspaper discussion and one or two cases 
in which a priest, resisting his bishop, appealed to the courts of 
law and claimed the benefits of the canon law, that system of 
ecclesiastical jurisprudence has seldom been even discussed or 
attempted to be introduced here. In recent years, however, the 
Propaganda has introduced a system of ecclesiastical tribunals 
into this country, by which in each diocese judices causarum were 
selected from among the priests of the diocese to hear and report 



276 BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [Nov., 

to the ordinary in cases of ecclesiastical offences charged against 
any priest of the diocese. Otherwise we are without the canon 
law, though its principles must necessarily be constantly invoked 
to a considerable extent by ordinaries of dioceses in deciding ec- 
clesiastical questions. During the accumulations of so many 
ages the corpus juris canonici has swollen into an enormous mass, 
equal in bulk and in the number of volumes to the gigantic pro- 
portions of corpus juris civilis of the Romans, perhaps even be- 
yond this. Great portions of the canon law are now obsolete, 
other portions are too cumbersome now for practical use, and 
still greater portions are wholly inapplicable and unsuited to the 
wants of the church, of society, and of the world in the nine- 
teenth century. 

A thorough revision of the canon law seems to be now a 
crying necessity. The present illustrious pontiff, Leo XIII., 
seems to us to be peculiarly fitted for the task. His great learn- 
ing, his profound research, his untiring habits of labor and study, 
his broad and comprehensive statesmanship, his able and skilful 
methods of handling the most difficult ecclesiastical affairs, and 
his marvellous energy and enlightened enterprise mark him out 
as a pope most eminently suited and perhaps providentially ele- 
vated to the chair of Peter for attempting and accomplishing 
this grand work. To direct and inspire the labors of those 
whom he would appoint for this gigantic and erudite task would 
be a congenial undertaking with so great and learned a pontiff. 
A pontiff who has, with profound intellect, grasped the wants of 
the church and of society throughout the Christian world ; who 
has revived in our colleges and universities the study of St. 
Thomas Aquinas and the Christian philosophy of his school ; 
who has raised the Roman doctorate to be a true diploma of 
theological and ecclesiastical learning; who, by his prudent, 
brave, and skilful diplomacy, has ameliorated the condition of 
Catholics under persecuting governments ; who has brought 
imperial Prussia and is now bringing republican France to 
Canossa; who has taught the world that patriotism cannot be 
used as a cloak to cover dynamite and secret societies ; who has 
thrown open the treasures of the Vatican Library to the Muse of 
History such a pontiff might well attempt, by the aid of learned 
.commissions acting under his guidance and inspiration, the revi- 
sion, reformation, condensation, simplification, and codification of 
the canon law, that it might be made suited to the wants of 
the universal church, and of society throughout the world ; that 
it might be made applicable to all countries alike and without 



1883.] BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 277 

evasion, and, remaining no longer a dead letter, should become 
again a living code, of which every patriarch, prelate, ecclesiastic, 
and layman in Christendom would take cognizance on its procla- 
mation once for all at Rome, and to which all should render un- 
qualified obedience. Such an achievement would be the crown- 
ing glory of the already glorious pontificate of Leo XIII. Such 
a code we would receive with joy, and hail its introduction into 
our own country with reverence and loyalty. 

The canon law as it existed in 1641, the introduction of 
which into Maryland Lord Baltimore and his Catholic secretary, 
Mr. Lewger, so strenuously resisted, and were finally sustained 
therein by the great-grandson of Sir Thomas More, the pro- 
vincial of the Society of Jesus, was a code vastly different from 
that which, under revision, would emanate from the pontificate 
of Leo XIII. 

We will resume in another article the consideration of Mr. 
Bancroft's alterations of the History of the United States, in those 
parts especially which relate to the Catholic character of the 
Maryland colony. And here we would remind the learned his- 
torian of those burning words of Lacordaire in his twentieth 
conference of Notre Dame: "Mais on n'emprisonne pas la 
raison, on ne brftle pas les faits, on ne deshonore pas la vertu, 
on n'assassine pas la logique" You cannot imprison reason, you 
cannot burn up facts, you cannot dishonor virtue, you cannot assassi- 
nate logic. 



278 THE RETURNING COMET OF 1812. [Nov., 



THE RETURNING COMET OF 1812. 

ON the 2oth of July, 1812, while the grand army of Napoleon 
was entering Russia, a peaceful Frenchman, whose thoughts were 
more occupied with conquests in the heavens than on the earth, 
succeeded in adding another comet to the list of his discoveries. 
It was the tenth which he had been the first among men to set 
eyes on ; he had averaged one each year since 1802, when he first 
began searching for these mysterious bodies. Strange and mor- 
tifying as it must have seemed to him, the magnificent comet of 
1811 had been the prize of another observer, though he himself 
succeeded in capturing a tolerably bright one in the latter part 
of that year. 

Seeking for comets seems to have been a real passion^ with 
Pons. From 1802 till 1827 he continued perse veringly at it, 
being the original discoverer of twenty-eight, few of which, how- 
ever, had any special astronomical interest. But the one which 
rewarded his labors in 1812, though not attaining any very great 
brilliancy, proved, when its orbit was accurately computed, to be 
indeed a remarkable object. It was the first after that of Halley 
which could, on the ground of the shape of its path alone, be 
predicted to return after a long period and an excursion far be- 
yond the limits of the solar system as then known. In fact, only 
a few years had elapsed since the illustrious Gauss had made the 
computation of an elliptic orbit for a body never before observed 
a comparatively easy matter ; and the prediction of return for 
Halley 's comet, though possible from observations at one appear- 
ance, had really been based primarily on its supposed identity 
' with those of 1531 and 1607. The comet of 1812 was, then, the 
first one of long period the return of which was- definitely an- 
nounced on the basis of calculations made from one apparition 
alone ; and it was quite a daring assertion on the part of the 
great computer Encke that it would return to the neighborhood 
of the sun in the early part of 1883. 

During the many years which have since elapsed interest in the 
fulfilment of this prediction was necessarily postponed ; and the 
comet of 1812 passed into temporary oblivion in the number of 
short-period ones the returns of which have since been verified. 
But as the time for its reappearance approached, the calculations 
on it, long shelved, were taken down and re-examined, and its 



1883.] THE RETURNING COMET OF 1812. 279 

whole supposed path gone over with a view of ascertaining what 
disturbances it might have experienced from the action of the 
great planets of our system, including the recently-discovered 
Neptune. The result of this re-examination, made by Messrs. 
Schulhof and Bossert, was that the comet would not pass its 
perihelion, or nearest point to the sun, till September of next 
year ; and as there seemed little probability of seeing it at a much 
longer time before perihelion than three months, no great in- 
terest was felt in searching for it as yet. A sweeping epheme- 
ris, as it is called, was, however, computed for the convenience of 
those who might wish to try their chance of picking it up. 

Let us explain briefly what this sweeping ephemeris was. It 
must be understood that the position of the comet's orbit in 
space was well enough known ; there it was, a clear and distinct 
elliptical curve, every point of which was as easily ascertainable 
by astronomers as if the comet in 1812 had left a line or trail of 
light along its whole path. Let us suppose for a moment that 
such a brilliant line, marking its path, had been left. There it 
would have been, standing out against the sky, following at any 
one time a definite course among the stars, but slowly shifting 
its apparent position among them, as this earth swung round 
through its own orbit about the sun. Sometimes this line would 
have seemed to have nearly its true elliptical shape ; sometimes, 
on the other hand, as we passed through the plane in which it 
lay, and saw it, as it were, edgeways, it would have appeared 
quite straight. 

Now, the orbit or path of the comet, of course, was not in fact 
a line of light, nor was it naturally visible in any way. But it 
could be made practically visible by the knowledge of astrono- 
mers as to its real position. The course it would follow over its 
background of stars at any time of year could be calculated, and 
this course plotted on a celestial map. These plottings, being 
made for dates at regular intervals, say of five or ten days, 
through the year, constitute, then, the sweeping ephemeris so 
called because if any one should wish to find the expected comet 
at any one of these dates, he would only have to sweep with his 
telescope along the plotted curve corresponding to that particu- 
lar date. If the comet could be seen at all it would be seen 
somewhere on that curve, for the simple reason that it is really 
somewhere on the actual curve in space which has thus, as has 
been said, been made practically visible. 

But why not, it may be asked, instead of putting down this 
curve on the map for various times, put down the place which 



280 THE RETURNING COMET OF 1812. [Nov., 

the comet itself would apparently occupy among the stars at 
those times? To this it must be answered that such a thing 
would be highly desirable ; it is often done when our knowledge 
is precise enough, and the result is what we call an ephemeris 
simply, without any " sweeping " about it. But the difficulty of 
doing it in this case was this : that though, as has been said, we 
knew the position and shape of the orbit very accurately, at least 
in its nearer portions, we did not know with sufficient accuracy 
the position of the comet in that orbit. It had, indeed, been pre- 
dicted that it would arrive at perihelion in September, 1884; but 
this result was confessedly liable to great error one way or the 
other, so that no one could say with certainty at any time whe- 
ther the comet would be one hundred millions or three hundred 
millions of miles] from the sun. It was like an expected train, 
with the telegraph broken down : we know it is somewhere on 
the track, but where it is no one can tell till he sees it. 

Such was the state of things at the beginning of September 
just past. At that time Mr. W. R. Brooks, of Phelps, N. Y., an- 
nounced the detection by himself of an object suspected to be a 
comet. He telegraphed its position among the stars to other as- 
tronomers, that they might observe it and help to determine its 
orbit, should it be a comet, as soon as possible. After a few 
days, observations were obtained sufficient for the computation 
of an orbit, which was assumed, as it is always with new comets, 
to be parabolic in form. 

Well, now, it may be asked, was this comet of Mr. Brooks 
anywhere on the line corresponding to that date in the sweeping 
ephemeris for the comet of 1812? If so, surely it would have 
been suspected at once as being that object. The answer is that 
it was not on that line, or rather that the line was not on it ; 
though it ought to have been, as will be seen subsequently. The 
new comet was, therefore, not suspected of identity with the 
expected visitor, and various calculations of its path from the 
present observations alone were made, which did not agree very 
well with each other. This discordance was probably partly 
owing to the considerable error of the assumption which had 
been made as to the parabolic form of the orbit ; but it was 
ascribed rather to the shortness of time as yet elapsed since 
discovery and the slowness of the comet's apparent motion. 
Further calculation was, therefore, postponed till more observa- 
tions should have been made. 

It is principally by the discordance of these orbits, and the 
want of confidence in them, that the failure of astronomers to 



1883.] THE RETURNING COMET OF 1812. 281 

recognize the similarity of one of them to that of the comet of 
1812 should, as it would seem, be explained ; though the general 
belief that the latter was not coming yet may have had some- 
thing to do with it, as well as the fact that the line of the sweep- 
ing ephemeris was not on the Brooks comet, as has been said. 
However, be the reason what it may, this similarity remained 
without any practical recognition for several days. When it did 
at last succeed in making an impression, it of course naturally 
occurred to settle the question of identity by seeing if, after all, 
the Brooks comet would not fall on the path of the 1812 comet 
projected in the heavens ; and the calculation being made, it 
appeared, somewhat to the surprise of the astronomical world, 
that such was actually the case. The Brooks comet was found 
to be really on the path of that of 1812, and was therefore rea- 
sonably assumed to be that body ; and from the definite place 
which it occupied in that elliptical orbit it was computed, with 
great probability of exactness, that its perihelion passage would 
be made on the 25th of January, 1884. 

But why was it that the lines marked out in the heavens by 
the sweeping ephemeris did not cover it? It was simply that 
they were not carried out far enough. It had not been supposed, 
as has been said above, that the returning comet of 1812 would 
be seen more than about three months before its perihelion ; and, 
therefore, the calculations necessary for the projection of its 
orbit on the heavens being somewhat laborious, it had not been 
considered worth while to make them for a less advanced posi- 
tion of the comet in its path. In other words, only a part of the 
ellipse, extending to the place the comet would occupy three 
months before perihelion, had been thus projected for the various 
dates ; but at the time of discovery it actually lacked, as will be 
seen by reference to the dates above given, nearly five months of 
the time of perihelion. Of course, therefore, the Brooks comet 
was not on the lines as actually drawn ; if they had been ex- 
tended they would have covered it. The improvement in in- 
struments, the skill, vigilance, and assiduity of comet-finders, had 
strangely in this case defeated their own ends in causing the 
failure to recognize the comet of 1812 by picking it up too soon. 

Observations since made confirm the identity of the two 
bodies discovered by M. Pons and Mr. Brooks ; and by the in- 
formation which we now possess, unusually accurate for such an 
early period in a comet's apparition, we are able to predict with 
confidence its future course in the heavens. Its apparent path 
will be through a part of the sky lying east of the sun, so that at 



282 THE RETURNING COMET OF 1812. [Nov., 

the time of its greatest brilliancy, in January, it will be seen in the 
western sky after sunset, thus having an advantage over its mag- 
nificent predecessor of last year. It is a little curious, by the 
way, that this comet should at both apparitions be put in com- 
parative obscurity by an unusually splendid one just preceding 
it. It will disappear in the southwest early in February. 

With regard to its future brightness nothing certain can be 
affirmed. The only way we have of calculating it is by assum- 
ing it to shine simply by reflected light from the sun, like a 
planet ; on this assumption it will be in the middle of January 
about seventy times as bright as now (September 27), and ought, 
therefore, to be equal then to a star of about the third magnitude, 
and easily, though not brilliantly, visible to the naked eye. But 
the assumption that comets shine only by reflected light is mani- 
festly incorrect in many cases ; and since its discovery this comet 
has discountenanced it by suddenly multiplying its light ten or 
fifteen times within forty-eight hours. At its apparition in 1812 
it was visible to the naked eye with a tail two degrees long ; at 
the present one it ought, from its relative position to us, to be 
three or four times brighter than then, and will show its tail with 
little foreshortening. The chances, therefore, are good for its 
making a fairly fine show. 

The peculiar interest attached to it is its return on time from 
the immense depths of space into which it has plunged, and the 
interesting verification which it gives of the laws which govern 
the movements of the heavenly bodies ; though, of course, to 
professional astronomers no such verification is needed. It will 
help to redeem its fellows from the suspicion of being "erratic" 
in their movements, and will show that the reason others do not 
come back as it has done is simply that the calculations made on 
them, giving no indication of anything but a parabolic or infinite 
orbit, have not justified any expectation that they would do so. 
The ordinary or parabolic comet, while in sight, keeps on its line 
as perfectly as this one does ; but the curve on which it runs is 
not a closed one, and therefore it would be folly to expect it to 
renew its course. 

Be it remembered, then, here is the first long-period comet 
which has been predicted to return from calculations made on 
the shape of its path alone ; and here it is. 

One question arises now : If this comet is a periodic one, 
why was it not seen before 1812? To this it may be answered 
that there was only one previous apparition at which it could JDC 
expected to have been noticed, at about 1741 or thereabouts; 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 283 

for previously telescopic comets, as this one would sometimes be 
in its whole course, were seldom seen, and even faint, naked-eye 
comets would attract little attention. In April, 1742, we have an 
account of a comet seen by several persons in the Southern 
Ocean, occupying the position that this would have had after 
perihelion. But it may be that its first visit to our system was 
in 1812, and that it was then, on its approach to the sun, thrown 
into an elliptic orbit by the action of one of the outlying planets. 
Such tricks have been played with comets before ; in fact, it is 
not impossible that such has been the origin of all periodicity or 
ellipticity in cometary orbits. 

The next similar return of a long-period comet now expected 
from calculation is that of the one of 1815, the date of its next 
perihelion passage having been assigned by Bessel, one of the 
greatest astronomers of this century, for February 9, 1887. Let 
us hope that it, too, will sustain the reputation of the discoverer 
of gravitation by coming back with the punctuality which that 
of 1812 has shown. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

Pious AFFECTIONS TOWARDS GOD AND THE SAINTS : Meditations for every 
day in the year, and for the principal festivals. From the Latin of the 
Venerable Nicolas Lancicius, S.J. With a preface by George Porter, of 
the same society. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. 

We give this book a hearty recommendation. It is an excellent manual 
for daily meditation. The matter is plain, well chosen, easily remembered, 
conveniently divided, and has about it a sort of suggestiveness or fruitful- 
ness which is the charm of any good meditation book. As slovenly pre- 
paration is the great fault of meditation, Father Porter, himself an expe- 
rienced teacher of mental prayer, has wisely dwelt especially upon it in his 
preface. Whoever will lay his suggestions to heart and faithfully use this 
book, and (we will venture to add) will daily commit to memory a few 
sentences from Scripture illustrating the points presented by the saintly 
author, will be likely to find relief from the distractions and barrenness 
often besetting mental prayer. 

THE LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER. Compiled from reliable sources by the 
Rev. William Stang. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co. 1883. 

This is a short, timely, and authentic record of the life of the father of 
the so-called Reformation. The author has done well in allowing Luther 
to depict himself. Its readers who are convincible cannot help making 
the reflection that when such a man as Martin Luther turns reformer one 



284 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov., 

might as well expect to gather figs of thistles or grails of thorns as the 
purification, from such hands, of the church of God. This fourth centen- 
nial, by spreading genuine information of the life of Martin Luther, appears 
destined to cover the originator of the religious revolution of the sixteenth 
century with merited disgrace. All seekers after truth, and lovers of it, 
should read this book. 

SERMONS AND DISCOURSES BY THE LATE MOST REV. JOHN MACHALE, D.D., 
ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM. Edited by Thomas MacHale, D.D., Ph.D. 
Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. New York : The Catholic Publication 
Society Co., 9 Barclay Street. 1883. 

An admirable collection ot sermons on general subjects and for par- 
ticular occasions, marked throughout by the eloquence, thought, and 
learning of their distinguished author, whose name only needs to be men- 
tioned to command attention and interest for these discourses, and to as- 
sure them to be models of sacred oratory, as indeed they are. 

GROWTH IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR LORD. Meditations adapted from 
the French original of the Abbe De Brandt, by a Daughter of the 
Cross. Vols. iii. and iv. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. 

In the January number of this magazine we called attention to the first 
volume of these Meditations as promising to be a real addition to this par- 
ticular kind of spiritual and ascetic works. 

Now that the series is complete, and we are in a position to judge with 
knowledge and to praise with discrimination, it is due the compiler and 
translator to say that the promise has been fulfilled, and we trust many 
souls will profit by her labor. For solidity, for a fulness of treatment at 
once sufficient and yet suggestive, for a completeness of subjects suited 
to the great devotions, to the greater feast-days, days of retreat, etc., we 
know of none for general use in private or for communities equal to these 
.here published. 

THE SERAPHIC OCTAVE ; or, Spiritual Retreat of Eight Days for all the 
Children of St. Francis of Assisi. Adapted for the use of all Religious. 
St. Louis: B. Herder. 1883. 

This is a practical, solid, and most useful work for those who make 
retreats. There is needed a variety of this kind of books, and we are glad 
to have this one from a Franciscan source. The translation reads well, and 
the get-up of the volume is creditable to the publisher. 

Jus CANONICUM JUXTA ORDINEM DECRETALIUM RECENTIORIBUS SEDIS 
APOSTOLIOE DECRETIS ET RECIVE RATIONI IN OMNIBUS CONSONUM. 
Auctore E. Grandclaude, Vicario Generali, Doctore in Sacra Theo- 
logia et in Jure Canonico. Parisiis : apud Victorem Lecoffre. 1882. 

This is a very profound, extensive, and able treatise on canon law, in 
three volumes, containing in all about eighteen hundred pages. It follows, 
as intimated in 4 the title, the order of the five books of Decretals, and is 
prefaced by a general treatise on canon and civil law, and on the Roman 
Curia. From what examination we have been able to give it, it strikes us 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 285 

as being the most satisfactory and thorough work on the subject which 
has appeared in recent times. 

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ANNUAL FOR 1884. With Calen- 
dars calculated for different parallels of latitude and adapted for use 
throughout the United States. New York: The Catholic Publica- 
tion Society Co. 

This is the sixteenth year of the Annual, and it is a pleasure to see 
that, excellent as it has always been, it continues to improve, especially in 
the engravings. The portraits particularly are good ; for instance, that of 
Cardinal Cheverus, who was the first bishop of Boston, and that of the late 
Father Pise, of Brooklyn. A fine face, too, is that of the first bishop of St. 
Louis, the polished yet energetic and warm-hearted Italian, Rosati. There 
is also the keen yet true and earnest Scotch face of the late Mr. James 
Burns, the founder of the well-known London Catholic publishing house 
of Burns & Gates, who, the son of a Presbyterian minister and for many 
years one of the most noted Protestant publishers in England, sacrificed 
many advantages on becoming a Catholic, and devoted the rest of his life 
.to the formation of a good Catholic literature for his countrymen. Besides 
the many well-written articles of contemporary Catholic biography, includ- 
ing, in addition to those already named, Archbishop Hannan of Halifax, 
Louis Veuillot, Father Saint-Cyr, "the pioneer priest of Chicago," Father 
Thomas Burke, O.P., Archbishop Wood of Philadelphia, all gone to their 
reward within the last year, there are several interesting historical sketches. 
Among the last are " The Albigenses," " St. Dominic," "The Waldenses," 
" St. Teresa and the Carmelites," " St. Francis Xavier," " The Baron of St. 
Castine," " Mary Ward," foundress in the sixteenth century of the English 
Institute of the Blessed Virgin, and " Frances Mary Teresa Ball," foundress 
in this century of the Irish Institute of the Blessed Virgin. There are 
statistics too, such as many readers are apt to pass unnoticed, though 
their compilation requires skill and labor, and a sagacious scrutiny of them 
is very instructive. Then there are interesting accounts of historical 
localities, and there is one of the clearest and best-written descriptions 
yet published of the great suspension bridge between New York and 
Brooklyn, a description which its author has had revised by the chief 
engineer of the bridge. In fact, the one hundred and fifty-six pages of the 
deservedly successful Annual are full of interesting and highly instructive 
articles by competent writers. 

ANNALS OF FORT MACKINAC. By Dwight H. Kelton, Lieutenant United 
States Army. Revised edition. 1883. 

In 1877 the Very Rev. Father Jacket, who is dean of the district, dis- 
covered the remains of the heroic missionary Father Marquette at the vil- 
lage of St. Ignace, on the site of the little Jesuit church, where they had 
been interred June 9, 1677, just two hundred years before. The pamphlet 
above, by Lieut. Kelton, of the Tenth United States Infantry, even though 
it follows the dry method of annals, is interesting reading, and in a greater 
degree is valuable for those who have anything to do with keeping the 
annals of the church in the region about the upper great lakes. 

Michilimackinac, Lieut. Kelton says, means the country of the Mishini- 



286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov., 

maki, and was originally applied to the eastern half of the upper penin- 
sula, and now in its shortened form of Mackinac it is applied to the island 
and the strait just south of Pointe St. Ignace. These Annals cover the his- 
tory of the region from 1634, when it was first visited by Jean Nicolet, to 
the present time. Many vicissitudes have overtaken the little village of 
St. Ignace and the island of Mackinac, with its fort begun by the English 
in 1780 to replace the fort at "Old Mackinac," on the north shore. In the 
winter of 1680-1 the famous explorer, Father Hennepin, of the Recollects 
of St. Francis, was at St. Ignace and enrolled the fur-traders there in the 
third order of St. Francis. By the surrender of Quebec in 1759 this region 
passed to the English, though Pontiac took the fort at Old Mackinac from 
them and held it for a short while. By various devices the English, in 
spite of the treaty of 1783, maintained possession of the new fort until 1796, 
and again in 1812 captured it from us. In 1814 our troops made an assault, 
but in vain. The British garrison at that time consisted principally of the 
Glengarry Light Infantry, a force enlisted among the Catholic Scotch 
Highlanders of Glengarry in Canada. Lieut. Kelton's pamphlet gives lists 
of the priests who have served this mission from 1670 to 1883, as well as 
of the respective French and English commandants previous to American ' 
possession, and of the officers of the garrison of Fort Mackinac since. 

CROWN OF THORNS, and other Tales. 24mo, pp. 69. Baltimore : John B. 

Piet & Co. 
SIMON VERDE ; or, The Good-Natured Man. By the author of Tasso's 

f Enchanted Ground. 24010, pp. 105. Baltimore : John B. Piet & Co. 
THE FEAST OF FLOWERS, and other Tales. 24mo, pp. 70. Baltimore : John 

B. Piet & Co. 
FILIAL LOVE BEFORE ALL, and other Tales. 24010, pp. 104. Baltimore : 

John B. Piet & Co. 
THE QUEEN'S CONFESSION ; or, The Martyrdom of St. John Nepomucene. 

From the French of Raoul de Navery. i8mo, pp. 174. Baltimore : John 

B. Piet & Co. 

There can be no hesitation in recommending the above five books to 
those selecting reading matter for the younger Catholic children. The 
Queen's Confession, though, it must be said, is adapted for more advanced chil- 
dren also, and would not be uninteresting to older readers even. Its story 
deals with the great patron saint of the Czechs, that holy priest, John of 
Nepomuk, who sacrificed his life rather than break the seal of confession. 
The preface is written by a Franciscan friar of the Irish province, who hides 
himself under initials; and, as he well says, "the story of Queen Jane's [of. 
Bohemia] life is worth telling. She had all the virtues of a modest maiden, 
a suffering queen, and a saintly woman. St. John Nepomucene is one of 
the martyrs of the church. His courage, piety, fortitude, and death 
demand the reverence of the priest and the esteem of every one that reads 
the history of his life." 

ROSE PARNELL, THE FLOWER OF AVONDALE. A Tale of the Rebellion, '98. 
By D. P. Conyngham, LL.D. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1883. 

Under the guise of a romance, the heroine of which is a member of a 
well-known Irish family that for some generations has been identified with 
the patriotic party in Ireland, the author has made a skilful and interest- 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287 

ing historical picture of some of the scenes in the ill-conducted and luckless 
attempt of a part of the Irish people in 1798 to win freedom. The author 
himself a gentleman who, besides being a man of literary experience, had 
made an honorable record of another kind by what might be called ama- 
teur military services in the Union army during the late civil war passed 
to his rest only a few months ago, so that any success his book may meet 
with cannot profit him now. The scenes of '98 here described are suffi- 
ciently soul-stirring, yet, as history vouches, it would be hard to exaggerate 
the cruelty of the outrages^ committed at that time by the English troops, 
or by the Protestant yeomanry acting in the English service in Ireland. 
It is to be hoped that the day of such horrors for Ireland has passed, and 
that there is yet in store for the fateful isle a period of peace and of pros- 
perity. 

THE NORMAL Music COURSE. A series of exercises, studies, and songs, de- 
fining and illustrating the art of sight-reading ; progressively arranged 
from the first conception and production of tones to the most ad- 
vanced choral practice. First Reader. By John W. Tufts and H. E. 
Holt, New York. 

THE NORMAL Music COURSE, ETC. Second Reader. 

MANUAL FOR THE USE OF TEACHERS, to accompany the Readers and 
Charts of the Normal Music Course. By John W. Tufts and H. E. 
Holt. New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco : D. Appleton & 
Co. 1883. 

These two musical readers are of a small quarto shape, and both by 
their tasteful covers and their handsomely and clearly printed music ought 
to prove very attractive to the younger classes in schools, for whom they 
are intended. The Manual gives a key to the method followed in the two 
readers. The First Reader, which is divided into two parts, contains, first, 
so much of theoretical instruction as is necessary, and, secondly, a selec- 
tion of very pretty childish songs. The Second Reader, intended for more 
advanced classes, develops the theory and contains a still larger collection 
of songs than the First Reader. 

THE MARTYRS OF CASTELFIDARDO. Translated from the French by a 
member of the Presentation Convent, Lixnaw, Co. Kerry. 181110, pp. 
vi.-24o. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 1883. 

THE LITTLE HUNCHBACK. By the Countess de Segur. Translated by 
Clara Mulholland. New edition. i8mo, pp. 287. Dublin : M. H. Gill & 
Son. 1883. 

WITHOUT BEAUTY; or, The Story of a Plain Woman. Translated from the 
French of Mile. Zenaide Fleurot, by Alice Wilmot Chetwode. i8mo, 
pp. 304. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1883. 

TALES BY CANON SCHMID. Newly translated by H. J. G. (Containing fif- 
teen of the tales.) i8mo, pp. 384. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1883. 
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

The above four little books can be heartily recommended to all who are 
looking for something for their children to read. The last-named book 
especially, the famous little German tales, will go on its own well-known 
and well-appreciated merits, the translation itself being easy, clear, and 
idiomatic in its style. 



288 NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. [Nov. , 1883. 

HISTOIRE DE MADEMOISELLE LE GRAS (LOUISE DE MARILLAC.) FONDA- 
TRICE DES FlLLES DE LA CHARITE". PR^CE'DE'E DBS LETTRES DE MGR. 

MERMILLOD, EVEQUE D'HE'BRON, VICAIRE APOSTOLIQUE DE GENEVE, 
ET DE M. FIAT, SUP^RIEUR GE'NE'RAL DES PR&TRES DE LA MISSION ET 
DES FILLES DE LA CHARITY. Paris : Poussielgue Freres. 1883. 

This book will be noticed soon. 



THE ROSE OF VENICE : A Story of Love, Hatred, and Remorse. By S. Christopher. Balti- 
more : John B. Piet & Co. 1883. 

LADY GLASTONBURY'S BOUDOIR ; or, The History of Two Weeks. By the author of The New 

Utopia, i8mo, pp. 279. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. 
VADE MECUM AD INFIRMOS, pro Missionariis America: Septen. Continens preces lingua anglica 

et germanica pro cura infirmorum utiles. S. Ludovici. 1883. 
NANO NAGLK : her Life, her Labors, and their Fruits. By William Hutch, D.D., president of 

St. Colman's College, Fermoy. New edition. Crown 8vo, pp. xvi.-sis. Dublin : M. H. 

Gill & Son. 1882. 
SHORT MEDITATIONS TO AID Pious SOULS IN THE RECITATION OF THE HOLY ROSARY. 

Translated from the French by a Member of the Order of St. Dominic. 32010, pp. vi.~3o8. 

New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet. 1883. 
BERTHA DE MORNAY, SISTER OF CHARITY : her Life and Writings. With preface by Natalis 

de Wailly, member of the French Institute. Translated from the French. i8mo, xvi.- 

271. Dublin : Browne & Nolan. 1883. 
A NEW DEPARTURE IN THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE, WITH THEORIES UPON 

THE NERVE FORCE, FEVER, CONTAGION, ETC. By C. A. Hardey, M.D., Graduate of the 

University of Pennsylvania. New York : P. O'Shea. 1883. 
OUR AMERICAN SICILY ; where they grow the genuine Sicily lemon, as well as 

" The Orange, Banana, and Guava, 
The Pine- Apple, Date, and Cassava." 

[A pamphlet description, for Catholic colonization purposes, of the San Antonio colony re- 
servation in Florida. By Judge Edmund F. Dunne, the president at San Antonio, Florida.] 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVIII. DECEMBER, 1883. No. 225. 



HENDRIK CONSCIENCE* 

HE was a deep thinker who gave the name of the three theo- 
logical virtues to the three Catholic countries of Europe whose 
destiny it has been to be persecuted for their faith or to have 
their rights to independence and autonomy disregarded by 
neighboring nations who envied them their prosperity and held 
them in subjection. That subjection has been all the more gall- 
ing from the fact that in language and character no people could 
be conceived less congenial to their powerful masters. Ireland 
still has unabated faith in the future which will separate her from 
stolid England ; Poland still clings to the hope of shaking off the 
iron hand of barbaric Russia ; and Flanders, full of charity, has, 
under the common name of Belgium, shared with the Walloon 
Provinces her hard-won liberty, after having been for centuries 
the battle-ground of the European powers and experiencing in 
turn the yoke of Spain, Austria, and France. 

As is ..Iways the case, the language has shared the fate of its 
conquered people. Tfie poetical strains of the Irish bards and 
the quaint periods of the Four Masters sound weird and strange 
in the ears of the majority of Erin's children. Government op- 
pression has well-nigh silenced the literary voice of Poland's rich 
but proscribed tongue. And it is only since Belgium's success- 
ful revolution of 1830 that the remembrance of the musical old 

* Cfr. Conscience : twee redevoeringen door N. Nelis, Leeraar by 't Athenaeum van Brugge 
Rond den Heerd, Bruges, 1882. 

Copyright. REV. I. T. HKCKEK. 1883. 



290 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec., 

rhymes of Van Maerlandt and Simon Stevens have spurred the 
free Flemings on to renewed efforts in the field of national litera- 
ture. For the last half-century a movement of revival in lett-i's, 
architecture, music, and art, none the less effective because con- 
fined to so narrow a strip of territory, has steadily been gaining 
ground in Flanders. Were its authors less outspoken in the ex- 
pression of their Catholic convictions, and did not its leaders 
fight in the foremost and fearless ranks of the Catholic ^rty, 
their works would long ago have. been brought to the attention 
of the outside world and been recognized as not unworthy of the 
Flemish masters of the glorious past. But the noble men who 
voice their religious sentiments in terse, soul-stirring verse and 
mellow, picturesque prose have to contend against a government 
of free-mason gueux who became traitors to the faith of their fa- 
thers and who are shamefully ignorant of their mothers' tongue. 
The rich, musical strains of Peter Benoit's oratorios are wrung 
from the melodious chords of a Catholic harp ; the grand con- 
ceptions of Baron Bethune, whorii Germany honored as the only 
artist whose genius was capable of restoring and completing Co- 
logne's historic cathedral, are influenced by the Catholic remi- 
niscences of the ages of faith ; Geefs' marble groups and Baron 
Wappers' national canvases were created under the masterly in- 
fluence of Catholic inspiration ; the historical studies of David, 
Willems, and Duclos are stamped with the seal of Catholic truth. 
Hence they are ignored at home by the government, who alone 
disposes of the means to give them fitting recognition ; they are 
belittled or not so much as mentioned abroad by the infidel for- 
eign agents of our periodical literature. Not until an American 
bard shall display in an English setting the hidden gems of Flem- 
ish poetry will Ledeganck's harmonious verse, Gezelle's " Grave- 
yard Flowers," and De Coninck's " Mankind Redeemed " ob- 
tain their well-earned praise. 

That graceful service was rendered years ago . to one whose 
works did not become household words in every civilized lan- 
guage of the world until they were brought out in English 
dress, and who died the other day at the ripe old age of seventy- 
one the Catholic and patriot Hendrik Conscience. 

It is passing strange that this most renowned of Flemish writ- 
ers, whose first work marked fifty years ago the dawn of a splen- 
did era of literary wealth, should have been born of a French 
father. Pierre Conscience was a native of Besanon, and was ap- 
pointed by Napoleon I. harbor-master of Antwerprin recognition 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 291 

of repeated deeds of bravery whilst serving in the French navy. 
He had been three times in irons on British pontoons as a pris- 
oner of war, and the emperor paid the French debt with an office 
in conquered Belgium. A Flemish maiden of one of Antwerp's 
suburbs gained the affections of the ancient marine, and Hen- 
drik, the first-fruit of what proved a happy but short union, was 
born December n, 1812. 

Pompstreet, situated in St. Andrew's neighborhood, one of 
the most populous and picturesque of the ancient city of Ant- 
werp, where our hero was born, proved a rich field of observa- 
tion to the future delineator of the manners and inner life of the 
Flemish people. Pompstreet was what I call a catholic street, 
possessing in itself all the elements that go to make up these odd, 
irregular thoroughfares of our mediaeval cities, "which modern 
travellers admire so much because of their quaintness. In Pomp- 
street the neat wooden structure of the modest burgher set off the 
gray stone mansion of the noble Salm-Salms, and the poor tene- 
ment of the laborer added a bit of quiet color to the broken lines 
of the old-fashioned borough. In Pompstreet the tradesman el- 
bowed his rich neighbor, who daily witnessed the poverty of his 
humbler fellow-citizens, knew their names, took an interest in 
their welfare, and learned to practise the precept of Christian 
benevolence without wounding their sensitiveness. To the no- 
bleman poverty was no distressing and unusual sight, as it is in 
these days of magnificent avenues for the rich and of squalid 
alleys for the poor. The latter conceded with thankful accept- 
ance the rich man's coveted right of unostentatiously alleviat- 
ing their distress, and thus they both carried out the beautiful 
ideal of universal brotherhood which Christ preached and which 
the Catholic Church has ever upheld in society as well as in the 
church. To that familiar intercourse of prince and plebeian we 
owe many of the most touching pages of The Poor Gentleman, a 
powerful drama of family pride struggling with misfortune and 
want. 

Day after day little Hendrik untiringly watched from a win- 
dow of the parental house the ever-varying scenes of busy 
Flemish life. For the boy was weak and unable to walk. Fas- 
tened in his little arm-chair, the child-invalid would envy the 
sports of the other boys romping in the street. His heart yearn- 
ed for the sweet companionship of the children of his age, in 
whose games he could not share, and the monotony of his 
young existence was only broken by the loving caresses of his 
mother and the not infrequent visits of gold-spectacled Mr. 



292 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec, 

Tartare, the family doctor. The child's ailments appealed to the 
sympathies of the kind-hearted old gentleman. He bestowed the 
best of care on his little prote'ge', determined to leave no means 
untried to prolong his life, and thus give a chance to nature and 
an unimpaired constitution to prove true his assertion, that if 
Hendrik lived to be seven years old he would live to be an old 
man. Little Hendrik appreciated the sympathetic care of Dr. 
Tartare. Like all invalid children whose youthful spirits are 
trammelled by bodily infirmities, he became thoughtful and ob- 
serving. Whoever has read Conscience's glowing sketch of the 
doctor in Siska van Roosemael need not be told that the mature 
writer graciously paid the debt contracted by the sickly child. 
We are all familiar with the self-denying love of a mother's heart, 
and are not surprised to learn that suffering Hendrik was his 
mother's pet. To shorten the weary hours of the long day- 
each day is an epoch in the life of the child Madame Conscience 
would tell, with a woman's tender appreciation of child-nature, 
the touching drama of Little Red Ridinghood with a wealth of 
details which made the little sufferer forget his own ailments 
whilst deeply sympathizing with the cruel fate of the wolf's 
gentle victim. The romancer's power of description and pro- 
found analysis of the mysterious passions of the human heart, as 
exhibited in What a Mother can Suffer and other works, may 
be traced to those instructive hours which the doting mother 
devoted to the amusement and delight of her story-loving 
boy. 

Thanks to the unremitting attentions of the doctor, the criti- 
cal period was safely passed and Hendrik gained the use of his 
limbs when seven years of age. He was not slow in availing 
himself of his long-delayed freedom of action, and he now passed 
the swift-spent days roaming about the quaint streets of St. 
Andrew's parish, every turn of which revealed something new 
to the eager eyes of the wondering boy. His father rather en- 
couraged this thirst for street information, which filled the mo- 
ther with just alarm. The old gentleman was an uncompromis- 
ing partisan of the unsound doctrines on education which Jean 
Jacques Rousseau's mile had made so popular in revolutionary 
France. He left Hendrik to his own devices. Nor was Madame 
Conscience's anxiety about the boy diminished when, the fall of 
Napoleon having deprived her husband of his official position, 
the latter sought in the occupation of shipbreaker and dealer in 
waste paper a means of livelihood. Little Hendrik now spent 
his days in hunting up books from among the heaps of mis- 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 293 

cellaneous discarded literature in his father's junk-shop, and de- 
voured their contents with feverish assiduity. However, the 
frequent warnings of his mother made a deep impression on the 
child's precocious mind, intensified when her death left the eight- 
year-old lad without a guide. Two years later Pierre Con- 
science moved about half a mile outside the then city walls with 
the young wife who had replaced the former in his own if not in 
the boy's affections. Unrestrained in the use of his time, Hen- 
drik now spent all the hours not devoted to reading in running 
about in the fields. In his rambles he frequently met the parish 
priest of a neighboring village, who took an interest in him and 
invited him to his house. The old priest was deeply versed in 
the natural sciences, and whilst preparing the bright lad for his 
first Holy Communion gave him an insight in the mysteries of 
the laws of nature and taught him to admire its beauties. Con- 
science, indeed, grew passionately fond of nature, and, thanks to 
his reverend teacher, acquired that appreciation of the beautiful 
and that scientific knowledge which assert themselves in almost 
every one of his novels. He has embalmed his grateful remem- 
brance of the gray old priest, his benefactor, in his fragrant 
Leaves from the Book of Nature. It is, no doubt, to his intimacy 
with this worthy man that Conscience owed the true religious 
feeling which permeates his works. 

Hendrik was sixteen years of age when the Conscience family 
moved again, this time to the village of Borgerhout. His father 
had now seven children by his second wife, and found it hard 
work to supply them with the necessaries of life. He intimated 
to the youth that it was time he should look out for his own 
support. The old gentleman had surely done very little to 
enable Hendrik to work for his living ; but young Conscience 
was as noble-hearted as he was courageous, and he bravely 
looked about him for something to do. The village school- 
master, the worthy Mr. Vercammen, having offered him the 
position of assistant teacher, he eagerly and thankfully accepted 
it. Devoting all the free time which his duties in the class-room 
left him to the study of botany and English, he soon came to be 
known among the educators of the day as a conscientious and 
painstaking teacher. His ability attracted the attention of Mr. 
Delin, a schoolmaster of Antwerp, who secured Hendrik's ser- 
vices in the larger field of usefulness which his native city af- 
forded, and who, an enthusiastic friend of Willems and a tho- 
rough Fleming, communicated his own love for the mother- 
tongue to the studious youth. 



294 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec., 

Conscience was diligently performing the duties of his modest 
position when the shout for freedom which had startled the 
Nassau dynasty within the palace walls and sent them flying 
across the border reverberated in the hearts of the people in 
every city and hamlet of Belgium. L' Union fait la Force was the 
battle-cry which the restless burghers of Brussels sang to the 
wild strains of the Muette de Portici. The Flemish Catholics, 
goaded to desperation by the religious proscriptions of William 
of Holland, who had repeatedly turned a deaf ear to the legiti- 
mate complaints respectfully urged by their representatives, took 
up the cry and enthusiastically rallied under the banner of 
liberty. The patriotic heart of Conscience could not resist the 
appeal for " faith and fatherland." In a few days he overcame 
his father's opposition and joined the ranks of the volunteers. 
But the youth of seventeen soon found out that the school-room 
was a poor preparation for a soldier's life with all the privations 
which a hastily-declared a"nd unlooked-for war implied. The 
hardships of the campaign soon exhausted his untrained strength, 
and he found himself sick in the hospital tent of Baelen even 
before he had made a stroke or aimed a shot in the cause cf 
freedom. The tender ministrations of a young girl of the village, 
who nursed him to restored vigor and strength, made the im- 
pressive youth almost regret the day he had again to shoulder 
the knapsack and the musket. However, he did his duty man- 
fully, and, having rejoined his regiment, he fought desperately 
at the battle of the Iron Mountain, near Louvain, where his 
comrade was shot dead and he himself was seriously wounded. 
His adventures during the campaign form the narrative of one 
of the best of his books, The Revolution of 1830. 

As soon as Conscience's wounds were healed he was sent to 
another regiment doing garrison duty in Dendermonde. Here 
his youthful appearance and refined feelings attracted the un- 
complimentary attention of a rude, ignorant captain, who, bronzed 
in the service, had risen from the ranks without acquiring know- 
ledge or manners befitting his station. The sensitive school- 
master, after having unflinchingly faced shot and shell, now 
meekly bowed under the insulting tongue-lash of ill-mannered 
Captain Turc, who made him undergo all manner of indignities. 
Conscience found a solace, however, in literature ; whilst quar- 
tered in Dendermonde he published several patriotic songs in 
French which delighted his companions in arms and earned him 
the title of chansonnier du rt'giment. And when he took a 
scholar's revenge on the captain, who was cordially detested by 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 295 

all, by writing satirical verses, the soldiers gleefully made the 
echoes of the old barracks resound with the welcome poetical 
effusions embodying their grievances set to mirth-provoking 
music. There is no telling what punishment the brutal captain 
might have visited upon the suffering youth had not a longed- 
for furlough freed Conscience from the petty tyranny. 

Whilst spending his vacation in Antwerp he made the ac- 
quaintance of another poet-soldier, the witty Theodore van 
Ryswyck. By a not unusual yet strange law of contrast a last- 
ing friendship sprang up between this frolicksome, independent 
wag, who found a wild delight in playing practical jokes on his 
fellows, and the tender-hearted, thoughtful Conscience, whose 
retiring disposition was a perfect antithesis of Van Ryswyck's. 
Mutual sympathy, on the other hand, drew Conscience to an- 
other most strenuous advocate of the Flemish movement, the 
talented John de Laet. This author soon discovered his young 
friend's endowments of mind, and encouraged him to devote 
them to efforts in the mother-tongue, although he himself was 
still giving vent to his soul-stirring writings in unadulterated 
French. Mustered out in 1836, Conscience retraced his steps to 
the fatherly mansion, which harbored a growth of progeny, but 
no corresponding increase of worldly goods. The young man's 
exertions to find remunerative employment were but ill-repaid. 
The revolution had caused hundreds of students to abandon 
college, and six years of a soldier's life had unfitted them for the 
liberal professions, which none could enter without a high degree 
of literary proficiency. As a result commercial pursuits were 
overcrowded. Conscience tried the tramping life of a civil 
engineer, but soon came to the rueful conclusion that he had not 
the required mathematical training or taste. In sheer despera- 
tion he was on the point of keeping the wolf of hunger from the 
door by manual labor when a kind Providence threw his literary 
friends, Van Ryswyck and De Laet, in his way. This happy 
meeting proved the turning-point in his career. Together they 
discussed the situation of the Flemish element in the new-formed 
nation. They deplored the action of the government, which dis- 
criminated against the Flemish tongue by shutting it out of its 
administrative bureaus ; they protested against the party spirit 
which treated a native idiom as a foreign language, whilst thou- 
sands of Flemings could not even understand the official French ; 
and from the banks of the Schelde emerged in his literary cradle 
the Moses of a persecuted people, who was to emancipate them 
and lead them to victory Conscience. 



296 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec., 

The outlook was anything but encouraging for the Flemish 
movement after the successful revolution which culminated in 
the independence of the Belgian provinces. Years of French 
domination had thrown the native tongue into discredit and had 
made the knowledge of French a necessity for all those who as- 
pired to an office or a prominent position in public affairs. Nor 
had the advent of the Orange dynasty to the government of the 
Netherlands bettered the condition of the Flemings. Far from 
putting an end to their grievances, the Nassaus, deeming their 
language an unwarrantable idiom of the Dutch, treated it as a 
rebellious expression of their Catholic faith, and did all in their 
power to stifle its local genius under the stately periods of the 
less pliant Dutch. After 1830, under the new re'gime, the promi- 
nent men of the Belgian nation, in their hatred for the northern 
language of the oppressor, sought to thrust the Flemish entirely 
aside. The fact that some of the most prominent defenders of 
the Flemish tongue, like Van Ryswyck, were publicly known to 
be Orangeists gave a color of right to the attempted proscription. 
Both Catholic and Liberal parties affected to ignore the language 
of the Flemings. Yet the Flemings had stood the brunt of the 
battles for independence. But now that liberty was secured, like 
the daughters of the priest of Madian who had filled the troughs 
with water, they were driven away and prevented from water- 
ing Raguel's flocks. A few of their leaders, notably Willems, 
loudly asserted their rights and found some encouragement 
among the middle classes of the cities where they resided. But 
the government made them pay dearly for the -plaudits of the 
people. The whole weight of administrative influence was thrown 
against them, and old Willems was removed from a prominent 
position which he had filled with honor for years in the city of 
Antwerp to a petty office in the obscure town of Eecloo. He 
threw it up in disgust, and, encouraged by his friends, he went 
to Ghent and founded the Belgian Museum. But that learned 
periodical, which deserved the plaudits of Germany's most able 
writers, which Jacob Grimm admired as the best literary maga- 
zine of the day, had to suspend publication for lack of apprecia- 
tive subscribers. 

However, some of Willems former pupils in Antwerp re- 
mained true to his teachings and kept alive the only remnant of 
the once famous literary guilds worthy of the name " The Olive- 
Branch." Priests and judges, lawyers and doctors, teachers and 
letter-loving merchants, all enthusiastic admirers of the then 
popular writers, such as Van der Palm, Bilderdyk, and Tollens> 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 297 

made up its membership. Theodore van Ryswyck and John de 
Laet had just joined the club when Conscience fell in with them. 
Both were anxious to add to the strength of its youthful ele- 
ment. De Laet, a thorough nationalist, was convinced that new 
Flemish blood was wanted to keep up the standard of excellence 
of the famous guild and to counteract its Dutch literary tenden- 
cies. Both urged him to apply for admission to "The Olive- 
Branch." An applicant for membership had to write a Flemish 
essay to be submitted for approval to the guild. Following the 
tastes of the day with all the more willingness and ease from 
the fact that French was his father's tongue, Conscience had up 
to that time confined his efforts to French. But now the im- 
portunities of his friends overcame his misgivings and he set 
about looking for a theme. Rummaging among his father's old 
books, he finds an antiquated history of the Netherlands by 
Guicciardini, reads therein a graphic description of the ravages 
caused by the iconoclasts and of the devastation of the cathedral 
of Antwerp in the sixteenth century, and Conscience has found 
his subject. Not daring to attempt composition in Flemish, he 
intended to write in French, trusting to a laborious translation 
for success in his undertaking. For a whole day he painfully 
struggles to set down his thoughts in French, but in vain ; his 
head was too filled with the exciting scenes of Flemish history. 
Finally he seizes his pen, and the hidden spring which was to 
flow for fifty years in clear and sparkling streams of living 
Flemish prose bubbles forth. He writes with feverish haste and 
anxiety until midnight, and before the timid youth seeks his 
humble cot for a few hours' rest the first eighteen pages of his 
maiden book have been written. He resumes his now pleasing 
task the next day. For almost two weeks he scarcely stops to 
take his scanty meals. When his story is pretty well under way 
he runs to John de Laet, who applauds. Within a month The 
Year of Wonders was completed. 

In St. James' parish, and not far from the Academy of Fine 
Arts, there exists, unaltered to this day, an ancient Flemish inn 
styled " The Little Black Horse," a picture of said animal adorn- 
ing its old-fashioned signboard. Here the young artists, painters, 
and sculptors gathered fifty years ago, and spent the time from 
eight to eleven P.M. in discussing art news, the master's tech- 
nique and the recent methods of the craft. They aimed at creat- 
ing a distinctive Flemish art which should revive the historic 
glories of Flanders. The ambitious youths were led to the now 
acknowledged realisation of their art-dreams under such able 



298 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec,, 

colorists as Wappers, Leys, and others. Conscience and his two 
literary friends were always welcome guests to the merry circle, 
and there is no doubt that his companionship with the artists of 
the Antwerp school had the most salutary influence on his mind, 
adding color to his thought and refinement to his mode of ex. 
pressing it. To the habitu6s of " The Little Black Horse " Con- 
science first read his manuscript. He possessed to an unusual 
degree the charming and rare gift of a powerful and dramatic 
reader ; the modulations of his clear, resonant voice swayed the 
feelings of his hearers at his will. His sympathetic audience in- 
creased night after night, and when the story of The Year of 
Wonders was told his enthusiastic friends unanimously agreed 
that it should be published. But the young author was un- 
known and he had no money ! With the reckless generosity 
characteristic of impecunious artists, they all agreed to pledge 
their purse to make good any losses the publisher might suffer. 
The next day John de Laet, then editor of the Journal d'An- 
vcrs, wrote a flaming article in praise of the new Flemish won- 
der, and the population of Antwerp was on the tiptoe of ex- 
pectation : Who was Conscience ? An old friend of Pierre 
Conscience, the author's father, took it upon himself to enlighten 
Pierre as to the doings of his son. The old gentleman got into 
a French rage. He swore a soldier's oath that Henri should stop 
writing in the despicable Flemish tongue and should tear up his 
manuscript, or never again set foot across the threshold of the 
paternal mansion. Young Conscience had little reason to re- 
member with any fondness the family circle or to fear being 
taxed with ingratitude. Yet his sensitive soul suffered very 
much from this unreasonable opposition, for he truly loved his 
aged parent. But the struggle was short ; faith in his future and 
love of country gained the day. With a heavy heart he packed 
up his scanty wardrobe and sallied forth into the streets of 
Borgerhout, not knowing where he would repose his weary 
head that night. God watched over him. The unusual sight 
of Hendrik Conscience walking along the Antwerp highway, 
traveller's fashion, with a bundle on his back, attracted the at- 
tention of his friend Charles van Geert, a clever and successful 
landscape gardener. As soon as the latter had ascertained his 
situation he caught him by the arm and hurried him to Mrs. 
Van Geert's house. Van Geert's mother readily agreed to her 
son's wishes, and, with a delicate hint not to mind the bill, 
directed Conscience to take lodgings at " The King of Spain," a 
respectable Borgerhout inn. Much to the disgust of the elder 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 

Conscience, The Year of Wonders was printed; and much to the 
relief of the son, and to the delight of his generous but poor 
friends, it sold rapidly and was read. A few days after the ap- 
pearance of the book Wappers sent for the young author and 
handed him a formidable-looking envelope with big red seals ; 
it contained a letter from a government official announcing to 
the timid writer, who as yet shrank from his newly-acquired 
fame, that Leopold I. summoned him to Brussels. The king re- 
ceived him kindly, and at the end of an hour's audience, during 
which he encouraged Conscience to continue his literary labors, 
dismissed him with a handsome donation from the royal casket. 
Leopold was a far-seeing politician : to make Flemings love their 
mother-tongue and to foster its literary renown meant death to 
French sympathies and unassailable autonomy to the struggling 
little kingdom of Belgium. 

The Year of Wonders was far from being a finished work. A 
feeble style, imperfect unity, and weak delineation of character 
were its least faults in Catholic eyes. Conscience had broached 
some dangerous ideas which his religious convictions soon led 
him to deplore. He revised and corrected subsequent editions 
of the book, and wished henceforth to write nothing in the least 
offensive to the Catholic faith. Flushed with his early success, 
which, notwithstanding the mentioned defects of the work, was 
fully merited by masterly descriptions of events, Conscience 
soon produced his second work, a collection of prose and verse 
called Phantasy. Our youthful author had the good sense to 
realize that it had only an unwarranted success, which was due 
to friendly good-will only. Nothing daunted, he resolved to 
turn to Belgium's historic heroes for a subject worthy his im- 
proving pen and ripening powers. The glorious deeds of 
Breidel and De Coninck, which for a time checked French inter- 
ference in Flanders, were selected for his patriotic theme. The 
result was the world-renowned Lion of Flanders, considered by 
most of Conscience's numerous admirers his masterpiece ; it is a 
literary gem which would grace the greatest author's jewelled 
crown. Published in 1838, it was soon heralded throughout the 
land as the triumph of the Flemish cause. Its fast-appearing 
editions gave an unwonted impetus to the Catholic Flemish move- 
ment, which, at first laughed out of court, has been steadily gaining 
ground ever since, and has forced honorable recognition even from 
its enemies. Bowing to the verdict of the country, the provincial 
government rewarded Conscience with a modest office, which 
he soon resigned to go and live with his friend John de Laet. 



3oo HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec., 

\Ve arrive at the eventful year 1839. The European powers 
had decided to rob independent Belgium of part of its freed ter- 
ritory, Russia insisting on Eastern Limburg, and Luxemburg 
being restored to King William of Holland. The " Treaty of the 
Twenty-four Articles," consummating the injustice, raised a perfect 
storm of indignation, none the less outspoken because impotent, 
in Belgium and in the two dismembered provinces. The artis- 
tic club of " The Little Black Horse " was not the least vehement 
in its denunciation of Machiavelian politics. In February, 1839, a 
meeting was called the forerunner of the now famous Antwerp 
Meeting and Conscience denounced the treaty in impassioned 
tones. He was an eloquent speaker at all times, but on this occa- 
sion he surpassed himself and was applauded to the echo. The 
results of the meeting were lamentable : threats of death to the 
Orangeists were made and acts of violence took place, notably 
against the residence of Mayor Legrelle, who had counselled 
moderation. The next day all the blame of the disorders was 
laid at the door of Conscience, who had not said a word to incite 
the riots caused by an irresponsible populace. Deeply resenting 
the injustice of the imputation, which found credence even among 
his friends, he resolved to retire from public life. Hearing that 
Charles van Geert advertised for a gardener, he applied for the 
vacant place, to the surprise and mortification of his friend. 
However, convinced that his sojourn in the country would help 
the embittered man to forget the deplorable occurrence, Van 
Geert gave him the superintendence of his Borgerhout gardens. 
Conscience was not incompetent to fill the position ; the lessons 
of botany given him in boyhood by the old priest had not been 
forgotten ; but what he wanted was hard work. For eight 
months he indulged with wild energy from morning till night in 
manual labor, laying out flower-beds, weeding borders, grading 
walks. The high-strung youth was determined to smother the 
latent fire which consumed his soul, and to pluck out of his heart 
the noble ambition of benefiting his countrymen. Happily, he 
struggled in vain. When a committee of his friends called upon 
him with the request to deliver a funeral oration at the burial of 
Van Bree, the director of the academy, whose death he sincerely 
deplored, Conscience could not resist their entreaties, and he was 
triumphantly brought back to Antwerp by his jubilant ad- 
mirers. The eloquent author did more than justice to their high 
expectations of his ability. With such ^loquent diction did he 
clothe his noble thoughts that Mayor Legrelle himself, who up 
to that day had been unable to hide his resentment, walked up to 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 301 

the young orator and publicly complimented him on his talent- 
ed effort. The discourse is printed in Conscience's volume of 
Speeches. His friend Wappers succeeded Van Bree in the direc- 
tion of the Academy of Fine Arts, and procured him the appoint- 
ment of secretary to the board of directors a position which he 
held for many years. Henceforth above the reach of want, Con- 
science in 1842 married Miss Mary Pynen, a native of Antwerp, 
who, although she had received the best education, never, says 
Mrs. Ida von Duringsfeld, knew a word of French. 

From 1839 dates the epoch of Conscience's greatest literary 
activity. He published in rapid succession How to become a 
Painter ; What a Mother can Suffer, a tragical gem ; Siska van 
Roosemael ; History of Belgium; Count Hugo van Craenhove ; Even* 
ing Hours ; Leaves from the Book of Nature ; LambrecJit Hensmans ; 
Jacob van Artevelde. All these works were read with increasing 
avidity by the people, and caused doughty champions of the 
Flemish language to come forward and enrich its literature with 
the fruits of their busy pen. We mention August Snieders, Van 
de Kerckhove, Sleeckx, Jan van Rotterdam, Zettermans, and 
Henderickx, nearly all worthy disciples of so illustrious a leader. 
Nor was old Father Willems forgotten in his voluntary exile at 
Ghent. To make him share in the tardy but popular triumph of 
his hopes and aspirations, such distinguished writers as Lede- 
ganck, Blommaert, and Rens gathered round him as vernal and 
glorious a crown as ever pressed the white locks and careworn 
temples of so old and tenacious a gladiator. For years alone he 
had struggled with the angel of his fatherland, and he had retired 
from the arena lamed but not conquered. 

The growing party of Flemings who insisted on the use of 
the Flemish language in the courts and legislative halls, being 
looked upon as too radical for a country of mixed languages like 
Belgium, had been styled Flamingants. Down to 1847 they were 
still the Helots of political life. But so bright a galaxy of youth- 
ful speakers and writers as those referred to above could not be 
expected to submit much longer to political ostracism, as they 
could not but see that the public encouraged their efforts. The 
Flamingants began to grow restless under the anomalous regime 
of a government which they accused of discussing their interests 
and sending forth its edicts thereon in a foreign tongue, without 
giving them an opportunity to have a representative of their own 
give his advice. 

Two parties then, as now, strove for the mastery at the polls ; 



302 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec., 

the Conservatives and the Liberals. Many Catholics still be- 
longed to the latter; in fact, the bulk of the party persisted in 
claiming that they were thoroughly in sympathy with the 
church. The rude awakening from their delusion a few years 
later proved how dangerous it is to trifle with the warnings of 
ecclesiastical authority and to disobey its rules of action. How- 
ever, this much is true : that in those early days the Liberal party 
was far from being what it has since become the sink in which 
all that attacks religion or seeks to cover the church with its 
vituperous slime has gradually settled down, until the more 
modern distinction of Catholic Conservatives and Gueux Libe- 
ratres has become a descriptive shibboleth of the character of the 
members of each political creed. Preparatory to the elections of 
1847 the Flemish Antwerp Meeting called on the leaders of the 
Liberal party, then in the majority, and demanded the right to 
name on their ticket one distinctively Flamingant representative 
among the sixteen candidates for the city council. They pre- 
sented a man well known for his liberal views. But they were 
treated with supreme contempt ; in fact, the Liberal leaders told 
the Meeting, " From the very woof-thread unto the shoe latchet, 
I will not take of any things that are thine, lest thou say : I have 
enriched thee." About the same time John de Laet and Vlees- 
chouwer applied for the position of professor of history in the 
Antwerp Athenaeum. Their application was not even noticed, 
because, said their friends, they belonged to the Flamingant part)'. 
These studied slights embittered the Flamingants, and in a 
spirit of revenge they started a satirical weekly, De Roskam (The 
Currycomb), edited by John de Laet and managed by Vlees- 
chouwer, later editor of the bright and well-known Reinaert de 
Vos, a paper of *the same saucy class 'of political literature. As 
might be expected under the circumstances of its birth, the Curry- 
comb was harsh and indulged freely in insulting personalities. 
Conscience regularly contributed to the paper ; but, true to his 
generous instincts and refined feelings, being no politician, he 
never indulged in captious invective. The Currycomb was as 
ephemeral in its existence as the overwrought bad feelings which 
had engendered it, and it disappeared in 1848. In 1849 t- ne 
Flamingants cast their fortunes with the Catholic Conservatives, 
who accepted Conscience as their representative candidate. 
Conscience had become so popular that, notwithstanding the 
utter defeat of the Catholic party, he ran far ahead of his ticket 
and came within a few votes of being elected. This was a great 
moral victory. It had bee^ won in the face of the most out- 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 303 

rageous warfare, such a one as only the enemies of the Catholic 
name can stoop to. Indeed, their personal abuse wounded Con- 
science's finer sensibilities so much that he left the city in dis- 
gust and retired with his family to the Kempen, where he had 
formerly tramped to war with knapsack and musket. Fear of 
cholera contagion, which had already attacked one of his children, 
made his wife urge this step with all the more success. 

In the Kempen Conscience enjoyed for a time the beauties 
of nature and the quiet of rural life. The recollections of his 
youth became more vivid, and he here picked up the subject of 
two of his works, The Recruit and Baes Gansendonck. But he was 
not allowed to remain long away from the scene of his former 
triumphs ; deputation after deputation waited on him and im- 
plored him to return to Antwerp. They assured him that the 
whole population condemned and deplored the villanous war of 
abuse so unjustly waged against him. Conscience, too religious 
to harbor revenge and too genial to condemn himself to a per- 
petual exile from the city of his birth, gave in and returned amid 
the thankful plaudits of the people. He signalized his return to 
Antwerp by co-operating most effectively in the establishment of 
the first great Flemish popular league, Voor Tael en Kunst (" for 
Language and Art "). When asked what its programme should 
be he wrote the following noble motto : " Thou sJialt love thy 
fatherland, its language, and its fame!" Within a very few 
years the league counted more than a thousand members ; the 
eloquent lectures of Conscience and the spirited verses of other 
gifted writers made its soir6es the most brilliant and sought-for 
gatherings of the winter season in the commercial metropolis of 
Belgium. Nor did Conscience rest at social success : in the club 
were formed arid prepared for public life men eminent in poli- 
tics, like Coomans and Jacobs, who to this day fight the noble 
battles of law and order, morality and Catholic rights men emi- 
nent in literature and art, who have made the traditions of Flem- 
ish ascendency in these branches a living reality, the influence of 
which is felt to-day all over the European Continent. 

Deriving by this time a sufficient income from his publishers 
not to depend any longer on the good-will of others, Conscience 
resigned his position of secretary to the Antwerp academy 
when his friend, the painter Wappers, stepped out as director in 
1851. During the following years he published Blind Rosa, 
Wooden Clara, Rikketikketak, The Poor Gentleman, The Usurer, The 
Grandmother, The War of the Peasants, Hlodwig and Clothildis, The 
Plague of the Village, The Happiness of being Rich, Mother Job, Jubilee 



304 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec., 

Feasts, and The Money Devil. In the meantime the Catholic party 
followed up its hard-earned successes which, alas! it lacked the 
courage to guard and make stable when in power and had in 
1855 honored itself and the Flemish cause by raising Mr. Peter 
de Decker to the secretaryship of the interior. Trouble was 
brewing in the land which it took all the patriotism of the Ca- 
tholics successfully to avert. The Liberal party was finally 
showing its hand, now that it had lost its grip on public affairs. 
Its leaders, coming out in their true free-mason colors, headed a 
campaign of vituperation against their political rivals and against 
priests, convents, and churches, of which American Know-no- 
things seem to have caught the fanatical spirit about the same 
time. Besides, the victories of the French arms in the Crimea 
had made the nephew of Napoleon I. as ambitious as his imperial 
uncle. He coveted the tempting Belgian morsel, and his emis- 
saries were preparing the way for this political boa-constrictor to 
swallow it by covering it with the saliva of discontent. They 
craftily excited the people to complaints of the existing order of 
things and against the party in power complaints which the 
Liberals, for purposes of their own, diligently tried to fan into a 
flame of rebellion. They descanted on the advantages to com- 
merce to be derived from a closer connection with the glorious 
empire, and made far more headway than some Liberal indivi- 
duals, very patriotic to-day, would care to acknowledge. Secre- 
tary De Decker gave proof of far-sighted political wisdom when 
he chose Conscience to counteract the imperial machinations, 
and to preserve in West Flanders the love for Belgian indepen- 
dence, by appointing him commissary of the district with head- 
quarters at Courtrai, scarcely six miles from the French frontier. 
Conscience fulfilled his mission with enthusiasm and success. 
The fire of genuine love of country was burning bright in his 
heart, and he who had the pleasure of listening to many of the 
speeches which the exigencies of his office gave the commissary 
the opportunity of making to the people does not wonder that 
West Flanders is to this day the province of Belgium most de- 
voted to national independence. During his official career in 
Courtrai Conscience, who was always a hard and steady worker, 
employed his leisure hours to advantage and wrote successively 
Simon 'lurchi, The Evil of the Times, The Young Doctor, The Iron 
Coffin, Bella Stock, A Mother s Love, and Bavo and Lievcken. 

It was during his ten years' residence in Courtrai that we 
learned to know Conscience, then in the manhood of his forty- 
seven years. Scarcely above middle height, he was strong, 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 305 

broad-shouldered, and well built. His head, covered with long 
black hair combed back with some care, was inclined to the 
right side. This caused a stoop of the shoulders, which, together 
with a very slight halt of gait, a few enthusiasts went so far as 
to imitate. We admired his pensive brow ; the slow but pene- 
trating glance of his dark, lustrous eyes ; his reserved manners, 
at times abrupt owing to a natural nervousness, yet free from all 
pedantry. When he appeared in public, arrayed in his gold-em- 
broidered dress of office, a double row of ribbons and crosses 
with which the potentates of Europe had delighted to honor 
him glistening on his patriotic breast, to us college boys Con- 
science was a demi-god ! We were proud of the city of our 
birth, the ancient Cortoriacum of the Romans, the stronghold of 
the middle ages, the modern commercial metropolis of West 
Flanders. But who had sung the bloody battle of the Golden 
Spurs, fought under its walls in 1302 the most glorious victory 
ever won by Flemish arms, that laid low the boasted power of 
Philip le Bel of France? Who had added new glories to the 
laurels of Breidel and De Coninck, the sturdy burghers under 
whose leadership the communes had upheld their rights against 
the haughty Gaul's hated power, whose triumphs had made Van 
Artevelde's sway possible in imperial Ghent ? Who but our 
hero, Conscience, the author of the Lion of Flanders ? Who but 
the illustrious writer whose works we devoured and the halo of 
whose literary talents shed an unwonted lustre on the bright 
escutcheon of our loved Courtrai? Baldwin of Flanders had 
marched from our turreted castle to rescue the Holy Land from 
the power of the Turk and to wear a royal crown in Jerusalem. 
But Conscience was fighting the battles of patriotism and reli- 
gion at home. His fame had conquered lands in a manner and 
by means which we students valued above swords and cata- 
pults. All the peoples of the earth were entwining around his 
brow a crown which neither weapons nor insurrections could 
wrest from his venerated head. With what enthusiastic yells of 
delight and admiration we saluted his appearance on the plat- 
form on commencement day! How proud and manly we felt 
when he pinned a medal on our breast and pressed the premium 
in our hands with words of encouragement that made us cry for 
joy ! How we applauded to the echo his burning periods of un- 
defiled Flemish as he spurred us on in a well-polished oration to 
be true to our language, our God, and our fatherland ! 

The office of curator of the Wiertz Museum in Brussels hav- 

VOL. XXXVIII. 20 



306 HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. [Dec., 

ing become vacant in 1867, Conscience was promoted to that 
honorable position by Secretary Van den Peereboom. He ac- 
cepted the place as a recognition of his labors by the govern- 
ment, and moved to the capital with his family in 1868. The 
following year was one of sore trials to the now aging father. 
His two sons were attacked with a most virulent type of typhus 
which proved very contagious in 1869. At the first symptoms 
of danger Conscience hurried the boys away to Courtrai ; but 
too late : both died. The oldest, Ildephonse Ilde we used to 
call him at college was a genius in his way. Of a restless dis- 
position, he possessed the unhappy faculty of keeping his pro- 
fessors on the jump and his companions in hot water. He had 
quite a mechanical and scientific turn of mind, and had dug an 
underground cave in his father's garden, where he ensconced 
himself, studying chemistry, fooling with powder, and producing 
pyrotechnic pieces which a professional would have envied. On 
play-days he would give his intimate friends seances which 
filled us with amazement, one of his most successful displays 
being a miniature volcano which threw up little pebbles and 
scoriae, and the lava of which flowed down the sides of the little 
mound of sand in the most approved Vesuvius fashion. Every 
now and then, to the dismay of the servants, who could not 
account for the disappearance to the thrifty housewife, his 
mother, Ilde would abstract pieces of furniture with which to 
adorn his subterranean den. He would likely have kept his 
doings much longer from the gaze of the uninitiated, had not a 
gunpowder explosion which burned his hair and singed his eye- 
brows and lashes brought down the vault on his cracked head. 
In athletic performances he was a marvel of agility, and we have 
seen him on the ice leap on skates across five chairs in a row 
with a recklessness without parallel outside a circus. His too 
tender-hearted father could not find fault with his pranks, but he 
felt much grieved when wild Ilde ran away from home and sailed 
to America. The boy roamed over the Western prairies for 
more than a year, hunting and fishing, now the guest of a friend- 
ly tribe, again the welcome visitor to the cabin of the border 
pioneer. It was rumored, when he landed in Belgium on his 
return, that his father was to make his adventures the subject 
of one of his works, but death buried Ilde's adventures with his 
father's love for the wayward boy. 

Since 1-868 Conscience published The Minute-Men of Flanders, 
A Good Heart, Edward 't Serclaes, Felix Roobecti s Uncle, Felix Roo- 
beck's Treasure, Money and Nobility, etc. The fiftieth anniversary 



1883.] HENDRIK CONSCIENCE. 307 

of the day when he first stirred up love of country in the hearts 
of his companions in arms with jubilant verse and joyous song 
found him still writing with unweakening power for the gratifi- 
cation and instruction of his countrymen. The government 
commemorated the day by creating him a Grand Commander of 
the Order of Leopold, and the people celebrated the golden 
jubilee of the Flemish bard with national festivities not unlike the 
crowning of Petrarch at the Roman Capitol. For half a century 
Conscience had unremittingly and manfully fought for the rights 
of his Flemish fellow-citizens ; for half a century he had worked 
with untiring energy to revive in their breasts the love of their 
mother-tongue ; for half a century he had written to enlight- 
en their minds, ennoble their hearts, purify their morals, and 
strengthen their Catholic faith. His efforts have been crowned 
with success : infidel and immoral books are unknown in the 
Flemish tongue ; Flanders is thoroughly imbued with a spirit of 
patriotism and love of country, all the more healthy and lasting 
because subordinate to a faith as unshaken in its practice as the 
divine laws which inspire and enforce it. To-day the Flemings 
are a power in the legislative halls of the Belgian nation, and the 
time is not distant when they will victoriously sweep away from 
the capital the cursed brood of free-thinking vultures who are 
eating away the substance of the people, and are making the 
Belgian name a reproach to Catholic nations and a stench in the 
nostrils of honest governments. All honor to Conscience, who 
revealed to them their strength and tested it triumphantly in the 
public arena ! All honor to the man who, after the death-dealing 
torrent of rotten French novels had swept over the Continent, 
leaving moral and physical wreck in its slimy path, taught the 
world in a till then despised and unknown tongue, soon translated 
into all languages for the benefit of the nations, that a novel is 
not necessarily the grave of morality, nor a novel-writer inevita- 
; bly a poisoner of souls ! A nation's gratitude was fittingly dis- 
played in Belgium's capital on the 25th of September, 1881, when 
the laurel wreath encircled a brow beneath which not a thought 
was ever conceived that could make a maiden blush. On the 
I4th of September, 1883, the pure, patriotic Conscience, the Ca- 
tholic romancer, went down to his grave with the gratifying 
knowledge that his work has not only produced fruits, but has 
been gratefully appreciated by his countrymen. 



3o8 THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. [Dec., 



THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. 

IT was a sultry summer day under the emigrant-sheds at 
Kingston, and Jael stood wiping the perspiration from her 
homely face and gazing sadly on the blue, shining waters of On- 
tario and the green islands beyond the harbor. It does not 
matter what her surname was ; in fact, Jael was ugly enough 
without the terrible combination of syllables which her English 
home had presented to her through her cobbler father. She had 
concluded, in leaving England, to leave also to it the one thing 
which had been its only free gift to her since she was born, and 
she did it with that feeling of indifference and scorn peculiar to the 
unthinking poor, certain that better names could be found in free 
America, where good things were so plentiful. The crowd of 
people with whom she had been associated in a long voyage 
knew her only as Jael, the tallest, homeliest, and most feared 
woman in the ship, silent always and indifferent to the trifling 
cares of daily life, towering in physical height, in experience, and 
in strength of character over all the women they had ever 
known. She had shown them on one or two occasions that her 
voice was the one sweet thing in her natural make-up, and on 
other occasions that if she was habitually silent it was not for 
want of ideas or language. Indeed, after the first avalanche of 
abuse which she had hurled at an offender people were fearful of 
disturbing her voice in any manner, lest the thrush's notes might 
turn suddenly into the shrill cries of the virago. She kept as 
much aloof from her companions as if she travelled in the first 
cabin. They liked her none the less, it was true, for Jael was not 
averse to assisting mothers in the care of numerous little ones, 
provided that no fuss was made over the service and no thanks 
attempted ; and it was wonderful how her singing soothed the 
children and her sharp epithets quieted the noisy. She was fond 
of the children. It was part of her daily routine to sit on the 
deck, and, witn her large, hard eyes turned towards England, to 
scream out ballads and revival hymns in true Nonconformist 
style, while sailors and passengers stood at respectful distances 
and laughed and applauded among themselves. The little ones 
sat around her, rapt and enthusiastic, and their eager clamor 
would keep her singing for an hour at a time. She grew to be a 
character aboard as circumstances developed her good and bad 



1883.] THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. 309 

acquirements. When a storm came up, and it looked at one mo- 
ment as if the ship was to go down, and men and women crept 
together trembling and weeping, Jael stood up in their midst and 
poured out an extemporaneous prayer of such passionate strength 
and profuseness, filled with the oddest and most striking Scrip- 
tural allusions, that a great confidence suddenly filled their ter- 
rified souls, and in the loud, excited hymn which she began after 
the prayer many voices joined and swelled it to proportions 
which nearly drowned the wild whistle of the wind. People 
came to look on her after a while as a sort of Hebrew prophetess. 
She was entered on the ship's books as Jael, aged nineteen ; but 
her tall, gaunt form, the absence of bloom or freshness on her 
thin face, the long, coarse features, and the sad, stern, experienced 
eyes made her appear a woman of thirty. Speculation was rife 
concerning her, but it remained speculation until the end of the 
voyage. Jael tolerated no inquiries into her past history, and 
when they had reached Quebec all evidence of her well-known- 
traits disappeared on a sudden. She sang, prayed, scolded no 
more, preserving a rigid coldness and reserve of manner up to 
the moment when she stands looking sadly out on the waters of 
the great inland sea. Her travelling friends are more distant 
than ever, repelled by her surly silence, nor does she wish them 
one point nearer. 

Poor Jael ! Alone in the strange land, without a friend to 
aid her in her need, appalled by the thousands of miles which lie 
between her and her native soil, she feels at this moment that it 
might have been better had she remained with the drunken 
father and continued to lead the old life until the bitter end. 
Death would not be much harder amid the squalor of England 
than in the loneliness of America, and in either case there 
yawned the pauper's grave. She had been the daughter of a 
preaching cobbler, who left his bench and last to hammer Bethel 
pulpits and clothe the spiritual feet of men with the leather of 
Scripture, and as her father's clerk for eight years she had 
served him faithfully and so far as to take up the office herself 
when too much beer had prostrated him. There was a touch 
of poetry in her heart. She loved the hymns, the* Bible stories, 
the long prayers of the preachers with their stormy imagery, and 
the majestic psalms. She had even composed a psalm and a few 
hymns, and her father could, not surpass her fervent prayers. 
But the filth and uncertainty and meanness of her life tired her 
at last. Her father made her heavy life heavier by his abuse and 
his senseless beatings of a too faithful child, and one night she 



3io THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. [Dec., 

had left him in the streets of Liverpool and set out in a vague 
yet hopeful way to see what a new world had to offer her. 

And here were all its offerings around and before her the 
quaint, lively city with its red-coated soldiers, the emigrant-sheds, 
the great lake, and the awful loneliness. Oh ! better indeed to 
have remained with the drunken father and have the life beaten 
out of her at least by the hands of her own and not by those of 
the stranger. The day was long and hung so heavily on every 
one that a few enterprising spirits among the immigrants arrang- 
ed an entertainment, and invited Jael to display any of her ac- 
complishments for the amusement of the crowd. It was an act 
of hardihood, but she was in a mood and consented. When it 
came to her turn, and every ear waited in delight for the first 
notes of that sweet voice, she disappointed them by reciting in 
her broad dialect, yet with a tenderness inconceivable in so 
coarse-looking a woman, the poem of " Bingen on the Rhine." 
What feeling it was that stirred her to it Jael never knew, for 
she was not given to analysis of her own motives; but the loneli- 
ness and despair of the soldier dying far from the land of his 
love suited her mood at that moment, and drew tears from the 
sympathetic immigrants as they thought of the homes they 
would never see again. She moved off when her part was over, 
and, sitting at one side, shed the first tears that had fallen from 
her eyes since she left England. 

Luke Bolger, standing in the background with an official of 
the place, studied her curiously. 

" She is only nineteen," said the official, " and about the style 
of a girl you would want." 

" Jes' about," said Luke, whose face was not more favored 
with beauty than Jael's, and had besides a bargaining expression 
and a hard leatheriness which was altogether absent from the 
girl's stolid countenance. He stood watching her silently still, 
until the official thought fit to arouse him. 

" I have an idea," said Luke then, and his face wreathed itself 
with a smile of golden meaning. He was going to drive a bar- 
gain, and it might require close shaving. " What's the use of 
hiring a girl and paying her a dollar a week for a hull summer, 
when by marrying her you wouldn't have to pay nawthin' at all ? 
See?" 

" I see," said the official, " and I. wish you luck ! There's the 
girl for you, if you're not afraid to take a strange critter in 
hand." 

" Trust me to manage the female critter," said Luke, as he 



1883.] THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. 311 

snapped his old whip suggestively ; " an' if you'll get me a knock- 
down I'll manage the rest." 

" Come along," said the official, " and take everything as it 
goes, for by all accounts she's a queer one." 

He led Luke to where Jael sat with moistened eyes. 

" Jael," said he, " this is Luke Bolger, who wants to speak 
with you. You can believe whatever he tells you about himself. 
It's a pretty safe thing, because he never says more of himself 
than he can help." 

Luke laughed, but checked himself when he saw from Jael's 
manner that she resented his familiarity. She was studying him 
in her usual frank way, her great eyes reading his hard face, his 
stout limbs, serviceable clothes, and general well-to-do air. He 
stood coolly while she inspected him. 

" I hope you like the boy," he said with grave humor, " be- 
cause I must say I like the girl. I want a wife, a good working- 
woman who's fond of a home and able to keep one. I have a 
farm big enough to support a dozen or more, no debts, no chil- 
dren, and my first wife is dead three months. Do you want to 
take her place ? " 

There was a dead silence in the shed. The official stood back 
laughing, the men whispered smiling comments, and the women 
held their breaths in expectation of Jael's torrent of abuse for the 
bold stranger ; for Luke shouted- his proposal into every ear, and 
stood with his chin up, his legs apart, and his trade eye ready to 
close tight on the bargain if Jael consented. She was certainly a 
strange woman. Without taking a moment's thought she an- 
swered in her solemn way that she would be his wife, and when 
he took her in his arms, and kissed her amid cheers and laughter, 
she blushed faintly and then began to prepare for her depar- 
ture. 

The marriage was there and then celebrated in the hasty 
business fashion which is characteristic of the time and was 
peculiar to Luke Bolger. The women of the sheds stood at her 
side, and the men supported the groom, while the justice bound 
them together jocularly until such time as the stringent laws of 
the country would permit them to obtain an Indiana separation. 
Jael had a name at last. Before she could get away from the 
sheds she was Mrs. Bolgered to her heart's content, and some of 
the women, venturing on Luke's boldness, kissed her good-by 
with many tears and good wishes. Jael was seized with an old- 
time inspiration at this evidence of affection, and threw Luke 
into a brown study by suddenly bursting into a Bethel prayer of 



3i2 THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. [Dec., 

benediction for her friends. It was like a Scriptural whirlwind. 
Her lofty and sometimes ridiculous imagery was softened by the 
enthusiasm of her face and her burning eyes, and the perfect 
tornado of language that roared from her lips turned men into 
postures of stony respect and awe. She ceased when a hymn 
had been sung, and then followed her husband in meek silence, 
while he, poor man, led the way with his trade eye wide open in 
astonishment and doubt, lest he had been bitten in his bargain. 

The Bolger farm lay forty miles north of Kingston, in the 
heart of the wilderness. It was a respectable possession for a 
man of Luke's age, but the soil was of a sort that did not 
bode well for the future, and the loneliness of the place was a 
mighty weight on the spirit of Jael. There were no human faces 
seen in that neighborhood oftener than the full moon, there were 
no human habitations within ten miles, and Luke was not gener- 
ous enough or sociable to invite friends to his log-cabin hos- 
pitality. The deer ran across the clearing with curious eyes 
for the dwelling and its occupants, and not unfrequently a bear 
snuffed suspiciously from a distance and fled into the safety of 
the forest again. A wandering trapper or a surveyor or tourist 
periodically found his way to the cabin and detailed to the 
sombre woman who served his meals the news of the outside 
world, wondering that she took so little interest in it and had 
such scant language. Luke did all the talking. He was rather 
proud of the distinction his wife's silence secured, for it reflected 
on him a certain lustre. But he never lost a secret dread of 
those occasions which would wake in Jael the exercise of curs- 
ing or benediction. They never came. Jael was silent from 
year to year, and did her work and bore her children faithfully, 
enduring his ill-tempers and his good tempers with stony in- 
difference, and growing daily more uncanny, more homely, and, 
if possible, more silent. Her marvellous voice never broke the 
primeval solitude in song. Even the mother's croon was never 
heard in the cabin. Her babies were stolid, silent beings, who 
never cried, and never seemed intelligent enough to appreciate 
the services of their attendants, and they grew up dark, slow, 
wild-eyed animals, with scant ideas and scant speech, coarse, 
morose, and entirely wanting in their mother's enthusiasm or 
their father's shrewdness. 

There was one exception, however. They had four boys 
and no girl. The last-born of the family two days after his birth 
surprised his mother by a fit of terrible screaming. His red face 
grew purple with passion, his fists clenched and his feet kicked, 






1883.] THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. 313 

and his blue eyes seemed to flash with rage. She had some 
difficulty in quieting him, as her awkward methods did not seem 
to please him. It astonished her that he should repeat the per- 
formance day after day during a period of two years. After a 
time Luke and she became convinced that there was something 
superior about this child to anything they had seen in the shape 
of infancy. His skin was white and fair, his eyes were blue as 
the sky, and his silky hair was almost red. In his moments of 
good-humor he laughed at his mother while she worked, and 
stretched out his little hands to her, surprising her into that 
croon and baby-talk which Luke had missed without knowing 
why. When he came to be named Jael dreamed a good deal of 
that Jewish king whose Psalms had been her delight and conso- 
lation, and finally called him David. He must have looked like 
the king, she thought, for he woke in her heart the same feelings 
which only the Psalms could formerly rouse, and then he seemed 
to her besides like a sweet, living song shining always in her eyes 
as well as sounding in her ears. David was the wonder of his 
brothers, who could never look at him too long, and were per- 
petually testing the quality of his eyes with their fingers and the 
strength of his lungs by their pinching. As he grew to years 
and understanding he wrought a marvellous change in the house- 
hold. It was usually no noisier than the spring woods, but the 
tears, the screams, the laugh and the shout, and inquiry of the 
child, as he came daily in contact with the sharp and smooth and 
surprising things of existence, kept his parents and his brothers 
in a state of continual emotion of one kind or another. Jael's 
deep nature began to respond slowly but richly to the influence 
of heaven. She would sit for hours watching and entertaining 
her child, teaching him to sing the old ballads and hymns of her 
missionary days, describing the wonders of her sea-voyage and 
the peculiar people in England, and mimicking the preachers 
of the Bethel congregations. He picked up instruction with 
wonderful quickness, and Jael's happiness and triumph were com- 
plete when he had learned to recite " Bingen on the Rhine." 
Her powers were exhausted at this point. Henceforward David 
must look elsewhere to have the vague longings of his nature 
satisfied. 

The year which saw finished the second decade of Jael's mar- 
ried life did not find the family more prosperous than on the day 
of her marriage. They lived in the same old house, and around 
them stood the solemn woods, whose limits civilization still 
avoided. The nearest neighbor was still ten miles away, and if 



314 THE FOUR SONS OF J A EL. [Dec., 

the cleared land was more extensive the soil had become less 
fruitful. The father and his sons had harder work each year to 
produce a crop able to support them. The bank account, small 
as it was, had dwindled slowly in spite of the strenuous efforts of 
stingy Luke, and then crept up a corresponding debt of two 
hundred dollars which drove him almost to suicide as he felt the 
impossibility of paying it. He was a dogged and sober man, 
however, and held on to his own with the grip of a miser, 
hoping and despairing fitfully, more moody than he would have 
been, and dreaming of impossible ways of realizing the fortune 
he had set out to win. Occasionally he drove to Kingston, but 
his moroseness so increased with each visit that he wisely avoided 
it altogether, and his last visit was made only at the suggestion of 
a friendly trapper, who one day whispered to him some news of 
mysterious though agreeable import. When he returned his 
spirits seemed to have revived for the moment. He was ex- 
tremely talkative with the boys, and began to dilate extravagantly 
on the beauties of the world and the advantages of setting forth 
to win a fortune. The soldiers at the barracks were his special 
theme. 

" Jes' see them once," said Luke, as they ate dinner under a 
tree in the meadow, " an' you can't take your eyes off 'em all 
tricked out in red and gold, dressed like gentlemen all day, 
nawthin' to do whatever. Oh ! it's fine, boys, an' they're jes' 
the laziest fellows in the hull world." 

" That's where we ought to be," said 'Dab, with a yawn and a 
laugh, and two of the brothers signified their assent to the idea 
by laughing with him ; but David's eye flashed a little and his 
lip curled in scorn. 

" Them's not sogers," said he wrathfully ; " any one could do 
that much. Where's the fightin', where's the guns, where's the 
killin' an' stabbin' an' glory ? I wouldn't be a woman-soger." 

The three dolts opened their eyes wider at this outburst, as 
if to take in the full magnitude of the idea. 

"Dave's right," said the father approvingly; "they're only 
woman-sogers, after all, but some know how to fight, too, I 
reckon, an' they're only takin* a rest now. The fightin's goin' 
on in the States. They're havin' a mighty hot time of it, too, an' 
crowds of boys are leavin' Kingston every day to jine in. Sech a 
crowd as left the day I was there ! Goin' to see the world ! I 
wish I had done it when I was a boy." 

David's face kindled, and he looked down the Kingston road 
as far as the horizon, as if he would like to burst the bars of 



1883.] THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. 315 

distance and leap headlong into the battles. Even his brothers 
caught a touch of regret from their father's tone and a spark of 
David's enthusiasm. 

" We ought to git, too," said 'Dab boldly, while he edged 
away from the expected blow such a suggestion deserved ; but 
Luke pretended not to hear, and David, still bolder, ventured on 
the more daring remark : 

" This place is too small for such a gang as we be. We could 
make somethin' fightin', an' send it home to mam an' dad, instead 
o' starvin' here on 'taters an' corn." 

There was a gasp from each of the boys at this bold opinion, 
and an expectation of seeing David laid senseless at their feet ; 
but the father only laughed scornfully and started to his feet. 

" Enough o' nonsense," said he, " an' off to yer work ! It's well 
enough to talk, but the idea o' you lads earnin' yer own livin' 
or standin' up to fight alongside o' men ! G'long, ye babies ! " 

The boys accepted this estimate of their abilities with the 
meekness natural to them, but David grumbled all the afternoon 
in secret and managed to communicate his own defiant spirit to 
his brothers before nightfall. Coming home at dark, they lagged 
behind their father purposely to discuss the matter. Jael won- 
dered, as they came in, at their unusual silence and preoccupation. 
She feared .they had had trouble with their father in the field. 
Their manner soon dispelled that dread, however, for he and his 
sons sat talking together of war and battles until they had worn 
out the greater part of the evening. They worked themselves up 
to a pitch of enthusiasm, and David never recited " Bingen on the 
Rhine " with more fervor or success than he did while the others 
were closing up for the night. It was impossible that the fever 
which had seized hold on these young hearts should escape the 
notice of the mother, but she did not see any evil consequences 
from it, and it troubled her not at all. She had read of wars and 
slaughters in the Bible, of terrible butcherings, of murders and 
stormed cities ; they always appeared to her as the relics of a 
bygone age, for she had never more than heard the stor}^ of 
modern warfare. What had war to do with her coarse, igno- 
rant, simple-hearted sons ? Yet every day saw the boys more 
eager to seek the southern battle-fields, and daily at the noon 
hour they talked and pleaded with their father for permission 
to go. 

The stray hunter who had once brought important news to 
Luke stopped one morning on his way through the woods -to 
exchange a word of friendly greeting with Jael. 



316 THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. [Dec., 

" Family all together yet," he said, with a knowing smile, 
" an' all well ? " 

" Yes," said Jael, wondering at the form of his question. The 
hunter shook his head disparagingly. 

" Yer very slow in takin' up a good chance, ma'am. S'pose 
the war shet down on a suddint, whar'd ye be? " 

" Where we are now," answered Jael briefly ; "what have we 
to do with war? " And she wondered the more. 

" Four strappin* boys," continued he sadly, " growin' up use- 
less in this hole, when they might be earnin' piles o' money for ye 
down South fightin' with the Yanks." 

Every nerve in Jael's body tingled suddenly with a new, 
unknown pain, and a strange fear shook her strong body like an 
ague. Was this the key to the excitement which had seized on 
her boys ? 

" Don't you go puttin' such thoughts into them chicks o* 
mine," she said, with repressed passion ; " don't you do it, Master 
George, or it'll be the worse for ye." 

" Oh ! it's done," said George, laughing ; " but I reckon they 
haven't got spunk enough to face gun-music. I told Luke two 
weeks ago he could git two hundred dollars apiece for the boys 
in Kingston, an' he's a fool if he doesn't take it up. Eight hun- 
dred dollars doesn't lie on every stump, ma'am, an' I swow I'm 
sorry I haven't a boy o' my own to exchange for so much gold." 

He went away and left Jael standing bare-headed in the sun, 
yet chilly as if. the winter's snow lay on the ground. Apprehen- 
sion had started the drops on her brown forehead, and the wide 
mouth quivered and trembled with pain. What blackness was 
this coming over her dark life ? What new sorrow was threaten- 
ing her, who had suffered so much ? She looked across the shin- 
ing, pleasant fields, and saw the boys seated with their father 
under the dinner-tree eating ; and immediately there rose another 
picture of the same fields desolate and bare, and vpid of the 
young lives which had made their loneliness bearable ; of herself 
standing at the door when twilight came, and listening vainly for 
the voices and footsteps that came up from the meadows so 
cheerily ! They might have heard her loud cry of agony had 
they been less wrapped up in the subject of their going into the 
world, or seen her as she fled towards them across the fields, 
with her thin locks streaming and her eyes straining with fright 
lest her young be taken from her before she had reached them. 
They were too excited to notice her standing a few yards in 
their rear, but talked on until the whole story was burned into 



1883.] THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. 317 

her heart and Luke himself had pronounced her sentence when 
he said gaily : 

" Well, boys, we'll try it, anyhow. To-morrow ye shall start 
for Kingston, an', if yer courage doesn't fizzle before ye get there, 
ye shall start for the war in soldier's clothes in two days." 

A shout of rapture from the boys and the opening verse of a 
hymn from David were rudely interrupted by the stern, wild 
figure which strode in among them silently. She looked from 
one to another with burning eyes, hot words trembling on her 
lips. All but David and her husband shrank from her. The 
boy knew his mother well, and Luke had a sublime confidence in 
his own doggedness and cunning. 

" Why, Jael," said he in surprise, " what's the matter with 
you, woman ? Be you gone crazy ? " 

" Naw," said Jael, flinging out the word like a bullet from the 
gun. " You an' the boys are clean stark mad, though ! What 
is't you would do with 'em, Luke? What ideas has Master 
George put into your head ? " 

" I s'pose," said Luke, with a swagger, " you may as well 
know one time as another. The boys are goin' to see the world, 
Jael, jes' as you an' I did years ago goin' to the States to do for 
themselves. I didn't care to hurry 'em, but they were set, an' 
as I kin make a little spec on 'em I'm willin', an' so will you 
be." 

" They would never have thought of it on'y for you," Jael 
said in such a hoarse voice " on'y for you, Luke Bolger, on'y for 
you." 

And she stood silent, fighting her emotion secretly, that she 
might not break down just yet before her boys. There was an 
awkward pause, and the young fellows began to steal away from 
the spot to their work. 

" They won't go if you say so," she began again. " Tell me 
you'll keep 'em, Luke, or I'll go mad I surely will." 

" Nonsense, woman ! " said Luke ; " they an't no use here, an' 
we'll clear eight hundred by lettin' 'em go. They've got to go 
some time ; why not now ? " 

" Boys ! " she cried sharply, " you won't go, will you ? You 
won't leave Jael?" so they always called her. "I was always 
good to you, an' I'd die without you." 

With the exception of David the great, coarse sons did not 
understand nor appreciate this appeal, but felt inclined to grin 
at her strange looks and words and manner. It was so utterly 
unlike Jael that they were frightened, not touched, and they said 



318 THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. [Dec., 

nothing 1 , not so much as a sheep would. David was struggling 
with his ever-ready tears. 

" Now, don't try any of that stuff on 'em," said Luke angrily, 
and fearful of her influence ; " they're sot, I tell ye, an' they'll 
stay so. You git home an' rig up for a ride to Kingston to- 
morrow. We'll see 'em off, an' I'll rig ye out like a swell when 
I lay hands on the money. Eight hundred ! Jes' think of it! " 

Jael turned on him her angry eyes. 

" You're a bad man," she said slowly, " worse nor I ever 
thought ye. You'd sell yer boys for gold. You ought k to be 
cursed for it, an' p'r'aps you are. They're sot because you 
stan' up to 'em. They go because you've lied to 'em 'bout the 
glories of war. You've told 'em of the fine dresses, the gilt an' 
the lace, the guns, the everything ; but you never told 'em of the 
long marches, the shootin' an' killin', the bloody fields where the 
cannon tear poor boys to pieces, an' where they stick one another 
with bayonets or get nicked with knives an' bullets. You didn't 
tell 'em," Jael almost screamed as she worked herself into the 
old-time passion, "how the crows an' vultures eat the dead 
bodies lyin' in the air, as they eat the soldiers of King Saul ; you 
didn't tell 'em about the starvin' an' the cold, an' the way they 
treat pris'ners ; or about the hospitals where the wounded die in 
heaps groanin' for water, or of the plagues that eat 'em up alive. 
No, no, you didn't tell 'em them nice things ! You wanted the 
blood-money curses, curses on you ; curses again an' again until 
they cover you like the locusts an' eat even your bones ! What 
do you care if 'Dab is smashed to pieces by a cannon-ball ? What 
do you care if the birds eat Dave's eyes out an' he never gets 
burial ? Only the money for you ! If you do this thing, Luke 
Bolger " and she sank on her knees to the ground, with her 
hands clasped and her eyes starting, a terrible picture of passion 
and distress " may all the curses that were since the world be- 
gun fall on you ! May Naaman's leprosy rot you an' no Jordan 
water help you ; may the devil treat you ten times worse than 
Job ; may the Philistines lay you waste an' the robbers o' Jericho 
fall upon you ! Oh ! curses like rain on you curses till the last, 
you robber, you son of Belial and Moloch, devil and no man ! " 

The last word came out in a scream of rage and madness, and 
immediately, true to her old habits, she broke out into a fierce 
hymn of denunciation and ran, shouting it, back to the house. 
There was a long and sad silence until the wild singing had 
ceased, while the boys stood fearful of looking at each other or 
towards their father. Luke was not at all affected, except by the 



1883.] THE FOUR SONS OF J A EL. 319 

dread of losing the bounty-money, and he turned to them with a 
laugh of hearty mirth and scorn. * 

"You needn't laugh," said Dave sharply; "that settles it! 
We'll not leave Jael, sence she takes it so bad. We'll stay with 
her till she dies." 

" It'll be a mighty quick death, then," Luke thought, with a 
murderous gleam in his eyes, but he was politic enough to say 
nothing more at that moment. They returned to their work, 
and he allowed the boys to think and talk about the matter 
without interference, hopeful that their own inclinations would 
bring them back to the original design. Once or twice he spoke 
with David alone. 

" It's one of Jael's freaks," said he, " to cut up as she did. She 
was brought up that way, an when once she's started kin get off 
more curses than a canaller. She knows you boys hes got to 
leave home some time, jes' as she an' I did. Why, she ran away 
from home. When I fetch back the bounty-money she'll feel 
even, an' it's a-mighty hard for you young fellows to miss so 
good a chance, anyhow." 

Dave was suspicious, however, and reluctant to enter upon 
the scheme again with the impression of his mother's agony so 
fresh in his mind. The temptation to go was strong enough to 
prevent him offering any remonstrance to his father's urging. 
As his stupid brothers would follow where the spirited boy led, 
Luke was satisfied that within the next twenty-four hours he 
would be a rich man. Before they had quitted the field another 
change had taken place in Dave. He came to look at the matter 
as his father did, and considered that, as the separation of the 
family was merely a question of time, the agony might as well be 
endured now as later ; and his brothers agreed with him, so that 
father and sons presented themselves at the cabin in a very cheer- 
ful frame of mind. 

Supper was ready for them, and Jael had resumed her ordi- 
nary dull manner, but her face was seamed with a most pitiful 
anguish. Dave did not dare to look at her. Her wild, fierce 
eyes devoured .the boys, resting longer and more lovingly on the 
fair features of the latest-born ; but Luke was unnoticed, and his 
offensive jocularity brought to her cheeks a flush of anger and 
pain. He pretended to be afraid of her present mood, so much 
so that he went with the boys to their loft that night to sleep, 
and Jael was left to walk about the cabin, in the open air, wring- 
ing her hands and weeping, and trying vainly to plan for the 
safety of her children. She was already passing through the 



320 THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. [Dec., 

agony of parting, for once Luke's cupidity was aroused nothing 
could successfully oppose him. Her great sorrow was come at 
last, and she was almost crazed. 

When Luke came out at daylight to hitch up the horses for 
the day's labor he found her still there, and he guessed that if 
the boys were to get away without a scene a stratagem must 
be used. In trickery he was an adept, but Jael had an instinct 
so sharp and true that to deceive her was almost impossible ; 
brought face to face with her agony, like the condemned in sight 
of his scaffold, every sense was preternaturally alert. Brute force 
was his chief reliance, but to this David offered a serious obstacle. 
If the boy were solidly convinced that his mother would take 
their departure seriously to heart, there was an end to the fa- 
ther's hopes ; and therefore Jael must be tricked and David put 
out of the way before the final scene. 

" Up early ! " said Luke cordially. " Well, old woman, you've 
got your way this turn, but I'll have mine later. The boys have 
decided not to go till you are dead." 

" You'll murder me, then," said Jael, plainly expressing her 
distrust and suspicion. " I'd be glad of it." 

" There are better ways o' doin 'things than that," he an- 
swered, with a laugh. " Let me tell you, Jael, you're a foolish 
woman. Eight hundred dollars is a big thing. Why can't you 
be sensible an' let the boys go ? " 

She turned away from him in disdainful silence. 

" Oh ! let us make a bargain to your likin' as well as mine," he 
persisted. " You keep Dave an' let the other three go." 

" They are all mine," she said proudly. " You can't have one." 

" That settles it," he snorted, with an oath ; " but I'll be even 
with you yet"; and to David, who came sleepily from the house 
at that moment, he added : " Hitch up, lad, an' bring in a load o* 
wood from the stump lot while the boys are at breakfast." 

" Don't want to," grumbled Dave ; " let 'Dab wind up what 
he begun." 

" I'll do it," said Jael briefly ; " it's too hard work for him." 

" No, Jael," cried the boy cheerfully, as he ran to the horses. 
" I'll bring the wood. I was on'y foolin', an' I don't mind the 
work at all." 

The mother looked from his father to him, as if trying to read 
their hearts, and so hungry and bitter and sad was the glance 
that Dave had hard work to keep from crying and giving up the 
attempt altogether. Jael stopped him as he was driving past, and 
seized his arm. 



1883.] THE FOUR SONS OF JAEL. 321 

" You're not goin' away, Dave ? " said she. " You're not goin' 
to leave Jael? I'd die if I lost my boys ; and to the war, Dave, to 
be shot an' torn, an' die alone away from mammy you're not 
goin' to do it, are you ? " 

" Not if you say so, Jael," said the boy, trembling, while his 
father laughed silently at a distance to reassure him. 

" I would curse him a thousand times if he took you away," 
she went on. " I'll die soon enough, an' you can all go then. 
But wait a little, Dave ; hold 'em back just a little. Time isn't 
long to young folks. If you go I'll kill him an' myself. I would 
like to kill him now the bad, bad father ! Promise me, Dave, my 
boy promise Jael you'll not go away." 

" Now see here," said Luke angrily, " if you don't let that boy 
go to his work right off, an' shet down on yer nonsense, I'll take 
the hull crowd straight to Kingston." 

She let him go at this rough command and stood watching 
him as he drove away. 

" You'd better get us somethin' to eat," said Luke ; " the boys 
are jest gettin' up." 

But his words* were unheeded until Dave, having loaded his 
wagon, was returning ; then, more assured, she entered the cabin 
and began her preparations for the meal, while her sleepy sons 
washed themselves and snarled at one another, according to cus- 
tom, at the front door. It was the fatal moment for Jael. When 
she came out into the open air again Dave and the horses had 
disappeared, and before she could scream out her terror and de- 
spair Luke and 'Dab had thrown a cloth securely over her head, 
thrown her on the ground, and bound her hand and foot with 
pitiless severity. 

"It's hard, old woman," said Luke, "but you must allow 
you're the cause of it. Dave had to be got off, an' your shines 
were too much for him. I must leave ye this way till to-mor- 
row. You won't mind fastin', an' when I git back with eight 
hundred dollars it'll cheer ye some." 

The boys laughed nervously, and were anxious to get away 
from her dreaded presence. Jael made no useless resistance. 
The thongs on wrist and arm were strong and the gag perfect, 
but the agony eating her heart was stronger and left her weaker 
than a child. Luke had to assure himself by peering into her 
face that she was not dead. They placed her on her bed, locked 
the doors, and ran gleefully down the road to join Dave, waiting 
for them two miles away. 

" How did she take it?" he asked with tender anxiety. 

VOL. XXXVIII 21. 



322 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

" Jes' as I said," Luke answered " like a kitten. When a 
thing has got to be it's got to be, an' that's all about it. She 
kicked while she could. When it wasn't no more use she sat 
down without a tear. ' Give my love to Dave,' says she, ' an 
don't get drunk an' lose your money.' Oh ! I know the women, 
boys, an' you'll know 'em in time." 

The boys felt that his knowledge of the opposite sex gave him 
an advantage over them which not even their bold flight into 
the world could equal, and during the drive to Kingston Luke 
" showed off " and gave them much crooked advice as to the 
general management of females. 

And Jael ? Poor mother, so ruthlessly deprived of her be- 
loved ! When Luke returned with his blood-money she was still 
lying where they had left her. He unbound her hands and feet, 
loosened the gag, and flourished his dollars before her ; but Jael 
neither spoke nor stirred. He felt the cold, rigid limbs, and 
passed his hands over the clammy features, then stole secretly 
and swiftly from the spot and the neighborhood. Death had 
bound Jael in bonds which he could not loosen, and had closed 
at the same time the gaping, aching wound so cruelly inflicted. 
Only the coarse face showed what bitter suffering she had en- 
dured before her pulses ceased to beat. 



INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT.* 

II. 

IN order that my readers may gain a more complete under- 
standing as to the hopelessly illogical nature of Dr. Pusey's 
claim to the possession of " infallible truth resting upon infalli- 
ble authority," it is necessary that we should explain more at 
length the nature of the church's infallible magisterium. This has 
been done with great power and fulness by the late Dr. W. G. 
Ward in his Essays upon the Church's Doctrinal Authority, to which 
work I would refer those who desire a more extended disserta- 
tion upon the subject than can be given here.f I shall, however, 
after a few preliminary remarks, proceed to give a brief explana- 
tion. 

* See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for October. 

1 1 do not wish to be understood as endorsing all the personal opinions of the learned writer 
in that volume. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 323 

We saw in our last article that even were everything which 
Anglicans claim for themselves granted to them, were their or- 
ders, their sacraments, and their symbolic orthodoxy as freely ad- 
mitted by Catholics as were those of the Novatians and Dona- 
tists, they would still be in as hopeless a state of schism as were 
those early separatists, and neither more or less a branch of the 
visible Catholic Church than were they. For what essential dif- 
ference is there between the high Anglican idea of the church 
and that of the early Donatists ? Whatever may have been the 
excesses of the Circumcellions, or extremists of that sect ; however 
much in their later history they may have become isolated from 
the rest of Christendom, not merely in fact but in principle, it is 
certain that at first they claimed to be the true representatives 
of the visible church in Africa, and in reality, therefore, to be in 
communion with the transpontine churches. Theoretically they 
no more renounced communion with these latter than does the 
Anglican body when she declares that she does not reject " the 
churches of Italy, France, and Spain"; but, with the same ab- 
surd inconsistency as Anglicans, they denounced as schismat- 
ics the Catholic bishops and clergy in their own land, calling 
them, as do our modern sectarians, Romanista! If, therefore, the 
" churches of Rome, Greece, and England " (three " branches " 
without a trunk or root !) form the Catholic Church nowadays, 
why not Rome with the Donatists and Novatians in the fourth 
and fifth centuries ? 

I have asked this question very many times of Anglicans, and 
have never yet received any reply but an ignoratio elenchi ; and 
yet there ought to be some satisfactory answer, if our friends 
would save themselves from the horns of a very serious dilemma. 
In the absence of anything of the sort judgment must go by de- 
fault. For it is evident that were such a state of affairs as we have 
described and as Anglicans dream about possible if the church 
could exist in separate parts, each under its own independent 
hierarchy and government then the church would not be visibly 
one at all, and so, by the strictest logical necessity, she would not 
be infallible. The fact that the Novatians and Donatists were 
doctrinally sound was merely accidental ; there was nothing except 
the force of conservatism to keep them so ; and we know but too 
well from the history of French, Swiss, and New England Cal- 
vinism, to say nothing of other phases of Protestantism, how 
feeble a barrier that is when the perverse mind of man, led on by 
curiosity, begins to speculate upon matters which can only be 
rightly apprehended by the light of faith. There is no reason, 



324 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVA TE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

then, to suppose that had either Novatianism or Donatism lasted 
longer, or had even during their brief history produced some 
daring heresiarch, they would not straightway have fallen from 
the purity of the faith. What was there to preserve them from 
it? Tradition, doubtless our Anglican friends would exclaim, at 
all events as referring to their own case. We cling, they would 
say, to the tradition of the .church, the " unanimous consent of 
the Fathers," to those doctrines which, according to the canon of 
St. Vincentius, have been handed down semper, ubique, et ab omni- 
bus ; and so doing we are safe. 

Let us examine the position thus taken up ; let us investigate 
its meaning and see if there is anything in it. It will serve to 
bring this question of infallibility and private judgment to an im- 
mediate issue. 

This appeal to tradition the tradition of what they are pleased 
to call the undivided church is common, it is only fair to add, 
both to modern Ritualists and to the historic High-Church party. 
The expression " undivided church " is, however, somewhat mis- 
leading, as very few Anglican theologians are willing to take into 
consideration the whole body of tradition even up to the schism 
of Photius, and still less up to the final rupture between East and 
West. Many stop short at the end of the third century ; others, 
again, take in the period of those first four oecumenical councils 
Nicaea, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Chalcedon whose decrees 
the Established Church in the reign of Queen Elizabeth declared 
to be a part of its rule of faith together with the definitions of the 
high court of Parliament ! Dr. Pusey, if I remember rightly, ac- 
knowledged six general councils, sufficient to bring him up to the 
times of St. Gregory the Great, whose supposed witness against 
the cecumenicity of papal supremacy was too delicious a morsel 
to be foregone. I doubt if any Anglican theologians pay the 
slightest attention to the witness of tradition after his time, and 
yet the Greek schism was not finally consummated until about 
the time of the Norman conquest. But the mere fact of indivi- 
duals thus placing limits of their own upon the duration of time 
during which the tradition of the church was sufficiently pure to 
be available as a witness to divine revelation is simply a reductio 
ad absurdum of the claim to the possession of any " infallible truth 
resting upon infallible authority." 

Tradition, according to Catholic theologians, may be viewed 
under two distinct aspects first, objectives* material; and, second, 
active or formal. 

By objective or material tradition is signified the whole body 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 325 

of doctrine delivered to the apostles by the mouth of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, or'by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, handed 
down (traditunt) from age to age in the church through certain 
recognized channels, chief among which are, I. The general and 
constant teaching of the church ; 2. The acta of the oecumenical 
councils ; 3. The acts of the martyrs ; 4. The sacred liturgy 
and other religious forms and practices (lex orandi, lex credendis) ; 
5. The writings of the Fathers. To these channels of objective 
tradition, which are called general, may be added certain others 
which are termed particular e.g., epigraphs, coins, etc. with 
which we are not here concerned. By active tradition, on the 
other hand, is intended those doctrines which the Ecclesia Docens, 
divinely guided by the perpetual indwelling of the Holy Spirit, 
according to Christ's promise, deduces and collects from the 
matter of tradition, and proposes to the faithful for their assent 
as matters of faith. 

The channels or means by which material tradition is handed 
down from age to age may be compared to the bed of a river, 
or, still better, one of those hydraulic flumes familiar to those 
who have visited the mining districts of California, whose waters 
contain grains of gold. It is the part of the expert, the trained 
and experienced miner, to detect and separate the grains of pre- 
cious metal from the dross in which they are concealed, and it 
is for the hand of the goldsmith and the skilled artificer to 
take the gold and mould and fashion it into the chalice or the 
diadem. 

And just such is the office of the Ecclesia Docens. She alone, 
informed by the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost, is the ex- 
pert who can detect and cull the grains of divine and apostolical 
tradition from the channels in which they run ; she is the gold- 
smith who alone, by the hand of her trained artificers, the school- 
men and theologians, can formulate the grains of tradition so 
collected into the golden chain of dogma. 

This element of the active infallibility of the church Angli- 
cans entirely ignore, and this is their fundamental error. 

Confining, by a strange delusion, the idea of tradition entirely 
to the works of the Fathers, they proceed to treat these produc- 
tions just as Protestants treat the Bible simply as a collection 
of writings which every one has a right to approach and in- 
vestigate, and to deduce thence his own doctrines, deciding for 
himself what the writers meant and what they did not mean, and 
where they agreed with each other and where they did not. If 
such a course as this is an exercise of the use of private judgment 



326 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVA TE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

with regard to the Holy Scriptures, why is it not equally so 
when adopted with reference to the writings of the Fathers ? 

When a Protestant layman tells -his Ritualistic pastor that he 
cannot bring himself to believe that our Lord, when he said, 
" This is my Body, this is my Blood," intended that the apostles 
should understand that he had changed the substance of the 
bread and wine into the substance of his body and blood, on ac- 
count of its extreme unlikeliness, and that his common sense tells 
him that it is much more probable that he was merely using a 
metaphor, he is immediately informed that he has no right to 
have any opinion upon the matter at all ; that a member of the 
" Holy Anglican Catholic Church " has no business to exercise 
his private judgment, which is a heresy and a sin, and that he is 
bound to believe the interpretation which the church places upon 
it the mouthpiece of the church in this instance being the Rev. 
E. B. Pusey, D.D., and the Rev. R. F. Littledale, D.C.L. 

And yet when advanced Anglicans proceed to treat St. Ire- 
naeus and St. Cyprian and St. Jerome in precisely the same 
manner as that in which their Protestant parishioners treat the 
Bible, and are reminded that they are exercising their private 
judgment just as really and just as unequivocally as any Evange- 
lical, they are apparently entirely blind to the force of the ana- 
logy. Still, I feel confident myself that if, instead of reading Dr. 
Pusey's Eirenicon and other untrustworthy works of that de- 
scription, they would only systematically study the De Unitate 
EccZesitz of St. Cyprian and the De Baptismate contra Donatistas of 
St. Augustine, their eyes would be opened and they would see 
the folly and wickedness of their present course. They would 
see, unless they are determined not to perceive the truth and I 
do not think that this is the case with many that those holy 
Fathers regard the church as a living, teaching body, a body 
which was known to all and could not be mistaken by reason of 
its visible oneness; one in hierarchy and government, one in 
doctrine, one in the mutual intercommunion of its members. 
Even supposing that all reference to the pope had been omitted, 
that none of the Fathers had ever spoken of the Holy See as a 
centre of unity and inculcated obedience to it as such ; even sup- 
posing that it were of human origin, the production of the early 
middle ages and of the "forged decretals," the position of An- 
glicans would be in no wise bettered, for they are not one with 
the "rest of the Catholic Church," they do not communicate, 
except by fraud, at the same altars as do we, and they are mani- 
festly no more " one body " with the church united to the see of 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 327 

Peter than were the Novatians or the Donatists. But the papal 
centre of unity is not a mere accident or after-thought ; it is an 
essential and absolutely necessary factor in the constitution of 
Christ's church. I think it was Voltaire who observed that had 
there been no God it would have been necessary for mankind to 
create one. And so, too, may we say of the Roman primacy. 
that if our Lord had not provided for it, it would have been 
necessary to supply it, otherwise his promise of unity to the 
church could not have been fulfilled, except by the extinction of 
free-will and making- man a mere machine.* But that which is 
absolutely necessary to the very existence of the church cannot 
be of merely human origin ; it is, therefore, divine. The church 
in respect of its unity is like a circle, whose essence consists in its 
being enclosed by a line called the circumference, which is such 
that all straight lines drawn from a given point within it, called 
the centre, are equal ; that is to say, all the points along the line 
of the circumference have precisely the same relation to the 
centre. A point which ceases to bear the same relation to the 
centre as the others does not form part of the circle ; and should 
a given portion of the circumference cease to have the same 
relation to the centre as it had before, it too would cease to 
form part of the circle. A circle which is forced out of shape into 
an oval or a pear-shaped figure ceases any longer to be a circle. 
And so likewise of a circle from which a segment of its circumfer- 
ence has been removed : it is no longer a circle. Which things 
are an allegory, for thus it is with the Catholic Church. There 
is only one conceivable way in which such a society as the 
church was manifestly intended by our Lord to be a body teach- 
ing with authority, exercising spiritual jurisdiction over the en- 
tire world, and known to all mankind by its note of visible one- 
ness there is, I say, but one conceivable way in which such a so- 
ciety could be preserved as one to the end of time, and that is 
that just as all the points along the line of the circumference have 
the same relation to the centre, so do all the members of th'e 
Catholic Church hold the same relation to their head. Break the 
circumference, and you no longer have a circle ; break (per impos- 
sibile) the unity of the church, and the church is not disunited 
it is destroyed. But the church, by Christ's ordinance, cannot be 
destroyed ; therefore the church of Christ cannot be divided. 

As a matter of fact, not even by miraculous interposition 
could this unity be effected otherwise without, as I have said, in- 

*The Anglican hypothesis denies this, and with what result ? We have an " Association 
for Promoting the Reunion (!) of Christendom." 



328 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

terfering with man's free-will ; and this is really a metaphysical 
impossibility, for if man during this state of probation were de- 
prived of his free-will he would cease to be a moral and respon- 
sible agent that is, he would no longer be man at all. 

As, then, our Lord promised that his church should be one, as 
he declared that by this visible oneness it should be manifest to 
all men, and inasmuch as the only conceivable means by which 
this visible oneness could be maintained through all time, in all 
places, and under all circumstances is by visible union with a 
visible head, we have, as a purely human argument, the strongest 
primd facie evidence that that church which now, as in the be- 
ginning, is visibly one, and that through visible union with a 
visible head ; and which, moreover, is the only society which in 
its unity and its totality claims to be that one communion we 
have, I say, the strongest grounds for believing that the Catholic 
Apostolic Roman Church, and it only, is that one fold under one 
shepherd which must exist somewhere, unless the promises of 
Jesus Christ have failed and Christianity is a dream. 

But we are by no means thrown back upon any merely 
humanly-constructed hypothesis in this matter. Space forbids 
me even to touch upon the evidences from the holy Gospels that 
our Lord did choose one individual and give him a singular and 
extraordinary commission of teaching and governing the one 
church, which constituted just such a position and just such an 
office as we should expect to find in a society which was to be 
visibly maintained as one to " the consummation of the world," 
and without which we cannot conceive the possibility of such 
unity being maintained for hundreds of years and against all 
odds. 

The church of Christ, then, is not only a collection of indivi- 
dual human beings, nor is the mind of the church the aggregate 
of their minds, nor the will of the church the aggregate of their 
wills, any more than the body of man is simply a collection of 
particles of matter, and his mind and his will and his soul only 
the exhibition of material functions. This is a very popular 
theory among positivists, like Mr. Frederic Harrison, who will 
tell you that because every act of the human mind is accom- 
panied or preceded by some revolution of the molecules of the 
brain, therefore the mind itself is nothing but the manifestation 
of molecular motion, and that the mind cannot even be conceived 
of as existing without the molecules of whose functions it is 
simply an exhibition. And what these materialists have done 
for man our ecclesiastical materialists have done for the church 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 329 

of Christ, and with equal success. For in spite of all the bab- 
bling- of Huxley, and Tyndall, and Spencer, and Darwin, man 
has an immortal, immaterial soul, a soul which will exist apart 
from his body when the " molecules " of that body shall have 
passed off into the gases of the atmosphere and into the dust of 
the earth, and which, for weal or for woe, shall come forth to 
judgment and be reunited with that body at the last day, to 
spend with it an eternity of bliss or an eternity of misery. 

And in spite of all the heretics and schismatics that have ever 
pestered the earth from Cerinthus to Dr. Littledale, the one 
church visibly united with the one head is the living body of 
Christ, informed and vivified by the indwelling of God the Holy 
Ghost, whose voice it is we hear when the church speaks, whose 
hand it is that moulds and guides every action of her life. 

The Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops alone constitute the 
Ecdesia Docens* These alone are the judges of the faith and the 
pastors properly so called. The rest of the faithful, whether lay 
or clerical, have no judicial voice by divine right. Neverthe- 
less they may be admitted as consultors, and the presbyters 
teach and preach (especially such as have the cure of souls), but 
simply as locum tenentes of the bishop whose subjects they are. 

The organs, then, of the active infallibility of the church are, 
I. The pope, who holds the " place of Peter/'f " to whom the 
Lord commends his sheep to be fed," \ who, when defining 
matters of faith and morals ex cathedra, is infallible ; 2. The 
bishops in union with the pope. That a bishop separated from 
the pope and differing from him in doctrine should retain his 
rights as a teacher and ruler is a theory destructive of that unity 
which our Lord promised to the church, that oneness by which all 
men might know which was the Ecdesia Docens and which was 
not ; for inasmuch as this oneness was conferred by the church's 
divine Founder as one of its notes, and since, as we have seen, the 
only way in which the episcopate can be essentially and per- 
petually one is by being visibly united to one visible head, we 
know that none can be truly bishops of the Catholic Church, and 
so form part of the Ecdesia Docens, save those who are in union 
with the pope. 

But these bishops are not individually infallible ; it is only 
in their collective capacity, when representing the Ecdesia Docens 
(the pope being one of them and their head), and as the mouth- 

* Murray, De Ecdesia CAristt, vol. ii. d. n, 16. 

t Locus Petri. St. Cyprian, Ep. lit. ad Antomanwn. 

\ St. Cyprian, De Hab. Virg., 10. 



33O INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

pieces of the tradition of their respective dioceses, that they 
enjoy this gift, whether they exercise this office when living 
apart in their dioceses or assembled in council. 

Now, this body constituting the Ecclesia Docens is perpetually 
teaching without any intermission, as the prophet Isaias says : 
" Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen ; all 
the day and all the night they shall never hold their peace " ; * 
and as Philip, the Roman legate at Ephesus, declared : " Peter 
the prince and head of the apostles, up to this time and always 
(sea? rov vvv, H<X dft) both lives and exercises judgment in his 
successors." f Still, this does not mean that the pope and the 
bishops are perpetually teaching physically, but that they are 
always ready to teach when occasion calls ; that they are daily 
teaching through animate and inanimate organs, and that they 
are always there, a living authority, attending to all the needs of 
the church, ever present in their places for instruction, for judg- 
ment, and for correction. 

I have said that the pope and the bishops, the Ecclesia Docens, 
are daily teaching through animate and inanimate organs ; and 
this brings me to say a few words upon the church's " ordinary 
magisterium" 

I think that the meaning of this expression can be best ex- 
plained by quoting the following passage from the eminent theo- 
logian, Father Perrone, which Dr. Ward, in the work above 
referred to, has thus translated : 

"The church, when she discharges her function of teaching, performs a 
threefold office : the office (i) of 'witness,' (2) of 'judge,' (3) of 'magistra.'l 
She performs the office of . . . ' magistra ' in her daily ministry, wherein 
by verbal and by practical inculcation (vivd voce et praxi) she instructs 
the faithful in all those things which conduce to their training in pure 
doctrine and morality, and leads them, as it were, by the hand along 
the path of eternal salvation. That Christ has endowed his church with 
infallibility for the performance of these duties is the truth which Catholics 
maintain and all non-Catholics deny." 

The primary organs of the church's infallibility, then, are the 
pope, speaking ex cathedrd, and the bishops in union with the 
pope ; but the ordinary way in which the dogmas of the faith 
(for of these only I am now speaking) are brought home to the 
intelligence of the individual faithful is through that ordinary 
magisterium which Father Perrone has described above as a 

* Isaias Ixii. 6. t Concil. Ephes., Act. iii. 

I have already referred to this threefold office in my first article. 
Perrone, De Loci's Nos. 347-8. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 331 

system in which they are " led by the hand " along the path of 
salvation by preaching, by instruction in Christian doctrine, 
catechetical or otherwise, by her public devotions, by authorized 
literature, and by the general atmosphere of Catholic life. And 
all this is one harmonious whole. What the pope or the coun- 
cil define dogmatically the bishops promulgate authoritatively, 
the clergy teach, and the people receive. It is one faith, issuing 
from one centre, shedding abroad its rays over all the world ; 
and it is one simply and solely because it issues from one centre. 
Our Lord's promise of unity is here literally and luminously ful- 
filled by means of that very institution which is, as I have said, 
the only conceivable instrument through which, humanly speak- 
ing, it could be fulfilled ; and this majestic phenomenon is summed 
up in those words which in letters of gold circle round the awful 
dome of St. Peter's : 

" Hinc sacerdotii unitas exoritur, 
Hinc Una Fides mundo refulget." * 

It is by means of this perfect oneness of all the members of 
the Catholic Church with their visible head that they know with 
certainty the dogmas of the faith which are proposed to their 
belief in a word, that they possess " infallible truth resting upon 
infallible authority," and that, therefore, their faith is preserved 
as one. And what is the vital principle of all this ? What is it 
that prevents the pope and the bishops from going wrong and 
leading the whole Catholic Church astray after them ? It is the 
indwelling of God the Holy Ghost. " But the Paraclete, the 
Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will 
teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind whatsoever 
I have said to you. When he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he 
will teach you all truth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever 
I have commanded you ; and behold I am with you all days, 
even to the consummation 'of the world." The infallible teach- 
ing voice of the Catholic Apostolic Roman Church is the fulfil- 
ment of these divine promises. If they are not fulfilled in her 
they have come to naught. 

Now, Anglicans are outside of all this; they have no part 
nor lot in this matter. They cannot, as do we, point to an in- 
fallible authority and say : From hence I derive my doctrines, and 

* From hence the unity of the priesthood takes its rise, 
From hence One Faith shines forth to all the world. 



32 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

because I know that the authority which gives me these doc- 
trines is infallible, therefore I know with certainty that what I 
believe is true. They do, indeed, as we have seen, make loud 
professions of believing 1 in an infallible church ; but their church, 
even if. it were infallible, is not of the slightest use to them, for 
it is dumb. It treats them like a medical man who should take 
a sick patient utterly ignorant of medicine and place him among 
the bottles in his surgery, and say : Here are the remedies ; pick 
and choose for yourself ; I have nothing to say. That is how the 
imaginary church of the Ritualists treats them with regard to 
the Bible and the patristic writings. Why should the Bible, 
which is the written word of God, and which in spite of diffi- 
culties contains not a single error, require an authorized and in- 
fallible interpreter, and not the miscellaneous writings of differ- 
ent authors of very various degrees of learning and accuracy ? 
Our Lord's rule was to hear the church the living church and 
that only. If private judgment is unlawful in the one case, why 
not in the other? 

How different the action of the Catholic Church ! The office 
of collecting the doctrines of the faith from the writings of the 
Fathers, who were simply the accidental witnesses of tradition, 
must necessarily be the duty of an infallible authority ; but this 
office the Anglican usurps to himself, and thus virtually denies 
the infallibility of the church indeed, one of the foremost Ritual- 
istic controversialists does not hesitate to do this categorically. 
" There is in Scripture," says Dr. Littledale,* " no promise of in- 
fallibility to the church at any given time." " The church is in- 
defectible in the long run, though the teaching voice may be 
fallible at any given time." Indefectible in the long run ! I will 
not insult a man of Dr. Littledale's intelligence by supposing for 
a moment that he imagined these words to have any meaning ; 
they were doubtless intended to lull the disquieted consciences 
of certain advanced Ritualists whose ratiocinative faculties were 
not of a high order, and to whom a big-sounding word operates 
like a pleasing opiate. It is just such a phrase as the late Mr. 
Charles Dickens puts into the mouth of the " member for the 
gentlemanly interest," who quashes every objection and raises 
the utmost enthusiasm in the breasts of his rustic constituents 
by his constant references to the " illimitable perspective." One 
cannot help thinking that the perspective of the infallibility of a 
church which is only " indefectible in the long run " must be so 

* Plain Reasons against Joining the Church of Rome, p. 132. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 333 

" illimitable " as to be entirely beyond the ken of ordinary 
mortals ! 

I suppose that it can be scarcely necessary to point out that 
a church which is only "indefectible in the long run " cannot be 
of the slightest use to mankind, its teachings could in no sense be 
a rule of faith, because, according to this astute theologian, it 
may " at any given time " be teaching error. Nor can it anywise 
be said to be a fulfilment of our Lord's promises. In the church 
which he founded he solemnly assured them that he would be 
present with them "all days," and he declared that the Holy 
Ghost should " abide with them for ever," "leading them into all 
truth." Upon its perpetual and unceasing infallibility rests the 
whole scheme of Christian revelation, including the canon of 
Scripture itself. Take this away, and give us only " indefectibility 
in the long run," and you have shattered at one blow the whole 
edifice of Christianity, and given us back in exchange only the 
enigmas which of erst puzzled the brains of Socrates and Plato 
and Seneca. 

Of course one source of this strangely contradictory behavior 
on the part of Anglicans arises from the fact that they entirely 
misapprehend the nature of the office performed by the Fathers 
in the transmission of divine tradition. All that these writers 
do is to bear witness (human witness) to the tradition of the 
church that is to say, to the doctrines which have been handed 
down through the channels above referred to from the apostles 
but they were not infallible in so doing ; so that unless there is 
always in the church some living authority perpetually infallible 
to decide on matters of faith and morals, there is no infallibility at 
all. It is this which is entirely wanting in the Anglican system, 
and it is this fact to which I refer when I say that, in spite of 
their professing to believe in the infallibility of the church, they 
in reality assert nothing but their own private judgment, which 
for them is the ultimate arbiter of all doctrine. They deny this, 
I know ; they say that the voice of the church contained in 
tradition is their supreme guide, but they immediately give the 
lie to this by setting themselves above tradition in claiming to 
decide for themselves what the Fathers meant, wherein they 
agreed together, and when they were stating the apostolic tradi- 
tion and when not. Take, for instance, that passage from St. 
Irenasus which we have examined in a previous article in THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD. On whose authority is it that Anglicans 
depend for the various conflicting interpretations they have 
placed upon it, contrary even, as I trust I have shown, to its plain 



334 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Dec,, 

logical and grammatical signification? Simply upon their own 
authority. They form their own judgment in the matter ; they 
make their own decision. Thus they, each one for himself, are 
the supreme judges of it all, and there is in reality no one above 
them. Could Martin Luther himself have asserted a more com- 
plete right of private judgment than this? Asa matter of fact 
it is Luther's doctrine pure and simple, who declared that a lay- 
man with the Bible in his hand knew more than the pope him- 
self.* Still, Luther was the more honest and did not pretend to 
believe in the infallibility of a church which he immediately pro- 
ceeded to deprive of all reality, and in regard to whose doctrines 
he himself was, after all, the supreme referee. It has been re- 
served for Anglican Ritualists thus to develop this last stage of 
the absurdity of Protestantism. 

Nor is it open to them to claim the right of private judgment 
for the purpose of examining the claims of the church and the 
sources and channels of tradition, which, of course, we concede to 
one who is avowedly non-Catholic. For, with singular perversity, 
they at once declare themselves to be Catholics, they assert that 
there is an infallible church claiming their obedience, and then 
set to work incontinently to frame a theory of religion and ec- 
clesiastical polity for themselves, independent of any external 
authority whatever, and relying entirely upon the results of their 
own study and discernment, making use, in the course of this 
proceeding, of the writings of the Fathers precisely in the same 
manner as ordinary Protestants employ the Bible. When, how- 
ever, we remember the extraordinary misconceptions that exist 
both as to the true nature of infallibility and even as to the 
meaning of the expression, one cannot help feeling that these 
vagaries are perhaps more deserving of pity than of reprobation. 
As an instance of the manner in which the rank and file of the 
Ritualistic party is hoodwinked by its teachers, I may cite the 
following from the replies " To Correspondents " in the English 
Church Times of January 21, 1881 : 

" ONE IN DOUBT. Do you not see that all your Roman Catholic friend 
can give you as proof is his own fallible private opinion that the pope is 
infallible? Unless he be himself infallible he cannot know for certain 
whether the pope be right or wrong on any given occasion. It is just as if 

you were to give some one your word that you knew Mr. A to be a 

first-rate Chinese scholar, without your being able to tell whether he spoke 
any Chinese at all, not to say speak and write it well. You would have to 

* "Quod laico auctoritatem (Scripturarum) plus sit credendum quam papas, quam concilio, 
into quam ecdesttz, hoc etiam juristae decent, et adeo est Catholicum, ut August.inus in multis 
locis, hoc pro regultl habent legendi auctores." Cf. Audin's Life of Luther, vol. i. p. 167. 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 335 

be a first-rate Chinese scholar yourself before your opinion on any one 
else's qualifications would be of value." 

In another number of this ingenuous journal this subject is 
still further treated in reply to an " inquirer " : 

" INQUIRER. Unless the [Vatican] Council was infallible itself it could 
not tell whether the pope is infallible or not ; but by saying that he is in- 
fallible without the consent of the church, all it proved was that itself was 
fallible, and so incompetent to settle the question at all, which is just the 
point we made when answering ' One in Doubt.' What value is the testi- 
mony of a thousand school-boys to the fitness of a man to be prime minis- 
ter or lord chancellor ? " 

This is Dr. Samuel Johnson's old joke over again, gravely set 
forth to salve the consciences of inquirers and those in doubt : 
Who drives fat oxen must himself be fat ! 

I beg that the reader will look attentively at the last words 
in the former of the above extracts : " You would have to be a 
first-rate Chinese scholar yourself before your opinion on any 
one else's qualifications would be of value." Surely the patent 
sophism contained in these words, and repeated in the statement 
that the Vatican Council by defining papal infallibility declared 
itself to be fallible, require no elaborate refutation. Still, it is 
only fair to the editor of the Church Times to say that neither 
he nor Dr. Littledale was the inventor of this strange idea, that 
in order to know another to be infallible one must first be in- 
fallible one's self. The late Dr. Whately, in a work entitled The 
Search after Infallibility, published in 1847, enunciated what is 
virtually the same idea viz., " he who is infallibly following an 
infallible authority is himself infallible." * 

The late Dr. Murray, of Maynooth, treats this subject at 
length in his Theological Essays, and I trust that I may be par- 
doned if in elucidation of this subject I quote him somewhat at 
length. Commenting upon the above work of Dr. Whately, he 
cites the following passage of the Protestant archbishop, and 
then proceeds, as we shall see, to pass his reflections upon it : 

" ' I call it a " craving for infallibility,'" " so commences the quotation 
from Archbishop Whately, " ' (although hardly any one is found in words 
claiming, or expecting to be, personally infallible), because it is evident 
that he who is infallibly following an infallible guide is himself infallible. 
If his decisions on each point coincide exactly with those of an authority 
which is exempt from error, that his decisions are exempt from error is 






* It is reported, I know not whether truly or not, that His Eminence Cardinal Newman, 
who knew Whately intimately at Oxford, observed with reference to the latter's work on Logic 
that it was an excellent production and contained a little of everything except logic I 



336 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVA TE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

not only an undeniable but almost an identical proposition ; it is as plain 
as that things which are equal to the same are equal to each other. 

"' But this, though self-evident as soon as stated, is sometimes lost sight 
of in practice. A man will speak of himself as being fallible, and as hav- 
ing no expectation of being otherwise. But his meaning must be (suppos- 
ing him quite certain that he has an infallible guide, always accessible, and 
to which he constantly conforms) his meaning must be that he would be 
fallible if left to himself; that his exemption from the possibility of error 
is not inherent, but derived. But actually and practically he does consider 
himself infallible. 

" ' Though the gnomon of a sun-dial has no power in itself to indicate 
the hour, yet when the sun shines on it the motions of its shadow must be 
correct, as those of the sun's rays which it follows. And, in like manner, 
he is infallible practically in his belief who always believes exactly what 
an infallible church or leader believes ' (p. 14). 

" There are," says Dr. Murray, commenting upon the above, " several 
mistakes here, arising, as appears to me, partly from Dr. Whately's not 
knowing or not keeping before his mind what we understand by the word 
infallibility when applied to the church, and partly from his confounding 
this meaning of the word with that which it commonly bears in popular 
language. 

" i. If in ordinary conversation I am asked, 'Are you sure that it was 
Dr. Whately you saw yesterday in Stephen's Green ? ' and answer, ' I could 
not be mistaken ; I am infallibly certain that it was he,' all that I mean by 
this is that I have the usual evidences that beget a physical certainty in 
such cases. So, in like manner, if I assert in similar form a proposition 
resting on moral or metaphysical evidence ; what I mean in all such as- 
sertions is that I have absolute certainty, physical, moral, or metaphysi- 
cal, as the case may be, of the truth of what I say. 

" But when I speak of the infallibility of the church I understand 
something very different from this. For I then mean that the church is 
assisted and controlled by an extraordinary and supernatural guidance of 
God, so that she cannot ever err in defining articles of faith, etc. 

" Suppose that an infallible authority exists, and that I have clear and 
sure proof of its existence, and that I accordingly submit to it and believe 
in it ; suppose that I have evidence that such or such a doctrine has been 
defined by that authority, and that I accordingly believe that doctrine ; 
then I am sure that my belief agrees with its teachings ; I am following an 
infallible authority; I am certainly following it, but not infallibly. I have 
the certainty of faith that what is taught by this authority as revealed is 
revealed, but I am not infalljble. I hope to make all this very plain by 
some further observations. 

" 2. The church of Christ, we believe, infallibly follows an infallible 
guide (namely, the Spirit ever abiding with her and directing her), and is 
therefore infallible. And we believe that the church infallibly follows this 
guide, because the word of God so teaches. But no individual has received 
this promise ; no individual who has not received a special revelation to 
that effect can be infallibly sure that he will persevere to the end in the 
true faith any more than in any other virtue. He believes to-day every 
word which the infallible church teaches, and he believes so firmly that he 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 337 

is ready to seal his faith with his blood. But he may fall away from grace, 
and rebel against the church which he formerly believed infallible, and be- 
come a heretic, and die in his heresy. The promise which secures her 
from error will not secure him, for it has not been made to him. Who 
would assert that Luther, for example, while he believed in the infallibility 
of the church and received her teaching with unquestioning assent, sRould, 
in consistency, be considered by Catholics as all the time infallibly follow- 
ing an infallible guide ? 

"The Catholic idea of faith undoubtedly involves (as I may probably 
explain in another part of the present volume) the most firm assent, rest- 
ing on grounds so sure as to exclude every rational apprehension of mis- 
take ; the mind, fortified by divine grace, being ready to encounter any ex- 
tremity rather than voluntarily waver for a single moment. Stronger as- 
sent there cannot be, in the present stage of our existence, than this while 
it lasts. But man is still free ; grace may be abused ; and the mind may 
reject as false what it previously held to with a belief so strong. The as- 
sent is sure ; but it may fail, and what may fail is not infallible. 

" 3. A man, therefore, who follows an infallible church does not infalli- 
bly follow it ; for he has no divine promise that he will always follow it, 
and this is necessary in order that he should be said infallibly to follow it. 
There is another reason why those who hold the infallibility of the church, 
and follow what they believe to be this infallible church, are not thereby 
constrained to hold that they infallibly follow it. 

" An infallible church, by the very terms, cannot through ignorance or 
any other cause teach any doctrinal error. But an individual may fall into 
involuntary error without ceasing to be a sound member of the church. 
Even learned theologians may err without the least sin against faith. For 
while the whole revelation entrusted to the infallible church is for ever 
preserved by her untainted and unmutilated, individual members may, 
through inculpable ignorance, think the doctrine on certain points to be 
different from what it is. They are still prepared to receive her defini- 
tion, whatever it may be, when notified to them, and they firmly believe 
whatever she holds, though through mistake they think that she holds 
such or such doctrines which are really different from what she does 
hold. They err, and therefore are not infallible, though they follow all 
the while the infallible church that is, they are her docile children, 
and receive all her teaching with blind obedience so far as it is known to 
them. 

"4. But see," continues Dr. Murray a little further on, "the absurdity 
to which Dr. Whately's reasoning leads. I suppose that he holds the in- 
fallibility of the apo.stles in their public teaching, at least the infallibility of 
the body in its collective capacity. Here there was a living infallible tri- 
bunal. Wherefore the early Christians, who all believed on the authority 
of the apostles, and had as clear evidence as it is possible for man to have 
that such and such doctrines were taught by them each one of all these 
early Christians infallibly followed an infallible guide, and therefore each one 
was infallible. For the same reason all who followed them were individu- 
ally infallible, and so on down to the present day an extent of infallibi- 
lity which, according to us, it would be simple heresy to assert. Thus, then, 
we might reason on Dr. Whately's principle : 
VOL. xxxvin. 22 



338 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

'"He who is infallibly following an infallible guide is himself infal- 
lible ' (Dr. Whately' s words). 

" But the early Christians, who were taught by the apostles, infallibly 
followed an infallible guide. (Certainly as much so as any Catholic pre- 
tends to be following the infallible church.) 

"therefore the early Christians were infallible, etc. 

"Dr. Whately confounds infallibility with certainty. It is true to say 
that he who is certainly following an infallible authority is so far certain, 
or he who follows an infallible authority has an infallible certainty that 
what he believes on its teaching is true. But to have an infallible cer- 
tainty is not to be infallible. Dr. Whately has an infallible certainty that 
God exists, but he is not infallible." * 

Now, precisely the same argument applies to the absurd re- 
mark of the Church Times to " One in Doubt." If, as the Churcli 
Times asserts, no one can be certain of the infallibility of another 
without being himself infallible, then neither the early Christians 
nor ourselves can be certain that the apostles were infallible in 
preaching the truth of the Gospel. 

The Church Times, like Dr. Whately, confounds infallibility 
with certainty. Certainty rests upon evidence, and the evidence 
of the church's infallibility consists in her notes her oneness, her 
sanctity, her apostolicity, her catholicity ; and these notes in their 
perfection and totality are to be found in the Catholic Roman 
Church, and in her only. We have, then, the most solid grounds 
of certitude, based upon the evidences of Christianity them- 
selves, for believing in her infallibility ; for the evidence is as pat- 
ent and unmistakable as the sun at noonday, because the church 
in which all these notes are combined either exists in the Catho- 
lic Roman Church or does not exist at all. 

There is nothing either absurd or unintelligible in the fact of 
an infallible authority residing in the Ecclesia Docens i.e., in the 
pope and the bishops united to him as the centre of unity and 
the mere fact of Dr. Littledale and the Church Times being driven 
to the use of such sophisms as I have been exposing (which 
one would think could only be addressed to the very ignorant 
or very thoughtless) f shows that they have really no valid argu- 
ment to bring against it. 

It may, however, be urged that my own argument goes too 
far, and that, having admitted with Dr. Murray that man can 
attain to absolute certainty on certain points of religion e.g., the 

* Murray, Essays, chiefly Theological, vol. iii. p. 46 et seq. 

not touched upon the contention of the Church Times that the Vatican fathers 
heir infallibility by defining the pope's infallibility, because it seems to me a piece of 
would think that infallibility were infinity, and as there cannot be two infinites, 
ot be two infallibles t 




1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 339 

infallibility of the Ecclesia Docens I have conceded too much, for 
that Anglicans claim nothing more than this in asserting their 
ability as individuals to attain to absolute certainty with regard 
to the meaning of the patristic writings and of everything to 
which they bear witness. There is a flaw in this argument 
which I beg leave to point out. 

No Catholic theologian asserts for a moment that the intel- 
lect of man, even when unaided by the light of faith, is unable 
to arrive at absolute certainty with reference to any of the state- 
ments of Holy Scripture. For instance, granting the inspiration 
of the Bible, which of course implies the absence of mistakes in 
the sacred writings, any one who can read the Gospels can 
arrive at absolute certainty with' regard to the fact that our 
Lord was born at Bethlehem, and suffered at Jerusalem, and 
that his mother's name was Mary. And so with a multitude 
of things, not merely statements of historical fact, but even asser- 
tions implying doctrine. The existence of God (which can be 
known even by the light of nature) and of angels, the mercy of 
God in forgiving sins to those who are penitent, the divine mis- 
sion of our Lord, and so on these can be known with absolute 
certainty by those who either can read the Scriptures for them- 
selves or hear them read by one in whose honesty they have 
perfect confidence. But there are many other things, both mat- 
ters of fact and matters relating to dogma, which cannot be 
known with certainty by the unaided human intellect. For in- 
stance, while our Lord's divine mission is stated in terms which 
are simply univocal, his divinity i.e., his consubstantiality with 
the Father is not so stated. Not a single one of those passages 
which the church regards as teaching our Lord's divinity but is 
capable, as an abstract term, of two interpretations. Thus when 
our Lord says (St. John x. 30), " I and the Father are one," it is 
well known that this expression is commonly used among our- 
selves, You and I are one on that point meaning merely one 
in mind or will, and not in substance. And so again when St. 
Paul says (Col. ii. 9), " For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
Godhead corporally " as far as the mere words are concerned, 
it might mean, as Nestorius maintained that it did mean, that God 
dwelt in Jesus Christ, but not that God was born of Mary. Now, 
no amount of philological or grammatical learning can settle such 
points as are here involved, because they are divine mysteries, 
which can only be determined by an authority divinely consti- 
tuted. The Ecclesia Docens is that divinely-constituted authority, 
and she is therefore infallible. She takes the Holy Scriptures 



340 INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [Dec., 

and the records of tradition, and decides each question with the 
certainty that she cannot err in so doing, because God himself 
has promised that she shall not. 

But Anglicans are not infallible ; Anglicans have no divine 
promise that they cannot err ; what right, then, have they to take 
the Bible and the Fathers, and set themselves up to determine, 
even each one for himself alone, what they mean and what they 
do not mean, or what safeguard have they in so doing ? 

It may be objected: If this be so how can we know with 
certainty that the church is infallible? The fact that the infalli- 
bility of the Ecclesia Docens is one of those matters which the mind 
can know with absolute certainty is from the nature of the case 
a logical necessity. For it is inconceivable that Almighty God 
should institute an infallible authority for the purpose of teach- 
ing mankind the truths necessary to their eternal salvation, and 
should withhold from them the faculty or the power or the 
opportunity of knowing with certainty that it is infallible. Such 
being the case, it only remains to examine the evidence for the 
infallibility of the Ecclesia Docens, and, having done this, we stand 
face to face with the Catholic Roman Church. And the evi- 
dence for that infallibility, as far as Christians are concerned, 
consists in her bearing visibly upon her the notes or marks which 
we know will be the distinguishing characteristics of that 
church. Space forbids me to enter further upon this subject on 
the present occasion. I will only say that as the chief of those 
notes is that visible oneness by which, according to our Lord's 
institution, she was to be known (just as our Lord himself was 
known to St. Martin by the five sacred wounds, and the evil 
spirit was detected by their absence), so do we know with abso- 
lute certainty that the Catholic Roman Church, in visible commu- 
nion with the Apostolic See, alone is that Ecclesia Docens, because 
she alone, in common with the other notes of sanctity, catholicity, 
and apostolicity, is visibly one throughout the entire world, and 
that in the only way in which it is conceivable for a society of 
beings endowed with free-will to be perpetually and essentially 
one. 

The Ritualist, however, of the school of Littledale will doubt- 
less ask : What, then, is the use of tradition at all, if we may not 
have recourse to the writings of the Fathers to learn the teachings 
of the church? But from what we have already said the reply 
will surely be anticipated. The church the pope and the bish- 
ops, and the theologians who are their consultors do have re- 
course to the patristic writings, just as they also devote them- 



1883.] INFALLIBILITY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 341 

selves to the study of the Sacred Scriptures. But this method of 
learning the truth is not for the individual members of the Ec- 
clesia Discens ; for mark this : when our Lord founded his church, 
and gave his commission which was to last for all time, "even to 
the consummation of the world," it was a commission to a living 
body of men to teach with a living voice. He did not instruct 
his apostles to go and write a book, and then scatter it broadcast, 
so that mankind might draw their doctrines from thence. He 
never so much as hinted that any such book was to be written ; 
still less did he imply that individuals among the faithful by 
years of hard study were to discover the doctrines of divine 
revelation in the writings of uninspired authors ; but he conferred 
the gift of infallibility upon certain living men, and, by logical 
necessity, upon their successors, promising them his daily and 
hourly assistance in their teaching office to preserve them from 
error. This is the work, this is the duty, of the Ecclesia Docens ; 
it is the part of the Ecclesia Discens to hear and to obey. 

Now, this is what I mean when I say that Anglicans are out- 
side of all this. They do not hear the Ecclesia Dccens and they do 
not obey her. They hear and they obey no one but themselves. 
They set up, indeed, a phantom church and loudly profess their 
obedience to it, but each one is for himself the mouthpiece of that 
church, one man's views (!) of what the church teaches dogmati- 
cally being more " advanced " than those of another, and each 
one modifying his opinions from time to time by the results of 
his own reading and his own judgment. The reasons which he 
has for embracing in his " Catholic Church " all sects possessing 
or claiming to possess valid orders rest upon precisely the same 
basis as do those of another sectarian who would include all who, 
with or without orders, profess the Nicene Creed, or others 
again, still more " liberal," who would welcome as their brethren 
in the faith " all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." 
It has its beginning and its ending in self, in the private judgment 
of the individual. However loudly the Ritualist may boast his 
vaunted Catholicity; however pharisaically he 'may contemn the 
members of Protestant sects more consistent than himself ; how- 
ever he may prate about holy church and her authority, and 
demand from .his dupes and satellites a submission culminating 
in himself as her interpreter, he cannot get outside of himself. 
That calm and blessed assurance, that perfect peace of mind, 
which comes from the certain possession of immutable truth is 
the birthright of those alone who listen to the voice of that 
shepherd to whom our Lord committed his sheep to be fed, 



342 BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. [Dec., 

" because Blessed Peter, who lives and presides in his own see, 
offers the truth of faith to those seeking it." * If, then, these ear- 
nest but misguided men would really possess this blessed cer- 
tainty ; if they would in very truth feel their feet planted upon 
the rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail ; if, dis- 
satisfied with the stone of " indefectibility in the long run " of- 
fered them by their spiritual guides, they would indeed be made 
partakers of that bread of " infallible truth resting upon infallible 
authority," let them come out from among Protestants and cere- 
monialists and Erastians in the Establishment, and accept like 
little children the citizenship of the kingdom of heaven upon 
earth. 



BENJAMIN BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONQ. 

MER.f 

THE negro stands at the white man's door and asks for 
schools and school-teachers. Are you demands the white man 
in return a being of sufficient intelligence to be worthy of a 
good schooling ? To answer that question the readers of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD will permit me, a lover of the colored race, to 
tell them something of one negro's history which may stimulate 
their sense of justice justice, I say ; for the system of American 
slavery, which made the soul of the black man darker than his 
skin with law-enforced ignorance, was the work of white men. 
What our white people did wrongfully to their black brethren 
in former times it is but just that we should set right to their 
children in these our times. 

Benjamin Banneker was born in Baltimore County, not far 
from Ellicott's Mills, in 1731. His father was a slave, and by all 
accounts a native African, and his mother was a free mulatto. 
She was a woman of great energy and industry, and a true-heart- 
ed wife and mother. Very soon after her marriage she pur- 
chased her husband's freedom, no doubt from the proceeds of 
her own toil. 

Young Benjamin was sent in early boyhood to a white school 
in the neighborhood which was thrown open to a few colored 

* St. Chrysologus, Ep, ad Eutych., p. 16, apud Allnatt, Cathedra Petri, p. 29. 

t See Memoirs of Banneker, by I. H. B. Latrobe and J. Saurin Norris, both of the 
Baltimore bar : also, History of the Negro Race in America, by Williams, himself a colored 
man (New York : Putnams, 1883), and the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1863. 



1883.] BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. 343 

children ; for it was not till years afterwards that it became a 
penal offence to teach a black boy his letters. An old servant of 
one of Maryland's leading families, who had known Banneker 
from his childhood, used to relate that whilst all the other boys 
loved play and sought amusements, Banneker's only delight 
was to " live unto his books." The region in which Benjamin 
was born was then almost a wilderness; for in 1732 Elkridge 
Landing was of more importance than Baltimore, which was 
only laid out in 1727. It is well to keep this before our minds, 
in order that the difficulties against which Banneker had to 
struggle may be fairly understood. When old enough to work 
he was taken from school and employed to assist his parents in 
their labor ; and during his early youth his destiny seemed no- 
thing better than that of a child of poor and ignorant free negroes 
possessing a few acres of land in a remote and thinly-settled 
country district. The outlook for a clever colored boy at the 
present day even is not very bright, and a^ hundred and twenty 
years ago it must have been gloomy enough. 

After passing his minority Banneker continued to reside on 
the little farm of his parents, and remained in possession of it 
after they died and during the remainder of his life. Whilst in 
the vigor of his manhood he was an industrious and thriving- 
farmer ; kept his grounds in good order, had horses, cows, and 
many hives of bees, and cultivated a good garden, living quite 
comfortably. But he was all the time tormented with the desire 
of knowledge. During the winter months and at other leisure 
times his active mind was employed in increasing the knowledge 
he had gained at school. His favorite study was arithmetic. 
He had learned the mere rudiments of ciphering at school, and 
now a resistless attraction drew him, all alone and without any 
teacher, to master that whole division of mathematical science. 
He slowly became a perfect master of the most difficult arithme- 
tical problem^. Knowledge of all kinds, indeed, was his craving. 
He devoured every book he could buy or borrow, and by degrees 
so amplified an4 improved his knowledge and cultivated his mind 
that before reaching the years of middle age he was a man of 
good English education, of correct grammatical speech, able to 
write strong English, and of much general information. But he 
loved the natural sciences best, was a quick observer of all natu- 
ral phenomena, studying with eagerness and delight all that he 
beheld about him of the operations of nature's laws. 

At first his knowledge was known to his illiterate neighbors 
only, but by degrees it became the wonder of a wider circle ; and 



344 BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. [Dec., 

Banneker, still a young man, came to be thought of as one who 
could not only perform all the operations of nfental arithmetic 
and ciphering with extraordinary facility, but exercise on matters 
and things in general a sound and discriminating judgment. It 
was about this time that he displayed an extraordinary mecha- 
nical genius ; for, all unaided, he contrived and made a clock, the 
first in the then quiet and secluded valley of the Patapsco, a 
watch serving for his model. It took him a -long while to ac- 
complish this feat, his greatest difficulty, as he often afterwards 
said, being to make the hour, minute, and 'second hands corre- 
spond in their motions. The clock was at last finished, and raised 
still higher Banneker's credit in the neighborhood and marked 
an epoch in the life of the gifted negro ; for it was probably 
owing to the fame of it that the Eilicott family heard of him and 
s )ught him out. 

It was, indeed, about this time that the Ellicotts built in the 
vicinity of our hero's farm those flour-mills of which they are 
still the owners, and which gave name to the present village and 
post-office of Ellicott's Mills. The family is still a respectable 
and honored one, a leading Maryland family, and worthy to be 
held in benediction by all colored people and their friends for the 
unsought kindness and affectionate help they spent on Benjamin 
Banneker. He was a delighted and studious spectator of the 
new mill-buildings as they were being erected. When the mills 
were running he was still an eager watcher ; and long after the 
novelty of them died out among his neighbors he continued his 
frequent visits, watching and studying the machinery. Thus not 
only his acquaintance with the Ellicotts developed, but he also 
came to know the settlers, both whites and blacks, of the sur- 
rounding country, who resorted to the mills to dispose of their 
corn or have it ground, to purchase goods and satisfy their 
various wants, and also to get their letters and newspapers. 
The mills, in short, became the gossiping centre of*the country 
round. Here in conversation with those who valued -attainments 
so unusual in a man of color, accompanied always by great mod- 
esty and general good conduct, Banneker was at times induced 
to overcome his habitual reserve and take his share in the con- 
versation and take sides in the various discussions. Little by 
little the proprietors, certainly men of noble character, formed 
an acquaintance with, him which ripened into true friendship ; 
and a few years after the mills were in operation Mr. George 
Eilicott, one of the owners, lent Banneker Mayer's Tables, Fer- 
guson's Astronomy, and Leadbeater's Lunar Tables, with a few 



1883.] BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. 345 

astronomical instruments. It happened, however, that Ellicott 
was prevented at the time from giving Banneker the instructions 
usually necessary for understanding the'tables and the use of the 
instruments. A few days later, therefore, he went for that pur- 
pose to Banneker's little home a mere hut when to his surprise 
he found that he had mastered the meaning of the books and use 
of the instruments by himself, and was in no need of an instructor. 
I do not know what attention, if any, he had hitherto given to 
the subject of astronomy, though we can hardly suppose that 
the stately march of the starry heavens could have failed to at- 
tract his perplexed and earnest guesses. It must also be borne 
in mind that when he thus fairly began the science he was a man 
of nearly threescore years ! At any rate, from this time the 
study of astronomy became the great passion of Banneker's 
life. 

He was never married, and, after his parents' death, was the 
sole occupant of his little cabin. Though obliged to labor for 
his bread, and being besides his own cook, chambermaid, and 
hostler, Banneker, by retrenching his wants, made little serve 
him, every ingenuity being exercised to secure more leisure to 
devote to his books and his observations. His favorite time for 
study was, of course, at night, when he could look out upon the 
stars and planets, whose laws he was gradually but surely mas- 
tering. As it was during the hours of darkness that Banneker 
was at his real labors, and as he was forced to sleep during the 
greater part of the day, he lost among his less appreciative 
acquaintances the reputation for industry that he had won in 
earlier life. Those who saw little of him in his fields, and found 
him sleeping when visiting his house, set him down as a lazy 
fellow who would come to no good, and whose old age would 
disappoint the promises of youth. 

This "dislike was followed by attempts to impose on the 
humble genius, and even by attacks on his property, with various 
threats against his person. A memorandum in his handwriting, 
dated December 18, 1790, states : 

" informed me that stole my horse and greatcoat, and 

that the said intended to murder me when opportunity presented. 

gave me a caution to let no one come into my house after dark." , 

The names of the parties were originally written in full ; but they 
were afterwards carefully erased, as though Banneker had re- 
flected that it was wrong to leave an unauthenticated assertion 
on record against any one. 



346 BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. [Dec., 

The amateur astronomer did not, however, because of his 
studies, cease to visit the mills. He is described by a gentleman 
who frequently met him at this time " as of a black complexion, 
medium stature, of uncommonly soft, gentle manners, and of 
pleasing colloquial powers." Whatever others thought of him, 
the friendship of George Ellicott, the owner of the mills, himself a 
man of high literary attainments, never faltered. Ellicott's visits 
to Banneker were frequent. Finally he induced our timid star- 
gazer to venture such calculations as are set down in almanacs. 
But what was Ellicott's chagrin to find that his black friend's 
first prediction of an eclipse was false : an error had slipped into 
his calculations. Ellicott drew his attention to it. To his 
mingled surprise and delight, Banneker answered by letter, 
pointing out that he had been misled by a discrepancy between 
the two authors, Ferguson and Leadbeater. " Now, Mr. Ellicott," 
runs the letter, " two such learned gentlemen as the above men- 
tioned, one in direct opposition to the other, stagnate young 
beginners. But I hope the stagnation will not be of long dura- 
tion." In the same letter, speaking of the greatness of the task, 
he thus writes : " It is an easy matter for us, when a diagram is 
laid down before us, to draw one in resemblance of it ; but it is a 
hard matter for a young tyro in astronomy, when only the ele- 
ments for the prediction are laid down for him, to draw his dia- 
gram with any degree of certainty." 

Of the labor of his work few of those can form an idea who 
would nowadays attempt such a task with all the assistance 
afforded by accurate tables and well-digested rules. Banneker 
had no aid whatever from men or tables ; and Mr. George Elli- 
cott, who promised him some astronomical tables and took them 
to him, declares that he had advanced unaided far in the prepa- 
ration of the logarithms necessary for his purposes. A memo- 
randum in his calculations points out other errors of Ferguson 
and of Leadbeater, both of whom, no doubt, would have been 
amazed had they been informed that their elaborate works had 
been reviewed and corrected by a negro in the then unheard-of 
valley of the Patapsco. 

The first almanac prepared by Banneker for publication was 
for the year 1792. The almanac-publishers of Baltimore gave a 
very flattering praise to the compiler : 

"They [the publishers] feel gratified in the opportunity of presenting 
to the public through their press what must be considered* as an extraor- 
dinary effort of genius a complete and accurate ephemeris for the year 
1792, calculated by a sable son of Africa," etc. 






1883.] BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. "347 

And they further say : 

" They flatter themselves that a philanthropic public, in this enlight- 
ened era, will be induced to give their patronage and support to this work, 
not only on account of its intrinsic merits (it having met the approbation 
of the most distinguished astronomers of America, particularly the cele- 
brated Mr. Rittenhouse), but from similar motives to those which induced 
the editors to give this calculation the preference the ardent desire of 
drawing modest merit from obscurity and controverting the long-estab- 
lished illiberal prejudice against the blacks." 

Banneker himself was entirely conscious of the bearings of 
his case upon the position of his people ; and, though remark- 
able for an habitual modesty, he solemnly claimed that his work 
had earned respect for the African race. In this spirit he wrote 
to Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State under Washington, 
transmitting a manuscript copy of his almanac. The letter a 
fervent appeal for the down-trodden negro, and a protest against 
the injustice and inconsistency of his treatment by the people of 
the United States is herewith given entire. I beg the reader as 
he peruses this letter to weigh its pleadings well, putting himself 
and our times in place of Jefferson and ninety years ago/ 

"MARYLAND, BALTIMORE Co., near Ellicott's Lower Mills,. 

"August 19, 1791. 
" THOMAS JEFFERSON, Secretary of State : 

" SIR: I am fully sensible of the greatness of that freedom which I take 
with you on the present occasion a liberty which seemed to me scarcely 
allowable when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in 
which you stand and the almost general prejudice and prepossession 
which are so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion. I 
suppose it is a truth too well attested to you to need a proof here that we 
are a race of beings who have long labored under the abuse and censure 
of the world, that we have long been considered rather as brutish than 
human, and scarcely capable of mental endowment. 

" Sir, I hope I may safely admit, in consequence of that report which 
hath reached me, that you are a man far less inflexible in sentiments of 
this nature than many others, that you are measurably friendly and well- 
disposed towards us,* and that you are ready and willing to lend your aid 

* Jefferson, in his Memoirs, written in January, 1821, speaking of the reforms introduced 
by him and his associates into the organic law of Virginia, speaks as follows of his and their 
efforts at emancipation : " The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing 
laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future or general emancipation. 
It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment 
whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment, however, were 
agreed on that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day and deportation after a pro- 
per age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it 
bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse 
will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to 
be free ; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government, 



348 BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. [Dec., 

and assistance to our relief from those many distressed and numerous 
calamities to which we are reduced. 

" Now, sir, if this is found in truth I apprehend you will readily em- 
brace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas 
and opinions which so generally prevails with respect to us, and that your 
sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are that an universal Father 
hath given being to us all of one flesh, but that he hath also without par- 
tiality afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the 
same faculties, and that however variable we may be in society or religion, 
however diversified in situation or color, we are all of the same family and 
stand in the same relation to him. 

" Sir, if these are sentiments of which you are fully persuaded, I hope 
you cannot but acknowledge that it is the indispensable duty of those who 
maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who profess the 
obligations of Christianity, to extend their power and influence to the re- 
lief of every part of the human race from whatever burden or oppression 
they may unjustly labor under; and this, I apprehend, a full conviction of 
the truth and obligation of these principles should lead all to. 

" Sir, I have long been convinced that if your love for yourselves and 
for those inestimable laws which preserve to you the rights of human na- 
ture was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous that every in- 
dividual, of whatever rank or distinction, might with you equally enjoy the 
blessings thereof; neither could you rest satisfied short of the most active 
diffusion of your exertions in order to their promotion from any state of 
degradation to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may 
have reduced them. 

"Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am of the African race, 
and, in that color which is natural to them, of the deepest dye, and it is 
under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the supreme Ruler of the 
universe that I now confess to you that I am not under that state of 
tyrannical thraldom and inhuman captivity to which too many of my 
brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of 
those blessings which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty with 
which you are favored, and which I hope you will willingly allow you have 
received from the immediate hand of that Being from whom proceedeth 
every good and perfect gift. 

"Sir, suffer me to recall to your mind that time in which the arms and 
tyranny of the British crown were exerted with every powerful effort in 
order to reduce you to a state of servitude. Look back, I entreat you, on 
the variety of dangers to which you were exposed ; reflect on that time 
iri which every human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope 
and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict ; and you cannot 
but be led to a serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and provi- 

etc." The delay of emancipation, which Jefferson thus viewed with such impatience, if not re- 
sentment, had at least the effect, by longer intercourse and the union of two or three more gene- 
rations of the races, of rendering deportation plainly unnecessary to full freedom of the blacks. 
The political associates whom he mentions as having agreed on the above scheme of emancipa- 
tion were himself, Pendleton, George Wythe, George Mason, and Thomas L. Lee. They were 
a committee of the House of Burgesses appointed in the session of '76. (Jefferson's Writings^ 
Boston, 1830, vol. i. p. 39.) 



1883.] BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. 349 

dential preservation ; you cannot but acknowledge that the present freedom 
and tranquillity which you enjoy you have mercifully received, and that it is 
the peculiar blessing of Heaven. 

"This, sir, was a time in which you clearly saw into the injustice of a 
state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehension of the horrors of 
its condition. 

" It was now, sir, that your abhorrence thereof was so excited that you 
publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy 
to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages: 'We hold these 
truths to be self-evident : that all men are created equal, and that they are 
endowed with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness.' 

" Here, sir, was a time in which your tender feelings for yourself had 
engaged you thus to declare you were then impressed with proper ideas of 
the great valuation of liberty and the free possession of those blessings to 
which you were entitled by nature. 

" But, sir, how pitiable is it to reflect that although you were so fully 
convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind, and of his equal 
and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges which he had con- 
ferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies 
in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren 
under groaning captivity and cruel oppression ; that you should at the 
same time be found guilty of that most criminal act which you professedly 
detested in others with respect to yourselves ! 

" Sir, I suppose that your knowledge of the situation of my brethren is 
too extensive to need a recital here ; neither shall I presume to prescribe 
methods by which they may be relieved, otherwise than by recommending 
to you and all others to wean yourselves from those narrow prejudices 
which you have imbibed with respect to them, and, as Job proposed to his 
friends, 'put your souls in their souls' stead.' Thus shall your hearts be 
enlarged with kindness and benevolence towards them, and thus shall you 
need neither the direction of myself nor others in what manner to proceed 
herein. 

"And now, sir, although my sympathy and affection for my brethren 
hath caused my enlargement thus far, I ardently hope that your candor 
and generosity will plead with you in my behalf when I make known to 
you that it was not originally my design, but that, having taken up my pen 
in order to direct to you as a present a copy of an almanac which I have 
calculated for the succeeding year, I was unexpectedly and unavoidably led 
thereto. 

"This calculation, sir, is the production of my arduous study in this my* 
advanced stage of life ; for, having long had unbounded desires to become 
acquainted with the secrets of nature, I have had to gratify my curiosity 
herein through my own assiduous application to astronomical study, in 
which I need not to recount to you the many difficulties and disadvantages 
which I have had to encounter. And although I had almost declined to 
make my calculation for the ensuing year, in consequence of that time 
which I had allotted therefor being taken up at the Federal Territory by 
the request of Mr. Andrew Ellicott, yet, finding myself under several en- 
gagements to printers of this State to whom I communicated my design, 



350 BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. [Dec., 

on my return to my place of residence I industriously applied myself 
thereto, which, I hope, I have accomplished with correctness and accuracy. 
A copy of which I have taken the liberty to direct to you, and which I 
humbly request you will favorably receive. And although you may have 
the opportunity of perusing it after its publication, yet I chose to send it 
to you in manuscript previous thereto, that thereby you might not only 
have an earlier inspection, but that you might also view it in my own hand- 
writing. 

"And now, sir, I shall conclude and subscribe myself with the most 
profound respect, 

" Your most obedient, humble servant, 

" B. BANNEKER. 

" THOMAS JEFFERSON, Secretary of State, Philadelphia. 

" N.B. Any communication to me may be had by a direction to Mr. 
Elias Ellicott, merchant, in Baltimore town. B. B." 

The boldness of this letter may well startle us. There is no 
cringing nor unmanly servility, and we must admire the strong 
consciousness of Banneker in his mental powers. Jefferson 
honored the letter with the following courteous reply : 

" PHILADELPHIA, PA., August 30, 1791. 

*' SIR : I thank you sincerely for your letter of the ipth instant and for 
the almanac it contained. Nobody wishes more than I do to see such 
proofs as you exhibit that nature has given to our black brethren talents 
equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a 
want of .them is owing only to the degraded condition of their existence 
both in Africa and America. I can add with truth that no one wishes more 
ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both 
of their body and mind to what it ought to be as fast as the imbecility of 
their present existence and other circumstances will admit. I have taken 
the liberty of sending your almanac to M. de Condorcet, secretary of the 
Academy of Sciences at Paris, and member of the Philanthropic Society, 
because I considered it a document to which your whole color had a right 
for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of 
them. I am, with great esteem, sir, 

" Your most obedient servant, 

" THO. JEFFERSON. 
" MR. BENJAMIN BANNEKER, 

" Near Ellicott's Lower Mills, Baltimore Co." * 

* Touching the condition of the blacks prior to and during the Revolution Mr. Williams 
(History of the Negro Race, i. p. 370) says : " When the Revolutionary War began the legal 
status of the negro slave was clearly defined in the courts of all the colonies. He was 
either chattel or real property." Soon the ticklish question arose concerning the negro 
soldier who was a slave: "Could he be taken as property or as a prisoner of war?" After 
much deliberation the colonies agreed to accept him as a prisoner of war, while the royalists 
held he was property and legitimate spoils of war. Mr. Williams says : " But the almost 
universal doctrine of property in the negro, and his status in the courts of the colonies, gave 
the royal army great advantages in the appropriation of negro captives under the plea that 
they were property, and hence legitimate ' spoils of war 'J; while, on the part of the colonies, 
to declare that the captured negroes were entitled to the treatment of prisoners of war was 



1883.] BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. 351 

When his first almanac was published Banneker was about 
sixty years of age. He soon received tokens of respect from 
all the scientific men of the country. 

In his letter to Jefferson our astronomer alleges as a reason 
why he was thinking of not going on with his almanac for that 
year that he was with the commissioners appointed to run the 
lines of the District of Columbia, then known as the Federal 
Territory. Wishing to avail themselves of Banneker's acquire- 
ments, the commissioners invited him to be present at the sur- 
veys. His conduct throughout the whole engagement secured 
their respect. They invited him to a daily seat at their ^own 
table, but this, with his usual modesty, Banneker declined. They 
then ordered a side-table laid for him in the same room with 
themselves. On his return he called to give an account of his 
work at the house of a friend. He arrived on horseback, dressed 
in his usual costume a full suit of drab cloth surmounted by a 
broad-brimmed beaver hat. He declared the commissioners to 
" be a very civil set of gentlemen, who had overlooked his com- 
plexion." After describing the work, and, with his usual humil 
ity, counting as trivial his own share, he added that during his 
absence he did not taste wine or spirituous liquors, adding : " I 
feared to trust myself even with wine, lest it should steal away 
the little sense I have." David Stuart, Daniel Carroll, Thomas 
Johnson, Andrew Ellicott, and Major L'Enfant were the survey- 
ors. Of course it was through Ellicott that Banneker was 
secured. 

This Daniel Carroll owned the property on which the Capitol 
building stands. He was a devout Catholic, brother, if I mistake 
not, of Archbishop Carroll, of Baltimore. His family was not 
related to the Carrolls of Carrollton. Daniel's descendants still 
live on Capitol Hill, Washington. Their house is known as 
Duddington. 

to reverse a principle of law as old as their government. It was, in fact, an abandonment 
of the claim of property in the negro. It was a recognition of his rights as a soldier, a 
bestowal of the highest favors known in the treatment of captives of war." Yet as a matter 
of fact it often happened that even on the patriot side " enlistment did not work a practical 
emancipation of the slave, as some have thought. Negroes were rated as chattel property by 
both armies and both governments during the entire war. This is the cold fact of history, 
and it is not pleasing to contemplate. The negro occupied the anomalous position of an 
American slave and an American soldier. He was a soldier in the hour of danger, and a chattel 
in time of peace." 

Prior to 1809 free colored people possessed of a certain property qualification voted in 
Maryland. In that year the right of voting was restricted to free white males, Greenbury 
Morton, a colored man, and claimed by some as a relative of Banneker, was ignorant of the new 
law till he offered to vote at the polls in Baltrmore County. It is said that when his vote was 
refused he got on a barrel and addressed the voters in a strain of true and passionate eloquence 
which held them in breathless attention. 



352 BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. [Dec., 

Hard drinking had been Banneker's weakness. But, with a 
self-denial supposed to be unknown to his race, seeing its evils, 
he resolved to refrain from intoxicating drink, and gradually 
succeeded, becoming finally a total abstainer. As the reader 
may well suppose, once familiar with the books and instruments 
furnished him by the Ellicotts, Banneker was anxious to devote 
more time to study, and still more desirous to be released from 
the anxieties and cares attending the cultivation of his farm. 
He undertook to let it out, but his tenants were a continual vexa- 
tion to him, refusing to pay rent, and, when expostulated with, 
retaliating by annoying him in a dozen ways. One of them, see- 
ing his impatience, said quaintly to him, " It is better to die of 
hunger than anger." Finally he sold his farm for an annuity. 
Carefully calculating his chances of life, he put the annuity at 
twelve pounds, Maryland currency, during a given number of 
years. 

This, with the proceeds of his' almanacs, supported him till his 
death in 1804. It is said the only serious error Banneker ever 
made was in this very calculation, for he lived eight years longer 
than the time he had calculated. But it was the Ellicotts who 
had bought the place, and they generously paid the annuity till 
their old friend was gone. 

When at death's door during a previous sickness, Banneker 
charged his two sisters, Mrs. Molly Morton and Mrs. Black, to 
give to Mr. Ellicott his MSS., his letter to Jefferson, all his 
instruments, and everything else loaned or given him by that 
gentleman. On the day of his death the sisters faithfully obeyed 
his orders, and their arrival at the mills was the first news of the 
learned negro's death. During the last sad rites at Banneker's 
grave, two days after death, his cottage took fire and with every- 
thing in it was totally destroyed. The clock was then lost. 
Among his MSS. were found many astronomical and mathemati- 
cal notes and observations, together with much that reflected the 
quaint and humorous turn of his mind. 

Banneker published his almanac till 1802. It was a success 
financially as well as scientifically. Its title is here transcribed 
at length as a matter of curious interest. If it claims little of 
the art or elegance or wit of modern almanacs, it is nevertheless, 
viewing its history, a far more interesting production : 

" Benjamin Banneker's Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, 
and Maryland Almanac and Ephemeris for the year of our Lord 
1792, being bissextile or leap-year, and the sixteenth year of 
American Independence, which commenced July 4th, 1776. Con- 



1883.] BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. 353 

taining the motions of the sun and moon, the true places and as- 
pects of the planets, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising, 
setting, and southing, place and age, of the moon, etc. The lu- 
nations, conjunctions, eclipses, judgment of the weather, festivals, 
and remarkable days." This much is Banneker's. The rest was 
the publishers', but, besides being quaint, has nothing very at- 
tractive. Copies of the almanac have become very rare indeed. 
I have been informed by a dealer in old and curious books that a 
single copy would bring fifty dollars. He stopped his almanac 
in 1802, and survived his last publication only two years, dying, 
as I have noticed, in 1804, at the age of seventy-two. 

It only remains for me to mention the few and scattering 
details of our hero's life that remain to us. In his business 
transactions he was strictly honest, while towards his own 
debtors he was very lenient. Hence the need of selling his 
farm, for he was not able to collect his rents. The boys, who in 
his old age were rather numerous in the neighborhood, played 
sad havoc with his garden. They would call at his door and 
ask and obtain permission to partake of some of his fruit. After- 
wards, when the astronomer was lost in calculations, they would 
return and strip his trees. For this he was heard to remonstrate 
with his youthful visitors, even offering them one-half if they 
would leave him in quiet possession of the other ; but all without 
avail. To a friend who once visited him in the summer he ex- 
pressed regret that he had no fruit to present him, adding with a 
smile : " I have no influence with the rising generation. All my 
arguments have failed to induce them to set bounds to their 
wants." 

Banneker's habits of study were very peculiar. At nightfall, 
wrapped in a great cloak, he would lie prostrate upon the 
ground, passing the hours of darkness in contemplation of the 
heavenly bodies. At daylight he would retire to his dwelling, 
where he spent a portion of the day in repose. But as he 
seemed to require less sleep than most people, he employed the 
hours of the afternoons in the cultivation of his garden, trimming 
the fruit-trees, dr in observing the habits and flights of his bees. 
When his services and attention were not required out-doors 
he busied himself with his books, papers, and mathematical in- 
struments, at a large oval table in his house. The situation of 
his dwelling was one that would be admired by every lover of 
nature, and furnished a fine field to observe the celestial pheno- 
mena. It was about half a mile from the Patapsco River, and 
commanded a prospect of the hills, near and distant, upon its 
VOL. xxxvni. 23 



354 BENJ. BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. [Dec., 

banks, so justly celebrated for their picturesque beauty. The 
whole situation was charming, inspiring, and no doubt helped 
him in overcoming the difficulties in the way of the pursuit of 
science. 

Banneker's morals were without a blemish, save that in his 
early manhood days he was a hard drinker. We have already 
spoken of that courageous self-denial, generally regarded as un- 
known to his race, with which he trampled the sin and then the 
temptation under foot. We remember his boast that all the 
while he was engaged on the survey of the District of Columbia 
he tasted not even wine. He seems to have been a Quaker in 
his religious belief, and, while hoping that he may have received 
some form of baptism in infancy and partaken besides of God's 
uncovenanted mercies, we must regret for his sake that the 
true church numbered him not among her sons. To those little 
acquainted with his race his thirst for knowledge must excite 
wonder and his success in acquiring it a far greater astonish- 
ment. 

" The extent of his knowledge "thus runs Latrobe's memoir of 
him "is not so remarkable as that he acquired what he did under the 
circumstances we have described. It may be said by those disposed to 
sneer at his simple history, if there be any such, that after all he was but 
an almanac-maker, a very humble personage in the ranks of astronomical 
science. But that the almanac-maker of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary- 
land, and Virginia, from 1792 to 1802, should have been a free black man is, 
to use the language of Jefferson, ' a fact to which his color has a right for 
their justification against the doubts that have been entertained of them.' " 

All must agree with this conclusion, and must ask themselves if 
such things were possible amidst so much prejudice and so many 
drawbacks, what may we not expect from the colored people of 
to-day ? The case of Banneker shows that it is a mistake to 
fancy that the negro will always skulk in our shadow, over- 
powered by the ability and importance of his more favored 
brethren. 



1883.] A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" 355 



A POET OF THE "REFORMATION." 



THE revolution produced in Germany by the movement 
known as the "Reformation" was most discouraging to polite 
literature. The song, devout and cheerful as it had been, was 
hushed, and German imagination for a hundred years brooded 
in silence or gave utterance to its dreams in verses worse even 
than those of the Meistersinger. Those minds, always thought- 
ful, yearned for they knew not precisely what, and must come at 
length to let other peoples direct their aspirations and give them 
strange tongues. It is most remarkable what, in the midst of 
this season of inactivity and discouragement, the other nations 
of Europe did for Germany. 

The Saxon period, so named from the native home of Luther, 
was essentially prose, but it did wonders in developing German 
intellect and language. Luther himself was a most vigorous 
writer. The ferocity with which he warred, his mighty influ- 
ence among his countrymen, aroused within them a new impulse 
both to read and to write, and the German language became one 
of the richest in Europe for the discussion of the serious concerns 
of man, mortal and eternal. But it is tiresome and it is sad 
to read the literature of that period, its gloomy complainings, 
its unrelenting warrings, its gradual, inevitable descent into the 
depths of mysticism and doubt, which have made faithless and 
godless so many of that gifted and naturally most religious people. 
To the influences of these internal struggles were added, among 
others less important, those of the Thirty Years' War, similar in 
duration and disastrous consequences to the Wars of the Roses. 
No people fight like the Germans, especially when they fight 
with one another. So brave, so serious, the German knows not 
to yield, except to superior physical force, and when he yields at 
length to that it is a sullen submission that waits for other times 
and other opportunities to renew the conflict. In these terrific 
wars of many kinds German literature, poor as it had become 
for the soothing, sweet behests of poetry, 'seemed destined to re- 
turn into the barbarism of the past, until finally, ashamed, dis- 
gusted with its own doings, and discouraged with the possibili 
ties of its endeavors, the German mind sought, as it seemed, to 
ignore what it had known, to yield its individuality, and engraft 
upon itself a foreign existence. 

It is interesting to contemplate that continuous travelling 



356 A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" [Dec., 

hither and thither, during the latter part of the seventeenth and 
much of the eighteenth centuries, in search of foreign sentiments 
and foreign forms of expression. It reminds one of the missions 
of the first rude Romans, seeking amid cultured peoples for laws 
with which to control and guide their ignorant and lawless popu- 
lace. Fortunately for German literature, no single foreign na- 
tionality could please universally. Fierce were the struggles 
among the different invaders who had been invited the Greeks, 
the French, the Dutch, the English. Of these the French, under 
the lead first of Opitz, and afterwards and especially of Voltaire, 
seemed as if they must prevail ; and the German nation appear- 
ed as if anxious to give themselves up entirely to the people who 
in all respects were least similar to themselves. The German, 
naturally simple, thoughtful, tender, in the times whereof we 
write seemed to have grown ashamed of himself for being such, 
and endeavored to become gay, supple, affected. " German sim- 
plicity of manners, nay, the very language itself, disappeared 
from the court and from the castles of the nobility. The higher 
literati, the public officials, even the richer burghers, ceased to 
speak their mother-tongue." * Menzel says that French influ- 
ence extended even to the habits of physical life : " Paleness came 
into favor; a lady without the vapors belonged not to good 
society. The hearty daughters of German country gentlemen, 
sound to the core, painted themselves white, starved themselves 
thin, and drank vinegar, in order to get up the genuine invalid 
look." What was to become of the patriotism and the morals of 
a people thus habituated was plain to foresee. 

We have made these observations preliminary to a brief 
study of that man who, belonging not specially to any of the 
various schools, employed the ideas and the discipline of each as 
it happened to suit his purposes or his whims. There has never 
lived a man about whom have been more conflicting opinions 
than Goethe. Not as to his claims to be regarded as a great 
genius. On these there has been and can be but one opinion. It is 
the most illustrious name in the literature of Europe since Shak- 
spere. In some respects Goethe went beyond even him. For 
not only was he a great poet, but he was a scientist and a dis- 
coverer in science. He was conversant with art. From his 
youth, even his childhood, to old age, far-advanced old age, the 
possession of health, pecuniary means, all good opportunities, 
combined with sleepless industry in study and in work all these 
allowed him to do his very best in the various fields of his en- 

* Metcalf's German Literature. 



1883.] A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" 357 

deavors. An aristocrat, or at least of aristocratic ambitions and 
pretensions, sympathizing only with the aristocracy or other for- 
tunates who, like the rich Persicus of Juvenal, during an insigni- 
ficant misfortune are wont to receive contributions that compen- 
sate over and over for all losses, real and imaginary he became 
a trimmer in literature as in politics. The distinguishing char- 
acteristic of Goethe's being was selfishness. He was the most 
exquisitely, imperturbably, continuously selfish mortal that has 
ever lived in this world, at least among those of, or in approxi- 
mation to, his own social and intellectual rank. Some years ago 
we read his Autobiography, which, instead of an apologia, a name 
usually given by modest men to such a work, he styled " Poetry 
and Truth." We have been sometimes sorry that we read it. 
In this book it is wonderful to notice .the coldness with which he 
alludes to the various love-passages he had with young girls ; 
how he trifled with their affections ; how little he cared for their 
disappointments, their sense of humiliation, and how he seemed to 
have neither remorse nor regret for the unhappiness that re- 
suited from changes of his purposes and violations of his pledges. 
It was sufficient, in his mind, for them to remember that such 
changes and violations had been done by Johann Wolfgang von 
Goethe, to whom all mankind owed too much gratitude for ser- 
vice upon various fields to let him be disturbed by remembrance 
of what, in hours of youthful levity, he may have said and done 
in the society of a few individual girls and women. Not that 
even in this world he did not have to pay for such things, and 
in ways poignant and humiliating. 

In an age of despotism a selfish man will ever be a time-ser- 
ver. This was an age of despotism manifold, not only political, 
as Prussia has ever wielded, but religious and literary. French 
literature first and most powerful, Greek literature next, English 
literature last. Lessing, single-minded, combative, heroic, had 
to fight single-handed, and died reeking with the sweat of battle 
before he could raise or hear a shout of victory. Had he been 
joined by Goethe, whom without a pang he would have been 
ready to acknowledge and follow as leader, the war would 
sooner and easily have been ended. Yet this man, in whose in- 
tellect were characteristics of the most gifted of all ages, ancient 
and modern, gave himself to the management of the political 
affairs of a German duke, and in hours of leisure humored and 
flattered and tantalized these several despotisms even, according 
to the individual caprices and whims of each. In this various 
work the things which he did are among the wonders of the 



358 A POET OF THE "REFORMATION." [Dec., 

world. Yet of all wonders connected with them this is the 
chiefest: that none of them were done by actuation of love of 
country, love of mankind, or love of God; Not that Goethe was 
not a man of feeling. So much the worse, and he pursued that 
rdle of the great poet in creating concrete existences out of his 
own heart's experiences. He had loved the lithe little Gretchen, 
and her he immortalized in Faust. He knew all that is to be 
felt by an ardent nature. 

In the case of Margaret in Faust, that one of the most pow- 
erful of the productions of the human intellect, it is piteous 
to witness how soon and how far one heretofore innocent may 
fall when tempted beyond endurance by the evil spirit. Mephis- 
topheles, who at first is represented as sufficiently reprobate and 
hideous, has already grown, by the time he has first seen this 
poor child of fifteen years, to feel apparently some pity, and he 
avows that such perfect innocence is beyond his power to cor- 
rupt. To Faust, who has pointed her out to him, he says : 

" She there ? She's coming from confession, 
Of every sin absolved ; for I 
Behind her chair was listening nigh. 
So innocent is she, indeed, 
That to confess she had no need. 
I have no power o'er souls so green.'' * 

Yet he is held to his compact, and, to satisfy the eager lover, that 
very night begins the attack by placing a casket of jewels on the 
press of the child's chamber. Preparing herself for her couch, 
singing the while " There was a king in Thule," and noticing 
the casket, it appears that the evil one has found at once the 
weakness it will be most promising to assail. After adorning 
herself with the jewels and getting before her poor mirror, how 
mournful these words which she utters : 

"Were but the ear-rings mine alone ! 
One has at once another air. 
What helps one's beauty, youthful blood ? 
One may possess them well and good ; 
But none the more do others care. 
They praise us half in pity, sure : 

To gold still tends, 

On gold depends, 
All, all ! Alas, we poor ! " t 

Never was a tale of ruin more pitifully told. The pinching of 
the wants of a poor estate, harsh domestic rule, notice, attentions, 

* Scene vii., Bayard Taylor's translation. t Ib., scene viii. 



1883.] A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" 359 

and devotions from a young man handsome, aristocratic, courtly, 
and wealthy ; then native innocence, habitual piety, abhorrence 
of dishonor, wickedness, and shame, wailings and prayers before 
and after her fall these fill one's heart with a sympathy that 
brings frequent tears to one's eyes : 

" My peace is gone, 

My heart is sore ; 
I never shall find it, 
Ah ! never more." * 

" Incline, O Maiden, 

Thou sorrow-laden, 
Thy gracious countenance upon my pain ! 

The sword thy heart in, 

With anguish smarting, 
Thou lookest up to where thy Son is slain." t 

That by her spinning-wheel at home, this in the donjon cell to 
an image of the Mater Dolorosa fixed in a shrine in a niche of 
the wall. Of these lyrics Bayard Taylor says : " If the reverie 
at the spinning-wheel be a sigh of longing, this is a cry for help 
equally wonderful in words and metre, yet with a character 
equally elusive when we attempt to reproduce it in another 
language." The slaying of Margaret's brother Valentine by 
Faust, the unintentional death of her mother produced by the 
daughter, the discovery of her shame, the charge of infanticide 
when these have brought insanity, we should have to search long 
to find a scene so heartrending as that in prison the night before 
her execution, when the seducer, who appears to be more discon- 
certed than remorseful, essays her rescue. When she has recog- 
nized him at last, refusing his persuasions, though without re- 
proach, she tells him : 

" Now I'll tell thee the graves to give us. 
Thou must begin to-morrow 

The work of sorrow ! 
The best place give to my mother, 
Then close at her side my brother, 

And me a little away, 
But not too very far, I pray ! 
And here, on my right breast, my baby lay ! 
Nobody else will lie beside me ! " \ 

Now, one reading this poem for the first time might suppose 
that this ruiner of female innocence would remain and share her 

* Scene xv. t Scene xviii. J Scene xxv. 



360 A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" [Dec., 

fate, or live to be consumed of remorse and be for ever lost. 
Not he. When Mephistopheles, at the dawning of the day, cries 
petulantly and threateningly to him : " Come ! or I'll leave her in 
the lurch and thee ," not another word from Faust of sympathy, 
counsel, or remonstrance. What is worse, and what seems incre- 
dible, the poet, departing from the legend, leaves us to infer that 
he, too, like the poor penitent girl, has escaped the perdition of 
the soul. The German historian before quoted, speaking of 
Goethe's habitual compounding with vices, even those the most 
hideous and revolting, writes thus: 

" Goethe did not shrink from playing this part even into the next life. 
His Faust was meant to show that the privilege of the aristocratic volup- 
tuary extended beyond the grave. This Faust may offend against every 
moral feeling, against fidelity and honor; he may constantly silence the 
voice of conscience, neglect every duty, gratify his effeminate love of plea- 
sure, his vanity, and his caprices, even at the expense and the ruin of 
others, and sell himself to the very devil ; he goes to heaven notwithstand- 
ing, for he is a gentleman, he is of the privileged class." 

In his youth Goethe had paid some slight respect, if not to 
religion, at least to the regard that all communities have or pro- 
fess to have for morality and decency. But by the times where- 
in Faust y The Elective Affinities, and Wilhelm Meisters Appren- 
ticeship were produced the new religion that he had invented, 
a Neo-Platonism founded after long studies of Paracelsus and 
Boerhaave, had developed to his satisfaction ; and the founder 
being leader at the court of Weimar, at the head of the lite- 
rature of Germany, having watched not only without pain 
but with pleasure the growing demoralization among all ranks 
of his countrymen, henceforth his lovers, loving whom and how 
they may, are to receive no punishment, not only from the muni- 
cipal laws and from public opinion, but even from remorse and 
from hell ! It was, indeed, a humiliated state of domestic society 
when marriages " under the apron," as they were called, were 
common, whereat Protestant clergymen were required, without 
much urging thereto by the dukes and barons on whom they de- 
pended, to take in wedlock country girls and housemaids whom 
they had wearied of. In such a society a man gifted, rich, power- 
ful may do and say about as he pleases, and, instead of losing, 
continue to gain more and more in influence upon opinions and 
habits. Then the exquisite pathos, the delicate tenderness, the 
marvellous dramatic interest of many portions of these works, 
interspersed often with lyrical verses of almost unequalled excel- 
lence, serve to lead even virtuous and pious minds to withhold 



1883.] A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" 361 

much of that condemnation which as a whole such works 
deserve. In Wilhelm Meister the old harper and the child 
Mignon cannot but be remembered with a tender sadness that it 
is grateful to feel. Let us notice this extract from book ii. 
chapter xi., at the conclusion of the previous playing and singing 
that the old man had rendered before Meister and his motley 
suite of women : 

" The old harper remained silent ; his fingers wandered carelessly 
among the chords of his instrument ; finally he struck them more boldly 
and sang as follows : 

"' What sounds are those which from the wall 

And o'er the bridge I hear ? 
Those strains should echo through this hall, 

And greet a monarch's ear.' 
So spake the king ; the page retires : 
His answer brought, the king desires 
The minstrel to appear. 

" ' Hail, sire ! and hail, each gallant knight ! 

Fair dames, I greet ye well ! 
Like heaven, this hall with stars is bright. 

But who your names may tell ? 
What matchless glories round me shine ! 
But 'tis not now for eyes like mine 
. On scenes like these to dwell.' 

"The minstrel raised his eyes inspired, 

And struck a thrilling strain : 
Each hero's heart is quickly fired, 

Each fair one thrills with pain ; 
The king, enchanted with the bard, 
His magic talent to reward, 

Presents his golden chain. 

" ' Oh ! deck me with no chain of gold ; 

Such gift becomes the knight, 
Before whose warrior eyes so bold 

The rushing squadrons fight. 
Or let the glittering bauble rest 
Upon your chancellor's honored breast 

He'll deem the burden light. 

" ' I sing but as the young bird sings 

That carols in the tree ; 
\ The rapture of the music brings 
' Its own reward to me. 

Yet would I utter one request, 
That of your wine one cup the best 
Be given to-day by thee.' 



362 A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" [Dec., 

" The cup is brought ; the minstrel quaffed. 

He thrills with joy divine. 
'Thrice happy home, where such a draught 

Is given, and none repine ! 
When fortune smiles, then think of me, 
And thank kind Heaven, as I thank thee, 

For such a cup of wine.' " 

When the harper, at the conclusion of his song, seized a goblet of wine 
that stood before him, and, turning towards his benefactors, quaffed it off 
with a look of thankfulness, a shout of joy rose from the whole assembly." 

Touching as this is, the one following, from book iii. chapter i., 
is more so. Mignon, yet a child in years, though now grown 
towards womanhood in heart from sorrow, the fruit of a love 
not only forbidden but revolting in its kind, had been spirited 
away from Italy, her native country, and had been made to 
promise, amid circumstances most impressive upon her sensitive 
nature, never to divulge the fact of her expulsion, nor the place, 
nor even the country, of her birth. The softness of the manners 
of Meister had served to draw her affections towards him, and, 
longing ever for the home of her childhood, she hoped that this 
young man, who seemed so good and was so kind, might even- 
tually carry her there. But, remembering her promise, the little 
outcast could only strive to make known by innuendo the place 
whither she yearned to go. Taught by the master of a troop 
of strolling players to sing and play upon the cithern, one day 
she sang before Meister this song : 

"Know'st thou the land where the lemon-tree blows, 
Where deep in the bower the gold orange grows ? 
Where zephyrs from heaven die softly away, 
And the laurel and myrtle tree never decay ? 
Know'st thou it ? Thither, oh ! thither with thee, 
My dearest, my fondest ! with thee would I flee. 

"Know'st thou the hall with its pillared arcades,' 
Its chambers so vast and its long colonnades, 
Where the statues of marble with features so mild 
Ask, 'Why have they used thee so harshly, my child?' 
Know'st thou it ? Thither, oh ! thither with thee, 
My dearest, my fondest ! with thee would I flee. 

" Know'st thou the Alp which the vapor enshrouds. 
Where the bold muleteer seeks his way through the clouds ? 
In the cleft of the mountain the dragon abides, 
And the rush of the stream tears the rock from its sides. 
Know'st thou it? Thither, oh ! thither with thee, 
Leads our way, father; then come, let us flee. 



1883.] A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" 363 

She commenced each verse in a solemn, measured tone, as if she had 
intended to direct attention to something wonderful and had some impor- 
tant secret to communicate. At the third line her voice became lower and 
fainter; the words 'Know'stthou it?' were pronounced with a mysterious, 
thoughtful expression, and the 'Thither, oh ! thither 'was uttered with an 
irresistible feeling of longing, and at every repetition of the words ' Let us 
flee !' she changed her intonation. At one time she seemed to entreat and 
to implore, and at the next to become earnest and persuasive. After hav- 
ing sung the song a second time she paused for a moment, and, attentively 
surveying Wilhelm, she asked him, ' Know'st thou the land?' 'It must be 
Italy,' he replied; 'but where did you learn the sweet little song?' 
'Italy!' observed Mignon thoughtfully; 'if you are going thither, take me 
with you. I am too cold here.' 'Have you ever been there, darling?' 
asked Wilhelm ; but Mignon made no reply, and could not be induced to 
converse further." 

Now, would it not be supposed that the hero of a tale in 
which there are such as these was one of heroic spirit indeed, fit 
for the achievement of heroic action ? He was scholarly as he 
was condescending to such as the harper and Mignon. Among 
other things in that line he had studied what one might style 
the sphynx of literature, Shakspere's " Hamlet," and come nearer 
than any other, before or since, in interpreting its subtle, multi- 
fold meanings. On the contrary, this Wilhelm Meister, for any 
manly purpose, was not worth, not only the salt he ate, but the 
air he breathed. He had been created, it seemed, merely to 
show with what unlicensed liberty a young man of education and 
means to keep himself from servile work might disport himself 
with any pleasure tq which his selfish, indolent being might have 
a fancy. Then in ^-Elective Affinities, as if to put down in his- 
tory and show to coming generations how lost to religious obli- 
gation, how fallen from common decency, was that in which he 
lived, Goethe composed, though in forms most singularly at- 
tractive, a history of loves whose equals, everything considered* 
in sinfulness, foulness, and nastiness, mankind have never known, 
at least in books.. It is simply diabolical, this history of the love 
of Edward and Ottilie for each other, and that between the 
former's wife and his friend. Surely there was no belief in God 
in the man who, at the death of this false husband, following soon 
after that of her whom he foolishly, forbiddenly loved, whose 
body was so placed by the side of hers\ that no other could be 
put with them in the same vault, concludes thus : " So lie the 
lovers, sleeping side by side. Peace hovers above their resting 
place." 

Goethe seemed to have regarded himself as the poet for the 
aristocrat and the voluptuary. It is strange that in a Christian 



364 A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" [Dec., 

age its greatest intellect should have so outraged, in his pub- 
lished works, the ideas of honor and religion ; stranger that such 
outrages should have been commended by a majority of the 
great, the titled, the wealthy, and the cultivated of his country- 
men. There were, and are, those who suspect that Goethe had 
no belief in God, or at least none in a future state of punishment 
and reward. At all events, he must have been among those, now 
so numerous, who regard what Christians call the Bible as a 
book of man's creation, containing fond allegories and fables in 
the midst of narratives fit only for primers of school-children qr 
Sunday evening readings of ignorant aged crones, who must 
have, and ought to be kindly afforded, some little light, genuine 
or spurious, as they are about to immerge into the " dark valley 
and the shadow of death." 

Honor and patriotism were words which with Goethe seemed 
to have been mere sounds signifying nothing. As for honor in 
love, wherein that noble sentiment may sometimes be made to 
pass over its most trying ordeal, this he treated with undis- 
guised contempt. His most distinguished and interesting lovers 
were those who felt and indulged dishonorable loves. A genuine- 
ly honorable love, inspired by that tender, faithful sentiment of 
the German of the foretime, mutually felt between one honest 
man and one honest woman, so told as to be made interesting to 
readers, is not, or scarcely, to be found in all of Goethe's works. 
To make his lovers interesting he seemed to have believed it neces- 
sary to spice them with dishonor. He made one and another of 
his heroes false, treacherous, seeking the beloved object mainly 
because, the property of another, he could not possess her with- 
out risk and shame. Wifehood, upon which the blessing of 
Heaven might be humbfy yet confidently invoked, compared with 
love illicit and ever new, he looked at as a dammed and stagnant 
pool compared with the first gushings of ever-fresh waters from 
the fountain before reaching the channel that was made for their 
confined and legitimate course. Never had been such a time- 
server, such a flatterer of his own age, in which, among those who 
stood in the very lead of social existence, there was no love 
worth feeling or none worth talking about except such as was 
forbidden of God and man. In fine, he, the grandest intellect 
that three centuries have produced, more grossly and recklessly 
dishonored the best traditions of his country than any German 
of any age. He gazed with leering eye, and chuckling showed 
to the eyes of others evil as his own, sights from which his ances- 
tor of two thousand years before, on the banks of the Danube, 






1883.] A POET OF THE "REFORMATION" 365 

the Rhine, or the Weser, would have turned his face away in 
modest)'- and chaste fear. 

Now, what was the secret by which, in the treatment of such 
themes, Goethe so charmed and yet charms so many of mankind ? 
It was that knowledge of form which he possessed beyond the 
poets of all times. It may have been partly from the conscious- 
ness of this being his chief power that he chose to set it off with 
the bad, the trifling, and the contemptible of his generation. 
The single beauties in his works are the greatest in their kind, 
and mankind, in admiration of them, have been less disgusted 
than they ought to have been with the general evil tendencies 
of the whole. The works of Goethe are more remarkable even 
than those of the great artists in the classic age in this respect : 
that whereas these had moulded into beauty the excellent material 
in which their country and times abounded, he had to work 
amid the gross things he found for his plastic hand in his own 
country and his own time. He was not the seducer of his gene- 
ration. No one man can ever be that. The age was already 
corrupt. A noble work was before him, which he selfishly neg- 
lected. Instead of lifting his age out of the slough into which 
it had fallen, he got down himself into this slough and took a vain, 
wicked pleasure in showing to his besmirched companions into 
what fair forms these foul elements might be shaped, fair to look 
upon, but frail, perishable, and easily resolvable into the things 
out of which they had been taken. He toyed with the Roman- 
tic, the French, the English, the Greek. He employed each 
and all when they suited his fancy, and calmJLy, coldly dominated 
in his autocracy even down to the last of extremest old age. 
Never having been a patriot, among the productions of his last 
endeavors was that which seemed as if intended as an apology, 
the best that he could devise, for the want of fidelity to Ger- 
many during the period of her humiliation. When she lay 
prostrate and full of sorrow before Napoleon, he had sung the 
praises of the conqueror. In after-times, when Germany had 
risen to its native manhood and had been numbered among the 
powers of Europe, the time-serving poet brought out his drama 
of " Epimenides." It is universally admitted to be his very 
feeblest work, and because it was a too late rendition of what 
was due from one who, far from raising his hand or his tongue 
in the times of sorest need, had fawned and cringed before him, 
the chief occasion of her longest, most sorrowful wailing, and 
therefore was now the very last man in Germany to be called 
upon to sing or pretend to rejoice in her deliverance. 



366 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. [Dec , 

Here was indeed a giant a giant, however, not after the sort 
of Christopher, the bold ferryman, sure reliance of timid travel- 
lers in stormy weather. To bear the disguised Infant amid 
swollen waters was not after his liking. He was rather a Goliath 
of Gath, " a man of war from his youth," * that defied the armies 
led by the Most High, not foreseeing the fall to which he was 
doomed. The men and women of his generation lauded him for 
his strength and his audacity, and there be many yet, though 
constantly growing fewer, who, charmed by the witchery of his 
words, are led into places which all benignant spirits would 
warn them to avoid. Than Goethe never has lived a man 
who employed his gifts less faithfully for the ends for which 
they were bestowed. 



IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 

FEW viceroys were so liked by the Irish people as Sir Henry 
Sydney. At one time he was much esteemed by the citizens of 
Dublin and the people of Galway on account of the humanity 
/ he evinced during the plague. Sir Henry Sydney has left on 
record a most interesting account of his visit to the ancient town 
of Galway. He describes the gentry of that district as an amia- 
ble, educated, and most hospitable people. In writing to Queen 
Elizabeth, Sydney sa^s : 

" The better classes in Galway have been educated in Spain, and they 
possess all that delicacy of feeling which characterizes the Spanish 
grandees. The name of your majesty was received with great respect. 
The people of those quarters are all most devoted to the papal church ; 
but that fact does not lessen their loyalty to your majesty. The women 
are very beautiful, dress magnificently, and are first-class dancers. In 
fact, every one young and old must take part in the dance. The people 
are all independent, and the town has a large commercial intercourse with 
Spain." 

The reference to Galway dancing was received with much 
satisfaction by the queen. Elizabeth sent valuable presents to 
several Galway ladies, amongst whom were the beautiful Sebina 
Lynch and Violet De Burgh. The latter lady became the bride 
and happy wife of a young Spanish grandee. 

Like other excellent lord-deputies, Sydney subsequently 

* i Kings xvii. 33. 



1883.] IRELAND UNDEK ELIZABETH. 367 

became unpopular, especially when attempting to raise taxes 
with the concurrence of his council and without the approval 
of the parliament. A violent agitation followed, in which all 
parties joined against the viceroy. In 1569-70 the inhabitants 
of the Pale met, deliberated, and sent three delegates to present a 
petition to the queen. The noblemen chosen for this purpose 
appeared at the English court to protest against the system 
of imposts levied by Sir Henry Sydney and his council. Sir 
Henry was not idle during the agitation, for he had taken espe- 
cial care to present a counter statement to Queen Elizabeth of 
the question at issue. The queen listened to the Irish complaints 
with apparent care, and is reported to have shed tears ; but the 
deputies were afterwards committed to the Fleet prison as con- 
tumacious opposers of the royal authority. 

When the news reached Dublin and the provinces of the 
arrest and imprisonment of their representatives the populace 
were indignant, and the " inventive story-tellers " at the inns 
positively asserted that the people's delegates had been mur- 
dered by the special order of the English sovereign. About the 
same period letters reached Dublin which at once removed the 
impression made upon the public mind by those mischievous 
news-mongers. The fact of the delegates having been imprisoned 
by the queen, nevertheless, had the effect of renewing the agi- 
tation with tenfold energy amongst the inhabitants of the Pale ; 
and a second deputation was appointed to wait upon Sir Henry 
Sydney and his council, in order to remonstrate against his 
" new taxing law." The parties chosen on this occasion were five 
peers men of integrity and moderation, in whom the people of 
the rival creeds had every confidence. The excitement soon 
became so intense that the queen was alarmed for the safety of 
her Irish dominions. The wily princess was well aware that the 
subject of dispute was one on which the Protestant settlers and 
the native Irish were likely to become united ; for, like the in- 
habitants of other countries, they cordially detested what they 
considered undue taxation. It was also rumored at this excited 
period that a foreign enemy was hovering about the Irish coast ; 
and some influential Protestants of Dublin declared their inten- 
tion of coalescing with any party, foreign or domestic, in order 
to have vengeance upon England for " daring to tax the Irish 
Protestants after the fashion of the popish natives." At this 
time, however, the native Irish paid little or no tribute to En- 

* MS. of the Rev. Robert Watson, a Protestant clergymen of Dublin in 1592 ; State Paper 
Office. 



368 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. [Dec., 

gland. It is not now certain whether Sir Henry Sydney knew of 
these transactions, which, however, were not calculated to excite 
so much concern as the apprehended combination of the Pales- 
men and the native Irish. Elizabeth despatched fresh instruc- 
tions to Sydney, to the effect that he should at once bring the 
question to an amicable settlement by a compromise, which was 
ultimately agreed to by the Irish disaffected of both creeds. The 
indignation of all parties in Ireland was turned against Sir Henry 
Sydney, and the people who at one time had given him a trium- 
phal entry into their city would now stone him to death. 

The massacre of Mullaghmast has been ascribed to the reign 
of Queen Mary, but it occurred in that of Elizabeth, under the 
viceroyalty of Lord Sussex. It is related that Sussex invited a 
number of Irish chiefs to a banquet, and whilst partaking of his 
hospitality it was arranged that a party of assassins should rush 
upon them, dagger in hand. Only three persons were left to im- 
perfectly relate the bloody deed. In the black pages of the his- 
tory of Irish misrule by English statesmen and their officials 
there are two or three instances more in which an English gene- 
ral stooped* to the treachery or the cold-blooded wickedness of 
concerted assassinations whilst their victims were partaking of 
hospitality given in the name of the English sovereign. The 
question may be raised: "Did Elizabeth ever hear of the scene 
which occurred at Mullaghmast?" It is alleged by some writers 
that the narrative concerning Mullaghmast has been much over- 
drawn. But Lord Sussex is positively named as the organizer of 
such a massacre. There is also proof of his having corresponded 
with a noted poisoner. 

In March, 1571, Sir Henry Sydney resigned the office of lord- 
deputy of Ireland, " considering the task of governing that 
country hopeless." But the task was not altogether hopeless, 
although very difficult to perform. The successive viceroys 
were ignorant of the temper of the people and the resources of 
the country. The inhabitants were treated as " a barbarian and 
conquered race." Yet the secret despatches of a few of the 
viceroys deny the "barbarism." Such men as Lord Sussex did 
irreparable damage to the honor and humanity of England by 
their mode of action in Ireland. Sir Henry Sydney died in a 
few months subsequent to his return to England, quite broken- 
hearted at the treatment he received between his " Irish friends " 
and the queen. In fact, he became the victim of the English 
" Cabal " and their agents in Dublin Castle, headed by that mar- 
plot and base man, Archbishop Loftus. 



1883.] IRELAND UNQER ELIZABETH. 369 

Sir William Fitzwilliam was the successor of the once popu- 
lar Sir Henry Sydney, and undertook to govern Ireland on a 
new principle. He commenced by a reduction of the enormous 
expenditure for the army, spies, and other officials connected 
with Dublin Castle. The garrisons throughout the country were 
considerably reduced. The chief officials were in debt to those 
under them, and peculation and fraud had been worked out in 
a systematic manner for a long period under successive govern- 
ments, and the English council felt it almost impossible to as- 
certain the real facts of the case. At one time Sir William Cecil 
contemplated a visit to Ireland, that he " might judge for him- 
self " ; but his presence being constantly required in London, he 
depended on the correspondence of his well-paid spies, who 
rarely uttered a word of truth. 

Fitzwilliam became alarmed at the position in which he was 
placed. He therefore petitioned the queen for his recall. He 
assured her highness that his pecuniary position was fast driving 
him to ruin. He had given away all the money he had, and was 
living on credit, which made little of him in the eyes of the peo- 
ple. Sir Henry Sydney had been brought to beggary in Ireland, 
and he said that the same fate awaited himself. The Border 
tribes took advantage of this state of things, and they were con- 
stantly harassing the English garrison of the Pale.* 

Mr. Froude frankly admits that the 

"Spiritual disorganization of the country was even more desperate than 
the social aspect. Whatever might have been the other faults of the 
Irish people, they had been at least eminent for their piety ; the multitude 
of churches and monasteries which in their ruins meet everywhere the 
stranger's eyewitness conclusively to their possession of this single virtue. 
The religious houses in such a state of society could not have existed at 
all unless protected by the consenting reverence of the whole population. 
But the religious houses were gone, and the prohibition of the Mass had 
closed the churches, except in those districts which were in arms and open 
rebellion. 1 ' 

Tremaigne, the confidential agent of Sir William Cecil, re- 
ports that when J " the churches were closed, and the priests ban- 
ished to the mountains or sent to dungeons, religion had no place. 
The peasantry became desperate characters. Neither fear of 
God nor regard for virtue nor oaths nor common honesty re- 
mained in the land. The great drag-chain upon conscience was 
deliberately set aside by the government. In the presence of 
this -state of affairs society fell to pieces." Mr. Froude is most 

* Fitzwilliam's secret despatches to Sir William Cecil. 
VOL. XXXVIII. 24 



370 IRELAND UNDER. ELIZABETH. [Dec., 

outspoken and candid in his description of Ireland under Eliza- 
beth in 1570-71, and his statements correspond completely with 
many of the secret despatches of those times. He makes the ad- 
mission that 

' The English settlers everywhere became worse than the Irish in all 
the qualities in which the Irish were most in fault. No native Celt hated 
England more bitterly than the transported Saxon. The forms of English 
justice might be introduced, but juries combined to defeat the ends for 
which they were instituted, and every one in authority, English or Irish, 
preferred to rule after the Irish system." 

In concluding his despatches to Sir William Cecil, Tremaigne 
strongly urges upon him the policy and common honesty of 
" not disturbing the Irish chiefs in the possession of their ancient 
patrimonial inheritance. The Englishmen who might come over 
to take possession of their lands were men, for the most part, 
who were doing no good at home, and would do worse in Ire- 
land." Tremaigne concludes his advice to Cecil and the queen in 
these words, which are full of significance : " Establish a sound 
government, give the Irish good laws and good justice, and let 
them keep their laws for themselves." * 

Amongst the remarkable men who figured in the background, 
directing by his talents and energy of mind and body, was the 
Rev. Nicholas Sander. Sander was an enthusiast of the most 
ardent nature. Although he acted with King Philip, he had a 
poor opinion of his military talent and bravery. He describes 
Philip to be " as much afraid of war as a child might be of fire "; 
and, despot-like, Philip " did not desire to encourage rebellions 
anywhere unless it ended in profit to himself" an old policy in 
Europe. 

The small expedition for the conquest of Ireland with which 
Sander was connected left the Spanish waters in May, 1579, f r 
Kerry. Sander was accompanied in this wild and hopeless 
scheme by two Irish bishops, six friars, and some six hundred 
Spaniards, Italians, and English adventurers brave, reckless 
men, many of whom were far more interested in the chances of 
plunder than a desire to liberate an oppressed people. They 
soon discovered that the prospect of booty was small, and that 
the people whom they came to aid were divided amongst them- 
selves. The expedition landed safely at Dingle, at the south- 
western angle of Kerry. FitzGerald, the Earl of Desmond, the 
great Catholic chief of the south, looked upon the expedition as 

* " Causes why Ireland is not reformed " endorsed, M. Tremaigae, June, 1571. MSS. oa 
Ireland, State Paper Office. 



1883.] IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 371 

too small and ill-timed. Some Irish authorities allege that the 
invading party numbered five thousand ; whilst a Spanish de- 
spatch makes it out to be " some six hundred, and by no means 
effective for such an expedition." Desmond disliked the English 
rule just as much as the O'Neills did ; but he had experienced 
reverses in the field and elsewhere. He had rebelled and was 
pardoned. If Sander's expedition failed, and he stood amongst 
the vanquished, what might be his fate ? After a delay of seve- 
ral days Desmond resolved to sustain the English interest. The 
Spanish expedition to aid the malcontents of Ireland was, as 
usual, attended with unexpected disappointments and local dis- 
affection or apathy. At the eleventh hour the Earl of Desmond 
joined the " rising," and the Catholics of Munster came forward 
in three days. One of the first acts of his followers was ven- 
geance. They seized upon the town of Youghal, an English 
colony at that period. For two days the Geraldine party, to 
their disgrace be it told, plundered the merchants, fired and 
sacked the town, and murdered every one who could not escape. 
Within six weeks the scene was changed, and English " ven- 
geance revelled in a general carnage." Butler, Lord Ormond 
received the command of the " army of English vengeance." 
General Pelham writes thus to the council of the movement of 
his troops in Munster : " We passed through the rebels' counties 
in two companies, consuming with fire all habitations, and 
executing the people wherever we found them." The widow 
of Fitzmaurice, one of the Geraldine race, and 'her two little 
children were discovered in a cave, where they had retired 
from the heavy snow-storm. They were "dragged forth like 
a lioness and her cubs." A few screams were heard from the 
children, then all was silent. In the morning a milkmaid dis- 
covered their bodies in the snow. The mother had a cruci- 
fix closely pressed to her heart, and the frozen left hand in a 
death-grasp around her daughter's neck. We are assured by 
the Annals of the Four Masters that General Pelham and Lord 
Ormond killed _the blind and the aged, the women and the 
children, the sick, the insane, and even poor idiots who wan- 
dered about the country craving for food, which no one who 
had it refused them. The despatches sent by Pelham and Or- 
mond to the council speak with the greatest levity of the whole- 
sale destruction of papist women and children. The castle of 
Carrigafoil was stormed by one hundred soldiers and two 
pieces of cannon. After a short discharge of artillery the walls 
gave way and the castle was invaded with a yell for vengeance. 



372 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. [Dec., 

Every one, save an old Italian, was instantly put to death in the 
most revolting manner. General Pelham (March, 1580) was 
quick advancing to capture Lord Desmond and Father Sander. 
Ormond boasted that he destroyed or burned down every habi- 
tation for ten miles. On one fearful snowy night Sir Edward 
Fenton, another English commander, regrets that the "sport was 
not so good." Fenton boasted how he hanged a popish priest 
one day, supposed from his dress to have been a Spaniard.* At 
the period of his expedition to Ireland Sander was about fifty 
years of age. He had been educated at Winchester, and was 
subsequently Fellow of New College, where he had resided till 
the accession of Elizabeth. In Edward VI. 's time he was impris- 
oned, deprived of his private property, and in many ways injured. 
In Mary's reign Sander was restored, and quickly displayed a 
strong feeling of resentment against the " Reformers." He is 
described by his contemporaries as a learned scholar and an 
eloquent expounder of Catholic doctrine. 

There were many men in Ireland who were willing to fight to 
the death ; but treachery and blundering afforded time to Lord 
Grey to mature his plans of action. The maxim of Grey was 
" the rough-and-ready mode of fire and sword." At every side 
the wretched inhabitants were consumed in the flames, and the 
fine young women models of beauty and chastity were seized 
upon and outraged by the ruffian soldiers to an extent that 
caused a forest of hands to be raised to heaven for protection 
and for vengeance. Sander's army of invasion was most disas- 
trous to the people of the south of Ireland ; yet they never up- 
braided him nor sought to betray him, although a large reward 
was offered for his head. He was a brave man, but a fanatic 
beyond a doubt. A few weeks later the scene was changed. The 
incapacity with which the whole enterprise had been conducted, 
and the want of sympathy for even his own countrymen on the 
part of King Philip, created a bitter feeling in Ireland. The 
hanging and quartering was on a large scale of slaughter. Not 
more than seven or eight of the expedition ever returned to Spain. 
On a cold November morning the bodies of six hundred men who 
were hanged from the " nearest trees " were ranged upon the 
sands awaiting the barbarous quartering. The scenes in -the 
Wicklow mountains showed desperate determination. Glenma- 
lure was an appropriate place for an enemy to lie in ambush. An 
experienced officer, Colonel Cosby, was despatched to dislodge 
the " Irish enemy " who were supposed to be under cover here. 

* Teuton's Despatches, vol. ii. 



1883.] IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 373 

Cosby and his troops went unmolested up the narrow valley 
for some distance ; all was silent, no human being to be seen, 
when suddenly the crags and bushes on either side, before and 
behind, became alive with armed men tall, powerful men and 
amidst yells and shouts Cosby 's force was assailed with a storm 
of shot and stones and well-directed arrows. The native assail- 
ants were concealed among the rocks. Another volley and a 
shout of vengeance from the almost unseen enemy caused a 
panic amongst the English troops, who feared to advance one 
side or the other, not knowing what force they had to contend 
against. Terrified in a way that English soldiers rarely expe- 
rience, they looked at one another, and, as if with one mind, 
they flung down their arms and attempted to escape as best they 
could. In the words of Mr. Froude, " the trap had closed upon 
them, and all the officers and almost all the men were destroyed." 

Sir John Perrott, a lord-deputy who was somewhat severe 
in his administration of justice, makes many admissions as to the 
source of Irish hate. The condition of religion he places in the 
front rank. He states in one of his despatches of 1584 that at 
that period there were not more than forty Protestants by birth 
in Ireland. Of course there were a 'few thousand English 
settlers and officials who professed to belong to Protestantism ; 
yet at the approach of death it was often discovered that they 
had been playing a game of hypocrisy, and when terror-stricken 
a messenger was despatched for a confessor. 

In Sir John Perrott's time (1583-4) there was only one 
apothecary in all Ireland, a man named Smythe, otherwise 
" Bottle Smythe." This Smythe, according to all the records, 
was an atrocious villain. He was occasionally employed to 
compound liquids to produce " a long sleep," and it sometimes 
happened that he had to prepare, per order from some unknown 
quarter, draughts for unmanageable politicians or warlike native 
chiefs. Smythe once engaged to drug Shane (Seaghan) O'Neill, 
but the stomach of the " wild Irishman," potently fortified by 
usquebaugh, withstood the effects of the death-draught suggest- 
ed by Lord Sussex.* Shane's " wiseman " said that his master 
" danced the poison out of his skin." 

In a letter of Sir John Perrott, dated from London, October 
3, 1590, he alludes to this transaction on the part of Sussex in 
the following words : " Bottle Smythe gave certaine poysons to 
Shane O'Neile, who escaped very hardlie afther the receipte of 
yt, and yet my Lord of Sussex was reyther thought a discreete 

* Ancient Irish MS. ; Cox's History of Ireland. 



374 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. [Dec., 

man than a perilous man, but a most honourable man and a grave 
gouvernour, as he was indeed." * 

Sir John Perrott was succeeded in the government of Ireland 
by Sir William Fitzwilliam, whose Irish administration may be 
briefly described as a reign of terror. In less than three months 
after his arrival the country was in a far worse condition than 
it had been for fifty years before. Leland observes: "The 
Irish trembled for their safety, and the disaffected became con- 
firmed in their inveteracy." Upon the whole, the Irish admin- 
istration of Fitzwilliam was as mischievous, cruel, aggressive, 
and corrupt as any of the worst of his predecessors had pre- 
sented. The dishonest subordinates in office were permitted to 
carry on the intrigues and schemes for which they were noto- 
rious. 

The name of Shane O'Neill first appears in public affairs 
about 1551, when he was engaged in some rival claims con- 
cerning land with men who were not able to resist his power. 
He is described at this period as a " man who liked to do as 
he pleased with every one." He had little regard for life, and 
would shoot or maltreat a creditor as soon as he might " bring 
down a pheasant." English generals, writing at a later period, 
affirm to their cost that Shane was the most formidable enemy 
they could meet with in Ireland, and that he "observed neither 
treaties nor oaths." But this was a perfect copy of Lord Sus- 
sex. Shane O'Neill's hatred of England seemed beyond reconci- 
liation. Ill indeed did he discharge his duties to the numerous 
vassals who swore allegiance to him and were faithful follow- 
ers in adversity as well as prosperity. He treated all with 
neglect and indifference. Yet he was severe upon others for 
theft, and thought little of hanging one of them from a forest 
tree. A contemporary, O'Donnellan, describes Shane as " half- 
wolf, half-fox. His life was noted for abominable immorality." 
His body-guard were mostly of gigantic stature, brave and fear- 
less of death ; they were likewise true to their master. No 
money could purchase their allegiance. Like Shane himself, 
they were prepared to perish for that creed which they seldom 
practised. At the approach of sickness or death all was changed 
and the soldiers of the cross were earnestly sought for; and 
those good men were quickly at the pestilential bedside of the 
outlaw or the wild mountaineer, who, amidst all his worldly 
infirmities, still clung to the faith which he had received in bap- 
tism. 

* Irish State Papers of Elisabeth's reign. 



1883.] IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 375 

In 1561 Shane O'Neill made preparations for his visit to 
England. According to Camden, he was in London in 1563. 
Upon his arrival in London he had several long interviews with 
Sir William Cecil. Shane's critics soon found him to be a very 
shrewd man, with business habits and deep penetration. Eliza- 
beth received him graciously, and in return he made divers 
oaths, " certifying to his friendship and loyalty to her." The 
decision on his claims was at first deferred by the queen until 
Hugh (Aodh) O'Neill, the young Baron of- Dungannon, should 
arrive and plead his own cause. A report, however, reached 
London that this young baron was killed in a drunken quarrel. 
Elizabeth no longer hesitated to grant Shane O'Neill a full par- 
don and recognize his right of succession to the chieftaincy. 
She further presented him with a present of one thousand pounds 
in gold. Shane was quite delighted at receiving the gold, for 
he was always in needy circumstances. On the following day he 
attended Mass at the chapel of the Spanish ambassador (De 
Quadra) in Ely Place.* The appearance of Shane O'Neill at the 
court of Elizabeth was a matter of more than surprise. The in- 
habitants of London shared in the feeling. O'Neill is described 
as a most powerful man, beyond seven feet two inches in height, 
quite erect, with a large head and face ; his saffron mantle sweep- 
ing round him ; his black hair curling on his back and clipped 
short below the eyes, " which gleamed from under it with a gray 
lustre, frowning, fierce, and savage-like." Shane had a gold chain 
and a handsome cross round his neck, said to be the gift of the 
pope ; and it was further related that the diamond ring he wore 
was a present to him from King Philip, presented on the king's 
behalf by De Quadra, Bishop of Aquila, then Spanish ambassador 
in London. Some forty of O'Neill's body-guard were beside 
him ; they were bare-headed and fair-haired, with shirts of mail 
which reached their knees, a wolf-skin flung across their shoul- 
ders, and short, broad battle-axes in their hands. They were all 
of large size, and seemed almost to worship their chief. O'Neill, 
throwing himself on his face before the queen, offered homage, 
addressing her in Irish. 

* The chapel in question Was rented by the Spanish ambassador from the Protestant bishop 
of Ely, with the sanction of Queen Elizabeth. The Spanish envoy was the prudent De Quadra, 
Bishop of Aquila, who subsequently died at Durham House, in the Strand. This chapel, where 
Da Quadra celebrated Mass and Shane O'Neill "prostrated himself," is now, after many vicis- 
situdes of fortune, once more a Catholic church, with a magnificent stained-glass window pre- 
sented by that zealous Catholic, Henry, Duke of Norfolk. The ancient palace of the bishops of 
Ely, and chapel of St. Ethelreda, the patron saint of the diocese, having been sold about one 
hundred years ago, then became Church of England property. It was again for sale some eight 



376 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. [Dec., 

Shane thought as little of swearing false oaths as the queen 
herself. O'Neill having made submission, he was allowed to see 
" life in London " for some months longer. " The great cousin 
of St. Patrick," as Campion styled him, discovered that he had 
been outwitted by Cecil. His return to Ireland was delayed for 
some time, and he and his retainers continued to be an object 
of interest to the people of London, who received them in a very 
friendly manner. Shane was entertained by the lord-mayor. 
Upon his return to Ireland he violated the treaties and oaths 
compiled for him. He burned the cathedral of Armagh as an 
act of personal revenge against Archbishop Loftus, who in turn 
excommunicated him. But O'Neill laughed at such fulmina- 
tions, and asked could Loftus excommunicate a man who never 
belonged to his religion, adding : " He may curse me as long as 
he pleases, so long as I stand well at Rome." 

During these hostilities the English army met with severe 
losses. A powder magazine was blown up at Derry by a native 
spy, which destroyed General Randolph and seven hundred of his 
troops. An historian relates that the lord-deputy's troops won 
more, victories by stratagem than by force. Indeed, no general 
could be more fully aware of this fact than Shane O'Neill. The 
certainty of English success almost always lay in the treachery 
practised by the Irish chiefs against one another. Gold had' a 
marvellous influence upon the actions of those oftentimes* needy 
chieftains. In one of Sir Henry Wallop's despatches to Cecil he 
writes "that if the Irish were united they would be able, in a few 
months, to compel the English to retire from the island." 

The lord-deputy, having informed the queen of the hopeless- 
ness of conciliating O'Neill, expressed his fears as to the issue, to 
which her highness replied : " Let not your suspicions of Shane 
O'Neill give you uneasiness. Tell my troops to take courage, 
and that his rebellion may turn to their advantage, as there will 
be lands to bestow on those who have need of them.." This sig- 
nificant hint from the queen was well received by the viceroy 
and his council, and had the desired effect of producing subse- 
quent victories. It is strange how long O'Neill evaded all the 
efforts of the officials at Dublin Castle and their emissaries to slay 
or circumvent him. " If," writes Elizabeth, " Shane O'Neill can- 
not be made to fear our royal name and obey our commands, 
then, my Lord of Sussex, your wisdom must suggest some dis- 
creet way of making him less troublesome" The sincere thinker 

years ago (1875), and was then purchased by Father Lockhart, of the Order of Charity. It is 
now a Catholic church. 



1883.] IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 377 

cannot moderate, even by the name of suspicion, his positive 
certainty that Elizabeth learned, without opposition or rebuke, 
the efforts of Sussex to assassinate Shane O'Neill. 

Clannish hate and jealousy made the O'Donnells, Maguires, 
O'Reillys, and other chieftains of Ulster the inveterate enemies 
of O'Neill. They had, however, much reason to complain of his 
tyranny and the unscrupulous manner in which he levied contri- 
butions. It was, of course, the policy of Elizabeth to subsi- 
dize those needy lords, and to reward every follower of O'Neill 
who might betray his interests. These well-concerted measures 
proved successful. O'Neill, finding himself deserted by one, be- 
trayed by another, his soldiers reduced in numbers by pestilence, 
want, and disaffection, was driven to the alternative of seeking 
protection from his Scotch enemies, whom he had often beaten, 
but still treated and regarded as generous foes in battle or 
honest friends in peace. He accordingly, when pursued by Sir 
Henr,y Sydney and sore beset by his hosting, went to Claneboy, 
where the Scotch were encamped to the number of six hundred 
men. He sought the protection of their leader, Alastair Mac- 
donald, who received him with a show of welcome ; but when 
the unfortunate chief lay unarmed upon a couch in his tent 
Macdonald and his officers rushed upon him, and, plunging a 
dozen daggers into his body, exclaimed : " We are now re- 
vengecl." Macdonald sent his head as a trophy to the viceroy, 
who, at the suggestion of Archbishop Loftus, placed it on a pole 
at the gates of Dublin Castle. What a " suggestion " to come 
from a preacher of the Gospel ! A tradition of the times is 
that Loftus had O'Neill's head pickled and sent in a box to the 
queen, who ordered it to be " spiked " at the Tower. 

Sir Henry Sydney describes O'Neill as a brave, cruel man ; 
still, possessed of some good parts and charitable to the poor. 

There can be little doubt that O'Neill was drunken and im- 
moral. He decoyed Janet, Countess of Argyle, from her hus- 
band, and then treated her in a very unkind manner.* He was 
the foremost man of his time at the chase, and a marvellous 
horseman, unconscious of fear or danger. Upon the whole, 
O'Neill's character presents a mixture of conflicting passions ; 
but when those times of civil strife and sectarian hate are con- 



sidered, he was a notable chief and a generous man ; perhaps 
he was worthy of a better fate. 

* Lady Argyle was sister to the noted Scotch peer, Moray, and she was present at the 
murder of Rizzio. After the assassination of Shane O'Neill the countess returned to Edin- 
burgh. She was styled " beautiful Janet," and was attached to the Knox school of politics and 
religion. 



378 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. [Dec., 

Let me introduce a few scenes in Ireland during the military 
command of the Earl of Essex. * Mr. Froude refers to Elizabeth 
in these words : " The queen was not displeased with the mas- 
sacre of the O'Neills in 1574."! Let the reader ponder on one 
or two of those outrages upon humanity and civilization, as 
chronicled by. Mr. Froude himself, and vouched for by the Irish 
State Papers : 

" Report said that during the expedition against Desmond, Sir Bryan 
O'Neill held a suspicious conference with Tirlough Lenogh and the Scots 
of Antrim. It was assumed that Bryan was again playing false, and Lord 
Essex determined to punish him. He returned to Claudboy as if on a 
friendly visit. Sir Bryan and Lady O'Neill received Essex with all hospi- 
tality. The Irish annalists say that they gave him a banquet ; he admitted 
that they made him welcome, and that they accompanied him afterwards 
to the castle of Belfast. Had Sir Bryan O'Neill meditated foul play he 
would scarcely have ventured into an English fortress, still less would he 
have selected such a place for a crime which he could have committed 
with infinitely more facility in his own country. 

"Lord Essex, however, was satisfied that he intended mischief. Essex 
had been deceived by Sir Bryan O'Neill once before, and for avoiding a 
second folly by over-much trust, as he expressed it, 'he determined to make 
sure work with so fickle a people.' " 

Mr. Froude then proceeds to describe " a feast and a massacre " 
after the fashion of what Lord Sussex arranged and carried out 
at Mullaghmast : \ 

" A high feast was held in the hall. The revelling was protracted late 
into the night before Sir Bryan O'Neill and his wife retired to their lodg- 
ing outside the walls. As soon as they were supposed to be asleep a com- 
pany of English soldiers surrounded the house and prepared to break the 
doors. The O'Neills flew to arms. The cry rang through the village, and 
they swarmed out to defend their chief; but, surprised, half-armed, and out- 
numbered, they were overpowered and cut to pieces. Two hundred men 
were killed. The Annals of the Four Masters state that several women 
were also slain. The chieftain's wife probably had female attendants with 
her, and no one was knowingly spared. The tide being out, a squadron 
of horse was sent at daybreak over the water into the ' Ardes,' from which, 
in a few hours, they returned with three thousand of Sir Bryan O'Neill's 
cattle, and with a drove of stud mares, of which the choicest were sent as a 

* Walter, Earl of Essex, subsequently died suddenly. He was supposed to have been 
poisoned by the hired agents of Lord Leicester, who married his widow. Essex was father to 
the royal favorite of that name whom Elizabeth sent to the scaffold. 

i Froude's History of England, vol. xi. p. 181. 

J In the second volume of the Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty I have referred to 
the massacre of Mullaghmast. The English Catholics perpetrated many cruelties against their 
co-religionists of Ireland. The Irish priesthood were unpopular with English rulers of every 
period, because they stood nobly by their oppressed countrymen. 

% Annals of the Four Masters ; Lord Essex to Fitzwilliam. 



1883.] IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 379 

present to Fitzwilliam. Bryan O'Neill himself, with his brother and Lady 
O'Neill, were carried to Dublin, where they were soon after executed." * 

The work of the expedition, however, was not over. Ulster, as 
Lord Essex admitted, was " quiet ; wolves [the Irish] were still 
wolves, to be exterminated whenever they could be caught." 

Mr. Froude describes another massacre that met with " the 
entire approval of the humane and merciful virgin queen." 
The subject has been often chronicled, but from the pages of Mr. 
Froude's work it has an air of historic importance : 

" On the coast of Antrim, not far from the Giant's Causeway, lies the 
singular island of Rathlin. ... It contains an area of about four thousand 
acres, of which one thousand are sheltered and capable of cultivation, the 
rest being heather and rocky. The approach is at all times dangerous. 
The tide sets fiercely through the strait which divides the island from the 
mainland, and when the wind is from the west the Atlantic swell renders it 
impossible to land. The situation, and the difficulty of access, had thus 
long marked Rathlin as a place of refuge for Scotch and Irish fugitives ; 
and besides its natural strength it was reputed as a sanqtuary, having been 
the abode at one time of St. Columba. A mass of broken masonry on a 
cliff overhanging the sea is a remnant of the castle in which Robert Bruce 
watched the leap of the legendary spider. To this island, when Essex en- 
tered Antrim, Macdonnell and the other Scots had sent their wives and 
children, their aged and sick, for safety. On his way through Carrickfer- 
gus, when returning to Dublin, Lord Essex ascertained that they had not 
yet been brought back to their homes. . . . The officer in command of the 
English garrison was Colonel Norris, Lord Norris' second son. Three 
small frigates were in the harbor. The summer had been dry and wind- 
less. The sea was smooth ; there was a light and favorable air from the 
coast. Lord Essex directed Colonel Norris to take a company of soldiers 
with him, and cross over and kill whatever he could find. The run up the 
Antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished. Before an alarm 
could be given the English had landed close to the ruins of the church 
which bears St. Columba's name. Bruce's Castle was then standing, and 
was occupied by some twenty Scots, who were in charge of the women and 
children. Norris had brought cannon with him, so the weak defences 
were speedily destroyed. After a fierce assault, in which many of the gar- 
rison were killed, the chief, who was in command, offered to surrender if 
he and his people were allowed to return to Scotland. The conditions 
were rejected ; the -Scots yielded at discretion, and every living creature in 
the place, except the chief and his family, who were reserved for a heavy 
ransom, was immediately put to the sword, t Two hundred were killed in 
the castle. It was then discovered that several hundred more, chiefly 
mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shore. 
There was no more remorse, not even the faintest shadow of perception 

* Froude's History of England, vol. xi. p. 179. 

t It is probable that the Scotch above alluded to were Kirk Protestants ; but "brave Norris " 
cared not what they were in religion : he supposed they were It is A, 



380 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. [Dec., 

that the occasion called for it. They were hunted out as if they had been 
seals or otters, and all destroyed. ' Surleyboy and the other chiefs,' Lord 
Essex coolly wrote, ' have sent their wives and children into the island, 
which have been all taken and executed to the number of six hundred. 
Surleyboy himself,' he continued, 'stood upon the mainland of the 
Glynnes and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to have run mad 
with sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, and saying that he then lost 
all that ever he had.'* Essex described the scene at the caves as one of 
the exploits with which he was most satisfied. Queen Elizabeth, in an- 
swer to the letters of Lord Essex, bade him tell Sir John Norris (' the exe- 
cutioner of his well-designed enterprise ') that she would not be unmindful 
of his services." t 

Captain Brabazon, an ancestor of the present Earl of Meath, 
received orders to " dislodge and destroy the rebels of certain 
districts in Connaught." This " soldier of fortune " left behind 
him a name as deeply stained with human blood as that of Lord 
Grey. Colonel St. Leger writes from Cork to Sir John Per- 
rott, in 1582, to the following effect : 

'' The country is ruined. ... It is well near unpeopled. Between the 
soldiers and the rebels there were great numbers killed in a barbarous 
manner. The mortalit)' caused by pestilence lately is not like anything of 
the kind ever before seen. There died by famine alone not less than thirty 
thousand in the province of Munster within six months." 

A large number of people were hanged, drawn, and quarter- 
ed in Dublin. Mr. Froude says that the English victory over 
those 

" Miserable people was terribly purchased. Hecatombs of helpless 
creatures, the aged, the sick, and the blind, the young mother and the 
babe at her breast, had fallen under the English sword, and, though the 
authentic details of the struggle have been forgotten, the memory of a 
vague horror remains imprinted in the national traditions. ... To Lord 
Ormonde J the Irish were human beings with human rights. To the En- 
glish (army) they were vermin to be cleared from off the earth by any 
means that offered." 

The country soon partook of the silence and solitude of the 
graveyards, with their churches and abbeys in ruins. One re- 
markable outlaw was still to be hunted down, to be shot by 
English soldiers, or betrayed by his own countrymen for gold. 
The government, having communicated with their spies, offered 

* Lord Essex to Sir Francis Walsingham ; MSS. Ireland ; Carew State Papers. "Sorley- 
boy," as the English spelt his name, was Sorlach buidhe (the "yellow") Mac Alastair. 

t Queen Elizabeth's secret despatches to Lord Essex ; Carew State Papers ; MSS. Ireland ; 
Froude, vol. xi. p. 186. 

J The Earl of Ormond (Oir Mumhan East Munster) was of the Butlers of Kilkenny. 
Froude's History of England > vol. xi. p. 258. 



1883.] IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 381 

a reward for the capture of the Earl of Desmond, dead or alive. 
A priest and a few devoted followers were captured one by one ; 
and those faithful friends who supplied food and shelter to the 
noble outlaw were soon arrested themselves and " at once dis- 
posed of." Desmond was hunted into the mountains between 
Kerry and the bordering ocean. His condition was most de- 
plorablehalf-naked, half-starved, and every moment expecting 
to be in the hands of some sordid wretch who could not resist 
the temptation of gold. Winter was casting its shadows, and 
many of those cold October nights Desmond spent beneath 
hedges and trees, the murmuring of the night winds and the 
falling of the leaves conjuring up the bygone days of youth and 
happiness, and then contemplating the dark and hopeless present, 
with the scaffold and the headsman fast approaching. After 
spending many nights in dreadful suspense he received a lodging 
in a cabin at Glanquichtie, a lonely retreat, far away from the 
busy scenes of life. In this humble place the noble Desmond lay 
down, quite weary of life, upon a pallet in the loft, his beads 
and crucifix in hand. Some time about midnight the house was 
surrounded by English soldiers, accompanied by Donell Mac- 
Donell Moriarty, of the Moriartys of Kerry. The door was burst 
in, and after a few moments' struggle the Earl of Desmond's 
body was flung down from the loft, bleeding from the dagger of 
One of his own kinsmen. The blows were again renewed till the 
assassin party were certain that their victim was dead. Des- 
mond's body was taken to Cork, where it was spiked beside 
the skeleton of his brother, and his head was sent to London as a 
trophy for Queen Elizabeth. Such was the end of the amiable 
Earl of Desmond. 

In September, 1583, Dr. Hurley, the newly-appointed arch- 
bishop of Cashel, arrived in Ireland. From the day he left 
Rome till he landed, in disguise, somewhere between Dublin and 
Carlingford, he was pursued and traced by the agents of Wal- 
singham. He was arrested in Drogheda and carried to Dublin 
Castle, where he was examined before the lords justices (Arch- 
bishop Loftus and Sir Henry Wallop), two well-known " priest- 
hunters." He refused to give an account of himself, and main- 
tained a silence which Loftus considered to be "contempt of the 
queen's authorities." The Irish council wrote to London for 
instructions. The archbishop was informed that unless he 
would give a full explanation of what brought him to Ireland, 
and whether he was one of the pope's emissaries, they would 
apply torture to him. Very strange to relate, the council in 



382 IRELAND UNDER ELIZABETH.' [Dec., 

London had not, up to this period, furnished Dublin Castle with 
the rack. But Loftus had great faith in the " rough-and-ready 
whip on a bare back." Later the " cat-o'-nine-tails " was the pro- 
duction of the Orange Beresfords, of a period not forgotten yet 
in Ireland. After some months' delay a final order came from 
the government in London. A mode of torture was suggested 
by Walsingham. Loftus replies in general terms as to how the 
Irish council acted in this case : 

l( " Not finding that an easy method of examination to do any good, we 
made commission to Mr. Waterhouse and Mr. Fenton to put the said priest 
Hurley to the torture, such as your honor advised us to do, and which was 
to toast his feet against the fire with -very hot boots." * 

Yielding to his dreadful agony, the archbishop made a state- 
ment which showed that he was connected with a political party 
in Rome, and his secret cipher proved that he had been recently 
appointed to the see of Cashel by Pope Gregory XIII. The 
latter incident was declared to be a treasonable matter, although 
not proved to their entire satisfaction. 

Hurley solemnly affirmed that his mission was one of peace 
and charity, and not treason. The lawyers hesitated ; they 
scrupled to find a man guilty of a crime said to be committed 
outside the English territory, and they declined to arraign him 
for treason. They would not, however, permit him to escape. 
Loftus and Wallop suggested, with the queen's approval, it would 
be well to execute Archbishop Hurley without further delay. His 
execution came under the class known as " special martial law,, 
against which he could take no exception." The queen took 
another month to consider the matter, and then " approved of 
the suggestions of Loftus and his colleagues," and " commended 
their doings." The Irish judges persisted in their legal opin- 
ions that there was no case for a trial by a regular jury. The 
opinion of the judges " was set aside by the queen." 

The traditions of the times describe the execution as a most 
barbarous proceeding. It is said that the head was sent to Lon- 
don. The quartering of Archbishop Hurley was followed by a 
number of other executions. The people were struck down at 
every side. The women and children appeared like so many 
spectres, humanity being represented by skeletons covered with 
skin creatures crawling along the roads, unable to walk. Still 
they were pursued and cut down, young mothers placing their 

* Irish tradition relates that melted rosin was poured into his boots, causing a maddening 
torture far worse than the rack. 



1883.] DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. 383 

tattered garments around their infant offspring, in the delusive 
hope of protecting them from sabre blows. The old women, 
with uplifted hands, cried out to Heaven for protection, or ven- 
geance upon their inhuman destroyers. Could Queen Elizabeth 
witness those scenes she might shudder for her " responsibilities." 

A Kerry lady named Fitzgerald, who was charged with in- 
citing the peasantry " to public violence," and, further, " prac- 
tising witchcraft," was hanged by Lord Ormond. This lady 
was deeply regretted by the people of Munster, arid her name 
was long handed down to posterity as the " brave Lady Fitz- 
gerald who defied the Saxon." 

At the conclusion of these massacres the Celtic race had been 
reduced to nearly one-half its number, especially in Ulster, where 
the people fought bravely for their homes. The successor of 
Elizabeth came to the possession of an unenviable inheritance in 
Ireland. His intentions were good, but continuous misgovern- 
ment had enslaved and debased the people ; still, they yearned 
for freedom from successful interlopers, and handed down to pos- 
terity an undying hatred of their oppressors. 



DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY.* 

AND what, pray, is dynamic sociology? These two finely- 
printed and well-bound volumes tell us that it is materialism and 
agnosticism made the law of the land as far as it is safe to do it 
and especially made the law of the children's education. Here 
is a representative of " advanced thinkers " who tells us what 
they propose to do with their doctrines in politics. This book 
tells us what agnosticism, if permitted, will do in the way of 
making laws for the people and training up their children for 
them ; it is agnosticism law-making and men-training. 

Much of the book is devoted to a statement of agnostic doc- 
trines as to what man is. Spencer, Comte, Haeckel are summa- 
rized and their theories in the main adopted. And by these it 
appears that we are not the noble beings we have fancied our- 
selves, our spiritual nature a breathing out of the infinite and 
our animal nature fitted to be a worthy servant of the spirit in 

* Dynamic Sociology ; or, Applied Social Science, as based upon statical sociology and the 
less complex sciences. By Lester F. Ward, A.M. In two vols. New York : D. Appleton & 
Co. 1883. 



384 DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. [Dec., 

achieving an immortal destiny; no, we are animals, and only 
animals. The power of thinking is a brute power. Mind, this 
writer tells us, is in and of itself nothing. It is made up of the 
" relations which subsist between the material molecules of the 
brain and nervous system, and between these and the material 
objects of the outside world which appeal to them by means of 
actual mechanical contact." If one has fancied that his mind has 
been improved, his thinking power regulated and sustained, by 
the study of eternal things, of wisdom, truth, and justice, and that 
the mind must therefore belong to the order of being with which 
it finds itself thus at home, he has been deluded. We might say 
that as the organs of mastication and digestion in a brute prove 
that it does not live on air but on material food, so the craving 
of the human mind for spiritual and eternal things, and its fitness 
to deal with them, nay, the actual necessity it feels of possessing 
them, proves the soul's destiny to be their enjoyment ; but Mr. 
Ward and the agnostics assure us that we are mistaken. " Tan- 
gible facts," he says ; " material objects ; truths, laws, and prin- 
ciples demonstrable either directly by the senses or deducible 
from such as are demonstrable in such a manner that their nega- 
tion is absolutely excluded such are the materials for the intel- 
lect to deal with, such the proper objects of knowledge. The 
only safe kind of knowledge is the knowledge of things. Know- 
ledge of thoughts is unreliable, because thoughts themselves as 
often consist in errors as in truths. The only real knowledge 
is the knowledge of nature. The only important knowledge is* 
the knowledge of science." 

To answer by saying that the illative sense or power of draw- 
ing a conclusion from premises ; the power of deducing from 
facts a law ; the power, so much used by the author's masters, 
of previously outlining a law by hypothesis, and then fitting the 
mosaic of facts into the frame; the power of sorting facts 
together into categories and generalizing their qualities ; the will- 
power of withholding assent and rejecting known facts as mo- 
tives of belief, of considering, pondering, judging, and decid- 
ing, as the ever-recurring why and how rises in the mind to 
answer that these mental functions, the very tools of the trade 
of science, are not tangible nor visible nor any wise deducible from 
any amount of material substance, and are plainly superphysical, is, 
in Mr. Ward's esteem, to set yourself down as a dreamer. What 
is not "capable of analysis," he says, "into simple physical prin- 
ciples " is nothing. " Every rational analysis of human action 
tends to ground it in egoism and assimilate it to animal action." 



1883.] DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. 385 

Human joys, too, are only animal pleasures. " They have their 
origin in the human body, and no matter how much they may be 
etherealized and spiritualized by psychological and intellectual 
influences, they may always be traced back to the body, the 
source of them all, even of the mind itself." 

As to the Christian idea of man, of course it is to him some- 
thing quite unscientific. Indeed, it is his deliberate and settled 
conviction that Christianity has been a calamity to the world. 
Just as the light of true science was about to dawn Christ came, 
he says, " and plunged the world into an abyss of darkness." 
Much is said about our delusions concerning abstract principles 
of morality. The relativity of. all notions of right and wrong is 
insisted on. He ventures as a practical application of this doc- 
trine a not very edifying attempt at a partial justification of 
prostitution, which, he argues, may often be quite a laudable 
means of getting a living. " Life," he bluntly says, " is dearer 
than virtue, and there is often more true virtue in this surrender 
of virtue (prostitution) than there would be in preserving it." So, 
we infer, he would speak of the soldier who flings away his 
musket and runs for his life. It is a greater virtue to save his 
vitals from the risk of perforation than to practise the virtue of 
patriotism under such distressing difficulties. Of course he 
thinks that the doctrine of immortality, by curbing the eagerness 
of men to have present and material joys, has " exerted an ex- 
ceedingly pernicious influence." 

Such being man, how shall he be governed? By dynamic 
sociology. Mr. Ward means by this the application of inge- 
nious contrivances and smooth-working inventions of govern- 
mental force to remedy the evils of society. Lest the reader 
should think we have mistaken his meaning, we quote the opinion 
of the Popidar Science Monthly in its notice of this book : " As 
the reader will perhaps have inferred, the drift of his reasoning is 
towards a great extension of coercive agency and government 
control in the work of social progress." Social progress cannot 
be well secured by human freedom, for the human will is not 
and cannot be free. " Like the universe," says Mr. Ward, " like 
life, like man himself, like the other faculties of mind, the will is a 
genetic product of cosmical law. The illusion consists in sup- 
posing that our will is subject to our orders, that it is in any 
sense free." " If the universe is the theatre of law, freedom is a 
delusion." " Society itself is the domain of law, and its move- 
ments, so far from being sporadic, irregular, and incapable of 
classification or prediction, are the strict, determinable products 
VOL. xxxvin. 25. 



386 DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. [Dec., 

of antecedent causes which can be studied and known by man in 
the same way that the causes of physical phenomena have been 
studied and learned by him by the scientific method." Seeking-, 
therefore, to save the world from misery by appealing to a free 
and generous obedience to men's sense of right, which is the re- 
flection in the soul of its divine Prototype, has been the root 
error of all previous, and especially all Christian, sociology. But 
now, having fathomed the secrets of organic and inorganic na- 
ture and revealed to view its laws, science has but to extend its 
investigations into the region of human society ; the result will be 
the same as it has been with mechanics, chemistry, or electricity. 
A machine overcomes physical obstacles ; it planes a board, or 
binds a sheaf of grain, or transmits sound by adjusting the action 
of certain physical laws ; why should not the laws of human 
society, which are in their initial action as fixed as those of me- 
chanics (argues our agnostic), be similarly used for overcoming 
social difficulties? Only, he insists, because they are yet to a 
great extent undiscovered. But now that science has begun to 
study them they will soon be discovered ; the laws of human 
conduct will be as fully known as those of dynamic chemistry, 
and by the principles of dynamic sociology men can invent 
beneficial governments, just as they have invented labor-saving 
machines. This resemblance of the dynamic legislator to the 
mechanical inventor the writer repeatedly insists upon. 

But what, it may be asked, is to be the form of government? 
Who will discover, who apply, these social forces ? Shall we have 
one great agnostic to do it, or many ? Shall the people elect him, 
or shall the laws of natural selection evolve the man and the laws 
of heredity perpetuate both his capacity and his authority ? Or 
shall we establish an institution to be for our rulers what a stock- 
farm is for our horses a place in which we may cultivate and 
scientifically grade up a certain breed of men and women who 
shall be our perpetual rulers ? We should think that one holding 
the physical and therefore hereditary character of all human 
qualities would favor hereditary aristocracy, or even hereditary 
monarchy, to rule the people. But however doubtful he leaves 
us as to what form of government he may favor, he is quite 
clear as to what kind of education he would set at work, or 
rather keep at work, to bring about a scientific treatment of 
social problems. His form of school is the state school. He is 
for the present government monopoly of education, perfected 
and strengthened and made compulsory. Since education, as 
moulded by his party, is what he would first employ for his pur- 






1883.] DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. 387 

poses, it is well to hear him tell of the results which would fin- 
ally be produced : " The energies heretofore so powerfully di- 
rected to ecclesiastical work would then be directed to educa- 
tional work. The school would fill the place now occupied by 
the church. The scientific lecture would supersede the sermon, 
and the study of natural objects and of standard scientific works 
would form a substitute for a study of sacred writings." 

It will be perceived by this short summary of the book that 
Mr. Ward's theory of government is based on the two funda- 
mental falsehoods of materialism : first, that the river of life is 
known only in its present fleeting current, the springs from 
which it flows and the sea into which it empties and is absorbed 
being alike unknown and unknowable ; second, that in man the 
moral and intellectual are but the beastly appetites in a high 
state of development. 

Not the least injury done by such a book is that it breeds 
scepticism. First principles are in question. If you play with 
the agnostic your only stakes are the title-deeds of rational certi- 
tude. The very primary intuitions of the mind are called in 
doubt, and the axioms of reason are set down lower than the very 
evidences of the senses over which the reason should preside. 
No language can exaggerate the gloom of doubt in an unguarded 
or ignorant mind after reading books like this, which strive to 
trace our spiritual nature to the action of the physical and 
chemical laws of mere animal life. For that is their purpose. 
Some write learned treatises on the natural sciences to insinuate 
that there is no moral being in man, and some write treatises on 
logic to show that there is no absolute truth in human reason- 
ing, and some write absorbing novels, and some bewitching 
poetry, some edit great journals, some teach in schools and col- 
leges, each in his own place and way continually insinuating the 
same fatal errors ; and here comes one to sketch a system of 
government based on the same doctrine of despair that the 
beginning and end of all human life is this poor, dull, deceiving 
world. The forces invoked are but the weaknesses of human 
nature ; that which in one's purest moments he most laments, 
that which gives birth to the torments of remorse and in public 
affairs most disturbs the peaceful use of human liberty, is to be 
made the honor and happiness of mankind. Here we have the 
agnostic attempting the r61e of a political doctrinaire. Having, 
he seems to say, perfected my education as a puller-down of reli- 
gions, I present my card as an architect of governments. MoraF 
sentiments, heretofore considered as the most powerful of human 



388 DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. [Dec., 

motives, and moral excellence, the thing most admired among 
men, I propose to leave out of view as either the highest end 
or the strongest means. I will substitute physical enjoyment, 
actual and present ; that is the dynamic force of our future 
agnostic state. The attractiveness of life so viewed I will teach 
in the schools of the state (and there shall be no other schools), 
and agnostic education shall be the harness in which the people 
shall be broken into the new system. 

An agnostic school ! This book reveals who are the best 
lovers of our present system of secular schooling. Is it not 
strange that agnostics should put such value on the school as a 
means of making men disbelievers, and that yet our Protestant 
brethren fail to perceive its value in making men Christians? 

One of the worst things about agnosticism is the fact, or the 
pretence, that so many of its apostles are men of scientific cul- 
ture. The man who abdicates immortality is often a professor 
in some honored college faculty or a contributor to some purely 
scientific journal. He rises up from his microscope and says 
that there is no God and no future life. We do not say that 
scientific men are generally tainted with such errors, but only 
that leading agnostics are, or claim to be, familiar with the natural 
sciences. Yet the greatest lesson of created nature is its sugges- 
tiveness of the Creator. To collect from the voices of nature the 
being of a sovereign ruler, as a lens collects the rays of the sun, is 
the almost irresistible act of human reason. All nature, all sci- 
ence, agree to testify that there is something else; and the dim 
lights of the simplest mind and its weakest yearnings point to a 
supreme being as its end and destiny. Who can be a philoso- 
pher of true induction, and really know the constant, instinctive, 
irrepressible action of the human soul towards the knowledge 
and enjoyment of the infinite, and not draw out of such pheno- 
mena the necessary being of the Deity ? That our poor bodies 
.and feeble minds shall be re-created in a better world is the in- 
stinctive yearning of the dimmest reason. They who know na- 
ture best are those whose study has emancipated them from its 
thraldom, and not always those who have longest studied na- 
ture's phenomena. The ploughboy whose soul is filled with 
prayer by the breath of the rosy morning, the songs of the birds, 
and the rippling of the brook has been better taught by nature 
than the proud man whose researches, though ever so vast, have 
but filled up with created things that mind which is an ocean 
bed of yearning love to be filled only with the uncreated. What 
a delusion to suppose that " Nature," as agnostics understand it, 



1883.] DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. 389 

can ever be the feeding-ground of a soul ravenous for eternal 
things ! What blindness not to see that prior to all reasoning is 
the objective being of reason ! What an error to begin to in- 
vestigate phenomena before fully establishing the character and 
powers of the investigator! The being which necessarily states 
the problem of infinite existence should demand its solution be- 
fore proceeding to lower tasks. Before reasoning begins the 
mind is equipped for its work. The measures and standards of 
true and false, right and wrong, are found already made for it 
and given to it as the instruments for its use. And as the merest 
inspection of the laws of thought reveals that these standards 
could only be used by a personal being i.e., an individual con- 
scious of his own distinct, unblended life so their source could 
only be a personal being who is absolute reason, and the supreme 
model and master of all subordinate reasoning beings. 

A distinguished writer, Mr. Mallock, has suffered somewhat 
in his reputation by shocking the modesty of the public with his 
pictures of the future of agnosticism. Yet are not the doctrines 
and suggestions of this book simply disgusting and infamous, and 
are they not the logical outcome of agnosticism ? Mr. Ward is 
but an untamed specimen, whose youth was perhaps less in- 
fluenced than that of others by lingering traditions of Christianity. 
His commendation to the public by the editor of the Popular 
Science Monthly, and under the auspices of a first-class publishing 
house, tells us how things are changing, and gives us a warning of 
what we may expect when agnosticism develops all its influen- 
ces when journalists and country gossips, hostlers and railroad 
kings, school-teachers and book-publishers, and members of all 
classes of society, begin to live, and to lead on their neighbors to 
live, without thought of God, or providence, or prayer, or mar- 
riage, or any law but the present physical joys of calculating 
beasts. 

Audacity, however, is attended with the fatality that its only 
victories are surprises. With such light as such frank books 
throw on the purposes of materialists we think that the social 
problems will not be solved by Dynamic Sociology. 






390 ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. [Dec., 



ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE.* 

FUTURE relations between Catholics of England and English 
public life, with a view to their development, can only be fairly 
discussed after we have realized the conditions which exist at 
present or have existed in the past. This, however inadequate- 
ly conceived or imperfectly executed, is the topic of the fol- 
lowing paper. But we must endeavor to perceive the causes 
which led to our position before we attempt to consider in what 
manner and how far, in the future, corporate or individual ac- 
tion may be either possible or politic. 

This effort presupposes two points, on both of which I desire 
to claim your sympathy, or at least to minimize your dissent. 
Of these, the first is that existing relations between English 
Catholics and public life are not absolutely perfect ; they admit 
of readjustment. And, next, if they be imperfect, that sugges- 
tions for their improvement be met with a predisposition to 
excuse friendly criticism which is also impartial. No advance 
of value can be made in any phase of life without mutual in- 
quiries, mutually endured, of the Socratic kind. Criticism is 
misplaced only when it offends against truthfulness, intelligence, 
good taste, or charity. It is a golden rule in criticism to esti- 
mate what is said rather than who says it. 

In this difficult, important problem there are, on the Cath- 
olic side, three independent factors, or factors only partially de- 
pendent on each other. The history, conditions, peculiarities 
of these three factors must be severally estimated at the outset. 
The more briefly this can be done the less will your patience 
be taxed and my ignorance be exhibited. The conclusions ar- 
rived at, however, have not hastily or without thought been 
adopted. A superficial treatment of the topic is alone possible 
in the limits at our disposal. But I venture to hope that, when 
I conclude, others more able than myself will give the " Aca- 
.demia " the benefit of their wider experience. 

In Protestant England Catholics formerly occupied, and 
still to an extent occupy, an anomalous, unparalleled position. 
The restoration of the faith; the establishment of the hierarchy; 
the network of religion again covering the fair face of our 

* A paper read before the Academia of the Catholic Religion at its session, March 13, 1883, 
in the Archbishop's House, Westminster. 






1883.] ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. 391 

country ; the material edifices outward tokens of faith to the 
world being built in all directions ; the slow, steady, obvious 
submission of a sensible proportion of our fellow-countrymen to 
the church this is incomparable with anything of a like sort in 
modern times in any other country. Both former sufferings 
and present immunity from suffering are elements in our ano- 
malous position. As a fraction of national life, Catholics of late 
years, indeed, have emerged from the endurance of active perse- 
cution or of passive disabilities, political, social, religious. But 
the fatal past has not failed to leave its mark ; and the present 
has found us ill-prepared to survive with the fittest in the 
struggle for existence. Ecclesiastical, social, civil influences 
against them have, of necessity, tinged the character of English 
Catholics, not always for the better. They have moulded their 
instincts, stifled their aspirations, limited their sphere of action. 
Centuries of suppression and generations of effacement have 
taken from Catholics not only the power but the will for com- 
bination and union in public life. Divided as they were into 
two sections of great poverty and wealth and these together 
form one of the factors above named of the aristocracy, titled or 
untitled, and the mass of the people professing the old faith, 
there was little political intercommunion between them, po- 
tential or actual. Nor was there, I am assured, a middle class 
worth consideration, impinging alike on rich and poor, which 
tended socially to assimilate the two. Each division of the 
Catholic body, so far as public life was concerned, lived apart, 
thought apart, worked apart. Each division, in family life, did 
its duty towards God, their neighbor, themselves. Both pa- 
tiently bided the time when, in civil and political influence, they 
should severally regain their own perhaps with usury. It 
almost seems as if the patience of that grand and noble feature 
in English history were at last, in God's time and in God's way, 
to be rewarded I mean the hereditary Catholics of England. 

It is not easy to estimate the position of the Catholic poor 
of the period previously to Emancipation. Neither, politically 
speaking, if the- difficulty be insoluble, is the loss of moment. 
Poor English Catholics were too few in numbers and too feeble 
in power to affect political interests in the British state. In all 
probability they did not differ widely from their wealthier 
neighbors, so far as they were influenced by common causes. 
But, though it be more easy to speculate on the mental attitude 
of the upper-class Catholic, it is a nicer and more delicate opera T 
tion. If one may presume to form a judgment on so obscure a 



392 ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. [Dec., 

topic, indifference to the weakness of isolation ; love of seclusion ; 
resentment at interference from without ; a certain amount of 
jealousy and not unnatural suspicion of all parties ; carelessness 
of public life, or care for individual action only, so long as family 
and religious interests were preserved these would appear to an 
observer to be some characteristics of the old Catholic body in 
England. These were some of their idiosyncrasies when the 
period closed of political subservience to, and agitation against, a 
Protestant ascendency ; when the period opened of toleration, if 
not of religious equality. Every one did that which was right in 
his own eyes, conscientiously and charitably. But organized po- 
litical action, or even civil or municipal or social combination, 
was not so much as dreamt of. 

At a certain date and for a certain time observe the con- 
ditions a new element was added to the old historical party of 
English Catholics. The age set in of conversions from the Pro- 
testant Establishment. To the small Catholic population, and in 
the course of a generation, thirty or forty years ago, were added 
hundreds of highly educated and gifted men and thousands of 
men who had at least shown vigor of mind, determination of 
purpose, candor, courage, by leaving the religion of the vast 
majority of Englishmen for the faith of the few for a faith de- 
tested, misunderstood, still abjectly feared, but not still actually 
persecuted. It would be invidious and impossible alike for me 
to attempt to compare or to contrast hereditary old Catholics 
with new converts from Protestantism. He ought to be neither 
the one nor the other who would dare to hold the balance even- 
ly between the two. But this will be conceded by all : Either 
party supplemented the higher, stronger, more enduring, more 
valuable qualities of the other to an extent which made the 
future commingling of both into one only not complete and per- 
fect. To the constancy, devotion, firmness if you will, obstinacy 
of those who have handed down intact the old faith were now 
added the energy, the fire, the zeal, the versatility of those to 
whom it was given to return to the religion of their not very 
remote ancestors from the opinions of their more immediate 
progenitors. What, I ask, was the result of this fusion of ele- 
ments old and new ? 

The answer is plain. Upon the highest and only true form of 
Christianity was grafted some of the better spirit of the present 
age and time. The elder Catholic could boast of all that his- 
tory, family record, persecution, romance, might yield to the 
picturesque and imaginative side of a genuine existence. The 



1883.] ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. 393 

neophyte could offer to the common lot much of the more ma- 
terial and practical side, with its keen sense, its business habits, 
its hard work, of the life of the nineteenth century. The combi- 
nation of these elements, in a fight for national equality now and 
for national pre-eminence hereafter, would, if they coalesced, 
create a powerful party in the state. And to a wide extent they 
have coalesced, loyally and without obvious exception. After 
half a century of common strife with a common foe these two 
English Catholic elements have combined wholly in sentiment, 
aim, and friendship. They have combined also, to an extent, in 
closer bonds, which an uprising generation, the result of mar- 
riage unions between old and new members of the church, have 
cemented and enlarged. And the section which by descent is 
half-convert, half-born-Catholic is one which is destined if I 
may venture on a prophecy to play a conspicuous part in the 
future of English Catholicism. It is so destined, amongst other 
reasons, on this ground : because it contains, as a constituent part 
from which the old Catholic oody was free, an infusion of the 
great middle class of England. 

It must not be supposed that the superimposed stratum of 
convertism was pure, unqualified gain to the common cause. 
No ; it was not. In the absorption of converts from Protestant- 
ism into a body of religionists bearing the features of English 
Catholics this could not be expected. There are converts and 
converts, as well as differentia amongst hereditary Catholics. 
Hence I have been careful to limit the dates and the period of 
this influx into the church from Anglicanism. Friends and foes 
alike concur in the opinion that a wide gulf severs the old con- 
vert of twenty, thirty, forty years ago from the neophyte of 
to-day. From the coarse libels of Dr. Littledale to the candid 
criticism of anonymous writers in the Tablet, all are agreed. 
The one, though slightly quixotic, is a fine, noble specimen of 
humanity, albeit a pervert. The other is a poor creature at best, 
who has just managed to save his soul, and should rest, do no- 
thing, and be thankful. Like many hasty generalizations and 
most detractions, there is a modicum of truth in the last of these 
pictures which it were wise to acknowledge and well to act on. 
Two opposite faults seem to attack the more modern convert 
indolence and fussiness. He becomes either indifferent to every- 
thing outside religion, having once entered the ark of safety, or 
he is over-active, too zealous, absorbed in temporal matters or 
the worldly side of ecclesiastical questions which he has failed 
to master. A tendency to either fault is felt, probably, by those 



394 ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. [Dec., 

even who withstand both. Both failings, of course, must be 
checked. The fussiness of converts if it exists will certainly 
and deservedly be suppressed from without, and need detain us 
no longer. Indolence, or inactivity, or apathy, or indifference, 
or whatsoever term be used, to everything external to the 
church and outside one's self this is a more subtle and a more 
harmful disease. And the disease is this : the practical abdica- 
tion of Catholics, as English citizens, of every form of public life 
an abdication which is nothing short of calamitous, and in its 
effects is almost criminal. With its diagnosis and cure we are 
more intimately concerned on the present occasion. 

This glance backwards has not been a waste of time, if it may 
help us to perceive the relative position of two out of the three 
factors which make up the sum of English Catholicism. We find, 
in the first place, a small, compact, self-contained body of old 
Catholics, the heirs of position, birth, and wealth, bound in ties 
of faith thicker even than blood to the bulk of poorer but 
equally constant members of the 'true church. We find, next, a 
mixed multitude of all ranks, of both sexes, of every age, of all 
professions, who, under the generic name of converts, have boldly 
made the venture of faith, and one by one have joined an insig- 
nificant minority. We have thus a complete section of the com- 
monwealth, high, middle, and lower classes, representing his- 
torical descent, contemporaneous energy, and the mass of the 
people. But the scale on which this section is made, by com- 
parison with other segments of English political life, is small and 
weak. However completely converts and born Catholics may 
have combined together, it were impossible for them to become 
a political force in the state, as the state is now constituted, for 
educating public opinion or for influencing and guiding public 
affairs. 

It is a fact which does not unexceptionally commend itself to 
English Catholics, but it is a fact with which English Catholics 
have to deal, that at the present day in Great Britain the exer- 
cise of political power is ever more and more largely placed in 
the hands of the people. Put the problem in what form you 
please whilst avoiding the question of authority in politics the 
result is equally ignored by many Catholics that we are now 
governed not solely by the upper ten thousand. Almost within 
the memory of some of us the theory of the rule of a personal 
monarchy has been abandoned. All of us can call to mind the last 
act of the legislature which practically changed the government of 
England from that of a numerous oligarchy into one of a limited 



1883.] ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. 395 

democracy. Under the rule of our new masters whom, by the 
bye, we have to educate and as a power in the empire, Catholics 
were but a feeble folk by reason simply of their lack of numbers. 
Given the latter condition in modern politics the power of 
numbers and English Catholicism would become, in proportion 
to its extent, formidable, and, in proportion to its force, irresisti- 
ble. It would become irresistible on this score, as possessing 
what no other political party could so much as pretend to. 
Catholics, however widely divided into opposite camps, possess 
a common basis of action, a common fixity of principle, a com- 
mon singleness of purpose, in all that concerns their common and 
supernatural bond of union the church. This can be said of no 
other political party. This is the distinction which severs the 
Catholic body from all others. This is the specialty which, in 
theory, gives supremacy to Catholics. But then in order to 
enter the domain of practical politics, from which for centuries 
they have been excluded, and to act on the strength of their 
principles, numbers are needed. And of this element of power 
the Catholic body was formerly wanting. It wanted the masses. 
This want, however providentially, as I hold, but in any case 
historically has at length been supplied. 

The only or chiefest want of the Catholic body in England, 
viewed as a section of the state, has been supplied during the 
past thirty to forty years. It has been supplied to this extent. 
According to trustworthy accounts, we are now more than 
seven times as numerous as we were before. Old Catholics and 
converts combined are supposed to form an aggregate of some 
two hundred thousand souls. The Catholic population of Great 
Britain may be estimated at a million and a half. Our numerical 
position has been achieved by the emigration first and then by 
the multiplication of fellow-Catholics from the sister island, who 
now number about one million two hundred and fifty thousand 
souls. 

This accession of strength to the Catholic cause in England 
observe this addition to the main point of its weakness and in 
the very source from which political power now flows, ought to 
be a subject of gratulation to all who look for the ultimate 
return of their country to the unity of the faith. There is no 
need to dwell oa the irony of fate which meets us here. The 
race more mercilessly ill-governed and more savagely perse- 
cuted for its faith, and for a longer length of time, by a profess- 
edly Christian country, than any nation known to history, heaps 
coals of fire on the head of her persecutors. She becomes their 



396 ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. [Dec., 

deliverer and their evangelist. But we may deal with facts. 
And if public events can be traced backward from effect to cause, 
the church in England owes politically everything to Catholic 
Emancipation ; and Emancipation, be it remembered, was the 
boon to the Saxon from the Celt. Without Ireland, England 
would not have yielded, at all events did not yield, Emancipation. 
And since that date the progress of the church has been one 
continued and almost triumphant advance. She has developed, 
without a check worth naming, in every conceivable way in out- 
ward organization, in material buildings, in converts to the 
faith, in municipal and political power ; amongst other ways, in 
sheer strength of numbers. In all human probability what is 
happening before our eyes in America will be repeated in kind, 
if not in degree, not many years hence in England viz., this : 
Catholicism will take its natural place as a powerful influence for 
good. Such a result will be due, or any result which approxi- 
mates to it will be due, to the third factor in the Catholic body 
of which we have spoken ; the factor which is six times as 
numerous as both the others combined ; the factor which is 
Irish by nationality, indeed, but is British perhaps by birth, 
possibly by marriage, certainly by circumstance, adoption, and 
choice. 

Within the bounds of these three factors the old Catholics, 
the new Catholics, and the poor Catholics are contained both 
the agents and the agency by which our co-religionists may 
again enter upon the rights and duties of public life in England. 
These questions, then, have to be answered : How are we to 
apply the means to the end? How can we find Catholics will- 
ing to take action ? How shall we support them when they are 
found? Both ability and time compel me to attempt a reply in 
the most superficial manner ; and I ask for indulgence in making 
the attempt even in general terms. 

It may be a sanguine sentiment, but I believe it to be true, 
that a new era politically is opening, or has opened, to the church 
in this country. In spite of many adverse influences for which 
history, persecution, effacement, custom are responsible against 
English Catholicism, one hopeful fact, which is almost prophetic, 
cannot be denied. A new generation is rising, half-convert, half- 
hereditary-Catholic by descent. It is rising at the very time 
when new political power is being yearly added to the church 
by the multiplication of her numbers. The problem, then, 
amounts to this: How may we apply to the energy, culture, 
talent, zeal, now in its early manhood amongst us, the latent, 



1883.] ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. 397 

dormant, but real force made ready to our hand in the power of 
numbers of our Catholic masses ? 

There are two elements in such a national and religious prob- 
lem for it is both. First, we must secure agents by whom and 
on behalf of whom the interest and good-will of the Catholic 
majority may be excited. And then we must create a Catholic 
constituency by whose co-operation these agents may take their 
place in the government of the country. These elements would 
act and react upon each other. They indicate two needs of the 
Catholic body at the present day. These needs are, first, the want 
of men of public spirit and social influence willing to take their 
position in the world ;-and, second, the want of men sufficiently nu- 
merous to return for public service such leaders in the work of Ca- 
tholic restoration. If leaders of thought and action can be found 
there will be no difficulty to discover those that will follow. If 
we can create a constituency which is content, nay, anxious, to 
follow, leaders of men will spontaneously appear. The chief 
difficulty will be this : for which of the two are we, in order of 
time, to seek first? Perhaps we had better seek for both at one 
and the same time. We must urge, if needful we must spur, 
members of the Catholic upper orders or middle class to answer 
to the call of public duty or self-sacrifice when it is sounded. 
We must stimulate the Catholic million, the toiling masses 
Saxon or Celtic, or both combined to be ready for one, perhaps 
for two contingencies. They must support those who consent 
to do them service, for the sake of the cause ; or they must pro- 
duce from themselves competent men to act as their representa- 
tives. 

Are these statements too vague and intangible for serious 
treatment ? If they be so I would say more plainly : Catholics 
must aspire not only to the highest form of public service ; they 
must be content to fulfil the lowest duties in the state. Many a 
young fellow enjoys the vision of a career at St. Stephen's who 
is little pleased to serve as a vestryman in the Tower Hamlets. 
Catholics ought, though not the same Catholic ought, to be both 
in Parliament and on the vestry. Between the two we ought 
to take our fair share in every other department of public life. 
We must force our way, in spite of lords-lieutenant, upon the 
bench of magistrates. We must manage to be pricked as high- 
sheriffs. We must wear the gilded chains of municipal office as 
councillors or mayors. We must take the thankless, useful office 
of guardian of the poor. We must stand for that onerous, pay- 
less, costly post a seat on the school-board. We must be will- 



398 ENGLISH CA THOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. [Dec., 

ing to take office, aldermanic or other, under the coming new- 
act for the better government of London. We must secure the 
ministrations of our clergy for the army and navy and the Indian 
service. We must open wide the doors of our hospitals, work- 
houses, jails to the like influences for their Catholic inmates. 
And the majority of our fellow-believers, the Catholic population 
of England, must to these ends heartily offer us their support. 
They will support us when they see us anxious to take our place 
in the government of the nation. They will support us when we 
have made them take their place in the electorate of the country. 
We shall in turn be given support and give back support when 
we desire to re-enter public life by means of, and not apart from, 
the masses who are Catholic ; when we are content to defend 
all genuinely Catholic political interests, even at the expense of 
party politics ; when, in a faithless country, we honestly make 
our own the ills, the sorrows, the distress of all who are of the 
household of faith, be they the poor, the sick, the young or aged, 
the ignorant or criminal, the unrepresented or the badly gov- 
erned. 

Little more need be said on a question which admits of end- 
less discussion, in order to make this paper practically sugges- 
tive. But two further points demand consideration : 

I. It is difficult to suggest any practical means for supplying 
the deficiency of candidates for the public service of the state 
amongst the rising generation of Catholic youth. We cannot 
force upon any one a vocation in the commonwealth which may 
not be inspired or accepted freely. We cannot give political 
mission to any one in spheres in which we have no authority. 
Still less can we, at a moment's notice, supply to any one defi- 
ciencies in education, training, or habit of mind which prevent 
him from answering a summons to public life. The utmost we 
can do is to point to the needs of the church ; to affirm that such 
needs are imminent ; to stimulate the self-devotion of her sons ; 
and to trust that some of her sons will devote themselves to 
supply the church's necessity. Lest, however, I be accused of 
arguing under the shadow of generalities, I will shortly recall 
three facts to indicate the extent to which English Catholics 
abstain from the duties of the state. They will be taken from 
well-known Parliamentary, educational, and poor-law statistics. 
They will at least be suggestive of the poverty of our present 
efforts after public life : 

i. At this moment we have but a single Catholic member of 
Parliament sitting for an English borough or county. Recent 



1883.] ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. 399 

calculations show that, according to our population, we ought 
to have seven-and-twenty members. In some cities Catholics 
can command one-third of the municipal votes. In others they 
form one-third of the population.* 

2. In the late school-board elections almost every Catholic 
who stood was elected always high on the poll, sometimes at 
the head. This was in the provinces. London, which on every 
ground ought to have taken the lead, was the most striking 
exception. Out of ten metropolitan boroughs four Catholic 
candidates only went to the poll ; of the four, only two were 
successful. 

3. The Catholic Union Annual Report for last year, amongst 
other important services rendered by that society to the church, 
congratulated itself upon forty or fifty additional Catholic guar- 
dians of the poor. How many thousands of guardians in England 
there may be I know not ; but I do know that there exist six 
hundred and fifty distinct poor-law unions and upwards of fifteen 
thousand parishes. 

II. It is not difficult to suggest a means by which power may 
be added to the church, both politically and socially, through 
her newly and unexpectedly acquired force. But, if it be not 
difficult, the attempt is not unattended with danger. Party 
spirit runs high on this, as on other questions. Here and now 
it would be unwise to increase the agitation. To this end, and 
in the few concluding words which follow, I shall eschew all 
allusion to the highest form of public life to which Catholics may 
aspire, and will confine myself to the lower. I shall also avoid all 
reference to the nationality of the third factor of Catholicism of 
which we have thought, and will speak of them, as I am justi- 
fied in speaking of them after sojourning amongst us for more 
than a generation, as naturalized English citizens. 

There are two ways of dealing on behalf of the church, and 
in regard to social, educational, and municipal matters, with this 
immense majority of English-speaking Catholics. The two ways 
are these : First, if it be not an Hibernianism to say so, to 
ignore them entirely and to let them alone. Secondly, to own 
their existence, their importance, their power for the good of 
the Catholic cause, and to utilize them. The latter of these two 
methods is the one which I hold to be sensible, just, politic ; 
which I would urge on all who will be persuaded, as needful and 

* Since this paper was read it has been asserted in the newspapers that the Catholic vote 
will be enabled, at the next general election, to turn the scale in about seventy-five elections. 
In how many boroughs or counties, up to the present time, have Catholics endeavored to es- 
timate, concentrate, or utilize for the service of the church this vote ? 



4oo ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND PUBLIC LIFE. [Dec., 

even inevitable. As England is now governed, in the spheres 
we are discussing, by the will of the people, the Catholic will of 
a Catholic people must be influenced. This can only be done 
by ascertaining their number, by combining their force, by 
stimulating their intelligence, by counteracting their prejudices, 
by guiding their opinion and decision. And all by personal in- 
fluence, which has been and may again be secured. Of course, 
union being power, all our efforts presuppose the registration of 
the Catholic vote. Whether such registration be effected by 
local and individual action, or by general, central, and corporate 
action, I pause not to inquire. But registration must be had if 
Catholics would again enter public life, as public life now exists 
in Great Britain. If registration be neglected we shall remain, 
as we are, politically powerless. 

One final thought may be added. Late legal decisions have 
enormously increased the power of the Catholic vote, even in 
municipal elections, and the like is true of politics. I speak of 
the case of the lodger rate-payer's vote ; but I have not heard of 
its wide utilization, and I know where it has been entirely neg- 
lected. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that in this, as 
in all questions under debate, the two upper-class factors of En- 
glish Catholicism have, consciously or unconsciously, yet abso- 
lutely, neglected the third factor the factor which is, politically 
speaking, the most powerful, the factor which alone is powerful. 
They neglect not in works of charity, God forbid ! but in a 
wide sense of the word politically the day-laborer, the skilled 
artisan, the petty tradesman, the shop-assistant behind the coun- 
ter, the ill-paid clerk at his desk ; they neglect, in a word, the 
working orders of Catholics. These form the material from 
which political power will flow in the future, does flow at the 
present. These, living perhaps in a single attic of a house of 
ratable value, are held (under conditions) to be rate-payers and 
are entitled to a vote. These are the elements on which the 
convert, the old Catholic, or one born of both may work for the 
cause of holy church. We can gain nothing for her cause if we 
ignore these elements. We can gain much, perhaps all, if we 
utilize them. The Catholic Church herself has ever been, and 
still is, on the side of the masses. The Catholic Church has ever 
been, and still is, the poor man's friend. We cannot be wrong in 
following her example. We ought not to forget that her divine 
Lord and Master lived the life of a village carpenter. 



1883.] ARMINE. 401 



AR^INE. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

IT was like a terrible evil dream to Egerton that fearful 
scene through which he had passed when he found himself 
again in Paris, shattered, bruised, and with a broken arm 
which it was necessary to submit to a surgeon at once. But 
this was not his first duty ; his first was to dictate a few lines 
to D'Antignac and send them by his servant. 

" I do not know," he said, after stating briefly all that had 
occurred, " where Mile. Duchesne is to be found ; but I 
would suggest that Mile. d'Antignac should, if possible, go to 
her, since I am sure there are no lips from which she could 
better receive this sad and shocking news. I will see her as 
soon as she is able to receive me. If Mile. d'Antignac sees 
her, may I beg that she will say this?" 

But some time elapsed before Mile. d'Antignac was able 
to see Armine. In the first place, it proved difficult to dis- 
cover her whereabouts. At the apartment in the Rue Neuve 
des Petits Champs no one was to be found. The concierge 
reported that even Madelon was gone and he did not know 
her address. Was she with Mile. Duchesne? He shook his 
head ; he did not knotv, but thought not. Mademoiselle went 
away one day with her father ; Madelon did not leave until a 
day or two later, and although it was true that she might 
have gone to join mademoiselle, he did not think so. 

" What am I to do ? " said Helene when she went back to 
her brother. " How am I to find this poor child ? " 

D'Antignac answered : " You can only wait. Sooner or 
later she will be heard of in the Rue Neuve des Petits 
Champs, and if you told the concierge to let you know when- 
ever he had any tidings of her or of Madelon " 

" I told him .that, of course, and emphasized it with the 
promise of reward for such tidings." 

" Then nothing else remains to be done. You can only 
wait with such patience as you are able to command." 

" Which is none at all when I think of her," said Helene 
in a tone full of distress. " What must she be suffering, alone 
or worse than alone my poor Armine ! " 
VOL. xxxvin. 26 



402 ARMINE. [Dec., 

" She is suffering a great deal, no doubt," said D'Antignac ; 
" but not even your presence and your sympathy could 
relieve her grief now. Let that be your comfort for not find- 
ing her. In the first agony of such a shock consolation is 
so impossible that it really matters little what influences sur- 
round the sufferer." 

Helene shook her head. " I cannot think that," she said. 
" However much we are absorbed in grief, we must be con- 
scious of sympathetic or unsympathetic surroundings. And, 
unfortunately, though we cannot tell what her present sur- 
roundings are, we may fear that they are very far from sym- 
pathetic." 

" Perhaps, then, this fact may lessen her grief for the 
father who placed her in them." 

" Ah ! " said Helene, " it seems to me that, on the contrary, 
it would make it more bitter. How proudly, until the last 
time that she was here, she always dwelt upon her father's 
integrity of purpose ! How often she spoke of his unselfish- 
ness and unvarying kindness to herself ! And now I do not 
see a ray of consolation to which she can turn." 

" Of earthly consolation there is none for her," said D'Antignac 
sadly. " But her faith is strong. We must pray much for her." 

Days passed without bringing them any tidings. The 
journals every morning were full of the fearful accident which | 
had occurred, the additional particulars that each succeeding 
day brought to light, and the progress of the investigation j 
into the cause of the disaster. Ducheshe's death was undoubt- 
edly the greatest sensation connected with the event. The I 
radical press had columns upon columns of panegyric and I 
lamentation for him ; a grand civic funeral was decreed, by I 
which . his late associates strove at once to do honor to his | 
memory and excite popular feeling in their own behalf; 
while the meeting to attend which he was on his way when ] 
the awful catastrophe happened was adjourned over for two 
days, and most of the brother delegates of the dead revolu- ] 
tionist stood around the grave in Ptre la Chaise to which his 
mangled remains were consigned with mingled eulogy of the 
life and labors thus so mournfully and prematurely cut short, 
and mad denunciations of the existing order of things. 

" But this is horrible ! " said D'Antignac, dropping one 
of the papers he had been reading to the couch on which 
he lay. " Poor child ! how will she endure all that she is 
.compelled, I fear, to see and know of this madness ? " 



I883-J . ARMINE. 403 

" It is indeed terrible for her," said Helene, turning, with 
mixed sensations of disgust and heart-sick sympathy for 
Armine, from the furious and blasphemous diatribes pronounc- 
ed over the body o( Duchesne, at which she, too, had been 
glancing. Looking up as she spoke, she saw that her brother's 
face, usually so serene, wore a more perturbed expression than 
she had seen on it before for years. She was almost startled 
to perceive how seriously disquieted he evidently was ; and, 
rising at once, she said with decision: 

" I will go again and see if I can hear anything about 
her. I think the concierge would surely have kept his word 
and informed me if he had learned her whereabouts ; still, it 
will do no harm to try and gain some intelligence." 

" Inquire of the concierge where Madelon might be heard 
of," said D'Antignac. " Even if she is not with Armine, and 
does not know where the poor child is, she may be useful in 
tracing her." 

"Yes," said Helene quickly. "I remember now that 
Madelon has a sister, or some relative, whom she used to visit 
frequently. I will endeavor to find out where this person 
lives." 

When she was gone D'Antignac put his hand under his 
pillow, and, drawing out his rosary, began to tell the beads, 
his countenance as he did so regaining its wonted peaceful 
look, though there was still sadness in the thoughtful gaze 
which wandered from its near surroundings to rest on the 
blue depths of sky far away. But this sadness did not last 
long. When after, comparatively speaking, a brief absence 
his sister returned disappointed from her quest, he looked up 
to her troubled and sorrowful countenance with a quiet, almost 
cheerful smile. 

" We must be patient," he said. " Poor child ! it is hard 
for her ; but she is in the hands of God, and therefore safe." 

" Yes," said Helene; "and yet, though I blame myself for 
it, I cannot but fqel afraid for her. She is so young so 
utterly alone! And where can she have been taken? Per 
haps out of Paris*! It seems that she left some days before 
her father started on his fatal journey, and that her luggage 
was carried with her." 

" I am not afraid for her," said D'Antignac. " I have been 
thinking it all over while you were away. As for Duchesne 
! himself, God have mercy on his soul; but so far as Armine 
is concerned, his death is the best thing that could possibly 



404 ARMINE. [Dec., 

have happened for her. It has delivered her not only from 
outside dangers, the tyranny and persecution to which she 
would doubtless have been subjected which, indeed, had al- 
ready begun but from the worse danger of interior strife ; 
the constant battle between nature and conscience ; the ex- 
quisite pain of being obliged to elect between antagonism to 
her father and unfaithfulness to God. The suffering is sharp 
now ; but time will assuage that, and whatever her future 
life may prove, it is scarcely likely that it will be so painful 
as the past." 

At this point in the conversation, and before H61ene had time 
to reply, the door opened and a servant informed her that Mile. 
Duchesne's maid wished to speak to her. 

" Bring her into the salon at once, Cesco," Mile. d'Antignac 
said eagerly, and hurried out to meet the welcome visitor. She 
remained away but a moment. 

" I see that Madelon has brought good news," said D'An 
tignac, as she approached with the smile which her brilliant 
eyes and white teeth made so flashing. 

"News that satisfies me, for the present at least," she an- 
swered. " The poor child has just returned to the Rue Neuve 
des Petits Champs, and Madelon entreats me to go to her." 

" Go, by all means, and at once, ma sceur, " he said. " You 
will bring her back with you ? " 

"Of course, if I can. But I fear that it may not be easy to 
persuade her to come." 

" Why ? " he asked with some surprise. 

" Madelon is, you know, a dull, uncommunicative creature, 
who has neither the will nor the power to express herself clearly,] 
and I can only gather from the little she says that she is veryl 
uneasy about Armine. ' Mademoiselle is changed mademoiselle] 
is changed,' was almost all that I could extract from her." 

" Naturally such a blow as this, succeeding as it? did great 
trouble of mind, must affect her sensibly," he said. " But l] 
agree with you ; I am satisfied for the present to know that 
she is safe and in Paris." 

Mile. d'Antignac had never been in the apartment in the Rue 
des Petits Champs before, and when Madelon opened the door 
of the small salon and ushered her in she almost shivered, so 
dreary and uninhabited did the place look ; for now there was 
no cheerful fire burning, no fragrance of violets on the air, no- 
thing of the atmosphere of home-life and refinement of taste, 
which had so pleased Egerton's fastidious eye on the night when 



1883.] ARMINE. 405 

he first made the acquaintance of the Socialist and his daughter. 
Dismantled of all the graceful prettiness with which Armine 
had surrounded herself when its inmate, it was merely in ap- 
pearance " an apartment to let," and Madelon, without pausing, 
crossed the floor, lifted the portiere which draped the entrance 
to what had been Duchesne's study, and motioned Mile. d'An- 
tignac to pass in. 

There was something inexpressibly sad to Helene in the 
aspect of this room. It was evident that it remained just as its 
late owner had left it. Chairs were sitting about, the table wore 
that air of orderly disorder so characteristic of an intellectual 
worker; and at one side of this table, just opposite an empty 
arm-chair that looked as if its occupant had risen from it but the 
moment before, sat Armine. 

As Helene's eye fell on the girl she was struck with a sense 
of surprise. She had, even before Madelon's advent and re- 
port, naturally expected that Armine would be much affected 
by the terrible calamity which had befallen her had expected, 
indeed, that she would be overwhelmed by grief. And Madelon 
had said that she was " changed, changed." But at a first glance 
there seemed no change at all to be observed. The girl was 
sitting in shadow, it is true, so that her face could be seen im- 
perfectly only ; but her attitude and air were so natural and 
familiar, as she leaned back in her chair with hands clasped be- 
fore her and eyes fixed in quiet thought, apparently, on the table, 
that Helene stood still gazing at her in momently increasing 
amazement. 

Suddenly becoming conscious of the gaze, Armine lifted her 
eyes, and, perceiving the presence of her visitor, rose quietly to 
receive her. 

" It is very good of you to come to me, dear Mile. d'An- 
tignac," she said, advancing ; and after her usual affectionate 
greeting she led the way into the salon, seated Helene on a 
couch beside an open window, and stood before her while 
asking after D'Antignac. 

Helene replied mechanically to the inquiry, for the broad 
light that now fell over the girl showed that Madelon had 
spoken truth. Armine was changed ; that homely and familiar 
phrase, which is so expressive, rose to Helene's mind : " She 
does not look like herself." 

Yet the alteration was so subtle, so intangible, that it was 
some little time before Mile. d'Antignac could define in what 
it consisted. It was not that the always pale face was now ab- 



4o6 ARMINE. [Dec., 

solutely bloodless, nor that the delicate features had that sharp 
chiselling in all their lines, but especially about the nostril, which 
the touch of suffering alone can give ; such signs of grief as 
these are too ordinary to excite surprise. Voice and manner 
seemed thoroughly natural quiet and subdued, but not more so 
than usual, H61ene thought. " Perhaps," she said to herself, 
" it is the absence of the emotion which is naturally to be ex- 
pected that gives so strange an impression " ; but the instant 
afterwards she knew this could not be so. Of emotion actively 
expressed there was no trace whatever ; yet it was impossible 
to look at Armine without feeling that the iron had entered 
her soul and was piercing it to the core. 

After the question about D'Antignac's health had been asked 
and answered there was a momentary pause. H61ene hesitat- 
ed to allude to the death of Duchesne, and Armine sat silent, 
thought-absorbed apparently. But at length the former said 
caressingly : " You will come home with me, my child, will you 
not? Raoul and myself both wish it." 

As Armine looked up to reply H61ene saw where it was 
that the change lay. It was in the eyes and mouth. 

" Thank you," she answered. " Yes, I will gladly come, since 
you are so kind as to let me ; but not yet. I have to stay here 
for a while." 

" But cannot you come with me now and return to-morrow ? 
Raoul will be disappointed if I do not bring you back with me," 
said He"lene persuasively. 

" I wish I could go," the girl answered. ' " But I must re- 
main here now ; there is business to be attended to before I 
leave." 

She pointed toward the room they had left, and went on in 
the same calm manner which seemed so unnatural under the 
circumstances. 

" Dear Mile. d'Antignac, I see that you are surprised at me. 
I am surprised at myself. I do not know what is the matter 
with me. I thought at first that I was stunned, and that that 
was the reason of my feeling so strangely. But there has been 
time for sensation to return, and it does not come. My heart 
seems dead. It has no sensation. I cannot even think steadily 
of what has happened. My thoughts wander off on trifles. I 
feel utterly indifferent about everything." 

" You are stunned," said He"lene. " It is with our hearts as 
with our bodies a sudden and terrible shock paralyzes for a 
time." Then, as a neighboring clock struck the hour, which 



1883.] ARMINE. 407 

was later than she had been aware, she rose to go. As she 
took the girl's hand to say adieu a sudden rush of pity caused 
her to clasp the slender form in her arms and say warmly : 
" O my dear ! I grieve that I can do nothing to comfort you. 
But Raoul he surely can ! " 

Armine shook her head. ".Even he can do nothing for me," 
she said. " Yet I would go to him, if I could. But there are 
people men to be here to-night. I must see them. And 
this" 

She touched her dress, and Helene for the first time no- 
ticed that this dress was not black and said : " I should have 
thought of that. Let me go and see to it at once." 

" You are very good," said Armine ; " but it is needless. 
Madelon is attending to it." 

" Then, my dear Armine, God be with you ! I will see you 
again to-morrow, and will pray for you." 

" Yes, pray for me," said Armine. " I cannot even pray 
for myself." 

D'Antignac listened silently as his sister described her 
visit, nor did he speak for some minutes after she had con- 
cluded the narrative. Then he said with a sigh : 

" She is in very deep waters. There is a terrible passage of 
suffering before her, and it may last long. But she has an 
heroic spirit, a pure heart above all, a single intention. The 
last will sustain her against the despair that threatens to over- 
whelm her." 

" Her impassiveness gives me a strange feeling of terror," 
said Helene. " It is so unnatural. It is impossible but that a 
reaction must come. Looking at her face, 'I should not have 
been surprised to see her burst at any moment into convulsive 
raving." 

Raoul shook his head. " That is not the danger I appre- 
hend," he said. "I am afraid that her physical strength may 
become exhausted, and that she may sink into a low fever or 
congestion of the brain. By the way, did you tell her that 
Egerton wishes to know when she can see him ? " 

" Oh ! I quite forgot his request. But it does not seem to 
me that it would be well to put any additional strain upon her 
just now. Don't you think Mr. Egerton ought to wait until 
she is better able to bear it?" 

"No; that would only be to reopen the wound when it 
was beginning to close. A little more or less in the way of 



408 ARMINE. [Dec., 

endurance does not matter much at present, while the capa- 
bility of suffering is almost paralyzed. She ought to be told 
now everything connected with the accident which she is ever 
to know. And this message of her father's she must, of course, 
hear. Egerton called during your absence, and at my request 
promised to return this evening if- he finds himself well enough 
to make the exertion. I hoped that she would be here, and 
that he might thus discharge himself of a duty which he evi- 
dently feels to be very oppressive, and at the same time get 
the interview over for her. Of course it must be a very pain- 
ful one on both sides." 

" How is his arm to-day?" 

" The surgeon considers it to be going on favorably ; but 
he says that his whole body is one huge bruise, which makes 
movement difficult and excessively painful." 

Glancing up to Helene's face as he ceased speaking, D'An- 
tignac read a thought in her eyes which brought a slight smile 
to his own. But he said seriously : 

" How do we know that what appeared an idle whim, his 
tampering with Socialism and its expounders, may not prove to 
have been, if not providential, yet useful in its results ? Useful 
as regards Armine's interests, at least ; for I judge, from a few 
words which he dropped, that her father entrusted a message 
of great importance in connection with her future life to him. 
Now, if he had not accompanied Duchesne on this wild expe- 
dition, probably Duchesne would have died without having 
the opportunity of speaking. He survived the accident only 
about an hour, and all was confusion around. There was no 
one else near him in whom he could have reposed confi- 
dence." 

" I hope," said Helene a little drily, " that this message may 
not prove to be an attempt to exercise a posthumous tyranny 
over poor. Armine." 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

EGERTON did not return that evening ; but the next morn- 
ing, at the earliest hour possible for a visit, he presented him- 
self, asked first for Mile. d'Antignac, and on learning that she 
was out gave his card, requesting that it might be taken to 
Mile. Duchesne. 

" But Mile. Duchesne is not here, monsieur," said Cesco. 



1883.] ARMINE. 409 

" Not here ? " said the young man. " I understood from M. 
d'Antignac yesterday that she would be here in the evening." 

The servant could only repeat the fact already stated : she 
was not here. An apartment had been prepared for her, but 
she had not yet come to take possession of it. Should he 
inquire if M. d'Antignac could see M. Egerton? 

The latter hesitated a moment, then said no, he would not 
intrude on M. d'Antignac at that early hour ; and, re-entering 
his fiacre, drove to the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs. 

That his sensations were not enviable as he proceeded 
thither it may well be conceived. Hitherto his business in 
life had been to seek amusement ; now he suddenly saw himself 
confronted by a stern and most disagreeable duty a duty he 
had, gratuitously as it were, brought upon himself, inasmuch as 
he had put himself in the position which caused it to be de- 
manded of him. Playing with fire is proverbially a dangerous 
amusement ; and of this trite truth, as apposite to his associa- 
tion with Duchesne, he had been reminded often enough and 
earnestly enough for the warning to have produced some 
effect, if it had ever occurred to him to give a thought to such 
warning. The danger of entanglement on one side or illusion 
on the other was over for him, if it had ever existed ; but he 
felt that the brief association with Duchesne, so idly formed 
and so tragically ended, was not a mere episode in his life, but 
an epoch, for it had left results that might in more than one 
way affect the whole of his future. Even before Duchesne's 
death the thought had several times occurred to him, with a 
surprise not untinctured by awe, that if he ever attained to 
Christian belief he would have to date the dawn of such belief 
from his acquaintance with this enemy of Christianity ; since 
but for his Acquaintance with Duchesne himself he would not 
have known Armine, and but for the strong impression made 
upon him by words that had fallen now and again from her 
lips, suggesting trains of thought and logical sequences never 
before presented to his mind, the Catholic Church would have 
remained to him a terra incognita with which he was not likely 
to come into sufficiently unprejudiced contact for his intelli- 
gence to regard it impartially. It would be too much to say 
that the virtual act of faith made by him when Duchesne was 
dying merited that illumination of soul necessary to the full 
reception of Catholic truth. The act was but an instinctive 
impulse of the spiritual nature the involuntary recognition 
of his Creator by the creature in a moment of strong emotion. 



4i o ARMINE. [Dec., 

During the period of intense bodily pain and nervous prostra- 
tion which followed the very recollection of that lightning- 
flash of faith was forgotten ; but only for the time. Light had 
irradiated the dark places of his soul once, and now he was not 
unwilling to say, "Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief." 

On arriving at his place of destination he alighted once 
more, and, in very much what may be supposed to be the frame 
of mind of a man about to storm a battery, slowly and painfully 
mounted au quatrtime. 

On the stair he met Helene, who was descending. She 
stopped and shook hands with him warmly, inquiring with in- 
terest about his health. " I don't know whether you are most 
to be condoled with or congratulated, Mr. Egerton," she said. 
" A broken arm and such severe bruising as you must have had 
are not trifles ; but, considering the circumstances, I think you 
were fortunate to escape as you did." 

" I think so, I assure you," he replied. " I have suffered 
very severely more from the nervous shock than from actual 
pain, though that has not been inconsiderable. But, contrasting 
my lot with that of so many others, I feel that I was indeed 
fortunate." 

" You are recovering from the effects of the shock, I hope ? " 
she said, looking at him with kind sympathy. 

" Somewhat," he answered. " But my nerves are very shaky 
yet. And I confess," he continued with a faint smile, " that 
I dread the interview before me. You have just left Mile. 
Duchesne, I suppose ? " 

" Yes," she replied, her face taking an expression of gravity 
as she spoke. 

" And will she receive me, do you know ? You were kind 
enough, perhaps, to prepare her for my visit?" 

" I came so early this morning specially for that purpose," 
she answered ; " for I am ashamed to acknowledge that I forgot 
to speak of it yesterday. Yes, she will receive you. But " she 
hesitated ; then, as he evidently waited for her to proceed, 
said : " I was going to beg you to make your communication as 
brief and as little painful as possible ; but I am sure such 
caution is needless." 

" It would be needless if I had any option in the matter," 
he replied. " But that, of course, I have not." 

" Well, I must not detain you longer," she said kindly. 
" For your own sake, as well as hers, it is best that the meet- 
ing should be over as soon as may be. Good-morning." 



1883.] ARMINE. 411 

" Good-morning," he responded ; and they went their sepa- 
rate ways, he envying her in that she was not called upon to 
perform the task before him ; she pitying him, and wishing him 
Godspeed in the same. 

He was shown into the salon, and the first object that his 
eye rested on as he entered was the figure of Armine. Dressed 
now in deep black, she was standing motionless in the middle 
of the floor in an attitude as aimless as that of a lay figure. 
There was something, indeed, so unnaturally still and impassive 
in this attitude that Egerton unconsciously paused just within 
the threshold of the room and stood gazing at her in appre- 
hensive wonder. And when, roused by the closing of the door 
after his entrance, she turned slowly toward him, he could 
scarcely repress an exclamation, so startled was he by the sight 
of her face. Helene had been struck with surprise at the in- 
definable change in the girl ; his predominant emotion was that 
of dismay. 

Perceiving him, she advanced quietly and extended her 
hand, which he took without uttering a word ; for he could 
think of no words that seemed fitting nay, that would not 
sound to him oppressively commonplace. It was she who first 
broke the silence. 

" I am sorry to see that you are suffering," she said. 

Turning, she drew forward an easy-chair, motioned him 
toward it, then seated herself near and fixed her eyes on his 
expectantly. 

All this was so different from anything that he had antici- 
pated that his embarrassment became almost overpowering. 
He regarded her for an instant ; then, making a desperate effort 
to recover the self-possession that was about to desert him en- 
tirely, answered : 

" Yes, I am suffering. This is my excuse for not having 
waited on you before to-day, mademoiselle." 

".Why should you have been in haste ? " she said apatheti- 
cally. 

" I was in haste to fulfil a promise I had made," he an- 
swered, "and to execute a trust which had been laid on me." 

"A trust?" she repeated; and now there was some quick- 
ening of attention in her eyes, though her manner was still 
without emotion. 

" A trust," he repeated in turn. " I should never have 
thought of intruding upon you at present, nor conceived the 
idea of mentioning to you a subject so exquisitely painful as the 



412 ARMINE. [Dec., 

one of which I have to speak, were I not constrained to do 
so by the express request of your father." 

His voice sank as he pronounced the two last words, which 
were uttered with so much reluctance that Armine said : 

" Do not hesitate to speak freely. You cannot pain me. 
Pain no longer exists for me, I think. You wish to tell me 
something about my father?" 

" Yes," said Egerton. " When dying M. Duchesne made 
to me a communication of great importance, adjuring me to 
deliver it to you without delay." 

Then, in the fewest possible words, he repeated Duchesne's 
relation concerning the marriage of his grandfather. 

It was a strange story, as he suddenly thought, for him, a 
young man, to be detailing to her, a young girl embarrassing 
in every way ; and he did not look toward her as he spoke 
until, at a slight exclamation when he first mentioned the name 
of De Marigny, he could not resist the temptation to observe 
her face. 

" Ah ! " she murmured to herself in a low tone, " I under- 
stand now. This explains many things." 

It was as she said this that Egerton looked up. Was there, 
he wondered, any special interest to her in this discovery? Her 
face, when he permitted himself to glance at it, did not answer 
the question. It wore the expression of one who has suddenly 
grasped the solution of what had been a problem, but a problem 
of no great interest, seemingly. Egerton noted this and went on. 
But when he proceeded to speak of the proofs of the mar- 
riage, and remarked that he would charge himself with the duty 
of obtaining these proofs and taking all the legal steps required 
for establishing the fact of its validity, Armine stopped him. 

" You have fulfilled the trust given you, monsieur, in telling 
me this family secret. But you will not be called upon to incur 
farther trouble. I shall not use the discovery. If my father had 
lived it would have been right for him to claim his* inheritance ; 
and if I were a man 7 might feel it a duty to do so. As it is, 
I shall not move in the matter; and all that I ask of you is to 
hold inviolate the secret entrusted to you." 

" But, mademoiselle," he cried earnestly, and with mingled 
surprise and disapproval, "you cannot mean that you do not 
intend to claim your inheritance ! " 

" That is what I mean," she answered. 

"Impossible!" he exclaimed. "All other considerations 
apart, you will not, I am sure, disregard the imperative inten- 



1883.] ARMINE. 413 

tion of your father to secure you against an evil of which you 
are no doubt ignorant as yet one of the worst evils, if not 
the very worst, that beset any life, but especially that of a wo- 
man : the curse of poverty." 

" I am in no danger of suffering from poverty," she replied. 
" My mother's fortune which was not large, but is quite suf- 
ficient for my wants was secured to me." 

" But, mademoiselle," Egerton again eagerly began, when 
she interrupted him. 

" I am the representative of my father," she said in a tone 
half-interrogative, half-asserting. 
" Assuredly," he answered. 
" The sole representative." 
" Yes." 

"It rests with me, then, to act or not in this affair ; and I 
shall not act." 

Again Egerton strove to speak, and again was stopped. 
" It is altogether useless to discuss the subject," she said 
decidedly. " I mean what I have said. I shall not move in 
the matter." 

"Not claim even your name?" 

" Of course not, since to do that would be to proclaim the 
whole." 

Egerton was silent a moment before he asked in a some- 
what constrained tone : 

" Do you mean, mademoiselle, that not even the Vicomte 
de Marigny is to be informed of this discovery ? " 
" Yes, monsieur, I mean that," she replied. 
What was Egerton to do? He was not inclined for the 
controversy in which he so unexpectedly found himself en- 
gaged, but a sense of loyalty to the trust of the dead man 
made him feel bound to use every argument in his power ; and, 
though he had not intended in this interview to press the claims 
of humanity on Armine's filial conscience, he now felt driven 
to this. 

" Permit me, mademoiselle," he said firmly but deferen- 
tially, " to remind you that the wishes of your father I may, 
indeed, say his command ought to have weight with you, 
and will, I am sure, when you have deliberately considered the 
subject, compel you to change your decision. I have still a 
direct message to deliver to you " 

He paused as Armine rose from her seat. Extending her hand 
with the motion of putting the whole question aside, she said : 



414 ARMINE. [Dec., 

" I will hear no more. Monsieur, I thank you for for all." 
Coming to his side he, too, had risen she put out her own 
hand and grasped his, holding it as she went on: "Do not 
think me ungrateful. You have been a true and noble friend 
to my father. You have faithfully discharged the trust he 
placed in you. Is it not enough that you have done this ? It 
is all that you can do." 

When Egerton found himself again rattling along the streets 
of Paris he looked vaguely at the brilliance and glitter and 
rushing tide of life around him. Which was actual the blue 
sky and sunshine, the gay splendor of the broad street and its 
hurrying crowds, or that quiet room with what seemed to him 
the almost spirit-like presence of the girl from whom he had a 
moment before parted? He felt a strange sense of bewilder- 
ment, as if he had seen one who was and yet was not Armine, 
together with a great consciousness of physical discomfort. Per- 
haps the last predominated ; for at first he thought less of the 
interview just over than of his nerves and his stomach, both of 
which were making themselves sensibly and very prominently 
disagreeable. And, like all persevering claimants, their impor- 
tunity presently gained attention to their wants by reminding 
him that he had taken no food that morning. He had, it is 
true, gone through the form before coming out, but had 
eaten nothing. At this recollection he stopped at a cafe and 
ordered breakfast ; and while waiting for it to be served his 
thoughts naturally returned to Armine and the incidents of the 
morning. 

If he had considered his position one of difficulty and em- 
barrassment before speaking to her, he found it doubly so now. 
Chance if chance it was had brought him into a singular 
connection with this girl. From the first time he saw her there 
had been for him an indescribable attraction about her a sort 
of attraction which he had never met with in any other woman* 
And though Duchesne's dying trust had been cause of much 
anxiety to him, he had yet found a certain charm in the sense 
that he was thus tacitly constituted the guardian, if not of Ar- 
mine herself, of Armine's interests. He speculated on what 
her sentiments regarding the matter might be, anticipating 
that she would feel pain if the assertion of her rights should 
seriously injure the fortune of the Vicomte de Marigny, and 
sure that, in any event, she would deal generously by her kins- 
man. But it never occurred to him to doubt her obedience to 



1883.] ARMINE. 415 

her father's behest, and so he had never considered what his 
own course of action must be in such a contingency. And 
now this contingency was upon him, and he felt utterly in 
doubt what to do. 

It was not until he was leaving the cafe half an hour later 
that a thought came to him like an inspiration. He would 
go to D'Antignac, ask his advice, and enlist his influence with 
Armine. 

Fortunately for him, it was one of D'Antignac's best days, 
and he was admitted at once. 

" I have come to you for advice," he said, after answering 
very briefly D'Antignac's inquiries about his health. " I find 
myself in a most perplexing position about this business of 
poor Duchesne's. Will you let me tell you the story, which 
is a strange one, and then give me your opinion as to what 
you think I ought to do ? " 

" Tell me, by all means," said the other cordially. " My 
opinion and advice shall be heartily at your service ; and, 
moreover, I will not quarrel with you if you do not take 
either after they are given," he added with a smile. 

" Thank you," said Egerton ; and he proceeded in the first 
place to repeat the relation which Duchesne when dying had 
made to him. 

D'Antignac listened in silence, his expressive countenance 
indicating the strongest iaterest. Egerton saw, by a sudden 
quickening in the dark eyes as he began his narrative, that 
the fact of Duchesne's connection with the De Marigny name 
was not unknown to him ; and there was a something between 
incredulity and anxiety in D'Antignac's face as the story went 
on. After repeating as literally as he remembered them the 
words of Duchesne, he was beginning to describe his inter- 
view with Armine when D'Antignac interposed. 

" A moment," he said. " Pardon me, but have you made 
inquiries, obtained the proofs Duchesne spoke of?" 

"Not yet/' was the reply. "I have not had time, and 
have been, as you are aware, in no condition to make any 
exertion. But I purpose or did purpose to go to Dinan 
to-morrow and secure this proof." 

"Don't you think," said D'Antignac, "that it would have 
been wise to have attended to these necessary preliminaries 
before saying anything to Armine on the subject?" 

Egerton looked a little startled. " I see," he said, " that I 
have acted prematurely in speaking to her. Yes, you are 



4i 5 ARMINE. [Dec, 

right. I ought to have investigated the matter before saying 
a word to her about it. Duchesne may have been deceived, 
though I think not. He was too sagacious a man to permit 
himself to be misled either by his- own hopes or the plausible 
representations of another. He was evidently so confident of 
the correctness of his information that I shall be surprised if 
the affair does not turn out exactly as he described." 

" And Armine how did she receive your communica- 
tion?" 

" In the most extraordinary way, it seems to me," answered 
Egerton ; and he described at length the scene with her. 
" Whether such unaccountable conduct is attributable to her 
present state of mind I do not know. She is certainly very 
unlike in manner what she has heretofore seemed. I was 
amazed at the change I found in her ; I was even shocked ! " 

" My sister tells me that she is greatly changed," said 
D'Antignac. "Which is not surprising," he added, "consid- 
ering all that she must have suffered lately." 

" But the alteration is greater than even the shock and 
horror of her father's death might be supposed to cause. In 
fact, I was appalled at the marvellous dissimilarity to her 
former self which she exhibited. It has left a singular im- 
pression on my mind ; I cannot connect her as she was when 
I saw her last with her as she looked and spoke this morn- 
ing. Two different individuals could not be more unlike." 

D'Antignac looked grave, almost anxious. " Helene tells 
me the same thing," he said. " Poor child ! she must have 
suffered indescribably." 

" To return to my own part of the business," said Eger- 
ton, " I think that I shall go to Dinan to-morrow, look into 
the matter that is, obtain the necessary documents to estab 
lish the validity of the marriage." 

" If they are to be obtained," interposed D'Antignac, with 
a smile. 

" That of course," said Egerton ; " and if they are not to 
be obtained I shall be quite reconciled to the fact, since Mile. 
.Duchesne takes the affair as she does. On my return say- 
ing that I am successful in my search I shall once more pre- 
sent the subject to her consideration ; and I hope for your 
influence to induce her to listen more reasonably than she 
did this time. If she still persists in her present resolution, 
her obstinacy will lay an exceedingly disagreeable duty upon 
me. I promised Duchesne solemnly that I would do my 



1883.] ARMINE. 417 

utmost to secure his daughter's rights to her, and that pro- 
mise I intend to keep. If the proofs are forthcoming and I 
shall spare no pains to secure them 1 will lay the matter 
before the Vicomte de Marigny. Don't you agree with me 
that this is what I ought to do?" 

" Yes, that certainly is your proper course," answered 
D'Antignac. " But you spoke of going to Dinan to-morrow. 
Surely you are not in a condition to travel ! Take my advice 
you asked it, you know and wait until you can at least 
move without pain, which I see you cannot do now." 

Egerton smiled. " I should have to wait a month or so 
in that case, if the surgeon's opinion is to be relied on," he 
said ; " and this would not suit me at all. I want to get the 
affair off my mind." 

" Duchesne himself was in no haste to press the claim," 
said D'Antignac ; " therefore I cannot see why you should 
disquiet yourself so much about a few weeks more or less." 

" I am afraid that it is more my impatience to rid myself 
of the responsibility I feel than any special necessity for 
haste which urges me to action," replied Egerton. " How- 
ever, there is, as you say, no reason why I should hurry 
myself beyond my strength ; and so I may wait a few days 
before undertaking the expedition to Dinan, and to Marigny 
to look up the witness Duchesne spoke of. Meanwhile, I must 
not fatigue you longer " he rose at the last word " but I 
may come and tell you the result of my quest, may I not ? :> 

" I was going to beg that you would," said D'Antignac, 
extending his hand in parting salutation. " To me, as you 
are no doubt aware, there is a double interest involved." 

CHAPTER XXX. 

EGERTON was proceeding very leisurely down the stair on 
his way out, his entire attention absorbed in his hold on the 
baluster and the direction of each step as he laboriously took it 
for D'Antignac was not mistaken in thinking that it was a pain 
to him to move when about half way down he encountered a 
lady whose approach he had been too preoccupied in thought 
to notice. He paused for her to pass, lifting his hat, but scarcely 
glancing at her ; and it was only after she had passed that the 
idea of her identity dawned on him. He turned as he still stood 
where she had left him turned so suddenly as almost to lose 
his balance and looked after her. All that he saw was a tall, 
VOL. xxxviii. 27 



418 ARMINE. [Dec., 

slight figure in deep mourning just disappearing from sight as 
his eye fell on it. Was it or was it not Armine? It struck 
him as rather a strange coincidence that, having met Mile. d'An- 
tignac an hour before as he was on his way to visit Mile. Du- 
chesne, he should now meet the latter here. But everything 
connected with Armine seemed strange now ; and, after all, it 
had been arranged that she should come to the D'Antignacs. 
He was not certain that the figure of which he had obtained but 
a momentary glimpse was hers, but he thought so. And he 
was right. 

D'Antignac's face still wore the look of anxiety which had 
followed the retiring form of his late guest when a low knock 
at his door half-startled him, it sounded so like Armine's familiar 
tap. Not conceiving that it could be her, it was with reluc- 
tance that, on a repetition of the knock, he responded, " Entrez" 

The door unclosed, and, putting aside her veil as she entered, 
the girl who had been so constantly in his thoughts of late 
advanced toward him. 

Most things in this world happen differently from what one 
expects. D'Antignac was well aware of this truth, and had 
therefore formed no definite imagination or thought he had 
formed none of how Armine might appear when he saw her 
first. H61ene's description and Egerton's had prepared him 
to find in her an unusual, Egerton had said an extraordinary, 
change. He had looked forward to this first meeting with anx- 
iety, eagerness, and, it must be confessed, with some curiosity ; 
but he did not believe it possible that, prepared as he was for 
change, anything could surprise him. He was mistaken : he was 
surprised. 

She came to his side with her accustomed quiet tread, and, 
as he raised himself and held out his hand, she took it in the 
clasp of her own, saying : 

" You see I have come to you." 

He did not answer for a moment, but only held her hand 
and looked earnestly into the eyes that gazed down on him as 
she stood beside the couch. Then he said gently : 

" I am glad that you have come. I would have gone to you 
if I could." 

" I am sure of that," she said. " And, if I could, how gladly 
I would have come to you long ago ! But I could not. And 
now now that I am free I feel as if I were dead ; as if I had 
not a heart in my breast, but a stone. I do not know what is 
the matter with me. People say I am stunned ; but I do not 






1883.] ARMINE. 419 

feel stunned. I feel simply dead as if I should never be con- 
scious of any sensation again. And it is awful to be alive and 
yet dead!" 

" Sit down," said D'Antignac quietly she was still standing 
"and we will talk about this." 

" Yes, I want you to talk to me," she said. " But let me 
stay close to you and hold your hand." 

She knelt down by his side, resting her hand, which still 
clasped his strongly, upon the edge of the couch. There was 
so much force in the grasp of her fingers that he understood 
his sister's fear of a sudden convulsive reaction to this unna- 
tural calm. 

" I know what is the matter," he said, speaking with the 
utmost calmness and gentleness, " and it is not necessary that 
you should distress yourself by trying to tell me. You have 
been living in a state of tension for a long time, and the last 
terrible shock has for the present deadened sensation. It will 
wake again, never doubt that. There are hours and days of the 
most poignant suffering before you, though, indeed, I doubt 
whether there is any suffering worse than what you are endur- 
ing now. It is not strange this state after such a blow as 
has fallen on you. But the sharpest form of grief would be 
more easily borne." 

" Oh ! yes," she said, with a deep-drawn breath, " much more 
easily borne. For I should feel then that I was human.". 

He looked at the pale face with a faint, sad smile. " You 
human ! " he said. " And do you not know that it is when a 
nature feels most acutely that such a result as this occurs? 
Tell me " he paused for a moment " when you heard of your 
father's death, how was it with you ? " 

" It was like a blow that struck me to the earth," she an- 
swered. " I remember nothing but the sense of being crushed 
by the awful horror, by the realization that I should never see 
him again and that he had parted from me in anger. Then 
came unconsciousness, and when I waked I was like this, cold 
and lifeless. I think it might have been different if I had been 
among those of whose sympathy I felt sure, if I had had even 
one friend near me. But, you see, I had not. I was with 
strangers, with people whom I disliked and dreaded, and what 
could my grief be to them ? I believe they were frightened of 
me. At least they left me alone, and when I roused sufficiently 
to speak of leaving them they made no opposition. I think 
they were glad to let me go." 



420 ARMINE. [Dec., 

"And when you first felt yourself free where did you go?" 
asked D'Antignac. 

" I went back to the only place I could call home," she 
answered " to the apartment I had left with him, knowing 
so little how I would return." 

"And then," he said, "where did you go?" 

She looked surprised. " I have come here," she answered. 
" That is all." 

" And so," said he slowly, " you have not been within a 
church." 

She started as if he had struck her, and he saw her eyes 
dilate with the first look of anguish that had been in them. 

" Oh ! how could I ? " she cried. " How could I use my 
freedom to do that which his last act endeavored to prevent? 
It would have seemed to me like treason to his memory." 

" Poor child ! " said D'Antignac. He did not otherwise an- 
swer these words for a minute or two ; but presently he said 
gently, " And so the struggle still goes on you are still torn 
in two, as it were, by a divided allegiance. Well, this is no 
time to preach to you, so I will only ask one question : to 
whom is your allegiance first due ? " 

" I suppose that I should say to God," she answered wearily. 
" But I do not feel that any more than I feel anything else. I 
think my faith is dead." 

"And I am sure that you are mistaken," said D'Antignac. 
" Do you not still believe in the truths of faith ? " 

" Oh ! yes," she answered indifferently. " I believe, but I 
do not feel at all. I have no longer any desire to practise 
what I believe. I cannot even pray. I think I am forsaken by 
God. And this is my punishment, no doubt, for fancying that 
I was called upon to alienate and wound my father my father, 
who had always been so good to me, and who went away, 
never to return, full of bitterness toward me." 

" My poor Armine ! " said D'Antignac, " you are like one 
stricken unto death, torn and bleeding from a contest which 
has drained your heart's blood, and you are not capable now 
of seeing anything in its true light and true proportions. When 
you alienated your father you were wounding yourself more 
deeply than you wounded him in an heroic effort to be true 
to God ; and it is no more possible that the God whom you 
thus acknowledged should forsake you than that the sun should 
withhold its light. But you are ill in mind and spirit, and so 
you cannot feel this. The insensibility which seems to you so 



1883.] ARMINE. 421 

terrible is the natural result of long and intense emotion and 
struggle. Do not try to rouse yourself, for the very effort 
will defeat the end. Simply be quiet, and after a while light 
will shine through the darkness, and the voice of God will 
speak to your soul." 

She looked up at him gratefully. " Your voice gives me 
comfort," she said " the first I have felt. It seems to stir 
my frozen heart a little. But all is dark with me very dark. 
My father can never give me another word of kindness or for- 
giveness ; and if God had not withdrawn his face, if I could 
go back to the thoughts and feelings of a fortnight ago, what 
then must I think of my father? If I prayed, could I pray 
for him f" 

"Why not?" said D'Antignac in the same grave, gentle 
tone which had such a tranquillizing influence upon her. 
Though he had not expected this question, he had known that 
it must occur to her and be one of the sharpest stings in her' 
grief, and what he had to do was to apply such healing balm 
as he could ; not words of comforting delusion, but such as 
the infinite charity of the church allows. "Why not?" he 
repeated after an instant. " If you did not, would you not be 
pronouncing a jjudgment upon him? But God alone is the 
judge of the soul, for he beholds it unveiled and reads motives 
where we see only actions." 

Oh ! what pain and wistfulness were in the dark eyes as 
they looked up at him now, and what nervous strength was 
in the slender fingers that clasped his hand. 

" But if if such a soul had called itself the enemy of God," 
she said in a tense whisper, " could one dare to hope 
then ? " 

" Even then it is not for us to pass judgment," he an- 
swered. "For what are our judgments based upon? Surely 
the narrowest and most incomplete knowledge. Who can 
read another's mind and soul ? Who can draw the line where 
prejudice and ignorance cease to be excusable? Only God, 
who weighs every human error in the scale of exactest justice 
and regards every human frailty with tenderest mercy. So 
let us leave the dead in his hands, with this absolute confi- 
dence : that every soul will in eternity occupy the place for 
which it is fitted, and that whatever good intention, whatever 
ignorance it may plead will most surely be allowed in its 
behalf." 

Armine did not answer in words ; but she lifted the hand 



422 ARMINE. [Dec., 

which she still held to her lips, and then they were silent 
together for a space of time which neither of them counted. 

The silence was broken by the unexpected entrance ot 
H61ene ; and when she saw the slender, black-clad figure kneel- 
ing by her brother's couch she was for a moment fairly 
startled. Then she came forward with an exclamation of 
pleasure and welcomed the girl, who rose to meet her. 

" You have not been a moment out of my mind since we 
parted," she said ; " and I am more than glad to find you 
here. Now you must make up your mind to stay. Madelon 
can bring all that you need. You must not go away again." 

" She must do exactly what she wishes," said D^Antignac's 
calm voice before Armine could answer. " Do not trouble 
her with insistence, if she does not wish to stay. Leave her 
quite free." 

Armine gave him a glance of gratitude. " You are always 
as wise as you are kind," she said. " And, dear Mile. d'An- 
tignac, I will come to you after a while, as I have promised, 
since you are good enough to want me ; but not to-day, I 
think." 

He"lene shook her head. " To-day is a better time than 
to-morrow," she said. " But I will not press you, since Raoul 
says that I must not ; though I think that sometimes people 
need a little compulsion for their own good." 

"She needs something more just now," said D'Antignac. 
41 Put on yotir bonnet, H61ene. I want you to go out with 
her." 

Mile. d'Antignac looked surprised ; but she was in the 
habit of obeying her brother's directions without question, 
so she left the room, and when she returned with her bonnet 
on she was struck by the expression of Armine's face. It 
was paler than before, if possible, but the strange, impassive 
calm was broken ; the lips were tremulous instead of set, and 
the deep, dark eyes seemed full of immeasurable sadness. 
D'Antignac looked up at his sister and said quietly : 

" Send Cesco to call a carriage, and then drive with her 
to Notre Dame des Victoires." 

Several hours later, when HeMene returned, she entered her 
brother's room and found the Vicomte de Marigny with him. 
After she had shaken hands with the latter, D'Antignac said, 
with more eagerness than he often displayed : 

" How did you leave Armine ? " 



1883.] ARMINE. 423 

" I left her in very good hands," Mile. d'Antignac answered ; 
" but you will not see her again for some time. She has gone 
to the Convent." 

" Indeed !" said her brother, with an expression of surprise. 
"By whose advice did she go?" 

" Is it necessary to ask? By that of the Abbe" Neyron, to 
whom you sent her." 

" I did not send her to him," said D'Antignac quietly. " I 
did not mention his name." 

" Did you not ? Well, at all events, she so understood. We 
had not been long in the church when she turned to me and said 
that she would like to see him, if I thought it possible. I went 
to inquire, and fortunately found him disengaged, so I sent her 
to him, while I remained in the church. It seemed to me that 
I waited a long time ; but presently she returned, and with her 
came the abbe, who told me when we went out together that 
he thought the best thing she could do would be to go to a re- 
ligious house for a retreat, to tranquillize her and prepare her 
for the reception of the Sacraments. Of course I could not 
but agree with him, though it was a disappointment to me 
that she would not come to us ; so he said he would go to the 
convent and arrange matters, while I went home with Armine 
and made such preparations as she needed. It did not take 
long to make these, and, to my surprise, I found her for the first 
time manifesting something like eagerness and interest. ' It is 
what I want/ she said : ' to get away from the world not even 
to hear an echo of it for a time.' So when we drove to the 
convent we found every arrangement made ; she was received 
most kindly, and there I left her." 

" You could not have left her in a better place," said D'An- 
tignac with satisfaction. " This is all that I could have desired 
for her, and more than I could have hoped. Her wounds will 
be healed and her soul fortified there, and when we see her 
again she will be the Armine we have known given back to 
us. Meanwhile we can think of her with peace. The worst is 
over." 

" She must have suffered terribly from the shock of her 
father's death," said M. de Marigny, who had listened to the 
conversation with interest and attention. 

" Yes," answered D'Antignac, " and the shock was intensi- 
fied by the circumstances immediately preceding it and by the 
fact that she was among unsympathetic people. Indeed, we 
have feared very serious consequences. She has been in the 



424 ARMINE. [Dec., 

state of stunned apathy from which a reaction is often fearful. 
But now it is possible to dismiss anxiety. She is where she 
will be most wisely and carefully tended, and where she will 
find the rest and the religious atmosphere which she needs." 
"But is it not possible that her father's friends may give 
trouble when they find that she has been taken to a convent?" 
asked the vicomte. 

" I do not think there are any of her father's friends who 
have the right to interfere with her at all," replied D'Antignac. 
" She has, as far as I can learn, no relatives here, at least 
and she is therefore absolutely, though desolately, free." 

" No relatives here ! " repeated M. de Marigny, who seemed 
very much interested. " But no doubt she has relatives else- 
where." 

" On her mother's side, very likely ; but I do not know who 
or what they are. On her father's side Here the speaker 
paused and looked at Helene, who rose at once, and, saying 
something about removing her bonnet, left the room. 

There was a moment's silence after the door closed behind 
her, and then D'Antignac said : 

" I feel bound to tell you, Gaston, that Duchesne left behind 
him a disclosure which concerns you very deeply. He pro- 
fesses to have discovered proofs of the marriage of his grand- 
parents." 

The vicomte looked surprised, but more incredulous. " At 
this late date," he said, " that is hardly probable. When and 
where did he discover the proofs?" 

"It appears that he had never seen them himself, but that 
he believed in their existence on the testimony of the son of an 
old servitor of your granduncle who lives at Marigny. I sup- 
pose you know who the latter is?" 

" Very well an old pensioner of the estate, who has lately 
made some extravagant demands which were not granted. If 
he knew anything he might have revealed it, thinking that he 
would impose his own terms for the disclosure ; but I doubt 
his knowing anything of any real importance." 

" At least it is easy to put the matter to the test. He as- 
sured Duchesne that his father had witnessed the civil mar- 
riage, which took place at Dinan, where it must be regis- 
tered." 

" Oh ! " said the vicomte, with an air of relief, " that brings 
the matter down to a point which can be easily verified. I shall 
go to Dinan at once." 



1883.] ARMINE. 425 

" That is scarcely worth while, since another person intends 
going- to-morrow," said D'Antignac, smiling. 

" And who is that [person, if I may ask an agent of Mile. 
Duchesne? " 

"So far from that, a person who complains that he could 
not induce Mile. Duchesne to manifest the least interest in the 
disclosure or to authorize him to take any steps whatever. But 
the matter having been laid upon him as a kind of trust by her 
father, he feels. bound to discover, at least, whether the proofs 
of the marriage are forthcoming. There is no mystery con- 
nected with his part in the affair. He is the young American 
Egerton of whom you have heard me speak, who was with 
Duchesne at the time of the accident, and therefore received 
his last words." 

" And it was to him, then, that the disclosure about the mar- 
riage was made ? " 

" Yes, to him, that he might convey it to Armine." 

" And does it not strike you as strange that, if Duchesne be- 
lieved the story of Lebeau, the old servant at Marigny, he 
did not verify it for himself seek out the proofs and assert 
his claim at once ? " 

" No doubt he intended to do so, and thought, like many 
another man, that he had unlimited time in which to act. But, 
if you remember, the time which elapsed between his leaving 
Brittany and his death was very short." 

There was a minute's silence. Then the vicomte said : 
" The matter must certainly be investigated at once. Will you 
give me the address of this M. Egerton?" 

" If you will ring the bell, Cesco shall find you one of his 
cards," said D'Antignac. " Never having any need to pay visits, 
I do not burden my mind with remembering where people live. 
That is one advantage of being a fixture." 

Cesco came ; the card was speedily found, and the vicomte 
rose to go. 

" If I decide to leave Paris immediately, I shall, of course, 
not see you again before I start," he said ; " but I will let you 
know the result as soon as possible. Tell me this, however : 
did Mile. Duchesne mention the matter to you?" 

" To me ? Not at all. It did not seem to be in her mind 
in the least. Set your mind at rest with regard to her. I can 
assure you of one thing: that if poor Duchesne's hopes prove 
absolutely baseless, no one will be less disappointed than Ar- 
mine." 

TO BE CONTINUED. 



426 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Dec., 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

A COURSE OF PHILOSOPHY : Embracing Logic, Metaphysics, and Ethics. 
A Text-Book for use in Schools. Second edition. Revised and en- 
larged. By Very Rev. A. Louage, C.S.C., Provincial of Canada. Bal- 
timore : John B. Piet & Co. 1883. Pp. 290. 

In the preface to this second edition of his Moral Philosophy the Very 
Rev. Father Louage makes an explanation in regard to the notable differ- 
ence which distinguishes it from the first edition, and, indeed, entitles it 
almost to the appellation of an entirely new text-book, which we think 
due to him that we should quote entirely : 

" When the first edition of this Philosophy appeared we made known to the public that we 
originally did not have an intention of publishing, in the form of a manual, the notes which we 
had gathered and dictated to our pupils. We had been entrusted with a class, in which, besides 
philosophy, we were to teach other matters in one scholastic session of five months. At the 
end of our course our notes were reviewed and prepared for the press by another person and 
sent to a publisher almost without our knowledge. The urgent need of a manual, and the 
alterations made by the reviewer, whose chief aim was to be elegant, partly explain the precipi- 
tancy employed in producing the work, and also account for certain inaccurate expressions it 
contained. The responsibility of the principal errors, especially those in Ontology, we ourselves 
assume ; and we here take the opportunity of thanking the author of an analytical and just 
criticism which appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, one year after the publication of our 
Philosophy, for his suggestions. We have profited by that criticism, and have made many cor- 
rections and additions, principally in Logic and Metaphysics. 

" We have now presented to the public a book we believe worthy of its title ; a manual that 
will prove acceptable in the schools." 

The writer of the present notice, who was acting editor of THE CATHO- 
LIC WORLD when the criticism on the Philosophy of Father Louage ap- 
peared, avails himself of this occasion to disclaim the credit of its author- 
ship, which has generally been ascribed to him a mistake which he re- 
frained from correcting on account of a strict injunction of secrecy from 
the author of the criticism, a man of the highest eminence in several 
sciences. He will doubtless highly appreciate Father Louage's generous 
acknowledgment. For ourselves, we can only express our admiration for 
a sincerity and modesty so very rare in authors, certainly never surpassed 
and seldom equalled even by those who profess to teach and follow the 
most perfect rule of moral virtue. 

The system of Ontologism is one which has fascinated some of the best 
minds devoted to philosophical studies, and it has only been finally ex- 
pelled from the Catholic schools by the decisive and final condemnation 
of the Holy See. It was principally on account of statements savoring of 
the errors of this system that we thought it necessary to insert in our 
pages an unfavorable criticism of Father Louage's work in its first edition. 
As he has now removed all ground of objection to his manual on this 
score, and has conformed his theory to the teaching now common and 
approved in Catholic schools, not only on this head, but generally in 
respect to the other topics treated, we withdraw our former remonstrance 
against the use of this text book in the instruction of youth. 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 427 

Besides this, the author has most carefully and laboriously improved 
the entire work, with a view to making it suitable for its purpose as a text- 
book of the easiest and most elementary instruction in philosophy. As 
the proof of a pudding is in the eating, so a text-book can only be tested 
in the use. The intelligent teachers and pupils who will make use of this 
manual are the ones to decide on the measure of success which its author 
has achieved in a most difficult undertaking, one equally difficult with the 
task of composing a catechism. We hope the venerable author of this 
Course of Philosophy for Use in Schools will find a reward for his earnest 
effort to meet a general and pressing demand in the approbation of those 
who are the most competent to judge, and in the evidence of the utility of 
his manual as a text-book in our schools. 

THE RETURN OF THE KING. Discourses on the Latter Days. By Henry 
James Coleridge, S.J. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. (For sale by 
the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

This is a collection of sermons, not containing a connected and sys- 
tematic treatment of the great topic to which they refer, the Second Coming 
of Christ, yet arranged on a plan which exhibits continuity in the order of 
ideas and unity in the common scope, and leaving out no one department of 
the general subject. These sermons are characterized by the qualities of 
matter and style, always found in Father Coleridge's works, and which we 
have often brought into notice in our criticisms of his various writings. 
For the most part they are expositions of doctrine or applications of un- 
doubted truths of religion to existing facts, in which all Catholics must con- 
cur with their statements and teaching, and from which every pious reader 
must derive the greatest spiritual instruction and benefit. In the exposition 
of prophecy Father Coleridge is sober and reserved. He follows what is 
the more common view concerning the unfulfilled prophecies, and seems 
to look on the signs and tendencies of the present time as indicating the 
approach of that disastrous period which many consider to be foretold in 
the Apocalypse as awaiting the world in the future, and which is designated 
as '* the reign of Antichrist." This anticipation casts a gloomy and fore- 
boding shadow over the view and prospect of the present and the future 
age of the church and the world. It may be that coming events are 
actually casting these dark shadows before them. Personally we are not 
convinced that the particular interpretation of the prophecies from which 
these sombre auguries are drawn is so certain that we may not hope for 
better things in store for us as this century draws toward its close and 
another dawns upon the earth. But, whatever room there may be for dif- 
ference of opinion upon this part of the subject, the great facts and truths 
which Father Coleridge as a preacher of the word of God sets forth with so 
much power and solemnity, respecting the second coming of Christ, the 
Last Judgment, and the finality of all human issues, are awful as well as 
indubitable, and worthy of the serious consideration of all Christians. 

NIGHTS WITH UNCLE REMUS. Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation. 
By Joel Chandler Harris, author of Uncle Remus: His Songs and Say- 
ings, At Teague Poteet's, etc. With illustrations. Boston : James R. 
Osgood & Co. 1883. 

The public has for some years been familiar through the columns of the 



428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec., 

daily press, where they were passed about from one to another, with Mr. 
Harris' droll scraps of utilitarian wisdom as supposed to come from the lips 
of an aged negro. Of course the obligation of authorship in such a case 
insists upon the reader's imputing these thoughts to the imaginary negro, 
and not to the author himself. But leaving aside the question as to 
whence came the " hard common sense " of " Uncle Remus' " philosophiz- 
ing, there can be no doubt, to those who have lived in the South, as to the 
amusingly accurate representation of the negro dialect which Mr. Harris 
has offered us in all these negro squibs of his. 

But, aside from what is amusing in Uncle Remus' talk, a good deal of 
interest has been excited by his stories about animals, and the many 
curious legends he relates that used to be rife among the plantation field- 
hands and the colored house-servants in that now seemingly far-off period 
" before the war '' a period which is perhaps already assuming in the minds 
of many Americans the characteristics of the Golden Age. In the seventy- 
one stories contained in this latest of Mr. Harris' volumes the student of 
comparative folk-lore will find a treasure. The author says that he has 
been led to believe, by the success of his former books, that " a volume 
embodying everything, or nearly everything, of importance in the oral 
literature of the Southern States would be as heartily welcomed " as his 
others were, and after looking over these stories there can be no doubt of 
the welcome. He assures us that " none of the stories are ' cooked.' They 
are given in the simple but picturesque language of the negroes, just as 
the negroes tell them." 

The dialect followed in these stories is that of Georgia and the Sea 
Islands on the coast. For the Sea Islands dialect a short vocabulary is sup- 
plied, and it is a delightful task to follow the amusing perversions which 
English has been subjected to in these dialects, and compare the way in 
which the Louisiana negro or the West Indian negro has handled the 
French or Spanish which has become his adopted language. 

Our American citizens of African descent have many weaknesses and 
what citizens of ours have not ? but they have also a nature and a humor 
that are fascinating to all who have ever been brought in contact with 
them. It is, in fact, no uncommon thing for a Southerner to become 
home-sick merely at the sight of an old-fashioned negro, for the sight 
brings up before his memory the many happy days of his childhood and 
youth that he spent listening to the mirth-provoking sallies and the queer 
fancies of the colored folk about him. 

NECROLOGY OF THE ENGLISH CONGREGATION OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENE- 
DICT, FROM 1600 TO 1883. By the Rev. T. B. Snow, M.A., Priest of the 
same Congregation and Procurator of the Province of York. London : 
Burns & Oates. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.) 

This is a catalogue of names of English Benedictines during two hun- 
dred and eighty-three years, exclusive, of course, of those who are still 
living. An interesting and careful historical account of the Order in En- 
gland is prefixed as an introduction. Those scholars who are curious re- 
specting documents of modern English history will be glad to add this 
volume to their collections. 



1883.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 429 

ALETHAURION (Short Papers for the People). By Thomas C. Moore, A.M., 
S.T.D. Leavenworth : Ketcheson & Hubbell. 1883. 

This book is of the class to which belong The Faith of our Fathers, 
Stumbling- Blocks, and Archbishop O'Brien's Philosophy of the Bible Vindicat- 
ed, an admirable work, likewise from the pen of a Propagandist, but which 
almost escaped the notice of the critics until its author was raised to the 
see of Halifax. The present work, however, differs very much in style and 
plan from those mentioned. It is of the West, Western. It savors of the 
yellow Ohio and the Salt River, smells of the prairie and the clearing 
indeed, suggests the court-house meeting and the stump rather than the 
circumstances of place wherewith those of the East associate sacred ora- 
tory. This doubtless is all right. We have seen priests preaching in the 
squares of Rome, and have no doubt that they will yet do so on the street- 
corners of New York. God may send the apostle to-morrow. We pray 
for his coming. When he does he will have a style to suit, and it will 
differ from the normal one now accepted. Dr. Moore shows extensive 
reading, accurate learning, and genuine Catholicity. He follows the 
church from her start to our times, giving very detailed information in 
short, pithy, homelike, but pure grammatical language. His stories and 
illustrations all appeal to the mixed audience of the " dark and bloody 
ground,'' to which the papers are addressed ; hence they are in taste. 
Amongst other subjects incidentally treated we mention exclusive salva- 
tion, election of bishops and rectors, necessity of teaching the evidences 
of religion in our colleges, evangelization of the people of the United 
States, secret societies, etc., in all which there is displayed the spirit of 
obedience to the church, united with sound judgment and priestly candor. 
It is good to see these polemical works multiplied, as every writer adds 
something important to the argument for the truth. We were struck, for 
instance, by this author's treatment of miracles and of secret societies, as 
well as by his chapter on hell and on the indefectibility of the church. 
Brevity is the soul of his wit and wisdom. These papers will be useful to 
a large class of readers. By the way, what is the secret of binding a book 
so that, like this, it lies open on your table at any page ? Pity more of our 
binders don't get hold of it. 

REMINISCENCES OF ROME. By the Rev. Eugene MacCartan, parish priest 
of Antrim. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic 
Publication Society Co.) 

Father MacCartan has managed in the three hundred and eighteen 
pages of these Reminiscences to give his readers a very clear idea of how 
Italy, or the parts of Italy which he visited, looked to him in 1870, the year 
in which the tour here described was made. There is no attempt at fine 
writing, nor does he venture upon the ground of art criticism that is so 
inviting and so destructive to most foreigners going into the peninsula. 
There is nothing here but faithful description of things as they were when 
Pius IX. still reigned as king in Rome, before the weary law of uniformity 
had stamped out the differences, that, it is said, are not so marked now, 
between Genoese, and Venetian, and Lombard, and Florentine, and Roman, 
and Neapolitan. Yes, there is something more than description. There 



430 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec., 

are Father MacCartan's thoughts upon what he saw, and these are given 
in a simple, straightforward, and unconscious way, perhaps as they were 
given to his parishioners on his return amongst them. Anyhow, his book 
of Italian travel, though not new as might be expected, is interesting from 
first to last. 

But the proof-reading, especially of such Latin, Italian, or other non- 
English words as appear, is not creditable to a Catholic publishing house, 
though it ought in justice to be said that the stereotype plates were not 
made by the house whose imprint appears above. 

THE GROUNDS OF THEISTIC AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF. By George P. 
Fisher, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale 
College. 

The reputation of Dr. Fisher as a scholar and a writer is such that any 
work from his hand must command attention from all, whatever form of 
belief or unbelief they may profess ; especially so when he writes on 
such topics of paramount interest and importance as those which are 
handled in the present volume. In a literary point of view, and in respect 
to rhetorical art and style, Dr. Fisher is, in our opinion, pre-eminent among 
our living authors in his own department. We hold his mental endow- 
ments and scholarly attainments in certain branches of learning in great 
esteem, from the evidence furnished by those of his works which we have 
perused, including this his latest production. Moreover, a great deal of 
what he has written, taken in a historical, philosophical, or doctrinal sense, 
as an exposition of his own belief or opinion, carries with it either the full 
approbation of our judgment as certainly or probably sound and correct, 
or at least as an approximation to that which we are fully convinced is the 
complete truth, or even matter of divine faith and essentially belonging to 
revealed religion. 

The present work seems to have been partially occasioned by the 
ribald blasphemies of that noxious individual, Robert Ingersoll. We con- 
jecture, however, that the insidious efforts to bring the influence of 
agnosticism to bear on the minds of the rising generation, and to subvert 
all religious belief and teaching among our studious youth, have had more 
decisive influence in stimulating the learned professor to take up arms in 
behalf of God and Christianity a most excellent and also a most neces- 
sary undertaking. 

In criticising the manner in which Dr. Fisher has fulfilled his task we 
must be brief. A really solid and appreciative review of his work would 
demand a long article, or more than one. In respect to certain portions to 
which a Catholic must necessarily take exception we say nothing at pre- 
sent, since to say anything with any effect would require us to say much. 
In respect to the main body of the argument, we merely, in brief, give our 
opinion that the theistic argument is sufficiently well handled to give 
motives for certain conviction to any reasonable mind. What is peculiar 
to it is derived from the author's familiarity with the latest forms of 
atheism and his skill in availing himself of their self-contradictions. By 
far the most original and, in our opinion, the most admirable chapter in 
the second part of the work is that which treats of the " Sinlessness of 
Jesus." So, also, the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters, on the 



1 883.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 

Evidence for Miracles and the Authenticity of the Gospels, with cognate 
topics, contain a well-constructed and unanswerable argument on the evi- 
dences of Christianity. Here the author's knowledge of the works of 
modern critics, both destructive and conservative, is brought into play in a 
most effective manner. 

HISTOIRE DE MADEMOISELLE LE GRAS, FONDATRICE DES FILLES DE LA 
CHARITE. Paris: Poussielgue Freres. 1883. 

We have read here and there short notices of Mademoiselle Le Gras 
(Louise de Marillac) which were sufficient to excite in us the wish to 
know more about so remarkable a woman. But until this volume reached 
us, and we had read it, our wish had not been answered. This history has 
been carefully written, is full of information, and gives evidence of close 
investigation of original sources. 

So great a man and saint as Vincent of Paul found in Mile. Le Gras a 
woman equal to the task of co-operating in harmony with him in fulfilling 
the providential designs of God. This is saying not a little in her praise. 
Certainly the Sisters of Charity must ever look up to the great St. Vincent 
of Paul as their founder, but it may be fairly questioned whether their in- 
stitution would ever have existed had it not. been for Mile. Le Gras. She 
was the foundress of the Sisters of Charity under the guidance of St. 
Vincent of Paul. They are the offspring of both. 

St. Benedict found in his sister, St. Scholastica, one who led also a life 
consecrated to God ; St. Francis of Assisi had for his spiritual daughter 
St. Clara ; St. Teresa, on whose feast we pen these lines, had for her co- 
adjutor in the work of reform of the Carmelites St. John of the Cross, and 
St. Vincent of Paul had for his spiritual daughter and coadjutrix Louise de 
Marillac. He who reads this faithful history will recognize that she was 
no woman of an ordinary stamp. What humility ! what prudence ! what 
charity ! It appears a part of God's providence that all, or nearly all, great 
enterprises in his church should have for their success the sympathetic 
co-operation of spiritual, saintly women. We thank the writer of this 
history, and hope a competent pen will put it in a worthy English dress. 

SHORT SERMONS FOR THE Low MASSES OF SUNDAY. By the Rev. F. 
X. Schouppe, S.J. Translated from the French, with the permission of 
the author, by the Rev. Edward Th. McGinley. New York : Benziger 
Brothers. 1883. 

Father Schouppe is one of the most distinguished theologians of Bel- 
gium. His sermons contain a methodical course of Christian doctrine, 
both dogmatic and moral. They are of the first class of excellence, have 
been well translated, and are published in a neat, convenient form. 

AN APPEAL TO THE GOOD FAITH OF A PROTESTANT BY BIRTH : A Defiance 
to the Reason of a Rationalist by Profession. By His Eminence Car- 
dinal Deschamps, Archbishop of Malines. Translated from the 
French by a Redemptorist Father. New York : Benziger Brothers. 
1883. 

This duodecimo volume of less than one hundred and forty pages con- 
tains ten brief but conclusive and unanswerable arguments by one of the 



432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec., 1883. 

ablest writers and greatest prelates of this century. The translation is good, 
but defaced by several misspelled words. Probably the translator's native 
language is not English. However, English scholars consider themselves 
bound to spell correctly the words of foreign languages. And, besides, 
publishers ought to take care to have their proofs so carefully corrected 
that palpable errors of this kind, if they are found in the copy, should not 
appear in the printed text. 



THE PAROCHIAL HYMN-BOOK. Words and melodies, containing prayers and devotions for all 
the faithful, including Vespers, Compline, and all the liturgical hymns of the year, both in 
Latin and English. London : Burns & Gates. 1883. 

CROP REPORT OF THE KANSAS BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, for the month ending September 30, 
1883, etc. , and Meteorological Record for the month. Wm. Sims, secretary, Topeka, Kan- 
sas. Topeka, Kansas : Kansas Publishing House. 1883. 

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COUNCIL OF THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, APRIL i, 1883. Read at the Annual Meeting, April 30, 1883. 
New York City: Central Office, No. 79 Fourth Avenue. 1883. (Pamphlet.) 

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CATHOLIC TOTAL ABSTINENCE UNION OF AMERICA. Issued from the 
Thirteenth Annual Convention, held at Brooklyn, N. Y., August i and 2, 1883. Pub- 
lished by the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America. 1883. (Pamphlet.) 

RECENT WONDERS IN ELECTRICITY, ELECTRIC LIGHTING, MAGNETISM, TELEGRAPHY, 
TELEPHONY, ETC., ETC., including articles by Dr. Siemens, F.R.S., Count du Moncel, and 
Prof. Thomson. Edited by Henry Greer. Illustrated. New York : College of Electrical 
Engineering. 1883. (Pamphlet.) 

WHAT is THE ANGLICAN CHURCH ? To which is added an Open Letter on the Catholic Move- 
ment, to the Rt. Rev. F. D. Huntington, D.D., Bishop of Central New York, by the late 
Rev. F. C. Ewer, S.T.D., Rector of St. Ignatius' Church, New York. Third edition. 
Chicago: The Living Church Company. (Pamphlet.) 

SAINT THOMAS D'AQUIN. La Science et la Saintete. Panegyrique de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, 
de TOrdre de St. Dominique, prononce par Monseigneur Gastaldi, Archeveque de Turin. 
Traduit de 1'Italien avec 1'autorisation de Sa Grandeur, par l'Abb Didier, du Clerge de 
Maurienne (Savoie), Aumonier des Dames Trappistines de Turin. Turin: Librairie Inter- 
nationale Catholique et Scieutifique, Chev. L. Romano, editeur. 1883. (Pamphlet.) 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXXVIIt. JANUARY, 1884. No. 226. 



THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 

THE triennial gathering of the Episcopal Church has been in 
session for nearly a month and has adjourned. We do not know 
what impression it has left upon the ecclesiastical body which it 
represents. The members have said much which to external 
observers seems of little importance. In order not to show any 
difference of opinions, they have wisely left out all questions of 
doctrine, and, to use the language of a New York infidel preacher, 
they have " reiterated worn-out platitudes and nerveless ideals." 
We think that they have left upon the general public the impres- 
sion that they are a respectable body of men, quite satisfied 
with themselves, and not disposed to quarrel concerning matters 
of doctrine. Neither has any question of ritual been allowed to 
disturb the placid surface of their communion. Why should 
there be any quarrel where all may do as they please ? As says 
the Rev. Dr. Newton, if he be correctly reported : " Of all the or- 
thodox churches in the country, there is none that permits such 
independence of thought as our own conservative church. It. 
was not the outgrowth of one mind. It was a national church 
from the first. Statesmen and not narrow-minded theologians 
provided for the possible unity of those elements in England 
which on the Continent were warring with each other. In our 
creed there is nothing said about the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures. An article concerning future punishment was prepared 
and omitted. The article on the sacraments appeals to the heart 
and not to the head. The Westminster. Catechism is elaborate 

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



434 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

and metaphysical ; ours is brief, simple, unspeculative, having 
chiefly in view the life of the learner. As a result a wide multi- 
tude of individual opinions has grown up in the church. In this 
city we can see in the church every phase of Christian thought 
consistent with the Apostles' Creed." Whatever may be thought 
of Dr. Newton's views, no one who knows the Episcopal Church 
can doubt its elasticity in regard to doctrine. In this respect it 
would almost take the premium among the Protestant sects. If 
there were no pretensions to any ecclesiastical powers or posi- 
tion we should not be surprised at this comprehensiveness, since 
where private judgment is the arbiter of all questions, what unity 
of faith could be expected ? But when this church claims apos- 
tolic orders and calls itself a part of the Catholic Church, or "the 
Holy Catholic Church," men may well look with wonder at a com- 
munion which embraces all shades of Christian thought, in which 
no man can know what he must believe. Contrary to the words 
of the pastoral, the catholicity of such a body would have to be 
discovered by "a special telescope or a crucible." Herschel's 
magnifying power will hardly be sufficient to enable us to see it. 
And if the honorable bishops and ministers would be content 
with the plain facts of their position, they would not seem quite 
so ridiculous as when they claim to be the successors of the 
apostles, whose powers in their hands have dwindled down to 
almost nothing. The Methodists have bishops whose orders are 
quite as good as theirs, and, to the mind of many, much cleaner ; 
but they, while more zealous for doctrine, do not pretend to be 
the legitimate heirs of the apostles. We have no intention here 
to dwell upon the question of their orders, which have been re- 
garded null by the Catholic Church and by every communion on 
the face of the earth which has preserved intact the episcopal 
succession. Words are wasted on this point with them, as on 
every other ess'ential note of the one true church. Yet how ca>n 
sincere minds be led away by such delusions? Either there 
is one church or there is none. There can no more be two 
churches with different creeds than there can be two Gods. 
And beyond the pale of the one church there is always confusion 
of belief. The nearer any body approaches to the likeness of the 
divine model without submission to Christ, who founded the 
church, the more of a mockery is it to the heart and the head. 

In the few remarks we have to make concerning this conven- 
tion we shall abundantly make good the truth of these views 
and the accuracy of Dr. Newton's proposition. 

While little was done for discipline or ritual, the Protestant 



1884.] THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 

Episcopal Church has before the world still more plainly com- 
mitted itself to vagueness and uncertainty of belief. 

In regard to discipline we find not much to interest any one. 
There were some rules proposed in regard to the trials of bishops 
and ministers. These rules may be an improvement upon the 
old ones. In this matter we can be no judges. 

There was an attempt to bring to account Bishop Riley, of 
Mexico. It would seem that this attempt is likely to fail, be- 
cause this prelate considers himself independent of any control. 
He has founded another branch of the Cat'holic Church, and has 
consequently the right to manage it in his own way. It is not 
easy from the reports of the convention to get the exact truth of 
this matter. We give the words of a correspondent of the New 
York Sun, which is generally very accurate : 

" The state of church affairs in Mexico is a troublesome thing to the 
convention. They call it 'the Mexican muddle,' which is exactly the name 
for it. The convention would like to straighten oat this muddle, but there 
are hindrances in the way. Some years ago, when railroads and other 
means of American civilization began to make their mark in Mexico, Chris- 
tian people of various persuasions set longing eyes on the Mexicans as 
possible converts to evangelical religion. Several of the leading denomi- 
nations sent missionaries there and found the natives good listeners. A 
Mexican is by nature religious. He wants to follow some religion, without 
caring much what it is. It was thought he might prove as good a 
convert to Episcopalianism as to any other form of faith. So the work of 
pushing Episcopacy in Mexico was committed to the care of Mr. Riley, now 
known as Bishop Riley, or, to be more exact, the Right Rev. Henry Chaun- 
cey Riley, D.D. Bishop Riley had been brought up among the Spaniards 
of South America, and thought he understood the Spanish character. He 
speaks Spanish fluently, which is a prime necessity among Mexicans. He 
had a fortune of his, own, and he was* willing to engage in the work. Thus 
the opening prospect f the Mexican work was bright enough. It was not 
even a very heavy tax on the Foreign Mission Board, for Bishop Riley was 
liberal' with his own money, and was willing to spend it all in the good 
cause. But it turned out that he had no capacity for managing affairs. He 
thought himself as rich as the Montezumas of- old, and paid out money as 
if he had a, gold-mine behind him instead of the comparatively small pile of 
one hundred and'fifty thousand dollars. His money was soon gone, and then 
tee became of very little account. He got into trouble with his own adher- 
ents and with the representatives of other churches, who said all manner 
of severe things about him. A committee was appointed to go and see 
about him and his work. Bishop Elliott, of Texas, was chairman of the 
committee, which visited Mexico and saw a great deal that was unsatisfac- 
tory. Now the committee is ready to report. The convention is ready to 
take up the Mexican muddle and see what, if anything, can be done with it. 
" But When Bishop Riley was wanted, lo ! he was not to be found. Yes- 
terday one of his friends declared it was likely that he would arrive in this 



43^ THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

city the day after the adjournment of the convention. Some want to try 
to settle the muddle in his absence. Others say it is a shame to sit on a 
man in his absence and engage in a trial, or something of the kind, which 
may end in his deposition. It is asserted, by those who know, that Bishop 
Riley's management has left Mexico worse off than if Episcopacy had never 
been introduced there." 

" What right had they," said the Rev. Dr. Fulton, " to cate- 
chise the bishop of the valley of Mexico ? Could they depose 
this bishop ? In Hayti they had a bishop who was not at all 
under the control of the board of managers. The bishop there 
was autonomous and was not responsible to any power on earth." 
The committee of bishops were not satisfied with Mr. Riley's 
administration. They charge him with " a want of ingenuous 
dealing with the liturgy," with " misappropriation of funds," 
and " neglect of his diocese." They were " surprised and grieved 
to learn that several congregations in the valley of Mexico have 
never had an episcopal visitation. The number of worshippers 
in the city churches scarcely equals the number attending in 
1875." Objection is also made to the manner of conducting the 
new orphanage for girls, which has given occasion for scandal. 
They therefore request Bishop Riley to resign his office. The 
Rev. Dr. Fulton charges him also with trying to induce Bishop 
Cummins, the founder of the Reformed Episcopal Church, to be- 
come the bishop of the valley of Mexico. It seems that he has 
also called his church " the Church of Jesus," and considers him- 
self independent of the General Convention. Now, says the same 
reverend doctor, " he is said not to believe in the apostolicity of 
the office he holds, and is placed in a position in which he has the 
power to go and establish schismatic churches with an episco- 
pate valid though irregular, and all without responsibility to any 
power on earth." We really did not know that there could be 
any irregularity, and supposed that by the branch theory of the 
church any bishop could establish a part of the Catholic Church 
anywhere, inasmuch as by virtue of his office he is one of the in- 
dependent heads of the church. It seems, however, that there is 
another brother in Hayti in a similar position. " This zealous 
brother," says the Rev. Dr. Hall, " is now as independent of this 
church as is the bishop of Rome, and he might say to them to- 
morrow : ' My dear brethren of the church in the United States, 
do not be in a hurry ; I am bishop of the church in Hayti, and I 
will come and talk with you.' " It does not appear that Bishop 
Riley has resigned, nor that there is any one having jurisdiction 
over him to whom he could resign. His is the independent 



1884.] THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 437 

"Church of Jesus." But then what will become of the Episco- 
palians whom he has gathered into his communion? The bishop 
of Massachusetts has great fears that they may go back to the 
Roman Catholics, or be taken up by the Methodists and Pres- 
byterians, who have sent money there for this purpose. Our own 
opinion, gathered from the statistics, is that this " Church of 
Jesus " is not a very large branch of the Episcopalian tree, and 
that the possibility of its withering is worthy of consideration. 

In regard to marriage an effort was made to " regulate the 
impediments to matrimony and to distinguish between them," 
and " to provide a form for the celebration of mixed marriages, 
or of persons not members of the church." As far as we can see 
from the journal, nothing was accomplished at this session ; 
though it would be interesting to know precisely what " three 
bishops, three clergymen, and three jurists learned in the law " 
would determine on this subject. It has been customary for 
Episcopalian ministers to marry any one without reference to 
creed, or even to baptism. 

Some effort was also made to inquire into the practices of the 
Ritualists and others who transform the Prayer-Book to their 
owrt views, and use services and vestments not ordered by the 
church ; but by mutual consent this subject of agitation was laid 
aside, and it was left to every bishop to do as he pleases in his 
own diocese. While the discussions in regard to the changes in 
the liturgy were the principal theme of argument, there was 
little said about those who employ the " Sarum use " or change 
the Communion office to suit their own opinions. This is the 
fruit as well as benefit of elasticity. 

A very important movement in favor of "church schools" 
was begun and commended. The joint Committee on Education 
remarks that " we need more faith in the church as the divinely- 
gifted educator" that " there is no function, no region of life or 
thought, which it is not the church's duty to occupy " ; and they 
recommend that "the number of schools for both sexes should be 
increased." The Rev. Mr. Haskins offered a resolution for the in- 
corporation of a general Society of Protestant Episcopal Schools 
with a capital of one hundred million dollars. The pastoral of 
the bishops declares that " one hour of the seven days will never 
suffice for the education of a Christian child. Parish school, 
academy, college, university, our whole educational system, cry 
out for invigoration." They then urge the building and en- 
dowment of these schools, which shall be under the charge of 
ministers and teachers of their own denomination. We wait in 



438 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

patience to see if these sentiments so plainly expressed mean any- 
thing, or if, as heretofore, the Episcopalians will join hands with 
Protestants and infidels in forcing the public schools, which must 
be godless, upon the people of this country. Will they still cry 
out against the Catholic Church because she cannot use nor 
encourage education divorced from religion? 

Most of the time of the convention was spent on the proposed 
changes of the Prayer-Book, which, after some amendments, were 
adopted and referred to the different dioceses for ratification. It 
is hard for a stranger to see the precise benefit of these changes, 
which are called the enrichment of the liturgy. Many of the 
" enrichments " are very petty, and those which are important 
are no advance in the assertion of any doctrine. 

The feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord has been inserted 
in the calendar, which will prove very instructive to the great 
majority, who will not keep it. A very lively discussion arose, 
however, as to the date of the celebration of this feast. That 
there might not be any concession to the custom of the Catholic 
Church, it was at once proposed to put this feast down some 
time in the Epiphany season. The Pope of Rome came in for his 
share of abuse because he had meddled many centuries ago in 
this matter. The Rev. Dr. Adams delivered himself of some 
striking sentiments which seemed to have an electrical effect : 
" The things that had been done by the Roman Church from the 
sixteenth century he did not call by any means Catholic. He was 
not influenced in any church matter by the Church 6f Rome or 
its practice, and therefore all those arguments with regard to 
'the Roman Church went, with him, for absolutely nothing. His 
Catholicity was American Catholicity. Yet so far as this was a 
living church, this institution of the feast of the Transfiguration 
was the grandest movement that had been made in it for the last 
fifty years." The action of the Catholic Church in placing this 
feast on the 6th of August was no consideration to weigh upon 
his mind. But at last it appeared that the Eastern communions 
keep the feast upon the same day, and a learned divine, who had 
studied the whole question, " hoped that this church would not 
sacrifice this great opportunity of placing herself in harmony 
with the rest of Christendom." So at last the celebration was 
set down for the 6th of August. This settlement gave occasion 
to much joy, as the freedom of " American Catholicity " was 
visibly manifested in contrast with other less favored portions of 
the branch churches. Dr. Huntington said that " he should startle 
some members present, and amuse others, and open the eyes of 






1884.] THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 439 

all who had eyes to be opened on this point, when he said that 
some of the best liturgical scholars of the Church of England 
took the ground that if any of their clergymen were to under- 
take the observance of the feast of the Transfiguration they 
would make themselves liable to fine and imprisonment, and to 
whatever other penalties of pramunire there might be." We pity 
the narrow circumstances of these clergymen, and would advise 
them to emigrate to the happy land of Columbia, where they 
can have festivals, altars, wax candles, stoles, and piscinas at will. 
We hope also that the laity of the American Episcopal Church 
will learn the meaning of the Transfiguration, and not be con- 
fused on the subject, as a church-warden whom we once knew, 
who did not know whether it meant transfusion or transformation. 
Yet wardens and vestrymen are apt to be ignorant, and in many 
cases are not members of the church. The warden of whom we 
write was not even ever baptized. And although an effort has 
several times been made, as in this convention, to require that 
the wardens and vestry be communicants, we believe that this 
rule of discipline has never been adopted. And any one knows 
that all the members of the Episcopal body are free to keep or 
not tcJ keep the feasts or fasts of their church. They are not 
even obliged to go to public worship on Sunday. We there- 
fore earnestly hope that this " grand event " of a new feast will 
be the means of giving them new life. 

A very important proposition was made at the beginning of 
the liturgical discussion namely, that the Protestant Episcopal 
Church should change its name. We have always considered it a 
matter of questionable taste for a grown man to change his name. 
But for a church to take a new title seems to us quite grotesque. 
It was proposed to call the Protestant Episcopal communion 
" the Church," or " the Holy Catholic Church." Of course this 
change would make it whatever they called it. It reminds us 
of a resolution once passed in a Protestant convention : " Re- 
solved, That the Pope of Rome is Antichrist, and that he be and 
hereby is destroyed." If the Episcopalians should call them- 
selves " the Holy Catholic Church," what consternation would 
be felt all the world over ! What would the rest of us do ? 
The late Dr. Ewer declared that " the name Protestant Episco- 
pal Church is as absurd as if Massachusetts should call itself the 
' Anti-Mormon Gubernatorial State.' ' A gentleman from New 
Mexico says that "he lives in a country almost exclusively 
Romish," and that the old name "puts his light under a bushel." 
" We are the Catholic Church of America," said he, "and it is 



44-Q THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

a great misfortune that we have a name which we must con- 
stantly explain away and apologize for." Another gentleman 
says, what will give great quiet to many, " There has been need 
for the present title, but the necessity has passed and we ought 
to bury the bloody shirt." " Our mission is not to fight Roman- 
ism, but to build up the church." The Rev. Dr. Fulton, however, 
exclaims : " The Protestant Episcopal Church is not the Holy 
Catholic Church. We are one of the very least of the great 
tribes of Israel. I live in a city of three hundred and fifty thou- 
sand inhabitants, where our communicants number not more 
than two thousand five hundred. Would it be modest and truth- 
ful to call ourselves the Catholic Church of the United States ? " 
Yet when one has a father is it quite right to be ashamed of that 
father? And were the fathers of the Episcopalians so very 
absurd when they named the church which they founded ? If 
they were so very absurd what is the logical inference ? But 
the Episcopal Church did not change its name this time. Four 
bishops to whom the proposition was referred gave a mournful 
report, recommending that there be no rebaptism of the eccle- 
siastical body. That name " Protestant Episcopal " was forced 
upon them by the " external pressure of circumstances," and " it 
is a trial to faith and patience, but not less a note of the kingdom 
which cometh not with observation." It is certain that this note 
does not come with observation. And the sad bishops find con- 
solation in the fact that they allege, that " it was not till a com- 
paratively late period that the Catholic formula of the Creed 
obliterated the names of local churches." Then follows a series 
of statements partly true, partly false, and wholly dishonest, and 
a fearful dart is hurled at the Catholic Church, which does not 
need to change its name, as it is " no trial of faith and patience." 
We are the wicked people who " adulterate the name of the 
whole Catholic Church by the prefix Roman" There is some- 
thing terrible the matter with us, as we have within us " an in- 
ternal canker which eats out the verv core of Catholic unity." 
How sad that we are so very sick and are ignorant of it! But, 
say the bishops, there 'is a good time coming, when "truth will 
naturally assert itself, and the whole chaos of American Chris- 
tianity be shaped into unity and beauty." Then, we presume, 
they -who are so sick of canker will be gone, and the term " Pro- 
testant Episcopal " be synonymous with " Holy Catholic." 
Under these encouraging circumstances why not wait and let 
one's name stand ? 

The discussions in regard to the Prayer-Book developed some 



1 884.] THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 441 

curious phases in ecclesiastical life. Many desire more liberty 
and choice in their worship. The Rev. Dr. Morrison demanded 
more flexibility. He said : " In the country parts of the United 
States the church is very weak. It is said to be strong in the 
cities, but he was yet to learn where it is strong in the country 
places. Was it even as strong- as it ought to be in the cities ? 
They were told that they had altogether something like three 
hundred and fifty thousand communicants, but he presumed that 
these figures were made up from the rolls furnished by various 
parishes, and were hardly reliable. Why was the church weak in 
the country places ? Because he thought the order for morning 
and evening prayer was away over the heads of many persons to 
whom it was addressed. It was too intellectual for them." 

Some changes were made in the Scripture lessons, and the 
joint committee had seen fit to strike from the calendar " the 
story of Balaam and his ass." Why this instructive miracle was 
to be left out we do not know, as even Dr. Hanckel said that 
"an ass may speak and act sometimes more wisely than a man." 
So the House of Bishops moved to put back this portion of 
Scripture, and after some quite interesting argument their reso- 
lution* was sustained. Some thought the whole story was a, 
dream, this being " the opinion of a long line of commentators." 
And, said the Rev. Dr. Harrison, " if any clergyman wished to 
get rid of that chapter, the remedy had been provided. One of 
the rules made it possible for any one who found one of those 
chapters unsuitable for reading at any particular time to change 
it, and, therefore, there was no absolute objection to the retention 
of this chapter." It is difficult with these rules to see how there 
could be any objection to anything. 

The " Beatitudes of the Gospel " were made a special service, 
but also left entirely optional. Some of the members desired to 
put them at will in the place of the Ten Commandments. One of 
the reverend doctors said that " he had long felt the burden of 
having to say the decalogue at every celebration of Holy Com- 
munion." This amendment did not meet with the consent of 
the majority, and, as far as we can see from the journal, the Com- 
mandments will still keep their place. To us this seems a wise 
provision, since while many need to be familiar with the de- 
calogue, there are not many to whom the beatitudes apply. 

Nearly all the proposed changes in the services were of lit- 
tle doctrinal import. Some curious opinions were, however, 
evolved when any doctrine was touched, and it was evidently 
the purpose of the committee to avoid anything by which 



442 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

faith might be either affirmed or denied. The discussions con- 
cerning the form of absolution are a most remarkable illustration 
of the elasticity and vagueness which distinguish the Episcopal 
Church. The old forms of absolution are both declaratory, and 
would be an insufficient form of the Sacrament of Penance, even 
if it were the intention of the church to administer it. There 
is surely no such intention, as no well-informed person would 
propose to give absolution publicly to a mass of people upon a 
general confession where only an admission of general sinfulness 
was expressed. And, besides, the articles of their faith declare 
that penance is not a sacrament, " that it has no visible sign or 
ceremony ordained by God," and " that it has grown of the cor- 
rupt following of the apostles." If it ever has been the inten- 
tion of a few ministers to give absolution thus publicly, it is 
certain they have failed, as they have neither orders nor juris- 
diction, nor the proper matter and form of the sacrament. The 
forms hitherto ordered were only prayers which any person 
might use, which laymen in the Catholic Church could well offer 
to God. He who would make anything more of these forms 
would involve himself in many absurdities. The High-Church 
element seems, nevertheless, disposed to make out of these 
prayers a kind of sacramental absolution. The new form pro- 
posed is an adaptation of the prayer which both priests and 
people use in the Catholic Church. It simply asks " that God 
will grant absolution and remission of sin, space for true repen- 
tance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the 
Holy Spirit." Some of the members saw in this an attempt 
to undervalue the priestly powers of which a few are proud, 
and they resisted any change. One learned minister tells us 
that these prayers for absolution are a full and perfect form, to 
convey the sacramental pardon of all sin. He has profoundly 
studied the whole subject, which, he says, " is an exceedingly 
difficult one." Moreover, it was necessary to guard against Ro- 
mish errors. " The man who came into church and heard the 
priest pronounce this absolution could not feel drawn into Ro- 
mish errors or mistakes. He could not have the idea that the 
words pronounced gave him absolution, unless he had grace. 
He could not suppose that these words gave him such absolu- 
tion ; that he could go out and say : ' All my sins are wiped out ; I 
have been a debtor for so many sins, but I have had so much 
absolution, and the balance is struck; I am a saint." 

It seems to us also well to avert the danger of this dreadful 
catastrophe, even if powerful means were necessary. But the 



1884.} THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 443 

same very learned gentleman has found out " the flaw in the 
faith of the Roman Catholic Church. It gives absolution upon 
.bare confession, not for repentance and doing good works 
meet for repentance, not for faith, but simply on confession, 
without good works done, and without faith shown." We need 
not say here that this flaw has no existence except in the mis- 
representation of this Episcopal minister, whose ignorance is 
hardly excusable. We would refer the honest gentleman to any 
Catholic catechism. 

But the Rev. Dr. Fulton tells us that "there are degrees of 
absolution," which, however, he does not explain to us. He ad- 
mires this beautiful precatory absolution, in which the word 
"consolation " sweetens and enriches everything. " He thought 
it was pretty hard to be absolving people all the year round in 
God's name, and never get absolution one's self. If the committee 
could only have given to the ministers of the church a chance to 
be absolved by the congregation, he should like very much to 
say his confession, and should very much like to hear the con- 
gregation say to him: 'The almighty and merciful Lord grant 
thee absolution and remission of all thy sins.' ' 

Then' arose a gentleman from western Michigan, who said 
that he firmly believed he had power to absolve, and he had be- 
lieved this for sixteen years. " Was he now to be undeceived ? 
He failed to understand why it was that the priest of God 
should rise up at the time of prayer, and merely make a de- 
claration or precatory statement that the people were forgiven 
by some indefinite, subjective method. They were proclaiming 
against the subjectivity of Protestantism around them, and had 
they not the power to tell their people, when they made the 
confession which the church puts on their lips and in their 
hearts, that the priest had authority to give them absolution?" 
It was immediately objected that this whole discussion was "the 
introduction into the church of questions of doctrine," and the 
Rev. Dr. Corbett reminded them of " the story of Aladdin and 
the wonderful lamp how the old magician had obtained the lamp 
that performed miracles, by calling out in the street opposite the 
palace, ' New lamps for old ones ; new lamps for old ones.' His 
advice was to keep the old lamp still." Mr. Whittle, of Georgia, 
asked, " When doctors disagree, who was to decide? " And an- 
other gentleman remarked " that the discussion was utterly use- 
less and that he saw no means whatever to the settlement of the 
question." So it was not settled, and the disputants were all 
pleased, while the Rev. Dr. Huntington declared " that never in 



444 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

any assembly of the American church, convocation, congregation, 
or convention, had the burning question of absolution been dis- 
cussed so kindly, so temperately, and so considerately." 

Libert}' 1 of opinion is indeed great in this community, but we 
sometimes wonder what good this church does to any of its 
members. It certainly never tells them what they are to believe. 

There was a very interesting or peculiar debate in regard to 
the Nicene Creed. This symbol contains the article of faith 
which declares the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. 
Mr. Judd, of Illinois, objected to this formula, and " thought the 
able and learned secretary ought to know that the great Eastern 
Church, with its one hundred millions of souls, held to precisely 
the view which he had been advocating. A hundred Episcopal 
conventions could not make him repeat the filioque. The idea of 
his calling the Church of Rome the Mother Church was a pecu- 
liar condition of things, especially when they know that the 
Church of Rome was an infant church as compared with theirs ; 
the Church of England having been planted, according to the 
best authorities, in the British Isles in the year 38, and the 
Church of Rome having never been heard of until the year 61, 
or soon thereafter " ! " He hoped that this church would not 
undertake to put a bar against the communion of a single mem- 
ber of the Universal Church, which it would do if it insisted 
upon inserting into the Communion office the so-called Nicene 
Creed." 

The Rev. Dr. Abercrombie, who had been to the depths of 
this subject, explained then to the members how it was with the 
Oriental Church, and how badly in this matter Nicholas I. had 
conducted himself: " He asked this House not to lay an unnec- 
essary yoke, not to put as the creed, in the central act of worship, 
the Communion office a thing which would remain a stigma 
upon the church, and which would remain a bar to catholic 
communion. If the House would take the proper step and refuse 
to do an act so contrary to unity, he believed that the church 
would go forward conquering and to conquer, and that the idols 
of superstition, of false doctrine, and of the authority of Rome 
would fall like Dagon before the ark. He prayed that God 
might speed that day." This electrical speech did not seem to 
have produced much effect, though we wonder that, with th( 
hope of such tremendous results, the House did not at once d( 
what he asked, especially as it was only not to do a very little 
thing. At this juncture one of the members called the attention 
of the delegates to the fact that " Article VIII. of the Articles of 






1884.] THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 445 

Religion declared that the Nicene Creed ought to be received 
and believed, since it may be proved by most certain warrants of 
Holy Scripture ; and that the litany told him to say, ' O God 
the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son.' " 

Then Mr. Meigs, of New Jersey, interposed that " the work of 
the joint committee was being endangered by the differences 
between parties in regard to doctrinal questions, such as the 
filioque. He therefore desired that this proposition of the com- 
mittee should be rejected." It was then rejected by one hun- 
dred and fifty to one hundred and seven votes. So the Nicene 
Creed was left where it was, and, as it is optional, need never be 
recited. It was made manifest, however, that the majority of the 
convention did not favor professing a belief in the procession of 
the Holy Ghost from the Son. Our own opinion is that many 
do not comprehend the meaning of the term ; but also that many 
would be glad to sacrifice anything, if only any of the Eastern 
churches would recognize them in any way. Such recognition 
will never take place, for the older branches of the Oriental 
schism are too well penetrated with the ancient traditions to 
associate \vith any form of Protestantism, which they have many 
times anathematized. We do think, however, that it is not 
honest nor dignified for a respectable body like the Episcopal 
Church to continue to implore a bow of recognition from a com- 
munion whose faith condemns all that they profess. And the 
truth is that they would give the world if any church having 
valid orders would' give its guarantee to their own. For this 
any sacrifice would be cheap. And in all this, as in their shame 
of their name, they contradict the action of their fathers. Schaff, 
in his History of Creeds, tells us that " the English Reformers fully 
admitted, with the most learned fathers and schoolmen, the ori- 
ginal identity of the offices of bishop and presbyter. The most 
learned English divines before the period of the Restoration, such 
as Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, Field, Ussher, Hall, and Stillingfleet, 
did not hold the theory of an exclusive jure divino episcopacy, 
and fully recognized the validity of presbyterian ordination. 
They preferred and defended episcopacy as the most ancient and 
general form of government, best adapted for the maintenance of 
order and unity ; in one Word, as necessary for the well-being 
but not for the being of the church." * In this view we believe 
that the great majority of the Episcopalians concur. 

Much was said in regard to the growth of the Episcopal 
Church in the last one hundred years. In reading over the 

* History of Creeds, i. p. 605. 



446 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

report of their missions and the statistics of the convention we 
are struck with the comparatively small number of baptisms and 
communicants. It would seem that the small minority only are 
communicants, and that many of the missionary bishops can 
hardly live, and could not live without supplies of money from 
the East. Some complain, and during the past three years 
report no progress at all. The whole country has increased 
somewhat in population during the last one hundred years, and 
statistics which cover this period ought to show a large increase. 
The Committee on the State of the Church recommends that 
" church-membership should be computed on the basis of the 
baptized rather than on that of communicants. This basis would 
be more churchly and less misleading." They also say that 
" their greatest deficiency is in the inadequate number of candi- 
dates for holy orders." They further tell us that there has come 
among them " a more tolerant and catholic spirit, which has per- 
vaded the whole length and breadth of the church to a degree 
never known before." By this we are officially informed that 
doctrine has been made more vague, and that each member has 
become more indifferent as to the belief and practice of his fellow- 
members. If their words do not imply this we fail to grasp the 
meaning of the phrase, " tolerant and catholic spirit." 

The House of Bishops, as the " successors of the apostles," is 
the most important part of this convention. The sessions of this 
body are private, and we therefore do not hear of their discus- 
sions. We only know of them by what they see fit to make 
public. In the past they have not been as conservative as the 
House of Clerical and Lay Deputies. They have denied the Real 
Presence of our Lord in the divine Eucharist, and the doctrine of 
baptismal regeneration, which the lower House probably would 
not have done. And on this occasion, in the opening sermon of 
Bishop Clark and in their pastoral, they have almost announced 
liberalism in belief. " The Episcopal Church," says the New <. 
York Christian Union, " makes room for all forms of spiritual 
experience, without emphasizing any single phase ; it has a place j 
for the zeal of the Methodist and the cooler and less emotional ] 
life of the Unitarian. It lays no peculiar stress on a special rite, 
as does the Baptist; it does not insist upon a Calvinistic cree( 
with the Presbyterian, nor upon an Arminian creed with th< 
Methodist ; it welcomes alike Calvinist and Arminian." 

Bishop Clark tells us that " the catholic teaching of th< 
church, the scnsus communis of Christendom, is of no more authc 
rity than the opinion of the individual, and in some quarters it 






1884.] THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 447 

ends in setting aside both the witness of the early church and 
the inspired record upon which that witness rests." " The 
church of our inheritance allows its ministers and members to 
construct their complicated schemes of doctrine according to the 
best light they have, but it does not demand assent to any of 
these schemes as matters of faith." " To whatever school of 
theology we belong, I trust there are none of us who are not 
ready to say : ' Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.' " " It is 
safe for us to allow the same play of individual thought and 
opinion in respect to all matters which are not strictly of the 
faith that existed in primitive times." " It is the wisdom of our 
church to require of her members only a simple affirmation of 
the Apostles' Creed." 

. It will be observed that the whole question as to the true 
meaning of this Creed, and as to faith held in primitive times, is 
to be decided by every individual in the full exercise of his 
liberty. Where, then, is the difficulty in reciting the Apostles 
Creed, and where is the internal bond of belief ? Each one for 
himself interprets the Bible, the Creed, the teaching of the early 
church. What larger liberty is possible ? If there be greater 
elasticity we fail to comprehend it. 

The pastoral is the address of the bishops to their people on 
the most solemn occasion, and they are all responsible for it. 
What do we find, then, in this authoritative document ? We find 
therein many unintelligible sentences which even the writer him- 
self probably did not understand. We may well say to them in 
the language of Job : " Who is this that hideth counsel without 
knowledge?" " Who is this that wrappeth up sentences in un- 
skilful words ? " We agree with the minister we have already 
quoted: "It reiterates the old symbols, though it fails to gal- 
vanize them into any semblance of life and meaning. At a time 
when the tendency of the educated classes is against the assump 
tion of dogmatic dictatorialism, when millions believe in nothing 
at all, this church meets the mighty difficulty by reiterating 
worn-out platitudes and nerveless ideals." We do not understand 
what is meant by the balance, which the bishops say is not to be 
hoped, " between loyalty to unalterable truth and a due regard 
to what is variable but none the less actual in the needs of 
society." The'y tell us that " it must always cost an effort to 
adjust in a satisfying harmony the contending claims of old with 
new, uncompromising creeds with honest movements of religious 
thought." We always considered truth invariable in its very 
nature, which no mutations of time or speculations of so-called 



448 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. [Jan., 

science could alter. Then they would have their people know 
that " the Gospel is not a philosophy. The church is not dis- 
covered at the end of a line of argument, any more than by a 
telescope or a crucible. Personal power rules in the realm of 
spiritual things, as in institutions and reformations upon the 
earth." "A reverent scrutiny of documents, and a searching 
criticism of what is human in grammar, arithmetic, or version, are 
a part of the church's business, and belong to her scholars." 
We did not think that there was anything inhuman or super- 
human in either of these things. But they add that the Old and 
New Testaments are eminently in each other, as " a greater 
student of these lively oracles than we are likely to meet in any 
of our thoroughfares long ago declared." No information is 
given as to who this gentleman is, nor why we are to look 
through the streets to find his equal. Yet already, they say, 
" time has brought a reasonable end to that factitious quarrel 
between science and faith which only a little while ago dis- 
turbed so many minds, the reconciliation of these foolishly alien 
ated creatures of God consisting in so simple a remedy as the 
discrimination of their spheres." We hope the average reader, 
who may wonder at the unintelligible, will be able to catch the 
meaning, even if he do not admire the style. We are glad to 
hear that time has brought an end to the quarrel between those 
two foolishly alienated creatures. If the quarrel be over in the 
Episcopal Church we are inclined to think that faith has been 
driven from the ground. But now for the dogmatism of the pas- 
toral : " The fontal truth which is the promise of a rectification of 
much disproportioned theology " is the Incarnation of the Son of 
God. " This Incarnation includes atonement, as it includes every 
article of the creeds, every ministration of grace, all the forces 
and functions of the living body of Christ." All this is indeed 
true, if it were in their power to understand it. But how can 
they either explain or understand it who deny the unity of 
Christ's body, who assert its corruption, who render to the 
Mother of God no honor nor reverence ? There may be a few 
who know the words by which this vital doctrine is stated ; 
there can be none who feel it in their hearts or know its power. 

" Our Anglican fathers knew what they did when they placed 
the article of the sufficiency of the Scriptures next after the 
articles of the Trinity, and they did not mean that the rule 
whereby all doctrines are to be infallibly proved is itself fallible, 
or is yet to be proved." The world may respectfully ask of the 
Episcopal Church the reason why she holds to the inspiration of 






1884.] THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CONVENTION. 449 

the Scriptures and what that inspiration is ; and it will receive no 
reply. The world may ask how that can be an infallible rule 
which every one is at liberty to interpret according to his own 
views. And the world will point to the fact that unity of faith 
among Episcopalians, even regarding the Trinity and Incarnation 
of the Son of God, is neither actual nor possible. The bishops 
take good care not to define anything, not'to state in terms any 
doctrine, else they would disagree. They can deny truth ; they 
cannot affirm it. Why did they not state to this material age 
what they believe, and what men ought to believe, in regard to 
the two natures and one person of the Word made flesh ? Why 
did they not state the meaning of the Apostles' Creed which 
every one ought to hold ? The answer is manifest because 
they do not possess any clear conception of truth, and cannot, 
therefore, express it ; because the first step into the region of 
doctrine leads to the discovery of their hopeless disunion. 

Now r they look at their sister Protestant sects and hope to 
win them. " To call these generous reformations Christless 
would be unfair. The love of Christ is in them." They are all 
right, and "only lack what Christ has offered to provide through 
the ordinances and offices of his heavenly kingdom." Let them 
only come to these successors of the apostles and get what they 
lack. Let their ministers come for episcopal ordination. Then 
all will flow on beautifully and in order. Will these " generous 
reformations" comply with this invitation? Does the Episcopal 
Church expect some of the Protestant denominations to apply 
for admission as a body? We hardly think any of them will 
come. And if they were to ask advice of some one fully as wise 
" as any one we may meet in our thoroughfares," he would 
probably ask, " Why would you do it, and what would you gain ? " 
" You will gain nothing whatever in certainty of faith, nothing in 
unity. You will hear ' airy generalities,' and the assumption 
of claims which all Christendom rejects. Better remain where 
you are than take a position more unreal and be deceived by 
forms which have no substance." 

Here we close our brief commentary. They who are true in 
heart, who really believe in one God and one Christ, will come 
to his one church. The day is past for insincerity or play with 
questions which concern the salvation of the soul. It is sad to 
deceive one's self even in the things of this life ; it is endless ruin 
to deceive the soul in the things of eternity. The signs, of the 
Son of Man are in the heavens ; and there are only two forces in 
the field, the Catholic Church and the infidel. 
VOL. xxxvin. 29 



450 THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. [Jan., 



THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE* 

IN the year of Rome 746, on the seventh day before the 
Calends of January, corresponding with our 25th of December, 
towards five o'clock in the evening, two mounted Roman offi- 
cers left Jerusalem by the gate of Damascus, followed by an 
escort of soldiers and a few slaves. One of them, a man of about 
fifty years of age, of a powerful build, red of face and free of 
tongue, suggested at a glance, by the thick regularity of his fea- 
tures, the type of Vitellius. Epicurean in doctrine and in habits, 
he quoted on all occasions, whether to the point or not, the 
verses of an illustrious poet, lately deceased, copies of whose 
poems he occasionally received from Rome. He never failed to 
add after each quotation : " And to think that I knew him, that 
divine Horace ! How often have we played together in our 
childhood ! 

" ' O saepe mecum ! ' ' 

This officer bore the name of Mansius Quadratus. 

The other was a young man hardly thirty years of age. His 
expression was grave, and he replied by rare monosyllables only 
to the inexhaustible volubility of his jovial companion. The out- 
line of his finely-cut features, his head shaved after the manner 
of the Romans, stood out in sharp relief against the clear sky of 
a beautiful evening of Palestine. Indifferent to the idle conver- 
sation of his companion, he was gazing thoughtfully upon the 
environs of Jerusalem, apparently absorbed in the study of a 
difficult problem. 

" Sooner or later, my good Octavius," said the Epicurean, 
" you will acknowledge that wisdom does not consist in dreaming 
of the future, but in enjoying the present : 

" m ' Nunc est bibendum, nunc pcde libero 
Pulsanda tellus !' 

O that immortal Horace ! We were dear friends in our 
youth. Believe me," he continued, without awaiting an answer 
from the taciturn young man, "you can never change the 
world. The world, my young friend, is older than you. I 
cannot but regret that you have given up that richly-endowed 

* Translated from the French of the Abbe" H. Perreyve, by Miss M. E. Perkins. 



1884.] THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. 451 

soul of yours to vague reveries of progress and of the future 
which rob it of its daily joys, and that you have condemned 
your youth to a hopeless expectation of an indefinite good. 
Alas ! Octavius, the world is going, and always will go, from 
bad to worse ! Believe me, we must accept it as it is, take our 
share in its pleasures as they go, and not weary our hearts long- 
ing for the return of the golden age : 

"/ Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
Progeniem vitiosiorem.' 

Ah! that inimitable Horace! Our fathers were near neighbors 
at Venusium, in our beloved Apulia." A moment of silence 
followed this already familiar exclamation, and nothing was 
heard but the regular tramp of horses' feet, the clanking of heavy 
swords against the saddles, and the quick step of the escort. 

" At least," resumed the indefatigable Quadratus, " might one 
inquire whence you have drawn your extraordinary ideas about 
the world and its future ? If my question is indiscreet I do not 
ask for an answer. Above all things I believe in respecting the 
opinions j of others, provided that they, on their part, will not 
interfere with mine. But, to tell the truth, it seems that since 
your sojourn in Jerusalem the doctrines of the Jews have had 
more or less influence on your mind, and that the son of the 
patrician Octavius has not been wholly insensible to the super- 
stitions of the good people of Judea. Be not angered, friend ; I 
can foresee your answer, and would not have you take too seri- 
ously what is intended merely as a jest. 

" ' Dulce est desipere in loco,' 

as Horace says." 

Another silence followed this short quotation. Just then a 
slave left the ranks of the escort and ran towards the officers. 
Both of them absorbed, one in his reverie, the other in his own 
remarks, had passed beyond the road which led to Bethlehem. 
Made aware of their error, they retraced their steps a short 
distance and turned into the ravine extending along the foot of 
Mount Sion. 

" Well, I shall not insist upon it ; and since my remark seems 
to have pained you, let us speak no more on the subject. Only 
allow me once more to exhort you, my dear Octavius, to shake 
off this melancholy which nothing warrants surely not your age, 
nor your brilliant prospects, nor the present state of the world 
under the divine and ever-glorious Augustus! Look at the 



452 THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. [Jan., 

empire, look at the whole universe, happy under the sway of 
Cassar, and do not discourage the general joy for the sake of vain 
theories of which you yourself in fact " 

" Quadratus," interrupted Octavius, " the night is already 
falling. Do you think we are still far from Bethlehem ? " 

"We are hardly half way," said Quadratus, "but when we 
shall have reached the summit of the slope we see before us we 
shall see the lights of the town. At best we shall arrive late 
barely in time to secure quarters for the night. I know of but 
one inn in Bethlehem, and I hardly see how we shall find place 
for all our Jews. For my part I would not have one of them 
within fifty paces of my room : 

" ' Odi profanum vulgus et arceo 

I am not like a certain officer of my acquaintance, upon whom 
the charms of Judaism " 

" Quadratus," said the young man gravely, " since you will 
insist upon the subject, let me put an end once for all to this 
offensive jesting, and so explain myself that it may be no longer 
possible " 

" Come, now ! has he really taken offence ? One can no longer 
dare to jest with these young men ! What was comedy for their 
fathers is tragedy for them. Indeed, I believe the world will 
soon have forgotten how to laugh." So saying, he shrugged his 
shoulders with an air of despair. 

Octavius continued : " After all, Quadratus, you must forgive 
some souls for seeking their consolation elsewhere than in the 
wine-cup. I am not a Jew, as you would make me out, nor am 
I tempted to become one. I am a Roman as well as you, wholly 
independent, heart and mind, free from all superstition, and little 
disturbed, it seems to me, by vain scruples. I have, on the con- 
trary, tried everything and already exhausted all. I am dying 
of weariness in the midst of pleasures. I envy and admire you 
in the tranquillity of your happiness ; for myself, I have not learned 
the secret of it. I find that the joys of this world only excite in 
my heart a hunger and a thirst which they are powerless to 
satisfy. Everything is too much or too little. Like you I would 
willingly lull myself to sleep in these pleasures, forgetting therein 
the world and myself, did not some indefinable sense of the 
infinite come to disturb my rest and awaken within me dreams 
and desires that seem endless and insatiable. So I wait, I long, 
I pray. To whom or for what I know not. I pray for that 
which must come to respond to this profound instinct which 



1884.] THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. 453 

possesses my soul. I believe in a good which I do not know, 
but without the hope of which I would not wish to remain a day 
on this sad earth." 

" You are ill, my friend," replied Quadratus in a paternal 
tone. " You are affected with the malady of the age. By Her- 
cules ! I have no patience with the dreamers who have disturbed 
so many beautiful souls of our time, and could I but lay hands 
on that Plato of yours I would get this good Murena to thrash 
him soundly ! Would I not, Murena? " 

" Yes, sire," answered a stalwart slave, looking up at his mas- 
ter with a stupid laugh. 

" But tell me, Octavius," resumed Quadratus, " what is this 
indefinable 'infinite/ which has even no name in the Roman 
language? Why do you believe that a man, in order to be 
happy, must needs aim at something superior to himself ? The 
secret of our true happiness is in ourselves and in the good 
things which surround us. Learn to appreciate these advan- 
tages and you will be happy. Common sense teaches us this. 
After all, why desire a happiness which our nature cannot 
attain ? Even supposing such happiness to exist, I refuse to 
recognize or desire it, for this would only condemn me to the 
tortures of Tantalus. I merely ask of the gods to leave me in 
peace on earth, and not to disturb my life with the hopeless de- 
sire of anything better, any more than I, miserable mortal, at- 
tempt to interfere with their pleasures of Olympus. The gods 
are happy where they are ; I try to make myself as comfortable 
as possible where I am. Every one to his place. By Hercules ! 
my dear Octavius, it is many a day since I have attempted to 
philosophize thus." 

" Then you are contented, philosopher," said Octavius, with a 
sad smile, " with such good things as fall to your lot in this life ? 
Pardon me, but I cannot accuse you of ambition. What, Quad- 
ratus ! you are no longer young ; the evening of life with its infir- 
mities must soon come upon you, and then what will remain to you 
of all your mortal career ? The bittep recollection of a few plea- 
sures, purchased perhaps at the price of the sufferings of others ; 
of fruitless trials, unexplained and unconsoled ; the feeling that life 
has been one long disappointment, and that after death we have 
nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for. And can it be^ 
for such an end that you have been endowed with that active in- 
telligence which you may try in vain to stifle, that heart so capa- 
ble of loving, and of whose generous sincerity I myself have had 
so many proof sj> For my part I cannot believe it. I cannot be- 



454 THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. [Jan., 

lieve that this short and troubled dream can be the secret of 
man's destiny. I believe there must be some better solution to 
the problem. I believe that a time will come when our eyes shall 
behold what they have so long sought ; that humanity shall not 
roll on eternally in this desolate darkness, but that one day the 
long-desired truth shall be ours yes ! even should a god have to 
come down upon earth to bring it to us 

" Well done, Octavius ! Behold indeed a solution ! All that is 
necessary, then, my dear friend, is to break the chains of Prome- 
theus, that the ancient benefactor of mankind may bring back the 
sacred fire amongst us." 

" Do not be too ready to laugh at those old dreams of the 
sages," said Octavius. " The fable of Prometheus has always 
impressed me deeply." * 

" Is it possible ! " exclaimed Quadratus, offering his hand 
gaily to Octavius, who returned the salute without smiling. 
"After all, it is beautiful," continued the former, drawing his 
horse's head away from that of his companion, "it is indeed 
charming, to be as young as you are, when the world is as old as 
it is." 

" Really, my poor friend," returned the young man, " we have 
no two ideas in common. You look upon the world as old. It 
seems to me very young ; to tell the truth, I believe it has hardly 
yet cast off the obscurities of its childhood. I believe it is barely 
on the eve of awakening to a moral consciousness. What master 
has yet instructed it ? What powerful and beneficent hand has 
pointed out its true destiny ? Humanity seems to me like a poor 
weak child given over in its very infancy to an evil genius, by 
which he has been injured, robbed, but not irretrievably ruined, 
and who, before he can recover what he has lost, must await the 

* In the tragedy of Aeschylus the chorus says to the martyred hero : " Must thou suffer 
unceasingly ? Is there to be no end to thy woes ? " 

PROMETHEUS. " Not until Jupiter so wills it." 

CHORUS. "Dost thou hope that such may be his will ? Dost thou not admit thy fault? 
But to reproach'thee with it would give us no pleasure, and would only afflict thee ; rather let 
us seek some means of deliverance." 

PROMETHEUS. " It is easy for those who know not adversity to advise and reprove those 
who are less fortunate. I foresaw this, and it is voluntarily, yes, of my free will, that I have 
acted thus ; I do not deny it. In order to save mortals I have sacrificed myself " (v. 263-275). 

" Is it not extraordinary," says Patin, " to find fn a pagan poet this sublime idea of a God 
offering himself in sacrifice for man ? Some of the Fathers of the church have been so struck by 
it that they have traced therein a sort of confused presentiment of the grandest mystery of our 
religion " (Etudes sur les tragiques grecs : Eschyle, Le Promithie). 

The tradition to which the learned critic refers is very ancient ; already in the second cen- 
tury, Tertullian speaks of Christ as the true Prometheus : " Hie enim est verus Prometheus " 
(Apologet. xviii.) And be again refers to the ancient fable in his first book Contra Marcion. 



1884.] THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. 455 

help of a power whose devotion will be without limit, because its 
love shall know no bounds." 

" And you believe in such a power ? " 

" I do." 

" And you await its advent ? " . 

" I expect it." 

" You are more seriously affected than I had supposed," said 
Quadratus gravely. 

At this moment the little caravan emerged from the denies 
which they had followed along the foot of "Mount Sion, and, leav- 
ing the valley of Kedron, they crossed the wide tableland of a hill 
whence a vast and solemn panorama spread itself out before them. 
They were leaving behind them on the north Jerusalem, now 
reddened by the last rays of the setting sun ; on the west were to 
be seen the mountains of Judea ; and on the east, beyond the Dead 
Sea, the mountains of Arabia. 

The young man, again absorbed in his reveries, gazed half un- 
consciously on the scene, the profiles of the mountains standing 
out sharply against the clear twilight sky. Quadratus called 
two men from the escort and ordered them to go on in advance, 
in order to make preparations in Bethlehem for the arrival of the 
Roman envoys. 

The reader has doubtless already surmised the object of their 
journey. Augustus having at that time ordered the taking of a 
general census of all the subjects of his empire, and the inhabi- 
tants of Palestine having been for this purpose summoned to the 
principal cities of the country, our two officers had been sent from 
Jerusalem to Bethlehem to see that the commands of the emperor 
were properly executed, and to maintain order in case of need. 
The Romans were not in actual possession of Judea, but Pompey 
had subjected it to a tax. Herod held sway under Caesar, and 
the nature of the alliance between the Jewish and the Roman 
people was such that it secured to the latter the benefits of the 
tribute. It was more especially for the distribution of this tri- 
bute that the census had been ordered, and the nominal inde- 
pendence of Judea could not prevent its being executed under 
the Roman form and by Roman officers. Our two friends, there- 
fore, expected to arrive that evening at Bethlehem, and to begin 
their operations the following day. 

"Do you know what I am thinking?" said Quadratus, de- 
spairing of eliciting from his young companion any satisfactory 
answer to his previous questions. " I am thinking what miserable 
luck we have to be off here at the end of the world among these 



456 THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. [Jan., 

savages, while the divine Augustus is shutting the gates of the 
temple of Janus and exhibiting with a grandeur hitherto un- 
known the immense majesty of universal peace. To think that 
while the whole world has its eyes turned towards Rome, I must 
needs be occupied with this miserable business of registering the 
names of the people of Bethlehem ; the whole crowd of them are 
not worth counting, and a few thousands more or less can make 
little difference to Caesar. By Hercules ! this is no place for 
us, Octavius, and I swear that this shall be my last year of ser- 
vice in the East." 

"A marvellous land, this East ! " thought Octavius, giving no 
attention to the bitter exclamation of Quadratus. " It is the birth- 
place of all light, no less of the intellectual than of the terrestrial 
sun. What power has ever lasted that has not sought here its 
consecration ? What doctrine has ever taken root that has not 
sprung from this quarter of the earth ? And, if we can believe 
the mysteries of tradition, the time has come when this ancient 
orient is to recover its strength by a new fruitfulness, and to as- 
sume the direction of the whole world;* What instinct is it that 
makes me so love these traditions ? When I gaze on these moun- 
tains of Judea, land of so many prodigies, I fancy I can see the 
dawning light of a new era rising from behind them. O moun- 
tains of Palestine ! O silent, voiceless plains, mute since the day 
when ye echoed the sounds of the Eternal Voice ! O strange and 
solemn land ! better do I love thy rivers and thy palm-trees than 
the shores of the Tiber ; nor would I give one hour of thy grave 
solitude for all the glorious tumult of the Capitol." 

" Do you not agree with me this time ? " said Quadratus. 
" You do not answer me." 

" What did you say ? " asked Octavius gently. 

" I say that we are entering upon the field of Rama," con- 
tinued Quadratus, evidently piqued. 

The caravan had, in fact, just reached the field of Rama, made 
memorable by the beautiful lament of Rachel, who mourns for 
her children and will not be comforted because they are not : 
" Et noluit consolari, quia no?i sunt" The angel of night had al- 
ready spread his wings over the earth, and the solitude of Rama 
seemed even more solemn than was its wont. 
fc, As they passed the tomb of Rachel the Jews left their places 

* " It was then universally believed," says Tacitus, " upon the faith of ancient sacred writ- 
ings, that the East was about to receive new strength, and that men from Judea were to take 
possession of the whole world Pluribus pereuasio iuerat, antiquis sacerdotum litteris contineri, 
eo ipso tempore fore ut valesceret Oriens, profectique Judaea rerum potirentur " (Htst. l.v, c. 
xiii.) Suetonius mentions the same tradition (In Vespasian.) 



I? 84.] THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. 457 

in the caravan to press their lips on the sacred monument ; but 
Quadratus ordered them back and gave strict orders that no one 
should quit the ranks, now that night had fallen, and that the 
first one to disobey should be put in irons. All moved on in 
silence save one old Jew, who muttered between his teeth : 
" Cruel daughter of Babylon ! happy he who shall seize thy chil- 
dren and crush them against the stone ! " 

" These Jews are certainly the most superstitious people on 
the face of the earth ! " said Quadratus. " It was only last week 
that I had to restore order in the Temple among those who had 
come to offer their oxen and sheep for sacrifice, and who were 
rushing at each other right and left, throwing everything into 
confusion. Can anything be more absurd than to believe that 
burning animals on their altars can give pleasure to the gods? 
Do I not at least in this meet your views, my dear philosopher? " 
said he, turning towards Octavius. 

" Not at all, friend ; I am of the contrary opinion." 

" Ah ! now you speak for the sake of contradicting. I know 
you, young man. You are not more devout than the rest of us, 
for since we have been together in the service of Caesar I have 
never known you to sacrifice to the gods so much as a chicken." 

" So much the worse for me. Quadratus, this is my misfor- 
tune. I was born either too soon or too late. I do not believe 
enough to take part with the believers, and only doubt enough 
to make me regret the want of faith. I am a sceptic, which 
means great suffering to an earnest soul ; but my scepticism does 
not prevent my recognizing everywhere the general features of a 
universal religion, which seems to me to be not so much an 
entire error as the alteration of a truth. Sacrifice is one of these 
general features. How can you believe that a universal custom, 
one that is found among all peoples, in all ages, in all parts of the 
world, is a mere accident or is merely the result of human imagi- 
nation ? No, no ! Man, once conscious of his guilt, feels the 
necessity of appeasing the justice of Heaven. For this he seeks 
an adequate victim ; he seeks on all sides, below as well as within 
himself; sensible of his own imperfection, of his powerlessness, he 
would find a victim superior to himself, capable of effecting his 
reconciliation with the gods. If ever a new Hercules should 
appear upon the earth to purify and save it I feel that it would 
be by suffering and dying for it." 

"Come, now, Octavius!" said Quadratus, trying to laugh, 
"you are indeed beyond me. I confess that I cannot at all under- 
stand these reveries of yours ; let us leave them and arrange to- 



458 THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. [Jan., 

gether how we are to organize our affairs at Bethlehem. By the 
way, what is the meaning of this name of Bethlehem ? for in the 
language of the Jews each name is a poem in itself, and it always 
amuses me to hear their significations. Who can tell me this?" 
said the officer, turning to the escort. " Aram," he called, " tell 
me the meaning of the name of Bethlehem, and all that you know 
about this poor village. I warrant we shall 'hear something mar- 
vellous," said he, turning towards Octavius, " and that Athens 
herself will be as nothing compared with this Bethlehem ! Just 
listen." 

The Jew left his place in the ranks of the escort and hastened 
as best he could to the head of his master's horse. Seizing the 
bridle, not to guide the animal, but to steady his own feeble 
steps, he began his explanation : 

" Bethlehem, sire, means ' house of bread.' " 

" I expected as much ! " interrupted Quadratus. " And what 
more ? " 

" Our rabbis tell us that the name is symbolic, and signifies 
that Bethlehem will one day nourish all the nations of the earth." 

" Good for a beginning ! The pretension of these beggars 
is astonishing ; it is always they who are to save the world ! 
Go on ! " 

" Bethlehem is called Ephrata also that is to say, the fertile, 
the fruitful." 

" I'll warrant that it is called Ephrata because it will one 
day be the richest, the most beneficent city of the universe, and 
that it will spread its treasures over the whole world ! " 

" Even so, sire," answered the Jew gravely. 

" By Hercules ! " exclaimed Quadratus, " I am becoming a 
rabbi myself." 

" Bethlehem," continued the old Jew, " belongs to the tribe 
of Juda, and the ancients called it the city of David, because that 
holy prophet was born there." 

" David, David ! " interrupted Quadratus. " Was he not one 
of your kings?" 

" Yes, sire." 

"And this great King David was born in Bethlehem?" 

"Yes, sire; which means, say our rabbis, that Bethlehem will 
also give birth to the true David that is, to the true King of the 
world, who, according to promise, is to inherit all the nations of 
the earth." 

Quadratus laughed heartily. 

" Are you listening to all this marvellous information, Octa- 



1 884.] THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. 459 

vius? They are superb, these beggarly Jews! Ah! my old 
fellow, you had better speak softly ; were Csesar to hear you he 
might be jealous of the King of Bethlehem ! And David what 
did he do in Bethlehem ? " 

" Before he was the anointed of the Lord he tended flocks," 
continued the Jew gravely ; " wherein, say our rabbis, he is the 
symbol of the great Shepherd who is to gather all men into one 
flock, and lead them from the desert of this world into his eternal 
pastures." 

" Better and better ! " cried Quadratus. " Behold the King 
of Bethlehem is also King of Olympus. A moment since he de- 
throned Caesar; now, it seems, Jupiter himself must beware ! " 

" Amen ! it is even thus," continued the old Jew. " Other 
great men have also been born in this town : Abissan, Elimelech, 
Obed, Jesse, Booz. It was in this very field, now trodden by 
thy horse's feet, that Ruth gathered the ears of corn left by the 
reapers. Our rabbis say that this harvest is the symbol of the 
life to come, when all souls shall be gathered together to appear 
before the face of Jehovah." 
" Good ! Then I, too, shall be there ? " asked Quadratus. 

" Yes, sire," said the old Jew solemnly. 

Quadratus seemed much amused. " And when is he to appear, 
this true David, this King of the world, this Saviour of the uni- 
verse ? When is he to take possession of his palace of Bethle- 
hem?" 

As he said these words he leaned forward, and, shading his 
eyes with his hand, seemed to be trying to distinguish some 
object in the darkness before him. 

" Our rabbis say," answered the Jew, " that, according to 
the calculation of the weeks of the Prophet Daniel, he must soon 
come." 

" Soon ! " exclaimed Quadratus. " So much the better. I 
should certainly be delighted if Octavius," said he, interrupting 
himself, " what is that we see moving just before us?" 

The young man started as from a dream, and, looking over 
his horse's head, said : " I see a poor man and a woman walking 
slowly ; we are coming up with them." 

" Tell me, old Jew," resumed Quadratus, " if this were to be 
thy Messias who is coming to take possession of his throne of 
Bethlehem ! " 

At the insulting tone of these words old Aram started like a 
young man, stopped short, and, darting at the Roman officer a 
look in which the fervor of the believer mingled with the rage 



460 THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. [Jan., 

of the patriot, " // may be! " he exclaimed, and with one bound 
he fled away into the darkness. 

" You are crucified if they catch you ! " cried the Roman. 
" But let him go," said he to the soldiers who made ready to 
follow him ; " the old slave was not worth the cost of his food." 

" It may be," repeated Octavius to himself. His heart beat 
quickly and a strange uneasiness took possession of his mind. 
Meanwhile they were approaching Bethlehem. The road was 
narrow and rough. A few steps more and the horse of Quad- 
ratus had overtaken the two travellers who had a moment since 
attracted the attention of the officers. 

" My good man," said Quadratus, " who are you ? " 

Thus addressed, the old man turned. Never did a milder 
dignity adorn so manly a countenance. He saluted the officer 
courteously, and answered a few words in Hebrew, which Oc- 
tavius alone understood, he alone being familiar with that lan- 
guage. 

" He tells you that his name is Joseph," said Octavius, " and 
that he is on his way to Bethlehem with his wife to obey the 
orders of Caesar." 

" And she what is her name ? " continued Quadratus. 

" My friend," said the young man to Joseph, " he asks you the 
name of her who would seem to be rather your daughter than 
your wife. She seems to walk with difficulty." 

The stranger again replied in Hebrew. 

" Her name is Mary," said Octavius, " and she is very weary." 

The older officer made some brutal answer which aroused the 
young man's indignation. 

" Silence ! " he exclaimed sternly. Just then a movement of 
the horses separated the two strangers ; Joseph remained on the 
side of Quadratus, the young woman at the side of Octavius. 
While the former officer was asking Joseph some rude and stupid 
question the young Roman felt his heart stirred within him. 
His sight became suffused, and an emotion beyond his control 
brought to his lips accents unknown to himself. 

Trembling, he stooped down towards the young woman and 
said to her softly in Hebrew : 

" O thou who art called Mary ! whoever thou mayest be, I 
know not what instinct impels me to ask of thee the secret of my 
destiny. O daughter of Judea ! I have read the writings of thy 
prophets ; distracted between my own despair and their hopes, if 
thou hast a word to enlighten my soul, in the name of Heaven 
speak ! " 






1884.] THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. 461 

The young woman heard his fervent prayer, and as she 
turned towards him his eyes fell upon her face. At that moment 
the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, lighted up the coun- 
tenance of the Virgin. What tongue could tell the beauty of 
that heavenly vision ? What pencil would be worthy to trace 
its features ? The Virgin's face was pale but luminous with a 
celestial light. No mortal could look into her eyes ; she raised 
them not, but in a sweet, grave voice she uttered these words : 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God ! " 
After these words Octavius heard no more, saw no more, 
felt no more. 

When he came to himself again Octavius was alone in a room 
of the inn ; his arms were on the floor, guarded by a sleeping 
slave ; a lamp hanging by a long iron chain gave a dim, flickering 
light ; he himself was seated, with his elbows resting on a table, 
and before him lay a roll of papyrus. 

He opened the roll. 

For some time back Octavius had been in the habit of 
writing each evening a journal of his life. 

The last lines of the manuscript before him were copied from 
some verses which a favorite poet of Augustus had lately given 
to Rome, and whose prophetic accents had deeply impressed the 
young officer. 

Only a few hours before leaving Jerusalem Octavius had 
written out the following lines : 

" Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas ; 
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo ; 
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; 
Jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto. 

Teque adeo, decus hoc aevi, te consule, inibit, 
Pollio, et incipient magni procedere menses; 
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, 
Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras. 
Ille Deum vitam accipiet. . . . 
Adgredere 6 magnos, aderit jam tempus honores, 
Cara Deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum, 
Adspice convexo nutantem pondere mundum, 
Adspice venture laetantur ut omnia saeclo. 
O mihi tarn longae maneat pars ultima vitae, 
Spiritus et quantum sat erit tua dicere facta."* 

*"The time sung by the Sibyl is accomplished; a new and grand series of ages begins. 
The virgin returns ; the era of Saturn is restored to us ; a new race descends from the highest 



462 THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. [Jan., 

The copy of the verses ended here. He read with a troubled 
heart these beautiful lines, which sounded to him like the dicta- 
heavens. When shall appear the child who is to close the age of iron, and over the whole uni- 
verse raise up the golden age, protect his birth, chaste Lucine ! Thou consul, it is to come, this 
glory of the new age ; thou consul, Pollio, these great days are to begin their march. Did there 
still remain some vestiges of our crime, his hand, effacing them, shall deliver the whole earth from 
eternal terror. Come, then, it is now time come receive thy great honors, dear child of the 
gods, glorious son of Jupiter. At thy coming see the world rise and leap, see the earth tremble ; 
the depths of the sea, the very heights of the heavens, are moved. See with what joy the uni- 
verse is filled at the first hour of thy age ! Oh ! may one moment of life, one burning breath, be 
still left to me, that I may sing thy first graces, and I die content. . . ." 

The fourth Eclogue of Virgil remains to this day a strange and mysterious enigma to all 
critics. Science would seem to be equally at fault, according to the declaration of M. Firmin 
Didot in his translation of the Bucolics: " I have read nearly all the commentaries that have 
been written on this Eclogue, in the hope of coming to some satisfactory conclusion as to what 
mysterious child Virgil intended to designate ; but after having devoted much time and care to 
the subject I found myself as undecided as to the object of my researches as- 1 had been before." 

Heyne attempted to attribute to this wonderful poem the proportions of a simple fact by 
saying that Virgil had merely made a skilful use of some sibylline prophecy which he had found, 
announcing to the world some immense future blessing or happiness : " Unum fuit aliquod 
(sibyllinum oraculum), quod magnam aliquam futuram felicitatem promitteret. Hoc itaque 
oraculo et vaticinio seu commento ingenioso, commode usus est Virgilius" (Heyne's Virgil, 
London, 1793). But this explanation only establishes and increases the problem instead of 
solving it. An ancient tradition, well received among Christian authors, recognizes and admires 
in this fourth Eclogue of Virgil an echo of the sibylline oracles announcing the coming of the 
Saviour. The origin of this tradition is well worth knowing. We find it expressed for the first 
time in a discourse which Eusebius ascribes to Constantine, and in which that monarch under- 
takes to prove at some length that the fourth Eclogue of Virgil clearly predicts the coming of 
Christ. The discourse of Constantine includes and comments upon a considerable part of this 
Eclogue, translated into Greek, probably by Eusebius. In many cases, since Constantine, the 
same interpretation has been given to these celebrated verses. Lactantius quotes them in this 
sense in the seventh book, section 24, of his Divine Institutions. And St. Augustine, who also 
refers to them, does not hesitate to say : " Is it not of Jesus Christ that the great poet bears 
testimony ? Whatever may be, in fact, the progress of humanity in the ways of justice, if crime 
disappears our mortal infirmity still retains its vestiges, which can only be cured by the hand of 
the Saviour, clearly designated by these verses " (De Civit. Dei, 1. x. c. xxvii.) The middle ages 
received and respected this touching tradition regarding the poet of Mantua : " Deified by 
pagan science," says M. Ozanam (Ve. SiMe, IXe. legon), "raised up as pontiff, as Roman 
priest, as inheritor of sacerdotal tradition, Virgil became also the representative of the religion 
of the future." To save him the barbaric ages threw over him a corner of the prophet's cloak. 
Owing to his fourth Eclogue, he was looked upon in the Christian world as one of those who 
had announced Christianity ; and this interpretation, which began with Eusebius as early as the 
fourth century, was continued through the middle ages. He was ranked among the prophets, 
which accounts for the greater respect paid to his works. Tradition tells us that St. Paul, that 
proud scorner of profane science, having come to Naples, went to visit the tomb of Virgil, and 
that, having opened the Eclogues and read the fourth, he began to weep. The memory of this 
tradition was long preserved in a sequence sung in the cathedral of Mantua, which recalled the 
legend in charming terms : 

41 Ad Maronis mausoleum 
Ductus, fudit super eum 

Pie rorem lacrymae ; 
Quern te, inquit, reddidissem, 
Si te vivum invenissem, 
Poetarum maxime ! " 

Popular tradition wished to add something of its own to this more ancient legend, and the 
shepherd who pointed out to travellers the tomb of the poet showed near by a little chapel 
" where," he said, " Virgil used to hear Mass " ! 






1884.] THE FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE. 463 

tion of a Sibyl, and which so eloquently expressed his own pre- 
sentiments. He seized the papyrus and tried to write. The de- 
parture from Jerusalem ; the questions of Quadratus ; his own re- 
plies, mysterious even to himself; the impression produced by 
the sight of the plains of Palestine ; his reveries, his hopes, his 
desires^ stronger, more impatient than ever; the revelations of 
the old Jew ; that " It may be " that he had uttered ; the meeting 
with the two strangers 7 that woman nobler than a goddess, purer 
than an angel ; that sweet name of " Mary " ; the supernatural 
brilliancy of that heavenly face ; the sound of her voice, sweet as 
that of a child, strong as eternity ; her strange words ; the ecstasy 
that had followed them ; the inexplicable joy which inundated 
his soul after years of doubt and sadness ; the vague feeling of a 
destiny fulfilled, an intense longing for death all these memo- 
ries, these sentiments, filled the heart of Octavius to bursting. 
Overwhelmed, he fell forward upon the table and buried his face 
in his hands. 

Suddenly he started up ; it seemed to him that an extraordi- 
nary light had replaced the darkness of night. He hastened out 
upon the terrace, which overlooked all the surrounding country. 
A marvellous light covered the heavens. The very silence seem- 
ed to have been endowed with life, and the distant echo of an 
indescribable melody seemed to bring to his ear these sweet and 
holy words : " Peace to men of good will." He was seized with 
fear, and began to doubt his own sanity ; but, returning to his 
room, he had no sooner crossed its threshold than all was chang- 
ed. A profound peace took the place of his feverish agitation ; 
the feeling of anxious desire and expectation which had so long 
tormented his soul gave way to one of peaceful confidence in the 
possession of a long-desired treasure. Henceforth Octavius 
sought no more he loved ! He never lost this divine peace. 
Hardly two months after the events just related Octavius died. 
His last word was the name of her whom he had met on the 
road to Bethlehem. With his last breath he uttered the name 
of" Mary." Those who after his death found the roll of papyrus 
containing the memoirs of the young Roman wondered at find- 
ing the journal interrupted at the 25th of December. On the 
page which bore this date they read only these lines in Hebrew : 
" Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." And 
just below a name the name which at the hour of death had 
purified his lips : " Mary." 



464 PSYCHE ; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [Jan., 



PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE* 

WHO is there possessed of a delicate appreciation of the beau- 
ties of Nature who has not at some time in his life tried to enjoy 
botany ? 

Have you never, on coming home from a country excursion 
or a walk in the woods, bewitched with the perfume of flowers and 
with the lovely pictures revealed to you in the vegetable king- 
dom have you never looked up some special treatise on natural 
history, hoping to find an intelligent guide to penetrate with 
you behind the veil which your superficial observation had only 
pierced ? 

For, of course, you know that the display of odorous petals and 
the harmony of color and perfume, intended to attract and capti- 
vate, are not the most remarkable manifestations of vegetable 
life. Internal organs of insignificant appearance, often not visi- 
ble to the naked eye, really constitute the essential parts of the 
plant. 

So, tired of mysteries, you eagerly opened the volume that 
was to explain everything ; but what was your discomfiture to 
find, instead of revelations, a series of dry lists, methodical classi- 
fications, barbarous nomenclatures, systems of Tournefort, La- 
marck, Jussieu, Candolle, and I don't know what else an inex- 
plicable jumble of heterogeneous terms and polysyllables. 

Dizzy and perplexed with Greek and Latin, you tossed aside 
the musty volume, and with it science and its pedantic worship- 
pers. And you were right ; for pedantry, muffled in big words 
and grand airs, often masks presumptuous ignorance. Real sci- 
ence, like truth, is attractive and accessible. Since the science 
of natural laws has ceased to rest on pure speculation, it has 
spoken the vulgar tongue. The faster it progresses the more it 
will disdain any inheritance from Moliere's doctors and other 
scholars in us who make up in words for the lack of everything 
else. 

What should you say, now that your righteous indignation 
has cooled down, if a new guide offered himself, promising to 
make short work of fantastic names and dead languages, and lead 
you through the realm of trees and flowers so wickedly hedged 
off by pedants with a triple row of thorns? 

* Translated from the Rtvue Gtntrale. See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for July, 1883. 



1884.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 465 

Perhaps you would consent to listen, and even to follow him 
in his walks, now that spring vegetation is displaying its first 
treasures. 

If so, we'll profit by the first ray of sunshine and the earliest 
conveyance to leave town. An American omnibus will take us 
in a few minutes to the most picturesque environs of Brussels 
La Cambre, Schaerbeek r and Laeken, where the varied floras of 
wood, hillside, field, and meadow are in full bloom. 

Quick ! jump in and be off ! 

Here we are at Laeken. We must notice, in passing, the 
dusty relics of La Kermesse, so popular with our forefathers, and 
even now one of the liveliest suburbs of Brussels. Here is the 
interminable church with its insignificant facade hiding monu- 
mental treasures. We'll cross the cemetery, skirting th^ mauso- 
leum of our kings, and enter the Avenue Sainte-Anne. 

Here we are ! It is a fit entrance to the kingdom of Flora, 
sweet with the freshness and verdure of spring. On our right 
are the royal parks with their sombre groups of beeches, chest- 
nuts, acacias, and plane-trees; and on the left white country- 
houses and little villas, nestling amid early foliage, give variety 
and cheerfulness to the scene. 

Let us pause in this vestibule of the domains of the fruitful 
goddess, for strange things already claim our attention. 

Look at the foot of the elms that border the avenue. The 
ground is strewn with little oval leaves of a tender green. Can 
there have been a fall of leaves so early? Is this the first ves- 
ture cast off by the giants of the vegetable kingdom ? 

Look closer at the pretended leaves, and you will notice in 
the centre of each a little lump masked by the vegetable tissue. 
Open it and you will find that this is not a leaf, as you supposed, 
but a fruit covered with a light, membranous wing which will 
float on the wind and so disperse the seeds. 

Plants have many a device for scattering abroad their seeds. 

" Many plants trust to numbers," says a celebrated English 
naturalist, Grant Allen, "and produce an incalculable multitude 
of germs. Many, like the elm, fasten them to little contrivances ; 
and wings, nets, feathers, tufts of down, are entrusted to the 
winds to carry in all directions the fertilized germs. Some 
plants, like the impatient balsam, toss them to a distance ; and 
there are tropical trees that fire them off with such force as to 
give a violent blow. Other plants, again as, for instance, the 
scratchweedand the burdock use animals for colporteurs, hook- 
ing their seeds on to their bodies; or like our apple arid plum 
VOL. xxxviii. 30 



465 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATUKE. [Jan., 

trees, they enclose the seed in a hard, indigestible covering, and 
that again in an envelope which is sweet and succulent. The 
object of Nature is evident ; the proof is in the fact that there 
were no apples, pears, plums, or peaches before the miocene (ter- 
tiary) period that is, before the animals appeared that feed upon 
them. , 

'" So the plant makes a compromise, like a merchant fallen 
among thieves, who sacrifices a portion of his goods to save the 
rest. Sometimes the merchant hides his treasures under paltry 
coverings, or he arms himself to the teeth and puts on a threat- 
ening aspect. As specimens of this we all recognize walnuts and 
chestnuts." 

But to return to our sheep, or rather to our elms. You ask 
if these ^reat trees have had time to blossom, bear fruit, and bring 
it to maturity before the leaves unfold, so early in the spring, in 
spite of the frosts and hailstorms of March. 

Certainly ; and if you had noticed the trees in question in your 
walks on the boulevard, you would have remarked the eccentric 
fashion in which they array themselves, before any verdure ap- 
pears, in a reddish-brown peruke, which really consists of bunches 
of flowers. Are you surprised ? Nothing is more common 
among the trees of this region than this mode of precocious 
propagation. 

The ground of our public walks is strewn in spring with all 
sorts of catkins. These catkins, surrounded at the base with two 
glutinous scales, are flower-spikes that have accomplished their 
work of fertilization and detached themselves voluntarily from 
the tree. 

But do not misunderstand me. You must notice one dis- 
tinction of which casual observers, unacquainted with botany, 
have very inexact ideas. Catkins which fall and are lost in the 
dust do not always bring the fruit with them, like these first 
spoils of the elm, because there is a radical difference in their or- 
ganic structure. 

With a simple lens, or even with the naked eye, we easily 
recognize in the elm-blossom the union of fertilizing and fertilized 
organs in the centre of one and the same envelope and upon the 
same axis. This is called an hermaphrodite flower. 

When the axis is detached the seed of the elm must necessa- 
rily fall ; therefore it makes haste to grow and ripen before leav- 
ing the branch that gives it sap and life. With most of our for- 
est trees this hasteiis not necessary, and so their fruit ripens at 
its leisure and drops off later, sometimes in the form of catkins, 






1884.] PSYCHE ; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 467 

sometimes furnished with long wings, as in the case of maples 
and hornbeams, or with long, silken threads that let the seeds flut- 
ter to a distance. 

Nut trees, for instance, which blossom in our gardens at the 
close of winter and are the first heralds of spring, ripen calmly 
all summer and do not yield their fruits until the autumn. 

This is because their .male and female flowers are independent 
of each other, although situated on the same branch. Therefore 
the male flower can drop off after the fertilization without bring- 
ing the other with it. 

It is the same with alders, birches, plane-trees, beeches, and 
oaks. 

The distinction is still more marked in the willow and poplar. 
Each kind of flower is found on a different individual, which 
gives them their name of dioecious, formed from two Greek 
words meaning two dwellings ; as opposed to other flowers 
called monoecious that is, possessing but one dwelling for two. 

But, alas ! here am I, after all my protestations, talking Greek 
as unconsciously as any pedant. 
" Et tu quoque, Brutus ! " 

Now I am beginning on Latin ! But don't give me up quite 
yet ; the attack is past, and I will return to what scholars, who do 
not talk like other men, call contemptuously the vulgar tongue. 

Let us cross the Avenue Sainte-Anne, at the end of which we 
shall see the whole extent of country in all its variety. 

Here we are! Before us rise the blossoming beeches of Little 
Switzerland, as they call the beautiful valley which reminds one- 
in its wild solitude of Gustave Dore's enchanted forests designed 
for Perrault's tales. The fields of colza cutting through the 
tender green of the wheat look like great fields of cloth of gol'di 
spread on the wide plains. Certainly this is one of the most pic- 
turesque places in our neighborhood.* 

Now that you have appreciated the charm of the whole scene, 
let us return to details, to the study of plants. 

You see that reddish-brown hillside, colored with oxide of 
iron, where a sort of dandelion flaunts its cottony stem and great 
indented leaves? The blossom is past, but the feathery tufts of 
the fruit remain. Following the fashions of the great personages 
we have been describing, this plebeian mimics the vegetable 

* Since the completion of the royal park " La Petite Suisse " has lost the charm>of solitude. 
I went there lately, but 

" The wood had lost its mystery, 
The nightingale its voice." 



468 PSYCHE; ox, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [Jan., 

aristocracy and blossoms before bearing leaves, thus producing 
strange effects. In the month of February you may see its long 
stem, wrapped in cotton, emerge from the ground, bearing on the 
end a yellow flower almost identical with the dandelion. If the 
first fine days of spring entice you into the country you will 
be struck with the unusual adornments of the odd plant called 
by the common people colt's-foot, and by the learned tussilage 
(cough-loosener), on account of the medicinal properties of its 
flowers, an infusion of which is said to be good for troubles of 
ihe lungs. 

It will not do to slander this crazy-looking philanthropist. 
'We will apologize and enter the wood. 

.Stop ! here is another queer thing, a tuft of arrow-headed 
tleaves with a green cornet in the middle. Surely this plant 
cannot .have flowered. We will unroll the horn and see what is in 
tit. What is this reddish, club-shaped thing with two little gar- 
lands placed one above the other at its base ? Can it be a pecu- 
liar mode ot blossoming ? 

Yes, it represents a flower, or a legion of flowers, arranged in 
two divisions forming the two wreaths, of which the upper one 
contains exclusively male flowers, called stamens, and the lower 
one female flowers, called pistils. By this arrangement the 
weight alone .suffices to scatter the fertilizing dust or pollen of 
'the stamens on to the pistils. When the fertilization is completed 
rthe upper flowers fade and drop off, the club and the horn dry 
up, and the axis bearing the lower flowers turned to fruits 
lengthens out into a little tree. Then the leaves drop off in their 
turn before autumn ; and our plant becomes unrecognizable, 
despoiled of verdure, like the colt's-foot in spring. It looks like 
a pretty spike of fleshy texture covered with little, bright-red 
.apples, but quite bare of foliage. It would require mesmeric 
.second-sight to recognize under this disguise the individual once 
wrapped in a cornet. 

Such are the metamorphoses of the wake-robin, or the arum 
onaculatum of naturalists. His name and aspect are as odd as 
those of his kindly rival, the colt's-foot; but his instincts are 
quite different. 

While the colt's-foot is benevolent and good for colds, wake- 
robin is a ferocious homicide. In spring he is armed, like a 
savage, with a sheaf of poisoned darts of terrible power under 
the form of leaves. 

" Almost insipid when you begin to chew them," says Dr. 
Mace, " they soon develop a sharp, burning taste ; the inside of 



1884.] PSYCHE ; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 469 

the mouth seems to be pricked by thousands of needles ; then 
come on violent pains in the stomach, with vomiting, colics, con- 
vulsions, and cramps in short, all the symptoms of cholera 
morbus." 

Bulliard tells of three children who had terrible convulsions 
after eating some of these leaves, which they mistook for sorrel. 
The two younger ones could swallow nothing and died, one at the 
end of two hours, the other in sixteen hours. The eldest, who 
was stronger, or had eaten less of the poison, had his tongue so 
swollen that it completely filled the cavity of his mouth. He 
recovered, but was always very emaciated. 

The leaves of thyme are said to allay the inflammation caused 
by these leaves. Nature loves to place a remedy near an evil, 
and even to draw a remedy from the evil thing itself. The roots 
and leaves of the arum applied to the skin make an excellent 
derivative, akin to powdered mustard ; and its leaves, cooked 
with sorrel, are a sovereign poultice for drawing an abscess. 

Moreover, the root of arum maculatum, deprived of its ma- 
lignant power by boiling and drying, contains a great deal of 
farina, and is said to be a good substitute for potatoes. During 
the French Revolution a horticulturist named Bosc took refuge 
in the forest of Montmorency and lived on these roots. He de- 
clared that they grew abundantly enough to furnish subsistence 
for thousands of men. 

So we feel more kindly towards this assassin, especially as he 
only poisons and kills in legitimate self-defence when people eat 
him without proper precaution. I think the severest jury would 
bring in a verdict of not guilty in view of this extenuating cir- 
cumstance. 

It is the same with nettles, whose young shoots you see by the 
roadside and upon the rising hills, already on the defensive. 
Young nettles taste like spinach when they are cooked, and later 
in the season their stems give out a fibrous substance which makes 
an excellent kind of tow after being thoroughly soaked in water. 
In Kamtschatka it is greatly valued for making cordage, cloths, 
and nets. 

Unfortunately the nettle is covered with hollow hairs which 
secrete the same corrosive liquid as the sting of the ant formic 
acid which sets the skin afire and often irritates the sensitive 
epidermis of the botanist. 

Do not confound this with the pretty, harmless plant impro- 
perly called the dead nettle (lamium album), which seems to 
copy the nettle's form and bearing in order to keep its pretty 



470 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [Jan., 

flowers safe from indiscreet hands. This parody, as we have 
seen, is quite common in Nature, and in the animal kingdom as 
well as in the realm of Flora. 

The nettle has colorless blossoms, which open in June, while 
the dead nettle half opens its white, helmet-shaped corolla as 
early as the month of April. 

See that big humble-bee disappearing within one of those 
flowers. Do you know that this gorgeous visitor is just now 
accomplishing unconsciously one of the most exquisite results in 
Nature? Nature, who guards so jealously the preservation of 
species that she holds cheap the life of the individual, has given 
to insects the task of preserving integrity of type by crossing 
forms of the same species. 

With this object she has established a harmony so perfect 
between the structure of the plant and the organs of the insect 
that the latter sometimes fertilizes only flowers belonging to 
distinct types. 

Sir John Lubbock, a positivist of Spencer's school, says that 
there are few flowers in which the adaptation of the various 
parts to the visits of insects is so clearly and beautifully mani- 
fested as in the common dead nettle (lamium album). 

The nectar occupies the lower and narrower part of the tube, 
and is protected from rain by an arched upper lip and by a thick 
border of hairs. The tube is broad at the entrance and throws 
out a large lip which serves as a landing-place for big bees. 

The length and narrowness of the tube, and moreover the 
ring of hairs situated at its base, prevent the smaller species from 
having access to the nectar, because they would injure the plant 
by exhausting the honey, without producing any useful result. 

The dead nettle, like many other field flowers, is especially 
adapted to humble-bees. They rest on the lower lip, which pro- 
jects laterally so as to give them a firm footing. Then they can 
plunge their proboscis down into the nectar. 

Moreover, the arched upper lip is admirably fitted by dimen- 
sions, form, and position, not only to be a protection from rain, 
but also to oblige the insect to press the pollen that it brings 
against the pistil. Remark that the stamens are not arranged in 
the usual way around the pistil, but on the side along the external 
arch of the flower. This arrangement prevents the pollen from 
blinding the insect and from touching those parts of its body 
which ought not to come in contact with the stigma, as we call 
the top of the pistil, through which penetrates the tube put forth 
by the grain of pollen laid upon the surface. 



1884.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 471 

You can have visual proof that the size and rounded form 
of the upper lip, the relative position of pistil and anthers, the 
length and narrowness of the tube, the peculiar formation of the 
lower lip, the ring of hairs and hidden feast of nectar, all lead to 
the transfer of pollen by the bees from one flower to another. 
If we compare the dead, nettle with flowers fertilized by the 
wind as, for instance, pines, which give out clouds of pollen we 
see the wonderful economy of organs and functions effected by 
the admirable adaptation of this flower. 

Towards the close of the last century, when the relation of 
stamens to pistil was well understood by naturalists, the mode of 
fertilizing certain superior plants, such as the primroses, that 
adorn our gardens in the spring, still remained a mystery. 

It was asked how the fertilizing dust of these hermaphrodite 
plants could reach the pistil, of which the summit was made in- 
accessible by the peculiar structure of the plant ; or how the 
pollen could pass from the stamens of certain unisexual flowers 
to the pistil of flowers situated often at a great distance upon 
another plant. 

It was a German named Conrad Sprengel who solved this 
problem. He saw honey-bees, attracted by the perfumed, sugary 
glands at the bottom of flower-cups, bring away on their hairs 
or their sticky proboscis the fertilizing dust of the stamens, and 
lay it upon the pistil as they left the flower ; or transfer pollen 
from the stamens of one flower to the pistil of another, even at a 
distance. 

Monsieur le Maout tells us that " towards the middle of the 
last century Bernard de Jussieu, professor of botany in the 
Royal Gardens, while examining the trees confided to his care, 
saw that a pistachio tree which had flowered every year with- 
out bearing fruit was then about to bear pistachios : the fruit 
had knotted. The top of the seed-vessel had certainly received 
fertilizing dust, but where had it come from ? There was not in 
the whole Garden of Plants a single pistachio-tree whose flowers 
had stamens. They searched the neighboring gardens, but in 
vain. A fruit formed by seeds developed without the aid of 
pollen would give a rude shock to the theory of fertilization of 
flowers, which was not then as solidly established as it is to-day. 
The great botanist, though disturbed at the uselessness of his 
search, maintained firmly that there must be in the neighborhood 
a pistachio with stamens, and that it had caused the knotting of 
the tree in the king's garden. It must be found. Bernard de 
Jussieu betook himself to the authorities; the police sent its 



472 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [Jan., 

agents out into the country with an exact description of the in- 
dividual that had so effectually baffled search. The agents went 
round and round the garden, always widening a little the spiral 
course of their investigations, until they found near the Luxem- 
bourg, in a corner of the nursery of the Cistercians, which skirts 
the Observatory Walk they found, I say, a small male pistachio- 
tree which had blossomed that year for the first time. The 
pollen, then, must have passed through the air over the Faubourg 
Saint-Germain, the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, and the Faubourg 
Saint-Marceau, to reach the top of the pistil of the pistachio-tree 
planted in the middle of the Garden of Plants. Now, it was hard 
to admit that the wind could have carried a little pollen so far 
without dispersing it anywhere but on the tiny surface of the 
flower that needed it. Some other aid to fertilization must be 
found. 

" They soon remarked that the bees, after rifling the stamens 
of the 'male pistachio, flew in the direction of the Garden of 
Plants, after rising straight into the air in the manner of carrier- 
pigeons. Thus that mysterious instinct was revealed which in- 
sures the fertilization of flowers by leading bees to feast on 
plants of the same species. 

" The flower, properly so-called," adds M. Maout, " is intend- 
ed to indicate to insects, by its form, color, and smell, the reser- 
voir of nectar that they seek. It is the label of the vase that 
holds the ambrosia ; it is the unvarying uniform of all flowers of 
the same species, and insect-travellers know by its brilliant sign 
the perfumed caravanserai where they will find refreshment." 

Darwin pursued these observations, and published in 1862 a 
monograph on the fertilization of primroses. He showed first 
that the Chinese primrose cultivated in the garden has two or 
three distinct floral types. 

While in the first the style, or long neck of the pistil, overtops 
the stamens, in the second the stamens rise above the pistil. 
Darwin soon remarked that when these plants are protected 
from contact with insects fertilization is effected with great dif- 
ficulty ; and that even the short-styled types, which are espe- 
cially prolific when well fertilized, remain invariably sterile. 

Numerous experiments, skilfully made, led him to the con- 
viction that, generally speaking, a flower fertilized by another 
flower is superior in form, vigor, and fruitfulness to the produce 
of a self-fertilized flower. 

Finally, he found that the produce of the artificial fertilization 
of one of two types by the other is always more fruitful than the 



1884.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 473 

produce of two similar forms crossed. If, for instance, you cross 
two similar forms of primrose, you notice, as in a case of hybrida- 
tion, that the descendants grow weak and become sterile. 

When an insect takes nectar from a long-styled primrose his 
proboscis is covered with pollen precisely to the part which will 
touch the head of the pistil when he visits a short-styled flower. 
This result is invariable, because the stamens in a long-styled 
plant rise exactly to the same height as the pistil in short-styled 
plants. On the other hand, if the insect visits first a short-styled 
plant the proboscis becomes covered with pollen much farther 
from the tip, just at the height of the summit of the pistil in a 
long-styled plant. Darwin obtained later a third form that fer- 
tilizes itself, the stigmas being on a level with the anthers that 
is to say, a flower which unites pollen-sacks of the long-styled 
floral form and a pistil of the short-styled form. 

Look through my lens; examine carefully the top of the 
style in the primrose you have just gathered. You will notice 
scattered on the surface of the stigma little balls, which are 
nothing but grains of pollen. 

This is because at the period of fertilization the stigmas 
bristle with delicate hairs, or short lashes, and produce a vis- 
cous secretion intended to retain the pollen and facilitate its 
penetration. What can be more simple and at the same time 
more ingenious? Sometimes Nature seems to take pleasure in 
accumulating difficulties in order to conquer them by a thousand 
original combinations, where insects play a part all the more 
wonderful because of their unconsciousness. 

Sometimes, as in the sage, the stamens and pistil ripen at 
different periods, thus making self-fertilization impossible. Then 
bees come to the rescue, and the flower lays actual traps for 
them. When the bee enters a sage blossom with ripe stamens a 
spring stretches out and claps down upon his hairy back the 
anthers, laden with pollen, which were before hidden under the 
upper lip of the corolla. The insect then enters a more mature 
blossom with its ripened pistil hanging towards the opening of 
the corolla ; and thus the stigma necessarily comes in contact 
with the pollen. 

The nectar of flowers is perhaps only distilled by them in 
order to attract insects, for flowers that do not need their aid 
secrete none. Perfumes and colors serve equally to attract, and 
are usually wanting in flowers fertilized by the wind. FJowers 
fertilized by nocturnal or twilight insects give out their scent 
only in the evening. Often arrangements are made to suit but 



474 PSYCHE; OR, TJTE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [Jan., 

one species of insect, and always so that the creature, in order to 
reach the nectar, must take a certain position and make certain 
movements, that he may alternately touch and avoid the stigmas 
and anthers. 

Pollen grains are carried on the back, head, feet, or proboscis. 
Domestic bees moisten the pollen with nectar and carry it on 
the outer surface of their flattened legs. These are edged with 
stiff, bent hairs, so as to make a real little basket. 

The obstacles opposed to fertilization vary in a thousand 
ways. Sometimes the difficulty lies in the separation of the 
sexes, or the difference of period in the maturity of pistil and 
stamens, or in the inequality of form in the two organs and their 
situation in the flower. Sometimes the stamens are hidden be- 
hind the stigma or the anthers oppose themselves to the. egress 
of the pollen. Sometimes the insect is imprisoned and nourished 
by the flower until the pollen is ripe and can be taken away. 
This is the case with certain arum blossoms and with the aris- 
tologus clematis. The insects are imprisoned by a range of bent 
hairs, which become straight when they are to be released. 
Meantime the anthers ripen and pour their pollen on to the backs 
of the visitors. Then the hairs shrivel up and the captives are 
set free. Can anything be more ingenious, simple, and admirable ? 
Again, as among the orchids, the flower, which is especially irri- 
table, tosses its pollen from a distance on to the insects hovering 
over it Or, as in the barberry, the stamens snap like a spring 
on to the visitor's back. We should never end if we were to 
enumerate all the wonders of fertilization by intercrossing 
which the labors of contemporary naturalists have brought to 
light. 

Darwin, in his work entitled On the Various Contrivances by 
which British and Foreign Orchids are fertilized by Insects, and on 
the good Effects of Intercrossing, has collected hundreds of observa- 
tions of this kind, which show among various species of plants 
subjected to crossed fertilization a peculiar structure, calculated 
with precision to prevent self-fertilization, and to bring about 
the transfer of pollen to the stigma of a different blossom by an 
insect of a given species. 

Thus the tubes of the corolla of the common red clover do 
not at first sight appear to differ in length from .those of the 
crimson clover. Yet the nectar of the common clover is inacces- 
sible to the honey-bee. It must seek that of the crimson clover, 
while the humble-bee reaches the bottom of the corolla of the 
common clover with its long proboscis. Thus whole fields of 
clover, as Darwin observes, give no nourishment to the honey- 



1884.] PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. 475 

bees, though they are very fond of its nectar. However, the 
flowers of the second crop are usually smaller, and therefore ac- 
cessible to the busy creatures celebrated by Virgil. Another 
observation, even more striking, has been made by Darwin on 
the same subject, showing the close connection that exists be- 
tween creatures apparently most distinct. 

The propagation of humble-bees, which, as you see, abound 
in spring before the honey-bees appear, is dependent on the 
number of cats and mice that infest the rural districts. If mice 
and dormice abound the nests of the humble-bees are destroyed j 
and as the fertilization of clover is allied to the number of humble- 
bees, the apparently improbable result follows that cats assist in 
preserving the crops. They are, if you choose, the police of our 
hay-fields, and especially of our cultivated meadow-lands. 

These hidden connections form an invisible and interrupted 
chain, some of whose links escape the notice of the superficial 
observer, who sees in Nature only harmony of color, sound, and 
perfume, and does not suspect the extent of the great law of con- 
tinuity in time and space. He calls himself poet and thinker, 
and maintains that he alone understands Nature, while in fact he 
receives from her only bewildering and incoherent sensations. 
The vain youth who mocks at science and scientists, and rocks 
himself to sleep with an empty jingle of words, understands no- 
thing of the universe and its glories. He is blind and deaf to 
the wonders and harmonies around him. The fairest sights and 
richest combinations in Nature do not exist for him. 

" Most men, even among those who consider themselves well 
educated, are satisfied with meagre notions of science picked up 
in childhood and youth, and pass their lives in ignoring their 
own ignorance. 

" Yet man is man only by intelligence. The greater his intel- 
ligence the more complete is his manhood. The more exact are 
his impressions and the more just his ideas, the greater is his intel- 
ligence. Now, this exactness is attained only through labor, study, 
and constant reflection, by which true scholars are made, whose 
intellectual horizon extends beyond the limits attained by the 
ordinary mind. Unassisted natural talent, which we call intuition 
or inspiration, may make literary men poets and artists ; but 
though these arouse and stir the world, they leave it at the same 
intellectual standpoint where they find it. The perseverance of 
men of science alone succeeds in tearing away some fragments of 
the veil under which God has hidden natural truth, and in really 
enlarging the field of human efforts." 

I am not speaking now. I have given place to one of the 



476 PSYCHE; OR, THE ROMANCE OF NATURE. [Jan., 

most celebrated of our contemporary naturalists, whose nume- 
rous discoveries place his knowledge and judgment beyond 
doubt, as the robe he wears insures his orthodoxy from suspicion. 
I mean the learned Abbe David, the French missionary who has 
revealed to u^J^^e fauna of China. After twenty years of travel, 
study, amKrcpdi^auhJi amid the solitude of an unexplored, virgin 
nature, KwrvfitanK rAiest formulates a conclusion before which 
only peml spiSts injtnese days can recoil. It is that the methods 
and dati|0jf n^|den/^S)cience, which is not to be confounded with 
rationali^^5-<^^eratively needed in instruction of every 
grade. Finft; m-"primary education, because science substitutes 
intuitive teaching, and the exercise of the faculties of observation, 
imagination, comparison, and judgment, for the too exclusive 
training of automatic memory, which turns the child into an 
unthinking parrot, restive under all intellectual discipline. 

And in intermediate education, which is to most minds the 
Pillars of Hercules, because the scientific method develops rig- 
orous exactness of mind without prejudice to the imagination, 
which it disciplines, and at the same time captivates by a gradual 
revelation of the great romance of nature. 

Because scientific data freed from all systematic narrowness 
teach man the true conditions of his existence here below, and 
gradually show him the causes of his physical and mental un- 
easiness, without prejudice to religious feeling. 

What can better develop a heart unsullied by passion than a 
true comprehension of the universe, where, as the poet tells us, 
" God's name is written on earth in letters of flowers, and in 
the heavens in letters of fire " ? 

Is it not better than spending the best years of youth in dry 
exercises of memory, where the study of the sense of words is too 
often sacrificed to a study of the meaning of things, so that the 
over-driven collegian, who comes from his rhetoric puffed up 
with fine periods and phrases, possesses a quantity of discon- 
nected intellectual baggage and an ill-balanced mind whose ver- 
satile weakness betrays false training? 

I am wandering from the point. I beg your pardon, but it is 
partly your fault in being so patient a listener. Perhaps Nature 
herself has pleaded with you better than I, who have lifted only 
a corner of her veil. I know her eloquence is irresistible, and 
many a time, like you, I have listened spell-bound in a perfect 
ecstasy to her overpowering fascination. The divine harmonies 
of Nature have often made me deaf to human discords and for- 
getful of the cruel deceptions that meet a heart that seeks can- 
didly among men for truth. 



i8?4-] REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. 477 



REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. 

When thou wert born, O beaming star ! 

Three holy angels flew to earth ; 
The three kings from the East afar 

Brought gold and jewels of great worth ; 
Three eagles on wings light as air 

Bore the news East and West and North. 
O jewel fair, O jewel rare, 

So glad was heaven to greet thy birth ! 

From a Sicilian " Canzune," translated by J. A. Symonds. 

No one can read the beautiful office of Advent without 
feeling something of the ardent longing- with which the church 
looks forward to the festival of the Nativity. The solemn anti- 
phons, in particular, called the Great O's, sung during the eight 
days previous, are like deep sighs from her yearning, waiting 
heart. She calls to the coming Messias by all those significant 
titles which the prophets used as they gazed into the future with 
longing eyes : O Sapientia ! O Adonai ! O Radix Jesse ! O 
Oriens, Dayspring, Brightness of everlasting Light ! come and 
give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of 
death. She sings again and again : Drop down, ye heavens, 
from above, and let the skies pour down the Righteous One ! 
Oh ! that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come 
down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence. 
The oft-repeated Aperiatur terra et gcnninet Salvatorem seems to 
announce the glad tidings to the inanimate world. Some of the 
church-bells even, like the melodious chime at Rheims, change 
their song as the Nativity draws near and sprinkle the air with 
the sweet Rorate, cceli, dcsupcr. A cry of admiration and wonder 
goes up to Mary : Quia quern cceli caper e non pot er ant tuo gre- 
jnio contulisti Him whom the heavens could not contain thou 
bearest, O Virgin of virgins ! in thy bosom. 

During this season of expectation the church fasts and prays, 
and gives herself up to holy rigors, especially in the hidden 
recesses of the cloister. The Cistercians, for instance, redouble 
their austerities during Advent, and in cold and hunger await 
the coming of Christ in memory of Mary's awaiting in the cold 
cave of Bethlehem. But on Christmas night a fire is kindled on 
their hearth in token of joy, the only night in all the year, and 
the monks gather around it with a holier flame kindled in their 



478 REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. [Jan. 

hearts that which made St. Alfonso de Liguori exclaim in his 
meditation on the Nativity: " O Ignis qui semper arde s, accende me 
O fire that ever burnest ! inflame me." 

As the hour approaches when, as St. Gertrude says, the sweet 
dew of divine grace falls on all the world, and the heavens them- 
selves drop sweetness, the church, as she chants the Venite, exulte- 
mus Domino, breaks out five times during that psalm with the 
joyful Hodie scietis This day ye shall know that the Lord cometh ; 
and in the morning, then ye shall see his glory ! 

St. Chrysostom calls Christmas " the mother of all festivals." 
Not that it was absolutely necessary the church should set apart 
a special day for that which she no more loses sight of than she 
does of the Divine Passion. She never forgets that the Incarna- 
tion is the key-note of the Redemption. Three times a day she 
reminds us, by the Angelus bell rung throughout the Christian 
world, that the Word was made flesh. The divine Infant is to 
be seen everywhere in our churches, in every Catholic house- 
hold, and in some favored lands by the very wayside, pillowed on 
the immaculate Heart of Mary. And there is not a single hour of 
the twenty-four that in some part of the world thousands do not 
bend the knee in lowly reverence at the words of the last Gospel 
of the Mass, Et Verbum caro factum est, and at a similar portion 
of the Nicene Creed. 

The legends of the saints, too, are full of reminiscences of the 
manger. The espousals of St. Catherine with the Child Jesus, 
which so many artists have depicted ; the Verbum caro factum est 
engraved on the heart of St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi ; and the 
divine Infant in the arms of St. Anthony, are instances of this. 
And it was one Christmas eve, after long meditating on the mys- 
tery of the Incarnation, that St. Bernard beheld our Saviour in a 
vision, as still in his human infancy, which so impressed him that 
henceforth he only thought of the best means of serving God. 
And more than once has the Child Jesus been visible to purer 
eyes than ours in the uplifted Host, as of old in the star that 
appeared to the Magi, according to an ancient commentary on 
the Gospel of St. Matthew, spoken of by Baring-Gould, which 
says that the Star in the East had the form of a radiant child 
bearing a sceptre or cross a tradition illustrated by some of the 
early Italian masters : 

" In a trice a star shone forth, 

Oh! so brightly shining. 
Nearer, nearer yet it came, 
Still towards earth inclining ; 



1884.] REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. 479 

And 'twas shaped O wondrous sight ! 
Like a child with visage bright, 
Holding sign of kindly might, 
With a cross combining." 

There have been several holy persons in the church, of won- 
drous lives, whose mystical states of prayer were a kind of 
dramatic representation, if one may say so, of the mysteries of 
the Holy Childhood, especially at Christmas time, as in the case 
of Catherine Emmerich. In them the divine Infancy seems to be 
perpetuated. The venerable Margaret of Beaune, too, as Christ- 
mas approached, became more and more absorbed in divine 
things ; her lips refused all nourishment ; her ears seemed closed 
to all earthly sounds till the bells began the joyful carillon be- 
fore the midnight Mass. And while her physical faculties were 
suspended her sense of spiritual things was proportionally in- 
creased. Nor is this surprising, for, as she said herself : " The 
capacity of the soul that possesses God is marvellous. The more 
it is filled with his divine grandeur the more it expands towards 
the infinite. The holy presence of God surrounds the soul like 
the waves of a shoreless ocean whose flow never ceases, and in 
proportion as the soul is inundated does it draw nearer to God 
and become capable of contemplating and adoring him." She 
spent whole hours repeating, Et Verbum caro factum est, -to ob- 
tain pardon for sinners, as if she thought it sufficient merely to 
remind our Saviour that he became man for their redemption. 
And she had a vision, wonderful as that of St. Anthony which 
Murillo has so gloriously depicted, in which the divine Infant 
appeared to her with those potent words emblazoned in gold on 
the palms of his hands. It was through her influence that M. 
Olier introduced the devotion of the Holv Infancy among the 
Sulpiciang; with a special service on the 25th of every month, 
and, after the office of the Nativity was sung, the now well- 
known litany of the Infant Jesus was chanted, composed for 
the purpose by Fenelon, afterwards archbishop of Cambrai, but 
then at the seminary of St. Sulpice. And how fully the latter 
was imbued with the spirit of the manger is to be seen by his 
incomparable meditation for Christmas, which one is never weary 
of repeating. 

It is this devotion to the Holy Childhood that for many years 
has garnered in so plentiful a harvest of the Sainte Enfance in 
China, whereby so many thousand children have been rescued, 
to become, as Father Faber says, " the sweet prey of the Babe 
of Bethlehem." 



480 REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. [Jan., 

So absorbing is this devotion to the Nativity that, while some 
of the saints have spent their lives in contemplating the won- 
derful events of the thirty-three years, going from one degree of 
glory to another, others have stood perpetually before the man- 
ger in amazement, and let their days waste sweetly away like the 
lamps of fragrant oil in the cave of the Incarnation. 

" O blessed who with eyes so pure 

Have watched Thy cradle day by day ; 
Thy looks may in their hearts endure, 

Brightening their dim and weary way. 
Blest whom sweet thoughts of Christmas-tide 

Through all the year may guard and guide, 
As on those sages journeying smiled 

In dreams the Mother and the Child." 

Such was St. Paula, who, though she went from a sumptuous 
abode on the banks of the Tiber, where the pilgrim now goes to 
venerate her memory in the church of San Girolamo della Ca- 
rita, found Bethlehem the sweetest, most attractive spot in the 
whole world. The first time she entered the Cave of the Na- 
tivity she was so penetrated with the wonderful mystery of the 
Incarnation that she resolved to spend the rest of her life watch- 
ing besid'e the manger where the divine Infant once lay on the' 
straw, and repay suffering by suffering, love by love. St. Jerome 
describes this visit in his letters : 

" Arriving at Bethlehem and entering the grotto, she contemplated the 
holy asylum of the Queen of virgins. There I heard her say that with the 
eyes of faith she saw the divine Infant, and the Magi'adoring, and the Vir- 
gin Mother, and the shepherds hastening to behold the Word made flesh. 
With joy and holy tears she cried : ' Hail, Bethlehem ! so worthy of the 
name ; House of Bread, where the Bread of Heaven deigned to descend for 
us. Ah ! how is it possible that I, a wretched sinner, shoul^ be found 
worthy to kiss this cradle, to pray in this cave, where the Virgin Mother 
deposited her divine fruit ? This shall be the place of my rest, since it is 
the country of my God ; here will I dwell, since my God did not disdain to 
be born here ; here will I give myself to that God who gave himself up for 
me.' " 

And she built a hospice by the wayside to shelter pilgrims 
drawn thither by the Star in the East, in the very place where 
Joseph and Mary could find no suitable asylum, and founded a 
monastery for religious women who 'kept up the angels' song of 
" Gloria in excelsis." Alleluia ! was their joyful cry on awaken- 
ing in the morning, as it is now the constant refrain of the church 
at Christmas time. 

The memory of St. Jerome, too, must always be associated 






1884.] REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. 481 

with Bethlehem, where he ended his days. His stern, austere 
nature no doubt needed the softening influences of "the peaceful 
star of Bethlehem." 

" The thought of the Eternal Child 

Upon his cloistral cell 
Must sure have cast an influence mild, 

And, like a holy spell, 
Have peopled that fair Eastern night 
With dreams fit for an eremite, 
Beside that cradle poor bidding the world farewell." 

His remains now lie appropriately in the magnificent chapel 
at Rome sacred to the Presepio ; and the church of St. Anas- 
tasia, where he often officiated when in the Eternal City, was 
afterwards chosen by the popes in which to offer their second 
Mass on Christmas morn. 

Nor is Bethlehem forsaken in our day. Holy men still keep 
watch around the manger and offer hospitality to the pilgrim. 
A procession is daily made to the holy place, and the angelic song 
sung on the spot where it was first heard. Lady Herbert tells us 
of a priest who, saying Mass for the first time in the Cave of the 
Nativity, could hardly repeat the "Gloria in excelsis" for his tears. 

But who has not at some portion of his life been sweetly 
lured on to Bethlehem, at least in spirit, especially at Christmas- 
time, and there shed such blessed tears ? Who has not pictured 
to himself the cave, the crib, the beasts of burden, the stra\v, the 
cold, the dampness, and the gloom ? the gloom till lit up by 
that celestial radiance of the Child Jesus which so many painters 
have represented and poets sung : 

" See, the rays His brows adorning 
Are the light of endless morning." 

Mystic writers, too, have seen this heavenly light in their 
visions. Mary of Agreda and Catherine Emmerich both saw 
Mary with her face turned toward the East, and both saw the 
light St. Joseph had placed in the cave grow dim in the radi- 
ance that became brighter, and brighter still, till a marvellous 
splendor revealed the birth of Christ. Crashaw beautifully ex- 
presses this in his hymn to the Nativity : 

" We saw thee in thy balmy nest, 

Bright daw"n of our eternal day ; 
We saw thine eyes break from the East 

And chase the trembling shades away. 
We saw thee, and we blessed the sight. 
We saw thee by thine own sweet light." 

VOL. XXXVIII. 31 



482 REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. [Jan., 

Milton, after singing the splendor of this " greater sun," adds : 

" And all around the courtly stable 
Bright harness'd angels sit in order serviceable/' 

Every painter of the Nativity has given a group of these an- 
gels. One has represented them as gazing with wondering eyes 
into the manger where Jesus is laid, twinkling like the stars, and 
each star above looking as if it might burst forth into an angel. 
Botticelli has painted a band of angels, full of grace and sweet- 
ness, weaving a joyful dance in the air above, while others are 
embracing the astonished shepherds below. As Fra Jacopone da 
Todi sings : 

" Little angels all around 

Danced and carols flung ; 
Making verselets sweet and true, 

Still of love they sung ; 
Calling saints, and sinners too, 

With love's tender tongue." 

Lope de Vega makes Our Lady caution the angels as they come 
through the palm-trees : 

" Holy angels and blest, 

Through these palms as ye sweep. 
Hold their branches at rest, 
For my Babe is asleep. 

" And ye, Bethlehem palm-trees, 

As stormy winds rush 
In tempest and fury, 

Your angry noise hush ; 
Move gently, move gently, 

Restrain your wild sweep ; 
Hold your branches at rest 

My Babe is asleep.'' 

St. Luke, the first artist to depict the Mother and Child, is 
another of the saints of Bethlehem. Father Faber calls him " the 
Evangelist of the Sacred Infancy," because we owe most of our 
knowledge concerning it to him. And " by him were the ' Mag- 
nificat,' the ' Benedictus,' and the 'Nunc Dimittis' all canticles 
of the Holy Infancy laid up and embalmed for the delight and 
consolation of all time." Every Christian poet since has striven 
to echo and vary these songs of joy. Of these none are more 
beautiful than Fra Jacopone's ' Stabat Mater speciosa,' and his 
' Presepio ' so full of homely tenderness : 



1884.] REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. 483 

" By thy great and glorious merit, 

Mary, Mother, Maid ! 
In thy firstling, new-born Child 
All our life is laid. 

For thy beauteous baby Boy 

We a-hungered burn ; 
Yea, with heart and soul of grace 

Long for him and yearn. 
Grant us, then, this prayer : his face 

Toward our bosom turn : 
Let him keep us in his care, 

On his bosom stayed. 

O poor humble human race, 

How uplift art thou ! 
With the divine dignity 

Reunited now ! 
Even the Virgin Mary, she 

All amazed doth bow ; 
And to us who sin inherit 

Seems as though she prayed." * 

The people, too, have come to the manger with their carols 
that breathe the freshness of the woods and pastures, the sweet- 
ness of the wild flowers, and the unstudied grace of pastoral life. 
Borrow tells of a beautiful hymn common in Spain, which the 
hostess of a country inn sang while cooking his breakfast, begin- 
ning as follows : 

" Once of old upon a mountain shepherds overcome with sleep 
Near to Bethl'ern's holy tower kept at dead of night their sheep ; 
Round about the trunk they nodded of a huge ignited oak, 
Whence the crackling flames, ascending bright and clear, the darkness. 
broke." 

These shepherds have even had names assigned them. In one of 
the illustrations of a beautiful book of Hours printed for Simon 
Vostre in 1502, depicting the adoration of the shepherds, their 
names are inscribed as follows : Gobin le gay (i.e., merry), le 
beau Roger, Aloris, Ysauber, Alison, and Mahault. And there 
is an ancient tradition that among them were Simon and Jude, 
afterwards apostles. 

Some have objected to the tradition that a cave was the place 
of the Nativity ; but, as travellers know, people in the East often 
build their houses against a cavern, by which means" depth and 
coolness are obtained. This is also done in the Apennines. St.. 

* Symonds' translation. 



484 REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. [Jan., 

Justin Martyr, who was a native of Palestine and flourished 
shortly after the death of St. John the Evangelist, and therefore 
had every opportunity of knowing- all the first Christian tradi- 
tions, declares that our Saviour was born in a grotto at Beth- 
lehem. And at a later period St. Jerome confirms this state- 
ment. 

Mrs. Jameson finds something inexpressibly touching and 
significant in the presence of the inferior animals at the Nativity. 
It is as if they, who, with all nature, participated in the fall of 
man, had now become sharers in the benefits of the Incarnation. 
The ass in particular has been regarded with a certain venera- 
tion on this account, and because of its having borne more than 
once the Son of man : 

" The ox and ass to them was given 
To see our Lord : the light of Heaven 
Fell on them in that hour. 

" And since our Lord she bare 

In triumph to his place 
One patient beast hath .seemed to wear 

The mark of his high grace, 
His token to dumb creatures, freed 
From slavery and unholy deed." 

The middle ages considered the sobriety, patience, resignation, 
and many other qualities of this animal as well worthy of imi- 
tation by Christians. " Salvete, fratres asini ! " was St. Fran- 
cis' fraternal salutation, which Coleridge has echoed in his line : 

" I hail thee Brother ! " 

The festival that commemorates the flight into Egypt was once 
popularly known in some countries as the Feast of the Ass, and 
a young matron with a babe in her arms was escorted through 
the streets on a gaily-decorated ass, and led into the very church, 
where, before the high altar, a hymn was sung in honor of that 
lowly beast, one version of which runs as follows : 

" From the country in the East 
Came this strong and handsome beast, 
This able ass beyond compare, 
Heavy loads and packs to bear. 

Now, Seignor Ass, a noble bray, 
Thy beauteous mouth at large display. 
Abundant food our harvests yield, 
And oats abundant load the fields. 



1884.] REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. 485 

He-haw ! 

He was born on Shechem's hill, 
In Reuben's vale he fed his fill, 
He drank of Jordan's sacred stream, 
And gambolled in Bethlehem," etc. 

Some parts of this ceremony seem to us very grotesque, par- 
ticularly the braying- of the animal in the chorus ; but, as Michelet 
remarks, the church did not discourage the innocent customs of 
the people, but made herself a child to prattle with her children, 
and blended her sacred language with theirs. 

The remembrance of their participation in the scene at Beth- 
lehem has led, Christians from remote ages to give animals a 
share in the abundance of Christmas time. St. Francis of Assisi 
wished he had the power to compel all the chief magistrates of 
towns and villages to scatter grain through the streets on Christ- 
mas day, that the birds might have occasion to rejoice, and to 
give an abundant supply of food to the cattle in memory of Him 
who was born between an ox and an ass. Even in Sweden the 
old Catholic custom has been kept up of putting out sheaves of 
oats and barley on the trees and houses and high poles for the 
birds, who testify their joy in language that cannot be mistaken. 
For every creature ought to rejoice on a night that brought life 
into the world. You see these sheaves on the top of every barn, 
and the poorest laborer who has no grain asks and receives a 
sheaf from his more wealthy neighbor, that the birds may rejoice 
around every dwelling. A Swedish poet thus summons them : 

"Come hither, little birds, merry of mood, 
By barn-door and dwelling-house corn-ears are strewed. 
Christmas comes hither, 
Then may ye gather 
Food from the bread-giving straw golden-hued." 

Miss Bremer, in her charming story of Strife and Peace, has 
woven this beautiful custom into a Christmas scene with happy 
effect. The very crows, too, in that country have a cake and a 
sip of Christmas ale given them, and fresh straw to lie on, which 
reminds one of the crow-song of the old English mummers: 

" My good worthy masters, a pittance bestow. 
Some oatmeal, or barley, or wheat, for the crow ; 
A loaf, or a penny.^er e'en what you will 
From the poor man a grain of his salt may suffice, 
For the crow swallows all, and is not over-nice." 

In some places the very children sleep on the straw-covered 



486 REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. [Jan., 

floor in honor of the Child Jesus in the manger, and we read in 
Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia that the prisoners there 
piously strew their cells with straw on Christmas eve. The 
proud Polish nobles, too, hang a sheaf of straw in the most con- 
spicuous place in their banqueting-halls in memory of the pov- 
erty of Jesus and Mary in the stable of Bethlehem. 

The practice of giving food and clothing to the poor at this 
season, now so general, is derived from the good old Catholic 
custom. Scott makes one of his characters lament the death of 
the Lady of Ellangowan because "on ilka Christmas night, as it 
came round, the leddy gae twelve siller pennies to ilka puir body 
about, in honor of the twelve apostles like." " Xhey were fond 
to ca' it papistrie," she adds, " but I think our great folk might 
take a lesson frae the papists whiles. They gie another sort o' 
help to puir folk than just dinging down a saxpence in the broad 
on the Sabbath, and kilting and scourging and drumming them 
the sax days o' the week besides." In some parts of Germany 
food is provided for the poor in a most delicate manner. A table 
is bountifully spread " for the Blessed Virgin and the guardian 
angels of those who slumber," as it is said, and left unattended, 
with lights upon it, for the benefit of the poor wanderer who 
might be ashamed to beg. 

In feudal times serfs were often freed at this season of general 
charity. The very dogs were unchained. The dungeons were 
opened to set the prisoners free, or some of them at least, and 
the remainder had their condition alleviated, that none might be 
excluded from the common joy. 

This rejoicing seems to extend even into the other world. 
The old legend of St. Brendan makes.the traitor Judas tell of the 
refreshment he finds in his terrible torments from " Chrystmasse 
to Twelfth-daye." Other legends say that on Christmas night 
Our Lady descends into Purgatory that holy realm of suffering 
over which Faber says she is crowned as queen with power to 
deliver certain souls, because on this same night she brought 
into the world Him who came to redeem them. 

The inanimate world also sometimes breaks forth into joy at 
this exceptional time, as at Glastonbury, where the Holy Thorn, 
planted by St. Joseph of Arimathea, 

" Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord." 

And there was likewise an old oak near Malwood Castle, in 
Hampshire, that used to bud every year at the Nativity. The 
Pere Poire" also speaks of an apple-tree near Nuremberg that 



1884.] REMINISCENCES OF BETHLEHEM. 487 

formerly bore apples at Christmas in honor of Mary, who for us 
bore the fruit of eternal life. Perhaps it was the flowering of 
some such tree that led to the pleasant German custom of the 
Christmas-tree which annually gladdens every household with 
the sweet fruit of domestic affection. In some parts of England 
the people still assemble in their orchards on Christmas eve to 
bless them and invoke a good crop for the coming year. In 
Kent they sing : 

" Stand fast, root ; bear well, top ; 
God send us a youling sop, 
Every twrg.'apple big ; 
Every bough, apples enow." 

The English are generally thought to be specially attached to 
the festival of Christmas. And they have reason to be, for it 
commemorates important events in their history. It was on 
Christmas day, A.D. 596, that ten thousand Anglo-Saxons were 
baptized by St. Austin and his fellow-missionaries. No won- 
der the great apostle made it henceforth a doubly joyful festival. 
The bells were rung almost incessantly from Christmas till the 
Circumcision. The churches were trimmed with holly, laurel, 
and ivy. The yule log was cut with great care to burn brightly 
on every hearth. And immense candles were lighted at mid- 
night in token of the true light they had received, as sung in one 
of their many beautiful carols : 

" Then be ye glad, good people, 

This night of all the year, 
And light ye up your candles, for 

His star it shineth clear. 
And all in earth and heaven 

A joyous carol sing ; 
For lo \ to us a Child is born, 

And all the bells do ring." 



488 THE COINERS" DEN. [Jan., 



THE COINERS' DEN. 

No man has more admiration for moral virtue than I. I am 
persuaded that the good and virtuous should be carefully cher- 
ished and highly prized ; that it is equally incumbent on private 
persons and public society to adopt every practicable expedient 
to promote the happiness and prolong the life of every truly 
meritorious member of the body politic ! This is my belief. 
Strongly impressed with this persuasion firmly rooted in my 
mind, I determined, when I had finished my college course, to 
give myself a holiday and luxuriate for some months at my ease 
in a charming village situated in County Wicklow a few miles 
distant from the Irish metropolis. There was nothing selfish in 
this resolution. It originated in a profound sense of duty. I un- 
dertook it pro bono publico for the benefit of the public at large. 
I retired to a romantic valley in that mountainous county by way 
of rendering a service to the Irish nation that is, from a feeling 
of patriotism exalted into philanthropy. For the good of my 
country I took care of myself. Really good people are notorious- 
ly few in number ; there is unfortunately such a paucity of truly 
exemplary characters that I deemed this indulgence highly com- 
mendable " set down in my duty " and I am sure my readers 
will agree with me. I had worked very hard in preparing for 
examinations, and felt quite exhausted. My system craved relaxa- 
tion desipere in loco, as Horace has it where I could take my ease 
and repose in a " castle of idleness," preparatory to entering on 
the serious business of life. I always had a great talent for doing 
nothing, and ardently admired the profound genius of Italy, not 
so much for its magnificent poetry, its life-like sculpture and 
majestic architecture, as for that admirable proverb, Dolce far 
niente. The people who originated that incomparable proverb 
will ever receive my unqualified admiration ! I do believe, too, 
that no man enjoys the exquisite beauties of natural scenery 
" the warbling woodland, the resounding shore " so much as 
your incorrigible idler. He is a gifted being in this respect, 
being more alive to the varied loveliness of external phenomena 
than more hurried and bustling characters. In the valleys of 
Wicklow the pied daisies and the yellow buttercups, which 
opened their tiny chalices of gold to the sun and gemmed with 
their innocent beauty the emerald verdure that undulated in the 



1884.] THE COINERS' DEN. 489 

wind and clothed the mountain-sides, had an exquisite charm for 
me in these " hours of idleness." Owing to the length of time I 
gave to their contemplation, I could see, I fancy, more in them 
than other men. I felt, with the poet, 

" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar." 

This is one of the prerogatives, the heir-looms, of the great 
family of " Do-nothings." They feel more delight than other 
men in the leisure which succeeds unavoidable labor. I enjoyed 
my emancipation from college tasks the corroding cares, the 
doubts and fears, connected with approaching and dreaded ex- 
aminations. As no man fights more fiercely than a coward when 
found in a corner, so no man works more industriously than an 
idler when he cannot help it. Such was my case. The idleness 
which succeeded my deliverance from study was not only de- 
lightful, it was delicious. I found exquisite pleasure to stretch 
my listless length beside some crystal rivulet, and, while the sky- 
lark was filling the summer air with thick warbled notes, 

" To pore upon the brook that babbled by." 

But it is useless to dwell upon this subject. Let it suffice to 
say that there is a pleasure in sloth which can never be fully 
understood by any but the slothful. Some young men have the 
disedifying habit, when at Mass, of gazing at the female mem- 
bers of the congregation, and thus neglecting their devotions to 
gratify their curiosity. This habit I never indulged in, even in 
my youngest days ; and therefore it is somewhat unaccountable 
that on the second Sunday after my arrival in the village I be- 
came conscious, while hearing Mass, of the presence of three 
ladies who knelt at the right, while I knelt at the left, side of the 
attar. I dare say a mesmerist could account for my know- 
ledge of their presence, but I could not, as my eyes during the 
ceremony were riveted on my prayer-book, lest I should once 
look at the ladies ! 

At the conclusion of the service I managed to get out of 
church before the majority of the congregation, and then stood 
at some distance from the door, through which the congregation 
defiled in an unbroken stream for several minutes. My object 
was merely historical ! I wished to contemplate the faces and 
figures of the descendants of those gallant clansmen, the Byrnes, 
Tooles, and Kavanaghs, whose mediaeval wars with the English 



490 THE COINERS' DEN. [Jan., 

Pale make such a figure in the annals of Dublin. This was my 
exclusive object. But while thus engaged the three ladies 1 
have spoken of issued from the porch, and, mounting a private 
car in waiting for them, drove rapidly away. As my conduct 
during Mass occasioned me an uncalled-for scruple of conscience 
as I feared I had given scandal I took a crown from my 
pocket and sent in my card to the priest who had celebrated 
Mass, and who was then disrobing in the sanctuary. During our 
conversation I requested him to remember my intention at the 
Holy Sacrifice, and, strange to say, though I made no inquiry on 
the subject, the names and address of the ladies leaked out ! 

Two of them were daughters of a rich professional man in 
Dublin, while the third, who seemed little more than seventeen, 
was their cousin. The features of this girl seemed to me (it 
might not be so to others) the very perfection of female loveli- 
ness. There was something so artless in the expression of her 
modest countenance, in "the mind, the music breathing from her 
face," an air of such guileless sweetness and innocent beauty, 
wholly unconscious of its fascinating potency, that I was charm- 
ed and enslaved to a degree that the day before I would have 
laughed at as wholly incredible. The other and elder ladies 
were likewise handsome, but there was so artificial an air about 
their beauty that I was inclined to ask : 

"Are those tresses thickly twined 
Purchased hair pinned on behind ? 
Is the blush which roses mocks 
Bought at three-and-six the box ? " 

There was something cosmetic in their beauty. They seemed 
so perfectly conscious of their charms that I could not admire 
them. They resembled that Lesbia in the Irish song who wore 
her golden robe so tightly laced 

" That not a charm of beauty's mould 
Presumed to stay where nature placed it." 

While their niece resembled the Norah Criena of the same song : 

" Few her looks, but every one, 
Like unexpected light, surprises." 

To my eyes she resembled a young rose, laden with morning 
dews and fraught with fragrance, which waves carelessly in the 
garden and imparts perfume to every breeze with every motion. 
Horace would have addressed her in the words which he ad- 
dressed to Phidyle in his third book, twenty-third ode : 
"Coelo supinas si tuleris manus, etc." 



1884.] THE COINERS' DEN. 491 

If she raised her suppliant hands her prayer would assuredly 
be heard, etc. 

Her father, as I was informed by the priest, had been a mer- 
chant in the West Indies, who, after a life of labor, had invested 
a large fortune in landed property and then suddenly died, not 
without circumstances of a suspicious nature. Unfortunately 
this purchase had never been registered, and the title-deeds had 
.disappeared in some mysterious way which could never be eluci- 
dated. Owing to this lamentable contretemps the young lady 
who had woven unconsciously a chain for my heart, and whom I 
shall name Eala was left comparatively penniless. 

Entering one morning the principal street of the county town, 
what was my astonishment to see two chaises, laden with trunks 
and travelling-bags, standing before the principal hotel, and a few 
minutes afterwards four ladies one of whom was Eala issued 
from the house, entered the vehicles, and drove rapidly off in the 
direction of Dublin. All my hopes seemed to vanish. I felt un- 
speakably crestfallen and desolate as the flying vehicles, amid a 
cloud of dust and the shouts of ragged children, disappeared in a 
turn of the road. From that day forth whatever was the rea- 
son the County Wicklow lost all its picturesque loveliness in 
my eyes. It was very strange and wholly unaccountable, but I 
could no longer discern " the soft magic of streamlet and rill " 
which the poet speaks of, and which had been so conspicuous 
before ! Everything around seemed to become " weary, stale, 
flat, and unprofitable," and I began to wonder what poets and 
travellers could have seen in the landscapes of Wicklow. I 
came to the conclusion that there had been great exaggeration in 
those descriptions. To me not only Wicklow but life seemed 
lone and dreary, and I began to ask myself, like a certain modern 
philosopher, was it really worth living ? I also began to remem- 
ber that it was not by reclining under beech-trees or poring 
upon brooks that the great heroes of antiquity had achieved 
their immortal reputation, but by vigorous and energetic action 
in confronting danger and undergoing toil and suppressing ty- 
ranny. I therefore, in order to approximate to those immortal 
heroes, determined to return to Dublin. In that city I took up 
my abode in Summer Hill, where I endeavored to discover the 
residence of Eala ; but all to no purpose. 

I found, however, that her two fair cousins resided just at my 
elbow in Mountjoy Square; but though I saw them almost daily 
in their walks to the more lively and commercial parts of the 
city, where they visited the stores of silks and soft goods, I 



492 THE COINERS' DEN. (Jan., 

could never see Eala in their company, from which I concluded 
that she did not live with them ; but whither she had gone or 
where she resided I could not ascertain. 

My landlady in Summer Hill was an admirable person, 
cleanly, obliging, and attentive. She had only one fault : she did 
not appreciate my vocal music as she should do. Her musical 
education, I regret to say, had been entirely neglected, inso- 
much that she characterized my nocturnal vocalizations as mere 
" noise," which, she said, disturbed her family, her lodgers, and 
herself. I considered this want of taste as very provoking. I 
could not at first account for such barbarous insensibility to 
sweet sounds, but on due consideration I attributed it to the 
nature of the song. Most assuredly it could not be owing to the 
nature of the voice ! That was impossible ; so I took from my 
repertoire another song with which I was convinced she must be 
pleased. 

So unaccountable are tastes that my landlady was still more 
displeased, though I sang at the top of my voice until two 
o'clock in the morning. So I sallied forth one morning, after 
an unreasonable lecture from my landlady, in search of new 
lodgings, repeating as I went Cowper's lines : " Oh ! for a lodge 
in some vast wilderness." The illogical character of my land- 
lady's mind, her passionate propensity to sarcasm and invective, 
her unpardonable violation of the rules of reasoning, fired my 
blood to such a degree as to lend wings to my steps; and so 
before I well knew where I was going I found myself in the 
southern part of Dublin. I had crossed Carlisle Bridge and was 
pacing through Stephen's Green before my mind reverted to the 
object of my excursion. When I had in some degree recovered 
my equanimity, and time and motion had mitigated my very 
justifiable anger, my eyes fell upon an outside car which excited 
all the faculties of my soul in a most extraordinary manner. 
This car was driven by an elderly man in a frieze coat, who might 
be a farmer and was apparently its owner, while I was quite 
certain that I saw Eala seated on the other side, accompanied by 
what appeared to be the farmer's wife. What a chance this was ! 
I immediately ran to a car-stand, and, jumping on a vehicle, 
ordered the driver to follow the farmer wherever he went. 

He crossed the bridge of Rathmines, traversed that beautiful 
outlet, and then, turning to the right, entered Rathgar Road. 
"Here at least he will call a halt," I said to myself; but he did 
not. He prosecuted his journey to Rathfarnham. He crossed 
the Dodder that winding stream whose devious wave turns so 



1884.] THE COINERS' DEN. 493 

many mill-wheels and entered the wild and picturesque country 
which lies between the Dodder and the mountains. I had often 
roamed through that district with pleasure. But it never ap- 
peared so verdant and beautiful as on the present occasion. It 
was worthy of Paradise. I asked myself what people could see 
in the County Wicklow a county so vastly inferior, in my mind, 
to the County Dublin. Here the verdure was visibly greener, 
the sun brighter, the air balmier, and the music of the lark more 
dulcid and exhilarating. At least so it seemed to me, and so I 
am sure it was. 

After some further driving we came to what was termed 
then, and possibly is still, the " Military Road." Along this road, 
constructed by the army of England during the rebellion of 
'98, we proceeded until the fresh breezes laden with the saline 
vapors of the sea apprised us that we were approaching the 
rocky shores of Howth. Ships became visible in the distance, 
gliding with snow-white sails and imperceptible motion, swan- 
like and beautiful, et spumas sails cere ruebant "and broke the 
splashing waves with their prows." Here we found the soil 
degenerating into barrenness, thinly covered with a starveling 
vegetation, and dotted with squalid cabins walled with mud 
and thatched with straw, picturesque to look at but undesirable 
to live in. To my unspeakable amazement, the car containing 
my inamorata stopped before one of those wigwams, and she her- 
self, bounding from the vehicle and accompanied by her female 
companion, went in. " What on earth can she want in such a 
den? Assuredly she cannot live in that pig-sty," I said to myself 
half aloud. " I wish to mercy I could find some pretext for fol- 
lowing her into that hideous hovel and ascertaining the object of 
her visit." 

" I know what your honor wants," said the driver, as he pe- 
rused me with a keen glance. " You want an accident ? It's 
what a good accident would fit you to a T. Isn't it? " " That's 
exactly what I want," said I, brightening up at the suggestion ; 
" an accident would serve me as an excuse for penetrating that 
hovel and ascertaining what's going on inside." " There, now," 
said the driver exultingly, " didn't I know what you wanted ? 
There is nothing like a good sound accident in cases of this kind. 
When you're dealing with a young lady an accident is the sove- 
reignest thing in life. It touches her heart and makes her sensi- 
ble at wanst, the darlint." 

" But while you're talking we're losing time," said I impa- 
tiently ; "let me have your accident at once." "Oh! fair and 



494 THE COINER^ DEN. [Jan., 

asy goes far in the day," replied the driver. " What would your 
honor be willing to give for an accident a good sound accident 
that would impose on a peeler without the least taste in life of 
design in it ? What would you be after giving for an accident ? " 
" I'll willingly give you five shillings over and above your t fare, 
if you supply me with a plausible excuse for entering that pig- 
sty." 

" Five shillings ! " shouted the driver, with an indescribable 
air of mingled astonishment and disgust. " Did any one ever hear 
the like ? Five shillings for an accident ! Things are come to a 
purty pass ! By gor ! accidents must be very cheap when they're 
going for that price. Five shillings for an accident ! Oh ! wir- 
rasthrue, wirrasthrue, what's the world coming to at all ? Five 
shillings for an accident ! Was the like ever heard of ? " " Well, 
come," said I, " you shall have ten shillings when the accident is 
completed." 

" You're nothing but a gentleman ! " exclaimed the driver, 
quite satisfied. " I'll give you an accident that would take a 
pearl off a piper's eye and make a blind man see again." So 
saying, he descended from the car and took out the linch-pin. 
" Now, your honor, the wheel will come off and rowl into the 
ditch, and the car will stop of itself, and we'll be thrun off of it ; 
and sure Gubbawn Saer himself, if he was to the fore, could not 
invent a purtier accident considering the price." " I think you 
have earned your money very easily," said I, giving him his fee ; 
" but if it serve the purpose all is right." 

" There's not in the seven parishes a jarvey that's handier in 
getting up an accident nor my own four bones, though / say it, 
that oughtn't to say it ; and now your honor can go into the cabin 
and see what's to be seen." " No ; you had better go in first, 
tell your story, and ask assistance ; I'll go in afterwards and seek 
shelter." " And who'll mind the mare ? " asked the driver. 
" Oh ! the mare will mind herself. A jarvey's mare is as knowing 
as a jarvey. Besides, when I go in you can come out." " All 
right, your honor." 

The interior of the cabin, as I found on entering, was per- 
vaded by darkness broken by the light of a large fire blazing on 
the hearth, over which a large pot was suspended on an iron 
hook descending from the black and smoky interior of the cav- 
ernous chimney. The naked rafters which supported the roof 
were, like the roof itself, black with smoke and polished with age, 
while the walls were destitute of windows and the floor formed 
of clay. Behind the chimney a second room was situated, to 



1884.] THE COINERS' DEN. 495 

which access was obtained through a rude doorway opening be- 
side the fireplace. 

In this doorway I could dimly discern the form of Eala talk- 
ing to the old woman, whom I took to be a farmer's wife, and 
who had sat beside her on the car. It was evident from the 
plaintive tones of her voice, which went like an arrow to my 
heart, that Eala was overwhelmed with distress and anxiety. 
. " What is to be done ?" she asked. "How am I to act in this 
dilemma?" 

I immediately stepped forward and saluted Eala, hat in 
hand. " I beg pardon for this intrusion," I said, " but I have met 
with an accident. My car broke down just adjacent to this 
place, and I have ventured to come in for assistance. I have had 
the honor of seeing you in the County Wicklow, where you re- 
sided with the Staunton family. If I can be of any use to you 
please to command me. I shall be delighted to render you any 
service in my power. Be so good as to inform me if I can ren- 
der you any assistance." 

Eala looked at me with an inquiring glance from those fawn- 
like eyes, worthy of Juno, in which by the light of the fire I 
could see a tear was glistening. What was my delight to hear 
her say in that musical voice, which seemed worthy of Paradise : 
" It would be affectation in me to say that I do not remember 
you. I have learned who you are, and I frankly and gratefully 
accept your proffered assistance." " Only tell me where I shall 
go or what I shall do ; and, were it even at the risk of my life, I 
shall endeavor to accomplish it." 

"You run no risk whatever," she replied. "The whole affair 
is simply this : A man stretched on his death-bed, groaning and 
struggling, in this room, and apparently on the verge of the grave, 
knows where a document is concealed of infinite importance to 
me. He refuses to communicate the secret to any one who can- 
not speak Latin. Now, if you will go in and pronounce a few 
Latin words in his hearing he may possibly tell you where the 
deed is hidden. -This is all." 

The room into which- the old woman conducted me was 
dark, low, and damp a most uncomfortable apartment, in which 
nothing at first sight was visible. When my eyes became accus- 
tomed to this artificial twilight I could easily discern in the 
centre a truckle-bed covered with dingy blankets and a tat- 
tered counterpane. The occupant of this squalid couch was a 
raw-boned Colossus, a man of herculean proportions, whom 
disease had prostrated, robbed of muscular power, and reduced 



496 THE COINER:? DEN. [Jan., 

to the weakness of infancy. Worn to the bone, gaunt, skinny, 
and haggard, with beetling brows, feverish aspect, and lurid eyes, 
he glared at me like a tiger. His voice was gruff, hoarse, and 
horrible; there was something, I thought, supernatural in its 
tones as he asked me, " Where are you from ? " 

The speaker seemed to me at that moment a man whom " the 
vile blows and buffets of the world " had maddened to despera- 
tion, and who, forced by undeserved misfortune, had made war 
on society in the view of making an end of himself, if he could 
not inflict vengeance on mankind. But disease, in chaining him 
to his pallet, had subdued his rebellious spirit, tamed his innate 
ferocity, and inclined his obdurate heart to repentance. 

"My good man " I began. "I am not a good man," he 
gruffly replied, with an indescribable growl. " What do you call 
me a good man for? Is it mocking me you are? But tell me, 
are you from the priest?" Here the old woman muttered some- 
thing which I did not understand, which seemed to appease him. 

" I come here," I continued, " by pure accident, which this 
woman can explain to you. But if you have anything to impart 
which it would ease your mind to communicate, you may con- 
fide in me. I have been told you have some information to 
give." 

" Ay, ay," he exclaimed, " tell me, can you spake Latin ? Let 
me hear you spake Latin." I immediately repeated the first 
lines of the ./#*&: " Arma virumque cano Trojse qui primus 
ab oris," etc. " Well, I believe that's a prayer for my sowl? 
It's very fine, anyhow. Tell me, will you hear a confession ? " 

" It's raving he is, sir," said the old woman, and she again mut- 
tered something in his ear. " He's the greatest loony ever you 
seen. Don't mind him, yer honor." She seemed to be appre- 
hensive that the Sacrament of Confession might be profaned by 
our proceedings. Meantime he was glaring at me like a man 
who had lost his senses and was half inclined to fight with me, 
meditating an attack. "Come here," he exclaimed in a hoarse 
voice, at the same time fumbling under his pillow, from which he 
brought forth a bag. 

" Come here," he repeated. " Take this bag ; there's a paper in 
it. It's not the thing you want, but it'll be the means of getting 
it. Tell me, do you know Meath Street Chapel ?" " To be sure 
I do; what about it? "said I. "Go to Meath Street Chapel, 
do you mind, and ax the dark where Pat Maher does be. When, 
you see Pat Maher show him this paper. Do you mind? And 
if he axes you for th' other token, say : 



1884.] THE COINER^ DEN. 

" ' Qui, quae, quid, 
Do what you're bid : 
By the mark on your face, 
Give the bearer the lease,' 

and he'll give it to you." 

These words I took down in pencil as he repeated them over 
and over again. Then, putting the bag into my hands, he added: 
" Now stir your stumps. You have no time to lose, and if you 
meet the priest on your way tell him to make haste, for my 
time is short. Thank God ! my mind is easier now since I made 
the restitution." 

Now, I regarded this communication as unworthy of a mo- 
ment's attention. I was half ashamed of my part in the drama. 

" It's evidently all nonsense," said I to the old nurse as she led 
me out of the room. " No such thing," said she ; " it's nothing 
of the sort. Glory be to God that you got it out of him ! It's the 
great secret entirely. It's proud and happy you ought to be to 
get it out of the likes of him. It's more nor I ever expected. 
There's some chance for his poor sowl now. God be praised ! " 

No less to my surprise than satisfaction Eala's face flushed up 
with pleasure when I gave her the paper. She never looked so 
beautiful. Her eyes were brighter, her cheeks rosier, and her 
smile sweeter than ever. She seemed quite certain that a matter 
of much importance had been accomplished, a great victory 
achieved. She expressed, with great timidity, a hope that I 
would follow up the affair by complying with the dying man's 
directions and endeavoring to obtain the lost deed. I assured 
her with no little warmth that nothing would give me greater 
pleasure than to oblige her, and that if it were at all possible the 
deed should be recovered and placed in her hands. It is impos- 
sible to describe the expression of her guileless countenance as I 
made this protestation. Her eyes sparkled with delight and 
gratitude beamed in every lineament. But when I solicited, with 
a low bow, permission to accompany her to Dublin this expres- 
sion vanished at once. A change came over her countenance. 
She declined my escort with an air of embarrassment which ren- 
dered her appearance even still more interesting. Finally I 
begged to know where I should wait upon her when I had ac- 
complished my mission an inquiry which she answered at once 
by giving me her address in Stephen's Green. Being unable at 
the moment to invent any plausible excuse for remaining longer 
in her presence, I bowed myself out of the cabin and proceeded 
to rejoin my jarvey. 
VOL. xxxvin. 32 



498 THE COINER& DEN. [Jan. 

The dexterity of that ingenious individual in repairing an ac- 
cident proved no less remarkable than his ability in producing 
one. He had the car on its wheels, and was prepared, whip in 
hand, to drive me back to " the city of the swords." I was sur- 
prised to find, when we were on the road, that the landscape, which 
afforded me so much pleasure in the morning, was no longer 
what it had been. A change had come over it in the interval 
which it puzzled me to account for; but to make amends we 
travelled more rapidly, and this augmentation of celerity com- 
pensated, I thought, for the strange disappeaFance of scenic at- 
traction. 

I requested Patrick Brady such was the patronymic of my 
Jehu to drive to Meath Street Chapel, expecting, to find the cus- 
todian of that sacred edifice in the vicinity or interior of the 
chapel. But it is " the unexpected " that always takes place, and, 
in perfect accordance with this indisputable maxim, which ex- 
perience loves to corroborate, I found the custodian out. I 
was told, however, that he would be visible at night. Now, pa- 
tience is a virtue which, in the whole course of my life, I have 
never succeeded in cultivating. I have always rebelled against 
it in the most morose and sulky manner, and if I submitted on ' 
this occasion I submitted like the poet's " captive lion," which 

" Gnaws and yet may break his chain." 

Night finally came, and with it a kind of microscopical rain 
such as -they possibly have in fairy-land. It was a stealthy 
Scotch mist in the gradual process of development into a dashing 
, Irish rain. You would require a magnify ing-glass to discover 
the drops with the eye, but to the sense of feeling it was much 
more perceptible. It was an insidious rain, too, which little by 
little wet you to the skin and drenched you more thoroughly 
than a driving shower. The effect of its incidence on the earth 
was to convert the natural mud into a pasty substance of a 
greasy nature, which was invented apparently in the interest of 
the carmen, being exceedingly unpleasant to walk in. 

Shrouded in darkness, pelted by rain, and impeded by mud, I 
plodded along with weary steps and a melancholy countenance 
from College Green to Thomas Street. Every native of Dublin 
will remember this thoroughfare, which extends through Dame 
Street, High Street, and Corn Market until it finally reaches 
Thomas Street. Here I turned to the left and entered Meath 
Street, where I fortunately found the clerk, or sexton. He pe- 
rused me from head to foot when I asked for Pat Maher, and 



1884.] THE COINERS' DEN. 499 

was silent for a second or so. At the moment I did not under- 
stand this pause, but subsequent reflection explained it to me. 
He was surprised that so well dressed a man should inquire for a 
person so abject and degraded. 

" You'd never make it out by yourself," he exclaimed, " but I'll 
send a boy with you. He'll lead you to the spot." By this 
guide I was conducted to a dark, damp, and dismal-looking hall 
which night and day stood open to the winds and rains, and this 
owing to the absence of a hall-door, which, if it once existed, had 
been subjected to the vicissitudes of fortune had fallen like 
ancient Troy and been given to the flames. There was a 
general air of negligence in this domicile, which, grim and gloomy, 
seemed to be devoted to evil destinies, or, as the ancients would 
say, consecrated to the gods of Tartarus a kind of highway 
to the under-world, the haunt of melancholy desolation, and an 
ante-chamber to the dominions of Pluto. 

I paused upon the threshold, as if reluctant to penetrate the 
gloom, which might be filled with armed Shades or vociferous 
Furies ; but the cheerful voice of my young companion, in the 
midst of the gloom, exhorting me to proceed revived my cour- 
age and dispelled my apprehensions. The hall, as I advanced, 
seemed to be an ingenious continuation of the street ; for, like 
the street, it was floored with mud. 

Notwithstanding its dilapidated condition, this ruined house 
swarmed with inhabitants. Every room might be compared to 
a cage crowded with children, whose young voices were resonant 
in all directions. It resembled a rookery a resemblance which 
increased as I ascended, for the caged and invisible children 
seemed more numerous and more noisy at every landing. 

Malte-Brun remarks that old trees and old animals become 
barren, cease to be prolific ; and he fancies that old nations par- 
ticipate in this infecundity and likewise become barren. In this 
way he accounts for the total disappearance of the nations which 
flourished in ancient times on the margins of the Mediterranean 
the Etrurians, -Carthaginians, and Phoenicians. But the Celts, 
though ancient, are not barren. " The Celts," says Emerson, 
" are an old family of whose beginning there is no memory, and 
their end is likely to be still more distant in the future." This 
opinion of Emerson's derived from this half-ruined house an un- 
expected corroboration. 

Having reached one of the landings, my young guide whom 
I mentally compared to the Casta Sibylla of Virgil's ^Eneid, for he 
conducted me through shades blacker than those of Tartarus 



500 THE COINERS' DEN. [Jan., 

suddenly paused and said : " This is the place." With these 
oracular words he applied his knuckles to the door and elicited a 
hollow sound, which was immediately answered. The door was 
thrown open, and a large, comfortless room, dimly lighted, and 
thronged with gazing children, was presented to my view. I 
was reluctant to advance. I shrank back with the modesty 
characteristic of Irishmen, and allowed my young friend to act 
as internuncio. His inquiry was answered in Irish, and some 
words were added in a whisper which were less intelligible. 
Without a moment's delay my young guide turned to me and 
said: 

" Pat Maher is not here ; but if you want to see him imme. 
diately I'll bring you to where he is." " That is exactly what I 
want," I replied. " Come along, then," was the answer, and 
accordingly we went along. 

We groped our way down to the street, which we finally 
reached I resembling the pious ^Eneas, and he the Sibyl that 
conducted the Trojan and ascertaining at every step the vera- 
city of the Latin poet when he tells us, " Facilis descensus Averno 
est." Having reached the street in safety, we turned to the left 
and set out for Thomas Street. This street at that hour was 
thronged with buyers and sellers, and " humming like a hive." 
Near the footpaths on either side tables were standing, piled with 
edibles which provoked a world of bargaining and chaffering, and 
proved clearly that Thomas Street at that hour was haunted by 
good appetites and shallow purses. The edibles consisted of 
black puddings, sheeps' trotters, salt herrings, onions, and cab- 
bages, which evidently possessed great attractions for the pas- 
sengers moving along the pathways, as they were perpetually 
pricing them. 

In the most crowded part "of the thoroughfare, vociferating 
prayers and entreaties in a hoarse, strong voice, and making him- 
self universally heard, sat a sturdy beggar with his back to the 
wall, and having a lighted candle before him in a sort of paper bag. 
This paper bag, which was whitish in color and partially trans- 
parent, served as a lantern to shield the flame from the wind. Its 
owner assuredly did not put his light under a bushel ; for, what 
with his hoarse voice and burning candle, he was the observed 
of all observers. The candle stood between his knees and shed 
its light, not only on his face, which was black and repulsive, but 
upon his arms, which were skinny and white, being utterly flesh- 
less mere skin and bone, as if their proprietor were a living 
skeleton. His object was to excite compassion by the exhibi- 



1884.] THE COINER DEN. 501 

tion of those skeleton arms. His body was in motion, rocking 
backward and forward to the cadence of his voice somewhat 
like a tree " laden with stormy blasts." In his supplications he 
invariably spoke of himself in the third person : " O good Chris- 
tians! " he exclaimed, " have compassion on that poor object, for 
the sake of your father's and mother's sowls, and the sowls of all 
belonging to you." His supplications were eloquent and pa- 
thetic, but the expression of his face counteracted their effect, 
for it was displeasing and repulsive. 

Cicero assures us that in addressing the public an orator 
should have not only a good character but a good countenance. 
Now, in this respect the beggar seemed to be defective. He had 
not a good countenance. My guide, to my astonishment, stood 
stock-still before this figure, and whispered, " That's Pat Maher, 
sir." I was at once shocked and disgusted by this information. 
My aristocratic prejudices revolted at the idea of making ac- 
quaintance with this squalid mendicant ; but the expectation of 
serving Eala mitigated my disgust, and I swallowed my repug- 
nance. 

It seemed difficult, however, without attracting attention to 
an undue degree, to get into conversation with this man. I 
shrank from the task of addressing him. Finally I gave my 
guide a penny, which he slipped into his hand, whispering at the 
same time into his ear: " There is a man here wants to spake to 
you." " I'll be with him in a minute," replied Pat Maher. " Let 
him wait a minute." I accordingly waited, paying my guide at 
the same time and dismissing^him. 

Gradually Pat Maher lowered the tone of his apostrophes. 
His voice declined to a whisper by degrees, and finally ceased. 
Then by a great effort he scrambled to his feet with the assist- 
ance of the wall, and approached me with" What do you want?" 
"Do you know this paper?" I asked. "I do," was the reply, 
after a moment's examination. " Have you any other token ? " 
" I have : ' Qui, quae, quid. Do as you're bid,' " etc. 

" That will do," said he; "folly me." He led the way into 
Meath Street, with the assistance of a staff, and advanced with 
knocking knees, splay feet, and strangely shambling gait, faster 
than I supposed he could go. Having reached Meath Street, he 
halted before an open cellar, cavernous and black. " We must 
go down here," said the beggar. 

"What! into that horrible cavern?" I asked. "Yes, in- 
deed," was the reply, " into that same." I fancied I heard the 
sound of running water splashing in the subterraneous depths. 



502 THE COINERS' DEN. [Jan., 

" It's there the deed is hid ; you must go down there," added 
the beggar-man. " If you haven't the courage to go down there 
you had no business coming to me." "If that's the case I'll go 
down," said I. " Yes, I think it's the best of your play," he 
replied. " We shall want a light ? " said I. " You can't find the 
parchment in the dark ? " " Be gor, you're very 'cute entirely." 
said Pat Maher. " I wonder has your mother any more of ye?" 
He plunged his hand into the pocket of his dress, and brought 
out a piece of wax taper, whteh he held up to me triumphantly. 
" What do you think of dat ? " he asked, with a glitter of the eye 
whi'^h seemed to say, " Do you think I'm a fool ? " 

We descended into the cellar by broken steps, and then ad- 
vanced through the " darkness visible " that pervaded the vault, 
until we reached a door. This door was pushed open by the 
beggar and revealed a flight of stone steps, clean, unbroken, and 
visible by a glimmering light of a wavy and supernatural charac- 
ter, resembling light that had died. It seemed to stream up from 
the bottom of the stairs, as if its source were in the depths of the 
under-world. 

" You must go down dem steps," said the beggar, pointing to 
the stairs. I turned as pale as a sheet at these words, and trem- 
bled in every limb. I felt myself paling. But the thought of Eala 
enabled me to subdue my apprehensions, and, affecting a courage 
which I by no means felt, I descended the steps, followed by Pat 
Maher. At their foot we came to another door, which when 
pushed open revealed, to my amazement and horror, a room full 
of light. The most remarkable article of furniture in this sub- 
terraneous apartment, which secured my attention the moment I 
entered, was a huge engine rising to the ceiling, which, like a sen- 
tient being, was groaning, wailing, churning, and creaking, as if 
dissatisfied with its task, weary with labor, and querulous with 
toil. The light which revealed its ponderous operations and en- 
abled me to see it was given out by a fire flaming on a hob and 
attended by a fireman, at the extremity of the apartment. This 
fire was kept constantly in an incandescent state by a huge leath- 
ern bellows, which, as if in sympathy with its fellow-slave, the 
machine, was hoarsely groaning and complaining apparently of 
unrequited toil and protesting against oppression. Both were 
tended by men, bare-armed and black-looking, their stern faces 
smutted with smoke, and their aspect lowering, scowling, and 
repulsive. 

In one of these men, better-featured than the others, my ap- 
pearance seemed to excite a profound interest. He sidled near 



1884.] THE COINER& DEN. 503 

and perused me with a long 1 , concentrated gaze, in which I thought 
I could detect an expression of affection. After a searching and 
meditative stare he questioned me in a shy and distant manner as 
to my kindred in Tipperary. I replied with the utmost frank- 
ness, letting him know who I was. While my attention was 
thus engaged my arms were suddenly pinioned to my sides and 
bound behind my back with cords. My hat was removed, and a 
small linen nose-bag, such as carters use to feed their horses in, 
was thrown over my head and twisted round my throat. I was 
then seized and thrown on my back, while a dexterous hand was 
plunged into my pockets, which were emptied in a moment of 
some gold coins and a gold repeater, while threats, intermingled 
with curses of a savage and diabolical character, were hissed into 
my ear. 

" Those will make the fine wash entirely," exclaimed one of 
the banditti in a tone of rapturous exultation, as he jingled the 
guineas found in my pocket. " We're made men, by the Ho- 
kies ! " " But what will be done with the shalwadore ? " * ex- 
claimed a voice. " Oh ! that's easy settled a sticking-plaister 
will stop his gob, and de sack-em-ups '11 carry him away." 

At that time an infamous traffic in dead bodies which were 
not always dead raged in Dublin. The anatomists paid a high 
price for "subjects," and miscreants were found ready to supply 
the demands of science from motives which were by no means 
scientific. " Look at this, boys ! " cried a confederate, who had 
been gazing on me with compassion. " This man that's lying 
here is my foster-brother. It's an owld sayin', an' a thrue, Dil 
fear gaoil, act searc mo croidhe dalta.\ He and I sucked the same 
breasts. Before you lay another hand on him you must first kill 
me." 

A shout of ironical laughter hailed this sally. " Ah ! what do 
you mean, man, at all ? Would you be after lettin' him out to call 
the bulkies an us and git us all hung or transported ? Are you 
out of your senses, or what ails you at all ? Is it ravin' you 
are?" " Ravin' or no ravin', all I know is this : before you kill 
this man you'll first kill me." " Well, we will kill you, then, if 
that's all that's wanted." This exclamation was hailed with a 
shout of approving laughter. 

" Not so fast," cried another desperado. " This man is my 
comrade. We coom together into the gang, and we'll g'out of 
it together. The first man lays a hand on him I'll split him down 

* Sealbhadoir ownef, proprietor. 

t " A kinsman is beloved, but the pith of the heart is a foster brother." . 



504 THE COINER^ DEN. [Jan. 

to the chine." And the speaker raised a butcher's cleaver over 
his head. 

This called out a storm of shouts, threats, and imprecations. 
The band seemed to resolve itself into two factions, which, amid 
a world of clamor, came to blows. The roar of contention rang 
through the hollow vaults. Yells, howls, cries, and curses were 
heard on all sides, confusedly blended in a chaotic tumult of 
sound. A furious wrestling, struggling, tumbling, and screaming 
filled the whole concavity and occupied every member of the 
band. In the midst of this hurly-burly, this furious Babel of 
exasperated uproar, I managed by a desperate effort to break my 
cords and set myself free. I rose to my feet, ran for my life up 
the stairs, and got out into the open air. 

The terrible scene I had passed through impressed itself so 
forcibly on my mind, was so present to my scared and bewil- 
dered imagination, and appalled and terrified me to such a de- 
gree, filled me with such horror and affright, that it is no ex- 
aggeration to say I was insane with fear. I sped through the 
centre of the streets as if I were winged. I could not fly fast 
enough. I fancied every moment the banditti were at my heels, 
a howling troop, straining after me like bloodhounds, clamoring 
to pull me down and murder me. Finally I reached the college, 
panting and exhausted, where a friend who had chambers gave 
me hospitality. Into his "pale ear "I poured the terrible inci- 
dents of my recent adventure. But my agitation threw me into 
a fever from which I recovered with slow and tedious difficulty. 
Meantime my friend communicated with the authorities. A 
company of soldiers for there were at that time no policemen in 
Dublin proceeded to Meath Street and ransacked the coiners* 
den ; all the stamping machinery and other materials were hauled 
out, and among the rest a trunk in which the deed was discover- 
ed which in after-time restored Eala to her long-lost inheritance. 
I need not say more. The reader will himself supply the suc- 
ceeding incidents which crowned my sufferings with the antici- 
pated reward the hand of Eala. And now, like another ./Eneas, 
communing with another Dido, 1 can describe in tranquillity the 
appalling adventure 

" Quae ipse miserrima vidi, 
Quanquam animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit." 



1884.] WICKED No. 7. 505 



WICKED NO. 7. 

BOB SHIPPEN was engineer of the night express running 
between Des Moines and Council Bluffs on the Chicago, Rock 
Island, and Pacific Railroad. He was a stout, jovial fellow, 
with thick, coal-black beard and a heart as big as himself. In the 
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers no member was better 
liked ; and when, on one of his trips, he met with an accident 
which laid him up for a fortnight, a good many sympathizing 
letters were written to him, all ending with the hope that he 
might soon be on his legs again. 

The fireman who rode with him was his bosom friend ; and 
one winter evening Dick Barnes was seated in Shippen's humble 
home at Des Moines, Iowa, smoking a pipe and talking over the 
late mishap. Nobody was in the room besides themselves, ex- 
cept a baby a crowing, healthy baby, not much more than a 
twelvemonth old, who had been christened Bob after his father. 
" The little ' critter ' does nothing but laugh," spoke the fireman, 
poking the child with his grimy forefinger. " Yes, Bobby is his 
dear, dead mother over again. Martha never had a frown on her 
face. She was a good wife," answered Shippen in a slightly 
tremulous voice. " She knew how to make corn-cakes to a T," 
said Barnes. 

" And she never kept me waiting for my meals not a minute," 
said the engineer. " Oh ! it was hard to lose her ; 'tis over a 
year now since she died." Here he fetched a sigh and drew his 
sleeve across his eyes. Then turning to the crib where Bobby 
lay, trying his best to talk and Bobby could utter a few words 
" My child," he added, " needs so much a mother's care. I'm 
away all night long, and when I get home at sunrise I have to 
sleep, you know--I must get rest ; and I wonder how Bobby 
thrives as he does." " Well, now, don't be angry if I tell you 
something, will you?" said Dick. "No, speak out," said the 
engineer. 

" Well, if I were you I'd marry again, just for the child's 
sake." His friend made no response, but sat a few minutes with 
his face buried in his hands. 

Presently Shippen looked up, and, eying the other closely, 
said : " I'm to be on the 'road again to-morrow night." " Are 
you? Really?" exclaimed Barnes, turning pale. "Well, by 



506 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

Heaven! 'twill be my turn next. That locomotive has killed 
three men already, you know good, worthy members of the 
Brotherhood and she tried her level best to kill you." " Pshaw ! 
don't talk nonsense," said Shippen. " No. 7 is a tip-top machine. 
Accidents will happen." " Well, what made her act as she did 
when you got hurt?" asked the fireman. " Surely you're not in 
earnest, are you? "said Shippen. " I am," said Barnes, thump- 
ing his knee with his fist, which made little Bobby burst into 
another fit of laughter. " I tell you No. 7 has a devil in her, and 
and if I didn't like the man who drives her, and whose name is 
Robert Shippen, not another trip would I make on her ; I think 
too much of my life." 

The following evening Shippen wended his way to the engine- 
yard, where No. 7 was hissing and panting for him to arrive, and 
where his fireman was very glad to see him. " For I do hate to 
be alone on this machine," said Barnes. " Why, ever since I've 
been getting up steam I've " Bah ! bah ! " interrupted Ship- 
pen, as he perched himself upon his elevated seat on one side of 
the cab. " Don't talk nonsense. Off she goes!" And so saying, 
he pressed his hand against the throttle-lever and brought the 
locomotive to her place at the head of the train, which was a 
pretty heavy one : three express-cars, seven sleepers, and two 
baggage-cars, and several of the cars had come all the way from 
the Pacific. The depot presented a lively, bustling scene. 

" Please tell me, sir, does this train stop at Casey? " inquired 
a young woman with a gun resting on her arm, and addressing 
Shippen, who had alighted to take one more look at his engine 
the grim, iron monster, with huge six-foot driving-wheels ; and 
more than one impatient traveller paused to admire No. 7. 

" No, miss, this is the lightning express," answered Shippen. 
" Too bad ! " ejaculated Lizzie Elder. " I want so much to get 
home to-night with my brother Jim's rifle." " Sorry, but you 
can't be in Casey till to-morrow," pursued the engineer. 

" Too bad ! " repeated Lizzie. " Well, I am s*orry, truly sorry, 
that we don't stop there," said Shippen, glancing up at the big 
clock four minutes yet. At this moment an oldish woman ap- 
proached, carrying a bundle which on nearer view proved to be 
a baby. " What ! brought Bobby here to get one more kiss out 
of me?" exclaimed Shippen, smiling and rubbing his greasy 
beard all over the child's face, which Bobby greatly enjoyed ; for 
he laughed and thrust out his tiny hands toward Lizzie Elder, 
who was very fond of children, and this was such a bouncer ! 
She could not help pausing to look at it ; she might never see it 



1884.] WICKED No. 7. 507 

again. " What a little beauty ! " she said as she peeped into its 
merry blue eyes. 

" It's a boy called Bob after me ; he'll drive a locomotive 
some day," said Shippen, giving his offspring one more kiss. 
Then, bidding the woman take good care of it, he mounted up 
to his place on the engine, and, leaning out of the cab window, 
waved his hand to Miss Elder, who was still admiring the baby. 

" If I was the superintendent of this road, miss," he said, " I'd 
stop this train at Casey just to accommodate you I really 
would." On which the girl smiled and said : " I thank you very 
much." 

" He isn't joking, miss. He'd do exactly what he says," 
spoke Barnes, the fireman, who had been devouring Lizzie with 
all his eyes. 

" All aboard ! " shouted a voice at the far end of the long 
depot " all aboard ! " Immediately the engineer drew back 
from the window and placed his hand on the throttle ; in another 
moment the train was moving. 

" Good-by," said Dick Barnes, who had the satisfaction of 
having the last look at Lizzie Elder " good-by." For Shippen's 
watchful eyes were now fixed intently on the track ahead, while 
Dick continued to gaze upon the young woman as he pulled the 
bell : " Ding-dong ! ding-dong ! ding-dong ! " And his eyes did 
not leave her until she faded from his vision amid the crowd and 
smoke and waving lights. During the run to Council Bluffs the 
engineer spoke but very few words to his friend the fireman. 
No. 7 was causing Shippen "for the first time grave uneasiness, 
and he did not wish to excite the other's fears more than they 
were already excited by the uncommon heeling of the locomo- 
tive every time she went round a curve ; and once it really seem- 
ed as if she had left the track. But when they were flying past 
Casey, Shippen spoke and said : " That was a mighty fine-looking 
girl that admired my Bobby. I wish that I could have stopped 
at this place to accommodate her." " Yes, she was just the kind 
of girl I admire," answered Barnes. " Tall and straight as an 
arrow ; no silk and satin doll. And I liked, too, the way she car- 
ried that rifle." " And she's fond of children," pursued Shippen. 

" Well, if this devil-possessed locomotive doesn't break my 
neck " No. 7 had begun to bounce and rock frightfully, yet this 
was the smoothest part of the track " I'll see that young woman 
again afore long," said the fireman, as he swung open the furnace- 
door to shovel in more coal. 

And he did see Lizzie Elder again a week later. She had 



5o8 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

come to Des Moines in order to go to confession ; for she was a 
Catholic, and Christmas was approaching 1 . Shippen and Barnes 
were leaving the engine-yard after their usual night trip, tired 
and longing to get a good sleep, when they met the girl, accom- 
panied by her brother. The dawn was breaking in the east, and 
Lizzie and Jim were about to take the early train for home. 
Lizzie nudged Jim's arm and said : " Here comes the engineer of 
the night express the man who has the pretty child I told you 
about." Shippen saw her smile, and as they were passing one 
another Jim Elder wished him " Good-morning." Whereupon 
Shippen paused and informed him that in spring the express 
trains were going to stop at Casey. 

" Indeed ! That's good news," exclaimed Lizzie. 

" And then I hope I may have the pleasure of taking you 
home now and then," continued the engineer, looking at her with 
a pleasant smile. 

" I'm his fireman," put in Barnes, " and I can recommend his 
train." " We neither of us see much of the sunlight," continued 
Shippen. " We sleep in the daytime. But Casey is a thriving 
village ; I can tell that when the moon shines bright, although 
we generally pass it going forty miles an hour." " Well, come 
and make us a visit," spoke Jim Elder, who liked the engineer's 
honest face. " 'Tisn't easy for us to get a holiday," said the 
latter. 

" Well, you'll see me there afore a great while," spoke Barnes. 
" I'm thinking of throwing up my situation as fireman afore I get 
killed, and I think farming would suit me. How's land about 
Casey?" 

" No better corn-land in Iowa," answered Jim. " You ought 
to taste our corn-cakes," said his sister. " Corn-cakes, did you 
say ? " ejaculated Barnes. Then, after smacking his lips, " Tru- 
ly," he added, " they must be uncommon good when when 
you make 'em." At this frank speech they all laughed. " Well, 
how is Master Bob ? " inquired Lizzie, addressing Shippen 
while the radiant blush was still upon her cheek. 

" Never better," answered Shippen. " And he roots his little 
fingers so deep into my beard and clutches it so tight that I came 
deuced near being late for my train yesterday ; I couldn't get 
Bobby to let me go." 

" His father's pride and his mother's joy," said Lizzie mus- 
ingly. " Alas ! he has no mother. She died when he was only a 
month old," sighed the engineer. " But then my pay is twelve 
hundred a year, and, God be thanked, while I live Bobby shall 



1884.] WICKED No. 7. 509 

want for nothing ; he wants nothing now except a mother's 
care." "Are you long in the West, miss?" inquired Barnes, 
who was anxious to put in as many words as possible before the 
girl went away : her train would leave in ten minutes, and he 
must not let Shippen do all the talking. "Long? Yes, indeed. 
Why, I was born here," answered Lizzie. 

" Well, I think more of this State now than I ever did," pur- 
sued Barnes. Then to himself he added : " Iowa girls can't be 
beat." And here let us observe that, while Lizzie Elder was 
quite tall, she was at the same time exceedingly graceful. Her 
complexion was very fair, and the half a dozen freckles on her 
face might have been called beauty-spots. She had, moreover, 
a pretty dimple in her left cheek and a cast in one of her hazel 
eyes, which gave her a most piquant expression ; and it was this 
expression which fairly carried Barnes off his feet, although he 
saw her but dimly in the early morning light. " Well, I suppose 
there's a school and a meeting-house handy to where you live ? " 
said Shippen. " So that if my fireman does abandon me and 
turns farmer in your neighborhood he'll be able to go to meet- 
ing on the Sabbath, as well as educate his little ones." " My 
little ones ! Ha ! ha ! " laughed Dick. " Well, there are two 
churches in Casey and a public school," answered Lizzie ; " but 
we are Catholics, and I went to the school of the Sisters of 
Charity in Des Moines." " Well, do you never feel lonesome at 
home?" inquired Shippen "for you tell me that you live five 
miles out on the prairie." " Oh ! no. There is always plenty to 
do. I'm always busy. Brother Jim this season had a hundred 
acres in corn, and " " Pretty near ninety-five acres," inter- 
rupted Jim. " And when I'm out o' doors I look at his corn, and 
at the prairie chickens, and at the big hay-stack ; while indoors 
I churn, and sew, and read, and sing. Jim likes me to sing ' The 
Old Kentucky Home ' : my parents came from Kentucky." 
"And you say that you are a Catholic," put in Barnes, "and 
that your father and mother were from Kentucky ? Well, now, I 
like Kentucky almost as much as I do Iowa. And yet I'm I'm 
surprised." " Surprised at what?" said Lizzie. " Why, you're 
a native-born American and at the same time a a Catholic." 
" That's true," said Lizzie. " We have been Catholics for three 
generations." " Well, though I never met any of your way of 
thinking at camp-meeting, some of those that I'm acquainted 
with are very good folks," said Shippen. " But the best thing 
about 'em, in my opinion, is that when they're once married they 
stay married; we don't hear of them trying to get divorced." 



5io WICKED No. 7. [Jan. 

" Well, I like Iowa, and I like Kentucky, and I like Catholics 
too," said Barnes, just as Jim Elder glanced at his watch and 
whispered to his sister that it was time to be going. " I'm glad 
to hear you say that," said Lizzie. Then, holding out both hands, 
she gave one to each of her new acquaintances ; and when pre- 
sently Barnes and Shippen sauntered off toward their lodging 
they did not open their lips. The former was wondering what 
might be the price of land on the prairie where Lizzie Elder 
lived, while the latter was murmuring to himself : " Poor Bobby ! 
He can't do without a mother's care much longer; he really 
can't" 

Three nights before Christmas the ground was covered deep 
with snow, and when, at the usual hour, Shippen and his fireman 
mounted No. 7 they were both thinking of Lizzie Elder and 
wondering if she might be snow-bound in her prairie home. 

" Well, we'll not fall out over her," spoke Barnes. " If she 
likes me best let her say so. If she likes you best let her say so. 
You're a tip-top fellow and deserve to get a tip-top wife." 

" Well, Bobby wants a mother badly," answered the engineer, 
as he looked at the steam-gauge. " And this young woman 
seems to be healthy and clever ; she doesn't appear as if she'd 
run up big bills for dresses and gewgaws. And, Dick, you must 
come and see us as often as you can." " That I will, provided 
you win her," replied Barnes. " For I know that Miss Elder 
makes excellent corn-cake." 

" I admire a tall girl, don't you ? " pursued Shippen. " Yes, 
provided she isn't too tall. I don't want to have a bean-pole. 
Miss Elder is just about the right height." " Her mouth is a 
trifle big," continued Shippen ; " but then, on the whole, I'd 
rather have it too big than too small, eh ? " " Yes, for it shows 
that she isn't one of the scolding kind," answered Barnes. " Give 
me a roomy, laughing mouth every day in the week." 

" But, Dick," said the engineer, "you and I may be counting 
our chickens afore they're hatched ; suppose she ^ won't marry 
either of us ? " 

" Well, I'm going to send her a Christmas present," said 
Barnes. " There's a Catholic book-store in Des Moines, and I 
saw a prettily-bound book there a couple of evenings ago called 
Fabiola, which " "Which I sent to Miss Elder yesterday," in- 
terrupted Shippen exultingly. "You didn't!" "I did, upon 
honor." " Well, well ! I declare, you're a point ahead of me," 
sighed Barnes. "But never mind. I'll send her a Christmas 
gift, too." Here a voice cried out : " All aboard for Council 



1884.] WICKED No. 7. 511 

Bluffs, Omaha, Denver City, and San Francisco all aboard ! " 
" Ding-dong ! " sounded the bell, " ding-dong ! ding-dong ! " 
And presently, with a piercing shriek, No. 7 sallied forth into the 
darkness. 

But in about an hour and a half the full moon rose, and as 
it cast its weird beams over the snow-clad prairie, dotted at long 
intervals with a clump of trees or a pioneer's cabin, Dick Barnes 
thought what a dreary, ghostly aspect the landscape bore, and 
rejoiced that he was speeding across it as fast as the engine 
could carry him. 

"No. 7 is behaving pretty well to-night, isn't she? " he said, 
as he flung open the furnace-door. 

" I can't say that," replied the engineer doubtfully. " I 
begin to think you may be right: there is something deuced 
queer about No. 7." 

"What is it? What is she doing now ?" inquired Barnes, 
with an expression of awe. 

" She doesn't always respond when I open the throttle- valve," 
said Shippen. " Look ! I am giving her more steam, and yet she 
doesn't go any faster." " Do you believe in evil spirits, in 
demons ? " asked the fireman, wiping his brow. " Well, yes, I 
I do, and yet I But, confound it ! look at her now." And even 
while he was speaking the locomotive perceptibly slackened her 
speed. It could hardly be the snow that was checking her. 
The late storm had been accompanied by very little wind, and 
the snow had not drifted at least not enough to impede such a 
powerful engine. Why, then, was she going slower and slower ? 
In vain did Shippen open the throttle-valve as far as it would 
open ; slower, slower, slower went No. 7, until in less than an- 
other mile the train came to a full stop. Shippen, we are 
glad to say, was never profane, otherwise he might have used 
some unseemly language at present : more than twenty minutes 
behind-time, a bitter cold night, and stuck, apparently with- 
out any cause, within a little distance of Casey, which was 
forty-five miles from Des Moines. Barnes murmured to him- 
self: "This shall be my last week on this haunted, devilish 
engine," while Shippen alighted with his oil-can to examine 
the machinery and to try and discover what the trouble was. 
From every part of No. 7 were dangling long, thin, glittering 
icicles ghostly fingers they looked like ; and she seemed to be 
shivering and moaning as if in pain at the intense cold, for the 
mercury had fallen to twenty degrees below zero. It was not a 
night even for wolves to be out wandering on this desolate waste. 



512 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

The conductor, who had hastened forward to inquire what 
was the matter, was clapping his freezing arms with all his might, 
and presently, after bidding Shippen to make up as much lost 
time as he could, ran back to his snug corner in the front car. 
He had scarcely left the engineer, who was examining one of 
the axles and in order to do so Shippen had crawled partly un- 
derneath the engine when No. 7 suddenly moved forward at 
least six inches ; then paused, then began to move again ; and 
Shippen drew himself out, barely in time to prevent the pon- 
derous driving-wheel from passing over his neck. " I never 
touched the throttle-lever so help me God, I didn't! " exclaimed 
the startled fireman, as Shippen shook his fist, then jumped into 
the cab ; for of her own accord the locomotive was now moving 
onward. But after advancing ten rods she again mysteriously 
halted, just as a sledge was seen coming toward the railroad 
track. Once more Shippen alighted, and, although sorely puz- 
zled at the eccentric action of his engine, as well as excited by 
his narrow escape from being crushed to death, he could not 
help smiling and speaking to "Lizzie Elder for it was surely she 
whose face was peeping out at him from between the folds of a 
buffalo-robe. " Did you receive my humble Christmas gift, Miss 
Elder?" he said, while the sledge was grating and jingling 
across the frosty rails only a few yards away. " Miss Elder, 
don't you know me? I'm Bob Shippen, engineer of the night 
express.". 

The young woman made no response ; for about half a min- 
ute she turned her eyes full upon him, then whispered some- 
thing to the boy who was driving, and away the horse trotted 
along the wild, dimly-marked road, which led apparently no- 
where into the moonlit desert. 

" Well, now, that's odd, deuced odd ; I can't explain it," 
thought Shippen, shaking his head. " Not even to thank me 
for the book ; not even to open her lips and ask after Bobby." 
" That was Miss Elder, wasn't it?" said Barnes, after his friend 
had resumed his place on the engine and was pressing his hand 
against the throttle. 

" Yes, I could swear it was," answered Shippen, as No. 7 
creaked and groaned, and was slowly moving ahead ; for plenty 
of sand was being strewn from the sand-box, and he had given 
her a full head of steam. 

" And yet," he added, " I can hardly believe it was she ; Miss 
Elder wouldn't have treated me so rudely. However " Here 
he ceased to talk and watched No. 7, watched her closely, and 



1884.] WICKED No. 7, 513 

was very glad indeed when by and by she was going at full 
speed again. 

But after Barnes and himself had made their round trip in 
safety to Council Bluffs and back to Des Moines he said in a 
solemn tone to his fireman : " Dick, I came very near being 
killed to-night, didn't I? And I confess that No. 7 isn't like 
any other engine that I ever rode on. I'm growing afraid of 
her ! " " Let's quit her as soon as possible," answered Barnes. 
" Well, I heard last year," continued Shippen, " that No. 7 had 
a, devil in her, just as the Bible says that a herd of swine once 
had. But I laughed at the man who told me poor fellow ! he 
was afterwards killed by her and I never repeated this to you, 
Dick, for I didn't use to believe in such things as ghosts and evil 
spirits. But now " " Now, when a demon did certainly touch 
the throttle," interrupted the fireman, " and tried to make her 
run over you, you do believe in supernatural beings moving all 
around us. Well, I always did believe in 'em, and here I was 
ahead of you in wisdom." 

" So you were, Dick. The most educated folks can't disprove 
the possibility that ethereal beings may be moving close to us 
without our being able to see or hear them moving." " Well, I 
wonder what can have set Miss Elder against you?" said Barnes 
presently. " Why didn't she answer when you spoke to her?" 
" Ah ! that's more than I can telL And did you notice the 
startled, frightened expression on her face when she looked at 
me ? " "I did," said Barnes ; " and I have been very low- 
spirited ever since." 

" So have I," said Shippen. " I feel as if some evil were 
going to happen." Then, after reflecting, a moment and pressing 
his hand to his brow, "I sometimes think," he added, "that this 
everlasting night-work doesn't agree with my brain. You and 
I hardly ever see the sunlight. While other folks are sound 
asleep we are flying across Iowa, stark awake, while every spot 
except our engine is as still as a graveyard." 

" Ay, and that engine No. 7," said Barnes. " It's enough to 
turn any man's brain." Then after a pause, and gazing ear- 
nestly at his friend, " I've hit it ! " he exclaimed. " I've hit it ! 
I know now what made Miss Elder drive rapidly on without 
speaking." "What was it? Tell me," said Shippen eagerly. 
" She saw something which made her blood run cold some- 
thing hovering about the engine which your eyes and mine 
didn't see." A silence of several minutes followed this remark. 
Then the engineer said : " Well, Dick, I'm going to wed that 
VOL. xxxvin. 33 



514 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

girl, if she'll have me, afore No. 7 blows up or does some other 
infernal thing." 

"Shall we toss up to see which of us shall ask her first?" 
said Barnes, " or shall we both pop the question at the same 
time?" 

" Well, do you think, Dick, that we have seen enough of the 
young lady to take such an important step^this week? Had we 
better wait a little till we know her better ? " " Bah ! Don't 
you and I do things quicker than other folks ? Don't we travel 
by express ? " replied Barnes, with a grin. " Well, let's try and 
get a day off, and then we'll pay Miss Elder a visit," pursued 
Shippen. 

" Agreed," said the fireman. "I am longing to taste her 
corn-cake." " And I'll bring Bobby along ; the crisp prairie air 
will do the child good," said the engineer. 

"The baby gives you an advantage over "me," said Barnes. 
" How so, Dick ? " 

" 'Cause such a cunnin', sprightly thing can't but interest the 
girl in its daddy," answered Barnes. " The girl says to herself : 
' There's a man who has done honor to my sex.' ' 

At this Shippen laughed and said : " Come, come, it's grow- 
ing late. The sun will soon be up, and you and I must get to 
bed." " To bed, to bed ! " murmured his friend, shaking his head. 
" Alas ! we two are exactly like owls : we only see the world 
by night-time. But I'm going to turn over a new leaf. I'm 
going to see something of the blessed sunshine afore I cross the 
great Divide." " Do, do ! " said Shippen, " afore No. 7 scatters 
your bones to the prairie-wolves to feast on by moonlight." 

And now, with a mournful feeling, the engineer betook him- 
self to his much-needed repose, while the other likewise retired 
to his couch to dream of corn-cake and a cabin on the prairie. 

It was Christmas eve, and the hands of all the clocks were 
verging nigh to the hallowed midnight, when the lightning ex- 
press glided out of the depot at Council Bluffs. The night was 
clear ; every star was shining ; only in the far northeast was 
there a single dark spot a lowering cloud which seemed to be- 
token more snow. " This is positively my last ride on this devil- 
ish locomotive," said Barnes. " People may laugh and say I'm 
cracked ; I'll not ride on her one more night." 

" Well, don't let's talk about ghosts and demons," answered 
the engineer in a voice less firm than usual. " As long as we're 
on No. 7 we must do our duty like men. While you attend to 
the furnace I'll keep my hand on the throttle, and if anything 



1884.] WICKED No. 7. 515 

happens before we get back to Des Moines we'll not be to 
blame." 

" Well, it's a hundred and twenty miles to Des Moines," pur- 
sued Barnes, " and I'm not a fellow much given to praying. 
But I do hope that the Lord will bring me safe home. O Lord ! 
I ask thee pardon for my sins." 

"That's right, turn your thoughts to God," said Shippen. 
" For we who live on locomotives may have our necks broken at 
any moment." 

" At any moment," echoed the fireman. " And and I'll 
never take the name of God in vain again as long as I breathe ; 
and I'll go to meetin' as often as I can ; and " 

" Be a good, faithful husband, if your life is spared and Miss 
Elder will have you," interrupted Shippen. Then, after a pause, 
he added : " But now don't let's talk ; I must keep a sharp eye 
on the track." "" Well, I'll be .a Catholic, if she wants me to," 
said Barnes under his breath. " Catholic women don't switch 
off on other husbands ; once ' spliced,' they're 'spliced ' till death. 
And I'll pop the question to-morrow, if I'm alive ; I will, as sure 
as the stars are twinkling." 

And now while Barnes attended to the feeding of the furnace, 
and while Shippen strained his vision as far ahead as he could, 
on, on, faster and faster, speeded No. 7, until in a little while she 
was running at the rate of fifty miles an hour. The train had 
left Council Bluffs a quarter of an hour late ; it was soon on time 
to a second. All went well until they were rushing past Casey 
and were within forty-five miles of Des Moines, when Shippen's 
keen ear was attracted by an unwonted rumbling in the forward 
part of the engine. " What on earth has happened now ? " said 
Barnes in quaking accents. 

He had scarcely put the question when the bell-rope was 
pulled twice violently as a signal to stop. At once Shippen 
obeyed the signal from the conductor, then looked back to see 
if anything had gone wrong with the train : perhaps a car had 
broken loose. " But he could not distinguish anything very 
plainly ; for the ominous cloud in the northeast, which had been 
growing rapidly larger and larger, by this time covered nearly 
the whole heavens, and snow was beginning to fall. Within three 
minutes it was snowing so hard that it was impossible to see an 
object even twenty feet away. "What's the matter?" asked 
the conductor, hastening up as soon as the train had come to a 
stop. 

" All right here," replied Shippen and Barnes at one breath. 



5i6 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

" Well, then, why did you stop ? " " You signalled me to do so," 
answered the engineer. " You're mistaken," said the other. 
" But the belt-rope was pulled ; I could swear it was," said Ship- 
pen. " Well, I didn't pull it," said the conductor. Then, looking 
round, he added : " I shouldn't wonder if that man and woman 
back yonder tried to steal a ride ; this confounded snow is so 
thick they'll probably jump on one of the cars without being 
seen." Here Shippen fancied that he perceived a human figure 
gliding past the engine ; but the snowflakes so blinded his eyes 
that he could not feel sure it was not imagination. 

" Well, whoever they are, tramps or not, I pity 'em," pur- 
sued the conductor. " This is a bad time and a lonesome spot to 
be out o' doors. The man begged me to take him aboard, but I 
couldn't; it's against the rules to take way passengers on the 
express." " What are you staring at ? " inquired Barnes, trem- 
bling, as he peeped over Shippen's shoulder. " Nothing, no- 
thing," answered the latter ; and presently the conductor waved 
his lantern and bade him go ahead. 

" Nothing ? " ejaculated the fireman. " Well, who do you 
suppose pulled the bell-rope and made us stop ? " Then rolling 
up his eyes, " O Lord ! " he added, " deliver me from the evil 
one. I'm a sinner, I know I am. But I'm going to be good ; 
I'll turn over a new leaf." 

" Come, come, Dick, don't lose heart," said Shippen, touching 
the throttle ; and in a moment, after giving several tremendous 
puffs for the train was pretty heavy No. 7 moved on again. 

But the engineer might as well have been stone-blind as tried 
to distinguish anything on the track ahead in such weather ; 
right into the howling northeast snow-storm No. 7 was forcing 
her way with constantly increasing velocity. Her huge head- 
light seemed only to render the snowflakes thicker ; they looked 
like countless diamonds darting hither and thither athwart the 
blaze. The hour was two in the morning ; drowsy lids had long 
since closed in sleep. Inside the cars, as well as inside the cabins 
on the prairie, men's ears were deaf to the sound of the tempest ; 
only Bob Shippen and Dick Barnes were awake, and wide-awake. 
No sleep for the engineer and fireman of the night express ; and 
No. 7 was in a little while going like mad. Shippen's trusty 
hand was grasping the throttle ; Barnes was peering nervously 
through the little window in front of him, and a whole month's 
wages he would. have given to be safe and sound in Des Moines. 
He was humming a hymn which his mother had taught him 
when of a sudden right before him rose a human face ; in another 



1884.] WICKED No. 7. 517 

moment it was pressing against the outer side of the glass ; then 
a ghostly hand appeared in view. " Good God protect me ! " 
cried the terror-stricken Dick. 

" What ! what ! Is there a train ahead of us ? " shouted the 
engineer, his heart jumping into his throat. But, without making 
any response, Barnes ran back and stood a few seconds quivering 
and tottering on top of the coal-heap. 

Brave as Shippen was, drops of cold sweat started out on his 
brow when presently the door which leads from the narrow 
footway along the boiler into the interior of the cab flew open, 
and, ushered in with pelting snowflakes and screaming winds, 
came an apparition. " Stand back in God's name ! " he cried. 

" Merry Christmas ! " answered a blithe voice, and in a jiffy 
the snow-covered hood and shawl were flung aside, and lo ! be- 
side him stood a young woman, laughing heartily at the fright 
which her unexpected appearance had caused both Shippen and 
his fireman. 

The latter had doubtless retreated like a poltroon into the 
foremost baggage-car, for Dick was nowhere to be seen. " Why, 
as I live ! it's you the girl I've been thinking so much about," 
exclaimed Shippen ; and only that one of his hands was holding 
the throttle, we do believe that in his transport of delight he 
might have embraced her. 

" Well, merry, merry Christmas ! though we have never 
met before," continued the fair stranger. " You're joking," said 
Shippen. " You're surely the girl who admires my Bobby, and 
to whom I sent a book as a Christmas gift a few days since. 
Aren't you Lizzie Elder?" 

" Indeed I'm not," replied the other, as she rubbed her half- 
frozen cheeks and stamped the snow off her chilled feet. " Well, 
then, I must be crazy or else bewitched. Who in heaven's name 
are you ? " "I am Lizzie Elder's twin sister," she answered, with 
a roguish twinkle in her eye. " My name is Helen, and when 
you sent my sister that pretty book I was not at home ; I was 
away at a husking party, and I knew nothing about it when you 
accosted me the other night as I drove past your train in a 
sleigh." " Ah ! the mystery is explained ; for I was indeed 
greatly puzzled at your not answering me when I spoke to you 
on that occasion," said Shippen. " Well, how is your sister ? 
She is well, I hope ? " 

" Lizzie is very well indeed, thanks. She went to Des Moines 
yesterday, and brother Jim and I were to go there last evening. 
But we missed the way train, and were driving to Des Moines 



518 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

in our sleigh when we chanced to meet your train awhile ago. 
We never knew the express to stop where it did. But the conduc- 
tor refused to let us get aboard. Then, in spite of Jim's urgent 
entreaties, I made bold to steal a ride on the cow-catcher." 
" Well, upon my word, you astonish me ! " exclaimed Shippen. 
" But it was awfully cold out there awfully cold. It seemed to 
be blowing a thousand hurricanes right in my teeth, and I was 
very soon obliged to seek refuge here," continued Helen, to 
whose numb cheeks the blood was slowly coming back. 

" Well, nobody could be more welcome ; and I wish you, too, 
a merry Christmas," said Shippen, now offering her his left hand. 
" But what on earth possessed your brother and yourself to quit 
home on such a fearfully cold night? Why didn't you wait 
until daybreak?" 

" Oh ! we have a smart team of horses, we were well covered 
up in a buffalo-robe, and nobody could get lost by following the 
telegraph-poles," answered Helen. " Besides, sir, this is Christ- 
mas blessed Christmas morning and we were anxious to be at 
first Mass, which is at four o'clock." 

" Well, we shall soon see the lights of Des Moines ; for the 
road here is smooth and straight, and we are running nearly a 
mile a minute," said Shippen. Then inwardly he said : " What a 
good Christian she must be to leave home at such a time as this! 
And to steal a ride, too, on the pilot merely in order to get to 
church before sunrise ! Verily, there's a heap of faith among 
Catholics a heap of faith, whatever some folks may say against 
'em." " Well, had I remained on the cow-catcher or pilot, as 
it is sometimes called I'd have been frozen stiff by this tinre, 
wouldn't I?" continued Helen, whose cheeks were now blazing 
red and felt as if a thousand needles were pricking them. 

" Yes, miss, it was a very rash thing to do," answered Ship- 
pen. " It was indeed," said Helen; "and my brother will give 
me a good scolding when he meets me." " Well, where is my 
fireman?" said the engineer, glancing round. " Has he hidden 
his scared head in the baggage-car?" " I guess he has," replied 
Helen, laughing. " He no doubt took me for a ghost ha ! ha ! " 

Poor Dick Barnes ! Little did they dream that at this very 
moment he was floundering up to his waist in a snow-drift miles 
behind. Wicked No. 7 had pitched him off while he was quaking 
and praying on top of the coal-heap in the tender. " Well, truly, 
it breaks my heart to think that my fireman is such a coward," 
said Shippen ; " for Dick will probably lose his situation, and it's 
a pretty good one." Here Shippen opened the furnace-door and 






1884.] WICKED No. 7. 519 

saw that the hungr y flames needed more fuel. " Oh ! ' let me 
shovel in the coal," exclaimed Helen. " Exercise will keep me 
warm." And with this she took the shovel out of his hand and 
performed her work as fireman very well indeed, considering 
that she was not Dick Barnes. But Helen, like her twin sister, 
was strong- and healthy ; she had been brought up to do some- 
thing better than read dime novels and pore over the fashion- 
plates in the illustrated papers. She had been born in Iowa 
of Kentucky parents Kentucky, the land of talf and graceful 
maidens and no wonder that Shippen made big eyes at her and 
finally ejaculated : " By Jingo ! If you'll take me to church 
this Christmas morning I'll go with you ; for if we arrive on 
time 'twill be thanks to you, my new fireman." Then to himself 
he said : " What a magnificent figure she has ! As supple as a 
piece of hickory and as straight as an arrow." 

And Des Moines was reached on time to the minute. But 
Dick Barnes did not make his appearance ; nor had the con- 
ductor nor any of the brakemen seen him ; and now it occurred 
to Shippen that perhaps his friend had fallen off the engine, and 
he loudly blamed himself for not having suspected this before. 
His eyes filled with tears, and Helen, too, felt very sad. 

" Well, I'll immediately telegraph to Casey," said Shippen, 
"and I'll leave no stone unturned to find his body. Poor Dick! 
Although he was sometimes very scary, .he was a tip-top fellow ; 
swore a little, but never drank, and knew every hymn in the 
book." 

" Well, I'm acquainted with every one for miles around 
Casey," said Helen, " and I'll get a hundred farmers to search 
for him.'' 

Accordingly, having taken his locomotive into the engine- 
yard and given her in charge of another fireman, Shippen and 
Helen hastened to the telegraph office, which was near by in the 
railway depot. But scarcely had they reached it when a deafen- 
ing sound was heard ; the whole building shook as if in an earth- 
quake ; and presently word was brought that engine No. 7 the 
big engine had exploded ! " And not the smallest piece of her 
can be found," gasped a frightened employee, who had had a 
most miraculous escape " not the smallest piece of her ; she 
has vanished into the air like a spirit ! " At this startling an- 
nouncement Helen made the sign of the cross, while Shippen's 
hand trembled as he rested it on her arm. 

True to his promise, after a brief but rigid examination before 
the superintendent, who acquitted him of any carelessness with 



20 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

his locomotive, Shippen accompanied Helen to Mass. At the 
church-door they met Lizzie Elder, who was anxiously awaiting 
her brother and sister ; and when Lizzie was told what had hap- 
pened during the night, she too made the sign of the cross and 
breathed a prayer for the soul of the lost fireman, then returned 
thanks to God that her dear sister had not been blown to atoms 
on No. 7. 

Shippen, who had never been in a Catholic church before, 
was highly interested and thought that he had never seen a place 
of worship so crammed with worshippers ; and all were so quiet- 
ly devout, and at the Elevation, when the people bowed their 
heads, he bowed his head too. After Mass the wind veered to 
the northwest, the storm came to an end, and when by and by 
the sun rose it rose on a cloudless sky. Of course the engineer 
took Helen and Lizzie to see Bobby, who clapped his tiny hands 
and managed to say, " Dada ! Dada \ " and then " Hellay," 
"Leedee," whereupon Helen and Lizzie half smothered him with 
kisses. Oh ! happy indeed would this blessed Christmas have 
been, except for the mournful fate of poor Barnes. " I knew 
Dick so well ! " sighed the engineer, as he brushed a tear off his 
cheek. " He was a very good son to his old mother while she 
lived a very good son * and he'd have made an uncommon good 
husband for any woman. Poor Dick \ " " Well, perhaps he may 
not be killed after all," said Helen. 

"Alas I there's not one chance in a thousand that he's alive,'* 
said Shippen. " Well, we will remember him in our prayers,'" 
spoke Lizzie. "For we Catholics pray for the dead." "A most 
comforting thing to do," said Shippen. " And I don't see what 
folks have to find against your religion ; it's nothing but pre- 
judice." 

It was nearly noon when Jim Elder made his appearance. 
" I took the early morning train from Casey," said Jim. " But 
the snow has drifted badly in several places, and that is what has 
delayed me." 

" Well, we are overjoyed to see you," exclaimed his loving 
sisters, who had begun to feel a little anxious. " And I deserve 
a good hard scolding for what I did," said* Helen, with a furtive 
glance at Shippen. " Ay, to think of Miss Helen daring to ride 
on the pilot ! " said Shippen. " Oh ! it was risky, very risky. 
Never do it again." 

" Well, well, I'll not scold you, dear sister," said Jim, giving 
her a kiss. " I am too glad to find you safe and sound. I didn't 
know, after you left me last night, but what the horrid engine 



1884.] WICKED No. -j, 521 

had tossed your body out of sight. I spent half an hour looking 
for you.- I was very, very uneasy." 

In the afternoon they all paid a visit to Father Malone, the 
parish priest, who made an excellent impression on Shippen, and 
the latter promised that this should not be his last visit_to the 
reverend gentleman. Then, after having assisted at Vespers, Jim 
Elder, Shippen, and the girls took the train for Casey ; for the 
engineer had obtained a short holiday, and Jim was determined 
to give him a taste of prairie life in midwinter. 

It was, however, with heavy hearts that they reached the 
comfortable log-house, which stood in the midst of a clump of 
locust-trees five miles from the settlement ; for they had not 
been able to obtain any tidings of Dick Barnes, dead or alive, 
although scores of willing men had spent the day looking for 
him; and it was the general opinion that after falling off the 
engine he had been devoured by wolves, great numbers of whom 
had come down from Minnesota since the bitter cold weather 
had set in. 

But life, we know, is full of surprises ; and imagine the feel- 
ings of the mournful party when on entering the house they dis- 
covered Barnes lying on the floor near a blazing fire. An im- 
mense buffalo-robe was wrapped around him, and he was chatting 
with Jim Elder's hired man, a jovial Irishman, who had proved 
indeed the tenderest of nurses. The meeting between Shippen 
and his fireman cannot be described. The former, in the ecstasy 
of his joy, came near dropping little Bobby ; he might have let 
hi-m fall had not Lizzie Elder caught the child in her arms, while 
the engineer bent down and rubbed his shaggy beard over 
Barnes' face, as if grinning Dick had been a baby too. 

" Tim Murphy found me up to my neck in a snow-drift," said 
Barnes. " I was half dead when he hauled me out and carried 
me here in a sleigh. And he's been rubbing the skin off my 
bones ever since to bring back the circulation ; and now he is 
smothering me in this buffalo-robe." " Well, 'twas mighty lucky 
I was out at that lonesome hour," answered Tim. " Only that I 
had been driving Mr. Elder and Miss Helen to Casey, where 
they wanted to get aboard a train so as to be in Des Moines in 
time for first Mass, I'd never have had the good fortune to save 
your life." " And wasn't I glad ! Didn't I ' holler ' when I saw a 
sleigh coming toward me ! " continued Barnes. 

" And didn't I at first think it was the Old Boy peeping up 
out of a snow-bank at me? " said Tim, with a broad grin. " But 
then I had always associated the divil wid fire ; and so in a 



522 WICKED No. 7. [Jan., 

moment I said to myself: 'Bejabers! the Old Boy wouldn't be 
such a fool as to be here in the snow.' And so I drove boldly 
up ; and wasn't it lucky I did? " Here everybody laughed, and 
Bobby's shrill voice might have been heard laughing above all 
the other voices. 

' On the morrow Shippen, like a wise man, determined to 
make good use of his holiday. Accordingly, after eating a 
hearty breakfast he had never tasted such corn-cake before he 
asked Lizzie Elder to show him the cows. " For I like cows," he 
said. " My father was a farmer." We say he asked Lizzie ; he 
could have sworn it was she ; and when, after praising the cattle 
and the chickens, and in fact everything he saw about the happy 
homestead, he ended by asking her to be his wife, the girl 
blushed ; then presently, lifting her big, bright eyes off the 
sparkling snow, she answered yes. " Well, I loved you," he 
said, " from the very first moment I saw you in the railway depot 
admiring my Bobby. My fireman can tell you that this is the 
solemn truth." " Why, I never laid eyes on your beautiful child 
before yesterday," answered the merry maiden. " You're jok- 
ing," said Shippen. " Why, I'm Helen, not Lizzie," said the 
young woman. " I'm the one who scared you so night before 
last, and who kept your furnace roaring after your fireman had 
disappeared." "Well, well, upon my word!" exclaimed the 
astonished engineer, whose jaw dropped a couple of inches. 
" Your mistake is a most natural one," continued Helen, her poor 
little heart in a terrible flutter. " Sister and I are so very alike ; 
even our freckles are nine in number " here she blushed again. 
" And if you regret your mistake, well, all right. I will let you 
live on in single-blessedness." "Oh! no, it doesn't matter one 
jot, not one jot," said Shippen, now taking her hand and pressing 
it. " I know that you'll make me a very happy husband." 

" Well, you couldn't have Lizzie, any way," said Helen, with 
an arch look, "for she is going to marry your fireman." " What ! 
has Dick already popped the question ? Well, I declare, he does 
indeed travel by express." 

" Yes, he asked sister to be his wife before breakfast, while 1 
was busy making the corn-cake." The engineer now burst into 
a hearty laugh ; then, still holding Helen by the hand, he walked 
back to the house, where it is not necessary to add they were all 
very, very happy. 

" Father Malone is to marry us next month," said Barnes. 
" And he will marry us, too," said Shippen, casting a fond look on 
Helen, who was playing with Bobby. 



1884.] A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 523 

" And I'm going to his church always," said Barnes. " So 
am I," said Shippen. " I'd rather be a Catholic than anything 
else." 

" Well, Bob," continued Dick, " you and I should be most 
thankful to God that we are alive to-day." " Ay, so we should," 
said Shippen. " And I'll never laugh at you again when you say 
that there are mysteries going on about us which science cannot 
explain ; our engine was " Possessed by an evil spirit," inter- 
rupted Barnes; "and she tried her level best to blow you up. 
But you were too quick for her, Bob too quick." 

" Well, they haven't found the smallest piece of her," said the 
engineer " not the smallest piece." 

But albeit such was the tragic end of wicked No. 7, all is well 
that ends well. 



A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 

IT was a Christmas eve in the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, and through the streets of Nuremberg came drifting a 
feathery snow that heaped itself in fantastic patterns on the pro- 
jecting windows and fretted stone balconies of the quaint and 
crowded houses. It was not an honest and single-minded snow- 
storm, such as would seek to shroud the whole city in its delicate 
white mantle, but rather a tricksy and capricious sprite, that 
neglected one spot to hurl itself with wanton violence on an- 
other. Borne on the breath of a keen and shifting wind, it came 
tossing gleefully full in the face of a solitary artisan who, wrap- 
ped in a heavy cloak, was making the best of his. way homeward. 
Truly it was not a pleasant night to be abroad, with the snow- 
drifts dancing in your eyes like a million of tiny arrow-points, 
and the sharp wind cutting like a knife ; and the wayfarer was 
consoling himself for his present discomfort by picturing the 
warm fireside and the hot supper that awaited him at home, 
when his cheerful dreams were broken by a sharp cry that 
seemed to come from under his very feet. 

Startled, and not a little alarmed, he checked his rapid walk 
and listened. There was no mistaking the sound : it was neither 
imp nor fairy, but a real child, from whose little lungs came 
forth that wail at once pitiful and querulous. As he heard it 
Peter Burkgmaier's kindly heart flew with one rapid bound to 
the cradle at home where slumbered his own infant daughter, 



524 A STORY OF NUREMBERG. [Jan., 

and, hastily lowering his lantern, he searched under the dark 
archway whence the cry had come. There, sheltered by the wall 
and wrapped in a ragged cloak, was a baby boy, perhaps between 
two and three years old, but so tiny and emaciated as to seem 
hardly half that age. When the lantern flickered in his face he 
gave a frightened sob, and then lay quiet and exhausted in the 
strong arms that held him. 

" Poor little wretch ! " said the man. " Abandoned on Christ- 
mas eve to die in the snow ! " And wrapping the child more 
closely in his own mantle, he hurried on until he reached his 
home, from whose latticed panes shone forth a cheerful stream 
of light. His wife, with her baby on her breast, met him at the 
door, and stared with a not unnatural amazement as her hus- 
band unrolled his cloak and showed her the boy, who, blinking 
painfully at the sudden light, tried to struggle down from his 
arms. 

" See, Lisbeth ! " he said, " I have found you a Christmas 
present where I least expected one an unhappy baby left in 
the streets to die of cold and hunger," 

r His wife laid her own infant in the cradle and gazed alternately 
at her husband and at the child he carried. She was at all times 
slow to receive impressions, and slower yet to put her thoughts 
into words. When she spoke it was without apparent emotion 
of any kind. " What are you going to do with him, Peter ? " 
she said. 

" What am I going to do with him ? " was the reply. " I am 
going to feed and clothe and shelter him, and make an honest 
man out of him, please God. It cannot be that you would re- 
fuse the poor child a home?" 

Lisbeth made no answer. She was a large, fair, sleepy-eyed 
woman, who had been accounted a beauty in her day. A model 
wife, too, people said ; neat in dress, quiet of tongue, her conduct 
staid, her whole thoughts centred in her household. She now 
took the boy, noting with a woman's eye his coarse and ragged 
clothing, and stood him on his unsteady little feet. A faint ex- 
pression of disgust rippled over her smooth, unthinking face. 

" He is a humpback," she said slowly. 

Her husband started to his feet. In all ages physical defor- 
mity has been a thing repulsive to our eyes ; but at this early 
day it was regarded with unmixed horror and aversion, and was 
too often considered as the index of a crooked mind within. 
Peter Burkgmaier, tall and erect, with a frame of iron and 
sinews of steel, as became a master stone-mason, stood gazing 



1884.] A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 525 

at the poor little atom of misshapen humanity who tottered over 
the polished wooden floor. The spinal column was sadly bent, 
and from between the humped shoulders the pale face peered 
with an old, uncanny look. Yet the boy was not otherwise ugly. 
His forehead was broad and smooth, and his dark hjue eyes were 
well and deeply set. The artisan watched him for a minute in 
painful silence, then turned to his wife and took her passive hand 
in his. 

" Lisbeth," he said with grave kindness, " I know that I am 
asking a great deal of you when I beg you to take this child 
under our roof. He will be to you much care and trouble, and 
may never find his way into your heart. At any other time, be- 
lieve me, I would not put this burden on your shoulders. But 
it is Christmas eve, and were I to refuse a shelter to this help- 
less baby I would feel like one of those who had no room within 
their inns for the Holy Child. Dear wife, will you not receive 
him for love of me and of God, and let him share with little 
Kala in your care ? " 

Lisbeth's only reply was one characteristic of the woman. 
She was moved by her husband's appeal, against what she con- 
sidered her better judgment ; and without a single word she 
picked up the boy from the floor and laid him in the cradle by 
the side of her own little daughter. Then, with a smile and her 
smiles came but rarely she proceeded to carry off Peter's wet 
cloak and to bring in his supper. So with this mute assent the 
matter was settled, and the deformed child was received into the 
stone-mason's family. 

And in a different way he became the source of much gratifi- 
cation to both husband and wife. The first regarded him with 
real kindness and an almost fatherly affection, for the boy soon 
began to manifest a quick intelligence and a winning gentleness 
that might readily have found their way into a harder heart. 
Lisbeth, too, had her reward ; for it was sweet to her soul to 
hear her neighbors say, as they stopped to watch the two children 
playing in the doorway : " Ah ! Lisbeth, -it is not many a woman 
who would take the care you do of a wretched little humpback 
like that " ; or, " It was a lucky chance for the poor child that 
threw him into such hands as yours, Mistress Burkgmaier " ; or, 
" Did ever little Kala look so fair and straight as when she had 
that crooked boy by her side ? " 

And did not the good pastor from the Frauenkirche say to 
her, with tears starting in his gentle eyes : " God will surely 
reward you for your kindness to this helpless little one " ? Nay, 



526 A STOXY OF NUREMBERG. [Jan., 

better yet, did not the Stadtholder's lady lean out from her beau- 
tiful carriage, and say before three of the neighbors, who were 
standing by and heard every word : " You are a good woman, 
Mistress Burkgmaier, to take the same care of this miserable 
child as of yqur oftvn pretty little daughter " ? which was some- 
thing to be really proud of ; for whereas it was the obvious duty 
of a priest to admire a virtuous act, it was not often that a noble 
lady deigned thus to express her approbation. 

Yes, Lisbeth felt, as she listened serenely to all this praise 
surely so well merited that there was some compensation in the 
world for such charitable deeds as hers, even when they involved 
a fair amount of sacrifice. And little Gabriel, before whom 
many of these remarks were uttered, pondered over them in 
secret, and gradually evolved three facts from the curious puzzle 
of his life first, that he did not really belong to what seemed 
to be his home ; second, that he was not loved in it as was Kala ; 
third, that Kala was pretty and he was ugly. So with these 
three melancholy scraps of knowledge the poor child began his 
earthly education. 

And Kala was very pretty. Tall and strong-limbed, with her 
mother's beautiful hair and skin, and with her mother's clear, 
meaningless blue eyes, the little girl attracted attention wherever 
she was seen. No better foil to her vigorous young beauty could 
have been found than the pale, misshapen boy whom all the world 
called ugly. The children played together under Lisbeth's 
watchful eye, and Gabriel in all things yielded to his companion's 
imperious will, so that peace reigned ever over their sports. 
But when Sigmund Wahnschaffe, the son of the bronze-worker 
in the neighboring street, joined them, then Kala would have no 
more of Gabriel's company. For Sigmund was strong as a 
young Hercules and surpassed all the other lads in their boyish 
games. When he would play with her Kala turned her back 
ungratefully upon the patient companion of her idler moments, 
who was fain to watch in silence the pleasures he might not 
share. 

Yet from Sigmund she met no easy compliance with her 
wishes. His will was a law not to be disputed, and once, when 
she had ventured to assert herself in rebellious fashion, he 
promptly maintained his precedence by pushing her into the 
mud. Kala began to cry, and like a flash Gabriel, in a storm of 
rage, flung himself upon the older boy, only to be shaken off as a 
feather into the same muddy gutter. It was over in a minute, 
nor would Sigmund deign to further punish the little humpback 



1884.] A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 527 

who had been ridiculous enough to attack him. Serenely un- 
moved he strolled away, while Kala and Gabriel went sadly 
home together, to be both well scolded for the ruin of their 
clothes and sent supperless to bed ; Lisbeth priding herself above 
all things on the strictly impartial character of her retributive 
justice. 

But Gabriel had at least one pastime which could be shared 
with none, and which bade fair to recompense him for all the 
childish sports he was denied. With a smooth block of wood 
and a few simple tools his skilful fingers wrought such wonders 
that Kala and Sigmund, and the very children who hooted at 
him in the street, could not withhold their admiration some- 
times a brooding dove with pretty, ruffled plumage ; sometimes 
the head and curving horns of a mountain chamois, instinct with 
graceful life ; sometimes a group of snails, each tiny spiral re- 
produced with loving accuracy in the hard-grained wood. To 
Peter Burkgmaier these evidences of a talent then in such high 
repute gave most unbounded satisfaction. His own trade was 
far too severe for the boy's frail strength, but wood-carving was 
fully as profitable and might lead to wealth and fame. Had 
not Veit Stoss, of whose genius Nuremberg felt justly proud, 
already finished his wonderful group of angels saluting the 
Blessed Virgin, which hung from the roof of St. Lorenz ? With 
such an example before him, what might not the boy hope to 
achieve through talent and persevering labor? And Gabriel 
felt his own heart burn as he looked with wistful eyes upon that 
masterpiece of rare and delicate carving, and studied reverently 
the seven joys of the Holy Mother, framed in their clinging 
roses. 

Nuremberg was then alive with the spirit of art, and every- 
where he turned there was something beautiful to quicken his 
pulse and feed the flame within his soul, that was half-rapture 
and half-bitterness. No idle boast was the old rhyme: 

" Nuremberg's hand 
Goes through every land." 

For the city's renown had spread far and wide, and in its many, 
branches of industry, as well as in the higher walks of art, it had 
reached the zenith of its fame. Already, indeed, the canker-worm 
was gnawing at the root, and unerring retribution was creeping 
on a blinded people ; but no sign of the future was manifested in 
the universal prosperity of the day. Every street furnished its 
food for the artist's soul : the Frauenkirche, enriched with the 



528 A STORY OF NUREMBERG. [Jan., 

loving gifts of devout generations ; St. Sebald's, with its carved 
portal, its stained windows, its treasures of bronze, and, above all, 
the shrine where Peter Vischer and his sons labored for thirteen 
years. Gabriel loved St. Sebald's dearly, but closer still to his 
heart was the majestic church of St. Lorenz, where, in sharp 
relief against the dull red pillars, rose that dream in stone, the 
Sacrament House of Adam Krafft, its slender, fretted spire 
springing to the very roof, clasped in the embrace of the curling 
vine tendrils carved around it. 

Here the boy would linger for hours, never weary of study- 
ing every detail of this faultless shrine, wherein reposed no saint 
or martyr, but the immortal Lord of hosts. With envious eyes 
he gazed upon the kneeling figures of Adam Krafft and his two 
fellow-laborers, who, carved in stone, now supported the treasure 
their hands had wrought. Surely this was the crowning summit 
of human ambition to live thus for ever in the house of God, 
and before the eyes of men, a part of the very work which had 
ennobled the artist's life. Ah ! if he, the despised humpback, 
could but descend to posterity immortalized by the labor of his 
hands. What to the dreaming lad was the picture of Adam 
Krafft dying in a hospital, poor, unfriended, and alone, in the 
midst of a city his genius had enriched ? What was it to him 
that Nuremberg, which now heaped honors on the dead, had 
denied bread to the living ? Such bitter truths come not to the 
young. They are the heritage of age, and Gabriel was but a 
boy, with all a boy's fond hopes and aspirations. Often as he 
studied the graceful beauty of the Sacrament House, where, cut 
in the pure white stone, he saw the Last Supper and Christ bless- 
ing little children, he wondered whether among those Jewish 
boys and girls was one who, deformed and repulsive to the 
eye, yet felt the Saviour's loving touch and was comforted. 

A few more years rolled by, and each succeeding spring saw 
Kala taller and prettier, and Gabriel working harder still at his 
laborious art. Not so engrossed, however, but that he knew that 
Kala was fair, and that when her soft fingers touched his a swift 
and sudden fire leaped through his heaft. Kala's beauty lurked 
in his dreams by night and in his long, solitary days of toil, and 
became the motive power of all his best endeavors. If he should 
gain wealth it would be but to lay it at her feet. If he, the 
desolate waif, should win fame and distinction, it would be but to 
gild her name with his. Surely these things must be some re- 
compense in a woman's eyes for a pale face and a stunted form ; 
and Gabriel, lost in foolish dreams, worked on. 



1884.] A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 529 

Sigmund Wahnschaffe, too, had grown into early manhood 
and had adopted his father's calling. Strong arms were as use- 
ful in their way as a creative brain, and if Sigmund could never 
be an artist like Peter Vischer, he promised at least to make an 
excellent workman. People said he was the handsomest young 
artisan in Nuremberg, with his dark skin bronzed by the fires 
among which he labored, and his black eyes sparkling, with a 
keen and merry light. Times had changed since the day he 
pushed little Kala into the mud, and he looked upon her now as 
some frail and delicate blossom, that to handle would be desecra- 
tion. Yet Kala was no rare flower, but a common plant, with 
nothing remarkable about her except her beauty ; and, once 
married, Sigmund would be prompt enough to recognize this 
fact. Gabriel, with a chivalrous and imaginative soul, might per- 
haps retain his ideal unbroken till his death ; but in the young 
bronze- worker's practical mind ideals had no place, and his 
bride would slip naturally into the post of *housewife, from 
whom nothing more exalted would be demanded than thrifty 
habits and a cheerful temper. 

And Kala knew perfectly that both these young men loved 
her, and that one day she would be called upon to choose be- 
tween them between Sigm'und, strong, handsome, and resolute, 
with a laugh and a gay word for all who met him ; and Gabriel, 
dwarfed and silent, who had caught the trick of melancholy in 
his unloved childhood and could not shake it off. But it was not 
merely the sense of physical deformity that saddened Gabriel's 
soul. The air he breathed was filled with a subtle spirit of dis- 
cord ; for upon Nuremberg, with her many churches and monu- 
ments of Catholic art, the " Reformation " had laid its chilling 
hand. Its influence was felt on every side in art, where the 
joyous, simplicity of Wohlgemuth had given place to the fantas- 
tic melancholy of Albrecht Diirer, fit imprint of a troubled and 
storm-tossed mind ; in literature, where the bitter raillery and 
coarse jests of Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, now passed with 
swift approval from mouth to mouth ; in religion, where a re- 
bellious people were soon to banish from the stately Sacrament 
House the God who had made of it his shrine. 

The day had not yet come when Nuremberg, in her blind 
arrogance, was to close her gates upon those who had given her 
life and fame ; but already were heard the first faint murmurs of 
the approaching storm. What wonder that Gabriel shrank from 
the darkening future, and that men like Peter Burkgmaier, pon- 
dering with set mouths and frowning brows, were slowly making 
VOL. xxxvin. 34 



530 A STORY OF NUREMBERG. [Jan., 

up their minds that the city which had been their birthplace 
should never shelter their old age? But Lisbeth went stolidly 
about the daily routine of her life ; Kala's smiles were as bright 
and as frequent as ever ; and Sigmund troubled himself not at all 
with matters beyond his ken. 

Winter had set in early, and already November had brought 
in its train snow and biting winds, and the promise of severe 
cold to come. It was a busy season for .the bronze- workers, and 
Sigmund toiled unceasingly, his cheerful thoughts giving zest to 
his labors and new strength to his mighty arm. For did not 
each evening see him by Kala's side, and had she not, after 
months of vain coquetting, at last fairly yielded up her heart ? 

" Kala will make a good wife," said Lisbeth proudly. " And 
she goes not empty-handed to her husband's house." 

" They are a well-matched pair," said Peter meditatively. 
" Health and beauty and dulness are no mean heritage in these 
troubled times." 

And though the neighbors hesitated to call the young couple 
dull, they one and all agreed that the marriage was a suitable 
one and that they had long foreseen it. " Why, they were little 
lovers in childhood even ! " said Theresa, the wife of Johann 
Dyne, the toy-vender in the next street ; and Kala, who had per- 
haps forgotten the time when her child-lover had knocked her 
into the gutter, smiled and showed her beautiful white teeth, 
and suffered the remark to pass uncontradicted. 

But even the most stolid of women have always some lurking 
tenderness for those who they know have loved them vainly, 
and Kala, though she had without a demur accepted Sigmund for 
her husband, yet broke the news to Gabriel with much gentle- 
ness, and was greatly comforted by the apparent composure with 
which it was received. He grew perhaps a trifle paler and 
quieter than before, if such a thing were possible, and shut him- 
self up more resolutely with his work ; but that was all. No one 
would have dreamt that life with its fair promises had suddenly 
grown worthless in his hands, and that the rich gifts which still 
were left him seemed as nothing compared with the valueless 
treasure he had lost. Even his art had become hateful, freight- 
ed as it was with dead hopes ; and often, when all believed 
him to be toiling in his little den, he was wandering aimlessly 
through the streets of Nuremberg, seeking comfort in those 
haunts which had once been to him as dear friends and compan- 
ions. For hours he would linger in the church of St. Lorenz, 
and then slowly make his way to the Thiergarten Gate, where, 



1884.] A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 531 

along the Seilersgasse to the churchyard, rise at regular intervals 
the seven stone pillars on which Adam Krafft has carved, in 
beautiful bas-reliefs, scenes from the Passion of our Lord. Years 
before the simple piety of a Nuremberg citizen had erected these 
monuments of holy art, and their founder, Martin Ketzel, had 
even travelled into Palestine, that he might measure the exact 
distances of that most sorrowful journey from the house of Pon- 
tius Pilate to the hill of Calvary. Heedless of the severe weather, 
Gabriel visited daily these primitive stations, striving to forget 
his own bitterness in the presence of a divine grief; and, laying 
his troubled heart at his Saviour's feet, would return, strength- 
ened and comforted, into the busy city. 

Christmas now was drawing near, and with its approach a 
new resolve took possession of his soul. A fresh light had 
dawned upon him, and, shaking off his apathy, he started to work 
in earnest. All day long he toiled with a steady purpose, though 
none were permitted to see the fruit of his labors. Kala, indeed, 
unaccustomed to be thwarted in her curiosity, presented herself 
at his work-shop door and implored admittance ; but not even to 
her was the secret revealed. 

" It is very unkind of you ! " she pouted, hardly doubting that 
she would gain her point. "-You never kept anything from me 
in your life before." 

Gabriel took her hand and looked with strange, wistful eyes 
into her pretty face. " I am keeping nothing from you now," he 
said. "It is your wedding-gift that I am fashioning; but you 
must be content to wait its completion before you see it. By 
Christmas it shall be your own." 

So Kala, comforted with the thought of future possession, 
bided her time, and Gabriel was left in undisputed enjoyment of 
his solitude. At first he worked languidly and with little zest ; 
but from interest grew ambition, and from ambition a passionate 
love for the labor of his hands, which threw all other hopes and 
fears into the background. Kala was forgotten, and Gabriel, 
absorbed in the contemplation of his art and striving as he had 
never striven before, felt as though some power not his own were 
working in him, and that the supreme effort of his life had come. 
Yet ever in the midst of his feverish activity a strange weakness 
seized and held him powerless in her grasp ; and like a keen and 
sudden pain came the bitter thought that he might die before his 
work was done. Instinctively he felt that his hopes of future 
fame rested on these few weeks that were flying pitilessly by, 
each one carrying with it some portion of his wasted strength ; 



532 A STORY OF NUREMBERG. [Jan., 



and that if death should overtake him with his labor uncomplet- 
ed his name and memory must perish from the world. So, like 
one who flies across a Russian steppe pursued by starving 
wolves, Gabriel sped on his task, seeking to out-distance the grim 
and noiseless wolf that followed close upon his track. 

It was Christmas eve, the anniversary of that snowy night 
when Peter Burkgmaier had carried home the deformed child, 
and now all was bustle and glad preparation in the stone-mason's 
household. Within three days Kala was to be married, and Lis- 
beth, who felt that her reputation as cook and housewife was at 
stake, spared neither time nor trouble in her hospitable labors. 
Since early morning the great fires had roared in her spacious 
kitchen, and all the poor who came to beg a Christmas bounty 
tasted freely of her good cheer. With light heart and busy 
fingers Kala assisted her mother, and doled out the bread and 
cakes not too lavishly to the ragged children who clamored 
around the door ; wondering much in the meanwhile what 
trinket Sigmund would bring her with which to deck herself on 
Christmas morning. 

And in his little room Gabriel stood looking at his finished 
work, and asking himself if his heart spoke truly when it whis- 
pered : " You, too, are great." It was sweet to realize that his 
task was done and that he might rest at last ; it was sweeter 
still to see in the bit of carved wood before him the fulfilment of 
ail his dearest dreams. So while daylight faded into dusk and 
evening into night, he sat lost in a maze of tangled thoughts that 
crowded wearily through his listless brain. It was now too 
dark for him to discern the image by his side, but from time to 
time he laid his hand upon it with a gentle touch, as a mother 
might caress a sleeping child, and was happy in its dumb com- 
panionship. 

How long he had been sitting thus he never knew, when sud- 
denly out into the frosty air rang the great bells of St. Lorenz, 
calling the faithful to midnight Mass. 

Clearly and joyfully they pealed, as if their brazen tongues 
were striving to utter in words their messages of good-will to 
men. Gabriel's heart leaped at the sound, and a great yearning 
seized him to kneel once more within those beloved walls, and 
amid their solemn beauty to adore the new-born Babe. Ju- 
bilantly rang the bells, and their glad voices seemed to speak 
to him as old friends, and with one accord to urge him on. 
Weak and dizzy, he crept down the narrow stairs and out into 
the bitter night. The sharp wind struck him in the face, and 



1884.] A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 533 

worried him as it had worried years before the baby abandoned 
to its cruel embraces. Yet with the appealing music of the bells 
ringing- in his ears he never thought of turning back, but 
struggled bravely onward until the frowning walls of St. Lorenz 
rose up before him. Through the open doors poured a little 
crowd of devout Christians who still adhered to the customs of 
their youth, and Gabriel, entering, stole softly up to the Sacra- 
ment House, where so often the carved Christ had looked with 
gentle eyes upon his lonely childhood. 

Mass had begun, and the great church was hardly a third full, 
for Nuremberg's weakening faith exempted her children from 
such untimely services. But in the faces of the scattered wor- 
shippers there was something never seen before a grave sever- 
ity, a solemn purpose, as when men are banded together to resist 
in silence an advancing foe. Gabriel, dimly conscious of this, 
strove to restrain his wandering thoughts, and fixed his eyes 
upon the gleaming altar. But no prayer rose to his lips, though 
into his heart came that deep sense of rest and contentment 
which found an utterance long ago in the words of an apostle : 
" Lord, it is good for us to be here." Like a child he had come 
to his Father's feet, and, laying there his rejected human love, his 
ungratified human ambition, he gained in their place that peace 
which passeth all understanding. The two shadows which had 
mocked him during life vanished into nothingness at the hour of 
death, and with clear eyes he saw the value of an immortal soul. 

Mass was over, and the congregation moved slowly through 
the' shadow) 7 aisles out into the starlit night. But Gabriel sat 
still, his head resting against the stone pillar, his dead eyes 
fixed upon the Sacrament House, and upon the sculptured Christ 
rising triumphant from the grave. 

Four weeks had gone by since the body of the humpback had 
been carried sorrowfully past the stations of the Seilersgasse into 
the quiet churchyard beyond. The dusk of a winter evening 
shrouded the empty streets when a stranger, of grave demeanor 
and in the prime of life, knocked at the stone-mason's door. 
Kala opened it, and her father, recognizing the visitor, rose with 
wondering respect to greet him. It was Veit Stoss, the wood- 
carver, then at the zenith of his fame. With quick, keen eyes he 
glanced around the homely room, taking in every detail of the 
scene before him Lisbeth weaving placidly by the fire; Kala 
fair and blushing in the lamp-light ; and Sigmund playing idly 
with the crooked little turnspit at his feet. Then he turned ta 



534 A STORY OF NUREMBERG. x [Jan., 

Peter, and for a minute the two men stood looking furtively at 
one another, as though each were trying to read his companion's 
thoughts. Finally the wood-carver spoke. 

" I grieve, Master Burkgmaier," he said with courteous sym- 
pathy, " that you should have lost your foster-son, to whom 
report says you were much attached. And I hear also that the 
young man promised highly in his calling." 

" Then you heard not all," answered the stone-mason slowly. 
" Gabriel did more, for he fulfilled his promise." 

A sudden light came into the artist's eyes. " It is true, then," 
he said eagerly, " that the boy left behind him a rare piece of 
work, which has not yet been seen outside these walls. I heard 
the rumor, but thought it idle folly." 

Peter Burkgmaier crossed the room and opened a deep cup- 
board. "You shall see it," he said simply, "and answer for 
yourself. No one in Nuremberg is more fit to judge." Then, 
lifting out something wrapped in a heavy cloth, he carried it to 
the table, unveiled it with a reverent hand, and, stepping back, 
waited in silence for a verdict. 

There was a long, breathless pause, broken only by the low 
whir of Lisbeth's busy wheel. Veit Stoss stood motionless, 
while Peter's eyes never stirred from the table before them. 
There, carved in the fair white wood, rested the divine Babe, as 
on that blessed Christmas night when his Mother " wrapped him 
up in swaddling-clothes and laid him in a manger." The lovely 
little head nestled on its rough pillow as though on Mary's bosom ; 
the tiny limbs were relaxed in sleep; the whole figure breathed 
at once the dignity of the Godhead and the pathetic helplessness 
of babyhood. Instinctively one loved, and pitied, and adored. 
Nor was this all. Every broken bit of straw that thrust its 
graceful, fuzzy head from between the rough bars of the manger, 
every twisted knot of grass, every gnarl and break in the wood 
itself, had been wrought with the tender accuracy of the true 
artist, who finds nothing too simple for his utmost care and 
skill. 

Veit Stoss drew a heavy breath and turned to his compan- 
ion. " It is a masterpiece," he said gravely, " which I should be 
proud to call my own. I congratulate you on the possession of 
so great a treasure." 

" It is not mine," returned the artisan, " but my daughter's. 
Gabriel wrought it for her wedding-gift." 

The wood-carver's keen blue eyes scanned Kala's pretty, sto- 
lid face, and then wandered to Sigmund's broad shoulders and 



1884.] A STORY OF NUREMBERG. 535 

mighty bulk. A faint, derisive smile curled his well-cut lips. 
"Your daughter's beauty merits, indeed, the rarest of all rare 
tokens," he said slowly. " But perhaps there are other things 
more needful to a young housewife than even this precious bit of 
carving. If she will part with it I will pay her seventy thalers, 
and it shall lie in St. Sebald's Church near my own Virgin, that all 
may see its loveliness and remember the hand that fashioned it." 

Seventy thalers ! Sigmund dropped the dog and lifted his 
handsome head with a look of blank bewilderment. Seventy 
thalers for a bit of wood like that, when his own strong arms 
could not earn as much in months ! He stared at the little 
image in wondering perplexity, as though striving to see by 
what mysterious process it had arrived at such a value ; while 
into his heart crept a thought strictly in keeping with his prac- 
tical nature. If the humpback could have produced work worth 
so much, what a thousand pities he should die with only one 
piece finished ! 

On Lisbeth t too, a revelation seemed to have fallen. Her 
wheel had stopped, and in her mind she was rapidly running 
over a list of household goods valued at seventy thalers. It was 
a mental calculation quickly and cleverly accomplished ; for Lis- 
beth was not slow in all things, and years of thrift had taught 
her the full worth of money. Instinctively she glanced at her 
husband and marvelled at his unmoved face. 

" Your offer is a liberal one, Master Stoss," said Peter grave- 
ly. " And I rejoice to think that the poor lad's genius will be 
recognized. In him Nuremberg would have had another famous 
son." 

" In him Nuremberg has now a famous son," corrected Veit 
Stoss, laying his hand upon the statue. " No other proof of 
greatness can be needed." With gentle care he replaced the 
cloth and lifted the precious burden in his arms, when suddenly 
Kala sprang forward, her cheeks ablaze, her blue eyes dark with 
anger. Transfigured for one instant into a new and passionate 
beauty, she snatched the image from his hands. 

" It is mine ! " she cried fiercely " mine ! Gabriel loved me, 
and carved it for me when he knew that he was dying. It was 
for me he did it, and you shall not take it from me." 

She gathered it to her bosom with a low, broken cry, and 
darted from the room. God only knows what late $ love, and 
pity, and remorse were working in her breast. Veit Stoss turn- 
ed softly to her father. " It is enough," he said. " Your daugh- 
ter has the prior right, and I came not here to wrong her." 



536 THE TURK IN IRELAND. [Jan., 

And so the hand which had robbed Gabriel of love and life 
robbed him of fame. For the statue which should have given 
joy to generations remained unknown in the artisan's family. 
At first many came to see and wonder at its beauty ; but with 
the advent of a colder creed men wanted not such tokens of a 
vanished fervor, and the little Christ-Child was soon forgotten by 
the world. Perhaps Kala's sturdy grandchildren destroyed it as 
a useless toy ; perhaps it perished by fire, or flood, or evil acci- 
dent. No memory of it lingers in the streets of Nuremberg ; 
and Gabriel, lifted beyond the everlasting hills, knoweth the 
vanity of all human wishes. 



THE TURK IN IRELAND. 

SOMEWHAT sheltered from the giant waves of the fierce At- 
lantic by the frowning and buttress-like cliffs of Cape Clear and 
Sherkin Islands, possessing all that goes to make a haven worthy 
of its name, the now almost deserted port of Baltimore, in the 
barony of West Carbery, county of Cork, presents a sorry con- 
trast with its aspect in the time of that " blessed martyr of im- 
mortal memory," Charles I. of England. Then wealthy mer- 
chants lived within its walls, warehouses of fair proportions lined 
its streets, articles of merchandise were piled up on its wharves, 
ships of war and commerce floated on its blue waters ; while 
now, of traders, of walls, of warehouses, of goods or ships, naught 
remains save those ghost-like memories of olden glories which 
cling with hallowing influence to somany famous spots in Erin's 
isle. 

The ancient name of Baltimore was Dun-na-sd> signifying 
" the fortress of the jewels," the origin of which title, poetic as 
it is, seems lost in mystery. Its present name has been, and this 
even by writers of good repute, like Samuel Lewis,* derived 
from Bcal-ti-mor, " the great habitation of Beal," because, they 
say, it was one of the principal seats of the idolatrous worship 
of Baal. Dr. Joyce, M.R.I. A., however, in that erudite work 
which has gained for him so much justly-earned fame,f very 
rightly says : 

"For this silly statement there is not a particle of authority. The 
name is written in several old Anglo-Irish documents Balinthnore, which 
accords exactly with the present Irish pronunciation ; the correct Irish 

* Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, London, 1837, vol. i. p. 172. 

t The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places. Dublin t Gill & Son. 



1884.] THE TURK IN IRELAND. 537 

form is Baile-an-tigke-mhoir, which means merely the town of the large 
house; and it derived this name, no doubt, from the castle of the O'Dris- 
colls." 

These O'Driscolls were those of whom the Irish historian and 
bard Giolla-na-neimh O'Heerin * wrote, as it is translated into 
English : 

" O'Driscoll, head chief of the land 
Of Corcaluighe, I treat of now ; 
He took possession of the coasts of Cleire, 
The fittest headland for the princely lord. 

" O'Driscoll of the wealthy. Beara 

Rules over the land of the salmon coast, 
A blue-water shore abounding in harbors, 
Exhibiting to view large fleets of wine."t 

Truly did the olden writer call these chiefs " princely lords," 
for they were heads of the famous Ithian race, chiefs or princes 
of Corcaluighe, or Carbery ; lords of the fertile and famous Beara 
territory before the O'Sullivans had claimed a rood of it as 
theirs ; rulers of the fair island of Cape Clear, the rolling lands 
round Baltimore, and of Ineragh,in Kerry; hereditary admirals of 
Deas Mumhan,^: and masters of the castles of Dunashed, Duna- 
long, and Dunamore, with many another pile of lesser fame. Al- 
ways endowed with hands prompt with sword or purse, the 
O'Driscolls were fitting chieftains of a soldier race. 

In the reign of James I. of England, however, many things 
were changed in Ireland. Discipline and cohesion and union 
on. the English side were fast overcoming the struggles of brave 
but uncertain and disunited men. The strong point of what 
may, for the nonce at all events, be styled the feudal nobility of 
Ireland was never what we call in modern days by the well- 
sounding name of patriotism. They fought for their own right 
hands and for their own ends ; they grasped in spasmodic effort 
at a power which was slipping through their fingers despite all 
their exertions to retain it, and they looked from left to right for 
friends with all the vague indecision of despair. Such a state of 
things was the ruin, temporary only, perhaps, but nevertheless 
certain for the while, of the best hopes of the Irish nation as a whole. 
England and English tyrants traded her and their way to glory 
and to power on the indecision and jealousy and greed of the 
Irish princes. There is little use in the student of history ever 

* Obit. A.D. 1420. 

- 1 'this reference to wine-laden ships goes to prove the extent of the ancient trade of Balti- 
more. 

\ Deas Mumhan (pronounced dyas mooan) " South Munster." 



538 THE TURK IN IRELAND. [Jan., 

shutting- his eyes to facts, for realities remain whether one sees 
them or not, and there is no doubt that the Irish " people " in 
the sense we use the word now were the merest tools of their 
brave and generous but undoubtedly jealous and unstable chiefs. 
The people passed from the rule of one native lord to another, 
and, with the land they tilled, were often bartered or surrendered 
to the hated Sacsanach without their voice or choice being con- 
sulted. Throughout the whole world the rulers were doing as 
they willed with the ruled, and Ireland was no exception. 

Hence it was that some time in the early part of the reign 
of the first Stuart king of England Sir Fineen (Englished as 
" Florence ") O'Driscoll granted to an English adventurer, Sir 
Thomas Crook, a lease of Baltimore and the adjoining territory. 
Sir Florence was growing old, and like many of his fellows 
doubtful of the fortune of war, he had, somewhat readily as it 
seems, made his peace with the English, and yet had found it 
hard enough to win the complaisancy of Lord-Deputy Carew. 
His eldest son his heir, if Celtic law was to prevail was a noted 
friend of Spain and was doing a brave man's part in Flanders in 
the army of the archduke/ so that the aged chieftain found it 
no easy task to make any arrangement with the English. This, 
however, he did succeed in, and at once, or soon after, parted with 
his fairest territory to Sir Thomas Crook. Hereupon may hang 
a tale of advocacy and interest ; but, even so, dusty state papers 
do not reveal it, and it is therefore each man's right to guess. 
Certain is it, however, that Baltimore passed into foreigners' keep- 
ing. 

Yet under alien rule Baltimore prospered. English mer- 
chants settled in it, English ships filled its harbor, it was a 
stronghold of England in Ireland, its colonization was too new 
for Irish blood to have mingled with English in the veins of its 
inhabitants, and English rulers cared for and fostered it. James 
I. granted a charter of incorporation to its English Protestant 
colonists, as Henry II. had done to the Bristol Catholics whom 
he brought or sent to Dublin. England's rulers had not yet 
learned the Irish power of national absorption to render even 
their English settlers in time " more Irish than the Irish them- 
selves." 

The frequenting of the southern and western coasts of Ireland 
by those to whom the English officials seem to have agreed to 
give the generic title of " pirates," oblivious of all distinctions, 
had long been a source of complaint amongst the English colo- 

* Calendar State Papers, Ireland, reign James I., A.D. 1606-8, pp. 6, 7, 313-14. 






1884.] THE TURK IN IRELAND. 539 

hists. The truth is, however, that there seems to have been a 
hidden intent in the wide application of this ignominious appel- 
lation. The " pirates " seem to have often hailed from Spain ; 
sometimes they dared to land such forbidden freight as " popish 
priests," and, to speak the truth, never shirked a fair stand-up 
fight with their British foes or, as was the fashion then, the 
plundering of any laden galleon. They were men of every 
nation sometimes English, sometimes Spanish, sometimes even 
Irish, sometimes wilder, fiercer, and more dangerous foes than 
could ever be the worst of Christians. Mysterious enough, in an 
age when news travelled slowly and bad work was doing both" on 
sea and land, were some of the actions of these " pirates." Balti- 
more was ill-protected against attacks from the sea, though 
stoutly walled enough against the " wild Irishry " ; and this de- 
spite the efforts and advice of Sir Arthur Chichester, who im- 
plored the Privy Council to make secure the entrance to such 
an important port, and told them how the foe " might be easily 
kept out thence " because " by means of the narrow entrance in 
at the mouth thereof, where there is a rock naturally made to 
contain ordnance that would be able to sink any ship coming 
within reach of their shot, as of necessity it must, if it will come 
in." * There was a king's ship in the harbor, it is true, the Tra- 
montaine ; but she was slow of sail and her captain seemingly 
somewhat of a laggard, for Chichester complained that from the 
time of that vessel's first entering the port until the date of his 
own visit she had never left the security of the haven. Sir 
Arthur commented severely on such conduct at a time when it 
was known to all men that " a great number of priests, with other 
like seditious ministers and newsmongers, continually passed to 
and fro." The Privy Council seem to have been as little inclined 
to activity as was the captain of the Tramontaine, for they left 
Baltimore without better protection, and the viceroy's cautions 
passed unheeded. 

Wednesday, June 29, 1608, Lord Danvers sent from Cork to 
Chichester a letter which, under date the 2$d of the same month, 
had been written by one James Salmon, of Baltimore, and which 
was to the following purport : 

"Thinks fit to certify him of a ship coming into the harbor, and going 
out again yesterday afternoon, which seems strange. As she was coming 
in John Johnson went aboard her with his boat, and talked with them, 
demanding who they were, whence they came, and whither they were 

* "Sir Arthur Chichester to Privy Council," March 30, 1608. Calendar of State Papers, 
Ireland, 1606-8, pp. 447-8. 



540 THE TURK IN IRELAND. [Jan., 

bound. They answered they were of Hampton, come out of Spain, and 
bound for Limerick ; but Johnson affirms that they were Irishmen and 
could speak but little English. They asked Johnson whether there was 
any fortification or garrison here ; he answered no. They asked whether 
any English dwelt here ; he answered that there were two towns here, one 
on this side and one on the other side. They also asked whether any Irish 
dwelt here ; he answered that there were a few here. When they had thus 
communed with him, being shot a good way into the harbor, they stood up 
close by the wind along the further shore, and immediately cast about 
again and sailed out of the harbor. The man-of-war [the slow-sailing, lag- 
gard-commanded Tramontat'ne] was aground repairing. If she had been 
afloat she would have laid them aboard. When the stranger was out of 
the harbor she stood to the east, towards Castlehaven, or that way. She 
was not above thirty or forty tons, and did not show above fifteen or six- 
teen men, but it is likely they had more. O'Driscoll's sons came this way 
in the last rebellion, and no doubt, if the coast were well searched, it would 
be found they have landed men somewhere." 

Perhaps they had some messenger, it may have been, from 
the sons of Sir Florence, bringing tidings of the renown they 
were winning in foreign wars ; perhaps one of his soldier-sons 
in person even, coming, bronzed and bearded, scarred with 
honorable traces of recent fights, to see whether or not there was 
hope of an essay on behalf of native land. 

About midway in June, 1631,* it happened that 

" One Captain Mathew Rice, a Dutch renegado, in a ship of three hun- 
dred tons, twenty-four pieces of ordnance, and two hundred men, and an- 
other ship of one hundred tons, eighty men, and twelve iron, pieces, be- 
twixt the Land's End of England and Ireland, took a ship of Dartmouth of 
sixty tons, wherein one Edward Fawlett was master, with nine men there- 
in ; they took therewith her masts, cordage, and other necessaries, with all 
the men, and sunk the hull, as they had done to two French ships before." 

Some days after this occurrence Rice the name so spelt 
seems more English (or Welsh) than Dutch with his Algerine 
companions, being off Dungarvan, managed to capture a small 
boat owned by one John Hackett, of that town. Hackett, with 
the five men who formed his crew, was soon clapped under 
hatches for safe-keeping, and his little vessel of only twelve tons 
burden was soon " manned with Turks and renegadoes," and, 
thus occupied, " presently took one other boat of like burden, 
belonging to Dungarvan, with her master, Thomas Carew, and 
five men." This deed accomplished, Hackett was required by 
the commander of the Atgerine vessels to steer them into Kin- 
sale. Now, Hackett had in this request a great chance of 

* The " sack of Baltimore " undoubtedly took place on the iyth of June, 1631 ; but as there 
seems to have been a strange confusion of dates on the part of the chroniclers of the events im- 
mediately anterior thereto, we prefer to be non-definite upon smaller points. 



1884.] THE TURK IN IRBLAND. 541 

revenge and of escape. For it seems that guarding that town 
and port there were, " besides the fort, the king's ships." But 
Hackett told the Turks that Kinsale " was too hot for them," 
and upon his representations " they altered their purpose, and he 
brought them to Baltimore about ten of the clock at night, and 
they cast anchor on the east side of the harbor's mouth, about a 
musket-shot from the shore " ; and of their " coming none of the 
inhabitants had any notice, they came so late, for after the sun 
setting they were seen, but not known, near Castlehaven." Bal- 
timore and its inhabitants were all unconscious of the terrible 
danger which already cast its shadow upon them. As Davis has 
sung, so was it : 

" The summer sun is falling soft on Carbery's hundred isles 
The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel's rough denies; 
Old Innisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird, 
And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard ; 
The hookers lie upon the beach ; the children cease their play ; 
The gossips leave the little inn ; the households kneel to pray; 
And full of love, and peace, and rest its daily labor o'er 
Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore." 

The sunset passed away, and its golden and crimson and 
purple splendor was veiled by the dark canopy of night : 

" A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there ; 
No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth, or sea, or air. 
The massive capes and ruined towers seem conscious of the calm ; 
The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm. 
> So still the night, these two long barks round Dunashed that glide 
Must trust their oars methinks not few against the ebbing tide. 
Oh ! some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the shore : 
They bring some lover to his bride, who sighs in Baltimore ! " 

Far different mission, in truth, was that of the " two long 
barks " which lay beneath the shadow of Dunashed, and there- 
fore soon after nightfall, under the guidance of Fawlett, of Dart- 
mouth who, English born though he was, was as ready as 
Hackett to aid the infidel Algerine a reconnoitring party set 
out for Baltimore, and they " came in one of their boats into the 
said harbor." Fawlett " piloted them along all the shore, and 
showed them how the town did stand, relating unto them where 
the most able men had their abode. In this business they spent 
five glasses ; when they came back aboard they cheered up the 
rest of the company, saying : ' We are in a good place and shall 
make a bon voyage' ' 
. This service accomplished and the report of their spies heard, 



542 THE TURK IN IRELAND. [Jan., 

the Algerines " consulted what time of night was the fittest for 
their intended exploit, and concluded a little before day to be the 
most convenient season." About two o'clock in the morning 
there set forth from the infidel squadron some two hundred and 
thirty desperadoes well armed, each man, besides hisweapons, 
carrying a torch, and many of them bearing besides crowbars and 
hammers to break the locked and bolted doors of the townsfolk. 
Stealthily moving over the calm and darkened waters, these mis- 
creants soon reached the land. The first portion of the town 
actually attacked was that known as the Cove, where chiefly 
resided the English merchants and inhabitants. Some- portion 
of the invaders were placed in ambush, so as to secure the retreat 
of those who now pressed forward, eager for robbery, murder, 
and plunder. All along the narrow streets rolled dark volumes 
of smoke lit by bright gushes of flame, cries for mercy were 
uttered to those who never heeded the Christian's prayer, while 

" From out their beds, and to their doors, rush maid and sire and dame, 
And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabre's fall, 
And o'er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl. 
The yell of ' Allah ' breaks above the prayer and shriek and roar. 
O blessed God ! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore." 

How long the work of the pirates would have continued but 
that they met an unexpected check it were hard to say. Most 
probably not until every roof-tree sank in its own ashes and every 
particle of wealth in Baltimore was transferred to the holds of 
the Algerines. Luckily, however, in their course of rapine and 
spoliation the infidels assailed the house of one William Harris, 
.who, awakened by the uproar ringing through the town, was fore- 
armed as he was forewarned. When they thundered at his 
portal he met them with a stout musketry fire and had the satis- 
faction of seeing that, no matter how the fight might yet even- 
tuate, 

"Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store, 
There's one hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore ! " 

Harris' brave defence stayed the passage of the invaders, and 
while they surrounded his house, and plied all their energies to 
destroy it and its gallant occupants, the inhabitants of the as yet 
unassailed portions of the town were gathering and arming fast. 
Firelocks and swords and bucklers were being grasped by hands 
which, however long unused, were no way laggard now that 
home and wealth and life, with those things which are ever 
nearer and dearer still to the bulk of humanity, were in peril. 



1884.] THE TURK IN IRELAND. 543 

The rolling drums of the advancing townsfolk warned the Alge- 
rines of the necessity of retreat ; but, though they realized this 
necessity, it was no part of the plan of these marauders to return 
to their ships empty-handed. They bore back with them, despite 
the efforts ei the burgesses, much spoil and golden treasure, and, 
worst of all, one hundred and seven Christian captives.* 

The pirates having withdrawn to their ships, the burgesses 
with all possible speed sent despatches to Kinsale, calling on the 
commander of the king's ship lying in that haven to hasten to 
Baltimore before the foe escaped with their booty. It so hap- 
pened, however, that as this same captain was loath to leave his 
moorings without sanction from his superiors, and the messenger 
from Baltimore was compelled to travel with what speed he 
might to Mallow, in order to obtain from the lord-president of 
Munster authority for the sailing of the man-of-war, much pre- 
cious time was wasted and some days elapsed. When the king's 
ship did at last reach Baltimore the enemy were beyond the 
reach of pursuit.f 

Although the foreigners escaped, it is some satisfaction to be 
certain that the dastard by whose guidance their crime was ren- 
dered possible paid the penalty of his felonious action. There 
can be no question that Davis, from whose poem we have al- 
ready quoted so often, was strictly and historically accurate in 
his depicting of the attitude of the people towards Hackett when 
he was brought forth to surrender his life as a tribute to aveng- 
ing justice : 

" Tis two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody hand, 
And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand, 
Where, high upon a gallows-tree, a yelling wretch is seen : 
'Tis Hackett, of Dungarvan he who steered the Algerine ! 
He fell amid a sullen shout, with scarce a passing prayer, 
For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there. 
Some muttered of MacMurchadh, who brought the Norman o'er, 
Some cursed him with Iscariot, that day in Baltimore." 

* These captives were of every sex, age, and condition. A full and pitiful list of them 
exists. Whole families were borne away, carried to a fate and a life terrible in each and every 
respect. Take such entries as the following: "William Mould, himself and boy"; "John 
Ryder, himself, wife, and two children " ; "John Harris, his wife, mother, three children, and 
maid " ; V Richard Lorye, himself, wife, sister, and four children " ; " William Gunter, his wife, 
maid, and seven sons"; "Maurice Power and his wife." It would be impossible to imagine 
anything more brimful of volumes of unutterable sorrow and wrong than this business-like and 
official list. Every entry is the record of what must have been a grief surpassing death. 

t The quotations embodied in the text, as well as the authority for our recital, is contained 
in the Council-Book and Annals of Kinsale, edited by Dr. Caulfield. 



544 ARMINE. [Jan., 

ARMINE. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

WHEN the news of Egerton's escape, and of the injuries 
which he had received in the railway accident, became known 
to his friends in Paris he naturally received many congratula- 
tions and condolences. Among these came a note from Mrs. 
Bertram expressing all things cordial in the way of concern, 
and ending with a few lines which made the young man smile : 
"Sibyl hopes with me that you will soon be able to come to 
see us. She is anxious to hear an account of your escape and 
of the sad fate of the person you were accompanying, in 
whom she is much interested." 

" Much more than in me," said Egerton to himself, with the 
little sore feeling which Miss Bertram was always successful 
in exciting. It occurred to him to consider whether, had he 
been one of the victims of the accident, she would have been 
interested in his fate, and he decided that she would have 
said that " he died as he had lived, in the pursuit of a 
caprice." And it did not lessen the sting of this hypothetical 
judgment to feel that it would have been at least partially 
true. 

He had at this time, however, things more serious to think 
of than Miss Bertram's opinion, depreciating or otherwise. M. 
de Marigny came to see him and treated the matter of Du- 
chesne's claim in a spirit which pleased Egerton. " It is my 
affair now," he said, " to ascertain whether any proof of the 
marriage really exists ; and, if it does exist, to secure to Mile. 
Duchesne whatever rights may be hers. That is my right and 
duty as the head of the family ; but I do not mean to inter- 
fere with your right of friendship, M. Egerton, and if you care 
to go down into Brittany with me I shall be happy to offer 
you the hospitality of the chateau." 

" You are exceedingly kind," said Egerton ; " but my posi- 
tion is a little embarrassing, and I hardly feel that I have any 
right to interfere in the matter farther. From M. Duchesne 
I had only the charge to tell his daughter of what he be- 
lieved to be certain facts. And when I told her, so far from 
requesting me to verify those facts, she requested me most 



1884.] ARMINE. 545 

positively to take no steps in the affair. But, M. d'Antignac's 
advice coinciding with my own opinion, I felt bound to take 
at least the step of finding whether there was any proof of 
the civil marriage, and, in case there was, of informing you 
the person most nearly concerned of the fact. Since you, 
however, have been informed, and since you mean to take 
the investigation into your hands, I do not feel that any obli- 
gation rests upon me to go into the matter farther." 

" An obligation no," said the vicomte. " There is cer- 
tainly not the least obligation resting upon you. But never- 
theless I think it would be best if we made these investiga- 
tions together. As I am supposed to represent my own in- 
terest, there should be some one to represent Mile. Duchesne's; 
and since you are the person to whom her father made the 
disclosure " 

"That was only an accident," interposed Egerton. 

" Granted ; but still an accident which puts you in the 
position of being the only person sufficiently well informed to 
act for his daughter." 

" Who most decidedly declined to allow me to act for her." 

" Granted again ; but remember that she was not probably 
in a state of mind or feeling to decide properly on any ques- 
tion. Over her father's grave it seemed to her, no doubt, 
very useless to consider whether he had ever a right to call 
himself by another name. She overlooked altogether her own 
interest in the matter; but we must not overlook it." 

- " I suggested her own interest," said Egerton, " and she 
refused to consider it at all." 

The vicomte made a little gesture signifying that this did 
not matter. " She is a woman," he said, " a young woman, 
and in deep grief. We must act for her. Or rather, I shall 
find out, on abstract grounds, what is the true state of the 
case; and then it will be time enough to think of acting. 
Meanwhile there is no special reason for haste. I have just 
heard that she has gone into a convent for a retreat which 
will last for a fortnight at least and, therefore, if by delaying 
my departure for a few days I can induce you to go with me 
down into 'Brittany, I shall willingly do so. You must feel 
very much shattered now, and I doubt if you find the pros- 
pect of a railroad journey desirable." 

" I confess," said Egerton, " that I shrink from the thought 
of it ; and yet I confess also that I should like to see the end 
of this matter, since the beginning of it has been forced upon 
VOL. xxxvin. 35 



54$ ARMINE. [Jan., 

my knowledge. But I hesitate to let you delay your journey 
on my account. I should think that you would be in haste 
to know the best, or worst." 

"On the contrary," said the vicomte, " I feel no impatience 
and very little concern. It is difficult to tell what is best 
and what is worst in any temporal affair of life ; but it can 
never be other than well that truth should be known and jus- 
tice done. I desire simply to know the one and to accom- 
plish the other." 

" Then, if you /eally do not object to delaying your 
journey for a few days, I should like very much to accom- 
pany you." 

" With the prospect of your companionship, I shall be 
happy to delay it," M. de Marigny replied, with true French 
courtesy. " We will go, then, next week. The day can be 
hereafter appointed, for I shall do myself the pleasure of call- 
ing again to see how you improve." 

This improvement was rapid, since Egerton's injuries, with 
the exception of his arm, were not serious. He was looking 
very pale, however, and quite like a man who had passed 
through a trying experience of one kind or another, when he 
finally made his appearance in Mrs. Bertram's drawing-room. 
It was not her reception-day he had taken care to avoid 
that but nevertheless he found a group engaged in drinking 
tea, who all rose eagerly at sight of him. He had a swift 
impression of familiar faces Miss Dorrance's and Mr. Tal- 
ford's among the number even while he was shaking hands 
with Mrs. Bertram and receiving her cordial welcome. Then 
there was a hubbub of congratulations and inquiries for several 
minutes; and then, missing one person, he looked around. 

Sibyl was standing quite near, but a little behind him, 
leaning one arm on the back of a tall chair and observing 
with a smile the scene of which he was the centre. As his 
eye met hers she at once held out her hand. 

" I have only been waiting an opportunity to add my con- 
gratulations to the rest," she said. " But will you not sit 
down ? I think you look a little tired. Pray take this chair, 
and I will bring you a cup of tea." 

Egerton took the chair, and, somewhat to his surprise, Miss 
Bertram brought him a cup of tea with her own hand, 
wheeled quickly and deftly a little table forward for the cup 
to rest upon, and then sat down by him, " to be near in case 
you need assistance," she said, smiling. 






1884.] ARMINE. 547 

' " You are very kind," he answered ; " but I have already 
begun to be tolerably independent of assistance. It is, of 
course, awkward to have only one hand available ; but my 
arm is getting on very well, and when I consider " 

" Yes," she said as he paused, " I should think that when 
you consider you would feel yourself to be most fortu- 
nate." 

" I feel it so keenly," he said, " that I am oppressed by the 
consciousness. Why should / have been spared, and not only 
spared in the preservation of my life, but comparatively unin- 
jured, when others it is something I can hardly dwell upon ! 
Yet the question is constantly recurring to me : why should it 
have been 7, and not they ? " 

There was a moment's silence. Miss Bertram seemed unable 
to suggest any answer to the question ; but she looked at the 
young man keenly, and presently said : 

" But I do not think that you escaped scathless. Apart from 
that" she glanced at his helpless arm "you give me the idea 
of one who has suffered. You are greatly changed since I saw 
you last." 

"The shock was terrible," he said, "and the nervous suf- 
fering afterward very great. But the change may be owing 
to something besides physical causes. A man could scarcely 
pass through such an ordeal could hardly feel himself face to 
face with the most terrible form of death and be quite the 
same afterward." 

M Some men could, I think." 

" A very shallow nature might, perhaps. But I " he smiled 
a little " though I make no pretensions to great depth, am 
not, at least, so shallow as that." 

" I hope you do not imagine that I thought so," she said 
quickly. " It seems to me that it would that it must make 
a lasting impression. And then to see your companion killed 
by your side but forgive me ! Perhaps I ought not to force 
you to talk on such a subject." 

Egerton would have been glad if she had chosen another ; 
but he remembered Mrs. Bertram's note, and what had been 
said therein of Sibyl's interest in the fate of Duchesne, so he 
felt in a manner bound to gratify that interest. 

" It is a subject which I find it difficult to banish from my 
mind," he answered. "Even in my dreams it returns to me. 
The death of Duchesne was indeed most terrible ; yet I can 
give you no idea of the iron nerve and fortitude of the man. 



548 ARMINE. [Jan., 

He talked to me of matters concerning worldly affairs almost 
up to the moment of dissolution." 

" And at the moment," said Sibyl. " It is that I have been 
curious about. I have wondered if his faith in humanity had 
power to sustain him then" 

" He did not seem to need sustaining," said Egerton. " And,, 
since he died with the words Vive Fhumanite' on his lips, you 
may imagine that his faith in it, or at least his devotion to it,, 
was as strong in death as in life." 

" But, under the circumstances, did not that seem unneces- 
sary and and almost theatrical ? " she asked. " If he had been 
about to be shot there would have been some reason for pro- 
claiming his faith in that manner. But why should he have 
done so, dying as he did?" 

Egerton hesitated. All around them was a ripple of gay 
talk and light laughter ; tea-spoons clinked against delicate china 
cups, silk dresses rustled, sunshine streamed over it all how 
could he speak here of that solemn moment, charged with the 
issues of eternity, when he had recalled the thought of God 
to the dying Socialist and evoked the defiance of which he 
had spoken ? His hesitation was only momentary, for before 
he decided what to say Sibyl spoke quickly. 

" Do not answer, Mr. Egerton," she said. " I see that you? 
are reluctant to do so, and it is inexcusable of me to question 
you in such a manner. My apology must be that you told me 
so much of M. Duchesne's devotion to his ideal that I have 
wondered how it stood the test of death." 

" It stood the test triumphantly, so far as his sincerity was 
concerned," Egerton answered. " I never doubted but that it 
would. There was no leaven of hypocrisy or self-seeking in 
the man. He was an honest and passionate enthusiast." 

Miss Bertram was silent for a moment, then she said slowly : 
" I wonder how much of an excuse for error such sincerity of 
conviction is, granting that there is a life to come and that 
we need excuse in it?" 

Egerton shook his head. " That question is rather too deep- 
for me," he replied. " Suppose you ask M. d'Antignac ? He 
will give you a precise answer I have never known him fail 
in that and a precise answer is something so rare that it is 
refreshing to hear it, whether one accepts it or not." 

" One generally feels constrained to accept M. d'Antignac's 
answers," said Sibyl. 

Egerton was about to ask how much of D'Antignac's an- 



1884.] A R 'MINE. 549 

swers on some subjects she had been constrained to accept, 
when the conversation was interrupted by the approach of 
Miss Dorrance, who came and sat down on his other side. 

" I cannot let Sibyl monopolize you, Mr. Egerton, when we 
have all been so interested and so anxious about you," she be- 
gan. " I wonder if you have any idea what a visitation you 
escaped ? When we first heard of your having been injured 
in the accident we were so concerned that we talked mamma, 
and I, and Mrs. Bertram, and several more of your friends of 
going- to pay you a visit to condole with and entertain you. 
But Cousin Duke threw cold water on our project said you 
would not care at all to see us; that it would be a 'nuisance' 
to a man who had been cut to pieces, and battered and bruised, 
for a set of women to descend upon him ; and so we gave it 
<up." 

" Mr. Talford must have been filled with jealousy at the 
thought of seeing me so distinguished," said Egerton. "I can- 
not imagine any other reason for his giving such an opinion. 
I assure you that I should have been delighted to see you, and 
flattered beyond measure by such an attention." 

" Would you, indeed ? It was too bad, then, of Cousin 
Duke to interfere," said she. "And Sibyl agreed with him, 
too." 

" I agreed that Mr. Egerton would probably regard such a 
visit in the light of a nuisance," said Sibyl ; " and I still think so." 

" I don't know how to prove that you are wrong," said 
Egerton, " except by retiring to my rooms, feigning a severe 
relapse, and sending to beg that you will all take pity on me." 

" Ah ! " said the young lady, smiling, " but the feigned re- 
lapse would be the point of difference. A visit of the kind 
might be pleasant enough under those circumstances ; but to 
a man who really had been ' cut to pieces, and battered and 
bruised,' as Laura says, I am sure that receiving half a dozen 
women could not be agreeable." 

" I am not so modest," said Miss Dorrance. " It never oc- 
curred to me that Mr. Egerton would not be charmed to see 
us ; and another time I mean to carry out my idea." 

" Pray do ! " said Egerton. " If I should have the misfor- 
tune to be the victim and survivor of another railroad ca- 
tastrophe I shall certainly look for a visit from you." 

" It would be a very high price to pay for such a plea- 
sure," said Miss Bertram. " Let us hope that your gallantry 
may not be put to the test." 



55<> ARMINE. [Jan., 

She rose as she spoke and walked away, and while Egerton 
looked after the tall, graceful figure Miss Dorrance said in a 
confidential tone : 

" It was really Sibyl's fault that we did not go. We should 
not have minded Cousin Duke's opinion, but she endorsed it so 
strongly that both Mrs. Bertram and mamma gave the mat- 
ter up; and then, you know, what could / do?" 

" We might have passed it off as an American custom, if 
you had come to see me alone," said Egerton, laughing. " At 
least I feel very much defrauded, and I shall certainly have 
the matter, out with Talford at the first opportunity. Mean- 
while I am glad to hear that your mother has recovered 
sufficiently even to take into consideration a visit of the 
kind." 

"Oh! mamma is vastly improved; and, since she was not 
allowed to go to see you, she will be delighted if you will come 
to see her." 

" I shall certainly give myself that pleasure. My first visit 
when I return to Paris shall be paid to her." 

" When you return to Paris ! " repeated Laura, with sur- 
prise. " Are you going away ? " 

" Only for a short distance and a short time," he answered. 
" And if by thus tempting fate I am blown up again I shall 
certainly expect you to fulfil your promise of coming to see 
me." 

Miss Dorrance regarded him for a moment with a very 
curious scrutiny. Then ' she said frankly : " I confess I an* 
interested in you, Mr. Egerton. I think you must be engaged 
in something very romantic and mysterious. Sudden journeys,, 
terrible accidents, dark and desperate companions I think 
Cousin Duke must be right in his idea that you have become 
a deeply-dyed Socialist, full of plans to blow up emperors- 
and what not." 

" It is very kind of Mr. Talford to destroy my reputation 
for good sense not to speak of good morals in that way," 
said Egerton, half-amused, half-annoyed. " But I assure you 
that if no emperor is blown up until I have a hand in his 
assassination, they will all die peaceably in their beds. As for 
the journey I am about to make, it is of a most inoffensive^ 
, private character." 

" But your last journey you were going to attend a So- 
cialist meeting then, were you not?" persisted the young; 
lady. 



1884.] A RMINE. 5 5 1 

"As a mere matter of curiosity and amusement yes," an- 
swered Egerton, who began to regret the publicity which 
he had given to his vague, socialistic sympathies. " But I 
think that I have been quite sufficiently punished," he added, 
glancing down at his arm. 

Miss Dorrance probably agreed with him, for she did not 
pursue the subject, and he was able before long to effect his 
escape. But it met him again when he went up to Miss Ber- 
tram to make his adieux. 

" I have been thinking a good deal," the latter said in a low 
tone, " of the young girl Mile. Duchesne of whom I have 
heard you speak several times. How terrible the shock of 
her father's death must have been to her ! " 

" It was," answered Egerton. " One can judge of that by 
the change it has made in her." 

"You have seen her, then?" said Miss Bertram, with a 
quick glance at him. 

" Necessarily," he replied. " I was not only with her 
father when he died, but I received his dying wishes to trans- 
mit to her." 

" But I judged, from something which I heard Mile. d'An- 
tignac say, that there was some doubt or mystery about her 
whereabouts." 

" There was for a time a little doubt, but no mystery. 
Her father, in order to remove her from all religious influ- 
ences, had placed her with some friends of his, and the D'An- 
tighacs did not for some time know her address. But after 
the news of her father's death these people made no effort to 
detain her, and when I saw her she had returned to her usual 
place of residence." 

" If matters had reached such a point between father and 
daughter as that," said Sibyl, after a moment's pause, " per- 
haps it was as well he was killed." 

Egerton could not repress a smile at her tone of reflective 
consideration. " I was very sorry for poor Duchesne," he 
said, " but I fear that no friend of his daughter could resist 
arriving at such a conclusion." 

" And now that she is free, what does she mean to do 
become a Catholic?" 

" At once, I believe. She is in a convent now, to prepare 
for the step." 

" Ah ! " said Miss Bertram. " But I am sure you will not 
allow her to remain there." 



ARMINE. [Jan., 

" I have nothing whatever to do with it," said Egerton, 
with some surprise. 

" Have you not ? " She gave him another quick glance. 
" I thought perhaps you had been invested with some rights 
of guardianship. At all events, I shall depend upon you to 
obtain for me a glimpse of this interesting young lady sooner 
or later." 

After taking his departure Egerton pondered a little on these 
words, which, he decided, could have only one meaning that 
Miss Bertram supposed him to be in love with Armine. It was 
not a new idea to him that he might be ; as we are aware, it 
had occurred to his mind before, and not only occurred to 
it, but been entertained and agreeably dwelt upon. Yet it had 
not occurred to him that any one else would suspect a senti- 
ment of the existence of which he was by no means sure him- 
self ; and therefore Miss Bertram's penetration surprised him, 
and, for some curious reason, did not please him. Certainly, 
if he had ever been accused of being in love with Sibyl Ber- 
tram, he would have repudiated the idea; yet he had always 
been conscious of a strong attraction toward her, of hovering, 
as it were, on the brink of a fancy into which a little gracious- 
ness on her part might have precipitated him. But, instead 
of being gracious, she had always repelled him in a very 
subtle fashion, it is true, but a fashion which he clearly ap- 
preciated, and which was peculiarly trying to his self-love. He 
had long been aware that the sore feeling which her depre- 
ciation excited was a proof of her power to move him, and 
he never approached her without acknowledging the charm 
of her strongly-marked and interesting character; yet he 
had not suspected himself of any sentiment which could ac- 
count for the mental twinge which it cost him to realize that 
she had in imagination coolly handed him over to Armine. 
"Surely one is a mystery to one's self!" he thought. And 
then, more sensibly, " Surely I am a fool ! " 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

ACCORDING to his promise, Egerton went down into Brittany 
with M. de Marigny as soon as his attendant physician pro- 
nounced him able to travel ; and those who were left behind 
in suspense to wit, M. and Mile. d'Antignac heard nothing 
of them for some time. 

Meanwhile Armine remained in the convent where she had 



1884.] A RHINE. 553 

been placed, and was reported by the Abb6 Neyron as im- 
proving daily in physical health and spiritual peace. He came 
to talk with D'Antignac concerning her, and seemed more and 
more impressed with her character as it revealed itself to him. 
" It is a remarkable soul," he said, " and one with which I 
think God must have special designs." 

" I have always thought so," D'Antignac answered quietly. 
"But what do you take those designs to be, M. l'Abb6?" 

The discreet priest shook his head. " It is not yet possible 
to tell," he answered; "and there is no need for haste in try- 
ing to decide. God in his own time makes his will clear with 
regard to each human soul. The trouble is that so few souls 
are anxious simply to fulfil that xvill ; they have their own 
plans and desires, which they prefer to God's. But this soul, 
I think, will be willing to take his way." 

" Dear Armine ! " said Mile. d'Antignac. " She has al- 
ways thought so little of herself or her own desires that 
I am sure you are right. And when will she be received into 
the church?" 

" There is nothing of the kind necessary,'' replied the abbe". 
"She was received into the church at her baptism her mother, 
it seems, was a good Catholic and had her baptized in her in- 
fancy and she has never in word or deed renounced the faith. 
Consequently, she has only to make her First Communion. She 
has already made her general confession." 

" And when will she make her First Communion ? " 
" To-morrow morning in the convent chapel. I have an 
invitation for you, dear mademoiselle, to be present ; and 
afterward you can arrange with Mile. Duchesne about her 
plans." 

" My arrangement is easily made, or rather has been al- 
ready made," said Helene. " I shall bring her home with me." 

" It will be the best arrangement for a time," said the 
abbe". 

It was an arrangement to which Armine made no objec- 
tion, though she, too, qualified her acceptance with the words, 
"for a time." She seemed happy at the thought of being with 
her friends, and especially of seeing D'Antignac ; yet Helene 
noticed how wistfully she turned and glanced back into the 
quiet convent court as they were passing out of the gateway 
to the street beyond. " I had never known peace until I found 
it here," she said in a low tone ; " and such peace ! " Then 
she looked at her companion. " Do you remember," she went 



554 ARMINE. [Jan., 

on, " how when M. d'Antignac told me that I must not return 
to him again, I said that I felt like one who was exiled from 
Paradise? I have the feeling still more strongly to-day." 

" I can understand it," said Helene ; " for here is the only 
foretaste of Paradise to be known on earth, and I have had 
the same feeling when I left one of these abodes of peace to 
go back to the jarring and distracted world." 

" But we are going to M. d'Antignac," said Armine, as 
they entered the carriage waiting for them, "and I am always 
conscious of the same atmosphere of peace surrounding him." 

It was indeed a happy meeting between the two, who had 
been faithful in affection to each other so long, when they met 
without any farther need for separation; when Armine could 
tell D'Antignac all that she had been thinking and feeling, sure 
of absolute sympathy and comprehension, and when he could 
note all the change that had been wrought in her the great 
change since the day when, in her grief and despair, she had 
come and knelt down by him, asking for help. Now the light 
of spiritual peace was in her eyes and on her face, and, though 
much of the sad sense of loss was revived by the familiar 
objects which surrounded her, it could not rob her of that 
deep and abiding joy of the soul which is the first result of 
the sacraments. 

Not as a stranger, but as one who had long known the life 
of which she was now to form a part, the girl settled into her 
place in the small household and soon made herself a useful 
member of it. But, while she was always ready to aid H61ene 
in any way, she chiefly liked whatever enabled her to serve 
D'Antignac ; and perceiving this, H61ene resigned to her va- 
rious duties which brought her into attendance on him. Of 
these, one which she enjoyed most was reading to him for an 
hour or two in the morning ; and she was engaged in this 
manner one day when the timbre of the apartment sounded, 
and a moment later Cesco entered, saying that Mile. Bertram 
begged to know if M. d'Antignac would receive her. 

"Yes," said D'Antignac; "ask her to enter." And then he 
said to Armine, who rose instinctively : " Do not go. This is 
some one whom I should like you to meet." 

Armine might have remonstrated had there been time, but 
as she paused the door opened and a tall, handsome young lady, 
who gave the impression of something at once majestic and 
winning, came in. The fashionable richness of her dress might 
with some people have been the first thing which struck the 



1884.] ARMINE. 555 

eye ; but costume was never more than an adjunct to Sibyl 
Bertram's beauty, and Armine saw the sweet, cordial smile and 
clear, brilliant glance rather than Virot's hat and Felix's 
dress. 

Sibyl on her part was struck, as soon as she entered, by the 
slender, black-clad figure standing against the light, by the side 
of D'Antignac's couch, and she knew at once who it must be. 
One quick glance, however, was all that she permitted herself 
as she walked forward and clasped the hand that D'Antignac 
held out. 

" I hope you have not allowed me to derange you, as our 
French friends say," she remarked, with a smile. " It has been 
so long since I have seen you that I could not resist the incli- 
nation to make an effort, at least, to do so." 

" I am very glad that you did not resist the inclination," 
he answered. " I am always happy to see you when I am able 
to see any one ; and by coming just now you give me not only 
the pleasure of seeing you, but also the pleasure of making two 
of my friends known to each other. Will you let me present 
Mile. Duchesne? Armine, this is Miss Bertram." 

The two young women so different in character, circum- 
stances, and association regarded each other for an instant, 
and then by an impulse Sibyl held out her hand. 

" I am glad to meet Mile. Duchesne," she said in her frank 
voice. " I have heard a great deal of her." 

Armine glanced at D'Antignac with a smile. " My friends 
here are very kind, I know," she said. 

Miss Bertram regarded her for a moment longer before she 
replied. Then she said : " It is not only from your friends 
here that I have heard of you. The first person whom I 
heard speak of you was Mr. Egerton, who has talked of you 
a great deal." 

D'Antignac was not surprised that Armine "seemed to shrink 
at the sound of a name so lately connected with the tragedy 
which had such cruel meaning for her. She grew a shade 
paler, and her eyes seemed to gather a deeper shade of wistful 
expression. After an instant's pause she answered: 

" I know Mr. Egerton, but not very well ; and I cannot 
imagine why he should have talked of one of whom he knows 
so little." 

" I think he fancies that he knows a good deal," said Miss 
Bertram. "It is one of Mr. Egerton's peculiarities "the 
slightly mocking tone of her voice just here would have been 



556 ARMINE. [Jan., 

very familiar to Egerton's ear had he heard it "to believe that 
he reads character with unusual penetration." 

" He certainly brings an unusual degree of sympathy to 
bear upon it," said D'Antignac's quiet voice ; " and the truest 
penetration is that which is derived from sympathy." 

" Yes, Mr. Egerton is very sympathetic," said Armine. 
" He feels, he understands so quickly. I have observed that." 

" I see that he has two very good friends," said Sibyl, 
smiling. She sat down and looked at D'Antignac. " I am 
not sympathetic," she said. " I make dreadful mistakes about 
people, and I often feel as if I were horribly obtuse. How can 
one learn sympathy?" 

" I think you do yourself injustice in fancying that you do 
not possess it," he answered. " If you really want to learn, 
however, there is one way cultivate comprehension." 

" But if I had to define sympathy I should say that it was 
comprehension." 

" Not exactly. They are only very closely allied. One 
cannot have sympathy without comprehension, but it is quite 
possible to have comprehension without sympathy." 

" I always hesitate to disagree with you, M, d'Antignac, 
because you know everything so much better than I do," said 
Armine; "but it seems to me that it is impossible to have com- 
prehension without sympathy. If we thoroughly comprehend 
why a person feels or believes a thing very strongly, even 
though we may condemn the belief, we may understand his 
point of view, his motive and meaning ; and is not that sym- 
pathy ? " 

" Yes," D'Antignac answered, knowing well of what she 
was thinking, " that is sympathy in the truest sense which we 
feel for those with whom we differ, and it certainly has its 
basis in an enlightened comprehension. To compare earthly 
with heavenly things," he added, not unwilling to change the 
subject somewhat, " such sympathy reminds me of the divine 
charity of the church toward the adherents of error. While 
for the error itself she has sternest and most uncompromising 
condemnation, she has infinite compassion for those who are 
misled by it. And that is the spirit which, as far as possible, 
we s*hould imitate." 

" Only we may sometimes make mistakes about condemn- 
ing error," said Sibyl. 

He looked at her with a smile. " We shall most undoubt- 
edly do so if we make our own opinion the standard for our 



1884.] A RMINE. 557 

judgment," he said. " There is hardly an affair of life, and 
certainly not a question of importance, either political or so- 
cial, which we do not need to try by a standard that knows no 
variation, that is never swayed by thought or fear of man." 

" Such a standard is what I have always instinctively longed 
for," she said. " Yet I wonder if you know the feeling of re- 
volt as if one were surrendering one's liberty which one who 
has been reared in Protestantism feels at the thought of sub- 
mitting to the absolute authority of the Catholic Church?" 

" I do not know it from experience," he answered, " for, 
thanks to the mercy of God, I have always belonged to the 
household of faith. But I have observed it very often in others, 
and to me there is no more striking proof of the ' darkness of 
our understanding ' which theology teaches is one of the three 
consequences of original sin. For what save a hopeless dark- 
ness of the understanding could make men prize the liberty of 
remaining in ignorance and of formulating error ? Does any 
man of sense, when he is offered scientific knowledge and such 
certainty as science can afford, reject it in order to retain the 
' liberty ' of making wild guesses and forming wild theories on 
a basis of no knowledge at all ? Yet what is any scientific cer- 
tainty compared to the certainty of a truth which has been 
revealed by God ? Yet this truth in a matter so vital as 
eternal salvation men reject for the liberty of entertaining 
vague opinions and being ' carried to and fro by every wind of 
doctrine.' Surely the world has never seen such another proof 
of human folly ! " 

" It is strange," said Sibyl musingly. " One might think 
that people would be at least as eager to obtain certainty in a 
matter so important as they show themselves with regard to 
worldly knowledge. But so far from that, how indifferent they 
are ! How little earnestness they display ! One is tempted to 
think that earnestness died out of the world with the mediaeval 
saints." 

D'Antignac shook his head, smiling a little. " You draw 
wide conclusions from narrow premises," he said. " I grant 
that earnestness such as you mean has no place in your world 
the world of a society which is essentially pagan, with a thin 
veneer of conventional Protestantism over it but it has not 
left earth with the mediaeval saints. Ask Armine if she has not 
lately seen some of it in the convent where she has been stay- 
ing." 

"Ah! mademoiselle," said Armine, as Sibyl looked at her, 



558 ARMINE. [Jan., 

" if you could see the life of that convent as I have lately seen 
it, you would not think that the saints had left the earth." 

" Or rather she would realize that they have in all ages 
spiritual descendants," said D'Antignac. " I think that Miss 
Bertram might find interest in a visit to a convent. You have 
never met any religieuses ? " he added, addressing Sibyl. 

" No," she answered, " I have never met any, and I confess 
that I would like to visit a convent very much indeed." 

" I am sure that H61ene would be delighted to take you," 
he said. " She has an extensive acquaintance in the religious 
world. Or here is Armine, who could introduce you into the 
convent which she has just left." 

" If I might take the liberty, I should be delighted to do so," 
said Armine. 

"Here comes Hlene," said D'Antignac, as his- sister en- 
tered. " We will hear what she has to say of it." 

Helene had to say that she would take Miss Bertram to 
visit a convent with pleasure. " We will appoint a day," she 
said, addressing the latter, "and 1 will not only show you a 
convent, but also some of the most charming women in the 
world." 

Miss Bertram declared that any day would suit her, so the 
next afternoon was appointed for a visit to the convent which 
Armine had lately left. " I know that Armine is by this time 
anxious to see her friends again," Mile. d'Antignac said, smil- 
ing. 

Arrmine admitted that she would be glad of an opportunity 
to do so, and after a little more discussion Miss Bertram rose 
to go. " I am sorry that I cannot stay longer," she said, in 
reply to a remonstrance from H61ene, " but I left mamma at 
the Magasin du Louvre and promised to bring the carriage 
back for her in half an hour. But I shall come to-morrow 
afternoon there is no fear of my failing in that. And then, 
or at another time, M. d'Antignac, I shall hope to hear some 
more practical directions about cultivating sympathy. Adieu, 
mademoiselle ; I am happy to have met you." 

The last words were uttered very graciously to Armine, 
and in the ante-chamber, where H61ene accompanied her, the 
speaker added : " What an exquisite face Mile. Duchesne has ! 
It is like a poem, as I think I have heard Mr. Egerton remark. 
I do not wonder now that he has been so enthusiastic about 
her." 

"Has he been enthusiastic?" said H61ene, smiling a little. 



1 8 84.] A RMINE. 559 

" I did not know that he had seen much of her. He was spe- 
cially fascinated with her unhappy father." 

" I have always had a suspicion tljat the fascination was 
with her rather than with her father," said Sibyl. " And I 
can only repeat that since I have seen her I do not wonder. 
Now au revoir, dear mademoiselle. Look for me certainly to- 
morrow." 

" I have discovered something," said Mile. d'Antignac to 
her brother a few hours later. " Miss Bertram believes that 
Mr. Egerton is in love with Armine." 

" Does she ? " said D'Antignac quietly. " It may be so. 
Things more unlikely have happened. And probably Miss 
Bertram is a good judge of the signs of the tender passion." 

"Do you think it can be true?" said Helene after a pause. 

" I do not know," her brother answered. " I have never 
seen him with her, nor has he often spoken to me of her. I 
find it quite credible that any man should be in love with 
Armine. That is all I can say." 

" I should find it more credible for one to be in love with 
Sibyl Bertram," said Helene. " She is to me a peculiarly 
charming person." 

" She is a very attractive person to me," said D'Antignac, 
"but not charming like Armine. However, that is my indi- 
vidual taste. Then I fancy Miss Bertram might prove very 
difficile. That often deters a man from falling in love." 

,"I thought a man was generally animated by difficulty." 

"That depends on the man. He may not care for diffi- 
culty, or there may be too much of it. But you may be 
sure of one thing," added the speaker, with a smile : " if Eger- 
ton is in love with either we shall soon discover it; for you 
know the proverb, ' L amour et la fume"e ne peuvent se cacher' ' 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE next afternoon D'Antignac was alone, lying quietly 
on his couch after seeing the party of ladies start off for the 

Convent, when the sound of the door-bell was followed 

a moment later by the entrance of M. de Marigny. 

D'Antignac's pale, calm face brightened with pleasure, 
as it always did at sight of this nearest and dearest of all his 
friends, and he held out his hand with a gesture of welcome. 



560 ARMINE. [Jan., 

" One values a pleasure more for its unexpectedness," he 
said. " I did not know you had returned to Paris." 

" I have only been . in Paris a few hours," the other an- 
swered. " I have come here at once. Do I not always come 
here before I go anywhere else? But to-day I have come 
with important news." 

"Indeed!" said D'Antignac. He looked keenly at the 
other's face, as if to determine the character of the news 
before hearing it. There was certainly no indication of bad 
news in the serene and slightly smiling expression of the 
countenance. " It is as I expected," he said. " You have 
found that there was no foundation for Duchesne's belief." 

M. de Marigny drew a chair forward and sat down, smil- 
ing a little more. Then he said quietly: " Au contraire. I 
have found his story correct in every particular." 

" Is it possible ? " said D'Antignac. He lifted himself to 
a sitting position, as if, in the eagerness of his interest, unable 
to remain recumbent. " Do you mean," he said, " that Du- 
chesne was really the heir to the title and estates of Marigny ? " 

" I mean," answered the vicomte calmly, " that he had a 
very good case to carry into a court of law, and might have 
been declared the true Vicomte de Marigny. But, again, he 
might not. I have obtained a legal opinion upon the case, 
and I am told that the issue would be extremely doubtful. 
The marriage is to be found registered as Duchesne was told 
that is, the marriage of a Henri Marigny and Louise Bar- 
beau. But it is necessary to prove that this Henri Marigny 
was Henri Louis Gaston, Vicomte de Marigny, and the only 
witness of the marriage is long since dead. We have, it is 
true, the second-hand testimony of his son, and the court 
would decide upon the value of that testimony. The end is 
this : if Duchesne were living I should contest his claim, and 
I doubt whether he would succeed in establishing it. But, 
since he is dead, the case is different." 

" Why ? " asked D'Antignac. 

" For the simple reason that it would have been impossi- 
ble to surrender to him without a struggle property which 
he would have used in the worst of causes. But with his 
daughter the matter is different. I have no doubt it will be 
possible to make an amicable arrangement with her. I shall 
lay the case before her as it stands, counsel her to take legal 
advice and to determine what she will accept, or whether she 
will have her case decided by law." 



1884.] ARMINE. 561 

"Then even in her case you would contest the claim, if 
brought for the whole estate?" 

" I should have no alternative but to do so. My duty to 
those who are to come after me would demand it. A man 
who has inherited an old name and an old estate occupies a 
different position to that of one who has made his own for- 
tune and, in a certain sense, his own name. The former, at 
least, is his own to do what he will with. But one who oc- 
cupies the place of succession in an old line is no more than 
a trustee. What was handed down to him he should hand 
down intact, as far as may be, to those who are to come after 
him. And therefore, as the guardian of interests not his own, 
he cannot surrender any part of an inheritance which it is his 
in a special manner to protect, without absolute assurance ot 
the justice of the claim such an assurance as only the deci- 
sion of a high legal authority can give." 

"I understand your position," said D'Antignac. "You 
are bound for the sake of others to think of justice rather 
than of quixotic generosity. Yet, from your speaking of an 
'amicable arrangement' with Armine, I judge that you think 
her claim would be just." 

"Yes," he answered, " I think that she has a claim, though 
whether it can be legally supported is another question. 
There is a very good moral certainty that a marriage took 
place, which, though only a civil marriage, would, I presume, 
be held binding by the church. That being the case, she is 
a daughter of the house, and therefore I should be within 
the bounds of my duty in allowing her whatever was just 
and right." 

D'Antignac lay back on his pillows. " I do not think," 
he said quietly, " that Armine will accept anything." 

" But why should she not as a right ? " asked the other. 
" There is no question of generosity in the matter, no room 
for scruples. Either she has a right or she has not. If she 
has, why should she hesitate to accept it?" 

14 She will tell you herself," answered D'Antignac. " My 
opinion is merely an instinct; yet I have never found my 
instincts with regard to Armine wrong." 

" But on what ground do you think ,-her likely to re- 
fuse?" 

" That I do not know. She has not spoken of the matter 
at all to me. I can only repeat that I have an instinct that 
she will refuse to press any claim or to take anything." 
VOL. xxxvui. 36 



562 ARMINR. [Jan., 

" But I am told by M. Egerton that it was her father's 
dying charge that she should do so." 

"Poor Armine ! " said D'Antignac. "Was it not enough 
for her to have suffered all that she did from her father dur- 
ing his life? Why should he exercise a posthumous tyranny 
over her now ? Egerton, of course, felt obliged to tell her 
all that Duchesne directed should be told. But, that being 
done, why should there be any farther effort to influence her 
through his desires, in opposition to her own wishes?" 

The vicomte shrugged his shoulders, with a smile. " It 
would certainly be a singular freak of fate that would make 
me the advocate of Duchesne's wishes in any respect," he 
said. " But it would be strange if they did not influence his 
daughter, especially as I have seen more than once how 
strong her sentiment of filial devotion was." 

" It was the strongest sentiment of her nature," said D'An- 
tignac, " and she has been wounded in it, as we are wounded 
just where pain is most keenly and deeply felt. All her life 
the cruel struggle has been going on God on one side, her 
father on the other ; the desire to reverence and the need to 
excuse, passionate affection and intellectual condemnation. 
She has been torn and crushed ; and when, through a most 
terrible grief, peace has come to her, I must remonstrate 
against that peace being again disturbed by the image of 
her father. Put before her, as you propose, the case in all 
its bearings, give her time to decide upon it, and then accept 
her decision. I have confidence in Armine. I believe that it 
will be a wise one." 

" I have confidence in her, too," said the vicomte. " She 
inspires one with that feeling. Yet she is very young to 
decide on a matter of so much importance. At least you 
will promise to give her your advice?" 

" If she asks it certainly. But I cannot promise that it 
will be exactly what you desire." 

41 1 desire only that she shall receive what is justly hers ; 
and you will hardly advise her to reject it?" 

" I cannot tell until I hear her reasons for wishing to do 
so. Armine generally has good reasons for her conduct and 
opinions. And yffru must remember that although you are 
bound to offer whatever is just, she is not bound to accept it." 

" She is bound by all the rules of common sense." 

" Ah ! common sense," said D'Antignac. " Well, that is a 
very good, a very useful, a highly respectable thing ; but there 



1884.] ARMINB. 563 

is sometimes a sense which is uncommon that is higher and 
better. I have a great respect for common sense, but I have 
never made it the standard by which to test all opinions, as a 
number of worthy people do." 

" Since you have often accused me of something closely 
verging on quixotism, I suppose I am hardly one of the 
worthy people," said the vicomte, laughing. 

" No," the other answered, with a smile, " you are not one 
of them. And therefore I shall expect you to be reasonable, 
if for any motive which common sense perhaps might con- 
demn Armine declines to profit by this discovery." 

" I see that you are firmly of the opinion that she will de- 
cline, and that you are also firmly disposed to uphold her in 
doing so," said the vicomte. " Ek bien, I must simply put the 
matter before her myself. When and where can I see her?" 

" The ' when ' is for you, or for her, to determine," answered 
D'Antignac. " But the ' where ' is easily arranged, since she 
is here." 

"Here?" repeated De Marigny, glancing involuntarily 
around. 

" Not at this moment," said D'Antignac, perceiving the 
glance. "Just before you came she went out with H^lene 
and Miss Bertram. But she has been staying with us since 
she left the convent, to which, as you may remember, she 
went soon after the death of her father." 

" I remember to be prepared for reception into the 
church." 

" She has never been out of the church. But she was pre- 
pared to receive the sacraments made a general confession 
and her First Communion. Poor child ! How changed she 
was when she returned quiet, peaceful, almost happy ; al- 
though her father's death is a blow from which she will never, 
I fear, entirely recover." 

" And yet it must be difficult for her not to feel the relief 
of the freedom which results from it." 

" I doubt if she feels it at all," said D'Antignac. " Her 
nature is too deeply affectionate. She was passionately at- 
tached to her father, and, after her fears for his eternal fate, 
I think that the greatest grief connected with his death is 
the fact that they parted in estrangement at least on his 
side." 

" His fate was terrible," said the vicomte ; " but I confess 
that I could not regret it. He was a man whose power of 



564 ARMINE. [Jan., 

doing evil was great in proportion to his natural gifts and 
they were very great. 1 never heard him address a multi- 
tude, but I can imagine the magnetic power which he pos- 
sessed, and the fiery eloquence which M. Egerton describes 
as fully equal to that of Gambetta. And this man, unlike 
Gambetta, was not a politician and self-seeker, but he had 
all the force which strong, fanatical conviction gives. The 
day might have come when he would have played the part 
of another Danton." 

" Nothing would have delighted him more. But how comes 
on our friend Egerton, who may well speak feelingly of the 
eloquence which nearly led him to death ? " 

" It certainly nearly led him to death," said De Marigny, 
" but I doubt if it nearly led him into Socialism. He has too 
clear a mind to be captivated by such fallacies." 

"You like him, then?" 

" I like him exceedingly. There is something very attrac- 
tive in his character an openness and a verve which promise 
well. When a man is prepared to hear reason, and is sus- 
ceptible of enthusiasm, one may hope much from him." 

" I hope much from his association with you. It was what 
he needed contact with a man of ardent faith, who is at the 
same time foremost in every activity and interest of the world. 
Generally speaking, it may be safely said that to convert men 
of the world we need those who are, in a measure at least, men 
of the world also, who possess its polish, its grace, its keen 
wisdom, yet use these things for God and not for the world. 
And so I believe that it may be -your privilege to bring this 
soul out of the realm of shadows of beliefs without base, and 
the vain opinions of men into the presence of the great real- 
ity of divine Truth." 

" I will gladly do all that I can to this end," said the 
vicomte. " But let me remind you that to pray is better than 
to argue when the conversion of a soul is in question ; and 
there can be no doubt whose prayers are of most value yours 
or mine." 

" Neither can there be any doubt," said D'Antignac, " that, 
prisoned here on this bed of pain, I am not likely to forget 
my friends in the sole thing that I can still do for them." 

When Armine heard of M. de Marigny 's visit, and that 
he desired to see her, she evinced, somewhat to D'Antignac's 
surprise, the greatest reluctance to receiving him. 



i884-J ARMINE. 565 

"I cannot!" she said, shrinking at the mere suggestion* 
"It is impossible. Do not ask me!" ; 

D'Antignac did not answer immediately. Her agitation, 
was so evident that he reflected for a moment before replying. 
Then he said, with the gentle calmness which always tran- 
quillized her : 

" But it is necessary that I should ask you, and I am sure 
that you will not act -merely from an impulsive feeling." 

" It is not merely an impulsive feeling," she said. She 
came and knelt down by the side of his couch. " Do you not 
remember," she said in a low tone, " how all the last cruel 
trouble that divided my father and myself began with with 
his seeing me speak to M. de Marigny? And have you for- 
gotten that I told you how he bade me never speak to him 
again ? Here is something in which I can obey him ; and 
surely I should do so ! " 

" My dear little Armine," said D'Antignac, laying his hand 
tenderly on hers, " I understand all that you mean and all that 
you feel ; but there is more to consider than you perhaps ima- 
gine. In the first place, it is entirely beyond reason that you 
should be bound throughout your life by the arbitrary and 
hasty command of a moment " 

" But M. de Marigny is entirely out of my life," she in- 
terrupted quickly. " There is no reason why I should ever see 
or speak to him." 

" There is a very important reason why you must of ne- 
cessity see and speak to him," said D'Antignac. " You cannot 
have forgotten the communication which your father when- 
dying made to Egerton, and which he conveyed to you." 

She made a quick gesture as of one putting a thing away 
from her a gesture half-proud, half- pathetic. 

" I will have nothing to do with it nothing," she said. 
" What my father did not claim for himself I shall not claim 
in his name. If that is why the Vicomte de Marigny wishes 
to see me, simply tell him this. I have nothing more to say, 
only that I am sorry Mr. Egerton disregarded my wishes and 
betrayed the secret confided to him." 

" He disregarded your wishes with reluctance," said D'An- 
tignac ; " but he felt himself bound in honor to execute as far 
as possible the trust your father had confided to him, so he 
came to me for advice. I agreed with him that M: de Marigny, 
as head of the family, should certainly be informed of what 



$66 ARMINE. [Jan., 

your father believed to be certain facts. Yet, after all, it was 
not Egerton who informed him, but myself." 

Armine had risen now from her kneeling position, and stood 
looking a little cold and reserved. 

14 1 do not think," she said, " that Mr. Egerton should have 
come even to you when I requested him to hold inviolate a 
secret which he had received as a dying confidence." 

44 Not as a dying confidence, if I understand rightly," said 
D'Antignac, 44 but rather as a commission." 

44 Which he performed when he came to me," she said in 
the same slightly proud voice, "and therefore with which he 
had no more to do." 

44 I do not agree with you," said D'Antignac, exceedingly 
surprised by this manifestation of character, and understand- 
ing more fully the dilemma in which Egerton had found him- 
self. " He felt that by the trust which your father had placed 
in him he was obliged to consider your interest, even if you 
refused to consider it yourself; and, if you have any confidence 
in my judgment, you may believe that he was right." 

44 1 have every confidence in your judgment," said Armine, 
with more of her usual manner. " You know that. But I can- 
not believe that he was right to disregard my wishes and bring 
upon me, and upon others, annoyance which I wished to avoid. 
For nothing, M. d'Antignac, nothing shall make me take any 
step in the matter! What is it to me whether my father had 
or had not the right to bear a noble name ? What is it to me 
whether a little more or less of wealth might be mine ? I 
have enough for my wants, and this much at least of my fa- 
ther's spirit is in me: I belong to the people, my heart is 
with the poor and the suffering, and why should I strive to 
force myself into a noble house that would only scorn the 
descendant of a peasant and the daughter of a Socialist?" 

She looked very little like the descendant of a peasant as 
she uttered these words, D'Antignac thought. The delicate 
face was instinct with feeling, the beautiful dark eyes were 
glowing ; he had never been more struck with what he had 
always remarked in her, the unmistakable signs of inherited 
refinement. 

" I can understand," he said quietly, " that there would be 
very little to urge you to claim what your father regarded as 
his right, if any struggle was necessary to do so. But if there 
was none needed if, instead of scorning, the head of the 



1884.] ARMIN&. 

house came voluntarily to acknowledge and receive you what 
then?" 

She paused a moment before answering, and he saw an in- 
describable change come over her face a change such as he 
had often observed when she was touched by a high or beau- 
tiful thought. And when she spoke her voice was like a 
chord of music so many different tones of feeling blended into 
it. 

"What then?" she repeated. "Only this: that it would 
be a noble thing for the head of such a house to do, granting 
that he believed the claim to be just, but that I have no desire 
for the recognition or acknowledgment." 

"Yet it was your father's dying wish," said D'Antignac. 

She looked at him with a glance which, even before she 
spoke, seemed to disarm his power of objection ; it was at once 
so pathetic and so full of the meaning which greater knowledge 
of a subject gives. 

" My father's dying wish has a different significance to you 
and to me," she said sadly. " You regard it, no doubt, as dic- 
tated by solicitude for me, for my personal prosperity and hap- 
piness. But / know my father better than to fancy that. He 
had not one set of opinions for his public life and another for 
his private life ; he did not preach to others that property 
and rank are crimes against the brotherhood of humanity, yet 
grasp at them himself. He was wrong he was mad, if you 
will but 1, who spent my life with him, would stake my ex- 
istence on his sincerity." She paused, for her voice was choked 
with emotion; but controlling herself after a minute, she went 
on : " Do you think, therefore, that he wished me to claim rank 
and wealth in order that I might enjoy privileges that he held 
to be robbery ? Ah ! no. What he desired I know it as cer- 
tainly as if he had told me was that I should use them for 
the ends that lie desired, and to which he had given all his 
own fortune and the labor of his life. I understand now with 
perfect clearness why it was only after that unhappy visit to 
Marigny that he began to concern himself about what I be- 
lieved, and to endeavor to mould and bend my faith. I re- 
member well how he said that he had thought lightly of my 
opinions as ' merely a girl's fancy ' until he found that there 
might be power in my hand for evil or for good ; 1 did not 
understand him then, but I understand now. The power for 
good or evil was the inheritance of Marigny, which he thought 
might be mine. Do you think, then, that he would have wished 



568 ARMINE^ [Jan., 

me to possess that power to use for ends which he thought evil ? 
and you know I could not use it for ends which he thought 
good." 

"But you might use it for ends which would be truly good ?" 
said D'Antignac, anxious to put every view of the case before 
her, yet certain that she would not be moved. 

She shook her head. " Even if I could," she said: " and that 
is doubtful, for what am I but a weak girl without judgment ? 
you certainly do not think that they would be ends as good as 
those for which M. de Marigny uses it now ? Should I take 
out of his hand if I had the power to do so means that give 
him greater influence in the battle where he is a champion and 
defender of all that is most noble and of most vital importance 
to France ? Ah ! you do not know," she went on, clasping her 
hands with a familiar gesture, while her eyes shone on him full 
of radiance, "how long I have said to myself, ' If there was only 
something that I could do ! something to aid in this battle, 
which I, who have seen the other side, know must be so long 
and hard ! something to help those who are to save France, if 
she can be saved ! ' Arid now you would have me lessen the 
power for good of one who can do all that I have dreamed 
of? Oh! no, M. d'Antignac, I am sure you do not wish it; 
and I am also sure of this, that I would work for my daily 
bread sooner than touch one centime that came from the reve- 
nues of Marigny ! " 

It was impossible to doubt her earnestness or her resolution, 
and D'Antignac smiled a little an inward and invisible smile, 
if the phrase may be allowed to describe the slight sense of 
amusement which does not always find outward expression as 
he thought how positively he had prophesied this result, even 
while ignorant of the reasons which would influence her. 

"I comprehend your position," he said after a moment. 
" You feel that you could not fulfil your father's wish by using 
anything which came to you through this claim in the way 
he desired ; so, rather than use it in a way he did not desire, 
you prefer to leave it in hands where it is certain to be well 
employed. But you overlook two things first, that what- 
ever descended to you in such a manner would be absolutely 
yours, to do what you will with ; and you would be no more 
bound by the wishes of your father in the disposition of it 
than he would have been bound by the wishes of his grand- 
father who, we may infer, would certainly not have desired 
that the family inheritance should be spent in founding a Com- 



1884.] ARMINE. 

mune. In the second place, M. de Marigny has a right to 
decline to retain what he does not feel to be justly his, and 
you have no right to refuse to hear reasons for believing it 
to be yours." 

She looked at him with the same reluctant expression with 
which she had first heard the proposal that she should see M. 
de Marigny. 

" You do not know how painful it would be," she said. 
" Surely it is not necessary ! Surely you can tell him what I 
have said, and assure him that no argument can change my 
resolution ! " 

"I might do that," said D'Antignac, "and still he would 
be, by the nature of his position, constrained to insist on see- 
ing you ; and you have no reason that justifies you in refusing 
to see him." 

" I have the memory of my father's command .and of my 
promise that I 'would never speak to M. de Marigny again." 

" My dear Armine, your own good sense must tell you 
that you are not fettered by such a command or such a prom- 
ise. Your father himself set both aside when he directed 
you to prosecute the claim for the inheritance of Marigny, 
since it would be impossible to refuse to hold communication 
with a man who has never injured you and who is the head 
of the family." 

" But I have told you that I have nothing, and can have 
nothing, to do with the family in one way or another," she 
said. "Therefore why should I be forced to do this thing? 
But I do not wish to be childish or unreasonable," she added 
after a moment, in which only the expression of D'Antignac's 
face answered her last appeal, "and if you think it absolutely 
necessary that I should see M. de Marigny, I will see him,' 
though it will be painful oh ! more painful than I can say." 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



570 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan., 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

LA VIE DE N. S. JESUS-CHRIST. Par L'Abbe E. Le Camus. Paris : Pous- 
sielgue Freres. 1883. 

M. Le Camus unites exegetical and theological with the historical 
exposition of the four harmonized Gospels, together with a blending of 
spiritual and pious reflections. His Introduction ; on the doctrine of the 
Incarnation, the sacred books which give account of it, the locality and 
other environments of its manifestation ; is a clear statement in a small 
compass of that which it is most important to know before studying the 
harmony of the Gospels. Unfortunately, in the copy we have received, the 
last ten pages are wanting. 

The paraphrase of the harmonized narrative of the Evangelists is com- 
posed in an agreeable descriptive style. The author's exegesis is critical 
and acute. His doctrinal as well as his exegetical exposition, in matters 
which have not been decided by the authority of the church, is remarkably 
independent and sometimes diverges from the common sentiment of expo- 
sitors and theologians. Its tone is always sober, with a tendency to 
minimize. In developing the scope and meaning of the discourses and 
parables he is admirable ; and we refer particularly to the exposition of 
one parable, that of the Laborers in the Vineyard, which we have found 
for the first time made clearly intelligible. We have not finished the 
perusal of these carefully-written volumes, but we feel justified in recom- 
mending them as most useful and instructive to the educated laity, as well 
as to clergymen. In our judgment the work of M. Le Camus ranks on the 
first line of Lives of Christ with those of Sepp, Coleridge, and Fouard. 
We would assign Geike's Life of Christ to the same rank, were it not for 
errors in some points of doctrine and deficiencies in others, such as must 
always mar the works of all except Catholic authors when they attempt a 
complete exposition of the Gospel. We hope that M. Le Camus will carry 
out the intention which he hints at of publishing a similar work on the 
Acts of the Apostles. 

We have looked with curiosity to see whether M. Le Camus has thrown 
any light on the dates of the birth, baptism, and death of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, but we have found very little. He considers that 749 A.u.c. is the 
more probable date of his birth, and maintains very positively that his 
public ministry comprised only two years, besides the period between the 
Temptation and the First Passover. The opinion of M. Fouard that Jesus 
Christ was born in 749, and crucified in 783, or A.D. 30, three years and 
three months after his baptism, has been fully set forth in an extensive 
review of his Life of Christ in this magazine. We have arrived at a differ- 
ent opinion viz., that our Lord was born December 25, 747, baptized dur- 
ing the autumn of 778, and crucified on some day near the middle of April, 
782, A.D. 29. We take this occasion to give some of the reasons proving 
the correctness of these dates. 

i. Tertullian, with whom the most ancient tradition agrees, assigns the 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 571 

baptism of Christ to the twelfth and the crucifiiion to the fifteenth 
year of Tiberius i.e., respectively to the years of Rome 778 and 782. St. 
Luke places the beginning of St. John Baptist's ministry in the fifteenth 
year of Tiberius. We understand this date as reckoning from the appoint- 
ment of Tiberius to be the colleague of Augustus an event shown by pro- 
bable evidence from history to have taken place three years before the 
death of the latter. Thus, Tertullian is harmonized with St. Luke. 

2. October was the month most suitable and customary for bathinj, 
and John would therefore naturally select this season for baptizing. Nu- 
merous caravans were passing by the Jordan at this time to go to Jerusa- 
lem for the Feast of Expiation, and it was therefore the most favorable 
season for him to begin his ministry. The language of the Gospel narra- 
tive favors the supposition that Jesus came to be baptized soon after John 
began to preach, being then "about thirty years old." A period of thirty 
years and nine months intervenes between October, 778, and the end of 
December, 747, so that this last date is admissible, if there are good reasons 
for accepting it. 

3. The date of 749 is improbable, because Herod died in March, 750, 
which would restrict the absence of the Holy Family in Egypt to a few 
months, contrary to the ancient tradition, confirmed by some rabbinical 
writings, that they remained there at least two years. This reason mili- 
tates also against the date 748. All critics are now agreed that Christ was 
not born before 746 or after 749. 

4. Tertullian asserts as a well-known fact, appealing in proof of it to 
the Roman archives, that the enrolment in Judaea which brought Joseph 
and Mary to Bethlehem was made while Sentius Saturninus was governor 
of Syria. As he vacated his office early in 748, the birth of Christ cannot 
have taken place at a later date. Quirinius, who is mentioned by St. Luke, 
was a special legate of the emperor, exercising superintendence over the 
enrolment. Christ was born while the temple of Janus was shut. It was 
shut August, 746. Christ was not born at the close of that year, because if 
so' he would have been twelve years old before Archelaus was deposed, 
and could not have been taken to Jerusalem at the Passover next fol- 
lowing his twelfth birthday. He was not born in 748, because at the 
beginning of that year Saturninus was no longer governor of Syria. 
Therefore he was born in 747. Those who, with Kepler and Ideler, con- 
sider the Star in the East as a constellation formed by the conjunction of 
planets will find a confirmation of the date given in the remarkable con- 
junctions of May, August, and December of 747. 

5. The testimony of Tertullian and of the earliest tradition assigns as the 
date of the death of Christ the Passover of the fifteenth year of Tiberius 
i.e., A.u.C. 782. Between this and the Passover next after the beginning 
of John's preaching two other Passovers intervene. This gives a period 
of three years and about six months to our Lord's public ministry. Daniel 
foretold that the Messias should be cut off in the middle of the last of the 
seventy weeks. This can have no other meaning than the one commonly 
given, that the last week began with the public ministry of Christ and 
ended seven years later when St. Peter by divine revelation opened the 
door of the Catholic Church to the gentiles. In the middle of this week 
/.<?., three and one-half years after his baptism Christ offered up the sacri- 



572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan., 

fice of expiation on the cross. There is a concurrence of ancient testimo- 
nies bearing witness that Christ suffered during the consulate of Rubel- 
lius and Fusius, the two Gemini i.e., 782, or A.D. 29. It is quite certain that 
the month Nisan of this year corresponded nearly with the month of April. 
It was on the I4th or the I5th of Nisan we are inclined to think it was the 
i$th that Jesus suffered. It would be very desirable if it could be deter- 
mined by astronomical calculations precisely on what day of the month 
and week according to the Roman calendar the I4th of Nisan was deter- 
mined by the Jewish authorities, for the year of our Lord 29. This seems 
to be impossible. It is probable, however, that Friday in the Passover 
week of A.D. 29 was the I5th of April. 

We could wish that both the Abbe Fouard and the Abbe Le Camus, in 
future editions, would discuss these questions more minutely and com- 
pletely than they have done. A careful general index to the work of the 
Abbe Le Camus is also a desideratum. 

BEN-HUR. A Tale of the Christ. By Lew. Wallace, author of The Fair 
God. New York : Harper & Brothers. 

It is rather late to notice a book published more than three years ago, 
or would be if the ordinary motive of book-notices, the reception of a 
copy from the publishers, had existed in this case. It is not too late, how- 
ever, to do a service to those of our readers who have not read Ben-Hur 
by recommending it to them as a genuine and rare gem of literature. It 
has been read by a great number of very different sorts of persons, young 
and old, and has been very highly appreciated by many readers who are 
competent judges. Though a mere "tale'' in name and form, the per- 
sons and incidents of which are for the most part imaginary, and a most 
pleasing story, considered merely as a story, its real scope and purpose are 
very serious, and it is intended to teach the most important of all religious 
truths the divine character and mission of Jesus Christ. We have reason 
to believe that it has done a great deal of good in that way. It contains 
an admirable argument for the divinity of our Blessed Saviour, in which 
an irresistible logic is presented under the attractive and impressive form 
and drapery given to it by the author's fine imagination. Like many 
others, when we read Ben-Hur, without any previous knowledge of its 
character, we were surprised to find such a production coming from the 
pen of the gallant soldier and distinguished statesman who is our present 
ambassador at the Sublime Porte, and felt curious to know the reason of 
it. The explanation is given in the following extract from some news- 
paper, what one we know not, as it was sent to us in the form of a clipping 
enclosed in a letter from a friend : 

" WHY GENERAL WALLACE WROTE ' BEN-HUR.' 

" An intimate friend of General Lew. Wallace contributes this bit of gossip, telling how Ben- 
Hur came to be written : ' Before and some time after the war General Wallace was inclined to 
be sceptical on religious matters, particularly as to the divinity of Christ. Chance one day, 
while travelling on a railroad, threw him in company with Colonel Ingersoll, the infidel. Their 
conversation turned on religious topics, and in the course of their discussion Ingersoll presented 
his views. Wallace listened and was much impressed, but finally remarked that he was not yet 
prepared to agree with Ingersoll on certain very extreme propositions relative to the non di- 
vinity of Christ. Ingersoll urged Wallace to give the matter the careful study and research 



1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 573 

that he had, expressing his confidence that Wallace would, after so doing;, fully acquiesce in the 
Ingersoll view. After parting Wallace turned the matter over in his mind and determined to 
give it the most thorough investigation. For six years he thought, studied, and searched. At 
the end of that time Ben-Hur vtza produced. I mst Wallace at a hotel in Indianapolis not 
long after the book had been published. The book was naturally the topic of our conversation. 
After having told me the story I have just given, Wallace turned to me and said : " The result 
of my long study was the absolute conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was not only a Christ and 
the Christ, but that he was also my Christ, my Saviour, and my Redeemer. That fact settled 
in my own mind, I wrote Ben-Hur." ' " 

That nuisance Robert Ingersoll has thus been indirectly and uninten- 
tionally the cause of some good to counterbalance his own mischief and 
that of other vile books like his own. 

Perhaps it is because of the genuine and clear Christian ideas and the 
deep religious sentiments embodied in Ben-Hur that its merits as a work 
of literary art have not been more distinctly recognized. Had it been 
written after the manner of Kenan it would have won for itself and its 1 
author the highest praises of the literary critics, and would have become 
famous at once. But having been written in accordance with the truth 
of the Gospel, it could only await a reception of cold indifference from all 
except those who believe in that truth or at least feel no positive dislike of 
it. Even with these it is very likely that the deeply religious impressions 
which it conveys to their minds and hearts have caused them to forget the 
consideration of its literary excellence. 

Ben-Hur is, in our opinion, a fine work of art. Mr. Wallace's first his- 
torical romance, The Fair God, published many years ago, is a production 
of no small merit, and gave promise of something better to come, if the 
author chose to continue his literary efforts. But this second work is 
far beyond what we expected to find when we began to read it. It was 
a bold and hazardous undertaking to compose a historical romance into 
which such sacred persons and events should be introduced. It was espe- 
cially daring, and might seem even profane, to attempt a delineation, in a 
work of that kind, of the person and actions of our Blessed Lord. In such 
an attempt there is no medium between a great success and a disastrous 
failure. Mr. Wallace has succeeded in this, the most difficult part of his 
attempt, both by judiciously refraining from attempting too much and by 
doing well what he has attempted. The person of our Lord is introduced 
but seldom, and then only in a transient manner, until the last scene of 
the divine tragedy is reached. In the description of scenes which are 
taken from the Gospels the accessories furnished by the author's inven- 
tion are managed with good taste and skill. One scene which is purely 
imaginary, the interview between Ben-Hur and Jesus at Nazareth, at the 
time when our Lord was about seventeen years of age, is simply exquisite, 
and worthy to be compared to a picture by one of the great masters. Mr. 
Wallace preserves faithfully the truth of the narrative of the Gospels 
throughout, and expresses no opinion directly or by implication which is 
not in accordance with the Catholic doctrine, with one important excep- 
tion. In his description of the Crucifixion he calls the complaint of Christ, 
" My God ! my God ! why hast thou forsaken me ? " " a cry of despair " an 
expression which is utterly unwarrantable. He adds also to the inimit- 
able narrative of the Passion in the Gospel a finishing touch from his own 
pen entirely out of harmony with its subdued and divine pathos: ".A 



574 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan., 

tremor shook the tortured body; tJure was a scream of fiercest anguish, and 
the mission and the earthly life were over at once." 

The story of Ben-Hur, as a whole, has many characters and scenes 
which are admirably depicted. We will not call it faultless, and in our 
opinion, although in parts it reaches the excellence of the highest form of 
art, the author's exuberant imagination generally inclines him to over- 
draw and to color too highly. The young Prince Ben-Hur is too heroic and 
too much resembling a mythical demi-god, and the scene of the sixteenth 
chapter in the palace of Ildernee borders too closely on the marvellous. 
These defects do not, however, detract from the fascinating charm of the 
story, and for young readers they doubtless add to it. We have heard the 
wish expressed that a similar book to Ben-Hur might be written, present- 
ing apostolic Christianity in the same clear light in which Mr. Wallace 
presents the divine mission of its Author. Such a work could only be 
achieved in a manner which would equal that of Mr. Wallace in truthful- 
ness, by a Catholic, and one minutely acquainted with the history and the 
environments of the early age of the church. We are thankful to Mr. 
Wallace for what he has done, and done so well. There are few books 
which we have read of late years with so much pleasure, and we advise 
every one who has not read it to do so at the earliest opportunity, feeling 
certain that those who follow our advice will thank us for having called 
their attention to The Life of Ben-Hur, 

THE ETERNAL PRIESTHOOD. By Henry Edward, Cardinal Archbishop of 
Westminster. London: Burns & Gates. 1883. 

This is not a dogmatic and doctrinal but a spiritual and practical trea- 
tise, written for the benefit of priests. Its basis is, nevertheless, dogmatic 
and doctrinal, and it is laid upon two fundamental ideas. One is the 
essential identity of the sacerdotal character in all who have received it, 
whether they are only in the grade of the presbyterate or have been ele- 
vated to the highest grade of priesthood by episcopal consecration. The 
second idea, which is derived from the first by a natural genesis, is that 
the obligation to sanctity and perfection which springs essentially from 
the character and dignity of priesthood in bishops, exists also in priests in 
virtue of their sacerdotal state. The reason, quality, motives, and means of 
sanctification in the priestly state and office are thus derived from the 
excellence, dignity, and privileges belonging to the sacerdotal character, 
which is possessed in common by all priests, although in its fullest exten- 
sion and plenitude it exists in bishops alone. The cardinal sa)'s : " Except- 
ing this alone [i.e. plenitude of the priesthood in the one and limitation in 
the other], the priesthood in the bishop and the priesthood in the priest 
are one and the same. ... It is of faith that the episcopate is the state of 
perfection instituted by Jesus Christ. It is certain also that the priesthood 
is included in that state. Whatsoever is true of the priesthood in itself is 
true both of bishop and of priest" (pp. 2, 3). 

In consonance with this doctrine, after a brief but clear exposition, 
derived from the Scripture and the great doctors of the church, of the 
nature and dignity of the priesthood in Jesus Christ and in his human 
ministers, the cardinal proceeds to his principal theme, the obligation to 
sanctity by which priests are bound : . 



1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 575 

" It is theologically certain that interior spiritual perfection is a pre- 
requisite condition to receiving sacred orders. St. Alphonsus declares that 
this is the judgment of all Fathers and doctors with one voice" (p. 34). 
In developing this thesis the cardinal puts his finger upon one false 
maxim, too common and most detrimental in its influence viz., that per- 
fection is something which appertains only to the state of a bishop, or of a 
person who is under religious vows. 

"The notion of obligation has been so identified with laws, canons, 
vows, and contracts that if these cannot be shown to exist no obligation is 
supposed to exist. It is true that all laws, canons, vcnus, and contracts lay 
obligations upon those who are subject to them. But all obligations are 
not by laws, nor by canons, nor by -vows, nor by contracts. There are obli- 
gations distinct from and anterior to all these bonds. . . . These bonds of 
Jesus Christ are upon all his disciples, and emphatically upon his priests. 
... If these things do not demand of men aspiring to be priests interior 
spiritual perfection before their hands are anointed for the Holy Sacrifice, 
and the yoke of the Lord laid upon their shoulder, what has God ever 
ordained or the heart of man ever conceived to bind men to perfection? " 
(pp. 49. So). 

We have italicized the word " vows," in order to call attention to the 
sanction which the cardinal's words imply of a sentiment very forcibly 
inculcated by Bishop Vaughan in his introduction to the Life of St. John 
Baptist de Rossi. It is that the ordinary and principal medium for promot- 
ing Christian faith and virtue is the body of the clergy, employed in active 
pastoral or missionary work ; irrespective of any varieties in mode of living 
and discipline, organization under special rules, or consecration to different 
kinds of activity by voluntary agreement or by vows in an institute or order. 
Such a view promotes that spirit of fraternity and harmony which ought to 
subsist among all classes of priests. It brings out prominently the primary 
importance of the intellectual and spiritual education of that clergy which, 
wjth and under the bishops, has that chief and most essential office and 
work to do, both pastoral and apostolic, to which all others, however 
excellent and important, are auxiliary. 

It is matter of congratulation that such solid and useful doctrine 
should be presented to the priesthood of the English-speaking world, and 
to the young ecclesiastics who are aspiring to the priesthood, by one who 
is both an archbishop and a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, and who 
is in his own person an illustrious example of sacerdotal learning, virtue, 
and zeal. It is to be hoped that Cardinal Manning's book will be read by 
all those to whom it is addressed, and that its results will equal its intrinsic 
excellence. 

GROUNDWORK OF ECONOMICS. By C. F. Devas. London : Longmans, 
Green & Co. 1883. 

On taking up a book treating of political economy we confess to a 
feeling of aversion. This volume, however, has agreeably disappointed us. 
We read with interest every page of it. The style is clear, it is written in 
plain English, and the terms used are not hard to understand. 

Mr. Devas has given to the public no ordinary book. It displays origi- 
nality without eccentricity. He consults the best authorities, at the same 
time does not fail to do his own thinking. We should classify him among 



576 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan., 1884. 

honest thinkers and sincere lovers of their brethren of the human race 
a radical conservative. The work is eminently judicious. 

Its author not only thinks, but observes too, and gathers facts from all 
quarters, quoting authorities with equal facility, whether ancient, mediaeval, 
or modern. He is evidently familiar with the literature of his subject. He 
has convictions convictions of an earnest, clever, broad thinker. We ad- 



mire his courage and esteem his book as attractive. There is need just 
now of pens like his to treat the topics of his book and in the way he 
does. Such pens should not be idle. 

We have been promised a review of the work by a competent writer, 
and look forward to the accomplishment of this purpose. 

ORDO DIVINI OFFICII RECITANDI MISS^EQUE CELEBRAND^E PRO ANNO BIS- 
SEXTILI 1884. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 
This Ordo is a great improvement on the one hitherto in use in its 
beauty of print and general appearance ; it also has in addition to the 
common office the Roman one. This necessarily makes it somewhat 
more bulky. Still, it has only one hundred and twenty pages to the 
nearly one hundred of the old one; and the pages are hardly perceptibly 
larger. It omits some points given in the other, principally the list of 
deceased bishops and clergy, and the anniversaries of consecration, etc., of 
the bishops. It is by no means free from mistakes and misprints, the most 
important of which, and perhaps all the really serious ones, are corrected 
in the preface. We would, however, suggest the omission of " Sec. Ruhr. 
Gen." before each day ; also the words " Pro Clero Rom." seem hardly 
necessary, as the red type sufficiently indicates the Roman office. Other 
criticisms might be made; but it is easier to criticise any book, and espe- 
cially an ordo, than to make a better one, and this is such an encouraging 
departure that it is to be hoped further improvement will come of itself. 

A CLASSIFIED AND DESCRIPTIVE DIRECTORY TO THE CHARITABLE AND 
BENEFICENT SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 
G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

In favor of this neat and very useful little volume we need only copy 
the first paragraph of its preface : 

"This Directory has been compiled primarily for the friendly visitors 
of the Charity Organization Society, but also with a hope that it may be 
useful to all interested in the charitable resources of New York City. It 
shows where relief can be had, and it will gi*ide those who wish to con- 
tribute to special charitable work in the city." 

MICHAEL ANGELO. A Dramatic Poem. By Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow. Illustrated. Imperial 8vo, pp. ix.-i84- Boston : Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 1884. 

This handsome volume is worthy of the taste and resources of its pub- 
lishers, no less than of the dead poet whose final work it contains. The 
poem had been written ten years before, but Longfellow had kept it by 
him for revision, and after his death it appeared for the first time in the 
pages of the Atlantic Monthly. Now, in conformity to Longfellow's wish, 
the Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. have given us the work in this ele- 
gant form, with thirty-seven illustrations in the highest style of our new 
school of designers and wood-engravers. 



vol.38 
The Catholic World no. 2 , 





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